Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXI per Annum C

25 August 2019

It is very common here in the Bible-belt that questions of salvation are discussed.  At some point I am sure most of us have been directly asked, “Are you saved?”  To pay attention to the Gospel passage today it is clear that the question of who is saved and how many precedes us by centuries.  Today we hear the question asked of Jesus.

In context, the questioner is asking will only a few Israelite people be saved?    It is important to note that before Jesus’ time and during his time this question surfaced and there were different schools of thought among the rabbis about the world to come, which is the Jewish idea of salvation.  Some rabbis took the position that all Israel, all the members of the Twelve Tribes would be saved.  But another current of thought said that the saved would be few and not many.  In this current of thought some rabbis highlighted different moments of Hebrew/Israelite history and noted groups that would not be saved.  Rabbis noted that the generation of the Flood would not be saved.  This was the generation of Noah and the Scriptures say that wickedness was everywhere and thus God destroyed them with the Flood.  These rabbis highlighted the Israelites whose sin contributed to the Babylonian Exile and the destruction of the Temple would not be saved.  They noted that the notorious sin among the men of Sodom would mean they would not see the world to come.  And rabbis noted that the ten tribes who went into exile in the north and intermingled with the culture and religion of the Assyrians would not be saved.  This position that not all Israelites would be saved is a belief that only a remnant of Israel will see the world to come, the promised Day of the Lord, the new creation, that place of harmony.  With this in mind we can appreciate familiar words about the world to come, like those of the Prophet Isaiah: “Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat; The baby shall play by the viper’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.  They shall not harm or destroy on all my holy mountain; … On that day the Lord shall again take it in hand to reclaim the remnant of his people” (Is. 11:6, 8-9, 11).

With this background, what about Jesus’ response?  Will only a few be saved?  It is important to note that Jesus adopts this remnant, this the-saved-will-be-few school of thought.  His is a sobering answer.  And it is difficult.  To be clear, it is not difficult to understand.  Rather, it is difficult to accept.  He says, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.”  And to those outside knocking the Master will say, “I do not know where you are from.”  The most sobering aspect of Jesus’ adopting of the more restrictive notion of salvation is what the image he uses communicates.  The image says that some who are trying to enter his kingdom will not be able to do so.  They will not be strong enough to get in.  The other sobering message of Jesus’ words is that those who are seeking entrance, to whom the Master says, “I do not know where you are from,” are at least acquaintances of the Master.  The lesson here is that mere acquaintanceship with Jesus will not save and will not be enough to gain entrance to the kingdom.  Listen to how close those seeking to enter had been: “And you will say, ‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets’.”  I don’t know about you, but that is stunning to hear.  Those who will not gain entrance to the kingdom are not merely people completely far off, people who never followed Jesus.  Rather, they are people who interacted with him.  They were in his presence.  They ate with him.  They listened to his teaching.  But still they hear the message: I do not know where you are from!

So the saved will be few and gaining entrance to salvation will be as entering through a narrow gate.  And why will those who are not saved fail to have strength to enter the world to come?  This is important to note.  What does Jesus say of them?  “Depart from me, all you evildoers!”  It is their sin, their wickedness that prevents them from being strong enough to enter salvation.  And this is really key and quite a shock: What does their wickedness mean or result in for their relationship with Jesus?  It is as if he never knew them.  “I do not know where you are from.”  I think this saying highlights a truth of Catholic faith with which perhaps we are uncomfortable and would like to believe is just excessive piety.  We explain and believe that the more serious type of sin, what we call mortal sin, brings to death the soul’s spiritual life with God.  It ends friendship with God.  If not confessed, healed, and repented of, it leads to eternal separation from God.  Surely that is too harsh, we want to say, right?  I mean, come on, if I’m baptized and I basically lead a good life and I want to be with Jesus nothing really separates me from God in any real or meaningful way, right?  Oh?!  The gospel says that those who are seeking entrance to the kingdom know Jesus and had been in his presence.  Yet, they are evildoers.  They are wicked sinners.  And what is the result of doing evil as regards our relationship with the Master?  He looks upon the severed relationship and says, “I do not know where you are from.”  What makes them unable to enter the kingdom?  What makes them strangers to the Lord?  Their grave mortal sins!  They do not simply harm the relationship.  They sever it to the point of rendering the wicked sinner unrecognizable to the Lord.

Do you realize we are supposed to learn something for ourselves and our relationship with Jesus in this hard teaching?  You see, Jesus draws the questioner into the question.  It is the same for us.  In adopting the remnant-will-be-saved school of thought, Jesus makes the question about the questioner’s own salvation and says: “And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves cast out.”  So, if Jesus’ answer for the Israelites was that some who entered the covenant would not be saved because of their wickedness, what do we who have entered the New Covenant by baptism learn for our own salvation?  We must strive for the narrow gate and we must turn from our wickedness!

Things within our world and even our Church seem like a sorry circus depending on where you train your focus.  If the world even bothers to think about salvation at all, it basically assumes that all people are going to Heaven.  I mean, maybe not Hitler, but you have to be really bad, like almost unimaginably evil to not make it to Heaven.  That’s not what the Bible and Jesus say.  Go to just about any funeral and from the words spoken it sure seems like the deceased is being canonized and that we have some direct knowledge they are already in Heaven.  That’s incredibly presumptuous.  In the Church some have an acquaintance with Jesus for Christmas and Easter, but not much else.  For others their relationship with Jesus might be more about taking rather than giving from their talent or their treasure.  Others might be present and active in so many good ways, but rarely ever go to confession.  Do those things sound like striving for the narrow gate?  And then there is the really crazy stuff that leaves you scratching your head: People who claim to be faithful followers of the Lord but who lead moral lives very much in conflict with Christ and who act as if that is not a grave problem.  There is moral dissent on issues like adultery, sodomy, abortion, and contraception.  You can find people who claim to be Catholic advocating for abortion and claiming to be Catholic.  You can find Christian groups and even churches flying gay pride flags.  I ask, does that at least promote confusion and perhaps seem to aid others in their grave sin?  Of course it does!  And then there is doctrinal dissent.  This week the top Jesuit priest in the order said another silly thing.  It is becoming a particularly Jesuit charism to say silly, uncatholic things.  He said that the devil is not a personified being but rather a symbolic reality.  Well, that’s not even authentic Catholic teaching.  That’s not even biblical.  This doesn’t help people respond to the narrow way and I wonder when Church leaders will call this nonsense out?

I don’t know the answer to that.  But I do know that I must proclaim the fullness of Catholic truth, that I must strive so that my soul gets to Heaven, and that I must work such that you might get there too.  Given what we learn from Jesus in this passage, the question might be put this way: Will you strive to be the remnant?  Will you seek to follow and to remain on the narrow path?  That’s the way to Heaven, no matter what the world is doing around you.  And while what we learn today is sobering indeed let’s not forget the Good News: God has come to save us and has paid the price for our salvation!  Our response is to strive and to make use of the rich gifts of grace in His Church such that we enter Heaven.  Yes, our efforts are needed and we must strive.  But the Good News is that throughout our efforts we are wrapped in the mercy of God who holds nothing back for our salvation!  It is He who comes “to gather nations of every language” [first reading] that many might see His glory.  We do not disdain or lose heart at the Lord’s discipline [second reading].  Rather we strive to guard and live seriously our relationship with God, knowing we have a Father who ardently desires us to recline at table at the banquet of salvation.

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XIX per Annum C

11 August 2019

Summer is a common time for family vacations.  Family vacations are a special time to enjoy recreation and to remember what binds us together.  One summer my family took a vacation out to the old family ranch in Montana where my Grandpa Hamilton had grown up and where my dad had spent so many summers as a child.  My grandpa, who had died years before I was born, and the Montana ranch were things I had only seen in pictures until that summer.  That trip gave me a deeper sense of the grandfather I know only in photos, and it gave me a better sense of the life of my ancestors, a life that had been transmitted to me as a descendant.

The first and second readings tell us that we are descendants, born of the faith of our fathers.  We descend from a great cloud of witnesses whose praises are sung throughout the Scriptures.  We receive an inheritance by being chosen by God as we sang in the psalm: “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.”  The Scriptures today spend quite some time recalling our family history in the faith.  The first reading highlights the night of the Exodus when our ancestors were freed from Egypt and the second reading recounts several events in the life of Abraham, our father in faith.  Our Jewish ancestors in the faith trusted in the Word of God and put their faith in His promises, even though none of them lived to see His promises, as the second reading said: “All these died in faith.  They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar.”  They only saw it from afar because what God promised would not be fulfilled until Christ came and established his Church to continue to make, from all nations, sons and daughters of God as numerous as the stars.  Our fathers knew the night of the Passover, but it was not until the night of the Last Supper that the full meaning of the Passover was fulfilled.  And so they only saw it from afar.

We have been made members of God’s family through Christ Jesus.  The life of faith has been transmitted to us, in part, through our ancestors.  And we gain a better sense of these witnesses of faith and what our life truly is by spending time with them in the Scriptures, in prayer, and in living the full life of Christ in his Church.  While what God has promised has been inaugurated on earth by Christ in his Church, we are still much like our ancestors in the faith in that we, too, await the complete fulfillment of what God has begun in Christ – a fulfillment that will only take place in heaven.  And the Lord Jesus teaches us in the gospel that while we await the fulfillment of God’s promises, we must be ready, we must be vigilant or else we might lose out.

The type of readiness Jesus calls us to observe is communicated in the idea of girding our loins and lighting our lamps.  These ideas harken back to the Exodus when the departure by night from Egypt needed the light of torches.  And the readiness to move with haste on that night meant typical ankle-length garments needed to be cinched up at the waist so as not to impede movement or to cause one to trip.  That is what “gird your loins” means.  The modern-day version of “gird your loins” would be something like, get your pants up over your rear!  Now I know this is an odd image in a homily and I’m truly not intending to make fun, but we all know the fashion the past many years to wear pants or shorts hanging extremely low.  My point in raising this fashion is that it is totally impractical for movement.  That’s the same idea in Jesus’ admonition to be ready with girded loins.  If you have ever watched an episode of COPS or LivePD, when the surprise of being lit up by red and blue lights catches someone off guard, the person can’t run very well with low-hanging pants.  Oddly enough this fits very well with Jesus’ point: sort of like being lit up by police lights, if we are to be ready for the surprising and unknown hour of the Son of Man’s return then we have to be ready to move, ready to respond, ready to turn to the light and to say our final “no” to the darkness of sin and the dark kingdom of the prince of this world.  Jesus says: “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return.”

We must be ready for the Lord’s return.  We must be ready to be judged.  We must be ready for the opportunity to enter the fullness of God’s kingdom.  For the Lord will come on a day and at an hour we do not expect.  On that day the Lord will invite us to heavenly life – what the Bible describes as a rich wedding feast.  This is the feast our ancestors in the faith saw from afar and which we begin to experience even here if we participate in the Holy Eucharist, coming forward worthily after having first received forgiveness for our sins.  The promise of life with Christ in heaven must be the treasure our heart seeks.  We must live that life now and be ready to move with our loins girt, our belts cinched up.  What should we do to be ready to inherit a full place in the kingdom?  We should already be living its inauguration here and now; we should already be doing the work of a servant who awaits the master’s return.  But laziness, complacency, and living to excess, these and other things will leave us unprepared at the Lord’s return, sort of like being caught with our pants falling off our rears!  So, what kind of servants are we?  Do we already live our life in the kingdom?  Or do we consider the time we have as God’s delay, a time when we can get away with sin?  Hearing this Gospel, what kind of servants will we choose to be?  What we do now and how we live now will determine whether we are assigned a place with the faithful or the unfaithful.  Jesus says, “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.”

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XVI per Annum C

21 July 2019

In the first reading we have an account of one of the most famous theophanies in the Old Testament, a revelation of God Himself that we can say foreshadows a later more developed understanding of God as Trinity since, as the reading says, the Lord appeared but Abraham saw three figures.  This theophany has inspired many ancient icons that depict God’s revealing of Himself by showing three figures who are dining with Abraham.  Abraham welcomed and quickly gave focused hospitality to the Lord God, desiring to have the Lord stay with him and providing a meal to the mysterious figures.  In the Gospel account of Jesus’ visit to the home of Martha and her sister, Mary, it would seem that welcome and hospitality are also a clear theme.

I bet that if we could ask people what types of things a parish ought to do, what kinds of things help it to thrive, I bet a significant number of responses would indicate that welcoming and hospitality are key indicators of a parish climate and key things a parish ought to do well.  So common is this expectation that the impression of not being welcoming would be an indictment of a parish.  But is a generic or uncritical welcome and hospitality really being proposed as a lesson from the Gospel selection today?

What characteristics can we witness about Martha in the Gospel?  (1) A first characteristic, she has a welcoming attitude.  She welcomed Jesus.  The Gospel tells us that quite directly and plainly.  (2) A second characteristic, Martha was quick to be busy about being an excellent hostess and she has a servant’s heart.  “Burdened with much serving,” the Gospel said.  (3) And a third characteristic, Martha knows the value of a team, she is a delegator who brings others into her work.  In speaking to Jesus about her sister, Martha says, “Tell her to help me.”  She is the type of person who, if you had her on your parish hospitality committee, you’d be inclined to think “We have a great person in that role, a real go-getter.”  But the Lord does not accept Martha’s method and gives a rebuke to her notion that Mary should do as she does.

If you have a more active, jump into action, personality this Gospel might leave you disappointed and discouraged because for as much as we easily assume that welcome and hospitality are primary virtues, the Lord says Martha isn’t quite the one to imitate.  But if you are more active by nature and quick to jump into service, don’t despair.  Jesus in no way denigrates being attentive to the aspects of welcome and hospitality.  Rather, he makes a positive comparison.  The rebuke of Martha is not because her activity is bad.  Rather, it is the way in which she does it that the Lord does not entirely support.  It is rather that something else is better, the better part… simply being attentive and focused on the presence of Jesus and being with him as his disciple.  The Gospel makes the clear point that what Martha is busy doing is a burden.  Other translations say, she was distracted with much serving.  In other words, the way she goes about this work is pulling her away from something else.  In this case, it is pulling her away from Someone, from being at peace by simply being in Jesus’ presence.  It’s as if she has to prove something to feel good about having Jesus near her and being at rest.  Furthermore, the Gospel goes on to tell us more about Martha, that her activity is corrupted with anxiety and worry.  It is this precise way of doing what she is doing that Jesus rejects.  Mary has chosen the better part of simply being focused and in peace in Jesus’ presence.  What Jesus is doing here is to emphasize the proper order of simply being with him, in relationship, in intimacy.  He is making a finer point: Activity, like welcoming and hospitality, if done in a distracted, anxious way, gets corrupted.  And to the tendency to let such work eclipse a proper focus on Jesus, well, then, Mary has chosen the better part.  It is this better part that each disciple must keep in first place.

What can we learn?  Where do our efforts as individual disciples and as a parish begin?  Does it begin with Jesus, with simply being with him?  If not, we have failed to start with the better part, with the most important focus.  How much attention do we give that?  Or like Martha, do we get things out of order, keeping ourselves busy and anxious, and upset that we are burdened and overworked?  Do we start to feel resentment because we want to pull others into our load to help us carry it?  What attitude ought we to have, and what things ought we to do, to show that we adopt the posture of Mary in today’s Gospel, that posture of sitting at the feet, which in ancient culture was a sign of being a disciple gathered near the Master?

I suggest it is Abraham who shows us that Martha’s work can be done with a better focus.  He too quickly jumps into action, but notice his desire is that the Lord stay with him.  He says, “…if I may ask you this favor, please do not go on past your servant.”  And Abraham stays with the Lord God while the mysterious figures dine.  The prime example of the “better part” for us in our time is worship at Holy Mass, and a commitment to extend our time with the Lord by participation in our adoration program.  I think even the physical layout of our chapel, with the Lord’s Real Presence elevated on top of the Tabernacle, invites us to a posture like Mary’s, our kneeling or sitting in the pews being sort of like a place at the Lord’s feet.  By keeping this proper order of the “better part” we adopt the simple focused desire to be in the Lord’s presence.  But the opportunity for a Mary-like focus on the “better part” extends out into our daily home life too, even when we are not here at church.  Our prayer, our study of the faith and its saving doctrine, discussing the faith with others, teaching it to children, which is a sacred trust parents have in the home, all of this is a way we live the “better part”.

Our take away is that before we even get to activity, to the tasks of welcome and hospitality, before we jump into action, so easy to do in our frenzied pace of life, each disciple needs to give focused welcome to being with Jesus in the intimate life of prayer that should mark a disciple.  Like Martha we each have burdens, anxieties, and worries.  Is it any surprise that so often when God or His messenger appears to someone in the Bible the first message God speaks is “Be not afraid?”  Jesus’ gift of his presence and our reciprocal gift of being present to him resolves the burdens we carry much more so than our distracted activity.  By being in the Lord’s presence and by studying him and his teachings may we find a healing of our worries and anxieties such that we experience the reward of choosing the better part which we pray will not be taken from us in this life or in the life to come!

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - First Solemn Mass of Rev. Jerome Krug

Dominica XIII per Annum C

First Solemn Mass of Rev. Fr. T. Jerome Krug

30 June 2019

A newly ordained priest was looking down the long line of faithful awaiting his first priestly blessing.  Among the many familiar faces the new priest spotted a man he did not recognize.  When the man arrived at the front of the line he told the new priest that though they had never previously met he had come to participate and to see what an ordination was like.  In that line, on that day 20 years ago this Tuesday, I imparted my first priestly blessing to that man, your father, Father.  Your dad and I had no idea then how that intersection of our lives would be only the first of many for years to come.  Fr. Krug, you were six years old on that day.  Moving forward from that day, I came to know your dear mother, you and your siblings, and even extended family.  It has been a real joy over the years to experience so many other intersections of our lives: my years as an assistant priest in Edmond when you were a child, visits and meals at your home, my time in vocations work when you met with me to tell me you had decided to go to seminary, and now to be the Pastor of your home parish during the years of your seminary studies, your ordination and First Mass.  Over these 20 years I have been accustomed to looking upon you as a spiritual son – but now also a brother priest.  Father Krug, I am very proud of you!  This parish is very proud of you!  To have the title “Father” resound within these walls, knowing that it refers to a son of our parish, is such a tremendous blessing to us!  As you now take up a unique place at the altar of sacrifice, we ask you to prayerfully remember your home parish as you hold in your hands the greatest gift of God to us: The Real Presence of Jesus Christ in his sacrifice for our salvation!  We marvel at the working of God who has blessed our parish in so many ways.  We continue to pray for you.  We ask God to bless all the different vocations that are discovered and lived here.  We look forward to more young men here, more sons of our parish, one day bearing that title “father,” which you have just accepted.

There is plenty in the Scripture selections of this Holy Mass to instruct all disciples in all vocations and, in a particular way, to instruct a new priest.  That instruction comes, as we might expect, from Jesus’ words, but also, perhaps unexpectedly, from a small detail that could be easily overlooked, a detail we might call his “focus,” or maybe better stated, Jesus’ “intention,” what the Gospel described as that resolute determination of his to go to Jerusalem.

The first lesson for us comes from Jesus’ words which reveal to us the demands of being his disciple.  In the Gospel selection we discover the urgency of being his disciple and the demand of having the Lord as the central focus of our life.  To the invitation, “Follow me,” one person responded, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.”  The Lord answered back, “Let the dead bury their dead.  But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  Another person along the Lord’s journey promised to follow yet added, “but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”  The Lord answered, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”  How significant are Jesus’ words about the urgency of his call to be a disciple and to follow him?  Consider these words of the Lord as compared to a similar scene in the first reading.  Upon being called by Elijah the prophet, Elisha said, “Please, let me kiss my father and mother goodbye, and I will follow you.”  Notice that Elijah permitted Elisha the momentary hesitation.  He said to Elisha, “Go back!  Have I done anything to you?”  The contrast here shows us how much more Jesus expects and demands when he says, “Follow me.”  Jesus’ words demonstrate to us that even the most serious and natural of human tendencies and responsibilities, as good as those are (like burying the dead and maintaining family relationships), if understood in proper order, are less important and less urgent for a disciple than is the call to place Jesus and God’s kingdom first in our lives.  Am I making too much of the urgency and the radical nature of the response Jesus expects?  Consider that for as solemn of a duty as there was in the Old Testament to parents and family, who was the only One who came ahead of that?  The answer is in the order of the Ten Commandments.  Honoring God comes before honoring even parents.  Only God could demand first place before parents.  The response Jesus makes to those who want to first go home before following him is an implicit revelation of his divinity.  He is God.  He comes first.  He gets to make that claim on us.  Is Jesus the center of your life?  So much more urgent is Jesus’ call that even just setting your hand to the plow but still looking back reveals you have the wrong priorities and a different center for your life.

 To this urgent call the response of the consecrated religious, of the priest, of the married man or woman, or of the single person will not all look the same.  However, what is very clear and common to us all is that nothing and no one can come before our response to Jesus and to the urgency to proclaim God’s kingdom.  For the priest, the response to this urgent call will be evident, even before his preaching and ministry, in his daily life of prayer, in his time spent in silent meditation on the Scriptures, in his care for his spiritual life and soul, and in a particularly critical way in his celibacy lived in a chaste way as a gift for the Church.  Fr. Krug, as a priest you will be surrounded, rather like Jesus, by the crowds with their demands and expectations.  The priest can never be satisfied with letting anything come before the Lord.  You will, of course, be keeping the Lord in the center of your life by serving the legitimate needs of the people.  There need be no false dichotomy between action and contemplation, between ministry and prayer.  However, it can be very easy for the parish priest to have busy days with lots of activities and to convince himself he is doing the work of the Lord.  But if the priest does not first and always begin with sitting silently with and before the Lord of the work, you can bet something or someone other than Jesus has crept into the center of his life.  Fr. Krug, the gift of celibacy, which you formally accepted at diaconate, can serve as a reminder to you that you really have no one other than the Lord; and celibacy received and integrated into your life can give impulse to an intense life of prayer.  That gift accepted by the priest, becomes also a gift to the rest of us in the Church who benefit from a chaste love available for service and who likewise see in the priest the eschatological reminder that we are each called to a relationship with God that excludes all the idols, whether internal or external, that we so easily enshrine.

But what about the second lesson today, that small detail in the Gospel selection that might be easily overlooked?  It is a lesson that I would say applies uniquely to a priest.  Jesus was “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.”  What can that tell us and tell a new priest about responding to the urgency of the Lord’s call?  As the Gospel says “when the days for Jesus’ being taken up were fulfilled” Jesus was focused and absolutely determined to go to Jerusalem.  This “being taken up” refers to the events of Jesus’ exodus, his passage from death to glory in the resurrection and ascension.  This ninth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel begins the long travel narrative that lasts for ten chapters until you finally arrive at the end of chapter nineteen.  There you see the specific destination in Jerusalem for Jesus’ resolute determination.  Jesus was NOT simply going to Jerusalem, for upon arriving in the city, chapter nineteen says: “And he entered the temple” where he drove out those who were making it a den of robbers (cf. Lk. 19:45).

An interpretation of this focus of Jesus in the Gospel is that the Great High Priest was resolute and firm in his intention to process to the place of sacrifice.  Why did the Samaritans refuse to welcome Jesus on his journey?  Simply because he was a Jew and because of their historic ethnic antagonism?  Not at all!  Jesus’ resolute determination to go to Jerusalem and to the Temple creates a direct conflict for the Samaritans in their view that their temple is the true sanctuary.  The Samaritans, in other words, refuse Jesus because they reject the Jerusalem Temple as an alternative temple to their own.  Their refusal of Jesus is a specifically religious objection and strikes at the very heart of who is God and what is the true sacrifice.  That Jesus remains resolute when some dismiss his focus on the sanctuary offers a lesson for a priest.

Dear Fr. Krug and brother priests, as St. Benedict instructs in his Rule (43:3), “Let nothing be preferred to the work of God.”  The monastic use of “work of God” is understood as the sacrifice of praise offered to God in the entirety of the Sacred Liturgy.  Is it too much of a stretch to say St. Benedict is highlighting something not altogether dissimilar from Jesus’ firm intention to make his way to the place of sacrifice?  The determination of Jesus instructs us priests that nothing – nothing – not parents, nor family, nor possessions, nor honors, nor hobbies can come before the urgent call to unite ourselves to Jesus in his determination and in his priestly sacrifice.  That is, to unite ourselves to his own greatest work, to the obedient trust by which Jesus accomplished his exodus, his being taken up.  This is not to be understood as a call to see our sanctuaries as some type of eccentric playground where the priest remains in obscurity.  It is also not a call to ignore the many ways a priest must sacrifice for his people outside of the sanctuary.  But it is to say that nothing is greater or more important or more urgent for the priest than to himself be united to the sacrifice of Christ and to unite his people to that same sacrifice made present in the Sacred Liturgy and on the sacred altar.  For ultimately, we must admit, the journey Jesus resolutely begins in the Gospel today has for its destination not just the city of Jerusalem and not only the Temple therein.  Ultimately, his journey is about his arrival to the sanctuary and the altar of the Cross and, through his resurrection and ascension, the final destination is his being taken up to his rightful place in the heavenly city and the sanctuary of God’s throne.

If this is Jesus’ firm intention and if a priest should model this urgency by that same resolute focus on bringing himself and his people to the altar of the Cross, we can appreciate the teaching of the Second Vatican Council in its document on the Sacred Liturgy where it says, “the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the font from which all her power flows” (Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10).  If that is to be more than just nice sounding teaching or a slogan, I will say quite openly, that it needs to be more clearly seen in pastoral leadership and planning.  Almost like an inhospitable Samaritan many dismiss any consistent and resolute focus in pastoral leadership on the dignity of the Sacred Liturgy.  We rightly talk much these days about mission and evangelization and pastoral planning, but if we want vitality and power to accomplish those lofty hopes, we must begin with a resolute focus on our own procession to the sanctuary and to the sacrifice of praise offered to God in the whole of the Sacred Liturgy.  We priests must not fail to keep that focus.  And though the lay faithful do not offer the sacrifice in the same way as the priest, they too must make sacrifice and keep this resolute focus of Jesus so to be gathered and incorporated into his determination to save us by means of his great exodus made present in the Paschal Mystery.  If we, priests and faithful, lose that focus we fail to tap into that font that gives power for our response to the Lord’s urgent call.  If the evidence of priestly ministry reveals more determination and focus on our office business hours, on money, on programs, and construction projects then we are not following the Lord’s example.  If our people are to be called into this great procession and helped to avoid along the way the distractions and temptations to call down fire upon the inhospitable and to choose other persons or other things before God, then we priests must be firm in our focus and resolute intention that the sacred liturgy is the summit of all of our directives and the source of power for mission.

Today, for the first time, Fr. Krug, you lead us to the place of Jesus’ resolute determination, to his sacrifice at this altar.  May what we receive from this font of power help us place nothing before the Lord, such that the words of the psalmist are truly our own: “You are my inheritance, O Lord.”

The Most Holy Trinity

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Proverbs 8:22-31; Ps. 8; Rom. 5:1-5; Jn. 16:12-15

16 June 2019

Observing the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity this weekend we commemorate in the Sacred Liturgy the central and fundamental mystery that we receive and accept in faith.  The very being of God is the center and foundation of all we believe.  The mystery of the Holy Trinity expresses our faith in God Himself, how He exists – not just that He exists – what His inner life is like.  This aspect of our faith is something purely of God’s revelation, that is, His showing of Himself to us.  In other words, no human mind on its own would come up with the concept of a Trinity, that the one God exists as Three Persons, were it not for God revealing this about Himself.  When we profess faith in the Holy Trinity we mean that the being or substance of God is one and that His inner life is a communion of Divine Persons in relationship.  Each of the Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is equally and fully God.  In other words, they are completely equal in substance.  We do not believe in three divine substances, three gods, joined together.  We do not believe that the three Persons are a division of the divine substance, as if each Person is one-third God.  Rather, we profess belief that the substance of God is one and undivided and that the inner life of God, as revealed to us, is a perfect communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It is God who shows this about Himself and reveals this truth to us.  It is what we learn from the Sacred Scriptures.  On the authority of God who makes Himself known we accept and profess faith that God is a unity in Trinity and a Trinity in unity.

I suggest that there is something in us that is not at ease with mystery.  We want answers to everything and we think we are owed such answers.  If this unease with mystery existed before our time, I think it has been exacerbated in our time by the ubiquitous presence of the Internet and smart phones.  At our finger tips are the answers to most everything in the world.  That availability puffs up our self-centered pride in our expectation that we should have all the answers.  And even more problematic is the related attitude that develops in us when something remains mysterious and is not immediately and easily understandable and discernible to us.  In the face of mystery not easily understood, that even more serious root problem is the tendency to consider the mystery itself as somehow of less value to me personally because I cannot understand it.  In other words, we might tend to view the mystery itself with more suspicion before we would first admit the limitations of our own mind.  The mystery is suspect; it can’t be my mind that is suspect.  This faulty proposition says answers should come easily and if I can’t understand or grasp something then maybe it’s not true or, perhaps more likely, it is viewed as having less value.  This faulty proposition says if I can’t understand something – and grasp it easily – it somehow lessens the value of my experience and isn’t beneficial or “real” to me.

But that is not how the wisdom of ancient thinkers operated.  And that ancient wisdom is the very foundation upon which we rest today.  In the face of questions about how God revealed Himself and what it means to believe in God, ancient thinkers pondered, and questioned, and had fierce debates, even physical fights, to stretch the limited mind to understand God and the world around them.  Their philosophy and theology is a rich deposit given to us and upon which we must rest to remain in the truth.  It is also a deposit we are duty bound not to change, but rather only to develop in continuity and to further expose the truth already contained in what we receive.  This is why Sacred Tradition in our faith is so vitally important and is not to be rejected except at our own peril.  Today’s first reading from the Book of Proverbs offers us a selection of ancient wisdom that impacts our understanding of the mystery of the Holy Trinity.  In the early Church and among the Fathers of the Church, it was widely held that Proverbs chapter 8 (our first reading) described in veiled and mysterious language the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God before the incarnation.  The “wisdom of God” is the subject and the one speaking in today’s first reading.  This wisdom of God is described as acting alongside and with the Lord God in actions that sound much like the story of creation in the Book of Genesis.  This wisdom of God that, as Proverbs says, is “possessed” or “begotten” or “beheld” existed with the Lord God before all things.  As this ancient wisdom was further explored and, later enlightened by the aid of Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit of truth, the New Testament in the First Letter to the Corinthians describes the incarnate Son of God in a way that should not surprise us.  St. Paul write, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).  No wonder in the Creed our Catholic faith is careful to say both what we do believe and what we do not believe when we say of the Son of God, “begotten, not made, consubstantial (meaning of the same substance) with the Father,” or as we hear in the Latin, “genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri.”  The same equal divinity of the Holy Spirit is revealed by Jesus in the selection of the Gospel we heard today.  Notice, Jesus does not speak of the Holy Spirit merely as a force, but as a Person with personal pronouns: “But when he comes…. he will guide you…. he will speak.”

Is it an authentic value in our faith that we should know and grasp everything immediately, and do so easily?  Or is it actually good for us in the face of mystery to remember that we are not the topmost being, nor the topmost intellect in the created world?  The mysterious and somewhat cryptic words of Jesus in the Gospel certainly encourage humility and patience as he clearly says that his apostles cannot bear or understand now all that he has to say.  Jesus requires of them humility and patience to await the Holy Spirit when he comes.  The event of Pentecost and our reception of the Holy Spirit in the sacraments means we have now the benefit of the Holy Spirit to help us receive the truth of God as Trinity and the truth of other mysteries we profess.  Yet, there is still mystery and we must become comfortable with it.  If we fail to accept mystery and the reality of our own limitations we will actually impede God’s work in us and we will develop the false notion that places ourselves at the center of all things.  We are not meant for a one-time interaction with God by which we comprehend everything about Him.  We are meant for a lifetime of communion and growing relationship.  The Scriptures cannot be fully understood by us, and actually aren’t meant to be, as if we will ever remove all mystery.  In fact, the Scriptures are the living Word of God, made for a lifetime of reflection by which we continue to grasp more and more, if we will allow it.  It may surprise that even the Sacred Liturgy is not supposed to be immediately and easily understood on all levels.  In fact, immediately grasping and understanding everything about our worship is not an authentic Catholic principle of liturgy at all.  It is actually good that mystery remains in our worship.  Our experience of mystery in no way lessens the value of worship, unless we have made the mistake of thinking the focus of worship is ourselves and our preferences, instead of purely the worship that God is owed.  We come here to encounter mystery that transcends us, that is above and beyond us.

The central and fundamental mystery we encounter is the inner life of God, the Blessed Trinity, poured out for our creation and for our salvation.  In humility and patience we receive this faith.  Though it remains mystery we use our minds aided by the Holy Spirit of truth to seek to understand it more and more.  Rather than dismissing the mystery of the Holy Trinity as too complicated, or trivializing it as not relevant to our lives, we recognize this faith in the Holy Trinity is the very foundation of all we are from the simplest Sign of the Cross made with reverence and care, to the divine grace that comes in the Sacraments poured out from the Holy Trinity, to the final unveiling of the mystery of God we await in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Pentecost Sunday

Dominica Pentecostes

9 June 2019

This weekend we come to the climax and the conclusion of the holy season of paschaltide and the ascensiontide.  The season of Easter concludes with the Solemnity of Pentecost, the fulfillment of Jesus’ resurrection promise to send the Holy Spirit.

Just as we Christians in the New Covenant have an annual cycle of feasts, so did the Jews of the Old Covenant before us.  There were seven major festivals for the Jews.  Two of those Jewish festivals have come over into a new expression in the New Covenant and they find their place in our annual cycle of liturgical feasts.  One of those is Passover, which we celebrate at Easter.  The word “pascha,” coming into Latin from Greek, means “Passover” and it is the same word for “Easter.”  That’s why we make reference in our Catholic faith to the paschal (or Passover) mystery, the paschal (or Easter) candle, and the season of Easter as paschaltide.  The second of those Jewish festivals that comes over into the New Covenant is Pentecost.

The Christian imagery of fire to represent the Holy Spirit is so common such that we likely don’t think much about it.  Thus, in the Acts of the Apostles, when we hear that tongues of fire descended upon the apostles and disciples when they received the Holy Spirit, it sort of just seems right to us.  But we can have a deeper appreciation for the Holy Spirit as fire when we look into the Jewish understanding of Pentecost, which we have adopted.  Jewish Pentecost occurred 50 days after Passover, just as our Pentecost arrives 50 days after Easter.  Among the Jewish feasts it was one of three that required pilgrimage, a holy journey to observe the feast.  Over time the Jewish Pentecost, while remaining a harvest feast, took on a spiritual meaning as a celebration of God’s giving of the Law in the Sinai Covenant.  It is in this context of Pentecost as a Jewish celebration of God’s giving of the Law, the Ten Commandments, that we can have a deeper appreciation of why the Holy Spirit descends as tongues of fire.  Another way to highlight this is, why, for instance, didn’t the Holy Spirit descend as a dove at Pentecost, as He had upon Jesus at his baptism?  Listen to the account from the Book of Exodus about God’s giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai (an option for the first reading at the Vigil Mass of Pentecost).  Amid cosmic signs of thunder and lightning and thick cloud and a very loud trumpet blast, Moses brings the Israelites out of their camp to the base of the mountain to meet God.  The Book of Exodus says, “And Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire” (Ex. 19:16-18).  Out of that fire God speaks and Moses, on behalf of the people, goes up and receives the Ten Commandments.  So, notice the parallel: In the Old Covenant at Mt. Sinai, God descends in fire upon the Israelites who are composed of twelve tribes.  In the New Covenant account of Pentecost in Acts of the Apostles, God the Holy Spirit descends in fire upon the twelve Apostles who represent those twelve tribes, and likewise descends upon other disciples gathered with them.  This descent and its connection to God’s presence in fire on Mt. Sinai, we can say, is a revelation of the divinity of the Holy Spirit.  It likewise helps us understand that in our Christian observance, we have at Pentecost a new giving of the Law, a giving of the Law not on stone, but descending upon us, taking on flesh within us.  God’s law does not remain outside of us, but indwells within us.  Pentecost is an interior gift.  This interiority is a significant difference in our Christian observance of Pentecost.  We celebrate now the promise of Jesus fulfilled, namely that the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us and empowers us from within to live God’s commands.

Being empowered from within by the Holy Spirit of God, gives us another critical focus for Pentecost and what it means for us today.  At Pentecost the Apostles and other disciples, by receiving the Holy Spirit, are anointed and consecrated for mission, that is, to be sent out to continue proclaiming God’s kingdom in word and action, and to continue the saving work of Jesus.  I would say that Jesus’ accompanying action of breathing on the apostles and disciples as they receive the Holy Spirit highlights this sense of “going out,” this outward impulse and mission.  After all, breath comes from within and goes out from Jesus.  And breath can also move objects in its path.  Likewise, the early Church, and we who receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit at confirmation, are empowered from within, anointed and consecrated, moved and sent out to actually work for and share in the mission of Jesus.

On this Pentecost, to have a rich understanding of our own being sent out on mission, I want to highlight two words from the Gospel selection.  I’m going to bet they are not the words you might expect.  What two words?  The word “as” and the word “so.”  It seems like a preacher would have to work pretty hard to get something worth saying out of such seemingly inconsequential words, right?  But listen to how the words “as” and “so” feature in Jesus’ action of breathing and saying “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  Jesus says, “AS the Father has sent me, SO I send you” (Jn. 20:21).  Think about what those simple words reveal about what Jesus expects by giving the Holy Spirit, this new giving of the Law internally with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Let me flesh those words out and insert them in this context.  “As the Father has sent me,” OR “Just as,” OR “Just like,” OR “In the same manner as” the Father has sent me, Jesus says, “so I send you,” OR “even so,” OR “in the same way,” I send you.

Upon being anointed and consecrated by the descent of the Holy Spirit, with God’s Law dwelling within in them, the apostles and disciples on that first Christian Pentecost had a deeper share and responsibility for the mission of Jesus.  Do we consider that for ourselves?  God’s Law, God’s very self, the very Holy Spirit of God is not given to us such that we are just some nice box or receptacle to hold the Holy Spirit.  No, Jesus gives us his promise of the Holy Spirit to push us outward into mission, to greater responsibility for his own mission, a mission that is first in the mind of God the Father.  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  In the second reading, St. Paul wrote “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit” (1 Cor. 12:7).  Do you take time to consider what gift of the manifestation of the Spirit has been given to you, and for what benefit?  Do we ask the Lord that in prayer?  Do we ask other members of Christ’s Body to help us identify that?  We should!  The Holy Spirit is given to us who belong to Christ.  It is not given so that we simply become a receptacle to contain it.  It is given so that we are transformed and more deeply conformed to Christ.  It is given so that we go out and transform the concrete reality of the places where we live, and move, and have our being (cf. Acts 17:28).  Do we view Pentecost, our own confirmation, and the gifts of the Spirit given in times of particular need… do we consider those gifts given to us as requiring an outward thrust, an outward mission?  We should!

The collect of this Mass (of Pentecost Day) makes an allusion to the “divine grace that was at work when the Gospel was first proclaimed.”  It makes that allusion because receiving the Holy Spirit in our time carries the implication that the Gospel must still be proclaimed here and now and that the Lord gives divine grace to do it.  Receive the Holy Spirit, aware that as the Father sent Jesus, even so he sends you!

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Dominica IV Paschae C

12 May 2019

This weekend is commonly known as Good Shepherd Sunday because of Jesus’ use of the image of shepherd and sheep in the Gospel, the very same Gospel section where Jesus also proclaims: I am the Good Shepherd.  Good Shepherd Sunday is also a time to give focus to prayer and to our efforts to encourage vocations in our parish by directly speaking to the young people in our midst and in your families about the call of Jesus in their lives.

Jesus says that his sheep hear his voice.  The implication is that his sheep are familiar with him such that they recognize him because they can identify his voice.  And hearing him, they follow him.  You may not have a sheep, but if you have a pet you know this well.  When I return after several days away on vacation my vacations always end in the same curious way: I go over to my mom’s house to… whisper!  Why do I whisper?  Because she keeps my cat and if he hears my voice from within the room he is kept in, he will begin a very loud and obnoxious whining meow.  So, to visit my mom at the end of a vacation I sit in her living room and whisper about my trip because the cat knows my voice and if he gets making noise, my visit with mom is over.

We are familiar with many things.  We know our sports teams.  If you hear “Who dat?” you might well know it’s a reference to the New Orleans Saints.  If you hear that Rumble is giving away tickets in the narthex you know we’re talking Thunder tickets.  We know our songs.  If you hear the rousing beat and the lyrics “Just a man and his will to survive” you could probably quickly respond with “The Eye of the Tiger.”  We know our movies.  If the altar boys are a bit rowdy before Mass and to remind them who is in charge I were to say “I am your father,” they know I’m making a Star Wars reference.  If you press someone to give you the full story and they jokingly respond with “You can’t handle the truth!” you likely have a clear image of Colonel Jessep in A Few Good Men.  There’s nothing wrong with knowing these things and enjoying pop culture.  But in truth these things aren’t worth much in the end.  We would have to admit that so many things with which we are familiar and with which we identify don’t have a lasting value.

How familiar are we with Jesus?  How familiar are we with his voice?  Compare that with how immediately recognizable the “voice” of pop culture is to us, how easily we identity it.  For as much as we so easily identify sports, music, and movies, if we are Christians shouldn’t we be all the more familiar with Jesus, with the voice of the Master, our Good Shepherd?  While Jesus uses the image of a sheep and shepherd, he clearly is using it as an analogy.  When he says he gives his sheep eternal life, we know he is saying there is something more critically important about following him, something more at stake in hearing and listening to him.  Shepherds care for their sheep and their wellbeing in the natural order, but they don’t give them eternal life.   To be familiar with Jesus, to hear his voice, and to follow him is worth much more than the voices and messages of pop culture, frivolity, or dissent that surround us.  When we listen to him and follow him we are permitting him to shepherd us to eternal life.  If we are more familiar with other voices and things of lesser value then we might risk being led astray because then we would be formed and guided by things that do not truly matter and that do not last.

In what ways do we hear Jesus’ voice?  In what ways do we not hear it?  What in our lives needs to change so that we are more attentive to his voice?  In giving guidance and in caring to guard the life of the sheep, a shepherd has to make choices for the sheep that place limits on them, that create boundaries, that restrict them, and that require obedience.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  We are his sheep.  Does your experience of following Jesus mean you know there are boundaries and restrictions that require obedience from you?  Or is it inconceivable that you would have to change any of your ways in order to follow Jesus?  Or is your default setting that whatever I think or feel like is what should be acceptable and okay with God?  Not intending to belittle, I ask that question because it would seem that a prevailing attitude in our time is that if something about following Jesus just hits too close to home then surely it’s too much to ask of my obedience.  We shouldn’t be unaware of this trend such that we are swept up in following voices and messages that are not our Good Shepherd.  There can be no doubt that at some point you, like me, have come across someone claiming to be Catholic yet holding or professing an opinion directly contrary to clear Church teaching, usually in the arena of morality.  Think of any current hot button issue and you can probably find a dissenting voice claiming to be Catholic.  Sometimes the dissenting voice is wearing a Roman collar and ought to know better.  Sometimes the dissenting voice means well but has been so poorly formed they don’t know what they are talking about.  Other times, maybe the most insidious dissent, is the voice that chooses the authority and primacy of the self and simply will not listen to what Jesus and his Church teach.  You can guess I have a number of conversations about faith and Church teaching.  In a particular area of clear moral teaching an otherwise very fine person once told me, “Well, that’s not an area of life that I let the Church’s teaching impact me.”  It’s a stunning statement.  It’s simply a clear refusal to hear Jesus’ voice, to follow in obedience, and so to be led by his shepherding to the pastures of eternal life that Jesus wants to give.  And I think that is more and more a common tendency in our time.  We need to be aware of it.  The tendency goes like this: A person has a challenge or a struggle that requires sacrifice; the person doesn’t want to feel badly about his or her situation; and so, he or she simply chooses to ignore anything from outside him or herself that sounds like an obligation to work, to change, or to follow what is difficult.  Instead a more and more common default setting is to simply shut out the voice of Christ when it hits too close to home or requires too much.

If we are sheep of the flock being guided to eternal life by Jesus then we need to have the conviction that listening to Jesus’ voice and teaching in our own lives actually matters.  And that it matters unto salvation and eternal life!  Why would I make such a claim?  Because in God’s love for us Jesus came to save us from sin and the voice of the serpent who wants to lead us astray, just as he did Adam and Eve.  Jesus himself spoke clear teaching that confirms and upholds God’s Word from the Old Covenant.  The voice of our Good Shepherd went still further and called us to a deeper demand to love in giving up ourselves.  Finally, the Good Shepherd established his Church to proclaim his truth and to continue to guide us.  Jesus himself said to his apostles and disciples, “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me” (Lk. 10:16).  Remaining and living in the communion of the Church is where we the sheep most clearly hear the voice of our shepherd and where we come to know him and are known by him.  Here we have the Sacred Scripture, the Sacred Tradition, the authentic worship that renews us and refocuses our eyes and ears on Jesus.  Here we have the teaching of Christ guided in his Church by the Holy Spirit of truth.  Here, if we will listen and obey Jesus’ voice, we can dwell secure in his hand.  Here in the sheepfold we have the greatest means to become familiar with the Good Shepherd who calls us and who lays down his life and rises again so that we, too, might rise to eternal life in the pastures of heaven.

Third Sunday of Easter

Dominica III Paschae

Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41; Rev. 5:11-14; Jn. 21:1-19

5 May 2019

Graduating seniors, and anyone older preparing for a class reunion, know that this time of year is often characterized by a good deal of self-reflection and reminiscing about the past while charting a course for the future.  That reflection for graduates, finishing up one stage of life and preparing to embark on something unfamiliar with its mix of excitement and uncertainty, [that reflection] can lead to acknowledging and facing regrets, unfulfilled tasks, mistakes, and even sins, together with a renewal and a recommitment to start anew and to do things differently, to be more the person one should be.  Revisiting the past, reminiscing, can help us make a course correction and can help form new dedication to not make the same mistakes again.

Why am I suggesting the image or analogy of the reflection often associated with graduation or a class reunion?  Let’s look at why the Gospel scene for the disciples may well have brought to the fore much self-reflection, reminiscing, confronting past errors, and recommitting to a new course.

St. John tells us this is the third resurrection appearance of Jesus.  The first two were in Jerusalem.  This one is back in Galilee.  So immediately we have the sense of homecoming, going back to the roots of the disciples’ life with Jesus, the roots of their call and their mission, their first conversion, zeal, love and commitment to him.  They are at the Sea of Tiberias, which is another name for the Sea of Galilee.  We might call it the sea of miracles.  So many incredible things had happened on those waters with Jesus and the disciples.  So many incredible things had taken place on the shores and nearby.  The setting is a place where the disciples had had such powerful encounters with Jesus.  This sets the stage for another.

There is an allusion in this Gospel selection [John 21] to what St. Luke recounts in his fifth chapter.  There, as in this account, a group of the disciples is out fishing all night and they catch nothing.  Jesus instructs where to fish and a great haul is brought in.  Obedience is a clear lesson, obedience to God even and especially when it seems counterintuitive and against one’s better judgment as a human being.  Jesus then says from now on they will be catching men.  So, when in today’s Gospel selection, a miraculous catch of fish is made you know Peter and the disciples can’t help but recall the prior time and how it led them to give up everything to follow Jesus.

The language here also makes an allusion to the miraculous feeding of the five thousand with bread and fish, an event that had happened in the same place and which was followed by Jesus’ walking upon the very same Sea of Galilee.

And given that Jesus invites the disciples to come eat with him, there is an allusion to eating with Jesus at the Last Supper.  At the Last Supper, Peter had boldly claimed that he would remain even when all the others betrayed and fled, saying “I will lay down my life for you” (Jn. 13:37).  Jesus follows up that claim by indicating that Peter would deny him three times.  Here in this setting on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias/the Sea of Galilee, Peter can’t help but be taken back to all of these moments.  Self-reflection.  Reminiscing.

The charcoal fire gives a clear indication of what Peter must remember in order to recommit himself to Jesus and to his mission.  The word in Greek used here for ‘charcoal fire’ is a unique word and it is not the common word for fire.  That unique Greek word is used in another place, not long before this episode, and that gives us a sign to focus in on, and an indication of what this scene must have made Peter consider.  Where else is the word for charcoal fire used?  In the Passion account, after the Last Supper, after predicting the threefold denial by Peter, while Jesus is being interrogated by the high priest, Peter is sitting nearby in the high priest’s courtyard with others warming himself (Jn. 18:18).  ‘Charcoal fire,’ you see, is the place where Peter was more concerned about himself, taking care of his own bodily needs, warming himself to keep his body from being uncomfortable due to cold, while his denial was aimed at keeping himself from being uncomfortable by being too associated with Jesus.

I suggest that all of this tells us that the air of today’s scene is pregnant with memory and that just as when we stand in familiar places and prepare to leave in order to embark on something new, we can reasonably assume for Peter that this place causes for him the type of self-reflection and reminiscing that we know so well.  This reflection brings about for Peter an opportunity for recommitting and recommission; and the same can be true for us.  Peter recommits and turns back after having denied Jesus.  What might this teach us about recommitting to our first following of Jesus?  What might this teach us about turning away from our sins and our failure to follow, and turning back to Jesus instead?  What might this teach us about renewing again our responsibility for the mission of Jesus and his Church?  As Peter had to renew and recommit to his love for Jesus, he was reminded of his call to shepherd and care for Jesus’ flock.  What work, what care, what shepherding is left undone if we fail in our mission?  If we don’t renew and recommit to our love for Jesus?  What of Jesus’s desire for our world and for souls around us is thwarted if time and again we are more concerned for ourselves, for our reputation, for our comfort as opposed to being engaged in being living disciples and bold witnesses in this world?  What work of the Lord is left undone if we are more busy warming ourselves to avoid being too closely associated with the demands of God?

We must take obedience to God seriously.  Obedience is at the heart of the original call to be a disciple, to be obedient to the love of God.  After all, obedience to God, rather than to men, is what the apostles offer as their defense before the Sanhedrin in the first reading.

Like Peter it is time to reflect and consider where we need to make a course correction as disciples.  Like Peter it is time to recommit and to find our first love and zeal for the mission of the Lord.  In a world that rejects obedience to God’s designs and chooses the self instead, where must we recommit to being bold disciples?  Will we keep ourselves warm by the charcoal fire of silence in the face of offenses against human life?  Are parents and friends choosing the charcoal fire when there is no pushback if children should choose to live in sin outside of marriage, so common and increasingly so these days?  When the world is running wild toward active homosexuality, transgenderism, and sexual immorality of all kinds, do we simply keep ourselves warm, or will we speak the truth as the living members of the body of Christ we are all called to be?  Are we disobedient to God, while staying in the light of a screen viewing pornography?  Is our heart heavy with the charcoal of serious uncharity and hatred toward another, or refusal to forgive?  Ought our lips be receiving Holy Communion with such burning flames?  To continue the image, do we sort of stand such that the light of the fire shines on someone else, pointing out someone else’s faults and sins while refusing to acknowledge our own, keeping our own in the dark, and rarely visiting confession, so judgmental are we.  When even among the leadership of the Church, among bishops and priests, there are those who are weak shepherds, and even some who are frauds, will we simply deny the truth of Christ and keep ourselves warm?  You see, we cannot complain about the course correction needed in our world if as disciples we are content to stay by the charcoal fire warming ourselves.

Like St. Peter, thanks to the generous mercy and saving power of the Risen Lord, we have the opportunity to acknowledge where we keep ourselves comfortable in disobedience to God.  And, like St. Peter, we have the opportunity to correct the course, to renew ourselves and to recommit as Jesus’ followers.  Yes, it will require obedience.   Yes, it will be difficult.  Yes, we will be led to give of ourselves and to stretch out our hands in sacrifice.  But it is Jesus who remains with us and who gives us the strength to be his witnesses.  It is Jesus who calls us today too to recommit ourselves to bold obedient discipleship.  He says to us too: Follow me!

Easter Vigil & Easter Sunday

Easter Vigil & Easter Sunday

20 & 21 April 2019

Gospel: Luke 24:1-12

[Note: One very limited part in brackets was delivered only at the Easter Vigil Mass]

God’s action is not limited only to times past.  Our faith is that God offers us salvation too.  Our observance of Easter reminds us [through the abundant selection of Scripture at this Vigil] of what God has already done so generously and it should cause us to think of what God is doing now to offer us new life.  Considering the history of how God’s people turned to Him and lived with Him, versus the times they turned away and lived apart, should make us consider the same dynamic in our own lives.  Knowing our own salvation story reveals to us just how much ongoing, regular, renewal and recommitment we need as disciples of Jesus.

We have now completed our Lenten journey begun many weeks ago.  Lent serves us as a time to identify the cross we must carry in order to follow the path of Jesus toward his Kingdom.  Where by faith and baptism we once died to self and rose to new life in Christ, we find periods of life where we refuse to deny ourselves, as if we are fighting to take back the old life we gave up.  In the many ways we do not pick up the cross, the ways we sin, we see before us the project of each Lent, namely to deny ourselves, to die to self, in order that with greater fidelity we pick up the cross and follow the path of the Master before us….sort of like dragging our crosses in the way of the rut already carved by Jesus’ Cross before us. 

Do we need regular renewal and recommitment in our life as disciples?  You bet we do!  If you aren’t convinced the answer is “yes,” let me ask you: at any point this Lent did you struggle and fail with the Lenten practices you yourself chose?  And let’s drill deeper, did any challenge and refusal to deny yourself happen within a week’s time span?  Often we plan some spiritual practices and sacrifices and a week passes and we haven’t made much progress.  We get going and we are doing well, and then suddenly we cave and choose our own ego and refuse dying to self.  Lent is our annual season of serious renewal.  But the Church, recognizing how much struggle there can be in our spiritual life even within a week’s period, tells us we need more than just once a year renewal, rather we need weekly renewal by attendance each Sunday at Holy Mass where we experience a small Easter, a renewal in God’s word, a call to deeper conversion, and a preparation to receive worthily the Lord’s gift of self in Holy Communion.

On Holy Thursday we heard St. John’s account of the last supper.  There the apostles who had already long ago decided to follow Jesus faltered.  Judas was ready to betray.  Peter refused Jesus’ action and said, “You will never wash my feet.”  In the Gospel passage at this Mass we hear that these same apostles thought the message from the women of Jesus’ resurrection was nonsense and they did not believe.  Peter goes to at least check out the tomb, but goes home amazed, as if to say, “What is going on here?”  Do you and I need regular renewal as disciples?  You bet we do!  These towering figures of the Bible sure did.  Let’s not be naïve: What we do here to renew our life today needs to be repeated time and time again so that our commitment to the Lord is more authentic.

Sometimes without much critical thought and quite reflexively we easily state that we are Christians in the way Jesus says we should be.  But a broader view might reveal something different.  And we should take that view so that we aren’t unaware of how easy it is to drift away from the path.  It is sort of like how much more you can see of an event when you have an aerial view.  The Christian who is unaware of that innate tendency of our fallen nature to drift away from the Lord is something like watching an aerial view of a police chase.  You commit one infraction.   You choose to keep going.  You don’t stop at the first signals.  You ignore the clear signs that you are in the wrong and plow through the stop sticks.  You’re driving on rims, sparks flying, erratic and out of control.  And you end up in custody.  And since this is an analogy for the spiritual life, I’m not talking about police custody but the custody of the devil in the kingdom of darkness.

Here we gather to be renewed in faith in the Resurrection of Jesus, that most central and fundamental truth without which, St. Paul would say, our faith would be in vain and we would still be in our sins (cf. 1 Cor. 15:17).  The Gospel presents us the initial key evidence of the Resurrection: the tomb is empty and they do not find the body.  But maybe it’s a hoax, some might say.  Anyone who would choose to believe that would need to explain how in the ancient world, which did not accept the testimony of women, a fledgling group of disciples would hope to have their alleged hoax believed by putting forward the testimony of women.  But for the disciples this wasn’t controversial or a conflict, it was simply the truth.  The women saw and reported it.  The body stolen?  Who would take the time to untie the body bands and burial cloths if they were trying to quickly take and hide a body?  Wherever in life we are like the apostles, unbelieving, not engaged, sort of drifting away wondering “what’s going on here,” the generosity of God calls us to gather here to be renewed in our faith and the proclamation of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, giving us hope that God’s saving action is not only in the past, but is in the here and now of your life and mine!