Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVIII per Annum A
11 October 2020

I want to engage in a thought experiment with you.  Suppose you want to build a new home.  You ask around to get the best contractor you can find.  You are enticed by one builder who comes with many recommendations.  The builder has a great reputation in the region for using some of the best quality materials especially for roofing structures and for safe rooms.  Living in Oklahoma, the reputation for great quality safe rooms and roofing draws you in.  But as you meet and interview the builder you discover that he likes to build his houses on sand.  It seems obvious to you that building on sand is not a good idea but every time you bring it up he keeps insisting that his roofing and safe rooms are of the highest quality in the region.

But does the house stand?  Does the safe room stand especially when you need it most?  These would be your natural and logical questions.  Sure, the materials the builder uses might be the best around, they might somehow be better and more cost-effective than any other builder on the market.  But, doesn’t the foundation matter?  We would likely all say that a builder should have good materials and a sound building plan for a safe room and a roof.  It is good that he has such high-quality materials and reputation for such things.  But… the foundation!  How can you talk about your roofing and safe room materials if the entire foundation of the home is not stable and, in fact, is a false foundation?

The critical importance of a foundation is obvious to us in the material realm, something like a house as I just described.  In fact, I bet most of us would say the builder’s claims and those who celebrate his reputation are absurd.  It makes no sense to sell how good your roofing work is and your safe room materials are when, being built on a poor foundation, the whole thing crumbles anyway.  This same logic consistently applies and should be easily seen in the moral realm too.  Foundations matter.  Fundamental things matter.  First things matter.  You get first things, fundamental things, incorrect and what follows will not have the value it should have, or will not be reliable, because the most fundamental issues are flawed.  A literal house and a figurative moral house cannot stand on a flawed foundation.

Applying this thought experiment to the moral realm I want to offer some comments this weekend on our upcoming elections and our moral duty as Catholics to be involved in the proper ordering of our society by the important task of voting and voting with a well-formed Catholic conscience.

At the outset I need to anticipate the pushback.  This is not an inappropriate topic for a sermon in church.  And it does not violate any perceived tax law regarding tax-exempt institutions and the separation of Church and State.  My words today are about moral principles and platform issues and NOT about any one particular candidate or political party.  Part of the proof for this is that these words today can be applied not only to this year’s election but to any future one.  In other words, this isn’t just about this year.  In fact, still more proof that this is not about any one party or candidate, a portion of what I say today is borrowed (I cut and pasted it) from words I spoke on this topic in the lead up to the 2004 and the 2008 elections – when there were entirely different candidates and when there were some notable differences in the national party platforms.  In other words, the same moral principles apply no matter the election year and no matter the party and no matter the candidates.

Patriotism (I spoke on that back on the July 4th weekend) is a virtue and participating in civic life by voting is one fulfillment of patriotism.  As Christians we do have a responsibility to God to seek to order this world He has made according to the Natural Law and in a way that promotes godly life.  There is separation of Church and State.  That principle seeks to prevent the formation of a state-sponsored official religion, and to prevent a person’s religion being the reason that person flourishes or does not flourish in the State.  Separation of Church and State should not be understood however to mean that religious people or religious values are not welcome in the public square.  It can be very easy for us to be cynical about political life, politicians, and voting.  Especially with national politicians you might hear it said that they are all in bed with lobbyists and big money.  On the flip side, others might claim a politician’s record or platform might appear great but that he or she isn’t really sincere and is just doing the right thing to get votes.  These comments may in fact be true.  But our voting should not be based on personality or presumed insincerity of a given candidate.  I know that if I were to make voting decisions based on whose characteristics are most likable, or just least offensive, I would cast very different votes than voting based on policy.  We should vote based on a candidate’s stated platform, what the record shows he or she is likely to do, and based on those issues that are most critical to the common good and which do not permit, morally speaking, differences of opinion.  In other words, the well-formed Catholic conscience first looks at those issues that are most fundamental and foundational to the common good.  There are some issues in our fallen world that are objective moral absolutes and there are other issues that permit diverse opinion based on prudential judgment.  It’s analogous to the difference between the foundation of a home and those things that come later like a safe room and the roof.

As with any moral matter we must do good and avoid evil.  The same is true when evaluating issues, party platforms, and political candidates.  Some issues involve such a grave disorder of what God has established in creation, such disrespect to fundamental human dignity, that they are always and everywhere immoral and can never be legitimately supported.  Such issues are called intrinsically evil (USCCB, Faithful Citizenship, 22; hereafter FC).  As people of faith our non-negotiable opposition to these is demanded by the gravity of the issues themselves.  A prime example of this is the intentional taking of innocent human life.  Human life and the right to life is the most fundamental human good and it is the condition for all other human rights and goods.  Just as it is not sound reasoning to overlook a home builder’s poor choice to build on sand while advocating his great safe rooms and roofing, likewise it is not good moral reasoning to focus on a platform’s or candidate’s great plans for dealing with poverty and education or other issues if you overlook his support of an intrinsic evil like the taking of innocent human life.  The basic and foundational right to life is the condition for all other goods.  Abortion is always and everywhere an intrinsic evil and while something like euthanasia is also an example of an intrinsically evil violation of human life – by the numbers – abortion kills thousands more lives daily than does euthanasia and so abortion demands more of our scrutiny when voting.  To be sure, the right to life is linked to other rights and other issues in our civic life that either help or harm the flourishing of human life.  However, it is insufficient moral formation to treat the right to life as just one issue among many.  Frankly, a party, or a platform, or a candidate could have the best sounding ideas for other issues related to life (like education and health care) but if all that is predicated on escaping the womb it is a very weak and immoral platform indeed.  “It is a mistake with grave moral consequences to treat the destruction of innocent human life merely as a matter of individual choice. A legal system that violates the basic right to life on the grounds of choice is fundamentally flawed” (FC 22).  Other issues that are intrinsic evils and are non-negotiable for a well-formed Catholic conscience, though not an exhaustive list, are embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and same-sex marriage.

Often our electoral choices present to us the challenge that one candidate supports one intrinsic evil, while the other candidate supports a different intrinsic evil.  How do we choose between the two?  In such cases we likely have to evaluate the magnitude of the given evil.  As I said earlier, abortion kills far more people and demands more attention and is not equaled by the number of times euthanasia is committed.  For example, I looked at stats from the State of Oregon, a state which permits both abortion and euthanasia.  In 2016, publicly available numbers indicate that 133 deaths were registered due to euthanasia that year versus 8,942 registered due to abortion.  Though both issues are intrinsically evil, when faced with having to make an electoral choice between the two it is clear which issue demands more attention since one is significantly more prevalent than the other.  And what if both candidates support the same intrinsic evil?  In that case, we would have to try to discern which candidate’s platform and record might at least lessen the evil or be less extreme.  In most cases we will find a mixed bag due to each candidate supporting one non-negotiable issue over another.  Thus, we have to evaluate whether a candidate gets it right on the fundamental right to life, and then on other non-negotiable issues try to pick the candidate whose policies would do less harm.  A well-formed Catholic conscience can never cast a good moral vote hoping to advance an intrinsic evil supported by a candidate if you are voting precisely to promote that same intrinsic evil.

Still other issues in our civic life permit a variety of response and are based upon prudential judgment.  They are not classified as non-negotiable issues because they are not intrinsic evils.  We should also be interested in these issues, things like promotion and defense of the public order, addressing poverty, health care, education, respect for the environment, crime, civil rights, judicial appointments, capital punishment, immigration, and international peace.  But, like the roof or the safe room in my analogy, these issues are less fundamental than the basic good of human life.  They do admit a variety of opinions while maintaining a well-formed Catholic conscience.  We do not want to ignore any of these issues.  Yet, we must also recognize there is a hierarchy of issues.  The foundation, the fundamental good of human life comes first. Get that wrong and no matter how good other policies sound really what you have is a house of cards.

As Catholics with a well-formed Catholic conscience we apply these moral principles to party platforms and to particular candidates so as to make the best decisions we can when we vote.  We have dual citizenship.  We are citizens of this country and of this world, the city of man.  Yet, by faith and baptism we are made citizens of heaven.  We are called to order this world in accord with the Natural Law, which anyone with reason can access and know, and we are called to order this world according to the commands of God even as we strive to be prepared to enter the heavenly wedding feast of the Father’s Son.  Among other things, our well-formed conscience and our moral deeds, reflected in our voting, they vest us like the image of the Gospel parable, in the proper wedding garment required of those who are both invited and chosen.

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXIII per Annum A
6 September 2020 

This weekend is a most embarrassing Gospel for modern ears.  It’s embarrassing because Jesus encourages and even demands that his disciples commit sin!  Jesus encourages the most grave modern sin that is universally denounced even by non-Christians… he encourages us to meddle in other people’s business and to be “judgmental.”  It’s as if a person’s soul and its eternal destination matters!  Now, I trust you see I am being a bit facetious.  Jesus, who is God, certainly is not encouraging sin.  And though we might be uncomfortable with fraternal correction and though we know in our modern setting that we are almost assuredly going to be denounced for practicing fraternal correction in religious and moral matters, it is NOT sin to correct another.  And, in fact, to confront another whose sin is grave and which places his soul in jeopardy is a serious obligation of charity – not just an idea you might try sometime if you really have to – but a serious obligation of a believer.  It is ironic, no, that in an age that quickly denounces fraternal correction as being judgmental, the same accusers easily and quickly trade in their pious sanctimony and become among the worst offenders who broadcast someone else’s faults, mistakes, and sins to listening ears or all over social media.

Despite the way modern ears may want to reject correction, we must be serious about the lesson from Jesus in this passage that there is an authentic fraternal correction and that it is something we may need to be prepared to do.  Now, to be sure, there can be wrong and bad ways to go about fraternal correction.  And there can be ways to go about it that are in fact being “judgmental”.  But it is equally true, we must admit and be clear, that the mere fact that some attempts at correction can go astray does not mean all attempts at fraternal correction are motivated by judgmentalism.  We certainly know that Jesus is encouraging an authentic fraternal correction that is serious, that is charitable, and that is personal in that it demands a sincere human encounter and interaction with a brother or sister.  Failure to do fraternal correction in a good and a holy way is easy to spot.  Going up to someone guilty of grave sin and initiating the contact by claiming he or she is going to hell is not likely to go well.  We can all think of images of true failures – even sinful failures at correction.  Have you seen images of some of those radical groups who claim to be Christian and who show up to protest at funerals or other gatherings, holding huge placards announcing how God hates certain people, or how God rejoices in the death of certain people?  Jesus does not encourage us to do that.  Yet, he also doesn’t encourage us to be weak.  And in an age that prizes individualism and is marked by relativism, as if each person is the center and arbiter of his own absolute moral truth, we must admit that we are in fact called to confront sin.  And we are called to do so in a specific way and with the heart of Christ.

This fraternal correction harkens back to some of the earliest biblical evidence for the common responsibility we have for one another.  We can note the biblical account of the brothers Cain and Abel.  When Cain killed his brother out of jealousy and God asked Cain where his brother was, Cain famously asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper” (cf. Gen. 4:9)?  God rejected that claim.  None of us is alone or an island unto ourselves.  We are brought into relationship and into community and we have responsibility to one another.  You can see why the first reading from the Prophet Ezekiel was selected and placed with the Gospel passage for this Sunday.  Here the Prophet Ezekiel is told that part of his duty is to be a watchman and someone who warns others.  If a wicked person is committing evil and the prophet does not speak out and attempt to convert the evil doer, God says the evil doer will die as is appropriate for his sin, but what’s more, the prophet will be held responsible for the death.  We are responsible for one another.  This lesson comes to deeper development in the instruction of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage about fraternal correction.

Now certainly these Scripture lessons have a direct and most serious application to the service of those who are prophets and, in the case of the Gospel, the apostles.  By extension this serves as instruction for those who follow after the apostles in shepherding Christ’s flock.  Thus, bishops and priests have a most serious obligation here.  And would that more in their ranks exhibited a noticeable courage to be watchmen in the Church for the salvation of souls.  We can and should pray for that.  And we should find charitable ways to motivate our shepherds to such courage.  But, by extension, we can apply this call to fraternal correction to others in the Body of Christ, as a call to all Christians to be so committed to the salvation of souls that we seek to speak out when we encounter a brother or sister in the faith sinning gravely.  Imagine the good that can be done for a soul when parents and family members speak out when a child is straying from the faith, supporting immoral lifestyles, cohabiting with a dating partner, or marrying outside the Church.  Imagine the good that can be done when a believer speaks to a friend and encourages a deeper conversion to the faith.  Imagine the good that can be done when a parent encourages a child or a friend encourages another person to go to confession or to be more faithful in attending Holy Mass.  And sometimes it’s the inverse.  It is a child who becomes the inspiration to the adults to draw closer to Christ.

No matter how uncomfortable we might be with fraternal correction and no matter how modern society might dismiss it as being judgmental, a lesson for us today is that we are our brother’s keeper and that to be a believer united to Jesus Christ as a member of his Body not only means that I myself must separate myself from sin and repent, but also that I must be concerned to see others in the community likewise leave sin behind.  We cannot be a part of Christ if we are not apart from sin.  See what I just did there?  In fact, acknowledging our own sinfulness, making regular use of confession, and having zeal to change our own ways likely helps us also be in the best position to approach a fellow disciple who needs correction, and to do so with the mind of Christ.

Some things stand out in this Gospel about how we are to approach this duty of fraternal correction.  First, we must note that we are speaking here of serious sin.  Sin that if not stopped places a person outside of the fold of the Church.  That’s why Jesus says, if they won’t listen even to the Church treat them as a Gentile or a tax collector.  That is, someone cut off and excluded from community.  Jesus is not encouraging us to be busybodies about smaller or lesser sins.  Yes, it’s obnoxious that a fellow disciple lied and claimed to not get your email.  Yes, it would be better if a disciple did not drop a colorful word.  Yes, it’s annoying that a fellow parishioner promised to bring the brownies to the meeting and then didn’t even both to show up!  This is not what Jesus is talking about.  He’s talking about serious sin that cuts someone off from the community.  Things like fornication outside of marriage, adultery, serious theft, using God’s Name in vain, idolatry and worship of false gods, not being in a valid marriage, etc.  Second, note how personal this is.  Don’t go broadcasting someone’s sin.  Jesus tells us to go to the person and he repeatedly reminds us this is a ‘brother.’  Go speak to the person alone.  If he won’t listen, then take one or two others.  If he still won’t listen then bring in the authority of the Church.  Have a direct personal encounter.  Let your brother or sister see your concern and hear from your heart of your love and concern for a gravely sinful situation.  I think the injunction to personal encounter here is instructive.  You have to have courage and own your concern and exhibit charity in order to look someone in the eyes and raise an uncomfortable topic.  It is comparatively easy and weak to do what most people do: avoiding touch issues altogether, trolling in the darkness online, assassinating someone’s character in tweets and facebook posts.  This is not Christian behavior.  Third, note the context here.  This Gospel passage fits in with what preceded and the lesson of seeking out what is lost.  What is the value underlying and motivating the confrontation of a sinner?  The motivation is not being “right” or showing yourself to have some imagined doctrinal or moral superiority.  Rather, what motivates the confrontation is the value of a fellow disciple, a human soul made in God’s image and likeness, the object of God’s love for whom He desires salvation.  This value can be seen in the Gospel language of having “won over” your brother.  The value is not the being right but gaining or winning a soul.  Finally, the goal of Jesus’ instruction is preventing a grave sinner from continuing in his sin with an unrepentant heart.  He invites us who are members of his Body to share in his mission to call others to repentance in order to have salvation.

When it comes down to it, do you believe that Jesus is God?  And do you believe that we must change our ways and be conformed to him to have salvation?  If you do, then fraternal correction really isn’t all that controversial.  If you don’t, well, today’s psalm spoke about a hardened heart.

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XVIII per Annum A
2 August 2020

After being rejected in his hometown of Nazareth (cf. Mt. 13:54-58) and after receiving the bad news about the death of his cousin John the Baptist (cf. Mt. 14:3-12) today’s Gospel selection begins with Jesus responding by withdrawing to a deserted place.  As on so many other occasions crowds hear of Jesus’ location and they form to get near him.  Some verses later the disciples are thinking logistics and practicalities of so many people being gathered that they ask the Lord to send people away because “this is a deserted place.”

We have had a lot of bad news lately and so much around us is deeply confusing and disturbing and lacking hope.  Many of us are confused, concerned, afraid, angry, or just mentally exhausted by the lack of stability.  Perhaps that explains why in my own reflections on this Gospel passage the two mentions of the “deserted place” stand out.  What does it mean to call the location of today’s passage a deserted place?  It clearly isn’t empty of people – because a very large crowd has gathered – but it is a place seemingly empty of possibility.  It is deserted in the sense of not being hospitable or convenient.  It is a deserted place because it is lacking in something necessary, in this case adequate food.  It is deserted in the sense that it is a place to leave and get away from in relationship to some place better.  What spiritual message can we find in reflecting upon our own deserted places?  What are our deserted places?

Maybe for us it is literally a location, literally a place, or a thing.  Maybe we would say it is the world around us.  We see its order seem to dissolve into chaos, civil unrest, the proliferation of ideological slogans and untested, unproven claims of widespread systemic injustice in our country and in her institutions.  Maybe the deserted place that comes to your mind is the humanity of the Church Universal.  So many bad stories of weak leadership, scandal, and criminal sin from those who owe God and owe us better.  The Church closed down for months.  Does that mean we have adopted a fatal notion that we are somehow non-essential?  The Church now opened, thanks be to God, but far from normal.  So many people still not back.  I keep detailed stats from our weekends of being reopened.  Our attendance is good compared to other parishes, but still our best weekend so far has been only 44% of our normal total average weekend attendance.  Maybe the Church is more literally a deserted place now than we’d like to imagine.

What else might be our deserted places?  Perhaps instead of some literal place, it is something existential.  Might a deserted place be some empty place in our life or in the life of a loved one, a friend, a spouse, or a child?  The deserted place might be some challenge in life.  Some suffering.  Some experience of difficulty that is dry and inhospitable.  A deserted place in life might be where we don’t have enough of something we need for a good and a holy life.  A deserted place could be some dark part of life where we think God is restrained from working.

Consider the places that come to mind when you reflect on where the Lord would like you to permit Him to be with you.  Is your inclination in the spiritual life to quickly say “let’s get out of here?”  “Let’s move away from here and go to where we have seemingly more richness and blessing?”  Sort of like the tendency of the disciples in the Gospel: “Dismiss the crowds [Lord] so that they can go… and buy food for themselves.”  Or we focus on what little we have and like the disciples we say, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.”  Jesus responds: “Bring them here to me.”  Bring what you have.  Bring what you think is not enough.  Bring yourselves.  Give it to me.  Let me do with it what you cannot do and what you think cannot be done with so little.

In the Old Testament God’s covenant is tied to the image of eating and drinking, it is tied to bread and wine.  We see this frequently in the prophecies of Isaiah (cf. 25) and it is the hint and reference at the conclusion of today’s first reading.  That reading called God’s people to come to a free, generous, and rich meal.  It said, “You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk.”  The notion of eating, the notion of a rich banquet meal, is connected to God’s covenant relationship with us.  Did you notice how that first reading mentioned this promise of rich food and then could conclude: “I will renew with you the everlasting covenant, the benefits assured to David?”

There are some striking similarities in this Gospel passage of the miraculous feeding to the Last Supper.  It takes place in the evening, as did the Last Supper.  The attendees recline on the grass, as the apostles reclined at table at the Last Supper.  There are the same actions and in the same order in this miracle as in the Last Supper.  Jesus took, blessed, broke, gave.  As much as we want to get away from our deserted places, might we take a lesson from the Gospel and see them as places where the Lord is ready to be present and to work and to do more than we can imagine in His covenant love for us?  To let him work there we have to resist the temptation to flee and to get away to some place we think is better.  We have to resist the temptation to take ourselves to where we think we already have a sufficiency, where we already have enough, where we have what we want, where we have what we think we need.  To let him work in our deserted places we have to give the Lord permission to work in us and with us.  Jesus told the disciples: “Bring them (the loaves and fish) here to me.”  We are invited to bring the truth of all that we have and all that we are to the Lord.  So that, like the actions in this passage and in the Last Supper, the Lord might take, and bless, and break, and give.  Oh, but the breaking part… can we just skip that part?  Not if our deserted places and not if we ourselves are to be brought into the Lord’s covenant.  It was in the Lord’s being broken on the Cross that we were saved.  It was in the breaking open of his tomb that we have hope for resurrection.  It is in the breaking of the bread that eyes are opened to the presence of Jesus.  So, yes, we have to remain in our deserted places.  We have to permit the Lord’s covenant work by bringing all to him.  In repentance and in confession we let him break what is sinful and bless what must be healed.  In Holy Communion, if we receive it, we are given the Lord’s total gift of self, recognizing in it a call to covenant life by which we too must give of ourselves.

Resist the impulse to flee, bring the Lord everything, and be with him even in the deserted places.  He will take, bless, yes, He will break, and He will give.  A covenant of newness of life will result if we will stay in the places that seem empty and if we will enter into relationship with Him there.  And if so we will find sufficiency beyond our expectation and a superabundance of blessing for there will still be more left over.  “They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over – twelve wicker baskets full.”

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XIV per Annum A
5 July 2020

Our Catholic philosophical and theological tradition identifies virtues.  Virtues are habitual and firm dispositions to do what is good.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church adds the following about virtues: “It allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself.  The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions” (CCC, 1803).  Those virtues called theological are direct gifts from God.  We can picture them as being infused within us by God as gifts that form and perfect our interior being.  As an extension or outgrowth of these gifts from God are those other virtues that are acquired by our effort, our training, and our personal discipline called moral virtues.  The moral virtues perfect our exterior actions, they aid the greater ease by which our exterior actions conform to our interior being once it has been transformed by God’s gifts.  St. Gregory of Nyssa says “The goal of a virtuous life is to become like God” (CCC 1803, footnote 63).

Focusing on the humanly acquired moral virtues, the Church’s tradition identifies the virtue of justice as one of the four main, or cardinal, moral virtues.  Justice is that habit and firm disposition to give to others what is owed to them, what is their due.  The virtue of giving to others what is owed to them is expressed in some different ways.  The great philosopher and theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, treats justice (Summa, II-II, Q. 101, Of Piety) in a way that fits well with the greatest command in the Gospels: the love of God and the love of neighbor.  Growing out from justice, like a branch on a tree, is the virtue of religion.  This is that specific moral virtue expressing justice by which we give to God what properly is His right.  The virtue of religion disposes us to give primary attention to the worship we owe to God and to live in accord with His image and likeness, in which we have been made.  At every Mass, once the gifts of bread and wine are prepared on the altar, the priest prays the following to the Heavenly Father, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation” to worship God as an act of thanksgiving.  It is just.  It accomplishes justice.  It is our duty and it saves us.  Again, continuing as an outgrowth, like a branch, the moral virtue of filial piety is an extension of justice that is directed to give what is due and owed to our parents and to our country.  Since we come from our parents and since we come from a particular fatherland we owe a certain reverence, respect, care, gratitude, and support to our parents, our relatives, our country, and our fellow citizens.  We are indebted to various persons who have had some important impact in our lives and to the place of our birth, the place of our nourishment and growth, that has governed and shaped us by its culture and its values.  The Greek and Latin term for ‘father’ is what forms the root for this filial piety toward one’s country, the patria.  We commonly call this piety to one’s patria patriotism.

In the turmoil presently enveloping our country, and since Independence Day coincides with this weekend, I want us to hear that patriotism, love for and respect for one’s country, is a virtue and it should mark our lives as Catholics and as Americans.  This is not a call to nationalism whereby one pretends one nation is morally superior to all others, or whereby one acts as if one’s nation does not have faults that need to be addressed.  It is also not a call to xenophobia, whereby foreigners or those of different cultures are feared or even hated.  Such ideas would not be virtuous at all.  Much like we might have a basic respect for a family member who has faults, a virtuous person likewise cannot flag in his love for his country, even while admitting the complicated history that marks her, a history complicated precisely because men and women of every age who form a nation and its history are men and women with a fallen nature who have both good and bad qualities.  I can both exercise a filial piety, a devotion and respect toward my parents and relatives and, at the same time, not support, recommend, or promote everything they do.  The same is true in our devotion to our country.  So, what might explain the wave of hostility and anti-American spirit that seems to be spreading across these United States of America?

There is confusion among our fellow citizens about what we owe our country.  When you consider that patriotism is part of the family of the cardinal virtue of justice this confusion (sadly) should not surprise us.  Since much of our country is confused about the nature of justice – what is owed to others – no surprise that further downstream we find laxity in the virtue of patriotism.  If you don’t have a right relationship with God first, don’t be surprised that relationships with other persons and toward property and places will be less virtuous and may even become vicious.  When more than one generation now has been raised in an atmosphere that is confused about the basic right to life, especially that of the unborn, we have a cataclysmic failure of justice and that will bear bad fruit beyond the most obvious and grave result of the tragedy of lost lives.  Less grave, but still disturbing and telling, signs of confusion about justice can be seen in the cascade of lawlessness and self-destruction, revisionist history and rage, directed toward statues and buildings and national parks.  Even the trend of kneeling out at the national anthem is a failure of patriotism, a failure of justice toward the country, what is owed to the country.  The moral reasoning for this is that if you want to promote authentic and lasting justice you can’t refuse to give what is owed and due in one arena in the hopes of accomplishing justice in another arena.

To be clear so that I am not misunderstood, there is a right to peaceably assemble and to protest in a way that promotes justice.  I fully support that.  There are fine examples of true and just protest in our country, including protests against racism.  But much of what the media these past weeks has portrayed as “protest” is actually rioting, anarchy, and criminal behavior.  Domestic terrorism is not authentic protest.  It is not just and it does not accomplish the virtue of justice.  Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of protestors show up annually for the March for Life in Washington, DC.  Crime and violence do not spike in that gathering.  Yet far fewer people show up these past weeks in any downtown American city or outside a police headquarters and suddenly people are violently beaten, businesses and cars are on fire, and vandalism leaves the place trashed.  I trust it is not at all difficult to see which is authentic and just protest, and which is not.

I think a spiritual source and one cause of the national crisis takes us right back to the root word from which we get patriotism.  It is a crisis of fatherhood.  I can’t prove it but I can’t help but sense and identify in the images of riots I see from across the country a seething and open rage rising from the absence of authentic fatherhood.  I won’t claim it is absolutely applicable to each rioter but I suspect that in most cases someone with a father, or at least a strong father, would not be doing the things we see rioters doing.  If a father was absent, or simply weak, or even harmful, what sense would a person have of the reverence and respect owed to parents, to others, and to one’s country?  There would be no reverence.  But the soul knows it ought to be there.  And it aches in the emptiness.  I think the Church bears her own responsibility in the crisis of fatherhood, but that is too much to treat in one sermon.  In the larger society the break-up of the family, the rise of fatherless children, and the destruction of authentic masculinity are the societal signs of this absence of fatherhood that I suspect is a spiritual pain and a root cause of the rage erupting across our land.

You and I may not have quick solutions or be able to solve a crisis on a national level, but we can respond locally.  First, in justice we give the best we can to God and continue to strengthen our relationship with our Heavenly Father, especially in worship, prayer, and personal conversion.  Among the many good things our parish does, and while continuing to reverence and promote authentic femininity, we need to promote and nurture masculinity and fatherhood.  We need to expect men to be men and to step into the battle, into the breech, to be mentors, leaders, and providers.  Most certainly and directly, being a good husband to your wife and being a good father to your children is of prime importance.  This fatherhood can extend to be mentors providing stability and influence to other boys, girls, children and teens, in school, in sports, and in religious formation settings.  I strongly suspect God will bless virtuous masculinity and fatherhood.  I strongly suspect that by it He will help form a strong and growing number of men and women who will positively form our culture now and well into the future according to the plans of our Constitution “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” (Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America).  May God protect our Nation from threats both foreign and domestic and may God bless the United States of America!

The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Sollemnitas Corpus Christi
Dt. 8:2-3, 14b-16a; 1 Cor. 10:16-17; Jn. 6:51-58
14 June 2020

Today is our annual observance of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, also called by the Latin name “Corpus Christi.”  Our faith in the Holy Eucharist is one of the most essential and defining doctrines we hold as Catholics.  And so, I want to take a moment to clearly speak what we believe as Catholics about the Holy Eucharist.

First, take note of the words you hear in the long prayer at the altar, commonly called the Eucharistic Prayer, which is rich, over and over again, in sacrificial language.  This should make you consider and realize that what happens at the Holy Mass is a sacrifice.  It is the making present again, here in our midst, of the one saving sacrifice of Jesus’ very offering of self on the Cross.  In the Roman Canon, the first Eucharistic Prayer, which your priests here tend to use most often, take note of a summary of some key Old Testament sacrifices that foreshadow what Jesus would do and command of his Church.  Coming soon after the consecration, these are the words you hear so often: “Be pleased to look upon these offerings… and to accept them, as once you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel the just, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek.”  All three of these named figures are recounted in the Book of Genesis, after Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden.  They show us that sacrifice is needed if man’s expulsion from God’s presence is to be healed and if man is to be in right relationship with God.  For the sake of quick review, Abel offered a lamb.  Abraham was willing to obey the request to offer his own son.  Melchizedek offered bread and wine.  Maybe the idiomatic light bulb is already going off for you, meaning you better understand what this prayer of the Church places before us as a foreshadowing of God’s fulfillment in Christ: The foreshadowings of a lamb, a son, and bread and wine come together as one and meet their fulfillment in Christ and his New Covenant sacrifice on the Cross.  And, very important, given the memorial Jesus established at the Last Supper and commanded to be continued, the Lord has provided the means for that same sacrifice to be sacramentally present in every age and location of his one Church.

And so, for clarity, Catholics believe that, while the appearance does not change, in fact the bread and wine offered at Holy Mass cease to be the substance of bread and wine and become the true and real living and resurrected Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ.  This happens by God’s power in both the sanctifying action of the Holy Spirit and the authority of Jesus, the Son of God, who acts through a validly ordained Catholic priest such that wherever a Catholic priest follows the Church’s authentic prayer and intends to consecrate bread and wine they become the Body and Blood of the Lord.  We call this gift of the Lord’s Real Presence the Holy Eucharist.  When received by us we call it Holy Communion.  This is what every Catholic must hold and reverence.  This is the aspect of our faith placed in focus on Corpus Christi.  Because of what we believe about the Holy Eucharist, that it is really Jesus’ presence, then it deserves the utmost reverence and care.  No reverence can really be too much.  If all we have up here is, and remains, only bread and wine, only a symbol of Jesus, or only a reminder of his sacrifice… then frankly it’s just time to go home.

With all this in mind, I want to teach you today to be judgmental.  I know that being judgmental is just about the only capital sin that remains in the minds of most modern men.  You can sort of imagine the devil capitalizing on this: “I mean, I’m Satan, but I’m not judgmental.  The Big Guy takes care of that.”  What I want to teach you today is to be judgmental toward yourself.  Not toward anyone else.  In a move decades ago when the current Mass texts were being decided by the powers that were, at a time when a wider selection of Scripture was being promoted, our sacred liturgy was curiously stripped of any reading of a very relevant Scripture text for today’s solemnity.  It is St. Paul’s witness about the institution of the Holy Eucharist and the implications of that faith, what follows from that Catholic faith.  And you find this text that we no longer hear at Mass anymore for some reason in First Corinthians chapter 11, the chapter after the second reading today (cf. 1 Cor. 11:27-31).  St. Paul writes to the Church in Corinth, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord…. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.  That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”  St. Paul says therefore that we should examine ourselves before Holy Communion.  Be judgmental!  Toward yourself, that is.  If all we have here is bread and wine it would be a rather strange thing for St. Paul to say it could be received unworthily in a way that brings guilt on one for profaning, not bread and wine, but the body and blood of the Lord.  If all we have here is bread and wine it would be a strange thing to say that receiving it unworthily is to eat and drink judgment on yourself, and is the reason that some have even died.  Yet, that is the faith of the Church… because it has always been the faith of the Catholic Church, received directly from the Lord.  We heard that very faith proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospel selection today.

The basic idea here is that because of what we believe about the Holy Eucharist there are things we do and things we don’t do toward It.  We reverence It and worship It as God’s presence among us.  We treat It in a way that clearly speaks that It is not ordinary bread or wine.  We adore It in prayer when It is elevated at Holy Mass after the consecration and we adore It displayed in our adoration chapel.  We do not omit a genuflection toward the tabernacle or kneeling at Mass, assuming health or knee problems don’t prevent us.  We don’t receive It, treat It, or handle It casually.  We realize we shouldn’t present ourselves to receive It if we are not Catholic.  Even if we are Catholic by baptism, we realize we shouldn’t present ourselves to receive It if we have not been fully practicing the faith.  Likewise, we realize we shouldn’t present ourselves to receive It if we are not following an important moral teaching.  We examine and judge ourselves and so we go to confession regularly in order to be in a worthy state of grace for receiving Holy Communion.  We take care to instruct our children and family and other guests here so they understand and follow proper etiquette and are not confused about reception of Holy Communion.  And as we have learned recently, sometimes we simply observe a “spiritual communion” as a means to purify our vision and to build a greater longing for the Lord, just as we also observe a physical fast from food in preparation for Holy Communion.  I have said before that some of the best examples and witnesses of Catholic faith in the Holy Eucharist are those who respectfully refrain from receiving Holy Communion when they know they shouldn’t receive It.  When someone decides to refrain from Holy Communion we shouldn’t assume anything about that person other than they are a courageous soul, with a well-developed faith, and are showing reverence to the Lord’s Real Presence, just as the person does who worthily receives.

Sacrifice is needed if man’s expulsion from God’s presence is to be healed and if man is to be in right relationship with God.  The lamb, the beloved son, and the bread and wine are here joined and fulfilled in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  On Corpus Christi we observe that the perfect sacrifice that pleases God has been offered by the Son on the Cross, and is made present here in the Holy Eucharist.  And so, we examine ourselves in order to live in communion with the Lord whose Holy Communion we desire to receive. 

Pentecost Sunday

Dominica Pentecostes
30-31 May 2020

[Words in brackets refer to variations of this homily depending on whether the Mass and Scripture readings were the Pentecost Vigil with RCIA entrance into the Church, or the Mass and Scripture readings for Pentecost Sunday.]

Pentecost is one of the greatest solemnities of our faith, observing the descent of the promised Holy Spirit filling the Church and disciples, both in ancient times and now, with God’s gifts for mission.  We should understand that some of our feasts have origins in the Jewish faith.  Others are unique to Christianity.  For example, Christians observe Easter which has a connection to Passover.  The Jewish feast of Passover does not observe the same thing as Easter, but they roughly line up on the calendar and in other languages the word for ‘Easter’ bears stronger resemblance to the word for ‘Passover’ than does the English word.  Words like ‘Pascha’ and ‘Pasqua.’  As another example, our feast of the Ascension, the Lord’s return in glory to Heaven, is purely Christian and has no Jewish antecedent.  As a feast, Pentecost has Jewish origins.  In fact, it is one of the three most solemn feasts of the Jewish faith.  As a term, “Pentecost” refers to the “fiftieth day,” since the Jewish feast of Pentecost falls fifty days after the Passover.  The Passover celebrated God’s saving work to bring His people out of slavery.  Upon leaving Egypt the People of Israel arrived at Mt. Sinai about fifty days later (cf. Ex. 19).  Jewish Pentecost originally celebrated the harvesting of grain and the offering to God of the first fruits of the earth.  Later, Jewish Pentecost came to be an important remembrance of God’s giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai.  Thus, as an aspect of Jewish faith, Pentecost observed God’s establishing of a covenant in stone with the giving of the Ten Commandments.  It was in part this Jewish feast day that had the apostles, Mary, and other disciples gathered in Jerusalem when the outpouring of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son took place, thus marking the beginnings of the transition of Pentecost into a Christian feast.  The Church now concludes the Holy Season of Easter with this great solemnity of Pentecost, coming fifty days since Easter Sunday.

From reading the Scriptures you know that prior manifestations of the Holy Spirit had the Spirit descend in the form of a dove (at Jesus’ baptism).  What is significant about His descending in the form of fire as Acts of the Apostles tells us about Pentecost Day [Sunday: in today’s first reading]?  Why the form of fire?  There is a simple but profound answer.  Recall the origin of the Jewish feast of Pentecost observing the People of Israel arriving at Mt. Sinai where God gave the Law.  Exodus 19 [Vigil: tonight’s second reading] tells us what happened on Mt. Sinai as God came down to His people and spoke to them through Moses.  Exodus 19 says, “Mount Sinai was all wrapped in smoke, for the Lord came down upon it in fire.  The smoke rose from it as though from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently” (Ex. 19).  Thus, fire serves as a sign of the divinity of the Holy Spirit who comes down upon His chosen and redeemed people, not to write His law in stone, but in their hearts [Vigil: as the reading from Ezekiel tonight prophesied].  The Holy Spirit descending in fire serves as a further connection to the fulfillment of God’s past actions in the New Covenant established by the Son, Jesus Christ.  Just as the Passover and the Exodus of old are fulfilled in the exodus of Jesus’ death and resurrection, so the Jewish Pentecost of old is fulfilled in God the Holy Spirit descending upon the Church in the form of fire.

For us as Christians Pentecost does not observe God’s covenant with us in stone.  Rather, we might say that we celebrate at Pentecost that God’s covenant with us has come closer and deeper than commandments on stone tablets.  Since Jesus tells his disciples that it is better that he leaves them so that he can send the Holy Spirit, we might even go so far to say that God’s covenant with us has come still closer and even deeper than when God the Son took on our flesh and showed us divine love in human form.  We can make this claim because at Pentecost we observe that if we believe in the Lord Jesus and accept his word and commands, then the Holy Spirit of God comes to dwell within us, to animate us with the very life, power, and love of God.  The question, then, for each of us to consider is whether I give God a tender and receptive flesh, heart, and soul in which to take up residence as in a temple?  Or do I give God only a stony heart in my relationship with Him?

The responsibility that we each must take for our daily prayer life and our moral living, and the strength from God which comes from the life of the sacraments [Vigil: which you are about to receive] are meant to make us greater temples of the Holy Spirit, more pleasing to God, and more closely conformed to the image and likeness in which we were made, but which sin has disfigured and which sin still disfigures.  [Next follows two alternate endings of the homily.  The first was given at the Extended Form of the Pentecost Vigil at which the RCIA class entered the Church after COVID-19 closures delayed their normal entrance at the Easter Vigil.  The second was given at the regular Pentecost Sunday Mass.]

[RCIA: I am so delighted for each of you this evening.  After many weeks of delay, we arrive at such a solemn opportunity to recognize the journey of faith you have been on.  We give thanks to God for all the origins of that faith that has led you, the unbaptized, to enter life in Christ, and we give thanks to God for the origins of that faith that you, the already-baptized, received in other communities.  You have prayed, and studied, and worked to arrive at this moment.  It is fair to say by faith you have already become Catholic.  Tonight, we finally make that official and formal by your entrance into sacramental life and full initiation into the Church.  Thank you for your perseverance and your patience.  I am confident these past many weeks that God has been giving each of us grace, and doing something to prepare us for a mission none of us could predict.  Much like the apostles and disciples who did not know what to expect on that first Christian Pentecost, so we must strive and thirst, as the Gospel said, to drink the rivers of living water that the Holy Spirit provides within us, so that we live a deeper life with God and are prepared for the mission He will ask of each of us: a mission to go out and to make disciples.  Your thirst is met by the living water of daily prayer.  But never forget that the Father had a very specific living water in mind for His people, a living water prophesied and prefigured throughout centuries, finally inaugurated in the covenant of Jesus the Son, placed within us by the Holy Spirit, and meant to be experienced and increased by the life of the sacraments that will now mark your Catholic faith.  Give God a tender receptive flesh, heart, mind, and soul to live intimately with Him now and so to have the hope of the eternal communion of Heaven.]

[Sunday: I am confident these past many weeks that God has been giving each of us grace, and doing something to prepare us for a mission none of us could predict.  Much like the apostles and disciples who did not know what to expect on that first Christian Pentecost, so we must strive and thirst, as other Gospels say, to drink the rivers of living water that the Holy Spirit provides within us, so that we live a deeper life with God and are prepared for the mission He will ask of each of us: a mission to go out and to make disciples.  Your thirst is met by the living water of daily prayer.  But never forget that the Father had a very specific living water in mind for His people, a living water prophesied and prefigured throughout centuries, finally inaugurated in the covenant of Jesus the Son, placed within us by the Holy Spirit, and meant to be experienced and increased by the life of the sacraments of our Catholic faith.  Give God a tender receptive flesh, heart, mind, and soul to live intimately with Him now and so to have the hope of the eternal communion of Heaven.]

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Dominica VI Paschae A
17 May 2020

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” says the Lord.  Following the Lord’s commandments carries with it a new promise made by Jesus in his remarks at the Last Supper in today’s Gospel selection.  Jesus teaches that love should drive us to keep his commands.  St. John must have been so captivated by this notion of an interior drive to recognize what a gift God’s commands are, because in his writings he so often highlights that love of God is shown in obedience.  The interior drive of love, as opposed to mere external obligation!  And when our love drives us to be obedient to the Lord, we find a rich promise.  Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth.”  Note that Jesus is the first Advocate sent by the Father to be with us.  Now Jesus references another Advocate.  Jesus promises that his departure is important, even necessary and good, because by it he can then ask the Father to send to those who love him the Holy Spirit of truth to be an Advocate or a Paraclete, as is said in other sections of the Gospel.  Whether using the Latin or Greek based words, ‘Advocate’ or ‘Paraclete,’ the meaning is the same.  An advocate is one who is literally called to your side, who stands with you, to advise you, to strengthen you, to guide you, to defend you, to advocate for you.  You can picture this in the legal context in that someone’s legal adviser stands at the side representing him in court.  No surprise then that in some languages the word for “lawyer” shares that root of “advocate,” which you can detect in the Spanish “abogado” and still more clearly in the Italian “avvocato.”  The apostles would receive this promised Holy Spirit to come be with them, at their side, some days later at Pentecost when they were given this Advocate for their mission to the world.

How do we receive the promise Jesus made?  Our first gift of the Spirit of truth happens at our baptism when by rebirth into the family of God we are made temples of the Holy Spirit.  From this, we are given a life that needs to be nurtured and that is intended to grow.  The disciple is by no means finished upon receiving baptism only.  This is clear from the Scriptures, and so following that cue our Catholic practice evidences that there is more expected after baptism.  Among many other ways a disciple needs to grow after baptism, we can note the need to respond to the Lord by deeper love that motivates our obedience.  For our purposes today, I want to focus some attention on a significant way we receive the promised Advocate.  It is so significant that it is its own sacrament.  Let’s look closely at the first reading and marvel at the origin of our Catholic practice.

In the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles (8:5-8, 14-17) we get insight into the activity of the ancient Church, how things looked, and what happened as the apostles and other disciples sought to fulfill the Lord’s command to continue his mission.  In today’s selection we hear about Philip who is one of the deacons we heard about in last Sunday’s first reading.  Philip is in non-Jewish territory preaching and making converts to Christianity and baptizing new disciples.  But notice what happens next.  Acts says, “Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.”  So, what is going on here?  Philip the deacon had been preaching and baptizing with great response and joy in the city.  You can see clearly that there is more to be done than only baptism.  There are two distinct movements we might say.  There is baptism.  But then there is a distinct giving of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands.  Why didn’t Philip just lay hands on them?  Why did the Apostles Peter and John have to come all the way from Jerusalem to these new Christians to lay hands on them who had only been baptized?  You see here a distinct and separate bestowal of the Holy Spirit that apparently only the Apostles could do.  And they do it not according to the first way the Holy Spirit is received, that is by immersing a convert in water at baptism (as Philip had done), but by laying hands on them in prayer such that they receive the Holy Spirit.  Friends, what is this?  What do these acts of the apostles show us?  This shows us the ancient origin of what we now call the sacrament of confirmation.

Sometimes people are confused and wonder where confirmation is in the Bible.  Some go so far as to reject confirmation because they do not find that word in the Bible.  Certainly, the word ‘confirmation’ is not there, but the reality of what confirmation is, is indeed in the Bible.  We have it in today’s first reading.  Using the same faulty logic would one deny the “Trinity” because Jesus speaks of the Father and the Holy Spirit and himself as the Son but he does not use the word “Trinity.”  Well, no!  The reality of the Trinity is there, even if the word is not used.  Today’s first reading shows us that there is a special giving of the Holy Spirit that is different than baptism and which is done by different ministers.  Philip was a deacon and could preach and baptize.  But priestly and apostolic ministry was needed to lay hands on a Christian for this second giving of the Holy Spirit.

Confirmation completes the initiation that was begun in baptism.  In fact, reception of confirmation is necessary to complete and to fulfill baptismal grace.  In particular, its reception gives the Holy Spirit so that a Christian has strength to share in the mission of the Church to go out and to proclaim the kingdom, and to make new disciples.  This connection of power for evangelizing mission is one reason why we in the Western Catholic Church (as opposed to the equally valid Eastern Catholic practice) have kept the bestowal of confirmation ordinarily by a bishop.  While a priest has the sacred power to confirm by virtue of priestly ministry in apostolic succession, it is ordinarily a successor of the Apostles who comes to confirm.  However, a bishop may give permission for priests to confirm on his behalf, and priests regularly do so for groups entering the Church, like for those in RCIA.  Priests also confirm in cases of emergency.  Confirmation can often be misunderstood and undervalued.  There can be confusion about the purpose of confirmation when its reception has been moved around from younger to older, and thereby can be mistakenly viewed as some sort of teenage ‘rite of passage’ in faith.  Confirmation is even sometimes skipped altogether.  But let us be clear about the ancient origin and value of confirmation.  It completes our full initiation into Christ and into his Church with shared responsibility for the mission to make disciples.  It is the gift of the promised indwelling of God the Holy Spirit.  It fulfills the promise Jesus made at the Last Supper that if we love him and obey him this promised Advocate comes to us so that we are not orphans or abandoned.  Rather, with the Spirit of truth guiding us and guarding us, standing with us, and comforting us, we can be fully alive in the joy and power of God.  And so, like the joy that filled Samaria at Philip’s work, we too should seek confirmation and seek to live its grace so that we become part of the great chorus we heard in the psalm: “Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.”  What is this joy?  What is this crying out?  It is crying out in joy for the promised works of the Holy Spirit sent by the Father and the Son at Pentecost and received by the baptized faithful to give us evangelizing power as disciples of the Lord!

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Dominica V Paschae A
10 May 2020

The Gospel passage today takes us back to Jesus’ extended remarks to his apostles at the Last Supper where he had predicted Judas’ betrayal, had informed the group that he would be with them only a little while longer (Jn. 13:33), and had predicted that Peter would deny him.  The apostles are stirred up, maybe even confused and hurt.  And so, we can understand why Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

Jesus prepares the Apostles for his departure.  He is preparing them in an immediate sense for his suffering and death, about to take place in the moments after the Last Supper.  But in a larger more remote context he is preparing them for after his resurrection and ascension when he will return to his rightful place in Heaven with the promise to return again in glory.  While Jesus indicates he will go away, his departure is not without a promised return.  We can get this message and thus the reason why Jesus can say, don’t let your hearts be troubled, from the Greek original of this passage for the type of departure Jesus indicates.  The language for Jesus’ “going away” employs the image of Jewish betrothal and wedding ceremonies.  A bride and groom in ancient Jewish practice, once betrothed were legally married and already husband and wife, yet they did not immediately live together.  That’s why if you think with me in a different context, when Joseph plans to leave Mary after discovering she’s pregnant, the angel can appear to him and say “Do not be afraid to take Mary, your wife, into your home.”  Upon betrothal they are already legally married yet not living together.  Upon betrothal the groom would “go away” to prepare a dwelling place for his wife and new family.  He would often do so on familial land, “in his father’s house” in other words.  And once a suitable dwelling place was prepared he would return and a joyful wedding procession would take place to the new home where the bride and groom would begin only then their common life living together.

This is the language employed by Jesus in today’s selection.  Yes, he is going away.  But it is a going away that implies a return, as he himself says.  And his return is intended to gather his faithful to take them to the Father’s house.  The Father’s house, of course, is not a literal house but is Heaven and the life of eternal blessedness.

I hope this doesn’t shock you, but heaven is not here and it will not be here.  Heaven is not even in the Church.  Though indefectible in her spiritual and divine nature, the Church as the visible human community of those called, chosen, and formed to live deeper salvation is not yet heaven.  We in the Church are on a journey, as it were, toward that final joyful procession when Jesus returns as Judge and ushers the faithful into the wedding feast of heaven.  If you need a reminder that heaven is not here and not even in the Church at least in her visible human appearance, consider the first reading where we are plainly shown there were factions and there was complaining among disciples, all vying for their own interests.  [As an aside, as we prepare for limited re-opening and limited entrance to church, let’s have charity so we don’t replicate complaining and factions.]  The Church recognizes that the world and God’s creation is good.  Therefore, to care for it is good.  Therefore, it is good to seek to organize human society in greater conformity to Christ’s command and to his kingdom, such that there is greater justice and authentic flourishing here.  However, the Church’s competence and mission, is not primarily focused on the here and now.  As disciples we can never lose sight of the ultimate goal of Heaven and the proper competence and authority of the Church in spiritual matters of faith and morals.  While you the laity do have the call most directly to be apostles who take Gospel truths into the world, I get worried when the ordained and other leaders in the Church seem more action-driven and motivated by things outside the Church’s competence, matters of the human and political realm.  When the ordained give more attention to secular pursuits or the tactics of grass roots community action I fear the focus has shifted off of heaven and becomes focused on the here and now.  That may carry with it the false notion that we can build a perfect human community here.  That is not the work of the ordained.  Nor is it even realistic.  There will also be sin and imperfection here.  Heaven is our ultimate goal.  It is the place to which we strive.  There will be perfection and eternal blessedness.

Not only is Heaven not here.  It also is not a place, in the sense of some location or geography.  Look again at the Gospel.  When Jesus discusses his going away and the preparation of a dwelling for his faithful it becomes clear what this dwelling is: he will come to take you to himself so that you can be with him.  And where will that be or what will that be?  It becomes clear when Thomas says, “we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”  Jesus’ response is not about a physical place.  Rather, it is clear he is speaking about heaven as the life of the Trinity.  Sharing in the life of the Blessed Trinity, having the unveiled vision of God, is the experience of Heaven.  Jesus says that our procession to the eternal dwelling is to come to the Father.  He says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”  It is clear that his listeners get that Jesus is not speaking of heavenly buildings but of the Trinity because Philip asks boldly, “show us the Father.”

Friends, while Heaven is not this life here, the Good News is that we can begin to experience the life of the Blessed Trinity even now.  When we pray and give ourselves to God in prayer, we are opening ourselves to real relationship with a real personal being who is God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  God responds and places His life and love within us.  The sacramental life is still a deeper experience of Godly relationship. These are foretastes of heavenly life.  We become temples of the Holy Spirit of God.  We are given impulse by the very power of God and so we can understand those odd sounding words at the end of the Gospel: “whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.”  Those greater works are the works guaranteed by the Holy Spirit that have eternal consequences, building not only a society here but most especially building and saving souls for the eternal communion with God in Heaven.

With confidence that the Lord does not abandon us but sends his Holy Spirit may you whose vocation is the lay state seek to be living stones to build a world in greater conformity to Christ, recognizing that you are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.”  May we each together seek to live deeper communion with God in prayer and sacramental life now so that we are prepared for the day when the Lord will come to take us to the full heavenly vision of life with the Blessed Trinity in Heaven.