Fifth Sunday of Easter

Dominica V Paschae C
15 May 2022

As a priest I have had many opportunities to be with people who are near death due to terminal illness or very advanced age.  The knowledge that your life is near its end is at once sobering and clarifying.  Knowledge that death is approaching helps put things in perspective.  It helps clarify what is most important; what a person most wants to be known for; the legacy a person wants to leave behind.

Jesus faced this very situation in the gospel selection of this Mass.  Today’s gospel from St. John comes from the chapters describing the Lord’s Last Supper with his apostles.  Jesus knew his earthly life was near its end.  In fact, he told his apostles he earnestly desired to celebrate this final Passover with them and that he would not celebrate it again until he had entered his Kingdom.  In the course of that meal where Jesus gave us the gift of his Body and Blood the Lord was in his final hours of life on earth, preparing for his departure through death, and for his glorification in resurrection.

In his final words to his apostles Jesus gives them a new commandment: love one another.  Jesus determines that the command to love one another is the most critical topic he must address in his final hours of earthly life.  Given the dramatic scene of being near the point of his departure, we can say that it is critically important that we accept those words from the Lord.  And his call is not to some generic, undefined love.  Rather he says, “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”  His apostles would understand what that command requires when in hours of having spoken those words they would see Jesus love them to the end and lay down his life for them even though their betrayal and denial did not deserve that type of love.  This is the pattern of Jesus’ own love.  This is the pattern Jesus calls them to model.  They are to love one another in the laying-down-your-life kind of love that Jesus models.

Through the gospel Jesus is imparting to us the same legacy, the same critical lesson.  What’s more, in following his style of love, Jesus says people will know that we are his disciples.  Do we think people will know we are disciples because they see us walking into or out of church on the weekends?  Do we think that people will know we are disciples because we identify ourselves as Christians?  Do we think people will know we are disciples because we have a crucifix or some religious symbol somewhere?  Jesus says people will know we are disciples if we have love for one another – the type of love he modeled.

The word “disciple” refers to a student or a learner.  For followers of the Lord, being a student or a learner is no mere academic pursuit, or something that exists only in the mind.  To believe and to be a believer certainly involves an intellectual assent of the mind to the truths God reveals.  But it would be a mistake to think being a disciple is shown only by an assent of the mind.  One can believe something in the mind while not letting that belief impact choices, the way one lives.  We hear these dichotomies a lot, don’t we?  It is popular for many a person to indicate they believe things about God and faith but to never do anything about it.  I have met people who believe and who share Christian faith sincerely, but who have never been baptized.  Yet, the Scriptures are very clear that faith and baptism are how one enters life in Christ and becomes a Christian.  We all know people who make the distinction saying they are spiritual but not religious, they believe but resist being part of the Church.  But Jesus says, people will know you are my disciples if you love one another.  I can tolerate a whole lot of people I never have to interact with… you can say the same, right?  But for Jesus to command “love one another” immediately takes discipleship out of a “me and my personal Lord and Savior” category and places it in a communal arena.  If you love one another people will know you are my disciples.

There is no doubt that being a disciple of the Lord means that we make an intellectual assent to his teachings.  But the Lord won’t let us get away with that alone.  Speaking these words at the Last Supper, the Lord will put that love into action the very next day on the Cross.  We often point to the heart as being the center of what drives us and our actions, our will.  We learn in this Gospel passage that keeping the Lord in the realm of the mind and head belief is not enough.  To be sure, our mind must conform to the Lord’s teachings.  But our actions, our will, is also critical for showing that we are disciples, students, learners of our Master.  This is how the Lord says people will know we are his disciples: if we love one another.  A belief put into action is what the Scriptures call us to.  May our correct belief of the mind be visible also in our actions.  In this way our belief changes us and becomes a light to others so that they might join us in becoming students in the Church, this school of the Lord’s service.

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Dominica IV Paschae C
8 May 2022

 This weekend is commonly known as Good Shepherd Sunday because we hear from John 10, where Jesus uses the image of sheep and shepherd, and some verses before the passage today he calls himself “the Good Shepherd”.  Good Shepherd Sunday is also a time to give focus to prayer and to our efforts to encourage vocations in our parish by directly speaking to the young people in our midst and in your families about the call of Jesus in their lives.  In your charity, I ask for your prayers for me as your Pastor and for Fr. Bali in the great way he assists me in the work of shepherding.  In our prayers for young people, we need to create an atmosphere in our families where being open to God’s call to a religious vocation is fostered and even expected.  On Good Shepherd Sunday I ask you to pray that the young men in our midst whom God is calling to the priesthood, that they would hear His voice and that obstacles to hearing that call would be removed so that they can respond as future priests.  I ask you to pray, too, that the young women in our midst whom God is calling to be religious, that they would have the courage to follow the divine Lamb of God, and to be a future bride of the Lamb.

 Speaking of himself as Shepherd in relationship to the sheep, Jesus says, “I know them.” A shepherd in Palestine would spend all day and night with the sheep.  He would know their sound, their normal sounds and bleats, and their sounds in distress.  We would know their behavior.  We may not know this experience of a shepherd, but we can certainly understand how true this is if we consider how we might know a pet.  One time my mom sent me a pic of a family pet.  The photo was totally staged, but mom did not tell me it was staged.  She hoped I would think it was a natural moment caught on camera.  I knew immediately.  And when I texted back, “Oh please, that is totally fake,” she was amazed and asked how I knew.  I told her that because I knew his behavior I could tell by how the pet was holding his ears that he was not relaxed and that he was suspicious something was up.  That told me it was staged.  We can understand how a shepherd would come to know the sheep.  Of course, it is important for us to move out of the realm of literal animals, literal sheep, and to hear the Lord’s words as referring to us.  He knows us.  We are his sheep.  He is our Shepherd.

 Notice what we might call a progression, an order, or hierarchy of shepherding in this passage.  Our Lord, the Good Shepherd, sort of stands in the middle in a sense of this order of shepherds.  Earlier in John 10 he references himself as the Good Shepherd.  But here he references the way in which the Father is the shepherd.  That’s the implication of the words here.  The Father is greater and He has given the sheep to the Son, to the Good Shepherd.  And, likewise, descending in order, we know that the Lord has established his Church with visible shepherds who govern in his place as vicars, most especially the apostles and their successors, the bishops.  In fact, just last Sunday we heard of this final order of shepherds because the Lord was clearly choosing St. Peter as a shepherd when he told him three times: “Feed my lambs”; “Tend my sheep”; and, “Feed my sheep.”

 I want to suggest for us that the Lord has so designed his Church in fulfillment of the Father’s mission that there is a unity among the progression or the order of shepherds.  This is a clear meaning of the words the Lord says, “The Father and I are one.”  The Son does not shepherd in a different way than the Father.  Likewise, our Good Shepherd has given us an assurance, that the legitimately constituted apostolic shepherds guide us rightly when they are faithful to the deposit of faith, which is the Sacred Scripture and the Sacred Tradition.  When they speak to us these truths they amplify the one voice of our Good Shepherd and we can recognize the voice we hear.  Should the bishops not speak in accord with the deposit of faith, a dissonance is introduced into that voice and we can recognize it as departing from the fullness of truth.

It cannot be emphasized enough that there is no guarantee from the Lord that a person cannot or will not be separated from the Good Shepherd.  The idea of “once saved; always saved” is not a scriptural doctrine.  In fact, the exact opposite is claimed as St. John later records in chapter 15 when Jesus describes that branches on the vine that do not bear fruit are cut off and thrown out.  Likewise, the example of Judas is a clear indication that a person can freely choose to separate ourselves and to be lost.  But if we are sheep of the Good Shepherd we hear his voice and we follow him.  That is a reference to obedience and the moral way of life, we follow the path of morality.  I think it is critical that we embrace this in our confused age.  In our time and to great extremes, we have a self-referential culture that exalts the individual, the “I”, above any duty or obligation to another person, and even exalts the individual above reality itself.  This is in part why people can follow, promote, and defend outlandish immorality as a good because they claim it fulfills the self and no one can limit another person’s self-actualization in this way of thinking.  This is in part why people can claim to be something their own physical body clearly manifests they are not.  In this self-referential culture nothing – not even physicality, biology, or anatomy – is more concretely true than what the person decides he or she is, how he or she identifies.  Sadly, and frankly, we find many a catholic holding such opinions that do not come from the voice of the Good Shepherd.  Politicians of the highest order, celebrities, groups that call themselves Catholic while supporting positions at odds with the faith… all this goes on in a narcissistic age.  Whatever that is, it is clear it is not at all hearing, listening to, and following the voice of the Good Shepherd.

 My brothers and sisters, we live in an age that can choose to listen to any number of voices.  Because of that our social life will be a cacophony of dissonant noise at times.  Like Paul and Barnabas in the first reading, we too will face a society that is “filled with jealousy and with violent abuse,” who will contradict and malign and even come after us.  But following the message of the Scriptures today, Let nothing take away our joy in the Holy Spirit!  In the spiritual battle we are called to engage in, we are protected by our Good Shepherd who said, “No one can take them out of my hand.”  That’s the implication of those words, that the Good Shepherd provides a type of spiritual protection to those who follow him.  We listen to the voice of our Good Shepherd.  We follow him so that we may follow the narrow way to eternal life.  And along the way, we share the truth of what our Good Shepherd speaks so that others may be freed of the lies and ideologies and sins that enslave them.  We give them a chance to join us as sheep of the flock!  That will require us to pray so that we form a deep communion with the Lord.  And it will require us to accept sacrifice and maybe even abuse from those who oppose us.  This is the path our own Good Shepherd traveled.  It must be ours too, for as we sang in the psalm, “We are his people, the sheep of his flock.”

Easter Vigil

Easter Vigil
16 April 2022
Gospel: Luke 24:1-12

In the ritual system of our Catholic worship, whose absolute pinnacle you are climbing by your participation in this Easter Vigil with its evocative gestures and symbols, we regularly hear from the narrative of mankind’s salvation by listening to God’s Word recorded in that Catholic book called the Bible.  In entirely unique fashion, this Vigil has us listen to God’s love and saving action through a hefty number of readings, nine in all.  And that doesn’t even count the psalms that we sing and the numerous antiphons and other ritual words that come directly from the Sacred Scriptures.  In listening to the Scriptures we encounter God’s living word.  And we are intended to take that Word into our being and our way of living.  We are intended – the image might be – to breathe it in.  To let God’s inspiration be our respiration!  It is a living, not a dead Word.

We have to be careful that we do not succumb to the unhealthy and unholy busyness of modern life, falling prey to its materialist and secular mind, such that we begin to think of God’s Word as only words on a page, a static recounting of someone’s past history, a monument to the unsophisticated mind of some past cultures before the scientific age, dare I say… a dead word.  Salvation history recounted in Scripture is composed of past historical events and saving actions, yes, but God is acting to save us in our time too and to speak His Word to us, a Word that is always alive.  And so, we need to practice the art of seeing ourselves in salvation history.  We need to practice the art of seeing and receiving what God is doing now for us in the gestures and symbols of worship that communicate and make present His saving power.

An ancient homily on Holy Saturday is used in the Church’s prayer on Holy Saturday.  That ancient homily is a reflection on what faith tells us this day is about.  Quote: “The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep.  The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began.  God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear,” end quote.  God has chosen to subject Himself to falling asleep because by Original Sin and by our personal sins we are deserving of falling asleep.  God comes in our flesh.  He comes to live our very life.  He comes, collapsing the distance between us and Him, to place Himself into our experience that He might plant the seed of divinity there.  That means we must see our lives as the soil to receive God’s planting.  The living God with His living Word comes even into our sleeping to plant the divine power of new life.   That ancient Holy Saturday homily goes on to describe how God has entered His creation to bear and to reform the marks that cause us to fall asleep.  “I order you, O sleeper, to awake.  I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell.  Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.  Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image…. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed … in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.  See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you.  See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image.  On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back.  See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.”

All this is to say that, as we hear salvation history in God’s Word and renew our faith that it is a living Word, and as we meditate upon God’s action and the response of His people, and as we marvel at how God has chosen to enter into our life and to plant in our way of being the seed of divinity, what we marvel at is not only God’s action in entering our life, but that in the gestures of worship we recognize a call to seek, and to enter, and to live a godly life – we marvel that we are called to enter His life.  What God has done in coming to us and working within us is a relationship and not a one-way street.  As that ancient Holy Saturday homily reflected on what the Lord Jesus did in taking on our life and entering our sleep to overcome it, so relationship with God is an invitation to us to place ourselves into godly life.  God’s living Word experienced in the Scriptures but also in the gestures and symbols of our liturgical life is a principal way we enter into and we live the life of God.  It is a practice of sorts that we get here.  But entering into and living a godly life must happen outside these walls too, so that the light of divine life we have received might grow and dispel the darkness that still envelopes so many in our world.  As we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus the empty tomb is the witness to the truth of this saving event.  It is a witness on which we must firmly plant our faith.  Yet, in an almost curious-sounding way, it is NOT a witness on which we are called to plant our feet.  For just as the women in the Gospel went to perform the liturgical action of anointing Jesus, but then left, returning “from the tomb and announced all these things,” so our liturgical action here is meant to strengthen and restore our faith in God’s saving action and to drive us out to announce all this to others that they, too, might be amazed at what has happened.

 (slightly adapted for delivery Easter Sunday)

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday
14 April 2022

 As we have begun this evening Mass, the season of Lent has now officially ended and we have entered the most sacred days of the Church’s briefest liturgical “season”.  The Sacred Triduum, or the Sacred Three Days, carries us from Holy Thursday evening to Easter Sunday evening.  This short “season” has us observe our most high holy days, celebrating tonight that our Lord established two sacraments at the Last Supper, the institution of the Holy Eucharist and of the priesthood; observing tomorrow the saving sacrifice of the Cross; and, observing on Holy Saturday night and Easter Sunday our Lord’s resurrection to new life.

 The oddity of the last couple of years has impacted it seems almost every aspect of life, including adaptations to our typical practices at Church.  This has resulted in some good opportunities, I think, to give a renewed focus to some of the most essential aspects of our Catholic faith.  Though we are more back to normal than not, I found in a conversation with several brother priests a few months back that we rather appreciated that the omission of the optional foot washing last year provided an opportunity to focus more strictly on the institution of the Holy Eucharist.  Several of us wanted to maintain that focus and so I am again opting to omit the foot washing, which is always optional anyway.  I rather appreciate the foot washing, so I will certainly opt to do it in the future, but for this year at least I wanted to let the Holy Eucharist be the exclusive focus.

I decided I wanted to provide this focus so that we do not obscure that the Cross is really the focus of these days and that even the action of our Lord taking off his outer garments and washing feet is actually supposed to speak to us more than just foot washing, but the continuation of what the Son of God began at the Incarnation.  In other words, at the Incarnation the Son of God lowered Himself to strip off His proper glory as God in order to be veiled by His union with human flesh.  The action of removing his outer garments and washing feet, once again, renews this self-emptying, this lowering of God to us.  In other words, the foot washing is more than just a servant’s action, but is a prophetic act, drawing attention to the completion of the Lord’s self-emptying on the Cross.  Everything about the Last Supper and what we observe this evening speaks of the action and the gift of the Cross where our Lord submitted to sacrificing himself for our salvation.  That’s what I hope our focus can be this year.

 As your Pastor, I want to place our focus on the sacrifice of the Cross and the Holy Eucharist because I think one of the most disfiguring tendencies or ideas afloat with regard to the Holy Mass is the idea that it is a re-enactment of the Last Supper.  That idea in summary is that at the Last Supper Jesus had a meal with his followers, gave us two sacraments, and told us to do this again in memory of him.  And so, at Mass we gather as the present-day community of the Lord’s disciples and we share a meal.  But this degenerates rather quickly into notions of theatrics whereby the priest plays the part of Jesus and the people play the part of the apostles, and thereby obscures the actual theology of our faith about the Holy Mass, and the Holy Eucharist, and both the ordained priesthood and the baptismal priesthood.  Over the past many decades with the rise in the popularity of this idea, we have suffered a weakening, an impoverishing, of our theology of the Holy Eucharist and what it means to participate in it.  While one can hold an appropriate appreciation of the meal aspect of the Holy Eucharist, it must be said clearly that that is not the primary focus of the Holy Eucharist.  Rather, a Catholic understanding of the Holy Eucharist and the Holy Mass is first and foremost the making present in each time and place where the Mass happens of the very same sacrifice of the Cross, though in an unbloody manner, by which we are placed into relationship with the sacrifice of the Lord for our salvation.  And for this reason, and because of this authentically catholic understanding, St. Paul could write (as we heard in the second reading), “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.”  At Holy Mass, just as was present at the Last Supper, the mystery of the Lord’s Cross is in the air.  St. Paul and we today acknowledge that our gathering in fulfilment of the Lord’s command proclaims not a meal or a re-enactment of the Last Supper, but rather, we proclaim his death.  And since the Lord’s Cross is intimately connected to his Resurrection, our gathering here moves from proclaiming his death to receiving not dead flesh, but the living resurrected flesh of the Lord, presented to us in a manner we can receive in Holy Communion.  Therefore, a Catholic’s ability to receive Holy Communion is not simply the idea that might be expressed in this way, “I come to a meal and so I eat”; but rather, should be expressed as, “I come to the sacrifice of the Lord and if I am seeking to drive out sin from my life, I am then worthy to receive Holy Communion, to receive the Lord’s sacrifice for sin.”  I, too, must move from death to life by repenting of sin in confession, and by changing my sinful ways to live a deeper communion with the Lord.

Just as the foot washing is not just about a servant’s act, so the Last Supper and the Holy Mass are not primarily about a meal.  It is a meal, yes, but one whose focus is not just or simply about a meal, but rather moves us to consider the Cross, the sacrifice accomplished there, and the same sacrifice made present to us by our faithful gathering here.  And more than just “considering” these things as if they existed only in reflection of the mind or in memory, the Holy Mass puts us in contact with the very same reality of the Lord’s sacrifice for our salvation.  It makes the one and same sacrifice of the Cross present to us here and now through the agency of the ordained priesthood by which the Lord receives a man’s being and his life and so conforms the man to himself that the Lord chooses to act through him.  Through the gift of self in the ordained priesthood it is Christ the Great High Priest who acts.  In this way we might understand a deeper reality of the many vestments a priest wears for this most solemn act.  The ordained priest vests not to dress himself up, but rather, quite the opposite, he vests to cover himself in order that a priest beyond himself might be seen, namely the High Priest, Jesus Christ, whose one eternal Priesthood operates in our midst such that when we gather for Holy Mass we do not gather for a mere re-enactment.  No, we gather such that the sacrifice of the Lord on the Cross is actually made present to us and offered to us in Holy Communion.

 The Church knows in her deepest faith and her highest theology that everything about this evening is about the Cross, it is about sacrifice.  No surprise then that the first reading from Exodus is chosen, speaking to us about the memorial feast of the Passover that is not simply a meal but a perpetual institution that calls for the sacrificial slaughter of a lamb.  This is the foundation for the New Testament understanding of the Holy Mass.  As the Gospel passage this evening showed Peter with several misunderstandings about the Lord’s action of washing feet, may we purify our focus on the Cross in these days and carry that focus into a more proper understanding of the Holy Eucharist and the ordained priesthood.  May that opportunity this night result in a deeper faith in the Lord’s presence in the Holy Eucharist.  May it result in renewed participation at Holy Mass and regular confession of sin.  May it result in our commitment to spend time with the Lord in the prayer of adoration in our chapel.  May it result in greater awe in our families to generously promote a priestly vocation from within the family.  May it result in a new harvest of future priests from among the boys and young men here in our midst.

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Dominica V in Quadragesima C
3 April 2022

 The Gospel passage of the woman caught in the very act of adultery is a curious passage.  Perhaps one of the most curious aspects that stands out to us is that odd response of Jesus to write with his finger in the dirt of the ground, something the passage tells us he does twice.  We don’t know with certainty what he was writing or doing.  We do know that something about that gesture eventually led the accusers to walk away one by one.

The scribes and Pharisees contrived a twofold trap for Jesus.  The Mosaic Law is clear: any serious offense against one of the Ten Commandments is punishable by death.  Adultery certainly fits that.  If Jesus says the adulterer should not be stoned then he can be charged with a crime against God’s Law.  And there is another trap.  If Jesus says the woman should be put to death, and all the more in such a public place like the Temple, he can be charged with violating Roman law.  The Roman empire had taken to itself the authority to judge crimes punishable by death.  In other words, the Jewish elders did not have a forum to adjudicate and to bring about death in the Roman empire.  Such cases had to go before the Roman authority.  We will see this reality later when the elders eventually do bring Jesus before Pilate (cf. John 18:31).  They need Pilate to condemn Jesus to death in order to bring about what they desire to do to Jesus on the false claims that he had violated the Mosaic Law and that he had tried to make himself king over Caesar.

 I wonder if we as believers accept with clarity and consistency that God hates sin.  I think that is a lesson we can take from this Gospel passage.  I say that because Jesus does not dismiss the seriousness of the woman’s sin nor condone it, just as he does not give a free pass to the sins of the scribes and Pharisees who surround the woman.  Now, I know our modern ears sort of recoil at the word “hate.”  But it is true: God hates sin.  It is abhorrent to Him and offensive.  We admit this all the time in the act of contrition at confession: “O God, I am sorry for my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend thee, my God…”  Sin does not have a place in God’s presence (cf. Rev. 21:27).  And serious sin – even just one serious sin – deserves condemnation and punishment.  There is no denying that is a clear truth throughout the Bible and therefore throughout Sacred Tradition in the Church’s teaching.  Do we as disciples of the Lord serve as a Christian leaven for our culture by giving voice to what is true and by confronting sin where it is celebrated in our society?  I fear we are far too quiet on that front.  The daily drumbeat of progressive agendas and perversions on display in our culture is what prompts me to consider that a valuable lesson for us in our time is that simple foundational truth that God hates sin.  And related to that, we also have to accept that punishment of sin pleases God.  Sin deserves punishment.  Thus, in the Gospel our Lord does not say that someone guilty of adultery should not be put to death.  No, quite the contrary, he indicates that stones could be thrown at the woman.  But our Lord’s response goes further to show that the punishment of sin should arise from a purity that matches his own.  A pure and just hatred for sin should be the force or the muscle that hurls the stones.  So, he says, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  And while God hates sin and is pleased by its punishment, He also does not desire the condemnation of a soul, the condemnation of a sinner.  And that is Good News.  It is a common human trap to focus exclusively on the teaching of mercy that God does not desire the sinner to die, while obscuring that sin deserves God’s justice, a fierce justice.  Our Lord is both justice and mercy in this passage.  He clearly supports the punishment of sin and, also very important, he tells the sinner to go and sin no more.  There is no free pass for sin here.  But he also does not desire the woman to die or to be condemned and so he will not support those who are impure by their own sins lining up to throw stones at her in a spectacle of false righteousness.

 Think of how modern ears hear and use this passage and many others that refer to God’s mercy.  A person is caught in a very grave sin and it should be severely punished.  But Jesus doesn’t seem to support that.  So modern secular ears go marching off dismissing the seriousness of sin.  Then comes the next step, to support sin as its own expression and identity that should be “tolerated.”  And then comes the next step that not even tacit tolerance is enough, but the rest of us must actively promote the sin or else we are guilty of hate and should be canceled.  This process plays out before us daily it seems, and in the most perverse and outrageous ways.  Everything these days it seems is “trans” this and “trans” that.  Just days ago, the misguided moral leadership of our President celebrated “Transgender Visibility Day” by having the nerve to equate that ideology with being made in God’s image and likeness.  We should be clear, a person is made in God’s image and likeness; an ideology with convenient political clout and elitist money is not.  I am also thinking ahead to what comes each June with so-called “Pride” month.  One glance at what goes on as standard practice for celebrating Pride month demonstrates that it is overt sexualization of a most perverse kind on public display.  These ideologies and so many others are being injected into every sector of life at increasing speed, into laws, into entertainment, even children’s entertainment, into our schools – and why these children’s places?  Because these ideologies are a belief system that needs to indoctrinate the next generation.  We could even call them their own type of religion with their own catechesis.  And, we aren’t immune here, for even our local leaders go along with the pressure and promote these ideologies, as Edmond’s Mayor did last year with his June Pride declaration.  Why are our Christian voices so silent in the face of these errors?  These destructive forces are right under our noses, in our school systems, in our public libraries, in our city councils.  Now I am highlighting only a couple of examples of sinful movements that are prominent, but there are many more that we could list.  We believers make a mistake by being silent in the face of such false morality.

 But if we follow the Lord as we say we do, then we must first confront and name sin in our own life, because we must hate sin as God does, confessing it immediately in the case of serious sin, and working hard to change and root out sin from our lives.  Because God hates sin.  If we follow the Lord as we say we do, then we, too, love souls and we seek to listen to, to befriend, and to instruct those in our sphere of influence who struggle and who are going astray.  And speaking the truth to them is an act of love.  Don’t let anyone tell you any differently.  But we do not condone sin.  If we follow the Lord as we say we do, then we are clear about calling sin “sin”.  We are clear that God hates sin.  And if we follow the Lord as we say we do, then like him, we do not dismiss sin or downplay it, or support it.  No, like the Lord, we clearly love the sinner while also having his or her long term, eternal good in mind by saying, “Go and from now on do not sin any more.”

 We are on a special journey this Lent to be renewed.  For those who are preparing for baptism, they are preparing to be healed and saved in the waters of rebirth so that they might rise from the waters and go to live new life in the Lord.  For the already baptized we, like the scribes and Pharisees in the Gospel, are confronting our own sinfulness and walking away, even running, to the confessional to be healed by the mercy of God who does not want us to die.  And we step forth from that sacrament healed in our baptismal dignity to enact with greater zeal a holiness of life.  No matter what our own burdens and sins may be and no matter how serious they may be, we take comfort in the compassion and mercy on display in the Gospel passage today.  We accept that sin offends God and that its punishment pleases Him.  But we also accept that He does not desire our death or condemnation.  Rather, He heals us and at the same time, with our eternal good in view, He commands us to go and to sin no more.  In the face of the burdens and sins that mark our past we should be moved by the image in today’s first reading that the Lord opens passages and ways in the sea and in the desert wasteland, in the most unlikely of places.  In our places too!  “I am doing something new!” says the Lord.  Do something new in my life, Lord!  Convinced that God hates sin and expect us to speak the truth, may we say with St. Paul, from the second reading, “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Dominica IV in Quadragesima C
Safe Haven Sunday
27 March 2022

Listen again to God’s word to Joshua in the first reading: “Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.”  The setting of the first reading is that the Israelites are at the end of their 40-year desert wanderings.  They are about to observe the Passover.  And they are just about to take Jericho, the first city they conquer as they finally enter the Promised Land.  But God orders circumcision first because somehow over the course of the 40-year wandering and a likely focus on the most basic aspects of survival, God’s people had lost the practice of being marked by the covenant.  What do we make of this word “reproach”?  I checked other language editions of the Bible and it is clear that the meaning of reproach is that God removed “shame, disgrace, or blame.”  And so, reminding the Israelites that they belong to Him and insisting on their bearing the physical mark of their belonging, God says, “Today I have removed the shame of Egypt from you.”

What I want to emphasize here, and what I think this line illustrates, is the difference between objective sin and the punishment we deserve for it versus the subjective impact, the harm, and the effects of sin on us.  Digging deeper into the moral theology of the Church, there is more to sin than the objective matter of its gravity and the removal of guilt and punishment by God’s mercy.  There is a subjective dimension to sin.  Quite distinct from having been forgiven of sin in baptism or confession, there can be psychological, emotional, and spiritual factors which require the need for deeper and ongoing healing of the effects of sin.  When God speaks of “reproach” I think this can be said to highlight the subjective matter of sin, which we might call its ripple effects, how it impacts us, or the baggage of sin that we carry.  The idea of reproach, the shame of our sin highlights more than just the objective fact of sin.  Rather, it highlights the ideas about ourselves, the messages about ourselves, that we take from the fact of our sins.  Often times these ideas or messages about ourselves that sin sort of “speaks to us” need to be rejected because they are not the voice of God, these negative messages are not what God speaks to us in His love for us.  And this shame, these ideas or messages about ourselves, they often need a deeper healing beyond just absolution in the confessional.

Archbishop Coakley has designated this weekend to be Safe Haven Sunday across the Archdiocese to bring into the light the very difficult topic of pornography.  For clarity, I am using that word this one time in these remarks so that you know what I am talking about.  Going forward I will use other references to the topic in order to protect younger ears.  I hope you will appreciate my attempt to both treat a relevant topic that does touch upon salvation and our need to battle sin, while also seeking to limit exposing younger souls to this topic here at church.  Recognizing the extremely widespread availability and use of explicit material, the Archbishop is leading us in the Archdiocese to face this topic for how it enslaves us, how it impacts even our children, and how the shame of that struggle can keep someone locked in darkness and falling backward in the journey of holiness.  While the focus this weekend is the danger of explicit material and equipping parents to guard children, the truth is that this notion of reproach and shame can well be applied to any sin of our lives.  I am delighted that “Safe Haven Sunday” gives us a coordinated effort to turn attention to the topic of explicit material.  The particular focus for us this Sunday is to equip parents to protect your children in a sexualized culture.  As you leave Mass today we have a booklet resource.  This resource is specific to treating this topic for parents of children and youth, and so if you have children in the home I want you to make sure you pick up a booklet.  There is no shame in taking up that resource as an aid to your parenting.  You will note on the booklet’s front cover and in its first pages an invitation for parents to sign up for a 7-day challenge that will provide a crash course via email of lessons and practices parents should observe to address this topic in the home.

The statistics on the industry that promotes explicit material and the statistics on first exposure ages, on the percent of men and women, and youth who use this material, the frequency of viewing this material, and the amount of money involved in the industry... is frankly staggering, overwhelming and astounding.  While I realize not all will agree on treating this subject in church, I am of the mind that it would be the height of irresponsibility for me as the Pastor, or for you as a parent, to keep our heads in the sand on this topic.  And so, I want to appeal to you parents to be courageous on this topic.  And I want to make a direct appeal to the men of the parish to wise up and confront this topic with a masculine strength that is proper to our vocation as men and fathers.  If we – husbands, fathers, big brothers, uncles, spiritual fathers, Godfathers, grandfathers – have not yet spoken directly to this topic with a young person in our care and if we have not taken steps to protect our homes and environments, why not?  Do something.  And do it right away.

So, what do we do?  It is vitally important that we all accept and embrace our God-given dignity.  Do our actions reflect that dignity?  Are we living a life worthy of our calling?  It is equally imperative that parents recognize the importance of the family.  The home you create and the intentional actions you make are the best support that you can give to your children to live holy and healthy lives.  We cannot underestimate the influence parents have on their children.  It is your responsibility—first and foremost—to be aware, to be alert, and to be informed.  Gone are the days when we might laugh off that a child knows more about the internet than the parents do.  At the very least, you need to know about “parental controls.”  You need to set boundaries, and you need to monitor usage, which includes when and where your children have and use their devices.  One of the simplest and smartest things I have heard a parent do is to have a house rule where at a certain time of evening, and certainly by bedtime, all internet enabled devices, smartphones, et cetera, have to be relinquished and are kept overnight in the parents’ bedroom.  Since the majority of exposure and use happens while kids are bored and in their bedroom, this practice can greatly reduce access to this material.

But this is not just a warning to parents—all of us must be wise and teach our youth the blessings and the beauty of human sexuality.  Otherwise, we leave our secular culture to do the formation and that should scare us to death!  Yet, so many parents, grandparents, godparents, family members and trusted friends never talk about the sacredness of sexuality and may not even know what the Church teaches about chastity.  Creating a safe haven is more than just being watchful and aware for the good of our children it also includes what you teach them and your own behavior including what you do when nobody is looking.

Let me share with you the three basic recommendations for parents to create a safe haven in your home:

   Take control of your children’s devices.  Use parental controls and if a device doesn’t allow parental controls to be downloaded then don’t buy it for them.  Giving kids such devices without controls is like handing them a loaded gun and simply walking away.  Kids can’t handle the access to unlimited information provided by internet devices.  Frankly, adults can’t either.  We aren’t made for such overwhelming input.

   Do not allow devices in the bedroom.  This places kids at a greater risk of exposure to explicit content, it encourages isolation and lack of connection with others, and it creates a difficult environment for accountability.  It is conventional wisdom that if your child wants to have a sleepover at a friend’s house you, parents, want to know a whole lot of information before you agree.  You want to know the address and phone number of the friend.  You want to know the values in that home.  You want to know who the parents are and you may want to meet them first, perhaps at a school event, or over coffee to get to know them first.  Letting your child have an internet device in the bedroom is like sending them to a sleepover at a total stranger’s house.  You can’t do that.

   Talk to you children—Openly and often.  Parents have the most significant influence on their kid’s behaviors—more than their friends, their school or their parish church.  Make every effort at authentic human connection and relationship in the family.

Impure material is one of the great obstacles sabotaging our mission of evangelization and making disciples. God calls us to more. He offers us freedom.  Let us confidently take the next steps in creating safe havens in our homes and in our families.

Remember the Parable of the Prodigal Son—after living a life of dissipation the son was alone, hungry and riddled with guilt.  He decided to go home expecting to be treated like one of his father’s servants but when he got there his father saw him first and he ran to him, embraced him and kissed him because his son was lost but now was found, he was dead and has come to life again!

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!