Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • Thursday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    Sadly, the prayer that our Lord gave us to avoid multiplying words and babbling like the pagans can so much become for us an occasion to do that very thing.  We can rattle off the Lord’s Prayer 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

    [display_podcast]

    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’s take on the formula is a bit different.  It’s more of a positive expression.  We are not to love only our neighbor and hate our enemy, but instead we are to love everyone, just as God loves all of us.

    In our first reading, we see what’s at stake here.  Ahab had murdered poor Naboth and taken his vineyard.  He hated his enemy enough to kill him and steal his ancestral heritage.  But the Lord noticed what happened, and through the prophet Elijah brings the consequences of Ahab’s evil to bear.  But because Ahab repented of his evil, God does not bring the evil upon him, but does vow to bring it during the reign of his son.  Which is kind of bad news for his son, I guess.

    God is a God of justice, and no evil deed can go unpunished.  The problem, though, is that we don’t have to be as conniving as Ahab to merit the wrath of God.  We are all sinners, and in justice, there must be punishment.  But, thanks be to God, he sent his Son Jesus Christ into our world to take our sins upon himself and suffer the punishment we so richly deserve.  We have been granted grace and mercy through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, and it’s a debt we cannot hope to repay.

    But we redeemed and forgiven people have a command from Jesus today: “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  We must strive for perfection in our thoughts, words and deeds.  Will we get there completely?  Not this side of heaven, I think.  But many saints have come very close by joining themselves to Jesus and showing mercy to their brothers and sisters.  Perfection is the goal for all of us, the goal for all of us redeemed and forgiven sinners. 

  • Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    I don’t know about you, but I think that lots of us when we were growing up, learned that we had to win or earn the Lord’s kindness.  If we wanted God to love us, then we had to behave in the right ways and follow all the rules.  And some of that comes from our human experience.  Many people often consume their lives with trying to win the approval of others.  But we have it all backwards: God is not like that, and that’s what today’s Liturgy of the Word is trying to tell us.  The Scriptures show us a God who loves us first, and then calls on us to respond to God’s love by living the right way.  Our entire lives should be all about responding in love to the love God has for all of us.

    The first reading today recalls how God led the people Israel through the desert for forty years, bringing them safely to the land he promised on oath to their ancestors.  Traditionally this has been viewed literally, but there is also a tradition that sees the whole rescue of the Hebrew people from the tyranny of Egypt allegorically.  Many of the Church fathers see the rescue as our own rescue from the tyranny and slavery of sin, through the wilderness of the world, into the safe haven of God’s promise.  So whether we want to read this first reading literally today, or whether we want to see it as our delivery from sin, in either case, we see the Lord’s providence and kindness poured out on his people, delivering them from danger and bringing them safely into a land that had always been promised to them.

    For our second reading these weeks, we have been and will be reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, arguably one of the masterpieces of his theological writing.  Today’s reading is somewhat the crux of his presentation in Romans: God in his mercy chose to save us even before we were worthy of it.  We had been enemies of God through the power sin and death had over us, but God in his goodness chose to redeem us anyway.  Having been reconciled, he now chooses in his kindness to save us from the power of death and bring us in to the grace and peace of his kingdom for all eternity.  This is all done through the grace and kindness of our God, who chooses to save us even though we are not remotely worthy of it on our own.

    The Gospel reading, though, presents us with the greatest personification of God’s kindness.  Throughout chapter nine of Matthew’s Gospel, we see the crowds hanging on Jesus’ words and deeds.  In this chapter, Jesus heals a paralytic, he calls Matthew – a tax collector and a sinner – to follow him, he raises the daughter of a local government official from the dead, he heals two blind men, and expels a demon.  The crowds were understandably entranced by his words and deeds, and Jesus can see that they are entranced because they had so long gone without pastoral care.  The religious officials who should have been bringing them the good news of God’s kindness had instead been about the business of extracting the minutiae of the Law and filling their own coffers.  They had left the people abandoned of God, like sheep without a shepherd, and Jesus’ heart ached for them.  So in his kindness, he sends out the Twelve to continue his work and to call more and more people to come to know that the kingdom was at hand, and repentance would give them a place in that kingdom.

    So these readings have been a great rehearsal of the kindness of God as the Scriptures present it.  God created us in love, redeemed us from the grasp of sin and death, and gives us a place in his heavenly kingdom.  And that’s nice, but the Scriptures would be remiss if they stopped there.  Instead, they go on to prescribe the proper response to God’s love and kindness, and each of today’s readings give us one way to do that.  These readings call us to keep the covenant, to boast of God and to freely give.

    In the first reading, God makes the first move in favor of establishing a covenant.  He didn’t have to – clearly.  He had made us in love, but we had turned away from him, and not just once.  Yet, he was the one who sent Moses to lead the people out of the slavery of Egypt so that they could inherit the land he promised on oath to their ancestors.  If God has reached out that far to us, we can do no less than keep the covenant.  We have to live the life of grace: keep the commandments, love God and neighbor, celebrate the Gospel in everything we do.  We have to reach out to the marginalized and needy, just as God reached out to us in our own need.  “If you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant,” God says to us, “you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people.”

    In the second reading, St. Paul echoes what the first reading says.  God has made the first move.  He reconciled us while we were still sinners.  He gave us the way to the kingdom.  We didn’t deserve it, but our sinfulness is no match for God’s mercy.  So if God has been so merciful, we need to boast about it.  And we’re not to boast about it as if it was something we earned or accomplished on our own; we are to “boast of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” 

    And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus gives us the key to our response to God’s love, mercy and kindness: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”  The gifts of grace are never given to us just for ourselves.  They are given to us to share.  Now that we have been redeemed and blessed, we must turn and bless others, leading them to the redemption God longs to pour out on them.  We are to freely give of the rich store of grace that has been freely given to us.

    God does not manipulate us for his pleasure.  He does not demand that we behave perfectly in order to receive his kindness.  Instead, he is the one who washes our feet, who stretches out his arms on the Cross, who dies that we may live.  In the face of such great and perfect love, we can do no less than love in return. 

  • Thursday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    Sometimes the Gospel just makes good common sense.  Today, the Gospel expands on the Golden Rule, something we should all have learned when we were very little.  As my grandmother used to say, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.  But actually what Jesus is telling us today goes a bit deeper even than that.  Jesus equates the hatred in our hearts with outright murder.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up this theme from this very Gospel reading: “Deliberate hatred is contrary to charity. Hatred of the neighbor is a sin when one deliberately wishes him evil. Hatred of the neighbor is a grave sin when one deliberately desires him grave harm. ‘But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.’” (CCC, 2303)

    Today might be a good time for us to examine our consciences for sins against the fifth commandment.  Jesus says that these include murder and abortion, certainly.  But also hatred, vengeance and anger.  This might be a good time for us to call to mind those we have yet to forgive, and to pray for the grace to forgive them.  Or at least the grace to want to forgive them.  This might be a good time for us to look deep within us and ferret out any traces of racism, which is simply hatred directed at a certain group or race.  Casual racist jokes and stereotyping are evidence of a hatred that may be buried deep within us that comes out in inappropriate ways.  Today’s Gospel even hints that gossip, backbiting, and sarcasm directed at a brother or sister in Christ is an attitude that detracts from the dignity of another’s life and has no place in the heart or mind of the disciple. 

    “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says to us today.  Our witness to the life and dignity of the human person must be absolutely above reproach, or our witness for life is a sham.  And worse than that, we will have opted out of the Kingdom of heaven. 

  • Tuesday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    The Lord takes care of those who are on fire for love of him, he takes care of those who season their lives and the lives of others with the gifts God has given them.  Today, in a very familiar way, we are being called to be salt and light. 

    Salt is one of those wonderful things that is great in moderation.  Too much, and you’ve ruined the dish.  Not enough and it’s just bland.  But in just the right proportion, the food is perfectly seasoned.  Similarly, a fervent witness is a great thing.  Too much, and people might turn off your witness.  Too little and nobody will even notice what we’re saying.  But in the right proportion, a fervent witness draws other people to Christ and to the Church, builds up the body of Christ, and sends us all on the way to salvation.

    But when the salt loses its flavor, what good is it?  Or when you put a lamp under a bushel basket, what’s the point?  The gifts we have been given, we are to give in return.  The widow at Zarephath learned that in today’s first reading.  She didn’t think she had much, just enough flour and oil to bake a meager cake to provide a last supper for her and her son.  But when she gave even what little she had, she was able to eat for a year, her and her son and her guest too.

    The Lord takes care of those who are on fire for love of him, he takes care of those who season their lives and the lives of others with the gifts God has given them.  Whether we think our gifts are a little or a lot is ultimately meaningless.  The only thing that means anything is how willing we are to share them out of love for God and for others.  When we do that, the little we have is increased many times over and all for the glory of God.

    Today, we are being called to be salt and light.  God promises to take care of us when we give. 

  • Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    So Jesus goes over to Matthew, who, at that time, was anything but a saint.  He was sitting at the customs post, collecting the required taxes.  He was a Jew acting as a representative of the Roman occupation government.  He didn’t have a fan club, to say the least.  It wasn’t just that he was a tax collector – probably that would have been bad enough, but it was also that he was an employee of the Roman oppression government.  It was almost like he was giving up his heritage.  This is the Matthew who Jesus approaches and gives a fairly simple, two-word command:  “follow me.”

    We could be in wonder about why Jesus would pick such a man, and plenty of homily time has been spent examining that issue, I think.  What has me in wonder these days is Matthew’s response.  “And he got up and followed him.”  That’s it.  He left the table, didn’t even clock out, left all the money there, and took off to follow Jesus.  He didn’t cash out the register or finish up with the customer he was working with, or even take a minute to record the current transaction in a spreadsheet.  He followed right then and there.  He left his whole considerable livelihood behind.  And that livelihood was as rich as he wanted to make it, since all he had to return to Rome was the tax that was prescribed.  Anything else was his to keep.  But on the strength of a two-word command, he gets up and leaves his responsibilities to his employers, his family, and all he ever knew behind.

    What was it that caused him to do such a thing?  It certainly wasn’t some kind of solidly-worded argumentation or beautiful preaching or rhetoric, because all Jesus said to him was “follow me.”  So did he know Jesus before this?  Had he indeed heard him preach before and experienced a stirring in his heart?  Had he witnessed one of Jesus’ miracles and always wanted the opportunity to know more about this man?  Was there something going on in Matthew’s life that was calling him to make a change?  Was he unmotivated by his current situation or had he felt God tugging at his heart?  Of course, we don’t know the answers to any of these questions.  All we do know is that Jesus said “follow me” and Matthew did.  Simple as that.

    Yesterday I was at the Cathedral of St. Raymond in Joliet, for priesthood ordinations for our diocese.  Three young men were ordained for service to the Church of Joliet.  They, of course, looked elated, and had an excitement that I clearly remember myself.  This past week, I received a letter from a young woman I knew from the parish where I served my internship back in my third year of seminary.  She has finished her first year of formation for service as a Dominican nun.  Her letter told me about the richness of her experience of formation, including classes, prayer and ministry experiences.  Just a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated the forty years of wonderful service that Fr. Ted has given our diocese, including his work for the last six years at our parish.  In his homily at his celebration Mass, he reflected on the many experiences he had over the last forty years, and said that if he had it to do over again, he would enter the priesthood again “in a heartbeat.”  Later this year, we will have the opportunity to celebrate the fifty years of service that Sr. Anne Hyzy has given as a nun.  She is a woman whose faith and spirituality have been a beacon for so many of us, and we look forward to celebrating her anniversary.  And just this past week, I celebrated my second anniversary as a priest.  So this has been a time when I have had the opportunity to reflect a bit on God’s call.

    What is it that gets any of us to respond to that call: “follow me?”  Because – and let’s be very clear about this – every one of us gets that call in some way, shape or form, at some point in our lives.  We are called to rich vocational lives in so many different ways.  Some are called to be priests, deacons or religious.  Some are called to the married life and give of their lives as parents.  Some are called to the single life, sacrificing the promiscuity and worldliness of our current culture to be a witness to God’s power in the world.  We may be church workers, or doctors, or lawyers, or construction workers, or grocery store clerks, or any of a million different things.  But the one thing that unites us – our baptism – also unites us in its effect: we are all called by our baptism to do something specific, something heroic, something very significant for Christ.  To all of us – every one of us without exception – Christ is saying: “follow me.”

    In a perfect world, it should be enough for us that God has forgiven us of our sins and made us one with him in baptism.  It should be enough for us that Jesus says, despite the myriad of ways that we are unworthy of any kind of call, “follow me.”  It should be enough that we are forgiven, and graced, and called, and loved to respond just like Matthew did, giving it all over so that we can follow the Lord wherever it is that he is leading us.  But lots of times, that isn’t enough.  Because we are sinful people who are afraid of commitment or are too bogged down in the world, or have turned away for so many reasons.  Sometimes, it takes a while for that “follow me” call to work its way through our hardened hearts and restless spirits.  I should know: it took thirty-six years for me.

    So what about you?  Is there a customs post that you need to walk away from?  Is there a call to “follow me” that you’ve been hearing from the Lord for some time now that you have not had the courage to answer?  Because I think the real question is not what is it about Jesus that would make someone follow him with just a simple command.   No.  The real question is, what is it about us that would turn down the life of grace and happiness and adventure and joy that Jesus has in store for us? I can’t possibly imagine how terrible it would have been to say “no” to Jesus at this point in my life.  I always tell people that if you really want to be really happy, then you have to do what God is calling you to do.  Nothing else will make you that happy.  And I should know, because the last two years of my life have been the most wonderful I can remember.

    Jesus comes to all of us today, in the busy-ness of our lives.  Right in the middle of taking the customs tax from a traveler, we are called: “follow me.”  What does that call look like for you?  Are you ready to get up and follow him, without another word being spoken?  If you’ve been on the fence, consider this homily the sign you’ve been looking for.  God is calling.  “Follow me.” 

  • Saturday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    Today’s readings speak to us about the virtue of persistence.  St. Paul was one who modeled persistence in his life and ministry.  He quite often ran up against not only opposition, but also danger and imprisonment designed to thwart his preaching.  But Paul was filled with the Spirit and would not let anything deter him from doing the Lord’s work.  And so he could easily encourage, well, even command Timothy to “be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching.”

    And we need to hear this encouragement too.  Because it’s easy enough for us to preach the word in our thoughts, words and deeds when it’s convenient.  But the moment it becomes a little embarrassing, or when we’re in a situation in which we don’t want to stir up trouble, or if we think that others might think less of us, well it’s far too easy to let our witness slip away.  It’s easy to be fervent believers at Mass, but miss the opportunity to do the Lord’s work the rest of the day.  That’s simply human nature, and it affects all of us.

    But maybe the example of the Widow is what we need to follow.  Her witness didn’t have to be all about making a big scene or calling attention to herself.  Indeed the only one who even noticed, probably, was Jesus, the One who sees everything.  But that doesn’t mean that her witness didn’t cost her anything.  Indeed, it probably cost her almost everything she had in the world.  But nothing would stop her from witnessing.

    And so we must ask ourselves today and every day: when we “go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” what will that witness look like?  Will we be able to say with St. Paul at the end of the day, “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith?”  If we can, we too can await that crown of righteousness.  Please God, let us all be able to be crowned with it one day.

  • Wednesday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast] 

    When I read St. Paul’s message to Timothy in our first reading last night, I resonated with the spirit of his message.  St. Paul reminds Timothy of his calling and of the authority that was given him when St. Paul laid hands on him.  The life that Timothy was called to lead as a consequence of that anointing was one that would be challenging, but blessed.  He would have to bear his share of hardship for the Gospel, but St. Paul tells him never to be ashamed of it.  Whatever is to befall them, St. Paul’s confidence is in the Lord: “For I know him in whom I have believed,” he says, “and I am confident that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day.”

    That got me thinking about my own ordination as a priest, which was two years ago yesterday.  I clearly remember the words that Bishop Imesch spoke when he handed me the chalice and paten that I use for Mass to this day.  He said, “Receive the oblation of the holy people, to be offered to God.  Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross.”  I think those very words would be words that St. Paul would understand.  “Understand what you do” seems easy enough, until it gets to the second instruction: “imitate what you celebrate.”  What I celebrate here is a sacrificial moment, and if I am to imitate that, then my life must be basically sacrificial.  That’s what is meant by the third instruction in what the bishop said to me: “and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross.”

    Sometimes it’s hard for all of us to know that whatever our call may be, it will involve sacrifices.  Every single vocation necessarily requires that, because nothing authentic can ever be just about us.  We have to lay down our lives in love every single day because that’s what Jesus did for us.  Some days, as I tell the couples getting married here when I preach the homily for them, that may be hard work.  But it is always our hope that every day, whether it’s easy or difficult, it will be the greatest joy of our lives.  That’s why St. Paul tells Timothy that he should not be ashamed of his testimony to the Lord.  That’s why the bishop told me to conform my life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross.  Because none of us will ever regret anything we’ve sacrificed for love.

     

  • The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    After my first year in seminary, during the summer, I was sent to live for six weeks in Mexico in order to learn Spanish.  I wish that endeavor had been more successful, but I did in fact come away with some experiences that have changed my way of thinking and praying.  The most profound was my realization of how unified we are as Catholics in the Eucharist.  On the very first day I came to Mexico, which was a Sunday, the family I was staying with picked me up at the Spanish school, and before taking me to the house, we went to Sunday Mass at the local Cathedral.  In many ways, it was a “foreign” experience to me: the Church itself was around 500 years old, the oldest Church I’d ever been in.  The Liturgy, of course, was all in Spanish, a language I spoke very little of at the time, having only my high school Spanish to rely on.

    But as foreign as the experience was, there was also something very familiar about it.  And if you’ve ever been to Mass in a foreign country, you may well have had the same experience that I did.  Even though I didn’t understand every word, there was still a comfort that I had because the Mass was the same both here and there.  I understood that I was in the Liturgy of the Word when we sat to hear the readings.  I knew that we were in the Eucharistic Prayer at the elevation of the host and cup.  I knew that “Cuerpo de Christo” meant “The Body of Christ” when I went forward to receive Holy Communion.  Even though I didn’t understand every single word, I still felt united with the other worshippers in that Cathedral, because we had all come to the Altar to receive the Body of Christ.

    “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”  That’s what St. Paul tells the Corinthians today, and we are meant to hear it as well.  We are called to unity with one another as we gather around the Altar to partake of the one Body of Christ.  This feast was celebrated on Thursday at the Vatican, and in his homily, Pope Benedict made note of this very important aspect of the Eucharist.  “We feel the truth and the power of the Christian revolution,” he says, “the most profound revolution in human history, which we may experience in the Eucharist where people of different ages, sexes, social conditions and political ideas come together in the presence of the Lord. The Eucharist can never be a private matter. … The Eucharist is public worship, which has nothing esoteric or exclusive about it. … We remain united, over and above our differences, … we [must be] open to one another in order to become a single thing in Him.”

    We may try to express our unity in many ways in the Mass.  We might all sing the same songs.  We might all stand or sit together.  We might all join hands at the Lord’s Prayer.  Those are all okay things, but they are not what unites us.  They put us on a somewhat equal footing, but that can happen in all kinds of gatherings.  The one thing that unites us at this gathering, the experience we have here that we don’t have in any other situation, is the Eucharist.  The Eucharist unites us in the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, where all division must necessarily cease.  The Eucharist is the celebration of our unity par excellence.

    Having said that, there are obvious ways in which we can notice that we are not, in fact, one.  The Eucharist which is the celebration of our unity can often remind us in a very stark and disheartening way, of the ways that we remain divided with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  The most obvious of these ways is the way that we Catholics remain divided with our Protestant brothers and sisters, and in fact, they with each other as well.  The proliferation of Christian denominations is something we can soft-petal as “different strokes for different folks,” but is in fact a rather sad lament that the Church that Jesus meant to be one is in fact fragmented in ways that it seems can only be overcome by a miracle.  In our Creed we profess a Church that is “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic.”  By “Catholic” here, we may indeed mean “universal” but that does not excuse us from our lack of unity.

    Another thing that divides even us Catholics from one another is by sin.  Mortal sin separates us not only from God, not only from those we have wronged, but also from the Church and all of our brothers and sisters in Christ.  When we have sinned greatly, we are not permitted in good conscience to receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, because we cannot dare to pretend to be one with those we have separated ourselves from through mortal sin.

    This lack of unity expresses itself when all of the guests and family members cannot receive the Eucharist at weddings and funerals.  We see it painfully when we must remain in our pew at Communion time until we have been to Confession.  The lack of unity that we find ourselves in is one that is deeply painful to us, and grievously painful to our Savior who came that we might all be one. 

    “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him,” Jesus says to us today.  When we remain in him, we also remain united to one another through Christ.  This is what God wants for his Church, so today we must recommit ourselves to unity, real unity.  So if you have not been to Confession in a while, make it a priority to do that in the next week or so so that you can be one with us at the Table of the Lord.  And at Communion today, we must all make it our prayer that the many things that divide us might soon melt away so that we can all become one in the real way the Jesus meant for us.

    "I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
    whoever eats this bread will live forever;
    and the bread that I will give
    is my flesh for the life of the world.    "

    On this feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we pray that every person may one day come to share in the flesh of our Savior, given for the life of the world, and we pray that his great desire might come to pass: that we may be one.

  • The Most Holy Trinity

    The Most Holy Trinity

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    What is God like?

    rublev_trinity_iconToday’s celebration of the Most Holy Trinity reminds us of the fact that God loved the world he created so much that he was determined to remain in relationship with it.  “God so loved the world,” the Gospel tells us, “that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  That very familiar quote from John 3:16 has often been described as the entire Gospel all in one verse, because it tells us the reason for Our Savior’s coming, and the purpose for our existence, which is eternal life.

    God wishes to remain in relationship with us, his creatures, because God himself is a relationship.  We will never really understand the Trinity in this lifetime, we know that, but we also know that in the Blessed Trinity, our Church has described God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We recall this deepest of our beliefs every time we make the sign of the Cross, every time we receive a blessing, indeed every time the priest greets us at Mass with those familiar words: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.”  God is a relationship: the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son with the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit with the Father and the Son.  Three persons, one God, all in relationship.

    But make no mistake, I don’t come before you today to define the Holy Trinity for you as if I’ve figured it all out.  This deepest of our beliefs remains perhaps the deepest of all our mysteries.  A story about St. Augustine tells us as much: The story goes that he was walking along the beach, 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.

    But just because the Trinity is a mystery, that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about it.  In many ways, the mystery of the Trinity is a great blessing.  If we could really figure God out and define God in a neat set of explanations, it would be way to easy for us to simply file God away and never give a second thought.  Because we have to struggle with the mystery of the Trinity, this means we must constantly call God to mind and try to wrap our minds around God in new ways.  I had the great pleasure of preaching about the Trinity to our school children on Friday.  The fourth grade was preparing the Mass, and I asked them to write down questions that they had about God.  I was so deeply touched by the questions they wrote to me, and it was one of the greatest thrills of my priesthood to be able to speak to them about those questions.

    The questions they had were wonderful:  Why can’t we see God?  Why did God create the world?  If God created life, then how did God become God?  Why does God love us?  Was God there when Jesus was dying?  Why does God forgive us after we’ve done something wrong?  How do we know the Holy Spirit is with us?  But there was one question that seemed to get to the bottom of it all for me:  What is God like?  And I realized that Adam’s question was where the rubber meets the road in our faith, and that question was the whole reason for celebrating this feast of the Holy Trinity: we have to every day examine what God is like so that we can remain in relationship with our God who is a relationship and who longs to remain in relationship with us.

    Again, I’m not going to stand here and tell you the definitive answer to Adam’s question.  And that’s because there really isn’t one definitive answer to what God is like.  We could pass out cards right now and everyone could write down one thing that God is like.  And every one of us would be right in some ways, and every one of us would be wrong in some ways.  We could say that God is love, and we’d be right, but we’re wrong if we think of love in the limited way that we humans can conceive of love.  We could say that God is good, and we’d be right about that, but we’d be wrong if we think of God’s goodness in the way that a candy bar is good or a new car is good or even a new baby is good.  Our limited vocabulary can’t even come close to describing God.  As the song goes, our God is an awesome God, more so than any lyrics or other words could ever describe.

    So I want to go back to this idea of God as a relationship.  I do that because it’s one of a million ways I could talk about the Trinity today.  But I do it also because I think that God as a relationship is such a very appealing way to think about God.  We all know how much our good relationships mean to us, and so it is very desirable to think of our relationship with God, and of the relationship that is God. 

    Because 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 part of all of us, no matter what our earthly parents have been like, long 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 soul, 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 know they are also 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 ena
    bles 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.

    Maybe God comes to us as Trinity because one face of God is not sufficient to be God for us creatures who are constantly changing, and constantly struggling.  One day we need the Father, tomorrow we may need the Son and down the road the Holy Spirit.  Whatever we need, the point is that God is there.  Always was, always will be.

    So back to Adam’s question:  What is God like?  Well, that’s a reflection I think I’ll leave you all with today.  What is God like?  I hope you struggle with that question your whole life long.  I hope I do too.