12th Week in Ordinary Time 2024 - Tuesday - Laying your troubles before God

During the reign of Hezekiah, King of Judah, in the late 8th century BCE, the Assyrian Empire, under King Sennacherib, was expanding aggressively. After subjugating various neighboring nations, Sennacherib turned his attention to Judah, laying siege to fortified cities and eventually threatening Jerusalem itself.

And what was Hezekiah’s response to this threat? Instead of cowering in fear or surrendering or engaging in a violent military solution, which probably wouldn’t have gone well anyway due to the size of the Assyrian army, King Hezekiah takes the matter to the Temple, spreads out the letter from Sennacherib, the Assyrian King, before God, and prays for deliverance. 

Hezekiah’s prayer acknowledges God’s sovereignty over all the kingdoms of the earth and God’s power over all the creations of man, contrasting the true God of Israel with the false gods of the nations destroyed by Assyria. God is not like the idols made by human hands. The living God who controls the fate of nations.

The prophet Isaiah then assured Hezekiah that God has heard his prayer and will save Jerusalem.

The climax of the story is the miraculous intervention by the angel of the LORD, who strikes down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers, leading to Sennacherib’s retreat to Nineveh where he is eventually murdered by his own sons. This dramatic turn of events serves as a powerful testament to the belief that God actively intervenes in human affairs to protect His people, especially when they show unwavering faith.

This story is an example of the power of prayer and the efficacy of turning to God in times of crisis. When we are facing an Assyrian army of our own, we must turn to God for guidance and trust in God’s providence. 

Hezekiah demonstrated humility by acknowledging his limitations and seeking divine help openly. Strength lies in honestly recognizing our vulnerabilities and being open to seeking help and counsel from others and the wisdom of the scriptures and saints.  

Hezekiah righteous leadership and commitment to his faith were key factors that led to divine favor and protection. So, too, our faith matters. Our prayer matters and brings similar divine favor and protection to our loved ones and the church. 

In the Gospel, the Lord speaks of two ways: one that leads to destruction and one that leads to life. Hezekiah shows us the way of life today: trusting in God, living righteously, praying with conviction and humility, heading the wisdom of the prophets. May we follow the example of such holy ones for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

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For the Church, that we may always turn to God in times of crisis and demonstrate unwavering faith in His providence. Let us pray to the Lord.

For world leaders, that they may govern with righteousness and humility, seeking divine wisdom in their decision-making. Let us pray to the Lord.

For those facing overwhelming challenges, that they may find strength in prayer and trust in God's power to intervene in their lives. Let us pray to the Lord.

For our community, that we may resist the temptation of false idols and instead place our trust in the living God who controls the fate of nations. Let us pray to the Lord.

For all who feel threatened or besieged, that they may find courage in the example of King Hezekiah and seek God's protection. Let us pray to the Lord.

For each of us, that we may choose the path that leads to life by living righteously, praying with conviction, and trusting in God's guidance. Let us pray to the Lord.

For the grace to recognize our own limitations and vulnerabilities, and the wisdom to seek help from others and from the teachings of the saints. Let us pray to the Lord.

For all who have died, may they rejoice forever in the presence of the Lamb of God, especially X….

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

December 20 2023 - Idols or Emmanuel

 

Ahaz was king of Israel at a crucial moment in Israel’s history. The Assyrians were sweeping through the region—conquering everyone who would not assimilate and join their empire and worship their gods.  

So King Ahaz had a choice, will he trust in God and the guidance of the prophets or will he bow to Assyria and assimilate. Will he trust in the one true God or bow to the false gods. Knowing how weak Ahaz was, God spoke through Isaiah and told Ahaz: I’ll even give you a sign that I am with you and with Israel: “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.”

Sadly, Ahaz trusted not in the power of God. He entered into a protection treaty with Assyria. Despite Isaiah’s warnings, an altar was built for the worship of the Assyrian gods in the very Temple of Jerusalem violating Israel’s covenant with the one true God. And it wouldn’t be long before Jerusalem was conquered by Babylon a few decades later.

Every year, the world is given the same crucial choice as Ahaz. Emmanuel is born of the virgin, come believe in Him, trust in Him, worship Him, adore Him. God invites all of humanity to trust in the sign. The sign of signs. Will you trust? 

King Ahaz failed to trust in God and that had tragic consequences for the nation. Similarly, the world sinks further and further into depravity and chaos when it rejects the Christ.

So, the Church, in her prophetic mission, urges the world: “do not make the same mistake. The false gods of the world will not protect you, they will not give you the peace and prosperity they promise. There is one God and Him alone shall you worship. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” 

In these final Advent days, let us pray for the world, to believe in the One born for them on Christmas, Emmanuel, God with us, born of the Virgin Mary, as Savior of the World. Let us fast and pray for the church to resist the assimilation to the ways of the world, for increased faith in Emmanuel, hope in Him, and love of Him for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

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As we await with longing the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, we raise up our prayers of petitions.

That Christ may visit his holy Church and always find her repentant of sin and watchful in prayer.

That Christ may fill the Pope, our Bishop, and all the clergy with spiritual gifts and graces.

That Christ may guide the minds of those who govern us to promote the common good according to His Holy Will.

That Christ may banish disease, drive out hunger, and ward off every affliction.

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

Almighty ever-living God, who bring salvation to all and desire that no one should perish, hear the prayers of your people and grant that the course of our world may be directed by your peaceful rule and your Church rejoice in tranquility and devotion. Through Christ our Lord.

4th Sunday of Advent 2022 - A virgin shall conceive

 
We’ve come to the final Sunday of Advent. All four candles of the Advent wreath are lit; we are on the threshold of Christmas. We have been preparing our hearts through prayer, good works, music, decorations. Signs. Signs that God is close. Christmas is near.

In our first reading, King Ahaz was given a sign. A sign that God was near.

For King Ahaz was facing a dilemma: a dreadful one. On one hand, His enemies in northern Israel were attempting to coerce him to join them in a coalition—a collation against the Assyrian superpower. The assyrians were sweeping through the region, conquering everyone with whom they came in contact. And so King the Arameans and the King of Northern Israel thought they’d band together and get Ahaz to join them.

On the other hand, Ahaz has a bit of political cunning. He knows, there’s no way this coalition is going to stand against the Assyrian superpower. So he he’s being tempted to bow down and worship the gods of the Assyrians. 

What is he to do? He’s facing this Giant—Assyria. Reminding us of his great great great grandfather David, who also faced a Giant—named Goliath. Well, the God sends his prophet, Isaiah, to the king. And Isaiah tells Ahaz to have faith in God, like David facing Goliath. God is your protector. And Isaiah, knowing that, Ahaz’s faith is sort of weak at moment says, you want to know God is with you, ask for a sign, any sign, as high as the heavens and deep as the netherworld, a sign that will show you that God is with you. And Ahaz, in a moment of false piety, says, oh no, I couldn’t possibly do that. 

And Isaiah says, fine, God will give you this sign, a sign that you couldn’t come up with on your own:  “The virgin will conceive and bear a son and she shall call him Emmanuel.

It is impossible to say exactly what the fulfillment of this prophecy meant to King Ahaz. Who was the virgin in his day whose child was to signal that God was with him and his people? We do not know who she was. And sadly, chose not to believe. 

Ahaz trusted not in the power of God, but in the power of man. He entered into a protection treaty with Assyria, which on the one hand guaranteed him security and saved his country from destruction, but on the other hand demanded a price: the worship of the protecting power’s national gods. Idolatry. And after Ahaz had concluded the treaty with Assyria, despite Isaiah’s warnings, an altar was built for the worship of the Assyrian gods in the very Temple of Jerusalem. This violated the covenant with God. And it wouldn’t be long before Jerusalem was conquered by Babylon a few decades later. 

The Church gives us this powerful passage—a virgin will conceive and bear a son. We like Ahaz are being urged by God to trust him. Will you heed the warnings of the prophets and turn away from sin. Will you heed the invitation of the prophet to trust in God and his promises? Will you stand firm in the face of worldly pressures or bow to earthly gods? 

Sadly we see swaths of people abandoning faith, when faith is needed now more than ever. We are seeing the political consequences of faithlessness play out in our very day. Pagan idols bring us neither protection nor joy. 

Ahaz chose not to believe. So God gave all of humanity the same choice as Ahaz. That the virgin of Ahaz’s day was neither named nor identified points to the fact that the promise reached far beyond the historical moment of King Ahaz. It was a promise that reached far beyond that hour, and continued to shine for Israel as a star of hope pointing to an unknown future.

But that star comes into view again centuries later, when the veil is finally lifted, and the virgin’s identity and the identity of her son are made known. The Virgin who conceives by the power of the Holy Spirit and gives birth to the Son of God—Emmanuel, as we heard in the Gospel today. 

And even though Jesus is not actually named Emmanuel, Jesus “IS Emmanuel, as the entire history of the Gospel demonstrates. He is true man and at the same time God, God’s true Son, with us.”

“The virginal conception of Jesus is a divine work that surpasses all human understanding and possibility.” This is precisely what Ahaz resisted. He was not open to mystery, he was not open to faith, or the divine work that surpasses understanding and possibility.

God invites all of humanity to trust in the sign. The sign of signs. Will you trust? Two weeks ago, I reflected on how If you were to pick up the bible, and turn to nearly any page of the holy book, God is inviting humanity to trust Him. Sometimes the bible gives us models of trust, and then sometimes we see the consequences of what happens when we don’t trust God.

Adam and Eve are told to trust God. He would feed them, he would take care of them. Don’t eat of the forbidden tree, just trust me. And we know how that worked out. 

Abraham, is called our father in faith, He trusted God to leave his homeland and follow the path that God was showing to Him. Proverbs says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” Isaiah speaks of his own trust in God when he says in chapter 28: “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” Jeremiah, the grumpier prophet says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

The Lord Jesus in the Gospels teach us to trust when he says: “do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

Over and over, the injunction to trust God, to trust in his promises, and over and over in Scripture illustrations of the blessings that come in trusting in God, the tragic consequences when we don’t. 

King Ahaz failed to trust in God. And that had tragic consequences for the nation which he ruled. Even though Isaiah pointed out signs that God was with him, he chose not to trust. And, it’s easy to condemn Ahaz, but this is a sin of which we’re all guilty. 

Catechism 397 explains the first sin and every sin, as a failure to trust God. It says, “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.”

And so Advent is needed. We need Advent to help us renew our trust in the promises of God and to resist the inroads the enemy has made in our lives and to repent of our failures to trust.

But then consider, that the sign of the Virgin conceiving and giving birth becomes the very model of trust for us. The Virgin is the perfect example of the "obedience of faith" mentioned by Paul in the second reading.

Lumen Gentium says, “the Blessed Virgin stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from Him.” Failure to trust was the origin of sin, but the exercise of trust became the origin of salvation. 

“To celebrate Advent means: to become Marian, said Pope Benedict XVI, “to enter into that communion with Mary’s ‘Yes,’ which, ever anew, is room for God’s birth, for the ‘fullness of time,’” In the final Advent days ahead, renew your trust that the Savior is indeed born of the virgin, point out his saving birth for all to see, for the glory of God and salvation of souls. 

Homily: 3rd Sunday in OT 2017 - Jesus, a light for those in darkness

On this 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, our Gospel reading takes us back to the fascinating beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. After being baptized in the river Jordan by his kinsman John the Baptist, Jesus had gone out into the desert to fast and to do battle with the powers of darkness. There Our Lord resisted the temptations of the devil Himself.

The very first detail St. Matthew narrates, after Jesus emerges from 40 days of spiritual desert warfare, is that Jesus hears of John the Baptist’s arrest. It’s about 10 chapters later that Matthew explains why John was arrested. But we know why: to silence Him! John had preached against the corruption and immorality of his local government rulers, King Herod and his wife Herodias, and he was arrested to silence Him. For preaching the word of God, John was arrested and imprisoned and ultimately martyred.

Well, upon hearing of John’s arrest, what does Jesus do? Where does he go? He goes to Galilee. Now, this is not some random destination. John was arrested by Herod, and Jesus goes directly to the territory ruled over by Herod. Jesus walks right into the darkness, right into the land where God’s Word had begun to be stifled. Jesus goes to the heart of darkness, if you will, to bring the light of God’s kingdom.

Matthew explains Jesus’ going to Galilee to begin his ministry was a fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah from our first reading: a people in darkness seeing a great light. Jesus chooses this place of darkness to begin building his Church—a turning point in history.

Matthew compares Jesus’ venture to Capernaum, on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, to a time in Israel’s past, when the tribes of Zebulun and Napthali occupied that same shore. Eight centuries earlier, the tribes were overrun by Israel’s enemies, the Assyrians. The invading Assyrians caused great disruption and devastation to God’s people, ultimately exiling 10 of the 12 tribes.
So Matthew evokes this painful memory of darkness and death to explain Israel’s condition under Herod and the Roman Empire, but then he continues the prophecy; he speaks the light shining in the darkness. The light would begin to shine first in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali; the place where the first tribes were carried off, would be the place which would first experience the dawning of the light of God. And so Matthew, alluding to this Old Testament prophecy was saying that Jesus’ coming to Capernaum was just that…the beginning of something new, a new era, a new age for the kingdom of God, when the a new light was beginning to shine after a period of darkness. Jesus calling of the new 12 is a reconstitution of Israel, the 12 tribes that had been dispersed and lost and overshadowed by death.

Jesus is the light for those overshadowed by darkness in every age. For the early Church ravaged by the hateful persecutions of Emperors like Nero, Diocletian, Decius, he was the light, granting courage and the promise of eternal life for those who suffered. And in our own day, Jesus is the light to a people overshadowed by the perverse values of the culture of death, by a growing shadow of anti-religious sentiment, and secularism.

When we are filled with the light of Christ, the darkness of our earthly temptations and sufferings are dispelled, and even in a dark age, we can know blessings of peace and joy and healing and fulfilment—“abundant joy and great rejoicing” as Isaiah says.

How can we better experience these blessings God wishes to give us through Christ? How can more completely be filled with the light of Christ? First and foremost, we have to open the dark places in our hearts to the light of Christ. As St. John Paul II said, we need to throw open the doors of our hearts to Christ.

And this is rarely easy or comfortable. Turning our eyes to the light after a long period of being accustomed to darkness usually stings a little bit. Who here likes to look deep down in one’s heart and admit that there is some selfishness that lives there, there’s impatience, and laziness, and lust. There’s arrogance in dealing with family members, there’s egotism.

Self-examination is like going to the dentist. We don’t like it when the dentist begins to drill deeply beneath the surface, but he does so, even risking striking a nerve from time to time, in order to root out the cavity, to root out the corruption.

So too in the spiritual life, digging deep, rooting out corruption, examining one’s motives, one’s attitudes. The saints recommend the daily examination of one’s conscience. Before retiring to bed, to replay our day, our conversations, our interactions, our decisions; to admit our failings, to thank God for our blessings, to consider what we should have done differently, and to ask God’s mercy for our sins.

This daily accountability to God is a powerful aid for spiritual growth. It exposes the dark places to the light so healing and transformation can occur. God heals from the inside-out.

On the other hand, as Christians we aren’t just a bunch of navel-gazers. We allow the light of Christ to shine through our deeds by becoming as St. James says, not just hearers of the word but doers of the word. Concrete acts of service and charity, getting involved with volunteer work, these activities have a transforming effect. There are tons of volunteer opportunities in Cleveland, the food banks, the homeless shelters.

The Knights of Columbus, the parish council, the choir, St. Vincent de Paul, social justice committee, Cleveland Right to Life, these groups can be great opportunities for spiritual growth, to be exposed to and to shine with the light of Christ.

This year, 2017, try something new. A new way of praying, a new way of serving.
Again, “Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ,” St. John Paul said. Do not be afraid to allow the light of Christ to dispel the darkness in your families and in your hearts, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.