Daily Homilies

April 30, 2017 - Third Sunday of Easter

2017-04-29T15:25:00.000-05:00

Acts 2:14, 22-33;
Psalm 16;
1 Peter 1:17-21;
Luke 24:13-35
The story in our Gospel today takes the form of a Mass. Cleopas, who is the brother of St. Joseph and so the uncle of Jesus, and his wife, who is one of the several women in the New Testament named Mary, are walking home after having come to Jerusalem with Jesus for the Passover. Jesus appears. “The Lord be with you.” Cleopas confesses the sin of the people for killing Jesus, and his own sin in failing to believe in the Resurrection. Jesus reads the words of the Scriptures. Then he preaches a homily, explaining how everything points to his death and Resurrection. How wonderful it would be if we could have Jesus preach to us now! Instead, you only have me. When he is done explaining the Scriptures, he takes bread, says the blessing, breaks it, and gives it to them. Jesus is revealed in the breaking of the bread. Then they go and announce the Gospel of the Lord. This is not an accident. Here we have a proof for how the Mass goes all the way back to the Apostles. St. Luke uses very specific words to emphasize how this encounter with Jesus is like the Mass.

Just like in the Mass, Jesus was present even though the disciples could not see him. Jesus is present here, even though he cannot see him. When they reached Emmaus, they stopped for the night. They stop because they are seeking some rest, but Jesus is the true rest for our restless souls. They stop because they cannot see their way any longer in the dark, but Jesus is the Way. They stop because they are afraid of the dark, but Jesus is the Light of the World. They do not understand who they are with. “Their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” Yet, they do understand that this stranger is able to bring all the events of the past few days into light and they wish to speak with him further and so they beg Jesus to stop with them.

We too, should beg Jesus to stay with us. Our lives are a journey toward heaven. We alternate between doing holy things like going to Mass and praying and doing secular things like work and play. It would be a mistake to think that Jesus is only with us when we are doing the holy things, as if he were just sitting in Church and has nothing to do with what happens outside of these walls. We turn to God throughout the day, but he is always turned toward us. God is just as real when we are watching television as he is when we are praying.

When we stop and take our rest, we should urge Jesus to stay with us. Not because he would otherwise go somewhere else, but because we need to keep in mind that he is here with us. He is on the couch next to you as you watch TV. Sometimes, when you are watching TV, stop for a second and pray. God is always there, but we have to remember sometimes. This is why it is so important to pray at specific times throughout the day. Pray before you eat, pray after you eat, pray before you sleep, pray when you wake up in the morning, pray constantly. And do not let these prayers be just a jumble of mumbled words. As you say the prayer, turn to God in your heart. Remember for a moment who you are and who God is.

Once the disciples recognize Jesus they immediately leave Emmaus for Jerusalem. Before they remembered Jesus, they were afraid. It was not safe to be walking outside after dark, particularly not in an age without flashlights or streetlights. When they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread, they get up and go back to Jerusalem. They are no longer afraid. They do not wait until morning. They just go. "Perfect love casts out all fear." "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." When we know that we are loved, we are not afraid anymore. It is not like someone who is too drunk or stupid to see the danger. A Christian sees the danger but is not afraid because he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. This fearlessness is the true mark of Christians. To be willing to die for what you believe in is not uncommon. Many people die for what they believe in: some are good; some are bad; some are just crazy. Martyrs are different. They die without hatred and without fear. They die joyfully because they have come to know a love that is greater than any suffering.

We are not at this time confronted by the challenge of martyrdom. No one right now and right here is going to kill us for faith. But we still face fears. The fear of missing out. We are afraid that if we give ourselves more fully to Jesus and therefore give up things of this world, we are missing out on the fun that the rest of the world is having. The elder brother complains to his father that the prodigal son got to party but he never even got to feast on a goat with his friends. We want to eat our cake and have it too. We are afraid that being Christian means giving up enjoyable parts of life. The father responds to the elder son by reminding him of his love. If we come to know the love of God, we will realize that all the little distractions of the world are worth nothing in comparison. It will be like a man who stops playing a video game because he has fallen in love and his friends make fun of him for being bossed but he says, “You do not understand. I don’t want to play the game anymore. I have something better to do with my time.” Imagine being so in love with God that it wasn’t that you did not sin because he told you not to but because sin just seemed like such a waste of time.

March 8, 2015 - Third Sunday of Lent

2015-03-08T00:57:00.001-06:00

Exodus 20.1-17
Psalm 19.8, 9, 10, 11 Resp. John 6:68c
1 Corinthians 1.22-25
John 2.13-25

Zeal is the willingness to kill in order to force people to keep God’s law. In the time of Jesus, zealots were an established group of people who held to this willingness. They looked back to Phineas, the great-nephew of Moses, who stabbed a spear through a man and the woman he was breaking God’s law with. They looked back to Matthais Maccabbees who, when he saw a Jew about to sacrifice to a pagan god on the altar, killed that man on the altar instead. In the modern day we call zealots “terrorists” like those mobs of Muslims that killed and burned because a comic was drawn about the violence of Muslims and their founder Mohammad or because some copies of the Koran were accidentally burned.

In the Gospel today, Jesus is the one with zeal. “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Today, unlike any other Gospel reading, we see Jesus with a weapon in his hand. Consider what that looked like: Jesus turning over tables, whipping the sheep and the oxen and their owners, spilling coins all over. This was the Jesus that the zealots wanted. Here he is using violence to make sure that God’s commandments are obeyed.

That is of course the difficulty with commandments. It is difficult enough to obey them ourselves, but when we see someone else who not only fails to obey but actually does not intend to obey, there is a kind of crisis. Will we decide that we do not care? Then the commandments must not be so important after all, so why do we bother trying to obey them? Or we could use violence and threats of violence to oblige the others to keep the commandments, in which case we are a zealot.

Consider the issue of abortion. God says “Thou shalt not kill” but there is murder happening in our country with the permission of the government. A million babies every year are murdered, some of them just one block away from here. What options do we have? If we really believed that abortion is murder, would it not be correct to be violent? If I saw a small child being murdered, I would absolutely use violence to defend them. Yet I hear that murders are occurring every day, 2500 murders a day, and I do nothing. WWJD? Should we make a whip of cords and drive the evil out of our society? Perhaps we should be zealots, like Jesus.

There is another option though. We could turn the other cheek. We could choose to suffer the wrong that others do, never breaking our own commitment to the commandments. In fact, Jesus is showing us today about another way to be a zealot. “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Zeal for your house will destroy me. That is not the way that zeal is supposed to work. Zeal meant being willing to kill and use violence, but Jesus is saying that he is willing to be killed, to be consumed. “Destroy this temple”, he says, meaning the temple of his own body.

This is a different kind of zeal, one unknown to the terrorists and the zealots. Instead of inflicting suffering, it chooses to suffer. Jesus came to this earth because we were doing wrong things. He did not come with a sword to compel us to do what is right, though, as he demonstrates today, he could have. He came to die on the Cross.

If the commandments of God were merely arbitrary commands, there would be no way to enforce them except through violence. God is stronger than us, so he can force us to do as he chooses. But this is not how God acts. Indeed, the few times in the Old Testament that God uses violence to enforce his will (the destruction of Sodom, the death of Korah, etc.) only emphasize how rarely that is the case. Usually God does not send fire from heaven to punish the wicked. When Adam and Eve sinned, he made them leave his garden, but he gave them a field to live in. God does not treat us like his enemies; he treats us like his children. And if God will not send fire down to destroy every Planned Parenthood and every other den of evil in this world, he does not need us to do it for him.

No, the commandments of God are not arbitrary; they are for our own good, and disobedience of the commandments is its own punishment. I do not obey the command “Thou shalt not kill” because I am afraid of the legal consequences or because I am worried that God will smite me down. I obey that command because I do not want to be a murderer. I do not want to be a thief. I do not want to be an adulterer or idolater or filled with envy.

When I look at Jesus, I see that he was a great man, and I wish that I could be more like him, not in the miracles he could work or in the following he had but in the way that he could keep the commandments. He lived his life like someone who knew the purpose of living. I wish I could be like that. He did not come to this earth to force me to be like him. He does not have to. I want to be like him, though I am too weak to be very much like him.

Once upon a time the sun and the wind got into an argument about who was stronger. They decided to settle things with a test. “Let us see who can force that man over there to take off his coat”, said the wind. The sun agreed. So the wind blew with all its strength, but the harder the wind blew, the more the man held on to his coat. Then it was the sun’s turn. He shone down strong and soon it was very warm and the man removed his coat.

The Zealots had zeal but violence is not convincing. Jesus knew that if he suffered and died for my sins, I could not resist loving him. This is how the weakness of God is greater than the strength of the human. I do not need God to force me to keep his commandments, though I do need him to help me. If someone tried to violently force me to follow a religion, I would resist, but since someone loved me so much that he was willing to die to save me, I am very interested in learning more about that love.

March 7, 2015 - Saturday of the Second Week of Lent

2015-03-07T07:46:00.000-06:00

Micah 7:14-15, 18-20
Psalm 103:1-4, 9-12
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.” This line is kind of funny, but it is an accurate depiction of how we try to bargain with God. If the father is running any kind of responsible household, he will immediately turn down this job application. Not that it is even an application. The son presumes that he is doing something very humble by saying, “treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers”, but it is a very arrogant statement. He is commanding the father to hire him.

The son cannot be hired as a servant. He can only be accepted back as a son. We can never earn our way with God. If he wants servants, he has the angels. We can only be accepted as children of God. A sinner trying to come back to the Father can never make up for their sins, but they will always be a child of God.

The other son is also thinking like a bad servant rather than a son. He has never accepted the mission of the father as his own. The joys of the father should be the joys of the son. The sorrows of the father should be the sorrows of the son. God’s family is different than human families: we are never going to grow up and move out on our own. We need to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Jesus became like us in all ways but sin, so we must become like him in all ways we can. We must become sharers in the divinity of him who shared in our humanity.

All our labors in this world will be useless if we have not first conformed our will to the Father’s will. If we are secretly working for ourselves, we will build up resentment at God. If we want to be saints (and we do want to be saints) then we must give up any idea of progress in this world, any expectation of young goats, and take on the mind of Christ. Accepting our role as sons and daughters of our Father means seeing as God sees and loving what God loves, without jealousy or ambition. We cannot be independent and we cannot be servants. We cannot be anything more or less than children of God.

March 6, 2015 - Friday of the Second Week in Lent

2015-03-06T02:30:00.000-06:00

Genesis 37:3-4, 12-13, 17-28
Psalm 105:16-21
Mathew 21:33-43, 45-46

Perhaps you have noticed that this week, we have seen a lot of death and almost-death. Abraham was going to kill Isaac. Yesterday, Lazarus and the rich man both died. Today, Joseph’s brothers were going to kill him, the favorite son of Jacob, and, in the Gospel parable, the landowner’s son is killed. This all culminates tomorrow in the parable of the Prodigal Son whom the father says was dead and is now alive again. This is all symbolic of Jesus, which his prophesy makes clear. Jesus is the beloved son who was sacrificed. Jesus was our brother whom we killed because we were jealous of how much our Father loved him.

We know that we will die. Some people live with that knowledge more present to them than others. When we are healthy, we rarely think of death. When we are young, death seems as impossible as growing old. Yet death will come. Death is the universal human experience. We speak different languages; we eat different foods; we live under different governments; but everyone in the history of the world has died or will die. Death is a brick wall that no one can go through. It ends every project, every hope, every plan. Is it impolite to speak about death? If we ignore it, will it go away?

No. We will acknowledge death. We will spend 40 days preparing to die, for we are in the season devoted to death. By fasting and almsgiving we are trying to let go of this world. By prayer we are grasping at the world to come. These days culminate in the Easter Triduum, which begins with the dying and death of Jesus Christ. Death is not the end. The Triduum ends in resurrection.

The master sent servant after servant to collect the harvest, but some they mistreated and others they killed, but the master did not give up on the land. He sent his son and they killed him too. What will the master do? He will raise his son from the dead and continue trying to get the fruit he desires. Nothing will stop the master from getting what he wants. He is relentless. He is unbeatable. The love of God is unstoppable.

March 5, 2015 - Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

2015-03-05T01:47:00.000-06:00

Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1:1-4, 6
Luke 16:19-31

It is not clear to us exactly where the people in the reading are. We are told that Lazarus “was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.” However, Abraham died a long time ago and, as far as we know, went to Sheol, the place of the dead, like everyone else who died. The rich man is in Sheol, but he is experiencing great sufferings, which was not the usual description of that place. We know that he is not in hell, because we see him worrying about his five brothers, whereas hell is a place of complete selfishness.

Perhaps they are all (Abraham, Lazarus, and the rich man) in Sheol, but Abraham and Lazarus are in the part where they are waiting for Jesus to come and take them to heaven after he dies, while the rich man is in the part for people who will go to hell. In that case, things are only going to get worse for the rich man. If we would go to hell for being rich, we here are all in trouble. All, except the very poorest people in our country, live a life more luxurious than the rich man. True, we do not have servants, but our food is more sumptuous and our clothes are more impressive.

However, Abraham too was a rich man, and he is not suffering. Perhaps we would say that the problem is that the rich man never helped Lazarus. Abraham, however, does not draw the rich man’s attention to this failure, nor to the disrespectful way that the rich man is still treating Lazarus. He calls him “my child” and asks him to remember the difference between the life of Lazarus and his life. The problem seems to be that the rich man never suffered.

Perhaps the rich man was in the section of Sheol for those who would go to heaven when Jesus came and got them, but who needed to suffer first, similar to what purgatory is now. Before any sinner can go to heaven, they need to suffer for their sins, even after being forgiven. Some people suffer in this life; some people suffer in the next. We should take our suffering in this life and avoid it later. Hours spent on our knees in prayer or days of fasting or serving others who we could avoid all sound better than the torments that the rich man was experiencing.

March 4, 2015 - Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent

2015-03-04T07:52:00.000-06:00

Jeremiah 18:18-20
Psalm 31:5-6, 14-16
Matthew 20:17-28

Jesus always knew what was going on. He was not caught up in events beyond his control. Even before he went to Jerusalem, he not only prophesied his death and resurrection, but even described how it would all take place. When we hear the story of his passion in a few weeks, we must keep today’s Gospel in mind. Jesus did what he did on purpose. Nothing could have been done to him if he had not allowed it to happen. There is nothing he suffered that he did not choose to suffer. This does not take away the guilt of those who betrayed him and condemned him and scourged him and mocked him and crucified him; they also chose to do what they were doing. Jesus, however, must be seen throughout all this as one who came “to give his life”, not someone who had it taken from him.

What does it mean for Jesus “to give his life as a ransom for many”? A ransom is the price paid to a captor for the freedom of the captives. Who is our captor? Satan. Sin. Death. We sold ourselves into captivity for a fruit. We were meant to be free. We were supposed to be kings and queens of this earth. Instead, we have spent the majority of human history in captivity. Satan demanded the life of an innocent man for ransom, and Jesus paid it with his own life. Only he could pay it, because he was the only innocent man. His life could not be taken from him, but he could lay it down. What Satan did not know was that, having laid it down, he could take it up again.

The ransom has been paid, so Satan is forced to release us, if we will be free. Jesus unlocked the door of the dungeon that is sin, but we have to choose to walk out. This should not be difficult, the choice to leave sin behind, but we are enamored with the little comforts that we have found in this filthy prison cell. We must somehow work up the courage to leave! How foolish we look, choosing to stay in the dark, dirty prison, rather than go out into the light. We hear voices, whispering, enticing us to stay. We are frightened of what “going out” means. So we stay, in sin, ransomed prisoners who will not leave their prison.

March 3, 2015 - Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent

2015-03-03T07:15:00.000-06:00

Isaiah 1:10, 16-20
Psalm 50:8-9, 16-17, 21, 23
Matthew 23:1-12

“Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven.” It seems at first glance that we are guilty of letting a human tradition stand in the way of the words of our Lord. It seems that way at second glance too. We cannot say that Jesus was wrong, and we cannot say that Matthew did not faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ really taught.

There are some little tricks that people use to explain this, but they are not satisfactory. True, we call our male parent, “Father”, but Jesus is talking about titles that religious people take on. True, we do not use the exact word that Jesus condemns, since he did not speak English (the word “father” had not even been invented yet), but this seems too legalistic. Jesus is saying that we should not call anyone by the same name that we use for our male parent, no matter what language. True, Jesus says “call no one on earth your father”, and we do not call anyone “Our Father” except God, but why do we come so close to breaking the command?

However, and this is a big however, the use of “Father” as a title for religious leaders goes back as far as the Church herself. The desert monks of the early Church were called “Abba”. St. Paul himself says that “For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” We did not just discover the Gospel of Matthew yesterday. Even St. Jerome, 1600 years ago, struggled to interpret this verse in light of the tradition. It seems strange that this tradition grew up in a Church which always read the Gospels. The people who first started calling a priest or a monk “father” knew what Jesus had said.

One reason why tradition is so essential in the Church is that the members of the early Church understood better the literal meaning of Jesus’ words. They were closer to him culturally and historically. If they, reading this Gospel just as we do every year, did not think it was a contradiction to call religious leaders “Father” who are we to disagree? But if we do keep calling people on earth “Father”, we do so acknowledging our one Father in heaven. Let us “bow our knees before the Father, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.”

March 2, 2015 - Monday of the Second Week of Lent

2015-03-02T02:51:00.002-06:00

Daniel 9:4-10
Psalm 79:8-9, 11, 13
Luke 6:36-38

In fairy tales, not the Disney versions but the originals, a common trope is that the king will ask the wicked person for advice on how to punish a wicked person. The wicked person misunderstands who the punishment is for and advises a particularly horrific punishment. Then the king tells the wicked person that they will be punished exactly as they said. There is some poetic justice in how the person is forced to suffer their own sentence. I often wondered why they never realize in time that they have been caught and suggest some very light punishment.

Jesus warns us that we are going to suffer this poetic justice. Hopefully, we hear his words in time to save ourselves. If our King asks me how a sinner should be treated, I am going to say that he should be forgiven if he is even a little bit sorry and then welcomed into heaven. These cannot be mere words: I need to start treating sinners that way since that is how I want to be treated. Jesus tells us that the measure with which we measure will be measured out to us. In other words, we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us, because that is in fact how it will be done unto us.

When we do something wrong, we are usually quick to talk about mitigating circumstances. It is truly a saint who takes absolute responsibility for their own sins. Even if we accept responsibility for our sin, we who fall far short of righteousness quickly begin to explain why it was not really so bad after all, until we are confessing merely that we misheard or misunderstood or were misunderstood: “I am very sorry that you were offended by what I said.” How rare is the person who can say “I’m sorry” without adding soon after “Although, it was not really as bad as you make out.”

So it is that we are very good about making up excuses for ourselves. We should stop that. But, at the very least, we should start using this marvelous talent with other people. Not pretending that bad is good, but making every excuse for the person who has sinned against us. When someone cuts you off in traffic, presume that they are on their way to the hospital. When someone snaps at you, presume they have a very bad headache. When we measure out punishment, what seems like a tiny dose given to another will look enormous when it is directed back at ourselves.

February 28, 2015 - Saturday of the First Week of Lent

2015-02-27T23:01:00.001-06:00

Deuteronomy 26:16-19
Psalm 119:1-2, 4-5, 7-8
Matthew 5:43-48

So when Jesus says, “Be perfect”, what does he mean? I suppose he could mean, “be really not so bad after all” or “accept your imperfections as part of who you are”, but I actually think he meant “Be perfect.” My difficulty is that I fail utterly at being perfect, so what then?

Perhaps Jesus, knowing that I will fail to achieve this standard, sets it high anyway to tell me to be satisfied with nothing less. He wants me to be unusual, to do more than the others do. Not a little more, but a lot more. I am not to be satisfied until I am perfect, and, since I am never perfect, I am never allowed to be satisfied with my current level of love; I am never able to say, “I love enough.”

The command to be perfect stands on its own. Even if I am not perfect and have not been perfect and have no reasonable expectation of achieving perfection in the future, I am still commanded to be perfect. The command never goes away. The Pharisees loved to know the limits of commands, where they could stop obeying, but this command is unlimited. Some psychologists would say that this is unhealthy obsession with perfection, that I should learn to love myself just the way I am, but I cannot. I want to love myself just the way I could be.

On the other hand, Jesus might mean this not so much as a command as an offer. These sorts of phrases are always in advertisements. You know: “Live in Florida” or “Be beautiful.” The advertisement is saying, “It is possible to do these things if you take advantage of what I am offering you.” Then Jesus’ words would mean that if we love our neighbor and our enemy, we will become perfect. Love has the power to perfect us.

I know that I will never be as perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect. No matter how perfect I ever become by the grace of God, God will be more perfect. Jesus does not compare our perfection to our Father’s perfection because that is reasonable goal for us, but because we should look at our Father who loves us and want to be just like him. God made the rocks to be rocks and the flowers to be flower, and God made the angels to be angels, but he made humans to be gods, sons and daughters of the Most High.

February 27, 2015 - Friday of the First Week of Lent

2015-02-27T04:15:00.000-06:00

Ezekiel 18:21-28
Psalm 130:1-8
Matthew 5:20-26

“If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?” We have just repeated this verse several times, but it really does need to be hammered into our heads. We are not good enough; no one is. The world is not divided between the virtuous and the wicked, between the good and the bad. We are all bad. We might not have killed anyone, or committed a crime that would send us to prison. We might be what the world calls “a basically good person”. This does not matter. We know the reality behind the façade we show the world. We not only make mistakes, doing or saying something before thinking about it, but we consciously make bad decisions. We are not perfect and anything less than perfect is not good enough.

The first reading demonstrates the problems we face. The wicked man can easily convert, and his whole life is forgotten in favor of his new attitude. Likewise, the virtuous man can easily fall and do something wicked and his whole life is forgotten because of his sin. These are not two different men but one man. We should each recognize ourselves in these portraits, how easily we go from wickedness to virtue and back. A person can, in the course of an hour, sin and convert and sin again.

Jesus tells us that our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. These were people who tried as hard as they could to be good, to follow every law. We are not going to beat the Pharisees at their own game. We need something different. We have something different in humble repentance. In the first reading, the wicked man who repents is saved but the virtuous man who falls is condemned. If we see ourselves as “basically good”, we are going to fall. Pride comes before the fall.

If we acknowledge our wickedness, if we admit that we do not love God as we should and we do not love our neighbors nearly as much as ourselves, we are on the path to repentance. Humility comes before the conversion. The twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are rooted in Christian spirituality. The first step, “We admitted we were powerless—that our lives had become unmanageable”, is not some special status of alcoholics. This is the attitude that we all must have in the face of sin.

February 26, 2015 - Thursday of the First Week of Lent

2015-02-26T00:57:00.003-06:00

Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25
Psalm 138:1-3, 7-8
Matthew 7:7-12

The condition that Jesus sets today for receiving the gifts of God is asking. Ask and it will be given to you. God gives good things to those who ask. Why do we have to ask? The desire has to precede the gift. If we receive a gift that we do not want, we thank the giver politely and then put it on a shelf. The gifts of God are not made for shelves. God is not holding back a gift until we ask for it nicely. His hands are forever extended, ready to give, but he will not shove the gift down our throats.

Jesus speaks of a gift today, not wages. We cannot earn the gift of God, otherwise it would not be a gift. This does not mean, however, that we have nothing to do. We have to prepare ourselves for the gift. If we bought a dress for a woman, not in her size but in the size that she ought to be, she would not be able to receive the gift until she had gotten into shape. This sounds rather offensive and mean-spirited, and so it would be coming from a normal giver, but God has all kinds of gifts for us that will not fit us now. He is anticipating what we can become, not what we are.

When St. Francis prayed that God would show his love, he received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ in his hands and feet. If he had received that gift before his conversion or too soon afterward, it would only have confused him and either increased his pride or discouraged him altogether. Imagine the gifts that God has planned for you that will not fit now. These are not gifts for you alone, but for the whole Church: gifts of healing and prophecy, gifts of suffering and martyrdom, gifts of faith, hope, and love.

We should celebrate whenever we see spiritual progress, wherever we see it. Not only will the praise of God be greater, but we are closer, as a Church, to the next gift. There are amazing gifts just around the next bend, if we will make progress. We stand here, playing with mere toys, afraid to take the next step. We need to start seeking and finding the next foothold in our spiritual life. Our progress, which is measured in love of God and neighbor, is so little, so far.

February 22, 2015 - Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

2015-02-24T00:52:00.006-06:00

Isaiah 55:10-11
Psalm 34:4-7, 16-19
Matthew 6:7-15

Our God is not deaf. He is not asleep. He is not far away from us. Our God is not busy. We have so much difficulty imagining an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, eternal God that we invent difficulties that do not exist. We imagine that God must be too busy running the whole universe to listen to us. God is not like us. He is more attentive to each of us than we are to ourselves. He knows the life history of every mosquito. He knows when a hair falls off our head. We cannot fathom how attentive he is to us.

God does not hear us because we pray to him. He hears every word we speak all day long; he knows every thought we think. We may be tempted to imagine that when we turn to God in prayer, it is like picking up the phone and calling him. Not at all! We are more like a toddler picking up a toy phone and calling our father who is sitting right there watching us. God does not hear us better when we are in church or when our hands are folded or when we are looking up at a particular corner of the ceiling or shouting at the sky.

God is not inattentive, but we are. The difference between when we pray and when we are not praying is not God’s attention to us but our attention to God. Sometimes we wonder whether God is hearing our prayer. This is certain: he is. Our real concern should be with whether we are hearing him. God is with us always, hearing every thought, feeling, and word, but, when we finally turn to him, we act like he does not know us. We think that prayer is all about God, but, paradoxically, it is all about us. When we pray, we are not contending with an absent God but with ourselves: with our selfish, stubborn, obtuse natures.

When we pray, we may use many words or few, we might repeat a prayer or speak freely to God, we may invoke God’s name or ask a Saint to pray for us, we might read the Scriptures or sit in silence hoping to hear the Spirit speak within us, but we should not pile up words, as the Gentiles do, thinking that in their many words they will be heard. We are not trying to be heard; we are trying to hear.

February 23, 2015 - Monday of the First Week of Lent

2015-02-23T00:58:00.000-06:00

Leviticus 19.1-2, 11-18
Psalm 19.8, 9, 10, 15 Resp. John 6:63b
Matthew 25.31-46
When it comes to saving for retirement, all the financial advisors agree: save early and save often. It would seem that the point of working is to produce a retirement account. As for your IRA or 401K, I cannot say, but for the most important retirement account we have, this advice stands. We have an account in heaven. The interest rate is phenomenal, and the market is never going to crash. There is a kingdom there that has been prepared for us from before the foundation of the world. There is a room there with your name on it, waiting for you to move in. We need to build up that account though; we need to start making deposits. God’s bank tellers are all around us: the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, strangers, the imprisoned, the sick. Whatever we deposit with them is going to be credited to our account.

The Church sets before us the fourteen works of mercy. The seven corporal works and the seven spiritual works. The seven corporal works include the six that Jesus mentions here and, because groups of seven are kind of the thing, adds burying the dead. A good practice this Lent would be to make sure that we do something for all seven. Feed the hungry, whether in person in a soup kitchen or by sending money in the rice bowl or donating to the food shelf. Give drink to the thirsty. Clothe the naked, and not only with your cast-off clothing that you wanted to get rid of anyway. Visit those in prison. Welcome the stranger, particularly the homeless, perhaps not into your own home, depending on your circumstances, but into a home. Visit the sick, especially the forgotten people in nursing homes. And bury the dead, come to a funeral, especially of someone who would not have had many people come.

Do these works of mercy generously, not as if only trying to check off a list. Do these works of mercy gladly, not only because people need your help, but because you need to be merciful. Do these works of mercy unreservedly, without too much concern for the worthiness of the recipient: be willing to be taken advantage of. When we arrive at the day of judgment, we do not want to be shocked by how low the balance is in our account. Start saving up now; make regular deposits. Save early and save often.

February 21, 2015 - First Sunday of Lent

2015-02-21T09:38:00.000-06:00

Genesis 9.8-15
Psalm 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 Resp. 10
1 Peter 3.18-22
Mark 1.12-15

Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side? We’re told that rainbows are merely illusions, light refracted into its constituent parts by water droplets, but people do not write songs or poems or myths about light refracted by water droplets. They write songs and poems and myths about rainbows.

This attempt to deconstruct the rainbow, to explain it away, is a danger in our modern scientific world. The danger is that we see through everything and soon there is nothing to look at anymore. “The rainbow is merely refracted light. Rainbows are only illusions.” No. It is not only or merely anything. It is a gigantic stripe of every color that goes from one side of the sky to the other. If a person sees through a rainbow, then they no longer see the rainbow. Someone who can look at a rainbow and not see a rainbow is blind.

This problem of seeing through is particularly a modern problem, but humans have always suffered from this blindness. St. Peter writes in the second reading today that baptism is not merely the removal of dirt from the body. Somebody might see a baptism and say, “That’s it? That’s all? Just a little water, a quick bath?” They have seen through the baptism, so they cannot see the baptism. They cannot see a person saved through water and the Holy Spirit.

Is love merely a chemical reaction in the brain? No. There may be such a reaction, but it is not the essence of love. If you want to know about love, ask someone who has loved, not a neuroscientist. Is the Mass merely a lot of unnecessary words and rituals? Is the Eucharist just bread and wine? If you want the truth, you cannot ask someone who has seen through it all. You need someone who has seen the truth, the ineffable, wonderful, amazing truth.

That is Jesus in our Gospel today. He went out into the wilderness to fast for 40 days, the first Lent, and he came back with a vision for the people of Galilee: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel!” Jesus could see what we blind people miss. He constantly prayed and fasted. He is God, of course, and knows the Father and the Holy Spirit perfectly, but he also made certain that his human nature was able to see what we look right through. In fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, Jesus brought his human nature into right relationship with God.

Perhaps it is clearer how the other two practices of Lent relate to our relationship with God. If we want to be close to God, obviously we should pray, talking to him and listening to him. And almsgiving means serving the people he created. If I love God, I will pray and help others. These two are clearly important, but perhaps it is less obvious that if I love God I will not eat meat or give up desserts.

But fasting is the tool by which we are able to see the reality of the symbols. Like when we look at a drop of water through a microscope and see all sorts of living creatures swimming around that were invisible before, or we look at the sky through a telescope and see planets and stars and galaxies where there seemed to be nothing, if we are going to see to the reality of things, we need a tool; not a telescope or microscope but something else. That something else is fasting, and it is so very essential to the Christian life. How does fasting allow us to start seeing new things? It is not that if we fast long enough we will eventually start hallucinating. There are people who do that in other religions, but that is not the goal of Christian fasting. The good effects of fasting last even after you begin eating normally again.

For us, fasting is based on a hunger that is present in every human soul. Atheist or Christian or whatever religion, the hunger is present because God put it there when he created us. We experience hunger pangs of this spiritual hunger. It is painful to have a desire that cannot be filled. So we try to answer the hunger with various things: food, entertainment, alcohol, whatever. This hunger is why we eat too much. This hunger is why people get drunk. This hunger is why people jump out of airplanes and ride rollercoasters. This hunger goes under many names, but above all it is called Boredom. O wonderful boredom, the realization that I am not satisfied with what this world has to offer!

If we sit on the couch with a bag of potato chips, watching TV, we might quiet this hunger for a little while, but not very long. If a starving person cannot get food, perhaps they will chew on gum or something else to pass the time, but, when they have food, they will throw away the gum and begin to eat. So also, when we get to heaven and live in the presence of God, we will throw away whatever we have used to quiet our longing for God here on earth. But what if the hungry person forgot that hunger was for food and kept chewing gum when there was food available? Or what if a person forgets that the longing of their soul is for God and tries to find their happiness in the trifles of this earth? We must fast so that we do not forget what we really want, so that we do not forget what the longing is really for.

As we fast this Lent and rediscover our longing for God, we must be careful not to find a substitute for what we have given up. Particularly if you have given up television or the internet, you may find that you have literally hours of extra time each day. Now is not the time to become an avid reader of novels. Use the time for the other Lenten practices: prayer and almsgiving. Help those in need. Read the Scriptures. Spend some time in Adoration. If our fast is the kind of fast that God loves, it will turn us outward to God and to our neighbor.

Then, we will be able to see. A person who has not spent time fasting cannot see the love of God, but we can. We will look at rainbows and see a promise given thousands of years ago. We will look at the Eucharist and see the Body and Blood and Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we imitate Jesus this lent and fast for 40 days, we will begin to feel something. When our hearts are burning because we refuse to settle for anything less than God, when our whole bodies are on fire with desire, then we will walk around with our eyes wide open, then we will be able to see.

July 6, 2014 - Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2014-07-06T02:53:00.003-05:00

Zechariah 9.9-10
Psalm 145.1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13-14 Resp. 1
Romans 8.9, 11-13
Matthew 11.25-30

If we are ever lost in reverie, looking up at the sky and thinking how nice it would be to live on a cloud, after a few seconds, perhaps even a minute, we look back at the earth at forget about clouds. Listening to the Gospels should not be like cloud appreciation. We should not hear the words of Jesus and think, “isn’t that such a nice idea”, and then go back to our daily drudgery. Jesus is making us an offer. He is making you an offer. He wants to make your life easier. Jesus says to you, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Are you tired? Are you exhausted with life? Jesus tells us, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.” This is not a scam. He is not making up fluffy, useless religious sayings. This is real advice, for our benefit, which we ought to take seriously.

Our Lord is meek and humble of heart, and he wants us to learn from him because he sees that we labor and are burdened and we wants to give us rest. Although the labor and burdens of our daily work might be what first comes to our mind, it does not seem that Jesus is offering us rest from those. If he were, his solution seems insufficient. How could it help us to be meek and humble of heart? The meek and humble do not often have less work in this world; indeed they often have more, and more difficult, work.

If Jesus is not promising us rest from our work, he must be referring to other labor and burdens. If we learned to have a heart like Jesus, meek and humble, even though we would still have work to do each day, our load would lightened. The opposite of humility is pride. Pride must be the burden which Jesus is offering us relief from.

The suggestion that pride is weighing us down might offend us at first. A person might not think that they have so much pride, or perhaps they know someone with a great deal of pride who does not seem to be burdened. We should not worry though, for the moment, about other people and their pride. Let us just consider how pride has been burdening us.

Do you spend time worrying about what other people think of you? Are you worried that you have not accomplished enough in this life? Are you upset because someone else has taken credit for your ideas and your work? Do you lie awake at night thinking about how angry you are with someone you cannot forgive? Does it concern you that people misjudge you and misunderstand you? Do you feel like you deserve more material possessions in this life, at least as much as so-and-so has? Are you afraid that you are losing the rat race?

Those are a lot of burdens! Those, and many burdens like them, are the real burdens. If we could be rid of them, life would be much more bearable, no matter what labors we have in this world. “But wait,” you are perhaps saying to yourself, “you do not understand. I have a real grievance with the world. I have been treated unfairly. I have not been given what I deserve.” I do understand though. I do not doubt that every single person here has been treated unfairly and some people have been seriously misused, but I am not the one recommending humility and meekness; Jesus is, and he is the most abused person in the history of the world. Who has been treated as unfairly as he has?

He says that we should learn from him, that we should take his yoke upon us and learn from him. To teach a young ox how to plow, a farmer would yoke it up with an experienced ox. The experienced ox would know what to do and the young ox would be forced to come along and learn. Jesus offers us his credentials, “I am meek and humble of heart.” We need to let Jesus drag us around while we learn from him; we need to do whatever we see him doing.

What did Jesus do when the Samaritans would not let him walk through their town? He walked around. What did Jesus do when the Pharisees and Sadducees tried to trick him with questions? He answered them and taught them. What did Jesus do when they crowned him with thorns and spit on him? He picked up his Cross and carried it to where he would die. What did Jesus do in the end, after all the abuse and torture and completely unfair treatment? He asked the Father to forgive them since they did not know what they were doing.

Does this mean that we should allow others to treat us badly without complaining? Yes. This is just another reason why a religious vocation is better than a secular vocation: those who have vowed poverty, chastity, and obedience are free to lay down all the burdens of pride. Someone like Blessed Mother Teresa can find rest in the midst of exhausting work, terrible living conditions, and cruel accusations. Someone like St. Martin de Porres can go through life being treated like less than a human being.

St. Francis once said the following about perfect joy: “When we come to the monastery, soaked by the rain and frozen by the cold, all soiled with mud and suffering from hunger, and we ring at the gate of the place and the brother porter comes and says angrily: ‘Who are you?’ And we say: ‘We are two of your brothers.’ And he contradicts us, saying: ‘You are not telling the truth. Rather you are two rascals who go around deceiving people and stealing what they give to the poor. Go away’ And he does not open for us, but makes us stand outside in the snow and rain, cold and hungry, until night falls-then if we endure all those insults and cruel rebuffs patiently, without being troubled and without complaining, and if we reflect humbly and charitably that that porter really knows us and that God makes him speak against us, oh, Brother Leo, write that perfect joy is there!”

We who live in the world cannot experience this perfect joy always, the rest that Jesus offers. The world and the people of this world will try to take every advantage of us possible. We who live in the world will have to keep some burdens, so that society can continue to function. We will have to, at times, fight for our rights and the rights of others, but this responsibility should not prevent us from finding rest where we can by being humble and meek: letting others mistreat us, letting others take more than their share, working hard in this world without credit, forgiving those who do not even know that they wronged us.

Will we only hear the Gospel today or will we actually do what Jesus says?

July 5, 2014 - Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

2014-07-05T14:41:00.000-05:00

Amos 9:11-15
Psalm 85:9-14
Matthew 9:14-17

The prophet Amos, whom we have been reading all week, has some very serious accusations for the Israelites. They have done some terrible things. He also is telling them that because of their crimes they will be punished by God with war and exile. It is a harsh book, but it still ends with comfort. Today, God says, “I will bring about the restoration of my people Israel.” Even in the midst of the accusation and punishment, there is comfort. Because God loves us.

It is a difficult theological problem, trying to consider whether what we suffer is the punishment of God for our sins or simply the random situation of life. On the one hand, God does seem to punish people for their sins throughout the Scriptures, exactly as we see here in the book of Amos, but on the other hand, people do not seem to suffer in proportion to their sins. Even here in the book of Amos, the Israelites are being punished because they afflicted the poor. So the suffering of the poor was not the punishment of God. Moreover, the punishment of God was war and exile. Surely the poor suffered through this punishment as well, the good with the bad.

So if we say that all suffering is punishment from God, we are clearly wrong, but it would also seem to be wrong to say that suffering is never punishment from God. How do we tell the difference? The classic way is to consider all the suffering of other people as simply suffering, deserving our sympathy and not our judgment, and to consider all of our own suffering as punishment, because we know our sins and we know that we deserve it.

Some people consider this method as too harsh. If I consider every sickness, every injury, every setback in my life as a punishment from God, will it be too difficult, or even impossible, to see God as love? If God loves me, why would he cause me to suffer? Then we should remember the reading today. Even before he has carried out his harsh punishment, the Lord is already speaking of restoring his people. The Lord is never out to hurt us. Everything he does is for our own good. If God is ever punishing us for our sins, then his punishment is yet another expression of his love. He loves us and does not want anything other than our good.

July 4, 2014 - Friday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

2014-07-04T06:10:00.001-05:00

Amos 8:4-6, 9-12
Psalm 119:2, 10, 20, 30, 40, 131
Matthew 9:9-13

In the first reading we hear about people who are consumed with desire. Even during the day of rest, all they can think of is the object of their desire. “When will this feast or Sabbath be over”, they wonder, “so that we can get back to business.” And what business? Their desire for profit is so great that they cheat and steal and lie.

Oh that we would have a desire for God like their desire! The children of this world are always wiser in their ways than the children of the kingdom. If only I could be as motivated to serve God as some people are to make a million dollars. There are people who will sacrifice every good thing for money and fame. How is it then that I find it so difficult to give up mediocre things in order to follow God?

Perhaps this is what Jesus means when he says that he wishes we were hot or cold rather than lukewarm. If we were cold, like these merchants who have a great desire to get back to cheating and stealing, who can barely contain themselves through one day off, then we could turn this desire to something good. Which is easier, to work up a desire that we do not have or to redirect a strong desire in the wrong direction? There are many examples of saints who redirected misguided desires. St. Ignatius was a soldier who loved glory in battle, and he became a soldier of Christ. St. Matthew, as we read in the Gospel today, went from collecting taxes, being so in love with money that he collaborated with the Roman government, to being in love with Jesus Christ.

I do not know if it is easier to redirect a desire or create a desire. The point is to have the right desire. If your desire is weak, the thing is to strengthen it. If you have a strong desire for something inferior to God, consider how you can turn it to him. I need to desire God more, and I need to turn my desires to him. I do not have the strong desire for God that the saints had, but I can take comfort in my desire to have a desire for God. So long as I do not let go of this desire for a desire, there is a chance for me.

July 3, 2014 - Feast of Saint Thomas, Apostle

2014-07-03T06:16:00.001-05:00

Ephesians 2:19-22
Psalm 117:1-2
John 20:24-29

St. Thomas the Apostle is remembered primarily for two things: that he was the one who did not believe in the Resurrection, and that he brought Christianity to India. Doubting Thomas is a bit of an unfair reputation. So far as we know, none of the Apostles believed before seeing Jesus except St. John who saw the empty tomb and believed. It is simply that his doubts are recorded in such a powerful fashion as we read today. He immediately believed. He experienced many hardships and went to a faraway land to preach the Gospel. There he was killed for the faith. Many people might have seen the same thing and still doubted. St. Thomas received his faith not by investigation. St. Thomas received his faith from the Father. Before he saw Jesus, God allowed him to doubt for the sake of generations to come, but when he saw Jesus, he received the gift of faith.

Faith is not a human accomplishment. Faith is a gift. Faith is not gritting our teeth and insisting that we will believe. Faith is a gift. Faith is not something we should be proud of as if we were better people than those who do not believe. Faith is something we ought to be grateful for because it is a gift. Faith is something that we ought to ask God for every day. And if we begin to doubt, there are two mistakes we can make: trying to fight the doubts on our own or accepting the doubts as wisdom. If we begin to doubt, we must turn to God and ask for more faith.

We receive knowledge from our parents and the Church. We know about Christianity because of them and the books we read. But faith is something different. If the whole world abandoned Christianity, and it was just you alone with no support, if they all told you that it was pretend, that it was just another story like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, is there something within you that would still believe? Is there something within you right now that believes in God without consideration of any argument or reason? That is faith. It will not seem strong if we test it ourselves; it will fall apart quickly because God will not defeat our free will. The true test of our faith comes from the outside: persecution, suffering, martyrdom. That is when we find out how strong faith really is.

July 2, 2014 - Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

2014-07-02T06:53:00.001-05:00

Amos 5.14-15, 21-24
Psalm 50.7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13, 16bc-17 Resp. 23b
Matthew 8.28-34

What is the point of keeping the trappings of Christianity if the heart is gone? There is no point. We should not celebrate the holy days if we no longer believe in the reason behind them, if they have become merely occasions to get drunk and eat too much. This is what the Lord means when he says, “I hate, I spurn your feasts.” God hates when someone celebrates a feast but denies the meaning. So many today get married because they want a beautiful wedding, but by living together before marriage and rejecting children after marriage, the wedding is empty, like a rotten tree with nothing inside.

We can see that religious holidays without faith are worse than useless when we consider what Christmas is turned into by those who do not care about the birth of Jesus. On the other hand, a religious feast can bring someone back to the faith who is struggling. That is not what is meant here. There is a difference between a person who struggles, and a person who has rejected the faith. If a person has rejected the Gospel, they should not celebrate the holy days. They should not come to the Eucharist. The Church would be better off, not if we got rid of all the sinners, because then we would all have to leave, but if all the people who are not even interested in trying would just leave us alone. If a person is working to destroy the faith by completely ignoring morality and having no interest in repentance and even preaching death and destruction in this culture, yet they attend Mass for social or political reasons, they are a hypocrite. When we sin, we should repent and confess our sins, but if a person does not want to repent, they should stay away until they are converted.

The demons called Jesus the Son of God, but they were his enemies and he treated them as such. The town saw the power of God in their midst and begged him to leave, so he did. When those who choose not to believe leave the Church, it is a blessing for us and for them. Perhaps someday they will change their minds and come back. In the meantime, it does no good to pretend that those who are against us are with us. We should not welcome people into the Church so that they can subvert her mission from within.

June 27, 2014 - Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

2014-06-27T10:56:00.000-05:00

Deuteronomy 7.6-11
Psalm 103.1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 10 Resp. 17
1 John 4.7-16
Matthew 11.25-30

Today we celebrate the preeminent devotion, the greatest devotion of Christianity: the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the Sacred Heart we celebrate the human body of our Savior. The heart deservedly stands as a symbol of the whole body. It is at the center of the body, and the heartbeat is evidence of the life of the body. In the Sacred Heart, we worship the actual organ in the body of our Savior, beating from the time of its formation in the womb of the Blessed Mother, beating while he preached forgiveness and healed the sick, stopped by the Cross, pierced by the lance, begun again at the Resurrection, and still, today, beating in the body seated at the right hand of the Father.

Further, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is devotion to the love of Jesus, the twofold love of Jesus: the divine love and his human love. The Sacred Heart is truly symbolic of the love of God which created the world and which redeemed a fallen world, but it also expresses the fully human love which Jesus had for the crowds, for the suffering, for his disciples, particularly for the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” The Sacred Heart loved not only with the love of God, but also was the perfect human heart, loving in right relationship all things.

We are convicted by the Sacred Heart for our lack of love. If it were only a symbol of divine love, the love which created us, so stunning in its infinity, an infinity which is for all but no less infinitely for each, we are by definition incapable of such love, but, since it is also a symbol of Jesus’ human love, we are indicted when we see how much love a human heart is capable of. Consider how, in comparison, we love so little. How small is our love for our families, our friends, and our enemies! How little compassion do we have for the sick, the poor and the suffering!

The love, both human and divine, symbolized by the Sacred Heart is an unrequited love. Through all human history, God has loved humans with an everlasting love, but humans have ignored and insulted this love. There is no greater symbol of the human response to God’s love than the Sacred Heart pierced by a lance. Humans respond with violence against the very symbol of God’s love, as if, unable to repay the love, and refusing to be in debt, they try to destroy the love of God. Yet the lance, rather than destroy the Sacred Heart, only opens it further, pouring forth blood and water in the final symbol of the complete gift.

Jesus invites us today to learn from him, for he is meek and humble of heart. Let us take him up on this generous invitation. If we think that we know anything or have a certain amount of wisdom, but we have not yet learned about love, we are mistaken. We will be truly wise when we are masters of love: the love God has for us, the love we return to God, the love God has for everyone else, the love we have for those whom God loves. All this love is one Love. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” We will not be masters of love until the beating of our hearts is in perfect sync with the Sacred Heart. Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto yours.

June 26, 2014 - Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

2014-06-26T02:57:00.001-05:00

Today's Readings

The stronger the foundation, the more work which is required to build on that foundation. Sand is a weak foundation, so it is easy to dig a few feet into the sand and bury the anchors for the house. Rock is a strong foundation, so it requires a great deal of work to break through even a few feet.

Jesus contrasts the one who listens to his words and acts to the one who listens to his words and does not act. According to the analogy they have both built a house. Indeed, if we consider the analogy further we can understand that the rock is located under the sand. It is not as if the rock were bare rock. Wherever there is sand, there is bedrock underneath, perhaps 100 feet underneath, but it is there.

So the fool listens to the words of Jesus, nods in agreement, smiles even, then goes home and keeps living. Perhaps, occasionally, he tries to act according to the words that he heard, if it is not too hard. The wise man hears the words of Jesus and begins digging. He digs through 100 feet of sand, hits rock, and begins chipping away at the rock. Only then does he build his life.

It sounds like a lot of work. It is a lot of work. Following Christ requires more than a smile and a nod. It is not easy to build a spiritual life that is anchored in the rock, but it is worth it. As Jesus teaches us, when the winds come and the floods rise, the house built on sand will not stand. We are going to have trouble in this world. We must build our faith to withstand the trouble.

If we listen to the words of Jesus and act on them, a faith will be built in us that cannot be blown over, no matter how strong the winds. If we listen to the words of Jesus and act on them, a hope will be built in us that cannot be drowned, no matter how high the waters reach. Unquestionably, the storms are coming. If we play at being Christian, we are building a play house that cannot stand up to anything. If we take Christianity seriously, more seriously than we have ever taken anything, more seriously than we take money, more seriously than we take sports, more seriously than we take

June 25th, 2014 - Wednesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

2014-06-25T07:19:00.000-05:00

2 Kings 22:8-13; 23:1-3
Psalm 119.33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40 Resp. 33a
Matthew 7.15-20

After many kings who did evil, King Josiah began the work of restoring the temple. When the book of the Law was found during the restoration, he wept and committed himself fully to the Law. He had it read to the people so that they too could follow the Law. King Josiah begins anew the covenant between Israel and the Lord. He rids Israel of the pagan religions and celebrates the Passover of the Lord, that great feast which had not been celebrated for hundreds of years.

So what happened to the great King Josiah, who “turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might”? He died. He was killed in battle by the Pharaoh of Egypt who took over the country until the Babylonians arrived a decade later. And the sons of Josiah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Josiah never really had a chance to make his reforms stick. Too much evil had been done in Judah by the previous generations, and it is not so easy to undo centuries of evil with one good king.

So also in our spiritual lives. One good intention is not enough to undo a lifetime of sin. One good retreat or one good prayer will not change us. Our willingness to sin has made us weak. We confess our sins, but then we return to them. It is not possible to give in to temptation a thousand times and then simply decide to stop sinning, not without grace. God can accomplish anything in us, if we allow him, but allowing him may be dangerous. To purify the Israelites, God sent them into exile for 70 years. Who knows how God will purify us! It probably will not be pleasant or easy. Perhaps we are afraid of life without sin, or of the suffering that will free us from our sins. We would so like to start over fresh, as if none of the past had ever happened, but we cannot, because it did. God forgives our sins, but in order to free us from them, there must be fire, either in this life or the next. If we truly want to be free, we will embrace the fire in this life and allow it to burn away the attachments we have formed. And we can make this fire burn hotter now by fasting and penance, if we wish.

June 24, 2014 - Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

2014-06-24T06:31:00.001-05:00

Isaiah 49.1-6
Psalm 139.1b-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15 Resp. 14
Acts 13.22-26
Luke 1.57-66, 80

Today we commemorate the birth of a great prophet, and not just a prophet, but he of whom it was said, “Behold I am sending my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. A voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.”

The feast of Christmas, coincidentally, is placed near the winter solstice, near the darkest day of the year. The feast of John the Baptist, symbolically, is placed opposite Christmas, near the summer solstice, the lightest day of the year. In the northern hemisphere, the sun strengthens every day after Christmas and weakens every day after the feast of John the Baptist. This yearly astronomical event is a sign to us of the difference between the two men. John signals the end of something, something decreasing and fading away. When he says that he must decrease, he is not speaking only for himself but for the entire prophetic tradition of Israel. Jesus is causing something new to happen, something increasing.

John the Baptist marks the end of the age of prophecy. He is the last in a long line of the great prophets of Israel: Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and many others. Yet John was greater than all of these former prophets. He was greater than all before him inasmuch as the message he proclaimed was greater than theirs. They proclaimed justice, but he proclaimed the Just One. They proclaimed mercy, but he proclaimed the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

John the Baptist is great because, from his mother’s womb, he was a perfect instrument of God. God planned for him to prepare the way for Jesus. Before he was born, God had dedicated him as a prophet to the nations. His first prophecy took place while he was still inside his mother. Nevertheless, for all of his greatness, the character of John the Baptist in the Gospels is above all humble. He decreased; Jesus increased. He freely told his disciples to follow Jesus. He was never jealous of Jesus.

Thanks be to God for the great gift he sent in John the Baptist, but let us remember the words of Jesus. “The least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.” Every single one of us who are baptized into the Kingdom ought to exceed the humility and obedience of John. Not by our own strength, but through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) (A)

2014-06-22T07:10:00.000-05:00

Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14-16
Psalm 147.12-13, 14-15, 19-20 Resp. 12a
1 Corinthians 10.16-17
Lauda Sion
John 6.51-58

Manna is a kind of food that appeared on the ground each morning from the time that the Israelites left Egypt until the day that they ate the fruit of the promised land. Manna was free food: the only work was going out each morning to gather it up. Manna was abundant food: it fed 2 million people for forty years. Later generations of Israelites looked back on the time in the desert as a blessed time, depending entirely on providence for survival.

There were three lessons concerning manna. First, no one was to gather more than they needed. Each person was allotted one omer of manna a day, a little less than a gallon. When they went out to gather the manna, some people gathered a lot and others gathered a little, but everyone ended up with one omer per person. Whether this is the result of a miracle or if it means that those with too much shared with those who did not have enough, the lesson for us is the same: we should not take more of this world’s resources than we need. If we have too much, we should share with those who do not have enough to satisfy their needs.

The second lesson of the manna is that it must not be kept overnight. The Israelites had to trust that the manna would be out on the ground again the next morning. Those who tried to keep the manna overnight found that in the morning it was full of worms and smelled terrible. From this rule we should learn not to hoard the riches of this world. True, we are not wandering in the desert with manna appearing on the ground each day. It is very reasonable to save money: to save enough in case of a surprise car repair, to save enough in case you lose your job, but do not hoard money.

Some people collect money and property as if they only wanted to see how much they could have, as if they were competing in a game with the other rich people of this world. I do not refer only to millionaires and billionaires. Consider the very idea of collecting something. It is so acceptable in this culture to say, “I collect hippopotami”, but we Christians should look in horror at the idea of spending time and money, whether on ceramic doodads or unnecessary power tools. We are travelers in this world; pack lightly!

The third lesson of the manna is that on Friday the Israelites gathered enough for two days so that they would not go out on the Sabbath. This is a lesson we ought to take to heart. There is so little respect today for resting on the Lord’s Day. Six days a week have been given us to work; we must rest on the seventh day.

But how should we rest on Sundays? The usual forms of rest in our culture (ball games, shopping, and restaurants) involve someone else serving us. Should we sit home then and watch TV? A proper understanding of Sunday rest begins with what we all must do on Sundays: go to Mass. The point of Sunday is to worship God. Anything else we do is peripheral.

There is an old joke about a man who asked his pastor whether it was okay to smoke while he prayed. His pastor said, “Absolutely not! When you pray you should be completely devoted to prayer.” So the man went to another priest, but he changed his question, “Would it be okay to pray while I smoke?”

We Christians do not begin with a rule, because every rule has loopholes. We begin with the Holy Spirit. Our Sundays should be about praising God. Mass is not something to be fit in around a busy schedule. Mass comes first, everything else can be planned afterward. Those who work on Sunday should insist on having time to go to Mass, and they should take another day to praise God by resting.

Together, the three lessons of the manna teach us that we were not made for survival. The point of our lives cannot be getting through to tomorrow at any cost. We certainly were not made to succeed as the world sees success, with piles of money and stuff. Survival is secondary to praising God. As Moses puts it, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”

The lessons of the manna were so important, so foundational to the Jewish religion that Moses took one omer of manna and placed it in the Ark of the Covenant, a box covered in gold. The Ark was placed at the center of worship. The Jewish Temple was merely a house for the Ark, and the Ark was a container for the manna. So really, the manna was at the center of Jewish worship, this special bread which God had given to his people.

Do you see where I am going with this? This temple, this church, is really just a house for that box right there. That box is the Ark of the Covenant, which is also called the tabernacle. Within the tabernacle, we place a portion of the bread. It is not ordinary bread that we put in the tabernacle. Indeed, it is not really bread at all. The bread is a symbol, which is to say, we see bread, we taste bread, but the meaning of the bread is something more. What is the something more? It is Jesus Christ, his Body, his Blood, his Soul, and his Divinity.

The bread is a sacrament, which is to say, it does not only symbolize this, but it in reality is Jesus Christ: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. When we receive the symbol of bread, we actually receive Jesus Christ. When we see bread and kneel down in worship, we are actually worshipping Jesus Christ. This is a mystery. It is not clear to us how something can have the accidents of bread, the sight, the smell, the taste of bread, the atoms and molecules of bread, but in reality be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It is not clear to us, but that is not important. Jesus did not give us this sacrament and say, “Take and understand; this is my body.” No, he said “Take and eat; this is my body.”

We must believe that the bread is, as the Church tells us, as Jesus told the Church, actually his Body. We must believe that the wine is, as the Church tells us, as Jesus told the Church, actually his Blood. This belief is not a nice addition to our faith. We place the Eucharist at the very center of our worship, because it defines who we are.

Faith in the Eucharist is where we must begin. All other work in the Church is pointless unless we begin with the Eucharist. It is pointless to protest abortion unless the Eucharist is at the center of our work. It is pointless to give food to the hungry unless this food given to us by God is satisfying our hunger. We as a Church are not a gathering of people who like doing good things. We are a gathering of people around the Eucharist. The good things come later.

Christianity without the Eucharist would be like Judaism without manna, just a lot of laws. From the Eucharist we receive our mission from God and the spiritual energy to complete that mission. If we receive the Eucharist with faith in the mystery, and we receive it acknowledging that we want to serve God above all else, confessing every sin we have committed, rejecting any plans to commit sin in the future, then we will be transformed.

Jesus Christ came to earth to give his life for us and to us. He gave his life for us on the Cross. He gives his life to us in the Eucharist. When we receive the Eucharist, we hold the life of God in our hands. We eat the life of God. We become what we eat. Eventually we do not live anymore ourselves, but Christ lives in us. That is what the Eucharist is about.

Update and Status, Especially for Kindle Subscribers

2014-06-22T06:17:00.000-05:00

I have not updated this blog in a while and have been rather intermittent for the past year. I began this blog when I had more free time, and my current pastoral responsibilities must always trump blogging, but I do hope to get back on track now. While this may be disappointing for those who use the website, it is of greatest concern to those who subscribe on their Amazon Kindle. So to clarify a few points:

This blog is always available for free at dailyhomilies.org. I have no interest in charging for it. Amazon charges a fee to deliver the blog to the Kindle. This fee is mostly kept by Amazon, and I have no control over it. It would be free on Amazon if I could make it so. I also cannot help anyone cancel a subscription, but it is easy to do and Amazon can help if you wish.

Even when I am not able to keep up daily posts, the archives are an important part of the website. My long term goal is to finish all the homilies for the various cycles. When this is completed, I will release a complete Kindle book. In the meantime, many homilies are available by looking in the current archives.

The reason why I inconsistently update is because a post is not a simple matter of writing a few paragraphs, but requires significant time. I could write a similar size blog post in a few minutes, but a quality homily should come not from me but from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in my reflection on the readings. While I preach at Mass every day, and I am always surprised and grateful to God when wisdom comes out which is not from me, this blog contains not so much homilies as a careful exegesis that provides a foundation for a homily. I do not want to just have "something" for each day, because I want what I do have to be useful for years to come. When the cycle returns to a homily that is in the archives of this site, I read that entry before going to preach. I do not read the homily to the people, but read it to myself as a beginning of what to say. I do not want to post homilies on this site that will not teach me something when I return to them three years later, though I have often had to correct something because of what I had learned in the meantime. Ultimately, I want to have a homily for every possible set of readings, not so that I would just preach the same homilies over and over without any reference to what the parish needs, but to get me started when I am stuck. There used to be many such tools (one of my favorites told which Summa Theologica article to read each Sunday), but they have mostly gone out of date with the new cycles of readings, so I hope to create one for myself, and I am pleased that others find these homilies useful. I am always grateful to those of you who have written me words of encouragement of the years.

I hope that this clarifies the status and purpose of this blog. I apologize to anyone who was expecting or depending on something else. If you would like to email me, my address is fatheradam@rejoice.cc

In Christ,
Father Adam McMillan.