Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXXIII per Annum B
14 November 2021

 We are in the final few weeks of the Church’s liturgical year since the Church’s new year always begins with the First Sunday of Advent, just two weeks away.  These final weeks of the current liturgical year are marked by the images in the Scripture readings of times of darkness, tribulation, suffering, and destruction… images that call to mind the end of things, especially the end of earthly life and most especially God’s return in glory accompanied by the end of the world.  Thus, we hear today from the thirteenth chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel.  It is a very complicated Gospel chapter that can be difficult to grasp.  That difficulty is made the more so in this setting in that the Church picks only some verses of the chapter to give us a glimpse.   Thereby missing the whole context of the chapter can create its own confusion.  Furthermore, attempting to make some sense and application of the passage in a limited setting like a homily with only a few minutes to speak really won’t do justice to the chapter.

 Chapter thirteen is Jesus’ Discourse on the Mount of Olives.  After journeying over several chapters toward Jerusalem, our Blessed Lord has finally arrived in the holy city.  He has visited the Temple (as we heard from last week when Jesus was watching people and especially a poor widow put offerings into the Temple treasury).  And now, leaving the Temple he goes outside the city gates, across the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives, and speaks the selection we hear today presumably while looking back across the valley toward the Temple.  We need to know an important context that the Olivet Discourse is about two distinct but related events.  The Lord speaks about (1) the destruction of the Temple; and, (2) he speaks about the return in glory of the Son of man at the end of time and the end of the world.

 The initial context of Mark chapter 13 is not read in today’s selection.  That context comes in the first verses of chapter 13 when a disciple mentions to Jesus the magnificent stones and the building that is the Temple.  Jesus predicts the Temple’s destruction.  Then, on the Mt. of Olives, the apostles ask the Lord when this will take place.  Jesus responds by commenting on the two related events of the destruction of the Temple and his return in glory at the end of time.  One complication for us is that St. Mark has both events overlaid to show their relatedness and interconnectedness.  That interconnectedness makes sense in the Jewish mind because the Temple was viewed as an image, a microcosm, of the order of the whole universe.  Destroying the Temple is closely related to the destruction of the cosmos, the whole world, which will be part of the Lord’s return in glory.  This interconnectedness is not as clear to the modern mind and so we can get a bit lost in chapter 13, losing sight of which event and which timeline of cataclysmic signs refers to which event.  It is important for understanding chapter 13 to know which event (Temple destruction or return in glory at the end of time) Jesus is speaking of in any given moment.

 Throughout the Olivet Discourse Jesus is shifting in and out of references to both events because they are interconnected.  But at the end of the discourse Jesus notes an important difference between the destruction of the Temple and the end of the world when he returns in glory.  Our Lord predicts that the destruction of the Temple and the violent and deadly overthrow of Jerusalem will happen within one generation (40 years).  But as regards his return in glory with the end of the world, our Lord says we do not know when it will happen, not even the Son knows the day or the hour, only the Father.  The first event (Temple destruction) will have accompanying signs and you should be able to know it is coming (like the fig tree getting leaves and you know summer is near).  But the second event (return in glory with the end of the world), you won’t know the day nor the hour.  Here the lectionary stops today’s selection but Jesus goes on to use another image, the parable of servants not knowing when the master of the house will return and so they can only be watchful and prepared each day.  I hope you can see that in chapter 13 you have to keep clear which event is being referred to.  Otherwise you might conclude that our Lord predicted the end of the whole world in one generation and thereby got it wrong.  No, he predicted the destruction of the Temple and, in fact, it did happen in one generation, in about 40 years’ time.  Or you might conclude that he has told us both that we will be able to know the time of his return and that we will not be able to know.

 At this point this homily is feeling more like a lecture, but I wanted to set a foundation for some of the mysterious message of chapter 13, because it is mysterious and we all know well that with that mystery we can tend in our world to get wrapped up in movements, and ideas, and prophecies, and interminable YouTube videos… but we need to stay grounded and rooted, anchored, in what Jesus, and the Scriptures, and his Church actually teach.  With that in mind, I want to briefly highlight a lesson for us, something more like a homily.  In the first reading from the Book of the Prophet Daniel we hear the apocalyptic vision of Daniel that accompanies a time of great upheaval, trial, and distress.  It is an image of the end of things.  That reading gives us an Old Testament reference for one of the named Archangels, St. Michael, who is described as an angel prince warrior and a guardian of God’s people.  (So, our devotion to St. Michael and our trust in his protection is a piety with Old Testament origins.)  The reading shows us the upheaval of a great battle in heaven which is also manifested in the earthly realm.  But after this, those who are wise and just will awaken to an everlasting life and will shine brightly like the stars.  This teaches us a lesson that is maintained in the New Testament and which Jesus also demonstrates in his own life and teaches in his own words: Namely, that suffering precedes salvation.  The spiritual battles that are manifested also on earth, the mysterious and frightening cataclysmic events that accompany the end of the world and the Lord’s return in glory, and also our own struggles with sin and our need to confess, to grow in virtue, and to be saved… all these are examples of that scriptural lesson: that our normal or ordinary path to salvation passes through suffering.  I think we need to hear this because it can be easy for us to dismiss this.  Let’s face it, none of us wants to hear that.  It can be easy for us to treat dismissively or all-too-lightly the damage of our sins.  It can be easy for us to fail to go to confession as we should, letting month upon month, or more, build up the filth of moral decay.  It can be easy for us to dismiss the seriousness of God’s judgment and the call to a rigorous spiritual life marked by spiritual battle.  I think we can fall prey to these notions that dismiss suffering and battle and hard work, in part, because we live in such an age of comfort, casualness, and self-absorption.  We can tend to think of God’s judgment less objectively and instead approach that notion subjectively, thinking something like “Judgment?  Condemnation?  God would never do that to me!”  But you can’t read the Scriptures seriously without noting that some will pass the test and others will not.

 As we come to the end of a liturgical year and hear Scriptures that speak of the end of things, it can be a spiritually healthy opportunity to recall what the Church terms the Four Last Things, that is: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.  These are the end of things.  Our lot on earth passes through suffering and death.  Upon death we will each face our own unique particular judgment, which will be revealed at the end of time in the General Judgment when the Lord returns in glory.  And when that end comes we will find ourselves in one of two eternal destinies: that of heaven or hell.  Signs in the world around us won’t tell us conclusively when the Lord will return.  But they should serve to alert us to the reality of spiritual battle which we must undertake.  But let’s keep ourselves anchored in a truth: The Lord has already won the victory and generously gives us the tools and the strength for battle, even aiding us with his power and life in our frailty.  But we have to cooperate with those gifts, especially by prayer, regular practice of the sacramental life, and moral living.  The Lord’s love is constant and generous.  He sends us guardians, like St. Michael, to minister His own generous assistance.  We therefore must be like servants in the household who live each day simply finding confidence and peace in being prepared and alert for his return.

Solemnity of Christ the King (Traditional Latin Mass)

Dominica D.N. Iesu Christ Regis (Mass of the 1962 Missal)
31 October 2021

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

In a Church with as much history as ours, we observe today a solemnity that is more recent in history.  This solemnity of the universal kingship of Christ was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925.  In his encyclical letter about today’s feast, Pope Pius XI sets the context of this observance.  Let’s listen to his own words:

“In the first Encyclical Letter which We addressed at the beginning of Our Pontificate to the Bishops of the universal Church, We referred to the chief causes of the difficulties under which mankind was laboring. And We remember saying that these manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ; and that We promised to do as far as lay in Our power. In the Kingdom of Christ, that is, it seemed to Us that peace could not be more effectually restored nor fixed upon a firmer basis than through the restoration of the Empire of Our Lord” (Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI, December 11, 1925).

Exponentially moreso than did the year 1925, our time bears the marks of a society suffering great difficulties and manifold evils due to Jesus Christ and his law being thrust out of public and private affairs and out of the governance of nations.  There is no authentic and lasting peace between nations, and within nations divisions, tribalism, and dissolution is on the rise, bringing with it great turmoil, unrest, and fear.  What a vision Pope Pius XI had so many decades before the insane lawlessness that has now gripped our nation and much of the world!  This reality should give us renewed focus and vigor to observe the kingship of Christ.  This reality should also lead us to unapologetically submit ourselves more completely to the reign of Christ.  To stay on the current path of modernity and secularization is to choose a path of destruction.

 By virtue of his divine nature, being the Son of God with all lordship and sovereignty, our Blessed Lord is a King by right.  Being God his kingship extends farther than any mere man’s kingship.  Yet, having given us the curious gift of freedom, there is a certain sense in which his sovereignty must be claimed over us, as if by conquest.  The Lord has absolute rights over us.  Yet, in freedom, he expects us to use that gift to submit and to subject ourselves to his rule.  Our Blessed Lord makes this conquest and claims his rights over us by his Passion, death, and resurrection.  Thus, with good reason do we hear the Gospel on this feast, a Gospel that communicates to us the unique way the Lord exercises his kingship.  It is a Gospel leading to the Lord’s condemnation and death on the Cross.  By shedding his blood on the Cross, the Lord condemns sin and wins victory over Satan and his kingdom of darkness.

 Having established his kingship over us, we hear words from the Epistle to the Colossians that let us know it is God’s action that makes it possible for us to enter his kingdom, to subject ourselves to him, and in so doing to find ultimate and lasting freedom.  St. Paul expresses our thanks today because it is God “who has made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light: who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has transferred us into [his] kingdom.”

 The placement of this solemnity in the traditional calendar situates it always near the annual observance of All Saints’ Day.  This year it falls literally the day before All Saints’ Day.  The proximity of this traditional placement can serve as a lesson that the mission of the Lord Jesus as King continues in how the saints manifest the holiness and glory of the Lord.  While we will celebrate the reflected glory and holiness of the saints, we also must admit that the Lord’s mission is supposed to continue in each of us who must strive for holiness and who are saints still-in-the-making.

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

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVIII per Annum B
10 October 2021

Last weekend the Gospel selection ended with children in their humility, trust, and acceptance as an image of what is required to enter the kingdom of God.  Today’s passage features a rich man, who is certainly older and less simple than a child, asking a question that touches upon the same lesson: What is needed, what must one do, to inherit eternal life?  And today’s passage ends with Jesus’ remark that entering the kingdom is hard, very hard.  He notes that wealth and riches make it hard to enter the kingdom.  The words of the Lord amaze and astonish the disciples leading them to ask, “Then who can be saved?”  Today’s passage connects well with the conclusion of last week’s passage and presents us with a critical question that should be ours about what is needed to inherit eternal life.  The passage likewise should challenge us.  We should not pass over these words lightly.  We need to have the same interest in knowing what is needed to enter the kingdom.  We need to permit the discomfort, the amazement, the astonishment to impact us if we are really listening to the words of the Lord and taking seriously the call to reform our lives for heaven.

 The rich man is an example to us in two key ways for how we need to navigate this life in the hope of inheriting eternal life.  The rich man provides us an example both in what he does well and in what he does not do well, that is what he still needs to do.

In a posture of petition and humility and worship, the rich man kneels before Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Notice what response Jesus does not give.  He does not say, just accept me as Lord and Savior.  He does not say, just be a basically good person.  No, notice what Jesus highlights as a foregone conclusion, one that would be familiar to any serious Jew.  The commandments.  Keeping the Law of God would be a common Jewish expectation for entering the kingdom.  And Jesus does not deny this.  Rather, the Lord highlights such obedience.  In response to the rich man, Jesus says, “You know the commandments.”  And the rich man does know them.  He responds that he has observed all these from his youth.  So, the first lesson of the rich man for us is in what he does well.  He is aware of, he is serious about, and he observes the commandments.  Doing what is right and living in accord with the commandments is key to entering heaven.  This is important for us to accept as a lesson because it is fashionable to dismiss a serious conforming of one’s life to the moral law.  Today we often hear approaches to living a godly life that are far less rigorous and robust than the example of the rich man.  Here are some examples of things we often hear: “I’m basically a nice person.”  “I don’t do anything THAT bad.”  “As long as your heart is in the right place.”  “I haven’t murdered anybody.”  We’ve all heard these generic or lowest common denominator appeals that reveal a less than robust striving for holiness.  This Gospel and the example of the rich man do not let us get away with that.  No, this rich man has observed all the moral commands and he has done so from his youth.  An appeal to some really bad thing I have NOT done cannot be the measure of my moral life and that does not get me off the hook for a serious examination of life and a vigorous life of faith.  Yet, this is the error that many people make in our modern age.  It is a well-worn road to hell.  The first lesson about getting to heaven is to obey and keep the commandments, to live a serious moral life.

But there is a second lesson for us in the example of the rich man.  He knows the commandments and he has observed them from his youth… yet, he must know deep inside that something is lacking for he comes to the Lord and asks what more is needed.  And the rich man is lacking something.  Jesus says so.  In context, it seems the rich man has his heart, his desire, his intentions focused on riches.  His treasure is on earth and not in heaven.  So, when the Lord tells the man to sell what he has and then come follow him more closely, the rich man goes away sad.  This lesson in what the rich man does NOT do well is what I will phrase or call the lesson of the heart, the lesson of love.  My spiritual interpretation of this passage is that the rich man, while following the commandments and being obedient, is lacking in love.  The deeper or richer motivation to follow the commandments is something that has escaped him.  He knows the commandments and he follows them, yet something deeper is missing.  To support my interpretation that he’s lacking in love I want to highlight a unique and captivating aspect of St. Mark’s version of this passage, where St. Mark writes, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”  That’s a really interesting phrase and it jumps out at me as a way St. Mark is trying to communicate something to us.  Added to this unique phrase is the fact that all the commandments that Jesus lists off, are commandments traditionally understood to guide what one owes other people, they guide love of neighbor.  Things like, you shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness.  When Jesus says to the rich man, “You know the commandments” but then the Lord doesn’t list those commandments traditionally understood to guide what one owes to God, to guide love of God, in my mind that serves to highlight this spiritual interpretation that what the rich man is lacking is a proper motivation, a desire of the heart, a deep love of God that should be the reason for why he leads a moral life.

Just as we cannot dismiss a robust living of the moral life and obedience to God’s commands, likewise we need to look deeper.  We need to notice the movements of the heart.  We cannot live the commands of the moral law in only a superficial or formal way.  We need to give attention to the matter of the love of God.  To strive for eternal life we cannot dismiss a robust living of the moral life; but we also must reform our heart to deeply love God and his ways so that we are not lacking in what will help us inherit eternal life.  It can be very easy for us to have our hearts set on what we can provide for ourselves and on what we can control.  We can fall into the trap of having our heart heavy with material goods and earthly riches.  But to have treasure in heaven starts with the heart and the work we must do to foster our love of God and to place ourselves before him, like the rich man, so that the Lord may look upon us and simply love us.  Before we love God, He has loved us.  Do we let ourselves accept the love of God?  Think of that unique phrase in this passage: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”  Do we simply let ourselves be in the place where Jesus can look upon us and love us?  Or does an excessive focus on earthly advancement keep us from meaningful attention to a prayer life that will address the deeper matter of the heart?

We can and should pray anywhere and anytime.  We can and should pray at Holy Mass, and on our own using our own words and turning to God’s word in the Bible as a rich deposit for our spiritual lives.  In all of this, we have various ways to place ourselves before the Lord, like the rich man, so that the Lord may encounter us and love us.  Letting ourselves be loved by God and growing in love of Him must be just as much part of our striving as keeping the commandments must be.  They go together.

My experience of the value of praying and participating in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament really struck me in this regard.  By participating and committing to a time in our adoration chapel we can quite literally re-enact this Gospel passage in its unique description of Jesus.  When we come before the Lord in adoration, we place ourselves before him.  We run up to him in the midst of our busy day.  We may even kneel before him, like the rich man.  We believe the Lord is present in the Blessed Sacrament.  Why wouldn’t we run up to him?  And in that time of prayer, in addition to whatever we might bring and whatever things we might want to pray about, we probably need the encouragement of this unique Gospel passage to simply be before the Lord, to let him look upon us and to love us.  As we have heard from the Book of Wisdom today we pray that we set our hearts on the Lord and on spiritual treasure, that we may not be weighed down by an earthly focus that prevents us from noticing our need to let the Lord love us and to call us to follow him.

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVII per Annum B
3 October 2021

 The Pharisees test Jesus in the Gospel passage by asking about marriage and divorce.  The force of Jesus’ response remains powerful still today in an age marked by many challenges in relationships.  The Pharisees were a very devout group of Jews who knew the Scriptures well.  They indicate that Moses permitted a “bill” of divorce.  They are referring to the teaching of Moses found in the Book of Deuteronomy 24:1-4.  This is the first place in Scripture that mentions a permission for divorce.  Jesus responds to the Pharisees by himself quoting the Book of Genesis and taking them back to “the beginning.”  It’s like saying, see how far you have strayed… get back to God’s original idea and mind.  Jesus interprets the witness in the Book of Genesis and indicates that divorce is not the mind of God and, furthermore, that to divorce and remarry is tantamount to adultery.  The Catholic Church maintains this divine teaching because it is not human teaching but comes from God, and man has no authority to change divine teaching.  How can we not maintain this teaching, if we take the Scriptures seriously?

 In the exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees we learn that Moses permitted divorce due to the sinfulness of the people and their hardness of heart.  But Jesus purifies the vision of his listeners.  And he challenges them to live in accord with the mind of God.  This Gospel lesson is challenging.  I don’t want anyone to think that the message today is condemnatory.  Or that the result should be embarrassment and shame.  In speaking about the mind of God and the permanence of marriage we find a truth that we must hold up.  As a Pastor I know that there are many challenges that come in relationships.  I also know, as does the Church, that one rightly makes a distinction about the morality involved between one who breaks the marriage vows versus being a spouse who has been unjustly abandoned or divorced against his or her will.  I am keenly sensitive too because divorce has marked my own family.  But none of this changes that we must uphold what marriage is and we must expect spouses to strive for it, notwithstanding those cases where marriage vows have been irreparably harmed or one spouse refuses to work to improve the relationship.  If you have questions about divorce or need to address a new and subsequent marriage that was accomplished outside the Catholic Church then I urge you to come see one of the parish clergy soon.  Fr. Bali and I and Deacon Pereira will happily guide you.

 In the Genesis account we see that the relationship of man and woman, their oneness in the flesh that is a hallmark of marriage, is something found within the very act of creation.  It is God’s action that results in the creation of man and woman and it is God’s action that they belong together.  This is why we believe that marriage is not at all a man-made institution, but a God-made one.  Therefore, we accept in faith what God has made.  At the same time, man has no ability or right to dissolve what God has united, to change what God has made, or to make other relationships equivalent to marriage.  God made marriage within the very order of creation as a covenantal bond between one man and one woman.  This is important to note, and all the more so in our troubled age.  Notice that Adam does not leave his father and mother to marry Eve.  No, Adam and Eve were made for one another and established as fitting partners in life.  Since God established marriage and placed it within the very order of creation, “for this reason,” as the Scripture says, all future marriages involve a man leaving his father and mother and clinging to his wife.  In other words, marriage involves a permanent unity reflective of that unity in creation that we see in Adam and Eve and – for this reason – a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife.

But these biblical passages have implications far beyond the question of marriage and divorce.  This is so because we find here a Scriptural based anthropology, meaning an understanding of the origin and existence of mankind.  This Scriptural anthropology presents a biblical vision of creation, the divine institution of marriage, the meaning of the body, the life-creating power of human and spousal love, and more.  As Christians we accept as authoritative, divinely inspired, and inerrant, both the Old Testament and the New, and so the lessons of Genesis are brought together with the Gospel interpretation given by Jesus into a unified Christian anthropology.  Do we accept and embrace this vision of creation, mankind, and moral life, especially as regards relationships like marriage?  Do we let this vision transform us and our attitudes?  While today’s readings touch upon marriage, we can note that this Christian anthropology in the Scriptures gives us guidance on many other issues in our secular modern age.  In fact, given the tsunami of anti-traditional social constructions and novel ideas in the area of sexuality, gender, and marriage it is critical that we understand what godless forces in our society are proposing as a substitution for the Christian vision of creation.  For if we pull up anchor from the foundations of Christian anthropology we quickly find ourselves swept away into all types of man-made constructions that are delusions aided by fairytale language presenting itself as a new version of reality.  But it is no reality.  What are some examples of being unmoored from reality due to rejecting Christian anthropology?  I mean the separation and rejection of the procreative meaning of sexual love by use of contraception or by sterilization.  The proliferation of abortion that leaves a baby dead and a woman scarred, at the very least emotionally and psychologically.  So-called gay “marriage.”  The idea that there is no discernible difference or even meaning to the body, to our physicality, such that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man.  The proliferation of made up genders on an almost daily basis.  Things like non-binary, non-conforming.  The claims of transgender ideology.  The experience of modern life, uprooted from a biblical and Christian anthropology, has consequences.  And very serious ones indeed.  And we are seeing this all around us precisely because a Christian view is no longer the view of those who drive culture in our world.  The experience of modern life apart from a Christian anthropology is like trying to tread water right near the edge of Niagara Falls and hoping not to get swept away.  The last few years have been marked by radical delusion powered by mainstream media, and by leftist elites in our political and monied classes. There are real people with struggles in all the areas of morality I have mentioned.  They need help, but instead are aided in living a fantasy by these made up ideas and nonsensical language.  The elites with power put forward the stories of such suffering souls in order to tug at the heart strings by invoking a compassion that is false because it recreates a world that is not based upon reality.  Would that our cultural response would be offering real help to the suffering, to help them see reality and to face their challenges, rather than going along with the lies and aiding and abetting the delusions we see all around us.  This is what happens when you pull up anchor from reality.  Reality reveals itself by the order of creation around us and it can be known by anyone of good will.  And if you have faith, you can see this reality even more clearly.

 Is accepting the Lord’s teaching demanding?  Yes.  But accepting his teaching is more than just a religious practice.  It has much deeper meaning and consequence because the Christian vision of creation and mankind and relationship is accessible to all, no matter one’s faith.  The rejection of the Christian vision revealed by God, is rejection of reality itself.  And we are seeing those consequences all around us.  As if on cue, this very week provided me with two relevant examples of what happens when we reject the Christian vision presented us in the Scriptures.  An op-ed appeared in the New York Times entitled “Divorce Can Be an Act of Radical Self-Love” (New York Times Opinion, Lara Bazelon, September 30, 2021).  In this article the author notes that her marriage was good.  There was no abuse or neglect.  No one was cheating.  In fact, she says, there was love.  She notes that she still loves her ex-husband and goes so far as to say that even now when he walks into the room her stomach drops just like a roller coaster drop, a reference to the breathlessness of love and attraction.  She admits, “I divorced my husband not because I didn’t love him.  I divorced him because I loved myself more.”  One wonders whether the author realizes what she has just admitted and whether the editors at the New York Times really intend to promote narcissism as a cultural value?  Also, this week a Texas abortion provider testified at a House Oversight Committee hearing saying, “abortion saves lives, …abortion is a blessing, abortion is an act of love, abortion is freedom” (Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi).

 At this point in human history we are well beyond the testing of the Pharisees.  What a godless society proposes is not working because it is in opposition to the very order of creation, a creation we cannot pretend does not exist.  The lesson from the Lord in the Gospel passage is a call to get back to “the beginning.”  It is a lesson to accept God’s action in creation and the offer of His kingdom in childlike trust.  We marvel at the age of the martyrs and how Christian witness confounded pagan empires.  A new pagan empire is already here.  As he said to the Pharisees, Jesus says to us today, it’s time to get back to “the beginning.”  It’s time to be the saints, the witnesses, both the Lord and the world need!

Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Traditional Latin Mass)

Dominica XVIII Post Pentecosten (Mass of the 1962 Missal)
26 September 2021

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

 This brief passage from St. Matthew gets right to the point of showing our Blessed Lord as able to heal both body and soul.  The Lord’s identity and power as God is on display.  He knows the interior thoughts of the scribes who do not even say verbally, yet think, that he has blasphemed by taking on an attribute of God, namely forgiving sin.  He goes on to prove his authority by performing a physical healing, the miraculous healing of the paralytic.  And though the interior thoughts of man may still today raise questions, doubts, and complaints about the method God chooses to forgive sin, this passage also makes it clear that our Lord has given this authority of his to men, something we hold in faith in our belief that sincere confession and valid absolution are the normal sacramental means by which the Lord Jesus forgives sin in his one Catholic Church.

The parallel passages recounting this same episode from the Gospels of St. Mark (2:1-12) and St. Luke (5:17-26) fill out the picture and tell us more about this episode.  For instance, in the other parallel accounts we learn specifically that four men, presumably friends of the man with palsy, are carrying his mat.  And we learn that the crowds around the Lord are so dense that the only way the men can get the sick man to the Lord is by opening a hole in the roof and lowering the mat down before the Lord.

 All of the Gospel accounts of this event however make note of a particular motivation that drove the Lord to grant the spiritual healing of sin and the physical healing of paralysis.  The passage notes, “and Jesus seeing their faith,” went on to forgive the sins of the man with palsy.  I find this simple acknowledgment quite interesting.  The Gospel passage clearly makes reference to the plural in making use of the possessive pronoun “their,” as in “their faith.”  That pronoun could be an indication that upon seeing the faith of all five men (the four carrying the mat and the man with palsy) the Lord performed the miracle.  Or it could be an indication that upon seeing the faith of only the four who carried the mat he performed the miracle.  Whatever the case, it is certainly true that the reference is plural and thus the faith of the paralytic’s friends is also something that motivated the Lord.

We can learn in part by this how our Lord chooses to function in dispensing his grace.  Faith is an important foundation and a requisite for receiving God’s life.  We in no way want to dismiss the importance that the sick man himself needs to have faith. However, by this passage, we learn a critical lesson that should drive us to be living members of the Body of Christ, seeking to maintain the life of grace, and guarding our unity with the Lord, because we learn that the faith of the sick man’s friends was also instrumental and a motivating factor for our Lord’s miraculous working.  This truth revealed in the Gospel is a foundational reason for our belief in the communion of the saints, and even related to the doctrine on indulgences.  Despite some controversy with the doctrine of non-Catholic Christians, this passage shows us that the Lord chooses to forgive sin and to heal at least some people because of the merits of others (Sermon for this Sunday from St. Ambrose, The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, v. IV, p.183).  Yes, the merits of one person or group can positively impact the good of others and can be a manner by which the Lord dispenses his grace to someone in need.  That might not sound shocking to us.  Yet to some Christians it is.  Suspicion of this Gospel lesson and rejection of this Catholic doctrine leads some to be offended by the notion of the unity we have in Christ and the powerful effects of the intercession of the saints for us, and our part in interceding for others.  We as Catholics accept this as true.  And even more mysterious and viewed with suspicion is the doctrine of indulgences, the foundation of which is the belief that the treasury of graces and spiritual gifts won by Christ together with the saints is like a rich store that the Church has a role in dispensing to the faithful, in particular for the departed and those who have no one to pray for them or to assist them.  For whatever rejection this doctrine might meet, we accept it and find in the brief words today an important foundation of this belief: Seeing their faith, [Jesus] said to the man sick with palsy: Be of good heart, son, your sins are forgiven you.

My brothers and sisters we want to find consolation, joy, and encouragement in such simple words, words it would be easy to pass right over in this passage.  We ourselves have needs.  We know of so many loved ones and friends and still others with whom we interact who need the Lord’s grace and healing.  We naturally want to support in prayer those who have passed before us in death.  And we know we will make that passage someday too and we hope someone will pray for us and assist us.  The working of God’s grace is not like granting a wish.  It is mysterious.  The faith of an individual person must always be involved.  Yet, the faith and merits of others are involved too.  May the generous response of the Lord in today’s passage, motivated at least in significant part by the faith of the sick man’s friends, be an encouraging message for us that we might have confidence in lifting the needs of others to the Lord, interceding for others so that they are carried to the Lord and even placed before him by our faith.

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

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXV per Annum B
19 September 2021

The section of St. Mark’s Gospel that we are in contains three Passion predictions that Jesus makes.  Last week we heard the first, today the second.  Though each of the three predictions is one chapter apart, the Church chooses to put two predictions back-to-back on successive Sundays.  In each case, the disciples clearly don’t get it.  In fact, more accurately we could say in each case we see the blundering of the disciples and the embarrassment of their attempt to distance Jesus and themselves from the shadow/specter that suffering will cast over how Jesus will be the Christ.  Jesus clearly teaches that the way he will be the Christ (and therefore the way a disciple will be a Christian) is through the via dolorosa, the way of suffering that leads to resurrection.  Jesus does not speak of suffering and crucifixion without, thanks be to God, also referencing the resurrection.  This gives us hope in this valley of tears, as we say in the Salve Regina.  On the flip side, it is likewise true, that Jesus does not speak of a resurrection without the cross.  This gives us a certain sobriety and a reality check about life in our fallen world marked by sin.  In the first Passion prediction, from last week’s Gospel, Peter rebuked Jesus and attempted to correct him, to distance him from suffering.  In today’s prediction the embarrassing blundering of the disciples continues as we see the disciples are not willing to accept for themselves that their lives must be marked by the Cross.  We know this because they are caught arguing about power and who will be the successor when Jesus dies.  They are arguing about who among them is the greatest.  What instruction is offered us by hearing two passion predictions and two examples of disciples not getting it?

First, what can we make of what appears to be secrecy on Jesus’ part?  Last week we heard Jesus warn the disciples not to tell anyone about him.  In today’s selection the Lord doesn’t want anyone to know where he is as he continues teaching about his suffering and resurrection.  Doesn’t this seem to fly in the face of openly proclaiming the Gospel?  Doesn’t this seem to undercut the mission of disciples and the Church to give witness to the Lord?  I mean, we talk all the time, right, that we are supposed to share faith and the Gospel with others?  The secrecy doesn’t seem to make any sense, even though sometimes (maybe often?) we might want to say, “Gosh, it would be easier to just keep my faith to myself rather than to be told that I’m supposed to share my faith as a disciple.  I mean, I could handle just lighting my lamp and putting it under a bushel basket.”  I suggest the odd-seeming secrecy is related to our accepting and “getting” the lesson Jesus emphatically teaches of cross and resurrection.  In these Gospel passages the Lord might be wanting secrecy for the time being because he knows (as we see evidence for in the passages) that the disciples don’t get it.  It’s like we heard last week, Jesus said to Peter: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  The Lord wants secrecy for the time being not because disciples are supposed to remain silent, but rather, for as long as they are not thinking as God does, then they don’t get to talk about him.  In other words, if you are going to think as human beings do and try to talk about faith and the Lord and morality and salvation and conform them to your own image… you might as well just shut up.  Lord knows, we hear that kind of useless hot air oh so frequently from people who, knowingly or unknowingly, empty the Gospel of its content.  So, no, we are not off the hook to give witness to our faith; but we must give an accurate witness, a witness that accepts the emphatic teaching of the Lord that he will be the Christ both of suffering and resurrection, both of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

With two Sundays of Passion predictions in our ears and two Sundays of examples of blundering disciples who don’t get it, I suggest a lesson for us is to examine whether we accept the Lord’s insistent teaching that he will suffer greatly, be rejected, be handed over, that he will be killed and rise again.  It might be easy for us to sort of scoff at the disciples in the Gospel in their refusal to accept a Christ on the Cross.  How silly the disciples in the Gospel seem to be!  We likely cannot appreciate how unexpected a notion it was in the time of the disciples that the promised Messiah would seem to be defeated by suffering, torture, and death.  However, we might want to be cautious about scoffing at the buffoonery of the disciples.  After centuries of Christian faith we rather take for granted that Jesus and Christianity involve the cross.  So expected is the cross to us that it’s even become decoration and jewelry, and sometimes rather opulent at that.  But do we accept the role of the cross precisely as it is, or more as decoration and symbol?

Asking ourselves whether we accept a suffering Lord and suffering in our own life as disciples seems a worthy response to these Gospel passages (from last Sunday and today).  I say that because I suggest we have our own struggles with accepting suffering.  We might not always refuse suffering, but I bet each of us at times struggles with keeping an outlook of faith when challenge, and suffering, and difficulty come our way.  Sure, we might have good sounding words of faith when someone else is suffering, but do those words become empty when suffering comes to us?  We might have some part of our personality that we wish were different.  We might have a moral failure that causes us grief.  We might have challenges in a marriage.  We might have physical defects.  Or maybe we just feel “off,” we feel like life should be easier, but it just doesn’t seem to be so.  Or maybe there is terminal illness or some suffering that is unimaginable.  We can tend to think God is far from us when we suffer.  We can tend to complain and to ask, “Why is this challenge happening to me?”  We can tend to want to say, “Can THIS really be part of God’s plan?  Can any good come from this?”  In our fallen nature these are not surprising questions.  And, yes, we probably need to be cautious about scoffing at the blundering disciples when we ourselves can at times expect resurrection without a cross.

These past two weekends of Passion predictions place before us the crystal clear message that being a disciple of the Lord must have meaning and content and that it costs us something.  In last week’s Gospel the Lord references taking up a cross to teach us that suffering is part of the way of following him.  In today’s Gospel he takes up a child as a way of illustrating the smallness and humility that also must mark the way.  As we participate in this sacrifice of the Lord for us at the Holy Mass, we must clear out the false notions from our minds and place laser focus on what our presence here must mean: We come to this sacrifice of the Lord because we ourselves must humble and lower ourselves and be ready for sacrifice that will make us more like the Lord, whose path is the only way to salvation.

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.”