Caritas Christi Urget Nos

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  • Thursday of the Twenty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the things that has helped me in my spiritual life is the knowledge that “we’re not home yet.”  We can list all kinds of things, I’m sure, that remind us that this life in this world is not perfect.  But our hope is that we have the kingdom of God to look forward to.  We Christians all long for the day when we will be part of the Kingdom in all its fullness.  Today Jesus speaks to the Pharisees, and his disciples, about the Kingdom.

    To the Pharisees, Jesus issues a warning.  He tells them they may as well stop looking for signs of the coming Kingdom, because the Kingdom is right under their noses!  They have already missed the forest for the trees.  The Kingdom of God is right here among them, ushered in by Jesus himself.

    To his disciples, Jesus gives encouragement.  He tells them that the days will come when they long for the Kingdom, but when that happens, they should not let themselves be easily led astray.  They shouldn’t lose heart because they can’t see signs, and they should not be afraid when he himself has to suffer and die.  The Kingdom of God, he tells them, does not come without a price, but it’s a price worth paying.

    To all of us, also his disciples, I think he is saying both things.  First of all, we must not miss the Kingdom of God among us.  We have to stop being so wrapped up in ourselves and our concerns that we miss God working and building his kingdom among us.  The Kingdom is here, alive in the faithful, celebrated wherever God’s people live the Gospel.  And second, we must not be tempted to look for signs of the end times. David Koresh and Jim Jones should not have any attraction for Christian believers.  They Mayan calendar and its lack of dates beyond December 23rd of this year are not meaningful prophetic signs for us.  The end will come when the end comes, and if it happens while we are still here, may the end find us ready for the Kingdom.  And found ready, may we all go together to eternal life.

  • Saint Josaphat, bishop and martyr

    Saint Josaphat, bishop and martyr

    Today’s readings

    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.  Jesus calls us to have faith even the size of a mustard seed, in order that we might accomplish insurmountable tasks in his name.  We may have to give more than we know in order to accomplish our calling.  But by faith, God can use us to do mighty deeds.   Through the intercession of St. Josaphat, let us face the impossible.

  • Thursday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It’s all a matter of perspective – that’s true in most things, but most especially true in our relationship with God.  Today’s Gospel gives us a glimpse at that.  Jesus asks, “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?”  Well, those men he talked to were shepherds, or had shepherds in their family, so they would have responded “nobody would do that!”  Why on earth would they risk losing the other ninety-nine sheep to find the lost one?

    And as far as the coin goes, I guess it depends on what the coin is worth.  If it’s a denarius – a day’s wage – then yes, it would be worth staying up all night and searching carefully.  But if it’s just a small coin, why bother?  Who of us doesn’t have a junk drawer with a small collection of pennies in it?  If we lost one of them, we’d hardly even notice, let alone give up a night’s sleep to find it.

    But here’s the perspective part: God is not like us.  Every sheep among us is important, and he will relentlessly pursue us individually until he has us all in the sheepfold.  And there are those among us who don’t see themselves as worth much.  Maybe we’re just simple laborers and not an influential businessperson, or maybe our own self-image is so poor that we think we are dirt.  But God does not; and if we’re lost, he’s going to light a lamp and stay up all night until he has us back.  For him, one of us is every bit as important as the other ninety-nine.  Every simple laborer is as important as the influential ones among us.  Even if our own self-image is poor, we are a treasure in God’s eyes.

    And so that’s what the Kingdom of heaven is like.  It’s a relentless pursuit and a flurry of activity until we are all back where we belong.  Once we are all with God, the joyful celebration can continue, knowing that we are all back where we were always meant to be.

  • Monday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “In you, O Lord, I have found my peace.”

    I believe that one of the goals of all our lives is to find true peace.  And unfortunately, we spend time looking for that peace in too many of the wrong places.  We might think we can find peace in wealth, or status, or whatever, but these things tend to lose their luster rather quickly, and the pursuit of them often stirs up something far less than peaceful in our lives.

    But the Psalmist tells us exactly what is going to bring us that true peace that we look for, or rather, who is going to bring it.  And that is the Lord.  We could go after great things, looking for something beyond what God wants for us.  Or we could go after things too sublime, things that require more from us than what we can give, but the Psalmist refuses to go there.  Rather, he says, he has stilled and quieted his soul like a child on its mother’s lap.

    True peace is a product of quieting one’s soul and finding God’s will.  Reaching for things that don’t concern us, trying to get involved in things that are not what God wants for us, letting ourselves get dragged into sin, those things will never bring us peace.  Only in the Lord is our hope and our peace.

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

    The Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed (All Souls)

    Today’s readings: Wisdom 3:1-9; Psalm 63; Romans 8:31-39; John 11:17-27

    One of my most vivid childhood memories was when I was just about nine years old.  My grandfather on my mother’s side, who had retired just a few months earlier, was diagnosed with cancer.  There wasn’t so much that could be done about cancer in those days, so he wasn’t expected to live long.  And so one night, as the oldest of the children, Mom and Dad came to my room to talk to me about Grandpa.  That was the night I learned about life and death, sadness and grief, love and pain.  We cried a bunch, hugged a lot, and talked about how we were going to miss Grandpa.

    I went to the wake and funeral with my family, because that’s what we did when a loved one died.  My parents could have shielded me from that experience in many ways, but they chose not to, and I’m glad they made that decision.  Death and grief aren’t things we actively seek, but we can’t be afraid to meet them head on, girded with faith, and confident of the hope we have in Christ Jesus.

    I still miss Grandpa to this very day.  He had a wonderfully silly sense of humor that never failed to make me laugh, he made a homemade ravioli that blew away anything I’ve ever eaten since, he came from Italy, learned our language and made a beautiful life for his family, and the stories of that have been an inspiration to me every day.  The same is true of all of my grandparents, all who have gone on to the Kingdom, all of whom I miss and all of whom were a great example for me.

    I miss Grandma Mulcahy when I’m planting flowers in my Mom’s garden, because she did that better than anyone, and while she did, we would talk about Ireland and I would hear about life in the “Old Country.”  I miss Grandma Mastrodonato – Mom’s Mom – when I’m out in a public setting and see people doing crazy things or wearing something odd, because she always enjoyed people watching and listening to others.  I missed Dad’s Dad a lot in my job previous to seminary, because he built the monstrous printing press that was, at the time, printing a job for my customer.

    And I miss Dad.  When I’m having a rough day, I just want to sit down and talk, knowing he’d listen and understand, and support me in whatever way I needed.  I missed him especially a couple of months ago when I celebrated the funeral of his best friend, one of the pillars of our neighborhood.  Together, they were two of the best, most giving men I ever knew.

    And there are aunts and uncles who have gone on to the Lord, too.  All of these characters have been inspirational to me in some way, and I find that the grieving, while it may dissipate a bit, never seems to completely go away.  I don’t think it’s supposed to.  Because when we have loved much, the passing away of one we have loved leaves a hole in our life that shouldn’t go away.  That doesn’t mean that our life comes to an end: we move on, as move on we must, but always with a sense of loss, hopefully tempered with fondness for the relationship we had, hopeful of a reunion in heaven one day.

    “The souls of the just are in the hand of God.”  So says the wisdom writer of our first reading this evening.  That is our prayer for our loved ones, for all the faithful departed.  Because, if we are convinced of that grace, we know they are alright, and have hope that we will be alright too.  And our Liturgy gives us words to hope on as well.  In a few moments, I will sing the words that have comforted me so many times in my sorrow: “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.”  That is the promise derived from Jesus’ words in tonight’s Gospel: “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live…”

    On this feast of the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, 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.

    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.

  • The Solemnity of All the Saints (Evening Mass)

    The Solemnity of All the Saints (Evening Mass)

    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.  Some criticized him for doing that, 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 made that the business of their lives.

    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 Benedict, Michael and Gabriel, 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, he can certainly do that in ours too.  Perhaps, if we are willing to accept it, he can fill us with saintly attributes: strength in weakness, compassion in the face of need, witness to faith in times when society lacks direction, and so much more.

    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?

    This is a lot of work, and it’s not easy to live a saintly life, but Jesus makes a promise today to those who strive to do so: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven!”

  • Solemnity of All the Saints

    Solemnity of All the Saints

    Today’s readings

    One of my friends told me that the nun who once taught him had a rather curious line to compliment a student when they had done a good deed: “May you die a martyr’s death!”  Well, knowing how some of those saints died would make anyone cringe a little and say “yeah, thanks Sister, you first.”  But we know the sentiment of Sister’s comment: the martyrs are saints and definitely in heaven.

    So many of us would bristle at the thought of becoming a saint.  Saints are those people in elaborate paintings or statues, who lived lives that we find very remote.  Saints just seem out of touch and sainthood out of our grasp.

    But that’s all wrong.  We were all made by God to come back to him one day: we were, in fact, made for heaven.  Becoming a saint is the vocation of all of us.  Because the most important thing we know about saints is that they are definitely in heaven, which is our true home, which is where we were meant to return some day.

    And so this feast in honor of all the saints is an important one.  We celebrate those saints we know of like Mary and Joseph, Peter and Paul, Patrick and Dominic and so many others.  But we also celebrate the ones we don’t know of; people whose faith and goodness only God knows.  And most importantly, in celebrating them, we vow to become like them: close to Jesus who leads those who believe in him past the gates of death to the glory of heaven, where our reward will be great, as Jesus says in the Gospel today.  On that day, we will indeed rejoice and be glad!

  • Monday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Loose lips sink ships.”  That’s a saying that I learned somewhere in my early elementary school life.  I don’t think I fully understood what it meant at the time – all I appreciated was that it told me to keep my mouth shut.  But as I’ve lived and matured, I know very well that frivolous talk can be hurtful and even dangerous.  Our gift of speech is an important one: through it we communicate with each other and it is the basis of our being able to work and live in society.  But using speech in the wrong way can cause a whole host of problems.  We’ve all probably been in the midst of that in some way at some time in our lives.

    And so Saint Paul’s words to the Ephesians are probably good ones for us to hear today:

    Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned among you,
    as is fitting among holy ones,
    no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk, which is out of place…

    All of us, who are called to be God’s holy ones, have a very important responsibility to use our gift of speech wisely.  We must not engage in idle, frivolous, or even obscene speech, because this is out of place for those who follow the Lord.  But what I think is so important is what Saint Paul says needs to be on the lips of God’s holy ones – and that is thanksgiving.

    Big deal, right, of course we can speak about thanksgiving.  But the Greek word that is translated “thanksgiving” here is eucharistia – and we all know what that means.  The Eucharist – which is our thanksgiving – is always to be on our lips.  So that’s the lens by which we ought always to view the words we say: are our words Eucharist?  Are they thanksgiving?  Because those are the only words we need to be saying.

  • Marriage Renewal Day Homily

    Marriage Renewal Day Homily

    Today’s readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 47; I John 4:7-12; Matthew 5:13-16

    The Rite of Marriage gives us so many wonderful images for the spiritual life.  Speaking of the bride, the nuptial prayer asks that she may model her life on “the holy women whose praises are sung in the Scriptures.”  Speaking of the groom, it prays that he might remember that “she is his equal and the heir with him to the life of grace.”  And speaking of their union, the Liturgy speaks of it reflecting the marriage of Christ with his bride, the Church.

    The Scriptures portray so many people for us.  Some of them are models of what not to do, but there are holy women and men that are meant to be an inspiration for us.  We remember the courage of Esther as she took her life in her hands and spoke out against the pending injustice of the extermination of her people.  We remember the kindness of Ruth as she refused to leave her mother-in-law alone in a foreign land.  We remember the holy women who attending to Jesus on the way of the cross and who witnessed the resurrection.  The wedding Liturgy prays that the bride would emulate their qualities, be devoted to the people in their lives, stand up to injustice, and always walk with Christ.

    It goes on to pray that the groom would assume responsibility for leading his family in the spiritual life.  The life of grace is our goal, which is realized most perfectly in heaven, and we are all heirs to that life if we would follow our Lord and live the Gospel.  Coming together as equals, the bride and groom raise up children for the Kingdom of God, becoming a family that shines like a light in a dark place.  The love of bride and groom reflect the love of Christ for the Church.  A marriage is not a relationship meant to be kept to itself; it is meant to be salt and light, proclaiming God’s love by living as Christ has taught us: loving God and our neighbor.

    So with these wonderful images to guide you, you embarked years ago on a journey of married life.  Would that every day were a moment of grace, but life gives us good times and bad, sickness and health.  Some days, it’s hard to be Esther or Ruth; some days we detour off the life of grace; some days spiritual equality isn’t foremost in our minds.  Yet that is our calling, and where sin corrupts, grace heals: the entire story of our life and relationships cannot ever be boiled down to one moment.  Thank God.

    So day by day, we let God write that new covenant on our hearts.  God forgives our iniquity and sin, and we once again remember that our brokenness is no match for God’s love; that sin and death don’t follow us to the Kingdom of God, that the struggles of this life make the life of faith and grace so much more important, so much more urgent in our lives.

    My parents’ marriage was inspirational to me.  Dad always worked so hard for our family, but was never an absentee father.  He was there for mom and for all of us, every day of his life.  He and mom were great partners; they always did everything together; unfortunately even to the extent of being diagnosed with cancer a month apart.  Dad has been gone for five years now, but mom continues on, being the source of wisdom and common sense, and love that she always was.  Their marriage nurtured them both and helped them to be a source of love and grace for us, and for so many others that God put in their lives.  They taught religious education to high school kids in their home for years, and those men and women, grown up now, still have a fondness and respect for both of them.  My vocation as a priest grew out of their vocation as parents.  I am called to Fatherhood in a way similar to my dad’s vocation, and as a Father I am called to shepherd and love my family – this parish – into heaven.

    Your lives and marriages have their own story.  Times of challenge build character and endurance.  Times of grace give us strength to journey on.  The ups and downs of married life, lived faithfully and intentionally, have brought you here today.  Your marriage is a sign that God’s love never ends.

    And so it goes: our lives are bound up together in the love of our bridegroom, Jesus Christ.  We live our vocations shining as a light in the dark place this world can be sometimes, seasoning a society that has grown bland with apathy and sadness with the love of Christ.  Today we pray for all holy vocations, of whatever station in life, that they might be lived with faithfulness and love poured out in great abandon, confident that we never run out of love because God is the source of that love.  May God’s grace continue to call men and women into vocations to priesthood, religious life, and married life.  May God help us all to love as perfectly and freely as he loves us!