Holy Week 2022 - Spy Wednesday - The sin of Judas Iscariot

 Wednesday of Holy week is known as Spy Wednesday because on this day Judas Iscariot made the shameful bargain with the high priests to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.  

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the depths of the inferno are reserved for traitors, those guilty of the sin of betrayal. For Dante, the sin of betrayal is so much worse than sins of the flesh—like gluttony or lust. Opposed to the hot-blooded impulsive sins, Dante saw betrayal as cold, requiring forethought, and malice. Satan coldly sought to betray God, as did Judas. Which is why both Satan and Judas are together in hell’s lowest, coldest depths. 

I’ve read that In some villages in Poland, on this day, an effigy of Judas is throne from the church steeple, dragged through the streets and stoned, and then drowned in a pond.

Of Judas, the Lord himself said, “It would be better for that man if he had never been born.” Why? Because Judas knew the truth about Jesus, but betrayed him anyway, and then went on to take his own life. The Church has never declared that Judas is in hell. But based on the Lord’s own words and the fact that Judas died apparently without repentance for his terrible betrayal and by his own hands, it is likely.

But it didn’t have to be so. Jesus died for Judas too. Salvific grace was available to him too, if he would have repented. Like all those in hell, Judas’ eternal sufferings would consist of  the pain of being excluded from God’s presence for all eternity, the knowledge that its duration will continue forever without possibility of rest, the knowledge that it could have been otherwise, and the understanding that it is entirely his own fault.”

We consider Judas’ story today, during holy week, to understand the events leading up to the Lord’s Passion, but also, that we might not make the same mistake as Judas. 

We mustn’t lead greed fester in us, allowing our sins to remain hidden, like Judas who stole from the community purse. We shouldn’t allow anger toward God fester in us. We mustn’t allow unrepentance to fester in us, for any sin, no matter how slight. 

Tomorrow begins the Great Paschal Triduum. In our great liturgical celebrations, we will consider all the Lord did, and suffered, and endured for us. He bore the weight of our sinful betrayals, our lusts, our selfishness, our greed, our pride, wishing no sinner to die, but to return to Him and live. As we contemplate his sufferings and His love for us, may our conviction for the Gospel increase, that we will look for opportunities to know him, love him, and serve him, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For increased faith and understanding in the catechumens and candidates who approach the sacraments of initiation in the coming Paschal Solemnity. 

That the grace of these holy days may touch the most hardened of hearts, and move unrepented sinners and fallen-away Catholics to return to the mercy of God.

For strength to resist temptation, and the humility to sincerely repent of sin.

That through fasting and self-denial, we may be ever more conformed to Christ.

That those in need may find assistance in the charity of faithful Christians and that peace and security may be firmly established in all places.

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

Mercifully hear, O Lord, the prayers of your Church and turn with compassion to the hearts that bow before you, that those you make sharers in your divine mystery may always benefit from your assistance.

All Saints 2020 - Who we are, where we're going, how to get there

At the tail end of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI promulgated a document called Gaudium et Spes, the pastoral constitution on the Church in the Modern World. It’s purpose was to help the Church understand her position and role and mission in the changing modern world with all of its advancements and strengths and foolishness and errors. For it’s important for the Church to reflect upon the “signs of the times”—a phrase which came from this document—to understand better the concrete details in which we are to live out our Christian mission and identity.

While explaining the need for Christians to bring our faith and live our faith in the many different levels of society in which we find ourselves, Gaudium et Spes is also very realistic in speaking about monumental struggle against the powers of evil and darkness.  History is not just the story of human progress, right? We are opposed by satan, the father of lies, who seeks to corrupt souls and bring ruin to nations and families and the Church. 

Last week, when we celebrated Priesthood Sunday, I asked for and thanked you for your prayers for priests—because there is a real battle involved in working for the good of souls. And if the devil can bring ruin to priests, well, that’s going to have an impact on parishes and families, isn’t it? 

But it’s not just priests, Vatican II says, all Christians are involved in this struggle, this battle. Facing such hostility and wickedness and personal demons, we recognize we need God. We need the Sacraments. We need prayer. We need the guidance of good solid Catholic teaching from our Pope and Bishops. If we are going to survive the battle with our souls intact, we need to make sure that we are drawing as much strength and protection and light from our faith as possible. 

And, this weekend, on this solemn feast, we look to the holy souls, the saints, the men and women and children, from every age, and place, and profession, who “survived the time of great distress," as St John calls this life on earth in our First Reading. The survivors, the spiritual war heroes, those who are glorified by God in eternity because of their Christian faith, hope, and love.

Contemplating these brothers and sisters in Christ encourages us: for if they can do it, so can we. I propose three short lessons on how the saints can be our teachers and guides. 

The first lesson is that the saints live with the destination in mind—they know what is at stake—that there is more to life than this earthly life. In the first reading, we get a glimpse of those saintly victors standing, robed in white in the heavenly throne room. In the presence of God stand this great multitude—people of every nation, race, and tongue, who have put on the wedding garment of Christ, who have been baptized, and have kept their faith amidst all the temptations and persecutions in this life—again, knowing what was at stake: in the end they would stand victorious in the heavenly throne room, or be banished from it for all eternity.

Why do we resist those terrible onslaughts of temptation? Why do we pray to remain faithful in the midst of persecution? Because heaven is at stake. Not only does sin diminish us—weaking our will and clouding our mind—it puts our souls at risk of hell. 

This first lesson is so important—because if we aren’t living with the destination in mind, we are likely to veer off the path—perhaps even forget there is path. There are many souls living this way--as if this earthly life was all that is—eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die, and that’s it. And their souls are in danger. Because if you don’t live as if heaven exists in this life—why would anything be different in eternity?

So the saints remind us to live with the destination always on our minds. 

Secondly, it’s not enough to know the destination—you have to know where you are starting from—where you are, right now, spiritually, and who you are. If you can’t pinpoint yourself on the map—how do you know the direction in which you are to walk? 

And this is the second lesson: the saints understand who they are: they understand that they are human beings, with fallen natures due to sin in need of salvation. They know they need Christ. They know they need the Sacraments. They know they need prayer. 

And, they know that through baptism they have become Children of God. We read in our second reading: "See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are." Children of God. Members of God's family. God’s love for us is so profound—we are gathered into his family through the blood of Christ. And the saints are animated by this profound self-knowledge. In whatever hostilities we face, whatever temptations: we do so as Children of God. 

The saints know that they were made for love, by the one who is love. Love animates us, love guides us, love fills us, love protects us. The saints recognize because they are loved they need to become love--loving God and neighbor in the concrete details of their life. 

And that’s the third Lesson. it is not enough just to know who we are and where we are supposed to be going, but we also need to know how to get there. In order to cross a lake, you need a boat. In order to cross a mountain, you need mountain gear. In order to get to heaven, the home of the saints, you need to practice saintliness, blessedness.

This is what today's Gospel passage reminds us of: the Beatitudes are the practices and attitudes that you and I must cultivate if we wish to join the saints. 

We must practice poverty of spirit—recognizing our fundamental need for God in all things. We must mourn for our sins—those lost opportunities to live for God. We must be meek—treating each other with gentleness. We must hunger and thirst for righteousness—seeking to justly give God what belongs to God and to treat our neighbor and the poor with the respect and fairness due to every living human person. We must not just be just but merciful—going beyond what is merely fair and just—but practicing true mercy to become a blessing for others. We must be clean of heart—turning away from anything impure, corrupt, perverted, vile, or selfish, in order to seek God through prayer and worship and divine contemplation. And we must keep the faith amidst persecution—in fact, if we are not living our faith in such away that the world hates us, we might not be really living the faith.

Live with the destination in mind, live with the humble knowledge that you are a sinner, reborn in baptism as a child of God, now called to strive to live the beatitudes in this life, that we may join the ranks of the blessed in eternity.

May the saints help us and preserve us for this our destiny, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

31st Sunday in OT - 2019 - God is the lover of souls

“O Lord and lover of souls, your imperishable spirit is in all things!” What a profound statement of faith from our first reading from the Book of Wisdom today.

I’d like to consider 5 points this powerful, profound line of scripture. …“O Lord and lover of souls, your imperishable spirit is in all things!”

First, we’ll consider how it speaks to what we are. Secondly, what we are not. Thirdly, what that means in daily life. Fourthly, what it requires of us. And finally, its ultimate import.
So, firstly, this line speaks of who we are. God’s imperishable spirit is in us. We are endowed by God with what philosophers, theologians, poets, and scripture call “a soul”, an immortal, rational soul. We are made by God with a body and a soul.

Harkening back to the very first book of the bible, we read in Genesis, that in contrast to all the other elements of the created universe: the stars, the rocks, the plants, the animals, God uniquely breathed life into the man and woman. in divine image he created them; male and female he created them. When God looks upon us, he sees a reflection of Himself, we are made in God’s very image and likeness. And therefore, we are capable of understanding the order of the universe. We possess the powers of intellect and free will, and the use of reason capable of recognizing our purpose of pursuing the true, the good, and the beautiful.

“O Lord and lover of souls, your imperishable spirit is in all things!”

Secondly, then, we are reminded of what we are not. Since, we have God’s very spirit within us, we are not irrational animals, we are not some consequence of random cosmic forces, we are not bound to follow every urge, appetite, or impulse we experience. Nor are we merely mortal—we share something of the immortal nature of God. Nor, are we inconsequential to God, we are not accidents. Our existence is part of God’s plan. And there is something about us that loveable even when we have misused our free will in sin.

In the Gospel today, the Son of God, Jesus, sees Zacchaeus in the tree. What does he see when he sees Zacchaeus? Does he see a cheat, a crook, an extortioner, a collaborator with the foreign enemy? Zacchaeus was all these things. But Jesus, lover of souls, saw something deeper than all of Zacchaeus’ physical and moral shortcomings—something that was loveable in Zacchaeus and is loveable in all of us, something worth dying for.

“O Lord and lover of souls, your imperishable spirit is in all things!”

Thirdly, what this means for all of us in day to day life, is that if we believe that we have God’s imperishable spirit within us, and by the way, so does every other human being on this earth, if we believe that, we must treat ourselves and others with dignity and respect, we must foster what Pope Paul VI called a “civilization of love”, what Pope John Paul II called the “culture of life” that cherishes and protects every human person from the moment of conception until death.
The very essence of our moral theology and our call to social action is the dignity of every human person—the responsibility we have for our souls and that of our neighbor. To neglect one is to neglect the other.

“O Lord and lover of souls, your imperishable spirit is in all things!”

Fourthly, what does this require of us? What does this entail? If our soul has value in God’s eyes, we must cultivate and care for it. We are usually pretty good at caring for our bodies. Most of us don’t totally indulge every bodily appetite. Most of us observe some semblance of eating right, exercise, caring for our bodies when they become ill, diseased, or broken down.

But, the care our souls, on the other hand, is certainly not one of the hallmarks of our culture. And yet it is the lack of care for the immortal soul which is at the root of most of our exhaustion, unhappiness and societal evil. We pursue so many idols: wealth, bodily pleasure, and power, and our lives our sorrier for it.

I am reminded of a powerful article written by Bishop Lennon, who passed away this week. Bishop Lennon wrote how Christians, rather than pursuing idols the idols of the world are to place “God at the center of our weekly schedules and activities, meals, chores, conversations, parenting, work, vacations, civic responsibilities, decisions, problems, crises accomplishments, and losses.” By doing so, the bishop said, “our whole lives become charged and changed by God’s presence”. Rather than unhappiness and exhaustion from pursuing idols and neglecting our souls, our life becomes filled with power and patience and resiliency and joy even amidst our many trials.

To assist us in making sure we are taking the time to cultivate our souls and placing God at the center of our lives, the Stewardship committee has put together a wonderful Time Commitment Card. We invite you to take one of these Commitment Cards home with you and pray with it throughout the week. How might God be inviting you to make a greater return of your time to Him that he may strengthen you and speak to you?

After praying with the Commitment Card throughout the week, next weekend we will collect the cards and place them before the altar. So please take a commitment card home with you today, they are located at the ends of the pews. Pray with them, ask God to help you commit to some healthy prayer habits that will nurture your soul, and bring them back to church next weekend. No need to put your name on the card or anything, your commitment is between you and God.

God is a lover of souls and wants to see your soul flourish in virtue and grace. As, St. Paul writes in our second reading, “that our God may make you worthy of his calling and powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose and every effort of faith”

Finally, why does any of this matter?

It is clear that we have the imperishable spirit of God within us. God made us to live forever, to be united with Him forever in eternity.

But scripture is also clear that what we do with our time and our choices and our free will matters—what we do with that imperishable soul matters.

For those who die in God’s grace and friendship, who have become perfectly purified from sin, their destination, immediately after death, is heaven. These are the saints, those who names we know, and those whose names we don’t, whom we celebrated in a special way on All Saints Day.

For those who died in God’s grace and friendship, but have been imperfectly purified of sin, that is, who have not given the whole of their lives and minds and wills and souls to God in this life, that’s most of us, we are destined for heaven, but have some purification after death in Purgatory. We pray in a special way for the souls in purgatory during this month of November.

And those who freely choose to live and persist in grave sin, those who allow the powers of selfishness and sin to consume them in this life, their imperishable soul will suffer what Jesus himself calls “the unquenchable fire”.

By the way, I will be taking up for my second Friday faith formation these topics of heaven, hell, death, soul, and purgatory. So, consider joining us in the school cafeteria for a discussion of these topics on friday at 7pm.

Knowing these truths is Good News. For with God’s help we can preserve our souls from evil and open our souls to the life God wishes to give us. God is the lover of souls and invites each of us, urges us  through His Word, to concern ourselves with what matters most in life, the cultivation of our souls in grace, in virtue, in imitation of the Good Shepherd, the Son of Man who came to seek and to save what was lost for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

17th Sunday in OT 2019 - Purification from earthly pride

The Catholic poet, Dante Alighieri, wrote a famous poem, almost 800 years ago now, called the Divine Comedy—La Comedia Divina.  In the three books of La Comedia, Dante chronicles a pilgrimage he makes through hell, purgatory, and heaven.   He describes the horrific sights and sounds of the punishment of the wicked in hell for their failure to repent from their self-centeredness. He then makes his way up the mountain of purgatory, where he meets those undergoing purification from the effects of their life’s sinfulness. Dante finally visits heaven, il paradiso, where amidst glorious celestial light he meets the blessed saints who free from all selfishness now enjoy the beauty of being in God’s presence.

Dante uses an interesting literary device to depict the suffering of the wicked in hell, a device called Contrapasso. Contrapasso means the punishment fits the sin. For example those who in hell unrepentant of the sin of lust are caught blown about the second circle of hell by this terrible hellish whirlwind. How does the punishment fit the sin? As the lustful allowed themselves to be carried by the winds of their passions on earth, in hell they are subject to these uncontrollable winds for eternity—without rest.

In purgatory, for Dante, the purification also fits the sin. At the base of the mountain of purgatory, the largest group of people Dante meets are those who need to be cleansed of the sin of pride. For Dante, every sin can be traced back to pride. Pride turns away from God, pride claims to know better than God, better than the Church. We commit pride when we act as if we were the center of the universe. Jesus condemned the Pharisees for their pride and traced their inability to recognize him as the Son of God back to pride.  Our self-centered pride keeps us from loving God and loving neighbor as we should.

So if for Dante, the purification fits the sin how did he depict the purification of the prideful? Well, what is the opposite of pride? Humility. The purification of the prideful of purgatory involved a very specific act of humility, an act of humility prescribed by the Lord Himself. Their purification, the healing of their willfulness, their self-centeredness, their sinful egotism, was to recite over and over, humbly and devoutly, the prayer we find at the beginning of the Gospel today, the Our Father.

Why does Dante see the Our Father as a fitting purification for pride? Sinful Pride claims “MY WILL BE DONE”, the Our Father prays “Thy Will be Done.” Sinful pride asserts its own self-sufficiency and control; the Our Father approaches God with open hands, seeking the daily bread that can only come from God. Sinful pride refuses to forgive, never forgiving an affront to our almighty egos, the Our Father asks God for the grace to forgive, allowing the wounded ego to heal. Where sinful pride does not acknowledge that it could ever make a mistake, could never sin, the Our Father pleads mercy for our sins, mercy that can only come from God.

A good priest once suggested to me that our holiness as a Christian can be measured by our ability to pray the Our Father from the heart. In Dante’s purgatory, the Our Father is prayed over and over as an act of purification from pride, until these souls truly learn to pray it from the heart, with a heart in union with the heart of Jesus.

The Our Father is one of the first prayers we learn as Catholics: we commit it to memory, we pray it every week at Mass. I remember committing it to memory in first grade PSR. Now, once committed to memory it becomes easy to rattle off the words, barely thinking about what they mean.  So, there is certainly a difference between praying the Our Father from memory and praying it from the heart, isn’t there? 

To pray the Our Father from the heart means to pray it from your very depths, to mean every phrase of it, to pray it with the heart and the mind of Jesus Christ.  As a spiritual exercise it is helpful from time to time to pray the Our Father, very slowly, reflecting upon every word, what those words really mean for us as Christians.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church, by the way, is a wonderful resource for this, the entire final 100 paragraphs of the Catechism deal with each line and each phrase of the Lord’s Prayer.

Let’s just like at the first word of Jesus’ prayer. Where pride focuses on me, me, me.  The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to focus on us, on we.  We are to address God as part of a community.  The first word of the Our Father is Our. 

In teaching us to pray, Jesus teaches us to focus not just on ME, my life, my needs, my desires, rattling off my wish list. For Christianity is not a mere private affair.  The Church Jesus founded is not just a gathering of isolated individuals, but persons who have been brought into a new communion with God and one another.  We go to God together. 

Look at Sunday Mass.  We cannot fulfill our Sunday obligation by sitting in a room, by ourselves, communing with God.  We are meant to come together, at least every week, in united prayer. Someone who claims that they don’t need the Church to be Christian needs to reexamine the data and the teachings of Jesus Christ.

The Christian Church is a communion, a community, a family of souls on earth united in faith and prayer to the souls in purgatory who both receive the help of the blessed souls of the saints in heaven. And the Our Father, to be prayed by every Christian every day, opens us, reminds us, recommits us, to being a faithful members of this communion. It humbles our egocentrism, opening us up to new vistas of charity and living in harmony.

Seek and Ye shall Find. And in the Our Father, the Lord teaches us a prayer of perfect and unselfish love offering ourselves entirely to God and asking from Him the best things, not only for ourselves but also for our neighbor.

May this Holy Eucharist help us to truly be purified from all earthly pride, to grow in humble surrender to the holy will of God in all things, to pray with the hearts and minds of Jesus, united with all of the holy souls and the saints, that Our Father may truly be hallowed on earth as He is in heaven, for the Glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Holy Saturday 2019 - Hell trembles with fear

The ancient homily on Holy Saturday states: “there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.”

In the Apostle’s Creed we profess that after Christ was crucified, died and buried, “He descended into Hell.” Christ was not condemned to Hell, like the rest of humanity. Rather he descended; he went willingly and with purpose.
From the time of Adam, all who died, whether evil or righteous were deprived of the vision of God. And Christ went to those who souls who awaited their Savior. The ancient homily says, “he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve…the Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory.”

Holy Saturday is a quiet day. Yet, in the quiet, if we listen, and If we grow silent enough, and listen well, we hear hell trembling, and the voice of the Lord, victorious through the cross, proclaiming a word of life, a word of freedom. The Catechism says, “Christ went down into the depths of death so that "the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live."

In the Canticle from morning prayer this morning from Isaiah chapter 38, one of God’s faithful ones ponders how, though he shall come to the gates of the netherworld, the pit of destruction, because of his sins, God will save him, his sins will be put behind him, death will not get the final word. “Fathers will pass on to their children the truth of your faithfulness”. This is the truth that is passed on through the generations by the Christian faithful. The truth that salvation is found in Jesus Christ, mercy and forgiveness, freedom from sin and death is found in Jesus Christ: through His death, burial, and resurrection.

Yes, there is a great silence on earth today. But we incline our ear passed the silence, to a Word which cannot be silenced. Not by the world, not by the powers of corruption and selfishness, sin, evil or malice.

Though much evil still fills the world, and the powers of death seek to swallow us whole, we open our hearts to the new life-giving Word, to the one who holds the keys of death and of hell, and opens the doors of heaven, resurrection and eternal life to those who would follow Him, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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All-powerful and ever-living God, your only Son went down among the dead and rose again in glory. In your goodness raise up your faithful people, buried with him in baptism, to be one with him in the everlasting life of heaven, where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

1st Week of Lent 2019 - Friday - Justice, Mercy, and the Need for Repentance

Our readings underscore today the justice of God, that God is a just judge: the just, the virtuous shall at the end of this life receive eternal life, and the wicked and unrepentant shall go on to eternal perdition. And they underscore the mercy of God: “If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die.”

What separates the saved from the damned in the readings today? Repentance. Lent is a powerful call to repentance, and repentance is a matter of life and death.

Justice is when you give that which is deserved. Justice demands parents feed and nurture their children. Mercy gives beyond what is deserved. As a matter of justice, all sinners deserve death. They’ve chosen by their own free will to separate themselves from God, and so they deserve the consequences of that separation.

The Psalmist is a little overwhelmed by God’s justice today. “If you, O LORD, mark iniquities, LORD, who can stand?” The Psalmist is overwhelmed that God knows, each and every one of our iniquities throughout our whole life, and that every deed from our whole life will be brought up on the day of judgment, and we will have to give an accounting for them.

But then the Psalmist recalls God’s forgiveness: “But with you is forgiveness”. God has announced his mercy: He Himself will pay the price of our sins, and that he will forgive those who repent.

During Lent, we show our repentance, our sorrow for sins, our desire to convert from each and every one of our sins, through prayer, fasting, and charity. We make a Lenten confession and confess those sins. By doing so we “Cast away from all the crimes we have committed, and make for ourselves a new heart and a new spirit. (Ez 18:31).”

We make a grave mistake in saying, “it doesn’t matter how I live, because God is mercifull”. No. It does matter. Repentance does matter.

Jesus said to his disciples: "I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.” The Pharisees were so self-assured that they did not recognize their sinful pride and their sinful coldness toward the poor. They failed to repent of their pride, their lust, their wrath, selfishness, and for that Jesus announced eternal consequences.

So may we take advantage of this time of mercy, truly examine our hearts and our motivations, not according to the standard of the world, but the standard of Christ, that not a sin of our life will go unrepented of, that the Lord will not find us unrepentant, but full of contrition, trusting in His word, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For the whole Christian people, that in this sacred Lenten season, they may be more abundantly nourished by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

For the whole world, that in lasting tranquility and peace our days may truly become the acceptable time of grace and salvation.

For sinners and those who neglect right religion, that in this time of reconciliation they may return wholeheartedly to Christ.

For ourselves, that God may at last stir up in our hearts aversion for our sins and conviction for the Gospel.

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

Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your people may turn to you with all their heart, so that whatever they dare to ask in fitting prayer they may receive by your mercy.

Monday - 15th Week of OT 2017 - I have come to bring not peace but the sword.

Did Jesus not come to bring peace upon the earth? Did he not speak of peacemaking in the beatitudes, did he not command his apostles to pronounce peace on people’s homes? So why does he say in the Gospel today, “I have come to bring not peace but the sword”?

First, the sword here is not to be understood as an actual military weapon. Jesus’ Church is not a military machine, at least, not in the earthly sense. The Apostles’ were certainly not tasked with converting people at sword point.

Rather, Jesus’ sword is spiritual; by the sword of his word, his teachings, the way of wickedness is clearly severed from the way of righteousness. Jesus divides and separates us from all that keeps us from a close, intimate, personal relationship with Him. He wants full communion with us and nothing less. He has come to divide us — to tear us from relationships with people and things that are keeping us from being closer to Him.

Jesus here foreshadows the division that will take place at the end of time when the righteous who choose the path of life are ultimately separated from those who choose the path of death. In Luke’s Gospel, the Lord even says, “I have come not to bring peace but division.” Everyone must choose, even if families become divided.

Responses to Jesus’ invitation will vary—from the full embrace of the saints to the hostile rejection of the godless, or rather, those who make themselves into their own gods. Jesus is also well aware, that this response of faith, or lack thereof, will cause discord—even hostility—within families.
I think Jesus’ teaching here is particularly challenging in our age of tolerance, which often preaches Jesus without the sword, Christianity without the call to repentance, or as St. John Paul called it, an age without “the sense of sin.”

I know it causes great pain to parents and grandparents when their children and grandchildren wander from the way of Christ. We fear for their souls, for we know hell is real, whether they acknowledge that or not. Our culture tells them that they are free to choose their own path. But Christ is clear, we must choose Him, His Church—those who reject his apostles, reject Him.

Great pain, great sadness. So we certainly redouble our prayers and efforts of sharing with them the saving faith, even when it causes a little tension around the dinner table. Yes, we possess the Truth it in its fullness, but we are called to share it gently, with the utmost patience. And, lest we become self-righteous, each of us must keep ourselves honest as well. We must examine the loyalties we continue to flirt with, the small compromises with selfishness.

May the choices we make today, the words we speak, bring us, and those around us closer to the Lord, that divided from sin, we may know the peace of communion with Him for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That our bishops and clergy may be zealous and clear in preaching and teaching the truth of the Gospel.

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

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.

For all the needs of the sick and the suffering, the homebound, those in nursing homes and hospitals, the underemployed and unemployed, victims of natural disaster, war, and terrorism, for all those who grieve the loss of a loved one, and those who will die today, for their comfort, and the consolation of their families.

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.

Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your people may turn to you with all their heart, so that whatever they dare to ask in fitting prayer they may receive by your mercy. Through Christ our Lord.

Holy Saturday 2017 - Morning Prayer Reflection - "He descended into hell"

The ancient homily on Holy Saturday states: “there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.”

In the Apostle’s Creed we profess that after Christ was crucified, died and buried, “He descended into Hell” He was not condemned to Hell, like the rest of humanity. Rather he descended, he went willingly and with purpose.

From the time of Adam, all who died, whether evil or righteous were deprived of the vision of God. And Christ went to those who souls who awaited their Savior. Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the souls who awaited his coming.

The Catechism says, “Christ went down into the depths of death so that "the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live."

The ancient homily says, “he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve…the Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory.”

We do well to observe the silence today, we who have quieted our willful souls by Lenten and Holy Week penances. If we grow silent enough, and listen well, we will hear hell trembling, and the voice of the Lord, victorious through the cross, proclaiming a word of life, as we await his Easter resurrection for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Homily: Thursday - 2nd Week of Lent 2017 - The Great Chasm

Monday night, I attended the parish mission over at St. Paschal’s, at which Fr. Tom Dragga used today’s Gospel passage to help prepare the attendees for the sacrament of Confession.

One of the points, that I’m going to steal from his reflection, and by the way, Fr. Dragga taught me to steal, he was one of my homily professors in seminary. As he would say, “if Fr. Estabrook preaches well, you can thank me, if Fr. Estabrook preaches poorly, then he should have payed better attention.” And one of the lessons he taught was to “steal, steal, steal” material for a homily!

Fr. Dragga spoke about a particular detail in the Gospel—a word we don’t use too often in our common parlance, the great “chasm”—“the chasma mega”, in the Greek—which separated the rich man and Lazarus—the chasm between heaven and hell. Why do we go through the humbling, perhaps even embarrassing ordeal of the sacrament of confession? To be free of those things which create a chasm between us and God.

Why do we subject ourselves to the rigors of Lent? Why do we follow the sometimes mysterious precepts of the Catholic faith? Why do we sacrifice our time, talent, and treasure for the needy instead of enjoying our earthly goods in their entirety? To avoid the chasm…to avoid the mistake that the Rich Man in the Gospel made in choosing to ignore the poor man at his gate.

We do believe that sin and selfishness create a chasm between us and God, and that some sin is so deadly, as the apostle John explains in his first letter, that the chasm becomes unpassable, uncrossable; the way of the wicked leads to doom, as Psalm 1 says, and nothing in life save for the grace of God particularly dispensed in the Sacrament of Confession, can heal that chasm.

Sometimes we think that our venial sins “aren’t that bad”, but all sin creates chasm, separation, wound. And so we seek not simply the absolution of our mortal sin, but to root out venial sin from our life.

Our Lenten prayer, fasting, and almsgiving disposes us to grace, they help to strengthen us against the temptations to sin, they certainly soften our hearts which can becomes so easily hardened by selfishness and self concern. For the abyss, the chasm separating the rich man and Lazarus did not simply appear in the afterlife, he dug that abyss  each day that he disregarded his fellow man during his life.

May our Lenten observances open our eyes to the needs of the poor, heal our sinfulness, and help us to experience and become instrument’s of God’s saving mercy for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That our Lenten prayer, fasting, and almsgiving may bring about conversion and renewal within the Church.

For those who have fallen away from the Church, who have become separated through error and sin, for those who reject the teachings of Christ, for their conversion and the conversion of all hearts.

That our Lenten observances may deepen our commitment to the needs of the poor who seek our assistance.

For those experiencing any kind of hardship or sorrow, isolation or illness: that the tenderness of the Father’s love will comfort them.  We pray to the Lord.

Homily: 29th Sunday in OT 2016 - Perseverance in Spiritual Matters

About 500 years ago, America was just being explored by men like Ponce de Leon and Cortes, Michelangelo was completing the Sistine Chapel, Machiavelli was writing The Prince; it was a time of political, social, religious, and scientific upheaval in Europe. 

There was a 17-year-old girl named Theresa who had felt God’s call to enter the Carmelite monastery in Avila, Spain. She was a physically beautiful girl, talented, outgoing, affectionate, wise, intelligent, and much in tune with her spiritual life.

About six years after entering the monastery, though, prayer became very hard for Theresa. She began to make excuses not to practice daily mental prayer, she became lax in her devotions. Her enthusiasm for her religious vocation began to wane and she grew lukewarm for her faith.

One day, Theresa was given a vision, a supernatural vision—a vision which was terrifying, but afterwards she saw it as a great gift. She was given a vision of hell; souls were falling to hell in great abundance, like snowflakes, she said, because of their faithlessness. But then she saw specifically the very place the devil had prepared for her soul if she continued down the path of lukewarmness.  And then God allowed her to experience some of the pain, despair, and torment of that place. She said the hopelessness of that place was impossible to put into words.  Such would be the consequences if continued to allow lukewarmness to develop in her heart.

She saw this vision as a gift because it helped her realize the consequences of faithlessness. She found renewal in her own faith and even worked to reform the entire Carmelite Order.

What is lukewarmness? Lukewarm faith?  It’s neither hot nor cold.  The lukewarm are neither on fire with enthusiasm for the faith, nor necessarily icy cold in their hostility toward the faith. But because of their lukewarmness they begin to slide…they stop praying, they stop going to Mass, they stop believing that God is more important than earthly pleasure.

Lukewarmness is like a slow-working disease.  Even a once enthusiastic soul, like Theresa’s can be brought to lukewarmness.  It can slowly sap the willpower needed to pursue the the spiritual perfection to which the Lord calls us. 

What causes this spiritual disease of lukewarmness?  Well, just as our bodies can become malnourished when we don’t eat our fruits and vegetables, so our souls can become malnourished by not taking time for meditation, spiritual reading, examination of conscience, and fulfilling the duties of your vocation. 

The other cause for lukewarmness is sin.  Breaking the commandments, acts of pride and lust and greed cause the soul which is fervent for God to grow cold.  Failure to fulfill the obligation to participate at Sunday mass and Holy Days is often the first step of a slippery slope that leads to perdition.  Why are some Catholics who attended twelve years of Catholic school now hostile to the teachings of the Church and practice of the faith?  You can bet money that missing Mass played a part.

Just because food tastes good—like butterfinger bars and oreo cookies—doesn’t mean it’s good for the body.  Likewise, Just because certain television shows or websites or gossipy conversations can bring some enjoyment, they can be quite dangerous for the life of the soul, where love for spiritual heavenly  things can be replaced with love for perverse and worldly things.

I bring up this story of St. Theresa being awakened out of her lukewarmness, one because today is the feast day of St. Theresa of Avila, but also, I think the story fits well with our readings.

In the first reading from Exodus we hear how Moses had to persevere in keeping his hands raised during a battle with the Amalekites. As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel was victorious in battle; but when he let his hands down, the Amalekites, Israel’s enemies got the upper hand.

This is a great metaphor for the spiritual life—when we keep our hands raised before God, persevering in prayer, engaging in the works of mercy, victory is won—our souls grow as they are meant to. When we grow lax, lukewarm, and disobedient, our souls diminish.

The battle between Israel and the Amalekites is just one battle in the Bible. Israel had to engage in quite a few battles in order to take possession of the promised land. All those battles remind us that there is a constant battle going on in our own lives—a constant struggle between two forces.  On one hand the forces of peace and goodness and mercy and forgiveness, and on the other hand the forces which seek the ruin of souls--hatred, violence, self-absorption, resentment.  Which forces do we nurture?

In the spiritual life, when we do fall, when we do grow lukewarm, one of the most important and powerful things we can do is to make a good confession. To humbly acknowledge our sin and our need for the Lord’s mercy can truly be a turning point in our own spiritual battles.

Notice, as well, that Moses was only able to keep his hands raised with “a little help from his friends.” Aaron and Hur supported Moses’ hands—they helped him when he began to grow weary. So too, friends, we are not meant to go through the Christian life by ourselves. We need good Christian friends to support us, to encourage us in the faith. As Christians, we aren’t like sports fans who go our separate ways after the game, we are meant to walk with each other, to share our faith with each other and strengthen each other.

Personally, I get together with a group of brother priests on a weekly basis. We share a meal, we pray together, we go for a walk and discuss the challenges of priestly ministry, we discuss books we’ve been reading, lessons from movies we’ve seen, and we encourage each other in our priesthood.

Every Christian needs that. Here at St. Clare we are blessed to have groups of families that encourage each other in the faith, the families in christ jesus groups, and for two years now, we have had the Arise groups. We need each other: to help each other grow in the faith and keep each other from growing lukewarm.

We need God’s help to fight life’s battles, like Moses and the Israelites. We need to persevere in prayer, like the widow in the Gospel, and to remain faithful to God, we need the help of our Christian friends, who keep us accountable to God’s commandments, who encourage us, and challenge us.

Through this celebration of Word and Sacrament, may the Holy Spirit enliven our faith, rekindling the faith of any who have grown lukewarm. May we recommit to daily prayer and meditation, frequent confession of sins, concern for the souls of our fellow Christians, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Homily: 24th Sunday of OT 2016 - Care for your eternal soul

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found the parables of today’s Gospel a bit strange.
“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?”

And I always think to myself, “well, I wouldn’t?” Why would you put the 99 sheep at risk in order to find the 1? It’s bad business. If you are a shepherd, and your job is to protect your flock, and one wonders away, wouldn’t just count it as lost? Otherwise, if you go out looking for it, and leave the 99, you’re likely to come back to find that 45 other sheep had wandered away or worse, eaten by wolves, stolen by bandits. Kind of sounds like bad shepherding to me!

But this parable isn’t talking about prudent business decisions here, is it? Jesus is talking about the love of the father. If as a parent you have say six children, and one of them gets lost at the shopping mall, as I used to do…all the time…as a parent you wouldn’t say, “well, that’s okay, I have 5 other ones.” No parent would do that. So God, whose love for us is greater than even parents love for their children, goes to extravegent lengths to save those who have fallen away…all of us.

The parable of the woman with the lost coin is another strange image. She has 10 coins and loses 1 and then turns her whole house upside-down searching for it. The coin in question was a drachma, a silver coin. How much was a drachma worth? Some scripture scholars say it was about 65 cents, others a nickel, others a fraction of a penny. Still, with this coin, you couldn’t buy a loaf of bread for that. And yet, what does she do when she loses this coin? She turns her whole house upside-down. Maybe if I lost a twenty bucks, or a hundred, of course, but for a nickel? Not only does she rejoice when she finds this coin, she calls her neighbors over. Could you imagine, who would call up their neighbors and say, “come over, quick, I’ve got the best news, you’re not gonna believe it!” And they come over, and ask, what’s this about? And beaming, you hold up that shiny nickel…I found it! Your neighbors would slowly back up out of the house and call the men with the white coats.

And I think Jesus knew that this story was strange. For it’s not about the value of the coin…but about this amazing joy over the conversion of sinners. It illustrates just how important our souls are to God. God, in fact cares about our souls, much more than we do.

These parables, along with the parable of the prodigal son, remind us of how much God loves us, the great ends to which he is willing to go to save us, and the responsibility we have to protect our souls from evil now that they’ve been redeemed.

Why does God love us so? Why are our souls so valuable to God that he is willing to suffer and die for us—to go to extravagant lengths to save us?

What is the value of a soul? All the beauties of nature and all of the works of man do not compare in the smallest degree with the value of a soul. For nature is finite, every building or work of art is finite. But the soul is of eternal value. It will never die. You and I are going to live forever. Our bodies will die, but our souls, will never die. Your soul—your spirit—will live forever. And how we live our lives on earth, the moral choices we make, our assent of faith or our lack thereof, will determine whether our souls spend eternity in heaven or hell.

Yes, it is terrible when a person loses his health, or his money, or his friends.. But the loss of one’s soul because we fail to recognize our sinfulness and our need for God, that’s even worse, that is the truly greatest tragedy possible. On this 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the world trade center, we think of that word: tragedy. The loss of life, the violence, all of this is great great tragedy. But again, the greatest tragedy, is when a soul becomes destined for hell. A soul, destined for heaven, choosing hell through its failure to repent, is the greatest tragedy of all.

St. Peter says, God does not wish that any souls should parish, but that all should come to repentance. He gives every soul, each one of us, a super-abundance of opportunities to repent. But whether we truly repent or not will determine our eternal destiny.

It should be deeply concerning to us, when Catholics lose their faith, when they stop going to Church, when they enter invalid marriages, when they turn away from the moral teachings of the Church. Deeply concerning! For we know not the day nor the hour, when this earthly life will end and we will face our judge.

These beautiful parables this weekend remind us that God does not give up on us, he continues to reach out, to call out, He continues to search, to even do elaborate, extravagant things to bring souls to repentance and conversion…crazy things, like sending people like us out to bring in the lost sheep! If you have a family member who has fallen away from the faith, or a neighbor who has no faith, pray for them, fast for them, do penance for them, look for creative ways to bring them into contact with the saving Gospel.

We must also do our part in protecting our own souls from faithlessness. Each of us must commit to a healthy prayer life, studying the Bible daily, engaging in works of mercy. There are plenty of souls who came to church every week, but never prayed. Because they allowed the flame of faith to die out now they neither pray nor come to Church.

Prayer and reading scripture, making a frequent confession, is how we take the care of our souls seriously. Our souls are worth protecting, after all, they were worth dying for.

God comes to us in this Mass, in this Eucharistic celebration, he seeks us out to nourish us, feed us, bring us to repentance, to help us know his love for us. May we respond to his love through genuine repentance and an increased effort to cooperate with his grace for the glory of God and salvation of souls.