Dec 4 - 2nd Sun of Advent: Hearing and Being John the Baptist Today

John the Baptist is voice of truth and conscience that spoke out in the darkness of the world of his time, declaring the coming of the Lord.

As we await the Savior, we stay awake in hopeful expectation of the Lord's coming by staying focused & devoted to the truth that speaks to us in our hearts, to the whispers of the Holy Spirit in our souls.

Also, we are to be like John the Baptist in another way: proclaiming the Gospel to the world - the gospel that Mark records, as well as the good news that the people of Israel experience when they were delivered from the Babylonian captivity as Isaiah reports in our first reading. Jerusalem was captured in 587, and the people of Israel were either killed in the seige or the battle, or lastly brought back to Babylon as trophies. Isaiah declares to them that this subjection will soon have an end, that they will be restored to the promised land that God had given them.

John's witness was more than just his words, and that is why the Gospel Mark records his way of life well that testifies almost as much as his words. He called the people of his time, and us now, to repentance. We are to do the same, to witness by our lives the Gospel, so that our words are not a resounding gong that is only hollow underneath. St. Peter in the second reading reminds us, just like John the Baptist, of the importance to remain spotless and perfect when the Lord returns. How can we acheive this with our human weakness?

Our season of Advent is of a time of hope, of expectation for the Lord, that is why we share the good news with others. As we await the Lord coming we are to stay awake with hope, as Pope Benedict describes in his encyclical Spe Salvi: "Let us say once again: we need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. ... God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. ...His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day...in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is 'truly' life.". [par. 31]

That was the theme of Pope Benedict visit to the United States: Christ our hope.

It's only with our hope in the risen Lord who comes to us Christmas as an infant child, God-with-us, Emmanuel, that we truly hope to find ourselves with God's grace working to be a people full of the spirit and with out blemish.

So this is what we are called to do to prepare the way with hope in the wilderness, the desert of our own hearts and souls. We have to bring down the mountains of our pride, and fill up the valleys of our weaknesses, failures, and fears. If we prepare in this way during Advent, we can trust that our risen Lord whom we make ourselves ready for, will be able to deliver us from our weaknesses, to free us from our slavery to the Babylonian empire of our sins, and restore us to his saving grace.

34th Sunday of Ord. Time: Christ the King

“Nice guys finish last,” they say... but not forever.  Today on the Solemnity of Christus Rex, Christ the King, the last Sunday of the Church's liturgical calendar, we remember that The Lord Jesus, The King of the Universe and Our Shepherd, will come at the end of time and set aright the scales of Justice.  This is exactly what St. Paul described in our reading from 1 Corinthians, where "He will subject all things to Himself" so that "God will be all in all."  At the end of time, Our Shepherd-King will reward those who have modeled their life after His own, and punish those who did not.  Every good deed will be rewarded.  Nice guys won't finish last.

The shepherd that the Lord describes Himself as through the prophet Ezekiel is one that seeks the lost, recovers the stray, heals the sick, binds the injured – is this not exactly what Jesus demands in the Gospel when he lists what the Church coins as the “corporal works of Mercy”: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, caring for the ill, visiting the imprisoned?  Those who follow the example of the Good Shepherd who cares for His Sheep will be rewarded abundantly, even if they don't realize that the good they do is in fact done to the Lord Jesus Himself, every single time.

What about “the sleek and the strong” whom the Lord “will destroy” as Ezekiel tells us?  These are the same as the Gospel's “goats” who do not live like the Shepherd-King whose life on Earth was a life of self-sacrificial love, building up the good of others, indeed all of us.  When the King comes, they will also be surprised to find that whatever they did, it was done to God the Son.

The reward and punishment are not kept exclusively for the future.  We can see a foretaste of the future even now present to us.  A life of virtue is its own reward: freedom, integrity, wholeness, peace.  Likewise, a life of sin is its own punishment: slavery to our weaknesses, self-destruction, broken relationships, discord.

Our Lord will come, let us prepare.

A word about the new translation of our Mass.  The goal of the new text is simple: to help Catholics be more deeply transformed by the most powerful gift we have, the Mass and the Eucharist contained therein.  It seeks to achieve this by elevating our liturgy with a more sacred and beautiful language that is so much more than just an invitation to pay more attention to what we say (though it is that, too).  Further, by distinguishing the language of prayer from the everday vocabulary, the new edition of the Roman Missal will make us remember that the Mass is not some ordinary experience, but rather the highest activity that the human being can perform: adoration of Almighty God.  I pray, I hope, and I believe that this new translation, as we acclimate ourselves and open ourselves to its depth, will help us enter into prayer and thus into the one and only thing that can fully transform our souls and bodies to be more like that of Our Shepherd-King, the God who is Love.

Bearing Good Fruit – Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (10-2-2011)

Today we are challenged by the implicit question that this parable presents to us: What kind of grapes are we yielding?

This parable of the vineyard meant a rather specific thing for the original audience, and it's meaning is clearly manifest in the response at the end "the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit."

The Jewish people are entrusted with God's great gift, the Torah, the Law, ratified by a covenant.  His own great teaching should have been a vineyard providing them with life and happiness, a wall protecting them from the banality of the world around them, a tower offering them insight into the deepest mysteries of life and of the universe.  They fail to make good production: as Isaiah says, they yield wild grapes.  The Lord sends servants, the prophets, who are often ignored, scoffed at, abused, killed.  Finally God sends His Son, Jesus, who is totally rejected and usurped, yet establishes a new people who will receive the vineyard as their own and govern it rightly.  This is what the parable meant for the audience of the day.

However, that meaning is not the only one for the parable: it works on another level because the Scriptures are the living Word of God which speak directly to us even as it is speaking through history.  In addressing this parable Pope Benedict reminds us of the bleak results we see when we use our freedom poorly.  In Jesus of Nazareth he asks, "if we open our eyes, isn't what is said in the parable actually a description of our present world?  Isn't this precisely the logic of the modern age, of our age? Let us declare that God is dead, then we ourselves will be God.  At last we no longer belong to anyone else; rather we are simply the owners of ourselves and of the world.  At last we can do what we please.  We get rid of God; there is no measuring rod above us; we ourselves are the only measure.  The 'vineyard' belongs to us.  What happens to man and the world next?  We are already beginning to see it..."

The Holy Father is reminding us of the importance of not allowing God's gift of freedom to bring us imprisonment in our own selfishness, making ourselves to be God.  Did we build the vineyard?  Do we own the world?  No, we are all tenants, we are all stewards of God's gifts - that is why we focus on stewardship in our parish.

This parable can also be understood in a spiritual sense: God gives you, in your Baptism, this magnificent gift.  Your body, your life, becomes this wonderful vineyard-garden that houses the Spirit, then He departs to allow you to freely care for it.  Will you work hard, half-heartedly, lazily, or not at all?  Will you work for bits of time but take "vacations" from this work of the Spirit?  What kind of grapes will you yield?  Will it be, as St. Paul calls us to, "all that is true...honorable...just...pure...lovely...gracious...excellent and praiseworthy?"

But not primarily individually, we should remember that as Christians, we are called to be members of the one body of Christ: we are in it together, particularly as a parish community and as a diocese.  We are primarily stewards together, not only individually.  CCC 781 "At all times and in every race, anyone who fears God and does what is right has been acceptable to him. He has, however, willed to make men holy and save them, not as individuals without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge him and serve him in holiness. He therefore chose the Israelite race to be his own people and established a covenant with it. He gradually instructed this people. . . . All these things, however, happened as a preparation for and figure of that new and perfect covenant which was to be ratified in Christ . . . the New Covenant in his blood; he called together a race made up of Jews and Gentiles which would be one, not according to the flesh, but in the Spirit."

God wishes us to be saved together.  Are we working together for this common goal?  Are we bearing the fruits of the Spirit like St. Paul mentions?  Are we people of community, where the "peace of God that surpasses all understanding guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus"?  If not, we are not being good stewards of God's gifts to us.  Let us renew in our hearts our commitment to do God's work in our lives.

Older Homily - September 11th, 2011 -- Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today, on the tenth anniversary of the most painful events in recent memory here in the United States, when we lost some 3,000 citizens in a few hours, God wrote the homily. Could the readings be more timely? We hear the first reading from Sirach open with these words: “wrath and anger are hateful things…Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord?”

Thomas Aquinas was right when he said the natural response to injustice is Anger. We should be angry, but like Jesus was when he cleansed the temple: an anger that comes from love for the person's good and the desire for them to attain it – anger that humanity is not living up to its high calling – anger that co-exists with forgiveness.

Another natural response is to remember. Jesus tells us to forgive, but he never says "forget." So where does the age-old saying, "forgive and forget," come from? I don't know, I guess I'm too young to remember. But I bet it comes from the point of Jesus' words, that is, what forgiveness truly entails: that you love another so fully and respect their freedom so reverently that you do not allow the past to corrupt the present. Forgiveness does not deny justice, but goes far beyond it - toward rehabilitation, not only of the person, but of the wounded, even broken, relationships they affect.

There was a Cistercian monastery (Our Lady of Atlas) in Algeria that in the late months of 1993 had to make a decision: Islamist extremists were driving out all foreigners from the area and they were given only a few months to leave safely. The monks met to decide their future – and in the face of the fears, concluded that their fate was already bound to these people. Upon being told that the Church needed monks and not martyrs, the abbot, Fr. Christian replied: “there is no difference.” In a one-page letter that was discovered after their abduction and, fifty-six days later, their death, Fr. Christian offers his “last words” to explain why they chose this road to those who might not understand it.

He says that (1) his life was already given. That was what he meant when he said a martyr and monk are no different. Their life is love.

He also reminds us that “the Sole Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure.” Jesus himself died from the plot executed by a few extremists.

Lastly, he says “I know I am an accomplice in the evil which seems alas, to prevail in the world.” Here he is claiming his own sinfulness, his own responsibility in continuing the world’s suffering.

In saying this, he points out that there are two conjoined "sins" we can commit in light of such tragedy and injustice: self-justification and demonization. It is way too easy to interpret such situations in the following terms: “we are completely innocent; they are absolutely evil.” We assume the high ground while we put others in the place of the unforgiveable sinner. Neither of these are true. First of all, we all are guilty of being accomplices with evil, and the intricate connections of humanity do not make evil something easily separated out. Secondly, Jesus died for everyone, so no one is unforgiveable.

Yet we make these claims in all kinds of small ways in our lives: "remember what he or she did that one time? Remember what he or she said to them?" It's a lot easier to do this than to take the long road of true and full forgiveness that our first reading and Gospel call us to do. Yet forgiveness is the only solution to the tragedies of injustice we suffer in this life.

At times we fail to live up to that. We all fail to rehabilitate, to work tirelessly for the good against the tireless work of evil. In short, we are not perfect and we at times grow weary of becoming saints. But we cannot throw in the towel, we cannot stop converting our hearts to love more deeply. The only hope of a better world is that God’s kingdom of world be built up in our hearts and the hearts of all. Let us pray that the kingdom of forgiveness that began on the Cross will take root in our souls and in our lives. Amen.

Below you will find the Final Testament that Christian wrote:

When an "A-Dieu" takes on a face.

If it should happen one day—and it could be today—

that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to engulf

all the foreigners living in Algeria,

I would like my community, my Church, my family,

to remember that my life was given to God and to this country.

I ask them to accept that the Sole Master of all life

was not a stranger to this brutal departure.

I ask them to pray for me—

for how could I be found worthy of such an offering?

I ask them to be able to link this death with the many other deaths which were just as violent, but forgotten through indifference and anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other.

Nor any less value.

In any case it has not the innocence of childhood.

I have lived long enough to know that I am an accomplice in the evil

which seems, alas, to prevail in the world,

even in that which would strike me blindly.

I should like, when the time comes, to have the moment of lucidity

which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God

and of my fellow human beings,

and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.

I could not desire such a death.

It seems to me important to state this.

I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice

if the people I love were to be accused indiscriminately of my murder.

To owe it to an Algerian, whoever he may be,

would be too high a price to pay for what will, perhaps, be called, the "grace of martyrdom,"

especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.

I am aware of the scorn which can be heaped on Algerians indiscriminately.

I am also aware of the caricatures of Islam which a certain islamism encourages.

It is too easy to salve one's conscience

by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideologies of the extremists.

For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: they are a body and a soul.

I have proclaimed this often enough, I believe, in the sure knowledge of what I have received from it,

finding there so often that true strand of the Gospel,

learnt at my mother's knee, my very first Church,

already in Algeria itself, in the respect of believing Muslims.

My death, clearly, will appear to justify

those who hastily judged me naive, or idealistic:

"Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!"

But these people must realise that my avid curiosity will then be satisfied.

This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills—

immerse my gaze in that of the Father,

and contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them,

all shining with the glory of Christ,

the fruit of His Passion, and filled with the Gift of the Spirit,

whose secret joy will always be to establish communion

and to refashion the likeness, playfully delighting in the differences.

For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs,

I thank God who seems to have willed it entirely

for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything.

In this thank you, which sums up my whole life to this moment,

I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today,

and you, my friends of this place,

along with my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families,

the hundredfold granted as was promised!

And also you, the friend of my final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing.

Yes, I also say this Thank You and this A-Dieu to you, in whom I see the face of God.

And may we find each other, happy good thieves, in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen. (In sha 'Allah).

Algiers, December 1, 1993—Tibhirine, January 1, 1994.

Christian.

Homily 9-18-2011 Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

          There are many ways to shock an audience: the right twist in a plot, the unsettling image or expression on a face, eerie music, or a few unexpected words that change everything.  The parables often shocked Jesus’ audience, and this one still gets under our skin today in the same way.

          This parable forces us to compare our human understanding against the divine logic – how high God’s ways above our ways and His thoughts above our thoughts.  We tend to focus on the injustice of no “hourly wage” for the stewards, and this often makes it impossible for us to accept, or even sometimes see, the message that Our Lord wishes to give us in the parable.  Here the message is this: God’s love is for our benefit, our flourishing; and that Love is generous and pursuing; and that Love has no favorites.

          We first need to understand who is who: God is the employer who pays the workers, us, who follow His bidding.

Another thing that helps us to understand the parable is that these laborers are “day laborers,” people who do not have a stable job but have to rely day by day on these kind of little tasks to provide for their own sustenance and needs.  These are the “unemployed” who “will work for food,” as we often see today people holding signs to such effect.

It is important to notice that there are no other characters in the scene.  If God is the employer and we are the day-laborers, then within the parable Christ is trying to show us that we are all in the same position: we all have a serious lack before God: we need His Grace, his Love, his Mercy and Forgiveness for our sins.  It shows us that God is the only one who is really able to employ us: nothing else satisfies – there is no other meaningful work, no other meaningful way of spending our life.

He comes, finds us, calls us to serve Him, and then generously bestows on us these things we need and even the greater gifts of heaven besides.

And in the “day” that represents our whole lives, some are called later than others, but still receive the same generous portion.  While for those who work from the beginning of the day, their joy is found in having a meaning and purpose for their lives.  Their life is not in limbo, waiting, searching, lost.  They can say at any moment, “I know who my Master is and I know the great reward he will give me for my labors.”  And this gets at why it is wrong for us to be shocked into a reaction of injustice: we are forgetting what the reward is.  The  reward God offers us is eternal life, perfect happiness, freedom from pain and suffering.  What more is there?  What else can we want?!

And this is where stewardship and sacrificial giving comes in.  As a parish, we have made that choice: we have renewed our commitment to being stewards of our baptismal promises during Lent; we renewed our stewardship to humble service during the past Easter Season for this year, and now it is time to renew our commitment to sacrificial giving.  The parish already does this, increasing our 7% commitment to 8% this year (5 to Adalbert, 3 to poor).  We are building ourselves slowly toward the goal of a biblical tithe, 10%.

Father Bill is asking all of us, myself included, to pray for guidance by the Holy Spirit as we discern our sacrificial gift for this year.  Please include a portion of that gift to the Bishop’s Annual Appeal, which we will begin next week with the video explaining the needs of our Diocese.  At that time you will also receive a financial report of the parish that shows how we accomplish our stewardship that frees us from doing fundraisers. 

“Seek the Lord while He may be found” Isaiah says.  Don’t wait!  Don’t wander around lost, confused, without a master to serve, indeed the only one who can give us meaning to our lives.  Find the Master who will give you all that you need and more.  Serve him fully and know the joy that is found in that complete self-abandonment to Divine Providence.