Audio: The Nativity of the Lord (Christmas) - Mass During the Night

Homily by Fr. Hamilton at the Mass During the Night on the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas).

Reading 1 Is 9:1-6

Responsorial Psalm Ps 96: 1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13.

Reading 2 Ti 2:11-14

Alleluia Lk 2:10-11

Gospel  Lk 2:1-14

Second Sunday of Advent

Dominica II Adventus B
6 December 2020

“Attitude is everything!”  It’s a common phrase highlighting that a good attitude and positivity really can change your outlook and can frame your life in such a way that, even when things are difficult and maybe not so good, you can be positive, and joyful, and happy.  And there seems to be some truth to that notion.  A positive good attitude breeds more of the same.  Get outside and enjoy some sunlight and fresh air, put away negative thoughts, laugh around a campfire with a good beverage, or just stop and call to mind the good you do have… these and so many other simple things are likely to positively impact you and those around you.  And studies even show that such positivity and focus on the good can have a real measurable impact on a person’s overall health and wellbeing.

It seems fundamental to our nature that we are drawn to goodness.  It is attractive to us.  We love hearing good and positive news.  And on the flip side, aren’t we often aghast when something evil and tragic happens?  Think of an attack that takes many lives.  Our reaction to such things reveals that it’s like we can’t even imagine the degree of evil that sometimes displays itself in our world, so fundamentally good are we.  And can’t we say that too – that negativity, bad things, and evil really do shock us – can’t we say that too demonstrates our fundamental orientation to goodness and positivity?  Even if people who do not ascribe to faith would not want to admit a divine origin of the goodness in us, they still recognize the basic fact of our goodness and our attraction to it.  As a person of faith, I am inclined to see in our natural orientation to positivity and goodness signs of our origins.  We believe we are made in God’s image and likeness, right?  If the supreme Good Himself made us, shouldn’t we expect that marks and characteristics of our Maker are present in us, just as an artist or craftsman leaves his marks in the things he makes?  Our fundamental goodness and orientation to positive things can be considered like the thumbprint of an artist in the clay he molds.  God made us and so no surprise that goodness and positivity resonate in us.

So, what am I doing with this homily this weekend?  Well, I’ve written a few self-help pop-psychology books I’ll be selling in the narthex… No!  No moral therapeutic deism here.  Far more than a basic self-help principle that “attitude is everything,” there is a faith principle and a theological truth we desperately need to latch onto.  We have Good News!  We have been claimed by Good News Himself, the Word of God in our flesh, Jesus the Christ!  We need to spend far more time with, give far more focus to, the Good News than we do the bad news.  Doing so will put you more in touch with the fundamental truth that God loves you and that He is in control.  Doing that will positively impact you.  A solid grasp on the fundamentals of our teaching can also serve to remind us of these things.  Fundamental matters like, God is good and He made the world to be good.  By the guilt of our first parents, sin and disorder entered this world, yes.  But God did not abandon us.  In His great love He sent His Son to suffer the disorders of our world and to bear our sins.  Jesus redeemed us.  And though as we pray soberly in the Salve Regina, we still walk in this valley of tears, we have forgiveness for sin and grace to advance in holiness toward the hope of eternal salvation.  This is Good News!

It is so easy to be wrapped up in and saturated by the bad news.  Yes, we know things in our world need fixing.  We are disturbed by the evil and lies that surround us.  We have anxiety about the state of affairs in our world, our leaders, and their agendas.  And we have worries and frustrations about Church leaders too.  We each have our personal struggles and pains.  No matter what you think of the science or the motivations, together we bear a psychological exhaustion with the events of this year.  I think I’ll scream if I have to think or say “COVID-19” one more time.  And I’m just about ready to trash all the “Closed” signs on every other pew.  Yes, negativity, darkness, and bad news is out there.  But if we believe in Jesus then we must catch ourselves when we give more attention to the bad news, to the kingdom of darkness, than we do to the Good News and the Kingdom of Light!  We don’t have to be naïve and pollyanish about our own sins and the problems in the world and in the Church.  Sober acknowledgement and challenge of those things is needed.  But be careful!  If we have been claimed for Christ and if we truly live as his disciples then we are a people of the Good News!

You know, right, that “Good News” and “glad tidings” are literal meanings of the word we translate as ‘Gospel’?  This weekend in the Scriptures the little appearances and reminders of Good News jumped out at me.  “Give comfort to my people, says your God.”  “Speak tenderly.”  “In the desert prepare the way of the Lord!  Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!”  We should evaluate ourselves.  Think of what others who really know you might really say about you and your attitude, the things you say, the way you act, the things everybody can read on social media.  Are you and I known more for spreading the bad news?  God’s word through Isaiah said, “herald of glad tidings; cry out at the top of your voice… herald of good news!”  I know we have worries.  Legitimate ones.  I know it is easy to be wrapped up in what is going poorly.  I know things can feel like a desert or a wasteland.  But still at the start of a new Church liturgical year, something about the Gospel today caught my attention.  Did you notice how St. Mark gets right to the point?  Whereas other Gospels spend significant space describing the conception, the birth, and the infancy of Jesus, how the whole story began, St. Mark makes a beeline to refer to his writing as the ‘Gospel’: “The beginning of the Gospel,” the first line today said.  Again, that word for Good News and glad tidings.

Brothers and sisters, by faith and by baptism we have been brought into the Kingdom of Light inaugurated in our midst.  Yes, we still await the final fulfilment of that Kingdom in Heaven.  And yes, in this in between time of waiting, so characteristic of Advent, we have to suffer the disorders of our fallen world, we have to suffer our own sins and the sins of those around us.  But we cannot give more thought and attention and energy to the bad news than we do to the Good News that defines us.  Think of it this way: We cannot live as children of the light as effectively as we must if we give more attention to the Devil and his kingdom and the bad news than we do to Jesus and his Kingdom and the Good News.  We have received the message of faith.  We are called to be messengers of the same for others.  “A voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths’.”

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVIII per Annum A
11 October 2020

I want to engage in a thought experiment with you.  Suppose you want to build a new home.  You ask around to get the best contractor you can find.  You are enticed by one builder who comes with many recommendations.  The builder has a great reputation in the region for using some of the best quality materials especially for roofing structures and for safe rooms.  Living in Oklahoma, the reputation for great quality safe rooms and roofing draws you in.  But as you meet and interview the builder you discover that he likes to build his houses on sand.  It seems obvious to you that building on sand is not a good idea but every time you bring it up he keeps insisting that his roofing and safe rooms are of the highest quality in the region.

But does the house stand?  Does the safe room stand especially when you need it most?  These would be your natural and logical questions.  Sure, the materials the builder uses might be the best around, they might somehow be better and more cost-effective than any other builder on the market.  But, doesn’t the foundation matter?  We would likely all say that a builder should have good materials and a sound building plan for a safe room and a roof.  It is good that he has such high-quality materials and reputation for such things.  But… the foundation!  How can you talk about your roofing and safe room materials if the entire foundation of the home is not stable and, in fact, is a false foundation?

The critical importance of a foundation is obvious to us in the material realm, something like a house as I just described.  In fact, I bet most of us would say the builder’s claims and those who celebrate his reputation are absurd.  It makes no sense to sell how good your roofing work is and your safe room materials are when, being built on a poor foundation, the whole thing crumbles anyway.  This same logic consistently applies and should be easily seen in the moral realm too.  Foundations matter.  Fundamental things matter.  First things matter.  You get first things, fundamental things, incorrect and what follows will not have the value it should have, or will not be reliable, because the most fundamental issues are flawed.  A literal house and a figurative moral house cannot stand on a flawed foundation.

Applying this thought experiment to the moral realm I want to offer some comments this weekend on our upcoming elections and our moral duty as Catholics to be involved in the proper ordering of our society by the important task of voting and voting with a well-formed Catholic conscience.

At the outset I need to anticipate the pushback.  This is not an inappropriate topic for a sermon in church.  And it does not violate any perceived tax law regarding tax-exempt institutions and the separation of Church and State.  My words today are about moral principles and platform issues and NOT about any one particular candidate or political party.  Part of the proof for this is that these words today can be applied not only to this year’s election but to any future one.  In other words, this isn’t just about this year.  In fact, still more proof that this is not about any one party or candidate, a portion of what I say today is borrowed (I cut and pasted it) from words I spoke on this topic in the lead up to the 2004 and the 2008 elections – when there were entirely different candidates and when there were some notable differences in the national party platforms.  In other words, the same moral principles apply no matter the election year and no matter the party and no matter the candidates.

Patriotism (I spoke on that back on the July 4th weekend) is a virtue and participating in civic life by voting is one fulfillment of patriotism.  As Christians we do have a responsibility to God to seek to order this world He has made according to the Natural Law and in a way that promotes godly life.  There is separation of Church and State.  That principle seeks to prevent the formation of a state-sponsored official religion, and to prevent a person’s religion being the reason that person flourishes or does not flourish in the State.  Separation of Church and State should not be understood however to mean that religious people or religious values are not welcome in the public square.  It can be very easy for us to be cynical about political life, politicians, and voting.  Especially with national politicians you might hear it said that they are all in bed with lobbyists and big money.  On the flip side, others might claim a politician’s record or platform might appear great but that he or she isn’t really sincere and is just doing the right thing to get votes.  These comments may in fact be true.  But our voting should not be based on personality or presumed insincerity of a given candidate.  I know that if I were to make voting decisions based on whose characteristics are most likable, or just least offensive, I would cast very different votes than voting based on policy.  We should vote based on a candidate’s stated platform, what the record shows he or she is likely to do, and based on those issues that are most critical to the common good and which do not permit, morally speaking, differences of opinion.  In other words, the well-formed Catholic conscience first looks at those issues that are most fundamental and foundational to the common good.  There are some issues in our fallen world that are objective moral absolutes and there are other issues that permit diverse opinion based on prudential judgment.  It’s analogous to the difference between the foundation of a home and those things that come later like a safe room and the roof.

As with any moral matter we must do good and avoid evil.  The same is true when evaluating issues, party platforms, and political candidates.  Some issues involve such a grave disorder of what God has established in creation, such disrespect to fundamental human dignity, that they are always and everywhere immoral and can never be legitimately supported.  Such issues are called intrinsically evil (USCCB, Faithful Citizenship, 22; hereafter FC).  As people of faith our non-negotiable opposition to these is demanded by the gravity of the issues themselves.  A prime example of this is the intentional taking of innocent human life.  Human life and the right to life is the most fundamental human good and it is the condition for all other human rights and goods.  Just as it is not sound reasoning to overlook a home builder’s poor choice to build on sand while advocating his great safe rooms and roofing, likewise it is not good moral reasoning to focus on a platform’s or candidate’s great plans for dealing with poverty and education or other issues if you overlook his support of an intrinsic evil like the taking of innocent human life.  The basic and foundational right to life is the condition for all other goods.  Abortion is always and everywhere an intrinsic evil and while something like euthanasia is also an example of an intrinsically evil violation of human life – by the numbers – abortion kills thousands more lives daily than does euthanasia and so abortion demands more of our scrutiny when voting.  To be sure, the right to life is linked to other rights and other issues in our civic life that either help or harm the flourishing of human life.  However, it is insufficient moral formation to treat the right to life as just one issue among many.  Frankly, a party, or a platform, or a candidate could have the best sounding ideas for other issues related to life (like education and health care) but if all that is predicated on escaping the womb it is a very weak and immoral platform indeed.  “It is a mistake with grave moral consequences to treat the destruction of innocent human life merely as a matter of individual choice. A legal system that violates the basic right to life on the grounds of choice is fundamentally flawed” (FC 22).  Other issues that are intrinsic evils and are non-negotiable for a well-formed Catholic conscience, though not an exhaustive list, are embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and same-sex marriage.

Often our electoral choices present to us the challenge that one candidate supports one intrinsic evil, while the other candidate supports a different intrinsic evil.  How do we choose between the two?  In such cases we likely have to evaluate the magnitude of the given evil.  As I said earlier, abortion kills far more people and demands more attention and is not equaled by the number of times euthanasia is committed.  For example, I looked at stats from the State of Oregon, a state which permits both abortion and euthanasia.  In 2016, publicly available numbers indicate that 133 deaths were registered due to euthanasia that year versus 8,942 registered due to abortion.  Though both issues are intrinsically evil, when faced with having to make an electoral choice between the two it is clear which issue demands more attention since one is significantly more prevalent than the other.  And what if both candidates support the same intrinsic evil?  In that case, we would have to try to discern which candidate’s platform and record might at least lessen the evil or be less extreme.  In most cases we will find a mixed bag due to each candidate supporting one non-negotiable issue over another.  Thus, we have to evaluate whether a candidate gets it right on the fundamental right to life, and then on other non-negotiable issues try to pick the candidate whose policies would do less harm.  A well-formed Catholic conscience can never cast a good moral vote hoping to advance an intrinsic evil supported by a candidate if you are voting precisely to promote that same intrinsic evil.

Still other issues in our civic life permit a variety of response and are based upon prudential judgment.  They are not classified as non-negotiable issues because they are not intrinsic evils.  We should also be interested in these issues, things like promotion and defense of the public order, addressing poverty, health care, education, respect for the environment, crime, civil rights, judicial appointments, capital punishment, immigration, and international peace.  But, like the roof or the safe room in my analogy, these issues are less fundamental than the basic good of human life.  They do admit a variety of opinions while maintaining a well-formed Catholic conscience.  We do not want to ignore any of these issues.  Yet, we must also recognize there is a hierarchy of issues.  The foundation, the fundamental good of human life comes first. Get that wrong and no matter how good other policies sound really what you have is a house of cards.

As Catholics with a well-formed Catholic conscience we apply these moral principles to party platforms and to particular candidates so as to make the best decisions we can when we vote.  We have dual citizenship.  We are citizens of this country and of this world, the city of man.  Yet, by faith and baptism we are made citizens of heaven.  We are called to order this world in accord with the Natural Law, which anyone with reason can access and know, and we are called to order this world according to the commands of God even as we strive to be prepared to enter the heavenly wedding feast of the Father’s Son.  Among other things, our well-formed conscience and our moral deeds, reflected in our voting, they vest us like the image of the Gospel parable, in the proper wedding garment required of those who are both invited and chosen.

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXIII per Annum A
6 September 2020 

This weekend is a most embarrassing Gospel for modern ears.  It’s embarrassing because Jesus encourages and even demands that his disciples commit sin!  Jesus encourages the most grave modern sin that is universally denounced even by non-Christians… he encourages us to meddle in other people’s business and to be “judgmental.”  It’s as if a person’s soul and its eternal destination matters!  Now, I trust you see I am being a bit facetious.  Jesus, who is God, certainly is not encouraging sin.  And though we might be uncomfortable with fraternal correction and though we know in our modern setting that we are almost assuredly going to be denounced for practicing fraternal correction in religious and moral matters, it is NOT sin to correct another.  And, in fact, to confront another whose sin is grave and which places his soul in jeopardy is a serious obligation of charity – not just an idea you might try sometime if you really have to – but a serious obligation of a believer.  It is ironic, no, that in an age that quickly denounces fraternal correction as being judgmental, the same accusers easily and quickly trade in their pious sanctimony and become among the worst offenders who broadcast someone else’s faults, mistakes, and sins to listening ears or all over social media.

Despite the way modern ears may want to reject correction, we must be serious about the lesson from Jesus in this passage that there is an authentic fraternal correction and that it is something we may need to be prepared to do.  Now, to be sure, there can be wrong and bad ways to go about fraternal correction.  And there can be ways to go about it that are in fact being “judgmental”.  But it is equally true, we must admit and be clear, that the mere fact that some attempts at correction can go astray does not mean all attempts at fraternal correction are motivated by judgmentalism.  We certainly know that Jesus is encouraging an authentic fraternal correction that is serious, that is charitable, and that is personal in that it demands a sincere human encounter and interaction with a brother or sister.  Failure to do fraternal correction in a good and a holy way is easy to spot.  Going up to someone guilty of grave sin and initiating the contact by claiming he or she is going to hell is not likely to go well.  We can all think of images of true failures – even sinful failures at correction.  Have you seen images of some of those radical groups who claim to be Christian and who show up to protest at funerals or other gatherings, holding huge placards announcing how God hates certain people, or how God rejoices in the death of certain people?  Jesus does not encourage us to do that.  Yet, he also doesn’t encourage us to be weak.  And in an age that prizes individualism and is marked by relativism, as if each person is the center and arbiter of his own absolute moral truth, we must admit that we are in fact called to confront sin.  And we are called to do so in a specific way and with the heart of Christ.

This fraternal correction harkens back to some of the earliest biblical evidence for the common responsibility we have for one another.  We can note the biblical account of the brothers Cain and Abel.  When Cain killed his brother out of jealousy and God asked Cain where his brother was, Cain famously asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper” (cf. Gen. 4:9)?  God rejected that claim.  None of us is alone or an island unto ourselves.  We are brought into relationship and into community and we have responsibility to one another.  You can see why the first reading from the Prophet Ezekiel was selected and placed with the Gospel passage for this Sunday.  Here the Prophet Ezekiel is told that part of his duty is to be a watchman and someone who warns others.  If a wicked person is committing evil and the prophet does not speak out and attempt to convert the evil doer, God says the evil doer will die as is appropriate for his sin, but what’s more, the prophet will be held responsible for the death.  We are responsible for one another.  This lesson comes to deeper development in the instruction of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage about fraternal correction.

Now certainly these Scripture lessons have a direct and most serious application to the service of those who are prophets and, in the case of the Gospel, the apostles.  By extension this serves as instruction for those who follow after the apostles in shepherding Christ’s flock.  Thus, bishops and priests have a most serious obligation here.  And would that more in their ranks exhibited a noticeable courage to be watchmen in the Church for the salvation of souls.  We can and should pray for that.  And we should find charitable ways to motivate our shepherds to such courage.  But, by extension, we can apply this call to fraternal correction to others in the Body of Christ, as a call to all Christians to be so committed to the salvation of souls that we seek to speak out when we encounter a brother or sister in the faith sinning gravely.  Imagine the good that can be done for a soul when parents and family members speak out when a child is straying from the faith, supporting immoral lifestyles, cohabiting with a dating partner, or marrying outside the Church.  Imagine the good that can be done when a believer speaks to a friend and encourages a deeper conversion to the faith.  Imagine the good that can be done when a parent encourages a child or a friend encourages another person to go to confession or to be more faithful in attending Holy Mass.  And sometimes it’s the inverse.  It is a child who becomes the inspiration to the adults to draw closer to Christ.

No matter how uncomfortable we might be with fraternal correction and no matter how modern society might dismiss it as being judgmental, a lesson for us today is that we are our brother’s keeper and that to be a believer united to Jesus Christ as a member of his Body not only means that I myself must separate myself from sin and repent, but also that I must be concerned to see others in the community likewise leave sin behind.  We cannot be a part of Christ if we are not apart from sin.  See what I just did there?  In fact, acknowledging our own sinfulness, making regular use of confession, and having zeal to change our own ways likely helps us also be in the best position to approach a fellow disciple who needs correction, and to do so with the mind of Christ.

Some things stand out in this Gospel about how we are to approach this duty of fraternal correction.  First, we must note that we are speaking here of serious sin.  Sin that if not stopped places a person outside of the fold of the Church.  That’s why Jesus says, if they won’t listen even to the Church treat them as a Gentile or a tax collector.  That is, someone cut off and excluded from community.  Jesus is not encouraging us to be busybodies about smaller or lesser sins.  Yes, it’s obnoxious that a fellow disciple lied and claimed to not get your email.  Yes, it would be better if a disciple did not drop a colorful word.  Yes, it’s annoying that a fellow parishioner promised to bring the brownies to the meeting and then didn’t even both to show up!  This is not what Jesus is talking about.  He’s talking about serious sin that cuts someone off from the community.  Things like fornication outside of marriage, adultery, serious theft, using God’s Name in vain, idolatry and worship of false gods, not being in a valid marriage, etc.  Second, note how personal this is.  Don’t go broadcasting someone’s sin.  Jesus tells us to go to the person and he repeatedly reminds us this is a ‘brother.’  Go speak to the person alone.  If he won’t listen, then take one or two others.  If he still won’t listen then bring in the authority of the Church.  Have a direct personal encounter.  Let your brother or sister see your concern and hear from your heart of your love and concern for a gravely sinful situation.  I think the injunction to personal encounter here is instructive.  You have to have courage and own your concern and exhibit charity in order to look someone in the eyes and raise an uncomfortable topic.  It is comparatively easy and weak to do what most people do: avoiding touch issues altogether, trolling in the darkness online, assassinating someone’s character in tweets and facebook posts.  This is not Christian behavior.  Third, note the context here.  This Gospel passage fits in with what preceded and the lesson of seeking out what is lost.  What is the value underlying and motivating the confrontation of a sinner?  The motivation is not being “right” or showing yourself to have some imagined doctrinal or moral superiority.  Rather, what motivates the confrontation is the value of a fellow disciple, a human soul made in God’s image and likeness, the object of God’s love for whom He desires salvation.  This value can be seen in the Gospel language of having “won over” your brother.  The value is not the being right but gaining or winning a soul.  Finally, the goal of Jesus’ instruction is preventing a grave sinner from continuing in his sin with an unrepentant heart.  He invites us who are members of his Body to share in his mission to call others to repentance in order to have salvation.

When it comes down to it, do you believe that Jesus is God?  And do you believe that we must change our ways and be conformed to him to have salvation?  If you do, then fraternal correction really isn’t all that controversial.  If you don’t, well, today’s psalm spoke about a hardened heart.

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XVIII per Annum A
2 August 2020

After being rejected in his hometown of Nazareth (cf. Mt. 13:54-58) and after receiving the bad news about the death of his cousin John the Baptist (cf. Mt. 14:3-12) today’s Gospel selection begins with Jesus responding by withdrawing to a deserted place.  As on so many other occasions crowds hear of Jesus’ location and they form to get near him.  Some verses later the disciples are thinking logistics and practicalities of so many people being gathered that they ask the Lord to send people away because “this is a deserted place.”

We have had a lot of bad news lately and so much around us is deeply confusing and disturbing and lacking hope.  Many of us are confused, concerned, afraid, angry, or just mentally exhausted by the lack of stability.  Perhaps that explains why in my own reflections on this Gospel passage the two mentions of the “deserted place” stand out.  What does it mean to call the location of today’s passage a deserted place?  It clearly isn’t empty of people – because a very large crowd has gathered – but it is a place seemingly empty of possibility.  It is deserted in the sense of not being hospitable or convenient.  It is a deserted place because it is lacking in something necessary, in this case adequate food.  It is deserted in the sense that it is a place to leave and get away from in relationship to some place better.  What spiritual message can we find in reflecting upon our own deserted places?  What are our deserted places?

Maybe for us it is literally a location, literally a place, or a thing.  Maybe we would say it is the world around us.  We see its order seem to dissolve into chaos, civil unrest, the proliferation of ideological slogans and untested, unproven claims of widespread systemic injustice in our country and in her institutions.  Maybe the deserted place that comes to your mind is the humanity of the Church Universal.  So many bad stories of weak leadership, scandal, and criminal sin from those who owe God and owe us better.  The Church closed down for months.  Does that mean we have adopted a fatal notion that we are somehow non-essential?  The Church now opened, thanks be to God, but far from normal.  So many people still not back.  I keep detailed stats from our weekends of being reopened.  Our attendance is good compared to other parishes, but still our best weekend so far has been only 44% of our normal total average weekend attendance.  Maybe the Church is more literally a deserted place now than we’d like to imagine.

What else might be our deserted places?  Perhaps instead of some literal place, it is something existential.  Might a deserted place be some empty place in our life or in the life of a loved one, a friend, a spouse, or a child?  The deserted place might be some challenge in life.  Some suffering.  Some experience of difficulty that is dry and inhospitable.  A deserted place in life might be where we don’t have enough of something we need for a good and a holy life.  A deserted place could be some dark part of life where we think God is restrained from working.

Consider the places that come to mind when you reflect on where the Lord would like you to permit Him to be with you.  Is your inclination in the spiritual life to quickly say “let’s get out of here?”  “Let’s move away from here and go to where we have seemingly more richness and blessing?”  Sort of like the tendency of the disciples in the Gospel: “Dismiss the crowds [Lord] so that they can go… and buy food for themselves.”  Or we focus on what little we have and like the disciples we say, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.”  Jesus responds: “Bring them here to me.”  Bring what you have.  Bring what you think is not enough.  Bring yourselves.  Give it to me.  Let me do with it what you cannot do and what you think cannot be done with so little.

In the Old Testament God’s covenant is tied to the image of eating and drinking, it is tied to bread and wine.  We see this frequently in the prophecies of Isaiah (cf. 25) and it is the hint and reference at the conclusion of today’s first reading.  That reading called God’s people to come to a free, generous, and rich meal.  It said, “You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk.”  The notion of eating, the notion of a rich banquet meal, is connected to God’s covenant relationship with us.  Did you notice how that first reading mentioned this promise of rich food and then could conclude: “I will renew with you the everlasting covenant, the benefits assured to David?”

There are some striking similarities in this Gospel passage of the miraculous feeding to the Last Supper.  It takes place in the evening, as did the Last Supper.  The attendees recline on the grass, as the apostles reclined at table at the Last Supper.  There are the same actions and in the same order in this miracle as in the Last Supper.  Jesus took, blessed, broke, gave.  As much as we want to get away from our deserted places, might we take a lesson from the Gospel and see them as places where the Lord is ready to be present and to work and to do more than we can imagine in His covenant love for us?  To let him work there we have to resist the temptation to flee and to get away to some place we think is better.  We have to resist the temptation to take ourselves to where we think we already have a sufficiency, where we already have enough, where we have what we want, where we have what we think we need.  To let him work in our deserted places we have to give the Lord permission to work in us and with us.  Jesus told the disciples: “Bring them (the loaves and fish) here to me.”  We are invited to bring the truth of all that we have and all that we are to the Lord.  So that, like the actions in this passage and in the Last Supper, the Lord might take, and bless, and break, and give.  Oh, but the breaking part… can we just skip that part?  Not if our deserted places and not if we ourselves are to be brought into the Lord’s covenant.  It was in the Lord’s being broken on the Cross that we were saved.  It was in the breaking open of his tomb that we have hope for resurrection.  It is in the breaking of the bread that eyes are opened to the presence of Jesus.  So, yes, we have to remain in our deserted places.  We have to permit the Lord’s covenant work by bringing all to him.  In repentance and in confession we let him break what is sinful and bless what must be healed.  In Holy Communion, if we receive it, we are given the Lord’s total gift of self, recognizing in it a call to covenant life by which we too must give of ourselves.

Resist the impulse to flee, bring the Lord everything, and be with him even in the deserted places.  He will take, bless, yes, He will break, and He will give.  A covenant of newness of life will result if we will stay in the places that seem empty and if we will enter into relationship with Him there.  And if so we will find sufficiency beyond our expectation and a superabundance of blessing for there will still be more left over.  “They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over – twelve wicker baskets full.”

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XIV per Annum A
5 July 2020

Our Catholic philosophical and theological tradition identifies virtues.  Virtues are habitual and firm dispositions to do what is good.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church adds the following about virtues: “It allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself.  The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions” (CCC, 1803).  Those virtues called theological are direct gifts from God.  We can picture them as being infused within us by God as gifts that form and perfect our interior being.  As an extension or outgrowth of these gifts from God are those other virtues that are acquired by our effort, our training, and our personal discipline called moral virtues.  The moral virtues perfect our exterior actions, they aid the greater ease by which our exterior actions conform to our interior being once it has been transformed by God’s gifts.  St. Gregory of Nyssa says “The goal of a virtuous life is to become like God” (CCC 1803, footnote 63).

Focusing on the humanly acquired moral virtues, the Church’s tradition identifies the virtue of justice as one of the four main, or cardinal, moral virtues.  Justice is that habit and firm disposition to give to others what is owed to them, what is their due.  The virtue of giving to others what is owed to them is expressed in some different ways.  The great philosopher and theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, treats justice (Summa, II-II, Q. 101, Of Piety) in a way that fits well with the greatest command in the Gospels: the love of God and the love of neighbor.  Growing out from justice, like a branch on a tree, is the virtue of religion.  This is that specific moral virtue expressing justice by which we give to God what properly is His right.  The virtue of religion disposes us to give primary attention to the worship we owe to God and to live in accord with His image and likeness, in which we have been made.  At every Mass, once the gifts of bread and wine are prepared on the altar, the priest prays the following to the Heavenly Father, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation” to worship God as an act of thanksgiving.  It is just.  It accomplishes justice.  It is our duty and it saves us.  Again, continuing as an outgrowth, like a branch, the moral virtue of filial piety is an extension of justice that is directed to give what is due and owed to our parents and to our country.  Since we come from our parents and since we come from a particular fatherland we owe a certain reverence, respect, care, gratitude, and support to our parents, our relatives, our country, and our fellow citizens.  We are indebted to various persons who have had some important impact in our lives and to the place of our birth, the place of our nourishment and growth, that has governed and shaped us by its culture and its values.  The Greek and Latin term for ‘father’ is what forms the root for this filial piety toward one’s country, the patria.  We commonly call this piety to one’s patria patriotism.

In the turmoil presently enveloping our country, and since Independence Day coincides with this weekend, I want us to hear that patriotism, love for and respect for one’s country, is a virtue and it should mark our lives as Catholics and as Americans.  This is not a call to nationalism whereby one pretends one nation is morally superior to all others, or whereby one acts as if one’s nation does not have faults that need to be addressed.  It is also not a call to xenophobia, whereby foreigners or those of different cultures are feared or even hated.  Such ideas would not be virtuous at all.  Much like we might have a basic respect for a family member who has faults, a virtuous person likewise cannot flag in his love for his country, even while admitting the complicated history that marks her, a history complicated precisely because men and women of every age who form a nation and its history are men and women with a fallen nature who have both good and bad qualities.  I can both exercise a filial piety, a devotion and respect toward my parents and relatives and, at the same time, not support, recommend, or promote everything they do.  The same is true in our devotion to our country.  So, what might explain the wave of hostility and anti-American spirit that seems to be spreading across these United States of America?

There is confusion among our fellow citizens about what we owe our country.  When you consider that patriotism is part of the family of the cardinal virtue of justice this confusion (sadly) should not surprise us.  Since much of our country is confused about the nature of justice – what is owed to others – no surprise that further downstream we find laxity in the virtue of patriotism.  If you don’t have a right relationship with God first, don’t be surprised that relationships with other persons and toward property and places will be less virtuous and may even become vicious.  When more than one generation now has been raised in an atmosphere that is confused about the basic right to life, especially that of the unborn, we have a cataclysmic failure of justice and that will bear bad fruit beyond the most obvious and grave result of the tragedy of lost lives.  Less grave, but still disturbing and telling, signs of confusion about justice can be seen in the cascade of lawlessness and self-destruction, revisionist history and rage, directed toward statues and buildings and national parks.  Even the trend of kneeling out at the national anthem is a failure of patriotism, a failure of justice toward the country, what is owed to the country.  The moral reasoning for this is that if you want to promote authentic and lasting justice you can’t refuse to give what is owed and due in one arena in the hopes of accomplishing justice in another arena.

To be clear so that I am not misunderstood, there is a right to peaceably assemble and to protest in a way that promotes justice.  I fully support that.  There are fine examples of true and just protest in our country, including protests against racism.  But much of what the media these past weeks has portrayed as “protest” is actually rioting, anarchy, and criminal behavior.  Domestic terrorism is not authentic protest.  It is not just and it does not accomplish the virtue of justice.  Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of protestors show up annually for the March for Life in Washington, DC.  Crime and violence do not spike in that gathering.  Yet far fewer people show up these past weeks in any downtown American city or outside a police headquarters and suddenly people are violently beaten, businesses and cars are on fire, and vandalism leaves the place trashed.  I trust it is not at all difficult to see which is authentic and just protest, and which is not.

I think a spiritual source and one cause of the national crisis takes us right back to the root word from which we get patriotism.  It is a crisis of fatherhood.  I can’t prove it but I can’t help but sense and identify in the images of riots I see from across the country a seething and open rage rising from the absence of authentic fatherhood.  I won’t claim it is absolutely applicable to each rioter but I suspect that in most cases someone with a father, or at least a strong father, would not be doing the things we see rioters doing.  If a father was absent, or simply weak, or even harmful, what sense would a person have of the reverence and respect owed to parents, to others, and to one’s country?  There would be no reverence.  But the soul knows it ought to be there.  And it aches in the emptiness.  I think the Church bears her own responsibility in the crisis of fatherhood, but that is too much to treat in one sermon.  In the larger society the break-up of the family, the rise of fatherless children, and the destruction of authentic masculinity are the societal signs of this absence of fatherhood that I suspect is a spiritual pain and a root cause of the rage erupting across our land.

You and I may not have quick solutions or be able to solve a crisis on a national level, but we can respond locally.  First, in justice we give the best we can to God and continue to strengthen our relationship with our Heavenly Father, especially in worship, prayer, and personal conversion.  Among the many good things our parish does, and while continuing to reverence and promote authentic femininity, we need to promote and nurture masculinity and fatherhood.  We need to expect men to be men and to step into the battle, into the breech, to be mentors, leaders, and providers.  Most certainly and directly, being a good husband to your wife and being a good father to your children is of prime importance.  This fatherhood can extend to be mentors providing stability and influence to other boys, girls, children and teens, in school, in sports, and in religious formation settings.  I strongly suspect God will bless virtuous masculinity and fatherhood.  I strongly suspect that by it He will help form a strong and growing number of men and women who will positively form our culture now and well into the future according to the plans of our Constitution “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” (Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America).  May God protect our Nation from threats both foreign and domestic and may God bless the United States of America!