Third Sunday of Advent

Dominica III
Adventus A

15 December 2019

 St. John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come?”  On its face value I have some real struggles with this Gospel passage.  I’m intrigued by John’s question and on its face value it doesn’t make sense to me.  “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”  Did St. John the Baptist NOT know the answer?  The Precursor of the Lord…is unsure?  The last and the greatest of the prophets…doesn’t know?  The one who lept in his mother’s womb when Jesus was present in his own mother’s womb…is unsure?  The zealous prophet dressed like Elijah, who endured the harsh desert and ate locusts and honey, he doesn’t know?!  How can he now be asking this question as if unaware of Jesus’ identity?  St. John is in prison awaiting certain execution.  Are we perhaps to assume that St. John is being worn down by the hardship of prison and that his prior knowledge about Jesus’ identity is now maybe lacking?  On its face value this Gospel passage seems out of place.  It needs more than face value understanding; it needs closer scrutiny.

  To dive more deeply into the intrigue of this passage we need to suspend an easy and natural assumption we make as Christians when we hear this passage.  So many centuries now after Jesus walked the earth, we know and accept that Jesus is BOTH the promised Messiah (the anointed one) and that he is God Himself.  It can be very easy for us to so link the “Messiah” and “God” in the one person Jesus such that we end up thinking the “Messiah” and “God” are synonymous terms or notions.  But this was not the mind of the Jewish people and so Messiah and God were not automatically linked by people like St. John.  The Messiah is the one who would redeem God’s people from their suffering and would be an anointed king and priest who would lead God’s people.  This notion developed in time to be an expectation that this anointed king-priest would be from the line of King David.  But God Himself is an entirely distinct notion.  Suspending our automatic Christian linking of Messiah and God we can then, I suggest, understand the great revelation of this passage and why John seems to be asking a curious question.  So, let’s hear St. John’s question again while also keeping clear that the promise of the Messiah and the promise of the coming of God Himself are not automatically assumed and linked by St. John in the one person of Jesus.  St. John asks, “Are you the one who is to come?”

  This does not simply and only mean, “Are you the Messiah?”  Notice, St. John doesn’t use that word, he doesn’t ask if Jesus is the Messiah.  He asks “are you he who is to come?”  This is an allusion to Old Testament prophecies about the coming of God Himself.  A prime Old Testament location of the prophecy of the coming of the Lord God is found in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 35.  And… no surprise the Church chooses Isaiah 35 as today’s first reading.  In responding to St. John’s question, Jesus indicates his own accomplishments that trace right back to Isaiah 35, from which we heard today: “Here is your God, he comes with vindication;… Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing.”  Jesus is making a direct allusion to Isaiah 35 where we find the prophecy of the coming, not of the Messiah alone, but the coming of God Himself!  In addition to that list of prophecy Jesus adds more that is not in Isaiah 35; I’ll comment on two of them: Jesus adds “lepers are cleansed” and “the dead are raised.”  In the Second Book of Kings surrounding the story of the leper Naaman we find the assumption that curing leprosy was something only God could do.  Likewise, in a rare Old Testament prophecy about resurrection, we find in Isaiah 26 that the dead being raised would happen when God Himself arrives.

  Are you the one, he, who is to come?  Jesus’ response causes St. John to see not only the fulfillment of what he clearly already knew – that Jesus is the Messiah – but also to see that Jesus fulfills the signs that accompany the arrival of God Himself.  And thus, it makes sense that Jesus goes on in this passage to tell the crowd about St. John using an allusion from the Book of the Prophet Malachi.  Jesus says that St. John is more than a prophet and indicates that the words of Malachi (Mal. 3:1) apply to St. John: “Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way before you.”  That entire context in Malachi is about the messenger that would come to announce, not the Messiah, but the coming of the Lord God.  I suggest that St. John clearly already knows that Jesus is the promised Messiah.  But from prison St. John learns in this passage that Jesus is more than the Messiah, but a Divine Messiah, that Jesus is the one who is to come, that He is God Himself.

 On this Sunday the change of color and the liturgical theme call us to rejoice!  We are invited to rejoice by receiving what St. John learned in Jesus’ response: Namely, the great revelation that in the advent of Jesus God Himself is with us!  We are nearing the annual celebration of the birth of our God.  We still await His final return in glory at the Second Coming.  It is time to rejoice for He is near to us.  It is time to lift to Him our blindness, our lack of vision and spiritual sight, our deafness, our flagging speech, our lameness, our leprous impurity and afflictions, our deadly sins and the prospect of our bodily death.  It is time to live the rejoicing that God is near and that His presence means something for how we live.  “Blessed is the one who takes no offense” at Jesus.

Second Sunday of Advent

Dominica II Adventus A

8 December 2019

 God has no grandchildren.  We are accustomed to hearing that we are, by faith and baptism, sons and daughters of God.  We are, as we say, God’s children… but God has no GRANDchildren!

 What does that mean?  It means that a person does not have a relationship with God, at least not the kind that He desires and invites us to, the kind that transforms and saves, because someone in your family has, or once had, a relationship with God.  In other words, relationship with God is not inherited.  The relationship with God that transforms and saves requires an intentional decision.  It is something immediate and direct, not something based on nearness to someone else who has that relationship.  That’s the lesson of aphorism: That each person has a personal decision to make to turn from sin and to live as a disciple of Jesus.  Relationship with Jesus is not cultural or inherited.  God has no grandchildren.  We pray, do we not, “Our Father,” not “Our Grandfather, who art in heaven”?

 In his preaching in his time St. John the Baptist seems to recognize the call to personal decision, personal responsibility, in being a person of faith.  He says to the religious Pharisees and Sadducees: “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?  Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.  And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’  For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.  Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”  St. John highlights the same truths about each person being intentional in the life of faith.  He preaches the requirement of producing good fruit.  He requires evidence of repentance, of each person’s turning from old ways in response to the advent of Jesus.  Standing there at the River Jordan St. John blows out of the water the notion of an inherited, familial faith.  “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’.”

 In the Gospel “Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan” were at fever pitch because of St. John’s preaching.  So many centuries of prophecy had been made and everyone expected a new exodus, a new event of God’s saving work.  To that end it is noteworthy that St. John is at the Jordan, the very place where the first Exodus had ended as God’s people crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land.  Standing in that spot signals God is doing something new.  We each have a decision that only we can make.  God has no grandchildren.  Choose to be, and give evidence that, you are a child of God.  “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”

First Sunday of Advent

Dominica I Adventus A

1 December 2019

 This annual season of Advent is a gift from the Church that reminds us to wait and to prepare.  Our waiting and preparation focuses on the two main arrivals of Jesus.  We wait and prepare to be renewed by the annual observance of Jesus’ first coming when he was born at Bethlehem.  We also wait and prepare for Jesus’ second coming, a coming which we begin to experience on the particular day of our death, which will be fulfilled more generally at the Second Coming at the end of time.  Both main arrivals of Jesus get our attention in Advent.  However, since the first coming at Jesus’ birth has already happened in history, we should give a priority to our preparation for the Second Coming, which we still await, and which will have specific consequences for us.  We give attention to the far more important preparation that each of us must do to be in a state of grace and ready to meet Jesus at his second advent, his second arrival; we do this all the more because in this time of year the Second Coming we await is so easily eclipsed by an exclusive focus on the first coming in that event we call Christmas.  If we lack this proper priority of focus on the Second Coming of Christ then the Scripture selections might seem odd to us this weekend.  We’re beginning Advent, the start of a new Church liturgical year, but we are still hearing about the end times and the final judgment when Christ will come again.  That might seem odd if our priorities are out of order.

 First, I want to dismiss a notion popular among some Christian groups that this Gospel passage speaks of the idea of the “rapture,” that is, a secret coming of the Lord when the faithful will be taken and others left behind.  This is not a Catholic teaching and is not supported in the Scriptures.  If you back up several verses from the start of the Gospel passage it is clear that the entire context here is that of the end times and the final judgment, in other words, not a secret coming of Christ, but the very public return of Christ to judge the living and the dead.  And in this proper context it is clear then why the analogy of the “days of Noah” serves here: Because that too was a very public, dramatic, and sudden end while people were occupying themselves about their daily, ordinary activities.

We begin this new Church liturgical year with a focus on our end.  It reminds me of a Latin motto: Finis noster, principium nostrum, which means “Our end is our beginning.”  The lesson transmitted in that motto is that we begin with our end in mind.  We have a clear goal.  And this translates into our spiritual life as well.  With a clear goal or end in mind, we can then travel toward that end with far greater focus and success.  The opposite is also true: If we travel without a goal or an end in mind, we are far more likely to wander aimlessly, and who knows where we might end up?  We believe that we will meet the Lord when he comes.  Our end or goal is that we should be ready for that meeting so that we can attain the offer of eternal life in his Kingdom.

 Jesus said in the gospel: “For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”  One of the biggest mistakes we can make for our soul is to think we will always have enough time to get ready to meet the Lord.  If we think we know with certitude that death is still far away from us or that we can accurately predict its arrival and have time to be ready, we are making a risky gamble.  And even if death is still far away, such a gamble  will likely breed a laziness that will not bode well for our spiritual growth.  This attitude inclines us to become spiritually lazy, lax in confessing sin, absentminded in prayer, and unconverted to Jesus.  And then we are ripe for the plucking to spend eternity in the kingdom of darkness.

This is exactly what the gospel teaches us.  Jesus told his disciples that on the day of his coming people will be about ordinary tasks, thinking it just like any other day.  He compared it to the days of Noah when folks were about their ordinary lives, thinking nothing was different, and then came the flood.  Jesus said, “they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.  They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.”  Some activities are good and some are bad.  Some lead us to Christ.  Some are sinful, making us poor friends of Christ.  And some sins lead us to Hell.  What things are on the list of your activities when you examine your life?  Which are good?  Which are sinful?  Which things need to be removed so that you are not like someone in the days of Noah, likely to be swept away in a sudden flood?  What things need to change so that you are not like someone asleep as his house is broken into?  In the second reading St. Paul spoke of some examples: works of darkness, he called them, orgies, drunkenness, promiscuity, lust, rivalry, jealousy, the desires of the flesh.

 Jesus says, “you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”  In Advent we prepare ourselves to more sincerely celebrate Christ’s birth.  Advent also focuses our attention to a task we must never set aside: namely, to prepare to meet the Lord when he comes.  We will not know for sure when that will be.  So, we can only prepare and live each day ready to meet him.  St. Augustine wrote: “Let us not resist his first coming, so that we may not dread the second” (Ps. 95, 14. 15: CCL 39, 1351-1353).  The Lord Jesus loves us and has come to save us.  Our preparation must be to love him in return and always the more.  We must love him more than our sins.  More than works of darkness.  We must love him more than worldly pursuits.  Then on whatever day he comes, we will be prepared to meet him, for the Judge who comes will be the One we have longed for with Advent focus and with loving hearts.

Fall Finance & Stewardship Sermon (33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Dominica XXXIII per Annum C

Fall Finance & Stewardship Sermon

17 November 2019

 As a Pastor it is necessary for to me to speak from time to time about the material needs of the parish.  We can all agree it is not the most exciting topic.  Yet it is important to do.  In fact, it is a reality that the ancient Church knew and understood too.  Did you notice the second reading today (2 Thess. 3:7-12)?  It’s the very reason for today’s second reading.  St. Paul writing to a community, the Thessalonians, to speak to them about the practicalities of their common life together, and how it should be orderly.  Therefore, he needed to confront some of the disorder that was in that community.  Some are trying to eat for free, he said.  Others are not keeping busy but are acting like busybodies.  And so, his direction is work quietly and eat your own food!  I try to follow the pattern of giving a major address on parish finances and our stewardship of treasure a couple of times a year: in the early spring and again in the early fall.  I have delayed the fall talk until now so that we could first focus on our spiritual response to local reporting of abuse in our archdiocese.  But this weekend I want to turn our attention to the financial responsibility we each share by being a member of the parish of St. Monica Church.

 Since beginning my ministry as your Pastor I have initiated regular public reporting on parish finances.  These appear in the bulletin four times per year.  Upon the completion of each quarter of the fiscal year you will see a report and charts printed in the bulletin that reflect a summary of the income and expenses of the past quarter.  The consistent financial story is that we usually have a tight budget.  And there are times, as in the quarter completed on September 30, that we run a slight deficit.  I would bet the average person in the pew doesn’t have a real clear sense of what it costs to run a parish.  Thus, I want to share with you a sampling of parish expenses.  The parish Finance Council and I hope that this knowledge can serve both greater appreciation of what we do here and also serve a greater awareness of the need to share the responsibility to be sacrificial givers as stewards.  For context, I have pulled some budget numbers from the last Fiscal Year to share.

When we gather here and in the many spaces we use for worship, for meetings, formation classes, and small group events, we hope for a comfortable atmosphere with heat/air, electricity, and water.  Our annual utilities cost us a bit more than $76,000.  In addition to that cost for use, we must keep our aging heat/air units maintained and functioning.  The majority of our units date from the initial construction of our parish, meaning they are 19-23 years old.  Last year our service agreements for units cost more than $26,000 and repairs cost us an additional $16,000.  By way of a current budget number, just two months ago we had a monthly utilities bill for over $8,000.  Our facilities are heavily used and need regular cleaning and stocking.  Janitorial service and supplies cost us more than $32,000 last year.  Repair and maintenance to our buildings, including our parking lot, cost us more than $24,000 last year.  We want our campus to appear beautiful and maintained and so landscaping and gardening cost us more than $20,000 last year.  Thanks to our volunteer parishioners who work mowing teams our parish saves a lot of money that we would otherwise have to spend on paying for mowing.  However, we still have maintenance on our mowing equipment.  That, together with maintenance of our irrigation system, cost us more than $9,000 last year.

 Totaled up, this sampling of campus and facilities expenses, cost us more than $205,000 last year.  Those expenses required 16% of our annual income last year.  To give a current example: Just this week we learned that the heat unit (which is 19 years old) for our choir room isn’t working.  If all we do is repair it that will cost more than $2,000.  Or if we replace the unit that will cost $9,000.  We are on borrowed time with most of our units and we can expect a significant expense one day soon. 

 Let’s look now at the cost of some of our formation programming, the far more exciting stuff we do here.  We have many offerings for children and youth formation.  This covers high school formation, middle school formation, youth and whole family summer activities, the annual Steubenville youth conference, our discipleship groups, Family Formation, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, and more.  We spent almost $62,000 on these programs last year.  Formation enrollment fees help us recover some of that cost, but the parish still covers the vast majority of cost, almost $56,000, out of our budget.  We serve approximately 327 children and youth in these programs.  This part of our budget means the parish spends on average about $170 per child.  We serve the women of our parish who are mothers in our Mom’s group.  That serves approximately 40-45 women.  We spent almost $4,000 last year, or about $92 per participant.  Our nursery operating expenses and supplies represents $23,000 of last year’s budget.  We serve approximately 40 men in our St. Augustine Men’s Group.  Last year we spent almost $1,400 on that program, or about $34 per participant.  Our annual observance of Our Lady of Guadalupe costs the parish over $5,000.  And our Parish Festival requires about $7,000 from the annual budget.  This sampling of our formation expenses totals about $96,000 or about 7½% of our annual budget.  From September through April each year we have invoices for a food service vendor due to our monthly pancake breakfasts and five fish frys in Lent.  Those food invoices total over $8,000 and breaks down to over $600 per event.  Clearly, you can see we are not making money on these offerings nor coming anywhere close to covering the actual cost.

We have a construction loan on the blessing of our St. Ambrose Center with a current balance of about $720,000.  I am happy to report that we have paid off around $160,000 on that loan in the past year alone.  These numbers are just a sampling of the real costs and requirements of having a parish.  I haven’t even mentioned insurance and liability costs, salaries and employee health insurance and retirement, supplies for things in church (like candles, altar bread, vestments, etc.), nor assessments that each parish pays the archdiocese for diocesan operations, priest retirement, and subsidies to the catholic schools where students from our parish attend.

 You also should know the good news that our parish tithes 10% from its own income.  I invite you to see the report of weekend collections, called “Stewardship of Treasure,” that we print in each weekly bulletin.  In that report you see not only the income we collect from e-giving and envelopes, but you can see that we pull out 10% off the top of each weekend’s collection. That money is placed in a separate bank account and is not available for our operating expenses.  Rather, from that account we make charitable gifts to local, national, and international beneficiaries to support their charitable works.  We should be proud that the parish grants around $77,000 annually in charitable gifts that come from the gifts you give in the weekend offertory.  That does not even account for additional service to the poor that we offer.  Thus, the parish itself gives the example that we ask of each member here, to be sacrificial givers and even to commit to tithing from your income.  Trust me, it would be nice to have that additional $77,000 for our regular operating expenses, but we are committed to stewardship and promoting that style of life that each disciple should strive for: to be a sacrificial giver who tithes and who takes that tithe off the top, and not from what is left over after paying other bills.   Thus, in my oversight of the parish budget and, in my own personal charitable giving, I am keenly aware of the type of giving we ask of each member here.  I also know it is possible to do.  In addition, I know you will experience blessings in forming that type of spiritualty if, whatever your current giving level is, you move in that direction of giving more and even tithing.

 We often speak by analogy that the parish, the Church, is a family.  The familial relationship is one reason why the priest is called “father” and you the flock are called his spiritual “children.”  Of course, a significant difference in this family arrangement is that the children pay the bills and it is a safe bet that all of the children who have jobs make more than the father does!  But seriously, the parish has only the money that you give.  A key area of financial health that we must always evaluate is each parishioner’s commitment to sacrificial giving, to making regular financial contributions to the life of our parish.  I want to thank the many of you who embrace stewardship and who tithe.  This parish has a higher percentage of people who tithe than the average parish does, thanks to our history and our foundation with stewardship.  I also want to thank the many of you who give sacrificially and who are still working toward the practice of tithing.  But truthfully, it is clear that a vast number of people are not in the habit of charitable giving to the parish and a surprising number give nothing.  It is important to consider that, just like the expenses of running your home, the expenses here never go down, right?  They are always on the rise.  Our common life here and our shared responsibility for this parish mean that our giving needs to keep pace with expenses.  I hope my sharing of the sampling of expenses can help you appreciate that.  With this in mind, I want to highlight regular Sunday offertory contributions.  This is the single largest source of parish income.  For a healthy parish budget, we need regular Sunday contributions to be strong and consistent.  With a greater response to this shared responsibility for the life of our parish we will be able to maintain the programs we currently offer but also be in a stronger position for ever increasing needs and costs for ongoing evangelization and the operations of our campus.  In particular, I want to promote one way of making your regular offertory contributions: Our electronic, or eGiving program, called Faith Direct.  It is a convenient way to commit to regular giving to the parish and a convenient way to manage your Sunday contributions and special gifts from wherever you are.  If you have not yet signed up for Faith Direct I ask you to consider that possibility.  There is information in your pews and out in the narthex.  Signing up and using Faith Direct is easy and is something you can control from your own computer and even your smartphone, using the Faith Direct app.  Contact the Parish Office for more information and for help in beginning to use Faith Direct, or go to faithdirect.net to sign up.  Many of you, like I do, already use Faith Direct.  Has it perhaps been some time since you considered your gift and increased it?  If so, I encourage you to enter a prayerful time of reflection and to make a new intention for your generous gifts.

 The larger reality for a disciple is that our parish giving can’t be simply about choosing a number and paying out, as if this giving is like any other bill we pay.  Rather, I am asking each of you to develop a way of the spiritual life as regards stewardship of all your resources.  I am asking you to recognize that giving to God first, and giving to care for His Church, is a practice that is really a spirituality, that shows its marks not only in numbers in your bank account but, more importantly, in all areas of your life as a disciple, in the way it transforms you as a follower of Jesus.  The foundation of this spirituality of stewardship in our financial giving is a recognition of what we all know is true: Where we put our money reveals where our priorities are.  It shows what we believe to be of value.   Jesus spoke similar words: “…where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6:21).  In 1993 our parish was formed and its first members stepped out in faith to be stewards who built the foundations we enjoy today.  What is our response to that gift that we have inherited?  Is our response in sacrificial giving appropriate and proportional to the gift received?  Or have the ideologies of individualism and consumerism crept into our hearts and minds such that we tend to keep our gifts to ourselves or tend to view Church as a commodity or a transaction lacking a deeper personal investment of myself?  To develop a spirituality of stewardship and to evaluate your own response to our shared responsibility here, I ask you to first commit to a regular time of prayer before the Lord in our Adoration chapel.  Open your heart to him there and ask him to increase your trust, trust that he gives you gifts that you are capable to use for his glory and that you will still have what you need if you put him first.  Then from the foundation of prayer in adoration, evaluate your response to sacrificial giving.  Like the twofold Great Commandment of love of God and love of neighbor, the primary purpose and function of the parish is twofold.  We exist first of all to worship God.  It is a matter of the virtue of justice that God is owed worship from us, His creatures.  Worship is our loving response to the generous love of God for us.  Secondly, we exist for love of neighbor.  The different facets of our communal life, whether simply fraternal gatherings, educational/formational gatherings, or service opportunities, are ways in which we show love of neighbor.  Our love of neighbor must have an outward focus too, in that we are called as disciples to be on mission in this world to serve the salvation of souls by evangelization and the formation of new disciples.  Our mission here and our work is spiritual.  But, as we learned in the second reading, it is not only spiritual because it is not immune from the requirements, the organization, the order, and even the costs of the things of the “real world.”  The mission and desire of God the Father is to save us.  His Son took on our flesh to accomplish that mission.  This can serve as a reminder that our communal life and mission is also incarnate, just like Jesus.  Jesus is God, yet he took on human flesh.  He chose to live with the needs and demands of a human body, as well as its limitations, most prominent in that being incarnate in a real body made it possible for him to suffer and die.  As a parish community our mission, too, is lived out in an incarnate, concrete reality.  This means that we too have to face the needs, the demands, the requirements and limitations of being a visible community of the Lord in this place and in this time.  I ask each of you to make a response and to strive for a new moment and a new practice of the stewardship that will meet our parish needs, that will transform each of us personally, and that will transform the world we serve with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God!

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXXII per Annum C

10 November 2019

 Ideas have consequences.  We see that in the Gospel exchange today between Jesus and the Sadducees.  The Sadducees were a distinct movement or party within Judaism.  They were a rather small but influential and elite group owing to their descent from a priestly line and thus, their influence in the Temple and the functions of worship.  They were also distinct in some of their beliefs.  For example, they had a much more restrictive approach to Scripture, accepting only the Books of Moses as authoritative (the Books of Moses being the Pentateuch, the first five books of our Bible).  They did not believe in the existence of angels.  And they rejected the notion of a resurrection.  So, it was not only their aristocratic lineage that set them apart, but also their thoughts, opinions, and beliefs.  Ideas have consequences.

 With this in mind let’s look at the two Gospel lessons (marriage and angels) and see just how different popular thought in society today is from the thought formed by divine teaching from Jesus.  I’ll start with angels.  It is a popular thought in society to claim that when a person dies he becomes an angel.  At the time of funerals, you see on cards and hear in poems direct claims that the deceased is now an angel watching over us or that Heaven has gained an angel.  Pinterest will literally explode with examples of this idea.  Now that idea may be based more on sentimentality, yet it has consequences.  Based on the revelation of Scripture and philosophical reasoning, angels are distinct beings that are purely spiritual.  As such it is not proper to their being to have a body.  That’s what it means to be an angel: an intelligent personal being that is purely spiritual and not bodily.  Quite a different level of being is the human being who properly exists as a unity of body and soul.  A human being has both a bodily element and a spiritual element.  As creatures of superior intelligence, and not being limited by a body, angels are, to use less technical terms, higher on the “food chain” than a human being, just as a human being is higher on the food chain than an animal, which is higher on the food chain than a plant.  So, what is the consequence of the popular idea that after death we become angels?  Now I hope no one brought any rotten produce from your backyard garden, but I have to break it to you that, first of all, such a notion is not true, is not consistent with the Scriptures, and therefore not a belief a Catholic should adopt.  Secondly, if after death we hold that a person can go up the food chain to become an angel, then we have to accept the possibility and logical consequence that we can also go down the food chain and become a dog, or worse a cat.  No one wants to accept going down the food chain and I don’t see popular poems around death and dying making any claims when a person dies that Heaven, or Hell for that matter, has gained a cat!  But wait!  Didn’t Jesus say that in the resurrection and in the age to come we will become angels?  Be careful.  He said those deemed worthy to attain to the age to come will be “like angels” and he says that not to indicate that a dead human being changes his rank of being and joins the choirs of angels.  Rather, he says they become like angels specifically in that they no longer die.  The dead person enters immortality, like the angels, but the dead person does so awaiting to be rejoined to his resurrected body.  It’s the way we properly exist as human beings.  In other words, a human being remains a human being and an angel remains an angel.

 Switching gears to the Gospel lesson on marriage, in society, popular thought and opinion (these days anyway) is that marriage is primarily, or even only, about the adults, that it is first and foremost about the fulfillment of the adult parties.  Therefore, whatever fulfills any two consenting adults is good and acceptable; and, is as good and acceptable as what fulfills any other two adults.  There are consequences of this thought.  So, we have slogans like “love is love.”  And we have bumper stickers of a blue square containing a yellow equal sign, and a red version of the same image.  This has consequences and it leads to a completely subjective understanding of marriage that results in marriage being whatever anyone wants to make of it.  And so, the consequence of popular thought leads to two men or two women simulating marriage and doing so nowadays with legal codification.  And it would be hopelessly naïve to think that this opinion about marriage won’t easily and quickly become no longer mostly about what two people want but will become any combination of numbers or genders or transgenders.  But what the Scriptures reveal, and therefore what a Catholic holds, about marriage is very different.  The Gospel selection today gives a small glimpse of this divine lesson.  Jesus responds to the situation presented by the Sadducees.  They present a silly hypothetical case of a woman married seven times in this world.  If you believe in a resurrection, well then, whose wife will she be when she returns to a bodily life in the new world to come?  Jesus responds that those who are deemed worthy to attain to the resurrection do not marry.  This is the case because in the resurrection he says specifically that “they can no longer die.”  So, what is the consequence of that thought?  What do we learn from it?  If in the resurrection people do not marry because they cannot die that means that a primary reason for marriage in this age is precisely for procreation, the continuation of life, since we can and do die in this world.  Society’s opinion leads to the rejection of children as a primary purpose and blessing in marriage by the promotion of contraception.  And society’s opinion rejects the exclusive nature and value of the complementarity of the two sexes whose unity in marriage models the unity of God Himself whose image in creation is shown in making us both male and female.  Based on the Natural Law, based on Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, the Catholic holds that openness to life and the unity of the spouses are the primary purposes of marriage.  Furthermore, we hold that it is precisely these fundamental purposes that are for the good of the spouses and which lead to their fulfillment and flourishing.

 Ideas have consequences.  We need to be careful about what we permit to influence our thoughts and opinions because that translates into our beliefs and our actions.  I fear that it is fashionable, especially these days and in the arena of the faith, to want quick and easy answers and to not treat seriously that Scripture and Tradition are our guides and that they need to be carefully studied.  If we are people of faith who know Jesus to be God and master of our life, then popular opinion in society needs much greater scrutiny so that we make sure we are not led astray.  For the consequence of being led astray would mean not only the possibility of being wrong but could also mean we are not worthy to attain to heavenly resurrection.

 The Maccabean brothers in the first reading give us a powerful example of just how important it is to be aware of which ideas we permit to form and influence us.  These seven brothers, together with their valiant mother, are examples of fidelity in the face of the popular and secular thinking of their time.  When societal pressure and the secular force of the king demanded they violate God’s law they refused and died for that faith.  Their witness remains for us today.  For as much as we value the present life, and we should, we can’t compromise the offer of the life to come.  If we permit ourselves to be formed by the uncritical adoption of popular societal opinion how will we ever hope, to be like the Maccabees, to provide an example of fidelity in our time?  Ideas have consequences.  We come from God and we are made for Him and we are called to return to Him.  In the meantime, we have the duty to stand as witnesses to divine truth so that others reject falsehood and share our hope for a heavenly resurrection.  As we prayed in the Collect of this Holy Mass: “Almighty God, …keep from us all adversity, so that… we may pursue in freedom of heart the things that are yours.”

Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXXI per Annum C

3 November 2019

 Still on Jesus’ extended journey to Jerusalem narrated by St. Luke, in the verses immediately before today’s Gospel passage, just outside the city gate of Jericho Jesus had healed a blind beggar who wanted to see.  Now inside the city, amid throngs of people, Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus.  Zacchaeus could see with his eyes; his eyes functioned properly.  The Gospel narrative tells us important details, however, about Zacchaeus’ moral stature, not just his physical height.  Tax collectors were viewed as public sinners.  The Israelites who were tax collectors were viewed as cheats among God’s people because they cooperated with the occupying Roman government to take money from their own kind.  Added to that, tax collectors made money by taking their own cut from their own people.  Zacchaeus is not just any tax collector but a “chief tax collector AND a wealthy man.”  First century ears would hear this description and immediately hear that Zacchaeus was a very grave, dishonest, and public sinner.  The difference between the blind beggar and Zacchaeus then becomes clear: Unlike the blind beggar, Zacchaeus had the use of his eyes but he is morally blind and in spiritual darkness for he is lost and headed to eternal destruction.  The final line of the Gospel selection fills in the picture of just how important for salvation was Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”

I find this Gospel account intriguing for who is doing the seeking.  The first part of the Gospel shows us that Zacchaeus had a strong desire to see Jesus.  He fights his way in the crowd but, being short, he knows he won’t be able to catch a glimpse of Jesus.  Zacchaeus desires to see Jesus and he employs whatever is necessary to see him.  But as Jesus passes by notice that the subject switches and it is Jesus who is doing the seeking.  Jesus, who is, as the first reading said, the “Lord and lover of souls,” reads Zacchaeus’ heart.  Jesus knows that despite his great sin, Zacchaeus is in the process of changing.  Zacchaeus’ desire to see Jesus is not a matter of his eyes, which function well, but of his faith and its expression in moral conversion.  And so, it is Jesus who stops and looks up at Zacchaeus.  Jesus meets Zacchaeus’ desire and Zacchaeus’ efforts, and so Jesus calls out to Zacchaeus with an invitation for more intimate life and communion with him.  “Come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.”  As the light of new life dawns on Zacchaeus he moves from being the chief tax collector who has cheated everyone to – we might say – being the chief of stewardship who now gives half of his belongings to the poor and who repays those he has extorted by repaying four times over – far more than required by Jewish law.  When you have Jesus, the greatest treasure, well, giving up material things is of comparatively little consequence.

 What are you seeking in life?  Or better yet, Whom are you seeking in life?  Is it Jesus?  Is it a relationship with him?  Is it salvation in his kingdom?  And if you want to seek Jesus are you taking a cue from Zacchaeus and using the means necessary to accomplish that goal?  Are you rising up, like climbing that sycamore tree, to place your eyes on Jesus?  Are you ready and willing to receive Jesus with joy today into your house?  If I say I seek Jesus but I’m not working to focus my way of thinking and acting to be like the Gospel, then not only am I NOT climbing that tree to see Jesus, but I’m actually descending; I’m digging a hole.  If I want to see Jesus but I won’t battle that tendency to gossip or to drink heavily, or any other sin, then not only am I NOT climbing that tree, but I’m actually digging a hole.  If I say I seek Jesus but I won’t work to eradicate lust and to live greater purity of heart, mind, and body, then I’m not placing myself in a position to see Jesus; rather, I’m digging a hole.  If I hang out in the crowd somewhere near Jesus but I don’t make the effort to pray and to confess my sins then I’m not making my way up that tree, but I’m digging a hole.  That hole won’t help me see Jesus.  But it will swallow up my body and result in seeing damnation!  The choice to let oneself be transformed by Jesus is yours and it is mine.  Ultimately, what it comes down to, as it did for Zachhaeus, is will I let myself be found by Jesus?  Will I put myself where I can be found by Jesus?

 Jericho is a place in the Old Testament where walls tumbled down so that God’s people could enter the fortified city and be victorious.  That setting in today’s passage – Jericho – is rich then.  What walls need to tumble down in our lives, walls that prevent us from seeing Jesus?  What walls in our moral life prevent us from entering deeper life with Jesus?  What walls in our spiritual life keep us distant from the Lord who seeks us and who desires us to have salvation?  Truly seek Jesus.  Truly desire life with him.  And then, like Zacchaeus, employ the effort necessary to make that happen.  And you know what?  Jesus will look up at you, tell you he’s been seeking you, and then he’ll ask to come dwell with you while the grumblers and complainers remain lost and unsaved.  The salvation that Jesus brings – the salvation that he himself is! – means that he invites us to come down from the tree while he himself climbs up the tree: not a sycamore tree, but the tree that is the wood of the Cross, where all who look upon him lifted high (cf. Jn. 3:14-15; Num. 21:8-9) find that “today salvation has come to this house.”

Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXIX per Annum C

20 October 2019

 This weekend I am going to continue reflections on the state of things in the Church and in the world, motivated by the recent abuse report from our Archdiocese.  The sinful and criminal scourge of sexual abuse together with the moral rot within so much of our leadership that has contributed to failures in handling abuse is a subject that I think we simply must talk about and it cannot be swept under the rug.  I think it is also owed to you to hear words on this from a priest.  Given the realities of disorder and immorality in our society and within the Church I do NOT, sadly, anticipate that this will be the last time we have to reflect upon this topic.  But I do hope that a new level of transparency is happening now, which can only bode well for the witness the Church can give to our world such that other institutions and groups might be driven to more transparently address abuse where we know it also takes place in the secular world.  In God’s Providence, His Sacred Word in the scripture selections this weekend seems quite appropriate for the pulse I sense in our community.  In particular, I find great consolation in the Old Testament (first reading) image of fraternal support and intercessory prayer: Moses having help holding up the staff to gain victory for God’s people.  And I find consolation in considering the new staff of God, that is the Cross of Jesus, by which on the hill of Calvary his arms are outstretched to gain us the ultimate victory of salvation.  And then the perfect Gospel for us today.  Maybe I shouldn’t assume to attribute this to you as a group, but I know this Gospel speaks to me: Jesus gives his disciples a parable “about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.”

Thank you, Lord!  That’s just the message I needed to hear right now because weariness I think describes my general sentiment.  Maybe that resonates with you too.  All week I have been reflecting upon weariness and trying to notice how weariness is just sort of hanging in the air.  The original Greek in this passage that we translate in English as “weary” has a rich variety of meaning.  It refers to what can happen when we are in a bad situation, when we are immersed in suffering or in evil.  The literal root of the word refers to the tendency to faint or to turn coward when being “in evil.”  The connotation of the word in this use carries the sense of being disappointed, or losing heart, or growing weary when we suffer evil.  Now, to be clear, I am not at all suggesting that there isn’t joy in daily living or that there aren’t so many good things that take place over the course of a day.  However, when I stop to think and to reflect upon the state of affairs in our world, both the secular world outside and the state of affairs inside the Church, I think I notice a sense of being fatigued, of being dissatisfied, and being impatient.  Maybe I’m not the only one.

Looking at the broader secular world things seem more and more unhinged from truth and reality.  And more to the point, the velocity with which we have become unhinged seems to have increased exponentially.  I suggest that our political discourse in the United States can serve as the magnifying glass to see the dissolution in our secular world.  Looking into that magnifying glass I think we see a fanatical blood lust for abortion on demand, that seems like its own evil, distinct from the fact of the evil of abortion itself.  I think we also see a rapid rise in the tyranny of the transgender movement which, frankly, just looks like complete chaos.  Switching gears now to look to the Church, I don’t think we can just assume that life within the Church is our little safe haven because disorder and chaos mark the Church too, at least in her human membership.  More and more I hear from so many Catholics who are disturbed by the confusing decisions, documents, and actions that come even from the Vatican.  There is a Synod of bishops going on currently in Rome and it, like the couple of previous synods in the last few years, seems determined to sew confusion even in already settled matters of doctrine and in long-standing disciplines.  We look to our bishops, but so many seem to be lacking real apostolic courage to proclaim authentic Catholic faith when it might cost them popularity among people or among fellow bishops, or even higher ups in Rome.  How much do they need to hear today’s second reading from St. Paul: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, … proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient.”  Added to all this is the great sadness of the abuse scandal and the complete loss of trust it carries with it.  I’m not going to burden us with any more observations than these few examples.  Again, maybe it is just me, but I know I need to hear the divine command to not grow weary, to not become a coward, to not despair.  Rather, we pray always and await God to secure the rights of His chosen ones and to do justice speedily.

 So what do we do?  What can we do here?  First of all, our turbulent times outside and inside the Church are a painful but important lesson that our firm and lasting foundation given to us by Jesus is Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.  Our only answer and solution to the problems in society and in the Church is to be more deeply immersed in authentic Catholic Tradition.  That Tradition is the full deposit of God’s Word to us and contains the spoken, oral teaching and discipline of the Apostles and that privileged portion of oral teaching written down in the Sacred Scriptures.  To be immersed in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition gives us an anchor and a firm foundation that does not move even though the winds of chaos batter us.  Secondly, taking the lesson from today’s Gospel, we must be persistent in prayer and not give in to weariness.  You and I want our prayers answered right away, correct?  I have some sobering news for us.  Notice that final line of today’s Gospel?  Jesus said, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  I hate to have to tell you this but that seems to frame Jesus’ teaching in this Gospel in the terms of the end times, meaning that Jesus is saying the justice and the vindication that will speedily come from God is in reference to the final judgment.  In other words, he does not mean that we should expect our prayers to bring a speedy resolution of earthly injustice.  And not, sadly, on our timeline.  So, we must be determined to pray and to be persistent and to not become weary of the events of our times.  I promised you some guidance in our prayer response in light of our local abuse report.  (1) I suggest that we invoke the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph in our prayers, with a specific focus of having before our eyes authentic feminine and masculine examples of discipleship.  The daily Rosary is clearly a great prayer to adopt.  (2) I suggest that we make time to be committed to be before the Lord in our Adoration Chapel and to make every effort to incorporate adoration into our spiritual life.  To be there simply before the Lord who is present.  To raise to him all the concerns that rise up in our hearts.  And to have ourselves prepared to receive from his open Heart the gift of merciful love that flows so abundantly from that Divine Heart.  (3) I suggest that you consider how you might make attendance at daily Mass possible.  To be more regularly, frequently, nourished by the Sacred Scriptures proclaimed at Mass and to receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Lord more regularly strengthens us in battle.  And, finally, (4) something we will do together is that on the first three Wednesdays of November we will move the daily Mass into the main church and we will offer those Masses in particular for reparation for the sin of abuse and for the healing of victims.  As you responded so enthusiastically to this last year, I hope you will make the effort to join together on those first three Wednesdays of November for the evening daily Mass held here in the main church.

  In the first reading, God’s people were victorious against a fierce enemy while Moses held his arms aloft with the staff of God.  Moses was not alone.  He had the help of others to raise the staff.  That gives us an early example of intercessory prayer and the value of coming together in mutual support and prayer.  My friends, the new staff of God is the Cross of Jesus, where his arms are spread out for our salvation.  The psalm today tells us we lift our eyes toward the mountain whence shall come our help.  Lifting our eyes to the mountain and to the Cross is precisely what we do sacramentally at the Holy Mass.  In the raised sanctuary, like the Hill of Calvary, we set our eyes upon the ultimate victory of God, both the crucifixion by which the debt of sin is paid, and upon the resurrected flesh of Jesus Christ given to us in Holy Communion to aid our weariness!  If exhaustion, loss of trust, and loss of hope wage war upon you then hear the Gospel remind you how much more the just Judge will respond to our persistent prayers.

In the face of so many challenges both in secular culture and in the Church, and in places far away and also near, what you and I can do is to live the orthodox Catholic faith in the only place that matters for us: Here and now… in the family, the domestic Church; in the witness of our lives out in our small segment of the world, at work, at school, in our neighborhood, in gatherings of friends; and in this parish.  This is our sphere of influence.  This is where we are called to pray always and to help one another when we grow weary.  This is the place where the lives of the saints – YOU –  these saints are made!  That “book,” we might call it, of local holiness is the answer to present crisis and it needs to be written upon the pages of our very lives.  Gods gives us the grace – the “ink,” so to speak – to write that story.  God the Father’s answer to this fallen world is Jesus Christ.  But we must never forget that by faith and baptism we have been made members of the Body of Christ.  And so, it is up to you and to me to respond to God’s gifts and to be disciplined and zealous in our cooperation with His grace so that we become more and more the living image of Christ in our broken world.

Audio: Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In his homily for this Sunday, Fr. Stephen Hamilton once again reflects upon the state of the Church in light of the recent clergy abuse report released by the archdiocese.

Reading 1 EX 17:8-13
Responsorial Psalm PS 121:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
Reading 2 2 TM 3:14-4:2
Alleluia HEB 4:12
Gospel LK 18:1-8

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVIII per Annum C

13 October 2019

 Once we get past Labor Day one presumes most people have settled back into a regular routine with a new academic year under way at schools and a new formation year in full swing at the parish.  Parish programming running full-steam means the parish budget sees a dramatic uptick in expenses.  And this is also a time of year when we have the joy of seeing and greeting new faces who have recently joined the parish.  For all of these reasons it is a fairly common practice in parishes in the early fall to address stewardship, a time to reflect upon and to renew our call to sacrificial giving and our use of time, talent, and treasure.  Stewardship is one of the foundational practices of a disciple who believes in Jesus and who believes what the words mean to say that Jesus is the master of my life.  I previously told you that I would be specifically addressing parish finances and last month I had set this weekend for that talk.  But the recent release of the investigative report of abuse allegations in our archdiocese causes me to conclude that it would be more prudent for me to delay that talk for a few more weeks as we each wrestle with our reactions and pray about our response to that report.  Since it is helpful for current and new parishioners who do not know about or use our electronic giving program, Faith Direct, we are still doing a normal fall promotion of Faith Direct.  Faith Direct materials can be found in the narthex and an invitation will be coming to you by email.  But my more detailed treatment of parish finances and our common responsibility for sacrificial giving will wait until at least next month.  Together with that delay, and as I organized last year, I want you to know that I am taking time to pray and to consider parish opportunities for prayer and penance as our spiritual response to our local report.         

 I think the Gospel selection today teaches us a basic principle for life that applies equally to our spiritual life with God.  That lesson is a two-fold awareness: First, the awareness of ourselves and our afflictions.  And, secondly, the awareness of what God is doing in us.  One of the challenges of modern life marked by its frenetic pace, noise, and interruptions is that we can be easily swept along in daily living with little discipline to spend time in reflection and prayer.  The result is that we can tend to be rather numb and unaware of what stirs within us, the good and the bad.  My friends, we aren’t meant to be machines.  We are a unity of body and soul, mind and heart, reason and faith.  Emphasize the one to the exclusion of the other and you aren’t living a fully human life.  How easily and frequently we bury our faces in the backlit screen of a phone or other device, I think, serves as the sign for how easily we can be swept up in distractions that make us less aware of all that stirs in us.  Distraction is one thing; but the result is my main concern as a pastor.  The result is loss of self-awareness and awareness about God’s work with us and in us.  The Gospel shows us how important this basic principle of awareness is.

I can recall events of life when I have wondered why did I react to a given situation in the way I did?  And I have been surprised upon deeper reflection to realize that my reaction was less about the facts of the given situation and more about something else under the surface.  I can recall times of life when, much to my surprise, I came to realize that something like fear or shame or sadness was the deeper reality that explained my surface reactions.  Maybe you would agree that it is generally better overall health and functioning to be aware of what stirs inside you.  But I suggest there is a still more important reason for awareness than just overall health.  And that reason is because awareness impacts our relationship with God, our admitting the truth of what we each bring to the relationship with God.  And it impacts our ability to notice what God is doing in us.

 I’ll give a couple of examples from my own experience.  It took me years to finally notice and admit anger with God about some experiences of life.  I wondered why my prayer seemed dry or why God seemed distant.  I was tempted to believe He wasn’t there for me, wasn’t there in my attempts to pray.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that God was waiting for me where the anger was.  In other words, it was really I who was not authentically there in prayer.  God was at the place where I really was, where I needed to be… but I had to be aware and admit and go to the anger to find Him.  Another example from just a few years ago was when the priests of the archdiocese were gathered to learn about how we would each run the recent archdiocesan capital campaign in our parishes.  In that gathering, I asked some rather pointed questions, with just enough edginess, that unwittingly I became branded as “the opposition.”  But you know what I realized upon further self-reflection?  My reaction was really fear, more than it was any opposition to the campaign strategy or to the things the campaign would support.  I was afraid to have to directly ask someone for money.  I was afraid of rejection.  I was afraid of having to rely on someone else and to appear needy.  And going still deeper I had to admit it made me insecure, and I don’t like that.  And that is where this awareness took a particularly important spiritual turn.  I had to ask myself, so where do I place my security?  And I had to notice that I wasn’t placing my security in God.  You see, if I know and trust that God is my security then I can both have or not have money or resources and all will be well.  If I have God as my security then I can both give money and resources to others, or receive money and resources from others and its okay.  If I know and trust that God is my security then I can ask someone else for a pledge gift and whether they say yes or no, my security doesn’t change because it is in God and not in a person’s response to the request.  Learning the value of awareness has been for me not only a good life lesson for natural health; it has been a powerful lesson about spiritual health because awareness permits me to be honest, sincere, real, and authentic in my relationship with God.  That in turn helps me take note of what God is doing in me and to then be able to make a response to Him.

 I suggest awareness is a valuable lesson for us from the Gospel today.  It is really quite simple but profound.  It’s a lesson that is easy to miss in the scene with the lepers.  But listen again.  “As [Jesus] was entering a village, ten lepers met him,… saying ‘Jesus, Master!  Have pity on us!’  And when he saw them, he said, ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’  As they were going they were cleansed.  And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God… and fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.”  Only one of them realized.  It’s the lesson of awareness.  And it had a direct impact on the healed leper’s relationship with God because that awareness led him back to Jesus in a posture of worship (he fell at his feet) and in gratitude.  Leprosy is a clear affliction, a disease.  But the truth is we each have and carry afflictions, both physical and spiritual, some obvious and public, like leprosy would be; others, more subtle or hidden.  Perhaps it is those hidden spiritual diseases that are even more dangerous than something like an obvious physical disease.  I say, “more dangerous,” because we can remain unaware of hidden disease, or we can simply hide it, leaving it unconfessed and unaddressed.  Is our awareness of our afflictions and awareness of what God is doing in us a critical lesson with spiritual implications?  I think so.  I think the Gospel shows us just how much is riding on awareness.  The passage doesn’t tell us everything that happened with the other nine healed lepers.  We know they were physically healed.  But what about deeper healing in their relationship with God?  What about the deeper matter of their salvation?  Can we know anything about that?  I think we can.  For only one of the ten – the one who was aware and realized – heard these words: “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”