Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Preaching, Homiletics & Scripture

  • The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

    The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

    Today’s readings: Isaiah 25:6-9; I Corinthians 15:51-57; John 6:37-40

    This past Sunday and Monday, I took a couple of days off.  I packed up early on Sunday and was out of the house by 6am, and took a 3 hour and 45 minute drive to see a friend, one of my classmates from seminary, who is a priest in the diocese of Springfield.  I visited with him all of Sunday and on Monday morning, then packed up just before noon and returned home.

    I mention this because the trip itself was a bit unusual for me.  Usually, I’ll play the radio or my iPod in the car the whole way down, but for most of the trip this time, I traveled in silence.  I did that because I was aware that I was missing my dad in a special way.  He died a year ago in May, and I’ve been missing him a lot.  But I think I was missing him in a special way on this trip because Dad was great for road trips.  He’d get up before the crack of dawn, which is what I did, and he’d motor on toward whatever our destination was.  He loved to drive even long distances, and especially when I was a kid, the trip was kind of filled with expectation.  It wasn’t always fun getting up so early to leave, but it was kind of cool because it was a different experience, and as a kid, who could sleep the night before vacation anyway?

    So many wonderful things continue to remind me of Dad.  I was sitting on the new deck at Mom’s house a couple of weeks ago.  We had intended Dad to sit out and enjoy the deck that summer, but he died just a few days before it could be completed.  He would have loved it; he always liked sitting outside and enjoying the neighborhood and his house.  So as I sat there on that deck and prayed my breviary, I found myself especially close to Dad.

    As I’ve experienced these things over the last several weeks, I’ve been aware of my sense of loss t hat doesn’t ever seem to completely go away.  In some ways, that’s a good thing, because it reminds me how much I have loved and how much I was loved.  And through all of it, I have felt the abiding presence of God who is with us in all of our joys, and all of our sorrows.  I really feel like the danger of grieving is so miniscule compared with the danger of never having loved in our lives.

    I’ve reflected on my experience of grief this past week.  I was with some of my priest friends who form a kind of support group for each other earlier in the week.  We were praying about this feast of All Souls, and talking about our experience of loss and grief.  I shared what came to me in that moment, and that was a profound sense of gratitude to my parents for having given me the opportunity to learn to grieve when I was little.  I remember when my grandfather, Mom’s Dad, was close to death.  Mom and Dad talked with me about what was going to happen, and we all cried and hugged, and I began the strange feeling of grief when I was just nine years old.  When the time came, as is the custom on both sides of our family, all of us went to the wake and funeral, little as we were.

    Some people try to shield their children from that experience.  Indeed, our overly medicated society tries to protect us all from that experience of grief, white-washing it and moving on just as soon as possible.  But how grateful I am that my parents didn’t do that to me.  Through that experience, I learned to love more deeply, not less.  I learned that the people in my life are signs to me of God’s love and presence in my life.  I learned that grieving is part of life, that it’s natural, that it’s something we all experience, that it’s a sign of God’s love.  We have to learn to grieve, as soon as we have the opportunity, and not to be afraid of it, because grieving is a way that we remember and love and heal and grow.

    Grief and loss can do a number of things to us, and that is what makes it so scary.  Some people can become fixated in their grief and can be taken by a kind of clinical depression.  For that, we must count on the expert assistance of counselors and therapists who can help us through the root causes of depression and help us to experience our grief in healthier ways.  But that doesn’t mean that everyone who experiences loss should be medicated or is even ill.  If you’re moving through grief and continue to be aware of the gifts of your relationship with those you have lost, and continue to know that God is present with you even in your pain, then you’re probably grieving in healthy ways.  But if you’re lost and have lost sight of God’s love, then you might need to speak with someone about your grief.

    Jesus said in the Beatitudes “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  What makes this a particularly outrageous statement is that in biblical language, the word “blessed” here means “happy.”  So how is it that mourners are actually happy?  And the answer to that is that mourners have the wonderful experience of God’s presence in their grief.  When we grieve, we are especially close to God, close to our God who grieves when we are hurt, who may allow the bad things that happen in our lives, but never wills them, whose heart breaks whenever we sin and turn away from him.  We are made in the image and likeness of our God who is no stranger to grief, especially in the person of Jesus Christ, who grieved at the death of his friend Lazarus, who grieved with those he ministered to, and whose heart was broken when he saw the sadness of his mother at the foot of the cross.  Our God accepts grief head-on, and so should we, aware that in our grieving we are closer to God than ever, and have the benefit of his abiding presence in our pain.

    On this feast of the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, I could reflect on the difference between All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  But you could read that in the bulletin.  I could tell you all about purgatory and the need for us to pray for the dead.  But there’s another time and place for that too, I think.  Instead, I have chosen to reflect on our experience of grief, and I’ve done that because it’s an experience we all have, on some level, at some time in our lives.  I want you to know how very natural grief is, and how very blessed an experience it is.

    Death is always a time of great sadness, but our Liturgy teaches us that we who believe in the Lord Jesus must never grieve as if we have no hope.  Our hope is always in Christ, the one who knows our grief and pain, and is with us in every moment of our lives, most especially when we are in pain.  The Church teaches us that if we believe in God and do his will, we can be reunited with all of our loved ones forever one day.  For the believer, the hopelessness of death is always overcome by the great hope of God’s grace.

    We will hear later in this Liturgy that for those who believe in Christ, life is changed, not ended.  Because Jesus has died and risen from the dead to pay the price for our sins, we have been given the great gift of salvation.  And so we know that death only separates us from those we love for a short time, and that death never has the last word because Christ has triumphed over death.  The beginning and end of everything is Christ, and Christ is with us in our first moments, and also in our last.  He is with us in our pain and with us in our joy.  He helps us to remember our loved ones with love that continues beyond our death and beyond the grave.  Grief and loss and pain are temporary things for us.  Love is eternal, love never ends, love can never be destroyed by death, love leads us all to the great glory of the resurrection and eternal light in that kingdom where Christ has conquered everything, even death itself.

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

  • Thursday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I think today’s reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a good one for us to hear.  How often are we beset by all the frustrations of the world, and all of the sadness that our own lives can sometimes bring?  I’m not saying that every day is horrible, but we all go through times when it seems like it’s too much, like one more phone call and we’ll explode.

    And to all of that today, St. Paul advises us to “put on the armor of God.”  Because when things go wrong, we have two choices.  We can go to pieces, wondering where is God when we really need him, getting angry with God, ourselves, and others, and lashing out at anyone and everyone in our lives.  Or, we can realize that what God allows he doesn’t necessarily wish on us.  We can join ourselves to him, and draw our strength and courage from the Lord himself, knowing that he walks with us in good times and in bad.

    Because we know which one the devil himself would choose for us, right?  That evil one wants to use the trying times to drive a wedge between God and us.  And we need strength to guard against that “evil day.”  And so, St. Paul tells us, “In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming arrows of the Evil One.”  And that shield, he says, is prayer: “With all prayer and supplication, pray at every opportunity in the Spirit.”  Prayer and faith are the armor we need to get through the trying times of life without falling victim to the evil one.

    Sometimes life can feel like a war, but as the Psalmist says today, “Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war.”  Our stronghold is that whatever life brings us, we are never alone.  Never.

  • 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.

    Their message, as the Psalmist says, goes out to all the earth.  Blessed are all of us when we catch that message and live that message, following the way to Christ Jesus.

  • Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “You shall love the Lord, your God,
    with all your heart,
    with all your soul,
    and with all your mind.”

    That certainly seems simple enough.  But we miss the mark on it all the time, don’t we?  The idea is to put God first, which of course, is the first of the ten commandments:  “I am the LORD your God; you shall not have strange gods before me.”  But we have all sorts of strange gods that vie for our attention every day, and way too often, we give in to them, and put something less than god ahead of the God who made us.

    Back in my pre-seminary days, I used to work for a print company.  I had to manage multiple print projects for a few different customers, and so it was my job to schedule the print time in the plant, get proofs to customers, proofread projects, and a whole bunch of other stuff.  It could get very mind-boggling, so I took to writing very detailed to-do lists for myself so that I’d be sure to get everything done in the course of a day.

    You probably do something like that too.  Whether you are managing a consulting firm or simply trying to get the kids to soccer and choir and reading club at the right times, you probably keep lists to make it easier.  I still do it today, and it’s the only way I can keep things going without forgetting something major.  These days, I use a computer version, but the idea is the same.

    But one of the things I used to do when I worked at the print company was to include a one-word task every single day: “pray.”  I found, after I had been working there for a while, that I needed to do that to keep my faith life integrated with my work life.  The Scriptures teach us to pray always, and I found that unless I put that on my to-do list every day, there was precious little chance of my stopping to remember God, the One who created me and sustained me and loved me always.  Taking five minutes to pray was the least I could do.  I kept a Bible and a devotional in one of my desk drawers all the time, and I would take a five-minute break to use them.  That kept me a lot more focused during the day, and kept me from getting so full of myself that I made life intolerable for my coworkers.  Praying had a lot of benefits in the workplace.  And when I got to that one task – “pray” – I would remember to take time to do just that.

    One day, I was very sick and couldn’t come in to work.  So my friend Joyce, who was my backup partner, filled in for me.  The next day, when I came in, I found she had left notes on my to-do list about what she was able to get done, and what happened on some of my projects.  Joyce is a woman of faith, so when she got to that “pray” task, I’m sure she smiled, and probably did just that.  But she left me a note next to that task that said something like: “Done.  But I probably should have made it a novena!”  Apparently it had been a hard day!

    The point of all this is that we have to make a way to put God first in our lives.  Otherwise, if it’s not the busy-ness of the day, then it’s something else that comes first, and it’s almost never God.  It could be our status or ego that comes first, it could be money, it could be the latest gadgets or all the luxury comforts that we crave.  It could be sports, or it could be family activities, or even laziness that becomes a god for us.  And that’s all really sinful.  It’s a violation of the first commandment.  And it’s the first commandment for a very good reason: because it’s the most basic thing.  If we can’t hope to get this one right, we’ll never be very good at all the rest.

    These days in our society, I have been wondering what is really first for us.  I’m thinking we may have made gods of government bailouts.  You’d think that in this time of uncertainty, and on the brink of a pivotal election, people would be coming to Church, reconnecting with their God, and drawing strength from their faith, putting God first even if they haven’t been doing that very well in the recent past.  But you’d be wrong.  Right now, we’re taking the annual “October Count” – a yearly mass-by-mass attendance count.  The attendance counts as compared to registered parishioners this year are running 2-3% lower than last year, and 6-7% lower than this time in 2004.  We are hearing that is true from other churches in our area too.

    Even for those of us who manage to make the time to come to Mass on Saturday evening or Sunday morning, that still doesn’t necessarily mean that we are putting God first all the time.  We have to find ways to put God first, adding time with him to our to-do lists, making prayer and reflection a part of our daily routine.  Because it’s only by doing this that we can nurture a friendship with our God, a friendship that sustains us in bad times and in good, a friendship that ultimately leads us to heaven, that place we were created for by the One who created us.

    Jesus makes it plain enough for us in today’s Gospel.  Love God and love your neighbor; these are the hallmarks of a Christian’s life, the hallmarks of life for all of us who were created by God and are called to return to God one day.  And so it is imperative that we get love of God and love of neighbor right.  To neglect these two commandments, which Jesus says today are the basis of the whole law and the prophets, is seriously sinful.

    But the good news is that we have the chance, having heard the Word of God, to return and to re-prioritize our to-do lists, putting God first, loving God and neighbor, and coming at last into the presence of our God who loves us first and always.  The Psalmist, as always, helps us to make our prayer today: “I love you, LORD, my strength, LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, My God, my rock of refuge, my shield, my saving horn, my stronghold!”  He is the LORD and there is no other!

  • Saturday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever seen a fig tree?  I haven’t.  But I can tell you I’d be pretty frustrated if I had cared for a fig tree for three years and never saw one bit of fruit.  I think we could all understand the man wanting his gardener to cut the tree down and give the good soil to some other plant.  Having nourished the plant and watered it and put in hours pruning it and doing all the things it takes to care for a tree, nothing has come of it.  Time to get rid of it and move on.

    And so, one could certainly understand if God would turn out to be just like that frustrated man.  Having cared for, fed, nurtured, guided and corrected us sinners, when we don’t bear fruit, certainly in his frustration, God would be justified in blotting us out and never giving us a second thought.

    But God is not the frustrated man in the parable, is he?  No, God is the gardener, the one who has really done all the work of nurturing, and he is amazingly patient.  The gardener says of the tree, “leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future.  If not you can cut it down.”  And so God is with all of us.  God gives us another chance, even when we’ve had so many chances before, even when it seems like we just aren’t worth the trouble.  But God is patient.

    And we are better than fig trees.  We know enough to respond to the nurturing of our God.  Our prayer today leads us to reflect on those ways in which we have borne fruit, and those times that we have been fruitless.  We are being cultivated and fertilized yet again at this Mass, so may we be fruitful in the days and years to come.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Some people would say that Jesus was a peaceful man.  Saying that is really misunderstanding Jesus and who he was.  Because peace wasn’t necessarily his primary interest, at least not peace in the way that we often see it.

    Because sometimes I think we misread what peace is supposed to be.  We might sell peace short and settle for the absence of conflict.  Or even worse, we may settle for peace at any price, swallowing our disagreements and never coming close to true healing in our relationships.  There are families in which never a harsh word would be said, but the underlying hostility is palpable.  There are workplaces in which there are never any arguments, but there is also never any cooperative work done.  Sometimes there are relationships where fear replaces love and respect.

    And this is not the kind of peace that Jesus would bring us today.  This is the One who came to set the earth on fire, and his methods for bringing us to peace might well cause division in the here and now.  But there is never any resurrection if we don’t have the cross.  And so there will never be any peace if we don’t confront what’s really happening.  The fire has to be red hot and blazing if there is ever to be any regrowth.

    And so today we have to stop settling for a peace that really isn’t so peaceful.  We may just have to have that hard conversation we’ve been trying to avoid.  Of course, we do it with love for our brothers and sisters, but out of love we also don’t avoid it.  Our words and actions must always be guided by the fire of the Holy Spirit, but we must never choose to neglect the Spirit’s guidance and instead just settle for something that is really not peace.  We have to work for true healing in all of our relationships.

    The Psalmist tells us today that “the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.”  That goodness resides in all those people God has given us in our lives.  This day, we are called to relish their goodness and work for lasting peace with all of them.

  • Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It has often struck me when hearing the news the last several months that being rich in what matters to God is more important than ever.  With banks failing, Wall Street needing a huge bailout, and a 700 billion dollar economic recovery transfusion coming from the government, who among us hasn’t had the sinking feeling that this world’s riches are nothing at time but straw?

    So you’d think that in this time of uncertainty, and on the brink of a pivotal election, people would be coming to Church, reconnecting with their God, and drawing strength from their faith, building up those riches that are from God.  But you’d be wrong.  Right now, we’re taking the annual “October Count” – a yearly mass-by-mass attendance count.  The attendance counts as compared to registered parishioners this year are running 2-3% lower than last year, and 6-7% lower than this time in 2004.

    In some ways it strikes me that we are quickly losing our faith, or even worse, that we as a society are becoming indifferent to faith, seeing it as irrelevant or ultimately meaningless.  At a time in our nation’s history when we should be returning to God in droves, people instead are staying away in droves.

    And it’s hard to live through uncertain times without faith.  How can we ride the ups and downs of life with anything close to tranquility without the rock that is our faith?  Instead we as a society seem content to place our faith in government bailouts, while we continue to practice unprecedented greed.  And to all of that God tells us today, what will happen if we hear “You fool, this very night your life will be demanded of you?”  The time to store up treasure in what matters to God is clearly here.  How will we people of faith give witness to that?

  • St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr

    St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr

    Today’s readings | Today’s saint

    [Mass for the junior high school children.]

    Of all birds, sparrows are probably the most insignificant.  They are small in size and dull in color.  They undertake no great flights.  They live in bushes rather than in trees.  Though they are found in vast numbers all over the world, we take them completely for granted.  They so blend in with the earth and their surroundings that we hardly ever notice them.

    In today’s Gospel, Jesus wants us to know how far God’s love for us and care for us and knowledge of us goes.  In doing that, he didn’t talk about swans or eagles, even though these birds make a much more splendid appearance as opposed to the humble sparrow.  But listen again to what he says about them: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father knowing.”

    By this he means that everything that happens to any of his creatures, whether they are roaring lions or tiny sparrows, whether they are world leaders, or little children, whether they are great or insignificant, God still cares for them – they are still important to God.  He notices what happens to us, no matter who we are, he cares for us and wants us to be with him forever.

    In our day, there are lots of things to worry about.  Many people right now are worrying about the economy.  Will we be able to stay in our homes or will we lose them?  Will we be able to pay our bills?  Can we still afford to live in a safe place?  And there are lots of other things we worry about too.  We worry about people we love when they are sick.  We worry about passing tests, whether they are tests in school or medical tests.  We worry about our family and friends who are off in foreign lands fighting difficult wars.  There is no shortage of things to worry about.

    But Jesus reminds us today that we are in God’s hands.  The hairs of our head have been counted.  We are worth more than millions of sparrows, and God notices every single one of them.

    St. Ignatius of Antioch was a bishop at the end of the first and beginning of the second century.  At that time, Christians were often persecuted, this time under the Emperor Trajan.  Christians were being forced to deny Christ or lose their lives.  Many of them chose to give their lives for Christ, and Ignatius was one of them.

    When he was in prison, Ignatius wrote to the people in the churches he led.  He told them not to worry about him.  In fact, he told them not to try to intervene for him, not to try to stop what was going to happen.  He knew he would die for his faith, but he didn’t want them to try and stop it.  He was not worried about his life, because he knew that God would take care of him.  He wrote:  “No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire.”

    He was killed for his faith and became a martyr.  We celebrate his courage on this feast day for him.  We celebrate his faith in Jesus, that faith that told him there was nothing to worry about because God loved him and valued him more than many sparrows.

    What we need to do today is to give our worries back to Jesus, to remember that we are in his hands, and to tell him that we trust in him.  After our prayers of the faithful, we are all going to come forward and offer our worries back to Jesus so that we can put them in his hands as we celebrate the Eucharist today.  After you come forward to give your worries to one of our students who will place them before the altar, I want you to return to your seat and imagine yourself giving that worry to Jesus.  Imagine him taking it from you, reassuring you that you are worth more than many sparrows, and imagine him embracing you and reassuring you that you will be cared for.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When I was in seminary, one of the big courses we had to pass with flying colors early on was called Christology.  As the name might suggest, Christology is the study of Jesus Christ, but perhaps more specifically a study of the Church’s theology about Jesus Christ.  That course covers what we believe about Christ, the history of the Church’s belief about Christ, and the history of the many schisms and heresies that developed around Christ through the early years of the Church.

    When I read this morning’s first reading, I was so taken by the feeling that it was a reading about Christology as a whole.  If you want to know what we believe about Jesus Christ, just reread this reading a few times and reflect on it.  That’s your homework, by the way!  So what I’d like to do is to point out as many of the beliefs covered in this reading as I can, to give you food for thought.

    The first part is the standard St. Paul kind of greeting in which he says “grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Foundationally, this prayer says exactly what we believe: grace and peace come from the Father and the Son.  He goes on to say that we have all been blessed by the Father in the Son with every spiritual blessing.  God has chosen to send his grace, peace and blessing to us through Jesus, because it is Jesus who can relate to us in our human nature.  Through Jesus, he says, we have been chosen and called to holiness, loved and adopted as sons and daughters of God.

    Because of that love and adoption, God would not leave us in our sin.  No, through Christ we are also redeemed, forgiven and lavished with grace.  It is through Jesus also that God makes known all the mysteries of life and grace.  All of this had been set in motion before the world began, but given to us in time, here and now, through the One who was with him in the beginning and who stays with us until the end.  And at the end, everything in heaven and on earth will be summed up in Christ.

    As St. Paul says in another place, through Christ, with Christ and in him all things are.  Through Christ everything continues in being right up until the end.  And so thanks today go to St. Paul, the master theologian who reminds us of the great heritage and hope that we have in Christ.  And thanks be to God for the grace that is ours in every moment.