One of the best reasons for us to make the most of Lent is that God is doing something new, as he tells us in today’s first reading. He wants of us an increase in faith. He wants us to have a faith that accepts the gift of miracles, but does not rely on miracles to sustain it. The royal official and his household came to believe when his child was cured, and that’s a good first step. Whatever it takes to bring us to faith is okay. But we are called to go beyond that, and to nurture a faith in Jesus that trusts even when trusting seems foolish. God is doing something new in us this Lent; may our Eucharist strengthen us to receive it.
Tag: faith
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Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time
In our first reading today, we have an instruction on the virtue of integrity. Integrity is that virtue by which we show that we are who we say we are, that we are in our secret moments what we are in our public ones, that we walk the walk and talk the talk. Our first reading speaks of the blessings of a life of integrity: “Compassionate and merciful is the LORD; he forgives sins, he saves in time of trouble and he is a protector to all who seek him in truth.” Seeking the Lord in truth is the cornerstone of integrity, because to be people of integrity we have to find him in the simplicity of our hearts.
Integrity requires steadfast faith and careful study: “incline your ear and receive the word of understanding, undisturbed in time of adversity.” If we seek the Lord’s will and open our minds and hearts, we will receive that will in God’s time. Exposing our hearts and minds to Scripture and meditation will allow God to form us in his ways.
Integrity requires patient acceptance of our station of life: “Accept whatever befalls you, when sorrowful, be steadfast, and in crushing misfortune be patient…” Being people of faith is easy in good times, but being people of faith in hard times requires character, and allows God to hone that faith to be a source of real strength.
Integrity requires trust in God: “Trust God and God will help you; trust in him, and he will direct your way…” Trust is following God, not knowing where he will lead you, but knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that wherever he leads you will be for the greatest possible good.
Integrity requires humility too, as the apostles found out when they reached Capernaum. It doesn’t take any integrity to declare oneself the greatest, it requires integrity to know that any greatness that we might have is really a sharing in the awesome greatness of our God.
The Psalmist instructs us today: “Commit your life to the Lord, and he will help you.” May that commitment be a commitment to integrity and a sharing in the life of God.
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Saturday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time
“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” The writer of the letter to the Hebrews sums up for us this notion of faith, which can be so difficult to wrap our minds around. What I love about the definition of faith that comes to us in this passage is that it seems to be telling us what we at some level already know: faith is a heritage. The passage speaks of the faith of Abel, Enoch, and Noah, all stories we can readily read in our Old Testament, stories of men who had to really take a leap of faith because what they hoped for was unseen. Only God could fulfill all their hopes and longings.
The same, of course, is true for us. We are living in difficult times. There is uncertainty in the economy to the point that probably none of us can say that we don’t know someone affected by layoffs, devalued stock, or a dwindling economy. There is uncertainty in the world, with wars being fought almost everywhere we can think of, and especially our own men and women fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our own state has political issues to the point that it’s hard to know which politicians are honest and which are not, and we almost hate to turn on the television and hear of how deep the scandal has grown. We have our own personal family uncertainties, maybe loved ones are sick, or are suffering from depression. Maybe relationships are strained.
For all of us who live in these uncertain times, Jesus offers us hope. We get a glimpse today at what we hope for and cannot now see: Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James and John. This is a foretaste of the glory of the Resurrection, a glory that Jesus knew when he rose from the dead, and a glory that we yet hope for. It’s not pie in the sky: we know that our promise in Christ is greater than any of the difficulties our time can bring us. We know that faith is our heritage, and that that faith has led all of our forebears through times as difficult or more difficult than this. Today, we have the promise of things hoped for and evidence of things unseen: Christ is our hope, yesterday, today and for ever.
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Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
When I was in seminary, I did my hospital chaplaincy in my fourth summer at Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove. Every once in a while I would come to a room that was marked with a prominent sign stating that the room was quarantined and outlining a whole list of restrictions to any visitor who would enter. Those restrictions usually required a mask and sterile gloves, and often a sterile gown as well. The problem with all that is that it’s a real obstacle to any kind of effective ministry to the sick. So we were taught to ask at the nurse’s station whether the protection was for the patient’s benefit or for ours. If it was for the patient’s benefit, we would of course wear everything that was required; but if it was for our benefit we would have to assess how risky the situation was. Often it wasn’t a problem for the brief time we would be visiting, and we would do without some of the protection.
Jesus today finds himself in much the same ministry situation. A leper comes to him and kneels before him. If we have been listening to the first reading today, we know that that kind of behavior was forbidden. They didn’t have masks and gloves and gowns in those days, so the prescribed behavior was that the leper was to live apart from the community to avoid infecting anyone else. But the leper doesn’t do that. Instead, he comes to Jesus, and kneels at his feet, stating the obvious: “If you wish, you can make me clean.” And of course Jesus agrees with those wonderful words: “I do will it. Be made clean.” But what’s worth noting here is that Jesus too ignores all those prescriptions in our first reading, and actually touches the leper, something that would have been completely unheard of. Jesus too recognized that all those quarantine warnings were a real obstacle to any kind of effective ministry to the sick.
The issue is touch. The Church realizes that God acts through the healing touch of doctors, care givers, family and ministers in the life of those who are hurting. Every sacrament has what is called an “imposition of hands,” recognizing that the Holy Spirit makes the sacrament happen as the minister imposes hands in prayer. That’s the whole reason for all those hand pictures in room 162. In the rite of the Anointing of the Sick in particular, hands are imposed on the sick person’s head. If there are family members or friends present, I usually invite them to impose hands too. And then the priest imposes his hands by anointing the person with oil on their forehead and their hands. All of this comes from the example of Jesus who actually touched those who were sick and raised them up. There is healing in the power of touch.
But there is difficulty with touch, too, isn’t there? Sometimes touch is misused, and sometimes touch is unwelcome. There may be good reasons for those feelings, and we need to respect them. Even the Church’s own Liturgy allows for adaptations of the imposition of hands in various circumstances. For example, I almost never actually touch a penitent’s head in confession because there’s just two of us there, and I don’t want anything to even appear improper. But still I have to recognize that the lack of touch is a real obstacle to effective ministry to those in need. Because touch used in a healthy, prayerful and ministerial way is a sign of the presence of Jesus, in whose place I am standing, and an invocation of the Holy Spirit. The Church simply recognizes that what our experience teaches us: in general, touch heals, touch empowers and touch guides.
If we’re having problems with touch and there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for it, maybe we have to look deeper. Certainly if we have been abused or mistreated in some way, a reticence to be touched is understandable, but still is something we need to have healed. But if we can’t bear to enter a hospital to visit a sick relative, let alone touch them, then we may have to look into ourselves and deal with our fear of sickness or death. If we find it difficult to forgive others let alone embrace them in reconciliation, then we may have to look into ourselves and deal with the unconfessed sin in our own lives that keeps us from any kind of reconciliation. If we cannot bear to put a quarter in the box being held out to us by a homeless person on the street, then we may have to look into our lives and deal with our own poverty; deal with what we ourselves lack in some spiritual sense. Human nature longs for touch from the womb – mothers know this – and so if we now have difficulty being touched, whether that touch is an actual touch or a spiritual one, then there is something off, something wrong, some fear or sin that needs to be dealt with, some emptiness that needs to be filled up, and we’ll never be holy, never be whole until we do it.
We ourselves may have come to this Eucharist today in need of touch, in need of being made whole. In the quiet moments of today’s Liturgy, it would be good for us to look into our hearts and identify what kind of touch we need, or what it is we need to deal with so that we can receive that touch in the Spirit in which it is offered. That’s where we need to start, because we disciples are called to touch our world. We will never be able to do that if we have not accepted Christ’s healing touch in our lives. Only when we have can we go out and visit the sick, holding their hands and praying with them for God’s healing and mercy. Only then can we embrace those who have wronged us and be reconciled with them. Only then can we enter the homes of the poor, as our St. Vincent dePaul Society will be doing, and give them the hand up that they need. Only then can we reach out to someone who is hurting, as our Stephen Ministry will be doing, and guide them back to grace. Only then can we take the hand of a child and teach them about God’s love.
The world yearns for healing, yearns for the touch of Christ. And Jesus will not leave things according to the Levitical Law of our first reading. Jesus instead opts to break the rules and reach out to all of us needy ones, touching our lives with grace. And he wants us to do that too. He wants us to be fountains of his love and grace, healing the sick, releasing those imprisoned by whatever holds them back, and kissing the leper clean. To all of us broken ones, he says loud and clear today, embracing us as he always does, “I do will it. Be made clean! I do will it. Be made clean! I do will it. Be made clean!”
We usually take some quiet time after the homily. But today, I would like to invite us all to respond to the Word of God in a different way. Please stand with me now, take out the half sheets with “The Summons” on it, and sing together verses 1, 3 and 5.
The Summons
John L. Bell, Tune: KELVINGROVE 7 6 7 6 777 6
Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be shown in you and you in me?Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?
Will you set the pris’ners free and never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean, and do such as this unseen,
And admit to what I mean in you and you in me?Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
In your company I’ll go, where your love and footsteps show.
Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me. -
St. John Bosco
St. John Bosco was a master catechist who knew the importance of living and teaching and handing on the faith that the author of our first reading talked about. “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for,” the author writes, “and evidence of things not seen.” John Bosco was a man who lived his faith with conviction. He was a priest who was concerned with the whole person of the young people he taught: he wanted them to fill both their minds and their souls.
John was encouraged to enter the priesthood for the specific purpose of teaching young boys and forming them in the faith. He was ordained in 1841. This began with a poor orphan, who John prepared for First Holy Communion. Then he was able to gather a small community and teach them the Catechism. He worked for a time as a chaplain of a hospice for working girls, and later opened an oratory – a kind of school – for boys which had over 150 students. The needs of teaching them also encouraged John to open a publishing house to print the catechetical and educational materials used in the classrooms.
He was known for his preaching, and that helped him to extend his ministry by forming a religious community – the Salesians – to concentrate on education and mission work in 1859. He later formed a group of Salesian Sisters to teach girls. By teaching children self worth through education and job training, John was able to also teach the children of their own worth in the eyes of God.
Jesus asks the disciples in today’s Gospel, “Do you not yet have faith?” It is up to all of us to help people come to faith in Jesus. St. John Bosco was tireless in his devotion to teaching and forming young people. In today’s Eucharist, may we give thanks for the teachers in our lives, and may we also commend the teachers and catechists of today’s young people to the patronage of St. John Bosco.
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Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time
“For he who made the promise is trustworthy.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if these are the only words we take from this holy place today, we’re doing pretty well. The essence of our faith is based on this rock-solid statement from the writer of Hebrews: “For he who made the promise is trustworthy.” That’s true, of course, and I think we can all agree with it on the intellectual level. But people of faith have to go deeper than that; we have to be people whose living is wrapped up in the truth of that statement: “For he who made the promise is trustworthy.”
If we really believe that, then nothing should ever stop our witness. We should not be stopped because we think we don’t have the words, or the talents to be a witness for the faith. That doesn’t stop us because God has promised to give us the words and whatever else we need in those moments, and he is trustworthy. We should not be stopped because we are afraid of commitment, because God has promised us a life that is better than anything we can imagine if we but take up our cross and follow him. And he is trustworthy. None of our objections or insecurities should stop our discipleship, our living for Christ, because God has promised to great things in us. And he is trustworthy.
And so we place our lamps on the lampstand, unafraid of the watching world looking to us, because we’re not shining our own light but rather Christ’s. We encourage each other in faith and good works because we have the promise of our trustworthy God to take us wherever we need to go.
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Thursday after Epiphany
The feast of Epiphany is a celebration of the fact that Christian life looks like something. Because Jesus has appeared on the earth and taken our own human form, because he has walked among us and lived our life and died our death, we know what the Christian Way looks like. We know that the Christian life consists of embracing our humanity, with all its weaknesses and imperfections. We know that it consists of living our own lives well, mindful of the needs of others, forgiving as we have been forgiving, and spreading the light of the Gospel wherever it is that God puts us. The Galileans in the synagogue in today’s Gospel were amazed at Jesus’ speaking words of grace. We too are called to do this so that all will speak highly of us and recognize in us the presence of Christ.
Because Christ is still manifest among us. Every encounter with someone else is an opportunity for Epiphany. It is an opportunity for us to look for the presence of Christ in that other person, and for them to see Christ at work in us. How we do that depends on the situation, certainly, but it must always be our top priority if we are eager to be called Christians. John’s words in the first reading are clear, and are words of indictment on those times we forget to be the Epiphany to others: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
Christ is made manifest in all of us and among all of us. In the ordinariness of our lives, we can find Christ’s grace abundantly blessing us, or we can reject it. If we make it our priority to be Christ’s presence in the world in every encounter with a brother or sister, we may find that we are blessed with epiphany upon epiphany, constantly growing in God’s grace. This is all part of our faith, of course, and it is this faith, as John tells us, that conquers the world.
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Mary, the Mother of God
My mother has a lot of stories about me as I was growing up. Some of them are funny or interesting, others are just a little painful or embarrassing. I suspect your mother has or had stories like that about you too. My mother tells the story about me as a toddler. I don’t remember the story, obviously, but she thinks it’s pretty funny. Now, anyway. Apparently at that time, my parents had a habit of sneaking out of Mass after Communion. I know nobody here would do such a thing, but they did. So one day, if you can imagine this even possibly happening, I was making kind of a fuss – no way, right? My dad picked me up to go to the back of church. As we were headed to the back, I said in kind of a loud voice at a rather inopportune pause in the priest’s homily, “Are we going to get coffee cake and donuts now?” As impossible as this story is to believe about me, this is the story that my mother kept and reflected on in her heart!But Luke tells us of all the amazing things that were observed and said about Jesus, even in his infancy, and all these things are what Mary kept and reflected on in her heart. I think it’s fair to say that she probably didn’t understand all of them at the time, or at least she didn’t know where they were leading, although she certainly knew that her son was someone very special, the Son of God. And so she keeps all these things and reflects on them in her heart. She is the first, really, to receive the Gospel – observing it, as it were, as it was happening and unfolding. And so she is the model for all of us hearers of the Word; we too catch little phrases or episodes that we later reflect on in our hearts. When we first hear them, it might well be that we don’t understand them. But we know that we can later reflect on them in our hearts, and the Holy Spirit will reveal their meaning. Mary is the model for all of us hearers and lovers of the Word of God.
The Church gives us this wonderful feast of Mary on this, the octave day of Christmas. In a very real way, the Church still celebrates this day as Christmas day – that’s one of the wonderful things about being Catholic. We don’t have to cast off Christmas with the wrapping paper; we get to celebrate for many days. But to celebrate the eighth day of Christmas as the feast of Mary, the Mother of God is a wonderful and appropriate thing to do. We all know that if Mary hadn’t said “yes” to God’s invitation and cooperated with his plan for her, that salvation history might have gone rather poorly, to say the least. We are indebted to Mary’s faith, a faith which made possible the salvation of the whole world and everyone ever to live in it.
More than that, Mary’s faith is a model for us. We often do not know where God is leading us, but in faith we are called to say “yes” anyway. We are often called upon to take a leap of faith, make a fiat, and cooperate with God’s saving plan for us and others. Just like Mary, we have no way of knowing where that might lead us; just like Mary, that might lead to heartache and sorrow; but just like Mary, it may lead to redemption beyond belief, beyond anything we can imagine.
And so, yes, Mary is the Mother of God. And let me tell you, this was a doctrine that didn’t come without its own price. People fought over whether a human woman could ever be the mother of God. How would that be possible? But the alternative, really, would be to say that Jesus was not God, because we clearly know that Mary was his mother. So to say that Mary was not the Mother of God is to say in a very real and precarious way that Jesus was not God, and we know just as surely that that would be incorrect. Jesus was fully human but also fully divine, his human and divine natures intertwined in his person without any separation or division or degradation of one nature at the expense of another. And so, as theologians teach us, Mary is the Mother of God the Word according to his human nature.
But Mary is also the Mother of the Church, leading its members to her son Jesus and to faith in God. She is mother of priests, caring for us in a special way and interceding for the faithful completion of our mission. She is the mother of mothers, interceding for them and showing them how to nurture faith in their children. She is the mother of the faithful, showing us how to cooperate fully with God’s plan. She is mother of scripture scholars and those who just love the scriptures, having seen the Word unfold before her and treasuring it in her heart. She is the mother of disciples, having been the first of the disciples and the most dedicated of them all. She is the Mother of God, and our mother, and we cannot sing our Christmas carols without singing her praises too. We honor her faith and example today, and we ask for her intercession for our lives, our families, our Church and our world.
Pray for us, o holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
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Saturday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time
You know, this Gospel reading is filled with all sorts of off-putting comments, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I bristle at the thought of comparing God to a dishonest judge! But that’s not the point here. Of course, Jesus means that God is so much greater than the dishonest judge, that if the dishonest judge will finally relent to someone pestering him, how much more will God, who love us beyond anything we can imagine, how much more will he grant the needs of this children who come to him in faith?
But people have trouble with this very issue all the time. Because I am sure that almost all of us have been in the situation where we have prayed and prayed and prayed and nothing seems to happen. But we can never know the reason for God’s delay. Maybe what we ask isn’t right for us right now. Maybe something better is going to come our way at some time. Maybe the right answer will position itself in time, through the grace of God at work in so many situations. Maybe we just don’t have the big picture.
But whatever the reason, the last line of the Gospel today is our key: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Our faith is what leads us to continue the prayer until it is finally answered. Maybe the situation will come to a peaceful resolution, or maybe it is we who will be changed. But if we approach it all in faith, then we know we have to approach it all with the long haul in mind, because our faith tells us that God answers in God’s time and in God’s way.
A delay could either bring us closer to God as we continue to pray in faith, or it can fracture our relationship with God when we give in to despair. But let that not be so for us. When the Son of Man comes, may he find us faithful ones busy in prayer.
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The Dedication of Saint John Lateran
I’m often amazed by the flurry of activity that goes on around this place. I’d only been here a couple of months, and I became convinced that if I strolled over to church at three in the morning, I’d see six or seven cars in the parking lot and a meeting going on somewhere. In a typical day here, there are a handful of meetings, a full day of classes in the school, several people stopping by the parish office to schedule Masses, or pick up baptismal certificates, or coming for appointments with us priests or other staff people. We have people come in for financial and other assistance, perhaps to plan a funeral for a loved one, or pick up lesson plans and supplies for a religious education class. People come in for daily Mass, or to decorate the church, or come for ministry training. And all these things have to be supported by people cleaning the church or watering plants, staff members repairing broken furniture, cleaning bathrooms, or changing light bulbs. We have around fifty staff members involved in every kind of ministry and function here, as well as countless volunteers who support the work of the church in so many ways.
Today we celebrate the feast of the dedication of the St. John Lateran basilica in Rome. That might seem like a strange feast to celebrate, since few of us have probably ever been there. But St. John Lateran is a very important church for us Catholics. It is the “mother church” of all Catholics around the world. It is the Pope’s parish church, the cathedral of Rome. It’s an enormous basilica built over three hundred years ago on the site of a former church built in the fourth century. Within the building are representations of the popes going all the way back to Peter. Over time the churches on this site have been subject to fire, earthquakes and war, and have had to be rebuilt several times. But a church has always been there. It is a visual reminder, inside and out, of our connection to our tradition and the fact that the Church has survived a lot over the centuries–from both within and without. The building attracts many tourists. They can’t help but admire this grand edifice, much like the Jews of Jesus’ time strolled the Temple precincts and admired its splendor.
While it is a solid structure, and probably needs constant upkeep, it is a reminder of another edifice, the real Temple Jesus laid the foundation for and Paul and subsequent preachers carefully built upon, and that temple is God’s people. This structure also requires constant upkeep, that’s what we are about in our celebration today, remembering who we are and “tending to the Temple.”
This church that is ourselves, this temple of the Holy Spirit that we are, needs constant upkeep and maintenance – just like this building where we worship, and just like old St. John Lateran. Because we often fall into the disrepair of sin or the neglect that is spiritual laziness. And often the repairs can seem daunting. But they are certainly possible because of the love of God and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that spirit that brings us back to the Church and helps us with the sacraments.
And that’s the point of today’s celebration. We remember that we are connected as Catholics throughout the world by our connection to the Pope. We remember that we ourselves are the temple of God, as St. Paul tells us today, built on the rock-solid foundation of Jesus Christ, built up with the teaching of the apostles, the proclamation of the Holy Scriptures, and the guidance of the Church’s tradition.
The Scriptures today paint the picture of a Church that is not just a building, but is a living thing that goes forth and makes the whole world new. Just as Ezekiel’s vision painted the picture of water flowing forth from the temple, cleansing and renewing the earth, so the waters of baptism flow forth from the Church of God, taking with it the many ministries of the parishes and the myriad of giftedness possessed by all the baptized believers in all the churches of the world, and flowing out into the world to make a real difference. This is how the lost come to find salvation. This is how the poor are fed. This is how the unborn and the elderly sick are protected. This is how the world, dark in sin and lost in the disrepair of apathy is bound up and made new and washed clean and healed. Saint Paul makes it very clear today: we are the temple of God, and we are filled with the Spirit to make a difference in the world. The Church that is us, we baptized ones, goes forth into a world aching for renewal and brings it all back to the God who made everything, and makes everything new.
And that newness is exactly what Jesus meant when he upturned the moneychangers’ tables and scattered the doves. Because the doves were needed for the sacrifice, and the money which bore the inscription of pagan deities had to be changed for money that could be brought into the temple treasury – they weren’t doing anything wrong. But Jesus’ message here is completely different than we might think at first – what he means by all of this is that there is a new temple, the temple that is he himself – that temple which will be torn down by disbelievers but restored in the Resurrection. There is a new temple, and so that old one with all its dove-sellers and moneychangers isn’t really necessary any more, so take it all and go home, or come to worship rightly, in the temple that is Christ, that temple that will never ever fall into disrepair.
We very much need the church buildings we have among us. We need St. John Lateran to be a symbol of the Catholic faith that has withstood persecution of every sort and remained standing to give witness to Christ. We need St. Raphael’s church so that we can come and worship and find our Lord in Word and Sacrament. But all of that pales in comparison to the importance of the Church that is you and me, and all the baptized ones of every time and place, filled and inspired and breathed forth with the Holy Spirit, gifted beyond imagining, flooding the earth with the torrent of God’s grace, making everything new, and bringing it all back to God who made it all possible.
The task is daunting, but we cannot be afraid to be Church to one another and Church to the world. As our Psalmist tells us today, “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold!”
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