Third Sunday of Lent

Dominica III in Quadragesima C

Holy Family Consecration Weekend

24 March 2019

We have been preparing for a novena of days to freely participate in our parish-wide Consecration to the Holy Family, which we will accomplish today after the homily.  I am grateful to our parish Knights of Columbus for proposing and supporting this consecration.  They once again stand out as good Catholic men who keep before themselves and before all of us the call to become even better disciples of the Lord Jesus and members of God’s family in the Church.  Today I want to comment on some lessons of the Scripture passages in light of the role and mission of the Catholic family to be a place of God’s dwelling, an example and witness of Christian life, and a generator for evangelizing the wider society and culture.  Whether your family is still very young or without children, still awaiting children, or whether you still have children in the home, or whether the generosity of adoption has formed a family, or whether children are grown and you are in the empty nest phase, all of our families are called to attract others to Christ like the supernatural fire of the burning bush attracted Moses to God.

The Book of Exodus presents us with one of the most iconic theophanies – appearances of God – in all the Scriptures.  In fact, I can still remember the picture associated with this Bible passage in the children’s Bible my parents gave to me as a boy.  And I’m grateful I have those memories of my parents being evangelizers in the family home.  Moses is on Mount Horeb when he sees the burning bush.  God’s voice tells him that he is on holy ground.  The Hebrew word for holy, “kadosh,” is used by the highest rank of the nine choirs of angels, the Seraphim, a name meaning “fiery ones,” who chant before God’s presence “holy, holy, holy” (cf. Is. 6:3).  The word is used for the Temple, it is used for the sanctuary, it is used for the innermost part of the tabernacle – the Holy of Holies.  It means that this place is set apart, it is sanctified, it is consecrated by a special presence of the Lord God.  So, in this sense, on the mountain Moses is entering into a natural consecrated sanctuary, much like we come to the mountain, to our raised sanctuaries as consecrated places to encounter the burning love of God who gives Himself to us in Word and in Sacrament.

Moses has this privileged encounter with God because he is being given a mission for the good of God’s people who are dwelling in unholy land.  They are dwelling in Egypt, in a polytheistic society where, among the many gods believed in, Pharaoh himself has acted as a god.  By his affliction of the Hebrew people Pharaoh has sought to undo the one true God’s promise of numerous offspring by enforcing harsh labor (Ex. 1:8-14) and killing all the first-born males (Ex. 1:15-22).  Pharaoh has also sought to annul God’s promise of land by refusing to let the people go up to their own land (Ex. 1:10).  Encountering God in fire, Moses is sent out into a trial by fire to proclaim the one true God to a hostile world and to proclaim to God’s afflicted people God’s plan of salvation and His plan to call them to the mission of creating a people who belong exclusively and intentionally to Him.

We can receive the Consecration to the Holy Family in this same sense today.  We come here, to the place set apart for holy encounter with God.  Here we are reminded in Word and we experience in Sacrament the fire of God’s love.  Here we are claimed for Christ and renewed to live that fundamental consecration in baptism to be God’s holy people and to permit God His place in the life of the home.  Compared to Moses’ time, we think of ourselves and our time in history as more sophisticated.  Yet, we live surrounded by people and a society who quite literally are idolaters, having their own golden calves.  You see just how literally this is true in the battle on public ground where Nativity Scenes and Ten Commandments monuments are erected resulting in Satanic groups demanding rights for images of horned goats.  The other false gods of our society are more subtle, yet they easily replace the type of dedication we should have to the one true God.  Examples of false gods abound in our time: the god of self-sufficiency, the god of “my time,” the god of pleasure, the god of money, the god of sports, the god of drugs, the god of lust and of pro-choice, the god of politics, the god of self-determination, the god of infidelity and adultery, the god of fornication, perversion, and gender ideology, and on and on… a circus of polytheism in our own time demanding an allegiance that is fairly called extremism.

Just as Moses encountered God in a holy sanctuary set apart, so do we do so here.  We encounter God and we prepare to proclaim Him to a hostile world, burning with unholy attachments and false affections.  Just as God reveals Himself to the Hebrews as the God of their fathers, so God continues to choose to make Himself present in family life.  Thus, our families need to be strengthened in living their dignity as people set apart for God and their mission to proclaim God to a challenging environment.

But isn’t it good enough in this setting to be basically religious and generally a good person?  What good is a consecration prayer?  Does it really make a difference to God to live family life intentionally as a holy way of life, a holy calling?  The second reading gives us a shocking lesson of not falling into the danger of overconfidence in faith, the danger of misplaced confidence in faith.  The point of the selection comes in the very final line today: “Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.”  That admonition follows a surprising listing by which St. Paul highlights the religious blessings and experiences of the ancestors.  And what is the shocking conclusion?  Despite all their religious blessings, St. Paul says, “Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert.”  Put that into a New Covenant context and let the lesson apply to us to not fall to overconfidence about being basically a religious person, the privileged cradle Catholic, or a “going-through-the-motions” Catholic.  We have experiences of God in prayer, even in the cloud of incense.  You can pass through the waters of baptism for yourself or bring your baby.  Eat the same spiritual food here… but if we aren’t being careful, if we aren’t going beyond surface or external actions and looking deeper into what kind of persons we really are… we are not learning the lesson of the example St. Paul sets forth.  Is my family life lived as really set apart for God?  If I am a member of Christ’s Body and if I consecrate myself and my family to the Holy Family, am I living as I should?

Avoiding overconfidence is one reason why I have emphasized personal intention and freely desiring this Holy Family Consecration in this preparation time for today’s consecration act.  To borrow the gospel image, God expects fruit from the family tree.  He looks for our families to bear fruit in being places where the style of home life actually permits Him to have room by family prayer, Sunday worship, moral living, and service to others.  He expects fruit to come for the good of our troubled society by the fact of having placed cells of godly family life directly into the fiery trial of modern secular life.  Our families are the domestic Church.  They are emissaries of light, like the burning bush in your neighborhoods meant to proclaim God and His promises to your children and to others beyond the family, even to those who give more attention to the false gods of our time.  Your family life is holy ground.  After all family life is the place set apart by which God Himself, Jesus Christ, chose to come and to bring salvation to our afflicted world!

First Sunday of Lent

Dominica I in Quadragesima C

10 March 2019

In a few minutes in the preface of this Mass of the First Sunday of Lent we will hear the following about Jesus and the Gospel scene just proclaimed: “he consecrated through his fast the pattern of our Lenten observance.”  In our faith and religious use the term “consecration” refers to a solemn act by which something or someone is set apart for God.  For example, a church is consecrated by a bishop in a solemn act, its walls being anointed with the Sacred Chrism that we also use in baptism, confirmation, and ordination of priests and bishops.  Thus, the whole building is a place set apart for privileged encounter with God, distinct and separate from the profane world around it.   This means that secular use of the space is inappropriate, at the very least awkward, and potentially sacrilegious.  A thing once set apart for God is never to be used for any profane purpose.  A sacred object – a thing consecrated – is definitively set aside for God.

But when the thing consecrated is not an object, but a person, there is more to consider.  A person can be set aside for God by a solemn act.  For example, this takes place when a man is ordained.  It takes place when a man or woman takes solemn vows in religious life or a person is consecrated to a life of virginity.  A more fundamental level of consecration takes place when a person is baptized and then confirmed.  The person is anointed, the sign of the Holy Spirit, by which that person belongs to God and is set apart for Him in a special way.  A critically important distinction between the consecration of a person, as distinct from an object, is that a person’s free will must be involved and must cooperate to live in accord with consecration.  An inanimate object does not have free will and so its consecration is accomplished merely by the solemn external act by which it is consecrated.  But a person must use his free will to desire consecration, to pursue the solemn act by which consecration takes place, and – very important – a person must live in accord with his or her consecration for it to bear fruit.  Just as profane use of a consecrated object is inappropriate and even sacrilegious, consider the added weight of moral gravity when a consecrated person set apart FOR God chooses to live apart FROM God by choosing sin.  We can say with good reason that the sins of a baptized and confirmed person, the sins of an ordained person, take on an added gravity of sacrilege because it is the refusal of the consecration of one set apart for God.  While all sin is sin, there is a unique gravity when a consecrated person sins as compared to the same sin committed by a pagan.  So, when we speak of the consecration of a person we are not speaking only of the external act by which he or she is set apart for God; rather, we must also speak of the person’s internal disposition by which he seeks to live for God and to live in accord with the mission given by God.

The Gospel selection about Jesus shows us both dimensions of being consecrated by a solemn, external act, AND the interior disposition, the use of free will, to live that consecration in his mission as the New Adam, the faithful Israel, the Son of God who comes to save us.  The Gospel begins by reminding us that Jesus had just been baptized and consecrated by a solemn, external act in the anointing of the Holy Spirit when it says, “Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan.”  And the bulk of the Gospel selection shows us the other dimension of the consecration of a person, by which interior freedom must be used to live in accord with one’s consecrated mission.  We see Jesus’ interior disposition, the use of his free will, in his response to the devil’s temptings.  Jesus chooses to live as set apart for the Father by rejecting the devil’s ideas and choosing to live his true identity as the Beloved Son of God.

Why this focus on consecration?  The Preface of the Mass tells us that Jesus’ fasting consecrated the pattern of our Lenten observance.  Fasting for Jesus and for us results, if we are doing it seriously, in a strong visceral reaction and that serves to teach us that we so often respond to even the slightest need, provocation, or physical prompting from the body while it is easy to ignore the soul and our spiritual reality and needs.  When we fast as a spiritual practice we can’t help but be more alert.  We know we are doing something to live more deeply our consecration to God.  We feel and hear the cues from our body in fasting, but we immediately use our higher faculty, our mind and our will, to direct our attention to our deeper hunger to live apart for God, and not simply to fill the belly.  This connection between our Lenten observance and consecration sheds some light on a special opportunity our parish will have in two weekends.  I am using the homily this weekend to encourage us to prepare for a parish-wide consecration to the Holy Family.  Our parish Knights of Columbus presented this idea to me and they are taking the lead in making this rich opportunity happen.  Knights serve and protect things, right?  These knights in our parish see the need to support and to protect living the faith in the family and so they are providing us with this special opportunity.  By means of prayer, confession, fasting, and spiritual preparation in these next two weeks, we have the opportunity to use our freedom to live more deeply the sacramental life that sets us and our families apart as the domestic Church, the place where God dwells in the family home.  As the spiritual father of this community I will personally lead us in the formal prayer by which we will effect this consecration at all Masses the weekend of March 23 and 24.  But it is up to each family, and especially the parents, to prepare for this consecration and to freely engage in what it means to be a family set apart for God, a family who lives the sacred mission of being a domestic Church, a place where prayer happens, where God is welcome, where the moral life is observed, and where the Gospel is proclaimed by the way your family lives its life.  This consecration is, in a certain sense, the call to simply be who we are called to be, who we were made by baptism, confirmation, and which the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony has made your homes to be.

I ask each family to choose to prepare for this consecration and so to be ready to freely engage in the consecration prayer we will say together in two weeks.  Beginning on March 15 for a novena of days, or at least for the week leading up to the consecration, we should be engaged in preparation by family prayer, fasting, and making a confession.  Some of you may be away over Spring Break the week before the consecration, which is why I want you to hear about this now so that you may be alerted to use preparation time well.  Our Knights of Columbus will be present after all Masses handing out preparation materials.

In the spirit of the Gospel I want to warn you, however, to expect some temptations and obstacles to arise leading up to this consecration.  Just as the devil hoped Jesus would not live in accord with his consecration, so he will see to it that temptations come your way too.  Maybe the temptation comes from troubles dealing with a child in the “terrible twos,” or maybe the teen years, who doesn’t want to cooperate and who needs to be reminded who is in charge of the household, especially when it comes to prayer, attending Mass, or formation classes.  Perhaps the temptation will come to simply live Spring Break as if it were a vacation from Lent.  Maybe the temptation is to avoid confessing sin such that we are not renewed in our baptismal life, our most basic consecration.  Maybe the temptation is that there is silence where family prayer in the home ought to take place.  Whatever the case, the Gospel shows us we need to prepare.  Expect to be mocked by the devil and to have obstacles come your way.  Respond with Jesus, using the words of Scripture, “One does not live on bread alone,” “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve,” “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”  One final scriptural help is Psalm 91, today’s responsorial.  It is the same psalm the devil himself quotes to Jesus in the Gospel.  And it is a stunning thing for him to quote it, though like a bad scripture scholar he does so out of context.  It shows us how much outright mockery we should expect when we determine to live our consecration.  Psalm 91, you see, was used by Jewish exorcists as the primary exorcistic psalm to drive a demon out of the possessed.  The psalm is still used today in our Catholic exorcism ritual.  Of all the 150 psalms that’s the one the devil chooses to quote!  You can just hear and see the mockery dripping from his lips.  When you are feeling distracted from preparation for our Holy Family Consecration or when you feel pulled from the mission that is yours as a Christian you might pray with and use this psalm.  Where the devil’s promptings seem heavy and impossible to defeat, remember his weakness before God and pray with the hope of that psalm: “You shall tread upon the asp and the viper; you shall trample down the lion and the dragon.”  May the Holy Family of Nazareth inspire us and protect us as we seek to serve God more faithfully, to be the people we have been consecrated to be!

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

6 March 2019

Today we begin in a solemn fashion the holy season of Lent by observing fasting from food and abstinence from meat and by gathering in prayer, for a ritual that goes back to Jewish practice: the imposition of ashes.  Ancient biblical symbols of penance include prayer, fasting, wearing sackcloth (uncomfortable, abrasive clothing), rending (tearing) one’s clothing, and the use of ashes.

The Scriptures give us some indications and can highlight at least three particular meanings of the use of ashes.  The Book of Genesis (3:19), in a formula used with the imposition of ashes today, takes us back to man’s creation and the fall.  “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”  This tells us that the ashes are a symbol and a reminder of mortality.  Man was formed from the dust of the earth and God breathed life into him.  Yet, because of sin, death has entered mankind’s history.  You and I inherit that original sin from Adam and Eve and we also bear individual guilt for our personal sins.  Thus, the ashes remind us we are all headed in the same direction when we will return to dust through death.  We come from dust and we are returning there.

Ashes also symbolize repentance.  Job, though good and exceedingly blessed, finds himself encountering God who has permitted him to be tested.  Job knows that he is nothing before his Creator whose ways are inscrutable.  And so Job says, “therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).

Ashes also symbolize interceding for others, doing penance on behalf of others.  Daniel (Daniel 9:3) is a righteous man yet he does penance for his people.  Ashes were part of his practice.  The Book of Esther (14:1-3) also shows us this intercession on behalf of others using ashes.  The pagan king had determined to kill the Jewish people but Queen Esther, humbles herself and her beauty, and enters into repentance and mourning for the Jewish people by covering her head with ashes and dung.  (Dung Wednesday would not be very popular!).

Finally, another passage, along with Esther, shows us some history in regards to the placement of ashes as a penitential practice.  Repentance for sin in the First Book of Maccabees shows us that ashes were sprinkled on the head (1 Maccabees 3:47 [appears only in the Catholic Old Testament]).

The readings today also give us two perspectives on our penance in the gift that is this holy season of discipline and serious return to God our Father.  The Book of Joel shows us the public calling together of a people doing visible penance.  You can’t miss that the people are doing penance: “Blow the trumpet, proclaim a fast, call an assembly” (Joel 2:15).  That is like what we do today.  We are doing something very public, a day of penance for our sins.  Yet, Lent is not only Ash Wednesday.  The vast majority of Lent is not the public visible act of penance.  The vast majority of Lent fits more with the Gospel selection, the observance of penances that are hidden, private, and done in secret where we face the truth of needing to return to our Father who sees in secret.

We have strayed from God.  Lent is an annual gift of training by which we admit just how far we have gone away.  Just like Adam and Eve strayed and were expelled from the Garden because of their sin, we likewise have gone far away.  Our sins expel us from God’s presence.  We need to do serious penance to make a serious return to our Father.  We often encourage the participation of children in Lent by giving up things like chocolate, or soda, or pizza.  And that is well and good… for children.  But as St. Paul calls us NOW to a time to receive God’s grace more deeply, St. Paul would also say to us: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1 Cor. 13:11).  The truth of our straying from God is not explainable by an inordinate attachment to chocolate or to pizza.  No, we need to go much deeper.  We need to be much more serious.  We have a long journey to return to our Father and to arrive once again at the mountain of Easter, newness of life, and restored baptismal grace.  But this does not discourage us because it is our Father who gives us this time of reform.  It is He who desires us and who calls us to deeper life with Him.  Mercy and compassion from the Father who sees what is hidden inspires us to serious engagement in this holy season.  Because it is God who calls us back to Himself we have the courage to move beyond the superficial, beyond the surface, beyond what is visible and to pick up the character of the vast majority of this season: Facing more deeply the source of our separation from God and going more deeply into penance.  “Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God” (Joel 2:13).  Tear open your heart and get to what really has caused you to stray from God.  Open that truth to God and do penance confident that He gives you this grace to make a return.  He sees and longs to repay you by welcoming you into deeper life with Him now and ultimate life in the kingdom to come!