December 14 2017 - St. John of the Cross - Lessons from Prison

For attempting to reform his Religious Order, the Carmelites, St. John of the Cross was imprisoned, nearly starved, and publicly flogged by his own religious brothers. They opposed John’s determination to observe the primitive Carmelite rule which emphasized austerity, poverty, and discipline.

It was in prison that John came to know the cross acutely, for there he learned to unite his suffering with the suffering and death of Jesus, as he sat month after month in his dark narrow cell.

His sufferings did not diminish his desire for holiness, rather, his desire for union with God increased. He passed the time reflecting on the Scriptures which he had memorized and composing poetry. In the darkness of the prison, he bloomed into a great mystical poet and theologian.

He authored books and poems titled The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night of the Soul, the Spiritual Canticle, and The Living Flame of Love. 

Of the thirty-six Doctors of the Church, John of the Cross is known as “the Mystical Doctor” for his writings on the mystical union with God the soul achieves through purification and purgation of its selfishness in this life through suffering and penance.

In his Ascent of Mount Carmel, John teaches, evidently from his own experience, that the soul must empty itself of itself, of selfishness, of ego-centrism. The source of our unhappiness in this life isn’t suffering, necessarily. Rather it’s selfishness.

We are restlessly dissatisfied because we seek to fill the infinitely deep caverns of our souls with the petty goods of the finite world: pleasure, sex, power, and prestige.  This drive to fill our hearts with the finite only leads to deeper dissatisfaction.

Yet, when we turn our hearts over to the infinite, to God, our deepest yearnings are met.  The spiritual life, therefore, consists of letting go of false aspirations, ideas, and attachments, and rightly ordering our desires: putting God first, and everything else second and only for the sake of God.

John is an excellent saint for Advent. He teaches us that the best way to prepare for Christ is through the renunciation of selfishness. We prepare best for Christ’s coming into our life through seeking to be free from all that keeps us from knowing, loving, and serving God. By undergoing this purification we become ready to receive the one we are destined to receive, Jesus Christ, whom we wait for, and prepare for, and long for, and hope for, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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We raise up our prayers of petitions, as we await with longing the Advent of Christ the Lord.
That through self-denial and embrace of the cross the Christian people may experience ever-deeper union with Christ and a more faithful proclamation of the Gospel.

For the members of the Carmelite Order, that their life of prayer and penance will be for the Church a source of renewal and strength.

For an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life and a strengthening of all marriages in holiness.

That Christ may banish disease, drive out hunger, ward off every affliction, and strengthen all who suffer persecution for the sake of the Gospel.

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

28th Sunday in OT 2017 - Mystical Marriage and the Wedding Feast

On Tuesday evenings, we’ve been offering the video series titled “The Pivotal Players”. The series beautifully presents the lives of men and women who deeply impacted Church history. We’ve studied St. Francis of Assisi who brought important reform to the Church of the Middle Ages by calling men and women back to Gospel simplicity in a time when Christians were beginning to become enamored with the luxuries of their day.

We learned from St. Thomas Aquinas, the priest, scholar, and theologian whose writings and systematic thinking about God and the Church continue to be of inestimable value.

Last week, we studied the life and impact of different sort of theologian, the mystic St. Catherine of Siena who is pivotal in helping the Church to contemplate the mystery of God’s love. Listen to her words: “You are a mystery as deep as the sea;” she says, “the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find, the more I search for you.  But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will ever leave me desiring more.  When you fill my soul, I have an even greater hunger, and I grow more famished for your light.”

Catherine’s deep yearning for God was also accompanied by extraordinary mystical phenomena such as visions and revelations, raptures, the stigmata. Catherine, lived many years eating nothing except the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  And often, her prayer was so intense, she would begin to levitate.

Catherine was named by Pope Paul VI as a Doctor of the Church, which is surprising because she was illiterate. As a Doctor of the Church Catherine teaches the Church of all ages essential lessons about the Christian Life. And Catherine is very clear that the purpose of the Christian life is to grow in union with God through prayer, fervent meditation on the suffering of Christ, fasting, cultivation of the virtues, purification from sin, reliance on the Sacraments of the Church, and total abandonment to the Holy Will of God.


Union with God was a theme of her writings and reflections. At the age of 19, having already attained tremendous sanctity, St. Catherine had a vision, in which Jesus gave her a wedding ring, symbolic of her union with Christ the Bridegroom of the Church. Theologians call this the Mystical Marriage, a foreshadowing of the eternal union the blessed obtain in heaven. This is the point of the Christian life, to grow in this union here on earth, that we may share in this union in heaven.

This image of mystical marriage with God isn’t just the fanciful imagining of medieval mystics. Jesus himself uses this image in the Gospel parable we heard today: A king had thrown a wedding feast for his son and sent out servants to invite the guests.  Some guests ignored the invitation.  Others abducted the king’s servants, mistreated them, and killed them. One guest was found unworthy or at least unprepared for the feast.

Who is the king in this parable? Who is the son? Who is his unnamed Bride? Who are the servants? Who are the guests?

Well, of course, the King is God the Father, who celebrates the Marriage of Christ, His Son to  the Church. The Marriage was accomplished on the cross. Jesus himself announces this on the cross, when he says, “Consummatum est”—it is consummated. The servants are the apostles and all those God has sent out into the world to invite sinners to repent and become members of the Church. The guests are those who are given a choice: will you join the wedding feast or not?

At the end of the parable, there is a guest who is thrown out because he is not wearing the wedding garment. Perhaps, this is a Christians, who had lost his wedding garment through sin. Perhaps here is a Christian-in-name-only who went through life simply going through the motions, but never actually sought the intimate union that God wants to establish with us.

In baptism we do receive a wedding garment. But it is up to us to keep that wedding garment unstained and intact. And if it becomes stained or tattered or lost by sin, it must be cleansed and repaired through the Sacraments, particularly the Sacrament of Confession.

The wedding feast of the parable is certainly an allegory for heaven. And yet, we cannot help but see a parallel to what we are doing here, right now.

Since the earliest days of the Church, the Mass, celebrated each Sunday and every day for almost two thousand years, has been called “the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.” Here at Holy Mass, we are the wedding guests who have responded to the invitation of the King. Here at Holy Mass, those who are prepared through Sacramental Confession, are able to feed on the richest food and choicest wine of all, the Body and Blood of Jesus. Here we are able to receive a foretaste of the Communion the blessed enjoy at the eternal wedding feast of heaven.

Over the last few decades, millions of Catholics have fallen away from the Catholic Church.  BUT, the number one reason why Catholics return to the Church is because of their hunger for the Eucharist.  People return to the Church, because here and only here does Christ give us his true flesh and blood.

Many Catholics come to Mass every day because of this deep hunger for Him. To paraphrase Catherine of Siena, the more we eat, the more we hunger. The desire to know God, to be with God, to be close to God is very good, it’s our deepest longing. But it’s up to us to pursue it, to pursue the God who wants to see us flourish in holiness, who wants to see us become saints.

As I mentioned St. Catherine subsisted for years only on the Eucharist. This was possible because the Eucharist is the supersubstantial food of heaven, it is the very life and presence of God. St. Catherine would often see blazing fire in the consecrated host, for rightly so, the Eucharist is the ardent fire of God’s love for us. The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Church’s life, for from it we receive the grace to live out our union with Christ in the world.

May each of us like Saint Catherine be set aflame with divine love, be united to the Lord in his sufferings, and be devoted to the building up and serving of his Holy Church for the glory of God and salvation of souls.