Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXII per Annum B

2 September 2018

It has been a very curious week as more of the current crisis in the Church unfolds.  And I really long for the day when I can return to giving proper homilies about the Scriptures.  However, in a moment like this when we are all saddened, scandalized, and shaken you deserve to hear from your Pastor about what is going on and how to maintain a perspective of faith.  I hope you will agree with my opinion that sort of having to suspend reflections on the Scriptures and to talk about what is going on is warranted at this moment.

A week ago a stunning testimony was released from the Pope’s former ambassador to the United States, the now-retired Vatican diplomat, Archbishop Viganó, who alleges cover up regarding the sex scandal surrounding former-Cardinal McCarrick.  Viganó’s allegations implicate many high-ranking Vatican prelates and raise questions about the handling of this by Pope Benedict and by Pope Francis.  The allegations further raise questions about whether Pope Francis ignored sanctions said to have been imposed against McCarrick by Pope Benedict.  Since Viganó is no hack but is someone with privileged information relevant to these charges, it seems to me his allegations must be investigated.  He is credible and knowledgeable.  Therefore, I wrote Archbishop Coakley, Cardinal DiNardo (in his role as President of the conference of bishops of this country), and Archbishop Pierre (Viganó’s successor), the Pope’s current ambassador to the United States, asking each of them to lend their voice to the demand that Viganó’s claims be fully investigated.  I’m not usually writing bishops and making demands.  It has been a curious week.  It would seem that several bishops around the country are in fact demanding an investigation.  Archbishop Coakley is among them.  The week was a bit more curious when the The Vista, the newspaper at UCO, called me and conducted an interview about the crisis and how it is impacting Edmond Catholics.  That article should be out this week.

Since my remarks a couple of weeks ago I have had some time to calm down a bit.  I think more data gives us a context to see that abuse in the Church has been effectively responded to with procedures and policies since 2002, which has greatly reduced (by large margins) the incidence of abuse and new events of abuse.  By stating this I am not saying we don’t have more work to do or that there isn’t still a crisis.  Rather, it might help us all to see what good has been accomplished so our picture is accurate.  Before I share some statistics for context, I want to state clearly that abuse like this must not be happening in the Church and among clerics.  That even one event of abuse has happened is too much.  The first focus needs to always be the victims, the harm done to them, and how we respond to them and care for them.  I tried to address that in my remarks a couple of weeks ago.  Today, by no means diminishing the focus on victims or offering excuses, I think talking about the context here can help us as we struggle.  I decided to share some data in the homily today because I noted in several conversations this past week the mistaken notion that widespread abuse is still going on presently, on the same horrific scale as when it first became more publicly known in 2002.  But that is actually not true.  To that end I have decided to share with you data from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, called CARA, at Georgetown University.  CARA is a non-profit research center that conducts social scientific studies about the Catholic Church.  A research analyst, Mark Gray, speaks in the data I will now share regarding past reports of abuse in light of the current Pennsylvania Grand Jury report.  It’s a rather lengthy report I want to share with you, so bear with me.  The words I am speaking come from Mark Gray the analyst.  [Read CARA report]

http://nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/2018/08/pain-never-disappears-from-unhealed.html

[After CARA report pick up here…] So reports Mark Gray from CARA.  The data here is helpful and, furthermore, I can agree with the researcher’s attitude and suggestions.  Again, I do not want there to be any confusion or careless claim that distracts from real harm done to victims and the collateral harm done to us since scandal rocks us and shames us all.  With that in mind, it is at least good to hear that as regards abuse itself, we should not be mistaken and think that the PA Grand Jury report is revealing an entire set of new abuse cases.  Most of it is abuse that fits the historical pattern of having occurred mostly in the 1960s through the 1980s.  What does seem to be new is that the grand jury report gives us a focused look at the response of bishops and other Church leaders.  The abuse itself is the most horrific thing of all.  However, perhaps the knowledge now of cover up and secrecy is the fuel that drives most of the current anger in what has now become another crisis for us.  Given that we are reliving again 2002 with a report on mostly older, historical cases, I wholeheartedly agree that the Church should freely and willingly open our records for independent scrutiny.  I was 28 years old when I had to preach on this scandal in 2002.  Sixteen years later I’m doing it again at 45 years old.  I would really like it if I didn’t have to treat this subject when I’m 61 years old.  I’m glad to tell you that Archbishop Coakley has announced a plan to review our current and our historical clergy files and to submit them to independent scrutiny from a prominent local law firm so that a report may be made public.  This strange week for me continued in that I happened to have a conversation with Governor Frank Keating this week who, in the aftermath of the 2002 scandal, had been the chairman of the National Review Board set up by the US bishops to respond to the abuse crisis.  He expressed great pleasure at Archbishop Coakley’s plan and he expressed hope that a prominent state law enforcement officer would review the plan and give it public support so that we can all have confidence that we are opening this dark subject once and for all.

We are in for a long haul with our response this time around to what seems to me to be a crisis most closely focused on failed leadership in our Church as regards the handling of the crime and the sin of abuse.  The allegations that have come out reaching all the way to the top in the Vatican continue to develop and I have no idea where all that might go.  To be sure, the daily and ongoing developments in the news cycle are exhausting.  But we have to cry out to God in this and find our source of hope and light in Him.  We must also do penance and make reparation for the evil and the grave harm done in our Church.  I want to be part of the solution and I hope you will want the same.  I truly believe we need some radical penance and reparation on a biblical scale that gives particular focus to ordering rightly our relationship with God and our relationship to others.  This focus will respond to what Jesus says is the greatest command: Love God first with all that you have and are; and love your neighbor as yourself.  I am continuing to pray and it is my plan next weekend to announce my decisions and suggestions for the penance and reparation we will observe here.  In the meantime, and in conclusion, I want to share some of Archbishop Coakley’s words from his letter to all of us about penance and reparation.  But before I do that, if you are interested, I’m happy to share any of the documents I referenced today, my own letters to the bishops or the CARA report.  Just let me know.  [Read Coakley Letter, 31 August 2018].

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXI per Annum B

26 August 2018

This Sunday concludes our five-week period of listening to Jesus’ teaching that his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink. In the gospel even disciples of Jesus – people who had already begun following the Lord – begin to argue with him and to leave him over the literal meaning of this teaching, this gift. The Twelve Apostles are asked to make a tough and definitive choice: either leave Jesus and return to their former lives, or accept the literal meaning of his teaching and enter the covenant he offers in his flesh and blood. This choice is prefigured by the first reading, when Joshua told God’s people they must choose: either forsake their sin and choose God’s ways, or become enslaved to the pagan gods of the nations around them. In other words, God’s people could no longer ride the fence. If they were to receive the blessings of the Promised Land, Joshua announces to them that they must definitively choose to accept God’s covenant, ratifying it by the way they lived, being marked by it in the flesh, or they must accept the consequences of following alien gods.

In the gospel, Jesus is asking the same choice from his apostles. And listening to this gospel we know Jesus is asking the same choice from us. Having listened to Jesus’ clear teaching in John 6, we must either accept that the bread and wine in fact become Jesus’ Body and Blood, requiring us to choose to live in communion with the teaching of Christ and his Bride the Church, or go our separate ways and return to our former way of life. Once we have been fully initiated into the New Covenant of Christ by Baptism, Confirmation, and reception of the Holy Eucharist, thus being marked as belonging to God, we, like the people of the Old Covenant, must live by God’s laws or face the consequence of having no lasting life within us.

Today, the selection of God’s Word tells us we must get off the fence. In fact, inheriting the Promised Land of heaven will not come as the result of fence riding. We are asked to confirm God’s covenant and to live according to His ways. We must decide whom we will serve, whom we will follow. The Israelites were faced with a tough decision. Jesus’ disciples have a tough choice to make. How often in our living of our faith, in being disciples, do we feel such tough choices?  When was the last time that following Jesus meant you had to clearly turn away from another way of life, from other choices, things which people around you do and which they say is okay?  Does it sound strange in our ears that following God would require a tough choice to ratify the covenant with him and to forsake ways that are contrary to God’s teaching?  It shouldn’t sound strange if we follow the Scriptures. In fact, what would be strange would be to go through life as a disciple never feeling the pinch of a tough choice to choose God over worldly ways. After all, Jesus himself teaches: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  Actually, when it comes down to it, if following Christ doesn’t find us struggling with real conversion and change, then – I’ll just say it – we really aren’t following Christ at all. In such case, following Christ has become little more than being a member of a social organization, or a club, where we show up for our regular meetings.

You see, God’s gift of the Promised Land to the people of Israel was a prefigurement of His greatest offer of blessing and life in an eternal communion with Him that never ends. And the choice faced by the Israelites in the first reading, like the choice faced by the apostles in the gospel, is a choice we, too, must make if our living for Christ is to be real and if it is to arrive at God’s offer of an eternity of blessing in heavenly life. We must make a clear choice for Christ and his teaching. In John 6 Jesus tells us he gives his entire life to us. Will we choose to be with him?  Wherever we think our own conclusions have more authority than that of Christ and his Church, we are like the disciples in the gospel who murmur against the Lord: “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”  When our moral choices fly in the face of Christ’s teaching and the consistent witness of the Church, we are not choosing life with the Lord. When we won’t acknowledge our sins and receive the healing of confession, we are straddling the fence and even returning to godless ways.

But this isn’t what Jesus wants for us. He calls us to himself and he asks us to choose life with him. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”  However we murmur, however we choose paths that are not godly, however we sin we should make it our prayer that the Father will grant us the grace to get off the fence and come to true life. We should pray for the grace of conversion and more authentic living of our life with Christ so that, with the apostles, we can say: “Master, to whom shall we go?”  You see, the Good News is that, if we will clearly and seriously follow his commands, Jesus offers us unimaginable blessing that begins even now in a real communion with his Body and Blood. It’s time to hop off the fence!

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XX per Annum B

19 August 2018

I’m uncomfortable here today because I want to address the latest scandal rocking our beloved Church.  I don’t have law firms or liability risk agents to write for me.  No one is telling me what to say.  What you get comes from a shepherd and from my heart.  I may misspeak and have to retract some words.  I don’t mean to offend but this will be in places a rather adult topic and so those with small children won’t offend me if you feel you need to step out for a bit.

First, I want to apologize to the victims of horrific soul-crushing abuse, that is a form of spiritual murder.  I apologize to their family members who suffer with them.  I apologize to others who, upon learning of this disgusting matter, have their faith rocked and wonder if they can remain in a church.  If you have been sexually abused or know someone who has been, or any other form of criminal abuse, and if it has not yet been reported, then please report it to local law enforcement and to Church officials.

When the first round of sexual abuse news broke in 2002 I was a very young priest.  I spoke publicly about the topic then.  I am not afraid to do so now, but I am disgusted and angry.  I think I am more angry now than I was in 2002.  I am also exhausted with all of this. I assume most all of you know former-Cardinal McCarrick was credibly accused of abuse of a minor, had apparently used his power as a bishop to abuse his subordinates, and had two other cases involving adults where his respective diocese paid settlements with the adult victims.  McCarrick’s activities were widely suspected or actually known and yet he suffered no consequences as he rose among the bishops and became a cardinal.  You can laugh at me and think I am crazy but when I heard the news about former-Cardinal McCarrick two things surfaced in me at once: (1) anger; and, (2) the thought that I should sell all my belongings, shave my head, live in a stone hut, and start a new religious order.  How will we rebuild from this mess?  Who will do it?  The answer throughout all of history in the face of moral crises in the Church has always been saints.  Everyday people make a more radical decision for Jesus and that starts healing and repair and roots out the corruption and evil.  I’m probably too weak to be a St. Francis of Assisi… I don’t know… but we need some new men and women who will radically reform their lives and that of the Church.  And now we have the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report highlighting the sad history of abuse in six dioceses in that state.

I’m angry that this subject has interrupted my plans to speak only on Jesus’s clear teaching about the Holy Eucharist, about which we have been hearing for numerous weeks. I’m angry that grave and horrific sin – be it abuse itself or  cover ups by leadership – harms the Church which is Jesus’ Bride.  I’m angry that this obscures the holiness proper to the Church because all we can see now is the sinfulness of humanity, not the presence of divinity in Christ’s Bride.  I’m mad at what this does to you and how it might rock your faith, especially if you might tend to mistakenly place your faith in something or someone other than Jesus Christ alone!  I’m mad because I know young people hear this and think the Church can’t be true, can’t be trusted, or is a joke – just a sham of a manmade institution.  And I’m mad at how this might harm future vocations.

I’m mad that innocent clergy are now understandably viewed with suspicion.I’m also frustrated because I’m not sure I even know what to tell you.  There is much I could say, but does it help?  Once we work through our own initial emotions we need to recapture rationality and make sure we have sound information about the judgments and decisions we make.  It can be very easy to jump to conclusions, find scapegoats, have faulty information, and to fail to see around our own biases.  There seems to be a human tendency in the face of crisis or tragedy to find the one thing that explains it.  The older I get I don’t think life’s answers are usually reduced to one thing.  More often than not there is not just one thing that explains a situation but rather several things together.  We have to be careful not to naively look for the one problem that explains this crisis.  In offering my own thoughts on this mess, I realize and I admit I may actually be doing that very thing.  I might well be accused of myopia in sharing my thoughts.  I might well be accused of scapegoating.  I’m prepared for backlash and if I am wrong, then I will just have to admit it and apologize. In a few weeks I’ll have more thoughts on a spiritual plan for penance and reparation, but for now I’ll share five elements of my read on this scandal.  This is by no means an exhaustive list.

The mystery of evil and human freedom to choose sin.  Have we forgotten that the devil is real and that the doctrine of Original Sin is a foundational matter of how our faith views the state of our fallen world?  These doctrines reflect reality and shake us from our naïve slumber that somehow evil and sin aren’t real or can’t exist among the clergy. From an extensive study after 2002 of the state of this matter in the United States it would seem that, while abuse happened going back many decades, and across many decades, the incidence of abuse dramatically rose in the 70s and 80s and then dropped just as dramatically in the late 90s and into the 2000s.  A few weeks back I spoke on this being the 50th anniversary year of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, where Bl. Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the ancient teaching of the Church that the dignity of sexual love in marriage excludes contraception.  You know what this anniversary also means?  It means it is now the 50th anniversary of widespread rejection of this teaching and rebellion among laity and clergy alike.  I suggest that the corruption among clergy who gave a wink and nod to this teaching began to create a deeper moral crisis with priests and bishops failing in their vocations and that has contributed to the monstrous situation we are now in.  Priests telling people contraception is no big deal; bishops failing to discipline such priests… don’t tell me that didn’t lead to a wink and a nod with clergy and their failures in living chaste celibacy!  Widespread rebellion against sexual morality reaching a high point in 1968 and abuse events increasing by several orders of magnitude in the 60s and 70s… I think it’s related. This leads me to another element: infidelity to chastity among the clergy in general.  This includes both heterosexual and homosexual orientations.  Abuse has been inflicted on both females and males.  However, I think we do have to admit that there is some connection in this crisis to acting on a homosexual orientation.  I say that because 81% of abuse cases between 1950 and 2002 involved teenage boys.  This seems different to me than the abuse of small children before puberty.  The vast majority of cases involve post-pubescent teen boys.  This cannot be ignored.  However, let me state equally as clearly, I am NOT referring to the mere fact of a same-sex attraction among some priests.  The mere fact alone of a same-sex attraction does not make one an abuser of children or teens or other adults.  Rather, I am referring to those acting on the attraction and living a clandestine gay lifestyle who, for however it is explained, have proclivities toward minors.  There have been both heterosexual and homosexual cheaters among the clergy.  Hear me clearly again, there are also many chaste priests with same-sex attraction just as there are many chaste priests with heterosexual attraction.  Chaste people with same-sex attraction, among clergy and laity alike, I think are some of the most valiant people in living life in Christ in the midst of a twisted and depraved world that is all too ready to tell them acting on same-sex attraction is just part of being healthy.  But why might 81% of those cases involve teen boys?  Why is it not more even with cases involving females?  I don’t know for sure.  But I have a friend who made a suggestion that might offer some explanation.  He says in the cases of heterosexual cheaters among priests, they often are more likely to be forced out of the priesthood because relationships they carry on will often lead to a pregnancy or to an ultimatum from the woman, and things become public.  But this is not the case for homosexual cheaters with boys.  As a result, in the past homosexual cheaters may have stayed in the priesthood and therefore their numbers may have grown.

Another factor in past abuse might be related to the fact that psychological screening of seminary candidates only began, I believe, sometime around 1990.  I recall seeing a list with the number of seminarians this archdiocese had in the early 80s.  There were over 35 seminarians.  It was 1997 when I came across that list.  At that time we had only 12 seminarians.  I asked a priest what happened to all these guys and why we couldn’t seem to get more than 12 seminarians.  He replied that it was because that earlier list was before we did psychological screening.  Perhaps that helps us understand what seems to be the much higher incidence of abuse going back before such mandatory screening.  Screening isn’t perfect, but it does do a great service.

The final element I will raise as related to how we explain the horrific crime and sin of abuse, as well as the rage-inducing failed leadership and coverup among bishops is what I will call a crisis of weak masculinity carrying with it the loss of the ability to be fatherly.  In order to appreciate the God-given qualities of femininity that are complementary to the God-given qualities of masculinity our society has wrongly cast negative light on men and masculinity.  To raise up femininity and women, which is a good thing to do, our society has wrongly cast aspersions upon and suppressed masculinity and men.  Watch how men are cast in entertainment and you get a glimpse of this.  The man is the immature fool whose presence is barely needed for good balanced family life.  Our boys and young men are, as a group, increasingly adrift, locked in an alternate reality of excessive video gaming, and seemingly without clear purpose.  In some organs of society masculine traits are punished and boys learn early that their natural qualities are less than desirable.  Now we have reached a point where masculinity is referred to as “toxic”.  I suspect that description is not very precise and is meant to make men self-conscious and soft.  Our spiritual fathers are impacted by this cultural climate too.  There have clearly been some sick men in the priesthood who are weak men who never should have been there.  But it is just as clear that in the upper ranks of bishops and cardinals, even if they themselves are not abusers, many likewise have no concept of fatherhood.  Maybe they had it once.  But those who covered up abuse clearly lost it.  Listening to their corporate speak is all the evidence needed.  A manly father doesn’t need experts and lawyers and insurance companies to tell him how to act.  The failed bishops speak like men who are not fathers because a father would be outraged and in deep pain for his children despicably harmed under his guard.  Maybe some bishops have mustered that.  Most of the ones getting the TV interviews certainly have not.

Some perspective might help.  Where have we seen this horrific trail of abuse?  We have seen it in the entertainment industry.  In universities.  In the Catholic Church.  In Protestant communities.  Saturday morning the Oklahoman carried and article that Baptists and Evangelicals are admitting this and needing to address it.  It is in Jewish communities.  In public schools.  In sports.  Among physicians.  In other words, this is not just a Catholic crisis.  It is a secular crisis.  It is a cultural crisis.  The Church should be better, but don’t let yourself be fooled that it exists only in the Church.  Don’t be misled by those who offer the convenient solution to just leave the Church.

As the Church continues to address this scandal we will hear of the development of new procedures, policies, and remedies.  I suppose the institutional organization needs those.  But you and I don’t.  You know why?  Because we already have them.  Procedure?  It’s called repentance!  Policy?  We have the sixth commandment and all that it means about sexual morality.  Remedy?  We have it!  It’s Jesus present in the Holy Eucharist.  Remember Jesus’ words a few weeks back when we began our tour through the Bread of Life discourse in John 6?  He said, Don’t work for food that perishes.  Everything else perishes.  Everything else we eat and fill ourselves on doesn’t last.  Jesus told the Jews that their fathers ate manna in the desert but they still died.  Try filling yourself on anything except Jesus and you’re gonna die.  It won’t last.  Only Jesus fills us, remedies, and gives us eternal life.  He’s why I’m Catholic.  He’s why I stay.  And he’s truly present in the Holy Eucharist.  There is frankly no place else to go if I want to have lasting life.  I am deeply sorry for any and all victims and I offer that with my meager portion of authority here.  But I would be lying and guilty of spiritual malpractice if I gave any impression that due to abuse one might leave the Church and find what God wants for you.  I can understand and sympathize with victims and the scandalized who leave the Church for a time or maybe forever.  But it is not what God wants.  “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him on the last day…. [t]he one who feeds on me will have life because of me.  This is the bread that came down from heaven.  Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary

Assumption of the BVM

15 August 2018

A formal and necessary part of Catholic faith is our belief that God has blessed Mary with certain privileges.  These privileges bring salvation to Mary and they come purely from the generosity of the Holy Trinity and the desire of God that we have full life with Him.  These privileges are an answer to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, and so they are part of God’s plan to make it possible for mankind to have eternal salvation.  All the privileges of Mary stem from her first or main privilege, namely that God chose her to be the Mother of the Son.  In the Assumption we express our Catholic faith that at the end of her earthly life Mary, having been preserved from sin from the first moment of her life and having chosen to live sinless her entire life, was rescued from the decay of the tomb and brought up body and soul into heavenly life.

The first reading of this solemnity opens with the apocalyptic vision of St. John from the Book of Revelation.  What St. John saw sets the tone for how the Church understands his vision, Mary’s unique role in salvation, and what we believe about today’s solemnity.  The first reading began, “God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.”  And coinciding with this vision of the ark and the heavenly temple is what St. John reports next: “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”  If you look at the citation of that first reading you would see that it is basically a portion of chapter 12 of Revelation.  However, the Church backs the reading up one verse, to include the final verse of chapter 11.  Why include the last verse of chapter 11?  Because the Church wants to instruct us on how the faith has viewed Mary from ancient times.  She is the fulfillment of the Ark of the Covenant.  She is the New Ark.  Today, observing our faith that upon the end of her life Mary was taken up body and soul into heaven, the Church wants us to hear what St. John saw in his vision: that heaven opened and there in the temple where God dwells and is worshiped St. John also saw the ark.

The Catholic faith always reads major Old Testament figures, objects, and events as precursors that foreshadow a fulfillment to come in the New Covenant.  An Old Testament type or figure points to its New Covenant fulfillment.  Thus, a New Covenant fulfillment is always necessarily greater than its Old Testament type.  So, looking at what the Old Testament tells us about the original ark of the covenant tells us that Mary, in being its fulfillment, is greater still!  In summary, the ark of the covenant in the Old Testament was the dwelling place of God with His people Israel; the ark was His sanctuary on earth (Ex. 25:8).  The ark was the sacred chest, the container that carried within it those precious signs that were incarnations of God’s presence and promise: the ark contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 25:16), a golden urn containing the manna, and the staff of Aaron that had budded as a sign of the priesthood.  The ark was made of acacia wood (Ex. 25:5), which was known as a hardy, incorruptible wood.  The ark was covered in pure gold, and veiled in a cloth of blue (Num. 4:5-6).  This should sound familiar and get us thinking about Mary.  The ark of the covenant remained with God’s people and moved with them.  It was placed in the holy of holies in the sanctuary.  Finally, the Israelites would not face their enemies without carrying the ark of the covenant into battle with them; it was the reminder, the sign, and the proof that God was with them in battle.

Mary’s first privilege from God, that she was chosen by Him to be the mother of His Son, tells us that for all the reverence and care for the ark of the Old Covenant, Mary is greater still for she is the New Ark.  As fitting as it was that the ark of the old covenant be placed in the holy of holies, how much more does it make sense that God’s chosen daughter, and the vessel of the Incarnation of the Son, should be preserved from the corruption of the grave and dwell in God’s presence in the temple where He is worshiped?  Thus, the choice by the Church to have us listen to St. John’s vision in the first reading tells us something important about Mary and helps us situate our faith in her assumption within the context of where the ark should rightfully dwell.

Since the Gospels do not record an account of the assumption, the Church chooses the Gospel of the Visitation.  That choice deserves some attention.  There are similarities in the passage of the Visitation that hearken back to King David’s triumphal transfer of the ark of the old covenant into Jerusalem, recorded in the Book of 2 Samuel 6.  There we read that David rose and went to the hill country of Judah to bring up the ark of God.  David exclaims, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?”  He leaped before the ark as it was brought into the city with joyful shouting.  Considering this joy before the ark of God’s dwelling we can appreciate the devastation when, upon exile, the ark disappears and is not seen again.  With this in mind, the Gospel of the Visitation has been read by the Church for centuries as an account of the ark’s return to be with God’s people.  This is fulfilled in Mary who is carrying God-incarnate in her womb.  She goes out to the hill country of Judah to visit Elizabeth.  Before the presence of God contained in the ark of Mary, John leapt in his mother’s womb.  Elizabeth cries out in joy and asks how can the mother of my Lord come to me?

In celebrating Mary we are reminded that God is with us.  As the New Ark, Mary fulfills to a greater extent than the signs of old that God is with us because she contained not just the old types of the commandments (God’s Word in stone), the manna, and the staff of priesthood, but God’s Word-made-flesh, the Bread of Life come down from heaven, the one Who is the great and eternal High Priest.  Facing the many enemies of the Church without and within, we carry her into battle trusting the power of her prayers for us and knowing that she is the ark that tells us God is with us.  Finally, we not only celebrate her rightful dwelling in the heavenly temple, but we find in our faith in her assumption a reminder of God’s loving invitation to us that we follow the life of grace so that we may take up our place in the vision seen by St. John, the heavens opened for us by the Savior who came to us through the New Ark, Mary assumed body and soul into heaven.            

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XVIII per Annum B

5 August 2018

 Last week was our first week of a five-week tour through the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, known as the Bread of Life discourse.  This chapter is a prime location of Jesus’ teaching and our faith in the Holy Eucharist, that ordinary bread and wine become his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  The first reading today from Exodus 16 narrates God’s providing of a bread-like substance, called manna, in miraculous fashion for 40 years in the desert, which foreshadows Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness and foreshadows his providing the true bread from heaven.  Last weekend the gospel selection told us of the feeding of the five thousand with loaves and fish.  While this was a miraculous multiplication of food we should note that, although miraculous, the bread multiplied was still ordinary bread; the “flesh” still ordinary fish.  After feeding the five thousand Jesus goes off and, in a gospel selection we do not hear in this five-week tour, he miraculously walks across the water.  Today’s Gospel selection picks up the next day after these two miracles.  The Jewish crowds notice Jesus’ absence.  They go seeking him out and they make their way across the sea to find him.  The passage makes clear why they are seeking him: It’s time to eat again!  They had eaten their fill but now it is the next day and their bellies are likely empty again.  Jesus acknowledges that the crowds are seeking him for a free meal: “…you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.  Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

What is Jesus doing here for the crowds?  He wants to redirect or elevate their desire and attention to something more than regular, natural, ordinary bread.  The statement is clear: It’s as if Jesus is saying, “you have gone to so much effort for ordinary food.  Put far more effort into the food that lasts.”  Likewise for us, Jesus wants to elevate our thinking and our desire for a food that endures to eternal life.  Why do the crowds need to hear Jesus tell them to elevate their thinking?  Why do we need to hear the same?  Because they and we so quickly and easily put aside spiritual thinking and spiritual vision.  This is what is hidden in Jesus’ words: “you are looking for me NOT because you saw signs.”  St. John’s use of the word “sign” refers to miraculous revelations of Jesus’ power and mission that, when accepted, are vehicles that promote coming to faith in him.  The crowds witnessed the miracles, but did they see the sign?  Did they – do we – see with spiritual vision so that signs of Jesus are not just mighty deeds to impress, but gifts to draw us to faith in Jesus as the Son of God?  The crowds don’t see.  Jesus tells them so: You are coming after me not because you saw signs but because your bellies were filled.  And thus, he tells them to elevate their minds and to seek what lasts.  His message is the same to us.  Jesus wants us to see beyond the ordinary and to come to deeper faith in him as our God.  This is his message too about what appears as ordinary bread, of which we will hear more in the coming weeks.  He doesn’t want us to stop with bread that fills the stomach but then perishes.  He redirects our desire and our focus to “the bread of God… which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  This is the bread that he will give.

Consider how startling is the human tendency to lower our thinking and our vision.  Did you notice how the first reading about God giving the manna started?  Exodus 16 tells us that out in the desert the “whole Israelite community grumbled.”  They were complaining.  They actually defy God by indicating that they would prefer to go back to Egypt where they had been in slavery!  Why go back?  Because at least there they knew where their next meal was coming from!  They would prefer to return to slavery if they could at least know their bellies would be filled.  This complaining is all the more startling when you consider that just the chapter before God had miraculously saved them from Pharaoh’s approaching army by parting the sea to give them safe passage.  Yet they have so soon lowered their thinking and their vision!  “Following God is too hard.  Let’s go back to being slaves.  In Egypt we knew where our food was.”  Friends, we are not that different in how quickly we settle for food that perishes, whatever we can provide and control for ourselves, whatever we think will keep our bellies full, whether that is literal food, or power, or money, or attention, or social media likes, or drugs, or sex – the list goes on!

Like the Israelite community, what deserts of life cause us to lower our thinking and to focus mostly on filling ourselves with the things that perish?  Maybe “the desert” is that common tendency to trust in myself.  It’s much easier and more predictable than being vulnerable to God or to someone else.  That would require trust.  Maybe it’s that tendency to keep myself so busy that I barely notice my deeper and spiritual needs.  That emptiness is there and it is nagging at me.  But if I just keep going it gets filled, right?  Maybe the desert is a habit of serious sin and I feel powerless to stop it.  It’s easier to just live in the slavery than to open it, to reveal it, to raise it to God.  Maybe the desert is trouble in marriage or a painful loss and it’s like there is just no place to go.  Could the desert that lowers your thinking and obscures your spiritual vision be some personal defect or some cross or suffering?  It’s not a sin, but gosh it’s heavy and I can’t see what Jesus might do with this.  Or maybe the desert is a generalized dryness in faith, or going through the motions as a Catholic.  And I know I need more.

Do you see why we too need to hear Jesus tell us today to redirect and to elevate our thinking so that we receive from him the food that he will give, the true bread from heaven?  Like the Israelites, our lowered vision convinces us that even a place of slavery is better because in a perverse sense it is more predictable and we seem to have some element of control.  We are inclined to settle for the kingdom of darkness where everything perishes.  Jesus wants to elevate our hope to his kingdom and the food that endures to eternal life!

In the weeks ahead we will hear the undeniable and clear teaching that Jesus gives his whole self, his flesh and blood, as food that endures.  Jesus turns ordinary bread and wine into his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.  He continues to do this in the Holy Mass and through the valid ministerial priesthood of his Church.  As his words elevate our focus to the food that endures to eternal life, we hear his call to put far more effort into the food that lasts.  To see the sign that Jesus works with ordinary bread and wine is to receive an invitation to deeper faith that he is God.  To experience the Holy Eucharist for what it is we likewise have to entrust our ordinary lives to Jesus.  Jesus’ Real Presence to us is a call for us to be more present to him!  We elevate our vision and our commitment to Holy Mass, where we worship Emmanuel, God-with-us.  We find in the tabernacle waiting for us in private prayer the God who remains with us in all our ordinary needs.  By participating in adoration we find an oasis of peace in our deserts where Jesus raises our weary hearts and minds and assures us he is with us in all the things that we can’t control.  And gradually we begin to trust that Jesus will fill us with what we truly need and with what lasts as we hear him say, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XVI per Annum B

22 July 2018

One of the most basic, foundational implications of being a person of religious faith is that we believe there are truths of this world and the next that, while true and certain, are beyond our full ability to explain, to understand, and to appreciate.  Our limited ability to explain and to understand does not make these truths any less true.  I am speaking here of the realm of mystery, things that are true but are higher than the limited human mind can comprehend.  What this means for us as people of religious faith is that our ordinary, daily lives, our lives in the natural world, meet and touch the extraordinary and the supernatural, the spiritual world, already present here and whose fullness we will experience in the life after death.  In other words, there is value, meaning, and truth here and now that is transcendent, that exists also in realms above and beyond us.  Our ordinary, daily life is pregnant with meaning that is true and real, even though it is more than the eyes of the body can see, measure, and evaluate.  One of the greatest tricks of the devil is to keep us so busy that we live more like machines and, by keeping silence and reflection at a distance, we soon forget that our life is marked by mystery and the things of God.

Maybe some examples of mystery will help us appreciate that ordinary life is pregnant with extraordinary meaning.  At almost every wedding I am privileged to witness, standing as I am nearest the groom, I see mystery in what I will call the breathless reaction of the groom when he first sees his bride on the wedding day.  Some physically and visibly gasp.  Others sort of lower their heads for a moment with a brief turn of the head as if struggling with emotion.  Others tear up.  These couples have seen marriage before; they have even been to weddings.  They have seen each other countless times before.  They have spent months talking about and thinking about marriage.  On a mere natural, ordinary level nothing should surprise them.  Yet it does!  It takes their breath away!  That is mystery.  Another example: Most of us can talk about the reproductive process and the gestation of new life leading to birth.  We can do this rather dryly and without emotion.  But I’m willing to bet that if you have been present at or near a newborn’s birth that you might have shed some tears.  This is mystery.  Perhaps another way to communicate the idea of mystery is to say that life is full of beauty.  Deep beauty, not just surface appearances, might be a synonym for mystery.

The beauty and mystery of human life needs our reflection because this week the Church marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most prophetic papal encyclicals, issued by Blessed Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, meaning Of Human Life.  Perhaps you already know that this encyclical communicates the long-held teaching of the Church that to properly live conjugal love in a good moral fashion “each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life” (HV 11).  For the sake of absolute clarity, this means that any “action which, either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse is specifically intended to prevent procreation” is intrinsically wrong and immoral (HV 14).  This is a teaching that we are each obliged to hold.  Furthermore, when this teaching is not being observed individual persons and married couples need the grace of confession and the sincere efforts at learning and following a scientific method of natural family planning.  Blessed Pope Paul VI was prophetic in predicting the societal fall-out that would occur if the beauty and mystery of sexual love were to be separated from the beauty and mystery of human life by various means of artificial contraception.  As he predicted, this separation has led to increased and earlier onset of promiscuity among even the young, increased infidelity, instability in marriage, immoral and evil social engineering in the hands of government authority, increased divorce, abortion, in vitro fertilization, and a generalized category of lower moral standards, which today we can see displayed in homosexual activity, homosexual marriage, and transgenderism.  None of what I am saying should be taken as shaming or judgment upon you.  Rather, I would point to the confusion generated by the sexual revolution and social upheaval going on in the past decades.  Furthermore, I would also borrow God’s words in the first reading: “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture.”  New Testament shepherds – bishops and priests – have been silent in confusion, fear, or in their own sinfulness over these same decades.  No wonder this teaching is so misunderstood by folks in the pews.

What I hope to leave you with today is the “why” of this teaching.  And that takes us right back to my beginning: that our ordinary, daily living in this natural world is pregnant with beauty and mystery that touches upon the extraordinary, the spiritual, and the eternal transcendent realm of God.  The Church’s teaching on human life rests directly on the mystery of the spiritual reality of God’s covenant love and the fulfillment of that covenant in the total, self-giving sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  Do you married couples reflect on the mystery that there is something more than merely biological or ordinary in the act of your marriage embrace?  The devil wants to keep you so busy and occupied, living more like machines, so that the mystery of your vocation in Holy Matrimony escapes you and you begin to think less of the spiritual and extraordinary, and to live as the pagans do.  The spirit of the world wants you to think that there can’t be much supernatural and eternal meaning to your married love.  But think with me of the history of salvation.  Consider the significant moment of the covenant God made with Abraham.  The sign of that covenant was circumcision that made of the Hebrews a people of God.  Why THAT mark of the covenant?  Why there?  Why did Abraham and those who entered the covenant with God have to bear a mark on their generative organ?  It’s because the ordinary, natural, temporal good of sexual love and its generation of new life in the covenant of marriage is designed by God to be a sign of the extraordinary, supernatural, and eternal regeneration of new life in the covenant God would fulfill in Jesus and which we enter by baptism!  Pure sexual love in marriage has that depth of beauty and meaning!  The covenantal mark that exposes the very organ of the generation of natural life tells us something of the full spiritual meaning, the dignity, the mystery of human love and human life so essentially part of the married vocation.  Your natural life is made pregnant with this meaning by God.  This is the truth that the Church can do no less than to uphold and to teach.  This is part of the “why” of the moral teaching of this aspect of married life lived in purity.  This is what the world and the worldly miss.

What God the Father fulfills in the new covenant of Jesus is accomplished by a total self-gift of the God-man on the Cross.  We hear of this in the second reading: “In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near by the blood of Christ.”  That total gift of self, by the shedding of his blood, broke down the separation, the “wall of enmity,” between us and God and made possible new spiritual life in the Church and ultimately in the fullness of Heaven.  That total gift of self is what spouses in Holy Matrimony are called to model and to signify by pure marital love free from the various contraceptive measures the world promotes.  Seeing the sad prophetic developments predicted by Blessed Pope Paul VI, we can echo the Gospel where Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity… for they were like sheep without a shepherd.”  Marking the 50th anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae we thank God for this shepherding from the highest authority of the Church.  We need to take responsibility to learn how to live in conformity with this teaching.  Rejecting the spirit of the world, we find ourselves led to the flowing waters and the fresh green pastures of truth where we see our ordinary lives in their full spiritual and extraordinary meaning!  In Jesus Christ and in His Church we find fulfilled the Father’s words through the Prophet Jeremiah: “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock …  and bring them back to their meadow; there they shall increase and multiply.  I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble; and none shall be missing, says the Lord.”

Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Nativity of St. John the Baptist

24 June 2018

This year the observance of the nativity of St. John the Baptist falls on a weekend, meaning it replaces the normal Sunday Mass.  Most of the saints in our liturgical calendar have a feast day that is placed more or less on the day we call their “birth” into eternal life, meaning the day of their death.  Only a very few saints have multiple celebrations in the calendar, and fewer still have observances of their literal birth in time, their birth on earth in addition to their birth into eternity.  St. John the Baptist is one such saint.  That we observe his nativity tells us that he and his mission are incredibly important to our faith as Catholics.

My reflections on this nativity of St. John the Baptist do not rest so much on the Scripture selections themselves but rather on the simple fact that we are asked to celebrate the birth of a “radical.”  It is rather curious and maybe even comical.  Look at us!  Here we are as thoroughly modern people.  For the most part we are dressed rather well.  We have our comforts and our controlled environment here.  We probably think we know what we need to hear from God.  We may even think we are doing God a favor by being here.  And we gather to celebrate the birth of a guy who went around in camel hair and ate locusts!  And more than that, he spoke a strongly critical message and stern warning about the day of God’s judgment!  Meanwhile we – and by “we,” I mean I – fret about the thermostats before each Mass and when we arrive we say, thanks be to God, no one parked in the spot I like to park in or is sitting in my spot I like to sit in.  This hardly seems like the breeding ground for radicals.  Maybe just the mere fact that the Church has us observe this man’s nativity has more than enough to speak to us before we would consider the Scripture passages associated with this Mass.

St. John the Baptist was a radical.  Are we ready to be radicals?  That’s in part why I think our observance of his birth is a bit curious, even comical.  Do we realize that a radical is being placed before our eyes to imitate?  But here’s the catch: we often misunderstand the term “radical.”  We stop at what is visible or superficial and we think that’s what it means to be a radical.  St. John lived out in the wilderness.  He ate weird stuff.  He wore strange clothes.  We would wrongly conclude that he is an “out there,” free-range spirit, a radical.  That’s not what being a radical means.  And it’s not what the Church is placing before us for imitation.  Being a radical goes much deeper.  That something “deeper” is the real thing we are being encouraged to follow in this observance of St. John’s birth.

I wonder if often we confuse a “revolutionary” for a “radical?”  A revolutionary turns things over, turns things on their head, and bucks the system.  A radical, on the other hand, might do some revolutionary things, but the far deeper reality of a radical is that he is rooted and has a strong foundation.  That’s the core meaning of the term from which we get “radical.”  Radical means being rooted.  As Catholics, beneficiaries of the radical preaching of St. John the Baptist, we are radicals if we are rooted in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.  These are our foundations.  It is out of these, or from these, that we must operate to fulfill our calling to be missionary disciples in the modern world.  If we are disconnected from, unaware of, or uninterested in Scripture and Tradition then whatever we are doing in the name of Jesus risks having little to do with our roots, and thereby ceases to be radical, and thereby ceases to be of God.

We are to be rooted in Sacred Scripture (which is God’s word in written form) and rooted in Sacred Tradition (which is God’s word passed on in the oral preaching and witness of the apostles).  By “rooted” I mean that we are to reach deeply into, and to draw spiritual life and wisdom out of, Scripture and Tradition.  Then nourished with such life we stretch forth and go out to be witnesses of Jesus in this world.  Like a living thing, we only have life if we remain with the roots.  Like a living thing, we grow and stretch out to reach new places beyond our familiar territory.  But we can’t be alive and we can’t grow unless we have roots.  Jesus himself used this image: “I am the vine, you are the branches.  He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5).  To be radical, like St. John, is to be rooted in God’s word, which comes to us in the twofold font of Scripture and Tradition.

The society in which we live is marked by upheaval from its own roots.  This upheaval seems to be happening at an ever more rapid pace.  Societal change in norms and expectations has made us arrive at unbelievable scenarios, scenarios that were unimaginable even just a decade ago.  To be a person of radical faith in this environment will likely result in people looking at us as if we really are dressed in camel’s hair and eating locusts!  People might ask, what are those Catholics breathing and eating?  They think Jesus is actually God and that that actually means their personal lives and societal life truly ought to be conformed to God’s moral commands.  Are they crazy?  Those Catholics think Jesus is not a bygone influence, but that the Scriptures, the Tradition, and the Church continue to speak his teaching with authority.  How medieval!  They think persons being made in God’s image and likeness imparts a dignity that demands the right to life.  They think that sexual love has meaning, that its proper place is actually within the marriage of a man and a woman, that it should not be refused in acts of contraception, and that same-sex activity is not only out of order, but even immoral.  They actually think a person’s genetic code, expressed in the physical appearance of the body, is determinate of one’s gender, no matter how surgery might alter that appearance.  How unscientific!  Those Catholics think that Jesus’ life and power comes to them in sacraments.  They think the Mass actually makes Jesus’ sacrifice present such that bread and wine really become Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.  What fairy tale magic!  What are those Catholics breathing and eating?!

If we are radical, if we have roots, I’ll tell you what we are breathing and eating: we are breathing in the inspiration of God’s word and having been made more worthy by frequent confession we are eating the gift that roots us in deep communion with Jesus himself!  By observing the birth of St. John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus, we are not being called to be revolutionaries.  Rather we are called to be radicals.  We are called to be so rooted in our life with Jesus that we have something worth sharing with our world.  In fact, we have what Jesus wants to be shared with the world so that men and women are called away from error and sin and brought to true and lasting life in advance of the day of judgment.  The devil wants us to sink our roots into the things of this world over which he has some measure of influence because by that he knows he has uprooted us from Christ and neutralized a branch of the vine.  A different St. John, St. John the Evangelist, describes it this way: “Do not love the world or the things of the world.  If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.  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.  And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever” (1 Jn. 2:15-17).  Observing the birth of St. John the Baptist is our call to be rooted in the things of God and to join St. John in a radical proclamation to the world that God is in our midst: “Behold the Lamb of God!”

Eleventh Sunday In Ordinary Time

Dominica XI per Annum B

17 June 2018

Jesus’ words in the selection from St. Mark’s Gospel teach us about the Kingdom of God.  It is a seed that is scattered on the land that undergoes change and growth while the sower waits for it to come to harvest time.  It is like a seed so small that one would not expect it to become the largest of plants.  These parables remind me too of Jesus’ words in St. John’s Gospel when he says that unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain.  But if it dies it produces much fruit.

What does the image of seed and the process of germination teach us about the kingdom of God?  I don’t want to wade too deeply into plant biology here because to do so would be to wade into a topic I am not qualified to say much about.  However, for the purposes of this parable image of seed we might consider that seed that is scattered, sown, and planted is not a dead thing, but a living thing.  We can say that seed is in a living but dormant state.  The image of seed falling to the ground and dying, rather than having a literal meaning, is an image or analogy: seed that is planted gives up its previous dormant form.  In this sense, it “dies”, gives up itself, and transforms into something different.  Once a seed is planted, water in the soil begins a process by which the seed coat ruptures, and the heretofore dormant embryonic root is exposed and grows into the ground where it begins to extract nutrients and minerals that promote its growth and the production of shoots and leaves.

And Jesus says this tells us “how it is with the kingdom of God.”  God’s kingdom in seed form begins its process of germination in us by faith and baptism.  God’s kingdom is here in our midst the Scriptures say; and we await its fulfillment in the heavenly life to come.  The seed is scattered in us and slowly, imperceptibly, as if on its own, it gives up itself and transforms into something new, growing toward the harvest the sower expects and for which he waits.  The seed of the kingdom has its own inner strength or force that demands and impels toward full development.

The seed of God’s kingdom is scattered here below.  God expects it to sprout, to grow, to stretch, and to reach up to fulfillment in eternity.  Like the sower, He provides everything that is necessary for proper growth.  He prepares the soil – He prepares us – by the words of the prophets to receive the kingdom He plants.  He even sends His own Son, Jesus Christ, to till the ground with the instrument, the plow of the Cross, and to water us with the gift of the Blood and water flowing from his open side.  And He waits patiently to gather the harvest.

As analogies go, parables are not literally applicable in all aspects of the image.  For instance, taking the parable of the scattered seed, God the Sower, unlike the man in the parable, certainly knows how the seed of the kingdom sprouts and grows.  He is, we might say, more actively involved than the sower in the parable in that God continues to give forth all the necessary nourishment in order for the kingdom to grow in us.  In other words, God is not merely waiting for the harvest unaware of how to promote kingdom growth in us.  Likewise, as the parable applies to us, we are not passive in kingdom growth in ourselves.  We have been given the gift of free will and so we are called to be part of, and indeed to be responsible for, kingdom growth in our own lives and in the lives of others.  Disciples are supposed to be witnesses of the kingdom in this world and disciples are supposed to make other disciples.

The second reading comes into play here.  The kingdom being planted in us here below means we are called to undergo ongoing transformation so that the kingdom grows to its full harvest.  The seed planted in us and germinated with faith and baptism means we give up ourselves and the former ways of life so that kingdom life grows in us.  By this we can understand St. Paul: “while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.”  With the kingdom planted in us, our “seed coat” of sin must rupture so that kingdom life can grow and flourish in us, taking in all the nourishment God generously provides.  Like Jesus’ words in St. John’s Gospel, the seed planted here below must die, it must give up itself, in order to transform into newness of life.  And so, our use of free will, what we do in the body, matters for kingdom growth in us.  What we do in the body speaks to whether the kingdom harvest is lacking or ripe in us.  St. Paul’s image can be understood then: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.”  Yes, what do in this “seed coat” of the body matters.

The kingdom planted generously and lovingly by God requires that we give up our former way of life and be transformed here below.  Will we give up whatever sin is ours and submit it to God’s kingdom?  That is the question for each of us.  Have you ever heard it said, “Well, I’m okay, I mean I haven’t committed adultery or murdered anyone.”  Such comments excuse and minimize what are the kingdom-limiting factors in one’s life.  When I hear that I want to say, “That’s great, then let’s not waste breath on things that aren’t real for you and let’s get to what are the sins that limit the kingdom in you.”  The growth of conversion requires our cooperation.  Where we struggle to give up old ways and to live more fully on the nourishment God provides, we can take courage in the patient, tender care of God who expects a harvest in us and who does not abandon us in that growth.  Like the tender shoot from the cedar tree in the first reading that is torn off and planted high above Israel, providing proper dwelling, so God the Son, Jesus Christ, has given up his own life to provide us everything we need so that the kingdom grows in us.  At every Holy Mass we pray the Lord’s Prayer.  We might hear those familiar words about earth as having a particular call to us to submit ourselves to the kingdom in this body: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.”

Pentecost Sunday

Dominica Pentecostes

Vigil & Mass of the Day

20 May 2018

The Church concludes this weekend the Holy Season of Easter with this great solemnity of Pentecost.  Pentecost is the celebration of that day when, after having prayed for Christ’s promised gift, the Holy Spirit descended upon the early Church, with His gifts and power being poured out upon the Apostles and disciples.  We also pray for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon us today.  Listen again to part of the opening collect of this Mass: “with the divine grace that was at work when the Gospel was first proclaimed, fill now once more the hearts of believers.”  In this weekend’s Mass the Church throughout the world prays that the same Spirit who came at Pentecost would continue to work through us.

Before the beginning of Christian faith, the Jewish faith observed a feast of Pentecost.  For Jews, the celebration of Pentecost was a summons to return to the Holy City Jerusalem to recall their birth as the chosen people of God.  Perhaps that origin in Jewish faith of recalling birth as God’s people is why the Christian feast of Pentecost has always been viewed as a birthday.  It is viewed as the birthday of the Church.  Before the first Christian Pentecost took place Jesus had called together his first followers, gave the Church her essential structure and mission, and declared that his Church would be established upon the rock of St. Peter, a foundation that the gates of Hell would never be able to destroy.  As if the time leading up to the first Christian Pentecost was like a time of gestation, the Catholic Church’s birthday is commonly viewed as that first Pentecost described in the Acts of the Apostles.  Finally filled with the very Spirit of God and empowered with His gifts, the Church Jesus established went out boldly to proclaim Christ to peoples of every tongue, land, and nation.

Sticking with that idea of birth, we might consider how in most cases we expect that a pregnant woman will receive some pre-natal care.  She will avoid things that will harm the child within her.  She will be guided by people with medical knowledge to arrive at that day when a healthy child may be born into the world.  Given that Pentecost is a birthday, and that we pray today for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our lives, perhaps the analogy of pre-natal care can instruct us on how we should live our Christian life so that Christ comes to fuller birth in each one of us.  Pentecost is the completion of the Paschal mystery that is, the mysteries of the eternal saving value of Christ’s suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension.  He has made it possible for a new life to come to birth in us, a life that will come to full development in the eternity of Heaven.  Pentecost is our call to live this life more fully beginning here and now.  But what sort of “pre-natal care” do we need to give the grace of God in us so that it comes to fuller birth?  You see, we make a mistake if we think there is nothing more any of us must do in order to arrive at Christ’s offer of salvation.  We need to make sure that we nourish, protect, guard, develop this deposit of the Spirit placed in us by faith and baptism.  Christ has redeemed us, yes.  He has bridged the gap between us and God, yes.  He has opened the gates of Paradise, yes.  But it remains for us to live united with Christ now so that having turned from sin we allow his life to come to fuller birth in us.  Only this will lead to eternal salvation.  The Scriptures also can be seen to hint at awaiting this birth where St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans: “For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19).  In fact, St. Paul goes on to use that very image of birth just three verses later: “We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains” (Rom. 8:22).

The whole creation eagerly awaits the revelation – that is, the showing forth, the birth – of God’s children.  How should we care for the life of grace in us?  What changes must we make so that the life of grace isn’t harmed or unable to come to fuller birth?  Certainly our spiritual “pre-natal” care must include the spiritual life-blood of prayer, it must include confession of the poison of our sins that does harm to that life placed within us, it must include the nourishment of the Holy Eucharist worthily received, it must include service to others and study of God’s Word and the saving teachings of our faith.  Will you give God’s grace in you this “pre-natal care?”  The whole creation groans and waits for how our world will be different if we live fully by the Holy Spirit.  You see, Pentecost is not just the birthday of some institution, the Church.  It is your birthday too!  We rejoice that we have been made adopted sons and daughters of God.  We rejoice in the completion of Christ’s saving mysteries.  We rejoice in the birthday of the Church.  Our joy can’t be complete, and we can’t be the people we are called to be for the good of the world, until we let Christ’s life come to fuller birth in us.  And so we pray today and always, Come, Holy Spirit!

Pentecost Sunday

“Come, Holy Spirit.” In his homily for Pentecost Sunday, Fr. Hamilton’s reflects on the the conclusion of the Easter season, the birth of the Church, and our call to continue the mission of that Church to spread the Gospel to all nations.

Reading 1 ACTS 2:1-11
Responsorial Psalm PS 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34
Reading 2 1 COR 12:3B-7, 12-13
Gospel JN 20:19-23