Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: grace

  • The Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord: Mass During the Night

    The Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord: Mass During the Night

    Today’s readings

    We’ve all had the experience of being in a dark room, probably at night, and turning on a light. It’s blinding until we get used to it. There’s even a scene in one of my favorite movies, Christmas Vacation, when Clark finally gets the Christmas lights to work and it’s so blinding that his neighbors, who have been sitting in the dark sipping wine get up and stumble around and even fall down the stairs. That’s our natural, biological, response to bright light in the midst of darkness.

    I get that same idea from the second part of tonight’s Gospel reading. I can just imagine the shepherds, who have become very used to seeing their flocks and keeping watch over them by the dim but present light of the stars and the moon. Suddenly, they have the blinding light of the angel and the glory of the Lord. It’s no wonder they were afraid: they could hardly see, and what they could see was the surprising appearance of an angel into their mundane nightly watch.

    But that’s what this night is all about. We live very mundane day-to-day, night-to-night, existences. We become used to what we see: the shadows, the darkness, even the sadness around us. Bad news doesn’t surprise us anymore. The real surprise on the evening news is when we hear something good. We get very used to our day-to-day lives, filled as they are with long to-do lists, running from one errand or event to the next, managing the stress, frustration, and anxiety that come from falling behind in one area or the other. This is the dim light we become used to.

    And this night aims to change all that. Into our dimly lit lives, our God wants to shine the splendor of his glory. The birth of his only begotten Son into our world isn’t just a nice event depicted on Christmas cards or Nativity scenes. The birth of his only begotten Son is meant to change the world, including the dimly-lit recesses of our daily existence.

    This is amazing grace. This is an indwelling of God that changes the world and changes our lives.

    It’s incredible, because when you think about it, God doesn’t have to care about our welfare or our salvation. He’s God, he’s not in need of anyone or anything, because he is all-sufficient. He doesn’t need our love, he doesn’t need our praise, he doesn’t need our contrition. In some sense, he really doesn’t need us.

    But he wants us. Love needs the beloved. Grace needs the penitent. Goodness and truth and beauty need the worn and weary. And so our God pursues us, and pursues us with great zeal. Isaiah tells us that the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this. Indeed that zeal won’t rest until it reaches its perfection in the lives of all of us.

    He created us in love, and even though he doesn’t need us, he loves us beyond all imagining, and can’t do anything but that. Throughout time, yes, we’ve disappointed him, and when he forgave us – which he didn’t have to do – we disappointed him again. That’s been the story of us as a people, and also our own personal stories, if we’re honest. How many times have we all sinned, and after being forgiven, go back and sin again? Honestly, if we were God, we’d throw up our hands and walk away. But, thank God, we’re not God, and our God isn’t like that. As often as we turn away and come back, he reaches out to us with the love of the father for his prodigal son. Our God pursues us, and pursues us with great zeal.

    When our need for a Savior was great, when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world, when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, after Abraham, Moses, David and Daniel had made God’s desire for reconciliation known, our Lord Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desired to consecrate the world by his most loving presence. Being conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, he was born in Bethlehem of Judah and was made man. As a man, he walked among the people of his time and lived as one of us, in all things but sin. At the appointed hour, he took on our sins and was nailed to a cross. He died to pay the price for all of us, in order to redeem us and bring us back to friendship with the Father. Because of this, the power of death and sin to keep us from God has been canceled out, and we have the possibility of eternal life. Our God pursues us, and pursues us with great zeal.

    We gather this night not simply to sing Christmas carols and wish each other a Merry Christmas, but more so to revel in the zeal that our God has for our souls. We who are so much less than him, and so unworthy of his love, nonetheless have his love and are intimately known to him, better than we even know ourselves. In God’s zeal for us, he reaches out to us when we fall, walks with us when we suffer, and brings us back to him when we wander away. There is nowhere we can go, no place we can run, no depth to which we can fall, that is beyond the reach of God’s zealous love for us. And that’s why this night, when we celebrate the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, is such an amazing and holy night for us. If not for this night, the night of our salvation on Easter would never come to pass. This night we celebrate not just the birth of a baby, but the birth of God’s intimate presence in the world from the moment of his birth until time is no more.

    It’s no wonder the angels sang that night: they knew what the world had yet to behold. They knew that God’s zeal had obliterated the chasm between the world and its Maker. They knew that the sadness of death was coming to an end. They knew that the power of sin had been smashed to bits. They knew the light of God’s Radiant Dawn had burst forth upon the earth and Emmanuel, God-with-us, became incarnate in our midst. They knew that in this moment, the sad melody of sin had given way to a chorus of God’s glory. They knew that the dirge of death had been replaced by a symphony of peace that God pours forth on those whom he favors.

    That moment, all those years ago, changed everything. Light shone in the darkness. The glory of the Lord enveloped the earth. Nothing would be the same. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this!

  • Tuesday of the Second Week in Advent

    Tuesday of the Second Week in Advent

    Today’s readings

    In this morning’s readings, our God is doing everything possible to get our attention. Salvation is God’s number one priority and he won’t rest until all have come to it. And so he sends Isaiah to “cry out” so many truths that we need to absorb: flesh is fading, but the word of the Lord is forever; the glory of the Lord will be revealed; our guilt is expiated. And this is all good news if we would receive it, but humanity is prone to tuning God out, especially if times are good.

    And so he literally jumps up and down to get our attention: Isaiah runs up to the top of a high mountain crying out, “Here is your God!” And failing all of that, God becomes the good shepherd, who notices us lost sheep and sets out to bring us back, even though it would seem – to us – to be wiser not to do so, lest the other ninety-nine scatter.

    God wants us all to come to salvation. He won’t rest until we are where we should be. He wants us all to open our hearts and receive him. He comes among us, as the Psalmist says, “to rule the world with justice, and the peoples with his constancy.” God urgently seeks to bind up all the broken and lost ones and bring everyone to the kingdom. That’s Advent. Blessed are we when we hear God crying out to us and respond.

    Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

  • The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Well done, my good and faithful servant.  Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities.  Come, share your master’s joy.” I always like to joke that that’s how I ended up being the pastor of the biggest church in the state, so maybe it’s not such a good idea! But then, I love this parish and wouldn’t rather be anyplace else, so there’s a lot of truth to the joy of faithfulness.

    This Gospel passage is a very interesting reading that sometimes gets explained as a plea for us to use our time, talent, and treasure for the good of the kingdom.  And that’s a very nice message, except that it isn’t what the Church is going for on this, the second to last Sunday of the Church year.  We have to remember that, at the end of the Church year, the Church points us to the end of time, when Jesus will return and all will be put into proper order, and the Kingdom of God here on earth will forever be the Kingdom of God in heaven.  So what’s really going on with today’s Gospel reading?  Well, bookmark that for a bit, because it is truly the million dollar question of the day.

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

    And that’s the lens through which I think we need to see this week’s Gospel parable.  Here Jesus presents the often-quoted story of a rich man entrusting his slaves with a great deal of wealth before he sets off on a long journey.  The word “talents” here does not mean what we mean when we use that word: here we are not talking about gifts or abilities, but rather money, and a large sum of money at that.  Scholars suggest that a talent was equal to something like one thousand days’ wages, or what a poor person could have lived on for fifteen or twenty years.  So think about it, even the servant who only received one talent actually received quite a bit – he received what the average person would earn in a little over three years!  That’s a lot of money for anyone.

    So who is it, then, that is receiving such a magnanimous gift?  On first glance, seeing what it is they have been given, we might think these are senior advisers to the master, people who would have been in charge of his estate and his business transactions.  But that’s not what it says.  It says he called in his “servants” – so we are talking here about slaves, slaves – not business advisers.  And so these slaves are getting ten talents, five talents, and one talent – all of them are getting a considerable amount of money!

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

    Now, we’ve established that the gift they are receiving – even the slave who received little – is worth an incredible amount of money, especially to a slave who would never have the opportunity to see such wealth if not for the trust the master has placed in them.  So let’s be clear that this parable is not about us using our gifts properly; it’s about us, the slaves receiving something very great, some inestimable wealth.  What could that possibly be?  Well, of course, it’s God’s love, grace, and favor, which is undeservedly ours and given to us without merit.

    Just for background, this is yet another indictment of the Pharisees and religious establishment of the time.  They were the ones who, because Christ was not yet present in the world, received just one talent.  But it was still a huge sum of grace!  Yet, their practice was to protect it so scrupulously by attending to the minutiae of the 613 laws of the Torah, that they missed the opportunity to really invest God’s love in the world and grow the faith to full stature.

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

    Next week, we will celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe, and then look forward to a new year as we begin the season of Advent.  And so it is important that we take today’s Gospel parable seriously.  We need to spend some time reflecting on how well we have invested God’s grace and love in the world around us.  Have we been good examples to our family and others?  Have we been people of integrity in our workplaces, schools and community?  Have we served those who are in need out of love for Christ?  Have we been zealous to grow in our spiritual lives?  Have we taken time to root sin out of our life, and to receive the grace of forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance?  Have we been unafraid to witness to our faith in every situation?

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

  • The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes it’s hard to accept that something is in our best interest when we first hear of it.  I can remember often growing up not wanting to do something like go on a retreat or join the youth group, but my parents giving me that gentle nudge to do it anyway.  And then of course, when I went, I’d always have a really great experience.

    I always think of that when I hear this week’s Gospel reading.  I think it’s a pretty human thing to resist what’s good for us, especially when it means extending ourselves into a new experience, or when it means having to inconvenience ourselves or disrupt our usual schedule.  We don’t want to go out into the field and work today, or go help at the soup kitchen, or go teach religious education, or go to the parish mission, or get involved in a ministry at the church, or join a Bible Study, or whatever it may be that’s in front of us.

    I remember specifically an experience I had when I first started in seminary.  I became aware that some of the guys, as their field education, were serving as fire chaplains.  That scared the life out of me, and I said to myself that I’d never be able to do that.  Two and a half years later, one of my friends at seminary asked me to join him as a fire chaplain.  God has a terrific sense of humor!  I told him I didn’t think I had the ability to do that, but he persuaded me to pray about it.  Well, when I prayed about it, of course the answer was yes, do it.  And so I did, and found it one of the most rewarding spiritual experiences of my time in seminary.

    People involved in ministries here at the Church can probably tell you the same kinds of stories.  Times when they have been persuaded to do something they didn’t want to.  They could probably tell you how much they grew as people, how much they enjoyed the experience.  When we extend ourselves beyond our own comfort level for the glory of God, we are always rewarded beyond what we deserve.  And that’s grace; that’s the work of God in our lives.

    What’s important for us to see here is this: God extends his mercy and forgiveness and grace and calling to us all the time. We may respond, I think, in one of four ways. First, we may say no, and never change, never become what God created us to be. This happens all the time because we as a people tend to love our sins and love our comfort more than we love God. We would rather not be inconvenienced or challenged to grow.

    We might also say no, but later be converted. That’s a little better. Let’s be clear: there is no time like the present, and we never know if we have tomorrow. But God’s grace doesn’t stop working on us until the very end. So we can have hope because God does not give up on us.

    We might say yes, with all good intentions of following God, being in relationship with him, and doing what he asks of us. But perhaps we get distracted by life, by work, by our sins, by relationships that are impure, or whatever. And then we never actually become what we’re supposed to be.

    Or we might actually say yes and do it, with God’s grace. We might be people who are always open to grace and work on our relationship with God. Then that grace can lead to a life of having become what God wanted of us, and that puts us on the path to sainthood, which is where we are all supposed to be.  The model for that, of course, would be the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was able to say “yes” to God’s plan for her and the world right away.

    Today’s Gospel is a good occasion for a deep examination of conscience. Where are we on the spectrum? Have we nurtured our relationship with God and said yes to his call, or are we somewhere else? And if we’re somewhere else, what is it that we love more than God? What do we have to do to get us on the right path? We know the way of righteousness. We know the path to heaven. We just have to change our minds and change our hearts so that we might follow Jesus Christ, our way to eternal life.

  • Thursday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    During the summer before my final year of seminary, I worked as a hospital chaplain.  It ended up being a pretty rough summer for me and the other men and women in the student chaplain group: we had a record number of deaths and tragic accidents to deal with, and it was, as you might expect, getting us pretty down.  Then for morning prayer one day, one of my fellow students brought in today’s Gospel, and we reflected especially on the end part of the reading:

    “But blessed are your eyes, because they see,

    and your ears, because they hear.

    Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people

    longed to see what you see but did not see it,

    and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

    The more we explored that reading, the more we became aware that, even in the midst of all of the very real tragedy we were experiencing, we were also experiencing some very real great blessing. How true that is for all of us in life. We tend to dwell on the negative things we are seeing, and no one would ever doubt that we all have to see some pretty rotten stuff in our lives, some people it seems more so than others. But the problem comes when we let go of the blessing that comes too. We people of faith have to be convinced that God is with us even in, perhaps especially in, our darkest moments, and gives us glimpses of the kingdom of God that perhaps others don’t get to see. Blessed are our eyes when we get to see them!

    The people in Moses’ day didn’t ever really get to see God.  They got to see Moses, who sort of acted as an intermediary for them with God.  No one else could see God and live.  But our eyes do get to see God.  We can see God in the Eucharist, we can see God in the person sitting next to us, we can see God in the graced moments of our day.  Maybe we just need to open our eyes to see God more often, but he is there, longing to bless our eyes with the vision of him.

  • The Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I really don’t have a green thumb, but for a while when I was young, I was very interested in growing things.  My grandmother on my dad’s side had quite the green thumb: anything she planted grew to be quite prolific.  I have whatever the opposite of that is!  But still, I have always been fascinated by things growing from tiny little seeds to become large plants; no matter if they become beautiful flowers to decorate the landscape, or delicious vegetables to bring to the table.

    It’s really a miracle when you think about it.  A little seed, this tiny little dried-up thing, looks for all the world to be useless and dead.  But when it gets planted in the earth, and watered by the rains, new life springs forth from it, and a tiny sprout appears, which grows day by day to become a fully mature plant by the summertime.  Sure, we or the farmers might do a little work to nurture it and water it and keep the weeds and rabbits away, but we don’t make the plant grow: day by day, almost imperceptibly, growth happens.  One day, for all the grace given it, it becomes a mature plant that gives nourishment and delight and shade for the birds of the air.

    And this is the image that Jesus uses today to describe the Kingdom of God.  These parables are a lens through which we are to see life: the life of God, and our life, and how they all come together.  And it’s an encouraging message that we hear today.  Today, our Lord assures us that the Kingdom of God doesn’t come about all at once, in great power and glory, or in some kind of dramatic explosion.  The Kingdom is like those crops that grow to be fully mature plants and yield a harvest, but it happens little by little, almost imperceptibly, always growing, but we know not how.  And the Kingdom is miraculous like a mustard seed which one day is the tiniest of all seeds and eventually becomes a large plant that gives shelter to the birds of the air.

    Here’s why I think these parables are so encouraging:  We all want to be part of the Kingdom of God.  We all want to grow in our faith.  We all want that faith to sustain us in good times and bad, and eventually lead us to heaven.  That’s why we’re here today.  But the truth is, if you’re like me, you get frustrated sometimes because it doesn’t seem like there’s any real growth going on.  We commit the same sins despite our firmest resolve.  We take one step forward and two steps back.  But still, like the seed scattered on the land, being here for Mass today isn’t nothing.  Our prayers, however lacking they may seem to be, are still a manifestation of our desire to be in relationship with God.  And God takes those tiny seeds of faith and waters them with grace and the sacraments and the life of the Church, until one day, please God, our faith makes a difference in our lives and the lives of those around us.  And even if whatever we start with in the life of faith is as tiny as a mustard seed, in God’s hands, it can become that shrub that is a shelter for those who are flying around in life from one thing to the next, without any real hope except for Christ in us.

    And that’s an important thing for us to get.  Our faith life gets nourished and we grow in it from day to day.  That’s a gift to us, for sure: every step gets us closer to the life of heaven.  But it’s not for us only, friends.  We are called as we mature to become the shrub that gives shelter to the birds of the air.  We are meant to help others along the way of faith too.  Because we don’t go alone to heaven; we’re supposed to take as many fellow seekers along with us as we possibly can.

    We may not be perfect yet, friends, but we’re graced.  And grace will perfect whatever we sow and make our tiny little beginnings into great things, all for the Kingdom of God.

  • Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    “Do you love me more than these?”

    It’s a question that cuts to the heart.  Peter had just betrayed his friendship with Jesus and his commitment to the Gospel by denying his Lord not once, but three times: “I tell you, I do not know the man you are talking about.”  This is a poignant meeting of the two of them, the first time they have been alone together, since those words of betrayal were spoken.  And Jesus’ words to Peter in this moment are a mixture of comfort, challenge, and warning.

    So first, comfort.  And this might not looking comforting on the face of it.  Just as Peter had spoken words of betrayal three times, three times Jesus asks the question: “Peter, do you love me?”  Yes, the question cuts to the heart, but it is also comfort, because with each asking, Jesus is healing Peter from the inside out.  Healing never begins until the truth is spoken: “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.”

    Then come words of challenge: “Feed my sheep.”  When we are forgiven or graced in any way, we, like Peter, are then challenged to do something about it.  Feed my sheep, follow me, give me your life, come to know my grace in a deeper way.  Never do we receive grace only for ourselves.  Grace is for us, but we are meant to grace others once we’ve received it. 

    And then words of warning: “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  When we give ourselves over to God, that necessarily means that we might have to go in a direction we might not otherwise choose.  It necessarily means that we have to give up our own plans and follow God.  We have to let him take us where we do not want to go, so that we can be the ones we were always supposed to be.

    Jesus then summarizes all of it by saying “Follow me.”  No matter what we disciples have done in our past, no matter how many times we have messed up or in what ways, there is always forgiveness if we give ourselves over to our Savior and our friend.  If we follow him, there is mercy and grace and forgiveness – and challenge.  That’s the life of discipleship.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Saturday after Ash Wednesday

    Saturday after Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.”

    That’s advice I wish I’d taken sometimes when I’ve been coming down with something and think, “oh, it’ll pass.”  The sick need a physician!  How often have we had what we thought was a little cold or seasonal illness end up being much worse because we let it go, we didn’t want to go to the doctor?  This past year, that’s been so true with COVID-19.  The symptoms start out as something like a common seasonal illness, and sometimes they stay that way, but plenty have had something much worse develop.

    Anyone who has battled an addiction will tell you how true this is.  Many have thought, “Oh, I can stop any time I want.”  But they really need that intervention, that twelve step meeting or that time with a counsellor to really do what’s needed.  You cannot make any progress in wellness in any aspect of life if you don’t admit you’re sick and accept help.  We all have difficulty doing that sometimes, I think, and much to our demise.

    It’s important that we learn to do that in the spiritual life.  If you don’t think you need a physician for your spiritual life, congratulations, you can skip Lent.  In fact you don’t even need a Savior!  I say that in jest, but really it’s true.  Jesus is very clear today: he came to call sinners to conversion, and that includes all of us.  It’s been said that the Church is not a museum of saints, but a hospital for sinners.  And thank God that’s true, because all of us, me and you, all of us, need the medicine of grace in our spiritual lives time and time again.  And the good news is that Jesus gives us Lent to do just that.  Be converted, be healed, be made whole so that the glory of Easter can brighten our lives.

    So our reflection this morning is two-fold. First, where and how do I need the Divine Physician in my life right now? And second, invite him in and let him heal us.

  • The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Here’s something I want you to remember today, and cling to in your spiritual life: We can’t do anything good in our spiritual lives all by ourselves.  We can’t be perfect disciples all by ourselves.  We can’t bring other people to Jesus all by ourselves.  We can’t overcome sin in our lives all by ourselves.  We can’t speak up for the marginalized or take a stand for life all by ourselves.  We can’t vote for the right candidate all by ourselves.  We can’t raise our children all by ourselves.  We can’t love the other people in our lives as they should be loved all by ourselves.  Take any good thing and put it in that formula: whatever it is, we can’t do it all by ourselves.

    And we shouldn’t.  But what we should do is stop doing things that way as if that was ever going to work.

    So over the past several Sundays, we have been seeing a lot of one of my favorite characters in the Gospel, and that is Saint Peter.  Just three weeks ago, the Apostles were out in a boat, and Jesus came to them on the water.  Saint Peter asked our Lord to command him to come to him on the water, and he did, and we all know how that went.  Then last week, Jesus was quizzing the Apostles about who people said that he was.  Peter was the one who spoke up and professed that Jesus was the Christ, the coming Anointed One, and Jesus proclaimed Peter the Rock on which he would build the Church.

    And here we are today, just a couple of verses later in Matthew’s Gospel, and Peter is in the spotlight again, but this time for a far different reason!  So, for context, it’s important to realize that Saint Peter, like all of the Jews of that time, had a preconceived notion about what the Messiah would be like, and what he would come to do.  The Messiah was to be a great king and military leader, championing the people and overcoming their enemies, giving them political and military peace and safety.  That’s how people thought about the Messiah in those days.  Peter was still clinging to those old notions, and so he could not fathom that Jesus would have to suffer and die.  And so Jesus chastises him for thinking not as God does, but as people do.  It’s a mistake we all make time and again in our spiritual lives.

    Peter’s faith journey was like that: up one minute, and down the next.  One minute he’s walking on water, the next he’s drowning; one minute he speaks eloquently of his Lord, and the next he’s the voice of temptation.  So maybe it seems like Saint Peter, flawed as he was, was an inappropriate choice to be the pillar of the Church, the first of the Popes.  But our Lord never makes any mistakes.  He chooses who he chooses for a reason, and I think that’s what we have to spend some time looking at today.

    If Peter was unqualified for the position to which he was called – and it certainly seems like that was the case – then we have to expect to feel unqualified for the roles to which we have been called.  Parents often feel that way when they start to raise their first child.  Priests feel that every time they witness something incredible – which is a lot of the time.  We are all unqualified, but God sees more in us, he sees our heart, he sees who he created us to be, and he won’t rest until we’ve fulfilled that potential.  It’s often said that God doesn’t call the qualified, but instead qualifies those he has called.  If that’s true, then Saint Peter is the patron saint of that!

    If Peter made some mistakes along his journey of faith and discipleship – and he clearly did – then we have to expect that we will make mistakes in our own faith journey.  One minute we’ll have a glimpse of God and we’ll feel like we could never let him down, then the next minute we’ll fall into sin, maybe a sin we’ve been struggling with for so long, and we’ll feel like God couldn’t possibly still love us.  But he loved Peter all through the good and bad, and he loves us, no matter what.  He pulled Saint Peter out of the stormy waves, and he will reach out and pull us out of our own storms of failure, as often as we cry out to him.

    The one thing you can’t fault Saint Peter for is his courage.  Eleven other guys stayed in the boat, but Peter wanted to be where our Lord was: out on the water.  Eleven other guys kept their mouth shut when Jesus asked who they said he was, but Peter did his best to make a profession of faith.  Even what he said in today’s Gospel was probably what the rest were all thinking, but he at least had the guts to say it out loud.  His life wasn’t perfect, his discipleship wasn’t perfect, his faith had a long way to go, but he knew that he couldn’t leave our Lord forever.  Even when he blows it in the hours before Jesus died and denies our Lord three times, he accepts our Lord’s forgiveness and fulfills the role Jesus gave him in last week’s Gospel.

    Saint Peter’s story kept being written all throughout the Gospel narrative, and our story isn’t finished yet either.  Our Lord loved Saint Peter and he loves us too.  What we have to do is rely on that love, accept God’s forgiveness, and get out of the boat and go to Jesus.  We have to stop thinking like people do, and start thinking with the mind of Christ.  We have to stop trying to do good things in our lives all by ourselves and start doing them with the grace and power of Christ that can accomplish anything in anyone.

    He can make a lousy fisherman the rock on which he would build his Church.  He can do great things in us too.  If we let him.

  • Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

    Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    Palm Sunday is, quite honestly, a feast with a bit of a split personality. We start out on a seemingly triumphant note.  Jesus enters Jerusalem, the Holy City, and the center of the Jewish religion; the city he has been journeying toward throughout the gospel narrative, and he enters it to the adulation of throngs.  Cloaks are thrown down in the street, the people wave palms and chant “Hosanna.”  This is it, isn’t it?  It seems like Jesus’ message has finally been accepted, at least by the crowds who have long been yearning for a messiah, an anointed one, to deliver them from foreign oppression.

    Only that wasn’t the kind of salvation Jesus came to offer.  Instead, he preached forgiveness and mercy and real justice and healed people from the inside out.  He called people to repentance, to change their lives, to hear the gospel and to live it every day.  He denounced hypocrisy, and demanded that those who would call themselves religious reach out in love to the poor and those on the margins.  It wasn’t a welcome message; it wasn’t the message they thought the messiah would bring.

    And that’s what brings us to the one hundred and eighty degree turn we experience in today’s second gospel reading, the reading of our Lord’s Passion and death.  Enough of this, they say; the religious leaders must be right: he must be a demon, or at least a troublemaker.  Better that we put up with the likes of Barabbas.  As for this one, well, crucify him.

    Who are we going to blame for this?  Whose fault is it that they crucified my Lord? Is it the Jews, as many centuries of anti-Semitism would assert?  Was it the Romans, those foreign occupiers who sought only the advancement of their empire?  Was it the fickle crowds, content enough to marvel at Jesus when he fed the thousands, but abandoning him once his message made demands of them?  Was it Peter, who couldn’t even keep his promise of standing by his friend for a few hours?  Was it the rest of the apostles, who scattered lest they be tacked up on a cross next to Jesus?  Was it Judas, who gave in to despair thinking he had it all wrong?  Was it the cowardly Herod and Pilate who were both manipulating the event in order to maintain their pathetic fiefdoms?  Who was it who put Jesus on that cross?

    And the answer, as we well know, is that it’s none of those. Because it’s my sins that led Jesus along the Way of the Cross.  It’s my sins that betrayed him; it’s my sins that have kept me from friendship with God.  Those sins could have kept me from friendship with God forever, but God’s love would not have that be that way.  And so he willingly gave his life that I might have life.  And you.

    He gave himself for us.