34th Week in OT 2019 - Tuesday - The kingdom that shall never be destroyed

Yesterday, we heard how Daniel, because of his faithfulness and obedience to God was given “the understanding of all visions and dreams.”  Today we hear how Daniel, uses this gift, and interprets a dream of King Nebuchadnezzar.

Through the prophet Daniel, God wanted King Nebuchadnezzar to know that his kingdom, so dear to him, could and would undergo destruction.  Other kingdoms would take its place, but they, too, would last only a time.  The prophecy of Daniel foreshadowed the words of Jesus, when he spoke of the Temple of Jerusalem:  it, like everything built by human beings, will be destroyed. 
We are not to put our hope in earthly institutions, buildings, or kingdoms.

But then, Daniel prophesied about a kingdom established by God Himself, a kingdom that would never be destroyed. Daniel did not know that he was speaking about the Church: not church buildings, of course,  but the Church herself, made up of “living stones”.  And this kingdom, “the kingdom of truth and life, the kingdom of holiness and grace, the kingdom of justice, love and peace,” as is described in the Eucharistic Preface for the Solemnity of Christ the King, this kingdom is eternal.

The Letter to the Hebrews states, “we who are receiving the unshakable kingdom should have gratitude, with which we should offer worship pleasing to God in reverence and awe.” Gratitude for the blessings of life, gratitude seen in works of self-sacrifice, gratitude for salvation is a necessary hallmark of the members of the eternal kingdom.

Members of the eternal kingdom have a great responsibility, to ensure that we retain membership in it. For membership in God’s kingdom is not based on race or social status or place of birth, but on union with Christ through grace, through faith, hope, and love, and gratitude.

The Greek word for gratitude is of course “Eucharistia”—Eucharist. The gathering for Eucharist to offer pleasing worship—worship in which we unite our lives in reverence and awe to the sacrifice of Christ— is a hallmark of membership in the eternal kingdom.

May our gratitude for membership in the eternal kingdom through Christ be seen in works of love today, works which build up the kingdom made of living stones through the preaching of the Gospel for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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Lord, sanctify your bishops and priests, and grant them courage to preach the Gospel in its fullness.

Lord, make the lives of parents examples of faith to inspire their children to seek first your heavenly kingdom.

Lord, bring all those who have fallen away back to the sacraments, help them to repent of their sins and desire the life that can only come from you.

Lord, make us truly grateful for salvation and for the blessings that fill our lives.

Lord, bring comfort to the sick and suffering, charity and care to the destitute and down-trodden, be present through your church to the miserable.

Lord, welcome into your kingdom all the faithful departed, those whose names are written in our parish necrology, all clergy and religious, and X for whom this mass is offered.

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.

28th Sunday in OT 2019 - Prayers of Petition and Eucharistic Gratitude

In ancient Israel, no one was more pitiable than a leper.

The book of Leviticus prescribed that in order to avoid contact with others, the leper had to shout “Unclean! Unclean!” as they passed by and couldn’t come within 50 yards of a healthy person. They were prohibited from entering towns, they were cut off from their family, they were barred from Temple worship. Theirs was a life of total isolation: no friendship or family, no sense of belonging, no affection. And in today’s gospel we meet 10 of them.

10 Lepers stood off at a distance and shouted to Jesus. But instead of shouting “Unclean” they cry out to be cleansed. “Jesus, master, have pity on us!” Their cry echoes so many of the psalms in which the suffering cry out to God for healing, strength, relief, and protection. And Jesus heard them and heeded their plea.

In Jewish law, in order for a leper to be readmitted to society, a priest had to declare them cured of their disease. So, Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests. And on their way to the priest, the 10 were miraculously healed. The healing of the 10 lepers in the Gospel parallels the miraculous healing of Naaman the Syrian in the first reading.

Naaman seeks out healing from the God of Israel. Following the instruction of Elisha the prophet, Naaman plunges himself into the waters of the Jordan and emerges healed. God answers the plea for mercy, not just of a jew, but a foreigner.

What about you? What is your plea for mercy? What plea for mercy did you bring to Mass today?  Mercy for yourself, for your family, for our nation, for the world? The experience of suffering brings us to our knees. Prayer for mercy is one reason we come to Church, isn’t it? To plea for mercy? Mercy to end an illness, to end an addiction, to end family division, to end faithlessness, to end our modern day versions of leprosy which bring pain and isolation.

One of the reasons it is good to get to Mass a few minutes early, is so that you have the opportunity to recollect why you are here. Before the beginning of Mass, we do well to articulate to God our personal petitions for mercy, to entrust ourselves to the mercy of God, to plea for miracles.

This is going to sound somewhat strange, but the moment I typed that word, ‘miracles’ this morning as I was composing my homily. I received an email from a parishioner. “Father, a miracle just happened. My liver was failing, and I went to the doctors and they told me I was going to die. A week after you prayed over me, I go to the hospital and the ER doctor told me that my liver is fine, I’m not going to die. Weird, I know. Either that was a miracle or the doctors made a mistake. I had many people praying for me.” Thanks be to God, right? A miracle in our midst!

Miracles are real. Just as the miraculous healing in the Gospel signaled that in Jesus, the kingdom of God was breaking in to human history, modern day miracles are granted that we may know that God is still at work in our lives, that we ought to entrust ourselves to God’s providence and mercy.
Yet, in the Gospel today, the miraculous healing was only the first part of the story.

Having realized that he had been healed through the intervention of Jesus, the one leper, a Samaritan, returns to Jesus to offer his profound gratitude. Again, like Naaman in our first reading, returning to Elisha, confessing the true God of Israel, the Samaritan leper in the Gospel returns to Jesus, and falls on his face before Jesus, recognizing Jesus as God and King.

Here is a second reason we come to Mass every week, to fall prostrate before our God and King who has brought about the healing, not of our bodies, but a more important healing, the healing of our souls from sin. We come to Mass week after week to thank God for the saving grace we received at baptism, the grace won for us through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.

Thanksgiving is at the heart of the Christian life. You’ve no doubt heard the Greek New Testament word for Thanksgiving: it’s the word “Eucharist”…”Eucharistia”, found in our Gospel today; the leper fell on his face before Jesus and offered Eucharistia. It is not a coincidence that “Eucharist” became the word the early Christians gave to their weekly gathering at the altar. They gathered, as do we, to offer God humble thanksgiving for our salvation in Christ Jesus. In Christ, God has done for us, what we could not do for ourselves. He has healed us of the leprosy of sin, which brought alienation from heaven, and isolation from true communion with each other.

Without coming to Mass every week to offer eucharistic thanks, we begin to take our salvation for granted, we take Jesus’ sacrifice for granted, his pain and his suffering offered for us. Without mass, we begin to take God for granted and begin to act as if we are entitled to heaven. We are not. We are not entitled to that which is lost through sin. Without thanksgiving we are like those other 9 lepers who were healed, but did not return to Jesus to offer thanks.

So we come to Mass every week, thanking God for the gift of our salvation. And we thank God for the blessings we’ve received throughout the week and throughout the life. Another reason to get to mass early, to take the time to count our blessings, to recall how we have been blessed this week, how prayers have been answered in our life and in our family, for the health we do have, the safety we have received, the goodness we have enjoyed. Thank God for those who recovered from surgery, for the time you got to spend with those who bring you happiness, for the sweet memories you shared with your spouse, for the word of encouragement when you really needed it, the ability to experience the beauty of nature or a symphony or a church.

Something happens when we offer God true thanksgiving from the heart. Resentment begins to melt away. Envy over the things we don’t have is replaced with gratitude for the things we do. We experience joy over the presence of God dwelling within us. The praise that filled the heart of Jesus begins to fill our heart.

Count your blessings daily, thank God daily, fall on your face daily before the God of Mercy, petition God daily, for the needs of the world and the needs of the Church, pray for miracles, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Thanksgiving Day 2018 - Harvest Feasts and Eucharistic Thanksgiving

Throughout the course of mankind's history, the Earth's bountiful harvest has been celebrated with ceremonies of giving thanks. The ancient pagans celebrated the fall harvest as particularly important because it was a matter of life and death; the fall harvest was essential for the survival of the cold and fruitless winter.

Each autumn, the ancient Greeks celebrated the three-day festival of Thesmosphoria to honor Demeter,  the goddess of grain, and to plead that springtime, characterized by Demeter’s daughter Persephone, would come quickly. The Romans celebrated their autumn festival with music, parades, games and sports and a thanksgiving feast—making our modern thanksgiving festivities closer to the Romans than the Pilgrims. Israel also celebrated an autumn harvest festival—the feast of tabernacles—Sukkoth, an eight-day festival of thanksgiving following Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. Atonement proceeded thanksgiving, just like it does in the Holy Mass which begins with the penitential rite.

John’s Gospel records Our Blessed Lord traveling to Jerusalem for the festival of thanksgiving, as he must have done many times in his life. It was on the last day of the Jewish feast of thanksgiving, that the Lord utilized some feast-language and pronounced , “If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink.”

For Christians, every time we gather at the altar, we gather first and foremost as an act of thanksgiving. The earliest Christians used the Greek word for thanksgiving—Eucharistia—to describe their gathering on the Lord’s Day—to give thanksgiving to God for the gift of salvation, which Jesus won for us on the cross. At the Eucharistic feast, the fruits of the earthly harvest, wheat and grapes, bread and wine, are transformed into the very saving body and blood of Jesus, the one, true Lord of the Harvest. In an ancient prayer the Church acclaims the mystery of the Eucharist: "O sacred banquet in which Christ is received as food, the memory of his Passion is renewed, the soul is filled with grace and a pledge of the life to come is given to us."

Gratitude, Eucharistia, is such a fundamental Christian attitude. Without gratitude, without Eucharist, we begin to take for granted the blessings of our life, we begin to forget about the author and giver of those blessings, we begin to forget about the sacrifice without which the gates of heaven would have remained closed. Without gratitude, without Eucharist, we begin to forget that we are to use the time we’ve been given, the blessings we’ve been given, for God’s will, not our own.

Many of our contemporaries gather today with barely a hint of the ancient or Christian impulse to return thanksgiving to God. Much like in the Gospel today, only one out of ten lepers who had received healing from Jesus returned giving thanks. Jesus praises his faith. Faith that acknowledges that blessing, healing, fruitfulness, life comes from God, is praised by Jesus. In fact, it was only that one whom Jesus pronounced saved, go forth, your faithful gratitude has saved you.

So we rightly gather today, for those with faith and those without, to give thanksgiving to God for the earthly harvest which sustains our physical lives, and the more important spiritual bounty which sustains our spiritual lives, the eucharist, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet to come.

May each of your family gatherings be blessed today, with a deep sense of gratitude to God, may they be free from turmoil, division, and discord, and deepen the bonds of charity between all with whom you gather. May we use the time we’ve been given, the blessings and freedoms we enjoy, to gather souls to Christ, that they may know his mercy, peace, and joy, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the pilgrim Church on earth may shine as a light to the nations.  We pray to the Lord.

That all people of good will may work together against attacks on religious liberty and the Christian Faith.  We pray to the Lord.

For the protection of our armed forces, police, and firemen and all those who risk their lives to preserve the security of our country.  We pray to the Lord.

For the safety of travelers, the peaceful resolution of all family divisions and national hostilities, for protection from disease, and harmony amongst all those who gather together today.

For the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the sick, the aged, the lonely, the grieving, those who are out of work, those who are facing financial difficulties, those with addictions, and the imprisoned: that God will draw close to them, and bless them with grace and peace.

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, and for Chester Trzcinski for whom this mass is offered.

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.