September 11: A Remembrance

(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

(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

(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

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.