Caritas Christi Urget Nos

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  • Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Responsorial Psalm, Psalm 1; has always been one of my very favorite psalms. One interpretation of this Psalm is to look at it as a blueprint for blessedness. In Biblical terms, of course, blessedness equals happiness. So the person who doesn’t follow the counsel of the wicked or walk with sinners but instead meditates on the law of the LORD is happy, or blessed. This person is productive and vibrant, and all of his activities are prosperous. This person is contrasted to the wicked person who is anything but enduring. These are unhappy people who are driven away by the first storm that comes along.

    On the other hand, the Church has also looked at the blessed one in this psalm as referring to Christ himself. None of us is able to steer clear of evil all the time, nor meditate on God’s law day and night. But Jesus is the One who is like us in all things but sin and who is the fulfilled promise of God’s law. Jesus definitely is the tree planted near running water, which takes root strongly and shades us from the burning heat of evil under his never-fading leaves. Jesus is the one who can prosper any work that we do, if we just ask him to do so. If we want to know the person who really embodies the spirit of Psalm 1; then all we have to do is look to our Savior.

    But that doesn’t absolve us of our responsibility to become holy enough to take up the spirit of this Psalm within ourselves. We certainly don’t want to be the chaff which is driven away by the wind. Joining ourselves to our Savior, meditating on him day and night, as best we can, we can be refreshed by those running waters and become the sturdy trees that shelter the Church in good times and in bad. Blessed indeed are all of us who hope in the Lord.

  • Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    There are two things: the promise, and the response.

    The promise has echoed down through the ages.  God called Abraham and promised descendants as numerous as the sands on the sea shore or the stars in the sky.  Through Moses, God made known his intent to bring his people out of slavery and into the promised land.  Through Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, who speaks in today’s Psalm, God announces that he will make good on his promise to send a Messiah to his people.  And through Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of all the promises, we have the promise of salvation and eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven.  From Abraham to us today, the promise has echoed, and still echoes, in the Church and in the world, down through the ages.  There is the promise.

    The response has always taken many different forms.  One would think the response would be complete adoration, obedience, and devotion to our God who keeps his promises.  But sometimes the response has been arrogance, thinking that anything good that happens is the result of our own feeble efforts, like the foolish rich man in today’s Gospel.  Sometimes the response has been entitlement, as if we were actually worthy of grace, and due the gifts that come our way.  Sometimes the response has been apathy or disinterest, not even taking the time to notice the graces and blessings that come to us.  Sometimes the response has been outright rejection – refusing the gift and ignoring the Giver.  Sometimes we have been very unworthy and unappreciative of the promise.

    But there is still the promise.  And there is always time for a different, better, more appropriate response.

  • The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Connecting with God and the Power of Prayer

    The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Connecting with God and the Power of Prayer

    Today’s readings

    This weekend we continue our preaching series at St. Mary Immaculate called “A Crash Course in Catholicism.”  The purpose of the course is to address some core beliefs and practices of Catholics to help people, especially those who have left the practice of the faith or struggle with some of the basics of the faith, get back on track with their faith life.  But we can all benefit from hearing more about the basics of our faith.  Today we are addressing the fundamental ideas of what prayer is, and how we connect with God.

    Before I start on that topic of prayer, I want to invite all of you who are interested in digging it to this topic a bit deeper, all of you who might have questions about prayer, to come to a 30-minute discussion that will be led by members of our team.  That will take place in the small meeting room right after Mass.  If you didn’t come to the discussion last week, you’re welcome to come this week.

    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’ve heard it, I’m sure: 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 perfectly, at least not how we would see a perfect resolution, no matter how much we pray, and they almost never work out the way we’d like them to. 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.  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 what we think we would like 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. Praying never ever changes God, but prayer frequently changes us.  

    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. There comes a point when we need to admit that we 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 like an illness or some other disappointment. We may have to bear the burden of disease or the sadness of grieve 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 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, listenting, and 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 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 decisions of those who govern us, 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. We always 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.

    So it’s easy for me to tell you how to persist in prayer.  But one of the biggest questions I often get in confession is “Father, I’m trying to pray more consistently, but I just can’t get it going.  Can you help me?”  And it understand the issue.  As I mentioned, I’ve struggled in my prayer life just like everyone else.  Prayer is something we have to keep working on throughout our lives if we are to be people of faith.  

    I usually give people some advice that has helped me.  First of all, try to find a time that works for you to pray.  Don’t keep forcing yourself to pray more at the end of the day if you keep falling asleep during that time; maybe try first thing in the morning, or break it up and do a little throughout the day.  In my pre-seminary days, I used to put prayer on my to-do list, and keep a little devotional book in my desk drawer.  And try different types of prayer.  If the way you’re praying isn’t working, mix it up and try something else for a while.  It’s good to keep different types of prayer in your “prayer toolbox” because different situations, different seasons in our lives all require different kinds of prayer.  Remember that prayer consists of different things: adoration, contemplating our Lord’s Blessed Presence; contrition, asking God for his mercy and forgiveness of our sins; thanksgiving, remembering God’s gifts to us and expressing our gratitude; and supplication, giving ourselves, our lives, our families, our vocations to God for his greater glory.  All these kinds of prayers are necessary for a rich connection with God.

    It’s important to realize that if you’re having difficulty with prayer, you should still stay with it.  Just like Moses, and the widow in the Gospel parable.  Many saints tell us of dryness in their prayer life, and all of them say that key to overcoming it is to persist in it anyway and trust in God.

    But sometimes people have difficulty even expressing themselves to God.  So let’s try a little prayer experience…

  • Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs/Make a Difference Day

    Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs/Make a Difference Day

    Today’s readings

    St. Isaac and St. John were among eight missionaries who worked among the Huron and Iroquois Indians in the New World in the seventeenth century. They were devoted to their work and were accomplishing many conversions. The conversions, though, were not welcomed by the tribes, and eventually St. Isaac was captured and imprisoned by the Iroquois for months. He was moved from village to village and was tortured and beaten all along the way. Eventually he was able to escape and return to France. But zeal for his mission compelled him to return, and to resume his work among the Indians when a peace treaty was signed in 1646. His belief that the peace treaty would be observed turned out to be false hope, and he was captured by a Mohawk war party and beheaded.

    St. John worked among the Iroquois and ministered to them amid a smallpox epidemic. As a scholastic Jesuit, he was able to compose a catechism and write a dictionary in the Huron language, which made possible many conversions. He was eventually captured, tortured and killed by the Iroquois.

    Anything worthwhile costs us something, and that’s especially true of our faith.  If we are serious about it, if we love God and want to be caught up in his life, we’re going to have to pay for it in some way.  Saints Isaac, John, and their companions make that clear.  One of the biggest costs to us, I think, is our comfort zone.  To really live the faith, we have to get out of that comfort and do what God wants of us.  In the Gospel, Jesus was telling his disciples that they would have to give witness to him.  And they understood that that would cost them something – perhaps cost them their lives.

    We disciples are also going to have to pay some price for living our faith.  Probably not something as drastic as being tortured and beheaded, but something fairly costly for us.  For us today, perhaps that cost is giving up a beautiful fall Saturday to clean church pews, or trim a neighbor’s hedges, or sing songs at a nursing home, or any of the myriad of projects we are planning today.

    Today, on our Make a Difference Day, we give strong witness to our faith in our work. As we come together to pack meals at Feed My Starving Children, spend time in adoration praying for our community, or clean up our parish grounds, our presence and concern may be the way God is using us to get someone’s attention and see his presence in her or his life. Living our faith is always going to cost us something and that something is likely to be status or popularity, or at least the wondering glance from people who aren’t ready to accept the faith.  But the volumes that we speak by living our faith anyway might just lay the groundwork for conversion and become a conduit of grace.  We are told that we don’t have to hammer out all the words we want to say; that the Holy Spirit will give us eloquence that we can only dream of.  And it’s true, if we trust God, if we live our faith when it’s popular or unpopular, we will have the Spirit and the words.  God only knows what can be accomplished in those grace-filled moments!  I pray that you see Christ everywhere as you witness today.

  • The Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Our God Heals|Our God Saves

    The Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Our God Heals|Our God Saves

    Today’s readings

    Today we begin our “Crash Course in Catholicism.”  It’s our hope that through this four-Sunday series of homilies, those who are seeking answers from the Church and those who are wanting to get back to the practice of the faith can find some help in sorting out the obstacles they have been encountering.  For all of us, I think, these four Sundays will give us some important pieces to add to our “faith tool box,” ideas and concepts that will help us when life takes a turn we don’t expect or appreciate, or when people ask us questions we find hard to answer.  As we begin this series, I’d ask you to keep this endeavor in prayer.  And as we begin each of the homilies for these four weeks, I invite you to pray that Jesus would open all of our hearts and minds to accept the faith more fully.

    Today’s readings give us the opportunity to discuss two very important concepts: healing and salvation.  These things, honestly, are the whole reason Jesus came to us, the whole reason he left his heavenly throne, took on our flesh, and died on the cross.  These readings are really Good News!

    A lot of energy gets expended around the concept of gratitude when this Gospel reading is discussed, and it’s easy to see why that is – just one of the lepers came back and expressed his gratitude.  But I think he also might have been the only one who was really healed.  Here’s why I think that:  For Jesus, the physical ailment wasn’t usually the most important thing he wanted to heal.  Usually, he was looking for interior healing, almost a kind of healing of the person from the inside out.  So yes, the lepers who came to him were in need of physical healing.  “Leprosy” was the name given to all kinds of skin diseases – but only some were really Hansen’s disease, our modern name for leprosy.  The rest were various types of skin eruptions and rashes. When the skin became diseased, people called it leprosy, and the victim suffered exclusion from the community (cf. Lv. 13-14) and became ritually unclean.

    So Jesus sends the ten of them off to show themselves to the priests.  When they heard that, it had to be confusing.  The priests are the ones who would have to certify them healed so that they could participate in worship again, but since they hadn’t yet been healed, they had to grumble a bit about being put off to someone else.  Except that on the way they were cleansed (notice carefully that it doesn’t say they were healed).  When that happened, they couldn’t possibly mistake the grace they had been given, but nine of them took it no further than that.  Only just the one returned to give thanks, a sign that he had indeed been healed in body, mind and spirit.

    For us then, we need to know that not every healing takes place in the way we would expect, or even in the way we think is best.  God gives us grace according to his purpose and the kind of healing he gives us could well be something we wouldn’t exactly choose.  Perhaps 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 counsel 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.

    What is important to get here is that faith is the key to all of this.  Our faith has to have us open to whatever God intends for us.  Our faith has to give us the ability to cry out to God in our need.  Our faith has to make us ready for whatever healing God intends for us.  That’s not easy: that’s why they call it a “leap of faith,” and sometimes it is just that.  Notice the words that Jesus speaks to the Samaritan leper at the end of the reading: “Go your way, your faith has saved you.”  God can do a lot for us, but it is our own act of faith that helps us to see God’s hand in our lives and cooperate with his grace.

    I think that’s a good turning point for our second concept, and that is salvation.  Many of us have probably been asked by friends or even strangers who are Evangelical Christians, “Are you saved?” and “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.”  So let’s be clear about the answers: Are we saved?  Of course the answer is “Yes” — no ifs, ands or buts.  As I said at the beginning of my homily, this was the reason God sent His Son Jesus into the world.  Salvation is the gift won for us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  When we unite our lives to His in Baptism, we are saved.

    But what does this even mean?  What are we saved from?  The answer to that is sin and death.  These are the things that separate us, have always separated us, from real happiness with God.  It was the effect of Adam and Eve doing what God told them not to in the beginning, and ever since, it has caused all of us to desire things that are not God, things that, while they seem nice, can never give us real happiness.  This is what causes the human condition by which we so often end up doing the very things we don’t want to do, and because of which we are not able to do the things we want to do.  That is the basic effect of sin, which leads to the breakdown in all kinds of relationships — between fellow human beings, our connection with creation, our relationship with God, and even with ourselves.  Left to our own human devices we can do nothing about these breakdowns of relationships.  That choice in the beginning, which we call original sin, unleashed a torrent of sin and death with us at one side, and God on the other.  There was no way for us to cross it.  But God didn’t create us for death, so in an amazing act of love, he sent his own divine Son, who took on our flesh and paid the price for our sins.  By dying on the cross, that cross became the bridge for us to cross that torrential river of sin and death, and come to our God, to the place he has prepared for us, to the real happiness for which we were created.  That is the essence of our faith.

    This is why Saint Paul says to Saint Timothy in our second reading today: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead.  I bear witness to Him so that you may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus.  If we die with him, we shall also live with him in eternal glory.”  We proclaim boldly that there is a remedy for death, and it is Jesus Christ.  We profess that there absolutely is a Savior, and He is Jesus Christ.  

    So have you been saved?  Well, absolutely.  But have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?  That’s more of an individual question.  That process began at your baptism, when either you, or your parents and godparents, accepted that sacrament which makes you part of the Body of Christ.  At your Confirmation, you reaffirmed that by accepting the gift of the Holy Spirit, which leads you to salvation.  And every time you receive the Holy Eucharist, you become what you receive, by incorporating the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ into your own being.  

    But it’s easy to do those sacramental things and not have them really change us.  So there is that challenge to really accept that sacramental grace and really accept the salvation God offers us in Christ.  Catholicism is an experiential faith, a living relationship with Christ.  A Catholic is not a person who merely accumulates intellectual knowledge about God nor simply fulfills tradition and the letter of the law.  Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have repeatedly emphasized that Catholic Christianity is an encounter with Jesus.  That encounter happens all through our lives as we pray and grow in our faith.  This encounter with Jesus is the subject of our prayer life, and we will talk more about that in next week’s homily.

    In the meantime, what answer should you give to the Evangelical who asks you if you have accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?  My suggestion would be very simply: “Yes, I have.  Every day.”

  • Saint John XXIII

    Saint John XXIII

    Today’s readings

    The firstborn son of a farming family in Sotto il Monte, near Bergamo in northern Italy, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was always proud of his down-to-earth roots. After his ordination in 1904, Fr. Roncalli returned to Rome for canon law studies. He soon worked as his bishop’s secretary, Church history teacher in the seminary, and as publisher of the diocesan paper.

    His service as a stretcher-bearer for the Italian army during World War I gave him a firsthand knowledge of war. In 1921, Fr. Roncalli was made national director in Italy of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. In 1925, he became a papal diplomat, serving first in Bulgaria, then in Turkey, and finally in France. With the help of Germany’s ambassador to Turkey, Archbishop Roncalli helped save an estimated 24,000 Jewish people.

    Named a cardinal and appointed patriarch of Venice in 1953, he was finally a residential bishop. A month short of entering his 78th year, Cardinal Roncalli was elected pope, taking the name John after his father and the two patrons of Rome’s cathedral, St. John Lateran. Pope John took his work very seriously but not himself. His wit soon became proverbial, and he began meeting with political and religious leaders from around the world. In 1962, he was deeply involved in efforts to resolve the Cuban missile crisis.

    His most famous encyclicals were Mother and Teacher (1961) and Peace on Earth (1963). Pope John XXIII enlarged the membership in the College of Cardinals and made it more international. At his address at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, he criticized the “prophets of doom” who “in these modern times see nothing but prevarication and ruin.” Pope John XXIII set a tone for the Vatican II when he said, “The Church has always opposed… errors. Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity.”

    On his deathbed, Pope John said: “It is not that the gospel has changed; it is that we have begun to understand it better. Those who have lived as long as I have…were enabled to compare different cultures and traditions, and know that the moment has come to discern the signs of the times, to seize the opportunity and to look far ahead.” “Good Pope John” died on June 3, 1963. Saint John Paul II beatified him in 2000, and Pope Francis canonized him in 2014.

    Three years ago, I had the opportunity to celebrate Mass at the tomb of Saint John XXIII in Saint Peter’s Basilica. What a privilege to be in the presence of a pastor-saint who loved the Church enough to set her on a course of renewal in what many of us would consider to be our retirement years! It’s a great reminder that we’re always called to be productive disciples no matter what our age.

  • Saint Francis of Assisi

    Saint Francis of Assisi

    Today, we celebrate the memorial of one of the most beloved saints of all time, Saint Francis of Assisi. Saint Francis has a conversion that came when he was very young. He had contracted a serious illness, and spent a good deal of time in intense and difficult prayer. In that time of prayer, our Lord called Francis to renounce everything that people who live according to the flesh tend to desire, and to embrace everything that the world tended to shrink from. He did this by embracing an leper, and piled all of his earthly possessions – including the clothes he was wearing – before his father, who had demanded that he give restitution for the gifts he had given to the poor.

    Prayer before the cross in the crumbling church of San Damiano led Saint Francis to seek to reform the Church. Our Lord told him to “go out and build up my house, for it is nearly falling down.” Francis saw that our Lord was not merely referring to that church, even though it was nearly in ruins. He saw the ruin of the Church as a whole at a difficult period of history and sought to build it back up by authentically preaching and living the Gospel.

    He didn’t seek to found a religious order, but it happened anyway. People were drawn to the way that he lived the faith, and so he wrote a rule of life for his followers which began as a collection of texts from the Gospels. When he was pressed to form the Franciscan order, he did it willingly and did everything he needed to do to create the legal structure the Church required.

    During the last years of his life, Saint Francis received the stigmata. During his last hours, he received permission to have his clothing removed so that he could die naked on the earth, as Our Lord died. On his deathbed, he prayed the last addition to his Canticle of the Sun, “Be praised, O Lord, for our sister death.”

    Saint Francis is well-known for the Canticle of the Sun, and his famous prayer. But he is also credited with composing the song we began with this morning, “All Creatures of our God and King.” His devotion to the Church, to the gospel, to the creatures of the earth, and most especially to our Lord inspires people even today. And his dedication to rebuilding the Church is one that our current pope took on when he chose his papal name. Through the intercession of Saint Francis, may we all find true joy in following our Lord and his call in all things.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I want to begin my homily by reminding you of the words we heard in our first reading from Nehemiah:

    He read out of the book from daybreak till midday,
    in the presence of the men, the women,
    and those children old enough to understand;
    and all the people listened attentively to the book of the law.

    So I hope you won’t mind if I preach from daybreak to midday!

    Today’s readings remind us that we are always in the “school” of the faith.  We don’t ever graduate from that school, until, of course, that great day, when we stand before our Lord to be judged, relying on his mercy and on our relationship with him, which is always a gift.  Those who unite themselves to our Lord in faith throughout their lives, those who continue to study the Scriptures and see them fulfilled in our hearing, they have the promise of eternal life in the Kingdom of God.

    Saint Jerome, whose feast we celebrated earlier this week, underlined this for us.  He said that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ, because for all of us who did not live in the same time as Jesus, we rely on the Scriptures not just to tell us who Christ was, but also to have a relationship with him, remembering that Jesus is always present in the proclamation of the Word of God.

    We see two Scriptural moments in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  First, the Word is proclaimed.  Second, that Word has an effect on its hearers.  So first, the Word is proclaimed.  In the first reading, Ezra the priest reads from the scroll from daybreak to midday, in the presence of the men, the women, and those children old enough to understand.  It was quite the proclamation, and also included a kind of homily, apparently, since the reading tells us that Ezra provided an interpretation.

    The second Scriptural moment is the Word’s effect on its hearers.  For Ezra, the Word produced a very emotional response.  The people bowed down in the presence of the Word, and began to weep.  The weeping is presumably because, hearing the Word, they realized how far they were from keeping its commandments.  I think we might have that same reaction sometimes.  Nehemiah then instructs them not to weep, but instead to rejoice and celebrate, because the proclamation of the Word on this holy day was an occasion for great joy.

    And so today, as we hear the word of God, we too have to let those words have effect on us.  We are sent out as Jesus sent the disciples, with little but his own instruction.  That’s enough, and if we are faithful, we will see the word of God have an effect in every place we bring it.  Praise God for his powerful, effective Word.

  • The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The past two weekends, we have had the first reading come from the book of the prophet Amos.  I love Amos.  He doesn’t mince words, and you can usually tell what he’s getting at right away.  Today, though, I think it’s a little harder to understand what he means.  The line that jumps out at me is the line, “Improvising to the music of the harp, like David, they devise their own accompaniment.”  It almost sounds like a good thing.  David, of course, was known to be a wonderful musician, so it seems like a good thing that they are able to devise their own accompaniments, right?

    But listen to that line again: “Improvising to the music of the harp, like David, they devise their own accompaniment.” Again, it almost sounds like a good thing, but it isn’t at all. David could devise his own accompaniment, because he was singing those Psalms with the voice of God. But if everyone in our choir devised their own accompaniment, we’d have a cacophony. So here Amos is making the point that devising their own accompaniment meant that they listened to what they wanted to hear, they sang the song they wanted to sing, without any thought as to what was right.  They did whatever they wanted to do, because it seemed like God was blessing them.  It’s kind of like the expression, “she dances to her own music.” It’s not a compliment at all.

    The rich man in today’s Gospel devised his own accompaniment too. He ignored poor Lazarus every single day of his life. He knew Lazarus’s need, and maybe he even thought he’d get around to helping Lazarus one day. Or maybe he thought, “What good can I do, I’m just one person?” Perhaps he thought, “If I give him something to eat, he’ll just be coming around looking for something to eat tomorrow.” He probably came up with all kinds of excuses about why he couldn’t help Lazarus right here and right now. He was devising his own accompaniment.

    And we all know the story about the rich man. Someday becomes never. It’s eventually too late: poor Lazarus dies and goes to be with Father Abraham. But in an ironic twist of fate, the rich man also dies, and it seems like right around the same time. But it seems that Lazarus and the rich man end up in different places, doesn’t it? The rich man learns that devising one’s own accompaniment does not help one to sing a hymn of praise to the Lord, and his choice in life becomes his choice in the life to come. If one doesn’t choose to praise God in life, one won’t have that option in the life to come. Devising our own accompaniment comes with drastic consequences.

    Even in death, the rich man is devising his own accompaniment.  Even now, he does not see Lazarus as anything more than a messenger to do his own bidding.  “Father Abraham,” he cries out, “have pity on me.  Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.”  When he learns that’s not possible, he tries another tack: “Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.”  He never sees Lazarus as a brother, and that’s why they’re in different places.  That’s why there is that great chasm that Father Abraham talked about between them – the rich man built it himself!  Devising our own accompaniment means that we separate ourselves from the community, we literally excommunicate ourselves.

    One of the principles of Catholic social teaching is solidarity with the poor and needy.  This was a topic that the prophets, like Amos, preached about all the time. Solidarity with the poor is the teaching that says we need to be one with our brothers and sisters, and not ignore their presence among us. I became very aware of this as I walked around downtown Chicago one time. I had come with some money to give to the poor. But on the train ride home, I realized that I had just quickly given some of them some money, and never really looked at any of them. They were my brothers and sisters, and I didn’t take the time to look them in the eye. Solidarity calls me – calls all of us – to do just that. We have to step out of that universe that we have set in motion around us and realize that Christ is present in each person God puts in our path, particularly and especially in the person who is in need. We have to step out of our own cacophony where we have devised our own accompaniments and step into the symphony that God has set in motion. 

    God knows about this principle of solidarity. Because God holds it so dear, he sent his only Son to take on flesh – our flesh – so that he could live in solidarity with us – all of us who are poor and needy in our sins. He shared in all of our joys and sorrows, and reaffirmed that human life was good. Life was made good at creation and remains good to this day. But if God could take on flesh in solidarity with us, then we must take on the burdens of our brothers and sisters and live in solidarity with them.  We must abandon our own accompaniments and sing the song of our brothers and sisters in need.

    In our second reading today, St. Paul tells us to “pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness. Compete well for the faith. Lay hold of eternal life, to which you were called when you made the noble confession in the presence of many witnesses.” We have to be serious about living our faith and proclaiming the Gospel in everything that we do. In solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters, we must sing to God’s own accompaniment and join in the wonderful symphony that is the heavenly worship.

  • Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest

    Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest

    Mass for the school children.

    Saint Vincent de Paul is one of my favorite saints. He knew what it meant to be a priest, and he lived it every day. But he didn’t start out wanting to be like that; he had a conversation experience along the way.

    Back in the days when Saint Vincent became a priest, they had a rather easy life and were quite wealthy. This was the expectation he had when he was ordained. That was his goal in some ways until he heard the deathbed confession of a dying servant. That encounter led him to realize the extremely great needs of poor people in France at that time.

    That same servant’s Master had been persuaded by his wife to support the creation of a group of missionary priests to serve the poor. The countess asked Father Vincent to lead the group, and although he declined at first, he later returned to do it. That group is now known as the Congregation of the Mission or the Vincentians. They took vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability and devoted themselves to serving the poor in smaller towns and villages.

    Later, along with Saint Louise de Marillac, he organized the rich women of Paris to collect funds for his missionary projects, founded several hospitals, collected relief funds for the victims of war and ransomed over 1,200 galley slaves from North Africa. Over time, this became a parish-based society for the spiritual and physical relief of the poor and sick. This became the inspiration for the organization now known as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society. You know the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, because we collect clothing for them every year.

    Saint Vincent was also very interested in helping with the formation of priests. He wanted the priests to realize the needs of the poor and to know that the idea of becoming rich wasn’t part of priestly life. He converted his attitudes from the cynical and even slothful ambitions of the clergy in those days, and turned instead to follow his true passion, bringing Christ to the needy and the downtrodden.

    We too are called to be true servants of our Lord, by looking out for the needs of those who maybe don’t have as many advantages as we do, and by caring for the poor and being true friends of those in need.