Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Author: Father Pat Mulcahy

  • Saint Francis Xavier, Priest, Patron of the Diocese of Joliet

    Saint Francis Xavier, Priest, Patron of the Diocese of Joliet

    We celebrate the memorial of Saint Francis Xavier as a feast today, because he is the patron saint of the Diocese of Joliet.  Francis Xavier was a sixteenth century man who had a promising career in academics.  He was encouraged in the faith by his good friend, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and went to join the new community founded by Ignatius, the Society of Jesus, better known today as the Jesuits.

    Francis had a passion for preaching the Gospel and living a life of Gospel simplicity.  He would live with and among the poorest of the poor, sharing their living conditions, ministering to the sick, and preaching and teaching the faith.  Saint Francis Xavier lived in the East Indies for a time, before going on to minister to the Hindus, Malaysians, and Japanese.  He even learned a bit of Japanese in order to communicate well with his people and to preach to them.  He dreamed of going on to minister in China, but he died before he could get there.  Even so, he was the model and patron for all of us, called to be missionary disciples.

    We might not have the opportunity to live as Francis Xavier did and to actually go out to distant shores to preach the Gospel. But we certainly are still called to preach it with our lives. We are called to witness to Christ to everyone we meet: family, friends, coworkers, neighbors: anyone the Lord puts in our path. Our diocese chose Saint Francis Xavier for our patron because our founders took seriously the call to proclaim the Gospel to every person in this diocese. We are called upon to do the same, according to our own life’s vocation and state of life. May all who hear our words and see our actions come to believe and be saved.

  • The First Sunday of Advent

    The First Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    I don’t know about you, but I always find this weekend after Thanksgiving to be a little strange.  Here is a weekend when we can barely clear the plates at the Thanksgiving dinner table before we have to make room for Christmas.  And I’m not talking about the religious observance of the Incarnation of our Lord, but rather all the secular trappings of that holy day.  It begins about Halloween, or maybe a little earlier, when you start to see the stores slowly make room for the Christmas stuff.  They sneak in some “holiday” signs here and there, and start to weave the garland into the end of the aisles, just past the Halloween costumes.  On Thanksgiving day, you get about a thousand emails from every store or business from whom you’ve ever purchased anything.

    And then there’s Black Friday itself, which now starts bright and early on Thursday morning – Thursday, you know, Thanksgiving Day.  We then get to be treated to Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.  What a commercial mess this has all become, what a sad commentary on what makes our society tick.  We barely have time to gather up the pumpkins and corn stalks and autumn leaves before we have to set out the Christmas stockings and brightly-lit trees and candy canes.

    Now, I will say this.  There are times in my life, this year included, when the joy of Christmas is definitely welcome, and I’ll celebrate it as long as I possibly can.  So I’ve been listening to Christmas music, and have watched more than my share of Hallmark Christmas movies with Mom over the past several weeks.  I like to celebrate Christmas all the way until February 2nd, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So I’m in it too.

    But I find that this rampant consumerism is really just part of the ambient noise of our society.  From television to social media to email spam to Christmas jingles on the store loud-speakers, the noise never seems to stop.  Whether it’s political bantering and bureaucratic infighting, or the latest pop culture scandal, it seems like there’s always a lot of noise going on.  And we could add to that our own noise: sin in our lives, unaddressed family strife, and so much more.  It’s no wonder we often have the television on as background noise, we seem to clamor for it.

    But all that noise comes at the peril of our spiritual lives.  The noise fills up the space that God wants to use to speak words of encouragement, solace, or challenge.  When we are constantly listening to other things, we can’t hear the voice of God who wants to be part of our lives, who wants to give us himself.

    The emotions we feel at this time of year are palpable and often conflicted.  The Church knows this, and in Her great wisdom, gives us the season of Advent every year.  It’s a season that recognizes that there is this hole in our hearts that needs to be filled up with something, and can be filled up if we will just be quiet and make space.  That something isn’t going to be an item you can pick up on Black Friday, or a trite holiday jingle, or even a peppermint mocha latte.  Those things can’t possibly fill up our personal sadness, or the lack of peace in the world, or the cynicism and apathy that plague our world and confront us day after day.

    And so in our readings today, rather boldly, the Church is telling us to cut out all of this nonsense and get serious about our eternity.  Because if we’re only living from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, we are going to be left behind with our cheap electronics and gaudy trinkets, and have none of the real riches of the Kingdom of God.

    And so our first reading, from the second chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, has us taking a step back to look at our lives: “Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.”  We need to go a little higher and look down on what we’ve become in order to see how we fit into the bigger picture.  Do we see ourselves as concerned about peace and justice in the world, looking out for the needs of the needy and the marginalized, blanketing our world in holiness and calling it to become bright and beautiful as it walks in the light of the Lord?

    Or do we take part in those deeds of darkness that Saint Paul writes about in his letter to the Romans today?  Do we participate in these dark deeds to the point of giving scandal to those who carefully watch the activities of people of faith?  If we do, then Saint Paul clearly commands us to get our act together: “Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.  Let us conduct ourselves properly…”

    So this Advent season is clearly about something more than hanging up pretty decorations for a birthday party.  It’s about something more than perpetuating rampant consumerism and secularism.  And it’s definitely about more than participating in the same old noise we encounter all the time.  The stakes are too high for that.  Because while we are distracted by all of that ambient noise, we are in danger of missing the joy for which we were created.  Just as in the days of Noah, as Jesus points out in our Gospel today, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, so it will be in the coming Day of the Lord.  Just as those oblivious ones were surprised by the flood, we too are in danger of being surprised by the second coming.  God forbid that two men are hanging lights on the house when one is taken and the other is left.  Or that two women are getting some crazy deals at Kohls and one is taken and the other is left.  Or that two people are having a Twitter feud and one is taken and another is left.  We have to be prepared, because at an hour we do not expect, our Lord will certainly return.

    Don’t get me wrong: the return of our Lord is not something to be feared.  Indeed, we eagerly await that coming in these Advent days.  I’m just saying that if we aren’t attentive to our spiritual lives, if we don’t create a space for silence and reflection, if we aren’t zealous about living the Gospel, if we aren’t intentional about making time for worship and deepening our relationship with the Lord, then we are going to miss out on something pretty wonderful.  And that pretty wonderful thing isn’t in the far-off, distant future.  If we quiet ourselves and open our eyes, He’s right in front of us, walking with us, calling us to become more than we are, to become the glory for which we were created.  We have to stay awake, we have to turn off the noise, we have to live in the Lord’s daylight and not prefer the world’s darkness.  We have to eagerly expect our Lord’s birth into our hearts and souls, right here and now, and not in some distant day.

    Or we’ll miss it.  God forbid, we’ll miss it.

    So I am going to give you some quiet time right now, and also after Communion.  I want to give you an opportunity to pray in that silence. 

    So, in these moments of silence, I invite you to take a moment to call to mind something positive you’ve been meaning to do.  Maybe it’s a practice of prayer, or getting up on time, or exercising regularly, or reaching out to a friend or family member you haven’t talked to in a while.  If you’re like me, you could come up with a whole list of those things, but I want you to call to mind the one that is most tugging on your heart right now.  In these moments of silence, I invite you to talk to Jesus about that thing.  Offer it to him, and ask him for the grace to accomplish it, or at least begin it, in these Advent days.  And then listen for his support of you in that endeavor.

  • Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    You know I’m going to be all corny and wish you a happy new year’s eve, right?  But that’s indeed where we are.

    Our readings have been reminding us that the night is far spent and the day is drawing near.  We are called upon today to remain vigilant so that we do not miss the second coming of the Lord.  And it is well that we receive that warning today, on the cusp as we are of the new Church year.  This is the last day of the Church year and tomorrow, well even tonight, we will begin the year of grace 2019 with the season of Advent.  The day draws ever nearer for us.

    As the day draws nearer, we will need less and less of the light that has been given to us in this world.  The first reading says, “Night will be no more, nor will they need light from lamp or sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever.”  St. Augustine says of that great day: “When, therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ comes and, as the apostle Paul says, brings to light things hidden in darkness and makes plain the secrets of the heart, so that everyone may receive his commendation from God, then lamps will no longer be needed. When that day is at hand, the prophet will not be read to us, the book of the Apostle will not be opened, we shall not require the testimony of John, we shall have no need of the Gospel itself. Therefore all Scriptures will be taken away from us, those Scriptures which in the night of this world burned like lamps so that we might not remain in darkness.

    “When all these things are removed as no longer necessary for our illumination, and when the men of God by whom they were ministered to us shall themselves together with us behold the true and dear light without such aids, what shall we see? With what shall our minds be nourished? What will give joy to our gaze? Where will that gladness come from, which eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, which has not even been conceived by the heart of man?” (Tract. 35, 8-9) And of course, the answer to that, is we shall get our light looking on the face of Christ himself.  As Advent approaches, we pray earnestly for that day: Come quickly Lord, and do not delay!

  • Thanksgiving Day

    Thanksgiving Day

    Back in seminary, during the last summer before I was ordained a priest, I did my Clinical Pastoral Education at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove.  It’s a level one trauma center, so it’s a busy place with a lot of, well, trauma.  In C.P.E., we were placed in a group with other students, so we are all learning pastoral skills and processing pastoral experiences together.  I had a very good, but challenging time in that program.  I was assigned to the emergency room, along with a cardiac floor, so let’s just say it was never boring!  But it wasn’t boring for any of my peers either; that summer there were an unusually large number of traumatic deaths that we each had to deal with.

    During one of our prayer and reflection times, we read the last two lines of the Gospel we just heard: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.  For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”  Our reflection was that, in the midst of all the chaos and trauma, we had indeed seen some incredible moments of grace: family reconciliations, selfless service to others in need, families coming together to support each other.  Those moments were really holy ones, and blessed were our eyes indeed for having the privilege to see them.

    These days, as a pastor of this little country parish, as Bishop Conlon used to like to joke with me about, there’s always something going on.  What’s broken today?  What’s going on in the school that needs love and attention?  Which staff member is going through difficult life stuff that needs me to support them?  What meeting do I have to go to or even run?  What conflict needs resolving?  I’m almost never bored, as I’m sure you can imagine!

    I remember an evening a few years ago, after a long day of meetings that culminated with a wonderful Parish Pastoral Council meeting, I went back to the rectory and finished folding my laundry.  I picked up some bed clothes, looking forward to relaxing a few minutes, finishing my prayers for the day, and going to bed.  At that very moment, I got a call for an anointing.  So I got in the car, and headed out, and anointed the loved one of one of our parishioners.  As I was praying with them, I reflected how very grateful I was, even though exhausted, to be there.  That they trusted me enough to reach out in their need was a privilege, and the opportunity to support them one of the worst days of their lives was a great grace to me.  I could have been bitter that I didn’t get my moments of relaxation, but instead I was overwhelmed by the grace of the moment.  I was thankful, as I always am, for being a pastor of this little country parish!

    Many of you know that in the over the last few years, my mother has been ill, and sometimes declining.  This year we have been having to give her 24/7 care, which was no doubt hard for her to accept, except that it was done by her loving children.  She is certainly grateful that she has us to take care of her, but she felt, and to some extent probably still feels, that she is a burden.  She expressed that one Sunday afternoon when we all got together to talk and lay out a plan of care.  She began by saying, “I know I am a problem for you guys.”  With tears in my eyes, I said, “I think I can speak for Sharon and Peggy and myself when I say that we feel so privileged to be able to walk through this time with you.  Yes, it’s hard, but sometimes the hard stuff is worth it.”  One day Peggy texted us in our group text, “I helped Mom take a shower today and I washed her hair.  I’m so thankful I can spend this time with her.”  You see, blessed are our eyes to be able to look on our mother and care for her, just as she has so often cared for us.

    We could all tell similar stories.  The grace is there, sometimes hidden in the craziness of life, but for eyes blessed to see it, there are moments for which to be thankful.  Many of them.  Every day.  Because gratitude is a decision, not a feeling.  We can decide to be bitter and resentful for all that life throws at us.  Or we can be Eucharistic people – people of gratitude – grateful for the grace that sustains us when everything is falling apart.  Grateful for the moments of blessing that are happening even in the hardest situations.  Grateful for the people and the community that we get to walk with through this crazy life.  Grateful for the relationship with God who gives us, always, way more than we give him, freely, unconditionally, abundantly, undeservedly.

    I think we all know a little about how Thanksgiving started.  We learned in school that the pilgrims gathered in the autumn of 1621 after a year in the New World.  It was a year of rich harvests, and their gathering was a feast of giving thanks to God for what he had done for them.  They were thankful because they had survived.

    But Peter Fleck, a Unitarian minister, suggested some years ago that maybe that wasn’t it at all.  Maybe what was really true was that they survived because they were thankful.  Think about it, that year could not have been an easy one for them.  They were in a new land, vastly different from what they had been used to.  They had grown crops they weren’t used to and survived disease.  After all of that harrowing experience, they were still grateful.  Maybe that “attitude of gratitude” was why they survived.

    As Catholics, we are a people who constantly choose to be grateful.  Our Eucharist is the Thanksgiving feast par excellence.  Every time we gather to celebrate Mass, we remember that God in his infinite mercy sent his only Son to be our Savior.  He came into our world and walked among us, filling the earth with his most merciful presence.  He journeyed among us, a man like us in all things but sin.  His great love led him to bear the cross for our sake, dying the death we so richly deserved for our many sins.  And then he did the greatest thing possible: he burst out of the grave, breaking the chains of death, and rose to new life.  Because of this grace, we have the possibility of everlasting life with God, the life we were created for in the first place.

    Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember this awesome mystery.  Not only that, our Eucharist brings us to the hour of that grace, giving us once again a share in its blessing.  As a Eucharistic people, we Catholics are a people of gratitude.  That’s what defines us.

    So how would a people defined by gratitude celebrate this Thanksgiving day?  Certainly we have made the best possible start: gathering for the Eucharist to give thanks for the presence of God and the grace he pours out on us.  Then we take that grace to our families’ own Thanksgiving feasts and beyond.  As we gather around the table today, maybe we can stop to reflect on God’s magnificent presence in our lives – in good times and in bad.  And then use that gratitude to make the world an awesome place – or at least your corner of it!

    Gratitude is contagious – in a good way!  When we make it a constant spiritual practice to reflect on how God has blessed us, when we take the time to thank someone for something little they did that made us smile, when we show our gratitude by reaching out in service to others, others can become grateful people too.  A watching world looks at us Catholics to see if we really are who we say we are.  When we live as grateful people, our Eucharist is authentic and our witness is exhilarating.

    Like those pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving, maybe our gratitude can become the source of our survival through the hard times and the source of our joy in the good times.  Maybe we can not just survive, but actually thrive, because we are grateful people.  May we never cease to sing the praise of God and to cry out in songs of thanks and praise!

  • Wednesday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Engage in trade with these until I return.”

    Today’s Gospel reading presents us with Luke’s version of the Parable of the Talents from Matthew’s Gospel.  Luke’s version seems a little confusing to our ears, perhaps.  There is evidence that the nobleman seeking the kingship was actually a contemporary nobleman trying to do just that.  Whatever the case, we have a jumble.  Ten men get coins, but only three get questioned at the end, there’s the whole story about the nobleman and the delegation that didn’t want him to be king, and then the slaying of those delegates at the end.  If you’re scratching your head about all that, I think that’s most understandable!

    I think the pivotal command is what I just quoted: “Engage in trade with these until I return.”  That’s what the nobleman says to the ten servants who received the ten gold coins.  The ten gold coins are extremely valuable.  Their value is more or less what a poor servant might make in his entire lifetime.  So the real question today is, what is it that is really worth that much?  With what have we been entrusted that could possibly be so valuable?

    Obviously those ten coins represent the Gospel to us, the command to engage in trade with them is our witness.  And as we approach the end of the Church year, it would be a very good idea to see which of the servants we have been.  Have we been hard at it, giving witness by the way we live our lives, the service we give without anyone knowing about it, the integrity with which we conduct our business, which has caused people to admire our way of life, to seek to find what we have?  Or have we wrapped it all in a handkerchief and stored it away so that we won’t lose it and can find it when we need it, making it all about us, caving in to our fear, and never giving anyone a reason to suspect we are Christians? The Church year is ending, our Master will soon return.  What return will we give him on his investment in our eternity?

  • The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    “My whole world is falling apart.” We’ve all heard someone say that, or maybe we’ve even said it ourselves, at some point in our lives. I think today’s Gospel points to that kind of experience.

    But to really get at the experience Luke’s Gospel was getting at, you have to imagine how we would feel if we came to Mass one day and found this beautiful Church demolished and in ruins. I think we’d all be devastated and feel hurt, abandoned, and lost in some ways. And that’s just exactly how the original readers of Luke’s Gospel felt. Luke’s Gospel was written somewhere between 80 and 100 AD, so 50 or more years after Jesus died. And at this point, the glorious Temple of Jerusalem, once stately and glimmering white and gold in the sunlight, now lay in ruins, having been destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. For the Jews at that time, the Temple meant everything: it the center of their worship, which was crucial. But in the Temple they also found the symbol of their identity as a nation. It was a sign that God favored them among all the nations on earth and had chosen them to be his own. Jerusalem was no more, and a world ended with it.

    But as I mentioned at the start of this homily, we all go through something that makes it seem like the end of the world at some point in our lives. Family, friends and our communities experience various forms of dying and they are never easy. Cancer debilitates a formerly-vigorous and full-of-life friend or relative; a marriage breaks up; an injury makes it impossible to keep a job; aging diminishes a once-vibrant person. And more. Our churches offer more and more empty seats, our nation moves from one crisis to the next, we scratch our heads as legislatures seem incompetent or cantankerous or ineffective, perhaps we are dismayed by the recent election season, or are fearful at the growing violence in our major cities. We might even think of devastating natural disasters like the hurricanes and earthquakes that happen around the world. When we experience any of that, it can seem like the world is ending.

    And when things like that happen, it’s hard to find words to express our sadness, fear, pain, and desertedness. It can even be hard to find words to speak in prayer. But Jesus knows this will happen to us and promises that if we persevere, we will gain our lives and that God himself will give us a wisdom in speaking that cannot be refuted. In Christ, we can find wisdom to make painful circumstances occasions for God’s grace. What we experience as difficulties and painful endings, he sees as opportunities to witness to our faith in him.

    Very often when catastrophic things happen, people read it as the coming end of the world. Sometimes people even see these things as signs of God’s displeasure at the way humanity has been behaving. But today’s Gospel doesn’t support those kinds of ideas. God alone knows the time for the world’s ending, and he’s not going to provide definite signs. Not only that, but catastrophe is the symptom of evil in the world, and not a sign of God’s feelings about the state of the world, or the depravity of the human condition, or even about our own personal sinfulness.

    As the Church year comes to a close, it may be well for us to look back at our lives over the past year and take stock of our growth in faith. Has our relationship with Christ led us to a place where we can weather the storms of life, and hear his voice even when the world is falling down around us? Have we grown in our ability to make God’s presence in our world known when the world around us seems rudderless and adrift? Have we been open to God giving us words to speak in witness to the faith, so that we stand up with integrity for what we believe? If this year has not been a solid experience of growth for us, that needs to be our prayer for the year to come.

    I feel the need to comment on the past election season here, because it really calls for us to give the kind of witness that our Gospel reading calls for today.  We definitely need to find candidates on both sides of the aisle who respect life and are people of integrity.  The vacuum of that causes election seasons like we just experienced.  Pro-life people are not extremists, abortion is not healthcare but instead the murder of an unborn person, and it’s never a morally acceptable choice for anyone.  The fact that Catholic candidates have caved to outside pressure and ignore that teaching doesn’t make it right for Catholics or anyone.  On the other hand we can’t allow pro-life people to behave badly, or their lack of integrity ruins their witness and gives the other side the opportunity to label us as extremists.  Somehow, our witness has to get this right; that’s our call in the world.

    But remember what Jesus says at the end of the Gospel reading today:

    “You will be hated by all because of my name,
    but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
    By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

    On the second-to-last Sunday of the Church year, it would have been wonderful for the Liturgy to tie up all the loose ends and give us a happy ending. But that’s not what we have here is it? Why? Because life isn’t that way. Jesus tells us as much today. The message that we have is that, no matter how messy things may be, we can praise our God who is with us in good times and in bad, and promises to lift us up even when the world seems like it is coming to an end.

  • Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr

    Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr

    Today we celebrate the memorial of Saint Josaphat, who was born in what is now Poland to Orthodox parents. He later became a Basilian monk, and was chosen bishop of Vitebsk, in what is now Russia. His task was to bridge the divide between the Roman and Orthodox Church, but this was not easy, because the Orthodox monks did not want union with Rome; they feared interference in liturgy and customs. But over time, using synods and other instruction, he was able to win many of the Orthodox in that area to the union.

    But the fight was far from over. A dissident faction of the church was formed, and they fomented opposition to Josaphat. Eventually the mob murdered him and threw his body into a river. The body was recovered and is now buried in St. Peter’s basilica. Josaphat is the first saint of the Eastern Church to be canonized by Rome.

    Josaphat had an insurmountable task to accomplish. But he had faith that God would give him what he needed to accomplish the mission. He knew well Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel: that we must persistently pray for what is right.  There is still a great divide today between the Latin and Orthodox churches.  We must never stop praying that Saint Josaphat’s vision would be fulfilled.

  • Tuesday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time (Election Day)

    Tuesday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time (Election Day)

    Today’s readings

    Turn from evil and do good,
    that you may abide forever;
    The just shall possess the land
    and dwell in it forever.

    So says the Psalmist today, and I think these words are encouraging ones. Here we stand, finally, on election day, in the midst of another rancorous and in many ways, disheartening, campaign season. Now all the sound bytes and debates and campaign ads and news stories coalesce into the cornerstone of our democracy: your vote and mine.

    We Catholics are required by our faith to participate in this democratic process. The Catechism tells us: It is the duty of citizens to contribute along with the civil authorities to the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom. The love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity. Submission to legitimate authorities and service of the common good require citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community. 

    Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one’s country. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2239-2240)

    Every one of our voices matter, and so we are required to vote even when we think we’re just one person. It is up to us to stand up for what’s right: to defend the sanctity of life, to advocate for the poor, and generally to build up a society in which all people of good will can grow in their faith while they await their turn to move to that place in heaven that God has prepared for us.

    I understand when people say, this year, it’s all too depressing. But the Psalmist’s reminder is a good one: The just shall possess the land / and dwell in it forever. God is in control, and he’s using you and me to make his message known.

    Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Mother Mary, patroness of the United States of America, pray for us.

  • Mass of Remembrance for All Souls

    Mass of Remembrance for All Souls

    The souls of the just are in the hands of God.  His care is with his elect.  We shall also be united with him in the resurrection.  Death no longer has power over him.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  Today’s Liturgy of the Word has good news for those of us who have lost loved ones, whether it be in the past year, or even the more distant past.  The passing of time doesn’t take all the sorrow away, we know that, but it does give God a chance to bring us healing and grace and fond memories.

    We have come here today to do just that: to remember our loved ones who have passed away and now have hope of immortality.  We pray for their souls and commend them to our loving God that he might, in his great mercy, open the gates of the heavenly kingdom for them and give them the eternal reward for which they have long hoped.

    This morning’s Gospel reading presents us with perhaps the foundational principal of living the Christian life: love of God and love of neighbor.  We love God with great fervor because he loved us into existence.  And God teaches us how to love: to love him and to love others; in fact we manifest our love of God in very real ways by loving others.  Loving others is what brings us here together this morning as we celebrate our annual Mass of Remembrance for those who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith.  Our love of them doesn’t end when they leave us; and it is that love that intensifies our grief.  And so we gather this morning to remember and to take solace in God’s love for us, knowing that the grave is no obstacle to love, and that death has been defeated by our Savior who loves us more than anything.

    Over the last year, here at Saint Mary’s, we have celebrated over 100 funerals, which is a lot for us.  So, as your pastor, I’m acutely aware of the grieving of our community.  And I can relate to it: over the past year, I celebrated the funerals of two of my uncles on my Dad’s side of the family, a stark reminder that as I get older, we are losing that previous generation, and I am missing their presence in our lives.  Two uncles, two very different funerals.  One was a large funeral because Uncle Mike never knew a stranger.  He was a vice president of the company I worked for before seminary, and he was very involved in his parish.  Uncle Jim’s funeral was more of a private, small remembrance.  Both of them different, but both of them beautiful, hopeful times of prayer.

    I want to pause here and speak a little about the reality of grief.  Because, if there is one thing that we as a society do extremely poorly these days, it’s grieving.  We rush through it and hope it’s all done before we have a chance to feel any kind of pain.  That’s part and parcel of how things work in our world; we have a pill for every malady and a quick remedy for every pain, plagued with a whole host of horrifying side effects.  And what’s important to know is that this is not how the Church teaches us to grieve.  One of the most important reasons that we have All Souls Day each year is to give us the experience of remembering and grieving and healing.  If you truly love, you will truly grieve, and not turn away from it.

    The Church’s Catechism (989) teaches us: “We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day.”  And so we Christians never grieve as if we have no hope.  The Church’s Liturgy echoes this hope in the third Eucharistic Prayer: “There we hope to enjoy for ever the fullness of your glory, when you will wipe away every tear from our eyes.  For seeing you, our God, as you are, we shall be like you for all the ages and praise you without end, through Christ our Lord, through whom you bestow on the world all that is good.”  One of the Prefaces to the Eucharistic Prayers for the Dead makes it very clear that this hope touches our experience of grieving: “In him the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, that those saddened by the certainty of dying might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come (Preface I for the Dead).”

    And so I have some tips on grieving that I hope you will find helpful:

    • Don’t rush into the funeral. It’s hard to make all those difficult decisions at a moment’s notice.  It’s great if you’ve talked about your wishes with your family, because it makes things easier.  But if that hasn’t happened, the family would do well to take its time and avail itself of the resources of the funeral director and the church staff so that a funeral that adequately honors the deceased and comforts the living can be prepared.
    • Parents: please talk to your children about your funeral. Yes, that’s going to be a hard conversation.  But these days, too many young people are so disconnected from the Church and so averse to any kind of unhappiness, that they really don’t know how to grieve.  You have to help them with that.
    • Let other people help you. Even if you can do all the preparations, you don’t have to, and you probably shouldn’t.  Let the Church and others help you and minister to you in your time of grief.  As a priest, I presided at my father’s funeral, but one of the priests who knew him preached the homily.  I also asked our bereavement ministry to help us plan the funeral.  I found that was very helpful to me in my own grieving.  On that day, I wasn’t only the priest celebrant, I was also a son grieving the death of his father, and that was important.
    • Have a wake. A lot of people try to short-cut this one because they think it will be too painful.  It will hurt a little, yes, but the comfort of others expressing their love for the deceased and for you will do so much to heal you in the time to come.
    • Don’t be afraid to shed tears. Anyone who has ever seen me preach at some funerals of people I’ve known especially well has seen me get choked up.  Or they have seen me shed a tear when I’ve talked about my father or my grandparents in a homily.  Tears heal us, and it’s good for other people, especially your children, to see you cry.  They need to know that pain and sorrow are part of life so that they don’t feel like they’ve gone nuts when it happens to them.  You aren’t doing anyone any favors by not allowing them to see you grieve.
    • Understand that grief doesn’t “go away.” Feelings soften with time, yes, but you will grieve your loved ones for many years to come, perhaps your whole life long.  I still grieve for my grandparents who have been gone from my life for many, many years now.  Sometimes those waves of grief will come up all of a sudden, without warning, kind of out of the blue.  And that’s okay.  Remember grief is a sign that we have loved, and loving is the most important thing we will ever do.

    Friends, praying for the dead recognizes that all of our lives here on earth are not perfect, and the only way that we can attain the saving grace necessary for life in heaven is by turning to our Savior who gave his life for us.  Our second reading today gives us confidence that we can do this, and that his sacrifice on behalf of our loved ones, and of us, is sufficient, because his is a priesthood that never passes away.  He offered himself once for all, and that is enough, if we turn to him and ask his mercy.

    In a few moments, I will sing words that have comforted me so many times in my sorrow.  They are the words of the preface to the Eucharistic Prayer: “Indeed, for your faithful, Lord, life is changed, not ended, and when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.” This echoes the words of the Prophet Isaiah who confidently proclaims: “The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces; The reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the Lord has spoken.”

    During November, the Church continues to remember those we prayed for on the second day of this month, the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. And for this remembrance, I have chosen to reflect on our experience of grief, and I’ve done that because it’s an experience we all have, on some level, at some time in our lives. I want you to know how very natural grief is, and how very blessed an experience it is. We must always remember that blessed experiences aren’t always pain-free. Our God never flees from our brokenness, instead he has chosen to redeem it.  That is why he offered himself willingly for us.

    And so we are confident, because we know that death only separates us from those we love for a short time, and that death never has the last word because Christ has triumphed over death. The beginning and end of everything is Christ, and Christ is with us in our first moments, and also in our last. He is with us in our pain and with us in our joy. He helps us to remember our loved ones with love that continues beyond our death and beyond the grave. Grief and loss and pain are temporary things for us. Love is eternal, love never ends, love can never be destroyed by death, love leads us all to the great glory of the resurrection and eternal light in that kingdom where Christ has conquered everything, even death itself.

    Therefore, it is with profound sadness, but also with ultimate trust in Almighty God that we commend our loved ones to the Lord, knowing that his mercy is great and that his love will keep us united at the Eucharistic banquet until that day when death is conquered and sadness is banished and we are all caught up in God’s life forever.

    Eternal rest grant unto all of our loved ones, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

  • The Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    What if this life was all there was?  I’m sure you know some people who think that.  I’m not sure how people who think that can get out of bed in the morning, let alone keep on living day after day. Questions about life and death and last things and life after the last things are what’s going on in the Church’s mind and imagination in these last days of the Church year.

    It’s little wonder these questions grab us in these waning days of the year. The trees are losing their foliage. The daylight hours are getting shorter. The air is a bit colder, and we might get the feeling that winter can’t wait to get here!  We can sense there is a change approaching, and perhaps it isn’t one that we look forward to.  Even with the festive atmosphere of the upcoming holidays, or perhaps even because of the holidays, many of us feel depressed or blasé, and the festivity of the holiday season only serves to highlight it for us.  Please God, let there be something more.

    Fundamentally, we human beings need to make connections.  We want life, we want light, we want peace, we want love.  And because we want all these things, we know we are alive.  We attempt to fill them up as best we can.  We hope that our attempts are healthy, but honestly sometimes we find ourselves stuck and attempt to fill our desires with things that are well, just shoddy.  We anesthetize ourselves with drugs or alcohol or internet pornography or retail therapy.  We enter into relationships that are unhealthy.  We work ourselves to death. We distance ourselves from loved ones.  We sin.  We often just try to fill up the something more that we desire with something less than that of which we are worthy.

    And that’s exactly what the Sadducees were doing in today’s Gospel reading.  The Sadducees, we are told, were a group of religious authorities that taught there was no resurrection.  So these Sadducees come to Jesus and seem to have an earnest question.  They speak of a woman seven times widowed and wonder whose wife she will be in the resurrection of the dead.  Except that their question wasn’t earnest at all.  Clearly they were out to discredit Jesus, even embarrass him.  “So you think there will be a resurrection,” they say, “well then, what about this…?”

    The Sadducees didn’t get it when it came to the resurrection, and they weren’t willing to open their minds to any kind of new possibility.  If what Jesus said didn’t fit what they believed, then it absolutely must be wrong.  They were filling their desires with the sin of pride instead of the possibility of eternal life.  What a horrible, shoddy way to fill up their desires!

    But swing that around and look at the seven brothers in the first reading.  All they would have to do was eat a little pork and they could have lived.  I mean, who’s going to begrudge them a little bacon?!  Yet they patently refused to do so.  One by one, they are tortured and killed.  Why would they have let themselves be treated that way?  All they had to do was eat some pork, for heaven’s sake; surely God would forgive them, right?  But listen to what the first brother says: “You are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever.  It is for his laws that we are dying.”  These brothers and their mother realized that there was something greater, something more.  They knew their desire could never be filled up with a little pork, or the shoddy life that would come about as a result of giving up their beliefs.  What a stark contrast they are to the prideful Sadducees!

    We may be tempted to settle for something less, but we know there is something so much better in store for us.  There is something that will fill up our desires once and for all, and that something – or rather that someone –  is Jesus Christ.  It’s not going to be our pride, boasting of our elaborate wisdom or ability to take care of ourselves.  It’s not going to be a little pork, or giving in to whatever temptation comes our way to take us off the path.  It’s not going to be alcohol, or drugs, or unhealthy relationships or self-help gurus, or anything else.  It’s only going to be Jesus – only Jesus! – who will fill up the desires that touch us to the core of who we are.

    The Church in these waning days of the Church year would never deny that there is suffering in the world.  But she will encourage us to open up our desires to be filled with our Savior who comes not to make our suffering go away, but instead to fill it up and sanctify it with his presence.  There is something more, and we can expect to be filled up with it when we realize that the fit for the hole we have in our hearts is Jesus Christ.

    That, friends, is why it is so important that we gather as believers every Sunday, and avail ourselves of the other sacraments, especially reconciliation, on a regular basis.  We have an unquenchable desire that can only be filled up with Christ, that Christ who longs to be our life, who died to be our savior, who rose to be our salvation.

    Our God is not a God of the dead, but of the living.  To him all are alive.  So in these last days of the year, if we find ourselves desiring peace, desiring wholeness, desiring comfort, desiring love, desiring fulfillment, or desiring anything else, that’s okay.  Because what we’re really desiring is Christ, and he is always there to fill us beyond our wildest imaginings.