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.

February 10 2023 - St. Scholastica - Trusting in God's plan

The first chapters of the book of Genesis reveal God’s magnificent plan for creation. In the first chapter, the days of creation follow the divine logic: the light, the earth, the heavens, dry land, sea, vegetation, stars, the fish, the birds, the animals, and finally mankind.

In chapter two, we read of God’s plan for humanity. Humanity is to fulfil the purpose for which we were made: tending creation and obeying God—trusting God. 

Sadly, in chapter 3, we read of Adam and Eve stepping out of God’s plan, man’s rebellion. Instead of surrendering to God’s plan, trusting in God, obeying God’s commands, man and women choose to believe in a lie: that they can be happy without trusting God—that they can close their ears to the Word of God and still be able to hear correctly.

In the Gospel, the effects of Adam and Eve’s Original Sin are on display: a man deaf with a speech impediment. He cannot hear the words of his loved ones; he cannot communicate rightly as man was created to do.

But, in the Gospel, God’s plan of salvation is also on display. Through Jesus Christ the impediments to wholeness are healed, right relationship with God and neighbor is restored. 

Today, we honor St. Scholastica, twin sister of St. Benedict. We do not know much about her life, save that she was a consecrated virgin. The one story we do know comes from St. Gregory the Great, and illustrates the great trust in God that we are meant to cultivate.

Scholastica loved when her brother would visit her in the monastery and engage in the holy conversation of the saints. Well, on one occasion, the conversation ran long and Benedict announced he had to return to his monastery. 

Maybe she knew it would be their last such visit because she was coming to the end of her life, but Scholastica closed her eyes and began to pray. A torrential down pour of rain, thunder and lightning swept through making it impossible for Benedict to go home. ‘May God forgive you, sister. What have you done?’ ‘Well,’ she answered, ‘I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen.”

Scholastica trusted that if God wanted to send the rains, He would. She surrendered to God’s Will and God deemed it good to send rain so that the holy twins could continue their holy conversation. Her love for God and her love for her brother when combined with holy trust wrought a miracle.

As we prayed in the collect today, “following Scholastica’s example, may we serve God with pure love and happily receive what comes from loving God” for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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To God the Father Almighty we direct the prayers of our heart for the needs and salvation of humanity and the good of His faithful ones.

For the holy Church of God, that the Lord may graciously watch over her, care for her, deliver her from evil, and aid her in her mission.

Through the intercession of St. Scholastica, may all those whose lives and welfares are threatened by storms be delivered from all dangers.

For all who are oppressed by any kind of need, that the Lord may grant them relief and move Christians to come to the aid of the suffering.

For our beloved dead, for the poor souls in purgatory, and for X, 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.

5th Week in OT 2019 - Friday - Open our hearts to listen

The first chapters of the book of Genesis reveal God’s magnificent plan for creation. In the first chapter, the days of creation follow the divine logic: the light, the earth, the heavens, dry land, sea, vegetation, stars, the fish, the birds, the animals, and finally mankind.

In chapter two, we read of God’s plan for humanity. Humanity is to tend to creation and to marry.

Sadly, in chapter 3, we read of Adam and Eve stepping out of God’s plan, man’s rebellion. Instead of surrendering to the plan, trusting in God, obeying God’s commands, man and women choose to believe in a lie: that they can grasp at a future divorced from God and still live, that they can do anything they want without consequence, they can have their sin and their souls will remain intact, they can close their ears to the Word of God and still be able to hear correctly.

In the Gospel, the effects of Adam and Eve’s Original Sin are on display: a man deaf with a speech impediment. He cannot hear the words of his loved ones, he cannot communicate rightly as man was created to do, as we are created in the image of one who Speaks—who speaks creation into being, who created through the Word, who communicates his love between the three divine persons, who made us to be communicators of His own truth, goodness, and beauty.

But, in the Gospel, God’s plan of salvation is also on display. Through Jesus Christ the impediments to wholeness are healed, right relationship with God and neighbor is restored.

Jesus looking up into heaven and groaning before this particular healing reminds us that the ultimate healing took place when he looked up to heaven and groaned his last upon the cross.

Through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, we have inherited a world polluted with sin and death, our own human nature is marred so we do not hear God as we should, we do not see as we should, we do not speak as we should. But in Jesus, spiritual sight, hearing, and speech are restored, communion and communication are restored, and we renter God’s plan for our souls.

We face many times a day the same choice the Adam and Eve will face in the garden, will we listen to God or listen to the serpent. One choice will bring us life, the other will take it from us. As we just sang in the Gospel acclamation: “Open our hearts, O Lord, to listen to the words of your Son” for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For the Holy Church of God, that the Lord may graciously watch over her and care for her.

For the peoples of all the world, that the Lord may graciously preserve harmony among them.

For all who are oppressed by any kind of need, that the Lord may graciously grant them relief.

For ourselves and our parish, that the Lord may graciously receive us as a sacrifice acceptable to himself.

For the dead, for all of the souls in purgatory, and for X, for whom this Holy mass is offered.

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to those who call on you in supplication.

23rd Sunday in OT 2018 - Christ's Healing Activity Then and Now

As you may have seen in the bulletin, this month I’ll be hosting a bible study of the Gospel of Mark. Though we hear the Scriptures proclaimed at Holy Mass, to take them time to study them opens us to more deeply understand God’s Word. Like the deaf and the dumb man in the Gospel today, the Lord wishes to open our ears to understand the Word more deeply and loosen our tongues to proclaim the Word with greater courage, conviction, and faithfulness. So consider participating in our upcoming Scripture study on Monday nights in the chapel.

St. Mark’s Gospel is such an interesting Gospel to study. Compared to the Gospels of St. John, St. Luke, and St. Matthew, which relate to us many of the Lord’s sermons and longer teachings, St. Mark’s Gospel is very action-oriented. We see in Mark’s Gospel the Lord’s power, dominating the forces of evil and sickness, his strength of will in accomplishing the mission preordained by his Heavenly Father. St. Mark details how The Savior of the World working: healing the wounds of our sinfulness, casting out demons, opening eyes, ears, lips, minds, and hearts to God’s grace.

This weekend, our Gospel reading contains one of these wonderful detailed accounts from Mark’s Gospel of the Lord healing man who is deaf and dumb. To accomplish this miraculous healing the Lord could have simply willed the man to be healed, he could have snapped his finger or waved his hand and this man would be healed. But instead, we read of this multi-stepped ritual. The Lord first receives this man, then the Lord then takes him aside and he puts his fingers into the deaf man’s ears, and he spits and he rubs his spittle on the deaf man’s ears and tongue.   And then the Lord looks up to heaven, and he groans, and then he yells out, “Ephphatha, be opened.”  Why this ritual?  Why all these gestures, these signs, these actions? 

The Lord of course not only wanted to heal this man, but as usual, to teach us a lesson.  Namely, that he prefers to work through words, and gestures, and touch, and actions, and signs and intermediaries.  That’s how he healed so many during his earthly ministry, back then, and that’s how he wishes to bring healing to us, now, and all the ages of the Church.

This ritual healing, these gestures and signs in the Gospel today, teach us that the Lord heals through the gestures, signs, and rituals of his holy Church, primarily the Seven Sacraments. In washing our bodies in the waters of baptism, he brings cleansing of our sinful nature. In anointing our heads with chrism in the sacrament of confirmation, he brings strength for the work of the Gospel. In feeding us, under the appearance of bread and wine, in the Eucharist, he nourishes our deepest hunger for God, so that we turn less to be satiated by sin. Through the ritual words of absolution in the sacrament of confession, he brings the reconciliation with God that we cannot achieve on our own. In the exchange of vows in holy matrimony, he joins man and woman to become instruments of God’s fruitful love. Through the anointing of the Sick, the Lord gives powerful grace to endure bodily sickness and the final trial of physical death.

In recent years, there has been a real decline in the number of people coming to the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the forgiveness of their grave sins.  One of the reasons one often hears is that, “I don’t need to go to a priest, I just pray to God directly.”  But that’s not Christianity. The Lord works through his ministers, and through the words, gestures, and rituals of the Church. Offering our contrition to God in the privacy of our homes is good, for our sins truly offend God.  And we should offer our sorrow as soon as we recognize our sin.  BUT, God has made known exactly how He desires to forgive sins. We cannot insist that God forgive our sins on our own conditions.   That  forgiveness, that healing of sin, comes through the words and gestures of the sacrament—through the confession of our particular sins to a priest and the penitent’s expression of contrition, and the priest’s prayer of absolution.

The healing power of the Lord is not limited to the Sacraments, of course. He is present, when two or three are gathered in his name. The healing ritual in today’s gospel begins when the deaf man was brought to the Lord by other people. The Lord loves to work through other people, through parents and priests, neighbors and strangers, through support groups and best-friends-forever. He heals through doctors and medicine and nurses and caregivers, people who have dedicated their lives to healing. He helps those with emotional and psychological wounds through therapists and psychologists, by helping people confront wounds accumulated from childhood or trauma.  He teaches through catechists and clergy. Through Christians like you and me, the Lord desires to bring food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, consolation to the grieving, friendship to the lonely. He wants to use us, each and every one of us, to bring the healing the world so desperately needs.

What is the healing each of us needs? The Lord wishes to heal each one of us, to heal our wounded sense of right and wrong, our disordered attractions, to fix our broken moral compasses, to embolden our fear of speaking truth and being generous to the poor. Because of Original Sin we desire too much of what we don’t need and too little of what we do need. We desire too much social media, gossip, shopping, dessert, selfish exaltation, noise and entertainment, and too little prayer, study, charity, self-discipline, penance, fasting, mortification, silence and meditation. We do well to identify those parts of our lives which need healing, and bring them to the Lord.

That so many Catholics have fallen away from the Church in recent years is such a tragedy, because our brothers and sisters have fallen away from the ways that Jesus wants to work miracles in their lives, the ways the Lord wants to bring them healing and wholeness.

In the news these days, we’ve heard a lot about bishops and priests falling short of their sacred duties. It is a true scandal when ordained clerics undermine the spread of the Gospel through their grave sins. And yet, Christ has not abandoned us. He wants to bring healing to our Church now, and he will continue to do that through the Sacraments, through good holy priests and religious and lay faithful committed to the Gospel. Scandal, in a sense, is always a wake up call to the Church, the hierarchy and the lay faithful, and even to non-Catholics, that counterfeit and watered-down Christianity isn’t good for anybody. May we work and pray for the healing needed in the Church, our families, our community, by turning to the Lord in prayer and penance and the works of charity.

The Lord wishes to speak that powerful word, “Ephphatha” in each of our lives, that we might be ever-more open to his light and healing grace, by bringing our wounds to Him, by trusting in Him, by sharing our faith in Him for the glory of God and salvation of souls.