Corpus et Sanguis Christi

(Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ-Year B;This homily was given 18 June, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Exodus 24:3-8, Hebrews 9:11-15 & Mark 14:22-26)

Are you squeamish when it comes to the sight or even the mention of blood? Hopefully not, because blood is one of the main themes of the feast we celebrate this morning. It is in every one of our readings. There is blood in the prayers we offer for this Mass, and before our celebration is through there will be blood in the chalice on the altar.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. Not just Corpus Christi—the Body of Christ—but Corpus et Sanguis Christi, the Body and the Blood of Christ.

One common thread we find running throughout the Old Testament is that of blood. To shed the blood of another carried the most severe of penalties; and the offering of blood as a sacrifice became a regular part of worship and faith of Israel. For the Jewish people especially, blood was considered to be a sacred sign of life itself (Leviticus 17:11,14; CCC, #2260). We find that powerful sign in the first reading this morning.

God makes a covenant with the people of Israel, the Ten Commandments. The people agree, not once but twice, to follow that covenant, to obey the commandments of God.

And as an outward sign of this covenant between them, Moses pours blood first over the altar (since it was God who initiated that covenant), and then he sprinkles the rest on the people (literally, he pours blood over them), saying: This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you (Exodus 24:8).


Sacrifice and the shedding of blood was a sign that would be repeated over and over again as the people of Israel renewed the covenant God had made with them. They would offer the sacrifice of bulls, of goats, and of lambs, as an outward sign of their fidelity to God.

But why so much sacrifice? Why the shedding of so much blood? It is only with the coming of Jesus Christ that we begin to see that the entire Old Covenant (and all of the sacrifices and shedding of blood that took place for the renewal of that covenant) was really just a preparation for the one sacrifice of Christ and for the shedding of His blood on the cross.

We hear in the second reading this morning:

When Christ came as high priest . . . he entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.
—Hebrews 9:11-12

It is the blood of Christ and His sacrifice that renews us and gives us new life. It is the blood of Christ freely offered on our behalf that obtains for us the forgiveness of sins. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen puts it,

“The higher the life, the more precious the blood. When you come to the life of Christ, who sheds His blood, you get the total remission of sin.”


That is what God was preparing the people of Israel for. That is what He was preparing each of us for: the New Covenant written in the blood of Christ. Today, and at every Mass, we renew that covenant as we hear again the words of Christ from the Gospel, when takes bread and says:

“This is my body”


Then he takes the cup and says:

“This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.”


We are here today to offer the one eternal sacrifice of Christ to the Father; then here from this altar we will receive the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Do you believe that? Do you ever doubt that the body and blood of Christ are truly made present here in this Church at every Mass? It is not an easy thing to grasp. In fact, without faith, it is impossible.

There is a story about a very devout and holy priest in the 13th century named Peter of Prague. His greatest struggle as a priest was that he could not believe Christ was truly present in the consecrated host.

He even decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome, asking for the grace of God to help him with his constant doubts about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. On his way to Rome he stopped in the small Italian City of Bolsena, where he celebrated Mass in the Church of St. Christina.

In the middle of that Mass, immediately after he had spoken the words of consecration (This is my body . . . this is the cup of my blood . . .), blood began to seep from the consecrated host and trickled down his hands and onto the altar. Obviously, he was a bit shaken up by that experience. He interrupted the Mass and asked those present what he should do.

Pope Urban IV, the pope at that time, was only one city away, in Orvieto. And so they brought Fr. Peter to that city, where the pope listened to him and began to investigate all that had happened.

One year after that event, Pope Urban IV instituted a feast honoring the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ. He called it Corpus Christi, and it is the feast we are celebrating today.

Miracles happen. We know and believe that as people of faith. Some of us, in our own lifetime, may witness events like the Eucharistic Miracle at Bolsena. I have been there three times myself for the feast of Corpus Christi, and participated in Mass celebrated at that very altar; I have seen the relics: the corporal stained with blood and the marble from the floor that was touched by the blood of Christ. Miracles happen.

But the greatest miracle that has ever happened in the history of the world occurred when God became a man, and suffered and died on the cross to bring us home to heaven. Nothing greater than that has ever happened in this world, and nothing greater ever will happen this side of heaven.

And to make sure we would never forget it, in order to remain with us always, even until the end of the world (Matthew 28:20), He gave us Himself as an everlasting memorial of His suffering and death. He gave us Himself—body and blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist—so that we might renew this covenant of love He has made with us.

That miracle is about to take place once again on this altar. Let us bring before Him now all our doubts and fears, our joys and hopes, our prayers and intentions, and place them here on this altar; and then let us receive from this altar all that God longs to give to us: nothing less than the sacred body and blood of Christ.

It's the City that makes the Saints

(Feast of St. Anthony of Padua-Year B;This homily was given 13 June, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Matthew 5:13-16)

The feast of St. Anthony of Padua is unique not only in the saint himself, but in his very name, as well. Usually when a saint is referenced by a city it is because he or she originated from that City. We refer to St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena because they were born and raised in those cities.

Not so with St. Anthony of Padua. St. Anthony was not born in the Italian city of Padua. In fact, he was not born in Italy at all. St. Anthony is from Portugal, and the city of Lisbon. Yet we do not refer to him as St. Anthony of Portugal or St. Anthony of Lisbon.

The reason for that has everything to do with the response of the people of Padua to the Gospel message. St. Anthony, a Franciscan missionary priest, brought the Good News to the people of Padua, and they were wide open to God’s word and the call to repentance.

It is said that, in response to the preaching and ministry of St. Anthony, people who had long been at odds with each other were soon reconciled and lived in peace. Those who owed large sums of money, which they had no intention of repaying, suddenly brought their debts before St. Anthony and acknowledged their need to set things right.

The whole city was transformed. Padua became a city very much like the one described by Christ in the Gospel this morning:

A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.
—Mathew 5:14-16

Today’s feast and the Gospel remind us that it is not the saint that makes the city; it’s the city that makes the saints. It is not St. Francis and St. Claire that give us Assisi. It is Assisi that gives them to us. And it is the City of Padua that gives us St. Anthony for today’s feast.

How is God calling us to be that "city on a mountain?" We are called to respond with a radical love to the remarkable message of grace and forgiveness given to us by God. Who do we need to be reconciled with? How are we called to live more completely for Christ, to pray more fervently, to love more intensely in this city, our town, our parish community?

It’s the city that makes the saints. Might our response to the Gospel become the rich seedbed of the saints here in this "city on a mountain," as we respond to Christ’s call to be the light of the world, and the salt of the earth.

The Family, Image of the Most Holy Trinity

(Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity -Year B;This homily was given 11 June, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Matthew 28:16-20, Romans 8:14-17 and CCC #232-237)

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the most central mystery of the Christian faith. At the very heart of that mystery we come to understand two things: who God is, and what God does.

In fact, our faith teaches that we can only know who God is through what He does, through the way He makes Himself known in the world around us (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #237). We often hear it said that “God is love,” but how do we know that? We know because that is how He has revealed Himself to us.

God first creates the universe we live in and then literally loves us into being. St. Augustine says, “God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.” And to show us the extent of that love, God the Son enters into the world He created and sacrifices Himself on the cross to reconcile us to the Father.

Then, as we celebrated last week, at Pentecost, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit into the hearts of all who believe and are baptized, making us sons and daughters of God. As we hear in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans:

You received a Spirit of adoption,
through whom we cry, “Abba, Father!”
—Romans 8:15

That is how we know who the Trinity is, this God who is love; because He has made Himself known in the creative love that brought us into being, and the sacrificial love that made us His own children.

And of all the images that have been used to describe the Holy Trinity—the shamrock used by St. Patrick, and many others—of all those different images, the most appropriate and most beautiful one is the image of the Christian family.

The family is a communion of persons in love, just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a communion of persons in love. That same creative love of the Holy Trinity can be seen everywhere in our lives and in our own families. We are here today as the fruit of our parents’ creative love.

And who among us has not experienced that sacrificial love revealed by Christ at the cross? How many times have you made sacrifices for the ones you love? What are those sacrifices our families have made for us time and time again? The family, in its creative love (that brings new life into being) and its sacrificial love, is the very image of the Trinitarian love of God.

But the family today—I think all of us would admit—is under more intense pressure and threatened by more challenges than ever before. There was a headline in the Providence Journal this past week that read: “Vatican Says Family Structure is Under Attack.” No argument there.

The article in the Journal was referring to the new document published by the Pontifical Council for the Family. That document names two very specific attacks that all of us are familiar with.

The first is same sex marriage and same-sex unions. How many times have we seen this issue in the newspaper in the last year (or the last few days)? We hear the same arguments over and over:

That it’s all about equal rights.

But it isn’t.

That those who oppose such unions are motivated by hatred or discrimination.

But we are not.

Or, as one Senator from R.I., a Roman Catholic, said in a statement recently:

“This is a state issue.”

But it is not a state issue. Nor is it a Church issue. Marriage is not a Catholic issue or a Vatican issue. Marriage is a Trinitarian issue. It’s an institution created by God and given to the human family long before the Church or the state ever existed.

As Christ Himself tells us in the Gospel:

From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one.’
—Mark 10:6


That is Jesus’ response to the marriage “issue.” Marriage comes to us from God Himself, and because of that, neither the Church nor the state has the right to change it in any way. It is a gift from God in which a man and a woman give themselves to each other completely—as man and as woman—and cooperate with God in bringing new life into the world.

The love of a husband and a wife so closely resembles the creative love of the Trinity, in fact, that in 9 months they could be holding that love in their arms! That is the powerful and beautiful reality of the family as God sees it, and as God created it.

And so marriage is the first aspect of the family which is under attack in our culture today. The second aspect mentioned by that recent document is just as serious, yet much more hidden. It talks about the great “lengths people go to avoid having children, including contraception as well as abortion.”

How could these practices not have a destructive impact on the family as the image of the Most Holy Trinity? They go in the complete opposite direction of the creative and life giving love that God reveals to us in Himself. These practices exclude God the Creator from the act of love between persons; or worse, they destroy life before it even has a chance to begin.

The family structure is indeed under attack in the world we live in. So how are we called to respond, as Christians and people of faith, to these tremendous challenges?

We respond, first of all, by living out our call to family life and love. That speaks very loudly to the culture we live in. I can tell you that in 2 years in this parish, my life and ministry as a priest has been profoundly influenced and transformed by the families I have know here at Our Lady of Mercy.

Your family, your marriage, your witness to Christ in this world has more of an impact than you could possibly imagine. Please continue to offer that witness.

Secondly, vote. Or, perhaps better put, don’t vote; please do not vote for those politicians—Catholic or otherwise—who do not support the family or that gift of life that God has entrusted us with.

Sadly, they are not interested in God’s plan for the family; nor are they interested in the gift of life in its most fragile of forms. Please vote, instead, for those who will support the family and the gift of human life. And if we do not find candidates who will support this way of life handed down to us by God, then we must pray that God will raise them up here among us, perhaps from this very parish.

Which brings us to the ultimate and most important response of all: the response of prayer. As St. Paul reminds us, we are not engaged in a struggle with flesh and blood, but with spiritual powers, spiritual forces (Ephesians 6:12). We need the supernatural help that only God can give us.

We need prayer; we need to pray the rosary for families. Especially we need to entrust our lives and families to Mary, Queen of Families, that she who guided and cared for Christ so well on earth may continue to guide all of us, her children, on our journey home to heaven.

We pray, today and always:

Mary, Queen of families, pray for us.

Pentecost and the Fruits of the Spirit

(Pentecost Sunday-Year B;This homily was given 4 June, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Acts 2:1-11 and Galatians 5:16-25)

If you read the letters of the Apostle Paul, one of his trademark characteristics is that he often creates lists. Paul makes lists of injuries he has suffered (2 Corinthians 11:23-33) and places he has been (Galatians 1:17-2:1). He lists the various spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:4-11, 27-31;13).

Perhaps the best-known lists of St. Paul are the ones we read in his Letter to the Galatians. In that letter St. Paul names the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit. We would be hard pressed to find two ways of life more diverse than these. He says:

The works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies and the like.
—Galatians 5:19-21

It is quite a list, to be sure. And St. Paul could not be more clear about the fate of those who follow that way of life. He says:

I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
—Galatians 5:21


In contrast, Paul goes on to list the fruits of the Spirit:

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.
—Galatians 5:22-23


This morning we can ask ourselves: which list best describes where we are in the spiritual life? Do we recognize some of the works of the flesh in our own lives? Or do we see, instead, those fruits of the Spirit that all of us long for at the very core of our being.

Today we celebrate the feast of Pentecost, that day when the Holy Spirit first came upon the Church and enabled the disciples to experience those fruits of the Spirit in a radical and remarkable way. The Holy Spirit set their hearts on fire with the love of God, and then sent them out to transform the world they lived in.

The very same men and women who hid behind closed doors, cowering for fear of the Jews, are now enlivened with the Gift of the Holy Spirit and boldly proclaim to the world around them that Jesus Christ is Lord!

They began that day a revolution that changed the world forever. Their witness to Christ, begun in that small city some 2000 years ago, would eventually spread like wildfire across time and space, eventually making its way to even our own towns, our own churches and into our own lives this day.

And what started that fire on that amazing day of Pentecost was not an ideology, or simply a message, or just some new way of life. What began that fire was a person: the Holy Spirit.

He is the one—promised by Christ—that transforms each of us, as well as the world we live in. He is the one responsible for those fruits that St. Paul refers to in that list from Galatians: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.

If we want to see our lives, our families and our Church transformed, if we want to see those fruits in our lives and in the world we live in, then we have to first realize that it will only take place when we have invited Him to be a part of our lives and allowed Him to do all that He desires in us.


Today, on the feast 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.

O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant us in that same Spirit to be truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary-Year B;This homily was given 31 May, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Luke 1:39-56)

The scene of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one that is often beautifully depicted in Christian art. Yet sometimes, if we are not careful, we can reduce Mary to only a painting, picture or statue. We risk placing her so outside our own experience that she becomes some distant figure not entirely involved in the everyday world around us.

Fortunately, the Feast of the Visitation does not allow us to do that. Far from being statuesque or stationary, Mary in the Gospel for this feast is moving.

St. Luke tells us that she “set out and traveled to the hill country in haste” (Luke 1:39) to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Mary wastes no time manifesting the love of God in the world around her.

The love that Mary carries in her body, and the loved that wells up in her soul, does not allow her to stand still. She goes in haste to assist her cousin in need, and in that act of charity she sets in motion a whole chain of events that perpetuates the love she carries within.

Immediately upon arriving at the house of Zechariah, Mary’s voice sets the heart of St. John the Baptist in motion. Like one captive within the womb of St. Elizabeth, he cannot wait to get out and make Christ known in the world around him.

St. Elizabeth, for her part, cannot keep silent and sings out the praises of the Lord, blessing Mary and the God who works such wonders among His people.


In a very practical way, we can ask ourselves:

What lies dormant in our world today?

Where are the St. John the Baptists and the St. Elizabeths in our lives, waiting for the love of God to set their hearts in motion?

Where is the love of Christ waiting for a place to happen in our lives today.

Let us move in haste, following the example of Our Lady. May the Visitation become more than just a painting, more than just a picture in our lives. Like Mary, might we make the love of Christ real in the world around us.

The Problem of Evil

(7th Sunday of Easter-Year B;This homily was given 27 & 28 May, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 17:11-19)

For The past several years one of the most popular Broadway shows has been a play called “Wicked”. It’s based upon a novel by Gregory Maguire under the same title. Basically it’s a story about the Wicked Witch of the West, only before we come to know her in “The Wizard of Oz.”

Towards the beginning of that book, the Wicked Witch is away at boarding school, and has a conversation with her roommate Galinda (the one who will later become Glinda, the Good Witch, in “The Wizard of Oz”). They are talking about the reality of evil: Does it exist? Where does it come from?

At one point Galinda makes the observation that, while belief in God has become rather passé (people of Oz at the time could take it or leave it), the reality and the implications of evil are obvious and unavoidable.

In our own culture things are not really all that different. We do not have to be convinced of the reality of evil. We can simply open the morning newspaper or turn on the evening news. Evil exists in the world we live in.

That is the reality Christ is speaking of in the gospel, on the night before He dies, when He prays to the Father for the Apostles and for us. He prays:

Father, I do not ask that you take them out of the world
but that you keep them from the evil one.
—John 17:15


Following Christ does not necessarily remove us from the world and the experience of evil. Jesus, nonetheless, prays for us so that we can live in this world and serve Him, but all the while kept from the evil one. We are called to follow God’s plan, and God’s will, not the evil we see taking place around us.

Essentially, this is the same thing we ask for each time we pray the Our Father. We pray:

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

But with all that said, and after Jesus’ prayer and our own have been offered, much of what we know about evil remains a mystery. Down through the centuries, in the history of our tradition, some of the saints and theologians of the Church have helped us to shed at least some light on that mystery.

St. Thomas Aquinas says that evil is an absence of the good; it is a lack of some legitimate good which ought to be there. We can think of injustice, when someone’s legitimate rights are taken away or violated. That is an experience of evil. Or when one’s health or life is taken away seemingly without any sense of reason or purpose.

I recently learned that a young man with whom I had studied for the priesthood died this past Wednesday in tragic accident while vacationing with his family. He was 36 years old and had been a priest for only three years. That is what St. Thomas Aquinas means by an absence of the good; it is often how we experience evil in the world we live in.

St. Augustine describes evil in much more personal terms. In addition to an absence of the good, he also calls it “id quod nocet (that which harms).” Think about a time when something or someone harmed you our caused harm in the lives of those around you. That can happen in any number of ways. There are natural disasters or unexplained phenomena that cause damage and harm in the world around us.

Yet very often harm is caused by our own decisions and actions, by our misuse of freedom and the reality of sin. Our sins themselves are id quod nocet, that which harms. When we sin we harm our relationship with God, with one another, and ultimately we cause harm to ourselves.

But perhaps the most perplexing and often painful problem that we face with regard to evil is not the harm that we cause in the world, or the harm caused to us by others. The most challenging obstacle is often the suffering of those who are innocent. How are we to make sense of that?

In Dostoevsky’s great classic, The Brothers Karamazov, one of the main characters named Ivan brings up this very dilemma with his brother who is a monk. He tells him that he can accept his own suffering and the suffering of others if that is what God requires. As he puts it, “if all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony.” But then what does that say for the suffering of the innocent, of children that have done nothing to harm anyone?

Ivan tells his brother that if that is part of the equation, that if God is going to require the innocent to suffer to restore “the eternal harmony,” then when he gets to heaven he will return his ticket for admission! He will not go to a heaven like that.

What Ivan fails to mention is the one thing his brother brings up immediately: it is not our own suffering that returns the universe to “eternal harmony,” and it’s not the suffering of the innocent that accomplishes that either. It is the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that restores harmony and order to the world we live in. That’s where we receive our admission ticket to heaven.


And that is God’s response to the problem of evil. As St. John says in his gospel:

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
—John 3:16

God’s response to the problem of evil, to all the harm that we see in the world, to all suffering, is the response of love. It is the sacrifice of Christ Himself on the cross, for our forgiveness and our redemption. Now, that is not a response that answers all of our questions about evil and suffering. But it is a response that gives us hope in this life and in the life to come.

We can live in this world, finding consolation in Jesus’ prayer to “keep us from the evil one.” But ultimately, we can now participate in God’s plan to overcome that evil once and for all.

That is the Good News. Our sufferings and our struggles in this world are not meaningless. We can now unite them to the very sufferings of Christ, participating in the life of Christ and becoming a part of that same response of love that has changed, and continues to change, the world we live in.

Might we continue to see, in our lives, a greater participation in the life of Christ, the life He came to share with us; and may we continue to recognize more completely that Christ is our hope and strength, the one who prays for us throughout our time on this earth, and is ultimately our ticket of admission into the eternal life to come.

The Ascension of the Lord

(Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord-Year B;This homily was given 24 & 25 May, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 4:1-13, and Mark 16:15-20)

One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes is one I have used many times, but it is well worth repeating. He said:

“The men and women who did the most for this world

were those who thought mostly of the world to come.

Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in.

Aim at earth, and you will get neither.”

In many ways it summarizes our way of life as Christians: to be heavenly minded as we continue our lives here on earth. In today’s feast—the Ascension—that way of life is accentuated gloriously in the person of Christ, our Lord.

Jesus, when He comes to take on our humanity, does so much more than we could have ever hoped for. He not only forgives our sins, and redeems our humanity. In the ascension, Christ takes our humanity and glorifies it! The one who came from heaven to earth to become like us, has now returned to heaven and taken our human nature with Him, so that we can become like Him.

That fact alone should inspire us as we continue our earthly journey home to Him. Christ bids us to come follow Him, and we recognize that everything here on this earth matters; everything takes on eternal significance since it effects our relationship with God, with whom we will share all eternity.

But there is a second important reality we come to understand through the ascension, which is essential to our life here on earth. When Jesus ascends to the father, He does not become any less present here on earth. While He has taken His place at the right hand of the Father in heaven, Jesus remains on the earth through His body, the Church.

The same Christ who healed the sick, performed miracles and proclaimed the Good News to the poor continues to make His power and presence felt through the Church. That is the only way we could possibly understand the commission that He gives to the disciples in the Gospel. He says to them, as He prepares to ascend to the Father:

Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.
—Mark 16:15-16

Now that’s quite a tall order, wouldn’t you say? Essentially, what Christ has commissioned them—and us—to do is invite everyone in the world into a personal relationship with Christ; to baptize all who believe in Him, helping to bring them to eternal life.

Obviously, that is not something that we can set out to accomplish on our own. We do not have the gifts, the talents, or the resources that are necessary to complete a task that lofty . . . but Christ does! Jesus ascends to the Father and then gives us everything we need to accomplish His will. It is a supernatural commission that we have been given, and He gives us supernatural help to complete it.

That is the significance of those interesting signs that Christ mentions immediately after He gives us this commission:

These signs will accompany those who believe:in my name they will drive out demons,they will speak new languages.They will pick up serpents with their hands,and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them.They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.
—Mark 16:17-18

Jesus is not saying we should go out and pick up rattlesnakes! He does not want us to drink poison and see if we can stomach it. No, He wants us, and the entire world, to understand that this is His work, and He has equipped His Body, the Church, with grace and the supernatural means to carry it out.

As people of faith and followers of Christ, might we take inventory this day and come to realize more completely the gifts that we have been given to spread the gospel message in the world around us. We live in a world desperately in need of that saving and hope-filled message. It is no small task, but the one who calls us to it is able to do more than we could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).

Today we continue our work here on earth with our hearts and minds always focused on Christ, and we never lose sight of the fact that:

“The men and women who did the most for this world

were those who thought mostly of the world to come.

Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in.

Aim at earth, and you will get neither.”

Deus Caritas Est

(6th Sunday of Easter-Year B;This homily was given 21 May, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read 1 John 4:7-10 and John 15:9-17)

Deus Caritas Est. God is love. These are the opening words of the first encyclical letter from our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. As he says in that letter, these words, God is love, “express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith.” They speak of the very image of God, and of our own destiny as persons made in that image (Deus Caritas Est, #1).

Those words—God is love—are taken directly from our Second Reading this morning, the First Letter from the Apostle, St. John. We know that John was the only apostle not to suffer the fate of martyrdom. He was exiled, instead, to the small island of Patmos.

There is a legend that—while John was of course not able to leave that Island—Christians nonetheless were allowed to come to see him. Week after week, according to that legend, crowds would come to hear him preach the Gospel, and the message he preached, week in and week out, was that message of love.

Finally, one day, someone said to him:

“Why do you always preach about the same thing, the same message of love? You spent years with Jesus Himself. Surely you must have something else to share with us.”

And John’s reply was:

“I have many things to share, but I continue to give that same message because people still have not responded to it.”

We have to wonder, if St. John were alive today, would he still be preaching that same message?

In St. John’s Gospel this morning, we hear the words of Christ given to the Church on the night before He died. He says: “This I command you: love one another.”

Now, if we are honest, we can admit that the command to love is not always an easy one to follow. We live in a world that is often cold and indifferent. We can all think of people we have encountered in our lives that we find very difficult to love. How are we able to obey this command that Jesus gives us in the Gospel this morning?

The answer, I believe, is found in St. John himself. He says, in that Second Reading:

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
—1 John 4:10

That’s the answer:
Not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us.

St. John—who gives us that insight—was a man who experienced the love of God completely. All throughout his Gospel, he never refers to himself by name. Over and over again John refers to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” John was a man loved by God; he never really got over that fact. It was something that never left his mind.

In the very beginning of St. John’s Gospel, in the first chapter, he describes how Andrew and “another disciple” came to know Jesus. The “other disciple,” of course, is John himself. He says that Jesus invited them both to follow Him. John puts it this way:

They went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon.
—John 1:39


Now, that is a very odd description. Who cares that it was four in the afternoon? But it mattered to St. John because, on that day, at four o’clock in the afternoon, everything in his life changed. He was seized by Christ, loved by Love, and nothing was ever the same again.

Think about your own life. If you have children, you can probably remember the very hour that they were born. Or perhaps you remember exactly what time it was when you married the person you fell in love with. That’s what St. John is talking about. He was seized by the love of Christ, and it was four o’clock in the afternoon.

In the encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI describes this very same response we are to have to Jesus’ commandment in the Gospel. He says:

The “commandment” of love is only possible because it is more than a requirement. Love can be commanded because it has first been given.
—DCE, #14


In other words, God can command us to love because, in Christ, He has come right into our very lives and loved us first.

The Holy Father goes on to describe the Bible as the story of God’s love, a story in which Christ comes to us, seeking “to win our hearts”: at the Last Supper, when He gives Himself to us in the Eucharist; at the cross, when He gives Himself over for the forgiveness of our sins; and everywhere else in those first days of the early Church (DCE, #17).

All throughout history, if we look at all the greatest saints in the Church, we see this same Gift of God Himself in love; we see this same response from those whose lives were changed forever by that personal encounter with the God who is love. Their entire lives proclaimed that message: Deus Caritas Est; God is love.

We, too, are called to proclaim that same message; to witness to the God of love with our words and actions in this world. But that will never happen, it will never take place, until we have first been seized by Christ and loved by Him.

God calls us—just as He called St. John, and countless others—to know Him and be loved by Him; to know His forgiveness, His mercy, and His love in the deepest possible way.

Today we ask for that grace to open our hearts more completely to the God who is love, so that we may be faithful in responding to that command of Christ: to love one another, as God has loved us.

Remain in Me

(5th Sunday of Easter-Year B;This homily was given 14 May, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 15:1-10)

The image of the vine and the branches in this morning’s Gospel gives us a clear picture of just how radically dependent we are upon Christ for even the most basic necessities of the spiritual life. Like a mantra throughout that passage, Christ repeats those words, “Remain in me; remain on the vine; whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit. Remain.”

This weekend is a timely opportunity to reflect on what it truly means to remain in Jesus. Just yesterday we celebrated the anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady to three small children in Fatima, Portugal back in 1917. Today, of course, is also Mother’s Day, and the month of May. What better time to reflect on our Mother, Mary, as the perfect model for what it means to truly remain in Christ.

First and foremost, to remain in Christ is to remain in His word. As He says to the disciples in the Gospel this morning:

You are already pruned [made clean] because of the word that I spoke to you (John 15:3).

And then He goes on to encourage them, once again, to remain in that word.

Mary, above all the other disciples, was a woman of the word. From the beginning, at the annunciation, she was attentive to the word of God as it was given to her through the message of the angel. Her willingness to hear that word, her receptivity to the word of salvation, helped her to conceive the Lord in her heart even before she conceived Him physically in her body. All throughout her life she remained open and available to that life giving word of God and the words of her own Son. Mary was a woman of the word.

Are we that receptive to the word of God? As we listen to the gospel proclaimed here each week, are we open and available to what God is saying to us? Do we take time to read the Bible? St. Jerome, in his reflection on the word of God, says that “ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” The Scriptures help us to see as God sees, to think as He thinks. Might we be men and women of the word, remaining in Jesus by remaining in His word.

Secondly, Mary was a woman of the Eucharist (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, #53-58). She would have been present at all the first Eucharistic feasts, those first Masses of the early Church. But long before that, she received the body and the blood of Christ when she welcomed Him into her body and gave Him life.

John Paul II says that at the incarnation—when God became man in Christ—at that mystery, Mary “anticipated . . . the Church’s Eucharistic faith” (EE, # 55). He calls her the “first ‘tabernacle’,” the first place in which the body of Christ was reposed. To remain in Jesus and to have life in Him is to remain with Him in the Eucharist.

The Main Chapel at the North American College, where I studied for the priesthood, has a unique floor design. The floor itself is made of white marble, but around the main altar where the Eucharist is celebrated each day, the marble tiles are all dark green and they flow out towards the pews and branch off to either side of that chapel. The significance is found in the very image that Christ shares with us this morning, that of the vine and the branches.

Separated from the vine—the very source of our life—we can do nothing. Separated from Christ in the Eucharist, we are like a branch that withers and is good for nothing, only to be thrown out into the fire. Like Mary, we are called to be people intimately united to Christ in the Eucharist. To remain in Christ is to remain with Him, and He with us, in the Eucharist.

Finally, Mary was a woman of prayer. Time and time again, when she encounters the great mysteries of her son’s life, we are told that Mary “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Luke 2:19; 51). Mary remained in Jesus by keeping the mysteries of His life alive in her heart. She was a woman of great prayer.

Do we keep the mysteries of Christ present in our own lives through prayer? Do we take the time each day to be alone with God, the One who is the very source of our life and strength? To remain in Christ we must remain in prayer, able to recognize that in Him we have everything we need to live fruitful lives as people of faith.

This Mother’s Day, let us continue to look to Mary—woman of the word, woman of the Eucharist, and woman of prayer—as that perfect model of what it means to remain in Christ.

And may God continue to bless all mothers, all who have given us life and love, and most especially those who have taught us what it truly means to remain in Christ and to bear great fruit in Him.

Good Shepherd Sunday: God and the Bride

(4th Sunday of Easter-Year B;This homily was given 7 May, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 10:11-18)

This Sunday in the Church universal we celebrate the annual World Day of Prayer for Vocations. The reason we pray and focus our attention on this aspect of the life of the Church is simple: we are in need of religious vocations, and especially vocations to the priesthood. Pope Benedict XVI, in his message for this weekend, put it this way:

The mission of the priest in the Church is irreplaceable. Therefore, even if in some regions there is a scarcity of clergy, it should never be doubted that Christ continues to raise up men who . . . dedicate themselves completely to the celebration of the sacred mysteries, to the preaching of the gospel and to pastoral ministry.

Now, it shouldn’t surprise us that Pope Benedict is interested in vocations, or that this homily is about vocations. But what does come as a surprise, I think, is that thousands of Americans—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—are also interested in vocations to the priesthood.

I am referring, of course, to the “reality TV” series that recently aired on A&E called “God or the Girl.” You may have seen this program that follows four young men over the course of several months, as they must decide whether or not to enter a celibate life as a seminarian or remain in the world where they can date and continue their lives as single Catholic men. Again, as the title of the show suggests, they must make a choice: between either God or the girl.

Now, I have to admit, when I first heard about this show I was more than a bit skeptical. I could picture the cameras rolling as these four young men are being dropped off on an island with Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton! But having talked to people who have seen the show, and after reading much about “God or the Girl,” the overall message that comes through is really quite encouraging. It seems that even in the midst of our secular culture, people are generally interested—and even impressed—with the decision that many young men make to enter the seminary and embrace a call to celibate priesthood.

But with all that said, I still think there is something missing when it comes to that decision: “God or the Girl.” To say that a seminarian or a priest makes a choice not date or not to marry is really only part of the picture. Priesthood, like any vocation, is not a choice against something. It is ultimately a choice for something (or, to be more specific, a choice for someone).


Many times as a priest I am able to meet with young couples who are preparing for the sacrament of marriage. Whenever they talk about their life together, they never say:

“Father, we are so excited about our upcoming wedding, and about celebrating our decision to not see other people.”

No, they never say that! They say:

“I am looking forward to this wedding and my marriage to this person; I want to spend my life and give my love to this man or this woman.”

Marriage is not a choice against bachelorhood or a rejection of the single life. It is a choice for another; a choice for the beloved . . . and so is priesthood.

We need look no further than Jesus Christ, the great High Priest Himself, in the Gospel this morning, to see that love expressed in the most basic and compelling of terms.

Jesus refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd, who “lays down his life for the sheep.” At the very heart of Jesus’ identity and ministry, at the very core of who He is, we find this total gift of self, a gift of His very life for the sheep. Jesus goes to the cross out of love for His Bride, the Church.

In his document on the formation of priests, Pope John Paul II reflects on this very gift of self that Christ makes as the Good Shepherd. He says,

Christ’s gift of himself to his Church, the fruit of his love, is described in terms of that unique gift of self made by the bridegroom to the bride . . .Jesus is the true bridegroom who offers to the Church the wine of salvation (John 2:11).
—Pastores Dabo Vobis, #22.


He goes on to describe how the priest is called to share in that same spousal relationship, to make that same gift of self for love of the Church. So it’s not merely a choice between God or the girl. At its deepest level, the choice to follow Christ in the Catholic priesthood is a decision for God and the Bride, not God or the girl.

Now all of that sounds very theological and abstract. But it’s really not. In fact, in my own life, it is something that is very personal. For several years I struggled with the decision of whether or not to enter the seminary. If only I had waited a little longer, perhaps I, too, could have been on A&E’s reality TV show!

But my biggest challenge was trying to make that decision to give up the possibility of a rewarding married life, with a wife, children and all the things that most young men my age were considering.

The one thing that I could not see at the time, was that God was calling me to love every bit as much as any husband in the Church today, but that He was calling me to love in a very different way; He was calling me to share in that same love that Christ has for His Bride the Church. That reality, that truth, changed things for me. I began to look at the Church, the priesthood, and God’s call in my life in an entirely new way.

That is really what we pray for today, on this World Day of Prayer for Vocations: that all those who God is calling to love completely, and to give themselves fully to Christ in love for His bride the Church, may be able to hear that call and see that love in a whole new light.

Let us join with the Church throughout the world this day, in asking God for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. And may all those called to serve God as priests and religious today, reflect that love that Christ, the Good Shepherd, has for His Bride, the Church.

Theo-Drama: Play of a Lifetime

(3rd Sunday of Easter-Year B;This homily was given 30 April, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Luke 24:36-48)

A number of years ago I was at a talk given by Catholic author and papal biographer George Weigel, and he was speaking on “The Soul of Pope John Paul II.” He expressed what he considered to be different aspects of the pope’s personal and spiritual life: for instance, he said that the Holy Father had a Polish soul, nurtured in his beloved homeland of Poland; he had priestly soul, formed over his long and fruitful ministry as a priest of Jesus Christ.

At one point he went on to describe how John Paul II also had “a dramatic soul.” Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), as a young man growing up in Poland, had been an actor. He enjoyed writing and acting in plays, even continuing that activity clandestinely during the German occupation at the outset of World War II.

In saying that Pope John Paul II had a “dramatic soul”, Weigel was simply expressing how that sense of drama never really left him. He understood himself as a part of the greater drama of life, a play which God had written and in which he had been given a significant role to play.

Now this is not an entirely new way of looking at ourselves and our relationship with God. The great Swiss theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, in one of his works called the Theo-drama, explores what can best be described as the drama of life and the story of salvation. In that drama, he says, God is the Author, Director, and Actor on the world stage, but we are also actors who share that stage with Him.

The point of life, essentially, is to live fully the role that God has given us. Our freedom must work together with God’s freedom in order to follow His divine script. When our lives and our freedom are cooperating with His, we fulfill that authentic role. When they do not—when we abuse our freedom and cease to follow the divine will, when we sin—we lose sight of the true meaning of life and God’s plan for us in it.

In this drama, of course, it is Christ Himself who is the model of what it means to truly live out one’s role in this world. He is the one who always follows the divine script and freely loves both God and those around Him to the fullest possible extent.

The whole concept of the Theo-drama is a fascinating one, but it really only “works,” it only makes sense when we are able to understand that, first of all, there is a story that God has written and is writing; and, second of all, that we have a place in that story. That should sound rather obvious, but unfortunately it is not.

You may have heard the term “post-modernity” before; it’s been used to describe the culture we live in as seen through the art, literature, philosophy, and various components that make up that culture. One of the characteristics of our post-modern world is that we seem to have lost this sense of being a part of the greater story God has written. Think about the latest books, movies or TV shows; they nearly all present a very different picture of humanity than the one we find in the Theo-drama. In “post-modernity,” our lives become just a bunch of little stories that float around on their own. We are not connected to God or to each other.

The disciples in the Gospel we heard this morning, oddly enough, experience a situation very much like that. For three long years they had given their lives to Christ and followed Him. In that time they had seen amazing things: they watched Him preach the Gospel to thousands; they watched Him heal the sick, and raise the dead. And then, tragically, they watched Him suffer and die on the cross.

Now they find themselves gathered together in a locked room, fearful of the Jewish leaders and fearful of their own people. They have become separated from Christ and cut off from their own religious tradition . . . or so they thought.

Suddenly Christ appears to them and reveals the resurrection; they have not been separated from Him at all! And then He goes on to do the one necessary thing that remains: He reconnects them once again to their own faith tradition.

Jesus says to them:
“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

—Luke 24:44-45

It’s the second time Christ does this in the same chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel. It was that important to Christ, and that important to the early Church, that He should open their minds and hearts to understand the story of their own salvation.

He would have brought them back to the Book of Exodus, and to the lamb that the people were commanded to sacrifice as a sign of their salvation from slavery and death in Egypt; and Christ would have told the disciples: “I am that Lamb.”

He would have taken them through the great stories of the prophets, who constantly called the people of Israel to return to God, the One who called Himself their faithful and loving husband. And Jesus would have said to the disciples: “I am that faithful husband.”

And He would have opened up the Book of Psalms for them, and let them listen to the voice of King David saying, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” And Christ would have said to them, “I am the Good Shepherd.”

Jesus opened their minds and hearts to the great drama of salvation, the one that they had apparently forgotten or maybe never fully understood. He helped them to see that they were not alone, not isolated and cut off from God’s plan or God’s people. They were a part of a much bigger picture, a much greater drama, written by God Himself.

This morning, here in this Church, Christ reminds us that we too have a role to play in that same drama. We, too, are a part of God’s plan of salvation. Our stories, our lives, are not isolated and disconnected. We belong to a much bigger picture and a much greater plan, and in that plan we must discover who we are and fulfill that role in the world we live in.

Today we ask God to open our minds to understand the scriptures, and our eyes to recognize Him as we gather here to celebrate this Eucharist. Like those first disciples, might we see and touch and hear Christ who speaks to us in the scriptures and gives Himself to us—Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity—in the Eucharist.

And leaving this Church this morning, may we come to understand that the curtain has been raised and the drama of our salvation is not yet finished. Might we be faithful in accomplishing the work that God has given each of us to do, and truly live to the fullest extent that Theo-drama, the role God has prepared for each of us as people of faith and followers of Christ.

Divine Mercy-Breathing in and breathing out

(Divine Mercy Sunday-Year B;This homily was given 23 April, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 20:19-31)

Just last year, the priests of the Diocese of Providence came together for a “Priest Study Day” at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick. Archbishop Dolan, from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, was our presenter and he began by mentioning a book he had been reading on depression.

The author of that book had reached a point in her life where she felt completely helpless against the paralyzing power of that debilitating disease. The only thing that she felt she was able to do was simply to breathe in and breathe out. That’s it.

And yet, as basic as it may seem, that was the beginning of a brand new start for her life. Returning to that most fundamental element of human existence—breathing in and breathing out—was enough for her to begin that journey out of the darkness of depression and to move ahead towards healing and hope.

The point that Archbishop Dolan went on to make is that we sometimes need to get that basic in our own spiritual lives. When things seem difficult and complex, when we are struggling to find God in our daily lives, sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is to stop and breathe, recognizing the life of grace and the life of God within us.

Now, I know that this sounds a bit like pop-psychology, but actually it’s one of the most fundamental, biblical truths regarding the human person. Think about the Book of Genesis and the creation of Adam. We are told that:

The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
—Genesis 2:7


God did not simply give life to us. He breathed life into us. We are made in the image and likeness of God, living beings who have the breath of God living within us. We have the power to be creative as God is creative. We have the power to live freely even as God Himself is free. Life is an amazing gift.

But with that power and with that gift comes tremendous responsibility. There are consequences to the choices and the decisions that we make. Our freedom is one of the things that make us most like God, but we know that it can also be used to turn us further away from Him.

That possibility, that reality, is what we call sin, and all of us have experienced it. In his 1984 document Reconciliation and Penance, Pope John Paul II describes the reality of sin in this way:

Man also knows, through painful experience, that by a conscious and free act of his will he can change course and go in a direction opposed to God’s will, separating himself from God (aversion a Deo), rejecting loving communion with Him, detaching himself from the life principle which God is and consequently choosing death.
—Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, # 17


In other words, that life which God breathes into the nostrils of Adam is something that can be extinguished within us. This is not the fault of God. He is the one who gave us life and breath to begin with. When we detach ourselves “from the life principle that God is,” the fault belongs to us.

The entire history of humanity, from the Garden of Eden to the present day, can be summarized as a series of breathing exercises. Either we have allowed the breath of God to flow through our spiritual lives, through our culture and the world we live in, or we have not. We are constantly in the process of accepting or rejecting the breath of life that God gives us.

The most dramatic example of this is found in the person of Christ Himself. He who came to bring us life and the fullness of God’s mercy is Himself rejected and crucified.

And yet at the very heart of that mystery of the death of Christ on the cross is the mystery of our own salvation. It is for our redemption and the forgiveness of our sins that Christ—with great love and boundless mercy—goes to the cross; He dies for each one of us. And with that event comes the fullest expression of the forgiveness, love and mercy of God.

That is why Christ walks into the place where the disciples are in today’s Gospel—standing before the very people who had used their freedom to turn away from Him just days before—and He announces to them: “Peace be with you.” That is why He shows them His hands and His side, revealing the very wounds that healed them, and each of us, from sin.

And then He does one of the most beautiful and strangest things recorded in the Gospels: He breathes on them! St. John describes that scene:

He said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them.
—John 20:21-22

He breathed on them. The same God who breathed into Adam the breath of life now breathes on the disciples and says to them:

“Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
—John 20:23

God’s passion, His desire and purpose for every one of us, is to receive the breath of life anew, to be immersed in the mercy of Christ and His forgiveness flowing from the cross. But we must be willing to receive that mercy. We must be willing to breathe it in and breathe it out it in everything we say and do, at the very core of our being.

This can and should happen in all of the moments of our daily lives as people of faith. But the pre-eminent place where the mercy of God is received and where we are given the grace and strength to live out that mercy is through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Reconciliation is not an extra in the spiritual life. It “is the ordinary way of obtaining forgiveness” (Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, #31) for the sins we have committed. It is the sacrament Christ begins when he breathes on the disciples in St. John’s Gospel, and says to them: Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained (John 20:23).


Pope John Paul II calls that passage from St. John “one of the most awe inspiring innovations in the Gospel” (Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, #29). It is God’ s way of breathing new life into the souls of His people, into the life of the Church, and into the world we live in.

As we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday this day, the incredible mercy that God is constantly breathing out into His Church, let us take the opportunity to be more attentive to our own breathing:

Have we made ourselves available to the mercy of God by a sincere recognition of our own sins and the need for forgiveness?

Have we, in turn, lived in a way that proclaims and manifests that same mercy which we have received from God?

Breathing in and breathing out: the most basic activities of human life. Just as our bodies cannot live without air, even so, our souls cannot truly live without breathing in and breathing out the mercy of God.

Surprise! It's Easter!

(Easter Sunday-Year B;This homily was given 16 April, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 20:1-9 and De-Coding Da Vinci by Amy Welborn)

What a surprise it was, just a week and a half ago, when the lost “gospel of Judas” was discovered. Imagine finding out, just at the outset of Holy Week, that everything we believed about the one who betrayed the Son of God was incorrect! Judas, apparently, was no enemy of Jesus, but His closest friend. His handing-over Jesus turns out to be the greatest favor of all. As Jesus tells him in that “gospel”:

“You will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

In other words, You will set me free, Judas my friend.

Of course, the timing of this “new” gospel is no big surprise if we simply look at the ghosts of Easter past. For the past couple of years we have been “surprised” by all the stories of a supposed marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, hidden through the centuries and now revealed by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code.

But my favorite Easter surprise comes from Holy Week of 1996, when reporters from the BBC revealed that they discovered a box that had contained the bones of a certain “Jesus, Son of Joseph,” found in a grave in Palestine. They wanted to know if this would affect the faith of the followers of Christ.

Of course, they failed to mention that they actually found many bone boxes labeled “Jesus, Son of Joseph,” since those two names were among the most popular of Jesus’ time!

So what do these three “discoveries” or surprises have in common (besides trying to spoil Easter for a whole lot of people)? All of them have to do with a very different vision of Christ and the human person than the Christian faith we profess each week. They belong to the tradition and worldview called Gnosticism.

You’ve probably seen that word, Gnosticism, in some of the articles about the “gospel of Judas.” The “gospel of Judas” is a Gnostic gospel. Details about the life of Christ in The Da Vinci Code, according to Dan Brown himself, are based upon the Gnostic gospels, namely the “gospel of Thomas” and the “gospel of Mary.”

The Gnostics—a philosophical-religious group from the 2nd and 3rd centuries—are a hard group to pin down. Their views and beliefs are a bit diverse, but there is a common vision they all seem to hold onto. In her book, De-Coding Da Vinci, Amy Welborn describes some basic themes of the Gnostics:

The source of goodness in life is spiritual, and the material world (our bodies, and the world we see around us) is evil.

We, as humans, are imprisoned within our bodies. We need to be set free (again, think of the “gospel of Judas,” when Jesus says to him: “You will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”).

Salvation comes from having a secret knowledge, but only a select few are worthy to receive it. You better know your stuff if you want to go to heaven as a Gnostic.


It is for good reason that the Church has rejected these Gnostic gospels from the beginning. The problem with the entire Gnostic vision of the human person is the insistence that this world and this life are not really all that important. If the material world and the body are evil, then we should be eager to get rid of them. Better for the body of Jesus to rot there in that grave in Palestine. The only thing that matters to the Gnostic is the life after this one. Nothing in this world matters.

How different is the vision we are given as followers of Christ! The real St. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb this morning to anoint the body of Jesus, and what she finds instead is an empty grave. There is no body! It is the greatest Easter surprise of all: He is risen!

The radical message of the Christian faith is that Christ breaks into our world and takes on human nature entirely. The material world, and our humanity most of all, is something that is good, not evil. God takes it to Himself—soul and body—and He redeems it. He raises it up again.

The true message of the real Gospel is that this world—our bodies, our relationships, our care for the poor, our words and actions, our very lives—these things matter. We are not just spiritual beings waiting to be set free from this world. We are made of soul and body, and God wants us to live fully right here in this world, with our hearts set on the world to come. That truth should change us, and change the way we live our lives.


There is a very moving short story by English author D. H. Lawrence, called “Odour of Chrysanthemums.” It is considered to be a classic of English literature (it's also one of the only D.H. Lawrence stories you can read without having to go to confession afterward!).

The main character is a woman named Lizzie, and she is married to a coal miner who often comes home drunk or sometimes not at all. She despises him in her heart because he has become nothing more to her than a stranger.

As the story begins and her husband doesn’t show up after work, she begins to say to herself: He won’t be home tonight until they carry him in. And sadly she is right. She soon discovers that her husband has died accidentally in the coal mine. They indeed carry him home and she has the difficult job of cleaning him up, wiping all the dust and dirt from his body.

But in the midst of that awful task she discovers something alarming about this man as she clears away the coal and the soot. She begins to see things in him that she had never seen before. And then suddenly she begins to look more deeply at her own life, and she asks herself:

Who am I? What have I been doing? I have been fighting a husband who did not exist. He existed all the time. What wrong have I done? What was it that I have been living with? There lies the reality, this man.

The narrator goes on to say:

Her soul died in her for fear: she knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had met in the dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met nor whom they fought. And now she saw, and turned silent in seeing. For she had been wrong. She had said he was something he was not.


On this Easter morning, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ—soul and body—and reflect upon how He has taken on our humanity in all its weakness and all its brokenness . . . and redeemed it, what is our response as we look around us at the world we live in?

Like Lizzie in that story, we too are called to see something more than brokenness, weakness and sin. We are called to see each other as children of God, redeemed by Christ, and called to share in His resurrection. Might that Gospel and that vision of eternal life truly change the way we live in this world as we wait in hope for the life of the world to come.

Holy Thursday-The Paschal Mystery Made Present

(Holy Thursday-Year B;This homily was given 13 April, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Exodus 12:1-14, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

Tonight we begin the sacred Triduum, those holy three days in which we enter more deeply into the very mysteries of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. These days are always filled with inspiring and powerful moments. As we listen to the readings in these days, we can ask ourselves:

What must it have been like to be with Christ and the twelve Apostles in that upper room for the Last Supper?

To stand beneath the cross with Mary that Good Friday?

To come, with Mary Magdalene, to the tomb of Christ that first Easter morning . . . and find it empty?


In the Triduum we focus on these great events of Jesus’ life, the events of our own redemption. But somehow it is not enough for us to simply recall these events that occurred some 2,000 years ago. We need more than a memory, more than a remembrance of the redemption Christ won for us.

Jesus knew that. And for that reason, on the night before He died, at the Last Supper, Jesus takes the events of His own passion and death, and unites them once and for all to a meal.

It was the Passover meal, the one celebrated by the Jews each year to remember how God saved them from slavery and death in the land of Egypt. Jesus and the Apostles had celebrated that feast, that meal, all their lives. Yet, suddenly Jesus does something that had never been done before. We heard about it in that second reading from St. Paul.

He took the bread that was always used at that meal, and said, “This is my body” which will be given up for you. Then He took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”

The body that Christ will offer to the Father on the altar of the cross, and His blood that will be poured out on Good Friday for the forgiveness of sins, that gift of Christ Himself, is made present at that Last Supper in the form of bread and wine.

Christ then commands the Apostles to continue that sacrifice as He institutes the priesthood. He commands them to “Do this in memory of me.”

This is the gift we celebrate each Mass when we celebrate the Eucharist. It is the Passover fulfilled, the very sacrifice of Christ made present in every time and place. We truly believe as Catholics that the events of that first Triduum—Jesus’ sacrifice and death for us on the cross—are made present each time we celebrate the Mass.

Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, refers to this very mystery when he says:

In this gift Jesus Christ entrusted to his Church the perennial making present of the paschal mystery. With it he brought about a mysterious “oneness in time” between that Triduum and the passage of the centuries.

—Ecclesia de Eucharistia, #5

That first Triduum and those events of our redemption are, in a certain sense, “brought forward,” here tonight, and wherever the Eucharist is celebrated. They are perpetuated throughout all of history, and there is never a time or place where the great sacrifice of Christ and the glory of His resurrection are not present.


There is a man named Walter Ciszek whose cause for canonization is now being put forward. He was a young Jesuit priest from Pennsylvania who wanted nothing else than to bring the Gospel of Christ to the people of Russia. Near the beginning of World War II, he finally got his chance and he slipped behind the Iron Curtain under the guise of a common laborer.

It wasn’t long before the KGB discovered that he was a priest, and he was arrested and tried as a Vatican spy! It was a ridiculous charge and he expected them to discover this soon enough and he would be set free. Instead, the more they interrogated him the more convinced they became that he was sent to Russia to bring back secrets to Rome.

Walter Ciszek spent 23 long years in the Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. In that time he began to see that his dream of bringing the Gospel to the Russian people was being fulfilled in a very different way than he had imagined. Time and time again he offered the sacrifice of the Mass—at the risk of being executed—making Christ and the paschal mystery of the Triduum present even in the midst of Siberia.

Finally, one cold spring morning, he was told that he would be released from the prison camp in Siberia. He was given a new place to live, though still in many ways a prisoner within communist Russia, and he was therefore forbidden to celebrate the Mass and exercise his ministry as a priest. He did it anyway.

In his book, “He Leadeth Me,” Ciszek describes one night when he celebrated the Easter Vigil in the small hut or bolok that doubled as his “chapel”. Word had gotten out that he was celebrating the Mass and hundreds of people had come from all over to attend.

There were so many that he was unable to move—even to lift his arms. Communion had to be distributed after Mass, at 3 am. It was six hours later, at 9 O’clock in the morning, when he finally finished. Collapsing on his bed that morning, one thought was fixed in his mind: That all this had taken place in communist Russia!

Obviously, an event like that became known almost immediately. He was brought before the KGB the next day and told that he would be relocated. They warned him never to celebrate the Mass again. Yet time and time again he continued to make Christ present in communist Russia through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Over and over again he would express the same sentiments: that it was worth the risk.


How many times has that same mystery been celebrated, in Russia, in Auschwitz, in a thousand forbidden places and in the midst of countless lives of faithful Christians from the time of Christ until this very day? How many dark and lonely places have been graced with the light of Christ made truly present in this holy sacrament of the altar through the hands of priests consecrated for that very purpose?

Tonight we celebrate that very mystery: the mystery of the Eucharist and the Sacrament of the priesthood whereby the Eucharist is perpetuated in every time and place.

But do the Eucharist and the priesthood mean the same to us as they did to Walter Ciszek and the people of Russia? This Holy Triduum we give thanks to God for the gift of Christ in the Eucharist and the gift of the priesthood that was instituted on that same first Holy Thursday night. May we spend the rest of our lives growing in these mysteries, and coming to recognize Christ’s paschal mystery present to us each time we celebrate the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

Extravagant Love-Passion for His Passion

(Palm Sunday-Year B;This homily was given 9 April, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read Mark 14 & 15)

Who are the people we ordinarily associate with the Passion of Christ? Each year we hear about the Apostles, Mary and the women of Jerusalem; we hear about the scribes and the Pharisees, Pilate and the Romans, and a host of other characters.

But in St. Mark’s introduction to the Passion of Christ we are introduced to a person we do not usually think of when we reflect upon the suffering and death of Jesus: the woman with the alabaster jar of precious ointment. St. Mark recalls how she breaks open that jar and pours out its expensive contents in an expression of extravagant—even provocative—love.

Although we may not often consider her to be an important part of Jesus’ Passion and death, Christ Himself declares of her, and her alone:

Wherever the Gospel is proclaimed to the whole world,
what she has done will be told in memory of her.
—Mark 14:9

As we meditate on Christ’s Passion this coming week, we are called to do more than simply tell her story; in a certain sense, we are called to enter into her story; and not her story only, but the story and the very life of Christ Himself.

This is Holy Week, the singular most significant week in the Church’s liturgical year. It is the week that we focus, in a particular way, on the most central mysteries of our salvation:

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.

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

This is indeed Holy Week, and God calls each of us to enter into it with joyful expectation and hopeful anticipation as the day of Easter draws near. We are called to celebrate not only these solemn feasts, but to truly open our hearts to God in all the areas of our lives: in our homes and families, in our relationships, and in the work place.

Might we break open what is most precious within each one of us this Holy Week, pouring out upon Christ and His Body, the Church, our faith, our devotion, our passion for His Passion. And might our hearts be opened more completely this year to receive the Easter message of Christ’s resurrection with joy.

The Law of the Gift

(5th Sunday of Lent-Year B;This homily was given 2 & 3 April, 2006, at St. Elizabeth, Bristol, R.I. and 3 April, 2006, at Our Lady of Mercy, East Greenwich, R.I.; read John 12:20-33 and Gaudium et Spes, #24)

The Christian life and Christian faith is often experienced and expressed in paradoxes. We see this many times in the Gospel. Jesus says that those who humble themselves will be exalted; those who wish to be greatest must become the servant of all.

Perhaps one of the greatest paradoxes in Scripture is found in St. John’s Gospel, the one we listened to this weekend. Jesus tells us that the path to a fruitful and productive life begins at death!

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
—John 12:24


Ultimately, Christ is talking about the mystery of Easter. Each year we prepare ourselves to celebrate that mystery, which marks the journey from life, to death, to life eternal. Christ Himself comes to experience that mystery in its fullness through His passion, death and resurrection.

Yet each one of us is called to live out this mystery every day. Christ tells us that:

“Whoever loves his life (clings to it) loses it” (John 12:25).

“Whoever hates his life in this world (learns to give it away) will preserve it for eternal life” (John 12:25).


The theological term often used to describe this way of life is the Law of the Gift. Essentially what is means is that we are really and completely fulfilled only when we learn how to give more completely of ourselves (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, #24).

It is no coincidence that we reflect on this passage from St. John’s Gospel and meditate on the Law of the Gift this weekend, on the 1-year anniversary of the death of our beloved Pope John Paul II.

Perhaps more completely than anyone in this past century, Pope John Paul II taught and lived the Law of the Gift all throughout his life. As a young man, and then a priest, but most especially as Vicar of Christ and successor to St. Peter, Pope John Paul II exemplified the Law of the Gift and left us all an example of how to build a life following that law.

Many people still remember the year 1978 as the year we elected two Popes. Having returned to the city of Rome for the second conclave in a matter of weeks, many of the cardinals began to question what God might be saying to them regarding the election of the next successor to St. Peter.

For hundreds of years they had elected Italian Popes; might God be moving them in another direction, to think outside the parameters that they were used to working within?

It is said that, after many days of deliberation, the momentum began to sway in the direction of the young Polish Cardinal, Karol Wojtyla [that is John Paul II’s baptismal name]. As they were counting the ballots it suddenly became clear that there were enough votes in his favor, and that he would be the next Pope.

Witnesses say that Wojtyla looked visibly shaken, and that he bent over and placed his face in his hands. One of the Cardinals began to fear that he would not accept the nomination! Think about how different that is from a Presidential election, with the balloons and streamers and everyone shouting for joy.

He understood what God was asking of him. He understood well the Law of the Gift: that God was asking him to give no less than everything.

Earlier that week, before the conclave, in a sermon he was asked to preach at a Mass for the recently deceased John Paul I, he reflected on this incredible responsibility, and the depth of the love which God demands of every Pope. He had said:

The succession of Peter, the summons to the office of the papacy, always contains within it a call to the highest love, to a very special love. And always, when Christ says to a man, “Come, follow me,” He asks him what He asked of Simon: “Do you love me more than do the others?” Then the heart of man must tremble . . . Christ’s command, “Come, follow me,” has a double meaning. It is a summons to service, and a summons to die.


And so, the Cardinal in charge approached Karol Wojtyla’s desk that afternoon, while the others waited silently and watched. He asked him if he was willing to take up this office to which God was calling him, and Wojtyla replied immediately, without hesitation: “I accept.” The grain of wheat had fallen, and the fruit was about to begin.

John Paul II’s entire papacy modeled this dying to self, with which he began his journey as the successor of St. Peter. Time and time again he would have to surrender himself to the will of God and lose himself in order to gain Christ.

I’m sure most people are familiar with the fact that John Paul II was the first Pope in history to have been shot. It was one of the darkest days in the last century, when—in 1981—an assassin attempted to kill the Pope right in St. Peter’s Square.

The day was May 13, the same day that the Blessed Virgin Mary had once appeared to three young children in Fatima. When asked how it was possible that the bullet which entered his body had missed every major organ, the Holy Father said: “One hand fired [the gun], but another guided the bullet.”

And then the Pope went on to do something that sent shockwaves throughout the world. He forgave the man who had tried to kill him. In an address taped from his hospital bed and broadcast from St. Peter’s Square that very Sunday, the Holy Father said:

I pray for that brother of ours who shot me, and whom I have sincerely pardoned. United with Christ, Priest and Victim, I offer my sufferings for the Church and for the world. To you, Mary, I repeat: Totus tuus ego sum.

That last part of the Pope’s message, his motto as Pope, is a Latin phrase which sums up John Paul II’s total consecration to Jesus, through Mary: Totus Tuus, I am totally yours.

It is to Mary that John Paul II attributed that miraculous intervention. The bullet that went through his body that afternoon was later taken from the floor of the Pope-mobile, and placed—by John Paul II himself—in the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, in Portugal. It remains there today.

But what a curious message he was sending that Sunday: “United with Christ, Priest and Victim, I offer my sufferings for the Church and for the world.”

What does that mean? What does it mean for someone to offer their sufferings up for the Church? For the world? What it means is that we saw the fruit of John Paul II’s papacy; always we saw the fruit. But behind it all was that grain of wheat falling to the ground.

Falling, like his face in his hands at the conclave when he was elected Pope. Falling, like his body on the floor of the Pope-mobile, offered up to Jesus, through Mary. Falling, like his voice towards the end of his life, shaking with age and the dramatic effects of Parkinson’s disease, but speaking nonetheless the eternal words of God.

John Paul II was a man who lived out the Law of the Gift, and we in the Church and people throughout the world are continuing to see the fruits of it:

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
—John 12:24


But it is not only the Pope who is called to live out the Law of the Gift. All of us are called to realize that eternal truth, that “man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself” (Gaudium et Spes, #24).

I was 23-years old when I first felt God calling me to the priesthood. I remember my response at that time, how I had decided in my heart: God, I am willing to do anything that You want, to be anything You want me to be . . . anything but that!

It took me 5 years before I was able to prayerfully discern and grow in my life and faith, until I could see that this vocation that God was calling me to was the very thing that I also wanted all along. I realize now that being called to the priesthood, and responding to that call, is the greatest thing that has ever happened in my life. It’s the Law of the Gift, the reality that we are never really fulfilled in this life until we learn first to give more completely of ourselves to God and those around us.

As we continue to remember Pope John Paul II and seek to follow his example in our daily lives, how is God calling each of us to live out the Law of the Gift more completely in our own vocation, in our relationships with each other and with Him?

Like Pope John Paul II, let us learn to spend our lives loving God and those around us more completely than ever before, because our lives are not truly lived until we learn how to give them away.

If you are in the area, please join us for:

The Spiritual Legacy of Pope John Paul II
St. Elizabeth's Parish Mission
Bristol, R.I.
April 3-6, 7:00 PM