Homily - Palm Sunday

I want to keep it slightly shorter today. Two songs of my growing up days listening to Christian music for your reflection today. Just a little more meditation that fit well alongside the Passion narrative we just heard. If you can do it without falling asleep, it may benefit to close your eyes.

 1. Memoirs of St. Peter - we all ran away - denied him - “surely not I Lord”

  - Everyman (Rich Mullins)

2. A man at the end of his days may look back at all the pains, sorrows, the joys and the blessings, and say "I wouldn't change anything. I would have it just as God gave it." In the same way, God, who is outside of time and sees all of it at a glance, chose this death before He said Let there be Light. He chose this for you before you were born, knowing you would need it, knowing I would need it, knowing everything, and still loving you perfectly. You have never been, and never will be, unloved.

  - never been unloved (MWS)
 

Rich Mullins - Everyman
"Well he was out on a limb he was sitting in the shade
He'd led a hundred men and lived alone among the graves
He had a thousand questions and a million heartaches
He was everyman he was everyman
She was caught in a sin she knew the well was so deep
She threw her last pennies in and poured oil upon His feet
She touched the garment's hem she had only been asleep
She was everyman she was everyman
And the Lord looks down and He understands
The world draws up it's lines
But at the foot of the cross there's room for everyone
And love that is not blind
It can look at who we are and still see beyond
The differences we find
But with thorns in His brow and a spear in His side
Nails in His hand He died for you and I
For you and I and everyman
He had nets to mend he gave his fish and his loaves
He had to wash his hands and ran away without his robe
He couldn't understand until on Damascus road
He was everyman he was everyman
She brought the world a lamb and took warning from a dream
From an empty tomb she ran for her children she would weep
In her womb a baby danced she'd been waiting for a King
She was everyman she was everyman
And the Lord looks down and He understands
The world draws up it's lines
But at the foot of the cross there's room for everyone
And love that is not blind
It can look at who we are and still see beyond
The differences we find
But with thorns in His brow and a spear in His side
Nails in His hand He died for you and I
For you and I and everyman

Michael W Smith - Never Been Unloved
I have been unfaithful
I have been unworthy
I have been unrighteous
And I have been unmerciful
I have been unreachable
I have been unteachable
I have been unwilling
And I have been undesirable
Sometimes, I have been unwise
I've been undone by what I'm unsure of
But because of you, and all that you went through
I know that I have never been unloved
I have been unbroken
I have been unmended
I have been uneasy
And I've been unapproachable
I've been unemotional
I've been unexceptional
I've been undecided
And I have been unqualified
Unaware, I have been unfair
I've been unfit for blessings from above
But even I can see the sacrifice you made for me
To show that I have never been unloved

homily 3-21-2021

 

Jeremiah: “I will place my law within them and write it on their hearts.”

Ps. 51 – “A clean heart create for me, O God.”

Hebrews: “He learned obedience through what he suffered.”

Jesus (Jn. 12): “Father, glorify thy name!” (Lord, may You be glorified by my life. May every part of my life – my words, my actions, my thoughts, my plans, my choices, my dreams and goals, my relationships, my free time, my work, my play – may all of it give glory to you.)

2563 The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw." The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.

2562 Where does prayer come from? Whether prayer is expressed in words or gestures, it is the whole man who prays. But in naming the source of prayer, Scripture speaks sometimes of the soul or the spirit, but most often of the heart (more than a thousand times). According to Scripture, it is the heart that prays. If our heart is far from God, the words of prayer are in vain.

1431 Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one's life, with hope in God's mercy and trust in the help of his grace. This conversion of heart is accompanied by a salutary pain and sadness which the Fathers called animi cruciatus (affliction of spirit) and compunctio cordis (repentance of heart).24

1432 The human heart is heavy and hardened. God must give man a new heart. Conversion is first of all a work of the grace of God who makes our hearts return to him: "Restore us to thyself, O LORD, that we may be restored!" God gives us the strength to begin anew. It is in discovering the greatness of God's love that our heart is shaken by the horror and weight of sin and begins to fear offending God by sin and being separated from him. The human heart is converted by looking upon him whom our sins have pierced:

Let us fix our eyes on Christ's blood and understand how precious it is to his Father, for, poured out for our salvation it has brought to the whole world the grace of repentance.

Jesus says everything from the Cross and from the tabernacle. He still speaks to you, personally. Do you hear Him? You must sit in the classroom of silence.

Father glorify your name!

Ask God what He wants to do for your heart this Holy Week. Ask Him every day this week.

He wants to create a clean heart, to write His law there, so you can say “glorify your name.”

homily - 3/7

 
In the first reading we heard the Ten Commandments, which are so important for us. It's a reminder of the fact that our Christian faith grew out of the Jewish faith and they are not in contradiction, at least not in the deepest sense.  There are certainly some things that are new and there are some changes (we do get to eat pork), but at the core they are still the same.  We do well to look at these 10 Commandments during the season of Lent.
GK Chesterton used a very helpful image describing the commandments and the laws of the church as a fence around a beautiful amazing playground full of life and happiness - that is the life of the church,  the life of faith. But on the other side of that fence is a dangerous precipice, a cliff that leads to perdition to destruction. The point is that the Commandments are not meant to restrict us but to protect us from destruction. God is giving us the law in the OT for a reason that remains until heaven, and so its fulfillment in Christ doesn't abrogate the past laws and throw them out. The Church gives us all of these and we have them so that we can play on the playground of this beautiful life that we have in this world.
They're always trying to give us joy by pointing out for us the potholes of human living.  If you're driving thesis time of year without watching the road, your car will be messed up pretty bad. If you live life without paying attention to those potential spiritual potholes, your soul will be really beat up.
The ten commandments are often rejections (but not all of them). These rejections of various things are mysteriously already written in our hearts and speak to us in our consciences (we know to do good avoid evil). These rejections are a way that God is trying to invite us to a deeper yes. As Jesus cleanses the temple today, the most scandalous action and probably the thing that most caused so many of the Jewish religious leaders to seek his crucifixion, b/c no because He is saying no no no but rather because there's a yes - yes first and foremost, as He says this is my fathers house. This is the deeper yes. The relationship. That is why he does what he does today.

There is always a deeper yes behind the no's.
This can be done with all the teachings of the Church.
So when we examine all the laws about life saying no to euthanasia and abortion, the laws about chastity saying no to contraception and other issues, even why we say no to meat on Fridays of Lent (except in a couple weeks for St. Joseph’s solemnity!) and see the deeper yes then we will
mission statement (Jn 10:10) abundant life.
Not “90% of life where we miss a lot of good stuff.”
The only things He denies of us are the things that destroy us. He wants you keep you on this side of the cliff. And he will fight for you as he did today.
If we can remember that, then Commandments are not burdensome, but lessons, gifts - because GOd is setting us free, or keeping us free. Abundant Life.

Jesus describes His body as a temple today. His is the new place of worship. In Him we meet the Father.
1. We are also a temple.
2. We are the body of Christ, united with each other in Jesus.
When we sin, we affect both our personal temple, and the corporate temple of Jesus.

Every sin has ripple effects we heard about in the first reading, where God says sins will affect generations. Our sins do not only mess up ourselves, but all of us.

Confession is given for us o heal both of these. In Him we are healed in our hearts and souls to we can restore what we have list.
But also the whole body of Christ is cleansed in the sacrament of Jesus.
Reminds me of seminary, cleaning bathrooms with T$.
We keep our parts clean and the whole space is clean. Everyone had a responsibility. 1 - their own room. 2 - the whole building.
Confession is one way we do that work of cleansing here and now, and not
Let us ask the Lord for the grace to see the commandments not as burdens, but as a yes to the abundant life that is offered us.
May Jesus come into our hearts and purify them more and more so that we can truly be a house of prayer that gives worship to God alone.