Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Homilies

  • Pope Saint Pius X

    Pope Saint Pius X

    Mass at Saint Petronille, Glen Ellyn | Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate Saint Pius X, a man dedicated to pastoral ministry, and helping people to let go of whatever would hold them back on the journey of faith. He was born Joseph Sarto, the second of ten children in a poor Italian family. He became pope at the age of 68, and he wanted to open the banquet for all those who would come worthily. He encouraged frequent reception of Holy Communion, which was observed sparingly in his day, and especially encouraged children to come to the Eucharist. During his reign, he famously ended, and subsequently refused to reinstate, state interference in canonical affairs. He had foreseen World War I, but because he died just a few weeks after the war began, he was unable to speak much about it. On his deathbed, however, he said, “This is the last affliction the Lord will visit on me. I would gladly give my life to save my poor children from this ghastly scourge.”

    Turning to the readings, particularly the first reading because I feel it needs explanation: and I’m not going to sugar-coat this – the truth is that this is a really horrible story. Why on earth would we worship a God who would accept such a vow from Jephthah (or anyone else for that matter), or hold him to it? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves: first, a bit of context. The footnotes in the New American Bible remind us that this was a fairly common theme in ancient mythology. When the topic of sacrificing children comes up in Scripture, it is usually strongly condemned. Here, the writer simply records the story, probably to explain the tradition that is recorded in the next verse after our reading stops: “It became a custom in Israel for Israelite women to go yearly to mourn the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite for four days of the year.”

    Why this comes up at all in the Sacred Liturgy is another matter. Bad enough that this story is in the Bible, must we hear it every second year on this day? Well, all we have to do is wait a minute to hear the Psalmist explain what’s really important:

    Sacrifice or oblation you wished not,
    but ears open to obedience you gave me.
    Burnt offerings or sin-offerings you sought not;
    then said I, “Behold I come.”

    So let’s let the horrible story remind us that the Psalmist directs us how to really pray and really live. Leave behind the crazy sacrifices and unholy vows, and instead give ourselves completely to the Lord, and obey his commands.

    Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

  • Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s first reading has always intrigued me, ever since I can remember hearing it as a child. God intends to destroy the city of Sodom because of its pervasive wickedness. Abraham, newly in relationship with God, stands up for the innocent of the city, largely because that was where his nephew, Lot, had taken up residence. In what seems to be a case of cosmic “Let’s Make a Deal,” Abraham pleads with God to spare the city if just fifty innocent people could be found there. God agrees and Abraham persists. Eventually God agrees to spare the city if just ten righteous people could be found in the city of Sodom.

    It is important, I think, to know that Abraham’s prayer does not really change his unchangeable God. Instead, God always intended to spare the city if there were just people in it.  What I love about this reading is Abraham’s line, “See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes!”  It seems Abraham is testing the relationship, seeing how far it will go.  What happens is that he learns something great about our unchanging God: he learns that, as the psalmist sings today, “The LORD is kind and merciful.”

    All of this leads us to an important issue at stake for the praying disciple: that is, prayer must come out of a relationship with God.  Abraham may have been somewhat presumptuous to speak to God the way that he did.  But if he didn’t know God, if he didn’t have a relationship with God, well, then his conversation would have been completely offensive, wouldn’t it?  But he did know God, and was getting to know him better, so his pleas for the just people of Sodom were completely appropriate.

    We too are called to relationship with God, a relationship that finds its source in our prayer.  We can persistently plead for loved ones, but we also have to spend time in adoration and praise and thanksgiving, and even quiet contemplation so that this most important of our relationships can grow.  The LORD is kind and merciful, and he longs to reveal his mercy as we come to him in prayer.

  • The Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    The Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    “I can’t believe you messed up again.”
    “You’re never going to amount to anything.”
    “No one will ever understand you … love you … care about you.”

    I think we can all agree that these statements are examples of negative self-talk. We can recognize that easily enough when other people say them. But what happens when we are the ones saying them about ourselves? I also think most of us, maybe all of us, have said these things or something like them some time in our lives. Please God, we have gotten past that, but maybe we haven’t yet. The Good News today is that the Liturgy today takes aim against that self-talk head-on.

    By all accounts, Peter was an abject failure. As a fisherman, the Gospels record him catching nothing almost every single time he gets out on the water, at least until Jesus enters the picture. As a disciple, he was bold enough to get out of the boat and try to walk on water, only to get distracted by the wind and waves and sink, until Jesus pulls him up. As a friend, he denies Jesus three times on the night of his arrest and after his friend’s death he is in a tailspin of depression, until Jesus gives him three opportunities to profess his love.

    By all accounts, Paul was a murderer who wanted to destroy Christianity by destroying Christians. He was noted for his acumen in rooting out the Christian leaders and dragging them off in chains, and even consented to the stoning of Saint Stephen. He was emboldened and authorized to do the same in Damascus, until Jesus caught up with him on the road and blinded his distorted vision.

    Both Peter and Paul could have had the negative self-talk, and for good reason, and maybe, especially in Peter’s case, they actually did. But our God will tolerate no such thing for those he has chosen as his own. That’s why he gave Peter tons of fish, pulled him out of the water, and forgave him his denials, charging him to feed his sheep. That’s why he caught up with Paul on the road and redirected his vision, charging him to preach the Gospel. Our God has chosen them, chosen us, to be his own, and he won’t rest until we see who we are to be for him. Our God is the God of second chances.

    God sees past our negative self-talk, sees past our brokenness, sees past our failure, pulls us out of the water, tackles us on the road, and gives us a second chance. Or a third. Or a fiftieth, or whatever. [Father John and] I can attest to this. I hope you can too.

    So yes, on this feast of Saints Peter and Paul, we celebrate men who were great for the Church. Indeed we might not be here without their witness and example and ministry. But we do well to celebrate more the God who gave them second chances so that they could be the men he created them to be and to do the ministry he created them to do.

    So if you find yourself in the midst of negative self-talk today, I hope you’ll take Saints Peter and Paul as your patrons, and let God do in you what he did in them. But you need to let go of the vision that keeps you from him, you need to let God re-direct your vision, so that you can see the man or woman that God created you to be.

    Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

  • Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So today we learn that just because we call on the Lord, that doesn’t mean that the Lord is at our whim, someone we can summon in the same way as we press a button on the remote and the television comes to life. That’s what the whole nasty business with Abram and Sarai was about. Instead of trusting the Lord’s promises that God would make Abram the father of many nations, they took matters into their own hands and then were displeased at the result. That’s what happens when we forget to trust in God and instead trust in ourselves and in our own ability to do something clever.

    The same is true for the scribes and Pharisees, and also for the wanna-be followers of Jesus. They might claim mighty deeds in Jesus’ name, but Jesus can see their hearts and knows that they are not really open to the fullness of the Gospel. Simply crying, “Lord, Lord” will not get them into the kingdom of heaven. If they’re not willing to set their house on the rock solid foundation of Christ, they will not stand, and they will fall apart with the first of the storms.

    And so we disciples have to be careful about our relationship with Christ. It’s not something we can neglect and expect it to be deep and rich enough to lead us to eternal life. We have to be people of integrity, spiritual people who know who our Lord is and who are open to the fullness of his teaching. He teaches with authority, not as the scribes of old, nor as the so-called authorities of our time – like Oprah or Dr. Phil. If we want teaching with authority, all we have to do is open the Bible, take some time in Adoration, or devote ourselves to prayer, and then fall in love all over again with our Lord who gave himself for our sakes so that we can all be one with him in the kingdom that has no end.

  • The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

    The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

    Today’s readings

    “Give them some food yourselves.”

    Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Catholic worship is our celebration of the Eucharist. We state very strongly that it’s not just a symbol, not just a nice memory. It is the actual Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord. We know that we are spiritually in the presence of our Lord whenever we receive Communion or adore the Blessed Sacrament. But even more, we believe that, in the Eucharist, we become what we receive: we become part of the Mystical Body of Christ, and in that Body we all become one. We Catholics believe that the Eucharist makes us one, and because of that, it is good for all of us to come together as one to celebrate this feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

    On this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, we are called to take comfort in the many ways God feeds us. We know that when we pray “give us this day our daily bread,” we will receive all that we need and more, because our God loves us and cares for us. But to really trust in God’s care can sometimes be a bit of a scary moment.

    It was certainly scary for the disciples, who asked Jesus to “dismiss the crowds” so that they could go into the surrounding cities and get something to eat. They were afraid for the crowds because they had come to the desert, where there was nothing to eat or drink. They were afraid for the crowds because it would soon be dark and then it would be dangerous to travel into the surrounding cities to find refuge and sustenance. And, if they were to really admit it, they were afraid of the crowds, because all they had to offer them were five loaves of bread and two fish – not much of a meal for Jesus and the Twelve, let alone five thousand.

    But Jesus isn’t having any of that. Fear is no match for God’s mercy and care and providence, so instead of dismissing the crowds, he tells the disciples to gather the people in groups of about fifty. Then he takes the disciples’ meager offering, with every intent of supplying whatever it lacked. He blesses their offerings, transforming them from an impoverished snack to a rich, nourishing meal. He breaks the bread, enabling all those present to partake of it, and finally he gives that meal to the crowd, filling their hungering bodies and souls with all that they need and then some. Caught in a deserted place with darkness encroaching and practically nothing to offer in the way of food, Jesus overcomes every obstacle and feeds the crowd with abundance. It’s no wonder they followed him to this out of the way place.

    The disciples had to be amazed at this turn of events, and perhaps it was an occasion for them of coming to know Jesus and his ministry in a deeper way. They were fed not just physically by this meal, but they were fed in faith as well. In this miraculous meal, they came to know that Jesus could be depended on to keep them from danger and to transform the bleakest of moments into the most joyous of all festivals. But even as their faith moved to a deeper level, the challenge of that faith was cranked up a notch as well. “Give them some food yourselves,” Jesus said to them. Having been fed physically and spiritually by their Master, they were now charged with feeding others in the very same way.

    “Give them some food yourselves.”

    The Twelve certainly thought that was easier said than done, but how do we feel when we hear that command? Because, let’s be clear about this, it is a command for us as well. I just think this quote jumps off the page at me. Give them some food yourselves. Religious people often expect the proverbial deus ex machina, the “god out of the machine” that appears in some literary works when things go awry and sets everything right. God is expected to do all the heavy lifting while all we need to do is keep people in our thoughts and prayers. But that’s not how any of this works. The life of the disciple is not some contrived ancient drama, and God is not a literary device that we can employ when we’d rather not take care of people.

    The way prayer works when we notice a need is that we ask God to help us to make the situation right. What can we ourselves do to make things right? The answer to that depends on our proximity to the problem, our station in life, and the resources we have. If we see a disaster in a far away place, like the wildfires in California earlier this year, our best effort might be to raise funds to assist those most in need, as we did for our Lenten Service Project this year, raising over $15,000 to assist those in the poorest areas of the LA Wildfires. But maybe we are a little closer, and we can go to a soup kitchen to provide a literal meal. Perhaps our situation gives us free time to go on a mission trip, bringing the love of Christ to those who need so much assistance. The list goes on. We need to take Jesus’ command to “give them some food yourselves” seriously, because he wasn’t just joking around.

    Jesus has come to supply every need. In Jesus, nothing is lacking and no one suffers want. All the Lord asks of us each Sunday is to gather as a sacred assembly, to unite in offering worship with Jesus who is our High Priest, to receive Holy Communion, and then to go forth to share the abundance of our feast with others who have yet to be fed. After the crowd had eaten the meal, that was the time for them to go out into the surrounding villages and farms – not to find something to eat, but to share with everyone they met the abundance that they had been given. So it is for us. After we are fed in the Eucharist, we must then necessarily go forth in peace, glorifying the Lord by sharing our own abundance with every person we meet. We too must hear and answer those very challenging words of Jesus: “Give them some food yourselves.”

    In our Eucharist today, the quiet time after Communion is our time to gather up the wicker baskets of our abundance, to reflect on what God has given us and done for us and done with us. We who receive the great meal of his own Body and Blood must be resolved to give from those wicker baskets in our day-to-day life, feeding all those people God has given us in our lives. We do all this, gathered as one in the Eucharist, in remembrance of Christ, proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes again.

    Give them some food yourselves.

    Que el Cuerpo y la Sangre de Cristo nos mantengan seguros para la vida eterna.  May the Body and Blood of Christ keep us all safe for eternal life.

  • Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Saint Paul writes that he put up with persecution from all sides: from his own people as well as the Gentiles. He was beaten often, endured hazardous journeys and perilous weather, as well as every kind of deprivation. His experience was definitely extreme, but others who lived the faith in those days were also subject to persecution, torture and death. Our experience isn’t quite like that, is it? However, persecution like this does happen occasionally in some parts of the world.

    But there is a subtle kind of persecution that we often must endure. We know that even if our society is not openly hostile to living the Gospel, it might be just one step short of that. Life is not respected in our society: babies are aborted, the elderly are not respected or given adequate care, children are not raised in nurturing families, people are hated because of their race, color or creed. Faith is ridiculed as the crutch of the weak. Hope is crushed by those who abuse power. Love is diminished by the world’s shabby standards of loving. Living the Gospel is costly to anyone who would want to be taken seriously in our culture.

    To all of us who come to this holy place to worship this morning and who hope to work out our salvation by living the Gospel, Saint Paul speaks eloquently. He speaks to us as our intercessor today: “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant?” He points us to our Lord Jesus who paid the ultimate price for the Gospel, and reminds us of what our Gospel proclaims to us today: that in living that Gospel, regardless of its cost, we store up for ourselves incredible treasures in heaven, because it is in heaven that our heart resides.

  • Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Back when I was a seminarian intern, I had been visiting a parishioner at a local nursing home every week. I got to know her and her husband, and prayed with them often. One day, she was in the hospital, and I visited her there. Her husband told me she had been nonverbal: she hadn’t said anything for the last few days. So after talking a bit, we prayed – the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. I had invited her to pray along in her heart as best she could. When we got to those prayers, she began to pray them softly with us, and her husband had some tears of joy. Me too.

    I always say that we need to have a “prayer toolbox” for when times are difficult and we don’t know what to say or how to pray. And so it is glorious that Holy Mother Church has passed on some wonderful prayers, including the Lord’s Prayer, which he gave us in our Gospel this morning. When we don’t know what we are to pray or how to express our needs to God, these wonderful prayers do all that for us. Thanks be to God.

    So it’s good if we learn our prayers early on in life. Because if we have grown up saying them, we will never lose them, and they will be a comfort to us in good times and bad, up to our dying breath. So when times are difficult, it’s freeing to say, “Thy will be done…” When we don’t know what’s best for us, it’s best to say, “Give us this day our daily bread…” When we feel crushed by our sins and ashamed of our past, it’s healing to say, “forgive us our trespasses…”

    Today, let’s pray the Lord’s Prayer, as often as we pray it, with intention and attention. And let’s give thanks to Our Lord who entrusted these words to our hearts.

  • Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel is one that’s certainly very familiar to us. But if we’re honest, every time we hear it, it must give us a little bit of uneasiness, right? Because, yes, it is very easy to love those who love us, to do good to those who do good to us, to greet those who greet us. But when it comes right down to it, Jesus is right. There is nothing special about loving those we know well, and we certainly look forward to greeting our friends and close family. So this is the culmination of all the “You have heard that it was said…” / “But I say to you…” passages we have been hearing in the Gospel readings at daily Mass over the last week or so. Because this whole line of thinking, just as everything else in the Gospel, all boils down to love. We have to love, even love those who we’d rather not.

    Loving those we’ve rather not is a tall order, and we would naturally avoid that kind of thing. However that’s not what the Christian life is about. We know that, but when we get a challenge like today’s Gospel, it hits a little close to home. We all have that mental list of people who are annoying or who have wronged us or caused us pain. And to have to greet them, do good to them, even love them – well that all seems too much most days.

    And yet that is what disciples do. We’re held to a higher standard than those proverbial tax collectors and pagans that Jesus refers to. We are people of the new covenant, people redeemed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And so we have to live as if we have been freed from our pettiness, because, in fact, we have. We are told to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect. It’s a tall order, but a simple act of kindness to one person we’d rather not be kind to is all it takes to make a step closer.

  • Saturday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I love the first line of today’s first reading: “The love of Christ impels us…” More poignantly, that can be translated, “The love of Christ urges us on…” Saint Paul then talks in detail about how Christ’s love accomplished the work of death for all of us, so that our death doesn’t have to be the end of the story for us. That love of Christ urges us all on, impels us to lay down our lives for others, indeed it demands that we love in the same way as we are loved. That needs to be the theme of our life’s vocation, whatever form that vocation may take. It is the task of every authentic vocation to love others into heaven.

    That’s been where the fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel has been taking us this week in ourGospel readings. Jesus says, “You have heard it said…” and then follows up with, “But I say to you…” On Thursday, murder, the fifth commandment, became much more urgent when Jesus insisted it encompassed anger, bigotry, and hatred. Today, the eighth commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” is more urgent when Jesus insists that the commandment demands devotion to the truth, not swearing a false oath certainly, but also living in such a way that swearing an oath at all is unnecessary. We who follow the Truth in the person of Jesus should never be in a position where our dedication to the truth is called into question.

    So we cannot be those who “live your truth” as the pop culture commandment goes. Because we don’t have our own truth, we have Jesus, and that’s all the truth we need. And we are impelled, urged on in that truth, because that Truth is found in the love of Jesus Christ.

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  • Saint Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    I’m not sure if it’s that I’m getting older or that I have too many things to keep track of, but I find myself losing things, or losing my train of thought more often than I used to. I’m often grateful to Saint Anthony on those occasions! Saint Anthony is probably one of the best-known Catholic saints. As the patron for finding lost objects, I’m sure so many of us have prayed, “Tony, Tony, look around, something’s lost and can’t be found.”

    But the real story of Saint Anthony centers around finding the way to Christ. His journey as the servant of God began as a very young man when he decided to join the Augustinians, giving up a future of wealth and power to follow God’s plan for his life. But later, when the bodies of the first Franciscan martyrs went through the Portuguese city where he was stationed, he was again filled with an intense longing to be one of those closest to Jesus himself: those who die for the Good News.

    So Anthony entered the Franciscan Order and set out to preach to the Moors – a pretty dangerous thing to do. But an illness prevented him from achieving that goal. He went to Italy and was stationed in a small hermitage where he spent most of his time praying, reading the Scriptures and doing menial tasks. But that was not the end for Anthony’s dream of following God’s call. Recognized as a great man of prayer and a great Scripture scholar and theologian, Anthony became the first friar to teach theology to the other friars. Soon he was called from that post to preach to heretics, to use his profound knowledge of Scripture and theology to convert and reassure those who had been misled.

    So yes, Saint Anthony is the patron of finding lost objects, but what I really think he wants to help us find, is our way to Christ. As a teacher, a scholar and a man of faith, he was devoted to his relationship with God. And so his intercession for us might go a little deeper than where we left our keys. Maybe we find ourselves today having lost track of our relationship with God in some way. Maybe our prayer isn’t as fervent as it once was. Or maybe we have found ourselves wrapped up in our own problems and unable to see God at work in us. Maybe our life is in disarray and we’re not sure how God is leading us. If we find ourselves in those kinds of situations today, we might do well to call on the intercession of Saint Anthony.

    Saint Anthony, pray for us.