Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Preaching, Homiletics & Scripture

  • The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    “My whole world is falling apart.” We’ve all heard someone say that, or maybe we’ve even said it ourselves, at some point in our lives. I think today’s Gospel points to that kind of experience.

    But to really get at the experience Luke’s Gospel was getting at, you have to imagine how we would feel if we came to Mass one day and found this beautiful Church demolished and in ruins. I think we’d all be devastated and feel hurt, abandoned, and lost in some ways. And that’s just exactly how the original readers of Luke’s Gospel felt. Luke’s Gospel was written somewhere between 80 and 100 AD, so 50 or more years after Jesus died. And at this point, the glorious Temple of Jerusalem, once stately and glimmering white and gold in the sunlight, now lay in ruins, having been destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. For the Jews at that time, the Temple meant everything: it the center of their worship, which was crucial. But in the Temple they also found the symbol of their identity as a nation. It was a sign that God favored them among all the nations on earth and had chosen them to be his own. Jerusalem was no more, and a world ended with it.

    But as I mentioned at the start of this homily, we all go through something that makes it seem like the end of the world at some point in our lives. Family, friends and our communities experience various forms of dying and they are never easy. Cancer debilitates a formerly-vigorous and full-of-life friend or relative; a marriage breaks up; an injury makes it impossible to keep a job; aging diminishes a once-vibrant person. And more. Our churches offer more and more empty seats, our nation moves from one crisis to the next, we scratch our heads as legislatures seem incompetent or cantankerous or ineffective, perhaps we are dismayed by the recent election season, or are fearful at the growing violence in our major cities. We might even think of devastating natural disasters like the hurricanes and earthquakes that happen around the world. When we experience any of that, it can seem like the world is ending.

    And when things like that happen, it’s hard to find words to express our sadness, fear, pain, and desertedness. It can even be hard to find words to speak in prayer. But Jesus knows this will happen to us and promises that if we persevere, we will gain our lives and that God himself will give us a wisdom in speaking that cannot be refuted. In Christ, we can find wisdom to make painful circumstances occasions for God’s grace. What we experience as difficulties and painful endings, he sees as opportunities to witness to our faith in him.

    Very often when catastrophic things happen, people read it as the coming end of the world. Sometimes people even see these things as signs of God’s displeasure at the way humanity has been behaving. But today’s Gospel doesn’t support those kinds of ideas. God alone knows the time for the world’s ending, and he’s not going to provide definite signs. Not only that, but catastrophe is the symptom of evil in the world, and not a sign of God’s feelings about the state of the world, or the depravity of the human condition, or even about our own personal sinfulness.

    As the Church year comes to a close, it may be well for us to look back at our lives over the past year and take stock of our growth in faith. Has our relationship with Christ led us to a place where we can weather the storms of life, and hear his voice even when the world is falling down around us? Have we grown in our ability to make God’s presence in our world known when the world around us seems rudderless and adrift? Have we been open to God giving us words to speak in witness to the faith, so that we stand up with integrity for what we believe? If this year has not been a solid experience of growth for us, that needs to be our prayer for the year to come.

    I feel the need to comment on the past election season here, because it really calls for us to give the kind of witness that our Gospel reading calls for today.  We definitely need to find candidates on both sides of the aisle who respect life and are people of integrity.  The vacuum of that causes election seasons like we just experienced.  Pro-life people are not extremists, abortion is not healthcare but instead the murder of an unborn person, and it’s never a morally acceptable choice for anyone.  The fact that Catholic candidates have caved to outside pressure and ignore that teaching doesn’t make it right for Catholics or anyone.  On the other hand we can’t allow pro-life people to behave badly, or their lack of integrity ruins their witness and gives the other side the opportunity to label us as extremists.  Somehow, our witness has to get this right; that’s our call in the world.

    But remember what Jesus says at the end of the Gospel reading today:

    “You will be hated by all because of my name,
    but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
    By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

    On the second-to-last Sunday of the Church year, it would have been wonderful for the Liturgy to tie up all the loose ends and give us a happy ending. But that’s not what we have here is it? Why? Because life isn’t that way. Jesus tells us as much today. The message that we have is that, no matter how messy things may be, we can praise our God who is with us in good times and in bad, and promises to lift us up even when the world seems like it is coming to an end.

  • Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr

    Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr

    Today we celebrate the memorial of Saint Josaphat, who was born in what is now Poland to Orthodox parents. He later became a Basilian monk, and was chosen bishop of Vitebsk, in what is now Russia. His task was to bridge the divide between the Roman and Orthodox Church, but this was not easy, because the Orthodox monks did not want union with Rome; they feared interference in liturgy and customs. But over time, using synods and other instruction, he was able to win many of the Orthodox in that area to the union.

    But the fight was far from over. A dissident faction of the church was formed, and they fomented opposition to Josaphat. Eventually the mob murdered him and threw his body into a river. The body was recovered and is now buried in St. Peter’s basilica. Josaphat is the first saint of the Eastern Church to be canonized by Rome.

    Josaphat had an insurmountable task to accomplish. But he had faith that God would give him what he needed to accomplish the mission. He knew well Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel: that we must persistently pray for what is right.  There is still a great divide today between the Latin and Orthodox churches.  We must never stop praying that Saint Josaphat’s vision would be fulfilled.

  • Tuesday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time (Election Day)

    Tuesday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time (Election Day)

    Today’s readings

    Turn from evil and do good,
    that you may abide forever;
    The just shall possess the land
    and dwell in it forever.

    So says the Psalmist today, and I think these words are encouraging ones. Here we stand, finally, on election day, in the midst of another rancorous and in many ways, disheartening, campaign season. Now all the sound bytes and debates and campaign ads and news stories coalesce into the cornerstone of our democracy: your vote and mine.

    We Catholics are required by our faith to participate in this democratic process. The Catechism tells us: It is the duty of citizens to contribute along with the civil authorities to the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom. The love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity. Submission to legitimate authorities and service of the common good require citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community. 

    Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one’s country. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2239-2240)

    Every one of our voices matter, and so we are required to vote even when we think we’re just one person. It is up to us to stand up for what’s right: to defend the sanctity of life, to advocate for the poor, and generally to build up a society in which all people of good will can grow in their faith while they await their turn to move to that place in heaven that God has prepared for us.

    I understand when people say, this year, it’s all too depressing. But the Psalmist’s reminder is a good one: The just shall possess the land / and dwell in it forever. God is in control, and he’s using you and me to make his message known.

    Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Mother Mary, patroness of the United States of America, pray for us.

  • Mass of Remembrance for All Souls

    Mass of Remembrance for All Souls

    The souls of the just are in the hands of God.  His care is with his elect.  We shall also be united with him in the resurrection.  Death no longer has power over him.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  Today’s Liturgy of the Word has good news for those of us who have lost loved ones, whether it be in the past year, or even the more distant past.  The passing of time doesn’t take all the sorrow away, we know that, but it does give God a chance to bring us healing and grace and fond memories.

    We have come here today to do just that: to remember our loved ones who have passed away and now have hope of immortality.  We pray for their souls and commend them to our loving God that he might, in his great mercy, open the gates of the heavenly kingdom for them and give them the eternal reward for which they have long hoped.

    This morning’s Gospel reading presents us with perhaps the foundational principal of living the Christian life: love of God and love of neighbor.  We love God with great fervor because he loved us into existence.  And God teaches us how to love: to love him and to love others; in fact we manifest our love of God in very real ways by loving others.  Loving others is what brings us here together this morning as we celebrate our annual Mass of Remembrance for those who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith.  Our love of them doesn’t end when they leave us; and it is that love that intensifies our grief.  And so we gather this morning to remember and to take solace in God’s love for us, knowing that the grave is no obstacle to love, and that death has been defeated by our Savior who loves us more than anything.

    Over the last year, here at Saint Mary’s, we have celebrated over 100 funerals, which is a lot for us.  So, as your pastor, I’m acutely aware of the grieving of our community.  And I can relate to it: over the past year, I celebrated the funerals of two of my uncles on my Dad’s side of the family, a stark reminder that as I get older, we are losing that previous generation, and I am missing their presence in our lives.  Two uncles, two very different funerals.  One was a large funeral because Uncle Mike never knew a stranger.  He was a vice president of the company I worked for before seminary, and he was very involved in his parish.  Uncle Jim’s funeral was more of a private, small remembrance.  Both of them different, but both of them beautiful, hopeful times of prayer.

    I want to pause here and speak a little about the reality of grief.  Because, if there is one thing that we as a society do extremely poorly these days, it’s grieving.  We rush through it and hope it’s all done before we have a chance to feel any kind of pain.  That’s part and parcel of how things work in our world; we have a pill for every malady and a quick remedy for every pain, plagued with a whole host of horrifying side effects.  And what’s important to know is that this is not how the Church teaches us to grieve.  One of the most important reasons that we have All Souls Day each year is to give us the experience of remembering and grieving and healing.  If you truly love, you will truly grieve, and not turn away from it.

    The Church’s Catechism (989) teaches us: “We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day.”  And so we Christians never grieve as if we have no hope.  The Church’s Liturgy echoes this hope in the third Eucharistic Prayer: “There we hope to enjoy for ever the fullness of your glory, when you will wipe away every tear from our eyes.  For seeing you, our God, as you are, we shall be like you for all the ages and praise you without end, through Christ our Lord, through whom you bestow on the world all that is good.”  One of the Prefaces to the Eucharistic Prayers for the Dead makes it very clear that this hope touches our experience of grieving: “In him the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, that those saddened by the certainty of dying might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come (Preface I for the Dead).”

    And so I have some tips on grieving that I hope you will find helpful:

    • Don’t rush into the funeral. It’s hard to make all those difficult decisions at a moment’s notice.  It’s great if you’ve talked about your wishes with your family, because it makes things easier.  But if that hasn’t happened, the family would do well to take its time and avail itself of the resources of the funeral director and the church staff so that a funeral that adequately honors the deceased and comforts the living can be prepared.
    • Parents: please talk to your children about your funeral. Yes, that’s going to be a hard conversation.  But these days, too many young people are so disconnected from the Church and so averse to any kind of unhappiness, that they really don’t know how to grieve.  You have to help them with that.
    • Let other people help you. Even if you can do all the preparations, you don’t have to, and you probably shouldn’t.  Let the Church and others help you and minister to you in your time of grief.  As a priest, I presided at my father’s funeral, but one of the priests who knew him preached the homily.  I also asked our bereavement ministry to help us plan the funeral.  I found that was very helpful to me in my own grieving.  On that day, I wasn’t only the priest celebrant, I was also a son grieving the death of his father, and that was important.
    • Have a wake. A lot of people try to short-cut this one because they think it will be too painful.  It will hurt a little, yes, but the comfort of others expressing their love for the deceased and for you will do so much to heal you in the time to come.
    • Don’t be afraid to shed tears. Anyone who has ever seen me preach at some funerals of people I’ve known especially well has seen me get choked up.  Or they have seen me shed a tear when I’ve talked about my father or my grandparents in a homily.  Tears heal us, and it’s good for other people, especially your children, to see you cry.  They need to know that pain and sorrow are part of life so that they don’t feel like they’ve gone nuts when it happens to them.  You aren’t doing anyone any favors by not allowing them to see you grieve.
    • Understand that grief doesn’t “go away.” Feelings soften with time, yes, but you will grieve your loved ones for many years to come, perhaps your whole life long.  I still grieve for my grandparents who have been gone from my life for many, many years now.  Sometimes those waves of grief will come up all of a sudden, without warning, kind of out of the blue.  And that’s okay.  Remember grief is a sign that we have loved, and loving is the most important thing we will ever do.

    Friends, praying for the dead recognizes that all of our lives here on earth are not perfect, and the only way that we can attain the saving grace necessary for life in heaven is by turning to our Savior who gave his life for us.  Our second reading today gives us confidence that we can do this, and that his sacrifice on behalf of our loved ones, and of us, is sufficient, because his is a priesthood that never passes away.  He offered himself once for all, and that is enough, if we turn to him and ask his mercy.

    In a few moments, I will sing words that have comforted me so many times in my sorrow.  They are the words of the preface to the Eucharistic Prayer: “Indeed, for your faithful, Lord, life is changed, not ended, and when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.” This echoes the words of the Prophet Isaiah who confidently proclaims: “The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces; The reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the Lord has spoken.”

    During November, the Church continues to remember those we prayed for on the second day of this month, the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. And for this remembrance, 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. We must always remember that blessed experiences aren’t always pain-free. Our God never flees from our brokenness, instead he has chosen to redeem it.  That is why he offered himself willingly for us.

    And so we are confident, because 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.

    Therefore, it is with profound sadness, but also with ultimate trust in Almighty God that we commend our loved ones to the Lord, knowing that his mercy is great and that his love will keep us united at the Eucharistic banquet until that day when death is conquered and sadness is banished and we are all caught up in God’s life forever.

    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.

  • The Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    What if this life was all there was?  I’m sure you know some people who think that.  I’m not sure how people who think that can get out of bed in the morning, let alone keep on living day after day. Questions about life and death and last things and life after the last things are what’s going on in the Church’s mind and imagination in these last days of the Church year.

    It’s little wonder these questions grab us in these waning days of the year. The trees are losing their foliage. The daylight hours are getting shorter. The air is a bit colder, and we might get the feeling that winter can’t wait to get here!  We can sense there is a change approaching, and perhaps it isn’t one that we look forward to.  Even with the festive atmosphere of the upcoming holidays, or perhaps even because of the holidays, many of us feel depressed or blasé, and the festivity of the holiday season only serves to highlight it for us.  Please God, let there be something more.

    Fundamentally, we human beings need to make connections.  We want life, we want light, we want peace, we want love.  And because we want all these things, we know we are alive.  We attempt to fill them up as best we can.  We hope that our attempts are healthy, but honestly sometimes we find ourselves stuck and attempt to fill our desires with things that are well, just shoddy.  We anesthetize ourselves with drugs or alcohol or internet pornography or retail therapy.  We enter into relationships that are unhealthy.  We work ourselves to death. We distance ourselves from loved ones.  We sin.  We often just try to fill up the something more that we desire with something less than that of which we are worthy.

    And that’s exactly what the Sadducees were doing in today’s Gospel reading.  The Sadducees, we are told, were a group of religious authorities that taught there was no resurrection.  So these Sadducees come to Jesus and seem to have an earnest question.  They speak of a woman seven times widowed and wonder whose wife she will be in the resurrection of the dead.  Except that their question wasn’t earnest at all.  Clearly they were out to discredit Jesus, even embarrass him.  “So you think there will be a resurrection,” they say, “well then, what about this…?”

    The Sadducees didn’t get it when it came to the resurrection, and they weren’t willing to open their minds to any kind of new possibility.  If what Jesus said didn’t fit what they believed, then it absolutely must be wrong.  They were filling their desires with the sin of pride instead of the possibility of eternal life.  What a horrible, shoddy way to fill up their desires!

    But swing that around and look at the seven brothers in the first reading.  All they would have to do was eat a little pork and they could have lived.  I mean, who’s going to begrudge them a little bacon?!  Yet they patently refused to do so.  One by one, they are tortured and killed.  Why would they have let themselves be treated that way?  All they had to do was eat some pork, for heaven’s sake; surely God would forgive them, right?  But listen to what the first brother says: “You are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever.  It is for his laws that we are dying.”  These brothers and their mother realized that there was something greater, something more.  They knew their desire could never be filled up with a little pork, or the shoddy life that would come about as a result of giving up their beliefs.  What a stark contrast they are to the prideful Sadducees!

    We may be tempted to settle for something less, but we know there is something so much better in store for us.  There is something that will fill up our desires once and for all, and that something – or rather that someone –  is Jesus Christ.  It’s not going to be our pride, boasting of our elaborate wisdom or ability to take care of ourselves.  It’s not going to be a little pork, or giving in to whatever temptation comes our way to take us off the path.  It’s not going to be alcohol, or drugs, or unhealthy relationships or self-help gurus, or anything else.  It’s only going to be Jesus – only Jesus! – who will fill up the desires that touch us to the core of who we are.

    The Church in these waning days of the Church year would never deny that there is suffering in the world.  But she will encourage us to open up our desires to be filled with our Savior who comes not to make our suffering go away, but instead to fill it up and sanctify it with his presence.  There is something more, and we can expect to be filled up with it when we realize that the fit for the hole we have in our hearts is Jesus Christ.

    That, friends, is why it is so important that we gather as believers every Sunday, and avail ourselves of the other sacraments, especially reconciliation, on a regular basis.  We have an unquenchable desire that can only be filled up with Christ, that Christ who longs to be our life, who died to be our savior, who rose to be our salvation.

    Our God is not a God of the dead, but of the living.  To him all are alive.  So in these last days of the year, if we find ourselves desiring peace, desiring wholeness, desiring comfort, desiring love, desiring fulfillment, or desiring anything else, that’s okay.  Because what we’re really desiring is Christ, and he is always there to fill us beyond our wildest imaginings.

  • The Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Last Sunday and today, we have a kind of theme going on in our Liturgy of the Word.  Particularly in the Gospel readings, we have had the stories of two tax collectors.  Last week, the tax collector drew the scorn of the Pharisee, but went home justified because he humbled himself and asked for mercy.  He literally made himself low and was raised up.  Interestingly, in today’s story, Zacchaeus begins by raising himself up.  Being vertically challenged, he climbs a tree so that he can get a look at Jesus who was passing through Jericho.  As Jesus notices him, he is invited to come down so that Jesus can stay with him, which he does with joy.

    I don’t think it’s coincidence that the Church puts these two striking Gospel stories among the closing weeks of the liturgical year.  Last week, one of our staff members reminded me that we were exactly two months from Christmas, which I didn’t in fact receive with joy.  It’s not that I don’t like Christmas, it’s just that the older I get, the faster time passes.  And this year has been a whirlwind.  But here we are, with just three Sundays left in the Liturgical Year.  Advent begins on Thanksgiving weekend this year, and that’s just a stone’s throw away.

    So in the closing Sundays of the year, I think it’s interesting that we have these two memorable stories about the conversion of tax collectors.  You’ve heard it preached before, no doubt, that tax collectors were considered to be among the most terrible sinners, a characterization that probably wasn’t all that far from the truth.  They were known to be extortionists, collecting far more tax than the empire required.  And so to have two stores of their conversions at the end of the year is, I think, quite deliberate.

    As we run out of time on the Liturgical year, the Church points to the fact that we really don’t know how much time we have.  Clearly, death can take us at any time, and Jesus himself prophesies that we do not know the day nor the hour when he will return in glory.  So conversion is urgent.  We can’t wait for a tomorrow that may never come, nor presume that God will always give us more time.  We have to come down from the tree, having seen the Lord, welcome him into the home of our heart, and repent of the sins we have committed in our weakness, or in our stubbornness, or in our hard heartedness. 

    [For 9:00am Mass, Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens:

    [We have here today, nine young people who have been like Zacchaeus.  Yes, some are vertically challenged – at least now! – but they too have seen the Lord.  And while they weren’t baptized when they were infants like so many of us, they have desired to come to the faith and embrace their cross and follow our Lord. ]

    You have to love this story of Zacchaeus, I think.  I think there are two main components of the story that really stand out for me as hallmarks of the spiritual life.

    The first is Zacchaeus’s openness.  First, he is so eager to see Jesus that he climbs up a tree to get a look at him.  We don’t have to go that far.  All we have to do is spend some time in the Eucharistic Chapel, or even just some quiet moments reflecting on Scripture.  All of those are ways to see Jesus, but like Zacchaeus, we have to overcome obstacles to get a look at him.  For Zacchaeus, that meant climbing up a tree to overcome his short stature.  But for you and me, that might mean clearing our schedule, making our time with Jesus a priority.  Zacchaeus’s openness also included inviting Jesus in, despite his sinfulness.  He was willing to make up for his sin and change everything once he found the Lord.  We might ask ourselves today what we need to change, and how willing we are to invite Jesus into our lives, despite our brokenness.

    The second thing that stands out for me is what Jesus says to those who chided him for going into a sinner’s house.  “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”  What wonderful words those are for us to hear.  Because we know how lost we have been at times, and how far we have wandered from our Lord.  But the Lord seeks us out anyway, because we are too valuable for him to lose. And all we have to do is to be open to the Lord’s work in our lives, just like Zacchaeus was.  And we need to do it now, because repentance is urgent, mercy is urgent, salvation is urgent.  We know not how much time we have to return to our Lord, and there’s no time like the present.  What a joy it will be then to hear those same words Jesus said to our friend Zacchaeus: “Today salvation has come to this house.”

  • Pope Saint John Paul II

    Pope Saint John Paul II

    Today, we celebrate the feast of Pope Saint John Paul II, who was born in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland.  After his ordination to the priesthood and theological studies in Rome, he returned to his homeland and resumed various pastoral and academic tasks.  He was ordained an auxiliary bishop and, in 1964, became Archbishop of Kraków and took part in the Second Vatican Council.  On October 16, 1978, he was elected pope and took the name John Paul II, honoring his two predecessors, Pope Saint John XXIII, and Blessed Pope Paul VI.  His exceptional apostolic zeal, particularly for families, young people, and the sick, led him to numerous pastoral visits throughout the world.  Among the many fruits which he has left as a heritage to the Church are above all his rich theological teaching and the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as well as the Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church and for the Eastern Churches. 

    In Rome on April 2, 2005, the eve of the Second Sunday of Easter (or of Divine Mercy, a feast to which he had particular devotion), he departed peacefully in the Lord. He was canonized by Pope Francis on that same feast in 2014, and was canonized in 2018, also by Pope Francis. Normally a saint’s feast day falls on the day of his or her death, but because that date would often fall during holy week, and because the Church desired that his feast be celebrated with due solemnity each year, his feast is today, on the anniversary of the date of the Mass for his inauguration to the pontificate.

    Saint John Paul’s contributions to the Church and the world are profound: contributing to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and reinvigorating the Church through authentic teaching and his own personal charisma. We may remember that he often echoed the Scriptural teaching of “Do not be afraid,” and modeled the freedom of living one’s faith and witnessing without apology. May we all be reinvigorated as we celebrate his feast, and devote ourselves totally to Jesus, through Mary, as he did.

    Saint John Paul II, pray for us.

  • The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Persistently Prayerful

    The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Persistently Prayerful

    Today’s readings

    Prayer is one of the most important elements of the Christian life, of the life of a disciple, and yet it is also, I think, one of the most difficult to master. Still, it’s something that we work at every day of our lives, and the working it out should be one of our greatest joys. In today’s Liturgy of the Word, we have just one element of prayer, and that is the element of persistence in prayer.

    Now I’m going to be real careful here. Lots of people give some lousy advice about prayer: you know, if you just pray hard enough and long enough, everything will eventually work out all right. I’m not going to tell you that, because things often don’t work out the way we want them, no matter how much we pray. So why even bother praying? Well, hang in there, we’ll get to that.

    We have a wonderful image of prayer in our first reading. I invite you to raise your arms with me if you’re able, and leave them raised until you can’t any more. This is what Moses had to do to keep the Hebrew army in a winning position against Amelek and his warriors. The minute Moses lowered his hands to rest, things went ill for the Hebrews, but as long as his hands were raised, things went okay.

    Now, again, I proceed cautiously here, because I don’t think things always work out the way we intend them as long as we pray. But there’s an element of this analogy that is very important, I think. And that element is that sometimes it’s hard to be persistent in prayer. Sometimes you get tired. Maybe your arms are not yet weary, but they might soon get there.

    I can think of a few times in my life when I’ve grown weary of praying. One of them was in my late thirties when I was trying, once again, and once and for all, to figure out what God wanted me to do with my life. I prayed and prayed and prayed, and it didn’t seem like God was answering at all. I finally grew weary of prayer and told God that he should give me a big challenge and whatever it was, I would do it. Then one day, the day of the Easter Vigil that year, I got a letter in the mail from a friend and it made everything crystal clear. Six months later I was in seminary.

    Sometimes in our weariness we have to let go of the shopping list of what we want God to do for us and just let God be God. Because praying isn’t supposed to be comprised of telling God what to do. But how are your arms doing? Are you weary yet? Well if so, you’re in good company. Moses found that to really be persistent in prayer, he needed friends – Aaron and Hur – to hold him up. That’s true for all of us, I think. We often need friends to hold us in prayer, to take some of the burden of prayer when persistence has become difficult. If you haven’t already, you can put your arms down now.

    Then what are we to make of the gospel reading? I mean, are we really supposed to think that God is an unjust judge who has no respect for anyone? Obviously not. I think that we’re supposed to see in this little parable that if even an unjust judge – one who neither fears God nor respects any person – if even that judge will eventually give in to the widow pleading for just judgment, well then how much more will our God who is infinitely just and doesn’t just respect us but loves us beyond all imagining, how much more will he pour out his blessings of justice on all of us?

    Which isn’t to say that he will definitely answer our prayers the way we want them answered. Those persistent prayers will be answered in God’s way, in God’s time. He may say “no,” or he may even allow something evil like an illness or some other disappointment. We may have to bear the burden of disease or the sadness of the death of a loved one. But in all of that, God will be with us. He may heal us in other ways, that we might come to know God’s love in the midst of our burdens.

    When we persist in prayer, sometimes the change that happens is not the situation, but we ourselves. We may grow in grace in some way that we would not otherwise experience or even expect. We may grow in our capacity to love, or in our awareness of the needs of others, or in our ability to be steadfast in the midst of chaos. All of these give honor and glory to God, which after all, brothers and sisters, is our ultimate purpose in life.

    So let’s get back to that question that I asked at the beginning of the homily. Why even bother praying if we’re not going to get what we want? I think we pray for three reasons. First, we pray to grow in our relationship with God who is our friend. As in any relationship, we open ourselves up to conversation, watching for God’s response, accepting God’s will and his desire that we grow in love for him.

    Second, I think we pray because God genuinely cares about us. If we are to grow in love, we have to know that he is open to us and desires that we communicate our needs, our hopes, our fears, our deepest longings to him. It’s not that he doesn’t know these things already, but the process of expressing them in prayer helps us to know those needs in deeper ways and helps us to be aware of God’s action and blessing in our lives.

    Third, I think we pray because that’s how we grow in holiness. The more that we bind ourselves to God by receiving his mercy and grace and knowing his love for us in prayer, the more we become new people, new creations.

    At the end of the Gospel today, our Lord asks, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” That’s an incredibly important question. So often it seems like the world, or even our lives, have gone horribly wrong. We may be upset about our country’s values, or the candidates for the upcoming election, or the seemingly constant wave of crime, terrorism, or natural disaster. But it’s important that we remember that we can’t stop praying about these things. If we ever want to see things change, we have to be people of faith. We have to persist in our prayer, even if we don’t see things changing as quickly as we would like. The Psalmist reminds us today that “Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Every prayer may not be answered in our time and in the way that we’d like. But by persisting in prayer, we will eventually and always become something better.

  • The Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Thankful People

    The Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Thankful People

    Today’s readings

    We believers are called to be grateful in all circumstances.  That’s sometimes easier said than done, especially when we are going through hard times.  But our faith calls us to look for the blessings.  People who look for blessings in their lives tend to be more grateful, positive people.  Their faith also tends to be stronger, because they see how God has helped them not just in good times, but perhaps especially in tough times.  I always say that our God doesn’t just wave a magic wand and make all our problems go away, but that he never leaves us alone in the midst of those problems.  Today’s Liturgy of the Word provides the basis for that belief.

    Today’s readings speak to the sadness of leprosy, which in Biblical times included basically any skin disease.  People suffering from these maladies were shunned, partially because it was believed they could spread the disease easily, but also because contact with any such person made one ritually impure, and unable to worship or be part of the community.  So lepers were basically excommunicated, and had to fend for themselves.  Naaman in our first reading, and the ten lepers in our Gospel, had to contend with these ailments every single day.  So it’s not surprising that Naaman came to the prophet Elisha, and the ten to Jesus, looking for healing, as they had perhaps looked for healing just about everywhere.

    None of these eleven people were given any flashy cure.  No one waved that magic wand that made them look and feel one hundred percent better.  They were told to do some things that didn’t seem all that miraculous: prior to this reading, Naaman was instructed to bathe seven times in the Jordan River, which he felt was an inferior body of water than he was used to.  The ten lepers were told to go show themselves to the priests.  So it’s right that they all felt these procedures were highly suspect.  Yet, in the ordinary-ness of their activity, they were in fact cured.  Then they were left to see the blessing and offer thanks.

    Like the lepers in today’s Gospel, we have been healed of lots of things. We have found ourselves healed when:

    • A person who loves us tells us a hard truth we need to hear about ourselves.
    • We experience, in a long relationship, opportunities for growth in generosity, forgiveness, patience and humor.
    • Parenting teaches us to give our lives for another in frequent doses of our time, energies, hopes and tears.
    • We suffer a broken relationship, go for counseling, and the guidance we receive gives us hope for our future.
    • We seek help for an addiction and the group members offer us wisdom, support and helping hands when we fall, and support us “one day at a time.”
    • We suffer the death of a loved one and family and friends are there to grieve with us and eventually there is light at the end of the tunnel.

    Not every gift of our lives is something that at first glance seems like a good thing. Sometimes the fact that God has helped us through a bad situation is grace enough to celebrate. Back when I was in my second year of seminary, just before Christmas, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. We got her through the surgery and started on chemotherapy and eventually managed so celebrate Christmas. Just after I returned to the seminary in January, my father was diagnosed with kidney cancer. I have to tell you, I didn’t know how to pray any more at that point. I didn’t have words to say to God. But some of my brother seminarians came to my room one night and sheepishly offered to pray over me. They had no idea how important that offer was to me. I invited them in and we talked, and they prayed over me. From that point on, I was able to pray again, for my parents and for myself, because they had been God’s grace to me. I’ve never stopped being thankful for that – not for the situation, but for the grace and for my friends, both of which were a gift from God.

    I want to offer you two gratitude tools, and I hope that you’ll use one of them in your prayer life. The first is the idea of a “gratitude journal.” Some of you may already be doing this. Basically, every time you find something to be grateful for, you make a note of it in a journal. It doesn’t have to be a long story, just a few notes about what you’re grateful for. And the idea is that you go back every so often and look at the entries to see how you have been blessed, and the many ways that God has been working in your life. There’s no way you can not be more grateful and more joyful when you do that.

    The second tool is a tool that I am borrowing and slightly modifying from St. Ignatius of Loyola. It’s called the “Evening Examen,” and St. Ignatius has required all of his Jesuit and Jesuit-influenced followers to pray it every evening. The way I do it is to ask myself three questions at the end of every day. It takes maybe five minutes, maybe longer; it depends on the day. But If you do it every day faithfully, you will again see the grace of God at work in you and I believe you’ll find more joy in your relationship with God. Those three questions are:

    1. What are the blessings and graces I have received today? (Then give thanks for them.)

    2. What are the things I have said or done today that have not been a source of grace to others or to myself? (Then ask God’s forgiveness, maybe say an act of contrition.)

    3. In what way or ways has God been trying to get me to move, or what has God been trying to do in me these days? (Then ask for whatever grace you need to move in that direction.)

    So just three things: How have I been blessed? How have I sinned? What has God been trying to do in me? That prayer has been a source of growth for me as a disciple, and I hope you’ll try it and keep it in your prayer toolbox for the future.

    Let us not be a people who leave the giving of thanks to others, like the Jewish lepers left the Samaritan to do in today’s Gospel. May we instead be a people marked by an attitude of gratitude, giving thanks for the many ways that God sustains us and blesses us, looking for those blessings every single day. Then we can be a people who, when instructed, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God” can truly respond: “It is right and just!”

  • The Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time: Respect Life Sunday

    The Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time: Respect Life Sunday

    Today’s readings

    How wonderful are the words we hear in today’s Gospel! “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” This raises important questions for us: how deep is our faith? What have we accomplished by faith? What has our witness to the faith looked like?  Has our tiny faith been powerful enough to move the deeply-rooted trees of ignorance and doubt that plague our world? On this Respect Life Sunday, we are particularly confronted with the issues of life and how we have given witness to the sanctity of life from conception to natural death.

    The basis for the movement to respect life, brothers and sisters, is the fifth commandment: You shall not kill (Ex 20:13). The Catechism is very specific: “Scripture specifies the prohibition contained in the fifth commandment: ‘Do not slay the innocent and the righteous.’ The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. The law forbidding it is universally valid: it obliges each and everyone, always and everywhere.” (CCC 2261) Those are strong words that are particularly striking.  They apply not just to Catholics, but to “each and everyone, always and everywhere.” It’s part of the natural law, a law that seems to be regularly ignored these days. And that would seem simple enough, don’t you think? God said not to kill another human being, and so refraining from doing so reverences his gift of life and obeys his commandment.

    But life isn’t that simple. Life is a deeply complex issue involving a right to life, a quality of life, a reverence for life, and sanctity of life.  So there’s more to it than we might catch at first glance: Jesus himself stirs up the waters of complexity with his own take on the commandment. In Matthew’s Gospel, he tells us: “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, “You shall not kill: and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.” (Mt 5:21-22)

    Our Savior’s instruction on life calls us to make an examination of conscience. We may proclaim ourselves as exemplary witnesses to the sanctity of life because we have never murdered anyone nor participated in an abortion. And those are obviously good starts. But if we let it stop there, then the words of Jesus that I just quoted are our condemnation. The church teaches that true respect for life revolves around faithfulness to the spirit of the fifth commandment. The Catechism tells us, “Every human life, from the moment of conception until death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God.” (CCC 2319)

    And so we must all ask ourselves, brothers and sisters in Christ, are there lives that we have not treated as sacred? Have we harbored anger in our hearts against our brothers and sisters? What have we done to fight poverty, hunger and homelessness? Have we insisted that those who govern us treat war as morally repugnant, only to be used in the most severe cases and as a last resort? Have we engaged in stereotypes or harbored thoughts based on racism and prejudice? Have we insisted that legislators ban the production of human fetuses to be used as biological material? Have we been horrified that a nation with our resources still regularly executes its citizens as a way of fighting crime? Have we done everything in our power to be certain that no young woman should ever have to think of abortion as her only choice when she is facing hard times? Have we given adequate care to elder members of our family and our society so that they would not face their final days in loneliness, nor come to an early death for the sake of convenience? Have we avoided scandal so as to prevent others from being led to evil? Have we earnestly petitioned our legislators to make adequate health care available for all people?

    Every one of these issues is a life issue, brothers and sisters, and we who would be known to be respecters of life are on for every single one of them, bar none. The Church’s teaching on the right to life is not something that we can approach like we’re in a cafeteria. We must accept and reverence and live the whole of the teaching, or be held liable for every breach of it. If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem. We have to be respecters of life with integrity, or we are not the strong witnesses to the sanctity of life that our world requires right now.  On this day of prayer for the sanctity of life, our prayer must perhaps be first for ourselves that we might live the Church’s teaching with absolute integrity in every moment of our lives.  We must take our tiny mustard-seed-sized faith and nourish it so that it will grow into a living witness of faith in action.

    Our God has known us and formed us from our mother’s womb, from that very first moment of conception. Our God will be with us and will sustain us until our dying breath. In life and in death, we belong to the Lord … Every part of our lives belongs to the Lord. Our call is a clear one. We must constantly and consistently bear witness to the sanctity of life at every stage. We must be people who lead the world to a whole new reality, in the presence of the One who has made all things new. We have heard the Lord’s teaching and the teaching of the Church in union with the Holy Spirit. Now we must respond as our Psalmist urges us: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”