Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Homilies

  • Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today, Jesus has for us good news and bad news. The good news is that he is eventually going to send the Holy Spirit upon the world. The Holy Spirit will be a new Advocate for us, and will testify to everything that Jesus said and did. The Spirit’s testimony will be further evidence of God’s abiding love for us, a love that did not come to an end at the cross or the tomb, but instead triumphed over everything to make known his salvation to the ends of the earth. The testimony of the Holy Spirit, combined with the testimony of the Apostles, would be the birth pangs of the emerging Church, given by Christ to make the Gospel known in every land and every age.

    But the bad news is, that glory won’t come without a price. Those Apostles would be expelled from the synagogues and misguided worshippers would think they were doing God’s will by killing them. Jesus knew this would be the lot of his baby disciples and he cares for them enough to warn them of what is to come. It is an important aspect of their discernment to know what is to come. Also, by warning them, he is preparing them for what is to come so that when it does happen, they may not be flustered or frightened, but might instead hold deeply to their faith, knowing that God’s providence had foreseen these calamities and they might know that in God’s providence, these calamities would not be the end of the story.

    We are beneficiaries of the good news and bad news of today’s Gospel. We have heard the testimony of the Spirit and the Apostles, have been nourished by the Church they founded, have been encouraged by all that they suffered to bring the Good News to us. It is important that we too know that there is good news and bad news in the future of our discipleship. The Spirit continues to testify and the Apostles continue to teach us – that’s the good news. The bad news is, sometimes our faith will be tested. But in the end, it’s all Good News: even our suffering will not be the end of the story. God’s love triumphs over everything.  That’s our Easter faith.

  • Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today’s scriptures speak to us about the essence of what it means to live a Christian life.  First, as we can see in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, it means making a clean break with the ways that we have been tethered to the world.  For the newest members of the Church in that day, the rules and traditions had finally been settled.  Some of the Pharisaic members of the Church insisted the new members ought to be circumcised and comply with the many minutiae of the Jewish law.  But the Apostles remained firm that faith in Jesus was superior to the minutiae, and insisted only that the new Church members free themselves from any participation in idolatry and to keep their marriage covenants pure.  This freed them from the idolatrous tethers to the world, and would give them freedom in the Spirit.

    The second essence of living a Christian life comes to us in today’s Gospel reading, and that of course is to love.  But Jesus isn’t asking for just any kind of love: nothing superficial, not mere infatuation, and certainly not lust.  Jesus insists that his disciples love one another in the exactly same way that he loves them.  And he showed them, and us, what he meant by that when he suffered and died on the cross.  The disciple is expected to love sacrificially, unconditionally, just as Jesus has loved him, or her.

    So perhaps these readings can be for us a kind of examination of conscience.  In this Easter season, we need to be moving closer and closer in relationship with our Lord.  So we have to look closely at our lives for any ties to the world, and root them out, once and for all.  We have to look at our relationships, and see if the love that we show our brothers and sisters is sacrificial and unconditional, the same kind of love that we have received abundantly from our God.  We are reminded that we did not choose Christ, he chose us, and gave us gifts we never deserved.  Our thanksgiving for that great grace must be total devotion to him.

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    This week we have been hearing in our first readings from the Acts of the Apostles, about the controversy concerning the Gentiles.  As the Church grew and grew, many people from all walks of life began to turn to the Lord.  That’s the kind of thing we want to have happen.  But as the Church grew, it became time to clarify which traditions were just traditions and which really pertained to the faith.  How much of the Judaic faith was really necessary for salvation in Christ?

    Many of the traditions had to go.  Jesus himself chastised the Pharisees and Scribes often enough for the parts of the law that they rigorously defended when they should long ago have been dismissed as scrupulous and irrelevant.  But not everything would have to go.  Certainly there were tenets of Judaic faith that should and do apply to Christians too.  We retain a lot of Judaic faith in our own practice of religion even to this day: the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments, even the berekah prayer form is part of our Liturgy right now.  So the task for the Church was to untangle what needed to stay, and what had to go.

    The blueprint for them is as it is for us: the Gospel.  What traditions pertained to the great love that Christ brought us and called us to live for God and neighbor?  Those we should keep.  What traditions merely amounted to undue burden on our brothers and sisters and became irrelevant in the light of the Gospel?  Those would have to go.

    We’ll see in the coming days that the Church figured this out.  We know they did, or we would probably not be around today.  But we still have to figure it out sometimes, I think.  As we call Catholics to come home, we have to figure out how to welcome them back.  Maybe they have been put off long ago by irrelevant rules that amounted to undue burden.  We have to teach them what parts of our faith are Gospel values and put aside those things that are not.

    Controversies like the one with which the early Church wrestled teach us things.  We are forced to examine our faith and keep it lively and fresh, instead of letting it grow dim and lifeless.  Keeping our eye on the Gospel will help us to welcome people home, to the Church and to the family of God.

  • Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    So the goal is for each of us disciples to bear much fruit.  That’s how the kingdom of God is built here in our time and place.  Jesus says that the way we get there is by remaining part of the vine, which is Jesus himself, and by being pruned.  Now I’ve seen a lot of pruning and have pruned more than a few bushes in my day.  You have to imagine that pruning is a rather painful process for the shrub or the tree.  That’s true of us too, I think.  When we prune away the parts of us that don’t bear fruit, it will hurt a bit.  We may have to turn away from relationships that we feel the need to continue but don’t do us any good.  We may need to change the way we eat or sleep or think or live, and that’s not going to be easy.  But the reward is totally worth it.  Getting rid of that fruitless growth gives us energy to be used for bearing fruit for the kingdom.  That is what gives glory to God, as Jesus tells us, and that is the point of all our lives.

  • Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Paul was obviously a pretty tough guy.  I don’t know about you, but if I barely weathered the storm of people throwing rocks at me and leaving me for dead, I might think twice about how I handled my ministry.  That’s nothing to be proud of, but I think that’s part of fallen human nature.  How blessed we are to have the saints, like Saint Paul, to give example of how to weather the storm and live the faith and preach the word.  Indeed, if it weren’t for the grace-filled tenacity of those saintly apostles, we would very likely not have the joy of our faith today.

    But contrast the storminess of Paul’s stoning with the wonderful words of encouragement and consolation we have in today’s Gospel reading: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”  We can think of all sorts of situations in which these words would be welcome.  We have all experienced health problems in ourselves or in those close to us, job difficulties, family problems, and so many more.  How wonderfully consoling it is to know that in the midst of the many storms we daily face, our Savior is there: offering us peace.

    But the peace Jesus offers us in this reading is a bit different from what we might expect.  It’s not the mere absence of conflict, nor is it any kind of placating peace the world might offer us.  This peace is a genuine one, a peace that comes from the inside out, a peace that calms our troubled minds and hearts even if it does not remove the storm.  There is a contemporary song that says, “Sometimes he calms the storm, and other times he calms his child.”

    God knows that we walk through storms every day.  He experienced that first-hand in the person of Jesus as he walked our walk in his earthly life.  He knows our joys and our pains, and reaches out to us in every one of them with his abiding presence and his loving embrace.  He was there for St. Paul when he was being stoned, and he is there for us too.  His presence abides in us through the Church, through the holy people God has put in our lives, through his presence in our moments of prayer and reflection, and in so many ways we could never count them all.  This peace from the inside out is one that our God longs for us to know, whether we are traversing calm waters or braving a vicious storm.

    We pray, then, for the grace to find peace in our daily lives, the peace that comes from Jesus himself.

  • Ss. Philip and James, apostles

    Ss. Philip and James, apostles

    Today’s readings

    Today is the feast of St. Philip and the man we call “St. James the Lesser” because he is not the St. James that we know as a relative of Jesus and the traditional author of the book of James. Unfortunately, all that we know about this St. James is that Jesus chose him as an apostle. St. Philip we know a bit more about. We hear of him in the Gospel story of the feeding of the multitudes because he is the one who tells Jesus “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” In today’s Gospel we see him again as an apostle who is slow to believe. “Show us the Father,” he says, “and that will be enough for us.”

    So this, I think, is the feast for all of us disciples who don’t put ourselves in the limelight.  Maybe we’re slow to believe, or aren’t really sure how to accomplish the mighty deeds God requires of us.  Maybe we’re pretty unknown in discipleship circles.  And maybe that’s good enough for us.  Today’s feast says that’s okay.  It says that we will become great believers in God’s time, led by our Savior.  It says that we might need a little convincing that we can do the work God asks us to do, but that filled with the Holy Spirit, all things can be accomplished.  It says that we don’t have to be on the front page of the book to live our faith with conviction.

  • St. Catherine of Siena

    St. Catherine of Siena

    Today’s readings: 1 John 3:16-18 | Psalm 34 | Luke 12:32-34
    Today’s saint
    This Mass was with the school children.

    Saint Catherine was born at Siena, in the region of Tuscany in Italy. Catherine was the youngest in a family of twenty-five children.  Can you imagine having twenty-four brothers and sisters?!  When she was six years old Jesus appeared to Catherine and blessed her. Her mother and father wanted her to be happily married, preferably to a rich man. But Catherine didn’t want that, she wanted to be a nun.

    And so, to make herself as unattractive as possible to the men her parents wanted her to meet, she cut off her long, beautiful hair.  Her parents were very upset and became very critical of her.  They also gave her the most difficult housework to do.  But Catherine did not change her mind: her goal was to become a nun and give herself entirely to Jesus.  Finally, her parents stopped bothering her and allowed her to become a nun.  Her father even set aside a room in the house where she could stay and pray.

    St. Catherine was very honest and straightforward with Jesus and sometimes she even scolded him when she thought he was not around to help her in her struggles and temptations.  Jesus told her that because he was in her heart she was able to win her struggles by his grace.  That’s important to remember because Jesus is always around, in our hearts, to help us with our struggles and grace too.

    So eventually Catherine did become a nun.  When she was eighteen years old, she entered the Dominican Third Order and spent the next three years in seclusion, prayer and works of penance. Gradually a group of followers gathered around her—men and women, priests and religious.  They all saw that Catherine was a holy woman with a special relationship with Jesus.  During this time she wrote many letters, most of which gave spiritual instruction and encouragement to her followers.  But more and more, she began to take note of public affairs.  She would speak out on many topics and would stand up for the truth.  Because of this, many people began to oppose her and they brought false charges against her, but she was cleared of any kind of wrongdoing.

    Because of her great influence, and that she spoke out fearlessly to defend the truth, Saint Catherine was able to help the Church during a very difficult time.  During this time, the Church had many problems. There were fights going on all over Italy.  There was not just one, but actually two and then three men who claimed to be the pope!  Catherine wrote letters to kings and queens.  She even went to beg rulers to make peace with the pope and to avoid wars.

    At one point, Saint Catherine asked the real pope to leave Avignon, France, where he had been staying in exile, and return to Rome to rule the Church, because she knew that this was God’s will.  The pope listened to St. Catherine and did as she said, and even though it was difficult and there was still a lot of fighting to do, this eventually led to peace in the Church.

    Saint Catherine never forgot that Jesus was in her heart.  Through her, Jesus helped the sick people she nursed and comforted the prisoners she visited in jail.  Even though she spent a lot of time in prayer, she was still able to reach out to those who were hurting so that they too could know that Jesus loved them just as much as he loved her.

    Catherine is one of our most revered saints, because she wrote great works about the teaching of the Church and the spiritual life.  She once wrote that coming to know God was like trying to see the entire ocean, because every time you go a little deeper, there is always more to see.  God is like that too.  Every time we see a little bit more of who God is, we know that there is still a whole lot more that we have to come to know.  She wrote, “You are a mystery as deep as the sea; the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for you.  But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will ever leave me desiring more.  When you fill my soul I have an even greater hunger, and I grow more famished for your light.  I desire above all to see you, the true light, as you really are.”

    Saint Catherine is one of the most important saints of the Church.  Besides being a nun, she has also been named a Doctor of the Church.  This doesn’t mean that she cured people who were sick.  That’s not the kind of doctor she was.  The kind of doctor that Saint Catherine was is the kind of doctor who is very smart and has great insights and writes important things.  Saint Catherine’s writings are still very important to the Church today.  So that is why she was named a Doctor of the Church.  There are about 33 Doctors of the Church, and just three of them are women, including Saint Catherine of Siena.

    One person, boys and girls, can make a huge difference.  Saint Catherine made a huge difference in the Church, helping to get through a very difficult time.  She made a difference in the world, because she wrote to kings and princes and tried to help them make peace.  She made a difference in people’s lives because she reached out the sick and those in prison to help them to know how much Jesus loved them.  She still makes a difference for us today, because we can read the beautiful things she has written about God and help us to come to know him better.

    Saint Catherine is a wonderful saint, because she loved Jesus and loved people and wanted to help people know God.  We are all called to be the same kind of person that she was.  We are called to love Jesus and love people and help people to know God too.  That’s what God wants us to be, and we have Saint Catherine to show us how to do it.

  • Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Jesus tells us in the Gospel today that he did not “come to condemn the world but to save the world.”  His implication here is that being condemned is our choice.  God’s choice is that all of creation would come back to him, and be one in him.  It is us – sinful men and women that we are – who can choose the wrong path and turn away from God.  But even then, condemnation is not automatic because our God is incredibly forgiving.  We can choose to return, and once again walk with God.  We should never presume God’s mercy, but we have to do an awful lot of work to merit condemnation.  It seems to me that condemnation is just not worth the trouble; maybe we can instead put all that hard work into building up the Church and God’s people.  Why would we ever want anything else?

  • Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    “It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.”

    You know, I think the name Christian is so common to us that we take it for granted.  For those first disciples, there had to be a mix of emotions that came with being called Christians for the first time.  They may have been a bit fearful, because we know what happened to Christ, and so going about doing works in his name and being seen as his followers could certainly be dangerous for them.  But they were probably also deeply honored to be called Christian.  Being seen as his followers and people who did what he did was exactly what they wanted to happen, and because of that, we are told that many more people were added to the flock.  So there had to be a little joy in that mix of emotions too.

    So what about us, what does it do for us to be called Christian.  For some people, it probably seems like Christians are a dime a dozen, and most of them are not nearly as zealous as were those first Christians.  So being called Christian isn’t probably a complement or an accusation so much as it’s a way to categorize us, or even bracket us so that others can ignore our message.

    But our objective has to be the same as those first disciples.  We have to want that many would be added to the Lord after they see what we do and hear what we say.  In order for that to happen, we have to walk the walk and talk the talk as they say.  We have to be people of integrity.  Our worship can’t end when we say “thanks be to God,” but instead must continue into our living, into our daily lives.  We have to be people who stand up for life, who live the Gospel, who reach out to the poor and the marginalized, who earnestly seek to bring souls to Christ.  I think the world is aching to see that kind of authenticity in us.  And we have to love them enough to bring them to our Savior.

    When we are called “Christian,” it should stir up in our hearts a little fear and a little joy too.  The fear should be that we would in any way neglect the mission, and the joy should come when we realize that people see Christ in us.  The Psalmist today says “All you nations, praise the Lord.”  And that’s what we want to happen, to have people of every nation praise the Lord and call themselves Christian too.

  • Fourth Sunday of Easter

    Fourth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today’s brief Gospel reading begins with the wonderful line, “My sheep hear my voice.” However, I have two problems with that. First, who wants to be compared to sheep? Sheep are not the brightest of animals, and they must remain in their flock to defend themselves against even the most innocuous of predators. Second, how are the sheep, if that is how we are to be called, to hear the shepherd in this day and age? There are so many things that vie for our attention, that it would be easy to miss the call of the shepherd altogether.

    So let’s look at these issues. First, many who raise and nurture sheep would perhaps disagree with my assessment that they aren’t very bright. I have been told that sheep do have the innate ability to hear their master’s voice, which helps them to survive. Add that to the fact that they also innately wish to remain part of the flock, and we can see that sheep seem to know what it takes to survive. And maybe we don’t know that as well as we should. How often do we place a priority on being within earshot of our Master? How willing are we to remain part of the community in good times and in bad? Yet Jesus makes it clear today that this is the only way we can survive spiritually, the only way we can come at last to eternal life.

    So what will it take to overcome my second objection? What will it take for us sheep to hear our Master’s voice? We who are so nervous about any kind of silence that we cannot enter a room without the television on as at least background noise. We who cannot go anywhere without our cell phones and/or iPods implanted firmly in our ears? We who cannot bear to enter into prayer without speaking all kinds of words and telling God how we want to live our lives? If even our prayer and worship are cluttered with all kinds of noise, how are we to hear the voice of our Shepherd who longs to gather us in and lead us to the Promise? Yet Jesus makes it clear today that entering into the silence and listening for his voice is the only way we can survive spiritually, the only way we can come at last to eternal life.

    The real question, though, is this: how are we to hear the Shepherd’s voice if there are no shepherds to make it known? Today is the world day of prayer for vocations. And I want to talk about all vocations today, but in a special way, I want to talk about vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Because it is these vocations, and especially the priesthood, that are called upon to be the voice of Christ in today’s world. This is a special, and difficult challenge, and I know there are young people in this community that are being called to it. We hear in today’s Liturgy of the Word that this task is not always easy because it is not universally accepted, as Paul and Barnabas found out. But it is a task that brings multitudes of every nation, race, people and tongue to the great heavenly worship that is what they have been created for. People today need to hear the voice of the Shepherd, but who will be that voice when I retire? Who will be that voice when there aren’t enough priests in our diocese for every church to have one?

    We know that every person has a vocation. Every person is called on by God to do something specific with their life that will bring not only them, but also others around them, to salvation. Parents help to bring their children to salvation by raising them in the faith. Teachers help bring students to salvation by educating them and helping them to develop their God-given talents. Business people bring others to salvation by living lives of integrity and witness to their faith by conducting business fairly and with justice and concern for the needy. The list goes on. Every vocation, every authentic vocation, calls the disciple to do what God created them for, and helps God to bring salvation to the whole world.

    Nine years ago on this very Sunday, I was struggling with my vocation. I knew that God was calling me to give up my comfortable life and go to seminary to study for the priesthood. But I did not want to go. I was already doing what I wanted to do with my life and thought it was going pretty well. But on some level, I knew that life as a disciple required me to do what God wanted, and not necessarily what I wanted. There was an open house that day at the Diocesan Vocations Office. I wasn’t interested and I wasn’t going. And that day, the celebrant stood right here and preached on vocations and made the point that living as a disciple meant that at some point we have to stop asking the question, “what do I want to do with my life?” and start asking, “what does God want me to do with my life?” And I already knew the answer to that question: God wanted me to go to that vocations open house that day, and so I did. Four months later, I was in seminary.

    What about you? Are you doing what God wants you to do with your life? Maybe your answer won’t require such a radical change as mine did. Maybe it means you renew your commitment to your family, your work, your life as a disciple. But if you’re a young person out there and have only been thinking about what’s going to make you successful and bring in lots of money so you can retire at age 35, maybe God is today asking you to stop thinking only of yourself and put your life’s work at the service of the Gospel. Maybe you’ll be called on to be a teacher, or a police officer, or a health care professional. And maybe, just maybe, God is calling you to enter the priesthood or religious life. On this day of prayer for vocations, I’m just asking you to pray that God would make his plans for your life clear to you, and that you would promise God to do what he asks of you. I can tell you first hand that nothing, absolutely nothing, will make you happier.

    So I ask you all to bow your heads now and join me in prayer for all holy vocations:

    Faithful God,
    You sent your son, Jesus,
    to be our Good Shepherd.
    Through our baptism
    you blessed us and called us
    to follow Jesus who leads uson the path of life.
    Renew in us the desire to remain faithful
    to our commitment to serve you and the Church.
    Bless all who dedicate their lives to you
    through marriage, the single life, the diaconate,
    priesthood, and consecrated life.
    Give insight to those
    who are discerning their vocation.
    Send us to proclaim the Good News
    of Jesus, our Good Shepherd,
    through the power of the Holy Spirit.
    We ask this through Christ our Lord.
    Amen.