Third Sunday of Easter

Dominica III Paschae
Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41; Rev. 5:11-14; Jn. 21:1-19
4 May 2022

 The person of St. Peter is a key figure in this Sunday’s Gospel passage.  In addition to the person, we should consider the office of St. Peter, meaning the role of St. Peter, given to him by Christ Jesus.  To that end it is very providential that we have today’s Gospel passage at the time of a Conclave because it shows us the mind of Christ for St. Peter and the office or role that would endure in the Lord’s Church.  This resurrection appearance of Jesus is unique in that it takes place, not in Jerusalem, but at the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.  In other words, this appearance takes place up in the north.  It takes place in the general area where the apostles were from, and where they first received their calling to follow Jesus.  We have all likely had experiences of revisiting familiar places from earlier in life.  You can imagine that being back in their place of origin naturally called to mind for the apostles a reflection on where they had come from, and the journey they had been on with Jesus.  It naturally brings to the forefront of their minds how Jesus had formed them, and how far they had come from their initial days of discipleship.  And by necessity, when one reflects on his origins and how far he has come, one can’t help but think ahead to the future, the journey still to come.  In this passage, St. Peter gets clear indications from Jesus about the path he is on, where his journey in service to the Lord will take him, and what it will demand of him.

 This encounter of Peter with the resurrected Lord is full of the themes of repentance and restoration.  The big clue to this is that St. John tells us that on the beach with Jesus there is a “charcoal fire”.  That is a very specific word in Greek and the last time we encountered it was from St. John’s account of the Passion recorded in John 18 (verses 17-18; 25-27).  In the passion account, Jesus had been arrested and was being interrogated.  Nearby, at a charcoal fire, Peter was keeping himself warm and comfortable while he denied three times that he even knew the Lord.  Thus, the charcoal fire in today’s passage carries over this imagery of threefold denial.  I think the scene today can be characterized as showing signs of Peter’s repentance from that failure of denial.  Though the boat he was in was not far from shore, Peter, upon hearing that it is Jesus on shore, does not wait to row in, but instead jumps into the chilly, early morning water and makes his way to Jesus.  It’s a sign of repentance.  He could have reasonably (and comfortably) waited.  But, in a form of eager repentance, Peter tucks in his garment and jumps into the water to get to the Lord faster.  There, on the shore, with the other figures faded into the background, he is again near the Lord in the light of a fire.  The idea of repentance and restoration is still more clearly emphasized in the dialogue between Jesus and Peter.  The three denials of Peter are echoed – yet undone – when Peter is asked three times to profess his love for Jesus.  Where Peter had been looking out for himself and his own comfort during the Passion, now Jesus asks him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”  Simon Peter answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  The Gospel doesn’t tell us this detail, but we do know it was dawn at this appearance, and so I have to wonder if somehow a rooster couldn’t be heard crowing somewhere in the distance, echoing across the lake, echoing the past denial.  But the details we do know with authority are more than enough to capture this scene and its opportunity of restoration for Peter who had so grievously failed the Lord and the other apostles.

 I want to drill down a bit deeper however.  Because the indication of repentance and restoration of Peter is not simply found in the numerical evidence: a threefold denial now followed by a threefold profession of love and recommitment to Jesus.  Jesus is clearly drawing Peter back in, back to himself.  But there is a further sign of restoration that should not be lost on us.  For Peter’s restoration was not simply accomplished in his words alone, where in this passage he now claims three times to love Jesus.  Still more, his restoration comes about because in responding to Peter’s new recommitment, Jesus gives Peter a threefold charge.  Peter professes love that undoes his prior denial, yes.  But he is restored precisely in being given individually the role of shepherd.  Upon professing his love, Jesus tells Peter three times: “Feed my lambs; Tend my sheep; Feed my sheep.”  The Greek of St. John is even more direct.  Rather than what we have in English as “tend my sheep”, St. John uses the word that strongly and directly means “shepherd my sheep”.  In other words, be the shepherd!  This resurrection appearance also directs Peter to the future.  His love will be required of him by being led where he would prefer not to go and by stretching out his hands.  St. John tells us that Jesus “said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.”

 St. Peter’s office, or role, continues among the Apostles and is maintained in the Catholic Church by divine institution.  That our faith is guarded and proclaimed by a Church that is apostolic is a necessary mark of the Church established by Jesus.  This Wednesday, in the morning in our time zone, the Cardinals who will vote to elect a pope will be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel for the Conclave.  Hours before the Sistine Chapel doors are locked, we will gather here in the main church this Tuesday, at 5:30 pm, to pray the Mass for the Election of a Pope.  I hope you will join us in this act of faith to invoke the Holy Spirit for the Conclave and to pray for the wisdom of the cardinals and their docility to do what will most glorify God.  Soon, a new man will have his own reckoning like Peter on the lakeshore: thinking of where his life began, the journey he has been on, his past, and the future to which he is called by papal election.  Soon, a new man will not be able to help but to have this final Sunday Gospel before the Conclave echoing in his mind: Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?  Whoever is called to take the place of Peter and to continue his office for our shepherding, we pray that the spirit of repentance may come upon him such that similar to Peter in the boat, that man may jump into the distinctive white garment of the Pope and so make his way to Jesus as quickly as he can, while he leads us to the Lord in his wake.  We will pray that the one chosen is holy, and maybe even smart, and maybe even a good administrator and communicator.  No doubt, the one chosen will be a sinner who may have his own past charcoal fires of denial.  But, as the fire from burning ballots of his successful election send up white smoke for the world to see, we pray that the one elected may be restored and confirmed in the mission to be our chief visible shepherd on earth.  As Peter himself was called to be dressed and to be led where he did not want to go in order to stretch out his hands in witness to Jesus, we pray that the man elected will stretch out his hands in blessing us and giving us the witness of dying to himself, dying to personal theologies and factions, so that we may have the generous and faithful love of a shepherd worth following because he is responding to Jesus who first said to Peter: Follow me!

Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday

Easter Vigil
19 & 20 April 2025
Gospel: Luke 24:1-12

 Easter and the entire season through Pentecost is focused on celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, one of the principal doctrines of our faith.  A mystery of faith that is so central to salvation and so essential that St. Paul could say that if the dead are not raised then our faith is in vain and we are the most pitiable people of all (cf. 1 Cor. 15:16-19).  It’s all a waste, in other words.  If the resurrection is not real, if we fail to hold this essential doctrine, if we fail to live the hope of the resurrection, then there is no point in our carrying on like this.  Last one out, turn off the lights please!

Death is a consequence of sin.  It impacts almost all of us, save perhaps those rare souls like Enoch, Elijah, and Mary who may not have tasted death, but were assumed into life beyond this valley of tears.  We see death all around us.  We see signs that life tends to age and weaken and deteriorate.  We have large plots of real estate that serve as cemeteries.  Yet, we believe that the finality of death is not the finality.  We believe that the dead rise again.  As the Scriptures say, some will rise to a resurrection of life, of blessedness in heaven, and some will rise to a resurrection of condemnation.  But all will rise.  Despite all the clear effects of death, all the consequences of death, all the signs of death around us, we believe that the dead rise again.  What seems like the end is, in other words, not the end.

Throughout the living of the faith and our celebration of the mysteries of God, the mysteries of Jesus (who is God in the flesh), the mysteries of his Church, and of our salvation, we often think – and rightly so – of what God has done and still does for us.  We think of what God gives to us in our prayer.  We think of what God gives to us as we serve others in charity.  We think of what God gives to us in the sacramental life of faith.  But today, I want us to think instead about what we give to God.  By this, I mean, let’s think about what mankind gives to God; what human nature gives to God as related to what we celebrate in the resurrection.  God, who was in the beginning before all things were made, is pure spirit.  He has no beginning or end.  He is almighty, all-knowing, and present everywhere.  But as pure spirit, not made of matter, not made of stuff, He is free of the limitations that we face.  In fact, He is eternal and everlasting.  St. Augustine, the son of our parish patroness, once spoke in a sermon: God “was made flesh and dwelt among us.  He had no power of himself to die for us: he had to take from us our mortal flesh.  This was the way in which, though immortal, he was able to die…. He would first share with us, and then enable us to share with him” (Sermo Guelferbytanus 3: PLS 2, 545-546, selection printed in Liturgy of the Hours, vol. 2, p.432).

So, what have we given to God?  What does mankind or mortal nature give to God?  We give Him mortality.  We give Him what He did not possess in Himself.  Since we face the consequences of death on account of original sin, we gave Him the ability to die when God took on our human flesh in Jesus Christ.

If God weren’t God there would be some real “buyer’s remorse” in this deal.  If God thought as we think, He’d call all this off and say this is a raw deal.  But accepting from us our mortality is the plan of God.  And because of this plan, we can acknowledge a really awkward sounding idea: [As is chanted in the Easter Vigil Exsultet] “O truly necessary sin of Adam… O happy fault!”  Why would we call the sin that required redemption, a redemption brought about by the horrific torture, death, and resurrection of God Himself, a “happy fault”?  We certainly do not intend to say that the sin itself was a happy, or even a good thing.  No sin is good.  But, in light of the greater plan and the greater thing that God would do in response to sin, in retrospect we can curiously see the grace that came from God’s generous love after man had sinned.  And so, in that sense, so great is the immense love and work of God in salvation that we find a kindly light shining back even on man’s sin.  The result?  O happy fault!

As St. Augustine in his sermon went on to say, “Of ourselves we had no power to live, nor did he of himself have the power to die.  Accordingly, [Jesus] effected a wonderful exchange with us, through mutual sharing: we gave him the power to die, he will give us the power to live.”  We gave him the power to die.  This Easter I want to leave us with a different way to view the various ways we die, the ways our mortality is on display.  That is to say, I want to encourage a different way to view our weaknesses, our defects, our shame, our flaws, our failures, and our sins.  To be absolutely clear, no one should leave here thinking I am encouraging sin, diminishing its effects and eternal consequences, or going soft on the need to strive for holiness.  But the fact is that we struggle and we fail and we tend to live in shame and frustration, hiding our sins, finding in them the cause of exasperation, the sign that we will never make it.  In this, hiding our sins, dismissing the reality and its consequence, seeing it only as the sign that we will never make it, in this we are missing the way the resurrection completely upends everything.  O happy fault!

Our response to faith in the resurrection should be seen in how we live daily with greater awareness of this mystery we celebrate.  You see, we really need to live the resurrection as more than an idea about which to philosophize, or some fact about which we try to convince others.  Living the resurrection in greater awareness can come about if we recall the value of what we give to God.  How we see ourselves and how we experience frustration with ourselves and others, can be transformed in our daily living if, after the initial regret for sin, we can pick ourselves up and see our sin as an offering to God who makes of it too a “happy fault.”  Rather than seeing every failure and sin as only a defeat, we can have a renewed sense of peace about our sins if we remember that they are signs of the mortality that we give to God, by which he is able to accomplish his plan of salvation.  And in giving our deaths to God, he is victorious and gives in their place the ability to live.  Again, not celebrating or encouraging sin, we need to see in the reality of our failures the call to give something over to God.  This is also not advice to broadcast our sin as a way to prove that we do not dwell in shame.  No, we Catholics have a private place for that where absolution is given.  But this central reality of the resurrection is something that needs to mark our daily living.  In the grace and the light of Easter, ask the Lord to transform the way you respond to your own mortality, especially as on display in your defects and sins.  Yes, face the reality in truth.  Yes, repent of it.  Yes, confess it.  Yes, work to change and reform yourself so that you grow in holiness. But, get rid of the idea and the defeating voices that tell you your mortality is only a thing of shame or hopelessness.  That is not the voice of God.  And to reject such notions can help us live the resurrection as more than an item in the creed or a doctrine to study.  In faith, our sins and failings, when given to God, are part of the marvelous exchange by which we give to Him what He did not have in Himself.  In turn, we proclaim “happy fault” because He gives to us the power to live!

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday
17 April 2025

 With the beginning of this evening Mass, the season of Lent has now officially ended.  We have now begun the most intense and the shortest of the Church’s liturgical seasons.  This brief season is three days long, comprising Holy Thursday evening through Easter Sunday evening.  The three days is the origin of the name of this time: The Sacred Triduum, from the Latin meaning the Sacred Three Days.  This short “season” has us observe our most high holy days, celebrating tonight that our Lord established two sacraments at the Last Supper, the institution of the Holy Eucharist and of the holy priesthood; observing tomorrow (Good Friday) the saving sacrifice of the Cross; and, observing on Holy Saturday the reality of the tomb, a placed turned into hope by our Lord’s resurrection to new life, which we begin to anticipate and watch for in vigil on Holy Saturday night leading into Easter Sunday.

These intense, climactic days are the fulfillment of what God chose to do to restore His creation and the communion of life He desires us to have by His promise of salvation.  It is good to briefly consider all that hangs in the air in these brief three days.  Such recollection should help us appreciate aspects of the saving mysteries we celebrate here liturgically.

From the accounts of creation in the Book of Genesis, we recall that God provided all good things, the garden of blessing, every seed-bearing plant and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it, every animal, every bird of the air, and every creature that crawls on the ground.  God gave all these things for man to steward and care for.  And He gave them also as food for man to have every blessing in that garden of communion with God.

The Fall brought disorder into God’s creation.  It changed natural life such that after the Fall it tends to weaken and fall apart.  It brought about death.  The Fall results in man’s being cast out of the Garden, subject to death, and an eternal consequence of being at odds with God, which is the condemnation of Hell.  But Genesis reports that first announcement of the kernel of the Gospel (Gn. 3:15), that God has a plan to destroy the effects of the serpent’s cunning and to deal a mortal blow to death itself.

As that plan of salvation unfolded, and as man’s fall was related to grasping at and eating food, God called for the Jewish people to observe their salvation from slavery over the course of the Passover meal.  It was a meal that recounted God’s goodness and saving action.  Far from mere memory alone of the past event of the Exodus, the Jewish mind and faith is that the Passover makes God’s saving action present now to His people.  The meal had to be eaten.  The Passover lamb became the sign of what God does in the midst of His people.  The identification of God Himself – Jesus Christ – with the lamb, carries with it the message that, in Jesus, God is saving His people in the fulfillment of all that the Exodus accomplished, a journey no longer from slavery in a country of the earth, but a journey to freedom from slavery to sin by the passage to redeemed life, and finally a journey to the Promised Land of Heaven.  In the course of the last Passover meal with his apostles, the one we call the Last Supper, the Lord took the familiar Passover ritual and did something new and unexpected with it.  It took time for the disciples, the first Christians to grasp all the implications of the Lord’s action, but in the first generation of the Church, Christians already understood that the Passover meal had become a New Covenant by which God’s saving action was made present to His people now, and the lamb that had to be consumed was Jesus, the Lamb of God, very God Himself.  That faith has been handed on ever since and we still maintain it today as Catholics.  In fact, we would not be Catholic, we would not be the Lord’s Church, were we to fail to hold this faith about the reality of what took place at the Last Supper, and which now takes place in the Holy Mass.  The second reading from St. Paul to the Corinthians shows us how this faith was passed down from the first generation of Catholic disciples.  St. Paul is able to write, as we heard, “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.’ … In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’.”

What I want to tie together for us is how the Lord’s ultimate gift and sacrifice of himself for our salvation mirrors in some degree the act by which man was disobedient to God in the Garden and ushered in the fall.  In other words, God’s plan of salvation takes up some of the imagery and the action by which man created the need for salvation in the first place.  At the Last Supper, Jesus presented himself to his apostles in a way that echoed his strange sounding words from John 6 that he, that his very flesh, is the bread come down from Heaven.  At the Last Supper, Jesus presented himself to his apostles as food.  And though it would take at least a little time for their minds to grasp this, along with the action of the Holy Spirit to guide them in truth to this part of Catholic faith, the next day the Lord would show how this saving food – his very life – is likewise food from a tree, for the apostles learned that the Lamb of God, who was given as food, is placed upon the wood of the Cross, food dangling from a tree.

In the Garden of Eden food dangling from a tree was taken in disobedience, bringing to man a knowledge of good and evil that God did not intend for man and which distorted man’s nature.  God’s plan of salvation finds its culmination in that saving food of the lamb dangling from a tree on Calvary.  In obedience, we are to look upon it – upon God Himself – hanging in death, yet showing the immense depths of God’s love, that He places Himself where our disobedience brought ruin.  Now in obedience, and provided we observe communion of life with the Lord, we are called to receive food from the tree of the Cross.  But, this food saves!

This night we commemorate that at the Last Supper, as the Lord was bringing to fulfillment the long plan of salvation, he brought about salvation in a way that makes his saving power present in every time and place.  The power of the Cross and its food, made present in every Holy Mass, is not just a past recollection or a memory of a past event.  Like the ritual of the Passover meal for the Jews, this ritual of the Holy Mass makes present to us here the saving power of the exodus of the cross, death, and resurrection of Jesus: who is God, Lamb, and Savior.  At one and the same time in giving this saving gift, by establishing also the holy priesthood exercised in his Catholic Church, the Lord has provided the means by which his gift of self in the Holy Eucharist can be made present to his Church, to disciples in every time and place.  For all this, we marvel at the promise God made in that kernel of the Gospel first proclaimed over the wreckage man had made in the Garden of Eden.  God promised there a saving plan that the offspring of the woman would strike a mortal blow to the offspring of the serpent.  Our undoing is mirrored in the ways God has acted to save us.  Man first looked upon the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and found it enticing and good to look upon.  Now, man is called to look upon what does not seem enticing or good, in fact, rather grotesque, the agony of that tree of the Cross.  Man was first disobedient by taking from the tree in the Garden.  Now, man is called upon to be obedient in finding upon the tree of the Cross food for eternal life.  Where man’s sin brought death in the flesh, now man is called upon to express faith that death is destroyed because the seed-bearing fruit of the life of God Himself is planted within the greedy jaws of death.  As that limitless life of God germinates in the darkness of death and tomb it is destroyed from the inside out!  God’s generous love is what we celebrate this evening, a love that finds its promised culmination in the Holy Eucharist, the Real Presence of God, food for the journey, and the sign that we are not abandoned or left as orphans.  Intimately bound up with this sacred gift (the Holy Eucharist), is the means by which that gift comes to us: the priesthood of Jesus Christ.  This day is a day for the priesthood in a unique way.  And so, I ask you to pray for me and to pray for Fr. Bali, and for all priests.  We are weak earthen vessels – yet the power of God in sacred ordination results in His saving plan continuing to come in your midst through the sacramental life of the Church.  At the same time, I ask you to pray and to watch – even within your own families and among your sons – for signs that the Lord desires to continue the plan of salvation such that one day your son just might be called “Father”.  In the charity and the humble service that the Lord models for us, we seek to promote priestly vocations for the good of the present and future mission of the Church and we seek to observe faithfully that the Lord is present to us in these sacred mysteries of his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Dominica V in Quadragesima C
6 April 2025

 Throughout this Lent the readings from Sacred Scripture have shown us God’s activities and mighty works in the Exodus by which he brought His people out of slavery in Egypt.  The readings of Lent also move into the New Testament selections to show us the new “exodus,” that is the passage or departure that Jesus would undertake in his Cross and Resurrection.  The Exodus from Egypt was filled with mighty signs of God’s presence among the Israelites and mighty deeds that demonstrated God’s power over Israel’s enemies.  Thus, the events of the Exodus convinced Israel they belonged to God and that they were His chosen people.  Throughout the Old Testament, as Israel recalled the Exodus, they constantly spoke of the mighty works God had done in the past.  Today’s first reading from Isaiah and the psalm are good examples of such commemorative language, celebrating the past: “Thus says the Lord, who opens a way in the sea” and who leads out the powerful army of Egypt till they are “snuffed out and quenched like a wick.”  Filled with joy in belonging to God and being beneficiaries of His power, the Israelites would frequently cry out, as we repeated in the psalm, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.”

 Imagine, then, how strange the words of God must have sounded to Israel as delivered later by Isaiah in the first reading: “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new”.  Think about that.  God was telling Israel to overlook the many plagues He had visited upon Egypt to get Pharaoh to release the people.  Israel was being told not to dwell on God’s presence in cloud and fire as they were led away from Egypt.  They were being told to think no more of the incredible event of the Red Sea crossing.  They were no longer to recall the miraculous bread-like manna and the flesh of quail God provided for their food.  They were being told to consider no more the cloud, lightning, and thunder that accompanied Moses on Mt. Sinai as he visited God and received the Ten Commandments.  Or, to be absolutely clear, God is instructing His people that they should not be so past focused as to miss that He is in their midst still acting in the present.  God wants His people to also focus their minds on the new thing He is doing.  That “something new” is the exodus Jesus would undergo by his death and resurrection.  The exodus of Jesus is God’s most mighty work of all, because by it He offers Himself in payment for the sins that bring eternal death and deserve the punishment of Hell.  By faith and baptism we enter the life of Christ, being called to live this new life and to give up and avoid the old ways of slavery to sin, the past.  As the woman caught in adultery was spared, the “something new” of God spares us the punishment of Hell by the compassion of Jesus, if only we will place Christ’s life above all things.

 St. Paul understood well the “something new” of God.  He knew that he could not hold onto the old life, even though it was marked by so many of God’s mighty deeds.  St. Paul speaks most explicitly that in light of the new thing the Father does in Christ, everything else – everything – is garbage.  He wrote in today’s second reading: “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”  To understand St. Paul’s emphasis, it is helpful to know that the word “rubbish” in English is a PG version of latrine language.  St. Paul says to be a Christian, to belong to Christ, to be able to come to Christ’s compassion for forgiveness of our sins, to have new life in the Lord means all else is [pause, cough, clear throat] “rubbish” compared to the “something new” the Father does in Christ!

 In this holy season we are called to renew ourselves in the new life of grace in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Christ Jesus is the “something new” of the Father.  Have we changed this Lent?  Does our life reflect more faithfully now “the supreme good of knowing Christ” than it did at the beginning of Lent?  Where is my life leading me?  What appears to be my goal in life?  Would there be any evidence in my life to support the claim that my goal is “the supreme good of knowing Christ?”  Is there any evidence in my life to support what St. Paul described as the “straining forward” to “the prize of God’s upward calling”?  Or, to borrow St. Paul’s blunt words, do I give more attention to “rubbish” than to new life in Christ?  Am I content to treat my sins lightly, ignoring even serious sin in my life as I trade in new life in Christ for wallowing in filth?  Is success, pleasure, fame, money, athletic prowess, career, car or home what I really strive for?  Am I ready to account these as rubbish compared to the new life offered me in Christ?  By faith and baptism we have entered new life in Christ and we are called to live this life always.  If our being Christian is not just a label we wear externally, then we must view all else as rubbish in comparison to knowing Christ our Lord.  Only then, like the woman caught in adultery, burdened with our sins and the punishment they deserve, can we come to Jesus.  Meeting him we are freed by his compassionate words “Neither do I condemn you,” and we are given the serious work of his command, “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”  Only free from the bonds of sin can we live new life according to the Father’s plan, going forth to announce His praise, because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus the Lord!

Third Sunday of Lent

Dominica III in Quadragesima C
23 March 2025

 This Sunday the Scriptures call us to reflect on what it means to belong to God in covenant.  We belong to Him and are claimed by Him.  This involves living in accord with God’s ways.  And when we inevitably fail to do that in both venial and mortal ways, we are called to repent and to bear the good fruit God expects.  The lesson of repentance and bearing good fruit is a well-timed lesson for the Season of Lent as exhibited in the Scripture selections for this Holy Mass.

 The second reading (from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians) speaks to us about the Old Covenant God made with the Israelites and the many wonderful saving events God provided to His people, especially involving the ministry of Moses.  St. Paul does something interesting in recounting these saving events.  He says what happened with the people in the Old Covenant serves as an example and a warning to us in the New Covenant.  Listen to the blessings received by the Israelites, which St. Paul recounts to Christians in Corinth: “[O]ur ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea”.  St. Paul says this movement from slavery in Egypt to freedom, entering the cloud of God’s presence and passing through the parted Red Sea amounts to a “baptismal” entry to the Old Covenant.  He wrote: “all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea”.  Having thus been baptized into the Old Covenant, St. Paul goes on to write that they all “ate the same spiritual food”.  And here is the kicker from St. Paul.  He continues: “Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert”.  Considering these saving events of the Exodus and the outcome that most of those chosen people died before arriving at the Promised Land, St. Paul drives the lesson home for Christians: “These things happened as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.  Do not grumble as some of them did, and suffered death by the destroyer.  These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us…. Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall”.  And thus, the appropriate Lenten lesson of repentance that is reinforced in the Gospel selection.

 In the Gospel, Jesus calls his listeners to repentance.  He confronts a false but common notion among ancient people, namely that when bad things happen to people (like the massacre of Galileans in the Temple or like those who died when the tower of Siloam fell) it happens as punishment for sin, it is a sign that those who died were bad sinners.  The ancients commonly thought that all calamity and misfortune were related to sin and came about as punishment.  We might think that a quaint notion from unsophisticated ancient minds.  Yet, we moderns commonly adopt the opposite extreme.  In our culture we commonly adopt the idea that there is no relationship between sin and punishment.  So, we probably should be careful about making charges of lack of sophistication.  While Jesus says that those who died in those events were not worse sinners than anyone else, he still goes on to say, “But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”  What do we make of the apparent contradiction?  The Lord’s remarks can be understood if he is not speaking only of physical death of bodily death, like the Galileans experienced and like those who died when the tower fell.  The Lord is calling us to repentance so that we might not find ourselves facing spiritual death, eternal death in separation from him.  And in fact, the Lord expects and demands repentance that we might bear good fruit as members of the New Covenant.

   There is a popular notion among some Christians that claims that once a person comes to Christ and expresses faith, then they have a salvation that is set and unchanging.  That popular notion is expressed in these words: the doctrine of “Once saved; always saved”.  That notion simply does not match with the evidence throughout the Scriptures.  That notion makes no sense in light of the frequent biblical call to repent – even among those already following Jesus.  That false notion is adopted by many non-catholic Christians who might think that once they accept Jesus there is nothing that would endanger salvation.  But that false notion is also adopted by many catholics, perhaps unintentionally, who do not make good use of confession, that sacrament particularly geared to repentance and to the healing of sins committed after we enter the New Covenant in baptism.  That attitude cannot be ours.  For we are called to repent and to bear good fruit.

   As St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, “whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall”.  The Lord, like the owner of an orchard, expects fruit to come from the trees he has planted and nourished with his saving grace and the Precious Blood from his Cross.  That Gospel image of the fig tree echoes exactly an earlier event in the same Gospel of St. Luke when St. John the Baptist is calling his listeners to not assume that because they have Abraham as father that they are automatically saved.  St. John goes on to say, “Produce good fruits as evidence of your repentance…. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Lk. 3:8-9).  The tree is an image of an individual believer planted in the orchard of the covenant in Jesus.  From each believer, good fruit, produce at the proper time, is expected.  Like the people of the Old Covenant, God nourishes us with baptism and spiritual food and he sends workers to tend the orchard, to cultivate it and fertilize it.  The good fruit is expected and demanded.  If not produced, the tree is cut down.

    We trust that the Lord is kind and merciful.  But we also take care not to fall.  Repentance, by which we return constantly to the Lord, places our hope in him and keeps us united to the one whose generous gifts and patience make it possible for us to bear good fruit.

First Sunday of Lent

Dominica I in Quadragesima C
9 March 2025

 I think we would all agree that the Sacred Scriptures, being the inspired Word of God in written form, are of immense value for our instruction, for our correction, and for training in holiness (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16).  One of the blessings you can discover when you study and pray with the Scriptures is how much more there is than just the word on the page, as valuable as that is.  In addition to the words on the page, you see literary techniques and characteristics that open endless riches by which we can come to know God and by which we can come to see our lives in the plan of salvation.  By way of example, it is fascinating to understand that Old Testament figures can serve as types of what will be fulfilled in the New Testament.  Such is the case when we read about Isaac in the Old Testament, the beloved son of his father Abraham, who carries the wood for the sacrifice on his shoulders, much like what is fulfilled when Jesus, the beloved Son of God, carries the wood of the cross and is given in sacrifice by the Father for our sins.  Sometimes the literary device allows you to see mirror or inverse images between biblical events.

 On this first Sunday of Lent I suggest we should have in our minds the blessings of the Garden of Eden and mankind’s fall by giving in to the temptations of the devil.  We know about the garden from the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible.  God created all good things and made man in His own image, giving him authority over creation and placing him in that garden of blessing.  By taking and eating from the forbidden tree, man’s disobedience introduced sin, caused man’s expulsion from the place of blessing, and carries with it the inherited sin that we each receive and which weakens us in the face of temptation.  With that lesson from Genesis in mind, we have the inverse in the gospel selection from St. Luke.  Just one verse before today’s selection, Jesus is revealed in St. Luke’s genealogy as the “son of Adam, the Son of God”.  This reference to Adam bolsters how the gospel scene is an inversion of the garden, for Jesus is the new Adam, and like him, he is tempted by Satan.  But given that sin has entered the world, Jesus is led to, or placed in, the desert, far from the garden of blessing.  There, in that place of desolation that speaks so clearly of lack of blessing, Jesus, the new Adam, is victorious.  In this way, we have a summary of the temptations faced by Adam and Eve.  These temptations are relived, so to speak; they are recapitulated in Jesus.  But, this time, the new and perfect Adam, Jesus, is victorious; and, since he is both God and man, this means our own human nature, our flesh, has hope for victory in Jesus over what has caused our fall.

Genesis tells us of a threefold temptation in the Garden.  When Satan tempts Eve, the Scripture says that Eve saw that “the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gn. 3:6).  Christianity has developed a tradition of seeing in this scene from Genesis a threefold concupiscence, meaning a threefold way that is comprehensive for how we are inclined to sin.  You can see this tradition on display moving from Genesis to the opposite end of the Bible in the First Letter of St. John (chapter 2, verse 16).  He writes: “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”.  Let’s make the connection from the threefold concupiscence to how this has developed in Christian tradition.  Eve saw that the tree was good for food, which corresponds to the Christian tradition of referring to our tendency toward sin due to the lust of the flesh.  Lust is a disordered attachment to things.  The lust of the flesh, refers to a disordered attachment to food and drink and sexual pleasure, things that are pleasurable to the flesh.  Second, Eve saw that the tree was a delight to the eyes, which corresponds to the Christian tradition of referring to our tendency toward sin due to the lust of the eyes.  The lust of the eyes refers to a disordered attachment by which we see things and desire to possess and take them, to make them ours.  Eve saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, to make one like unto God, which corresponds to the Christian tradition of naming the pride of life as a source by which we fall to sin.  The pride of life is a disordered attachment to being exalted, to raising oneself up in esteem, to be powerful, to seek glory, to be in the know, to seek to occupy the place of God.

Jesus recapitulates this threefold temptation, this triple concupiscence, in the gospel selection, which presents us an inversion of the Garden of Eden.  Satan’s temptations correspond to this triple concupiscence.  Jesus, led to the desert by the Spirit, has undergone serious fasting and he was very weak in his human nature.  The devil, being the most cunning of all the creatures, seizes upon the moment to bring temptations, and St. Luke’s very ordering of the three temptations highlights the triple concupiscence that I have been describing.  The devil tempts Jesus to command that a stone become bread.  That’s an expression of the lust of the flesh, to make something that would be pleasurable, that would feed a desire of the flesh, that would fill a longing of the flesh.  The devil tempts Jesus by showing him all the kingdoms of the world and promises that he will hand them over to Jesus, that he may possess them.  That’s an expression of the lust of the eyes, to see all the power associated with earthly kingdoms and mankind, and to desire to possess it, to take control of it.  Finally, the devil tempts Jesus by placing him in full sight at the pinnacle of the temple and urges him to throw himself down so that God’s promise of protection can be displayed.  That’s an expression of the pride of life, to display his power, to make a show of himself, and to be exalted before the world as the one sent by God the Father.

 And so, with the lesson of Genesis and the threefold concupiscence, it makes total sense that our standard Lenten practices – fasting, almsgiving, and prayer – are remedies for these precise areas of weakness.  Where we suffer from lust of the flesh, we fast to train ourselves against a disordered attachment to food, drink, and bodily pleasure.  We need to rely on fasting more, and not only in Lent.  Don’t think that simply because the Church requires fasting only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, that those are the only days we should fast.  No, if you want to master the tendency to weakness in the flesh then adopt fasting.  In Lent, our use of a such a tool should be intensified.  Where we suffer from the lust of the eyes, we engage in almsgiving.  Where we might tend to fall prey to amass possessions, to take things and hold onto them for ourselves, we give things away to those who are needy and at the same time we train ourselves to maintain better control over this desire.  Where we are sort of tugged by the pride of life, wanting attention, or to be seen as an influencer, or to be wise, to be seen as powerful and noteworthy, we practice and develop a life of prayer.  By prayer we recognize our need for God.  We enter relationship with Him.  And immediately, humility is required because we can’t help but be honest in that relationship that we are not God, but in humility must rely upon Him and His love for us.  To make a minor adaptation of St. John the Baptist’s words in reference to Jesus: We must decrease and He must increase.

 Jesus has recapitulated the events of man’s sin and has been victorious over what separates us from God.  Thus, in Lent, we seek to be more greatly conformed to Christ so that, united more deeply with our Head, we who are members of the Body of Christ may share more fully in his victory.  Lent is not a time for superficial spiritual practices, but a serious engagement with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving so that the Lord’s power may come more fully into the weakness that ails us.  The Lord did not come in our flesh and die for our sins so that we can  give up trivial things for Lent.  That might be okay for children, but not for us adults.  He came to undo the power of our triple concupiscence.  Now is the time for serious battle to weaken the disordered attachments that keep us bound.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday
5 March 2025

 The holy season of Lent is an annual opportunity to be honest – brutally honest – with ourselves about ourselves.  It’s as if we are looking at ourselves before the Lord, as if he were a mirror and we are checking our reflection.  How do we reflect the Lord in our daily living?  Is our image conformed more greatly to his?  Is our reflection of him lacking in some significant way that must be reformed, and even in smaller ways that need our effort at conversion?

Taking up the call to engage in this self-examination is critically important because it is so easy for us to fall into a complacency about ourselves that can result in our adopting self-congratulatory ideas and false estimations of ourselves.  Considering what takes place at almost every modern funeral exposes this complacency and this self-congratulatory tendency.  Funerals are now “celebrations of life” by which most people mean a celebration of the deceased and all of his or her favorite hobbies and interests.  Rarely does one get the sense that the life being celebrated is that of the Lord, lived in the person of the deceased, which would be the only thing that matters and the only thing that saves.  Gone are the days at most funerals when, facing the reality of judgment, the focus is clearly on praying that the deceased person may experience a merciful judgment.  The way most people speak at funerals gives the distinct impression, if not the outright claim, that the deceased is already in Heaven or has become an angel.  And since it is assumed that the deceased is already in heaven, there is little that communicates the need to pray for the deceased person.  In fact, one of the greatest tragedies in modern funerals is that the living are not left with an awareness of the need to pray for the deceased and to accompany and help the deceased soul through its purification.  Rarely at funerals do we hear that the deceased had sins that must be addressed or that we should hold off on claims of instant canonization.  I am not observing this to be nasty, but to pull the veil off of a tendency that undercuts the truth.  The truth is that we are sinners.  The truth is that we exist in a fallen nature due to original sin, which we inherit.  The truth is that we are each guilty of our own personal sins, and sometimes rather serious sins that risk our eternal loss on the day of judgment.  If we don’t face that truth, if we allow ourselves to be medicated by the spirit that is so evident surrounding modern funerals, if we adopt a secular way of thinking, then we fall into the trap of self-congratulatory attitudes by which we think our sins aren’t that bad and that we don’t have much for which we must repent and be converted.

And thus, the importance of Lent.   It is a time to be brutally honest about ourselves.  And if we use Lent well, we don’t keep that honesty only for Lent, abandoning it the rest of the year.  Rather, we continually examine ourselves as a regular part of the spiritual life, and we heed the call to practice that brutally honest self-examination in the gift of confession.  Why do we engage in this honest self-examination and the practices of penance?  Because Jesus himself is the example to us of prayer, penance, and the arduous struggle with evil and the devil himself.  He did so in his temptation in the desert.  Furthermore, he recommends such practices to his disciples.  Notice that in the Gospel selection, the Lord is recommending spiritual practices and telling his disciples how to engage in them sincerely and in a way pleasing to him.  He says, “When you give alms,” and “When you pray,” and “When you fast.”  The Lord assumes that his followers take up these worthy practices and that his followers do them in such a way that does not render them empty by doing them in order so that others see those righteous deeds.

What we do in Lent with particular vigor is not intended to be kept in Lent, as if we would leave behind serious and honest self-examination the rest of the year.  We engage with the opportunity of Lent as an intense time of renewal so that we live the faith in a way more consistent with our calling and so that the coming celebration of Easter will find us living a deeper communion with the Lord who is the only source and hope of our salvation.  The truth is that we need to dismiss the tendency to excuse ourselves of sin and to make use of the great gifts that are the marks both of honest self-examination and honest reliance on the goodness of the Lord who loves us and whose mercy saves those who are humble and who repent.

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica V per Annum C
9 February 2025

 When we have an experience of God, there is a common human tendency to first consider our unworthiness.  It is a common tendency to think of the reasons why we can’t do what God asks, why it can’t be me, especially when that encounter with God involves some mission or task that He wants us to accomplish, or when it involves discovering our vocation, the calling, He gives us.  Our unworthiness to be with God, or to do anything that glorifies God, is an acknowledgment that we are unworthy because of our sins.  We see this common human tendency in the call of the Prophet Isaiah from the first reading.  He discovers God’s call in his experience of a spiritual vision of God’s temple in heaven.  When he sees this vision of God, and the fiery angels worshipping around the throne, and the cry of the angels, “Holy, Holy, Holy”, causing the whole temple to shake, Isaiah does what any normal human being would do.  He says, “Uh, oh!  I don’t fit in here.  And I’m probably about to die!”  To quote him in his own 8th century B.C. words, Isaiah says, “Woe is me, I am doomed!  For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”  Isaiah encounters God and he is afraid because he knows he is a sinner.  He can’t imagine that God would allow him to stand in His presence.  He can’t imagine that God would have anything in mind for Isaiah to do on His behalf.

Now, there is something true, and even good, about that common tendency to think of our unworthiness and sinfulness when confronted with an experience of God.  We believe that, don’t we?  It should come naturally to us as Catholics.  After all we start every Mass with some form of a penitential act, calling to mind our unworthiness to encounter God in worship and to express our hope that He grants mercy to make our worship pleasing to Him.  Our unworthy sinfulness is frankly the truth.  There is something very healthy about admitting that.  In fact, you want to know who is spiritually unhealthy and in mortal danger?  It is not the sinner.  It is the sinner who doesn’t repent.  It is the sinner who doesn’t receive the medicine in God’s gift of confession.  Yes, let’s be clear that knowing the truth that I am an unworthy sinner is appropriate and it means that I have a good grasp on reality, that I am not delusional.  But – and here is a lesson the Scriptures drive home for us – when that common tendency to know of oneself as unworthy is coupled with a failure of imagination that God can do something with me… that is a toxic combination.  When we think that our unworthiness means God can’t do anything about it, or that He can’t do something with us, then we are acting as if we are more powerful than God.  But if we repent, that’s a gamechanger!

There is a book I want to recommend that gives some advice on how to counteract that toxic combination.  The book gives an important antidote for combatting this tendency.  It is actually a Catholic book… and it is called the Bible!  (You know the Bible is a catholic book, I hope!  The Catholic Church put it together.)  The lesson throughout the Scriptures that serves as an antidote against our tendency to limit God’s plan for us is simply: listening.  Listening is always the first step in man’s response to God.  Listening is the first step to confronting the truth of my unworthiness, yes, but, if done in humility, it leads to God’s purifying action to heal us (as happened with the purifying ember of spiritual fire on Isaiah’s mouth).  It leads to God’s equipping us for our vocation (as happened on the lake with Jesus giving Simon Peter his calling).  Listening helps us focus not on what we can’t do, but rather on what God can do in us.  What God can do through us.  Listening to God’s Word in the Scriptures, listening to God’s Word in the Deposit of Faith and in Church teaching, listening to God’s Word in personal prayer, and in the ways He moves in holy, faithful friendships… this is an antidote to the tendency to limit God and to think He can’t be calling me to be holy and to do something holy in His Name.

St. Paul is someone who knew his unworthy sinfulness.  But you know he listened when, after listing various people and groups who saw the Lord, he says, “[l]ast of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me”!  So unworthy and such a sinner am I, St. Paul is saying, so unlikely a candidate am I to be an apostle or to accomplish any good for God, that is as if I am born into this mission and vocation abnormally!  He did the healthy thing of acknowledging his sinfulness.  But in humility and obedience he didn’t think that his sinfulness put a limit on God.  St. Paul did not permit the awareness of his sins to be coupled with a toxic failure to imagine what is possible with God.  You know he practiced the antidote of listening to God’s Word when he can say, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.”

We need to foster an imagination that trusts it is possible for God to interact in the world He made and to interact with us in our experiences such that we can discern the gifts He gives us, how He wants us to accomplish His tasks, and to follow the vocation He gives us.  It would have been easy for Isaiah to not listen, and to dismiss his vision as a crazy dream.  It would have been easy for St. Paul to think only of how he persecuted the Church and was a murderer and so to not listen to the calling to preach the Gospel and to write the words of faith that eventually became books in the Bible.  It would have been easy for Simon Peter, an expert fisherman with a fishing business, to get prickly when Jesus, a carpenter of all people (!), should tell him how to fish.  Had he failed to listen he might have missed his vocation to be a priest and the chief apostle.

In my past assignment as the Vocation Director, I had the enriching experience of working with young men wrestling with a mysterious call to be a priest.  Many a young man will think first of why it can’t be him, why he is unworthy, why his struggles and sins mean God can’t really give him a priestly calling.  One of the excuses I enjoyed the most was when a guy would be interested in the priesthood but would say, “I don’t know, Father.  I don’t think that’s me because I like girls too much.”  I would usually say, “Well, you should.  That’s a good sign.  You can’t dismiss the priesthood because of that.”  If I had a good enough rapport with the guy I would sometimes add, “It’s cute that you think that’s a reason why God can’t call you to the priesthood”.  We might expect the young to have difficulty in thinking God can use them for some holy purpose.  But I am not so sure that is limited to the young.  If you are a husband or a wife, a father or a mother, do you take your faith into the world on mission to share Jesus with others?  Do you think there is some reason you can’t do that?  Or do we adults think there is some place that God does not belong?  Do you bring Him into your work place and your social interactions?  Yes, young men listening today need to know that they can’t put a limit on God’s call and that He might want to give them the grace of the priesthood.  Yes, young women listening today need to know that the Lord might be calling them to religious life, no matter the limitations they have.  No matter their future calling, all young people have the charge now to be leaders among their peers, at school, and in social groups, in order to win many souls for the Lord, following the examples of so many great young saints throughout history.  But it is not only the young.  Those living life as single persons need to trust that God gives them a mission field in their career and in the service they can render to others by virtue of their greater freedom.  Couples who are preparing for marriage and those already married are called to let God’s grace be effective in them and in their faithful and fruitful love, seeing their mission field in the domestic church, a field which can open so easily to many other people, thus leading them to faith and the Lord by the attractiveness of hospitable family life.  You see, we are all purified and saved from our sins by baptism and given a calling in that first sacrament to speak the Good News.  If we are listening to God’s Word we know that our past and our sins don’t prevent God from working.  Repentance is the game changer that avoids the toxic failure to open our minds to what God sees as possible.  Whether you are young or older, if you find yourself dismissing a certain mission or vocation, thinking it can’t be you, know for certain that the evil one is lurking and your response should be to listen more attentively and to give God permission to do what He can do through you.

What godly calling and mission is yours?  What godly calling and mission seems unlikely in your opinion?  What is God asking of you that you might first object to and raise the reasons why you are not qualified?  Like Isaiah, like Simon Peter, like Paul, what is God’s missionary and vocational call to you that you think just can’t be?  You see, a lesson today is that we think more of ourselves instead of God.  That common tendency reveals the error.  Do we really think the source of power for mission and for vocation comes from ourselves?  No, when we listen to God and let down our nets in humility, it is not we alone who are doing the work.  Rather, it is God who purifies us with holy fire and it is God who fills the nets!

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica II per Annum C
19 January 2025

 In the Christmas season we celebrate in faith that our salvation is near because God has wedded Himself to us, His People.  He has done so by wedding Himself to us in our flesh.  We celebrate that reality in the conception of Jesus (where God first took flesh) and which we observe on the Annunciation each March.  And we celebrate that reality finally being made visible at the birth of Jesus at Christmas.  Though the Christmas season has ended, we continue celebrating God wedding Himself to us and being made manifest (or visible) by listening today to the story of the wedding feast at Cana.

St. John is doing something different with this story.  He is using an earthly event (the wedding at Cana) that has its own meaning as a tool to reveal divine mystery.  The Gospel story is clearly not really about the couple who got married in Cana because they barely get a mention.  The bride isn’t mentioned at all.  And the groom gets only a brief mention toward the end.  Another way we conclude that St. John is doing something different with the story is by considering just how much water Jesus turned into wine.  Six jars each holding about 20-30 gallons would result in between 120-180 gallons of wine.  We are more familiar with bottles of wine, so let’s run the conversion.  On average, that many gallons of wine would amount to between 720-1,080 bottles of wine for a wedding feast.  I searched around to see how one plans for the amount of wine to have for a wedding party.  Some advice is that for a party of 100 people you plan on about 40 bottles of wine, but to be safe you might just round up to four cases of wine, equaling 48 bottles.  Using the amount of wine Jesus made and running the conversion numbers, this would imply a wedding party in the small village of Cana involving party attendance of anywhere from 1,500- 2,250 people!  Look, I’ve been pastor of some small towns in Oklahoma that can throw some big parties, but that is an unbelievably large number of people in an ancient village, and it is a totally insane amount of wine.  And don’t forget, Jesus made that much wine AFTER they had already consumed all the wine the party had planned for!  Again, St. John is clearly doing something different by using the story of the wedding at Cana.

In the Bible, the image of a superabundance of wine accompanies descriptions of God’s action in end times to bring about salvation.  The Bible uses the image of much wine to describe the celebration of God’s People when He brings about their final salvation.  The Prophet Amos writes, “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, when… “the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.  I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, … they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine” (Amos 9:13-14).  The Prophet Joel writes, “And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine” (Joel 3:18).

St. John writes of the signs by which Jesus acts to reveal his glory and to bring about belief, discipleship, and salvation.  With all this in mind, we can view St. John’s use of the wedding at Cana as a sign that Jesus is the actual groom being revealed in mystery, for he is God who has wedded Himself to us in our flesh.  And following the logic of the imagery, someone else – namely, the Church – is being revealed as the actual bride.  You and I as members of the Church form the bride of Christ.  Now, don’t get hung up on the standard sex of that imagery.  The point is that Jesus is the groom in this relationship who lays down his life, who gives forth his life, to plant in us the seed of eternal life.  We, in this relationship, the Church, as bride, can only receive that gift within us and let it grow to full maturity so that we are born into heavenly life.

And still more, it is the Holy Mass that is the foretaste of the wedding feast of God’s nearness to us in His flesh, and the foretaste of that ultimate act of our salvation by which God brings us to the heavenly feast.  You should let this imagery form your perception of the Holy Mass and how you relate to it.  If we hold on to this imagery we should be impacted by how we prepare for Holy Mass and how we participate in it.  It is a common and widespread expectation that one dresses up for, and dresses properly for, a wedding.  Ordinary clothes just won’t do for something so important.  That should be our attitude for Mass.  What if I wore shorts and my favorite sports jersey to say Mass?  Outrageous!  By the way, the priest dresses in vestments not to communicate an idea that he’s better, but because he is supposed to serve as the icon of the groom and High Priest, Jesus Christ.  And, that would be hard to see or imagine of any man if he wore street clothes.  No groom would get away with dressing poorly for the wedding feast.  But you are the bride in this imagery!  The same holds for you.  Let that influence how you dress up for Mass.  If we are aware of the Mass as a foretaste of the heavenly wedding feast, then some habits come into different focus.  We see the need to prepare for Mass.  We prepare spiritually by our daily prayer life and frequent confession that prepares us to actually be in a communion of life with Lord before we receive Holy Communion.  We prepare by taking time to reflect on the readings before we hear them proclaimed live.  Is there a habit of arriving late for Mass and a habit of leaving early, walking out right after receiving Holy Communion?  I’m not talking about occasional snafus or emergencies.  But is that your habit?  Then the need to reform that habit comes into clearer focus when we understand the Holy Mass as the foretaste of the heavenly wedding feast where we should be “all in”.  Finally, for all of us here, let the grace of this foretaste help us understand the necessity as Catholics of marrying in a valid marriage in the Catholic Church so that the living of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony becomes a service by which spouses reflect to the world that God has wedded Himself to us, and reveals His glory through married love so that others may believe!

The Nativity of Jesus Christ (Christmas)

Nativitas D.N.I.C.
25 December 2024
Midnight Mass Readings

 Throughout the holy season of Advent the Church has called us to give particular attention to a practice that, truthfully, should engage us all year long, no matter the season.  That practice, given special attention in Advent but warranted throughout the year, is the practice or preparing for the coming, for the arrival of the Lord.  The coming of the Lord has two specific reference points in history.  The first coming has already taken place in time and it is the reason we gather today, to observe the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The second coming of the Lord in history is the one we still await when Jesus will return in glory as our Judge and Judge of all the living and the dead.  We might call these two comings of the Lord his “physical” arrivals, or his arrivals in human bodily form.  In Advent, and truthfully always, we prepare to live anew the meaning of Jesus’ first arrival while, at the same time, we seek to live the truth of the Lord’s birth and salvation for us by preparing for the unknown day when he will arrive in majesty and power.  The second reading for this Mass makes reference to these two “physical” arrivals when St. Paul writes to Titus: “The grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ”.  St. Paul writes about a grace of God that has already appeared even while noting that we still await the appearance of the glory of God.  One coming, one appearance has happened; the second coming, the second appearance we still await.

While our Christian vocation and our efforts at responding to the call to holiness take place between these two arrivals of the Lord, spiritual authors have noted a helpful interpretation that God arrives in a third way.  There is, we can say, another arrival of the Lord who comes to us in a different form between these two physical arrivals.  That third way, though perhaps not physical or in human bodily form, is no less real.  Between the two historical arrivals of the Lord, he comes to us spiritually by his grace.  Yes, the Lord arrives and comes to us by his gift of grace in so many and varied ways.  He comes by grace most pre-eminently in the sacraments of our faith, most especially in the Holy Eucharist.  The Lord’s grace arrives to us each time we stop life to admit our sins and to be healed in confession.  The Lord comes to us in holy Baptism and Confirmation.  He arrives with his grace in the sacraments of vocation, whether marriage or holy orders.  The Lord arrives to us when we pray, committing both to personal prayer time daily and our communal gathering at Holy Mass, observing each holy day and each Sunday as the Lord’s Day, by which we prepare weekly for the Lord’s return.  He comes to us in that blessing to the spiritual life that is meditation and study of Sacred Scripture, God’s Word to us.  The Lord arrives by his grace when we seek to live appropriate moral lives and when we give up our selfish ways to serve others.  His grace comes to us when we let the sacred teaching of the Church form us as we benefit from the centuries-long reflection of the Church on the mysteries of our faith.  So many ways does the Lord’s grace come to us.

Perhaps is makes sense to say that how we live in awareness of that third arrival, that third way of coming, the arrival of God to us by His grace in our spiritual life… perhaps that is the key to how we can prepare to observe Jesus’ birth in a less secular way, and also the key to being prepared for that most important test still to come: preparing for the Second Coming of Jesus.  Said another way, if we aren’t living in such a way to experience the arrival of God’s grace to us in our spiritual life, making use of the various examples of grace I stated earlier, then we are more likely to succumb to a secular and commercial preparation for Christmas and, as a consequence of that, we are more likely to succumb to being ill-prepared, “unprayed”, and unconfessed when the Lord comes again as Judge.

So, what lesson can we take for how to actively live that third way that the Lord arrives, his coming to us by grace in the soul, grace in the spiritual life?  I want to highlight two practices for our spiritual life.  These two practices are reflected in what we see in the Scriptures and in the experiences of so many believers over centuries.  The bad news is that these two practices, while simple, are tough and they will stretch you beyond your comfort zone.  The good news is that these practices are entirely possible and they will save you.

I think it can be said that the Scriptures show us an interesting pattern before some important action of God.  The pattern is that some important action of God is preceded by silence, often long silence.  I was doing some reading recently and I came across commentary about the long silence that enveloped God’s People Israel between the last prophet Malachi and the birth of Jesus.  In fact, some call this the “400 silent years” after the completion of the Prophet Malachi’s ministry.  I am not saying there were no godly events or no scriptural writings during those hundreds of years.  The point is that there was no prophet, no one whose commission from God was to say, “Thus says the Lord…”  Imagine being a faithful Jew, seeking to live the call to be God’s people in the midst of the world surrounded by people of many different beliefs and hearing nothing.  Some Jews, whole generations, would have never known what it was like to live in a time of a prophet.  Silence.  No new prophet’s word.  Four hundred years of silence.  Until, that is, the silence was broken, not by a new prophet, but by the very Word of God Himself.  An infant’s cry and coo in the still of a Bethlehem night broke the long silence.  So, the first practice that promotes God’s arrival to us by grace in the spiritual life is silence.  Depending on our vocation and our duties, we will have to be creative with this, especially in family life, depending on how much silence the kids will let you have.  Maybe instead of “silence” I could say, “quieting yourself”.  When was the last time your TV was turned off for a meaningful length of time?  I mean, during the day, not at night when you are asleep.  How about removing the ear buds?  We’re always ready to listen to someone else; we’re always somewhere other than where we actually are.  What freedom could you find by turning the ringer to off on the smartphone?  How often do you unplug from constant consumption of information, news, and – let’s be honest – silliness and total wastes of time online?  Silence, quieting yourself, is so necessary for prayer because we have to get all the words and messages and thoughts that are not from God out of our heads in order to make room to hear God.  It takes time to filter out all the competing ideas and thoughts and words that fill our heads and hearts.  If we rarely stop the noise, chances are we rarely quiet down enough to finally hear God – and to know it is God and not our own echo chamber.  Four hundred years of silence preceded and prepared the way for God’s own voice to break the silence on this night.  Silence is a critical precursor to God’s action.  While quieting ourselves takes discipline and is difficult, the good news is countless faithful over centuries know that it works.

And once we have quieted ourselves such that God can arrive by grace in our souls, once we have heard God’s voice, well, we then have something to say, something worth saying.  Here comes the second difficult practice.  We ourselves experience a new arrival of God’s grace, this third way of coming to us, when we share with others what we have received.  What do the Scriptures show us after the 400 years silence was broken by the Infant Word of God echoing throughout earth?  Immediately there is proclamation.  The angel of the Lord appears to shepherds in the stillness and relative silence of night and says, “I proclaim to you good news of great joy.”  A good news that is destined “for all the people”.  And following that proclamation, a multitude of the heavenly host joins the angel to break out in praise saying, “Glory to God in the highest.”  Thus, a disciple who is in the posture to receive the arrival of God’s grace is a disciple who knows his spiritual life is meant to be shared.  That doesn’t seem like it would be hard to do.  But it is.  It takes vulnerability to share your faith with others.  We do not hide our spiritual life or the ways God blesses us.  We do not boast, to be sure.  But, we are not called to hide what we have received under a basket.  We are called to break the silence of a world far from God with the proclamation of good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and what He has done for us.  We are called to share our faith and our blessings with those around us.  In so sharing our faith, others are blessed by the arrival of God for them and God’s grace in us is magnified for having been shared.

We more joyfully observe Christ’s birth, we are better prepared for his second coming, and we make ready the path for God to do something in us, to come to us by grace, when we follow that pattern seen in the Scriptures: fostering silence so that we make room for God to come to new birth in our souls by His grace, and then breaking the silence and the darkness by our own proclamation that “Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord.”