We Are Made to Find Joy as Suffering Servants

Homily for the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2012

Today’s first reading from Isaiah probably sounded familiar to many of you.  It is part of a passage that is read on Good Friday, that we have come to know as the prophecy of the Suffering Servant.  Christians immediately recognized that Jesus Christ, particularly in his passion and death, embodied the man spoken of centuries earlier by Isaiah.  It was not a great leap to make the connection: the suffering servant described by Isaiah would silently and without anger bear upon his shoulders the guilt of the many and like a lamb be led to the slaughter.

What comes to our minds when we picture the suffering servant?  I imagine that the scene looks pretty miserable.  He is bent over and looks defeated and weak.  His beard is all scraggly – a travesty.  And he is skinny, because miserable people are always skinny.  His face looks forlorn as he grimaces in pain.

The idea of a suffering servant conjures up for most of us the image of someone who is miserable.  But our Gospel, and many other teachings of Christ, and the witness of the lives of the saints who have followed after him should give us pause before we accept such a miserable picture.  In fact, we have reason to believe that in the very midst of his passion, Christ was experiencing a deep and abiding peace.
That even in though the suffering servant suffers, but he does not resent his suffering, he is not existentially shaken by his suffering, he is not miserable.  He might even have, at the depth of his being, something very close to joy.

Joy in the midst of suffering?  The idea seems so naïve and pollyannaish, doesn’t it?  And that is why we need to speak about our Gospel and these readings so clearly today.  Because they show us a truth about who we are that is so counter cultural and forgotten in our day.

In the Gospel, Christ teaches his disciples that what brings joy and fulfillment in life is not seeking to preserve your life, but seeking to give it away.  He turns the survival instinct on its head: we are not mere animals who live in a slavery of finding survival by being the fittest.  We are made in the image and likeness of God.  And what is God like?  God is love.  That means that his joy and his very existence come not from what he receives - because who can give anything to God – but from his continuous giving of his life and his love.  We are made in the image of this God who finds joy in giving, not in the image of an animal who finds joy only in receiving.

That is what Jesus revealed to us on the cross – that we are most ourselves when we give our lives away, because it is in this act of offering our lives that we live most fully in the image and likeness of the God who made us.  We are made to find joy in being suffering servants, in offering our lives as a sacrifice to God and to others.

And so while it is possible for human beings to act as if they were mere animals, preoccupying themselves with ensuring that all of their needs are met and desires satisfied, to do so is to ignore the way that we are made and to take a path that will lead to misery, not only for ourselves, but for our world.   The goods of this world are limited, and so when our lives are dominated by the concern for worldly things we begin resent others, we deceive others, we develop hatreds for others.  Other human beings become our competition, they threaten our survival, or at best become useful tools on our path to success.  Even our own children can be perceived as threats to our happiness and fulfillment, and, like many animals, can be trampled if they get in the way of our quest for our own needs.  When we are motivated by the same desires as other animals, we act like animals, and our culture becomes a jungle of hatreds, rivalries, resentments, and fears.  A culture of death.

On the other hand, when we accept and live the truth about the sacrificial nature of human life revealed by Christ we find joy and life.  Instead of resenting the demands others make upon us, we embrace them because we understand them as opportunities to become more Christ-like, and in becoming Christ-like, find joy.  We are motivated to offer our lives and gifts freely, not counting the cost.  And we are freed from fear, because if you are trying to give your life away, what can anyone take from you that will not help accomplish your purpose?

A Christian culture, a culture of suffering servants offering their lives is sacrifice, is one of joy, peace, goodwill, and freedom.  A culture that loves its children and elderly and disabled because they bring the best out of us and help us to be more fully human as we serve their needs.  A culture that is bound together in a profound social commitment and solidarity, because nothing is such a cross to love as another human being, and we know that happiness is found when we take up our crosses and follow Christ.

In a half hour or so we will leave this sanctuary where we are nourished and incorporated into the one, eternal offering of Christ and step out into a world that is makes it easy to forget who we are and what will make us happy.  How long will it take us before we start thinking about what we need, about what we didn't get, or shouldn't have to give?  Maybe when we turn on the television, and a commercial draws our attention to a product or political failure?  Or when a spouse or child or parent or friend makes a request of us?  Or when we are presented with an opportunity to be of service?  Or when something stirs within us to sit with Christ in prayer?  Remember at that moment: we are not animals whose happiness depends on the fulfillment of our needs and desires.  We are made in the image and likeness of God, the suffering servant.  We will find misery if we try to find happiness the way animals do.  God has made us differently - so that we find life, joy, freedom and peace when we offer our lives in sacrifice to God and to others.

So back to that image of the suffering servant?  What do you see?  I see someone whose countenance radiates a depth of character and deep peace, whose eyes sparkle with a love and joy that is contagious, and whose step is confident and unafraid.  I see the full stature of a human being living in the image and likeness of God.

The Door of Faith Is Always Open for Us

Homily from the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2012

This past Thursday, October 11th, marked the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in Rome in 1962.
And this year, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict has on the anniversary inaugurated a year of faith for the Catholic Church throughout the world.

As he launched us on the year of faith this past Thursday, the Pope explained his hope for the Church this coming year.
He said “We want this Year to arouse in every believer the aspiration to profess the faith in fullness and with renewed conviction, with confidence and hope. It will also be a good opportunity to intensify the celebration of the faith in the liturgy, especially in the Eucharist, which is “the summit towards which the activity of the Church is directed; ... and also the source from which all its power flows.”  At the same time, we make it our prayer that believers’ witness of life may grow in credibility.
To rediscover the content of the faith that is professed, celebrated, lived and prayed, and to reflect on the act of faith, is a task that every believer must make his own, especially in the course of this Year.”


Now the Church speaks of faith in two senses.  The first sense is the content of our faith, the what of faith, the content, what we find in the creed and in the catechism.  The second sense of faith is our faithfulness to God, or our devotion to him and to his will for us.  In this year of faith, our Holy Father has asked us to work on both aspects: on a deeper understanding of the mystery of our Christian faith and on an intensified devotion to Christ in our daily lives.

These two aspects of faith support one another, don’t they?  
The more we know about God, the more we love him; the more we love God, the more we want to know about him.  Faith seeks understanding, and understanding deepens faith.

So, concretely this year it will be important to seek ways to bolster and deepen both aspects of faith: our understanding and our commitment.

In some ways building our understanding is the easier part.
We live in an information age.  We have access easily online to every ecumenical council document and papal encyclical promulgated.
Multiple translations of the Bible are online, along with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, St. Thomas’s summa theological, the Catholic dictionary, and countless other resources.  The difficulty is knowing where to begin, or how to start.  Pope Benedict has given us some advice.  This year, he says, start with the Catechism and with the documents of the Second Vatican Council.  And I will give you a great hint on exactly how to do that.  If you go to the site www.flocknote.com/catechism and subscribe, a small piece of the catechism will be emailed to you each day this year, so that after the year is done, you will have read the entire Catechism.
You only have three days to catch up on if you start today.
I also would encourage you to make sure you have a New American Bible, and commit to reading through all four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles this year.  Also, if you don’t subscribe already, subscribe to the Magnificat.  It’s a little book that each day gives a brief biography of the Saint, the readings for Mass, and Morning and Evening Prayer.

Our Parish will also be providing many opportunities throughout the year to grow in faith, in addition to the current offerings for adults, including a series on the documents on the Second Vatican Council.
So that’s the first aspect of the year of faith, growing in our understanding of the teachings of Christ and his body, the Church.

The second aspect of faith is a bit more tricky: the fidelity, the commitment.  When we say that faith is a gift, I think it is in particular in reference to this aspect of faith.  You can know the Bible inside and out, you could have the Catechism memorized, without having faith.  Even the devil knows the Bible and the Catechism. In fact, he knows it better than any of us.  True faith is not just knowing, it must also be a receiving and adherence to what we know by faith.  Faithfulness, fidelity to Christ and the teachings of his Church is what makes us Christian. Otherwise we would all just be good students of Christianity.  No, the Catholic doesn’t just know what the teachings of the Church are and say “Oh, that’s nice.” “That’s one point of view.”  Faith means that we accept the teachings of Christ that have been handed down to us through the Church as the guideposts for our lives, and that we are faithful to those teachings even when it is not easy.



How can we strengthen our commitment to Christ, our adherence to his will in our lives?  Certainly knowing more about him helps – deepening our understanding of who he is and what he has done for us.  But as I said earlier, even the devil has that.  Something more is required.
And this is the mystery – where does the desire to follow Christ come from?  Ultimately it is a grace, it comes from him.
He gives us the desire to know, love, and serve him.  He gives us the desire that makes us want to be faithful.  But we can make ourselves more open to that grace, we can take steps that will encourage in us a desire to do God’s will, to follow him.

The first step is Baptism.  And thankfully we all are usually given that one by our parents.  The second is the life of the sacraments, particularly the Sacrament of the Eucharist – where through heavenly food God builds up in us the taste for heavenly things, he builds our hunger for him, for his will, for his love.  The third is in prayer, especially before the Blessed Sacrament.  As you know, we are beginning a perpetual adoration chapel this year.  If you are feeling a bit luke warm in your desire, a bit distant from God – as I imagine most of us feel most of the time, than take this concrete step.  Commit yourself to an hour with him once a week.  Maybe with your spouse or with a friend.
If you seek him, he will answer you.  If you knock, the door will be opened.  If you genuinely are working to do his will, he will show you the right path and give you the strength to follow him.
But you have to create an opening in your life, a time when he can work in you and break through the business of this world.  Will you spend one hour with him?  How much time do we spend pursuing trivial things, things that do not last?  Jesus warns us in the Gospel today that our stuff, our wealth, our need to be entertained, to be comfortable, can get in the way of our relationship with him.  Is there really a good reason why any of us cannot spend an hour a week with the Blessed Sacrament getting to know the God who made us and loves us and is trying to save us?
In the Gospel, the rich young man walked away.  He walked away from Jesus.  Because it was too hard.  He didn’t want to give up what he needed to give up.  He didn’t want to make the sacrifice that Christ was asking of him.  But true faith always requires something from us.  We can’t just observe Jesus’ work of salvation from the sidelines like a spectator and expect to share in his victory over sin and death.  We have to have some skin in the game, to be personally invested – willing to be counted and identified with Christ.  His teachings have to become our teachings, his ways our ways, his will our will, his life our life.

I will close with the words of our Pope addressed to all of us as we begin this year of faith:
“The “door of faith” is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. It is possible to cross that threshold when the word of God is proclaimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming grace. To enter through that door is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime. It begins with baptism, through which we can address God as Father, and it ends with the passage through death to eternal life, fruit of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, whose will it was, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, to draw those who believe in him into his own glory. To profess faith in the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is to believe in one God who is Love: the Father, who in the fullness of time sent his Son for our salvation; Jesus Christ, who in the mystery of his death and resurrection redeemed the world; the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church across the centuries as we await the Lord’s glorious return.”

From the Beginning He Made Them Male and Female

Homily from the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2012

As most of you know, our readings for Mass each weekend are given to us based on a three-year cycle.  So the theme of marriage that we find highlighted in today’s readings is one that the Church has highlighted every three years on the 27th Sunday of ordinary time for decades.

Yet as we listen to these readings this Sunday, we hear them in the context of a profoundly contentious cultural debate about same sex marriage.  As much as some have tried to argue that this cultural debate about is not over a religious question, but a civil rights question, all one has to do is read the editorial section in the paper each day to find out that everyone, on both sides of the debate, is using religious arguments.
In fact, those who are seeking to change the definition of marriage this fall have very deliberately worked to highlight clergy who agree with the proposed change, and many of those knocking at the door have been quick to tell those who answer that they are Catholics.

And so it is my duty as your priest, in the face of continuous religious arguments in favor of this change, to try to present a reasonable articulation of the Christ’s teaching on marriage as we hear it in the Gospel today, as difficult as that may be in 7 - 10 minutes, which is what they tell me is your attention span.  To be clear, I’m not trying to bully anyone from the pulpit, but as you prepare to vote on this issue, it is important that you have the opportunity to hear the basic gist of the Catholic position from your priest.

I don’t think that Christ’s teaching on marriage has ever been particularly easy to hear.  As we hear in the Gospel, divorce was permitted in the Mosaic law.  Yet in the face of the common practice of divorce, Jesus taught his followers that the law of Moses did not reflect the fullness of God’s plan for marriage and the family.  Instead, he began with Genesis.  “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.  Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

Now, when this passage was read at Mass a few decades ago, I imagine that the challenging aspect of the teaching centered around divorce.  In the face of a culture where half of marriages end in divorce, Christ’s teaching is very hard to hear: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.”

But today, as we prepare for another vote on the question of same sex marriage, the challenge to our culture in his teaching is found in his claim that from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female, and that in marriage these two leave mother and father and become one flesh.

From the beginning, Jesus teaches us, God created human beings in a complementarity,  male and female, and remember, after that day he said “it is very good.”  Our gender is not a liability, an obstacle to be overcome, but a blessing given to us by God to allow us to share in his life, his love.  Genesis clearly teaches that this form of human relationship, the complementary relationship of male and female is the primordial and foundational human relationship.  Reason shows us that homo sapiens sapiens reproduces heterosexually in the union of a man and woman; what Genesis teaches us that this complementarity of genders that can give birth to new life is not arbitrary, is not a liability of our species, but is intended by God and is good – is very good.

And marriage is the natural institution or social arrangement that acknowledges and protects and upholds the goodness of this complementarity and fecundity of our species.  It exists to promote and shelter the relationship between husband and wife, between parents and their children.

Now some might say, well that’s your opinion, Father, and you’re entitled to it.  But look, it’s not just my opinion.  What our Gospel shows us so clearly today is that this is the teaching of Jesus Christ handed on to us faithfully by his Church.   It is the teaching outlined in the Catechism and taught by the bishops throughout the world.  This is not a question of what color vestments to wear or at what age children should receive their first communion.   There are practices of the Church that are debated and change depending on historical and cultural context and circumstances.  But this teaching has to do with the very core of how we understand the human person, how we understand the relationship between men and women, how we understand the relationship between parent and child, the family.  And the consistent teaching of the Church, based on faith and reason, has always been that the natural family is a blessing given to us by God that should be acknowledged and promoted by society in the institution of marriage.

Now some might say, that may be the belief of your church, but what gives you Catholics the right to impose your view on everyone else?  Clearly, not all citizens see things the same way, why can’t you just live and let live?  Your unwillingness to allow others to act in accord with their deeply held beliefs amounts to bigotry and hatred.

That simply is not true.  And that is because the government’s regulation of marriage is overwhelmingly dominated by positive law.  This means that changing the definition of marriage would not only allow same sex couples to marry, but would more importantly mandate that our government through its laws and regulation promote an entirely different vision of marriage for the whole of society.  Despite assurances to the contrary, this active promotion by the government of a vision of marriage and the family based solely on love and no longer tied in any way to the complementarity between men and women or to their natural children would profoundly impact our culture.  We need only look at the impact of no fault divorce laws on our society, when the government abandoned its promotion of permanence and indissolubility in marriage during the last century.  Now half of marriages end in divorce.  Laws matter – they not only keep people from doing what is wrong, but they also express and promote values that have a formative impact on the culture.  As Catholic men and women, we have the duty and obligation to advocate for and support laws and policies that will help our culture to remain vibrant and healthy, and help our families to live according to the truths of our faith.

Now this support of laws and policies that reflect Catholic teaching on marriage can never, never be motivated by a distain or bigotry or ambivalence toward the needs of others.  Our Church is clear on this: there can be no tolerance in our midst for homophobia, for anti-gay slurs, for bullying, or for any kind of lack of charity directed against another because of their sexual orientation.  Despite what we might hear sometimes in the news, I think that our Church is actually remarkably accepting to all people, regardless of sexual orientation.  Who can begin to count the number of Catholics who are attracted to the same sex or have experienced some uncertainty in their sexual orientation and yet remain active and dedicated to the practice of their faith?  Most of us have family members and friends who are of a different sexual orientation.  We’re all working to try to get to heaven, we’ve all got issues that we’re working on and gifts we’re trying to develop.  No one is checking sexual orientation at the door, and no one will be checking sexual orientation at the gates of heaven.

To be Catholic is to be about the work of following Christ – because we know that he is the Way and the Truth, and the Life: he reveals to us who we are and the fullness of God’s plan for us.  And an essential and beautiful part of that plan, Jesus tells us very clearly today in the Gospel, is found in a man and woman bound together in a complementary love - a married love - that makes them one flesh and offers them the grace to cooperate with their creator in bringing new life into our world.

Service to The Least Teaches a Peace From Above

Homily from the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

The readings this weekend couldn’t come at a better time as we enter into the last months of a very contentious election year and come to the end of such a tumultuous week in international relations.

Most every one of us, I’m sure, would say that we are sick of the negativity that seems to dominate the headlines – the rivalry, the constant antagonism.  It is a constant refrain on the street: the frustration with the tenor of social dialogue today.

But we still keep watching, don’t we?  We must, or else politicians wouldn’t keep running the adds, the stories of acrimony and division wouldn’t be picked up by the media outlets.  The next juicy tidbit and our ears perk up, maybe even despite us.  What?  He said what?  They did what?  The outrage!  What a travesty!

And if it’s not politics, then so often something else presents itself as the latest source of drama in our lives:  workplace dynamics, competitive sports, family issues, gossip among friends, and even, parish rumors.  Drama at every turn, and we don’t always do our best to avoid it.

In fact, many times if we’re honest, we don’t try to avoid it at all.  And this speaks to a built in contradiction in each of us:  as much as we all sympathize with the statement, “Can’t we all just get along?,” the minute that someone is not getting along all of our heads turn and we just have to know what’s happening.  How often we place ourselves in situations where we know our passions will be roused, sometimes even under the mistaken impression that being engaged in this constant struggle makes us more fully alive.

St. James was clearly speaking to this dysfunctional contradiction in the human person when he wrote to the community of Christians in the letter we heard today.  They were overcome with rivalries and conflict – their passions were aroused, St. James wrote, making war within their members.

And this same dynamic, the passions at war, had overtaken the disciples on their way to Capernaum.  Jesus had just finished speaking about his coming passion and death.  Instead of talking about that, they were obsessing and fighting about who was the greatest among them.

How easy it is to be swept into this river of passionate discord, at school, in the workplace, with friends and family, on the street, watching tv or browsing the internet!  The social dynamics at work make it very difficult not to be pulled into the fray, to become a part of the bitter drama that is unfolding.

But our Christian tradition is clear on this point.  Christ and those who have followed in his footsteps have insisted that the Church not to allow the good in the world, the love of God that is present among us, to be obscured in our midst by divisions and hatreds.  Christians cannot allow petty earthly rivalries and jealousies to draw their eyes away from Christ and his plan of salvation that is unfolding around us.  Instead, St. James urges us to seek a peace that comes from directing our passions and protecting our hearts so that they are not constantly being jerked around by the latest crisis, whether that be at home or in school or at work, in Washington DC or in north Africa.

Christ was clearly able to do this – to keep his eyes fixed on the will of his heavenly Father and on the needs of those around him, even while all hell was quite literally breaking lose.  And in our Gospel today, Jesus teaches his disciples how to keep from being swept away in worldly turmoil.
He tells them, seek to serve those around you – particularly those who are the least.  Christ showed his disciples and us that we should not fight a divisive culture by fleeing to the hills or monasteries, as tempting as that might be, but instead by seeking to serve the casualties of our culture, seeking to serve the least.

To serve those whose lives have been entirely overlooked and ignored because they don’t arouse the passion of other’s sympathy.  Those who suffer silently or alone and whose stories are like so many other stories that they never make it to the top of the news cycle.  Those who have been scarred when they were carelessly used as scapegoats or for the mere entertainment of others.  Those who have been ostracized and shunned because they have refused to participate in the denigration of others.  And yes, those who have perpetrated harm on others and carry with them the heavy burden of shame and guilty conscience.  To serve the least.

Christ commanded us to serve the least not only out of love for them, but also out of love for us.  He knew that in serving the least we are freed from the distractions of division and discord and find peace.  Our service to the least, in the midst of a society that cultivates and encourages the warring of passions, allows us to live and be rooted in what St. James calls a wisdom from above.  A wisdom that is pure, peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, and without insincerity.  In a beautiful irony, God made our world in such a way that service to the least, to our children and those who are vulnerable in society, teaches us a peace that comes from above.  It is the least, it is our children who teach us to naturally shun what is evil and seek what is good.  To be passionate about learning, about being good, about making beautiful things come to life.  To desire to know not so much the faults of others as to hear stories about their virtues.  To speak the truth, regardless of the consequences.  And to love Christ about all things, simply because of how good and loving he is to us.

In a parish there is always a certain amount of conflict and discord, especially in our day when we are going through so many changes and living in such a crazy world.  I know that for Fr. Nadeau and I, and just about every priest I have ever talked to, it is our ministry to the least that keeps our lives in perspective, that keeps us from being overwhelmed by parish politics and focused on Christ and his work.  When we go to anoint someone who is dying, or when we are baptizing a little baby, or counseling someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one.  Or when I go to visit my nieces and my little nephew, who has just reached a stage in his life when at the sight of a crucifix he runs and points to it with great excitement, yelling at the top of his lungs: “Jesus!  Jesus!”

Throwing the Baker in the Batter

Homily for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time

(Note: after giving this homily, I had a few other thoughts and tweaks that have been added to this online version)

“Who do you say that I am?”
Quite a question that Jesus asks of his disciples today.  We might rephrase it for ourselves in our day:  “What does faith mean to us?  How does being Catholic affect my life?  What does it mean to be a member of the Church?  What does it mean to have a Christian home, to live a Christian life?”

In our Gospel today, at first it seems that St. Peter gives the right answer: “You are the Christ.” But it doesn’t take long before he demonstrates by his resistance to Jesus’ prediction about the future that his thinking is horribly flawed.  We have to conclude that when Peter said that Jesus was the Christ, he had a very different understanding of what it meant for Jesus to be the Messiah, the promised one.   It seems clear that Peter thought that Jesus would be successful in this world – that he would bring happiness and peace to those who followed him.  Maybe that he would reward his disciples for their labors and would grant blessings to those he had chosen.  That being a follower of Christ could be a peaceful and blessed kind of life.  In short, when St. Peter answered “You are the Christ,” it seems that what he meant was “You are the one who will make us successful in life.”  And boy did he find out that was the wrong answer.

Now, unfortunately, it seems that we all are prone to the same error that St. Peter fell in to when responding to the gift of faith in our daily lives.  Like Peter, we can begin to think that faith in God is supposed to make us successful, or at least help us to be successful – to have God at your side so that you will be able to conquer whatever challenges are placed before you.
I think this is a common understanding in our world today –
to treat religion as a kind of leg up, like a good education or a healthy lifestyle.  We might hear it even in anecdotal statistics that are sometimes thrown around – “You know, people who believe in God are happier.”  “They are more able to handle life’s troubles.”
“People who are religious are less likely to be criminals and are more likely to volunteer and give to charities.”  When Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am?” in our world today, it seems that many people respond in one way or another “You are one of the things that is important to have in a successful life.”  Kind of like the ads “Got milk?”, “Got faith.”  One gives you strong bones, the other gives you a strong spirit.  If you want your children to be successful, you should make sure that they get to church and get their sacraments – they can decide later on what they want to do with it, but at least they’ll get a good start.

What does Jesus say to all of this?  “Get behind me, Satan.”  “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  Human beings see their lives in terms of worldly success.
Human beings so often try to use religion as a way to achieve their goals, to get what they want out of life.  Human beings are always tempted to think of God as one more ingredient in the recipe for a successful earthly life.  As one ingredient among many that can be added to life along with others to improve the taste of things.

How vehemently Jesus rejects this notion of faith, this notion of who he is for us, of what he brings to us.  No, Jesus Christ is not an ingredient in the recipe for a successful life.  His life is the bowl that all of the ingredients must be mixed inside, his love is the oven that purifies and prepares us and his pierced hands are the hands that serve us to the Father.  Without him, not a single ingredient makes sense.  Without him, life is just a bunch of meaningless stuff all thrown together with no binding purpose.

When we see how Christ emptied himself, forsaking all earthly success in order to carry out his loving plan of salvation, when  we look upon the cross, we realize that Christ did not come to grant us earthly success, but salvation.  That is why, after Peter correctly identifies Jesus as the Christ, Jesus speaks of the cross.  The specter of the cross, foreshadowed by Christ, exposed the inadequacy of Peter’s understanding of Jesus and revealed the true Christ: Christ who takes up his cross out of love for us and who dies in order to give us new life.  Christ who calls us to spend ourselves loving God and others even when such love jeopardizes our earthly success.

The cross shows us that following Christ is a love story, not a success story.  Our relationship with Christ, together as members of his body, his plan for us, is so much more profound and beautiful than mere earthly success that only lasts for the few short days that we wander around on this planet.

The cross makes it clear that we cannot treat Christ as just one more ingredient in a successful earthly life.  No, that is like asking the baker to jump into the batter.  Absurd!  Christ did not come to be an ingredient in our earthly success, but instead to call each of us to be the ingredients in his plan of salvation.

When Christ reveals his cross to us in our daily lives, how do we respond?  When he shows us that we must follow him by our willingness to forsake earthly success in pursuit of his plan of salvation, do we listen?  Or do we, like Peter, rebuke him, insisting that his plan of salvation fit into our plan for earthly success?  That he jump into our mix, instead of us jumping into his?  He asked St. Peter, and he asks each of us “Who do you say that I am?”

The Most Important Work of Your Life

Homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2012

Jesus’ teaching today reminds us that the most important work of the Christian is an interior work, the effort to purify and bring order to our inner lives with the help of God’s grace.  And he teaches us this lesson because he wants his disciples to find the freedom and happiness that comes from a purified and well-ordered heart.  He knows that when the heart is divided, when it is constantly distracted, when it is ruled by passions that are out of control, then we cannot find peace and joy and happiness.  And not only that, but those we love most, our families and our friends and community often bear the effects of our heart problems.
He reminds us that a pure heart not only gives peace and joy to us, but to everyone else who we encounter in life.

So I think we can logically conclude from our scriptures today that the most important thing that we can be working on, the most loving thing that we can do for those around us, is to work on our interior lives, to work on purifying and ordering our hearts.  If you want to love your husband or wife more, work on your spiritual life.  If you want to love your children more, work on your spiritual life.  If you want to love your friends and neighbors and coworkers and people you run into on the street, work on your spiritual life.  In short, just as the greatest act of love we can undertake for God is the love of others, so too, the greatest act of love we can undertake for others is to work on our love of God.  They are two sides to the same coin.

Wouldn't it be nice if this interior renewal could happen quickly and without a lot of work.  That God would just reach down one day and zap us – like a big Holy Spirit defibrillator: heavenly paddles put to the chest and zzzt… presto saint.  But real cleaning and ordering doesn't often happen like that, even if there are a few zaps along the way.  Instead, the path that most of us are called to follow is a gradual incline of interior renewal or conversion: a daily effort to fight against vice and grow in virtue.  In short, it’s work.  Don’t we all ask ourselves – I certainly do every day – am I really working on this hard enough?  Am I actively seeking open my heart to Christ and his will or is my effort to know and love him often far too halfhearted?  To have a pure and ordered heart: that is what I know I need and what those around me need in me more than anything – certainly as a priest.  But it is the same for all of us.  What are we doing about that – concretely - this evening, tomorrow morning, afternoon?

And so on this labor day weekend it is fitting that we speak a bit about this most important spiritual occupation, working with Christ to build an interior castle, a spiritual life that is fully alive and open to God’s grace.  But where to begin?  What are tools and method of this art of interior renewal, this work of spiritual construction?  Perhaps more clearly than anywhere, we find in the lives of the saints throughout the centuries the inspiration and clear witness as to how to carry out this work of interior conversion.  Today I thought we could just touch on three main elements.

1. First, the saints show us that we must work to know our destination: to know Christ, whose mind and heart were pure and ordered to the truth  and goodness of God’s will.  The more intimately we know Jesus, the more we are capable of seeing the destination that our hearts seek.  How do we come to know Christ intimately?  The fathers of the Church tell us that ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ.  So first and foremost, we must work to immerse ourselves in the sacred scriptures, particularly in the Gospels.  But the scriptures do not interpret themselves, being that they are translated from 3 different languages and cultures of 2-3 thousand years ago that were very different from our own.  And so in our reading we have to rely on the guidance of the great doctors of the church, the moral and doctrinal tradition that has been handed on throughout the centuries, and the lived witness of the saints: all of whom help us to encounter the true Jesus Christ, rather than fall into the easy trap of fabricating an image of Jesus that conforms more to our own goals and desires than to the truth about him.  How often do you and I read scripture and scriptural commentaries, documents of the Church, or books on the lives of the saints?  If interior renewal is our goal, then this work of deepening our understanding of Christ is essential and we have to make it a priority.  How many bookmarks on our browser point us to sites that will help us to grow in the knowledge and love of our faith?

2. But it is not only this intellectual knowledge that we need, right?  We not only need to know where or to whom we’re going –
we also need his help getting there.  And this means that we need to listen to Jesus as he speaks directly to us so that the truth of who he is, what he thinks, and what he desires can begin to really change who we are and what we think, and what we desire.
The saints show us that this interior dialogue – heart to heart - happens through the sacraments, through fasting and other penitential practices, and through long hours of prayer.  Through these aspects of our Catholic life, Christ’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, leads us along the path to holiness.  The sacraments and our spiritual disciplines gradually instill in us the fortitude to persevere when we encounter our human weakness and failures, and to not settle for mediocrity in the spiritual life.  Over time God’s grace has the power to radically transform us through prayer and sacrament, making us less distracted with the trivial things in life, less prone to be overcome by destructive passions, less vulnerable to bouts of anxiety and fear, and more full of joy and hope and goodwill toward others.  Do we take time for prayer?  Real time – is it scheduled, does our day begin and end in prayer?  What about frequent confession and the regular reception of the Eucharist?  In our world, that pushes us in so many directions, it is easy to neglect these spiritual basics.
But if we are serious about interior renewal, for our sakes and the sake of those around us we need to put spiritual things first, and then let life settle in around that.

3. And finally, even  the most hermetic of hermits recognized that the interior can only be purified and ordered when it is constantly being given to those around us.  Christ teaches us continually throughout the Gospels that generous service to others and a sacrificial outpouring of one’s life to friend and neighbor is essential for an interior conversion of life.  We might put it this way: God can only purify and order your heart when you give it to him, not when you keep it buried in your chest.  Do the saints have pure hearts because they love, or do they love because they have pure hearts?  It’s kind of a chicken and egg question, but clearly the two go together.  What is clear is that in working to purify and order our hearts we must be concerned with the hearts of others.  When we give our heart to a brother or sister in need, Jesus tells us that we give it to him, and we know that when we give our hearts to Christ he works to purify them and order them and make them holy.
How much do we go out of our way to build community in our parish and in our neighborhood?  How much potential social time is gobbled up by vegging in front of a television of computer?  It’s easier to plop down on the couch, but you can’t love others from the couch.  Interior renewal means seeking out community, seeking opportunities to love others, and seeking Christian friendship so that we can encourage one another in the path to holiness.  This may be the greatest challenge to us today – building Christian community and culture.

As we look to the witness of the saints, to the instruction of  the scriptures and the witness of  our Catholic tradition, the pathway to interior conversion of life in Christ is pretty clearly revealed to us, it is not a great mystery like the Trinity.

But there is one mystery that each of us must sort out with God alone – and that is the path that we will choose each day.  Will we be hearers of the word only, deluding ourselves, St. Paul asks us today, or will we be doers of the word?  Will we be content with a basic knowledge of Christ, a mediocre prayer life, and kindness to those who are easy to be around?  Christ desires more for us because he knows our hearts and he knows that our hearts need more to find true joy and fulfillment.  That our hearts will be restless until they rest in him.  On this labor day weekend, let us recommit ourselves to the most important work of our lives: the work of building an interior castle, a temple for the Holy Spirit, a foundation that is solidly grounded in the joy and peace and truth of Christ’s love.

Who Do You Serve?

Homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time


When I was ordained a deacon, I remember very well the promise of obedience that we all made.  Approaching the bishop, you place your hands into his and he asks you “Do you promise obedience to me and to my successors?”

And again at the ordination to the priesthood, I gave my hands to the bishop, and again the question “Do you promise obedience to me and to my successors?”

It is the only promise that the priest makes twice.  So it will stick.  And I have often heard older priests say that it is the most difficult promise – not celibacy, not the discipline of prayer, but obedience.

Obedience is one of the most counter cultural concepts lived and taught by the Church today.  Particularly, I think, in our American culture.  And that is why I think that the readings this weekend, if we are open to them, are some of the more challenging readings that we hear all year.

Joshua starts us off right away in our first reading with the question: Who will you serve?  Will you serve the Lord?

And in our second reading, St. Paul was adamant in his insistence that wives should be subordinate to their husbands and husbands love their wives as Christ loves the Church by giving up his life for her.  In our Gospel, which follows Jesus’ challenging teaching about the Eucharist, he asks his followers to choose: will they accept his teaching?  Many don’t and they leave.  Peter, and some others stay.

The situations are stark and the stakes are high in our readings this weekend.  They show us men and women who have to make a decision, who have to decide: Who will we serve?  Whose teaching will we follow?  There is no dodging the question, no hedging.  You have to look into someone’s eyes and decide: will you follow or not.  I think it might be the fundamental question that our society is asking Catholics today.  Who will you serve?

Now you can see how many people, many of us might have wanted to ask Joshua or Jesus, well why do I have to answer you?  Can’t you just leave us alone and let us figure it out?  Why this insistence that there be a choice?  Why does someone have to serve someone else and follow their teaching, why can’t everyone just make up their own mind?  Why obedience?  Educated, well informed people should be able to live and let live, right?  What if I reject the either or, serve this or serve that?  Can’t we be masters of our own destiny?  Isn’t that the American dream?

But St. Peter knew better than that. He knew that he was going to serve someone, something – and if not, he would just be serving himself.  And so as he looked around at the options, the choice was very clear to him: where else was he going to go?  He was pretty convinced that there was something different about Jesus Christ, that he spoke words of eternal life, that he understood the truth about our destiny and knew how to get there.  Could he say the same for his wife?  For his governor?  For his best friend?  For himself?  No.

And he also knew that if you are really serving someone, obedient to someone, you cannot pick and choose what to follow and what not to follow.  He didn’t say to Jesus, “Well, I will follow you and I like your teachings about the poor, but this whole Eucharist thing, I’m just not really sure that I can buy that.”  Who’s the master in that picture, Peter or Jesus?  It would have been Peter, setting himself up as arbiter and jury, deciding which teachings of Jesus he should accept or not accept.  No, when you are serving someone you don’t just accept the teachings and decisions that you approve of.  That’s what you do with an advisor when you are the master.  Peter knew that Jesus did not come to be an advisor, but that he was God’s son.  And you don’t ask God’s son for advice, you ask him what he wants you to do.

If you look at the statistics, I think it’s very clear that many, many Catholics are treating the Church as an advisor.  They are happy to accept the teachings of Christ that they have an easy time accepting, but the teachings they find problematic – well, they overlook them.  Their master is somewhere else – who is it?

Some might respond: but Father, you just made a switch – you started with Jesus and ended with the Church.  I am serving Jesus, I am obedient to him, but the Church – well that is an advisor to me on how to serve him.  The Church is made up of human beings.

True, and don’t we know that in recent years.  But the weakness and sinfulness of the Church does not change the fact that we are all weak and sinful human beings, does it?  And if we are not obedient to our bishop’s interpretation of Christ’s will in matters of faith and morals when they speak in union with the pope, then whose interpretation are we obedient to?  Who are our masters?  Who are we serving?  We’re serving someone, we’re listening to someone.  We’re making someone else the master, whether it be ourselves or a political party, or some other social affiliation.  And unlike the bishops, who Christ promised would always be guided by the Holy Spirit to keep the faith until he returns, we have no guarantee that our evaluation, much less the evaluation of a political party, will be guided by God’s will.

Are we first Catholics, or are we first democrats, or first republicans, or first independents?  Who has the authority to interpret Jesus’ teaching and apply it to our world today?   A priest very clearly promises obedience to his bishop – twice – so it is very clear that he must follow his lead – even if he can’t stand the man, and even if he argues with him.  When push comes to shove,  Peter understood that even when the teachings are hard, even when the road is difficult, we must trust that in Christ and his Church dwell the words of spirit and life, and work to figure out how to accept that.

Reverencing the Body of Christ

Homily for the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2012

I know that many of you were a part of the Way of the Cross procession that our parish organized on Palm Sunday this year.  It was a moving event and I think that a number of the scenes from that day have stuck with many of us.  The way that Jesus was portrayed by the young man from our parish certainly had an impact on many people.  In particular, the last stations at St. Johns church would be hard to forget, as we watched this young man stripped half naked, shaking as he hung from the cross because he had dragged that huge thing a mile and a half across town.  To be so vulnerable and exposed before hundreds of people like that, before being gently lowered into the arms of his mother.  The Church was quiet, very quiet.

I was pretty involved in rehearsing the scene – practicing taking Jesus down from the cross.  And even during the rehearsal, there was a sense of respect or of what I might even call reverence as we worked to figure out how to take Jesus’ body from the cross and lay him gently so that he could rest in the arms of his mother.  The fact that we were just enacting a scene did not change the fact that we were carrying in our arms the body of another human being who was entrusting his safety to us.  

It reminds me a bit of carrying a newborn.  My brother and sister in law just had a baby a couple weeks ago and I was down the day after she was born.  I found myself up at 4:00am holding the little one – not a common experience for a priest.  How can you not have a certain, again, I’m going to call it reverence, as you gingerly and carefully hold that little child who is so vulnerable and precious?

Another experience I had of that same kind of reverence was when I was in Calcutta as a seminarian, working for a morning at Mother Teresa’s house for the dying.  We were asked to help bathe the male residents.  So each of us went to cot after cot, lifting up these young men who were so weakened by disease that they could not stand and weighed half our weight.  And there was a sense of profound reverence as we carried them, naked and vulnerable, to the shower room, washed them head to toe, and then brought them back to their beds.

Why bring these experiences up?  Because they came to mind as I reflected on the words of Christ in our Gospel today: Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you do not have life within you.  We might also put it this way: When you eat my body and drink my blood, you have my life in you, you hold my body, my life in your hands, entrusted to you, given to you.

We need to think about what that means.  It means that the bread and wine in a moment are transformed and become the flesh and blood, the body, of this man, Jesus Christ.  Just as his body was taken down from the cross and placed in the arms of his mother, so his body is taken from this altar and placed into our hands, our mouths.  In a sense, every time a Christian receives communion, he or she takes the place of Mary in the pieta.  The body of Christ is laid in our arms in a profound act of vulnerability, of intimacy.  Christ could not give us anything more personal of himself: his own body, his own blood: placed in our hands.

What if the Eucharistic minister handed us a newborn baby?  How would we hold that child, what kind of reverence would we have?  What if the Eucharistic minister handed us a naked, dying man?  How would we hold him, how would we reverence his body?   My experience is that the rest of the world goes away for a moment – all of your attention is focused on the life, the existence of the person you are holding in your arms.  The full weight of what, of who, you are carrying holds your attention fast.  Every move you make, every thought, is directed toward how you can respect and revere the body, the life that has been entrusted to you.  Your world is entirely consumed by what you are carrying.

In a few moments, the Eucharistic minister will place the body of the Risen Lord of Heaven and Earth in your hands, upon your tongue.  Will we carry his body with this same reverence, allowing it to consume us – our attention, our desires, our hopes and dreams?  And not just for the few steps on the way back to the pew, but for the rest of the week?

Jesus teaches us in the Gospel today that the Christian is a Christ-bearer: one who is entrusted with Christ’s body, and whose life must be consumed through, with, and in the Body of Christ.  

Who Defines the Catholic Church?

Homily for the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

It would be interesting to take a poll of all of the people in our area, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, and ask them this question:  “How would you define the Catholic Church?”  My sense that for many people in our area, especially our young people, the definition of the Catholic Church they would give would be quite superficial.  Maybe they would begin with the hierarchy – the pope and bishops, they might mention Jesus - perhaps they would highlight the social teachings of the Church – maybe some of the main beliefs that we profess each week in the creed.

But I wonder how many would say something like: “It is the group of people who in Baptism God has adopted as his sons and daughters and who he feeds with the body and blood of his Son so that they are made into members of his body working to redeem and sanctify the world.”

Alright -  no one would say that.  I don’t think I would even come up with that off the top of my head.  I had some time to think about it when I was working on the homily.   But this is the definition that Jesus gives us in the Gospel today: the Church, his followers, are those he feeds so that they can faithfully live in him, carrying out his work in the world.

How can we work to help our culture rediscover the right definition, the truth about the Catholic faith?  How will our society encounter in us, in our Church, not just a set of beliefs or an institution, but a doorway, a gate through which God leads all men and women to the green pastures of intimate union with him?  

Maybe some would say that we should do an advertising campaign, hire pr consultants, or work on our branding.  And perhaps some of these steps might help.  But the reality is much more simple and challenging: our culture will see the truth about us when we live it.  When we, as St. Paul urges us in our second reading today, put away the old self of our former ways of life, and are renewed in the spirit of our minds and put on the new self, created in God’s way of righteousness and holiness of truth.

When we show in our lives that we are men and women nourished by heavenly food.
When we stop at least in the morning and evening for a substantial period of time to speak with Christ who is our source of nourishment and strength.
When we choose to turn off the television and leave aside browsing online and instead spend time and effort working to understand and live the lessons of the sacred scriptures and the lives of the saints.
When we set up routines in our families that place common prayer and engagement in the life of the parish first, and let extracurricular and social engagements and entertainment time come second.
When we resolve to find the help we need in confession and with learned men and women of faith, not settling for sinful habits or a mediocre life, but seeking true holiness and union with God no matter the personal cost.
When we actively seek out ways to be of service to others with our time, gifts, and finances more than seeking ways that others can be of service to us.
When we sacrifice in order to make our relationships with our wives and husbands, our children and parents, a top priority.
When we prioritize community with our brothers and sisters in Christ, whose encouragement and support we need and who we are meant to support and encourage in living the Christian life.
And when we courageously stand against bigotry, gossip, deceitfulness, manipulations, and hatred in the workplace, at home, in our friendships, in our community, and especially in our parish.

Do people know that you are Catholic?  How?  I have a feeling most people figure out that I am.  But what about the rest of us?  I hope that it’s not just because they see our cars parked here for Mass on Sunday.  I hope it’s not because we sometimes wear a t-shirt from a Catholic event or have a wall calendar of the popes, or because they have overheard us arguing about a church teaching.  Any definition of the Catholic faith based on such superficial observations will be horribly impoverished.

Our children, our neighbors, our community need to see in us the witness of a truly different kind of life.  And so our parish must continually ask itself: Is it clear by the choices that we make each day that Jesus Christ is the source of our deepest nourishment and strength – the beginning and end of each day?  Do we seek to do his work, his will, above all things, to be faithful to him in all that we do and say?  Are we devoted to one another, who have been made brothers and sisters to one another in Christ?  Can the world see, when they look upon us, that we are members of a body that is nourished with of a new and different kind of food –
a food that comes from heaven, a food that unites us to God and one another and makes us sharers in his work?

The credibility of our faith demands that Christians not lower the bar, settling for a mediocre secular life.  St. Paul urges us all: Put away the old self of your former way of life, be renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new self.  May our witness show the world that what defines the Church is not principally the hierarchy or controversial teachings, but a beautiful, generous, compassionate, courageous divine life lived and shared among those who are nourished by Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life.

Needing To Be Fed

Homily for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Eating is a very strange activity, when you think about it.  Absorbing another thing into your body.  That’s probably why so many horror movies have to do with something eating something else.  The idea that you would consume another thing that was alive – that you would chew the life out of some vegetable. 

I remember some bumper sticker that asked if carrots screamed when you pulled them out of the ground. 

It is strange, if you step back for a moment and think about it, that in order to live we have to feed on other living things.  Why didn’t God just make it so that we absorbed energy from the sun?  Or why not that we could just chew on rocks or dirt?  Or why not just make us water or air powered?  I’m sure that’s what we would do, if we were in charge of putting together little human creatures – try to make them self-sufficient.   Instead, look how we ended up: needing to eat, needing to be fed.  Why?

Our Responsorial Psalm today speaks to our dependence upon God: The eyes of all look hopefully to you and you give them their food in due season. 

The psalmist’s reflection teaches us something important: our hunger, our needing to be fed, is not a sign of weakness, is not a punishment given to us by God.  No, because we know of God’s goodness, we can see that our dependence upon him is actually a blessed gateway that God has built into our world so that he can demonstrate his love for us.  Hunger opens us to receive  his gifts, it makes us raise our eyes for a moment and look to the one who is the source of our nourishment.  Our need to be fed is a blessing that opens us to God’s providential love. 

And so hunger is not the worst of evils – instead, it is a lack of hunger that is in fact revealed as the greatest threat to us. Think of one of the most common symptoms of depression: lack of hunger.  Think of one of the great signs of illness: no appetite.  It was not a group of 100 full and contented people that Elisha fed.  It was not a crowd of 5,000 sated and happy people that Jesus fed.  They were hungry.  And it was their hunger that caused their eyes to look upon him, waiting for him to give them the food that they needed.

But we have a hard time thinking that way, don’t we?  Because it is sometimes painful, we see hunger as a curse, a state to be avoided at all costs – we work hard to make sure that our families are never hungry, that we are as close as we can be to full all the time.  And we avoid not just hunger, but any dependency, any longing or unfulfilled need.  Our culture teaches us that the successful person is a self-sufficient person, one who is not in desperate need of God, though maybe does glance up from time to time to thank him.  That God is not so much our provider and source of life as he is our enabler, our collaborator.  That he helps us with the things we’re working to achieve, but that we don’t need him to survive, strictly speaking.  To kneel and beg?  Isn’t that for the sinful and desperate?  An action beneath our dignity?

No, no it’s not.  Kneeling and begging is just fine with Jesus, and in fact it is only to kneelers and beggars – people who are directly dependent upon him – that God can offer his gifts. 

And so the readings challenge us today to ask: do we acknowledge and live our dependence upon God?  And I don’t mean just in some vague, abstract sense. As we hear in today’s Psalm: are our eyes hopefully upon him, waiting for him to give us what we need in due season? 

Do we place our trust in him and cultivate in our prayer and in our lifestyle a dependence upon him at each hour of the day?  Do we recognize our need to be nourished and forgiven by life of Christ poured out for us in the sacraments? 

If the crowd of 5,000 had, as it sat before our Lord, decided that there was no way that Jesus could take care of them and that they should figure out amongst themselves what was best to eat – if they had voted and all chipped in and pulled something together – maybe they got the local kebab vendor to come over.  Would they have eaten that evening?  Well yes, I imagine, they would have, and maybe they wouldn’t have had to wait so long. 

But would their eyes have been as closely fixed upon Jesus as he broke the bread and said the blessing?  Would Jesus have been able to show them, in their dependency and hunger, such a great sign and miracle of the Eucharist and of God’s providential care for them, or would they have gone away believing that they had to take care of themselves?  Would Jesus have had the opportunity to give them more than they needed – rich and poor alike – so much that there were 12 wicker baskets left over, or would many that day have left hungry after the kebab guy ran out of food?

Listen to the words of the great St. Augustine as he commented on the psalm we hear today:

Focus your minds, brothers and sisters, on this great God. 

What was God meaning to do when he made heaven and earth, the sea, and all the creatures in them?  Perhaps someone may say “I see all these great things, to be sure: But does God regard me as one of the things he made?  Does he really care about me among all these?  Is God even aware of me now?  Does he know whether I am alive?”  What are you saying?  Do not let such wicked ideas creep into your heart, be not lukewarm doubters who despair and stop believing that God takes account of them.  If God took the trouble to create you, will he not take the trouble to re-create you?  Is not he who made heaven and earth and sea your God?

    

You Cannot Separate the Munera

Priest, Prophet, and King

In baptism, each Christian rises to new life in Christ and is anointed priest, prophet, and king.  To this threefold sharing in the identity of Christ correspond three munera, or aspects of his saving mission: the priest sanctifies, the prophet preaches, and the king governs.  The ontological change brought about in baptism therefore also enacts a commissioning in which the Christian receives the grace and the responsibility to exercise these munera in union with the risen Lord.  I remember well the lesson that our venerable canon law professor, Gianfranco Ghirlanda, drilled into our heads again and again when speaking of this commissioning: you cannot separate the munera.  Authentic Christian discipleship requires a continuity and harmony among the three: a Christian cannot authentically preach the faith without offering prayer and sacrifice, cannot offer sacrifice without serving others as Christ has served us, cannot serve others without telling them of the great gift we have received in Christ. 

The way in which the munera are exercised undergoes a transformation in the man who receives the sacrament of Holy Orders.  Christ’s example shows us that this ministry is profoundly human and relational, also entailing the full breadth and scope of the munera: one united action of teaching, sanctifying, and governing.  How many of the events in the life of Christ clearly demonstrate this three-fold harmony in his ministry.  We need only to look to the Last Supper, where Christ first arranged for the upper room to be made available, then taught his disciples and prayed for them, then bent to wash their feet before finally rising to break the bread and offer the chalice.  Every element of the last supper was important and was part of Christ’s ministry – not only the breaking of the bread.  Jesus is not only the one who offers the Eucharist – he is also our teacher and our Lord.  And likewise, a bishop or priest cannot only be the one who sanctifies – he must also be one who teaches and who governs.  Thus, from the earliest days of the Church, it has been clear that a bishop cannot authentically preside over the Eucharist while at the same time abdicating his duty to teach the faith or govern the local church. 

In recent years, however, an understanding of this necessary unity of the munera has been undermined, and particularly in the ministry of priests.  In the common understanding, and even among many members of the clergy, it is often either explicitly or implicitly held that priests are ordained as ministers who share only in Christ’s ministry of sanctification.  Often one hears “Father, if only you did not have to worry about the practical concerns of the parish and could just focus on the spiritual matters.”  And it is common today to speak of the priest and of priestly ministry in a way that resembles the work of a magic man – of one who whisks into the room, waves his hands and makes something holy, and then moves on to the next place.  But clearly such an understanding of the priest cannot be reconciled with the actual priestly ministry of Christ, who did not just sweep in and sanctify.  This mistaken notion that focuses the identity and ministry of the priest almost exclusively on the work of sanctification has had widespread negative repercussions in the Church. 

Reticence in the Laity to Follow the Teaching and Governance of Church Leaders.

How many conversations in recent years among priests have unfolded something like this: “Did you read the editorial page this morning?”  “Yes, I assume you’re referring to Betsy’s letter to the editor?” “Can you believe that?  And she is a daily communicant!  I just don’t understand how she could really believe that.”

Today we often find faithfully practicing Catholics who either blatantly dissent from the Church’s teaching or who openly oppose the leadership and authority of their priests or bishop.  It is an everyday occurrence.  Many of us assume that such dissent and disobedience are the signs of a lack of faith – that if the person just had more faith they would believe what the Church teaches and be more respectful of the clergy.  While faith certainly plays a role, I think it is important to also recognize how an impoverished understanding of priestly ministry has also fed into this problem.  If I believe that the priest shares only in Christ’s ministry of sanctification, or at least only fully in this aspect of his ministry, whereas I believe that Christ’s ministry of teaching and governing are not intrinsic or at least not entrusted in their fullness to those who have receive holy orders, then it seems perfectly logical that I could go to Mass and yet at the same time reject the teachings and the authority of my bishop and his priests.  I would say to myself “Well he is out of his element.  He should stick to what God has given him to do: which is to sanctify.”  And I would be more inclined to resent the bishop or priest for attempting to teach or govern with authority, because I would see such authority not as having come from God by virtue of his sharing in the Christ’s ministry, but instead as coming from his own desire for power and control.  Why would I follow someone who is trying to push me around or tell me what to think of his own authority? 

Diminishment in the Number of Priestly Vocations.

Vocations to the priesthood have been growing throughout the United States in the last decade, and yet this growth has not been even.  Some diocese have had an incredible boom in the number of men entering the seminary, whereas others have seen anemic growth.  Why?  People opine continually, and clearly there are many factors that affect the overall number of vocations.  Yet a critical factor that I do not believe is given nearly enough attention is the extent to which the understanding of priestly identity and ministry operative in a diocese or religious community affects its ability to attract vocations. 

Men do not have a vocation to be a magic man, particularly a celibate magic man.  If the understanding and exercise of priesthood and priestly ministry are impoverished to entail sacramental ministry alone, it is very possible that men who have an authentic vocation to priestly ministry will not feel called.  And this is particularly the case for men who are intelligent and have leadership ability.  Articulate and intelligent men know that God would not call them to a vocation that did not allow them to use the intellectual gifts that he had given them in service to the Church.  And so if they do not understand that the ministry of preaching and teaching is intrinsic and essential and defining of priestly ministry, they will be less inclined to be open to a priestly vocation.  Similarly, those men who possess strong leadership ability and administrative skills will be less likely to consider a vocation to the priesthood if their understanding of priestly ministry either does not include or includes an impoverished sense of the ministry of service and governance exercised by the priest.

Damage to Community

The priest is ordained to ministry in the Church in persona Christi… capitis.  This last word is often left out, particularly among those who promote an impoverished notion of the priesthood.  The priest is called to act in the person of Christ the head.  Jesus is not the big toe of the body.  He is the head who shows his humility precisely in that as head he bows low and serves, even to the point of death.  For the toe to bow low means nothing, but for the head to bow demonstrates true humility.  As Saint Paul so eloquently wrote: “Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself. (Phil 2:6-7)”  So it must be for the priest.  The priest is given and must be understood to possess real authority not only sacramentally, but in matters of teaching and governance as well. 

The undermining of the priest’s authority in non-sacramental ministry undermines his sense of responsibility to act in service of and for the good of the body.  And so it is common to find a correlation in priestly ministry between the loss of authority and absence from ministry.    This absence, the 9-5 syndrome, the complaining of being overworked, the multiple days off and extended periods of vacation, make more sense when the priest thinks that his ministry is supposed to be merely sacramental.  Pastoral council meetings, managing staff, teaching at vacation bible school, and going to the woman’s sodality meeting – these are all seen as impositions and activities that lie outside of the priestly vocation.  And so the priest quite easily can begin to excuse himself from building up and maintaining community life in his parish because he does not see such activities as being intrinsically tied to his ministry as a priest.  Instead, he becomes a sacramental accessory to the life of the parish, and may say things like “This is your parish, you decide what you need to do.”  And many of those who seek to dominate particular parts of parish life may encourage him in this thinking and commiserate about how overworked the poor priest is.  “Poor Father, you have so much going on, don’t bother coming to the meeting – we’ve got it covered.” 

Lack of Subsidiarity and the Adoption of Secular Governance Models

Another symptom of the impoverishment in understanding of priestly ministry manifests itself at the diocesan level. Since a magic man is clearly not capable of running a parish, it becomes necessary to institutionalize and even require lay positions and structures that can fill this void in priestly ministry.  Large diocesan offices must be created to oversee finance and business administration and to direct religious education.  These offices, in turn, begin to communicate and work directly with lay staff and volunteers from the parishes, rather than the priests themselves, since the work of teaching and governance is no longer considered to be intrinsic to priestly ministry.  Soon, lay staff outnumber ordained clergy and religious, and because of this shift toward  non-clerical hierarchies within the diocese, the model of governance adopted by the bishop and his lay staff is increasingly influenced by secular employment practices. 

The context of governance within a diocese that is envisioned by Lumen Gentium and by the codes of canon law is nowhere to be found.  While finance and administration meetings may begin and end in prayer, the spiritual relationship of shepherd and flock that is at the heart of Christ’s priestly ministry entrusted to the apostles and their successors is seriously compromised.  Fewer and fewer administrative decisions are made by those who have been directly entrusted with the salvation of those under their care and have received the grace of holy orders to carry out their ministry. 

Conclusions

What results when the three munera of priestly ministry are separated in favor of a purely sacramental model is destructive to the life of the Church.   Vocations to the priesthood are lost, dissent from church teachings and authority among the laity is fostered, parish community is weakened, and priests become apathetic and frustrated.  A priest can only carry out Christ’s ministry as he is baptized: priest, prophet, and king.  Just as Christ stooped to wash his disciples feet, so must the priest stoop to pay the bills, oversee a youth minister, or attend the finance council meeting.  The priest acts in the person of Christ the head, in the person of Christ who is the bridegroom to the Church, in the person of Christ who offered himself, priest, prophet, and king, to his beloved. 

Take Nothing For the Journey But A Walking Stick

Homily for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2012

Take nothing for the journey but a walking stick-- no food, no sack, no money in your belt.
Some days these instructions to the first disciples sound pretty good.  Perhaps especially on those days when we’re trying to register the car, paying taxes, cleaning or painting the house.  Just a walking stick.  Ahh…

But a family can’t survive with just a walking stick.  In order to develop the gifts we’ve been given, each of us requires many things.  And so as we hear Jesus’ instructions to the 72 in the gospel today, we know that he cannot have meant for this command to be literally followed by all of us.  Yet we are all disciples, to be those who announce the good news in our world.  We all share in the same prophetic ministry of the 72 who Jesus sent from Jerusalem to preach the Gospel.  So we can’t just say, well none of this applies to us.  We know that Christ’s teaching about the need for disciples to live a life detached from material things must apply at least in principle to us too.  But how are we to understand and live a Christian detachment from the material world that is appropriate for our state in life?  How are we who must raise families and live in the real world to be faithful to this teaching?

What a great question!  I hope that you ask yourself this question all the time.  How am I, how are we, how is my family called to live in a way that keeps material things in their proper place? 
This is really a question that you must ask, because it is not the role of the priest to dictate the concrete choices that each family must make regarding the material goods that they possess.  42” tv?  Ok.  44”  Nope, too big.  2 smart phones, ok.  3?  Nope, over the line.  No, the hierarchy does not produce documents that go through and detail exactly what you need and don’t need.

Yet the fact the magisterium does not delve into these financial matters does not mean in the least that our choices with regard to material possessions are unimportant or unrelated to faith.  On the contrary, one of the most visible ways that Catholics who live in the world demonstrate and proclaim their faith is by their attitude and treatment of material goods.  How you and I choose to spend our money, how much stuff we have and how much we are preoccupied with our stuff says something about our priorities, about what we think is important.  And being a follower of Christ has to change your priorities, has to change what you think is important. 

If you and I, who believe that heaven is our final destiny and that what matters on this earth more than anything is loving God and others – if our monetary choices are the same as people who don’t believe in heaven and who think that money, power, and pleasure are the goal of life, than something has gone horribly wrong.

Let me close by making this very concrete.  If I showed up tomorrow for Mass driving a Ferrari at a time while our parish is facing a budget shortfall.  You would be scandalized.  And rightly so.  You would wonder about my priorities, my integrity.  You would maybe even wonder about my commitment to the Church and the faith.  My credibility as a spiritual leader would be seriously compromised, not only among Catholics, but especially among non-Catholics.
Now what if I showed up in a Mercedes?  Probably there would still be a lot of talk.
What about a Volvo?  Probably less.
A Ford?  I think that passes the safe priest car standard.

How do I decide?  There is no church document or diocesan policy telling me what kind of car I should drive.  But clearly, that choice matters – not only for me, but for the Church.  In fact this monetary choice probably has as much impact on the community, or more, than any homily that I might give.

Now, you might say, well Father you are different from the rest of us – you represent the Church.  You are a priest and you are supposed to be detached so that you can point us to heaven.  True, very true.  But just because a priest more visibly represents Christ does not mean that none of you do at all.  Far from it.  Every Christian represents the Church, personifies the Church very clearly and directly in the place where they live and work.  And each of us, priest or not, is supposed to point others to heaven in our own way and according to our state in life. 

Does that mean that we all have to drive a Ford?  Of course not.  Does that mean that no one can drive a luxury car?  Of course not.  Some of us have received greater opportunities and greater material wealth.  That, in and of itself is not bad at all, but a good thing.  In fact, we might say that stuff, things, money represents an opportunity for us who are disciples of Christ, an opportunity to witness to the greatest goods of faith, love, truth, and beauty by the way that we manage our wealth. The things that we choose to have, the attention we give them, speaks to the world about our priorities, about what we think is important.  Monetary choices have spiritual and moral implications – and so we must prayerfully and prudently make sure that the monetary choices that we make are consistent with our faith and witness to its priority in our lives.

In a society that tends toward consumerism, we who are charged to proclaim the Gospel must be constantly on guard that our witness does not falter.  We must continue to ask ourselves “Are the monetary choices of my family witnessing to the priority of faith in Jesus Christ in our lives?  Have we begun to obsess over things or have we become distracted by them – are they keeping us from giving our attention to God and to those around us?  Are we generous to those in need and to efforts to promote what is good and true and beautiful in our community?  Are we truly grateful for the things that we have? 

We must all ask these questions, priests and deacons laypersons alike.  We cannot be content to simply follow in the footsteps of those who seek mere earthly treasure.  Our material wealth, our  belongings, are meant to be at the service of the great commission, the command that we have all received to proclaim the good news of Gods kingdom.  And so wealth cannot be the prized possession for the Christian, instead wealth must be understood as an opportunity.  An opportunity to witness to the true treasure in life: our faith in Jesus Christ.

God Did Not Make Death

Homily for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2012

God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.  These are the opening lines from our first reading from the book of Wisdom today.

I don’t know how much more clear about this God could be. 
He is the God of the living, not the dead.  He did not make death, he does not like death, death is his enemy.  God wants us to live.
And yet, how many people, how many Christians, have struggled with this teaching!  Even today many, many people, maybe some of you, carry this tormenting thought, a tremendous weight upon your shoulders: the thought that the death or suffering of a loved one was or is a punishment willed by God.  That God wanted it. 

What a tormenting thought.  On top of the pain of watching someone close to us go through the pain of suffering and death, the thought that their suffering, their death, was caused by something that they did or that we did to anger God, to incur his wrath and condemnation.

Not only is it a tormenting thought, it is a thoroughly anti-Christian thought.  It is, if I may say so, straight from hell.

So today might we ask the question: well, where does this idea come from, the idea that God would want or approve of suffering and death?  We know that God is a loving God.  He created us in love.  He has told us again and again that he wants us to live with him in his love.  So why do we have such a hard time believing that he doesn’t want suffering and death for us?

I think there are two reasons:
1. We know that God is all powerful.  If he were not, death and suffering would not be a problem.  God could just shrug his shoulders and say, “I don’t know what happened here.  I was trying to save her, but things just happened, and next thing I knew, I couldn’t.  That might work if things just happened without God knowing about it.  But he knows everything, he keeps everything in existence at every moment.  So if God is in charge and people suffer and die, then it seems like we are put into a position where we have to say that God must have somehow approved?  Who can he blame?  He’s the one who is all powerful and who could save us, right?

2.  A second reason for this mistaken idea is perhaps a bit more subtle, but pervasive.  Often it seems that bad things happen to bad people and it seems that good things often happen to good people.  You treat people miserably and hatefully, they tend to despise you.  You are generous and loving, and others tend to treat you well in return.  And God himself tells us that he rewards those who do what is right, and that the way of sin leads to death.  This is true, but it is a teaching that can easily be twisted, resulting in a very mistaken notion: that when bad things happen, it must be because someone did something wrong, and that when good things happen, it must be because God loves us.  How easy it is to fall into that one, a subtle twisting of the truth that can make us begin to think that suffering and death are a punishment from God for those who do not please him.

And that is why we hear the Lord loud and clear in the scriptures today.  God tells us, he insists: he does not want anyone to die.  He is the God of the living.  He wills that we be healed, he wills that we live.  And of all the mistaken notions that Jesus came to correct, this is one of the greatest: that suffering and death are a sign of God’s anger and punishment.

Christ's whole life radically and completely corrects this mistaken notion, in his ministry, in his teaching, and finally in his passion and death.

Jesus spent his whole ministry healing the sick and suffering and even resuscitating those, like Jairus’ daughter, who had died.  He did not heal them based on their holiness, he did not heal them because they deserved it.  He healed them because they asked, or because they had faith, or just because: he showed that God loves us and wants us to live not because of what we do, but because of who we are, his beloved sons and daughters in Christ, made in his image and likeness.

And Jesus explicitly taught us something new about those who are truly blessed – he gave his disciples the teaching of the beatitudes.  Who are the blessed ones, he asked?  Those who are happy?  No, those who mourn.  Those who are free of pain?  No, those who suffer.  Those who are approved of by all?  No, those who are persecuted.  He taught his disciples and he teaches all of us very clearly that suffering and death do not mean that you are distant from God.  That actually it is when we take up our crosses and follow him that we are most closely united to him and surrounded by his love.

But then, finally, because he knew, I think that we would still not really comprehend, Jesus proved the depth of God’s love, he proved that God would never want to harm us or see us suffer. 
How?  He submitted to suffering and death himself.  The sinless Word of God, perfect in holiness, who had never offended God and who walked in his ways, suffered and died the worst of deaths imaginable.  And so Jesus showed us in his passion and crucifixion that suffering and death cannot possibly be the sign of God’s anger or wrath or distance from us.  God cannot be distant from himself, so he was not distant from the cross, and so he is not distant from suffering and death.
And so as followers of Christ, our understanding of the mystery of suffering and death must be completely transformed.  It is no longer to be feared, because rather than being a punishment, it is a sharing in God’s very life, the life of Christ who suffered and died for us.

His suffering and death on the cross show us that even though God has allowed death to enter into his creation through the devil’s cunning and Adam’s sin, those who suffer or die are never distant from God or unloved. 

No, in fact the Lord shows us that he is often closest to those who suffer and die, and that the greatest saints are often those who were intimately united with him in the suffering and in death.
So what is death?  What is suffering, if it is not punishment, if it is not a sign of God’s distance from us?  I’ve only been ordained 5 years, and it’s hot. 

But we can at least say this: our tradition teaches us that it is first and foremost a mystery, a part of this world that cannot be entirely understood in this life.  A reality of life in this fallen world that God allows for reasons that we often cannot understand.  But Jesus has shown us this: that in entering into suffering and death with him, they are transformed: they no longer are a sign of God’s wrath or anger or condemnation. 

Death’s sting has been lifted.  Christ entered into death and suffering so that they could become, like the rest of life, an opportunity for us to encounter God and his great love for us, and to respond to his love in faith and trust. Talitha koum.  Jesus told them and tells us.  Do not be afraid.  Do not be afraid of suffering, do not be afraid of death.  Suffering and death are not the worst of evils.  They can't be.  Because through and in the midst of them God gives us eternal life.