1st Sunday of Advent 2022 - Promises of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love

 

Happy Advent Everyone. 

If you were to pick up the bible, and turn to nearly any page of the holy book, you would be able to discover either God making a promise or God fulfilling a promise. 

God makes his first promise to mankind immediately after the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden. God makes a promise that the evil unleashed through sin would be undone by the offspring of the Woman—a promise of a savior dating back to the very moment when mankind was in need of one.  

To Abraham, our father in faith, God made several promises: God promised to make Abraham’s descendants as countless as the stars, that all the nations of the world would come to be blessed through Abraham and his descendants, that God’s people would come to possess land—the promised land—forever, and that the enemies of God would be cast down through the seed of Abraham. Promises that would come to be fulfilled in Christ and his holy Church to which countless members are a blessing to the world. 

After wandering through the desert for 40 years, God promised that all those who search for Him would be able to find him—a promise fulfilled in your life and mine, and all those with the name of Christian who have found God through Christ. 

God promised, indeed, that His love would never fail—that no sin is so great that we would lose His love. Here is the promise that sin could be forgiven and the wounds within humanity would be healed. 

In the Psalms and prophets and the accumulated wisdom literature of ancient Israel, repeated over and over is the promise that those who allow the Word of God and the wisdom of God to light their way, the will know joy, delight, guidance, comfort and peace.

In the first reading, the first scripture of this first Sunday of the first week of Advent, we hear a powerful promise made the Isaiah the prophet. In fact, one might say, that is the job of the prophet—to dictate God’s promises to the people who need to hear them. 

And the promise Isaiah speaks to us is a promise of peace—of a whole world of saints—all the nations of the world, together worshipping the same God, the true God, in great joy in a world without war: They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again

Next Sunday, we’ll hear how this promise of peace will be so all-encompassing that it will even extend to the animals. The wolf will be the guest of the lamb, the calf and the lion will roam the earth side-by-side, instead of one being food for the other. Here is a promise of  the experience of God’s peace, and harmony, and joy.

Does that sound like our world today? Well, far from it. But that is because Isaiah’s vision is a promise of what will yet come to pass. It is a vision of a promise yet fulfilled. A promise that will be fulfilled when Christ comes again, his final Advent. 

But we believe he will come again, on good authority, his own. “I will come back again and take you to myself” he said at the Last Supper. That promise of the Lord’s return will come to pass, just as his first coming, promised by Isaiah when he foretold that the virgin would give birth to a son, the Lord’s first Advent came to pass.

The Lord tells us to prepare ourselves for his return in the Gospel today: we do not know the day nor the hour of the Lord’s return. Readiness for the Lord’s return. The whole Christian life, in a sense, the whole purpose of our faith, is about cultivating readiness—being awakened to the truth about reality—and conforming our lives to that Truth. Nothing could be more important than that; it is a matter, as the Lord explains, of being taken with him into the eternal city of heaven, or being left behind, outside heaven’s gates, excluded from God’s presence, for ever.

St. Paul on this first advent Sunday, guides us on how to prepare for the Lord’s return by casting off , what he calls “the works of darkness”—ridding our lives of lust, drunkenness, rivalry, and jealousy. “Make no provision for the flesh” Paul tells us. We must seek to turn away from our fallen, sinful tendencies and selfish desires and make “no provision” for them…meaning, we aren’t giving them room in our lives to grow, we are remaining vigilant against putting ourselves in the near occasion of sin, we avert our eyes from what leads to sin. When temptation arises, we don’t feed the fire by giving in, but turning to the Lord for help and putting on the armor of light—truth, prayer, faith.

During Advent, we prepare for Christmas and we prepare for the Lord’s final return, by putting on Christ—imitating his virtues—his own love for the poor, his own devotion to the will of the Father, the truth he teaches, the commands he makes, the prayer he practices and teaches, his enmity toward sin and selfishness. 

Throughout this holy season, the beautiful promises of God are reiterated to us anew. The four candles of the Advent wreath stand for four promises: the first candle represents the promise of increased hope, that in a world filled with such chaos, you will have more hope, if you prepare your heart for Jesus to enter it more deeply. The second candle represents the promise of peace—that in a world filled with so much hostility, and frantic, frenetic activity and exhaustion, you will have more peace—spiritual peace; if you prepare your heart for Jesus to enter it more deeply.; the third candle represents God’s promise of increased joy—that in a world with so much sadness and suffering—you will experience greater joy, if you prepare your heart for Jesus to enter it more deeply. And the fourth candle represents greater love—in world where there is loneliness, where God often seems distant, where we fall into sin that makes us feel quite unlovable—you will experience greater love,  if you prepare your heart for Jesus to enter it more deeply.

I promise, the Church promises, that if you seek these things—hope, peace, joy, and love, this Advent,  you will find them, knock and the door will be opened. I promise. For the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Sacred Heart 2018 - The Flesh of His Heart

In 1996 in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, then under the care of Archbishop Jorge Bergolio, now Pope Francis, an investigation was conducted of a possible Eucharistic miracle. A consecrated Host was found on the ground and soon placed in a glass of water to dissolve. Days later, the Eucharist hadn’t dissolved at all — it had turned into bloody Flesh. It was stored in the tabernacle for three years, and when it did not dissolve, Archbishop Bergolio summoned a neurophysiologist to have samples from the Host examined in a laboratory environment.

The scientist brought the sample to San Francisco without telling anyone there what it was or where it came from. Blind testing revealed the samples were constituted of human heart muscle, specifically from the myocardium of the left ventricle. Further, the tests showed the blood was human, with human DNA, and of the rare AB-positive type — the same as found on the Shroud of Turin.

A similar miracle was recently confirmed as authentic in Poland. In this case too, a Host had fallen to the ground, so it was placed in water to dissolve. Not long afterward, the Eucharist began turning red, as if bloody.

The bishop allowed scientific tests to be conducted, which indicated that the host had become human tissue, specifically heart muscle, and more specifically heart muscle, under great strain, as if it were undergoing great agony.

We celebrated last Sunday, the great gift of the Eucharist, how the Lord left us the Eucharist as the memorial of his suffering and death. These miracles in a sense link last Sunday’s feast with today’s feast of the Sacred Heart: that the Eucharist comes from the heart of Christ. The Eucharistic Preface today, in fact, calls the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the wellspring of the Church’s Sacraments. The Sacraments are born of the love of Christ, the heart of Christ, who willingly undergoes the excruciating agony of crucifixion, that we might be redeemed from our sinful rejection of God, of which all men are guilty.

His love encompasses all. Salvation is offered to all. The Gospel is preached to all. And the Sacraments are offered to all who will humble themselves to acknowledge and confess their sins and to profess the Christian faith of Christ’s one true Church. No one is excluded from the invitation to repent and believe.

Now some people want salvation without repentance, and some want it without belief, some people want it without engaging in the Sacramental life of the Church. So we pray for them, we do reparation for them, and we share the truth of the Gospel with them, that all may come to drink from the wellspring of Charity, the heart of Christ, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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That the Church may be continually cleansed and sanctified by the blood and water that gave us new birth.

For all who have fallen away from the Church, for those who lack faith, and in reparation to the Sacred Heart for all sin and all blasphemy.

For all those who are sick or burdened in any way, may come to know and experience the refreshment of Christ’s love.

For the repose of the souls of our beloved dead, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, for the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, for the deceased priests and religious of the diocese of Cleveland, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom.

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers, we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to the supplications of those who call on you. Through Christ our Lord

3rd Week of Easter 2018 - Friday - Hail, True Flesh

There is a short Eucharistic hymn from the 14th century, composed by an unknown author, possibly Pope Innocent VI, the fifth of the Avignon Popes. The hymn is called Ave Verum Corpus. It was sung often during benediction, when the host would be elevated in the monstrance for our adoration. While gazing upon, what appears to be ordinary bread, in the ornate golden monstrance, the choir would sing Ave Verum Corpus— Hail true flesh born of the Virgin Mary who having truly suffered, was sacrificed on the cross for mankind, whose pierced side flowed with water and blood: Be for us a foretaste of the Heavenly banquet in the trial of death. 

St. Thomas Aquinas maintained that believing that bread is transformed—trans-substantiated—into the flesh of the Savior is a difficult doctrine. The Eucharist does not look like Christ, nor his flesh; thus it tests our faith—the doctrine requires faith.  But we believe it because this teaching comes from the Lord himself.

"The bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world"

The flesh and blood offered on the cross for our salvation becomes present on the altar under the appearance of bread and wine. And as the Lord purchased our salvation—our eternal life—with his pierced flesh and outpoured blood, that same flesh and blood continues to be the life of the Church.
Every Christian is called to imitate Christ’s outpoured love, his self-sacrifice for the life of the world. Therefore, the Eucharist is the necessary food for our Easter mission: to proclaim, courageously Christ’s love, in all of our day-to-day encounters.

As Pope Benedict writes, “The Eucharist, since it embraces the concrete, everyday existence of the believer, makes possible, day by day, the progressive transfiguration of all those called by grace to reflect the image of the Son of God. There is nothing authentically human – our thoughts and affections, our words and deeds – that does not find in the sacrament of the Eucharist the form it needs to be lived to the full. (Sacramentum Caritatis, 72).”

May our thoughts and affections, words and deeds, our bodies and souls, continue to be transformed by this saving Sacrament, the True Flesh given for the life of the world, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the Church will deepen in her devotion to the Eucharistic sacrifice which is the source and summit of our Christian life.  We pray to the Lord.

That the redemptive power of Christ’s Eucharistic sacrifice will extend to the hearts and minds of all those who govern peoples and nations.  We pray to the Lord.

That the Eucharist will be for priests the source of their joy and their deeper configuration to Jesus Christ.  We pray to the Lord.

That the Christ’s Eucharistic Self-Sacrifice will be experienced in all marriages, in all business relations, in all daily encounters, among friends, strangers, and enemies.  We pray to the Lord.

For those who live in want: that Jesus the Bread of Life will be their sustenance, and that Christians may bring the justice and mercy of Christ to all those in need.  We pray to the Lord.

For all those who have died, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, for all who have fought and died for our country’s freedom, and for [intention below], for whom this Mass is offered.

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers, we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to the supplications of those who call on you. Through Christ our Lord.