Homily: Monday of Holy Week 2016 - The jar of precious oil

What a beautiful, intimate, tender, moment, we’ve just heard described on this Monday of the Holiest Week of the year, when Mary anoints the feet of Jesus, and washes them with her hair.

We had met Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, previously in the Gospel.  She sat at the feet of Jesus, listening, contemplating his face.  When Martha complained that Mary wasn’t helping with the household tasks, Jesus said, that it was Mary who had chosen the better thing. “Few things are needed in life,” Jesus said, “and really only one thing.” To sit at the feet of Jesus, to learn from him, and to love him, is the one thing necessary in this life. 

When we come to the judgment of our life, it will not matter how much many we made, the size of our house, the number of friends we’ve had, the number of trophies and awards.  The only thing that will matter is: did we do the one necessary thing that Mary did, did we learn from Jesus and love him.

I was talking to the third graders last week about the events of Holy Week, and we talked about the scene from our Gospel today. “Why did Mary take a jar of perfumed oil that cost thirty thousand dollars in today’s money and pour it all out and wash Jesus’ feet with it?” I asked the third graders.  And one of the children raised their hand and gave the perfect answer: “Because he is God.”

During this Holy Week, our love and affection for Jesus should fill the room like the fragrance of ointment.  It should be detectable by those we meet. Time spent contemplating the face of the Lord, this Week, meditating upon his love for us, his suffering, his humility, his patience, his unutterable beauty and glory should change us.  This is our task this week, the one thing necessary: to give Jesus the best we have in adoring Him, in contemplating Him, in following Him, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Homily: Palm Sunday 2016 - Paradox of Sorrow and Joy

Today we are in the middle of a paradox.

On the one hand, we are filled with joy.

As Jesus enters Jerusalem, throngs of people rejoice. The promised Savior has finally come! The Messiah is here! Redemption is at hand!

But then, on the other hand, we are sorrowful.  We hear proclaimed the sorrowful narrative of our Lord’s Passion—his rejection, his suffering, his death.

Today is full of so much joy and sorrow—much like the typical to Christian life—the life of the ordinary Christian is filled with both isn’t it? Sorrow and joy—defeat and victory.

For Christ: what seems to be his defeat on mount calvary, the cause of overwhelming sorrow, is actually his victory.  His passion is the victory of everlasting love.

"A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends" That's what Jesus taught, and that's what he did in his passion: to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that his love for us has no limits.

He entered the world in way similar to the way he entered Jerusalem.  At his birth, angels sang "Glory to God in the Highest" when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and now the people sing, "Hosanna in the Highest" as Jesus enters Jerusalem.

Both entrances were motivated by God's love.  Out of obedient love he became man, and out of that same love he is obedient to the Father even to the point of death—to save us from our sins.

The source of our sorrow is sin, our sins; in one sense, the cause of Christ's suffering is our sins.  Christ’s blood is on our hands, all of our hands. In another sense, the cause of Christ’s suffering is his love. He suffers because he loves; thereby showing us the true face of love.  True love is not a storybook romance; true love is the cross. He suffered for us, to open the gates of heaven for sinful man.

We have solved our paradox.  There is sadness because of sin, but there is joy because of Christ’s selfless compassion, his unselfish love.  By his death he has obtained for us a redemption that is eternal.

Today is the beginning of the holiest week of the year, the week we call Holy Week.  During the first Holy Week, two thousand years ago, Jesus achieved victory over sin and evil.  During this Holy Week, he wants to extend that victory into the parts of our lives that still need it conversion, those parts of our hearts and lives we have kept closed to the redeeming power of Christ.  Those selfish, unloving parts of us, we need to bring to the cross to be transformed.

May we make this week different by turning off the radio and television more often than usual, by spending more time in prayer than we do on the internet, and joining in this week’s liturgies, praying, worshiping, contemplating, receiving the Sacraments and the transforming power of grace this Holy Week for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Homily: Friday of the 5th Week of Lent 2016 - "You are gods"

One week from Good Friday, with Holy Week looming on the horizon, our Gospel today begins in a dramatic fashion, the opponents of Jesus are ready to stone him to death—the violence, the plotting, the hostility toward Jesus is all starting to mount and come to a climax. 

It was the festival of the Dedication of the Temple—what today is called Hanukah, and Jesus stood in a sacred place, one of the porticos of the Temple, preaching the truth about how he has been sent by the Father as the promised Messiah, the Son of God.

This enrages the people who weren’t ready to believe in Him, and certainly weren’t ready to give him the authority as the Messiah.  So they plotted against him, and were prepared to carry out that plot by stoning him to death as the Gospel opened today.

Jesus then speaks up and asks them, “why” are they persecuting him? They claim Jesus has committed blasphemy, but Jesus claims, “I have simply been restating to you what is in your own scriptures.”  He says, “you are trying to kill me for claiming to be the Son of God, while your own scriptures make that claim about all God’s people”  And he is right, of course.  Psalm 82 speaks about the children of Israel can rightly be called “gods”—not because they have any claim on Divinity—but because God speaks to them as his own children—and calls them into a filial relationship through justice and sharing his divine life.

This is a wonderful Psalm to keep in mind as we enter into Holy Week and as we remember all that Jesus suffers.  He undergoes all of this tremendous suffering, why? To enable us to be called children of God, to raise us up to this relationship with God where we are able to share his divine life—“to share in the divine nature” as we read in 2^nd Peter. Thomas Aquinas, quoted in our Catechism said: “"The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."

Remember, one of the promises of the beatitudes: blessed are the peacemakers, for the shall be called children of God.  That is our destiny, to be God’s children: obedient, sharing God’s joy, the treasures of his household. As a result of what Jesus accomplishes a week from today, we are able to experience what the catechism calls “divine filiation”—able to turn to God and cry out to him, saying “Abba Father”. 

Amidst the chaotic political events, so much darkness and bafflement in the world, Christians, Pope Benedict said, “remain unshakably certain that God is our Father and loves us, even when his silence remains incomprehensible.”  The same peace, faith, obedience, trust, and fortitude that will flow through Jesus’ veins as he undergoes his passion next week, dwells in the souls of the baptized.

Let us never forget that great dignity, and allow it to motivate us in our efforts to serve Our Lord, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Homily: Thursday of the 5th Week of Lent 2016 - What's in a name

Throughout Scripture there are several accounts of God changing peoples’ names: Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, Simon’s name is changed to Peter, Saul’s name is changed to Paul. In our first reading today, God gives Abram the new name, Abraham, for he shall be the father of God’s great nation. In the biblical context a name-changing occurs when God gives a special mission to someone. Jesus change Simon’s name to Peter when he gave him the special mission of being the rock upon which Jesus would build his Church.

In baptism, our deepest identity is changed—we are renamed---we are given the name of ‘Christian’.  And just like Abraham, Peter, and Paul—that new name comes with a mission—spreading the Gospel and sharing in God’s divine life.

In Scripture, people get into trouble whenever they try to “make a name for themselves”. Remember, the tower of Babylon? The people sought to build a tower that touched the heavens to “make a name for themselves”…they didn’t do it to glorify God, they didn’t do it to house the poor, they didn’t do it to make God’s name great, they did it for themselves, for their own glory.

Today’s first reading takes place right after the story of the fall of the tower of Babylon—for that’s the destiny of all purely human endeavors—our towers fall inevitably. With the tower fallen, humanity in disarray, God chooses Abraham to be the father of a people whose vocation will be to make God’s name known throughout the earth.  Through their faithfulness to the commandments, through their intimate union with God—people will come to know God through them.

That promise to Abraham is fulfilled in the Christian Church, as we, the baptized, those raised to new life by Christ, have as our vocation spreading Christ’s name to every corner of the earth by our witness of holy living.

Yet, we have the same temptation don’t we: to make our lives all about ourselves, to live for ourselves instead of for him, to make ourselves the center of the universe instead of him.  Our Lenten penances have helped us to repent and convert from this terrible pride.  Our Lenten practices have been designed to help us decrease, so that his name may increase.  The amazing a paradoxical thing is, the more we become like him, the more we become the people God created us to be.  We do not lose our identity, rather, our identity, our names, are perfected.  When we submit every detail of our life over to God, we become the-best-version-of-yourself, as Matthew Kelly puts it.

Sadly, in many parts of our country, even our own town, St. Patrick, a man who lived for Christ, will be honored without any reference to Christ.  The man who was sold into slavery, who drove out false religion from the emerald isle, will be celebrated not with sober mindfulness, but with ignorant drunkenness. Many have remade Patrick to look like themselves, a life, with no reference to Christ.

Conscious of our need to decrease, to glorify Christ, let us continue in our Lenten practices, mindful of our vocation to make Christ’s name great, to spread his saving Gospel in a fallen world, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Homily: Tuesday of the 5th Week of Lent 2016 - The crucified lifted up

The Israelites in the desert had taken their eyes off of what God was doing for them, so they began to complain.  God was freeing them from slavery and leading them to the promised land, but their complaints and hardness of hearts caused them to be dead in sin. To symbolize their spiritual death, saraph serpents killed many of the Israelites. Yet, realizing they had sinned, they repented. A saraph serpent was then placed on a pole, and became the remedy for their sin.

Failing to recognize that Jesus was truly the Son of God, Jesus told the Pharisees that they would die in their sins unless they looked upon him and believed that he was God.

In these dark times, even many Catholics look to the crucified one and see nothing.  They fail to make Him the God of their life. They fail to recognize Him as savior. They refuse his call to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.

It is the task of faithful Christians to hold him up for the world to see—in our speech, in our behaviors, and in our prayers, that they may see him and believe.

The great lover of the Crucified, St. Paul of the Cross, would often go from parish to parish, preaching parish missions.  When he would preach these missions, he would often hold out to the congregation a crucifix, and simply holding the crucifix out for all to see, he would say, “listen to his love.”

He said, "When you are alone in your room, take your crucifix, kiss its five wounds reverently, tell it to preach to you a little sermon, and then listen to the words of eternal life that it speaks to your heart; listen to the pleading of the thorns, the nails, the precious Blood. Oh, what an eloquent sermon!"

Look at the hands of Jesus, always open during life, still open, still giving, healing to the last drop of blood.

Look at the feet of Jesus, which climbed the mountain of Calvary, now lifted up and nailed to the cross for our salvation.

Look at the side of Jesus from which flowed the blood and water, the fountain of the sacramental life of the Church

It is up to us, dear brethren, to help those who do not look upon Christ with faith, to see that he reaches out to them from the cross with tremendous love. We are to help them embrace Him, as he longs to bring them mercy, strength, and peace, as he has for us.  May each of us keep his tremendous outpouring of love ever before our eyes, in our mind, and in our hearts, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Homily: Monday of the 5th Week of Lent 2016 - Susanna, Jesus, and Us

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Today we have one of the longest First Readings that we have in the entire lectionary.  It is the 13^th Chapter, a long chapter, from the book of the Prophet Daniel.  It is almost 60 verses long.  It is the story of this beautiful, faithful woman, Susanna, who is falsely accused by two corrupt evil old men, who wanted to have their way with her.  Lying to protect themselves the two wicked elders seek to have Susanna put to death.

Then Daniel steps in, advocates for her: and the two corrupt judges were convicted and Susanna goes free.

As I mentioned last week, our scripture readings for the last part of Lent point not so much to Lenten penances that we are to undertake, but to Christ—they help us prepare to understand what happens as Jesus is arrested, tortured, put to death, and is raised.

How does the Susanna story point to Christ? Who is Christ in the story? In a sense he is Susanna: beautiful, faithful, innocent, arrested because of the words of corrupt elders.

And though he suffers humiliation, torture, revilement, mockery, suffering, and death, he is exonerated, and vindicated by God, as Susanna was by Daniel, when he is Resurrected.  His Father testifies on Christ’s behalf, as we heard in the Gospel, when Jesus is raised from the dead.

At the end of the first reading, we heard how “the whole assembly cried aloud, blessing God who saves those who hope in him.”  Not only is Jesus foreshadowed in the Susanna reading, but his body the Church as well.  We are that assembly who now cries out, blessing God who saves those who hope in him.

In the beautiful, and well-known responsorial Psalm, we proclaimed: “Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side”.  Susanna showed her fearlessness as she went through her dark valley, as she trusted in God. Jesus will show himself to be Fearless as he went through his dark valley, during the events of Holy Week. And we learn from their example, what it means to be people of hope.

This Lent should have toughed us up a bit, going into the desert should always do that. It should have toughened us up against the temptations of the flesh, which we resisted through our Lenten Penances. And it should also be strengthening our resolve that the same Spirit of Jesus who endures so much suffering, so much darkness, faithfully during Holy Week, dwells within us.

That no matter the darkness we face, we do so with Christ at our side, in our hearts, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Homily: 5th Sunday of Lent 2016 - The Hound of Heaven & the Adulterous woman

"I fled Him down the nights and down the days 

I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him…."

So begins the poet Francis Thompson's famous poem entitled "The Hound of Heaven."  One scholar wrote, “’The Hound of Heaven’ is the sweetest, deepest, strongest poem ever written in the English tongue.”  And in this magnificent ode, we hear the story of a soul’s flight from God.

For centuries before, English poets had written of man’s search for God—the soul’s eager quest for the kingdom of heaven.  But drawing upon his own spiritual experience, Francis Thompson presents something very relatable for us sinners—the soul running away from God. 

We flee from God in so many ways don’t we—distractions, addictions, seeking happiness in the admiration of others. “We flee Him down the nights and down the days, we flee him down the arches of the years.”

I think of the woman caught in adultery in today’s Gospel.  She turned to sin for the same reason any of us turn to sin.  We think it will make us happy.  The adulterous woman sought happiness in an adulterous relationship—the carnal pleasures of illicit companionship.

Francis Thompson was a Roman Catholic who led a tortured life.  After abandoning studies to become a priest and later a physician, he drifted and fell into financial hard times.  His troubles worsened when he developed a painful neurological condition and began using opium to relieve his pain.  Though he fought off his drug habit, he eventually succumbed to tuberculosis, dying a month short of his 48^th birthday.  He knew from experience what it meant to flee from God down the “labyrinthine ways Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears.” We may have members of our own families who struggle with such addictions, who appear to be fleeing from God with all their might.

Yet, the point of the poem, isn’t simply that we flee from God, that part is obvious.  Francis Thompson called God the “hound from heaven”, who pursues us even as we flee Him.  God relentlessly pursues us sinners so he can save us. God pursues us because he desires us to be whole and happy, but we flee from him, the poem states, because we worry that we will have to sacrifice our earthly delights if we accept God. How often has God urged us to pray, but we resist because we worried we’d miss a favorite television show? How foolish of us. God calls out to us, offering us refreshment, peace, strength, and we choose paltry entertainment.  How foolish.  But God is unrelenting. And thanks be to God that he is—that he does not give up on us.

In the Gospel, the adulterous woman is brought before Jesus—the hound of heaven had caught up with her.

The Pharisees who had no mercy in their hearts wished Jesus to condemn her to death. But Mercy himself spoke,  “Let him who is without sin among you, be the first to throw a stone at her.”  And what a beautiful intimate moment, after the Scribes and the Pharisees and the crowds walked away in shame, and only two remained, the adulterous woman and the incarnation of mercy.

“Has no one condemned you?”  “No one, Lord” “Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more.” Here, she encounters mercy, she surrenders to it, and is enabled to make a new beginning of her life.  God always offers us a new beginning—a life free from sin devoted to doing the will of God.

The poem, “The Hound of Heaven” reaches its climax when the exhausted soul finally surrenders to the Love of God.  It finally gives up all of its carnal desires and instead of fleeing, it allows itself to be led by God. The souls recognizes that only God can provide true and lasting happiness; the pleasures and comforts of this world—which are temporary and incomplete—cannot satisfy our deep longing for God.

St. Paul is another example of one who finally surrendered to the love and mercy of Christ. Remember, Paul had been the most zealous persecutor of Christians in that first generation of the Church.  He was a high born, purebred Israelite, a Pharisee, well educated, zealous for his faith, a scrupulous follower of the law.

But because of his encounter with Mercy, he is able to say in the second reading today “But whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ.  More than that, I even consider EVERYTHING as loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my lord.”  What happened?  What happened to this man who had it all?  He had everything you would want as a Jew of his time—he came from the best neighborhood, the best family, went to the best school, had the leading job, was admired by everybody.  And he says, “All this is rubbish—compared to being taken possession of by Christ Jesus.”

Friends, God loves us; he pursues us, calls out to us to accept His mercy and turn away from sin, and experience the new life he has in store for us. God is constantly at work in all of our lives, here, now, chasing after us, pleading with us to put away our sins, our distractions, and our addictions, and learn to let him lead us in a life of ever greater submission to the Divine Will of God.

Thursday night, here at St. Clare we have a Lenten Penance service.  Between now and then, I encourage each of you to make a good examination of conscience—consider all the ways that you may be fleeing from God, and then come and encounter his mercy in the sacrament of confession.  Allow him to catch up to you, surrender to Him, and receive his mercy.

And if you aren’t in need of the Sacrament, in these final two weeks of Lent, let us all redouble our efforts to strip away all those things which lead us to sin, all those things that get in the way of surrendering to God, all those things we ought to count as rubbish.  May we, in the words of St. Paul “continue our pursuit” and “strain forward” not away from God, but towards Him.  To race into his arms as he races towards us, to surrender to that deeper intimacy with God that we all yearn for, to put an end to sin and make a new beginning of goodness, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.