Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Confirmation

  • Confirmation

    Confirmation

    My dear candidates for Confirmation, this is an amazing day. You come here today after a long period of growing in faith and preparing for this beautiful sacrament. You have completed many hours of service, you have learned a good deal about our faith and our church, and you have prayed and discerned this sacramental moment. So here we are, finally, and today you see the grace of all of that: you receive the sacrament for which you have worked so hard to prepare. I congratulate you for coming here today to choose yet again to be a follower of Christ in the Catholic Church. I thank you for making that difficult but important decision, a decision that no one should ever take lightly. I have more to say to you about that, but first I would like to speak briefly to your parents and sponsors.

    And so parents, I appreciate on behalf of the Church all that you have done to raise your children in the faith. A parent’s job is a difficult one, now and always. You know all too well that there are so many ways a young person can be distracted from their God, their faith, and even from their family. But you have persevered by bringing them for baptism, teaching them to pray, giving them the grace of continued religious instruction, and bringing them here today for Confirmation. A parent’s vocation is to bring children into the world and to teach them the faith, and lead them to heaven one day. This you have begun, but the job is never complete until that great day when we all meet in around the banquet table of God’s kingdom in heaven. And so I encourage you to continue this great work by seeing that your family comes to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, and that you all become life-long learners of our faith: that’s how we do it. Then on that great day when we do all come together to eternal life, you can hear your Lord say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord!”

    Sponsors, you have undertaken a very important role in the life of the young person you are sponsoring. That young person is very special to you or you wouldn’t be their sponsor. Being a sponsor for Confirmation is not something simply ceremonial, and it’s not just a pat on the back for being a good person in their life. As a sponsor, it is your job to continue to witness to the faith and encourage your candidate to grow in that faith. This means that the Church expects that you are living lives of integrity, showing that you believe in Christ by your example, and to encourage and correct the person you are sponsoring so that they remain on the road they have chosen. You share with their parents in the role of bringing them to heaven.

    And now, candidates, I return to you. You have come here for many reasons this afternoon. Some of you have freely chosen to come to the sacrament of Confirmation to be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit; it is a part of your faith and you have chosen to share in it; you may have been eagerly waiting for this moment all your lives. Others perhaps are doing this because a parent or grandparent or some other adult has urged you to do so. And that’s okay; they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t insist that you do what is best for you or encourage you on a path that leads to happiness. Whatever the reason is that you’re here, the important thing is that you’re here. The Holy Spirit which you will receive in a sacramental way this morning will continue to work in your hearts and in your lives to guide you through the years ahead which will undoubtedly provide you with a multitude of challenges.

    In today’s world, you have a lot on your plate. High school demands much from you: academics, sports, extra-curricular activities: all of these take time and energy and attention. Then there are the pressures of growing up in this time in history. Your parents and teachers expect you to perform at your best, to get good grades and eventually to go to a good college and get a good job. That is a hard thing to accomplish for anyone and for some more than others. You also have the pressures to socialize with other young people. You have to have friends and be popular, and sometimes that is difficult to reconcile with your life of faith. You may be tempted to try alcohol and drugs and going too far in relationships, and all kinds of things that you know are wrong and that will lead you into sin and complicate your life. The cost of being a disciple of Jesus who follows the right path is pretty high.

    So we are here for all sorts of reasons, and we bring so much challenge in our lives to this sacramental moment. And the reason we celebrate Confirmation as a community is that we are saying to you that the pressures you experience are not pressures you need to experience alone. The Church offers you some wonderful gifts to help you on your journey.

    The first is the gift of the people in your life who want the best for you. Your parents, grandparents, sponsors and other adults in your family are there for you. You have teachers, the staff here at church, Father John, Father James, and me. You need to know that you can and should go to any of us when times are tough, when you have to make hard decisions and when you don’t know how to do the right thing. All of these folks have had to make hard decisions every day, and sometimes we do it well and sometimes we learn from our mistakes. But we want you to know that you can always come to us for help, to be a sounding board when you just need some advice or even just someone to listen.

    The second gift is the others receiving Confirmation here today. Look around: these are all people who have come here because they believe that there is something special, something important, about living in Christ and living their Catholic faith. Whatever the reason is for them being here, there is that part of them that knows that life in the Spirit is worthwhile. When peer pressure seems to make life so hard, know that there are peers here at Saint Mary’s who stand with you to walk down the right path.

    And the final gift is what we celebrate sacramentally today: the Gift of the Holy Spirit. And that Holy Spirit changes things, changes you. As the Holy Spirit is given to you sacramentally today, He will fill you with the power to make your life a living witness to others of God at work in the world. Now, it might not be as obvious as our readings make it sound. You might not see tongues of fire. You might not see the Holy Spirit help anyone to speak in tongues, and it might seem like nothing miraculous will happen as a result of this sacrament today. Unless maybe you look a little harder. Maybe that Holy Spirit will help you to make a decision that is very difficult to make, or to stand up for someone with strength you never knew you had. Maybe the Holy Spirit will enable you to say the right thing to someone at just the right time. Maybe the Holy Spirit will stir up a fire in your heart that gives you passion for a cause that really makes a difference in the world. Maybe the Holy Spirit will fill your heart with a love that leads you to a vocation as a priest, religious brother or sister, or a married person, sharing God’s love in the world according to your station in life. In little and big ways, the Spirit who changes everything will continue to change you and make you new, if you rely on Him. I pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance every morning. And every morning I thank the Spirit for the graces I have been given. I know that can happen for you too.

    Today’s Gospel makes the Holy Spirit very tangible in our lives through the reality of truth. Truth is a word that, in our culture, is often misused. People think they can come up with their own truth, that as long as something seems right for them, then it has to be the truth. But truth doesn’t work that way. In another place in the Gospel, Jesus says that he is the Truth, and that there is no other way to the Father than through him. And today’s Gospel promises, that if we are people of faith, the Holy Spirit will lead us to that truth, and that having received it, we will testify to the truth. We become living witnesses of the truth who can then be a light in the world to draw others to Christ. We do that by living in the truth, and by loving others as Christ, the Truth, has loved us.

    So I encourage you to continue to be active members of the Church. Today is not the end of your faith journey: in some ways, it’s just the beginning. Continue to come here every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation for Mass so that you can receive the grace of the Eucharist to strengthen you, and the grace of the Holy Spirit to guide you. Continue to be of service to those in need so that those you serve, who have very hard lives, can help you to become strong people of faith. Continue to learn about your faith so that on that great day when you are called to heaven, you’ll know where you are and will recognize your Lord.

    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.

  • The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    Tonight’s readings

    Dear Brothers and Sisters, how good it feels to say “Alleluia” tonight!  Ever since we put the acclamation of our Resurrection joy away some forty days ago, we have been yearning for the opportunity to celebrate, once again, the fullness of our salvation.  And this is the night!  This is the night when Jesus Christ breaks the prison-bars of death and rises triumphant over the grave!  We have kept vigil for the fullness of that promise to be revealed, and now, here we are!  How could we do anything less than shout “Alleluia” with all of our joy?!

    Tonight, we have gathered in the oppressive darkness of the world around us.  The sadness of sin and death, culminating in the death of our Savior, seemed for a time to have triumphed.  We know, only too well, that it was our sins that brought Jesus to the Cross: it was indeed our infirmities that he bore, our brokenness on display for all the world to see.  So as we gathered in a dark Church or out on the dark piazza, we certainly must have felt that sadness in a special way.  But we know the whole story, don’t we?  And because we do know the whole story, even in our experience of sadness, there is that expectation, that part of us that knows that joy is on its way.

    As we have gathered over the last three nights to let the story of our salvation unfold, we have had an ever-heightened sense of yearning for the story to come to its fruition.  And tonight, we are treated to an even greater dose of that.  Tonight, we have heard stories of God’s desire to bring us back to him.  We have seen that time and time again, God has broken through the history of our brokenness, has triumphed over the lure of sin, and has redirected his chosen ones to the path of life.  We have recalled that God created everything to reflect the resplendent goodness that is God; we have seen Abraham, on the cusp of inheriting the promise of eternity for all his descendants, called upon to sacrifice his only son to show his love, only to have it all turned on its head when God promises to provide the lamb for the sacrifice, that lamb that is the foreshadowing of a Savior; we have seen Moses lead the people out of the Egypt that has held them slaves to sin, through the desert of desolation and yearning for God, safely through the waters of the Red Sea which flowed back to wash all their sins away, that journey that is the prefiguring of the sacrament of Baptism; then the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel have called us to come to the water, to be nourished freely and cleansed of our impurities.

    Tonight we have heard in reading after reading, that God will absolutely not ever abandon his loved and chosen ones to sin and death.  We have heard that God initiated the covenant and pursues it forever, never forcing us to accept his will, but willing that we should follow him and accept his mercy.  God has provided the lamb of salvation, the acceptable sacrifice which brings salvation to the whole world.  God has gone to the cross and been in the tomb and descended to hell – there is nowhere that is beyond the reach of God’s mercy, there is no place, no depth to which God will not go to redeem his beloved creation.  God’s mercy endures forever!

    God delights in the freedom of will that we possess as a natural part of who we are, because it gives us the opportunity to freely choose to love him, as he freely chooses to love us.  But he knows that same free will can and will also lead us astray, into sin, into evil.  The free choice to love God is a greater good than the absence of evil, so not imbuing us with free will was never an option.  Instead, evil and sin and our fallenness are redeemed on this most holy of all nights, this night which “dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.”

    And thus it is fitting that this night is the night when we focus on Baptism.  Everything is in place: the waters of the Red Sea are parted, the pillar of fire glows to the honor of God, we are led to grace and joined to God’s holy ones of every time and place, Christ emerges triumphant from the underworld and the sin of Adam is redeemed forever.  And so Korrin, our Elect, in a few moments will enter the waters of Baptism from the west: that place of the setting sun, renouncing the prince of darkness, professing faith in God, dying with Christ in the waters, emerging to new life, triumphant with Christ on the east, and encountering the bright morning star whose light blazes for all eternity.  We will hold our breath as the waters flow over her, and sing Alleluia when she is reborn, crying out the praise of God with all the joy the Church can muster!

    Our joy will continue to overflow as she and Brian, our candidate for full Communion with the Church, are Confirmed in the Holy Spirit and fed for the very first time with the Eucharistic Bread of Life and Cup of Eternal Salvation.  God’s mercy has once again triumphed and brought two wonderful young people into the family of the Church and the community of our parish.  God’s goodness shows forth all its splendor in so many wonderful ways on this most holy of all nights!

    This is the night that redeems all of our days and nights.  This is the night when sin and death are rendered impotent by the plunging of the Paschal candle, the Light of Christ, into the waters of Baptism.  On this night, everything is turned upside-down; sin and death no longer define who we are as human beings; the forces of evil search in vain for darkness in which to cower, because the bright morning star has washed the darkness away.  On this night, the waters of Baptism kill death, wash away faults and wickedness, give refreshment to those who are parched for holiness, and bring life to all who have withered in the desert of brokenness.

    And so, may the flame of our joy, blazing against the darkness of the world’s night, be found still burning by the Morning Star:  the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ our Lord, God’s only Son, who coming back from even from the depths of death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns for ever and ever!  Amen!

  • Confirmation

    Confirmation

    My dear Confirmation candidates, you come here tonight after a long period of growing in faith and preparing for this beautiful sacrament.  You have completed many hours of service, you have learned a good deal about our faith and our church, and you have prayed together on retreat and in many other ways.  Tonight you see the grace of all of that: you receive the sacrament for which you have worked so hard to prepare.  I congratulate you for coming here tonight to choose yet again to be a follower of Christ in the Catholic Church.  I have more to say to you, but first I would like to speak briefly to your parents and godparents.

     

    And so parents, I appreciate on behalf of the Church all that you have done to raise your children in the faith.  A parent’s job is a difficult one, perhaps more so now than ever.  You know all too well that there are so many ways a young person can be distracted from their faith and even from their family.  But you have persevered by bringing them to baptism, teaching them to pray, giving them the grace of continued religious instruction, and bringing them here tonight for Confirmation.  A parent’s vocation is to bring children into the world and witness and teach them the faith.  This you have begun, but the job is never complete until that great day when we all meet in heaven.  And so I encourage you to continue this great work by seeing that your family comes to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, and that you all become life-long learners of our faith.  Then on that great day when we do all come together to eternal life, you can hear your Lord say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord!”

     

    Sponsors, you have undertaken a very important role in the life of the young person you are sponsoring.  It is not something simply ceremonial.  It is your job to continue to witness to the faith and encourage your candidate to grow in that faith.  This is not a merely ceremonial role: you are expected to live lives of integrity, showing that you believe in Christ by your example, and to encourage and correct the person you are sponsoring so that they remain on the road they have chosen tonight.  You share with their parents in the role of bringing them to heaven.

     

    And now, candidates, I return to you.  You have come here for many reasons tonight.  Some of you have freely chosen to come to the sacrament of Confirmation to be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit; it is a part of your faith and you have chosen to share in it.  Others perhaps are doing this because a parent or grandparent or some other adult has urged you to do so.  And that’s okay; they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t insist that you do what is best for you.  Whatever the reason is that you’re here, the important thing is that you have come here.  The Holy Spirit which you will receive in a sacramental way tonight will continue to work in your hearts and in your lives to guide you through the years ahead which could be quite difficult.

     

    As a young person in today’s world, you have a lot on your plate.  High school demands much from you: academics, sports, extra-curricular activities, all of these take time and energy and attention.  Then there are the pressures of growing up in this environment.  Your parents and teachers expect you to perform at your best, to get good grades and eventually to go to a good college and get a good job.  That is a hard thing to accomplish for anyone and for some more than others.  You also have the pressures to socialize with other young people.  You have to have friends and be popular, and sometimes the cost of that is pretty high.  You are tempted to try alcohol and drugs and going too far in relationships, and all kinds of things that you know are wrong and that will lead you into sin.  The cost of choosing not to take part in that is extremely high.

     

    Everyone thinks that being in high school is one of the greatest times in your lives, and it sure can be.  But it can also be very difficult with the many pressures you have.  But the reason we celebrate Confirmation as a community is that we are saying to you that the pressures you experience are not pressures you need to experience alone.  Tonight I want you to notice three very important gifts.

     

    The first is the gift of the adults in your life who only want the best for you.  Your parents, grandparents, sponsors and other adults in your family are there for you.  You have teachers, the staff here at church, and Father Raj and me.  You need to know that you can and should go to any of us when times are tough, when you have to make hard decisions and when you don’t know how to do the right thing.  The adults in your life have had to make the right decisions every day, and sometimes we do it well and sometimes we learn from our mistakes.  But we want you to know that you can always come to us for help.

     

    The second gift is your classmates here tonight.  Look around: these are all people who have come here tonight because they believe that there is something special, something important, about living in Christ and living their Catholic faith.  When peer pressure seems to make life so hard, know that there are peers here at Notre Dame who stand with you to make the right decisions.

     

    And the final gift is what we celebrate sacramentally tonight: the Gift of the Holy Spirit.  These days the Holy Spirit doesn’t often help us to speak in tongues, and it might be that nothing miraculous will happen as a result of this sacrament tonight.  Unless maybe you look a little harder.  For me, I see miracles that I attribute to the Holy Spirit all the time.  I am able to make hard decisions here at the parish with wisdom that I know is not my own understanding but rather something that comes from God.  I am able to console people going through hard times with words that I could never have dreamed up on my own.  I pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance every morning.  And every morning I thank the Spirit for the graces I have been given.  I think that can happen for you too.

     

    Tonight’s Gospel teaches that Christ is “The Way, the Truth and the Life.”  That doesn’t mean that life will be easy.  For Jesus, that way was the Way of the Cross.  The truth that he preached cost him his life.  And the life that he gained meant that he had to die first.  In some ways that’s true for all of us.  Life is hard, and living life the right way comes at a cost.  But the reward we have is a relationship with our God that is deeply personal and unparalleled by any other relationship.  The reward is the Gift of the Holy Spirit that helps us to make the hard decisions and to live the right way, and to do the hard things that we think we can never do.

     

    So I encourage you to continue to be active members of the Church.  Tonight is not the end of your faith journey.  Continue to come here every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation for Mass so that you can receive the grace of the Eucharist to strengthen you, and the grace of the Holy Spirit to guide you.  Continue to be of service to those in need so that those who you serve, who have very hard lives, can help you to become strong people of faith.  Continue to learn about your faith so that on that great day when you are called to heaven, you’ll know where you are and will recognize your Lord.

     

    And now, if you are ready to receive this Holy Sacrament, I ask you to renew your baptismal promises.

     

  • Fifteenth Sunday: Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens

    Fifteenth Sunday: Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens

    This was the alternate homily that I gave at 10:45 Mass, during which we accepted a young man into the Order of Catechumens.

     

    In the ancient Church, there were several so-called orders within the assembly.  The main group or order was, of course, the believers.  These had been baptized and had come to accept Jesus Christ, to live within the Church and celebrate the sacraments.  Other orders included the Order of Widows, those women whose husbands had died and had no supporting family members.  These women were taken care of by the community, and in turn served the community as they were able. Another order was the Order of Penitents.  These people had sinned publicly, usually through some violation of the sixth commandment, and were unable to partake of the sacramental life of the Church.  They usually confessed their sins, and were given a lengthy penance to accomplish, and then were reunited with the Church on Holy Thursday.
    The other order, which we still have today, is the Order of Catechumens.  These are unbaptized people who desired to become one with the Church and live the life of faith.  This is the order into which we accept Aaron today.  His search for Truth has led him here to us, and we have accepted him in our ritual.  This rite of acceptance into the Order of Catechumens is one that symbolizes a kind of first official step for Aaron.  He has been inquiring into the faith and now wishes to join us.  His formation will continue in the months to come, and he will be baptized, receive Confirmation and First Eucharist at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night.  

    We are blessed to have Aaron with us today, because his presence indicates that our faith is alive and vibrant.  His presence shows us that God still searches for his people, calling them out of darkness into his own wonderful light.  As he continues to journey toward baptism, he will be with us in the assembly, being dismissed with candidates for Full Communion, until that day when they can all join us at the Table of the Eucharist.  

    We accept Aaron publicly today, not just for his benefit, but also for ours, and for two very specific reasons.  First, we as a community have a responsibility to bring the faith to all people until the day of the Lord’s return.  It’s not just the RCIA team and catechists, not just the priests and staff, but the entire community that makes this happen.  Our faith must be a witness to Aaron and to others that Christ is alive among us and longs to lead us all to salvation.

    Second, we have a need to grow in our own faith.  Every day, we come up against new obstacles, new darkness, and our faith must shine light into all of these situations.  We have a need to come to know our Lord Jesus in more intimate and meaningful ways.  And so Aaron isn’t journeying in faith alone here; we are all journeying and growing with him.

    Just like that seed that found its rootedness in the good soil, so too may our own faith, and Aaron’s, take root in the good soil of instruction and prayer and earnest longing for Christ.  May God’s Word go forth from us and never return to God void, but instead achieve the end for which he sent it, yielding a harvest of a hundred or sixty or even thirty fold.