On the Election (31st Sunday per annum)

We stand a short time away from the end of another presidential election. For more than a year now, we have been bombarded with news about the political parties, the candidates, the issues, etc. Let’s face it: this has been one of the ugliest and the most drawn-out campaigns of our lives. I think it is safe to say that most of us want a do-over, because we do not like either of the major candidates. What is a Catholic to do in a time like this, in an election like this?

The first thing we must do is to tear down the apocalyptic tones that plague both sides. We’ve probably all heard it said from either side: if you elect that other person, this country will fall apart. But if we are honest with ourselves, we know that this country is already very far from the Judeo-Christian values of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and the election of either major candidate will not so radically change this country that either it will suddenly return to those values or abandon those values to the point of persecution. We Christians have already lost our stronghold here, and this election will not change that in either way. Our individual vote, at least on the national level, is not really as important as everyone tries to make it appear to be. But it still has an effect, not merely upon the government, but upon our eternal salvation.

Every action we commit in this world is a choice: a choice moving us towards heaven and eternal life or moving us towards hell and eternal damnation. The only true choice that we have ever been given is whether we will accept that God is King, that Jesus is Lord, that His will should be done, or whether we are King, we are Lord, and our will be done. Your vote carries with it serious consequences not merely for the future of the nation, but for the future of your salvation, for your vote indicates your support for everything a candidate believes and promises to accomplish during their time in office. The higher the office, the greater that responsibility becomes upon each one of us to make the best choice possible.

The Church, desirous of our salvation, teaches us how to be faithful not only to our civic responsibility but also to our responsibility to God to be faithful to His word, faithful to the promises we made to reject Satan and to live united to God. Our vote must reflect the beliefs of our faith because those beliefs are supposed to be the foundation of all our actions. We are meant to approach the polls not as Democrats or Republicans or independents, but as Catholics. There are indeed some things about which we can disagree: for instance, we can disagree about the best policy for aiding the poor or for how immigration should work, but we cannot disagree on the most fundamental teachings of our Catholic faith: the dignity and right to life for every human being, the proliferation of the Christian faith through religious liberty, the natural and supernatural union of man and woman in marriage, and so on. These beliefs cannot be compromised or dismissed when we decide who receives our vote.

The Church does not force us to vote, nor does she make us vote for a specific candidate. Each of us must make that decision for ourselves. Yet the Church, mindful of the goal of our faith, which is eternal life, teaches that to vote for a candidate because they hold positions contrary to our faith is to commit a mortal sin. This is called a mortal sin because, by our vote, we directly support an evil action against the will of the good God. The Church teaches us to choose the candidate who will give us the best opportunity to practice our faith both in church and in the public square. We won’t find a perfect candidate, but our political system is far from perfection.

How does this teaching of the Church translate into this election? We are faced with a few choices for president at least who are far from ideal. But there are some who are worse than others, and the worst of them all is the Democratic candidate for president, Hillary Clinton. She has continually declared her support for abortion even to nine months, for the normalization of homosexuality, for the subjugation of religious institutions and even churches to the policies of the government in contradiction to their constitutional right to express their religious belief. Beyond even this, her campaign has been active in suppressing the faithful Catholic voice in the public square and working to sabotage that voice through pseudo-Catholic organizations ran by her lackeys. Because of these positions contrary to the teachings of the Church and her antagonism towards our faith, I must warn you, as your spiritual father, that a vote for Hillary Clinton is a mortal sin, a sin which will lead to your damnation if you do not repent of it.

There is no way to justify as a Catholic voting for a candidate who has a long record of demonstrating her opposition to what we believe and profess each Sunday. There are other candidates on the ballot who hold positions far more accommodating to our faith than Mrs. Clinton, and we should look into each one of their platforms to see who will afford us the greatest opportunity to live as God commands us to live. Yet we may not find a candidate who fulfills this requirement, or none who are truly open to the practices of our faith. It is up to your conscience to decide if you can vote for any of those candidates or if you must refrain from casting a vote. But we cannot support the promotion of a candidate who desires to promote such grave evils as official government policy if she is elected to office.

We Catholics cannot remain blind to the seriousness of these actions. We need to start living not as members of political parties but as disciples of Jesus Christ, as children of God the Father, and our vote must reflect that. We need to be like Zacchaeus in our Gospel, coming down out of the sycamore tree to receive the mercy of God and to reject all our sinful ways, living in accord with the loving will of God. We need to praise God’s name not merely by words but by living an upright life in accord with what He knows is best for us.

We have 9 days before we can go to the polls. Let us do as Pope Francis recommended: let us study the issues well, let us pray fervently, then let us vote, having been informed by the Church and guided by our conscience. I have provided in the bulletin a prayer from the Knights of Columbus for our nation, and I implore each one of you to pray this prayer individually and as a family between now and Election Day. Our nation can change for the better, but it must happen first by the grace of God, and then by our cooperation with His grace and His will. Let us all pray that God may make us worthy of his calling, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in us and in our nation.

Participation in the Mass (28th Sunday per annum)

It sometimes takes an ordinary event to awaken us to the extraordinary. I think some of us want to think of God acting in a rather grand and obvious way, like the parting of the Red Sea. Yet God, more often than not, acts in the Scriptures in ordinary ways. We see this with Naaman in our first reading, who washes himself in the Jordan River so as to be cleansed of his leprosy. We see this with the ten lepers who are walking to the temple before they are healed along the way. But we also encounter this surprise of the extraordinary whenever we are present at the celebration of the sacraments.

The sacraments are not given to us in extraordinary ways, but they use rather ordinary items: water, bread, wine, oil. It is God’s way of humbling us in His use of these ordinary items to convey that extraordinary grace which is at the heart of each of the sacraments. Through water, we are cleansed of our spiritual leprosy which is sin. Through oil, we are anointed with the grace of healing and strength. And through bread and wine, we are given the spiritual food most necessary for our spiritual health. But this is not the only means whereby we encounter our extraordinary God.

We have seen through the past three weeks some of the various aspects of the Mass: as the spiritual worship of God’s People, as the rest for which our hearts yearn, and as the foretaste of that blessed place where we desire to dwell for all eternity. We have done this so as to understand this occasion at which we gather each Sunday in and out, this event that has probably become rather ordinary to most of us. Our considerations on the Mass are the beginning of our reconsideration of this rather ordinary event towards the extraordinary grace and presence of this moment.

These considerations should lead us towards a greater participation in the Mass, but that begs the question: how am I to participate in the Mass? How am I to enter into this worship, this rest, this foretaste of Heaven as God wants and as the Church has taught for her entire history? Our participation should first of all echo the actions of the Samaritan leper in our Gospel. Each one of us is like that leper, for we have all been cleansed by the blood of Christ from the spiritual leprosy of sin that had disfigured our souls. Each one of us has, like Naaman’s baby skin, been revived to spiritual youth before God. At the very least, we should thank God each and every Mass that He has forgiven us and continues to offer that forgiveness through His sacraments. But we can do more than that.

To participate in the Mass is to do more than to follow the motions of the congregation. It is also more than singing along. Our primary participation is not external but internal, not merely what our bodies our doing but what is happening within our souls. The singing of the Mass is a great part of our participation and offers a more elevated response to God, yet it is not merely in external, physical actions that we are called to enter into as we celebrate the sacred mysteries. Our internal disposition and participation is the key to all the other actions we do whenever we gather before the altar.

We must always be mindful that the Mass is not a spectator sport or a TV show, those things that make no demand of our mind or heart. One of the greatest complaints I hear from Catholics is that they don’t get anything from Mass. This is because we have not done the work we must do on our part. Our faith is like a seed: it can only grow through effort and work. If we do not water it and put it in the best soil, it will not grow to its full stature. We cannot sit back and enjoy the Mass like it’s a talk show; we must make the effort to enter into the mystery before us.

We do this through active listening: paying attention to the words of the Mass. The Church has 2000 years of experience in understanding what it means to worship and to adore God, and that comes to us through the language of the Mass. I fear that our use of our local language has made us lazy in paying attention to what the Church actually says. When we worshipped with the common Western tongue of Latin, we could join in with the prayers of the Church throughout time and space. But even with that great loss, our attention must be on what these words convey to us, why it is that we focus on such words as “sacrifice” and “worship” and “right and just”. Do not merely hear these words, but listen to them and reflect on them in your mind and heart, letting them shape your beliefs and transforming your lives. If need be, I recommend getting a missal to help you better appreciate and contemplate these words and actions as you attend Mass.

We also participate through our active praying: offering up our own prayers in union with the great prayer of the Mass. There is always something or someone to pray for: why not offer all of that up to God through the primary means He has given us? But we cannot focus only on the prayer of petition; we need to enter into the prayer of union, the prayer of the saints. The reason that the saints have flourished throughout the centuries is because of their great love for the Mass. All of the aspects of the Mass we have recently seen are from the saints who have been nourished and strengthened through this one act. It will do the same for us, but only if we let it, only if we try.

The better we pray the Mass, the greater we shall grow as individuals and as a parish. This will require changes out of us, but a change towards the greater and the better. God desires us to be with Him, and so He gives us this awe-inspiring gift of the Mass as the means of this union. Do not reject it! Do not ignore it! Make the effort to plumb the depths of these mysteries so as to be what you were made to be: a child of God, an image of Christ, a temple of the Holy Spirit. Let us not be afraid of change but seek to draw nearer to the Lord who desires not only our healing but our flourishing. Let us join the leper of the Gospel in praising God for our blessings at the Mass but also so that our faith may be increased so that we may also be saved and enter into the glories of eternal life.

The Mass as Foretaste of Heaven (Part 3)

NB: This is the third in a series of sermons on the Mass, preached on the 27th Sunday per annum.

The angel showing St John the heavenly Jerusalem
Manuscript, 11th century

There are many days that we may sound like Habakkuk in our first reading: that we have cried out to the Lord due to the presence of evil, and yet it seems as if God does not hear or does not respond. The world seems to grow darker, and not just because of the change in the seasons. We feel pressed on all sides, from the militant attacks of Islam to the oppression of Western secularism. Where is God in these days? Why does He not answer us? Yet we find in two places the answers that we seek in our times of trial and difficulty.

Our readings encourages us to faith as one of those answers. In response to Habakkuk’s cry of woe, God tells the prophet that what the Lord has revealed shall come to pass, though it may not happen when the prophet desires. The divine plan of salvation works on God’s time, not ours, and we cannot rush it or advance it before the preordained moment. Nothing any of the prophets or ancient ones did before the birth of our Savior caused that birth to happen earlier. In the fullness of time Jesus was born, and not a moment too soon.

It is the same in our own day. We know that this world has an end date, the final hour when all shall be re-created and the divine judgment shall be wrought upon all souls, sending the good to eternal life and the bad to eternal punishment. We would like to see this happen now instead of waiting and enduring the hardships of our age, yet that may not be the divine plan for us. But Jesus offers us the gift of faith. He is not saying in our Gospel today that our faith must increase, as if we do not even possess the mustard seed-sized faith He mentions. What Jesus desires is for us to act in the faith we have received, no matter how large or small it may be. Our faith does not need to be increased, but it needs to be activated. If we believe, even if it is only in the few things we know and understand about God, we can persevere through the darkest of trials. And that leads to the second place where we can find the answer to this time of darkness.

What does it take to endure a long and arduous journey? It is knowing, even in some shadowy way, the destination at the end of the journey. The classic hero’s journey often does not have a definitive destination, but our hero is willing to endure whatever is thrown at him because he knows and believes in what he is fighting for. We Christians know in an intellectual sense what awaits at the end of our journey here on earth: the glorious splendor of Heaven. Yet we can lose sight of this goal amidst the temptations and trials that befall us. How do we keep ourselves single-minded in our earthly pilgrimage? Through our participation at the Mass.

We have been given the Mass as not only the primary act of worship to God, not only as the rest that strengthens our soul, but also as the foretaste of our experience in Heaven. I emphasize the word “foretaste”, for even the most splendid papal liturgies in Saint Peter’s Basilica cannot compare to the glory and majesty that we shall encounter in the halls of Heaven. Yet the Mass provides a glimpse, a pulling-back of the veil between Heaven and earth that allows us to perceive the reward of the saints.

We see this also spelled out by our patron Saint John in that awe-inspiring Book of Revelation. After outlining the final battle between the forces of good and evil, between the Lamb and the dragon, Saint John is given a vision of the new heavens and the new earth that shall endure forever after the terrifying last day of wrath and judgment. He calls it the heavenly Jerusalem, as did the Apostle in the Letter to the Hebrews (Heb 10:22-23). But John specifically points out how there is no temple in this celestial city, for God is worshipped no longer in shadows and images, but is really present among His people, and He will never be taken away.

This is the vision and the glory that is foreshadowed in the Mass. For each time we are gathered at Mass we do this not merely as a physical body, but we are united to that mystical body of the Church which occupies every age and the eternal age. We also do not merely participate in the liturgy which occurs now, but also in that final and eternal liturgy that is the reward of the just. When Jesus becomes really present to us in the Eucharist, we are brought to the wedding feast of the Lamb to His bride, that nuptial banquet that will never cease for those who have persevered in faith.

Let us take up the words of our psalm today, and seek to hear the voice of the Lord echoing to us through the Mass. Let our hearts not be hardened by the sin and sadness of the world, but let us remain faithful to God who is faithful to His word. Let us be aware of the eternal glories hidden in the Mass, of that beatific vision of God in which we will find our rest. Let us do as Saint Paul told Saint Timothy so long ago: “bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God” (2 Tim 1:8). Let us remain firm in the faith Jesus has given us so that we may join Him at the end of days in the glory that awaits His faithful ones.

The Mass as Rest (Part 2)

NB: This is the second in a series of sermons on the Mass, preached on the 26th Sunday per annum.

Hans Holbein the Younger's Dead Christ in the Tomb

If there is one thing most of us who are workers and laborers desire from our labors, it is rest. If we could spend the rest of our days without having to earn our keep by the sweat of our brow, we would most likely embrace it wholeheartedly. Our vacations are always too short, and the weekends fly so fast that Monday seems to hit like a brick wall. We love to take our rests, no matter how long they may be. And we should, for God created us to enjoy rest.

We observed last week how the Mass is the act of worship offered to God in union with the sacrifice of the Cross. But the Mass is also meant to be the pinnacle of our rest, in particular the Sunday Mass offered in part to fulfill the Third Commandment: Keep holy the Sabbath. In the first story of creation in the book of Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth in six days, then rested on the seventh day, blessing and sanctifying this day to Himself (Gen 2:2). This rest was so important that it was given as one of the Ten Commandments handed on to Moses and to the Israelites on Mount Sinai (Ex 20:8; Dt 5:12). The prophets, in calling Israel back to their original relationship with God, called them to return to the observance of the sabbath rest. But it is in Jesus that we see the fulfillment and elevation of rest in man’s relation to God.

Our Lord, while doing great wonders and stupendous miracles throughout His ministry in Judea, would often separate Himself from the crowds and make time for prayer and more in-depth teaching with His disciples. In fact, He even commanded them to rest, saying “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while” (Mk 6:31 RSV-CE). This rest will find its completion when Christ’s body is laid to rest after the work of the Cross on Good Friday and remains in the tomb on Holy Saturday. But a new rest is given to us with the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, that marvelous event which we commemorate each Sunday of the year.

In fact, this is the main reason why we are obliged by the Church to come to Mass on Sunday: to rest in the new work of creation which God has wrought through the Resurrection of Christ His Son. We are called to come to the Mass so as to find our rest in the only One who is capable of offering us the rest that we so desire from our labors. It is also the means whereby we continue to observe the Sabbath rest God commanded of old, though now within the framework of resting in Christ our Savior. We worship God through the sacrifice of the Cross, we marvel at the wonders done by the Lord, we rejoice in all that He has done for us, and we beseech Him to continue to remain with us, to strengthen us with His grace, and to free us from all sin and temptation.

But we are also called to rest in particular in the Mass because it is here that we realize the truth that astounds the heart and mind: we were made to rest in God. Humanity was not created to be separated from everything else to the point of complete autonomy and independence; we were created for God. Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the greatest theologians in the Church’s history, reflected on this in writing his autobiography. Augustine had sought debauchery, philosophy, even entering into a false religion before he entered the Church. Upon reflection, Augustine would pen these famous words: “You made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You” (Confessions 1.1).

It is only in God that our hearts will find that rest which comes in discovering the one thing that will truly satisfy our hearts. Nothing in this world can give us total and complete rest from this desire. We have a God-shaped hole in our hearts that cannot be satiated by any other creature; it can only be satiated by the infinite God who first loved us and created us so as to share that love with us. The Mass is the primary means whereby we who have found God can rest in Him who has created us, in Him who has redeemed us, in Him who has sanctified us. Only in God will our hearts be totally and completely filled.

Let us then enter into the rest which the Mass offers us, mindful that God has done the brunt of the work for us in sending His Son to die for us. Let us rest in the prayer of peace and union which the Mass offers us each time we approach the altar.  Let the Mass become more and more the place where we discover this hidden God who reveals Himself in Jesus Christ, the human face of God. Just as the couple who are in love seek to rest more and more with each other, let us find rest in the One who loves us beyond measure and desires us to return that love. Let us rest in Him so as to be strengthened for the labors that remain to us here on earth, so that we may be made worthy by His grace to receive the eternal rest of the faithful in Heaven.

The Mass as Worship (Part 1)

NB: This sermon was given on the 25th Sunday per annum (OF) as the first of a series of sermons on the Mass.

To get at the heart of a religion, one must look not merely at the beliefs or ideas of the religion, but one must look at how it worships the central deity. It is not enough to understand the intellectual ideas of the religion, but the public way in which this religion corresponds to its god. The Catholic faith is no different than any of the other religions in this aspect of its worship of God, yet it is different in how that worship is done and what she understands worship to be. For the Mass is the central act of worship in the Catholic Church, the act that is at the heart of what we believe as Catholics and as Christians. The better we understand and appreciate the Mass, the better shall we be able to participate in it and to be transformed by the Mass so as to be faithful Catholics in our daily lives.

What is the Mass? The Church has defined the Mass as the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross offered in an unbloody manner in union with the original sacrifice of Christ. Every time we participate in the Mass, we are present at the mysteries at the heart of our Christian faith: the Last Supper, the condemnation of Pilate, the Passion, the Death, and the Resurrection. All of these events either lead up to and prepare for the Cross or are the fruits of the Cross. The prophet Isaiah foretold that “by His wounds we are healed” (53:5) and so it is that Christ becomes the Lamb of sacrifice offered on the altar of the Cross so as to win for us our redemption from sin and our salvation in God.

We must be careful, however, not to think that the Mass is a new sacrifice of Christ, as if we are somehow enacting that sacrifice on Good Friday once more. St Peter tells us that Christ offered that perfect and complete sacrifice “once for all, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” (1 Pet 3:18) The Mass, therefore, is not a new sacrifice, but a re-presentation of that one perfect sacrifice on the Cross, now shown not in the bloody manner of Good Friday, but in the unbloody manner of bread and wine similar to what Melchizedek had offered on behalf of Abraham (Gen 14:18). This is one of the reasons why the sacred liturgy makes the proclamation, “The mystery of faith,” after the priest has consecrated the bread and the wine and made them the body and blood of Christ, for only by faith can we see this transformation, or transfiguration as the Church declares it, happening before us.

The Mass is the re-presentation of the sacrifice of the Cross as the primary act of worship to God. God has always commanded worship throughout the history of salvation, from Abraham offering two goats instead of Isaac, to Moses on Mount Sinai, to the grand temples of David and Solomon in Jerusalem, worship is a necessary aspect of the relationship between God and His people. And it continues today with the Church, the New Israel, the New People of God, whenever we gather together to celebrate and to offer the Mass. The Mass is an act of divine worship as seen from the invocation of the Holy Trinity at the beginning to the gift of divine blessing imparted at the end. The Roman Canon, that venerable traditional prayer of the Mass, begins, “To you, therefore, most merciful Father...” signifying that this action of the Church is directed to God the Father through God the Son by the workings of God the Holy Spirit.  We have been commanded by Jesus Christ to make this act of worship when He tells us, “Do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19, 1 Cor 11:24).

Let us seek the Lord while He may be found among us whenever we gather together to worship at the Mass. Let us praise the Lord who lifts up we poor souls from bondage to sin so as to be united with Himself. Let us continue to make the supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings that St Paul commanded in union with Christ and which has continued for two millenia wherever the holy Mass is offered. Let us be trustworthy in appreciating and treasuring the gift of the Mass that has been handed on to us and for the greatest fruit of the Mass: the Holy Eucharist in which we are nourished and strengthened by that same body and blood so as to become what we receive. Let the Mass truly be our act of divine worship so that we give God what is owed to Him, and that He, in turn, will give us the reward of being united with Him always in the divine worship of Heaven.