Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Ordinary Time

  • The Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    The Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    Today’s readings

    For each of the deadly sins, there is also a life-giving virtue.  Today, our readings focus on humility, which is the life-giving virtue that is the antidote to pride.  Of the seven deadly sins, pride is usually considered the original and the most serious of the sins.  Pride was the sin that caused the angel Lucifer to fall from grace to become the devil.  Pride was the sin that caused our first parents to reach for the forbidden fruit that was beyond them, all in an attempt to know everything God does.  A good examination of conscience would probably convince all of us that we suffer from pride from time to time, and sometimes even pervasively, in our own lives.  It’s what causes us to compare ourselves to others, to try to solve all our problems in ways that don’t include God, to be angry when everything does not go the way we would have it.  Pride, as the saying goes, and as Lucifer found out, doth indeed go before the fall, and when that happens in a person’s life, if it doesn’t break them in a way that  convinces them of their need for God, will very often send them into a tailspin of despair.  Pride is a particularly ugly thing.

    Jesus tells us quite clearly today: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  But not many of us really seek to be humbled, do we?  When we think about humility, we might associate that with a kind of wimpiness.  As you think about humble people do you imagine breast-beating, pious souls who allow themselves to be the doormats for the more aggressive and ambitious? Humble people, we tend to think, don’t buck the system, they just say their prayers and, when they are inflicted with pain and suffering, they just “offer it up.”

    But that’s not how Jesus sees it.  He doesn’t see humble people as wimpy or weak-minded.  He sees them as leaders: “The greatest among you,” he tells us, “must be your servant.”  So do you want to be a leader?  Do you want people to look up to you?  Well, if you do, you need to be a servant of others.  I talked in my homily last week about my friend Mike, who was the mechanic who humbly offered his service to those in need.  This weekend, we mourn the passing of our brother Marty Rock, a long time parishioner here at Notre Dame, who just this past summer, I clearly remember on his hands and knees repairing one of the pews in the church.  And he did that kind of thing all the time in his retirement years.  These were not wimpy men.  These were the kind of servant leaders that our Lord calls us all to be in today’s readings.

    Today, we had our parish day of service.  The place was bustling with around 150 servant leaders who took time out of their day to help spruce up the church grounds and reach out to those in need.  They packed lunches for the homeless, made cookies for PADS, did yard work for some senior parishioners, washed the pews you’re sitting in right now, painted the rectory porch, collected food for the food pantry, and quite a bit more.

    As we are in the middle of our stewardship campaign right now, this is a good time to reflect with humility on the many gifts that we have been given, both individually and as a community.  How can we make a return to God for all that he has given us?  How can we share the love that he pours out on us daily?  The best we can do is to look at our resources and realize, with humility, that they are all gifts from God.  And then pray to know how we can best return a portion of our time, talent, and treasure to God that he alone might be glorified in all things.

    As I said, this attitude is counter-cultural.  We want the places of honor at banquets and wherever we go; that’s just human nature.  We may not wear phylacteries or tassels when we come in to worship, but we are pleased when someone notices how wonderful is something that we have done.  And Jesus would have nothing of all this.

    I don’t really think that Jesus was saying there shouldn’t be people we call “father” or “teacher” or “master.”  I think Jesus knew well that the world needs leaders.  But the message here is that those leaders must be the servants of all.  And so we need to reflect on how willing we have been to be servants.  Have we reached out to the poor in some way?  Have we given adequately of our time, talent and treasure for the mission of the Church?

    We can see how Jesus modeled leadership in his own life.  Indeed, he is not asking us to do something he was unwilling to do himself.  When he said, “For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” he was in a way foreshadowing what would happen to him.  Humbling himself to take up our cross – our cross – he would be exalted in the glory of the resurrection.

    The good news is that glory can be ours too, if we would humble ourselves and lay down our lives for others.  If we stop treating the people in our lives as stepping stones to something better, we might reach something better than we can find on our own.  If we humble ourselves to feed the poor and needy, to reach out to the marginalized and forgotten, we might be more open to the grace our Lord has in store for us in the kingdom of heaven.

    At this Mass, we have been invited to a very important banquet, and we ourselves are completely unworthy of being here.  And I include myself in that statement.  Yet, through grace, through the love of our God, we have been given an exalted place at the banquet table.  Realizing how great the gift is and how unworthy of it we are is a very humbling experience.  In that humility, we are called to go out and feed those who need to know how much God loves them.

    For every one who exalts himself will be humbled,
    but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

  • Monday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The leader of the synagogue had it all wrong, and he of all people should have known what was right.  God always intended the Sabbath day to be a day of rest, yes, but also of healing.  There is no way that we can rest if we are in need of healing.  The woman in the story was plagued by a demon that kept her bent over for eighteen years.  Some translations of this passage say that she was “bent double.”  So she wasn’t just slouched over or bent part way, but more like this, bent in half, for eighteen years!  For eighteen years she never had a moment’s rest from this demon.

    We find great healing when we rest, and so the healing of a person who had been plagued for so long by a demon that she was bent over double from the weight of it, that healing had every right to take place on the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath Day of rest.  Who are we to decide when someone should be healed?  That grace comes from God, and the healing comes on his timetable, not ours.  The Sabbath has come and gone for us this week, but as we head into the workweek this day, it would be wonderful if we could take a moment to plan for the coming Sabbath day of rest.  We too are offered healing if we would rest in the Lord.

  • The Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Time, Talent and Treasure

    The Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Time, Talent and Treasure

    Today’s readings

    Mike was one of my favorite people in the world.  He owned the service station where my family had, and still has, our cars repaired and maintained ever since we first moved out to the suburbs, almost forty years ago now.  Dad used to joke that with all the cars we brought in there over the years, we probably had ownership in at least the driveway by now.  Mike was the kind of guy who, if you brought your car in for a tune-up, would call you and say, “your car doesn’t really need a tune-up yet, so I’ll just change the oil and a couple of the spark plugs and you’ll be fine.”  He was honest and did great work, and it seemed like everyone knew him.  He taught that to a kid who came to work for him when he was just sixteen.  When Mike retired five years or so ago, Ted took over for him and runs the business just the way Mike taught him.

    Mike was a regular at the 7am Mass on Sunday, and after his retirement was a pretty regular daily Mass-goer.  The church would sometimes ask him to help a person in need with car repairs.  This he did gladly; he was always ready to serve.  A couple of years ago, when Mike died, I took Mom to his wake.  It took us an hour and a half to get in to see him and his family, and it was like that all night long.  His funeral packed the parish church, and eight of us priests concelebrated the Mass.  Mike left his mark on our community in incredible ways, and nobody ever forgot it.

    Today’s gospel reading speaks to us about what may be the hallmark of Christian life: love of God and love of neighbor.  This two-pronged approach to loving is what life is all about for us, it is, in fact, the way we are all called to live the Gospel.  The scholar of the law is testing Jesus to see if he can come up with a way to discredit him.  But Jesus’ answer is one that the scholar can’t take issue with.  There were over six hundred major and minor precepts in the Jewish law, but any scholar worth his salt knew that they all boiled down to love.  In fact, the first of the laws that Jesus quoted, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind and soul…” was once that so many students of the law had memorized, so this was not new ground for them.  What was new was putting the love of neighbor parallel to that law.

    Today we begin our parish’s annual time, talent and treasure campaign for the strength of our parish.  This is the time when we parishioners of Notre Dame renew in our minds and in our hearts that love of God and love of neighbor are the first priority in our lives.  God is the One who gives us everything that we have and makes us everything that we are.  It is our special task in this life to use what we have been given and who we are and have become to give honor and glory to God.  Worship and prayer is the way that we come to love God.  Service and generosity are the ways that we show it.  That is the way of stewardship; that is the way of the Christian life.

    In a couple of weeks, our Finance Council will give you details about our parish’s financial condition; you can also read about that in this week’s parish bulletin.  So today, I would just like to give some highlights.  We all understand that it takes money to run an organization.  Gifts received through the Sunday collection not only help with the utilities and day-to-day operations of the parish, but they also provide resources to continue to build and strengthen our many parish ministries and programs.

    The budget for the fiscal year that will end on June 30, 2012 is $1.46 million.  This is a four percent decrease from the prior fiscal year.  What I hope you take away from this news is the following:  First, we are working hard to be financially sound and making decisions that make the best use of the dollars entrusted to the parish.  Second, we are forced to make cuts in our budget because we had a shortfall last year of about $91,000.  The only way we can fulfill our parish financial needs is with a commitment from everyone.  If we all do our part, we will be successful.

    Some ask how much they should give.  The truth is that only you and your family can decide that; it looks different for every household.  I just ask that you prayerfully reflect on the blessings you have received and consider a meaningful increase.  If you have not participated in offertory giving, I ask you to prayerfully consider an investment of the salary you earn during the first hour of your work week.  Some people find that first hour on Monday morning to be challenging and difficult; wouldn’t it be great to have the motivation of offering that time to the Lord in gratitude for your many blessings?  Whatever you decide, I will not be asking you to return a commitment form this year.  We want to make things easier and trust that you will respond with great love.  So I just ask that you simply increase your offering as soon as you are able.

    I also ask that all of you: adults, seniors, children, youth and young adults, all of you consider a meaningful contribution of your time and talent.  There are many wonderful ministries in our parish, and all of them would welcome some fresh blood and new energy.  We are in need of people to greet other people as they come in to Mass.  We can always use help with our religious education and youth ministry programs.  We are trying to revitalize our parish council and worship commission, and we could use people who love the Church to be part of those groups.  Our music ministry could always use more voices and instruments to glorify God in song.  If you are a couple who loves your marriage, we could use your passion to mentor engaged couples.  I’d like to start a health care ministry to help people monitor their blood pressure and learn how to take care of themselves, and occasionally look in on a sick parishioner to make sure their needs are being met.  And that’s just to name a few.

    Our parish day of service is next Saturday.  This is a wonderful way to try some service with a limited time commitment, especially if you are not sure how God is calling you to serve.  Please stop in the narthex after Mass to sign up for one or more activities, and don’t forget to sign up to come to the dinner after the 5:00 Mass.  Tomorrow/today we’ll also hear from the Invisible Children and learn how we can reach out to those hurting across the globe.  Our love for God and neighbor can make a difference right here in Clarendon Hills and half way around the world.  Love has no limits!

    I think that my friend Mike understood quite well why Jesus put love of God and love of neighbor at the top of those six hundred or so Jewish laws.  He knew the joy that came from being connected to a loving God, and made it his top priority to share that love with others any way he could.  Small acts, great faith, awesome generosity.  This is what it takes for the Church to continue to show God’s love to others.  My prayer is that we will all take time to reflect this week on how we can love God and our neighbor by generously returning a portion of our time, talent and treasure that God might be glorified in all things.  Thank you all for all that you do to make our parish as great as it is.  God bless you.

  • Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We just finished hearing about the challenges and ministry of Jonah this past week.  Jonah, called to preach repentance to the Ninevites, finds that he would rather not, and so attempts to get away from God.  That, of course, doesn’t work because there is no where that God is not, so he ends up in the belly of a big fish for three days and nights, and is eventually disgorged in Nineveh to do the work he was called to do.  This he does, begrudgingly, and the people of Nineveh repent, to the praise and glory of God.

    And today we hear that no sign will be given to the people of Jesus’ time except this sign of Jonah.  And that is true.  Jesus is called to preach repentance just like Jonah was, although, praise God, he does it willingly.  Jesus too will be covered over for three days and three nights, but this time in the tomb and not a fish.  He then is disgorged in the glory of the Resurrection to give the way to repentance, which some have done, to the praise and glory of God.  This is the only sign we need.

    But Jesus berates the people because while the evil people of Nineveh repented, the Jews of Jesus’ day not so much.  The people of Nineveh didn’t have anything near as  great a prophet as Jesus is, and they repented, but the people of Jesus’ time did not.  And so history and eternity will be kinder to the Ninevites than to these people.

    The Psalmist today sings that the Lord has made known his salvation.  This he has done, to the Ninevites, to the people of Jesus’ time, and to us.  Today we pray for the softening of our hearts so that we might repent of our wickedness in the way that the Ninevites did, and so have eternal life.

  • The Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I love it when the Gospel has a curious story in it because it’s fun then to peel back the layers of the story, kind of like an onion, and get at what’s inside.  Today’s Gospel story is just like that.

    When our modern ears hear this parable, there are surely things that seem odd about it, aren’t there?  First of all, as the wedding banquet is finished, the guests have to be summoned to the feast.  But in those days, they probably had received a formal invitation previously, and then had to be let know when the feast was ready.  But then we come to this very curious issue of the invited guests not wishing to attend.  What could possibly be keeping them away.  Even if they weren’t thrilled by the invitation and honored to attend, you’d think they would show up anyway because of who it is that is inviting them.  You would think they would want to keep the king happy.

    But they don’t respond that way, and so now the banquet is ready and the guests are well, unavailable shall we say…  So the king sends the messengers out to all the public places in order to invite whomever they find.  And who are they going to find?  Well, probably pretty much what you’d expect: peddlers, butchers, beggars, prostitutes, tax collectors, shop owners and shop lifters, the physically impaired and sick … in short, not the sort of people you’d expect to find at a king’s wedding banquet.

    So, to me, it’s not all that shocking that one of them is not appropriately dressed for the banquet.  What is shocking is that the rest of them are, right?  Some biblical scholars have suggested that perhaps the king, knowing who was going to show up, may have provided appropriate attire, and that one person refused to put it on.  We don’t know if that’s the case but if it were true, we could all understand the king throwing that person out.

    So what is this story really about?  Putting the parable in context, the banquet is the kingdom of God.  The distinguished invited guests are the people to whom Jesus addressed the parable: the chief priests and the elders of the people.  These have all rejected the invitation numerous times, and would now make that rejection complete by murdering the messenger, the king’s son, Christ Jesus.  Because of this, God would take the kingdom from them, letting them go on to their destruction, and offer the kingdom to everyone that would come, possibly indicating the Gentiles, but certainly including everyone whose way of life would have been looked down upon by the chief priests and elders: prostitutes, criminals, beggars, the blind and lame.  All of these would be ushered in to the banquet, being given the new beautiful wedding garment which is baptism, of course, and treated to a wonderful banquet, which is the Eucharist.  Those who further reject the king by refusing to don that pristine garment may indeed be cast out, but to everyone who accepts the grace given them, a sumptuous banquet awaits.

    So guess who are the beggars, prostitutes, criminals, blind and lame?  If you’re thinking they are you and me, well, now you’re beginning to understand what Jesus is getting at.  Our sinfulness leaves us impoverished, and hardly worthy to attend the Banquet of the Lord.  It would only be just for our God to leave us off the invitation list.  But our God will do no such thing.  He washes us in the waters of baptism, brings us to the Banquet, and feeds us beyond our wildest imaginings

    Today, Father Steve and I are continuing to unpack the new translation of the Mass which I think by now you probably know we are going to begin using on the first Sunday of Advent, which is November 27.  We were going to talk about the preface dialogue and the preface, but today’s readings are going to take us to a slightly different place.  So I have written about the preface dialogue in today’s bulletin.  If you want to know why we will be saying “and with your spirit” instead of “and also with you,” then be sure to check that column out.

    Today we’ll talk about some of the prayers that come just before the preface, and some of these are prayers you don’t ever get to hear, because the priest is to say them in a low voice, and they are usually covered by the Offertory hymn.  These prayers are changing, too, and so you may notice, for a while, that we have to look at the book to say them, rather than by memory as we are able right now.

    After the priest receives the bread and wine from those bringing forward the gifts, he offers them at the altar.  The prayers after that are the ones you hardly get to hear.  Having finished the offering, the priest bows profoundly, that is, from the waist, and prays:

    With humble spirit and contrite heart
    may we be accepted by you, O Lord,
    and may our sacrifice in your sight this day
    be pleasing to you, Lord God.

    Which is a quote from the book of the prophet Daniel.  The priest then turns to the servers and they wash his hands as he prays:

    Wash me, O Lord, from my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

    I thought about these two brief prayers in connection with today’s Gospel reading.  We approach the Lord with “humble spirit and contrite heart” which is exactly what the chief priests and elders did not do in the Gospel.  They thought that they had heaven in their grasp and that no one else did.  They felt like they had no need of repentance, no sins for which to be sorry.

    We can’t be like them, or we’ll never be able to come to the banquet.  The prayers of the Church should always serve to remind us of who we are and why we are here.  We were meant for the banquet, but we weren’t dressed for it.  We have been given that beautiful garment at baptism, which gives us the right to sit at the table.  We just have to be open to receiving it.  We receive it knowing full well that we are in need of forgiveness and mercy.  The most important sacrifice we offer at Mass is always the sacrifice of our lives, of our hearts, giving ourselves completely to our God who gives us everything.  And in return, he gives us everything back.

    We are blessed to be able to come to the Supper of the Lamb.  And in the moments during the offering of the gifts, maybe we can take time to be aware of offering ourselves and our hearts, coming before the Lord with humble spirits and contrite hearts.

  • Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever been sure of the Lord’s call in your life and it just terrified you?  I have.  And for those of us who have been in this position, we can perhaps understand Jonah’s reaction in today’s first reading.  He had been called by the Lord to preach to the people in Nineveh.  Now the people of Nineveh were unspeakably evil and had long been persecuting the people of Israel.  And so for Jonah, this call was a bit like being called to preach to the people of Al-Quaida or something like that.  Not only did Jonah fear for his life in going to them, but, quite frankly, he also could not possibly care less if they repented and God had mercy on them.

    But it’s a little hard to run away from God.  He always catches up with you sooner or later.  If that weren’t true, I wouldn’t be standing here today, I can tell you that!  It would certainly be easier for us Jonahs if we would just give in to God’s will at the beginning and not have to do all this running.  But sometimes the human heart just isn’t ready for radical change.

    That was true of the scholar of the law in today’s Gospel reading.  I think he’s more testing Jesus here than really wanting to be converted, but he can’t help but get caught up in Jesus’ teaching.  The question is, is he ready to “go and do likewise?”  The reading ends before he can make that decision, but the implication is that it will be very hard for him to really love his neighbor in the same way that the good Samaritan loved the robbery victim.

    And so those of us who look a lot like Jonah or the scholar of the law today, need to pray for softening of our hardened hearts.  Will it take three days in the belly of a big fish for us to finally give in to God’s will?  Or can we just give in and trust?

  • Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time: Respect Life Sunday

    Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time: Respect Life Sunday

    Today’s readings

    Today, I’d like to share a bit more of a sermon than a homily, reflecting more on a specific topic than on the readings themselves.  I do this because today is Respect Life Sunday, and I think it’s important to be aware of what the Church teaches on this very important issue.

    I would begin this reflection with these beautiful words from today’s second reading: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”  We can be so distracted by things that seem good that really aren’t all that good, things that seem important that are really just sweating the small stuff, and God would have us look instead at what is lovely, gracious, excellent and worthy of praise – in short, God would have us reflect on what he has created and know that this is the greatest gift, the most important thing we could be busied about.

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us: “The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists, it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.” (CCC, 27; cf. Gaudium et Spes 19.1)  Life is the greatest good we have because it is God who created life, every life, from the tiniest embryo to the elderly person in the final stages of life.  We reverence life, respect life, reaffirm life, because human life is the best thing there is on this whole big earth, the most magnificent of all God’s wonderful creation.

    The basis for the movement to respect life, of course, is the fifth commandment: You shall not kill (Ex 20:13). The Catechism is very specific: “Scripture specifies the prohibition contained in the fifth commandment: ‘Do not slay the innocent and the righteous.’ The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. The law forbidding it is universally valid: it obliges each and everyone, always and everywhere.” (CCC 2261) And that would seem simple enough, don’t you think? God said not to kill another human being, and so refraining from doing so reverences his gift of life and obeys his commandment.

    But life isn’t that simple. Life is a deeply complex issue involving a right to life, a quality of life, a reverence for life, and sanctity of life. Jesus himself stirs up the waters of complexity with his own take on the commandment. In Matthew’s Gospel, he tells us: “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill: and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.” (Mt 5:21-22)

    Our Savior’s instruction on life calls us to make an examination of conscience. We may proclaim ourselves as exemplary witnesses to the sanctity of life because we have never murdered anyone nor participated in an abortion. And those are good starts. But if we let it stop there, then the words of Jesus that I just quoted are our condemnation. The church teaches that true respect for life revolves around faithfulness to the spirit of the fifth commandment. The Catechism tells us, “Every human life, from the moment of conception until death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God.” (CCC 2319)

    The issues that present themselves under the heading of respecting life are many.  We are called to put aside racism and stereotyping, to reach out to the homeless, to advocate for health care for all people, to put an end – once and for all! – to abortion, capital punishment, war, terrorism and genocide, to recognize that euthanasia is not the same thing as mercy, to promote the strength of family life and the education of all young people, to provide food for those who hunger.  We Catholics must accept the totality of the Church’s teaching of respecting life, or we can never hope for a world that is beautiful or grace filled.

    We pro-life Catholics are called to go above and beyond what seems comfortable in order to defend life.  And so we must all ask ourselves, are there lives that we have not treated as sacred? Have we harbored anger in our hearts against our brothers and sisters? What have we done to fight poverty, hunger and homelessness? Have we insisted that those who govern us treat war as morally repugnant, only to be used in the most severe cases and as a last resort? Have we engaged in stereotypes or harbored thoughts based on racism and prejudice? Have we insisted that legislators ban the production of human fetuses to be used as biological material? Have we been horrified that a nation with our resources still regularly executes its citizens as a way of fighting crime? Have we done everything in our power to be certain that no young woman should ever have to think of abortion as her only choice when she is facing hard times? Have we given adequate care to elder members of our family and our society so that they would not face their final days in loneliness, nor come to an early death for the sake of convenience? Have we avoided scandal so as to prevent others from being led to evil? Have we earnestly petitioned our legislators to make adequate health care available for all people?

    Every one of these issues is a life issue, brothers and sisters, and we who would be known to be respecters of life are on for every single one of them, bar none. The Church’s teaching on the right to life is not something that we can approach like we’re in a cafeteria. We must accept and reverence and live the whole of the teaching, or be held liable for every breach of it. If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem. On this day of prayer for the sanctity of life, our prayer must perhaps be first for ourselves that we might live the Church’s teaching with absolute integrity in every moment of our lives.

    Our God has known us and formed us from our mother’s womb, from that very first moment of conception. Our God will be with us and will sustain us until our dying breath. In life and in death, we belong to the Lord … Every part of our lives belongs to the Lord. Our call is a clear one. We must constantly and consistently bear witness to the sanctity of life at every stage. We must be people who lead the world to a whole new reality, in the presence of the One who has made all things new.

  • Monday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    God’s salvation is radical.  Zechariah, in the first reading, is speaking to the broken Israel.  On account of its sins, it was taken into captivity and exiled to Babylon.  The fate they suffered was well deserved.  Generations had rejected the Lord’s covenant, had instead turned to the pagan gods worshipped by the people in the surrounding areas.  They had profaned the temple with the worship of foreign gods and every one of their kings led them to evil upon evil.  So why would the Lord ever care about them again?  Couldn’t he just throw up his hands and say, “I’m done”?

    But he doesn’t say that.  He’s not done.  He fully intends to restore the people, gathering them from the land of the rising sun and from the land of the setting sun, that is from the east to the west, and from the beginning to the end, everywhere over all the earth, in every time and place, and gather them back to himself, restoring Israel and making Jerusalem a holy city once again.

    All of this is a metaphor for our own need for salvation, of course.  How often have we as a culture rejected God’s covenant?  How much have we as individuals sinned?  How much have our leaders led us to the worship of foreign gods, like wealth and power?  We too have found evil upon evil and have rejected our God.  We would well deserve it if he threw up his hands in our midst and said to us, “I’m done.”

    But he doesn’t say that.  He’s not done.  He fully intends to gather us from wherever we have wandered, whenever we have fallen away.  No place is beyond the reach of our God who longs to bring us back to himself.  There is no place that we can go that is beyond God’s love.  It is never too late to experience salvation.  Nothing is impossible for our God who made us for himself.

    God’s salvation is radical.

  • The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time: The new translation of the Creed

    The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time: The new translation of the Creed

    Over the next several weeks, Father Steve, our deacons, and I will be preaching about the upcoming changes to the Mass.  As you know, we will begin using a new translation of the Roman Missal beginning the first Sunday of Advent this year, which is November 27.  We’ve already begun teaching and using the newly-translated musical parts of the Mass, but we can’t begin using the new prayers until November 27.  We can, however, teach them, which is what we’re doing now.  Over the past several months, Deacon Al and I have been writing about the changes to the Missal in our bulletin columns.

    Today, Father Steve and I are both preaching about the Creed, which we proclaim as an assembly every Sunday and Solemnity.  The Creed is one of the symbols of our unity as a people.  It’s appropriate that before we come to the Altar together to receive Holy Communion, the most important manifestation of our unity, we take time to proclaim as one body what we believe to be the Truth.  And so, following the exhortations from Holy Scripture, we rise and proclaim our belief in one God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, and our belief in the Church and all that She professes to be true.

    Now, like many of the prayers that have become so familiar to us, I think we can find ourselves reciting the Creed without really thinking about it.  How often have we gotten to the end of the prayer, only to think that we don’t remember praying much of it as we went along?  I know that’s happened to me.  This is too bad, because the Creed didn’t just fall out of the sky: it was crafted over many years with many modifications and tweaks to get the language right.  Many arguments happened over the wording in ancient days, and some even gave their lives to defend the faith as professed in the Creed.  To this day, there are a few words in the Creed, with regard to the Holy Spirit, that remain a point of contention between us and the Orthodox Churches of the East.

    The full name of the Creed that we pray is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.  This is in reference to the belief that the Creed was crafted, or at least accepted by the Church Council of Nicaea in the year 325 and the Council of Constantinople in the year 381.  At these Councils, the Council Fathers attempted to finalize the wording of the Creed, which had been argued about for many years, in order to put the controversies to rest.

    So maybe it’s important enough for us to take a little more care in the way that we pray the Creed.  And rather than beat ourselves up over the way we may have prayed it in the past, maybe we can make a resolution as this new translation comes to us, to pray it more carefully, as carefully as we are able.  Toward that end, I’d like to take a little time today to look at the new translation of the Creed and point out what’s new and explain that a little bit.  So if you take out your Gather books, and open up to the front where we have the new Order of Mass inserted, I would ask you to turn to page ____.  Let’s look at the Creed there together.  I want to point out four new things in the creed.

    The first is right at the beginning.  Instead of saying, “of all that is seen and unseen,” we will be praying “of all things visible and invisible.”  So the issue here is that there is a difference between something being unseen and invisible.  Let me explain it to you this way:  you probably cannot see your house from here, so it is unseen.  But I think you’d agree that your house is certainly not invisible!  On the other hand, there certainly are some things that are invisible.  When I discussed this with the third graders last year, they came up with a list, including things like air, which is invisible, but certainly present.  What we are saying is that God created all things: seen, unseen, visible and invisible.

    The second issue is a bit tougher, because it’s a word we don’t use in other contexts.  And that comes about a quarter of the way down with the word “consubstantial.”  The words “consubstantial with the Father” replace the words “one in being with the Father.”  This wording is more in keeping with the Latin text of the Creed, and a more accurate translation.  “Consubstantial” is a translation of the Latin consubstantialem, which is a translation of the Greek word homoousion.  Think of homoousion as similar to homogenous, because that is the root word.  Basically it means “of the same substance.”  So what we’re saying is that the Father and the Son are of the same substance of each other.  That’s similar to “one in being,” but I think it goes a little deeper.  There is a sense in which all of us are “one in being” with each other, but we certainly are not of the same substance of each other, certainly not one and the same as each other.  But the Father and the Son are that closely related; they are not Father and Son in the same way as humans are, they are actually of the same substance!

    The next difference is about five lines down.  It says that Jesus “was incarnate of the Virgin Mary.”  This replaces the words saying that “he was born of the Virgin Mary…”  “Incarnate” means a little something deeper than just “born.”  It means taking flesh, being embodied in a human form.  Of course, this is what happens to our souls when we are born, but for Jesus, something deeper happened.  He wasn’t just born in a human way, he lowered himself, and became one of us.  It happened in a supernatural form of conception which was accomplished through the grace of the Holy Spirit.  His incarnation was so much more than a human birth.

    The last difference involves a word which might seem to be used in an odd sense, or in a sense we’re not used to.  That comes almost all the way down to the end, about four lines up.  It says, “I confess one baptism…” instead of “We acknowledge one baptism…”  Now when we say the word “confess,” it usually means we are about to tell the priest our sins, doesn’t it?  But the original sense of the word “confess” was something along the lines of “to give witness to.”  The profession of faith used to be called a confession of faith.  And when we “confess” in the Sacrament of Penance, we are giving witness to the goodness and mercy of God and in light of that, reflecting on how we have fallen short.  So the confession has more to do with who God is than what we have done.  So when we “confess one baptism,” we are giving witness to the fact that one baptism is enough: it binds us to Christ who in his mercy calls us to redemption and eternal life.

    So that’s what’s new in the new translation of the Creed.  One of the more obvious changes, though is that instead of saying “we believe,” we will be saying, “I believe.”  In this way, I think we can see that we are not speaking for the others around us, but with all of us speaking together, we can hear what “we believe” and can truly become one body, one spirit in Christ.

  • Monday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I love the little line in the gospel reading that says, “Take care, then, how you hear.”  It almost seems like a throw-away line, but really, I believe, it’s an essential instruction from Jesus.  We disciples are to take care how we hear.  Not what we hear, although that’s probably part of it, but how we hear.

    So how do we hear the words of the gospel?  Do we hear them as something that seems nice but doesn’t really affect us?  Do those words fly over our heads or go in one ear and out the other?  Do we hear them at Mass, and then live however it is we want, seeming to ignore what we’ve just heard?

    Or, do we really hear the Word of the Lord?  Does the gospel get into our head and our heart and stir things up?  Do the words of Jesus get our blood flowing and our imaginations racing?  Does hearing the gospel make us long for a better place, a more peaceful kingdom, a just society?

    Psalm 19 says, “your words, Lord, are spirit and life.”  We believe that the Word proclaimed is the actual presence of Christ.  We are not just hearing words about Jesus, we are hearing Jesus, we are experiencing the presence of God right here, right now, among us.  If we open the door of our ears and our hearts, we might just find God doing something amazing in us and through us.

    Take care, then, how you hear.