Homily 9-29-2013

Today I want to ask you a very important question: “Does your wardrobe testify to Jesus?” I am not speaking about your physical clothes, though a shirt with a religious message on it might be a nice way to spark a good discussion (but it might not, and I'll get to that in a minute). I am talking about the things that really speak to others even more than our clothing (or lack thereof), our hair style, tattoos/piercing, whatever.

Pope Paul VI, an under-appreciated pope says: People today listen more readily to witnesses than to teachers; and if they listen to teachers at all, it is because they are witnesses!

What kind of witnessing do we do? What does our wardrobe look like?

The rich man of Our Lord's parable today doesn't receive a very good description: not even getting his name, all we hear is that he wore the best, he ate the best, and he ignored the worst. My guess is he ignored pretty much everyone.

As much as we hate to believe it, our actions can say a lot about what we love: is it God? Family? Success? “Retirement”? Self-righteousness? What we live our life for might not be the same as what we want to live our life for, and today is a reminder that we need to keep that in check. We should ask ourselves: What do we wear on the outside? Our “clothing” is the first thing people see when they look at us. Well, the first thing people “see” about our inner person is our actions: our choices. What do we choose put on every day? Hopefully it is God, Honesty, Goodness, Charity, and Humility.

Saint John Chrysostom has this to say about today's rich man: Ashes, dust, and earth he covered with purple, and silk; or ashes, dust, and earth bore upon them purple and silk. As his garments were, so was also his food. Therefore with us also: as our food is, such let our clothing be.

This holy bishop is noticing a kind of cause and effect relationship between what we put in and what comes out. Looked at spiritually, the rich man put in self-absorption, pride, and an attachment to worldly things, and look what he puts out: living high on the hog and a lifestyle oblivious to those who have nothing but gaping wounds.
we have to be careful what we put into our souls, so that we can control what we show to others on the outside!  What we ought to welcome in our hearts is only God and the things of God, and this is done through prayer, good works and especially the Eucharist.

• Ite ad Evangelium Domini nuntiandum.
Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.
• Ite in pace, glorificando vita vestra Dominum.
Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.




This Eucharist, what we put in our bodies and souls, is God Himself. Do we let that “consume” us, “take over” our hearts, and transform us into what we receive? Today, let us consciously put on a wardrobe of choices and concrete actions that witness to Jesus, that put God at the center, and that brings others to this community where our deepest human needs are satisfied by the Living God.

Homily - Dealing with Grief and Confusion

 Today's Gospel presents us with Luke's version of the Beatitudes, which are almost identical to Matthew's, but add some condemnations as well for those who receive their rewards in this life. Jesus reminds us that in the life to come, things are going to switch.

A parishioner at Mass this past Sunday was reading the petitions. She is on the parish staff and serves as a lector or petition reader often. This time though, she broke down when she was reading the petition about those who died in the Sept. 11^th attacks. After she gathered herself, she carried on through. At the end of Mass, she told me that twelve years ago today her son was turning 10. The day had a really bad effect on him. He was flooded with horror and sadness on the faces of everyone he met throughout the entire day. But the worst thing for his mom was that after school that day her 10-yr old son said to her: “Mom, I wish I hadn't been born.” He was so confused and filled with sadness that he wasn't able to separate the pain that everyone was experiencing from the happiness he was supposed to feel. With the help of his parents and friends, he eventually got through this time and began to make sense of the situation.

I don't know if today causes that type of difficulty in your own life, but I can assure you that you will have something happen in life that brings the same kind of confusion. There will be times when we will have a joyful day turned inside out and upside down, and you will feel sick to your stomach and confused and your emotions will be all over the place. I guarantee its going to happen, and I am sure that any adults here could verify that they have had times like that.

The important thing is to know how to deal with them, how to make sense of it all so we don't allow ourselves to slide into a kind of despair.

I just read a couple days ago from a book by St. Escriva: Your life is happy, very happy, though on occasions you feel a pang of sadness, and even experience almost constantly a real sense of weariness. —Joy and affliction can go hand in hand like this, each in its own “man”: the former in the new man, the latter in the old.

Saint Paul tells us about these two men in his Letter to the Colossians (3:1-11)

If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

...Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly:
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,
and the greed that is idolatry.
...anger, fury, malice, slander,
and obscene language out of your mouths.
Stop lying to one another,
since you have taken off the old self with its practices
and have put on the new self,
which is being renewed, for knowledge,
in the image of its creator.
Here there is not Greek and Jew,...
but Christ is all and in all.

For Saint Paul, we are all composed of two persons within in: Adam, the earthly man that we have to put to death but is always trying to rise up. And Christ, the new man whom we take upon ourselves in faith.

STORE UP TREASURES IN HEAVEN.

Homily (22nd Sunday of Ord. Time) God wants your heart, because He wants your whole person.

God wants your heart, because he wants your whole person.

Today's first reading from Philemon speaks to us about a slave, Onesimus, who is returning to his Christian master (Slavery in the ancient world was quite different from our country's past; in most cases a lot closer to the movie The Butler). Paul invites the master, Philemon, to receive his runaway slave as a brother. He wants him to change his heart about who he is, even if Onesimus will remain a servant of his household. Paul is interested in a change of heart, because it is there that everything changes.

The same for Jesus: he wants your heart, because he wants your whole person. Jesus was not a crowd-pleaser trying to keep everyone happy. He was not an entertainer or celebrity trying to remain popular and admired. He was not a sell-out rock star trying to stay on the headlines.

Jesus doesn't want only our happy feelings, or our friendship-of-convenience, nor our passive admiration. Jesus wants our hearts. So today, when crowds are following Him and getting a little too comfortable with who they think this guy is, He offers a kind of loving smack in the face that is meant to wake them up: “Unless you hate your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters...

unless you hate even your own life... unless you carry your own cross and come after me... unless you renounce all your possessions, you cannot be my disciple.” These are not the words of someone seeking popularity or admiration. These are “fightin' words,” as we sometimes call them, but not in the same way we normally think of them.

We all know what to say or do to get under people's skin. With our friends, our family, and even people we barely know, we know exactly the things we should not say if we want relations to continue smoothly. When we are tired, feeling ill, or upset about something, we might be tempted to actually do exactly what we never should. If we do this, we say, “them are fightin' words.” This is kind of what Jesus does today.

Instead of demanding a conflict between persons, Jesus demands a conflict within ourselves. He forces us to examine where our hearts are: What are the most important things in my life? What do I care about the most? What do I spend my time thinking about, worrying about, hoping for? Is it God? Is it success? Is it wealth? Is it family? Is it the pleasures of an easy life?

Wake up! Jesus says. Examine your heart, and put it in its right place. God wants your heart, because he wants your whole person.

Last week we heard about humility and how it is the foundation of the spiritual life: remembering that we are not the center of the universe, that we didn't make ourselves nor did any of the blessings we have in life (even the ones we think we got on our own) are all in some way from God who works through the world, through others, and even behind the scenes of our own souls to help us become what we are.

Today, we see the next step to building a good spiritual life: love of God. Putting our heart in the right place. Jesus doesn't want us to literally “hate” the good things we have in life, except in this sense: in any way that these things become an obstacle between us and God. If my family, either directly or indirectly takes first place in my life, they are a wall between me and God. If money or popularity or earthly pleasures become all I think about or look for, then I cannot be loving Jesus as I should.

If we love God and always have Him as #1 in our life, then we can keep family, friends, possessions, popularity, whatever: as long as it is not an obstacle. As long as God has our heart and not these things; as long as we are master of all that stuff; as long as they do not hold us on a chain and prevent us from following Jesus, then we can be free to give God our heart, and give Him or entire selves.

Homily 9-1-2013 The Center of the Universe

A LITTLE SECRET! I AM NOT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE!

I know this may confuse you. I am sure that a lot of you, although you might not have been able to articulate it, thought this was the case until I just stated the contrary. But it's true: I AM NOT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE.

. I was at a dinner this past Thursday and the speaker invited me to stand up because I was a priest.  As I stood to receive the gracious applause of people there, it felt nice.  But, as I mentioned already, I am not the center of everything, and this was a good reminder to me of that in a sort of way.  The only reason they were clapping for me was because I was a priest: that means they like priests, not that they like me.  It means that sometime along their journey of life there was some priest who was kind, loving, generous, compassionate, or whatever else - not that I was any of those things.  And it was a reminder to strive for it (just like we were told last week to strive to enter through the narrow gate).

. The more exalted we are, the more we need to humble ourselves.  Any good we are, any good we do, always starts from long before it reaches our hands: maybe our parents raised us well; so many teachers touched our lives in obvious or quiet ways; friends, neighbors, relatives, perhaps even strangers, all played a part in helping us to become who we are today.  And ultimately, this reminds us that everything in life is a gift.

The fruit of this awareness should be humility, which simply says: God is God and we are not.  I am not the center of the universe.

. Humility is the foundation of the spiritual life, and the gauge for holiness. Because its opposite, PRIDE, is the quicksand of the spiritual life, upon which no house of authentic holiness can stand, since holiness = loving.  Humility it also the foundation of holiness because, as the Catechism reminds us, it is the foundation of prayer: we cannot pray unless we recognize our nothingness and our reliance on God.

. Litany of Humility of Rafael Merry del Val, a Cardinal and the Secretary of State for Pius X.  (Song by Danielle Rose)

Mary is the example of Christ's principle today: those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Sirach: alms atone for sins. Consider daily acts of humility an alms-giving. This is in all sorts of small ways: not demanding recognition; not ignoring our need of others' assistance; asking for help; losing an argument by not lying, shouting, etc; not focusing a conversation on your own; actually being interested in the concerns of others; praying for others more than for yourselves; not pretending you know everything, especially in areas you are uninformed; not judging others harshly. Every way we practice humility, is similar to giving alms to our brother. In this action we say, “I am not the center of the universe!” This is a huge step toward genuine love.

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being honored, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being praised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being approved, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being despised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me, Jesus.
That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That in the opinion of the world others may increase and I may decrease,Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

Homily - 21st Sunday of OT (Parish Feast of St. Pius) - HEAVEN IS WORTH IT!

Today, as we celebrate our parish feast of St. Pius X, today's readings give us an opportunity to reflect on where we are going as a parish. I don't mean some kind of field trip, but what life is all about: Salvation, which is found through a narrow gate.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great, speaking of heaven, says: “No misfortune should distracts us from this happiness and deep joy; for if anyone is anxious to reach a destination, the roughness of the road will not make him change his mind.” Ultimately, heaven is worth the challenge of getting there.

This past February I travelled to Buffalo, NY, to visit a close college friend for a few days of skiing and catching up with him. Driving over there in the winter, I was really pleased that I had perfectly clean roads as I carried into Ohio. However, things eventually changed after sunset. When I got around Erie, PA, a storm brewed up and snow was coming down hard, but the more I turned North, the crazier it got. Eventually, there were practically no cars on the road, and I could barely see a thing. Finally, all there was to see were my headlights, an unmarked mound of snow with a road somewhere beneath it, and every 4-5 seconds, the poles marking the end of the pavement on each side. Those poles were all I had to stay on this little path and carry through to get to my destination, and boy was I poking along and hoping things kept going well.

“No misfortune should distracts us from this happiness and deep joy; for if anyone is anxious to reach a destination, the roughness of the road will not make him change his mind.”

So in the Gospel today, we have a negative example, someone that we should not imitate: “Lord, will only a few be saved?” This person is either overly curious (and we all know what happened to the cat), or they are seeking this information for a purpose: “what is the least amount of work I need to do?” It is like a student viciously calculating what they have to do to get a good grade in school.

Jesus' response, then, avoids two bad results. First, if he says “hardly anybody,” then we would all fall into fear and forget why Jesus came to die on the Cross. Second, if he says “mostly everybody,” we would all then be prey to presumption, to lazily moving through life as if heaven was a given – and there are few things that will make our love for God fade away faster than like assuming on God's love, just as a married couple that doesn't show affection will eventually deteriorate.

Rather, Jesus says “Strive to enter by the narrow gate!” You yourself, stay focused! Keep your feet moving; keep your hands on the plow; keep your nose to the grindstone; keep your eyes on the road; keep your head in the game!

Strive! Becoming a Saint, which is what we are all meant to be about here, means striving! And let's not forget that this does not mean that we are 1. self-made, or 2. entitled, another pair of parallel traps. Saints are not self-made, as if they did it on their own. No, getting through the narrow gate to heaven means that we more and more allow God to re-make us, not we ourselves. Nor is it something that we expect to come our way as we just sit around. We have to strive.

Instead of asking in our hearts “What is the least I can do to be saved?” We instead follow our patron, St. Pius X, guided by his episcopal and papal motto: instaurare omnia in Christo. These words, borrowed from Saint Paul and prayed every Monday evening in the Church's Liturgy of the Hours, are known well to us: “renew all things in Christ.” (Eph. 1:10).

It is in Jesus that we are sanctified. This means the Cross. This means striving.

As a parish family, we strive together. We stay focused together. We allow ourselves to be renewed in Christ together, here, gathered around this altar. May it be so every single week, and may we never give up on the journey, because its worth it. St. Pius X, Pray for Us.

Homily 8-18-2013

Catechism par. #575 Many of Jesus' deeds and words constituted a "sign of contradiction",³²¹ but more so for the religious authorities in Jerusalem, whom the Gospel according to John often calls simply "the Jews",³²² than for the ordinary People of God.³²³ To be sure, Christ's relations with the Pharisees were not exclusively polemical. Some Pharisees warn him of the danger he was courting;³²⁴ Jesus praises some of them, like the scribe of Mark 12:34, and dines several times at their homes.³²⁵ Jesus endorses some of the teachings imparted by this religious elite of God's people: the resurrection of the dead,³²⁶ certain forms of piety (almsgiving, fasting and prayer),³²⁷ the custom of addressing God as Father, and the centrality of the commandment to love God and neighbor.³²⁸
576 In the eyes of many in Israel, Jesus seems to be acting against essential institutions of the Chosen People:
- submission to the whole of the Law in its written commandments and, for the Pharisees, in the interpretation of oral tradition;
- the centrality of the Temple at Jerusalem as the holy place where God's presence dwells in a special way;

I came to set the world on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.
Jesus brings not peace but a sword?? “The Prince of Peace”??
Tough love is often misunderstood by those who receive it. “Truth will set you free, but it could also put you in jail.”
I came to set the world on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing. Fire is dangerous. Nothing touches it unchanged. Same thing with Jesus.
Jesus struck to the heart, he hits in the gut, and he gets a gut-reaction, a reflex.
Fireworks too close. Scaring/surprising Mom.
Martyrs, Padre Pio, etc.
If you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire. (Catherine of Siena)

Let's not shy away from being the powerful transforming force God wants us to be for our world. They may not understand it, it may shock and scare them, they may hate us for it, but the Truth will set us free and living (and dying) like Jesus will save us.

Life through Death

Jesus uses strong words today in his parable to issue a wake-up call call to his audience, a wake-up call that we all today still need to hear, reminding us that this world and this life is not what it’s all about.

In this life, everything is about something else: ultimately, heaven.  And because this is true, we have to be as Christ says today, “rich in what matters to God.”

When I ride my bike through narrow paths, I get nervous.  If I have to cross a street or turn a corner, I’d like to be able to see what is or isn’t coming down that street or around that corner!  Otherwise, I’m hitting the brakes and creeping.  The same goes for driving a car.  In life, we need that perspective, we need to be able to see the big picture.  That is what the author of our first reading, Qoheleth, had: a big perspective.  People would come to this wise figure for advice on the deepest mysteries of life, and he helped them remember the big picture.

In our world, one of the big “blind spots” of our society is death.  We pretend we are going to live forever.   There is also a tendency to sugar-coat death and anything associated with it (such as illness) so that it is re-defined: instead of funerals we celebrate their life – as if it is wrong to hurt.  No, it is wrong to lie about death, which is really a part of life: “This very night your life will be demanded of you.”

As a priest, I can’t hide from this.  Not just the occasional funeral, but every night I pray the dying words of Jesus: “Father, Into Your Hands I commend my spirit.”  Going to bed is like a little preparation for death.

The life of a Christian is already forfeit.  The only way to keep it is to lose it.  It is like when you are surrounded by foes: if you want to survive, you have to frantically put your life in danger.  It is like jumping out of a burning building: the only way to survive is to go straight into a new danger.

This idea made me read a poem I had heard of but never really read.  It is one of the greatest Spanish poems of all time, written by Saint Teresa of Avila, or her religious name Teresa of Jesus.  The poem repeats the line: muero porque no muero, I die because I do not die.  Primarily referring to her desire for heaven to be with God, this phrase has a double meaning for me.  If we do not die to ourselves and become more united to Christ, we lose ourselves.

In Christ, death is transformed.  It is redefined.  We don’t need to be afraid of it, because if we are living out our baptism, we have already tasted it.  Buried with Christ, we rose with Him, and we are in this Mass already on the other side of death.

Let us pray that with our Living Savior we can be rich in what matters to God, we can keep the big picture in mind, and we can daily die to ourselves so as to live in Christ.