16th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025 - Misaligned or drawn deeper into the Divine

 Last week, from Luke’s Gospel we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan: an instruction from Our Lord to go beyond our comfort zones to help others.  Immediately following the parable of the Good Samaritan, Saint Luke gives the account of our Lord’s visit to Martha and Mary, which we heard today.

The two stories complement each other well. For on the one hand, we are taught in the Good Samaritan Story, how disciples of Jesus Christ are to go out into the highways, and pick up and care for the wounded and those in need.  

On the other hand, Martha and Mary teach us another indispensable dimension of discipleship. Martha was busy with all the details of hospitality and Mary was sitting at the feet of Our Lord, listening to his word.  Martha was tending to the physical needs of the Jesus—she was in a sense the good Samaritan caring for someone’s needs, and that’s good. But it is Mary who is praised by the Lord. The Lord said, “Mary has chosen the better part”.

Yes, we have to care for those in need, yes we have to lift up the wounded, yes we should tend to the physical needs of our guests. Faith needs to be seen in our works; faith without works is dead, after all.

But we cannot lose sight of the one most necessary thing: we must remain grounded in our relationship to God by sitting at the feet of Christ. We must nurture that close, personal, intimate relationship with God through prayer, meditation, and contemplation.

There’s a story from the Missionary Sisters of Charity, the order of consecrated religious sisters founded by St. Mother Theresa of Calcutta.  One of the charisms of the Missionary Sisters of Charity is to take care of the poorest of the poor.  They literally lift starving discarded people out of the gutter and give them food and shelter and comfort.  They are literally saving lives. Yet, every day, the Missionary Sisters of Charity make a holy hour: they pray for an hour every day, usually around 6am, in front of the blessed Sacrament.  

Well, one day, a young novice goes to Mother Theresa, and says how she thinks that the holy hour is a waste of time; there are people starving to death on the streets while the sisters are in the chapel praying.  “Sister, you seem very troubled” Mother said.  “I am, Mother, this holy hour is a waste of time.”  “Because you think this,” said mother Theresa to the young novice, “you need two hours.”

St. Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church, remarked similarly, “"Everyone of us needs half an hour of prayer each day, except when we are busy—then we need an hour."

Francis de Sales and Mother Theresa understood the importance of work and charity, but also they knew how easy it is for us to become burnt out, misaligned, and disconnected from God without the daily prayer that sustains us.

Martha was no doubt doing good work in the Gospel today. But the Lord corrects her—reorients her. Why? For one, she comes into the room complaining. Never a good way to enter a room and begin a conversation. Complaining, as depicted in Scripture, is often associated with a lack of faith and trust in God's provision and sovereignty. I’ve met Christians who have complained to me before saying hello. 

Martha complains: Lord, don’t you care that my sister isn’t helping me? Jesus, don’t you care about the same things I care about? Already, we detect, a misalignment of Martha’s will and Jesus’ will. And this misalignment has brought her unhappiness and resentment, as is always the case when our hearts are misaligned. Martha then seeks to force her will, not only on her sister, but upon Jesus himself: “tell her to help me.” She demands that God must bow to her. Sadly, I’ve met a lot of people like that, too. I’ve no doubt acted like that at times. But that sour narrowminded willful ego-centrism is antithetical to the way of Christ. 

This is why Mary has chosen the better part. Before complaining, before acting, before demanding, she has knelt down to open her mind and heart to the mind and heart and life of Jesus. She has sought to align herself. Not my will, by Thy will be done.

Thinking that OUR earthly priorities, our earthly pursuits, are more important than spending time with Jesus is among the greatest mistakes we can make in the Christian life. For, it makes an idol of our work. Martha is preoccupied with the earthly and missing out on the heavenly.  Martha has her priorities backwards. And this is why she is unhappy and unexhausted. 

Now we might want to defend Martha here, “someone had to do the work. Someone had to serve the meal.” No. That is not the point of the story. We should not justify being busybodies. This story is to help us seek first the kingdom of God. Not my will. Not how I think things should get done. It’s not meant to enable us to justify impatience. If God is not the builder, the workers labor in vain. 

God has a lot of work for us here at our parish. I’m sure of it. Souls waiting to meet Christ in the Catholic Church if they could only meet Him in us. But narrowminded Marthas often do more harm than good. Men can be Martha’s too by the way, brothers. Because Men can fail to be rooted in prayer and can become just as controlling and filled with bitterness and self-centeredness instead of the Spirit of God.

But when we have opened ourselves up to God through prayer, the soil of our soul is watered by grace and illumined by God’s word, and real transformation occurs, so much so that the Lord Jesus can be detected in our decisions and words and activity. 

So begin the day with prayer. Begin on the right foot. Make time for real authentic meditation upon God’s Word throughout the day. Pray before you work, pray as you work. Include God in your meals, your chores, your leisure and rest. When we are directed to God through prayer, our lives become charged and changed by God’s presence: His peace calms us, his joy radiates from us, his wisdom guides us, and his love burns within us. Even our work, even our sufferings, can then become transformed into an encounter with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Every day we are faced with the choice to be more like Martha or more like Mary— misaligned or drawn deeper into the life and love of God.  Let us renew our commitment today to the daily prayer we need to seek the one thing that really matters, Jesus Christ Our Lord, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

March 25 2025 - Annunciation - Angelus Prayer (school mass)

 For many years now, the very first thing I do in the morning—before getting up and getting ready for the day, before I check my emails and text messages, before I check my calendar, before I make my breakfast, before even getting out of bed—is that I pray a prayer inspired by the feast we celebrate today. 

It is called the Angelus prayer—angelus is the latin word for An
gel—and it goes something like this: The Angel of the Lord announced to mary, that she would conceive of the Holy Spirit. And then I pray the Hail Mary. Then, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word” And then I pray the Hail Mary, and then “The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”, and then I pray the Hail Mary. And then there is a concluding portion.

But those three ideas—that the angel announced God’s plan to Mary, that she said yes, and that because of that yes, God took flesh—are three very important ideas—three ideas which are at the heart of today’s feast—and three ideas that it is very good to start your day with.

Why? For one, it is good to be reminded that God has a plan for each one of us, that we should be listening to the voices of God’s Holy Angels, and that Mary is at the heart of that plan. Secondly, it’s good to be reminded that when God’s plan is made known to us, we are supposed to say “yes” to God, God I am your handmaid, God let me be your servant in all things, in every way. And Thirdly, it is very important to recall that God really and truly took flesh—the Word took flesh—because it reminds us of who Jesus is—truly God and truly man and that we are called to be his disciples. God became one of us, so that we can become like Him.

So I invite you every day, pray that Angelus prayer. By the way, I don’t just pray it once, I pray it three times, upon waking, at noon, when the noon bells ring here at Church, and at six pm, when they ring again, they are, after all, called the Angelus bells, for that reason.

Pray the Angelus, so that your day can be infused with God’s goodness, so that you can recall the presence of the Angels, the example and goodness of our blessed mother, and that we may become more and more like Christ every day, God who took flesh that we may share in his divinity for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 - The need for quiet prayer

 Often times throughout the Scriptures we find our Lord going to a secluded place to pray. In the Gospel, we hear how after a very long and arduous day teaching the crowds, healing the sick, performing the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, seeing to the feeding of thousands of people, as the sun set, Jesus climbed a mountain in order to pray in solitude. His heart-to-heart prayer with His Father must have been a great consolation for the Lord, especially as he prepared to offer his life on the cross. 

The Lord’s own prayer is an example for all of us. As the master has done, so must the disciple. We need prayer, every day, to refresh us, and strengthen us, and guide us, in which we go to a quiet place, to church or a quiet room in our house, to focus our minds and hearts on God, in which we lift up our needs and the needs of our families, and we allow God to speak to us. Quiet solitude is often the place of divine encounter.

In the first reading from the first book of Kings: there was this loud earthquake, but the Lord was not heard in the loud earthquake, there was this loud booming fire, but the Lord was not heard in the booming fire, there was a strong driving wind, but the Lord was not heard in the wind. Rather, it was in the tiny whispering sound.  God’s voice was detected and heard in the quiet. The lesson here is that we must become quiet in order to hear the voice of God. We are often deaf to the voice of God because we have failed to become quiet enough to hear Him.  He wants to speak quiet piercing words to our hearts which help us to fall in love with Him; but if we have the television going, the iphones going, the video games going all the time, and so we do not hear him.  

Recall the Gospel story of the Lord healing the deaf man: the Lord places his fingers in the ear of the deaf man and says, “ephphatha” and his ears are opened. The Lord opens our ears so that we may hear his voice. The Lord wishes to perform that same healing for us. Prayer is part of the remedy for spiritual deafness, but also that healing requires the removal of those things which are causing too much noise.

Oftentimes its our own anxious thoughts keep us from prayer. Now of course, we are allowed to bring our anxieties to God, and we should. Daily we should be honest with God, and let him know what is causing us fear and anxiety: “Dear Lord, these are the things that are causing me anxiety right now.” But anxious fretting is not prayer. Rather, prayer is needed which surrenders to God and hands over those anxieties so we can experience the peace of his presence, to ask God to give us strength to bear our crosses, that his will be done, like Our Lord prayed in the Garden.

With the busyiness of life, it is often difficult to find time to pray, but it is necessary to make time. Christians do well to recall that prayer is essential for the Christian life. It’s essential. It’s a pillar without which the temple will crumble, the foundation without which our houses will fall. The Scriptures are clear: Christians need to pray. Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation.

The Christian Life involves learning how to pray, learning to imitate the Lord, who himself drew near in faithful communion to his Father. And it does involve learning; for St. Paul admits, “we do not know how to pray as we ought”. But just because they are unknown waters, doesn’t mean we aren’t to traverse them, or become immersed in them. The Holy Spirit will teach you how to swim in the ocean of prayer, if you let him. But you have to practice, and you have to prioritize.

And the more we pray, the happier we become. The more we pray, the less anxious we become, and we are filled with a greater peace of mind and heart. The more we pray, the more we understand ourselves, for we come to know God more intimately, and we really only know ourselves to the degree that we know God personally. The more we pray, the more we begin to see the hand of God in our day to day life—we see Him acting in our life. We begin to see that He loves us, personally. 

Prayer isn’t to be a sporadic or undisciplined practice where we only pray when we need something really badly. Rather, the Christian is to develop a habit of prayer, a habitual practice, as habitual as eating, maybe more so. Because there may be days where we don’t get to eat, but we must still pray. I think of so many Christians who have been imprisoned, where prayer sustained them. 

Prayer brings protection from the waves and storms which seek to overcome us. Through prayer, the Lord deepens our faith and trust, enabling us like Peter to walk on the waters toward Him. 

Prayer also protects our hearts from going astray toward sin. Prayer keeps us from greed that seeks to secure happiness in created things. Prayer keeps us from lust that seeks happiness in the pleasures of the flesh. Prayer keeps us from pride which seeks to build a life without God’s help. Failure to pray is a sign that we’ve failed to put our lives in God’s hands. That we are failing in the first beatitude, for to be poor in spirit is to allow God to be in control. Prayer surrenders control to God. 

Prayer also protects us from the deceptions of the evil one. The Devil is superior to us in intelligence and willpower. We are not smart enough to outwit him and to see through his lies on our own. We need God’s help and that comes through prayer. Where there is division, hatred, unforgiveness and animosity, there is a failure to pray. 

At bare minimum, each day we need, what I call a prayer sandwich, like two thin slices of bread, with a bunch meat and goodies in the middle. Begin the day, with simple prayer, as I mentioned last week, a prayer in the morning asking God to guide your day, to fill your day with His light, and then pray the hail mary; and then a prayer at the end of the day, before laying down to bed, in which you make a brief examination of your conscience and repent of your sins and thank God for the blessings. And then pray the hail mary, or the hail holy queen.

But then, you still need the meat, the stuffing, and that’s where scripture reflection, meditation, and contemplation, come in. A break, somewhere in the day, where it is just you and God, like Jesus in the Gospels going to that secluded place to pray. Bring to God the deep stuff, your deepest struggles. Open the Scripture and allow the Holy Spirit to teach you how to pray with God’s word, to open your mind and heart to be pierced and illuminated by God’s Word.

St. John Vianney wrote, “When we pray with attention and humility of mind and heart, we quit the earth and rise to Heaven.  We reach the outstretched arms of God." Recall how in the Gospel, the  Lord extendshis hands to lift Peter out of the depths. This happens to us when we pray.

May we accept the invitation of the Lord to walk on the water toward Him in prayer, toward Him who is our delight, our Lord, that he may be the firm foundation of our lives for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021 - Restful waters

20 years ago, in 2001, the summer after my first year of seminary, I went up to northern Ontario for a little summer vacation with a few fellow seminarians, to a quiet, remote cottage sitting on the bank of Little Hawk Lake about 4 hours north of Toronto. Since 2001, we’ve gone back up to the cottage, well over 20 times. We couldn’t go last year due to COVID, and it doesn’t sound like we’ll be able to go up this year, as the Canadian border is still closed to tourists. 

We try to take vacation right before the school year starts up again. We swim, we cook, we pray. We celebrate Mass. We catch up on reading. We’ll play board games, watch movies. Nothing too strenuous. In a sense, we try to fulfill the words of our Lord in the Gospel today today, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”

Rest is a good and holy thing. The Creator rested on the seventh day. He calls us to sabbath rest, away from the busyness and business of the rest of the week, to be refreshed in worship and family. We require rest. A third of our lives is spent resting. Healthy minds, healthy bodies, healthy souls need rest. 

In the 23rd Psalm, God is the good shepherd who leads his flock to restful waters. What a beautiful image. Not the violent stormy sea. But restful waters. One of my favorite things to do on vacation is simply to sit by the restful waters with a book or to take a flotation device and just float around the restful waters. 

That beautiful word in the Hebrew  for rest is “menuchah”. It’s found a number of times throughout the Old Testament. It’s used often to describe the promised land—the land of rest and refreshment for God’s people. Psalm 116 speaks of the soul filled with the rest of God after recognizing how blessed it has been by God’s graciousness. Psalm 132 uses the word to describe how God will rest upon his throne in the eternal Jerusalem upon completing his work of salvation. Psalm 95 speaks of how the hard-hearted, for turning their minds and hearts from God—shall not enter into the rest—the menuchah—of the promised land. We long for the rest and refreshment only God can provide. 

Hopefully, each of us experiences a foretaste of heavenly rest when we come to Mass. For, the Mass, on this side of heaven, is the place of restful water where the Shepherd leads his flock, each week. 

Many many people have shared with me, how something is amiss, something is missing, when they can’t get to Mass every week. That rest. That refreshment in God’s presence is missing, and their souls know it. It affects the rest of the week. The batteries begin to lose their charge. It becomes a greater struggle to be patient and generous and pure of heart without it.

This is why many people attend daily mass. The rest and refreshment of daily mass gets us started off on the right foot. If you are retired, consider attending weekday mass once and a while. It will do wonders for your faith life. 

Our spiritual director in seminary would often say that each of us needs an hour per day, a day per week, and a week per year of this spiritual refreshment. That’s good advice, not just for seminarians and priests, but for all Catholics. An hour a day for quiet prayer and mass and spiritual reading and meditation. A day per week for Sunday Mass of course, a day free from the stressful concerns of one’s job, and one week per year for some sort of spiritual retreat. Priests are even mandated by canon law to make a spiritual retreat.

When we fail to recharge our spiritual batteries, we risk becoming like those misguided shepherds in the first reading. Instead of living for God, we become bent on fulfilling our own will, seeking fulfillment in all the wrong places, ultimately becoming a source of division. Instead of gathering others to God, the spiritually defunct Christian is like that wicked shepherd who scatter the sheep, driving souls away from God. 

Stress, discouragement, and so many other crippling emotions can wear us out if we aren't prayerfully resting in Jesus every day. Only our union with Christ can supply us with the strength and wisdom we need to be the people God made us to be, and do the work God has for us. Without prayer, study, and time alone with God, our well will soon run dry - we will have nothing substantial to offer others.

So in order to be the shepherds we are called to be, the parents, grandparents, employers, priests, we are called to be—we need to allow God, daily, weekly, and yearly, at the restful waters of prayer. 

Why is the Lord Jesus constantly leading his disciples to the quiet places to pray and listen and teach them? It’s So that they will be equipped for his work. Rest prepares us for work. Prayer prepares us for apostleship and evangelization.

When I go up to northern Ontario, it usually takes a few days to unwind and enter into the rest,  but then something happens. As the batteries begin to recharge, I start to long to come back to work. I really do. I want to put the theological insights from my reading into practice. Having encountered God in prayer, having good heart-to-heart talks with God about the challenges facing the parish, I want to come back here to face those challenges.  

Rest and prayer for the priest is eminently important for his ministry, but that’s because rest and prayer are eminently important for all of our vocations. All of the work God has for us requires us to be rooted in Him. Not in some abstract political philosophy or utopian ideology. We need to be rooted in the living God. God wishes to be our portion and our cup. God wishes to be our peace and our strength, our light, our food, our life.

Make time to rest every day. Rest from your work. Rest from your electronic devices. Rest from your anxieties. Rest in God. God wants to meet you in your rest. He wants to refresh you there. But you’ve got to allow yourself to rest. You’ve got to say no to distraction. You’ve got to withdraw from the whirlwind of family drama, in order to hear the consoling whisper of God. Make time, every day, every week, and for a dedicated portion every year, to allow God to lead you to the restful waters for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

1st Sunday of Advent 2020 - Recognizing our need for God

During the season of Advent, we read extensively from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is the Advent prophet; for, In the weeks leading up to Christmas, we are attentively to Isaiah’s message to Israel. But in order to understand his message, we need to know about the context—what was Israel going through to need a message like the one they receive from Isaiah?

So, let’s consider the context: things had gone from bad to worse for Israel. A few hundred years prior, the twelve tribes had been united under single king. But after just a few generations that unity had begun to suffer. The united Kingdom of David had been divided into the southern kingdom where the Davidic King continued to rule in Jerusalem, and a rival northern Kingdom. The King of the North, not wanting his people to travel to Jerusalem for the Jewish Feasts, started what was basically a new religion, he built a rival temple, instituted new feast days. And as the northerners strayed from the religion of their forefathers, they soon fell into immorality and they became vulnerable to their enemies. And in the year 740 BC, that northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians.

Witnessing what happened in the North, the Prophets of the South pleaded with the southerners to remain faithful to God: if it could happen in the north, it could happen to us. And you’d think, they’d have less reason to stray from God: after all, they had the holy city of Jerusalem, the True Holy Temple, the True Religion was being taught. Yet, within a few generations, even the southerners began to slip and stray. 

Prophets like Obadiah, Joel, and Habakkuk, who are painted on the edge of our ceiling,  warned the south that the disaster which befell the North would soon befall the South if they did not reform their lives and teach their children to walk in the ways of righteousness.

This is why, in the first reading, Isaiah calls the southerners an “unclean people” their deeds “like polluted rags”, their nation “withered like leaves”.  And, just as the prophets had foretold, as the south strayed from God, they too became vulnerable to their enemies.  In 605 BC, the Babylonians captured the South; in 589 Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem culminating with the destruction of the city and the Temple in 587.  The remaining Jews, as Isaiah foretold, were “carried away by the wind”—most of the Jews of the South were carried off in chains, marched into Babylonian captivity.  They were exiled from their homeland, from their temple; loved ones were separated.  It was the darkest point in Israel’s history. 

Imagine how shaken the Jews must have been.  No doubt, they thought, How could God allow this to happen to his chosen people, his holy city, his holy temple. Why has God allowed us to fall into captivity? 

Who can’t identify with that sentiment.  Who hasn’t felt captive at some point in their life? Who hasn’t felt captive at some point in the last 10 months? Who hasn’t felt like things had gone terribly wrong in their life? In our country? How could things have come to this? The political turmoil, the civil unrest, the grave immorality all around us, wondering when, O Lord will you show yourself?  When will there be justice? When will there be mercy?

Isaiah then verbalizes some of Israel’s frustration: “oh that you would rend the heavens and come down with the mountains quaking before you.” Israel was desperate for God to show himself, and do something, and save them. 

This is the sentiment that begins the season of Advent—not on a very cheery note, but a realistic one. Right at the beginning, we recognize how much we need God—how much we need a Savior. Our families need Him. Our nation needs Him. I need Him. And if you don’t sympathize with that…If that need for God doesn’t resonate with you. Than a little spiritual tune-up is needed. 

For, we get into spiritual trouble, don’t we, when we forget that we need God? When we fall into what the scripture calls spiritual slumber. Look at what happens in my life when I don’t’ pray as I should…when I don’t keep the commandments of God always before me, as I should…when I don’t keep the example of my Savior always before me. A division between me and God begins to grow. Where there was once prayer now there is some earthly distraction, some selfish pursuit, my spiritual life suffers, my moral life suffers. And I’m certainly not filled with the joy that comes from a vibrant living relationship with God. 

And so Advent begins with this stark warning. Don’t let what happened to Israel happen to you. Recognize your need for God. Repent. Don’t be carried off by the winds of this godless culture. Plead with God, daily, in the words of the Psalm, “Turn our eyes toward you O God.”

For when we go through life without lifting our eyes to God, without recognizing our need for God, the activity of our life becomes vacuous—empty—undirected by anything but our whims. But when we rightly look to God throughout our day, beginning our day with prayer, engaging in our daily activity prayerfully, finding some time to reflect on the Word of God throughout the day, and ending our day in prayer, our lives become full of God’s presence.

Our lives are fuller when we turn our minds and our hearts to God, than they are when we neglect prayer or when we fill our lives with selfish pursuits. We are happier, we are more joyful, our lives have more meaning, when our faces are turned toward God, when our hearts recognize our need for God. 

This week, let us undertake two tasks. First, take stock of your spiritual life. Identify one activity that needs to be replaced with prayer, or at least one that needs to be undertaken with more prayer. And make a holy advent commitment to God, concerning that activity, that the Lord may keep you “firm to the end” in the words of St. Paul today.

Secondly, identify a person who you know, who has fallen away from church and prayer and religion and the sacraments. Pray for them. If you have the courage, at the opportune time, reach out to them. Remind them that it’s advent, invite them, perhaps to watch mass or even attend mass with you. And keep them in prayer throughout this holy season. Pray in the words of our psalmist “turn our eyes toward you O God”. 

For any healing, or peace, or unity we hope to see in our families or in our nation, will only when happen when our eyes are rightly turned to God, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.