Homily 9-12-2012

 Today's account is more than a miracle. Jesus performed all kinds of wonders and signs that weren't recorded by the evangelists. This one was written down because it spoke to the audience, and it speaks to us today, as Christ says, “Today, these words are fulfilled in your hearing.”

So besides the clear interpretation that Christ still can heal us today in miraculous ways, let us read this spiritually: Sin makes us deaf, dumb/mute to the things of God, to the promptings of His Spirit and the love of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Christ heals us of our sins through a personal encounter, in secret, away from the craziness of the world – in the soul, in prayer. (and in the confessional).

And just like this man was taken from the crowd, Has God ever used a situation in life to drag you out of your routine to listen to Him? Do you ever have silence in your day? In your week? (Our world has come to fear silence.) One lesson from today is certainly this: in order to be healed by Christ, we need to move ourselves out of the world to meet Him in prayer. Mass is part of this, but not all!

St. James reminds us today that God chose and chooses the poor. There are infinite examples of this in Scripture: think of Joseph and Mary, of shepherd-boy David, of the backwater men who are the Twelve disciples. It is the poor to whom the Lord reveals Himself, not because He has anything against the rich, but because they are deaf, dumb, and blind. They cannot take in God's message. Do we choose the poor, or put them aside for the rich, strong, and influential? Do we shun poverty and weakness because they remind us that we are not God and cannot control this world? That we are doomed to one day give an account to God for all we have done?

Solidarity, that is, unity as a human family, is kind of intimidating. It asks a lot of us to truly live as if everyone is my brother and my sister. If that is true, I should be like Christ, taking the suffering of every individual as in some way my own hurt. Their pain should make me 'groan' as Christ did in today's story. Where does Christ groan today? Where does He ask us to turn our eyes toward heaven and beg God's Mercy over the human family, both for our own sins and those of the whole world? We need only look to the newspaper to know what we must pray for.

Did Jesus need to go through this entire ordeal of leading away, looking up, groaning, touching his ears, his mouth, even spitting and finally saying “eph-phatha”? No, of course not. So why does he do it? Because these human actions show exactly the reason of God becoming man in the first place: he wants to relate to us directly, on our plane, so that he can lift us up higher. This is why he established His Church with Sacramental Signs. Each sacrament shows forth the two natures of Christ: the human element is the physical signs, the divine element is the word that is spoken.

Here in this Mass, as we step away from the crowd, we go to the Lord to be healed. And here in the Eucharist, He reaches out, touches us, and opens our Hearts to hear.

Homily 9-5-2012 St. Joe HS - Joseph and God's Work

What makes this school different? What makes it unique? I want to read you a one-page reflection by a modern saint, JoseMaria Escrivà in his book, Christ is Passing By (#129).

Let me tell you about an event of my own personal life which happened many years ago. One day I was with a friend of mine, a man with a good heart but who did not have faith. Pointing toward a globe he said, "Look, from North to South, from East to West." "What do you want me to look at?" I asked. His answer was: "The failure of Christ. For twenty centuries people have been trying to bring his doctrine to men's lives, and look at the result." I was filled with sadness. It is painful to think that many people still don't know our Lord, and that among those who do know him, many live as though they did not. But that feeling lasted only a moment. It was shortly overcome by love and thankfulness, because Jesus has wanted every man to cooperate freely in the work of redemption. He has not failed. His doctrine and life are effective in the world at all times. The redemption carried out by him is sufficient, and more than sufficient.

God does not want slaves, but children. He respects our freedom. The work of salvation is still going on, and each one of us has a part in it. It is Christ's will, St Paul tells us in impressive words, that we should fulfil in our flesh, in our life, what is lacking in his passion, "for the good of his body, which is the Church."

It is worthwhile putting our lives on the line, giving ourselves completely, so as to answer to the love and the confidence that God has placed in us. It is worth while, above all, to decide to take our christian life seriously. When we recite the creed, we state that we believe in God the Father Almighty, in his Son Jesus Christ, who died and rose again, and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. We affirm that the Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, is the body of Christ, enlivened by the Holy Spirit. We rejoice in the forgiveness of sins and in the hope of the resurrection. But do those words penetrate to the depths of our own heart? Or do they remain only on our lips? The divine message of victory, the joy and the peace of Pentecost, should be the unshakeable foundation for every Christian's way of thinking and acting and living.

Today Saint Paul describes the Church, the living Christian community, you and me, as a field. It's not easy growing a crop in a field, especially when all you have is an ox, a plow and a few other simple tools. Much is involved, and the difficult work relies on various talents and skills.

St. Paul is reminding the Corinthians, who are all jealously competing with each other, that no one is better than anyone else. All are equal, because all work is done in the service of the one great work: living and sharing the Gospel of Redemption in Christ.

There is no work more important than this: not Calculus, not History, not Literature or Art, nothing is more valuable to our life than the work of God. However, nothing that we do on earth needs to be separate from this work: not sports, not music, not Biology, nothing needs to be an obstacle from the work of God. As Paul reminds us, we all have work to do in God's field, only different works. Our daily life is exactly what St. Josemaria Ecrivà was focusing on, and we have his favorite and perfect example as the patron of our school.

Saint Joseph helps us see that any work can be God's work.

Escriva says that “St Joseph was an ordinary sort of man on whom God relied to do great things. He did exactly what the Lord wanted him to do, in each and every event that went to make up his life. The name Joseph, in Hebrew, means "God will add." God adds unsuspected dimensions to the holy lives of those who do his will. He adds the one important dimension which gives meaning to everything, the divine dimension”

Doing this, however, requires our cooperation, and this is in fact very simple: we keep our mind's eye and our heart oriented toward heaven, toward God. If we invite God through our soul to be part of our work, we have made that work holy, we have added that divine dimension, and God will add the rest.

Let us pray that here at St. Joseph High School, through the helpful prayers of our patron Joseph, we will never do anything without that divine dimension. Rather, as all of us do our various work here as students, teachers, administration, volunteers, etc., we will all do our best to keep our eyes on the prize, on the mission of this school: to be, as Bishop Rhoades mentioned at our recent dedication, a city on a hill and a light to the nations.

Homily 9-2-2012 Externals and Internals

Externals vs. Internals??

Today there is presented before us one of the oldest dilemmas in the Christian faith: How do the Law and God's Grace coincide with each other. The Church has long stressed that holding these two in opposition is in fact a false dichotomy. Here's an example of a false dichotomy that will make sense to us all: when presented with the question of having pie or ice cream, I always take them both. Who says I can't, right? They really aren't mutually exclusive, and, in fact, they sure do complement each other quite nicely! The same thing with the Law and Grace. Just like pie is made perfect with ice cream, so God's Law supports His Grace, even bears Grace.

So it is a good thing that the Jews treasured the Law. They were proud of it, they held it up as their pride and joy! And Jesus does not abolish even one letter of the Law. What He does, however, is challenge his listeners to remember what is more important, what the reason for the Law's existence is: the Human person, the Human soul. The Law is meant to make us holy, not miserly. The Law is meant to teach us to relate to God as He desires us, out of love made concrete in action.

This is why Jesus takes the focus off of the external rituals meant to shape our heart and onto the internal workings of the soul that end up driving our actions. Both are good, in one way or another, and if we have one without the other, our life becomes a contradiction. Rituals devoid of true religion is an empty show, and religion without action is worth nothing, as St. James says, “faith without works is dead.”

The Catechism defines true religion as the virtue of justice with respect towards God, or giving to God what is His due. So in par. 2135, the CCC states “Adoring God, praying to him, offering him the worship that belongs to him, fulfilling the promises and vows made to him are acts of the virtue of religion which fall under obedience to the first commandment.” However, we should also notice that James does not mention these things at all when he describes religion to his audience: For James, True Religion means 1)care for orphans and widows in their affliction (aka the poor) and 2) to keep oneself unstained by the world. Religion is action, because we need both external and internal.

So both Law and Grace are good, and are needed by us to order our lives properly toward God and neighbor. Indeed we can have our cake, and our ice cream too!

So here, today, as we pray externally in this the highest of all rituals, the Mass, we beg God through these actions purify our hearts. As we carry out the Law, offering Justice to God (by true religion) and to neighbor, may we receive an abundance of Grace so that our hearts bring forth the fruits of the Spirit and not the defilement of wickedness.

Homily 8/26/2012 Marriage and the Eucharist

 Joshua places before the people of Israel the honest dilemma they must address: they have to make a choice whether it is the Lord whom they will serve, or another.

This is exactly what Christ does is the Gospel today, he has check-mated those followers who wished to make him into a political hero or a wise teacher and commentator of Jewish Tradition. He leaves them to make a statement of faith in who He is, as the living God who has “the words of everlasting life.” Jesus turns and asks us, “Do you also go away?”

St. Pius X, with his papal motto of “to renew all things in Christ” made that choice for The Lord. Besides his dedication to the Sacred Liturgy and Sacred Music, one of the things St. Pius X is most well-known for is lowering the required age of reception of Holy Communion to children at the age of reason. If they know the Lord, they can choose the Lord, and can thus start to receive Him in Holy Communion.

Today, however, I would like to talk about our second reading and its connection to the Eucharist. In the second reading, we hear Saint Paul talk about marriage, telling wives to be subordinate to their husbands, and husbands to love their wives both as their own selves, and in the same way that Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her. Here Saint Paul makes clear that the Lord defines love for us, the Lord initiates love for us, the Lord teaches love to us. Love is not what we feel; it is not what the world says; not what the movies tell us. No; God is love and he defines it, and that definition is made public on Calvary. Love is defined by the cross.

The relationship between Christ and the Church is often expounded throughout Scripture as the love of Bridegroom and Bride. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, directly quoting a Vatican II document, summarizes this in paragraph 757: "The Church, further, which is called 'that Jerusalem which is above' and 'our mother', is described as the spotless spouse of the spotless lamb. It is she whom Christ 'loved and for whom he delivered himself up that he might sanctify her.' It is she whom he unites to himself by an unbreakable alliance, and whom he constantly 'nourishes and cherishes.'"(LG 6)

This is why the new edition of the Roman Missal prays after the Our Father for Christ to “look of upon the faith of [his] Church and be pleased to grant her peace and unity in accordance with [his] will.”

The great mystery of our life as a Christian people united in Christ is found in the mystery of marriage, of the love of bridegroom and bride. What a great and high calling! Husbands and wives are called to love with the radical love of the cross, they are meant to be an open book of the Gospel, making visible in our day and age the love of Christ for his people.

Could we ever love that intensely and perfectly on our own?? No way! Luckily, husbands and wives, God will not abandon you. In fact, He comes so close in the Eucharist precisely because He wants to strengthen us to love like this, whether we are married or not. And in fact, we must rely on God in our daily prayer and in reception of the Eucharist, which makes the cross present in our lives, which makes the source of all love, God Himself, present in our time and place and in our very souls when we receive him.

On this feast of our patron, let us pray for families to love like this, for people to be strengthened by the Eucharist, the source of love.

8-19-2012 Faith in Christ is the key to unlocking eternal life

T. Coonan Homily 8-19-2012 Faith in Christ is the key to unlocking eternal life.

Jesus does not explain the entire theology of the Eucharist to the Jews. He is inviting them to faith - Faith in who He is. In fact, He is forcing them to make a choice about Him. Either He is crazy, or He's malicious and intending to lead them astray, or He is exactly who He says He is. If they have Faith who Christ is, they will believe what He is teaching (even without fully comprehending it) and will find the gift of eternal life. Faith in Christ is the key to unlocking eternal life.

Last week I went on retreat to a monastery near Dubuque, Iowa. The place was surrounded by endless fields of corn, with some occassional soybeans. Every day I went for a jog out in those open spaces, and longed to run in those fields along the winding trails. However, the corn was like almost 8-feet tall, too high for me to see out - it was like a maze, and going in would be foolishness. So, since I didn't want you all to mourn the loss of your beloved parochial vicar who managed to starved to death in a corn field, I did what any Generation-X'er would do: I got on a computer, opened Google Earth and studied those corn fields from an aerial view. Then, although I still couldn't see anything more while I was in those trails, I knew where I was headed because I had seen the whole truth of that field. Simple solution: yes. Wise solution: definitely.

That is a small example of the wisdom that we hear about in the first and second readings today.

The first reading, although we only hear one side of it, presents us with a sort of competition between Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly or Foolishness. Both set up a banquet before us and both invite us to freely come forward and take what they wish to give us. One generously offers to our fragile simplicity the gift of truth, goodness, and beauty, summed up as “life”. The other takes advantage of our ignorance by deceptively offering a cheap meal “stolen bread” founded lies, which (unawares to the misguided) veils is true reality: chains and death.

Wisdom is not easy to come by, because it means knowing deeply and intimately, by our own personal experiences, what is true, what is good and just, what is beautiful – and thus knowing Who is God, since He is the fulness of all these things. However, it is not beyond the grasp of anyone – we are all invited to partake from her table. The key to making that journey towards Wisdom is Faith in Christ. It is like having a map for that corn-field. Faith doesn't make us 10-feet tall so that we can always see exactly what is happening. No, faith lets us know where we will end up, because we see things from above, we look up and trust that God is there.

As we have said, it is Faith in Christ is the key to unlocking eternal life. We know this best here in the Mass. Trusting in Christ as God, as setting up a table for us that is full of truth, goodness, and beauty, we are thus filled with God Himself, given to us in this sacrament. And this is the foretaste of eternal life. May our Faith in the Son of God bring us to our goal as we share even now in a foretaste of that gift.

Homily 8-12-2012 Be Transformed in order to Bring others to the Eucharist

Homily 8-12-2012 Be Transformed in order to Bring others to the Eucharist

 The Jews are absolutely scandalized by what Christ was saying about the gift of the Eucharist. They cannot not believe it. This is present here in our own world: it is difficult for non-believers to understand this great mystery. In fact, we ourselves never fully comprehend what the Eucharist is, because it is the living God, and God in himself is absolutely inexhaustible to our minds. It's like looking at the sun, our eyes simply cannot take it all in. This doesn't mean we run from contemplating this gift; rather, we adore and honor the host and chalice even more as Our Lord reveals Himself to us slowly, as He makes our eyes more and more able to see Him.

However, like Christ, we need to help others where they are at, to meet them where they are, so that we can bring them closer to Jesus.

The first way of teaching others about the Eucharist is holding the Eucharist in the highest reverence, in our actions, our words, and our thoughts. Since actions speak louder than words, if we do not have reverence for the Eucharist, how can we expect others to understand what this great sacrament is?

The Jews could not believe what Jesus was telling them, because they didn't know who it was that was speaking to them. We have to know Jesus in order to understand the promises he makes for us, in order to share this great Gift.

The three theological virtues that are directly related to our relationship with God are faith, hope, and love. And virtues are like muscles, they need to be used or they will slowly weaken and disappear.
So, every day we should pray to God for an increase in these virtues and exercise them, saying: “Lord I love you so much; Lord I believe in you. Lord I hope in you!” We can also pray in reparation, or in intercession, for those who do not love the Lord, do not believe in the Lord, do not hope in the Lord and his promises.
Next, these prayers for ourselves and for others need to be backed up with real, concrete exercises and practices in our life! Faith is shown by coming to mass every Sunday; by setting time aside daily for prayer, and especially praying devoutly while we are here at mass for ourselves our families and everyone who is in need. Our Hope needs to show itself, also: if we truly trust that God has a home for us in heaven, we should show that by the way we live in this world, by how we treat each other and how we we use the goods that God has given us. Most importantly, our Love for God needs to be shown in our love for others, no matter who they are, as Saint John has said: “How can we love the God whom we cannot see, if we cannot love our brothers and sisters whom we can see?”

And if we persevere in these virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love, this will open us up to the greatest way to show others what and who this Eucharist is: by being transformed, by allowing others to see Jesus in our actions, by truly becoming “Christians,” little Christs.

The greatest vessel of God's transforming Grace is this Eucharist. If we come to Him and are open to what the Lord wants to do in our hearts we will be renewed just as Elijah was strengthened to journey for 40 days.

If someone we know, or we ourselves, are unable to receive the Eucharist for any reason, we can also pray a prayer of spiritual communion, asking our Lord Jesus, who knows our longing, to come and fill us with his Grace as if we had received him in the Sacrament of Communion. And this can be prayed many times daily!

As we continue our prayer, we give reverence to our God for this greatest of gifts, we pray for Faith Hope and Love, and we beg to be consumed and transformed into Our Lord.

Homily 8-5-2012 God Gives what we need for our Renewal in Christ

Fr. T. Coonan Homily 8-5-2012 God Gives what we need for our Renewal in Christ

The focus of today's readings is simple: God supplies our need for our Renewal in Christ. Yesterday I walked through our rectory's vegetable garden and was affirmed again in the truth that God is a giving God: after I gathered in the huge cucumbers and numerous tomatoes, I remembered that all we had to do was plant the seeds, pull the weeds, and water the soil (sometimes God did that for me). God provides the rest, and I reap his generous gifts.

The one need of ours that is the greatest is found in the second reading today from the letter to the Ephesians. We are all longing for Transformation in Christ, both for ourselves and for the world: we need, for our own good and the good of others, to put off the 'old self' in Adam and put on the 'new man' in Christ Jesus. Sin beats us up more than anything, it makes us who we never were created to be. In order for us to “accomplish the works of God” like the Jews ask of Jesus, we have to rely on Him and on His gifts. We have to become like Jesus. He will always provide.

As Jesus tells the Jews that He Himself is the Bread of Life, He is begging them: “Don't come to me for your physical needs alone...nor even primarily; come to me for eternal food, spiritual food which never perishes.” Pray for holiness: theological virtues, moral virtues, (strength of character), promptings of the Holy Spirit.

We must cooperate with God's grace. We must choose. We must show our devotion – choosing God for His own sake. Lastly, we must never grumble! The Israelites are believing the lie of the world – so easy to believe because of the ability of the physical realm to overcome our senses and absorb our attention. “Don't seek me for what I can give you, seek me for who I am myself.”

Eucharist is the pinnacle of God's gifts to provide our needs. In God's gifts of Himself to us He is essentially saying: “See, I am holding nothing back from you; I give you everything.” Indeed God is showing us that in God we have everything we need. May the Eucharist, the gift of Jesus Himself, transform us that we may have the Grace to put off the 'old self' and become a new creation in our Lord.