Divine Mercy and the Body of Christ

(Divine Mercy Sunday-Year A; This homily was given on 29 & 30 March, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See 1 Peter 1:3-9 and John 20:19-31)

Today throughout the universal Church we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday. Our feast provides a great opportunity to reflect upon just what we believe about the mercy of God, because we do not believe that God is merciful in some general or abstract way. The mercy of God is quite specific and completely intentional.

We believe that the mercy of God comes to us through the body of Christ.

It is through the crucified and risen body of Jesus Christ that God’s mercy is poured out into this world for the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life. As St. Peter proclaims in the second reading this week:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great MERCY gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
—1 Peter 1:3

It is through the body of Christ that God reveals His unfathomable mercy. Jesus Christ walks into the room where the disciples are in our gospel this weekend, and addresses them all, saying: "Peace be with you."

Then he does something very intentional and peculiar: He shows them His hands and His side. He shows them His body and the wounds of the crucifixion, and He repeats that same greeting: "Peace be with you." Our peace, our forgiveness, and the very mercy of God come to us through the crucified and risen body of Christ.

But then Christ goes on to do something that is significant for every one of us today: He breathes on them, and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit. He says to them: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:19-21).

Jesus intends to continue this ministry and mission of Divine Mercy through the apostles and disciples gathered together in that place. He determines to maintain that ministry of reconciliation and mercy through His body, the Church.

Certainly it is through the apostles and their successors, the bishops, that this manifestation of God’s mercy will remain. In a particular way, through the Sacraments, especially Baptism, the Eucharist and Reconciliation, God will continue to pour out His mercy in the world we live in.

Yet it is not only through the apostles and their successors that God continues this ministry of mercy in the world. We are all members of His body; we are the Church. God fully intends that all of us be ministers of His mercy. That is the message of Divine Mercy that we celebrate this weekend. It is the message entrusted to St. Faustina Kowalska, a simple and humble nun living in Poland at the turn of the 20th century.

Christ appeared to St. Faustina and called her to be an apostle and “secretary” of His mercy; she was chosen by God to be an ambassador and messenger of the Divine Mercy. That message is not a complicated one. In fact it is quite simple.

The message of Divine Mercy consists of two things:

Trust in God (the words, “Jesus, I trust in you,” are found at the base of the image of Divine Mercy that Christ asked St. Faustina to promote).

Secondly, the message of Divine Mercy is fulfilled through an active and fruitful love for one’s neighbor (deeds of mercy).

Perhaps the greatest example and model for this message of Divine Mercy is found in St. Faustina herself. God entrusted her with much! She experienced countless struggles and, at times, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, yet through it all she trusted in Jesus Christ and in all that He was asking of her.

One Christmas, while still in the seminary, I had the opportunity to visit Krakow, Poland and to see the convent where St. Faustina lived and the Shrine of Divine Mercy dedicated to that beautiful devotion. There was a devout nun there, one of the Our Lady of Mercy Sisters; she was giving a tour of all the significant areas in that convent and church where St. Faustina was so deeply touched by Christ. At one point the sister turned to us and told us specifically of the things that Jesus had asked of St. Faustina:

How he wanted the Divine Mercy Chaplet to be prayed throughout the world.

How He wanted the image of the Divine Mercy venerated everywhere, especially on the Feast of Divine Mercy.

How He wanted the Second Sunday of Easter to be celebrated throughout the entire Church as Divine Mercy Sunday.

Then the sister gently folded her hands, sighed, and said with great sympathy:

“It was too much for her.”

Indeed! That would be too much for anyone! Yet St. Faustina trusted in what Christ was doing in her life. She trusted in the will of God and the promises of God. Now, some seventy five years later, the Divine Mercy chaplet is prayed throughout the world, especially in this week leading up to the Feast of Divine Mercy; the Divine Mercy image is venerated in churches everywhere, and this Second Sunday of Easter is observed in the universal Church as Divine Mercy Sunday.

Jesus, I trust I you! How is Christ challenging us, in our own lives, to trust in His mercy? How are we called to place our trust in His mercy, His grace and His providence, perhaps especially in those areas where it seems like it is “too much” for us? And how are we, then, to move outside of ourselves and reach out to others with that same mercy and compassion we receive from God?

There is a beautiful story about a vision that St. Faustina received in which Jesus appeared to her holding a ciborium filled with hosts. They were spilling over as He stood before her. She could not grasp the significance of the encounter.

Jesus said to her, “This ciborium and these hosts represent your works of mercy done for the sake of others. Each host represents one soul that you helped along the way to heaven by your prayers, deeds and sacrifices.”

In a moment, we will come forward and receive the Eucharist from a ciborium very much like the one that St. Faustina saw in her vision, held by the Risen Christ. We can ask ourselves today:

If Jesus were to offer me a ciborium at the end of my life, how many hosts would it have in it? How many souls would I have helped on their way to heaven by my prayers, my sacrifices, and my works of mercy?

Baptism: A Matter of Life and Death

(Easter Sunday-Year A; This homily was given on 23 March, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See Acts 10:34-43, Colossians 3:1-4 and John 20:1-9)


Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., in his book Living the Catholic Faith, begins with a story about Niagara Falls (pgs. 11-13). If you have ever been to the Falls, you know how majestic, powerful and awesome the Niagara River is…and how dangerous.

The archbishop goes on to tell the story of what happened about 40 years ago. There was a man who took his young niece and nephew out on a power boat several miles above the Falls. Suddenly, tragically, the engine failed and that boat began to drift down the river. Hundreds of people witnessed it from the shoreline, but they were helpless to stop it.

A few hundred yards before the Falls, the boat overturned after hitting a rock and the children spilled out into the rapids, headed straight for the brink. The young boy caught just the right current and plummeted nearly 165 feet down into the one pool of water where there are no rocks, and he survived! To this day he is the only person to ever to go over Niagara Falls unprotected and live.

But the main focus of the archbishop’s story was not the boy, as remarkable as his survival is. The story, instead, focuses on his sister. She was not so fortunate as her brother, and found herself in a different current. She was closer to the edge, though not close enough to make it to shore, and in the part of the river that spills out, eventually, onto the rocks below. She was rapidly going in exactly that direction, some twenty yards from the brink, when suddenly a man jumped into the water!

Holding onto his friends with one hand, he jumped into the water and caught that little girl with his other hand and held onto her until the people standing by could pull both of them to shore. That is a true story, documented at the museum beneath the Falls where it happened.

Archbishop Chaput goes on to say:

Each of us is that girl. We’re all swept along, beaten up, and paralyzed by a river of sin—our own sins and the world’s sinfulness, flowing down all the way from Adam and Eve. It’s the river we call Original Sin…No matter how hard we may struggle, we can’t do anything about it on our own. We can’t save ourselves. Then a Savior jumps into the current, for no reason other than wanting to rescue us. And He pulls us to safety.
—Living the Catholic Faith, pg. 13

Obviously it is a reference to our baptism. Baptism for us as Christians is not an option. It is not an extra or just some sign or symbol for “spiritual cleanliness.” Baptism, as the archbishop points out, is literally a matter of life and death. Jesus Christ, by our baptism, saves us from spiritual death and separation from God, and He brings us into a new and eternal life.

I mention that this morning, here on Easter Sunday, because right here in this Church last night, five young men and women were saved from death and brought into a new life with God. Five people were baptized here and experienced that powerful sacrament of death and life in Christ.

In a moment, each of us will renew our own baptismal promises, the same as we do every Easter Sunday. Are we aware that this is also a matter of life and death? The prayer introducing those promises says:

Dear friends, through the paschal mystery
we have been buried with Christ in baptism,
so that we may rise with him to a new life.

That is the mystery of Easter and the power of our own baptism: life and death. As St. Paul tells us in our second reading this morning:

You have died. Your life is hidden with Christ in God.
—Colossians 3:3


We have died to our old ways of sin, to our old self, and we now have a new life in God. We are no longer heading for the brink of disaster and death, because we have been saved by someone who loved us, who came to us, and risked everything to bring us back to God.

That truth, the Good News of the Gospel which we celebrate here today, has the power to change and transform the world we live in. And let’s be honest, we live in a world that is in desperate need of a Savior and of being rescued. Many—certainly not all, but very many—aspects of our culture and our world are heading for the brink of disaster. We are morally, spiritually and, in many areas of the world, even economically, bankrupt.

Our world desperately needs to hear the message that God has not deserted us, that He has come to us and jumped into the water to save us from death and disaster. We are all called to be witnesses of that message, since we are the ones who have experienced it personally.

A tremendous model for us in doing just that is found in our gospel this morning, in the person of St. Peter. Peter comes to the tomb where Christ, who was dead, has been raised to life again. He stands before that empty tomb, and then he does the strangest thing: he goes down into the tomb! Usually it is only the deceased that go down into the tomb, but here Peter enters and, in a certain sense, unites himself to the Risen Christ. To paraphrase St. Paul, Peter dies, and is raised up again, to a life hidden with Christ in God.

That is why we hear him, in our first reading, announcing the Good News and proclaiming to all that he has been called to be a witness to all that Christ has done (Acts 10:39). He announces to all that there is new life in Christ, and that, in His name, we have received the forgiveness of our sins (Acts 10:43).

This Easter, will we have the courage to go into the tomb, and then to stand up with St. Peter and make that same announcement? We who have been brought from death to life, will we be the ones to witness to the power of Christ, and the mercy of Christ, in our baptism, in the forgiveness of sins, and in the salvation of the world?

Cobblestones and Redemptive Suffering

(Good Friday-Year A; This homily was given on 21 March, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See Isaiah 52:13-53:12 and John 18:1-19:42)

The City of Rome is a place literally lined with cobblestones. On any given street or piazza you will find thousands of them. Yet there is one cobblestone in that city that is different from all the others. It is a small red one placed neatly on the right side of St. Peter’s Square. That red cobblestone commemorates the event that took place there on May 13, 1981. It was on that date, in that very spot, that Pope John Paul II was shot and almost killed.

Perhaps you remember that tragic event and the precarious days that followed; how the pope received a tainted blood transfusion that nearly ended his life instead of saving it. It was a long, hard recovery that demanded every ounce of stamina and determination that the Holy Father could muster (and we know he had no short supply of that).

A few years after his recovery, Pope John Paul II met his attacker face to face and forgave him. It was within six weeks of that encounter that he released an apostolic letter entitled, Salvifici Doloris, On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering.

It is by far one of his most personal and spiritual reflections (almost every footnote is a biblical reference on suffering). But it is also one of the most important for all of us, because we all experience suffering. Every one of us has a red cobblestone—or perhaps several of them—in our lives. It may be the death of a loved one; a broken relationship; disappointment or discouragement; an illness; an addiction; sorrow about the past; fear about the future.

And just as universal is the question that we have all asked at one time or another, either out loud or directly to God Himself in prayer:

Why?

Why is God allowing this to happen?

Why do I have to shoulder this cross, and not some other?

Why is this happening at this time in my life?

Why suffering?

Today, more than any other day in the year, we reflect on God’s response to that question. To be sure, it is no ordinary response. God does not answer the question in a way that we might want Him to, or in the way that we would expect. But His response is one that changes everything. Good Friday allows us to recognize God’s ultimate response to our suffering in the person of Jesus Christ who suffers for us on the cross.

In the person of Jesus Christ, God takes on our humanity and enters directly into our suffering. He takes on our own afflictions and suffers for our sins. As we hear in our first reading, from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah:

Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.
—Isaiah 53:4-5

God’s response to our suffering is the suffering of His own Son, Jesus Christ. That response, says Pope John Paul II in Salvifici Doloris, does two things: it redeems the world and transforms the entire experience and meaning of suffering itself.

In the cross of Christ not only is the redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed.
—Salvifici Doloris, #19

Our red cobblestones, difficult and painful though they may be, are not meaningless. They are not without some value. In fact, they have infinite value. We can unite our sufferings to the sufferings of Christ and participate in His work of redeeming the world we live in.

Today we come before the cross and venerate the instrument that opened for us the way to eternal life. Let us also bring before Him our red cobblestones, laying them at the foot of the cross, knowing that God has given us the strength to carry them, and the grace to unite them to Himself for the salvation of the world.

Journey into Holy Week

(Palm Sunday-Year A; This homily was given on 15 & 16 March, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See Philippians 2:6-11)

One of the most common and powerful ways of telling a story is to situate it in the context of a journey. Think about the best books you have ever read, or perhaps your favorite movies. Often they begin with the main character in one place, but moving on to some final destination. The story relates all the adventures and experiences that happen along the way.

In our second reading this weekend, St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, we hear the greatest story that has ever been told, and the greatest journey that anyone ever took. St. Paul relates the journey of Christ from the heights of heaven, down here to this earth, and His final return again to the Father in eternal glory:

Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
—Philippians 2:6

No, Christ did not hold on to heaven alone, but willingly poured Himself out—He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Philippians 2:7)—and came to dwell here among us. That is how Christ was revealed: as a slave and a servant, giving everything He had to meet the greatest temporal and spiritual needs of us all.

St. Paul says that “he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 6:8). That was the price He paid for our forgiveness and our eternal salvation.

“Because of this,” St. Paul continues, “God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every other name” (Philippians 6:9). He who became so lowly and was willing to serve the needs of all is now exalted in eternal splendor at the right hand of His Father in heaven.

This is the journey of our faith, the great mystery of our Savior and our own redemption. It is referred to, in theological terms, as the Paschal Mystery: the mystery of the life, death and resurrection of Christ and His ascension into heaven. That is the mystery we celebrate and experience every time we gather together for the Eucharist.

But never do we focus more intensely and with such fervor on that Paschal Mystery than in this week we enter now on Palm Sunday: Holy Week. It is during Holy Week, and especially the Sacred Triduum—Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday’s Easter Vigil—that we come to see this great journey of Christ revealed in a remarkable and life-changing way.

On Holy Thursday we gather together for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, to commemorate that night when Christ gave us His Body and Blood in the Eucharist for the very first time. We recall that night when He instituted the priesthood, His gift to the Church to continue His self-offering of the Eucharist even until the present time.

And we remember that moment at the Last Supper when He who came from heaven to this earth, in the words of St. Paul, “took the form of a slave,” and got down on His hands and knees, washing the feet of His own disciples. In that act of humility and love He teaches us all what it means to be a disciple and reveals our call to live our lives for others.

On Good Friday we celebrate the Passion of Christ, remembering once again His sacrifice on the cross. It is called “good” because it is the best thing that could have ever happened to us, where God Himself willingly dies for our sins and opens the gates of eternal life.

Finally, we gather together on Holy Saturday night in darkness and silence. The Easter Candle is lit, and then we light our own candles from that Easter light. The Church is soon flooded with light as we celebrate with joy the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.

This is our faith. These are the sacred mysteries of our salvation. How is Christ calling each of us to enter more deeply into them this Holy Week? If you have never experienced the Triduum, might this be the year that Christ is asking you to celebrate one, or perhaps all three nights, of these holy Three Days?

As we enter this most holy of all weeks in the year for us as Catholics, may we journey with Christ here on this earth, so that we can continue with Him forever in eternal glory in heaven.

JP II...Part II

Just in case you missed the Mission at St. Mary's:

Our Lady of Grace Parish Mission

The Spiritual Legacy of Pope John Paul II

Johnston, Rhode Island

Monday through Wednesday, March 3-5

Mass begins at 7:00pm each evening

On Monday night, we will look at John Paul II’s teachings on the “Theology of the Body,” how God becomes man and shows us, in His body, the full gift of love when He unites Himself to and marries our humanity. We will see how He has left an undeniable stamp of this desire for unity in the hearts, souls, minds and bodies of every single one of us.

On Tuesday we will look at our late Holy Father’s teachings on the Eucharist. The last Encyclical Letter John Paul II wrote was on the Eucharist. In October, 2004, he introduced the Year of the Eucharist, and he died in the middle of it. One of his last gifts to the Church is found in his teachings on the Eucharist. We’ll look at that on Tuesday.

Finally, on Wednesday night we will look at Pope John Paul II’s “plan” for the third millennium, how we are all called to go out and live the Christian message and bring the Good News of Christ to those around us.

Please consider joining us this Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night, at 7:00pm each evening, for the Parish Mission. Each night of the mission will be in the context of the Mass, as we draw ever closer to Christ, our Bridegroom, and listen to The Spiritual Legacy of Pope John Paul II.

Miracle Worker

(4th Sunday of Lent-Year A; I did not preach this weekend, so this reflection is taken from an earlier Lenten homily based upon this weekend's readings; See 1 Samuel 16:1-13, Psalm 23 and John 9:1-41)

What does the grace of God look like? Would we be able to recognize someone who had received the grace and favor of God?

This weekend’s first reading tells the story of Samuel who is sent to anoint the one chosen by God to lead the people of Israel. It’s no easy task, as we soon find out, because Samuel is unable to recognize exactly which one of Jesse’s sons God has chosen. Finally he encounters David: a simple shepherd boy, an unlikely candidate. “This is the one,” God tells him. “Anoint him”.

Samuel then anoints David with oil so that everyone can see that God has chosen David in a particular way to receive His grace and favor. It was an event that David himself never forgot. Years later, when writing the Psalm which sums up his entire life—our Responsorial Psalm this weekend—David sings to the Lord:

“The Lord is my shepherd...[he] anoints my head with oil, my cup overflows.”

That is what the grace of God looks like. Through the simple things of this world, like oil, God makes Himself known to us. He makes His grace and favor visible.

I am sure that all of us are familiar with the story of Helen Keller. When she was still a young girl, not yet 2 years old, Helen was suddenly struck by an unknown disease that left her without hearing or sight. Before she knew what had happened, Helen found herself locked into a world of darkness and silence. The few words she had learned in her brief life quickly began to fade away. The last one she remembered holding onto was “water”, and soon that was gone, as well.

Many painful years later, someone suggested to Helen’s parents that there might be someone who could help. There was a young woman named Anne Sullivan who, it was said, had a gift of working with the blind and deaf. They called her “The Miracle Worker”, and you may remember the movie that was made under that very title.

She came to Helen and tried to teach her what she called “word associations”. She would give Helen an object and then try to spell out the word by tapping it into her hand, but nothing worked. Everything she tried failed…until one day she poured cold water over Helen’s hands and tapped the word, “water”. Suddenly Helen remembered!

The last word that she had forgotten as a child was the first one she remembered, and with that small miracle Helen had broken through—once again—to the outside world. The connection had been remade, and she learned quickly how to communicate once again. By the end of her life she had talked with kings and queens, and several U.S. Presidents. She lived a life intimately connected to the people around her. And it all began with a handful of water.

As remarkable as this may seem, none of us should be surprised as Catholics, because this is the kind of thing that God does on a daily basis. God constantly uses the common, ordinary things of this world to reconnect His people to the world around them, and ultimately, to Himself.

Jesus, in the gospel this weekend, encounters a man blind from birth. St. John tells us that “he spat on the ground, made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes.” How strange is that? Why would He possibly do such a thing? Jesus is the Son of God. He doesn’t have to make clay to heal someone’s blindness. Yet he chooses to do so in order that this man, and those around him, could see, and feel and experience the healing grace of God.

This saving action of Jesus is at the heart of our faith as Catholics, at the very core of our understanding of the sacraments. God—who could come into our lives any way He wanted to—chooses to come to us in the ordinary things of life.

Like Helen Keller, we were once locked away in a dark world and separated from God, but the connection has been remade through water at our Baptism. Those of us who have received Confirmation had this connection strengthened through the anointing with oil. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, God Himself speaks to us in a human voice, saying, “I absolve you of your sins”. Bread and wine become, for us, the very Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. The sacraments are real. They change us, they transform us, they make us whole again. Through them God uses the natural world to touch us in a supernatural way.

But the sacraments do demand something from us. They demand a response. The sacraments are not magic. They are doorways through which God pours out His grace into our lives, but we have to be willing to open the door. We have to say, “Yes” to God’s invitation to holiness and life in Christ.

When David was anointed we are told, “from that day on, the spirit of the Lord rushed upon [him].” From the day of our own Baptism, the Holy Spirit has rushed upon us, and calls us even now to a deeper response, a deeper commitment to the life that Christ comes to bring us.

How is God challenging us this Lent to respond well to the grace and favor we have received in Christ? When the people in our lives look at us this week, will they be able to see—in a real and tangible way—that we have been touched by the grace of God?

Samaria, A Different Kind of Love Story

(3rd Sunday of Lent-Year A; This homily was given on 23 & 24 February, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See John 4:5-42)

The Bible is a book literally filled with stories: stories of tragedy, stories of triumph; sad stories, and stories that are often filled with hope. This weekend’s Gospel, however, contains a love story…but it is a different kind of love story.

Our story begins with the person of Jesus Christ (always a good place to begin a story) who comes to a well in the land of Samaria. St. John goes on to tell us that a Samaritan woman came to that same well to draw water, and that it was about noon. Noon. The middle of the day. In Samaria, at noontime, it was extremely hot. Why would someone come at noon to draw water?

Scholars tell us that women of this region would come in the morning to draw water. It was cooler, and they would gather there and converse about social and political life. It was a place of community; but the Samaritan woman is someone who would not have been welcomed in that community.

As Jesus pointed out, she had had five husbands, and the man she was now living with was not her husband. She would not have been very welcomed anywhere. For all of the relationships she has been a part of, she is a woman who is very much alone.

And so she comes to the well at noontime—alone—because she has much to hide, and many things she wishes to keep to herself. Noontime, for her, is a safe time. But noontime, when the sun is directly overhead, is also the only time of day when there are no shadows! Everything is laid bare before the sun (Son). There is no place to hide. And it is there, in that place and at that time, that she meets a man who will change her life forever. Again, it’s a love story, but a different kind of love story.

Right there by that well Christ begins a dialogue and a conversation of love with that Samaritan woman. We know that he spoke to her with love because in the course of that conversation he lays bare her deepest secret, the one thing that she would want to hide, especially from this Stranger…and even after that, she stayed!

What kind of acceptance must she have felt in the presence of this Divine Stranger? What compassion she must she have heard in His voice, to not leave immediately when He told her everything that she had done in her life. Never had she been accepted like that. Never had she been treated with such compassion and kindness. And before long, Christ begins to draw her even more deeply into that conversation. He offers her living water and a whole new experience of life.

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,” Jesus tells her. “But whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

By the time their conversation is over her entire perspective has been changed; she has been renewed there, by the side of the well, and cannot wait to go back to the town where she lives—accepted or not—to announce with overwhelming joy: “Come, see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Christ?”

It is a powerful and beautiful story. Again, a different kind of love story…but it is also our story! St. Augustine says that the woman of Samaria represents all of us. She is a type or image of the Church. Christ is the one engaging us in dialogue and seeking to draw us into that conversation of love.

In the Christian tradition we have a specific name for that conversation between us and God; we have a special designation for that dialogue of love: Prayer. Christ thirsts for that conversation with each one of us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, talking about this very gospel passage, says:

The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.
—CCC, #2560

Are we giving God that time that He wants from us, time to be alone and quiet before Him? We began our Lenten journey just three short weeks ago, on Ash Wednesday, and in the gospel on that day Christ talked about three things: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. On this, the third Sunday of Lent, we need to take a closer look at that first one.

Are we placing ourselves before Christ in that conversation of love where He can renew and revive our spiritual lives? Are we surrendering ourselves each day to Him in that place where He can expose and lay bare those things in our lives that we need to change?

Christ does not want to shame us, or reject us when those things are revealed more clearly before Him. Quite the contrary, He wants to receive us, forgive us and draw us ever more deeply into that conversation of love with Himself. He wants to give us living water welling up for eternal life!

This weekend we come to discover, more and more completely, that Jesus Christ is thirsty! With that said, there is only one question that each of us needs to answer here in the middle of our Lenten journey: If God is that thirsty, are we?

The Spiritual Legacy of Pope John Paul II

(1st Sunday of Lent-Year A; This homily was given on 9 & 10 February, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See Genesis 2:7-3:7)

St. Mary's Parish Mission:

Monday through Wednesday, February 11-13

Mass begins at 7:00pm each evening

If you had to pick one person in your life that has had the greatest influence on you, who would it be? Is there someone you emulate, whose example you try to follow in your own life? Maybe a teacher, a parent, or some famous person you admire and respect?

For me that question is an easy one: Our late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. I have said many times that one of the greatest opportunities of my life was being able to study for the priesthood in the City of Rome. In that time I was able to meet Pope John Paul II twice, to attend some two dozen Masses that he celebrated, sometimes even serving as one of his deacons.

I began reading his works well before I ever entered the seminary, and he has truly had a profound impact and influence on me personally, and on my priesthood. And so, when the pastor asked me about a month ago to give our parish mission this year, the theme that naturally came to mind was: The Spiritual Legacy of Pope John Paul II. This coming Monday through Wednesday we will gather here at St. Mary’s to look more closely at this great legacy of truth and beauty that our late Holy Father has given us.

One of the major themes of the life and writings of Pope John Paul II is something that has come to be called the Law of the Gift. Evident in the core gospel message and taken directly from the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II quotes it often as follows: Man only truly discovers himself through a sincere gift of himself.

In other words, I only truly know who I am, and why God created me, when I am able to give myself, in love, to God and those around me. Do you want to know why God made you? Why He put you here? Do you want to know how to be happy and joyful in this world? Those questions can only be answered fully, John Paul II would say, through a life lived "outside" of oneself. Man only truly discovers himself through a sincere gift of himself.

If we look closely on our first reading this weekend, from the Book of Genesis, we find the exact opposite in the Original Sin of Adam and Eve. They are not giving anything, to anyone. In fact, what they are doing is taking, in complete disobedience to the commandment of God. God had told them they could eat from any of the trees they wanted…except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet that is exactly what they do anyway.

In that Original Sin, we find a pattern for every sin, a picture of our own sins against God and those around us. It consists, ultimately, in taking, selfishly doing what we want and not what God wants for us. St. Augustine says that when we sin we are living curvatus in se, curved in on ourselves. When that happens we are often the ones that suffer the most. Sin makes us miserable; when we act selfishly and fail to love God and those around us, we are the ones that become diminished, less and less the men and women we were always created to be.

In St. Paul’s New Testament Letter to the Romans, the Apostle shares his own inner struggle with sin (see Romans 7:15-25). He describes how he recognizes a law at work within himself: The very thing he would want to do, he says, he does not do. But then he recognizes that there are things he should avoid and not do…but he goes right ahead and does them anyway! With great exasperation, he cries out in that letter:

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
—Romans 7:24

Who will save him from this awful struggle? And then he triumphantly answers his own question:

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
—Romans 7:25

The solution to the problem of Original Sin is not found in me, or you, or St. Paul. The cure for selfishness and a life lived curvatus in se is not found in that latest self-help book or on the Oprah Winfrey Show! The solution to the great struggle with sin and our incapacity to give ourselves truly to God and those around us is found in the person of Jesus Christ! I would recommend that He does that in three ways.

Firstly, God takes on a body. God becomes man and takes on our human nature. He weds His own divine life to our humanity, forming an unbreakable bond with the human race. It is in that body, then, that He teaches us how to love, how to live, and how to give. Jesus Christ loves and forgives even His enemies, and shows us what it means to give ourselves to God and neighbor. He gives His body over to be crucified in total obedience and love to His Father’s will, and for the forgiveness of our sins.

Secondly, just so that we would not miss or forget that great self-offering—as if we could ever forget something like that—He makes it a sacrament. He takes bread and wine, and says, “This is my body, which will be given up for you.” And he tells them, “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven.”

Yes, this total offering and gift of Himself on the cross, this gift of His body for the forgiveness of sins, is now given to His bride, the Church, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. We become united to Him, to His body and blood, His soul and divinity; that marriage between divinity and humanity is fulfilled in us!

And finally, after God takes on a body, after He gives us His body, and is living in us, and we in Him, He sends us out to proclaim the gospel and give ourselves like we never could before. Now that God lives in us, we have the ability to fulfill the Law of the Gift and truly live like Christ in this world.

I mention those three things specifically because those are the themes that I will be speaking on for the three days of our mission.

On Monday night, we will look at John Paul II’s teachings on the “Theology of the Body,” how God becomes man and shows us, in His body, the full gift of love when He unites Himself to and marries our humanity. We will see how He has left an undeniable stamp of this desire for unity in the hearts, souls, minds and bodies of every single one of us.

On Tuesday we will look at our late Holy Father’s teachings on the Eucharist. The last Encyclical Letter John Paul II wrote was on the Eucharist. In October, 2004, he introduced the Year of the Eucharist, and he died in the middle of it. One of his last gifts to the Church is found in his teachings on the Eucharist. We’ll look at that on Tuesday.

Finally, on Wednesday night we will look at Pope John Paul II’s “plan” for the third millennium, how we are all called to go out and live the Christian message and bring the Good News of Christ to those around us.

Please consider joining us this Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night, at 7:00pm each evening, for the Parish Mission. Each night of the mission will be in the context of the Mass, as we draw ever closer to Christ, our Bridegroom, and listen to The Spiritual Legacy of Pope John Paul II.

How is God challenging you and me to draw closer to Christ this Lent, and to live the Law of the Gift, giving ourselves more freely and completely to God and those around us?

Repentance, Renewal, New Life...Now!

(Ash Wednesday-Year A;This homily was given 6 February, 2008, at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; read Matthew 6:1-18, 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2)

How many times have you received ashes on your forehead and listened to the message of repentance and renewal that is proclaimed every Ash Wednesday?

How many times have you begun this Lenten journey with prayer, fasting and almsgiving, the practices which Christ talks about in the gospel this day?

So then, what is different about this Ash Wednesday, 2008, and what is different about this Lent, than every other one that has come before it? The answer, I believe, is found in our second reading, from St. Paul.

St. Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, to the church that he founded; to the church that he preached the gospel to, and taught the message of forgiveness and the mercy of God; about how Jesus Christ suffered and died for us on the cross to offer us everlasting life and an intimate relationship with Himself; to that church, and the men and women he loved, St. Paul offers a most serious and sober warning:

We appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
—2 Corinthians 6:1

In other words, St. Paul is warning them—in love—not to listen to this great message of mercy and forgiveness, not to hear God’s offer of intimacy and love, and then fail to respond to it.

It would be better to have never heard of Christ and the gospel message, than to have heard and understood it and then live as if we do not belong to Him. Do not do that, St. Paul is warning them…and us.

Continuing, he goes on to quote the words of God to His people in the Old Testament, taken from the Prophet Isaiah:

In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.

And then, finally, he gives the answer to the question I asked at the beginning of this homily, about why this Ash Wednesday and this Lent is different from any other one before it, and why this moment is different for the church at Corinth than any other moment:

“Now,” says St. Paul, “is the very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.”
(2 Corinthians 6:2)

Now is the time that Christ is working in our lives.

Last year, last Lent, however well or poorly we responded to God, all that is over. We cannot change a single thing that has happened to this point.

But right now is the day of salvation, when Jesus Christ is calling us to Himself, to turn from sin and be faithful to the gospel.

Now we are called to respond to this great message of grace and mercy.

Now we are called to an intimate and growing relationship with God.

How are we called to pray, fast and give alms at this moment, at this time in our lives? How is God challenging us to make this Lent different by giving ourselves totally and completely to Him…

Now.

Beatitude Adjustment

(4th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given 2 & 3 February, 2008, at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; Read Matthew 5:1-12)

Do you need a “beatitude adjustment?” That is the question we are forced to ask ourselves this weekend in light of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. Christ begins that great oration with what we have come to know as the Beatitudes.

The word “beatitude,” is a Latin word that means “blessed” or “happy,” and we discover right away that Jesus is not talking about the blessedness or happiness that we usually hear about in our culture.

When people talk about happiness, what they often mean is someone who has the wealth, power or influence to live the way they want to; many see happiness as a life without troubles or difficulties, basically carefree. It is a life—at the very least—without pain, suffering or sorrow.

Jesus takes that vision of happiness and turns it upside down in our gospel! He stands on the mountaintop and boldly proclaims:

Blessed are the poor in spirit…Blessed are they who mourn…Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness…
—Matthew 5:3-12

We can imagine the reaction of the people listening to that message for the very first time. They must have been scratching their heads, and asking:

How on earth are these people happy?

For heaven’s sake, what kind of blessedness is that?

What Christ was challenging them—and also every one of us—to do is to make a “beatitude adjustment;” to look at happiness, blessedness, and even eternal life from a fresh perspective. Christ challenges us to see this earth and heaven itself, in an entirely different way.

One of the greatest works of Christian literature ever produced is the Italian classic, The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri. It is a powerful story about the journey to eternal life and beatitude, but that story begins on a very sad and sorry note. Dante begins in medias res, revealing the consequences of a life poorly lived:

Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost.

He was lost, alone and in the dark, seemingly without God. But then, suddenly, he looks up and his entire perspective changes. He sees the mountain of God, way off in the distance, shining in the sun. He recognizes that this is what he has been missing, this is the vision God has called him to, and his heart quickens. He immediately makes his way towards that mountain, resolute on its ascent.

No sooner does he begin his climb, however, when he encounters three terrifying and ferocious beasts: the leopard, the lion and the she-wolf. They each represent—in Dante’s world—the things within us which are base and most opposed to the vision of God.

The leopard, beautiful to look at but very dangerous, represents all the sensual pleasures of this life. The lion, “his head held high” represents pride, arrogance and self-importance. Finally, the she-wolf embodies the cravings we have for the things of this world only: it is our greed, lust, and all those earthly vices that are never satiated, never satisfied.

Cleary Dante is no match for these creatures, and so he is forced to turn his vision, instead, downward…all the way down. He journeys into the depths of the Inferno, in the realm of Hell, and there he sees the men and women who have made the worse choices of all. He looks at sin and all its ugly consequences, and it makes him physically sick.

Eventually he makes his way up into the Purgatorio, where he begins to become purified, purged of all self love. He now understands clearly how very much he is in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness, and how willing God is to pour out that mercy!

Only now is he ready and capable of taking in the vision that captured his heart from the very beginning! He has received a “beatitude adjustment,” and he is ready to enter into the Paradiso, and to stand with all the blessed in heaven, beholding God Himself for all eternity.

Are we ready to make that same adjustment in our own life? Are we ready to adjust our vision of ourselves so that we can take in the beauty and majesty of the living God?

One of the most beloved saints down through the centuries has been “the poverello” from the small Italian city of Assisi, St. Francis. His humility and holiness are renowned. Catholic author G. K. Chesterton describes how Francis’ conversion and transformation came about through a series of ongoing humiliations. Willingly and voluntarily, as well as through the mysterious action of God, St. Francis was stripped of everything that would have given him comfort and consolation in this world.

It was, Chesterton describes, as if Francis’ life was slowly turned upside down. He was forced to see life from an entirely different perspective: one of total and absolute dependence upon God. That, describes Chesterton, is the way we should all view the world around us.

In his biography on the life of St. Francis, Chesterton says:

If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasize the idea of dependence… He would be thankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars.

Perhaps St. Peter saw the world so, when he was crucified head downwards… men have said “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.”

It was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St. Francis said, “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.” It was by this deliberate idea of starting from zero…that he did come to enjoy even earthly things as few people have enjoyed them.

That, in the words of G.K. Chesterton, is St. Francis’ “beatitude adjustment.” It is what enabled him to see that his own happiness, blessedness, and everything else in this world, was completely dependent upon God.

Now let us read Jesus’ teaching of the beatitudes in that key. Christ says:

Blessed are the poor in spirit…

Why are they blessed? Because they are totally dependent upon God to provide for them in everything…and He will!

Blessed are they who mourn…

Why are they blessed? Because they are not dependent upon the good things and good feelings of this life for happiness; their happiness, their consolation and their joy completely depends upon God…and He is so ready and willing to give them that consolation and joy!

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…

Why are they blessed? Because they are not dependent upon the justice and satisfaction of this world only; they have a satisfaction and a justice—and mercy—that comes from God Himself. How could they not be blessed by that?


How is God challenging us to embrace these beautiful and rewarding teachings in our own lives? How are we called to make a “beatitude adjustment?”

How are we being called this week to recognize, along with Dante, that we are sinners in desperate need of the mercy of God, and that He has a desperate desire to give us that mercy?

How are we called to stand on our heads, and like St. Francis, to see the world around us as totally dependent upon God?

May we truly come to see how blessed we are by God in this life, and receive in its fullness the beatitude He is calling us to in eternal life.

Light in the Darkness

(3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given 26 & 27 January, 2008, at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; Read Isaiah 8:23-9:3 and Matthew 4:12-23)

Our gospel this weekend tells the story of new beginnings: the start of Jesus’ public ministry, the calling of the first Apostles, Peter and Andrew, James and John. In many ways it is also a very personal story for me, but we’ll come back to that.

St. Matthew tells us that it all began “in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali” (Matthew 4:13). Where on earth are Zubulun and Naphtali? Those are two names we almost never hear in our Sunday readings, yet this weekend we hear them mentioned several times, in the first reading from Isaiah the prophet and in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

Zebulun and Naphtali, to go back to the Old Testament, were two of the twelve tribes of Israel. Remember that the twelve tribes were named after the twelve sons of Jacob; when they established themselves in the Promised Land, Zebulun and Naphtali settled into the region of the north, near the Sea of Galilee.

The north of Palestine was a region rich in natural resources and abundant in opportunities; they enjoyed a tremendous fishing industry on the Sea of Galilee, as we hear in all the gospels. But because that region was so close to the bordering nations, it was also the most vulnerable and exposed. Time and again in the nation’s history the land of Zebulun and Naphtali had been invaded and devastated by the enemies of Israel.

In the 8th century B.C., the nation of Assyria had come in and wiped them out, carrying many of the people into exile, and worse, repopulating the land with their own. The unity of culture and faith of the tribes to the north had been broken and dissipated. It was for that reason that Isaiah the prophet and St. Matthew both referred to it as “Galilee of the Gentiles,” and “a land overshadowed by death” (Matthew 4:15-16). It was a place of brokenness; a place of sorrow; a place of darkness.

And it is precisely in that place where Jesus Christ, the Messiah, begins to restore the twelve tribes of Israel, to heal the nation and to renew the face of the earth! I would suggest this weekend that this gospel passage teaches us three vital and important things about God.

Firstly, God comes to us in the darkness. When we are broken, afraid, confused and filled with sorrow, when the world around us turns dark and we feel most powerless, God comes to us. He brings us the light that we could never manufacture on our own, the light who comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.

Secondly, when He comes into our lives He immediately calls us out of darkness and into relationship with Himself, the Light. The first words He speaks in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali this weekend, the opening address in His public ministry, echoes the familiar command:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
—Matthew 4:17

Christ calls us to leave behind everything that keeps us from drawing closer to God; to turn away from sin and from every form of selfishness and to embrace the gospel message of grace, forgiveness and new life in the kingdom of heaven. We are called to live lives of repentance and to be united to the Light that is Christ.

Finally, once the Light comes into our darkness, once He has called us out of darkness and into His own wonderful light (see Colossians 1:13), it is then that He sends us out as apostles of light to bring the good news of the gospel to those who remain in darkness.

As we hear in the Gospel of Matthew, He calls Peter and Andrew, James and John to follow Him and become “Fishers of Men.” They will bring His gospel from the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali to the far reaches of the world, giving their very lives for the message of hope, forgiveness, and new life in Christ. By all means it is a powerful story for us to reflect on this weekend.

But as I mentioned at the beginning of this homily, it is also a very personal story. For several years of my life I lived in darkness; not geographically in the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali, but spiritually in the dark because I was not practicing my faith in Jesus Christ. I was not putting God in the center of my life. Instead, I put myself in the center and did whatever I wanted to do. Because of that I was spiritually in darkness.

There were questions in my life that I did not have any answers for:

Why am I here?

Why did God make me and what am I supposed to do with my life?

At that time I was working in the dark…literally! I was working third shift at Stop & Shop, and one night a commercial came on the radio at about three o’clock in the morning (Truth be told, it was the hard rock station, because that is what we listened to at three o’clock in the morning on the graveyard shift. If you go to the supermarket near you at three o’clock in the morning, that’s what you’ll listen to, like it or not!).

The commercial went something like this:

Do you feel called to serve other people?

Do you have gifts for spreading the gospel message?

Maybe you are being called to the Catholic priesthood.

I remember standing there, listening to that commercial in the middle of the night, and thinking: “You’ve got to be kidding me. Do they have any idea who listens to this station at three o’clock in the morning? People like me! They would have a better chance getting me to become a Catholic priest!”

I had no idea that God was trying—right then—to do that very thing. It was only over the course of the next few years that I began to realize that Jesus Christ had come to me in the darkness and began to call me into the light with Him. He began to call me into a deeper and more intimate relationship with Him than I could have ever imagined.

Everything in my life began to change: my relationship with my parents, with friends, with people I worked with. Everything was different. I found myself not only at Sunday Mass, but even at daily Mass now, with my parents, strengthened in the word of God and in the sacraments of the Church.

And then He began to send me out to share that same message of hope and the same joy that I had found in Christ. He sent me into the seminary to prepare for a life of ministry, a life of service. He sent me to Rome to finish my studies and formation for the priesthood. He sent me to Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich to proclaim the gospel message of forgiveness, mercy and eternal life. And praised be Jesus Christ, in July of 2007 He sent me here to St. Mary’s in Cranston to announce that same message of hope. I am a Roman Catholic priest, and I love what God has called me to do and the life that I have been given by Him!

That is my story.

What I ask this weekend is: What is your story?

Where do you feel the darkness in your own life? Where are the places that you are broken, anxious or fearful and feel alone or in the dark?

God comes to us in the darkness, and calls us into a deeper, more intimate relationship with Himself. How is He calling you out of darkness and into His light?

And most importantly of all, how is He calling all of us, this week, to be sent out and to share that message of hope and the Light that is Jesus Christ with those who remain even now in the dark? How are we called to bring the Light of Christ to a world that desperately needs it?

"Behold, the Lamb of God!"

(2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given 19 & 20 January, 2008, at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; Read John 1:29-34)

When people talk about you, what do they say? That’s a dangerous question, isn’t it? When the people who know you best say something about you, what do they say?

I ask that question because this weekend we are given one of those rare gospel passages in which Jesus doesn’t utter a single word about Himself or anyone else. We are completely dependent upon St. John the Baptist to speak to us about Jesus. And what he has to say is significant.

The Baptist spots Christ at the River Jordan, and immediately upon recognizing Him declares:

Behold, the Lamb of God,
who takes away the sin of the world.
—John 1:29

It sounds familiar enough to us, but what it meant for the people of Jesus’ time was nothing short of remarkable. The lamb was central to the religious life of the people of Israel. When they were rescued from the land of Egypt, only those who had sprinkled their doorposts with the blood of the lamb, and had eaten the lamb as their Passover meal were saved. The sacrifice of the lamb would become a sign of their salvation, a perpetual remembrance of their freedom, and a sign of their new life from God.

Once they became established in the Promised Land and built the Temple in Jerusalem, every day—right up to the time of Christ—the priests would offer the sacrifice of a lamb in atonement for the sins of the people. Remember, John the Baptist’s father was a priest of the temple. John would have understood all this.

When he cries out: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” he is announcing that the Messiah has arrived and the time has come for the salvation of all, for forgiveness, once and for all. It’s a powerful statement: The time has come for them to be forgiven, and for all sin to be taken away!

But what kind of impact does such a statement have for us? What does it mean for us that Jesus has come to “take away the sins of the world”? In our culture, and in the world we live in, many say that there is a loss of the sense of sin. To even suggest that there is such a thing as “living in sin” or to consider that we ourselves might be in a “state of sin” at any given time is almost unheard of.

Pope John Paul the Great, in one of his earlier documents called Reconciliation and Penance, writes about this loss of the sense of sin. He talks about the weakening of the moral conscience—our ability to recognize within our hearts right from wrong—and says:

It happens not infrequently in history that the moral conscience of many people becomes seriously clouded . . . Too many signs indicate that such an eclipse exists in our time . . . It is inevitable therefore that in this situation there is an obscuring also of the sense of sin.
—Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, # 18

The Holy Father connects this loss of the sense of sin to several different factors in our contemporary culture, and you don’t need to be an expert in theology or culture to recognize them.

The first one he mentions is what is commonly called secularism. John Paul II defines it as “a movement of ideas and behavior which advocates a humanism totally without God.” We place all of our focus on this world only; all our eggs are in this one basket. We look to our own accomplishments, our own careers, and even good endeavors like work and family, yet totally without reference to God. That is secularism.

Quoting what he had said earlier in his first Encyclical Letter, Redemptor Hominis, John Paul II talks about how man can build a world without God; it is certainly possible. But that world, he says, will end by turning against him.

Isn’t that what we see on a global scale, with nations destroying each other in the absence of any real search for the will of God? Don’t we see this even on a more personal level, when we try to create our own little space or world without God in it? That world, in the end, will turn against us. Secularism, then, is the first factor which leads to a loss of the sense of sin.

The second factor that has caused a loss of the sense of sin in our culture is what could be termed “pop psychology.” It is not really psychology at all, but a mistaken understanding of the human person which “leads to a refusal to admit any shortcoming.” In other words, we simply explain our sin away and excuse ourselves as a product of our environment.

The problems in my life are because of my upbringing.

It is my parents’ fault.

My boss is no good.

It’s all because of my kids.

Everyone else is to blame for my situation; everyone but me.

To fall back on that kind of mentality is to loose all sense of responsibility for my own actions and to loose the sense and meaning of personal sin.

The third factor that John Paul II mentions is moral relativism. Relativism is to say that something certainly could not be a sin all the time. Times change, and people change. So what used to be a sin a long time ago, now that everyone is doing it, must no longer be a sin.

Perhaps an example would be helpful. It used to be a serious sin, years ago, to miss Mass on Sunday. But now we all know lots of people who miss Mass all the time. Therefore, it must not be a sin anymore…right? Wrong! Not going to Mass on Sunday is a grave sin. It was years ago, and it still is today. In fact, 20 years from now, to miss Mass will still be a grave sin, because we are called to come here to worship God.

God calls us together each week to be strengthened in our faith and in the Sacraments of the Church, and to live differently than the rest of the world around us. We are created to worship God, and to give Him the praise that is due. Failure or refusal to do that, as we are guided by the teachings of the Church handed down to us by Christ, without any legitimate excuse, is sin. Defining it as anything else, and pointing to our culture and a changing social climate as the answer, is relativism.

Finally, John Paul II points to a practical atheism as a source of the loss of the meaning or sense of sin so prevalent in our times. Few of us would ever say, “God does not exist.” But we live our lives sometimes as if He did not exist. That is practical atheism.

We live as if we will never stand before God in judgment.

We live as if we will never answer to God for the sins that we have committed.

We live as if it were not at all possible that God could deny us access to the Kingdom of Heaven because of the actions, choices, or decisions we have made here on this earth.

To live in that way is practical atheism, and it causes a loss of the sense of sin.

But why are these things so serious? Why bother spending the time trying to understand them? Because when we lose the sense of sin in our lives, we also lose the mercy and forgiveness of God right along with it.

God says to us, whenever we have sinned: “I want to forgive you; I want you to know my mercy and to know my love. I sent my Son to suffer and die on the cross so that you could be forgiven. I want you back.”

To deny the sense of sin in our lives is essentially to say, “God, no thank you. I don’t want your forgiveness. I don’t need your mercy. I’m fine just the way I am!”

The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen would often say that sin is not the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in the world is the denial of sin. He once received a phone call from a woman whose brother was dying in the hospital. She described her brother not simply as a bad man, but as an evil man. He was a very rough character. Over 20 priests had been in to see him on his deathbed, and he had thrown them all out! As a last resort, his sister asked Fulton Sheen for help.

Realizing that he would fare no better than the other priests, Sheen stayed only 15 seconds on his first visit, and said nothing. The next day he came back and stayed for 20 seconds. Again he said nothing. After 40 days he was finally staying for up to 15 minutes a visit, and it was then that he finally broke the silence:

“William,” he said, “you are going to die tonight.”

“I know,” was the man’s reply.

“I am sure you want to make your peace with God,” Sheen said to him.

“No, I do not. Get out.”

Realizing that he wasn’t going to get through, Fulton Sheen agreed to leave, but before he did he went over to the man and said to him,

“Just one thing. Promise me that before you die tonight, you will say, ‘Jesus, have mercy’.”

He said, “I will not. Now get out.”

Later that night, one of the nurses called Fulton Sheen to tell him that the man had died, and she said that he had died well.

“Why would you say that,” he asked.

She said, “Because from the moment you left the room, he began to say, ‘Jesus, have mercy,’ and didn’t stop until the moment he died.”

We can deny the sin in our lives only so much, but eventually, we must bring it before God. Now, or later, we must acknowledge that we are in need of the forgiveness of God, and when we can do that, then we will be able to recognize fully that God is so filled with mercy, so ready to embrace us, so overwhelmingly in love with us.

And the ones who are able to recognize that are the ones most qualified and capable of proclaiming it to the world we live in, a world that desperately needs to hear the message about God’s mercy.

Who will be the one to tell them? Will you be the one in your world this week to tell others that God is merciful? Will you be the one to stand up with St. John the Baptist and point to Jesus Christ, saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”?

Baptism of the Lord

(Feast of the Baptism of the Lord; I did not preach this weekend, so I would like to post this homily from the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord that was given back in 2005, at my first assignment at Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich; See Matthew 3:13-17)

Imagine Tiger Woods asking you for some help improving his golf swing, or Donald Trump asking you for financial advice. That must have been how John the Baptist felt when Jesus came to the Jordan River to be baptized.

Think about it. People from all over Judea were coming to John to repent of their sins. Suddenly the Son of God steps into the water. John’s reaction is one we can all understand. He tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized: “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” Nonetheless, Jesus insists; but why? Why does the Son of God—who is without sin—need to be baptized?

We could look to the Christian Sacrament of Baptism, which teaches us how the one being baptized receives new life in the Holy Spirit…But Christ is already one with the Holy Spirit; in fact, He can never be separated from the Holy Spirit. There can be only one reason why Jesus is baptized and why He receives the Holy Spirit. It’s the same reason He took on human nature to begin with.

St. Cyril of Alexandria says He receives the Holy Spirit in His human nature, not for His own advantage, but for ours. He says Christ “receives it to renew our nature in its entirety and to make it whole again, for in becoming man he took our entire nature to himself.”


And so, it is for our sake that Jesus is baptized in the Jordan by John. It is for us that He comes to identify Himself with sinners whom He will eventually die for. It is for us that the Holy Spirit descends upon Christ in the form of a dove, as the heavens are opened and the Father declares:

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.
—Matthew 3:17

When Christ takes our human nature and cleanses it in the waters of the Jordan, he begins the Father’s will to renew all of humanity, and in a certain sense he prepares each of us for our own baptism. Each one of us, in baptism, is cleansed of original sin, and the Holy Spirit comes upon us, and the Father claims us as His own. In a certain sense, He says to each of us:

"This is my beloved son," or "This is my beloved daughter," "in whom I am well pleased."

But this renewal and new life that begins at baptism is not something that happens without our cooperation. We need to be open to the gift of life which God gives us in Jesus, and willing to respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit all throughout our lives. It is an ongoing process.

You might remember that in the late 1970s, in El Salvador, there was constant terror and turmoil as a corrupt military dictatorship frequently sent out death squads to punish anyone who opposed it. At that time Archbishop Oscar Romero was appointed to lead the archdiocese, and as far as the government was concerned, he was the perfect man for the job: He was a shy, timid man who kept his mouth shut.

Within a few short weeks of his appointment, though, everything changed. A very close friend of his, a Jesuit priest named Fr. Rutilio, was shot and killed by one of the death squads. It is said that when his body was brought before Oscar Romero, the archbishop wept uncontrollably, and remained that way all night as he prayed by the coffin of his friend.

The following Sunday, Romero cancelled every Mass in the archdiocese except for the one which he would say, a memorial service in the cathedral. More than 100,000 people attended the Mass, and one eyewitness described Romero as sweating, pale and nervous.

He said, “It was as if the archbishop was reluctant to go through the door of history that God was opening up for him.” But after a few minutes, the same witness said, “Suddenly, I felt as if the Holy Spirit had descended upon him.”

The archbishop then demanded an investigation into the killing. El Salvador’s military government was furious. And for the next three years, until he too was killed by the death squads, Romero broadcasted weekly homilies throughout the country, assuring the people that the Church was with them in their suffering.

Now baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit may not lead us to sacrifice our lives in the same way Archbishop Romero did, but we, too, are called to an openness to the Holy Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, and to be moved outside of ourselves.

Because we will never be truly happy in this life until we learn how to give of ourselves. We are only fulfilled when we learn how to give ourselves away, and it is the Holy Spirit who teaches us to do that. The Holy Spirit moves us and guides our lives—if we will let Him—so that we can begin to live more completely, more joyfully, that call we received at our own baptism.

So often people are waiting for some person or event that will change their lives and help them to find true meaning and purpose. But what if that event has already happened on the day of our baptism? What if that person we are waiting for is Jesus Christ, Whose very own we became at our baptism?

This weekend we ask for the grace to recognize that we have received new life from Christ in the sacrament of baptism. We have gone down into the waters with Him; we have received the gift of the Holy Spirit and heard the voice of the Father saying, "This is my beloved son," or "this is my beloved daughter," "in whom I am well pleased."

Let us be open to this gift today, open to the direction the Holy Spirit is leading us in, and learn how to give ourselves more completely to Christ, who has given Himself completely to us.

Mary, the Beautiful Mother of God

(Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God; This homily was given on 1 January, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See Numbers 6:22-27 & Luke 2:16-21)

Do you think that Mary was beautiful? I mean, would she stand out in a crowd? If she lived in our time, would she be approached by modeling agents, or asked to do commercials for Oil of Olay? Whenever Mary is depicted in Christian art she is always beautiful. Think about Michelangelo’s Pieta. Even in modern times, in movies like The Passion of the Christ or The Nativity Story, the face of Mary is always beautiful.

But whatever Mary looked like, her Son most likely had similar features. It is very likely that the face of Jesus looked a lot like the face of Mary; Jesus may have had Mary’s eyes, or her nose. She gave birth to a Son, and gave to Him everything concerning His human nature, everything that each of our own mothers has given to us. She gave God a face.

But because her child was also God, she is rightly called the Mother of God. We honor her this morning under that title, Mary, Mother of God. This young woman from the small town of Nazareth gave birth to the Son of God! God, who is invisible, pure spirit, “whom no human being has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16), as Scripture describes Him, is suddenly made visible in Christ Jesus, God made flesh. He is given a body, given a face, and the invisible God is made visible through Mary.

In the gospel this morning the shepherds come to adore Him and they behold the glory of God in the face of a little baby in a manger. That beautiful blessing that God mentions to Moses in the first reading, “May the Lord let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:25), in a literal way that blessing is bestowed upon these humble shepherds. They went to that manger that night, and beheld the face of God!

The blessing given to those shepherds (and also to every one of us), and the face of God Himself, come to this world through Mary. But what Mary does for Christ she also wants to do in our lives, as well. She who brought Christ physically into this world continues to bring about life in the Church through her role as Mother.

This is significant for us, because we are the ones striving to become what Mary has already become, seeking to enter our true home in heaven, where Mary has already arrived. By her prayers and example, she helps us on our way. She, whose face is radiant as She beholds the face of God, helps us to become radiant as well.

Because, in a particular way, we are the face of Christ for those who are searching for God. The invisible God is made visible now through us, for we are the body of Christ on earth.

Do the people around us—those we encounter on a daily basis—see the face of God as beautiful?

Will they recognize, by our words and actions, that God is beautiful and that He is truly present in this world?

As we enter into a whole New Year in 2008, may we become that blessing which God desires to bestow on the world we live in. May we live lives that proclaim that blessing, announcing to all:

The LORD bless you and keep you!

The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!

The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!

Subordination and the Holy Family

(Feast of the Holy Family; This homily was given on 29 & 30 December, 2007 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I. Read Ephesians 5:21-33, Colossians 3:12-21 & Matthew 2:13-23)

This weekend, for the Feast of the Holy Family, there is a choice for the second reading, part of St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians: the long version or the short one. One has to wonder if the choice is there because the long version contains the often unpopular verse: Wives, be subordinate to your husbands (Colossians 3:18).

You would be hard pressed to find a more controversial passage in the New Testament than that one…or one more misunderstood. It is not the only time in the Scriptures that we hear that statement, either. In St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians he says almost the very same thing:

Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.
— Ephesians 5:22

What on earth was St. Paul thinking…twice? Believe it or not, that passage from Ephesians is one of the selections that couples can have read at their wedding. You would be surprised how often couples actually choose it…or maybe you wouldn’t. They almost never do! That is unfortunate, since it very beautifully describes how we are all called to live and love in Christ, not just wives, but husbands, single people, priests and religious sisters and brothers, all persons.

If you go back just one verse from that “controversial” one in the Letter to the Ephesians, just one verse previous, St. Paul says:

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.
—Ephesians 5:21

That is not just an exhortation for wives; it is for all of us. We are called to be “subordinate to one another,” to submit to and defer to each other in love “out of reverence for Christ.” Only when we do that are we able to open ourselves up to the splendor and the dignity of love that we find in the person of Jesus Christ.

As Christians, we do not look at the world or each other to see how to live and how to love. We look to Christ. He is the source and foundation of love, and the love that Christ has for us is spousal. It is the love that a husband has for his wife. Now, that is not something I am simply making up; in fact, it is something that goes back even further than St. Paul. The spousal love of God is something we find all throughout the Old Testament.

God constantly refers to Himself as the divine spouse or husband of His bride, Israel. He calls her to Himself as a bride, and vows to care for her and watch over her forever. He makes promises to her, promises he intends to keep. He expresses His great desire and affection for her through prophets and poets alike.

It is beautiful and impressive imagery, no doubt. But it could never be more than that. It could never be a true marriage, since God is different from us. He is purely spiritual and dwells in heaven while we are corporal, dwelling bodily here on earth. In order for God to truly be a husband, well, he would have to become…a man. That is exactly what we celebrate in this Christmas season: Jesus Christ, the God who became man for us. God becomes man, and that man is the husband or bridegroom totally in love with His bride. In the New Testament Christ refers to Himself as the divine bridegroom (Matthew 9:15) and the true spouse of His bride, the Church (that’s us!).

Passionate is the fullness of the love He shows Her! His love for His bride takes Him to the cross, willing to die to save her and set her free. The Bride, for her part, is called to total devotion and love for her Spouse, giving her life to Him and holding nothing back.

Now that’s what St. Paul is talking about when he says, “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). It is precisely what he means when he says, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Husband and wife are called to image the very love of God and the Church, and they do so freely, joyfully and mutually. They are called to “be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

One of the most sought after speakers and experts on what has come to be called the “theology of the body,” is a man named Christopher West. He has an excellent way of explaining this mutual submission of husband and wife. He says that if you break up that word—“sub,” meaning “under” and “mission,” meaning “to be sent forth with the authority to perform a specific service”—then it becomes clear that the husband and wife place themselves “under” or at the service of the mission of their spouse.

This sounds altogether too theological, no? Thanks be to God we are given a beautiful example of it in the Holy Family itself.

These past few weeks we celebrated how the Blessed Virgin Mary receives a mission from God. It is an extraordinary mission. The Angel Gabriel reveals to her that she will conceive and bear a Son, and that he will be the Savior of the world. It is a mission upon which our eternal salvation rests.

St. Joseph, for his part, must place himself "under" that mission. There is no other option. If he is to be the just man and faithful husband of Mary, then he cannot deviate from this mission in the slightest way. How remarkably he places himself under the mission of Mary, as we hear each year in the Christmas celebration!

But today, on this Feast of the Holy Family, we hear that St. Joseph himself has received a mission. The same Angel Gabriel appears to him and reveals his mission: Take this Child and His mother, and get out of town. NOW! Herod is seeking to destroy this Child.

Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you.
—Matthew 2:13

From that moment, Mary places herself and her Child totally under that mission. She does not say, “Egypt? Oh, the weather there is terrible this time of year. Let’s go to Jerusalem, instead.” Nor does she say, “Now? I have just had a child. We’ll go next week.” She places herself totally under the mission of St. Joseph because if she does not, the Child will die! The circumstances are that dire, that drastic. But Mary willingly gives herself to that mission, in the same way that St. Joseph had previously placed himself under her mission of bringing Christ into this world and caring for Him.

This is the way God has formed the human family. The family is a communion of persons who are constantly looking out for the best interests of the other, and seeking to place themselves at the service of the other in love.

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21).

How is God calling all of us—wives, husbands, priests, religious, single persons, old and young,—how is God calling all of us to do that this week?