Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Blog

  • Saint Blase, Bishop and Martyr

    Saint Blase, Bishop and Martyr

    Today we celebrate the memorial of Saint Blase, and all that we really know about him was that he was the bishop of Sebaste in Armenia during the fourth century.  Everything else is legend.  But, even if the entire story isn’t true, there is Truth in the legend, because it points us to Christ.  Saint Blase is, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews says, one of that “great cloud of witnesses” who helps us to “keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of our faith.”  He was known to take up the work of Jesus the healer, just as Jesus commanded the Twelve to do in today’s Gospel reading, as he sent them out two by two.

    The legendary Acts of Saint Blase were written 400 years after his death. According to them Blase was a good bishop, working hard to encourage the spiritual and physical health of his people. Because of persecution that still raged throughout Armenia, Blase was apparently forced to flee to the back country. There he lived as a hermit in solitude and prayer, but made friends with the wild animals. One day a group of hunters seeking wild animals for the amphitheater stumbled upon Blase’s cave. They were first surprised and then frightened. The bishop was kneeling in prayer surrounded by patiently waiting wolves, lions and bears.

    As the hunters hauled Blase off to prison, the legend has it, a mother came with her young son who had a fish bone lodged in his throat.  At Blase’s command the child was able to cough up the bone.  Supposedly, that is the reason he has become the patron saint of those suffering from diseases of the throat.

    Eventually, Blase was tortured for refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods, and when he still refused to do so, he was beheaded in the year 316.  Today we pray in a special way for protection from afflictions of the throat and from other illnesses.  The blessing of Saint Blase is a sign of our faith in God’s protection and love for us and for the sick.

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    There’s a little line in the Gospel reading that could pass us right by, or at least puzzle us to the extent that we forget it and move on.  But I don’t think we should.  That line is: “Take care what you hear.”  It closely follows Jesus’ other hearing-related line: “Everyone who has ears ought to hear.”

    Sometimes we choose to hear just what we want to hear, sometimes we pick news sources and podcasts that are less than ethical and cause us consternation and detract from the Truth, and that is absolutely the opposite of what our Lord is counseling today.  Instead, we ought to be ready to hear the Truth, and to speak and witness to that Truth at all times, like a lamp on a lampstand.

    And so we might spend less time on the internet and in front of the television, and instead devote more time to prayer, reading and studying scripture, and activities that help us to grow in our faith.  The parish always has one or two Bible studies going on, and there’s even a class right now studying the Creed, that statement of Truth on which we base our faith. 

    It is much like the story of the conversion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who during recovery after injury in battle, read both romantic stories and stories of the saints.  He discovered that reading the romantic stories left him feeling anxious and empty, but reading the stories of the saints left him uplifted and wanting to hear more.  The Truth is like that.  Take care what you hear.

    We will be measured by our willingness to be people of Truth, and when we have courage to bring the Truth to a world in need of hearing it, still more graces will be measured out to us.

    Take care what you hear.

  • The Conversion of Saint Paul, Apostle

    The Conversion of Saint Paul, Apostle

    Today’s readings

    Brothers and sisters, if we think that we are the ones who get to determine the direction of our lives, we are dead wrong.  That’s the corollary to the proverb, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans.”  God is always and forever in charge. Today’s feast is probably the clearest picture of that.

    Look at Saul: educated in all the finest Jewish schools, well-versed in the Law and the Prophets, and zealous for the faith to a fault. He was absolutely the model Jewish man and had credentials that came directly from the high priests. Everyone knew of him, and his fame – or perhaps his infamy – spread all over the Judean countryside. He had participated in the stoning of Saint Stephen, letting the cloaks of the ones stoning him be piled at his feet. He was bringing all the followers of Christ back in chains to be tried and punished for following this new way. He was even on his way to Damascus to collect “the brothers” – so, the apostles – and put them on trial. The man was greatly feared.

    Look at Ananias. He was no fool. He was well-acquainted with Saul’s evil plans and did everything he could to stay out of his path. He obviously wanted to stay out of prison, but more than that, he wanted to keep people like Saul from destroying the community of the followers of Jesus. Ananias was every bit as zealous for the faith as Saul was.

    They both knew the direction of their lives and thought they had it all planned out. But they were dead wrong.

    God can take the most zealous and stable of us and throw our whole lives into confusion. He sometimes uses great means to get our attention and move us in a new direction. Like a bright light, or a vision, as Saul experienced. But sometimes he uses quiet words in prayer or the gentle nudging of a friend. Conversion is a life-long process for all of us, and in Saint Paul’s and Annanias’s stories, we can see the danger of being too entrenched in what we think is the way for our lives. The only judge of what is really right for us is God alone, and when we forget that, we might be in for a rude awakening.  But when we remember that and are faithful to that, God’s plans for us give us freedom and joy.

    The whole purpose of all of our lives, brothers and sisters, is to “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” That’s what our Lord commands the apostles, and us, in the Gospel reading today.  The way that we do that is to constantly listen for God’s voice and always be willing to go wherever he leads us, even if it’s in a direction we didn’t expect or might not have chosen.

  • Saint Agnes, Virgin Martyr

    Saint Agnes, Virgin Martyr

    Today’s readings

    There are a lot of saints in today’s Mass, but then, honestly, there always are.  Father John and I have an ongoing joke, that when one of us has the early 6:30 Mass, we say to the other, “I woke up the angels and saints for you.”  Now, obviously the angels and saints aren’t sleeping in the church, but they are in the church, and especially whenever we celebrate Mass.  We can’t see them, but they are all around the altar, praising God for the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross that we remember at Mass, and helping us to lift up our own voices in prayer.  This is the “communion of saints” that we talk about when we say the Apostles’ Creed during the Rosary or sometimes at Mass.

    Today we have two mentions of saints.  The first is the saint we celebrate today, Saint Agnes, a Virgin and Martyr of the early Church.  That’s the reason for the red vestments today.  She lived probably around the third century.  Legend tells us that Agnes was a young girl, probably twelve or thirteen years old, and very beautiful.  Many young men longed for her, lusted after her, really, and one such man, having looked at her lustfully, lost his eyesight.  But his sight was restored when Agnes herself prayed for him.

    Because of her dedication to Christ, she refused the advances of the men who lusted after her.  And one such man, having been refused, reported her to the government for being a Christian.  She was arrested and eventually put to death, although the method of her death is unclear.  She was buried near Rome in a catacomb that was then named in her honor, and Constantine’s daughter later built a basilica in her honor.  Her witness is that her dedication to Christ was most important in her life, and she had vowed to live a life of virginity in honor of that.

    The second mention of saints comes in the Gospel today, in which Jesus, at the early point of his ministry, calls those who followed him, and Appointed the Twelve Apostles.  Mr. Hueg tells me that I can ask the seventh graders to list all of the Apostles because they just had a quiz on that exact topic!  Then again, I could probably ask the eighth graders because I’m sure they’ll remember from last year!  Seriously, though, we know the importance of the apostles.  Because they risked their lives to witness to Christ – all of them except John dying a martyr’s death – because of their witness, we have the faith today.  Because of their faith, we can live and witness to our faith too.

    Both Saint Agnes and Saints Peter, James, John and the others, all of them lived their lives for Christ and all of them gave their lives to witness to Christ.  That’s a good inspiration for the way we should live.  God has given us everything we have, and more than that, he has given us the opportunity to choose eternal life and come to be one with him one day.  Even if we never have the opportunity to actually die for Christ, we are called to give ourselves in love to him, and to witness to his Gospel no matter what it costs us.

    The other thing that Saint Agnes has in common with the Apostles is that they are all mentioned in the words of Eucharistic Prayer I, which I will be using today.  When I pray it, see if you can hear the names of Agnes, Peter, James, Andrew, Philip and the others.  And when you hear them, give God thanks that he allowed them to give their lives so that we might have the faith.  And thank God that he gave his only Son to show us the way to heaven.

    Saint Agnes and the Apostles, pray for us!

  • The Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So we’ve taken down most of the Christmas decorations, and we won’t see the poinsettias and manger until next year.  Yet we’re not quite done with the Christmas season in the Church.  Traditionally, some aspects of Christmas joy and amazement remain in our Liturgy through February 2nd, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  Today is an example of that.  I almost think this should be called the Third Sunday of Epiphany.  I say that because the Church has traditionally held that there are three traditional Epiphanies.

    We’ll back up just a bit here.  The word Epiphany, as we discussed two weeks ago on that feast, means a “manifestation;” we often think of it as a kind of “aha!” moment.  It is basically God doing a “God thing” so that we will sit up and take notice.  And so on the Feast of the Epiphany, we traditionally think of the first Scriptural Epiphany: the visit of the Magi to the Christ child.  The other two traditional Epiphanies are, first, what we celebrated last week: the baptism of the Lord in the Jordan River by his cousin, Saint John the Baptist.  And then the third Epiphany is what we have in the Gospel this week: the miracle of changing water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana.

    So in each of these Epiphanies, we learn something about our Lord.  In the first Epiphany, the Magi bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, which reveals that this is no ordinary child.  No, this is the Child come from God who is to be anointed priest, prophet and king.  Gold for a king; frankincense for a priest; and then the myrrh which foreshadows Jesus’ suffering and death on the Cross, all to pay the price for our sins and bring in the joy of God’s mercy and redemption.  In this Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the One who has come to manifest God’s love in an incredibly generous way.

    In the second Epiphany, Jesus is baptized.  John’s baptism was for the forgiveness of sins, which clearly was not necessary for Jesus.  Instead, his baptism consecrates the waters of baptism, so that every person ever to be baptized is washed with the same water that touched our Lord.  In our own baptisms now, we can inherit divinity because the Divine man, Jesus Christ, was washed in that same water.  Because Jesus humbled himself to be baptized, because he humbled himself to share in our humanity, we can be exalted to share in his divinity.  In this Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the One who claims all of broken humanity to be made new by God’s mercy.

    In the third Epiphany, today, Jesus, having gathered his disciples and on the verge of his ministry, changes water into wine.  But we know the symbolism of these things.  Whenever we see water in the Scriptures, the Church thinks of Baptism, and whenever we see wine in the Scriptures, the Church thinks of the Eucharist, the blood of Christ.  Here gallons of water, set aside for washing – another baptismal image – are miraculously turned into the best wine ever, poured out in superabundance to quench the thirst of those who gather for a feast.  Clearly these are Eucharistic images for us.  In this Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the One who provides life-giving blood, the best wine ever, for all those who are baptized, all those who follow him in faith.

    Over these three weeks, we have come to see who Jesus is in some very particular ways.  If we had never heard of him before, but came to Mass these three weeks, we would have learned of a God who cares enough for us, his creatures, to provide a way for them to be healed from their sinfulness, cured of their brokenness, and changed from profanity to divinity, from death to eternity.  If we had never before heard the Gospel, these three weeks would reveal very good news indeed!

    But, of course, we have heard the Gospel and been raised in the faith.  And so these three weeks are an opportunity for us to look once again at our precious Lord, in the great outpouring of God’s love that the Incarnation truly is, and see that he continues to reveal himself and his grace in so many ways among us every day.  Have you had an experience of Epiphany this week?  Has God given you what you need – probably through someone else – in just the way you needed it at some time recently?  Have you seen God’s love active in a new way this Christmas season?  If so, now is the time to give thanks for that experience.

    And we have to remember that Jesus wants us to be Epiphany as well.  God wants to use us in some way to reveal his love and grace to others.  It doesn’t have to be a big and incredible experience.  It might just be doing, as Saint Therese of Liseaux used to say, little things with great love.  Then others can see Christ at work in you and me.  Then we can be Epiphany and shine the bright light of Christ’s love in a world that is very dark and ponderous and weary.  How do we do that?  Mary’s instruction is all that we need to hear: “Do whatever he tells you.”

    That word of instruction from our Blessed Mother is one that was directed not just to the waiters, but even more importantly to us.  As we see who Jesus is in our lives, as he reveals himself and his will for us, we baptized believers, who are fed at the Table of the Eucharist with the Bread of Life and the Wine of Salvation, with his very own Body and Blood, must act on that Epiphany and do what he tells us. 

    Sometimes people struggle with this.  They hear the call, but are afraid, or uneasy, or unmotivated, and they let the call go by.  At the end of our lives, we never want to be wondering “what if” we had followed the call, “what if” we had done what he told us.  If we want to be happy, truly happy in this life and forever happy in the next, we have to take the leap of faith and follow our Lord.  Whatever happens as a result of that will be guided by the hand of our God who wants the best for us.  If we want to be happy, we have to live the Epiphany, be the Epiphany: “Do whatever he tells you.”

  • Thursday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s reading

    My grandmother used to say that, although she liked to read the Bible, she really didn’t like the Old Testament because of all the violence.  And certainly today’s first reading helps me to understand how she felt.  But it’s a reading that I think has very important things to say about the spiritual life.  I’m going to be clear though, as a pastor I approach this with fear and trembling, because I could well be judged in the same was as Eli and his sons.

    So we have been hearing the story of Eli and his sons this past week.  But there are significant parts of the story we haven’t heard, and that’s too bad, because they explain the massacre we get in today’s first reading.  Eli was the high priest at the time that Samuel was conceived, and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas assisted him.  His sons were also terrible human beings.  They would steal the peoples’ sacrifices off the altar while they were still boiling, and were known to be extremely promiscuous.  When Eli, their father, was made aware of this, his response was more or less, “Now boys, you can’t be doing that.”  So they ignored their father and did it all the more. 

    It’s easy to see the sin of Hophni and Phinehas, but Eli was actually more at fault.  In the theology of the Old Testament, the appropriate response from Eli would have been to put them both to death.  I know that sounds harsh, but we need to look at it from the spiritual perspective.  Anything that gets in the way of bringing people to God, anything that gets in the way of right worship, anything that gets in the way of taking care of those in need, has to be radically blotted out.  That’s why all those Egyptians pursuing the Israelites in the desert came to a watery end in the Red Sea.

    And Hophni and Phinehas were only part of the problem.  The problem is that Eli, as high priest, has been ignoring his duties in such a way that he allowed not only the sins of his two sons, but also the sins of the people.  More and more, they were turning away from the Lord.  All of this comes to a tipping point in today’s reading.  When they had been initially defeated by the Philistines, only then did they think to consult the Lord.  So they bring the Ark of the Covenant down like it was some kind of rabbit’s foot instead of the Holy Presence of God.  And so God gave them over to the hands of their enemies and allowed the Ark to fall into the hands of the Philistines.  Their depravity caused not just the fall of the nation, but also the fall of their religion.  The Ark was a sign of God’s presence in the community, a treasured holy vessel crafted by the hands of Moses, and they let it go.  I’ll tell you right now, friends, no one gets to this Tabernacle while I still have a beating heart, and I’m not the high priest.  But that’s how depraved things had become, all because Eli was asleep at the altar.  (Incidentally, he is frequently noted as sleeping in the stories that preceded this one.)

    None of this is ever going to get better for Israel until David is anointed king of Israel, and a type of messiah for the people.  Of course this foreshadows the actual Savior of the World, the Christ and Messiah who would be anointed by the Holy Spirit to break the power of the most insidious enemy and gain us all the salvation we need.

    So the moral of the story, if you want one, is to put to death whatever in us is keeping us from completely, freely, following God.  It’s not easy.  It wouldn’t have been easy for Eli to put his sons to death.  But if he had, he would have saved the lives of thousands of soldiers and prevented the fall of Israel and her religion.  There is too much at stake to let things go; we have to be ready to do whatever it takes to stay in relationship with our God.

  • Tuesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It is always interesting to me how clearly the unclean spirits know who Jesus is.  For them, Christ our God inspires fear and rebellion.  But even these unclean spirits, hearing his voice, begrudgingly obey.  Jesus teaches with authority, as the people standing by admit of him.  This is a teaching that cannot be ignored. Each person may hear it and respond differently, but they do respond.  Many hear his voice and follow.  Others turn away.

    In these early days of Ordinary Time, we essentially have the continuation of the Epiphany event.  We continue to see Christ manifest in our midst, and continue to decide what to make of him.  Today we see him as one who teaches with authority and who has authority over even the unclean spirits within us.  Today he speaks to our sinfulness, to our brokenness, to our addictions, to our fallenness, to our procrastinations, to whatever debilitates us and saddens us and says “Quiet! Come out!”

    This Epiphany of Christ as dispossessor of demons is an epiphany that does more than just heal us.  It is an epiphany that calls us out of darkness, one that insists we come out of our hiding and step into the light, so that the light of God’s love can shine in us and through us.

  • The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

    The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    What wonderful words we have in today’s Gospel to close out the Christmas season: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”

    We have come a long way since December the 25th.  Jesus, the Son of God, has become the son of Mary, and has consecrated the world through his most loving presence.  The Second Person of the Holy Trinity has taken on flesh and become one like us in all things but sin.  He took that flesh as the lowliest of all: as a baby born to a poor young family in the tiniest, poorest region of a small nation.

    But during his Epiphany, which we have been celebrating ever since last Sunday, we saw the importance of this Emmanuel, God with us.  Magi came from the East to give him symbolic gifts: gold for a king, frankincense for the High Priest, and myrrh for his burial.  Today, the Epiphany continues with the second traditional reading of the Epiphany: the Baptism of Jesus.  Today, we fast-forward to Jesus as a grown man, ready to begin his ministry, and doing that by taking part in Saint John the Baptist’s baptism, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Obviously, Jesus didn’t need to be forgiven of his sins, because he was like us in all things but sin.  So Jesus’ taking part in that baptism manifests himself as One who has come to be with sinners, to take on their sinfulness, and to sanctify those waters of baptism so that they can wipe away our sins.

    And here’s a wonderful thing: even though the Christmas season officially ends today, we continue to celebrate it in some ways, all the way up to Candlemas day, the Presentation of the Lord, February the 2nd.  We see that especially this year, because next week, we get the third traditional reading of the Epiphany, the Wedding Feast at Cana, in which Christ is manifested in his ministry, and the superabundance of wine foreshadows the outpouring of his blood for our salvation.

    The secret to our celebration of the Epiphany is that we must be ready to accept the manifestation of Jesus in our own lives.  We have to let him be our king and priest, accepting his death for our salvation.  We have to celebrate our own baptism, which is only significant because Christ has gone through it first, long before us, sanctifying the waters.  We have to let him minister to us as he did at the wedding feast, giving us the very best of food and drink, in great abundance, to nourish us into eternal life.

    This is the One with whom the Father was well-pleased; he is the One with whom we are in awe.  We are moved to silence before our Christ who came most mercifully to sanctify our way to heaven.  That silence can only be appropriately broken by the exclamation of the Father:  “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased!”

  • Saturday After Epiphany

    Saturday After Epiphany

    Today’s readings

    “He must increase; I must decrease.”

    By these words, St. John the Baptist indicates that the Epiphany, the manifestation of our Lord in the flesh, is complete.  John’s disciples have got it wrong; they took offense at Jesus baptizing when he himself had been baptized by John.  They assumed that because John had baptized Jesus, that Jesus must in some way be inferior to John.  But John knows his mission was to be the Forerunner.  He knows that his ministry was one of paving the way for Jesus and the Gospel.  He knows that his own baptism was a mere precursor of the baptism that Jesus would bring, a baptism that imparts the fullness of the Holy Spirit to all believers.

    “He must increase; I must decrease.”

    St. John the Evangelist tells us in his letters that we are to be on guard against those who come in the name of Jesus but are not of him.  We must be wary of pretenders and totally turn away from false idols.  He has spent this past week in our first readings giving us the standards of discernment that help us to know the Truth.  Anyone of the Truth will testify to the Incarnation of Jesus in the flesh.  Anyone of the Truth will love deeply, and will love neighbors as well as God.  Anyone of the Truth, he tells us today, will cast out sin, from himself and from others.  Even though he may not be perfect, still he will battle sin and turn to Christ incarnate in the flesh for the indwelling of the Spirit, for the grace of his baptism.

    “He must increase; I must decrease.”

    Christ came in the flesh because, as the Psalmist tells us today, the Lord takes delight in his people.  As his people then, we must also delight in him.  We must remember that we are all in the service of the one who came to set us free.  We must remember that our own thoughts, our own desires, all of these are not the be-all and end-all of existence, and quite often, we must die to them in order that God be manifested among us.  We must remember that we are not the center of the universe.  As we offer and prepare our gifts for the Eucharist today, may we also offer the decreasing of ourselves in order to pave the way for the increasing of Jesus Christ in us, around us, and among us.

  • Friday after Epiphany

    Friday after Epiphany

    Today’s readings

    Today, as we continue to celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord, we see Jesus manifested as healer.  “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”  What a wonderful profession of faith!  Here is a man, full of leprosy, who has been in pain and ostracized for perhaps a good portion of his life.  He perhaps has heard about Jesus and was eager to see if he would do what no one has been able to do for him.  No one would even touch a leper, for fear of contracting the disease, or becoming ritually unclean, or both.  So he has been forced to live with it for all this time.  But Jesus isn’t going to be limited by anything, so he does it: he touches the man and says, “I do will it.”  Healing is the will of our Father, and Jesus came to do the Father’s work.  Responding to the man’s faith, Jesus is able to do in him what no one else could do, or even would do.

    So Jesus is manifested as a healer, but we know that despite our best efforts of prayer, it doesn’t always work out as it did for the leper.  But there are so many kinds of healing.  What God intends for us may be far different, perhaps far more important to our salvation, than the healing of a disease. 

    In any case, whether the disease goes away or not, the person of faith is always given what God intends for her or him.  And that person never walks through suffering alone, because we know that our Lord suffered greatly on that Cross.  So, joining our sufferings to Christ’s, we have him to help us with our own cross, whatever it may be.  Whether God intends our disease to go away or not, he always wills our salvation, which in the end is the essence of what he came to do.  Today Christ is manifested as healer.  Healer of our bodies, perhaps.  But healer of our souls to make them fit for heaven, for sure.