Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • The Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “For freedom Christ set us free.”  So writes Saint Paul in our second reading today.  And it’s a beautiful reflection for this weekend, when we are getting ready for our Independence Day celebrations.  When our nation’s founders set up this fledgling republic 231 years ago, freedom was certainly one of their primary concerns.  Freedom of religion was of primary importance, and they also held dear freedom of expression, freedom of association, and many others.  We are the beneficiaries of their hard work.  As “they” say, freedom isn’t free, it is purchased at a price, and at this time of year we remember those who paid that price for us.

    In that second reading, Saint Paul is reflecting on the freedom that the early Christians had.  This freedom was a freedom from the constraints of the myriad of laws that they observed, laws that encouraged people to replace true devotion  to the spirit of the law with mere surface-level observance of the letter of the law.  Paul reminds them that their freedom was purchased at the incredible price of the blood of Jesus Christ the Lord who died that they, and we, might have life.

    For the Galatians, as well as for all of us, freedom had to be defined a little more exactly, and that was St. Paul’s purpose in today’s second reading.  Because freedom isn’t free, it can’t be taken lightly or casually, and so he makes it clear what the freedom truly is.  The Galatians had the mistaken notion that freedom meant the same thing as license, which isn’t the case at all.  Freedom didn’t mean license to act against the law and to live lives of immorality and corruption.  That would be replacing one form of slavery with another, really, since immorality has its own chains.  The freedom Christ won for us is a freedom to live joyful lives of dedication and devotion and discipleship, all caught up in the very life of God.  Real freedom looses us from the bonds of the world and sets us free to bind ourselves to God, who created us for himself.  Real freedom is freedom to be who we have been created to be.

    This distinction between true freedom and license for immorality is one that we must take seriously even in our own day, even as we prepare to celebrate our nation’s own independence.  Because in our own day, we too have confused the freedom we have inherited from our founders with a license to do whatever the heck we want.  And that, brothers and sisters in Christ, is not the gift we have been given.  Freedom of expression doesn’t mean we have the right to express ourselves in a way that slanders or ridicules others. And if you don’t think that’s an issue, just listen to some talk radio or watch some daytime television!  Freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion, and it doesn’t mean that we have to practice our faith in secret and not let people know that Jesus Christ is Lord by the way we live and talk.  And you know that’s an issue: in the courts, in our places of business and our schools, and in our communities.  Being free doesn’t mean we have license to do whatever we want; being free means we are free to better ourselves, our families, our churches and our communities.  Real freedom is freedom to be who we have been created to be.

    This freedom to be who we have been created to be is a matter of some urgency for Elisha in today’s first reading and the disciples that Jesus met in today’s Gospel.  All of them received the message that when God calls, the time to answer is now.  But all of them found that there were things going on inside them that kept them from answering the call; that kept them from being free to follow God in the way they were created to do that.

    Certainly the rebukes they all received seem a bit harsh to our ears.  After all, they had good excuses, didn’t they?  Who would deny a person the right to say goodbye to their families or bury their dead?  But there are a couple of subtle distinctions that we have to get here.  First, it wasn’t as if they had ever been told to follow the call instead of taking care of family and burying the dead.  Yet they were using those things as an excuse to put off their response to God’s call.  Second, following God’s call very well could have meant doing those things they were involved in, but in a way that honored God.  The demand was to put God first, and one could conceivably do that and still take care of family, friends and business.

    What’s at issue here is right relationship.  Responding to God’s call must always come first, but responding to God’s call may mean raising one’s family, tending to a sick parent or elderly relative, reading to one’s children, grieving the loss of a loved one or battling an illness.  It’s a matter of priorities, and true freedom means putting God first in all of that, trusting that God will help us to make sense of the ordinariness of our lives.

    It’s important to know that God pretty much always calls people out of the ordinariness of their lives.  That was true of Elisha today.  He was minding his own business – literally – by plowing the fields.  And yet he gives it all up on the spot to follow God as Elijah’s successor.  It must have been an incredibly moving event for Elisha, because he was so excited that he ran back, slaughtered his oxen and chopped up the yokes to use as fuel to cook the flesh and feed his people.  Doing that was a complete break with his former life, and showed the length he was ready to go in order to do God’s will.

    On this Independence Day, may we all remember that true freedom doesn’t mean doing whatever we want, regardless of the implications for others and ignorant of our relationship with God.  True freedom doesn’t mean license to live an immoral life.  Instead, true freedom is about living the life God has called us to live and following as committed disciples, free to be bound up in the life of God.  True freedom means breaking with anything that holds us back from becoming the free sons and daughters of God we were created to be.  True freedom means putting God first and serving him in the ordinariness of our lives, following his call to our dying breath.  True freedom means finding the same joy that our Psalmist finds today when he sings, “You are my inheritance, O Lord.”

  • Thursday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In today’s Gospel, we have the origin of the beautiful prayer the Lord gave us.  Unfortunately, that same prayer can get rattled off so quickly and second-naturedly that we totally miss what we’re saying and miss the real grace of the Lord’s Prayer.  We really ought to pay more attention to it, because it serves so well as the model for all of our prayer.

    First, it teaches us to pray in communion with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  This week, in our Office of Readings, we priests and deacons and religious have been reading from a treatise on the Lord’s Prayer by St. Cyprian.  On Monday, that treatise told us: “Above all, he who preaches peace and unity did not want us to pray by ourselves in private or for ourselves alone.  We do not say ‘My Father, who art in heaven,’ nor ‘Give me this day my daily bread.’  It is not for himself alone that each person asks to be forgiven, not to be led into temptation, or to be delivered from evil.  Rather we pray in public as a community, and not for one individual but for all.  For the people of God are all one.”

    Second, it acknowledges that God knows best how to provide for our needs.  We might want all the time to tell him what we want, or how to take care of us, but deep down we know that the only way our lives can work is when we surrender to God and let God do what he needs to do in us.  And so the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”  The whole point of creation is that the whole world will be happiest and at peace only when everything is returned to the One who made it all in the first place.  Until we surrender our lives too, we can never be happy or at peace.

    Third, this wonderful prayer acknowledges that the real need in all of us is forgiveness.  Yes, we are all sinners and depend on God alone for forgiveness, because we can never make up for the disobedience of our lives.  But we also must forgive others as well, or we can never really receive forgiveness in our lives.  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” might just be the boldest prayer we can utter on any given day.  Because if we have been negligent in our forgiving, is that really how we want God to forgive us?  When we take the Lord’s Prayer seriously, we can really transform our little corner of the world by giving those around us the grace we have been freely given.

    And so when we pray these beautiful words today at Mass, or later in our Rosaries or other prayers, maybe we can pause a bit.  Slow down and really pray those words.  Let them transform us by joining us together with our brothers and sisters, surrendering to God for what we truly need, and really receiving the forgiveness of God so that we can forgive others.

  • Monday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We have been reading the last several days from the very challenging portion of Matthew’s Gospel in which we hear Jesus use the formula: “You have heard it said … but I say to you…”  Basically, in all of these instructions, Jesus is taking the old Jewish law and cranking it up a notch.   We heard that anger, vengeance and libel are as disastrous as murder.   We heard that lust is as morally reprehensible as adultery.   Today, Jesus takes on the concept of justice.

    In the days before Jesus, justice was met by inflicting on the one who had wronged you what they had done to you.  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, you steal one of my sheep, I take one of yours, that kind of thing.  It’s a very primitive sort of justice, but to be honest, I think, one that still kind of resonates in our society.  People might not like to say they believe this sort of thing, but you see it all the time.

    Jesus isn’t into defining justice in this way.  For Jesus, true justice consists in rendering to God what he belongs to him; it means giving to others as God has given to us.  In a way, it’s the primordial form of the whole “pay it forward” idea.  If God has been generous to us, then, in justice, we need to be generous to others.  So we don’t argue about our tunic, but instead give our cloak as well.  We go the extra mile, and never turn our back on those in need.

    We believers have to get our heads around the idea of true justice.  We have to be willing to give without counting the cost.  We have to remember that in justice, we should be condemned for our many sins, but instead we have salvation in Christ Jesus.  Because God has been merciful and generous to us, then in justice we must do the same for others.

  • The Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Scriptures speak to us all about our need for a Savior.  If we didn’t need a Savior, this would be a pretty strange gathering.  Why bother getting out of bed and dragging ourselves here?   Even  good King David knew that he needed a Savior and he, very appropriately, helps us to pray in today’s Psalm response: “Lord, forgive the wrong I have done.”

    At the bottom of this need for a Savior is the fact that we are all sinners, every one of us.  We may not have done anything notorious, but we have to know that we all fall short of God’s expectations of us – and not just sometimes, but way more often than we’d like to count.  I know that’s not easy to hear, but it’s also not easy to argue against, is it?  It’s not popular to talk about sin even from the pulpit these days, because in our society everything is someone else’s fault.  In days gone by, if a child misbehaved in school, woe to him when he got home.  Today, if a child misbehaves in school, woe to the teacher when the parents find out the child has been held accountable.  If we spill coffee on ourselves and it burns us, we sue the purveyor who sold it to us.  Personal responsibility is not something we are ready to accept, let alone teach to our children.  Lord, forgive the wrong we have done indeed!

    And so all of us sinners who are in great need of a Savior have gathered here for this weekend Liturgy.  What we hear from today’s Scriptures is all about sin.  First, sin has consequences.  Second, repentance is crucial.  Third, forgiveness is freely given.  And finally, reconciliation brings joy.

    Sin has consequences.  This was what King David heard in today’s first reading.  You may know the story.  While the war was raging and his army was fighting for his own survival, David looked out and saw the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who was very appealing to him.  He sent for her, and had his way with her.  In the society of that day, such an act was an offense primarily against the woman’s husband, because it ended his blood line.  When that happened, the man’s property would not be passed on to his heirs after death, and would instead be given to the state.  King David was the state, so David’s taking of Uriah’s wife also meant that he stole his inheritance.  And just to make the deed complete, he arranged for Uriah to be “accidentally” killed in battle.  This was not just a minor sin or a tiny indiscretion.  What God says to David in today’s first reading is that yes, his sin is forgiven because God is mercy.  But, because of his wrong choices, David has unleashed a chain of events that will result in violence being part of his family’s inheritance forever.  That is not punishment for his sin, but rather the consequence of it.  Even when our sins have been forgiven, we often unleash consequences we could not have foreseen.  That’s how insidious and destructive sin can be, and that is why there is no such thing as a victimless or private sin in which no one else is affected.

    Repentance is crucial.  We see that move to repentance in King David’s behavior today.  When confronted by God, David is quick to repent: “I have sinned against the LORD,” David says.  And this is the crucial step.  God is always ready to forgive, but we have to recognize that we need to be forgiven.  We have to know that we need a Savior.  I think we struggle with this.  I remember the first Ash Wednesday after the new Roman Missal came out, and the words were changed for the giving of ashes.  A couple of people were really angry with me for saying “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”  I am so aware of my own need for repentance that I didn’t really know what to say to them.  God’s forgiveness takes two: God to offer it, and us to receive it.  That’s why the Sacrament of Penance is so important.  You have to get to confession at least once a year, and I say it should be more like once a month.  We should always put ourselves in the presence of God’s mercy.  If you want God’s grace, all you have to do is to make a move to receive it.  We all need a Savior, and we are all promised one if we will just ask for it.

    Forgiveness is freely given.  God’s response to David didn’t even take a minute.  As soon as he says that he had sinned against the Lord, God’s response comes through Nathan the prophet, loud and clear: “The LORD on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die.”  And notice, please, that the Lord doesn’t say, “OK, I forgive you,” as in “now that you’ve said ‘I’m sorry’ I will forgive you.”  No.  The message is that David’s sin has been forgiven; that is, the forgiveness has already happened.  It is not necessary that we repent, or do anything, in order that we be forgiven.  But it is crucial that we repent in order to receive that forgiveness and grace that is given to us freely, without a moment’s hesitation, by our God who is at his core, forgiveness and grace.  We should not, of course, commit the further sin of presumption by assuming that that it does not matter what we do because we are always forgiven.  But above all, we should not deprive ourselves of the grace of forgiveness by choosing not to confess and repent and receive what is offered to us.

    Reconciliation brings joy.  I think what is so important in today’s Gospel is for us to see how great is the joy that comes from sin forgiven and mercy received.  The unnamed “sinful woman” is not bathing and anointing the Lord’s feet so that he will then forgive her sins.  She is bathing and anointing him because she is overjoyed that her many sins have been forgiven.  The little parable Jesus tells to Simon the Pharisee makes that clear: the one who was forgiven the greater debt loves more.  He loves not to have his debt forgiven, but instead he loves because the debt has already been canceled.  And so we too come together with joy this day because the debt of our sin has been erased.  We pour out our time, talent, and treasure, and especially our own lives, on this altar of sacrifice, because our sins have been forgiven and the debt has already been paid by our Savior who stretches out his arms on the cross so that we might have salvation and might be reconciled with our God who created us for himself.  Today in that silent time after Communion, we should all be filled with joy because of the great forgiveness that is ours when we sinful people realize that we need a Savior and turn to find his arms already open to us.  What other response is there to that grace but tears of joy?

    It might not be popular to talk about sin these days but, brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s the only reason we’re here together this day.  If we don’t need a Savior, then we don’t need to waste an hour in Church, do we?  But the truth is we are a sinful people, a people in need of a Savior, who gather together to sing the words of King David, “Lord forgive the wrong I have done.”  In our gathering we can cry out in tears of joy for forgiveness freely given and mercy abundantly bestowed. “Blessed” – indeed happy – “is the one whose fault is taken away, whose sin is covered.”

  • Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes God’s blessings can be challenging.  For example, we might not think that those who are meek and those who mourn are blessed.  And we certainly wouldn’t celebrate the blessings of those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, would we?  It’s even more challenging when we remember that the word “blessed” in Scripture could also be translated as “happy.”  Would we think of those people as happy?  Probably not, but God does.

    Paul and Timothy in our first reading write to the people of the Church at Corinth that, when they are afflicted – as they surely were! – it was for the Church’s encouragement and salvation.  Paul knew well that following Christ meant going to the Cross.  He realized that, for him, it probably meant death, but for all of us, it means some kind of mortification, some kind of sacrifice.

    So it’s important for us to remember, I think, that while God never promises to make our lives free and easy, he does promise to bless us.  He will bless us with whatever gifts we need to do the work he has called us to do, the work for which he formed us in our mother’s womb.  We may be reasonably happy in this life, but the true happiness must come later.  Our reward, which Jesus promises will be great, will surely be in heaven.

  • Thursday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Love is very definitely the theme of today’s Liturgy of the Word.  This week we have been hearing readings from the book of Tobit, in which we have the only Scriptural appearance of Saint Raphael the archangel.  And today we hear about him entering the story, in the guise of the person of Azariah.  Tobit and Tobiah and all the rest don’t know he’s an angel yet, but that will become clear enough when the blessing of love wipes the cataracts away from Tobit’s eyes, and everything becomes clear to him.

    And we know that it is love that can do all these things.  Love can clear up old Tobit’s vision.  Love can and will let Tobiah survive his wedding night when he marries Sarah.  Love can heal Tobit’s and Sarah’s broken hearts.  And love can reveal that the power of God works in all of our lives, in all of our hearts.

    Sometimes we need an angel to come to know that.  During our lives, we can go through periods that are just awful and seem devoid of any joy.  But love won’t let that be the final answer for any of us.  Just as the angel Raphael took the form of Azaraiah and was a blessing to Tobiah and Sarah, so too there may be angels in our own lives, in the form of family or friends or caregivers that end the cycle of sadness in the same way that God’s blessing ended the cycle of death for Sarah’s husbands.

    Tobiah and Sarah sang a song of praise to God and said “Amen, amen” before going to bed for the night.  They woke up the next morning to rejoice in God’s love in the same way that we can, if we will but realize that there is no commandment greater than the commandment to love God and one another.  Death cannot and will not ever win the battle over love.

  • Thursday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the voices that can never be silenced in us is the voice that cries out seeking to see.  We spend our whole lives crying out as Bartimaeus in today’s Gospel: “Master, I want to see.”  And just as the crowd and even the disciples could not silence his desires, so nothing will silence that desire in our own hearts and souls.  We want to see the truth, we want to see Jesus, we want to see the world as it really is, we want to see our way out of our current messed-up situation, we want to see the end of suffering, we want to see peace, we want to see wholeness, and maybe most of all we want to see ourselves.  As we really are.  As God sees us.  This is our lifelong task.

    St. Augustine spoke of that very same task in his Confession.  He said, speaking to God: “I will confess, therefore, what I know of myself, and also what I do not know.  The knowledge that I have of myself, I possess because you have enlightened me; while the knowledge of myself that I do not yet possess will not be mine until my darkness shall be made as the noonday sun before your face.”  He goes on to say that he can try to hide from God if he wanted to, but it would never work.  Hiding from God would only result in hiding God from himself.  God sees the depths of our being, so if we try to hide all we really end up doing is running away from God who knows us at our very core.

    The writer of our first reading had this idea in mind when he said:

    He plumbs the depths and penetrates the heart;
    their innermost being he understands.
    The Most High possesses all knowledge,
    and sees from of old the things that are to come:
    He makes known the past and the future,
    and reveals the deepest secrets.

    God is calling us all out of darkness today.  He wants us to see him, and ourselves, as we were created to be.  He created us from glory.  And we won’t experience that glory in its fullness until we go through the rather painful experience of bringing all of our darkness out into the light.  Maybe we’re not ready for that yet.  But we can pray to become ready, and to be open.  We can pray in the words of Bartimaeus: “Master, I want to see!”

  • The Most Holy Trinity

    The Most Holy Trinity

    Today’s readings

    Talking about the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is perhaps the most daunting tasks for a preacher, but also one of the greatest privileges.  Here is one of the great mysteries of our faith, one that cries out for explanation, one that has kept the best minds of our religion occupied throughout time, and one that we, very likely, won’t completely understand until that day when we see our God face to face.

    You may have heard me tell one of my favorite stories about Saint Augustine with regard to the Trinity.  The story goes that he was walking along the beach one day, trying to figure out the nature of the Holy Trinity.  As he walked along, he came across a little boy who had dug a hole in the sand right next to the shore.  With his little hands he was carrying water from the ocean and was dumping it in the little hole. St. Augustine asked, “What are you doing, my child?”  The child replied, “I want to put all of the water of the ocean into this hole.”  So St. Augustine asked him, “But is it possible for all of the water of this great ocean to be contained in this little hole?”  And the child asked him in return, “If the water of the ocean cannot be contained in this little hole, then how can the Infinite Trinitarian God be contained in your mind?”  With that the child disappeared.

    We know, of course, the essential teaching: that we acknowledge and worship just one God, who embodies three divine persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  What that means for us as believers, though, is something that truly takes a lifetime, and then some, to figure out.

    Just like any of the mysteries of our faith, the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is not one that can be appreciated in a vacuum, outside of relationship with the God we worship and adore.  And that’s just as well, I think, because, as Saint Thomas Aquinas taught, the Trinity can perhaps best be described as a relationship.  The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son.  And this makes sense to us on some levels, because we all have been taught, and we all accept, that God is love.  And not just the kind of paltry love that our pop culture and society calls love, but love in the deepest of all senses, the kind of love that is self-giving and that intimately shares in the life of the other.  God is love, but God is better than the best love our feeble human minds can picture.  The love that is God is a love so pure that it would wholly consume us if we gave ourselves to it completely.  Just as difficult as it is for our minds to describe the Holy Trinity, so that love that is God is impossible for our minds to grasp.

    But it is a love that can be experienced and lived.  We have seen, in the recent observance of Lent and celebration of the fifty days of Easter, that our God won’t stop at anything to be love for us.  Our sins were obstacles, horribly offensive to God, cutting us out of that intimate relationship and destining us for eternal destruction.  But God wasn’t having any of that.  No, instead he gave his Son, his only begotten One, to be our Savior, to pay the price for our sins, to die our death and to rise to new life so that we could have that too.  That is the love of God so deeply expressed in our religious experience.  And it’s a love we’re called to share, as we lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters, renouncing selfishness and allowing ourselves to get caught up in the lives of others.  I’ve experienced that over the last two and a half years that I’ve been here at Notre Dame, and I rejoice everyday at being part of this community.  It’s a feeling that I have for my family, of course, and I pray that you all experience it in your relationships as well.  Love is who God is and love is what we are called to become.

    God as a relationship is a convenient concept for us, because our needs change during our lives, depending where we are on the journey.  Sometimes we need a parent.  And so relating to God as Father reminds us of the nurturing of our faith, being protected from evil, being encouraged to grow, and being corrected when we stray.  If you’ve had difficulty with a parent in your life, particularly a father, then relating to God as Father can also be difficult.  But still, I think there is a part of all of us, no matter what our earthly parents have been like, that longs to have a loving parental relationship.  God as Father can be that kind of parent in our lives.

    And sometimes we need the Son.  Relating to God the Son – Jesus our brother – reminds us that God knows our needs, he knows our temptations, he’s experienced our sorrows and celebrated our joys.  God in Christ has walked our walk and died our death and redeemed all of our failures out of love for us.  God the Son reminds us that God, having created us in his own image and likeness, loves what he created enough to become one of us.  Our bodies are not profane place-holders for our souls, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and that very body was good enough to become the dwelling place of God when he came to earth.  Maybe you’ve never had a brother or sister or never were close to yours, but in Christ you have the brother above all others who is present to you in all your joys and sorrows.

    Sometimes, too, we need a Holy Spirit.  Because we often have to be reminded that there is something beyond ourselves.  That this is not as good as it gets.  As wonderful as our world and our bodies can be, we also know they are very flawed.  The Holy Spirit reminds us that there is a part of us that always longs for God, no matter how far we have strayed.  The Spirit reminds us that our sins are not who we are and that repentance and forgiveness are possible.  It is the Holy Spirit that enables us to do the really good things we wouldn’t be capable of all by ourselves, the really good things that are who we really are before God.

    It might seem like this mystery of the Trinity is a purely academic discussion. Does the Trinity affect our daily lives or make a difference in our here and now?  Is all this discussion just talk, or does it really make any difference?  Obviously, I don’t think it’s just talk.  Instead, the Most Holy Trinity must be shared with people in every time and place.  God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit wants to relate to all of us, be present to all of us, and call all of us to discipleship through common baptism, and it’s up to us to point the way to that Trinity of love that longs to be in loving relationship with all people.

    However we need to relate to God right now, the good news is that he is there for us, giving us that relationship.  God is Triune because he wants to encompass our lives from beginning to end, from conception to life eternal.  Getting caught up in the relationship that is God is the project of our lives, and enables us to cry out with the Psalmist today, “O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!”

  • Saturday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s reading from the book of Sirach lays down the basis of all biblical wisdom literature.  The basic premise is that we have been created good by God, who gave humanity everything necessary for survival, created and shared the wisdom to know and love God, and opened up the nations for their inheritance.  Humanity was given every possible advantage and blessing.  And so it is wisdom to cooperate with all of this grace, and to remain connected to God.  This God notices everything, “their ways are ever known to him.”

    When you think about it, this is an incredible honor for us profane creatures.  We have been created in the wisdom of God, whose foolishness, we are told, exceeds our human wisdom.  So even on our worst days, we are still part of God’s wonderful creation, and we are always called to relationship with God who gives us everything we need.

    Everything we need includes salvation, paid for at the price of the life of his only begotten Son, on whose body, blood, soul and divinity we are fed.  The strength of this heavenly food draws us more deeply into Christ who keeps us close to him.  The Psalmist sings of this wisdom: “The Lord’s kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.”  How blest are we who fear and love our God who made us to participate in his divine wisdom!

  • School Graduation

    School Graduation

    Today’s readings: Acts 4:32-35 / 1 John 3:18-24 / John 15:1-8

    As we gather tonight for your graduation, I can imagine that you are feeling all sorts of things.  You’re probably excited, knowing what you’ve accomplished and looking forward to what lies ahead.  You may be relieved, having come through good times and bad, perhaps having learned things you never thought you would grasp.  Perhaps you’re a little nervous or fearful, thinking about high school and entering into the unknown after all these years.  And you may be a little sad, since you’re gathered here as a class for the last time.  All of those feelings are normal and part of the experience tonight.  Moving forward is always exciting and scary and sad all rolled up into one.  That’s life!

    Your parents and teachers and all of us who have been part of your lives have a lot of mixed emotions on this occasion as well.  It’s hard to see our children move to the next phase of life sometimes, but it’s also exhilarating seeing their accomplishments and celebrating the young men and women they have become.  For me, it’s hard to say goodbye to all of you, because I’ve known you all for the last two and a half years; I’ve seen you grow, and so many of you have been great altar servers.  You’ve stirred my heart and given me renewed faith in young people and hope for a world in the future being guided by people of faith.  But however we all feel about you moving on, move on you must.  That is what life is all about: growing and learning and becoming and going forward.  We all want that for you, and hopefully that is what you want for yourselves.

    So on this graduation day, I want to take a moment to talk to you about where you should go next.  Having come through as many as ten years at our Catholic School, you have open to you a wide range of paths and opportunities.  Many of them are good ones, some will be incredibly great.  You will have to make some hard decisions in the days and years ahead as you carve out your niche in life and continue to become the people God created you to be.  Now I’d never presume to tell you each what to do and to become and what path to follow.  But I do want to leave you tonight with some principles for making these hard decisions.  And nothing I will tell you is my own invention; these principles of discernment have long been part of the teaching of the Church and the living of our faith.

    The first principle is to pray a lot.  God has a plan for each of us in our lives.  Maybe we are meant to become priests, or sisters or brothers in a religious order, or parents.  Perhaps we are to become teachers or doctors or lawyers or public safety first responders.  God wants us to use the gifts he has given us to glorify him.  But we have to figure out exactly how to do that.  And the only way we can do that is to pray.  We have to ask God, every day, to reveal the part of the plan that he wants us to see.  We have to trust that God will give us what we need to do what he wants us to do.  We have to know God well enough to recognize the answer to our prayers and the call that he is giving us.  That’s prayer.  Some days, we will have a crystal clear answer, but the truth is, most days, we will have more questions than answers.  But being people of constant prayer will serve us well over the long haul and teach us what we need to know to keep growing.

    The second principle is to learn everything we can.  Follow your passions and absorb everything that interesting people are showing you.  Never stop learning about the world, and never stop learning about your faith.  Whether you go to Catholic high school or public, whether you attend a Catholic university or not, you still have so much to learn about your faith.  If Father Steve and I stopped growing in our faith, our parish would die.  If Pope Francis stopped growing in his faith, the Church would be irrelevant.  If you want to become the best you that you can be, then you have to continue to see who Christ is.  You have to continue to understand what living the Gospel means.  Because it is faith that truly makes sense of everything we learn about the world.  If we truly want to know Truth, then we have to constantly evaluate everything we learn in terms of what we know about God and who he is and what he gives us and what he wants for us and the world.  Learn everything you can and grow in your faith.

    The third principle is to love before we do anything else.  Whatever we think we have to do in any situation, it’s important that we first love the other people involved.  To truly become the people we are meant to be, we have to love others in the same way that God has loved us.  Pope Francis said recently, “To live according to the Gospel is to fight against selfishness.  The Gospel is forgiveness and peace; it is love that comes from God.”  The world wants us to live for ourselves, to take care of ourselves first, to live according to what we think.  But that only leaves us unhappy and alone and unfulfilled.  If we want to become great people, we have to love unconditionally and sacrificially, just like Jesus loved us when he took our place up there on the Cross.  Because it’s only in laying down our lives for our brothers and sisters – as he did – that we can rise to new and glorious life.

    And finally, the most important discernment principle is what Jesus tells us in the Gospel tonight: that we have to remain in him if we want to be truly successful.  Listen to what he says again: “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”  Nothing.  Nothing really good will happen apart from our life in Christ.  And so it’s important that you continue to do what you’ve learned here at Notre Dame: pray every day, go to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation and even during the week when you can, receive the Holy Eucharist and go to Confession often.  Stay connected to Christ, remain in Christ, and you will truly become the person God created you to be.

    Take a look at the Cross.  That’s what success looks like for us believers in Christ.  It looks like love beyond our wildest dreams.  It looks like giving everything, trusting all the while that God will give us what we need in return.  That’s how Jesus loves us, and that’s how we’re supposed to love one another too.  We are probably not going to get nailed to a cross, but we are definitely called upon to give of ourselves, to lay down our lives for each other.

    For all these years, we have tried to give you the tools to grow into the people you were meant to become.  If you remember these things and use them and grow in them, you will be successful, happy and blessed.  The goal of all our lives is to get to heaven one day, and for the time you’ve been in our Catholic school, we have done our best to give you what you need to get there, because getting to heaven is the ultimate badge of success; it’s the greatest measure of our having become who we were meant to be.  I hope that you will be reasonably happy in this life, but I really want you to be eternally happy with Christ in heaven one day.  I look forward to seeing the great people you will surely become as you continue to be involved here at Notre Dame in the years to come.  May God bless you in every moment of your lives.  And don’t ever forget where your spiritual home is: right here at Notre Dame.