Glorious, Holy...and Purified

Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome

(Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica-Year B; This homily was given on 9 November, 2012 at the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence, Providence, R.I.  See John 2:13-22)

The Basilica of St. John Lateran adorns herself with the title of “Mother and First of all the Churches in Rome and of the World.”  A rather modest distinction, no?  Of course that title comes to the Lateran Basilica because it was the place of residence for the popes from the early Church right up until the beginning of the 14^th century (only in 1305, when the papacy was temporarily displaced to Avignon did the Lateran cease to be the papal residence).  The pope, of course, being the Vicar of Christ on earth, is the visible head of the Church and is entrusted in a particular way with authority to preserve Her unity and guide Her through Her earthly pilgrimage,  to where She will be joined with Christ for all eternity.  Certainly we celebrate this morning that renowned and glorious union with Christ in which we are all, as His body, exalted.  We thank God for the Holy Father who gives his life in service of that end for us as Catholics.  What a glorious feast day!

So many of the popes down through the centuries, and especially the popes that we have witnessed personally—Pope Benedict XVI, Blessed John Paul the Great before him, others for some of us who have been on this earthly pilgrimage a little longer—have reminded us by their very lives that power, glory and the great dignity of our call are translated in this world into humility, service and the gift of self.  We seek an ever more intimate union with Christ who “came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).  The Church is called to be like Christ, to be holy, even though we are all too aware of each one’s limitations and failings.  And so it is that the Church comes to understand herself, in the words of the Second Vatican Council, as “at the same time holy and always in need of being purified” (Lumen Gentium, #8).

Therefore it is fitting that, on this glorious feast day in which we celebrate the dignity of our Divine filiation, we reflect in the Gospel on the purification of the Temple (John 2:13-22).  Traditionally the Fathers of the Church will come to understand this cleansing of the Jerusalem Temple as Jesus’ preparation for the one acceptable sacrifice, not bulls and goats and sheep but Himself.  The Lamb of God is the one sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world, and He will replace all animal sacrifices, Himself the fulfillment of God’s plan for our forgiveness and salvation.

But St. Paul reminds us, in our second reading this morning, that we are the temple of the living God, who dwells in us.  The temple, though holy, is in constant need of purification.  There are three aspects of this purification that are important for us to reflect on this morning.

Firstly, we recall that it is Christ who allowed Himself to be purified and scourged for us.  Christ, who is without sin and perfect in every way, nonetheless went through the pain and humiliation of being scourged at the pillar and endured the agony of the crucifixion well before His body the Church suffered.  He asks nothing of us that He Himself has not already endured.  When we experience purification or cleansing in this world it is not the punishment of God or His wrath vented against us.  It is the love that unites us more intimately with our Divine Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.  The cleansing and purification of this temple is good because it is from God.

Secondly, we acknowledge that we are all in need, as individual members of His body, of that purification.  We are all mindful of those times that we have taken the focus off Christ as the center of our lives and placed something, or someone, else in His place.  Through the idolatry of technology, or imprudent relationships or perhaps coming to realize that we have placed ourselves at the center of our lives, we stand in need of purification and cleansing so that this temple of the living God begins once again to be about Christ and the work of the Gospel and not about us. 

Finally, we are aware, perhaps now more than ever, of the need for us as a Church to be purified of all the ways we have failed to transform the world around us and have, instead, allowed the secular world to transform us.  How many members of the body of Christ, through neglect or apathy, have turned a blind eye to the needs of the unborn and the sin of abortion so prevalent in our culture today?   How many support abortion in the name of “choice”?  How many members of the Body of Christ in America have supported same-sex marriage and rejected God’s plan for the human family as a covenant of love between one man and one woman, bearing fruit in this world in the same way that Christ desires to unite Himself to His Bride the Church for that fruitfulness in spiritual life?  How many Catholics in our very region of the country have accepted the lie that physician-assisted suicide is a viable solution when it comes to our loved ones facing terminal illness?  There are consequences to these sins against human dignity and the gift of life.  These errors and moral failures are in need of cleansing and purification. 

Furthermore, the silence of priests—all of us, at one time or another—on these vital issues is also something which we must bear responsibility for. 

And yet how very many faithful Catholic men and women, laity, priests and religious, have sacrificed so much to be faithful and to witness to the dignity of human life, the sanctity of marriage, the dignity of the human person.  Our defense of those essential qualities and dimensions of life come at a cost and there is a tremendous struggle, to be constantly defending and fighting for what others consider to be an option at best or, at worst, a nuisance.

This struggle, this challenge, is what is known as purification.  The challenge that some must face—in this life or the next—of taking accountability for those times when opinions and decisions have not been consistent with the values and teachings of our Catholic faith is cleansing, purifying.  The acknowledgment of the need for forgiveness and God’s mercy is something that strikes at the heart of God’s work of purifying His temple. 

How are we called today, and especially in the days ahead, to embrace that purification?  How is God inviting us to be more completely united to Jesus Christ here in this world by being purified of all that is not from Him and worse, has taken us away from Him in any way?  Because a purified and cleansed Church alone will have the power necessary to accomplish what this world needs more than anything else: the transformation into what Blessed John Paul the Great called a “Civilization of Love.”  A purified Church will have the power to announce with the boldness of humility and charity the Gospel message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, the only path to mercy and human fulfillment.

Catholic Voters and Formation of Conscience

(29th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was preached at all the Masses on the weekend of October 20-21 2012 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I.  See Mark 10:35-45)

Audio Link to Homily

Quia Malum Est, Deus Est.

(23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 8 and 9 September at St. Thomas More Church, Narragansett, R.I. See Mark 7:31-37)

For Gospel and homily, scroll to about 12:00-ff

 

Wisdom: It's Personal

(20th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 18 August at Our Lady of Loreto Church, East Providence, R.I., and on 19 August at St. Brigid Church, Johnston, R.I. and Holy Apostles Church, Cranston, R.I.  See Proverbs 9:1-6 and John 6:51-58)

If you had the choice to possess all the information that you would ever need to know, about everything, or to be a man or woman of great wisdom, which would you choose?  In other words, if you could be the person on Jeopardy who always answers every question correctly all the time, or instead to be a person recognized by others as filled with the wisdom of God, which would you want to be?  There is a difference, we discover in our first reading this weekend, between those two realities.

Our first reading for this weekend is a beautiful and poetic excerpt from the Book of Proverbs which speaks rather eloquently to us about wisdom. The intriguing figure of Lady Wisdom is the very personification of the way of life God calls us to. We are told, “She has built her house, she has set up her seven columns” (Proverbs 9:1).  In that well-established place, in fact, Lady Wisdom has prepared a banquet of choice foods and delicious wine!  Then she invites you and me to join her in that intimate meal:



Let whoever is simple turn in here; to the one who lacks understanding…Come, eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed!


—Proverbs 9:5



This delectable passage from the Book of Proverbs reveals to us that the wisdom of God, like God Himself, is not merely informational.  It is, instead, relational. It is personal. God does not give us an instruction manual or a series of checkpoints to guide us through life. He invites us into a personal relationship with Himself, in which we grow in virtue, knowledge and holiness because the God who calls us is Himself filled with all of these things, and more.



I do not learn to be a person of love and generosity by reading many books about those subjects; it is not by memorizing definitions of the virtues—like temperance, prudence, justice and courage—that I suddenly acquire them.   No, it is when I fall in love with God, the One who is love, who exudes humility and gentleness, kindness and all virtue, that I suddenly thirst and hunger for these very things in my own life.  It is only when we encounter and embrace a real and growing relationship with the living God that we begin to embody the wisdom of God and suddenly find our lives transformed.

Is this not what Christ has been proclaiming to us in the Gospel for these past four weeks?  For the last month, and also including next weekend, we hear from the same chapter of St. John’s Gospel, Chapter 6 or the Bread of Life Discourse.  Over and over again Christ has announced that He is the Bread of Life come down from heaven; He has invited us to receive Him, become united to Him, draw closer to Him in His body and blood.  This weekend He proclaims boldly:

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in Him.

—John 6:56

Receiving Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is not merely a fleeting moment experienced at Mass each week. It is a personal encounter with the Savior who offers His body and blood on the cross to redeem us; the Eucharist is the second person of the Blessed Trinity who calls us into a personal relationship with God.  When we come to Mass each week do we recognize and acknowledge that?

In her book The Way of Perfection, the great mystic and Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila, is instructing her sisters in prayer and she teaches them how to avoid obstacles that keep them from recognizing the personal relationship that is at the center of the Christian life. She says that, in prayer, they should not merely try to picture Jesus and imagine what He would look like in a given situation or scene. No, instead she says they should also look at Him (see The Way of Perfection, Chapter 26, #3). She reminds them how Christ never takes His eyes off them! When they pray, they should look right back! They should look at the One who is already looking at them and allow that intimate and personal connection to grow even deeper.

In the Eucharist we do well to do the same. How captivating, to suddenly recognize that the God who suffers and dies for us out of an abyss of Divine mercy, is actually looking at us with that same love, even here, even now. 

When we look at the tabernacle we are looking at Him.

When the priest raises the Host at Mass and proclaims, “Behold, the lamb of God…Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world,” we are looking at Him.

When the body of Christ is offered to us at communion each week, we are looking at Him.



What is the best way to prepare for such a personal encounter? What is the best way to savor such an experience even long after the Mass is over? I would suggest we take the counsel of St. Teresa of Avila and spend as much time as possible—before, during and after the Eucharistic sacrifice—watching in prayer and looking at Christ who never takes His eyes off us.  For the more we fall in love with Him, the more we are lost in His gaze and swept up in His love, the more we will ourselves become men and women who embody the love of God, and the wisdom of God.

Interruption & Pastores Dabo Vobis

(16th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 21 & 22 July, 2012 at St. Joseph's Church in Woonsocket, R.I.  and on 22 July, 2012 at St. Peter's Church in Warwick, R.I.  See Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Mark 6:30-34)

How well do you handle interruptions?  When you are at home, relaxing and reading a good book; or when you are watching your favorite TV show; or maybe when you are at work and your labor is positively productive…and then suddenly the phone rings, or someone arrives unexpected…How well do you handle that?

I ask that question because Christ in our Gospel this weekend is interrupted.  He is doing one of the most essential and important things in His work with the twelve Apostles: teaching them how to rest, how to be still. 

These men are about to be sent out by Christ to spread the Gospel message to the ends of the earth.  In their apostolic ministry they will be active to the point of exhaustion.  Therefore Jesus longs to teach them how to be at peace and to pray, because it is there that they will find a source of strength for untiring service, a wellspring for pastoral zeal.  But just as Christ begins to teach them these vital lessons in the spiritual life, he is suddenly interrupted!

While Christ and the twelve Apostles “went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place” (Mark 6:32), a veritable throng of people, anticipating the direction in which He was heading, arrived at the place before Him.

Jesus’ response to that interruption is amazing.  He was not bothered by them.  He was not even disappointed at the lost opportunity to spend some quiet time with the Twelve.  No, St. Mark tells us in fact that He was overwhelmed with love:

When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.

—Mark 6:34

He saw those people and sensed deep within Himself that they were hungry, but not for bread; He intuited that they were thirsty, but not for water.  They were hungering and thirsting for the living God, and so He fed them.  As St. Mark tells us, “He began to teach them many things” (Mark 6: 34).  They were being fed by God, shepherded by Christ, the Good Shepherd.  In a word, they were being loved.

This beautiful outpouring of compassionate love we find in the Gospel this weekend is a fulfillment of the prophesy we listened to in the first reading this morning, from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah.  Noting the widespread suffering and hopeless sorrow of the time, Jeremiah attributes the afflictions of his people to bad leadership, bad shepherds. 

Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord.

—Jeremiah 23:1

God will come out against these shepherds!  He will not tolerate bad shepherds who scatter the sheep and feed themselves on His people.  But nor will He leave His people alone to be scattered and lost.   “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I have driven them and bring them back to their meadow” (Jeremiah 23:3). 

God Himself will walk among His sheep, feeding them, pasturing them.  Jesus Christ is that Good Shepherd, leading His sheep to the restful waters of everlasting life.  He will pour Himself out on the altar of the cross to redeem and save the lost and the weary.

But God continues, through the Prophet Jeremiah, “I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble” (Jeremiah 23:4).   “I will give you shepherds” (Jeremiah 3:15), God assures them.

Those words in Latin—Pastores dabo vobis, I will give you shepherds—are the opening words of a document written by our late beloved Holy Father, Blessed John Paul II, back in 1992.     Reflecting on the vital work of forming men for the priesthood of Jesus Christ, Blessed John Paul II reminds us that our hopes rest on nothing less than the faithfulness of God!   

God has promised that the Church will never be without shepherds to guide and guard Her in the faith. 

§  The ineffable gift of the body and blood of Christ that comes to us in the Holy Eucharist is a gift from God, a gift from Heaven…but it comes to us only through the hands and voice of the priest. 

§  The overwhelming consolation of sacramental absolution, when we confess our sins with true sorrow in the Sacrament of Reconciliation entrusted to the Church by Christ Himself for the forgiveness of sins, those words of mercy and new life which come to us from Christ come to us through the priest. 

We will never be without these gifts, we will never be without shepherds called by God and appointed to feed His flock.  But Blessed John Paul II reminds us that such a promise, such remarkable fidelity, calls for our own response in kind:

The total trust in God’s unconditional faithfulness to his promise is accompanied in the Church by the grave responsibility to cooperate in the action of God who calls.

—Blessed John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, #2

God will never cease to call men to the priesthood, will never cease to appoint shepherds for His people; yet we must never cease to open our hearts to whatever He is asking of us for the fulfillment of that promise.   In short, we must be as willing as Christ is in the Gospel this weekend, to be interrupted.   We must be willing to allow God to interrupt our Church and our personal lives, to do whatever He wants us to do so that His promise will take root and flourish in our midst.

 I can attest to this personally in my life.  In my early twenties I had my own plan for my life; I wanted to be married, to have a family.  I wanted to be successful in a career that would allow me to be fulfilled and happy.   All good things.  But then suddenly that plan was completely interrupted!

For the first time in my life I felt that God was calling out to me, and that He was calling me to the priesthood.  I did not hear a voice audibly from Heaven.  I did not see an angel or experience any supernatural visions.  But I was certain that God was speaking to my heart, calling me to follow Him.  More and more each day I felt that He was calling me to the priesthood.

About that same time, people from Saints John and Paul Parish where I had grown up, where I was baptized and received my First Communion; in the place where I received the Sacrament of Confirmation; people in that parish began to approach me and ask if I might be called to serve the Church as a priest.  Sometimes even people I did not know or recognize would approach and ask me that question: “Have you ever thought about the priesthood?”  Finally in 1998 I entered the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence. 

Now, in 1997 there were only two seminarians in that place.  One of them left, and some people even suggested that the seminary should be closed down.  Nonetheless, in 1998 seven of us began studies there for the priesthood.  The next year there were ten of us.  I continued my formation for four more years in the North American College in Rome and was ordained to the priesthood on June 26, 2004.  By that time the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence began to receive men from nearby dioceses around New England and even as far as Baltimore.  The number of college-age men studying for the priesthood grew to around two dozen.  For the last two years we have had 27 seminarians in formation for the priesthood at Our Lady of Providence from seven separate dioceses.   We have a full house with no empty rooms, because God is faithful.

Pastores dabo vobis.  I will give you shepherds.  The Lord has consistently fulfilled His promise down through the centuries, and He calls each one of us to be faithful and to respond to His abundant grace in our lives and in His Church.  But to do so will involve interruption!  Are we willing to be interrupted by God so that His work will continue to flourish?  I would suggest that there are three ways God is challenging us to be interrupted as we respond to His fidelity in providing shepherds for the Church.

Firstly, we allow God to interrupt our spiritual lives, our prayer lives, as we ask Him fervently for an increase of vocations to the priesthood in the Diocese of Providence.  Prayer was the only instruction Christ gave us with regard to increasing vocations (Luke 10:2).  Perhaps we do not always have vocations in the Church because we do not always ask for vocations in the Church.  The people of Ss. John and Paul Parish were asking God for vocations, and within a five-year period three of us from that parish were ordained to the priesthood.  If you ask God for an increase in vocations, He will listen to you.  Allow God to interrupt your prayer life as you “ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2).   

Secondly, we must be willing to allow God to interrupt our families and the plans that we have for the people we love.  My parents have been overwhelmingly supportive from the very beginning of my discernment of a priestly vocation.  Such is not always the case, unfortunately, in the Church today.  Having spent six years as a seminarian, and having worked in seminary formation for an additional four years, I can share with you that it is not at all uncommon for the mother or father of a seminarian to be unsupportive as he begins to respond to God’s call in his life. 

Truth be told, these situations seldom discourage me.  What discourages me is when I think of all the young men who I may never meet, who I may never encounter in the seminary, because their mothers or fathers did not support them in answering a call to the priesthood.

Often it is the case that parents want good things for their sons: a successful career, a family, happiness; all good things.  But they are unable to consider that God desires to give them even greater gifts, and fruitfulness that will endure for an eternity beyond this world.  Are we willing to allow God to interrupt our families so that this fruitfulness may continue in the Church?

Finally, I would suggest we allow God to interrupt our lives through a willingness to approach those who we think He might be calling to the priesthood and to share courageously the gift of God that we have come to recognize in them.  Is it possible that God is calling someone from your parish or your family to the priesthood?  Is it possible that you are called to pray for that person and even to approach him on some personal level and offer your support and encouragement? 

Pastores dabo vobis.  I will give you shepherds.  God is so very faithful in His promise and provision of shepherds for His Church.  How is He challenging us this week, and every week, to cooperate in that promise and to allow vocations to the priesthood to flourish in our time?

The Gracious Act

(13th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 1 July, 2012 at St. Veronica's Chapel in Narragansett, R.I.  See 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 and Mark 5:21-43)

What would it take for you to become a really great golfer, or maybe even a professional?  Perhaps you are not interested in that question at all, but chances are that you at least know someone who is!  There are several important things necessary to be a great golfer.  For instance, you would need to be physically fit; you would have to possess the skills and gifts that allow you the capacity for becoming a great golfer. 

But there is still something else beyond all those things, without which you could never reach your fullest potential on the golf course: you have to have a good, consistent golf swing.

It sounds simple enough, but there are people who make tens of thousands—if not perhaps even hundreds of thousands—of dollars a year, not to play golf but to teach other golfers how to swing the club; professional golfers use them all the time.  Indeed, with the right swing, cleared of many or most of the imperfections, a golfer has the potential to dominate the course.  Whether it is the long drive, fairway irons or the short game, a good consistent swing is necessary to play golf well.

I mention that this morning because St. Paul is speaking about something very similar in our second reading this weekend.  No, St. Paul is not talking about golf (although if they had golf in St. Paul’s day he would probably be as good at it as he was in everything else!).  I am referring to an expression that comes up twice in that very short reading from the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “this gracious act.”

This gracious act?  Which one?  Firstly, St. Paul is referring specifically to the “gracious act” of the Corinthians who had agreed to provide a monetary gift for those who were less fortunate and in need.  They had more than enough to get by, and had made the decision to give some of their wealth away.  St. Paul encourages them to stay the course, knowing that such a “gracious act” will not only enrich those less fortunate, but that such charity will come back to enrich them, as well:

May you excel in this gracious act also…as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their needs, so that their abundance may also supply your needs.

—2 Corinthians 8:7,14

At the Second Vatican Council, in the document on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes, the Council Fathers would go on to describe something very similar to St. Paul’s interpretation of the “gracious act.”  Used frequently by Blessed John Paul the Great and referred to often as “The Law of the Gift,” Gaudium et Spes insists that “Man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et Spes, #24).

It has much more to do with one’s will and progress in the path of virtue than with one's wallet (although those first two things will undoubtedly influence the third).  It is when one is generous in forgiveness, in friendship, in time and in the basic attitudes of life with God and others, pouring oneself out generously in love; only then does one truly discover happiness and the fulfillment that remains elusive for so many.

Fittingly, when encouraging “this gracious act” of the Corinthians, St. Paul makes reference to another “gracious act,” performed by Christ:

For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

—2 Corinthians 8:9

 OK…so which act is that?  Perhaps St. Paul is referring to the Incarnation: God, who exists eternally in heaven and is in need of nothing, suddenly enters time and space to be born in a poor stable in Bethlehem.   Through that one gracious act, God became man and made it possible for us to know the living God!  In His poverty He enriched the entire world.

St. Paul, however, would never have limited “the gracious act” of our Lord to the Incarnation alone.  Like a good consistent golf swing, Christ perpetuated His poverty and multiplied our riches by pouring himself out over and over again.    

At the Last Supper, gathering with those closest to Him in this world on the night before He suffered and died, He took bread and offered it to them, saying, “This is my body.”  It was all He had, His very sustenance, and He was giving it to them, to take and to eat.  “This is the chalice of my blood,” He said to them, sharing how His blood would be poured out for the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of the world.  He had nothing more to give.   Christ, completely impoverishing Himself at that sacred meal, enriched those first disciples with the fullness of Divine life. 

The next day he offered Himself up as a sacrifice on the altar of the cross, pouring out His life, His breath, everything He had; in that gracious act we inherited the forgiveness of our sins and the richness of God’s mercy.  The gates of heaven swung wide open to let in the beggars and paupers that we are before His Majesty, the King!

Even still, in the Gospel this morning, Christ continues to pour Himself out in that gracious act that enriches those who come into contact with Him.  That poor woman who had suffered for twelve years, reached out in desperation for healing and hope, and suddenly received abundantly more than she could have possibly imagined.    Christ immediately perceived “that power had gone out from him” (Mark 5:30) just as surely as the woman “felt in her body that she was healed in her affliction” (Mark 5:29).

 So it is with the daughter of Jairus, who is dead.  Christ touches her, raises her up and restores her to health in that gracious act of healing and love.  Over and over again, Christ constantly gave of Himself and enriched the world around Him. 

What about us?

How could we ever hope to consistently perform such gracious acts in our own daily lives?  Don’t we know all too well our weakness and sin, indeed the very reason why He became man to take on our humanity and redeem us?  Of ourselves we could never hope to act so powerfully, so graciously.  

Jesus Christ, however, lives in us.  By virtue of our baptism we have received the very grace of God and a share in His Divine life.  No matter how many times we fail or how far we fall, Christ has the power to renew us and set our hearts on fire once again.  If you find this difficult to believe than read the Acts of the Apostles, or simply ask St. Paul.

Which brings me back to my original question: what does it take to be a great golfer, or perhaps even a professional?  Truth be told, in one hundred years that question will not matter to a single soul reading this today.  But there is a question that should be in the heart of every single one of us, and if not then our spiritual lives are in big trouble.  That question is:

What does it take to be a saint? 

What does it take to grow in holiness in this life, to grow in friendship with God while we are here on this earth, so that we can live with him forever in the eternal bliss of heaven?

The answer to that question is: One gracious act.  Allowing Christ to so live in us that the one gracious act is performed, over and over again in our lives…starting now…and continuing consistently until the moment that we enter eternal life.

What We Really Need

(Feast of St. Cyril of Alexandria-Year B; This homily was given on 27 June, 2012 at St. Sebastian's Church, Providence, R.I.  See Matthew 7:15-20)

Are you needy?  Do you have needs?  Of course you do.  As human persons we all share some of the most basic needs of life.  We have an innate need to be loved.   Along with that is the need to be forgiven, when we have failed God or those around us.  At the heart of the matter and more to the point: We need God.  Desperately.

How glorious that He is so ready and willing to give us what we need and long for most of all: Himself.  It is the story of our salvation writ large.

In the 5^th Century there was an important and greatly influential bishop named Nestorius who believed Jesus, like us, had needs.  Certainly he did not teach that Jesus needed to be forgiven.   Nonetheless, Nestorius taught that Jesus was a human person who was joined to the Divine Person of the eternal Son of God.  It seemed to make sense to him that this human person would need to be joined to God and then suddenly have the power to perform miracles, heal the sick, suffer for us on the cross and then lead us all to heaven.

But Nestorius was wrong.

We do not believe that Jesus was a human person.  Catholics do not believe that at all.  In fact we believe that Jesus was a Divine Person who took on our human nature, becoming like us in all things but sin (see Hebrews 4:15 and Gaudium et Spes, #22). 

Why is that important?  Because believing and teaching the wrong thing about God can lead us away from God, and away from heaven.  The word we use for such teaching is heresy, and Christ takes it very seriously.   The early Church condemned the teaching of Nestorius because it was leading the people of God into error and away from the true teachings revealed by God. 

In the Gospel this morning Christ warns us all against such things.  He says:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.

—Matthew 7:15

Jesus was not a human person who needed to be joined to God to do powerful things.   He is God who is in need of nothing.  Nonetheless He comes to us and takes on our human nature to redeem us because we need Him.

At the same time that Nestorius was teaching heresy about Christ, Bishop Cyril of nearby Alexandria—whose feast we celebrate today—was defending the Catholic faith by insisting that Jesus was not a human person but a Divine person who took on our human nature.  Even before He was born, while in the womb of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ is a Divine person.  He did not so much need love because He is love; He did not need to be joined to God because He is God; He is eternally united to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. 

St. Cyril of Alexandria, along with the fathers of the Council of Ephesus in 431, courageously proclaimed the Blessed Virgin Mary as Theotokos, the God-Bearer.   She carried in her body not merely the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth but the Divine person who is the eternal Son of God.  Indeed, she needed Him more than He needed her, since without Him she would not have existed.  Such is the mysterious and great glory of our Catholic faith. 

God does not need anything or anyone.  Yet He pines for us, longs for us, and greatly desires each and every one of us.   He becomes man and takes on our human nature so that we can receive the greatest gift and the most pressing need deep within our souls: Him.

With St. Cyril of Alexandria we thank God for so great a gift, given to us here in the Holy Eucharist.  We receive here the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ and pray for the grace to be as attentive to the needs of others this day as God is to our needs every day.

Divine Mercy and the Porta Fidei

(Divine Mercy Sunday, 2nd Sunday of Easter-Year B; This homily was given on 14 & 15 April, 2012 at Holy Apostles Church in Cranston, R.I.  and St. Timothy's Church in Warwick, R.I.  See John 20: 19-31)

C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia.  Leonardo DiCaprio in the film Inception.  Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau.  

What do all these have in common?  If you have read those books or seen the movies, then you know the characters in those stories are able to pass through a doorway into another reality, an entirely different dimension.  

The children in Lewis’ “Chronicles” go through the wardrobe and enter into the magical land of Narnia; for Inception, it is the realm of the subconscious and the world of dreams that they are able to enter; Matt Damon’s character in The Adjustment Bureau is able to walk through a door in Manhattan and suddenly find himself halfway across New York City.

Perhaps the reason why these stories are so compelling and attractive is that, in a certain sense, we go through the doorway with those characters and escape from reality for a few hours, or a couple of weeks if we encounter a really good book.  But, of course, once the film or book is over we must come back to reality and face all the challenges, complexities and difficulties that remain ever inescapable.

But what if you could walk through a doorway into a reality that was just as complex and difficult as the one you experience everyday, but one also filled with joy, wonder and peace?  What if walking through that doorway started you off on a journey that would end, eventually, in eternal bliss and eternal life?  Would you walk through it?  Of course you would!

A few short months ago our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, wrote an Apostolic Letter for the Church called Porta Fidei, Latin for “The Door of Faith,”  and he described faith as that doorway into a life of communion with God.  “To enter that door,”  he says, “is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime.  It begins with baptism (cf. Rom. 6:4), through which we can address God as Father, and it ends with the passage through death to eternal life.”

Every one of us present at the Eucharist this day has walked through the Porta Fidei.  We made a decision to come here, expecting and anticipating to enter into communion with the living God, and so it is.  We gather here around this altar and receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ, we share in communion with God and with each other.  What a remarkable gift faith is!

Yet there are many who do not walk through that door.  Many people in the world today, and sadly also many in the Church, are experiencing a crisis of faith, which is precisely why Pope Benedict wrote Porta Fidei; it is why he has initiated the coming year as the “Year of Faith,”  beginning October 11, 2012, in order to focus on that virtue and its necessity for a life of human fulfillment and salvation.

You may have seen the internationally broadcast event this past Monday which showed the debate between Cardinal Pell from Sydney Australia and the well know biologist and self-proclaimed atheist Richard Dawkins.  Dawkins is the author of the bestselling book The God Delusion. It is his contention that those who believe in a personal God are deluded, that such a God does not exist.  Some of the arguments he offered during the the debate were intelligent and carefully reasoned, and others were much less so.  In all of them, sadly, he was wrong.  There are very few people in the world who believe as strongly as Richard Dawkins that God is nonexistent and people of faith are deluded.

Nonetheless, there are a great many people who fit the description of “practical atheists.”  They are people who certainly believe that God exists; they perhaps believe even in the Church and in the efficacy of the Sacraments.  Yet they live as if neither God nor the Church exist; they live as if there will be no rendering of an account at a final judgement and no eternal life that follows this one.  Does that sound familiar to you?

How many of our pews are empty, how many friends and members of our families have ceased to practice their faith?  

Some of these are the result of apathy or spiritual malaise, people who have succumbed to a secular culture that has become expert in distracting us from the essential matters of worship, true relationship and virtue.   Still, many have left the Church and the practice of their faith because of people within the Church!  They have been hurt by something which was said or done to them, and now they are standing outside the Porta Fidei.  Or perhaps something happened to them, or to someone they love; maybe it was cancer, some terrible tragedy, some inexplicable circumstance; somewhere along the way they simply made a decision to not follow a God that would allow that to happen.  These things are not uncommon in the world we live in.  Therefore it should come as no surprise for us to see them happening to St. Thomas the Apostle in our Gospel this weekend.

We often refer to him as Doubting Thomas, but lest we forget, Thomas is also a Saint, an Apostle and a man who would soon become a martyr specifically for his faith in Jesus Christ.  Thomas had seen a lot in his brief time with the Lord.  He had watched Christ heal the sick and raise the dead; he saw Christ preach to thousands and win the favor of the multitudes.  But then he had seen Christ arrested and beaten.  He had stood by in numbed silence while Christ was convicted and then executed.  After having placed all his hopes and trust in Jesus of Nazareth, he had suddenly come up empty and his faith was shaken to the core.  The disciples come to him and share how they have seen the Risen Lord, how He has appeared to them!  But Thomas will hear none of it:

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

-John 20:25

He is with those same disciples this weekend, in the upper room.  The doors of that place are locked, literally but also figuratively for Thomas.  He has closed himself off from a life of faith, the Porta Fidei is shut tight!  But Jesus Christ walks right into that room anyway, through the locked door, and confronts St. Thomas directly:  

“Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side.”

-John 20:27

Jesus Christ has no problem at all with those who demand evidence and want to see things for what they are in the material world. Nonetheless, he also demands that such rigorous inquiry be accompanied by faith:  “Do not be unbelieving, but believe” (John 20:27).  

Our Lord challenges us to embrace that same faith in this coming “Year of Faith.”  How comforting to know that, even in our doubts, amidst our own fears, disappointments and darkest days, and perhaps even especially in those moments, He is able to enter into our lives and inspire us to walk through the Porta Fidei.

I mentioned at the beginning of this homily the Christian author, C.S. Lewis.  His stories, books and essays are among the finest and most faith-filled works of this past century.  And yet Lewis himself was a staunch atheist for decades.  He quips about how he would be very careful to avoid particular conversations, never to read certain articles or books, lest they should suddenly shatter his facade.  In his autobiography, Surprised By Joy, he writes about how something, or rather, Someone, eventually broke through the locked door of his private study and how his entire atheistic house of cards finally came crashing down:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I desired so earnestly not to meet.  That which I had greatly feared had at last come upon me.  In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.  I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms.  The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet.  But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?  The words compelle entrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of Divine mercy.

-C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy, 

P. 228-229, Harcourt Inc.

Compelle entrare, compel them to come in.  Lewis writes that this compulsion for us to enter into a life of faith plumbs the depth of God’s mercy.  This weekend we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, and God is compelling all of us to adore and gives thanks anew for His great mercy and the forgiveness and grace we are given in Christ.  How is He also compelling us to enter more completely though the Porta Fidei this weekend, and in this coming year?  

Perhaps more importantly, how are each of us called to compelle entrare, to compel those in our families, among our friends and those we encounter each day, to enter into the doorway of faith, the Porta Fidei, so that they can share in communion with God and discover anew this Divine Mercy, this Jesus who is forever our Resurrection and our Life.