Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy

The Epiphany of the Lord - 8 January 2012

2012-01-09T15:39:00.004-06:00

Here is a link to the Epiphany homily of Pope Benedict XVI:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2012/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20120106_epifania_en.html

And here is his homily:

EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION
ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Vatican Basilica
Friday, 6 January 2012

[Video]

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

The Epiphany is a feast of light. “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Is 60:1). With these words of the prophet Isaiah, the Church describes the content of the feast. He who is the true light, and by whom we too are made to be light, has indeed come into the world. He gives us the power to become children of God (cf. Jn 1:9,12). The journey of the wise men from the East is, for the liturgy, just the beginning of a great procession that continues throughout history. With the Magi, humanity’s pilgrimage to Jesus Christ begins – to the God who was born in a stable, who died on the Cross and who, having risen from the dead, remains with us always, until the consummation of the world (cf. Mt 28:20). The Church reads this account from Matthew’s Gospel alongside the vision of the prophet Isaiah that we heard in the first reading: the journey of these men is just the beginning. Before them came the shepherds – simple souls, who dwelt closer to the God who became a child, and could more easily “go over” to him (Lk 2:15) and recognize him as Lord. But now the wise of this world are also coming. Great and small, kings and slaves, men of all cultures and all peoples are coming. The men from the East are the first, followed by many more throughout the centuries. After the great vision of Isaiah, the reading from the Letter to the Ephesians expresses the same idea in sober and simple terms: the Gentiles share the same heritage (cf. Eph 3:6). Psalm 2 puts it like this: “I shall bequeath you the nations, put the ends of the earth in your possession” (v. 8).

The wise men from the East lead the way. They open up the path of the Gentiles to Christ. During this holy Mass, I will ordain two priests to the episcopate, I will consecrate them as shepherds of God’s people. According to the words of Jesus, part of a shepherd’s task is to go ahead of the flock (cf. Jn 10:4). So, allowing for all the differences in vocation and mission, we may well look to these figures, the first Gentiles to find the pathway to Christ, for indications concerning the task of bishops. What kind of people were they? The experts tell us that they belonged to the great astronomical tradition that had developed in Mesopotamia over the centuries and continued to flourish. But this information of itself is not enough. No doubt there were many astronomers in ancient Babylon, but only these few set off to follow the star that they recognized as the star of the promise, pointing them along the path towards the true King and Saviour. They were, as we might say, men of science, but not simply in the sense that they were searching for a wide range of knowledge: they wanted something more. They wanted to understand what being human is all about. They had doubtless heard of the prophecy of the Gentile prophet Balaam: “A star shall come forth out of Jacob and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel” (Num 24:17). They explored this promise. They were men with restless hearts, not satisfied with the superficial and the ordinary. They were men in search of the promise, in search of God. And they were watchful men, capable of reading God’s signs, his soft and penetrating language. But they were also courageous, yet humble: we can imagine them having to endure a certain amount of mockery for setting off to find the King of the Jews, at the cost of so much effort. For them it mattered little what this or that person, what even influential and clever people thought and said about them. For them it was a question of truth itself, not human opinion. Hence they took upon themselves the sacrifices and the effort of a long and uncertain journey. Their humble courage was what enabled them to bend down before the child of poor people and to recognize in him the promised King, the one they had set out, on both their outward and their inward journey, to seek and to know.

Dear friends, how can we fail to recognize in all this certain essential elements of episcopal ministry? The bishop too must be a man of restless heart, not satisfied with the ordinary things of this world, but inwardly driven by his heart’s unrest to draw ever closer to God, to seek his face, to recognize him more and more, to be able to love him more and more. The bishop too must be a man of watchful heart, who recognizes the gentle language of God and understands how to distinguish truth from mere appearance. The bishop too must be filled with the courage of humility, not asking what prevailing opinion says about him, but following the criterion of God’s truth and taking his stand accordingly – “opportune – importune”. He must be able to go ahead and mark out the path. He must go ahead, in the footsteps of him who went ahead of us all because he is the true shepherd, the true star of the promise: Jesus Christ. And he must have the humility to bend down before the God who made himself so tangible and so simple that he contradicts our foolish pride in its reluctance to see God so close and so small. He must devote his life to adoration of the incarnate Son of God, which constantly points him towards the path.

The liturgy of episcopal ordination interprets the essential features of this ministry in eight questions addressed to the candidates, each beginning with the word “Vultis? – Do you want?” These questions direct the will and mark out the path to be followed. Here I shall briefly cite just a few of the most important words of this presentation, where we find explicit mention of the elements we have just considered in connection with the wise men of today’s feast. The bishops’ task is praedicare Evangelium Christi, it is custodire et dirigere, it is pauperibus se misericordes praebere, it is indesinenter orare. Preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, going ahead and leading, guarding the sacred heritage of our faith, showing mercy and charity to the needy and the poor, thus mirroring God’s merciful love for us, and finally, praying without ceasing: these are the fundamental features of the episcopal ministry. Praying without ceasing means: never losing contact with God, letting ourselves be constantly touched by him in the depths of our hearts and, in this way, being penetrated by his light. Only someone who actually knows God can lead others to God. Only someone who leads people to God leads them along the path of life.

The restless heart of which we spoke earlier, echoing Saint Augustine, is the heart that is ultimately satisfied with nothing less than God, and in this way becomes a loving heart. Our heart is restless for God and remains so, even if every effort is made today, by means of most effective anaesthetizing methods, to deliver people from this unrest. But not only are we restless for God: God’s heart is restless for us. God is waiting for us. He is looking for us. He knows no rest either, until he finds us. God’s heart is restless, and that is why he set out on the path towards us – to Bethlehem, to Calvary, from Jerusalem to Galilee and on to the very ends of the earth. God is restless for us, he looks out for people willing to “catch” his unrest, his passion for us, people who carry within them the searching of their own hearts and at the same time open themselves to be touched by God’s search for us. Dear friends, this was the task of the Apostles: to receive God’s unrest for man and then to bring God himself to man. And this is your task as successors of the Apostles: let yourselves be touched by God’s unrest, so that God’s longing for man may be fulfilled.

The wise men followed the star. Through the language of creation, they discovered the God of history. To be sure – the language of creation alone is not enough. Only God’s word, which we encounter in sacred Scripture, was able to mark out their path definitively. Creation and Scripture, reason and faith, must come together, so as to lead us forward to the living God. There has been much discussion over what kind of star it was that the wise men were following. Some suggest a planetary constellation, or a supernova, that is to say one of those stars that is initially quite weak, in which an inner explosion releases a brilliant light for a certain time, or a comet, etc. This debate we may leave to the experts. The great star, the true supernova that leads us on, is Christ himself. He is as it were the explosion of God’s love, which causes the great white light of his heart to shine upon the world. And we may add: the wise men from the East, who feature in today’s Gospel, like all the saints, have themselves gradually become constellations of God that mark out the path. In all these people, being touched by God’s word has, as it were, released an explosion of light, through which God’s radiance shines upon our world and shows us the path. The saints are stars of God, by whom we let ourselves be led to him for whom our whole being longs. Dear friends: you followed the star Jesus Christ when you said “yes” to the priesthood and to the episcopacy. And no doubt smaller stars have enlightened and helped you not to lose your way. In the litany of saints we call upon all these stars of God, that they may continue to shine upon you and show you the path. As you are ordained bishops, you too are called to be stars of God for men, leading them along the path towards the true light, towards Christ. So let us pray to all the saints at this hour, asking them that you may always live up to this mission you have received, to show God’s light to mankind.

Mary, the Mother of God - 1 January 2012

2012-01-01T13:52:00.003-06:00

The Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God

Numbers 6:22-27 - Galatians 4:4-7 - Luke 2:16-21

January 1, 2012

Happy New Year to you all! This weekend, as we celebrate the second Sunday of Christmas, we ask the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, the Mother of God. More than a millennium and a half ago, in the year of Our Lord 431, the bishops of the universal Church gave glory to God, by giving honor to Mary. They pronounced her to be “the Mother of God”. In that year of 431, the third world-wide—or ecumenical—council of the Church took place in the city of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey. According to tradition, Ephesus is the town where Mary lived the last years of her life under the care of Saint John the Apostle, so it’s not surprising that the Council held at Ephesus in 431 was the setting for pronouncing this title by which the Church honors Mary at the beginning of a new year, in the midst of the Christmas season.

The bishops who gathered in Ephesus contended with the heresy—the false teaching—being taught by the archbishop of Constantinople. He falsely taught that Jesus Christ was actually two separate persons: the human Jesus… and the divine Christ. So according to his false teaching, Mary would certainly be the mother of the human Jesus, but could not be called the mother of anyone who is divine.

This way of thinking, though, was condemned by the Council of Ephesus. The teaching of the Church, they proclaimed, is that there is only one person in Jesus Christ, and that if Mary is the mother of the human Jesus—Jesus Christ who is God—then she can be honored as the Mother of God.

Still, even if we know all this—if we know in our heads that we can call Mary the Mother of God—why should we? Why is this feast so important that we normally celebrate it as a holy day of obligation?

Keep in mind that whenever Holy Mother Church obliges us to do something, she’s acting like any good mother (like Mary). What she does is for our sake, not hers. And certainly, in celebrating this feast in honor of Mary, we receive much more than Mary does from our devotion to her as the “Mother of God”. At the heart of this great mystery that we celebrate, we see that this belief—that Mary is the “Mother of God”—says something about Jesus, about Mary, and about us.

First of all, what does the title “Mother of God” say about Jesus? The mystery that the Council of Ephesus reflected on—in awe—is not first and foremost that Mary is the MOTHER of God, but rather, that this baby, whom we see lying in the manger IS God. The hymn we sing asks “What child is this?” and our answer is that “this, this is Christ the King!”: not the king of a human realm, as Judas Iscariot would assume thirty years later. This helpless infant… is the same God who creates the stars of the heavens. This helpless infant… is the same God who destroys our sins on the Cross. In Jesus, God and man are united. The infinite and the finite wed. And because of this wedding, our lives on this earth, naturally destined to last only seventy or eighty years perhaps, within a valley of tears, can, through Jesus, be lived forever in heaven.

If Mary is the Mother of God, then we are called to be brothers and sisters of God. Jesus was born into this world so that we could be borne into Heaven. In dying, Jesus opened the gates of heaven to us, to make a home for us there, so that we could live as one family.

In your imagination, picture today’s gospel passage: you see the infant Jesus in the manger, with his mother on the ground next to him, and Saint Joseph keeping watch over them. The Holy Family had already made the perilous journey to Bethlehem, and when they had got there, they had found themselves rejected by everyone whom they asked for shelter. Not much later, there were angels, and shepherds, and kings from the east praising the newborn child. What a strange turn of events: from rejection to adoration! It’s no wonder that as Mary rested in the hay she pondered these things in her heart: complete rejection, and utter acceptance, all because of the same person.

Mary was only about fourteen years old when these things happened. If Mary had not been full of grace she might easily have become cynical as she reflected on all these things. Mary was beginning to see how the world treats people. You yourself remain the same person throughout your life, but because of circumstances, many people react very differently toward you.

As Mary pondered these events in her heart, she realized that this was going to be the pattern throughout her son’s life: acceptance or rejection, based merely upon the attitudes of others, and the circumstances of life. Even at such a young age, she could see that if others were given the chance to witness miracles—angels singing in the sky, water turning to wine, or a blind man regaining his sight—they would very likely praise her son. But if following Jesus meant watching him being turned out of the synagogue in Galilee, or being mocked by the scribes and Pharisees for trying to teach them about God, or being whipped and crowned with thorns after being condemned to a traitor’s death, people wouldn’t hesitate to distance themselves from her Son.

Many of us are going to make resolutions for the new year. How successful will we be? For most of us, the new year won’t be much different than the last. Because, after all, we remain the same person that we’ve always been. If we truly want to change, it will take the grace of God, above and beyond our human efforts. The grace of God is what made Mary the “Mother of God”, the Mother of Jesus, and our Mother. It's through God's grace that the really important changes in our lives are effected. Each day of 2012, ask Mary for her intercession before Jesus, to remain committed to Christ in your daily life no matter the circumstance, and no matter the consequences.

The Nativity of the Lord - 25 DEC 2011

2011-12-25T20:11:00.001-06:00

The Nativity of the Lord

December 25, 2011

“‘She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,

because he will save his people from their sins.’” [Matthew 1:21]

Growing up, I knew only three of my grandparents, since one passed away before my parents married. Of the three grandparents whom I knew growing up, only one was Catholic: my mother’s mother, my Grandma Kelly. Although we only saw her a couple of times a year, I learned a lot about my Catholic Faith from her.

My Grandma Kelly was widowed fairly young (when my mother was 18 years old), so she had to become financially independent. To say that she was a hard worker is an understatement. My brother and I would spend a summer each week at her home. We saw the sort of work ethic and frugality that she lived by. I don’t think as young boys, who didn’t have the advantage of growing up on a farm, that we appreciated this about her. But as we got older and entered the adult world, the message that she had taught by her example sank in.

But even more than her work ethic, her faith drove her life. It’s not often anymore that I return to my mother’s hometown. But whenever I do, and go to pray inside the church where she was a parishioner most of her life, it’s easy to walk straight to the pew where we prayed with Grandma at Holy Mass whenever we visited. This pew was on the right side of the church, about seven pews from the back, entering from the center aisle.

When you’re young, you think the world is one big constant. Nothing will ever change. Only with experience do we realize just how much change is a part of life. As a boy, despite the fact that one

grandparent had already died, I imagined that grandparents, like parents, live forever. But in the 1980’s, that world changed: my father’s mother died in 1981, and my father’s father in 1982.

My Grandma Kelly, however, didn’t seem ever to change. In 1986, she was 85 years old, but didn’t hesitate to come down from north-central Kansas to help celebrate my graduation from high school. She still worked, and still lived by herself in her own home, and drove her old Ford to church, to work, and downtown to buy groceries and go to the post office. Or if there was big shopping to do, she would drive into Salina. But that fall, when I was in my first semester at Kansas State, I found out one day that she had suffered a stroke. When our family went to visit her in the hospital, she was conscious, but very weak.

In the hospital, we were told that she would not likely recover. That was the first time I recognized that this pillar of strength could be weak. I realized that she would never be active again, and busy, as she enjoyed being. She would never be able to carry out the good works animated by her Catholic Faith. But her faith was still clearly part of her, inside her. And I realized, as an 18 year-old, that all her works had been borne from her Faith. Her ability to work was taken from her, but her Faith could not be taken away. And besides, not all of her good works were taken away from her: she still prayed faithfully there, on what became her death bed.

We only got to visit her twice in the hospital, and then, on Christmas Eve 1986 (25 years ago), she died. Her funeral was held a few days later in her parish. It was strange to sit in one of the front few pews, instead of with her towards the back. It was strange to be part of a funeral Mass, with all the Christmas decorations and lights shining inside the church. It was strange to realize that I would never again in this life have a grandparent to turn to, to ask a question, and to pray beside.

Fewer than six months later, I left Kansas State and entered the seminary. One of the greatest regrets of my life is that my grandmother did not get to see me enter the seminary. But then, maybe I wouldn’t have entered if not for the lesson about Faith that she illuminated for me by her death.

+ + +

To many in our world who celebrate Christmas for a whole variety of reasons—some sacred and some secular—Christmas doesn’t seem like the time to reflect on death. However, I’d be willing to wager that even the most ardent atheist can’t help but find himself thinking at Christmastime about his loved ones who have passed away.

But for the Christian, there’s an even more powerful link between the mystery of the Birth of Jesus, and the mystery of human death. Over the past few weeks, in the sermons of Advent, there were a few phrases that suggested this link: that “the wood of the crib is the wood of the Cross”, and that “Jesus was born into this world, so that He could die from this world.” Jesus’ vocation was not to be born. Jesus’ vocation was to die on the Cross. Jesus’ birth makes possible His death.

We as Christians celebrate on December 25 not just a remembrance of Jesus’ birth 2000 years ago, but an opportunity for new life that God is handing us today. Every good work, every spiritual and corporal act of mercy, every sacrifice of your life as a Christian, can bear fruit because Jesus makes death an opportunity for life.

This truth is really no more or less than the truth with which we conclude the Prayer of St. Francis, that “it is in dying that we are born to eternal life”. Let me illustrate this truth with a poem from the 20^th century. Personally, I’m not much for poetry, but this poem—titled “The Journey of the Magi”—has taught me a lot. Since I have a hard time expressing poetry, let me offer you a recorded version, recited by an actor whose voice you may recognize. The poem is spoken in the person of one of the three wise men, reflecting many years later on the journey that they made to Bethlehem. What I’m going to play here is only the last sixty seconds of the poem, where, after having explained what they witnessed on the way to Bethlehem, the wise man, in his old age, reflects on what they witnessed at Bethlehem:

“Journey of the Magi” by T. S. Eliot

The “old dispensation” means not just the Old Testament, which ended when Jesus was born. The “old dispensation” means living your life according to your own human terms, clutching your gods, instead of allowing God the Father to hold you in His Hand, and guide you through this world. The “old dispensation” is the little kingdom that each of us makes for himself, instead of living for the Kingdom of God.

Jesus Christ is born today. We see His light. He guides us by His light to follow Him through life: not only on Sunday, but seven days a week, every week of every year of our life here below. Mary has borne a Son for us, and His name means “God saves”. God saves us, not from trial and tribulation, but from sin and death. Jesus shows us, teaches us, and strengthens us to accept that our salvation comes from our putting to death everything from the “old dispensation”, everything that is not of God, so that we can live freely enough, to live for God alone.

I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you a very joyous, happy and merry Christmas Season, and a very holy new year.

4th Sunday of Advent [B] - 18 DEC 2011

2011-12-17T20:28:00.001-06:00

The Fourth Sunday of Advent [B]

II Samuel 7:1-5,8b-12,14a,16 ─ Romans 16:25-27 ─ Luke 1:26-38

December 18, 2011

“Should you build me a house to dwell in?” [II Samuel 7:5]

King David seems to be a humble man. He appears, in our First Reading, to want to set things right. And both of these virtues—humility and justice—are at the heart of the Advent Season, modeled as they are by John the Baptizer and the Blessed Virgin Mary. So perhaps the Church proclaims our First Reading today, on this final Sunday of Advent, in order to hold King David up as a model for us. Or, perhaps not.

Perhaps not, given the Lord’s response to King David. Settled in his palace [after] the Lord had given him rest from his enemies, King David cries out in concern about his own dwelling being richer than the Lord’s. In His divinity, God dwells in Heaven, of course, but in some mysterious manner God had dwelt on earth, since the time of Moses, within the Ark of the Covenant. King David is referring to this Ark when he cries out, “Here I am living in a house of cedar, while the Ark of God dwells in a tent!” The Lord responds with a rhetorical question that unlocks the meaning of the First Reading: “Should you build me a house to dwell in?”

We realize this is a rhetorical question because the rest of the Lord’s words reveal King David’s intention to be… just too small. David in this passage appears neither humble for admitting the richness of his own palace, nor just for implying that the Lord deserves better than a tent. The Lord turns David’s intention upside down. Instead of accepting David’s concern, the Lord reveals all that He is going to accomplish for His servant David: “I will make you famous like the great ones of the earth.” “I will give you rest from all your enemies.” And finally, speaking of Himself in the third person: “The Lord also reveals to you that He will establish a house for you.” But the Lord’s ways are not man’s ways, the Lord’s house is not David’s house, and the house the Lord builds is not built according to man’s ways: that is, the Lord’s house is not built of cedar, brick, marble or stone, but of living stones that are far more precious.

+ + +

One thousand years after David’s time came and he rested with his ancestors, the Lord raised up David’s heir. Gabriel was sent from God… to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David…. St. Gabriel hails Mary as being full of grace, and says to her, the Lord is with you. Then Gabriel explains to Mary that the Lord God will give Mary’s son the throne of David his father… and of his kingdom there will be no end.

But Mary responds simply with a sincere question. The angel’s praise doesn’t make her proud. She has no noble plans, like King David, but only a question for the Lord: “How can this be?” Gabriel answers honestly, but could only have raised more questions, when he replies that the Power of the Most High will overshadow you, and that therefore the child to be born will be… the Son of God. Had Mary been full of irony and skepticism (like so many of us), she might well have replied, “Well thanks, Gabriel, that explains everything!” St. Gabriel had only added mystery to mystery. He had not, in human fashion, made clear the “How?” of the Incarnation. But he had made clear the divine “Why?”: that in the Incarnation, the Lord is fulfilling His promise to establish a house for you.

Mary’s response is simple. Mary’s response is a model for your own life as a disciple of Jesus. King David, at least in today’s First Reading, is not a model for your life. David believes that serving God starts with his plans. But Mary is different. The two sentences that make up her response are really nothing more than an extended definition of the Hebrew word “Amen”. She declares, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Too often as believers, we add the word “Amen” to the end of a prayer mindlessly, giving the act no more thought than when, with pencil in hand, we mark a period at the end of a sentence. But the word “Amen” is the most important word of every prayer. The word “Amen” is our profession that we personally accept everything that’s been said in the prayer. The Blessed Virgin Mary, in speaking her words here to St. Gabriel, models for us what she commends in similar words at the Wedding at Cana: “Do whatever He tells you.”

+ + +

So what do you and I as Christians have to learn from King David and the Blessed Virgin Mary? The primary lesson is not to place great stock in our own plans, even if they seem humble and aimed at honoring the Lord. This is what David did. Mary, on the other hand, honored the Lord far more by listening for, and accepting, the Lord’s plan, not devising her own. In Mary, not in David, we see the virtues of humility and justice: humility, because she preferred God’s will to her own; and justice, because she accepted the truth that her life was not hers to live, but belonged to God, for Him to do with whatever He might will.

You know, many of us adults, I’d be willing to bet, when we hear the word “fiat”, think of the Italian car maker whose subsidiaries include Ferrari and Maserati. If King David lived today, he would probably drive a car like a Ferrari, whose symbol is a stallion rearing upwards. But “fiat” is also a word in the Latin language, which in English generally means “agreement” or “assent”. More literally, the Latin word “fiat” means “let it be”. This is Mary’s first word as the Mother of God: she accepts God’s plan by saying, “Fiat mihi secundum Verbum tuum”: “May it be done unto me according to your Word.” And so the Word became Flesh, and dwelt among us.

On this final Sunday of Advent, we honor Mary at this particular moment of the Annunciation, when the human life of Jesus began. Nine months later came the day that we will celebrate beginning next Sunday on December 25. But in the midst of the grandness, majesty, and joy of Christmas, don’t forget the simplicity and humility of Mary, who in all things sought only to give God His due, which was her all. Mary was not like the great King David. If Mary lived today, she would not care to drive a sports car: she would be content to ride on the back of a donkey that plods forward one step at a time, with its head down.

Mary knew that true humility does not make us weak, small or less powerful. Handing our life over to God means becoming an instrument of His peace, and a dwelling place for His Word. The grandest building made of human hands—whether St. Peter’s Basilica, or the Eiffel Tower, or the Twin Towers—will one day fall to the ground: by decay, if not by human malice. But even the smallest soul given to God endures in God’s Presence forever. From such souls, God forges His house, the Mystical Body of the Church, with its foundation on earth, and its stories stretching into the heavens.

Immaculate Conception - 8 DEC 2011

2011-12-07T11:59:00.001-06:00

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Genesis 3:9-15, 20 ─ Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12 ─ Luke 1:26-38

December 8, 2011

“Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” [Luke 1:28]

In the beginning, God had a plan. God’s plan was for mankind to live a blissful life in this world, and at the end of earthly life, to rise body and soul into Heaven, to spend eternity there with Him and all their brothers and sisters in the family of man.

But mankind did not cooperate. You know how Adam and Eve brought sin into the world. They did not cooperate with God’s plan, and so God came up with a “Plan B”. In this “Plan B”, God would show His love for mankind by handing over His only Son, knowing that man would crucify this Son, and knowing further that the Crucifixion of His Son would destroy the power of human sin and death.

In God’s “Plan A”, one man and one woman were to begin God’s plan. They failed. Adam and Eve instead brought sin and death into human experience, to make what had been designed as a human paradise into a valley of tears, full of suffering, doubt, and at time, even despair.

In God’s “Plan B”, one man and one woman were to begin God’s plan. They obeyed. They fulfilled God the Father’s Will. And so through Jesus and Mary, you have the opportunity to live a life here below filled with hope and joy, and even some measure of peace. But all of the virtues in our earthly life will only be fulfilled in the perfection of Heaven.

ó ó ó

Today the Church throughout the world celebrates the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our Blessed Mother is the one creature in all of God’s Creation who obeyed God unfailingly. Our Blessed Lady is the one human person who has been completely open to accepting Jesus into her life.

We hear Mary’s openness to this gift of life in today’s Gospel passage. Gabriel was sent from God… to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph… and the virgin’s name was Mary. Saint Gabriel the Archangel is God’s messenger, bearing the news of Mary’s Son. Mary asks how she, a virgin, can conceive. But God’s messenger assures Mary that God’s Son will be conceived in her womb by the Power of the Holy Spirit.

Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus reflects God’s omnipotence. God can create something out of nothing. In the beginning, God created the universe out of nothing. Similarly, in the nothingness of Mary’s virginity, God creates, and His Son is conceived as a human being in Mary’s womb. But these two acts of God creating out of nothing—God’s creation of the universe, in the beginning; and God’s creation of Jesus’ human body and soul, in the fullness of time—both anticipate, and foreshadow, an even greater miracle on God’s part.

Likely you have heard the saying, “The wood of the crib is the wood of the Cross.” This saying isn’t historically true, but its truth lies in pointing our attention to the fact that Jesus’ conception and birth were a means to a greater end: that end being Jesus’ Death and Resurrection. As another saying puts it, “Jesus was born into this world, so that he might die from this world.”

Through Mary, God’s Son comes into the world to destroy sin and death. Jesus’ vocation is fulfilled more than three decades later, according to the same pattern by which God created in the beginning, and in Mary’s womb. God creates… out of nothing. So it is with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Human sin is a failure to love. Human sin is an absence of grace, an absence of love. You and I, as human beings: how do we respond when someone doesn’t love us? In our sinfulness, we usually respond in kind. If someone gives us the cold shoulder, we do the same. We respond to an absence of love with a further absence of love. That’s how sin works: it spreads like a spiritual and moral cancer, destroying the love that God meant, in the beginning, for our human life to be about.

Thanks be to God, God does not respond to sin as you and I do. If God did, then when we had wandered far from Him, God would have (metaphorically) turned His back on mankind, and left us to wallow in sin, finally to die and exist forever separated from Him. Thanks be to God, God responds to the nothingness of sin by choosing to love. Down into the midst of a human race of sinners, God chose to send His only-begotten Son. Jesus entered this world, and on Calvary, in the midst of the nothingness of rejection, rebuke, scourging and mockery, Jesus offered His life for the forgiveness of sin. In the midst of the nothingness of sin, God “re-deemed” the world.

ó ó ó

Thanks be to God for His act of “re-creation”. Thanks be to Our Blessed Mother Mary for saying “Yes” to her part in God’s plan. And thanks be to God for preparing Mary to say “Yes” to His will for her life. Those are the three truths that the Church celebrates today on this Holy Day of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. First, God from all eternity, knowing that man would reject Him, planned to re-create the human world through the offering of His Son. Second, God chose Mary to be the Mother of His only-begotten Son, and Mary chose perfectly to accept this vocation. Third, knowing from all eternity of Mary’s fidelity, God prepared Mary for her vocation be means of a unique grace: the grace that we call the “Immaculate Conception”.

Many people confuse the Immaculate Conception with the Virginal Conception of Jesus. This confusion is somewhat understandable, given that the Church proclaims the Gospel passage of the Annunciation—Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus—on the Holy Day of the Immaculate Conception. But the Church proclaims this Gospel passage today not to confuse, but to show the link between Jesus and Mary, between His divine life and her human life, between the vocation of Jesus to die for mankind, and the vocation of Mary to give birth to mankind’s Savior.

At the moment that Mary was conceived in the womb of St. Anne, God preserved Mary from the stain of Original Sin. Ordinary human beings like you and me—that is to say, “ordinary” in the sense of “fallen human beings”—are conceived with the stain of Original Sin. This Original Sin, of course, is washed away by the Sacrament of Baptism. But God chose to preserve Mary from Original Sin. God chose to let Mary be immaculate—that is, without sin—from the first moment of her life, when Saints Joachim and Anne conceived her.

Again, this gift was given to Mary not only for her own sake, but for the sake of her Son, and for the sake of all those who would become members of her Son’s Mystical Body, the Church. You and I celebrate Mary’s fidelity today because she is our Mother. She is the Mother of the One whose Body we are members of. We honor her as the first and best disciple of Jesus Christ. And we honor her because of the unique gift of holiness that God gave her through her Immaculate Conception. During this Season of Advent, her life shows us best how to receive Jesus into our lives.

2nd Sunday of Advent [B] - 4 DEC 2011

2011-12-04T20:49:00.001-06:00

The Second Sunday of Advent [B]

Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11 ─ 2 Peter 3:8-14 ─ Mark 1:1-8

December 4, 2011

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. [Mark 1:1]

This past Thursday morning after Mass, I was serenaded outside church by parishioners singing “Happy Birthday”. I’ve been a priest almost seventeen years, and never been sung to before… preached to, yes; but never sung to. This says a lot about the parishioners of St. Mark’s, and reminds me of the email I quoted in the bulletin a few weeks ago, from a gentleman in southwestern Kansas who said that after visiting, he and his wife would like to join St. Mark’s if and when they move to this area.

But St. Mark’s parishioners weren’t the only ones who remembered my birthday. Johann gave me a little gift. You probably can’t read it from where you’re sitting, but it says, “Love is being owned by a Schnauzer.” Wasn’t that thoughtful of him? You know, every gift says at least two things: it says something about the one who gives it, and something about the one who receives it. This is true regarding both simple and profound gifts. On the one hand, imagine that you were to give a bag of treats to your dog for Christmas. You would most likely give him treats that you think he would enjoy, and this simple exchange would show your affection for him, and his taste in goodies.

Something infinitely more profound, of course, is at the heart of Christmas. During Christmas we celebrate God the Father giving to us the Gift of His Son. Advent is the time for reflecting on this Gift, to help us understand God our Father better, and also our own human selves better.

+ + +

God the Father gives us the Gift of Jesus in many forms (many “wrappings”, we might say). God the Father gives us His Son, for example, through the Sacred Scriptures, especially through the accounts of the Gospel. The Gospel accounts themselves are divine gifts, and these four gifts—called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John— reflect, like any gift, the one who gives, and the one who receives.

During this new Church year that began last Sunday, we hear from the Gospel account of St. Mark the Evangelist. During this year, we at St. Mark’s Parish will have occasion to learn more about our parish patron. His account of the Gospel will be the focus on our parish’s Generations of Faith this coming Spring. But right now, consider Mark’s Gospel account in the setting of all four of them.

St. Mark the Evangelist wrote the shortest of the four. It’s only sixteen chapters long, while the longest—that of St. Matthew—is twenty-eight chapters long (almost twice as long). Is this difference an accident, or through this difference does God reveal something to us? This really begs a wider question: why are there four accounts of the Gospel? Wasn’t one good enough? Is it just an accident that there are four Gospel accounts?

Consider these questions by reflecting on your own life. Is there any single person on earth—with the exception of yourself—who knows you completely? If you’re married, then you’d surely say that your spouse knows you extremely well, but did your spouse know you as a child? Does your spouse know what your childhood was like better than your parents? If you have children, is it possible that your children know a side of you that your parents don’t?

I’m sure you see the point. Even though you are one person, and the same individual throughout your life, different persons know you, and have seen your life, from different vantage points. Even at a particular time—say, when you were a sixth-grader—your classmates, parents, siblings, and teachers, all knew and related to the same person. Yet each of those persons saw you from a different perspective.

This sheds some light on the differences among Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Only Matthew and John knew Jesus personally: Mark and Luke only knew of Jesus through the apostles whose disciples they were (Mark was a disciple of St. Peter, and Luke a disciple of St. Paul). Each of these four evangelists wrote their Gospel account based on the relationship each had with Jesus: in two cases, second-hand. Their own human understanding of the Gospel shaped how the Holy Spirit worked through them to hand on the Gospel.

The other side of the coin is that each evangelist wrote his Gospel account for a different group of Christians. With his particular audience in mind, each evangelist handed on the gift of the Gospel. None of the Gospel accounts tells us everything that could have been written about Jesus. As St. John the Evangelist says in the very last verse of his account, “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”[1] However, while the four Gospel accounts do not give us everything there is to know about Jesus, they do give us the saving Truth about God’s Love for us in Jesus.

+ + +

The Gospel passage that the Church proclaims on this Second Sunday of Advent portrays St. John the Baptizer. The passage that we just heard is the first eight verses of Mark’s Gospel account. Mark’s portrait of John the Baptizer—lean and mean—reflects Mark’s account of the Gospel itself. Mark does not tell us about the conception and birth of John, as Luke does; for that matter, Mark doesn’t tell us about conception and birth of Jesus. Mark begins his account of the Gospel with John and Jesus already adults.

St. Mark the Evangelist plucks three verses from the Old Testament to illustrate John the Baptizer in the role of prophet. None of the four evangelists portrays John at great length, but that’s part of the portrait of John, and illustrates one of his key virtues. Likewise, consider from this what you yourself should take home from today’s Gospel and reflect on during the coming week. How is St. John the Baptizer a model for your life as a Christian?

When you look at St. John the Baptizer, one of the first virtues that we see is humility. Certainly humility is key to understanding Advent. We hear that John’s appearance and diet are ‘mean’ in the sense of humble: John was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt…. He fed on locusts and wild honey. The material humility of John’s life, however, is a means to an end: that is, living his vocation to be a prophet, pointing out Jesus to others.

This is your vocation, also, in virtue of your baptism into the life of Christ Jesus. The role of prophet demands of you humility: both materially and spiritually. Most often, “material humility” is called “simplicity”. What is not needed, is in fact a burden. Advent, like Lent, is a time for throwing off burdens, both materially and spiritually. (Keep in mind that our parish’s Penance Service will be held on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 18.)

Spiritual humility, however, is more important than material humility. Spiritual humility is reflected in John the Baptizer’s life: he proclaims, “One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.” John is referring to Jesus, of course.

Jesus is not just “the reason for the season”. Jesus is the reason for human life itself. Jesus is the answer to every question about the meaning of human life. The more that you humble yourself before Jesus, and say about your life what John said about his, that “He must increase, and I must decrease”,[2] then the more your life will deepen in meaning. Even in the face of your sins, through humility, repentance, and accepting Jesus as the price for your sins, …the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. Giving up your life to Jesus becomes your gift to your own self.

[1] John 21:25.

[2] John 3:30.

Advent - Tuesday of Week I

2011-11-28T13:08:00.001-06:00

Tuesday of the First Week of Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10 ─ Luke 10:21-24

November 29, 2011

The book of the Old Testament that the Church turns to most frequently during Advent is, without a doubt, the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah, as I’m sure you know, is one of the four “major prophets” of the Old Testament: those four being Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. The Season of Advent, of course, is a season of prophecy, symbolizing as it does the entire period of human history from the Fall in the Garden of Eden to the pregnancy of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This entire stretch of human history was one of longing and expectation for the coming of the Messiah, promised as it was by God in the Garden after the Fall of Adam and Eve, and symbolized by the longing and expectation of Mary’s pregnancy.

In today’s First Reading from Isaiah, the Church proclaims the coming of the Messiah. Just as Mary’s human pregnancy truly and historically became the symbol of Israel’s hope for a Messiah, so Isaiah uses metaphors of vegetation to prophecy God’s plan to fulfill His promise for a Messiah: A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, / and from his roots a bud shall blossom.

Then Isaiah prophesies that the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon this Messiah. This prophecy, like all prophecies, is limited in what it reveals. Isaiah himself, the human prophet, likely did not understand that the Messiah would be the Son of God in a human nature. How could he have suspected that God the Father would be so gracious as to give us His only-begotten Son as the Messiah? But God does announce through Isaiah’s prophecy that the Holy Spirit shall rest upon the Messiah.

God, through Isaiah, reveals that this Holy Spirit is a Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a Spirit of counsel and of strength, a Spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord…. The Church calls these six—along with “piety”—the “gifts of the Holy Spirit”, and these seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are the best Christmas gifts that we as Christians might hope for. We receive these seven gifts through Jesus Christ, whose birth we await. You first received these seven gifts on the day of your Baptism: your birthday into the Church. These gifts were further strengthened in you through the Sacrament of Confirmation, so that you might more fully live out your vocation as a Christian, and in the particular vocation by which God asks you to carry out His work on earth.

1st Sunday of Advent [B] - 27 NOV 2011

2011-11-26T14:57:00.001-06:00

The First Sunday of Advent [B]

Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7 ─ 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 ─ Mark 13:33-37

November 27, 2011

“Yet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter:

we are all the work of your hands.” [Isaiah 64:7]

This past Monday evening, after a good rain had fallen in our parish, the breeze was cool. But in spite of the temperature, I walked around for quite a while simply smelling the earth, plants and trees: all of which smelled strongly wet. I’m not sure if that makes sense, because in our own culture, we’re not used to talking much about the sense of smell. Particular groups of individuals, such as cooks or florists, dairymen or hog farmers, are very used to specific smells, and likely use their sense of smell to judge or anticipate decisions they need to make. But the “ordinary Joe” uses his sense of smell very little during the average day, and usually not in regard to important matters.

For the “ordinary Joe”, December is a time for enjoying many rich and sweet smells. Fresh evergreen, whether used for an Advent wreath, a Christmas tree, or other seasonal decoration, bears a smell that many would associate with no other time of year. Many families have recipes for baked goods made only before Christmas, the mere thought of which evokes their aromas. Our preparations for, and celebrations of, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without these sweet smells.

The first Christmas was full of smells, also, but not sweet ones. Close your eyes and imagine the moment surrounding Jesus’ birth: the Holy Family, who had made a week-long journey without finding a place to lodge, were in a stable surrounded by livestock. And although Western art pictures the Bethlehem stable as a sort of wooden barn, the stable in fact was a cave in the side of a hill. Still today, shepherds near Bethlehem use such caves to protect and shelter their folds. But a stable of this kind likely had a dank odor, compounding the smell of the animals and their filth.

Yet the foulness of the first Christmas wasn’t limited to its smells. Worse than foul odors are the vices of men and women who refused to shelter this peasant family. Worse than a lack of hospitality and charity were the vices of the king who feared a rival, and systematically destroyed the innocent, so that he could dominate his lands.

Why would God the Father send His only-begotten Son down from Heaven to be born in a stinking cave, amidst threats of violence? For that matter, why would God the Father choose peasants to serve as the mother and foster-father of His only-begotten? Did God make a mistake? Or is He revealing to us something both about His own divine nature, and about the holiness that you and I are called to? The foulness, baseness, and poverty of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem is a revelation from God, and introduces us, right from the beginning of the Gospel, to the fact that paradox lies at the heart of both God’s divine life, and the holiness that God is calling you to.

The entire Gospel is filled with paradox, but the stories of Advent and Christmas seem to highlight the paradox of the all-powerful God becoming a weak human; in order to destroy death, by dying. The English writer G. K. Chesterton wrote a book about human history, and Jesus’ place in the center of human history. The book is titled The Everlasting Man. Chesterton writes at length about Bethlehem, and describes the paradox that Mary held in her arms and gazed upon the face of her Creator and Savior. This is the paradox, Chesterton wrote, “that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle.”[1] God, in other words, is right under our noses.

+ + +

“What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’” Jesus opens the door to Advent with these words. Jesus wants us to open our eyes. “Jesus said to His disciples: ‘Be watchful! Be alert!’” Through the Sacred Liturgy, Jesus is saying this to us, His disciples, today. But what are we to be watching for? What are we to be alert to? Advent and Christmas are such richly symbolic seasons that it’s easy to lose sight of God’s most obvious presence in our lives. Before getting to that, though, consider two more obvious ways that we prepare for Jesus during Advent.

History reveals Jesus to us. We look back two thousand years in time each Advent. We commemorate, proclaim, and celebrate in the Sacred Liturgy the historical events that truly took place over two thousand years ago: that for us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. During Advent, we look back at the life of Mary, bearing Jesus in her womb for nine months. We reflect on Joseph toiling to protect Mary and her unborn Child. Through this reflection, we ask God to help us see how those historical events symbolize the spiritual challenges that you and I face each day.

But the future reveals Jesus to us, also, during Advent. That’s why the Gospel passage, on this First Sunday of Advent, does not come from the first few chapters of the Gospel. Today’s Gospel passage is not about Mary bearing Jesus, or Joseph keeping watch. Instead, today’s Gospel is from Chapter 13 of Mark’s Gospel account. Mark has only sixteen chapters. Mark records the Last Supper in Chapter 14. Why, then, does the Church proclaim this Gospel passage today? It is to prepare you for the future: for the particular judgment of your life that Jesus will make on the day of your death, and for the Final Judgment that Jesus will make at His Second Coming. Those future events will determine how each of us will spend eternity, and so God gives us this season every year to focus on the need to be alert: to be ready to see Jesus when He comes to us in the future.

Jesus came into this world two thousand years ago to save mankind. Jesus will come at the end of time to judge mankind. But Jesus is also right under our noses. The solemnity of Jesus in the past, and the majesty of Jesus in the future, can overshadow the Presence of Jesus here and now: the Jesus who wants to dwell within your own soul. You likely think of yourself as simple, and maybe even unimportant in the grand scheme of the world. You may recognize yourself as a poor sinner. But it’s because of that spiritual poverty that Jesus wants to dwell in your soul, so that you can live your life in Him.

The foul poverty and vice of Bethlehem two thousand years ago symbolizes the spiritual poverty of a sinner. Are you a sinner? The penitential season of Advent is a time to be alert to your sinfulness, in order to recognize what the gift of salvation means.

[1] G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993), page 301.

Christ the King - 20 NOV 2011

2011-11-19T09:51:00.001-06:00

Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ The King [A]

Ezekiel 34:11-12,15-17 ─ 1 Corinthians 15:20-26,28 ─ Matthew 25:31-46

November 20, 2011

“The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.” [Psalm 23:1]

In the moment after your baptism, the priest anointed your head with Sacred Chrism, saying, “As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of His Body, sharing everlasting life.” Your entire life on this earth—at least, inasmuch as you conform your human will to God’s divine will—is spent carrying out those three roles: the role of priest, the role of prophet, and the role of king (or queen). These three roles help us focus our reflection each fall on our commitment to the Stewardship Way of Life.

These three roles are also the “lenses”, if you will, for you to look through as you reflect on the particular vocation that God gave you (of, if you are young, has in store for you). Two Sundays ago, the homily focused on the third of these roles: the role of king. In Sacred Scripture the role of king is inter-twined with, and often parallels, the role of the shepherd. The readings today, on this Solemnity of Christ The King, illustrate at length this role of “shepherd / slash / king”.

Last Sunday, the homily focused on the role of prophet. In the Old Testament, the role of prophet was exemplified by Moses. In the New Testament, the role of prophet is fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Throughout His earthly life and ministry, Jesus served mankind as the perfect prophet. The greatest example in His public teaching is His Sermon on the Mount. The greatest example in His private teaching among His apostles was at the Last Supper, in the prayer that John records in chapter 17 of His gospel account (often called His “High Priestly Prayer”).

But Jesus isn’t just a prophet whose words instruct people. Jesus was sent into our world by God the Father primarily to be a priest, whose priestly sacrifice was His own self, not rams and bulls, as the priests of the Old Testament offered in the Temple. To show the importance of Jesus’ priestly sacrifice on Calvary—the sacrifice that Jesus makes present for His followers in the Sacrament of the Eucharist—I want to contrast Jesus’ roles as prophet and priest, and point out how Jesus’ prophetic role serves, and leads to, His priestly role.

If we think of Jesus only as a prophet, and compare Him to well-known teachers such as Confucius, the Buddha, or Plato, we miss the point of the Gospel entirely. Jesus’ prophetic teaching isn’t its own point. The point of Buddhism is to imitate the Buddha by practicing what he taught. The point of Confucianism is to imitate Confucius by practicing what he taught. The point of Platonism is to imitate Plato by thinking as he thought.

But Jesus’ teaching is different. His teaching is a sign that points beyond His teaching, to the top of Mount Calvary. Jesus’ death on the Cross fulfilled His life as the divine Prophet. Everything Jesus taught, in public or private—from the Beatitudes to the High Priestly Prayer that He offered at the Last Supper—is shown, exemplified, and fulfilled by Jesus’ act of self-sacrifice on the Cross. But that sort of perfect self-sacrifice only wearies men and women, if they try to imitate Jesus’ self-sacrifice only through their own human strength.

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This is why Jesus gave His followers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on Holy Thursday evening: to offer His disciples—through all the centuries to come—the gift of His self-sacrifice on Calvary. Jesus isn’t just an historical figure to imitate. Jesus is the eternal God, who offers us His life, so that we can offer our lives in self-sacrifice. Without the strength of Jesus’ Body and Blood, soul and divinity, it is impossible to follow Jesus’ teachings. Jesus on Calvary proclaims that human nature alone is impotent and empty—that human life is impotent and empty—without God, who showers His grace upon us through the Cross.

All of this is reflected in the very structure of Holy Mass. As the Mass proceeds, you ascend to its summit, just as on Good Friday the crowds ascended Mount Calvary. We see during the celebration of Holy Mass that there are three stations where the priest and others stop and stand, reflecting the Church’s members carrying out the roles of shepherd, prophet, and priest.

The first station is symbolized by the priest’s chair, where he acts in the role of shepherd. He gathers God’s flock together: one of the first examples is a ritual of penance. Then, a few minutes later, the priest through the prayer known as the Collect “collects” or folds all of our individual intentions and prayers into the single prayer that the priest offers to God, so that all of us together will be ready for both the Liturgy of the Word, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

The second station of Holy Mass is the pulpit. Here the second baptismal role is carried out: the role of prophet. This role is exercised by the laypersons who act as the lectors and cantors of the first three Scripture passages. But the final Scripture passage that’s proclaimed is from the gospel accounts, where Jesus Himself acts and speaks. In the Old Testament, Jesus is foreshadowed. In the writings of the Apostles, Jesus is spoken about. But in the gospel accounts, Jesus Himself acts for us and speaks to us, and all His words and actions point us in one direction: onward to Calvary.[1]

The altar is the third station of Holy Mass. The actions that take place at the first and second stations lead us to the altar. The altar is the sanctuary’s “center of gravity”, if you will. The Word of God that is proclaimed during the Liturgy of the Word becomes Flesh during the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

In our Church’s sanctuary here at St. Mark’s, we can literally see this. The altar of sacrifice is in the center of our sanctuary. Closer to the people, and to either side of the altar, are the first station—the priest’s chair—and the second station—the pulpit. The fact that this altar stands in the center visually highlights its importance. Let me describe for you, though, a very different Catholic parish.

For the last four years of seminary formation, Bishop Gerber sent (now “Father”) Sam Pinkerton and me to Chicago. Like any large city, Chicago has its share of parishes where things went off the rails after the Second Vatican Council. Even in the early ’90’s, there were still parishes afflicted by ideas that had nothing to do with the teachings of Vatican II. One day, a group of us seminarians stumbled upon a Catholic church whose exterior architecture should have warned us about what the inside would look like.

In the stripped-down sanctuary, with white walls and no statues, the altar was not in the center. The altar and the pulpit were equidistant from the center, like two eyes on the front of a person’s face. The altar itself was “unique” because it had the tabernacle built inside it: you had to reach down to take the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle. At the side of the altar burned a red sanctuary lamp. On the other side of the sanctuary was the pulpit. On the front of the pulpit, at the top, was a recessed stand on which rested a copy of the Holy Bible. To the side of the pulpit burned… a red sanctuary lamp.

You might be tempted to ask, “What’s wrong with this picture?” Of course, practically speaking, it would take less time to answer the question, “What’s right with this picture?” But to focus on one problem related to the baptismal role of prophet: the architecture of the sanctuary, in placing the pulpit and altar equidistant from the center, suggests that the pulpit and altar are equal, and so also that the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist are equal, and so also that the Word of God and the Word of God made Flesh are equal in significance.[2] Through authentic Catholic worship, however, we see that the Word of God chooses not only to speak to us, but also to become Flesh for us. In fact, He speaks to us so that we might be ready to receive His Presence in the Eucharist.

But why? Why is the Word of God made Flesh on the altar at Holy Mass? In the words of the Creed, the Word of God becomes Flesh “for us men and for our salvation”. Jesus instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist so that when you, as Jesus’ disciple, share in the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, you will have the strength to offer the sacrifice that God calls you to make every day in your vocation, and in your stewardship through St. Mark’s.

Your time, talent, and treasure are gifts of stewardship only if they are sacrificial gifts, in imitation of Jesus. For example, the time that you—adults and children—give, should not be the surplus time in your schedule, which you give once more important concerns like sports and work are taken care of: instead, the time you give to your parish must be a sacrifice of time, and that means that you give something else up in sacrifice. Likewise, the talent that you—adults and children alike—give, should not be only a giving of your best talents. A sacrifice of talent also involves giving yourself to doing things that you may not seem to be very talented at. Just as we grow interpersonally and psychologically when we “stretch” ourselves, so we also grow spiritually. And of course, the treasure that you—adults, teenagers, and children alike—give to your parish must be a sacrificial gift: this means, as Monsignor McGread always says, that you give from a need inside yourself to give, rather than giving for a need outside yourself in the parish or diocese. Where is the need? The need for giving is inside yourself, not outside.

We are here—each of us—as members of the Body of Christ. Just as any human body has different members with different roles to play, so the Church is the Body of Christ, where each member has a vocation lived out in a unique “corner” of the world. The entire Mystical Body of Christ—throughout history and throughout the world—is nourished by the one Sacrament of the Eucharist. This sacrament is the strength God gives us to imitate the Sacrifice that becomes present at the altar: the Sacrifice that Jesus offered on Mount Calvary as our High Priest, Good Shepherd, and King of Kings.

[1] Let me give an example of Jesus’ actions and an example of His words, both of which point beyond themselves. First: Jesus’ act of raising Lazarus from the dead. Why did Jesus do this? What was His point? Did Jesus descend from Heaven to extend the length of human life on earth? Unfortunately, Lazarus did die a second time, some years after Jesus raised him from the dead. Does Lazarus’ second death, then, invalidate Jesus’ miracle, or show that Jesus isn’t as powerful as He claimed? Or was Jesus’ miracle—the mighty work of raising a man from the dead—a sign that points beyond itself: that points to Jesus’ own Resurrection at the Hand of God the Father?

The other example is found is one of the greatest of Jesus’ sermons, found in the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel account. There, Jesus preaches the discourse on the Bread of Life, claiming that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Many of those who had followed Jesus up to that time were scandalized. In the end, many [of those] disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.

And in response, what did Jesus say to them as they departed? Did Jesus run after them, explaining, “I was only speaking symbolically! I didn’t really mean that you had to eat my Flesh and drink my Blood! Come back!” Jesus let them leave, just as He let Peter and nine other apostles deny Him after His arrest; just as Jesus allowed Judas to kiss His cheek and hand Him over to the guards; just as Jesus allowed the thief hanging on His left mock the Son of God who was dying in order to open the Gates of Heaven for him, for Judas Iscariot, for the nine Apostles who fled, and for you and me.

Jesus let them leave. The disciples who were scandalized by Jesus’ sermon of the Bread of Life could not see where Jesus was leading them. But it’s no wonder that those listening to Jesus did not understand where He was leading them. At the beginning of the Gospel, when Jesus invited Andrew and Peter to leave their father and their nets, saying to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men”, Andrew and Peter did not realize where Jesus was going to lead them. He was going to lead them to Calvary. And after three years of public preaching and miracles, Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist at His Last Supper, in order to give His followers—that is, the Church—the means of fulfilling His command to live a life of self-sacrifice.

[2] Of course, the Word of God and the Word of God made Flesh are equal personally, as both are the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity: the Son of God made man in Jesus Christ.

The 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - 13 NOV 2011

2011-11-12T21:02:00.000-06:00

The Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]

Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31 ─ 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6 ─ Matthew 25:14-15, 19-21

November 13, 2011

“Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities.

Come, share your master’s joy.” [Matthew 25:21]

In the moment after your baptism, the priest anointed your head with Sacred Chrism, saying, “As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of His Body, sharing everlasting life.” Your entire life on this earth—inasmuch as you conform your human will to God’s divine will—is spent carrying out those three roles: the role of priest, the role of prophet, and the role of king (or queen). These three roles help us focus our reflection on the commitment we make to the Stewardship Way of Life each fall.

These three roles are also the “lenses”, if you will, for you to look through as you reflect on the particular vocation that God gave you. If you are a husband and father, or wife and mother, you can consider every responsibility you have in your vocation through those three roles of priest, prophet, and king (or queen). For example: a mother and father sacrifice their time and energy to take a sick child to the doctor’s office, teach their child how to read, and provide shelter and nourishment. These examples mirror the many actions that Jesus carried out during the three years of His public ministry, as a priest, prophet and king.

Last Sunday the homily focused specifically on the third of these roles: the role of king. In Sacred Scripture the role of king is inter-twined with, and often parallels, the role of the shepherd. In the Old Testament, the role of “shepherd /slash/ king” is exemplified by David. In the New Testament, the role of “shepherd /slash/ king” is fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Throughout His earthly life and ministry, Jesus served mankind as the perfect Shepherd/King. For example, when Jesus fed the five thousand with five loaves, He was providing for His flock, like a Good Shepherd. When Jesus expelled demons, or extended His arm to Peter as he sank in the water, He was protecting His flock from evil.

But Jesus’ death on the Cross was the summit of His entire earthly life, and the specific act that opened once again the gates of Heaven, which had been shut by God because of Adam and Eve’s Original Sin. Jesus’ death on the Cross fulfilled His life as the divine Shepherd/King. And vitally important for you and me is the fact that on the previous night, “on the night he was betrayed he himself took bread, and, giving [the Father] thanks, he said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you.”

Jesus established the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on Holy Thursday evening, in order to offer His disciples—through all the centuries to come—the gift of His self-sacrifice on Calvary. When you are at Holy Mass, you are on Mount Calvary, on the day of Good Friday some 2000 years ago, just as surely as His Blessed Mother Mary and the Beloved Disciple, John the Evangelist. But maybe we shouldn’t compare ourselves to two disciples as holy as Mary and John. When we consider our selves, maybe a more apt comparison would be that we are one of the two thieves, hanging to Jesus’ left and right, on crosses of their own making. We are present with Jesus on Calvary, but we still are free to accept or reject what He offers us there, and here.

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Being present at a celebration of Holy Mass is like being present along the Way of the Cross. As the Mass proceeds, we are ascending to the summit of the Mass, just as on Good Friday the crowds—both disciples and accusers—ascended Mount Calvary. And just as there are stations—stopping points—during the Way of the Cross, we can also see stations during the celebration of Holy Mass: three stations, which reflect the priest carrying out the roles of priest, prophet and shepherd in his vocation.

The first station is symbolized by the priest’s chair. After the entrance antiphon and procession, the priest begins speaking to God’s flock, and exercises the role of shepherd. He gathers God’s flock together: first through a ritual of penance. The shepherd says, “Brethren, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.” He’s calling all God’s lost sheep, including himself. He calls God’s lost sheep away from their sins, and into God’s Presence.

Another simple example of the priest shepherding at his chair is found on page 8 in our Missalette. The introductory rites of Holy Mass end with the priest gathering God’s flock to pray together: the priest says simply, “Let us pray.” The shepherd then pauses… not so that the server has time to bring the Missal over, but so that the flock—so that you—have time to recollect your hearts and minds for prayer. At the top of page 8 in our current Missalettes, these prayers are called the “Opening Prayers”. But in the new translation of the Roman Missal, these prayers are called by their traditional name: the “Collect”, which comes from the verb “to collect”. That’s what you will see printed in two weeks on the corresponding page in the new Missalettes: instead of “Opening Prayers”, it will say “Collects”. The Collect “collects” or folds all of our individual intentions and prayers into the prayer that the priest offers to God on behalf of everyone present.

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The second station of Holy Mass is right here: the pulpit. Here at the second station the second baptismal role is carried out: the role of prophet. This role is exercised at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word by laypersons who act as lectors. In our own parish, any Catholic who has received the Sacrament of Confirmation is eligible to serve as lector at Sunday Mass.

Throughout the course of the Liturgy of the Word—the first main part of the Mass—there is an ascent. We climb throughout the Liturgy of the Word. We begin in the Old Testament. For example, our first Scripture reading today is from the Old Testament Book of Proverbs. The next Scripture passage that’s proclaimed is typically one of the Psalms: today, Psalm 128. Then the Church moves to the New Testament. The Scripture passage after the Psalm always comes from one of the writings of the Apostles: today, from St. Paul’s first Letter to the Thessalonians.

But then the summit of the Liturgy of the Word is reached. The final Scripture passage that’s proclaimed is from the most important part of the Bible: the gospel accounts, where Jesus Himself acts and speaks. In the Old Testament, Jesus is foreshadowed. In the writings of the Apostles, Jesus is spoken about. But in the gospel accounts, Jesus Himself acts for us and speaks to us. It’s because Jesus’ presence in this part of the Bible is unique that the proclamation of the Gospel is unique. Actions are carried out here in honor of Jesus’ presence in the Gospel that we don’t observe when any other part of the Bible is proclaimed. For example, we stand to honor Jesus, just as if He were to enter our living room at home. The proclamation of the Gospel is prefaced by a dialogue between the priest and laypeople, and everyone blesses himself over his mind, lips, and heart. And on particularly solemn Sundays and Holy Days, the Gospel may be incensed, servers may bear candles, and the Gospel may be chanted, just as it was at every High Mass celebrated in the years before the Second Vatican Council.

Although the proclamation of the Gospel is the Liturgy of the Word’s summit, it’s not its conclusion. The homily, Profession of Faith, and intercessions conclude the Liturgy of the Word. All three of these flow from the Gospel, each in its own way. Of these three, the homily is where the priest exercises his baptismal role of prophet most specifically.

The homily shows where the Gospel bears directly on the lives of those listening. The homily is also, we might say, the most dangerous part of the Mass for the priest. Everything else the priest says at Holy Mass (except perhaps the announcements) is printed for him directly in the Missal. The Missal tells the priest what to do and say. But the homily opens up possibilities of danger for the priest. Of course, some types of danger are holier than others. Some types of danger arise from stupidity or gracelessness. But other types of danger are inherent in the role of prophet. If you don’t see that, look at the crucifix.

The crucifix, however, isn’t just a Catholic symbol. It’s not just something to wear on a necklace. It’s something to be embraced. Jesus, in every one of His acts of shepherding, is leading you to the top of Mount Calvary. Jesus, in every one of His prophetic words, is telling you to accept Calvary as your destiny, to take up your own cross and follow Him. Because the Word of God, as powerful as it is, is not the goal of Catholic worship or Catholic life. There’s only one thing in this world more powerful than the Word of God, and that’s the Sacrifice of the Word made Flesh.

The 32nd Week [I] - Thursday

2011-11-10T16:43:00.001-06:00

The 32^nd Week in Ordinary Time [I]

Thursday, November 10, 2011

God created man—male and female He created them—in His own divine Image and likeness. The immortal human soul that God creates at the moment of a human being’s conception has three capacities that reveal the Image of God: the human memory, intellect, and will.

The human intellect is an ability that includes what we observe in lower animals, who can reason by putting together the memories of their own experiences, and the world around them at any given moment, as they perceive it. But the human being has a memory and a will that can transcend one’s own experiences. The human person can hold memories of events that happened long before his life. The human person can also, through his intellect, plan far into the future. Dogs don’t take out life insurance policies, or anticipate what might happen to someone half way across the world. Man’s intellect can ponder not only about next year, though. With his intellect man can ponder events that may happen after his death to this world. What lies beyond this earthly life?

The human intellect is not an end in itself. If we treat it as such, human life in this world becomes a torment. Neither is the human intellect meant to be the servant of the human will. The past two hundred years offer up many examples of “evil geniuses” who twisted the human intellect and will to evil ends. The human intellect finds meaning—in this world, and in the possibilities of the next—only is discerning and carrying out the divine Will of God, as Jesus Christ did on Calvary.

The 32nd Week [I] - Wednesday

2011-11-09T08:30:00.000-06:00

The 32^nd Week in Ordinary Time [I]

The Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

History is memory that transcends the individual. Take Johann, for example. As a lower animal, the only memories inside his head are those that he himself has experienced, such as eating his food, or running in the back yard. When he was a puppy, his mother wasn’t able to share with him memories about her grandfather, and how Johann looked just like his great-grandpa! No: the only memories that Johann has are of those individuals, places and things that he has experienced through his own five senses over the last thirteen months.

Human beings, on the other hand, can share memories. You can share in the memory of something that happened thousands of years before you were born. We call those “shared memories” “history”. History transcends the life of a single individual, and allows you to appreciate the lives of others. Dumb animals can only learn through their own successes and failures. Human beings can learn through the successes and failures of others. When it comes to learning about holiness, we are blessed in the Catholic Church to have the “communion of saints”.

Memory is not something that God Himself has. He has no need for memory, because He is all-knowing. God “sees” all at once every event, person and thing in the past, present, and future. So to say that the human memory reflects man’s being created in the Image of God uses a metaphor of the second order, because memory is a substitute for the intellect. Memory is a mirror for the intellect: memory gives us knowledge now of what once was.

As God teaches us, the goal of the human memory is divine Love. Memory serves the intellect, and the intellect serves the will, as the human person chooses through his will to love in a divine manner: that is, be sacrificing his own self. In our ordinary human experience, memories can be a stumbling block to loving. What we term “bad memories” can cause us to hold grudges, instead of loving as God does: without measure. A Christian is growing in wisdom when even “bad memories” are seen as an opportunity to love as Jesus loves man from the Cross.

The 32nd Week [I] - Tuesday

2011-11-08T09:24:00.000-06:00

The 32^nd Week in Ordinary Time [I]

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

The greater part of today’s First Reading from the Book of Wisdom is very familiar to you if you’ve attended many Catholic funerals. The souls of the just are in the hand of God, we so often hear at a Requiem Mass. But the first few phrases of today’s First Reading from the Old Testament Book of Wisdom are not part of that passage for the funeral liturgy.

God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made them. What does this mean? Reflecting on this truth of our Catholic Faith could take all our life (or longer…). What is God’s Image? Our Christian Faith tells us that Jesus Christ is the Image of God the Father, so of course we can look to Jesus this week to answer this question: what does it mean that God created man in His own divine Image?

There are two ways to answer this question. The first is to consider what abilities (or capacities) man has that might reflect God’s Image. The second is to consider what goal these abilities allow man to accomplish or reach. God created man with the abilities of memory, intellect and will. Now, we might say that all animals have these abilities in some measure, but the difference between the lower animals and man is the goal towards which man directs his efforts, the goal that is personified in the Flesh in Jesus Christ: the goal of divine Love.

The 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - 6 NOV 2011

2011-11-06T18:52:00.000-06:00

The Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]

Wisdom 6:12-16 ─ 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 ─ Matthew 25:1-13

November 6, 2011

“Resplendent and unfading is wisdom,

and she is readily perceived by those who love her,

and found by those who seek her.” [Wisdom 6:12]

The past few weeks, as Halloween drew near, I’d been wanting to find a good costume for Johann to wear on his first Halloween here at St. Mark’s. At first, I thought of getting him a really scary costume: I looked, but I couldn’t find any Jawhawk costumes for dogs, so I had to scratch that idea. Then I thought of dressing him up as a saint. After all, what is Halloween, but “All Hallows’ Eve”? Every Catholic family should consider using Halloween to witness to their Faith by having trick-or-treaters dress as saints. But with Johann, I figured that anyone who knew how ornery he is just wouldn’t buy him as a saint… so I scratched that idea, too.

Then I realized that, after all, honesty is the best policy, so why not dress him up in a costume that would honestly reflect his life around the rectory? So I tried to think of a good way to sum this up: what is his life around the rectory like? Well, truth be told, Johann pretty much rules the roost, so I first looked for a rooster costume, but couldn’t find one. I tried to think of another image, and thought that around the rectory, he’s the “big enchilada”: but I couldn’t find an enchilada costume. I thought some more, and realized that around the rectory, he is definitely the “top banana”, and lo and behold! I found a banana costume. So if you’re on Facebook, you can see Johann wearing his Halloween costume.

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Each of us wears, if not different costumes, then different hats in life. At home we bear one set of responsibilities, while at work or school, we carry out another. A conversation that we hold with our mother is going to “sound” different than a conversation with our youngest son: in tone, topic, and vocabulary. Each of us is always the same person, but we speak and act differently, as a particular responsibility or relationship demands.

The same is true in our lives as Christians. We carry out different roles because God calls each of us to accomplish many things for His Kingdom. Sometimes he calls different members to different vocations. For example, he doesn’t ask the average Christian to enclose her life behind the walls of a cloister, to eat a diet without meat, and to sleep on a board on the ground, as the Cloistered Carmelite nuns in northeastern Sedgwick County do. God doesn’t call every Christian to the beautiful sacrament of marriage, and to those whom He does call to marriage, He gives differing blessings in the number of children He calls parents to rear.

But there are some roles—three, in fact—that God calls each and every Christian to carry out for the sake of His Kingdom: priest, prophet, and king. Each Christian will carry out these three roles in somewhat different ways, depending on his or her vocation. But each Christian is asked by God to carry out these three roles. The day of baptism is the beginning. On the day of your baptism, God “commissioned” you, if you will, to carry out these three roles. Let’s zoom in on a particular celebration of Baptism.

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Maybe it’s the fact that everyone is staring at the cute baby who’s just been washed in the baptismal font. Or maybe it’s the fact that the prayers come so thick and fast during a celebration of Baptism. Whatever the case, most people present at a baptism don’t take in all the prayers that the priest offers up to God. One of the most meaningful prayers is the one that immediately follows the actual baptism. The priest takes the most sacred of the church’s three blessed oils—Sacred Chrism—and anoints the crown of the baby’s head with that Chrism. The crown of the head is called the “crown”, of course, because it’s the part of the head that—if you were a king or queen—would be covered with your golden crown.

But in baptism, that’s in fact what you become: a king or queen. Listen to the words of the prayer that immediately follows the actual baptism with water. As the priest then anoints the child’s head with Sacred Chrism, he says to the newly baptized: “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into His holy People. He now anoints you with the Chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of His Body, sharing everlasting life.”

Focus today on the third of these: the role of king (or, if you’re female, the role of queen). The role of king defines your life as a Christian. There is a difficulty in trying to do this, however. In our American culture, the role of king is often looked down on, rather than being the kind of role that we might look up to for role models. American schoolchildren learn in history class about King George III and his tyranny against the colonies. Catholic school children learn about King Henry VIII, who claimed to be the head of the church within his kingdom, and ordered the executions of those who wouldn’t bow to his false claim. The images conjured up by these kings are of crazy, lazy men who sit all day in their castles looking for ways to take what belongs to others.

But if we look a little deeper into history, we can see many examples of saintly kings, whose actions can help us understand our own role as Christians. Men like St. Louis, for whom our Midwestern city is named, served France as King Louis IX. In addition to serving Christ in the people of his own kingdom, St. Louis also served Christ by defending the Holy Land against the onslaught of Muslims. He wasn’t a ruler who sat in a situation room and ordered his pawns forward toward death. He was a king who led his troops into battle, who was armored and saddled up and faced death for the cause he served.

In a phrase, we could say that “facing death” distinguishes a saintly king from a tyrannical king. A tyrannical king will readily allow others to die for him. A saintly king will offer his own life for others, to achieve what is right and just.

But the role of a saintly king can be summed up even more simply, in a single word: “shepherd”. In our culture, we might consider a king and a shepherd to be two very different roles, hardly synonymous at all. But in Sacred Scripture they often parallel each other. After all, when we read through the Old Testament, who appears as the greatest king of Israel? King David. But before he was anointed king, David was a shepherd. He was tending his father’s sheep when he went forth to defend Israel against Goliath. King Saul was reluctant to allow someone as young as David to go up against Goliath, but David replied (speaking of himself in the third person):

“Your servant used to tend his father’s sheep, and whenever a lion or bear came to carry off a sheep from the flock, I would chase after it, attack it, and snatch the prey from its mouth. If it attacked me, I would seize it by the throat, strike it, and kill it. Your servant has killed both a lion and a bear. This uncircumcised Philistine will be as one of them, because he has insulted the armies of the living God.” [I Samuel 17:34-36]

These verses illustrate how the role of “protector” is part of being a shepherd. This, in turn, shows one way that the roles of shepherd and king are so similar. When David marched forth against Goliath to defend Israel, it was as a shepherd. Scripture tells us that with shepherd’s staff in hand, David selected five smooth stones from the wadi and put them in the pocket of his shepherd’s bag. With his sling in hand, he approached the Philistine. [I Samuel 17:40]

There is, of course, another, gentler side to a shepherd than that of the protector. The shepherd also sees to it that the members of his flock are provided nourishment. The role of a king demands this gentler responsibility, also: we can think of saintly kings like Louis IX of France, or Stephen of Hungary, who spent their personal wealth to carry out the corporal works of mercy for the poor and destitute within their kingdoms. The Lord’s Diner in our own diocese is a clear “descendant” of those works of kingly saints.

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All kingship, and all shepherding, flows from God. It’s by the grace of God that kings like St. Louis of France and St. Stephen of Hungary gave their lives for their people. It’s by the grace of God that you who are fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, protect and provide for those entrusted to your care. And it’s by the grace of God that your parish family, and those your parish serves, benefit from your stewardship of time, talent and treasure.

After all, the greatest examples of shepherding and kingly service are found in the works and Word of the Lord Himself. Think of the 23^rd Psalm, where God is described in Verse One as shepherd, and Verse Two as protector:

1 The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. Fresh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose. Near restful waters he leads me, to revive my drooping spirit.

2 He guides me along the right path; he is true to his name. If I should walk in the valley of darkness no evil would I fear. You are there with your crook and your staff; with these you give me comfort.

The Lord God acts as protector and provider throughout our lives, in countless ways. But He does so most powerfully in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. Reflect briefly on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in two different regards: first, the priest at Mass as shepherd and king; and second, the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist as our Shepherd and King.

Similar to what parents do in their homes, the priest is a father who protects and provides for his spiritual children. He does this in many different settings: in the confessional, on one’s deathbed, in the classroom and in private instructions to catechumens and engaged couples. But at Holy Mass he does these two things with a more specific aim. As both protector and provider, the priest at Mass leads his flock to the altar. As a protector, he leads his children away from sin, to approach the altar unburdened. As a provider, he leads his children to the altar so they can be nourished there.

The priest leads his flock throughout the course of the Mass. Most often we hear him leading his flock with two simple words: “Let us….” At Holy Mass, we hear Father say, “Let us call to mind our sins”, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God”, and—most simply of all—“Let us pray.”

These two words—“let” and “us”—reveal important truths about the priest’s service to his flock. The word “Let” reveals an invitation. The priest does not make demands by saying, “Call to mind your sins!” or “Give thanks to the Lord our God!” or “Pray!” The priest doesn’t use imperative language. He uses language of invitation. He says, “Let us pray”, which makes clear that those listening are free not to pray. The flock are free to wander away from the shepherd. Or to paraphrase the old saying, “You can lead a flock to restful waters, but you can’t make them drink.”

Another important truth is heard in the word “us”. Saint Augustine, who served his flock as a bishop in northern Africa 1,500 years ago, explained to his flock, “For you, I am a bishop. With you, I am a Christian.” As a priest at Mass, I often think of this truth when I receive Holy Communion. The priest eats and drinks the Body and Blood of Christ, not only to set an example for his flock, but more deeply out of his own personal need for God’s grace, to be capable of serving as a good steward of his vocation. You hear something similar when you’re sitting in a jet, taxiing on the runway. The flight attendant gives pre-flight instructions, and inevitably explains that if there’s a loss of cabin pressure, masks will fall from above, and—if you have small children—what are you to do? You are to put your own mask on first. Why? Because you’re more important than your child? No. Because if you don’t take care of yourself, you’re not going to be of any use to your child, and you both may suffer.

The Lord Jesus, on the other hand, is our Shepherd and King in an infinitely more powerful way than the priest at Holy Mass. The priest who leads us at Mass is leading us to the altar of Jesus Christ. The physical altar in the church’s sanctuary represents the Cross on Calvary. On the Altar of the Cross, Jesus offered His own self in sacrifice for His flock: that is, for His Bride, the Church. On the altar in the sanctuary, Jesus’ self-sacrifice is truly made present through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And that’s where the priest is leading us during the Mass: away from sin, towards the sacrifice that takes place at the altar.

Jesus offered His entire self to us on the Cross: His Body and Blood, soul and divinity. We are led to the altar during Mass, to be nourished by Jesus’ entire self. We are nourished by Jesus’ entire self when we offer Jesus our entire self. If we hold something back from God—if we say that God can have part of my life, or some of my wants and needs, but not my life in all its smalless—then the sacrifice of Jesus won’t be able fully to dwell in us. It would be like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. For Jesus’s life to change your life as He wants, what you bring to the altar has to be as complete a gift as what Jesus offers you from the altar. Only with a complete exchange of selves will you have the strength to be a faithful steward during the week, in all the sacrifices—large and small—that God asks you to make for others.

The 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time - 30 OCT 2011

2011-10-29T15:35:00.002-05:00

The Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]

Malachi 1:14b-2:2b, 8-10 ─ 1 Thessalonians 2:7b-9, 13 ─ Matthew 23:1-12

October 30, 2011

“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;

but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” [Matthew 23:12]

Scanning the parish surveys that have been filled out this month, there are a lot of common threads among the comments that people have made. Many are about the celebration of Holy Mass, which is encouraging, because it reflects that the people of our parish know and believe that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the center of our lives as Catholics. Fortunately, most of these comments are positive. That reflects an engagement with what is best about the Mass, a “best” that at its heart is divine, and can never be diminished by the foibles or mistakes of priests or laypersons who participate in the Mass.

It’s common in sacristies, where priests prepare for Holy Mass, to see a sign directed to the priest, which challenges him with these words: “Say this Mass as if it were your First Mass, as if it were your last Mass, as if it were your only Mass.” That simple saying points to how precious the Mass is. Across the many decades that a priest lives as a priest, he’s likely to celebrate Mass in many different settings. Let me contrast two of the Masses that I’ve celebrated over the 16+ years that I’ve been a priest. One, I celebrated on January 14^th in the year 2000. The other, I can’t tell you the date of; I can’t tell you even the year of it, but let’s say it was celebrated in the winter of 2005.

The first Mass was celebrated in the Vatican, early in the morning of that January of the Great Jubilee year 2000. Through an improbable set of circumstances, I was invited to concelebrate Mass with Pope John Paul II in the Pope’s private chapel, a space which holds only about thirty people. Although this Mass was celebrated in a small, simple chapel (in many ways just the opposite of St. Peter’s Basilica in all its grandeur), the Mass was more meaningful because of its simplicity. After all, if the same Mass had been celebrated in St. Peter’s, I probably would have been seated a hundred feet away from the Pope, who would likely have been seated up on the high altar above the rest of us. But in this tiny chapel, he was seated only about ten feet away during the Liturgy of the Word, and about fifteen feet away as he stood at the altar during the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

The other Mass took place at St. Joseph’s Church in Conway Springs, where I served as pastor for six years. As I said, I don’t recall the date, or even the year. But I know it was winter, because the whole town was covered in a blanket of snow several feet deep. Because of the weather, the power had been out during the night, and still was out at the time of Mass. So as you can imagine, the church was dark, and very cold. Because the snow was still falling, the streets hadn’t been plowed yet, and not many people were stirring: even most companies and businesses in Wichita had cancelled work shifts. I could barely get the doors to the church open because of the snowfall, and when it was time for Mass to begin, no one else was in the dark church.

As Mass began, I could barely read by the light of the candles on the altar. However, I didn’t feel any pressure to speak as quickly as I normally would, since no one else was present… until, that is, the time of the Consecration. Since I was focused on the prayers of Consecration, and since it was dark, I couldn’t tell who had entered the church. After Mass, however, I spoke to the woman who had braved the weather to participate in that simple offering of Holy Mass. She said, “I was surprised that Mass was going on when I got here. I thought you would cancel the Mass.”

With this, we began an interesting conversation. I explained that a scheduled Mass is never cancelled unless a priest is physically unable to be there. She asked why a priest would celebrate Mass without anyone else present. In response, I used the analogy of a play by way of contrast. While a theatre manager might cancel the performance of a play if no one bought a ticket, the celebration of the Mass isn’t directed primarily towards the lay people present, either for their entertainment or even for their edification. It’s directed primarily to God, and the priest who has scheduled a Mass has agreed to offer the Mass to God for a specific intention, on a specific day and time.

In the decades since Vatican II, this teaching of the Church has often been lost in the shuffle: the celebration of Holy Mass is directed primarily towards the worship of God, not towards the people. Confusion about this point is the reason that so many say that “Mass is boring”: because they’re not “getting” what they’re wanting. Instead, the Church needs to do a better job instructing all the faithful, no matter their age, that for the laypeople who come to Holy Mass, the celebration of Mass is directed primarily towards giving, not getting. The celebration of Mass is directed primarily towards God, not towards us. The celebration of Mass is to begin with us, not end with us. The celebration of Mass begins with what we come to Mass to give to God.

One of the flash-points in the Church since the Second Vatican Council concerns the placement of the altar, and consequently the stance of the priest during the Consecration. You can immediately tell a person’s thinking about the nature of the Mass if they have an answer when you ask them to describe the stance of the priest during the Consecration before Vatican II. Of course, many Catholics today have never been to a Mass as it was celebrated before Vatican II. Even as old as I am, I wasn’t born until after the Second Vatican Council ended! But even younger Catholics may have heard or read about what the Mass—in its pre-Vatican II form—was like.

So if you ask someone to describe the stance of the priest during the Consecration as the Mass was celebrated before Vatican II, you’re likely to get one of two answers. The first is that some people will say that the priest stood… “with his back to the people”. This may be meant as an objective statement, and of course physically it’s a true statement. But the phrase inevitably carries a negative connotation, as if the priest doesn’t care about the lay persons who are behind him in the pews. Of course, according to this same line of thinking, the people who are sitting right now in the back pew of church really ought to be offended! Just think: all the rest of you in church have your backs to those poor people sitting in the back pew!

Beyond this facetiousness, we understand that the people in the first twenty pews are no more standing (or sitting) with their backs to the people in the last pew than the priest is at the altar. Rather, all the people in church—priest and laypeople—are facing in the same direction. They are united in directing their bodies to God, and this symbolizes that all are united in directing the same action to God: the action of giving. This is why the second response that you may receive, as some describe the priest at the Consecration in the older form of the Mass, is that the priest is standing “facing the same direction as the people”. His stance shows physically that he is leading the people in prayer, not speaking to them.

By contrast, in the modern celebration of Mass, when at the Consecration the priest is facing the lay people, it’s much easier for those in the pews (especially if they’re not well catechized) to get the impression that they’re passive spectators, instead of active participants. Likewise, it’s much easier for the priest (especially if he had poor formation at the seminary) to lapse into the role of “performer”, more concerned that the people hear him (by the quality of his voice) than he is concerned that God hear him (by the quality of his heart and soul).

When the priest encourages, and those in the pews believe, that the role of laypersons at Mass is to be passive spectators, they’re not only at risk of finding Mass “boring”. Something far worse is at risk. They’re at risk of not giving what they’re there to give. And no, I’m not talking about the collection plate. That’s secondary, although it flows from the primary gift we are called to give at Mass. The primary act of giving at Mass is the giving of one’s own self.

At this point, let me back up and explain something about the Sacrament of Baptism, in order to get a running start at reflecting on the giving of self. During November, we’ll be reflecting on the stewardship of our selves, and how this gift of stewardship is rooted in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. But all this begins on the day of our baptism. When a person is baptized, he or she becomes a member of the Mystical Body of Christ (that is, the Church). When you were baptized, your entire life—past, present, and future—was transformed. Your entire life was changed into Christ’s life, and the three roles (or three “jobs”, if you prefer) that are His, became yours. Those three “jobs”—those three “roles”—are the roles of priest, prophet, and shepherd.

In every celebration of Holy Mass, no matter how simple or grand, no matter who may or may not be present with us, we are taking part in the greatest of the seven Sacraments. At Holy Mass we learn how, and are strengthened, to give our selves to those in our imperfect, daily lives. We gives our selves through these three roles of priest, prophet and shepherd, as Jesus lived and fulfilled all of them perfectly on the Cross.

The 30th Week [I] - Friday

2011-10-28T10:26:00.005-05:00

The 30^th Week in Ordinary Time [I]

Friday, October 28, 2011

In the secular culture that surrounds us, when we hear mention of “the human spirit,” something very generic is being described, whether it’s the drive for success, or determination, or the ability to “think outside the box”. When the Church talks about human nature, and describes the different dimensions of man as “body”, “mind”, “soul” and “spirit”, the spirit in human nature is undoubtedly the highest part of his nature. This human “spirit” is that part of the soul through which man can touch the essence of God’s divine nature. The human spirit is that part of the soul where grace dwells.

This isn’t to say that a human person does not experience the divine through the human body. This isn’t to say that a human person cannot follow the reasoning of his mind towards the divine. But it is in the spirit of human nature that the divine and human meet. It is in the spirit that the lower parts of the human person can participate in any way in the divine.

When the Church teaches about the highest form of prayer—namely, contemplation—this is a form of prayer that “takes place” (so to speak) in the human spirit. In this form of prayer, there is no self-mortification properly speaking that takes place. But there is a great deal of sacrifice of self involved. First, one must sacrifice one’s own active forms of prayer (vocal prayer and meditation). The two greatest teachers of the Church on prayer—St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila—are very clear in directing souls who have advanced in prayer to give themselves to time in prayer in which active prayer is sacrificed, so that one can receive from the Lord all the graces He wishes to give in contemplation.[1]

But even within advanced prayer, there are sacrifices that must be made. To mention only one: in the stage of growth that St. John of the Cross calls “the night of the spirit”, God removes the particular graces that He had given at earlier stages of prayer. The person praying experiences this as a darkness, and may wrongly believe that something is wrong (either with himself, or God). But God in this “night of the spirit” is weaning “the human spirit” of the habit of praying for the sake of what one “gets” from it. God is helping the human person to grow in the virtue of faith, so that one prays, and loves, for God and Him alone. ¤

[1] That doesn’t mean that a Christian at this stage would never return to vocal prayer and meditation, but that additional time must be cultivated in one’s prayer for the growth of contemplation.

The 30th Week [I] - Thursday

2011-10-27T10:17:00.004-05:00

The 30^th Week in Ordinary Time [I]

Thursday, October 27, 2011

The human person is the most complex of all creatures. Mind you, that’s not necessarily a compliment to man. God in His divine nature is perfectly simple. When we say that mankind is the most complex, we’re saying that man has more “parts”, so to speak, or more “sides” or “dimensions” to his nature that any other creature, including angels. For example, man has a body, which angels do not have. Man also has a free intellect and a free will, unlike dumb animals, whose thinking and choosing are ruled by instinct.

Sometimes we say that man is made up of body, mind and spirit. Then, at times, we’ll hear a distinction between “soul” and “spirit”. What’s the difference between these two? Put simply, the soul includes the baser part of human nature by which we do everything we do as humans: the facts that we can move, breathe, and exercise the five human senses depends on the human soul. While many good people profess not to understand this, the fact remains that all dumb animals also have souls, by means of which they move and breathe and do all that they do. However, the difference between the human soul and the soul of a dumb animal is that a human being has an immortal soul, which will continue to exist after death (sorry, but not only do All Dogs NOT Go to Heaven, but in fact NO dogs go to Heaven…).

A Christian, then, must mortify both soul and spirit. In Catholic Tradition when we speak of the human soul, a large part of the discussion concerns what are called the “passions”. This word does not refer to one’s “deepest desires”, but to very primal experiences such as anger or fear. They involve emotions, but are more than emotions.

Reflect for a moment on the passion of anger, as an example of self-mortification of the soul. It’s common for a Catholic to confess “anger” during a sacramental confession, even without reflecting on what they’re confessing. Are they confessing the mere fact of getting angry? Is merely becoming angry a sin? Obviously it’s not, or Jesus would have sinned when He cleansed the Temple. Anything that we confess as a sin of anger must be a deliberately willed choice. And this shows us where self-mortification is needed.

Anger as an emotion comes from God, who created it as part of our human nature, which is good in its entirety. It is, if you will, a “tool” of our human nature to help us in certain circumstances to accomplish something that is necessary but difficult. But like any part of our human nature, it can be twisted to serve bad ends. When we recognize that our human anger is leading us to sin, we have the choice to mortify our anger. For example, if our anger is directed toward a family member, we can choose to love that person through thoughts or acts of charity, choosing to see that person as God does: as His child, who—like us—sins and is in need of mercy and love.

The 30th Week [I] - Wednesday

2011-10-26T09:20:00.002-05:00

The 30^th Week in Ordinary Time [I]

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Christian self-mortification cannot only be mortification of the body, or it will not reach the root of sin, and so will not lead a sinner into Jesus Christ. Unlike those who simplistically blame the human body as the root of sin, the saints of the Church point to the mind as a starting point of human sin. The mind is the origin for the ideas that the human will either does or does not choose to act upon. It’s only in the will acting that the body may be an instrument (not the source) of an evil action.

How, then, should one practice self-mortification of the human mind? The answer to this question depends on what the particular individual tends to give his or her mind over to. Any of the vices can become a focus for the human mind: for example, one can generate thoughts of jealousy, greed, lust or sloth. Or, a particular person can serve as a focus for evil thoughts: if one person intensely dislikes another, it hardly matters which vice is exercised, as long as one can have bad thoughts about the person. In this vein, it’s important to point out that sometimes one’s own self becomes the focus of thoughts that act against Christian virtue.

In all of these cases, self-mortification calls for moving these thoughts out of the mind. This is often harder than it sounds, because so much of human thought—perhaps far more than we realize—is habitual. One alternative to feasting on the thoughts that are bound up with vice is to empty one’s mind completely. Often, though, this is difficult. More fruitful is first to remove from one’s life any source of the thoughts bound up with vice (that is, near occasions of sin), and second to mortify the thoughts bound up with vice by engaging the mind with virtuous thoughts.

In engaging the mind with virtuous thoughts, the Church offers her holy Scriptures first of all. The practices of praying the Liturgy of the Hours (which is made up almost entirely of Scripture) and Lectio Divina (the “sacred reading” of Scripture) are the greatest gifts of the Church in this regard.

The 30th Week [I] - Tuesday

2011-10-25T09:35:00.000-05:00

The 30^th Week in Ordinary Time [I]

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Self-mortification demands the mortification of the entire self. In secular media, especially those with an ax to grind against the Church, you will see the practice of self-mortification grotesquely caricatured: a movie will show a monk beating himself with a whip as he cries out what a bad person he is. By contrast, the Christian practice of self-mortification is an offering of one’s entire self to Jesus Christ through mortification.

But what is the human self? Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition clearly teach that the human self is mind, body and spirit (sometimes the last of these is further divided into “soul” and “spirit”). But as you look at these different dimensions of the human self, the body is usually considered first. It’s thought of first not only because of inaccurate caricatures, but also because of how we are first taught about the practice. Reflect on children’s sacrifices during Lent: many will give up soda pop or candy, which (at least for those forty days) is a form of bodily self-mortification.

Difficulties with bodily self-mortification generally arise for two reasons. The first occurs when the body is seen as bad instead of good. The body, in fact, was created by God and given to us as a gift. It’s because our human nature is fallen that the body is used by the will for bad actions, and so for this reason a Christian must mortify the body in order to bring it into accord with God’s Will.

The second difficulty arises when we forget that self-mortification is a means to a greater end. Whenever we fast, or kneel in prayer for an extended period of time, or endure uncomfortable surroundings or weather, we ought to do it for God alone: to dispose our selves to be more authentically His disciples, and instruments of His peace.

The 30th Week [I] - Monday

2011-10-24T16:27:00.003-05:00

The 30^th Week in Ordinary Time [I]

Monday, October 24, 2011

“…if by the spirit / you put to death /

the deeds of the body / you will live.” [Romans 8:13]

Yesterday began the 30^th Week in Ordinary Time. In these last weeks of the Church year, our Scripture readings at Holy Mass turn to the Last Things. This is especially true of the Scriptures at Sunday Mass, but is also true of weekday Mass.

The Last Things are not heard of much in the secular culture that surrounds us. Unfortunately, they’re often not heard of in many corners of the Church, either, even in these latter days of the Church year. But our First Reading at weekday Mass this week comes from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and helps us to see Jesus Christ through the Last Things.

The Last Things, of course, are Heaven and hell, death and judgment. It would seem, considering a logical order, that death is the first of these four. Death, after all, is the occasion for the first form of judgment: the particular judgment which in turn leads a soul to hell or—through Purgatory, usually—to Heaven.

Yet the death that ends a human life on earth is foreshadowed in many ways throughout that life. Each and every sin, for example, is a death in the spiritual life of the soul. Mortal sin destroys grace completely. But sin often brings about death in other forms, also: it can destroy relationships, careers, or reputations.

But in today’s First Reading, St. Paul writes of death in another form: “…if by the spirit / you put to death / the deeds of the body / you will live.” The distinguishing trait of this form of death is that it’s under human control. By contrast, we cannot ultimately avoid or control the death that ends our life on earth. But this form of death that St. Paul speaks of, we can control, and we avoid it at our own risk.

Most often in the Catholic spiritual tradition, this form of death is called “self-mortification”. The word “mortification” comes from the Latin word for death (mors, mortis), which is where in English we get words such as “mortify”, “mortician”, and (most obviously) “mortal”. Self-mortification is what St. Paul is speaking about when he explains that “…if by the spirit / you put to death / the deeds of the body / you will live.” This week at weekday Mass St. Paul will help us reflect on the spiritual importance of self-mortification.

The 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 23 OCT 2011

2011-10-22T17:12:00.004-05:00

The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]

Exodus 22:20-26 ─ 1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10 ─ Matthew 22:34-40

October 23, 2011

“The whole law and the prophets depend on

these two commandments.” [Matthew 22:40]

This past week, Bishop Jackels gathered the priests of our diocese at the Spiritual Life Center for our annual Clergy Conference. As I drove to the Spiritual Life Center Monday morning, I passed a church on East 45^th Street with one of those signs used both to advertise events, and to offer brief, humorous slogans for the reflection of passers-by. Monday morning the sign offered this thought: “‘Stop, drop and roll’ doesn’t work in Hell.”

But fortunately here on earth, we can each day stop in the midst of our busy-ness, drop our illusions of knowing better than God, and roll over (that is to say, ‘convert’) our expectations to those of the Gospel. (Humor can evoke the best in us, and help us see insights that we might otherwise overlook.)

+ + +

Today’s brief Gospel passage, by virtue of its brevity, focuses our mind. Jesus wants you, as you strive every day to follow Him, to bring focus to your daily life through these two commands. If someone on Monday morning—at work, at school, at the grocery store—asks you what Sunday’s Gospel and homily were about, all you have to remember are Jesus’ two commands: love your God, and love your neighbor.

Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Where I work, we don’t talk much about religion”, or “Where I go to school, no one asks me about religion”, or “When I go to the grocery store, I don’t hear anyone talking about religion.” But maybe you are the one at work who will start to talk about the Gospel. Maybe you are the one at school to ask others about the Gospel. Maybe you are the one that others will hear speaking Jesus’ Name in public. If there are people around you at work, at school, or in the public marketplace who don’t even go to church, how are they ever going to hear about the Gospel? Where would they hear it? You yourself can be the instrument that God uses to reach them. There’s no question that God wants to reach others. The question is whether you will allow God to use your life to bring Jesus into the lives of others.

+ + +

The scholar of the law in today’s Gospel passage tests Jesus. This scholar, the evangelist tells us, was a stooge of the Pharisees: one of them, but chosen by them to test Jesus in order to flunk Him. “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” We all know from catechism classes that God gave Moses ten commandments. But in the centuries after Moses, Israel became dissatisfied with just these ten. Like children who argue against their parents, the people of Israel nit-picked the Ten Commandments, in order to justify themselves and their actions. So the leaders of Israel added smaller and more particular commandments, to prop up the Ten. By the time of Jesus, the common teaching of the Law of Israel involved 613 commandments (in Hebrew, Mitzvot). Listen to how these commandments mushroomed:

From those among the Ten Commandments that deal with “loving our neighbor”, the Jewish scholars of the law produced 14 commandments about business practices, 19 about employees, servants and slaves, 36 about courts and judicial procedure, eleven about property rights, seven about criminal law, and 24 about punishment and restitution! And that doesn’t exhaust the commands to “love our neighbor”! When you turn to “loving God”, the lists of commandments are even longer, including 33 about the Temple and sacred objects, 46 about idolatry, and 102 about sacrifices and offerings!

With 613 commandments, it was easy for the average Jew to lose focus. Jesus wanted to bring focus back to God’s People, just as He wants for you and your family today. He wants to bring focus to the rhythm of your daily life, as it unfolds week after week. This focus will strengthen your life, in proportion to the time you give to Jesus’ answer: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.”

But it’s interesting what happens next. The scholar of the law didn’t ask Jesus which commandment in the law is the second-greatest. Jesus tells Him anyway. Maybe you know people who answer your questions like this: you ask them one question, but their answer is the answer to a different question. God is like this in our prayer, at times: God always answers our prayers, but He doesn’t always answer in the way we hope. Sometimes His answer doesn’t seem to correspond at all to what we were talking to Him about. However, when God changes the subject of our conversation with Him, maybe it’s better to turn the conversation over to Him, and spend more of our time in prayer listening….

In today’s Gospel passage, when Jesus gives the answer to a question that the scholar didn’t ask, He makes clear that the second-greatest commandment is very important. Reflect for a moment on the Ten Commandments: out of the ten, the first three are about “loving your God”, and the latter seven are about “loving your neighbor”. Why are there more than twice as many commands about “loving your neighbor” than there are about “loving your God”? It’s not because loving your neighbor is twice as important as loving your God. More likely, it because loving your neighbor is twice as difficult as loving your God. The English writer, G. K. Chesterton, once observed that “The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people!”[1]

Why is Chesterton right? Why, so often, are our neighbors also our enemies? In this second-greatest commandment, when Jesus commands you to love your neighbor as yourself, He’s not using the word “neighbor” as we might be tempted to do. We, in our fallen human nature, want to shrink the meaning of “neighbor” to as few people as possible. That’s why Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan, so that His followers would see every human being as their neighbor.

So then, the second-greatest command is to love every human being as yourself. That’s very daunting. That’s impossible to carry out without divine grace. Vices in our fallen human nature make this command very hard to carry out. Let me illustrate with an example from my own childhood. But maybe this scene will resonate with experiences in your own family’s life. It’s the late 1970s, and our family is driving west on I-70 in our Ford Pinto. We’re heading for our family vacation, which our parents are going to sorely need after ten hours in a station-wagon with four children.

Anyhow, our family is headed west. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass are playing over the 8-track player. But in the backseat, one of the children is tormenting another. Somewhere near Salina, a warning had been issued from the front passenger seat. Somewhere about Russell, an invisible line was drawn on the back seat, and one child threatened the other, “You’d better not cross this line!” Unfortunately, fallen human nature is fallen human nature. A parent’s command is like the Ten Commandments, and a sibling’s pronouncement is like the 613 commands of the Jewish scholars. Neither is going to change fallen human nature, even though they are both needed.

You might be wondering what happened next in that Ford Pinto. Well, between Russell and Hays, the letter of the law—both the mother’s, and the sibling’s—was followed perfectly. That line was not crossed. But that doesn’t mean that the spirit of the law was followed. The sibling who had been warned, with the smallest finger—the pinky—drew a line perfectly parallel to the invisible line. Up and down, down and up, the line was drawn, over and over, and each time the line was just a little bit closer to the invisible line. And then back and forth, towards the line, but always stopping short, so as not to cross the line. Back and forth, up and down, down and up, back and forth, all the way from Russell to Hays, but never breaking the letter of the law.

Lest you think all this was un-observed from the front passenger seat, I must inform you that mothers have eyes in the back of their heads. They see all. Our Mother knew exactly what was going on, and somewhere near Victoria, as she saw the twin spires of the Cathedral of the Plains, she let out a long sigh, and you could just barely hear her whisper to herself, “I knew I should have entered the convent.”

This is how fallen human nature operates! Two siblings seated next to each other for ten hours shows us perfectly what fallen human nature looks like. The more laws are multiplied, the more ways that a fallen human being will find to break the spirit of the law. And the more that the spirit of the law is broken, the more that laws get multiplied. The only way out of this vicious cycle is to notice Jesus’ answer to the scholar, and to practice what He preaches.

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. To love, is to follow the Spirit of the law. To love is to fulfill the letter of the law, instead of circumventing its intent. To love, is even to go beyond the law, because the law is only a guide pointing in the direction that love will take us: the law isn’t meant to tell us where to stop.

No matter what vocation God calls you to live, Christian love must be its heart. In your life this week, look for someone whom you may be tempted to imagine is beyond the pale of God’s love, or at least beyond your own love, and love that person anyway, by means of a prayer, an anonymous good deed, or a kind word (or all three).

Christian love impels us to imitate Christ by loving our God and our neighbor. The Eucharist gives us the strength and hope to do so.

[1] G K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News (July 16, 1910), “The Man Next Door”.