4th Sunday after Epiphany 2023 (EF) - Christ asleep in the boat

On February 28, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI gathered at St. Peter’s square with thousands of pilgrims for his final public audience after announcing his resignation.

And at that final public audience, Pope Benedict reflected a bit on his pontificate as a whole. He shared how over those 8 years there were ups and downs, successes and challenges. He said overall he often had a clear sense of the Lord’s closeness, that he felt the Lord with Him in his work, and how there were many moments of light and joy.

He said, "The Lord gave us days of sun and of light breeze—days in which the fishing was abundant.” Hopefully, you can relate. That experiencing the Lord’s presence in your life, there are days of warmth and light and consolation, of successes in the vineyard of the Lord, days when family life just sort of clicks, meaningful, fulfilling days filled with grace.

But then, Pope Benedict said, “There were also moments when there were stormy waters and headwinds...” Likely, we can relate to that too. Life is stormy. There are difficult days where our plans are thrown off course before we leave the house in the morning, days of chaos, days where the world seems bent on breaking us, where there is friction with coworkers and even with loved ones, days of disappointment, days perhaps when it seems the powers of hell have their sights set on us.

We can only imagine what those difficult days were like for the Pope. When members of the clergy, members of his staff, really let him down, where foreign governments resisted the efforts of the Church in spreading the Gospel and working for justice. Who knows the resistance he faced, the headwinds, from the enemies of the Church both internal and external, human and demonic.

But then, Pope Benedict said something, and I remember being surprised when he said it. He said there were days when it just felt like the Lord was asleep.

The holy father was of course drawing this image from today’s Gospel, for this 4^th Sunday after epiphany, in which the apostles become overwhelmed as the Lord slept during the crossing of the stormy sea.

Perhaps you can relate to this as well. You offer up prayers and supplications, you ask God for help, and, there is silence. God doesn’t act in the way we think he should. Stirring a family member to return to Church, or for the conversion of some wayward soul. When it doesn’t happen, in our time frame, it feels perhaps, as if the Lord is asleep.

Based on the Lord’s response to the apostles plea, it always seems like there was test here that the apostles pretty much failed. Of course we need to cry out to God for help. Amidst the raging storms of life, we need God’s help. We need his guidance, we need his grace to grant us courage. Scripture even instructs us to call out to God in times of trouble: Psalm 50, says, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you.”

I think the failure of the apostles, though, is their doubt in the Lord’s care for them. “Teacher do you not care that we are perishing?” they ask. Of course he cared. How could he not? How could they doubt that?

And so the Lord says, “O you of little faith.” As if to say, guys, you can do better, you need to trust more deeply, you need greater faith if you are going to be able to survive the great mission I have in store for you.

After admitting that there were days when it felt like the Lord was sleeping, Pope Benedict said, "But I always knew that the Lord was in that boat and I always knew that the boat of the Church is not mine, is not ours, but is his and he will not let it sink…I never felt alone.”

Here you can sense that Benedict was not a man of little faith, but of great faith. Yes he experienced storms. Yes, he experienced perhaps silence from the Lord, but he trusted, trusted that God is in charge.

Does it sometimes seem that the Lord is sleeping? Fine. But don’t draw the conclusion, the foolish conclusion that he doesn’t care, or that he doesn’t exist. This passage is proof that in the life of the disciple there will be times when the Lord isn’t doing what we want Him to do. Our job is to trust, and to surrender, to have faith that his care for us is without limit, that he gives us what we need, for the success of the mission, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

A reading from the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans

Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying, [namely] “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.

A continuation of the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew

At that time, Jesus got into a boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?”

 

Feast of the Holy Family (EF) 2023 - BXVI and the School of the House of Nazareth

 

Happy Feast of the Holy Family. "The house of Nazareth", Pope Benedict wrote, "is a school of prayer where one learns to listen, meditate on and penetrate the profound meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God." And so In light of Pope Emeritus Benedict’s recent passing, let us allow the great Pope Benedict to take us to school. 

He writes, at the school of the Holy Family, we learn that we must develop “spiritual discipline if we wish to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become disciples of Christ”.  Notice, how the holy father connects discipline and discipleship. We cannot have discipleship without discipline. In our prayer lives, that means developing and sticking to a routine, a habit of prayer, no matter how we feel, marking the hours of the day, the household duties, the meals, rising and waking, with prayer, praying perhaps before speaking when a conflict arises, praying in times of great joy—turning as a family, to the holy family for blessings and graces and guidance.

Pope Benedict writes, that we must learn also from the Holy Family’s practice of silence. “Silence”, he says, “is the wonderful and indispensable spiritual atmosphere, in which the Word can be reborn within us! Whereas we are deafened by the noise and discordant voices in the frenetic, turbulent life of our time. O silence of Nazareth! He prays, teach us to be steadfast in good thoughts, attentive to our inner life, ready to hear God’s hidden inspiration clearly and the exhortations of true teachers” 

Our day, like the day of the holy family, should be infused with silence.

It’s in silence, that we like Our Lady are able to cherish and ponder Christ. He writes, “Mary was a peerless model of the contemplation of Christ. The face of the Son belonged to her in a special way because he had been knit together in her womb and had taken a human likeness from her. No one has contemplated Jesus as diligently as Mary. The gaze of her heart was already focused on him at the moment of the Annunciation, when she conceived him through the action of the Holy Spirit; in the following months she gradually became [more deeply] aware of his presence, until, on the day of his birth, her eyes could look with motherly tenderness upon the face of her son as she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger.

Memories of Jesus, imprinted on her mind and on her heart, marked every instant of Mary’s existence. She lived with her eyes fixed on Christ and cherished his every word. St Luke says: “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (as we heard in the Gospel today) and thus describes Mary’s approach to the Mystery of the Incarnation which was to extend throughout her life: keeping these things, pondering on them in her heart. 

St. Joseph too, teaches us. Pope Benedict wrote: Joseph fulfilled every aspect of his paternal role. He must certainly have taught Jesus to pray, together with Mary. In particular Joseph himself must have taken Jesus to the Synagogue for the rites of the Sabbath, as well as to Jerusalem for the great feasts of the people of Israel. Joseph, in accordance with the Jewish tradition, would have led the prayers at home both every day — in the morning, in the evening, at meals — and on the principal religious feasts. In the rhythm of the days he spent at Nazareth, in the simple home and in Joseph’s workshop, Jesus learned to alternate prayer and work, as well as to offer God his labour in earning the bread the family needed.

Pope Benedict draws several lessons in particular from today’s Gospel. He writes, “Jewish families, like Christian families, pray in the intimacy of the home but they also pray together with the community, recognizing that they belong to the People of God, journeying on; and the pilgrimage expresses exactly this state of the People of God on the move (journeying to God together).” So vibrant personal prayer lives, contemplating the face of Christ, cherishing christ in our hearts like our Lady, is important. Ordering our family life, our professional life in a godly way, and infusing them with prayer, like St. Joseph is indispensable. But also the Holy Family models communal prayer. Our corporate worship together as the family of God, the Church, is so powerful and essential to who we are. We join together in prayer at holy Mass, a foretaste of the saint’s communal worship of God in heaven. 

But then, the Holy Father draws our attention to the words of Jesus in the Gospel. They are first words of Our Lord recorded in the Gospels, and Benedict writes, After three days spent looking for him his parents found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions (cf. 2:46). His answer to the question of why he had done this to mary and joseph was that he had only done what the Son should do, that is, to be with his Father. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Benedict says, “note the resonance that hearing this word “Father” on Jesus’ lips must have had in the hearts of Mary and Joseph…We may imagine that from this time the life of the Holy Family must have been even fuller of prayer since from the heart of Jesus the boy — then an adolescent and a young man — this deep meaning of the relationship with God the Father would not cease to spread and to be echoed in the hearts of Mary and Joseph…The Family of Nazareth became the first model of the Church in which, around the presence of Jesus and through his mediation, everyone experiences the filial relationship with God the Father which also transforms interpersonal, human relationships.”

The dear departed Pope Benedict knew the important of Christians families looking to and modeling their family life after the Holy Family. He wrote, “the Holy Family is the icon of the domestic Church, called to pray together. The family is the domestic Church and must be the first school of prayer. It is in the family that children, from the tenderest age, can learn to perceive the meaning of God, also thanks to the teaching and example of their parents: to live in an atmosphere marked by God’s presence.”

May the Holy Family guide and protect us always, and may the soul of God’s servant, Pope Benedict XVI, through the mercy of God rest in peace, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

 

A reading from the epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians

Brethren: Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another,  if one has a grievance against another;  as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

A continuation of the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke

Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple,  sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.

September 2019 - First Friday Holy Hour - New Wineskins and Eucharistic Adoration

“New wine must be poured into fresh wineskins” .

At mass this morning, I reflected upon how these words remind us of the need for constant renewal in the Christian life. Baptism transforms our souls into new wineskins of grace, but without renewal, prayer, without faithfulness, and the Sacraments, our souls can become brittle again, resistant to the sanctification the Lord desires for us.

We know Catholics, even members of our families, who though baptized, have become resistant to grace. The mere mentioning of the Church at a family gathering, or even a gentle reminder of the need to return to the Sacraments can lead to a heated argument.

So we come before Our Eucharistic Lord tonight for them and for ourselves. We entrust the fallen-away to the Sacred Heart, pleading for miracles of conversion. And we come before Lord asking for conversion for our hearts as well, for the grace we need to be instruments of healing and evangelization.

At World Youth Day, in Cologne, in 2005, Pope Benedict spoke about the profound transformation which the Eucharist both signifies and brings about. He said, “This first fundamental transformation of violence into love, of death into life, brings other changes in its wake. Bread and wine become his Body and Blood. But it must not stop there; on the contrary, the process of transformation must now gather momentum. The Body and Blood of Christ are given to us so that we ourselves will be transformed in our turn…His dynamic enters into us and then seeks to spread outwards to others until it fills the world, so that his love can truly become the dominant measure of the world.”

We kneel down in Adoration, there is a profound contact of our heart with His. The Latin word for adoration, after all is, is ad-oratio - an embrace of love. We embrace Him and He embraces us to make us like Himself.

So let us take some time now to become quiet, to adore the Lord who embraces us and transforms us, who longs to heal us of selfishness and fear, we seeks to set our hearts ablaze with the fire of His Sacred Heart.

After a period of silent adoration, we will offer prayers of reparation followed by benediction.
Rejoice, for the Bridegroom is with us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

5th Week of Easter 2019 - Friday - A Heart Which Sees And Acts

One of my favorite Papal encyclicals of the last 20 years, is the first encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI titled “Deus Caritas Est”, God is Love. Holy Father chose to wrote the first encyclical of his pontificate on the subject of Christian love, WHY Christians are called to love, WHAT is Christian love, and HOW Christians are called to love.

The first question “why” is pretty clear to us. We are called to love because God is love and we are made in God’s image. The Gospel today answers that question too, we are called to love because Jesus has commanded us to. All of the commandments of the law are summed up in the command to love God and love neighbor.

The Holy Father then answers “what is love” by reflecting on the different concepts of love from theology and philosophy, eros, philia, and agape, and their relationship to Christ’s teaching. 

He then answers “how Christians are called to love” by showing how Christian charity is carried out in the different spheres of society, in politics, in what is often called “social justice”.

“The Christian's program” writes Benedict, “the program of Jesus—is “a heart which sees”. Christians are to attune their hearts to the heart of Jesus, and thereby develop a heart which sees what is needed, and acts accordingly. Jesus saw the need, the greatest need in the universe, the need for human redemption, our salvation from hell became God’s highest priority. He saw our need, and acted accordingly, laying down his life, embracing the cross and death for us, to save us. There is no greater love than his for us.

So, the Christian heart, attuned to Christ, through an encounter and recognition of his love, for us, for me and you personally, also sees the needs in the world, and acts accordingly.

Love, is not simply an emotion, or a feeling. Our Christian call to love isn’t simply to go through our neighborhoods and have fluffy feelings about everyone. Rather, the call to love, is a call to be attentive to need, and to act accordingly, to lay down our lives to bring Christ’s mercy into the lives of others, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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God the Father was glorified in the death and resurrection of his Son. Let us pray to him with all confidence.

God the Father bathed the world in splendor when Christ rose again in glory, may our minds be filled with the light of faith.

Through the resurrection of His Son, the Father opened for us the way to eternal life, may we be sustained today in our work with the hope of glory.

Through His risen Son, the Father sent the Holy Spirit into the world, may our hearts be set on fire with spiritual love.

May Jesus Christ, who was crucified to set us free, be the salvation of all those who suffer, particularly those who suffer from physical or mental illness, addiction, and grief.

For all of our young people beginning summer vacation, that they may be kept safe from all physical and spiritual evil, and be kept in close friendship with the Lord Jesus through the faith lives of their families.
That all of our beloved dead and all the souls in purgatory may come to the glory of the Resurrection.
O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the desires of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our lord.

3rd Sunday of Easter 2017 - Word and Sacrament on the Road to Emmaus

In a homily on the Emmaus story a few years ago, the holy Father, Pope Benedict, spoke about conversion.

“The Gospel of the Third Sunday of Easter — which we have just heard — presents the episode of the disciples of Emmaus, an account that never ceases to astonish and move us,” the Holy Father said. 

“This episode shows the effects that the Risen Jesus works in two disciples: conversion from despair to hope; conversion from sorrow to joy; and also conversion to community life.”

Conversion. There is an important word in the Christian life. Generally, conversion means any sort of change. Converting dollars to pesos, metric to standard. In the religious sense, we can speak of converting from one religion to another. St. Paul, for example, converts from being an unbeliever and persecutor of Christianity to one of the greatest and most heroic evangelizers of history. At Easter this year, here at St. Clare, 5 people from different faith traditions: Baptist, United Church of Christ, Methodist, and Presbyterian converted to Roman Catholicism.

In mathematics, converting from one type of unit to another is simple, if you know the formula. Moral conversion and religious conversion are not so easy, and rely heavily on the grace of God. Our 5 converts spent months undergoing formal training in the faith, and many of them would speak of how their journey to the faith took many different twists and turns throughout their lives.  Moral conversion requires more than intellectual training, converting from selfishness to generosity is not so easy. We have to break habits of the mind, renounce selfish ways, and make real effort to be more generous.

And Pope Benedict is saying that the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus is the story of conversion. In their conversion they came to a deeper understanding and joy in the risen Christ and love for him.  This is a conversion that the Lord wants for each one of us. To deepen our understanding, to deepen our faith, and to deepen our love.

For the life of the Christian isn’t simply about a one-time conversion at baptism, and then we are guaranteed of heaven. The life of the Christian is a journey of continued conversion: not just from unbelief to belief, not just from evil to good, but from good to better. Hopefully Easter 2017 finds you holier, more prayerful, walking more reverently, utilizing the gifts of the Holy Spirit more than you did a year ago. If not, what happened?

Well, whatever happened, Our Lord extends today the invitation to begin to walk again in the way of daily conversion.

Pope Benedict continued his homily, explaining what is necessary for the daily conversion of the Christian life. He says, “It is thus necessary for each and every one of us to let ourselves be taught by Jesus, as the two disciples of Emmaus were: first of all by listening to and loving the word of God read in the light of the Paschal Mystery, so that it may warm our hearts and illumine our minds helping us to interpret the events of life and give them meaning. Then it is necessary to sit at table with the Lord, to share the banquet with him, so that his humble presence in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood may restore to us the gaze of faith, in order to see everything and everyone with God’s eyes, in the light of his love. Staying with Jesus who has stayed with us, assimilating his lifestyle, choosing with him the logic of communion with each other, of solidarity and of sharing. The Eucharist is the maximum expression of the gift which Jesus makes of himself and is a constant invitation to live our lives in the Eucharistic logic, as a gift to God and to others.”

Did you catch the two necessary practices for ongoing conversion? Listening to and loving the word of God, and valuing more deeply the gift of the Eucharist.

A little less than a year ago, we were reflecting on the story of Martha and Mary, how Mary sat at the Master’s feet and listened to him and cherished him. And I think it was at this Mass, in which I presented a challenge…a 10-minute-a-day challenge. Not turning on the television, not doing the household chores, until you’ve spent 10 minutes reading and reflecting upon the Scriptures. I wonder if anyone took me up on that.

The scriptures help our hearts to be “warmed and illumined” as Pope Benedict said.  They help us “interpret the events of our life”. Have you ever been reading the Scriptures and discovered that it was as if they were written just for you? I hope so. If not, I encourage you to do a little more reading.

So the first necessary practice is listening and loving the word of God, the second is cherishing the Eucharist more deeply, allowing its power to becoming unleashed in your life. The Pope used a really neat phrase, he said when we accept the gift Jesus makes to us in the Eucharist, our lives begin to take on a “Eucharistic Logic”.

In the Eucharist, Jesus is offered to the Father, broken, shared, and poured out. And when we allow the Eucharist to convert us, our lives begin to take on the same logic, the same pattern: we allow ourselves to be broken, poured out, and shared for others. Our life becomes a “living sacrifice to the Father”.

When we truly begin to take seriously this call to listen and love the Word of God and to cherish the Eucharist we begin to experience profound conversion: conversion from despair to hope; conversion from sorrow to joy; and also conversion to become more involved in service in the life of the community, such as the ways being presented in today’s Ministry fair down in the gym.

May we accept the invitation the Lord makes to us today, to grow in grace, to allow him to shape and transform our lives through Word and Sacrament for the glory of God and salvation of souls.