Re-Creation and the Holy Spirit

(Pentecost Sunday-Year C; This homily was given 27 May, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Acts 2:1-11 & John 20:19-23)

One of the first stories we learn from the Bible as children is the Story of Creation that we find in the Book of Genesis. We are all familiar with those opening words: In the beginning.

The author of Genesis relates how:

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the earth.
—Genesis 1:1-2

The Hebrew word for that mighty wind is ruah, and it means spirit or wind of God. By no means is it merely a strong gust of wind. The ruah, or the wind of God, has the power to enter directly into that formless wasteland, that primordial chaos and the abyss of darkness, to bring order and light.

Genesis continues to describe how God then separates the light from the darkness, the night from the day, the land from the sea. He makes the plants and various animals and creeping things. But finally, as the capstone and the pinnacle of creation, he fashions man.

We read about how God personally creates man out of the clay of the ground, and then He breathes into him the “breath of life;” God puts His own life-breath into the man, and he becomes a living being.

The Story of Creation is a powerful and beautiful story of God’s plan for the human family; it evokes a sense of that original paradise right here on earth.

But we also know the rest of the story: How that paradise was lost through original sin. Suddenly sin and death entered into God’s perfect creation, and the chaos and darkness crept in as God had never intended. Our human nature, and creation along with it, had become tainted.

The Gospel of St. John is, in many ways, a response to that fall of man and corruption of creation. It has been referred to as the “Story of the Re-creation,” because of the similarities to the Book of Genesis.

St. John begins his gospel with the very same words we find in that original creation narrative: In the beginning.

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
—John 1:1

Then John describes how “the word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God became man and suddenly everything changed. He brought hope where there had been despair and order where chaos reigned. Christ restored our vision when He opened the eyes of the blind (Chaper 9), and showed Himself master over the chaos of this world by walking across the stormy sea (Chapter 6).

But the high point of the story of re-creation for St. John is found in the gospel for this Feast of Pentecost. The disciples are in the upper room, huddled together behind locked doors. Most of them have failed Christ in one way or another. They are filled with fear of what may happen to them.

Suddenly Jesus enters into their own private darkness and says to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). Even as Christ was the light of the world and the source of hope and promise of peace to the world, even so will these disciples be.

Jesus then does something that, at first, would seem very odd to us. St. John says, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22).

The word St. John uses for Christ breathing on the disciples is the very same word used in Genesis to describe how God breathed new life into man. John wants to make sure that his audience understands that Christ is re-creating the disciples, and then through them, renewing the face of the earth.

We see that even more powerfully in the first reading for this weekend, from the Acts of the Apostles. The disciples are all gathered together in one place when a strong, driving wind rushes upon them. Reminiscent of the ruah, the wind over the earth at the dawn of creation, the Holy Spirit comes upon the early Church with great power. God sends the Holy Spirit upon them in the appearance of those tongues of fire, and then sends them out to proclaim the Good News to all the nations.

This is Pentecost, the power of God and nothing less than the re-creation of the world. On that day the Church was born, the hearts of the disciples were set ablaze, and God changed the course of human history.

But as we celebrate this great Feast of Pentecost here in 2007, we can ask ourselves:

Where do we most need the Holy Spirit in our world today?

Where do we find the chaos and the darkness in our own world and in our own lives?

In Iraq, and in the Middle East?

In the United States?

In our own families and our own personal lives?

Where has the darkness and the chaos crept into our own world? We need that same power of God in the Holy Spirit, the power that alone brings light, peace and order to a world that has slipped off-course in so many ways. Are we open to the Holy Spirit in our own lives and willing to seek Him out incessantly for that great Gift of Himself?

Just yesterday we celebrated the feast of St. Philip Neri. St Philip is a sixteenth century priest who is often referred to as the Apostle of Rome because of his role in God’s work of renewal in the Eternal City at a time when many had lost their focus. Clergy, as well as laity, were much more concerned with the things of this earth, to the detriment of their spiritual lives. The importance of the Sacrifice of the Mass and the life of devotion were all but lost. Yet, St. Philip, through his apostolic zeal and radiant joy, was able to turn countless souls back to Christ.

There is a great story about St. Philip, who on the vigil of Pentecost had gone into a small cave or grotto and began to pray for an increase in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He wanted to experience more powerfully the Spirit of God in his life. Suddenly there appeared before him a globe of fire. It entered his mouth and then expanded his chest as his heart beat furiously within him.

St. Philip cried out for God to stop that experience, not because he was in pain, but because he was overwhelmed by joy. After his death, it was discovered that two of his ribs had been broken above his heart when it had expanded. They had re-formed, creating a lager space for the beating of his enlarged heart.

Today, on this Feast of Pentecost, we pray for that same increase in the power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives. Not that God would break our ribs, but that He would break open our hearts and souls, and fill them with that same fire of love that burned in the hearts of St. Philip Neri, and all the disciples on the first day of Pentecost.

We pray:

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
and enkindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your spirit and they shall be created.
And you shall renew the face of the earth.

Unity and Communion

(Seventh Sunday of Easter-Year C; This homily was given 19 & 20 May, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Acts 7:55-60 & John 17:20-26)

Our readings for this weekend focus on the theme of unity, what it means to be joined together as one. As we look at the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of St. John, it becomes clear that we are seeing two very different kinds of unity.

In the Acts of the Apostles we hear the account of the stoning of St. Stephen. St. Stephen was one of the first men to become a deacon in the early Church. He is also the first Christian martyr, the very first one to die for his faith in Christ.

St. Luke, the author of Acts, writes about how St. Stephen had been witnessing to the risen Christ and relating to the scribes and the religious leaders that the person of Christ was the one sent by God for our salvation. Finally, at one point, they had heard enough. St. Luke then describes how, suddenly:

They all “rushed upon him together. They threw him out of the city and began to stone him.”
—Acts 7:57-58

One of the older translations says that they rushed upon him “as one man”; they were that united against him in anger and hatred. And because they were so united, so completely of one accord, they were able to accomplish what they set out to do. They were able to kill St. Stephen…but that’s all they were able to do!

They had the power to kill his body, but it becomes remarkably clear in that description from the Acts of the Apostles that his soul is perfectly intact. He prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59), and he even prays for those who are stoning him to death.

As powerful a scene as that is regarding St. Stephen’s faith and the quality of his soul, it is just as revealing with regard to the unity of his attackers. The Crowd mentality or the mob mentality that can be seen all throughout human history—from the time of Christ, when they cried “crucify him”, even into our own time, with terrorism—is essentially a weak unity. It can take away life, but that is all it can do.

How different, the unity Christ calls us to! The oneness Christ calls us to—in Him and with each other—has the power not to take away life, but to bear fruit and bring new life to the world we live in. In His beautiful oration to the Father, Jesus prays for His disciples and for all of us:

That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they may also be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.
—John 17:21

Our unity in Christ is the same unity that Christ shares with the Father in the Holy Spirit. As we know, that unity was able to bear fruit by shedding forth the mercy of God, the love and the grace of God in the world we live in. Our unity in Christ, likewise, is able to bring new life where no life had been before. It is that fruitful, that powerful.


Obviously, that is a spiritual reality. Jesus says that we will live in Him and He will live in us (John 15:4; 17:23,26). The Holy Spirit lives in us by virtue of our Baptism. It is a deeply spiritual reality.

But Christ is not just a spiritual being. He is not a spirit or a ghost. In addition to being fully God He is also fully man, flesh and blood, body and soul, like us. Therefore the unity He calls us to is also a physical reality. It is a unity that we should be able to see, feel and experience.

That physical unity finds its greatest expression whenever we gather together here to celebrate the Eucharist. The reason why Christ gives us His body and blood is to make us one in Him, in the Eucharist.

St. Paul, writing to the Church at Corinth, says it all when he describes how they drink of the one cup, and eat of the one bread, and so become one in Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).

About six months ago, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a document entitled, Happy are Those Who are Called to His Supper. It explores this very mystery of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of unity in the life of the Church.

One of the topics covered in that document is a question many Catholics are sometimes asked: Who is able to receive communion in the Catholic Church? The document goes on to explain how those who are not in communion with the Catholic Church are not able, therefore, to receive the Sacrament of Communion for that reason. We share a common Baptism with our brothers and sisters of other Christian faith communities. We share their same love for Christ in the Scriptures and hold so many beliefs and doctrines in common.

However, we are not united in our understanding of the foundation of the Church by Christ. They do not accept the role of St. Peter as the head of the Apostles, and the successor of St. Peter in the Pope. They do not accept that structure of the Church regarding the Apostles and their successors in the bishops of the Church, from which we receive the gift of the Eucharist itself. Therefore, while we invite all to join with us in prayer at the Eucharistic table, not all are able to receive Communion in the Catholic Church.

For that matter, the bishops go on to say that there are certain circumstances in which even Catholics should refrain from receiving the Eucharist:

If we are no longer in the state of grace because of mortal sin, we are seriously obliged to refrain from receiving Holy Communion until we are reconciled with God and the Church.
— Happy are Those Who are Called to His Supper.

To go back to our CCD classes growing up, mortal sin is not something that simply happens to us by accident. It involves three things. Firstly, it must be what the Church refers to as “grave matter,” something serious enough to break our communion with God and with each other. Secondly, we must be aware that it is grave matter, to have the knowledge that we are dealing with something that serious in the moral life. Finally, we must be free to chose not to commit that sin, but nonethless go ahead and do so anyway.

We do not usually need a religion textbook or a course in moral theology to tell us when this has happened in our lives. We know when we have sinned against God or others in a serious or grave way. The Holy Spirit is the one who convicts us of sin and moves us towards repentance. That is why the bishops continue by saying:

Catholics who are conscious of committing any mortal sin must receive the Sacrament of Penance before receiving Holy Communion.

It is important to understand what is being said there. They are not saying that those in a state of mortal sin should stay away from Christ in the Eucharist. No, they are saying to those in a state of mortal sin: Be reconciled! Be reconciled to God and to each other, and then come to receive this great Sacrament of Communion.


One final aspect that is not mentioned in the bishops’ document on the Eucharist—I believe because it is rather obvious and perhaps goes without saying—is something that I mentioned at the beginning of this homily. Our communion and unity in Christ, far different from the crowd mentality that took away the life of St. Stephen, is able to bear fruit and bring new life to the world.

That is the reason we come together in the first place: so that we can be strengthened in the Eucharist and then go out and bear fruit in the world we live in. It is the reason why we hear those words at the end of every Mass:

“The Mass is ended, go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

How is God challenging us to be more united, more completely one than ever before, as we gather together for the Eucharist? And how are we called to bring the fruits of that unity to a world that desperately needs the new life of Jesus Christ?

Time in the City

(Feast of the Ascension-Year C; This homily was given 17 May, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Acts 1:1-12 and Luke 24:44-53)

In just a few short days we will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the “birthday of the Church.” The Feast of Pentecost is about the power of God in the life of the early Church; it is about the gift of the Holy Spirit and the remarkable work of God that coincides with that.

Today’s Feast of the Ascension is different. The Ascension is not so much about the power of God in the lives of the Apostles or the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. The Ascension is about the promise of power, and the promise of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ, in our readings this morning, teaches us the difference.

In both the Acts of the Apostles and St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples that they will receive from God “power from on high” (Luke 24:49) and the unprecedented gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5,8)… but not yet…not now.

Instead, He tells them to wait:

Stay in the city

until you are clothed with power from on high.
—Luke 24:49

He tells them

“not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait” (Acts 1:4).

Wait in the city.

Wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

And it is there in the city, while they wait without Christ and without yet the promised Holy Spirit, that they come to discover their own weakness; their own powerlessness; their own fear; and their own utter dependence upon God…so that, when the promised Holy Spirit does come, and sends them out to set the world on fire, they will remember that it was not their own power, but the power of God shining through their human weakness.

In these next few days we too will prepare to celebrate the great day of Pentecost, and the coming of the power of God from on high. But God invites us, too, in this next week and a half, to spend time in the city; time to recognize our own weaknesses, our own fears, our own powerlessness and our own utter dependency upon Him.

Let us pray for the grace to spend well this time in the city, that we may also come to appreciate the great power of God at work in us, and the power of the Holy Spirit shining through our human weakness.

What's in Your Temple?

(Sixth Sunday of Easter-Year C; This homily was given 13 May, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Revelation 21:10-23 & John 14:23-29)

One of the greatest opportunities of my life was the time I spent studying for the priesthood in the city of Rome. Living in the heart of Europe, I had plenty of chances to travel and see so many historic places.

I would always make it a point to spend some time in the basilicas or cathedral churches of the various cities I was able to visit. I remember the first time I entered St. Peter’s Basilica; I was overwhelmed by the size of it, the beauty and the majesty of the place. It gave me a remarkable sense of God’s presence and an awareness of the lives of the saints, many of whom were memorialized in that very Church.

You can tell a lot about a city from the cathedrals and churches that are found there. If you have ever been to any major city, in Europe or right here in the United States, you know that is true. But not all cities are alike, and not all churches are either.

I remember once, in my third year as a seminarian, I had the chance to travel with some classmates to Southern France. We came to the ancient city of Arles, which was in the midst of celebrating its annual festival, but the central focus was certainly not Christ or the lives of the saints. In fact, one of the main attractions of that city was bullfighting!

On the day we arrived a bullfight was taking place and thousands of people in that city had gathered in the local arena to watch it. Yet as we walked through the streets of that city over the course of the next several days, we were not able to find a single open church or Mass anywhere.

Finally we saw what appeared to be an old cathedral, but as we entered we realized it had long ago ceased to be an active church and had been turned, instead, into a museum. All of the side altars were still present, but the sacred altar stones had been removed and the altars were now covered with plywood.

But most disturbing of all was that each of the altars now displayed photographs of bullfights, depicting the various stages of that rather graphic sport as it was taking place. You could make out clearly where statues, icons and images of Christ would have been, but now there was quite a different focus and very different priorities in that “church.”

You really can tell a lot about a city by the churches and the places of worship that are found there!

In our second reading this morning, from the Book of Revelation, St. John describes the vision he had of heaven, and the capital city, the heavenly Jerusalem. He says:

The angel took me in spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.
—Revelation 20:10

He describes that city in great detail, how magnificent, brilliant and radiant it was. But then he goes on to say:

I saw no temple in the city…
—Revelation 21:22

No temple?! How is that possible? The capital city of heaven and there is no temple whatsoever, no place to worship God. But St. John continues to explain that there was no temple because:

…its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb.
—Revelation 21:22

God Himself is the temple. God is the place of worship for the people of the heavenly city. In the end, there will be no pilgrimages to St. Peter’s Basilica; we will not gather in cathedral churches at all. Those who worship God will dwell in Him. We will have a real and intimate relationship with God and that will be our worship.

But that real and intimate relationship is not one that begins at the end of this life, or the end of this world. We begin right here and now to dwell with God and to worship Him “in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Jesus Christ, in the gospel this morning, puts it this way:

Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
—John 14:23

And so, with that in mind, we can ask ourselves this morning: “What’s in your temple?” We have all heard the question on the TV commercial asking, “What’s in your wallet?” Well, today we can ask ourselves: What’s in your temple?

Are there things in our temple that do not belong there? Maybe not pictures of bullfights, but are there things that would distract us from that intimate relationship God is calling us to? Are we holding onto any habits or personal sins that keep us from growing in our faith? Is there anything in our temple that needs to go?

Secondly, is there room for prayer in that dwelling place that we have with God? How important is prayer in our daily lives? Do we set aside time each day to be alone and quiet before God?

Finally, no cathedral or basilica would be complete without some special place for the Blessed Sacrament. Here at Our Lady of Mercy the tabernacle is right in the center of our church. The Catholic Church teaches that the Eucharist is the center of our lives; the Blessed Sacrament is the “source and summit of the Christian life” (Lumen Gentium, #11). Is He at the center of your life, guiding everything you do?

Once again, on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, we take a moment to answer that one simple question:

“What’s in your temple?”

The Good Shepherd: Commitment & Sacrifice

(Fourth Sunday of Easter-Year C; This homily was given 28 & 29 April, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Ezekiel 34 & John 10:1-18)

Today we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday, and that title, of course, is taken from the tenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Jesus announces to the people of Israel, and to all of us, “I am the Good Shepherd.”

That title for Christ may be very familiar to us as Christians, but for the people of Israel the image of a shepherd would have been literally charged with meaning. Remember it was Moses who led the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, across the desert, and into the Promised Land. But long before that, he had been a shepherd, “tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro” (Exodus 3:1).

King David, the greatest king in the history of Israel, was called by God when he was just a shepherd boy; God called him to be the shepherd and leader of the people. He would later reflect on the tender care and providence of God in his own life, and write “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.”

Yet it was the prophets who would eventually connect that image of shepherd not to a single man—Jacob, or Moses, or David—but to all the leaders of the people of Israel. One of the great promises of God in the Old Testament comes to us through the prophet Jeremiah, regarding the shepherds whom God will always provide for His people. God says, “I will give you shepherds after my own heart” (Jeremiah 3:15).

But Ezekiel brings into sharp contrast, around the time of the Babylonian Exile, how those shepherds of Israel, which God had appointed, were bad shepherds. They had not cared for the flock or looked after the people. Instead, they had only looked after themselves. God cries out to them, through the prophet Ezekiel:

You did not strengthen the weak nor heal the sick nor bind up the injured. You did not bring back the strayed nor seek the lost…
—Ezekiel 34:4

They had not led the people; as shepherds, they had not fed the people. Instead, they had only fed themselves. With a deep and haunting sense of justice, God says, “I swear I am coming against these shepherds.” No longer will they lead this people. Instead, God says, “I myself will do it!” I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep (Ezekiel 34:11).

I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled and I will strengthen the weak (Ezekiel 34:16).

And then He offers, through the prophet, a promise that would have been breathtaking to the people of Israel: I will appoint one shepherd over them to pasture them, my servant David; he shall pasture them and be their shepherd (Ezekiel 34:23). It was the promise of the Messiah, born of the house of David.

Into this context Jesus Christ comes and announces to the people of Israel: “I am the Good Shepherd.” It was the fulfillment of everything they had hoped for, everything God had promised.

In Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, they saw a man totally committed to the people of Israel, to feeding not Himself but the people with the word of God and the Bread of Life. Thousands came out to hear Him explain the Scriptures and proclaim the kingdom of God. He was totally committed to the people, and gave them His own body and His own blood in the Eucharist.

And in Jesus Christ they saw a shepherd willing to sacrifice Himself for the sheep. In that same tenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).

He was willing to sacrifice His own life on the cross, to suffer and die so that we could be forgiven, and so that He could say what we heard in the gospel this weekend:

I give them eternal life and they shall never perish (John 10:28).

That is the fullness of what Jesus means when He says, “I am the Good Shepherd,” and it is at the heart of what we celebrate today. It is also why the Church throughout the world today observes the 44th World Day of Prayer for Vocations. We believe that the same God who cared for and lovingly guided the Church at its foundation will continue to do so in our own day by providing the vocations to the priesthood and religious life that sustain the Church in every age.

In 1993, Pope John Paul II wrote the foundational Apostolic Exhortation on priestly formation called Pastores Dabo Vobis: I Will Give You Shepherds. He begins that document by quoting God’s great promise from the prophet Jeremiah: “I will give you shepherds after my own heart” (Jeremiah 3:15). It is a promise we can count on, and one that gives us tremendous hope. In fact, says Pope John Paul II, the commandments of God depend upon Him answering our prayers for more vocations!

God has commanded the Church to preach the gospel to all nations and to celebrate the Eucharist; to “do this in memory of me.” Those commandments are dependent upon the gift of the priesthood, which God has given, and will continue to give, to the Church (Pastores Dabo Vobis, #1). And in many places throughout the world, the Church is teeming with vocations.

In Africa, parts of Asia and South America, and in countries like Poland, there are so many priests that some are sent here to the United States to lead and guide our churches. In reality, we are experiencing here in our country what has often been called a “vocations crisis.” Why is that?

I do not think there are any easy answers to this question, but I would suggest that part of the problem has to do with the lack of value we place in our culture at this time on two of the things so evident in Christ, the Good Shepherd: commitment and sacrifice.

There is a lack of commitment in the culture we live in, and not just in relation to the priesthood. There is a lack of commitment in marriage between a man and a woman, “until death do us part.” There is a lack of commitment in relationships, in business, and in many other areas. Where there is a crisis in commitment, there is bound to be a crisis in vocations.

Secondly, our culture places a very low value on sacrifice. We live in a hedonistic society that places pleasure on a pedestal. It’s me first, and sacrifice second. It should not surprise us in the least that in a country where sacrifice and commitment are not valued enough, neither will there be much regard for vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

With that said, I would like to bring things to a much more personal level. I love being a Catholic priest! I love everything about it. Each day I thank God for the gift and call of the priesthood in my life. There are a thousand things about the priesthood that I love, but today I would like to share with you only two of them (I'll try to cover the other 998 next week!).

The first is commitment. I love being totally committed to Jesus Christ, and His Bride, the Church. I love being committed to teaching at the school next door, to visiting the hospitals and the homes of the people of this parish whenever I am called upon to do that. I love being totally committed to celebrating the Eucharist and proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ here in this place, day in and day out, week after week. I love that commitment. I am not constrained by that in the least. In fact, to be committed to those things gives me tremendous freedom and an indescribable joy!

The second thing I love about the priesthood? Sacrifice. I love the fact that my sacrifice means something to God. I love the fact that my “Yes” to God’s call in my life, and all the challenges that sometimes entails, that means something to God and to the people I serve. I love the fact that my struggles, my difficulties, my sufferings, together with your struggles, your difficulties, and your sufferings, can be united on that altar and joined together with the one sacrifice of Christ, and that means something.

I love the priesthood because that commitment and sacrifice gives meaning and purpose to my life and to the lives of those I am called to serve. And so today we join the Church throughout the world in praying to God for an increase in vocations to the priesthood, for all of the men whom God is calling to make that same commitment and that same sacrifice, which leads in the end to freedom and joy in Christ.

We also pray for all the men and women that God is calling to serve Him in religious life. In a particular way, we pray that God would continue His promise of providing the Church with “shepherds after [His] own heart,” and that He would help us all to place a greater value on commitment and sacrifice in our Church, our families, and in our own personal lives as we continue to listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd and follow Him to eternal life.

Restoration & Mission

(Third Sunday of Easter-Year C; This homily was given 22 April, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 21:1-19)

We celebrate this morning the Third Sunday of Easter, continuing to read the Gospel accounts of the appearances of Christ in the days immediately following the resurrection. The Easter mystery of the resurrection—Jesus Christ risen from the dead—is so central to our faith that the Church takes fifty days just to celebrate and ponder it.

In all the appearances of Christ to His disciples following the resurrection, there are always two things taking place: restoration and mission. Whether it be to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, or the disciples gathered together in the upper room, Jesus begins by restoring them from the state they are in, often one of brokenness and unbelief. Then He prepares them for mission, to go out and proclaim to the world that He is risen!

Our Gospel this morning—the third time Jesus appears to His disciples, according to St. John—reveals those aspects of restoration and mission in a powerful way in the life of St. Peter.

Ah, proud Peter! Remember it was Peter who had said to the Lord, at the Last Supper, “Though all may have their faith in you shaken, mine will never be” (Matthew 26:33). But then he had stood by the fire, warming himself along with the enemies of Christ, and had proceeded to deny his Lord and God three times. It was a bitter moment that he would never again forget.

However encouraged Peter may have been by the previous two appearances of the resurrected Christ, it is clear in our gospel that he is simply not himself. He is moving not forward in faith to proclaim the resurrection but backwards instead, retreating into what would have been most familiar to him. He says to the other disciples: “I am going fishing.” That is what Peter knew best; it was what he did before he met Jesus. Many of the other disciples were also fishermen. They respond, in turn, “We also will come with you” (John 21:3).

And it is right there, in the midst of all that is familiar, that Jesus Christ reveals Himself to them…yet they do not know that it is Jesus. They encounter that Stranger on the shore, who tells them to cast their net off the right side of the boat. They had been fishing all night and had caught nothing, but they listen to Him anyway.

Suddenly their nets are at the point of breaking and all the disciples are amazed at that tremendous catch of fish…except for St. John the Beloved Disciple. He alone is not caught up with the fish because he alone is able to recognize that this has happened once before!

Remember when St. Peter, St. John and many of the disciples had first met Jesus? It was in Peter’s boat. Jesus had come aboard and began to teach the people standing on the shore. Then He turned to Simon Peter and said, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4). On that occasion, Simon had at first protested: “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets” (Luke 5:5). Then they had caught so many fish that the nets were tearing and Simon Peter was hooked! He, and the other disciples along with him, began to realize just who this Stranger was.

And now, in this morning’s Gospel, St. John remembers that remarkable day. He sees it taking place all over again and he immediately cries out to Peter: It is the Lord (John 21:7). Peter, it’s Him! It is Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, and He is appearing to us again! Suddenly the entire direction of that Gospel changes. St. Peter is no longer going backward and withdrawing. Now he dives right in, literally!

All the disciples go ashore, and no one questions any longer who this Stranger is. They all know that it is the Lord. That is when Jesus invites them to “Come, have breakfast” (John 21:12). He invites them to share in an intimate meal with Him. And suddenly, at that meal, Jesus again does something very familiar, something they all would have recognized. St. John tells us He:

“Took the bread and gave it to them” (John 21:13).

Just as He had done in the miracle of the loaves and the fish. He took the bread and gave it to them, and they, in turn, fed over 5,000 people. Just as He had done on the night before He died, at the Last Supper. He took the bread, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body…” They would never have forgotten how He gave Himself to them on that night, and here He is, doing that very same thing again, restoring those disciples at that meal and preparing them to go forth on the mission of proclaiming the Good News of the resurrection.

And finally, Jesus enters into that beautiful dialogue with St. Peter: “Peter, do you love me?” Three times He asks Peter that question, one for each of the times that Peter had denied Him! Jesus restores St. Peter, and then He sends him out on mission: Tend my sheep. Feed my lambs. Peter, if you love me, then go where I am sending you! Go and serve those whom I have entrusted to you!

This is a very powerful gospel, and a very timely one, as well. The world we live in is in desperate need of being restored. Now, more than ever, are we in need of the restoration and new life that God alone can give.

Our country has just experienced, in this last week, the worse shooting tragedy in our nation’s history. It would be impossible to express the amount of pain and suffering that is pouring out from the community at Virginia Tech. And yet, even in the midst of that, we should not be surprised to find Jesus Christ entering directly into that sorrow and grief. We should not be surprised to see Christ entering into the things most familiar to the families and loved ones of the victims there—friends, family members, communities, churches—and restoring broken hearts, restoring new life and restoring hope. He does it all the time.

The people of Virginia Tech. have not been forgotten by God. And neither have we. We gather here this morning, in what is for us the familiar place. How many times have you listened to the Gospel proclaimed here? Or knelt here in prayer to ask for help for yourself or your family, to give thanks to God, to lift up your heart to Him?

This is the familiar place where God comes to us, and makes Himself known. It is where He enters directly into our lives and says to us what He says to the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias:

“Come, have breakfast” (John 21:12). Come, and share in this meal together. Come, eat My Body and drink My Blood. Come here to this place, and experience the power of the Eucharist, the power of the resurrection, and be restored…and then go out and share that new life and new hope with a world that is in desperate need of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

2,000 years ago Christ came among His first disciples and He restored them to Himself and then sent them out to set the world on fire. Where is He sending us this week, as we leave this place restored and renewed and ready to proclaim—with our words and actions—that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead?

Divine Mercy: The Water and The Blood

(Divine Mercy Sunday-Year C; This homily was given 14 & 15 April, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 19:31-37; 20:19-31)

Just two weeks ago, on Passion (Palm) Sunday, we watched the movie The Passion of the Christ next door in the school auditorium. After that movie we had time for questions and answers and someone inquired about the peculiar scene towards the end, when one of the soldier takes his spear and pierces the side of Christ.

That scene, of course, is taken directly from the Gospel of St. John. In Chapter 19 of that Gospel, St. John describes how, before taking Christ down from the cross, “one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out” (John 19:34).

The Fathers of the Church, and St. Thomas Aquinas after them, describe how that blood and water represent the sacramental life of the Church. The water is the symbol for the water of baptism, in which we are renewed and given new life in the Holy Spirit. The blood, of course, is the blood of Christ given to us in the Eucharist, the blood of the “new and everlasting covenant” in which we are sustained and nurtured in our Christian faith.

As we heard in the opening prayer for this Mass on the feast of Divine Mercy:

God of mercy, you wash away our sins in WATER, you give us new birth in the Spirit, and redeem us in the BLOOD of Christ. As we celebrate Christ’s resurrection increase our awareness of these blessings, and renew your gift of life within us.

Mel Gibson, in The Passion of the Christ, incorporates that full sacramental significance when he has the soldier standing directly beneath the body of Christ at the moment he pierces Him. That blood and water flow out directly towards the soldier, and in a mystical sense he becomes immersed in the sacramental life flowing from the crucified Christ.

That is a great image for the feast we celebrate today: the Feast of Divine Mercy. It was on February 22, 1931 that Jesus appeared to a simple, humble Polish nun named Sister Faustyna Kowalska. She would later become known as St. Faustyna. He was radiant, dressed all in white, and His right hand was raised in a blessing. With His other hand he indicated His side, where He was pierced by the soldier’s lance, and from that place there emanated two bright rays of light: one red, and the other pale blue. Again, that same significance of the water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist.

Jesus told her that He wanted that image, and the devotion to His Divine Mercy, venerated throughout the universal Church; a very tall order indeed! Yet today, some 75 years later, that image and this feast are being celebrated in churches throughout the world.

One of the obvious aspects of that Divine Mercy image and the scene from St. John’s Gospel is that the mercy of God comes to us—the forgiveness, the grace, the ineffable love of God—comes to us directly from Christ, but that mercy comes to us through the Church. No one, not even the saints nor the mystics, no one has a direct and exclusive line to God.

We do not baptize ourselves into new life; we receive baptism as the gift of God through the Church. We do not get the Eucharist on EBay, or the Blessed Sacrament through a catalogue. We gather together here, as the People of God, and it is through the sacramental life of the Church, through the grace of Holy Orders, that the Body and Blood of Christ become truly present on this altar and we receive Christ Himself as the Bread of Life.

God has given us a share in His own life in the sacraments—especially in the Eucharist— but that life comes to us through the Church that He established. This can be a very difficult thing for many people to accept in our culture today.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee, in a lecture he gave back in January at the North American College in Rome, summed it up well when he said, “Folks have trouble with the Church.”

Think of your own conversations with people over the last year. How many times have you encountered those who have no problems with Christ or with the Bible, but who are nonetheless indifferent, or even hostile towards, the Church? Archbishop Dolan continues:

“They want the king without the kingdom, Christ without His Church and for us as Catholics it’s a package deal.”

You cannot have the Head without the Body, or the Groom without the Bride. Christ has forever united Himself to His Bride, the Church. They cannot be separated.

In our gospel today, Jesus appears to the disciples after the resurrection, and He says to them: “Peace be with you”. Of course, they are terrified! They think He is a ghost, so He reassures them by showing them His wounds. He shows them His hands and His side, that they can see it is the same Christ who was crucified for them. And He repeats that same assuring greeting:

Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

The disciples are being given the very same mission as Christ had in the world. They are given the minsitry of forgiving sins and leading others to salvation and new life in God. Christ breathes on them, giving them the gift of the Holy Spirit, and He says:

Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.

Pope John Paul II calls this moment “one of the most awe-inspiring innovations in the Gospel” (Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, #29). It reveals that intimate link between Christ and His Church. The two cannot be separated.

The question we can ask ourselves on this Divine Mercy Sunday is: Where are we standing when it comes to Christ and His Church? Are we standing—like that soldier in The Passion of the Christ—in the stream of the sacramental life of the Church? Are we standing close enough to become immersed in the mercy of God?

Are we being renewed each day in the waters of baptism? All of us, by nature of our baptism, are called to holiness of life. That call must be answered on a daily basis, as we give ourselves over to Christ in all the aspects of our daily lives. Are we answering that call to holiness we received at baptism?

Are we immersed in the Eucharist? God gives us His own Divine life here in this Blessed Sacrament. The Church calls the Eucharist the “source and summit of the Christian life” (Lumen Gentium, #11; Ecclesia de Eucharistia, #1). It is the source of our strength, the place where we are renewed, and the summit, the God-ward direction in which we are going. Are we becoming more and more immersed in that mystery of the Eucharist as we continue to follow Christ?

Today, on this Feast of Divine Mercy, we pray in the words taken from the Diary of St. Faustina:

O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fountain of mercy for us, I trust in you! (84)

Road to Emmaus

Knights of Columbus Mass

Installation of Officers

(Easter Wednesday; This homily was given 11 April, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Luke 24:13-35)

The readings following Easter Sunday—all of Easter Week—are exciting readings. They are about new beginnings, the resurrection and a new start. We see the risen Christ engaging His apostles and early disciples and we listen to the Acts of the Apostles; we hear about the ones who would begin the proclamation of the resurrection. Easter week does indeed celebrate the very foundations of the Church.

Yet as we look at our gospel this evening, St Luke’s encounter of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, it is clear that those foundations seem rather shaky! The disciples are saddened by the excruciating memory of Good Friday, and downcast about the death of Christ because they “were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). What is worse, they have failed to believe the reports of His resurrection.

They begin to tell this Stranger about “some women from our group” who claimed Christ was alive, but they had been there themselves, and saw no such thing! Jesus upbraids them for being so slow to believe…but then He immediately begins to set in place a rock-solid foundation.

He goes back into the Scriptures, and begins to point out all the places that referred to Him. Later, those disciples will recall how their hearts were burning within them as Jesus spoke to them on the way.

Then comes the great moment of recognition: Jesus takes the bread and breaks it, and suddenly their eyes are opened! It is Him, and He is alive!

These days of Easter week are exciting, indeed. The foundation that Christ builds for these disciples, and this experience of the Risen One in the scriptures and in the Eucharist will be one that supports, nurtures and strengthens the Church for centuries to come.

Every Sunday, even up to our own time, this experience of word and sacrament continues to be the place where our lives take shape and are molded to be more and more like Christ. Tonight, we gather together in this Church to take up anew the St. Joseph’s Council of the Knights of Columbus, asking the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into this council that was begun years ago here in this parish community.

We ask God to guide us—tonight, as well as in the weeks, months, and years to come—as we build on that same foundation of the Scriptures and the Eucharist, that our hearts will burn within us as we hear His word proclaimed and as we are made one with Christ and with each other in the breaking of the bread.


The following newly elected officers of the St. Joseph’s Council Knights of Columbus at Our Lady of Mercy Parish were installed in a ceremony immediately following Holy Mass:

Sean Pauley, Grand Knight
Michael Murray, Deputy Grand Knight
Kevin McDevitt, Chancellor
Joseph Weaver, Financial Secretary
John Carne, Recorder
Michael Gallagher, Treasurer
Gil Bianchi, Advocate
Thomas Mahoney, Lecturer
James Coyle, Warden
Arthur Lisi, Inside Guard
Robert Vespia, Outside Guard
John de Giulio, Trustee
John Morris, Trustee
Richard Ohnmacht, Trustee

Rev. Christopher Mahar, Chaplain

Quo Vadis?: The Direction of the Resurrection

(Easter Sunday-Year C; This homily was given 8 April, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 20:1-9 and Colossians 3:1-4)

“Domine, quo vadis?” Lord, where are you going? Those are the words of St. Peter spoken to Christ in a legend regarding the early Church in Rome. According to that legend, St. Peter, discouraged and fearful amidst the persecution of the Church under Emperor Nero, made a decision to flee the city.

As he was leaving, he saw coming toward him the Risen Christ. In his amazement he dropped to his knees and said, “Domine, quo vadis?” Lord, where are you going? Christ responded:

“I am going into the city, to be crucified anew, since you have chosen to abandon my people.”

At that, Peter realized that he had been going in the wrong direction; he turned around, went back into the city of Rome, and was himself crucified for his faith in Christ and his leadership in the Church. [That last part of the story is no legend; it is an historical fact. Peter was literally crucified upside down, not considering himself worthy to die in the exact same way as Christ.]

Our gospel this morning, St. John’s account of the empty tomb, is about going in the right direction. In fact, we could call it “the direction of the resurrection.”

Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb early in the morning and discovers that the stone has been removed. She is the first one to encounter the evidence of the resurrection, and her immediate reaction is to run. But she does not run into the tomb, in joy and exaltation. Instead she runs away from the tomb and away from the mystery of the resurrection.

Mary, quo vadis? Where are you going? Like St. Peter in that legend, Mary is going in the wrong direction (and not just geographically). She is not running to share the joyful news of the resurrection; she thinks Jesus is still dead. Worse still, she thinks that His body has been stolen! She says to St. Peter and St. John:

They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.
—John 20:2

They. We don’t know exactly who “they” are, but Mary is convinced that “they” have taken the body of Christ. Was it the Romans? The scribes and Pharisees? One of the concerns of that time period was that grave robbers would come in the night and steal the costly burial clothes, carelessly discarding the body of the deceased. We don't know. Whoever they are, Mary is distraught and brings her concern to the Apostles Peter and John.

And suddenly everything in that gospel changes. Peter and John (followed by Mary) run back in the direction of the resurrection; they make their way back to the tomb, and then discover what Mary, moments before, had missed: the burial clothes are still there but it is Jesus Christ Himself who is gone. No one has broken into that tomb. For the first time in all human history, someone has broken out! He is risen!

That news, that great event, changed the course of human history. It changed the direction this world was going in. Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for us, is risen from the dead. Those who are baptized into Him and follow Him faithfully here on earth are given that same promise of resurrection. That fact should change everything about our lives. It should change the way we live and the direction of our lives on earth. Each of us can ask ourselves this morning: Is that the case? Are we going in the direction of the resurrection? Not everyone is, you know.

St. Paul, in our second reading this morning, tells us that the direction of the resurrection is up. He says:

Brothers and sisters: If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not what is on earth.
—Colossians 3:1-2

Everything that we do here on earth should be done with our sights set on heaven. One of the prayers we prayed at Mass all throughout Lent says “[Lord] you teach us how to live in this passing world with our heart set on the world that will never end” (Preface Lent II). The ultimate destination for our lives is not here on earth. The direction of the resurrection is up.

But we find ourselves pointed in that direction and we remain in that direction not by doing whatever we want to, whatever feels right to us, or by following the popular opinions of the people around us, but by the guidance and teachings of our faith. It is from the Scriptures, from the Sacraments (especially Christ in the Eucharist), and from the teachings of the Church that we discover, and remain in, the direction of the resurrection.

In our culture today, that is far from a reality. So many people, a great many of them Catholic Christians, take their bearings from their own feelings or from the people around them. There was an article in the Religion section of The Providence Journal yesterday morning that discussed the latest phenomenon of the “discovery” of the bones of Jesus. One New Testament scholar, Ben Witherington, summed up quite well the problem we face. He said:

“We live in a Jesus-haunted culture that’s biblically illiterate. Everybody knows who Jesus is. But the actual knowledge about early Christian history and the Bible is very low in the culture and even large segments of the church.”

Doesn’t that explain a lot of what we have seen in the last few years? People are ready to sell Christ down the river and abandon the traditions of their faith because they read about Jesus and Mary Magdalene in some fiction novel, or because National Geographic is doing a special about the “Lost Gospel of Judas.”

We can ask ourselves: Quo vadimus? Where are we going? These people are not the ones we should be listening to when it comes to our eternal salvation! Read the Da Vinci Code if you want. Watch the latest fiction story about the bones of Christ if you choose. But, for God’s sake, and for your own sake, do not base your eternal salvation on them!

We need to look to some very different sources, very different authors when it comes to our eternal life; we need to start reading authors like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

If we want to know about the life of Christ and His relationship to Mary Magdalene or any of the disciples, we should start there.

If we want to know the secrets of the early Church we should read the Acts of the Apostles.

If we want to know the “historical” Jesus, truly know Him, the person, then we start by growing closer to Him right here in the Eucharist.

This is where we find the direction to live our lives.

The 40 days of Lent are over. Now, for the next 50 days we celebrate the resurrection and our eternal life with Christ. How is He challenging us to focus on the teachings of our faith as we celebrate that mystery?

So that the next time someone asks us, “Quo vadis?” Where are you going? We can honestly say that, with the grace and help of God, we are going in the direction of the resurrection, and in the way of eternal life with Christ.

The Last Supper and the Christian Life

(Holy Thursday-Year C;This homily was given 5 April, 2007, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 13:1-15)

Tonight we celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, in a particular way commemorating that night in the Upper Room, at the Last Supper, when Christ gave the Church the greatest gift She could have ever received: the gift of Himself in the Eucharist.

In his last encyclical letter, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, what would be one of his final gifts to the Church, Pope John Paul II says, “The Church draws her life from the Eucharist” (EE, #1). Christ, in the Eucharist, is the source of our strength, literally our life-blood as we live the gospel here on earth.

In order to perpetuate that heavenly gift throughout the centuries, Christ also institutes, on the same night, the sacred priesthood. Without the priesthood, there would be no Eucharist. Without the Eucharist, there would be no priesthood. These two great gifts are bestowed upon us by our Lord as He gathers with His disciples on the night before He died.

Therefore, it is curious that the passage from St. John’s Gospel, which we read from every Holy Thursday, does not mention either the Eucharist or the priesthood! In fact, the Gospel of St. John is the only gospel that does not include an “institution narrative,” the words of Christ instituting the sacrament of the Eucharist:

This is my body, which will be given up for you…

This is the cup of my blood…it will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven…

Nor is there mention of the words instituting the sacrament of Holy Orders: Do this in memory of me.

St. John, the last gospel to be written, assumes that the reader is already familiar with both the Eucharist and the priesthood. In the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, we find the longest discourse on the Eucharist in the entire Scripture. Over and over again, he relates the words of Jesus, who refers to Himself as “The Bread of life” (John 6: 22-59) and says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” (John 6:54).

St. John is quite familiar with the gift of the Eucharist, and with the priesthood, which continues that gift. What he chooses to relate to his readers about the Last Supper, instead, is the washing of the feet; he chooses to speak to us about service.

It is a very moving scene. Jesus gets up from the supper, takes off his outer garments, and begins to wash the dirty feet of His disciples. It is difficult for us to appreciate the reaction His disciples would have had at that moment. Washing feet was the job of the lowest servant, not the Master of the house. St. Peter literally has to be talked into it.

What is so important for us to see is that St. John does not relate this scene as something separate from the Eucharist which has just taken place before it. John is not saying that Jesus gives the Church the Eucharist, and then says, “OK, that’s done. Now, here’s how you wash feet.” No, it all fits together as a piece.

It is Christ who pours Himself out completely in the Eucharist, giving Himself completely, body and blood, soul and divinity, holding nothing back.

But it is the same Christ who now gets down on His hands and knees and pours Himself out completely as He washes the feet of His disciples, showing them that this is what leadership and power is all about in the Church.

And it will be the same Christ who, one day later, will pour Himself out completely, offering Himself on the altar of the cross.

There is no separation, for St. John, between these events. They are all the revelation of Jesus Christ, who holds back nothing but gives Himself entirely for us in love. Pope Benedict XVI, in his most recent Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity) begins with the account of the Last Supper, which we just heard from St. John’s Gospel. He recalls how that account began, when St. John says that Christ:

Loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.
—John 13:1

Our Holy Father mentions how this is an obvious reference to the washing of the feet, but that it also refers to the Eucharist. Christ loved us to the end, to the fullest; He gave us everything He had when He gave us Himself in the Eucharist.

The entire life of Christ was a total gift of Himself, poured out for every one of us. He shows us tonight that there is no separation between the Eucharist, our worship, our time here in this Church, and our daily service of God and neighbor.

It is said that Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta required her nuns to spend one-hour minimum in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament before they ever hit the streets of Calcutta. She was asked why this was so important; why not spend that time, instead, serving the needs of the poor and those who were suffering? Her response was:

“If we cannot recognize Jesus here in the Blessed Sacrament, then we will never recognize Him out there in the street.”

There is a connection between our lives of faith and devotion, our worship of God and sharing in His sacramental life, and the work we are called to do in the world. We can never separate the mystery of the Eucharist from the washing of the feet. Those two aspects of the suffering and risen Christ are all of a piece.

When I was ordained in the summer of 2004, I had a prayer card made depicting The Lamb of God being sacrificed on the altar. It is a scene from the famous Ghent Altarpiece, and is an obvious reference to the sacrament of the Eucharist.

But on the back of that prayer card, I chose a Scripture verse from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans which is very different from that scene…but also very much the same. It reads:

I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.
—Romans 12:1-2

I knew that, as a priest, I would daily be offering the sacrament of the Eucharist on the altar for the sanctification of God’s people, and for my own sanctification. But at the same time, I knew I would be called to offer myself to God, not only at Mass, but all throughout the day, in all things. There can be no separation between our life of worship and our offering at the Mass, and our daily sacrifice of praise and service to God and neighbor. Those two mysteries—in the life of Christ and in our own lives—stand or fall together.

Our challenge this Holy Thursday evening is to pour out our own lives in the same way Christ does; to give ourselves as a gift to God and to those around us. We are called to recognize Christ right here in this Church, and then to leave this place and simply recognize Him everywhere.

Passion Sunday

(Palm Sunday-Year C; This homily was given on 31 March & 1 April, 2007 at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; See Luke 22:14-56)

Today we enter into what is, for us as Catholics, the most important, solemn, and beautiful week of the year: Holy Week. Our celebration begins here with this Palm Sunday Mass, what is traditionally called Passion Sunday.

That word—passion—has two very different meanings. The first and obvious meaning, connected with our feast today, is that of suffering. We speak of the passion of Christ, meaning His suffering and death, and all that He embraced to set us free from sin and death. He truly loved us all the way to the cross.

The second meaning, also rather obvious, is passion as in desire. When we are passionate about someone, we have a tremendous desire to spend time with them, to be close to them.

In the opening words that Christ speaks in our Passion Narrative today from St. Luke, our Lord expresses both meanings of passion as He addresses His disciples. The scene is the Last Supper, and He is just about to share His own body and blood with them for the first time in the Eucharist. Looking upon them with what must have been great love, he says:

I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer (Luke 22:15).

Jesus is saying that He has a tremendous passion to gather with them before He undergoes His passion. It is fitting that Christ speaks of both meanings as we celebrate this Passion Sunday Mass and enter Holy Week. This week is the time when our desire for God meets His own infinite desire for every one of us. It is a time when God wants to stir up within us that passion He wants us to have for His passion. How is He working in our lives at this time to do that?

There are fifty-one weeks in the year that we think about and are immersed in our own suffering, our struggles and difficulties, our crosses. And rightly so. We all have our own crosses to bear, our own particular sufferings that we face each day.

But this week, above all other weeks in the year, is the week that we focus on His cross, His suffering, His passion. How is God drawing us more completely into that mystery this Holy Week? I would suggest three ways in which God is able to accomplish that.

Firstly, when we spend time doing what we just did: reading the passion of Christ in the gospels. Each of the four gospels has an account of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection. Pick one of them, and spend some time alone with God reading over and praying with those sacred accounts of Christ. The saints have done that since the earliest days of the Church. Why not us this Holy Week? We are all called to be saints.

Secondly, we enter more deeply into the passion of Christ by participating in the Sacred Triduum, those three holiest days of this most special of all weeks: Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil on Saturday Evening.

On Holy Thursday of this week, we gather to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. We remember that Christ, on the night before He died, gave over His body and poured out His blood in the Eucharist for the life and sustenance of the Church.

On Good Friday we gather as God’s people to remember and celebrate the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, that glorious death which purchased for us salvation and the forgiveness of our sins.

And at the Easter Vigil, we assemble once again as Church, our souls and our sanctuary filled with light, and celebrate with great joy the resurrection of Christ.

Finally, we come to participate in the passion of Christ by recognizing that our own suffering is not something separate and alien to Him. Christ came among us as a man to help shoulder our burdens and take away the curse of sin and death that has afflicted us all. He helps us in our deepest need, but more than that. He also gives us all a share in His own suffering for the redemption of the world.

Whenever we unite ourselves to Him in faith, acknowledging our own crosses and difficulties, but uniting them also to Christ and to His cross, God allows us some share in His work of bringing about new life (see Colossians 1:24, 2 Corinthians 4:8-14).

This is Holy Week, the most solemn and beautiful week of the year. How will God stir into flame that passion for His passion this Palm Sunday, and every day this week?

The Personalistic Norm

(5th Sunday of Lent-Year C; This homily was given on 25 March, 2007 at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; See John 8:1-11)

We are coming up now on the second anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II, truly one of the greatest persons of our time. While it is true that most of us only knew him in his capacity as our Holy Father—in the time he served as pope—there are a few fortunate souls in the Archdiocese of Krakow in Poland who also knew him once as their simple, humble parish priest (imagine!).

During that time when he was known as Fr. Karol Wojtyla, he spent a lot of his time with young people, especially couples preparing for marriage and young families just beginning their lives together. It is from that experience that he wrote his first book, Love and Responsibility.

Love and Responsibility is basically about human relationships and human sexuality. It speaks to us about how we relate to one another as persons, and the underlying principle of that book is what Wojtyla calls the Personalistic Norm. Basically stated, it says:

The person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end (Love and Responsibility, pg. 41).

In other words, persons are not objects, and cannot be treated that way. That is how we relate to machines: automobiles, cell phones, and home computers. But we never relate to persons like that. Stated positively, the Personalistic Norm confirms:

The person is the kind of good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love (Love and Responsibility, pg. 41).

It is the basic commandment to love, and a foundational way for us to look at life in Christ. But the Personalistic Norm can be a challenging principle to put into practice.

We can ask ourselves today, when we look at the world around us and especially the people in our lives: What do we see? Objects or people? Our gospel this weekend provides us with a great framework to answer that question.

We begin with the scribes and Pharisees, who drag before Jesus a woman caught “in the very act of committing adultery” (John 8:4). Can you imagine how embarrassing, how humiliating that must have been for her? So how do the scribes and the Pharisees see the world around them? Or, more to the point, how do they look at that woman?

Obviously the do not see her as a person. In fact, they are not even looking for justice, desiring to see things set right. We discover in that gospel that there is only one reason why they drag her before Christ: they are using her to get to Him. They are willing to manipulate her life and expose her for the sole purpose of destroying Him. It was a shameful and pathetic plot.

Thankfully we do not see such things in the United States in 2007; we do not drag people out into the streets as objects to be stoned in public. But do we ever reduce women—men, too, but most especially women—to objects in our culture? We certainly do. In fact, it happens all the time.

Bishop Paul Loverde of the Diocese of Arlington, in a letter written to his diocese in Virginia just a few short months ago, talked about what he called the plague of our culture. He called it the “Plague of pornography.” Pornography is a reality that destroys relationships, it destroys families; it is destroying the fabric of our culture.

In that letter, Bought With A Price, Bishop Loverde writes:

This plague stalks the souls of men, women and children, ravages the bonds of marriage and victimizes the most innocent among us. It obscures and destroys people's ability to see one another as unique and beautiful expressions of God's creation, instead darkening their vision, causing them to view others as objects to be used and manipulated…It is not going away.

As Christians we are called to ask God for His assistance in taking away this plague. We are to seek the grace and healing of God for all the places where our lives and our communities have been affected by the sin of pornography. We can never reduce another man, woman, or child to an object. Again, as Fr. Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) writes: The person is the kind of good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love.

Which brings us, ultimately, to the way that Jesus Christ looks at the world and the people in it. St. John tells us that Christ, after driving away the scribes and Pharisees, bent down again and wrote on the ground with His finger. He was now alone with the woman. But suddenly, he looked up and spoke directly to her, as woman!

St. Augustine has a beautiful way of describing that powerful scene. He says “He who had driven away her adversaries with the tongue of justice, now looked upon her with the eyes of gentleness and compassion” (In Ioannis Evangelium, 33, 6).

That is the way Christ looks at the world around Him. That is the way Christ looks at every single one of us: as persons. No matter what we have done, no matter what sins we have committed, or how far we have fallen from Him, He looks upon us now with the eyes of gentleness and compassion.

Turning those eyes toward the woman, He then addresses her as a person:

“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” (John 8:10).

It is a very affectionate term: woman. We know that because He only uses it a few other times in the gospels, and one of them is when He addresses His own Mother (John 2:4)! Jesus speaks to and relates to this woman caught in the act of adultery in the very same way as He speaks to and relates to His own Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary: as a person!

“Woman,” He says to her. She, in turn, responds to Him as a person. And it is finally, in this dialogue of persons, this dialogue of love, that He is able to speak directly to her situation, and challenge her to change her life.

Go, and from now on do not sin anymore (John 8:11).

Christ has spared not only her life, physically, from stoning, but He has also safeguarded and spared her spiritual life by turning her away from sin and turning her back to a true relationship with the living God. It is a tremendous scene for us to meditate on as we approach this final week of Lent before the beginning of Holy Week this coming Sunday.

We can ask ourselves:

How is Christ calling us into that same dialogue of persons, that same dialogue of love with Him at this time in our lives, confronting our sins and turning us back to God?

How is He challenging us to look at ourselves, and each other, not as objects but as persons fully capable of receiving His mercy, His love?

How are we called, in this coming week, to continue that mercy and compassion in the way that we live, and especially in the way that we look at the world around us?

Laetare Sunday

(4th Sunday of Lent-Year C; This homily was given on 17 & 18 March, 2007 at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; See 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 and Luke 15:1-32)

The Fourth Sunday of Lent is traditionally called Laetare Sunday, a celebration very much like Gaudete Sunday in Advent. For each of those Sundays, we use rose-colored vestments, and both Latin words can be translated, “rejoice.” Both also announce to us that we are drawing ever closer to the feast for which we are preparing (Christmas for Gaudete Sunday, and Easter for 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.

It is not at all unlike what we find in the natural world. Nature does not wait for a particular day before revealing the signs of spring all around us. Buds start to blossom on the trees and flowers begin to bloom long before the first day of spring hits the calendar.

Even in our sanctuary you may have noticed new signs of life. Our decorating committee decided to keep the sanctuary stark and barren this year as a reminder of the desert experience of Lent. They placed dead branches in clay pots filled with sand on either side of the tabernacle. But if you are sitting close enough, you may be able to see that those dead branches have started to come back to life. That’s a great picture for us of Laetare Sunday; it is like a stream in the desert.

You may have seen the movie The Chronicles of Narnia. If you have children you may have seen it a few dozen times! It is a great story that begins with the Land of Narnia under a terrible curse. Everything is frozen in snow and ice; it is “always winter and never Christmas,” as one of the characters says; a long, cold winter without any hope of spring or summer.

But mid-way through that movie, as Aslan the King draws ever closer to Narnia (Aslan represents Christ in that movie), the curse that has held Narnia in its frozen grip begins, slowly, to let go. The snow and ice begin to melt and the main characters, as they walk through the forest, watch it come to life before their eyes. Trees begin to take on green leafs; flowers blossom and bloom.

It is a beautiful story, but the author of The Chronicles of Narnia never meant for it to be just a children’s story. It is the real story of our own redemption.

The land that we live in is under a curse: the curse of sin. It is a curse that often separates us from each other; it separates and divides families, churches, and communities. It is a curse that separates us from God. The curse of sin makes the world we live in a very cold place indeed. But Jesus Christ is the King who comes to break that curse.

Christ comes from heaven to earth, into this icy world, to suffer and die on the cross and to break the curse of sin and death which has touched us all. He has come to reconcile us to God and to each other. He comes to inaugurate what St. Paul, in our second reading today, calls the Ministry of Reconciliation. He says:

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation.
—2 Corinthians 5:19

There are two important and essential aspects to that description from St. Paul. We are called, first and foremost, to be reconciled to God. Secondly, we are then entrusted with that same ministry of reconciliation.

Pope John Paul the Great, in his 1984 Apostolic Exhortation, Reconciliation and Penance, says that this Ministry of Reconciliation described by St. Paul sums up the entire mission of the Church: a people who are first reconciled to God, and who then seek to reconcile others to that same God.

In terms of our Gospel parable this weekend, we are called to be—like the Prodigal Son—those who come before God and seek His mercy and forgiveness. But we are also called to be like the Father: always ready to welcome back the Prodigal, and even reaching out to the bitter, angry, older brother. We are constantly being reconciled, and seeking reconciliation for those around us.

That’s the reason we rejoice this Laetare Sunday: because we have received and been given the Ministry of Reconciliation. That’s the reason we can sing for joy in what God has done and in what He is doing in the world around us.

But if there is a lack of joy in our lives this Lent; if there is a lack of joy in the Church; if there is a lack of joy in the world around us; is it possible that we are not as open as we should be to this Ministry of Reconciliation?

One of the obvious themes of Pope John Paul II’s Reconciliation and Penance is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Sacrament of Penance. Are we making ourselves available to that source of reconciliation and the mercy, forgiveness, and joy that come as a result of it? When is the last time you made a sacramental confession and allowed God to touch your life and your soul with the Ministry of Reconciliation? When was the last time you were able to reconcile with another person, or help someone else to be reconciled with God?

Steve Brown, founder of Key Life Network, tells the story of two brothers who did everything together. But outside of that they were as different as two people could be. The older brother was tall, good looking, and everyone liked him. The younger brother was short and, to be rather blunt, he was ugly; and worst of all he had a hunched back that you couldn’t help but notice. But he could sing! Wow could he sing! He had the voice of an angel, and people from all over town would come to the church on Sunday, many just to listen to him.

Eventually the two were sent off to a boarding school together, and as you might have guessed, the older brother made many friends, quickly. The younger brother, unfortunately, had a much harder time of it.

One day, as the older brother was passing by the chemistry lab, he heard much laughing and carrying on. He stepped into the room to find out what all the noise was about, when he suddenly froze in fear. A group of students had gathered around his younger brother, and they had pulled his shirt up over his head, exposing his back, and they were mocking him.

The older brother wanted to rush in and defend him, but he was afraid. He thought for a moment that if he did so, they might begin ridiculing him instead, and the thought of that was just too much for him to bear, so he turned quickly and went away.

But not before his brother saw him leaving.

Soon after that, the younger brother decided he could no longer stay at the boarding school so he packed his things and returned back home. But the people of that town never heard him sing again.

It was some 10 years later, and the older brother was half way across the world, just finishing his time in the service. He was sitting out beneath the stars, very much at peace, when he suddenly became convicted by the Holy Spirit for what he had done to his brother so long ago.

At great expense of time and money, he made his way back to the town where they used to live. He found his brother, and to his surprise and wonder the little brother forgave him and welcomed him into his home. They embraced and wept, and talked together until the early hours of the morning so that the older brother could no longer keep his eyes open.

Finally he crawled up onto the couch, and went to sleep . . . only to be awakened in the morning by the most beautiful sound that he had ever heard. It was the voice of his brother, coming from the next room over, and he was singing.

We can ask ourselves this Laetare Sunday: Where do we most need to hear that singing in our lives at this time?

Where do we most need to be reconciled to God and to each other?

There is great news for us in our entrance antiphon: Laetare, Ierusalem! Rejoice, Jerusalem! The Ministry of Reconciliation—God reconciling the world in Christ—has come. In the words of St. Paul: We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Our Town, and the Glory of God

(2nd Sunday of Lent-Year C; This homily was given on 3 & 4 March, 2007 at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; See Luke 9:28-36)

Our gospel for this weekend, the Transfiguration, is one of the more remarkable and visual gospels we find in the Lenten season. We can picture that scene as St. Luke describes it to us. Jesus goes to the top of that mountain, taking with Him Peter, James and John. He enters deeply into prayer with the Father, and then suddenly it happens:

His face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah…
—Luke 9:29-30

Imagine what Peter, James and John must have been thinking as those amazing events unfolded on that mountain! But, of course, we don’t have to imagine what they were thinking. St. Luke tells us what was going through their minds: absolutely nothing!

They were not thinking anything, because they “had been overcome by sleep” (Luke 9:32). They were out cold! One of the greatest events in their lives to that point, and they almost miss it entirely! Fortunately they wake up in time to catch the tail end of that great vision. It is Peter who tries to reach out and take hold of it with both hands. He says:

Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
—Luke 9:33

It is a futile effort to hold on to an experience that has come so quickly, and just as quickly fades away. St. Luke even tells us that Peter is merely grasping, and that “he did not know what he was saying” (Luke 9:33).

This vivid gospel passage provides a great reflection for us on this Second Sunday of Lent. We can ask ourselves this weekend: Are we awake and alert in our spiritual lives, or do we find ourselves, perhaps, asleep like Peter, James, and John? Are we aware of the glory of God in our own midst, our own lives this Lent?

Because the glory of God will not come into our lives in the same way it did for those disciples. We will not see the face of Christ change in appearance, or His clothing turn dazzling white. But we will see His glory…if we are awake, if we are alert…

St. Irenaeus, one of the great Church Fathers, has a beautiful and oft quoted expression regarding the glory of God. He says, “The glory of God is man, fully alive” (Adversus Haereses, Book IV, Ch. 20, #7). What he means by that is that God is glorified when man and woman are fully alive in Christ. Like so many of the early Church Fathers, he talks about that “great exchange,” how the Son of God became the Son of Man so that man and woman could become sons and daughters of God. To have that life of Christ in us means to be fully alive. As Christ Himself tells us, in St. John’s Gospel, “I came so that that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

To have the abundant life is to be fully alive in Christ. To live abundantly in Christ is to allow the power and grace of God to so fill our souls and our lives that the glory of God shines through us. That will happen in our spiritual lives this Lent to the extent that we are able to heed the command of God the Father in our gospel this weekend:

This is my chosen Son; listen to him (Luke 9:35).

It is when we listen to Christ that we are most awake and most alive in God.

It is when we listen to Christ that we live most fully and most abundantly in Him.

It is when we listen to Christ that our lives take on new meaning, new purpose, and the life of joy God calls us to.


I would suggest this weekend that there are three ways God is calling us to listen to Christ this Lent:

Firstly, and obviously, He is calling us to listen to Christ in the Scriptures, to hear Him in the word of God. Each time we come to Mass we listen to that living and life giving word proclaimed, and we listen to Christ. Each time we open the Scriptures in our own life of devotion, we listen to Christ.

When I was in my early twenties, the priest in my home parish spoke one Sunday in Lent about what it means to observe the traditional Lenten practices. He said that it is obvious that we should be willing to make sacrifices, and we often give things up for that reason. But, we should also be willing to do things in our lives for Christ. He suggested works of charity or works of mercy, and reading the Scriptures.

I was intrigued by that. At the time, I was reading about one or two novels a week. I would read anything I could find; but I had never really read the Bible. I started with the New Testament, the Gospel of St. Matthew. Before I went half way through it, I already noticed my life beginning to change. It changed my relationship with my parents; it changed my relationships with the people I worked with. It changed the way I looked at my own life, and the way I looked at my relationship with God.

Within six months I felt that God was calling me to the priesthood. He had probably been calling me for years, but I had never heard Him. Now that I was listening to Christ in the Scriptures, I began to hear God more clearly in all the events of my life. That is what God wants to do in all our lives this Lent. It begins with listening to Christ in the Scriptures.

Secondly, we also listen to Christ in our own personal lives of prayer, spending time alone with God each day. The account of the Transfiguration has long been used as an illustration for our own experience of prayer with God, our time “on the mountain” with Him.

St. Leo the Great says that one of the reasons Christ reveals His glory to the disciples is to strengthen them for all that they will encounter in the days ahead. When they witness Christ arrested, beaten and condemned, when they experience the scandal of the cross, they will remember that day on the mountain and they will have the courage and strength to go on. In fact, they would even have the courage and strength to go to their own deaths for their unwavering faith in Christ.

And so it goes with us. We, too, are called to be strengthened in prayer so that we can follow Christ in our daily lives. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “We pray as we live, because we live as we pray” (CCC #2725). Are we able to listen closely to Christ in the way we pray, and in the way we live, this Lent?

Finally, we are called to listen to Christ in the events, and especially in the people, that God brings into our lives each day. If “the Glory of God is man fully alive,” then we should be able to recognize that glory in the people around us.

Just the other night I went to Trinity Rep. to see the play Our Town. You may have seen that play, or read it in high school. Written by Thornton Wilder, it is the delightful story of the quaint town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire.

The point that Wilder is making is that it doesn’t matter where we are born, or what period of time we live in. All of life matters; all of life is beautiful, and we should be able to recognize the powerful, and even painful, beauty of life right where we are. It could be anywhere, any-town. It could be Our Town, East Greenwich.

There is a haunting scene at the end of that play which takes place in a graveyard. Many of the characters of Our Town have passed on, and are now at rest there. Suddenly Emily, one of the main characters, who has just died, comes to join them. She tries to get acclimated to the place, and at one point asks if they are able to go back and relive some of the more special moments of life. The characters there try to dissuade her; they tell her that it is far too painful. She insists anyway, and returns to the time of her twelfth birthday.

As soon as she enters that moment, she is struck by how delightful every little detail is. She can’t take in everything fast enough. She comes down the stairs of her house and is overwhelmed by how beautiful and young everyone looks. She tries to get their attention but everyone is so busy, so occupied. It becomes more and more frustrating for her, and at one point she calls out to her mother:

“Just look at me one minute as though you really saw me.”

But, of course, her mother is doing all she can to get the family ready for the day. She tries her father, but again, to no avail. Finally she turns to the Stage Manager, in desperation, and says, “I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.”

She asks to go back, once again, to her grave, saddened by the futility of her visit. As she is leaving she looks back and says, “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.” And then she turns, again, to the Stage Manager, and says, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?”

The Stage Manager tells her no, that most of them do not…but, some of the saints do, and a few poets.

As we begin this second week of Lent, are we fully aware of all that God is doing right here in Our Town, East Greenwich? Are we alert and awake, listening to Christ in the Scriptures, in prayer, and in the everyday events of life?

If “The glory of God is man, fully alive,” where is God calling us to become more fully alive, more completely aware of Jesus Christ in our lives this Lent?