Fourth Sunday of Easter

Dominica in Pasqua IV
21 April 2024

 The Gospel passage for this Sunday is familiar.  We hear the Lord declare that he is the Good Shepherd.  It is a tender image.  The Lord Jesus is not simply claiming to be a good shepherd in a superficial way, as if to use the image only to put a nice sentiment in the minds of disciples.  He is also making a contrast between himself and those who are bad shepherds, what the text refers to as a “hired man” and other translations call a “hireling” and even a “mercenary”.  There is an Old Testament precedent for this image of the good shepherd.  It is the strong rebuke of the shepherds of Israel, meaning the religious leaders, who have God’s Word launched against them by the Prophet Ezekiel, in Ezekiel chapter 34.

Ezekiel delivered these words of God because he was told to prophesy against the shepherds of Israel and what they had done to the sheep: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!... You have fed off their milk, worn their wool, and slaughtered the fatlings, but the sheep you have not pastured.”  And further, Ezekiel says, “As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have been given over to pillage, and because my sheep have become food for every wild beast, for lack of a shepherd; because my shepherds did not look after my sheep, but pastured themselves…. I swear I am coming against these shepherds.  I will claim my sheep from them and put a stop to their shepherding…. I will save my sheep… I myself will pasture my sheep” (Ez. 34:1-16).  The Lord is more indirect in his words in the Gospel than was the prophet, but the tender image he uses of the good shepherd has behind it this very forceful language about the seriousness of shepherding God’s people rightly toward the sheepfold and the pasture of eternity.  It has behind it a serious indictment for shepherds who take up the responsiblity of shepherding, but use it as an opportunity to pasture themselves, that is, to make shepherding about caring for themselves and what they can gain.

With that Old Testament prophecy as a backdrop, let’s consider again the Gospel passage.  In this section of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem and the temple area.  He is in the place of religious significance for Jewish faith, the place of encounter with God in the temple, the place where the religious authorities operate in a most important way.  And in fact, I think we get a richer sense of the Good Shepherd imagery by noticing that just verses before today’s passage, backing up into the prior chapter, in John 9, we have an entire chapter where the Pharisees are exposed for opposing the miraculous healings worked by Jesus, where they appear to be like clowns running a kangaroo court as they investigate the healing of the man born blind.  You should check it out and read John 9 today to see what immediately precedes the Lord’s declaration that he is the Good Shepherd.  As the Pharisees refuse to accept that Jesus healed the man born blind and they even refuse to believe that the man born blind was indeed blind, they reject that Jesus is the one sent from God, despite the fact of his doing the works of God.  At the conclusion of John 9, Jesus says, “ ‘I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.’  Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not also blind, are we?’  Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains’.”  Did you catch what happened there and what was being revealed about the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the shepherds of Israel?  The Pharisees themselves sure caught it!  “You’re not saying we’re blind, are you?”  While they might see with the eye, the Lord is calling them spiritually blind.  Because they refuse to acknowledge their blindness they are caught in sin.  They are shepherds who are being rebuked.  And so, in this context and atmosphere, the Lord reveals that he is the Good Shepherd.  It is he who fulfills the words from Ezekiel.  He is God coming to claim His own sheep and to take them away from the bad shepherds who are only taking care of themselves.  In their own blindness and sin, the Pharisees are leaving the sheep neglected, scattered, and even subject to the pillage of wolves, meaning the destruction of the evil one, Satan.

Next in this passage, the Lord says, “I know mine and mine know me.”  These words here and other Gospel words about the one good shepherd, and the one entrance to the sheepfold, and the one gate by which the sheep go in and out, have a strong resonance with later words of the Lord: “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6).  St. Peter, in the first reading, likewise speaking to the Jerusalem elders and leaders, the same ones indicted by Jesus in the Gospel, seems to be saying something similar: “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved” (Acts 4:12).  The Good Shepherd says, “I know mine and mine know me.”  Surely, we can understand that the Good Shepherd’s knowing us the sheep, his relationship with us, his knowledge about us is complete, and firm, and strong, and lasting.  He is God and there is nothing lacking in his knowledge.  “I know mine.”  But what about the last part of that claim, “and mine know me”?  For that claim to be true, that requires something of us the sheep.  How do we remain firm in our knowing of Jesus, our Good Shepherd?  I suggest that a cornerstone for our knowledge of the Good Shepherd and for our advancing toward the pasturing that leads to eternal life is whether we accept and truly embrace that Jesus is the only way to salvation.  There is no other name, no other person, no other figure, no other power, no other claim, no other system of belief, no other system of worship, no other movement, no other thing that will save us!  If we don’t accept that and live by that, then we are not knowing the Good Shepherd for who he is for us.  And if we do not know him, then we are weakened in identifying his voice and in following him.  We gradually seek pasture elsewhere and we listen to other voices that are not his.  And that will not lead us to eternal life and salvation in the pastures of heaven.  In an age like ours that treats everything as equal and equivalent, an age that emphasizes “my own personal truth”, an age that parrots “tolerance” and “coexisting”, an age that promotes what is really a secular progressive religion that promises the “salvation” of a man-made utopia here on earth, in this atmosphere we can fall prey to the wolves that weaken our confidence and faith in Jesus as the Good Shepherd and the only way to salvation.  The only way to salvation is the Good News that God Himself desires us to be shepherded rightly into good pastures, and He Himself has come as the Good Shepherd to save us.  The Lord has to have that kind of primacy and priority in our lives.  He knows us.  But for us to know him, we need to place all our confidence and faith in him.  We need to identify and remove from ourselves other persons, ideas, or things that we might follow ahead of the Lord.  We should examine our conscience for those things we make explicitly more important than the Good Shepherd and his guidance.  But we also need to search ourselves and to be honest about naming those things that, perhaps unintentionally or accidentally, we give more allegiance to than we do to the Lord.   We have the opportunity to repent and to know our shepherd more deeply by listening to his voice and entrusting ourselves to the One who knows us intimately.  Our Good Shepherd makes the astounding claim of calling us into a relationship with him that mirrors the relationship of the very Blessed Trinity.  What he says should fill us with joy: “I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father”.

Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)

Dominica in Pasqua II
Divine Mercy Sunday
7 April 2024

 In my homily for the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday I suggested that our “Alleluia” returns in this season and is joyful precisely because, if we have used Lent well, when the “alleluia” is suppressed, then we have confronted the reality of our own sins and the sinfulness in mankind’s history.  This admission of our guilt can serve to make us more aware of what God has done for us in saving us.  And thus, it makes us more grateful and joyful in signing out “Alleluia” in this season of the resurrection.  Praise the Lord for his salvation in Jesus Christ!

At the root of mankind’s state and status is a pride that grasps for more and grasps to touch and to possess the place that properly belongs to God.  This is the lesson of Adam and Eve and their disobedience in grasping for the fruit of the tree that the serpent told them would make them like God (Gen. 3:5).  They desired the place and the knowledge and the power of the Godhead, and so they took the fruit of that tree and brought condemnation upon themselves and upon all of us who inherit that fallen nature, which is still inclined to sinfulness and unholy desires.

By Original Sin and our own personal sins we deserve condemnation.  We actually acknowledge that at the start of each Holy Mass when we call to mind our sins and ask God’s mercy, before we ascend the mountain, so to speak, of worship at Holy Mass.  When we call to mind our sins we are not merely calling to mind “struggles” or “mistakes” or “weaknesses” or some such vague language.  No, we are calling to mind our sinful choices and our guilt.  We are calling to mind that we deserve condemnation.  We call to mind everything that reflects sin in our lives.  Each one of us says, “I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done (the evil I have done) and in what I have failed to do (the good I have failed to do), through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault”.

Yes, as we recall God’s mercy we have many reasons to be thankful and to be filled with joy as we say alleluia, because we are aware of those sins from which we have been saved.  The apostles and disciples, the first Christians, faced condemnation for their own sins and they faced a world locked in death, when they experienced the Good News of the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus.  They knew the Lord’s resurrection to be a great victory of joy and hope.  And they knew they were called to live that victory.  Thus, the second reading had St. John proclaiming that belief when it said, “the victory that conquers the world is our faith”.  The disciples went out into the midst of a world whose mentality and vision was still very much locked in human power and the hopelessness of condemnation.  As the first reading showed, the disciples went out into that world and they lived differently.  They had different teachings.  They had different practices.  They were of one heart and mind, and with power they bore witness to the resurrection.

Do you acknowledge the drama of salvation and God’s generous mercy in your life?  Are you aware of sin in your life such that you can live the joy of Christ’s victory for you?  Are you ready to be like the first disciples and to go into the midst of the world and live differently?  Do you know it to be your mission, too, to bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus and to proclaim that the victory that conquers the world is our faith?  We are supposed to render that kind of evangelical service to the world.  For though we have been redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, the world is still ensnared by that mentality and vision of grasping and possessing the place, and the knowledge, and the power that belongs properly to God.  In so doing, those who adopt a worldly way of thinking and acting dismiss the free gift of salvation from God, so busy are they grasping things for themselves and by their own power.

Yes, the world is ensnared by the mentality and vision of its own false god.  Do you ever consider why so many of the gravest evils of human history, so many of the gravest sins, involve human flesh, both how it is made and its very existence?  It’s because sins against human life, sins against its dignity, and sins against how human flesh is made strikes at the very image of God, who has made human beings male and female and has made us in His image and likeness.  Murder, adultery, pornography, sexual immorality of all kinds, abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, transgender ideology… all these ensnare our world and our contemporaries and they create an atmosphere that threatens to ensnare us.  These sins are like a retelling of the Garden of Eden with the serpent enticing mankind against God, against His very image and likeness.  These sins keep the world and the worldly from acknowledging the victory of our faith.  These things keep souls locked in condemnation and need our witness and our joyful “alleluia”.  We are to be so grateful ourselves for the gift of God’s mercy that we are ready to live differently in the midst of the world, and to be like those first Christians who proclaimed in word and action the victory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday

Easter Vigil & Sunday
30 & 31 March 2024

   At Easter we return to our familiar singing of “alleluia”.  That word originates from the Hebrew and means “Praise the Lord” or “God be praised.”  One of the distinctive liturgical features of Lent is that the alleluia has been suppressed these past many weeks.  We are accustomed to the alleluia before the Gospel, but we use a different Gospel acclamation throughout Lent.  In some religious communities and in some parishes there is the practice as Lent gets started of marking that suppression of the alleluia by taking a banner that reads “Alleluia” and burying it in the ground.  So, when today “Alleluia” rings out again in our churches and from Christian mouths, there is supposed to be great joy in such a happy proclamation.  So, why would we be so joyful in that acclamation?  Why would that acclamation now return and what has prepared us to have joy as we again proclaim “alleluia”?

In part, it is because we have first observed Lent where we have been deprived of that familiar word of praise of the Lord.  But, of course, it is deeper because our observation of Lent is about more than just the absence of “alleluia”.  Rather, it is about walking the journey and the opportunity of that holy season to take note of what reduces our joy, what stifles or limits our joy.  What stifles our joy is sin, and/or being a glutton about good things in our life such that we give those things more focus than we dedicate to the spiritual life.  They become actual idols.  In Lent, we pass through the desert of recognizing sin and seeking to dismiss it from our lives in order that we live in greater freedom as God’s sons and daughters.  And as we grow in fidelity to that work of uprooting sin and growing in holiness by the fostering of virtue, well, then, we experience greater joy in Christ.

Yes, our Christian Lenten practice of the absence of that word alleluia is geared to making us now more fond of proclaiming “Praise the Lord”!  When something is missing, when I don’t get to experience it or enjoy it over an absence, I am enabled to be more aware of the blessing of that thing when I can experience it again.  Of course, we mean only good things here.  For, we ought not enjoy bad things or sins, and we ought not return to them once we get rid of them.  That’s why a true Lenten sacrifice, something you give up as part of your Lent, is about giving up a good, a legitimate thing that you are able to enjoy, but which you voluntarily relinquish.  You do this to make more time for God, to fill the absence (of that thing you have given up) with greater attention to prayer, discipline, and work on the virtues.

What has the absence of “alleluia” taught us such that we return to its use today?  By our working to uproot sin, by our willing sacrifice of good things in our life, by our struggles, by our weakness in our resolve, by having to recognize how inconsistent I can be at spiritual work and doing something for God, by all this we enter into a time of desert wandering.  We mark salvation history in our own living.  Like God’s people in Egypt we have to confront by the absence of our alleluia that we are very much trapped in sinful patterns and that our “egypts” – our sins – have quite a hold on us.  We are attached to slavery in Egypt and we need a savior.

If we have first done this self-reflective work in Lent.  If we have recognized the ways in which we need the Lord to save us, and if we take stock of just how desperate we are in our sinfulness, then we have noticed in the dryness of the missing “alleluia” that we have been given much by the Lord Jesus who has worked such marvels for us.  We likely do not take anywhere near enough stock that by our sins we deserve condemnation.  We are helpless and hopeless.  We would have no cause to dare think, much less say, Alleluia, were it not for the Lord!  That, friends, is what Christians actually believe about the seriousness of sin and the seriousness of the offer of salvation in God’s generous love.  In the dryness of Lent’s missing alleluia we have the opportunity to confront our Egypt and to learn to let it go.  We have the opportunity to pass through the desert, to follow – and yes, to wander (hopefully not for 40 years!) – where the Lord leads trusting that the slowness of our hoped-for growth in holiness is not due to anything lacking from Jesus, but from our own resolve.  And so, time and time again, we must be trained in the absence of our acclaiming “Praise the Lord” of just why we have such cause to praise him!  Missing the alleluia these many weeks, if we become convinced of our need for salvation, our need for Jesus, then our “Alleluia” returns now with deep joy!

In the absence of praise these long weeks, hopefully we return to that familiar acclamation with renewed gratitude for how salvation history has worked in us, how it is working, and how – by God’s continued generous love – it will continue to work into our future.  We praise the Lord now for God the Son has come to save us.  We praise the Lord now for God’s Kingdom has been inaugurated and we are called to inherit it.  We praise the Lord now because by baptism and faith and continued striving, salvation history is not only a story of the past but is very much here and now working in you and in me.  Our sins take us to the grave and eternal death.  But the Lord Jesus has gone there on our behalf.  The voracious appetite of death once greedily took his flesh.  But in so doing death got a surprise in that it swallowed up a power greater than itself: God almighty.  Jesus has tangled with death and left it ruined.  And by rising from the dead the Lord has opened the path for all who believe and who conform their lives to him.  Taking note of all of this divine work as a deeply personal history for me and for you, and not just a story from the past, we can say once again, “alleluia!”  Praise the Lord!

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday 2024
28 March 2024

Ex. 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Cor. 11:23-26; Jn. 13:1-15

  The season of Lent has now ended and the Sacred Pascal Triduum has begun with the start of this Mass.  The Gospel selection for this Holy Mass is taken from St. John’s unique account of the Last Supper, at which the Lord Jesus gives an extended Farewell Discourse.  Throughout that discourse it is clear that the apostles did not understand the full import of the Lord’s words, nor what he was doing.  We heard evidence of this in the passage where Jesus responds to Peter’s question by indicating “What I am doing you do not know now, but afterwards you will understand” (Jn. 13:7).  Later on in this passage we hear other words from Jesus, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now; but you shall follow afterward” (Jn. 13:36).  Still later in St. John’s final discourse, Thomas asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” (Jn. 14:5).  A final example of the lack of understanding on that first Holy Thursday evening: Philip says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied” (Jn. 14:8).  The Lord responds, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?” (Jn. 14:9).  Yes, throughout the Farewell Discourse is a contrast between the misunderstanding of the disciples in that present moment and a future time when they will understand what Jesus is saying and doing.

 The twofold sacramental significance of the Last Supper is that the Lord was establishing the apostles as his first priests and, at the same time, entrusting to them the duty to guard the Holy Eucharist, and giving them the sacred power to make that gift present in his Church for future generations.  The Lord was giving this charge to apostles whom he knew to be misunderstanding the significance of what he was doing for them, in them, and through them for the whole Church and the salvation of the world.  Knowledge of their misunderstanding apparently did not phase the Lord, for it did not stop him from doing what we celebrate this evening.  The future understanding would come as a gift of the promised Holy Spirit, sent from God and taking up dwelling in His Church.  For me, looking back over 25 years of ordained priesthood, I can sort of chuckle about these misunderstandings in the Gospel.  I chuckle because I am really chuckling about my own misunderstandings about what the Lord was doing the day I was ordained and given a share in that apostolic charge to guard the Holy Eucharist and to make it for the Church.  To be clear, that comment is not a claim that I have reached a moment of utmost clarity about the Lord’s workings.  No.  Rather, it is simply a comparative observation that the priest today can notice how much was misunderstood by the priest 25 years ago.  And I assume I will be able to say that in 25 more years should God grant me those years.  Indeed, the Gospel plays out again… In time and with growth we come to understand more of what the Lord does for us and in us.  The Holy Spirit helps us marvel at those gifts and helps us have a deeper understanding of these mysteries.

 But to have our misunderstandings clarified and to appreciate what the Lord does for us we have to get to know him and we have to let him do his work in us.  That means we must use our freedom to cooperate with him, to make ourselves available to him, and to beg the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds.  Peter hesitated about letting the Lord wash his feet, and even said, “You will never wash my feet.”  The Lord’s response taught Peter a distinction between bathing and washing (as we heard in the use of language in the passage).  We might consider that an image that serves as a distinction between baptism and confession.  For when Peter thought he might need more of himself bathed, Jesus said, “Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed, for he is clean all over.”  Bathing makes one clean.  An image of the bathing of baptism.  Yet, even the one who is clean needs his feet washed from the daily dust of life’s journey.  An image of the washing of confession.

 Let’s stick with that initial protest of Peter: “You will never wash my feet.”  Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”  In this spiritual interpretation of that exchange, we can understand that as the need to be washed in confession and restored there to our baptismal dignity.  Peter was apparently bathed.  He had no need to have more of himself bathed.  According to the Lord, he needed only his feet washed.  It is a model for us in our need to be healed, restored to baptismal dignity, and washed of the daily “dust”, the daily struggles, the daily sins.

 We the baptized have been bathed in the waters that make us clean all over.  Yet, like the apostles, we have misunderstandings.  We can suffer from hardened hearts.  We can refuse the Lord.  Our sins risk our inheritance with him.  As we pray this evening that the grace of the priesthood will be given to sons in your families, to sons of this parish, we know that our own misunderstandings cannot be relieved if we are not healed in confession.  We will be open to the Holy Spirit’s illumination to lift our misunderstandings and to heal our sins if we build our Eucharistic devotion, our devotion to this great gift given on this holy night.  Our resistance to prayer where that comes up in the busyness of our lives, resistance to uprooting sin, our resistance to coming to adoration in our chapel are ways we say to the Lord, “You will never wash my feet.”  We learn from the Gospel this evening, through the slowness and misunderstandings of those first priests, we learn of the ongoing need after being bathed in baptism, to encounter the Lord time and time again.  In the adoration of Holy Mass and worthy reception of Holy Communion, and in responding to the opportunity of adoration in our chapel, we go there to reveal our vulnerabilities and misunderstandings to the Lord.  He enlightens us and heals us.  He sends forth the Holy Spirit to transform us in any age and stage of our life.  By giving us his very self in the Holy Eucharist, through the hands of priests, the Lord holds out before us that inheritance that is the great hope of those who follow where he is going.

Third Sunday of Lent

Dominica III in Quadragesima B
3 March 2024

 We learn from our Lord in the Gospel about the dignity and value of the temple, the house of God.  It is sacred and holy, which refers to “being set apart”.  That which is not set apart, that which is common, that which is mixed with ordinary things is profane.  The temple, the house of God, is not to be profaned by making it just another place that is not set apart for God.  We learn that the profane is not to intrude into the sacred.

As we learn that the temple, the house of God’s dwelling, is set apart, we also learn something quite important, that the temple is not merely a place of stone.  It is, rather, the Body of Jesus.  And further, we learn from St. Paul elsewhere in the Scriptures that by faith and the consecration of baptism, Christians are removed from the merely profane and are set apart, made holy, made temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 3:16-17; 12:27).  With a biblical outlook we are to have zeal for the Church, zeal for the temple of the Lord’s Body, and to have zeal for the temple that our bodies have become.  It doesn’t take any effort to let ourselves exist in the profane.  No, that happens daily and easily.  It takes effort to have zeal to recognize the holiness of the temple we have become and to live accordingly. Furthermore, it takes effort to transform the way we live in the profane so that something of the holy, something of God, is brought into our daily activities outside of these sacred walls.  After all, when we gather here and are nourished by God’s Word, and the grace of the Holy Eucharist, and fortified with common prayer, we are then sent out at the end of each Mass, sent out to be on mission in the world to make more disciples.

The first reading gave us the Scriptural listing of the Ten Commandments.  The Ten Commandments establish relationship with God.  They establish what it means to be set apart as belonging to God.  They are the markers of leaving aside the profane and being holy.  We should consider the setting of the first reading: It is the Exodus.  God’s people have been set free from slavery.  They are on their way to freedom and the Promised Land.  We are fairly familiar with the biblical story of God desiring to set His people free from Egypt.  But sometimes we don’t consider the finer point of what they were being set free for… When Moses told Pharaoh of God’s instruction to let His people go, Moses informed Pharaoh that they must be set free to go out to meet God in the desert to serve Him, which is biblical language for “to worship Him” (cf. Ex. 7:16; 8:1; 9:13), that was why, not only the Hebrew people, but all their flocks too, had to make the journey, so that they would have animals available for sacrifice in worship of God.  The story of the Exodus and being set free, is a story of being set free for that proper relationship with God that is marked by worship.  In the account of the Ten Commandments, the people are gathered at Mt. Sinai.  There they receive the Ten Commandments.  It’s worth reflection that in giving the Ten Commandments, God is doing something almost like giving building materials for building a temple, a place of worship.  Except, foreshadowing the lesson of the temple-in-the-flesh from today’s Gospel, God is not giving literal brick and mortar.  Rather, he is giving those structures that will set the people apart from the profane to be temples.  He is giving those structures that are “moral” brick and mortar, that establish proper relationship with Him and that make His people living temples.

Contrary to the structure created by the Commandments, there is an attitude in our time that proposes that freedom is radical autonomy, that freedom means there are no limitations on our desires and choices, no obligations to which we must be obedient.  This wrong idea can infect our attitude toward the Commandments and moral teaching, if we aren’t careful.  It’s a popular idea one encounters everywhere.  I was at a hearing recently at the Oklahoma State Department of Education and one citizen stood up to speak in public comments and said quite plainly that there is no such thing as objective good or evil, that there is no such thing as objective truth, or beauty, or goodness.  Such things are only individual opinions or personal tastes, the person said.  This false idea in our time is an extreme notion that rejects boundaries and limitations if they are not things we ourselves choose.  This attitude is present in the ideology of choice and the pro-abortion agenda that rationalizes the killing of unborn children.  This attitude is present in the lose sexual moralities (whether hetero or homo) proposing that the only consideration in sexual ethics is what makes the self feel good.  Despite the harm of sexual acting out before marriage, and sexual perversions, this wrong attitude says it is only a person’s intention that is the measure of morality.  That is, that all desires and actions are equal so long as the person doesn’t mean harm and, after all, the individual desires are how “love” is defined anymore.  It’s why we end up with senseless slogans like “love is love”.  To the modern mind infected by secularity, there are no boundaries.  And that’s just not reality.  And so, we end up with the rejection of observable physical reality, like the body and the binary reality of male and female.  Though less salacious, this attitude is frankly also present in the way the duty of Sunday worship can be dismissed and treated as if it is only a minor sin to skip the worship of God at Holy Mass.  The rejection of the obligation of proper worship is a rejection of the boundaries that God has placed on time, on our week, and it is a choice to remain profane and enslaved, by being apart from God, not fully alive as temples, as living stones.

The Lord demonstrated zeal for the temple.  He was clearly angry at what he saw going on in the temple, after all he took time to make a whip in order to drive out the moneychangers.  (That makes the Lord’s angry reaction a pre-meditated act, not an abrupt outburst.)  Some scholars suggest that he was mad that money changers were cheating people with bad exchange rates.  Others suggest that the Lord was mad that there were even moneychangers at all.  But the fact is that we don’t know that, the biblical text doesn’t say.  What we do know is what the text plainly says when Jesus turns over the tables.  He says “stop making my Father’s house a marketplace”.  Stop making it a place of trade.  What we know is that the Lord was angry that this activity was taking up space in the place that had been set aside to be holy.  It was profaning and taking up space that should have been kept apart so that people would have room to come inside the temple, to pray, and to worship.  The Lord was angry that something set apart to be sacred was being profaned.  And, we can’t forget the deeper and more important lesson for our life as consecrated, anointed disciples: the body has been made a temple and we can’t lack in our zeal to keep it holy and to avoid profaning it by being complacent about sin.

The Ten Commandments are like moral brick and mortar for our temples, the temples of our bodies.  The Ten Commandments are the boundaries that God gives so that we have proper relationship with Him and truly belong to Him.  The Ten Commandments are the foundation by which we, the baptized, truly become living stones in the temple of Jesus’ Body, of which he was speaking in the Gospel.  In this holy season we have a privileged opportunity to recognize just how run down by daily living we can become such that we lack zeal for the Father’s house.  We have the opportunity in Lent to correct course, to turn over the tables of complacency and to chase out the moneychangers of our busyness and work, and all the things that get more attention from us than we give to the good of our souls.  By the cleansing of confession, or by preparation for baptism for those in RCIA, we are given grace to become more truly what we were made to be: namely, living stones in the temple of God, members of the Body of Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit.

First Sunday of Lent

Dominica I in Quadragesima B
18 February 2024

ACA Commitment Weekend

 The journey of Jesus into the desert always fills our hearts and minds with a vivid image to begin the Lenten season. Like our Lord, we journey with resolve to be strengthened, knowing we too will be tempted. No doubt, you have chosen something from which to fast during this season, some sacrifice, and you hope that your efforts will not only prepare you for a greater celebration of Easter, but that they will also make you a better husband or wife, a better father or mother, brother, sister, and friend. In short, you hope to be more united to Christ: to renew that Christian identity bestowed upon you at Baptism, and to be a better disciple.  We must constantly repent, renew, and be reformed.

Or, in the case of the catechumens in RCIA preparing for Baptism at the Easter Vigil, you prepare yourself to be baptized and confirmed: at once united to Christ and strengthened to be his witnesses in the world. Today, we celebrate and pray for all Catechumens and Candidates in RCIA preparing to receive these sacraments this Easter as they gather at the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine this afternoon to celebrate the Rite of Election that is, to be chosen for the Easter Sacraments by Archbishop Coakley.

Yes, we begin this season with all our fervor in participating in “the yearly observances of holy Lent,” as we prayed in the Collect at the start of Holy Mass, but a question must arise in our hearts.  That question is, “Am I being ‘driven by the Spirit?”

It’s a detail that is sometimes overlooked in the Gospel, but this year as we read the brief account given by St. Mark, there’s no opportunity for dramatic demonic dialogues to overshadow the surprising fact that Jesus does not simply choose to go to the desert. Rather, we are told, he is driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit! The Gospel said, “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days.” (Mk 1:12)

At the beginning of Lent, am I being “driven by the Spirit”, like Jesus was driven into the desert? Am I taking on Lenten observances inspired by the Holy Spirit?  Was the Holy Spirit part of how I came up with my serious Lenten observances and sacrifices?  In other words, did I even pray, “Lord, what do you want from me this Lent”?  Am I desiring what Jesus desired—to follow God’s will for my life, led by the Spirit—while I face the “wild beasts” and “temptations” that fill the desert of my life?

If we want to be driven by the Spirit, we must first desire to live in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit, referenced by St. Peter in the second reading, is life in the Risen Lord, the fulfillment of the sign of God’s eternal covenant with us, prefigured by the sign of the bow in the clouds which God gives to Noah.  The covenant with Noah is fulfilled in Jesus.  His flesh is put to death by being “drowned” we might say, immersed in the “flood” of bitter suffering and crucifixion for our salvation.  But, the wood of that Cross serves as we might also say, as the ark, the instrument through which his passage lands on “the shores” of the Resurrection. Never again, we heard in that first reading, will the Lord God permit a flood to destroy all mortal beings.  And so, passing safely through the threatening “waters” of the temptations of this life is now accomplished for believers in baptism.  As we heard in the second reading, “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.”  To live in the Spirit, then, means to keep this covenant, and to follow God’s ways.

The covenant cannot be kept alone, however. We must live in the Spirit as the Body of Christ, the Church! The Church connects us to Christ because the Church is the Body of Christ, by which we are joined to Christ our Head, we the members.  The Church gives us the support we need to keep the covenant, and allows his Spirit to move in and through us. But the Church, the Body of Christ, cannot support those seeking to live in the Spirit if we don’t support the Church, if we aren’t living members of the same. We all must do our part to build up the Body of Christ, the Church, ministering to her as the angels ministered to Christ.

As we journey through this Lenten season, may the wilderness within us become a sacred space for transformation. Let the love of God guide us, the teachings of the Lord direct us, and the baptismal waters renew us.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday
14 February 2024 

This holy season of renewal in godly life begins in distinctive fashion with the imposition of ashes.  In a few moments, as ashes are imposed, you will hear the phrase: “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”  I really love how Lent begins with that phrase because I think it is so rich, so packed, with meanings that speak to us of aspects of our faith and salvation history.

First, it speaks to us of a reminder of our creation.  That takes us to the Book of Genesis.  Man was formed from the dust of the earth and God generously blew life into his lungs.  That phrase is a reminder of mortality, and therefore the need for repentance, since we also know that the phrase comes from God’s words to Adam after the Fall.  God spoke to Adam of the consequences of sin and that he would have to labor by the sweat of his brow to provide from the land for his needs.  God said to Adam that one day he would return to dust and uses this very same phrase: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”  This serves as a powerful reminder that there is a God and we are not Him.  We bear the mortality that is a consequence of Original Sin and our personal sins.  We will face judgment and so the reminder of being dust is also a call to repentance.

But there is still even more meaning packed into that inaugural phrase of Lent.  It is not only a reminder of past creation or of the darkness of sin and mortality.  We are a people of hope.  We have hope in the Blood of Jesus in the New Covenant.  And so, this reminder of creation, automatically carries with it a reminder of re-creation.  God’s plan to save us from sin means that the Son has come in our very flesh to restore us, to redeem us, to usher in a new creation.  The phrase calls to mind at one and the same moment, both creation and re-creation.

And thus, that packed phrase, is a call to us to go deeper in our life with the Lord.  We are to repent of what keeps us bound to sin and the mortality of eternal death.  We are to live in the new creation by growing in grace and holiness.  That grace of being recreated by the Lord is something that must be seen and visible in us.  That does not mean that we live grace in order to be seen.  No.  Rather, God’s Word tells us that grace must be made visible.  In St. Paul’s Letter to Titus he writes that the grace of God “has appeared”, that is, been made visible, in Christ (cf. Ti. 3:4).  If we are living in the new creation then likewise redeemed life must be seen in us too.  It must be enfleshed in us.  Holiness must be incarnate in us, following the model of the one who made us new.  And so, Lent is a time for us to put on more fully, like clothing and vesture, the grace of redeemed life.  We are to put on the life of Christ, the New Adam, who has refashioned us for a new creation.  St. Paul writes in the Letter to the Ephesians, “put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24).

When we face all the meanings of that Lenten phrase, we know that we have divided hearts.  We fall for sin and we remain attracted to it, even though the Lord has opened for us the way to salvation.  The call of Lent is to shake off the slumber that speaks to us and keeps us living in sin, apart from God.  We are to uproot those things that are sinful.  And we need to be serious about the disciplines that will help us go deeper in our life with the Lord.  I think the words of the first reading are so appropriate for this call to avoid being superficial but to seek deeper redeemed, recreated life.  The Prophet Joel wrote the words of the Lord: “[R]eturn to me with your whole heart,… Rend your hearts, not your garments.”

Our campaign of Lent has begun.  Our spiritual weapons, both the ones highlighted in Scripture and our additional personal penances and practices, help reform our lives so that we live less in the old ways of sin according to our fallen nature and live more as the new creature in Christ according to the life of grace.

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica III per Annum B
21 January 2024

 In the selection from St. John’s Gospel last Sunday we heard about two of John the Baptist’s disciples, Andrew and an unnamed disciple, and later Simon Peter, who encounter Jesus and begin following him.  You might wonder whether today’s Gospel selection is the same scene, just St. Marks’ version and, if so, you might wonder why would we hear again about the calling of some of those same disciples?  Is it the same calling or not?  And how might we understand the immediate and sudden way in which the selection today tells us those disciples dropped everything to follow the Lord?

Last week’s account and this Sunday’s account are actually two different chronological events.  We know this because last week John the Baptist himself was in the passage, pointing his own disciples to the Lord.  “Behold, the Lamb of God”, he said to his two disciples.  Today we hear of a different moment from St. Mark, for he places it in a different chronological moment.  He writes that the calling we hear about today took place “after John had been arrested.”

We know that John the Baptist himself was a rather serious and dedicated man of God, living in the desert, preaching, leading a disciplined and penitential life, and calling God’s people to repent.  If these same disciples we hear about today were first John’s own disciples, it is reasonable to conclude that they too were rather dedicated, well-formed, and righteous men of God.  While the Scriptures do not give us all the details, we might conclude that after John the Baptist’s ministry ended due to his arrest and eventual death, perhaps those disciples returned to their former homes and way of life and work.  This puts them in Galilee, where they are fishermen in the episode we hear today, and where Jesus now comes to call them himself.  So, if you get the idea from today’s passage that Jesus simply shows up unknown and says “follow me”, and they drop everything to do so… you need not think that.  It is clear these disciples had encountered the Lord before, they had spoken to him, and they had stayed with him some (as John’s selection last week told us).

Jesus’ message that the time of fulfillment and the kingdom of God is at hand resonates with these serious disciples of John the Baptist.  His claim to make them “fishers of men” resonates too.  All of this helps us understand their readiness to immediately follow the Lord.  The term “fishers of men” has a ring to it of a prophecy from Jeremiah 16.  In that text, the prophet speaks of a time when people will no longer speak of how God brought his people out of Egypt in the exodus, but rather how he brought them back from exile, sort of a new exodus, to their promised land.  Jeremiah says that God will send many fishers to gather his people and to bring them back.  This prophecy can serve to signal that some new activity of God, some new movement of His people, would be celebrated.  Something like a new exodus.  It can serve to signal some type of new exodus, a new gathering of God’s people.  When you consider that John the Baptist himself was preparing the way for something new, and pointing to Jesus, and that John was conducting his ministry most powerfully at the Jordan River, where the first exodus ended, we might then understand the immediate attraction and response of John’s own disciples when Jesus shows up, says the kingdom is at hand, and calls them to be fishers of men.  They had been expecting something new, a new exodus, and in Jesus they see it is happening.  And they want to respond immediately.

Do you ever compare yourself to today’s Gospel selection, and that seemingly immediate response of the disciples, and wonder whether you would be willing to follow the Lord so definitely, so conclusively?  I suggest we note that these disciples encountered Jesus initially, and then some time later there was progression and maturation such that they were ready to follow him and commit to him.  In other words, notice that our life as disciples, too, is not about just a one-time encounter.  Our life too is supposed to progress and mature.  The first encounter matters, but so does the next encounter, and the next… all the moments of progression and life with the Lord.  What this can tell us is that any tendency to view life as a disciple as about just one moment, is dismissing the importance of progression and may be a flawed approach.  To put this in a catholic context, if we were to think that my life with the Lord is just about my baptism or just about other isolated moments where I come to get a sacrament (as critically important as those are) and not about progression and maturation in gospel living, then we are mistaken.  If we were to think that I turn on “Jesus time” by coming to Mass once a week and that does it, we are missing all the things that should be happening daily to mark our maturation as disciples.  No, the story of our life as disciples is not the mistaken view of today’s passage that Jesus showed up unannounced and unknown, said “follow me”, and they dropped everything and did so.  Rather, there was first desire on their part to be godly.  There was initial conversion with John the Baptist.  There was relationship with other disciples by which they were pointed to Jesus and had an initial encounter with him.  There was maturation and progression in faith such that they responded so conclusively in the passage we hear today.  And, as we know, there is a whole lot more to the story because those same disciples had to learn from the Master, and there were many more mistakes and repentance that would mark the journey that leads us to now view those apostles as such revered saints.

If you evaluate yourself against the response of the disciples in today’s passage, thinking their response to be this kind of out of nowhere response and think your response may be lacking, then perhaps we can look back to last Sunday’s passage from John for a few pointers.  Do you want to respond more fully to the Lord?  Then let’s take some cues from what happened in the initial encounter with the Lord that we heard about last Sunday.  Like John’s disciples heard, at every Mass we have pointed out to us the presence of Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God.”  After hearing that, are you willing to imagine the Lord asking you (like last week’s Gospel), “What are you looking for?”  Are you willing to dwell on that and respond to the Lord?  What are you looking for in life?  What is important to you?  What are your goals?  What do your daily activities reveal are your true priorities?  And do those match up with your stated priorities?  Are your priorities the Lord and being his disciple?  Where do you feel lacking or empty or not satisfied in life?  Do the things you seek after provide lasting peace?

Next pointer, what was the follow up question from the disciples last week?  “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  Our encounter with the Lord is not just one time.  Are you willing to stay with the Lord to come and see?  We worship the Lord here at Mass.  This provides us some crucial moments to stay with the Lord.  We worship him present when the Holy Eucharist is elevated at the altar for those few moments.  Worthy reception of the sacrament is the fullest participation in the Holy Mass.  But what about more than that?  The disciples from last week’s passage went and stayed that day with the Lord.  What are you willing to do to extend your time with the Lord?  What are you willing to do to take time to reveal yourself and your life to the Lord?  What are you willing to do to take time to encounter him and get to know him, not just at Mass, but in your daily living, at home, and among other disciples?  Going to stay with the Lord can happen quite literally in our adoration chapel where we are in the presence of the Lamb of God, his presence in sacramental form.  What a place to pray!  What a place to ask yourself “What am I looking for?”  Going to stay with the Lord can and should happen, too, in our homes, at work and school, in the car, when we travel, in our thoughts, in our efforts at personal prayer time.  Going to stay with the Lord happens too in fellowship with other believers.  We are not islands unto ourselves.  There we come to vocalize our faith, to share it, to be inspired by the faith of others, and to have help in being accountable with other followers of the Lord.

All of this helps aid progression and maturation in the faith.  It follows the pattern we saw from last Sunday’s Gospel selection to this Sunday’s.  I suggest that the fruit of reviewing those questions from last Sunday’s passage, helps set the stage for the unfolding of this Sunday’s passage in our own lives.  Our encounter with the Lord is nourished and matures such that the stage can be set for what we see in today’s passage.  We are prepared for deeper life with the Lord such that when he calls us to follow him in various ways into the new exodus, we are prepared to conclusively commit ourselves to follow him and to leave behind the “nets”, the things that tangle us and so often get placed ahead of life with the Lord.  The Lord’s call is ever new for us too: “The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

The Epiphany of the Lord

Epiphania D.N.I.C.
7 January 2024

             Things aren’t always as they seem.

            The Israelites at the time period of the first reading could have said that.  They’ve been in exile.  Their land and their holy city are in ruins.  They have lost their power.  Yet God’s word through the Prophet Isaiah is of splendor, glory, riches, and wealth.  The words from the first reading said: “Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! … the glory of the Lord shines upon you … you shall be radiant at what you see … the riches of the sea shall be emptied out before you, the wealth of nations shall be brought to you.”  But their land was in disarray and in ruins.

            Things aren’t always as they seem.

            The Magi – pagan foreigners from the East – came to find a newborn king.  They brought costly gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh into the humble, ordinariness of the home of Joseph and Mary.  Could a mighty king, whose birth even the cosmos celebrates with the Bethlehem star, possibly be in human form, in such a normal, simple setting?

            Things aren’t always as they seem.

            Certainly, part of the lesson of the Christmas season is that through the normal, ordinary events and things of life we are called to see the extraordinary.  Said another way, the ordinary becomes the vehicle to reveal the extraordinary.  Through the natural and human we are to see the divine.  Through natural, sacramental signs – water, bread, wine, oil, words of absolution – we are to see, hear, taste, and touch the power and the presence of Christ.

            I wonder how many times we miss God and His grace because we pass by the ordinary moments of life and faith?  How much grace do we miss because we’re too busy to stop and make time for God’s presence in our midst?

            Shepherds could see the glory of God even through the stench and the sounds of a stable.  Magi could do homage to a king in a humble home and in the form of a weak, tiny baby.  Do we train our eyes to see beyond the way things seem?

            Things aren’t always as they seem.

            Ask yourself what changes you can make in this New Year to notice God’s presence in the ordinary opportunities of daily life.  Engage in that kind of self-reflection not so much to make “New Year’s resolutions”, but to do what we authentically do as Catholics, that is, to do what good catholics do: to repent and to plan for a season of change not far away on Ash Wednesday.  Whatever your age or your state in life, whether you are a child, a teenager, young or older adult, whether you are single or married, ask yourself what changes you can make to train your eyes to see God’s presence in ordinary, humble circumstances.  What change can you make to give time to daily prayer, scripture reading, and time to simply listen to God?  What in your daily schedule can change to give more time and room to God?  Could you alter your schedule some to be able to attend daily Mass at least a bit more frequently?  What in your life needs to change to give more serious attention to repentance and to coming to confession with greater frequency?  Ask yourself what you could change to be able to attend adoration in our chapel or to make your own personal visits to the church to pray before the Lord’s Real Presence in the tabernacle.  That’s perhaps the best example of all of things not being what they seem: our senses see ordinary bread, but it is the real presence of God.  What in your life could change so that you can notice Christ’s presence in those around you in need?  What can you change to offer yourself in service to others in need, to show those in need the compassion, love, and healing of Christ?

            Whether you are young or old and whatever your state in life, what can you change to train your eyes to see God’s presence in ordinary, normal, and humble circumstances of life?  Shepherds could see the glory of God in a stable.  The Magi could see a little baby and give Him homage, prostrating themselves before God-made-man.  What do your eyes need to see beyond the ordinary things of life?  After all, things aren’t always as they seem!