Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • Monday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “In you, O Lord, I have found my peace.”

    I believe that one of the goals of all our lives is to find true peace.  And unfortunately, we spend time looking for that peace in too many of the wrong places.  We might think we can find peace in wealth, or status, or whatever, but these things tend to lose their luster rather quickly, and the pursuit of them often stirs up something far less than peaceful in our lives.

    But the Psalmist tells us exactly what is going to bring us that true peace that we look for, or rather, who is going to bring it.  And that is the Lord.  We could go after great things, looking for something beyond what God wants for us.  Or we could go after things too sublime, things that require more from us than what we can give, but the Psalmist refuses to go there.  Rather, he says, he has stilled and quieted his soul like a child on its mother’s lap.

    True peace is a product of quieting one’s soul and finding God’s will.  Reaching for things that don’t concern us, trying to get involved in things that are not what God wants for us, letting ourselves get dragged into sin, those things will never bring us peace.  Only in the Lord is our hope and our peace.

  • Monday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Loose lips sink ships.”  That’s a saying that I learned somewhere in my early elementary school life.  I don’t think I fully understood what it meant at the time – all I appreciated was that it told me to keep my mouth shut.  But as I’ve lived and matured, I know very well that frivolous talk can be hurtful and even dangerous.  Our gift of speech is an important one: through it we communicate with each other and it is the basis of our being able to work and live in society.  But using speech in the wrong way can cause a whole host of problems.  We’ve all probably been in the midst of that in some way at some time in our lives.

    And so Saint Paul’s words to the Ephesians are probably good ones for us to hear today:

    Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned among you,
    as is fitting among holy ones,
    no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk, which is out of place…

    All of us, who are called to be God’s holy ones, have a very important responsibility to use our gift of speech wisely.  We must not engage in idle, frivolous, or even obscene speech, because this is out of place for those who follow the Lord.  But what I think is so important is what Saint Paul says needs to be on the lips of God’s holy ones – and that is thanksgiving.

    Big deal, right, of course we can speak about thanksgiving.  But the Greek word that is translated “thanksgiving” here is eucharistia – and we all know what that means.  The Eucharist – which is our thanksgiving – is always to be on our lips.  So that’s the lens by which we ought always to view the words we say: are our words Eucharist?  Are they thanksgiving?  Because those are the only words we need to be saying.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Tme

    Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Tme

    Today’s readings

    Some people would say that Jesus was a peaceful man.  Saying that is really misunderstanding Jesus and who he was.  Because peace wasn’t necessarily his primary interest, at least not peace in the way that we often see it.

    Because sometimes I think we misread what peace is supposed to be.  We might sell peace short and settle for the absence of conflict.  Or even worse, we may settle for peace at any price, swallowing our disagreements and never coming close to true healing in our relationships.  There are families in which never a harsh word would be said, but the underlying hostility is palpable.  There are workplaces in which there are never any arguments, but there is also never any cooperative work done.  Sometimes there are relationships where fear replaces love and respect.

    And this is not the kind of peace that Jesus would bring us today.  This is the One who came to set the earth on fire, and his methods for bringing us to peace might well cause division in the here and now.  But there is never any resurrection if we don’t have the cross.  And so there will never be any peace if we don’t confront what’s really happening.  The fire may need to be red hot and blazing if there is ever to be any regrowth.

    And so today we have to stop settling for a peace that really isn’t so peaceful.  We may just have to have that hard conversation we’ve been trying to avoid.  Of course, we do it with love for our brothers and sisters, but out of love we also don’t avoid it. We have to work for true healing in all of our relationships.  May all of our divisions lead to real peace!

  • Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It has often struck me that, the economy of our nation and the world being as precarious as it is, that being rich in what matters to God is more important than ever.  With all the bad financial news out there, who among us hasn’t had the sinking feeling that this world’s riches are nothing at time but straw?

    So you’d think that in this time of uncertainty, and on the brink of a pivotal election, people would be coming to Church, reconnecting with their God, and drawing strength from their faith, building up those riches that are from God.  But you’d be wrong.  All you have to do is look around and see that Mass attendance is nothing like it was in the past, that there are too many empty spaces in the pews.

    In some ways it strikes me that we are quickly losing our faith, or even worse, that we as a society are becoming indifferent to faith, seeing it as irrelevant or ultimately meaningless.  At a time in our history when we should be returning to God in droves, people instead are staying away in droves.

    And it’s hard to live through uncertain times without faith.  How can we ride the ups and downs of life with anything close to tranquility without the rock that is our faith?  Instead we as a society seem content to look to the government to save us, while we continue to practice unprecedented greed.  And to all of that, God warns us: we may just

  • Saturday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time: Day of Service

    Saturday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time: Day of Service

    Today’s readings

    Our Gospel today warns us of coming persecutions.  At some point, we will all be dragged before synagogues and rulers and authorities of some sort, and we will have to give an account of what we believe.  Now for us, it’s not going to be so literal, obviously.  But we may have to give an account of why we believe in Christ or why we follow a religion that inconveniently speaks out against threats to life and family.  We may have to tell others why it is that we would give up some of the first non-rainy day in the last few to sort food for the food pantry or dig a trench outside the church or clean the pews.

    Living our faith is always going to cost us something and that something is likely to be status or popularity, or at least the wondering glance from people who aren’t ready to accept the faith.  But the volumes that we speak by living our faith anyway might just lay the groundwork for conversion and become a conduit of grace.  We are told that we don’t have to hammer out all the words we want to say; that the Holy Spirit will give us eloquence that we can only dream of.  And it’s true, if we trust God, if we live our faith when it’s popular or unpopular, we will have the Spirit and the words.  God only knows what can be accomplished in those grace-filled moments!

  • Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time [B]: Time, Talent & Treasure

    Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time [B]: Time, Talent & Treasure

    Today’s readings

    I’m speaking at all the Masses this weekend, and I know what you’re thinking: here comes the money talk.  All he ever does is talk about money.  I hope you don’t really feel that way, because we do try to keep all the money talk to a minimum.  We do, however, want to keep you in the loop and so on occasion you’ve had updates from Tim French, the chairman of our Finance, Facilities and Administration Commission, and most recently from Scott Marshall, the President of our Parish Council.  I am grateful to both of them for the work they and their peers have done in keeping us on point financially, and helping to steer our parish in the right direction.  As for me, this is the only time I will be coming to you to talk about money, except for the Diocesan Appeal in the winter.

    But I’m not even just talking to you about money today, because quite honestly, I am asking for something a whole lot more valuable.  And that’s in the spirit of today’s Gospel.  Jesus wasn’t as interested in the rich young man’s money as he was in his heart and soul.  And he asked for that in exchange for something much more valuable than anything we or the rich young man possess: eternal life.  That, after all, was what the rich young man wanted, right?  I mean, he asks Jesus at the beginning of the Gospel reading what he has to do to inherit it.  And it’s actually a good question.  I don’t know if it’s because we take salvation for granted or if we can’t really see past the next big thing happening in our crazy lives, but I sometimes think we’re not as zealous about inheriting eternal life as we should be.  So we could all – myself included, by the way – learn a little something from the rich young man’s question.

    So today I’m asking you to give up whatever it is that may be holding you back – riches, status, anything – and go all in for the prize of eternal life.  Just like Jesus, I am asking for your hearts and souls, so that you might have the great gift of eternal happiness in the life to come.

    So what does that even mean?  What does it look like?  To get there, I want to focus on the three traditional areas of time, talent and treasure.  Treasure we’ve been talking about for a little while now.  Scott gave you an overview of the parish’s position a couple of weeks ago, and the financial report was in the bulletin.  If you missed that, it is also published on our parish website.  The budget this year calls for a 3% increase in operating expenses.  That amount covers anticipated energy and environmental costs, keeping our buildings in good repair, salaries and benefits for all of our parish and school employees, and the expenses of our parish ministries.   Your generosity helps us to reach out to those in need, touch the lives of those who are hurting, and teach the faith to people of all ages.

    I am appointing a buildings and grounds committee to work with our Finance, Facilities and Administration Commission.  Their task will be to assess the needs of our parish facilities.  They will help us to plan for repair and replacement of various resources of our campus.  Our goal would be to have a surplus in the budget each year so that we can put money aside for those expenses, something we have not been able to do in recent years.  Another goal would be to finish the basement project in order to provide space for our teens, a good facility for our food pantry, rehearsal space for our choirs, and meeting space for all our ministries.  That is something that was part of the original vision of our new facility, something we have not as yet been able to accomplish, although we have been saving money toward it.

    Over the past year, we have replaced air conditioning compressors in the parish offices and in the school gym, have completed a large upgrade on our parish’s computer network and the school’s computer lab; we have repaired and maintained the parking lot with the goal of keeping it intact for at least another decade, and many other smaller projects.  Your generosity and the hard work of staff and parishioners alike have made all this possible.

    But there is so much more to do, and I ask that each of you discern how you can help us to meet our increased budget needs through your offertory support.  While we all have different resources to draw from and commitments to fulfill, we can each give something in support of our parish family.  We are doing our best to use modern conveniences to assist parishioners in their giving.  We have electronic giving options to help meet the demands presented by the fast pace of our lives.  Details are in our bulletin and in the letter from me which you should have already received, or will receive in the next few days.  You can always give online at givetond.org.

    So now I want to ask for something more, and that is your time and talent.  One of the greatest strengths of Notre Dame Parish is the outreach to those in need.  We are blessed with volunteers and staff who minister tirelessly to the hungry, the homeless and those who are struggling with life challenges.  We also have strong programs in our school and religious education programs, youth ministry and Confirmation preparation, and adult education and RCIA programs.  In addition we are always trying to build on our strong worship, improving how we come together to celebrate the Eucharist, and to make our time worshipping our God a top priority.  We also make time to come together at wonderful events like the Oktoberfest, the Dinner Dance, the Italian Dinner and Saint Patrick’s Day Party – just to name a few.

    But as many wonderful volunteers as we have to make all of that happen, we could always, always use way more.  Every one of our volunteers who head up our ministries would tell you that they could use more help.  And some of our volunteers are getting up there in age and cannot do what they used to do.  We’ve recently buried good people like Marty Rock and Eileen Thome who served our parish so faithfully for many, many years.  Who is going to take their place?  And so many of our volunteers are pulled in all sorts of directions, some of them taking on what is quite honestly too much.

    This is our community; it’s not an auditorium where we come to see a show or a shop where we go to receive a service.  This is a family where everyone needs to take part to make the community vibrant and active.  If you’re not already active in ministry around here, I am asking you to prayerfully discern how God is calling you to serve.  What are your special talents?  What are the activities here that energize you or stir up your passion?  Those are ways that you can serve, and be part of the mission of our parish.

    In all honesty, we have not been good about soliciting volunteers in past years.  We are looking for new ways to do that and will roll some things out in the next year.  But in the mean time, there are three ways you can help.  First, you can respond prayerfully to the questions I just asked, and if you discern a talent or passion that you’d like to share, let us know.  If you don’t know who to contact, tell me or Father Steve and we will put you in touch with the right person.  Second, watch the bulletin and our electronic newsletter for volunteer opportunities.  And third, be part of our Second Annual Parish Service Day next Saturday.  I promise that you will find being an active part of the parish rewarding, and even more, I proclaim the promise of eternal life that Jesus wants to offer to the rich young man – and to us – today.

    The Church teaches that, in living the Gospel, we are to strive for reasonable happiness in this life, and eternal happiness in the life to come.  That’s what today’s readings teach us.  We pray for wisdom, which puts us on the path to eternal life.  We zealously seek eternal happiness.  We put our lives and our resources at the service of the Gospel.  We contribute our time, talent and treasure to the mission of the Church.   We beg God, with the Psalmist today, to prosper the work of our hands for us!  Prosper the work of our hands!

    Committing ourselves to this great endeavor of grace, let us take the Stewardship Prayer Cards from the pew racks, stand, and pray together:

    Generous God,

    We give you thanks for all you have given us:
    our families, our homes, our community,
    our parish.

    You have walked with us as we grow together in faith;
    You speak through us when we teach and witness to the Gospel;
    You work in us when we reach out to those in need.

    Help us to grow in faith:
    May we never be in distress when we are in need;
    May we never be indifferent when we have surplus.

    Teach us how to be a generous people,
    freely pouring out the love you daily give us;
    confident that the store of that love has no end
    because its source is always You, God.

    Renew Your Spirit in us;
    help us to be One Body, One Spirit in Christ,
    and help us to create the world anew in You.

    Through Christ our Lord.

    Amen.

  • Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Yesterday, the fiftieth anniversary of the calling of the Second Vatican Council, marked the beginning of a Year of Faith that Pope Benedict called for in his encyclical, Porta Fidei.  In that document, he calls on all of us Catholics to throw open the doors of faith, to rediscover who we are as the People of God, and to underscore the grace that comes through living our faith.

    Saint Paul all this week has been trying to convince those “foolish Galatians” that they should abandon the nonsense that they have been fed by other preachers.  These men apparently had been convincing them that they had to accept all of the precepts of the Jewish Law in order to be Christians.  Saint Paul points out that faith in Jesus Christ frees them from all of that, and he tries to get them to instead live the precepts of the Gospel.

    In today’s Gospel, Jesus has been driving out demons from those who had been possessed by them.  But the crowd is not accepting his miracles in faith, rather they assert that only a devil could cast out a demon.  Just like the Galatians, they refused to put their faith into practice and instead insisted on clinging to what they know.

    Jesus, however, is doing a new thing.  He’s doing a new thing among the people of his day, he was doing a new thing among the Galatians, and he’s doing a new thing in us.  We have to be ready to let go of some of our pre-conceived notions and renew ourselves in the Gospel.  During this year of faith, let us make it our prayer that all God’s people come to know the faith in new and proper ways.

  • Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Go and do likewise.”

    What a wonderful instruction for Jesus to give us this morning.  “Go and do likewise.” Jesus is telling us that those who hear the Gospel must also live it, or it is useless.  Those who do not go out and do likewise are like the foolish Galatians in today’s first reading who seem to be abandoning the Gospel and replacing it with all kinds of other rules, including circumcision, that are mere appearances of holiness.  Those of us who would call ourselves disciples of the Lord must do better than that.  We must indeed “go and do likewise.”

    We’ve all heard the story of the Good Samaritan umpteen times so it may all too easily go in one ear and out the other.  But we really must hear what Jesus is saying in this parable if we are to get what living the Christian life is all about.  As an aside, I must say it is extremely humbling to me personally that the priest in this story was not the good guy.  The good person in the story is one that Jesus’ hearers would have expected to be anything but good: the very name “Samaritan” was synonymous with being bad.  So for the Samaritan to come out as the good guy was something that made his hearers stand up and take notice.  Think of a group of people that our society tends to bracket as evil; then think about Jesus calling one of them “good.”  That’s what this was like for them.

    Yet it was this person, who was considered to be less-than-good, that knew instinctively the right thing to do.  He was the one who bound up the victim’s wounds and led him off to safety and healing.  Compassion for others is part of the natural law, something that every person should possess, Christian or not, and for Christians it is certainly foundational to living the Gospel.  Turning one’s back on those in need is reprehensible and any who do that are not hearing what the Gospel is teaching us.

    The Gospel is not merely for our edification; it is for our instruction.  Those of us who would dare to hear it must be willing to go and do likewise.

  • Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time [B] – Respect Life Sunday

    Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time [B] – Respect Life Sunday

    Today’s readings

    If you’ve been to any number of Church weddings, you have probably heard today’s first reading, and part of the Gospel proclaimed.  Obviously we usually leave out the part about divorce, but these readings are quite popular for weddings.  The reason, of course, is that the story is about how man and woman were created for each other.  The totality of the readings we have today, though, are challenging.  We do have that piece about divorce there, and it does present a challenge in these days when so many marriages fail.

    Apparently, the people of Israel were unable to accept the fullness of the teaching of marriage – not unlike today, obviously – Moses gave the men permission to divorce when necessary.  In that society, a woman’s reproductive rights belonged first to her father, and later to her husband.  So adultery could only be committed against the husband whose rights had been violated.  Our modern sensibilities see this as completely wrong, and Jesus seems to agree.  Jesus says that the man who remarries is committing adultery against his first wife, because she has rights in the marriage too.  Jesus levels the playing field here by giving both spouses rights in the relationship, but also the responsibility of not committing adultery against one another.

    In our society, we have to contend with this painful reality still.  Each spouse has rights and also responsibilities, and while we are all ready to accept our rights in just about any circumstance, we are hardly ever ready to accept our responsibilities.  That has led us not only to the problems we have with divorce, but in so many areas as well.  We are a people very unaccustomed to the demands of faithfulness, not just in marriage but also in our work and our communities, just to name a couple.

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word rejects this lack of faithfulness.  Christian disciples are to be marked by their faithfulness to each other, to God, and to their communities.  Faithfulness is hard and very often inconvenient.  But for us, brothers and sisters in Christ, faithfulness is not optional.

    In wedding liturgies I always tell the bride and groom that faithfulness will make demands of them.  They will have to make a decision every day to be faithful to the promises they make at their wedding.  They will have to make a decision every day to love one another.  And sometimes this is easy, but sometimes it is hard to do, but either way, it’s still their calling.  The same is true for me as a priest.  I have to renew my ordination promises every day.  I have to make a decision every day to be faithful to my God, be faithful to my ministry, be faithful to my promises, be faithful to my own spouse which is the Church, and my own family which is the people I serve.  Sometimes that’s a joy and the easiest thing in the world.  But, just like anyone else, I have rough days, and on those rough days, I’m still called to be faithful.

    We are all of us called to be faithful citizens.  That is easy when our candidate wins the election or legislation we’ve been hoping for passes.  It’s not such a joy when he or she loses the election, or our interests aren’t being met, or the economy is plunging.  It’s very difficult when we see so many abuses of power or the seeming triumph of evil.  But we still are called to be faithful, doing our best to make things right, witnessing to the sanctity of life, standing up for the poor, needy, and most vulnerable members of society, building the kingdom of God on earth whenever and however we can.

    One of the biggest challenges of our time is something of which we are mindful in a special way this month, and by that of course, I mean the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.  It’s easy to remain faithful to that call when we don’t have to make the decision, but harder to remain faithful when someone we know is having a difficult pregnancy, or has been raped.  It’s hard to defend life to natural death when a loved one is suffering, clinging rather tenaciously to life even when they’re unable to live it.  It’s hard to defend life when someone in our community has been murdered and the death penalty is on the table.  But we disciples don’t get to pick and choose the occasions during which we will be faithful.  If our witness to life is to mean anything to the watching world – and now more than ever before it absolutely has to! – we’re going to have to be faithful always, even when it’s hard, even when it stretches us.

    The little vignette at the end of the Gospel reading today almost seems out of place.  I use this story at every baptism I do, and it’s easy to see why.  But I also think it relates to our call to faithfulness today.  Jesus promises the Kingdom of God to those who are like children.  Obviously he isn’t extolling the virtues of being childish here.  He is getting at, as he often does, something much deeper.  He notes that children are dependent on their parents or guardians for everything – they need their parents.  They don’t yet have rights in the society, they are unable to provide for themselves.  So they depend on the adults who care for them for all of their needs for safety and care.

    This is the kind of faithfulness Jesus asks of us.  We need to approach our relationship with God with childlike faith, acknowledging our dependence on God’s grace and mercy.  We need to be faithful to God in good times and in bad, even when we cannot see the big picture.

    Faithfulness makes demands on us.  The disciple is the one who is ready to accept those demands.  The disciple makes a decision to love God and the people in his life every day.  The disciple makes a decision to be faithful to his or her vocation, whatever that vocation is, every day.  The disciple defends the sanctity of every human life, from the moment of conception, to the moment of natural death.  The disciple makes a decision to be faithful to God and the teachings of God’s Church every day.  Some days those decisions are easy, and some days they are more than challenging.  But the faithful disciple, the one who accepts the Kingdom of God like a child, has the promise of entering into it.