Caritas Christi Urget Nos

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  • The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    There is a strong theme of welcoming, of hospitality, in today’s Liturgy of the Word. But it’s not just a matter of saying to someone who’s new, “Hey, how are you? Welcome here!” The hospitality that we’re being called to in the readings today is a welcome of the Word of God. And that sounds much easier than it actually is, so hang on to that, because we will come back to it.

    In our first reading from the second book of Kings, Elisha the prophet is extended hospitality by the Shunemite woman. Beginning by giving him food, eventually she builds a little room on the roof of her house so that Elisha could stay there whenever he was traveling through town. We don’t know if she was a believer or not, but she recognizes that Elisha is a holy man and uses her influence and means to see that his prophetic ministry could flourish.

    In the Gospel reading, Jesus speaks of those who would welcome the apostles as they went about their preaching mission. “Whoever receives you receives me,” he tells them. When someone accepts the messenger – and, importantly, the message that he or she brings – one receives the giver of the message. This is the basis of our Catholic teaching that Christ is present in the Word of God proclaimed in church.

    The true prophet, of which Elisha was one, always brings the Word of God. The Shunemite woman reacted to the Word of God by making it welcome, in the person of Elisha. She is a model for us of the hospitality and welcome of the Word that we are asked to consider this day. So we too have to feed the Word and make a home for the Word. We can feed the Word by exposing ourselves to the Scriptures in prayer and reflection. I had a professor in seminary who used to beg us to read the Bible every day – even just a few verses. He would say, “Then, brothers, when you close your eyes in death, you will open them in heaven and recognize where you are!” When we feed the Word, we are able to grow in our faith and the Word will bring life to our souls.

    From feeding the Word, we then have to build a little room for it, on the roof of our spiritual houses. It’s instructive that Elisha’s room was built on the roof, because then the Word of God was over everything in the Shunemite woman’s life. The Word of God was the head of her house and the guiding principle of her family life. When we build that room, figuratively in our own lives, it must take top precedence for us too. Jesus makes that a commandment in today’s Gospel.

    And so we feed the Word and give it a home in our lives, and then it becomes the guiding principle of our own lives, as it should be. But here’s the thing about that, and maybe this is why so many people don’t want to do this. Because there is a cost to welcoming the Word of God. Remember that the prophets were not always as welcome as Elisha was in the Shunemite woman’s house. The prophets were often berated, ridiculed, even imprisoned, beaten and murdered, because the Word of God isn’t always welcome. Jesus says in the Gospel reading today, “Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.” We have to be clear about the fact that we fully expect that reward to be in heaven, because it’s tough to be a prophet in the world, in any age or place.

    And that’s because the Word of God calls us to live a certain way. The Word of God wants us to be open to change, the Word of God actually demands that we change. The Word of God wants us to be Christ to others, because Christ is the Word of God. And so we must be forgiving of those who harm us, loving to those who test us, reaching out to those who need us (even when it’s inconvenient, or they’re not the people we want to be around), welcoming of those who are different than us. Welcoming the Word of God means that we have to take up our cross and follow our Lord, knowing that there will be death involved and we might have to give up a whole lot.

    In today’s world, the Word of God calls us to be Christ in a world that is increasingly intolerant of anyone who isn’t us. We all want what we want when we want it, and we don’t tolerate delay or inconvenience in any form. We hate the idea of compromise so much that political discussion isn’t discussion at all, and no one’s life is worth as much as our own, no matter the stage or circumstance of that life. Add to that the scourge of racism, war, and attacks on family life and other values, and we live in a very unwelcoming world indeed. But into that world, into that world, we are called to be Christ to others, to love without counting the cost, and to be a living witness to the Gospel.

    Doing that means we may have to die to what we think is important, die to our own self-interests and desires, die to what makes us feel comfortable. That’s what giving up one’s family meant in Jesus’ day: being cast out of the family was a form of death. So not loving mother and father and son or daughter more than Christ meant dying to life in this world. And dying to life in this world is exactly what welcoming the Word of God will cost us. That’s the message of the Gospel today.

    But giving up our lives will not be without its reward. The Shunemite woman was rewarded with a child, even though her husband was advanced in years. Jesus says the same. Giving the Word of God even just a cup of water to nourish it and let it grow will be rewarded in ways we cannot even imagine.

    So welcoming the Word of God will definitely cost us something, but it will also change everything. Are you willing to embrace the cost and build a home in your life for the Word of God?

  • Saturday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    This whole Gospel story such a beautiful profession of faith and outpouring of God’s mercy! After the centurion tells Jesus that his servant is at home sick, paralyzed and suffering, Jesus agrees to come and cure him. But the centurion, knowing his unworthiness, tells him “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed.” This statement of faith absolutely astounds Jesus and he says: “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.” And so the healing of the man’s slave takes place at once. It’s an interesting and inspiring exchange, to be sure.

    We have the privilege, every time we gather for the Eucharist, to echo the centurion’s faith. Just before we come to the Altar for Holy Communion, we say together: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof. But only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” And saying those words out loud is so important at that moment in the Mass. Unless we truly believe that Christ’s Body and Blood are sufficient for the healing of our souls, unless we truly know that we are completely unworthy of God’s mercy, then we don’t have the faith necessary to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord.

    But when we do enter into that moment of Communion with hearts open in faith, everything changes for us. True healing can come about, and we can return to our daily lives and find our souls healed with the grace that prepares them for whatever this world brings them. When we receive Holy Communion in this most worthy way, perhaps we can hear our Lord saying also to us: “You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.”

  • Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s readings represent some of the deepest longings of the human heart, and expose one of the deepest wounds of the human heart.  The deep wound is the feeling of abandonment that we experience in the midst of trial.  Just as the Jews must have felt abandoned by God when the walls of the city fell, the Temple was burnt down, and everyone was marched off to exile in Babylon, so we can sometimes feel abandoned from time to time when we struggle with the many trials that come to us.  Whether it’s illness, death, or even a wayward family member, whether it’s unemployment or underemployment, or whatever the trial may be, it can be so devastating, and gives us the feeling that we are all alone.

    It can be easy to forget God in those times when it seems like God has forgotten us.  And so the Psalmist expresses one of the deep longings of the human heart: “Let my tongue be silenced if ever I forget you!”  The Psalmist meant Jerusalem, but Jerusalem was really for them a symbol of God himself.  When people get to the place of forgetting God, all hope is really lost.  Remembering God in adversity at least gives us the light of faith, the glimmer of hope.  How people get through the hard times in life without faith, I’ll never know.  The Psalmist today desperately prays that no one would ever have to find out.

    The leper in the Gospel reading expresses the second of the deep longings: “Lord if you wish, you can make me clean.”  When we have sinned and fallen from God, we often don’t know whether God would want anything to do with us.  We can feel unworthy of salvation, which of course is what Satan really wants to have happen to us.  Because when we’ve turned away from God in shame, again we lose that light of faith and that glimmer of hope.  But the answer to the Leper’s question is what we sinners all have to hear today: “I do will it.  Be made clean.”

    God would rather die than live forever without us.  We have to remember that those deep longings of our heart were put there by our God who never wants us to forget him, and who desperately wills that we be made clean.  We may from time to time in our lives have to sit by the streams of Babylon and weep.  But we must never lose hope in the One who always wills our salvation.

  • Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior? I’m sure you’ve heard this question, perhaps someone even asked you that question. They teach that all you have to do is make that one-time decision and you’re saved. Well, not so fast.

    If salvation were something magical that came about as the result of just saying a simple prayer, once and for all and then living the rest of your life however you want, then why wouldn’t everyone do that? The fact is, salvation is hard work. It was purchased at an incredible price by Jesus on the cross. And for us to make it real in our lives, to live it in our lives, we have work to do too. Not the kind of work that earns salvation, because salvation can never be earned, but the kind of work that appropriates it into our lives and makes it meaningful and apparent to those who encounter us.

    Salvation looks like something. People who are saved behave in a specific way. They are people who take the Gospel seriously and live it every day. They are people of integrity that stand up for what’s right in every situation, no matter what it personally costs. They are people of justice who will not tolerate the sexist or racist joke, let alone tolerate a lack of concern for the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. They are people of deep prayer, whose lives are wrapped up in the Eucharist and the sacraments, people who confront their own sinfulness by examination of conscience and sacramental Penance. They are people who live lightly in this world, not getting caught up in its excess and distraction, knowing they are citizens of a heaven where such things have no permanence. Saved people live in a way that is often hard, but always joyful.

    Not everyone who claims Jesus as a personal Savior, not everyone who cries out “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s what Jesus tells us today. Salvation isn’t magic. We have to build our spiritual houses on the solid rock of Jesus Christ, living as he lived, following his commandments, and clinging to him in prayer and sacrament as if our very life depended on it. Because it does. It does.

  • The Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I have good news for you, and I want you to drill it into your very soul. I want you to take it with you all through the coming week and beyond. I want you to share it with every person who is important to you, or better, even to every person God puts in your path. That news is this: God is in charge.

    And thank God for that! Look at the mess our governments, Church, and communities are in. Scandals, mismanagement, injustice, greed, lack of concern for human life: all of those can cause us to lose confidence that anything is the way it’s supposed to be. But, thankfully, God is in charge, and nothing can go so wrong that God can’t fix it. We see that in the readings today. In our first reading, the prophet Jeremiah finds himself being vexed by those who would rather not hear his message. They seek to tempt and denounce him, hoping that will cause him to fall and do something they can use against him. But it doesn’t work. He turns to the Lord, and the Lord hears his cry and delivers him from their hands. This causes him to sing God’s praise:

    Sing to the LORD,
    praise the LORD,
    for he has rescued the life of the poor
    from the power of the wicked!

    In the second reading, Paul recounts the fall of humanity through the sin of Adam. Through that sin, death entered the world and sin and death reigned, until Jesus smashed their power through his own death and resurrection. Saint Paul emphasizes that the Paschal mystery has turned everything upside-down, in a good way:

    For if by the transgression of the one the many died,
    how much more did the grace of God
    and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ
    overflow for the many.

    Finally, in our Gospel reading, Jesus himself speaks directly to our hearts. Even though we may be going through hell, even when it seems like everyone is working against us, we are to “Fear no one.” Why? Because God knows us completely: he has gone so far as to number the hairs on our head, so nothing of value in us can ultimately be destroyed. And so we should not be afraid of “those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”

    So I want you to take three things with you into the week ahead. The first is do not be afraid. Jesus says this three times in the rather short Gospel reading we have today, so with that much repetition, we really ought to take notice. Sin and death are ultimately powerless over us, so we should not be afraid. Instead, we ought to go forth and follow our calling, live our vocation, and seek to maintain a holy way of life. That will ensure that we remain on the path to the reward in store for us.

    Second, remember that God is in charge. Not anyone else, not us, not our friends or enemies, not sin or death, not any passing thing or human entity. Ultimately, it is only God who is in charge, and because of that, we have to know that everything will eventually work for our good and the good of all. Evil can’t have the day because it’s already been defeated by the death and resurrection of Our Lord. God is always in charge.

    Finally, perhaps most importantly, remember that you are loved. I cannot stress this enough. God is love and because of that, God cannot not love. He loves you more than you can possibly imagine. He loves you despite your failings, calling you to a better life. He loves you even when everyone else seems to be turning away. He loves you on your good days and on your bad days. His love is the constant in all of our lives, and the one thing that, even if everything else fails, should get us out of bed in the morning. You are loved completely and absolutely, and as I tell our school students, that’s the most important thing we can know about God.

    So do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows. God loves you more than anything, and he is absolutely in charge of everything. Fear no one.

  • Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” What a beautiful – and challenging – word we have today from the Gospel. We could use this as an occasion to talk about stewardship, and that might be legitimate. But I think that Jesus is getting at something a bit different here. The clue to what he’s getting at, I think, is the little saying that comes right after this.

    “If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light;
    but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness.”

    My mother always used to say that “the eye is the window to the soul.” That’s kind of what this saying is about. What is it that we are letting into our souls through the windows of our eyes? There is an ancient church virtue of the “custody of the eye.” What we let ourselves see has a direct result on what happens in our spiritual life. If we find that our lives are off track, that we aren’t praying well, that our relationships are tense at best, well, maybe we’re seeing the wrong stuff. Television, movies, the internet – all of these provide occasions of sin for all of us.

    And Jesus is right, when we allow our eyes to be bad, our whole body – even our soul – can be in darkness. If we really treasure our spiritual lives, then our eyes and our hearts will find that they are on things that are worthy of being seen and experienced. So maybe this summer is an occasion for a little less TV, better chosen movies, and some serious time with a good book, or perhaps, the Good Book! For where your treasure is, there your heart, and your eye, and your mind, and your soul, will be also.

  • The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Think back. When you were growing up, in your faith formation, did you get the idea that somehow you had to behave yourself in order to win God’s love and grace? I think that’s a common thing that people come to after a life of somewhat inadequate faith formation. We got the idea that, if we wanted God to love us, then we had to behave in the right ways and follow all the rules. And some of that comes from our human experience. Many people often consume their lives with trying to win the approval of others, and so God is just an extension of that. But we have it all backwards: God is not like that, and that’s what today’s Liturgy of the Word is trying to tell us. The Scriptures show us a God who loves us first, and then calls on us to respond to God’s love by living the right way. Our entire lives should be all about responding in love to the love God has for all of us.

    The first reading today recalls how God led the people Israel through the desert for forty years, bringing them safely to the land he promised on oath to their ancestors. Many of the Church fathers see this rescue as our own rescue from the tyranny and slavery of sin, through the wilderness of the world, into the safe haven of God’s promise. So whether we want to read this first reading literally today, or whether we want to see it as our delivery from sin, in either case, we see the Lord’s providence and kindness poured out on his people, delivering them from danger and bringing them safely into a land that had always been promised to them.

    For our second reading these coming weeks, we will be reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans, arguably one of the masterpieces of his, or anyone else’s, theological writing. Today’s reading is somewhat the crux of his presentation in Romans: God in his mercy chose to save us even though we were not worthy of it—we were still sinners. We had been enemies of God through the power sin and death had over us, but God in his goodness chose to redeem us anyway. Having been reconciled, he now chooses in his kindness to save us from the power of death and bring us in to the grace and peace of his kingdom for all eternity. This is all done through the grace and kindness of our God, who chooses to save us even though we are not remotely worthy of it on our own.

    The Gospel reading, though, presents us with the greatest personification of God’s kindness. Throughout chapter nine of Matthew’s Gospel, we see the crowds hanging on Jesus’ words and deeds. In this chapter, Jesus heals a paralytic, he calls Matthew – a tax collector and a sinner – to follow him, he raises the daughter of a local government official from the dead, he heals two blind men, and expels a demon. The crowds were understandably entranced by his words and deeds, and Jesus can see that they are entranced because they had so long gone without any kind of adequate pastoral care. The religious officials who should have been bringing them the good news of God’s kindness had instead been about the business of attending to the minutiae of the Law and filling their own coffers. They had left the people abandoned of God, like sheep without a shepherd, and Jesus’ heart ached for them. So in his kindness, he sends out the Twelve to continue his work and to call more and more people to come to know that the kingdom was at hand, and repentance would give them a place in that kingdom.

    So these readings have been a great rehearsal of the kindness of God as the Scriptures present it. God created us in love, redeemed us from the grasp of sin and death, and gives us a place in his heavenly kingdom – all of this without our being worthy of any of it. And that’s nice, but the Scriptures would be remiss if they stopped there. Instead, they go on to prescribe the proper response to God’s love and kindness, and each of today’s readings give us a way to do that. These readings call us to keep the covenant, to boast of God, and to freely give.

    In the first reading, God makes the first move in favor of establishing a covenant. He didn’t have to – clearly. He had made us in love, but we had turned away from him, and not just once. Yet, he was the one who sent Moses to lead the people out of the slavery of Egypt so that they could inherit the land he promised on oath to their ancestors. If God has reached out that far to us, we can do no less than keep the covenant. We have to live the life of grace: keep the commandments, love God and neighbor, show God’s love in everything we do. We have to reach out to the marginalized and needy, just as God reached out to us in our own need. “If you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant,” God says to the Israelites and to us, “you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people.”

    But, in the course of time, we did not, in fact, hearken to his voice nor keep the covenant. In the second reading, Saint Paul echoes what the first reading says. God has made the first move. He reconciled with us while we were still sinners. He gave us the way to the kingdom. We didn’t deserve it, but our sinfulness is no match for God’s mercy. So if God has been so merciful, we need to boast about it. And we’re not to boast about it as if it was something we earned or accomplished on our own; we are to “boast of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

    And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus gives us the key to our response to God’s love, mercy and kindness: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” The gifts of grace are freely given to us, but they are never given to us just for ourselves. They are given to us to share. Now that we have been redeemed and blessed, we must turn and bless others, leading them to the redemption God longs to pour out on them. We are to freely give of the rich store of grace that has been freely given to us.

    Our God is not a God who manipulates us for his pleasure. He does not demand that we behave perfectly in order to receive his kindness, grace, and love. Instead, he is the one who washes our feet, heals our brokenness, forgives our sins, and stretches out his arms on the Cross. Our God sends his only Son to die, that we may live. In the face of such great and perfect love, we can do no less than love in return.

    So that’s the examination of conscience today. First: are we aware of how much God loves us? Because I think we are still caught up in thinking we are unlovable because we have sinned. But that, friends, is a lie that the devil tells us so that we might despair of God’s mercy. God loves us first, best, and always, and we have to get that into our heads and hearts. Second: are we living as men and women who are loved passionately by our God who would rather die than live without us? If not, we have some praying and reflection to do today. Because we cannot, dare not, turn our backs on a love so freely given at such a great cost.

  • The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    As we come up to the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation, the bishops of our nation yesterday, on the Eve of this Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, consecrated our nation to that Most Sacred Heart. They were going to do it today, but yesterday they were meeting in Florida for their spring convocation and wanted to do that consecration together. Today, we will join in that consecration after the Universal Prayers.

    We’ve all heard the teaching that God is love.  And that’s a good thing to remember: I tell school students they should always remember that, and if they do, they’ll know quite a bit about our God.  God is love in its purest form, so pure in fact that it burns away all our imperfections and makes us new people, washed clean in the Blood of Christ.  True love wills the good of the other for the sake of the other, and God models that best by having sent His only Son to live our life and die our death and raise us to new life with him forever.

    Today, the word “love” is tossed about in all sorts of ways.  Love can be construed as lust, or even affection, and real love isn’t any of that.  Real love isn’t bound by agendas, selfishness, or pride, and it is hard, no impossible, for us to avoid those things given our fallen human nature.  But, if we let Him, if we get out of his way, God will fill us with his grace, and give us love emanating from the Sacred Heart of Jesus that will fill our lives with love beyond measure.

    And let’s be clear: God loved us first and loves us best.  He loved us into existence and sustains us in his love.  Because God is love, he cannot not love.  But our agendas, selfishness, and pride can certainly get in the way, and now is the time to root all of that out because our world, our communities, our families, our churches, and certainly our nation need our love.  Everyone needs to see the Sacred Heart burning in us, because this world, left to its own crime, sin, death, and blasphemy, is way too sad without it.

    We are all broken and hurting and in pain, spiritually. We might ignore it, or offer it up, or worst of all, might try to mask it with alcohol or other addictions. But none of that really heals us. The only thing that really heals is the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  The same is true for our broken world.

    We don’t trust God as much as we should; we don’t let God love us as much as we should. We want to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, that’s such an American attitude: we want to take care of ourselves all by ourselves. Pope Francis said that God never gets tired of showing us mercy, it’s we who get tired of asking. And that’s so sad. We weren’t made for that. We were made to be cared for and to be loved so that we can take care of others and love them in the name of Christ.

    God’s love is awesome. It doesn’t just cover our sins, it wipes them out, obliterates them so that they aren’t who we are any more. In the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, we find a love that is so pure and so powerful that it cannot be overshadowed by any kind of darkness, nor be snuffed out even by the grave.

    But we absolutely have to let him love us, or we will miss it every time.

    Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

  • Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I think we have to admit that the Old Testament, at times, can be pretty brutal. And today’s first reading is an example of that. Mind you, I love this story because it contains touches of humor and has a wonderful message about our faith, but it’s still brutal.

    The humor comes from Elijah’s cajoling of the prophets of Baal. Obviously, we know they weren’t getting an answer from Baal because there is no Baal. Elijah says to them:

    “Call louder, for he is a god and may be meditating,
    or may have retired, or may be on a journey.
    Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”

    Some scholars claim that “meditating” should really be translated “using the bathroom,” so it shows you just how much Elijah thinks of these so-called prophets and their so-called god.

    But, brutality and humor aside, the spiritual meaning of the reading is important. God had told the Israelites that, when they came into the land he was giving them, they were to slaughter everyone in the land: men, women, children, livestock—all of it. The idea is that anyone or anything left alive would ultimately tempt them to false worship of the Baals, which is exactly what happened.

    But God isn’t really about a blood bath—that wouldn’t be a God we would care to worship, I would guess. What he is telling them, and us, here is that everything that stands in the way of true worship and real relationship with the only God who longs to save our souls has to be blotted out and not left standing.

    So the reflection today is this: what is it that we have allowed to stay alive when we really ought to put it to death? What habits, or desires, or relationships, or whatever—what is in the way of a deeper relationship with the God who loves us more than anything. We need to identify those obstacles and obliterate them from the face of the earth. Anything else is unworthy of our relationship with God.

  • The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    Today’s readings

    If you’ve ever traveled abroad, to a country where English is not the spoken language, maybe you’ve had this experience. I traveled to Mexico when I was in seminary to learn Spanish. The first day I was there, we went to Mass at the local Cathedral. Even though at that point my Spanish was rather rudimentary, especially on that first day, still I recognized the Mass. That’s because we celebrate it in the same way, with the same words – albeit in a different language – everywhere on earth. In the Eucharist, we are one. “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” That’s what St. Paul tells the Corinthians today, and we are meant to hear it as well. We are called to unity with one another as we gather around the Altar to partake of the one Body of Christ.

    We flounder, sometimes, in showing our unity. We want so much to say that we are one that we think we have to invent ways to do it. And sure, we do some things together. We all sing the same songs. We all stand or sit together. We might join hands at the Lord’s Prayer. And those are all okay things, but they are not what unites us. They put us on a somewhat equal footing, but that can happen in all kinds of gatherings. The one thing that unites us at this gathering, the experience we have here that we don’t have in any other situation, is the Eucharist. The Eucharist unites us in the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, where all division must necessarily cease.

    Having said that, there are obvious ways in which we can notice that we are not, in fact, one. The Eucharist, which is the celebration of our unity, can often remind us in a very stark and disheartening way, of the ways that we remain divided with our brothers and sisters in Christ. The most obvious of these ways is the way that we Catholics remain divided with our Protestant brothers and sisters, and in fact, they with each other as well. The proliferation of Christian denominations is something we can soft-pedal as “different strokes for different folks,” but is in fact a rather sad reminder that the Church that Jesus founded and intended to be one is in fact fragmented in ways that it seems can only be overcome by a miracle. In our Creed we profess a Church that is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” By “catholic” here, we may indeed mean “universal” but that does not, of course, mean that we are in fact one.

    Another thing that divides all of us from one another is sin. Mortal sin separates us not only from God, not only from those we have wronged, but also from the Church and all of our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we have sinned greatly, we are not permitted in good conscience to receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, because we cannot dare to pretend to be one with those from whom we have separated ourselves, through mortal sin.

    I think this point is very notable at this point in our human history. There is so much going on that is caused by personal and societal sin, and that sin does indeed separate us. There is the sin of racism. There is the sin of disrespect for human life, including abortion, violence in our cities, disrespect for religion, properly formed conscience, and family. There is the sin of fomenting and thriving on disagreement, especially in politics. Jesus prayed on the last day of his life on earth that we would all be one, and yet, throughout history, and even to this very day, we continue to find occasions to separate ourselves from one another, to proliferate division in thought, word and deed. We who receive the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity, need to be the catalysts for that very unity, to root out every vestige of racism in our own hearts, and stand with our brothers and sisters. We can’t just stand by and say, well, I’ve never said anything racist or I never had an abortion, so I’m just fine. That’s not how sin works. We have to be the ones who say it’s not okay, and seek reconciliation with every single person. If we don’t, we’re mocking the Eucharist, and I think we all know that’s not okay.

    “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him,” Jesus says to us today. When we remain in him, we also remain united to one another through Christ. This is what God wants for his Church, so today we must recommit ourselves to unity, real unity. So if you have not been to Confession in a while, make it a priority to do that in the next week or so that you can be one with us at the Table of the Lord. And at Communion today, we must all make it our prayer that the many things that divide us might soon melt away so that we can all become one in the real way the Jesus meant for us.

    We must make it our priority to recommit ourselves to the unity that is brought about by the Holy Eucharist, and live that unity so that all will come to know the source of our oneness, in Jesus Christ. On this feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we pray that every person may one day come to share in the flesh of our Savior, given for the life of the world, and we pray that his great desire might come to pass: that we may be one.

    Because the loaf of bread is one,
    we, though many, are one body,
    for we all partake of the one loaf.

    May the Body and Blood of Christ keep us all safe for eternal life. Amen.