God Works in Mysterious Ways

(Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ-Year A; This homily was given 24 & 25 May, 2008, at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; read John 6:51-58)

I am sure you have heard the expression: “God works in mysterious ways.” So often when God reveals Himself in our lives, when He guides us through this life and into eternal life, He works in powerful, beautiful, and mysterious ways. The Feast of Corpus Christi that we celebrate this weekend is no exception.

The story of our feast goes back 800 years and begins with one woman (one little girl to be precise). Her name was Juliana and she grew up in the city of Liège in Belgium. At the age of five she became an orphan and was sent to a nearby Monastery to live with the Augustinian nuns at Mount Cornillon. She eventually joined the order.

When she was sixteen she began to receive extraordinary visions. She saw a full moon, darkened in one place, where there appeared to be a piece missing. She had no idea what that vision meant. Eventually God revealed to her that the moon represented the Church’s Liturgical Year and the piece missing was a feast that He wanted in honor of the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. Of course, she was helpless to accomplish such a task.

After nearly twenty years she confided in a nearby priest, the Archdeacon of Liège, Jacques Pantaleon. He believed what she shared with him but was equally powerless, in his position, to do anything about it.

After Juliana’s death, Jacques Pantaleon became the Archbishop of Jerusalem, sent there by the Pope to bring unity and peace to a place that was in a great deal of distress. Several years later he returned to Rome and soon after his arrival the Pope there died. The Cardinals in Rome then elected him the new Vicar of Christ.

Jacques Pantaleon became Pope Urban IV, an elderly but well accomplished Pontiff who lived only three years after his election. In that brief time he did two things that touch our lives in a particular way today:

Firstly, he instituted the Feast of Corpus Christi, remembering young Juliana and her extraordinary visions.

Next, he commissioned a young Dominican priest named Thomas to compose the office (the music and prayers) for the celebration of the feast. We know him today as St. Thomas Aquinas, and the hymns he composed—Pange Lingua (the final two stanzas of which are the Tantum Ergo), Verbum Supernum (the final two stanzas of which are the O Salutaris Hostia) and the Adoro Te Devote—are still popular and cherished today.

This great feast, and some of the greatest music our Church has ever heard, all began with a five year old orphan in Liège! God does indeed work in powerful, beautiful and mysterious ways.

But the God who works so magnificently and mysteriously in the lives of Juliana, Pope Urban IV, and St. Thomas Aquinas, works in the same way in our own lives.

In fact, that mysterious vision of Juliana—the one of a full moon with a piece missing—is a beautiful image for each one of us. We are all created with an empty space, a piece missing, which only God can fill. No matter what we try to stuff into that place, nothing else will ever work but God. He alone can satisfy the deepest longing and yearning of our hearts.

St. Augustine said it well when he prayed: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

That deepest yearning and longing we have is something that God alone can fulfill, and today we celebrate the truth that He has done so. In the Holy Eucharist God meets us at the point of our greatest need: our desire and hunger for Him. In all the places that God makes Himself known to us and gives us Himself, the Eucharist is preeminent. It is the Sacrament and the encounter with the living God Himself, and the foretaste of eternal life.

Christ tells us in the Gospel of St. John this weekend:

Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
—John 6:53

Do we really believe that? Do our lives as Catholics reflect this great truth and the life-giving power of the Eucharist? He continues:

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.
—John 6:54

In heaven we will live in union with Christ, physically and spiritually, for all eternity. Today we taste here on earth that eternal life of heaven in the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist has the power to transform our lives, to re-invigorate our families, to renew our communities and bring new life to the world we live in.

Then why doesn’t it?

In November of 2006, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a reflection on the importance of worthily receiving Christ in the Eucharist called, “Happy Are Those Who Are Called To His Supper”. That reflection spoke about the power of Christ in the Eucharist and the personal effects we experience when we receive such a tremendous gift.

But it also mentioned the preparation that God expects of us, and the way we should be living on a daily basis in order for those effects to occur as God intends. It is possible to make the reception of Holy Communion fruitless, not because of God but because of us!

Specifically, “Happy Are Those Who Are Called To His Supper,” mentioned three things that should be a part of our daily lives.

The first is Christian prayer and the daily reading of Scripture. Do we take time each day to be alone with God in prayer? Do we listen to the words of God in the Bible, and allow God to shape and mold our understanding or reality? Do we listen to what He is saying to us in the Scriptures and then respond to that word in prayer. It is in daily prayer that we grow in intimacy with God as we prepare to meet Him here in the Eucharist.

Secondly, we are called to faithfully live out our vocation wherever God has called us to be. Whether we are married, single, a religious brother or sister, or ordained, God calls us to be faithful day in and day out, to love Him and our neighbor. That is not easy to do…and when we fail…and we will—no one is perfect in loving God the way He calls us to, and in loving those around us; we all fall short—but when we fail, then we have to be mindful of the third requirement in the life of the Christian: Daily repentance and Reconciliation.

We are called to live lives of repentance. When we get to the end of the day, we humbly acknowledge those places where we have failed to love God and neighbor, and we say we are sorry. We seek His mercy and forgiveness in our lives on a daily basis.

If we have committed any grave sins then we need to seek God’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which He gave us for that very purpose. “Happy Are Those Who Are Called To His Supper,” names several “thoughts, actions, and omissions” which would constitute “grave matter” and would require one who has knowingly sinned in that way to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation before receiving Holy Communion:

Failing to worship God by missing Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation without a serious reason, such as sickness or the absence of a priest.

Engaging in sexual activity outside the bonds of a valid marriage.

Speaking maliciously or slandering people in a way that seriously undermines their good name.

Producing, marketing, or indulging in pornography.

Engaging in envy that leads one to wish grave harm to someone else.

These are all serious sins that would need to be forgiven in Confession before receiving the Eucharist. Regular confession, in fact, is one of the most effective ways of living a repentant life.

Daily prayer and Scripture, living faithfully our vocation, and living lives of repentance: When these practices are a part of our daily lives, then Christ can work powerfully in the Sacrament of the Eucharist and accomplish so much more than we could imagine.

God wants to unite Himself to us in this Sacrament and make us the holy men and women we have always been called to be. That is the goal of the Christian life; not to be decent people, or as good as the person next to us, or as nice as the person across the street. No, we are called to be saints…which brings me back to Juliana of Liège.

Later on, after her death, she became Blessed Juliana of Cornillon, and in 1869 she was canonized St. Juliana by Pope Pius IX. In the same way, that young Dominican priest became St. Thomas Aquinas. These were ordinary men and women who were touched by Christ in an extraordinary way in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. God works in extraordinary, powerful and mysterious ways.

How will He work in us on this Feast of Corpus Christi, in this coming week, and all throughout our Christian lives?

God's Innermost Secret

(Trinity Sunday-Year A; This homily was given 17 & 18 May, 2008, at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; read John 23:16-18 and CCC #221, 2201-2213)

Do you have any secrets? Is there something in your life that is so personal, so beautifully intimate, that only one or perhaps two people in the entire world know it? Maybe it is your own special recipe for gravy and meatballs, or the way you first met, and fell in love with, your spouse.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us God has a secret! God’s innermost secret, says the Catechism, is this:

That God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that he has destined us to share in that exchange.
—CCC, #221

From all eternity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are pouring themselves out to one another in love, and receiving the love being given. Now, by an absolute and total gift of goodness, mercy and grace, we are called to share in that exchange.

But how do we know that? Who let the cat out of the bag on that secret? The Catechism says that God did when He sent us His Son.

St. John, in the gospel this weekend, words it this way:

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 loved the world. This powerful and overwhelming love that God has within Himself from all eternity is suddenly turned loose on the world. The Father sends the Son, not to condemn us but to save us and bring us into eternal life. Now, if we believe in Him—place our hope, our faith, our trust in Him—we can share forever in that eternal exchange of love that is God Himself.

This life-giving love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is what we come here to celebrate this Trinity Sunday. There is nothing in all the earth as remarkable and beautiful as the Holy Trinity…well, almost nothing!

There is one thing, here among us today, that is the very image of the Holy Trinity, pointing us towards that love which exists within God Himself: the Christian family. Just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a communion of persons in love, even so is the Christian family. In particular, there are two dimensions in which the Christian family reveals and imitates the love of the Trinity: in its creative love and in sacrificial love (CCC, #2205).

One of the most obvious ways the Trinity is expressed is found in the created world. God, in love, creates the world we live in. He brings it to life in love.

In the same way, when a husband and wife express their love for one another physically, they open themselves up to the possibility of new life. Whenever I prepare couples for marriage, I always tell them that the love they share in marriage is so powerful, so real, that in nine months they could be holding it! In nine months they could be giving him or her a name. That is what it means to share in God’s creative love.

But families do much more than that; they also make sacrifices. How many sacrifices have you made in this last week alone for the ones you love? We make sacrifices for our spouses, our children, our parents. When we do that in faith, we participate in the sacrificial love of Christ Himself.

Lived out to the fullest, this plan of God for the human family will not only reveal God’s love in our midst, it will also build up society and the world around us. That is why the family is the basic building block of society itself. God intends it that way.

Pope John Paul the Great used to say, “As the family goes, so goes society and the rest of the world.”

Isn’t that a beautiful quote? Society stands or falls with the family. If our families are responding to God and His plan, the world around us is built up and strengthened, and everyone benefits: Christians, and even those who do not believe in or follow Christ. As the family goes, so goes society and the rest of the world.

But in newspapers across the country this week, there was a similar quote using the very same phraseology of John Paul II. The Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom said “As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation.” California?

He was talking about the new law that was passed there this week recognizing “same-sex marriage.” Pumping his fist in the air, he triumphantly declared:

"As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. It’s inevitable. This door’s wide open. It’s going to happen whether you like it or not."

The problem with his statement, of course, is that California is not the image of the Holy Trinity. Now, please do not misunderstand me. I love California. Think of all the wonderful things we have been given from California. They have given us Disney Land and navel oranges; they even gave us Ronald Reagan! But Disney Land, oranges and Ronald Reagan are not the image of the Trinity.

And either is "same-sex marriage."

"Same-sex marriage" does not image or reveal the Holy Trinity, and neither does it mirror the creative love of God nor the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ.

It is biologically impossible for the physical act of love between two men or two women to bring forth another human life. No matter what the law says, in Massachusetts or California, that will never happen because the way God designed our bodies simply does not allow such a thing. He has never intended it. Furthermore, it is the clear and consistent teaching of our faith, revealed directly and unequivocally in Sacred Scripture, that for a couple of the same sex to express their love, physically, in that way, is a grave sin. “Same-sex marriage” does not reflect the creative love of God.

But neither does it participate in the sacrificial love of Christ. How could it? How could any two people, or a state, or a supreme court, or anyone reject God’s plan for the human family, God’s design for the building up of culture and society, and replace it with their own plan, and call that sacrificial? How could that ever be a participation in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ? That is not sacrificial. It is selfish.

The teachings of our faith, speaking specifically about the state and not the Church, clearly affirm the opposite when it comes to defining and promulgating marriage:

Civil authority should consider it a grave duty to acknowledge the true nature of marriage and the family, to protect and foster them, to safeguard public morality, and promote domestic prosperity.
—CCC #2210

The state and the courts have a grave duty not to redefine marriage and tell us what they think it is, but to get down on bended knee and accept the “true nature of marriage and the family” that has already been given to us by God. Whenever that word, “grave,” is used, by the way, it means serious business. It means that if we do not follow the direction God is trying to lead us in, there will be fewer souls in heaven. It is that serious.

So what are we called to do in such challenging times? When the laws and the society around us are being taken in a different direction than the one God intends, what can we do if we are not sitting on the Supreme Court or actively working within the legislature?

There are two simple, yet profound, things that we should all be doing, and they are the very things that have brought us here today.

Firstly, we live out the plan for the family as given to us by God.

We remain open to that creative love that brings life into this world, and continue by teaching our young people right from wrong and about what it means to follow God, and how to be led into eternal life with Him.

And we continue to make sacrifices for the people we love, united to and in imitation of the selfless love of Christ who gave everything on the cross to bring us home to God. That is at the heart of the sacrificial love we are called to in the Christian family.

And secondly: Pray. Pray for our society and our culture. Pray that the Mayor of San Francisco will be proven wrong, because it is not how California goes, but as the family goes, so goes society and the rest of the world. California is not the image of the Holy Trinity. You are.

Pray, for God’s sake and for our own, that the families here in this parish, the families in this state, and the families of our nation will live out fully God’s plan for us, reflecting His own creative and sacrificial love, so that, seeing us, all the world may come to know God’s innermost secret:

That God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that he has destined us to share in that exchange.
—CCC, #221

The Lord and Giver of Life

(Pentecost Sunday-Year A; This homily was given 10 & 11 May, 2008, at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; read Acts 2:1-11 & John 20:19-23)

Mickey Mouse. Cinderella. Pinocchio.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

These characters can seem so real to us, they have made us laugh and entertained us so often on TV and in the movies, that we can sometime forget they are only images on a piece of paper. They are merely sketches drawn by an artist’s pen.

But Walt Disney had the power and the ability to bring them to life; to make them walk and talk, and do so many of the things we do every day. The word used for that power or ability is animation. It is taken from the Latin verb animo, and means to give life to or to bring to life.

We are reminded this Pentecost Sunday that Walt Disney is not the only one who has the power and ability to do that. God Himself is the Great Animator. As we profess each week, speaking specifically about the person of the Holy Spirit, He is "the Lord and giver of life."

The work of animation is something God has been doing from the beginning. In the Book of Genesis, in the story of creation, He fashions a world of beauty and splendor. He creates the land and the sea, and all living creatures. But as the pinnacle and masterpiece He creates man and woman in His own image and likeness. We are told how He made Adam from the clay of the earth, and then breathed into him the breath of life. He animated Adam with His very own life’s breath.

But unlike Mickey Mouse and Pinocchio, we are given something that allows us to be like God Himself: Freedom. We are not puppets on a string, moved along on some set course that God has totally determined. We are completely free to live and love like God. We have the ability to be creative, to make decisions and choices of our own.

Yet along with this freedom comes the ability to do something that God never wanted. We have the ability to reject Him, and to refuse the love that He offers. We are able to be disobedient. In short, we are able to use our freedom to turn against the God who gave us life. We have the ability to sin.

That is the story we find immediately after creation. It is the story of the fall, when Satan tempted our first parents, and attempted to separate them from each other and to separate them from God. With their original sin, and all of our personal sins which we commit on a daily basis, we are driven further from each other and further from God Himself. His perfect story and magnificent plan for us was ruined. In fact, it was now doomed and destined to end with God being forever separated from the creatures that He made in such great love.

And so God did something truly amazing and remarkable, beyond the wildest imagination of even Walt Disney. He entered into His own creation in order to re-animate it from the inside. Imagine if Walt Disney could actually enter into one of his own cartoons, literally. That is what God has done. The Creator enters into His own creation; God becomes man, in order to redeem us.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ is conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary and becomes man. He comes to teach us how to live and how to love, and He suffers and dies on the cross to grant us the forgiveness of sins and the very mercy of God.

In the face of our disobedience and rejection of God, Christ comes straight for us. He comes at us not with a vengeance, but with a Passion. He comes to suffer and die on the cross to redeem us and is raised from the dead to offer us new and everlasting life.

Then, once He ascends to heaven and is seated at the right hand of His Father, the Father and the Son send forth the Holy Spirit upon the Church, to re-animate the world we live in. That is the feast we celebrate this weekend. The Church, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is sent forth to continue the work of re-animating and giving life to a world yearning and crying out for God.

As we hear in the Responsorial Psalm this weekend:

When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.
—Psalm 104:30

This eternal plan of God to re-animate the world He created has, at its center, the dignity and vocation of women. In a document he wrote twenty years ago, Mulieris Dignitatem, Pope John Paul the Great spoke of this eternal plan of God to redeem us and establish us in that eternal relationship of love with Himself. That plan, says John Paul II, has a specific order of love, and women are first in that order. It is the woman, he says, “who receives love, in order to love in return” (Mulieris Dignitatem, #29). Women teach us all what it means to receive love, and to return that love again.

Think about the natural world for a moment. A woman receives the gift of love from her husband and she nurtures that gift for nine months. Then she returns that gift, lovingly introducing the child of her body to her husband, her family and to the world. So too, explains Pope John Paul the Great, in the supernatural world. The two great women he highlights are the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Bride of Christ, the Church.

Mary is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit; she conceives in her womb and bears a Son. She offers that child to God in love and to the world for our redemption. On the day of Pentecost, still with Our Lady present, the Holy Spirit comes upon the Church and “the love of God is poured out into our hearts” (Romans 5:5). The Church then returns that love by freely and joyfully giving Herself in faithful service and love for God and neighbor, manifesting in concrete ways the love She has received from Christ, Her Bridegroom.

This recognition of woman as first in the order of love is something inherent to every woman, says John Paul the Great. Yet this weekend, as we celebrate Mother’s Day throughout our nation, we remember our own mothers who taught us all so well what it means to receive love and to return that gift to God and the world. Today we pray in thanksgiving for them and seek to imitate them in our personal lives and in our Church.

How is God challenging us to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit more completely in our daily lives and in our Church? How are we called to surrender to the work and the will of God as He re-animates our faith lives, our Christian discipleship and the work of the Gospel that we have been entrusted with?

Today, as we celebrate Mother’s Day and Pentecost, we pray with the Psalmist:

Lord, send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.
—Psalm 104:30

"This is Eternal Life..."

(7th Sunday of Easter-Year A; This homily was given on 3 & 4 May, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See John 17:1-11)

If you had the opportunity to go to heaven, today…if God offered you that invitation, now…would you say, “Yes”? Of course you would! That is the reason why we are here. It is the goal of life: to enter into eternal life with God.

But what if you were told that in order to go, you would have to change your opinion about something; or see things differently; or change the way you look at God, or heaven, or the Church, or people in your life? Would you make that change in order to go to heaven?

Again, it sounds like a silly question. Of course you would! There is a fiction novel written by the great Christian author C.S. Lewis, called The Great Divorce, which hovers around those very questions.

Despite the unfortunate title, The Great Divorce is not about marriage and divorce; instead, it is about the divorce or separation between heaven and hell. As the book begins the characters are in hell and they do not even realize it. The land they are dwelling in is dreary, rainy and it is perpetually twilight. The people are all miserable and isolated.

As the book continues, several of them get onto a bus and soon find themselves in a strange new country. They step off the bus, into a land that is bright, beautiful, and frightening (it is completely different than the place they have been).

What they do not know is that the place itself is an ante-chamber of sorts for heaven, the very entrance way. Suddenly people from heaven come towards them, people that they have known: friends, relatives, acquaintances; people that perhaps they liked while on earth, and in some cases people they did not like!

These are the ones who have made it to heaven, and now they come to speak to these visitors and to try to convince them to let go of whatever they are holding onto, whatever it is that has kept them from heaven to begin with. They essentially come with the intention of convincing them to go to heaven.

Shockingly, almost all of them refuse! They are determined to hold onto whatever opinions, ideas or ways of life that have kept them from eternal life. To the question I asked at the beginning of this homily—Would you be willing to change?—they answer, definitely, “No!”

There is one character, a big and rather gruff man, who has worked very hard all his life. In fact, he is convinced that he is entitled to a sort of universal recognition of this very fact. Over and over he insists: “I only want my rights. I’m not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity.”

The person sent to him is an old acquaintance, a man who lived a much worse life. But apparently he had been forgiven and by the grace of God had entered heaven. Now he is trying to convince his friend that heaven is not something you have a “right” to, but a gift that needs to be received, even asked for.

The Big Man is hearing none of it. He is offended even by the very act of kindness and assistance. I should be the one in heaven, he tells him, not you! Then comes the tragic conclusion. He turns to the heavenly visitor and defiantly says:

“I’d rather be damned then go along with you.”

Almost all the characters have something similar that they are holding onto. There is another character, called the Grumbler. She grumbles and complains continuously. The person sent to help her cannot even get a word in edgewise. It is as if the Grumbler realizes if she gets to heaven, there will be nothing to grumble about! She goes on grumbling until she actually ceases to be a person in the strict sense, and to the amazement of the narrator, she becomes a grumble!

At times it is a very humorous book but also very sad, because we are able to notice a little bit of ourselves in many of those characters. That is the reason why C.S. Lewis wrote the book. His intention, as he explains in the preface, is to help us realize that not all roads lead to heaven! Not every choice here, not every opinion, not all of our words and actions, will lead us to eternal life with God. In fact, some will actually prohibit us from reaching that end! Some things are able to keep us out of heaven, forever.

That is why it is so important for us to understand what God means by heaven and eternal life. It is why I asked:

“What if you were told that in order to go to heaven, you would have to change your opinion about something; or see things differently…Would you make that change in order to go to heaven?”

In our gospel this weekend, Christ is praying to His Father, asking for eternal life for all of us! And in that prayer, He defines eternal life. He tells us what He thinks it is (and since He is the one who made heaven, we do well to listen). He prays:

Now this is eternal life, that they should know you [Father], the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
—John 17:3

Heaven and eternal life, then, is not some vague happiness or a place of tranquility or merely the absence of pain. It is more than an eternity doing the things I enjoy doing. Eternal life is a living and growing relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Eternal life means living in a relationship with the God who loves us, who came here to suffer and die on the cross to offer us His forgiveness and to be with us forever. It means trying to understand what pleases Him, and to do those things; or to know the things that displease Him, and to avoid them. This is eternal life: a deep and intimate, personal relationship with the living God.

It should seem rather obvious by now that this is not the definition generally accepted in our culture. Just a few weeks ago, when Pope Benedict XVI came to our country, the bishops of the United States asked him about the secular culture we live in. In that gathering in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception they asked him what he thought of the difficulties the Church faces in confronting a secular world with the message of Jesus Christ. He replied

“At this point in her history, [the Church in America] is faced with the challenge of recapturing the Catholic vision of reality and presenting it, in an engaging and imaginative way, to a society which markets any number of recipes for human fulfillment.”

To recapture the Catholic vision of reality. In other words, in many ways we have lost that vision. So many people today do not have a vision of reality that places God at the center. They do not understand themselves and the world we live in as ultimately created and redeemed by God. Or if they do, they often do not build their lives on that premise. It is up to us, says our Holy Father, to recapture that vision and present it “to a society which markets any number of recipes for human fulfillment.”

Our society has many ideas of what it means to be happy and fulfilled: Success, power, wealth, etc.

We have a wide range of options for what it means to be fulfilled forever in heaven:

Heaven for me is eternity on the golf course.

Heaven is me and my dog, sitting by the pool, forever.

Heaven is eternal happiness with my spouse, my family, my friends, my car, my iPod shuffle…

But none of those things, in and of themselves, is heaven. In fact, if that is all we understand about heaven, then we’ll probably never get there, because heaven is a personal relationship with God. It is an invitation and an extension of mercy and forgiveness and a life united to the God who created us, loves us and redeems us.

Which brings us back to the original question:

If God was inviting you to heaven today, would you say, “Yes”? Would you be willing to change your perspective, your way of looking at the world around you, or God, to get there?

Because God is inviting us, now, to experience a foretaste of eternal life and heaven in the Eucharist. Here at the altar of God we are given a taste of heaven in the person of Jesus Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity. But before we do that, do we first need to look at Him, or heaven, or the people around us differently?

How is God challenging us all to see things more clearly the way He sees them?

How are we called to recognize now, more than ever, that:

This is eternal life, that they should know you [Father], the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
—John 17:3

Ascension-The Life of Christ, Book II

(Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord-Year A;This homily was given 1 May, 2008, at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; read Acts 1:1-11)

Everyone loves a good story. There is something about a great story that leaves us sitting on the edge of our seat, or eagerly turning the pages to find out how the book will end. And some stories are so good that we simply cannot get enough of them from only one book or one movie. They require a sequel, another edition or subsequent film just to complete the enthralling tale begun in the first.

The life of Christ is a story very much like that. There have been innumerable volumes written about Him, and still we only scratch the surface. The entire New Testament is filled with people telling His story, from the first disciples and Apostles like St. Peter and St. Paul, to people whose names we do not even know (Letter to the Hebrews).

But one of the authors we do know is St. Luke, and we listen to what he has to say in the first reading this morning, from the Acts of the Apostles. St. Luke is one of the four evangelists, one of the four great gospel writers. In the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles he reminds his readers of what he has already written about Christ:

In the first book, Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught until the day he was taken up, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
—Acts 1:1-2

That was the subject of his first book, the Gospel of St. Luke. But now, in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke continues to tell that remarkable and powerful story of Christ by describing the life of the early Church. It is St. Luke’s sequel to the life of Christ, Book II in the remarkable story of the Son of God and what He came to do here on earth.

Truly it is a breathtaking story. The Acts of the Apostles goes on to describe the challenges and the joys of the first century Church under the leadership of the apostles appointed by Jesus Christ Himself. It tells of the sacrifices of the members of the Church, and of many who gave their lives for their faith in the God who suffered and died for them. By the end of the Acts of the Apostles, the faith of the Church has spread to the far reaches of the world as they knew it.

In many ways, that story is one that still being told. Certainly the Acts of the Apostles is complete. There will be no new edition to that book, or to any of the books of Sacred Scripture. As the Second Vatican Council teaches, we await no new revelation.

But the story that St. Luke begins in the Acts of the Apostles about the activity and mission of the early Church is continued even now in our own day. It is essential that we understand that fact as we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension.

Jesus Christ ascends into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father. This event is not something separate from our own daily lives. The ascension is not simply something that “happens” to Christ “back then,” having nothing to do with us.

When Christ ascends into heaven, God is now ready to continue His saving work by sending the Holy Spirit upon the Church. He sends us His gifts and divine assistance so that He can continue His ministry of reconciliation through us. Our story is an intimate part of His story. Are we able to recognize that in our daily lives?

When we experience the tragedies and triumphs of life, when we are filled with sorrow and distress or joy and hope, it is Christ who continues to live in us.

This Ascension Thursday, may we be able to see that the story told by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles some 2,000 years ago, and the story which will be completed by God Himself at the end of time, is the very same story that is unfolding before our eyes right here, right now.

May we truly recognize that Jesus Christ is continuing to tell His story, and live out His life, in us.

Is He living in you?

(6th Sunday of Easter-Year A; This homily was given on 26 & 27 April, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See Acts 8:5-17 and John 14:15-21)

I am sure you have noticed that ad campaigns for various products have become very simplified over the years. Slogans like “Got Milk” and “Just Do It” catch our attention and are easy to remember. The ad for Gatorade is one like that. It simply asks the question: “Gatorade. Is it in You?”

The inference is clear: if it’s not in you, then it should be! But whether we drink Gatorade or not, I think we would all agree that we have to be very careful what kind of food or drink we put inside our bodies. Some things are good, and some things are not. What we choose to put inside us can mean all the difference between living a healthy life, or an unhealthy one; it can even make the difference between life and death.

The same is true when it comes to our spiritual lives.

What we allow into our spiritual lives and into our souls can mean all the difference between a healthy, living and growing relationship with God or a very unhealthy one. Our first reading this weekend gives us a glimpse of this very reality.

We hear in the Acts of the Apostles how Philip has taken the City of Samaria by storm. He preached the gospel to them, and the most remarkable things were beginning to happen. We are told that:

With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip when they heard it and saw the signs that he was doing. For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice, came out of many possessed people, and many paralyzed or crippled people were cured. There was great joy in that city.
—Acts 8:6-8

Philip preached the gospel with great power. He healed the sick. He cast out unclean spirits. Yet after all these amazing things, we discover that it was not enough! There was still one more thing that was missing.

The apostles in Jerusalem heard what had happened in Samaria, and they sent Peter and John, who prayed for the people, “that they might receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:14-17). It wasn’t enough to clear out the unclean spirits. These people were in need of the Holy Spirit. And that’s exactly what they received.

God wants to do so much more than drive away evil and take away the things that harm us; he wants to give us Himself. We can ask the question this weekend: The Holy Spirit: Is He in you?

In the gospel for this weekend, Jesus speaks about this very mystery of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He gathers together with His disciples on the night before His suffering and death, and it is clear that they are distressed about His imminent departure. He consoles them and insists that He will not abandon them, He will not leave them orphans.

“I will ask the Father,” He says, “and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you.”
—John 14:16-17

Yes, they already know what it means to have an advocate in God, since Christ has been with them from the beginning. Now, He tells them, the Advocate will not only be with them, He will be “in” them. He is talking to them about the person of the Holy Spirit. God wants to live in us, to share with us His own divine life.

This weekend we are given a great example of that reality in our young people here in this parish. This Saturday morning, twenty six children received Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist for the first time. Jesus lives in them now in a whole new way.

Sunday afternoon thirty six young people will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, strengthening that bond with the Holy Spirit that they received on the day of their baptism. The bishop will stretch out his hands over these young people, calling down the Holy Spirit upon them, just as Saints Peter and John called down the Holy Spirit on the converts in Samaria in the Acts of the Apostles.

The Holy Spirit will be living and moving in their lives like never before, giving them the courage to witness to their faith in Christ in this world and to live fully the gospel and their baptismal call to holiness.

They remind us all this weekend of God’s plan for each and every baptized and confirmed member of the Church. God wants to use each one of us to make His message of mercy and grace known in the world we live in, but that will never happen if there are things in our lives which are opposed to the Holy Sprit. We will never be able to fully surrender our lives to God and be totally open to the work of the Holy Spirit if there are things “in us” that are opposed to the will of God.

What are some of those things?

Anger or hatred. If we are harboring resentment, anger or hatred towards any person or group of persons, and not allowing God to help us with that struggle, then the Holy Spirit will not be able to move us and guide us in the way He wants to. Anger, hatred, and bitterness, are all opposed to the Holy Spirit.

Pride. If we have placed ourselves above the people around us or looked down on others; if we have been so self centered that we have place everyone else beneath us or perhaps even placed God beneath us, then He will never be able to live in us the way He wants to. If we have decided to live our lives the way that we want to, without any regard for God and His commandments, without listening to God or the Church or anyone else, for that matter, that is pride. It is completely opposed to the docility God calls us to in the Holy Spirit.

What are the things in our culture that are clearly opposed to the life of the Holy Spirit in us?

Pornography. Researchers say that millions of Americans are now addicted to internet pornography (http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php). Pornography damages the way we look at each other. It destroys our relationships with each other and can destroy our relationship with God. Have we allowed pornography into our spiritual lives?

Contraception. This is so prevalent in our society, although we hear so little about it with regard to the spiritual life. It is simply taken for granted that couples contracept, Catholic or not. But contraception stifles life in the family and banishes God from one of the most important parts of our lives: the relationship of love between a husband and a wife.

There is even a commercial on TV now that targets young people. It totes that this particular contraceptive will not only prevent pregnancy, but will also eliminate acne. This should concern every one of us. Contraception is opposed to the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

These are just a few of the things that so often squelch the life of the Holy Spirit in us. If these, or any grave or serious sins, are in us, then God wants them out. Why does He want them out? So that He can give us more of Himself! He wants us to be emptied of these unclean spirits so that He can then fill us with His own divine life and help us to live the way He always intended us to.

St. Paul, in his Letter to the Galatians, describes the kind of life we will have when that happens, when we are surrendered to the person of the Holy Spirit. He says that when we live by the Spirit we will bear fruit, and that:

The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
—Galatians 5:22-23

Are not these the very things we long for in our lives? Joy. Is it in you? Patience. Is it in you? Generosity, faithfulness, self control. Are these things in us? We are called to live in the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit. May our lives this week become more and more completely surrendered to the Holy Spirit, who has been promised and sent into the hearts of all the faithful.

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.

Human Nature and the Divine Condition

(5th Sunday of Easter-Year A; This homily was given on 19 & 20 April, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See 1 Peter 2:4-9 and John 14:1-12)

Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip?
—John 14:9

How must Christ have felt when He spoke those words to St. Philip? Was He disappointed? Frustrated? Perhaps He was even exasperated.

St. Philip—and the rest of the apostles—had been with Him from the beginning of His public ministry. They had watched Him heal the sick and raise the dead. They personally witnessed amazing and remarkable events, things that only God could do…and still they did not know completely who He was.

Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip?

St. Augustine says, regarding that awkward exchange, that Jesus reproves Philip “for not recognizing his divine condition through his human nature” (De Trinitate, Book 7). The humanity of Christ got “in the way” for St. Philip. He was not able to see the “divine condition” because he was focused on Jesus’ humanity only. He could not imagine that someone who was human, like himself, could also be the eternal Son of God.

Could that sort of thing ever happen in our own time? Is it possible for us to be so focused on humanity that we lose sight of, or fail to recognize, the “divine condition” in the world? Absolutely, and it happens all the time.

It does not happen that people mistake the divinity of Christ on account of His human nature, like in the gospel this weekend. But it is something that happens all the time with His Bride, the Church.

The Church is also both human and divine. We truly believe and profess weekly that the Church is divinely established; it is founded by Christ. We are the only “organization” in the world that is founded by God. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit dwells in the Church. The Church is a divine institution.

Yet the Church is also human. It is made up of human individuals who are like Christ in so many ways, yet unlike Him in our fallen human nature. He was without sin. We struggle with sin all the time, and that is why our faith teaches us that the Church is “at once holy and always in need of purification” (Lumen Gentium, #8).

That is the reality we experience in the Church, and it can also be one of the greatest obstacles for the world around us. To paraphrase St. Augustine, the world around us often fails to recognize the “divine condition” of the Church because it focuses solely on the human dimension.

One obvious example is the Apostolic Visit of Pope Benedict XVI. He has come to our country to strengthen the faith and bring us a message of hope. He has come in the person of Christ to show us the works of God, and so many—in the media especially—have missed that completely.

Days before the arrival of our Holy Father, the Providence Journal announced his coming with this disappointing headline: “Pope’s U.S. Visit will find a faith in disarray”. Not exactly a “Welcome, Holy Father!” is it? If you read the article, you know it became much more negative than even that headline.

Then came Monday. The front page article for that day was one of the most discouraging reports I have read in the Journal (and that is saying a lot). Mind you, this was the very day before the Pope arrived. There was nothing positive in it. It talked only about empty pews, closing churches, and the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

Now let’s be clear: these are real and painful issues that need to be addressed and should be talked about. The clergy sexual abuse crisis especially is something that demands a response.

And the Church has responded.

Pope Benedict XVI has responded nearly every day he has been in this country. He has tried to reach out in some way to those who are hurting and has continually prayed for reconciliation and healing.

Bishop Tobin, in Thursday’s article in the Providence Journal, said “the Catholic Church has done and continues to do as much as any institution in society to try to respond to the terrible events of sexual abuse.”

Yes, there is so much healing that still needs to take place and the Church continues to seek that reconciliation and purification that God has demanded from the beginning. But to make the clergy sexual abuse crisis the focus of the Pope’s visit or to publish article after article, day after day, of the same shameful facts and figures without even trying to communicate the rest of the purpose of Benedict XVI’s visit is to render a tremendous disservice to the mission of reconciliation and hope he has come here to establish.

Besides the media’s misrepresentation of our Church and our Pope, why should this concern us? I would say that all of us are susceptible to the same difficulty that St. Philip encountered in our gospel. With so much negativity, day after day, and a focus solely on the human faults and weaknesses of individual members of the Church and the vast array of challenges we face, are we not in danger of losing sight of the “divine condition,” and the work of the Holy Spirit among us?

This is no small concern, because the Church by her very nature is both human and divine. To see the Church as only a human institution is to live without hope. If the Church is only human, then there is no hope of healing, for anyone. If the Church is only human, then there is no hope of overcoming even the smallest of difficulties, no hope of changing our lives or the world around us. But the Church is not only human, and there is always hope.

That is the message Pope Benedict XVI has brought to our country this week. The theme of his apostolic visit is “Christ, Our Hope!” Speaking to the bishops in Washington, D.C., at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception on Wednesday, he spoke of the purpose of his visit: “To strengthen further the bonds of communion that unite us.”

How could one man ever expect to accomplish all that? To bring hope and strengthen the Church in the United States? The answer is at the heart of our faith as Catholics: he’s not just any man. He is the Vicar of Christ on earth and he has come to bring us the message and the hope of Christ Himself. He has done that by doing exactly the opposite of what many in the media have done. Instead of pointing only to the human dimension he has shown us, instead, the “divine condition.”

In his homily at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Saturday morning, the Holy Father spoke about the mystery of the Church, at the same time both human and divine. Following the example of many writers and theologians (he mentioned our own Nathaniel Hawthorne) he used the image of the stained glass windows to illustrate the mystery of the Church.

[The article in the Providence Journal on Sunday morning, the day after I first preached this homily, did cover this very point made by Pope Benedict, using the very same illustration of stained glass windows…Not a moment too soon, thanks be to God.]

Pope Benedict described how beautiful the stained glass windows are inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. But, he noted, if you look at those windows from the outside, they are “dark, heavy, even dreary.” That is very often the way people view the Church: from the outside, seeing nothing comely or attractive.

“It is only from the inside,” said Pope Benedict, “from the experience of faith and ecclesial life, that we see the Church as she truly is: flooded with grace, resplendent in beauty, adorned by the manifold gifts of the Spirit.”

He was clear that even from the inside, the light from those windows can sometimes become darkened and dimmed through routine and the sins and weaknesses of the members of the Church. They can also be dimmed, he said, by the society we live in, so often forgetful of God and resentful of the demands of Christian morality.

But the main point the Pope made to the priests and religious gathered together there—and to every one of us, by extension—was that we are called to experience the majesty and beauty of that light, to be blessed and graced by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, and then to go out from that experience and reach out to the world around us.

We are not called to look at a world that has rejected the gospel, rejected the Church and rejected Jesus Christ, and simply shake our fist in anger. No, we are called, instead, to love. “We, who live the life of grace within the Church’s communion,” said Pope Benedict, “are called to draw all people into this mystery of light.”

Pope Benedict closed his homily that day very beautifully, by directing us all beyond merely the human dimension of the Church and all the challenges we face, and to look more intently to the divine condition.

“So let us lift our gaze upward! And with great humility and confidence, let us ask the Spirit to enable us each day to grow in the holiness that will make us living stones in the temple which he is even now raising up in the midst of our world.”

God is doing something in the life of the Church and in the world we live in. He is continuing to build up His Church, even now, and is strengthening the mission of evangelization and hope that He has intended all along. We are called to be “living stones” says Pope Benedict, to be a part of that glorious work.

St. Peter, our first Pope, says the same thing in our second reading for this weekend:

Come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
—1 Peter 2:4-5

That is why we gather together each week as people of faith: to offer spiritual sacrifices—to offer our very lives and the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist—not only for ourselves, but for the world around us. We are called to live fully the mystery of our faith here, and then to leave this Church and help those around us to see that, yes, the Church is human, but also that it has been touched and blessed at its very foundations with the powerful and everlasting divine condition.

Good Shepherd Sunday-Found!

(4th Sunday of Easter-Year A; This homily was given on 12 & 13 April, 2008 at St. Mary's Church, Cranston, R.I.; See 1 Peter 2:20-25 and John 10:1-10)

There is a movie that came out late last year, and it’s now available on DVD, called August Rush. It tells the story of a young boy who is bounced from one orphanage to another, never able to find his place in this world. All his life he has had this deep and abiding sense that his parents are out there, perhaps even looking for him, and that if he just reaches out enough, then they will find him.

One of the major themes of the movie is music. This boy has the most remarkable ability to master any instrument he touches: the guitar, the piano, an elaborate church organ. He is even able to lead an orchestra at the age of eleven.

Now, he has no idea that both of his parents are also very accomplished musicians. Still, he believes that if he can play his music for enough people, eventually his parents will hear him and come to take him home.

It doesn’t take long for the people around this young boy to recognize his musical genius. He is a true child prodigy, like a Mozart or a Beethoven. One of the characters in the movie understands that gift all too well, and tells the boy that he can pretty much write his own ticket; the sky is the limit. Whatever he can dream is well within his grasp. He asks him:

“What do you want to be in the whole wide world?”

The boy answers him immediately, with one word:

“Found.”

That is all he wants, all that he desires in the whole world: to be found, to be loved, to be taken home where he belongs.

That desire is something that every one of us holds in common. It is an innate desire, something planted deep within by God Himself: the desire to be found, to be loved, and to be brought home to an eternal life with God. No matter how far we run from Him, that desire will never go away.

What we celebrate on Good Shepherd Sunday is that God has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. He has come from heaven to this earth in order to seek us out, to reveal the great mercy and love of God, and to lead us home to eternal life.

St. Peter explains it well in our second reading this weekend:

For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
—1 Peter 2:25

We have been found. Even in the midst of our own sins and our brokenness, Christ the Good Shepherd has come for us. Into a world that is so often forgetful of Him, that has “gone astray” in so many different ways, the Good Shepherd has found us and is leading us even now to eternal life in God.

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in his recent encyclical letter, Spe Salvi, writes about this mysterious and hopeful intervention of Christ, the Good Shepherd, and of what it means for our lives here on earth (see Spe Salvi, #6).

Pope Benedict talks about the experience of the early Church. In the first few centuries, when a person died their body would be placed in what is called a sarcophagus. Very much like a coffin, these sarcophagi were often made of stone or marble. They would then chisel various Christian images on the outside of the sarcophagus, to remind themselves that death did not have the final word. Our Christian faith gives us hope for a life beyond this world.

One of the more common images to be found on the sarcophagi from this time period was the image of Christ, the Good Shepherd. The message was clear: that He is able to shepherd us throughout our lives, and even from death into eternal life with God.

Pope Benedict quotes our responsorial psalm this weekend, Psalm 23, to emphasize how Christ truly is the Good Shepherd who can lead us through “the valley of darkness” and “the shadow of death” and into eternal life because He’s been there!

Jesus Christ has Himself experienced the depths of suffering and the deepest darkness, so He can certainly shepherd and guide us through anything in this life, and lead us into the abundant life that God has always intended for us. As He tells us in the gospel this weekend:

I came so that they may have life and have it more abundantly.
—John 10:10

Christ shepherds us and guides us in that abundant life with God in so many different ways, but for us as Catholics, perhaps never more so than in the person of our Holy Father, the Pope. One of the most beloved titles of the Pope is Chief Shepherd of the Flock.

It is no accident that I have quoted two people at the beginning of this homily: St. Peter and Pope Benedict XVI. From the first century, in the person of St. Peter, until our present day, in the person of Pope Benedict XVI, Christ the Good Shepherd has continued to lead and guide the Church into abundant life.

In just a few short days, Pope Benedict XVI will set foot on the soil of our own nation in order to strengthen the faith of the Church in America and to guide us all ever closer to Christ. He comes not to bring his own message and opinion, or his own words, but the message and the words of Christ Himself.

I would offer three practical suggestions on how we can prepare ourselves most completely to receive that message and allow Christ the Good Shepherd to guide us in this Apostolic Visitation this week.


Firstly, pray! Pray for our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. Pray for his health and his safety. Pray that our nation, our families, and we ourselves as individuals, would be open to what God is saying to us this week through the Chief Shepherd who comes to walk among us here.

Secondly (and I never thought I would ever say this in a homily!): watch TV! Finally, we have something worth watching on television. Perhaps to spend 30 minutes or an hour each day watching the coverage of the Pope’s Apostolic Visitation this week (and focus not so much on the various commentators and what they have to say about Pope Benedict XVI, but try to listen well to the words of Pope Benedict himself, and what He is saying to our nation, our families, and us personally this week).

Finally, I would suggest that we spend at least five or ten minutes a day meditating on the theme of the Apostolic Visitation: “Christ, Our Hope.” What do those words mean to you?

Is Christ our hope because He comes to us in the Sacraments of the Church and strengthens us on our journey of faith?

Is Christ our hope because he walks beside us in the valley of darkness, and never leaves us alone? Is He our hope because He has been through all the darkness that we will ever experience here, and we can count on Him to lead us to eternal life in God?

Is Christ our hope because of the promise of the resurrection, because he will raise us up to eternal life? Because we will see our loved ones once again, those who have “gone before us marked with the sign of faith”?

To spend five or ten minutes a day meditating on why Christ is our hope, and what that means for our lives here on this earth.

Christ, our hope, has come to us. We have been found, we have been loved, and even now He is leading us ever more deeply into an abundant and eternal life with God. May we be open this week to the way that He will do that in amazing and remarkable ways in the Apostolic Visitation of Pope Benedict XVI.

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?