Tag: Church

  • The Anniversary of the Dedication of Saint John Lateran

    The Anniversary of the Dedication of Saint John Lateran

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate the feast of the dedication of the Cathedral of St. John Lateran in Rome. Most people think of St. Peter’s Basilica as the pope’s church, but that’s not true. As the Bishop of Rome, his Cathedral Church is the Lateran Cathedral, once dedicated to our Savior, but now named for St. 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. Today we celebrate the feast of its dedication on November 9, 324 by Pope St. 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.

  • The Anniversary of the Dedication of the Saint John Lateran Cathedral

    The Anniversary of the Dedication of the Saint John Lateran Cathedral

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate the feast of the Dedication of the Saint John Lateran Cathedral in Rome. That seems a little obscure to us, I know, but it’s an important feast for the Church because it is a celebration of Church and a reflection on what Church is. The Lateran Cathedral is the cathedral church for the Diocese of Rome. As bishop of the diocese, the Lateran Cathedral is the pope’s church. Because of that, Saint John Lateran is considered to be the mother church of the Catholic faithful. So it’s an important church, and it gives us cause to celebrate the Church as a whole, so this feast is celebrated throughout the world, and when it falls on Sunday, it takes the place of the Ordinary Time Sunday. So that’s why we’re celebrating the Dedication of Saint John Lateran today.

    So let’s take a look at what Church (big “C”) is. The Church is a reality that is at the same time concrete and experiential and heavenly and eternal. The concrete structures of it are the nuts and bolts that make it work. The building itself, the parish staff, the rubrics of liturgy and the holy books, as well as teachings and dogma and sacraments – all of these are things we can touch, or learn or work with. But there is another layer, one more experiential. These include the people as a whole, on the way to holiness; the Word at work in believers; the effects of grace mediated through the sacraments; the Gospel lived out day by day and the love of God shown through Charity. And in yet another layer, the Church is not just here on earth. It’s in heaven, celebrated among the Communion of Saints and sung by the choirs of angels. And finally it is eternal, not just limited to our own puny ideas of time and space, but all wrapped up in the Mind of God who is ever-present, all-powerful and all-knowing. The Church is an incredible reality that has been pondered by people much more saintly and learned than I, and a reality that will be advanced and celebrated for ages yet to come.

    The Scriptures today are a beautiful meditation on Church. The gospel is a little jarring, to be honest. Jesus has this famous dust-up with the temple merchants and officials. A lot of people find this disturbing, because it jars their view of Jesus as a peaceful man. For the record, I don’t think Jesus was about peace the way we think of peace. He was definitely more about zeal for the truth, for justice, and for proper worship of God, all of which is in play here. Those merchants were doing a necessary task, honestly. People needed to pay the temple tax, and they needed the proper coinage to do it, so there had to be money changers. People needed to make sacrifice, and they needed unblemished animals for it, so there had to be people selling animals. What didn’t need to happen was for these people to be taking advantage of the poor, and charging more than they should have. That was dishonest and unjust and Jesus was sick of it.

    But even more than that, this whole dishonest structure was a view of Church that Jesus was saying was completely unnecessary now. The kingdom of God is at hand, we’ve been hearing that in the readings for months now, and so this unjust and corrupt view of Church needed to come to an end. So in his zeal for the real house of God, Jesus turns the old stuff upside-down. That’s what’s going on here. Saint Paul underscores the similar notion to the people of Corinth in today’s first reading. What is the Church? He says, “YOU are God’s building!” He and the Apostles have laid the foundation, and we are building it up, becoming a Temple of the Holy Spirit. There is an entirely new view of Church going on here, and it’s one that we should celebrate and have zeal for.

    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.

  • Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    Today’s readings

    In today’s Gospel, Peter and the others are asked, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  We heard this Gospel story just last weekend.  Now, both Peter and Paul were committed to the truth about who Christ was.  They had too much at stake.  Having both messed up their estimation of who Jesus was earlier in their lives, they knew the danger of falling into the trap.  So for them Jesus could never be just a brother, friend or role model – that was inadequate.  And both of them proclaimed with all of their life straight through to their death that Jesus Christ is Lord.  We too on this day must repent of the mediocrity we sometimes settle for in our relationship with Christ.  He has to be Lord of our lives and we must proclaim him to be that Lord to our dying breath.  We must never break faith with Saints Peter and Paul, who preserved that faith at considerable personal cost.

    Perhaps Saints Peter and Paul can inspire our own apostolic zeal.  Then, as we bear witness to the fact that Jesus is Lord of our lives and of all the earth, we can bring a banal world to relevance.  Perhaps in our renewed apostolic zeal we can bring justice to the oppressed, right judgment to the wayward, love to the forgotten and the lonely, truth to a society that settles for relativism, and faith to a world that has lost sight of anything worth believing in.  One might say that that is the Church’s mission, but actually the mission is what is of primary importance.  And so we believe that the apostolic mission has a Church, and it’s time for the Church to be released from its chains and burst forth to give witness in the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

  • Mass for the Election of a Bishop

    Mass for the Election of a Bishop

    Our diocese this weekend is celebrating the Mass for the Election of a Bishop, praying for the prompt appointment of our next bishop.  So I did a brief homily on what a bishop is and does, followed by a talk about (sigh) money.  You get just the first thing here!

    As you may know, our diocese has not had a bishop since early December, when Bishop Sartain became the archbishop of Seattle.  Since then, Bishop Siegel, our auxiliary bishop, was named the diocesan administrator.  He can keep the diocese running, but can’t really make any substantive changes.  So at this time, we are waiting for Rome to select a new bishop for us, and today we celebrate a special Mass for the Election of a Bishop, praying that the Holy Spirit would help Pope Benedict find us a man who is holy, and loving to his people and clergy.

     

    Bishops were selected in the Church pretty early on, during the time the original Apostles were dying off.  These successors to the Apostles helped to ensure that the faith was handed down to us as the Lord intended it.  They administrate the Sacraments and see to it that the diocese and its parishes live and witness to the Gospel message in the present time.

     

    Candidates for the office of Bishop have to be priests.  When there is a vacancy in a diocese such as ours, it can be filled by a man who is already a bishop somewhere else, or by a priest of our diocese or even of another diocese.  Names for these candidates are submitted to Rome through the Papal Nuncio, who in the United States is Archbishop Pietro Sambi.  These candidates are examined very closely, and without their knowing, I might add.  If the person selected is already a bishop, he is installed in the diocese within a short period of time.  If he is a priest, he is ordained or consecrated as a bishop, which automatically installs him as the bishop of the diocese.

     

    The diocese of Joliet in Illinois was erected in December of 1948, carved out of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the diocese of Rockford, and the diocese of Peoria.  Since then we have had four bishops.  Bishop Martin McNamara, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, served from the erection of the diocese until his death in 1966.  Bishop Romeo Blanchette, a priest and auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Joliet, served from 1966 until 1979.  Bishop Joseph Imesch, an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Detroit, served from 1979 until his retirement in 2006.  Bishop Peter Sartain, who was bishop of Little Rock, served from 2006 until this past December.

     

    And so we continue to wait for word of who our next bishop will be.  We are a rather large diocese, of around 700,000 Catholics spread over seven counties.  Popular opinion suggests that that means we won’t have to wait very long.  Our prayer is that the Holy Spirit would inspire all those involved in the decision so that we have a wonderful bishop who can serve us and help us move our diocese forward in spreading the Gospel to the people of our seven counties.

     

  • Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today we’re gathered on what is, for us, the eve of the Ascension.  While the reading that we have in today’s Gospel is from John’s account of the eve of the Passion, the words could well have been spoken to the Apostles on the eve of the Ascension too.  Jesus speaks of leaving the world and going back to the Father, this time until he returns in glory.  The Twelve had to be broken hearted all over again.  They had lost their friend and Lord briefly to death, but had been encouraged by him as he appeared to them after the Ascension, and now he is preparing to leave again.

    But the truth of it is that nothing will happen with the fledgling Church until he does leave.  Only then will the Father send the Holy Spirit to be with the Church until the end of time, giving the early disciples and us later disciples the grace and strength to go forward and proclaim the kingdom and call the world to repentance and grace. If God’s purpose is to be advanced on this earth, then Jesus has to return to the Father. If the Spirit does not descend, the Church would not be born. If the Church were not born, the Gospel would be but an obscure footnote in the history of the world.

    The Good News for us is that the Holy Spirit continues to work among us today, as often as we call on him.  “Ask and you will receive,” Jesus says, and so we ask and receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for the glory and praise of God. We disciples, we friends of Jesus, can count on his blessing, the rich gift of the Holy Spirit, the great witness of the Church. Our lives are enriched by our faith and our discipleship. What we do here on earth, what we suffer in our lives, what we celebrate — all this will bear fruit for the glory of God.

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    This week we have been hearing in our first readings from the Acts of the Apostles, about the controversy concerning the Gentiles.  As the Church grew and grew, many people from all walks of life began to turn to the Lord.  That’s the kind of thing we want to have happen.  But as the Church grew, it became time to clarify which traditions were just traditions and which really pertained to the faith.  How much of the Judaic faith was really necessary for salvation in Christ?

    Many of the traditions had to go.  Jesus himself chastised the Pharisees and Scribes often enough for the parts of the law that they rigorously defended when they should long ago have been dismissed as scrupulous and irrelevant.  But not everything would have to go.  Certainly there were tenets of Judaic faith that should and do apply to Christians too.  We retain a lot of Judaic faith in our own practice of religion even to this day: the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments, even the berekah prayer form is part of our Liturgy right now.  So the task for the Church was to untangle what needed to stay, and what had to go.

    The blueprint for them is as it is for us: the Gospel.  What traditions pertained to the great love that Christ brought us and called us to live for God and neighbor?  Those we should keep.  What traditions merely amounted to undue burden on our brothers and sisters and became irrelevant in the light of the Gospel?  Those would have to go.

    We’ll see in the coming days that the Church figured this out.  We know they did, or we would probably not be around today.  But we still have to figure it out sometimes, I think.  As we call Catholics to come home, we have to figure out how to welcome them back.  Maybe they have been put off long ago by irrelevant rules that amounted to undue burden.  We have to teach them what parts of our faith are Gospel values and put aside those things that are not.

    Controversies like the one with which the early Church wrestled teach us things.  We are forced to examine our faith and keep it lively and fresh, instead of letting it grow dim and lifeless.  Keeping our eye on the Gospel will help us to welcome people home, to the Church and to the family of God.

  • Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome

    Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate the feast of the dedication of the Cathedral of St. John Lateran in Rome. Most people think of St. Peter’s Basilica as the pope’s church, but that’s not true. As the Bishop of Rome, his Cathedral Church is the Lateran Cathedral, once dedicated to our Savior, but now named for St. 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. Today we celebrate the feast of its dedication on November 9, 324 by Pope St. 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.

  • Thursday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The Israelites wandering in the desert would seem to have had the spiritual life easy. How could they possibly miss God’s presence? There was a cloud to lead them to the Lord by day, and fire by night. But just like the stuff that ended up in the net in today’s Gospel, some people got it and some people didn’t.

    The same is true for us. How hard can it be for us to see the Lord’s presence in our own lives?  Even now, some people get it and some people don’t.  And more than that, even the faithful among us sometimes get it and sometimes don’t.  I often think it would be good to have something as hard to miss as a column of cloud or fire to keep me on the straight and narrow.  Well, in a way – a much better way, actually –  we do: we have the Church, the Sacraments, and the Word of God, prayer that beckons us by day and by night. But even that doesn’t always light the way for us.  There are so many distractions.

    The issue is urgent.  The Kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells us today, will be like the fishmongers sorting out the fish from the seaborne refuse.  We don’t want to get thrown out with all that vile stuff.  So, may God lead us all to be among those who get it, those who follow the way marked out for us. After all, we have something way better than clouds by day and fire by night, don’t we?

  • Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    There’s a lot of talk about water in these readings today, and when that happens, we know that it means the talk is really about baptism. We ourselves are the sick and lame man who needed Jesus’ help to get into the waters of Bethesda. The name “Bethesda” means “house of mercy” in Hebrew, and that, of course, would be the Church. We see the Church too in the temple in the first reading, from which waters flow which refresh and nourish the surrounding countryside. These, of course, again are the waters of baptism. Lent calls us to renew ourselves in baptism. We are called to enter, once again, those waters that heal our bodies and our souls. We are called to drink deep of the grace of God so that we can go forth and refresh the world.

  • Forty Hours Devotion: Thursday Evening Vespers

    Forty Hours Devotion: Thursday Evening Vespers

    Reading: Hebrews 12:18-24

    The letter to the Hebrews draws our attention to two living pictures. First, there is the worship gathering of the old Law, at Mount Sinai, with Moses as the presider. There the people gathered in fear, because anyone who might see the Lord would certainly die. The worship was of a God of fire and judgment, and a covenant marked by strict observance of the Law. Sinners really had no place in this worship space, because their own rejection of the covenant marked them for destruction.

    Second, there is the worship gathering of the New Covenant, at Mount Zion, the centerpiece of the New Jerusalem, with no one less than Jesus Christ as the presider. Here the people gather in joy, because the Lord embraces us to live. The worship here is of a God of mercy and compassion, and a covenant marked by “the sprinkled blood which speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.” Sinners are central to worship on this mountain, where Christ offers himself as salvation for the sins of the whole world.

    This second mountain is where we gather today, entering with joy this holy ground, aware that with us are gathered “countless angels in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” And it is Jesus that we have come to worship on this altar, in these holy forty hours, aware that we are the holy people of God, the people he came to save, the ones he longs for.

    I borrowed a tradition from Anne Hillebrand of our pastoral staff when my father died. At family gatherings, we have a special candle that we light to remind ourselves that he is with us, certainly not in a physical way, but as we Catholics believe, among the Communion of Saints. Jacqueline Skelly and I had a conversation this morning that reminded me of this little tradition. We see here so many beautiful candles burning with love for God. They are symbols of the light of Christ, certainly, but also symbols of all those people that the author of the letter to the Hebrews speaks of: the countless angels, the assembly of the firstborn, the spirits of the just made perfect. All of the angels and saints and our faithful departed gather with us on this holy night to adore the Lord.

    This is an opportunity to see the Church, as it were, in a whole new light. The offical Evening Prayer, or Vespers, of the Church always speaks of the Church in a special way, in the image of Mary. We have more Marian prayers in Vespers, and we sing Mary’s song, the Magnificat. But she stands in the place of the Church, being the image of the faith the Church has in Christ. And so, tonight, we have the worship of the Church gathered in the Assembly of the Lord. We’ve come to celebrate the New Covenant that Jesus ratified in his own blood. We celebrate the nourishment we have in Christ’s own body, we celebrate his complete presence, soul and divinity, incarnate among us in our praying.

    But it’s also important for us to remember that the presence of Christ, and the Communion of Saints, do not leave us when we leave this holy place. As we recognize Christ our Lord in the Eucharist this evening, so we should always recognize him in our brothers and sisters, the poor and the outcast, the sinners among us, the ones who frustrate us, those who are fallen, prisoners, the elderly and the terminally ill, the unborn, and all the people God has created and called his own. Christ is present with us in a special way during these forty hours, but he is also present to us in important ways every hour of our living. As we have come to adore the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament tonight, let us resolve to adore the Lord in all the people God puts in our path from this moment forward.

    As we gather here before our Eucharistic Lord, the love that God has for us is palpable, but so is the love that God has for everyone. It is important for us to be welcoming witnesses of every person, so that they can see Christ in us, but also so that we can see Christ in them.

    And so we pray with joy this night, gathered in the presence of all God’s holy ones, asking that the Church Triumphant would be made manifest in all its glory, here and now, and in every age to come.