May 13 2026 - Our Lady of Fatima (school mass) - Become like shepherd children

 

Today, May 13 is the anniversary of Mary, the Mother of Jesus appearing to three shepherd children in the small village of Fatima in Portugal in 1917.  Mary appeared six times to Lucia, age 9, and her cousins Francisco, age 8, and his sister Jacinta, age 6, between May 13, 1917 and October 13, 1917.

Why was it, that out of all the people in the world, Mary appeared to three young children the ages of many of you here? She didn’t appear to the Pope. She didn’t appear to a journalist or a historian who could write a thorough and detailed account of her visit. She didn’t appear to a news anchor who could interview her on live television. Why three young shepherd children?

Part of that answer is mysterious—God works in mysterious ways. God wanted Mary to appear to those three children in Portugal because that’s what God wanted, He has his reasons, and those reasons are not always immediately known to us—we’ll find out in heaven.

Likely though, Mary appearing to three, poor shepherd children has something to do with Jesus telling us that unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

This message was especially true in 1917. For in 1917, the world was on the verge of tremendous technological advancement: a lot of our own country still didn’t have electricity, but in just a few yers the world would change—automobiles, airplanes, nuclear power, soon computers, wireless communication, space rockets, internet, now artificial intelligence.

In 1917, the world would soon be getting more powerful and more complex, and Mary, appears from heaven to three simple, weak, poor children, and tells them to pray, to be dependent on God, and to not let material things become the center of your lives.

If Mary had appeared to adults, to their parents even, would they have believed her, that God wanted us to pray the rosary, to go to confession, to believe in Jesus. Many adults think of themselves as too sophisticated to pray the rosary, too proud to go to confession, too learned to believe in hell and the devil, too cultivated to practice fasting. This is why they are often so unhappy, because they have stopped believing in God in their deepest hearts. But, as we heard in the Gospel, "blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it."

Dear ones, please head our Lady’s message. Don’t grow up to think that you don’t need God. Don’t grow up to think that the point of this life is just to become rich or that the right amount of material things will make you happy. Don’t grow up to think that it’s okay to sin. If you do, you’ve grown up wrong.

God gave Mary a special job to appear to these three young children, he trusted them with this simple yet profound message: that if we want to be happy in this life and be with God in eternity, we need to turn way from sin, practice prayer, believe in Jesus and his teachings, and do what we can to help others turn to God.

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Inspired by Mary’s call to prayer and to trust in God, we offer now our prayers of petition:

For the holy Church of God, that she may always heed Our Lady’s message of Fatima by proclaiming and living out the call to prayer, penance, and conversion with faith, hope, and love.

For peace in our world, that through the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima, hatred may give way to reconciliation, violence to justice, and war to enduring peace,

For the conversion of sinners and the renewal of faith, especially in places darkened by unbelief and indifference to Christ.

That during this month of May, all people may turn their hearts to the Blessed Virgin Mary, seeking her aid and imploring her intercession with increased and fervent devotion, imitating her example of Faith, Hope, and Love..

For those who suffer, especially the poor, the persecuted, and the forgotten, that they may know the comfort of Mary’s immaculate heart and the strength of her Son’s redeeming love,

For the dead, that they may be received into the glory of heaven where Mary, reigns as Queen.

O God, who chose the Blessed Virgin Mary to bring your Son into the world, hear our prayers and strengthen us in faith, hope, and charity, that we may one day share in the triumph of her Immaculate Heart. Through Christ our Lord.

 

15th Week of Ordinary Time 2023 - Wednesday - Revelation of God's Love

 Fire. We find fire throughout the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles as tongues of fire on Pentecost. The Lord himself says that he has come to set the world on fire, and how he wishes it were already blazing.

Our first reading today presents us with Moses approaching the bush on fire, but a fire that does not destroy. And from that fire-that-does-not-destroy-or-consume, God reveals Himself to Moses. 

Consider this story in its ancient context. The Egyptians worshipped a god of fire, as did the caananites, the Babylonians, and the persians, as have many pagan peoples throughout history. But notice, though God reveals himself from this burning bush, He doesn’t claim to be the God of Fire. Rather, He reveals Himself as “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” God reveals himself as the God of people. He is not simply the harnesser of fire, demanding subordination from lowly humans lest they be consumed by his powerful flame. Rather, God’s power comes from his fiery love. Unlike the cold, dark, conniving, murderous heart of pharoah, who slaughtered the Israelites because they were growing too numerous in his estimation, God reveals a heart of love that has been moved by the suffering and slavery of his people. 

But the burning bush in which God reveals that He is the God of fiery love is but a foreshadowing. It’s not until God comes in the flesh, in the form of man, that he fully reveals His love. Jesus is God’s fullness of revelation, the revelation of God’s love, God’s desire to free all humanity from death and slavery to sin which keeps us from intimate communion with Him. 

And in the Gospel today, the Lord Jesus speaks of how God reveals Himself to the childlike, a revelation that the wise and the learned are blinded to. Why are the worldly-wise, the clever, blind to God? Because of their prideful self-sufficiency. Even though they came into the world as helpless babies, into a Creation brought into being by God, the wise and the clever take the posture of absolute self-sufficiency. “I don’t need God, I have my wisdom, I have my wits, I have my own power, my own fire, I am my own god!” Their consuming pride keeps them from the light and love of God.

But the childlike—the humble—recognize, “all that I have is a gift from God.” I live, I breath, I am saved, I am sanctified, I am given another opportunity for eternal life because the God of love has poured Himself out in love. And recognizing the need for God, the childlike run toward God like a moth to flame—but unlike the moth, the childlike are not consumed, rather, they are perfected. 

The ancient theologian Origen once said that those who draw near to Jesus in the Eucharist, draw near to fire. Childlike, let us run near to the fire of God, the fire of the Eucharist, the fire that purifies us, enlightens us, illuminates us, and perfects us, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

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That the Holy Spirit may help us to be instruments of grace and conversion, to hardened sinners, fallen away Catholics and to the faithless.  

That our young people on summer vacation may be kept safe from the poisonous errors of our culture, and that their families may be places where the faith is practiced and cherished.

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

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.

19th Week in Ordinary Time 2022 - Become like Children (St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross)

 In his teaching about the Kingdom of God, besides his employment of a lot of agricultural imagery, Jesus often used the image of the child.  

Children are eager, energetic, and ready to learn and grow.  So should we be.  Eager to please the Lord by our conduct.  Energetic in our charity and generosity towards others.  And always ready to learn about our faith and grow in holiness.

Children are dependent on their parents for life, security, and education.  And so are all of us upon God. 

And Jesus says, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”  

Childlike humility is characterized by its deep trust.  Imagine the child gazing into the eyes of their parents in wonderment, listening to every word they are saying and believing it, taking it into their heart.  That is supposed to be every Christians attitude toward God—straining our ears wanting to hear him, wanting to sit in his lap, lay our heads on his chest.

In today’s first reading, God tells the Prophet Ezekiel to be obedient like a trusting child and eat what he would give him. The chief sin of the people of Judah was their disobedience to God, their refusal to be obedient trusting children. “Be not rebellious like this house of rebellion, but open your mouth and eat what I shall give you.” Those words are also spoken to us. The world, the culture is rebellious toward God, refusing to eat the food God gives us. 85% of Catholics refuse to come to Mass weekly to be nourished by Word and Sacrament. So we must go to the them. It is commanded.

“Eat this scroll, then go, speak to the house of Israel.” Notice how Ezekiel is nourished by God, then sent on a mission. And again, so are we. We are fed by the Word of God, in order to live by the Word of God, which entails speaking the Word of God to others, becoming prophetic instruments, speaking to the rebellious of the need to return to God, becoming fishers of men. 

Today, we celebrate a saint, Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, a jewish convert, who came to Christ late in life, who became like a child late in life. After a long career in philosophy, she entered the Camelite monastery. The year was 1932, Adolf Hitler was chancellor of Germany. In 1942, the Nazi’s arrested Sister Teresa Benedicta.  She and her sister Rosa, also a Catholic, were transported to Auschwitz in Poland by boxcar.  One week later, Sister was murdered in a gas chamber. She is celebrated as a virgin martyr.

May St. Theresa help us to trust God, to run like children to the cross, by which God is glorified and men are saved for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For the conversion of atheists, agnostics, those who are cynical towards Catholicism, moral relativists, those who reject the Faith, and all lapsed Catholics, that the Holy Spirit will help them discover the Truth of Christ. 

That the Holy Father, the Bishops and all Clergy and Religious will be shining examples of fidelity to the Truth.

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

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. 

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.

October 1 2021 - St. Therese, the Little Flower - Whoever humbles himself like this child...

 The month of October begins with the celebration of the feast of the Little Flower, St. Therese of Liseaux. “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven” we hear in our Gospel.

Therese is certainly one of the little ones loved by the Lord, held up for all of us to emulate.

Therese was blessed to be raised in a home where the practice of the faith was practiced and cherished. In the deeply religious atmosphere of her home, her piety developed early and intensively. All four of her elder sisters became nuns, and at the tender age of fourteen, Therese traveled to Rome with her father to request, at the knees of Leo XIII, permission to enter the Carmelite convent of LeMans.

Some might say, 14 is too young of an age to commit oneself to a life of poverty, prayer, and penance. But here is the enthusiasm of a child rushing into the arms of Jesus that we are all called to emulate.

Her life of simple holiness became known to the world, mostly due to her autobiography, "Story of the Soul" which the little, humble one wrote only out of obedience to her religious superior. But in it, we find detailed a powerful spirituality of love and service.

She writes: I ask Jesus to draw me into the flames of his love and to unite me so closely to him that he lives and acts in me.  I feel that the more the fire of love encompasses my heart, the more I shall say: "Draw me," and the more will those souls who are near to mine "run swiftly in the sweet odor of the Beloved."  Yes, they will run and we shall run together, for souls on fire cannot stay still

How does one develop this pure childlike love for the Lord and for souls? Well, like a child, we have to start small.  Therese wrote, “I applied myself above all to practice quite hidden little acts of virtue; thus I liked to fold the mantles forgotten by the Sisters, and sought a thousand opportunities of rendering them service.”

The Lord gives us many opportunities, every day, to practice this way of child-like love. May we humble ourselves like the child, Therese, in so many daily acts of love, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For blessings upon the members of the Carmelite Order, and that their witness of prayer and penance may continue to draw souls closer to Christ.

During this month of October, dedicated to the Most Holy Rosary, Catholics may take up this devotion with renewed vigor and trust in Our Lady’s never-failing intercession. 

That the sick and the suffering may know God’s healing and know the love of God in their trials.

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

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers, we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to the supplications of those who call on you. Through Christ our Lord.

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021 - Be obnoxious to the wicked

One of the books of the Old Testament that is perennially useful to meditate upon is the book of wisdom, from which our first reading is taken this weekend. Scripture Scholars tell us that the Book of Wisdom, also know as the Wisdom of Solomon, was written in Alexandria Egypt, making it different from the other books of the old testament, not only for where it was written, but because of the fact it was written in Greek, rather than in Hebrew. 

And the book wasn't in fact written by Solomon, rather it was the very last book of the Old Testament to be written, composed just about 50 years before the birth of Jesus. The book was written primarily to the Jews of the Diaspora. The Greek General Ptolomy after conquering the Holy Land, sent nearly 120,000 Jews into exile, mostly to Egypt. And so, this book, the book of wisdom, was written to them, to the Jews exiled from the Holy Land—to give them the religious guidance, the wisdom, they would need in order to be on guard against the temptations they might experience in the Egyptian culture—with its many forms idolatry. 

Sadly, the book is written, also, in response to a number of Jewish exiles who had apostatized—they had given up their Jewish faith in favor of the pagan practices of the Greeks who dominated Alexandria. So, the faithful Jews would not only have to be on guard against the pressures from the surrounding pagan culture, but they’d have to withstand pressure from their own kind, their own people who forsaken the faith. 

In the passage today, we hear of the wicked conspiring against the faithful—the wicked, being those former Jews who had turned their hearts from the covenant. “Let us beset the just one,” the wicked say, “because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training.” 

The wicked apostates are depicted as conspiring against the holy ones, because the holy ones remind them of what they left behind when they abandoned their faith. The righteous ones were making the wicked nervous because by their good deeds they showed that the way of the wicked leads to doom. 

One of the prevailing philosophies of the Greeks, one of the prevailing philosophies of Alexandria at the time was the philosophy of Hedonism. Eat drink and be merry, over-indulgence, avoid any suffering, sexual promiscuity and libertinism. The wicked had traded the beautiful covenant with God for deviant Hedonism.

We live in a very Hedonistic culture don’t we? Instant gratification and instant pleasure are idolized, promiscuity is normalized.  The Church is often attacked because she reminds our hedonistic culture that there is more to life than just seeking pleasure all the time. Christians are seen as obnoxious to the wicked, for we engage in many practices that Hedonists consider foolish: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, chastity, poverty, obedience, self-sacrifice, study, going out into the streets and serving the poor, patiently enduring suffering for the good of souls.

In a way, I think, the Word of God is giving us our marching orders this morning.  Be obnoxious to the wicked.  Be so holy, take your faith so seriously, engage in the works of mercy so devoutly, that you make the wicked a little nervous.  It might just cause him to rethink his life.

the wicked are ignoring us, because they don’t us as a threat to their hedonistic ways, are we really living the faith? If we are blending in with the wicked, valuing the same things they do, then are we really on the path of life?

In the Gospel, the Lord foretells his suffering and death.  Why did the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day plot against him to torture and kill him? He had become obnoxious to them.  He told them that to inherit the kingdom of God, you had to repent, you had to not only be externally observant of God’s laws, you had to transform your heart. 

Mercy is to be extended not only to those who can repay you, but even to those who persecute you, you have to treat as family even those who are of different ethnicities than you, you have to go and touch the leper and wash him clean. Obnoxious behavior for the pious Jewish Pharisee of the 1st century.

Taking a child, and placing it in their midst, and saying, you need to become like, was obnoxious behavior to the great scholars of the law. To the Pharisee, a child is so insignificant, they have nothing to hold over anybody, no power, and Jesus is saying, yes, exactly. How obnoxious. To welcome women into his band of disciples, to eat with tax collectors and prostitutes, to lay hands on lepers, all obnoxious behavior, all to show that God’s love extends to all.

After communion today, we’ll hear from Margaret McIntyre a volunteer with the Franciscan capuchins and the Catholic Volunteer network. The founder of the Franciscans, St. Francis, had a wonderful title, “God’s fool. He was foolish for Christ, he was obnoxious for Christ, he was obnoxious to the worldly and woke them up from their selfishness through a life of preaching, poverty, and penance.

To become a saint, we must be willing to be obnoxious in our faith, obnoxious to the wicked. That would be my dismissal from mass today if we could change the words of the mass: go forth and be obnoxious to the wicked, thanks be to God, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

15th Week in OT 2019 - Wednesday - Who am I?

"Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?"

I think every saint in history has asked that question, in all humility, “who am I?”

I think of St. Francis Xavier: “Who am I to travel to Japan, to India, to the headhunters and cannibals, to preach the Gospel?”

Or Mother Cabrini: “Who am I to leave my native Italy to come to the New World to work with the poor immigrants?”

Or St. Catherine of Sienna: “Who am I to correct the Pope who had abandoned Rome to live in the papal palace at Avignon?”

Or St. Francis of Assisi: “Who am I to rebuild the Church through radical poverty?”

Or St. John Paul II: “Who am I to condemn the communists who bring atheism and ruin to my native land?”

Or St. Maximillian Kolbe: “Who am I to take the place of one condemned to die?”

The saints no doubt each had their own “burning bush moment” where they heard the Lord calling them to something great: to something difficult, to something scary and our of their comfort zone, something requiring the radical trust of a child, as directed by Our Lord in the Gospel.

The Lord contrasts the Wise and the Learned of the World with the Childlike. The Wise and the Learned claim to know what’s best in life, how to succeed, how to get ahead, how to become powerful. But the Lord calls his disciples to become childlike, to approach the burning bush with fascination, wonder, curiosity, openness, and radical trust.

The Lord calls each of us, too, to lives of radical holiness that requires radical trust. For most of us, our vocation in life is set, but within that vocation, within marriage or priesthood or the single life, are opportunities to serve the Lord, to allow ourselves to be sent into the unknown.

And when we do, when we trust, when we follow where the Lord leads, there may be some suffering, but we allow Christ to work within us, we become instruments of God’s providence unfolding in history, we become heirs to great treasure in heaven, we discover the great destiny for which we were created, we join the company of the saints, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That all Christians may respond generously and courageously to the divine call to holiness.

That young people may be hear God’s call to priesthood and consecrated religious life, to turn away from the empty promises of the world to follow the Lord in holiness.

That those engaged in missionary work will be preserved from evil and reach the most hardened of hearts.

For the sick, suffering, and sorrowful, for miracles for hopeless causes.

For the souls in purgatory, and for N. for whom this Mass is offered.

O God, our refuge and our strength, hear the prayers of your Church, for you yourself are the source of all devotion, and grant, we pray, that what we ask in faith we may truly obtain. Through Christ our Lord.