Annunciation 2024 - Mary does not eclipse, but magnifies the Divine Sun

 

Due to March 25 falling during Holy Week this year, the Solemnity of the Annunciation is transferred to the first day after the Easter Octave, that is today, April 8. 

Interestingly, today also coincides with a solar eclipse, a celestial event where the moon passes between the earth and the sun, totally obscuring the sun's light. 

It is a providential coincidence that invites us to consider the profound relationship between the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Divine Son, Jesus Christ.

Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, "God who made the sun, also made the moon. The moon does not take away from the brilliance of the sun. All its light is reflected from the sun. The Blessed Mother reflects her Divine Son; without Him, she is nothing. With Him, she is the Mother of men." 

In the cosmic dance we witness today, the moon, by eclipsing the sun, does not diminish its light but momentarily draws our gaze so that we might appreciate the sun's brilliance all the more when it reemerges. In the same way, Mary, in her humility and obedience announced at the Annunciation, does not overshadow Jesus but reflects and magnifies His divine light. Just as the moon is illuminated by the sun, Mary's life is wholly illuminated by the grace and love of God through Jesus. She is the immaculate mirror reflecting His perfect light into the darkness of our world.

Just as the moon reflects the light of the sun, Mary reflects the love and grace of her Son, Jesus Christ. She does not eclipse or diminish His glory but rather magnifies it through her faithfulness and obedience. “My soul”, she says, “doth magnify the Lord.”

The eclipse today, then, becomes a profound metaphor for our spiritual lives. There are moments when our faith seems overshadowed by doubt or fear, just as the sun is momentarily covered by the moon. Yet, these moments do not signify the absence of God's light but rather an invitation to trust in the steady, illuminating presence of Mary, our guide, who always reflects the light of Christ back to us, guiding us through periods of darkness back into His radiant love and mercy.

It is in these moments that we can turn to Mary, our Blessed Mother, who will always guide us back to her Son. As St. Louis Marie de Montfort reminds us, "[Mary] is the safest, easiest, shortest and most perfect way of approaching Jesus and will surrender themselves to her, body and soul, without reserve in order to belong entirely to Jesus."

On this day of celestial wonder and divine grace, let us renew our commitment to journeying towards Jesus by walking with Mary, the star of the new evangelization, who leads us to her Son. Let the eclipse remind us that even in moments of darkness, the light of Christ, reflected in the heart of Mary, is our ever-present guide and hope, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

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Let us offer our prayers to the Father, guided by the light of Christ and accompanied by the Blessed Virgin Mary, as we present our needs and the needs of the world.

For the Church, that under the maternal guidance of Mary, it may shine forth as a beacon of divine love and truth in the world, leading all people closer to Christ. Let us pray to the Lord.

For world leaders and all those in authority, that they may be inspired by the humility and obedience of the Blessed Virgin Mary to serve with integrity, seeking justice and peace for all people. Let us pray to the Lord.

For all who are experiencing moments of darkness and doubt in their lives, that through the intercession of Mary, they may see the light of Christ and feel His comforting presence amidst their trials. Let us pray to the Lord.

For our community, that we may embrace Mary’s example of faithful service and unconditional love, opening our hearts to God’s will and serving one another with generosity and compassion. Let us pray to the Lord.

For all who are ill or suffering, especially those among our families and friends, that they may find healing and consolation in the love of Jesus, with Mary as their tender advocate and guide. Let us pray to the Lord.

For all the faithful departed, that through the mercy of God and with the intercession of Mary, they may be welcomed into the heavenly kingdom and enjoy eternal peace. Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, hear the prayers we offer today, trusting in the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. May our lives reflect the light of your Son, Jesus, as we strive to follow Him more closely each day. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

5th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2024 - Life is worth living

Have you ever been deeply brokenhearted and felt you couldn’t go on? Have you ever felt that life is just one series of miserable occurrences after the next? Have you ever had an existential crisis, a moment in your life where you wonder “what is the point of it all?”

Such experiences are not uncommon. Job in our first reading this weekend is at a real low point in his life. He says to himself, “Is not man's life on earth a drudgery? Isn’t life just endless servitude where you are just waiting to die? Kind of dark. But also reassuring that scripture is honest about the miseries we face. That sometimes you begin to question, what is up with all this suffering?

And this is an important question. There is a whole branch of philosophy called existentialism which grapples and wrestles with the universal human experience of figuring out the meaning of life and enduring suffering with purpose. The existential philosopher Albert Camus claimed, that “Deciding whether or not life is worth living” is “the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.”

Now, Albert Camus was pretty critical of religion most of the time, but he’s certainly on to something. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen launched a radio show back in the 1950s and television show, called “Life is Worth Living.” And that television show was on primetime, on a major network, and had the highest rating of any show at the time. 

Now Job really grappled with this question. And Job really knew what it meant to suffer. Job, initially, was a wealthy man with a large family, significant livestock, and many servants. In a series of calamities, he lost his possessions and wealth, including his livestock and property. Tragically, Job suffered the loss of his ten children when a great wind collapsed the house where they were gathered, leading to their deaths. Job experienced a debilitating illness: painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. His physical suffering was intense. Job faced additional hardships in the form of isolation and rejection. His friends, who came to comfort him, suggested that his suffering was his own fault. 

But Job was a man of deep faith, and ultimately concludes that the man of faith is called to trust in God always: “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” And that life is worth living even when we suffer tragedy. 

The book of Job, read the whole thing some time. It’ll help you grow in spiritual maturity. 

“Life is worth living”. How can we say that?

When Christians say that life is worth living, this belief is grounded in scripture, theology and reason.

Scripture in its earliest pages reveals that humans are created in the image of God. God is good, therefore human life is good. Human life is good and sacred, therefore every human life has dignity and worth, and our dignity is not dependent on external factors such as achievements, status, wealth or abilities but is intrinsic to being a human being. 

Life is worth living because every life has a purpose. Often people begin to question whether their life is worth living because they see no purpose to their life. This is why deep mature faith in God is so important to the human experience, for living a life aligned with divine principles and guided by faith helps us experience the purpose for which we were made—to know our purpose even as we suffer. With faith, Our challenges and sufferings, even our setbacks and sins, become opportunities for growth and transformation, the cultivation of virtue and the sanctification of our eternal souls.

Life is worth living because the time we have been given in this earthly life is for the purpose of preparing for eternity. 

Now, again, most of us, at some point, have moments, even perhaps long periods of life, where we feel like Job in our first reading. And so it is important to fight these negative feelings with Truth. We must remind ourselves of our worth as human beings. We have a responsibility to preserve and nurture life and that includes our own physical, mental, and spiritual health. We need to eat right and avoid activities and substances that bring us depression and meaninglessness, and strengthen our faith when it is wavering.

I can’t remember who said it, but it’s great advice. Whenever you are feeling down or lost, look at the crucifix. Remind yourself, that the one nailed to the cross embraced that cross for you out of love for you. No matter your sins, no matter your past. He loves you. Your life is worth living because God loves you. He loved you into existence, knowing what your sins would be, knowing the suffering you would have to endure. And he gives you the knowledge that he loves you so that you do not despair. 

In today’s Gospel, people came from throughout capernaum to be healed by Jesus—to be delivered from their earthly miseries and bodily pains and their demons. And the Lord certainly, certainly wishes to bring us wholeness and peace and healing, just like he did for the citizens of Capernaum. But you must go to him with the desire to be healed. When you come to mass, have you identified what needs healing? Have you identified the broken parts of your life that need wholeness? The stagnate part of your lives that could use transformation.

To those who say, I don’t need to come to church, I can approach God at own home. How’s that working out ? We don’t have a lot of Gospel stories of people being healed just by sitting at home. Even with the case of Peter’s mother-in-law, Jesus is welcomed and brought into the home, by the sons of Zebedee and Alphaeus, and the healing comes through the actual encounter.

We need to come to mass, sometimes more than just once a week, when we are downtrodden. You know every week we have holy hour, when the Eucharist is placed in the monstrance for you to come and kneel and pray. Every first Friday as well. Jesus waits for us to visit him in the monstrances and tabernacles and confessionals. 

We can be pretty foolish about the spiritual life, sometimes, thinking that our problems will just go away in time, without any real effort on our part, without putting in the work, and bringing our sufferings to Jesus with persistence. And the unwillingness to do the work, the unwillingness to confess our sins is the cause of immeasurable misery. Faith involves doing the work, approaching Jesus, laying our life bare to him for healing.

Job suffered, but in the end, he kept the faith. And doing so resulted in a powerful experience of God. Keeping the faith, in the end, will result in the eternal experience of God’s goodness in heaven. So when our crosses grow heavy, we must go to Jesus, and learn to rely on Jesus to be our strength. If you haven’t received the strength you need, you need to keep going back to Jesus. 

May the Lord sustain us in our works and in our sufferings, reveal to us our purpose, and deliver us from our sins for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

5th Sunday in OT 2018 - Life is worth living

Have you ever been deeply-broken hearted that you felt you couldn’t go on? Have you ever felt, like Job, in our first reading: Is not man's life on earth a drudgery? In other words, have you felt that life is just one series of a miserable circumstances after the next? Have you ever had an existential crisis, a moment in your life where you wonder “what is the point of it all?”

Such experiences are not uncommon. The whole branch of existential philosophy was developed to grapple and wrestle with the universal human experience of questioning the purpose of it all. The existential Philosopher Albert Camus even claimed, that “Deciding whether or not life is worth living” is “the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.”

We Christians take that question seriously. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen even launched a radio show and later what became the most popular television show at its time, called “Life is Worth Living.” The book of Job grapples with this question: if life is filled with so much drudgery and suffering, is life worth living?

In ancient times, suffering was understood to be caused by sin. If you suffered, it must be your fault, or the fault of somebody down your family line. But, this was not the case for Job, Job was a just and honest man, and yet he still suffered. So how does the virtuous and faithful Job understand his suffering?

The Book of Job ultimately concludes that the man of faith is called to trust in God whether he suffers or not, “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” “Bless the Lord at all times” as the Psalmist says. That’s a faith and trust that we all need to aspire to. And Job shows us that sort of faith isn’t always easy. How did Job reach this level of spiritual maturity? How did he go from existential crisis to deep faith, from seeing his life has monotonous and meaningless to seeing the hand of God in his life?

Job’s spiritual awakening certainly came after a lot of questioning. Maybe you’ve asked these questions too. “Why?”, “why me?”, “why is this happening to me?” But Job has a breakthrough when he shifts his focus, he changes the type of questions. He stops asking “why must I suffer?” and starts asking God “what do I do about my suffering?” Life IS worth living, no matter the suffering, so how do I deal, how do I cope with the things that are causing my unhappiness, these circumstances threatening my peace and well-being. What is the way forward?

Self-examination is a powerful tool for spiritual growth. If we are unhappy we do well to question the cause of it. Why am I unhappy and depressed? Well it might be because my drinking has increased, or I’ve not forgiven my spouse, or haven’t prayed with any real depth in a few days, or I’m really angry at my boss, or I haven’t been helping anyone but myself lately. Unhappiness is often a sign of unresolved anger, resentment, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth, self-centeredness. There is great unhappiness when one is isolated by selfishness, when one lives only for oneself. Taking a moral inventory is quite necessary from time to time.

But the road to happiness doesn’t end with the self-examination, it needs to lead to action: cutting back on the drinking, Netflix, and video games; standing up to the boss who’s been taking advantage of you, making a spiritual retreat, or maybe going to couples’ therapy if there are deep unresolved issues with your spouse; or getting involved in volunteer service if you’ve been living selfishly lately.
Life IS worth living, and even when there is suffering, even when life feels like monotonous, meaningless drudgery, we have some choices to make. And those choices will determine if we remain stuck in unhappiness or we discover God’s presence with us.

Now, one of the great miseries of life, which Job experienced as well, is the death of a loved one: a parent, a child, a spouse, a dear friend. When a loved one dies there’s often a whole host of feelings: numbness, confusion, anger. Sometimes the pain is so great it feel like you can’t go on living either, such broken-heartedness can be devastating. We ask God some of those Job-like questions: why, why did this happen, why was my loved one taken from me.

And so often, the road to healing involves that shift: from “why was my loved one taken from me” to “now what can I do to heal, to find peace”

That’s not always an easy question to ask. It’s hard to trust that healing and peace CAN be discovered again, to allow yourself to go on living, to allow God to bring you healing. As we recited in the Psalm today: “the Lord, heals the brokenhearted…Great is our Lord and mighty in power; to his wisdom there is no limit.”

To cry out to God with a broken heart is better than not crying out to Him at all. And I think that was Job’s great shift towards deep faith: learning how to turn to God and trust God amidst the suffering.
In today’s Gospel, people came from all places to be healed by Jesus—to be freed of their earthly miseries and bodily pains and their demons. And the Lord certainly, certainly wishes to bring us wholeness and peace and healing, just like he did for the citizens of Capernaum.

But I’d say most often that healing looks a little different than what we first thought. Healing and peace typically don’t come by a wave of the magic wand, but like Job, they involve learning to see things from God’s perspective, learning to trust God amidst the suffering, trusting that life is worth living, and adopting healthy ways of reflecting that faith.

The poet Stephen Vincent Benet put it: “Life is not lost by dying; Life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand uncaring ways.” So let us care deeply, love deeply, give of ourselves deeply, that we may discover the healing and life Jesus died to obtain for us for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

July 21, 2017 - St. Lawrence of Brindisi - "He is a living Pentecost"

A 17th Century contemporary of his, the Cardinal theologian Cajetan, said that St. Lawrence of Brindisi was “an incarnation of the old apostles, who, speaking to all nations, were understood by all.  He is a living Pentecost.” St. Lawrence was certainly enlivened by the Holy Spirit, he was able to preach effectively in at least 6 languages.

Saint Pope John XXIII honored this gifted son of St. Francis by proclaiming him a Doctor of the Universal Church with the title “Apostolic Doctor”.

St. Lawrence accomplished so many different kinds of service in his sixty years of life: Army chaplain, diplomat & peacemaker, miracle-worker, exorcist, theologian, biblical scholar, linguist, confessor, mystic, and leader of the Counter-Reformation, doctor of the Church.  As vicar general for the Capuchins he combined his brilliance, his great administrative skill, and his great sensitivity and human compassion.  He founded many friaries, in Prague, Vienna, Bohemia, Madrid, and Austria.

What was the source of his greatness, of his devotion, of his fortitude, and courage?  His effectiveness as a preacher derived from an intense interior life—particularly his great love for the Mass and the Blessed Virgin to whom he attributed his vocation. He would sometimes be so caught up in ecstasy during the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice that he would be weeping with love and adoration.

If we wish to become the person God made us to become, we too must make the interior journey: we must come to have a burning love of Christ, seeking purification sins, habituating ourselves in the ways of Christ through a fervent practice of the virtue, enlightenment of mind through meditation of His Holy Word. We must seek to see as our true nourishment prayer and the Sacraments.

Fulton Sheen often said that the reason many of us are not the saints God made us to be, is because we do not wholly wish to become them. We play pretend at seeking God, instead of really making Him our life’s quest.

In the words of St. Lawrence: “Christ came into this world to do battle with Satan, to turn the world to faith and the true worship of God.”

May our faith and worship be purified and strengthened by this holy Saint, may he help us to deepen our zeal and courage for the Gospel, to develop our gifts for the building up of the Church, for the work of God, for his Glory, and the salvation of souls.
 
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For Bishop Nelson Perez, the next shepherd of our diocese; for our Apostolic Administrator, Bishop Daniel Thomas; for Bishop-emeritus Richard Lennon; that the Holy Spirit will continue to enlighten and empower them with grace, confidence and hope.  We pray.

For our Holy Father’s prayer intention for the month of July: that our brothers and sisters who have strayed from the faith, through our prayer and witness to the Gospel, may rediscover the merciful closeness of the Lord and the beauty of the Christian life. We pray.

That the Holy Spirit may enlighten all Christians, deepening in them conviction for the Gospel. We pray.

That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering. We pray.

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased priests and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. We pray.

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