2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025 - Cana Epiphanies

 Two weeks ago, on the Feast of the Epiphany, the babe at Bethlehem was revealed to be the Son of God and savior of the world. What an epiphany: Jesus is revealed as God in the flesh come to earth to save and redeem all people of all nations of all time.

Last Week, we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord.  The voice of the Father proclaimed Jesus to be his beloved Son, with whom He is well pleased and the Holy Spirit in the bodily form of the dove was seen, revealing Jesus as Christ.  What an epiphany—Jesus is revealed as what…as the second person of the holy Trinity, beloved by the Father, anointed by the Spirit for the work of salvation.

Today, we heard in our Gospel another epiphany, a set of epiphanies, really! The Gospel of the wedding feast of Cana contains epiphanies about Jesus, epiphanies about his Blessed Mother, and it even reveals something about us and the response God wants from us all, of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Firstly, what does the Gospel reveal about Jesus? At the Wedding at Cana, Jesus is revealed to be the divine bridegroom. And you might say, Jesus wasn’t getting married, how is he the Bridegroom. Well, at a Jewish wedding, it was the responsibility of the bridegroom to provide the wine. We can see this to be true, even in the text, for when the headwaiter tastes the wine, he immediately calls the bridegroom, assuming that he was the one who procured the vintage.

But, in this story, it was Jesus who provided the wine. By taking on the bridegroom’s responsibility to provide the wine, and doing so in a spectacular style, miraculously changing 120-180 gallons of water into the finest vintage, Jesus reveals himself as the Divine Bridegroom, who provides the wine of salvation for his bride, the Church.  

This epiphany was hinted at in our first reading. Isiah prophesied about how God himself would take us as his spouse: “As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.” 

In joining the Church to himself, through his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has united himself to humanity as Bridegroom to his Bride in a union of love.

And that Jesus revealed himself as a Bridegroom through a miracle of changing water into wine, is also significant. Wine, drunk at a wedding brings joy to the hearts of those who imbibe in it. So too, those who join the church, are able to rejoice at being united to God through Baptism, and most especially, receiving Holy Communion with God through the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood, the Eucharist.

What an epiphany! Jesus is the Bridegroom who unites himself to us, through Sacramental bonds, that we may live in joy. 

The second epiphany at the wedding at Cana is regarding Jesus’ mother, something that also gladdens our hearts. 

You can imagine how embarrassing it would be today if, at a wedding reception, the banquet hall ran out of food or beverage.  Even though most people would sympathize with the couple and blame the banquet facility, it would still be embarrassing. Well, in the ancient world, it would be incalculably more so, because the family threw the wedding party. If they ran out of supplies, especially with days to go for the duration of the wedding celebration, it would be an embarrassment that likely would never be forgotten.

Well, who noticed first that the family had run out of wine? Jesus’ mother. Mary noticed the impending catastrophe before anyone else, even the mother of the bride and even the wine steward.  Mary’s love made her notice details that others were missing.  To remedy the problem, she went to her son.  She didn’t twist his arm.  She simply said, “they have no wine!” confident that her Son would miraculously intervene even though his “hour” had not yet come.

What’s the epiphany? Mary is involved in the gritty details of our lives, and she is at work before we even know we have a problem. Our Lady is looking down on all of us right now with maternal love, bringing our needs to Christ, even the ones we are not aware of, the needs we might even be ashamed to acknowledge—praying that we may have the strength and patience and humility, to bear our crosses in union with Christ.  Mary brings our trials, our heartaches, our challenges, our vices and sins to God, so that we may obtain the wine of grace we need to endure and overcome them.

Mary’s role in the Church reveals something about God too. God has placed Mary in this role of heavenly helper and intercessor. God has chosen her and thereby God wants us to have a relationship with her, trusting Mary, entrusting ourselves to her, bringing our needs to her. God formed the Church as a family with the greatest mother in all existence. 

And there is the epiphany about us as well: God has formed us into a family, united us through Jesus in Word and Sacrament, having Mary as mother. And  we are joined with each other for a purpose.

In the second reading today, St. Paul reflects on the variety of spiritual gifts…gifts of healing, mighty deeds, prophecy, discernment, varieties of tongues. Gifts given to glorify God and spread the Gospel. All these gifts are given to help us serve God. But notice, St. Paul says that none of us have received all of these gifts. Meaning, we are to work together, using our unique gifts, to serve God. We aren’t meant to do it on our own. Perhaps, this season, you’d do well to consider how God is calling you to work together with a brother or sister in Christ, in service to God—that all people of all places may come to drink the wine of salvation.

While the extraordinary seasons of Advent and Christmas have come to an end, our Ordinary Time scripture readings help us to realize the extraordinary nature of being members of the church, being loved by God, joyfully gifted with a variety of blessings, and spiritual helpers, the blessed Mother, our patron saints, our guardian angels  for the work of the Gospel. 

When we are faithful to our mission— Epiphanies of Christ’s goodness and power and love are made known in us and through us, in how we treat people, in the people we serve, and forgive, and witness to, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 - Different kinds of spiritual gifts

 Having completed the sacred seasons of Advent and Christmas, we’ve entered, once again the liturgical season known as Ordinary Time. During ordinary time we focus, not so much on the extraordinary events in the life of Jesus—his birth, his passion and death and resurrection, like we do at Christmas and Easter, but on the ordinary life of the Church, our everyday life as followers of Christ.

What should ordinary life as a Christian look like?  Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary in today’s Gospel gives us a very important first principal: “Do whatever he tells you.”  There’s the ordinary task of the Christian, there’s a summary of the work of the Church: “Do whatever he tells you.” Obey Christ.  Fulfill the mission he’s given.  Do his work.  Follow his will.  And when we do that, Jesus is able to transform ordinary water into extraordinary wine—he is able to transform the ordinary works and words of our life, into the rich, extraordinary works of God.  

The trouble is, of course, that we all too often obey our selfish impulses, our fears and anxieties, our preconceived notions about how the world should work, our prejudices, we listen to all of these voices, instead of the one voice that should matter, and so the ordinary water of our lives remains just water, the ordinary remains ordinary; the gifts go unused, the talents buried, the light hidden. 

“Doing whatever he tells you” means putting the gifts God has given us into practice. And in our second reading, St. Paul enumerates a number of those gifts which make our ordinary Christian life quite extraordinary.

“To each individual, the manifestation of the Spirit is given to some benefit.”  God gives every baptized member of the Church special gifts for the renewal and building up of the Church.  These gifts are not just for the Corinthians 2000 years ago, they are gifts not just for the clergy, not just for people involved in formal missionary activity in foreign lands, they are not just rare graces you might receive at charismatic prayer meetings.  But to you and me and every baptized member of the Church, God has given gifts that his Holy Spirit might be manifested NOW, in this neighborhood, in this parish, in our families, that souls might be brought more deeply into His divine life and the life of the Church.  

Saint Paul enumerates these gifts: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, mighty deeds, prophecy, discernment of spirits, varieties of tongues, interpretation of tongues: all meant for building-up the Church..  

Let’s look at some of these. First, Paul listed Wisdom. Saint Thomas Aquinas called wisdom, “the view from the hilltop”.  The wise person sees life from the high vantage point—that is, he puts in life in order in light of eternity. Wisdom means putting your life in order, getting your priorities straight. And all Christians are meant to do that. Wise Christians looks to the scriptures, looks to the saints, looks to our Church teachings to guide their lives, not the fleeting, fickle, foolish impulses of our emotions or sentiments or the foolish opinions and values and errors of the age. The Church needs wise Christians who are prudent, practical, rational, and judicious, who act as a guiding light for our culture.

Second, Paul lists the gift of “knowledge”.  The Catholic faith has produced the greatest and most knowledgeable thinkers of all time: Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, John Henry Newman, not to mention great scientists like Louis Pasteur, Alexander Fleming inventor of Penicillin, Galileo, Copernicus, Marie Curie, Catholics invented Universities.  It was a Roman Catholic priest, George Lamaitre who first proposed the Big Bang Theory! These men and women remind us that our knowledge is meant to be at the service of the Church and the human race. 

Are you knowledgeable in science, math, history, philosophy, theology, sports?  Your knowledge has been given to you as a gift, not simply to make a lot of money or to show off—no to lord it over others, but to be put in the service of God. I met a gentleman the other day, with a background in mechanical engineering and pipe fitting.  He is now helping poor Hispanic communities bring their buildings up to code. How can you use your knowledge to help others—to build up the Church?

The next spiritual gift Paul mentions is “faith”. Now all of us here have faith, more or less. Paul here is speaking of faith that is contagious. Have you met someone with really contagious faith? You talk with them and they draw you deeper into the life of the Church, they speak about prayer and you want to go home and pray, they speak about their guardian angel, and you think, yeah, I need to become better friends with my guardian angel, or they speak about confession, and you think, yeah, I haven’t been to confession in a while. 

There are non-believers languishing outside of the Church because of our failure to exercise the gift of faith—to allow our faith to be contagious. Is your faith contagious? If not, why not?

Paul mentions next, “gifts of healing”.  All of the baptized are empowered to pray for healing.  Every Sunday we always have a petition for the sick and the suffering, and each of us instinctively turns to God when we are sick or have a sick family member.  I think there are a lot of people in the Church who have been given the gift of psychological healing: people who almost naturally bring calm and peace, who can sooth inner turmoil, who can calm troubled psyches and souls.  

The gift of healing particularly can become unlocked when we ourselves have received healing.  Those who have overcome an addiction often finds that they can help others still struggling.  If you have been healed, likely the Lord is calling you to help someone who needs healing, someone who is grieving, or suffering from an emotional trauma, or just needs someone to talk to.

Finally, the gift of discernment is very important.  You might not have the gift of healing, wisdom or knowledge, but discernment is meant to help others discover their gifts.  To discern the work of the Spirit in others is no small thing.  God uses those with the gift of discernment to help others identify their gifts. You detect someone who is suffering emotional turmoil and you lead them to the one with the gift of healing.  You detect someone who is doubting the faith, and you bring them to the one with the gift of faith or knowledge.  You detect a family situation that requires outside help, perhaps a troubled marriage, and you get that troubled marriage the help it needs.  You detect that a particular young person is being called to religious life or to the priesthood, or that a fellow parishioner should consider joining the choir or becoming a lector or Eucharistic minister or deacon or catechist, you help point them in the right direction, and that is invaluable.  The person with discernment helps me to see something about myself that I cannot see.

At the beginning of this new year, far better than a new year resolution to eat fewer potato chips or something, is to consider how God is calling you to develop and share your gifts this year, for the building up of the Church, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

2nd Week of Easter 2021 - Friday - Abundance of Spiritual Food

 Having read through the entirety of Jesus' discourse with Nicodemus from chapter 3 of St. John's Gospel over the past four days, we now begin a week long reading of John Chapter 6.  St. John's sixth chapter is comprised of two miracle stories and a teaching: the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and Jesus walking on the water and the great Bread of Life discourse.  I encourage you to read and reflect on the entire chapter to get a sense of what's coming over the next 8 days.

For the past few days we've heard Jesus talk about the importance of believing in Him that we may have eternal life.  This miracle story seems to answer the question, “what kind of life does Jesus offer?”.  “What kind of life does Jesus offer?” Abundant life.  In the miracle of the multitude he takes the little that is possessed by the few and transforms it into a feast for the multitude.  What is brought to him, is multiplied into an abundance. 5 loaves are not only enough to feed five thousand, but there are twelve wicker baskets left over.

Similarly in the miracle at the wedding at Cana. The Lord doesn’t just transform a mug of water into wine. He transforms 120—150 gallons—of water into wine, more than they would need for the remainder of the wedding celebration.

Finding enough food for sustenance is not easy for a lot of people on this planet. And the Lord provides not only enough for sustenance, but abundance. This is particularly true in the spiritual life. 

Many souls wander around this planet trying to find something to sustain them—to give them courage, to give them inner strength, to give them what they need to make it through this vale of tears. They turn to the new age, they turn to popular psychology, modern philosophy, or the pharmaceutical industry. These may satisfy for a time, but in the end they always leave us exhausted and unhappy. 

But in Christ, we are finally able be fed spiritually in a deep and last manner; and not just with enough nourishment to satisfy us, but with more than we will ever need. The Christian life is an infinite mine in which the more one digs and explores the more one finds. This is evidenced in the life of the saints: abundant means for sanctification are available for those who seek it out. And the reason we are not holier than we are isn’t due to a lack of spiritual food, but because of our refusal to eat it.

“If you remain in me you will bear much fruit. (Jn 15:5)” “I have told you these things that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete (Jn 15:11)” “The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it in abundance (John 10:10).”

Through prayer and good works may we dispose ourselves—open ourselves—to be fed by the Lord, sanctified by the Lord, who desires to perfect us and complete us by his abundant grace for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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Filled with Paschal joy, let us turn earnestly to God, to graciously hear our prayers and supplications.

For the shepherds of our souls, that they may have the strength to govern wisely the flock entrusted to them by the Good Shepherd.

For the whole world, that it may truly know the peace of the Risen Christ, especially we pray for the conversion of those who refuse belief in God and Jesus the Christ, His Son.

For our parish, and for the newly initiated, that we may bear witness with great confidence to the Resurrection of Christ.

For our brothers and sisters who suffer, that their sorrow may be turned to gladness through the Christian faith.

That all of our beloved dead and all the souls in purgatory may come to the glory of the Resurrection.

O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the desires of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in 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.

Feb 11 2019 - Our Lady of Lourdes - Apparitions and Miraculous Healing

The first apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the 14 year old girl named Bernadette Soubarou was on this day, February 11, in 1858.  Bernadette reported seeing a young woman dressed in white, with a rosary in her hand, and a yellow rose on each foot.

Many find the idea of a Marian Apparition strange.  But, one cannot deny the biblical evidence that Mary loved to visit people.  She lovingly visited her cousin Elizabeth to share her joy of new life. Mary attended the wedding at Cana. She went to see Jesus in Capernaum. She was there in Jerusalem during her son’s Passion, and approached him during His way of the cross. And she approached him on Calvary, and stood by him during his suffering.  She was with the apostles, in prayer, on Pentecost.

Tradition has it that Mary appeared to the Apostle St. James on his apostolic journey to Spain, even before her bodily assumption into heaven. In her many apparitions throughout the centuries her message is basically the same: be faithful to her son, pray and work for the conversion of sinners. In other words, the Blessed Mother repeats the message she first gave at the wedding at Cana, “do whatever he tells you.”

At Lourdes, the Virgin Mary told Bernadette to pray for the conversion of sinners by praying the Rosary and meditating on the salvific events in the life of Christ. And of course, to build a chapel.

Today, more than 7 million people make a pilgrimage to this place, every year.  Though Church authorities have only officially recognized about 70 miraculous cures at Lourdes, countless people have experienced healing in some way.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II, who had such a great devotion to Our Blessed Mother, designated the 11th Day of February as a World Day of Prayer for the Sick: “a special time of prayer and sharing, of offering one’s suffering for the good of the Church, and reminding us to see in our sick brother and sister the face of Christ who, by suffering, dying, and rising, achieved the salvation of mankind.”

We unite ourselves in a special way today with all those who turn to God for help in their afflictions, who seek his peace and healing.  May we be instruments of peace and healing for them, with Mary, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That Our Lady may protect the Church from all evil, and aid us in the mission of the Gospel.

That all government leaders may be awakened to the supreme dignity of each human life, and that all people of our nation may work together for an end to the culture of death.

That through Immaculate Mary, Queen of Peace, hatred, violence, and cruelty will cease in the world.

That the sick may draw strength, consolation, and healing by turning to Our Lady, who
intercedes for us from her place in heaven.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

We pray, O Lord our God, that the Virgin Mary, who merited to bear God and man in her chaste womb, may commend the prayers of your faithful in your sight. Through Christ our Lord.

2nd Sunday in OT 2019 - Buddhist Detachment & Christian Morality

I was watching a documentary last night that contained an old Buddhist story, I think you might like. There was an old farmer who had a prized horse. And one day the horse ran away. And the farmer’s neighbor comes over to commiserate—to offer his condolences. He says, “I’m so sorry. I heard about your horse.” And the old farmer says, “who knows what is good or bad?” And the neighbor is confused because this is the farmer’s prized horse, after all. So the neighbor bids his farewell. Well the next day, the horse returns and he brings with him 12 wild horses from the countryside. Now the farmer is rich in horses. And the neighbor comes over and says, “Congratulations, you have all these horses.” And the old farmer says, “Who knows what’s good or bad?” And the neighbor is confused again. And then the next day the old farmer’s son is taming one of the horses and is thrown off the horse and breaks his leg. And the neighbor comes over again to commiserate, and the farmer says, “who knows what’s good or what’s bad”. And then the next day the army comes through the countryside and they are conscripting able-bodied young men to go off and fight in the war, and the farmer’s son is spared. And this story can go on and on and on.

Though this is a Buddhist story, there is some Christian truth. The Christian is to be detached
in a sense. We don’t know what the events of our life will hold. As they say, when God closes a door he opens a window. Being fired from one’s job, for example, might open up a new opportunity that is in the end more lucrative or more meaningful and fulfilling. The Christian martyrs, like our own St. Ignatius, they saw meaning behind what most people would consider evil: their suffering. St. Ignatius even told the Christians of Antioch not to try to rescue him from being brought to Rome for his martyrdom, so confident was he, that God could bring about something good through his suffering, just as God brought about the greatest good through the greatest suffering, our human salvation through the suffering and death of Jesus.

So, like the old farmer, Christians are called to practice a certain level of detachment. We aren’t to curse God when things don’t go our way. We are to trust God’s providence. Like Old Job would say, “the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

The Buddhist story however seems to only give insight into the events that happen around us. What it doesn’t address is human choice, human free will, that choices that I make. “Who knows what’s good or bad” applies to the events that happen to us and around us. The farmer had no choice that his horse ran away—so who knows if it was good or bad. However, the choices that we make, the exercise of free-will, that’s different. The Judeo-Christian tradition, our scriptures, the teachings of our Lord and the theologians are very clear that choices are either good or bad, and we can know the difference.
Some choices are so clearly in violation of the natural moral law, they are called objectively evil, objectively sinful: it doesn’t matter who does them, or the circumstance, they are always evil. One example, is the intentional destruction of innocent human life in the womb. And thousands and thousands and thousands of Christians and people of good-will marched upon our nation’s capital on Friday to bring an end to this national tragedy—this embarrassment to history--the legal allowance to murder unborn babies because they are unwanted by their parents. Christians are called to be the moral conscience of a place.

So some choices are clearly wrong. Sometimes it’s not always easy to know what is right or wrong. So God has given us through the Scriptures and through the teaching of his own lips, clear moral teaching. The 10 commandments, the sermon on the mount help to illuminate for us the right way to live, the way that leads to the flourishing of the human soul, the way that leads to everlasting life.

Our Gospel today contains some very important moral teaching from the lips of our blessed mother. Mary doesn't speak often in the Sacred Scriptures, but every time she does speak her words overflow with wisdom: "Do whatever he tells you." That is what is good, always. The teachings and commandments of Christ are always good. They aren’t always easy, but they are always good.

In the case of the wedding at Cana, the command was to bring Jesus jars of water, a strange request. But, when happened when the stewards were faithful to the command of Christ: goodness and power and glory were manifest.

“Do whatever he tells you” means that we can have unbounded confidence in Jesus. His teachings flow from a heart full of goodness, mercy, and love that understands humanity better than we understand ourselves. He wants what is best for us——he came to reconcile sinful man with God, to save sinful man from error and death. And when you trust him he will lead you to all truth. The compelling thing about Christian truth, besides the fact it comes from God himself, is that it is logically consistent, it holds up to greatest rational scrutiny. It is truly Catholic—universally intelligible to all people of all places of all times.

So we trust in Christ and those who he has established to speak and teach in his name. We are to have unbounded confidence in Him and in the teachings of His Church. For he himself said, “he who hears you” speaking to the Apostles, “hears me”. And “he who rejects you rejects Me.” He’s given His authority to the church in matters of faith and morality. And so when the Church clearly teaches that a particular human action is a sin, we trust that teaching and adapt our lives accordingly.

The true test of our confidence in God's goodness and power is our obedience to his will. To “do whatever he tells us”. And what does he tell us? To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to carry our crosses, to love our enemies, to forgive unreservedly, to build our lives and families on the solid foundation of his teaching, to believe in all the all the truths which the holy Catholic Church teaches, because God has revealed them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

Believing in good and bad is becoming increasingly unpopular. Naming actions as good or bad is labeled as intolerant or bigoted. But our Gospel today shows us, that when we say yes to Jesus, as incomprehensible as that is to the world, bringing 80 gallons of water to be changed into wine, when we say yes, to whatever he tells us, he does something amazing, something that reveals the goodness and power and glory of God that leads hearts to salvation through belief in Him.

May we be faithful to all the Lord and His Holy Church teaches and commands, may we do “whatever he tells us” for the glory of God and salvation of souls.