Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: Easter

  • Holy Saturday: Blessing of Easter Foods

    Holy Saturday: Blessing of Easter Foods

    Holy Saturday is a rough day for us Catholics, I think.  We started last Sunday with a triumphant procession with palms, only to end with the death of Jesus in the Passion.  On Thursday, we gathered for the joyful celebration of the institution of the Eucharist – an incredible gift from our God – and again, yesterday, we ended the week with the Passion.  It’s been a roller coaster week of death and life, of triumph and disappointment, of joy and sadness.  And today, well, today’s even harder.  We have the memory of the cross fresh in our minds from yesterday.  And we know the joy that’s coming tomorrow.  But for now, all we can do is wait.

    And we’re not so good about waiting, are we?  We live in a culture where we want immediate gratification.  But all we can do today is gaze on the sealed up tomb, symbolized in our church by the empty tabernacle, the extinguished sanctuary lights, and the stripped altar.  We are absolutely yearning for life to burst forth from the tomb and destroy death forever.  And it will, but not yet.

    This reminds me of when I was a kid, and mom would start cooking for Easter.  Days before, she would prepare Easter calzone, a traditional Italian Easter food that her father used to make.  She would bake lamb cakes made of Aunt Mia’s sour cream pound cake recipe, one of my two favorite versions of that cake.  The smells would be incredible, and we longed to nibble on the jellybeans that decorated the lamb cake, or have just a little slice of the calzone.  And we’d get to do that, but not yet.

    Not yet because it’s not Easter yet, and we’re still fasting, still waiting, still hoping, praying and believing.  There would be joy in the morning, but for now, all we could do is wait … even as our hungry tummies growled, as we smelled the wonderful things baking in the kitchen.

    Food gives us powerful memories, especially on feasts like this.  We always remember the things we ate on Easter Sunday, or on Christmas, and yes, even the Irish soda bread on Saint Patrick’s day!  In so many ways, the food we prepare and eat reminds us of who we are, reminds us of those we love, and reminds us of the wonderful mysteries that we celebrate.  It’s important to cook our traditional foods because they are gifts to us from the One who provides food for our stomachs as well as food for our souls.  It’s important that young people learn to make these foods so the tradition doesn’t end, and that they hear the stories of those great traditions so that the grace will live on.

    We gather here today then, to thank our Maker for providing for us once again.  We ask his blessings on the feasts of tomorrow, just as he has blessed us with the whole reason for tomorrow.  We remember the stories of our family traditions, as well as The Story that brings us together on Holy Week and Easter.  The time is almost here.  The fast is almost over.  We eagerly await the Feast and the feasting.

  • Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus is a perplexing one, to be sure. But in the light of Easter, we can see that Jesus was proclaiming that God is doing something new. Not only that, but God wants us all to be part of that new thing. For Nicodemus, that meant the old ways of worshipping and living were no longer sufficient, and really no longer needed. God was looking not just for people’s obedience, but also their hearts.

    We see those hearts at work in the early Christian community. The reading from Acts this morning tells us that the believers cared for one another deeply, and were generous in that care. “The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common.” They were even selling their possessions to give to those who were in need. Nobody felt needy, nobody felt cheated, nobody felt like they were doing more than their share. People were worshipping not just with their minds, but also with their hearts, and their worshipping didn’t stop when they left the worship place.

    So the same has to be true for us, really. We have to be willing to give of our hearts, to believe not just when we’re in church, but also when we are in the rest of our life. We have to trust God to take care of us when we stick our neck out to help someone else. We have to worship not just with our minds but also with our hearts.

  • Second Sunday of Easter

    Second Sunday of Easter

    Today’s Readings

    Today is the feast day for those of us who sometimes question things, and the apostle, St. Thomas, is our patron saint. And so today we can give Thomas a hard time for his unbelief, and we can disparage all those other “doubting Thomases” in our lives, or, maybe, we can just come to the Lord in our humility and say “My Lord and my God!”

    Because I’m sure we can all think of at least one time when we were reluctant to believe something, or had our faith tested, only to have Jesus stand before us and say, “Peace be with you.” I remember the time that it became apparent to me that the Lord was calling me to go to seminary after so many years being out of school. I had a long list of reasons why that wouldn’t work, why it couldn’t be done at this stage of my life, why anyone would be a better choice than me. And I never got a direct answer to any of that. Never. In some ways, all I got was Jesus standing in the midst of my questioning and saying to me “Peace be with you.” And six months later I was in seminary.

    You’ve had that same kind of experience at some point in your life, I’d bet. Maybe it was in college when you started really questioning your faith and felt like everything anyone had ever told you was a lie. Or maybe it was the time you were called to do something at Church, or even take a turn in your career, and couldn’t possibly believe that you were qualified to do that. Maybe it was the time it suddenly dawned on you that you were a parent, and had no idea how you could ever raise a child. It could even have been the time when you completely changed your career – as I did – and weren’t totally sure that was God’s will for you.

    Like Thomas, we want evidence, hard facts, a good hard look at the big picture, before we’re ready to jump in. We want to “see the mark of the nails in his hands and put our fingers into the nailmarks and put our hands into his side.” But that’s not faith. Some people say that seeing is believing, but faith tells us that believing is seeing. “Blessed are they,” Jesus says, “who have not seen but still believe.” We sometimes first have to make an act of faith, a leap of faith if you will, before we can really see what God is doing in our lives. And that’s the hard part, that’s the part that we, like Thomas, are reluctant to do.

    Jesus makes three invitations to us today. The first is to believe. Believe with all your heart and mind and soul. Believe first, and leave the seeing to later. Trust that God is with you, walking with you, guiding you, willing the best for you. Be ready to make that leap of faith. What God has in store for us is so much better than our puny plans for our lives. Be blessed by not seeing but still believing.

    The second invitation is to touch. “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says to Thomas, “and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” He makes that same invitation to us every time we walk up to receive Holy Communion. What a gift it is to be able to share in Christ’s wounds, to be bound up in his Passion, to live the resurrection and to be nourished by his very body and blood. Just like Thomas, we’re invited to touch so that we too might believe.

    The third invitation is to live a new day. The Gospel tells us that Jesus first came to the Apostles on the evening of the “first day of the week.” That detail isn’t there so that we know what day it is or can mark our calendars. In the Gospel, the “first day of the week” refers to the new day that Jesus is bringing about – a new day of faith, a new day of trust in God’s divine mercy, a new day of being caught up in God’s life. We are invited to that new day every time we gather for worship.

    We have doubts, periodically and sometimes persistently. But God does not abandon us in our doubt. Just like Thomas, he comes to us in the midst of our uncertainty and says to us: “Do not be unbelieving, but believe.” “Peace be with you.”

  • Easter Saturday

    Easter Saturday

    Today’s readings

    We are confronted in today’s Gospel with something we all have to struggle with, and that is a reluctance to believe. In the disciples’ case, it was a slowness to believe based on the fact that they didn’t really have the resources that we do – like the scriptures and hundreds of years of Church teaching. But still, they did have Jesus’ words, which they apparently didn’t understand, which they in some ways really didn’t believe.

    We come to Mass today having been there, done that. Like I said, we have more resources: the scriptures and the Church, and so it often seems like we should know better. And I think in some ways we do believe, at least in our heads. But when it comes to believing with our heats, it’s another thing entirely. How easy is it to believe that God loves us and has a plan for us when we are confronted with a difficult situation? When a loved one is dying? When we’ve lost a job? When the economy has eaten up our retirement? When we’ve just learned that we are seriously ill?

    But like the disciples, Jesus comes to us today and tells us that our faith must be the bedrock of our lives: helping us to be joyful in the good times and providing a source of strength in our bad times. And just when we are all thinking about ourselves – about what we need, about what we’re going through – just when the disciples are trying to figure out what to do next – Jesus makes it clear: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” Get back on the horse, get back into life, live the faith and be a witness. That’s the life of the disciple, that’s the life of faith.

    And we can do all that today and every day because of what we celebrate on this Easter Day: Christ is risen, and sin and death have been destroyed. God does have a plan for us, he does love us, and he has done all he needs to do to prove it.

  • Easter Thursday

    Easter Thursday

    Today’s readings

    The time between Easter and Pentecost is often referred to as the period of Mystagogy. Mystagogy is a Greek word meaning “looking back on the mysteries.” It is a time of unpacking what we have just been through, and coming to see, with eyes enlightened by faith, the meaning of things we may never have noticed before.

    The disciples in today’s Gospel reading are beginning that period of Mystagogy. They have seen the risen Lord, and now things they wondered about are all starting to make sense to them. Remember, they didn’t have the Gospels to guide them like we do; they had to live through all of this and it’s so clear from the readings of Lent and especially Holy Week that they were confounded by what Jesus was doing and what was happening to him. They were horrified and disillusioned and grieved by his death. But now, seeing him risen from the grave, they are beginning to make sense of it all. As the Gospel says today, “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” and they came to see how the Scriptures applied to Jesus.

    This is a special period for those we just received into the Church at the Easter Vigil. They will use this time of Mystagogy to grow in their new-found faith. It will be a time for them, too, to look back on the mysteries. They will reflect on their faith journey that began in childhood and eventually brought them here. They will reflect on the wonderful rites they have experienced, from the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens, to their Election by the Bishop early in Lent, to the Scrutinies we witnessed with them, all the way to their Baptism, Confirmation and First Eucharist on Holy Saturday night. They will see God at work in their lives and make sense of things they may have been confused about before.

    But this Mystagogy isn’t just limited to the disciples and our Neophytes. We are all mystagogues. Mystagogy, I think, is a life-long process, and all of us, converts and cradle Catholics alike, spend the rest of our lives unpacking the mysteries, reflecting on our lives of faith, coming to see who Jesus is for us in whole new ways, appreciating more deeply the love and grace poured out on us every day. Every day is a new opportunity for Mystagogy, and an opportunity to exclaim with our Psalmist today, seeing the wonderful mysteries that have unfolded for us, “O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!”

  • Fourth Sunday of Easter: Following the Good Shepherd

    Fourth Sunday of Easter: Following the Good Shepherd

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    Every year on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, we celebrate “Good Shepherd Sunday.”  And every year on this Sunday, I protest inwardly about how awful it is to be compared to sheep!  I think a lot of priests look forward to preaching on this day, but for me the analogy just doesn’t seem to work.  Maybe that’s because I didn’t grow up in the time and place Jesus was preaching.  They might have been more prone to get the point than people in our modern time and suburban place.  I mean, you don’t see a lot of sheep around Naperville, do you?  I think the reason I protest against this whole sheep metaphor is because it is usually preached as encouraging a kind of blind acceptance of what we’re being taught.  Sheep are usually thought of as animals who accept whatever they’re being told blindly, because they are not able to think for themselves.  That’s what makes me kind of bristle at the whole idea of being compared to sheep.  I don’t think we’re supposed to check our brains at the door when it comes to living our faith.  I can’t imagine God wanting us to do that since he created our ability to think and gifted us with free will.So I’m thinking that this is not the picture we are supposed to be getting from these readings, and that the problem here is that your preacher doesn’t really know anything helpful about sheep that would explain the analogy.  So I read a commentary about this reading, and I think it helps sort out the analogy that Jesus is making here.  In Jesus’ day, the shepherds would gather several flocks in the same fenced-enclosure. The sheepfold might be constructed in a pasture using brush and sticks; or, it would adjoin a wall of a house and have makeshift walls for the other sides. Owners of small flocks of sheep would have combined them in the secure enclosure at night.  Someone – the gatekeeper – would then guard the flocks. The "gate" would have been a simple entrance, but the gatekeeper might even stretch out across the opening and literally be the "gate." The shepherds would arrive early in the morning and be admitted by the gatekeeper. They would call out to their sheep and the members of the flock recognize the voice of their own shepherd, and that shepherd would “lead them out.”  The shepherd then walks in front of the flock and they follow. (Jude Sicilliano, OP)So then, I think the point that Jesus is making is that sheep know their shepherd’s voice and they follow him.  This shepherd is one who takes care of them and leads them, keeping them safe.  So maybe sheep aren’t so dumb after all.  Their ability to know their shepherd’s voice helps bring them to the place where they belong, and their desire to follow the shepherd keeps them safe, keeps them from stumbling off the path into who knows what kind of dangerous situations.
    It pains me to say this, but you know, maybe we need to be a little more like sheep after all.  I for one find that I am often distracted by the plethora of competing voices out there, so much so that it can be hard at times to hear the voice of Jesus our Good Shepherd.  Some of the distracting voices that we are subjected to include:
    •    voices of temptation that call us to covet more than we need or embroil us in heartbreaking addictions;
    •    voices of intolerance that call us to accept war and terrorism as legitimate ways to deal with disputes;
    •    voices of self-importance that call us to turn our back on God or trick us into thinking that we don’t really need God;
    •    voices of isolation that divorce us from family and community
    •    voices of apathy that divorce us from our world, the needy, and the marginalized
    •    voices of discouragement that lead us to give up on ourselves or on others, or that convince us that our efforts don’t really matter

    And these are just a few, aren’t they?  There are so many voices out there that can distract us from our Shepherd, so many enticing things to drag us off the path to God.  And we follow them all the time.  All these voices diminish our life, lead us away from our families, communities, church, even God.  Even if we follow them in the hopes of leading a more exciting life, we may find that the momentary thrill of turning away from the Good Shepherd only leaves us feeling diminished and alone.  The only way to a more exciting, fulfilling life is to follow Jesus who “came so that [we] might have life and have it more abundantly.”

    So does this mean we have to leave our brains at the door, and follow blindly?  No.  Of course not.  Following those other competing voices out there is what requires blind acceptance.  The thinking person follows the Good Shepherd, and faces the many challenges of life not with some kind of delirious, unthinking, debilitating faith, but instead with a faith that is informed by Scripture, upheld by Tradition, and nourished in the Eucharist.  The most abundant life we can have is a life in Christ.

    On this Good Shepherd Sunday, the Church also asks us to pray for vocations.  Because without people dedicated to their vocation – whatever it may be – so many people will never hear the Gospel, never hear the Shepherd’s voice. We know that every person has a vocation. Every person is called on by God to do something specific with their life that will bring not only them, but also others around them, to salvation. Parents help to bring their children to salvation by raising them in the faith. Spouses bring their husbands and wives to salvation by upholding their faith and living for each other in good times and in bad.  Teachers help bring students to salvation by educating them and helping them to develop their God-given talents. Business people bring others to salvation by living lives of integrity and witness to their faith by conducting business fairly and with justice and concern for the needy. The list goes on. Every vocation, every authentic vocation, calls the disciple to do what God created them for, and helps God to bring salvation to the whole world.

    Six years ago on this very Sunday, I was struggling with my vocation. I knew that God was calling me to give up my comfortable life and go to seminary to study for the priesthood. But I did not want to go. I had heard the Shepherd’s voice but was in some ways choosing to ignore it.  I was already doing what I wanted to do with my life and thought it was going pretty well. But on some level, I knew that life as a disciple required me to do what God wanted, and not necessarily what I wanted. There was an open house that day at the Diocesan Vocations Office. I wasn’t interested in going – at all. And that day, the celebrant, who is now one of my brother priests, preached on vocations and made the point that living as a disciple meant that at some point we have to stop asking the question, “what do I want to do with my life?” and start asking, “what does God want me to do with my life?” And I knew that God wanted me to go to that open house that day, so I did. Four months later, I was in seminary.

    What about you? Are you doing what God wants you to do with your life? Maybe your answer won’t require such a radical change as mine did. Maybe it means you renew your commitment to your family, your work, your life as a disciple. But if you’re a young person out there and have only been thinking about what’s going to make you successful and bring in lots of money so you can retire at age 35, maybe God is to
    day asking you to stop thinking only of yourself and put your life’s work at the service of the Gospel. Maybe you’re being called on to be a teacher, or a police officer, or a health care professional. And maybe, just maybe, God is calling you to enter the priesthood or religious life. On this day of prayer for vocations, I’m just asking you to pray that God would make his plans for your life clear to you, and that you would promise God to do what he asks of you. I can tell you first hand that nothing, absolutely nothing, will give you a more abundant life. 

  • Third Sunday of Easter

    Third Sunday of Easter

    Today's readings [display_podcast]

    emmaus“They recounted … what had taken place on the way, and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”  It is always interesting to me, in this story of the appearance of Jesus on the road to Emmaus, how the one thing that got through to them was the breaking of the bread.  He spent a long time walking with them, interpreting the Scriptures and recollecting all the things that had happened on the way.  But they never knew it was Jesus until he broke bread with them.

    Because of this, the early Christian community quickly took on a Eucharistic identity.  They gathered often and took part in the breaking of the bread, and it is in this act of worship that they found the icon of who they were.  “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus had commanded them, and through appearances like this one on the road to Emmaus, they quickly began to see how important this actually was.  And because the early Christian Community found its own identity in the breaking of the bread, it is not terribly surprising, I think, that we find ourselves to be a Eucharistic people.

    Listen to the part of the Gospel where he reveals himself to them once again: “And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.”  There are four specific verbs here: took, blessed, broke, gave.  First Jesus takes bread, receives our offerings, uses what we have to bring to the table.  Then he blesses that bread: as waning as our gifts may be, Jesus blesses them anyway and gives them a character that they could never have on their own, or as a result of our poor efforts.  Then he breaks it: just as his own body was broken for us on the cross, so he breaks the bread of our offerings so that it can be a sacrifice given for many.  Finally he gives it: our bread, our offerings, are now completely transformed, filled up with whatever they may lack, blessed and made available to many, and now given for our own sanctification and salvation.  The gifts we have given, which ultimately came from God, are now given to us once again, only this time with more blessing than they ever had.

    We are a Eucharistic people.  So we gather over and over to find our identity once again.  We offer our gifts: bread and wine, our experiences, our sorrows and joys, our loving and our living, our successes and failures, who we are and who we were meant to be.  Jesus takes all this, blesses it, breaks it and offers it back redeemed and sanctified and made whole and holy.  Every time we gather for the Eucharist, we not only recognize our Lord in the breaking of the bread, but also we recognize our selves, the ones we were created to be.

    In fact, it is this identity that forms our parish vision statement.  You may have seen it before.  If not, or if not recently, go on our website and look it up.  Here is what it says, and it comes directly from this very Gospel reading.  Listen:

    We, the Catholic community of St. Raphael,
    are a people being transformed into Christ.

    A community gathered –
    a worshipping people
    called by God
    formed by Scripture, Sacrament and Tradition
    renewed by the Spirit
    united in faith
    we journey together.
       
    A community blest –
    a gifted people
    honoring differences
    respecting the dignity of all
    learning and teaching
    developing leaders
    we grow in grace.

    A community broken –
    a compassionate people
    thirsting for justice
    aching for peace
    receiving and giving forgiveness
    bringing hope to the hopeless
    we struggle for wholeness.

    A community given –
    a generous people
    welcoming all
    offering our treasures
    leading with shared wisdom
    responding in love
    we embrace Christ's mission to transform the world.

    Our parish has chosen to identify itself as a Eucharistic community: taken, blessed, broken, and given for all.  How wonderful for us to see our Lord, to see ourselves, and to see one another in the breaking of the bread!