Good Friday

Why do we not celebrate Mass on Good Friday? If the Mass is the re-presentation of all that happens today, why do we not offer the Mass? Today there is no Mass because there is no need for the sign that points to the reality: we kneel before that very reality today. On this day, we are more really present at the Cross than we are during the Mass. We behold the wood of the Cross upon which hung the salvation of the world because it is happening today. This day is the day appointed by God from all of time to offer the one perfect sacrifice for redemption from sin.

Behold that wood upon which hung your Savior! Behold that bloody tree upon which He hangs because of your sins, because of my sins! Behold the Lamb of God bruised, derided, cursed, defiled, the Lamb who sheds every ounce of His blood so as to take away the sins of the world! All of this because you and I, because we rebel against God, because we choose anything and everything other than God. Because of this, as the prophet Isaiah says, “the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all,” and “the Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.”

Let us weep this day over the dead body of our Savior. Let us join the sorrowful Mother in weeping that her son has been killed, that she carries with her the sorrow unlike any other sorrow. Let us cast down our faces in shame that each one of us has caused this, each one of us has made this day necessary. But hear carefully the words Isaiah speaks at the end of his prophecy about the suffering servant: “Through his suffering, my servant shall justify many.” Let us remain hopeful that Jesus the suffering servant may justify us by His passion and death.

Holy Thursday

What do we normally eat at a feast? While our customs may vary depending on our families and our cultures, we normally have meat at the feast. Meat has always been a standard feature of a feast, while the absence of meat gives the meal a rather penitential or impoverished characteristic. How can we celebrate Thanksgiving if we don’t have the turkey? Could it really be the Fourth of July without a hamburger or hot dog? Can we really enjoy the Super Bowl without chicken wings? Meat has been throughout human history and culture a symbol of feasting and rejoicing, in particular the Jewish feast of Passover, where the lamb is sacrificed and feasted upon by all at table.

Yet Jesus transforms this Passover meal on this night. He uses the great Jewish feast of freedom and salvation to establish a different feast, though still signifying freedom and salvation. Jesus uses the Passover as the type that foreshadows the complete sign of feasting and rejoicing. Jesus transitions the Passover from being the salvation feast of a small nation and people into the sacrifice of praise offered by the entire world. He does all of this in the institution of the most holy Eucharist.

The Passover meal heralds the ultimate feast of faith for Christ and His Church. Everything that the Passover represents for the Jews corresponds to a reality which we shall encounter over the next few days. But the central image of Passover is the paschal lamb, the animal sacrificed by the Jewish priest then completely consumed by everyone in the household. The lamb provides the meat for the feast, a feast that originally began as a meal eaten in haste, in preparation for leaving Egypt.

But if the Passover is the type or symbol of the Eucharist, then where is our meat for our feast? What shall we eat in our new Passover meal, which supersedes the old? We feast on the new paschal lamb, sacrificed upon the altar of the Cross. This is the mysterious reality at the heart of the institution of the Eucharist on this night. If the Mass is the feast of faith, then there must be meat for that feast, and Jesus offers us the purest meat possible: His own body, offered as the sacrifice so that we might pass over from death unto life.

This is why the Eucharist is called the source and summit of the Christian life: everything that we believe and do flows from this. We have bishops and priests so that they may re-offer this sacrifice and feed us once more this most savory meat. We receive the sacraments of initiation so that we may approach the table and partake of this feast. We go to confession so that we may be worthy once more to receive this meat. It is the sun that illumines our day; without it, our souls would grow dark and cold.

Yet how much do we appreciate this gift? How much do we really treasure this morsel from Heaven? What is our attitude towards this feast of faith? Do we treasure it with reverence and sacredness or do we treat it as another chore to check off the list? The Eucharist is not a snack to reward a child for a good deed; it is the food by which we are sustained in this hungry world. But it cannot nourish us if we remain indifferent to it, if we treat it as something less than what it is.

As we plunge into the mysteries of faith over these next three days, I implore you to spend some time in serious consideration of your faith. Does any of this really matter to you? Is all of this really the feast of faith, the center of our universe, or is it another chore that we check off the list? Is the Eucharist really the means of communion, of union with Christ, or is it just something that I pop into my mouth and then go off as if nothing happened? God desires so much more from us; will we give it to Him? I encourage you to spend some time tonight in adoration, in quiet time before the Lord who prays in the garden that He may do the will of His Father: to die for our sins. May we appreciate more fully this sacrifice so that we may be truly nourished at this feast of faith.

5th Sunday of Lent - Death and Life

What do we fear most about life? What is it that we dread most about our mortal nature? There is one thing common to all people of all ages that we dread and fear: death. We fear death, that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. We hate death because we fear it, because we want to avoid it as much as possible. Our generation continues the quest for immortality, seeking the fountain of youth not in some mythical land far away, but in a pill or in a computer. We will do anything rather than die.

But death comes for us all. We cannot avoid it, we cannot pretend it will never happen. Yet there is more than one way to die. Certainly, our physical bodies can die. However, we can also die spiritually. How does this happen? It is the same as our physical death: we lose life. But how can we lose our spiritual life? We lose it when we remain enveloped in sin. We lose it when we are consumed by sin. We lose it when we choose sin over God. Our spiritual death is never just a death, but is always a suicide, for we choose that death for ourselves. Yet God desires not the death of the sinner, but that he live.

We hear about the greatest of Jesus’ miracles in the Gospel today, when He raises His friend Lazarus from death, and not just any death: Lazarus had been dead in the tomb for four days, a sign taken by the Jews to mean that one was completely and totally dead. Jesus, who is the resurrection and the life, by His power and authority restores Lazarus to life. It is probably the greatest sign that Jesus offers up to this point in the Gospels. But it also has great meaning for us: it demonstrates that God is the Lord of life, and that He can restore life whenever He wills.

We hear in the psalm today that with the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption. God desires life for all of us, as we see in the vision of Ezekiel in the first reading. For indeed, who can truly stand in innocence before the Lord? As the Psalmist puts it, “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, Lord, who can stand?” None of us are totally innocent before God: all have sinned, both as individuals and as the human race. Yet God desires not death, but life. Knowing our weakness, knowing our infirmity, God desires to revive humanity by redeeming it from the bonds of sin and Satan, and this work will be accomplished so very soon in the passion and death of Christ our Lord.

Yet this redemption is not a ticket easily purchased, nor is it merely a free gift. God does offer us redemption and salvation, but it comes at a cost: our death to sin. Saint Paul recognizes this as he writes to the Romans in the second reading. Salvation is not something that is merely bought with a few words: it is something that costs us our life in sin. Saint Paul is not rejecting the physical world in saying this, but the truth that we are not meant to live for this world, to live for the flesh. We are meant to be animated by the Spirit of God to live for Christ. We cannot have the Spirit if we remain dead in sin. We cannot be lead by the Spirit if we cling to sin. We cannot live in the Spirit if we reject that same Spirit.

The raising of Lazarus from the dead serves as a sign that Jesus can raise any soul to life, even a soul that has been steeped in sin, wallowing in sin for decades. The history of the Church is filled with scandalous sinners who converted and became great saints: egotists, sex addicts, murderers, heretics, drunkards, even worshippers of Satan. Yet their eyes were opened to the error of their ways by the grace of God, they repented of their sins, and lived their lives with the same confession we hear on the lips of Martha: that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the one coming into the world to save it. And we can do the same as them, if we believe as Martha and Mary did, that this same Jesus who weeps over death desires us to live and to live fully.

As we enter the last two weeks of Lent, we are plunged more deeply into the mysteries of these days. We are preparing for all that Jesus did and suffered from this day until Easter Sunday. Let us not merely listen to these actions and events, but let us be moved by them. Let our hearts be filled with contrition for our sins and a true desire to repent of them. Let us seek the mercy that can only be found in the confessional, for God desires us to have a sure sign of our pardon. Brethren, do not let your hearts remain dead to sin, but let them be alive in Christ Jesus, in His Holy Spirit. As Jesus raised Lazarus from death, so too will God raise our souls from the death of sin, but only if we respond to His grace and seek His mercy. Let us indeed seek His mercy, so that we may have the fullness of redemption in the life to come.

4th Sunday of Lent - Blindness

Which sense would you be least willing to lose if you had to lose one of your five senses? For most people, sight is the sense they would pick to keep most out of the five. While we don’t want to lose any of them, sight seems to hold sway because it is the most useful for everything we do. Without sight, we cannot experience beauty, we would never know the faces of those we love, we would lose a tremendous amount of knowledge. Could you imagine not knowing colors?

Yet we not only possess physical sight via our eyes but rational sight from our minds. Unlike the rest of the animal world, we are able to possess knowledge and wisdom, to grow in our experiences and shape the reality as we have made it up to this time. But, just as our physical eyes can suffer from glaucomas, our rational sight, our inner eye, can become darkened. We can lose that pristine vision we once had of right and wrong, good and evil, holy and wicked and begin to see the world in bland greys. What causes this inner eye to lose the light? It is sin that darkens this eye, and only one can cure us.

In our Gospel, we hear that a man who was blind from birth receives his vision by the healing power of Jesus. This man can represent each one of us, for we too were born blind, not due to a physical defect, but to the defect of original sin upon our souls. And just as Jesus lifts the blindness from the blind man’s eyes, so too does He lift our original blindness from our souls in baptism. But we can lose that original vision over time, and we can even become blind once more, only we are trapped in a worse blindness because we had seen the Light of the world and beheld His glory, yet rejected it for something else.

We all have something that blinds us to the total truth which Jesus teaches us. For some, it is a favorite sin. For others, it is arrogance. Some are blind because of ignorance while others are blind from apathy. Whatever it is that stands in the way of clear vision, it is something that can be removed. But do we want it removed? We may be like the child who sits too close to the TV and doesn’t want to lose that spot, even though we may gain better vision because of it. We may be like the Pharisees in the Gospel, who do not believe that they are blind, which is the worst kind of blindness.

Jesus Christ is the Light of the world, the light proceeding from light, as we profess each Sunday in the Creed. He does not want us to remain in darkness, the darkness of ignorance, the darkness of pride, the darkness of sin. He wants us to see clearly, to be the children of light, as Saint Paul wants also, as we hear in the second reading. But to remain in the light means that we must be freed of sin, for the light only “produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth”. It means that we must cast off that which blinds us or keeps us in the darkness, and walk in the light. We cannot have it both ways, pretending to be children of light while assisting at Mass but living as if we belong to this world, the world of darkness, remaining secret and hidden rather than visible to all.

Brethren, let us be the children of light! Let us not remain in our sins or in our pride or whatever makes us blind. Let us be healed by Jesus the divine Physician so as to see clearly the Son of Man leading us to God. Let our hearts not find their rest in the filth and darkness of sin, but in the glory and light of God. Let us see the dawn of Easter rising on this day, the midway point of Lent. If we have done little to amend our life, let us not delay! The sun of the Resurrection rises in the east. Do we look for it eagerly, or do we cower in our blindness? Do we wish to remain in the darkness, or shall we be healed of our blindness, so that we may see the light in this world, and rejoice in that same light in the world to come?

3rd Sunday of Lent - Living Water

What is the most essential element we need in order to live? Water. Without water, there is no life. NASA has a motto in their search for life beyond our planet: “Follow the water.” Wherever there is water, there is life. Humans can survive better without food than we can without water. It comprises most of the material in our body and is essential to almost every activity we do in order to live. Without water, there is no life. Jesus in our Gospel today offers the Samaritan woman not just any ordinary water, but “living water”, as He tells her. What is this living water? How do we get it? And can we lose it?

The living water which Jesus offers is our union with God in the Holy Spirit, who is poured out for us in the sacraments. We should automatically think of baptism whenever we hear about water in the Scriptures, for just as water gives us earthly life, baptism gives us heavenly life, opening for us the gates of heaven to be joined with God. We listen to this Gospel on this Sunday of Lent in order to help our catechumens prepare to receive baptism, hence the beginning of the scrutinies on this Sunday. We should recall our own baptism which gave us this living water to drink. But this is not the only sacrament in which we receive this living water, in which we receive the Holy Spirit.

Brethren, it is possible to lose this living water, to allow the well to dry up and become spiritually parched. And just as we have no physical life if we lose water, so too do we have no spiritual life if we do not have the living water of the Holy Spirit. How do we lose this water? How do we become spiritually parched? This happens when we fall into sin, when we violate our baptismal promises to reject Satan and all his works and all his empty show. It happens when our hearts become hardened by sin, as were the hearts of the Israelites in the first reading and the psalm. It happens when we lose faith in God, and thus begin to lose our justification, as Saint Paul says in the second reading.

Is it possible to regain these living waters? Is it possible to regain our faith and thus regain our justification? It is quite possible, but there is only one means of doing it. How? Through the confessional. God does not pour out His Spirit upon us only once at baptism or confirmation, but He desires to renew us constantly, just as the earth is renewed by rain. Yet we must not seek rain where it cannot be found. Would it not be foolish to build a house in the Sahara Desert and plant a garden and wait for the rains to come? Then is it not also foolish to ask God to increase our faith and pour out His Spirit upon us if we remain in the spiritual desert of sin?

Brethren, I spend one hour before this Mass in the confessional not because I’m bored or I need to be somewhere. I am in there because God has given me the authority to forgive sins and to restore the living water to you. I am in there because, like Jesus, I thirst for your salvation. In my nine months of being here, there are many of you whom I have never seen nor heard in there. Why? What prevents you from coming and receiving the mercy of God? What prevents you from being refreshed with the living water that Jesus wishes to give you? What prevents you from being free of your sins in the ordinary means God has given to you?

Many of you go to confession perhaps once a year yet come up to receive Communion every week. Would to God that it were the reverse! What’s the point of receiving Communion if you’re still parched by your sins? Why receive the Bread of Life if you still eat the bitter herbs of sin? Jesus does not want you to remain in your sins, that’s why He died on the Cross. But we must imitate the Samaritan woman and acknowledge our sins before Jesus if we wish to be truly refreshed by His living water. We must imitate her humility in order to be elevated to glory.

Brethren, let your hearts not be hardened! Hear the voice of the Lord calling you to repentance, calling you to drink deeply of His living water. Do not be like the Israelites at Meribah - testing God, challenging God. Do not remain in the desert of sin but come and be refreshed by confession. Yet we should not do this only in Lent, in this season of penance and sorrow. We need to take every opportunity to be freed of our sins and refreshed by the Holy Spirit so as to continue to be justified. I encourage you not only to go to confession this week, but to also go at least once a month. Then we can be like those who heard the Samaritan woman’s testimony and encountered Jesus themselves: they not only believed because of what she said, but because they joined her in humbling themselves and recognizing Jesus as the one true savior of the world. May we do the same, so that we may boast not in arrogance but in hope of the eternal and joyful glory of God.

2nd Sunday of Lent - Transfiguration

NB: This homily is short due to the bishop's video for the Diocesan Parish Annual Appeal.

We hear the story of the Transfiguration on the second Sunday of Lent. Tradition tells us that this event occurred about forty days before Jesus’ passion and death. St. Luke in his Gospel sees this event as the moment when Jesus sets His face toward Jerusalem, towards the sufferings of Good Friday. Why does Jesus do this? This happens for two reasons. First, Jesus wants His inner circle, His closest disciples and us to see Him as He really is. Who will be suffering that Passion? Who will be undergoing that cruel death? It’s not just any man, but it is God in the flesh. Jesus reveals who He is so that we may be comforted in knowing that He suffers with us.

But Jesus also reveals His full glory so that we may know the end of our journey. We like to know where we’re going. If we know our destination, we will make a greater effort to reach it. What Jesus reveals is not just His glory, but the glory that we will share with Him if we survive our passion. Our life is like Lent: we have many struggles with only a few moments of joy. But Jesus’ passion and death is not the end, for He rises on the third day. So too will our Lent come to an end, and if we have been faithful, we will experience our own Easter Sunday.

Let us rise and be not afraid to follow Jesus, to carry our cross daily. Let us remember the glory of the holy mountain, the glory prefigured for us in the Holy Mass. Let us be strengthened by the Eucharist to toil away at the work of our lifetimes, just as Jesus did after this day. Let us endure the toils of our daily Lent, so that we may join Jesus in receiving the wondrous glory when we join Him in the resurrection on the last day.

1st Sunday of Lent - The Desert

We are the children of temptation. As we enter into the first full week of Lent, we should reflect on this sentiment first: we are the children of temptation. We hear in the reading from Genesis and in the Gospel about temptation. Genesis shows us that first temptation of our parents Adam and Eve, and their giving in to the tentation. This is the original sin, the sin in which we were conceived, the sin in which we were born, the sin in which we lived in need of a Redeemer.

The Gospel shows that Redeemer beginning to do His great work of redemption, but the first battle He wages is not against any human foe; it is against the one who first tricked our parents into sin, the one who tricks all of us into sin: Satan, the devil. It was the devil who took the form of a serpent and tricked Adam and Eve to eating the apple and disobeying God. It is the same devil who tries to tempt Jesus away from obeying His heavenly Father. Satan tries using the three usual temptations, as outlined by our Saint John: the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, and the lust of the eyes (cf. 1 John 2:15-16).

First, the devil tries to make Jesus make bread of stones. He is hungry after fasting for forty days; why shouldn’t Jesus eat? But Jesus reminds the devil that we live not by bread alone, but by the will of God. Next, the devil tries to make Jesus proud by demonstrating His power before all the people in the area of the Temple in Jerusalem. If only Jesus would throw Himself off the top of the Temple, the angels would save Him, and everyone would believe whatever He said. But Jesus, throwing Scripture back at the devil’s Scripture, reminds us that we shall not tempt God into signs and wonders, but humble ourselves before His majesty. Finally, the devil demonstrates his so-called power by showing all the worlds in his supposed control, calling Jesus to worship him and receive a reward. But Jesus forcefully reminds the devil that God alone has full dominion and power, and that everything truly belongs to God.

In undergoing these temptations, Jesus is beginning to unravel everything that was done in the garden so many millennia ago. Saint Paul in our second reading highlights this, reminding us that by the first Adam, we all have sinned, we are all children of temptation, but by Jesus our new Adam, we all have the possibility of justifying ourselves. We are all the children of temptation, but we can become once more, through the redemption of Jesus Christ, the children of God.

Brethren, let us throw off sin once and for all. Let us imitate our Redeemer and fight against Satan and all his temptations. Yet, even if we have sinned, let us rush to the sacrament of mercy, let us rush to the confessional, be freed of our sins, and strengthened by God’s grace to fight Satan once more. Let our Lenten penances not be a means of pride, but the seed of humility by which we shed off the old man of temptation and sin, and are clothed in Christ. Let us not remain the children of temptation, but let us be the children of God, the children of His promise, the children of heaven.

8th Sunday per annum

Who did we trust as children? Where did we look when we were in need? We trusted and looked to our parents, our family. Everything we needed we received from them. If we were hungry, they fed us. If we were cold, they clothed us. They helped provide our education so that we could become capable adults who could do the same when we had our families. But what would happen if we got too big for our britches? What if we forgot our parents when we moved out and never spoke to them again? We would appear ungrateful for all that they had done for us, and would be seen as disrespectful towards our parents, and rightly so.

But how do we appear in the eyes of the world when we forget God? Some might be indifferent, but many would say that we are freeing ourselves from the crutch of religion. They will praise us for casting off this oppressive yoke so that we can be free to do whatever we want. Yet the religion that these ne’er-do-wells despise is not the religion that we practice. They hold freedom to be their salvation and religion as the oppressor, whereas it is almost the opposite. Everything that God demands of us leads towards our true freedom, because God is our Father.

The modern Western world grows darker each day because we have forgotten the God who has given us absolutely everything. Our very existence is due to Him, not to mention the created universe, the planet upon which we live, the air and water and earth which are so vital to our continued existence, and all the plants, animals, and materials that we use not only to survive but to thrive in this world. And we have collectively forgotten that fact. Why? Because our hearts cannot have two masters, as Jesus points out in our Gospel today.

Our era is the most prosperous era ever seen on the face of the earth. Our nation is one of the wealthiest in the world. Even our poor, in general, are far better off than the poor around the world. Yet what are some of the results of this wealth? Increased divorce rates, increased suicide rates especially among teens, decreased birth rates, tremendous disparity between the rich and the poor, a nation increasingly split between two political parties touting two different worldviews. And why do we see all of this? Because we make mammon our master, because we do not seek first the kingdom of God.

This is the classic wheel of fortune, something which is not unique to America alone, but is the fate of all great nations. It is exemplified for us most clearly in the history of ancient Israel. God established the Israelites by His power to be an independent nation. They started out small and weak, almost helpless on their own to occupy a town, let alone form a nation that could stand up to their neighbors. But God was with them, giving them strength and power to overcome anyone and be His people, so long as they were faithful to His promise. Israel would grow and become a great nation, powerful and equal to those around her. But Israel would soon forget her God, would forget the One who had brought her that strength and power, and would abandon God to glory in her power and wealth or even to worship the false gods, the idols of her neighbors.

In due time, God let Israel act as if she had abandoned God. An enemy would come and threaten them, Israel would march out arrogantly to battle, and would suffer many losses as a result of her abandonment of God. Israel might even be conquered for a time, such that she lost all her wealth and power and was reduced almost to nothing. Only then, when a faithful remnant remained, would God call them back to Himself, to worship Him as the one true God, the God of promise, and He would restore them. And so the cycle began all over again, from the ascent of Israel by the hand of God to the fall of Israel through her arrogance and forgetfulness of God. So too it shall be with every nation on this earth, and with the Church. If we do not trust Him, if we do not hold Him to be the source of all holiness and goodness, God will let us fall to our sins, to our wickedness, until we trust in Him once more.

Brethren, our ancestors came to this land not only filled with the promise of what this nation could offer, but with confidence that God would help them at every point. They not only worked hard at their trades, whether in the fields or in the factories, whether labor or capital, but they also prayed hard, they trusted greatly, they never forgot God because He promised He would never forget them. Yet how little faith do we find on the earth today! What would our grandfathers and great-grandfathers think of our age, when so many place their trust and confidence not in the omnipotent, eternal God, the God of our salvation, but in wealth or power or technology? Why would God want to help us when we continue to believe that we can do it all on our own, like a 5-year-old trying to dress themselves or a 12-year-old thinking that he can run away and be better off without his supposedly oppressive parents?

As we begin Lent this week, it is most appropriate that we hear Jesus exhort us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” The Church gives us this season of penance and reflection to ask ourselves whether we are truly seeking the kingdom of God, whether we are striving to live out this righteousness through everything that Jesus has been teaching us in the Sermon on the Mount over the past weeks, or whether we are paying lip service to the Lord before we return to our true master, whatever it may be. Brethren, do not waste this opportune season: make this a meaningful Lent. We have seven weeks between now and Easter to pray, to fast, to give alms, to give far more time and effort than we have done in the past to reconsider our relationship with the Lord, to pursue once more His righteousness, so as to receive His salvation. Do not let this slip by, but make this the time whereby you can begin to make your own the words of today’s Psalm: “Rest in God alone, my soul.”

6th Sunday per annum

Most of us probably feel good about ourselves. We're not murderers, we're not extreme racists, we're not the greediest of CEOs. We are ordinary citizens with ordinary lives in ordinary jobs. We can't be that bad can we? As long as I don't intrude on to others, I'm not a menace to society. Yet Jesus does not aim for the minimal amount of goodness; he aims for perfection.

As he continues to preach the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord begins to talk about the law of Moses. He begins to extend the meaning of that law not nearly to the words of the law, but to the spirit of the law, the intent of God in the law. Jesus announces from the beginning of this passage that he is not setting up something new, something completely foreign to all that they had known. He comes, as he said, "not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.“ Everything that Jesus is doing here is based on the law and the prophets, all of which flow from and point to himself. But now that he has arrived, he reveals to us the full meaning of the law.

The law of God is not merely the literal words of the law. If that were the case, but all that we would need to be was one of the Pharisees, who sought to observe those little words as perfectly as possible. However, Jesus calls his disciples to a righteousness greater than that of the Pharisees. How is that possible? It is only possible if it means more than what is written on the stone tablets of the Commandments, more than can be found in the prophets.

Our Lord begins to explain what he means by pointing to the most important and the most commonly observed Commandments. He begins to show us the great depths of the law and how they apply not merely to action but also just thought, not just the outside but the inside as well. Many of these things seem easy to do: how many of us actually kill? How many of us actually commit adultery? How many of us actually swear? But Jesus begins to reveal the fullness of truth, the fullness of the law.

Most likely, none of us have committed murder in the physical sense. But, most likely, all of us have committed murder in the way we have treated others. Through gossip, rumors, lies, we murder the character of others. Most likely not a few of us have physically committed adultery. But most likely all of us have committed adultery in the way we are treated others. By our use of the media, by the way we gaze at others, by the way we fantasize about others, we violate our vows of marriage or the state of chastity to which all of us are called. He even goes so far as to overturn something allowed by Moses: the right of divorce. Jesus will say later on in the Gospel that Moses allowed this because of the hardness of our hearts, yet the true state of marriage as instituted by God does not permit divorce for any random reason.

In all of this, our Lord is wishing to elevate us beyond a legal perspective of goodness or holiness, to a more divine perspective. God desires not a purely legal observance of the law, but a total observance. This can be seen not just in the teachings of Jesus but in the example of his life, in which he shows us His complete obedience to the Father in everything that he does, even the cross. It is not an obedience that merely seeks to get by, to do the bare minimum, but the obedience of a child wishing to please their father.

This is the wisdom that Saint Paul speaks of in our second reading. It is not the human wisdom that seeks only pleasure, but the divine wisdom that desires love. It is this divine wisdom that is revealed by Jesus for our good, for our sanctification. His desire in all of this is to lead us away from the fires, away from falling into Gehenna, His image for Hell. He desires not merely that we avoid hell, but that we seek to be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, by not only obeying but also teaching these commandments to others so that they may obey, so that they may enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Sirach in our first reading talks about two paths: fire and water. Shall we choose the path that leads to the waters of eternal life, or shall we choose the path that leads to the fires of hell? Brethren, we still have a long way to go before we are completely good. Perhaps we are not Hitler or Stalin or any of the great despots, but we still have a long way to go to become what we were created to be. As the season of Lent approaches in a few weeks, let us renew our desire to obey the law; not just the law on the stone tablets, but the law written into our hearts and revealed to us by Jesus. Let us abandon our sins and take up the word of Christ that offers us salvation. Even if we have failed, let us run to the confessional to receive his mercy and to start anew on this path of salvation. Let us pray that we may completely obey the law as Jesus did so that we may indeed be worthy of entering into the kingdom of heaven.

5th Sunday per annum (OF)

If Christianity became illegal tomorrow, is there enough evidence in your public life to accuse you of this crime? Could you be arrested based on your daily life? If the police came knocking, would they have reasonable suspicion to arrest you? It may sound extreme, but it gets at the point of today’s Gospel. As Jesus continues the Sermon on the Mount, what some scholars call the greatest sermon ever preached, He offers two images of salt and light. How simple these images are, yet how full they are of meaning.

Jesus first calls us to be salt. You may not know this, but salt is the original flavoring. Salt has been an essential aspect of cooking for millennia. In fact, people at times in the ancient world were paid not just in money but also in salt, from which we get the word salary. Salt served not only as a flavoring, but also as the only means to preserve meats and other foods before mechanized refrigeration. The only other thing that was as important in the ancient world as salt was light.

Perhaps it may be hard to imagine, but imagine a world in which the brightest light you could have once the sun set was from fire. Light is essential when there is so much darkness. We have ready access to light at the flip of a switch, but there are still many people throughout the world who have only a torch or a fireplace to serve as the only light at night. In the time of Christ, the availability of salt and light could very well demonstrate your wealth to your neighbors.

Why is it that Jesus chooses to highlight these two items? Because this is what He wants the Church to be in the world. The Church is meant to demonstrate the wealth of God’s grace to all, just as salt and light demonstrated wealth in Christ’s day. However, the Church’s riches are not meant to be kept to herself; these riches of grace and mercy are meant to be shared with the world. This is done because of the effects of sin upon the world: the world becomes tasteless and dull, as if it has no flavor, and the world grows dark, in need of light to illumine the landscape. This is the duty of the Church.

Brethren, we are meant to be the salt and the light that this world so desperately desires and needs. Traditionally, two things were given to the newly baptized child by the priest: salt as the first blessed food to be eaten, and light in the form of the candle bearing the light of Christ. We are meant to give this world the flavor of Christ, to preserve it from sin so that it may be palatable to us once more. We are meant to shine in the darkness of the world, so that others may see the light and be drawn away from the darkness. But how do we do this?

Many see this task as quite difficult. What can we do in the face of so many influences around us? How can we change anything, let alone draw people to Christ? We will want to adopt business techniques or political moves to do this. We may look into what has been most successful throughout history. But Saint Paul tells us what will be most successful for each one of us in our second reading. It is not necessarily the ways of the world, but the demonstration of the spirit and power of God.

In Saint Paul’s day, the Greeks were known for the art of rhetoric, how to speak eloquently and elaborately. They almost reduced it to a science, this ability to persuade, to argue, to move the crowd to your position. Contests were held to see who was the best rhetorician. But Saint Paul, a Jew with limited Greek, came to Corinth and preached not with sublimity or words of wisdom; he preached the truth that he knew and believed, the truth that burned inside his heart and mind. By his fidelity to the reality of Christ, Saint Paul converted many to the faith, showing that the true power in this world is not human wisdom but the power of God.

We are not all perhaps as eloquent or as learned as many of the people around us; we may know plenty of people who could be better witnesses than ourselves. But God does not call the qualified; He qualifies those whom He calls. And each of us is called to be salt and light. We do this by imitating Saint Paul, who knew nothing but Christ and Him crucified. We then live out that knowledge, knowing that we can do all things through Christ, through the power of God. To become salt and light does not mean doing grand things, but doing everything in light of Christ.

How many of us pray before every meal, even when we go out to eat? How many of us spread prayer throughout our day? How many of us have the Bible at hand to read, or the works of the saints? How many of us read through the Catechism or another explainer of our beliefs and practices? Instead of focusing on the teams playing in the Super Bowl tonight, we could focus on learning all the apostles and what they did. Instead of fawning over the Wildcats or Cardinals, we could memorize the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes so that we can begin to live them better. It doesn’t take much, only the reminder that we are here not for this world, but to draw ourselves and others towards the next.

Brethren, let us not lose our flavor or grow dim, but let us be the salt and light of Christ. Let our good works shine before others so that our heavenly Father is glorified. Let us do whatever we are capable of doing so as to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every corner of our lives. Do not give in to the pressures of the minority who hate us or the quiet indifference of the majority who don’t care. Even if you only change one person, you have been what Jesus called you to be. Let us be the salt and the light for our little corner of the world, so that God our Father may be glorified and that we may open the way to eternal life for ourselves and those around us.

4th Sunday per annum (OF)

Christianity leaves a sour taste in the mouths of many modern people. What is it that causes this? For the majority, it is the moral life. When outsiders think of Christianity, they think only marginally of Jesus Christ and mostly about the commandments and rules. It seems as if this religion wants to regulate everything. Can there be any fun? Can there be any joy? Indeed, if you look at those considered fundamentalist or extreme, it seems that there is no joy or happiness to our religion. Why become one?

Others will try to have the joy of the Gospel without the bad aftertaste of morality. They will lay claim that Jesus didn’t want to maintain a rigid structure of rules and regulations but desired a unity founded upon love. These are the “spiritual not religious” types who prefer working in vagueness. They will point to today’s Gospel and say that these Beatitudes demonstrate that Jesus wants something different than what organized religion offers. How do we respond?

The fundamental problem that modern man has with morality is that he sees it as an imposition against his freedom. Morality does not allow him to be whatever he wants to be. While there are some people who are fine with the loss of freedom if it means they are saved, for many that are formed in this framework, the Christian moral law seems a step backwards in man’s awakening of himself. However, Christianity is founded upon a different view of freedom. For the Christian, freedom means the ability to choose without coercion the good. The Catechism describes it as is “a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness” that can only attain its perfection in God (CCC 1731).

This means that we human beings are not free to do whatever comes into our minds. It means that we were meant to be oriented towards something that would give us true joy. It means that we were meant to be with God, who is all-good and all-holy. But it also means that we need to learn what it means to grow and mature in truth and goodness. This is where the commandments begin that growth, and where the Beatitudes in today’s Gospel show the full fruit of maturity in morality.

Think about children playing in the playground. They don’t merely define the boundaries of the game - where they are playing or which direction the game goes. They also establish rules. Some of these rules are prohibitions against certain actions, but the most important rules are how the game is won. Children are naturally competitive and also naturally just; they want to see fair competition as much as possible. God does the same for the great game of our lives.

The commandments help define the boundaries of our lives - where we can go or where we should avoid going - along with being the rules for fair conduct. But Jesus offers in this Gospel account those rules that show what it means to win the game of life. We Christians can oftentimes focus too much on observing the commandments, or at least the minimal observance. We’re like children who stand at the line at the edge of the playing field, wondering what would happen if we want beyond that line. Yet the game is happening behind us, and we’re missing out.

These Beatitudes are not meant to replace the commandments but are their fulfillment. The commandments alone do not allow us to draw nearer to Christ; they are the minimal law to be a decent human being. Most of them we know and obey instinctively. But the Beatitudes are revealed by Jesus so that we may know the true purpose of this life: union with God through Jesus Christ. These promises come to fruition in those who are open to hearing them and living them freely and completely.

But who are those that can do this? Who can live out these Beatitudes and reach the kingdom of heaven? Saint Paul tells us who in our second reading when he points out who has heard and answered the call to enter into the Church. It is the poor, the weak, the humble, the nothing who can do this, because they know that God will be there to help them. Many of the first converts to Christianity were not the philosophers or politicians or nobles, but they were slaves, women, the poor - those who were nothing in ancient Roman society. Yet God demonstrates His power and His sanctification through them, revealing the marvels that are possible through His grace.

Brethren, God does not wish us to be slaves. Nor does He wish us to be adrift in the turbulent seas of doubt and arrogance in which we find ourselves today. He sends His Son to show us the way of grace and truth, the way of the commandments and the Beatitudes which lead to the kingdom of heaven. Let us humble ourselves and enter into the joyful game of Christianity, not seeking the false goods past the field line, but the truth that is meant to set us free. Let us be poor and mournful and meek, let us hunger and thirst, let us be merciful and clean and peaceable, and let us endure the persecution of the ignorant and the arrogant, just as Jesus did all of that in His earthly life. Let us learn from the divine Master the joy of the Christian moral life, so that we may receive the reward of that virtuous life: the kingdom of heaven.

3rd Sunday per annum (OF)

What does it mean to be Catholic? And why should you be one? This is a question that has probably popped up in our minds at one point or another. What is the reason behind being in this church, in this religion? Why should we be Catholic instead of Protestant? Why this instead of Judaism or Islam or any number of other religions? Why even have a religion? How many of my generation who simply abandon religion for a vague and inactive spirituality, only occasionally remembering that the deity even exists. But why are they wrong to do this, and we right to remain here?

Saint Peter in his first letter exhorts the faithful to have a reason for their hope (1 Pt 3:15). Do we know that reason in our own hearts? Or do we struggle to understand why we should even still come in here and go through the motions? We sometimes feel like people have it easy when it comes to matters of faith, as if it is natural for them whereas we cannot find the answer and wrestle over the point of maintaining these exercises. Yet the truth is that we all have our times of struggle in the faith. No serious Christian is absent from that struggle, yet that struggle can and often does lead to a stronger faith and a greater understanding of why we are here.

I offer you the best example I know of this: my own life. I was not really raised in the Catholic faith. I was baptized Catholic, and I did receive my first Communion. But my family stopped going to church when I was eight or nine, and it didn’t really change much in my life, except make Sunday open for anything else. However, as I grew up, I desired something more. I kept searching for the answer to all of this, what the point of it all is. I would stare up at the stars at night wondering if this was really everything that could be, if this empty universe truly held all the answers. It was not a satisfying answer in my mind.

It was during college that I began to look into the Catholic faith which I ostensibly belonged to. I was inspired by the witness of a few people who were Catholics and Protestants, but were deeply committed to their faith. I read, I studied, I prayed, I went to Mass for the first time as an adult. I began to find an answer that was far more complete than what I had known before. I began to know Jesus Christ. The rest, as they say, is history.

Brothers and sisters, Catholicism is not an ethnic religion. We are called to share this faith with our families, but it is not something that is merely passed down. Our faith is ultimately a choice, an individual choice concerning Christ, a choice with consequences. To help us with that choice, Jesus reveals Himself, as we continue to see in these post-Epiphany Gospel accounts, and today is no less different. Jesus calls all to repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, while He also calls Simon Peter and Andrew to come after Him. Jesus does the same for each one of us, calling us to make the choice to follow after Him.

But how many people are there from our parish who have left here, either to seek Him in another church or to ignore Him altogether? How many of our brothers and sisters have left and not returned? Can we ignore them or let them wander in the dark? And what about all our separated brethren in the various churches around us who seem to imitate the Corinthians in Saint Paul’s day, as we hear in the second reading? Can we sit by and let them proclaim, “I belong to Luther”, or “I belong to Calvin”, or “I belong to Wesley”, or “I follow the true Christ”? Do we sit on our laurels and make half-hearted prayers that God converts them? And this is without even considering the poor who do not have the Gospel, the drug-ridden, the helpless among us who struggle to eke out a basic living. Who shall tell them that the kingdom of heaven is at hand? Who shall give them the answer which their hearts seek, as I was seeking for so many years?

Jesus Christ did not establish the Catholic Church to be just one among many other temples and churches. He is the Light of the World, meant to draw all people to Himself. But He does not work alone; the Lord called the Apostles and the early disciples to work with Him in spreading this message of repentance and truth to all the corners of the world. Jesus still calls men and women to work with Him to bear that light of truth in their lives, no matter their vocation. Shall we hear His call and answer it? Shall we find in Him the truth our hearts have been seeking, the answer to all our questions? Shall we repent and embrace the kingdom of heaven?

Brothers and sisters, I urge you: make the choice for Christ! Let us turn to the Light of the World to receive His light and His salvation. Let us turn to Him who calls each one of us to follow after Him. Follow Him who has been the one definitive answer for so many people over the past two millennia, and will be the one answer until the last day. May we indeed desire the kingdom of heaven brought to us in Christ Jesus, and seek to share the Light with all whom we meet so that all of us may enter that kingdom which shall endure for ever.

Second Sunday of Advent: Alerts

We are oftentimes surrounded by alerts. In these days of smartphones and constant connection to the virtual world, we receive numerous alerts from our devices. The long rings for a phone call, the short beeps for texts and emails, and whatever sundry beeps, boops, and twirls we make these things do to make us aware of something whether it has any importance or not. We don’t want to be left in the dark about anything, hence the many alerts.

Perhaps we already filter these alerts between what is necessary versus the trivial. But what would happen if we ignored those alerts? If we didn’t respond to the rings and beeps and buzzes coming from all these devices? We would be ignorant of what was happening in the world, unaware of anything beyond what someone tells us in person. While this might be better for us overall, it would be very difficult to communicate important or tragic news if we ignored our alerts. While annoying, they do serve their role of notification.

John the Baptist stands out in our Gospel today as the ultimate alert, one that cannot be ignored without repercussion. As we move closer to Christmas, the Church presents us this striking figure of the preacher in the desert, a man foretold by Isaiah to be the one charged with preparing the way for the Lord. His message is summed up in the first words we hear from him today: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! Yet how are we to respond to this alert?

The answer lies in that very first word, “Repent.” Saint Matthew and the other gospel writers us the word metanoia in Greek. We freely translate it as repent, but how well do we understand what either word means? The Greek word metanoia signifies a complete conversion, a total change of life from what was previously done. To undergo metanoia was to make a radical change in one’s life, even to the point of doing the opposite of what you had done before.

John the Baptist stands as the trumpeter or herald announcing the arrival of the king. He prepares the way for the Lord by giving us the first hints of what the newborn King will proclaim in His public ministry in a few years. The trumpet blast is meant to grab our attention, and John does this so as to call us to do the same thing Jesus will demand later on: for all of us to undergo conversion, metanoia, from our sins. Why is this so necessary that John makes this announcement ahead of Jesus?

This trumpet blast is necessary because sin is the reason why Jesus comes into the world. God had revealed numerous times before the birth of Christ what must be done to live rightly, to live in holiness: abandon sin, abandon the false gods, enter into the covenant with God and observe all that He asks of you. Yet so many times we failed to do that. This is because sin still remained upon us, saturating our souls such that it was impossible on our own to do all that God willed. Therefore, sin needed to be removed from humanity so that humanity could once more be able to enter into the holiness desired for all by God.

Many people are going around proclaiming that Jesus is the reason for the season, and they are not far off. Yet the deeper reason why Jesus comes in this season is the problem of sin. Sin separates us from God, deforms our natural and supernatural capacities for good, and inclines us away from God and closer to the devil. Ever since the garden, sin has sliced humanity off from total union with God, with no apparent end in sight, until a lowly virgin was told that she would be the mother of the Savior. It is because of sin that Jesus comes into this world, so that He could remove it from us and restore us to God.

Yet the story is not that short. Too often, we think of the great Christian story as this: God creates man, man sins, God sends Jesus, Jesus removes sin, the end. There is so much missing from this oversimplification. Jesus does come to free us from sin: the wood of the crib foretells the wood of the Cross. But the redeeming sacrifice of the Cross is powerless unless we accept it and we begin to sin no more. God does not grant us a free pass to sin by the death of His Son; God demonstrates to us in the Cross the depths of His love and His desire for us to love in return. And that is the whole reason behind John the Baptist’s trumpet call today.

Jesus Christ, speaking in Himself and through His forerunner John the Baptist, wants us not merely to avoid sin but to become holy, to be saints. He wants for us metanoia, a complete conversion away from sin, from death, and from the devil towards Himself, towards the good, towards eternal life. There is no middle path in the teaching of Jesus: either you are moving forward towards God or moving away from Him and towards the devil and damnation. There are no sidelines, no pits, no timeouts in the game of Christian life: we play to win or we play to lose.

Christianity is not meant to be comfortable: it is the truest challenge to the whole world. Our faith first dares to proclaim that there is such a thing as sin, that there are quite a few things that are not willed by God and are dangerous for us, even perhaps some things that are quite popular in the world today. But it doesn’t end there: our faith calls every human being to abandon those things, to abandon sin, and to receive the mercy and love of God won for us in Christ Jesus. Saint Paul in our second reading sees this as the means whereby the promise of the patriarchs is confirmed, the first inklings of what would happen first on Christmas Day and then on Good Friday.

We wear violet during Advent because it is a penitential season. We do not sing the Gloria because we are waiting for the glory of God to appear once more in the crib in Bethlehem. We mark this season with penitence because our sins are the reason for the season, the purpose for Christ to be born into the world. Only by facing the truth of our sinfulness, of our complete incapacity for winning our redemption by our own efforts can we then truly rejoice in a few weeks when we see that tiny child in the manger. Only when we admit our sinfulness can we then rejoice at the sight of our Savior who will help us to be converted and to live.

Let us then weep over our sins, which have lead not only to the birth of our Savior but will lead to His death as well. Let us repent of our sins, undergoing the conversion, the metanoia, that John the Baptist proclaimed as will the One who follows after him. Let us receive the mercy of God through the sacrament of confession so that we may indeed glorify God for His mercy to us and to all generations. Let us not despair that we are sinners, but let us hope once more in the saving action of Christ brought to us through the sacred liturgy, turning to the Cross as our only consolation and our only hope. Let us not ignore the alert of John the Baptist this day, but let us indeed repent of our sins and of our sinful way of life, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.

First Sunday of Advent (OF): Preparedness

We begin a new liturgical year today with this Mass of the First Sunday of Advent. We open this year of grace as we open every new year: excited about the possibilities and hopeful for a new start. Yet the start of the church’s year does not hearken to past; it hearkens to the future. The poet T. S. Eliot once quipped that “in my beginning is my end,” and indeed the end must always be in sight for anything started in this world, especially we poor mortals. As we previewed last week in the feast of Christ the King, everything in this world has an expiration date, including the universe itself. Nothing in this world of decay lasts forever, no matter how hard we try to make it otherwise.

We usually think of Advent as a consideration for the coming of Jesus Christ in history, commemorating the great expectation of the nations that the Savior would come and set them free. Yet Advent does not merely concern this past coming: it offers for our meditation and prayer the two other ways that Christ comes into this world and invades our lives. Today’s readings show us the first of these comings, or should we say the second coming. Each of these readings flows with anticipation for the final return of Jesus Christ in glory and majesty on that last and terrifying day, when all shall be put to right and the world shall be made anew in His glory.

Isaiah looks with joy at the results of that last judgment, when all shall joyfully ascend the mountain of the Lord to the house where they shall dwell in peace and security for all eternity. It is the same joyful hope found in the psalm, where Jerusalem is the symbol for that eternal city that shall never be lost or overtaken. It is the hope that remained in the hearts of the faithful Jews in the long centuries before the coming of Jesus, and it is the same hope that must remain in our hearts as we endure our own long centuries until Jesus comes once more, not to a humble stable in the farthest corner of the world, but in the full splendor of His kingship to rule for the ages.

Our other readings remind us of the consequences of this hope. Both of them urge us to stay awake and be watchful, since we know neither the hour nor the day when this hope shall be answered. Both warn us against the sins that emerge from losing that hope: the sins of the flesh, for when we lose hope in eternal life, we seek to make a heaven out of earth instead of waiting for God to do that in His own time. Our Lord in fact offers an appropriate image of expectation: be on your guard, as if a thief were coming to rob your house.

This image of being on guard for a thief provides another reason for our new position at Mass. I stated a few weeks ago that we would return to the traditional position of praying together - priest and people - turned towards the Lord. Advent is a most appropriate time for restarting this liturgical orientation because of what Jesus tells us in this Gospel: be on your guard, be ready. We Christians are called to be on the watch for the Lord to come, like guards in the tower waiting for the king to return so that the castle door may be opened for him. Yet we cannot do this if we are turned inward rather than outward. The thief does not come from within the house but outside; the king will not return from inside the castle but from outside. So too will Christ come not from within us, but He ultimately returns from a place outside of the universe, breaching the gap when His hour has come.

It is certainly true that God is with us. We who have been confirmed are called to be temples of the Holy Spirit. We who receive the Eucharist can really lay claim to Jesus dwelling within us. Yet the immanent God, the God within, is also the transcendent God, the God beyond the cosmos. In fact, while we talk about God being with us, even perhaps dwelling within us, God is also dwelling outside of any aspect of the cosmos. We are not pantheists who believe that the universe is a God or that God is bound to the material world. God in Himself is transcendent, unencompassed by anything, even Heaven. It is by His will that He becomes immanent, that He pours Himself out for us, sharing Himself as only He can do.

If God is transcendent, if He dwells in highest heaven, then our worship should reflect this understanding just as it reflects the truth that God is with us. This is why Catholics for millennia have adopted this position of a common outer direction for prayer, not facing a wall nor the priest ignoring the people but looking outward for the transcendent God to come once again and be with us. I said earlier that Advent reflects two different comings of the Lord: the first I mentioned was His final coming in majesty, but the second is the coming of the Lord daily upon the altar. We are reminded in this season that Jesus not only came to the stable in Bethlehem and will come on the last day, but that He frequently comes to us, humbling Himself to come from the highest heaven and be encompassed in bread and wine. The transcendent made immanent, heaven revealed on earth, the Savior who has come and will come now come once more to be our food for the journey.

If we are going to be faithful to Christ, we must be on the watch. Saint Peter warns us in one of his letters to be watchful for the devil, who prowls like a roaring lion seeking to devour anything. But Jesus tells us to be watchful for Him to come, to be ready for that hour, whether it is the hour of our death or the hour of the last death, the death of this universe. To be watchful means to be ready for whatever may come or for whatever is expected. If we are not watchful, then we forget that we are not citizens of this passing world. We become like those who ignored Noah as he prepared the ark: eating, drinking, feasting with abandon, disregarding hope in Christ. And like those fools in the days of Noah, we too will be swept away when that last day comes and we have not been watchful, for we will receive not the reward of alertness but punishment for our disregard, for our hopelessness, for our abandonment of the coming Lord.

Let us not be caught offguard by the coming of the Lord, but let us be watchful for that hour. Let us prepare our lives for Him by living as He commanded us, following Him as our King and Lord. Let us turn and watch for Him to come now on the altar and soon on the last day. Let us use this season of Advent to make ready to celebrate that first coming in Bethlehem which we will commemorate on Christmas Day, that we may rejoice in His first coming to set us free from sin and death and to make ready His final coming. “Let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” as Saint Paul tells us, “and make no provisions for the desires of the flesh,” but let us prepare ourselves for the endless delights that await the watchful in eternal life.