14th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 - Lessons from a Chinese Opium Addict (St. Mark Ji Tianxiang)

 At the turn of the 20th century there was a persecution against Christians in China called the Boxer Rebellion. Now persecutions of Christians in China have been occurring since the 1600s, but unlike former persecutions of Christians which were led by the Chinese government, the Boxer Rebellion was led by a Chinese Secret Society called The Righteous and Harmonious Fists, or the Yi-he-quan. And the Yihequan was basically an anti-foreign, anti-Christian hate group. They believed foreigners and Christians were threats to Chinese society, so Yihequan destroyed foreign owned businesses and property, such as foreign owned railroads and telegraphs. And they hunted down and murdered Christian missionaries and Chinese Christians.

There were about 1000 Christians who were martyred during this persecution, one of whom is honored on July 9, St. Mark Ji Tian-xiang. (Shi-ang)

St. Mark was born in China in 1834. He was a physician who served the poor. But when he himself became seriously sick in his 30s, he began to treat himself with one of the common medicines of that time, opium. But he began to abuse the powerful drug and developed an opium addiction that lasted for decades.  

As a Catholic, St. Mark prayed for deliverance from his addiction, but he kept falling. He would confess his moral failure in the Sacrament of Confession, but even that only provided periods of sobriety, and as the Yihequan began their persecutions access to the Sacrament became impossible. Nevertheless he remained a believing and practicing Catholic. 

During the Boxer Rebellion, St. Mark was captured by the Yi-he-quan and when he was given a chance to renounce his faith in order to save his life, he refused.  It is said that he sang the litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary as he was led to his execution. 

And remember St. Mark died still mired in a vice from which he was never able to completely break free: that crippling addiction to opium. 

No matter how many times he confessed, and no matter how many times he uttered his resolution to amend his life, he continued to fall back into addiction. Those around him, including his family, his friends and even the priest to whom he regularly confessed his sins suspected him of abandoning the desire for conversion. 

And yet…he died a heroic Christian martyr. He professed Christ with his last breath and won the martyrs crown. He is with Christ in heaven. This addict had also cultivated heroic courage and responded to the grace of God in final perseverance.

As St. Mark and his family were dragged to prison to await their execution, his grandson looked fearfully at him. “Grandpa, where are we going?” the grandson asked. To which St. Mark replied, “We’re going home.” St. Mark begged his captors to kill him last so that none of his family would have to die alone. He stood beside all nine of them as they were beheaded; his faith unshaken. 

Those who have struggled with or those who continue to struggle with addiction know that there is a real temptation just to give up trying to overcome the addiction, to give up and give in. But St. Mark reminds us all to persevere in seeking to overcome our vices. As many times as you fall, come back to the Lord. Don’t stop praying for deliverance. Don’t stop going to confession and receiving the Eucharist with the desire for inner healing and freedom. 

In the Second reading, St. Paul s very clear about how the flesh and the Spirit are at war. There is a war between what our body desires, what our flesh desires, and what is good for our soul. Because of Original Sin, we cannot trust that every bodily desire is for our greater good.  We desire too much of what we don’t need, like sin, and too little of what we do need, like prayer. Our body often craves what is sinful, not always, but enough that bodily desires must be discerned.

And St. Paul teaches that there are eternal consequences for living only for those sinful fleshly desires, making an idol of the flesh, where pleasure is first and God is second. “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

St. Mark Ji Tianxiang didn’t give up. He fell. He relapsed. He disappointed his family and himself. But he persevered in the struggle. That’s what living by the Spirit means. It’s not that we are automatically morally perfect in all of our behaviors just because we are baptized. Living by the Spirit means continuously struggling against those weaknesses of the flesh, repenting when we fall, turning to God for forgiveness, making a firm purpose of amendment to change as we can with God’s help. 

The Lord in the Gospel says, "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” You want refreshment in your struggles against the flesh? The Sacrament of Confession is like instant refreshment. You who are burned by the guilt of sin, you can receive instant refreshment. So many people deprive themselves of that beautiful sacrament, that refreshing sacrament, where Jesus is waiting to refresh you, if you would but humble yourself. Confession is such a powerful aid to our sanctification. Every sin might be a failure, but every confession is a victory for God. 

And there may come a time, like in 20th century China when priests were rounded up and forced underground, when that Sacrament—that gift from Jesus himself, isn’t as available as it is right now. With the way modern society is bent on giving up its freedoms these days, and obscuring the message of the Gospel, the Church may have some difficult times ahead in these parts, not to mention the secret and not-so-secret societies which hate the Church and work against her. But even then, it will be okay, because the real fight is always the fight of the Spirit—to seek faithfulness to God when the world’s powers are unleashed.

For those who learn from Jesus, those who become meek and humble of heart like him, even in persecution, will find rest in his presence, in his company, the company of the saints with Christ for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

5th Week of Easter 2021 - Tuesday - Lasting Peace

Scripture speaks often of God’s desire to give his people “peace”. Psalm 85 says that God promises peace to his people. Psalm 29 says, “The LORD gives strength to his people; the LORD blesses his people with peace.” Paul tells the Galatians that the fruits of the Spirit are “love, joy, goodness, faithfulness, and peace” Isaiah prophecies that the Messiah will be called “Wonder-Counselor and Prince of Peace”

You can tell when people are filled with the peace of God. The holiest people I’ve met have been the most peaceful, peace surrounds them like cloak. I think the opposite is also true; most of us have met people that seem surrounded by a cloud of distress, bitterness, unhappiness; drama and chaos and division follow them everywhere. We speak of people having a chip on their shoulder, their lack of peace, having a physical reality. Perhaps, you’ve met someone who has allowed grief to turn into anger at the world or anger at God and that anger just exudes from them.

In the Gospel, Jesus offers peace to those who believe in him: peace the world cannot give, peace which banishes fear. This is not to say that when we believe in and follow Jesus, our fears and anxieties simply evaporate. Jesus leads us on a journey of peace. 

Pope Benedict wrote that “Real peace can only be brought by release from the captivity of comfortable lies and the acceptance of suffering.  Repression is the most common cause of mental illness and healing can be found only in a descent into the suffering of truth.” 

I would add that many addictions come from burying pain under a pile of lies, and freedom from that addiction comes only when we allow Jesus to lead us through the lies, to the root of the pain.

Jesus leads us on a journey of peace which involves acknowledging the truth of our suffering. So that person who has allowed grief to turn into anger, Jesus will lead to confront that grief and teach them to bear it with grace. The person with the resentment, Jesus will help them confront the resentment, to be honest about it, and to be released from it. He helps us face our comfortable lies, the lies we tell ourselves so that we don’t have to face our sufferings. 

For facing our sufferings is the only real road to healing which is the only real road to peace. It is a peace which is beyond all understanding, at least the understanding of the world. The world tells us, if we’ve been hurt, we should be angry, we should get revenge, we should seek worldly justice, we should claim our victimhood. Jesus shows us, how people of faith can know peace even while nailed to a cross. 

May the Lord Jesus, the Prince of Peace free us from the captivity of our comfortable lies and make us into instruments of his peace for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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Filled with Paschal joy, let us turn earnestly to God, to graciously hear our prayers and supplications.

For lasting peace throughout the world: Christ, the Prince of Peace will put an end to all enmity and division, and unify the peoples of the world.

For Pope Francis and Bishop Malesic, that they may have the strength to govern wisely the flock entrusted to them by the Good Shepherd and for an increase in vocations to the ordained priesthood, and that our priests may serve the Church with the love and devotion of the Good Shepherd.

That during this month of May, Christians may turn to Mary, Mother of the Church, seeking her aid and imploring her intercession with increased and fervent devotion, especially by praying the Holy Rosary. Let us pray to the Lord.

For deliverance from all evil and all temptation: for those under the influence of drug abuse, addiction, insanity, occultism, atheism, sexual perversion, and any spiritual evils which degrade the human person.

For those experiencing any kind of hardship or sorrow, isolation or illness, and that the Lord may grant his gift of peace to those most in need of it.

That all of our beloved dead and all the souls in purgatory may come to the glory of the Resurrection.

O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

28th Week in OT 2020 - Tuesday - Freedom from the slavery of sin and addiction

 

A few years ago, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences hosted a conference at the Vatican called “Narcotics: Problems and Solutions of this Global Issue”. For, if you remember, it was just a few years ago that we were experiencing what we were calling the Opioid Epidemic. Our part of the country was particularly impacted by a rise in deaths stemming from opioid use and addictions. Our Bishop Malesic wrote a pastoral letter to his former diocese, too on the subject.

Anyway, at this Vatican conference, the Holy Father described drug addiction as a “new form of slavery”, comparing addiction to slavery—noting how addiction, like slavery, can fiercely control a person’s life. The drug becomes a set of shackles, resulting in the loss of freedom to pursue what is good in life.

This sort of language is certainly reminiscent of St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians this morning. Paul speaks of the yoke of slavery to which the Galatians were falling back into. Christ had freed them, broken the chains, but the Galatians were putting the shackles back on their own wrists. 

For the Galatians this yoke of slavery was the belief that salvation came through the law—all they had to do to be was be circumcised and follow the old Jewish law and they could go to heaven. But Paul is saying, no, that’s not right: “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything”, rather you need to have faith in Jesus Christ, and practice it. “Only faith working through love” matters.

These Galatians were guilty of exactly the same attitude the Lord condemns in the Gospel today in the house of the Pharisee. The Pharisee believed that the law was the path to righteousness. But the Lord explains that the law cannot bring internal purification, it cannot bring true freedom. Rather freedom comes through belief in him, discipleship of him, following him.

The yoke of slavery can come in many forms—when we choose something, some pursuit over Christ, we are falling back under the yoke of sin. It can be drugs, alcohol, pornography, shopping, video games, social media. For these things can consume so much time, energy, they keep us from pursuing the good things God wants for us. Or even this belief that we can find ultimate fulfillment and salvation outside of Christ, separate from God, through merely political, scientific, or secular means. 

But each of needs to identify personally what attitudes, pursuits, habits of body and mind, ideologies, keep us from the prayer and charitable works that constitute that “faith working through love” that Paul says is the only thing that matters. What keeps us from practicing our faith in saintly and heroic ways?

May the Holy Spirit help us to identify any shackles that keep us from that active faith and act love of Christ for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

 

That the ordained and lay faithful may give courageous witness through lives of active faith and virtue.

For all those chained by the slavery of addiction, that they may know the deliverance and liberation that can only come through Christ. 

That world leaders may look upon the Son of God, believe in him, and seek the peace and justice that only he can bring.

That our young people may take seriously the call to holiness, and turn away from the evils of our culture to spread the good news of Christ’s eternal kingdom.

For all whose lives are marked by suffering may come to know the healing and peace of Christ.

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased clergy and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom.

 O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

24th Sunday in OT 2019 - God is at work to find the lost

In the three parables of Luke chapter 15, we hear of three lost objects: A lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son.

What do they have in common? Well, they are lost. The sheep becomes lost because he strays from the flock. The coin is lost in the darkness of a windowless home perhaps due to the negligence of its owner. “My son was lost” the father said, lost in selfishness, lost in his stubbornness, lost to his passions, lost to the consequences of his imprudent actions, lost in a ruptured relationship with his family, with his father.

Now, of course, the first two objects, you can’t really blame for becoming lost. The dumb sheep really doesn’t know any better than to wander off; inanimate coins can’t be blamed for becoming lost. But the son, he made some choices, didn’t he? His alienation from family, his separation from his father’s house, was due to his own free will; he chose to demand his inheritance before the proper time; he chose to squander his inheritance on a life of dissipation.

His prodigality, reminds us of Eve in the garden. No doubt he began to entertain some really bad ideas even before the demand of the inheritance, without thinking of their consequences. He allowed himself to become enraptured in temptation.

And like Adam and Eve, his sin involved a father. Adam and Eve ignored the commands of the Heavenly Father, to not eat from the forbidden tree. And the prodigal son treated his father, as if he was meaningless to him.

The prodigal son, squandering his inheritance in sin, is representative of humanity, become separated from God in sin. And much of humanity still, living their life as if God did not exist. We, like Him, can become so lost, we don’t even realize it.

It makes us think of those who seem lost to addiction. The addict often denies the damage being done in their lives. They see their bodies wasting away and continue to drink; they see the damage they are doing to their families and continue to gamble or overspend; they see the broken relationships and broken dreams and continue to head down the path of self-destruction. The addict minimizes the most important things, like family and health, and over values the high, the pleasure, the indulgence.
So too the prodigal son overvalues his independence, his pleasure, and undervalues the relationship with his father.

This parable is often read as analogy, where again, we are the prodigals. God the father, runs to embrace us with his mercy, an embrace of love and forgiveness and welcome when we have sinned. Yet before the father saw his son form a distance and ran to him, God was also at work mysteriously behind the scenes, in the son’s decision to return home.  It’s really a sort of miracle that he even recognized how lost he was, how close he was to death. For often, addicts push themselves to the brink of destruction. The sinful soul often denies its loss of grace, the danger of hell, and fails to repent.

When I celebrate the sacrament of confession, especially for a soul in mortal sin, it is a joy. We rejoice with the angels of God who rejoice when a sinner repents. And as a priest, it is a joy to be that instrument of mercy. But I also recognize that before that soul walks into the confessional, God was at work to wake them up, to help them to realize their sinful state, to bring about the repentance, which is so often the fruit of the prayers and sufferings of the Church, your prayers, and the sufferings offered up in union with the Lord.

It also makes me think of those with whom we work in the RCIA. Yes, RCIA prepares souls for the Sacraments of New Life, baptism, confirmation, and eucharist. But, God was already at work, behind the scenes, before these souls even show up to that first RCIA session. Again, the fruit of prayers and penances.

Everyone I’ve worked with in the RCIA has always shown up to that first session, because whatever has been going on in their life, perhaps they were protestant, perhaps they were raised with no religion, perhaps they lived a life of dissipation, like the prodigal son, and recognized the damage of their self-destructive behavior, perhaps, like St. Paul describes himself in the second reading, they were a persecutor of Catholics, arrogantly convinced of their own self-righteousness. In all these cases, they always show up to that first session because God has been working, and they have this holy desire for something more.

We are happy to announce that RCIA will be starting in just a few weeks. If you are unbaptized or a member of another faith tradition and are seeking something more, RCIA is for you. God has placed that desire for something more in your heart, and it’s time to make the journey home.

The parable of Son is an invitation for all of us to seek that something more. If you are not a fully initiated Catholic, seek that something more in the RCIA. If you are a Catholic who has fallen into mortal sin, seek that something more in the Sacrament of Confession, the merciful embrace of the Father. If your spiritual life has become arid, dry, seek something more through prayer and service. If you know of someone who has fallen into a life of dissipation, invite them to something more. Be the instrument of God in their life, that helps them home. Pray, pray, pray for those who are lost, that they may be found. They may appear lost to us, but they are not lost to God.

God is at work in each of our lives, urging us to seek that something more, that union with Him through faith, hope, and love, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

6th Sunday in OT 2019 - Sermon on the Plain

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gives his most famous sermon on top of a mountain. For Matthew depicts Jesus like Moses who atop Mt. Sinai received the Law of the Old Covenant from God. Jesus—the New Moses gives the teachings of the new law—the law of the new covenant that he came to form between God and Man. In Matthew’s Gospel, atop what is now called the Mount of Beatitudes, Jesus taught about holiness and eternal life, about salt and light, about anger, adultery, and divorce, and the love of enemies, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, about judging others and casting pearls before swine, and the imperative of building your life on the solid foundations of his teachings.

In Luke, Jesus gives his first major sermon, not from the top of a mountain. In fact, St. Luke tells us that Jesus came down from the mountain, and taught his disciples and this large group of people on a stretch of level ground. This passage of Luke’s Gospel is known as Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, and is delivered immediately after spending a night in prayer and naming the 12 apostles.

Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and Luke’s Sermon on the Plain contain much of the same content, in fact, Luke’s version is a bit more down-to-earth, clearer and direct.
“Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.
Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man."

Just four beatitudes compared to Matthew’s eight. And on the surface…this is a pretty strange teaching. Blessed are your when you are poor? Well, no one wants to poor. Everyone tries to get out of poverty. Blessed are you who are hungry? In Jesus’ day, to go hungry was a sign that you were cursed by God. Know one likes to be hungry. Blessed are you who weep? This is getting more masochistic as it goes on. Poor, hungry, now sad? We seek to escape sadness, depression, and grief. And the last one is even more dramatic. You are blessed when you are hated, persecuted, condemned as evil for being a follower of Jesus. Well…where do I sign up?

How do we begin to understand these odd teachings? Jesus certainly shakes-up the expectations of his audience. Christians are to view and treat the world differently. We aren’t to trust in the same things the worldly-minded trust in, we aren’t to hunger or crave or seek the same things as the worldly-minded because we recognize that nothing in the world can satisfy our deepest hunger for God. We get in trouble when we attach that deepest spiritual hunger to the things and ways of the world; we end up frustrated, exhausted, spiritually depleted, and even lost in sin.

This odd teaching requires we go a bit deeper though. Jesus uses this phrase “blessed are you” in each of these sayings. The Greek word for “blessed” is “Makarios”, the same as in Matthew’s Gospel. “Makarios” is often translated as blessed, happy, fortunate, or divinely joyful. The Greeks used to call the island of Cyprus “makaria” the Island of Joy. The Greeks felt Cyprus was like a high-end resort: so fertile, beautiful, pleasant, safe, peaceful, and rich in minerals and natural resources, that its inhabitants were completely self-sufficient. They had no need to travel or trade in order to live in perfect physical comfort. Maybe, Luke had this in mind in writing “Makarios”, that following Jesus’ teaching, you receive what is sufficient for making your way to the heavenly paradise.

Blessed, fortunate, divinely joyful, in possession of what is necessary for eternal life, are you when you are poor, that is, when you are not attached to or controlled by material things, but rather, when God is your greatest possession, when you do not allow the material things of the world to keep you from knowing, loving, and serving God.

So much of our sadness comes from allowing the things of the world to control us and distract us from what is most important in life. The world tells us that joy and happiness are obtained by amassing houses, cars, mobile devices, clothes and shoes, grander and more luxurious vacations. The devil loves to convince us to work harder and harder for these things, which may bring some temporary gratification, but in the end leaves us exhausted. The devil loves using worldly allurement to draw us away from that which truly gives us life--prayer, service, devotion, worship, and communion—that is genuine encounter with God, and genuine authentic human contact. So how blessed are you when you are poor, detached, dispassionate about the worldly and rich in the things of God.

Okay. Blessed, fortunate, divinely joyful are you when you are hungry. Hunger is linked to the sensual. So, how fortunate when you are not addicted to sensual pleasure. Food and drink and sex are good, and the ability to enjoy them in their proper context is good. Catholics are not puritanical. God pronounced these created things good. But good, in their proper context, moderated by reason. Pleasure is good, but not God. What sinful man tends to do, is to make them into gods. We attach our infinite desire for God to these created things and bend our wills to obtain them inordinately. But because these things do not satisfy our deepest desire for God, it’s no surprise that addictions emerge around these things: food addiction, drug and alcohol addiction, sex and pornography addiction—Addictions which cause great damage to the psyche, to families, and to souls.

But blessed are you when hunger, when you are detached from these sensual pleasures, when you don’t let the pursuit of physical pleasure control your life. Jesus came to set us free from slavery to the sensual.

Thirdly, Blessed, fortunate are you who now weep. The weeping of the righteous in scripture is often linked to the acknowledgement of sin. Isaiah cried out and wept: Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips” Isaiah wept because he was unable to come into the presence of God because of his sins. And so, blessed are you when your recognize your sinfulness and weep for your sins and seek conversion.

What does the world weep over? Certainly not over offending God! One can’t help but think of the recent legalization of abortion up to and including the birth of the child in several states for any reason. As a kid, in popular culture there was at least some acknowledging that abortion was not ideal. The slogan was “make abortion safe, legal, and rare”. In 2019 we hear slogans like “shout your abortion” or “abortion on demand without apology”. People not weeping but reveling in the fact that innocent life is murdered. The world weeps not for the destruction of its moral compass. 

Rather, Christians blessed are you when you weep over sin. We do well to make spiritual reparation through prayer and fasting for sins that cry out to heaven and for the conversion of those who revel over and celebrate sin.

And those who weep over sin, the Lord says, will one day laugh; those who acknowledge and repent of sin in this life will rejoice in the world to come.

And finally, blessed are you when you are persecuted for Christ. “Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!” The world wants to silence the Christian Gospel, wants us to compromise the moral teachings of Jesus, to water down the content of the faith, to change what has been received from Christ and the apostles. And we will face resistance when we trust in Jesus.

But Jesus promises blessedness, eternal life, and joy to those who persevere in the truth, who are willing to undergo suffering to courageously defend, patiently explain, clearly articulate, and unambiguously live the Christian faith in the face of error and confusion and persecution. We proclaim the Gospel of Life in the midst of a culture of death, but we do so joyfully, knowing that our efforts are made for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

15th Sunday in OT 2018 - Redeemed by His Blood

One of the most important dimensions of the seminary formation of priests is learning how to minister in a bunch of different settings.  We learn how to minister in hospitals and nursing homes in jails and at schools, and the people who hope to help in each of these settings each have their own set of challenges. 

One particularly challenging area is ministry to those who struggle with addiction. My eighth year of seminary, I was able to minister at an addiction treatment center primarily for adolescents with addiction, but I would also meet some parents who also had addiction problems. 

And I can remember an adult woman I met in recovery who had been, what she called “a hopeless alcoholic.”  She had been through a number of programs, and had attained sobriety for a while, but she would always end up getting drunk again. She told me how she reached where she really hit rock bottom. She had fallen-off-the-wagon and had gone on a drinking binge lasting several months in Chicago; she woke up one morning in an alley next to a dumpster, not remembering how she got there. And in utter desperation she had decided to take her life—she planned to jump in front of a train.

And on her way to take her own life, she passed by St. Peter’s Church, and for a reason she couldn’t quite explain she went into the Church and into the Confessional.  And she told the Confessor Priest that she was in such desperation that she was going to kill herself.  “Why do you want to end your life?” the priest asked her.  She said, “because I am a hopeless drunk, I am a bum, I am an addict. I am good for nothing.”  And she said that that priest answered with great vigor and said, “No you are not.  You are a child of God and made in God’s image and likeness, bought back from evil, from darkness and death at the cost of His only begotten Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  That’s who you are.  You also happen to have a severe drinking problem.  But maybe, if we begin to work on who you are as a Christian, the bad things that you do will begin to take care of themselves.” This woman, who I met, here in Cleveland, said that was the turning point in her life. 

What that priest told her, was a restatement of what we just heard in our second reading. It is in Christ, through His blood, that we have been redeemed, and our sins forgiven. You have been chosen, destined by adoption, to be holy and blameless.”

This is a message that we must all take to heart: You and I, Christians, are sacred, because you and I have been purchased by the blood of the Son of God, bought back from evil, from darkness and death.

What does it mean that you are sacred? I can think of a story to illustrate: In Virginia a few years back, there was a squabble over a parcel of land. A group of developers had purchased a parcel of land and wanted to build on it a shopping center. But there was a problem, this piece of land was venerated as a Civil War Battlefield upon which was fought the great Battle of Manassas. Well, when these developers announced their plans to build a shopping mall, and a cry went up from the people who said, “your can’t do that. This ground, this earth is sacred, because the blood of brave soldiers had been spilled here.” That which is held sacred, we make every effort to protect from profanation.

Why do Catholics work to defend innocent life in the womb with such vigor? Because innocent life, too is sacred. Why do we work to protect and defend the institution of marriage, because marriage is sacred.

What St. Paul is saying, dear Christians is that you have become sacred ground: your minds, your wills, your bodies, your souls have been sanctified by the blood of Christ through baptism, and when you really believe that, you make effort to protect it from profanation.

What had made the blood of the Manassas battlefield sacred was the blood of the soldiers who died there. But, the Christian, has been covered, has been washed, with the Blood of the Innocent Lamb, the Incarnate God.The Lord Jesus shed his precious blood and gave his life to redeem us, to save us from hell, and has made us adopted sons and daughters of God. “It through His blood that we have been redeemed and our sins forgiven.”

Pope Leo the Great encouraged the Church to remember this often. He said, “Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God's own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God's kingdom.” Whenever you are tempted, whenever you begin to believe that you are a hopeless case, call to mind that you have been washed and sanctified by the blood of Christ.

There is an old southern Baptist hymn that goes “would you be free from your burden of sin?  There’s power in the blood, would you over evil a victory win?  There’s wonderful power in the blood.  Would you be free from your passion and pride? There’s power in the blood.  Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide.  There’s power in the blood.”

The Month of July is traditionally dedicated to the Precious Blood of the Lord, and we do well to meditate frequently and thank God for the Precious Blood shed for us, the blood which has the power to redeem the gravest of sinners.

One such meditation is that beautiful litany, the Litany of the Precious Blood: listen:

Blood of Christ, poured out on the Cross, save us
Blood of Christ, price of our salvation, save us
Blood of Christ, without which there is no forgiveness, save us
Blood of Christ, Eucharistic drink and refreshment of souls, save us
Blood of Christ, stream of mercy, save us
Blood of Christ, victor over demons, save us

The blood of Christ has the power to break the most powerful addiction…if you let it. It has the power to impel the most timid soul to be a prophet in the world, like Amaziah in our first reading…if you let it. The blood of Christ has the power to transform ordinary fishermen, like the Apostles, into Princes and Heralds of the Gospel…if you let it.. The blood of Christ has the power to make you and me into great instruments of God, even in this increasingly secular age, and holy and without blemish…if we let it.

As we continue this Eucharistic Sacrifice, offering again the sacrifice of the Son’s Blood to The Father, let us be renewed and nourished, strengthened, sanctified and saved by that same Precious Blood for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

23rd Sunday in OT 2017 - Intervention

A few years ago, a television show premiered on A&E called “Intervention”. The show follows one or two participants who are abusing or severely addicted to drugs or alcohol. Their relatives and friends are interviewed who detail the effects the drug or alcohol addiction has had on the family—the sadness, the grief, the lies that often accompany addiction, the concern for the harm the addict is doing to themselves. A trained intervention specialist then prepares the family for staging an intervention, in which the family and friends gently confront the addict about their addiction. At the intervention, the addict is given a choice: enter a rehabilitation program or risk losing contact and financial assistance from their relatives. From what I’ve read, the show has had tremendous success in getting help for addicts and their families.

This method of loving confrontation is biblical. As we heard today, If your brother falls into sin, try to help them, confront them, if they don’t listen to you, bring another with you. A family effort is often needed in helping someone who has fallen into addiction, sin, or unhealthy behavior. Sometimes our Lord waits until two or three are gathered in his name, to make his power known.

The passage we heard today, in fact, immediately follows the parable of the lost sheep, in which Jesus tells us about the love of the heavenly Father, how the Father sends the Son to seek out the lost sheep, he’ll even leave behind 99 other sheep for a time, in order to search out and find the one lost sheep that have gone astray.

And one of the ways God seeks out the lost sheep, is through us: through family members who lovingly and gently confront those who struggle with addiction to drugs, gambling, pornography, internet shopping, video games, parents who act as watchmen over their children, as we heard in the prophet Ezekiel today. If a family member stops going to Church, ignores Church teaching, blasphemes in public, we have a duty to gently correct them.

The point of correcting people when they fall into sin isn’t to prove that we are holier than they are, the point is concern for their souls, and helping them to be the people God made us to be.
I’ve had some personal experience with this: In seminary, I volunteered at a drug and alcohol treatment facility for teenagers, and I would participate in group family counseling sessions, in which parents and relatives would gather, in a very gentle setting, they would share with their teenager how the addiction has brought harm to the addict and the family life.

Most priests are not trained intervention specialists or drug counselors, but for families facing these issues, the Church can help connect your family with those with this expertise.
God loves the sinner, God love the addict. In fact, many people I’ve known who have struggled with addiction have great intellectual gifts, have tremendously large hearts. Sometimes they turn to addiction because they feel emotions like grief so deeply they turn to other substances to numb their pain. Though they act in unlovable ways, the addict is a child of God, loved by God.

Intervention, fraternal correction, seeks to help people who sometimes become incapable of helping themselves, who have fallen into a cycle of hurting themselves and their families, who have started making self-destructive choices. Part of being pro-life, is to help people when they are making anti-life decisions, choices that are destructive to the spiritual life, emotional life, physical life, or family life.

In the Reading from Romans today, St. Paul teaches that all the 10 commandments, don’t commit adultery, don’t break the sabbath day, don’t commit murder, don’t steal or covet, can all be summed-up by the command: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Fraternal correction, confronting the sinner, the addict, is done out of love. Parents correcting their children when they act selfishly, spouses gently correcting spouses when they act selfishly, correction, also called, rebuke, is done out of love. Today’s Gospel is clear that we are to to help each other to become the people God made us to be.

In becoming the people God made us to be, it is also important to look to holy examples.  We of course first, and foremost, look to the example of the Lord. We read and reflect upon the Scripture stories of the Lord, we keep the great image of the Lord’s sacrifice before our eyes, the crucifix, so that we can know his love, and follow his example of patience, mercy, self-sacrificial love.

Second to Our Blessed Lord, we look to the example of humility and forbearance of His Blessed Mother. Her boundless charity and her lowliness are virtues to emulated by every Christian.
Thirdly we look to the example of the Saints. The Saints are our great teachers, Ordinary People, fishermen, farmers, widows, humble priests and religious, artists, ordinary people, who God calls to extraordinary holiness.

Beginning this Tuesday night, I will be showing over in the Harvest Room a video series called “Catholicism: The Pivotal Players”. This series explores the lives of some Ordinary People who answered the call to use their gifts and talents for the building up of the kingdom of God—people like Francis of Assisi, G.K Chesterton, Catherine of Siena, Thomas Aquinas, and Michaelangelo. I encourage you to attend this free adult-education opportunity.

If Jesus Christ has the power to break the bonds of death, he can lead those enslaved to addiction an sin to freedom.

May each of us be humble enough to be open to the correction we need to grow in holiness, that we may help others become the people God made them to be, that we may live in the freedom of their children of God and receive an everlasting inheritance for the Glory of God and salvation of souls.

Homily: 5th Sunday of Lent 2017 - Rotting souls raised to life

 On this fifth Sunday of Lent we hear another of these magnificent stories from the Gospel of John.  Two weeks ago we heard the story of the woman at the well.  Caught up in a rhythm of sin and thirsting for God , she encountered the Lord Jesus, who said to her, “I will give you living water, which alone can satisfy”.  She represents all of us, all thirsting for God, but all to often trying to quench that thirst in all the wrong places.

Last week we heard of the man born blind.  Again, he is all of us, born in the blindness of sin.  Our minds so often clouded and confused, even in our attempts to live righteously.  Jesus says to him and to all of us, “I am the light of the world.”  If you want to see rightly, be grafted on to me.
 
As we near the end of Lent, these stories in John’s Gospel move toward a sort of crescendo.  He is living water, he says, “I am the light”.  And today Jesus speaks the greatest of the “I am” statements.  He says, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

What is our God interested in?  Life!  One of my favorite quotations from the early Church fathers is from St. Ireneus of Lyons, who said, Gloria Dei Homo Vivens, “the glory of God is the human being fully alive.”  Jesus himself said, I came that they might have life, and have it to abundance.
Christ died, that we may live, free from sin, full of divine life.

God’s glory, what gives God happiness, is that we are fully alive.  Conversely, what saddens the heart of God is when we continue to allow death to reign in us at any level, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

We heard in our first reading about God’s desire to free us from the powers of the grave: “I will open your graves and have you rise from them.”  Of course, this can refer to the resurrection of our bodies when Christ returns. But he’s not just speaking of our final resting place here. The grave also wherever the powers of sin and evil and death reign in us: an addiction, a habitual sin, an inability or unwillingness to forgive, anger and bitterness, perversion, fear of leaving behind the comfortable to follow Christ more devoutly, lack of fervor for the spiritual life…the grave is whatever limits the life of God in you. Think of laying in a grave, there is no place to move, you are constricted, unable to move, tied up, and God says, from your graves, I will have you rise up.”

God’s desire to raise us to new life, can be seen in our wonderful Gospel story of the raising of Lazarus. But, Lazarus is not the only story of Jesus raising the dead in the Gospels. There are three raisings. Can you think of the other two?  The first one is the daughter of Jairus. Remember the little girl who died in her home when Jesus was on the way to heal her?  The second is the son of the widow of Naim.  Jesus sees the widow weeping as they brought out the body of her son, and Jesus is moved to raise him from the dead.  The third is of course, Lazarus.

St. Augustine offered a spiritual reading of these three encounters with the dead.

Because Jairus’ daughter dies in her house, St. Augustine says that her death symbolizes the sort of spiritual death that remains locked up in us, the sort of sins that poisons us from the inside: the resentments, the old grudges.  They aren’t necessarily expressed in words or actions, they just sort of fester within us, poisoning our thoughts, and our wills, and our imagination.  These are the sins we do in private—though no sin is private to God, of course. Jesus raises this little girl, just as he wants to heal us from all of our interior sinful attitudes.

Secondly, the son of the widow of Naim.  He had died and was being carried outside the house to the cemetery. St. Augustine says, he symbolizes the sins, that have begun to express themselves in action.  When the interior anger and resentment, selfishness and lust bubble over in words of actions. But Jesus forgives these too.

The third person Jesus raises from the dead, his friend Lazarus.  Lazarus had been carried out of the house and placed in a tomb.  By the time Jesus gets there, Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days.  His sister, famously says, when Jesus instructs them to roll away the stone that blocks the tomb, “but Lord, surely, there will be a stench.”

St. Augustine says that Lazarus in his grave, symbolizes that evil, that spiritual death, that not only has come out of the heart in words and actions, but has established itself as a habitual.  Now, the anger, the hatred, the violence, the lust, have taken root, and have become such a part of my life and my activity, that, like Lazarus in the tomb, there is a stench, and it’s affecting the people around me.  That anger, addiction, selfishness or lust now affects the well-being of the family. Neighbors begin to avoid us because of our stench.

There was a saint, Saint Christina would become nauseated when in the presence of someone who had an unrepented mortal sin. She could sense that their souls were dead and rotting.

So we have these three types of sin, the interior, the exterior, and that…well…stinkiest, ugliest sorts of sin.  But, at the heart of today’s Gospel, is the message that though our sins are foul, Jesus draws near to us, to bring life. Jesus goes to the smelliest, ugliest soul and invites them back to life.

From time to time, a priest hears someone say, “Father, believe me, what I’ve done is so bad, even God can’t forgive me.” But, our Gospel today says, “false, wrong!”  Nobody, not even those who are entrenched in evil are beyond the reach of the forgiving power of Christ.  He goes into those deepest darkest places, to bring us out of the disgusting muck of sin.

Jesus wept for Lazarus, under the sway of the powers of death.  It breaks God’s heart when we aren’t fully alive.  He doesn’t weep out of anger with us; he weeps when sin and death take his friends.

This Thursday, we will have a penance service. Through Sacramental Confession new life is available to the most hardened sinner. Every Catholic should go to Confession during the Lenten season. If you’ve already confessed, thanks be to God. If you haven’t come and allow Jesus to raise you out of the grave of sin and dysfunction, to release you from the constrictions of the grave, and to the new and flourishing life of grace, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.