Third Sunday of Lent

Dominica III in Quadragesima C
23 March 2025

 This Sunday the Scriptures call us to reflect on what it means to belong to God in covenant.  We belong to Him and are claimed by Him.  This involves living in accord with God’s ways.  And when we inevitably fail to do that in both venial and mortal ways, we are called to repent and to bear the good fruit God expects.  The lesson of repentance and bearing good fruit is a well-timed lesson for the Season of Lent as exhibited in the Scripture selections for this Holy Mass.

 The second reading (from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians) speaks to us about the Old Covenant God made with the Israelites and the many wonderful saving events God provided to His people, especially involving the ministry of Moses.  St. Paul does something interesting in recounting these saving events.  He says what happened with the people in the Old Covenant serves as an example and a warning to us in the New Covenant.  Listen to the blessings received by the Israelites, which St. Paul recounts to Christians in Corinth: “[O]ur ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea”.  St. Paul says this movement from slavery in Egypt to freedom, entering the cloud of God’s presence and passing through the parted Red Sea amounts to a “baptismal” entry to the Old Covenant.  He wrote: “all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea”.  Having thus been baptized into the Old Covenant, St. Paul goes on to write that they all “ate the same spiritual food”.  And here is the kicker from St. Paul.  He continues: “Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert”.  Considering these saving events of the Exodus and the outcome that most of those chosen people died before arriving at the Promised Land, St. Paul drives the lesson home for Christians: “These things happened as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.  Do not grumble as some of them did, and suffered death by the destroyer.  These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us…. Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall”.  And thus, the appropriate Lenten lesson of repentance that is reinforced in the Gospel selection.

 In the Gospel, Jesus calls his listeners to repentance.  He confronts a false but common notion among ancient people, namely that when bad things happen to people (like the massacre of Galileans in the Temple or like those who died when the tower of Siloam fell) it happens as punishment for sin, it is a sign that those who died were bad sinners.  The ancients commonly thought that all calamity and misfortune were related to sin and came about as punishment.  We might think that a quaint notion from unsophisticated ancient minds.  Yet, we moderns commonly adopt the opposite extreme.  In our culture we commonly adopt the idea that there is no relationship between sin and punishment.  So, we probably should be careful about making charges of lack of sophistication.  While Jesus says that those who died in those events were not worse sinners than anyone else, he still goes on to say, “But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”  What do we make of the apparent contradiction?  The Lord’s remarks can be understood if he is not speaking only of physical death of bodily death, like the Galileans experienced and like those who died when the tower fell.  The Lord is calling us to repentance so that we might not find ourselves facing spiritual death, eternal death in separation from him.  And in fact, the Lord expects and demands repentance that we might bear good fruit as members of the New Covenant.

   There is a popular notion among some Christians that claims that once a person comes to Christ and expresses faith, then they have a salvation that is set and unchanging.  That popular notion is expressed in these words: the doctrine of “Once saved; always saved”.  That notion simply does not match with the evidence throughout the Scriptures.  That notion makes no sense in light of the frequent biblical call to repent – even among those already following Jesus.  That false notion is adopted by many non-catholic Christians who might think that once they accept Jesus there is nothing that would endanger salvation.  But that false notion is also adopted by many catholics, perhaps unintentionally, who do not make good use of confession, that sacrament particularly geared to repentance and to the healing of sins committed after we enter the New Covenant in baptism.  That attitude cannot be ours.  For we are called to repent and to bear good fruit.

   As St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, “whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall”.  The Lord, like the owner of an orchard, expects fruit to come from the trees he has planted and nourished with his saving grace and the Precious Blood from his Cross.  That Gospel image of the fig tree echoes exactly an earlier event in the same Gospel of St. Luke when St. John the Baptist is calling his listeners to not assume that because they have Abraham as father that they are automatically saved.  St. John goes on to say, “Produce good fruits as evidence of your repentance…. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Lk. 3:8-9).  The tree is an image of an individual believer planted in the orchard of the covenant in Jesus.  From each believer, good fruit, produce at the proper time, is expected.  Like the people of the Old Covenant, God nourishes us with baptism and spiritual food and he sends workers to tend the orchard, to cultivate it and fertilize it.  The good fruit is expected and demanded.  If not produced, the tree is cut down.

    We trust that the Lord is kind and merciful.  But we also take care not to fall.  Repentance, by which we return constantly to the Lord, places our hope in him and keeps us united to the one whose generous gifts and patience make it possible for us to bear good fruit.

First Sunday of Lent

Dominica I in Quadragesima C
9 March 2025

 I think we would all agree that the Sacred Scriptures, being the inspired Word of God in written form, are of immense value for our instruction, for our correction, and for training in holiness (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16).  One of the blessings you can discover when you study and pray with the Scriptures is how much more there is than just the word on the page, as valuable as that is.  In addition to the words on the page, you see literary techniques and characteristics that open endless riches by which we can come to know God and by which we can come to see our lives in the plan of salvation.  By way of example, it is fascinating to understand that Old Testament figures can serve as types of what will be fulfilled in the New Testament.  Such is the case when we read about Isaac in the Old Testament, the beloved son of his father Abraham, who carries the wood for the sacrifice on his shoulders, much like what is fulfilled when Jesus, the beloved Son of God, carries the wood of the cross and is given in sacrifice by the Father for our sins.  Sometimes the literary device allows you to see mirror or inverse images between biblical events.

 On this first Sunday of Lent I suggest we should have in our minds the blessings of the Garden of Eden and mankind’s fall by giving in to the temptations of the devil.  We know about the garden from the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible.  God created all good things and made man in His own image, giving him authority over creation and placing him in that garden of blessing.  By taking and eating from the forbidden tree, man’s disobedience introduced sin, caused man’s expulsion from the place of blessing, and carries with it the inherited sin that we each receive and which weakens us in the face of temptation.  With that lesson from Genesis in mind, we have the inverse in the gospel selection from St. Luke.  Just one verse before today’s selection, Jesus is revealed in St. Luke’s genealogy as the “son of Adam, the Son of God”.  This reference to Adam bolsters how the gospel scene is an inversion of the garden, for Jesus is the new Adam, and like him, he is tempted by Satan.  But given that sin has entered the world, Jesus is led to, or placed in, the desert, far from the garden of blessing.  There, in that place of desolation that speaks so clearly of lack of blessing, Jesus, the new Adam, is victorious.  In this way, we have a summary of the temptations faced by Adam and Eve.  These temptations are relived, so to speak; they are recapitulated in Jesus.  But, this time, the new and perfect Adam, Jesus, is victorious; and, since he is both God and man, this means our own human nature, our flesh, has hope for victory in Jesus over what has caused our fall.

Genesis tells us of a threefold temptation in the Garden.  When Satan tempts Eve, the Scripture says that Eve saw that “the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gn. 3:6).  Christianity has developed a tradition of seeing in this scene from Genesis a threefold concupiscence, meaning a threefold way that is comprehensive for how we are inclined to sin.  You can see this tradition on display moving from Genesis to the opposite end of the Bible in the First Letter of St. John (chapter 2, verse 16).  He writes: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world”.  Let’s make the connection from the threefold concupiscence to how this has developed in Christian tradition.  Eve saw that the tree was good for food, which corresponds to the Christian tradition of referring to our tendency toward sin due to the lust of the flesh.  Lust is a disordered attachment to things.  The lust of the flesh, refers to a disordered attachment to food and drink and sexual pleasure, things that are pleasurable to the flesh.  Second, Eve saw that the tree was a delight to the eyes, which corresponds to the Christian tradition of referring to our tendency toward sin due to the lust of the eyes.  The lust of the eyes refers to a disordered attachment by which we see things and desire to possess and take them, to make them ours.  Eve saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, to make one like unto God, which corresponds to the Christian tradition of naming the pride of life as a source by which we fall to sin.  The pride of life is a disordered attachment to being exalted, to raising oneself up in esteem, to be powerful, to seek glory, to be in the know, to seek to occupy the place of God.

Jesus recapitulates this threefold temptation, this triple concupiscence, in the gospel selection, which presents us an inversion of the Garden of Eden.  Satan’s temptations correspond to this triple concupiscence.  Jesus, led to the desert by the Spirit, has undergone serious fasting and he was very weak in his human nature.  The devil, being the most cunning of all the creatures, seizes upon the moment to bring temptations, and St. Luke’s very ordering of the three temptations highlights the triple concupiscence that I have been describing.  The devil tempts Jesus to command that a stone become bread.  That’s an expression of the lust of the flesh, to make something that would be pleasurable, that would feed a desire of the flesh, that would fill a longing of the flesh.  The devil tempts Jesus by showing him all the kingdoms of the world and promises that he will hand them over to Jesus, that he may possess them.  That’s an expression of the lust of the eyes, to see all the power associated with earthly kingdoms and mankind, and to desire to possess it, to take control of it.  Finally, the devil tempts Jesus by placing him in full sight at the pinnacle of the temple and urges him to throw himself down so that God’s promise of protection can be displayed.  That’s an expression of the pride of life, to display his power, to make a show of himself, and to be exalted before the world as the one sent by God the Father.

 And so, with the lesson of Genesis and the threefold concupiscence, it makes total sense that our standard Lenten practices – fasting, almsgiving, and prayer – are remedies for these precise areas of weakness.  Where we suffer from lust of the flesh, we fast to train ourselves against a disordered attachment to food, drink, and bodily pleasure.  We need to rely on fasting more, and not only in Lent.  Don’t think that simply because the Church requires fasting only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, that those are the only days we should fast.  No, if you want to master the tendency to weakness in the flesh then adopt fasting.  In Lent, our use of a such a tool should be intensified.  Where we suffer from the lust of the eyes, we engage in almsgiving.  Where we might tend to fall prey to amass possessions, to take things and hold onto them for ourselves, we give things away to those who are needy and at the same time we train ourselves to maintain better control over this desire.  Where we are sort of tugged by the pride of life, wanting attention, or to be seen as an influencer, or to be wise, to be seen as powerful and noteworthy, we practice and develop a life of prayer.  By prayer we recognize our need for God.  We enter relationship with Him.  And immediately, humility is required because we can’t help but be honest in that relationship that we are not God, but in humility must rely upon Him and His love for us.  To make a minor adaptation of St. John the Baptist’s words in reference to Jesus: We must decrease and He must increase.

 Jesus has recapitulated the events of man’s sin and has been victorious over what separates us from God.  Thus, in Lent, we seek to be more greatly conformed to Christ so that, united more deeply with our Head, we who are members of the Body of Christ may share more fully in his victory.  Lent is not a time for superficial spiritual practices, but a serious engagement with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving so that the Lord’s power may come more fully into the weakness that ails us.  The Lord did not come in our flesh and die for our sins so that we can  give up trivial things for Lent.  That might be okay for children, but not for us adults.  He came to undo the power of our triple concupiscence.  Now is the time for serious battle to weaken the disordered attachments that keep us bound.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday
5 March 2025

 The holy season of Lent is an annual opportunity to be honest – brutally honest – with ourselves about ourselves.  It’s as if we are looking at ourselves before the Lord, as if he were a mirror and we are checking our reflection.  How do we reflect the Lord in our daily living?  Is our image conformed more greatly to his?  Is our reflection of him lacking in some significant way that must be reformed, and even in smaller ways that need our effort at conversion?

Taking up the call to engage in this self-examination is critically important because it is so easy for us to fall into a complacency about ourselves that can result in our adopting self-congratulatory ideas and false estimations of ourselves.  Considering what takes place at almost every modern funeral exposes this complacency and this self-congratulatory tendency.  Funerals are now “celebrations of life” by which most people mean a celebration of the deceased and all of his or her favorite hobbies and interests.  Rarely does one get the sense that the life being celebrated is that of the Lord, lived in the person of the deceased, which would be the only thing that matters and the only thing that saves.  Gone are the days at most funerals when, facing the reality of judgment, the focus is clearly on praying that the deceased person may experience a merciful judgment.  The way most people speak at funerals gives the distinct impression, if not the outright claim, that the deceased is already in Heaven or has become an angel.  And since it is assumed that the deceased is already in heaven, there is little that communicates the need to pray for the deceased person.  In fact, one of the greatest tragedies in modern funerals is that the living are not left with an awareness of the need to pray for the deceased and to accompany and help the deceased soul through its purification.  Rarely at funerals do we hear that the deceased had sins that must be addressed or that we should hold off on claims of instant canonization.  I am not observing this to be nasty, but to pull the veil off of a tendency that undercuts the truth.  The truth is that we are sinners.  The truth is that we exist in a fallen nature due to original sin, which we inherit.  The truth is that we are each guilty of our own personal sins, and sometimes rather serious sins that risk our eternal loss on the day of judgment.  If we don’t face that truth, if we allow ourselves to be medicated by the spirit that is so evident surrounding modern funerals, if we adopt a secular way of thinking, then we fall into the trap of self-congratulatory attitudes by which we think our sins aren’t that bad and that we don’t have much for which we must repent and be converted.

And thus, the importance of Lent.   It is a time to be brutally honest about ourselves.  And if we use Lent well, we don’t keep that honesty only for Lent, abandoning it the rest of the year.  Rather, we continually examine ourselves as a regular part of the spiritual life, and we heed the call to practice that brutally honest self-examination in the gift of confession.  Why do we engage in this honest self-examination and the practices of penance?  Because Jesus himself is the example to us of prayer, penance, and the arduous struggle with evil and the devil himself.  He did so in his temptation in the desert.  Furthermore, he recommends such practices to his disciples.  Notice that in the Gospel selection, the Lord is recommending spiritual practices and telling his disciples how to engage in them sincerely and in a way pleasing to him.  He says, “When you give alms,” and “When you pray,” and “When you fast.”  The Lord assumes that his followers take up these worthy practices and that his followers do them in such a way that does not render them empty by doing them in order so that others see those righteous deeds.

What we do in Lent with particular vigor is not intended to be kept in Lent, as if we would leave behind serious and honest self-examination the rest of the year.  We engage with the opportunity of Lent as an intense time of renewal so that we live the faith in a way more consistent with our calling and so that the coming celebration of Easter will find us living a deeper communion with the Lord who is the only source and hope of our salvation.  The truth is that we need to dismiss the tendency to excuse ourselves of sin and to make use of the great gifts that are the marks both of honest self-examination and honest reliance on the goodness of the Lord who loves us and whose mercy saves those who are humble and who repent.

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica V per Annum C
9 February 2025

 When we have an experience of God, there is a common human tendency to first consider our unworthiness.  It is a common tendency to think of the reasons why we can’t do what God asks, why it can’t be me, especially when that encounter with God involves some mission or task that He wants us to accomplish, or when it involves discovering our vocation, the calling, He gives us.  Our unworthiness to be with God, or to do anything that glorifies God, is an acknowledgment that we are unworthy because of our sins.  We see this common human tendency in the call of the Prophet Isaiah from the first reading.  He discovers God’s call in his experience of a spiritual vision of God’s temple in heaven.  When he sees this vision of God, and the fiery angels worshipping around the throne, and the cry of the angels, “Holy, Holy, Holy”, causing the whole temple to shake, Isaiah does what any normal human being would do.  He says, “Uh, oh!  I don’t fit in here.  And I’m probably about to die!”  To quote him in his own 8th century B.C. words, Isaiah says, “Woe is me, I am doomed!  For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”  Isaiah encounters God and he is afraid because he knows he is a sinner.  He can’t imagine that God would allow him to stand in His presence.  He can’t imagine that God would have anything in mind for Isaiah to do on His behalf.

Now, there is something true, and even good, about that common tendency to think of our unworthiness and sinfulness when confronted with an experience of God.  We believe that, don’t we?  It should come naturally to us as Catholics.  After all we start every Mass with some form of a penitential act, calling to mind our unworthiness to encounter God in worship and to express our hope that He grants mercy to make our worship pleasing to Him.  Our unworthy sinfulness is frankly the truth.  There is something very healthy about admitting that.  In fact, you want to know who is spiritually unhealthy and in mortal danger?  It is not the sinner.  It is the sinner who doesn’t repent.  It is the sinner who doesn’t receive the medicine in God’s gift of confession.  Yes, let’s be clear that knowing the truth that I am an unworthy sinner is appropriate and it means that I have a good grasp on reality, that I am not delusional.  But – and here is a lesson the Scriptures drive home for us – when that common tendency to know of oneself as unworthy is coupled with a failure of imagination that God can do something with me… that is a toxic combination.  When we think that our unworthiness means God can’t do anything about it, or that He can’t do something with us, then we are acting as if we are more powerful than God.  But if we repent, that’s a gamechanger!

There is a book I want to recommend that gives some advice on how to counteract that toxic combination.  The book gives an important antidote for combatting this tendency.  It is actually a Catholic book… and it is called the Bible!  (You know the Bible is a catholic book, I hope!  The Catholic Church put it together.)  The lesson throughout the Scriptures that serves as an antidote against our tendency to limit God’s plan for us is simply: listening.  Listening is always the first step in man’s response to God.  Listening is the first step to confronting the truth of my unworthiness, yes, but, if done in humility, it leads to God’s purifying action to heal us (as happened with the purifying ember of spiritual fire on Isaiah’s mouth).  It leads to God’s equipping us for our vocation (as happened on the lake with Jesus giving Simon Peter his calling).  Listening helps us focus not on what we can’t do, but rather on what God can do in us.  What God can do through us.  Listening to God’s Word in the Scriptures, listening to God’s Word in the Deposit of Faith and in Church teaching, listening to God’s Word in personal prayer, and in the ways He moves in holy, faithful friendships… this is an antidote to the tendency to limit God and to think He can’t be calling me to be holy and to do something holy in His Name.

St. Paul is someone who knew his unworthy sinfulness.  But you know he listened when, after listing various people and groups who saw the Lord, he says, “[l]ast of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me”!  So unworthy and such a sinner am I, St. Paul is saying, so unlikely a candidate am I to be an apostle or to accomplish any good for God, that is as if I am born into this mission and vocation abnormally!  He did the healthy thing of acknowledging his sinfulness.  But in humility and obedience he didn’t think that his sinfulness put a limit on God.  St. Paul did not permit the awareness of his sins to be coupled with a toxic failure to imagine what is possible with God.  You know he practiced the antidote of listening to God’s Word when he can say, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.”

We need to foster an imagination that trusts it is possible for God to interact in the world He made and to interact with us in our experiences such that we can discern the gifts He gives us, how He wants us to accomplish His tasks, and to follow the vocation He gives us.  It would have been easy for Isaiah to not listen, and to dismiss his vision as a crazy dream.  It would have been easy for St. Paul to think only of how he persecuted the Church and was a murderer and so to not listen to the calling to preach the Gospel and to write the words of faith that eventually became books in the Bible.  It would have been easy for Simon Peter, an expert fisherman with a fishing business, to get prickly when Jesus, a carpenter of all people (!), should tell him how to fish.  Had he failed to listen he might have missed his vocation to be a priest and the chief apostle.

In my past assignment as the Vocation Director, I had the enriching experience of working with young men wrestling with a mysterious call to be a priest.  Many a young man will think first of why it can’t be him, why he is unworthy, why his struggles and sins mean God can’t really give him a priestly calling.  One of the excuses I enjoyed the most was when a guy would be interested in the priesthood but would say, “I don’t know, Father.  I don’t think that’s me because I like girls too much.”  I would usually say, “Well, you should.  That’s a good sign.  You can’t dismiss the priesthood because of that.”  If I had a good enough rapport with the guy I would sometimes add, “It’s cute that you think that’s a reason why God can’t call you to the priesthood”.  We might expect the young to have difficulty in thinking God can use them for some holy purpose.  But I am not so sure that is limited to the young.  If you are a husband or a wife, a father or a mother, do you take your faith into the world on mission to share Jesus with others?  Do you think there is some reason you can’t do that?  Or do we adults think there is some place that God does not belong?  Do you bring Him into your work place and your social interactions?  Yes, young men listening today need to know that they can’t put a limit on God’s call and that He might want to give them the grace of the priesthood.  Yes, young women listening today need to know that the Lord might be calling them to religious life, no matter the limitations they have.  No matter their future calling, all young people have the charge now to be leaders among their peers, at school, and in social groups, in order to win many souls for the Lord, following the examples of so many great young saints throughout history.  But it is not only the young.  Those living life as single persons need to trust that God gives them a mission field in their career and in the service they can render to others by virtue of their greater freedom.  Couples who are preparing for marriage and those already married are called to let God’s grace be effective in them and in their faithful and fruitful love, seeing their mission field in the domestic church, a field which can open so easily to many other people, thus leading them to faith and the Lord by the attractiveness of hospitable family life.  You see, we are all purified and saved from our sins by baptism and given a calling in that first sacrament to speak the Good News.  If we are listening to God’s Word we know that our past and our sins don’t prevent God from working.  Repentance is the game changer that avoids the toxic failure to open our minds to what God sees as possible.  Whether you are young or older, if you find yourself dismissing a certain mission or vocation, thinking it can’t be you, know for certain that the evil one is lurking and your response should be to listen more attentively and to give God permission to do what He can do through you.

What godly calling and mission is yours?  What godly calling and mission seems unlikely in your opinion?  What is God asking of you that you might first object to and raise the reasons why you are not qualified?  Like Isaiah, like Simon Peter, like Paul, what is God’s missionary and vocational call to you that you think just can’t be?  You see, a lesson today is that we think more of ourselves instead of God.  That common tendency reveals the error.  Do we really think the source of power for mission and for vocation comes from ourselves?  No, when we listen to God and let down our nets in humility, it is not we alone who are doing the work.  Rather, it is God who purifies us with holy fire and it is God who fills the nets!

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica II per Annum C
19 January 2025

 In the Christmas season we celebrate in faith that our salvation is near because God has wedded Himself to us, His People.  He has done so by wedding Himself to us in our flesh.  We celebrate that reality in the conception of Jesus (where God first took flesh) and which we observe on the Annunciation each March.  And we celebrate that reality finally being made visible at the birth of Jesus at Christmas.  Though the Christmas season has ended, we continue celebrating God wedding Himself to us and being made manifest (or visible) by listening today to the story of the wedding feast at Cana.

St. John is doing something different with this story.  He is using an earthly event (the wedding at Cana) that has its own meaning as a tool to reveal divine mystery.  The Gospel story is clearly not really about the couple who got married in Cana because they barely get a mention.  The bride isn’t mentioned at all.  And the groom gets only a brief mention toward the end.  Another way we conclude that St. John is doing something different with the story is by considering just how much water Jesus turned into wine.  Six jars each holding about 20-30 gallons would result in between 120-180 gallons of wine.  We are more familiar with bottles of wine, so let’s run the conversion.  On average, that many gallons of wine would amount to between 720-1,080 bottles of wine for a wedding feast.  I searched around to see how one plans for the amount of wine to have for a wedding party.  Some advice is that for a party of 100 people you plan on about 40 bottles of wine, but to be safe you might just round up to four cases of wine, equaling 48 bottles.  Using the amount of wine Jesus made and running the conversion numbers, this would imply a wedding party in the small village of Cana involving party attendance of anywhere from 1,500- 2,250 people!  Look, I’ve been pastor of some small towns in Oklahoma that can throw some big parties, but that is an unbelievably large number of people in an ancient village, and it is a totally insane amount of wine.  And don’t forget, Jesus made that much wine AFTER they had already consumed all the wine the party had planned for!  Again, St. John is clearly doing something different by using the story of the wedding at Cana.

In the Bible, the image of a superabundance of wine accompanies descriptions of God’s action in end times to bring about salvation.  The Bible uses the image of much wine to describe the celebration of God’s People when He brings about their final salvation.  The Prophet Amos writes, “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, when… “the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.  I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, … they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine” (Amos 9:13-14).  The Prophet Joel writes, “And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine” (Joel 3:18).

St. John writes of the signs by which Jesus acts to reveal his glory and to bring about belief, discipleship, and salvation.  With all this in mind, we can view St. John’s use of the wedding at Cana as a sign that Jesus is the actual groom being revealed in mystery, for he is God who has wedded Himself to us in our flesh.  And following the logic of the imagery, someone else – namely, the Church – is being revealed as the actual bride.  You and I as members of the Church form the bride of Christ.  Now, don’t get hung up on the standard sex of that imagery.  The point is that Jesus is the groom in this relationship who lays down his life, who gives forth his life, to plant in us the seed of eternal life.  We, in this relationship, the Church, as bride, can only receive that gift within us and let it grow to full maturity so that we are born into heavenly life.

And still more, it is the Holy Mass that is the foretaste of the wedding feast of God’s nearness to us in His flesh, and the foretaste of that ultimate act of our salvation by which God brings us to the heavenly feast.  You should let this imagery form your perception of the Holy Mass and how you relate to it.  If we hold on to this imagery we should be impacted by how we prepare for Holy Mass and how we participate in it.  It is a common and widespread expectation that one dresses up for, and dresses properly for, a wedding.  Ordinary clothes just won’t do for something so important.  That should be our attitude for Mass.  What if I wore shorts and my favorite sports jersey to say Mass?  Outrageous!  By the way, the priest dresses in vestments not to communicate an idea that he’s better, but because he is supposed to serve as the icon of the groom and High Priest, Jesus Christ.  And, that would be hard to see or imagine of any man if he wore street clothes.  No groom would get away with dressing poorly for the wedding feast.  But you are the bride in this imagery!  The same holds for you.  Let that influence how you dress up for Mass.  If we are aware of the Mass as a foretaste of the heavenly wedding feast, then some habits come into different focus.  We see the need to prepare for Mass.  We prepare spiritually by our daily prayer life and frequent confession that prepares us to actually be in a communion of life with Lord before we receive Holy Communion.  We prepare by taking time to reflect on the readings before we hear them proclaimed live.  Is there a habit of arriving late for Mass and a habit of leaving early, walking out right after receiving Holy Communion?  I’m not talking about occasional snafus or emergencies.  But is that your habit?  Then the need to reform that habit comes into clearer focus when we understand the Holy Mass as the foretaste of the heavenly wedding feast where we should be “all in”.  Finally, for all of us here, let the grace of this foretaste help us understand the necessity as Catholics of marrying in a valid marriage in the Catholic Church so that the living of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony becomes a service by which spouses reflect to the world that God has wedded Himself to us, and reveals His glory through married love so that others may believe!

The Nativity of Jesus Christ (Christmas)

Nativitas D.N.I.C.
25 December 2024
Midnight Mass Readings

 Throughout the holy season of Advent the Church has called us to give particular attention to a practice that, truthfully, should engage us all year long, no matter the season.  That practice, given special attention in Advent but warranted throughout the year, is the practice or preparing for the coming, for the arrival of the Lord.  The coming of the Lord has two specific reference points in history.  The first coming has already taken place in time and it is the reason we gather today, to observe the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The second coming of the Lord in history is the one we still await when Jesus will return in glory as our Judge and Judge of all the living and the dead.  We might call these two comings of the Lord his “physical” arrivals, or his arrivals in human bodily form.  In Advent, and truthfully always, we prepare to live anew the meaning of Jesus’ first arrival while, at the same time, we seek to live the truth of the Lord’s birth and salvation for us by preparing for the unknown day when he will arrive in majesty and power.  The second reading for this Mass makes reference to these two “physical” arrivals when St. Paul writes to Titus: “The grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ”.  St. Paul writes about a grace of God that has already appeared even while noting that we still await the appearance of the glory of God.  One coming, one appearance has happened; the second coming, the second appearance we still await.

While our Christian vocation and our efforts at responding to the call to holiness take place between these two arrivals of the Lord, spiritual authors have noted a helpful interpretation that God arrives in a third way.  There is, we can say, another arrival of the Lord who comes to us in a different form between these two physical arrivals.  That third way, though perhaps not physical or in human bodily form, is no less real.  Between the two historical arrivals of the Lord, he comes to us spiritually by his grace.  Yes, the Lord arrives and comes to us by his gift of grace in so many and varied ways.  He comes by grace most pre-eminently in the sacraments of our faith, most especially in the Holy Eucharist.  The Lord’s grace arrives to us each time we stop life to admit our sins and to be healed in confession.  The Lord comes to us in holy Baptism and Confirmation.  He arrives with his grace in the sacraments of vocation, whether marriage or holy orders.  The Lord arrives to us when we pray, committing both to personal prayer time daily and our communal gathering at Holy Mass, observing each holy day and each Sunday as the Lord’s Day, by which we prepare weekly for the Lord’s return.  He comes to us in that blessing to the spiritual life that is meditation and study of Sacred Scripture, God’s Word to us.  The Lord arrives by his grace when we seek to live appropriate moral lives and when we give up our selfish ways to serve others.  His grace comes to us when we let the sacred teaching of the Church form us as we benefit from the centuries-long reflection of the Church on the mysteries of our faith.  So many ways does the Lord’s grace come to us.

Perhaps is makes sense to say that how we live in awareness of that third arrival, that third way of coming, the arrival of God to us by His grace in our spiritual life… perhaps that is the key to how we can prepare to observe Jesus’ birth in a less secular way, and also the key to being prepared for that most important test still to come: preparing for the Second Coming of Jesus.  Said another way, if we aren’t living in such a way to experience the arrival of God’s grace to us in our spiritual life, making use of the various examples of grace I stated earlier, then we are more likely to succumb to a secular and commercial preparation for Christmas and, as a consequence of that, we are more likely to succumb to being ill-prepared, “unprayed”, and unconfessed when the Lord comes again as Judge.

So, what lesson can we take for how to actively live that third way that the Lord arrives, his coming to us by grace in the soul, grace in the spiritual life?  I want to highlight two practices for our spiritual life.  These two practices are reflected in what we see in the Scriptures and in the experiences of so many believers over centuries.  The bad news is that these two practices, while simple, are tough and they will stretch you beyond your comfort zone.  The good news is that these practices are entirely possible and they will save you.

I think it can be said that the Scriptures show us an interesting pattern before some important action of God.  The pattern is that some important action of God is preceded by silence, often long silence.  I was doing some reading recently and I came across commentary about the long silence that enveloped God’s People Israel between the last prophet Malachi and the birth of Jesus.  In fact, some call this the “400 silent years” after the completion of the Prophet Malachi’s ministry.  I am not saying there were no godly events or no scriptural writings during those hundreds of years.  The point is that there was no prophet, no one whose commission from God was to say, “Thus says the Lord…”  Imagine being a faithful Jew, seeking to live the call to be God’s people in the midst of the world surrounded by people of many different beliefs and hearing nothing.  Some Jews, whole generations, would have never known what it was like to live in a time of a prophet.  Silence.  No new prophet’s word.  Four hundred years of silence.  Until, that is, the silence was broken, not by a new prophet, but by the very Word of God Himself.  An infant’s cry and coo in the still of a Bethlehem night broke the long silence.  So, the first practice that promotes God’s arrival to us by grace in the spiritual life is silence.  Depending on our vocation and our duties, we will have to be creative with this, especially in family life, depending on how much silence the kids will let you have.  Maybe instead of “silence” I could say, “quieting yourself”.  When was the last time your TV was turned off for a meaningful length of time?  I mean, during the day, not at night when you are asleep.  How about removing the ear buds?  We’re always ready to listen to someone else; we’re always somewhere other than where we actually are.  What freedom could you find by turning the ringer to off on the smartphone?  How often do you unplug from constant consumption of information, news, and – let’s be honest – silliness and total wastes of time online?  Silence, quieting yourself, is so necessary for prayer because we have to get all the words and messages and thoughts that are not from God out of our heads in order to make room to hear God.  It takes time to filter out all the competing ideas and thoughts and words that fill our heads and hearts.  If we rarely stop the noise, chances are we rarely quiet down enough to finally hear God – and to know it is God and not our own echo chamber.  Four hundred years of silence preceded and prepared the way for God’s own voice to break the silence on this night.  Silence is a critical precursor to God’s action.  While quieting ourselves takes discipline and is difficult, the good news is countless faithful over centuries know that it works.

And once we have quieted ourselves such that God can arrive by grace in our souls, once we have heard God’s voice, well, we then have something to say, something worth saying.  Here comes the second difficult practice.  We ourselves experience a new arrival of God’s grace, this third way of coming to us, when we share with others what we have received.  What do the Scriptures show us after the 400 years silence was broken by the Infant Word of God echoing throughout earth?  Immediately there is proclamation.  The angel of the Lord appears to shepherds in the stillness and relative silence of night and says, “I proclaim to you good news of great joy.”  A good news that is destined “for all the people”.  And following that proclamation, a multitude of the heavenly host joins the angel to break out in praise saying, “Glory to God in the highest.”  Thus, a disciple who is in the posture to receive the arrival of God’s grace is a disciple who knows his spiritual life is meant to be shared.  That doesn’t seem like it would be hard to do.  But it is.  It takes vulnerability to share your faith with others.  We do not hide our spiritual life or the ways God blesses us.  We do not boast, to be sure.  But, we are not called to hide what we have received under a basket.  We are called to break the silence of a world far from God with the proclamation of good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and what He has done for us.  We are called to share our faith and our blessings with those around us.  In so sharing our faith, others are blessed by the arrival of God for them and God’s grace in us is magnified for having been shared.

We more joyfully observe Christ’s birth, we are better prepared for his second coming, and we make ready the path for God to do something in us, to come to us by grace, when we follow that pattern seen in the Scriptures: fostering silence so that we make room for God to come to new birth in our souls by His grace, and then breaking the silence and the darkness by our own proclamation that “Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord.”

Third Sunday of Advent

Dominica III Adventus C
15 December 2024

 The change of vestment color for this weekend (from the darker purple to rose) and the permission to decorate the sanctuary with flowers serve as a visual reminder that half of Advent is in the past.  The color rose – rose being traditionally associated with joy – and the repeated message of the Scriptures call us to rejoice.  And so, this day has been called in Latin “Gaudete Sunday” or “Rejoice Sunday.”  That thematic title for this Sunday comes from the words of the entrance antiphon, which we chanted at the beginning of this Holy Mass: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.”  This weekend the Church calls us to step up our joy because we have completed half of this holy season and are drawing near to the celebration of the source of our joy, the birth of Christ Jesus.

The Gospel passage today is a continuation from last Sunday where we heard of the work of St. John the Baptist.  Last week’s Gospel told us that the word of God came to him in the wilderness and in response he went about “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Lk. 3:3).  There are a few verses between last Sunday’s and this Sunday’s Gospel that are not read in Mass, but I want to share them now.  John “said to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruits that befit repentance…. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’.” (Lk. 3:7-8, 9).  You brood of vipers!  I’d like to take a moment to welcome any visitors and newcomers.  We hope you’ll join the parish and get involved here.  What an Advent message!  No, but I think hearing those few verses between the two gospel passages helps establish a better sense of the full context of today’s passage.

 Today we hear a question and answer session between John and the different groups in the multitude who heard him preach repentance and who came to be baptized.  And the burning question from each group is “What should we do?”  Could the lesson between repentance and faith leading to action and a changed life be any more clear?  Again, those unread verses: “Bear fruits that befit repentance…. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’.” (Lk. 3:7-8, 9).  We have today a lesson for us about faith and action, we might even use the oft misunderstood phrase of faith and works.  God alone saves us by faith in His mercy and generous love.  And necessarily related to that, is that one who receives that free and unmerited gift from God should live in such a way that demonstrates a life claimed for God.  That’s why John could confront those whose repentance was suspect by calling them a brood of vipers.  John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus Christ.  The message for us is even stronger since Jesus fulfills all of the promises and prophecies about God.  Conversion and repentance is naturally and necessarily followed by a change of behavior, by action, by living the new life we have been freely given.  Faith and action go together!  They must go together or else we are not bearing good fruit.  Faith and action go together in whatever vocation and in whatever profession is yours.  Faith and action go together everywhere we live our life or else… we are not bearing fruit.  Or else, we are like trees ready to be cut down.

 Those unread verses that I shared help us see how the message from last Sunday’s passage is continued today.  At the end of the passage today John references wheat harvesting, but it is an image that speaks of judgment as well.  John points to the One who is coming and he says “His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Lk. 3:17).  It’s a harvest image to be sure, but its meaning is the same as the previous call to bear fruits that befit repentance.  The One who is coming, who is greater than John, is expecting good wheat; he’s coming ready to gather the harvest.  Be the wheat, in other words.  Don’t be the chaff.  Think about the harvest imagery.  The winnowing fan, also called a winnowing fork, was used to thresh out the wheat grain from the lighter hull, like the wrapper around the wheat grain.  In ancient times the winnowing fork was used to toss grain up into the air.  The heavier wheat grain would fall downward, while the wind and the action of throwing the grain with the fork would cause the chaff to blow away and land elsewhere.

  To repent and to receive baptism in Christ Jesus is a call to also bear fruit, to be good wheat ready for harvest.  Since the fruit of a changed and redeemed life, since the wheat of such a life is heavier, I want to encourage you to… gain weight!  Okay, now you’re talking, some are saying!  This is my kind of religion!  I mean, what could be easier at this time of year, right?!  No, not cookies and holiday treats.  Better said, let’s be heavier or more weighty as Christians.  Let’s bear good fruit as a sign that our lives have been changed.  Let’s be the wheat.  It’s not just an idea.  It is necessary in order to endure the judgment of the Lord when he returns again.  Bearing good fruit and being more weighty is marked by a life lived in such a way that it reflects the meaning of the repentance I declare, and that reflects the baptism I have received.  How do we bear good fruit?  Well, I can’t say everything today about what is means to be a Christian who is living authentically the faith received, but we can stick with some ideas from the Gospel.  How did John respond in the Gospel when asked by the people of his time, “What should we do?”  He basically responded with the idea of almsgiving.  Do you have extra clothing?  Give it to someone who has none.  Do you have enough food?  Then do the same.  John also encouraged justice in our interactions with others when he responded to the tax collectors and soldiers.  Don’t cheat people or take more than you should.  Don’t make false accusations.  And be satisfied with what you have.  Stop seeking more, always more things.  It’s basically from John a call to do what we call the corporal works of mercy.

  Interestingly enough, doing these things, bearing good fruit, connects us back to idea of rejoicing today on Gaudete Sunday.  You know one way to be more weighty as a Christian, one way to demonstrate the authenticity of your Christian life, one way to find joy… is to get out of ourselves and all the things we are wrapped up in and to give to others, to serve others.  This time of year is so hectic and so stressful for so many.  Maybe in part that is due to focusing excessively on our plans, our wants, our desires.  So, in the midst of all that this season is let’s remember to be more weighty as disciples of Jesus.  Let’s remember to be more weighty throughout the whole year.  To be clear, we don’t bear good fruit to make ourselves feel good, or for the purposes of some secular utopia in this world.  No, we seek God and we seek to bear good fruit because it is necessarily connected with the faith we proclaim.  We seek to bear good fruit because it is the right thing to do.  We seek to bear good fruit to draw others into the same call to repent and to believe in the Gospel.  We seek to bear good fruit because it will find us better prepared to stand before our Judge when he returns with his winnowing fan.  We seek to be good wheat ready for harvest, the wheat that, being heavier and having fallen to the ground in death, is ready to rise again to the kingdom of light and rejoicing!

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe
12 December 2024

 Today we observe with great joy the miraculous appearances, by which the Blessed Virgin Mary made herself known as the “ever virgin Mary, Mother of the true God through whom all things live” (cf. Office of Readings, Report by Don Antonio Valeriano).   The appearance of Mary sparked massive numbers of conversions to the true faith in the one Catholic Church established by Jesus.  Her appearance resulted in hundreds of thousands of souls leaving behind the falsehood of pagan worship and false religion.  Her appearance resulted in souls believing in the love of God shown in Jesus Christ, who is the Savior of the world.  To celebrate the Virgin today, and to do so in a way that pleases her and gives to Jesus what he is owed as God, means we must put behind ourselves false idols that get more attention that our soul and more attention than living our Catholic faith.  To celebrate this feast day today in a way that is good means we must stop making excuses for living a weak life as disciples of Jesus.

 Our Lady of Guadalupe has become so closely associated with the history of Mexico that, as one song says, to be Mexican is to be Guadalupan as something essential.  But even beyond Mexico, this appearance of Our Lady has transformed our continent and our world, such that she belongs not only to Mexico and to Mexicans, but is the Empress of All the Americas.  The number of conversions to Catholicism that resulted from her miraculous appearance in Mexico has led her to also be called the Star of the New Evangelization.  This means she is invoked for the new proclamation of the Good News that must be made in our time since so many souls who once were Catholic have fallen into darkness and sin as they leave the Catholic Church, or as so many other souls still have never heard of the true Church where salvation is found.

 To be clear, any time we honor Mary, like we do today on this great feast, it is never enough to stop with Mary.  Mary’s role is to point us to her Son, Jesus the Savior.  If we stop with Mary, or if we focus only on her or exclusively on her, then in fact we are not listening to the whole message of the gift that comes from God when some miraculous appearance takes place.  To say this another way, if we think that the popular song means that it is enough to be Guadalupan, then we are not listening to what Mary wants us to hear.  To be devoted to Mary means we must see that she leads us to Jesus.  To be devoted to Mary must lead us to the One she points to: to Jesus the Son of God.  We might add some words to that popular song and say: To be Mexican is to be Guadalupan, which is to be Catholic as something essential!  If one thinks that it is enough to be Guadalupan, to simply honor Mary without reinforcing and building our life with Jesus, then we are making a catastrophic error that will not lead to our salvation in heaven.  If one thinks that it is enough to be Guadalupan and simply to appear devoted and catholic on December 12, then we are missing the entire message of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  We would be causing the Virgin sadness if we honoring her did not result in living more fully the catholic faith.

 Two simple ideas come to my mind from the story of the appearance of the Virgin to St. Juan Diego.  When Juan Diego first saw Our Lady of Guadalupe she called him “the humblest of my children” and she said that it was her ardent desire that a temple ber built on the hill.”  And so, the two ideas are the virtue of humility and the construction of a temple.

 First, we recognize that everything we have is a gift from God.  And we owe Him everything in return.  Humility, being humble like St. Juan Diego, means that we listen to the ways God speaks to us and comes to find us.  He comes in our humble dedication to prayer.  He comes in our commitment to attend and participate in all Sundays and holy day Masses.  He comes in our moral living and in the way we work to remove sin from our lives.  He comes with His grace in living a proper sacramental life, including following the important practice of marrying according to Christ in his Church.  This humility to live marriage and family life as a sacrament places our entire life and our future on the solid foundation of Christ.  In the humility of service to others, especially the poor, God comes to us with His blessing.

 And God comes to us, His humble children, with a call to engage is some work.  We are called to build a temple.  But perhaps not exactly the same temple we think of on Tepeyac Hill.  By humble living of our faith and the commitment of holy baptism, we are building ourselves into a temple!  In baptism, the Holy Spirit is given to us to take up residence within us.  And so, we should recognize that we are temples of the Holy Spirit.  We are called to be beautiful temples dedicated to Christ.  We honor God and the Virgin Mother when we guard and care for our soul and live as the temples we have been made to be.  How senseless it would be to celebrate the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe, how senseless it would be to make visits to shrines (like the shrine in Mexico City or Oklahoma City), how senseless it would be to take the time to come here to church if we do not recognize ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, in humility, we seek to guard this temple of the soul and body and we seek to make sure our children do the same.

 May the intercession of the Virgin of Guadalupe encourage each of us to be more fully alive in her Son and to focus our efforts and attention where the Lady points us: to Jesus Christ and to fuller living of the gift of our Catholic faith.

First Sunday of Advent

Dominica I Adventus C
1 December 2024

 Our word “advent” comes from the Latin “adventus,” which is, in turn, a translation from the Greek word “Parousia.”  Parousia and adventus mean “arrival” or “coming.”  Our use of the word “advent” refers not only to the coming of Christ at his Incarnation and birth at Christmas, but it also refers to his second coming as Judge at the end of time.  The Catholic faith believes in these two comings of Christ: the Incarnation and the Second Coming, as we clearly profess each time we state the Creed.  Advent is a time of year that is hectic and exciting in holiday anticipation.  And so, the gospel selection today may sound almost strange to us, as if it is out of place for Advent.  Where is John the Baptist?  Where is the tender story of the virgin with child?  And if we think this gospel passage is out of place for Advent, perhaps that teaches us a critical lesson about how we view life and faith.  What is truly strange?  Is it the Church’s focus and the scriptural selection that is strange and doesn’t fit?  Or is it rather how we tend to live that risks being out of step with Christian preparedness and vigilance for the moment when the Lord comes again?  As we look ahead to celebrate the birth of Christ, which has already happened in time, we must remember that we can never pause our ongoing preparation and looking ahead to that coming of the Lord that we still await: the advent, the Parousia of the Lord, at his Second Coming!

The gospel is from Jesus’ discourse on the Mount of Olives where he speaks of his second coming.  He speaks of dramatic cosmic signs that will accompany his return in glory and he alludes to a prophecy from the Book of Daniel that the Son of Man will come in the clouds.  These signs are disturbing.  People will be in dismay and perplexed.  In fact, “people will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world.”  Considering this, Jesus’ instruction seems counterintuitive.  He says when you see these things “Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”  He says that we are to be vigilant in our belief that the coming tribulations are imminent.  We can add to this the lesson from the second reading that we do even more to be ready for the Lord’s return.  St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “Finally, brothers and sisters, we earnestly ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that, as you received from us how you should conduct yourselves to please God – and as you are conducting yourselves – you do so even more”.

How are we possibly supposed to face the final advent, the final coming of the Lord?  Jesus tells us that our responsibility is to be prepared.  I want to offer two general categories of how we prepare: (1) Some things not to do; and then, (2) Some things to do.  The things not to do.  Jesus says, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life.”  Jesus warns us to take care that our hearts not be weighed down by things that will prevent us from being ready to stand erect and to raise our heads.   In particular, we must be on guard not to become drowsy from “carousing”.  Other translations of this passage use the word “dissipation.”  That’s a word commonly used of the younger son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  The word in Greek translated as “dissipation” or “carousing” refers to “unbridled indulgence.”  We become drowsy and unprepared when we give in to unbridled indulgence in all the pleasures of the flesh: money, sex, power, food, recreation, sleep, and material goods.  These are the things that we cave to so easily in our fallen nature, making them our focus and, in so doing, becoming weighed down with an earthly, lower focus that obscures our true dignity as God’s children and impedes our ability to be ready to stand up and to raise our heads to meet the Lord when he comes.  To respond to Jesus’ call to be vigilant for his second coming, we have to guard our hearts so that we do not let them fall in love with a disordered and unbridled attachment to lower things that weigh us down and keep us from being prepared.

And then, the things to do.  Jesus tells us that our responsibility is to be prepared.  Jesus says, “Be vigilant at all times and pray.”  This refers to the spiritual advice of staying awake and praying, especially in the night time hours.  This spiritual discipline of vigilance is perhaps less considered than a more familiar spiritual discipline like fasting, but it is just as much part of the Jewish and Christian traditions.  Monks get up while it is still dark, late at night or very early in the morning, to pray.  That time of prayer – not surprisingly – is called “vigils.”  This call to be vigilant, to stay awake and to pray, helps us understand and appreciate key Catholic practices.  Ever wonder why we have a Midnight Mass at Christmas?  To keep vigil, to stay awake and to pray ourselves into the dawning of light on Christmas Day.  We keep vigil on Holy Thursday night after the Mass, praying before the gift of the Lord’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament.  We have an Easter Vigil that is always held in the darkness of Holy Saturday night so that we keep vigil as preparation for the arrival of Easter Sunday.  If you don’t already do so, you might consider whether you can attend those special Masses.  The spiritual practice of vigilance can also be grown in the devotion of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.  When we come to an adoration chapel we are coming to be vigilant, to stay awake and to pray before and with the Lord.  Perhaps the message of Jesus on this First Sunday of Advent might drive you to take up this practice, to commit to adoration, and to let the Lord prepare you for his return.  We always need more parishioners to commit to participate by taking time in our chapel, especially in the night time hours.  Let this be a call to you to participate in quiet time with the Lord.  I hope you will learn more about adoration and commit to time in our chapel.  You won’t regret it!  The Lord tells us to be vigilant, to stay awake, and to pray that we may have strength to escape what comes and to stand before him.  Physical strength will do us no good at the Second Coming.  We need spiritual strength.  Train yourself in that spiritual discipline of vigilance that we perhaps unwisely leave only to the most dedicated monks.  Stay awake and pray with the Lord in adoration so that you remind yourself of his Kingdom already present here and now, whose fullness we await in the life to come.  Train yourself in prayer and adoration to desire that Kingdom more than daily anxieties.  And as you pray before the Lord let him help you identify the sins that need confession.  Let him raise your head and cause you to stand secure in his love such that when that day with disturbing signs comes, you may see it not as a day of fear but as the arrival, the advent, of the gift of God’s love and desire for you: “Your redemption is at hand!”