Living Sacrifice

St. Josephine Bakhita: Touched, Healed, Fortunate

2012-02-05T15:58:00.000-05:00

St. Josephine Bakhita (1869-1947)

(5th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 4 & 5 February, 2012 at Holy Apostles Church in Cranston, R.I. See Job 7:1-7 and Mark 1:29-39)

I would like toask you a very personal question:

What happened to you when you gatheredtogether, probably with your family and their closest friends—on the day youwere baptized?

There is a goodchance that if you were baptized as an infant you will not remember what happened to you on that day. If you were someone who went through theadult catechumenate, participating in classes for the Rite of ChristianInitiation for Adults (RCIA) then you probably do remember.

Nonetheless, whetherwe remember it or not, all of us are familiar with what our faith teaches us about baptism. We know that on the day of our baptism ourparents and godparents made the sign of the cross on our foreheads; that thepriest or deacon poured water over our heads (or perhaps we were even fullyimmersed in that water) and the prayer of the Church was offered, in whichChrist Himself, through His sacred minister, baptizes in the name of theFather, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

On the day of ourbaptism Christ touched us, physically and spiritually. We were touched by Him, healed of OriginalSin and given new life in the Holy Spirit. What a remarkable and amazing thing happened to us on that day!

There is abeautiful image for what happens at baptism in our Gospel this weekend. St. Mark relates how Peter’s mother-in-lawlay sick in bed with a fever. In thetime of Jesus, it would not be unusual for a person to die if the fever wassevere. Perhaps for that very reason St.Mark tells us that they brought Jesus to the woman “immediately.” The sickness must have been serious indeed. Then Christ did the most tender and lovingthing:

He approached, grasped her hand, andhelped her up.”

—Mark 1:31

He touched her,and she was healed. She then began toserve those around her, filled with gratitude and self-giving love. Such is the healing and life-giving encounterwe experience in the Sacrament of Baptism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that, “in the sacraments Christcontinues to ‘touch’ us in order to heal us” (CCC, #1504).

That is whathappened on the day of our baptism. Christ touched us in order to heal us. On the day we received the Sacrament of Confirmation, when the bishopmade the sign of the cross on our foreheads with sacred chrism and prayed overus for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we were touched by Christ, healed andmade whole. That is what happens eachtime we encounter Christ in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. “In the sacraments Christ continues to‘touch’ us in order to heal us” (CCC,#1504).

How desperatelywe need and long for that touch and that healing; in a world broken by sin andso often tainted by evil, suffering and pain, how we yearn and long to betouched by Christ and to be healed.

There is apowerful story about a woman named Josephine Bakhita. She grew up in Sudan, one of the largestcountries in Africa, in a region called Darfur. You do not need to be an expert in current events to know that Darfur isone of the most dangerous places on earth, particularly for women. The atrocities committed against women andmen, and the violence in Darfur spreading to the point of genocide, provoked a crisisthat has cried out for international intervention in recent years (in 2004,U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powel referred to Darfur as the worsehumanitarian crisis of the 21^st century). For Josephine Bakhita, growing up in late 19^thcentury Sudan was no less dangerous.

She was born in1869 to loving parents and had a peaceful, happy life with her family. But at the age of nine she was abducted andsold off into slavery, which was not at all uncommon at that time (her ownsister had been abducted only a few years before). The experience was so horrifying that sheforgot her own name. When asked by hercaptors what she was called, she had no response. Therefore they named her themselves, laughinglycalling her “Bakhita, which means “fortunate.” Being sold into slavery again and again, she was anything but fortunate.

Over the courseof many years she experienced inhumane treatment and torments. One of the worse was something referred to astattooing, a process by which masters would be able to identify the slavesbelonging to them. Patterns and designswould be place upon the skin using flour, after which a razor was used to carvethe images in permanently. Salt wasplaced over the wounds to insure that deep scarring would take place. Josephine related later that the pain was soexcruciating she wondered how she even survived it.

The words of ourfirst reading this morning could easily apply to Josephine Bakhita:

Is not man’s life on earth adrudgery? …So I have been assignedmonths of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me. My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;they come to an end without hope.

—Job 7:1;6

But as with Job,even so for Josephine, those days did not end without hope. She was eventually sold to a family connectedwith the Italian Consulate, and began to experience kindness and even affectionfor the first time. Due to civil unrest,the family she was with was forced to return to Italy, and Josephine asked togo with them. Once in Italy she becamefamiliar with the Canossian Sisters and even began to take classes inpreparation for becoming a Christian. Shewas baptized, confirmed and received the Eucharist, choosing the Christian name“Josephine,” as well as retaining the Arabic name “Bakhita,” for she consideredherself fortunate indeed to have found the one she now referred to as the trueMaster.

Josephne Bakhitalater joined the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and was renowned for herjoyful love of God and neighbor. Peoplewould come to see her there at the convent, where she would bring them to thebaptismal fount, with tears of great joy, and introduce them to it. She would say: “This is where I became adaughter of God.” She had beentouched by Christ and healed of so much pain, a past filled with so muchsorrow.

Asked once whatshe would say if she were to meet the persons who had abducted her so manyyears ago, she took that question one step further and responded: "IfI were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me, I wouldkneel and kiss their hands. For, if these things had not happened, I would nothave been a Christian and a religious today" (Bakhita Tells HerStory, by Maria LuisaDagnino, 1993).

On October 1, 2000, Blessed John Paul II canonized St. JosephineBakhita and this coming Wednesday, February 8, we celebrate her Feast Day. She is a remarkable and inspiring woman ofcourage, virtue and faith who teaches us all what it means to be touched byJesus Christ in the sacraments of the Church and to be healed. Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical SpeSalvi, relates how she came to understand her life and her future with God:“I am definitely loved and whateverhappens to me—I am awaited by this love. And so my life is good.”

So I would like to come back once again to the question that I asked atthe beginning of this reflection:

What happened to you on the day that you were baptized?

What happened to you on the day you received the Sacrament ofConfirmation?

And what will happen to you today, as you encounter Jesus Christin the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, He who “continues to ‘touch’ us inorder to heal us” ?

The Voice of God

2012-01-29T11:01:00.009-05:00

(4th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 28 January, 2012 at All Saints Catholic Church, Woonsocket, R.I. and on 29 January, 2012 at St. Pius X Church in Westerly, R.I. See Deuteronomy 18:15-20 and Mark 1:21-28)

You have probably seen the cartoon series by Gary Larson called "The Far Side." It has that unique ability to capture both the comic and the bizzarre at the same time. One of my favorite Far Side cartoons shows a man sitting down with his children, reading a book. The faces of the children are frozen in terror, as the caption at the bottom explains the reason:
Stephen King, reading a bedtime story!

Our first reading this weekend goes something like that. Moses is relating to the people of Israel their own previous experience at hearing the voice of the Lord back when He revealed Himself with great power in the sight of all. He says:

"This is exactly what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, 'Let us not again hear the voice of the Lord, our God . . . lest we die'."

-Deuteronomy 18:16-17

They were literally scared to death to hear the voice of God, and for good reason! God’s voice, His power and majesty, is something we should all certainly be afraid of. His righteousness, His sovereignty is overwhelming. He spoke, and the world came into existence out of nothing. He merely says the word, and His voice brings into existence mountains and valleys, oceans and dry land. The voice of God is awesome in power and strength. But is not the voice of God also the voice of a father? Even the voices of earthly fathers often bring consolation, comfort, peace and joy to their children. Why should God’s voice be any different, He who is our heavenly Father?

Which brings us back to Stephen King and his children. While his daughter Naomi was still young, Stephen King realized that she did not share the same interest in his horror fiction that many others did. After writing thirteen best-selling novels he realized that she had not read one of them since she had no interest in the stories that had been such a big success for others. Therefore he decided to write a story just for her, a fairy tale that a little girl would enjoy. He called it, "The Eyes of the Dragon," and naturally it was a best seller.

At first his daughter was a little reluctant. Yet soon she found herself engrossed in the novel that had been written for that very purpose. On his website, Stephen King tells how moved he was the day Naomi finished that book. He tells how she hugged him and said that the only problem she had with the book was that it eventually had to come to an end.

Towards the end of "The Eyes of the Dragon," there is a powerful scene in which Peter, one of the main characters, is finally freed from the tower where he has been a prisoner for so long. He had been framed for the murder of his father, the King. He was the rightful heir to the throne, but no one knew it.

As he is freed there is great chaos in the square, but Peter begins to direct and motivate the people around him, so as to bring order and guide their escape. The people, who do not recognize this young man by his shabby clothing or unkempt appearance, immediately recognize that this is no ordinary voice. This is the voice of a king. They follow that voice instinctively and are able to fight successfully against the forces of darkness around them.

In the Gospel this weekend, we hear once again the voice of God. It’s the same voice that the people of Israel heard at Horeb, but this time it has a body to go with it! It is the voice of Christ teaching in the synagogue and the people are no less amazed. That voice is proclaiming the word of God and casting out unclean spirits, freeing those who had been enslaved by evil.

St. Mark relates the reaction of the people:

"All were amazed and asked one another, 'What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him'."

-Mark 1:27

We live in a world that longs for that voice and desperately needs the freedom it calls forth. Yet sadly it is also a world that often closes itself off from that voice and refuses to listen to it. The voice of God continues to resound in the world in which we live through the Church that Christ founded. The voice of Christ echos thoughout the centuries in the teachings of the Church, clearly expressing some of the most fundamental dimensions of what it means to be human and to live in this world with our hearts and minds set on things eternal. Yet daily we can see a culture which fails to listen to that voice.

The voice of God in the teachings of our faith calls out in splendid witness to the dignity of every human life, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. Nonetheless, we see all around us the "culture of death" and abortion on demand as the law of the land, signalling the lowest ebb of respect for human life in our nation's history.

And yet, still, the voice of God resounds, calling for another way: the way of life.

In our own personal lives, we also need to listen to that voice and follow it if we are to be the men and women of the Gospel that God is calling us to be. His voice is the voice of power, the voice of authority, the voice that is calling us to a better life, a higher path.

Where do we need to listen to that voice, calling us away from the sins and habits which only lead us further away from God? How are we called to tune in to that voice and allow it to lead us closer to Christ and to each other?
Where is the voice of Christ echoing in our families, teaching us about forgiveness and patience as we draw closer together and, together, closer to Him?
Where is the voice of God in the teachings of the Church guiding our communities and our schools to focus on prayer and faith, and the fundamental principles and virtues which will lead us, in the end, to eternal life with God?

May we come to recognize, more and more clearly, that voice of God in our lives, not as something to be feared and avoided but as a voice to be embraced and loved, adored and worshipped. Like Stephen King's daughter, who was so enraptured by that story written just for her, may we also come to recognize that the voice of God is constantly telling our story, a story that begins here in time but continues for an eternity with Him; indeed, a story that will never end.

Yes, Virginia, There is a God in Bethlehem

2011-12-25T11:38:00.003-05:00

Angels Announcing the Birth of Christ to the Shepherds 1639

by Govert Teunisz. Flinck

(Solemnity of the Nativity-Year B; This homily was given on 25 December, 2011 at St. Joseph's Church in Woonsocket, R.I.; See John 1:1-18)

The year was 1897 and an eight-year-old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon was having a crisis of faith. Her friends had confronted her and suggested that, because they had never seen Santa Claus, he must not really exist. Obviously shaken by that kind of challenge she went to her father and asked for his advice. He told her to write a letter to the local paper, The New York Sun, and wait to hear what they would say. "If you see it in The Sun," he had told her,"it’s so."

Virginia followed her father’s advice and the reply she received is today the most reprinted newspaper editorial ever written; it has been translated into dozens of languages and has been read by children and adults the world over for more than a century. That famous editorial begins:

"Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge." 

"The skepticism of a skeptical age…" Those are fairly big words for an eight-year-old girl, but of course the editor was not only writing to Virginia; he was writing to everyone who has ever been confronted with the challenge of believing in a world and in things that—although invisible—are every bit as real and enduring as the tangible universe we experience each day. He was offering an argument against the spirit of the age that denied the things that matter most merely because they could not be contained in a test-tube, dissected in a laboratory or explained by the laws of Newton.

The editor went on to write:

"You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart."

"Only faith," he wrote, "fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond."

Only faith…can push aside that curtain…

We come now to one of the greatest Feast Days of the Church’s liturgical year, the Solemnity of the Nativity, the birth of our eternal Savior, Jesus Christ. At the heart of this feast is the God who created this world breaking forth into the midst of it and making visible what has been hidden from all eternity. Christmas is the time, above all the times and seasons of the year, when the veil is lifted and the power of faith is working in the hearts of children and adults alike. It is a time when the unseen world is suddenly made known, manifested, in glorious and striking ways.

In the readings from the days leading up to the celebration of The Nativity we hear of a young woman from the town of Nazareth whose name was Mary. She receives a message from an angel that she will conceive and bear in her womb the Son of God Most High. And she believes what the Angel Gabriel says to her! She sees him, listens to him, and surrenders herself in childlike faith to the God who speaks to her through that angel. The curtain was being pushed aside by Mary’s faith; the veil lifting.

The same angel had already appeared to a man named Zachariah, telling him that he and his wife, although past the time for bearing children, would also have a son whose name would be John. The Baptist would be the Herald of the Messiah who would come to save the world from sin.

Then we come to today’s feast, Christmas Day. Yet another messenger from the unseen world appears to certain shepherds who were watching over their flocks at night, and they were terrified! Visits from angels in both the Old Testament and the New are almost always marked by such fearful wonder. The shepherd’s are told of a child who is born in Bethlehem, a Savior for all the world, "and suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests'"(Luke 2:13-14).

A multitude of angels! A sky-full of the heavenly host! The shepherds must have been completely overwhelmed! The veil had been torn wide-open and the unseen world was on display in all its grandeur.

Such is the reality of the birth of Christ among us. As St. John the Evangelist describes in the prologue to his Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

—John 1:1-2

Before time and before every created thing, God is. Through the Word, says St. John, all things came to be and without Him nothing came to be at all (see John 1:3). But then, suddenly, the most remarkable thing happens. God, who is invisible and supra-temporal takes on our human nature and reveals Himself in time:

And the Word became flesh

and made his dwelling among us,

and we saw his glory,

the glory as of the Father’s only Son,

full of grace and truth.

—John 1:14

The sacred liturgy describes this remarkable manifestation of the eternal love of God in a similar way:

For in the mystery of the Word made flesh

a new light of your glory has shone upon the eyes

of our mind,

so that, as we recognize in him God made visible,

we may be caught up through him in love of things invisible.

—Preface I of the Nativity of the Lord

This is the miracle of Christmas, the miracle of the love of God made present and seen by angels and men alike. Jesus Christ, born in a cave in Bethlehem, would make Himself known to a people yearning and pining for the salvation of God. He walked our streets and healed our sick; He opened the eyes of the blind and raised the dead. Jesus Christ suffered on the cross for love and gave Himself in the most visible and provocative way. The veil of the Temple was torn in two as the unseen God left no more room for doubt about how very far He was wiling to go to grant us forgiveness and extend to us the gift of eternal life.

But there is a crisis of faith in our own time that is not at all unlike the crisis that Virginia O’Hanlon was suffering from back in 1897. We, too, live in a skeptical age where people are reluctant or slow to believe all that God has revealed. Nonetheless, what people yearn for and long for every bit as much as the people at the time of Christ is salvation, healing, wholeness, peace. They are not looking for Santa Claus. They are looking and searching for the living God.

How is God challenging the Church to be courageous in making that God known in our own day and age? We who gather together at the altar of God week after week, where the body and the blood of Christ are made visible, made manifest and given to us in love; we who are strengthened by that Blessed Sacrament and nourished in the Word of God; we are called to make Him known in the world in word and deed, to make God visible because we are His body in this world.

May we who see this God made visible become ever more caught up in love of Him and those eternal mysteries that are often invisible, so that our lives may be oriented towards that unseen world that beckons us every moment of every day. As we live our Catholic faith in this world, may the God who was born and dwelt among us two thousand years ago continue to be born in the hearts of all those we encounter in the days ahead.

Advent: Fire Watch

2011-11-27T23:26:00.000-05:00

(First Sunday of Advent-Year B; This homily was given on 26 & 27 November, 2011 at St. Mary's Church in Charlestown, R.I. and St. James Chapel in Charlestown, R.I.; See Mark 13:33-37)

One of the more engaging and enigmatic Catholic figures of the last century is the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. Born in France toward the beginning of the twentieth century, by the time he was a young man Merton had both lived in and travelled extensively across Europe and the United States. He was a man very much immersed in the things of the world. Nonetheless, for all of his experiences and intellectual accomplishments he remained empty and unsatisfied.

Not finding what he was searching for in the midst of the world, Merton turned his gaze instead to things spiritual: religion, prayer and faith. This eventually led to his conversion to the Catholic faith and he was baptized in his early twenties.

Following baptism Merton felt called to the priesthood and eventually entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery located in Kentucky. His autobiography on this journey of faith from the midst of the world to the silence of the monastery, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold millions of copies and is considered to be one of the most influential spiritual works of modern times.

In his book, The Sign of Jonas, somewhat of a continuation of The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton writes on his experience within the Abbey of Gethsemani and offers his readers a glimpse of day-to-day monastic life. The epilogue, entitled “Fire Watch, July 4, 1952,” is indicative in that regard.

The fire watch was a responsibility often entrusted to a novice or perhaps a newly ordained priest in which the monk would inspect the buildings and property of the monastery after dark, insuring that all was well and that potential risks and hazards were attended to. After careful observation, with the assistance of a flashlight, the watchman would then retire with the rest of the community in relative peace and security; discretion is the better part of valor. It was fairly mundane business.

Yet for Merton the fire watch becomes something quite personal and introspective. Shining that flashlight into the kitchen and then the refectory, he recalls the experiences he has shared there with his brothers; he is a man of community who has to discern whether and how well he has loved his brothers in that place. He shines the lamp into the novitiate, where he himself was formed for the priesthood, then into the chapel where he was ordained for service and charity. Has he been faithful in these solemn duties and responsibilities? He recognizes, all too well, that this is where one comes “face to face with your monastic past and with the mystery of your vocation.” And then, suddenly, he begins to realize that all the while, as he was fulfilling his work as watchman both exteriorly and interiorly, someone else was actually watching him:

The fire watch is an examination of conscience in which your task as watchman suddenly appears in its true light: a pretext devised by God to isolate you, and to search your soul with lamps and questions, in the heart of darkness.

—Fr. Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas

The more Merton searched for and questioned the God of his vocation in the midst of his fire watch, the more he began to realize that God was already searching for and seeking him, asking the most intimate of questions in the deepest recesses of his soul.

People often ask me when and how I first felt called to the priesthood. It usually comes as a surprise when I tell them that it happened in Stop & Shop Supermarket! Be careful when you shop in those places! Actually, I was not shopping; I was working there, and it happened over the course of several years. Initially, I was given the opportunity to receive full-time pay and benefits, but it would require me to begin working the graveyard shift, midnight to eight o’clock in the morning.

At first it was rather exciting to be working such odd hours as a young man recently out of high school; but that quickly began to wear off. In the department I was in, I worked alone all night and when I came home I usually slept and went out infrequently at night, since I eventually had to come back home and get ready for work. I was living a very isolated life. I had no idea that it was actually isolation by design.

Many times I would ask myself, at three o’clock in the morning and when everyone I knew and cared about was home asleep, “What on earth am I doing here?” Eventually, in those long, pre-dawn hours, I began to ask that question on a much more metaphysical level: “What am I doing here? What is the purpose and meaning of my life? Might God have the answer to these questions?

It was at that time in my life that I began to sense what I would later understand as the promptings of God in the dark. As I was searching and asking questions about my life, I discovered that God was calling me into a deeper relationship with Himself, one that would eventually lead me to discern a vocation to the priesthood. In the words of Thomas Merton:

This weekend we begin again the holy season of Advent. It is, above all, a time of watching. Christ warns us in the Gospel this weekend:

Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.

—Mark 13:33

Christ calls us to be watchful for His coming, to be alert to His advent, and it is no coincidence that this is the darkest time of the year. Now is the season where the days are much shorter and the nights grow longer; now is the time when the darkness of worldly distractions can lull us into a spiritual sleep, tempting us to embrace a Christmas without Christ and mirth separated from the One who made us. Perhaps even our own cares and concerns—whether they be financial difficulties, personal or family health issues, fears or anxieties about the past, present or future—can allow the darkness to creep into our lives. It is precisely in these times that we need to be watchful and alert to the presence of Christ who is always nearer than we would ever dare to hope.

May we discover, in our watchfulness this Advent Season, that even our very best efforts to search for and discover God can barely hold a candle to the vigilance and loving watchfulness He initiates when it comes to our spiritual lives. In our fire watch this Advent, may we discover more completely God, who draws us ever more deeply not into the heart of darkness, but into the heart of Jesus Christ, His Son, who comes to us in the midst of the darkness and illumines our souls with His heavenly light.

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

2011-11-21T16:48:00.006-05:00

(Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary-Year A; This homily was given on 21 November, 2011 at the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence, Providence, R.I.; See Luke 21:1-4)

It should come as no surprise that the world we live in is becoming increasingly more secular. That is the reality not just in Europe but also here in the United States. The culture in which we are being formed is one that has become more and more alienated from, at times even hostile toward, the things of God. What we value most as Catholics—faith, sacrifice, obedience to the teachings of the Church which have not constrained but set free and guided the souls of millions of faithful men and women for centuries—these things are increasingly questioned and even discounted.

This creates a challenge for us who are called to proclaim and announce the message of the Gospel to the world. What does it mean to announce this message of faith and eternal life in a context where materialism and the values of this world only hold sway? Even within the Church, we encounter the difficulty of announcing the Good News to those who have also been affected by the culture in which we live. Catechesis, the explanation of our faith and the teachings of the Church, are done sometimes only with difficulty and the challenges are many.

We can ask ourselves, “How could I ever expect to be an effective minister of the Gospel or a fruitful priest in the face of so many challenges?” Perhaps Fr. Robert Barron or Archbishop Dolan could make a difference, but what about me? What do I have to offer to the world or to the Church facing such adversity and so many obstacles to faith and the truth of the Gospel?

This morning we are reminded—by St. Luke and in this Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary—that when we give what we have to God, He "by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20).

The old woman in the Gospel of St. Luke places a meager offering into the treasury, just two small coins. It would have been thoroughly inadequate and insufficient to put even a dent into the amount necessary for sustaining the day-to-day maintenance of the temple. Yet it is more than sufficient to gain the attention of the eternal Son of God. Christ takes notice, his interest is instantly piqued, and he points her out to His disciples as the exemplar of what it means to give oneself entirely to God. That passing moment becomes immortalized in the Gospel; the story of this woman and her two small coins will continue to be told until the end of time. We give God what we have and He accomplishes great and awesome things.

Such is the case of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her parents Anne and Joachim bring her to the temple and present her before the Lord. A young girl, especially in the cultural climate of the day, would have been insignificant indeed in comparison with the great religious and political conflicts that were legion at that time in occupied Palestine. She was not a man who could someday become king, or have great influence on the political scene. Yet that young girl would be the gateway through which the Redeemer of the world would come. Upon her “Fiat,” her simple, humble, “Yes,” to God rests the hope of salvation and the redemption of all mankind. She was all that Anne and Joachim had, and they gave her to the Lord. The rest is salvation history.

What is God asking of you today? What is the offering you are asked to make as you continue your formation for the priesthood of Jesus Christ? The world in which we live does not always value a vocation to the priesthood. Your offering may seem insignificant and insufficient to meet the needs of what the world is searching for. But that offering, made to God in sincere faith and trust in Him, has the power to bear tremendous fruit in the Church and in the world. Today we make that offering to God. Joined to His sacrifice and His offering at this altar, we surrender to Him what we have, and we trust in faith that He will continue to accomplish beautiful and awesome things in us.

And With Your Spirit

2011-10-23T22:30:00.004-05:00

(Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on 22 & 23 September, 2011 at St. Mary's Church in Cranston, R.I. and Holy Cross Church in Providence, R.I.; SeeMatthew 22:34-40)

In just a few short weeks, with the Third Edition of the Roman Missal being introduced on the First Sunday of Advent, we will experience one of the most significant changes in our celebration of Mass since the period following the Second Vatican Council. Certainly the holy sacrifice of the Mass does not change. Our union with Christ in the Eucharist can never change for “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). But many of the words and phrases in the prayers we offer and the responses we share each week will indeed change.

Well before that happens, of course, there will be pew cards available that will identify the words and phrases that are slightly different from what we have grown accustomed to for decades. Change is never easy but I am sure that before long we will become as familiar with the new expressions as we were with the previous ones. Hopefully we will even discover that the changes themselves are instrumental in helping us to draw ever more deeply into the mystery and the majesty of the encounter with the living God that we experience every time we gather together for Mass. We are doing something far greater than refining our language in the liturgy; we are embracing changes that will help us enter more intimately into the life of God.

Today I would like to focus on one of those changes, the very first one that we will encounter on November 27, 2011. On that First Sunday of Advent the priest celebrant will make the sign of the cross at the beginning of Mass and greet the people with the words, “The Lord be with you.”

Instead of the response, “And also with you,” however, the response of the assembled community will now be, “And with your spirit.” I am sure you would agree that it is a very small change. In fact, you might argue that it is such a small change that perhaps it is not even necessary. Yet what is being communicated in that small change, and indeed throughout that brief exchange that we participate in at the beginning of every Mass, speaks volumes.

“The Lord be with you,” the priest proclaims in his greeting.

The Lord, who says to us in Sacred Scripture, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20), this God is with us.

Christ, who abides silently and lovingly in the tabernacle of every Roman Catholic Church is with us.

Christ, whose body and blood are made present on the altar of sacrifice and received by His Church assembled before Him in the presence of the angels, He is with us. He is indeed with us!

“And with your spirit,” the community responds. And with your spirit. There is a spiritual reality taking place here in the Mass that needs to be made known at the beginning. The opening greeting and response set the tone for what we are about to enter into, a spiritual and physical encounter with Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We are not just bodies gathered together in His Church. We are bodies and souls and that is something we are in constant need of remembering.

The world in which we live does not always acknowledge the spiritual nature of our existence. Our culture is one preeminently focused on the body and the material world. If you are not convinced of this, turn on your TV or go to the movies. Even when there is an attempt to dabble in things spiritual, they are often explored only in as much as they relate to one’s existence in this world, this present life.

The great Christian writer C.S. Lewis, in a sermon he gave at Oxford University back in 1942 called The Weight of Glory, said that we are in urgent need of being rescued from “the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.” He explains how “almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.”

In seventy years not much has changed in that regard. And yet the good we search for, the glory to which God beckons us, the “far-off country” for which we long, none of these have been found on this earth. Sic transit gloria mundi. The glory of this world passes. The good and the glory which we yearn for can only be found beyond this world, in heaven. How remarkably astonishing then, that the God of heaven and the God of glory should choose to come here to this earth and find us! That is what we are celebrating in the liturgy. God is with us, physically, and with our spirit.

In the Gospel for this weekend Christ is asked which of the commandments is the greatest. His response is not simply, “Love God, love neighbor.” That is a truncated and incomplete translation of what He gives in answer to that all-important question. He says not, “Love God, love neighbor,” but:

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

—Matthew 22:37-39

With all your heart…and with all your soul…and with all your mind.

Christ acknowledges the whole person, the entirety of the human person whom He has created and redeemed and sustained by His love. Our response to so great a gift as life and redemption must be more than a mere physical obedience and pious action. We must love God with our bodies and with our souls, with our hearts and minds, our intentions and our wills, with everything we have and are. That is what it means to love God. Such love can only be complete, of course, when we take the same holistic stance in solidarity with and charity towards our neighbor.

At the conclusion of his sermon, C.S. Lewis holds up this love of neighbor as the hallmark of our own call to heavenly glory and union with God. He notes how it is certainly possible to be too concerned or too occupied with one’s own glory (a spiritual myopia, as it were). But, he says, “It is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.”

Guided by this focused and passionate desire for our neighbor’s glory, our neighbor’s journey towards that heavenly homeland, Lewis notes how our perspective and our everyday relations regarding those around us can and must be changed. This spiritual nature, which we acknowledge whenever we gather together for the Mass –and with your spirit—this spiritual reality is one that negates any possibility for regarding our neighbor as ordinary. We are destined, body and soul, to endure beyond this world for all eternity. In heaven, or, God forbid, separated from God and heaven, we will exist beyond this place, in a life that never ends. That changes things; it changes everything.

“There are no ordinary people,” writes Lewis:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

How is God challenging us to help our neighbor to that eternal relationship with Him, to share in His glory in that heavenly homeland? How are we called to love God with all of our hearts, all of our souls, and all of our minds in our everyday relationships and experiences this week? May we truly come to experience this love which begins here on this earth and transcends all earthly bounds, and in so doing come to recognize all the more that God is totally and completely with us, and with our spirit.

September 11: A Remembrance

2011-09-11T21:23:00.004-05:00

(Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on 10 September, 2011 at Blessed Sacrament Church, Providence, R.I. and 11 September at St. Anthony's Church in Providence, R.I.; See Matthew 18:21-35)

There is a museum in Jerusalem called Yad Vashem and it was established to commemorate the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust during World War II. The name of that museum, Yad Vashem, comes from the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament) and is found in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. In Chapter 56 of Isaiah, the Lord is comforting and consoling the people of Israel who have seen such devastation and loss after years of exile in the land of Babylon. As they return to their native land, God makes this promise to His chosen people, that for those who now keep His covenant and law, “I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 56:5).

A monument and a name. In Hebrew, a Yad vashem.

In naming the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, the message is clear that for those innocent men and women whose lives were tragically taken away, there will always be a remembrance. In fact, God Himself will remember them always for He knows them each by name.

Today we commemorate the thousands of men and women in our own nation whose lives were tragically cut short ten years ago in the terrorist attacks of September 11. It is not the same experience as the Holocaust; we know that. But for those who have lost family members and loved ones; for those who were personally harmed by the events of that fateful day; even for us as a nation, the sense of injustice, pain and sorrow is the same. The words of the Prophet Isaiah call to mind for us today the reality that these lives too will be given a place of remembrance, a yad vashem. The Lord remembers each of these men and women, created in His image and likeness; He knows them each by name.

The sense of memory and remembrance are central themes for us as Catholics. We celebrate Masses of Remembrance for our beloved deceased; we call to mind our identity as people of faith by remembering the history of salvation whenever the Eucharistic Prayer is offered; we recall Christ’s passion, death and resurrection and unite ourselves to Him in the hope of our own resurrection from the dead. We are people of remembrance.

In our Gospel this weekend St. Matthew reminds us of the importance of the memory when it comes to the commandment to forgive as we ourselves have been forgiven. Christ tells the parable of the king whose servant owed him “a huge amount” (Matthew 18:24). In fact, the debt was so great that in order to settle accounts with the king, the servant and his family would have to be sold off, along with all his property and possessions. He was personally and financially ruined, and he knew it. Falling to his knees before the king he pleaded for patience and the chance to pay it all back.

Suddenly the king, in a moment of extreme compassion and mercy, decides to forgive him the entire debt! It was a remarkable and seemingly unforgettable event. Yet immediately after leaving the presence of the king that servant forgets all about it—or choses to forget. He encounters a fellow servant who owes him a much smaller amount and seizes him, demanding that he pay it back immediately.

The point that Christ is making is that our memories and our hearts should be able to retain the great compassion and mercy of God so abundantly and even extravagantly poured out upon us. From that great resource of Divine Mercy, then, we should be able to act in kind to those who owe us so much less. Christ plays the numbers game with St. Peter in the Gospel: not seven times should we fogive, but seventy-seven times (other translations read seventy times seven, i.e., four-hundred and ninety). Whatever translation we are reading or however we calculate forgiveness, few if any of us can think of one person who has injured us four-hundred and ninety times, or even seventy-seven times. But we have all offended God at least seventy-seven times, perhaps even this week. Remember that! Remember what it is like to be loved that much and to be given so great a gift as God’s unconditional mercy and love.

There is a story about a Christian woman named Corrie Ten Boom who, along with her father and sister, helped to shelter Jews in the Netherlands during the Second World War. She would later write a book about her experience called, The Hiding Place. At one point their activity was discovered and they were taken into custody by the Nazis. Corrie’s father died soon thereafter but Corrie and her sister were moved to several places, eventually finding themselves in the concentration camp named Ravensbruk. It was there that Corrie’s sister died shortly before Corrie herself was freed.

Remarkably, Corrie began traveling around the world after the war in order to share the message of God’s merciful love. Her message was that God forgives—even the horrors of the Holocaust—God forgives. As you might imagine, it was a compelling and powerful witness.

She had just finished that talk in a small Church outside of Munich when she saw a man approaching from the back of the room. Her blood ran cold as she recognized him. He had been one of the SS guards at Ravensbruck, and one of the cruelest. He had no idea who she was.

“A fine message,” he said. “How good it is to know that, as you say, our sins are forgiven by God. You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk. I was a guard there. But since that time, I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from you, as well.”

He held out his hand to her, and at that very moment she thought of her sister, who had died in that place. She later recalled, “I stood there—I whose sins had again and again needed to be forgiven—and could not forgive.”

But she knew the power of forgiveness; she had spoken of it so many times. She knew that forgiveness was above all an act of the will, and that she did not need to feel like forgiving someone in order to actually do so. Suddenly she began to pray: Jesus, help me. I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You do the rest.

And as she shook the hand of that former SS guard, she began to feel a love for him that could only come from God. She said later that she had never known God’s love as intensely as she did that day.

We are called to be people of forgiveness in imitation of Christ who forgives each of us for so very much. Often times that is not an easy thing to do. Perhaps sometimes all we can do is struggle lift up our hands to God, to raise our hearts to Him, asking for the grace to forgive. When we do so, whether it be something small or maybe even as overwhelming as the terrorist attacks on our nation ten years ago, we trust that God is with us, helping us and allowing us to participate in His merciful love. May we have the grace necessary to remember all that He has done for us, all that He has forgiven us, so that the mercy flowing from the cross can continue to work in and through us in our daily lives.

Salvation, Hope & Prayer

2011-09-07T23:00:00.010-05:00

(Opening Mass for the Formation Year 2011, Seminary of Our Lady of Providence; This homily was given on 7 September, 2011; See Romans 8:22-27)

Why are we here tonight? Why are we here, gathered together before this altar, celebrating a Mass in honor of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of this formation year?

I would suggest this evening that there is only one answer sufficient to answer completely that question. It is a response and answer found on every page of the Gospel; in every ounce of blood that Christ shed for us on the cross; in all of His pain, sorrow and suffering; in all of His joy, triumph and exaltation; it is a response which is also found in the depths of our own hearts, in a longing and yearning too deep for words.

We are here tonight for salvation.

We gather together tonight to be saved by God. Christ gives Himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, a foretaste of the eternal life we are called to share with Him. He comes to us to draw us into eternal union with God. It is why He shares with us His body and blood, it is why He instituted the priesthood: for the salvation of souls.

St. Paul, in our first reading this evening, lifts up for us that great mystery of our salvation. He holds it up in all its splendor and beautifully intertwines that mystery with two powerful dimensions of our Catholic faith:

Hope and prayer.

“For in hope we were saved” (Romans 8:24), St. Paul tells us. Our beloved Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI begins his encyclical on hope, Spe Salvi, with these very words of St. Paul.

Spe salvi facti sumus. In Hope we were saved.

The Apostle goes on, in his Letter to the Romans, to speak of our human response to this great hope of salvation. He says that we yearn and long for it “with inexpressible groanings” (Romans 8:26) heartfelt prayers in which the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, drawing us ever more deeply into the mystery of our salvation.

These two, then: hope and prayer.

But the sense that our culture has of these two things, hope and prayer, is one that is very different from what the Apostle calls us to in that Letter to the Romans. Often times people see hope as a deep desire or wish for things to simply “work out well in the end.” But this “wishful thinking” is not hope.

Prayer can also become a wish list which is offered up to God for His ratification: this is what I wish for; please grant it to me.

How different, how deep and remarkably beautiful is the hope and prayer that we are called to embrace as men of God being formed for the priesthood of Jesus Christ.

Hope as a theological virtue is not a mere wish that the future will "pan out" for us. St. John of the Cross, in fact, in is spiritual writings, does not ground hope in the future at all, but more so in the past. He says that hope is linked to the faculty of the soul commonly understood as the memory (see The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book Three, Ch. 14).

The hope we have for a future with God is rooted in the events of the past and what that means for us today and everyday hereafter. Jesus Christ suffered and died for us on the cross, for love. That happened, and nothing will ever change that. Three days later Christ rose to life again; He made promises to the Church and kept every single one of them. He has promised you and me that if we place our faith in Him, if we put our trust and love in Him, then we will be saved, we will share in eternal life with God. That is the basis for our hope and the rock-solid foundation for everything that we believe. That is what St. Paul means when he writes, “In hope we were saved.” God is faithful. He has always been faithful. We can trust and hold fast to everything He reveals to us through His holy Catholic Church.

But we are not always prepared to respond in faith and trust to so great a hope of salvation; we do not always choose to stand on so solid a foundation. We are in need, every one of us, of holiness and purification. Our hearts need to be prepared to receive so great a gift as God Himself. Pope Benedict XVI speaks of this necessity, in his encyclical Spe Salvi, in terms of hope and prayer. He writes:

Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched.

—Spe Salvi, #33

Borrowing an image from the writings of St. Augustine, Pope Benedict describes how God wishes to fill or souls with honey, but that is not possible when our hearts are already filled with vinegar.

Think of all the bitterness that sin can bring to the human heart and how necessary it is that God drain from us every ounce of this vinegar. He can then stretch these vessels of ours and increase our capacity to receive the sweetness of real honey, His own Divine life poured out deep within the soul. God wants to purify our hearts and fill us with this sweetness, not only for ourselves but for all the souls we will encounter in our daily lives.

“Through this effort by which we are freed from vinegar and the taste of vinegar,” writes Pope Benedict XVI, “not only are we made free for God, but we also become open to others.”

This is at the heart of the purifying power of prayer. Pope Benedict goes on to say that in order for this purifying power to develop, it necessarily involves two things.

§ First and foremost it involves intimacy with God. We come into this chapel, time and time again, day and night, and spend intimate time alone in prayer with God. We come before the one who is so worthy of our love, all the while painfully aware of our own unworthiness. We acknowledge, time and time again, that we do not deserve so great a love, so great a gift, that we could never earn this indescribable love that God has for us, but that He is always present to us whenever we come before Him in humility and in faith. The purifying power of intimacy with God in prayer is essential to our salvation.

§ Secondly, this purifying prayer “must be constantly guided and enlightened by the great prayers of the Church and of the saints, by liturgical prayer, in which the Lord teaches us again and again how to pray properly” (Spe Salvi, #34). It is not the case that we become expert in the art of prayer and then impose our expertise on the Church and Her liturgy. Rather, we come to the Sacred Liturgy in awe and wonder, we bow before this great Sacrament of our salvation and we learn anew how to pray and offer ourselves to Him. The saints teach us this great act of worship. The Church throughout the centuries has guided the souls of countless men and women in these most sacred mysteries.

As we begin this new formation year, it is my prayer for each one of you that you will grow in the theological virtue of hope, a hope which is rooted on the rock-solid promises of the risen Christ; and through the purifying power of prayer, may God gently and loving allow you to be emptied of all vinegar and stretched out to the capacity to which you can receive so sweet a gift as this honey which is His Divine life within you.

As you continue to be prepared for the day of ordination, may hope and prayer continue to make you more and more like Christ so that, when the people of God approach you as their priest, yearning and longing for salvation with groanings perhaps too deep for words, you will have something beautiful and sweet to offer them.

At The Gates

2011-08-21T21:23:00.006-05:00

(Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on 21 August, 2011 at Blessed Sacrament Church in Providence, R.I.; See Matthew 16:13-20)

There are many treasures and gifts that we share as Catholics in the world today. Whether or not we were baptized into the Church as infants or have been received into the Church as adults there are so many truths of our Catholic faith that are simply priceless. One of our greatest treasures, in fact, is “on display” right now in Spain in the City of Madrid. Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, is a true gift to the Church and to the world.

This very weekend there are 1.5 million young people from all over the world that have travelled great distances to be with Pope Benedict XVI. It is said sometimes that young people are no longer interested in coming to the Church. Tell that to Pope Benedict XVI! Tell that to the 1.5 million people gathered in prayer in Madrid. The Pope truly is a treasure for us as Catholics and a gift to the world we live in.

The Eucharist is another priceless gift we thank God for as Catholics. We gather together each week to receive Jesus Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity. The Eucharist is the greatest treasure we could ever possess or, rather, the great Treasure that possesses us, takes hold of us and transforms our lives in ways beyond our ability to fathom.

Nonetheless, and not infrequently, we are called upon to defend these gifts we have been given. Perhaps too often people misunderstand—sometimes even intentionally so—the words and actions of our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI. Perhaps you yourself have had to explain to someone, “No, that is not at all what the Pope said,” or “No, that is not at all what the Pope meant.”

It can also happen that people in our lives will question and challenge the very things that we hold as sacred. Even relatives and friends at times will take issue with those truths of our faith that we value most of all: the personal dignity of every human life from conception until natural death, the sanctity of marriage as a covenant of love between one man and one woman, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Defending our faith can seem, at times, to be a daunting task. Many Catholics may feel like they just do not know as much as they would like to when it comes to responding to these questions and challenges that come sometimes from all directions.

Thankfully Christ has given us such tremendous promises and the blessed assurance that we will never be alone. He says to us at the conclusion of St. Matthew’s Gospel:

Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.

—Matthew 28:20

One of the greatest promises Christ makes to His Church that relates directly to St. Peter and his successor Pope Benedict XVI, as well as to the power of God in the midst of the Church, is the one we hear in the Gospel this weekend. Peter acknowledges that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God. Jesus immediately recognizes Peter’s insight as a gift:

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.

—Matthew 16:17

This is no ordinary event nor is St. Peter simply more intuitive than the other disciples. He has received the revelation of God and responded to it. Christ continues:

And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.

—Matthew 16:18

This rock-solid promise of the presence, power and permanence of Christ and the primacy of Peter is a tremendous gift and treasure for us as Catholics. Down through the centuries the Church has always held onto these words of our Lord as a reminder of the hope we have in Him. No matter how dark things get or how difficult the battle with evil becomes, the Church will still stand firm. We will continue to proclaim Jesus Christ and His Gospel message until the end of time.

Yet that hope to which we cling, however real it may be, is not precisely what Christ is saying in this passage. Certainly Christ will sustain us through all the trials and tribulations we face. Nonetheless, our Lord’s words to us are not merely defensive; they imply much more than that. It is not simply the case that the Church will be protected by Christ and sustained in the assault of the powers of evil and darkness. No, what Christ is saying is that the gates of the netherworld will not be able to sustain the assault of His Church! He says that “On this rock I will build my church,” and, taking the literal Greek:

πύλαι ἅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς.

The fortified city gates of the netherworld (the powers of death and evil) will not be able to triumph in an encounter with it.

Far from remaining on the defensive, the Church is called upon to go forward in the power of the risen Christ and do no less than lay siege to the gates of the netherworld!

I would suggest this weekend that there are three ways we are called to do that as Christians; three ways of living out our Catholic faith in such as way that we stage an offensive against the powers of darkness and the powers of evil in this world.

The first and perhaps least considered is prayer. There is unthinkable power in that daily converse we have with our God in prayer. Are there people in your life that are isolated from God and from the Church? Are there people that you know and love that feel all alone in this world and live a life separated from God and perhaps have lost their faith?

Hell is eternal separation from God. Many people find themselves in a living hell and long for the communion of life and love that you and I take for granted every day. Pray for them! When we pray for those around us it is not a merely passive plea. We are breaking into the realm of darkness and taking hold of souls created by God; we are lifting them up to God, bringing them into His light, and pleading for their salvation. There is nothing passive about that! It is an all-out, full frontal attack on the gates of the netherworld. And it works. God listens to our prayers.

The second way that we are called to lay siege to the gates of the netherworld is through a full sacramental life in the Church. When a new child of God is brought into the life of the Church, the priest prays in the Rite of Baptism:

The Christian community welcomes you with great joy. In its name I claim you for Christ our Savior by the sign of his cross.

The Sacraments, initiated by Christ and embraced in the life of the faithful, have the power to draw souls from the netherworld into the Kingdom of God.

The same is true for each one of us, already baptized. When we are struggling with sin and even if we have become lost through choices which have separated us from the life of grace and the life of God, we can be brought back into sanctifying grace once more through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. With reconciliation and the power of Sacramental Absolution, the words of the priest announcing the forgiveness of Christ—“I absolve you from your sins…”—have the power to reclaim souls once again for the Kingdom of God.

Finally, and perhaps most challenging for some, the work of evangelization is a powerful offensive weapon against the powers of darkness that oppose us. To simply share our faith and the love we have received from God with those around us who perhaps do not believe in Him can change lives and transform the world we live in. The proclamation of the Gospel message transformed the world in the days following the resurrection of Christ. It transforms the world still.

How is God challenging us to live out our faith this week like never before? With faith and trust in God we ask for the grace to pray for those we love and who are perhaps isolated or separated from God and His Church; to live a full sacramental life in the Church, especially united to Christ in the weekly celebration of the Eucharist; and to proclaim and share our faith in confidence with those around us. When we do so we carry with us the promise of Christ Himself, that not even the gates of the netherworld will be able to stand against us.

Christ in the Midst of the Storm

2011-08-07T13:45:00.008-05:00

Rembrandt's "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee"

(Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on 6-7 August, 2011 at Ss. John and James Church in West Warwick, R.I.; See 1 Kings 19:9-13 and Matthew 14:22-33)

Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed by the difficulties and complexities of life? I am sure that we have all felt that way at one time or another. Have you ever asked yourself: Where is God in all of this? I cannot see God at work in my life…I cannot find God in the midst of all the difficulties I am facing.

That may have been what the Prophet Elijah was thinking in our first reading this morning. That reading from the First Book of Kings describes how:

At the mountain of God, Horeb, Elijah came to a cave where he took shelter.

—1 Kings 19:9

He was not taking shelter in the cave because it was raining (in fact, it had not rained in a long, long time because Elijah himself had prophesied against it!). Neither was Elijah taking shelter in the cave because he was cold. He was taking shelter in the cave because there was a price on his head and he was literally running for his life.

In the chapters that precede 1 Kings 19 we discover the dramatic events which brought Elijah to that cave on the mountain of God. King Ahab and his wife, Queen Jezebel, had turned away from the worship of the one, true God, Yahweh. In fact, 450 prophets of the false god Baal had seduced the people and their leaders into idolatry. Elijah defended the honor and holiness of God and stood alone against these false prophets; he publically humiliated them on Mount Carmel and then disposed of them, much to the chagrin of King Ahab and Jezebel (see 1 Kings 18:17-40).

The response of the Queen? To have the Prophet Elijah put to death. As a result Elijah rose quickly and fled from the land, ultimately seeking shelter in that small cave on Mount Horeb. He may very well have been thinking: Where is God in all of this? I cannot see God at work in my life…I cannot find God in the midst of all these difficulties I am facing.

That may also have been what the disciples were thinking in the Gospel we listen to this morning. St. Matthew relates how they were ordered by Christ to get into the boat and cross the Sea of Galilee. No sooner had they entered the boat when a terrible storm began to stir; they were being “tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against them” (Matthew 14:24).

Many of these disciples were fishermen. They would have understood how dangerous a storm on the Sea of Galilee could become. Perhaps they had known men of equal or greater experience who had died in storms on the Sea of Galilee. St. Matthew tells us that this battle for their lives raged up until the fourth watch of the night (between 3am-6am); they had been fighting it almost all night long, and the entire time Christ was up on the mountain, with God in prayer. They may very well have been thinking: Where is God in all of this? I cannot see God at work in this storm…I cannot find God in the midst of all the difficulties I am facing.

Maybe you have felt like that in your life. It is difficult for us to understand what seems so often to be the distance of God. Where is God in all of this? I cannot see God at work in my life… Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in his second book on Jesus of Nazareth, writes about this mystery of the distance and closeness of Christ. Reflecting on this same incident of the disciples in the storm at sea, he likens that experience to the mystery of the Ascension of our Lord into heaven.

Remember when Christ rose from the dead, and appeared to His disciples. He had told them at that time He was now going to return to the Father. Naturally, they were distressed. How could they possibly live in this world without Christ, after all that had happened to them and all they had shared with our Lord? His presence among them had changed everything…and now He was going to leave them? Oddly, Christ had even said, “It is better for you that I go” (John 16:7). Better? Better to not have Jesus physically with them any longer? How is that possible?

It would be better because once Christ had ascended to the Father they would send the Holy Spirit who would dwell intimately with the Church and with each one of those disciples. His going away would be an even more intimate and personal experience of God than they could have possibly imagined!

Pope Benedict XVI says that this experience of the storm on the Sea of Galilee is an anticipation of this same kind of closeness, this same intimacy with God. He says that Christ on the mountain is not further away from those disciples who are struggling against the storm. No, He is closer than ever and “because he is with the Father, he sees them.” In a certain sense He sees them through the Father’s eyes, and because He sees them, says Pope Benedict, He comes to them.

It is not the case, then, that the burden falls upon us in the storms of life to see God at work, to find God in our lives and suddenly make sense of the sadness and difficulties that perplex us. No. God sees us. Christ sees us through the Father’s eyes and He comes to us!

Pope Benedict XVI eloquently encourages us:

In our own day, too, the boat of the Church travels against the headwind of history through the turbulent ocean of time. Often it looks as if it is bound to sink. But the Lord is there, and he comes at the right moment. “I go away, and I will come to you”—that is the essence of Christian trust, the reason for our joy.

—Pope Benedict XVI

Jesus of Nazareth: Part II, Pg. 285

Just one month ago I began my current assignment as Rector of the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence here in the Diocese of Providence. It is a tremendous responsibility which I both appreciate and am aware of daily. Upon beginning this ministry several people have approached me and said things like: “I am sure that God is calling priests to serve him in the diocese. What are you going to do to bring them into the seminary?” or “You are now responsible, in part, for the preparation and formation of future priests in the Church. What do you think of that?” Truth be told, in many ways it is overwhelming. Those questions are as perplexing for me as they would be for anyone.

But, nonetheless, I am also filled with trust, anticipation, even joy. I know that the one who called me—in the midst of so many storms and doubts and fears; that same God who called me and guided me so faithfully and fruitfully in seminary and in the priesthood—that same God is calling many men to serve Him faithfully in the priesthood now. He comes to us when we need Him most and I know that He is with the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence and with all of the men studying for the priesthood here even now. I know that He who called us is faithful and He will guide us through all the storms of life.

I would invite you to please join me in prayer for all of them and for those whom God is calling, even now, to the priesthood and religious life. May they be able to listen to that "still, small voice" that Elijah heard on the mountain of God (1 Kings 19:12), and may we all hear clearly the voice of Christ who came to the disciples in the midst of the storm and who always comes to us when we need Him most. May He lead us ever closer—through the priesthood, through the Eucharist, and through the preaching of the Word of God—to the shores of salvation.

Desire and The Magdalene

2011-04-26T04:49:00.003-05:00

(Tuesday of the Octave of Easter; This homily was given on 26 April, 2011 at the American College of the Immaculate Conception in Leuven, Belgium; See John 20:11-18)

This morning’s Gospel, from St. John, is a continuation of the Gospel that we listened to on Easter Sunday morning. You remember how St. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb to anoint the deceased body of Jesus but instead found the tomb empty. She ran franticly back to the place where the Apostles were and shared the distressing news with them. St. Peter and St. John had gone back to the tomb with her and also discovered that the tomb was empty.

Then they did the most rational, logical thing: they left. Jesus was not there so why bother standing around anyway?

Here we stand, on Tuesday of the Octave of Easter, and St. Mary Magdalene is still there at the empty tomb! In the Gospel it is much later than the early morning hour when she had first arrived; Peter and John are both gone and yet she alone remains. It is a remarkable display of strength of will, even strength of body, as we shall see.

Remaining there at the last place where Jesus had been, she first encounters the angels. There are two of them, we are told. Usually, in both the Old and New Testaments, when a man or woman encounters an angel one of two things happens:

They are either struck with dread fear bordering on terror (see Daniel 10:5-8; Acts 10:3-4), or they are so overcome with awe that they are tempted to worship the creature (see Revelation 19:10 and 22:8-9). St. Mary Magdalene does neither! In response to the question of the angel of why she is weeping, she says, perhaps even heatedly, “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him” (John 20:13). She has come here to anoint the Lord, not for questions.

Suddenly Christ Himself appears before her and, mistaking Him for the gardener, she continues her single-minded inquiry: “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him” (John 20:15). Incredible! She could not have been that big! Christ’s body would have outweighed her by 20, perhaps 30 pounds…yet she is going to carry Him away! The Magdalene offers us a remarkable display of strength this morning: strength of will, even strength of body.

St. Gregory the Great, in his reflection on this passage, says what she really teaches us, though, is strength of desire.

At first pass, he suggests, her desire is not yet strong enough. She has come to the tomb, like the others, and not found the body of Jesus. Had she left, as did Peter and John, she might never have seen the Lord that day. Instead she remained, all the while not reaching her desired goal, and yet strengthened all the more in that very desire. Finally, says St. Gregory the Great, she became strong enough to obtain the object of her desire. She now has the strength to hold on to Christ, who had already taken hold of her.

As we begin this Easter Season, do we have that same desire? Are we being strengthened in our desire for the body of Christ? Do we long for and yearn for the body of Christ in the Eucharist, and are we willing to be made even stronger in that desire this Easter?

If you had come here for Mass this morning only to find that something had gone terribly wrong, and there was no one to celebrate the Eucharist, what would you do? Would you shrug it off, eat breakfast and get on with the rest of your day? Or would you have gone straight to the internet and checked to see where the next available Mass would be? Would you have knocked on the doors of the resident priests in this seminary and said, “Father, something terrible has happened! I went to spend time with our Lord and I was not able to receive Him. Tell me, will you be celebrating Mass sometime today, and could I attend that celebration?”

Daily reception of the Eucharist has to be priority number one for every seminarian, for every man preparing for the priesthood. Longing for that intimacy with Christ has to be the driving force and passion of your life.

Daily celebration of the Eucharist has to be priority number one for the priest of Jesus Christ. If the parish priest accomplishes 50 good things in a day, but desire for intimacy with Christ in the Eucharist is not one of them, then he may have actually accomplished little, if anything at all. If the devout and faith-filled celebration of the sacrifice of the Mass is the only thing he does that day, there is a unique opportunity, by grace, to participate powerfully in the redemption of the world and the renewal of the Body of Christ, the Church. Does the world not need that redemption desperately? Does the Church not cry out for that renewal daily?

The Eucharist is essential to the life and ministry of the priest because it is here that the priest can discover, over and over again, that the entire life he is called to is about the Lord Jesus Christ and not himself. The source and summit of our lives is Jesus Christ, broken and poured out for us daily in the Sacrament of the Eucharist (see Lumen Gentium, # 11 and Ecclesia de Eucharistia, #1).

Do you want that? Do you long for and desire that encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ?

This Easter let us seek, with St. Mary Magdalene, to grow in our desire for the body of Christ. May we discover, with her, that when we finally have the strength to take hold of the One whom we desire, that He has already—long ago and more deeply than we could possibly imagine—taken hold of us.

Fourth Sunday of Lent: Baptism

2011-04-03T16:16:00.003-05:00

(Fourth Sunday of Lent; This homily was given on 3 April, 2011 at the American College of the Immaculate Conception in Leuven, Belgium; See 1 Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, and John 9:1-41)

This weekend, as we celebrate Laetare Sunday, we move beyond the halfway point in our journey towards Easter. The Fourth Sunday of Lent affords us a great opportunity to ask ourselves not only how we are doing this Lent but, perhaps more importantly, why we are doing it.

Obviously, Lent is a time of preparation for the celebration of the Pascal Mystery: the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and our hope of rising to new life with Him. One of the most significant and essential aspects of the Lenten season which paves the way for this preparation is penance. We began Ash Wednesday by noting the importance of penance, and its focus will endure all the way through Holy Week.

Nonetheless, when the Second Vatican Council reflects upon the liturgical season of Lent, penance is not the first aspect that is mentioned, nor is it the only important one. Both of the times Sacrosanctum Concilium mentions the central aspects of Lent it names penance secondly, but begins with baptism (Sacrosanctum Concilium, #109). In fact, it could be said that penance is relevant not for its own sake but to the extent that it draws us more deeply into the mystery of baptism and animates our baptismal call to holiness.

Baptism is a tremendous gift and a remarkable sacrament that we can too easily take for granted. The most precious things in our lives come to us through baptism. It is through baptism that we are given new life in the Holy Spirit and we experience a vibrant and life-giving relationship with God. Through baptism we have access to a life of prayer and intimacy with Jesus Christ; we persevere through baptism to union with God in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist; all of our relationships in the Body of Christ come to us through baptism. What an amazing gift!

If you have ever read (or perhaps have seen the movie) The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis then you are familiar with the story The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. That book begins with three small children who are playing hide-and-seek in an old medieval manor. The youngest girl, Lucy, soon discovers the ultimate hiding place: a small closet or wardrobe. She enters that wardrobe and closes herself in, moving way to the back where she can remain obscured behind a row of expensive coats. Yet making her way towards the back of the wardrobe she suddenly realizes that it is not a closed space at all, but actually a doorway to the mystical land of Narnia. She has gone through the wardrobe and entered into a vast and expansive landscape where there are mountains and hills, meadows and streams and all kinds of intriguing and living creatures. She will journey, with her brother and sister, throughout that amazing world and come to experience remarkable and breathtaking adventures.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes baptism in similar terms (minus all that great stuff about Narnia!):

"Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the spirit...and the door which gives access to the other sacraments." -CCC, # 1214

It is when we enter through that gateway that we begin to experience the true purpose and meaning of life, and we come into contact with the mysteries of our salvation. This weekend the Scriptures for this Fourth Sunday of Lent help us to focus in a particular way on this great Sacrament of Baptism.

The first aspect we can reflect on is the anointing of baptism. When a new child of God is reborn in baptism (whether he or she is an infant or an adult) that person is cleansed with water and baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Additionally, he or she is anointed on the crown of the head with sacred chrism, holy oil which signifies our share in the priestly, prophetic and kingly ministry of Jesus Christ. Reminiscent of the kings and prophets of the Old Testament, who were chosen by God and marked in a special way for service of God’s holy people through anointing, the signing with sacred chrism sets the Christian apart for a special life of holiness and service in the world.

No matter how far a child of God falls from this holy call, and despite whatever failings and faults he or she experiences in life, that distinction, that moment of being chosen by God and set apart, will never be erased. It cannot be taken away and it can never be repeated. The indelible mark of baptism remains all throughout life and into eternity because the favor of God and the call of God are irrevocable (see Romans 11:29). We may reject that favor and that gift, a terrifying dimension of our freedom; but God will never reject those who, in this life, return to Him.

There is a beautiful image for this reality found in our first reading this morning from the First Book of Samuel. Young David is anointed by the prophet Samuel and we are told “from that day on, the spirit rushed upon David” (1 Samuel 16:13). Every day of his life the Spirit of God rushed upon him and remained steadfast in David’s life…and what a life! We know all about the remarkable and heroic things David was able to accomplish: how he defeated the giant, Goliath, how he was victorious in battle and how he led the people of Israel as their beloved king.

But we also know the rest of the story. We know how he committed the sin of adultery with Bathsheba, and then committed the sin of murder to cover over his adultery. There were many times in his life where he flagged in his fidelity to God. There is a difficult and even sad description which comes to us from David himself in the First Book of Chronicles. David had come before the Lord and offered to build Him a temple, but the Lord refused because David had shed so much blood upon the earth; he had been a man of war and not peace. Solomon was to build the temple, but not David (see 1 Chronicles 22:6-10).

David lived a very difficult and complicated life…but he always managed to find his way back to God. This reconciliation was something which depended always and everywhere upon God, not David. “The spirit rushed upon David” throughout his life. The Holy Spirit rushes upon us here even now. It is up to us to respond to that Spirit and be renewed and regenerated in Christ.

Which brings us to the second aspect of this great sacrament: the regeneration of baptism. While it is true that the sacrament of baptism cannot be revoked nor can it be redone, it is also true that God has the power to renew and regenerate this gift of spiritual life He has poured out so graciously upon us.

If we look to our gospel for this weekend, it is clear that the man born blind has done nothing to bring about his own healing and reception of the gift of sight. Jesus freely chooses him and smears mud on his eyes, commanding him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. It is pure grace. But the blind man does listen to this word of Christ, he does cooperate with all that God is graciously doing in his life, and as a result his eyes are opened and he is restored to a whole new vision of the world around him.

So it is with us when we cooperate with God, who renews our baptismal call to holiness. One of the greatest ways this can happen is through daily interaction with the living and active word of God (see Hebrews 4:12). We become immersed in the Scriptures, allowing that word to convict us of our sins. We come to recognize, as we become more and more immersed in the word of God, all the places that we have fallen short in loving God and neighbor. More than that, though, we also come to see more clearly the path on which God is leading us (see Psalm 119: 105). We become filled with hope, filled with joy, and the word of God begins to set our souls on fire as we burn to share the Good News with those around us!

This is an important thing for us to grasp, especially as Catholics. We may have a tendency to shy away from such a strong attachment to Sacred Scripture, thinking that such zeal for God’s word belongs to other Christians, but not to us. There is a powerful lesson we can learn right here in Flanders. In the years following the Protestant Reformation, many of those who had left the Catholic Church began to claim that they alone had a firm grasp on the meaning of the Sacred Scriptures. They claimed fidelity to the word of God while they caricatured Catholics as believing only in the pope and the sacraments. In response to this claim, the Catholic Churches throughout Europe, and perhaps more so here in Flanders than anywhere else, began to construct enormous, wood-carved pulpits as high as twenty feet tall, ornamented with various sculptures and vibrant biblical scenes. The message being sent was that the word of God, just as much as the sacraments and fidelity to the Vicar of Christ, mattered and made a difference in the lives of the Catholic faithful.

If you go up to Ghent, to St. Bavo’s Cathedral, you will find a magnificent wooden pulpit that is as ornate as it is enormous. There is a sculpture of an old man set into the base of that pulpit, with a blanket being pulled off from over his head; he appears almost to be holding onto it desperately as angels blow their trumpets and other heavenly beings lift high he cross of Christ. At the base of that sculpture are the words of St. Paul, in Latin, which we find in our second reading this morning:

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.

—Ephesians 5:14

The time for that old man to take his rest is over! The living and active word of God has the power to regenerate us and reanimate our spiritual lives, setting us on fire and enabling us to change and transform this world we live in. This brings us to the final aspect of baptism which we find in our readings this weekend: the ripple effect of baptism.

If you drop a stone into a pool of water, there will be a ripple effect extending all throughout that pool. So it is with the sacrament of baptism; it affects every relationship in our lives. Baptism has an effect on every community to which we belong and touches everyone we come into contact with, for bad or for good.

We find something of this reality in our gospel for this weekend. The man born blind is healed by Christ, and almost immediately there is a ripple effect in the community. The Pharisees eventually stand against him, moving from a place of confrontation (“Give God the praise! We know that this man is a sinner”) to a place of outright rejection (“You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?”). Christ, on the other hand, is on the opposite end of the spectrum, leading that newly healed man into a relationship of salvation and life.

The parents in the gospel, however, are standing somewhere in the middle!

They are not exactly sure what to do. Afraid of being thrown out of the temple and placing their social status in jeopardy, they nonetheless still feel close to their son and must have been grateful for the restoration of his sight. They temporarily defer to their son, saying “He is of age; question him.”

How important we realize this weekend that Christ does not criticize this couple. He criticizes the Pharisees, no doubt. He even challenges the man born blind to place his faith in the Son of Man. But as the gospel comes to a close, the parents are still wavering in the moment of decision. They have not taken a stand for or against Jesus Christ.

How many people in your life are also standing, even now, on that razor’s edge? How many people do you know who—while not totally committed to the Catholic faith nor willing to follow Christ in their everyday lives—nonetheless are still ambivalent and perhaps are yet discerning a life of faith and trust in God. How important that we place no obstacles before them!

There is a ripple effect that comes from our baptism and our willingness to live out that initial and unceasing call to holiness. May God grant us all that we need—this Lent and all throughout our lives—to be renewed in spirit, to be regenerated and reanimated by the word of God and set on fire so that we can be instruments of His powerful grace in the lives of those around us.

Ash Wednesday: John Q. Catholic, M.P.A.

2011-03-09T07:06:00.004-05:00

(Ash Wednesday-Year A;This homily was given 9 March, 2011, at at the American College of the Immaculate Conception in Leuven, Belgium; Read Matthew 6:1-18)

NB- This homily was inspired by a Flemish priest (who shall remain nameless) who himslef holds an M.D, a Ph.D, and, of course, an M.P.A.

In our chapel each morning, as we celebrate the Eucharist, there are a number of seminarians and other students from the university who join us and who are studying for their S.T.B. (bachelor’s degree in sacred theology). Many others are currently preparing for their M.A. or A.M.A. (master’s or advanced master’s in philosophy or theology). Still others are working towards or perhaps have already received their S.T.L. (license in sacred theology) or Ph. D. (doctor of philosophy, which does not necessarily pertain to philosophy but instead connotes that the person is a “lover of wisdom” in the particular area of studies in which he or she earned the degree).

But Jesus Christ, in our Gospel this morning as we begin this Lenten Season, invites all of us to prepare for and earn—with Him and by His grace—our M.P.A. or master’s in penance administration.

Does that sound like a daunting task? Penance can sometimes have a negative connotation but that does not have to be the case. Penance and the penitential life, far from being a burden or an obstacle to our happiness, can often become the very means through which we experience freedom and joy in the spiritual life.

Penance allows us to be weaned off the things of this world, to be more detached from material things, not for the sake of detachment itself but so that we may become more attached to the things that matter most…beginning with God! The penitential life can often help clear the way for a renewal of our spiritual life and relationship with God.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Christ does not offer it to us as an option in the Gospel this morning. He does not say, “If you think of it, fasting would be a really neat thing to do,” or “If you’ve got some spare change, why not give some of it to a needy person?” No, he does not say IF, but WHEN:

When you give alms…
When you pray…
When you fast…

—Matthew 6:1-18

Preparing for and receiving one’s M.P.A. is not optional for the Christian, nor are there any prerequisites. We simply begin with Christ and seek to walk this penitential path, and we do so in an intentional and determined way throughout these next forty days.

Thankfully, Christ does offer us an essential study guide to assist us in this regard. He cautions us against practicing penance with a pretense; we should not fast, pray and give alms for the sake of being noticed or to earn respect and admiration from those around us. We should not embrace a penitential life for the purpose of boosting our pride and self importance. These are the very things which tear down and work against our spiritual growth and the virtues necessary to sustain us. Christ exhorts us instead to earn our M.P.A. in secret; to do so with a hiddenness which God alone will notice and reward.

We do well to turn to the lives of the saints, to study under the great masters of the spiritual life as we seek to follow the greatest Master of all, Jesus Christ, in the penitential life. There is a beautiful and endearing story about St. Therese of Lisieux which occurred in the final days of her life, when she was on her deathbed (see Fr. Jean C. J. d'Elbée’s classic I Believe in Love for this story and many inspirational and enlightening conferences on this beloved saint). Some of the sisters were nearby in the kitchen, talking, and they did not know that Therese could hear them. One of them said:

“Sister Therese of the Child Jesus will die soon, and I really wonder what our mother will be able to say about her after her death. She will certainly be at a loss, for this little sister, lovable as she is, has certainly done nothing worth the trouble to recount.”

They knew that Therese was a very lovable and special person, but they had no idea just how completely holy she was, how deeply rooted she was in Christ. They knew nothing of the sacrifices she was offering up daily for all of them, and for the entire world. These things would come out in time, especially after the publication of The Story of a Soul. Then the entire world would know of the profound hidden life of St. Therese of Lisieux. She truly lived what St. Paul, in the New Testament, described as a life “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

In 1997 Blessed John Paul the Great named St. Therese of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church, but certainly she had already earned her M.P.A. with Christ.

This Lenten Season will we?

The Moral Life and Eternal Life

2011-02-13T11:40:00.004-05:00

St. Augustine (354-430)- Portrait by Philippe de Champaigne

(Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time; This homily was given on 13 February, 2011 at the American College of the Immaculate Conception in Leuven, Belgium; See Sirach 15:15-20 and Matthew 5:17-37)

Our readings for this weekend from the Book of Sirach and the Gospel of St. Matthew teach us about the moral life and eternal life. Those two realities, for the follower of Jesus Christ, are inherently connected. To live the moral life, to follow the commandments of God and the teachings of our faith as revealed by God through His Church in the Scriptures and Sacred Tradition, is to begin to experience already a foretaste of eternal life with God. The life of grace within the soul, the Holy Spirit dwelling within us from our Baptism, takes root and begins to thrive and flourish when we follow the commandments of God.

In the Gospel of St. John, Jesus Christ says “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). God desires for us to experience here already that abundant life which is a foretaste of the joy, peace and holiness that will one day be ours for all eternity.

But the opposite is also true…If we choose not to follow the commandments of God and the teachings of our faith, if we decide that we will take our own path and follow our own will when we know that God is asking from us something else, we risk losing that abundant life He wants for us. There are Capital or “root sins”—in the Gospel this morning Christ mentions two of them, anger and lust—which are indicative of the decisions we can make in the moral life which often stifle the very life of God within the soul.

Anger, lust, pride, envy, sloth, avarice, gluttony...allowing these sins to take root in the soul, we risk losing not only the abundant life that Christ offers but even eternal life itself.

Sadly, too many people live as if that is not a remote possibility, as if God could never possibly say to them, at the final judgment: “I do not know where you come from; depart from me all you workers of iniquity” (Luke 13:27). Choosing not to follow the commandments of God creates in our lives the very real possibility of the loss of eternal life; Christ, in the Gospel this morning refers to that loss as Gehenna or hell. For all these reasons Sirach this morning cautions us to choose wisely when it comes to the commandments of God. He says:

If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you.
—Sirach 15:15

Heaven is not something that happens to us by accident. We do not enter eternal life as a mere conclusion to life here on earth. No, heaven is embraced through the choices and moral decisions we make each day. We decide to follow God, through a multitude of circumstances and sometimes in the midst of great difficulty. But the fact of the matter is we make decisions. Sirach this morning says to us:

He has set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose stretch forth your hand. Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.
—Sirach 15: 16-17

The commandments of God are the path to eternal life. That is why Christ is so adamant about the importance of the commandments in our Gospel this morning. He says:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
—Matthew 5:17

With tremendous authority Christ makes it clear that He is not simply a new Moses, not some great prophet or teacher of the law who will guide them into deeper interpretations of the commandments. No, He is the God who gives the law, and the only one who has ever completely fulfilled it. With that very same authority and power, compassion and mercy, Christ goes on to issue a challenge that should make us all a bit uncomfortable. It comes to us in the simple phrase:

You have heard that it was said…but I say to you…

Speaking about anger and lust, those root sins that have the power to destroy the life of grace in the soul, Christ explains how we do not have to commit the actual sin of murder; we do not have to be a notorious public sinner or have committed the act of adultery in order to be at risk of losing eternal life. Christ levels the playing field in the moral life and attacks the shallow religiosity of the scribes and Pharisees, a morality not at all unlike the one we find today.

It is not the case that there are notorious sinners—murderers and adulterers—who will not likely make it to heaven; that there are then the majority of us striving to be more righteous and good each day, working our way to heaven; that, finally, there are the scribes and Pharisees who are well on their way and the paragon of virtue. No, Christ turns that simplistic morality upside down when He says:

Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
—Matthew 5:20

Christ makes it clear to all of us that things are worse than they appear…and also so much better. Our late Holy Father, Blessed John Paul the Great, in a conference on the Theology of the Body back in 1980, says that this Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ words—You have heard that it was said…but I say to you—are not merely an accusation but above all an invitation: “The accusation leveled at the evil of lust is at the same time an appeal to overcome it” (General Audience of October 22, 1980).

Christ never raises the bar in the moral life beyond our ability to reach it; He would never command us to do something that is not possible. He gives us all the grace we need to be forgiven, loved, strengthened and confirmed in our journey through this life and on our way to eternal life with Him. But that can never happen until we are willing to admit that we desperately need God. We must come to the realization that, without grace, we cannot live the moral life as we should. We must declare, in a certain sense, spiritual bankruptcy and allow God to renew us and animate us from within.

In his letter to the Romans St. Paul describes his own struggle to live the moral life and to fulfill the commandments of God. He says:

For I do not do the good I want but the evil I do not want is what I do…when I want to do the right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
—Romans 7:19-25

This great mystery of the power of grace in the life of the soul takes on a whole new and compelling witness in the life of St. Augustine. Many people are familiar with the Confessions of St. Augustine, the autobiography that describes his conversion and God’s victory over sin in his life. In Book VI he reflects on the relationship he shared with the woman who was his mistress and who had given birth to his son. With total transparency and heartfelt honesty he says:

Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied, and my mistress being torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, my heart, which clave to her, was racked, and wounded, and bleeding. And she went back to Africa, making a vow unto You never to know another man, leaving with me my natural son by her. But I, unhappy one, who could not imitate a woman, impatient of delay, since it was not until two years' time I was to obtain her I sought—being not so much a lover of marriage as a slave to lust—procured another.
—Confessions Book VI, Ch. 15

Augustine had first to declare spiritual bankruptcy, to acknowledge his utter dependency and even enslavement to lust, before he could come to the realization that he needed God. It is one of the most provocative passages in the Confessions, and provides a stark example of how the root sin of lust—or any of the root sins, for that matter—has the power to keep the life of God from developing within the soul. It spells out for us the tragic consequences of a life given over to sin.

But, of course, we know the rest of the story. We know how God never gives up on Augustine, never ceases to call him to virtue and holiness, no matter how far he has fallen. Augustine goes on to describe that victory of God in his life:

Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you. You were within, and I was in the external world and sought you there . . . You were with me, and I was not with you . . . You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness . . . You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.
—Confessions Book X, Ch. 27

That is what can happen when we are open to the call of God deep within. Even in the midst of our struggles in the spiritual life, when we are all too cognizant of our weaknesses and our utter dependency upon God, we can take courage knowing that He is with us and constantly provides for us what we need to follow Him. Over and over again we have the ability and indeed the privilege of choosing to listen to the voice of God and to follow His call to mercy, forgiveness, renewal and new life. And so, we listen once again to the words of Sirach from our first reading this weekend:

If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you.
—Sirach 15:15

God sets before us this day fire and water…life and death…good and evil.

Let us choose Christ. Let us choose life. Let us choose to embrace the abundant life that He offers to each one of us this day.

Inception, St. Joseph and the Dream of God

2010-12-19T11:16:00.004-05:00

The Dream of St. Joseph

by Philippe de Champaigne, is dispalyed at the National Gallery in London.

(Fourth Sunday of Advent; This homily was given on 19 December, 2010 at the American College of the Immaculate Conception in Leuven, Belgium; See Matthew 1:18-24)

One of the big blockbuster films of this past summer, and a movie that is right now at the top of the charts for DVD sales, is the movie Inception. It is a very well written and compelling film filled with great special effects and intense drama. The characters in that film have the ability to go deep into the dream world of the people around them, extracting secrets from their subconscious and sometimes even inserting ideas—hence the name inception—that have the power to change lives.

Of course, as intriguing as the movie is, at its very foundation it is fiction. Certainly we cannot delve into the subconscious minds of those around us and enter into their dreams against their will. But nonetheless, in the Gospel this weekend we are shown not a fiction but the fact of the inner life of St. Joseph, husband of Mary. We are given an insight and a glimpse into his dream world, and in that place nothing less than our eternal salvation is at stake. We sit on the razor’s edge of St. Joseph’s dream, waiting breathlessly for his reaction to the angel’s voice…but we will come back to that in a moment…

For starters, St. Joseph is not the first dreamer we encounter in the Scriptures. In fact, he is named for one of the great Old Testament dreamers, Joseph the Patriarch. We encounter that Joseph towards the end of the Book of Genesis. He is only a teenager the first time we meet him, and he is dreaming about his brothers, arrayed before him and bowing before their younger brother. That dream is followed by another in which the sun and the moon and eleven stars of the sky are arranged before him; his father and mother, as well as his brothers, bowing in fealty to Joseph (see Genesis 37:5-20).

All too eagerly, and perhaps even imprudently, Joseph shares these dreams with his brothers, who immediately take offense at him. They decide at first that this “master dreamer” (Genesis 37:19) needs a dose of reality, and conclude that he should die; later they change their minds and sell him off into slavery instead. “After all,” they reason, “he is our brother” (Genesis 37:27). Thank heavens for small favors!

We are all familiar with the rest of the story. Joseph gets taken into Egypt where he suffers many hardships and is even thrown unjustly into prison. But soon Pharaoh himself has a vision that perplexes him and so he sends for Joseph, who is renown even in the land of Egypt as an interpreter of dreams. Joseph, with the help of God, unlocks the mystery of Pharaoh’s dream and saves not only Egypt, but the surrounding countries, as well, from famine and destruction. His brothers, true to his prophesy, indeed come and bow before him, even before they realize that he has graciously become their savior.

It is a compelling and beautiful story which reveals God’s power and ability to save us even in spite of our own human frailties and sins. But truth be told, when Joseph’s brothers mock him as “master dreamer,” they could not have been further from the truth. In fact, in all the Scriptures there is only one Master Dreamer, and that is God. His master dream comes to be revealed to us not at the end of the Book of Genesis, but at its inception.

In the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis we are given God’s dream for the human family. It is a dream in which the man and the woman live together in a mutual relationship of love and freedom. There is harmony and peace between them, and that same harmonic relationship exists between them and the rest of the created world. There is a just and peaceful accord between all of creation and God, who wills to walk with the man and the woman in the cool of the evening, content simply to spend time with them (see Genesis 3:8).

Of course, very quickly that dream is shattered; God’s dream for the human family is broken into a thousand pieces after what we come to understand as Original Sin enters the picture. Although we understand the truths of that mythic tale in a way different from our historical reality, nonetheless we see that broken dream played out over and over again in our everyday lives. Perhaps we ourselves, or those we know and love, are in the midst of that very brokenness:

Broken dreams…broken lives…broken promises…broken relationships…and the list goes on and on.

One of the great tragedies today is that so many people experience this brokenness and simply give up on the dream all together. They conclude that peace and harmony in this world is simply not possible and they cease to even try. That is a very sad thing. But even worse is the reality that many in this post-modern world have given up on even the hope for happiness and peace beyond this life. They have given up on even the possibility of an eternal life in which God will set things right and give us “far more than all we ask or imagine” (see Ephesians 3:20).

It is such a paradox because deep within our hearts we long for nothing else than this eternal dream of God; we desire nothing greater than the restoration of this harmony and peace deep within us, and spreading out to all of the relationships of our lives. We cannot help but to dream!

And so thanks be to God that He has revealed to us in the Scriptures this weekend and in the midst of our Catholic faith that He has no intention of ever giving up on that dream! No matter what happens, and no matter how many times we break away from His plan for our lives, God is relentless in making this dream a reality for us.

He so longs for its fulfillment that He is willing, even desirous, to come right into our brokenness, to become broken Himself on the wood of the cross, so that we can be healed and have the hope of an eternal life with Him. He desires to become one like us so that we can become more and more completely like Him. That is the hope we eagerly wait for in this Advent season and it is the plan of God revealed to us in the Scriptures. But that plan this weekend is almost derailed at its inception by none other than St. Joseph!

It is not because St. Joseph is selfish and wants to do his own thing, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. No, it is because St. Joseph was a good and righteous man of God and because he had a dream for his life. St. Joseph, like almost all righteous Jews of his time, would have had a dream for marriage and a family, to raise up faithful children of Israel. Suddenly that dream is shattered as Joseph comes to learn that this woman, who by all appearances is so holy, so pure, so perfect…is suddenly so pregnant! And he knows that he is not the father. His dream was broken and we are told in the Gospel this weekend that he had decided to divorce her quietly; he was going to separate himself from Mary and her Child. Immediately the angel of God intervenes and makes it clear, No, Joseph! That is not the right move!

His plan and dream for life was a good one, a holy one even, but it was simply not sufficient. The angel is essentially telling him, You have to dream a whole lot bigger, Joseph, because God is going to do something in your life beyond your wildest imagination. He has a dream greater than you could possibly foresee, and you are an intimate part of that dream.

St. Joseph, for his part, does not miss a beat. We are told that as soon as he awoke he did what the angel had instructed him. In a moment he was able to place his own dreams aside and to broaden his vision to the eternal dream of God. This Fourth Sunday of Advent, are you and I able to do the same?

We all have dreams and hopes for the future; we all have plans and desires that we hope will come to pass. But so many times we hold onto those dreams with both hands and fail to see that God often desires something more, something greater “than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

Are we willing to broaden our vision to the master dream of God, to His great desire for our eternal happiness, and let everything else in our lives conform to that dream? We must be willing and even eager not only to conform ourselves to that dream, not only to surrender ourselves to it, but to love it! Only there will we have the true freedom to let go of our own plans and to find the greatest desires of our hearts fulfilled in Him.

This Advent, may we find the courage to dream bigger than ever before and seek the inspiration that comes from God Himself and His Son, Jesus Christ, because this is the season, above every other season of the year, when dreams come true.

The Vision and the Fire of Advent

2010-12-03T16:11:00.006-05:00

St. Francis Xavier 1506-1552

(Friday of the First Week of Advent, Feast of St. Francis Xavier; This homily was given on 3 December, 2010 at the American College of the Immaculate Conception in Leuven, Belgium; See Isaiah 29:17-24, Psalm 27 and Matthew 9:27-31)

We have already come now almost one quarter of the way through the Advent Season, and our readings today encapsulate the message of what it means to be a people waiting for the revelation of God in Christ. We wait in hope for the vision of God who comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ, God incarnate.

In our first reading the Prophet Isaiah anticipates this vision when he announces boldly that “out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see” (Isaiah 29:18). When the Messiah comes He will open the eyes of all to see the beauty and the power of God.

The Psalmist speaks of that same longing and yearning when he sings of his great desire to “gaze on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple” (Psalm 27:4). It is not enough for us to hear about God or simply to know a great deal about Him. No, we long to see Him and to look upon His loveliness even here, “in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13).

One of the most beautiful prayers in the liturgy is found in the Christmas Season, which we will enter in a few short weeks. One of the Prefaces for the Eucharist Prayer in the Christmas Season offers this wonderful prayer to God:

In the wonder of the incarnation
your eternal Word has brought to the eyes of faith
a new and radiant vision of your glory.
In him we see our God made visible
and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see.

The eternal Word who is Christ has brought to our eyes of faith that new and radiant vision of God. When Christ comes to dwell among us as a man we finally catch a glimpse of the God who we know loves us and whom we could never see had He not revealed Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Our Gospel today shows us this reality in a striking and vibrant way. Those two men beg Christ to heal them and restore their sight. The very first thing—or better, Person—they see when their request is granted and their eyes are opened is the God-Man, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. What longing, what yearning we have to see Him as we await the coming of Christ this Advent!

Truth be told, this is the very mission and vocation of the Christian: to see God and be swept up in this “new and radiant vision,” to have our eyes opened to His glory and His unsurpassable mercy. Then we cannot help but go out into the world and proclaim His wonders so that the eyes of all may be opened to that same vision of God. We want all the word to see what we have seen and to taste what we have tasted in the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ.

But to do that we have to be able to see what God sees when He looks at us and at the world we live in. We have to see the sin that is inevitably a part of our daily struggle, but even more we need to see ourselves and those around us not only as sinners but as men and women loved infinitely by God. We need to see the men and women whom God is willing to suffer and die for. You have heard the expression before: hate the sin but love the sinner. We separate the sin from the sinner and try to see as God sees.

One of the great temptations and dangers of the disciple of Christ is to take both of those realities together—the sin and the sinner—and to despise them both. Our worst days as disciples are often the times when we fail in this regard. When we do that, seeing only sinful people doing sinful things, then we also risk losing the vision of God Himself. We can no longer see Him clearly and all that He desires for us to behold as we follow and serve Him.

Such was the temptation which St. Francis Xavier faced, whose feast we celebrate today. Francis Xavier was sent by St. Ignatius of Loyola to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of the East Indies. By no means was he the first person to do that. In our tradition it is St. Thomas the Apostle who is sent by Christ Himself to bring the Gospel to the people of India. St. Francis Xavier would follow in the footsteps of countless men and women who tirelessly and faithfully brought the Gospel to those who longed to hear it.

But what he encountered when he arrived there was not only the fruit of the fidelity of the missionaries that had gone before him. He also encountered the infidelity of the followers of Christ who had long forgotten the Gospel they were sent to proclaim. He encountered, along with many zealous and praiseworthy disciples, also clergy who had given cause for scandal and the brutality not only of the pagans in that land but especially of the many Christians who should have known better. One account tells how “when slaves were atrociously beaten, their masters counted out the blows on the beads of their rosaries” (Butler’s Lives of the Saints, IV).

How would you and I have responded to such brutality? What would have been our attitude as missionaries in that strange and mysterious place? The response of St. Francis Xavier was one of tears almost to the point of blindness, but not the kind we would first think. He writes to his spiritual father, St. Ignatius of Loyola:

“The dangers to which I am exposed and the tasks I undertake for God are springs of spiritual joy, so much so that these islands are the places in all the world for a man to lose his sight by excess of weeping: but they are tears of joy.”

St. Francis Xavier saw the sin that was rampant in that place and he saw the atrocities and the squalor that comes with the loss of the vision of God, but he also saw the countless souls whom God loved so dearly, and that made all the difference. His heart was on fire with that same love that sent Christ to the cross, willing to die for our salvation, and Francis Xavier was overwhelmed with love to the point of tears; he was nearly blinded by the tears of joy that flowed from a heart on fire with the love of Jesus Christ.

That is precisely why St. Ignatius sent him to the East Indies to begin with. After serving faithfully by Ignatius’ side following his ordination to the priesthood, Francis Xavier was not immediately sent out into the missions. He waited and longed to preach the Gospel but year after year that assignment never came. Finally, one day, Ignatius released him with the now famous exhortation, “Go and set the world on fire!” St. Francis Xavier went and did exactly that.

It is the fire of the Holy Spirit, and only that fire, that has the power to renew the Church in the time of St. Francis Xavier and in our own time today. It is only the fire of divine love that can so inflame us to hate the sin and love the sinner as we proclaim Christ unreservedly to the world we live in.

May we come to know that love here in this place as we prepare to receive Him in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. May we see here in the Eucharist that “new and radiant vision” of the glory of God and come to know Him in whom “we see our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see.” May our eyes be opened to that vision and may God send us out from this place to set the world on fire.

Thanksgiving and Grace

2010-11-10T11:45:00.004-05:00

(Wednesday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time; This homily was given on 10 November, 2010 at the Pope's College -founded by Pope Adrian IV- in Leuven, Belgium; See Luke 17:11-19)

Thanksgiving. Gratitude. Giving thanks is something we are usually taught at a very young age. We receive a gift or a kindness from a relative or friend and our parents immediately seek to instill in us an attitude of gratitude. Perhaps they purchase a box of “Thank-you” cards for us after a significant event and encourage us to begin that age-old practice.

But what, exactly, is at the root of our need to give thanks? Is it simply the obligation to “ingratiate” ourselves to others, showing them that we were indeed worthy of the gift received? Is it merely a healthy habit which we cultivate to keep up appearances and expectations? Or is it something more?

If we look to the liturgy of the Church we discover the power of thanksgiving as something which affects us deep within. One of the Prefaces for the celebration of weekday Mass (Preface for Weekdays IV) communicates the following humble prayer to God:

You have no need of our praise,
yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift.

Our prayer of thanksgiving

adds nothing to your greatness,
but makes us grow in your grace,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Our prayer of thanksgiving

adds nothing to your greatness…

There is nothing we can do or say that will ever add anything to God; He is complete and content and in need of nothing from anyone. But there is much that He can do, and indeed does, to increase His life in us.

Our prayer of thanksgiving…makes us grow in your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It is one thing to receive a gift, to be the recipient of some grace; but it is another thing altogether to grow in that gift and to allow it to reach its full potential. One can earn a Master’s Degree or a PhD—have received opportunities for education and intellectual growth—but still not allow those gifts to reach their full potential.

We can receive the greatest gifts of all—faith, our Catholic identity, the Eucharist—and still fail to grow spiritually even after having been given such tremendous graces. We often receive good things from God and from others, but we are also called to grow in those gifts so that they will bear the kind of fruit God intends from the beginning. Thanksgiving has everything to do with that fruitfulness.

Our Gospel this afternoon, from St. Luke, reveals this brilliant flowering of the gift of grace within the human heart. We are told there were ten lepers who stood at a distance from Christ and called out to Him for mercy. Telling them to go and show themselves to the priests of the temple (a requirement according to Mosaic Law) they immediately obey and suddenly, on the way, they are cured! Yet only one of them returns, thankful.

All ten were healed; ten received the gift and grace of physical healing, but for nine of them the grace stopped there. They were healed by God…but that is all that happened! Not so, for the one who returns to give thanks. He comes back and falls down at the feet of Jesus. He is filled with gratitude and praise. His entire life has been changed, not just his body. And then Jesus says something to him that He says to none of the others:

“Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”
—Luke 17:19

Salvation has come for this man! He has been changed and transformed not just physically, but spiritually, as well. Body and soul he has been touched by God in the deepest part of himself. It all began with that initial grace received from Christ, and was brought to fruition through the gift of gratitude:

Our prayer of thanksgiving

adds nothing to your greatness,
but makes us grow in your grace,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Having received such a gift and such a grace as Jesus Christ here in this Holy Mass, how will our gratitude bear fruit in our lives this day? How is God calling us to cultivate an attitude of gratitude so that all the graces we receive may reach their fulfillment in lives of joyful service and love for God and those around us?

Feast of Dedication of St. John Lateran

2010-11-09T06:54:00.006-05:00

(Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica; This homily was given on 9 November, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Ezekiel 47:1-12)

This morning we celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, a Church which adorns herself with the modest title of being “Mother and first of all the Churches in Rome and of the world.” But it is not so much that title we celebrate, nor even the basilica itself as much as it is the unity and universality that they represent.

Long before the popes began to preside over the assembly at St. Peter’s Basilica they made St. John Lateran their residence. For centuries that was the center for the visible source of our unity; today what we truly celebrate is the affection we have for the Vicar of Christ on earth, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. And we have much to celebrate, much to be thankful for.

For decades as a theologian and subsequently as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he provided clear and engaging teachings, in articles, books and statements, on Christ and the Church. As our Holy Father he has continued to teach, govern and sanctify the Church through his writing and example. But one aspect of the pontificate of Benedict XVI that I would like to emphasize this morning is his consistent witness—in city after city, country after country, time and again—in the face of what has often revealed itself as bitterness towards the Catholic Church and the Catholic message.

To be sure, that bitterness has come at times as a result of the sins and even scandal caused by members of the Church. Pope Benedict XVI has addressed this himself many times. Yet there is also a bitterness that has come as a result of the world that we live in, a world that is growing increasingly more secular, increasingly more closed-off from the things of God. There is a sense of bitterness, then, that can result from the Catholic message itself which our Holy Father represents; a message that emphasizes the need for conversion and forgiveness, an acknowledgement above all of the merits of Jesus Christ for us, not an emphasis on our own merits and accomplishments, however grand and distinguished they may be.

Yet in the face of such bitterness, our Holy Father has consistently borne witness to Jesus Christ and the message of the Gospel, in humility and charity, immersed in the power and joy of the Holy Spirit.

The impact of this witness has been tremendous. In city after city, country after country, from Washington, D.C. and New York, to France, Great Britain and recently in Spain, time and again that witness has affected the lives of thousands of people. Many, perhaps not most but certainly many, of those who were bitter about their experience of the Church or bitter with regard to the circumstances of their lives, have been touched by the life and ministry of Pope Benedict XVI. His reception in places across the globe has been positive and powerful for the Church and the world we live in.

I would suggest this morning that this witness offered by our Holy Father is not one exclusive to him as the Vicar of Christ. It is a witness that is universal in scope, one which we are all called to embrace. We are all called, as members of the Body of Christ, to bear witness to Jesus Christ and His Gospel, with humility and charity, immersed in the power and joy of the Holy Spirit. The Prophet Ezekiel, in our first reading this morning, shows us a vision of what that witness of the Church can look like. In his vision, which prefigures the Church, Ezekiel sees a temple and describes how there is water flowing from the sanctuary of that temple. It flows out well beyond the confines of that place of worship and reaches all the way to the sea (see Ezekiel 47:1-12).

Now usually when a river flows into the sea those waters, laden with salt and brine, will flow back into the river and turn its fresh water brackish. Not so with this river, describes Ezekiel. Instead, he says, the water flowing from the temple and into the sea changes the sea itself! That great body of water, bitter to the taste and expansive in size, is changed and transformed by the river flowing into it. In fact, Ezekiel relates how even the trees which line the banks of that great river are vitalized and they bear fresh fruit each month; their leaves are useful as medicine for healing.

It is a beautiful and vibrant picture of the mission of the Church and of the witness we are called to bear. We are called, at this Eucharist and in this sanctuary, to be immersed in the Body and Blood of Christ, so that we can go out into the world and bear witness to our Lord in all we say and do. Where will the rivers and tributaries flowing from our temple spread out to this day? How might God be able to bring healing and wholeness to those who have perhaps grown bitter in their experience of life? May we, like Pope Benedict XVI, bear witness to Jesus Christ and His Gospel, in charity and humility, fully immersed in the power and joy of the Holy Spirit.

Vigilance

2010-10-19T04:11:00.003-05:00

Vasari's Garden of Gethsemane

(Tuesday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time; This homily was given on 19 October, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Ephesians 2:12-22 and Luke 12:35-38)

Christ in our Gospel this morning instructs and admonishes his disciples to be vigilant; to be watchful and ready; to be prepared to receive Him when He comes to them (Luke 12:35-38). And although we are not given a list by St. Luke of the disciples who were present at that moment, we can certainly guess the names of some. St. Peter, for instance, most likely would have been there; Saints James and John; perhaps the rest of the Twelve. These were the men who were with our Lord day and night throughout His public ministry.

Some of these same men, St. Luke relates just a few chapters later, were taken aside by Him and given the very same instruction that we hear today: be vigilant; watch; pray (Luke 22:39-46). Yet despite being warned twice to be prepared for Him and ready, they failed. They were not vigilant; they flagged in their fidelity to our Lord. They not only fell asleep when Christ was counting on them to be awake and alert but they also, all of them, abandoned Him in His time of trial.

But by the grace of God they were given another chance to watch and wait for Him. St. Peter was given the opportunity to strengthen those who, like Him, had failed (Luke 22:31-32). Those very same disciples began to grow, in earnest, in their vigilance and preparedness for the presence of the living God. By the end of their lives they were more than ready, more than vigilant and prepared to meet their divine Bridegroom when He came for them.

The words of Christ in the Gospel this morning are poignant and fitting in their application to those disciples (and to us):

And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.
—Luke: 12:38

The second or third watch…

The Jewish people observed three watches of the night. The first watch was in the early evening, the second watch occurred around midnight, and the third was at dawn.

The disciples missed Him in the second watch in the Garden of Gethsemane. They were asleep and did not heed our Lord’s command. But in the third watch, at the dawn, when the light of Christ came for them—not at the end of the evening bit at the end of their lives—they were ready. They had grown in their vigilance, in their watchful attention to the presence of God, something that they had become more and more attuned to as they strived to serve Him faithfully. Yes, they failed, but in the mercy of God they learned how to grow and persevere in waiting and watching for God.

So it is with us. Often in the very places where we have failed to be vigilant, in the places that we have not been mindful of the presence of God, He calls us to an even greater vigilance and a more intense watchfulness so that, when He comes again, we will not miss Him. Our lives are often lived between those two watches—failure and fidelity—a dynamic process of growth in which we are being prepared to enter eternal life with Him.

St. Paul alludes to that dynamic process in our first reading this morning. He talks about our collective identity as a Temple of the living God, but he does not say that we are a building which is already fully completed. No. He says, “Through [Christ] the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:21-22).

The foundation of that building is already in place. St. Paul mentions the Apostles and prophets which make up that foundation. Paul himself would become a part of it; St. Isaac Jogues, St. John de Brebeuf and their companions whose feast we celebrate today, are a part of that foundation. It is rock solid and cannot be shaken. Christ Himself, as the capstone, is already in place and will hold this temple together.

But for the rest of us, we are being built into that dwelling place; we are growing into that temple of the living God, and that can be a mysterious, challenging and even painful process. It is often the case that God must shift and adjust each stone, and perhaps even turn some upside down so that they will fit just where He wants them to. At other times He may need to hammer and chisel out parts of the stone, making it smoother or more perfectly shaped for His own desires and purposes. It is not a pleasant process; yet we trust in the God who lovingly knows just how to form us and mold us in Christ.

Wherever we are today we ask for the same grace that Saints Peter, James and John received; the grace that enabled St. Paul to grow in his vigilance and eagerness to follow Christ and serve Him well. May we also be built up in Christ, made more and more vigilant, more and more fit for that “dwelling place of God in the Spirit,” so that when our divine Bridegroom comes to us at the end of our lives we may be ready to walk into eternal life with Him.

Are You Resolved?

2010-09-28T14:52:00.003-05:00

(Tuesday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time; This homily was given on 28 September, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Luke 9:51-56)

We hear in our Gospel this morning that, “when the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). He was completely and totally resolved to go to that place where He would suffer, and die, and rise again.

Yet as Luke continues to describe that scene we discover that it is not merely the iron will of Christ, not sheer determination alone that drives Him towards the Holy City. There is something else which undergirds that will and supports His resolution, His intense desire to accomplish all that the Father has entrusted to Him. That “something else” comes to be revealed, oddly enough, in the midst of opposition.

It is an unwritten law of the spiritual life that when we are resolutely determined and totally resolved to accomplish the work of God in this world, we will encounter opposition. It was no different for Christ. The moment that He “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,” he was literally, even physically so, opposed by the Samaritans. They would not let Him pass through their village to get to the place where His mission would be accomplished.

The response of His disciples is as shocking as it is disappointing:

Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?
—Luke 9:54

Yet suddenly, in Jesus’ rebuke and rejection of this simplistic suggestion, we catch a glimpse of what is behind the resolute determination of Christ. He quickly sets aside any sense of retaliation. The very reason He is making the journey to Jerusalem in the first place is to offer Himself on the cross for the sake of mercy, forgiveness and love. He is resolutely determined to suffer and to die so that the very people who oppose Him can be forgiven and receive a second chance, and a new life with God. The iron will and unbreakable resolve of Christ, therefore, is undergirded, is strengthened and supported, everywhere and always by love.

We come to see this perhaps even more so in His response to the disciples themselves. These are the very men whom He has chosen to carry on the ministry of reconciliation; the ministry of mercy, compassion and love. Yet here they are resolutely determined to carry out the ministry of vengeance; the ministry of retribution, even to the point of violence. It would not have been surprising in the least if Christ had simply rebuked them and cut them loose. He could have easily chosen other men to continue the work He had in mind; He could have built His Church with other stones which would fit more easily in their place. But He did not.

Christ was resolutely determined to use these men, to mold and form and guide these very men to be the foundation on which our faith would rest. In time they would become the very paragon of virtue, living out completely the message which He worked so hard to communicate to them on earth. St. John will later become the “Apostle of Love” modeling perfectly that great virtue and writing magnificently about it. His Gospel will describe it so eloquently in the life and mission of Jesus Christ.

Saints James and John, in the end, got it. They finally understood who Christ was and what He was calling them to, and all of it was made possible through Christ, who was resolutely determined to use them to accomplish great things in this world. Christ was totally and completely resolved, and that resolution was undergirded and supported always and everywhere with love.

This gospel passage is important and instructive for each and every follower of Christ, but in a particular way it is essential for the men here in this seminary whom God is calling to the priesthood; the men who, in a few short weeks will be ordained to the diaconate. A few short months later these same men will be ordained to the priesthood. Between both of those ordinations—to the diaconate and to the priesthood—each candidate will be asked 11 separate times: “Do you resolve to…?”

• Do you resolve to discharge the office of deacon with humble charity…?

• You who are prepared to embrace the celibate state: Do you resolve to keep forever this commitment as a sign of your dedication to Christ the Lord for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, in the service of God and man?

• Do you resolve to maintain and deepen the spirit of prayer that is proper to your way of life and, in keeping with this spirit and what is required of you, to celebrate faithfully the Liturgy of the Hours with and for the People of God and indeed for the whole world?

—From the Rite for the Ordination of Deacons

• Do you resolve to exercise the ministry of the word worthily and wisely, preaching the Gospel and teaching the catholic faith?

• Do you resolve to celebrate faithfully and reverently, in accord with the Church’s tradition, the mysteries of Christ, especially the sacrifice of the Eucharist and the sacrament of Reconciliation, for the glory of God and the sanctification of the Christian people?

• Do you resolve to be united more closely every day to Christ the High Priest, who offered Himself for us to the Father as a pure sacrifice, and with Him to consecrate yourselves to God for the salvation of all?

—From the Rite for the Ordination of Priests

The responses to those questions cannot come from an iron will alone; they must come from so much more than a sheer determination to bring oneself into conformity with a series of requirements and obligations. Because if that is all they are, then in more difficult times the priest or deacon will become frustrated and discouraged and may even begin to feel that he is burdened and bound to a life which is lacking in freedom.

But if there is love to undergird that resolution, if the priest or deacon allows himself to be immersed in the love of God and responds generously to that love, then those same promises and resolutions can become a source of great joy, done with passion and fervor, and in a way that will bear tremendous fruit for the Church and for the world we live in. And that is the stuff that transforms the lives of those we are called to serve. That is the stuff that transforms the Church and the heart of one’s own vocation.

Whoever we are and whatever God is calling us to do, may we seek not only to be resolved to accomplish His work and to respond with an iron will to please Him and serve His people; may we also receive the gift of God that allows that resolution to be undergirded with love, strengthened and supported with the mercy and grace of Christ, so that we ourselves may be transformed, and become instruments of transformation in the Church and in this world that so desperately needs God.

The Good Samaritan and Works of Mercy

2010-07-11T09:51:00.008-05:00

Michelangelo's Madonna and Child

in Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium

(15th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year C; This homily was given on 11 July, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Luke 10:25-37)

Our parable from the Gospel of St. Luke this weekend is one of the best known parables Christ ever told: the Good Samaritan. Christians and non-Christians alike are familiar with that parable. Often it is the person who will stop to assist a stranded motorist on the side of the road or the volunteer at a hospital or nursing home who is referred to as a “Good Samaritan.” In fact, that is one of the points of the Gospel. It does not matter where one is from—either Israel or some rival nation—or what our faith background may be. We are all called to show mercy and compassion to others; everyone is a neighbor, especially the person in need.

Nonetheless, St. Augustine offers a classic interpretation of this parable in which he says that Christ Himself is literally the Good Samaritan. Augustine says that the man who has been robbed, stripped of all that he has, and left for dead on the side of the road is Adam, all humanity; you and I are the ones who, through Original Sin and our own consequent sins, have been stripped of immortality and are helpless to change the course of our lives.

Suddenly we discover that Christ, the Divine Outsider, has come upon us to provide for our deepest needs. He does not come from the next country over but from the next world over! He comes from eternity into time and from heaven to this earth and takes on our human nature to save us and set us free. Christ does not pour oil and wine over our wounds and then provide money for us to recover in some wayside inn. No, He pours out His own body and blood for us on the cross and gives everything so that we can be healed, recover and discover a new life in God. Now that’s a Good Samaritan!

Our response to so great a gift should be twofold. Firstly, if it is true that Christ has done so much to seek us out and provide the healing that only God can give, then we need to make sure we get ourselves “in the way” to encounter the source of that healing.

St. Augustine says that Christ continues to provide the healing and restoration we read about this weekend through the sacramental grace of the Church. It is in Baptism that we are washed clean and set free from Original Sin; in the Sacrament of Reconciliation we are freed from mortal sins which have the power to keep us separated from God for all eternity; in the Eucharist we are sanctified and renewed, given God’s own Divine life and the strength to continue on the journey through this life to eternal life with God.

How eager we should be to become immersed in such grace! In the words of C.S. Lewis: “If you want to get warm then you have to stand near the fire; if you want to get wet, then you have to get into the water.” Our first response is to encounter this Good Samaritan every single chance we get.

The second response we should have is to follow the words of Christ at the end of that parable. When he finally gets the Scholar to understand that it was the Good Samaritan who showed mercy and compassion, Christ turns to him and says: “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). You, also, treat those around you with mercy and compassion and help them when they are waylaid and helpless on the side of the road.

Where is that need most urgent today, though? In Belgium in 2010, where is the Good Samaritan most needed and how can we discover our role in responding to the greatest challenges of our time?

I would suggest that the answer to that question is embedded in the architecture and the spiritual legacy provided for us by countless faithful men and women down through the centuries. When you walk down the street here in Leuven, or in Ghent, Bruges, Brussels and many other cities in Belgium, undoubtedly you discover small statues and images on buildings and in doorways of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding Christ out to the passersby on the street. Our Lady is always ready to offer them her Son, who alone can meet the deepest longing of the human heart. We do well to offer the same Christ to a world of suffering when we follow Him faithfully each day.

Just a few days ago we were in the City of Bruges with the participants of our Summer Institute and a local guide was giving us a tour of that beautiful and enchanting place. Of course, we are all familiar with the painful events of the Church in Bruges and throughout Belgium which have been publicized everywhere in these recent weeks. Our guide, thankfully, did nothing to disguise that pain and sorrow. What he did do, however, was point out these many statues and images found throughout the city, reminding us of a faith that dates back centuries and of the presence of Christ who alone can save and heal us.

At one point our guide showed us an old brick building façade—not a church or a chapel, but just a regular building—that displayed sculptures of the Severn Corporal Works of Mercy. You may remember these from your catechism classes:

1. To feed the hungry
2. To give drink to the thirsty
3. To clothe the naked
4. To shelter the homeless
5. To visit the sick
6. To visit the imprisoned
7. To bury the dead

To perform the corporal works of mercy is to provide for and assist those who find themselves physically desperate and alone, very much like the man in Jesus’ parable this weekend. The great American advocate for the poor and foundress of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day, said that the life of every baptized Christian should reveal—either directly or indirectly—the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. To reach out and assist those in need is intrinsic to the Christian life. That is what we do as Christians.

And while there is constantly a need to provide for the physical needs of those around us and that is something we all need to continually strive for, is it not also the case that in the culture we live in the spiritual needs of so very many people go uncared for? There are not many social programs seeking to care for people’s souls today. So if Christians will not care for the spiritual lives of those in need of healing and help, who will?

I would suggest that we take this week to reflect, above all, on the Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy and ask God how He can help us to perform these works for our own benefit and most especially for the sake of those around us.

The Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy are:

1. To counsel the doubtful
Are there any people in our lives who right now doubt their faith in God or their ability and desire to live out that faith in the Church? Are there people in our lives that are no longer convinced that God is close to them and really wants to lead them to joy and peace? We should never underestimate what a word of encouragement or counsel can do for them.

2. To instruct the ignorant
Are there people today who are ignorant of the greatest truths that God has revealed to us through Christ, truths that have been passed down to us through the apostles and have the power to lead us to eternal life? By all means, yes. Is there some small way that God is challenging us to share that faith and those truths with those who do not know them?

3. To admonish sinners
I think most people recoil at this one. We care more about how others perceive us than we do about our neighbor’s spiritual well-being and salvation. To admonish one who is in sin means firstly to pray hard for them, and then with great charity and humility to take a chance and share with them an aspect of their lives that-if unchecked-will not only bring them unhappiness and sorrow but may even cause them great spiritual harm. To admonish is an act of love, not of judgment.

4. To comfort the afflicted
Aren’t there countless people in our lives who are afflicted emotionally? Physically? Psychologically? How are we called, in some small way, to comfort them this week?

5. To forgive offenses
There are often times that we feel offended by the words and actions of others. Doing everything we can to forgive them is a spiritual work of mercy.

6. To bear wrongs patiently
Who among us doesn’t need to be more patient with the faults and weaknesses of those around us? When we are able to bear those everyday slights and quirks of others, and perhaps even some of the more serious grievances of our neighbor with patience, we perform a service that may go unnoticed by many but not by God.

7. To pray for the living and the dead
Finally, when we continue our daily conversation with God, are we attentive to bringing before Him the persons who are a part of our daily lives and intentions? Do we remember always those who have “gone before us marked with the sign of faith,” knowing that our prayers can do so much for the ones we love?

How is God challenging us to perform the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy this week, and to discover how His grace and the power of His love can work through us to bring healing and consolation to so many who are broken and in need.

Sacred Spaces

2010-05-19T03:13:00.003-05:00

Tabernacle and Sanctuary of the

Amercian College Chapel in Leuven, Belgium

(Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter; This homily was given on Wednesday, 19 May, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Acts 20:28-38 and John 17:11-19)

Nature abhors a vacuum. If there is a space, a gap, an empty place in the world, nature abhors it and wants to fill it in and smooth it out. Just so, there is a spiritual principle at work in our readings for today, and it goes something like this:

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, evil—and especially the Evil One who Christ names directly in our Gospel—loves a vacuum. Evil seeks out and searches for the empty places and desires to take up residence there.

Remember the parable Jesus tells in the Gospel of Luke?

When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, “I shall return to my home from which I came.” But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that person is worse than the first.
—Luke 11:24-27

Evil loves a vacuum and searches out the gaps and spaces. In our Gospel this morning Jesus is continuing that intimate priestly prayer to His Father and he indicates, before the disciples, that He is about to leave that place. He is returning to the Father in Heaven and notes how He has cared for and protected each of those entrusted to Him while He was here on earth:

When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you.
—John 17:12-13

Jesus is leaving but He will not take them out of the world with Him; as the Father has sent Him into the world, even so, now He sends them (John 17:18). But in that prayer His continued care for them is clear:

I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One.
—John 17:15

The Evil One desires to come into the sacred space and Jesus Christ, in the hearing of His disciples, prays to the Father to insure that will not happen. He expects those same disciples to cooperate in every possible way to make sure the sacred space is filled with the power of faith, holiness and love.

St. Paul, in our first reading this morning, does the same. Paul is bidding farewell to the presbyters of the Church of Ephesus, and as he stands by the ship in the port city of Miletus he shares with them what the Holy Spirit has revealed to him: that they will never see his face again. Their time together in the work of the Gospel has come to a close. In that bitter sweet moment Paul says to them:

Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the Church of God that he acquired with his own Blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock.
—Acts 20:28-29

St. Paul has the wisdom to understand that in his absence evil will desire to occupy the space that he has left behind. Therefore he exhorts them to be vigilant! He reminds them of the way he preached the Gospel to them; of how he worked among them night and day for three years; of the way he acted and spoke and how he lived his life (Acts 20:31-35).

Do the same, Paul is saying. Live a holy life in Christ Jesus; occupy well the space that God has given to you, and thus you will spare the flock and provide care and protection for the ones that God has placed among you. Evil wants nothing to do with the space that is filled with faith, holiness, charity and truth. Paul knew that…Do we?

This morning we can ask ourselves:

How are we occupying the sacred space that God has entrusted to each one of us? Are we seeking to live a holy life in Christ Jesus, to be His true disciples and care well for those entrusted to us?

Because it is not enough to remain quiet and still, avoiding evil as much as possible without ever seeking out the virtues and doing the good Christ calls us to in this world. We must avoid complacency, self sufficiency, and the mediocrity that is anathema to the spiritual life. But we must also seek out the virtues, perhaps even courageously so, in order to insure that evil has no place in our lives.

You have heard the expression, “The only thing that needs to happen for evil to conquer is for good men to do nothing.” How true that is. Please God, we are doing more than nothing in the spiritual life. But are we also seeking out holiness and virtue on a daily basis?

In 2010, to live chastity can be considered a heroic virtue; with so much to distract and tempt us, we must be all the more active and eager to cooperate with the overwhelming grace of God and live a holy life in Jesus Christ. In the culture we live in, that is so very critical, living a life of charity can be considered a heroic virtue. We are oftentimes too critical, even of each other; to live a life of forgiveness, mercy, charity in such circumstances requires even heroic virtue. Are we seeking that out and desiring—even when it is painful—the holiness of life and charity in truth without which we remain Christians in name only?

Because it is true that nature abhors a vacuum, and evil seeks out the gaps and spaces, but it is also true that we, by virtue of our Baptism, have the power of God that can fill those places with love, true freedom, virtue and the faith that has the power to change the world we live in. May we truly occupy the sacred spaces that God has entrusted to us, for our own sanctification and for the transformation of the world we live in.

Listening to God

2010-04-28T03:45:00.002-05:00

(Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter; This homily was given on Wednesday, 28April, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Acts 12:24-13:5 and John 12:44-50)

In our Gospel this morning Jesus Christ speaks a message to all—and, in particular, to those who have already made the decision to reject Him—that may have astounded them. In fact, it may even be surprising to many of us (although it should not be). He says, essentially, that everything He is accomplishing in the world, His mission and ministry, and His words in particular; all of those things, are not His own.

“Whoever believes in me,” Christ cries out, “believes not only in me but in the one who sent me” (John 12:44). But then He goes on to say:

Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words has something to judge him: the word that I spoke, it will condemn him on the last day, because I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak.
—John 12:48-49

All that Christ does, what He speaks, and the work of salvation He accomplishes in this world; all of this comes to Him from His Father. He listens to the Father, and then does what the Father tells Him. Therein lays the power of Christ. Christ’s power is not made manifest by imposing Himself over and above everything and everyone (although He could very well do that; He is the eternal Son of God and would have every right to do so). Instead, the power of Christ is revealed in His willingness to surrender Himself in humility and in loving obedience to another: His heavenly Father. The power of God is revealed in the Man who will kneel down in the dark, alone, and say: “Father…not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

Therein lays the power of Christ. Therein lays the power of the Christian. There is the power that we discover at work in the early Church, among the men and women who turned the world they lived in upside down. But they did not accomplish such a powerful transformation of their world through savvy ingenuity and a well-placed work ethic. They were powerful and effective witnesses because they listened to the voice of God and, with great love, obeyed it.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we are told this morning, the disciples were worshipping and adoring the Lord in the Church at Antioch. Suddenly, in the midst of that outpouring of praise to the Holy One, God spoke to them:

While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
—Acts 13:2

We do not know how that happened; we do not know whether the Holy Spirit spoke to them out loud, or in a vision, in the form of a dove, or if someone simply discerned that God was speaking. St. Luke does not include that information as necessary in Acts. But what he does make perfectly clear is that they heard the voice of God, they listened to the Holy Spirit, and they did what God was asking. That is the power of God which allowed the early Church to set the world on fire.

That same fire is what God desires for every Christian: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49). But that fire will not happen, cannot happen, until we can kneel down, silent and alone with God, and listen well to Him. We must have the humility to be still and listen to what God is saying to us—in the midst of our own sins and difficulties, trials and the many challenges of life—but listening nonetheless to what God is trying to communicate to us. And then we must carry it out.

One of the great dangers and occupational hazards of the priest—and certainly of any vocation in the Church, as well—one of the great sources of pain, sorrow and division, is that we may begin to listen only to ourselves. Then, essentially, we say to God: “This is how it will be,” and we welcome Him to ratify that.

That is not the power revealed to us by Christ. It is not the power so evident in the lives of the Apostles and martyrs who gave everything in loving obedience to God and those they were called to serve.

And so this morning, for God’s sake; for the sake of the Church which is in tremendous need of renewal; for the sake of the men and women in this world who may never come to know the person of Jesus Christ except through us; and for our own sake, let us ask ourselves (and not be too quick to answer the question):

Who am I listening to?

Easter: Shocked, From the Inside Out

2010-04-04T04:55:00.010-05:00

The Resurrection, by Peter Paul Rubens,
the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, Belgium

(Easter Vigil; This homily was given on Saturday, 3 April, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Genesis 1:1-2:2; 22:1-18, Exodus 14:15-15:1, Ezekiel 36:16-28 and Luke 24:1-12)

This is the first time I am able to proivide an audio recording of the homily (including the part where I almost knock over the Easter candle). I thank Mark Bentz, one of our fine seminarians here at the American College studying for the the Diocese of Portland in Oregon, for his expertise with the sound system (and for saving me the time of writing out a text for the blog!).

Please also check out the audio file of the Ave Maria, performed by the very gifted members of our music ministry here at the American College.

As always, continue to keep us all in your prayers, especially the 18 men studying here for the priesthood. A holy, blessed and happy Easter to you!

Laetare Sunday: An Image to Rejoice In

2010-03-14T16:56:00.004-05:00

(4th Sunday of Lent-Year C; This homily was given on 14 March, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Luke 15:1-32)

Why do soldiers going off to war, to a place far away, carry a photo of their wife or girlfriend with them at all times?

Why do college students keep pictures of their loved ones, family and friends, maybe even the family pet, in their dorm room or in the place where they study?

Why do the seminarians here at the American College keep, in their rooms, a picture of me…Okay, maybe they do not do that! But why do they also keep pictures of family and friends in their rooms?

I would suggest this morning that there are two important reasons why these images are so important for us. Firstly, they are an inspiration. When times get difficult and we are struggling to find hope and courage in a place far from home, we look to these faces of the people we love and we are inspired to go on; to move ahead; to push forward even when times are tough.

Secondly, we keep these images nearby because they give us a foretaste of what we have to look forward to in the days ahead. We look at a picture of the person we love, someone who also loves us—and maybe they are also looking at our picture in the same way—and we remember that it will not be long before we are with them once again.

Even if we have a picture of a loved one who has passed away and gone home to the Lord, we remember the promise of the resurrection and are reminded that one day we will be together with them forever, please God. The seemingly infinite distance will no longer separate us.

Images of our loved ones inspire us, and they grant us a foretaste of all that lies ahead. And that is what is at the heart of the feast we celebrate this morning, Laetare Sunday. Our entrance antiphon for the Mass this Sunday, in Latin, announces:

Laetare, Ierusalem, et conventum facite, omnes qui diligitis eam.

Rejoice, Jerusalem! Be glad because of her, all you who love her.

We rejoice with Jerusalem, for her redemption is at hand! We do not wait until Easter Sunday to celebrate the mystery of our redemption in Christ. The Church teaches us that every Sunday is a celebration of Easter, whether it is in Advent, Lent or Ordinary Time. Every Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This Laetare Sunday we are reminded that even in the midst of our desert experience, even in the middle of Lent, we have great reason to celebrate and rejoice: Jesus Christ has come, He has suffered and died for us, and is risen from the dead. Even now we anticipate that joy of Easter.

That news inspires us to push ahead and keep moving forward, no matter how difficult or discouraging things have been. But more than that, this glimpse of the resurrection, this image of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead and calling us to eternal life with Him, is but a foretaste of all that He has in store for us in the days ahead.

God wants to make sure we do not miss that picture this Laetare Sunday. Look lovingly upon our Lord today; be inspired and encouraged for all that He is planning for you!

But in our Gospel this weekend we discover one of the greatest truths about our faith and the amazing, unfathomable love of God: that long before we kneel down in prayer, before we ever raise our eyes to heaven, He is already looking upon each one of us with great love.

This weekend’s Gospel, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, is such a familiar and beautiful story. That young man demands his father’s inheritance and soon goes and squanders it all on a life of dissolute living, finding himself in a foreign land; he is hungry, alone and in dire need. It is a tragic picture of sin and one we have all experienced in one way or another. And the son does what, hopefully, all of us have done before. He comes to his senses and decides to go back home. Realizing how very well he had it in his father’s house, he makes his way back…but before he ever reaches that destination, before he ever sets his eyes upon his father, his father sees him!

Jesus, in St. Luke’s Gospel, tells us:

While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him and was filled with compassion.
—Luke 15:20

While he was still a long way off…

There are really only two possibilities for what Jesus describes in this Gospel. Either the father got lucky; he just happened to be looking out the window at the exact moment the son came around the bend or up over the hill (not very likely).

Or, the father stood by that window every day…waiting…Every day he stood by that window and looked out over the pathway that led to the horizon…everyday, he watched and waited, saying to himself, “Today. Maybe today my son whom I love, who has become lost, will be found and come back home…Maybe today.”

And so, suddenly, when that son finally appears, the father simply cannot help himself! He rushes out to meet that young man and embraces him, welcoming him back home.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Father gazes upon you and I in the same way. He sees us long before we ever see Him. He is gazing on you here. Even now.

I believe the challenge our Lord offers to us this Laetare Sunday is simple. If it is true that He is gazing at us, if He is truly looking at us even now, even here, with great love…don’t move! Do not move away at all from that gaze! Remain under the loving gaze of God the Father and ask for the grace to stay there throughout the rest of this Lenten season.

When we pray, we remain under the gaze of our loving Father. St. Teresa of Avila—whom I love because she is amazing—writes to her sisters that God is constantly looking at them with great love and when they pray, they should simply look back at Him, love for love. Prayer keeps us under the gaze of God.

So do the Sacraments. Remain close to God this Lent through frequent reception of the Eucharist, and through frequent confession. St. Paul encourages us this morning, in our second reading:

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
—2 Corinthians 5:20

When is the last time you made a good sacramental confession and allowed the love of God to renew and cleanse you, to forgive you and set you free to forgive those around you? God challenges us, through prayer and the Sacraments, to remain close to Him, to look upon Him who continually looks at us with great love.

Secondly, if it is true that God desires to look upon you with love, than certainly He also desires to look upon your neighbor in the same way; your spouse; the people you encounter each day. Let us not be like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, getting in the way of the Father’s love for our brother. God desires to gaze with love upon those around you, and the challenge is clear: stay out of the way of that gaze!

Do everything you can to facilitate the relationship God desires with those around you and ask for the grace not to get in the way of that love through words and actions that might keep others from looking at the God who is always looking upon them.

Let us continue to rejoice together in this gaze of infinite love that the Father has turned upon us, always being inspired by His presence and encouraged in all that He has in store for us in the days ahead.

Laetare, Ierusalem, et conventum facite, omnes qui diligitis eam.

Rejoice, Jerusalem! Be glad because of her, all you who love her.

Rejoice, for her redemption is indeed at hand.

Two Paths, and One of Them Leads to Life

2010-02-14T11:44:00.003-05:00

(6th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year C; This homily was given on 14 February, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Jeremiah 17:5-8, Psalm 1 and Luke 6:17-26)

We are so blessed in the Catholic spiritual tradition to have a multitude of saints—doctors of the Church and teachers of the faith—who show us what it means to walk daily in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. They teach us how we can live in this life with our hearts and minds set on eternal life with God.

So often it is the mystics—St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Catherine of Siena, and even local spiritual masters from the Low Countries like St. Beatrice of Nazareth or St. Jan van Ruusbroec—that teach us about the way God works in the soul desiring to walk with Him. Very often they will mention the three ways or paths of the spiritual life: the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive.

In the purgative way God purifies and purges our souls from the attachments we have to sin. Those sins—many perhaps even mortal which could cause us to lose our eternal salvation—which we cling to or otherwise find ourselves falling into from time to time are cleansed from our souls and we become more and more free to choose God and say no to the enticements of evil. For most of us this is a lifelong process that will be complete only in our final purification in purgatory, but God invites us to begin already that spiritual cleansing which will draw us more completely to Him.

Then, made more free and purified, we are prepared for the illuminative way; God sheds His light into our souls and illumines the path before us. We desire not only to avoid sin and the occasions which lead us away from God but, more than that, we desire and long for virtue. We seek the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity; we fall deeper in love with Christ and want to live like He lived; to love like He loved. The Holy Spirit is living and moving in us and we are being led, willingly and with great earnestness, into eternal life and ever deeper into a real and growing relationship with the Holy Trinity.

Finally, at the end of our journey, we enter the unitive way. This is not a unique status offered to a few select individuals; union with God is the call and the goal of every single one of us baptized in Jesus Christ and living in Him. In heaven, please God, each of us will be united to God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—in an intimate and eternal relationship of love.

But the mystics teach us that we can share in that life already, even here. In their writings and poetry, their experiences of prayer (and even their sufferings) shared with us, they show us how God purifies and illumines, and can unite Himself to a soul even here, even now. Their words and examples are inspiring and they increase our own desire for the things of heaven right and a happiness that far transcends the limits of this earth.

If we look at the writings of St. Teresa of Avila we can see even more detailed descriptions of the spiritual life. In her book The Interior Castle she describes the soul as a crystal globe containing a magnificent castle. Deep within the heart of that castle resides the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.

Outside that castle, beyond the spiritual life of the soul, one finds vermin, snakes and creeping things squirming around inside the moat and in the darkness surrounding the castle keep. But once we have engaged our spiritual lives and entered within the confines of the castle we have turned from sin and begin to experience the life of grace. That is the first dwelling place. From there we journey, progressively deeper and deeper within, towards the very center or the seventh dwelling place where Christ resides. St. Teresa only reached this intimate of all unions towards the end of her life, but her account and her descriptions—like those of the purgative, illuminative and unitive ways—are remarkably inspirational.

Nonetheless, these descriptions of the mystical life can also become a difficulty and even a distraction on our spiritual journey. We can be all too tempted to gauge ourselves and try to guess exactly where we fit in at any given moment. Am I in the third dwelling place, or perhaps moving into the fourth? Am I beginning to experience illumination or am I still experiencing the purgative way at this time?

Another tendency—and never a good one—is to look at those around us and try to guess where they are in the spiritual life. We see someone who does not appear—to our own sensibilities and determinations—to have their spiritual act together. We might think, Ah, that person is definitely out there in the moat! Or maybe we will look at another person’s external tranquility and peace of soul and decide, Yes, she is certainly walking in the unitive way with God.

In my fourth year of theology I was able to take a course on the spiritual life with a very wise and holy Dominican priest. He shared with us an experience he had while still in the novitiate, preparing for priesthood. The novice master said to them:

There are only two ways and two levels in the spiritual life.
You are either in a state of GRACE…or you are NOT!

How vital is that very distinction! Everything else is gravy. Either we are in a state of sanctifying grace and God is drawing us into a deeper relationship with Him; the Holy Spirit is living and acting in and through us and preparing us for eternal life…or we are not in a state of grace but have fallen into sin and are in danger of being separated from God for all eternity.

We used to refer to that eternal separation as hell. Nowadays we do not refer to it at all. We do not talk about hell in the classroom or in the homily (God forbid). It does not come up in our social discourse or spiritual conversations. But that does not mean that it is no longer a real possibility and a danger for each one of us.

Jesus Christ talked about hell. Often. He did not talk about eternal separation from God because He was itching to shout out condemnation. He talked about it as a warning, to signal that there is indeed a path that leads away from God. If you are walking on that path, He tried to convey, then get off it! Get on the path and follow the way, instead, that leads to eternal life (see John 14:6).

If you look at the readings that we are given for this weekend—from Jeremiah the Prophet, the responsorial psalm, Psalm 1, and the Gospel of St. Luke—all of them distinguish clearly between these two paths.

Jeremiah begins with the unhappy statement, “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5). Cursed. That is a very stark way to begin our readings this weekend, no? He says that such a one, who leaves the Lord behind and places all his trust and efforts in the human family alone, will be like a “barren bush” in the dessert which will simply wither away and die. That is not the right path, Jeremiah is communicating in the strongest of terms!

But, he goes on, “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:7). Then using the same words and imagery that we find in Psalm 1 this weekend he beautifully describes that person as a fertile tree planted beside the running water (Jeremiah 17:8; Psalm 1:3). It bears fruit in season and out of season. In the heat of the day or the dead of winter, that tree gives life in abundance, expressing the life of God and the life of grace to any and all that come in its path.

This is the tradition, says our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI (in his book Jesus of Nazareth) that Jesus Christ is drawing off this morning in St. Luke’s account of the Beatitudes. You may notice that St. Luke’s account is different from St. Matthew’s. In St. Matthew’s Gospel Jesus goes up on the high mountain and gives the people eight Beatitudes, eight blessed ways of following Him. In St. Luke Jesus does not go up the mountain but He remains on the plain. He is on level ground—leveling with His disciples, and with us, about the spiritual life—and he gives us not eight Beatitudes but only four. And then He gives us four “woes.”

Beginning with the blessings, He says, “Blessed are you who are poor…Blessed are you who are now hungry…Blessed are you who are now weeping…Blessed are you when people hate you…” (Luke 6:20-22). His words are somewhat disturbing. We do not usually think of these things as blessings. But they are not nearly as disturbing as the following statements:

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.
—Luke 6:24-26

“These words,” says our Holy Father, “terrify us” (Jesus of Nazareth, pg. 96). If you are disturbed by Jesus words this morning, then, you are in great company! And the reason why they disturb and terrify us is because most all of us want those things. What on earth is so wrong with wanting to be filled and content in this life? What could possibly be wrong with laughter? Why would we not want a bigger bank account to take care of our families and loved ones? What is wrong with these things?

To understand the “woes” and the beatitudes in St. Luke’s Gospel we have to look at the second “woe.” He says, “Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry.” The word for “filled,” in the Greek language, denotes an action that is completed and can never be increased further. To be filled in the sense that Christ is speaking of means to have a bank account that, however substantial it may be for now, can never be added to again. It is like having a brand new computer that is fast and effective, but can never again be upgraded or replaced. In ten years it will be slow and useless.

So Christ is not saying “woe” to these people simply because they have money or laugh or are filled with many good things. He is saying “woe” to them because that is all they have! They are so filled with the things of this life that they have left no room at all for the things of eternal life. They have left no room for the spiritual life or the Kingdom of God. Woe to them!

But blessed are the ones who are poor and needy, and who know it. They have lots of room for God. Blessed are the ones who are weeping and struggling and know that this world alone can never satisfy them. They are wide open to the life of grace that God offers and the promise of an eternal life of infinite bliss. Blessed are they! Blessed are they who are hungry and who thirst for a better life than this one. They have plenty of room to be filled completely with the Bread of Life and the Living Water of salvation. Blessed are they who are hated by others for the sake of Jesus Christ. They will be in the best of company with the saints and the angels when they are counted among the faithful in the presence of God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, where are we walking in the spiritual life at this time? Jesus Christ calls out to each of us this weekend and beckons us on the path that leads to beatitude, to blessings and eternal life with Him. May we have the courage to leave all behind that does not lead us to this path, and may our interior castles be filled with light as Christ illumines us and draws us ever more deeply into a life united with Him for all eternity.

Light Through A Window

2010-02-07T15:14:00.004-05:00

(5th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year C; This homily was given on 7 February, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Luke 5:1-11)

In our Gospel for this weekend we have what may very well be the most insincere prayer recorded in Sacred Scripture. I do not mean that the person praying it is insincere. On the contrary, St. Peter is one of the most sincere followers Christ encountered on this earth. Yet the plea he offers to Christ in St. Luke’s Gospel this morning is one that he, in his heart of hearts, would never, ever, have wanted Christ to answer.

The scene is compelling. Peter and his confreres have been fishing all night; they have caught nothing and they are tired. Christ urges them on nonetheless: “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4). Peter heeds that call…perhaps reluctantly…and then suddenly upon seeing such a miraculous return, and finding both boats filled with fish, he begins to understand: this is no ordinary teacher, no mere prophet. This is the Christ, the Lord!

His reaction is understandable and not at all surprising as he recognizes Who this man is and how very unworthy he himself is. And then he prays:

Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.
—Luke 5:8

Now how realistic is that prayer? Remember, this is before St. Peter has seen Jesus walking on the water. They are in a boat! Where does he expect Christ to depart to? All he knows, in the immediacy of the moment, is that he is in the middle of the sea, in a boat, with God! He is overwhelmed by the recognition of his own sinfulness and the splendor and majesty of Christ. His voice pleads with Christ to leave him alone but we know, deep inside, what Peter is really thinking: Lord, please do not ever leave me! Please, Lord, do not ever go away!

It is, in many ways, one of the great paradoxes of the spiritual life: the closer we get to Christ the more we come to realize our own sin and unworthiness before Him…and the more we long, deep in our hearts, to never, ever be separated from Him, even for an instant.

Thank God that not all our prayers are answered! Christ has no intention of answering St. Peter’s request for even the slightest bit of distance or a single moment of time. He does not move one millimeter away from the fisherman from Galilee, but instead draws him into a life that will be intimately connected to Himself from that day forward.

But how do we react when our desire to be close to Christ, and the fruits of our growth in the spiritual life, reveal our sinfulness and how very far we are from the perfection God is calling us to? Do we perhaps, like St. Peter, respond by a withdrawal on the surface level? How very important that we “put out into deep water,” and go deeper with Christ so that He can reveal in us what is deep within the human heart: that innate longing we have for intimacy with Him.

St. John of the Cross, in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, talks about the soul’s union with God and beautifully describes it as light coming in through a window (Ascent, Book II, Chapter 5, #6-8). The cleaner and clearer the window, he says, the more complete the transformation of that soul will be in God.

Think about what it is like to look out into your back yard early in the morning or late in the day, with the sun shining on the grass or on the trees outside. The window looks clean enough. But let that same sunlight shine directly into that window at just the right angle and you can see all too clearly the smudges and streaks that have been there all along.

That is what it is like when Jesus Christ shines His light into our souls. The closer we get to the Light the more we can see all the smudges. But that is not the final goal of the spiritual life! We are not supposed to see all the faults and failings in our lives and then pull down the window shade in shame and disappointment (“Depart from me, O Lord!”). No, we are called to clean the window:

A soul makes room for God by wiping away all the smudges and smears of creatures, by uniting it’s will perfectly to God’s; for to love is to labor to divest and deprive oneself for God of all that is not God.

When this is done the soul will be illumined by and transformed in God. And God will so communicate His supernatural being to the soul that it will appear to be God Himself and will possess what God Himself possesses…Yet truly, it’s being (even though transformed) is naturally as distinct from God’s as it was before, just as the window, although illumined by the ray, has being distinct from the ray’s.

—The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, Ch. 5, #7

Is not this what we have always longed for deep within our heart of hearts? To be fully illumined and enlightened by the merciful love of God? To be totally transformed in Him? This is the Light that St. Peter longed for, even on that boat in Galilee, despite the words that came from his lips on that miraculous and meaningful encounter with Christ.

The same Christ is calling out to each of us today. He calls us to “put out into deep water” to go deeper with Him than ever in the spiritual life. Will we cling to Him in this coming week? Will we allow Him to clean our windows through prayer, the Eucharist, perhaps through a thorough and heartfelt sacramental confession? The light is shining on us this day. May it transform us into His very likeness and lead us on to the radiance of Christ.

Hope: The Killer of Giants

2010-01-20T16:58:00.008-05:00

David Dispatches Goliath
by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens

(Wednesday of the of the Second Week in Ordinary Time-Year 2; This homily was given on 20 January, 2010 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See 1 Samuel 17:31-51)

What would have possibly possessed young David, in our first reading today, to believe that he could come up against such a lethal, malicious enemy as Goliath…and win? How could he have entered into combat with that mighty Philistine so completely sure of the victory?

Was it perhaps the recklessness of youth? His radical inexperience? Maybe he simply had not seen enough of the battlefield to know how very dire his situation was?

Was it perhaps supreme confidence in his own skill and ability? Remember, this is the same David who will quickly become a leader of men on the battlefield; he will soon become a brilliant tactician and general; a great warrior king. Perhaps he sensed that already within himself, beckoning him on to excellence and honor in battle.

Or was it raw courage? Was he simply the most courageous man in Israel? Was that what compelled him to act so boldly against the insolence of the Philistine?

I am sure that all of those things would have played some part in his battle with Goliath. Yet I would argue, above all else, that David acted the way he did because he was one who practiced the theological virtue of hope.

Now allow me to qualify what I mean by that. I do not mean that he really, really “hoped” he would not get squashed like a watermelon! It was more than mere wishful thinking that ushered David into battle. I mean that he practiced hope in the deepest and most theological sense of the word.

St. John of the Cross, in many of his works, writes about the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. He says that these are what enable us to be united to God. Hope, he goes on to describe, is the virtue that is most closely connected to the faculty of the soul we come to know as the memory.

That sounds a little strange, at first. Hope—the longing and desire deep within us which reaches out to grasp that which has not yet happened, that which lays in the future—this hope is connected to the memory we have of the things of our past.

Think about the people in your life that have been most faithful and loving, those gifts of God who have always been a source of comfort and strength. We look back and see that, time and again, they have been there for us and have never let us down. Suddenly we find ourselves in a difficult situation and we hold on unwaveringly to the belief that they will continue to remain with us and be there for us even now. That is the theological virtue of hope.

Of course, St. John of the Cross would insist that all our faculties—the memory, as well as the intellect and the will—are in constant need of purification. We must purge our memories, and allow God to purify them, of all that is not from Him, letting go of all that gratifies the self without God. Then we will have a pure hope which longs for and desires not many good things without God, but God first, and then all things in union with Him. We hope for the things that matter most because we recall that all the best things we have ever encountered come to us from God and the greatest of all these things is God Himself. That is a more complete picture of what St. John of the Cross would describe as hope.

David, in our first reading from 1 Samuel, practices that virtue beautifully. He stands before the king and tells him “Let your majesty not lose courage. I am at your service to go and fight this Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:32).

King Saul, for his part, is incredulous:

“You cannot go up against this Philistine and fight with him,” he tells David, “for you are only a youth, and he has been a warrior from his youth” (1 Samuel 17:33).

But David explains what he is convinced will happen by looking back to all that has happened in the past. He recalls how he would lead the flock of God and tend the sheep, and how the lambs were sometimes attacked by lions or bears. He defended them and always came out victorious.

But David is careful to see those moments of the past with his memory purified. He does not say, “I had the strength and skill to defeat those beasts, and so watch me wipe out this Philistine!” No, he does not insist on his expertise with a sling and a stone, even though that is ultimately what he will use to defeat the enemy. Instead David looks back and recalls things as they really were and insists that the victory is one that belongs to God: “The Lord,” he says. That is who will make all the difference:

The Lord, who delivered me from the claws of the lion and the bear, will also keep me safe from the clutches of this Philistine.
—1 Samuel 17:37

It is not David’s strength or his ability which will make the decisive difference here, but the Lord. Goliath may have the experience and power to crush young David but he is no match for almighty God! He discovers that quickly. David’s undying hope is the killer of giants, and the one weapon that no enemy can withstand.

Where do we most need to grow in the theological virtue of hope in our own lives right now? We, who have so many enemies in the Christian life, so many distractions and setbacks that keep us from growing in Christ and living for His Kingdom, are called to have a mighty hope which has the power to anchor our souls in God (see Hebrews 6:19).

How is God challenging us to purify our memories and to recall more deeply all the moments of His faithfulness and love toward us? We who have been forgiven so often by God, who have always been granted the grace and help we needed, who are constantly given light and peace when we need it most, whenever times are dark or difficult; we can trust most assuredly that the same God will be there for us now and always in the days to come.

May we learn well from David that—whatever insurmountable obstacles are before us, whatever Goliaths we encounter—hope is the killer of giants and the surest path to the promises that God offers to us today and always.

Advent...Yum!

2009-12-02T06:38:00.005-05:00

(Wednesday of the of the First Week of Advent-Year C; This homily was given on 2 December, 2009 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Isaiah 25:6-10, Psalm 23 and Matthew 15:29-37)

Our readings for this Wednesday of the First Week of Advent are absolutely delicious! The Church provides for us this morning scrumptious Scriptures, delectable tidbits to munch on as we begin this Advent Season.

In Isaiah the Prophet, our responsorial psalm and in St. Matthew’s Gospel the focus today is on food. If you are hungry and thirsty for God then you have come to the right place!

Isaiah, who is our great prophet of hope every Advent, talks about the banquet of our salvation. He says that God will provide for us a delicious banquet “on this mountain” (Isaiah 25:6, 7, 10). What mountain is that? The one great mountain for the people of Israel to which Isaiah is referring is Mount Zion, Jerusalem:

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised
in the city of our God.
His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation,
is the joy of all the earth.
Mount Zion, in the far north,
the city of the great King.
—Psalm 48:1

Isaiah speaks of the "veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations" (Isaiah 25:7). He calls it by name: death. Death, in all its sorrow and despair, all its darkness and discouragement, God will destroy all of that “on this mountain.” And in its place He will provide for us a banquet:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy rich food and pure, choice wines.
—Isaiah 25:6

Yum! Isaiah reminds us that our salvation from death and the banquet of eternal life is not just a theological principle nor is it only a spiritual promise; it is something palpable, even physical. The God of heaven takes on human flesh and dwells among us. Isn’t that what we are celebrating here this Advent? Our salvation comes walking—quite literally—into our lives and takes His place “on this mountain.”

St. Matthew tells us this morning how Christ, the great King Himself, stands on the top of the mountain and breaks the bread that will be miraculously multiplied to feed the hungry crowd. It is a foreshadowing and a preparation for the gift of His body and blood to us in the Eucharist. Yet it is also a symbol for the sacrifice that He will make for our salvation on another mountain, Mount Calvary.

On that mountain Christ will allow His body to be broken on the altar of the cross and His blood to be poured out in love for the life of the world. That is the mountain where death is destroyed forever, the place where the veil which had veiled all peoples is lifted once and for all. Each time we gather for the celebration of the Eucharist we remember and truly make present that sacrifice. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross is re-presented to the Father and we come to recognize what the Psalmist meant this morning when he said:

You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes…my cup overflows.
—Psalm 23:5

While the powers of darkness, the powers of Satan and of evil are constantly surrounding us and working so very hard to separate us from each other and separate us even from God, even then Christ the great King is spreading a table before us to nourish us and give us strength.

Have you thought of that lately? Has it occurred to you that in the midst of so many discouragements, so many disappointments and amidst all the tensions and difficulties that surround us all each day, God breaks into our lives to give us His strength? It is in the presence of those foes—whatever burdens we face each day—that God has set up His table on this mountain to give us His body and His blood; to provide a banquet of salvation even here, even now.

An important question we must ask ourselves this morning, though, is:

Am I prepared for that banquet?

Am I acquiring a taste for the things of God in my life?

Because the banquet of salvation and the things of God do not come automatically. They are indeed an acquired taste. We cannot drink deeply of the things of this world and eat richly from the table of this world and then also expect to be fully nourished at the banquet table of Christ.

Where are we being called to let go of the world and its pleasures a bit more this Advent? It might be a good thing, or even many good things that we are eating and drinking, but too much of a good thing can sometimes take us further away from the good God!

How is God challenging us to acquire a taste for the things of heaven and the drink deeply from this well and eat eagerly from this table where we are fed, nourished and strengthened with the bread of life and the cup of our eternal salvation?

How are we being called to acquire a taste for that heavenly banquet by being more attentive to the things we say to, or about, one another? Does our language and our speech build up the people around us or does it tear them down and devour?

Today let us be fed by Christ and strengthened in the Eucharist so that we may be all the more prepared to receive Him in the many ways He will come to us this Advent.

St. Catherine of Alexandria and Sedes Sapientia

2009-11-25T05:30:00.005-05:00

St. Catherine of Alexandria by Caravaggio,
from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, Spain

(Wednesdayof the of the Last Week in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 25 November, 2009 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See Daniel 5:1-28 and Luke 21:12-19)

This morning the Church celebrates the Feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria. A fourth century virgin and martyr, St. Catherine not only had a great love for Christ and great love for the Church; she was also a brilliant philosopher, a true lover of wisdom. She is the patron saint of philosophers.

There is a remarkable story about St. Catherine who denounced the emperor (Maxentius, or perhaps his father Maximian; hagiographers are not quite sure) for persecuting Christians. Although the emperor could have killed her on the spot, instead he tried to refute her arguments but found himself unable to match her sharp intellect. Therefore he gathered fifty philosophers, intelligent minds from throughout the kingdom, thinking they would be able succeed where he had failed. He was wrong.

When the arguments were all over and the conversation complete, they all converted to the Christian faith! In retaliation the emperor had them burned alive before executing St. Catherine, as well. The words of Christ spoken in this morning’s Gospel can be applied quite directly to St. Catherine of Alexandria:

They will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over to synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name. It will lead to you giving testimony.
—Luke 21:12-13

In a real and vital way, we also see Jesus’ words on wisdom taking flesh in the person of St. Catherine:

Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.
—Luke 21:14-15

St. Catherine was not able to testify and bear witness to Christ or convert her adversaries because she was the brightest girl in the kingdom (although she probably was). She was a powerful and effective witness for Christ because she was open to the wisdom of God which comes from above. She was docile to a divine knowledge which enabled her to speak courageously and clearly in the midst of trial and tribulation.

Is that not what we find in the first reading this morning in the prophet Daniel? He is the man who can read the writing on the wall. He knows how to unlock the secrets hidden in dreams and visions and to understand the difficulties and complexities of his time. But he did not accomplish all those things because he was the most intelligent captive in Babylon (although he probably was). In fact, it is King Belshazzar himself, who does not even believe in the God of Daniel, who tells us why Daniel has such wisdom:

I have heard that the Spirit of God is in you, that you possess brilliant knowledge and extraordinary wisdom.
—Daniel 5:14

Daniel had the Spirit of the living God in him. He was a man docile to the power of the Spirit and, like St. Catherine of Alexandria, he was able to surrender himself to a wisdom which was beyond him. Only when we can do that will we fully realize the potential of what God wants to reveal to, and in, us.

In his encyclical Fides et Ratio, our late Holy Father, John Paul the Great, spoke of the beauty and the dignity of philosophy and of holy wisdom. Philosophy is able to unlock so many of the secrets about humanity; it contributes greatly to the building up of the culture and serves to guide and order magnificently our way of life on earth.

But one of the challenges that philosophy faces is the temptation to separate itself from the ultimate truths revealed to us by God:

The Church considers philosophy an indispensible help for a deeper understanding of faith and for communicating the truth of the Gospel to those who do not yet know it…I wish to reflect upon this special activity of human reason. I judge it necessary to do so because, at the present time in particular, the search for ultimate truth seems often to be neglected.
—Fides et Ratio, #5

When philosophy and human wisdom set aside the ultimate truths revealed to us by faith and by God, then they themselves become impoverished. There is no competition between philosophy and theology, faith and reason. In the beginning of that encyclical, John Paul the Great says that faith and reason are like two wings upon which the human spirit soars to the heights to contemplate the truth. If we set aside the ultimate truths about who God is, who we are in the image of God, what the dignity of every human person is, then we are left with only one wing and as a result we remain earthbound.

At the end of the encyclical we are given a beautiful image that is near and dear to each of us in this chapel this morning: Sedes Sapientia. Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom. John Paul the Great says that is an image which helps us to understand what he is trying to communicate in Fides et Ratio.

The Blessed Virgin Mary was a woman completely docile to the Word that came to her. She did not fully understand it nor could she plumb the depths of all that God was beginning to reveal to her. Nonetheless she surrendered herself to God and, far from being less free and shackled, she became the very icon of freedom, fidelity and fruitfulness. Her “Fiat voluntas tua, Be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38), is the word surrendered in freedom which brings Christ into the world we live in.

Even so, says our late Holy Father, “when philosophy heeds the summons of the Gospel’s truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed it is then that philosophy sees all its enquiries rise to their highest expression” (Fides et Ratio, #108).

This is the goal of all philosophical thought and all theology, too: to be lifted up to the heights of all that God’s truth has in store for us here and in the world to come. Yet at times even theologians consider themselves or their own thought to be above the truths that have been revealed to us by God through the Magisterium, the teaching office of the Church. Here, too, does theology become impoverished.

Any theologian who considers himself or herself to be brighter than the teachings of the Church, above the wisdom which comes to us in a particular way through the Church’s Magisterium, is not doing theology; it would be closer akin to folly.

This morning we reflect upon our readings and ask ourselves:

Am I seeking the wisdom which comes from above?

Am I docile to the way that the Holy Spirit is leading me to enter more deeply, through philosophy and theology, into the mysteries of the Christian faith revealed to me by God?

Let us also long for and cry out for that same wisdom which came to the prophet Daniel and St. Catherine of Alexandria. May their merits and prayers, and those of Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, Sedes Sapientia, help us to soar upon the heights of God’s truth and allow us to testify to it and share it with a world that is constantly seeking and searching for God.

Conquered by Christ

2009-11-16T06:41:00.003-05:00

The Ressurection of Christ, by Peter Paul Rubens.
This magnificent Flemish masterpiece is found in

the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, Belgium.

(Monday of the of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 16 November, 2009 at the Chapel of The American College of the Immaculate Conception in Louvain, Belgium; See 1 Maccabees 1:10-63 and Luke 18:35-43)

This morning’s first reading, from the First Book of Maccabees, relates to us a rather tragic series of events. We hear about King Antiochus Epiphanes and his ruthless opposition to the people of Israel. In the days to come we will hear in great detail about the torture and malevolence of his regime. His plan was for nothing less than the utter obliteration of the chosen people of God.

But that is not the tragedy I am referring to this morning. There is another, related tragedy mentioned in our first reading: that before Antiochus ever set out against the people of Israel there was already opposition from within, and a plan for their own demise:

In those days there appeared in Israel men who were breakers of the law, and they seduced many people, saying: “Let us go and make an alliance with the Gentiles all around us; since we separated from them, many evils have come upon us.”
—1 Maccabees 1:11

They saw, in the political climate of their day, an opportunity for advancing their own ends, even though it would come at the expense of the way of life God had called them to. 1 Maccabees relates how “they covered over the mark of their circumcision and abandoned the holy covenant” (1 Maccabees 1:15), taking on the way of life of the Gentiles among whom they lived.

This clever and advantageous way of life was then introduced to King Antiochus, who was more than willing and able to carry it out. The tragedy, of course, is that the people of Israel should have known better. They knew full well they were called by God to be holy. Instead they chose themselves over the way of life God had shown them, and soon the entire nation would suffer.

In our Gospel this morning we find that same internal dynamic, albeit to a much lesser extreme, in the story of the blind man who calls out to Christ for healing.

“Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” (Luke 18:38), that man cries out as he hears that Jesus is passing by. “Son of David,” of course, is a Messianic title; this man knew his theology! He knew that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the One who would come to save Israel; to open the eyes of the blind and set the prisoners free.

Nonetheless, the blind man cannot see the Messiah. He cannot reach out and touch Him or find his own way to the Christ, so he does the only thing he can: he cries out, over and over again, for help.

Tragically, the very people walking with Christ, the ones right out in front, do not do a single thing to help him. Instead, we are told, they try to stop him. They rebuke him and tell him to be silent. St. Augustine says that these represent our fellow believers in Christ who can sometimes become obstacles in the spiritual life (St. Augustine, Sermon 351). Through their discouragement or perhaps their actions and decisions they block the way for us to reach the source of healing and strength in Christ.

Yet at this point in the Gospel Christ does something that could easily go unnoticed. In response to that blind man calling out for help, Christ initially does…nothing. He does not reach out to him, nor does He move an inch in that blind man’s direction. No, instead, perhaps sensing a deeper crisis of blindness in the people walking with Him, He suddenly turns to them and orders them to bring the blind man to Him. He wants them to reverse the direction they are moving in and to go, spiritually speaking, in the opposite direction.

The great Protestant theologian, Dietrich Bonheoffer, says that on the battle field of life there are no rusty swords. We are either fighting for Jesus Christ—in all of the little and big decisions of our lives—or we are fighting against Him. The way we live and how we choose to treat those around us makes a difference in our spiritual lives and in our relationship with God.

This morning we can ask ourselves, “Which side am I fighting for? Which direction am I moving in?” Because when we look at these readings today and reflect carefully upon them, we should be able to recognize that the greatest enemy and adversary of our spiritual lives is not necessarily the one we find hardest to love or the person we seem to always be “bumping into” every day. Very often the enemy keeping us, and perhaps others, from spiritual growth is us.

That is the enemy who needs to be conquered, over and over again, each and every day, by Jesus Christ. We must allow ourselves to be conquered by Him and even long for it, because He is the only one who can truly conquer us with pure love, however painful that healing may be.

This morning Christ comes to us in the Eucharist to conquer us with His radical self-gift, His own body and blood which he sacrificed on the cross and now gives to us so that we, too, may become true gifts to the Father and to those around us.

Are we willing to be conquered by Christ?

Are we willing to allow Him to transform us in the furnace of His divine love?

If so then we, too, can be the people to whom Christ speaks in the Gospel this morning, the ones called to bring to the Messiah all who are blind, broken and hurting. May we bring them, and ourselves, before the Son of David so that our eyes may be opened and we may truly be made new in Him.