Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Homilies

  • Friday of the 13th Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the 13th Week of Ordinary Time

    Thinking we have it all together and every issue taken care of can be a very dangerous thing. In my days in music ministry, I had many rather humbling moments as a cantor. Whenever I thought I knew the psalm well enough, God would use that occasion to show me, in front of everyone, that I didn’t. Needless to say, my leading of prayer on those occasions wasn’t very praiseworthy.

    But, sometimes I would struggle with a psalm. On those occasions, I would typically work pretty hard on it, practicing it and praying it over and over. Even if it wouldn’t get to the point where it was perfect, I would often say, “Okay, God, I’ve done the best I can, just help me to proclaim your Word as you would have me do it.” And on those occasions, I would almost always be surprised at how wonderful the psalm would sound coming out of my mouth.

    The difference between these two experiences, of course, was the one in whom I trusted to give voice to the song. When I thought I had it together and didn’t need to work very hard on it, I trusted in my own talents and knowledge, which was so subject to my own frailty. But when I would work hard on a psalm and eventually just give it up to God, I was trusting in the one in whom there is no frailty at all.

    Whether it’s in the raising of families or in our jobs or in the relationships we have with neighbors and friends, we can all be subject to the kind of self-righteous overconfidence that afflicted the Pharisees in today’s Gospel, and even the so-called worshippers that Amos was addressing in today’s first reading. Honesty about who we are is critical to authentic worship.

    God does not expect us all to be perfect, because he made us and knows us. He sent his Son among us to call not the righteous, but sinners. We will often stumble and fall into sin in the practice or malpractice of our spiritual lives, but on those occasions, Jesus reaches out to us and longs to dine among us. That’s what brings us here today. Though we are all of us far from perfectly righteous, we are all of us gathered together and can share the meal with our Lord and Master who is Righteousness itself. May we all do more to resemble the tax collectors and sinners who responded to Jesus’ invitation than the Pharisees who preferred to eat with their own kind.

  • Thursday of the 13th Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the 13th Week of Ordinary Time

    One of the things that used to irritate me about my parents when I was growing up is that they always knew, often better than I did, what was not only best for me, but would really make me happy. Of course, now I love that about them, but when I was young it always made me crazy. They would tell me that I should join a certain group or try a certain activity and I never wanted to, but when I ultimately did it, I of course would enjoy it thoroughly. They were right more often than I would have admitted. My parents have been wonderful prophetic voices in my life.

    Amazon had Amos as his prophetic voice. And of course, much like me, he didn’t want to hear that prophetic voice. Amos makes it clear that he is not speaking on his own, or even because he wanted to. If it were up to him, he’d go back to being a simple shepherd and dresser of sycamore trees. But he knows that the Lord was using him to speak to Amazon, and he had no intention of backing down. And, as it turned out, Amos was absolutely right about what he told Amazon. Too bad Amazon didn’t appreciate his prophetic voice as much as I did my parents.

    In today’s Gospel, Jesus too comes across as a prophetic voice. He could have cured the paralytic with one touch and without much fanfare. But that wasn’t what he was there to do. He was there to preach forgiveness of sins by the way he healed the paralyzed person (by the way, we don’t know by the language used here whether the person was a man or a woman, and the person’s name is not mentioned). Jesus used that simple situation of healing to be a prophetic voice in the world, saying to everyone present that real healing only comes about through the forgiveness of sins.

    That unnamed, gender-unspecified paralyzed person could be you or me today, or someone we’ll meet today. Who among us is not paralyzed by sin in some way? To whatever extent we are the ones in need of healing, may we all hear the prophetic voice of Jesus saying to us: “Your sins are forgiven. Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • The Most Holy Trinity: Solving the Mystery

    The Most Holy Trinity: Solving the Mystery

    One of the things I’ve always enjoyed is a good mystery. When I have the chance to just read what I want to read, it’s almost always a mystery novel. I read Agatha Christie all the time growing up, and I’ll often go back to some of her stuff even now. My love for mysteries probably explains why I like to watch “Law & Order” and “CSI.”

    If you enjoy mysteries too, you know that the mark of a good mystery is when it doesn’t get solved in the first six pages. It’s good to have to think and rethink your theory, right up until the last page.

    Today’s Solemnity of the Holy Trinity is just such a mystery, I think. This is an opportunity for us to once again ask the question, “Who is God?” We could say “God is love” or “God is good.” But that’s all in the first six pages. And those answers bring up more questions than they solve. We know that the Trinity means that we believe in one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But then we would have to explain how one plus one plus one still equals one, and our human minds are at a loss.

    If we’re honest, we have to begin our discussion of the Trinity by acknowledging that there’s a lot we don’t know about God. God is incomprehensible, too big for our limited wisdom to encompass, above us and beyond us and invisible to us; too wonderful for us in a very real way. We have yet to see God face-to-face, and until that happens, I don’t think we’ll never know God completely.

    But that doesn’t mean that we don’t know God at all. Because we’ve been given clues to who God is here and there, and each time we are open and ready to receive those clues, we come to know God in new ways. We’ve seen God active in the Old Testament. Moses points out today the magnificent holiness of God who created us, appeared to Moses himself in the burning bush, and led them victorious out of Egypt into the promised land. The God of the Old Testament is a God who passionately loves his chosen people and intervenes time and time again to bring them back to Himself, when they had wandered away.

    In the New Testament, the most obvious clue is in the person of Jesus. Jesus, the Son of the Father, who was present with him in the beginning when the heavens and earth were created, came from heaven to walk the earth, to experience our human condition, to die our death, and in so doing, to help us to know God. In Jesus, God again is a God of love, who seeks out the lost and heals the sick and raises the dead, and who forgives the sinner. In Jesus, we see the ultimate intervention of God in human history to bring his wandering people back to him, by sacrificing his own life on the cross, and rising triumphant over the grave.

    In both the Old and the New Testaments, we have countless clues to who God is. But Scripture isn’t the only way we come to know God. We can see clues in the other people God puts in our lives, when the love which God has for his people is lived out in action. There is a clue each time we reach out to the poor, lonely, or oppressed. Another clue is revealed each time we forget our anger and forgive a hurt or wrong. We find still another clue each time we give of our time or our talent to build another person up. Once again, in all of these ways, it is God’s love that helps us to know God in a new way.

    Another thing we know about God is that popular notions of who God is are often not helpful clues. God is not One who blesses the rich and the powerful at the expense of the poor and oppressed. Instead, God raises up the lowly and feeds the hungry. God is not the stern dictator who looks for the slightest infraction of the law to condemn the sinner. Instead, God reaches out to the sinner with readiness to forgive that goes beyond our wildest imaginings. God is not the God of easy religion who gives facile and impractical advice to complex problems. Instead, God is with his people in good times and in bad and gives us wisdom to tackle every situation.

    More than anything, God is the One who is with us always, as the Gospel says today, until the end of the age. This God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, this God who is infinitely beyond us, this God who created us and who sustains us, this God who laid down his life for us and sent his Spirit to enliven us, this God is God who is with us always, never leaving us, bringing us back to himself, and raising us up time and time again. What more could we hope for?

    And that, brothers and sisters in Christ, may be the closest we can come to solving the mystery of who God is for now. Maybe we won’t be able to explain all of the mysteries of God and the Trinity, but if we know that our infinitely loving God is always with us, perhaps we know enough. Because ultimately God is not a philosophy or an idea or a word we can define. Ultimately, God is a relationship: the Son proceeds from the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. I think it was St. Augustine who said that the Father is the Lover, the Son is the Beloved and the Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son. God is love itself; a love that goes beyond the imperfect love we can offer; a love that is with us always.

    And if the Scriptures make anything clear about God today, it’s this: that this love cannot be hoarded within ourselves. God’s love cannot be contained in us any more than God can be contained in one time or place or people. God’s love must be shared by the believer with people of every time and place, teaching them to observe all that he commanded us, and baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

    We Christians must continue to provide clues of who God is for others, until that great day when we will see God face-to-face and all the mysteries will be solved once and for all. On that great day, we can sing with the psalmist, “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be His own.”

  • Pentecost: Jesus is Lord!

    Pentecost: Jesus is Lord!

    Today's readings

     

    PrayerCard

     

    We've gathered today on the Solemnity of Pentecost … one of my favorite feasts of the whole year. Today, we have one last opportunity to celebrate the joy of the Easter season. For fifty days, we've been celebrating our Lord's resurrection, his triumph over the grave, and his defeat of sin and death. We've been celebrating our salvation, because Christ's death and resurrection has broken down the barriers that have kept us from God and has made it possible for us to live with God forever. In the last week, we've been celebrating our Lord's Ascension, with His promise that though He is beyond our sight, He is with us always. And today, today we celebrate the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit, poured out on the Church, who breathes life into nothingness to create the world, who recreates the world with power and might, and who pours out the power of forgiveness on a world hardened by sin.

    The Hebrew word for Spirit is ruah, with is the same word they use for "breath." So the Spirit who hovered over the waters of the primordial world also breathed life into our first parents, giving them not just spiritual life, but physical life, and life in all its fullness. The psalmist today makes it very clear that this Holy Spirit is the principle of life for all of us: "you take back your spirit, they perish and return to the dust from which they came; when you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth" (Ps. 104:34).

    It is this same Spirit that is poured out on our world, which often times doesn't look very life-giving. This world of darkness of sin, of war and terror, of poverty and injustice, of sickness and death; this world can be recreated daily when the Spirit is poured out on hearts open to receive Him. This Spirit bursts forth from the believer into action: working in various forms of service, works and ministries to proclaim, not just in word, but most importantly in deed, that "Jesus is Lord" (1 Cor 12:3).

    It is this same Spirit that is given to create the Church as Jesus breathes on the apostles on the evening of that first day of the week. In today's Gospel reading, the Holy Spirit is given for the reconciliation of the sinner. Our Church picks up this theme in the Sacrament of Penance when the words of absolution tell us that "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." Because it is in the forgiveness of rivalries, it is in the healing of broken relationships, it is in the restoration of peace and in the pardoning of sinners that God's plan for creation is most fully realized.

    That same Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters at the creation of the world now hovers over the Church. The apostles first received that Holy Spirit, but now it is poured out on us as well. Nothing that is truly good can be conceived of, nor realized apart from that Holy Spirit. As the sequence tells us today: "Where you are not, we have naught, nothing good in deed or thought, nothing free from taint of ill." It is the Spirit who gives life, both physical and spiritual. It is the Spirit who speaks in our prayer, putting those prayers in our hearts in the first place, and uttering all of our inexpressible groanings when we cannot pray ourselves. It is the Spirit who gives gifts to enliven our works and ministries. It is indeed the Spirit who gives us faith to cry out, "Jesus is Lord."

    Having gathered today in this place on this great Feast, we now pray for not only an outpouring of that Holy Spirit, but also for the openness to receive that Spirit and the grace to let that Spirit work in us for the salvation of the world. We, the Church, need that Holy Spirit to help us to promote a culture of life in a world of death; to live the Gospel in a world of selfishness; to seek inclusion and to celebrate diversity in a world of racism and hate; to effect conversion and reconciliation in a world steeped in sin. Brothers and sisters in Christ, if people in this world are to know that Jesus is Lord, it's got to happen through each one of us. One life and one heart at a time can be moved to conversion by our witness and our prayer. Let us pray, then, that the Holy Spirit would be able to do all that in us.

    Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen. Alleluia

  • 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.

  • 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."