Homily – Feast of All Saints (2009): Who Wants to Be a Saint?

Gospel reading Audio is here.  Gospel Text is here. 

Homily audio is here.

Who Wants To Be A Saint?

Have you ever thought about what it takes to be a saint?  We have feast days of saints all the time; our churches are named after them most of the time.  If our children are baptized or confirmed, we probably had to pick out the name of a saint for our child, or help them pick one.  There are even cities named after saints: St. Louis; St. Petersburg; St. Paul; San Francisco.  Saints are all around us.

But how often do we think about what it takes to be one?  The Feast of All Saints, which we celebrate today, was originally established in the fourth century to commemorate the martyrs of the early Church, those who were too many to name, or even remember individually.  Later, it was amended to include all the saints who’d died in Christ, all those who, by popular opinion had led a life of sanctity.  Today, the Church has extensive rules and processes for canonizing, or officially recognizing, a saint. But the Feast of All Saints recognizes everyone in heaven, saints named and unnamed, and celebrates their lives.

But what does it take, really, to be a saint?  And what does it matter to us? 

Today’s readings tell us a lot about who the saints are, and how they get to that status.  In the first reading, from the book of Revelation, John recounts a vision of heaven, in which he saw “of a great multitude, which no one could count” standing before the throne of God.  These people, dressed in white robes, were “the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.” These are people who have overcome sin in their lives through the saving power of Jesus’ blood.

Jesus Himself tells us about those who will be with God, in the Beatitudes. These eight categories of those who will be “bless-ed” tell us a lot about how we ought to live our lives; striving to do these eight things outlined by Jesus will make getting into heaven pretty simple!  If we can be humble of heart; submissive to God; mournful over the power of evil in the world; eager to grow in holiness; merciful toward the less fortunate; focused on seeing God’s glory; willing to make peace; and willing to suffer for the sake of God’s kingdom, we will be together with God in His kingdom!

But all of that “Church-speak” doesn’t really tell us anything about how we’re supposed to live, does it?  The Beatitudes don’t directly address the things that are problems for us…do they? 

Maybe they do.  Look for a moment.  If we are “poor of heart”, then money and things aren’t our first priority: God is.  If we have a sense of the greatness of God, then we will also understand why we need to submit ourselves to His will.  If the evil we see in the world makes us sad, and if we act to oppose that evil, then we’ll act to lessen its effects on people.  If seeking God is the first priority of our lives, then everything we do, every decision we make, will move us closer to Him.  And if we work to establish peace among men, and if we accept that people are going to beat us up for it, then we will establish the kingdom of heaven where we are.

It’s really pretty simple.  Jesus gives us the formula for achieving sainthood right here in this Gospel text!  And when we examine the lives of the saints, we see examples of all of these traits that we can follow.  The very reason we keep track of all of this is so that we will understand how to live holy lives! 

But if it were that simple, sin would already be defeated, right?  If it were just a matter of following eight simple rules, no one would ever have to worry about becoming a saint, would they?  Everyone would be a saint! 

Reality, though, is that we are constantly pulled in the opposite direction: much in our world is simply not of God, and is designed to pull us away from Him.  But, fortunately for us, God gave us tools to use to help us on our way.  First, he gave us the sacraments, those outwards signs instituted by Christ to give grace.  They are the most important weapon we have in fighting for sainthood.

More importantly, though, God gave us each other.  We all have a role to play in each others’ journey to heaven!  Look around you.  Husbands and wives, your first priority is to help your spouse get to heaven!  That’s your job!  Parents, as I have told so many of you at baptisms, your job is to keep little Johnny or Jane…out of Hell!  Those of you with brothers or sisters, it’s your responsibility to model what it means to be a Christian, to be a saint, for your siblings.

 Every one of us in the Body of Christ has a job to do: to help all the other members of that body get to heaven!  And if we’re all doing our job, then all of us will join the saints!   

What does it take to be a saint?  The Church has a lengthy process for “making saints”; it can take decades sometimes for the Church to officially recognize a saint.

But brothers and sisters, we all have the job, as Christians, of striving to become saints.  Sainthood isn’t easy; the lives of the saints are full of sacrifice.  But that sacrifice has a goal:  To be with God in heaven.

We’re not alone on that journey.  Everyone here around us should be helping us toward that goal.  And God wants us all to be with Him in Heaven.  

Think about it:  who’s helping you to become a saint?  Who are you helping?  What’s holding you back from becoming a saint?  And who might you be holding back?

Eucharistic Adoration at St. Ann (Reprise)

back in the summer of 2008, I posted this challenge to the parish.  I was serious then, and I am still serious. I’ve had one mother of ten take me  up on my challenge; I told her that I could only count her older at-home kids, since the younger 5 are all under the age of 9, and had to go where she goes…

Eucharistic Adoration is the single best gift that any of us can give to God and to the parish.  Spending time before the Blessed sacrament, especially in prayer for the parish, will bear more fruit than any other thing we can do.

So…go back and read my post.  the challenge was this:  I will spend an hour in Adoration for every three people who commit to an hour during the week.  I’ll pray for those folks, and I will pray for our parish an d our city.  And I will spend as much time as it takes to answer this commitment I am making.

So…how would you like to make me stay up at the church?  All it takes is showing up! Adoration hours are from noon to 10:30 pm every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, except for national holidays.  The Chaplet of Divine Mercy is prayed at noon, 3:00 pm and 6:00 pm each day; Evening Prayer is celebrated at 5:30 pm, and Night Prayer is celebrated before Reposition at 10:00 pm.

So…who’s showing up?

Homily for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time – “One Flesh”

Audio for this week’s Gospel is here.

Audio for the Homily is here.

Comments appreciated.

 Back when I was engaged, I am sure that I heard the words in today’s Gospel.  I am equally sure that I wasn’t listening at all.  After all, what 23 year-old is focused on the Bible and its implications on his life?  I was much more concerned about my job in the Army, my next duty station, and whether Ann Marie would still want me when I got back from overseas than I was about discerning the meaning of a passage of Scripture (I don’t think I even owned a Bible back then…). 

I was a product of our culture, a culture which looks at marriage as a convenient contract between two people, and which looks at children as a matter of convenience and “choice”.  So in looking at marriage, our culture didn’t prepare me to think about “higher things”; everything that Jesus referred to in the Gospel today went right over my head.

But have you ever thought about what it means to be “one flesh” as Jesus declared in today’s Gospel?  The implications of that declaration are huge.  And they mean something, not only to couples who will marry, but to the whole Church.

In the Old Testament reading, God creates woman to “complete” the man Adam.  Something was missing in Creation after everything else was made.  What was it that was missing?  A suitable partner for the man!  According to the story, the man Adam had dogs, and cats, and cattle, lions and tigers and bears to hang out with; none of them was a suitable partner for the man.  So God took something out of Adam, and from that created the first woman, Eve. So Eve contains what was now missing from Adam, and she completes him, makes him whole.

A lot of time passed from the creation of man until the Pharisees were hassling Jesus; and so had a lot of sin in the world.  The Pharisees try to trap Jesus with a question about divorce, which was a legitimate practice under the Law.  They wanted to put Jesus in the position of contradicting The Law, so that they could then punish Him.  And Jesus put it right back in their faces:  “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.”  And then, Jesus pointed to the creation story:  God created male and female to become one flesh.

It’s interesting to see how these teachings play out in our modern world.  One flesh.  Jesus says we’re to join with our spouses and become one flesh.  And that teaching is supposed to drive our conduct in and outside of marriage.

For example:  This teaching tells us that our sexuality should be reserved for marriage, when we become one with our spouse.  And it tells us that we should not contracept, because all forms of artificial contraception interrupt the union of spouses, and keep them from becoming one flesh.

It tells us that our marriages are intended to be permanent.  Not perfect, just permanent.  And it tells us, as we read further in the Gospel today, that the products of our marriages, our children, are special in the eyes of God, and that we should not only care for them, but strive to make them holy.

And Jesus teaches us all of this even in the midst of a culture that sells us the exact opposite message.  Jesus teaches us that the perfect unity of marriage is a gift from God, a gift that that our First Parents compromised in The Fall, but that we are now able to reclaim through grace.  And He encourages us to strive to achieve that grace!

But…what if we’re already divorced?  What if we’re contracepting?  What if we’re… sterilized?  What if we’ve already tried marriage and it just didn’t work out for us?

Brothers and sisters, all of these are realities in our lives.  If we aren’t personally in those situations, we know lots of dear friends who are.  And I wouldn’t stand here and tell you “Too bad…there’s no hope for those folks”… because that would not be true!

Jesus, and his Church, both call us to a high standard.  Our marriages, and our children, deserve our best effort to try to achieve that standard.  But when something goes wrong, when our best efforts fall short of the goal, we still have God’s mercy to fall back on.  Divorced?  That doesn’t kick you out of the Church!  Go talk to our priests.  They will help you understand your situation, even if it’s been years!  Contracepting?  Come talk to any of us; let us help you understand what the Church teaches, and how beautiful it is.  And consider trusting that God created you correctly, and fertile.  Sterilized?  Again, our priests can help you, first to understand why that wasn’t the best decision, and then to understand how to move beyond it.  No one will judge you.  All of us just want to help!

At the end of the day, God gave us the gift of marriage to let us help each other to get to heaven.  And He gave us the gift of children to let us be co-creators with Him in building His kingdom!  

“One flesh”.  God calls us to be one flesh.  And all that went right over our heads when my wife and I married.  And I don’t think our experience was unusual!

But in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples, and the Pharisees, what God has called us to.  Marriage is no small thing; it’s not just a contract between two people to hang out together.  Marriage is the sacrament which creates ONE out of TWO.  Marriage joins together a man and a woman just as Christ is joined to His Church.  And marriage is important enough that we ought to do everything we can to strengthen it against the assaults of this world.

So much in the world works against marriage.  We have to take hold of all that God provides us to help us on our journeys together.  If you’re married, ask yourself:

“What have I done to become more united to my spouse today?”

If you’re not married, the question is: “What am I doing to become more united to Christ, and to His bride, the Church, until I marry, if that’s God’s will?”

Strong marriages, and strong families, are what build up the Church.  And God’s grace is the glue that binds those strong families.  Ask for His help.  And see what happens!

Homily – 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Food for the Journey

 Link to audio of the Gospel is here.

Link to audio of the homily is here.

Have you ever had to go through something, and you just didn’t know how you were going to get through to the other side?  All of us have; when we’re young, it might be something as simple as moving to another part of town and changing schools.  Later in life, maybe it’s an important assignment that we just can’t figure out.  As we grow toward adulthood, perhaps we lose a close relative or friend to death.  All of these things can be hard, depending on our age.

 

Or maybe we end up in a bad work situation, or worse, we end up unemployed, and we have no prospects of getting another job. Or we end up suffering from a grave illness, or we lose a parent, or a child, or a spouse to death.  These things can all make us cry to heaven, asking God to just “take me now, Lord!” Or they can even make us reject God altogether, and make us think we don’t need a God who can’t do any better by us than that.

If we were left on our own to get through all of these situations, if it was on us to figure out how to get through, alone, we’d never make it through.  But we aren’t alone.   And we have something to sustain us, someone to give us strength, even in the worst of times.
Why was Elijah running through the desert to Horeb?  Why did he leave everything he knew?  Elijah was running for his life.  His work situation, as prophet of God, had gone really badly; after he killed the prophets of the false god Baal, the wife of the king decided Elijah had to die, too.  So Elijah was running to save his life.  And you know Elijah got tired.  Not just physically tired; Elijah was spiritually tired.  And he just wanted to give up, lie down and die, because he couldn’t understand how things had gone so wrong.  Ever felt that way?

But God didn’t let Elijah just starve, or die of thirst, did he?  Instead, God sent Elijah heavenly food and drink to sustain him for his journey, not once, but twice!  God had things that He still wanted Elijah to do, so God fed him for the journey!

In the Gospel, Jesus connects Himself to that same food in the desert.  He hears the Jews murmuring as He explains who, and what, He is.  The Jews cannot understand Jesus’ reference to Himself as “bread”; after all, they know his parents.  And Jesus explains further to tell them that His flesh is the bread he’s giving!  Jesus claims that those who eat his flesh won’t just make it through their journey:  Jesus tells them that those who eat His flesh will live forever!

 The Jews, of course, were scandalized.  No one ate people.  So what Jesus was saying was nonsense, at least at first hearing.

But God fed the Israelites in the desert.  And God fed Elijah on his way to Mount Horeb.  God had already performed fantastic miracles for His people.  And Jesus is the ultimate miracle!  Jesus gives us his flesh to eat, in the Most Blessed Sacrament, from this altar.  And the food is for the same purpose.  God fed the Israelites so that they could continue their journey to the Promised Land.  God fed Elijah under the broom tree so that he could continue his journey to his next mission.  And Jesus feeds us with His Body and Blood so that we can do what He has ordained us to do!

And what is it that Jesus calls us to do? What is it that He calls us to be?  Paul gives us insight in the second reading.  Christ calls us to “…be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us”!  Jesus feeds us, in order to strengthen us to live in the Holy Spirit! And He feeds us to give us eternal life!

But …how are we supposed to believe that God actually feeds us through Christ’s body when we line up and stick out our hands?  After all…that’s just a little round wafer.  That’s supposed to be God? Jesus?  And how does that help us with all this…junk in our lives?  Is the Eucharist going to get me a job? Or bring my wife, my brother, or my child back?

Brothers and sisters, the answer to those questions…is yes.  Yes, Jesus will help us!  Is He going to make things just like we want them to be?  No!  But what Christ will do is this:  He will give us the strength to make it through!  Out of work?  Come to Jesus!  He’ll sustain you and guide you as you search!  Someone died?  Come to Jesus!  Jesus has the words of everlasting life!  Our relatives and friends who die in Christ will rise with Him!  Spouse cheating on you?  Come to Jesus!  He will strengthen you against the pain, and He will work on the heart of your spouse to bring them back to Him!

Whatever the hurt, if we can bring it to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, we will receive strength to live through it!  We are all drawn to Christ through the Father, just as Jesus said: we’re here this morning!  And now that we’re here, we can receive the Bread of Life, and live forever!  All we have to do…is believe!

 

Life is a journey.  And during that journey, we all go through things that seem too hard to survive: death, disappointment, and despair, are all part of our human experience.   They can sometimes pull us into a hole we can’t see a way to climb out of.

God, however, has a different way planned for all of us.  We have all been drawn to Christ, by God, through our baptism.  We have all received the gift of faith from God; it’s why we came in here this morning.  And God does not leave us to figure all this out on our own!

Jesus said: “I am the living bread that came down from Heaven”.  When we receive that Living Bread from the hands of our priest, we are given the strength to live as “imitators of God”, His beloved children.  And nothing can really hold us down.

Feeling down?  Feeling like you just can’t go on?  Let Christ refresh you in this meal we’re about to receive!  Christ is the Bread of Life.  Christ is our food for the journey. 

Take, and eat…and believe!

Homily – 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time: We’re All Called!

This Sunday’s Readings

Have you ever considered what it means to be “called” to do something? We talk about vocations often in our diocese; the word “vocation” is an English word which is derived from the Latin root “vocare” which simply means “to call.” We are blessed to have a large number of men in our diocese in formation for the vocation of priest; we also have women and men who are considering consecrated life as religious brothers and sisters. These are what we usually think of as “vocations”.

Sometimes we refer to single life, or married life, or even our choices of profession as doctors, or lawyers, or nurses, or whatever as vocations. And while it is true that all of these things are exercises of the gifts God has given us, even those things don’t exhaust the list of “vocations “ to which God has called His people.

Consider this: Everyone is called. Everyone responds. What we each have to decide is this: What are we being called to be? And what are we being called to do?

Take a look at today’s readings. Amos, in our first reading, is being invited to get out of the northern kingdom by one of the priests of Bethel. Basically, Amos is stirring up trouble by telling the people of Israel that Jeroboam’s kingdom will be brought down. So naturally, the priest wants him to leave, thinking he’s one of the professional false prophets from the southern kingdom. Amos corrects him, telling him that his job was to herd sheep and trim trees; at least, it was until God got hold of him, and sent him to be a prophet.

The Gospel gives us a little more perspective. Remember that Jesus first called His disciples, making them “fishers of men”; He next gave them authority. The story in this weeks Gospel picks up where Jesus actually sends them out into the countryside to exercise that authority; as the text says, “The Twelve drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”

The second reading connects all of this magical, mystical stuff to us: “In him you also, who have heard the word of truth … and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” The writer of Ephesians is telling the Church (including us) that we have all been adopted into Christ, and redeemed by His blood, and now sealed with his Holy Spirit for the tasks we are sent to do!

Amos received a call from God to be a prophet. He was a simple shepherd before that, with no particular skills or distinction. Yet God sent him to go prophesy to a king. Likewise, the Apostles were all simple men…before Jesus called them. He called, He gave them authority…and then He sent them to preach the gospel, to cure the sick, and to cast out demons!

God is still calling people to His service, brothers and sisters. Someone in this very room…is being called to the sacramental priesthood. Someone in this room…is being called to religious life. Others among us are called to the sacrament of Matrimony, to live faithfully as members of “little churches” within our families, transmitting the faith to our children. Still others among us are being called to life as single men and women, to live lives faithful to God’s call.

All of these “vocations” come from God. All of them are hard. And all are places where God sends his Holy Spirit to aid us.

But…there’s more, brothers and sisters, and it’s important that we see it, and act on it!

At the Mass, every Mass, we encounter the Living Christ, first in the assembly of His people, then in His Word read and preached, and most importantly and most perfectly in the Most Blessed sacrament, the Eucharist. And then, having been nourished and strengthened, we hear the priest or the deacon say, “The Mass is Ended, Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”, or similar words. At every Mass, we are all sent out on mission, just as the disciples were, to serve the Lord. That service can take a lot of forms, but at the end of the day, it’s a calling, a mission from God, to every one of us, to Love Christ and to serve Him!

And how do we serve Christ? How do we love Christ? We love and serve Christ by keeping His commands! We love and serve Christ by loving one another! And we love and serve Christ by being faithful to “the word of truth, the gospel of salvation”, that the letter to the Ephesians talks about!

This should be life-changing for us! We have received Christ truly present in the Eucharist, and then we are sent to love and serve Him by being His presence in the world! No matter who we are, even if we’re smelly shepherds like Amos was, God has called us to be witnesses to Christ, fed us for the journey, and sent us into the world!

Vocations come in many shapes and sizes. When we hear “vocation”, our first thought is often the Men in Black, our priests and our seminarians, who are public signs of God’s call to His service. If we’re older, we also think of religious sisters and brothers, some of them in habits, donating their lives to God’s service in a specific area or field. We might even think of our trade, or our rofession, as a “vocation”, because we feel particularly gifted by God to work in it.

But brothers and sisters, we all have a much more basic call, one that every single one of us shares: We are called to love and serve God in the world in which we live. We each have a religious vocation, to witness Christ in our lives, no matter where we’ve been placed.

Everyone is called, without exception. Every time we attend a Mass, we receive Christ, and we are sent on a mission by God. And no matter what the obstacles appear to be, God has given us the strength to do all He’s called us to, through the Christ whom we receive.

At the end of Mass, you’ll hear me say it: “Go; you are sent!”

God is calling us, all of us, and sending us somewhere.

What do you hear God calling you to do?

Homily for the First Sunday of Lent – Repent and Believe!

Gospel Audio

Homily Audio 

Repent and Believe!

Repent…and believe. “Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God: ‘This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” That’s what He said in to today’s Gospel reading.

“To turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one’s life.” This is how the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word, repent.

“Believe in the Gospel”. To believe (Also from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary) is “to accept as true, genuine, or real”.

So by textbook definition, Jesus’ call as He returns form the desert is pretty easy to understand: “Turn from sin. Amend your life. And accept God’s Gospel as real and true.”

This is all God asks of us as Christian men and women: “Be good. And believe Me.” That’s it!

But if that’s it…then why’s it so hard? And how are we supposed to do it?

Well…the forty days of Lent can help us to get our arms around that.

Today’s readings give us a push in the right direction. The first reading reminds us of the promise God made after the Great Flood was over; God had just finished “rebooting” the Earth because of the evil of the people. He only saved eight, according to the story; Noah and his family had been the only people on Earth to avoid sliding into the evil of the times. The Flood punished the sin of the people, and washed that sin away through forty days of rain, so that humanity could start over with God.

In the second reading, Peter tells us that God renewed His relationship with humanity again with Jesus: “Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God.” Christ’s death gave us a chance for a new life in God. And Peter tells us that the baptism we receive is not just a bath for the body: that baptism saves us: we make “an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”.

The Gospel brings back the forty days with Jesus’ time in the desert being tempted by Satan. When Jesus returns from the desert, He goes to Galilee and proclaims that “the kingdom of God is at hand.” Then what does He tell the people? “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”

The forty days of Lent begin with these readings because they set the tone. Lent should be all about two things: repentance, and belief; turning from sin, and believing in Jesus Christ and His saving work on the cross. This is the constant call of Lent: Repent…and believe.

All of us who are baptized have promised these things before, or had them promised for us. The Rite of Baptism recalls the time of the Flood as a sign of our baptism. And after the prayer over the baptismal font, those to be baptized are asked to do two things: to renounce Satan, and to profess their faith in Jesus. Repent…and believe.

This baptismal call to repentance is the same call we hear during Lent. Lent is a reminder for us that we have already been cleansed and reborn to life in Christ, but that we often fall short of living out the new life we received through baptism. Lent calls us to recall what God has done for us through Jesus; Lent calls to us make a return to the faith we professed at our baptism. We are called to repent…and believe.

But what do we need to repent for? What is it that we’ve done that’s so bad, so serious, that we need to turn away from it and do something different?

That answer is different for each one of us, I think. And no, the vast majority of us aren’t running around committing mortal sin after mortal sin, guaranteeing us a place in Hell. But Lent gives us a chance to really examine our lives, to ferret out those places where we are being less faithful than we ought. Lent gives us a chance to look at our choices in life, and to decide if we’re where we should be. And it’s a chance to take on some of the hard things in our lives, not just to give up chocolate for six weeks!

Lent gives us a chance to try to expose the lies that the Evil One sows throughout our culture: the lie that we can do whatever we like, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else; the lie that the Church is hopelessly out of touch in some of its teachings, and that we can ignore those that cause us discomfort; the lie that we are ultimately in control of our bodies and our lives, and that God is OK with it.

Is there an abortion in your past that you haven’t healed from? (Men, I am addressing this to you, too.) Pray about it; God wants to heal you and set you free! Contracepting in your marriage? Pray about it, and consider attending at least one Natural Family Planning class with the Diocese, to see if God is calling you to something different, something new. Consider using this Lent to work with the big things in our lives that hold us back from full union with God.

Will it be tough? If we’re going in the right direction, yes it will be tough! The last thing Satan wants is for us to catch on to his lies! But if we really open ourselves up to the grace God freely offers us, we can see past the lies, to the truth: that God has already given us everything we need to live as He calls us to, if we will only use it!

Jesus’ call as He returns from the desert is pretty easy to understand: “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” Turn from sin. Amend your life. And accept God’s Gospel as real and true.

This is a challenging call, to be sure. And much of what the world throws at us turns us away from that call.

But Lent can give us a chance to turn back. Lent can help us to make a break with anything in our lives that holds us back from repentance…and belief.

There is something in every one of our lives that is holding us back. And Jesus’ call as he came from the desert still has meaning for us. Repent…and believe.
Repent…and believe. And accept the grace God freely offers us to help our unbelief.

Then…stand back and see what happens in our lives!

Homily – 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Did You See That?

Gospel

Homily Audio

Did you see that?

You know, sometimes it takes an awful lot to impress us.  It’s hard for us to just take something at face value; it has to sing, or dance, or work a miracle to get our attention.

That must be part of human nature, because it’s always been like that.  Adam and Eve get the whole garden, they walk with God in it, and all they have to do is not eat from one little tree.  And what happened?  Moses leads the Israelites through the Red Sea to safety.  They watch Pharaoh’s army get swallowed up by the waters, and they get completely away.  And what happens?  They soon make a golden calf to worship in place of the God who saved them!

And we, in some ways, are sometimes even worse.  We know so much.  We can explain things that ancient peoples like the Israelites couldn’t even imagine.  And because we’re so smart, we miss some things.  Because we know so much, we forget about things that ought to be simple.  And we set up the false gods of money, or security, or status, to make us feel better.

But God constantly calls us to know Him.  God constantly invites us to believe Him.  And He constantly reaches out to us, asking us simply to love Him.  For us to hear Him, though…we have to pay attention to the signs around us.

God made it relatively easy for the people of Israel.  He gave them sign after sign.  Moses brought them out of Egypt.  Moses fed them in the desert.  Moses saved them from the snakes.  Later, other prophets worked signs and wonders.  They predicted things for Israel.  It was obvious these guys were working for God.

Then Jesus shows up, and all heaven breaks loose!  Blind people start seeing, lame people start walking. Even demons call Jesus out by name!  And people are impressed!  They saw who Jesus was, and they followed Him!

But God didn’t always show up in Person for everyone; not everyone got to see Jesus work His miracles first-hand.  And those who weren’t standing right there sometimes had trouble believing.  After all, anyone can make up a story.

But what ended up making the difference for the folks who couldn’t see Jesus for themselves?  What made the difference was the way in which those who told the stories of Jesus lived their lives.  It wasn’t just that they told nice stories; it was that their lives changed.  Those people who were preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ lived what they believed.  And no amount of persecution could get them to back down from the Truth!

Most of us have no first-person experiences of God.  Like ALL of the early Christians after the time of the Apostles, we have to depend on stories from others to understand who God is, who Jesus is.  We have to read, and study, and pray in order to understand how Jesus wants to change our lives, and who God is calling us to be.  We have to use the sacraments, those visible signs of invisible grace that Jesus established to help us on our way.

But even more importantly: we have to be prophets for one another.  We have to speak God’s truth.  We have to tell others what God expects of us all.  And we have to live our lives in a way that tells others that we know God, that we know Jesus.  This is what Christ left for us to do:  To go out into the whole world, preaching the Gospel through our lives.  To go out, according to our state in life, and be the next generation of prophets, with God’s words in our mouths!

But still…isn’t it hard to do that when we can’t see all of this stuff?  Isn’t it hard to stand up for what’s right, for what’s good, when most people around us are doing the opposite?

It is tough, brothers and sisters.  But that’s when our witness is that much more effective!  When the families with four, five, or even ten children come to Mass, or go out in public as a family, it’s hard to take the stares and the snide comments.  But showing off their large families is a witness to the world of God’s love for life!  When the conversation at work or turns bad, it’s hard to walk away and not participate.  But walking away without judging the other participants is a witness to the power of Christ in our lives.  At school, when everyone else is ostracizing the new kid, or the geek, it’s hard to expose ourselves to being made fun of alongside him or her.  But what a witness to God’s power in our lives to do it anyway!

God might perform some great miracle in our midst.  He can certainly do it if He chooses to.  But our faith shouldn’t depend on seeing those great big demonstrations of His power.  If we pay attention to the thousands of little testimonies around us, if we turn our lives into a thousand little prophetic signs, then we won’t miss out on seeing God active in the world!

God shows off in lots of ways. Some of them are big, ostentatious things; others are small and quiet.  We have to watch for signs of God in our lives, because they are sometimes so subtle that we can miss them.

And we have to stay humble, lest we fall into the trap of thinking that we know everything, and that we don’t need God for anything.

We have a choice to make about how we’re going to live.  We have a choice to make about how we’re going to represent the One who sends us out into the world to speak His words.

God is calling us to know Him.  God is inviting us to believe Him.  God is reaching out to us, asking us simply to love Him.  Pay attention to the signs.  And don’t be afraid…to be a prophet.

I am going to try this…

I am I’m the tenth hour of a 13 hour drive with another adult and 12 teen homeschoolers, to visit our nation’s Capitol, and to stand up for the 50,000,000 children who have died at the hands of the abortion industry since 1973.

Since you’re reading this, you have access to YouTube; check this short video at www.catholicvote.com. These guys say more in 41 seconds than has been said in a while!

Please pray for us, for safe travel, for protection from the cold, and for an end to abortion on demand in our nation!

Homily – Feast of the Epiphany, January 3/4, 2009

Gospel/Homily Stream (sorry – too smart for myself by half.  I made the mp3 before I split the Gospel and Homily parts.  The Gospel ends about 2:45 into the stream, if you don’t enjoy my melodious voice that much…)

Get it?

According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, an epiphany is described as, “a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”  We use the word often in the English language to refer to those “Aha!” moments, when something that we just couldn’t figure out becomes clear to us.

Our “epiphanies” are those moments when we “get it” about something, and they come about all kinds of things, big things, like the love of our life, and small things, like the solution to the Jumble puzzle in the newspaper.  Epiphanies happen to us all the time.  And when our “epiphany” comes, when we “get it” about something, we want to share it, don’t we?

The Gospel today, from Matthew, pulls together several threads from the prophets in explaining the Magi’s visit to Bethlehem to find Jesus.  And a couple of things are interesting, I believe, about this story.  First, who is it that’s even looking for this new King of the Jews?  A bunch of pagan astronomers!  Who missed it?  Everyone else!  The very people for whom Christ was coming missed the event entirely!

Second, where did this blessed event take place?  In a little back-water suburb of Jerusalem, Bethlehem!  The Magi went to the palace in Jerusalem, thinking that surely the new King they were seeking would be there; but nope!  They were led, first by a prophecy, and then by the star, to a little stable in a little town down the hill.

Finally, what happened to the Magi once they’d seen the Christ Child?  They were the first Gentile believers in Christ’s kingship; they prostrated themselves and did Him homage”.  They were open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit; they “departed for their country by another way” when they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod.  And they took the word of Christ’s birth away with them, out into the world, as the very earliest heralds!

We’re like the Magi in many ways, brothers and sisters.  One way or another, we all followed something to get here.  Whether it was the guidance of our parents, or the result of deep study and prayer on our own, we have all followed the light of faith into this church building, into this community, into the Body of Christ.

Many of us were unsure what we’d find when we arrived, but we came anyway.  Some of us searched first in the wrong place; where we were made sense to us, given what we knew then, but it turned out that we’d missed the mark somehow.  And when that “sudden, intuitive perception or insight” about Christ came to us, it changed everything for us!

Frankly, others among us, including myself, were more like the people of Judea.  Like the priests, and the members of Herod’s court, we totally missed Christ at first.  Maybe it was because everything was so routine.  Or maybe it was just that we weren’t looking for anything major to happen in our lives; church was one of those many habits that we honored (more or less, depending on how we felt on Sunday), but it was No Big Deal.  We saw no Star.  We were not aware of any King.  Life is just…life, and we just live it.  No earth-changing “perceptions here…”

But oh, brothers and sisters:  when our Epiphany comes, what a difference it makes!

Whether Herod and his lackeys knew it or not, Christ was born in Bethlehem.  Whether they paid any attention or not, something HUGE happened down the hill in Bethlehem.

And whether we choose to believe it or not, Christ is our Lord and Savior!  Whether we choose to acknowledge him or not, Christ died, and is risen, and Christ will come again!  And when we begin got embrace this truth, life will be different for us!

Does this mean that we won’t sin?  Does this mean that we won’t fall short sometimes?  No!  But when we encounter Christ, really encounter Christ, we will be changed!  And we will be able to follow “another way home” like the Magi did!

And it isn’t just a one-time thing, y’all!  Christ is constantly revealing Himself to us, in different ways!  And we should be constantly seeing new and different things about Christ, about our relationship with Him and with one another, which lead us closer to Him!

Even if we “get it”, there is always more to see, more to learn, more to “get”!  Every day can bring a new Epiphany for us, if we are just watching for it!

Epiphany: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

The Magi had their Epiphany when they arrived at the stable.  “They saw the child with Mary His mother.  They prostrated themselves and did Him homage.”  They “got it”.

Some of us have already had an epiphany.  And life is different already for those folks.  Some of us have already started to “get it”.

Some of us are still seeking.  And we’ll get there, if we continue to watch for the Star.  We’ll get there, if we continue to look for the signs that point the way.  We’ll get there, if we let the Holy Spirit lead us.  We’ll get there, if we get out of our own way, and allow ourselves to “get it”.

Homily – Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – December 28, 2008

Gospel

Homily

Faithfulness

This is a time of year when we celebrate family, isn’t it?  We gather as family, as much as we can; we have meals together; we call family members who are too far to get home, and we write letters or emails, with pictures or video, to those who are too far away to call.  We remember those who have died, and we celebrate the new lives among us with “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments.  For many of us, if not most, Christmas is about family.

But Christmas is about more than family, right?  Christmas, when you boil it down to the most important thing, isn’t about how much we spend on travel or gifts.  It’s not about how many parties we attend or give.  It’s not about most of the things the world holds out to us as important.

Our history as God’s people is full of examples of what’s really important about Christmas.  And what’s really important…is faithfulness.  The faithfulness of our forbears is the real point of Christmas.  The faith that led folks to do things that were unreasonable, to do things that were impossible, is the real miracle of Christmas.

And in the story of their faithfulness, we get a lesson for our families, whether they are families of one or of dozens.

In our readings, we see the faithfulness that led to Christ coming to Earth.  We see the beginning of His human family in Abram, who decided to listen to God when God promised Him descendants as numerous as the stars.  Why should he have listened, Abram?  He was old. So was his wife.  They’d been childless all their married lives.  In the view of the world, they were less than other people because they were barren.  But Abram listened, and obeyed God, and God honored that obedience and that faith.

Paul explains more.  Abraham went when God told him to.  Abraham trusted, even though it was illogical to trust.  And he had faith enough to be prepared to sacrifice his only son, because he knew he could count on the God who had done so much for him already.

Mary and Joseph carried on that faithfulness.  Think about it:  Mary and Joseph trusted God’s messenger, and went ahead with their marriage.  They trusted God to take care of them on the trip to Bethlehem.  And they were faithful to God’s law in bringing Jesus to the Temple.  And in fulfilling their responsibilities as parents, Mary and Joseph raised Jesus, The Christ to manhood!

These families we read about today are the examples we’re asked to follow.  We’re asked to be faithful to God’s call on our families, to be as holy as we are able to manage.  And God asks a lot of us, doesn’t He?

We’re asked to trust God as our families form, to be open to life however it arrives with us.  We’re asked to trust God with our children, to allow Him to guide them as they discern the path they should take in life.  We’re asked to be faithful to the guidance of the Church, to do certain things and to avoid certain things, because doing so aids us in our lives of faith.

And most of all, we are asked to put God first in our lives as individuals and as families.  Joseph could have been dishonored.  Mary could have been stoned to death as an adulteress!  Simeon and Anna could have given up on God’s promise, and just crawled off to die!  But they all faced their difficulties, and were faithful!

And that’s what we’re called to do, brothers and sisters!  Whatever our circumstance in life, God just asks us to be faithful.  If our job is threatened, God asks us to believe He’ll help us get through!  If we have a child who disappoints, God asks us to believe He’ll work on that child!  If we’re faced with an illness, or an unexpected crisis in our families, God asks us to remain faithful to Him through the trial!

But, God, it’s hard to be faithful, isn’t it?  So much around us calls us to not be!

Difficult marriage?  It’s so easy to seek comfort outside of it!  Children who are a disappointment?  Well, we can just kick ‘em out of the house and wash our hands of them! Unexpected pregnancy?  We can just make a trip down to Memphis and “fix the problem”!  Old and sick?  Or young, but terminally ill and in pain?  Well, we can fix that with a trip to a sympathetic doctor!  Money problems?  Can’t pay the bills, or losing the house?   Well, maybe I can hit the number in Lotto this week, or head to Caruthersville and make it up! Or maybe the government will fix it for me!

Funny, thing, though:  all of those “solutions” leave out the most important thing:  God!  Our problems aren’t unique, brothers and sisters.  And if our forbears in faith had taken these “easy” ways out, what would we have to celebrate this Christmas?  In fact, what would any of this mean, if Joseph had simply “divorced her quietly”, or if Mary had refused God’s request?  Nothing!

Christmas celebrates faithfulness.  The true meaning of Christmas in our lives is about the faith that led our predecessors in the faith to make the choices they made.  And ultimately, Christmas is about the faithfulness of the first Christians, Mary and Joseph, and the faithfulness of their ancestors, that made it possible for Christ to enter the world as a human child, like us in all things but sin.

What a gift to God it would be if we could all be more faithful in the coming year!  Does God ask us to be perfect? No!  Does He expect us to never sin? No!

But He expects us to try.  He expects us to cut those things out of our life that pull us away from Him.  He asks us to take advantage of the sacraments He gave us, as conduits of His grace.

And He asks us to be faithful.  Abraham and Sarah faithful.  Paul and the other apostles faithful.  Mary and Joseph faithful.  And in our faithfulness, He promises to bless us and our families.

Where have we been less than obedient to God?  Where can we improve our relationship with God?

God calls us to faithfulness.  Are we listening?