Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica VI per Annum C
13 February 2022

 This weekend our secular, cultural focus may be on the rivalry between the Bengals and the Rams, but the Scripture selections focus our attention on the face-off between the blessed and the cursed, the face-off between the righteous – those who hope in the Lord and rejoice to live according to His Law – and the wicked – those who put their trust in human beings, in the world, in material goods, and in the strength of their flesh.  Read again the first reading, the psalm, and the gospel and you will see in all three the clear dichotomy between the blessed and the cursed.  The first reading from the Prophet Jeremiah gives us this focus: “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings…. He is like a barren bush in the desert…. Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord…. He is like a tree planted beside the waters.”  The psalm takes up some of the very same images.  This message of blessing and curse comes to its fulfillment in the blessings and the woes of Jesus’ teaching in today’s gospel.

 Jesus repeats the very same message of Jeremiah and the psalm.  But Jesus’ comments about the rich and the poor are not merely observations about their literal economic class; rather, Jesus teaches that the material state of the rich and the poor symbolizes their spiritual state – except inverted.  The rich are the wicked who boast of their self-sufficiency, the strength of their flesh.  The poor are the humble, who put their hope and trust in the Lord.

 In the gospel, Jesus stood on a stretch of level ground and, by his teaching, leveled the preconceptions of his contemporaries as he levels ours!  Why say our secular vision is being leveled?  Because I bet most of us here listen to Jesus’ teaching and think: The poor, the hungry, the weeping, those hated, excluded, insulted and denounced are blessed?  The proof of our secular vision is that we don’t think these people blessed, which betrays where our trust really lies – in the world, in the flesh, in material goods.  And on the flipside, I bet most of us here listen to Jesus’ teaching and think: Why are the rich, and those filled, and those laughing, and those who are spoken well of told by Jesus “Woe to you!”?  That thought too betrays our worldly vision.  We think those who are well-off, comfortable, satisfied, and strong are truly blessed.  But Jesus reminds us that all the things we fill up on, the things we place trust in, are not as stable and secure as we tend to act or think, and they slip through our fingers when we pass from here.  Then, those who are full of the world, the flesh, and material goods will experience an emptiness, a poverty, a sadness, an isolation and a hunger that is incomprehensible, eternal and never-ending.

 Yet we struggle to hear this in our fallen nature and in our flesh, where we give so much attention to earthly well-being.  It might help us uncover this teaching of the Lord by considering what preceded it in the Old Testament.  In the Book of Deuteronomy we find Moses teaching God’s people after they had been wandering long years in the desert, a wandering whose purpose was in part punishment, and in part to work out from them all the ways of thinking they had adopted in slavery in Egypt.  Moses presents them God’s law, restating it to gain their acceptance of it before they will enter the Promised Land, and he also mentions blessings and curses (cf. Dt. 28).  In that teaching Moses indicates that if they obey God’s law and His ways it will be met with the blessing of children and land and crops and cattle and prosperity and peace.  In other words, the signs of blessing will be earthly reward.  In Jesus’ teaching today he is inverting the lesson.  The earthly blessings become the dangers, become the curses.  Why?  Because in earthly blessing we can tend to place our security and find little reason to turn our hearts toward zealous searching for God and His ways.  To bring about his Kingdom in the New Covenant, the Lord teaches us that the earthly blessings run the risk of becoming a trap; whereas, earthly poverty, and hunger, and struggle, these can lead us to turn our hearts to God and to seek His Kingdom.  No doubt this sounds odd to us.  We may want to reject this inverted lesson.  But in this can we not see and understand the Cross in a new way?!  To bring his Kingdom, the Lord endured the Cross.  The greatest loss and suffering and evil became the passage to the incomprehensible gain and joy and blessing of heaven.

 With all this in mind I wonder if there isn’t something in the experience of the last two years with COVID that might reveal to us something we need to admit about where our heart runs the risk of being focused.  In what ways do we still need to accept the New Covenant lesson of the Lord that our heart and our treasure must be on his Kingdom and not merely life in this realm?  Now to be clear, no one should hear this suggestion I am making as being pro-vax or anti-vax or pro-mask or anti-mask.  That’s far too superficial a focus.  If you have health and age risks and you determine that a vaccine, after careful moral examination, is acceptable and important for your situation, then get it.  If you determine your risks are low and you prefer not to get it, then don’t.  If you have compromised health and need to be cautious then feel free to wear a mask or don’t wear one.  My point however is to look more deeply into what we might learn from our collective response to COVID.  Is there a chance we might need to admit that we seek our blessings and our stability here in this life, a life that will not last?  Do we do just about anything to prolong our bodily health and life, whereas we’d have to admit, a stark contrast to the comparatively little we do to protect the health and life of the soul by say, admitting sin in confession, working to change sinful habits, and committing to daily prayer?  Do we view our prosperity as earthbound?  Or do we really seek heaven, even while we appreciate and guard and foster our life here for as many years as the Lord will give us?  As Christians we do not dismiss the body or fail to take care of it.  We care for it because it is good.  Yet our care for it does not become an exclusive focus on this life.  Rather we strive for holiness so that after we pass, our body might resurrect and be joined again to our soul in the life of heaven.  If we maintain this proper Christian focus then we accept from the Lord that our material blessings in this life bring with them responsibilities, such that if we are rich we are not hopeless, but we use those gifts to glorify God.  If we maintain this proper Christian focus then we also accept from the Lord that our material poverty in this life can help to turn our hearts to God as the lasting source of blessing and treasure.  The Lord’s teaching today helps us understand how – to borrow images from Jeremiah – even in the heat and the drought of life, that is, in the penances, in the mortifications, and in the sufferings we endure in this life we do not fear and we remain like a sturdy tree whose roots stretch out and whose leaves stay green.

 The Scriptures teach us that true wealth, satisfaction, and lasting life are found in God alone through His Son Jesus Christ.  However in our lives we try to carry the label and name of Christian while living more for the world and of the world, St. Paul reminds us that “[i]f for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.”  In whatever ways we choose sin, may Christ’s Spirit speak to us today “Woe to you!”  Ask yourself today, in what areas of my life am I living in contradiction to Christ and his clear teaching?  Ask the Lord to help you hear loud and clear, “Woe to you!”  Having heard Christ’s warning, may we then repent of our sins by confession and by serious reform of our lives so that we may be like a tree planted near running water, yielding its fruit in due season.  Blessed are they who hope in the Lord!

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica III per Annum C
23 January 2022

 After the conclusion of a meeting of various local pastors of different denominations years ago, several of us were sitting around just visiting.  As our friendly conversation was wrapping up, I said something about having to get back to the parish to finish up some plans for a Bible study.  The Baptist pastor said to me, with a wry grin: “Oh, you all study the Bible?”  Now, I want to make clear that we were all friends and this was all good-natured jabbing at each other.  So, I looked at him, acting surprised, and said, “Well, of course, we do.  It’s a Catholic book!”  Now that should not be controversial.  But let me say it again.  In all truth, the Bible is a Catholic book.  No one has a Bible they can hold and use, except thanks to the faith and dedication of the Catholic Church who received the Jewish Scriptures together with New Testament writings, and after scrutiny by those with apostolic authority from Jesus, decided which books fit with the received faith, and compiled it all together into the one book we call the Bible.  Due to the readings this Sunday that show us rich use of reading God’s Word in worship and in a liturgical setting, we can appreciate the important place of the Word of God in our life as Catholics.  Scripture is a rich treasure of our faith that helps us build a relationship with Jesus.  We are fools if remain ignorant of Scripture.  As St. Jerome famously said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

The readings this week provide us an important lesson about a critical foundation for the good of our spiritual lives.  In the Old Testament reading, God’s people gather for worship and are instructed extensively from the book of God’s law (the Scriptures as they existed at that time).  The people listened attentively and heard a message that confronted them to more faithful living; a message that convicted them of their complacency, their sin, and their tendency to practically forget to allow God’s law to lead all their daily actions.  Our worship, too, is composed of gathering to listen extensively to God’s Word.  We are called to listen attentively, to put away distractions and other pursuits, and to focus on God’s Word.  We do this so that we, too, might be confronted to more faithful living, to be convicted of our sins, and to reform our lives so that we do not compromise or explain away God’s law, but rather allow it to direct our daily living.  Why do we allow the often-uncomfortable work of being confronted by God’s Word?  Because it is necessary for our salvation.  And more than just confronting us, God’s Word teaches us about His love for us and inspires joy in us to see our lives as swept up into salvation history.

 The Gospel passage goes on to show us again how critically important God’s Word is for our spiritual lives.  St. Luke informs us that he has carefully investigated all that has been received in the prior Sacred Scriptures and the Sacred Tradition.  In so doing, God’s Word has become a foundation for his life, which he writes down and shares with the rest of the Church.  We will have spiritual health and the hope of eternal life if we truly make God’s Word – handed on to us in written form through Sacred Scripture and handed on to us in oral form through Sacred Tradition – the foundation of our spiritual lives.  For St. Luke indicates that he writes all that he has investigated so that we “may realize the certainty of the teachings [we] have received.”

 Thus, an important truth of our faith is that God’s Word is an indispensable foundation of our life.  As today’s psalm stated, we must say and mean: “Your words, Lord, are spirit and life!”  God’s Word reveals to us truths about how we are made in God’s image and likeness.  His Word reveals to us our eternal destiny.  Fostering a love for and a reliance upon God’s Word in our spiritual lives gives us a critical foundation for appreciating the Word made flesh, who is Jesus Christ, and for appreciating his enduring presence among us in the flesh by means of the Holy Eucharist.

 I don’t know about you but I find myself deeply disturbed and overwhelmed at times by the grotesque delusion that seems to be gripping so many aspects of modern life.  Who speaks the truth?  Who can you trust?  Basic matters of life and dignity and biology and sexuality and gender seem to no longer have their clear meaning among such a vast number of people.  Most all of the elites in our political and cultural classes, all the powers that be, having made an idol of money and power, are on the bandwagon of a deluded world promoting all this garbage.  And it is no longer good enough for them that space is made for their “theater of the absurd,” but now their tolerance requires absolute obedience or you are criminalized.  I tie this, at least in part, to a world and an age that is increasingly less founded on God’s Word.  What do I mean by that?  Is this not chaos all around us?  Can you recall what God’s Word first tells us about the world He made?  From the first verses of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss” (Gen. 1:1-2).  Before God’s creative action there was chaos and formlessness and lack of order.  It’s like we are returning to chaos.  And our society is doing so, at least in part, by not being founded on God’s Word.  Secularists and atheists may want to march down that regressive path to nothingness; but we believers can’t do so.  We better know our book and rely upon it to instruct us and to form us and to guide us to salvation in the midst of chaos.

 Let’s take just one stark example of what happens when the truth contained in God’s Word is rejected, and when we fail to be formed by God’s Word so to be powerful witnesses confronting society.  This weekend marks the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, that established a so-called right to abortion in federal law.  We may be months away from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.  I pray it will be so.  Are we willing to pray earnestly for the end of the heinous bloodbath that washes our country in evil?  Are we willing to forego our own plans and our own free time by participating in pro-life activities?  Will we go the extra mile to give a voice to human life in the womb?  Will we speak up when those around us discount the scandal of abortion or transmit the lie that what is in the womb is not a separate, unique, unrepeatable human being deserving of rights?  Will we inconvenience ourselves regularly to fast, to do penance, or to make sacrifices so that abortion proponents are converted?  Will we use our own money and our own energy to support a woman in need and in risk of giving into the immense pressure around her to make her child quietly disappear?  Will we speak of God’s mercy to one who suffers because of a past abortion and encourage that person to find healing in God’s grace?  It seems to me these are all things we must do because we are a people formed by the Word of God to be a people of life.  You and I can’t stand up to the demons barking about “choice” if we are not founded on God’s Word and in intimate relationship with the One who gives us power as members of the body of Christ.

 Your words, Lord, are spirit and life!  These words surely have an application to the great societal debate over human life.  These words also apply to so many other areas of our life.  We are called to be formed by God’s Word always and to allow His commands and His ways to guide, lead, and change every aspect of our own lives.  If we truly have ears open to God’s Word we know we must convert more deeply and be transformed.  Where we have failed and where we weep because of our sins, we also hear God’s Word remind us to rise from our worship, filled with grace, so that we may rejoice in the Lord who is our strength!

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica II per Annum C
16 January 2022

A couple weeks back we observed the Epiphany, a word meaning “manifestation” or “showing.”  In the Church’s ancient practice there is actually a triple manifestation of God all rolled up into one in the solemnity of the epiphany.  Along with the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of the Lord, and the miracle at Cana help us observe this triple manifestation that God is in our midst.

A principle manifestation of God in our midst is through holy matrimony, that’s why Cana is one of the manifestations of the epiphany.  Let that sink in for a bit.  Holy Matrimony is to be a way by which God’s presence is made manifest.  Do you think of marriage that way?  Do you think of yours that way?  Yes, bringing two people with a fallen nature together can be very complicated and involves suffering, it might seem like a purgatory or even a hell on earth at times… but do you think of marriage as God does?  Jesus, the Son of God in the flesh, is right there at a celebration of married love in Cana.  It is there that he works his first miracle, thus manifesting and showing that God has come to earth and lives among us in our flesh.  In a one flesh union of a man and a woman, both made in the image and likeness of God, and open to the gift of children through total self-giving and sacrificial love, God is made manifest and shows Himself in our midst.  Do you think of marriage that way?  Do you let yourself be in God’s presence to find healing and strength to live marriage that way?  Perhaps more important, and to borrow an image from the Gospel, will you invite Jesus to be in your marriage.  The “water” of a relationship starts out fresh and satisfying but it can turn tepid, still, and even sometimes stagnant… will you invite Jesus to be in your marriage to turn the water into the wine of the Holy Spirit?

I think of the apostles who were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and who went out to proclaim their new life in the Lord.  Recall how Acts 2:13 tells us there were naysayers who mocked this new life and who said that the apostles must have consumed too much new wine.  In the Scriptures wine can serve as an image of joy and the life of the Holy Spirit.  I think we can accept the manifestation of God’s desired presence in holy matrimony, a manifestation by his making of plentiful wine, to be an indication of how God desires to provide joy and new life in the Holy Spirit through His design for marriage.  But if holy matrimony is to be lived in a such a way that it manifests God’s presence in this world, that means it must be lived according to His design.  It cannot be lived in a secular way, or according to a worldly way of thinking, where marriage, it seems, has become more about the adults finding fulfillment and pleasure, and where “love is love” in any one of a number of modern combinations.  Marriage serves to manifest God’s presence when God Himself is permitted to be there.  That is to say, that “marriage” becomes “Holy Matrimony” when Jesus is invited to the feast.

I can’t help but notice the invitation list at the Cana wedding.  There was a wedding at Cana and the mother of Jesus was there.  And Jesus and his disciples were also invited.  I have a real simple idea following the ordering of the invitation list in this Gospel.  This is a simple idea that does not at all mean there aren’t many other ways to improve marriage or that there aren’t times when some serious triage is needed with people competent in helping navigate troubles in marriage.  But the simple Gospel lesson, based on the invitation list, is this: Will you invite Mary, and Jesus, and Jesus’ disciples to be part of your marriage?  Both husbands and wives, you gotta do this!

Grow in Marian devotion and ask our Mother’s intercession for the good of your marriage and family.  Ask her, give her permission, to do what she does in this Gospel: Dear Mother, notice where the wine of my marriage has run out and raise that deficiency to the Lord.  Dear Mother, implore with your Son to provide new wine.  Invite Jesus into your marriage.  Are you living your marriage in a godly way, such that the Lord would even recognize it as the instrument by which he shows himself?  If you live marriage as the pagans do, making it about yourself, avoiding sacrifice, seeking pleasure, lust, artificially refusing children, thinking it more about the fulfillment of the adults… well, then, Jesus doesn’t have an invitation to your marriage.  Make sure that changes.  There may be past choices you can’t undo in your marriage.  I’m not condemning.  You can still repent and issue a new invitation to the Lord.  And then place yourself in his presence especially at Mass, and in prayer with the Scriptures.  How about adoration in our chapel, even as a couple where possible, to be with the Lord to give him an invitation?  To let him be who he desires to be for you, namely the one who turns water into wine.  Finally, invite Jesus’ disciples to be part of what enriches your marriage.  Jesus’ disciples were there at Cana.  What I think that teaches us is the value of having strong friendships among other fellow disciples who might inspire us and who might assist us when it seems like we are running out of wine.  Make relationships, and the important accountability that can happen among disciples, a source of strength in your marriage.

I want to attach to this Gospel an announcement I had hoped to make a year ago, before we were dealing with much smaller attendance and the after-effects of COVID lockdown.  We are still rebuilding from that time but we are doing well, even though sadly there are still plenty of faces from the past who don’t quite seem to be back with us.  We have been quietly piloting for two years now a new marriage preparation method for the parish.  It is one that involves placing engaged couples with a mentor couple.  The program is called Witness to Love and the materials we provide give both the mentor couple and the engaged couple solidly Catholic resources needed for good marriage preparation over the six months we have for preparation.  What results is good preparation for the engaged couple and the added blessing of a time for marriage enrichment for the already-married couple.  Think about it, if someone asks you to be a mentor you have a concrete reason to finally give attention to your relationship.  The reason I am announcing this publicly is because any married couple in the parish can be asked to serve as a mentor couple.  There are very few pre-requisites.  The mentor couple must be in a valid sacramental marriage.  They must be active parishioners in this parish.  They have to be married at least five years.  They should not be related to the engaged couple.  That’s it!  You might be surprised to hear that you could be eligible and asked to be a mentor couple.  The Witness to Love resources we provide give you the solid content that is needed to help guide someone else’s marriage preparation.  Your own living of marriage, no matter how you might evaluate your own marriage, gives you a wealth of experience that can enrich an engaged couple.  Thus, with this announcement, I hope you won’t be surprised if an engaged couple asks you to serve as their mentor.  I hope you will be willing to help, to say yes.  You’ll have help from the parish and you’ll know that an engaged couple sees something admirable in your marriage and something they want to emulate.

God’s covenant with his people is described in Scripture, as it was in today’s first reading, as a marriage.  At a wedding party, Jesus manifested his divine presence and performed his first miracle.  Let’s give him permission to be in our marriages so they have the blessing of wine, that is the joy of the Holy Spirit, and so that married love can reveal God’s glory and bring disciples to believe in the Lord!

Nativity of the Lord (Christmas)

Nativitas D.N.I.C.
25 December 2021
Midnight Mass Readings

 In the Gospel for this solemnity the whole world was in motion.  The phrase that “the whole world should be enrolled” is a reference to the entire Roman Empire.  The Emperor Caesar Augustus had decreed that a census should take place and so the whole world was in motion as people returned to their ancestral homes for the census.  This is how Joseph ends up in the city of David, Bethlehem, because he is a descendant in the royal line of David.  He went to register where his ancestral line and territory originate from.  Recall that it was in Bethlehem that the youngest of Jesse’s sons, David, was anointed as king (cf. 1 Sam 16).  There was motion and commotion as the various processes of the world unfolded on that first Christmas night.  The powerful and the elite initiated this movement.  But most everyone was unaware that a divine motion was taking place in the midst of it all.  That divine motion took flesh by Mary’s cooperation and the power of the Holy Spirit and began nine months prior.  That divine motion remained hidden in the sanctuary of her womb.  And on this solemnity we celebrate that the movement of God coming to man was made visible by the birth of Jesus from Mary.  As the beginning of that movement of God, the conception of the Lord, took place in obscurity and simplicity and privacy.  So, with his birth.  And it was not to the powerful nor to the elite that the angel shared the message of God moving near and becoming one with us.

Celebrating the birth of our Savior and considering to whom angels announced this movement of God offers us three lessons for living our faith, three lessons for how we ought to be so that we are more open to the Good News of great joy that God is with us, so that we don’t miss the movement of God toward us like so many at that first Christmas.  And so, the humility and simplicity taught to us by those to whom the angels of the Lord did announce God’s coming near is a lesson for us.  It is a lesson for our present spiritual life so that we live in a way that makes us open and receptive to receive God’s desire to come near to us, open and receptive to receive God Himself.  So, let’s look at three examples of those to whom angels appeared.

 It was the Archangel Gabriel who first announced to Mary that God desired to come near to mankind and that she had been chosen to be part of this divine movement.  The humility and the simplicity of a living faith, of which Mary is an excellent model, is a lesson for us to emulate.  That living faith is one that is both active and contemplative.  It is one whose prayer is both vocal and silent.  Above all, a living faith is one that is not only on the lips but rather seeks to embrace what God speaks and to conform and change one’s life in trust.  Mary’s living faith is a model for us to permit God and His ways to have a claim on our lives so that we change ourselves to be conformed to Him.

The Gospel of St. Matthew tells us that an angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream to communicate God’s plan that involved Mary and to call upon him to change his mind so that he would not be afraid to take Mary into his home and to be both husband to her and father to her child.  The courageous obedience of St. Joseph is a model and a lesson for us to emulate.  The silence from Scripture on St. Joseph does not permit us to know much about him.  However, what we do know provides for us this lesson of courageous obedience.  Listening to the message of the angel and following what God revealed to him was not some passive thing.  His cooperation with God’s plan required a type of courage to steel his nerves, to change his plans, to submit to God in trust and to endure whatever would come.

Finally, in the Gospel of this Holy Mass we hear that soon after the birth of the Savior an angel of the Lord appeared to shepherds keeping the night watch in the fields near his birth.  The lesson we can learn from the angel’s appearance to the shepherds requires a bit more analysis.  It is perhaps not as obvious as the need for an angel to appear to Mary and to Joseph in order to gain their free cooperation with God’s movement to mankind.  Bethlehem is in the region of Jerusalem, only about 6 miles or so to the south of Jerusalem.  It might be hard for us to imagine but the service at the Jerusalem Temple and the sacrifices that took place there were a major driving part of the economy of the entire local area.  In particular, for the sacrifice of lambs thousands of sheep would be needed.  Perhaps most unimaginable to us, hundreds of thousands would be needed at particularly high holy days when pilgrims from far and wide made the journey to Jerusalem.  It is thus entirely likely that the flocks in the region surrounding Bethlehem, only about six miles from the holy city, were flocks that provided, at least in part, for the massive sacrificial system of the Jerusalem Temple.  Following the birth of Jesus, the angel’s appearance next to the lowly shepherds – to these shepherds in particular – highlights a lesson for us about sacrifice and worship.  Already at his birth, the specter of sacrifice is present.  The Bethlehem shepherds, guardians of the flocks destined for sacrifices at the Temple, come with haste to see what the angel proclaims, the sign for them of an Infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.  We don’t get any details later in the Gospel about just what is was like for several shepherds to move their entire flocks and to arrive at the nativity.  But whatever motion and commotion there must have been, these guardians of the sacrifices for the Temple, come to see the newborn Lamb of God, the one whose very self is the perfect Temple, the one who will be sacrificed for the salvation of mankind.  And thus, a lesson for us is the primacy of sacrifice in our embrace of God’s movement to be with us.  Most especially, our embrace of the sacrifice that is made present to us here at the Holy Mass, the sacrifice of the Cross that saves us.  But not only that.  The lesson for us is that to respond to God’s movement to us we must be a people of sacrifice.  Our sacrifices to change sinful habits and to rid them from our lives helps us welcome and adore Christ.  We make sacrifice to put God first in all things, requiring that we keep proper priorities and refuse to make others things our gods.  Living in such a way that proclaims that I actually do believe that God is near and with me requires sacrifice.  To see the events of life, especially those that challenge me or disturb my faith, as participating in God’s life and His work of salvation requires that I sacrifice the voices of doubt and beg an increase of trust.  And of course, to be like those guardian shepherds of the sacrifice, to gather here in accord with the Lord’s own command that we do this in his memory, to be present to worship God at Holy Mass… this requires that we sacrifice other pursuits to embrace God’s saving presence and action among us.  It is in keeping our eyes fixed, like the shepherds, on the Lamb of God, that our individual sacrifices make sense and are placed together with the one perfect pleasing offering made to God the Father by the Son Jesus Christ.

Developing a living faith, a courageous obedience, and a focus on the primacy of sacrifice helps us receive the Good News of great joy that our God and Savior has come near.  These lessons help us embrace the movement of God to us so that we might move to deeper life with Him.  May the observance of this solemnity help us, through the darkness of our stumbling faith, to see with renewed vision the glory of the Lord shining around us.  May this solemnity help us to embrace the movement of God to us so that we join the multitude of the heavenly host in proclaiming: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests!”

Third Sunday of Advent

Dominica III Adventus C
12 December 2021

The change of vestment color for this weekend and the permission to decorate the sanctuary with flowers serve as a visual reminder that half of Advent is in the past.  The color rose – rose being traditionally associated with joy – and the repeated message of the Scriptures call us to rejoice.  And so, this day has been called in Latin “Gaudete Sunday” or “Rejoice Sunday.”  That thematic title for this Sunday comes from the words of the entrance antiphon, which we chanted at the beginning of this Holy Mass: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.”  This weekend the Church calls us to step up our joy because we have completed half of this holy season and are drawing near to the celebration of the source of our joy, the birth of Christ Jesus.

The brief book of the Prophet Zephaniah, our first reading, demonstrates the hope of God’s people that there would be fulfillment of God’s promise that “the King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst.”  This promise that the Lord will come among his people and be in their midst has always held for the Church a Marian significance.  When we celebrate Mary’s role in salvation history it is common that this first reading is chosen since, through Mary and her cooperation in faith, God’s Son literally comes into our midst.  The mere hope of the fulfilment of this promise was already a source of joy for God’s people in the Old Covenant.  We who live in the time of the New Covenant can embrace an even more confident joy in that this promise has been fulfilled and God, our Savior, has come to us.  One of our focuses in Advent is that very reality, the first coming of our Savior, whose birth we are preparing to observe with renewed faith.

 Yet, for us too, like God’s people in the time of the Prophet Zephaniah, we await a promise to be fulfilled.  Zephaniah also prophesied about a coming day of the Lord, a day of wrath and judgment.  In fact, Zephaniah’s description of this day of wrath has inspired in large part the liturgical texts and poetry that we use for requiem or funeral Masses, especially the composition of the hymn Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath.  That coming day of the Lord, the day of judgment, is our second focus in the season of Advent.  We who exist in the New Covenant, seek to renew our faith in celebrating the first arrival of God’s presence in the midst of His people, that is His coming in our flesh and His birth in time.  But we also must prepare and look ahead – even looking ahead with joy – for the fulfillment of a promise still awaited, that is the Lord’s return in glory when he will usher in the fullness of his Kingdom.

 It may seem odd to look forward with joy to the coming day of glory and judgment.  Yet, that is our task in faith.  Our joy for the return of the Lord in glory can find its place in God’s tender care and love for His people.  We see that tender care in the terms commonly used to refer collectively to God’s people.  Borrowing the name of the location of the original citadel of David, named Zion, and later called Jerusalem, a poetic personification comes to be used to refer to God’s people as a beloved daughter.  The Prophet Zephaniah uses those terms – “daughter Zion” and “daughter Jerusalem” – calling God’s people to shout for joy even as they await both the coming of the Lord into their midst and the coming day of wrath.

 Those incorporated into the Church by faith and baptism, and who maintain that life of grace, are the fulfillment of daughter Zion and daughter Jerusalem.  The Church is thus viewed and referred to as the new heavenly city, the dwelling place of God with His people.  We have joy as we prepare to celebrate God’s birth among us at Christmas.  And we have joy as we still await and must prepare for God’s return in glory as our Judge.  Why or how do we have joy as we prepare for His return?  We have joy because we are called to view the Lord’s return as an opportunity for the fulfillment of our eternal dwelling and communion with God in His Kingdom.  To be able to look ahead with joy to the Lord’s return should fill us with the same expectation that prompted those listening to St. John the Baptist’s preaching to ask, “What should we do?”

 St. John the Baptist’s response highlights the moral response that must be part of our preparation for the Lord’s return.  And if we will seek to make a moral response by the choices we make in our living as disciples, then we can have joy as we await the Lord’s return.  Too often we can be lulled into a false notion that approaches our life as disciples and our preparation for the Lord’s return in a far too static way.  A brute way to say this is that we don’t have an authentic and lasting joy in waiting for the Lord’s judgment if we live as if having once been baptized and showing up for Mass means we have accomplished the heights of sanctity.  No, we have joy in our looking forward to the Lord’s return by living a dynamic moral life, by reforming our sinful ways, and by living for others.  That fulfillment and satisfaction you experience in serving the less fortunate and providing for someone who has less material means (which we do so easily at this time of year), that can serve as an indication and a reminder that we can live in joy by serving others and putting away sin from our lives.  All manner of people asked St. John the Baptist, “What should we do?”  All people from the Gospel reading, even those known as notorious sinners, such as tax collectors, and those known to exercise power and manipulation, such as soldiers, all have a place in the joy of awaiting the Lord if they will turn from sin and live a more dynamic moral life.  And that’s the lesson for us too.

 Our Advent focus is not only the joy of celebrating the Lord’s birth at Christmas but it is also a call to have joy in living our life and communion with the Lord now, even as we await that mysterious day of glory and judgment that will come.  We can prepare for that day with joy by seeking to be better grain (to borrow a gospel image), better wheat for the Lord, while separating the chaff from our lives through repentance and better moral living.  And then, as beloved sons and daughters of the Church, the new Jerusalem, and free from anxiety we can respond to the charge of St. Paul in the second reading, which forms the theme for this Sunday: “Rejoice in the Lord always, I shall say it again: rejoice!”

Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Immaculate Conception of the BVM
8 December 2021

 Observing the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary we contemplate the threshold of our salvation, because we celebrate the gift of God to Mary, the one He chose to be the mother of our Savior.  As we celebrate today how she was conceived free from all stain of sin in her mother’s womb, the womb of St. Ann, we celebrate that God was making good on His promise to save mankind.  With this in mind it is appropriate that we hear in this Holy Mass from the Book of Genesis.  We hear God’s words after the fall of Adam and Eve, in that sin we call “original.”  We hear of God’s plan to save mankind after sin had entered the garden of goodness God had made for His creation.

 In the selection from Genesis we hear what theologians like to call the “protoevangelion.”  That term comes from Greek and refers to the first proclamation of the Good News, the first proclamation of the gospel, that God has a plan to save us.  That first proclamation is verse 15 which has God speaking to Satan, the serpent, and saying: “I will put enmity [division, hatred, adversarial relationship] between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he [the offspring of the woman] will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel” (Gen. 3:15).  God speaks His plan to undo the sin and disorder that Satan proposed and introduced to Adam and Eve.  God proclaims that the offspring of the woman will strike a head blow, that is a mortal blow, to the serpent.  The fulfillment of this good news for salvation is finally found in the Cross of Jesus, in his sacrifice of his life for our salvation.  Why is the Cross of Jesus that mortal, head blow to the serpent and his cunning?  It’s because disobedience is at the heart of Satan’s relationship with God and Satan’s plan to bring ruin to God’s goodness.  Satan is that angel who fell because he would not serve God in obedience.  Disobedience is at the center of what Satan introduced in the garden and disobedience remains at the heart of our sins, for which we are personally responsible.  That’s why the Cross of Jesus is the fulfillment of this first announcement of the gospel: because the Cross is fundamentally about obedience.  God the Son, takes on our flesh, and he comes to do the Father’s will.  In obedience Jesus accepts the Cross and the punishment for our sins.  The obedience of the Cross undoes the disobedience inspired by Satan.  And thus, for you and for me, obedience to God is key to our salvation, an obedience that is demonstrated in our growth in holiness and our saying an increasingly committed “no” to sin.

 I’d like you to think about the value of the Cross in order to understand our faith in Mary’s preservation from sin in her immaculate conception.  The sacrificial event of Jesus’ death on the Cross is what saves us.  It is re-presented here at the Holy Mass and that’s why the Mass is so important to our faith and our entrance into Heaven because it places us in contact with the sacrificial value of the Cross.  I’m willing to bet that most everyone here believes the Cross is what saves us, even though it happened a few thousand years before any of us was ever thought of, or ever lived and walked the earth.  In other words, I bet most everyone here believes that God the Father saw the value of Jesus’ obedience and sacrifice on the Cross and applied the merit, the value, of that sacrifice, to people who did not live at the time and in the place where it happened.  God applies the value of the sacrifice of the Cross to those who will accept it in faith, and who will embrace it and conform their life to it.  God sees the value and the merit of the Cross and I bet you believe that its value is applied to you and to me a few thousand years later.  Here is what I’d like you to consider: If you believe the value of Jesus’ sacrifice can apply to you thousands of year later, can you believe and accept that God could see the value of the Cross and apply its value before it happened?  If its value could move forward in time to us, can God permit its value to go backward in time?  That is basically what we are saying in faith about Mary’s immaculate conception.  We are saying that God Who exists outside of time and Who sees and knows all things, could see the value of what His Son would accomplish on the Cross and He applied that value to Mary from the first moment of her conception in her mother’s womb.  Thus, God gave Mary the gift of saving her from the first moment of her life.  It’s not that she did not need salvation, no!  God saved her from the first moment of her life by the value of the sacrifice of Jesus which the Father could foresee.

 Why would it be important for God to have a plan to do this for Mary, the mother of our Savior?  If God’s plan was to send His Son in the flesh to be born among us, in time, in the normal course of human birth, then a human being, having inherited a fallen nature due to original sin, could not do anything but pass on fallen, sinful human flesh to Jesus.  But the Book of Revelation tells us that nothing unholy can be in God’s presence.  Much less together with Him.  God, the all-holy One, cannot coexist with sin.  It’s like oil and water; they don’t go together.  So, God’s preserving Mary from sin from the first moment of her life means she was being prepared for the role He chose for her in salvation: to give human flesh to the Son.  And by preserving her from sin, God the Father was making it possible to pass on to Jesus the pure flesh that could coexist with Him.  Mary’s being preserved from sin means she could provide for Jesus sinless human flesh in which to take up dwelling, in order to come to save us.

 Thus, the collect of this Holy Mass speaks well of what we believe in this aspect of our faith.  Listen to it again carefully: “O God, who…prepared a worthy dwelling for your Son, grant, we pray, that, as you preserved her from every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw, so through her intercession, we, too, may be cleansed and admitted to your presence.”

 We celebrate in this solemnity the special gift of God to Mary.  A gift that was part of His plan, first announced in Genesis, to deal a mortal blow to Satan and the harm he had done to God’s desire for us to have Heaven.  Since obedience was the undoing of Satan’s disobedience, then obedience to God must be fostered in our Christian living.  And this is why Mary is for us such a great example and intercessor.  She is the one who said “yes” to God’s plan.  We heard of that obedience in the gospel: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word.”  God has a desire for us to live in communion with Him now and forever in Heaven.  He has fulfilled His plan in Jesus’s sacrifice.  Today we celebrate the role He prepared Mary to occupy to bring us that Savior.  Looking to Mary and counting on her prayers for us we can walk confidently toward God trusting that by sincerely doing away with sin, by confessing it, and seeking to observe greater obedience to God now, we will be prepared one day to enjoy the fullness of obedience’s reward in eternal life in Heaven.

Solemnity of Christ the King

Dominica D.N. Iesu Christi Regis
21 November 2021

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.  To be clear, the Lord has absolute rights over us.  Yet, in freedom, he expects us to use that gift to submit and to willingly 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.  The implications are grave for our social order and for our hope for salvation when we refuse the kingship of the Lord who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life… when we refuse the incarnate love of God for us.  Consider not so much the small portion of the Gospel we hear today, but the whole larger context of the scene surrounding the arrest, the accusation, and the condemnation of Jesus.  “The angry mob outside demands him to be punished.  Voices from all sides have already concluded that he is guilty, even before any trial begins.  They don’t want to hear the facts of the case,” or to accept any meaning of the facts that does not fit the predetermined narrative (Rev. Robert Wood, personal text message, 20 November 2021).  “The truth of the matter makes no difference [to them].  He is obnoxious to them, and he has already been condemned in their minds and hearts.  It is not a matter of truth or justice, but of factions and ideologies and lies” (ibid).  What are the implications of rejecting the order of the King who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life?  Look into the mirror and look into that mirror of our civilization that is the mass media, cell phone video footage, and social media posting.  “The scene of today’s Gospel continues to be played out in our world.  Not only in Kenosha, Wisconsin, or Brunswick, Georgia,… but in every place and community and heart that refuses to see the truth, or to cherish the truth, or to listen to the spoken truth” (ibid).  When you reject the Kingship of the Word Incarnate who is Truth, the result is not that you are without a king.  Rather, fallen sinful man makes himself, and what satisfies himself – and soon – his delusions and his derangements, a king.

Having established his kingship over us, we should find comfort in knowing 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.  While it is possible for us to submit to our King, it is a work that requires our cooperation and ongoing effort in the life of grace.  Seeing the order of the reign of Christ flourish and proliferate in our world begins with that territory, that domain, that is a human person.  It begins with you and me submitting ourselves to the Lord, training our children to do the same, witnessing to the Lord and proclaiming the Gospel in our areas of influence so that others come to accept the Lord as their King too.  Then we will see the proper flourishing of the Kingship of Christ reflected in greater order, justice, truth, and peace in our world.  We get just a little glimpse of that growth and flourishing of the reign of Christ today as our brothers and sisters in RCIA have taken a new step to submit themselves to the Lord and to serve him in his Church as they enter the time of formation and instruction that is the catechumenate.

 The placement of this solemnity situates it always near the annual observance of All Saints’ Day.  The proximity of this 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.  We celebrate the fidelity and the success of the reflected glory and holiness of God shown in the saints, but we also must admit that the Lord’s mission and his reign is supposed to continue in each of us who must strive for holiness and who are saints still-in-the-making.

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.