Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Sacraments

  • Lenten Reconciliation Service

    Lenten Reconciliation Service

    Today’s readings: Colossians 1:3-14 | John 14:1-29

    In Jesus Christ, we have absolutely everything that we need for the forgiveness of sins, except one thing. In Jesus Christ, we have our God who became man (and we celebrate the feast of the Annunciation today which marks the beginning of the Son in his human nature). We have in Christ the Saving Sacrifice, his life poured out on us to take away the penalty of our sins and nullify the sting of our death. Not only that, but Jesus Christ strengthens us with the gift of his Holy Spirit, who enlivens in us the desire to be close to our God and to put our sins behind us. That Holy Spirit gives us the grace not just to know and confess our sins, but also the grace to avoid the sin ahead of us. In Christ, the way to forgiveness is open. We have all we need – except one thing.

    That one thing that’s missing is our own “YES.” Today we celebrate the feast of the Annunciation when Mary said yes to the angel: “Let it be done to me according to your word.” That fiat was her act of faith that made possible our redemption from sin and death. We too are called to make a fiat today – an act of faith that says, “YES, God, I trust you to forgive my sins. YES, God, I will open myself to your reconciliation and peace. YES, God, I will follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance away from my sinfulness and back to you.” And that’s why we’re here tonight. To say that “YES” so that all that the Father wants for us can happen in us. We are here to accept that wonderful grace, purchased at an incredible price, and poured out lavishly on us. All we have to do is say “YES” to it.

    This Lent we have been striving to develop, with God’s help, new habits of the soul, new habits of faith, hope and love. The habit we are called to work on tonight is the habit of repentance. Because once we repent of our sins, turn away from them, and confess them, we can then accept God’s grace and mercy, and become a new people, marked by faith hope and love. But repentance is a choice that’s up to us; it’s a habit we have to develop, because it’s not a habit that we see demonstrated much in our world. Our world would rather take mistakes and put a positive “spin” on them so everyone saves face. But that’s not repentance. Our world would rather find someone else to blame for the problems we encounter, so that we can be righteously indignant and accept our own status as victims. But that’s not repentance. Our world would rather encounter an issue by throwing at it money, human resources, military intervention, lawsuits or legislation. But that’s not repentance.

    So, quite frankly, if we are ever going to learn the habit of repentance, we are going to have to look elsewhere than the evening news. World leaders are no help at all, and even if the media were to see an example of repentance, I’m not sure they’d give it much play. So where are we going to get the inspiration to live as a repentant people? These Lenten days, we might look at the wayward son’s interaction with the Prodigal Father, or perhaps the woman at the well who left her jug behind to live the new life. We might look at the woman caught in adultery or even at the “good thief” crucified with Jesus. All of these got the idea and turned from their sin toward their God and received life in return. This is the habit of repentance that we have been called to develop in ourselves.

    Brothers and sisters, sin enslaves us and makes exiles out of us. Sin takes us out of the community and puts us off on our own, in a very empty place. That exile might look something like this:

    • We ignore the needs of the poor and exile ourselves from the full community;
    • We judge others and thus draw a dividing line between ourselves and those we judge;
    • We lie and are no longer trusted by others;
    • We refuse to forgive, and are trapped in the past, not willing to respond to the present;
    • We cheat, steal and abuse the rights of others and thus offend the right order of the community;
    • We act violently in words and actions and thus perpetuate forces that splinter and violate the human community;
    • We withdraw from their church and diminish the community’s ability to witness to God and serve others.

    The exile of sin is heartbreaking, but it doesn’t have to be that way for us. The Liturgy of the Word throughout the Lenten season has been showing us the way back. We have the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit to inspire us with desire for communion with our God. We have the grace and mercy poured out on us through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we have the grace to do that one thing that’s missing; to develop that habit that makes us one with our God – that habit of repentance that brings us back no matter how far we have wandered or how many times we have turned away. Our God can still reach us in exile and he can still bring us back to the community, if we will but let him. Our God wants us to have nothing but the very best. He says to us in tonight’s Gospel: “Peace I leave you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”

    And that’s why we’re here tonight. God is aching to pour out on us the grace of his forgiveness and to bring us to his peace beyond all of our understanding, and we have chosen to come and receive it. We have chosen to be a people marked by faith, hope and love. We long to develop that habit of repentance which allows us to receive the new life God has always wanted for us. So let us now as a community of faith examine our conscience and repent of our sins.

  • Fifth Sunday of Lent

    Fifth Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Back in the sixth century before the birth of Christ, the Israelites were in a bad way. They had been separated from their God by sin: against God’s commands, they had betrayed their covenant with the Lord and made foreign alliances, which he had forbidden them to do. As punishment, God separated them from their homeland: the cream of the crop of their society was taken into exile in Babylon, and those left behind had no one to lead them and protect them. Because they moved away from God, God seemed to move away from them. But he hadn’t. In today’s first reading, God shows them that he still loves them and cares for them, and promises to make them a new people. I love the line: “See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?” God would indeed bring them back and create their community anew.

    The Israelites were in exile, but exile can take so many forms. And St. Paul had a good sense of that. For him, the exile was anything that was not Christ; a sentiment we would do well to embrace. St. Paul knows that he has not yet taken possession of the glory that is promised him by Christ, but he knows also that he has already been taken possession of by Christ. He wants to leave behind the exile of the world and strains forward to all that lies ahead, the goal and prize of God’s calling in Christ.

    Which brings us back to the woman caught in adultery. We certainly feel sorry for her, caught in the act, dragged in front of Jesus and publicly humiliated. But the truth is, just like the Israelites in the sixth century before Christ, she had actually sinned. And that sin threatened to put her into exile from the community; well, it even threatened her life. The in-your-face reversal in the story, though, is that Jesus doesn’t consider her the only sinner – or even the greatest sinner – in the whole incident. We should probably wonder about the man she was committing adultery with; that sin does, after all, take two. And adultery is a serious sin. But Jesus makes it clear that there are plenty of serious sins out there, and they all exile us from God. As he sits there, writing in the sand, they walk away one by one. What was he writing? Was it a kind of examination of conscience? A kind of list of the sins of the Pharisees? We don’t know. But in Jesus’ words and actions, those Pharisees too were convicted of their sins, and went away – into exile – because of them.

    Sin does that to us. It makes exiles out of all of us. The more we sin, the further away from God we become. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

    Jimmy and Suzy went to visit their grandmother for a week during the summer. They had a great time, but one day Jimmy was bouncing a ball in the house, which he knew he shouldn’t be doing. After not too long, the ball hit grandma’s vase and broke in half. He picked up the pieces and went out back and hid them in the woodshed. Looking around, the only person who was around was his sister Suzy. She didn’t say anything, but later that day, when grandma asked her to help with the dishes, Suzy said “I think Jimmy wanted to help you.” So he did. The next day, grandpa asked Jimmy if he wanted to go out fishing. Suzy jumped right in: “He’d like to but he promised grandma he would weed the garden.” So Jimmy weeded the garden. As he was doing that, he felt pretty guilty and decided to confess the whole thing to grandma. When he told her what had happened, grandma said, “I know. I was looking out the back window when you were hiding the pieces in the woodshed. I was wondering how long you were going to let Suzy make a slave of you.”

    That’s how it is with sin: it makes a slave of us, and keeps us from doing what we really want to do. It puts us deep in exile, just as surely as the ancient Israelites. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

    You see, it’s easier than we think to end up in exile. Here are some ways people find themselves in exile:

    • They ignore the needs of the poor and exile themselves from the full community;
    • They judge others and thus draw a dividing line between themselves and those they judge;
    • They lie and are no longer trusted by others;
    • They refuse to forgive, and are trapped in the past, not willing to respond to the present;
    • They cheat, steal and abuse the rights of others and thus offend the right order of the community;
    • They act violently in words and actions and thus perpetuate forces that splinter and violate the human community;
    • They withdraw from their church and diminish the community’s ability to witness to God and serve others.

    Exile is heartbreaking. And to the exile of sin, God says three things today:

    First, “Go, and from now on, do not sin anymore.” That sounds like something that’s easy to say but hard to do. But the fact is, once we have accepted God’s grace and forgiveness, that grace will actually help us to be free from sin. Of course, that’s impossible to do all on our own. But God never commands us to do something that is impossible for us, or maybe better, he never commands us to do something that is impossible for him to do in us. God’s grace is there if we but turn to him.

    Second, God says: “Forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead.” Once sin is confessed and grace is accepted, the sin is forgotten. God is not a resentful tyrant who keeps a list of our offenses and holds them against us forever. If we confess our sins and accept the grace that is present through the saving sacrifice of Jesus, the sins are forgotten. But it is up to us to accept that grace. We truly have to confess so that we can forget what lies behind and be ready for the graces ahead.

    Third, God says: “See, I am doing something new. Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” We are the ones who get stuck in the past, always fearing to move forward because of past sins, hurts, and resentments. We are called today to be open to the new thing God is doing in our lives. The way to open up is to get rid of the past.

    For a long time I didn’t go to confession. I didn’t think I needed to. I grew up in that whole time of the church when it was all about how you felt about yourself. Garbage. I knew something was wrong when I was in my young adulthood and felt lost. I took a chance and went to confession at a penance service, and the priest welcomed me back. In that moment, I knew exactly the new thing God was doing in me, and it felt like a huge weight was lifted off of me. In fact, I was released from the exile of all my past sins and hurts.

    I never forgot that, and whenever anyone comes to me in confession and says it’s been a long time since they went, I am quick to welcome them back. Because that’s what God wants. He wants to lift that weight off of you, to end your exile. All it takes is for you to see that new thing he is doing in you, and to strain forward to what lies ahead.

    Tomorrow night at 7:00 we have our parish reconciliation service. If you have not been to confession yet this Lent, or if, like me, you haven’t been in years, it’s time to end your exile. We will have six priests here to hear you, and we are looking forward to the opportunity to do that. Would that we would all take this opportunity to forget what lies behind, and strain forward to what lies ahead. God is doing a new thing in all of us these Lenten days. Let us all be open to it.

  • 40 Hours: Thursday Evening Solemn Vespers

    40 Hours: Thursday Evening Solemn Vespers

    Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

    So I’m now in my early forties and when I was growing up, like a lot of people my age, I think, Eucharistic adoration wasn’t something that I encountered. In those days shortly after the Second Vatican Council, a whole lot of the old got thrown out to make way for the new. That was kind of like throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and it was never supposed to happen. Were there excesses and abuses tied in with some of the old traditions? Yes. But that never meant that everything old was supposed to go away. Instead, the intent of the Council was for everything old to be made new again. And so, in these days, we see a lot of people returning to the devotions that gave people a sense of the mystical and a glimpse of the beautiful and an intimate connection with God who is higher than the heavens, but also nearer than our own hearts. And the most beautiful of these devotions is the worship of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

    We’ve gathered here, then, to spend these forty hours in renewed devotion to the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. What has been beautiful for me to see is that this devotion has not been restricted to any particular age group, but has involved everyone from the youngest among us to our seniors. There have been groups of teens who got up early and came for prayer at three in the morning. Children in our school have been coming as a class throughout the day, and that will continue tomorrow. But probably the most touching to me was last night at the opening Mass, when so many families came together. They say the family that prays together stays together. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but I know that praying together gives families a common experience, and roots them in the communion of the Lord. Children who see a love in their parents that comes from their love of the Lord will certainly be able to look at others and love them in Christ. The family that worships the Blessed Sacrament together may be the family that makes it possible for others to see Christ in them.

    Because that’s exactly what this forty hours should be saying to us. Yes, we worship Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Yes, we receive Christ in the Eucharist. But yes, we are also called to be Christ to one another and to receive Christ in them. As we serve one another in gratitude, we are Christ for them. As we allow others to minister to us in our need, they are Christ to us. As we gather in faith, we become the presence of Christ for one another. As our service to the poor, needy, or afflicted radiates hope to those in need, we become the presence of Christ to others. As we love one another into a community of grace, we are Christ to a world that desperately needs God’s presence. The Christ in us is the same Christ in the Eucharist we receive and the Eucharist we adore. By worshipping and receiving the Eucharist, we become a divine presence in our world in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with our own efforts or worthiness, but is all about our Jesus.

    And we are all the Body of Christ in whatever way we have been called. This evening’s reading from St. Paul reminds us that we are not all the same, we do not all have the same gifts, we are not all in the same place on the journey of faith, but we are all absolutely part of the Body of Christ wherever we are and whatever our gifts may be. None of us can have the audacity to lord our gifts or talents over others, because they are just that – gifts – and we would not even have them if it were not for Jesus and his gift of the Holy Spirit. As we serve one another in Christ, we should be moved with humility by the way God works through us. Jane Ehrlich from our staff was telling me that they had some difficulty finding someone to play Jesus in our living stations this year, because people felt unworthy. And you know, they’re all absolutely right. None of us is worthy to play Jesus, but that’s okay, sometimes we are called to play Jesus anyway.

    You may find yourself called upon to witness to someone who doesn’t believe in God and feel totally unworthy of it. And of course, you are. But that’s okay, God will give you the words and the grace and you’ll be fine. I struggled with my vocation for a long time because I felt like I was unworthy of it, and I was absolutely right about that. I am completely unworthy of being a priest of Jesus Christ, but that didn’t change the fact that I was absolutely being called to be that priest, and it didn’t change the fact that everything I do as a priest is a result of God’s abundant graces that are poured out on me each day. We’re all in there somewhere. We are unworthy, but we’re called anyway, we are graced beyond anything we can accomplish and beyond anything we deserve, and we are all the Body of Christ.

    It is our experience of Christ in the Eucharist that makes this happen. Our worthiness comes from Christ himself, who is really present to us in the Eucharist each time we receive it, and each time we adore. In the Eucharist, Christ washes away our unworthiness to reveal the icon of Christ we were all created to be. There’s a prayer by St. Thomas Aquinas that I like to say when I prepare for Mass. It begins like this:

    Almighty and ever-living God,
    I approach the sacrament of your only-begotten Son,
    our Lord Jesus Christ.
    I come sick to the doctor of life,
    unclean to the fountain of mercy,
    blind to the radiance of eternal light,
    and poor and needy to the Lord of heaven and earth.
    Lord, in your great generosity,
    heal my sickness, was away my defilement,
    enlighten my blindness, enrich my poverty,
    and clothe my nakedness.

    As we continue to adore our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament as we observe these forty hours, may our worship unite us ever more as families, ever more as a community of faith, ever more as the Body of Christ we have been called and created to be. May we set aside our unworthiness to instead take up, with incredible humility, the grace so freely given to us in this Blessed Sacrament. May we become ever more aware of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and in one another. May we open ourselves to the challenge of reaching out to others in love as we contemplate the great Charity of Christ in this Saving Sacrifice. May we receive with gratitude the bountiful graces of our God in every moment of our lives.

  • Opening Mass for Forty Hours Devotion

    Opening Mass for Forty Hours Devotion

    Readings: Exodus 12:21-27 | 1 Peter 1:17-21 | Mark 14:12-16,22-26

    Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is truly an awesome privilege to be here tonight as we begin this Forty Hours Devotion. We are a people blessed and graced by our God with nothing less than the very Real Presence of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who has saved us from our sins and takes away the sting of our death by giving us the promise of eternal life. So it is with great joy that we look forward to these forty hours of Eucharistic adoration and worship, knowing not what graces we will receive individually and as a community during this time, but confident that those graces will be much more than we could ever hope for or imagine.

    This evening's Liturgy of the Word speaks to us very eloquently of the Eucharist in terms of God's saving work throughout time. Even back to the Israelite captivity in Egypt, God was looking out for his people, hearing the cry of their distress, and planning to save them in every way. These readings then speak of a people marked by their being elected as God's chosen people. The ancient Israelites were chosen to be saved from their captivity and we have been chosen to be saved from our sins. These readings also define us all as a people marked by faith, hope and love.

    In the first reading from Exodus, the people have not yet left Egypt. Moses is still trying to convince Pharaoh that he should let the people go out in to the desert to worship God, but Pharaoh is still stubbornly resisting, just as the Lord foretold. What we have in the reading, then, is the last of the plagues that will certainly cause Pharaoh not only to let the people go, but actually drive them from the land. That plague, of course, would be the death of all the first born of the land. But that death would not touch the first born of the Israelites, God said, if they would slaughter a lamb and sprinkle the doorposts with the blood. Then the houses would be marked as those of the Israelites, and the destroyer would not enter. This Passover sacrifice certainly marked the people for safety, but it also marked them in faith. They were given a ritual that would last for generations, one they still celebrate, in which they would recall this great saving act and pass that faith on to their young people.

    In the second reading from the first letter of St. Peter, we are reminded that our redemption from sin and death was not just purchased with something perishable, but with the precious Blood of Christ. Because of that, we are to conduct ourselves as a ransomed people, as a people marked by hope – by a hope beyond all hopes, by a hope that was purchased at great price, by a hope that will never disappoint or pass away.

    The Gospel shows Jesus giving this glorious, miraculous mystery to his apostles. "This is my Body … this is my Blood." We make that reality present every time we celebrate the Eucharist, in grateful remembrance of the Lord's sacrifice for our redemption. This beautiful feast of the most precious food marked the apostles, and all those who would be touched by their ministry and preaching, with the love of God beyond all telling.

    Our God is higher than the heavens, more awesome than any of the world's mysteries, but our God also continues to be in our midst, continuing his work among us, continuing to gift us with salvation, continuing to bring us back to himself. We do not worship a god who has set the world in motion and then retired to view our history from afar. We believe in a God who is intimately involved in our lives and our history so that we can never fall so far from him that he cannot reach us. We believe in God who has sent his Son Jesus Christ into our world, to walk among us, to share our sorrows and feel our pains, to die our death and show us the way back to the Father. Christ is really present here among us as we gather, here among us as we hear the Word proclaimed, here among us as we receive the ministry of the Church, and here among us as we partake of the Eucharist, the great sacramental meal that he gave us as an everlasting remembrance. Because Christ is really present among us, we are a people who have been marked by faith, hope and love. We have received the grace of God's saving action throughout history and have been redeemed at a great cost.

    We gather here then, for forty hours, to celebrate the nearness of our God and to worship Jesus Christ, really present here among us. We gather for forty hours because the number forty has always signified a sacred period of time: the rains during the time of Noah lasted 40 days and nights; the Jews wandered through the desert for 40 years, our Lord fasted and prayed for 40 days before beginning His public ministry. The 40 Hours Devotion remembers that traditional "forty-hour period" from our Lord's burial until the resurrection. In the Middle Ages, the Blessed Sacrament was transferred to the repository, "the Easter Sepulcher," for this 40 hour period of time to signify our Lord's time in the tomb.

    This Blessed Sacrament that we worship in these 40 hours is the same Christ we will receive in the Eucharist this evening – and every time we gather for Mass. And that Christ we receive in the Eucharist is the same Christ we serve in our brothers and sisters. Our Catholic experience of Jesus Christ is never just "me and Jesus." Our personal relationship with Christ is important, but it is always defined by our communal experience. So these forty hours may challenge us to reach out to others in ways we have resisted in the past, because the more we see Christ as we worship, the more we'll see Christ in our daily lives.

    What we celebrate in these days is that Christ is present to us in all of these ways every single day of our lives. We are looking for these forty hours to remind us of that great gift. Having celebrated St. Patrick's feast so recently, I am reminded that his Breastplate hymn sings of this wondrous presence so richly:

    Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
    Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
    Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
    Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
    Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
    Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
    Christ in every eye that sees me,
    Christ in every ear that hears me.

    May this forty hour retreat of adoration and worship of the Blessed Sacrament remind us that we are all caught up in the faith, hope and love that is ours in Christ. May we all in this time become ever more aware that our Christ is really present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, every time we gather in faith for the Eucharist, every time we worship the great hope present in the Blessed Sacrament, and every time we reach out in love to our brothers and sisters.

  • Monday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time: The transforming power of vocations

    Monday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time: The transforming power of vocations

    Today's readings

    The vocational call is a call that is not about me, not about you, but only about the God who makes the call. Just as the ancient high priests that the author of our first reading speaks about did not take that honor upon themselves, and just as even Jesus did not take that honor upon himself, so none of us takes up our own vocation. That is, none of us takes up our own vocation if our vocation is really authentic.

    The thing about a vocation, whether it's a vocation to the priesthood, or to religious life, or to parenthood, or whatever our vocation may be, is that that vocation comes from the God who created us. Our vocation comes to us at our baptism, when we are called from our old sinful life to a new life of promise, re-created to be the people we were supposed to be in the first place. Our vocation is a gift, the gift by which we are able to work out our salvation and see God at work in us, enabling us to do things we could never do on our own.

    Our vocation is not primarily about us, as I said at the beginning. Our vocation is given to us, along with our gifts and talents, so that we can go out into the world and transform it to a better place, so that we can make a difference, so that we can glorify God in everything that we do. We don't have to have a vocations crisis: all we have to do is for each of us to take up our vocation and live it faithfully, so that our world is all covered with the glory of God.

    If we all would make this the goal of our lives, we would be like that new wine poured into the new wineskin of our world, making all the earth new with God's love and mercy.

  • Advent Reconciliation Service

    Advent Reconciliation Service

    Readings: Malachi 3:1-7 and Luke 3:3-17

    reconciliation3I have to say that Advent is one of my favorite times of the year. As a person who prays with music, the hymns of Advent just speak to me of the hopeful expectation that we live during this season. I find that the gradual progression of lights on the Advent wreath leads me to open myself more and more to the warmth of God’s presence. The growing numbers of Christmas lights on people’s houses lights up the darkness and reminds me of the light of Christ. The truth is, our world has all sorts of reasons not to hope in anything, but our Church reminds us every year at this time that we have the only reason for hope that we need: the promise of Jesus Christ.

    Throughout Advent this year, I have chosen to reflect on God’s promises. I am finding that the hope that reflecting on those promises brings casts out the darkness and depression of barren trees, cold weather, and earlier nightfall. The hope of God’s promises also casts out the darkness of sin and death that seems to surround us and creep up on us in every moment. Last Friday night, I turned on the evening news, only to be filled with worry for my brother-in-law who works downtown and travels in and out of the Ogilvie Transportation Center, which had been closed due to gunfire in the building. The news continues to bring worry and concern for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    It’s so obvious that our world needs a Savior. Not just two thousand years ago, but right here and right now. We need a Savior who will lead us to justice and peace. We need a Savior who will lead us to reach out to the poor and oppressed. We need a Savior who will bind up our wounded lives and world and present us pure and spotless before God on the Last Day. We need a Savior who can bring light to this darkened world and hope to our broken lives. We need a Savior who can bring us God’s promise of forgiveness.

    This Advent, I’ve been teaching about an ancient prayer of the early Church. In the years just after Jesus died and rose and ascended into heaven, the early Christians would pray in their language, Maranatha or “Come, Lord Jesus.” So I’ve been saying that we should all pray that prayer every day during Advent. When we get up in the morning, and just before bed at night, pray “Come, Lord Jesus.” When you need help during the day or just need to remind yourself of God’s promises, pray “Come, Lord Jesus.” The early Christians prayed this way because they expected Jesus to return soon. We do too. Even if he does not return in glory during our lifetimes, we still expect him to return soon and often in our lives and in our world to brighten this place of darkness and sin and to straighten out the rough ways in our lives. Let us keep the expectation of the Lord and the hope of his promise of forgiveness alive in our hearts:

    Come, Lord Jesus and change our hearts to be more loving and open to others.
    Come, Lord Jesus and teach us to pray; help us to grow in our spiritual lives.
    Come, Lord Jesus and dispel our doubts; help us always to hope in your forgiveness.
    Come, Lord Jesus and heal those who are sick and comfort all the dying.
    Come, Lord Jesus and bring those who wander back to your Church.
    Come, Lord Jesus and turn us away from our addictions.
    Come, Lord Jesus and teach us to be patient with ourselves and others.
    Come, Lord Jesus and help us to eliminate injustice and apathy.
    Come, Lord Jesus and teach us to welcome the stranger.
    Come, Lord Jesus and give us an unfailing and zealous respect for your gift of life.
    Come, Lord Jesus and help us to be generous; teach us all to practice stewardship of all of our resources.
    Come, Lord Jesus and help us to work at everything we do as though we were working for you alone.
    Come, Lord Jesus and bind up our brokenness, heal our woundedness, comfort us in affliction, afflict us in our comfort, help us to repent and to follow you without distraction or hesitation, give us the grace to pick up our crosses and be your disciples.

    The good that John the Baptist preaches in this evening’s Gospel reading, is that God does indeed promise to forgive us. Wherever we are on the journey to Christ, whatever the obstacles we face, God promises to make it right through Jesus Christ. We may be facing the valley of hurts or resentments. God will fill in that valley. Perhaps we are up against a mountain of sinful behavior or shame. God will level that mountain. We may be lost on the winding roads of procrastination or apathy. God will straighten out that way. We may be riding along on the rough and bumpy ways of poor choices, sinful relationships and patterns of sin. God will make all those ways smooth. And all flesh – every one of us, brothers and sisters – we will all see the salvation of God. That’s a promise. God will forgive us all of our sins.

    All we have to do is to take God up on it. And that’s why we are here tonight. God promises us forgiveness, and we are here to receive it. As we confess our sins and receive absolution, we make Christ’s light a little more brilliant in our world and in our lives. There may only be one unforgivable sin: the sin of thinking that we don’t a Savior. When we think we’re okay and that there is nothing wrong with our lives or our relationships, then we’re lost. When we live our lives as if we’re the only one who matters, we’re very far from God. It’s not that God doesn’t want to forgive us this sin, it’s more that we refuse to have it forgiven. If Advent teaches us anything, it’s got to be that we all need that baptism of repentance that John the Baptist preached, that we all need to prepare the way of the Lord in our hearts, making straight the paths for his return to us.

    Come, Lord Jesus!

  • Diakonia: An anniversary

    Diakonia: An anniversary

    Before this day is over, I just wanted to reflect that today is the one-year anniversary of my ordination as a transitional deacon. I was ordained to that order on November 4, 2005, on the feast of St. Charles Borromeo at the St. Charles Borromeo Pastoral Center.

    The call to diakonia is a serious one for me. I'm not always perfect at it, and this anniversary really calls me to renew myself in that charism. As the Rite of Ordination says, "May God, who has begun this good work in you, bring it to fulfillment."

    Amen.

  • Tuesday of the 30th Week of Ordinary Time: Be subordinate to one another

    Tuesday of the 30th Week of Ordinary Time: Be subordinate to one another

    Today’s readings

    Well, it would be hard to pick a scarier reading to preach about on Halloween than one that starts out with the emotionally-charged sentence, “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.” It almost makes me want to skip it and preach on the Gospel reading, or even on the Alleluia verse – anything but that reading. But I firmly believe that if we’re going to have that reading, we need to understand it. Certainly it offends our modern sensibilities to hear something about women being subordinate to men. It’s just not done in this society.

    Yet it was done in the society in which St. Paul ministered. So his injunction to wives would hardly have raised an eyebrow. What would have been shocking in St. Paul’s time was the reciprocal injunction to husbands to love their wives as they loved their own bodies. Indeed, St. Paul’s point was not to rile either husbands or wives, but more to promote the living of harmonious family relationships. In that culture, the most harmonious families were those in which the wife was submissive to the husband, and the husband loved his wife. Not only that, they were expecting a very near return of Christ, so he didn’t always think people should be married at all. That’s how it looked then.

    So how would it look now? Today, I think St. Paul would insist that husbands and wives would live as equal partners, showing mutual respect, and living the love of Christ in their relationship. St. Paul would certainly say that men and women should work together to foster families in which God’s love could be shown and made manifest in the world through them. The real point of this reading, we must remember, is that the love of husband and wife echoes the love between Christ and the Church.

    We have to put aside the emotionally charged words that don’t make sense in today’s society, and instead turn to the heart of the message. We must respect one another and promote families in which God’s love can become real in a world which desperately needs to receive it. May we all love one another as Christ loves his bride, the Church.

  • 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Take Courage!

    30th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Take Courage!

    “Take courage, get up, Jesus is calling you.”

    These would be wonderfully comforting words to hear in any situation. Who among us does not wish to be called to Jesus? But as joyful as we are to hear these words in good times, they are incredibly comforting in times of sickness and suffering.

    “Take courage, get up, Jesus is calling you.”

    About four years ago now, just weeks before Christmas, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was frightened, as you can imagine, and we all shared in her grief as she worked through all the details of surgery and treatment. But she came through it relatively well, and we celebrated Christmas with some relief. But just after I returned to the seminary from Christmas break, my sister called to tell me that my father was diagnosed with kidney cancer. It was barely a month later, and we were going through it all over again. He had surgery, and treatment which continues even until now.

    It was a difficult time certainly for my parents, but really for all of our family too. I myself was unable to even pray about it, because I just didn’t know what to say to God any more. I was blessed to be in a seminary community that reached out to me and prayed me through all of it. Fr. Kevin, our dean of formation, even drove out to Loyola in Maywood during Dad’s long stay there to pray with us. It was a difficult time: two illnesses right in a row really tested our faith, as any kind of ongoing suffering will often do. But the Church knows that, and that’s why we have the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. My parents were both anointed by their pastor before their surgery, and it gave them great comfort and strength to go through all that their illness demanded of them: surgery, chemotherapy, and all the related pain and suffering.

    The anointing of the sick is the Church’s way of saying to the sick, “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”

    Illness and suffering can lead a person to a place where faith, now tested, begins to fail, and the sick person can turn away from God and the Church. It can be easy to blame God for suffering, or at least for not delivering us from it. Illness and suffering are so hard to understand. The Church teaches that God does not will our suffering, not as a punishment or our fate or anything else. However, God does permit suffering and sickness and death in this broken world, where things are far from perfect and sin is always at work. God knows our grief when we cry out in pain, when we call to Jesus like Bartimaeus, “Son of David, have pity on me.”

    And so when we are in the midst of serious illness, or weakened by old age, or preparing for surgery because of serious illness, the Church offers us the Anointing of the Sick. The purpose of this great sacrament is to heal our spirits and our minds, and perhaps to heal our bodies too, if God in his providence sees that to be beneficial to our salvation. We should not wait until we are on our death-beds to come to the sacrament, but to ask to receive it whenever we are seriously ill. In the letter of St. James, we are told, “Is anyone among you sick? He should summon the presbyters of the church, and they should pray over him and anoint (him) with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven.”

    At this point, I want to make an editorial comment. So often, in every parish where I’ve been, I have heard people complain that during their time in the hospital, no one came to visit them – not a priest or anyone else. And quite frankly, sometimes priests are guilty of neglecting that incredibly important part of their ministry. I know that I can’t get to the hospital every day, but I go when I can, and I go whenever anyone calls and asks me to go.

    That said, there was a time when we would just know that someone from our parish was in the hospital. Those days are gone. There are two of us here for 3800 families and that makes it hard for us to know everything we’d like to know in order to minister to you best. But there is also a law called the Health Insurance Privacy Protection Act, most often called “HIPPA.” You know about HIPPA if you have been to the doctor or hospital in the last few years, because you are given a brochure about your rights and have to sign a release that says you know them. But HIPPA also affects our right to know that you are in the hospital. And that may be okay, because sometimes when people are in the hospital for something routine, they don’t necessarily want everyone to know. But if you’re in for something serious, or things turn bad, we still might never know that. When you are admitted, you absolutely have to tell them – every time – that you are a St. Raphael parishioner and that you want us to visit. That will at least put you on the list that we get if we come by and make rounds. But if things are really serious, we ask that you have someone from your family call the office and tell us. Fr. Ted and I take this part of our ministry very seriously, and we want to offer you the help of the Church and the Sacraments in your time of need. But we can’t do that if we don’t know you need them. Please spread the word on that. End of editorial!

    The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is not the only way that the Church ministers to the sick. Priests are not the only ones responsible for caring for the sick. The entire community bears responsibility in reaching out to the sick, and their loved ones, in time of need. We all must visit the sick and pray for them, easing their burdens in whatever way we can. Every pot of soup brought to a sick member of our community, every ride to the doctor’s office that we offer them, every card sent to the sick is a special act of charity. To reach out to the sick and encourage them with our prayers is one of the corporal works of mercy.

    When we reach out to the sick as a community, we are saying, “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”

    It comes down to this: We stand near the end of another Church year. This is a good time to ask ourselves what this year has been like for us. Have we heard the Scriptures all year long as just some nice stories, or have we really been changed by them? Is our relationship with Jesus merely academic, or simply relegated to Sunday, or have we really grown in our friendship with the Lord?

    If this Church year has made any difference to us at all, perhaps we will be more willing to seek out the help of the Church in our times of illness and suffering – because we know that Christ longs to reach out to us through the Church in order to carry on his ministry of healing. If we have come closer to Christ this Church year, we should be now be more willing and able to reach out to the sick through simple acts of kindness, and by encouraging them to receive the sacraments, offering to make the arrangements ourselves if need be.

    This Church year we’ve seen Christ over and over again heal the sick and reach out to those in need. Those aren’t meant to be stories we just read or proclaim; they are meant to be an example of how to reach out to our brothers and sisters, encouraging them in the name of the Lord. Because Christ longs to continue his healing ministry in our own day and age, but he needs us to be the agents of that ministry. He needs the clergy to celebrate the sacraments of the sick for those in need. He needs committed lay people to visit the sick and encourage them, reminding them that the community cares for them and seeks their well-being. And he needs the sick to be well-disposed to receive his grace, especially in their time of need.

    Unlike those who rebuked Bartimaeus for calling out to the Son of David, we must be a community that encourages one another in our suffering, and brings the sick among us to the Lord for comfort and healing. This community needs to be a place where the sick can hear those wonderful words of comfort:

    “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”

  • Don’t be afraid of the Light!

    Don’t be afraid of the Light!

    [Homily for our youth reconciliation service.]

    I confessed to the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders from our school on Friday that I used to be afraid of the dark. I asked them and all the adults present how many of them have ever been afraid of the dark, and – no surprise – almost everyone raised their hands. Don't worry, I'm not going to ask all of you to fess up on that and let all your friends know one of your childhood secrets! But I think we can all agree that at some point, most of us have been afraid of the dark.

    When we're in the dark, obviously there is danger. We don't know if there's something we can fall over, or if some other kind of danger is lurking in that darkness. In order to find our way in the dark, we need some source of light to pierce through it all. When I was going to bed when I was little, I used to make my parents leave the door open just a little bit, so that the light from the hall would scatter some of the darkness and some of my fear. For centuries, people navigating through the dark of night would use the light of the moon and the location of the stars to pierce the darkness and lead them safely to their destinations.

    For us Christians, too, we need a light to direct us, a light to scatter the darkness of a world steeped in sin, evil and despair. Many dangers lurk in that kind of darkness for us, and if we don't have a light, we could come to a very frightening end. If we were to admit that we were afraid of this kind of darkness, we'd be taking a step in the right direction.

    And you all know the kind of darkness I mean. Maybe it's the easy availability and lure of drugs or alcohol. Maybe it's the temptation to copy a paper off the internet, or let someone else do our school work for us. Maybe it's the deep desire to go too far in our relationships, or viewing others as mere objects of our passions. Maybe it's the tendency to judge other people by what they wear, where they live, or where they come from. Maybe it's getting caught up in gossip and idle talk, ruining others' reputations. Maybe it's getting wrapped up in ourselves and our own egos and selfishness, and not reaching out to others, or even putting them down. Maybe it's the times we are quick to argue or fight with parents, family or others. All of this darkness can swallow us up and lead us to very dangerous places indeed.

    We need a light to pierce through all of that darkness, if we're ever going to find our way out of it. We began to open up the light at the beginning of our service when we lit the Paschal Candle. That light that stands for Christ, and more importantly, Christ's victory over death through the Resurrection, that light will lead us out of the darkness of our sin. In the Confirmation Interviews I did this past week, many of you picked as a portion of the Gospel you'd like to use in your prayer the brief quote "Don't be afraid; just have faith." Jesus said this to Jairus, the man whose daughter had just died, just before Jesus raised her up. And this is what we want all of you to hear tonight.

    Don't be afraid; just have faith. It's easy for us to think our sins have made us rotten to the core, unworthy of God's love, but that's not true. It's easy to think Jesus would have no more time for us when we've turned away from him time and time again, but that's now how Jesus works. It's easy for us to feel unlovable when we've messed up our lives in so many ways, but God's love is different than that. God's love is enduring, reaching out to us through the darkness of sin and evil, and giving us the light that will lead us out toward God himself.

    Don't be afraid; just have faith. Maybe you haven't been to Confession since your first Confession years ago. Maybe you've forgotten how to do it. If that's true of you, then all of us priests here want to say "welcome back, and do not be afraid." We will help you to make a good Confession; we will help you to open yourself up to receive the light of Christ that will lead you back to God's love.

    Don't be afraid; just have faith. Maybe there's something that you've had on your conscience for a long time now, and you've been afraid to confess it. Maybe you haven't told anyone else about it. Maybe it's something you're confused about. Perhaps you're not even sure it's a sin and you just need to understand the situation better. Maybe you're worried that the priest you go to will think less of you when you confess that sin. Forget all that. Come to one of us and confess it. We've heard a lot of stuff in Confession before and what I can say for myself is that when someone confesses something that has obviously been dragging them down for a long time, I have great admiration for their courage and their desire to make things right with the Lord. Again, we are here to bring you back to Jesus, and if you've come here tonight and don't take advantage of that opportunity, we're going to be heartbroken.

    In a few weeks, Bishop Imesch will be here to anoint you with Chrism and Confirm you. We hope that you will be able to do that with the blazing light of a clear conscience and a pure heart. That's probably not where you are right now, but it can be where you'll be in a few minutes. Don't be afraid; just have faith. Know that Jesus who could raise Jairus's daughter from the dead is the same Jesus who will raise you up from your sins. Know that the light you kindle tonight can become the blaze that takes you out of the dark places you might be in right now. If we were able to admit it, I think we'd all have to say that we are or have been afraid of the dark at some point in our lives. But there is no reason – no reason – that we should be afraid of the light.