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  • O Wisdom

    O Wisdom

    Today’s readings Mass for the school children.

    Did you hear that? That was quite a list of names, wasn’t it? It always strikes me that this list of characters, which is basically the human family tree of our Lord, is so much like any of our families’ history. This is a list of forty-two generations of the nation of the people of Israel led by people of greatness, and, well, people of something else. Some of them were heroic like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah and to some extent David and Solomon. But some of them were pretty wicked, especially Manasseh, whose wickedness in shedding innocent blood made God so angry that he allowed the Israelites to be taken into captivity by the Babylonians during the reign of king Jeconiah. So we have forty-two generations of people, some of whom were saints and some who were sinners, great men and flawed men, all leading up to the Incarnation of Christ, who was the only way to end the cycle of sin that spiraled all through the story.

    We’re just about to start the last week of Advent, and today we begin the more intense period of Advent that extends from December 17th through the morning of Christmas Eve.  During this time, the Church’s Liturgy makes us yearn all the more longingly for the birth of Jesus and his presence in our lives.  Just as forty-two generations of a mix of wisdom and foolishness could only be fixed by the presence of Christ, so the foolishness of our time calls for Jesus too.

    During these last days of Advent, we pray the “O Antiphons.”  We hear those antiphons famously in the song “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”  The verses are also used during Evening Prayer.  Today’s is “O Wisdom,” and the verse from “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is, “O come, O Wisdom from on high, and cheer us by your drawing nigh.  Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadow put to flight…” We trust God to come near, to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, to satisfy our longing for wisdom, to make sense of all the craziness in the world, with the loving presence of Jesus.

    And so we pray: Come, Lord Jesus and bring us peace. Come, Lord Jesus and put an end to the world’s foolishness. Come, Lord Jesus and bring us your Wisdom. We need you! Come quickly and do not delay.

  • Tuesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the television shows that I like to watch sometimes is called “Chopped” on the Food Network.  If you’ve ever watched the Food Network, you’ve probably seen it because they seem to run it about 18 hours out of the day.  On this show, they start with four chefs, and they give them a basket of really different, and sometimes strange, ingredients, all of which they have to use, to make either an appetizer, main dish, or dessert, depending on the round.  The dishes are then presented to a panel of three judges who are chefs and restaurateurs.  These judges critique each dish and, of course, pass judgment.  As each course goes by, one of the contestant chefs gets “chopped” or eliminated, while the others continue to compete.  At the end of the show, the winner gets ten thousand dollars.

    On one particular episode, one of the chef contestants had a real problem with arrogance.  He couldn’t see how anyone could possibly make a dish better than his, even though his always came out looking ragtag, and from what the judges said, tasting the same.  He would not listen to any of the critiques, because, well how did these people know anything?  He survived the first round, but was quickly eliminated in the second round, mostly because the judges got tired of his arrogance.

    That came back to mind when I read today’s gospel reading.  Jesus tells the chief priests and elders, “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you.”  That had to be terrible news.  Because those chief priests and elders were living what they thought was a good life.  They were the “decent people” of society.  Nobody could be noticed by God before they were, surely.  But Jesus says they certainly are.  Why? Arrogance – again.

    Like the arrogant chef, those chief priests and elders refused to listen to any kind of criticism.  John the Baptist had preached repentance, and the tax collectors and prostitutes, the riff-raff of society, had listened, and were gaining entrance to the kingdom of God.  Meanwhile, those so-called decent folks, the ones who should have known better, were in for an eternity of wailing and grinding their teeth.

    The arrogant chef merely lost out on ten thousand dollars.  The arrogant chief priests and elders had lost out on quite a bit more: eternal life.  Today, we all pray for the grace to overcome any arrogance in us and accept correction for the sake of our salvation.

  • Tuesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the television shows that I like to watch sometimes is called “Chopped” on the Food Network.  If you’ve ever watched the Food Network, you’ve probably seen it because they seem to run it about 18 hours out of the day.  On this show, they start with four chefs, and they give them a basket of really different, and sometimes strange, ingredients, all of which they have to use, to make either an appetizer, main dish, or dessert, depending on the round.  The dishes are then presented to a panel of three judges who are chefs and restaurateurs.  These judges critique each dish and, of course, pass judgment.  As each course goes by, one of the contestant chefs gets “chopped” or eliminated, while the others continue to compete.  At the end of the show, the winner gets ten thousand dollars.

    On one particular episode, one of the chef contestants had a real problem with arrogance.  He couldn’t see how anyone could possibly make a dish better than his, even though his always came out looking ragtag, and from what the judges said, tasting the same.  He would not listen to any of the critiques, because, well how did these people know anything?  He survived the first round, but was quickly eliminated in the second round, mostly because the judges got tired of his arrogance.

    That came back to mind when I read today’s gospel reading.  Jesus tells the chief priests and elders, “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you.”  That had to be terrible news.  Because those chief priests and elders were living what they thought was a good life.  They were the “decent people” of society.  Nobody could be noticed by God before they were, surely.  But Jesus says they certainly are.  Why? Arrogance – again.

    Like the arrogant chef, those chief priests and elders refused to listen to any kind of criticism.  John the Baptist had preached repentance, and the tax collectors and prostitutes, the riff-raff of society, had listened, and were gaining entrance to the kingdom of God.  Meanwhile, those so-called decent folks, the ones who should have known better, were in for an eternity of wailing and grinding their teeth.

    The arrogant chef merely lost out on ten thousand dollars.  The arrogant chief priests and elders had lost out on quite a bit more: eternal life.  Today, we all pray for the grace to overcome any arrogance in us and accept correction for the sake of our salvation.

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Prevenient Grace

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Prevenient Grace

    Today’s readings

    I love that the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is celebrated during the season of Advent.  Advent is a season of anticipation: God’s promises echo through the Old Testament, and in these Advent days, we see those promises coming to fruition in exciting and world-changing ways.  Today’s feast is a glorious glimpse of that reality.

    We are honored today to celebrate this, the patronal feast day of our parish and of our nation.  This, of course, celebrates Mary’s conception, not that of Jesus, which we celebrate on the feast of the Annunciation.  Blessed Pope Pius IX instituted the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8, 1854, when he proclaimed as truth the dogma that our Lady was conceived free from the stain of original sin.

    This feast celebrates the belief that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to be our Savior, and gave to him a human mother who was chosen before the world began to be holy and blameless in his sight.  This feast is a sign for us of the nearness of our salvation; that the plan God had for us before the world ever took shape was coming to fruition.

    The prayer over the offerings today uses a very technical theological term to describe how Mary was born, conceived actually, without sin, and that term is “prevenient grace.”  The prayer specifically says, “…Grant that, as we profess her, on account of your prevenient grace, to be untouched by any stain of sin…”  Prevenient grace is the same as other kinds of grace in that it relies on the saving action of Jesus on the Cross at Calvary, dying for our sins.  But prevenient grace refers to grace applied before that happened, as would have been in the case for Mary who was obviously conceived before her son was put to death.  This prevenient grace relies on the fact that God loved us so much that he foresaw the sacrifice of the Cross and applied the grace of it to Mary at her conception.  As the Collect prayer today said, “…as you preserved her from every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw…”  All of this is a very technical discussion that boils down to the fact that God will not let the constraints of time limit the outpouring of his grace.  And that’s the really good news we celebrate today.

    So, I think we know why this prevenient grace, this Immaculate Conception, was necessary: the readings chosen for this day paint the picture.  In the reading from Genesis, we have the story of the fall.  The man and the woman had eaten of the fruit of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat.  Because of this, they were ashamed and covered over their nakedness.  God noticed that, and asked about it.  Of course, he already knew what was going on: they had discovered the forbidden tree and eaten its fruit.  They had given in to temptation and had grasped at something that was not God, in an effort to control their own destiny.

    Thus begins the pattern of sin and deliverance that cycles all through the scriptures.  God extends a way to salvation to his people, the people reject it and go their own way.  God forgives, and extends a new way to salvation.  Thank God he never gets tired of pursuing humankind and offering salvation, or we would be in dire straits.  It all comes to perfection in the event we celebrate today.  Salvation was always God’s plan for us and he won’t rest until that plan comes to perfection.  That is why Saint Paul tells the Ephesians, and us, today: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.  In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ…”

    And so, in these Advent days, we await the unfolding of the plan for salvation that began at the very dawn of the world in all its wonder.  God always intended to provide an incredible way for his people to return to them, and that was by taking flesh and walking among us as a man.  He began this by preparing for his birth through the Immaculate Virgin Mary – never stained by sin, because the one who conquered sin and death had already delivered her from sin.  He was then to be born into our midst and to take on our form.  With Mary’s fiat in today’s Gospel, God enters our world in the most intimate way possible, by becoming vulnerable, taking our flesh as one like us.  Mary’s lived faith – possible because of her Immaculate Conception – makes possible our own lives of faith and our journeys to God. 

    Our celebration today is a foreshadowing of God’s plan for us.  Because Mary was conceived without sin, we can see that sin was never intended to rule us.  Because God selected Mary from the beginning, we can see that we were chosen before we were ever in our mother’s womb.  Because Mary received salvific grace from the moment of her conception, we can catch a glimpse of what is to come for all of us one day.  Mary’s deliverance from sin and death was made possible by the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus, who deeply desires that we all be delivered in that way too.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings
    School Mass

    I think we’re so blessed that we get to come to church and celebrate so many of Mary’s feasts.  Today is a very special feast because Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, is the patroness of the United States of America, and also the patroness of our parish, and so she is very special to us.

    I think today’s readings can be a little confusing.  The Gospel makes it sound like this day is about the conception of Jesus, but it isn’t.  We celebrate the conception of Jesus nine months before he was born, so that would be March 25th.  We call that day the Annunciation, because that was the day the Angel Gabriel came to announce to Mary that she would have a baby, but we’ll talk more about that in a minute.  Today we celebrate the conception of Mary, nine months before her birthday, so if you do the math on that one, her birthday is September 8th, just a few months ago.  This day celebrates that Mary was free from sin from the very beginning, the only person other than Jesus to be born without sin.

    The other confusing reading is the first one.  Why do we go all the way to the beginning of creation when we’re talking about Mary today?  Well, I think the reason is that Mary’s life and her faith in God solved a problem that began all the way at the beginning.  And that problem is sin.  From the very beginning, we human beings have been tempted to sin.  Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and people have been committing sin ever since.  Again and again, God broke in to history, leading people back to him, giving them prophets to show them the way, and again and again, people turned away from God.  And we continue that today.  Again and again, we are tempted and we sin and we turn away from God.  Eve represented our fall into sin.

    But God didn’t want that to be the way things ended up for us.  So he sent his Son to become one of us.  God knew that in order for Jesus to be born among us, his mother was going to have to be pretty special.  So before Mary was ever in her mother’s womb, God chose her to be his Son’s mother.  He made her free from sin so that no stain of sin would ever touch his Son. 

    Because Mary was so special, she loved God very much.  So when the angel came and told her she would have a baby by the power of the Holy Spirit, she said yes to God’s plan.  She might not have known at that moment all the detail about how it was going to take place or what would happen to Jesus in his life, but she said yes anyway.  We call that her fiat, her “yes” to God’s plan for her.  Fiat is Latin for “let it be done.”  She took a big leap of faith that day, thanks be to God, because with her leap of faith, we have been blessed ever since.

    This is all very good news.  But there is even more good news: because Mary was so special to God, she shows us how special we are to God.  As we celebrate God’s love for Mary today, we also celebrate his love for us.  Mary got to hold her Savior – the One God promised us – in her own arms.  When those of us who are old enough come to Communion, we are able to hold our Savior – the One God promised us – in the palm of our hand.  Mary’s life was brightened when Jesus was born.  Our lives will be brightened too, this coming Christmas, and every time we make room in our hearts for Jesus.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.

  • The Second Sunday of Advent: Be Reconciled

    The Second Sunday of Advent: Be Reconciled

    Today’s readings

    This week, I looked back in my homilies to the one I did a few years ago on this Sunday, and I had to chuckle just a little bit.  I talked about the fact that it’s hard to listen to the news in those days.  Ha!  There was sure some sadness in those days: unrest in the middle east, abuse scandals in the entertainment industry and political arena, crime in our cities, and so much more.  But here we are, a few years later, with the sadness of a pandemic complicated by political and social unrest.  It certainly seems like sadness compounds itself, doesn’t it?  

    And so as we enter into Advent this year, I think we Advent more than ever. We need Jesus to come and put an end to all our foolishness, to fix all our brokenness, to wipe away our sickness, and heal all our sin and shame.  I am guessing the followers of Saint John the Baptist felt the same way.  They dealt with all the same stuff that we do: corruption in government, poverty, racism, and crime – none of this is new to our day and age, unfortunately – it never seems to go away.  And so they did what I think has to be a model for all of us today: they came to John, acknowledged their sins, and accepted the baptism of repentance.

    They came to John, because at that point, Jesus wasn’t in full swing with his ministry, and they were seeking something new and something good.  We then, might come to Jesus in the same way, come to the Church, seeking something good and something new.  We need newness in our lives and in our society; we need the complications of doing simple things in every moment erased so that we can go back to normal, however that may look in the future.  We need a renewed culture of life and the ability to be Church again.  We need unity in Christ for all the people God has chosen as his own.

    And then, like those followers of John the Baptist, we have to acknowledge our sins – personal sins and those in which we participate as a society.  We have to repent of our brokenness and seek to turn our lives and our society around.  We can’t keep sinning, we can’t be in love with our sins and say that we love God; we have to repent, literally be sorry for our sins and turn away from them, as we turn back to God.  That’s an important Advent message for every time and place, now more than ever.

    It genuinely strikes me that, if we’re ever going to get past the bad stuff going on in our nation and our world, if we’re ever going to finally put an end to whatever sadness this world brings us, we have to begin that by putting an end to the wrong that we have done.  That’s why reconciliation is so important.  What each of us does – right or wrong – affects all of us.  The grace we put forward when we follow God’s will blesses others.  But the sin we set in motion when we turn away from God saddens the whole Body of Christ.  We are one in the Body of Christ, and if we are going to keep the body healthy, then each of us has to attend to ourselves.

    So today, I am going to ask you to go to confession before Christmas.  I don’t do that because I think you’re all horrible people or anything like that.  I do that because I know that we all – including me – have failed to be a blessing of faith, hope and love to ourselves and others at some point, and I know that so many people struggle with persistent sins, nasty thorns in the flesh, day in and day out.  And God never meant it to be that way.  He wants you to experience his love and mercy and forgiveness and healing, and you get that most perfectly in the Sacrament of Penance.

    So speaking of confession, here’s one of mine: There was a time in my life that I didn’t go to confession for a long time.  I had been raised at a time in the Church when that sacrament was downplayed.  It came about from what I came to realize was a really flawed idea of the sacrament and the human person.  But the Church has always taught that in the struggle to live for God and be a good person, we will encounter pitfalls along the way.  We’ll fail in many ways, and we will need forgiveness and the grace to get back up and move forward.  That’s what the Sacrament of Penance is for!

    One day, I finally realized that I needed that grace and I returned to the sacrament.  The priest welcomed me back, did not pass judgment, and helped me to make a good confession.  That beautiful experience of coming back has made me prioritize welcoming others back to the sacrament.  Coming back to the Sacrament of Penance was an extremely healing experience for me, and now I make it my business to go to the sacrament as frequently as I can, because I need that healing and mercy and grace.  And you do too.  So please don’t leave those wonderful gifts unwrapped under the tree.  Go to Confession and find out just how much God loves you.

    When you do find that out, you’ll be better able to help the rest of the Body of Christ to be the best it can be.  When your relationship is right with God, you will help the people around you know God’s love for them too.  That kind of grace bursts forth to others all the time.

    This year, we are challenged offering the Sacrament because of the Pandemic.  We can’t have a penance service in the way that we did, but we are offering some additional times to come to Confession.  So in addition to our English and Spanish Confessions at 2:30pm on Saturday and Polish Confessions at noon on Sunday, we will have Confessions on Monday, December 14 and Monday, December 21 at 7:00pm until all are heard.  We have two additional confessors available those evenings to help serve you.

    If you have been away from the sacrament for a very long time, I want you to come this Advent.  Tell the priest you have been away for a while, and expect that he will help you to make a good confession.  That’s our job.  All you have to do is to acknowledge your sins and then leave them behind, so that Christmas can be that much more beautiful for you and everyone around you.  Don’t miss that gift this year: be reconciled.

  • Thursday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Our worshipping in these last days of the Church year is often difficult, I think, because these readings are just hard to hear.  The readings from Revelation this week have been confusing, to say the least, and maybe even a little frightening.  And even if we could ignore the fright of the Revelation, well the Gospel is a bit more violent this morning than we’d like to experience first thing in the morning, I think.

    But there is a spiritual principle at work here.  We are being called to mindfulness.  If during this liturgical year we’ve been a little lax, or even have become complacent, these readings are calling us to wake up lest we miss what God is doing.  God is bringing the whole of creation to its fulfillment, and we are called to be witnesses of it.  We dare not be like those who missed the time of their visitation.  We have been given the wonderful gift of Christ’s presence in our lives all year long, and we are asked to look back at where that wonderful gift has taken us.

    And if we haven’t come as far as we should, then we are called to wake up and realize what’s slipping away from us.  We must not be left out of the kingdom, all our hopes smashed to the ground, all because we didn’t recognize that our greatest hope was right in front of us all the time. We know the time is running short.  The days are shorter, and night approaches more quickly than we’d like.  The leaves have gone from the trees.  The nip in the air has turned to cold and even frost.  These are the physical manifestations of creation groaning to come to its fulfillment, at least for the meteorological year.

    But if the encroaching winter leaves us empty and aching for warmth, then these final days of the Church year might find us also aching for the warmth of the kingdom, that kingdom we were created to live in all our days.  Let us not be like Jerusalem; we dare not miss the time of our visitation!

  • The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I’ve often heard stories of those who grew up in the great depression.  Many years later, they still had deeply engrained in them the scrupulous care for everything they have that was etched into their very being during that horrible time in our history.  They spent a lifetime wasting nothing, which was a good thing, except it sometimes spiraled into hoarding things.  They would eat leftovers well past their freshness dates.  It was just their response to having nothing, so completely understandable.

    And that’s the lens through which I think we need to see this week’s Gospel parable.  Here Jesus presents the very familiar story of a rich man entrusting his slaves with a great deal of wealth before he sets off on a long journey.  But because this is such a familiar parable, I think it often gets interpreted wrongly.  Often this parable gets turned into a lesson on sharing your gifts with others, but that’s not actually what’s going on here.  The word “talents” here does not mean what we mean when we use that word: here we are not talking about gifts or abilities.  No, a talent was a unit of money, and a large sum of money at that.  Scholars suggest that a talent was equal to something like one thousand days’ wages.  So think about it, even the servant who only received one talent actually received quite a bit – he received what the average person would earn in a little over three years!  That’s a lot of money for anyone.

    So we have this huge amount of money, given as a gift.  And that gift is being given, not to whom we would expect: not to senior advisers to the master, people who would have been in charge of his estate and his business transactions.  No, the text says he called in his “servants” – so we are talking here about slaves, slaves – not business advisers.  And so these slaves are getting ten talents, five talents, and one talent – all of them are getting a considerable amount of money!

    And we know the story.  Two of them take what they have and very successfully invest it and when the master returns, are able to hand over the original sum with one hundred per cent interest.  Very impressive, especially for a slave!  But the slave who received just a “little” (even though it was certainly still a lot of money), out of fear buries it in the ground and gives it back to the master untouched, with nothing to show for it.  It’s much like a person having gone through something like the great depression placing money under a mattress rather than trust the banks, which they saw fail miserably in their lifetimes.

    That’s the backstory, and there’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s get at it.  We’ve established that the gift they are receiving – even the slave who received little – is worth an incredible amount of money, especially to a slave who would never have the opportunity to see such wealth if not for the trust the master has placed in them.  We could almost understand, I think, if a servant hoarded the wealth entrusted to him, or used it for himself and his family.  So that the third servant even gave it back seems like a good thing. 

    I guess we have to unpack though, what the talent, the money, represents.  Here, these slaves have received something very great, some inestimable wealth.  What could that possibly be?  We should be able to see this pretty well.  What’s of inestimable value for us?  Well, of course, it’s God’s love, grace, and favor, which is undeservedly ours and given to us without merit.  That’s what the God, the master, was entrusting to his servants.

    So just for background, this is yet another indictment of the Pharisees and religious establishment of the time.  They were the ones who, because Christ was not yet present in the world, received just one talent.  They received that in the form of the covenant and the law that was the basis of their religion.  And let’s just acknowledge that God choosing them among all the nations was a huge sum of grace!  Yet, their practice was to protect it so scrupulously by attending to the minutiae of the 613 laws of the Torah, that they missed the opportunity to really invest God’s love in the world and grow the faith to full stature.

    So we disciples can’t be like that.  We can’t have the faith taken away from us and be tossed out to wail and grind our teeth.  We have to take the faith we’ve been given, the grace we have received in baptism, and invest it mightily in the world, without fear, so that everyone will come to know the Lord and we would all go on to be put in charge of greater things, in the kingdom of heaven.  That is our vocation in the world, brothers and sisters in Christ.  We have to get that right.  We can’t cower in fear, or think our faith is too little, or we don’t know enough.  In Matthew’s Gospel, fear is a huge sin.  “Do not be afraid” is a term we see over and over in the readings.  We have to be bold disciples and make sure that Christ is known everywhere we go, everywhere life takes us.  That is the only acceptable response to God’s love.

    We have come here today on the second-to-last Sunday of the Church year.  Next week, we will celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe, and then look forward to a new year as we begin the season of Advent.  And so it is important that we take today’s Gospel parable seriously.  We need to spend some time reflecting on how well we have invested God’s grace and love in the world around us.  Have we been good examples to our family and others?  Have we been people of integrity in our workplaces, schools and community?  Have we served those who are in need out of love for Christ?  Have we been zealous to grow in our spiritual lives?  Have we taken time to root sin out of our life, and to receive the grace of forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance?  Have we been unafraid to witness to our faith in every situation?  In this most difficult year, have we been able to get beyond ourselves to care enough about others to do what we can to keep people healthy in the face of a pandemic, to respect people of every race, color and creed, to witness to life and vote according to our formed consciences, to keep the doors of discussion open so that understanding can grow?

    If we can’t answer all these questions affirmatively, we have some new-Church-year’s resolutions to make.  Because, and I can’t stress this strongly enough, brothers and sisters, the alternative is wailing and grinding of teeth.  And forever is a long time to be doing that!  No; God forbid.  Our desire is to hear those wonderful words from our Lord one day: “Well done, my good and faithful servant.  Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities.  Come, share your master’s joy.”

  • Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin

    Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin

    Today’s readings
    Mass for the school children.

    Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, who was called “Mother Cabrini” during her life, was a humble woman of great faith and fortitude.  Because of poor health, she was refused entrance to the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, the religious community that had educated her.  But in 1880, along with seven other young women, Frances founded the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  The pope sent her to New York, where she intended to found an orphanage.  The house they were to use turned out not to be available, and the bishop advised her to return to Italy.  But she stayed, and eventually founded not only that one orphanage, but 67 institutions dedicated to caring for the poor, the abandoned, the uneducated and the sick. 

    Frances worked hard to educate Italian immigrants, providing for their religious education as well.  She established schools and orphanages despite the great obstacles she often faced.  She later traveled all over the world, establishing these institutions in Europe, Central and South America, and all over the United States.  She was relentless in this work until the day of her death.  She died on December 22, 1917 at Columbus hospital in Chicago, which she also founded.  In 1946, she was canonized by Pope Pius XII.  She was the first American citizen to be canonized a saint.  She is the patron saint of immigrants.

    Our Gospel today urges us to be working hard for the Kingdom of God, because we don’t know when our Lord will return to the earth and take us home.  We want to be found busy in God’s service and we want to be strong in our relationship with Jesus when that great day comes.  As the end of our Church year comes in just a couple of weeks, the readings right now have us thinking about the end of time, because we don’t know when that will happen.  When it does, we want to be rejoicing because we have worked hard to be able to celebrate that day.  Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini is a great example of a person who did what she could to help those who were in need.  She knew our Lord very well, because she saw his face in the poor immigrants who came to her.  Blessed are we if we meet our Lord in that same way, and he finds us ready to rejoice with him when he returns!

  • The Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

    The Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

    Today’s readings

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

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

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

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