Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Assumption of the BVM
15 August 2023

    A formal part of Catholic faith is our belief that God has blessed Mary with certain privileges.  These privileges bring salvation to Mary and they come purely from the generosity of the Holy Trinity.  These privileges are an answer to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, and so they are part of God’s plan to make it possible for mankind to have eternal salvation.  All the privileges of Mary stem from her first or main privilege, namely that God chose her in a singular way to be the Mother of God the Son in the flesh.  In the privilege of the Assumption that we celebrate today we express our Catholic faith that at the end of her earthly life Mary, having been preserved from sin from the first moment of her life and having chosen to use her freedom to live sinless her entire life, was rescued from the decay of the tomb and brought up body and soul into heavenly life.  You can find this doctrine already believed and celebrated liturgically in the fifth century.  Finally, being formally defined in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, this doctrine is thereby a dogma of the faith.

   In her Assumption we have one of the reasons for which we call Mary “blessed”.  In calling her blessed in her assumption, we join Elizabeth in the Gospel in proclaiming according to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that Mary is blessed among all women and blessed because of the fruit of her womb.  That fruit is our Savior, Jesus Christ, Mary’s Son and God in our flesh!

   A simple idea to help us appreciate the dogma of the faith that we observe today is this: That the ark of the covenant, and what the ark contains, belong together.  The contents of the ark of the Old Covenant were sacred: it contained God’s Word, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, it contained the rod of Aaron which had miraculously bloomed as a sign of priesthood, and it contained a vile of the mysterious manna from heaven.  By containing such sacred objects of God’s presence and power, the People of Israel rightly saw the ark itself as holy and as a place of encounter with God precisely because of its relationship with the sacred contents it contained.

   Likewise with Mary.  She is called the New Ark of the Covenant.  In fact, that image of the ark is invoked in the first reading from Revelation and moves immediately into a reference to Mary, the great sign of the pregnant woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve starts.  Mary as ark, contained the presence of God Himself as we heard in the Gospel passage.  That presence of God in her womb caused St. John the Baptist in utero to leap for joy, as we also heard in the Gospel passage.  Mary gave to God the Son his flesh, our human nature, so that he could save us, dying in our flesh and rising again to newness of life.  Furthermore, he grew in her, he was contained in her womb, like the ark contained the sacred presences of the Old Covenant.  But this time, the new ark contained not the Word of God on stone, but the Word of God in the new ark in flesh, Jesus the Christ.  It contained not the rod of Aaron that bloomed as a sign of priesthood, but in the new ark the Eternal High Priest himself.  It contained not a vile of that mysterious manna substance that was gathered from the desert floor by God’s People, but it contained the Bread of Life come down from heaven, the one whose flesh gives eternal life.  This is the ark of the new covenant and what it contains for our salvation.

   The ark and what it contains belong together.  Consider a different application but related imagery.  We wouldn’t put the Blessed Sacrament here on the altar but then have the tabernacle over there in the cry room.  The two belong together.  The tabernacle and what it contains belong together.  It is proper that after the Lord’s ascension into heaven, the ark – Mary – be reunited with her Son and brought to his dwelling place and this happens by a special privilege given to Mary by God.  This is what we believe in faith and what we celebrate in the Assumption.  We express faith that, in view of what needed to be accomplished in God the Father’s plan for our salvation, Mary was first saved by grace beforehand.  She was preserved from all sin in her conception and then, after a life of cooperation as the faithful and holy new ark of the covenant, that salvation that God gave her came to fruition such that, at the end of her earthly life, she was taken up body and soul into heaven.  God would not allow decay and corruption to touch her, the New Ark.  Since she had been saved from sin by a special grace, that means she was also saved from the consequences of sin, principal among those being death and the decay of the tomb.  May all of this about Mary serve to inspire us as disciples today to cooperate, like she did, with God’s grace so as to follow where the Lord has opened for us the way to heaven; a way she herself, we proclaim in faith, has followed.  Having been taken up body and soul into heaven we rightly say with the Psalm of this holy Mass: “The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold!”

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XIX per Annum A
13 August 2023

  Today’s first reading and today’s Gospel selection give us examples of theophanies.  ‘Theophany’ is a word that simply refers to a manifestation of God, an event by which God reveals Himself.  In fact, theophany has been a bit of a theme lately since last weekend’s observance of the Transfiguration is also a good example of a theophany.  In a theophany we have a manifestation of God’s presence and power in a sense perceptible manner.  Theophanies in the Old Testament are accompanied by the typical sense perceptible manifestations of wind, earthquake, and fire (cf. Ex. 19:16-19).  God revealing Himself to Moses on Mt. Sinai is a standard example of this, for when God comes to the mountaintop there is fire, there is wind that moves smoke up in a column, and the earth trembles.

Elijah in the first reading experienced a theophany when the Lord God decided to pass by him.  Those typical signs accompanied the event in the crushing wind, the earthquake, and the fire.  A unique contribution of this particular theophany is that the manifestation of God to Elijah is such that those typical signs of wind, fire, and earthquake are – in this instance – simply precursors to silence, the tiny whispering sound that mysteriously communicated the grandeur and the majesty of God.

The Gospel likewise presents us with a manifestation of God.  Keeping in mind the context of the passage can help us see this theophany.  After the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, the disciples are in a boat preceding the Lord across the Sea of Galilee.  That sea was a familiar place to the apostles, a place they often fished.  It is a large lake about 13 miles long and about 8 miles wide at its widest.  The passage tells us that the disciples were already a few miles into their journey offshore.  They were in a terrible storm.  And it was the fourth watch of the night, meaning it was between 3 and 6 in the morning.  This was a time on the water familiar to the disciples because it was a common time to go fishing.  We obviously understand that it was very dark out on the water and the storm made it very dangerous.

It is in this context that Jesus comes walking on the water toward them.  When the disciples are afraid and think they are seeing a ghost we get more evidence of this theophany, that Jesus is showing himself to be God.  Jesus responds to the disciples, “Take courage, it is I.”  That is a fine translation of the Greek text of St. Matthew’s account of this event.  It is an acceptable translation to suggest that Jesus is identifying himself (“It is I”).  However, we get more depth of understanding when we know that the Greek text can also accurately be translated as, “take heart, I am.”  The “I am” or “It is I” gives us a rich connection to other theophanies and that revelation to Moses from the Burning Bush of the Name of God: I am Who am.  In response to those who would dismiss this miracle as an optical illusion, as if Jesus was really walking on the shore or on a shallow sandbar, we can note Jesus’ use of “I am” to reveal himself precisely while walking on a stormy sea, in a place where his disciples are already several miles offshore, in a place where, when he doubts, Peter begins to sink down.  Is that use of “I am” significant?  You bet!  If there is any doubt, please see that the Lord uses it to reveal himself while breaking the laws of nature as he walks on water.  And the disciples truly get the theophany by the end because they say, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”

It doesn’t require much imagination to place ourselves into the lesson of this theophany of God showing Himself in the midst of a storm that tosses us about.  It doesn’t take much imagination to come up with a whole host of examples of things in life that we might call storms.  Our own character defects and weaknesses can be like storms.  We may feel overwhelmed by the setbacks we experience in our humanity.  Perhaps we face times of particularly strong temptation and it feels like we are drowning in sin.  We know the areas of our life where we are less than the disciples that we should be.  But we don’t always find the energy and the resolve to take a new step to breaking bad patterns and growing in virtue.  A storm may come from a bad decision we make with consequences we can’t undo.  Someone else’s sin may be a storm that impacts us or makes us a victim.  Times of grave social evil overwhelm us like storms.  Our storms may be worries we have for a friend or loved one.  Storms may come from illness and loss, where we are rocked by suffering and death.  We also can’t ignore that anytime we have a boat in Scripture we have a common image for the Church.  Various times in history show the boat, the barque of St. Peter, that is the Church, tossed about by waves and storms both internal and external.  History gives us ample evidence of leaders – from popes, bishops, and on down – whose immoral lives promote scandal and whose teaching fails to address the danger of heresy.  At other times the boat of the Church seems to suffer not so much from active threats but from weakness and lack of courage, as if she is just drifting about with no one’s hand on the rudder.  Our violent reaction to storms in life can reveal to us our tendency to believe a false idea that somehow life is supposed to be easy.  We don’t have that promise, especially not in our fallen world.  Recall that foundational, basic belief in Original Sin that tells us our world is fallen.  If we integrate that belief we know that things will not be easy in this life.  At times we uncritically adopt the notion that we’ll have a utopia in this life or that the march of history and progress means things are better simply because they are modern, and so our time must surely be the best.  That’s pure insanity.  Take a look around and see how everyone’s face is in a screen while they starve for real and meaningful human relationships that always elude them on that misnomered sphere of social media.  Things are better simply because they are modern?  That’s insanity.  And maybe one of the most fearful lessons of this passage (I almost hesitate to mention it): sometimes the Lord may call us, like he did with Peter on the water, to come INTO the storm, to leave the comparative safety of the boat to come into the storm for some mysterious purpose only the Lord knows.  Yes, there are hosts of storms in life from all manner of directions and sometimes too from the places we think least likely to be stormy.  But at the same time, there is Jesus in the midst of them, and he’s there to reveal Himself.  Therefore, we are called to avoid being people of doubt and little faith.  We are called to avoid being people of distraction who are primarily known for focusing on the waves, while taking our eyes off the Lord.  In the passage the disciples recognize Jesus as God because he is doing the things that God does in their Jewish Scriptures.  He treads upon the waves of the sea (cf. Job 9:8; Hab. 3:15).  He stills the storms (cf. Ps. 65:8; 89:10; 107:28-30).  And he reaches out to save his people (cf. Ps. 18:17; 144:7).  Yes, we do and we will face storms in life but the Lord Jesus is not a ghost for us either.  He is very much real, very much God, very much the one we need to call out to at the same time as we ignore and quiet the raging windy “voices” of life’s storms!

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XVI per Annum A
23 July 2023 

  Our life as Catholics is fit into a hierarchical communion, a community with different gifts and areas of service, yet sharing one and the same faith and journeying to our common home of heaven.  We know that we do not call all the shots in the Church.  In fact, we call very few of them when you consider that we have higher authorities over us.

    Quite often we might struggle with life in the community of the Church.  There are aspects of our religious life that are mysterious to us.  Perhaps there are things we don’t comprehend and need to work in order to better appreciate.  There are things in our common life in the Church that leave us unsettled and disappointed at times, even downright angry.  We wonder about certain decisions that are made.  Some of the authorities over us don’t always seem very inspiring.  Maybe we wonder how and why they were even chosen to begin with.  Some seem to be unimpressive simpletons.  Some seem to have a thing with money, and you sort of wonder about that.  And still others seem to muddle the truth.  We may scratch our heads about the decisions of our chief leader.  How could he have chosen “that guy” for a special office and role?  Doesn’t he see how bad some of these choices are?  What could he possibly be up to?  What does our chief leader mean by some of the stuff he says?  It’s like he just won’t speak clearly.  Why doesn’t he do something to make things better, more like it should be?

    The chief leader of which I speak is, of course… Jesus!  Jesus is our chief leader.  It is Jesus who is the Head of his Body the Church.  It is Jesus who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, as we read in 1 Peter 2:25.  It is Jesus who is the leader and perfecter of our faith, as we read in Hebrews 12:2.  It is Jesus who chose often unimpressive simple fisherman to be apostles.  It is Jesus who chose at least one who was a tax collector and another who had his hand in the money bag, the one who eventually committed great evil in betraying him.  It is Jesus who speaks in those mysterious parables, those teachings that are more than just images and stories, more than just comparisons, but rather stories with an unexpected twist.  Riddles we could say.  It is Jesus who speaks the parable today that forces us to contend with something unexpected and undesired: namely, that the kingdom is like a man who sowed good seed and in that field there is both wheat and weeds.  And more unexpected and undesirable to us, those weeds are permitted to be there even though they are sown by an enemy.  It is Jesus who employs this image by which the man who sowed good seed is not surprised that an enemy is also at work.  And it is Jesus who uses this image by which the man is patient to wait until final harvest for final justice.

    So, you know what that means, right?  If Jesus isn’t surprised by the weeds, and if Jesus is patient to await final justice at the harvest, well then, we don’t really get to act surprised and exasperated about the weeds in the Church.  We don’t get to exact immediate punishment and justice at all the crazy things we see in our time.  The Lord spoke this parable centuries ago.  It’s still an apt image today for life in the field of the Church.  Wheat and weeds.  And aren’t we just like the slaves of the householder in the parable?  “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?  Where have the weeds come from?”   And we go on just like the slaves, “Then we’ll go pull up the weeds, right?”  Nope.  The Master gives us not only the unexpected twist that there are weeds among the good seed, but also the further twist, “Let them grow together until the harvest.”  When we see evil and sin in the Church; when we see weakness from our leaders; when absolute confusion seems to reign; when heresy and immorality seem to be given a privileged spot; when the good and courageous leaders always seem to pay the price; when it seems like all we hear is that we are supposed to listen to and walk with those who reject Christ’s teaching and who give no sign of willingness to convert… there is that fire of indignation that arises in us like the slaves in the parable and we want to say, “Lord, if you’re not going to pilot the boat, I will.”  This parable just doesn’t let us have it that easy.  And it is a perfect lesson for our time.  If you are even casually aware of the state of affairs in the world and in the Church, the Gospel words of this parable are likely words we need to sit with and meditate upon for a good long time.

    Now I realize that this parable and what I am saying is not a complete template for how to navigate the multiple frustrations, or any one problem in the life of the Church.  By no means should anyone think that the lesson is that in the life of the Church there simply are no standards and we just turn a blind eye to error and sin and things contrary to the Gospel.  Not at all.  There are things that require courageous responses.  There are situations that need to be addressed.  There are wrongs that need to be rebuked.  And that does happen.  But also, it often doesn’t happen the way we would like.  This parable doesn’t really give us a comprehensive answer for how to handle the weeds in our time.  And the parable is not at all saying that the weeds will go without punishment and justice.

    There are topics and issues in our common life that have to be addressed.  That is true of every society of human beings.  The Church is no different in those challenges.  I’m not saying this parable tells us to ignore problems or to just dismiss them or to be naïve.  But I also don’t know how we answer all the challenges we see and the ones still to come.  What this parable can help us do is to focus on what we have authority to impact for the better, rather than focusing on someone else’s wrongs or what someone with higher authority needs to do.  This parable can make us contend with being a bit more sober about life in the field of the Church.  The parable can also help us marvel at the generous patience of the Lord.  And somewhere in that riddle of the parable we might pause just long enough to realize: You know, I better look inward first because through my sins I can be like a weed at any given time.  And had the Lord responded to the feverish calls to tear up the weeds at just the wrong time?  I myself might well have been, or well may be, pulled up and burnt.  And so, thanks be to God for the time for me to become good seed as a child of the kingdom!  Prayer, and frequent confession, and conversion, and good relationships in the faith, and the life of sacramental grace turn me from a weed into wheat.

The Lord is unlikely, it seems, to be chosen for the HOA field of the month award.  But his field will be the only one standing at harvest time and we have the time now to turn our focus and our energies more on becoming good wheat.  The alternative may be that we so focus on everyone else’s weedy-ness that we miss our own.

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Traditional Latin Mass)

Dominica IV Post Pentecosten (Mass of the 1962 Missal)
25 June 2023

 IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

I have had a number of priestly assignments over the years.  And at times, other new tasks have been added to my main work as a parish priest.  You would think that after 24 years of being a priest I might be less surprised about new assignments.  But it seems the reaction is always the same in me.  A calling to do something new, to take on some new mission can be very unsettling and causes much introspection.  When I first hear the news of being given a new calling, a new mission for God’s Church and His people a common reaction takes place in me.  Quite spontaneously, I usually first think of all the reasons why I’m not qualified and why it won’t work.

 I don’t think that tendency is all that unique.  When God calls, don’t we quite frequently and readily first think of the reasons why it is not a good idea, the reasons why it won’t work?  That’s a human tendency that the Scriptures show us.  You see that tendency time and time again in the calling of so many prophets.  The calling of the Prophet Isaiah is such an example when he sees a vision of God’s Temple.  Isaiah experiences a call to a mission, to his vocation.  What is Isaiah’s first reaction?  He thinks of the reasons the vocation and mission can’t work.  “Woe is me, I am doomed!  For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips.”  But God’s ministering angel comes with purifying fire, touches Isaiah’s mouth, and says “See, now… your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”  Being made clean and forgiven by God Isaiah can then answer, “Here I am, send me!”  In other words, Isaiah’s unworthiness is a given.  Of course, Isaiah is unworthy and sinful and incapable.  The young prophet Jeremiah is also hesitant when God calls him.  He first responds that he is too young to have a vocation from God and that his young age means he won’t know what to do and what to speak.  God tells him not to think that way and reminds Jeremiah that He, God, will give him what he is to speak.  Yes, the person called is incapable and unworthy.  That’s not a newsflash!  The Scriptural lesson is that the call is God’s call and He’s the One who equips the person He calls. 

In the Gospel selection, Jesus calls Simon Peter as he begins to bring together his apostles.  Imagine how embarrassing it would be to be an expert fisherman, as Peter was, with a fishing business, having just returned after a long night of catching nothing, to then have a carpenter get into your boat and give you fishing guidance: “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”  Simon Peter is actually qualified at fishing and he first notes his objection to put the nets in again, but with humility he is obedient.  Of course, we know that the Lord is preparing Peter for a new vocation, a new mission.  And in the face of a miraculous and large catch of fish, Simon Peter follows that human tendency to consider first how God’s call won’t work and how unworthy he is.  Falling at the knees of Jesus, Simon said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  Jesus indicates that he will guarantee Simon Peter’s mission and vocation when he tells him, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”

To fulfill the call to be holy we each are given a vocation which defines the larger arc of our life and which carries with it dignity, duties, and responsibilities.  But God may also give us a particular work at various moments of life.  We can call this a mission, some thing to accomplish that requires specific attention and effort but which may not define our whole life or be long term, like a vocation is. What godly vocation and mission is yours?  What godly vocation and mission seems unlikely in your opinion?  What is God asking of you that you might first object to, raising the reasons why you are not qualified?  “God, I can’t be…” fill in the blank.  “God, I can’t do…” fill in the blank.  Like Simon Peter, what is God’s call to you to vocation and to mission that you think just can’t be?  You see, a lesson today is that we think more of ourselves instead of God.  And that’s a problem.  That common tendency reveals the error.  Do we really think the source of power for vocation and mission comes from ourselves?  We first consider our skill, our strength, and our preparation.  We need to first think of God and what He can do.  What He can do even with you.  Even with me.  Of course, we certainly need to have a healthy awareness of our limitations and our unworthiness.  Such awareness permits us to focus where we need to call out to God in prayer for what only He can provide.  The Scripture lesson for us today is not a call to ignore our inabilities.  Rather, the lesson is to think first and more about God’s abilities.

 What might this say to us in various examples of callings?  A child or a teenager might first fear to be a disciple among peers in school and in groups of friends.  You fear being rejected or standing out for being an example of Christian faith.  Trust that God will give strength in the lunchroom and in hallways or in your neighborhood.  You need only cooperate.  Someone dating might face the struggle to live that relationship in purity and chastity as is moral teaching.  If someone is a follower of Jesus he or she has a mission to stand against the societal trend of inappropriate behavior or of living together before marriage, marriage which, for a catholic, needs to take place in the Catholic Church.  Some young men may have a vocation to be future priests.  They might tend to say, “That can’t be me.  God couldn’t choose me with my sins.”  Oh really?  Peter seemed to think that too.  Listen to the voice of the Master, “From now on you will be catching men.”  Spouses have a vocation to sacrificial love, to be faithful to one another, and to be open to the gift of children.  But it’s not easy.  There are fears and legitimate challenges and exhaustion.  Raising children takes so much.  Spouses may want to doubt the call and think themselves incapable.  But the dynamic of the Scriptures today speaks to you: “Do not be afraid.”

Think more of what God can do in you.  Maybe the invitation of God is to be more generous or sacrificial in financial giving or in lending your own talents to some area of parish life or to some Christian work done out in the world.  Is your first response fear that you won’t have enough?  How can I give more from what little I have and with my debts?  Put out into the deep and let God’s power and work bless your generosity.

What vocation and what mission might God be giving you?  What is your first response?  Is it, “I can’t”?  Or is it, “God can”?  God’s grace equipped Peter for vocation and mission.  God’s grace filled what was lacking in him and transformed him for the task at hand.  If God can call and equip so many figures in salvation history and so many saints over centuries, He does the same with the vocation and mission that He gives you.  He says to us: Your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.  He says: Don’t tell me you are too young.  I’ll give you what you need.  The Lord says to us: Put out into the deep.  Do not be afraid.  May our response be to follow the Lord in generosity, trusting him with all that we have and all that we are.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Sollemnitas Corpus Christi
Dt. 8:2-3, 14b-16a; 1 Cor. 10:16-17; Jn. 6:51-58
11 June 2023

 Today is our annual observance of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, also called by the Latin name “Corpus Christi.”  Our faith in the Holy Eucharist is one of the most essential and defining doctrines we hold as Catholics.  We believe, without equivocation or adopting the language of mere symbolism, that the Holy Eucharist is the living Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ.  It is the Lord’s Real Presence, whole and complete, in both the form of bread and wine, and even in the smallest fragments of particle or droplet.  It is the presence of the Lord given to us in sacramental form, by which we may be nourished by this gift when we receive it worthily in the state of grace.  We believe that the bread and wine at Holy Mass are changed in their substance.  They cease to be the substance of bread and wine, though the appearances remain unchanged, and become the substance of the Body and Blood of the Lord.  We believe this change of substance takes place by God and His power.  We believe this gift is made present to us only within the one true Church, established by the Lord and which responds to his command, “Do this in memory of me”, by using the words of consecration from the Last Supper and spoken by the ordained priest who shares in the one and same priesthood of the Eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ. 

That’s the quick summary of our catholic faith in the Holy Eucharist.  With that being said, I want to speak today about the Eucharistic Procession, which we will experience at the conclusion of the Holy Mass.  A few of you have asked me, “What is this for? Why are we doing this?”  That question tells me that I need to say “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” because it’s an indication there has been some dereliction of duty on my part as Pastor.  You see, while it is not obligatory, it is customary and desirable that a procession takes place on Corpus Christi at the end of Mass as a way of offering more public witness to our faith in the Holy Eucharist, and doing so precisely outside of these walls.  We haven’t done this before on the Sunday observance of Corpus Christi (and honestly most parishes don’t do a procession) because, up until now, I have been unable to imagine how I would fit this extra thing into a tight Sunday Mass schedule.  Like many a traditional thing in the past 50 or so years the outdoor procession has been dropped or almost entirely disappeared.  Is our faith stronger for that?  Is our Church better off for that?  It sure doesn’t seem so.  In fact, decades now of studies report that many a catholic does not know or does not properly express the truth of our Catholic faith in the Holy Eucharist.  A Eucharistic Procession might aid the formation of our membership to have proper Catholic faith.  And, in fact, one can schedule a procession just about any time of year.  Perhaps we should do more of this throughout the year.  Perhaps we’ll see a stronger Church in part because of this devotion.  Perhaps we’ll see a world more converted too.

There are two ideas I’d like to highlight about the importance of a Eucharistic Procession.  Since we literally move together outside of the church in a procession, one can’t help but grasp the notion that we disciples are on a larger mission.  We are not disciples for ourselves only.  We are not to view our life as Christians as simply like a club membership lived conveniently packaged inside these walls.  Rather, we are on mission moving through this world as the Lord’s witnesses and we do so with his presence as our King.  On a day of procession, as the border dissolves between our coming to Mass within these walls and our more public walking outside with the Lord’s Real Presence, we can’t help but wake up to the fact that our duty in the secular realm is to organize our world and our affairs in greater harmony with God’s Kingdom.  We travel in a procession, as we journey through life, and we engage in the larger journey to the fullness of God’s Kingdom.  As we go outside in procession it serves as a reminder of the call to proclaim the Gospel and to live for Christ outside of the church walls too, in the public square.

And the public square is quite a battle ground, isn’t it?!  Have we become any better off these past many decades by ceding ground to secular forces and accommodating their claims by our silence that faith is purely personal and private and should be kept out of the public square?  Such claims are false both from a Gospel perspective and even a constitutional perspective.  The Lord says you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world (cf. Mt. 5:13-14).  Employing those images, he goes on to say that a “city set on a hill cannot be hidden,” and that light must be allowed to “shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 5:14-16).  And secularists and even some Christians say we should keep our faith private?  Hogwash!  Those would be totally bizarre images for the Lord to use if his idea for disciples – then and now – is that we keep our faith neatly packaged for observance inside these walls only.

Now I assure you that walking outside in June, in Oklahoma, IN VESTMENTS is not the most desirable thing for me.  You might echo that sentiment being dressed up for Holy Mass.  But consider just one value in this public witness, put into stark contrast by the nature of this feast falling in the month of June, as it typically does.  Consider what June has become in the secular world and the displays that are common and becoming ubiquitous around the world.  Those who observe secular June go out to march in celebration of disorder, in revelry like that surrounding the idol of the Golden Calf, and in narcissistic lust.  We go out in a procession of order, and prayer, and adoration of God.  In fact, by the Lord’s design and gift to us, we go out in procession with God Himself and not in idolatry.  Yes, how needed is this devotional practice in our time.  How much more should we organize such things and go on even longer processions, and in even more public areas!

The second idea I’d like to highlight about the importance of a Eucharistic Procession is that in this act of piety we celebrate that the Lord promised not to leave his Church, not to abandon us, or to leave us orphans (cf. Jn. 14:18).  And he has not.  He remains with us as he promised, by dwelling within us by the Holy Spirit sent from the Father and the Son.  He remains with us by His divine power when we make room for Him in our commitment to prayer.  He remains with us by the sacramental grace that resides in us.  And He remains with us in the most august Sacrament of the Altar, the Holy Eucharist.  He resides in all the tabernacles of the Catholic world.  He is here waiting for us to visit him.  Can you hear the invitation to commit to a time in our adoration chapel so that you bring life’s concerns and experience that, in fact, you are not an orphan?  He is here with us such that we can carry him in procession as a clear experience that He has not left us orphans as we journey through this life, as we seek to be faithful witnesses before hostile forces in the world.  Yes, a Eucharistic Procession teaches us these two important things: (1) As disciples we are called to go out on mission to transform our world; and, (2) we do not go out alone.  God is with us.  He has not left us orphans.

As a foreshadowing for us today, the first reading spoke to us of Moses’ instruction to the people, “Remember how… God, has directed all your journeying in the desert” (Dt. 8:2).  With renewed faith, and new zeal, and new excitement for a New Evangelization of the world God loves, and which our Lord came to save, let us go out after worthy reception of Holy Communion to be salt and light and to carry today quite literally the Real Presence of the God of the universe who does not abandon us or leave us orphans!

Traditional Latin Mass - the Third Sunday after Easter (1962 Missal)

Dominica III Post Pascha (Mass of the 1962 Missal)
30 April 2023

 IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice: and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy” (From the Gospel of the Mass).

It is a particular providence that we hear these words today from our Blessed Lord in the Gospel because I need to speak today about the status of things regarding the Traditional Latin Mass at this parish.  I guess that most of you likely already know this information, but I need to share with you that in accord with what Rome is requiring of our Archbishop, the previously granted dispensation to have the Mass of the 1962 Missal here at St. Monica will not be able to continue after the monthly Sunday Low Mass in June.  That means we have today and then two more monthly Sunday Low Masses remaining here.  The last monthly Sunday Low Mass will be on June 25.  I want you to have this information now so that you can prepare.

I have much to say about this topic, much more than I can say in the course of the typical time frame of a sermon, so I will try to highlight only those things that I think are most important to share.  I will certainly be happy to discuss the matter in more detail privately or in small groups should you have other questions.  I encourage you to contact me if you have questions or to have greater clarity on the state of things here.

I find there can be quite a bit of erroneous information that goes around and quite a few assumptions that are not accurate when we have a charged topic like this one.  So, I want to state first that no one should suffer under the false idea that our Archbishop hasn’t done enough or that he is trying to shut down the Mass of the 1962 Missal.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I have had numerous meetings with him and ongoing communications over many months now.  We have been trying together to find ways around what Rome is doing.  We thought we had a solution with the dispensation he granted to this parish back in August 2021 to host the Traditional Latin Mass.  But that has since changed with further actions from Rome in December 2021 and more recently in late February of this year.  It is that most recent action from Rome that finally meant we were out of options since Rome is claiming that a diocesan bishop does not have the authority to grant such a dispensation, but that only Rome can do so.  While Rome might, and has, granted some dispensations, they are always limited in scope and have an expiration date of at most two years.  Thus, there is no long term solution even when Rome grants a dispensation.  I can attest to you that from the beginning of this debacle Archbishop Coakley has been nothing but gracious and generous.  His initial dispensation tells you what you need to know about his stance in all this.  Only with Rome’s subsequent and ongoing local interference has the situation become what it is.  In other words, and I want to state clearly, the blame for this falls squarely on the Pope and the Cardinal in charge of the Dicastery of Divine Worship.  I have personally seen the Archbishop’s reactions over the course of these many months.  I think I have a good read on him because I have known him since before he was a bishop and we have an excellent relationship.  He has been frustrated by Rome’s actions.  And when it became clear in early 2023 that Rome was doubling and tripling down on its aggression, I can tell you his look went from frustrated to grieved over what Rome is requiring.  Neither of us is happy about what is going on.  When this drama first began I thought it was really just me who would be faced with difficult questions of obedience.  But I have come to understand in an entirely new way just what a difficult position the Archbishop, too, is in.  Rome is demanding compliance and actually following up with expectations that the bishops report back to Rome with how they are implementing the demands.  In fact, the only reason that we are still having this Mass here right now is because the Archbishop has agreed to basically ignore Rome’s demands while we tried to find solutions and hoped for a different outcome.  If Rome had its way, I would have had to stop this Mass after this past December.

As I have said before, and I am not at all concerned about what anyone thinks of me, I believe the original document, Traditionis Custodes, that started all this ugliness to be unjust, despicable, a form of spiritual abuse from the Universal Pastor, and deserving of being ignored.  I would not want to have to face God as Judge if I were responsible for that document.  And I pray daily and sincerely for the Holy Father, and you should too.  I am personally comfortable with ignoring Rome’s aggression and just going on with life here.  But even I would admit that such a move would be challenging to sustain since Rome’s actions are so widely and publicly known.  To just ignore Rome’s demands would result in endless questions and uncomfortable conversations when others would inevitably ask how it is that the Mass continues here.  Would I lie and say we have permission?  Would I seem to be promoting open defiance of the Holy Father?  I think it is relevant to note in this dilemma that at least those who prefer the Mass of the 1962 Missal have local places to which they are already attached for full-service parish life.  I know that won’t help my own parishioners or me, but it still would remain possible for people here to attend on whatever occasion a Mass of the 1962 Missal where it is still permitted.  I am not saying that I am happy with this conclusion.  It is deeply unsatisfactory to me.  But it does seem relevant to note that what Rome is doing and what is now happening here does not mean that people have no option nearby for the 1962 Missal.

I realize that some among you might think I should do something different.  Perhaps you might be inclined to fault me for not fighting on.  I wouldn’t necessarily blame you for thinking so.  However, I have come to a few considerations that I hope you can at least appreciate.  Firstly, when it comes down to it, the only real personal relationship of obedience I have is to my Archbishop.  I made a promise to him.  Upon ordination a priest does not make such a promise to the pope.  It is through my obedience to the bishop of the diocese that I have connection to the Universal Church and to the Pope.  I cannot betray that obedience to my Archbishop and I would risk leading others astray were I to do so.  While this situation is difficult for me, seeing the care and generosity of the archbishop over these many months makes my obedience in this regard now a little less bitter to take.  I am not changing my opinion with regards to Rome’s actions, but I know that the Archbishop and I have tried numerous and creative things to avoid this.  Secondly, the devil and the demons can only mimic good things.  They can’t be truly good; they can only appear to be good by lying and by imitating what is good, even though what they actually do is to pervert that which is good.  In fact, that is so much a part of demonic activity: it twists and perverts what is good and true.  I suggest that obedience is one of the few things that the devil cannot emulate.  He can’t even come close.  No, his very existence is disobedience.  While he might ultimately submit to Christ and have to obey, as in the case of being expelled in an exorcism, the fact is he can’t emulate obedience.  He can only be forced – after much effort – to be obedient by being cast out.  Again, while it is very distasteful for me to conclude this, I think it is true: I cannot risk putting myself in a camp with the evil one by means of disobedience.  I need to take on obedience, even and especially when difficult, and to do so freely because it is one place the evil one surely cannot be.  He cannot be obedient.  Thirdly, in arriving at these conclusions, I am confident that the Lord is holding out much grace, albeit through suffering and the cross, that I do not see now or cannot see, but that I will be able to notice in time.  I am confident the Lord’s grace will work on my many defects and wear down my pride for his purposes.  I believe he will hold out the offer of this rich grace for you too, provided you likewise participate in what he is doing in the midst of this way of the cross.  I believe there are many great battles ahead.  Like other times in history, there is great upheaval in the world and in our beloved Church.  The Lord needs living members of his Body, he needs saints, to face off with the world and to bring it Good News!

These are the most important reasons in my thought process to share with you for how I have concluded that I will have to give up, for now, offering the Mass of the 1962 Missal publicly at my parish.  I can still say the Mass, and I will do so privately in my little prayer room on my day off.  I can still say it where it is still permitted, like at a Fraternity parish.  I can even say it at a non-parish church or some secret venue, as a hostile world may someday require.  But I can’t say it here anymore after June, as ridiculous as that is.  Part of the personal difficulty for me in this is that I feel as if I have failed you and failed the boys of the St. John Bosco Institute school.  I don’t think that is literally true.  But I feel as if I have.  In the tortured ways of man’s psychology in a fallen nature, we adults each know well that many a time how you feel about something and what is actually true do not always match up.  You know the second half of the Confiteor: “Ideo precor beatam Mariam” and other saints are mentioned, and then “et te Pater.”  It has become a gut punch for me, and difficult to hear, when my altar boys pray the second half of the Confiteor because I feel as if I am a father who has failed them and you.  That beseeching in the Confiteor has become a bit haunting to me: “et te Pater,” … “and you Father” I ask you to pray for me to the Lord our God.  While it is now the Cross for you and for me, we have two more uninterrupted Sundays together.  I promise I do and I will pray for you.  Et vos fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum!

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

Third Sunday of Easter

Dominica III Paschae A
23 April 2023

 The gospel is one of several instances where the grieving apostles and disciples do not immediately recognize the resurrected Jesus: “their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.”  On the rare occasions when I am not in the priest’s collar I can attest that it is comical how people don’t recognize me.  Without the normal garb I just blend into the crowd.  Years ago, I was at the mall in civilian attire.  In the distance I saw a couple parishioners walking toward me in the midst of the shoppers.  While still a distance off, I did one of those head nod acknowledgments.  The couple didn’t notice.  That got me thinking of doing an experiment: How close can I get to them before they recognize me?  So, we kept walking toward each other and walking closer and closer and we passed literally shoulder-to-shoulder.  They never saw me.  I was very excited to tell them about this but then I realized that I couldn’t because the experiment makes me look a little creepy!  So, I never told them.

Now I am not claiming that those disciples on the road to Emmaus failed to recognize Jesus because of his attire.  No, it is a much deeper matter than that.  However, the inability to see Jesus even though he was walking with them and speaking to them raises lessons for us.  What lessons can we draw from the gospel that will help open our eyes to Jesus’ presence, even though at first we might not recognize him or see him in the way that he is in our midst?

Firstly, Jesus let those disciples speak about what was on their minds and hearts.  They told him all about the hopes they had in Jesus and how he was dead and now allegedly alive.  Can we speak to God about our life, our hopes, our disappointments?  That’s what a vibrant prayer life should be.  Can we speak to others about Jesus?  We need to be willing and able to do so.  Can we give others we meet the room to speak and share about their lives?  If not, we are short-circuiting our journey and theirs on the road of discipleship.

Secondly, do we give our hearts what they need to be on fire for Jesus?  After the disciples on the road recognized Jesus they admitted that his Scripture interpretation had set their hearts burning within them.  Do we turn to the sharp, two-edged sword of the Scripture, reading it and reflecting upon it in prayer, so that our hearts may be on fire?  If our hearts aren’t on fire, set on fire by reliance upon the Scriptures, then we may be lacking the impulse needed for the next step in recognizing Jesus.  If we aren’t burning for more, in other words, why would we ever bother looking deeper?  You have to first be hungry to seek out good nourishment.

Thirdly, sharing life honestly with God and others and being enflamed by the Scriptures isn’t an end to itself, but should lead to recognizing Jesus more clearly in his highest presence among us: namely, in the Eucharistic “breaking of bread” which is his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.  Jesus remains with us in his Real Presence, a presence given to those worthily prepared so that a deeper life with Jesus can take place.  When Jesus broke bread with the two disciples “their eyes were opened and they recognized him.”  We need to see in this passage an indication of the new way that the Lord planned to be with his Church and to remain with us.  He is with us even though our eyes may not quite see him in the same way as when he walked the earth.  This passage is a lesson that the Lord is training his disciples to look for him where the Church gathers at the sacred altar in the breaking of the bread.  Preparing ourselves ready for Holy Mass, do we then seek to find the Lord in this privileged place where he decided to reveal himself, and to give himself to us?  Do we seek to train our eyes on him by committing to prayer in our chapel before the Lord present in the monstrance for adoration?  That’s a place we should go to improve our vision for like the downcast disciples on that road to Emmaus we often do not see the reality of what is around us and we may miss that the Lord is with us.

Fourthly, upon recognizing that Jesus was with them in the breaking of bread, what is the final lesson from the disciples on the road to Emmaus?  It is this simple comment from the gospel: “So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven.”  In other words, having encountered Jesus led those disciples to live life more fully with and in the Church.  They had been fleeing Jerusalem and the apostles.  They had been heading west, going in the opposite direction, from where the Church was gathered in those very early days after the Lord’s death, in fact on the very day of the Resurrection itself they were heading out of town, away from the community of believers.  But now they return to the eleven remaining apostles and the other disciples.  Encountering Jesus and having deeper communion with him is a must for a disciple.  But take careful note of an important lesson: one cannot have a complete relationship with Jesus without also having a deeper relationship with his Body the Church.  The Head and the Body, Jesus and the Church go together.  Always.  As those disciples on the march away from the Church learned, to be drawn into deeper life with Jesus requires deeper life with the Church.  And so, they returned to where the apostles were presiding.

The gospel provides an itinerary for the spiritual life of each of us here.  The Church proclaims that the Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon Peter.  Where we are blinded by our sin, distracted by the routine and demands of life, and spiritually immature, we have a pattern in the gospel that gives us direction and must always lead us here… because here Jesus is made known to us in the breaking of bread!

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Dominica IV in Quadragesima A
19 March 2023

 Again, at this point late in Lent, the Gospel readings put particularly intense focus on basic themes of desire for God, purification, increasing faith, and illumination; themes that are relevant, especially for those in RCIA who are in their final preparation for the climactic moments of their reception of the sacraments at the Easter Vigil.  Again, I want to encourage everyone to make it a point to commit to participating in the special ceremonies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night.  It is always moving for everyone who attends and it will be a great way to pray for the Elect, our brothers and sisters in our RCIA program.

Today’s Gospel passage of the man born blind comes from chapter 9 of St. John’s Gospel.  To grasp a theme, however I also want to go back to John 8 and pass through both chapters to paint a picture.  In this section of St. John, Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem for the 8-day long Festival of Tabernacles, also called Booths.  It was an annual festival held in the autumn after the completion of the harvest season and marked by pilgrimage, people making a great migration to join together in prayer and celebration.  The festival celebrated God’s fidelity in providing for His people in the present harvest and the historical remembrance of His providing for them in the wilderness after the exodus.  Given that people were gathering in large numbers in limited space, they had to build tents or booths for lodging for the festival.  Those booths also served to be an image and reminder of the desert wanderings of their ancestors.  Jesus arrives in Jerusalem for this festival.  It is a chaotic scene due to all the people crammed in for the observance.  But it also becomes chaotic, in a different sense, because of the confrontations and hostility Jesus faces there about his identity.

Appearing throughout John 8 and into today’s selection from John 9 we see some prominent themes that are reminiscent of the Book of Genesis, the creation, the fall, and God’s plan for salvation.  To make a quick pass through John 8, we find chaos and the disorder of hostility against Jesus in the holy city.  Most especially is the chaos of hostility evident in the scribes and Pharisees who are opposing the Lord.  This chaos reminds us of what preceded God’s creation in Genesis when the earth was formless and void (cf. Gen. 1:1-2).  As His first act to bring order out of chaos, God said in Genesis, “Let there be light” (cf. Gen. 1:3), the first day of creation.  The Lord Jesus reveals himself in John 8 to be the light of the world (cf. Jn. 8:12).  In Genesis, after the Original Sin that deforms our human nature, leaving it fallen and inclined to sin, Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, stand alone among creation and they hide themselves from the sound of God’s arrival (cf. Gen. 3:7-8).  In John 8, after no one is without sin to cast the first stone at the woman caught in adultery, it says that the woman was left alone standing before Jesus (cf. Jn. 8:9), which seems to replay the dilemma of the first man and woman in the Garden, with Jesus now as the New Adam.  At the end of John 8 as the hostility and disorder becomes most intense, it says that Jesus hid himself and then left the Temple area.  That can be viewed as the Lord recapitulating these significant moments of God’s creation, the harm done by man’s sin, and His – God’s – choosing to place Himself into this same history in order to redeem it.

With all these images and echoes of Genesis with chaos, the creation, the fall, and the consequences of sin, we come to John 9, today’s selection.  Here we have the man born blind.  In other words, there is no light for him.  He is in darkness, and in darkness from the beginning.  In other words, this is not one who formerly could see and then became blind, but he has been in darkness from the beginning.  That’s a hint of Genesis.  I’m not making a scientifically precise observation, so don’t get hung up on the beginning point of life – as we know now – being conception as opposed to birth.  Simply acknowledge that to be blind from birth is a reference for this purpose that means the man has been in darkness from the beginning.  This can reinforce the theme of what has happened to mankind since the Fall, since what is narrated to us in that book of the beginnings called Genesis.  The man blind from birth serves as an image of mankind’s fallen nature that blinds us to God, to holiness, and to spiritual realities.  Why is the man blind from birth?  The prominent religious idea of the time is that it is due to someone’s sin, that it is punishment for sin.  Again, sin brings disorder and chaos and lack of light, lack of vision.  Just as Genesis tells us that God formed man from the dust of the earth after a mist had watered the ground and then man became a living being (cf. Gen. 2:6-7), what does Jesus do to heal the blind man and restore him?  To maintain this theme of the interplay of creation and Genesis, the Lord makes clay of the earth using the moisture of his saliva and refashions the man’s sight and then tells him to wash in the pool.

In Lent, those in RCIA preparing for baptism are being made ready to enter more deeply into the order of God, being refashioned – recreated – by being washed and having the blindness of sin removed so that they see and are enlightened.  Those of us already baptized have been washed; yet, we know our dullness, our laziness, our slowness of heart to believe – to see!  And with this torpor in mind we have to keep battling against our fallen nature and experience ongoing conversion and re-formation, a re-creation by God’s generous grace.  Lent is a time for us, the baptized, also.  It is a time to confront the ungodly chaos in our lives, which is sin.  It is a time to acknowledge our blindness, and to be washed in confession, which restores us to baptismal grace.  Our focus in this rich selection of God’s Word is not so much physical sight, but the connotation of sight that refers to faith and to belief.  Our sight is healed, purified, and made whole when we see the world as it truly is, when we see ourselves as we truly are, that is… when we see our need for God, when we admit the defect – the blindness – of our sin and seek to be healed so that we can truly see and live.  Like the man born blind, upon being healed in both physical and spiritual sight, may we say with him, “I do believe, Lord,” and, may we do as he did, “and he worshiped him” (Jn. 9:38).

Third Sunday of Lent

Dominica III in Quadragesima A
12 March 2023

 Lent is a time for disciples to be renewed in the new life that was begun in us at baptism and to strive to deepen that life and commitment to the Lord.  Lent is also the time of final preparation for those who will be baptized at the Easter Vigil or, if already baptized, received in to the Church.  We have reached the point of Lent where some very long Gospel selections place a particular focus on the new life won for us by the Lord and the effects of that life in the baptized.

God’s People Israel were His chosen people.  They were a holy people and a consecrated nation whose vocation was to advance in the world as a sign to other peoples of what is means to belong to God.  But being chosen did not mean that the Israelites had it easy.  Great hardship came their way.  Hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt.  The harsh passage through the desert in the Exodus.  Exile, captivity, and dispersion among other races and nations are just a few highlights we know from the Scriptures.  The opening lines in today’s first reading tell us the difficulties and setbacks and challenges of belonging to God as a unique people, which difficulties caused the Israelites to harden their hearts against God.  In the desert their physical thirst was not satisfied and, in another sense, that “thirst” that was their desire for fulfillment was also not satisfied.  In their weakness the people sought to fulfill themselves in ways that ultimately never fulfill, by positioning themselves against God in grumbling and doubt.  God heard their cries and provided water from the rock.  The place of their doubt and quarreling (Massah and Meribah) about whether God was in their midst became a symbol to the people that they should not let hardship cause them to seek to satiate their thirst apart from God.

Our thirst and God’s thirst for us is central to the Gospel of the Samaritan woman at the well.  We have natural thirst that needs to be quenched.  But “thirst” is also a symbol of desire for better life, desire for fulfillment, hopes and aspirations.  It is clear in the passage that these different senses of “thirst” are in play in the Gospel because it becomes clear that the woman and Jesus are speaking of different kinds of water.  She speaks of literal water from the well; Jesus speaks of living water that wells up to eternal life.

In this meeting place of the woman’s thirst for water and Jesus’ thirst for souls, his love for souls, we find a hidden message.  God sees and knows our struggles and hardships (like the people in the desert) and so, he weds Himself to us to bring us relief, fulfillment, and new life.  A major part of why I am captivated by this passage is because of the hidden nuptial imagery in it.  In the Scriptures to have a man and a woman meeting at a well has implications of betrothal and marriage further down the line.  Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at a well, and not just any generic well, but Jacob’s well.  The Jewish mind would know of wells in the Old Testament that were important meeting points.  Abraham’s servant meets Isaac’s future bride Rebecca at a well (cf. Gn. 24:10-53).  Moses meets Zipporah at a well before they marry (cf. Ex. 2:15-21).  Most especially for this Gospel, Jacob meets his beloved Rachel at a well, in fact the same well as the Gospel (cf. Gen. 29:1-14).  They marry and become the patriarch and matriarch of Israel.

Now, certainly the nuptial imagery of Jesus at the well is not to be understood in the sense of a literal future wedding, for we know that Jesus was celibate.  But the nuptial relationship and imagery remains.  Jesus is the Bridegroom of his Church, the Scriptures tell us.  Isaiah had prophesied to Israel that your maker will be your husband (cf. Is. 54:5) and your builder shall marry you (cf. Is. 62:5).  And Isaiah prophesied that Israel would be called no longer desolate but “espoused” (cf. Is. 62:4).  To see the Lord at Jacob’s well with the Samaritan woman sets the scene for us to understand that the Lord has a great love for his people – his scattered people – imaged in this woman from Samaria, and that he loves them and desires them more than they – more than we – even know.  Like the Samaritan woman we can seek to satisfy our lesser thirsts while being unaware of the One in our midst who offers us living water.  If only we would ask!

And there is the key for us!  Hardships and struggles and setbacks and sufferings plague us too.  In both direct and indirect ways we can grumble and complain against God.  In fact, I’m not even so much concerned about the direct doubts and grumblings against God.  At least a person who does so is honest and acknowledges the doubt stirring inside.  But the indirect and tacit doubt and grumbling ignores our deeper thirst and seeks to satisfy it in so many ways that will never last.  Don’t dismiss the possibility that we are like the people in the desert who doubt if God is with us.  No, ours may not be a direct statement of doubt.  But do you foster a meaningful and daily prayer life?  If not, that’s a silent Meribah and Massah.  But the Lord is already at the well waiting for you.  Do you seek to satisfy your longings, your thirst by your own means and in ways apart from God that will never satisfy?  That’s tacit grumbling.  And the Lord already knows your sins and calls you to repent, just like he knew the life of the Samaritan woman, leading her to repent and say “Come see a man who told me everything I have done.”

Over the course of her conversation with Jesus the Samaritan woman was illuminated to recognize Jesus and to come to faith in him.  We thirst for God.  We must be careful not to let hardship and struggle drive us to seek to satisfy our thirst in grumblings and doubt.  For they will never satisfy.  Rather, in prayer we arrive at the well and find the one who thirsts for us first.  As the water came from the rock in the desert, so we learn from St. Paul that Jesus is the Rock (cf. 1 Cor. 10:4).  He is struck on the Cross from which he cries: “I thirst.”  Give him a drink of your faith and seek from him the living water welling up to eternal life!

Second Sunday of Lent

Dominica II in Quadragesima A
5 March 2023

The first Sunday of Lent we began with a typical focus on the Devil’s temptation of Jesus in the desert, together with the Old Testament reading from Genesis of the fall of Adam and Eve by sin.  The second Sunday of Lent places our focus on the Transfiguration of the Lord on the mountain.  But we miss the very beginning snippet of today’s Gospel passage in Matthew chapter 17.  That missing introductory snippet reads: “And after six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John…” and on with the rest of today’s selection.  I am choosing to alert you to that simple missing phrase, “and after six days”, because it sets the stage for understanding the Transfiguration as a parallel and fulfillment of an event in the Old Testament.

What is the point in highlighting the timing of “after six days”?  That timing gives us a connection, a parallel to the Old Testament accounts of Moses on Mt. Sinai.  With this in mind we can see a number of parallels between Moses on Mt. Sinai and Jesus on the mountain of the transfiguration.  In fact, I think it is worth hearing directly from the Old Testament to appreciate some similarities.  The Book of Exodus, chapter 24, verse 16b-18, says: “and on the seventh day [the Lord] called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.  Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.  And Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain.  And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.”

Notice some parallels here: “After six days,” puts you at the seventh day.  On the seventh day Moses went up to be with the Lord God.  After six days, Jesus goes up the mountain where His presence as God is revealed.  The cloud on Mt. Sinai revealed the glory of the Lord.  In the Gospel we have the transfiguration of the Lord by which his glory was shone, his face shining like the sun, and his clothing becoming white as light.  In the Old Testament a cloud is a symbol of the presence of the glory of God and comes to be an image of the Holy Spirit.  In the Gospel we have a “bright cloud” from which the Father’s voice is heard.  When you put it all together, we have a key revelation of the Blessed Trinity in this event of the Transfiguration.  The Father, the Incarnate Son, and the Holy Spirit are all present here along with the Old Testament figures of Moses and Elijah.

Appreciating this parallel helps us see that Jesus is the new Moses.  He fulfills the mission of Moses and he is greater than Moses.  And that, in turn, communicates to us some significant meaning about what the Lord is coming to do and what he means for us.

With our Blessed Lord as the new Moses, and aware of the significance of Moses in salvation history, we can ask: What then is the exodus through which Jesus is leading us?  Our Lenten Sunday Masses are highlighting some aspects of this journey.  Last weekend we confronted temptation and sin and we saw its effects and destruction in the lives of Adam and Eve, our first parents.  They – and through them the human nature we inherit – were disfigured by sin.  Their eyes were opened and the impact of sin was seen in their relationship with one another and with God.  They began to fail to trust one another such that they began hiding themselves from one another and hiding themselves from God.  We inherit that disfigurement through Original Sin and we further harm our own nature, our very selves and our hope for eternal life, by our personal sins.  By listening to the “voice” of temptation we fall further under the dominance of the evil one and we harm our likeness to God, which is our fundamental dignity.  That’s the bad news.  It’s important to have that fundamental understanding of the reality of things.  The bad news explains much about ourselves and our world.  That’s perhaps why we face that sober truth so early in Lent as we did last Sunday.  But this weekend our Lenten journey places before us a new hope.  Just as God’s people were led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses, the new Moses – Jesus – is shown in the Gospel, and the exodus he leads us through is not liberation from a geographical place like Egypt, but liberation from the moral slavery to sin and the “place” of damnation.  The Transfiguration of God in our human flesh, affords us the Good News and the hope of our human nature being transformed where it has been disfigured by sin.  Our Lord has accomplished salvation for us.  Lent is our annual opportunity to be renewed in that pattern and to live more deeply the redemption the Lord won for us.  But there is an important key to keep in mind: We are never permitted to dismiss suffering and the Cross as part of this journey our Lord made as the New Moses.  We are never permitted to dismiss suffering and the cross as part of our own journey in following the Lord on our exodus to newness of life.  In the Gospel selection, the Lord required that they come down the mountain and continue on to Jerusalem, the place of his exodus from this life.  The Lord instructed Peter, James, and John, not to share the vision until after he had been raised from the dead.  In other words, the Lord accepts his suffering and death.  Just so, we cannot avoid the valleys of this life.  We cannot avoid suffering and our own crosses.  We cannot avoid going to our own Jerusalems for our own exodus.  Our sins are real and do real harm.  The Lord saves us from the eternal consequences of sin.  Yet, the disfiguring reality of sin requires our own transfiguration through struggle and sacrifice and much grace from God.  In all this we seek to cooperate with the Lord and his mission and to willingly go where he is leading.  In Lent we are called to leave our places of comfort, the places where we have set up our “tents”, to use an image from the Gospel.  We are called to go where we do not always want to go.  We take up penances and mortifications so that we are transformed by participating in the Cross.  We come here, where we seek to be worthily prepared, so that we can be nourished by the very sacrifice of the Lord on the Cross and so grow in his glory and know ourselves to be sons and daughters of our heavenly Father.

First Sunday of Lent - Traditional Latin Mass

Dominica I in Quadragesima (Mass of the 1962 Missal)
26 February 2023

 IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

The Gospel of the first Sunday of the Season of Lent places before us Our Blessed Lord’s journey into the desert from the account of St. Matthew.  Soon after his baptism, whereby his identity as the Beloved Son is revealed, our Lord goes out into the wilderness of the desert to prepare for his saving mission.  The trip to the desert is not an insignificant detail and it is not a random journey.  Rather, it is the Spirit that leads our Lord into the desert to take on the Devil.

Perhaps it strikes us as curious that the very Spirit of God, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, would lead the Son into the terrain of the prince of this world.  But it is for a holy purpose.  That purpose can give us focus for what Lent should be for us.

Our Lord’s appearance in the desert can serve to call to mind the desert wanderings of the Exodus.  God was doing something important and salvific in the life and history of Israel and he was doing so in the unforgiving wilderness.  Is this not the challenge for every life of faith?  We become focused on the desert, where there is dryness and difficulty and suffering in our life and we become so nearsighted in our misery that we can no longer see the overarching narrative, that God is acting and doing something to bring about His purposes.  As was the case in the Exodus and so many other instances of the number forty in the Scriptures, so here with our Lord’s forty days and nights in the desert, we have a time of testing of faith and a time of purification to lead to greater strength in battle.  Likewise for us, our symbolic forty days of Lent is a time of testing and a time of purification.  The goal is that our faith become stronger as we become more and more purified from sin.

Our Lord has a full human nature united to his full divine nature.  After forty days and forty nights of fasting, he would have been very hungry and very weak.  Think of how unprepared we can be when it comes to fasting for just one day on Ash Wednesday!  The battle our Lord faced was inconceivable to our paltry penances.  In that immense weakness the Devil, the opportunist that he is, came to tempt the Lord.  And the three temptations presented by the Devil mark the classic temptations that theologians have noted as part of man’s fallen nature.  That classic formulation of temptation is that man’s downfall is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.  St. John the Apostle and Evangelist shows just how ancient this formulation is when he warns not to love the things of the world and writes in his First Letter, chapter 2, verse 16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world.”

The Devil’s first temptation refers to the lust of the flesh, that is, to the desires of the flesh, of the body, to pleasures of whatever kind.  Our Lord is hungry and the temptation is to fill his belly and to give himself the pleasure and satisfaction of eating, to respond to the desire of the flesh for food by turning stones into bread.  Keeping with St. John and the ordering sequence of the classic formulation of the threefold temptation, we’ll jump to the third temptation from the Devil in the Gospel selection today.  The lust of the eyes is the desire to possess and to take by whatever means necessary.  In the third temptation the Devil shows our Lord all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  The Devil has a certain dominion over this world.  But the Lord has come to save the world, to pull it from the Devil’s grasp and to claim its proper ownership by God.  By offering the Lord all the kingdoms of the world, the Devil is tempting the Lord to gain possession of the souls he has come to save, but to do so – and here is the critical difference – to do so without suffering and without the Cross, but by worshipping the Devil himself.  And finally, the pride of life takes us back to the second temptation listed by St. Matthew in the Gospel selection.  Here the Devil tempts the Lord to show Himself for who He is as God and to do so in a very public way from the height of the Temple.  The Devil suggests that the Lord throw himself down to demonstrate his identity by means of the angels who would come to prevent his fall.

The Church places this episode before us at the start of Lent to show us that the Lord is recapitulating – and doing so successfully – the temptations of Adam and Eve and the temptations of Israel in the desert of the Exodus.  Where Adam’s sin turned paradise into exile and left him outside paradise in the desert, our Lord willingly goes into the desert to be faithful in resisting the classic threefold temptation.  Our Lord is faithful Israel.  Our Lord is the new Adam.  In all this he shows us that God Himself in His immense love for us comes to experience our weakness and to be victorious, and to do so in our very flesh.

In this holy season we are to battle that classic threefold concupiscence inherited from Adam: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.  But our battle cannot be half-hearted and weak.  We need some manly courage to be serious about discipline.  This is precisely what we are not good about as modern Americans.  So many of us, I fear, do not move beyond a childish Lent where we give up chocolate or some luxury.  It’s fine to give up those things.  But I highly doubt anyone’s salvation will rest on giving up chocolate, or pizza, or soda.  Yes, give up things like that, but also do something serious, something really challenging.  Take up one practice of prayer and one practice of mortification.  For prayer: If you don’t already pray a daily Rosary, then do it.  Pray with the Scriptures.  After all, “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  Or perhaps committing to come more often to adoration and even to committing to take an hour in our chapel each week would be a good new step in uniting yourself to our victorious Lord.  And for mortification: why not do more than the bare minimum?  I sometimes wonder about our modern regulations for Lent.  Do we really fast?  I mean, our modern rules for fasting are basically so easy that frankly it is not much of a challenge for most people.  So, how about willingly taking on more than the bare minimum?  It’s not required, I know, but perhaps fast on all Fridays of Lent, at least for most of the day up until the fish fry and then even there take only a modest amount.  I am sure these practices will increase the likelihood of a fruitful Lent where we can participate in the Lord’s victory and find renewal in the invitation to grow in daily prayer and the life of grace with the Lord.  As we heard in the epistle from St. Paul, “we exhort you that you receive not the grace of God in vain…. Behold now is the acceptable time, behold is the day of salvation.”

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.