Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: witness

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter (Religious Education and Confirmation Program Closing Mass)

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter (Religious Education and Confirmation Program Closing Mass)

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading this evening, we have from the Acts of the Apostles a rather defining moment for the early Church.  Jesus hadn’t given them a precise rule book of how to make the Church develop: he simply sent them out to baptize.  But he also told them to make disciples of all the nations, and that’s what’s at stake in today’s reading.  The Gentile nations didn’t observe all the laws that the Jews did.  And so admitting non-Jews to the Church meant deciding whether they had to be circumcised, and whether they had to observe all the other laws of the Old Testament, as they had.

    Well, obviously, this little mini-council, swayed by the great stories of Paul and Barnabas, hearing all the wondrous deeds that God was doing among them, decided that the Spirit could call anyone God wanted to be disciples, and they shouldn’t get in the way.  So they decide to impose very little upon them, outside of avoiding idol worship and unlawful marriage.  

    And then the Psalmist’s prophecy, “Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations” came to pass.  Think about it: because the disciples agreed to allow the Gentiles to come to Christianity in their own way, the proliferation of the Gospel was put into warp speed.  If it weren’t for this little council, we very well might not be Christians today.  Praise God for the movement of the Spirit!

    And now the command comes to us: we have to be the ones to proclaim God’s deeds to everyone, and not to make distinctions that marginalize other people.  God’s will is not fulfilled until every heart has the opportunity to respond to his love.  So we who have been learning about Jesus, now need to help others to know Jesus.  When we learn about Jesus, when we learn about our faith, it’s not just so that we know some good facts and can recite them.  We have to go beyond what we know in our head and bring it to our heart, so that we can love other people the way he has loved us.  When they experience that love in us, they will be attracted to come to know about Jesus too.

    That’s how it happened in the early Church.  That’s why Paul and the others were so successful.  That’s why the Gentiles couldn’t get enough of the faith.  We can reignite that fire in our world today if we bring what we have learned in Religious Education or Confirmation preparation, and take it from our head to our heart.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Friday of the Second Week of Easter

    Friday of the Second Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Our first reading today is filled with kind of intense drama.  The disciples, ever since Jesus rose from the dead and sent them the gift of the Holy Spirit, have been going around and preaching in the name of Jesus.  This is obviously attracting the attention of the religious leaders, and they’re not too happy about it.  It bothers them that the crucifixion of Jesus wasn’t the end of the story.  The news that he rose from the dead is something they are trying to cover up, and they don’t want anyone to know about it.

    So they take counsel together, and intend to deal with the disciples so that they will stop preaching.  But there’s a little interesting plot twist.  The official Gamaliel is trying to keep a balance between wanting to silence the disciples and not wanting to anger the people who are hearing them.  So he convinces the other officials to let the whole thing play out.  He reasons that if this isn’t of God, which he obviously things is the case, well, then, it will all die out on its own.  But if it is of God, he cautions the others that they don’t want to get in the way of that.  Now Gamaliel is obviously trying to brush the disciples off and cover his bets in case this doesn’t go well, but in doing that, he’s actually being king of prophetic.  We know that the preaching of the disciples was certainly something that came from God, and we know how it worked out.  After all, we’re here talking about their preaching today.

    But the courage of the apostles is inspiring, isn’t it?  They have been warned twice, and put in prison, and now beaten, and still we are told that “all day long, both at the temple and in their homes, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus.”  Thank God for that!  We are grateful for their new-found courage today, or we wouldn’t be here worshipping right now.

    We are called to display that same courage and to speak non-stop of our Lord Jesus Christ in all that we say and do.  The psalmist today reminds us that the only thing worth seeking is to dwell in the house of the Lord, and the only way to do that is to follow our Risen Lord.  So when you’re making a decision about what you’re going to say to someone who may be annoying you, or what you’re going to do in a difficult situation, stop and think about how you can proclaim the Christ, Jesus, in what you say and do.  God built a Church and is filling heaven because of the preaching of the disciples.  He can do a lot with our own proclaiming the Word in what we say and do, too.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

  • The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    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, which was a good thing, except it sometimes spiraled into hoarding things.  They would eat leftovers well past their freshness dates.  It was just their response to having nothing, so completely understandable.

    And that’s the lens through which I think we need to see this week’s Gospel parable.  Here Jesus presents the very familiar story of a rich man entrusting his slaves with a great deal of wealth before he sets off on a long journey.  But because this is such a familiar parable, I think it often gets interpreted wrongly.  Often this parable gets turned into a lesson on sharing your gifts with others, but that’s not actually what’s going on here.  The word “talents” here does not mean what we mean when we use that word: here we are not talking about gifts or abilities.  No, a talent was a unit of money, and a large sum of money at that.  Scholars suggest that a talent was equal to something like one thousand days’ wages.  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 we have this huge amount of money, given as a gift.  And that gift is being given, not to whom we would expect: not to senior advisers to the master, people who would have been in charge of his estate and his business transactions.  No, the text 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 the story.  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, especially for a slave!  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.

    That’s the backstory, and there’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s get at it.  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.  We could almost understand, I think, if a servant hoarded the wealth entrusted to him, or used it for himself and his family.  So that the third servant even gave it back seems like a good thing. 

    I guess we have to unpack though, what the talent, the money, represents.  Here, these slaves have received something very great, some inestimable wealth.  What could that possibly be?  We should be able to see this pretty well.  What’s of inestimable value for us?  Well, of course, it’s God’s love, grace, and favor, which is undeservedly ours and given to us without merit.  That’s what the God, the master, was entrusting to his servants.

    So 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.  They received that in the form of the covenant and the law that was the basis of their religion.  And let’s just acknowledge that God choosing them among all the nations was 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.

    So we disciples 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.  In Matthew’s Gospel, fear is a huge sin.  “Do not be afraid” is a term we see over and over in the readings.  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.

    We have come here today on the second-to-last Sunday of the Church year.  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?  In this most difficult year, have we been able to get beyond ourselves to care enough about others to do what we can to keep people healthy in the face of a pandemic, to respect people of every race, color and creed, to witness to life and vote according to our formed consciences, to keep the doors of discussion open so that understanding can grow?

    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.”

  • Monday of the Twenty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I think much of the reason people don’t preach the Gospel to others is because they think whatever they say or do has to be flashy, has to be as big as God is.  But that never works because God is always bigger!  Proclaiming the Gospel, at its core, is and always should be, as simple as showing people what God has done for us and in us.

    The defense St. Paul was making to the Corinthians in today’s first reading describes a way of living that might be very useful for us to consider.  Rather than caring about what people thought of him and proclaiming the word in a powerful way, he instead resolved to keep himself focused on Jesus and to say what he would have him say and live as Jesus himself would live.  His proclamation of example called those Corinthians to recognize a message not based on mere human wisdom but instead on the power of God.  We too can proclaim that same kind of powerful message in the way that we live.

    So if there are people in our lives who we wish knew the joy of the Gospel — and who among us doesn’t have someone like that? — then I think today we’re being called to take a fresh look at how we bring Jesus to them. Our proclamation of the Gospel has to be simple and authentic. If our proclamation rests on what we can do, it’s always going to fail. But if it relies on Jesus and what he has done in us, it will be irresistible.

  • The Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of my jobs before I went to seminary was in the sales department of a computer supply company.  In that job, they taught us that one of the first good rules of sales was never to ask a question to which you didn’t already know the answer.  I think teachers get taught that principle as well.  I can’t help but think that Jesus’ question to the disciples in today’s Gospel falls under that heading.  Because Jesus certainly knew who he was.  But, as often happens in our interactions with Jesus, there’s something more going on.  And to figure out what that something more is, all you have to do is go back to the Gospels the last couple of weeks and see in them that Jesus is looking for people’s faith.  He was looking for faith from Peter when he called him to walk on the water.  He was impressed by the faith of the Canaanite woman last week as she persisted in her request that Jesus heal her daughter.  And now he queries the disciples’ faith – and ours too – as he asks us the 64 thousand dollar question: “Who do you say that I am?”

    He actually starts with kind of a soft-ball question. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they recount all the obvious and probably much-discussed options of the time.  If there were bloggers and influencers and talk radio people and cable news in that first century, they too might have said “John the Baptist” or “Elijah” or “Jeremiah” or “one of the prophets.”  So this is an easy question for the disciples to answer.  But when he gets to the lightning round question, “But who do you say that I am?” there’s a lot more silence.  And, as often happens with the disciples, it’s the impetuous Peter who blurts out the right answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Very good, Peter, you have been paying attention.

    But here’s the thing: that answer is going to require much of Saint Peter.  You see, his answer not just a liturgical formula or a scriptural title or even a profession of faith in the formal sense.  Jesus is looking for something that goes quite a bit deeper, something that comes from the heart, something integrated into Peter’s life.  He is looking for faith, not just spoken, but faith lived, and that’s why Peter’s answer is actually pretty dangerous.  If he is really convinced that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” then that conviction has to show itself in the way Peter lives.  He can’t just believe that and keep it under his hat.  If Jesus really is the One who is coming into the world, the Promised One of all generations, the salvation of the world, then Peter has to proclaim it from the rooftops.  Now, to be fair, we should note that Peter had a little problem with this around the time of the crucifixion, when he denied Jesus not just once, but three times.  But that’s not going to be his everlasting reality, because Peter has to be the rock on which Jesus will build his Church.  Whether people want to accept that or not.

    So I’m very sorry to tell you all this, but we have all gathered here on a very dangerous Sunday.  We too, you know, are being asked today, “But who do you say that I am?”  And Jesus isn’t asking us just to recite the Creed, the Profession of Faith.  That’s too easy; we do it all the time.  Half the time it just flies past us by the time we say “Amen.”  Jesus doesn’t want to know what you learned at Bible Study or what you read on Facebook.  Those things are nice, but He isn’t going for what’s in your head.  Jesus is calling all of us today to dig deep, to really say what it is that we believe about him by the way that we act and the things that we do and the life that we live.  It’s a dangerous question for us, too, because what we believe about Jesus has to show forth in action and not just word.  Our life has to be a testament to our faith in God.  And if we cannot answer that question out of our faith today, if we are not prepared to live the consequences of our belief, then we have a lot of thinking to do.

    Because if we really believe – really believe – that Jesus is who he says he is, then we cannot just sit on the news.  Like Peter, we are going to have to proclaim it in word and deed.  In our homes, in our workplaces, in our schools, in our communities – we must be certain that everyone knows that we are Christians and that we are ready to live our faith.  That doesn’t mean that we need to interject a faith lesson into every conversation or bludgeon people with the Gospel.  But it does mean that we have to live that Gospel.  In St. Francis’s words, “Proclaim the Gospel at all times.  If necessary, use words.”  People absolutely need to be able to tell by noticing the way we live our lives that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.  If they can’t, then our faith is as tepid as the Pharisees’ and that’s certainly no cause for pride!  Frankly, that too has consequences.

    Every part of our Liturgy has consequences for us believers.  “The Body of Christ.”  When we hear that proclamation and respond with our “Amen,” we are saying “yes, that’s what I believe.”  And if we believe that, if we are then filled with the Body of Christ by receiving Holy Communion, then we have made a statement that has consequences.  If we truly become what we receive, then how does that change the way that we work, the way that we interact with others?  “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”  “Thanks be to God.”  If we accept that command, then what?  What does it mean to glorify the Lord with our life?  Does it mean that we just do some kind of ministry here at Mass?  Absolutely not.  The first word in the command is “Go” and that means we have to glorify the Lord in our daily lives, in our business negotiations, in our community meetings, in our interactions with peers or the way that we mentor those who work for us.

    So if we really believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, then our lives just became a whole lot more complicated.  We may have to give up some of our habits and vices, we may have to make a concerted effort to be more aware of Christ in our daily lives, we may have to learn to treat other people as the Body of Christ.  We may have to do all this preaching in a hostile environment, because sometimes people don’t want to hear the Good News, or even be in the presence of it.  I think that’s more true today than every.  The Gospel is met with hostility just because Christians preach it.  And this is dangerous, because if we really believe, then we have to preach anyway.  Peter did, and it eventually led him to the cross.  What will it require of us?

    So I don’t know just how dangerous this will be for me or for you.  I’m not even sure how we will all answer the question right now.  But one thing is for sure, all of us sitting here today have the same one-question test that Peter and the disciples had.  Who do you say that the Son of Man is?  Be sure to take that to your prayer this week.

  • Friday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Our God never promises that the life of faith and discipleship will be an easy one; only that it will be blessed. One thing is certain: that life will certainly entail hardship, even suffering. That’s pretty evident in today’s Gospel reading. Faithful disciples have to worry about being betrayed by even their closest family members.

    None of this is a surprise to anyone who has tried to live the faith. Perhaps at times the hardest people to evangelize are the members of one’s own family. I’m sure we all can think of people close to us who have abandoned the faith or practice it rarely. Maybe the ones who receive the Church’s teachings least are those we would hope would get it and be partners with us as we journey to the kingdom. It happens all the time – in your family and in mine.

    These are trying times. It is hard to give witness to the Truth when the culture around us wants to make its own truth. The evils of abortion and impure relationships are all but normalized now, and those who take a stand against them are considered intolerant at best, and hate-mongers at worst.  And it’s painful to see our brothers and sisters fall for the lie hook, line and sinker.  It’s hard for parents to see their children go astray, when they’ve done their best to pass on the faith.  So how do we stand for the Truth when our loved ones tune it out?  What do we do when our loved ones reject what we’ve tried to give them to bring them to eternal life?

    Our Gospel tells us that what we do is persevere: we continue to live the Truth and witness to our faith.  If those close to us tune out our words, then we have to be all the more attentive to our actions, to our lived witness, so that they can see that we live what we preach and believe.  We have to depend on God to give us the right words and help us to do the right things so that we won’t be a stumbling block.  And then we have to trust in God to work it all out in his time.

    None of this is going to be easy, but Jesus tells us that the one who endures to the end will be saved.

  • Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes God’s blessings can be challenging.  For example, we might not think that those who are meek and those who mourn are blessed.  And we certainly wouldn’t celebrate the blessings of those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, would we?  It’s even more challenging when we remember that the word “blessed” in Scripture could also be translated as “happy.”  Would we think of those people as happy?  Probably not, but God does.

    Elijah the Tishbite might have picked different blessings also, I am sure.  He gets to be the bearer of tidings that there will be drought and resulting famine until he says otherwise.  He then is taken care of by the Lord only by drinking from a little stream, and eating food brought to him by birds as he fled for his life.  His work was important, and he was taken care of, but was it in the way he might like?  Probably not.

    We have the same issue as we live out our Christian discipleship.  We very often have to be bearers of an unpopular message, and trust in God’s providence to deliver us.  We might speak up against abortion or, certainly, importantly in these days, against racism in every single one of its forms.  Not everyone will agree with us and there is a price to be paid for that, in terms of our popularity or even comfort level in our discussions with others.  But we disciples don’t get to pick the message we preach.  As we witness with our lives to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we have to preach the whole of it, or else our preaching is diminished.

    So it’s important for us to remember, I think, that while God never promises to make our lives free and easy, he does promise to bless us.  He will bless us with whatever gifts we need to do the work he has called us to do, the work for which he formed us in our mother’s womb.  We may be reasonably happy in this life, but the true happiness must come later.  Our reward, which Jesus promises will be great, will surely be in heaven.

  • Faith Formation Closing Mass

    Faith Formation Closing Mass

    Today’s readings

    Can you remember the first time you were called a Christian?

    It was at Antioch that the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians.  This, of course, is after the death and resurrection of Jesus, after the disciples, including Barnabas, and apparently Paul (known to them as Saul, the name he had before his conversion).  These dedicated men created a community in Antioch and taught them the Gospel and started a church there.  The people around them knew them for teaching about the Christ – Jesus – and it was there that they were first called Christians.

    We probably don’t think much about the term “Christian.”  It’s so much a part of our vocabulary, that we know Christians are those of us who believe in Christ and follow his teachings.  Sometimes people wonder whether Catholics are Christians, and the response is, yes, of course.  Our Church was founded by Christ himself, and we dedicate ourselves to living the Gospel he taught us, to living our own lives as disciples, as followers, as people devoted to him.

    If I were to ask you, “Who is Jesus?” you might tell me that he is the Son of God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the son of Mary and Joseph, God made man, the One who went about doing good and calling people to repentance, the One who shows us the way to the Father.  These, and many other facts about Jesus, are absolutely right, and we believe them completely.  But a fuller, more important answer requires us to go more deeply and to answer who is Jesus for us?  Do we have a relationship with Jesus, or is he just a concept we have learned?

    If all Jesus is is a concept, then, honestly, who cares?  If all Jesus is is a concept, why did so many of those early disciples die for him?  If all Jesus is is a concept, then how did this Church survive for over two thousand years?  Concepts are interesting, maybe, but hardly worth living for and dying for.  A vibrant relationship with a God who loves us enough to be personally present to us, that’s worth living and dying for.  At the end of the day, only that vibrant relationship with Jesus will cause people to say, “She’s a Christian” or “He’s a Christian.”

    Ever since Sunday, and including tonight, the Gospel reading at Mass has been reflecting on Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  Our Good Shepherd promises us eternal life, a life so much better than what we now experience, a life of forever grace, where all of our woundedness is bound up and our sins erased and our death redeemed.  All we have to do to get there is to listen to his voice, live his Gospel, and be faithful to our relationship with him.  If we do that, no one can take us out of his hand, no one can separate us from his love.

    In these days of pandemic, when we are sheltered in place and socially distant from each other, Jesus offers us a relationship that transcends all that.  He offers us a relationship where virus, disease, sin and death don’t have ultimate power over us.  He offers us a relationship that continues to write our story and draw us closer until we are one with him.  In these days of pandemic, I firmly believe that God is doing something among us: calling us to look at what’s ultimately important and calling us back to oneness in him.  That, really, can be the gift to us in these days.  And who doesn’t need a real gift in these days?!

    I honestly hope we never go back to normal – at least not the normal we’ve become used to.  Because that normal had us forgetting about Jesus and distancing ourselves from one another – you know, in different ways than we have now.  That normal had us distancing ourselves from our families in favor of being part of every activity imaginable.  That normal had us eating in the SUV on the way to the next thing rather than sitting down and getting to know each other.  That normal found other things so much more important than our relationships with each other and with our God.  And, friends, that normal isn’t worthy of us.  We deserve so much better, and the great thing is, God wants us to have it.

    So when things start getting back to normal – whenever that may be – let’s not forget the really important things we have learned and experienced and loved in these days.  Let’s not forget the really beautiful things that have happened among us.  Let’s not forget our renewed relationships with each other, and the relationship we have with God.  Let’s not forget that we are Christians.

    Because Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • 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.  Addressing Nicodemus, Jesus said that 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, mostly, for 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, we who have known the Lord for so long.  We have to be willing to give of our hearts, to believe not just when we’re in church, but also when we are out there, living our lives.  That’s especially true now that most of us can’t be in church for worship, but instead have to watch it on Facebook or television.  The pandemic gives us the opportunity, and even the nudge to make our faith the real viral thing.  So we have to trust God to take care of us when we stick our neck out to help someone else.  We have to trust that even when we are doing more than other people are, God will take care of the equity of it all and never be outdone in generosity.  We have to worship not just with our minds but also with our hearts.

    Because Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

    Alleluia!

  • The Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In my first priestly assignment, at Saint Raphael in Naperville, there was a huge football program for elementary school kids called Saint Raphael Football.  It was not just a team, but a league, and lots of surrounding churches had teams in the league.  You couldn’t live in Naperville and not have heard of Saint Raphael Football. So once in a while, in a social setting, someone would ask me what church I was from, and I’d tell them, Saint Raphael.  And they would say to me, “Oh yes, we go there, our son is in that football league.” I always wanted to tell them, “How nice. By the way, we also celebrate the Eucharist there.”  Maybe I should have.  Today’s gospel reading makes me think I should.

    We – as a society – have it all wrong.  Our priorities are all messed up.  I think we’re in real danger, now more than ever, and today’s Liturgy of the Word is a wake-up call for us to get it right.  We live in a society that has not just lost its moral compass, but has actually taken pains to bury it away and never look at it.  Everyone seems to think that something is okay if it works for them in their current circumstance, regardless of how it affects others, regardless of how it affects even them in the long-run.  That’s why you turn on the news and hear about shootings everywhere, and that’s why we have politicians vying with one another to see who can support abortion in the strongest possible sense.  As Saint Theresa of Calcutta once said, “And if we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”  In many alarming ways, our moral compass has been buried for so long that we hardly know what it looks like anymore.  

    So this homily is probably going to come off sounding kind of harsh to some of you, but if I don’t say what I have to say, I’m not doing my job as your priest.  And I know, really I know, most of you get this.  So please indulge me; if this doesn’t apply to you, please pray for someone who needs to hear it, because you know someone who does.

    When Jesus is asked whether only a few will be saved, he deflects the question.  His answer indicates that it’s not the number of those who will be saved – that’s not the issue.  The issue is that some people think they will be saved because they call themselves Christian, or religious, or spiritual, or whatever.  It’s kind of like the people I talked to who considered themselves practicing Catholics simply because their children played in a football league that was marginally affiliated with us.

    Jesus says that’s not how it works.  We have to strive to enter the narrow gate.  So what does that mean?  For Jesus, entering eternity through the narrow gate means not just calling yourself religious; that would be a pretty wide gate.  It certainly wouldn’t mean saying that you’re basically a good person, since that criterion is pretty subjective, and so widely misunderstood. The narrow gate means actually practicing the faith: taking time for prayer and worship, receiving the Eucharist for strength, living the gospel, reaching out to the needy, showing love to your neighbor.  It means making one’s faith the first priority, loving God first, worshipping first, loving others first.  Because “some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

    And I’ll be the first to tell you that it’s hard to do that.  Saint Paul says today that we have to strengthen our drooping hands and weak knees; Jesus says that many will attempt to enter that narrow gate but won’t be strong enough to do it.  That narrow gate of love is hard to enter: it takes effort, it takes grace; it takes strength, and we can only get that grace and strength in one place, and that place is the Church.  That’s why Jesus gives us the Church: to strengthen us for eternal life.

    That’s not the best news, however, because so many people these days settle for simply calling themselves religious, or being “spiritual” – whatever that means.  They’ll play football on the team, but won’t make an effort to come to Church to receive the strength they need to live this life and to enter eternal life.  It is here, in the Eucharist, freely given by our gracious Lord, that we receive the strength we need to love, the strength necessary to live our faith and be united with our God.  It is here, in the proclamation of the Word, that we find instruction to live as disciples and are more and more conformed into the image of Christ.  But it’s hard to get to Church because Billy has a soccer game, or Sally has a dance recital, or because Mom and Dad just want to sleep in after a really trying week.

    But those decisions, friends, have eternal consequences.  So let me be clear: God is more important than soccer, or football, or cheer, or whatever sport you’re playing; God is more important than the dance recital, and as for sleeping in on Sunday, well, as my grandfather used to say, you can sleep when you’re dead.  And it’s not like it’s an either/or proposition: people don’t have to choose between soccer and Mass or dance and Mass or even sleeping and Mass.  Certainly not in our section of the world.  This parish has Mass nine Masses on Saturday evening and all day Sunday, in three languages, all the way from 4pm on Saturday to 6pm on Sunday.  If those don’t work, there are a bunch of parishes within a short driving distance that have other schedules.  There’s probably a church within a few driving minutes of every football or soccer field in the area; I know a lot of families choose to take that option when schedules are hectic.

    The point is, we make time for what’s important to us.  And eternal life is the only thing that we have of lasting importance. So we have to build up the strength to get through that narrow gate one day.  We’ve got to worship God with consistency; we have to live the gospel with consistency.

    We’re not going to be able to say one day: “We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets and we played football on your team.”  We can’t just call ourselves Catholic; we have to live our faith.  We have to worship and pray; we have to reach out to the needy, stand up for truth and justice, make a real effort to love even when it’s not convenient to love, or even when the person who faces us is not as loveable as we’d like.

    All of this requires commitment and effort and real work from all of us. We have to strive to enter through that narrow gate, because we don’t want to ever hear those bone-chilling words from today’s Gospel, “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, you evildoers!” The good news is we don’t ever have to hear those words: all we have to do is nourish our relationship with Jesus that will give us strength to enter the narrow gate.  After all, the narrow gate is love, and the love of God in Jesus is more than enough to get us through it.