Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXIV per Annum B
12 September 2021

In the Gospel scene, Jesus and his disciples are out on a long walk, one of those occasions that is both a geographical and a spiritual journey.  On that walk we get to see the mind of Jesus.  We get to see what he thinks it is important to discuss, for it is he who probes the minds of his disciples.  He wants to know how his mission is going by asking what the “word on the street” is about him.  “Who do people say that I am?”  And after offering some of the various answers from the general public, you get the sense that Jesus’ follow up question reveals that the general public doesn’t quite have it correct.  For what the Lord wants to know is how well-formed are his disciples.  He wants to know, “But who do you say that I am?”  He needs his disciples to know who he is.  He needs them to be ready, when it is time, to profess and to proclaim who he is.

I wonder if we can take a lesson from this Gospel about the importance of being able and ready to profess and to proclaim who Jesus is?  This readiness was important enough for Jesus to probe the minds of his most intimate followers, those who were called disciples.  If we are authentic disciples then we must be ready to profess and to proclaim the truth of who Jesus is.  And one main point I want raise in this reflection is that we must notice that being a disciple who is ready to profess and to proclaim Jesus is not just a matter of saying his name – Jesus – or his title – Christ.  That is not enough, that is, if there is no real content behind the profession.  We learn this from the Lord’s long walk and his probing of the minds of his disciples.  Notice that what they, and what we, must be ready to profess and to proclaim has a specific content or meaning.  For after Peter gets it right that Jesus is the Christ, the Lord goes on to be specific and to teach about what that means.  He will be a suffering Christ, who will be rejected, killed, and who will rise again.  And when Peter tries to reject this content of who the Lord is, he gets both barrels in no uncertain terms: “Get behind me, Satan.  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Why is it important to emphasize that our professing of belief in the Lord must be more than mere words on the lips?  Because we live in such a superficial age marked by relativism that seeks to make each person the arbiter of a personal truth that replaces what is actually true.  We are bombarded by slogans and claptrap jargon that sounds enlightened, but when examined you see its light is from the fires of hell.  And we are bombarded by such things even within the Church by those who claim to be disciples.  When it comes to moral debates that have significant societal impact, our belief in the Lord must have meaning and it places specific demands on us as disciples.  Consider some of the hot button issues that make constant news, issues like abortion, the re-definition of marriage, transgender ideology.  So many so-called and notorious “catholics” in our political class present their Catholic credentials but hold positions that reveal they are in fact not Catholics in good standing.  Even some popular priests and other clerics pull a similar game.  It’s as if such people who wear the label “catholic” answer the Lord’s first question saying, “You are the Christ,” but like Peter – before he was rebuked and got the message – they reject the content of what that claim means.  They try to reject the cross and catholic moral teaching, and instead are more in league with what the secular elite dictates.

For some reason it can be considered controversial when the Church speaks on hot button moral issues, or issues that should impact how we as Catholics live, and how we vote, and how we seek to organize society in conformity with Christ’s Kingdom.  But if the Lord in the Gospel could insist that disciples profess both who he is and that such profession must have meaningful content… then such discussions really should not be controversial at all.  In the past few months we have been subjected to the spectacle of a President who regularly proclaims his Catholic credentials.  By analogy, it’s like he answers the Lord’s first question in today’s Gospel and says: “You are the Christ.”  But when one evaluates his multiple actions supporting, promoting, and advancing abortion, among other problematic issues, one sees clearly he is like an errant Peter in the Gospel who seeks to empty that profession of any meaningful content.  He deserves a severe rebuke: “Get behind me, Satan.”  Sometimes it helps demonstrate the problem I am describing by removing it from the realm of faith and showing its faulty logic in a different arena that is less charged.  Here’s a simple analogy using similar empty lingo like that used by abortion supporters in our political class.  You know the game Jenga.  You have planks or blocks and you build up a tower.  The game is to take turns removing planks in such a way that the tower still stands.  The strategy then is that you have to consider which planks are so important, so fundamental, that removing them would endanger the structural integrity of the tower.  Now imagine our political class who are pro-abortion coaching and leading players in Jenga and saying, “I’m personally opposed to pulling out all of the very bottom foundational planks of the tower, but I’m not going to impose my beliefs on other players.”  You know what we call that?  Game over, that’s what!  The tower collapses.  When abortion is promoted, supported, and advanced, the very fabric, the very foundational matters of life and justice, the order of society, and the natural moral law are removed and the tower comes crashing down.  And when a self-proclaimed Catholic does this it is a demonstration that he or she is not actually a catholic in any meaningful way at all.  Sadly, and you know their names, far too many politicians on the national stage who say they are Catholic are really not good Catholics in any meaningful way beyond the surface label, by which they say to the Lord, “You are the Christ,” and “I am a Catholic” but reject what that must mean for how they conduct their lives and their work.  And while I am focusing on the dilemma of self-proclaimed Catholics, the truth is any public figure who uses his platform to promote abortion is not deserving of our support.

So, why bother saying this?  I mean, other than voting such false catholics out of office, which we should do, you might want to say: What can we really do about this, Father?  We can’t change the world.  Well, actually, yes, you can.  Big players in social and political life don’t typically start out on the national stage; they start locally.  So focus locally, and don’t remain silent when local leaders adopt immoral ideas and practices, or when they promote such things in our communities and schools.  Vote according to a full catholic faith that shows the content of what it means to be catholic.  Form your kids in the truth so they are ready both to profess and to proclaim the Lord as Christ and also ready to uphold the content of what that must mean.  Be generous in your openness to life in your marriage and raise up children who will be soldiers in the battle to form our society in greater conformity to the kingship of Christ.  Its starts locally.  After all, the Lord started with only twelve apostles.  We can do our part by evangelization and personal witness to help others grow in their own response to the Lord’s question: “But who do you say that I am?” 

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Traditional Latin Mass)

Dominica XIV Post Pentecosten (Mass of the 1962 Missal)
29 August 2021

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

It is a reality of life and a truth proclaimed in God’s Word that man experiences a civil war within himself.  As St. Paul says it (epistle), “the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, for these are contrary to one another.”  The material world, including our flesh was made good by God.  Yet it is marked by sin.  And so, the flesh – after the Fall – battles even against the spirit to find its place and to establish its dominion.  In the civil war that is within us, the flesh can seem stronger or better armed than the spirit.  After all, isn’t it a common experience that the flesh seems to “win,” to get its way?  Don’t we experience frustrations and worries in life when we face the reality of our own sinfulness?

But upon deeper reflection, is it really true that the flesh is stronger than the spirit?  Might it be, rather, that the flesh is more savage than the spirit?  Might it be true that the flesh has more to prove than does the spirit?  A more thoughtful evaluation of our civil war reveals, I think, that the flesh in its fallen nature is like a loosely organized troop, armed with some weapons, yes, but trying to exert its presence and influence on a larger scale, battling in a more frantic way.  Perhaps we might even call the fallen flesh a terror cell, organized and able to inflict damage, to be sure, but frenzied and struggling to exert a stability and endurance it will never have.

If the flesh seems to be victorious in this civil war, is it really true that it is more powerful?  Or rather, is it that the spirit, being more eternally established, adopts a longer and wider vision, one that can afford something akin to patience or a more measured response to the fight?  After all, when you know that you are the victor, as the spirit knows, you can tend to live with or suffer the blows of a weaker enemy, knowing that you can sustain some inconvenience and harm because you know the weaker enemy will not have the upper hand.

 By faith and baptism we have been washed clean of the eternal consequences of sin and given the possibility of the inheritance of eternal life, that is, given the possibility of living in the ultimate victory of the Lord, where flesh and spirit are harmonious.  But in the meantime, in the campaign or the theater of battle that is this life, how are we Christians to understand the reality of our experience of the flesh and the spirit lusting against one another?  And, more importantly, what are we to do about this civil war?

 By maintaining the life of grace, especially in a proper sacramental life, we can faithfully take part in the battle that is our lot in this life.  Our battle strategy has two basic foundations as regards the flesh and the spirit.  One, while fallen flesh will not ultimately win, we need to take its savagery seriously and train it under discipline to live in greater freedom and conformity to holiness.  Two, while the spirit is ultimately victorious we need to rouse it from slumber and its tendency to dismiss the attacks of the flesh so that we strive with greater zeal and eagerness to live according to the spirit.  Penance and mortification are our practical responses to this twofold battle strategy.  We complete penance out of justice for our sins.  And we undertake mortification as a response to the call of prudence.  Penance and mortification become the duty of “every Christian who is not foolish enough to pretend to be out of the reach of concupiscence” (The Liturgical Year, Guéranger, vol. 11, p. 332).

 In the Gospel, the Greek wording is stronger than our English translation can communicate.  Rather than a message that no one can serve two masters, it is more like no one can be a slave to two lords.  When we focus on grasping, possessing, and controlling our own stability in this life, we are permitting the flesh to have the upper hand.  We are thereby serving “mammon,” that Aramaic word with a negative connotation, meaning “money” or “wealth.”  The gospel highlights some of the most basic elements of life.  We are not talking about fanciful things here.  No, it is more basic.  Do not worry over what you will eat or drink or wear.  Do not worry about the future.  This is such a basic lesson but such a foundational aspect of faith.  Faith can refer to an intellectual assent but it can equally mean trust.  Trust is a faith that has practical implications for how we live.  The Lord’s words in the Gospel are meant to recall for us who we are in this battle of life: we are God’s children and we are called to live in the freedom of the children of God.  We are worth more than the smallest of creatures, yet even they are cared for by God.  We are being called to a radical trust in God’s Fatherhood.  And when in our weakness and frustration with our own flesh we tend to listen to the lies that make us hopeless, we are called to have hope and trust in God’s working.  We have this hope and trust because we have been united and incorporated into Christ.  As members of the Church we are united to the Lord as Bride to Bridegroom.  As members of Christ’s Body we are united to our Head.  Thus, in the introit, when we cry out to God our protector and ask Him to look on the face of thy Christ… this is our face too and in a mystical way we are crying out to God to look upon us with that same favor and protection.  We cry out to a Heavenly Father who cares for us and who invites us to trust in Him.  We have confidence that when our Heavenly Father looks upon us He sees the face of His Christ, battered and wounded yet glorious and victorious.  And He responds such that we are withheld from eternal harm and guided to what is good for our salvation.

 IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Assumption of the BVM
15 August 2021

A formal part of Catholic faith is our belief that God has blessed Mary with certain privileges.  These privileges bring salvation to Mary and they come purely from the generosity of the Holy Trinity.  These privileges are an answer to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, and so they are part of God’s plan to make it possible for mankind to have eternal salvation.  All the privileges of Mary stem from her first or main privilege, namely that God chose her in a singular way to be the Mother of God the Son in the flesh.  In the privilege of the Assumption that we celebrate today we express our Catholic faith that at the end of her earthly life Mary, having been preserved from sin from the first moment of her life and having chosen to use her freedom to live sinless her entire life, was rescued from the decay of the tomb and brought up body and soul into heavenly life.  You can find this doctrine already believed and celebrated liturgically in the fifth century.  Finally, being formally defined in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, this doctrine is thereby a dogma of the faith.

You may have noticed that the Scripture readings do not make explicit reference to the assumption.  I actually love pointing that out because it raises an important lesson for us, especially important for a Catholic to grasp here in the Bible belt.  The lesson is highlighted in this question: Which came first, the Church or the Bible?  Or another way to ask it, did the Church’s faith precede the Bible or did the Bible precede the Church’s faith?  The answer is that the Church and the Church’s faith came first, well before anyone had a Bible to use.  Now, I want to pause right here, and say clearly that by making this observation I am not in any way downplaying the Bible or its importance to our faith, or suggesting it be allowed to collect dust on your shelves.  No, the Church reads and digests the Bible, and reflects upon it, and sees it as the inspired and inerrant recording of God’s Word in Tradition.  “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ,” St. Jerome says.  By observing that the Church precedes the Bible, what is important to highlight is that the Church was alive and faithful to the Lord well before the Church even decided at the end of the fourth century which books made it in to the Bible.  Still more, the Church was alive and faithful to the Lord well before the invention of the printing press, well before any printed copies of a Bible were available to the general public and for a user to hold before his eyes for personal reading.  So, for all those hundreds of years, how did the Church and individual believers hear God’s Word?  The answer is that God’s Word has its first and proper context within the Sacred Liturgy, hearing God’s Word proclaimed in the living faith expressed in our worship.  The liturgy is the first and proper context of the Church’s listening to God’s Word.  The Assumption of Mary can put an exclamation point on this foundational lesson of biblical history and how we read the Scriptures in a Catholic way.  One important understanding of the Scriptures is that they are read in a typological way.  That means that the Old Testament prepared the way for the New Testament and that persons, images, and events in the Old Testament are “types” that prefigure persons, images, and events in the New Testament.  So for instance, figures like Moses and Elijah are revealed through typology to prefigure Christ.  Again, the People Israel prefigures the Church.  As Christ and the Church are prefigured in the Old Testament, likewise so do the images of the woman, mother, and queen prefigure Mary in the New Testament.

While we don’t have passages of Scripture that make explicit reference to the assumption, we do have passages that refer to the ark of the covenant.  And this is key for our observance of the assumption of Mary.  The ark of the covenant in the Old Testament was the dwelling place of God with His people Israel; the ark was His sanctuary on earth (Ex. 25:8).  The ark was the sacred chest, the container that carried within it those precious signs that were incarnations of God’s presence and promise: namely, the ark contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 25:16), a golden urn containing the manna from the desert, and the staff of Aaron that had budded miraculously as a sign of the priesthood.  The ark was made of acacia wood (Ex. 25:5), which was known as a hardy, incorruptible wood.  The ark was covered in pure gold, and veiled in a cloth of blue (Num. 4:5-6).  It was placed in the holy of holies in the sanctuary.  This should sound familiar to a catholic and should get us thinking typologically about Mary. 

Since the Gospels do not record an account of the assumption, the Church chooses the Gospel of the Visitation.  That choice deserves some attention.  There are similarities in the passage of the Visitation that hearken back to the Old Testament, to King David’s triumphal transfer of the ark of the old covenant into Jerusalem, recorded in the 2 Book of Samuel 6.  There we read that David rose and went to the hill country of Judah to bring up the ark of God.  David exclaims, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?”  He leaped before the ark as it was brought into the city with joyful shouting.  Considering this joy before the ark of God’s dwelling we can appreciate the devastation when, upon exile, the ark disappears and is not seen again.  The Gospel of the Visitation echoes this Old Testament event of the ark.  Mary who is carrying God-incarnate in her womb goes out, like David, to the hill country of Judah, and she visits Elizabeth.  Before the presence of God contained in the ark of Mary, John leapt in his mother’s womb, like David had leapt and danced before the ark.  Elizabeth cries out in joy, like David had done, and asks “how can the mother of my Lord come to me?”  The Gospel of the Visitation shows that Mary is not only the Mother of Jesus, but also the New Ark of the Covenant.  With this in mind, the Gospel of the Visitation has been read by the Church for centuries typologically as an account of the ark’s return, a return not just to the earthly Temple, the sanctuary made by hands, but rather to its proper place in the heavenly sanctuary, since the earthly Temple is a copy of the heavenly one. 

The first reading of this solemnity opens with the apocalyptic vision of St. John from the Book of Revelation.  That reading began, “God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.”  St. John is given a vision of the true and lasting Temple, the one not made by hands, but in Heaven.  It’s as if the veils or curtains, the parts and divisions of the heavenly Temple, are opened and St. John sees all the way into the holy of holies, the inner sanctuary where the ark is kept.  And immediately, coinciding with this vision of the ark, as if the same image in different form, St. John reports next: “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”  By choosing the Gospel of the Visitation and St. John’s vision, the Church wants to instruct us on how the faith has viewed Mary from ancient times.  She is the fulfillment of the Ark of the Covenant.  She is the New Ark.

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

In celebrating Mary, we are reminded that God is with us.  As the New Ark, Mary fulfills to a greater extent than the signs of old that God is with us because she contained not just the old types of the commandments (God’s Word in stone), the manna, and the staff of priesthood, but rather she contained God’s Word-made-flesh, the Bread of Life come down from heaven, the one Who is the great and eternal High Priest.  Finally, we not only celebrate her rightful dwelling in the heavenly temple, but we find in our faith in her assumption a reminder of God’s loving invitation to us that we follow the life of grace, as did Mary, so that we may take up our place in the vision seen by St. John, the heavens opened for us by the Savior who came to us through Mary the New Ark, assumed body and soul into heaven.   

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XVIII per Annum B
1 August 2021

We are currently in a tour through the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, known as the Bread of Life discourse.  This chapter is a prime location of Jesus’ teaching and our faith in the Holy Eucharist, that ordinary bread and wine become his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  This is a distinctively catholic belief, a matter of our identity as catholics, and a litmus test of sorts for the authentic faith, such that lesser notions that would render the Holy Eucharist as only a reminder or a symbol of Jesus, or as somehow still ordinary bread, must be clearly rejected as uncatholic opinions.  And yet we struggle to maintain this full and catholic faith when our eyes see only the outward appearance of bread but cannot see the substance of what the thing is.  Therefore, our affirmation of the clear scriptural teaching about bread and wine being the true and real Body and Blood of Jesus is something that requires from us an act of faith.

There is a tendency in our fallen human nature to see, but to fail to recognize.  There is a tendency to see and to focus almost exclusively on the things of this world while failing to elevate our mind and our thoughts to see higher realities.  Here at our parish we go to great lengths to avoid the pitfall of thinking of the Holy Eucharist in an impoverished or lower way.  Our primary experience of the Holy Eucharist is at Holy Mass.  And so, here we give great attention to reverence in how we observe the Mass, reverence in how we handle and in how we receive the Holy Eucharist.  We emphasize greater solemnity in how we conduct the Mass.  We know the value of sacred music that serves to lift the mind and the heart, to help it soar above the tendency to think in mundane ways about the Holy Eucharist.  We adopt that ancient posture by which we all gather around the altar yet face together a common focal point of the Lord in our midst on the altar, even as that posture reminds us we are in a procession to look for, and to await, and to move toward the Lord when he returns in glory.  And outside of the Holy Mass, we have the opportunity to elevate our minds about the truth of the Holy Eucharist by committing to spend time in our adoration chapel, coming to know more intimately the Lord who is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament there displayed.

 Why do we take such effort to keep our minds elevated and strengthened in what is the proper catholic faith about the Holy Eucharist?  Are we really susceptible to a lower theology, to thinking in a more mundane way and being weak in our faith?  The answer is yes.  We operate in a sense perceptible body, which means it is very easy and natural to us to focus on what we can touch, and see, and hear, and measure… to focus on material realities.  And in our fallen nature our human powers of the mind and of the strength to direct and control ourselves face defects and weakness.  When you couple our fallen nature with the tendency to trust that which we can perceive with our senses, the risk is that higher realities of the spiritual realm that are more difficult to measure are viewed as less reliable or suspect or even fantasy.  Do we live surrounded by mundane thoughts and tendencies?  Yes, we do.  We live in a highly individualistic age hijacked by the relativism that makes the self the arbiter of self-made truth that stands in contrast to plain matters of objective reality.  Consider some examples of lower, muddled thinking in our time: Cultural elites invoke “the science” to stop all debate about highly complicated variables that go into their regularly-wrong predictions about climate change and human extinction, yet the plainly obvious science about reproduction and the child in the womb escapes them.  Or does it really escape them?  Yes, they know a thing or two about human extinction.  We are constantly barraged by mundane slogans like “love is love,” that undermine the truth of the clear design of the complementarity of the sexes.  Marriage, designed by God and set in the natural law, is now anything man wants to make of it.  It is lower, muddled, and increasingly delusional thinking that trumpets that men can be women and women can be men and there isn’t any discernible, fixed, and physical distinction between them.  It seems clear to me that we religious-minded types have a much more serious and consistent respect for, and grasp of, the science whose origin is the same God we worship.  And the lower and muddled thinking of our age regularly tells us that “devout” and “catholic” go together even when that devout catholic supports positions, like the ones I just mentioned, that are contrary to the faith.

When we come upon John 6 I would normally focus my homily on expressing and explaining Catholic teaching on the Holy Eucharist.  I summarized that teaching at the very beginning of this homily.  But my attention this time in John 6 is drawn to a subtle lesson that underpins the Lord’s teaching and his awareness of our tendencies.  The Lord knows we tend to suffer from weak minds in our fallen nature and so we need to elevate our thinking.  In the Gospel passage the crowd comes looking for Jesus after they had been miraculously fed with bread (we heard this account last week).  Jesus notes their mundane motives when he says, “you are looking for me NOT because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.”  In other words, you ate the bread I miraculously provided for you but you didn’t see the signs, you didn’t recognize what that means.  The Lord makes it still more clear in what St. John next records him saying, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”  In other words, he’s saying, you are hungry again and are coming for physical or ordinary bread that perishes; you need to elevate your thinking and seek the bread that endures, that is above, that nourishes not just the body but nourishes you to eternal life.  But their minds are focused on lower things, mundane things, things that do not last.  The crowd may have been privileged to see Jesus miraculously multiply bread but they didn’t recognize it as a sign of God acting in their present moment.  Instead they are still looking for a sign from him and their main point of reference is not the present but the past.  For they say to the Lord, “Our ancestors ate manna in the desert.”  Jesus focuses them (and us) on the present moment and on what God is doing for them: “my Father gives you the true bread from heaven…. I am the bread of life.”

 Listening to John 6 today I suggest we renew our full and proper Catholic faith in what the Holy Eucharist is, because by it the Lord is inviting us to see, to recognize, and to trust that he is operating in our midst, in our present moment now, to nourish us for eternal life, if we will recognize the call to first live an authentic communion with him by prayer, good moral life, seeking absolution for our sins, and presenting ourselves in a worthy way for his total gift of self.  We need to recognize the dangers of that tendency to succumb to mundane and lower ways of thinking by which we focus mostly on the things that perish.  And for that reason we should seek all the more to know and to nourish our catholic faith, to elevate our minds, to “seek what is above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1).  St. Paul seems to make a similar observation in today’s second reading: “you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds;… you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost - June 27, 2021

Dominica V Post Pentecosten (Extraordinary Form Low Mass)
27 June 2021

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

Today’s Gospel selection from St. Matthew, chapter 5, contains the first part of the large section of the Sermon on the Mount.  Chapter 5 in particular contains that part of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount that scholars call the “Antitheses.” These are a series of six statements setting up an antithesis, an opposition, between the Mosaic teaching from the Old Testament and the fulfillment of that teaching in the New Testament.  It treats of serious topics like anger, lust, divorce and remarriage, and the swearing of oaths.  We hear only of the first antithesis in today’s selection.  Our Blessed Lord notes in the Sermon on the Mount in the verses immediately before this passage that he has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but rather to fulfill them.  In other words, while there is a difference in how the Mosaic Law taught about matters, the Lord is not abolishing it but rather completing it, transforming it, transcending it…. to bring it up to the level of the Kingdom of God.  The Mosaic Law established a foundation, an incomplete and imperfect one, but one that was sufficient in God’s mind for its time and was what His people were prepared, at the time, to receive.  We might consider the location of the giving of the Mosaic Law as a sort of image for what Jesus is doing here.  The Mosaic Law was received from God and given to the People at the bottom of the mountain.  With his New Law that fulfills the Old Law it’s as if the Lord is wanting to bring his People up to the top of the mountain to a deeper encounter and union with God.  We do not repudiate the Mosaic Law or join in that ancient heresy that viewed the Old Testament God as somehow a different God; but with the advent of God’s Word in the flesh, the Lord Jesus, in the New Covenant it is time to live for more.  In fulfilling the law and the prophets, our Blessed Lord is not removing or deleting or abolishing them.  They are the important foundation for his higher teaching.

We are well aware, or at least we should be, that being a disciple of Jesus involves some fundamental requirements.  It involves obedience to God and worship of Him alone.  It involves acceptance of, and submitting to, specific teachings revealed by God in the Old Covenant and maintained and deepened in the New Covenant of Christ.  It involves acceptance of, and active membership in, the one Church that the Lord established as our Mother and our guide, believing that the Church, in her official teaching capacity, speaks to us with the very voice of the Good Shepherd.  It involves baptism and an appropriate sacramental life.  And at its very core, being a disciple of the Lord involves our response to the call to be holy, it involves our moral life.  The moral life cannot be excluded from our belonging to Jesus.  Unfortunately, that is a controversial statement in an age that tends to make the self the only reference point for moral truth, even placing the self above grave matters of the moral law.  The Lord teaches us that the moral life cannot be excluded for a disciple when he says: “Except your justice abound more than that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The antithesis we hear about today has to do with anger and insults.  In the Old Covenant Moses forbade murder: Thou shalt not kill.  But in the New Covenant, the Lord goes far beyond murder to forbid anger and insults.  And just like that, we are all perhaps considering something we said this past week, or something we posted on social media, or some family dispute, or some bad blood we hold deep in our heart toward someone.  The Lord notes that whoever is angry with his brother, and whoever says “raca,” an Aramaic word which means something like numbskull, empty headed, or worthless, something like “idiot,” and whoever says “you fool!” shall be in danger of judgment and fire.  In the New Covenant fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets we come to learn that there is more inherent in the commandments; they are not only the often negatively phrased “thou shalt nots.”  Rather, they contain far more and indicate the heights of virtue to which we are called.

So how do we respond to such a higher calling?  How can we attain a justice or a righteousness that surpasses that of the Scribes and the Pharisees?  I suggest an answer can be found in that Jesus concludes this first antithesis on anger and insults with a reference to one’s offering at the altar.  If you go to the altar to offer your gift and you recall that your brother has anything against you, “leave there thy offering before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to thy brother” and then come to offer your gift.  In other words, if we fail in justice or righteousness, if we fail not because we have taken physical life, but because we have killed another’s spirit with anger and insults, then we have failed to ascend the summit of the encounter with God and thereby, at the altar our offering is impeded.  That sounds like a tall order.  We live at a time when the powerful elite can and do convince themselves that their manifest grave sin in promoting abortion, gay marriage, and transgender ideology doesn’t even prevent them from approaching the altar for Holy Communion, and they are aided by derelict bureaucrats masquerading as bishops and priests.  And here is the Lord saying even to be angry and insulting to another impedes one’s offering at the altar.  He refuses the offering of one who has a heart set against his kingdom.  To be clear, the Lord is not indicting the emotion of anger that will rise in us to a greater or lesser degree based on our fallen nature and based on some aspects of our own personality.  What he is indicting is that to consent to that anger, to consent in such a way that leads to acting out upon it by outbursts and insults towards another is sinful; it fails to surpass the justice of the Old Covenant, and it impedes one’s sacrificial offering.  You see, the Lord is not undoing the Old Covenant law against murder, rather he is driving it deeper into the human heart and getting to the root cause of murder, which is wrath and anger, the desire to hurt someone else for revenge.

Fulfilling the law of our Lord’s kingdom is a tall order.  But we must resist the temptation of our fallen nature and resist joining in the chorus of some of the protestant reformers that would lead us to think this is impossible or that our free will does not present us with a real ability to choose.  How can we have hope of attaining to the transformed, loftier heights of the fulfillment of the Lord’s teaching?  Because we can participate in the very life of God and we are strengthened in charity by God’s action that emboldens our efforts.  God is love and He shares His life generously with us.  This is at the heart of the collect of this Mass, “O God, who hast prepared for them that love Thee such good things as pass understanding; pour into our hearts such love towards Thee, that we, loving Thee in all things and above all things, may obtain Thy promises which exceed all that we can desire.”  Let our offering of prayer and penance and especially the offerings we each bring to Holy Mass, to the mountain of Calvary, serve as a focus to examine and test ourselves to see and admit what might impede our offerings and so to receive anew the charity of God that emboldens us so that we do not remain only at the foundation or base of the mountain, but rather that we ascend up to the top of this mountain of Calvary, to the deeper union with God that He makes possible in His great love that is beyond understanding.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XII per Annum B
20 June 2021

Today’s brief Gospel passage from St. Mark shows us a miracle that demonstrates that Jesus is God.  The miracle of the Stilling or the Calming of the Storm shows us the identity of Jesus as God.  The passage concludes with the question of the disciples who are in awe at his power.  They ask: “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”  That the passage ends with this question, I suggest, highlights it is a question for each of us, a question we must each face and answer.  Who is Jesus really?  Do I have faith that He is God?

First, we need to appreciate the context to grasp the significance of the miracle.  The setting is the Sea of Galilee.  The Sea of Galilee is a good-sized lake, about 7-8 miles wide at its widest.  More importantly, it is known to have sudden storms whip up.  Most of us know that it can be very soothing to be out on water when the water is peaceful.  But to be in a small boat when a storm whips up is very dangerous and terrifying.  We need to notice the words of the Gospel passage itself, which describes the storm as a “violent squall” with waves breaking over the boat such that the boat was filling up and in danger of sinking.  Added to this context is that we know the occupation of most of Jesus’ apostles who were with him.  They were fishermen and they knew the Sea of Galilee well.  That these experienced fishermen were terrified and convinced they were perishing gives us still more context to see just how serious and powerful a storm this was.  In a striking contrast to the details about the seriousness and the danger of the storm we have the description of Jesus asleep on a cushion through it all, taking his rest and undisturbed by a storm that the men in the boat with him knew could very well take their lives.  They cry out: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  Jesus wakes up, and in an exorcistic response confronting evil, he rebukes the wind and he commands the sea, “Quiet! Be still!”

Today the first reading and the psalm selection together with this Gospel are all remarkably similar and place before us a clear theme and revelation of God’s identity and power.  Today’s psalm shows us sailors conducting their business on the sea in ships.  The psalm highlights the powerful works of God who made the sea and who controls it.  In the psalm a storm rises up with wind and waves that toss the ships about, such that the hearts of the sailors “melted away in their plight.”  In the psalm, the sailors cried to the Lord in their distress.  In the Gospel, the apostolic sailors cried out to Jesus.  In the psalm, the Lord rescued them by hushing the storm and stilling the waves.  In the Gospel, Jesus rebukes and commands the storm wind and waves.  By placing this exact psalm together with today’s Gospel selection, the Church is expressing her faith that this miracle demonstrates the divinity of Jesus.  Furthermore, combatting any pagan notion that Jesus is simply somehow one God among many, putting this Gospel together with this psalm identifies Jesus with the God of the Old Testament.  Jesus is the God who in the Old Testament calmed the storm and was sung about in Psalm 107.  Jesus shows this power in the miracle on the Sea of Galilee.

So, with this context helping us grasp the full threat of the storm and, thereby, the full manifestation of Jesus’ power as God in confronting it, I want to draw our attention to the question Jesus asks after waking up and snuffing out the storm.  He asks, “Why are you terrified?  Do you not yet have faith?”  The word used by Jesus and translated as “faith” can have a couple of important meanings and usages.  Both meanings are important to us as believers.  “Faith” can refer to the intellectual assent we must make to the truths of the faith.  So, for instance, we have recently celebrated liturgically in the past few weekends doctrines such as our belief that God is one God in Three Divine Persons, a Holy Trinity.  We have celebrated our faith that Jesus continues to be made present in the Holy Eucharist by which he remains with us and, when we are worthily prepared in a state of grace, we may participate in the Holy Eucharist by receiving that gift as divine food in Holy Communion.  But notice that the need for faith in the midst of the storm in today’s Gospel is not that meaning of the word that refers to intellectual assent.  In other words, the disciples are terrified and they call out; Jesus calms the storm, but he is not asking them an intellectual matter, as in “Why don’t you believe enough in the doctrine of the Trinity?”  He is not saying to them, “If only you would have recited the Creed.”  No, faith has another principal meaning here and it too needs our attention.  The question of Jesus after the storm is more about faith as trust, trust in God, trust in His power, trust in His working even when our limited human powers are threatened.

Over the years, I have had many interactions with people who might well identify with the image of serious storms in life.  It’s the story of Job from the first reading, a story that fits so well with the psalm and the Gospel message about storms.  Life will toss us about in its storms.  Like Job we may suffer terrible loss.  It would be foolish to think we will sail through this life without some serious turmoil and struggle, storms caused perhaps by others around us; storms caused perhaps by our own weakness, sinfulness, and poor choices; storms caused perhaps by defects in our character, emotional and psychological suffering, stuff internal to us that just is, even though we might not be guilty for choosing it… the list goes on.  Who is Jesus for you in such experiences of life?  Do you have faith – trust – in him?  Sometimes praying in our adoration chapel makes me consider how perfect an image it is for our passage through the sea of this life, an image of today’s Gospel.  Jesus is there displayed in our chapel.  He is still and quiet, almost as if sleeping on a cushion of the boat.  You and I come in there, into that “boat,” with all the stuff going on in our lives.  But he is with us!  Sometimes the sounds outside surrounding the chapel, especially in the daylight hours, remind me of that contrast of storm versus Jesus calmly asleep with full power.  I may be in that quiet chapel but internally I may bring much noise and storminess.  I may be in the quiet chapel but outside perhaps it is the voices of children playing on the playground, or the sounds of cars, or lawn mowers, or roofers… and don’t even get me started when someone flushes one of our toilets and it sounds like a rocket is taking off…  All this noise surrounds us, the storms surround us… distracting us… demanding our attention… but Jesus is with us quiet and still.  In preparing for this weekend’s homily I found myself wanting to encourage and to make a clear call to each of you to find time to dedicate to prayer in our chapel with Jesus who is really there.  Yes, we can and should pray anywhere, and especially in our homes.  But sometimes the journey to get up, to make a little pilgrimage, to leave our home, and to leave our busy activities, and get into the boat of our little chapel to be with Jesus in our storms is what is also needed.  I want to encourage you to make frequent visits to adore Jesus in the chapel.  I want to encourage you to contact the office and our adoration program to commit to a time of prayer in the chapel.  You won’t regret it!

When we come to the chapel with the external and internal storms of life, it seems to me we can powerfully live today’s Gospel passage.  We come there in the quiet and we might want to call out to wake Jesus up, “Don’t you care that I am perishing?”  The faith that is trust needs attention and needs to be exercised so that we come to experience Jesus who is God and who is the same God as in the Old Testament who calms the storm.  In the boat of the chapel we can’t pretend the storms of our lives aren’t circling around us.  Part of growing in that faith that is trust is learning to call out to God in our need and in the sometimes humiliating storms we can’t so easily control.  So often in life we both start and stop with only what our own power can accomplish.  Inspired by the revelation in today’s passages that Jesus is God, may we come to call out to the Lord.  Our calling out to him, our waking him up so to speak, just as in the Gospel, is the precursor to his powerful command: “Quiet!  Be still!”

Corpus Christi

Sollemnitas Corpus Christi
6 June 2021

 This annual Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (commonly called in Latin, Corpus Christi) is our opportunity to sharpen our focus so that we never take for granted that the Holy Eucharist is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Jesus Christ.  For those of us who are here week after week, taking time to clearly state what the Holy Eucharist is and what it requires of us who desire to receive it may seem rather elementary.  However, we never want to take the faith for granted or assume we are immune to decreased faith.  The grind of daily life can weaken our faith too.  And in an age that greatly underplays what we owe to God and what we must observe to be eligible for receiving Holy Communion, it seems important to take some time to refresh our appreciation of this most august Sacrament.

More recently, following Joe Biden’s ascent to the Presidency, the topic of what is required to receive Holy Communion and what is meant by worthiness to present oneself for Holy Communion has been pushed into the spotlight.  Truthfully, the controversy over self-described “devout Catholic” politicians who consistently advocate policies at odds with grave matters of Catholic doctrine (like the promotion and advancement of abortion and same-sex marriage) is a controversy that has existed, sadly, for a long time.  When you also consider that we live in an age of slogans that are given the weight of moral imperative – slogans like “welcoming” and “inclusion” and “tolerance” – we need to keep our wits about us and not let sentimentality cause us to deviate from proper Eucharistic faith and practice.  I want to suggest that understanding eligibility for Holy Communion (a) stems from and supports our teaching and faith in what the Holy Eucharist is; (b) that it can be understood positively; and, (c) that it actually gives zeal to our evangelical and missionary impulse to work to bring others into Eucharistic communion.

First, let’s remind ourselves clearly of what the Holy Eucharist is: Given the many foreshadowings in the Bible indicating God’s feeding us with bread from Heaven, and given the climax of that promise at the Last Supper, we believe that Jesus transformed bread and wine into the substance of his Body and Blood.  We believe that he left this gift to his Church for nourishment and so that he would be always with us in his Real Presence.  We believe that he left us a means to have this sacrificial food provided to us by establishing his apostles as the first priests.  Having a validly ordained priesthood, which carries that shared authority from Christ, a valid priesthood that exists in the Catholic Church, we believe that at Holy Mass bread and wine are transformed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ.  This gift is not dead flesh, but the living, resurrected flesh of the Lord.  This gift comes about by the will of God the Father, by the power of God the Holy Spirit who is called down upon the gifts, and by the words of consecration that were uttered by God the Son, and which are spoken over the gifts by a Catholic priest.  The priest becomes an instrument through which Jesus our Great High Priest acts to make this gift present to the Church in every time and place.  Thus, after consecration the bread and wine are no longer understood as bread and wine but rather the Body and Blood of the Lord in their substance.  And they are reverenced and worshipped as the Eucharistic presence of God in our midst.  Any lesser language regarding the Holy Eucharist does not fully communicate the Church’s faith and, in fact, lesser language may well be heresy especially if it gives the false notion that the Holy Eucharist is merely a symbolic presence of Christ, which it is not.

That the Holy Eucharist is the Body and Blood of the Lord is the ancient and constant faith of the Catholic Church.  Listen to the witness of the Scriptures:

From John 6:49-51: Jesus taught his disciples, “I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

  From Mark 14:17-21: At the Last Supper Jesus “took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, ‘Take; this is my body.’  And he took a cup …. And he said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant’.”

In the first decades of the Church’s life St. Paul gives witness to Eucharistic faith in his writings.

From 1 Corinthians 10:16: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it NOT a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread which we break, is it NOT a participation in the body of Christ?”

From 1 Corinthians 11:27-30: “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.  Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  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.”

These are rather inexplicable words for St. Paul to utter – that receiving Holy Communion unworthily, to take it without examining oneself or discerning what it truly is, is to eat and drink judgment upon oneself, causing sickness and death – these are strange words indeed if the faith of the Church was that the Holy Eucharist is only symbolic.  Writing almost one hundred years after the death of St. Paul, we find the words of St. Justin, a martyr, that show us the requirements for admission to the Holy Eucharist: “we call this food Eucharist, and no one may take part in it unless he believes that what we teach is true, has received baptism for the forgiveness of sins and new birth, and lives in keeping with what Christ taught” (CCC #1355).  The words of St. Justin give us three prerequisites for admission to Holy Communion: No one may take part unless (1) he believes that what we teach is true.  That means a person must be in a teaching or, we can say, doctrinal communion with the Church in order to receive Holy Communion; (2) unless he has received baptism.  That means a person must be in a sacramental communion with the Church in order to receive Holy Communion; and, (3) unless he lives in keeping with what Christ taught.  That means a person must be in a moral communion with the Lord by how he lives his life.  This ancient witness of Catholic faith and practice surrounding the Holy Eucharist tells us that these aspects of communion are prerequisites and must precede the reception of Holy Communion.  In other words, taking Holy Communion does not makes sense, and is forbidden, where a person is not first baptized and living a sacramental communion with the Church, where a person does not share the same doctrine or communion of faith, and where a person’s moral life is inconsistent with the demands of Christ.  This still applies to us today.  This means that if any one or more of those aspects of communion is not in place a person is not eligible for Holy Communion.  These prerequisites for Holy Communion that must precede reception of the Sacrament apply equally to non-Catholics and Catholics alike.  Sometimes people think that “closed communion” means only that non-Catholics are not able to receive.  That is not true.  Even a Catholic would find himself ineligible for Holy Communion were he not living a sacramental communion (as in the case of a marriage outside the Church), or were she to reject some definitive teaching of the faith, or were he to be guilty of grave sin that was not yet confessed.

If we believe that the Holy Eucharist is the Body and Blood of the Lord then these aspects of practice frankly make sense and serve to support the true faith.  If I believe that the gift of the Lord’s Real Presence is true and is here on the altar then that faith requires something of me.  It makes demands on me.  If the Lord gave the ultimate sacrifice to offer me the Holy Eucharist as nourishment, do I really think I can receive that gift without myself making sacrifice to live in communion with him?  One can see how these requirements for practice stem from the authentic faith and serve to highlight and communicate nonverbally the true faith in the Holy Eucharist.  Next, the unhappily named policy of “closed communion” can then be understood positively.  Closed communion is not observed in order to be unwelcoming or to exclude non-Catholics.  As if it were some club membership mentality.  No, it means a person must be living a full communion with the Lord before receiving Holy Communion or else the act of taking Holy Communion is lacking and may be an empty and even sacrilegious gesture or act.  And since this practice applies equally to Catholics, closed communion is not about being offensive to anyone.  Rather, it is more about recognizing the implications for taking Holy Communion: namely, that I have examined myself and I first observe a communion of life that must precede taking Holy Communion because to fail to do so is to eat and drink judgment on myself as the Scriptures say.  It is actually an act of mercy and charity to teach clearly on this and to prevent someone from unworthy communion because of the implications for eternal judgment.  If we have a spiritual vision united with the Lord we can see this quite easily.  A worldly vision will not be able to see.  With this in mind, too, it is actually an admirable expression of faith even to refrain from receiving Holy Communion where some prerequisite for communion must first be healed.  In fact, many are here in our gatherings week after week, catholic and non-catholic alike, who demonstrate an admirable faith precisely by refraining from Holy Communion.  To refrain in such instances is a sign of respect and faith and points out the reality of the Holy Eucharist just as much as someone who reverently and worthily receives the Sacrament.  We hope and pray for all such good souls that whatever temporary obstacles impede Holy Communion may be removed soon in order to live a deeper union with the Lord.  Finally, holding a proper faith and practice about the Holy Eucharist gives zeal and focus to our work as disciples to speak and to model the faith such that we bring others into a deeper communion with the Lord and his Church that ultimately can lead to a person’s ability to participate fully in Eucharistic communion.  You see, we do not receive the nourishment of the Holy Eucharist as a prize unto ourselves.  If we receive it, we do so understanding that we are called to be living members of the Body of Christ who give witness to Christ and who share in the mission of making disciples.  Our reverence at Holy Mass directs attention to the Lord in our midst.  Our commitment to take part in our Perpetual Adoration program gives us exposure to the Lord who remains in our midst and who strengthens us for mission.  Our wonder and awe at the gift of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar draws others into the saving work of Christ and leads them to the deeper union that gives nourishment and life to souls by the blessed and worthy reception of Holy Communion.