The Heart of the Matter

Pentecost 2012

What a scene that first Pentecost must have been.  The Holy Spirit came upon them in such a powerful way that the huddled group of scared disciples of Jesus were suddenly breaking out of their hiding place and boldly going out into the streets and plazas of Jerusalem to fearless proclaim that Jesus Christ was indeed Lord and Savior and that, though he had been killed by crucifixion, he had risen from the dead, and that there is salvation in no other Name.

Oh for the same kind of release of the Holy Sprit in our day!  Oh for the same fearless proclamation today!  Oh that today’s world would be transformed by one generation of believers as was that generation of the Apostles!

Historically, however, the Spirit’s action has been more subtle than explosive.  Take for instance our own personal Pentecost, when we received the Sacrament of Confirmation.  Chances are it was not explosive.  Chances are that it was a subtle transformation, like the change that happens in the Holy Eucharist.  Before the consecration the host and wine look as they are, just as after the consecration they look no different but by then they are the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior.

Just before the consecration, the priest holds his hands over the bread and wine and prays, “Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Like the dewfall.”  Have you ever seen the dew fall?  It happens slowly and invisibly, as does the transformation of the one who is confirmed.  In most cases, then, one’s own personal Pentecost is not so much like the first Pentecost, but is much more “like the dewfall.”

It helps, however, to know what gifts the Holy Spirit gives us when we are confirmed.  Remember them?  The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.  You’ll most probably recognize them when I list them for you, but what exactly are these gifts of wisdom and understanding, right judgment and courage, knowledge and reverence and wonder and awe in God’s presence.

Let me unwrap them so that we may better grasp them and incorporate them in our daily lives:

Wonder and awe in God’s presence, also known as the fear of the Lord.  This gift of the Spirit does not make us afraid of hell, but makes so in love with God that we are appropriately afraid of ever doing anything that would separate us from God.

Reverence, also known as piety.  This gift leads us to see God in all the persons the Lord puts in our lives, and respect them just as we respect and love God.  Or, in the words of Scripture: “How can you say you love and God and do not love your brother or sister?”

Courage, also known as Fortitude.  This gift strengthens us against natural fear and imparts to our will an impulse to undertake without hesitancy the most arduous tasks, to face dangers, trample underfoot human respect, and to endure without complaint even prolonged tribulation.

Knowledge.  This gift enables us to evaluate created things at their true worth in their relation to God.  Knowledge unmasks pretenses, reveals emptiness and helps us put firth things first, and prize friendship with God above all else.

Understanding.  With this gift, the Holy Spirit helps us grasp the truths of our Catholic faith, and by understanding them, we are enabled to penetrate the inner meaning of revealed truths and through them we are quickened to a newness of life.  With Understanding our faith ceases to be sterile and inactive.  Instead our mode of life bears eloquent testimony to the faith that is within us.

Right Judgment, also known as Counsel.  With this gift the soul is endowed with supernatural prudence, enabling us to judge rightly and promptly what must be done.  Right Judgment is supernatural common sense, a priceless treasure, when faced with the innumerable concrete cases that face us in our daily affairs.

Lastly, Wisdom, the most perfect of the gifts of the Spirit.  Wisdom is the gift of discernment, enabling us to sort through the subtleties of the various movements within our souls, with an eye to picking up on very subtle deceptions of an evil spirit that would deceive us by pretending to be an angel of light. 

These are the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us in Confirmation.  Let us ask our Lord open them up and magnify them in our lives, whether suddenly or like the dewfall.

Pentecost 2012

What a scene that first Pentecost must have been.  The Holy Spirit came upon them in such a powerful way that the huddled group of scared disciples of Jesus were suddenly breaking out of their hiding place and boldly going out into the streets and plazas of Jerusalem to fearless proclaim that Jesus Christ was indeed Lord and Savior and that, though he had been killed by crucifixion, he had risen from the dead, and that there is salvation in no other Name.

Oh for the same kind of release of the Holy Sprit in our day!  Oh for the same fearless proclamation today!  Oh that today’s world would be transformed by one generation of believers as was that generation of the Apostles!

Historically, however, the Spirit’s action has been more subtle than explosive.  Take for instance our own personal Pentecost, when we received the Sacrament of Confirmation.  Chances are it was not explosive.  Chances are that it was a subtle transformation, like the change that happens in the Holy Eucharist.  Before the consecration the host and wine look as they are, just as after the consecration they look no different but by then they are the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior.

Just before the consecration, the priest holds his hands over the bread and wine and prays, “Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Like the dewfall.”  Have you ever seen the dew fall?  It happens slowly and invisibly, as does the transformation of the one who is confirmed.  In most cases, then, one’s own personal Pentecost is not so much like the first Pentecost, but is much more “like the dewfall.”

It helps, however, to know what gifts the Holy Spirit gives us when we are confirmed.  Remember them?  The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.  You’ll most probably recognize them when I list them for you, but what exactly are these gifts of wisdom and understanding, right judgment and courage, knowledge and reverence and wonder and awe in God’s presence.

Let me unwrap them so that we may better grasp them and incorporate them in our daily lives:

Wonder and awe in God’s presence, also known as the fear of the Lord.  This gift of the Spirit does not make us afraid of hell, but makes so in love with God that we are appropriately afraid of ever doing anything that would separate us from God.

Reverence, also known as piety.  This gift leads us to see God in all the persons the Lord puts in our lives, and respect them just as we respect and love God.  Or, in the words of Scripture: “How can you say you love and God and do not love your brother or sister?”

Courage, also known as Fortitude.  This gift strengthens us against natural fear and imparts to our will an impulse to undertake without hesitancy the most arduous tasks, to face dangers, trample underfoot human respect, and to endure without complaint even prolonged tribulation.

Knowledge.  This gift enables us to evaluate created things at their true worth in their relation to God.  Knowledge unmasks pretenses, reveals emptiness and helps us put firth things first, and prize friendship with God above all else.

Understanding.  With this gift, the Holy Spirit helps us grasp the truths of our Catholic faith, and by understanding them, we are enabled to penetrate the inner meaning of revealed truths and through them we are quickened to a newness of life.  With Understanding our faith ceases to be sterile and inactive.  Instead our mode of life bears eloquent testimony to the faith that is within us.

Right Judgment, also known as Counsel.  With this gift the soul is endowed with supernatural prudence, enabling us to judge rightly and promptly what must be done.  Right Judgment is supernatural common sense, a priceless treasure, when faced with the innumerable concrete cases that face us in our daily affairs.

Lastly, Wisdom, the most perfect of the gifts of the Spirit.  Wisdom is the gift of discernment, enabling us to sort through the subtleties of the various movements within our souls, with an eye to picking up on very subtle deceptions of an evil spirit that would deceive us by pretending to be an angel of light. 

These are the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us in Confirmation.  Let us ask our Lord open them up and magnify them in our lives, whether suddenly or like the dewfall.

Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter - 4/22/2012

This time of the Easter Season in the RCIA process is a time called “mystagogia,” meaning a time to enter into the mysteries of the faith.  Without this part of the conversion process, the faith can remain a matter of knowledge of facts, teachings, and details of the commandments, the sacraments, the doctrines and the general expectations of what makes for a good Catholic.

There is so much more, however, that only comes to us after we have been baptized, and if we have been instructed in these mysteries.

As you probably know, the RCIA process is intended not only for converts to the Catholic faith, but also for the whole parish, especially through the various rites and scrutinies, in Advent and Lent.  So also with the Easter season, the time of mystagogia.  The invitation to the whole Church is to utilize this season so as to grow into the mystery of the faith.

So, let’s take today to look more intently into the process of spiritual development.  What does it look like if we take our baptismal faith with ever greater seriousness?  What are the stages of spiritual development.  After going through these, let’s each of us figure out where we are in our development, and where we want to be.

There are 4 stages of spiritual development:

Stage One looks like this.  The person in Stage One has not yet decided to turn his or her life around and heed the words of St. Peter in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles: “Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away."

People in Stage One are narcissists.  It’s all about them.  All the time.  They do not think that they commit sin; and therefore they have no need to repent.  The truth for these folks is that they think they can do anything, can improve themselves, pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  This narcissism (we used to call it pride) fuels all the vices of greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger and sloth.  They may say that they know God, but they do not keep His commandments, “and the truth is not in them.”  

The most we can do to help people in the first stage is to catechize them, teach them, warn them, in the hope that when God’s time is right, they “may turn to God and be saved,” as Scripture says.  In the meantime, they tend to not need religion, the sacraments or God Himself.  For these people the devil is hard at work to keep them right where they are.

And how does the Holy Spirit work in the hearts of these Stage One people?  Here the Holy Spirit will allow them to suffer the absence of God and the pain of feeling alienated from God.  Why does the Holy Spirit allow this?  To turn them around so as to trust in God, to hope in the future, and to be persons of love, and also, sometimes, to prevent people from destroying themselves.

Entering into Stage Two is marked by people starting to realize they need God.  They find themselves saying within their hearts short spontaneous prayers to the Lord: Lord, I need You.  Or, Lord, I desire You.  Or, Lord, I yearn for you.  Or, Lord, help me.  Or, Lord, turn this bad thing into something good.  Or, Jesus, I trust in You.  Or, Lord, save me.  The life of prayer takes on a new ugency; and it's only by a devout prayer life that one will progress spiritually.

For Stage Two people, they will know they are progressing in the spiritual life if they can see that their trust in God is increasing.  If they can see that their hope in the future is increasing.  And if they can see that their love of others is increasing.  Stage One people won’t even care about all of this.  For a Stage Two person, a sign that an evil spirit is toying with them is if they see a decrease in these virtues, and if they run into discouragement.  Discouragement is a sign that you’re off target and probably need to go to confession.  

Stage Two people will occasionally go back to Stage One thinking, perhaps becoming negative again, maybe even falling into old sins they thought they left behind.  But they still want to do God’s will in all things; and they will soon enough go to confession to let God’s grace turn their lives back to their path to "life on high with Christ Jesus."

People in the 3rd and 4th Stages will understand better than those in earlier stages the role suffering plays in the Christian’s life.  They will become familiar with a spiritual dynamic called the Dark Night.  That’s when a person has to be weaned off of worldly sensuality by various kinds of inner sufferings.  Being as attached as we are to sin, giving up these sins is a wrenching experience.  And many people, sadly, don’t want to go through the process until they face it in purgatory.  It’s a process of purgation, of being set free from all of our unfreedoms and from all of our addictions, so that we can be utterly free to be in complete union with God.  That complete union with God, also called the "mystical marriage" is the 4th Stage. It's like living on earth as if you were already in heaven.

Where are you in these stages of spiritual development?  Where do you want to be?  And where do you think God wants you to be?  

 

Homily for Divine Mercy Sunday - April 15, 2012

In 1931 a Polish nun was chosen by God to be the recipient of spectacular mystical visions and visits from our Lord Jesus Christ.  The Lord’s intention in these visits was to work through this woman to help the Church throughout the world to rediscover the essential call of the baptized: to realize that God is rich in mercy and that all the baptized are called to pray for mercy and to bestow mercy on others.  Thus began the Divine Mercy devotion that spread throughout the Church like wildfire. 

Do you not find it intriguing that this push from the Lord to focus on mercy was happening just a few miles away from a country that was so distraught by economic distress that they soon enough fell into the spell of a man who would lead the whole country into the exact opposite of mercy: mass genocide.

How can a Christian people be led so far away from what is good and holy as to embrace a truly evil man as their leader?  It must be either insincere practice of faith, or a severe misjudgment of what the faith calls us to.  

In these visions to the now canonized saint, Faustina, Jesus tells her of His distress at the lack of fervor of so many souls who do not grasp His mercy and love.  He told her:

“How painful it is to Me that souls so seldom unite themselves to Me in Holy Communion.  I wait for souls, and they are indifferent toward Me.  I want to lavish my graces on them, and they do not want to accept them.  They treat Me as a dead object, whereas My Heart is full of love and mercy.  In order that you may know at least some of My pain imagine the most tender of mothers who has great love for her children, while those children spurn her love.  This is but a feeble image and likeness of My love.”  

In these visions the Lord showed St. Faustina an image of His Sacred Heart with a visual depiction of the reality of what happened when He was pierced in the heart upon His death on the cross, when blood and water flowed down upon the human race: the blood of His holy passion which we take in every time we receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ when we receive Holy Communion, and the water of baptism which unites us with the Heart of Christ by a bond that cannot be broken.  This is the image we bless today.  

When Pope John Paul II canonized Saint Faustina on April 30, 2000, he declared this Sunday within the Octave of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday.  He had already back 20 years earlier written an encyclical, entitled in English: Rich in Mercy.  He who had lived under 2 forms of atheism, first under Nazi occupation and then much longer under Soviet tyranny, knew what it is like for people to forget the mercy of God: they embrace what is not God.  

In his appeal for a rediscovery of who God actually is, a God of mercy, he wrote: 

“If any of our contemporaries do not share the faith and hope which lead me, as a servant of Christ and steward of the mysteries of God, to implore God's mercy for humanity in this hour of history, let them at least try to understand the reason for my concern. It is dictated by love for man, for all that is human and which, according to the intuitions of many of our contemporaries, is threatened by an immense danger. The mystery of Christ, which reveals to us the great vocation of man and which led me to emphasize in the encyclical Redemptor Hominis his incomparable dignity, also obliges me to proclaim mercy as God's merciful love, revealed in that same mystery of Christ. It likewise obliges me to have recourse to that mercy and to beg for it at this difficult, critical phase of the history of the Church and of the world.”

How else can we explain the Risen Lord’s first message to the apostles, to be ministers of forgiveness:  “Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

How else can we explain the patience of the Lord with doubting Thomas but by seeing the Risen Lord as rich in mercy?  How else can we explain our reason for hope that the Lord in His great mercy will deal with us patiently and mercifully?  And how else can we explain our lives as Christians but as persons of mercy?  As persons of forgiveness, as a Church of forgiveness, and as people whose mercy must be so palpable that this unbelieving age will come to rediscover the mercy of our God by the mercy they find in us?

 

Easter Homily 2012

Jesus Christ is risen today!  Alleluia!

Let me approach this Easter as if you were not believers.  Let us suppose for the moment that you, for whatever reason, had not yet come to know Jesus Christ, or His message called the Gospel, and that you had come here because you had heard that a man was risen from the dead.  Let’s suppose also that you were open to hearing about this Jesus and his being raised from the dead and were curious.  Let’s also assume that you do believe there is some kind of God.

Let me, then, introduce you to Jesus.  Who is he?

Jesus lived at a certain point in history, 2000 years ago, at a certain place in the Middle East, now called Israel.  Like all human beings, he was born, he lived, he suffered, like the rest of us, and he died.  During that time before his death he revealed to us what God is like.  He not only taught about the love of God, but his teaching poured out in his working miracles of healing and forgiveness.  

He revealed that the justice of God is not vengeance and retribution, but forgiveness and mercy.  He also revealed that suffering is not meaningless but is to be shared with all people as the way of redemption, the way of becoming who we are really meant to be; and he went this way in what is called the Pascal Mystery: the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, now truly risen from the dead.  

His revelation of who God is includes an invitation to enter in ever increasing ways into the very mystery of God, that through our union with Christ we learn that He is God, God in the flesh, that God has so entered into human existence, that “spirit and blood now have a place in God.”  For Jesus Christ is truly human and truly divine.  

This man Jesus Christ is not a story about some deceased individual, albeit a truly inspirational teacher, who came back to life at a certain point in time.  No, this Jesus truly rose from the dead, and now no longer is subject either to death, or to the deathly things of unredeemed humanity.  But in his resurrection an ontological leap has taken place, a shift in being itself, a new thing has happened: humanity has entered into another dimension, a dimension that affects us all, creating for all of us a new space of life, a new space of being in union with God.

This Jesus, risen from the dead, has by his death on the cross reversed the ancient tendency to be selfish, to return evil for evil.  In him, the human race has ceased to be in rebellion against God and has entered into communion with God.

Jesus was born, lived, suffered and died at specific points in time, but his resurrection is not the same kind of historical event.  The resurrection did in fact happen at a specific moment, on the third day after his crucifixion, but the essence of the resurrection is that it opens up a new space that transcends history.  His resurrection is something new, a new type of event; and it is open to all of us.

Pope Benedict in the 2nd volume of his book, Jesus of Nazareth, describes the resurrection of Jesus as an “evolutionary leap.”  Benedict says, “Jesus’ Resurrection points beyond history but has left a footprint in history.  Therefore, it can be attested to by witnesses as an event of an entirely new kind.”

Those witnesses were the apostles, who went from being uneducated fishermen and other such workers drawn by Jesus into his inner circle to hear his words, see his deeds, and witness his death and resurrection.  He, after rising from the dead, commissioned these ordinary men to bring this message to the world.  If all this had not actually happened, if the resurrection were not true, there is no way a small group of uneducated Galileans could have persuaded the people of the Roman Empire to embrace a crucified savior.  If Jesus were not truly raised from the dead, where would have come their willingness to die as martyrs?  

As St. Paul says in Corinthians 15: "And if Christ has not been raised, then empty [too] is our preaching; empty, too, your faith.Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins.  Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all."

But we do believe; and because we believe, we are the most blessed of all!  Happy Easter!

 

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent - March 25, 2012

“Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”  

For years in my pride I rejected obedience as a virtue I would encourage in my preaching.  Perhaps it was my being a child of the 1960’s, but obedience seemed like a virtue for little children.  “Do what your mommy tells you.”  It seemed to me that many people transfer onto their religious experience the dynamic of their relationship with their parents, especially if the teenage years were fraught with tension between the parent who “knew better” and the rebellious teen.  

As I became more familiar with the inner workings of people’s lives, I saw that some people seem to spend their lives transferring their adolescent battle with a parent into fighting against Mother Church or God our Father, resisting any hint of being obedient, even to one’s own detriment.  When one is stuck in this kind of rebellion, one never grows up religiously.  Here’s how it plays out: 

All over the country there has been for years a hefty marriage preparation process for couples preparing to be married in the Catholic Church.  One of the elements of the preparation is learning the Catholic Church’s wisdom on sexuality, marriage, children, natural family planning, and so on.  

Over the years many priests, deacons and marriage prep couples have soft pedaled the natural family planning piece.  There is profound beauty in the Church’s wisdom on the meaning of sexuality and how important it is for husbands and wives to not be selfish in giving of themselves to each other.  Among other items, the wisdom is that sterilization (either tubal ligations or vasectomies) are contrary to wisdom built on the Gospel and on the natural law.  

So occasionally one will even hear a young practicing-Catholic couple who have had only one or two children choose one of these forms of sterilization.  A good practicing Catholic friend or relative of the couple, who has been brought in on this decision, may advise that it’s against the teachings of the Church.  Frequently enough, a common response, coming right out of the marriage prep they had on conscience, flips immediately to the priority of conscience.  

The impact of this poor training in conscience is that it amounts to this: if you don’t like a teaching of the Church, don’t give it much thought, dismiss it, because in your conscience it doesn’t apply to you.

Part of good training on conscience is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “the obedience of faith.”  It’s defined this way: “To obey in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is truth itself.  Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture.  The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.”

It is true indeed that God sometimes asks us to do the impossible, like suffer through multiple sclerosis, accept the death of a spouse or a child, live through a war, raise a mentally ill child, or something unique to your description of something impossible.

How does this play with the primacy of conscience?  

When faced with what looks like an impossible call from the Lord, our first inclination should not be that the teachings of the Church on the matter do not apply to me.  A good conscience means that I must wrestle between my values and my reality.  A good conscience will have as a first presumption that with You, Lord, I can do all things if you but strengthen me.  A good conscience will have this as its first priority: “I will obey you Lord.  Hear my plea,  Do not let me do anything against you will.”  A good conscience does not flip immediately to what I want. 

“Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”  If the Son of God had to learn to be obedient to the Father’s will, then learning obedience takes some doing.  After all He did say, “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.”

If the Son of God were not obedient, He would have run away from the cross.  He would not have allowed Himself to be “lifted up so as the draw everyone to Himself.”

So, the obedience of faith is what we are all called to.  This is no making up one’s own religion to maintain our lives the way they are.  Our religion, the Catholic religion, is not risk adverse.  In fact, it is very risky to be Catholic and to embrace the obedience of faith.

One last point: one cannot come to the obedience of faith unless we allow God to place His law within us, and write it upon our hearts.  If we do not enter the fray between our conscience and this obedience of faith, then we do not have an adult understanding of God’s relationship with us.  We are still, religiously speaking, a teenager looking for the easy answer.

 

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent - 3/18/2012

"The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ... be with you" . . . . But what is grace? "Hail Mary, full of grace". . . But what is grace?    Let’s say "grace" before meals. . . But what is grace?  "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!"  Yes, as amazing as it is, what exactly is grace?

St. Paul tells us that we have been saved by grace so that “in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast.”

During this season of Lent I am teaching as well as preaching, so let me share what the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines grace to be:

Grace is “the free and undeserved gift that God gives us to become his adopted children.  As sanctifying grace, God shares his divine life and friendship with us in a habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that enables the soul to act by [God’s] love.”  There’s more to it, but let’s just digest this much.  

Grace is being in a relationship with God, such a close relationship that it’s like a parent and child relationship.  A trusting relationship, such that we know we are loved and protected and guided and yes, sometimes disciplined.  In grace we know God as a loving Father.  

But notice: this relationship is a free and undeserved gift.  We have done nothing to earn this relationship with God.  If I am a good person, a faithful person, a person of deep faith, all of this is a gift from God.  Even my desire to respond to God’s love, by returning the love, is a gift from God.  It’s all a gift from God.  Everything is gift.  My very existence is a gift.  My abilities and talents are gifts.  My upbringing, my educational opportunities, all my successes are gifts from a God of love.  If I am married, the marriage is a gift. If I am single, my singleness if a gift.  If I have children, they are gifts.  If I parent them well, then that good parenting is a gift.  

My brothers and sisters, all is gift!  We can claim nothing as our own, except our sins!  Our sins are events of refusing God’s grace, of breaking out of the relationship with God so as to act as if I were not in a relationship with God.  And if we break out of this filial relationship with God grievously, we will be inclined to continue breaking this relationship with God.  This is what we call mortal sin.  Mortal sin kills our relationship with God.  And when mortal sin is done repeatedly, as described in our first reading from Second Chronicles, we lose our way, we die spiritually, and chaos comes upon us.

We heard in this reading that the Israelites were going over to something other than their relationship with God, and they, the leaders, the priests and the people “added infidelity to infidelity” and “practiced all the abominations of the nations.”  The result of this straying out of grace, out of being in relationship with God, was all of the destruction that came their way: the destruction of the temple, the experience not only of war but losing the war and being carried off into exile.  

Isn’t it interesting that only after all the calamity came was the writer able to say why it had come upon them: that they had been unfaithful to God, that they had followed other gods, that they had broken their relationship with God.  In other words, they fell away from grace.  Why couldn’t they see it while it was happening?  Ah, the prophets could see, “But they mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets.” 

There is always hope, for when we are in a state of sin, in a broken relationship with God, when we have lost sanctifying grace, God still gives is what is called “actual grace.” You may ask: what is actual grace?  Actual grace is God’s giving us the help we need to conform our wills to his.  So, let’s say we are in a state of sin, alienated from God; well, God never stops loving us.  He is like “the Hound of Heaven,” forever going after us, with actual grace, to help us come to our senses so that we may regain our relationship with God, re-enter into the life of the sacraments, return to the Lord.  

The Gospel says it this way: “For 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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  

If you are not, right now, in the state of sanctifying grace, then please, by all means, come to our penance service Monday evening, here in the church at 7 pm.  And get right with God.

 

Homily for Sunday, March 4, 2012

Why on earth did Abraham presume that God wanted him to engage in the human sacrifice of his son, Isaac?   Why would Abraham agree to that?  And why would God have asked of him such a terrible thing?

To answer these questions we have to understand the word “sacrifice.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines sacrifice as “a ritual offering made to God by a priest on behalf of the people, as a sign of adoration, gratitude, supplication, and communion.  The perfect sacrifice was Christ’s death on the cross.”  

You can begin to see, then, that our reading from Genesis will lead us to a greater understanding of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and that will lead us to a greater understanding of the “holy sacrifice of the Mass.”

That’s where we’re headed, but we still have to better understand sacrifice.  Why?  Because by the very fact that we live at this point in human history, it is very difficult to wrap our minds around sacrifice.  Why?  Because we are children of our times, creations of our culture;  and our culture tends toward sacrificing only for oneself: to be thinner, to have a better physical condition, to be willing to move to another state if I can better my salary, to do things my peer group does so as to fit in better.  In other words, our culture is a culture of narcissism, a culture of looking out for oneself, seeking after what is going to benefit me, my family, and my projects.  Sacrifice for the good of others is often on a lower rung of priorities for the children of this generation.  And giving up something really important as a gift to God does not make sense to this generation.

To understand our times we should add on to our culture of narcissism another cultural element: to be more secularized, to act as if God does not matter, to make decisions as if God is irrelevant, to engage in acts that are seen as having nothing to do with God.

There!  I think I have described why it is so difficult for us to understand sacrifice as an act of devotion to God, and sacrifice for the good of others. 

So let’s stretch our minds to rise above our culture and see what sacrifice has meant at other times in history, less materialistic times, times that were less forgetful of God.

The wisdom of the ages is that being human, truly human, fully human, requires a sense of devotion to something greater than oneself.

Here are the kinds of people who know the meaning of sacrifice: Scientists who enter fully into their discipline for the sake of discovering something that will benefit the whole human race; good politicians who want to do something to better society and not just seek office for the sake of recognition or power; teachers who genuinely care about their students and don’t count the cost of assisting them to measure up to their abilities.  Yes, we understand sacrifice and all of know people who genuinely give of themselves for the sake of others.  We know hem, but they’re rare.

Sacrifice means going out of my way and denying self for the sake of the common good.  Sacrifice means giving up something I enjoy or desire or think to be my due.  Sacrifice means giving of myself, my time, my money, my skill to express my devotion, my love, like someone who takes into their home an aging or ill relative or friend, or someone who cannot repay.

And when sacrifice is raised to a higher level, it becomes a way of life in relation to the One, the Only, God, the supreme desire of our souls.  When one has fallen in love with God, everything else is of a lesser category, and one would be willing to sacrifice anything so as to enter more fully into that relationship with God.

Only now can we begin to understand the sacrifice of Abraham.  In his culture human sacrifice was common.  We cannot understand this today; or maybe we can, when we think of the sacrifice of babes in the womb for the sake of the false god of our times, self.  

Now remember, Abraham was our father in faith, the first one to be called into relationship with the One God; and at the very beginning of the story of faith, we see this: 

• that God blesses the desire to sacrifice as an expression of being fully dedicated to Him,
  • but also God marks out at the very beginning of the Bible that there will be no human sacrifice in this new religion, the only human sacrifice will be God’s sacrifice of Himself to us on the cross.  

Oh, there is so much to say, but let us hunker down to this: if we really knew sacrifice, we could not stay away from the sacrifice of the Mass.

 

Homily for the 1st Sunday of Lent - 2/26/2012

I’d like to begin this First Sunday of Lent with a very recent quote from Pope Benedict: "One great problem facing the Church today is the lack of knowledge of the faith, 'religious illiteracy.’ With such illiteracy we cannot grow. ... Therefore we must re-appropriate the contents of the faith, not as a packet of dogmas and commandments, but as a unique reality revealed in its all its profoundness and beauty. We must do everything possible for catechetical renewal in order for the faith to be known, God to be known, Christ to be known, the truth to be known, and for unity in the truth to grow."

There are many reasons for this state of widespread religious illiteracy but I am finding more and more young people wanting what they have not yet been given, the truths of our faith. One particular truth young people crave is how to have a clear conscience as described in our 2nd reading, from First Peter.  

We need to know that our conscience is that still, small voice in the back of our minds that enjoins us at the appropriate moment to do good and avoid evil, and judges our particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those what are evil.  We all know that removing dirt from the body cannot compare to having a right relationship with God which produces a clear conscience.

So, let’s look at what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches about our conscience. It’s this, that deep within our conscience we discover a law which we do not lay upon ourselves, but is already given within, a law we must obey.  This voice of our conscience is always calling us to do what is good and to avoid evil. This voice sounds within our hearts at just the right moment.  This voice, our conscience, is a law written on our hearts by God.  It is written deep within our most secret core, in, as it were, our sanctuary.  In this internal sanctuary we are alone with God whose voice echoes in the depths of who we are.

If we are prudent and if we are sufficiently spiritually awake we will recognize in this still, small voice the voice of God. Then we will be able to recognize this nudge from God and withstand distractions that can deceive us that we are following our conscience, but in reality we may not be. 

A good conscience, which produces a clear conscience, enables us to assume responsibility for the acts we perform.  So, if we commit evil, the just judgment of our conscience will be an internal witness to the truth of the evil of our particular choice.  If all is spiritually well with us, and we can admit the faults we commit, the good conscience then turns us to the forgiveness that must be asked for, the good that must still be practiced, and the virtue that must be constantly cultivated with the help of the grace of God.

Another teaching of the Church on conscience is this: Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as to personally make moral decisions.  He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience, especially in religious matters.

In this process of detecting the guidance of our conscience we need to know that we can have “erroneous judgments” of conscience.  If a person takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin, such a person is culpable, or responsible for the evil he commits.

Therefore, we all have a moral duty to be informed and make enlightened moral judgments.  A well formed conscience is upright and truthful.  Since all of us live in a culture that is blind to good and evil, the education of our consciences is even more indispensable. 

The whole enterprise of having a clear conscience is not just a matter of self-esteem.  It is the voice of God, leading us from within to be in an ever deepening relationship with God.  Going against our conscience, and believing our self-deceptions, leads us further and further away from God and His grace.  An early warning system of the potential of losing grace is this: if we dismiss the priority of worshiping God and honoring the 4th commandment, then we are vulnerable to running amok and letting ourselves be led by an erroneous conscience.  On the other hand, living by a well formed conscience is the surest path to being at peace with ourselves and with God.  And don’t forget the role the sacrament of penance has to play in a good conscience.  

 

Homily for Sunday, February 12, 2012

Have you noticed that we Catholics have some things about us that make us different from other people?  This difference comes from the meaning we attach to the things we do.  For instance, for Catholics the meaning of the love between a husband and wife is tantamount to the love of God who alone can create, yet in His love He creates a totally unique, new human being through the love of the husband and wife.  This meaning transforms a bodily function into an act of God.  We therefore consider it very sacred and not to be used in a tawdry way.

The sacraments are other uniquely Catholic interpretations of life: the person who is baptized, confirmed and eucharist-fed is living in an encounter with the Lord Himself.  The one who is sick and given the anointing of the sick encounters the experience of sharing in the sufferings of Christ.  The couple who are married in a sacramental marriage encounter the the Lord in the very relationship they share as husband and wife.  The one who is ordained is an encounter with Christ for all those he serves, especially when he serves the people well.  And the penitent who approaches the sacrament of penance encounters the Lord who sets us free from our sins.

That last sacrament, penance, aka confession or reconciliation, is the one that especially bothers non-Catholics.  They think the Catholic Church dreamt it up.  But they know not its history.  They do not know this about the Old Testament days: that when one had committed an offense against God, that person would have to go to the priest and tell the priest what the offense was.  Then the priest would prescribe what was to be done, like purchase a dove or a lamb and have it sacrificed by the priest so that the unclean person could be in a right relationship with God and with the community of Israel.     

A big problem for people in those days was that any sickness, deformity or disease was seen as a punishment from God for some offense against God.  

To break that concept of God’s doling out punishment to sinners Jesus came into the community and was constantly healing people from all kinds of ailments and sickly conditions.

Yet in today’s Scriptures we see not just Jesus healing, in this case, a leper, but also He reinforces the need for the cleansed man to “go and show [himself] to the priest.” 

What is Jesus teaching us about this need to present oneself to the priest?  We can see from the very early church that there was always a consciousness of the Christian’s need to remain pure, clean, unblemished, holy, and set apart from the ways of non-believers.  If one had committed an act that violated this noble calling, then such a person would confess to the priest or bishop what act was done, and then a penance would be imposed on the penitent as a way of repairing the damage that was done to that person’s relationship with God, but also that person’s relationship with the community that was struggling to live up to the calling given to the baptized.

Jesus could have told the leper, “Your faith has made you well.  Go in peace.”  He didn’t do that.  Why?

Leprosy or any skin condition like impetigo, ring worm, lice, and so many other conditions, were thought to be contagious.  So, the leper would have to live apart from the community until the condition somehow got healed.  When a healing happened, the leper was to go to the priest and show the priest his body.  If there was no more evidence of a skin problem, the leper would have to go through two weeks of purification rites and sacrifices before the community could take him back in and not be afraid of catching what he had.

Over the centuries of the church this same attention to dealing with the contagious element of sin was addressed through the need to “go and show yourself to the priest.”  Go, and fess up to what you have done to diminish the holiness of the community of faith, and diminish the luster of your relationship with God.

So, it is in the wisdom of the church that the Lord continues to give us this sacrament, this doorway into starting anew towards the Kingdom of God.  

If you are not aware already, the Catholic Church throughout the country is setting aside “leap day”, February 29th from 4:30 to 7:00 PM so that in very Catholic Church across the country the confessional light will be on for you, especially for anyone who has been away from the sacraments for a while.  And since Lent begins a week from this Wednesday do consider taking a leap of faith this leap day and “go show yourself to the priest.”  Let’s let God’s grace sweep us up into His great mercy.