Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Preaching, Homiletics & Scripture

  • Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome

    Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate the feast of the dedication of the Cathedral of St. John Lateran in Rome. Most people think of St. Peter’s Basilica as the pope’s church, but that’s not true. As the Bishop of Rome, his Cathedral Church is the Lateran Cathedral, once dedicated to our Savior, but now named for St. John the Baptist. This site has served as the Cathedral church for the pope ever since the first structure was built in the late 300s. It served until the pope was moved to Avignon, and upon returning, it was found to have been destroyed. The present structure was commissioned in the 1600s and is one of the most massive churches in Rome. Because it is the parish church of the pope, it is in some ways considered to be the parish church for all Catholics. Today we celebrate the feast of its dedication on November 9, 324 by Pope St. Sylvester I.

    The disagreement between Jesus and the Jews in the Gospel reading today showed what was really a difference of opinion on what Church is.  The many services that were being offered outside the Temple were required for the sacrifice, so they supported the worship that went on there.  In a sense then, they were legitimate enterprises.  But Jesus came to bring about Church in a whole new way.  His uncharacteristically violent reaction was frustration that those who should know better did not see what God really wanted in worship.  He didn’t want birds or animals, he wanted people’s hearts so that he could re-create them anew.

    Any feast like this is an opportunity for us to take a step back and look at this thing we call Church. The misunderstanding in the Gospel between Jesus and the Jews tells us that we cannot view Church as just a building. The reality of Church is brought to great perfection in the Body of Christ, and we see that because of Christ, the Church is a living, breathing thing that takes us in and out of time and space to be the body we were created to be. So today we celebrate Church; we peel back the Church’s many layers, touching and learning the concrete, living the experiential, asking for the intercession of the heavenly, and yearning to be caught up in the eternal. The Church is our Mother who has given us birth in the Spirit and who nurtures us toward eternal life.

    The river of God’s life flows forth from the Church to baptize and sanctify the whole world unto the One who created it all. The Church has its foundation in Christ, who also raises it up to eternity. Blessed are all those who find their life in its sanctuary.

  • The Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed (All Souls)

    The Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed (All Souls)

    Today’s readings

    It’s been a couple of years now since Dad died, but I still miss him all the time.  Yes, with time, the grief has subsided a bit, and the days are a little easier.  But the memories, great memories, are still there, and the absence of my father still leaves a hole in my heart.

    But that’s okay.  That’s how grief works.  It might seem sometimes like it would have been better to live without love, but we know deep down that that’s not true.  Sadness and even death are temporary; love is eternal.  As the Church’s vigil for the deceased tells us, “all the ties of friendship and affection which knit us as one throughout our lives do not unravel with death.” We know that death only separates us for a short time, and even though there is that hole in our heart, the sadness that we feel is way better than never having loved at all, never having had our loved ones in our lives at all.

    Today, the Church gives us the grace of remembering all of our loved ones who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith, and all the dead whose faith is known to God alone.  The Church is great in wisdom in giving us this feast every year.  Because even though on this day, we might shed a few tears, still we will have the grace of remembering the ones who have given us life, given us wisdom, those who have been Christ to us, those who have made God’s love tangibly present in our lives.

    Even if the memories aren’t the best, and even if we struggle with the pain of past hurts mixed with the sorrow of grief, there is grace in remembering today.  Maybe this day can be an occasion of healing, even if it’s just a little bit.  Maybe our tears, mixed with the saving Blood of Christ, can wash and purify our wounded hearts and sorrowful souls.

    And I know it won’t all go away today.  We are left with tears and loneliness, and that empty place at the table, and that hole in our heart. But sadness and pain absolutely do not last forever, because death and sin have been ultimately defeated by the Blood of Christ. We can hope in the day that our hearts will be healed, and we will be reunited with our loved ones forever, with all of our hurts healed and relationships purified, in the kingdom that knows no end. The Eucharistic Prayer itself will tell us today that there will come a day when “every tear will be wiped away. On that day, we shall see you, our God, as you are. We shall become like you and praise you for ever through Christ our Lord, from whom all good things come.”

    Eternal rest grant unto all of our departed loved ones, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.  May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.  Amen.

  • The Solemnity of All Saints

    The Solemnity of All Saints

    Today’s readings

    How would you react if someone called you a saint?  We hear that, sometimes, don’t we?  When we do something good for someone, sometimes they’ll say, “Oh, thank you, you’re a saint!”  But how does that make you feel?  Do you bristle a bit and think, “not me!”?  I think we all have that kind of reaction.  Saints are the people we see in statues and hear about in amazing stories.  No way could we ever be confused with people like that.  More often than not, we would be likely to say to someone, “now I’m no saint…”

    … As if that were a good thing.  When we think about saints, we get stuck, I think, on those saints of statues and medieval stories.  But today, the Church is asking us to think about saints in a broader way.  Yes, we include all those “official” saints that have been canonized through the ages.  We are told that Pope John Paul II canonized some 482 saints during his pontificate.  This is an impressive number, to be sure, but it is even more impressive when you realize that that is more than the previous seventeen popes all put together!  Some criticized him for doing that, saying that it cheapened the process of canonization.  But his feeling was that the Church is in the business of bringing people to heaven, so canonizing many holy people was the right thing to do.

    And that’s an important piece of information about our official saints.  Canonization recognizes that the person is certainly in heaven from what we know of him or her.  That’s why the process is so intricate.  And this is contrasted with the fact that the Church has never said any person is in hell.  So we know of thousands of people that are certainly in heaven, but no one who is in hell.  This illustrates that God’s will is done in the end, doesn’t it?

    But, as I said, I think the Church wants us to think about saints in a broader way.  There is the story of a schoolteacher who asked her children what a saint was.  One little girl thought about the saints she saw in stained glass windows, and said “Saints are people the light shines through.”  Think about that for a minute – that little girl isn’t far from the kingdom of God there.  Because all people are called to let the light of Christ shine through them, and saints are those people who have let that light shine through.

    Heaven is that great multitude that John the Revelator tells us about in today’s first reading: that multitude “which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.”  They are wearing, he tells us, white robes, which have been washed in the blood of the lamb.  That seems very counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?  Everyone knows that blood stains like nobody’s business.  But he’s speaking poetically here, and recognizes that nothing washes us sinners quite as clean as the saving blood of Jesus Christ.

    And that’s really the only way.  Because we’re quite right when we bristle a bit at being called saints.  We can’t be saints all on our own.  We aren’t good enough, we can’t make up for our sins with any kind of completeness, and there’s basically no way that we can jump high enough to get to heaven.  But this feast of All Saints recognizes that we don’t have to.  We don’t have to because Christ has saved us through no merit of our own but based solely on God’s love for us.  The fact that we can be called saints is a grace, and we dare not bristle so much that we turn away from that grace.

    We are all of us on a journey, and we know that our true home is not in this place, however good it may be.  We are on a journey to heaven, and that means that we are in the process of becoming saints.  The reason John Paul could canonize so many saints is because he had so many to choose from.  None of them were good on their own merit; they became more and more like their heavenly Father by joining themselves to Christ.  Jesus said, “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” and there is no way to do that except to follow him.

    So, no, of course, not all of us will be canonized.  Most of us will go to the Kingdom rather imperfect in many ways.  But if we look to those canonized saints for inspiration, perhaps our relationship with the Lord will lead us and our brothers and sisters to that place where all the saints worship around the Throne of the Lamb.

    So yes, today we honor the great saints like Mary and Joseph, Patrick and Petronille, Francis and Dominic, and all the rest.  We glory in their triumph that was made possible by joining themselves to Christ.  We take inspiration from their battles and from the faith that helped keep them in Christ when they could have turned away.  If God could do that in their lives, just maybe he can do that in ours too.  Perhaps, if we are willing to accept it, he can keep us “strong in times of trials and doubts; courageous when challenged; compassionate to the broken; wise for those who are searching; outspoken when others hold a fearful silence; anonymous in performing loving deeds; persevering when struggles will not just evaporate; defending justice when the world ignores or presses down those on the margins; gentle and strong in the face of what opposes the gospel.”[1]

    Those virtues are virtues that we think about when we think about those official, canonized saints.  But they are virtues for which we can and should strive as well.  The desire and the grace to attain those virtues comes from God himself, and the reward for receiving that grace and living those virtues is a heavenly relationship with God.  What could be better than that?

    One of my very favorite hymns in our tradition is the one we sing today: “For All the Saints.”  It speaks of our great battle with evil, and the grace of God that overcomes it all in the lives of the saints.  When we picture ourselves as part of that great throng of saints, it changes the singing of the song.  Would it not be great if we could be part of that countless host of which we sing:

    From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
    through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
    singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:
    Alleluia, Alleluia!

    [1] Jude Siciliano, OP, First Impressions.

  • Saturday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When we are deeply concerned about our own needs, our own prestige, our own honor, we often end up falling into a pit.  Because that kind of thinking is its own kind of blinder.  We can’t see past all that to notice the greatness of God, and to rejoice in what he is doing.

    Pride has us looking in all the wrong directions.  What we need to look to is the host of the party.  Then we can rejoice and give honor and glory to God, who deserves all of our praise.  Then we can see and delight in the good things he is doing in our lives and in the life of our community and our world.

    Humility frees us up to see God’s work in us.  It allows God to call us to a higher place, perhaps even a higher place than we would have, and certainly could have, on our own.  Humility is custody of the eyes: instead of looking where we should not look, we look instead to ourselves, into our own hearts.  And there we see three things.  First, we see our own sins, woundedness, brokenness, imperfections and failings and we humbly ask for God’s help.  Second, we see the child God created us to be, and the beauty of that child, and return to our first longing which is to be with God himself.  And finally, we see God at work, creating and re-creating us, calling us to himself.

    What we see in humility is always greater than what we see in pride.  But we have to be willing to take off those blinders that pride puts on us, and be ready to take the lower place.

  • Friday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It could have been jealousy.  Or maybe they just felt threatened.  Either way, the Pharisees had lost sight of the mission.

    You could see how they would have been jealous: here they are working long and hard to take care of the many prescripts of their religion, attending with exacting detail to the commandments of God and the laws that governed their way of life.  But it is Jesus, this upstart, and not them, who is really moving the people and getting things done.  People were being healed – inside and out – and others were being moved to follow him on his way.  That had to make them green with envy.

    And, yes, they probably felt threatened.  The way that he was preaching, the religion he was talking about – well, it was all new and seemed to fly in the face of what they had long believed and what they had worked so hard to preserve.

    But how had they gotten here, how did they lose the way?  Because what Jesus advocated was really not a different message: it was all about how God loves his people and that we should love God and others with that same kind of love.  That message was there: buried deep in the laws and rules that they were so familiar with, but somehow, the laws and rules became more important than the love.

    The Pharisees wanted to preserve their religion and the way of life they had lived for so long.  Jesus wanted to make manifest God’s love, forgiveness of sins, and true healing.  It’s not that the rules of religion are not important, but the underlying message and the greatness of God cannot be overshadowed by legalism.  That is the argument in today’s Gospel; that is the argument that ultimately brought Jesus to the cross.  He would rather die than live without us; he paid the price that we might be truly healed and might truly live.  As the Psalmist reminds us today: Praise the Lord!

  • Ss. Simon & Jude, apostles

    Ss. Simon & Jude, apostles

    Today’s readings

    Today, we celebrate two apostles who, as often is the case, are relatively unknown except that they were followers of Jesus.  Jude is called Judas in Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles.  Matthew and Mark call him Thaddeus.  We have in the New Testament the letter of Jude, which scholars say is not written by the man whose feast we celebrate today.

    Simon was a Zealot, a member of a radical party that disavowed all ties with the government, holding that Israel should be re-elevated to political greatness under the leadership of God alone.  They also held that any payment of taxes to the Romans was a blasphemy against God.

    Neither of these men held any claim to greatness here on earth; they found their glory in following Christ.  Their joy was, as St. Paul instructs us in his letter to the Ephesians, in their citizenship which was of course in heaven, as it is for all of us.  We are merely passing through this place, and our task while we are hear, as was the task for Simon and Jude and all the apostles, to live for Christ and to live the Gospel.  The reward for them, then, as is for all of us, is in heaven, their and our true home.

  • Monday of the Thritieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thritieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The leader of the synagogue had it all wrong, and he of all people should have known what was right.  God always intended the Sabbath day to be a day of rest, yes, but also of healing.  We find great healing when we rest, and so the healing of a person who had been plagued for so long by a demon that she was bent over double from the weight of it, that healing had every right to take place on the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath Day of rest.  The Sabbath has come and gone for us this week, but as we head into the workweek this day, it would be wonderful if we could take a moment to plan for the coming Sabbath day of rest.  We too are offered healing if we would rest in the Lord

  • Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Master, I want to see.”

    As you might have guessed, today’s Gospel story isn’t about healing a blind man.  Yes, that’s what happened in the story, and it was significant, but that’s not the real essence of the story and it’s not why we have this story in the Scriptures today.  The story refers to physical blindness, but it implies a blindness that goes much deeper, a darkening of wisdom and understanding, from which Bartimaeus has been suffering for some time.  We know this because, in the story, he is encamped, all set up, with his cloak spread out underneath him.  This cloak would have caught the alms that people tossed to him as they passed by.

    Somehow, he comes to know that someone important is passing by, and someone tells him that it is Jesus.  He begins to call out “Son of David, have pity on me!” which disturbs some of those in the crowd.  But he is persistent and Jesus hears him and calls him to come to him.  At that, Bartimaeus casts aside his cloak and runs to Jesus.  This detail is important.  The cloak in the story symbolizes his past life, everything he had become, and he casts it aside to come to Jesus.  When Jesus asks what he wants, he says, “Master, I want to see.”  To which Jesus replies, “Go, your faith has saved you.”

    So Bartimaeus has come to know that his life has not had the meaning he would like.  He is unable to “see” with understanding, and he calls out to Jesus to save him.  Jesus does so, and remarks that it is Bartimaeus’s faith that has saved him; had Bartimaeus not had faith that Jesus could heal him, no healing would have happened.  Then Bartimaeus goes on to follow Jesus on the way.

    The question before us today is this: what is our own blindness?  What is on our cloak keeping us rooted in our past life of sin?  Will we have the courage to cast all that aside and call out for the mercy of our beloved Savior?  Because it is only this act of faith that will ever bring us from the blindness of our past lives, our sins and brokenness, into the light of understanding and grace.

    Just as he asked Bartimaeus, Jesus asks us today, “What do you want me to do for you?”  May our prayer be as full of faith as Bartimaeus’s was: “Master, I want to see.”

  • Friday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Paul’s lament has got to be so familiar to all of us, I think.  Most of us really want to be better people, to live the right way, to give witness to Christ in our daily lives.  And much of the time, I think we accomplish that.  But there’s always that downfall in all of us, that pattern of sin, that set of circumstances or group of people who bring us back to the nastiness that is the evil in our own lives.  And try as we might to do good, there it is, close at hand, as St. Paul tells us in our first reading.  There seems to be no end in sight; no way for us to actually be good people.  But all we need is the desire, and, as he also tells us, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.  That is the mercy and grace that is extended to us in the Sacrament of Penance.  The more we desire it and approach it, the more help it will be to us.  We don’t have to be good all on our own, we can’t.  But, thanks be to God, we don’t have to.

  • Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    All this talk of beatings aside, I think the scariest words in today’s Gospel come right at the end of the reading:  “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”  Think about how much we all have.  Even in a tough economy, we have much more than most people in the world.  That’s a wonderful blessing, but it does mean that so much will be demanded of us.  Demanded.  But then it can be demanded, because the blessings have been so freely given.  We may feel inadequate to the task, we may shrink before the demands.  But we have no reason to do so, because, as the Psalmist tells us, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”