One Marriage in France 150yrs ago

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I watched a French movie (the exchange of the princesses) which recounts a double-arranged marriage between the kings of France and Spain as they tried to end a bitter war of twelve years.  It poignantly shows how even in the midst of the royal court and tense political situations, marriages still have the same fundamental problems and challenges.  Indeed, with all the problems and attacks to marriage that come from outside the couple, the most important problems and challenges are within the individual.  For marriage is founded on love - the highest calling of the human person and thus of marriage.  And we cannot truly and fully give ourselves to our neighbor (love) until we have true and full possession of ourselves.  Selfishness is poison to marriage, as it is poison to love.

Last week I went on pilgrimage to France, to see many holy shrines but most importantly for me, to see our patroness, whose relics were on display for over a week in the basilica made in her honor in the early 20th century.  The only book I read while I was away was this: Therese by Dorothy Day.  In her own assessment, she says with regret that this project revealed to her that she only has the ability to write about herself.  However, I am truly enjoying it, and at times the beauty of Therese’s family life, which truly shines through, has brought me to tears.  This girl could not have become a saint without her family.

          Louis and Zelie Martin - Zelie died when Therese was 4-½.

Marriage is the most important thing in the world.  Little Flowers grow in the garden of the family, which is founded on marriages that are healthy and holy.  Virtue is grown where there is love and faith.  The world ends this more than all the other causes that draw our attention because they seem more urgent but are truly less important and less impactful.  The future of society rises and falls with the family.

All married couples must continue to grow and allow God to work in their marriages, and we all have the duty to support them.  The Perfect must not be made the enemy of the Good.  Sure, there are failures.  Sure, things aren’t exactly as they should be and definitely not always suitable to our desires or tastes.  Don’t let past imperfections impede you from doing as much good as you can now.

1 - Marriage in Christ Seminar.

2 - Five Love Languages.

3 - Date night - spend time together.  Marriage is work, certainly, but if it is only work there can be little enjoyment. Children want (and really need) to know and see how much mom and dad love each other.  That stable foundation of knowing that mom and dad are all in, no matter what, is the fence around the garden that allows little flowers to flourish.  May the Lord Jesus, truly present in the Eucharist, help us all, especially marriages, grow more and more in living a lives for each other and thus giving new life to our world.

"What do people say about me?"

The diocese's communications office has asked the following note to be read regarding Bishop Rhoades' investigation that we spoke of last weekend.  I would like to read that before the homily.

We can be grateful for Bishop Kevin Rhoades, not to mention our predecessor Bishop D'Arcy.  Although he may not necessarily do everything perfect, and I'm sure he doesn't please everyone 100% of the time, but I know that our bishop is a good man at his core.  In the way that the twelve disciples, who followed Jesus around for his three years of public ministry and truly saw into his heart, I am confident that Bishop Kevin has a good heart for his people.  How did Peter know this so certainly about Jesus?  It was written in Jesus' actions.  Our actions speak louder than our words, right?  Then the way we see others live on a daily basis is more fundamental to understanding their character. 
That is why Peter could make his claim of who Jesus is.  He called him the Messiah because he saw Jesus' actions speaking as a strong support to the Lord's words.  Many people of Jesus' time claimed to be the Messiah.  Go back to the book we got for Lent title "Case for Jesus" and you will find examples of that.  But all those false messiahs could not back up their words with actions like Jesus' healing of a deaf-mute like in last week's Gospel.
What others think about us is important, but not as important as what God knows about us.  Building  our lives around what others think about us is like building a house on sand.  It may start out fine, but the odds are small for it to endure the test of time.  Founding our sense of identity on what God knows about us, both what are the intentions of our hearts and what our actions are showing day by day, that is building a house on solid rock.  For popularity is much cheaper than integrity.
Jesus gives us a great example of this.  He knew integrity was worth much more than popularity.  Despite what others thought about him, He knew how His Heavenly Father looked upon Him with Love and was well-pleased with Him.  Like the prophet Isaiah, he was true to his identity in the midst of opposition, even to the point of death on a cross.  And in that time of trial, Jesus revealed his true self by his actions.  He didn't just say "the Son of man must be rejected" and "take up your cross after me," but he lived it.  Even when Peter tried to tempt Him away from God's will, to take the easy way out, to be a different type of savior, he said an emphatic NO.  Rather, he laid down his life.


For it is the cross that makes a saint.  We cannot be saints without the cross.

 He put this Eucharist into action on the Cross.  Let us, from this Holy Communion, live a life founded on integrity and on what God sees in us, a life that takes up the Cross after our redeemer.

Poverty before God

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St. James’s letter makes clear that distinction and factions are not allowed in God’s house, at least not when judged by worldly standards. 

All the poor are heirs of the kingdom of God as much as we are, if not more.

We ourselves must make ourselves poor in order to receive the Eucharist worthily. Not necessarily materially poor, for even the rich have a place to worship at the altar of God that St. James describes, although Jesus does say if you forsake earthly things you will gain heavenly ones. But really we must be poor in a different way to receive the Eucharist - poor in spirit. It is the hungry who are filled with good things, the blessed Mother tells us in her Magnificat.

Pope St. Leo the Great: When Christ says “blessed are the poor in spirit,” he shows that the kingdom of heaven is to be given to those who are distinguished by their humility of so rather than by their lack of worldly goods.  Spiritual poverty is first and foremost a type of humility.  We must be humble before God to realize we need God and all the other blessings of life that He freely showers upon us.

Think about this: how many Pharisees and scribes were healed by Jesus? I don’t think any are mentioned in the Gospels. That's because they weren’t able to express their need, to acknowledge their poverty.  The one Pharisee I know who was healed by Christ was Saint Paul, who first had to be blinded by Christ.  The Lord had to break him down so that he could raise him up.  He had to make him poor in a certain way, in the way that was most important to Paul, so that he could realize his need.  Not only was he blinded, he was told by the Lord Jesus that he, Paul, was persecuting Him, that he, Paul, was doing exactly what God did not want him to do: consenting to the killing and arresting of Christians.

Like Paul, If we aren't humbled, we will be humiliated.  Which ultimately, it taken properly, will be something that saves us.  Pride is the worst of sins.  Thinking we don't need God or others, or that we have earned all our blessings on our own.

Perhaps this is one of the blessings that God is offering to the Church in the U.S. and other parts of the world that are suffering through current events.  It seems God is reminding us of our poverty, stripping us of any ability to rely on our own powers.  In the first days of his papacy, Pope Francis cried out, "Oh how I wish the Church to be poor and for the poor."  Not materially poor only, but poor in spirit and grounded in true humility.  Indeed, God is answering our Holy Father's cry from the heart, and it is a mercy and a grace.  Amen. God's will be done.  

We must be like that dry thirsty ground spoken of in the first reading.  For it is then that God can transform us, make us whole, and heal us.

May we receive the same poverty of spirit in our hearts so that God can truly work in us.  May we be small like Therese, and may our little deeds, our little flowers in God's garden, be noticed and smiled upon by Our Loving God.

Bad Shepherds

Audio from 9:30: click here

A couple people met up with me after this Mass and expressed concern with my homily.  I did not express clearly whole breadth of the problems, and tried to emphasize it better in future homilies.
Here are various resources that I find helpful.

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/pope-francis-all-must-help-to-root-out-culture-of-abuse

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/ex-nuncio-accuses-pope-francis-of-failing-to-act-on-mccarricks-abuse

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/truth-is-needed-to-free-the-church-from-sacrilege-of-clergy-scandal


"The truth will set you free." John 8:32.

Bread of Life - Self-Gift

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If the Eucharist is the Bread of Life, then we need to change the way we look at our lives, especially on Sundays.  I’m preaching a truth that we all need to hear, but especially the people who are not in the room.  For Jesus says “unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood…” and yet the reality is that 75% of Catholics in the United States don’t make it to Mass regularly.  It’s not a priority, so they are spiritual zombies like we talked about last week.

The Eucharist isn’t magic.  God doesn’t bulldoze us.  He desires our free response, and so He allows us even to reject Him. This explains That type of person ends up being someone who eats the Bread of Life but doesn’t live it - perhaps even trying to live a life of duplicity - as if sin and God can be friends within our hearts.  —And in light of the news over the past weeks, I think especially especially for priests or other church leaders who do harm through a life that in serious ways does not conform to Jesus, a life with a dark side that ends up causing more harm than good.  “Whoever causes one of these little ones to sin…” Jesus says, and indeed it is a tragedy to see how some of the Church’s representatives have failed to help others, even here in this parish in the past from what I’ve heard.  No, clearly the Eucharist isn’t God’s magical way to force us to change.  We must be willing to be changed.

Communion will not affect you unless you let it.  And the biggest part of letting it, letting Him, work within you, is to grow in intimacy with Jesus.  If you know Jesus deeply and personally, the Eucharist will transform you.  You will start to become a different person, you will become Him, and through that, you will become the best version of yourself.  We may also need to get to Confession, for the Eucharist will not help us at all if we take it when not prepared, for Saint Paul says “whoever eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.”

The Seven Secrets of the Eucharist would be a great book to help you unleash the power of the Eucharist in your life. 

Running on empty

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Elijah is trying to run on empty. He needs food but even is entering a type of despair, practically begging for death and almost refusing to eat.  He can’t make it to the mountain God has sent him to unless he eats.

This reminds me of a story in my life. A time that I’m very happy about - when I ran a half marathon in southern Ohio while in seminary in Columbus. I remember it so fondly because it is the one time I beat my brother Fr. Matt in a head-to-head race.  Unfortunately, it was only because my brother has a finnicky stomach and a strong will that I was able to pull it off.  Like Elijah, he tried to run on empty, or almost empty.  He was afraid of cramping so he had a banana and some granola for breakfast - that's it.  Then we drove for like an hour and warmed up and tried to run 13.1 miles.  Not a good idea, but at least there's gatorade stations right?  Nope, not for Fr. Matt - they will slow him down from his goal time and he might cramp up, so "no thanks" on the only fuel he had for the race.  So he's out there clipping like 6-minute miles or something for the first ten or 11 miles, but eventually he just can't do it.  He literally stops, completely.  He sits down, lays down out in the middle of nowhere.  A few minutes later, he's up and just walking, and I come along and find him.  He explains that he hit the wall (I like the word "bonked") and will have to go in nice and slow, unfortunately.  I say "well, glad you're okay, see you in a bit!!" And there you have it.  I beat him!  But only sorta-kinda.

You can't run without fuel. Life is usually not an easy stroll.  It's not a marathon either, at least not all the time.  But you will certainly "bonk" without getting fed.  A lot of our world doesn't seem to care about God, but really, they have just hit a wall and need to be refueled.  They need their souls to be recharged.

We need to feed our souls good, wholesome stuff.

How to refuel?
1. Get to Sunday Mass, even when difficult.  Not going to Sunday Mass is like missing the family photo.  When your not there, you can't be replaced.  Alongside that, nothing can replace the gift of God in the Eucharist.
2. Set a daily payer routine - When?  Where? How?  What? (Include a daily review and a plan for the next 24 hours)
3. Go on a Retreat.  Jesus says "come away and rest a while."  You know, even organizations often take time to think deeply about what they are doing and where they are headed.  Why don't we realize how important that is for our spiritual lives?
4. Find some Christian Fellowship. We need to face the fact that our culture, with its rampant individualism and moral relativism, is not supportive of Christian living.  If we want to survive, we need support.  That's why God gave us each other.
5. Practice Acts of Service.  Whether it is volunteering at the parish or in a charity program, or just spending yourself for the sake of those in your daily life, God recharges us when we give ourselves away.  Love overflows back into us.

Food that perishes

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When I thought about Jesus' words today, "food that perishes," I couldn't help but think of my refrigerator.  Let's be real, as far as sanitation goes, you don't know what you're gonna get when you walk into a single guy's house.  I mean, a teenage bedroom isn't much better, but they usually don't have free reign over the entire house so it just stays in their room.  The single-adult male however, yikes.  Especially their refrigerator, unless they cook often (I don't devote much time to that). So, over the past few years of living alone and spending most of my evenings out and about with high school and parish activities, I have discovered that almost any food will eventually perish, and then can take on new and exciting life in the wonderful ways of bacteria.

But when Jesus was speaking of "food that perishes," he wasn't talking about things that spoil - since the only thing that doesn't is the Twinkie that layed on a science teacher's shelf in Maine for 40 years and counting.  Not physical food, then, but something else - a type of spiritual food, something that feeds our immaterial parts of ourselves: our souls and our minds.  Our minds long for truth, they are made to eat it up, so to speak.  G.K. Chesterton says "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."  If it doesn't do that, then the open mind is just plain foolish.  We were made to cling to truth and find a spiritual satisfaction in that truth, a truth that is bigger than just facts because it goes beyond trivia questions to the deeper wisdom about life and eternity.

1. Jesus says "The truth will set you free," and indeed it does, even if it puts you in jail.

Whether it's Cardinal McCarick's recent demise in public light or the truth about Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae from 50 years ago that prophesied how contraception (the pill, etc.) will exploit women, destroy marriage and family, and make parents feel that children are burdens instead of blessings.  People thought he was crazy then, but we can say with perfect hindsight that this Pope had God-given foresight as to where our culture would head.  Hard truths are not always easy for us to take, just like turnips or brussel sprouts (without bacon!), but the truth will set you free.

Besides Truth, we were made sure something even more, and that is the deeper meaning of Jesus' words: "Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you."

2. GOD IS DESIRING US.  We often think of the Eucharist as God's fulfillment of our desire to be with Him.  Indeed it is this.  We were created by God with a special longing that can only be satisfied by Him alone.  Our human nature is hard-wired for a "food" that goes beyond the natural world.  Even beyond the spiritual food of truth that our souls hunger for.  The desire for little truths ultimately lead us to larger ones, until we are swept up in the Lord alone as the only true satisfaction of our souls.

But we should also look at this Eucharist and see that God is desiring us.  Remember that: God gave us the Eucharist and the other sacraments, God gave us His only-begotten Son, and opened heaven for us by His resurrection and ascension, He allows us to encounter Him in prayer, all because He wants to be with you.  He can't wait for heaven.  He brings heaven to earth.  Yes, we indeed desire God.  But if you look at the gift of the Eucharist, you must see that God desires you even more.

3. Little kids don't know what's good for them.  In some ways, adults will say they don't even know what's good, period.  I mean, looking back at some of the foods I really enjoyed, can make me a little squeemish.  If we let kids choose what they wanted, they wouldn't eat their vegetables or go back to school or do their piano lessons or help around the house.  We don't know what's good for us, and we are all a bit like those little kids who would rather listen to those more immediate, earthly desires rather than the deeper ones for truth, love, and God.  

Prayer keeps us in touch with those deeper desires.  So too does discipline, sacrifice, and a life of spent on those around us.  Quiet yourself down each day, listen to that desire for God, and God's desire for you.  Amen.