Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XIV per Annum C
6 July 2025

 Every year in late spring and early summer there are a number of events having to do with the priesthood.  There are ordinations and anniversaries and many priests are beginning new assignments.  We are familiar with pointing to the Last Supper as the place where the Lord established the priesthood and the Holy Eucharist.  However, today’s Gospel passage is an important and unique passage that shows how Jesus appointed, not only the Apostles, but also other ministers with his authority.

The Gospel passage helps us see a priestly order, an expanding rank of ministers, that is established with sacred authority from the Lord in order to assist the apostles as coworkers and companions.  The apostles need assistants and so, here, a much larger group than the Twelve is chosen to form a rank second to the apostles.  The Lord is forming a priestly hierarchy for his Church.  Today, we use the terms “presbyters” or “priests” for this secondary rank.  That’s not surprising given that this passage has strong allusions to the passages in Exodus 24 and Numbers 11 when Moses chose 70 priestly elders at the time of the Exodus to help him with his overwhelming mission by ministering to the twelve tribes of Israel (cf. Ex. 24:1; Num. 11:16ff).

 We should note that these 72 (from the Gospel) do not simply volunteer.  Still less, they do not choose themselves.  They don’t give themselves the mission and they don’t simply present themselves as having credentials to minister with the Lord’s authority.  No, they are chosen, and they are chosen by the Lord who sends them out to prepare the way for his work.  They are to have a total dedication and to be free of distraction to minister in the name of the Lord.  We see this from the instruction that they are to carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals, and that they are to greet no one along the way.  They are to have a radical focus in proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is at hand.  Finally, in a verse that is unfortunately left out of both the shorter and the longer versions of this passage, we see the full extent of the authority the Lord shares with the 72, when the Lord says this about his chosen ministers: “Whoever listens to you listens to me.  Whoever rejects you rejects me.  And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Lk. 10:16).   This is a strong declaration of apostolic authority.  And it also demonstrates the importance of being united to the one Church the Lord established.  I say this because the authority is given by the Lord.  It is not claimed for oneself by someone who decides to be a minister, and still less by someone who simply starts his own “church” or community.  Now, that is a challenging notion in our modern age where we are so accustomed to religion and church being like a commodity that one shops for and picks the version one likes, with options on every street corner.  To minister with real apostolic authority comes from the Lord and operates within his Church.

And having said all this about the divine authority the Lord bestows on his ministers, believe it or not, the Lord chooses real men, “average joe’s” we might say, to be sent out as his priests and to assist the work of the bishops who are the successors of the apostles.  This is the part of the passage I want to focus on this weekend.  The Lord instructs: “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Lk. 10:2).  My friends, we must do this.  We must pray to the Lord to send us the priestly workers we need.  And when I say we must pray for this, I mean we must speak to the Lord fervently and frequently.  We must also speak encouraging words to young men in our midst so that they have opportunities to hear the call.  This praying and this encouraging needs to happen, too, within families.  And so, I want to suggest in a particular way that parents, and especially fathers, be bold in speaking to sons about a reverence for the priesthood and a healthy pride you would have were a son to pursue a calling to the priesthood.

I am convinced that the Lord is calling young men, and even more young men from our parish.  I am also convinced that our age suffers from so much noise and distraction that obstacles make it easy for young men to dismiss the possibility that the Lord could be calling them to the priesthood.  It is rarely the perfect candidate who ends up making a good seminarian.  We need to avoid the tendency of expecting already well-polished priestly qualities when we look upon a grade school boy or a teenage and college-aged young man in your family and in the parish.  No, we are looking for simple qualities of prayerfulness, participation in parish life, and dedication to service and to the faith.  These can be the precursors to the calling.  The rest can be formed and polished in seminary and in ministry.

I think it needs to be said that we should also pray directly that the Lord’s strength removes obstacles from the hearts and minds of our boys and young men, obstacles that may cause them to quickly dismiss the idea of the priesthood as if it can’t be them or, as if they don’t have what it takes to be a future priest.  I suspect these kinds of obstacles frequently get in the way of a priestly vocation.  I think it is fair to say that if a boy or young man immediately dismisses the idea of the priesthood as something impossible for him, then he likely is not paying attention and is too easily dismissing what the Lord can do in him if the Lord is calling.  The rest of us also need obstacles removed from our hearts and minds.  We adults in the parish need to remember that we are looking for small signs, not already formed priests in the young men around us.  The ordinary, average joe shouldn’t be dismissed from our radar, and our prayer and invitation.  It could be your son.  It could be the boy who engages in some school pranks that we would probably call “bullying”.  It could be the boy who is terrible in the outfield, but better at shortstop.  It could be the guy who gets kicked out of a state park along with his Boy Scout troop on a campout.  It could be the guy who practices World Wrestling Federation moves on his younger brother in the living room.  It could be the young man who has some rather typical struggles with virtue.  It could be the guy who makes some bad choices before legal drinking age.  It could be the guy who takes your daughter to the prom.  It could be the guy who fails his first theology exam in seminary.  Are you catching on yet that all these “could bes” are real examples from my life?!  We clean up nicely, don’t we?!  And along with all that, all these unlikely examples, it could be the boy who also serves Mass.  It could be the guy who also sings in the choir, or prays in the chapel, or even who just sits in the pew nearby.  Yes, it could be your son, your brother, your nephew, your grandson, your friend, the guy in the pew around you.

The obstacles aren’t important to the Lord and are weak compared to what his grace and power can do in the people he chooses and calls.  Our job is to pray, and to invite, and to listen, and to be open to what the Lord wants to do in us and in those possible candidates he calls to the priesthood.  The priesthood is a rewarding life and a challenging life and a life full of meaning that impacts the world because it impacts souls and leads them to God and His Kingdom.  Pray to the master of the harvest that we produce from our families and our parish the future priests whom the Lord will send ahead of himself to prepare his way!

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Proverbs 8:22-31; Ps. 8; Rom. 5:1-5; Jn. 16:12-15
15 June 2025

 On the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity we commemorate the central and fundamental mystery that we receive and accept in faith.  We can say that our faith in the Trinity is the “mystery of mysteries” because it is a mystery about the very being of God Himself and, as such, is the center and foundation of everything else we believe.  The mystery of the Holy Trinity expresses our faith in how God exists, what His inner life is like – not just that He exists.  This aspect of our faith is something purely of God’s revelation, that is, His showing of Himself to us.  In other words, no human mind on its own would come up with the concept that the one God exists as Three Persons, were it not for God revealing this about Himself.  For this reason, I think we can say that this expression of our faith is a prime example of how we Catholics are obedient to the Sacred Scriptures.  I say that because the language of the Scriptures can help us understand why we accept in the obedience of faith this notion that God is one being in three divine Persons, a notion that is barely comprehensible to our minds.

Jesus’ own words give the first indication of a relationship that he has as Son with the Father.  By those very words, we can see how the Church would believe that in God there is something more than an isolated, solitary life.  Rather, there is a Father and a Son.  We hear today from St. John’s Gospel.  Listen to a selection of remarks from Jesus in other parts of the same Gospel.  I think they reveal some of the foundations that led the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to eventually give shape to, and to define, how we think God exists in Himself.  Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father…. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:9, 10)?  Here not only are two relationships in God revealed, but also a clear indication of some type of oneness, for the Father and Son seem not to exist as two physical beings side-by-side, but as one in the other.  In John 16:28: Jesus says, “I came from the Father and have come into the world.  Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father”.  Relational language that supports our faith that God is Trinity gets stronger in John 17 in Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper.  He says, “Now glorify me Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5).  There is a complete sharing of everything between the Father and the Son as we hear in these words of the Lord, “everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine” (John 17:10).  A strong revelation of the unity within God comes again as Jesus prays to the Father that the disciples may be one “Just as we [Father] are one” (John 17:11).  This unity language continues further on in John 17 “that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us…. That they may be one as we are one” (John 17:21-22).

But we learn still more in that the Lord’s words also reveal another relationship in God: The Spirit of truth.  That is what today’s brief Gospel selection shows us.  The Lord says of this Spirit, “Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he [the Spirit] will take from what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:15).  In other words, we learn that just as Jesus, the Son, has received and shared everything from the Father, likewise the Spirit of truth will take from this common treasury.  The Spirit shares in the “everything” of the Father and the Son; the Spirit does not speak a different revelation.  In time, this “Spirit of truth” would come to be understood as the Holy Spirit, the distinct third Person of the Trinity.  In fact, that unfolding understanding of the Third Person of the Trinity that developed in time sounds rather like what Jesus himself said, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.  But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth” (John 16:12-13).

Now, I have sort of bombarded you with Scripture passages such that, if you weren’t aware that the Bible is a Catholic book, you might be tempted to think you had walked into a service at one of the many denominations that dot the landscape!  But I have shared these brief selections from Scripture to show the reason for why the Church would come up with an expression of faith like the Blessed Trinity.  The reason is not some arbitrary ivory-tower concept, but obedience to, and serious reflection upon, what the Scriptures reveal.  With all this in mind, that’s why I say that this mystery of the faith is a prime example of the humility by which we Catholics express the obedience of faith to God and to the Scriptures because we accept what our minds cannot grasp.  And we accept it because it has been revealed by God.  And God cannot deceive.

Therefore, we observe today our belief about God, that He is one divine being, one divine substance, and that within Himself are three distinct relationships of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Each Divine Person is co-equal and co-eternal.  They are not a division of substance, rendering each somehow one-third God, nor are they somehow three gods.  Rather, they are undivided in the unity of divine substance, yet distinct in the three relationships within the one Godhead.

I want to leave you with something about the Blessed Trinity that I hope you can take directly into your prayer life as a disciple, something that I hope will be more simple and practical.  Elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says this about what the Holy Spirit will accomplish in disciples when he is sent.  “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you” (John 14:20).  When we respond to this gift of the Spirit and love the words and commands of Jesus, he says, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (John 14:23).  No matter how much our minds can or cannot grasp of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, we have the astounding promise that we disciples are brought into the unity of the Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity!  Provided we love and keep the Lord’s words, we receive the Father’s love and the Trinity comes to dwell in us.  Let this impact your own personal prayer.  We frequently begin and end our prayers marking ourselves with the sign of the cross as we call upon the Persons of the Trinity.  Why not take a few moments to directly acknowledge the presence of the Three Divine Persons in your prayer?  Really.  Even verbally.  You could say: I acknowledge you God the Father my Creator here with me.  I acknowledge you present God the Son who have taken on flesh to show me the nearness of God.  I acknowledge you God the Holy Spirit who come to dwell within me.  Distilled down to its most basic lesson for us, our faith in the Holy Trinity teaches us that God is not a “force” or an “energy” or an “abstract idea”.  Rather, God is relational and personal.  Begin your prayer acknowledging and expressing faith in that presence with you, near you, even in you, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  For we are told that if we come to love and to keep the word of the Lord, God Himself comes to dwell in us and to make His home in us!

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

In Ascensione Domini
1 June 2025

 The Church proclaims and believes the saving effects and value of what is called the Paschal Mystery.  The Paschal Mystery is the fulfillment in Jesus of the saving acts of God prefigured in the major events of the Old Covenant.  The Paschal Mystery is the new Passover by which the one, perfect, unblemished Lamb of God is offered for the sins of the world throughout all time.  The Paschal Mystery is the new Exodus by which the Lord frees believers from slavery in the kingdom of sin and opens a path, himself leading the way, so that we are guided to the Promised Land of Heaven.  The Paschal Mystery is the joining of heaven and earth such that what we experience here of God’s grace in the earthly sanctuary is a copy and a foreshadowing of the heavenly realities where Christ has entered in his resurrected flesh into the heavenly sanctuary to intercede for us before the Father.

There are four elements to the Paschal Mystery.  They are the suffering, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus.  By virtue of being transferred from its normal liturgical date this past Thursday, marking forty days since Easter, today we are observing this fourth element in the Paschal Mystery: the Ascension of Jesus.  It is a curious mystery, and one that often is sort of forgotten among the other three elements of the Paschal Mystery.

The Ascension shows the Lord Jesus to be priest, prophet, and king of the New Covenant.  We see the allusions to this threefold office of the Lord in the Gospel and other scripture passages.  Today’s selection from St. Luke hints at the kingship of Christ in that he led his apostles out to Bethany.  It was in that village on the Mount of Olives, as Jesus was approaching Jerusalem to die, that the people acclaimed him as king and he then made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  The Gospel selection also hints at the Lord’s identity as prophet.  Earlier in St. Luke, at the transfiguration, the great prophets Moses and Elijah had appeared conversing with Jesus about his exodus.  Like Moses, Jesus in the Ascension is coming to his departure, his exodus from Jerusalem to Heaven.  Like Elijah, his departure is marked by his being taken up into Heaven, from which place he will bestow a powerful sharing in his very Spirit.  The Gospel selection also hints at the Lord’s identity as priest.  In Bethany, before ascending, we are told that Jesus raised his hands and blessed the apostles.  This is a clear priestly gesture, something like Aaron is known to have done, and which priests still do today when imparting a solemn blessing over the people.

It is this identification of Jesus as the Eternal Priest of the New Covenant that helps us understand the ascension and how it connects the earthly sacrifice of the Cross to Heaven, thus making it an eternal sacrifice for all time, the saving power of which we then encounter and have made present to us at every Holy Mass.  The identification of Jesus as the Great High Priest stands out powerfully in the ascension.  God the Son is the Eternal Priest of the New Covenant who comes to offer the one perfect sacrifice that saves all mankind.  As Priest, God the Son prepares Himself in the womb of Mary, as in a “sacristy”, and vests for the sacrifice that saves us by vesting not in robes, but by vesting Himself in our human flesh.  Upon vesting, the Lord begins his procession, moving through various events of life and places as he makes his way up to the mountain of sacrifice on Calvary.  Vested in our flesh, he offers the perfect saving sacrifice on the altar of the Cross.  It is perfect because He is God and He can offer something more valuable than any one of us can do.  It is a saving sacrifice because by virtue of offering our very flesh, we ourselves are incorporated into that sacrifice that is an atonement for our sins.  On the Cross, Jesus is both the perfect priest making the offering and he is the very offering itself, making an offering to the Father in our flesh and with power to resurrect.  Upon completion of the sacrifice (and the resurrection being the sign that the sacrifice was accepted by the Father), the Risen Lord does not shed his vesture, but goes forth in triumph as priest to take this one saving sacrifice into the perfect sanctuary of the temple of Heaven.  There, still vested in our flesh, the Lord stands before the throne to intercede for us.  It is from Heaven that our Great High Priest joins the sacrifice of the Cross to the eternity of Heaven, thus making his sacrifice of eternal value, and constantly poured out for us.  The sacrifice of the Cross, then, is not just a sacrifice limited in time to one historical moment.  Rather, it is eternal and the Lord has no need to offer sacrifice repeatedly, as we heard in the Letter to the Hebrews.

This identity of Jesus as the Eternal High Priest, seen so powerfully in the Ascension, touches directly on our Catholic life.  In the Holy Mass, the Lord is not sacrificed again and again.  Rather, the one perfect sacrifice, eternally present before the heavenly throne, is something we access and have re-presented to us through the Lord’s Catholic Church and through the instruments the Lord uses by the priesthood in his Church.  Vested as priest in our flesh, the Lord went up Calvary and mounted the altar of the Cross to offer the perfect sacrifice for our sin.  In the Ascension, we celebrate that vested as priest in our flesh, the Risen Lord makes his triumphal entry into the heavenly reality, the sanctuary of Heaven.  There, our Great High Priest brings the sacrifice of the cross and makes it an eternal offering.

With this in mind, we can understand elsewhere in the Scriptures the Lord’s words to his apostles that it is better that he go.  With this in mind, we are not saddened by the ascension and we do not think of ourselves as somehow abandoned.  With this in mind, we believe that the value and the saving effects of the Cross are poured out to us in every time and place, especially in the Holy Mass, where the priesthood of Jesus in his Church makes present to us the same one, perfect, and eternal sacrifice of the Cross.  At the Ascension, the disciples were led east of Jerusalem to Bethany where they saw the Lord taken up and were told he would return in just the same way.  Where the traditional posture is maintained in the sacred liturgy, as we do at our parish, we all face the same way together, facing either literal, or at least, symbolic east, looking for and awaiting the return of the Lord.  Why is this a posture in all ancient Christian liturgies?  Because ascending in the east, as we heard in the Acts of the Apostles, “[t]his Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven”.  Yet, also like the disciples at the ascension we know that we cannot only gaze at the sky.  Rather, we must open ourselves to receive power from on high with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that in this life and through this world our witness and our sharing of the good news draws others into the procession and exodus of our Great High Priest, leading us all to follow where he “our Head and Founder has gone before” (Preface I of the Ascension).

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Dominica V Paschae C
18 May 2025

The Gospel passage today takes us to St. John’s account of Jesus’ extended discourse at the Last Supper.  In this brief selection the Lord refers to his apostles both as children and disciples.  Calling them “children” is curious because they are full grown men.  Using that term can serve as a signal that something unique is going on here.  The Lord is claiming the disparity in the relationship to his apostles.  He is God.  And in that relationship all people, no matter their age, are his children.  The apostles are also “disciples” which is the word for “student”.  The apostles, as disciples, as students, had some distinct advantages over us present-day disciples, students of the Lord.  They lived directly with the Lord and learned from him.  They witnessed his miracles.  But, we also have some advantages that they did not have.  We benefit from the rich reflection of a more than 2,000-year tradition in the Catholic faith of diving deeply into all the things we must study and learn.  We have a rich body of thought that can guide us with resources that were not available to the apostles.  The Church has weighed in on so many experiences of human life and struggles and the resulting counsel and teaching also instruct us.  I think this gospel passage can serve as a paradigm for the advantage that we have.  I say that because you and I, present-day disciple-students, hear this passage already knowing the historical fact of Jesus’ suffering, death, resurrection and ascension.  We hear this passage and we rest on so much reflection about what the Lord was doing both at the Last Supper and afterward.  The apostles did not have that advantage.  They heard these words before the historical events took place and likely may not have been aware at the time of the import of these words, when considered against the backdrop of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  For them, this passage took place in the context of a Passover ritual.  For us, with the advantage of history, we know that this Passover ritual was altogether unique and new.  It was the initiation of a new covenant which the Lord commanded be done in his memory.  And so today, we gather at the Holy Mass knowing that our catholic faith tells us that we experience here in sacramental form the very gift of the sacrificial love of Jesus that was offered on the Cross.  That gift of the sacrificial love of Jesus is a living gift because by virtue of the resurrection, it is the Lord’s living and resurrected Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity that is offered in sacramental form in the Holy Eucharist.

 Signaling that something different and new is taking place by calling grown men his children, the Lord also calls them to be his students.  He claims his divine right by adding to the commandments.  This should catch our attention.  Who would or could add to the commandments, but God?  The Lord says, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.”  His command and his teaching of these his students is quite specific.  How are they to love one another?  “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”  The new commandment is to love one another as Jesus himself loves.  Whatever the apostles would have thought about how Jesus loves in that moment and at that supper, can any of us doubt that these apostle-students learned something altogether new with clarifying precision the next day as they saw him on the Cross?  This new commandment is no easy, sentimental command.  If you keep the crucifix before your eyes you know how it is that Jesus loves.  It is a call to sacrificial love.  It is a command to lay down your life for the good of another.  Jesus also says elsewhere that no one has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.  The cross, sacrificial love, leads to the resurrection.  We do not have the resurrection without sacrificial love.

 We are the Lord’s present-day students.  We also are his children.  We hear this Gospel passage already holding onto the knowledge of what happened after the Last Supper (the suffering, death, and resurrection), but still this is no easy or sentimental commandment for us either.  We have the advantage of so much reflection and learning that the apostles did not have when they first heard this new commandment.  But, whatever advantage that may be to us, does not absolve us from the difficult work of loving sacrificially as Jesus loves.  What did we hear in the second reading?  “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

 That work of dying to ourselves in order to love sacrificially is hard work and a lifetime’s work.  We are called to die to selfishness and self-absorption.  We are called to die to our own opinions that would place us apart from the communion of the Church.  We are called to die to claiming sovereignty over ourselves, but rather to see ourselves as children of the Father and subjects of the Kingdom of Christ.  We are called to die to those desires that are bad and sinful, and even to die to good things to which we may have a disordered and excessive attachment.  We are called to put on the mind of Christ.  We are called to deny self and pick up the cross.  In short: We are called to be Christ!  For only in being united to Christ as members of his Body will we be able to follow the path to our own resurrection.

Did you notice that the Gospel passage began by telling us that Judas had already left the Last Supper?  He never heard the new commandment.  When you consider what Judas symbolizes, that can signal to us that serious sin and hardness of heart prevent us from hearing and receiving the new commandment.  And it certainly impedes our ability to love sacrificially as Christ loves.  Thus, confession and absolution restore our proper life and place us again as children and students at the feet of Jesus, so that we can learn from his style of love.

 Finally, notice the full force of this new commandment.  The Lord says that loving one another as he loves, loving sacrificially, “is how all will know that you are my disciples”.  We really need to think about that.  You see, it is not in claiming the label “disciple” or “Christian” that others will know to whom we belong.  It is not by others knowing that we go to St. Monica and are registered and active here.  It is not in having some catholic bumper stickers on our car.  It is not in religious emblems we might wear.  It is not in the collection of crucifixes and crosses we have.  It is not in the religious books on our shelves.  As fine and valuable as all of those things may be, it is not by these that others will know we belong to Christ in a convincing and converting way.  Jesus says that it is in living this new commandment to love as he loves, to love sacrificially, to die to our fallen nature and to live united to him – this is how all will know that we belong to the Lord and are his disciples.

  Here at the Holy Mass, with the advantage of thousands of years of lived discipleship we know ourselves to be participating in the very paschal mystery of the Lord.  It is the participation in his suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension by which he completed a new exodus, leading us from slavery to sin and to newness of life in the Promised Land of Heaven.  Here we are renewed by the Sacred Scriptures and the Holy Eucharist to be partakers of the sacrificial way the Lord loves us.  In listening to his Word and in worthily receiving this Sacrament we continue to learn as disciples so that we are changed and strengthened to love as the Lord loves us.

Remarks on the Election of Pope Leo XIV

Remarks on the Election of Pope Leo XIV
At conclusion of Masses
10 & 11 May 2025 

This Fourth Sunday of Easter is commonly referred to as “Good Shepherd Sunday” because the Gospel comes from John 10, referring to sheep and to Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  Thus, it seems providential that the spot the Lord created in his Church for a visible chief shepherd on earth, who is his icon, would be filled just days ago such that on this Good Shepherd Sunday, we once again have that same guarantee of the shepherding of St. Peter, now provided through St. Peter’s successor Pope Leo XIV.  In fact, just hours ago from the central balcony of St. Peter’s where he was leading the Regina Caeli, the Pope said, “I consider it a gift of God that the first Sunday of my service as Bishop of Rome is Good Shepherd Sunday.”  We should be clear: Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  But, he has also left visible expressions of his shepherding, most especially through the ordained ministry of bishops and priests.  Peter is the Shepherd of Shepherds and his role is maintained in the succession of popes.

The greatest cause of our joy is Jesus Christ, his love for us, and the hope of eternal life he offers us.  But, we have added joy in this time that the throne of St. Peter is no longer vacant.  We are not like sheep without a shepherd.  I think it is important to note that our joy in a papal election is first and simply over the fact that we have a pope.  It is not a joy primarily based on which cardinal it is, or where he is from.  If you watched the announcement of Pope Leo XIV’s election, the pattern of announcement is always the same, you know that before the name of the one elected is even said, and before his papal name is announced, the crowd in St. Peter’s Square and the crowd watching around the world erupts in wild cheers simply from the announcement: We have a pope!  The chair is no longer vacant.  The conclave is over.  We have a Universal Pastor and a Holy Father.  Thus, we are filled with immense joy quite before we even know the basic facts about the man or who he even is.

That being said, there is a shocked excitement for us in that the new Pope was born in the United States and is the first US citizen to become pope.  For our parish too, there is some little additional connection in that our patronage of St. Monica and St. Augustine is something dear to the Holy Father given the roots of his religious order (the Order of St. Augustine).  In fact, when he was first made a cardinal, then-Cardinal Prevost was given the honorary custody and care of a church in Rome named for St. Monica.

He needs our prayers.  And I invite and ask you to focus on that.  I suggest you pray much more than researching and investigating information and statements on the man before he was pope.  In the modern age, we spend so much time, and spill so much ink, and frankly spill much figurative blood, in trying to identify the camp a person belongs to, and to defend our own.  It becomes a convenient excuse for failing to make time for prayer while claiming “I am too busy.”  So, if you are going to search out things about the new pope’s record and study up on him, I say, go ahead.  But you should also assign yourself a daily Rosary for him as well.

If you watched live or heard live Pope Leo’s first Urbi et Orbi blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s when he first appeared after election, or if you otherwise knew he was blessing the world and you intended to receive that blessing, you might be interested to know that there is a plenary indulgence offered when the Pope gives such a blessing.  The normal conditions for a plenary indulgence apply: sacramental absolution in confession within about 8 days, receiving a worthy Holy Communion, being detached from the desire for sin, and praying for the Pope’s intentions (by saying one Our Father and one Hail Mary).

This Thursday, May 15, a Mass in thanksgiving for the election of a pope will be said.  The Mass will be here in the main church at 5:30 pm. and I invite you to attend.

Mass for the Election of a Pope (Conclave 2025)

Mass for the Election of a Pope
Held in advance of Conclave 2025
St. Monica Church, Edmond, OK
Eph. 4:11-16; Ps. 89; Jn. 15:9-17
6 May 2025

 We gather this evening to pray for the Cardinal-electors of the Sacred College of Cardinals who will soon be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel to begin the Conclave that will elect the next pope who will become, by lawful election, the Successor of St. Peter and the Bishop of Rome.  Now, the Conclave begins tomorrow afternoon in Rome, but we are gathering this evening because if we waited until the regular Wednesday evening Mass in our time zone, the Conclave would have already begun since Rome is seven hours ahead of us.  This way, the prayers of the People of God, the prayers of the Church coming from Edmond, Oklahoma, join the prayers of the members of the Universal Church in accompanying the Conclave from its very beginning.  In other words, no moment of the Conclave will be left unaided by our prayers.

We make use of very unique Mass orations this evening, the Mass for the Election of a Pope.  This is the same Mass setting that the Cardinals will pray tomorrow morning in St. Peter’s Basilica, asking the Holy Spirit to guide and guard them as they fulfill this solemn obligation of their office, namely to provide a pope for us.  Upon completing this same Mass tomorrow morning in St. Peter’s, the final preparations will be made such that by tomorrow afternoon Rome time, the Cardinal-electors will enter the Sistine Chapel in a solemn procession, chanting the Litany of Saints, and making their oath before the balloting begins.  And after that, we will see how long it takes for a successful election to take place.  In the meantime, we pray.  We pray for the Cardinals.  We pray for the one chosen as pope.  We pray that we will be an obedient flock who will receive our new Universal Pastor with joy, hope, and confidence.

An interregnum is a unique moment in our life.  A moment when we as Catholics, but also plenty of non-catholics, find our conversations turning to the mysterious process of a Conclave.  There is nothing wrong with discussing what we think the Church needs at this moment in history.  There is something quite good about thinking of what the world needs from the Church, in what ways the world needs to hear the Gospel proclaimed with force in order to address the needs of our time and to frame our moment in history in the light of salvation history.  Some who follow these matters more than we do, and those who know more about some of the individual cardinals, can surface qualities and skills they have that might be attractive in a papal election.  What can be known about the job history of some cardinals will be, and has been, reported by the media, along with the suggestion that this one or that one might be a leading contender.  The truth is: We don’t know.  And we won’t know until white smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel.  And once we do know, we may well look back on what we thought we knew and see how our evaluations did not quite pan out.

 How do we understand this?  Or how do we talk about this?  I would say it this way: What media types discuss, and what you and I discuss, can only capture one aspect of the action of a Conclave.  Our pre-Conclave discussions can only capture what you might call the human or the political aspects of a Conclave.  None of our discussions can quite capture an immensely important aspect of a Conclave, namely that it is far from only an exercise in politics, but is also an act of faith by which the Cardinals seek to make a human decision that, before God as their judge, they believe is the right decision to make.  None of our pre-Conclave discussions can quite capture that aspect of a Conclave.  Nor can our discussions capture how that reality (what we might call the divine or spiritual reality of a Conclave) might influence the human factors in surprising ways, in ways that don’t match up perfectly with the political evaluations that are reflected in pre-Conclave prognostications.

This is not a time for political punditry.  I’m not saying we don’t have evaluations of our present needs, or that we don’t express hope that Cardinal So-and-So might be the ideal choice to address our present needs.  What I am saying is that our first and our main duty and gift is to pray, to pray fervently and to fast so that we are aiding the spiritual dimensions of a Conclave.  We can be honored that many people outside of our fold are interested in what is taking place right now in the Catholic Church.  To that end, I simply want to note that a friend of mine, Carla Hinton is here this evening.  She is a good and a fair reporter on religious topics for the Oklahoman.  She has my permission to be here and if, after Mass, she asks for your thoughts as a Catholic watching this moment in history, I think you should feel good about speaking to her.  You are, of course, free to decline.  I will by no means use a public forum like this to speak of any possible candidate, but I do think it is worth sharing a simple idea that might shape your prayers in this time.  My simple idea is what I might hope to see in whoever is the new pope.  My idea is necessarily limited in that I am only highlighting what I think is most essential.  And to be clear, my idea is not at all to be understood as if somehow in contradistinction to the last pope or any prior pope.  First, and I would not quite call this a job skill, but rather a disposition or quality: I pray that the man who is chosen is holy such that we see in him a serious disciple for whom relationship to Jesus Christ is the priority of his life.  In that, I hope we find inspiration to follow such a disciple because he will be our chief visible shepherd on earth.  Next, and this is more in the arena of job skills or abilities: I hope that doctrinal clarity in exercising such a teaching office as Successor of St. Peter is a clear factor in the new pope who is chosen, because our world faces many challenges and our world needs clear guidance.  Given the speed with which our world communicates (and often miscommunicates!), we need someone who can express the Church’s witness to the truth without confusion.  Next, I hope the one who walks out on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica is marked by evangelical fervor because our world will not listen to someone who is not convinced that the Gospel offers truth and hope to a world that is adrift for as long as it resists being anchored in Christ.  Evangelization is the foundational mission of the Church and so we need in our next pope someone who can take up that mantle and be zealous in proclaiming the Good News.  I have placed on the round table in the narthex a photocopied sheet with two prayers: one for the Conclave and one for the College of Cardinals.  I invite you to take one copy and to use those prayers for as long as they are needed.  We unite ourselves to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Spouse of the Holy Spirit and Mother of the Church, to St. Joseph, the Guardian of the Universal Church, to St. Michael the Archangel, to the Holy Apostles Sts. Peter and Paul, asking that the Cardinals be docile to the Holy Spirit in making a wise choice that glorifies God.  And as we advance in this Holy Mass we give thanks that we are united to the Lord Jesus and strengthened by his Word in Sacred Scripture and his gift of self in the Holy Eucharist so that we may take up our part to give the witness of a holy life, doctrinal clarity in our own sharing of the faith, and the witness of evangelical fervor to the shared duty we have to proclaim Jesus Christ and his Gospel to all we meet!

Third Sunday of Easter

Dominica III Paschae
Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41; Rev. 5:11-14; Jn. 21:1-19
4 May 2022

 The person of St. Peter is a key figure in this Sunday’s Gospel passage.  In addition to the person, we should consider the office of St. Peter, meaning the role of St. Peter, given to him by Christ Jesus.  To that end it is very providential that we have today’s Gospel passage at the time of a Conclave because it shows us the mind of Christ for St. Peter and the office or role that would endure in the Lord’s Church.  This resurrection appearance of Jesus is unique in that it takes place, not in Jerusalem, but at the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.  In other words, this appearance takes place up in the north.  It takes place in the general area where the apostles were from, and where they first received their calling to follow Jesus.  We have all likely had experiences of revisiting familiar places from earlier in life.  You can imagine that being back in their place of origin naturally called to mind for the apostles a reflection on where they had come from, and the journey they had been on with Jesus.  It naturally brings to the forefront of their minds how Jesus had formed them, and how far they had come from their initial days of discipleship.  And by necessity, when one reflects on his origins and how far he has come, one can’t help but think ahead to the future, the journey still to come.  In this passage, St. Peter gets clear indications from Jesus about the path he is on, where his journey in service to the Lord will take him, and what it will demand of him.

 This encounter of Peter with the resurrected Lord is full of the themes of repentance and restoration.  The big clue to this is that St. John tells us that on the beach with Jesus there is a “charcoal fire”.  That is a very specific word in Greek and the last time we encountered it was from St. John’s account of the Passion recorded in John 18 (verses 17-18; 25-27).  In the passion account, Jesus had been arrested and was being interrogated.  Nearby, at a charcoal fire, Peter was keeping himself warm and comfortable while he denied three times that he even knew the Lord.  Thus, the charcoal fire in today’s passage carries over this imagery of threefold denial.  I think the scene today can be characterized as showing signs of Peter’s repentance from that failure of denial.  Though the boat he was in was not far from shore, Peter, upon hearing that it is Jesus on shore, does not wait to row in, but instead jumps into the chilly, early morning water and makes his way to Jesus.  It’s a sign of repentance.  He could have reasonably (and comfortably) waited.  But, in a form of eager repentance, Peter tucks in his garment and jumps into the water to get to the Lord faster.  There, on the shore, with the other figures faded into the background, he is again near the Lord in the light of a fire.  The idea of repentance and restoration is still more clearly emphasized in the dialogue between Jesus and Peter.  The three denials of Peter are echoed – yet undone – when Peter is asked three times to profess his love for Jesus.  Where Peter had been looking out for himself and his own comfort during the Passion, now Jesus asks him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”  Simon Peter answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  The Gospel doesn’t tell us this detail, but we do know it was dawn at this appearance, and so I have to wonder if somehow a rooster couldn’t be heard crowing somewhere in the distance, echoing across the lake, echoing the past denial.  But the details we do know with authority are more than enough to capture this scene and its opportunity of restoration for Peter who had so grievously failed the Lord and the other apostles.

 I want to drill down a bit deeper however.  Because the indication of repentance and restoration of Peter is not simply found in the numerical evidence: a threefold denial now followed by a threefold profession of love and recommitment to Jesus.  Jesus is clearly drawing Peter back in, back to himself.  But there is a further sign of restoration that should not be lost on us.  For Peter’s restoration was not simply accomplished in his words alone, where in this passage he now claims three times to love Jesus.  Still more, his restoration comes about because in responding to Peter’s new recommitment, Jesus gives Peter a threefold charge.  Peter professes love that undoes his prior denial, yes.  But he is restored precisely in being given individually the role of shepherd.  Upon professing his love, Jesus tells Peter three times: “Feed my lambs; Tend my sheep; Feed my sheep.”  The Greek of St. John is even more direct.  Rather than what we have in English as “tend my sheep”, St. John uses the word that strongly and directly means “shepherd my sheep”.  In other words, be the shepherd!  This resurrection appearance also directs Peter to the future.  His love will be required of him by being led where he would prefer not to go and by stretching out his hands.  St. John tells us that Jesus “said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.”

 St. Peter’s office, or role, continues among the Apostles and is maintained in the Catholic Church by divine institution.  That our faith is guarded and proclaimed by a Church that is apostolic is a necessary mark of the Church established by Jesus.  This Wednesday, in the morning in our time zone, the Cardinals who will vote to elect a pope will be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel for the Conclave.  Hours before the Sistine Chapel doors are locked, we will gather here in the main church this Tuesday, at 5:30 pm, to pray the Mass for the Election of a Pope.  I hope you will join us in this act of faith to invoke the Holy Spirit for the Conclave and to pray for the wisdom of the cardinals and their docility to do what will most glorify God.  Soon, a new man will have his own reckoning like Peter on the lakeshore: thinking of where his life began, the journey he has been on, his past, and the future to which he is called by papal election.  Soon, a new man will not be able to help but to have this final Sunday Gospel before the Conclave echoing in his mind: Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?  Whoever is called to take the place of Peter and to continue his office for our shepherding, we pray that the spirit of repentance may come upon him such that similar to Peter in the boat, that man may jump into the distinctive white garment of the Pope and so make his way to Jesus as quickly as he can, while he leads us to the Lord in his wake.  We will pray that the one chosen is holy, and maybe even smart, and maybe even a good administrator and communicator.  No doubt, the one chosen will be a sinner who may have his own past charcoal fires of denial.  But, as the fire from burning ballots of his successful election send up white smoke for the world to see, we pray that the one elected may be restored and confirmed in the mission to be our chief visible shepherd on earth.  As Peter himself was called to be dressed and to be led where he did not want to go in order to stretch out his hands in witness to Jesus, we pray that the man elected will stretch out his hands in blessing us and giving us the witness of dying to himself, dying to personal theologies and factions, so that we may have the generous and faithful love of a shepherd worth following because he is responding to Jesus who first said to Peter: Follow me!

Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday

Easter Vigil
19 & 20 April 2025
Gospel: Luke 24:1-12

 Easter and the entire season through Pentecost is focused on celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, one of the principal doctrines of our faith.  A mystery of faith that is so central to salvation and so essential that St. Paul could say that if the dead are not raised then our faith is in vain and we are the most pitiable people of all (cf. 1 Cor. 15:16-19).  It’s all a waste, in other words.  If the resurrection is not real, if we fail to hold this essential doctrine, if we fail to live the hope of the resurrection, then there is no point in our carrying on like this.  Last one out, turn off the lights please!

Death is a consequence of sin.  It impacts almost all of us, save perhaps those rare souls like Enoch, Elijah, and Mary who may not have tasted death, but were assumed into life beyond this valley of tears.  We see death all around us.  We see signs that life tends to age and weaken and deteriorate.  We have large plots of real estate that serve as cemeteries.  Yet, we believe that the finality of death is not the finality.  We believe that the dead rise again.  As the Scriptures say, some will rise to a resurrection of life, of blessedness in heaven, and some will rise to a resurrection of condemnation.  But all will rise.  Despite all the clear effects of death, all the consequences of death, all the signs of death around us, we believe that the dead rise again.  What seems like the end is, in other words, not the end.

Throughout the living of the faith and our celebration of the mysteries of God, the mysteries of Jesus (who is God in the flesh), the mysteries of his Church, and of our salvation, we often think – and rightly so – of what God has done and still does for us.  We think of what God gives to us in our prayer.  We think of what God gives to us as we serve others in charity.  We think of what God gives to us in the sacramental life of faith.  But today, I want us to think instead about what we give to God.  By this, I mean, let’s think about what mankind gives to God; what human nature gives to God as related to what we celebrate in the resurrection.  God, who was in the beginning before all things were made, is pure spirit.  He has no beginning or end.  He is almighty, all-knowing, and present everywhere.  But as pure spirit, not made of matter, not made of stuff, He is free of the limitations that we face.  In fact, He is eternal and everlasting.  St. Augustine, the son of our parish patroness, once spoke in a sermon: God “was made flesh and dwelt among us.  He had no power of himself to die for us: he had to take from us our mortal flesh.  This was the way in which, though immortal, he was able to die…. He would first share with us, and then enable us to share with him” (Sermo Guelferbytanus 3: PLS 2, 545-546, selection printed in Liturgy of the Hours, vol. 2, p.432).

So, what have we given to God?  What does mankind or mortal nature give to God?  We give Him mortality.  We give Him what He did not possess in Himself.  Since we face the consequences of death on account of original sin, we gave Him the ability to die when God took on our human flesh in Jesus Christ.

If God weren’t God there would be some real “buyer’s remorse” in this deal.  If God thought as we think, He’d call all this off and say this is a raw deal.  But accepting from us our mortality is the plan of God.  And because of this plan, we can acknowledge a really awkward sounding idea: [As is chanted in the Easter Vigil Exsultet] “O truly necessary sin of Adam… O happy fault!”  Why would we call the sin that required redemption, a redemption brought about by the horrific torture, death, and resurrection of God Himself, a “happy fault”?  We certainly do not intend to say that the sin itself was a happy, or even a good thing.  No sin is good.  But, in light of the greater plan and the greater thing that God would do in response to sin, in retrospect we can curiously see the grace that came from God’s generous love after man had sinned.  And so, in that sense, so great is the immense love and work of God in salvation that we find a kindly light shining back even on man’s sin.  The result?  O happy fault!

As St. Augustine in his sermon went on to say, “Of ourselves we had no power to live, nor did he of himself have the power to die.  Accordingly, [Jesus] effected a wonderful exchange with us, through mutual sharing: we gave him the power to die, he will give us the power to live.”  We gave him the power to die.  This Easter I want to leave us with a different way to view the various ways we die, the ways our mortality is on display.  That is to say, I want to encourage a different way to view our weaknesses, our defects, our shame, our flaws, our failures, and our sins.  To be absolutely clear, no one should leave here thinking I am encouraging sin, diminishing its effects and eternal consequences, or going soft on the need to strive for holiness.  But the fact is that we struggle and we fail and we tend to live in shame and frustration, hiding our sins, finding in them the cause of exasperation, the sign that we will never make it.  In this, hiding our sins, dismissing the reality and its consequence, seeing it only as the sign that we will never make it, in this we are missing the way the resurrection completely upends everything.  O happy fault!

Our response to faith in the resurrection should be seen in how we live daily with greater awareness of this mystery we celebrate.  You see, we really need to live the resurrection as more than an idea about which to philosophize, or some fact about which we try to convince others.  Living the resurrection in greater awareness can come about if we recall the value of what we give to God.  How we see ourselves and how we experience frustration with ourselves and others, can be transformed in our daily living if, after the initial regret for sin, we can pick ourselves up and see our sin as an offering to God who makes of it too a “happy fault.”  Rather than seeing every failure and sin as only a defeat, we can have a renewed sense of peace about our sins if we remember that they are signs of the mortality that we give to God, by which he is able to accomplish his plan of salvation.  And in giving our deaths to God, he is victorious and gives in their place the ability to live.  Again, not celebrating or encouraging sin, we need to see in the reality of our failures the call to give something over to God.  This is also not advice to broadcast our sin as a way to prove that we do not dwell in shame.  No, we Catholics have a private place for that where absolution is given.  But this central reality of the resurrection is something that needs to mark our daily living.  In the grace and the light of Easter, ask the Lord to transform the way you respond to your own mortality, especially as on display in your defects and sins.  Yes, face the reality in truth.  Yes, repent of it.  Yes, confess it.  Yes, work to change and reform yourself so that you grow in holiness. But, get rid of the idea and the defeating voices that tell you your mortality is only a thing of shame or hopelessness.  That is not the voice of God.  And to reject such notions can help us live the resurrection as more than an item in the creed or a doctrine to study.  In faith, our sins and failings, when given to God, are part of the marvelous exchange by which we give to Him what He did not have in Himself.  In turn, we proclaim “happy fault” because He gives to us the power to live!

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday
17 April 2025

 With the beginning of this evening Mass, the season of Lent has now officially ended.  We have now begun the most intense and the shortest of the Church’s liturgical seasons.  This brief season is three days long, comprising Holy Thursday evening through Easter Sunday evening.  The three days is the origin of the name of this time: The Sacred Triduum, from the Latin meaning the Sacred Three Days.  This short “season” has us observe our most high holy days, celebrating tonight that our Lord established two sacraments at the Last Supper, the institution of the Holy Eucharist and of the holy priesthood; observing tomorrow (Good Friday) the saving sacrifice of the Cross; and, observing on Holy Saturday the reality of the tomb, a placed turned into hope by our Lord’s resurrection to new life, which we begin to anticipate and watch for in vigil on Holy Saturday night leading into Easter Sunday.

These intense, climactic days are the fulfillment of what God chose to do to restore His creation and the communion of life He desires us to have by His promise of salvation.  It is good to briefly consider all that hangs in the air in these brief three days.  Such recollection should help us appreciate aspects of the saving mysteries we celebrate here liturgically.

From the accounts of creation in the Book of Genesis, we recall that God provided all good things, the garden of blessing, every seed-bearing plant and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it, every animal, every bird of the air, and every creature that crawls on the ground.  God gave all these things for man to steward and care for.  And He gave them also as food for man to have every blessing in that garden of communion with God.

The Fall brought disorder into God’s creation.  It changed natural life such that after the Fall it tends to weaken and fall apart.  It brought about death.  The Fall results in man’s being cast out of the Garden, subject to death, and an eternal consequence of being at odds with God, which is the condemnation of Hell.  But Genesis reports that first announcement of the kernel of the Gospel (Gn. 3:15), that God has a plan to destroy the effects of the serpent’s cunning and to deal a mortal blow to death itself.

As that plan of salvation unfolded, and as man’s fall was related to grasping at and eating food, God called for the Jewish people to observe their salvation from slavery over the course of the Passover meal.  It was a meal that recounted God’s goodness and saving action.  Far from mere memory alone of the past event of the Exodus, the Jewish mind and faith is that the Passover makes God’s saving action present now to His people.  The meal had to be eaten.  The Passover lamb became the sign of what God does in the midst of His people.  The identification of God Himself – Jesus Christ – with the lamb, carries with it the message that, in Jesus, God is saving His people in the fulfillment of all that the Exodus accomplished, a journey no longer from slavery in a country of the earth, but a journey to freedom from slavery to sin by the passage to redeemed life, and finally a journey to the Promised Land of Heaven.  In the course of the last Passover meal with his apostles, the one we call the Last Supper, the Lord took the familiar Passover ritual and did something new and unexpected with it.  It took time for the disciples, the first Christians to grasp all the implications of the Lord’s action, but in the first generation of the Church, Christians already understood that the Passover meal had become a New Covenant by which God’s saving action was made present to His people now, and the lamb that had to be consumed was Jesus, the Lamb of God, very God Himself.  That faith has been handed on ever since and we still maintain it today as Catholics.  In fact, we would not be Catholic, we would not be the Lord’s Church, were we to fail to hold this faith about the reality of what took place at the Last Supper, and which now takes place in the Holy Mass.  The second reading from St. Paul to the Corinthians shows us how this faith was passed down from the first generation of Catholic disciples.  St. Paul is able to write, as we heard, “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.’ … In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’.”

What I want to tie together for us is how the Lord’s ultimate gift and sacrifice of himself for our salvation mirrors in some degree the act by which man was disobedient to God in the Garden and ushered in the fall.  In other words, God’s plan of salvation takes up some of the imagery and the action by which man created the need for salvation in the first place.  At the Last Supper, Jesus presented himself to his apostles in a way that echoed his strange sounding words from John 6 that he, that his very flesh, is the bread come down from Heaven.  At the Last Supper, Jesus presented himself to his apostles as food.  And though it would take at least a little time for their minds to grasp this, along with the action of the Holy Spirit to guide them in truth to this part of Catholic faith, the next day the Lord would show how this saving food – his very life – is likewise food from a tree, for the apostles learned that the Lamb of God, who was given as food, is placed upon the wood of the Cross, food dangling from a tree.

In the Garden of Eden food dangling from a tree was taken in disobedience, bringing to man a knowledge of good and evil that God did not intend for man and which distorted man’s nature.  God’s plan of salvation finds its culmination in that saving food of the lamb dangling from a tree on Calvary.  In obedience, we are to look upon it – upon God Himself – hanging in death, yet showing the immense depths of God’s love, that He places Himself where our disobedience brought ruin.  Now in obedience, and provided we observe communion of life with the Lord, we are called to receive food from the tree of the Cross.  But, this food saves!

This night we commemorate that at the Last Supper, as the Lord was bringing to fulfillment the long plan of salvation, he brought about salvation in a way that makes his saving power present in every time and place.  The power of the Cross and its food, made present in every Holy Mass, is not just a past recollection or a memory of a past event.  Like the ritual of the Passover meal for the Jews, this ritual of the Holy Mass makes present to us here the saving power of the exodus of the cross, death, and resurrection of Jesus: who is God, Lamb, and Savior.  At one and the same time in giving this saving gift, by establishing also the holy priesthood exercised in his Catholic Church, the Lord has provided the means by which his gift of self in the Holy Eucharist can be made present to his Church, to disciples in every time and place.  For all this, we marvel at the promise God made in that kernel of the Gospel first proclaimed over the wreckage man had made in the Garden of Eden.  God promised there a saving plan that the offspring of the woman would strike a mortal blow to the offspring of the serpent.  Our undoing is mirrored in the ways God has acted to save us.  Man first looked upon the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and found it enticing and good to look upon.  Now, man is called to look upon what does not seem enticing or good, in fact, rather grotesque, the agony of that tree of the Cross.  Man was first disobedient by taking from the tree in the Garden.  Now, man is called upon to be obedient in finding upon the tree of the Cross food for eternal life.  Where man’s sin brought death in the flesh, now man is called upon to express faith that death is destroyed because the seed-bearing fruit of the life of God Himself is planted within the greedy jaws of death.  As that limitless life of God germinates in the darkness of death and tomb it is destroyed from the inside out!  God’s generous love is what we celebrate this evening, a love that finds its promised culmination in the Holy Eucharist, the Real Presence of God, food for the journey, and the sign that we are not abandoned or left as orphans.  Intimately bound up with this sacred gift (the Holy Eucharist), is the means by which that gift comes to us: the priesthood of Jesus Christ.  This day is a day for the priesthood in a unique way.  And so, I ask you to pray for me and to pray for Fr. Bali, and for all priests.  We are weak earthen vessels – yet the power of God in sacred ordination results in His saving plan continuing to come in your midst through the sacramental life of the Church.  At the same time, I ask you to pray and to watch – even within your own families and among your sons – for signs that the Lord desires to continue the plan of salvation such that one day your son just might be called “Father”.  In the charity and the humble service that the Lord models for us, we seek to promote priestly vocations for the good of the present and future mission of the Church and we seek to observe faithfully that the Lord is present to us in these sacred mysteries of his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Dominica V in Quadragesima C
6 April 2025

 Throughout this Lent the readings from Sacred Scripture have shown us God’s activities and mighty works in the Exodus by which he brought His people out of slavery in Egypt.  The readings of Lent also move into the New Testament selections to show us the new “exodus,” that is the passage or departure that Jesus would undertake in his Cross and Resurrection.  The Exodus from Egypt was filled with mighty signs of God’s presence among the Israelites and mighty deeds that demonstrated God’s power over Israel’s enemies.  Thus, the events of the Exodus convinced Israel they belonged to God and that they were His chosen people.  Throughout the Old Testament, as Israel recalled the Exodus, they constantly spoke of the mighty works God had done in the past.  Today’s first reading from Isaiah and the psalm are good examples of such commemorative language, celebrating the past: “Thus says the Lord, who opens a way in the sea” and who leads out the powerful army of Egypt till they are “snuffed out and quenched like a wick.”  Filled with joy in belonging to God and being beneficiaries of His power, the Israelites would frequently cry out, as we repeated in the psalm, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.”

 Imagine, then, how strange the words of God must have sounded to Israel as delivered later by Isaiah in the first reading: “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new”.  Think about that.  God was telling Israel to overlook the many plagues He had visited upon Egypt to get Pharaoh to release the people.  Israel was being told not to dwell on God’s presence in cloud and fire as they were led away from Egypt.  They were being told to think no more of the incredible event of the Red Sea crossing.  They were no longer to recall the miraculous bread-like manna and the flesh of quail God provided for their food.  They were being told to consider no more the cloud, lightning, and thunder that accompanied Moses on Mt. Sinai as he visited God and received the Ten Commandments.  Or, to be absolutely clear, God is instructing His people that they should not be so past focused as to miss that He is in their midst still acting in the present.  God wants His people to also focus their minds on the new thing He is doing.  That “something new” is the exodus Jesus would undergo by his death and resurrection.  The exodus of Jesus is God’s most mighty work of all, because by it He offers Himself in payment for the sins that bring eternal death and deserve the punishment of Hell.  By faith and baptism we enter the life of Christ, being called to live this new life and to give up and avoid the old ways of slavery to sin, the past.  As the woman caught in adultery was spared, the “something new” of God spares us the punishment of Hell by the compassion of Jesus, if only we will place Christ’s life above all things.

 St. Paul understood well the “something new” of God.  He knew that he could not hold onto the old life, even though it was marked by so many of God’s mighty deeds.  St. Paul speaks most explicitly that in light of the new thing the Father does in Christ, everything else – everything – is garbage.  He wrote in today’s second reading: “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”  To understand St. Paul’s emphasis, it is helpful to know that the word “rubbish” in English is a PG version of latrine language.  St. Paul says to be a Christian, to belong to Christ, to be able to come to Christ’s compassion for forgiveness of our sins, to have new life in the Lord means all else is [pause, cough, clear throat] “rubbish” compared to the “something new” the Father does in Christ!

 In this holy season we are called to renew ourselves in the new life of grace in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Christ Jesus is the “something new” of the Father.  Have we changed this Lent?  Does our life reflect more faithfully now “the supreme good of knowing Christ” than it did at the beginning of Lent?  Where is my life leading me?  What appears to be my goal in life?  Would there be any evidence in my life to support the claim that my goal is “the supreme good of knowing Christ?”  Is there any evidence in my life to support what St. Paul described as the “straining forward” to “the prize of God’s upward calling”?  Or, to borrow St. Paul’s blunt words, do I give more attention to “rubbish” than to new life in Christ?  Am I content to treat my sins lightly, ignoring even serious sin in my life as I trade in new life in Christ for wallowing in filth?  Is success, pleasure, fame, money, athletic prowess, career, car or home what I really strive for?  Am I ready to account these as rubbish compared to the new life offered me in Christ?  By faith and baptism we have entered new life in Christ and we are called to live this life always.  If our being Christian is not just a label we wear externally, then we must view all else as rubbish in comparison to knowing Christ our Lord.  Only then, like the woman caught in adultery, burdened with our sins and the punishment they deserve, can we come to Jesus.  Meeting him we are freed by his compassionate words “Neither do I condemn you,” and we are given the serious work of his command, “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”  Only free from the bonds of sin can we live new life according to the Father’s plan, going forth to announce His praise, because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus the Lord!

Third Sunday of Lent

Dominica III in Quadragesima C
23 March 2025

 This Sunday the Scriptures call us to reflect on what it means to belong to God in covenant.  We belong to Him and are claimed by Him.  This involves living in accord with God’s ways.  And when we inevitably fail to do that in both venial and mortal ways, we are called to repent and to bear the good fruit God expects.  The lesson of repentance and bearing good fruit is a well-timed lesson for the Season of Lent as exhibited in the Scripture selections for this Holy Mass.

 The second reading (from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians) speaks to us about the Old Covenant God made with the Israelites and the many wonderful saving events God provided to His people, especially involving the ministry of Moses.  St. Paul does something interesting in recounting these saving events.  He says what happened with the people in the Old Covenant serves as an example and a warning to us in the New Covenant.  Listen to the blessings received by the Israelites, which St. Paul recounts to Christians in Corinth: “[O]ur ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea”.  St. Paul says this movement from slavery in Egypt to freedom, entering the cloud of God’s presence and passing through the parted Red Sea amounts to a “baptismal” entry to the Old Covenant.  He wrote: “all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea”.  Having thus been baptized into the Old Covenant, St. Paul goes on to write that they all “ate the same spiritual food”.  And here is the kicker from St. Paul.  He continues: “Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert”.  Considering these saving events of the Exodus and the outcome that most of those chosen people died before arriving at the Promised Land, St. Paul drives the lesson home for Christians: “These things happened as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.  Do not grumble as some of them did, and suffered death by the destroyer.  These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us…. Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall”.  And thus, the appropriate Lenten lesson of repentance that is reinforced in the Gospel selection.

 In the Gospel, Jesus calls his listeners to repentance.  He confronts a false but common notion among ancient people, namely that when bad things happen to people (like the massacre of Galileans in the Temple or like those who died when the tower of Siloam fell) it happens as punishment for sin, it is a sign that those who died were bad sinners.  The ancients commonly thought that all calamity and misfortune were related to sin and came about as punishment.  We might think that a quaint notion from unsophisticated ancient minds.  Yet, we moderns commonly adopt the opposite extreme.  In our culture we commonly adopt the idea that there is no relationship between sin and punishment.  So, we probably should be careful about making charges of lack of sophistication.  While Jesus says that those who died in those events were not worse sinners than anyone else, he still goes on to say, “But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”  What do we make of the apparent contradiction?  The Lord’s remarks can be understood if he is not speaking only of physical death of bodily death, like the Galileans experienced and like those who died when the tower fell.  The Lord is calling us to repentance so that we might not find ourselves facing spiritual death, eternal death in separation from him.  And in fact, the Lord expects and demands repentance that we might bear good fruit as members of the New Covenant.

   There is a popular notion among some Christians that claims that once a person comes to Christ and expresses faith, then they have a salvation that is set and unchanging.  That popular notion is expressed in these words: the doctrine of “Once saved; always saved”.  That notion simply does not match with the evidence throughout the Scriptures.  That notion makes no sense in light of the frequent biblical call to repent – even among those already following Jesus.  That false notion is adopted by many non-catholic Christians who might think that once they accept Jesus there is nothing that would endanger salvation.  But that false notion is also adopted by many catholics, perhaps unintentionally, who do not make good use of confession, that sacrament particularly geared to repentance and to the healing of sins committed after we enter the New Covenant in baptism.  That attitude cannot be ours.  For we are called to repent and to bear good fruit.

   As St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, “whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall”.  The Lord, like the owner of an orchard, expects fruit to come from the trees he has planted and nourished with his saving grace and the Precious Blood from his Cross.  That Gospel image of the fig tree echoes exactly an earlier event in the same Gospel of St. Luke when St. John the Baptist is calling his listeners to not assume that because they have Abraham as father that they are automatically saved.  St. John goes on to say, “Produce good fruits as evidence of your repentance…. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Lk. 3:8-9).  The tree is an image of an individual believer planted in the orchard of the covenant in Jesus.  From each believer, good fruit, produce at the proper time, is expected.  Like the people of the Old Covenant, God nourishes us with baptism and spiritual food and he sends workers to tend the orchard, to cultivate it and fertilize it.  The good fruit is expected and demanded.  If not produced, the tree is cut down.

    We trust that the Lord is kind and merciful.  But we also take care not to fall.  Repentance, by which we return constantly to the Lord, places our hope in him and keeps us united to the one whose generous gifts and patience make it possible for us to bear good fruit.