Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica III per Annum C
23 January 2022

 After the conclusion of a meeting of various local pastors of different denominations years ago, several of us were sitting around just visiting.  As our friendly conversation was wrapping up, I said something about having to get back to the parish to finish up some plans for a Bible study.  The Baptist pastor said to me, with a wry grin: “Oh, you all study the Bible?”  Now, I want to make clear that we were all friends and this was all good-natured jabbing at each other.  So, I looked at him, acting surprised, and said, “Well, of course, we do.  It’s a Catholic book!”  Now that should not be controversial.  But let me say it again.  In all truth, the Bible is a Catholic book.  No one has a Bible they can hold and use, except thanks to the faith and dedication of the Catholic Church who received the Jewish Scriptures together with New Testament writings, and after scrutiny by those with apostolic authority from Jesus, decided which books fit with the received faith, and compiled it all together into the one book we call the Bible.  Due to the readings this Sunday that show us rich use of reading God’s Word in worship and in a liturgical setting, we can appreciate the important place of the Word of God in our life as Catholics.  Scripture is a rich treasure of our faith that helps us build a relationship with Jesus.  We are fools if remain ignorant of Scripture.  As St. Jerome famously said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

The readings this week provide us an important lesson about a critical foundation for the good of our spiritual lives.  In the Old Testament reading, God’s people gather for worship and are instructed extensively from the book of God’s law (the Scriptures as they existed at that time).  The people listened attentively and heard a message that confronted them to more faithful living; a message that convicted them of their complacency, their sin, and their tendency to practically forget to allow God’s law to lead all their daily actions.  Our worship, too, is composed of gathering to listen extensively to God’s Word.  We are called to listen attentively, to put away distractions and other pursuits, and to focus on God’s Word.  We do this so that we, too, might be confronted to more faithful living, to be convicted of our sins, and to reform our lives so that we do not compromise or explain away God’s law, but rather allow it to direct our daily living.  Why do we allow the often-uncomfortable work of being confronted by God’s Word?  Because it is necessary for our salvation.  And more than just confronting us, God’s Word teaches us about His love for us and inspires joy in us to see our lives as swept up into salvation history.

 The Gospel passage goes on to show us again how critically important God’s Word is for our spiritual lives.  St. Luke informs us that he has carefully investigated all that has been received in the prior Sacred Scriptures and the Sacred Tradition.  In so doing, God’s Word has become a foundation for his life, which he writes down and shares with the rest of the Church.  We will have spiritual health and the hope of eternal life if we truly make God’s Word – handed on to us in written form through Sacred Scripture and handed on to us in oral form through Sacred Tradition – the foundation of our spiritual lives.  For St. Luke indicates that he writes all that he has investigated so that we “may realize the certainty of the teachings [we] have received.”

 Thus, an important truth of our faith is that God’s Word is an indispensable foundation of our life.  As today’s psalm stated, we must say and mean: “Your words, Lord, are spirit and life!”  God’s Word reveals to us truths about how we are made in God’s image and likeness.  His Word reveals to us our eternal destiny.  Fostering a love for and a reliance upon God’s Word in our spiritual lives gives us a critical foundation for appreciating the Word made flesh, who is Jesus Christ, and for appreciating his enduring presence among us in the flesh by means of the Holy Eucharist.

 I don’t know about you but I find myself deeply disturbed and overwhelmed at times by the grotesque delusion that seems to be gripping so many aspects of modern life.  Who speaks the truth?  Who can you trust?  Basic matters of life and dignity and biology and sexuality and gender seem to no longer have their clear meaning among such a vast number of people.  Most all of the elites in our political and cultural classes, all the powers that be, having made an idol of money and power, are on the bandwagon of a deluded world promoting all this garbage.  And it is no longer good enough for them that space is made for their “theater of the absurd,” but now their tolerance requires absolute obedience or you are criminalized.  I tie this, at least in part, to a world and an age that is increasingly less founded on God’s Word.  What do I mean by that?  Is this not chaos all around us?  Can you recall what God’s Word first tells us about the world He made?  From the first verses of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss” (Gen. 1:1-2).  Before God’s creative action there was chaos and formlessness and lack of order.  It’s like we are returning to chaos.  And our society is doing so, at least in part, by not being founded on God’s Word.  Secularists and atheists may want to march down that regressive path to nothingness; but we believers can’t do so.  We better know our book and rely upon it to instruct us and to form us and to guide us to salvation in the midst of chaos.

 Let’s take just one stark example of what happens when the truth contained in God’s Word is rejected, and when we fail to be formed by God’s Word so to be powerful witnesses confronting society.  This weekend marks the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, that established a so-called right to abortion in federal law.  We may be months away from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.  I pray it will be so.  Are we willing to pray earnestly for the end of the heinous bloodbath that washes our country in evil?  Are we willing to forego our own plans and our own free time by participating in pro-life activities?  Will we go the extra mile to give a voice to human life in the womb?  Will we speak up when those around us discount the scandal of abortion or transmit the lie that what is in the womb is not a separate, unique, unrepeatable human being deserving of rights?  Will we inconvenience ourselves regularly to fast, to do penance, or to make sacrifices so that abortion proponents are converted?  Will we use our own money and our own energy to support a woman in need and in risk of giving into the immense pressure around her to make her child quietly disappear?  Will we speak of God’s mercy to one who suffers because of a past abortion and encourage that person to find healing in God’s grace?  It seems to me these are all things we must do because we are a people formed by the Word of God to be a people of life.  You and I can’t stand up to the demons barking about “choice” if we are not founded on God’s Word and in intimate relationship with the One who gives us power as members of the body of Christ.

 Your words, Lord, are spirit and life!  These words surely have an application to the great societal debate over human life.  These words also apply to so many other areas of our life.  We are called to be formed by God’s Word always and to allow His commands and His ways to guide, lead, and change every aspect of our own lives.  If we truly have ears open to God’s Word we know we must convert more deeply and be transformed.  Where we have failed and where we weep because of our sins, we also hear God’s Word remind us to rise from our worship, filled with grace, so that we may rejoice in the Lord who is our strength!

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica II per Annum C
16 January 2022

A couple weeks back we observed the Epiphany, a word meaning “manifestation” or “showing.”  In the Church’s ancient practice there is actually a triple manifestation of God all rolled up into one in the solemnity of the epiphany.  Along with the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of the Lord, and the miracle at Cana help us observe this triple manifestation that God is in our midst.

A principle manifestation of God in our midst is through holy matrimony, that’s why Cana is one of the manifestations of the epiphany.  Let that sink in for a bit.  Holy Matrimony is to be a way by which God’s presence is made manifest.  Do you think of marriage that way?  Do you think of yours that way?  Yes, bringing two people with a fallen nature together can be very complicated and involves suffering, it might seem like a purgatory or even a hell on earth at times… but do you think of marriage as God does?  Jesus, the Son of God in the flesh, is right there at a celebration of married love in Cana.  It is there that he works his first miracle, thus manifesting and showing that God has come to earth and lives among us in our flesh.  In a one flesh union of a man and a woman, both made in the image and likeness of God, and open to the gift of children through total self-giving and sacrificial love, God is made manifest and shows Himself in our midst.  Do you think of marriage that way?  Do you let yourself be in God’s presence to find healing and strength to live marriage that way?  Perhaps more important, and to borrow an image from the Gospel, will you invite Jesus to be in your marriage.  The “water” of a relationship starts out fresh and satisfying but it can turn tepid, still, and even sometimes stagnant… will you invite Jesus to be in your marriage to turn the water into the wine of the Holy Spirit?

I think of the apostles who were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and who went out to proclaim their new life in the Lord.  Recall how Acts 2:13 tells us there were naysayers who mocked this new life and who said that the apostles must have consumed too much new wine.  In the Scriptures wine can serve as an image of joy and the life of the Holy Spirit.  I think we can accept the manifestation of God’s desired presence in holy matrimony, a manifestation by his making of plentiful wine, to be an indication of how God desires to provide joy and new life in the Holy Spirit through His design for marriage.  But if holy matrimony is to be lived in a such a way that it manifests God’s presence in this world, that means it must be lived according to His design.  It cannot be lived in a secular way, or according to a worldly way of thinking, where marriage, it seems, has become more about the adults finding fulfillment and pleasure, and where “love is love” in any one of a number of modern combinations.  Marriage serves to manifest God’s presence when God Himself is permitted to be there.  That is to say, that “marriage” becomes “Holy Matrimony” when Jesus is invited to the feast.

I can’t help but notice the invitation list at the Cana wedding.  There was a wedding at Cana and the mother of Jesus was there.  And Jesus and his disciples were also invited.  I have a real simple idea following the ordering of the invitation list in this Gospel.  This is a simple idea that does not at all mean there aren’t many other ways to improve marriage or that there aren’t times when some serious triage is needed with people competent in helping navigate troubles in marriage.  But the simple Gospel lesson, based on the invitation list, is this: Will you invite Mary, and Jesus, and Jesus’ disciples to be part of your marriage?  Both husbands and wives, you gotta do this!

Grow in Marian devotion and ask our Mother’s intercession for the good of your marriage and family.  Ask her, give her permission, to do what she does in this Gospel: Dear Mother, notice where the wine of my marriage has run out and raise that deficiency to the Lord.  Dear Mother, implore with your Son to provide new wine.  Invite Jesus into your marriage.  Are you living your marriage in a godly way, such that the Lord would even recognize it as the instrument by which he shows himself?  If you live marriage as the pagans do, making it about yourself, avoiding sacrifice, seeking pleasure, lust, artificially refusing children, thinking it more about the fulfillment of the adults… well, then, Jesus doesn’t have an invitation to your marriage.  Make sure that changes.  There may be past choices you can’t undo in your marriage.  I’m not condemning.  You can still repent and issue a new invitation to the Lord.  And then place yourself in his presence especially at Mass, and in prayer with the Scriptures.  How about adoration in our chapel, even as a couple where possible, to be with the Lord to give him an invitation?  To let him be who he desires to be for you, namely the one who turns water into wine.  Finally, invite Jesus’ disciples to be part of what enriches your marriage.  Jesus’ disciples were there at Cana.  What I think that teaches us is the value of having strong friendships among other fellow disciples who might inspire us and who might assist us when it seems like we are running out of wine.  Make relationships, and the important accountability that can happen among disciples, a source of strength in your marriage.

I want to attach to this Gospel an announcement I had hoped to make a year ago, before we were dealing with much smaller attendance and the after-effects of COVID lockdown.  We are still rebuilding from that time but we are doing well, even though sadly there are still plenty of faces from the past who don’t quite seem to be back with us.  We have been quietly piloting for two years now a new marriage preparation method for the parish.  It is one that involves placing engaged couples with a mentor couple.  The program is called Witness to Love and the materials we provide give both the mentor couple and the engaged couple solidly Catholic resources needed for good marriage preparation over the six months we have for preparation.  What results is good preparation for the engaged couple and the added blessing of a time for marriage enrichment for the already-married couple.  Think about it, if someone asks you to be a mentor you have a concrete reason to finally give attention to your relationship.  The reason I am announcing this publicly is because any married couple in the parish can be asked to serve as a mentor couple.  There are very few pre-requisites.  The mentor couple must be in a valid sacramental marriage.  They must be active parishioners in this parish.  They have to be married at least five years.  They should not be related to the engaged couple.  That’s it!  You might be surprised to hear that you could be eligible and asked to be a mentor couple.  The Witness to Love resources we provide give you the solid content that is needed to help guide someone else’s marriage preparation.  Your own living of marriage, no matter how you might evaluate your own marriage, gives you a wealth of experience that can enrich an engaged couple.  Thus, with this announcement, I hope you won’t be surprised if an engaged couple asks you to serve as their mentor.  I hope you will be willing to help, to say yes.  You’ll have help from the parish and you’ll know that an engaged couple sees something admirable in your marriage and something they want to emulate.

God’s covenant with his people is described in Scripture, as it was in today’s first reading, as a marriage.  At a wedding party, Jesus manifested his divine presence and performed his first miracle.  Let’s give him permission to be in our marriages so they have the blessing of wine, that is the joy of the Holy Spirit, and so that married love can reveal God’s glory and bring disciples to believe in the Lord!