5th Sunday of Easter 2022 - What is Love?

Well, in the last five weeks we’ve had Easter Sunday, Divine mercy Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday, Mother’s Day Sunday, and today, our Gospel reading gives us the chance to perhaps name today, Love Sunday. “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Earlier this afternoon, I was able to celebrate a wedding for a young bride and groom, Eddie and Anna. So, I’d like to reflect on Christian marriage, on this “Love Sunday”, drawing upon it lessons for all us us, whether you are married, single, widowed, a consecrated religious or a priest. 

Leading up to the wedding, I met with this young couple for about 10 months of marriage preparation. So for 10 months, off and on, we discussed many topics concerning healthy, holy, and happy marriage:  the need for open and honest communication, the need for patience, forgiveness, prayer, engagement in the life of the Church, being open to the children God desires to bring into their new family, and what it means that Marriage is one of the Sacraments of the Church instituted by Our Lord to confer grace.

But the reason for all the preparation, meeting with the priest, the pre-cana day, the prayer, all that effort, is because of our hope that the two of them will be able to share a life of happiness and holiness—a marriage filled with grace and love. 

That word, “love” is found all throughout the marriage liturgy. Will you love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live.

But, what is love? That was a question I pose to all of my couples in marriage preparation. What is love? The word is certainly used in a lot of different ways: I love cookie dough ice cream, I love violin music, I love my grandma, I love the Cleveland browns, which is kinda like saying I love suffering and tragedy.  

St. Paul writes about that word “love” in his first epistle to the Corinthians, and many couples choose this passage for their nuptial mass. Love. “Love is patient, love is kind, it bears all thing, endures all things, it is not rude, it is not pompous, it forgives all things.” Paul says. 

What is love? For Paul, and really throughout the Bible and Christian Theology, Love isn’t a just an emotion. Nor is love so mysterious that we can’t say anything about. St. Paul says plenty and so does our Lord.

For Paul, for Christians: Love is an action, it’s a choice, it’s pursuit that requires effort. Love is a choice to be patient when we feel the claws of impatience raking across our souls, love is choosing to be kind when selfishness rears its ugly face, love is enduring and persevering in doing what is right and just when we want to give up, love is being humble when we want to be pompous, love is forgiving when we want to brood over injury.  

In the Gospel, when the Lord Jesus says, “love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength” he’s not talking about making sure that we stir up some pious fleeting emotion toward God every once and a while, or for an hour on Saturday evening or Sunday. He’s saying that Christians need to put God at the center of our work, our decisions, how we treat people, our marriages, everything—every conversation, every interaction, our free time, everything.

It was love that led the Lord to the Cross-the choice to serve God for the greater good, out of the deepest, most profound care for good of our souls. The willingness to bear unfathomable suffering for our redemption. There is no greater love than to lay down your life for another. Talk about an action. The Lord shows us precisely what love looks like, when he lays down his life for his on the cross, to save us from hell. Love requires effort, selflessness, often sacrifice. 

And St. Paul goes so far to say that if you are going throughout life without this type of Christ-like love, then you are like a clashing cymbal, in other words, you are just going through life making a bunch of noise—our lives are sadder and emptier without love. 

And I hope that none of you here are just clashing cymbals—jumping from pursuit to pursuit, relationship to relationship without God’s love filling your soul. And if you are, I invite you to consider another way, a timeless way, the way of Christ, the way of true love.

This is the Love the world needs more of…not just fuzzy feelings, but Christians, doing what is best for each other and our neighbor. Setting good Christian example for one another, praying for one another, making sacrifices for one another and the mission of the Church. As the Lord says in the gospel today, this is how all will know that you are my disciple, that you love one another.

Love requires effort:  to pray when we have other things to do, to go to Sunday Mass when we’d rather sleep in, bringing your kids to church when it’s just easier for everyone to stay in their pajamas all day. It takes effort, right? to study the Bible when we could be sitting in front of the TV or playing the newest game on our smartphones, to strive to give up habitual sins when it’s just easier to justify our selfish actions, being honest in business when it’s easier and more profitable to cheat your client, it requires effort, love requires effort, looking past the faults of others to do what’s best for them, as I would do for myself. 

But this is why weddings are so joyful for the Church. It is so joyful for us to see Bride and Groom standing before God’s altar, in front of their family, and friends, and brothers and sisters in Christ, to say, this is the person I choose to lay down my life for, this is the person I hope will love me as Christ loved me.  This is the person I will sacrifice my life for like no other, who I will pray with and pray for like no other, who I will work with hand-in-hand to serve the needs of the poor and the needs of the Church like no other, who intend to work together to become instruments of God’s love in this dark, cruel, cold world. For as Pope Benedict would say, "love is the light, and in the end the only light that can illuminate a world grown dim."

This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Love is a choice. And the more effort we pour into love the more rewarded we will be in, in this life, and the life to come.  May pour our time, talent, and treasure into this choice, to love every minute of every day for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021 - Marriage in God's Plan

 
I mentioned to Cara, our Parish Secretary this week that the lazy days of summer have certainly come to an end here at Saint Ignatius.  RCIA is off and running, monthly Taize prayer services will be beginning this month, PSR is in session, the day school is already half way through its first quarter.  Our Clambake is coming up next Sunday, the basketball league is beginning sign-ups, weekly bible study is ongoing, , legion of mary and st. Vincent de paul continue to meet, our new monthly young adult group draws young catholics from across the diocese, we’re going to begin a repair project on our stained glass windows, and don’t tell our music director, but advent is only two months away.

And all this on top of the normal rhythm of parish life: the joy of celebrating daily Mass, confessions seem to be a bit more popular than when I arrived two and a half years ago, anointings, marriages, baptisms, parish staff meetings, even, really aren’t that bad. But, one of the highlights for me each month is our first Friday Eucharistic Holy Hour.

Last night, I had a wedding rehearsal, for one of our last weddings of the year and then we had our holy hour. And after a very long week, that holy hour really hit the spot. And realizing I hadn’t really come up with anything for my weekend homily, I so I asked the Lord what he might want me to preach on this weekend: both at our Saturday wedding and then for our weekend masses. And I began to see a little overlap.

Our first reading and the Gospel this weekend are readings chosen often by couples for their wedding Mass. I always think it’s rather profound that the era of livestreaming and twelfth generation iphones, couples choose for their wedding a passage from this 3500 year-old ancient text from the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis. And in it, we find that the ancient biblical vision for marriage, God’s vision, is not outdated, it’s not a relic of the past we have yet to discard—like an embarrassing photo from our teenage years. It’s as relevant as ever, because it is truly God’s word.  

In this passage, our first reading, we read of the origin, the genesis of the first marriage in human history: a match made in the earthly paradise, in the Garden of Eden. 

Adam had been created first. And while working and laboring in the Garden, Adam experienced this deep longing: this longing not just for a friend, but a wife. The Creator acknowledged that this longing was by design—he says it’s not good for man to be alone…this longing for a wife was placed in the man’s heart by God from the beginning. It’s all part of the plan.  So God gets to work again, in order to complete his Creation. He puts the man into a deep slumber and creates a wife for Him.

Upon awaking from his deep slumber, the man let’s out this joyous exclamation when he glimpses his bride. He says, “AT LAST!” 

When I prepare couples for marriage, I meet with them for a minimum of six months, for many of them sometimes over a year. After all those years of dating and marriage preparation, their wedding day has “At Last” arrived—the day when two become one.

So what we have here in the very first book of the Bible is God’s Word teaching us that marriage is not a mere human institution, but has been established by God from the foundation of the world. “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife”—a holy longing placed in our hearts is fulfilled in the holy union of matrimony. 

This passage is of such great importance that Jesus quotes this passage verbatim in the Gospels. The Lord quotes this passage from Genesis in his explanation of why divorce is not possible and not part of the plan of God. In lawful, Sacramental marriage, like Adam and Eve, Bride and Groom become One—a new creation. They are joined together by God and cannot be separated.  What God has joined man cannot separate.

Most couples, when asked, “Why get married?” give a two-fold answer: “Because we love each other and want to start a family.” This answer is consistent with Church teaching that the purpose of marriage is twofold: unity and procreation—to be joined in mutual love and to bear children.

The Sacrament of Marriage is powerful because it helps couples be faithful to these two ends. That can’t be said for a couple who simply enters into a so-called civil marriage before a Justice of the Peace. Through the Sacrament of Marriage, celebrated according to Church law, God abundantly blesses husband and wife, giving them the strength they need to love and honor each other, for better, for worse, through sickness and health in an indissoluble bond. It also gives them special grace for the tremendously difficult role of being Christian parents, especially in the 21st century. 

Raising a Christian child now, in a culture which is increasingly hostile to our faith, is no doubt, one of the greatest challenges Christian families have ever had face. But through the Sacrament of Marriage, God’s special grace is there.

Additionally, the Sacrament of Marriage does something that most couples probably aren’t thinking of when they approach the priest for marriage preparation. The Sacrament of Marriage turns Christian Husband and Wife into a sort of living Sacrament—visible signs of Love. Christian husband and wife shows us that in this broken world, love is possible—love is real. 

This is why the Devil hates Christian marriage and does everything he can to pervert it, break it up, and undermine it as an institution. He hates it because it is a reflection of God. No wonder he wants to deface it and promote disrespect for it, to spread lies like “God never intended one man to love one woman for the rest of his life.” It’s a lie having its genesis with the Father of lies, who himself refused to love God for the duration of his life. The Devil doesn’t want us to believe in love, not true love, only in counterfeit, perverted substitutes: to settle for less.

Marriage matters.  It is bound up with God's plan for the world.  The self-giving generative love of husbands and wives shows the world that permanent, exclusive, faithful love is possible; and by God's permanent, exclusive, faithful love for us, we are saved.

If any of you are in a civil, non-Sacramental marriage, please give me a call, so we can work on rectifying the situation. Or if you and your spouse are having some marital problems and are looking for marriage help, I can share with you some resources that you will certainly find helpful if you give them a try. And if you are civilly divorced, please know that there continues to be a place for you in the Church, and I invite you to consider giving me a call to discern if it is appropriate to seek an annulment.

The Church needs strong, holy Catholic marriages and holy families—in which the Word of God is practiced and cherished. 

The month of October is traditionally devoted to the Holy Rosary. The Holy Father and the Bishops encourage us to pray the rosary daily during this month, and what better intention than to pray for marriages and families. Pray your rosary for those couples in irregular situations. Pray for spouses going through marital difficulties. Pray for the divorced, that they can know God’s healing and discern their role in the Church.

For each of us, celibate, married, or single, have a role in promoting happy, healthy, holy Christian marriage for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

10th Week in Ordinary Time 2021 - Monday - Beatitude in every season

 Over the next three weeks we will read through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount for our daily Gospel readings, beginning today with the opening verses of Chapter 5 of St. Matthew’s Gospel.  

The beatitudes are read at baptisms, weddings, funerals, and throughout the Church year because they are the attitudes and dispositions we are meant to cultivate throughout every season of life whether we are mourning or rejoicing, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, in youth or old age.

Families often request the beatitudes be read because even in their grief, they recognize that it is good and holy to turn to God in gratitude for the ways in which their loved ones lived out the beatitudes and to pray for the ways their loved ones well short.

Bride and groom often request the beatitudes for their wedding because the beatitudes are the key to a happy, holy marriage. I often say to bride and groom: In the beatitudes, Jesus Himself gives all Christians a blueprint for a life of holiness and faithful discipleship.  Yet, here are also keys to a happy, holy marriage.

Your marriage will be blessed when you are poor in spirit, when you rely on the grace of God and put God first in your marriage at all times.  Your marriage will be blessed when you mourn, when you say you are sorry for moments of selfishness to God and to each other. Your marriage will be blessed when you are meek, when you are gentle instead of being domineering or self-centered. Your marriage will be blessed when you are merciful, when you are quick to grant forgiveness to each other. Your marriage will be blessed when you are clean of heart, when you guard your hearts, minds and marriage from the poisonous attitudes of our selfish culture. Keep your hearts and marriage clean from materialism, envy, entitlement, spiritual laziness. Your marriage will be blessed even when, and maybe especially when, you are persecuted for being a follower of Jesus, when you are faithful to Jesus even when there are consequences—socially, perhaps even financially. 

The beatitudes, however, are not just a list of commandments. They are about transformation. The blessedness of Christ is to transform our minds and hearts and personalities. We are to be meek, as he was meek; we are to be pure, as he was pure; we are to be devoted to doing the will of God as he was devoted.  

It is good to come across the beatitudes in Ordinary Time because they remind us that we must always be about the business of cultivating the blessedness of Christ in the ordinary circumstances of our lives—His blessedness is to transform us and animate us every day, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For the whole Christian people, that the beatitudes of Christ may animate our lives. Let us pray to the Lord. 

For our President and all elected government representatives, may the Holy Spirit grant them wisdom and guide them to promote authentic and lasting peace in the world, an end to terrorism, respect for religious freedom, and a greater reverence for the sanctity of Human Life. Let us pray to the Lord.

For our young people beginning summer vacation, that they may be kept close to the truth and heart of Jesus, that young people may live in faith-filled homes where the Gospel is cherished, studied, and lived-out. Let us pray to the lord.

For all of the sick and suffering, for the grace to unite their sufferings with Christ and to know His consolation and peace.

For our departed loved ones and all of the souls in purgatory, and for N. for whom this Mass is offered. We pray to the Lord.

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

September 2020 - First Friday Holy Hour - The wedding Feast and Eucharistic Adoration

Weddings are a recurring theme in the Gospel. The Lord’s first miracle recorded in the Gospel of John takes place at a wedding—the wedding at Cana—where the Lord transforms water into an abundance of wine. And, as we heard in this evening, the Lord compares his ministry—his dining with tax collectors and sinners—to a wedding feast. He is the bridegroom—and can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?

The Lord’s original audience would no doubt have picked up on the messianic undertones of the all of this wedding language. The age of the Messiah, the long awaited for final stage of human history, when the Lord’s Messiah would usher in the definitive kingdom of God—is scripturally linked to the wedding feast. Through the work of the Messiah, the Lord God would provide for his people rich food and choice new wines—juicy rich food and pure choice wines.

So, the Gospel reading certainly helped the early church understand their place in history. This is the age of fasting. In the words of the Lord, “the bridegroom has been taken away”—he has ascended to the Father’s right hand. And so, we fast and do penance and prepare our souls for the bridegroom’s return. We are to be like those wise virgins who await the bridegroom with lighted lamps, waiting to be welcomed in the wedding feast. 

And yet, at the same time, the bridegroom is already here, isn’t he? We are already fed with the rich food and choice wine, of the Eucharist. At holy Mass. This is why the Church fathers speak of the Mass as a foretaste of heaven. Already we sit at the banquet table of the lamb. Already we are fed with the rich food from heaven—the Eucharist. And already we are able to mystically experience and celebrate the joining of the bridegroom to his bride—the Church—when we participate at Mass.

And when we come to Holy Hour, and adore the Blessed Sacrament—we are able to glimpse the Bridegroom—with joyful anticipation—like the Bride in the Song of Songs—who rejoices at the sight of her lover right standing at her window. “Here he stands behind the wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices. My lover speaks; he says to me, Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one, and come!” The bridegroom of the Song of Songs says, “the flames of true devotion are a blazing fire. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away.”

This night, we gaze upon the bridegroom. May he set our hearts afire with the flames of true devotion—flames that cannot be drowned by worldliness or selfishness or the floods of worldly anxiety. We kneel, and adore, and await his return where he will arrive, not simply under sacramental signs—but in the fullness of his glory…for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

22nd Week in OT 2019 - Friday - Weddings and Wineskins

In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ first miracle takes place at a wedding, the wedding at Cana, where water is turned into an abundance of wine. It was there that Jesus ushered in something radically new. He wasn’t just a teacher, he wasn’t just a commentator on scriptures, he wasn’t just a do-gooder: that first miracle at the wedding, with the wine, signaled something new in God’s plan of salvation for sinful humanity.

Today’s from Luke’s Gospel, we encounter those two images again of weddings and wine. Jesus first compares his presence with his disciples to a wedding celebration.  Just as a wedding is filled with joyful celebration, so too, Jesus’ public ministry is a time of great joy for his disciples.  And so too, as Jesus is our companion throughout our own lives, there is a joy that cannot be taken away by any earthly misfortune.  Things can never become so dark that we cannot call upon Jesus as Lord.  No matter how severe our suffering, it can always be united to Him.

Second, Jesus says, “no one pours new wine into old wineskins.”  Since leather wineskins would become dry and brittle with age, the new wine, still in the process of fermenting would burst the old wineskins. 

Before baptism, before discipleship, we had an old nature, an old wineskin.  But when we were baptized and truly made the commitment to follow Christ, we set aside the old nature, and acquired a fresh new nature. For many of us, baptism was very long ago, and those fresh, new wineskins, if they are not constantly renewed can start to grow brittle again, resistant to change, resistant to the new wine of the spirit.

Many of us know Christians, even members of our families, who dabbled in Christianity, practiced it for a while, even 12 years of Catholic school, but now they seemed to have lost their taste for the things of God; even mentioning the faith leads to a heated argument.  The wineskin has burst.

They have allowed their souls to resemble the old nature, prior to baptism, without Christ as Lord.
In the first reading, we heard the great Christological hymn from the letter to the Colossians, proclaiming Christ the first born, the head of the Body, all creation is to be subject to Him, His Lordship. In order to keep the winskins of our souls pliant and fresh, in order to know the joy of the bridegroom in our every suffering, we must subject Ourselves to the Lordship of Christ in all things, in our every endeavor, every relationship, in our every need.

Rejoice for the bridegroom is with us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That all Christians may experience the profound renewal of Spirit needed for spreading the Gospel in our modern world.
For the return of all Christians who have fallen away of the Church and into serious sin, for their conversion, and the conversion of all hearts.
That our young people may be kept safe from the errors and poison of the world, so to grow in the ways of righteousness and truth.
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, abuse, and terrorism, for the sanctification of the clergy, 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.

Homily: Thursday - 5th Week in OT 2017 - The two become one

Today’s reading is often chosen by brides and grooms for their wedding ceremony. I think it’s always pretty significant that modern couples choose to read from a book written more than 4000 years ago. What does a 4000 year old ancient text have to say to couples in the age of iphones and self-driving cars? We return over and over to this ancient story because God continues to speak to us about marriage, love, fidelity, and family.

For the reading from second genesis contains an account of the first marriage in human history. In a sense, a marriage made in heaven, for we discover that marriage was not a human creation, but designed by God. God desired man and woman to be joined as helpmate, a union he designed to bring them joy, fulfillment, help.

In the Sacrament of Marriage, Bride and Groom promise to journey through life together as companions, promising that through all the trials and difficulties of life, they will help each other become Saints; and insofar as they are faithful to God’s vision for marriage, as they love each other in good times and in bad, they will become the people God made them to be, in a sense they discover their souls.

I think a wedding is always so joyful because it is edifying to witness two people coming before God’s altar, in front of their family, and friends, to say, this is the person I choose to lay down my life for, this is the person I will sacrifice my life for like no other, who I will pray for, and serve like no other.

Marriage matters. Married love shows us a glimpse of Jesus’ love for the Church. Marriage shows the world that self-sacrificing love is possible, and that by love we are saved. In a world with so much selfishness and perversion, strong Christian marriages are so important—husbands and wives saying they will strive to make the Word of God, the Love of God, the guiding principle and the wellspring for their marriage.

St. Paul says that if we do not have this sort of love, the love of Christ, we are a resounding gong, a clashing symbol. Meaning, if we are not filled with the love of Christ, we are going through life simply making a bunch of noise—and isn’t our world noisy enough?

May the grace of God strengthen all marriages, and may Christian husbands and wives inspire each of us to Christ-like love toward all with pure and devout hearts for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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For newlyweds beginning married love together, that they may always have a true and generous love for each other; may they receive the rich blessing of children, and know the constant support of family and friends.

For all married couples, that they may be faithful to the Gospel in every dimension of their married life and give all an example of God’s ever-faithful love.

For all trouble marriages, that they may know the constant support of the Church, that they may be protected from discouragement and practice patience, mildness, reconciliation toward each other, and know the healing power of the love of Christ.

For all children who are impacted by the sad reality of divorce, that they may know the constant ever-faithful love of God and be comforted in their grief.

That the sick, lonely, elderly, homeless, and all those experiencing trials or suffering of any kind may be strengthened by God’s love and know His comfort and peace.  We pray to the Lord.

For all those who grieve the death of a spouse, and for all the dead, for all of the souls in purgatory, the deceased members of our families and friends, for all those who have fought and died for our freedom.