Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Author: Father Pat Mulcahy

  • Tuesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    As many of you know, I enjoy cooking. And so our Gospel reading’s reference to seasoning resonates with me quite a bit. Sometimes you can under-season a dish: when you’re cooking, if you don’t add seasoning as you go along, at the end you can never put in enough salt or pepper to make it taste right. Sometimes you can over-season a dish, too. And then all you get is salt taste, and you’ve ruined what you were hoping for. But when you get it just right, the salt you’ve added brings out the other flavors in a dish and everything just tastes the way it is supposed to taste.

    And Jesus wants us to think about that today in terms of the Christian life. Jesus doesn’t want us to be under-seasoned. We need to add seasoning all along the way: during the journey of our life, we have to be seasoned with the sacraments and with scripture so that we can come to the banquet just right. And we can’t be over-seasoned either. We have to, as St. Benedict teaches us, pray and work. Otherwise all our prayer and scripture end up all in our heads and never in our hearts, and that’s not right.

    I think, too, today about the people that “season” our lives. All of those who God has given to us to be part of our lives flavor our lives in ways that can’t be duplicated. We are blessed to have each other to lead us to Christ and to accompany us in good times and in bad. We will never regret what we have given to others in terms of sharing time or experience, in terms of praying or working together. The grace of being salt and light for each other is so preferable to being the bland consumers our society would have us be.

    So here is a question for our reflection today: who in our lives needs our salt and light today?

  • The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

    The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

    Today’s readings

    Today, the Church celebrates the relatively new memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. This memorial occurs each year on the day after Pentecost. Pope Francis, of blessed memory, extended this feast to the Universal Church in 2018. Before that, it had a long history in Poland, and it was Saint John Paul II who commissioned a mosaic of Mary, Mother of the Church, at Saint Peter’s Basilica.

    The image of Mary, Mother of the Church, has its origins in the Gospels, and in Sacred Tradition. At the foot of the Cross, Jesus commended Saint John to Mary as his mother, and her to Saint John as her son. The Church has seen this as Mary welcoming all members of the Church in the person of Saint John, and relating to them as mother. This gives strength to the Tradition that since Mary is the Mother of Jesus, the head of the Body, so she is also the mother of the members of that same Body.

    Mary also prayed with the disciples in the Upper Room for the coming of the Holy Spirit, as we saw in our first reading this evening from the Acts of the Apostles, and as the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, she became the mother of the Church as it came into being. Mary is the one who guides the Church as Mother by interceding for the Church in our need, by pointing us to the leadership of her son Jesus Christ, and by giving us comfort and encouragement in times of need and crisis. Mary is indeed our Mother and because of that grace and comfort, we are truly blessed.

    And so today, we pray with Holy Church, that Mary would continue to intercede for us and bring us to her Son, Jesus. We strive to follow her example of faith and love, to serve the people God puts in our lives. We give witness by our actions that the Gospel is a valid way of life for all people, and that our Lord continues to act in our world for the good of all.

    Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Well, Church, happy birthday! Today is the Solemnity of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, because on this day, Jesus and God the Father sent the Holy Spirit on the first Apostles to enliven them and enable them to preach the Gospel.

    Today, we celebrate the joy of the Easter season for the last “official” time. It’s not that we don’t celebrate the joy of Easter every day, certainly every Sunday, but we do it with great joy in these special Easter days. For fifty days, we’ve been celebrating our Lord’s resurrection, his triumph over the grave, and his defeat of sin and death. We’ve been celebrating our salvation, because Christ’s death and resurrection has broken down the barriers that have kept us from God and has made it possible for us to live with God forever. In the last week, we’ve been celebrating our Lord’s Ascension, with His promise that though He is beyond our sight, He is with us always. And today, today we celebrate the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit, poured out on the Church, who breathes life into nothingness to create the world, who recreates the world with power and might, and who pours out the power of forgiveness on a world hardened by sin.

    The Hebrew word for Spirit is ruah, with is the same word they use for “breath.” So the Spirit who hovered over the waters of the primordial world also breathed life into our first parents, giving them not just spiritual life, but physical life, and life in all its fullness. The psalmist today makes it very clear that this Holy Spirit is the principle of life for all of us: “If you take away their breath, they perish and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.” (Ps. 104:34).

    It is this same Spirit that is poured out on our world, which often times doesn’t look very life-giving. This world of darkness of sin, of war and terror, of poverty and injustice, of sickness and death; this world can be recreated daily when the Spirit is poured out on hearts open to receive Him. This Spirit bursts forth from the believer into action: working in various forms of service, works and ministries to proclaim, not just in word, but most importantly in deed, that “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:3). Indeed, we can only make that proclamation if we have received and live in the Holy Spirit. The preface today makes that same claim: “This same Spirit, as the Church came to birth, opened to all peoples the knowledge of God and brought together the many languages of the earth in profession of the one faith.” We can’t say anything good about God, or the faith, either individually or as one, except in the Holy Spirit.

    It is this same Spirit that is given to create the Church as Jesus breathes on the apostles on the evening of that first day of the week. In today’s Gospel reading, the Holy Spirit is given for the reconciliation of the sinner. Our Church picks up this theme in the Sacrament of Penance when the words of absolution tell us that “God, the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins.” Because it is in the forgiveness of rivalries, it is in the healing of broken relationships, it is in the restoration of peace and in the pardoning of sinners that God’s plan for creation is most fully realized.

    That same Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters at the creation of the world now hovers over the Church. The apostles first received that Holy Spirit, but now it is poured out on us as well. Nothing that is truly good can be conceived of, nor realized apart from that Holy Spirit. As the sequence [which we sing tomorrow, but not today at the vigil Mass, tells us: “Where you are not, we have naught, nothing good in deed or thought, nothing free from taint of ill.” It is the Spirit who gives life, both physical and spiritual. It is the Spirit who speaks in our prayer, putting those prayers in our hearts in the first place, and uttering all of our inexpressible groanings when we cannot pray ourselves. It is the Spirit who gives gifts to enliven our works and ministries. It is indeed the Spirit who gives us faith to cry out, “Jesus is Lord.”

    Having gathered today in this place on this great Feast, we now pray for not only an outpouring of that Holy Spirit, but also for the openness to receive that Spirit and the grace to let that Spirit work in us for the salvation of the world. We, the Church, need that Holy Spirit to help us to promote a culture of life in a world of death; to live the Gospel in a world of selfishness; to seek inclusion and to celebrate diversity in a world of racism and hate; to effect conversion and reconciliation in a world steeped in sin. Brothers and sisters in Christ, if people in this world are to know that Jesus is Lord, it’s got to happen through each one of us. One life and one heart at a time can be moved to conversion by our witness and our prayer. Let us pray, then, that the Holy Spirit would do all that in us.

    Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle 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. Amen.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Friday in the Seventh Week of Easter

    Friday in the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Jesus’ words to Peter in this Gospel reading are a mixture of comfort, challenge, and warning. Peter had just messed up in the worst way possible by denying his friend not once but three times. But then comes the question not once but three times: “Peter, do you love me?” This is comfort because with each asking, Jesus is healing Peter from the inside out.

    Then words of challenge: “Feed my sheep.” When we are forgiven or graced in any way, we, like Peter, are then challenged to do something about it. Feed my sheep, follow me, give me your life, come to know my grace in a deeper way.

    And then words of warning: “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” When we give ourselves over to God, that necessarily means that we might have to go in a direction we might not otherwise choose.

    But then Jesus brings Peter back to comfort and healing once again by saying “Follow me.” No matter what we disciples have done in our past, no matter how many times we have messed up or in what ways, there is always forgiveness if we give ourselves over to our Savior and our friend.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr

    Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr

    Today’s readings

    Saint Boniface was sent by Pope Saint Gregory II to reform the Church in Germany, which had been heavily negatively influenced by the forces of paganism. He sought to restore the fidelity of the German clergy to their bishops, in union with Rome. He also sought to build up houses of prayer throughout the region, in the form of Benedictine monasteries. While he had much success, in the Frankish kingdom, he met great problems because of lay interference in bishops’ elections, the worldliness of the clergy and lack of papal control. During a final mission to the Frisians, he and 53 companions were massacred while he was preparing converts for Confirmation. Saint Boniface has been called the apostle to Germany.

    In our first reading today, we have one of the great first apostles, Saint Paul, for whom apostleship is becoming quite real. Nearly torn to pieces by the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, the Lord comes to him with some dubious consolation. “Take courage. For just as you have borne witness to my cause in Jerusalem, so you must also bear witness in Rome.” I’m not sure if that was good news or bad for Saint Paul!

    For both Saint Boniface and Saint Paul, discipleship cost them something, namely their lives. And they’re not the only ones. For all of those who take up the call to discipleship, it will cost something. Maybe not our lives, but certainly our comfort or our point of view or our status at work or in the community. Living the Gospel and bringing the presence of Christ to the world means we often have to give sacrificially and love unconditionally.

    Our hope and safety is in God, and giving sacrificially is possible for us because our Lord has done it first.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Saint Charles Lwanga and companions, Martyrs

    Saint Charles Lwanga and companions, Martyrs

    Today is the anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood, 19 years ago. It is also Father John’s anniversary of thirty-six years. I find our Liturgy today to be particularly inspirational on this anniversary day. Today’s Liturgy of the Word represents a kind of wrap-up to the lives of St. Paul and Jesus, respectively. They both have completed the mission for which they had been sent, and both are now giving the mission back to God who would continue it as He alone saw fit. Paul’s mission had been one of conversion, beginning with his own, and then reaching out to the Gentiles he met traveling far and wide. Now he did not know what would happen to him, only that the Holy Spirit kept telling him it was to be an end filled with hardship, from which Paul refused to shrink.

    Jesus, one with the Father from the beginning, had come from the Father and was now going back to the Father. He brought God’s love to bear on the aberrations of sin and death and had drawn disciples into the mission to continue the work. It could not continue unless he returned to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit upon them. Doing that has brought the Gospel into every nation and into the lives of millions. He too faced an end filled with hardship, from which he refused to shrink.

    The same could be said for Saint Charles Lwanga and his twenty-two companions, young people killed by the Bagandan ruler Mwanga, who insisted they give in to his immoral demands or face death. And they did face it, they refused to shrink from it, so we celebrate their martyrdom today. The inspiration of these holy ones, and of our Lord, gives us the strength to face the difficult times in our own lives. Witnessing to what is right and good is often inconvenient, facing hardship is always frightening, and for those like Saint Charles and Jesus’ disciples, sometimes dangerous. But that is what disciples do. That is our ministry, the work to which we have all been called.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • The Ascension of the Lord

    The Ascension of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    For the early Apostles and disciples, today’s feast had to be a kind of “now what?” experience for them. Think about what they’ve been through. Their Lord had been betrayed by one of their friends, he had been through a farce of a trial and put to death in a horrible, ignoble way, they had been hiding in fear thinking they might be next, they had questioned what they were supposed to do without their Lord, and then they witness the Resurrection: Christ walks among them for a time, appearing to them and making himself known. They had seen redemption of a way of life they almost had abandoned, and now, on this feast of the Ascension, their Lord is leaving them again. In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, you can almost feel the amazement and desperation they are experiencing as they stare up into the heavens, incredulous that their Lord is gone, again.

    So once again, God sends two messengers, two men in white garments, to set them straight. God had sent two men in dazzling garments to the women at the tomb on the day of the Resurrection as well. That time, the men reassured the women that the Lord had not been moved or stolen, but had risen from the dead. This time, the men appear to the Apostles, assuring them that the Lord would return in the same way as he had just departed from their sight. Both times, it was the same kind of messengers, with the same kind of hopeful message. Go forward, don’t worry, God is in control.

    One of the great themes of Catholic theology is the idea of “already, and not yet.” Basically, that means that we disciples of Christ already have a share in the life of God and the promise of heaven, but we are not yet there. So we who believe in Jesus and live our faith every day have the hope of heaven before us, even if we are not home yet. And this hope isn’t just some “iffy” kind of thing: it’s not “I hope I’ll go to heaven one day.” No, it’s the promise that because of the salvation we have in Christ, we who are faithful will one day live and reign with him. This gives us hope in the midst of the sorrows that we experience in this world.

    Another great theme of Catholic theology is that our God is transcendent, but also immanent. Transcendent means that our God is higher than the heavens, more lofty than our thoughts and dreams, beyond anything we can imagine. Whatever we say about God, like “God is love” or “God is good” – those things only begin to scratch the surface of who God is, because God is transcendent beyond anything our limited words can describe. But our God is also immanent. God is not some far off entity that has brought the world into existence and set the events of our lives in motion and then drops back to observe things from afar. No, our God is one who walks among us and knows our sorrow and our pain and celebrates our joy. Saint Augustine said that God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. Our God may indeed be mysterious and beyond us, but he is also the one we can reach out and touch. If that weren’t so, the Eucharist would be pretty meaningless.

    As you can see, Catholic theology is generally speaking not exclusive. We are not either already sharing in the promise or not yet sharing in it, but we are “already and not yet.” Our God is not either transcendent or immanent, but both transcendent and immanent. These two great theological themes come to a kind of crossroads here on this feast of the Ascension.

    Today, as Christ ascends into heaven, our share in the life of God and the promise of heaven is sealed. We have hope of eternal life because our Lord has gone before us to prepare a place for us. If he had not gone, we could never have shared in this life. So, although Jesus has left the apostles yet again, they can rejoice because they know that the promise is coming to fulfillment. We do not possess it yet, because we are not home yet, but we share in it already, because Christ is our promise.

    Today, as Christ ascends into heaven, he once again, with the Father, is transcendent, because we, along with the Apostles, can no longer see him. But he remains immanent by his promise to be with us always. Again, I will quote St. Augustine who said of Christ that “He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” St. Augustine teaches that the notion of time is that everything is present to God all at once. This explains how our celebration of the Eucharist in a few minutes brings us to Calvary at the moment when Jesus gave his life for us. And it explains how Jesus can ascend into heaven and yet remain among us. Time is a limitation for us humans, but not for God who created time in the first place.

    All of this theology can be heady stuff, but what it boils down to is this: because Jesus died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, we now have the hope of heaven and of sharing in the very life of God. Even though we do not possess heaven yet, we know that it belongs to all who have faith in Christ and live that faith every day. And even though we do not see Jesus walking among us, he is still absolutely present among us and promises to be with us forever. The preface to the Eucharistic prayer which I will sing in a few minutes makes this very clear; it says:

    Mediator between God and man,
    judge of the world and Lord of hosts,
    he ascended not to distance himself from our lowly state
    but that we, his members, might be confident of following
    where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.

    Jesus, having explained the Scriptures to his Apostles yet again, tells them “You are witnesses of these things.” And so they don’t have the luxury of just standing there, staring up into the sky for hours, dejected and crushed because the One who had been their hope had disappeared. No, as the Gospel tells us today, they “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.” They are witnesses, “clothed with power from on high,” and they must be filled with the hope and joy of the resurrection and ascension of the Lord.

    We disciples are witnesses of these things too. We must witness to a world filled with violence and oppression and sadness that our God promises life without end for all those who believe in him. And we have that hope already, even though not yet. We must witness to a world languishing in the vapidity of relativism and individualism and New Age Oprah and Dr. Phil philosophy that it is Jesus Christ, the Lord of All, who is one with us in heaven, and present among us on earth, who fulfills our hopes and longings and will never leave us. We must be witnesses to all these things, living with great joy, continually praising God because Christ’s ascension is our exaltation. We too might hear those men in dazzling white garments speak God’s words of hope to us: go forward, don’t worry, God is in control.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    This feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin shows us the great love, joy, and faith of our Blessed Mother. Having given her fiat – her “yes” – to God, she now shows concern for her elder relative who is also with child. She goes to visit her in a great act of hospitality, which is one of the virtues Paul admonished the Romans to follow in our first reading today. Perhaps because of her faith and her great concern for Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s own child begins to rejoice in the womb, recognizing his Lord and the great woman who would bring him to human life.

    While we don’t have an exact account of what happened at that visit, we do have the Church’s recollection of its spirit, as told through Luke the Evangelist. The whole feeling of this Gospel story is one of great joy. Both Elizabeth and Mary represent the Church in the telling of the story. Because just as Elizabeth was moved by the faith and generosity of Mary, so the Church continues to be edified by her example of faith and charity. And just as Mary rejoiced in what God was doing in her life, so the Church continues to rejoice at the mighty acts of God in every person, time and place.

    The Gospel reading ends with the great song called the Magnificat which is Mary’s song of praise to God for the wonders he has done throughout all time, but also in her own life. We too should make that our own song as we continue to be overjoyed by the great acts of God, shepherding us all through our own lives, and intervening in our world and society to bring grace to a world darkened by sin. We, too, can pray with Mary, “From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.”

    Because Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

  • Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter

    Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Petty jealousy is a pernicious thing. Paul experienced it, directed against him by those Jews who were jealous of Paul’s effective preaching and suspicious of the Christian Way. In their fear and jealousy, they appeal to Gallio, a Roman official, complaining that Paul stirred up the people to worship God contrary to the law. What they were trying to do was get Paul and the others arrested for worshiping God at all, in violation of Roman law, even though they do the same thing. But Gallio sees through their very thinly veiled patriotism and throws them all out, turning a blind eye as they beat a synagogue official who was a supporter of Paul.

    Neither those troublemakers nor Gallio were at all virtuous. The troublemakers weren’t so much concerned about the laws of the land as they were quibbling about following Jesus. And Gallio wasn’t so concerned about defending the Christians as much as he wanted them all to go away and leave him alone. Through it all, Paul was able to see the fulfillment of God’s promise in the vision he had: “Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack and harm you.” And that’s exactly what Paul did.

    It is up to us to witness to our faith courageously too. We might face opposition, and even petty jealousy. But the message is too important to bury for fear of what might happen. We must trust that the Lord will preserve us too, in the same way he guarded Paul in his efforts to proclaim the Gospel.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • School Graduation: Go!

    School Graduation: Go!

    Sometimes when we come to major moments in our lives, there is this crazy thought that comes to us – what do I do now? It’s kind of like, I’ve looked forward to this moment for so long, even though I know the next step, I don’t know how to be me in that next step.

    The good news is, right in the middle of tonight’s Gospel reading, there is one word that sums it up for Christian disciples. This is the word that marks what we’re supposed to do; it wraps up all the instructions Jesus gave to his Apostles, and to all of us who are his disciples. It tells us who we should be and what we should do. This one word is especially appropriate for you graduates today, as you get ready to begin the next phase of your life in a new school. That word is: GO!

    We hear that word a lot. Once we have learned the rules of a game or a race or some kind of contest, the person officiating the game will say something like, “Ready? Set? Go!” “Go” is a word we look forward to: we can’t wait to begin the game or start the project, or whatever it is we’re doing. There’s no time like the present, and we always want to keep going. But that same word can trigger a bit of sadness, or anxiety. We don’t always want to go; we like where we are, where we are has been home, and it’s comfortable. When we go, we’re often in unknown territory, and so going can be as much an occasion for stress as anything else.

    So going is part and parcel of life, both our life in this world, but also our life with Christ. In this life, we will, like it or not, experience a lot of coming and going. We are always on the move, until that great day that we get home to heaven, that place that is our true home, that place to which we journey all through our earthly lives. So I thought it might be well to take a quick look back and review some of the important things you’ve been taught during your time here at Saint Mary’s. The first thing I’d mention is what I have taught you is the most important thing that you can know about God in this life. And that is that God loves you – in fact God is love itself. God is a love so perfect that it surpasses anything we can know about love in this life. God is a love so pure that God cannot not love – that wouldn’t logically be possible. And so God, in love, made people – you and me and everyone else – so that he could have a way to show his love. And so God loves us, forgives us, guides us, challenges us, and loves us some more. And so I’ve told you that writing “God loves me” as the answer on a religion test would get you at least half a point. I’m not sure if that works in high school, but I obviously think it should!

    The second thing I’d want you to remember is that it’s not all about you. You, and your relationship with God, are certainly part of the equation, but we disciples aren’t just supposed to live for ourselves. We are a people who are to go out and preach and teach and share and witness what we’ve been taught. Sometimes, we will do this with words, but most often as Saint Francis once said, we will do this with actions. We will reach out and take care of people in our lives, and people God puts in our lives. We will make a decision to give of ourselves so that people in need can have a better life, or at least a better day. The gifts that we have are never given to us just for ourselves; they are meant to be shared, and when we share them, we find they don’t run out, we just keep getting more to share. It’s kind of like the feeding of the multitudes: when we share our little offering of five loaves and two fish, God makes it enough, and more than enough, to feed everyone. But only when we remember that it’s not just about ourselves.

    The final thing I’d like to remind you is that as a leader – and all of you will lead in some way at some time – you should never ask people to do something you’re not willing to do yourself. Jesus is the absolute best example of that. In teaching us to love each other and lay down our lives for each other, he literally laid down his life for us: dying on the cross to pay the price for our sins and to give us the possibility of eternal life, of going to that place prepared for us in his Father’s house, that home that is our true home – in heaven. And so just like Jesus, we too have to lead by being servants, and taking up the cross, and doing what we might not want to do but what needs to be done, so that others will see the way to live too. We have to witness by example and to lead the way we want others to live.

    These are among the things you have learned in our parish school, and I believe these lessons will serve you well. Know that you are loved just for who you are; that you are loved by a God who created you and sent his Son to redeem you and poured out his Spirit on you that you might live a holy life that leads you back to him one day. That will give you peace on your darkest days. Know that you are called to reach out to others so that they can find light in the darkness. And know that you are a leader when you witness by your life and example. When you do all that, you’ll be successful beyond your wildest dreams, and you’ll have a relationship with your God that no one can take away from you, and will bring you to that place of ultimate happiness.

    Having learned all this, I charge you all to GO. Go, make a difference. Go, live in God’s love. Go, be a witness to what you’ve been taught. Go, lead the world to a better place. Go, be a disciple and make disciples of everyone you meet. Go, knowing that our Lord is with you until the end of the age. Go, and glorify the Lord with your life.

    Because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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