Homily 2-24-2013 Mountains

 Mountains in the Bible are powerful and important places. Mountain is almost a code-word for divine intervention, for God manifesting Himself and making something critical happen.

In seminary, we had our own little mountains not far off the Mississipi river in southeast Minnesota, called “bluffs.” One of these had an awesome rock formation right near the top that gave a wonderful view of the gorgeous campus below. I went up there many times, even once before sunrise to watch the dawn break. Back when I was in shape, I could take the most direct and steepest route right up to it, but I was always out of breath by the time I made it to the top.

Lent is meant to be a time of climbing a mountain to experience God. And if you've ever tried to climb a mountain, you know that it ain't no walk in the park. This is some seriously difficult work, and you better make good preparations for it. You have to first off dress properly and bring the right equipment. But also you have to pack the necessary amount of food and water. But not too much. Any ounce of extra baggage you bring is going to make that climb more miserable. So the journey up the mountain requires you to make judgments on things: what's important? what will help me? what will hold me back? That's one thing we do during Lent.

But then we get to work climbing. And that work toward sanctification can be tough. In these 40 days, we may want to quit. It is so much easier to just give in to the gravity of our concupiscence and fall down. It's not easy to change; it means going against the grain of our habits to make better ones.

When we are tempted to give in to the difficulties, or find ourselves tripped up on our faces because of sin, it is then that we need a reminder of our purpose: why are we doing this?

The Cross hurts, but the Resurrection gives us assurance that it's worth it.

This is what the disciples experience today. 8 Days ago, they hear that their teacher, the Messiah, is going to taste the most humiliating, most shameful, and most painful death possible.

They need encouragement. They need a change of perspective- to see things from above.

They need a God's eye view. They need hope.

Homily 2-17-2013 Winning the Desert Duel

 Five days into Lent, I am sure some of us have been tempted to give up our Lenten promises. Perhaps we've felt the sting of our sacrifices and we already asked ourselves, “Is it too late to change my penance?”

This is okay. Temptation is normal for us humans. And today, as we follow Jesus into the desert in a game of “follow the leader” that really isn't a game, we look toward our future with confidence knowing that He was Himself tempted and overcame the sting of that temptation.

Today, in the desert where we have to face-up to ourselves, we see Jesus in a sort of duel - a wrestling match between Himself and the Devil's cunning temptations. And the lesson for us today is that we don't defeat the Devil at his own game. If we play his game, we lose no matter what.

Look at Christ. Jesus doesn't beat Satan by doing what he tells Him: turning stones to bread to satisfy his physical wants; worshiping him to receive power and dominion; or hurling himself off the temple to receive the praise and adoration of others. Rather, Christ conquers these attacks by His lowliness, by His humility, by His trust in God His Father. Not that he couldn't have shown the Devil who's who, but He responded this way to leave an example for us. And in that victory we are shown a way to win in our own struggles and temptations, whatever form they take (for me right now it is in the form of yummy looking sweets and snacks between meals!). We have to follow our leader.

The desert reminds us that we will fail on our own. This is why Moses commands the people of God to proclaim the story of their ancestors, of how God saved them by mighty works: so they never forget that they are nothing without God. We must confess our trust in God over these next 40 days as Paul reminds the Romans. We see today the truth in the words of Saint Paul, who said in 2 Cor. 10:12 I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong. Here's one example of that. If on Ash Wednesday we cannot survive the 16-or-so hours of fasting (or at least Fr. Terry cannot) without being either irritable, grumpy, or lazy, then how do we expect to survive the forty days of Lent ahead of us? No, Lent is not a muscle-building program for us to be self-sufficient; Lent is a habitual re-orienting of the eyes of our hearts and minds towards God so that we find in Him our only true strength. When we are weak, then we are strong. This is the humility that Christ exemplified for us today, and this is how he defeated the Devil in that challenging competition.

So whether we have already stumbled in our Lenten program or have survived the first days of Lent, we know that we must trust in God our Father, after the example of Christ in the desert. With absolute humility, let us creatures acknowledge Our Creator and Defender, and find ourselves strong in our weakness. CCC 2097 To adore God is to acknowledge, in respect and absolute submission, the "nothingness of the creature" who would not exist but for God. To adore God is to praise and exalt him and to humble oneself, as Mary did in the Magnificat, confessing with gratitude that he has done great things and holy is his name. The worship of the one God sets man free from turning in on himself, from the slavery of sin and the idolatry of the world.

This humble adoration is the way to victory. This is the program for our entire Christian life, and especially for our next six weeks. Let us follow our leader with His humility and His strength to the desert and the cross, and so receive the promise of eternal life that we taste in this Mass.

Homily 2-10-2013

 Today I have a simple message for you all: don't be afraid of prayer. Despite its difficulties, it is rewarding.

When Jesus tells Peter to “cast out into the deep for a catch,” I think this is a beautiful image for what prayer is. Prayer is dark, scary, demanding, challenging. It requires our hard work, yes, but ultimately depends on more than that to be fruitful: we can't force God, just as Peter can't force fish into his net. But if we are faithful to prayer, we will in the end see great results. If we go “cast out into the depths” of our soul in prayer, it is there we will find the wellsprings of eternal life in the Holy Spirit, and we will never be dissappointed, we will never be let down.

Today's readings show us that prayer is the source of Christian mission. Only in prayer do we get a sense of who God is, who we are, and what that relationship demands that we do on this earth – both for God and for our fellow man.

Saint Peter today receives his vocation, to be a fisher of men, through a profound encounter with the Lord Jesus. Saint Paul, who says today how he was made an apostle by Jesus appearing to him on the way to Damascus, also receives his mission, and his strength for perseverance, from that experience. And in our first reading, the prophet Isaiah, deep in prayer, had a similar mystical experience where he encountered in a vision both God and his angels, and hears the Lord calling out to him to fulfill a specific mission. Prayer is the source of vocation. Prayer is the source of mission.

Even Jesus himself underwent this process, one example being at the beginning of His public ministry: deep in prayer at His Baptism, the Father's voice is heard, and the Holy Spirit drives Jesus into the desert for 40 days to be deeply devoted to prayer as he begins his mission to proclaim the Gospel of repentance. This is what we are about to do as a universal Church in the 40 days of Lent which begin this Ash Wednesday, preparing for the holiest days of our Church Year – the Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.

If prayer is the source of mission, the source of what God is calling us to do, then it is also the source of Grace, with which God also equips us to carry out what He asks of us. This is why prayer is so critical: without it, we fail. The less we pray, the more we will struggle as disciples. On the other hand, the more we advance in prayer, the more perfect we become, the closer we are to being the saints God calls us to be, and the more our weaknesses and defects are overcome, since we are united to God Himself more perfectly and His love draws us into His fulness.  (A dedicated Christian should pray 15 minutes a day, minimum) (silent prayer is necessary!)

So, it is very fitting that at this time, we as a parish, as Christian Disciples, as stewards of the gifts of our life and our time, rededicate ourselves today to the stewardship of Prayer, affirming that we cannot fulfill our Baptismal calling without a regimen of prayer. I now invite our joint-speakers, Matt and Jack, to share their own experience of prayer in their lives to guide our commitment for this year.

Homily 2-3-2013 Receiving the Difficult Message

Jesus Christ, out of love for his hometown, speaks a difficult message to them, and they are unwilling to receive it. It fills “them with rage,” and we see the first glimpse of how the Gospel will end, Our Lord suffering death for standing up for the truth in live. Veritatem in Caritate, the truth in charity, is the episcopal motto of our Bishop Kevin Rhoades, and this is exactly the witness I have always seen him bear to our diocese. This role is a challenge for us as Christians, to speak the unpopular truth with compassion, but it is an essential part of true love, because Love and Truth go together. Charity does not abide in fantasy, it rather faces reality as it is – along with faith and hope to guide it.

But what really hits home for us today is how often we fit the role in today's Gospel not of Christ, but of the locals. How many times have we failed to listen to what we know is true because of how much it hurts? How many times have we disregarded the message because of a personal or social hang-up we have for the messenger? I know I have been guilty in the past of disregarding people I disagree with, of ignoring people I haven't forgiven, and of slandering (at least in my heart if not in my words/actions) people who have rubbed me the wrong way. If we fail to hear the hard truth, instead of growing and learning from our failings, we will only continue in the same shortcomings.

Sin is always easy, because of our concupiscence – since we have a tendency to self-love, it is always a challenge to be charitable, to be selfless, to model the Lord's Cross.

Saint Paul reminds us today of the essence of love, the essence of the Christian life. One practice I would ask you to do is to look at this passage for 1 Cor. 13, and replace the word Charity with Jesus, and see what it teaches you. Then replace it with yourself, and use that as an examination of conscience. You will find this remarkably helpful.

Living in love is the trademark of Christians, of God's adopted children. CCC-1828 The practice of the moral life animated by charity gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. ... (Basil) If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, . . . we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands . . . we are in the position of children.

Let us be those children who love for love's sake. And if we can't do it in every part of our life, let us fake it 'til we make it. Practice it until it truly is a part of your soul.

In order to know what charity looks like, let us recall its fruits: CCC-1829 The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion: (Augustine) Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest.

And these last words are why we are here today: God is love, and by coming to Him in our daily prayer and especially in the Mass, where Love itself is poured out into our hearts from this altar, we are restored and strengthened to live as children of God. Thank you Jesus, let the Love from your Sacred Heart fill our souls.

Homily 1-27-2013 The Unity of Christ's Body

 Last week, as we heard the account of the Wedding at Cana, we reflected on how the inferior wine of the world runs short of our desires, and we need to go to Jesus to receive the deep joy of the good wine.

That is what we heard about in the first reading. The people, after having returned from the Babylonian Exile for over forty years, are restored to life in Jerusalem. But not until now were they fully restored, for in today's reading they receive the Torah again, and this moves them in such a deep way, awakening a part of them that had been long asleep, that it moves them to tears. The Lord offers them what their hearts were longing for – a relationship of love with Him!

Today we see a glimpse of that that good wine is: it is in experiencing the liberty that Jesus brings: the freedom from the captivity of our sins but also of all evil, especially death the greatest of evils. It is Jesus alone that restores our sight to we who were blinded and could no longer see the truth of this world clearly, who couldn't behold God face-to-face until He came to deliver us.

Just as Jesus transformed the good water into the best wine, he desires today to transform the good of our culture into a deep and abiding peace and joy that the world cannot offer. For we know that our country offers us a sense of freedom, that our culture stress a profound respect for the individual. But this is only part of the truth God wishes to offer us. The glad tidings which the Lord Jesus brings to us, the poor, transcends this, lifting it up, purifying it, and making it eternally meaningful.

This deeper meaning is found in our second reading: the Pauline image of the Body of Christ from 1 Corinthians 12. This text is absolutely required reading for any Christian, and should be central for us Catholics in understanding what it means to be part of God's family. What this passage reminds us of is two critical points that come from our Baptism into Christ: we are all important, and we are all inseparably connected.

Firstly, St. Paul essentially says, we all have different roles in the Body of Christ, and they are all important, all necessary. What would the Church be like if it were full of only priests and nuns? We'd look pretty silly, and Father wouldn't have anyone to baptize! What if the married couples all desperately desired to be priests or nuns? Then where would the holy marriages be? And don't even think of saying the maintenance people aren't needed, or you will find out real fast just how much so they are!

Secondly, we are all connected. I've been thinking of this a lot lately, with Fr. Dan's surgery, Bishop D'Arcy's cancer returning, and, for the high school where I am chaplain, four funerals for current SJHS students' fathers in the past month. Indeed, for us Catholics, when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer, because of our great love and concern for each other. We know that in this life, we share in each others' sorrows and each others' joys, because the Body of Christ is inseparably connected in Jesus, in this Eucharist.

And that is the better wine Jesus offers us. Sure, liberty is a good thing, and the individual needs to be respected. But we Christians know that the best wine is offered to us in the Communion that we have in the Body of Christ. Let us pray that we may ever more and more appreciate and live this mystery of unity that is so central to our Christian life that we re-live it every single week.

Homily 1-20-2013 A Better Wine

 This world offers inferior wine. If you want the good wine, you have to go to Jesus.

Someone who just met me asked if I was 21 yet. Now I know I look really young, and I certainly still am, but I assure you that I really am 28 and have tasted good wine and I have tasted bad wine – and thanks be to God I know what's good and what's week-old, nasty skunk wine. If that was my first glass, I may be a teetotaler!

Jesus manifests Himself to His disciples with wine, at a wedding – both symbols of joy. This should remind us that joy (real, sincere joy) is a sign of God, and if we don't have joy in our lives, we might be missing out on God!

Christian Marriages are meant to be joyful because the Christian life is meant to be joyful. If you want to have real joy in your life, let Jesus lead your marriage, and always invite Mary.

Marriages always start out joyful. There really is the wine of joy to be found in a nice ceremony, then dancing, cake, etc. But sooner or later, and it may be years down the road, that wine will run out. The honeymoon phase will end, and marriage cannot run on the fumes of human euphoria forever. Neither can priesthood or any life-long commitment! This drought is where where marriages can potentially stagnate and so many people sadly just give up. They feel they have drank the wine to the end, they have bought the lie that there is nothing more for them, when this is only an invitation to more.

This pain arises because the human heart knows there is something more out there.

We have to move to something deeper, and this will demand something great of us: we have to humble ourselves before Jesus, preferably through Mary, and tell Him “we have no wine.” Then, even harder than admitting our weakness, you must “do whatever he tells you”: no matter how difficult it may seem, whether it is growing in your prayer, changing your lifestyles, converting to the teachings of the Church, whatever.

This command, “do whatever He tells you,” comes from Mary. Mary knows that it is scary to obey God completely. She also knows, as St. Paul says, that “the sufferings of this present life are nothing to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us” in Heaven. Mary is telling us: there is better wine coming! This isn't the end!

So don't settle for mediocrity. Water = natural, pure, true, Good, moral. Wine = fulfilled, elevated, transformed to an absolutely higher plane. Notice that this does NOT destroy what was there, but making it more than it already was!

Marriage is a sacrament!, i.e., an effective sign of Grace that was instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church. The spousal love of husband and wife are meant to not just symbolize God's love, but actually to make it present, that's what an efficacious sign means: I mean the difference between a picture of the Grand Canyon and actually being there. A holy sacramental marriage makes the love of Jesus for His Bride, the Church, physically present by loving daily with the same dramatic love of the Cross, the love we experience in the gift of the Eucharist – here at the wedding feast of the Lamb. As this kind of living and breathing Gospel, marriage teaches the faith of the Church. CCC 1666 The Christian home is the place where children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this reason the family home is rightly called "the domestic church," a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity.

So let's not give up in our vocations, especially in the great sacrament of matrimony, when the inferior wine runs out. Remember that God hold the good wine until later, for those who are faithful.

 This world offers inferior wine. If you want the good wine, you have to go to Jesus.

Homily - 1/13/2013 - Baptism of the Lord

God has a plan for your life, and that plan begins and is forever summed up in your baptism. The meaning of life is found in Baptism: it is that God makes us His Beloved Children and that we are to live in such a way that brings Him the greatest pleasure and delight.

I have sometimes surprised people when I tell them that the most important day of my life was not June 11, 2011 when I was ordained a priest, nor April 25^th, 2010 when I was ordained a deacon, nor my birthday nor anything else but the day I was baptized, October 14^th 1984. In fact, nothing comes close to that since without Baptism I would never have had any of those other important days, because Baptism is the “doorway to the sacramental life of the Church.” My priesthood is so very important to me, but it wouldn't mean anything, it wouldn't make sense without the vocation I have received in Baptism, the mission we all have as members of the one Body of Christ.

Since God's plan for your life in found in Baptism, this sacrament must lead us to a mission, a vocation. A mission or vocation requires a clear vision of both the big picture and our part in it. That vision comes from prayer and reflection on one's life. So Baptism without prayer means little, if anything at all. Let us look at Jesus.

Jesus' mission begins with His baptism, which is not the same as ours was, since He sancitifies the waters for us to be united with Him. From that Baptism, and from His prayer, Jesus receives the Holy Spirit upon Him in great power, and the voice of the Father calling out “you are my beloved.”

A Christian, a little Christ, must do more than just receive the sacrament of Baptism in order to find their vocation, to find out how they fit into God's big plan for the salvation of the world. This can only be accomplished by prayer. We must look to Jesus as our model: though we hear almost nothing of it in the Gospels, Jesus spends 30 years in preparation for his future mission – praying, studying Scripture, learning and practicing the trade of carpentry. We have to remember that the Lord is preparing us for something, and we have to help our children (and, really, all the youth of our parish) to see that. I am sure Mary and Joseph helped Jesus those 30 years. This should be a reminder to us that a vocation grows in a family, and we learn it from those who live their life with meaning and a vision.

Although prayer gives the necessary vision for the mission we receive in Baptism, we still need prayer afterward to help us keep that in focus. This is exactly why after Jesus has a clear vision of what His life is about, he goes to the desert to pray. And even throughout the Gospels he spends time alone in prayer, sometimes entire nights keeping vigil, recalling that vision and living from it. If he failed to keep that prayer, he would lose it – just as I have seen so many friends and acquaintances get lost in this world after drifting from prayer. So pray, see, live!