Fourth Sunday of Lent

Dominica IV in Quadragesima A

22 March 2020

There is something going around the world today. It can’t be seen with the naked eye. I’ve never seen it as an object in and of itself. But you can see its effects in people, in how it impacts them, sickens them, and deforms their life. Reports around the globe tell us it is everywhere. It damages life and separates families. Nothing seems to stop it. You know I had to mention it this weekend! I’m speaking, of course, of sin!

In the midst of the moral threat of sin, the Good News is clear. There is a remedy to sin and our separated life from God. The Good News is Jesus Christ! Maybe we need a moment like now to realize what is truly important and what lasts. Maybe we need a moment like now to admit what we give so much time to that ultimately passes and falls through our fingers. The Lord came as God the Father’s remedy. He came to place godliness within our very flesh. To place the salutary vaccine of grace directly into our bodies and souls. And the Lord released the power of that remedy by willingly laying down his life to save us. The remedy has been given on the Cross. That same remedy is made present again on the sacred altar at the Holy Mass. The sacrifice of the Mass is not a new remedy or a re-sacrifice of the Lord. Rather, the power and reality of the one and same gift of the Lord is made present here.

Since the remedy has been given, our task is to live in such a way that the remedy can actually work in us. The remedy of Jesus and his saving grace lacks nothing, but it does require our cooperation if it is to be effective for us in the face of the disease of sin and its threat to our eternal life. This isn’t difficult to understand. We understand it in a physical health way quite readily. Imagine if I need medicine for a physical illness. The medicine is one important piece, even an essential piece. But if I don’t keep myself hydrated, if I don’t allow myself to rest, if I eat poorly, if I keep exposing myself to the same source of disease then I shouldn’t expect a good outcome from the remedy. It’s the same with sin. The remedy of Jesus’ sacrifice and his ongoing grace to us is not a static gift. He gives it constantly and it needs our constant cooperation. We are saved by Jesus and by him alone. But our ongoing work to cooperate with that gift, to turn from sin, and to break patterns where we squander the remedy is the daily work of each disciple.

And thus, we come here to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We are renewed in the saving remedy of the Good News by the two-edged sword of God’s Word in the Scripture readings. We are encouraged by the faith of a community that pushes us to strive toward Heaven and holds us accountable. We come face-to-face with the very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. If we are in the state of grace and worthily prepared, we receive the Lord’s gift of himself, his remedy, under sacramental form in Holy Communion. But today gives us an opportunity, as unique and unwanted as it may be, to call to mind the truth and the value in our Catholic tradition of the Spiritual Communion, something which saints described and practiced throughout Christian history. When we receive Holy Communion under more normal circumstances we might refer to that as physically receiving Holy Communion. Christ’s faithful have long recognized that physically receiving Communion is not always possible. What might be some limitations? Perhaps a person is disabled, sick, or imprisoned and cannot make it to Mass. Perhaps you plan to go to Mass but a broken-down vehicle prevents that from happening. Maybe you are in a place where there is no priest, on a military post, or traveling in some remote location. All of these and more are physical barriers to receiving Holy Communion. But the faithful have also long recognized moral barriers to receiving Holy Communion. When I examine the state of my soul, perhaps I notice there some grave sin that needs to be confessed first and thus I need to refrain from physically receiving Holy Communion until I first go to confession. Maybe a person has not committed some objective sin but notices some part of Catholic doctrine that needs to be accepted and received more fully to be living a deeper life as a Catholic. Maybe a Catholic has not married in the Church and needs to have that addressed first before approaching for Holy Communion. We might even say that very small children who have not yet reached the age of reason, by which they become morally responsible, are in a type of barrier that normally does not permit them to receive Holy Communion until around the age of eight.

Given the possible reasons why physical reception of Holy Communion may not be possible, the question should be asked: is there no benefit of grace for such persons? Does that mean there is no communion at all? The Church’s spiritual writers and saints have long encouraged the value of a spiritual communion. When we are not able to make a physical communion, we recognize that by his power as God, the Lord is not limited in his ability to give us his grace. In a spiritual communion we identify what, if anything, we are responsible for that prevents our physical communion. We express to the Lord the desire to confess any sin as soon as possible in order to be more deeply united to him and, with obstacles removed, to be able to make a good Holy Communion as soon as possible. In a spiritual communion we prayerfully express our desire to receive the Lord and to embrace him spiritually. We do this confident that he blesses such self-examination and desire. We do this such that the grace the Lord gives in a spiritual communion may strengthens us to see our resolve to its conclusion, to remove all barriers to Holy Communion and to make a physical communion as soon as possible. My brothers and sisters, this grace is yours today and I encourage you to adopt this worthy practice in these difficult days. Wherever you are, as frequently as you want, you can turn your mind and heart to the Lord to make a spiritual communion. By this you will continue to be strong as members of Christ’s Body the Church, as we pray for a speedy end to what prevents the normal course of our life in this moment. As this Mass continues lift your hearts, your minds, and your lives to the Lord in sacrifice. Know that this is pleasing to God. And be confident that God, who is generosity beyond measure, will give you a rich store of the grace needed to remain near to Him today and every day.

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

2 February 2020

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord is an ancient feast, formerly called the Feast of the Purification of Mary, and commonly called “Candlemas” because of the custom of blessing and carrying candles in the entrance procession.  This feast marks the event, recounted in the Scriptures, when forty days after Jesus’ birth he was presented in the Temple in Jerusalem and when Mary underwent ritual purification after childbirth.  One of our beautiful Austrian stained-glass windows depicts this event.  Those of you sitting in the south transept won’t be able to see it now, but make sure to check it out after Mass.  Along the south wall of the main nave is that window.  At the top of the window you see the Ark of the Covenant, which is God’s very presence, housed in the Jerusalem Temple.  You see Simeon holding Jesus while proclaiming God’s blessings.  You see the prophetess Anna nearby.  You see Joseph and Mary in the foreground, with Joseph holding the offering of a pair of turtledoves or pigeons.  At the bottom of the window are the words from today’s Gospel passage, the words of Simeon “O Lord, my eyes have seen thy salvation.”

As stated in the last line of Simeon’s canticle and, as is unmistakable by the way this Mass begins, the prominent theme in this feast is light as a symbol for Jesus, God Himself, coming into the Temple.  Consider the high theological poetry in the first verses of St. John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…. The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world” (Jn. 1:1, 4, 9).

The Light of life, God Himself, came into the world.  To receive Him, to receive faith in Him, is a light to believers.  And thus, no surprise, that the light of candles is an apt symbol for our faith.  In part that’s why in baptism the newly baptized is given a candle while the minister says, “Receive the light of Christ.”  The minister goes on to say, “Parents and Godparents, this light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly.  This child of yours has been enlightened by Christ.  He/she is to walk always as a child of the light.  May he/she keep the flame of faith alive in his/her heart.  When the Lord comes, may he/she go out to meet him with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.”

On this feast we are supposed to think of light.  We are supposed to consider that faith in Christ is a light to our lives, showing us the way.  We are supposed to consider that the Light is God Himself who is our life.  With all this in mind, my thought for us today is rather simple and fundamental, but so critically important if our discipleship is more than just lip service. The thought is this: Do we accept and follow that Christ, his life, and his teachings are a light to us?  Do we accept that our faith gives us authoritative guidance in the darkness of our fallen world and in the darkness of our lives marked by original sin?  In other words, do we embrace and receive the light of Christ as a true gift to us?  Do we adults accept and obey this light for ourselves?  And do we teach our children and young people to likewise be obedient to this light?  I want you to seriously ask yourself whether you choose the light of Christ’s teaching or whether you choose darkness.  Make it specific and concrete by thinking of a particular teaching of our faith.  I say this because experience tells me time and time again that when a particular teaching of Christ and his Church – almost always areas of morality – causes us discomfort or tension or confusion and misunderstanding it is not uncommon for even a believer to adopt an unchristian secular mindset and to dismiss the teaching.  It goes like this: “I know the Church says X, but personally I disagree.”  But personally, what?  You see what is happening there?  It is no longer the light of Christ in his Church that is the guide, but the subjective personal feeling or opinion of an individual.  It is no longer the light of Christ that is the guide, but the person himself becomes his own light.  In so doing, the result is that we don’t follow the light of Christ but rather the secular darkness.  Ask yourself, what is my “default setting” when I’m conflicted by a teaching of the Church?  Is the light of Christ in his Church an authoritative source of illumination for me?  Or is it I myself who am my own illumination?  This tendency to adopt secular thinking as our guide is most easily seen in the hot button issues of our day.  I bet we’ve all experienced it.  Maybe we’re even guilty of it ourselves.  Do we choose popular opinion, secular thought, as our guide?  Or do we choose the light of Christ?  As Christians we are supposed to embrace what Christ teaches, believing it to be liberating Good News for us.  And we are supposed to seriously form our children to do the same.  They too are easily swept up in secular thinking about the issues of our day.  But Christ is supposed to be our light!  When we do the “but personally” trick, we are not following the Light.  Or rather, we are making secular darkness into our light.  And if we do that we can’t seriously claim that Jesus is our Lord and that we are his disciples.

Now what am I NOT saying in this message?  I am not saying that every teaching of our faith is necessarily easy to understand and to accept.  We have a fallen nature from Original Sin and we are sinners guilty of our personal sins.  The result is our minds suffer from darkened intellect and our wills can be weak.  When a Church teaching causes you tension, go ahead and wrestle, struggle, have questions, study, seek answers… if done in faith this is a good thing and it is the path to a greater embracing of the light.  I’m not saying we can’t have questions and struggles.  But don’t pull the “but personally” trick and dismiss the teaching.  That trick sets yourself up as the authoritative light.  And it reveals that you really aren’t a follower of the Light who is Jesus.  Rather, it reveals that secular darkness is your light.  St. John’s Gospel goes on to say, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light” (Jn. 3:19).

Today we celebrate that the light and the glory of God has come among us and entered the Jerusalem Temple.  The grace of God’s word, the mercy of the confessional, and the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist are prime sources of purification and light for us.  May we dispel the darkness of placing secular opinions on the throne of Christ.  Instead, may we struggle, and pray, and seek, and reform our lives such that we beg the Light who is God among us to come dwell more fully in the temple that faith and baptism have made us to be!

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XVIII per Annum B

5 August 2018

 Last week was our first week of a five-week tour through the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, known as the Bread of Life discourse.  This chapter is a prime location of Jesus’ teaching and our faith in the Holy Eucharist, that ordinary bread and wine become his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  The first reading today from Exodus 16 narrates God’s providing of a bread-like substance, called manna, in miraculous fashion for 40 years in the desert, which foreshadows Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness and foreshadows his providing the true bread from heaven.  Last weekend the gospel selection told us of the feeding of the five thousand with loaves and fish.  While this was a miraculous multiplication of food we should note that, although miraculous, the bread multiplied was still ordinary bread; the “flesh” still ordinary fish.  After feeding the five thousand Jesus goes off and, in a gospel selection we do not hear in this five-week tour, he miraculously walks across the water.  Today’s Gospel selection picks up the next day after these two miracles.  The Jewish crowds notice Jesus’ absence.  They go seeking him out and they make their way across the sea to find him.  The passage makes clear why they are seeking him: It’s time to eat again!  They had eaten their fill but now it is the next day and their bellies are likely empty again.  Jesus acknowledges that the crowds are seeking him for a free meal: “…you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.  Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

What is Jesus doing here for the crowds?  He wants to redirect or elevate their desire and attention to something more than regular, natural, ordinary bread.  The statement is clear: It’s as if Jesus is saying, “you have gone to so much effort for ordinary food.  Put far more effort into the food that lasts.”  Likewise for us, Jesus wants to elevate our thinking and our desire for a food that endures to eternal life.  Why do the crowds need to hear Jesus tell them to elevate their thinking?  Why do we need to hear the same?  Because they and we so quickly and easily put aside spiritual thinking and spiritual vision.  This is what is hidden in Jesus’ words: “you are looking for me NOT because you saw signs.”  St. John’s use of the word “sign” refers to miraculous revelations of Jesus’ power and mission that, when accepted, are vehicles that promote coming to faith in him.  The crowds witnessed the miracles, but did they see the sign?  Did they – do we – see with spiritual vision so that signs of Jesus are not just mighty deeds to impress, but gifts to draw us to faith in Jesus as the Son of God?  The crowds don’t see.  Jesus tells them so: You are coming after me not because you saw signs but because your bellies were filled.  And thus, he tells them to elevate their minds and to seek what lasts.  His message is the same to us.  Jesus wants us to see beyond the ordinary and to come to deeper faith in him as our God.  This is his message too about what appears as ordinary bread, of which we will hear more in the coming weeks.  He doesn’t want us to stop with bread that fills the stomach but then perishes.  He redirects our desire and our focus to “the bread of God… which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  This is the bread that he will give.

Consider how startling is the human tendency to lower our thinking and our vision.  Did you notice how the first reading about God giving the manna started?  Exodus 16 tells us that out in the desert the “whole Israelite community grumbled.”  They were complaining.  They actually defy God by indicating that they would prefer to go back to Egypt where they had been in slavery!  Why go back?  Because at least there they knew where their next meal was coming from!  They would prefer to return to slavery if they could at least know their bellies would be filled.  This complaining is all the more startling when you consider that just the chapter before God had miraculously saved them from Pharaoh’s approaching army by parting the sea to give them safe passage.  Yet they have so soon lowered their thinking and their vision!  “Following God is too hard.  Let’s go back to being slaves.  In Egypt we knew where our food was.”  Friends, we are not that different in how quickly we settle for food that perishes, whatever we can provide and control for ourselves, whatever we think will keep our bellies full, whether that is literal food, or power, or money, or attention, or social media likes, or drugs, or sex – the list goes on!

Like the Israelite community, what deserts of life cause us to lower our thinking and to focus mostly on filling ourselves with the things that perish?  Maybe “the desert” is that common tendency to trust in myself.  It’s much easier and more predictable than being vulnerable to God or to someone else.  That would require trust.  Maybe it’s that tendency to keep myself so busy that I barely notice my deeper and spiritual needs.  That emptiness is there and it is nagging at me.  But if I just keep going it gets filled, right?  Maybe the desert is a habit of serious sin and I feel powerless to stop it.  It’s easier to just live in the slavery than to open it, to reveal it, to raise it to God.  Maybe the desert is trouble in marriage or a painful loss and it’s like there is just no place to go.  Could the desert that lowers your thinking and obscures your spiritual vision be some personal defect or some cross or suffering?  It’s not a sin, but gosh it’s heavy and I can’t see what Jesus might do with this.  Or maybe the desert is a generalized dryness in faith, or going through the motions as a Catholic.  And I know I need more.

Do you see why we too need to hear Jesus tell us today to redirect and to elevate our thinking so that we receive from him the food that he will give, the true bread from heaven?  Like the Israelites, our lowered vision convinces us that even a place of slavery is better because in a perverse sense it is more predictable and we seem to have some element of control.  We are inclined to settle for the kingdom of darkness where everything perishes.  Jesus wants to elevate our hope to his kingdom and the food that endures to eternal life!

In the weeks ahead we will hear the undeniable and clear teaching that Jesus gives his whole self, his flesh and blood, as food that endures.  Jesus turns ordinary bread and wine into his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.  He continues to do this in the Holy Mass and through the valid ministerial priesthood of his Church.  As his words elevate our focus to the food that endures to eternal life, we hear his call to put far more effort into the food that lasts.  To see the sign that Jesus works with ordinary bread and wine is to receive an invitation to deeper faith that he is God.  To experience the Holy Eucharist for what it is we likewise have to entrust our ordinary lives to Jesus.  Jesus’ Real Presence to us is a call for us to be more present to him!  We elevate our vision and our commitment to Holy Mass, where we worship Emmanuel, God-with-us.  We find in the tabernacle waiting for us in private prayer the God who remains with us in all our ordinary needs.  By participating in adoration we find an oasis of peace in our deserts where Jesus raises our weary hearts and minds and assures us he is with us in all the things that we can’t control.  And gradually we begin to trust that Jesus will fill us with what we truly need and with what lasts as we hear him say, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Dominica in Pasqua V

29 April 2018

Recently I’ve been wondering about the mechanics of grafting the branch of one vine or tree onto another tree such that the grafted branch grows and thrives.  My wondering ‘stems’ (uh hem!) from a recent visit I made to the Crystal Bridge at the Myriad Gardens in Oklahoma City.  Among the many tropical plants and trees growing there, the Bridge features various types of orchids.  There are orchids of colors and shapes I have never seen before.  I was surprised at one point when I noticed that an orchid appeared to be growing directly out from the trunk of a very tall, tropical tree.  How does that work, I wondered?  How do you graft together two very unrelated plants and have them grow?  On closer inspection what had really happened is that an orchid plant, in its small pot had been hung on the trunk and, after time, the orchid’s root system had grown out from the pot, wrapping around it and covering it, giving the illusion that the orchid had somehow been grafted onto the tree.

Now I am very far from a “green thumb” and I don’t intend my thoughts to give instruction on grafting or gardening.  While not pretending to know much about how grafting of plants works, it seems generally true that successful grafting of very different types of plants or trees, while it may be occasionally successful, is the exception rather than the rule.  In other words, generally speaking, successful grafting requires a greater, rather than lesser, degree of genetic similarity between grafted plants or trees.

“I am the vine, you are the branches.”  Can you see why my trip to the Myriad Gardens comes to mind with this gospel?  In the Old Testament God’s Word uses the image of a grapevine to describe His chosen People Israel.  God chooses and plants the choice vine, from which He expects a great harvest and a good vintage.  But through sin and disobedience the choice vine of Israel goes wild and produces bad fruit.  God promises through the prophets to fix the problem.  Thus, when Jesus proclaims himself in St. John’s gospel to be the “true vine” he is emphatically stating that God’s choice vine is here, in his very person.  He is that promised vine.  And a good harvest and a good vintage will only come through him.  Disciples will produce what God wants only if we remain in the Lord Jesus.

By baptism we begin life in the true Vine by being grafted into Jesus, thus being made by the Holy Spirit adopted sons and daughters of the Father.  Disciples who remain in the Lord are called to maintain unity of life with the visible expression of Christ the True Vine – his Church, which Scripture also describes as the very Body of Christ.  In the first reading, after Saul’s conversion (becoming known as Paul) we see him seeking to be grafted onto the Church.  Because of his persecuting past, disciples were suspicious, but in time Paul’s newfound faith could grow and remain alive only because he joined Christ in the unity of his Church.  We who have been baptized are only alive in Christ and only producing good fruit to the degree that we remain united to Christ the True Vine.  Our unity grows by deeper conversion and faithful practice of prayer and the Sacraments.  When we sin, when we maintain a weak unity with the Church, when we don’t accept the pruning of God’s Word leading us to deeper conversion, when we don’t make Christ the center of meaning and nourishment in our lives, well, we are ready to be cut off and worthy of being taken away from the harvest of heaven.  Jesus says, the Father “takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit.”  “Remain in me, as I remain in you.”  “I am the vine, you are the branches.”

Friends, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that being marginal disciples, or Christians pretty much in name only, will lead to salvation.  To borrow the image of grafting, a marginal Christian is about as genetically dissimilar to the True Vine as an orchid to a tropical tree.  The marginal Christian might look like he has life from the True Vine, but on closer inspection he is nourishing himself, just sort of hung upon or near the Vine, much like that orchid I saw on the tree.  To be successfully grafted such that we branches bear good fruit, we must live what was begun in us in baptism, when we were grafted onto Christ.  We do not want to become a branch worth cutting off.  To be worthy to remain connected to the Vine, we are called upon by the Father to bear much, and good, fruit.

Generally speaking, successful grafting requires a greater, rather than lesser, degree of genetic similarity between grafted plants or trees.  We can carry this observation into the gospel image.  Obviously I use this idea of grafting to refer not to genetics, but to a greater degree of conversion or Christ-likeness.  We are first brought into the True Vine at baptism.  But that grafting must be lived and must develop as the Father wants if a living (faithful) branch and a fruitful harvest is to result.  Don’t expect an easy path as a Christian.  No, Jesus tells us we will be pruned.  But this serves to help us bear even more fruit.  We can never take for granted our unity with Christ the True Vine.  We should seek, like St. Paul, an ever-greater conversion and a grafting into Jesus’ Church.  “Remain in me,” Jesus says.  Today’s second reading from St. John gives all of us a clear indication of remaining in the Lord.  “Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them.”