Homily for Sunday - True Love: Making it personal!

Audio from Saturday night: https://docs.google.com/a/stpius.net/file/d/0B1r8CMMH17Y0U0xkOGtaVmRUQzBOY09La2o5ZGNLU1hZcldR/edit?usp=docslist_api

This is personal. “Alright, now it's personal” means they are now intensely committed to something because it is starting to have serious direct effects on them: whether their reputation, their relationships, their livelihood, or perhaps their very life. We don't get in-between a mama bear and her cub because then it gets personal. When I was a kid, we had a raccoon living in our garage one summer, and when my dad reached his hand into that cardboard box without knowing, wow talk about personal!

This is exactly what God is talking about in the first reading today: He takes us personally – all of us! But especially today, the weakest in society: the orphans, the widows, the aliens (not meaning martians but rather foreigners). God says if we mistreat them, things are going to get personal, “for”, The Lord says, “I am compassionate.” God has united Himself to us, His people, and if we mess up His Name among the nations, He will take it personally. This should be a big wake-up call to all of us for social justice: God's wrath flares up when He sees injustice. So too should we have a burning desire to set things right and take calm and prudent steps that get us closer, one day at a time, to true peace, as newly Blessed Paul VI once said: “If you want peace, work for justice!”

Today in another showdown between Jesus and the religious authorities of His day, we get a glimpse into the heart of religion. What is it all about? In many ways, a master teacher is proven by the ability to make complex things simple without losing the essence of them. An architect is no good if he can't explain to me what makes a good roof: “it keeps the weather out and doesn't fall apart.” Jesus today answers “what is religion all about?” And even very young children can understand this anwer: Love God, and Love your neighbor as if they were yourself.

That's all folks! If it's that simple, it sure makes us look silly for how often we make a poor job of it, huh?!

Then Jesus adds an interesting phrase at the end, and he uses the Gk. Kremetai 'hang' “On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets (i.e., the entire Jewish faith tradition).”

Now I'm sure you've seen, a few action movies, and in so many of them there is a time where someone is over a big drop, and the only thing keeping him from falling is the ledge or rope he's holding onto, or even better the hand of another person who reached them at the last minute. Without that grip, down they go, so long. Well, that is the image that Jesus is using when he says “on these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets.”

Love God, and Love your neighbor as if they were yourself. And if we don't God will take it personally. So we should take it personally.

Our relationship with God should be personal. It has to be more than Sundays. We have to both give God space in the home of our heart, and also spend time in that home with Him. God has, in fact, already carved a home for us in the Lord's Sacred Heart. Do we visit Him by prayer and sacrifice?

Secondly, our love of others should be personal. Do we sacrifice ourselves for others? There is a great almost-saint that Paul VI himself promoted, named Pier Giorgio Frassatti, and I'd love to tell you all about him but I don't have enough time: Fr. Bill would come shut off my microphone! So, go to the parish website, click on the word “homily” at the top, then click on my name. Then you can listen to another priest's account of Pier Giorgio (especially around 8min15sec). He's a wonderful young man of an upper class Italian family whose love for God showed itself so clearly in love for neighbor. It was personal for Blessed Pier Giorgio because He saw how God, in His Son death on the cross, made it personal first. Let us make it personal, too, and put the love of this Eucharist into practice.

Caesar and God

Audio from 10:30 Mass: https://docs.google.com/a/stpius.net/file/d/0B1r8CMMH17Y0enZHQVFFMkpid3dUalJNcmVEUGphenhrVm5V/edit?usp=docslist_api

There are two truths that are important for today's Gospel, and they both are contained in Jesus' memorable saying, that we should all have memorized: Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.

The first part is important.  It reminds us as Catholics that we must not shy away from public life and social responsibility, nor should we be opposed to legitimate authority in civil society.   The Catechism says, 1898 Every human community needs an authority to govern it.¹⁶ ... It is necessary for the unity of the state. [So, Catholics cannot support anarchy!] Its role is to ensure as far as possible the common good of the society. 1925 The common good consists of three essential elements: respect for and promotion of the fundamental rights of the person; prosperity, or the development of the spiritual and temporal goods of society; the peace and security of the group and of its members.   1900 The duty of obedience requires all to give due honor to authority and to treat those who are charged to exercise it with respect, and, insofar as it is deserved, with gratitude and good-will.  1915 As far as possible citizens should take an active part in public life. ...

Thus Catholics should be the best citizens of every country, and for all kinds of different reasons: it promotes the common good; it fosters stability and peace; it helps with evangelization because non-believers will be more attracted to good citizens; and it is a sign of our humility after the example of Jesus.  So being informed voters and engaging in public dialogue, even going to be on jury for court trials, are all essential elements of good Christians.  We don't try to hide away in our own bubble as the world around us goes up in flames.
But also,  Jesus demands  that we render to God what belongs to God.  Caesar is not God, and neither are we.  The phrase "what belongs to God" in the context of a Roman coin is meant to connect back to the creation story.  The coin had Caesar's image and likeness on it, but we in our very nature were made in God's image and likeness.  So for us, to render what belongs to God must mean our entire life!

Sometimes in this imperfect world Caesar and God will butt heads with each other. We know that in our society today, we are seeing conflicts between our faith and the society, and we have to take sides.  Jesus will at times make demands on us to be sort of conscientious objectors to society.  This is exactly what our bishops have been modeling about the HHS mandate over the past four or five years.  There are other historical figures we can think of from our country as well as the world.  If it is not promoting the common good, we must oppose it with humility and dialogue, trying our best to influence a change in the society.  And here is your challenge for the week: do one thing that promotes the common good in our social order, whether it is researching your vote, writing to the newspaper or to your congressman, or doing some grassroots work for the common good by volunteering in the parish respect life ministries or local community outreaches.  If you do that, you will be living Jesus' message for today, rendering to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.

Join the Feast!!

Audio recording (Sat. Night): Click Here
Spanish-American George Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905): “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Winston Churchill outlined this reality quite well in 1935, rather ominously foreboding another world war in the future, with the following words:

“When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong–these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” (House of Commons, 2 May 1935. Source: Churchill Museum)

We see this playing out today in this Gospel passage.  Jesus' parable works in two directions.  Looking back into the past, the Kingdom of heaven was a free invitation God offered  to His chosen people of Israel, sending the prophets ahead of Him to invite them to the banquet to which the Messiah would lead them.  But they failed to accept that invitation, and the city of Jerusalem, including the Lord's Temple, was burnt to the ground for their lack of fidelity to the Lord's covenants.  But looking to the future, jesus foretells the reality that is unfolding before their eyes: the leaders are again rejecting the invitation that Jesus offers them into the great feast of heaven, the will indeed kill Him, and later on, when the apostles try to preach the Lord's Resurrection and the wedding feast of the Lamb, they'll be kicked out of the temples and synagogues again and again.  Then, around 70AD, the temple will be destroyed for the second time.  History will repeat itself if we are too stiff-necked and hard-hearted to make the difficult changes they demand of us.

This seems to be a disease of humanity.  We are too often "unteachable" (as Churchill said) whenever we fail make the tough adjustments that history demands of us, which ultimately means conversion.  Anyone who makes a regular examination of conscience knows this, too.  The fact is: sometimes we let evil win by lack of foresight, poor counsel, laziness, or lack of vision of the ultimate goal.

Fixing that lack of vision is exactly what Jesus has been doing for us these past weeks with these parables.  Every single parable has mentioned "The Kingdom of God" or "The Kingdom of Heaven."  Jesus wants us to think about heaven, he wants us to have a vision so that we can have the enthusiasm to go after the goal, the focus to run the race of life.  One thing you can do this week is spend some time reading that vision in the Sunday Gospels of past weeks - just think about what God's Kingdom, heaven, is like.  Last week we saw how heaven is a vineyard that is meant to produce an abundant harvest of grapes.  On Sept. 28th the Kingdom goes to the son who obeys God's word with deeds.  The week before that it is the reward of a hard day's work (even when we don't fully deserve it).  Before that (if it wasn't trumped by Sept. 14th's feast of the Exaltation of the Cross) the kingdom of heaven is a place where we forgive others because our master has forgiven us so much more.  

And today, Heaven is a banquet that the King Himself invites you to.  If Pope Francis sent a bishop to your doorstep to invite you to a dinner, you probably wouldn't say, "sorry but we have a soccer game," or "my house is a mess" or "I just need to relax today."  Well, God isn't Pope Francis, or rather, Pope Francis isn't God, so let's not allow any excuses keep us from the invitation to heaven that God Himself invites us to for our eternity.  Furthermore, don't let those things keep you from Mass on Sundays, which is the true wedding feast of the lamb, as the priest says every time he elevates the host before communion time: "Blessed are those called to the supper of the lamb".  You are called.  Experience the joy of that call.  Leave behind the less important things and get that deeper spiritual vision of what life is really all about.  When you spend time seeing what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, your hearts will start burning in a way they never have, and you will be happier, more peaceful, more effective in your daily works, and a more joyful witness of God's love to others.  Don't let history repeat itself again: accept the King’s invitation, make the changes you need, and come, join the feast!

Homily - Saint Francis and Good Fruit

Recording from 10:30am Mass: Click Here

What kind of fruit are we bearing?  What kind of tree are we eating from?

Today, when the scriptures demand of us a clear produce of proper fruit, we should also recall the two great trees of the Bible, because if we are what we eat, then we have to ask ourselves what kind of tree we are spending time with.  One tree is the tree of the old man, Adam, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which is the source of our divided human heart: part of us afraid of God and the healthy part of us always reaching for Him.  The other tree in the story of the Fall is the tree of life, which in the fullness of time was revealed as the Cross, where we die to our disordered nature and find new life in the new humanity begun in Christ Jesus.
These two trees today are at every moment battling for our hearts as loud, annoying, and effective as any television or radio commercial.  Which one do we spend our time listening to?  The old sinful ways of the tree of pride, the tree of sin and death, the tree of a divided heart, or the tree of humble obedience and rebirth?  How do we do eat of the fruit of that tree?

Ultimately it is connecting with God in prayer.  Prayer is done in all kinds of ways: coming to Mass, reading Sacred Scripture, journaling, using a technique of one of the saints such as Saint Ignatius, Teresa of Avila, or John of the Cross.  Singing Christian music of any era can be prayer.  Simply put, it is looking with love up to God again and again.

CCC-2010 Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God's wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions.

Saint Francis, the patron of our pope, had his feast day yesterday, and he has some words about bearing good fruit in our life, and he sees that in order to produce fruit, we have to be connected to the tree of life through our prayer.

SAINT FRANCIS - " O how happy and blessed are those who love the Lord and do as the Lord himself said in the gospel: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and your whole soul; and your neighbor as yourself. Therefore, let us love God and adore him with pure heart and mind. This is his particular desire when he says: True worshippers adore the Father in spirit and truth. For all who adore him must do so in the spirit of truth. Let us also direct to him our praises and prayers saying: Our Father, who art in heaven, since we must always pray and never grow slack.

"Furthermore, let us produce worthy fruits of penance. Let us also love our neighbors as ourselves. Let us have charity and humility. Let us give alms because these cleanse our souls from the stains of sin. Men lose all the material things they leave behind them in this world, but they carry with them the reward of their charity and the alms they give. For these they will receive from the Lord the reward and recompense they deserve. We must not be wise and prudent according to the flesh. Rather we must be simple, humble and pure. We should never desire to be over others. Instead, we ought to be servants who are submissive to every human being for God’s sake. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on all who live in this way and persevere in it to the end. He will permanently dwell in them. They will be the Father’s children who do his work. They are the spouses, brothers and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Let us bear that great fruit then, connected to the Tree of Life, the Cross, through this Eucharist, and through our commitment personal prayer, bearing the fruits that God demands of those who bear His name before the world, always displaying the Joy of the Gospel.