Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • St. Thomas the Apostle

    St. Thomas the Apostle

    stthomas

    Today's readings 

    "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."

    Thomas sometimes gets a bad rap for having said that, but if we're honest, I think most of us can understand Thomas's hesitation to believe, since we have all probably struggled with belief at some point in our lives. And Thomas had good reason not to believe: the apostles were all frightened for their lives, having seen their Lord taken away to his death. Certainly that brings some healthy wariness to one's thoughts, words and actions.

    I wonder sometimes if Thomas's response was an expression of hurt. For whatever reason, he was not present when the apostles first saw Jesus. They had a wonderful experience of the Lord that Thomas didn't get to have. That wonderful experience helped them all to believe in the resurrection. It seems natural to me that Thomas may have felt a little left out, a little unjustly deprived of the Lord's presence. After all, Thomas had been with Jesus just as long as the others, so why should Jesus choose to appear to them when he couldn't be present also? We've all had experiences like that too, I think.

    But Thomas need not have felt deprived, because he was given an opportunity the others didn't get: he got to reach out and touch the Lord Jesus, an experience way more intimate than just seeing him. We get to have that kind of experience too. In a few minutes, we will all get to come forward and reach out and touch the Body of our Lord, allowing the Lord to enter our lives and our selves once again to fill us up and send us forth to be his disciples.

    We've been a lot like Thomas, I think. We've all struggled with our faith, we've all experienced the hurt that comes from being left out. But we're also all given the opportunity to have a real experience of our Lord by reaching out to receive him. So may we, all of us who have not seen but have believed, may we all cry out with Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"

  • 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time: The Meaning of Suffering

    13th Sunday of Ordinary Time: The Meaning of Suffering

    Today's readings 

    God did not make death,
    nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.

    I had finally gotten around to writing out some Christmas cards a few days before that great feast last year. I was still at school at Mundelein, and we didn't get out for Christmas break for a day or two. We had been doing the kinds of things you do before Christmas: the guys on my floor had gone out with the Rector for pizza. There was a little snow falling, which meant that there were some accidents here and there and bad traffic, but we all got back to the seminary safe.

    Well, my heart wasn't really in the writing out of the Christmas cards – I'm just terrible at that. But the alternative was studying for a test, and well, my heart wasn't in that either. Besides, the test was after Christmas break, so it could wait. I was about halfway through the address book, I think, when I got a page from the fire department I worked for. Usually the pages didn't apply to us, and I wasn't on call that night, but this one got my attention: Chaplains needed for fatal accident involving a child.

    Of course, all the emotions you'd think someone would experience hearing that went through me. I called my friend who was on call that night, and he was getting information from the department and said he'd call me back. He called a couple of minutes later and said if I wanted to come along, he could probably use the help. The family had their own clergy with them, so they didn't need us; we waited at the station for our people to come back so we could talk to them. Eventually, we were joined by another of our chaplains, which turned out to be a good thing.

    The call was handled by our department and another one nearby. The other department could not reach their chaplains, so I went with one of my friends to the other station. We waited for their guys to come back, and after they had emptied their ambulance, we were able to sit down and talk with them. In all my time as a fire chaplain, I never had a more significant conversation. These guys had been through a terrible situation, trying to save the life of a child, and the child had died on the way to the hospital. We talked for over two hours as they told us all the details and all of the emotions they were feeling. Fire and medic personnel almost never get to the point of freely sharing their emotions, so this was a pretty awesome talk.

    One of the men was Catholic and he was the one who had the task of extracting the child from the car. His enduring question was, why did this innocent child have to suffer and die? There was no answer for that question, but my fellow chaplain was able to give some meaning to it all when he pointed out that the child died in front of Marytown, a Franciscan monastery near our seminary that provides 24 hour exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. He pointed out that he died near the physical manifestation of Christ's own body, and that Jesus was always letting the children come to him.

    Today's readings bring this whole question back for me in such a poignant way. Why do people have to suffer? Why do good people and innocent children suffer? Why do people have to die? These are ever-present questions for us, I think, and this is where the rubber meets the road as far as our faith goes. Some people take great comfort in their faith when they have to deal with suffering. Some people even find their faith as they work through the pain of it all. And some people lose their faith, asking how God could let them suffer, or let a loved one suffer, if God loves them so much.

    God did not make death,
    nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
    For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
    and the creatures of the earth are wholesome…

    These words from today's first reading may bring up more questions than they answer for us. If God did not make death and if he made everything to have being and wholesome life, why does that plan go so often awry? Why are the living destroyed? Why is our world so often far less than wholesome? The Wisdom writer gives us a hint at an answer:

    But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world,
    and they who belong to his company experience it.

    The author is not saying that the person experiencing suffering and death did something to deserve it, and that's why they're suffering. That was, actually, a long-held belief in Jewish theology. But this reading represents a break from that kind of thought. The author is merely acknowledging that there is evil in the world, and that evil is the root of sin, suffering and death. All you have to do is flip on the evening news to know that's true.

    But suffering never seems to make sense for us. We may never get the answers to all our questions this side of the kingdom of God. Ask the woman with the hemorrhage in today's Gospel reading. She put up with her condition for twelve years – twelve years! In that society, such a condition made her ritually unclean, and so she could not take any part in the ritual or social life of the community. How awful that must have been for her. And to make matters worse, she was treated by doctors who not only did not cure her, but also took advantage of her, leaving her penniless.

    How many of us can identify with that woman? How many of us are here today, suffering from some illness that never seems to get better, or going through a family crisis that never seems to go away, or living with depression that seems to have no end? How many of us have worked long and hard on problems in our life or with our health with little success? How many of us have been left bankrupt – spiritually or emotionally, at least – in our attempts to put an end to our pain?

    Perhaps if we identify with the woman with the hemorrhage, we can also imitate her. In a great act of faith, she reached out to Christ, who not only cured her illness, but freed her of her social stigma and ritual impurity. Her touch of faith – which was a totally taboo thing for her to do, because it would have made Jesus ritually impure if he chose to acknowledge that – that touch of faith was rewarded with a new life.

    That can be hard for us to hear, when we don't really have that same opportunity. We can't see Jesus walking by and reach out and touch his robe. And maybe all of our attempts to reach out to him seem to have gone unrewarded. I'm not going to tell you that one act of faith will make all of your problems go away.

    But what I will say is this: as I have walked with people who have suffered, those who have reached out to Jesus in faith have not gone unrewarded. Maybe their suffering continued in some way, but in Christ they found the strength to walk through it with dignity and peace. Maybe Jesus won't always stop the bleeding of our hurts and inadequacies and woundedness. But through his own blood, he will always redeem us. We who are disciples need to make those acts of faith if we are to live what we believe.

    We come to the Eucharist today with our lives in various stages of grace and various stages of disrepair. At the Table of the Lord, we offer our lives and our suffering and our pain. We bring our faith, wherever we are on the journey, and reach out in that faith to touch the body of our Lord. We approach the Cup of Life, and whatever emptiness is in us is filled up with grace and healing love, poured out in the blood of Christ. As we go forth to love and serve the Lord this day, all of our problems may very well remain unsolved. Our suffering and pain may very well be with us still. But in our faith, perhaps they can be transformed, or at least maybe we can be transformed so that we can move through that suffering and pain with dignity and peace. And as we go forth, may we hear our Lord saying to us the same words he said
    to the woman with the hemorrhage: go in peace, your faith has saved you.

  • Ss. Peter & Paul: Who do you say that I am?

    Ss. Peter & Paul: Who do you say that I am?

     "Who do you say that I am?"

    Many have reflected on the importance of this question both for the disciples, and for ourselves. We might do well to think about it ourselves on occasion. But as I was preparing for today's Liturgy, an aspect of that question stood out in a way that it hasn't before.

    Certainly, it's an important question, and it called for a statement of faith from Peter. His faith was well-placed and well-articulated. So well, in fact, that Jesus gave Peter the all-important keys to the kingdom, and the power to bind and loose sins. This power has been appropriated to the Church through apostolic succession. So when you receive absolution in sacramental confession, it is because of Peter's faith that you receive it. That's a beautiful thing, I think, because it connects us to Jesus through the apostles as handed down through the Church.

    But here's the thing that stood out for me last night: it wasn't so much what Peter and the apostles said about who Jesus was that constituted their statement of faith, and their answer to Jesus' question. The answer really came from the way they lived their lives.

    Peter was, as Scripture shows us, an impulsive man. He often said and did the wrong thing, but just as often said and did the right thing. One minute he was walking on water, the next minute he was overcome by the wind and waves. Today he's professing his faith in Jesus, but a few verses later and Jesus is telling him to get behind him. He's nowhere to be found at the Cross, having denied his Master three times, but later professes his love for Jesus and accepts the responsibility to feed his sheep. But though it all, he was a man of conversion, and finally gave his life for Christ, suffering martyrdom under Nero in about the year 64.

    Paul, as we know, was a Jew, and a strict one. He went so far as to persecute Christians for their faith, and even took part in the martyrdom of St. Stephen. But Paul, too, was a man of conversion and completely changed his life on the way to Damascus, becoming a great apostle, theologian, and missionary. He, too, was martyred, ending his life in Rome.

    Both of these great apostles answered the question "Who do you say that I am?" by living lives of conversion, following Christ, and laying down their lives for Christ. They are examples to all of us, who also are asked to answer the question "Who do you say that I am?" So how have we been answering that question? What answer do our lives give?

  • 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Caritas Christi Urget Nos

    12th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Caritas Christi Urget Nos

    This was my first homily at my new assignment, St. Raphael. So there’s a bit more about me in here than I’d usually go for, but the nice part is that it fit in so well with the readings.

    In the Deacon Chapel at Mundelein Seminary, the institution where I spent the last five years, there is an inscription over the sanctuary that reads in Latin, “Caritas Christi Urget Nos.” The translation of this Latin phrase is found in today’s second reading: “The love of Christ impels us.” I have also seen that phrase translated, “The love of Christ compels us,” or maybe even better, “The love of Christ urges us on.” And we know this is true, don’t we? The love of Christ fills us up and the love of Christ sets us on fire and the love of Christ moves us into action. The love of Christ begs to be shared because the love of Christ cannot be contained. The love of Christ, if we let it, takes over our lives and empowers us to do things that we never thought we could do.

    I reflected on why Cardinal Mundelein would have put those words over the sanctuary of the Deacon Chapel at the school. I think it’s there as a reminder of what brought us there and what we were there to do. For those of us studying to be priests, it’s good to remember that it wasn’t our own initiative that brought us to the seminary. Sure, we had to cooperate with God’s grace, but it was that love of Christ that moved us to be there in the first place. And, coming to the chapel, we were there to celebrate the great power of Christ’s love in the sacrificial meal that he left us as a remembrance of him. We were there to remember that Christ died for all of us, as St. Paul tells us today, and that because of that we are made new creations.

    On the inside of my door at Mundelein Seminary, posted so that I could see it on the way out each and every day, was an 8 ½ by 11 inch sheet of paper that bore that same inscription: Caritas Christi Urget Nos. That sheet of paper wasn’t posted by Cardinal Mundelein or anybody else. I’m the one who put it there. I put it there as a reminder, too, of what it was that brought me to seminary. Because, in all honesty, some days I needed to be reminded of why it was I was doing what I was doing. Why was I studying a particularly difficult piece of theology? Why did I need to immerse myself in formation? Why did I need to do more to enliven my prayer life? Why was I studying for the priesthood at a difficult time in the Church’s history? Well, because the love of Christ impelled me to do it. I’ve found that’s the only reason that is ultimately satisfying, and that it’s only by going where the love of Christ takes me that I’m ever really happy.

    Today’s Scriptures paint a picture of a God completely in control. God is the one who sets the boundary for the sea and clothes the sky in the garments of the clouds. God is the one who overcomes death through the death of Christ and God is the one who creates the world anew through his Resurrection. God is the one who pilots the voyages of our lives and God is the one who calms our storms. If even the wind and the sea obey him, then we who are filled with his love are certainly impelled to do his will.

    Because the love of Christ impels all of us to do whatever it is we are called to do. The love of Christ impels some of us to raise children and create families where faith and love are priorities. The love of Christ impels some of us to live single lives with purity as a witness to the Gospel. The love of Christ impels some of us to be business men and women of integrity as a witness to God’s justice. The love of Christ impels some of us to priestly and religious vocations as a witness of faith. All of us are impelled by the love of Christ to do something to share that love with others and to show that love to a world which desperately needs to see it.

    We all could take a lesson from that inscription over the sanctuary of the Deacon Chapel at Mundelein and somehow put those words where we will see them each day. Because we all need to be reminded from time to time why we give of ourselves or deny ourselves or do more than what we’re expected to do. We need to remember that it is the love of Christ that impels us to live as examples and witnesses of the faith, so that others might see and believe. We need to remember that it is only by giving ourselves to our Lord, and trusting him to calm our storms, that we can ever be truly happy. The ultimate fulfillment in life comes from doing what Christ’s love impels us to do.

    As I begin my time here at St. Raphael, my prayer is that we will all use this time to grow in holiness together. We are all a people created by God and baptized into his Church. We are all a people of talents and gifts and faith. We are all a people loved by God and urged by that love to do great things in the name of God. We will do that by supporting one another, by praying for one another and by praying together, by celebrating the Eucharist and the sacraments together, and by sharing our faith and our lives together. I look forward to the time that we will spend together and pray that it will be a fulfilling time for all of us. I am grateful for the welcome you’ve already shown me in many ways, and for all of your prayers and support. Please know that you will be in my prayers every day. Let us rejoice in our being together, and let us all, as the psalmist tells us today, give thanks to the Lord, whose love is everlasting.

  • The Sacred Heart of Jesus

    The Sacred Heart of Jesus

    There’s a commercial I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks that I like. It shows little vignettes of people having near miss accidents, who are saved from those accidents by other people. So a woman on the way out of a restaurant moves a coffee cup on the table of a man whose elbow might knock it over at any minute. A man stops to yell to alert a truck parking that it’s about to run into a motorcycle. There’s a whole bunch of them showing people doing little things to help other people. The announcer says something like “when it’s people doing these things, we call it responsibility.”

    Have you seen that commercial? I like it, but I think they have the premise wrong. Because I think that when it’s people doing things like that, we ought to call it love. Sure, it’s not the same kind of love that you might have for a spouse or family member or even a friend, but it’s the kind of love that helps us go outside ourselves and work for the good of others.

    Today, we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Jesus’ love for us knows know bounds. In today’s Gospel, we see that not even death could limit his love for us. As he hung dying upon the cross, his love for us never wavered. And even after his death, the soldier’s lance helped blood and water to pour from his side. The blood that poured forth from Jesus’ side is the same blood we will be able to partake in this morning in the Eucharist. A blood that nourishes and strengthens us. A blood that cleanses us from our sins. The water is the same water you dipped your hand into on the way in today: the waters of baptism. That water washes our sins away and brings us into the body of the Church. The blood that poured forth from Jesus’ side as he hung on the cross continues to make his love present to us in the Church.

    One more way that the love of Jesus is made present in the Church is through you and me. We have to, as one of my professors used to tell us, love what Jesus loved as he hung on the cross. And that means that we are called to love each person we come in contact with, whether it’s our own friends or family members, or even a complete stranger. When we love each person in little or small ways, then some measure of the love that Jesus had on the cross for that person, the love which poured forth from his Sacred Heart, is poured forth upon our world yet again. The love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus isn’t meant just for us to hoard: we are meant to share it, so that that love may grow and abound and spread through all the world.

    May the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus draw you in today and be in your heart and in all that you do.

  • The Body and Blood of Christ: Sacrifice, Meal and Abiding Presence

    The Body and Blood of Christ: Sacrifice, Meal and Abiding Presence

    Today, I didn’t get to preach this homily. I didn’t preside at either of the Masses I attended; I just concelebrated. Which was fine, but I wanted to write a homily anyway, so that I didn’t lose the discipline of doing it. This isn’t as polished as I’d like it, but rather a first (and only) draft.

    Today’s readings.

    Today we celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ: the great gift of God to our Church and to our world in which we receive our salvation and in which the whole world is redeemed. We experience the Body and Blood of Christ as sacrifice, as a communal meal, and as abiding presence.

    As sacrifice, we experience Christ’s body and blood as the ritual that frees us from sin. When we celebrate the Eucharist, we are present in a memorial way at Calvary, where Christ laid down his life for us on that cross, to pay the price for our sins and the sins of the whole world. This sacrifice is decidedly not like the sacrifice Moses offered in our first reading, but is a perfection of it. Moses’ sacrifice was that of bulls. It was a gory, bloody sacrifice, in which the people were sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice to remind them of the covenant. In our sacrifice today, we participate in an un-bloody way the sacrifice not of bulls or goats, but of our Lord and Savior, who willingly laid down his life to free us from sin. St. Thomas Aquinas points out that if in Moses’ time, the sacrifice of bulls and goats brought people back into covenant with God, how much more does the sacrifice of God’s Son bring us into perfect union with God our Creator? In Christ’s death and resurrection, we are reborn into a living hope of seeing God face to face, something that in Moses’ time, nobody could do and live. Christ’s sacrifice also was not something that had to be repeated time and time again; he did it once for all on the cross, and we in the Eucharist have the opportunity to participate in that one sacrifice in anamnesis: in a memorial way.

    As communal meal, we are fed by our Lord and Savior in a most perfect way. When we gather as one body, we bring all that we are and all that we experience to the meal. We bring our daily struggles and imperfections. We bring our pursuit of holiness, with all its successes and failures. We bring our joys and our sufferings, our successes and our losses, our love and our pain. We bring all of this together to the one table of Jesus Christ, united with all of the prayers of the Church on earth and the saints in heaven, along with the bread and the wine, all to become the perfect Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, who fills us perfectly and nourishes our body and spirit. When we partake of the one loaf which is the Body of our Lord and the one cup which is His Blood poured out for our salvation, we who are many become one, and all of our sins and failings and brokenness is bound up and sanctified and redeemed. This one meal fills our every hunger and gives life to our spirit. In this one bread and one cup, we are nourished in a way that we will never hunger and never thirst for anything else, ever again.

    As abiding presence, we experience our Lord, who has ascended beyond our sight, in every time and place. At his ascension, Christ promised that he would be with us always, until the end of the age. The Body and Blood of Christ is the visible sign of that presence, the sacrament of his love, present in the Church for the redemption of the whole world. As we receive the Body and Blood of our Lord at Mass, and as we kneel in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, we experience in a very real way the fulfillment of Christ’s promise to be with us always. That beautiful sacrament empowers us all to go forth and see Christ’s presence in other ways: in the action of our love and service to one another, in our families and our communities as we reach out to one another in need and are present to one another in joy and in sorrow. The presence of Christ in our Church is made visible in each one of us, and that presence overflows to every corner of our world to preach the Gospel in word and in deed. Through the Eucharist, Christ is truly with us always until the end of the age.

    This word, “Eucharist,” means “thanksgiving.” It is truly the thanksgiving of our participation in the life of God through the saving action of Christ on the Cross. It is truly the thanksgiving for the nourishment that we receive through the sacraments and the Church. It is truly the thanksgiving for Christ’s abiding presence in our world.

    On this Father’s day, we can also experience that thanksgiving in our fathers, grandfathers, uncles, godfathers and spiritual fathers in many ways. All that these men have been for us in our lives is a visible reflection of Christ’s abiding presence in our Church and in our world. We truly give thanks for each one of them and encourage them all to continue to live as witnesses of the Gospel and of Christ’s love for all of his brothers and sisters. Through their example, may we all take us the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.

  • Sixth Sunday of Easter: God’s Transforming Love

    Sixth Sunday of Easter: God’s Transforming Love

    Today's readings.

    I realized this past week that this would be my last homily as a deacon.  Time has certainly flown by, and next week I’ll be attending the Ordination of a friend in Texas, and the week after that is my turn.  Since this is my last homily as a deacon, I am very happy that I get to preach on these particular readings, because they contain some of my favorite lines in all of Scripture.  We could certainly spend hours delving into the theological meanings of all that we’re told today, but well, I wouldn’t do that to you in my last homily as a deacon!

    The letter from St. John in today’s second reading has one of the most fundamental principles in all of theology: God is love.  We all probably learned that somewhere early on in our religious education, and it probably filled us with warm feelings at the time.  But we might also agree that the whole idea of “God is love” can be a little trite, the stuff of greeting cards and bumper stickers, perhaps it has become almost meaningless to we who have become jaded with the whole idea of what love is. 

    But the love that is God isn’t any of the things we think of when we think of love.  This love isn’t a mere warm feeling for another person, it isn’t a synonym for “like,” it isn’t physical, emotional or intellectual love at all.  The Greek word that is translated “love” here is agape – a word you may have heard – and maybe “love” isn’t even the best way to translate it, but that’s all that our English provides.  Agape love is love that lives for and acts for another person; agape love is, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

    This is, after all, what Jesus did for us up there on that cross.  The most perfect way that God could show God’s love for us is for His only begotten Son to be born among us, to suffer and die to pay the price for our sins, and to be raised up to new life that lasts forever so that the barriers of sin and death that had kept us from God’s love would be obliterated.  This agape love is love that is not destroyed by sin nor limited by death; it is a love that is impossible to horde but must be given away; it is a love that does not let distinctions like race or religion or class or way of life divide us: it is a love that is as limitless as God is, because God Himself is that love.

    This agape love that is God’s very essence is a love that completely transforms us.  This love makes our salvation possible and once it has done that, it bursts forth from us to others in order to make their salvation possible too.  Peter was transformed by this love in the first reading, and finally came to the realization that this love was not limited just to Jews but also must embrace the Gentile world as well. 

    Because God’s love transforms us, we are no longer slaves, as Jesus says, but now God’s friends.  Our slavery to the passions and vices and limitations and longings of our flesh can all be transformed by God’s love into the kind of obedience that brings us true joy.  God’s agape love forgives sin, heals brokenness, and raises us up to be God’s friends.  God’s love sends us transformed lovers out to love others and to help them find friendship with God too.  This love makes us sharers in the very love and life of God.

    Because God’s love transforms us, we can do the thing that is not in our nature: we can lay down our lives for others.  Just as Christ laid down his life on the cross, so we can give of ourselves, often at great cost, to raise children, to serve the poor, to care for the elderly and the infirm, to shelter the homeless and teach the young.  All of the things that will never make us rich or famous but which will raise up another person in need are possible because of God’s transforming love.

    When we’ve loved others in this way, and when we see them reach out to others in love, we know that God’s love continues to transform our world and continues to raise us up and make salvation possible for more and more people every day. 

    Having been transformed into God’s friends, we are commanded to love one another as we have been loved by God.  God’s love came to us at the incredible price of the life of Jesus Christ, and loving one another will demand a great price from us as well.  But we can be confident in our ability to lay down our very lives for others because we are being transformed daily by our God who is love itself.

  • Fifth Sunday of Easter: All Creation Rightly Gives You Praise

    Fifth Sunday of Easter: All Creation Rightly Gives You Praise

    Today's readings. 

    I remember back in my second year of seminary, I took my first moral theology class.  One of the first tests we took had a line from the third Eucharistic Prayer on it: “Father, you are holy indeed, and all creation rightly gives you praise.”  This line came along with the question: “Rocks are part of creation.  So how does a rock give God praise?”  The answer, we had been taught, is “by being a rock.”  Certainly a rock could not sing a song of praise or pray a psalm, but just by being what it was intended to be—a rock—it gave God praise.

    The implications of the question were that every part of creation gives God praise by being most fully what it was created to be.  Trees give praise to God by bearing leaves, flowers and fruit; animals give praise to God by running, ruling the jungle, barking, flying or whatever it was they were given power to do.  We then, are also created to give God praise by being most fully what we were created to be – by being fully human.  This is what Jesus tells us at the end of today’s Gospel: “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (John 15:8).

    Being fully human might seem easy to do.  But that, I think, is based on a flawed notion of what it means to be human.  How many times have we all said something like, “sure, I am a sinner; I’m only human, right?”  But being a sinner is not the same as being fully human.  The most fully human person that ever walked the face of the earth was Jesus Christ.  Jesus, we believe, was like us in all things, except sin.  This is how we know that sin is not part of what it means to be fully human.  And sin obviously is not something that gives God praise.  Indeed, that last line of the Gospel seems to leave no room for sin, and sets a rather high standard of what it means to give God praise: that we must bear much fruit – not just some fruit, but much fruit – and become disciples of Jesus.

    To become more fully human is a life-long task, and we know that it will never be fully realized this side of heaven.  But while we are on earth, that’s our primary responsibility: to give God praise by becoming more fully what we were created to be in the first place.  Today’s Gospel gives us a picture of how we’re supposed to do that.  It mentions two specific things we are to do.

    The first is to get pruned.  We, the branches of Jesus’ vine are destined to be pruned so that we can bear more fruit.  Now, a couple of weeks ago, I was pruning bushes at my parents’ house.  While the bushes never said a word to me, I was guessing this pruning was not a painless process for them!  It involves cutting away parts of the bush that looked for all the world like they were life-giving, and it involved cutting some branches radically away.  All in the name of becoming a healthier shrub. 

    We too have to be pruned sometimes.  And it’s not a painless process for us either: it involves maybe cutting away some parts of our lives that look for all the world like they are life-giving.  But we recognize that these things can be really destructive: relationships that entangle us in ways that are not healthy, pleasures that lead to sin, habits that are not virtuous.  However enjoyable these relationships or activities may seem to be, and however painful it may be to end them, end them we must in the name of pruning our lives to be healthier, to be more fully the people we were created to be.

    I’ve done some pruning in my own life recently.  And I can tell you it has indeed been painful.  This past week, I moved out of my room at the seminary.  It is a room that has served me well for the last four years, but, as one of our formators told us at our end-of-the-year Mass, “it’s time for you to go.”  At the end of it, I took one last look around before I left and saw a room much cleaner than it had been in about a year! – but also much emptier.  There was sadness, and I realized the sadness was not so much leaving the little but functional room, but that leaving it represented the sadness of leaving behind all the things the room been for me: the times I studied with my friends there for a test; the times we had met there for prayer or to discuss the Scriptures in our formation group; the times we had just hung out there, watching a movie, or wasting time together.  Those activities and relationships had been life-giving to me for five years, and now it was time to go.  I realize that as good as those relationships had been for me, it is time to let go and to move on to the priestly life God has been and is now calling me to live.  This pruning is painful, but in doing so, I can become more fully the person God created me to be.

    The second thing the Gospel calls us to do today is to remain in me.  “Me,” of course, means Jesus, and just in case we don’t get the point, Jesus gives us that instruction four times.  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, as the branch remains in the vine.  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you can bear much fruit.  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you will not wither and dry up only to be tossed out and burned as rubbish.  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that whatever you truly need and want will be done, and so that you can bear much fruit and be my disciples. 

    I think we can all get on board with remaining in Jesus, because this reading makes it sound completely wonderful.  And it is wonderful.  If we want to be truly happy, if we want ultimate fulfillment in life, if we really want to be the wonderful creation God made us to be, we must remain in Jesus, because, as he says, “without me you can do nothing.”  And that’s true.  How many times have we tried to better ourselves and lost sight of the goal before we even started?  How many times have we tried to stamp out a pattern of sin in our lives, only to fall victim to it time and time again?  How many times have we tried to repair relationships only to have egos, hurts or resentments get in the way?  When we forget to start our work with God’s help, we are destined to fail.  Apart from Jesus we can do nothing.  Well does he advise us to remain in him.

    But what does “remain in me” mean?  How do we do that?  Is there a blueprint or some steps we can follow to make sure we’re remaining?  Unfortunately, we don’t get any of that in today’s Scripture.  We are told that because we’ve had the word preached to us, we are “already pruned” and are on the way to remaining in him.  But this remaining, much like the seasonal pruning, is not a once-and-for-all thing.  We have to check our growth daily, we have to examine where we are remaining every day.  That might start with Sunday Mass attendance, and perhaps move on to daily Mass, praying devotions like the Rosary, reading Scripture every day, and taking time at the end of the day to see whether we’ve been part of the vine, or are in danger of breaking away from it.

    Remaining in Jesus is different for every person.  We’ve all been called to remain in him in different ways.  Some are called to remain in Jesus in the context of married and family life.  Others are called to remain in Jesus by living life as a priest, deacon, or religious brother or sister.  Others remain in Jesus by chastely living as single men and women.  Each of these ways of remaining in
    Jesus has a different style of prayer and embraces different acts of charity and service and relationships with others.  All of them are ways of remaining part of the vine, but they all must have that seasonal pruning and that daily examination that guides them back to the vine day in and day out.

    On this Mother’s Day, I am particularly struck by the spiritual example of my mother and my grandmothers.  These women have been faithful witnesses to the Gospel for me and have always encouraged me to live the most fully human life I possibly could.  They encouraged me to become all that God had created me to be, and if not for their witness and their urging, I know I would not be standing here today.  One of the many gifts God gives us in this life to encourage us in the very hard work of pruning and remaining is the gift of those who have been mother to us.  These might have been our natural mothers and grandmothers, our godmothers, our aunts or sisters or some other nurturing female presence in our lives.  For all of them today, let us give thanks, and praise our God for the ways they have helped us to be what God created us to be.

    All creation, as Eucharistic Prayer III tells us, rightly gives God praise.  But we aren’t rocks.  It’s not so easy for us to be most fully the wonderful human creation we were made to be.  But that, brothers and sisters in Christ, is our calling and our joy.  May we all support one another in our times of pruning and through our journey of remaining.  Encouraged by one another, we can all sing together with the psalmist, “I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people” (Psalm 22:26a).

  • Third Sunday of Easter: Preaching Forgiveness

    Third Sunday of Easter: Preaching Forgiveness

    Today's readings.

    Two weeks ago today, we celebrated Easter, the great feast of our salvation, when Christ rose victorious over sin and death.  Today, two weeks later, the question is, so now what?

    In today’s Liturgy of the Word, three different audiences hear the same message.  In the first reading, Peter is speaking to a Jewish audience.  This audience has just witnessed Peter and John stopping at the Temple Gate to cure a crippled man in the Name of Jesus.  These folks were used to seeing the man crippled, and for them, in that culture, at that time, being crippled meant that his life was steeped in sin.  So seeing the man cured meant also that his sins were wiped away.  The reading we have from Acts today follows that story and in it, Peter teaches that audience about the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection and exhorts them to repent and be converted, in order that their sins, too, might be wiped away.

    In the second reading, John is writing to his community, obviously an audience of Christians.  In that letter, John exhorts the community to avoid committing sin and to keep God’s commandments.  But because he knows that we are all weak human beings, he knows that sin happens, and so he encourages them by reminding them of Jesus Christ the righteous one, who is our expiation, who wipes away sin.

    In the Gospel, the audience is the disciples.  Jesus enters their midst and they are terrified, thinking they’ve seen a ghost.  After inviting them to touch him and after eating some cooked fish to let them know that he is not a ghost, but a real person, Jesus opens their minds so that they can understand all of the Scriptures that prophesied about his life and ministry.  He then encourages them to go out and preach repentance so that people’s sins might be wiped away.

    It almost sounds like a Lenten message, doesn’t it?  All of the readings speak of sin.  But the difference here is that all of the readings speak of sin wiped away.  And all of the readings speak of that wiping away coming about through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Through this beautiful Paschal Mystery, the blackboards of our lives are wiped clean so that a new story, free from the effects of sin and death, can be written about us in the Name of Jesus Christ.

    Let’s take a show of hands: how many of you gave something up for Lent, or did some act of charity or service, or gave money to the poor, or spent more time in prayer or prayed a different way during Lent?  That’s great; those penitential practices helped to prepare us for the joy of Easter.  During Easter, though, we quite rightly replace all the penance and fasting with joy and feasting.  So maybe we’ve all given up those practices of fasting, almsgiving and prayer that we started during Lent.  I know that, in many ways, I have.

    But maybe we shouldn’t give up reforming our lives for Easter.  Because the so now what? of Easter is that we truly believe things have really changed.  We believe that Jesus Christ died a cruel death and rose gloriously triumphant over that death.  We believe that His death and resurrection repaired our broken relationship with God and allowed us to experience the joy of salvation.  We believe that the Paschal Mystery is what makes it possible for us to live one day with God in heaven.  None of that was possible before Easter.

    So I think we should continue to reform our lives during Easter, perhaps by continuing some of our Lenten practices.  Because the idea is not to return to our old patterns of sin.  If the things we gave up were obstacles to living a life guided by Christ in the Holy Spirit and obstacles to living in community with others, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to go back to them.  If the works of charity, service and almsgiving we did helped us to be more aware of our many blessings and more aware of the needs of others, maybe we should look for ways to continue to grow in those virtues.  If our new practices of prayer helped us to grow closer to God and nourished our spiritual lives, maybe we should make room for that kind of prayer more often than just during Lent.  Because with the blackboards of our lives wiped clean of sin, we don’t want to go back and write the same old story. 

    So what is the story that we should be writing on those clean slates?  The Gospel tells us today: the story of the God’s forgiveness.  That story goes something like this:  Like the people in the first reading, we are called to live reformed lives.  Like the people in the second reading, we must be obedient to God’s command of love.  And like the disciples in the Gospel reading, we are called to go out and preach forgiveness of sins.

    I know what you’re thinking right now: Deacon Pat, I’m not a preacher, how can I go out and preach the forgiveness of sins?  Well, preaching, as I often need to be reminded, is much more than just speaking: it’s doing.  St. Francis said it best: “Preach the Gospel constantly.  When necessary, use words.”  Our baptism – the baptism received at the Easter vigil, or whenever it was we were baptized, and which we renewed on Easter Sunday – empowers us to be preachers of forgiveness in our daily lives.

    That might mean working to put aside the petty family squabbles, or even the significant family squabbles, that divide us.  That might mean forgetting our hurts and the offenses we’ve endured so that we can repair our families and communities.  It might mean that we are the ones who make the phone call to a friend even when we’ve done that a hundred times and they’ve seem to have lost our phone number.  Perhaps it even means swallowing our own pride and asking for forgiveness for something that wasn’t entirely our fault.  Forgiveness of sins is preached by the Church – which, brothers and sisters in Christ, is all of us – living forgiveness day in and day out.

    In my Reconciliation practicum class, I have had to memorize the very beautiful words of absolution that the priest speaks to the penitent at the end of Sacramental Confession.  The first part of that prayer goes like this: “God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins.”  Every time I hear those words in Confession, or when I speak them in practice for hearing confessions, I am overwhelmed by the great love that God has for us.  Indeed, the whole purpose of God’s unconditional love as lived in the three persons of the Trinity is to make possible the forgiveness of our sins.  So our own love of God and one another must make that forgiveness possible too.  That’s what it means for us to preach forgiveness of sins.

    Two weeks ago today, we celebrated Easter, the great feast of our salvation, when Christ rose victorious over sin and death.  Today, two weeks later, the question is, so now what?  After today’s Liturgy of the Word, I think we all know the answer to that question.  The new question is, will we do it?

  • Second Sunday of Easter: Peace Be With You

    Second Sunday of Easter: Peace Be With You

    Today's readings. 

    Why is it that you're here today?  Is it because your faith is what carries you through the highs and lows of life, because you need to worship in order to be empowered to live?  Is it because the Word of God and the life-giving Eucharist is central to who you are and vital to the service that you give?  Is it because your prayer life begins and ends in the gathered community that has its source in Christ?  Is it because you came to the 9:30 or 11:30 in the Chapel last Sunday and you heard the deacon give an incredible homily and you just couldn't stay away?

    Or are your motives a little less lofty?  Are you here because your parents pestered you until you gave up and came to Mass?  Are you here because that's what you always do on [Saturday Evening] Sunday Morning?  Are you here because you are afraid of having to confess that you didn't come?  Are you here because you are lonely, or had nothing else to do, or are desperate that God change your life?

    The good news is that if our reason for being here today is less than perfect, we have ten patron saints locked up in that room in Jerusalem.  For fear of the Jews they are together, clinging to one another, mourning their lost friend, wondering what would happen to them, and trying to make sense of the empty tomb that Mary Magdalene, Peter and the beloved disciple found earlier that day. 

    It doesn't matter what brings us together in this sacred place, because what really matters is that at least we are together; at least we are here.  And it really is an act of faith to come together every week.  More so now, perhaps, than ever before.  It would be so much easier to give in to the many scandals that keep people from the Church these days.  It would be far easier for all of us to give in to the embarrassment of being Catholic that we surely must feel every time we turn on the news these days.  It might even be understandable to find someplace else to worship, or for priests not to wear their Roman Collars in public, or for seminarians to give up pursuing the vocation to which they've been called.  But, for whatever reason, we didn't, and because we are here, together, with all of our fears and embarrassments and frailties, our Lord, in his Divine Mercy, can break through all those locked doors and say to us as he said to the Ten: "Peace be with you."

    It might be easy to give poor Doubting Thomas a hard time, but it cannot be so for those of us who come here with all our fears and doubts and uncertainties.  Because it is Thomas who speaks for us these days, when we would just as soon find some reason to write off what we've been taught and to do something else.  For those of us with modern minds who cannot and will not believe merely on the word of others, Thomas, who would not believe on the mere words of the Ten, is our spokesman.  For everyone for whom seeing is believing, Thomas's resolve to withhold judgment until he saw the Lord's hands and side is our statement of faith – such as it is.

    And I think I can understand Thomas's behavior here.  For whatever reason, he was missing from the group when the Lord came and appeared to them that first time.  He certainly must have felt left out, and perhaps hurt that he was not given the same gift that they were.  And we must remember that the Ten were all unbelieving before they saw Jesus' hands and side too: only upon seeing that were they able to exclaim: "We have seen the Lord!"

    Thomas was given the opportunity to have a much more intimate experience of the Risen Lord than did the other ten.  He alone was invited to reach out and touch Jesus in his brokenness:  "Put your finger here," Jesus says, "and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side."  Here again, Thomas is invited to the faith in the same way that we are this Easter day, because we too will have the opportunity to reach out and touch our Risen Lord, broken and bruised, in the Eucharist in a few minutes.  As we take the Body and Blood of our Lord, perhaps we will hear the faith of Thomas crying out, "My Lord and my God!" 

    It is very important, I think, to notice that every time Jesus breaks through the locked doors, he offers his peace.  In the very same way, Jesus is breaking through whatever it is that is locking us up these days and saying, "Peace be with you."  The peace that Jesus offers is not just the absence of whatever conflict we are experiencing, but more so, a wholeness that binds up our brokenness, heals our wounds, and calms the cries of our doubts and fears.  We have to know that it is that peace that leads us back to this sacred place, despite whatever it is that we think has brought us here this day.  It is that peace that helps us recognize our Lord, triumphant over the grave, who silences the doubt that we all experience when we are broken and our lives are crazy, and our world is a mess, and our Church is in disarray. 

    It is that peace that brings us together to meet our Risen Lord, and which empowers us to go out in the same way the disciples did, to forgive and comfort and bless and heal and feed and love everyone in the Name of Christ.  We must remember that many have not seen the Risen Lord but may come to believe because of us.  And it is truly a sign of the Risen Lord, brothers and sisters in Christ, when we overcome our embarrassments and scandal and are united with each other. It is a sign of the Risen Lord when we, with all of our fears and doubts and imperfections, continue to serve others in the name of Christ.  When we do that, perhaps others will see the presence of Christ in us and exclaim with Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"

    So, whatever it is that has brought you here this day, please hear the words of the Risen Lord as he breaks through the locked door of your own woundedness: "Peace be with you."