Transfiguration - Looking ahead!

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This story comes right after telling them of his passion and resurrection.  It seems that Jesus can tell that the disciples really haven’t gotten the whole message.  They aren’t seeing all of what was said, but only the bad.  Jesus is looking ahead.

Don’t want to bring down the room, but there are five weeks of Lent left.  It may seem like there’s some pretty tough terrain before we make it to Easter eggs and lamb cakes.  Like the disciples, we may get bogged down in the bad news.  We, too, need to keep looking ahead, “seeing through” from a higher, wider perspective.  In fact, the word perspective literally means to look through (or look beyond) sometime.  To see past the things that are just ahead, and focus toward the ultimate end and the joy that comes.  This is what Jesus provided with the mountain-top experience of the Transfiguration, and this is what we must keep our eyes fixed on as well.

Abraham also, as we see today, had to see through the day towards the stars that were to shine at night.  Seriously, go back and look at the reading.  It's daytime when he prepares the sacrifice and waits for hours, then finally night comes and the Lord passes over the sacrifice.  God promises him descendents like the stars that are not yet visible to Abraham, just as Jesus promises glory to the disciples and to all of us even when in our lives we cannot look past the mess of our lives.  And I would add, just like when there are still five weeks of Lent and we don’t see how God is growing us through these days of preparation, perhaps because He is working below the surface.

Jesus invites us to see beyond all the sin, the confusion, the mess, and the struggle.  He was us to see the mysterious victory that he wishes to bring about for us and how in the Father’s plan, all things will be worked unto good.  Just as the wounds on Jesus’ body become wounds of love that manifest His glory, so too does God want our stories to show forth His glory, as it indeed does in all the saints, even our patroness whose hidden life ended at 24, but really was just the beginning.

One of the things we are invited to see is that we are suppressed saints.  This is a new phrase I’ve learned just this past week when reading one of the short chapters of Peter Kreeft’s work Forty Reasons I am a Catholic. He says this in chapter 27, which is two pages and is titled “because Catholics, like their saints, are a little crazy.” Which surprised me, because I never thought of it that way, but I think he’s totally right.  Anyways, here’s what he wrote:  What, exactly, do the saints show us about ourselves and our hearts?  One things they show is that they were and we are suppressed saints.  There is a “good news-bad news” doubleness to this: on the one hand, it is to our credit that in our deepest selves we love and aspire to high and holy ends, but on the other hand, it is to our blame that we suppress and ignore these aspirations and settle for far lower ones.

Saint Paul, a man who was born in an island of Greek culture, born a Roman citizen, and born a Jew, says today that we are Citizens of heaven.  Paul, who forsook all those claims on his identity when he put on Christ Jesus, knew that none of this was home.  Our fatherland is not made of land.  Don’t forget where you are destined for, and to what God has called you.  Keep your eyes ahead, looking through the trials toward the glory God will win from the trials.  See who you are made to be and let Jesus bring you there.  Amen.

Resisting Temptation - Jesus' Example

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Temptation / Test had a different meaning in the scriptures than it has today.  Now it has a narrower meaning of drawing someone into sin.  The word for “test” that we have in today’s Gospel is the same as what Jesus does to Philip when he is about to multiply the loaves and says “where are we going to get enough bread?” as well as other passages.  God isn’t leading them to sin, but is trying out their resolve and their strength.

What the devil is looking for is Jesus’ identity.  “IF you are the Son of God…”  He heard about the witness of John the Baptist, whom he must have been keeping his eyes on, since many were calling him the messiah.  Now John testifies to this new man, who has never sinned.  Ever.  Who is he?  What does “son of God” mean…?

Jesus does not give him the answer he is seeking.  He is left unsure, and perhaps this is why, when the time comes, he tries to kill him.

SATAN ATTACKS WHEN WE ARE WEAK, WHERE WE ARE WEAK

1.  Food. 

2. Power / Wealth    

3. Fame.

Three steps that Jesus gives us to conquer temptations

Face the temptation.  Acknowledge it.  Don’t avoid it or hide from it.

Respond in faith.  Expose the lie.  Affirm the truth.

Act on that faith.

Blind Guides

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Blind leading the blind.  Driving through a white-out.
Walking in a forest at night.  Night vision.  We need someone else to show us.

I cannot see perfectly either.  I am not a saint.  I do what I can and I trust in God's grace to help me speak not my own wisdom but the Lord's.  Plus, I'm not really old enough to have wisdom yet, am I?

Who are we listening to for advice?  Whose "wisdom" is guiding our lives?  If we aren't conscious about using God's wisdom, we will get inundate with other sources.  Their vision is too narrow!  They don't see things from an eternal lens but only from the lens they have developed.  We need God to help us in our blind spots, even if others can help us with the most obvious areas where we make mistakes.

In this day and age you really need a prolonged period of silence to hear God's voice.  Or at least you need a Bible! and the Catechism.  and the writings of the saints.

Doctors of the Church, or other saints - they are the ones with night vision.

Lenten practices.  What are you going to do?  I still haven't finalized my choices.  Bishop Rhoades has written a Lenten message to the diocese, reminding us that giving up chocolate is not important if we have recurring sins that we need to root out - he especially focuses on sins of our speech.  Regardless of what we need to work on, it is true that we cannot allow Lent to simply be a cookie-cutter process or a go-with-the-flow exercise.  We should really try to discover, with God's help and guidance, what He really wants us to do and how we really need to grow.  Don't let me tell you what to do.  I'm not wise or holy enough to do that - maybe someday.  You should let God show you.  Ask Him to guide you and reveal it to you.

I can give guidelines from the wisdom of the church.  In fact, from Jesus.

Prayer.
Fasting.
Almsgiving.

Little Black books.

Loving from our Anointing

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What does anointing mean biblically?

Saul was anointed king by the prophet Samuel.  He failed to keep his priorities straight and the Lord chose to make a new king to succeed him from another family.  That man was David, who eventually became the most popular military leader in Israel.  Saul was jealous of David and tried to have him rubbed out, but it didn't work.  God was with David.  Now Saul is hunting David.  Yet David refuses to lay his hand on Saul to protect himself, perhaps not entirely without self-interest but also with clear religious foundation.  God had anointed Saul, too.  So David has mercy on him in the interest of receiving a blessing from above - that God many remain with him.

Now an important side-note: in the church, priests and bishops are anointed, but the biblical protections we see in the first reading are not the same.  If a man betrays his ordination by one of many serious failures to keep priorities straight, justice and goodness demands a timely and fair response.  In fact, for the last few days about two hundred bishops have gathered with Pope Francis in Rome to go over exactly how this will be done across the globe.  Let us pray for the Spirit of God they have received through anointing to give them wisdom and direction.

Now back to the Gospel: Every Christian is an anointed one.  That is what the name Christian means.  And every priest is anointed for the sake of the universal priesthood (baptismal priesthood) of the faithful.  But as we see well in the Gospel, the Christian life is not easy.  Jesus makes that abundantly clear for us today.  He gives all kinds of short phrases that hit like boulders, and flesh out exactly what we see between David and Saul: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

This sounds great.  But living it is a totally different story.  It can be brutal.

Give and it will be given to you.  How does that reconcile with lend without expecting repayment?

Here we see the challenge of the Christian life.  Not to be a doormat, but to break the cycle of vengeance.  Ultimately, it is an act of faith.  Faith that love is stronger than death.  Faith that God can heal deeper than any wound.  Faith that you are never alone.  Faith that God will make things right in the end.

Homily - The Resurrection: what side of the fence am I on? Am I riding the middle?

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Homily outline (notes).

Uncomfortable.
Underlining the Gospels where Jesus says what we don’t expect or don’t find “nice”.
Parallels perfectly the first reading - it’s all building a house on sand. They can’t satisfy and will always let you down. Ultimately it’s harsh language because it’s a calling out of idolatry.
Not a false dichotomy but a real one. Because your body / soul is only one temple. So what do you worship there?

Another way to ask it: What are we betting on?
RTF Conference - “Am I all in?”

This is what Saint Paul speaks about in the first reading. The same dichotomy comes out in a different way. Either there is an eternity and all this is almost nothing, or there isn’t and this is all we get. One is right and the other is wrong.

He is describing how life is a gamble: since every life tells a story - at the end of your life, what story does your life tell? What have you bet on?

Gold Rush.  

It really matters!

CCC (Catechism)

991 Belief in the resurrection of the dead has been an essential element of the Christian faith from its beginnings. "The confidence of Christians is the resurrection of the dead; believing this we live."⁵³⁸

1003 United with Christ by Baptism, believers already truly participate in the heavenly life of the risen Christ, but this life remains "hidden with Christ in God."⁵⁶⁰ The Father has already "raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."⁵⁶¹Nourished with his body in the Eucharist, we already belong to the Body of Christ. When we rise on the last day we "also will appear with him in glory."⁵⁶²

Sunday Homily - Invasion and Mission

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WYD Panama – FIAT Festival – Conference Hall for ~9,000 people.  Adoration with homily – Bishop Robert Barron.  Gave great homily.  Should have stolen it.

God, by his free gift, invades into our life.  He makes us uncomfortable – like we reflected on last week.  How is God challenging me to make my life uncomfortable?  He “gets into our boat” and we must cooperate with it, as Simon did, to allow God to work through us.

The Encounter with God is never earned.  Always un-earned.  We can pray every day, do charity, follow the commandments, but our spiritual life is not a never ending high-point.  Sometimes, God is Something never forgotten.

God always is working, but not always as we can see.  (iceberg)

Unworthiness is the right response to the encounter with God.  When the Lord comes to us and chooses to share Himself with us in a specific way, we should naturally say: I don’t deserve this.  Just as when the light shines through the window, it is then that we see how dirty it is.

As Isaiah, Paul, and Simon Peter today encounter God, they all admit their sins, their failings, their weakness.  This is true humility.

But we can’t allow that reality to paralyze us.  God knows our sins and still loves us.  He chooses us.  He doesn’t make junk, and sin doesn’t make you junk.  And ultimately, through confession of sin, God forgives us.

We have the sacrament of Confession for ourselves to encounter God’s mercy.

But it doesn’t end there.  Finally, God has a mission for them, and he has one for each of us.  The Encounter with God always leads us to be changed, more than just being forgiven.  And change isn’t easy, isn’t comfortable.  Sometimes we dream too small.  Perhaps always we dream too small, playing in the shallow waters of the things of this world, when God really wants us to be out in the deep waters of things that last forever.  What way is God dreaming bigger than I am?  How does God want something more than me?

How is God asking you to be fisher of men?  To bring people into the life of the Church, of the Kingdom of God, is not some small thing.

Homily

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TODAY (Mission – NOW)

Jesus makes us uncomfortable one way or another;  if he doesn’t then we aren’t reading the whole Gospel and knowing the real Jesus, we are rather following some false Jesus, the anti-Christ, because the road to heaven is not easy.  Jesus didn’t come to fill us with sugar.

Christ did not promise an easy life. Those who desire comforts have dialed the wrong number. Rather, he shows us the way to great things, the good, towards an authentic human life.

The ways of the Lord are not easy, but we were not created for an easy life, but for great things, for goodness.

Ultimately we were created for Love.  and Love has demands, demands that are challenging to us.  If we think Christianity is Easter without Good Friday, we have been deceived, duped.

I experienced this in a powerful way at World Youth Day Panama.  In many ways our life was pretty easy, but we had our challenges.  Especially dressing like a priest down in that heat for hours each day.  I know that after the past week’s temperatures you aren’t going to feel sorry for me and might want to do what the crowd tried to do to Jesus in the Gospel today, but it was so hot.  Seriously, most of the group didn’t want to risk the nine miles hike with our overnight bags to go to the vigil site a week ago.  But it was worth the struggle, the ridiculous sunburn that Leo got, the horrible blisters that Emma got.  We eventually were able to join hundreds of thousands of fellow Catholics rejoicing in their faith and united around the Pope.  We were tired, hungry, smelly, dehydrated, and sorer than ever, but we were happy.  Why?  Because of our LOVE.  We did all this together, as one, in trials and pains.  This echoes what Saint Paul is talking about in Corinthians.  The body of Christ, as we heard last week, is united in all its many members, but it is through love that we are one.  Pope Francis himself said at the opening meeting:

You, dear friends, have made many sacrifices to be able to meet one another and in this way you have become true teachers and builders of the culture of encounter. By your actions and your approach, your way of looking at things, your desires and above all your sensitivity, you discredit and defuse the kind of talk that is intent on sowing division, on excluding or rejecting those who are not “like us”. It is because you have that instinct which knows intuitively that “true love does not eliminate legitimate differences, but harmonizes them in a superior unity” (BENEDICT XVI, Homily, 25 January 2006). On the other hand, we know that the father of lies prefers people who are divided and quarrelling to people who have learned to work together.

          Don’t settle for comfort.  Don’t live the Christian life from a recliner, expecting comfort.  Be a true follower of Jesus, and a true messenger of the Gospel that calls us to work hard, get messy, and discover the LOVE that satisfies.

Ask yourself: what ways am I too comfortable?  Where in my life am I choosing the easy road instead of God’s road?  Ask Mary to show you how to courageously say “yes” to God’s will in that part of your life.