May 10 2022 - St. Damien the leper - Our crosses open doors

 
For the first four weeks of the easter season, we’ve been reading from the book of Acts— how the Gospel was spread first in Jerusalem and then throughout Judea amongst the Jews.  But today, we hear of one of the great breakthroughs of human history.  

Last week, we heard how following the death of St. Stephen, Christians were scattered due to persecution. But the Christians took advantage of their scattering. They preached to the Jews, as we heard today, as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch.

As some of the new Christians were Greek-speakers, they began to share the good news with some of the Gentiles in Antioch.  This may seem very natural and inevitable to us now, but this really was a breakthrough—the first time the Church became truly faithful to the Lord’s command to make disciples of all nations…not just the Jews of the Holy Land—but all nations.

Each of us are called to work for converts by sharing the Good News. So, where do the breakthroughs need to occur in your own life for that to happen? What do you need from the Lord do be able to share the faith more confidently with strangers?

Jesus says in the Gospel today, “my sheep hears my voice”.  He wants to use us as his mouthpiece.  There are people who long to hear the voice of Jesus calling them into the flock of the Church. They are waiting for us to share what we know of Jesus, of Catholicism, but they have no one to talk to. The internet can’t do our job for us.

Today, the Church celebrates St. Damien of Molokai, the apostle to the lepers. He spent sixteen years tending the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs on the island leper colony of Molokai of Hawaii.  And when he contracted leprosy himself, he continued to preach the Gospel. 

We aren’t just to preach the Gospel from a top an ivory tower, we are to enter into the world of the forgotten and the outcast, in order to show them, that they are not forgotten by God. 

For the Christians in the book of Acts, the persecution led them to preach to an entirely new group of people. For St. Damian, his leprosy enabled him to draw closer to the other lepers, to preach even more effectively by entering their world.

Our own crosses are keys that open doors into the lives of others who suffer, who are longing to hear the voice of the Shepherd. May we embrace those crosses, and enter through those doors, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

 - - - - - - - 

That all Christians may be deeply committed to the spread of Christ’s Gospel, and for the success of the Church’s missionary activity. Let us pray to the Lord.

For those in public office: may they govern with wisdom and compassion for the most vulnerable among us—especially unborn children, the elderly, the indigent, and persons with disabilities.  Let us pray to the Lord.

That the isolated and abandoned may know the love of God through the labors of the Church. Let us pray to the Lord.

For the repose of the souls of our beloved dead, the deceased members of our families friends and parishes, for those who fought and died for our freedom, and for N. for whom this mass is offered.

Graciously grant our petitions, we beseech thee, O Lord; may your grace sustain us always in your service, through Christ Our Lord.

1st Sunday of Lent 2022 - Desert Temptations and the Road to the Cross

 Each year on the 1st Sunday of Lent, we hear the powerful Gospel passage of Our Blessed Lord facing temptation in the Judaean desert. The mere fact that we even know about this story is significant. For remember, the four Gospels were based on eye witness accounts. Matthew and John were two of Lord’s twelve apostles: they heard him preach and teach, so we know where they got their material. Mark likely received most of his details from St. Peter, and Luke, as he tells us at the beginning of his Gospel, thoroughly investigated the events of the life of Jesus as accurately as possible. 

But, none of the four evangelists were with Jesus in the desert, so the details of this story must have come from the lips of Jesus himself. He wanted us to know about this profound experience. “Yes, even I was tempted, just like you.” 

The Letter to the Hebrews explains the Lord’s solidarity with us poor sinners, saying: “because he Himself suffered and had been tempted, he is able to help all those who are tempted.” “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning.”

We hear this Gospel each year, at the beginning of Lent, firstly, because during Lent, we are to be confronting our demons, our temptations. Lent is a time of honesty, acknowledging sin and temptation, going to confession, seeking conversion, and learning to trust in the Lord in times of trial. 

We hear this account of our Lord remaining faithful to God in the midst of temptations, to help us finally come to the conviction that He is with us even in our temptations. The faithful high priest lives in the hearts of all of the baptized. His faithfulness can conquer the devil in our lives, so much so that we can say, “I do have the power to say no to temptation because He lives in me. I can remain faithful to God in my trials because Christ lives in me.”

But this reading plays such a central role each Lent because something else is going. While there are many important events in the life of Jesus prior to his desert temptations, this reading is pivotal for his mission. The events of his infancy and childhood, his activity in the Temple at the age of 12, even his Baptism in the Jordan, serve as a sort of prelude to this event. Those early stories point to Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, God incarnate. But it’s this event, which in a sense, is the beginning of his way to the Cross. For his spiritual battle with the devil shows him rejecting the way of earthly power and glory and accepting the way of suffering and the cross. Let’s examine how.

Firstly, the Lord rejects the temptation to turn stones into bread. Why? After 40 days of fasting, “he was hungry” as St. Luke tells us. And since Jesus is God, he could surely transform the limestone rocks of the Judaean wilderness into food for himself. But, the deeper temptation: His divine power could be used to feed others. He could feed the starving of the world. That would benefit the Gospel mission. In a sense, the Devil here is tempting Jesus, not just to feed Himself, but to win people over with material things. “If you want people to follow you, use your wonderful powers to fill their bellies. They’ll follow you if you feed them.

But Jesus rightly says, I’ve not come just to feed their bodies, but to feed their souls with the truth, with the Word of God. And so the task of the Church is not to create some utopia on earth. The task of Christianity is to bring people to faith, that they may live in such a way as to live forever—to be reconciled with God through Christ, that they may live forever.

In the second temptation, the devil tempts Jesus: “I will give you everything you want, if you worship me.” Now again, Jesus knew his mission was the salvation of our souls. And the devil was saying, I can do that for you. I can release souls from hell without all that suffering, without the cross. I can do anything you want, just give me the praise, honor and glory due to your Father. I’ll give you everything you want, all you have to do is compromise the first and greatest of the commandments. And Jesus was tempted by this. 

This temptation isn’t unlike the first temptation of Adam and Eve…I’ll give you everything you want, you’ll be like gods; only don’t listen to God, listen to me. The devil is always offering us this empty promise, tempting us to compromise our faith to obtain some apparent good without paying the price, the cross. But it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world and lose his soul. So too, in our lives, in order to achieve some good, we must never compromise the commandments. 

The third temptation Jesus faced was to use his divine powers in such a way that no one could deny who he was: to jump off the roof of the temple like Superman and survive, that would prove to everyone once and for all that he was who he said he was. And the Lord could have done this if he wished; this and more. He could have continued his earthly life for two thousand years and healed everyone who ever entered a hospital without medicine or surgery. He could have performed a miracle a day, inviting the skeptical scientists to investigate them. He could have performed undeniable miracles, just as God could appear to everyone right now—everyone on earth at the same time—and give us undeniable proof of His existence. 

But the Lord resists this temptation. For, it is part of the mysterious plan of God, that God wants us to cultivate faith. He doesn’t want to force us to believe in Him by making his existence as undeniably as the sun undeniably shines in the sky. Rather, God desires that we have Faith, for Faith can move mountains. 

Rejecting these temptations, St. Luke tells us that the tempter departed from Jesus for a time. The Lord would be tempted again before facing the cross, just as each of us is tempted to turn away from our own crosses. 

During the desert of Lent, the devil will no doubt appear to each of us. Likely, he already has. Maybe you’ve already been tempted to reject the call to do penance, to skip out on prayer, to eat meat on Ash Wednesday and Friday, to just go ahead and do what you’ve always done. And what shame if you’ve given in. But, Lent is just beginning. And it’s not too late to recognize the game the devil is playing: trying to keep us complacent and satisfied with mediocrity, trying to get us to harden our hearts toward God little by little. 

But it’s not too late to recognize that we do not live by bread alone, that we owe God worship from the depths of hearts, that God invites us to trust in Him in times of trouble, to repent and believe in the Gospel, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.