September 16 2022 - Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian - Seeking out the lost & lapsed

 

In last Sunday’s Gospel, we heard three parables of rejoicing when the lost are found. Joy over the finding of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. 

Our Lord told these parables in response to the pharisees criticism that he dined with sinners, as a way of signaling that he has come precisely for sinners, and that the pharisees should be rejoicing over this fact. 

The saints we honor today, a martyred Pope and a martyred bishop from the 3rd century were church leaders who were concerned with the reconciliation of sinners. 

During a particularly violent persecution of the Church, led by the roman emperor Decius, many Christians, in order to save their lives, underwent the public, state-mandated ritual of offering incense to the Roman Gods.  Others, trying to get around the actual burning of incense, bribed authorities to obtain a document which stated that they had offered such sacrifices.  But that document till said, basically, “I deny Christ”. It’s still a public act—still an act of apostasy.

Now the Gospels are pretty clear that we are to hold fast to Christ to the end; we are to publicly proclaim him as Lord despite worldly pressures.

As the persecutions died down, the question arose: can these apostates be readmitted to communion? So, in the year 251, Pope Cornelius, whom we honor today, called a synod in Rome, and after presumably hearing from his bishop and theologians, declared that, yes, the apostates could be restored to communion, as long as they underwent what he called “the usual medicines of repentance”.  After all, St. Peter, prince of the apostles and first Pope and bishop of Rome had denied Christ three times, publicly.

That through penance and firm purpose of amendment, a sinner could be readmitted to Communion again. Pope Cornelius was supported in this pronouncement by many bishops, but especially St. Cyprian, the most important bishop in North Africa, who was one of the most important theologians and writers of the time.

There is no sin so great that it cannot be absolved in the Sacrament of Confession. God forgives repentant sinners, including those who have publicly denied him. There are many Catholics, who for whatever reason: anger at God, pride, public pressure, attachment to sin, have renounced their faith or lost their faith, either publicly or in their heart. They are the lost, like the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son.

But God is working, always, to help them to find their way back home before it is too late, before they are lost forever. And, he enlists us in this work: to preach the Gospel to them, to go out to them to invite them home, to prick their consciences perhaps, reminding them of their eternal soul and God’s love for them. 

The angels of heaven who rejoice over the conversion of sinners, want to help us to do our part in the reconciliation of those who have fallen away. Unlike the joyless second son in Sunday’s Gospel, we welcome sinners home with great celebration.

Through the intercession of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian may we faithfully bear God’s mercy to all those in need of it, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the Pope and all the clergy may be effective instruments of mercy, and for the grace and strength to seek out the lost, last, and least.

That through the intercession of the martyrs Cornelius and Cyprian, lapsed Catholics will be moved to return to the Sacraments.

For all the needs of the sick and the suffering, the homebound, those in nursing homes and hospitals, the underemployed and unemployed, victims of natural disaster, war, and terrorism, for all those who grieve the loss of a loved one, and those who will die today, for their comfort, and the consolation of their families.

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, deacons 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.

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 - Embracing the Lost

 This last Monday, aside from being our national celebration of Labor Day, was the feast of St. Theresa of Calcutta, known throughout the last decades of her life as Mother Theresa. 

During my semester in Rome during college seminary, I had the honor of working alongside the Missionary Sisters of Charity—the Religious Order founded by St. Mother Teresa, at a house for destitute men near the Coliseum there in Rome. Many of those sisters had been with Mother from the beginning of the order and certainly embodied her spirit—patience and love for the poor. And at this house for the destitute, men—mostly homeless men—would come off the streets and would be fed and bathed and treated with dignity and respect.  The sisters were breathtakingly patient and gentle as they treated these men as they would treat Jesus himself.  And they did so because that was Mother Theresa’s gift to them. She modeled for them, and for us, how to love Jesus in the poorest of the poor.

When anyone met Mother Teresa, they were often shocked at the fact that no matter how busy she was and no matter how many other people were around, when she talked to you, you felt like you were the only person in the world. She gave you her total attention, her total love, her total self every moment. It was as if the whole rest of the world dropped away and ceased to exist while she was talking to you. She wasn’t looking past you to see if there was someone more important in the room. She wasn’t bothered because of the other duties she had to attend to. She wasn’t trying to get back home so she could sit on her couch to veg-out or binge her favorite television show or get home to get dinner going. She certainly was not concerned what other people would thing about her by talking to you.

Why did she do that that? How did she do that? For one, it’s because of her prayer life. She made a daily Eucharistic holy hour, and mandated her sisters do the same, no matter what. She gave Jesus her full loving attention in prayer, and was thereby able to give you her full loving attention. 

Secondly it’s because she had come to know Jesus’ love for her. She knew that Jesus died for her—not just for general, collective “humanity”; she knew that if she had been the only sinner in the world, Jesus would have done no less for her than he did for all of us. 

God loves you, each of you, every ounce of you—warts and all. And his love for you is perfect. God’s love is not divided, as if each of us only receive one 6 billionth of his love and attention. God loves each individual with the entirety of his love. 

And that’s important to keep in mind as we consider our scripture readings this weekend. In the parables of the finding of the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son in the Gospel today, we are to come to recognize that we cannot be lost to God’s attention or to God’s love. Even when we turn our backs on God, God is search for us. We cannot become lost amidst the nameless, faceless masses. None of us are nameless or faceless to God. 

It is possible to turn our backs on God—to try to hide from God, like Adam and Eve in the garden hiding from God out of shame for their sin. We can separate ourselves from the life of the flock—from the family of God, the Church. We can engage in a life of dissipation outside of the Father’s house in sin.

Like the first son in the Gospel parable—we can act on the dumb idea that we’ll be happier if we just make our own way—if we claim our independence from the Father. But, that’s what sin is, isn’t it? Claiming independence from God and his ways? I’ll do it my way, thank you very much.

But like the prodigal son, that ends in disaster—unhappiness, unfullfilment, misery. If we just trusted God—and stopped playing games with God—and his simple call to holiness—we would be so less depressed.

The real turn in the parable is when the son feels something knocking on his heart. He recognizes everything he has lost because of his choices, and decides to return to the house of his Father.

“And while he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him,” the father had never stopped looking for his son, “and was filled with compassion. The Father runs toward the son to embrace him. Similarly, God, is always knocking on the heart of the sinner, and filled with compassion, is always ready to embrace us in mercy. 

But then, in the Gospel parable, there was another son, and this second son had remained in the Father’s house. But,  there was something lost about him as well—an emptiness. He was lost because he did not share his father’s joy at his brother’s homecoming. Love for his brother had at some point died in his heart. And without love, there can be no joy.

The two sons are two different dangers for Christians. The first danger is that we justify wandering from the Church—embarking on a lifestyle of sin—that brings its own joylessness and emptiness. The second danger, is that those who remain must never lose our love for our brothers and sisters who wander. If we do, it can result in joylessness, bitterness. Those of us who lose love for the sinner, will not know the joy of the Church’s mission to reconcile sinners to God. God forbid we become like that second brother. 

To borrow an idea from Pope Francis…why would anyone become Catholic if all they encounter are scowling, bitter, joyless, complaining sour-pusses. Or the cold, silent treatment. A life-long Catholic annoyed at a stranger sitting in their seat. Someone parked in my spot. Someone is encroaching on my territory. Someone who doesn’t know the right time to sit, stand, kneel. What are they doing here? I never left. We must never harden our hearts against embracing the lost--and those trying to find their way home.

How can we assure that doesn’t happen. Again, like Mother Theresa, prayer enlivens the heart. We need to lovingly gaze upon the face of Jesus in prayer, especially in the Eucharist, so that we can attend to Him in other people. That which you did for the least of my brethren you did for me.

There was a sister who complained to Mother Theresa. Mother, why do we have to waste our time with the daily holy hour. There are children dying in the streets of starvation and disease. The holy hour takes us away from the real work. To which mother replied, sister, because you believe this, you need two hours every day. She wasn’t kidding. 

May our parish always be a place where the lost are embraced and God’s love is joyfully celebrated and shared, where loving attention is given, where God’s children are serious about the sort of prayer that enlivens and emboldens charity, and where the Gospel is learned, cherished and lived out, for the glory of God and salvation of souls. 

2nd Week of Advent 2018 - Tuesday - Seeking Lost Sheep

Yesterday, we heard of the two friends who lowered the paralyzed man through the roof to be healed by Jesus; friends who exerted great effort to bring the paralyzed to Jesus.  We were challenged to consider how the Lord is calling us to make extra effort to bring others to Jesus for healing. It is an act of love to bring others to Jesus. Advent stretches our hearts to love as God loves, who desires that no one perish, but that they may have eternal life. To love others is to have concern for their eternal soul, as God does.

Jesus says in the Gospel that God doesn’t want a single sheep lost. So the Good Shepherd goes out, and sends us out, to seek the lost. We all know lost sheep. They are our family members, our neighbors, our old high school classmates. Friends, who for whatever reason, have stopped going to Church, who have hardened their hearts to the Truth of the Catholic faith. And those who have never heard the Gospel proclaimed convincingly.

We are to announce to them, like Isaiah, in the first reading that the comfort, the peace they are looking for, cannot be found “out there” away from the Church. It’s found here, in the presence of the Good Shepherd, when belief in Him and obedience to His ways fills ones life. Isaiah said, “Go up onto a high mountain, and fear not to cry out, here is your God.”  God desire to break into their lives, to help them repent and be purified and be filled with faith. And he wants to use us, our words and our deeds, our acts of kindness and charity, to help them wake-up from their slumber, to speak truth to them in their errors, to be a light, a beacon, for their journey home, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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That the Holy Father, all bishops and priests, religious and laity may shine with the Light of Christ’s love for the lost and despairing.

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

For those who have fallen away from the Church, who have become separated from God through error and sin, for those who reject the teachings of Christ, for their conversion and the conversion of all hearts.

That our young people will turn away from the evils of our culture to spread the good news of Christ’s eternal kingdom.

For those experiencing any kind of hardship or sorrow, isolation, addiction, or illness: may they experience the healing graces of Christ.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for 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.

Friday - 10th Week of OT 2017 - Salvation from the death that works within us

I read an article recently in the National Catholic Register, by a very good priest, Fr. John Longknecker, a former Evangelical pastor, who was received into the faith, with his family about 20 years ago. He’s a rarity, in that, he is a married Roman Catholic Priest. He was ordained through a special provision which allows for the ordination of previously married non-Catholic clergy who convert and who discern a calling to the priesthood. But that’s not the point of the article.

He wrote an excellent on the current debate in our culture concerning same-sex marriage. He tries to explain why the Church’s position, prohibiting same-sex marriage and same-sex activity is prohibited. He writes, “in the present debate over same-sex marriage Americans simply cannot comprehend that Catholics operate according to a different set of systems. We believe that same-sex activities and same-sex marriage are wrong, not primarily because we think such things are “yucky” and not because we “hate gays” or because we want to tell them they are all going to hell. We believe these things are wrong for clear and articulate reasons.”

Our culture doesn’t understand, and many Catholics who want to accommodate immorality don’t understand, that our teachings on these things are not based on sentimentality, but based on unchangeable, objective moral principles and also on the word of God.


Fr. Longnecker’s reasoning are rightly applied to not just the prohibition on same-sex marriage, but all of the moral teachings of the Church, including the Lord’s prohibition of divorce and adultery, which we heard in the Gospel today.

The world doesn’t understand us because our culture now values sentimentality over right reason, and it expects us to do the same, and will persecute us when we don’t.

But we put our faith not in the changing fancies and sentiments of man, but in the Logos, the Word-made-flesh, who came not to accommodate our sins, but to free us from them, to free us from the “powers of death at work within us” as St. Paul said in our first reading.

Yes the Lord loves us, and he loves lost sheep. But remember he goes out to the lost sheep to free them from the brambles. And the Lord will fight for those sheep who reject him, who keep returning to the poisonous brambles of sin until their last breath. But in the end, there are eternal consequences for rejecting Him and his Truth.

The forces of our sinful disordered nature conspire to keep us from rising with Christ to a life of charity and truth. Through his grace, may we know the strength we need to resist the powers of darkness within us, that we may choose life, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That our bishops and clergy may be zealous in preaching and teaching the truth of the Gospel, and that our future bishop of the diocese of Cleveland may be a man of true faith and the Holy Spirit.

For all of us who struggle with disordered attractions, sinful inclinations, and temptations to serious sin, for the grace to remain faithful to the teachings of Christ, and for mercy for those who fall.

That our young people on summer vacation, may be kept close to the truth and heart of Jesus.

That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering.

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

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.

Homily: 24th Sunday of OT 2016 - Care for your eternal soul

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found the parables of today’s Gospel a bit strange.
“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?”

And I always think to myself, “well, I wouldn’t?” Why would you put the 99 sheep at risk in order to find the 1? It’s bad business. If you are a shepherd, and your job is to protect your flock, and one wonders away, wouldn’t just count it as lost? Otherwise, if you go out looking for it, and leave the 99, you’re likely to come back to find that 45 other sheep had wandered away or worse, eaten by wolves, stolen by bandits. Kind of sounds like bad shepherding to me!

But this parable isn’t talking about prudent business decisions here, is it? Jesus is talking about the love of the father. If as a parent you have say six children, and one of them gets lost at the shopping mall, as I used to do…all the time…as a parent you wouldn’t say, “well, that’s okay, I have 5 other ones.” No parent would do that. So God, whose love for us is greater than even parents love for their children, goes to extravegent lengths to save those who have fallen away…all of us.

The parable of the woman with the lost coin is another strange image. She has 10 coins and loses 1 and then turns her whole house upside-down searching for it. The coin in question was a drachma, a silver coin. How much was a drachma worth? Some scripture scholars say it was about 65 cents, others a nickel, others a fraction of a penny. Still, with this coin, you couldn’t buy a loaf of bread for that. And yet, what does she do when she loses this coin? She turns her whole house upside-down. Maybe if I lost a twenty bucks, or a hundred, of course, but for a nickel? Not only does she rejoice when she finds this coin, she calls her neighbors over. Could you imagine, who would call up their neighbors and say, “come over, quick, I’ve got the best news, you’re not gonna believe it!” And they come over, and ask, what’s this about? And beaming, you hold up that shiny nickel…I found it! Your neighbors would slowly back up out of the house and call the men with the white coats.

And I think Jesus knew that this story was strange. For it’s not about the value of the coin…but about this amazing joy over the conversion of sinners. It illustrates just how important our souls are to God. God, in fact cares about our souls, much more than we do.

These parables, along with the parable of the prodigal son, remind us of how much God loves us, the great ends to which he is willing to go to save us, and the responsibility we have to protect our souls from evil now that they’ve been redeemed.

Why does God love us so? Why are our souls so valuable to God that he is willing to suffer and die for us—to go to extravagant lengths to save us?

What is the value of a soul? All the beauties of nature and all of the works of man do not compare in the smallest degree with the value of a soul. For nature is finite, every building or work of art is finite. But the soul is of eternal value. It will never die. You and I are going to live forever. Our bodies will die, but our souls, will never die. Your soul—your spirit—will live forever. And how we live our lives on earth, the moral choices we make, our assent of faith or our lack thereof, will determine whether our souls spend eternity in heaven or hell.

Yes, it is terrible when a person loses his health, or his money, or his friends.. But the loss of one’s soul because we fail to recognize our sinfulness and our need for God, that’s even worse, that is the truly greatest tragedy possible. On this 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the world trade center, we think of that word: tragedy. The loss of life, the violence, all of this is great great tragedy. But again, the greatest tragedy, is when a soul becomes destined for hell. A soul, destined for heaven, choosing hell through its failure to repent, is the greatest tragedy of all.

St. Peter says, God does not wish that any souls should parish, but that all should come to repentance. He gives every soul, each one of us, a super-abundance of opportunities to repent. But whether we truly repent or not will determine our eternal destiny.

It should be deeply concerning to us, when Catholics lose their faith, when they stop going to Church, when they enter invalid marriages, when they turn away from the moral teachings of the Church. Deeply concerning! For we know not the day nor the hour, when this earthly life will end and we will face our judge.

These beautiful parables this weekend remind us that God does not give up on us, he continues to reach out, to call out, He continues to search, to even do elaborate, extravagant things to bring souls to repentance and conversion…crazy things, like sending people like us out to bring in the lost sheep! If you have a family member who has fallen away from the faith, or a neighbor who has no faith, pray for them, fast for them, do penance for them, look for creative ways to bring them into contact with the saving Gospel.

We must also do our part in protecting our own souls from faithlessness. Each of us must commit to a healthy prayer life, studying the Bible daily, engaging in works of mercy. There are plenty of souls who came to church every week, but never prayed. Because they allowed the flame of faith to die out now they neither pray nor come to Church.

Prayer and reading scripture, making a frequent confession, is how we take the care of our souls seriously. Our souls are worth protecting, after all, they were worth dying for.

God comes to us in this Mass, in this Eucharistic celebration, he seeks us out to nourish us, feed us, bring us to repentance, to help us know his love for us. May we respond to his love through genuine repentance and an increased effort to cooperate with his grace for the glory of God and salvation of souls.