Who Do You Serve?

Homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reverencing the Body of Christ

Homily for the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Defines the Catholic Church?

Homily for the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Needing To Be Fed

Homily for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    

You Cannot Separate the Munera

Priest, Prophet, and King

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diminishment in the Number of Priestly Vocations.

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

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

Damage to Community

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

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

Lack of Subsidiarity and the Adoption of Secular Governance Models

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

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

Conclusions

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

Take Nothing For the Journey But A Walking Stick

Homily for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Did Not Make Death

Homily for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preparing a Path to Christ in Our World

Homily for the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 2012

Today we celebrate how God prepared a people, prepared a nation, sent prophets and a law into the world to receive the gift of his Son.  Might we ask, well why didn’t he just surprise us?

A question: if we had not been prepared, would  we have noticed the life and death of a simple, solitary man?  One who, in the estimation of this world was not of any note?  How many people who lived more than 2000 years ago could most of us list off the top of our heads?  I imagine the list would not have more than 20 names for most of us, maybe  even fewer than 10. 

Well, we might ask, why didn’t God become man as one of those people whose names are listed in the history books?  Why didn’t he become a great king and mighty ruler?

But we know the answer to that question, don’t we?  In Christ God wanted to reveal to us his saving power in the midst of weakness and darkness, which is where we need his salvation.  And so he needed to prepare us, needed to prepare a people to recognize in the humble frame of his Son Jesus, who was crucified like a common criminal, not just another tragic story of the suffering of this world, but the very image of God himself.

Today we celebrate the final stage of that preparation: with the Nativity, or the birth, of St. John the Baptist, and we celebrate that time of preparation that God spent getting the world ready for his Son.
Now, this is a very important feast for all of us, because think of how many people we run into each day – former Catholics or others, who are distant from the Church or who do not see any need for the Church.  How many who live in our families – our own children and grandchildren.  We cannot simply spring the faith on them.  Surprise, you get to come to Mass with us!  Here’s a Bible!  But what do we do? I think this is a question that really gets to many of us.  We pray for those we love who have left the practice of the faith, and that is certainly important and needed. 

But today we can also learn from the way that God prepared his people before Christ’s birth, we can learn from the feast that we celebrate today how we too can help prepare the way for Christ to enter the lives of our brothers and sisters who have either fallen away from the faith or who never had faith.
So how did God prepare his people to receive his Son?  I think we can see three stages:

First he impressed upon them that life is a gift that he gives to us because he loves us.  This truth of God’s goodness and of the goodness of life is something that most people recognize – that each day we are alive not by our own power, but by the power of another.  And this is really the first foundation stone of faith.  To recognize that we are dependent on God, and that God is good to us.  The first 3 of the 10 commandments focus on this teaching, Genesis focuses on this teaching.  God worked to help the Hebrew people recognize their reliance on him, and to become more and more grateful for his goodness.  We can see in the Psalms that they responded to his revelation with praise and thanksgiving.  Even in hardship, they took to heart God’s goodness.  They were grateful for what they were given.

And I think that more than many things, this is one of the most important preparations for Christ that we can make in our culture.  If you are not grateful for your life and for what you have, then you will not want to love God or love Jesus Christ.  If we are able to live a spirit of gratitude and to point out to those around us that we have no right to what we have.  To avoid any sense of entitlement, and instead to recognize our complete reliance on God.  Without gratitude, without a sense of thankfulness to God, there can be no love of God.  How do we live gratefully?  How do we help our families to be grateful?

Gratitude to God is the most fitting motivation to go to Mass.  To thank him for what he has given us during the rest of the week.  Not seeking what we can get out of Mass, but seeking instead to give God what we can of our lives in order to thank him for his generosity.

In a second stage, From this gratitude for everything, also comes the sense of duty or obligation to respond.  When someone gives you a gift, even the most basic of human cultures have understood that it is only right to say thank you.  That is what we do here at Mass – we do what we ought, as receivers of such great gifts: we say thank you to God.  And we can see that in the law, God showed his people how to respond to his gifts: to respect and honor life, ones parents, the truth, the material things of this world.  And we too, prepare the way for Christ when we show others through our actions and words that we know that the gifts we have received deserve to be honored and respected.   Gratitude should mature into respect and honor.

In the third and final stage of preparation, God revealed to his people how weak and incapable they were at adequately respecting and honoring his gifts.  He showed them their sins. He showed them their infidelity – how they had turned to other gods instead of him.  How they had wasted the gifts he had given them, trampled the lives of the innocent he entrusted to their care.  He showed them that they needed forgiveness and repentance.  That final stage culminated in John the Baptist, who preached repentance.  Repentance for a people who were incapable of loving God and honoring God as they should.  A grateful but sinful people are the only people who need a savior, someone to help them offer God fitting praise and thanksgiving.  And when they recognized that, when they recognized their need for God, their need for a savior, they were ready for Jesus Christ. 

Of all St. John the Baptist’s virtues, perhaps the greatest was his humility.  He was grateful to God for what he had been given and for his work of announcing Christ.  He had a profound sense of responsibility and of his duty to respond to the God who had given him his life by serving him.  And so he went into the desert and preached repentance, proclaiming that he was not worthy to even untie the sandal straps of the God he served.  May we follow his example of humble and grateful service, and may we be that voice in the wilderness that proclaims God’s praise and our need for his mercy and forgiveness.

God is in Control. Yes, It's Going to Be Alright.

Homily for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2012

The themes of growing and planting are strong in our scripture readings this week, and they come at the perfect time of year.  Many of you, I’m sure, have been getting gardens in during recent weeks and with only a few months of favorable weather here in Maine, the landscaping efforts in our community are in full swing.

Jesus clearly understood and loved the natural world.  He may have been a carpenter by trade, but when it came time to tell a parable about the kingdom of God more often than not he used an example from farming or nature, not carpentry.

And I think our Gospel passage today gives us a bit of an insight as to why.  Jesus points to the mystery of God’s work in the growth and life that we find in the natural world, a growth and life that is beyond our understanding and our ability to control.  You can take a piece of wood and form it with tools, determining exactly what it will look like.  A seed, the weather, gravity, these realities are something altogether different.  While we can have an idea of what has happened, and is happening and what will happen in the natural world, we cannot control it in the same way that we can control ourselves.

It’s fun to watch a baby figure out the difference, to figure out, for example, that it’s fingers are distinct from the rest of the world.  It is an early stage of the natural psychological development of a human being – the recognition of the difference between myself and everything else.  Slowly a child discovers that the world is not a blank slate that he or she can simply write on – that there are certain natural forces at work in the world that are mysterious and powerful and must be respected.  How many of you have worked so hard to help your children to figure out how to live in a world that is alive with the forces of hot and cold, gravity and momentum, light and darkness, viscosity and density, growth and decay, hunger and thirst, life and death.  The world teaches quickly teaches us that we are not in control of everything that happens around us.

This is the lesson of nature, if you will, the less of the natural kingdom. 
Now if this lesson is learned in a context in which we don’t know God or of his goodness and that the world is made for us in love, these forces can be viewed as antagonistic.  Laws of nature are an imposition and they threaten us.  And the natural response to nature when it is perceived as a threat is to do everything in our power to control nature and natural forces and to subdue them.  To bring the world into conformity with what we want because we don’t trust the world to care for us.  Instead, the world must be tamed and conquered – in our quest for survival against hostile forces we become slaves to the fear of survival.

But Jesus shows us the perspective of faith.  When we understand God’s goodness and that when he created the world he created it to be good, rather than our lack of control seeming to be a threat and liability, we understand that a world in God’s hands is in far better hands than our own.  And so rather than try to subdue the world and make it conform to what we want, we seek to understand the world around us and with trust we work to cooperate with the forces that are at work in the world.  You can only do that if you trust the maker, if you trust that God has created this world in love.  And that is why genuine Christian faith should always tend us toward good environmental stewardship. 
In recent years some have tried to argue that the Christian emphasis on human dignity and unique role tends to our domination of the natural world, but that is a horrible distortion of the message of Christianity.
In reality, our faith allows us not to be afraid to cooperate with the world because we know that it is good.  And this understanding of the natural world as good and as governed by forces that are good and come from God also encourages us to explore the world and learn about it.  To seek to understand more about God by seeing his handiwork.  To marvel at his creation, to thank him for his providential care, to praise him for the wonders that he works around us.

But there is also a more profound and important teaching in the parables that Jesus offers us today, a teaching that doesn’t have so much to do with the natural kingdom, but with the Kingdom of God. 
What he teaches us is that just as the natural kingdom is beyond our control and yet should not frighten us because it is in God’s hands and his control, so it is for the kingdom of Heaven.

In other words, God has put just as much care and effort into the project of our salvation, the work of God to save us and give us eternal life.  To the natural laws he has added divine commands –and similarly, they are not to threaten or to control or restrict us, but to give us happiness and freedom. 

Just as God has designed the earth to provide us with food and water and what we need to nourish and sustain our earthly bodies, so he also has given us the sacraments and the scriptures in order to nourish and sustain our souls. 

And so, just as we should not fear the mysterious forces and natural laws at work around us, so neither should we fear the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst.  Like the natural world, God’s grace cannot be controlled or tamed.  And so the response that gives us freedom and peace is cooperation, not fear or antagonism.   Jesus teaches us in the Gospel today: the seed sprouts and grows, we know not how.  Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.  Do we see our lack of control as a threat?  Or as an opportunity to turn to God with trust, asking him to help us to cooperate with his grace so that he can give us freedom and peace and happiness, not only in this natural kingdom, but one day too in the kingdom of heaven.

Sons and Daughters of the True and Living Sacrifice

Homily for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2012

Sacrifice.  As we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi this weekend, all of our scriptural readings center very directly on the religious practice sacrificing for God.

For most of us, I imagine the idea might seem very foreign and strange.  Sprinkling people with the blood of bulls?  Where did Moses come up with that idea?

If we look at ancient religions, and at the Jewish religion in particular, we can see that sacrifices were offered to God for at least three reasons. 

The first was as expiation, or in an effort to restore justice when the community had sinned against God.  We can see many examples of this throughout the Old Testament, that a scapegoat is offered to God to appease him for the sins of the many.  And in our own day we embrace a certain sense of this in our judicial system – the idea that in order to restore justice, something must be taken away from the guilty party – in minor cases it is money, in more serious cases their freedom when we imprison them, and in some cases that Catholic teaching condemns, our government even seeks to restore justice by taking the life of the guilty party.

A second occasion when sacrifice was offered to God was to ratify a solemn agreement or covenant.  This is the kind of sacrifice that we see Moses offering in our first reading today,
a sacrifice that confirms the seriousness of a commitment being made to God.  In offering the sacrifice, the people are saying: if I break the commitment that I am making today, may what happened to those bulls happen to me.  It is a sacrifice made to seal a bond.  We might think of this same form of sacrifice in, for example, the practice of blood brothers, or think of the case of when bond is collected in order to hold someone to a court date.

And a third occasion was in praise of God – a sacrifice of praise.  The Old Testament is full of accounts of massive displays of ritual sacrifice made after great military victories or other triumphs. 
In gratitude for God’s favor, the desire was to show God their thankfulness by offering him the best of what they had.  It is a natural impulse that we all have toward someone who has been good to us, we want to repay them, to show our gratitude by offering them something that is dear to us in return.

Each of these themes of sacrifice, or occasions of sacrifice to God were a part of the Jewish faith, and they prefigured the sacrifice of Christ that we celebrate at Mass.  If you think of it, we hear all three sacrificial themes outlined in the prayers of the Mass each week, don’t we?  That the Mass is a sacrifice of expiation, offered for the forgiveness of sins.  That the Mass is a sacrifice that establishes a covenant and binds us into a communion with God and with one another.  And that the Mass is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving that is offered to God on behalf of the whole Church.

But is something entirely new and different about the sacrifice of Christ that we offer at Mass compared to the sacrifices that prefigured his in the Old Testament.  And this is because the sacrifices of the Old Covenant were incomplete and unfulfilled, they were meant to lead to Christ and were not adequate in themselves.  The problem was this: everything that we might try to offer to God in sacrifice is already his.  This problem gradually came to the attention of the Hebrew people.

The prophets, like Isaiah, began to make the dilemma clear: thus says the Lord: “What do I care for the multitude of your sacrifices?  I have had enough of whole-burnt rams and fat of fatlings; In the blood of calves, lambs, and goats I find no pleasure.  When you come to appear before me, who asks these things of you?”  And we hear in Psalm 50 “For every animal of the forest is mine, beasts by the thousands on my mountains.  I know every bird in the heights; whatever moves in the wild is mine.  Were I hungry, I would not tell you, for mine is the world and all that fills it.  Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of he-goats?”

We have nothing of our own to offer.  Everything that we have has been given to us by God.  Even our most precious possession, our very life, is a gift from God.  And so the sacrifices that we are capable of making to God on our own, without his aid, are incomplete and lacking.  They are the equivalent of giving someone a gift that they have given to you in an attempt to thank them.  You can imagine how that might work at home: after an argument you wish to make amends: here, please take this gift back that you gave me at Christmas – really I mean it, I want you to have it.

Without Christ, our sacrifices for God are empty gestures striving toward completion, longing to be joined to a real sacrifice, to a real gift that can be authentically given to God, a gift that is perfect.  And the prophets realized that.  They saw that they needed a Messiah, they were in search a true high priest who could offer a true and authentic sacrifice to God, one that would truly, and not symbolically, gain expiation for our sins, that would truly, and not symbolically, ratify a new covenant, and that would fittingly praise and thank God for his gifts.

And the high priest who offers the perfect sacrifice is Christ.  Perfect because as God he can authentically offer the sacrifice of his life: because it is his in a way that our lives are not our own.  And so Jesus tells us in the Gospel that the Father does not take his life from him, he gives his life freely and completely on the cross in a way that none of us could because we are not the origin of our own life, we are not God incarnate.  But Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for us because he is not only God also human.  As he offered his life on behalf of all humanity, he gave all of us the ability to participate in his one eternal offering of his life, in his one, eternal offering of expiation, communion, and praise. 

That’s what happens at Mass – we are given the ability to participate in the one, eternal, offering of Christ that is the fulfillment and perfection of every sacrifice ever offered to God.  As members of Christ’s body through baptism, we are joined in his sacrifice, and we are given the work of uniting our sacrifices to his sacrifice, insofar as we take up our crosses with him, dying to ourselves with Christ and offering everything we have to the Father with him. 

So sacrifice is not an archaic or outmoded idea, a strange and foreign practice of ancient religions.  It is at the heart of who we are and what we do as Christians.  But the good news is that in Christ, we no longer bumble around struggling to offer things or animals or people in sacrifice to God that we hope will appease him and make him happy.  No, we are sons and daughters of the true sacrifice, the one, true, authentic sacrifice offered by the our high priest, Jesus Christ, a sacrifice of expiation, of communion, and of praise and thanksgiving.

Catholic Spirituality

Homily for Pentecost Sunday, 2012

Today as we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost, we have an opportunity to reflect a bit on the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church, and on what that means for you and I who are members of the body of Christ that is animated by the Spirit.  In other words, we have the opportunity to reflect on the Church as a Spiritual reality, to speak of Catholic Spirituality. 

For a number of reasons, it seems that we don’t hear about Catholic spirituality or the Catholic spiritual life all that often.  I think that part of the reason is that we’ve been influenced by a culture that promotes a concept of the spiritual that is opposed to the religious or to the institutional.  How many times we hear people use that kind of reasoning when they attempt to rationalize not going to Mass: “Well, I don’t need to go to Mass to be a spiritual person.”  “Mass doesn’t do anything for my spiritual life.”

When we hear this kind of idea expressed, we might have a tendency to just react: “Well heck, if that’s what it means to be spiritual, then we had better not encourage that in our kids.  No spirituality for you.  You are going to church.  None of that pie in the sky spirit mumbo jumbo.  Next thing we know you’ll be smelling like patchouli and wearing crystals and getting piercings. 

But what a horrible loss for the Church, to lose the sense that who we are, at our most profound depths, is a spiritual reality, a spiritual body.  That what ties us together is not so much that we do the same things or believe the same things, although those are important expressions of our unity, but that we have the same life dwelling within us. 

So we must address this opposition of the religious to the spiritual: this common impression that the spiritual is opposed to a church, to an organization.  How can we, on this great feast of the Holy Spirit, articulate Catholic Spirituality, explain what it means to be both a religious and a spiritual people?

The first way, I think, is to make sure that we understand all of the sacraments and religious experience of the Church as profoundly spiritual in nature.  In other words, celebrating Mass on Sunday is the most spiritual thing that we do.  It can be easy to lose the deeper awareness that here as we come together, the Holy Spirit moves within us and around us with great power and freedom.  The Holy Spirit allows the word of God to enter into our hearts and minds, calling us to deeper conversion.  The Holy Spirit dwells is at work during the celebration of the Eucharistic prayer to consecrate the bread and wine so that they become for us Jesus’ body and blood and to consecrate us so that we become his body alive in the world.  The Holy Spirit is at work within us, helping us to receive and to respond to the gift of Jesus’ very life in the Eucharist. 

Now, all of this working of the Holy Spirit happens in mystery, invisibly and we have to work to become more perceptive and responsive to the life of the Spirit.  And so I think that it is important that we prepare for Mass well.  The Church asks us to fast for an hour, but I think it is also important to set aside for a time before Mass the concerns and distractions of daily life – to prepare ourselves mentally so that we can enter into what it is that we are doing.  It’s hard to make a shift from crazy life into Mass mode in 2 seconds flat – you end up sitting in the pew or up here, and maybe your body is still, but your mind is going 100 miles an hour.  Well we are not going to be as receptive to the Holy Spirit at work if we haven’t prepared a bit.  That is what Vatican II meant when it spoke of the active participation of the people – first and foremost it means an interior participation or openness to what the Holy Spirit is doing here: a receptivity.  That means that in general it is incredibly important that we nurture a tone of the sacred here – a tone that helps us remember that God is at work among us, that his Spirit is alive in this time that we spend together in a particular and unique way.  We have been brought here for a purpose – we are here to be fed and strengthened and given the grace that we need to be able to live holy, virtuous lives in the world. The challenge for each of us is to really take with due seriousness what is happening here at Mass or when we celebrate any sacrament.  That doesn’t mean being overly nervous or stiff or stern, but to be reflective and attentive to the deeper, spiritual movements and realities that are unfolding around us, trying to let go of distractions and worldly concerns.

But I think the greater challenge, for most of us, is figuring out how to retain an authentic Catholic spirituality for the rest of the week so that when we show up here we don’t feel like we’re landing on Mars.  To be alive in the spirit, truly alive in the Spirit, means that the relationship must endure beyond these walls.  Love is not true love if it is only alive when we are with the beloved.  No, true love persists, it is faithful, it pines for the beloved, is always reflecting on the beloved, remembering, scheming, meditating. 

How do we bring the life of the Holy Spirit with us from this place into the rest of our lives so that when we come here, to this upper room, we are drawing upon a relationship with the Holy Spirit that is ongoing and alive during the rest of the week?  Mass is meant to build and strengthen a people who are alive in the spirit – it is not meant to resurrect us from the dead.  That is confession.

And so on a feast like Pentecost it is a good opportunity to look at our interior lives, look at our prayer.  To recommit ourselves as we enter ordinary time to maintaining a daily prayer life, to going to confession on a regular basis, so that Mass can be the source and summit of our spiritual life, but not the totality of it.  Yes, without a daily spiritual regiment we can find some benefit at Mass, we can enjoy certain elements of the community and prayer, but the deep spiritual intimacy that the Lord wants to strengthen and grow within us is not be possible if we are not spending a substantial amount of time with him throughout the week.  Mass can only be a spiritual experience for spiritual people, and the way that you become a spiritual person is by spending time and effort learning to listen and cooperate with the promptings of the Holy Spirit during the rest of the week.

Our celebration of the Eucharist is meant to be an intensified encounter that happens in an existing and committed relationship of love between God and his son or daughter.  We are meant to come to Mass as spiritual people, men and women with active and flourishing spiritual lives.  St. Bernard of Clairveau spoke of a sacrament as a kiss from God.  But in order for a kiss to be authentic, in order for it to be beautiful, it must occur in a relationship where faithful love exists well before lips meet and well after they part.  And that means for us that we must strive each day to carve out and nurture a real and genuine spiritual life.  Because it is this life of the Spirit that gives meaning to everything else: that must be at the heart of every Catholic endeavor.  Religion is not true religion, is not authentic, unless it is rooted in spiritual lives: and that means men and women, you and me, each day in our homes and workplaces and community faithfully working to live with and in the Holy Spirit we have received in baptism.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.

In Christ We Can Be In Heaven by Love

Homily for Ascension Thursday, 2012

The sense that many of us might have in listening to the end of the reading today is one of departure, of goodbye, of loss.  Jesus rises up into the clouds after giving parting instructions to his disciples. 
And yet the Church teaches us on this day not to see the mystery of the Ascension so much as that of a departure as that of an arrival.  An arrival of the body of Christ, the humanity of Christ, in heaven.  And therefore an opportunity to reflect on our heavenly identity, the identity that we share as members of his body.

St. Augustine began his Ascension homily with these words: “Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him.”
“For,” he said, “just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.”

We already are in heaven?
I think of some of our parishioners who are suffering with various illnesses, or those who are out straight juggling a million things, or are working constantly – more than they want to – worried about finances.  All of the challenges of life in this world.  And yet St. Augustine says that we are already in heaven. 

But his explanation on this day, I think, can be an inspiration to us.  Listen to what he says:
“Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear.  He showed this when he cried out from above: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? and when he said: I was hungry and you gave me food.  Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to him?  While in heaven he is also with us; and we, while on earth are with him.  He is here with us by his divinity, his power and his love.  We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love.”

“In him, we can be in heaven by love.”
Jesus ascended into heaven today by the power that he has as God, St. Augustine tells us.
But we, with God’s grace, are given the mysterious and beautiful ability to ascend to heaven through our love.

That’s something to get your mind around – to think of your life as an ascension – a gradual attainment of heaven, a journey toward final union with God.  But that is God’s hope for each of us – that we, who are members of Jesus’ body, are a part of the ascension that we celebrate today.  That we are joined with countless others to Christ, our head, as he goes home to meet the Father.  That each day, through lives of generous service to God and neighbor, we ascend a little more, rise a little more to the full stature of our calling.

St. Paul encourages us in our work, as he encouraged the first Christians so many centuries ago:  “Brothers and sisters, I urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call.”

“In Christ, we can be in heaven by love.”  We all seek heaven – seek intimacy with God.  We seek peace and joy and fulfillment.  St. Augustine also said “Our souls are restless until they rest in you.”  That restlessness can be overpowering sometimes when we feel so limited or overwhelmed by the circumstances of daily life.  And so today is a day to celebrate because Christ has revealed to us that this life need not be merely a restless wait for the return of our savior.  That we can already join him as he ascends to the Father.  When we embrace the pathway of the cross, the pathway of sacrificial love, we are drawn nearer to him and so heaven draws nearer to us.

Can You Be A Good Christian and Not Be Religious?

Homily for the 7th Week of Easter, 2012

Yesterday you may have seen the article about religious practice in Maine in the Bangor daily news.  Religious practice and affiliation in New England is lower than anywhere else in the country, the article reported, and by quite a bit.  Among so many people, it seems that religion is seen as an imposition, a structure and even an obstacle to true and authentic spirituality. The attractiveness of religion, the blessing of religion, seems to be lost on the majority of people in Maine.  And even among those who claim some religious affiliation, I wonder how many of them would speak of their religion is something that they tolerate.  The less religion the better. 

Now this loss of the religious in our culture is especially problematic for us Catholics.  Because of all of the various religions that dot our theological landscape, the Catholic Church epitomizes, for better or for worse, religion.  When someone is worried about demons in the basement, they call the priest.  Even non-Catholics call the priest.  They want an exorcism, not a meditation session.  There is a reason that Dan Brown wrote his novels about mysterious and secret organizations within the Catholic Church, not the Unitarians.  And there is a reason why the social teaching of our Church, and not some huge mega church, sets off such harsh response and condemnation.  Our Catholic faith, our heritage, thoroughly and undeniably looks, smells, and sounds religious. 

So in response to the rejection of religion what do we do?  I suppose we could try to run away from our religious identity, trying to emphasize the ways that you can get away with being Catholic without being too religious, playing down the history of the Church, playing down the role of the magisterium, playing down the importance of the sacraments.  But once gutted of its religious aspects, what remains?  Just another human institution, another ideology, another form of entertainment.  And not a very good one at that.  The Catholic Church is only beautiful, only makes sense, as a religion.

And so at what point do we have to just come to terms with that:
yes, I am a part of a very old, very mysterious religion that is run by a bunch of old men who wear strange hats and who symbolically wash my feet each year as a sign of how they are to lead us.  And yes, we do believe very odd things, ancient mysteries about God and about angels and saints that have been handed on to us for generations.  And we don’t just have services, we come to Mass where we do all these ritual movements together, we sing strange songs and memorize and chant all of these rather cryptic prayers (especially after the new translation).  I mean, if we take a step back and look at ourselves for a moment, look at what we are doing – even without the Latin, without the incense, it is very clear what we are doing here: we are being religious.

And that is not a liability, it is a gift.  Because what is not always understood is that human beings are inherently religious.  Watch a baseball game or a concert – look at the common ritual.  Why all the movies with religious themes and symbols?  We are made to do things together, and particularly, we are made to worship God together.  And young people, even though they may have been told that they don’t need religion and that it is bad for them, are still attracted to it.  To be a part of something bigger than yourself.  To be united to others in meaningful activity. 

And so in response to our current religious crisis, the Church, rather than denying its religious identity, needs to begin once more to show the beauty and blessing of being a part of this religion, of being a religious person, an active member of the Church.  For decades now, the secular has been romanticized, it is time that we started to romanticize the religious.

To say things like “Why pray to God by yourself when you can do it with a bunch of other people in a beautiful place with beautiful music and using beautiful prayers that you didn’t even have to make up?”

Why settle for trite poems and country music songs at the funeral home, when your loved one could be prayed for and treated with the honor of a son or daughter of the living God at a funeral Mass? 

Why the stress of wedding planners who want to make the perfect picture on some remote beach where you get sand in everything and no one can hear what you’re saying, when you can come to a church that was built by your ancestors to shelter you from the elements so that you can focus on the love that God is blessing between you on that day?

And furthermore, when did a walk in the woods ever help a poor person in need?  When did being a good person ever build hospitals and schools and homeless shelters?  And when did Jesus say that that’s what he wanted for us: to just be good people?  No, he never said that.  He said he wanted us to be one, one with each other and one with him, just as he is with the Father.  Not one in some vague spiritual sensation of good feelings, but one in truth.  That means one in action, one in thought, one in word, one in deed.  United to the vine as branches, members of the flock he shepherds, stones in the building that he raises, sons and daughters in the family of believers.  A religion, a beautiful religion – so human, and yet so yearning for the divine.  Marked by the grittiness and earthiness of a lived tradition handed on by countless millions of real, human hands over two thousand years. 

"Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one.”  Jesus wants us to be together – and not just as a penance.  He wants us to find joy and meaning in worshiping him together, in praying together.  He wants us to be able to share in the excitement of learning more about our faith, to encourage one another in deepening our knowledge of the divine.   He wants us to reach out to help the suffering and the needy with others by our side, sharing in the blessings that come from caring from those who are less fortunate.  To use the gifts that he has given us together, building upon one another as we are being built up into his body, the Church. 

Can you be a good person and not be religious?  I don’t know, perhaps.  Can you be a good Christian and not be religious?  No.  You can’t baptize yourself.  You can’t give yourself communion.  You can’t write your own Bible.  You can’t bury yourself.  And thank God.  We can do it together with him. 

Courage and Peace, Dialogue and Conviction

Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter, 2012

This is my commandment: love one another, as I love you.
No one has greater love than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

In recent months the culture wars just have been heating up, and that shows no real signs of abating as we look ahead to such a controversial presidential election and referendums.  And our Church, we as Catholics, have been kind of thrust right into the middle of things.  I’m amazed at how many politicians are making references to their faith in justifying their support of certain policies, on both sides of the isle.  Not the constitution, or some other civil document, but the bible, or even the teachings of the saints. And I think that’s because politicians know, as we all know, that faith is an important motivator for so many of us.  That it gets right to the heart of who we are and the choices that we make.

But this whole trend is worrisome for the Church, I think. 
The teachings of the Church are being interpreted increasingly as political statements.  So if you emphasize one set of teachings, you are assumed to be with one party, if you emphasize another, you are thought to be with the other party.  And it’s dividing our church, it’s dividing the people from one another, the bishops from their people, women religious from their bishops, priests from everyone – just lots of division.  We’re right in the middle of a giant game of tug of war, and the Church is getting pulled in every direction.  Heck, even moms are controversial topic just in time for mother’s day!

What does Jesus tell us in the Gospel today: remain in my love. 
And you know, it would be nice if we could just pretend that his words to us mean that we can just flee from this troubled time.  Hole up in the house or with people who are easy to be around.  Get more pets – sometimes they are easier to talk to than people.

But we are called to more than that.  We have the duty to live out our faith even in the midst of these polarized and trying times.  We have the responsibility to live as men and women of courage and peace, of dialogue and conviction. 

Maybe we don’t hear those words together too often: courage and peace, dialogue and conviction.  But that’s what it is to be Catholic, I think.  To be rooted in the truth, but rooted at the same time in love of others.

You and I cannot pretend that there is no right and wrong, that there is no such thing as good and evil.  Jesus tells us in the gospel, we must follow his commandments if we are to remain in his love.  It  is a task of the utmost seriousness, to do what is right and good and holy. 

But chief among those commandments is the command to love.  And so that means we must be willing to lay down our lives.  Not just willing, but perhaps we might say that we have the responsibility to practice each day in little ways that effort of dying to ourselves for the sake of others.  To work on living the virtues.

We have, at this unique time, the opportunity to show this unique form of courageous love to our culture:  not to be silent when people are saying things that are not true or are misleading or wrong, but at the same time not to resort to power tactics, to sink into the muck of political rhetoric and name calling.  And to speak more with our actions than with our words.  To let others tweet and twitter, to focus more on concrete acts of service and charity.  To recognize that in our cynical culture, words are increasingly of little value.  In order to be authentic witnesses, we must speak first with our choices, with our actions.  And our primary witness, as men and women of faith, must be through lives of faithful and generous service.  To be known for our kindness to others, particularly within our families and with those who are suffering or alone.  To be sure that we are reaching out to those in need,  taking care of the stranger.  In short, we must be willing to embrace a sacrificial way of life, to love others in the way that Christ has shown us.

You can’t love people you don’t know.  So I hope as you look at this summer, you and your family will work to get out of the house more.  To reverse the trend that seems toward greater and greater isolation and division from one another.  Turn off the television, step away from the computer.  Make the extra effort to go out, to leave the comfort and security of your home and to enter into the world that God places before us, a world that is in need of our Christian witness.

St. John encourages us in our second reading today:
Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God.

A Jesus Follower. Period.

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter, 2012

I recently came across an article about an accomplished protestant preacher who was diagnosed with Lou Gerigh’s disease a number of years ago.  The prognosis, that he had 3 to 5 years to live, sent him into a profound crisis. 

“I went from 100 miles an hour to zero miles an hour overnight,” he said. “That was a shock to my system.”

His response to the disease surprised him.  “I thought that if I knew I was going to die, I would really read the Bible and if I really was going to die, I would really pray,” he said. “I found the opposite to be true. I could barely read the Bible and I had great difficulty praying. You get so overwhelmed with your circumstances, you lose perspective.”

He spent months floundering.  Without realizing it, he had built his identity, his life, on his work, on his ministry.  And so losing the ability to minister meant that he felt that he was losing himself.  Living a hundred mile an hour life he had rooted his life in activities that would not endure, he had set up idols that came crashing down around him when his health failed.

Fortunately, with much prayer and interior work, he has come through his identity crisis.  And he made a comment that struck me and I think resonates with our scriptures today.  “I am no longer a preacher,” he said. “Today, I would say I am a Jesus follower. Period.  Having a terminal illness forced me into a situation where I grew in understanding of what it means to obey Jesus.”

A Jesus follower.  Period.  “Children,” St. John tells us in our second reading, “let us love not in word or speech, but in deed and truth.”

In truth.  What does it mean to be a Jesus follower in truth, not just in word and speech? 
St. John tells us: to really live with and in Christ, actively working to love him and follow his example so that his Spirit will be alive in us.  To be branches thoroughly attached to the vine.  To have the life of the vine flowing through us.  That’s what makes us Christians and makes us  into a Church: that we are united to Christ.

If preachers and priests like myself are always at risk of losing sight of this profound truth of our identity, must it not certainly be the case that we must all be on guard? 

Why do you think the Church insists that we come to Mass on Sunday?  In order to fill the pews?  In order to build institutional strength?  To prop up the offertory? 

No, no, no.  Because the Eucharist is the primary way that Christ unites us with himself, that he gives his life to us.  They way that he feeds us with his body and blood is exactly like the way that the sap flows through a vine into branches.  And as his life flows into us, it is meant to transform us and to help us to reflect the image of his son in the unique way that we are made to be Christ-like.  We are not called to believe in Christ so much as we are called to live in him – with our whole mind, body, and soul.  All of us are made to be transformed by his life and to be more and more each day animated by a new life – to die to ourselves and to rise to new life in Christ. 

Christ is to be our life – inside out, top to bottom.  He is the pattern in which we are made, and he is the measure by which we are measured. 

And so we cannot say “If you do this and this and this and this – if you follow these rules, if you live like this person, if you belong to this group, if you accept these teachings, then you will be a bonified Jesus follower.”

The definition of the true Christian, of the true Catholic, is one in whom the life of Christ dwells deeply and fully and beautifully and freely – one who is truly himself or herself because he or she is truly one with Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity.