What Does it Mean to be a Spiritual Person?

Homily from the Solemnity of Pentecost, 2013

So often these days, the Catholic Church is spoken of  in institutional rather than spiritual terms.  In fact, religion and spirituality are increasingly placed in opposition to one another.  We hear it all the time: “I am really more of a spiritual than a religious person.”

I heard recently that a particular priest has taken to responding to this claim with “No you’re not.”  Not sure that really builds bridges.  But in less jarring tones, I think he is on to something.  We might ask, “Well, what does it mean to be spiritual, to be a spiritual person?”

I’m not sure what people think that means.  Walks in the woods or on the beach?  A kind of emotional sense of well-being?  Proficiency in the techniques of meditation?

And maybe those in our culture who claim to be spiritual need to be pressed a bit – maybe not with such a stark “No you’re not.” but maybe with the question “What does your spirituality look like?” or what I have taken to asking “So do you consider yourself to be a Christian?”

Because Christian spirituality, Christian teaching on the Spirit is pretty clear.  And it is clear in this: there can be no separation of Religion and Spirituality for the Christian.  To be a Christian is to be religious and spiritual, you cannot be authentically spiritual without being religious and you cannot be authentically religious without being spiritual.

There are other religions that practice a religiosity without a spirituality, and there are religions that practice a spirituality without religiosity.  But Christianity is not one of them.

The solemnity of Pentecost that we celebrate today makes this abundantly clear.  There is no authentic Christian spirituality that does not ultimately come from and lead back to Jesus Christ and his Church, gathered in the upper room.  When the Spirit descended on the 12 in the upper room, he inspired and gave birth not to a disassociated spirituality, but to a new human community animated by the grace, to a religion, the religion of Jesus Christ.

So where is this idea of the spiritual being opposed to the religious coming from?

I think that if we look at it, what people often are referring to, in contrasting the spiritual and the religious, is the interior and the exterior expressions of faith.  The thinking is that religion is an outward expression of faith, whereas the spiritual is interior.  And so when they claim that they are spiritual but not religious, the claim is really that their faith life is an interior matter that they do not believe needs to be or profits from being shared with others or lived in communion.

But this makes no sense - certainly not for the Christian, but nor does it even make sense for human beings.  As human beings, what we do affects who we are and who we are affects what we do.  There is no way that our religious activity or lack thereof can help but impact our spiritual lives, or that our spiritual lives can help but impact our practice of our faith.  Christ pointed this out directly and concretely throughout his life: that the Christian cannot be a whitewashed tomb, empty religiosity and pietism, but neither can the Christian be mere spirituality without concrete actions of love and compassion and worship that are carried out in communion with others.

In Christ, the outward expression and the inward disposition are united, the spiritual and religious are combined, the Spirit and the Word become Flesh work together to accomplish God’s saving work.  In Christ we are given the model of spiritual and religious authenticity: a harmony of soul and body that is united in following the will of the Father.

Here at Mass this harmony is profoundly lived: we come before our Lord, we worship him with signs and actions, and he tangibly and visibly places himself in our hands, giving us his Body and Blood to nourish us and strengthen us in the life of faith.  And at the same time, our hearts, our minds are opened – the Holy Spirit is ever at work within us to transform and convert us through Word and Sacrament, to ensure that the words and ritual actions of Mass are not just rolling off our tongues and being superficially performed.

It is so important for our world to know that this place, that our Church, our spiritual home is not a place of empty religiosity. No.  Here, religion opens us to the Spirit, to Pentecost.   Words that we have said a million times come to life in these walls, gestures that we have made by the thousand take on new meaning.  We are fed here with a food that is not mere earthly food – we are given a spiritual food, spiritual drink.  We learn here from Christ how to be spiritual people, how to love, how to sacrifice, how to be generous and honest and courageous.  Our souls are transformed in this place as our bodies go up and down, standing and sitting, kneeling and genuflecting and making the sign of the cross.  These are outward gestures and signs that express and help us to enter into the real drama of conversion and redemption that is being accomplished among us.

As your priest for the last 5 years, I have had a front row seat on this spiritual drama.  I have seen the Holy Spirit at work in you.  I have watched many of you experience conversion, redemption, consolation, and renewal in these walls.  I have seen the work of Pentecost, of the Holy Spirit, continued in our midst, in this upper room.  I think that is one of the great blessings of being a priest, this front row seat.

What does it mean to be a spiritual person?  For the Christian, there is no way to be spiritual without being religious.  Because being spiritual is a gift, a gift that is given by Holy Spirit to those who have been joined to Christ and his body, who seek to be authentically religious.  The Spirit is a gift given to those men and women who religiously go to the upper room as the apostles did with Our Lady, who place themselves before the Spirit of God so that he can transform them, renew them, purify them.  Men and women who, over time and with much effort and support from the whole Church, are gradually filled and one day we pray that they are entirely permeated with the grace of the Holy Spirit.  In other words, that they become saints.

One in Love

Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, 2013

Back when I was an undergraduate philosophy student, we read quite a bit of Plato.  And you might think that ancient Greek philosophers would be boring, but often we found ourselves quite amused.  For example, in Plato’s Symposium, there is a speech given by a character named Aristophanes, who argues that originally there were three human genders, not just two.  In addition to male and female, he says, there was a third, which was a combination of the two.  These were the original people, he said.  They were round, their back and sides forming a circle; and they had four hands and the same number of feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike. They could walk upright, backwards or forwards, but when they wanted to run he said they would roll over and over at a great pace, turning on their four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air.

That’s an image…
What was Aristophanes point?  Why did he say that these primordial androgynous people must have existed?  Love.  “What do people want of one another?”, he asked.  “Is there a person who would deny or would not acknowledge that a meeting and melting into one another, a becoming one instead of two, is the very expression of his ancient need?”  And this is because, he says, human nature was originally one and we were a whole, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed us.  He says that the desire and pursuit to be whole, to be united to our long lost other half  is the origin of love.

In case you were wondering, this is not Catholic teaching.
We believe that God created us male and female, not as rolly polly androgynous tumbler people.  But Plato identified, some 400 years before Jesus walked on the planet, something that is very true and very much a part of our tradition.  That human beings are marked with a fundamental desire, or what he called an ancient need, to be one, to belong.

Aristophanes’ rather comical explanation of the origin of this deep human longing focuses on the natural and biological world.  That we have a desire for unity because in our maleness or femaleness we are incomplete people.  And isn’t it interesting that in our culture today it seems that many people have a similar idea about love.  Love is depicted as a desire to find the other half, to find Mr. or Mrs. right, to find someone who we will serenade with the words of Jerry Maguire, “You complete me.” For so many today, especially for so many of our young people, this is what they think finding love, finding the unity and the oneness they are made for, looks like.

But Christ teaches us that love is far more than a mere natural pairing of two imperfect halves seeking to be completed in one another.  Otherwise we would teach that marriage represents the perfection of love.  What the Church does teach is that the complementarity of men and women, the love of marriage is a sharing in the love of Christ, a love that is not exhausted in marriage, but that is ultimately rooted in union with God.  Love is made perfect in Christ, and in the union, the communion that we share together in him.  And so rather than finding love by paring up, Christ teaches us that human beings are made to find love and live in love by being part of a body that is alive in the Holy Spirit who unites us to one another and to God.

That we are open and receptive and responsive to this profound communion of love is Christ’s most solemn, most intense prayer.  It is the prayer we hear in the Gospel reading today.  The prayer that he prayed in the last moments of his life on earth, as he prepared to enter into his passion and death: this is his final request, his last will and testament:
“Holy father I pray for all who will believe in me, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us… so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.”

What does it mean to be one?  In Christ, our unity, our oneness with him and with one another is meant to be incredibly profound and multifaceted.  It is true that Christ’s love is manifest in a oneness and communion that exists in a unique and beautiful way between spouses, but it also exists in the love between parents and children, between friends and neighbors, between priests and religious and laity, between fellow workers and collaborators, and with God's grace, Christ tells us that our love must even extend to the stranger and to our enemies.

Jesus has taught us that love is not found in another who completes us, but in a profound communion of life shared with God, with one another, with our world, extending even to the most remote ends of society, encompassing the downtrodden, the scorned, the ridiculed, the forgotten.

Love is a multifaceted harmony of life, a symphony, not a duet.  It is a large, colorful pallet of paint, not black and white, yin and yang.  It is a giant and deep ocean full of myriads of creatures, an infinitely expanding universe of relationships of various shapes and sizes and durations and characteristics all united and brought together and animated by God himself, who is love.

God gives us his life in the Eucharist that we may be one in him, that we may enter fully into this ocean, this universe of love, the matrix of his life.  So that together he can build us up into a dwelling place of love.  He wants us to have the joy, the peace, the freedom that come from living together in him – free of rivalries and jealousies, bitterness or hatreds.  Sharing a communion, a life, that we could never find on our own or with another half; a life, a love that only he can give, a divine love, a oneness in heart and mind and desire that extends to all people and to all creation itself and that will endure even beyond death.

Easter is a Growing Season

Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter, 2013

This coming Thursday we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord.  It’s hard to believe, but yes, it will already have been 40 days since Easter this Thursday.

The season of Easter is 50 days long, continuing beyond the Solemnity of the Ascension, it continues on until the celebration of Pentecost, 10 days later – but there is a different tenor, we might say that our observance of Easter takes on a different flavor in the last 10 days of the season.

For the first 40 days of Easter the Church follows the life of the apostles who celebrated the resurrection of the Lord and then were taught by him as he appeared to them and explained the scriptures to them, broke bread with them, and spoke to them about the mission that would be entrusted to them.  It is a time of rejoicing and savoring the revelation of the empty tomb: that Christ has returned from the gates of hell to bring new life to his people, that in Christ, God has given us the promise of immortality and happiness with him forever.  In a sense, it is a youthful time, a time of exuberance, a time to sit at the feet of the Lord, to listen and be instructed by him as he shows us his wounded hands and feet and tells us of his love.  To be as lambs gathered around our good shepherd, to watch, to listen, and to be fed.

Sacramentally, we might look to Baptism and the quintessential sacrament of these days, the Sacrament that manifests the paschal mystery and opens to us the life of grace.  The white baptismal garment is reflected in the white liturgical color of the season, the paschal candle from which we all received the light of Christ stands before us, and the priest is encouraged to replace the penitential rite with the sprinkling rite, reminding us of the waters of baptism.

But there is a transition that we begin to sense even in our readings today.  Easter matures in these days.  And we are reminded that Christian initiation, the full life of a Christian is not exhausted in Baptism, that there are three sacraments of initiation that are required to bring the Christian to full maturity in Christ.

In a sense, the Solemnity of the Ascension marks the end of the childlike phase of Easter and the entrance into Easter’s adolescence.  Jesus Christ our Lord will ascend to heaven, to be with the Father, and we, the Church on earth, will find ourselves in a somewhat awkward situation: no longer able to sit at the feet of the Lord as a child, and yet not fully mature in faith that has been enlivened by the Spirit.
It is kind of like that time when your voice changes as a young man – when you go from singing full soprano to a few croaky notes.  Or as an athlete, when the limbs all of a sudden shoot out, you grow that 6 inches in the summer, and then proceed to trip and stumble over every inch you’ve gained.

Yet this awkwardness of Easter’s adolescence is a beautiful time.  And is a beautiful movement in the season of Easter – it is a season of anticipation, a season of longing, a season of intensified prayer as we wait and ask for Christ to bring his Church to full stature, to raise us through the gift of the Holy Spirit to the full maturity and dignity that we have been promised as Sons and Daughters of the living God.  Christ tells us in the Gospel today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.  The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”

This is not lent, this is not a season of penance, fasting, and abstinence.  We are within the season of Easter, the season of new life in the resurrected Lord.  Yet we are reminded today that new life means new growth, and growth sometimes has awkward moments, transitions that are not due to sin but are due to the fact that for us human beings, unlike the angels who are mature from the day they are created, maturity is a process that requires time and grace.

As we mature in the life of grace many times we are given capacities that we don’t immediately understand how to use.  We are given desires that cannot be immediately fulfilled, standards that initially are beyond our reach.  And so a sense of suspension, of wanting to do or being called to do something that we are not capable of doing - a spiritual awkwardness - often results.

This is a common experience for many of us when we begin to explore the gift of mature prayer. It can feel incredibly dry and distracted.  Or when we begin to seriously study the scriptures and teachings of our faith and we begin to realize how little we know and so many doubts arise.  Or when we reach out in service to others - maybe bringing communion to the sick, or dropping food off at the homeless shelter, or working on a community service project - and at first perhaps feel awkward and out of place.  Or when we attempt to bring up a conversation about spiritual or moral matters that needs to happen with a spouse or a child or a friend or coworker or neighbor, and wonder if we said a thing that made any sense or if we just upset the other person.

These last 10 days of Easter help us each year to remember something very important: that new life in Christ is not a moment of salvation received and celebrated, but a dynamic life of grace that is continually renewed and deepened within us, prompting us to ever-greater intimacy with Christ and with one another.  And that means persevering through the disconcerting moment of the Ascension, not once, not a few times, but constantly: passing through a periods of longing, of feeling dry and distant, of feeling awkward and incapable, of even feeling frustrated and overwhelmed as we seek to make progress.

Grace is never static, salvation is not instantaneous.  Growth is required for us to come to full stature, to be built up into that splendid city of Jerusalem that we hear of in the 2nd reading, to become those living stones that can form the dwelling place for the most high God.  Easter is a growing season, a season that is meant to help us deepen our commitment to living according to the new life we have received in Christ.

May we embrace the spirit, the tenor of these final days of Easter, not fleeing from, but persevering through the disconcerting seasons that accompany genuine growth in faith.  May our willingness to enter into the adolescence of Easter prepare us for the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, prepare us to receive the full mantle, the full mission entrusted to the adopted sons and daughters of God.

Our Love makes us Credible

Homily from the 5th Sunday of Easter, 2013

“This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This is what Christ says should be the distinguishing characteristic of his disciples: that we are experts at loving others.  When looking back at the history of our faith, we can see that when the Church has excelled in love, it has grown and flourished.  We think of the first few centuries when Christians lived in close community, served the needs of the poor, and witnessed to their faith even to the point of death.  The monks and hermits and scholars of the middle ages who preserved culture and sought spiritual wisdom.  The mendicant orders of Dominicans and Franciscans who led lives of poverty and zeal.   How can we even begin to number the many other millions of Catholics, of Christians throughout the centuries and today who are animated by incredible love and sacrifice for others, who have been and who are true disciples of Christ because they follow in his footsteps of love.

Yet, in recent years I know that many of you, like myself, are very concerned to see how the reputation of our Church, our mother, has been badly damaged.  I think it is safe to say that for many people in our society today, the Church’s beauty, her virtue, her compassion, her generosity of heart and overflowing love have been overshadowed by political battles and controversial social teachings.

Some have said: the problem is with those who lead her.  If they would just stop so rigidly holding on to outdated and intolerant teachings.  If the hierarchy would just get out of the way and allow the Church to adjust to modern ideas and ways of thinking, then we could be the Church of love again.  Then the world would see in the Catholic Church the love of Christ.

That was the sentiment that I heard so frequently during the recent papal elections – that the hierarchy needed to change the teachings of the Church – I’m sure many of you heard these thoughts expressed over and over.  That basically the hierarchy is keeping the Church from being a sign of love for the world, keeping the Church from following Christ’s commandment given in our Gospel today.

And then the Cardinals elected Pope Francis.  And wasn’t that interesting.  Because notice, the Pope has not changed a single Church teaching.  In fact, he has reaffirmed teachings, even controversial teachings.  But what a difference in how he has been received, huh?  Why?  Because Pope Francis seems to understand that people recognize the face of Christ most clearly not in teachings, but in loving actions.  This is how people know that we are disciples, this is what opens the doors of the heart and mind: love.  When we encounter love, when we experience love, we experience God, God is glorified.  When Pope Francis stopped the pope mobile and went to visit and kiss the disabled, when he visited those in prison on Holy Thursday, when he decided to live simply with other clergy and religious in the Casa Santae Martae – God was glorified, people recognized a disciple of Christ.  And then, only then, they were ready to hear what he had to say, ready to hear the teachings.  Why would you listen to someone speak about what is good and evil, why would you care what they were teaching, if you did not recognize by their actions of love that they were close to God?

Christ did not say in the Gospel passage we hear today what many people might think he should have said: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you make sure that everyone is faithful to my teachings.”  I’m not saying that we should not care about teachings!  But what I am saying is that the world will only listen to those who are faithful to the teachings of Christ when it recognizes that we are his disciples by our love that reaches out into the world.  And I’m not just talking about the pope or bishops or priests, although they must certainly take the lead.  But the credibility of the Church, the reputation of our faith, rests on all of our shoulders.

I think of how often it has happened to me that after being the recipient of compassion or generosity from someone I have been prompted to reevaluate my ideas about my impressions or beliefs.  Hasn’t that happened to all of us?  How many of those in our community would be likewise prompted to reevaluate their take on the Church after a positive encounter with one of us?

There is so much negative pr out about the Church, and that is not likely to change any time soon.  In fact, that has always been the case.  We could try to argue, to defend the teachings until we are horse from talking.  Try to convince people that we are a faith that teaches love of neighbor and enemy, for that matter.  That is not intolerant but that defends those who are persecuted and alienated from society.  And maybe we might convince a few people, although I doubt very many.  And even if we did, I’m not sure what kind of a victory that would be.  “Okay, I guess you’re not as sinister as I thought.”

But the Church cannot fundamentally be a group that is bound together by a creed.  We are bound together by the life, the love of Christ, a love that we must live by and teach to our children and explain to our world.  And this is what will make the Church grow and thrive, not primarily argumentation about doctrinal points, as important as they might be.  Think about the Early Church for a moment.  They had no common Creed or Catechism.  They had horrible pr – they were accused of being cannibals and of being enemies of the state.  They were being violently persecuted and exterminated.  And yet the Church has never grown so quickly and been so vibrant.

And this is because the early Christians were so profoundly aware that what bound them together, what binds us together in Christ, the grace that we receive in the sacraments, cannot be explained so much as it is lived, as it is demonstrated, as it is revealed in our love for others.  And not primarily in the hierarchy, although the holiness and leadership of the hierarchy is critical, but so is a lived holiness of life by Christians who are living and loving in the day to day world.

Pope Francis gave an interview in 2011 with an Argentinian Catholic news agency.  In the interview, then Cardinal Bergoglio spoke about what he called a sickness that is undermining the Church in the West.

“We priests,” he said, “tend to clericalize the laity, focusing fundamentally on the things of the clergy and, more specifically, the sanctuary, rather than on bringing the Gospel to the world.  We do not realize it, but it is as if we infect them with our own disease. And the laity — not all, but many — ask us on their knees to clericalize them, because it is more comfortable to be an altar server than the protagonist of a lay path. They begin to believe that the fundamental service God is asking of them is to become greeters, lectors or extraordinary ministers of holy Communion at Church rather than to live and spread the faith in their families, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and beyond.

The reform that’s needed, he continued in that interview, is “neither to clericalize nor ask to be clericalized. The layperson is a layperson and has to live as a layperson with the power of baptism, which enables him to be a leaven of the love of God in society itself, to create and sow hope, to proclaim the faith, not from a pulpit but from his everyday life. And, like all of us, the layperson is called to carry his daily cross — the cross of the layperson.”

Pope Francis teaches us, guides us, leads us, and inspires us.  And he is an example to us of the love of Christ – he kisses babies, maybe hundreds, he washes prisoner’s feet.  But these actions are primarily meant to be gestures and signs for us that are meant to point the way of authentic discipleship that we are all called to live.  Yet Pope Francis reminds us that the Church is sick, very sick, if Christ is only preached by the hierarchy within its own walls.  Your work, the work of every lay person, is to bring glory to Christ in the world, to make his life, his love tangible, real, incarnate in the places where you live, in our society and culture.

“This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Belonging

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Easter, 2013

So many stories have emerged, so many people have been impacted by the events surrounding the horrendous bombing in Boston this past week.  I was struck by one story in particular.  The story of Jeff Bauman, a 27 year old spectator at the Marathon.  As Jeff was standing by the sidelines, a man his age walked up, looked him in the eye, and dropped a bag at his feet, and walked away.  Seconds later, the bag exploded, tearing through Jeff’s legs, both of which were eventually amputated below the knee.

Do we not ask, upon hearing such a story, “How could anyone do that?”  How could you look someone in the eye while simultaneously placing a bomb under their feet?  How cold hearted, how numb and hateful must someone be?  Isn’t this really the same kind of question we asked after the Newtown shootings, after many acts of violence that we hear of in our world.  How can a person become so callous, so heartless, so detached?

But it is clearly possible.  And not only is it possible, but it seems that we are living in a society where social detachment, isolation, and eventual callousness toward others is becoming more commonplace.
There is no need to cite the massive sociological evidence, I think most of us recognize that we have become a more disconnected society, a society where even the most basic of human bonds and connections seem to be unraveling.  Between husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends, citizens and politicians, believers and bishops.  Our social capital, a term used by sociologists to describe the connections between people in society, our social capital has been waning.

There has been an attempt by some to categorize this as a youth problem, and to speak of a wave of narcissism that is infecting our young people basically because they are spoiled.  We hear them referred to as generation ‘Me.’  But narcissism refers to an elevated opinion of oneself and one’s own needs – an obsession with one’s own life and accomplishments.  I don’t believe that is what is going on.  It is not that our children think that they are the center of the universe, it is that their experience is increasingly one of living in a universe that is not shared.  And it is not just the young, although perhaps they have received the strongest dose of it – we all have become more and more isolated in recent years.

Think about life before computers and cell phones and souped up cable packages.  That was not long ago – just 15 years ago.  What was your life like then?  How engaged were you in the lives of others?  It’s not as if the time that we now spend with all of these screens somehow has just appeared in the last few years – we used to spend it in other ways.  How much of your day used to be a shared experience of reality with others, how much of it is a shared experience now?  It seems to be an increasing epidemic that in nearly every circumstance people are found with their faces glued to a smartphone or ipad or computer screen or tv.  We have the strong sense that this checking out of reality is not healthy, but so many of us can’t seem to articulate why, and can’t seem to draw a line in the sand, to delineate how much of our lives will be consumed by this kind of virtual life.  Increasingly, we are struggling to manage the technological tools that we have created.  And it is becoming more and more clear that a technologically fostered lifestyle of isolation and radical individualism is developing into a tremendous threat to our families, our society, and to our Church.

We who follow Christ cannot allow ourselves to continue in this slow and easy drifting away from real intimacy with one another, with our world, and with our God.  Catholic families must begin to take a counter-cultural stand, particularly with their children, not so much against a lifestyle of technological isolation, but in favor of a lifestyle of intimacy with God, with one another, and with our world that is rooted in the truth we hear proclaimed in the Gospel today.

Jesus teaches us that we belong to him, that we are his sheep, members of his flock.  We do not belong to ourselves, we do not act in isolation.  This is not a universe that is ours to construct or deconstruct as we desire.  We belong to Christ, and not only do we belong to him, but we belong to his world and to his people, to all people, and all people belong to us in varied ways.  Our identity is never in isolation, but always in relation to God, to others, and to our world.

This understanding of our identity cannot remain merely an abstract notion, but must lead to a lifestyle that we might call a “lifestyle of belonging.”  What does this lifestyle of belonging look like?  It means that we live in a way that is fundamentally in reference to God, to others, and to our world, rather than in reference to ourselves.  We acknowledge that our actions are not isolated or detached, but that we share a reality in which God, other persons, and the natural world have a claim on us.

We belong to our Triune God,  and so we acknowledge that in giving us life and sustaining us in life he makes a claim on us: to follow his commandments, to keep holy the Sabbath each week and to offer our prayers and supplications to him each day, asking him for his blessing.  And we work to carry out his commandments diligently and faithfully, since, again, we belong to him, we are the sheep of his flock and he is our shepherd.

Christ has shown us that our actions must acknowledge not only that we belong to him, but that each person belongs to Christ and so he has a claim on all human persons who he has redeemed at the cost of his blood.  All persons are members of his flock, either potentially or actually.  All have been invited to green pastures by our shepherd.  This means that every person we encounter has a claim on us, is a neighbor – as the Good Samaritain knew.  We can never pass by the existence of another, much less be callous or dismissive or malicious to another.  And this is particularly the case with regard to the primary relationships of life: to embrace a lifestyle of belonging means to acknowledge by our actions each day the claim that our spouses make upon us, that our parents make upon us, that our children make upon us, and at a lesser level, that our friends make upon us, our church and community make upon us, our country makes upon us, our work makes on us.  And much could be said about how when we live a lifestyle of belonging, we acknowledge the claim that the natural world makes upon us and work to cooperate with nature rather than to pretend that we can mold reality to fit our desires.

Rather than resenting these claims on our us, rather than resenting the fact that we are not self-possessed, the Christian rejoices in belonging to God and to others and to our world.  We hear that Sts. Paul and Barnabas were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit as they carried out their work as instruments of God’s salvation.  And as we look at the response to the violence in Boston in these last days, do we not likewise see many men and women who found great joy and peace, great meaning, in belonging to others?  Fire fighters and police and other emergency personnel who had a deep sense of belonging to the citizens they served.  Health care professionals who knew they belonged to the sick and suffering.  Even those parents and children and friends and neighbors who knew that they belonged to one another, who acknowledged by their actions that others had a claim on their lives.  Who, unlike that young bomber, acknowledged that the gaze of another human being, made in the image and likeness of God, made a claim on them that could not be ignored.  Christ teaches us that when we freely embrace a lifestyle of belonging, when we recognize the truth that we are members of his flock, we find great joy in serving those who we belong to, great meaning and peace in the intimacy that we have with God, with others, and with our world.

It is true that we can, to an extent, acknowledge that we belong to others in our use of technology.  We can call relatives and friends more often on cell phones, we can share photos of important happenings in our life on facebook.  I don’t forget as many birthdays now, thanks to facebook, which is great.  But our technological world tends to make us into mere observers of others and to undermine our sense of being connected to them in a real way that makes a claim on our lives.  And this can have a particularly detrimental effect on relationships that are most intimate and therefore exert the greatest claim upon us: our relationship with God, our spouses, parents, and children.    And so we must moderate our time observing others, moderate our time being entertained by others.  To be constantly on guard against the tendency to live as if we were entirely self-possessed,  for our families to drift apart, to live as if we did not belong to God, to one another, to our world, as if we were not a part of the one flock of our Good Shepherd.  How easily the wolves take down a sheep who has isolated himself and refused to acknowledge the claim of the shepherd, the claim of the flock on his life.  Christ teaches us that joy and peace and eternal life are given to us when we freely embrace the truth: that we belong to him and to one another and to our world, that we are the sheep of the flock that he shepherds.

Becoming Young with Age

Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, 2013

In the last part of the Gospel passage that we hear today, Jesus speaks to Peter, who he has just fully forgiven after his betrayal, about the way that his life will now unfold.  He says “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”

It has been suggested that this passage applies to all who follow in the footsteps of Peter as pope.  We might think of the recent election of Pope Francis and how he was dressed in the white cassock by others and led to the loggia where he would begin a very challenging ministry.

But, this passage, I think, can and should actually be understood as significant for all of us.  Look at what Jesus is doing: he is reversing the normal order of things.  Normally when you are young, you stretch out your hands and someone else dresses you and leads you where you do not want to go.  Then, when you are old, you dress yourself and go where you want.

So Christ is, in effect, telling Peter, that his love of Christ, his path of discipleship will give him the faith of a child.  And the same applies to all of us: in loving Christ, in responding to his question “do you love me” with a true “Yes Lord, you know that I love you,” we too, become more like children, we love more like children.

How does a childlike disciple love God?  As Christ said: by obeying and by being clothed by Him.  And we see evidence of how childlike Peter’s love for Christ became in the first reading today: He tells the Sanhedrin “We must obey God rather than men.”  That almost sounds to me like “My mommy doesn’t let me do that.”  Peter is very articulate as he explains the Good News of Christ, but in the end, the final motivation for Peter is clear: he must obey Christ.  That is what his love of Christ demands, obedience.  And this is very childlike.

And then we see that after he and the others are flogged, they rejoice, the author of Acts tells us, to be have been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of Jesus’ name.  And this also reminds us of children and how much they desire to be associated with those they love, to be, in a sense, clothed by them, to be visibly and tangibly connected to those they love.  It is not just any dad, but my daddy.  Even when they must endure many hardships, children will do just about anything in order to belong to a family.  And this is also a childlike love of Christ, a love that rejoices in belonging to Christ, even when that requires suffering.

Do we love Jesus as Children?  Do we rejoice to belong to him, to be associated with his name?  Do we seek above all things to be obedient to him and his will for us?

At youth ministry last week we read this same passage from the scriptures about Peter jumping out of the boat after hearing that it was Christ on the shore.  One of the kids said, “Hey, that reminds me of that scene in Forest Gump.”

And it got me thinking about Forest Gump, who exhibited this same abandon as he jumped into the water, and about how he was such a portrait of a childlike love.  Think of his unquestioning obedience throughout the movie, and his steadfast devotion and intense desire to be associated with his Jenny.

Now these traits of childlike love do not mean that we leave behind reason when we deepen our faith, that somehow faith and sophistication and intelligence are opposed.  Yet it can happen that as we grow older the complexity and subtlety of our reasoning develops improperly into the sophisticated ability to rationalize an insubordinate or lukewarm response to God.

Christ tells us that the opposite progression characterizes the Christian disciple who is animated by God’s love.  That because of our love for Christ, our age and wisdom strengthens our obedience to the will of God and our desire to belong to Christ and to be associated with his name.

The Empty Tomb Gives Us the Fullness of Life!

Homily for Easter Sunday, 2013

Imagine for a moment if the tomb had not been empty.  Imagine if when Mary Magdalene entered the garden on the morning after the Sabbath, she had found the Lord’s crucified body where they had left it and gently covered it with spices and perfumed oils and then rolled back the stone and departed.

We wouldn't be talking about any of these obscure men and women from 1st century Palestine today, would we?  They would not even be on the radar.  They would have faded away in the dust bin of human history – Peter, John, Mary, Martha, the other disciples – their names would be unknown to us.  And so most of us would have different names: maybe Julius, or Iris, or Evan, or Nike.  Maybe our names would sound like car names.  And we would not have any awareness of the Jewish faith either, since it has only been handed on to us through the Church.  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – these would be obscure figures to us, certainly more obscure than the great names of the Egyptian, Syrian, Celtic, or Mayan peoples.

As we looked back over the last two thousand years, we would still see hundreds of years of violent wars, intense rivalries, plagues, atrocities.  We would probably study the lives of the great and powerful men and women who shaped their times, the Caesars and Napoleons, the George Washingtons and Thomas Jeffersons.  Mostly men, portraits of human greatness, whose achievements were superlative enough to generate a legacy that would weather the test of time.  But we would know nothing of the hundreds of simple, humble, poor saintly men and women whose lives we have treasured through the ages and whose intercession we have sought.  The young women Perpetua and Felicity who heroically offered their lives for Christ, St. Benedict and his sister St. Scholastica who demonstrated a practical life of work and prayer, St. Anthony of Padua who still helps us find things, St. Francis and Clair who inspire us to live simple and generous lives, St. Therese of Lisieux and her little way, St Maximillian Colbe who courageously sacrificed his life for a little child at Auschwitz.  How many other holy men and women, how many quietly heroic lives would we know nothing about?

And at a deeper level, might we wonder whether these men and women would have existed at all?  They told the world, they have told us that the source of their holiness, of their great love, was not their own, their personal greatness, their worldly accomplishments, but the life of Christ risen from the dead whose risen life animated them.  Would others, not filled with Christ, have lived so generously?  Would they have found the same strength and inspiration and joy and peace and overflowing love somewhere else?

Where?  Where, my friends, to where would they have turned?  To themselves?  To others?  To an unknown and distant god?

No.  They would simply not have existed.  Saints do not exist if Easter does not exist.  And so our world, the world as we know it, would be so much darker, so closed upon itself, so stale and depressing.  If the tomb had not been empty, if it had been closed on Easter morning, our world would be empty, it would be empty and closed in on itself.  Life would be claustrophobic, the scent of death would constantly hang in the air.  Time and space would be flat and bland and boring.  Without an empty tomb, life would be a tomb to us.

Easter reminds us that Christ, risen from the dead, has changed our world, has made our world new, so much closer to God, that we cannot even begin to imagine, to comprehend what life would be like without the empty tomb.

My life would be a joke, and a miserable one at that.  What would your lives be like?  Were it not for the great example of Christ loving me, loving my family, from the cross – loving us in our sinfulness in confession, nourishing our souls in the Eucharist, consoling us with his words, urging us on with the promptings of his Holy Spirit – what kind of man would I be, what kind of life would I live?  What kind of men and women would we be?  We are all bad enough sinners as it is, but just think of all the misery, the pain and suffering, the evil that would overwhelm us if the tomb had not been empty!

Today we proclaim the great news of Easter: that the empty tomb has given us the fullness of life!  Christ, risen from the dead, has raised us up, raised us so high beyond our understanding, beyond our ability to even comprehend.  He emptied himself so that we could have the fullness of life.  He died so that we could rise.  He has suffered so that we can find joy.  He has endured hatred so that we can find love.

The new life, the risen and eternal life of Christ animates our world, animates us, encourages us, urges us on, draws us together, and challenges us to be holy as our Heavenly Father is holy, to love as he loves, to live as he lives.

It is amazing how something so empty can be so full of life!  New life pours from the empty tomb, pours from the side of Christ who was pierced for our offenses but who has been raised and who now lives and moves among us, his people, alive in our world.  Alleluia!

Lord, give us your new life!  Give it to us in abundance this Easter.  Let it soak into your church, into us, like gentle rain upon fertile ground.  Keep us always in your love, keep us always in your life.  Keep the stone always rolled away, the tomb always empty, and our world always full of your life, close to your risen heart, your risen body and soul, close to our salvation.

Why Didn't You Stop Us?

Homily for Good Friday, 2013

Today we turn to Christ who hangs before us on a tree, suffering.  In marking this moment this past Sunday during the Way of the Cross procession and then again this afternoon when the 8th graders from our school presented the Stations of the Cross, I noticed that none of us wanted to look when Jesus was raised up on the cross – we all wanted to avert our eyes from the scene.  It is so vulgar, so heinous, so degrading – to strip a man bare and nail him up before the crowd, using his suffering to create a spectacle, his pain to entertain the mob.  A calculated scene made to capture the morbid curiosity of those who walk by: "Look at the blood, how he is shaking, look how he is crying out.  Will this break him?  Will he renounce his Father in Heaven?  Will he curse his persecutors?  Will he show that when faced with suffering and pain he can love no better than the rest of us?"  The crowd watches to see him flinch, to see Christ betray the slightest hesitancy, watching to see if anyone can really love deeply in the face of death.  "He talked about loving enemies – well, will he really do it?"

Christ on the cross is Christ in the crucible, Christ put to the test, God on trial.  And the whole world watches, the whole world waits.

And then Christ dies.

And today we realize what just happened.  We just killed God.  It was possible - he let us do it.  We hoped that he would stop us, we hoped that he would put an end to our hatred, that he would keep us from driving in the nails, that he would stop our tongues from hurling insults.  That he would save us from ourselves, from our sinfulness, from our cowardice and rivalries.  But he didn’t.  He offered no resistance to the evil that infects us, he let us have it.  Like a lamb – he just let himself be tormented and killed.  He just let himself be run over by evil, cast aside like refuse.

He could have come down from the cross, he could have stopped us at any time, yet he did not.  Instead, upon the cross, Christ allowed himself to fall beneath the horrible specter of evil and sinfulness.  “Why Lord?,” we ask.  “Why do you not stop this?  Why do you allow evil to continue on?  Why do you allow us to persist in our sins, to be so hateful of others?  Why do you allow us to do what even we know we do not want to do?  You let us muddle through life, making mediocre attempts at holiness, neglecting the things that are most important, compromising our principles, entertaining juvenile infatuations, mistreating those we care for, turning a blind eye to the needs of others.  Why don’t you stop us?  Why do you submit to this, why do you tolerate it, allow your life to be snuffed out from our midst, allow us to forget you, mistreat you, malign you?  Why don’t you reach down from the cross and save us from ourselves, from our forsaken paths?  Don’t you want us to be good?  Come down from the cross and save us!”

Today looks like defeat.  Sin persists in our world.  Evil is everywhere around us.  People are constantly suffering and dying.  And now our Savior is dead.  A soldier pierces his side to verify and blood and water flow out.

“Beloved,” St. John Chrysostom’s voice comes through to us from centuries past, “Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought.  It has a hidden meaning.  It was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church, as he had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam.  As God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, in the same way Christ gave us the blood and water after his own death.”  The Church is born in this blood and water, in Baptism and the Eucharist we are given the greatest treasures ever bestowed on the human race.

Christ offers no resistance to the spear – he allows it to pierce his side.  And this is because resisting hatred does not create love.  Preventing vice does not instill virtue.  Squelching pride does not produce humility.  Silencing scorn does not induce praise.  And avoiding death does not give birth to eternal life.

Love, virtue, humility, praise, and eternal life – these are all gifts, not negations.  And they are given to us from the cross – they are given to us by Christ who allows us to kill him so that we can be born through the gifts of blood and water, of Baptism and Eucharist, that flow from his side.  From the cross Christ does not prevent us from doing evil, he inspires and equips us to seek holiness.  He does not force salvation, he offers it to us.  And what an offering, made at the price of his blood, an offering of blood mixed with water poured from his pierced side.  Christ freely chooses to give his life for us on the cross so that we can freely choose to give our lives to him .  He chooses love even to the point of death so that we can choose love that points the way to eternal life.

Colanders, not Basins

Holy Thursday Homily, 2013

Today is about charity, about love, about the Eucharist.
About how we live, about what it means to be a Catholic living in the world.

Communion in Christ, Communion with one another.
Nothing else matters in the end but these two pathways of intimacy, these two bonds of love.  Love of God, love of neighbor.

And at the deepest level, how we desire them!  Who of us does not yearn for an intimacy with the living God that is sustained and deep.  That is not subject to distraction or wanderings, doubts and misgivings.  Who among us is not working to be more disciplined in prayer, for their thoughts to be turned more frequently to the will of our Heavenly Father?

And likewise we find such fulfillment in intimate friendship, in sharing our time and efforts with others.  How many of us wish that we spent more time intentionally with those we care about, reached out to them more frequently in compassion and concern, were not so distracted by our own needs and desires?  Who among us would not want to do more for the poor, the suffering, the needy and the abandoned?

Today reminds us that the Catholic faith, the Catholic church, is precisely this community of hungry people, those who are striving to receive and give these greatest loves, love of God, love of neighbor.  Who are not willing to settle for paltry, passing fancies, for infatuations and attractions that are superficial and selfish.  Who know that we are made to receive real love and to give real love.

Is that not why we come here each week for the Eucharist?  We know that true love is offered to us here at this altar, the altar of the Cross.  There is no love more real than the love of Christ poured out for us on the cross at Calvary.  There is no offering, no sacrifice of life more profound, more deep and fruitful, than the sacrifice offered to us at Mass, the sacrifice of Christ offered once for all time to the Father.  Even with the failures and sins and limitations that everywhere surround us and dwell within us, the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is given to us freely, completely, and perfectly when we receive the Eucharist.  We receive true love, perfect love, perfect gift.  All of Christ: body and blood, soul and divinity.

This love, given to us completely in the Eucharist, is what makes us into a Church – Jesus’ life poured out into us, his Spirit dwelling within us, is what makes us brothers and sisters.  We share the same life, the same love – we have been made tabernacles, vessels of divine life.

Yet what Jesus shows us as he bends down to wash the feet of the 12 today is that his love has been poured into us so that it can be offered through us to the world.  The Church is not a repository for sanctity, but a dispensary of God’s love and grace.

Unlike the basin that is used tonight to catch the water that is poured over feet, Catholics must be like colanders – not collecting God’s love, but letting it pass through us to others.  Pouring into us and then out of us.  In and out.  And this is the incredible reality that we celebrate today.  Jesus could have chosen to save the world without our involvement.  He could have chosen to redeem all of humanity directly.  But instead he chose to involve us intimately in his work of salvation, to gather us around his table, to make us members of his body that he offers in sacrificial love for the world.  We bear his name – Christian – and are sent into the world as other christs.

We are truly not our own, we have been adopted, drafted, called, set apart to be vessels of God’s love in the world, to sanctify the world by actions that are united with Christ and animated by his Spirit. When we wash feet, we not only follow Christ’s example, we are Christ who continues to wash the feet of his disciples.  He redeems and sanctifies and heals and consoles and encourages through and in us.  True love pours through the Church into our world,  pours through us into our world.  Love that is genuine, love that is selfless, love that is freely offered to all, especially to those who suffer or are alone.  When I think of how many of you visit the sick, care for those who are alone or suffering.  How many of you make such efforts on behalf of your children and parents.  How many small and unnoticed things – hours spent in prayer, little gestures, even smiles to a visitor at Mass.  How much love, how much sacrifice, how much compassion?  The love of the Eucharist truly does flow through our Church.

Do we wish it flowed more strongly?  Of course.  We are hungry, we strive to love as Christ loved even as we are aware of our sins and failures.  Yet even in our hunger, even in our striving, today it is important to praise and thank God for the Communion that we share in him and in one another: for the Eucharist that is God’s life poured out for us, and the for Church that is all of us, all of our lives poured out for the world.

Why Processions?

Homily for Palm (Passion) Sunday, 2013

As many of you know, once again this year we are preparing for the Way of the Cross Procession this weekend.  It is something of a novelty for us, this kind of public, outdoor procession, but in most of the Catholic world, processions are not actually all that uncommon.  I was in Spain during holy week a few years back and the week was marked by processions and pageantry.  In Italy and many other parts of the Catholic world there are continual processions commemorating various occasions or events in the life of the Church.

But we are not as used to such things in these parts – particularly in New England.  I guess we do have parades, but even in parades, half the time the people are driving something – a tractor or a fire truck or the big L.L. Bean boot or something.

Maybe it has to do with living in a cold or mosquito-infested climate.  We tend to stay in screened in areas.  And it also might have to do with the rugged individualism and an understated way of life that is typical up here.  We can imagine a local asking: “Why do you people have to go and make a big show of things.  If you want a parade, do it in your living room where you can parade around to your heart’s content in your slippers and bath robe for all I care.”

No – I think that it is safe to say that processions do not come naturally to Mainers.
Yet as we enter Holy Week today, we enter a time full of processions here at church.

Today, as we celebrate Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, we recall Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.  In churches throughout the world, Catholics gather in places that are distant from their church and walk in procession with palms, marking our entrance into the Holy ground of Holy week with our Lord.  Then on Holy Thursday, after receiving Holy Communion, the people process with their priests, carrying the Blessed Sacrament to an altar of repose where they will keep watch in prayer with the Lord, recalling the night that our Lord spent with his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane.  On good Friday, the Cross is solemnly processed into the church, and then we will all process up to the cross to venerate it as we recall Christ’s great sacrifice of love for all people.  And finally, at the Easter vigil, Mass begins with the service of light outside of the entrance of the church as the Easter fire is lit and then all of the people and ministers process into the church with lighted candles, filling the sanctuary with the new light of Christ, risen from the dead.  One procession after another, really.

So I think that we who are somewhat procession-challenged, we Mainers, may find it helpful to have a little procession primer as we begin Holy Week.

Why processions?  Why does the Church encourage us to move around?  Why not just stay put in our pews or in our homes for that matter?

Entering into a procession speaks to something very important: that we are not mere passive onlookers as time marches past us.  To be a part of a procession is to be a protagonist, to be involved in the drama of life that is unfolding, to be a part of the scene: to be counted, to be on the record.  And I think that perhaps this is the most challenging reality of a procession for many of us.  We are not comfortable being pegged by others, being counted, being judged.  We do not want to enter the street and submit to the scrutiny of the bystander.  We prefer the anonymity of the sidelines, prefer our lives to be our own, our beliefs to shielded from scrutiny: not to be accountable for our actions, not to live under the public eye.  All of us, at a basic level, would rather be the spectator who judges than the actor who is judged.

But this is a toxic tendency for a Christian, and one that I think is having a tremendously negative impact on the Church, especially here in Maine.  The unwillingness to take part in something we do not control, unwillingness to be judged as belonging to anyone or anything other than ourselves.  To be branded.  Even to be branded as belonging to Christ and his Church.

And yet the irony is that in trying to remain spectators, in refusing to have a part, to be counted, we cannot escape the scene.  There are no sidelines in life.  We are either loving God and others or we are not.  There are no spectators to salvation.  All of us are part of the pilgrimage of human life on earth: we either accept that and work to follow Christ, or we fight him the whole way, but there are no bleachers, there are no bleachers.

Jesus Christ teaches us this week in an indisputable way that even God is not a spectator.  That God is anything but a spectator.  In Christ, the creator of all things enters into human history as its greatest protagonist, and he calls us to follow him: to leave the false refuge we seek in the bleachers and with faith and trust to instead enter into the great drama of salvation at work around us.  Spectators don’t love their neighbor, they just watch their neighbor.  Spectators don’t do good to those who persecute them, they just watch those who persecute and are persecuted.  Spectators don’t love God with their whole heart and mind and strength, they just watch– and they don’t even understand who they are watching because they have not walked in his footsteps.  Holy week teaches us, these processions are meant to teach us, that just as Christ is not a spectator God, neither can we be spectator Christians.  Christ has made us actors, he has given us his mission to accomplish, his word to preach, his Heavenly Father to love, even his cross to carry.

As he enters Jerusalem today, as he passes by, his presence walking among us asks each of us a question we cannot dodge, no matter how ruggedly independent we Mainers might be: will we be counted, will we take our places with Christ, will we join his procession to the father, the pilgrimage of love even unto death?  Will we take up our cross and follow him together with our brothers and sisters, or will our lives be one prolonged attempt to hide on the sidelines, sidelines that don’t even exist.  And so we process.  Why?  Because sometimes our feet follow our hearts, and sometimes our hearts follow our feet.

While We Are Away...

If you are having a difficult time finding the courage to go to confession, chapter 15 of Luke’s gospel is probably the best thing that you could possibly read.  The chapter begins with the parable of the lost sheep, followed by the parable of the lost coin, before our Lord finishes his lesson on repentance with the timeless account of the prodigal son that we hear in the Gospel reading this weekend.  This is not the only place in the scriptures that Jesus speaks about the beauty of repentance and forgiveness.  He preached on the theme of reconciliation continually.

As we hear the familiar words of the parable of the prodigal son once more today, might we ask ourselves, “Why does Christ place so much emphasis here?”  “What is our Lord trying to teach us, to teach you and I?”

On the face of it, the lesson might seem simple:  That God is good and merciful.  And this is a lesson that I think is pretty clear just in a simple reading of these passages of scripture.  Most Christians have learned this lesson, at least in theory - that God does not exact revenge or keep grudges.  Now and then I do hear someone expressing an idea that something bad was visited on them as if God had it out for them, as if they deserved it because of their sinful past.  But this mistaken idea that God harms us in retaliation for our sins is not very common.  Most people, I think, have a very robust faith that God will forgive them no matter what happens, that if they turn back to God he will never turn away from us.

But there is another lesson that our Lord implicitly gives throughout his teaching on reconciliation that I think is far more important for us to encounter in all its depth today.  And really it is not so much a lesson as it is a perspective, the correct way of seeing how God interacts with us: understanding the truth about God’s great intimacy and empathy and self-identification with us.

God’s forgiveness is part of a bigger picture, it only makes sense in the context of a thoroughly intimate and profound relationship.  Again and again, Christ made this point throughout his ministry.  That there is not a hair on our heads that is unknown, there is not tiny pebble that passes beneath our feet without our Heavenly Father’s notice.  When the prodigal son is away, the father’s eyes are constantly scanning the horizon.  How many sleepless nights were there?  How many times did he wonder if he was still alive?  Wish that he would come home?  Think of the things he would like to share with him, like to give him.  Lament that he could not entrust him with his life’s work.  In the parable of the lost sheep, the shepherd almost foolishly leaves the 99 in search of the 1 – as if he had an inordinate attachment to it – just could not stand not to hear it’s bleating in the flock, it’s absence almost painful.  The parable of the lost coin shows this same almost obsessiveness – someone who tears apart the whole house and stays up half the night, calling all her friends over to help until she finds this coin – the coin she just has to have, that cannot simply be replaced, that is not expendable.

The parables demonstrate not just that God is generically good and merciful to those who call upon him because he can’t help it, but that he is personally invested in us.  Why does Christ use the image of a Father and Son when speaking about God’s relationship to each of us?  The way that a parent loves a child, is invested in the wellbeing of a child is the closest thing he can point to in our experience to indicate how God cares for us.

But we have a hard time understanding this way that God loves.  We can only love maybe one or two people with a bit of this kind of intensity – maybe a few more if we have a large family – some of the saints has given us glimpses into what this kind of deep personal investment in each human being might start to look like - but even their example pales in comparison, is just a shadow - you and I can’t even begin to fathom loving the whole human race with the intensity that God loves us.  How he pours out his life on this altar – what this even means…  we are at a loss.  All of our hopes and fears, our anxieties and temptations, our joys and consolations… Christ is so connected to it all, so alive in it all that he calls it his own, he says that we are his, that we are him – we are his body, the Church.

And this perspective, this understanding, this knowledge of reality, of the truth about God, about the way that he cares for us, that he is connected to us… is foundational, is critical.  It is especially critical if we are to understand the sacrament of penance.  Because it is only when we understand the depth of the gift of Christ to us, in us, with us that we realize that our so called private sins are not only personal failures, but sins against Christ.  It is only when we understand God’s great compassion for each person, the way that Christ identifies himself with every brother and sister we encounter, that we see that we must confess our sins against others in the confessional.  We understand clearly that when we injure others, we injure Christ.  And when we sin against our brother or sister we not only apologize to them before coming to this altar, but we must also be reconciled with our Lord who cares for and and identifies himself with our brother and our sister and with each of us.

In short, Christ’s parables show us that when we are away on prodigal paths God does not just continue on as if nothing were wrong.  No, his eyes are constantly on the horizon.  He is always waiting.  Our wanderings always trouble him.  Our injuries always injure him.  We never wander, we never sin alone, privately – we always dissipate our lives under the loving gaze of our heavenly Father, every sin is in some way a sin against his love. St. Paul urges us today “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”  The light is on for you this week.  Go to confession.

Presumption

Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Lent, 2013


Today all three readings present us with a lesson in what we might call spiritual or theological presumption.  In the Gospel we hear Christ basically warning his fellow Hebrews about presuming that the suffering that is afflicting the Galileans will not afflict them simply because they are the chosen people.  He also rails against the idea that those who suffer or die young in this world have somehow brought their misery upon themselves because of their sins.  And in his letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul tells them sternly that they should study the sins and failures of the Old Covenant so that they can work to avoid falling into the same traps, never presuming that because of God’s grace they are somehow beyond falling.  No, he tells them, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.  Moses seems to be completely oblivious that he is on the holy Mount Horeb, and just walks right up to the burning bush.  He receives a stern warning: come no nearer.  Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.

I think it is very important that we brush up on this theme of presumption from time to time because we live in a religious environment that is heavily influenced by protestant culture, and there are some very stark differences between the Catholic and protestant theology in this area.

Protestant theology teaches that if we have accepted Christ as our Lord, then his grace covers over our sins like snow, and even in our sinfulness we can be certain we are destined for heaven.  That is why a protestant can say that he or she is saved even while they are aware of having committed very serious sins or persisting in sin.

Catholic theology teaches that it is presumptuous to make such a declaration.  And that is why Catholics often don’t know how to respond when they are asked “Have you been saved?”
A Catholic response to the question would be “I am working on it, I trust that with God’s grace I will be, I am filled with confident hope and trust that God is leading me along the pathway to salvation.”   But a Catholic would not dare to say that he or she is definitively saved.

And this is because from the earliest days, the Church has taught that salvation requires cooperation with God’s grace, it requires that we use our freedom to love God and love our neighbor according to God’s will.  Luther used to say that God’s grace covers us like snow over a pile of dung – that we remain wretched even when we are saved and redeemed.  But this is entirely contrary to what we believe.  We believe that God saves us not simply by covering over our sins, but that he saves us by sanctifying us, by making us holy from the inside out.  Through the sacraments, Christ is at work continually helping us to die to ourselves and be more and more alive each day in him, and this is what we believe makes us holy, this is what we teach brings us salvation.  And because we fall short of that regularly, because we often resist Christ’s work of salvation in our sinfulness we also are very aware that we cannot, any of us, presume salvation.  That doesn’t mean we should fear damnation.  But it is clear that life is a constant struggle of working with God’s grace to achieve one and avoid the other.  No one can claim to be secure or lost until their last breath.

This is why the Church, following the teaching of Christ, urges us to be extremely cautious in any assumptions about the state of our moral life or the moral lives of others – both in the positive or negative.  If you look, for example, at our funeral prayers –
they speak about our hope, about our trust, about our certainty in God’s love and compassion and mercy.  But never will you hear Catholic theology stating with certainly that someone is either in heaven or in hell - except in the case of canonized saints, and that is because in those unique cases of a canonized saint there have been two confirmed miracles attributed to that person that prove that he or she must be in heaven.  Outside of that – no comment.

This may all seem a bit speculative.  Let’s look at the practical application to your life and to mine.   There are different ways that unhealthy spiritual presumption can manifest itself, both in the positive when we mistakenly assume we are guaranteed salvation, and in the negative, when we mistakenly presume that we cannot help but go to the other place.

A first and common level of presumption would be the sort that we see with Moses today: it is a kind of rashness or presumption in our approach to God.  Sometimes it is just a carelessness.
We can begin to presume a kind of informal and unserious relationship with God.  We get sloppy with sacred things, times, and places.  Don’t treat them with the care they deserve.
And this is presumption in the sense that we kind of dispense ourselves from the rigors of the spiritual life.  We give ourselves a pass – easy excuses – I’m doing better than I was, I could be like so and so, at least I (fill in the blank).  I’m a good person (that’s one of my favorites).

All of these lines of thinking are presumptuous.  Why?  Because notice, they have nothing to do with what God has asked of us or told us that he expects.  Instead, they have to do with what we want to do, to justify, or with our own judgment, or the judgment of this world.  And it is presumptuous to think that our judgment, or the judgment of this world, is on the same level as God’s.  No – we are held to his standards and his standards alone – he is the judge.  We cannot, any of us, dispense ourselves from the teaching of Christ any more than we can dispense ourselves from having two arms and two legs.
This about an example in daily life when we might be the ones who have established the rules:  When the teenager arrives at the door late at night (or early in the morning) saying “Well, I know that you have constantly told me that I need to be home by 10:00pm, but I figured that was a bit harsh and that it would be fine if I got back by 2am.”  Or better “My girlfriend said that you would understand.”  That doesn’t go over well.  Presumption.

Another line of spiritual presumption has to do with the future…  to presume that we can repent later, that we can change our lives later, that we can accommodate sin for a bit longer before we get our acts together.  That’s the presumption that Jesus goes after today in the Gospel and that St. Paul warns against in our second reading.  We can never presume our ability to repent in the future.  Repent now.  That is a constant refrain in the scriptures.
The time to do good and avoid evil is now.  And this is repeated again and again by Christ to help us combat the lies and temptations of the evil one who is always trying to get us to put off doing good or avoiding evil just one more day.  God is merciful, and as Jesus teaches us in the Gospel passage today that he will give us the opportunity to bear fruit even when our track record has not been great.  But there will be a harvest: that is not a threat, it is simply reality.  We should not put the grace and mercy of God to the test.  We cannot presume upon God’s mercy as if we would live forever.  He will do everything he can to save us, but he will not violate our free choices.

And this leads to another and final area of presumption of a different sort that can be very problematic: when someone presumes to think that they will be always be trapped by sin, that they are tainted, that they have done something that cannot be forgiven.  On a few sad occasions I have heard someone say “God will never forgive me.”   Who are we to say?  That is not our role.  No, Christian hope tells us that we should seek and strive for holiness and that it is presumptuous to think that God’s grace is not capable of overcoming any obstacle and of making us saints.  In fact, what we do know from Christ is that God’s most intent desire and greatest effort in our world is directed toward bringing us to a sanctity and holiness that will give us true and lasting joy.  It is the height of presumption to think that somehow we could be beyond his ability to save, to think that we do not share in his plan of salvation, that we have not been made like every human being: for holiness, to be a saint.

How to we fight against sins of presumption?  We follow the example of Moses.  We remove our sandals. The sandals that would track into the Holy Ground of Christ’s teaching the rocks and dirt of our own judgment, the judgment of this world.  Instead, in all humility we must ask the Holy Spirit to help us to stand with bare theological feet before God and ask him to teach us his ways, to show us who he is and what he desires for us.  And then do our best to follow without compromise or hesitation, repenting quickly when we fail, not presuming, but trusting, that through the grace at work in us Christ is leading us along the path to eternal salvation.

Have You Lowered Your Spiritual Aspirations?

Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, 2013


These descriptions of encounters with God that we find in the scriptures this weekend: think of just how incredible they are.  They read like something we might expect from a fantastical adventure book.

In the first reading from Genesis today we listen to this incredible exchange that Abraham had with God.  Speaking back and forth, receiving promises from God, Abraham experiences a deep intimacy with the Lord.  As the sun sets, he falls into a trance, and enters into a mysterious darkness as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the pieces of the sacrifice he had laid before God.

And then, in our Gospel reading, we have this incredible theophany, or revelation of God in the transfiguration.  While Jesus was praying, Peter, James, and John witness his face change in appearance and his clothing become dazzling white.  Moses and Elijah appear with him in glory, and then a cloud descends upon them from which the voice of God speaks to them.

Our readings today emphasize the intimacy that the Triune God desires to have with humanity.  He invites each of us us, as he invited Peter, James, and John, into the very depths of his plans for us.  He does not hide himself from us, in Christ, God is revealed.

But we hit a snag with this, don’t we?  Then why don’t most of us experience God like Abraham, Peter, James, and John?  Why don’t we experience him the way that so many saints have experienced his presence in their lives, in such real and tangible ways?  Doesn’t our experience in our modern day and age show that God only reveals himself like this, in these kinds of dramatic and intimate ways, with a chosen and privileged few?  That the rest of us must be content to be those who are blessed because we believe even though we have not seen?  That walking with God, knowing and being known by him, is only for a chosen few?

No.  And this is very important, that we refuse to accept this idea that God is content or that it is somehow his plan to be distant from us.  We must resist the horrendously low spiritual aspirations of the culture in which we live - these hallmark endorsed vague feelings of God, this superficial sentimentalism that masquerades as genuine faith.  So many people think that this is what it is like to know God, that this is as good as it gets: to just feel good about life and about yourself, to be content and to be hopeful about one day being in a better place with him. Wishes and hopes, dreams and aspirations…

To this idea, to this vague, washed out spirituality, Christianity gives a decisive rebuttal.  No, that is not as good as it gets.  That is not what God wants for us – vague notions of a spiritual nature and the dim hope of heaven.

God wants us to know him, really and truly.  He challenges us to know him, to enter into a covenant with him, to be in on his plans, to be involved, to participate in the drama of his redemption.  To no just be obliviously floating through life in a bubble of niceties.  No – we are called right into the fray, into real spiritual dimensions that are mind boggling.  Beyond the limitation and banality that comes from living in a world constructed on our own terms.  God invites each of us into his life, a life that is so far beyond us, so immense, so beautiful, so alive that it is overwhelming.

And do we not want this too?  Aren’t we made, don’t we long for life that is more than what we can imagine?  Life that is more than we want?  Life that is beyond our ability to achieve or to even conceive?  Divine life, the life that God wants for us, is also the life we have been made for.

So why don’t we have this kind of intimacy with God?  Why don’t we enter dark clouds and speak with God?  Why aren’t we terrified out of our minds when we approach this altar, overwhelmed by the beauty of God’s love poured out for us?

Because, truth be told, we don’t want him enough.  No, we don’t.  If we did, we would spend as much time praying as we do watching tv or in idle conversation.  If we did, we would give as many hours to the study of his word in the scriptures as we give to study of our careers and hobbies.  If we did, we would be known throughout our community by our love for one another and our amazing generosity to the least among us who Christ tells us embody him.  If we did, opportunities to deepen prayer and learning about God offered by the parish would be packed and overflowing and the line at the confessional would wrap around the building.

What is limiting our intimacy with God is on our end, not his.  He wants each of us, he gives each of us the grace of the sacraments and scriptures to know him like Abraham, like Peter, James, and John.

It’s lent, it’s time for your priest to help you ask some hard questions:
Is God really number one with me?
Is this priority in words only, or also in my everyday decisions?
Do I often reflect that I am only a pilgrim here on earth, here for only a short while – and do I think of my eternity as I ought?
Am I convinced that the closer I am to the Lord in prayer the better I will be for everyone else?
Is my busyness often due to much ado about nothing?
Would I accept my husband or wife of close friend saying to me “I have no time to spend with you, I’m too busy.”?

The Triune God invites, calls to us, reminds us through St. Paul: Our citizenship is in heaven.  In the midst of our skeptical and faithless age, we cannot grow faith of heart, we cannot be content with a superficial knowledge of God and his ways, we cannot lower our spiritual aspirations.  We are called to ascend the mountain with Peter, James and John, not to settle for the valley.  We have been made to witness the glory of the Lord, to know him and be known by him.  To see our God face to face.

Prayer: Life Seasoned with the Salt of God's Love

Homily for the First Sunday of Lent, 2013

Lent is a time when the Church encourages us to intensify our spiritual efforts, particularly by undertaking the time tested disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  Today, as we hear of Christ’s journey into the desert for 40 days, I would like to focus for a bit on our efforts in prayer during our 40 days of Lenten desert.

For all of us, who live in what might be described as a technological jungle, prayer is a challenge.  Go to the restaurant, you can hardly hear yourself think.  Sound piped into the stores.  Even pumping gas, the thing starts squawking at you.  Tvs are often on at home.  Music or talk radio in the car.  It is a noisy and distracted world that we live in.  And we can almost become accustomed to this and think that people have always lived like this, that only monks and hermits live in silence.

But until modern times, most every person on the planet would have lived with long periods of silence in their everyday lives.  Working out on the fields or in the woods – they did not have boom boxes or ipods.  It’s not like they could play a troupe of musicians to follow them around.  At home doing chores – perhaps they whistled from time to time or sang songs to themselves, but that would grow older after a while.  While studying or working in various trades – really in most every human activity until recently, most people experienced long periods of silence.

But we live in a different world, a world that seemingly never stops, never just sits and listens.

And it is easy to fall into the trap of becoming habituated and even dependent on an environment of perpetual noise, to the point where we become uncomfortable with quiet and immediately find ourselves turning something on so that we never have to be alone with the silence.  And this is a great danger to us, and a tendency of our modern life that we need to fight to resist.

Because a reasonable amount of silence and solitude is not something that the Christian can avoid without peril.  We cannot live a perpetually distracted life, only allowing God to break in now and then as if he were yet one more distraction in the long line of distractions.  There are fundamental conversations that God needs to have with us that can only happen in the silence, in deep prayer.  Just as you would never take your spouse out on a valentine’s date sitting in the middle of the highway if the relationship was important to you, so we cannot pretend that our relationship with God is important to us if we do not set aside time to be with him quietly in prayer.  If we do not enter into the desert.

Of course the question soon arises: but what do we do in the desert?  What do we do in the silence?  Many of us suddenly find ourselves overcome with distractions.  It can be worse than the noise: all of a sudden all of the things that we need to do, all of the concerns and worries about the day and about the future come pouring through the flood gates.  And furthermore, it is often in the desert when the wiles of the evil one are unmasked.  When all of the distractions have been cleared away and we are forced to face our demons, we have to face our sins, our insecurities.

The scriptures teach us how to respond when we encounter distraction and temptation in prayer:
In the first reading, Moses tells the priests that when offering sacrifice they are to recount the good deeds of the Lord, to remember what God has done for them.  And this is most profoundly done when we turn to the scriptures, as our Lord did when he found himself tempted by Satan.  We too, when we come to prayer, to silence, can find great help in avoiding distraction by focusing on God’s word, on the scriptures.
One of the most sure methods of prayer, called lectio divina, or sacred reading, is based on this experience.  In lectio divina we begin with a passage of scripture, perhaps the readings from the day.  After thinking about them, we work to then apply the meaning to our lives, to hear the lesson that God is trying to teach us through his word.  And then finally this reflection leads to a conversation with God himself, to a dialogue of prayer.

The rosary or other devotional prayers like the divine mercy chaplet can also help us to enter into the posture of prayer before God, provided that we do not become narrow in our focus, just trying to get our rosary or other devotion in for the day.  We need to remember that each decade of the rosary invites us to contemplate an aspect or mystery of Christ’s life, and to be open to hearing what Christ wants to teach us through these mysteries.

Simply accomplishing a prayer, whether it be the rosary or the divine mercy chaplet, or the liturgy of the hours, can never be the goal.  The goal is an openness with God, a time of listening to him and speaking with him as we would speak with a friend.  If we are in the middle of prayer and feel ourselves wanting to just sit with God, to just be with him in silence, listening, then we should not be afraid to let our words pause for a moment.  Again, the goal is to be open to Christ.

Christian prayer begins and ends with these intentional and necessary times of uninterrupted and intense prayer that we incorporate into our morning or evening routines, but we should all seek to live prayerfully throughout the day.  We are called to live in a way that is recollected, that is open to God, in situations where we are not able to sit down and read or without a rosary: we might be in the car or working on some project, shoveling snow… something like that.  And yet in all of the different circumstances of life, we are invited by the Holy Spirit, especially in this season of Lent,  to make every effort to keep our eyes fixed on God.

1600 years ago, St. John Chrysostom spoke to his parishioners about this kind of daily practice of prayer.  He told them “Our spirit should be quick to reach out toward God not only when it is engaged in meditation; at other times also, when it is carrying out its duties, caring for the needy, performing works of charity, giving generously in the service of others, our spirit should long for God, and call him to mind, so that these works may be seasoned with the salt of God’s love, and so make a palatable offering to the Lord of the universe. Throughout the whole of our lives we may enjoy the benefit that comes from prayer if we devote a great deal of time to it.”

Prayer is essential.  Christ was able to resist the temptations of the evil because he was united to his heavenly father in prayer.  His miracles were all worked in prayer.  He prayed from the beginning of the day to the end, and he taught his disciples and all of us that we should strive to pray without ceasing.  To be mindful, really is what that means, to be aware and mindful that our Lord walks with us, and to be quick to turn to him.

It is Beautiful to be Old!

Ash Wednesday, 2013

I imagine that many of us had particular plans about lent this year.  Maybe plans to give up certain things that we have traditionally given up each year, such as sweets or tv, or new routines that have been planning, like going to daily Mass or the Stations of the Cross.  These practices of increased prayer and fasting are very important in allowing us to be open to the conversion that Christ wishes to offer us this season.

But then on Monday we had quite a surprise, didn’t we?  The pope will be resigning.  And so our  40 days of preparation for Easter will now coincide with preparation for and the receiving of a new Pope.  Even though these events will take place in Rome, I am sure that we will all be quite aware of the developments through modern media – which is a real blessing.  Because the Pope is not just the bishop of Rome; he is also the supreme pontiff of the universal Church, one who is a sign and a protector of the unity of all Catholics to Christ and to one another.

So now our lent takes on a different flavor, doesn’t it?  And we might ask, well what flavor?  Is it the flavor of endless speculation about who will be the next pope?  I certainly hope not.
Is it the flavor of endless comparing of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and trying to figure out what qualities the next pope will need?  I think that is not really for us to decide.  So how can we observe lent this year while at the same time taking into account this critical time in the life of the Church?

I would suggest two ways:
1. By increasing our prayer for the Church.  We have already been praying for a new bishop.  Now we have the added responsibility of praying for a new pope.  Concretely, I would suggest that we pray for the Church and for the cardinals who will elect the pope on a daily basis in the coming weeks.  Even if it is a short prayer in the morning.  The media and much of our world do not understand the truth about how leadership is selected in the Church: that it is a process of prayer and fasting, not one of power and politicking.  And we can participate in this prayerful discernment here in our parish as we ask God to help the Church to be receptive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit as she discerns who will be our new earthly shepherd.

2. But there is a second way that I think our Lenten observance can change this year, that I want to emphasize in particular.  And that is in our prayer for the pope, who has reached a point in his life where his health is failing, and to also be particularly attentive to those who share in the same cross, the elderly of our parish.  How quickly the pope himself has been forgotten in the news coverage, as tv crews run off to try to figure out who the next guy will be, and how easily in our own community we pass by the homes and institutions where our own elderly live.

We tend to focus on the first two of the three aspects of Lent: prayer and fasting.  But this is also a season that should be characterized by almsgiving: the giving of ourselves, of our time, of our gifts, of our financial resources, of our attention to others; a time of generosity.  The pope’s announcement reminds us of the cross that our older brothers carry – and encourages us to reach out in support and in solidarity with them.  For those of you who are older and who are experiencing the burdens of old age, I encourage you in a particular way to be united to the pope in prayer and in reaching out to others.  I would like to close with an address given by Pope Benedict when he visited a nursing home in Rome this past November, probably already then aware that he would be resigning this spring:

“I come to you as Bishop of Rome, but also as an old man visiting his peers. It would be superfluous to say that I am well acquainted with the difficulties, problems and limitations of this age and I know that for many these difficulties are more acute due to the economic crisis. At times, at a certain age, one may look back nostalgically at the time of our youth when we were fresh and planning for the future. Thus at times our gaze is veiled by sadness, seeing this phase of life as the time of sunset. This morning, addressing all the elderly in spirit, although I am aware of the difficulties that our age entails I would like to tell you with deep conviction: it is beautiful to be old! At every phase of life it is necessary to be able to discover the presence and blessing of the Lord and the riches they bring. We must never let ourselves be imprisoned by sorrow! We have received the gift of longevity. Living is beautiful even at our age, despite some “aches and pains” and a few limitations. In our faces may there always be the joy of feeling loved by God and not sadness.

Dear friends, at our age we often experience the need of the help of others; and this also happens to the Pope.  I would like to ask you to seek in this too a gift of the Lord, because being sustained and accompanied, feeling the affection of others is a grace!
This is important in every stage of life: no one can live alone and without help; the human being is relational. And in this case I see, with pleasure, that all those who help and all those who are helped form one family, whose lifeblood is love.  Dear elderly brothers and sisters, the days sometimes seem long and empty, with difficulties, few engagements and few meetings; never feel down at heart: you are a wealth for society, even in suffering and sickness.  The Pope loves you and relies on all of you! May you feel beloved by God and know how to bring a ray of God’s love to this society of ours, often so individualistic and so efficiency-oriented. And God will always be with you and with all those who support you with their affection and their help.”