Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Advent (C)

Just a few weeks ago on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, we heard the Gospel account of the Annunciation: the Angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she would become the Mother of God … and Gabriel also told Mary that her cousin Elizabeth was six months pregnant, even in her old age, “because nothing will be impossible for God.”

It’s been said that it is the celebration of the Immaculate Conception that gives the entire season of Advent its true meaning. By preserving her from the stain of original sin, even from the first moment of her conception, God was preparing Mary for this other moment when she would consent to God’s will and allow Jesus to be conceived by the Holy Spirit in her womb.

All of our Advent preparation over these past four weeks has aimed at helping us comprehend how we, too, were created by God to be “holy and blameless” in His sight; how we, too, must wait and long for His coming; and how we, too, must give our yes to God’s will so that Christ might be borne into the world through our lives.

Now, today, on this last Sunday of Advent, we hear the Gospel reading that picks up immediately after the angel Gabriel has made his announcement and departs from Mary. The very next words Luke writes in his Gospel tell us: “Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”

Mary set out in haste. Undoubtedly, Mary was still awed and in shock. She must still have had so many doubts and concerns about how this could possibly be true and what it would mean for her life, especially for her upcoming marriage to Joseph. And yet, Mary’s first and immediate instinct is to get up and rush to see her cousin Elizabeth and to offer her the assistance she would need during her pregnancy.

St. Luke tells us that “when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” So we can see that Mary’s instinct to “set out in haste” was truly a movement of grace. It was really her Divine Son who compelled her to action – to self-sacrificing service – and Mary indeed carried Christ to Elizabeth and her unborn child, John. They both recognized His presence in Mary’s loving service and in turn they were filled with joy and thanksgiving.

Over the past week, as I’ve been watching news coverage of the terrible school shooting in Newtown, I was struck by the number of people from around the country who were dropping everything to travel to Connecticut in the wake of the tragedy:

Two-dozen seventeen-year-old boys from a youth hockey team in Philadelphia came to Newtown to lay wreaths at the town’s makeshift memorial. A woman from North Carolina drove up to Connecticut with twenty-six Christmas trees, one for each of the victims. A group of students who survived a previous school shooting on an Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota came with the flags of their tribe and hard-won words of advice on how to begin the healing process. And any number of other volunteers came from as far away as Texas to offer whatever help they could.

During all the television coverage, many of these people have been interviewed by reporters, but when they were asked what it was that made them travel such distances, they were almost universally at a loss for words. The best they could explain – and they almost all used words similar to this – was that they simply felt they had to do something, so they got up and found their way to Connecticut any way they could.

I fully realize that not all of those people are as saintly as our Blessed Mother. And some of them may not even be Christians. And yet, as Christians ourselves, we cannot fail to see in their story a reflection of today’s Gospel reading … we cannot help but believe that it was really Christ’s desire to be carried to those in need, that these people were responding to when they set out for Newtown. Yes, they were compelled by love – to our minds, they were compelled by the One who is Love itself.

Well, brothers and sisters, what about us? No, I’m not asking that we all get up right now and drive to Connecticut. But do we always drop everything and respond at once to Jesus’ daily promptings in our lives? Do we give as much attention to the needs of our spiritual lives as we do to our physical health, or to our financial stability? Do we say yes to the many invitations Christ gives us each and every day to do even the small kindnesses that are signs of His love? Or do we rather imagine that we can be passive about the spiritual life, or that there will be time enough in the future to respond to Christ’s pull upon our hearts?

In one of the opening collects that we’ve prayed often at Mass during this Advent season we’ve asked God for “the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at His coming.”

Friends, today’s Gospel, connected as it is to the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception makes it clear that our Advent waiting – like that of Mary’s pregnancy some two thousand years ago – is not a static, stationary reality. Our Advent waiting is an active reality, a running forth, a setting out in haste. And even after Christmas has come and gone, this sense of immediacy, this eagerness to do righteous deeds, this longing to greet Christ's return, should really mark the entirety of our lives as Christians.

So, what is it that God is calling you to do today, or with the rest of your life? What is the mission He is giving to you, and to you alone? How does He want you to serve Him and His holy people? Whatever He may be asking of us, brothers and sisters, may we be like Our Blessed Mother and set out in haste to do His will.

Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent (C)

Today is the Third Sunday of our Advent season, which is known as Gaudate Sunday.  The word Gaudate means ‘Rejoice’ and it gives its name to this Third Sunday of Advent because it is the very first word spoken in the entrance antiphon of today’s Mass, and because the theme of rejoicing repeats itself in several of our readings.

In our first reading the prophet Zephaniah tells us: “Shout for joy and sing joyfully;” our responsorial Psalm admonishes us to “cry out with joy and gladness;” and in our second reading St. Paul encourages the faithful to “rejoice in the Lord always; I shall say it again: rejoice!” 

Normally on this Third Sunday of Advent we recognize just how close we are to our celebration of Christmas, and how near God is to us every day – and so we put the penitential color of purple aside for a week, and we allow the joyful, white brilliance of Christmas to seep in and make a beautiful rose.

But on this particular Third Sunday of Advent it is nearly impossible for us to think of rejoicing.  Our hearts and minds are too preoccupied by the horrifying news from Newtown, Connecticut. 

We are thinking of the littlest victims whose young lives were snuffed out, and those other children whose innocence was so abruptly taken from them.  We are praying for the parents whose arms and homes were so tragically empty last night, and those other parents who search for the words to explain this to their children and to comfort them.  

And together all of us are searching for answers.  How could this have happened?  Why did that troubled young man do such a horrible thing?  How can we keep it from ever happening again?  How could God have let this happen and where can He be found amidst these awful events?

At first glance, our readings – focused as they are on rejoicing – might not seem to offer many answers.  But I think if we take a closer look we might, in fact, find that just the opposite is true.  In our first reading Zephaniah tells the people, “fear not, do not be discouraged;” in the Psalm we are told to be “confident and unafraid;” and in our second reading St. Paul instructs us to “have no anxiety at all.”  

Friends, that’s because when Zephaniah, and the Psalmist, and St. Paul speak of rejoicing none of them are talking about a constant state of giddiness.  They are not encouraging us into a naïve blissfulness that willfully ignores the violence, loss, and grief, the struggles and hardships that we so often face, and certainly confront right now.

Rather, all of our readings today take such things as a given, and that is precisely why they begin by acknowledging our fear, doubt, and even our anger.  But they also refuse to leave us in such a place: they point a way forward, and they help answer at least one of the many questions that we always ask when tragedies like this occur.

Our readings tonight help us answer the troubling question, “Where is God in all of this?”  The prophet Zephaniah tells us, “the Lord your God is in your midst;” the Psalmist proclaims: “great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel;” and St. Paul assures us simply “the Lord is near.”

Friends, the lesson of this Advent and Christmas season is that our God is indeed very close to us – especially when we endure injustice and encounter the evil of violence and death.  These seasons point us to a God born in the flesh, born as a child so poor He is laid to rest not in a crib in a nursery, but in a manger in a stable … a child who is hunted by a mass murderer and exiled to a foreign country … a child, grown into a man, who is unjustly arrested and tried, brutally tortured and publicly executed … all in order to save us from our sins! 

And so, brothers and sisters, if we want to know where we can find God in events like yesterday we need look no further than the children who huddled in classrooms and closets fearful of a madman who sought their lives; we can find His presence in the teachers who shepherded their students to safety, and the principal who lived and died with such great devotion to education; and of course we can see God the Father, and Mary the Mother of God, in the faces of mothers and fathers who weep and mourn for their sons and daughters. 

Our God is Emmanuel – God with us!  He is so very near, so intimately close to us, that He has shared with us the suffering and death of human life – and He has conquered them!  That is why, even amidst such awful tragedy and loss, such grief, doubt, and fear, we cling desperately to a hope and a joy that the world cannot give, and therefore that the world cannot take away either:

We cling to Jesus Christ, our Savior, the fulfillment of all our longings, the answer to all our doubts, the source of all our healing and our glad tidings.  He is even now in our midst, and He will come again at the end of time to usher in the fullness of His kingdom.

Friends, tonight our hearts and minds are with our brothers and sisters in Connecticut, and with our own children and families.  Our hearts break and our minds reel trying to make sense of all that has happened.  But we pray, with the confidence that God is close to us, that “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”

Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Over the past several weeks we have been hearing Gospel readings from the Sixth Chapter of St. John’s Gospel: The Bread of Life Discourses in which Jesus makes clear that He is the Bread of Life.  He is the true bread come down from heaven.  His flesh is true food and His blood is true drink, and whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood has life eternal.

I said last week that such teachings would have been absolutely scandalous to a first century Jew.  Jews were forbidden from eating the flesh of an animal with its blood, and contact with human blood made a person ritually impure.  To eat and drink human flesh was as abhorrent an idea to Jesus’ contemporaries as it is for us today.

In last week’s Gospel, the crowds asked incredulously: “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”  But rather than back down, Jesus heightened the realism of His language: I noted that when Jesus repeats that only those who eat His flesh have life within them, He chooses to use a word that basically means to ‘gnaw’ or ‘munch’ on His flesh.

In today’s Gospel we hear about the results of Jesus’ clarity of teaching, the implications of His refusal to say only what the crowd wants to hear, or to couch His words in pious niceties.

“This saying is hard; who can accept it?” the crowds ask.  And St. John tells us that, “As a result of this, many of His disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied Him.”

Friends, there have always been and will always be many ‘sayings’ of Jesus that are hard; that are difficult to accept.  Today, perhaps more than ever, there are many people who find certain teachings of Christ’s Church difficult to accept and hard to follow.

I’m sure that many such difficult teachings come quickly to your mind: the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of human life, its prohibition against artificial contraception, abortion, and euthanasia; the Church’s definition of marriage and its prohibition against same-sex marriage, cohabitation, and pre-marital sex; the Church’s teachings on the dignity of labor, the rights of immigrants and refugees, and the tragedies of war and militarization. 

And then there are the even more fundamental teachings: to forgive as we wish to be forgiven; to care for the widow and the orphan; to believe in a God who became a helpless child, and was executed as a criminal, and rose from the dead! The list easily goes on and on.

To the ears of modern-day Americans, focused as we are on individual freedom and choice, mesmerized as we are by science and technology, insistent as we are on accumulating more and more for ourselves and fashioning worlds of our own truth, these teachings are hard and even scandalous. 

Just as in the crowd of today’s Gospel, there are many who choose to “return to their former way of life,” to live no longer for Christ, but for themselves. 

Others of us remain, but we do our best to ignore the hard truths that Jesus teaches.  We sometime choose to live not for Him, but for our own particular definition of His teaching, leaving aside whatever we find too hard to hear, or too difficult to accept. 

Like Peter, who even tried to dissuade Jesus from proclaiming the hard truth of His coming Passion, some people even advocate for the Church to abandon those teachings that are deemed to be too hard, too demanding, or insufficiently “modern.”

But brothers and sisters, as St. Paul makes clear in our second reading, from his Letter to the Ephesians:  “The Church is subordinate to Christ.”  The Church does not have the authority to alter the teachings of Christ, but rather She has been given the commission of proclaiming the saving truth of His teaching to all people. 

As Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict have said so often, the Church does not impose, She proposes.  And underlying all the teachings the Church puts before us is the same fundamental choice that Joshua put before the Twelve Tribes of Israel in today’s first reading:  

“If it does not please you to serve the Lord,” Joshua told the people, “decide today whom you will serve.”  Friends, all of us serve some master, and we cannot serve more than one.  We either serve God as He truly is – and through serving Him see the necessity of serving our brothers and sisters – or we serve something else we have fashioned into our god: some ideology, or our own ego, or our addictions to possessions, power, or pleasure.

So, the question Jesus asks the Twelve in today’s Gospel is asked of us as well:  “Do you also want to leave?”  Do you want to leave Him by departing from His Body, the Church?  Do you want to stop accompanying Him by avoiding the scandal of the Cross, by trying to set your own terms for discipleship?

This question is not and should not be an easy one to answer because answering it demands a great sacrifice from each and every one of us, without exception.  Answering it requires that we all lay down our lives, our egos, our expectations for how things “ought to be,” and pick up our cross and follow after Christ. 

Therefore we must all pray, for ourselves and one another, that we might have the grace that is required to answer with the Israelites in today’s first reading: “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord … For it was the Lord … who brought us … out of slavery.  Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.”  Brothers and sisters, we have all received too many blessings from the hand of God to doubt Him or to turn away from Him because we think His teaching is too hard or because He asks too much of us.

And if we struggle with answering this all-important question, as we all do from time to time …  when we find ourselves struggling to remain with Christ and to accept the clear but challenging portions of the Gospel … we are meant to lean on the strong faith of the Church.  We are meant to stand with the Apostles, who may not have understood completely, but who stood fast with Christ in today’s Gospel. We are meant to ground ourselves firmly on the rock of Peter’s faith. 

Peter, the very one who in his human weakness tried to run from the scandalous Cross, is now given the faith to answer Jesus’ question for all the Twelve and for all of us when he says: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

"You have the words of eternal life."  Friends, here is the ultimate lesson from today’s Gospel: Even the most difficult teachings of the Gospel, even the “hard sayings,” are not designed to scandalize, confuse, subjugate, or torture us.  The teachings of Christ, which the Church preserves and proposes, are all of them designed to bring us to the fullness of life: both in Heaven at the end of time, and also here in this life.

We have the assurance of Christ Himself who doesn’t go back on His hard teaching but says to the wavering crowd: “The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.”  And we have His fundamental promise elsewhere in John’s Gospel: “I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.”

Consuming now the Body and Blood of Christ, we are assured of having Christ’s life within us.  May our Amen as we receive the Eucharist be our answer to the Lord’s pressing question: “Do you also want to leave?” … “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.” 

Homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

This past Friday August 17th marked a rather obscure but profoundly important anniversary.  On that date in 1525 – some 487 years ago – Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss Protestant reformer, published a book on “the meaning of the Lord’s Supper.”

Zwingli claimed to have had a dream in which he was allowed to understand “the Eucharist in a whole new way.”  His novel belief was that the bread and wine of the Eucharist were only symbols, not really the body and blood of Christ, something not even Luther or Calvin claimed to be true.

That this anniversary is obscure is obvious enough.  But I also said that this date was profoundly important.  And indeed it is because Zwingli’s position has come to be held by the vast majority of Protestant Christians around the world.  Differences in Eucharistic theology are some of the most crucial issues dividing Catholics and Protestants to this day.

But sadly, many Catholics are themselves confused about the reality we celebrate in the Eucharist.  In 1992 a Gallup Poll interviewed just over five hundred American Catholics.  They found that twenty-nine percent of respondents actually claimed Zwingli’s position: that at Communion we receive “bread and wine, which symbolize the spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ.”

Another thirty-four percent of respondents claimed to hold some version of either Calvin or Luther’s position.  They believed we receive “the Body and Blood of Christ” but they were confused by what the Church teaches regarding precisely how this change occurs.

According to the Gallup poll only thirty percent of respondents could correctly identify and claim the Catholic Church’s true teaching: that in the Eucharist we really and truly receive the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.  Only the accidents of bread and wine remain: the substance of the bread and wine have sacramentally been changed into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Over the last several weeks we have been hearing Gospel readings from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel.  This section of John’s Gospel is usually referred to as The Bread of Life Discourse because it contains Jesus’ exchanges with His Jewish audience regarding the manna that the ancient Israelites had eaten on their forty-year sojourn in the desert.

Jesus makes clear that He is “the living bread that came down from heaven.”  Whereas the Israelites ate the manna and still died, those who eat the true bread from heaven will have eternal life.

And what is this true bread from Heaven? Jesus states plainly: “the bread that I will give you is my flesh for the life of the world … my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”

This was terribly scandalous for Jesus’ Jewish listeners.  Blood was understood to be the life-force of living creatures and to consume blood of any kind, let alone human blood, was unthinkable.  And yet here is Jesus telling them that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood!

No wonder Jesus’ listeners asked incredulously: “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”  In next Sunday’s Gospel we’ll hear their further reaction and as you can well imagine it isn’t positive.

But please note that Jesus doesn’t back down.  He doesn’t “offer a metaphorical, spiritualized interpretation of His words.”  He does not say that He was speaking merely on the level of symbol.

Rather, He actually “intensifies the realism of His language.”  In the seminary I had class with the great Scripture scholar Fr. John Meir.  He pointed out to us that when Jesus tells the people to eat and drink His blood, He uses a verb that connotes not the delicate eating of a fancy meal, but rather voracious gnawing.  Fr. Meir chose the verb ‘munching!’  In other words, Jesus doesn’t let His listeners off the hook – He wants them to deal directly with the stark realism of His words.

Well, as those Gallup Poll numbers indicate, even today people still find the realism of Jesus’ words difficult to accept.  Even Christians who otherwise interpret the Scriptures literally can’t seem to take Jesus at His word when He says “this is my body … this is my blood” and “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.”

But brothers and sisters this is precisely what we understand to be true when we celebrate the Eucharist.  We are not play-acting as a quaint memorial to Jesus. We are mystically re-presenting the sacrifice of Calvary and sacramentally consuming His flesh and blood.

Flannery O’Connor, who died in 1964, was one of the greatest American authors of all time.  As a Catholic living in the American South she often encountered those who misunderstood the Faith, yet in her life and writing she was always a great defender of it.

In one of her letters, she told a friend about a discussion she once had about the Eucharist:

Five or six years ago I was taken “by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater … She [had] departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. We went at eight, and at one I hadn’t opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me to say in such company …

Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the most portable person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one.

I then said, in a very shaky voice, ‘Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.’  That was all the defense I was capable of, but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it … except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable … Understand … that, like [a] child, I believe the Host is actually the body and blood of Christ, not a symbol.”

Friends, this should be our appreciation of the Eucharist also.  If it is merely a symbol it is not nearly worth it!  If it is merely a symbol it cannot nourish us for eternal life as we know we need and as Jesus has promised.  If it is merely a symbol then we do not have Jesus’ life in us – we have not become what we receive.

But, as we heard in today’s Gospel, Jesus has not only told us that His flesh and blood is indeed true food and true drink, He has also promised: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him … the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”

So, we now approach this Eucharist with the eyes of faith seeing not bread and wine but the very Body and Blood of Christ they have become, sacramentally.  And leaving here today we live not for ourselves, but for Christ, of whose body we have all become members.

"I give thanks to God always for all of you ..."

Three years ago I served as the assistant director of my community’s undergraduate seminary at the University of Notre Dame.  During a football weekend, one of our seminarians hosted his uncle who was at that time studying for the permanent diaconate.  Don Longano joined our seminarians for Mass before the game and he brought along his pastor who had authored several books for our community’s publishing house.  Later that morning at the seminarians’ tailgate party I had the chance to meet and speak with Monsignor Vaghi.

Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

I’ll be moving to my new assignment in New York later this week, but before school starts for me in early September, I’m going to spend a few weeks with my Mom and Dad on Staten Island.  While I’m home it’ll be easy for me to relax and unwind, and I’ll slip easily into the old familiar patterns and schedules of life at home.  Undoubtedly, one of the most important elements of such a routine revolves around food and eating.

Think for a second about your own home life as a family.  How much time, energy, and thought do you end up committing, each and every day, to food: to planning, preparing, eating, and then cleaning up from the meals we need to sustain ourselves.  It’s likely a considerable amount of time.

In my family we joke that we even end up spending a lot of time talking about food!  One of the most consistent questions asked at some point during almost all of our dinnertime conversations, is what we’re going to have for dinner the following night! 

In part, that’s because it really does take some forethought to prepare a meal; to decide what things go well together, what makes for a healthy meal, and then to gather the proper supplies.

But in fairness, it’s also because we can sometimes have a hard time deciding what we want, what we really have a hankering for.  We know we’ll be hungry again by then, but what is it that we’ll really want? What do we think will fill our hunger, not just for physical sustenance – in which case any old calories would do – but also for taste and pleasure.

After all, none of us want to eat the same old thing over and over again.  We all get bored easily and we grumble that we’re tired of the same old things.  We watch the Food Network, and we read the food section of the paper in search of new, and better, and more exciting recipes and restaurants to satiate our hunger, again, not merely for food – to be physically filled – but for the complete experience of a truly satisfying meal.

Friends, I’d like to suggest that if we think about it, this distinction between types of hunger, and our constant desire for something different and new, are in fact potent symbols for what is being spoken about in today’s readings.

Our Gospel picks up the story after last week’s miraculous feeding of the five thousand.  In today’s segment of John’s Gospel, the crowds follow after Jesus and He recognizes that they are only following Him because they have had their fill of the loaves.  The crowd is happy to have a free meal and they are hoping Jesus will continue to fulfill their very human need for physical, bodily nourishment.

But Jesus instructs them that they should work not for “food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”  He wants them to hunger not just for bodily sustenance but for the “bread that comes down from heaven” – which is to say the food that will fulfill the much deeper and more important desire for meaning, for wholeness, and for eternal life.

It is easy to provide for our physical, bodily need.  But we are not merely physical creatures.  We are spiritual beings who experience a much deeper type of existential hunger and longing.  If we do not seek to satisfy that deeper, spiritual hunger, then we will in fact never meet our deepest need or become our fullest selves.

Jesus explains to the crowd that He is Himself “the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  This is the spiritual food that will satisfy our deep, abiding spiritual hunger.  And we, of course, understand that Jesus gives us His very self as food and drink in the Eucharist precisely to give us such life and to sustain our spirits. 

But frankly, brothers and sisters, in our weakness we can sometimes become bored with this food.  Like the Israelites in the desert we grumble about still being unsatisfied.  Just as the Israelites longed to go back into Egypt, where they were slaves, but at least had decent food, we too can feel as if “the bread of life” hasn’t fully satisfied and that we still long for something else, something different, something new. 

In the end, though, the problem isn’t that God hasn’t provided, it’s that we don’t trust God enough to truly provide for our deepest needs and desires.  Instead, we hedge our bets.  We don’t fully give ourselves over to God.  We decide that we’re still in control, still capable of satisfying all our hungers by sating our appetite for all sorts of things: possessions, pleasure, power, or prestige.

But just as God brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and asked them to submit to the Law, so too God has brought us into a new type of freedom from sin, provided we accept a new type of submission in which He alone is our God. He asks us to turn over every part of our lives to Him, to trust in His plan for our lives and in His desire and ability to provide for all we need.

We only find ourselves unfulfilled and unsatisfied because we are constantly rebelling and grumbling against such surrender to God’s control of our lives.  We are still hungry because like the crowds in the Gospel we come to God asking for the wrong thing, still looking to satisfy our physical, bodily hunger rather than our truest spiritual needs.

Friends, that’s why in our second reading from the Letter to the Ephesians St. Paul admonishes: “put away the old self of your former way of life corrupted through deceitful desires” – in other words, put away desires that deceitfully lead us not toward Him who truly satisfies, but toward dead ends! 

Instead, St. Paul wants us to fully become the “new self” that is “renewed in the spirit … and created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”  St. Paul is trying to remind us that the fullness and the newness of life for which we long really is found in the “bread from heaven” which, as Jesus says, is to “believe” – to have faith and trust – “in the one who sent Him.”

So perhaps we should take time to ask ourselves what it is we most hunger and long for, what we devote our time and energy towards, in what or whom we put our faith and trust.  What it is that gives us a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment, of joy, peace, consolation, and excitement?  And in contrast, in what ways do we long for Egypt by clinging to things that lead, in the end, only to “division, desolation, embarrassment, and regret?”

Do we hunger most for success in our career, for financial security, or for material possessions?  Do we seek our fulfillment in how we recreate and vacation, how we vote, what we eat or drink, the clothes we wear, the car we drive? 

Or do we hunger most for, and find our satisfaction in, the time we spend with our loved ones and families, in the time we devote to prayerful communion with God, in the service we offer to those in need?

Do we have faith and trust in our own ability to secure fulfillment, happiness, and peace, or do we yield our lives to God and trust His plan for our lives, His ability to provide for all our needs?

Brothers and sisters, if we give over as much time, energy, and attention as we do to searching out the meals that will satisfy our bodily hungers, should we not give over at least as much time, energy, and attention to seeking out Him who can provide the “bread of life” which satisfies the deepest longings of our lives?

At this Mass, like the crowd in today’s Gospel, our prayer is: “Sir, give us this bread always!”  And in this Eucharist we are given the assurance that the Lord does indeed rain down bread from heaven, He sends us food in abundance, He satisfies our most abiding hunger.

Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

On Friday evening nearly one billion people around the world were transfixed by the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in London.  The spectacle was conceived and directed by the British director Danny Boyle, who is most famous for movies such as Trainspotting and the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire.

But this weekend’s Gospel reading got me thinking of another Danny Boyle movie – one of my all-time favorites – a film from 2004 entitled Millions.  The title refers to the number of British pounds that a young boy, Damian Cunningham, discovers on the side of a railroad track. 

After a bag of money mysteriously lands in Damian’s cardboard playhouse, he and his brother Anthony giddily count the money and set to spending it all before it becomes obsolete in two weeks’ time, when the movie indicates England will scrap pounds sterling for the Euro … you can tell this movie was made in 2004!

Damian’s brother Anthony wants to spend the money on toys, gadgets, and even on real estate investments! But Damian wants to give the money away to the poor.  He is a pious young man who rattles off the names, dates, and accomplishments of the saints as if they were stats from the back of a baseball card. 

And Damian’s devotion to the saints is rewarded throughout the movie, as he is visited by, and converses with great saints, including Theresa of Avila, Joseph, Nicholas, Francis of Assisi, and the Ugandan Martyrs.  Just as they truly do for all of us in the spiritual life, these saints provide Damian with advice, inspiration, and even defense against evil.

One of the most crucial scenes in the entire movie involves a conversation young Damian has with St. Peter, who visits shortly after the young man discovers that the money he found had in fact been stolen and misplaced by bank robbers.

“I thought it was a miracle,” Damian explains to Peter, “but it’s just robbed … can you still do good with it,” he asks.

In response, St. Peter tells Damian the “background story” of today’s Gospel – the multiplication of the loaves and fishes – and Danny Boyle has a bit of fun with the story.  According to St. Peter, the five thousand who gathered on the hill that day all had secret stashes of their own food, but they were “keeping it quiet, looking out for number one.”

But when the young boy comes forward and offers the disciples his “five sardines,” something amazing happens.  All of the people begin taking out their own food and start to share.  And the plate of fish goes “all the way around, and back to Jesus” and it still has the five fish and two loaves on it, and yet everyone has had their fill.

St. Peter tells Damian, “I think Jesus was a bit taken aback. He says, 'what happened? ' And I just said, 'miracle.'  And at first I thought I'd fooled Him.  But now I see it was a miracle, one of His best.”

Damian doesn’t quite get the point of Peter’s story, or how it applies to his predicament.  Damian is trying to do something really big and important to help the poor.  He’s devastated that the money he found, and thought was a miracle, could really be explained away so easily by a police report.

So, St. Peter goes a little further:  “You're trying too hard,” he tells Damian. “That kid, he wasn't planning on doing a miracle. He wasn't planning anything, except lunch. Something that looks like a miracle turns out to be dead simple.”

Despite the fact that Danny Boyle plays with the story a bit, and downplays the supernatural element of the Gospels, he is, in a way, still able to capture one of the crucial spiritual truths to be found in today’s Gospel reading – a truth that we often miss in our own lives, and gloss over in a Gospel story that we know so well.

The multiplication of the loaves and fishes is the only miracle narrated in all four of the Gospels.  In John’s version, which we’ve just heard, the evangelist is sure to mention that, “the Jewish feast of Passover was near.”  And as the action quickly unfolds, John uses language borrowed from accounts of the Last Supper and contained in the Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass to this day: “Jesus took the loves, gave thanks, and distributed them.” 

So we all know very well that the story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes fulfills the prophecy of Elisha from our first reading, and foreshadows the Eucharist that Jesus bestows to the Church before He dies, and that we celebrate daily in His memory.

But our familiarity with the story, and with the Mass itself, may blind us to some of the subtler spiritual lessons contained in the story. 

It’s crucial, I think, that it’s a little boy who gives Jesus what amounts to the leftovers of a previous meal.  First, we have to remember that children in Jesus’ day were not given the respect or the rights they are given today.  With women and slaves they were relegated to an inferior, even insignificant status.  Second, we should recognize the paucity of what the child brings forward: just a couple small fish, and a few pieces of bread.

And yet, from this apparently insignificant person, and this seemingly insufficient store, Jesus creates something spectacular.  He provides for the needs of an enormous crowd.

And the miracle doesn’t end there with everyone having “as much as they wanted.”  When the meal is finished, Jesus gives the disciples what might seem to be a practical instruction, a mere afterthought.  “Gather the fragments left over,” He tells them, “So that nothing will be wasted.”

Friends, Jesus isn’t just being a neat freak.  He isn’t merely being resourceful or environmentally conscious.  The spiritual point is that nothing, not the boy who brought the food, or the meager meal he brought, or even the left over fragments and tiny crumbs, are too small for God.

The miracle of the loaves and fishes, the miracle of the Last Supper, and the Eucharistic shape of our entire lives as Christians, show us that something that is in fact a miracle turns out to be pretty simple in its contents, and conversely, that simple things turn out to be miracles in the grace of God’s hands.

In Millions, St. Peter wanted young Damian to realize that he was frustrated because he was “trying too hard;” thinking and acting as if it were entirely up to him alone.  But discipleship and holiness don’t require us to perform large, conspicuous, seemingly miraculous good deeds as Damian had thought. 

Rather, in St. Paul’s words from our second reading, discipleship and holiness require us to live with “humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, and striving to preserve the unity of the spirit.”

Our lives, however small or worthless they may sometimes feel to us; all the little things, the daily actions we have to offer, however puny they sometimes seem to us … none of them are too small for God to use, to turn into a miracle.  He can make so much out of so little, and He makes sure that nothing, absolutely nothing is wasted. 

All of it, all of us – like simple fragments of bread and wine – are matter for miracles if only we, like the young boy in today’s Gospel, come forward and bring what we can to the Lord and allow Him to use them, use us, to answer the needs of all His people.

Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Sadly, this week our nation has once again experienced a most horrific and tragic event: the mass-murder of a dozen innocent moviegoers in a theatre in Aurora, Colorado.  This morning, in churches across the country, and especially in Colorado, communities of faith will gather to pray for the deceased and the wounded, and to seek some measure of hope, consolation, and understanding amidst such a senseless tragedy.

I feel quite comfortable in predicting that the Psalm we have heard this morning will be proclaimed at a significant number of these services, and will likely find a place in some of the official memorial services to be held over the coming days and weeks.

The Twenty-Third Psalm is almost certainly the single best-known Psalm in the entirety of the Scriptures: “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. In verdant pastures He gives me repose; besides restful waters He leads me, He refreshes my soul” … and perhaps most well know, and most poignant for today, the line: “Even though I walk in the dark valley, I fear no evil, for you are at my side.”

Not only Jews and Christians but people of many faiths, and of no faith at all, are deeply familiar with the words and metaphors of this Psalm.  We see it reproduced and reinterpreted not only on religious gifts and inspirational cards, but in artwork and music of all sorts

Just what is it about the Twenty-Third Psalm that we find so compelling?  Why does it have such a powerful hold on our imaginations, and why do we so often return to it in moments of grief and loss? 

Well, obviously, throughout the centuries this Psalm has spoken comforting and consoling words to some of humanity’s deepest and most abiding needs: the need to be fed, nurtured, protected, and shepherded. 

Like the sheep the prophet Jeremiah speaks of in the first reading, we are often misled and scattered.  Our fallen nature, our imperfect intellect, our human passions sometimes put us at odds with ourselves.  Often enough we feel internally divided, scattered, lost to others and to God.  On top of that, we’re often threatened by the Evil One: we fall to his lies and temptations, and we sometimes suffer under the chaos and hatred that he alone inspires and rejoices in.

In the Gospels such feelings of internal division, of being scattered and lost, are powerfully portrayed in the demoniacs that Jesus frees from possession.  Recall that in the Gospels the demon possessing a person always speaks to Jesus in the plural: “What have you to do with US, Jesus of Nazareth.” The demon speaks in the plural, in part, because they are the very embodiment of division.  They are not at all at peace with themselves, with God, or with the world around them.

In his letters, St. Paul addresses this same reality of internal division, of being spiritually and emotionally scattered, in a slightly different way.  He says, “the good I want to do, I don’t do – and the evil I wish to avoid, I do anyway.” I think we all know well that feeling of being divided within ourselves, because of the weakness of our wills and the power of the Tempter.

Finally, in the Gospels, Jesus Himself does battle with the Devil and his temptations in the desert; He predicts His own Passion and death by referencing the coming of “the ruler of this world,” Satan; and while in agony in the Garden, Jesus wrestles with God’s will and explains to His Apostles that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

But, brothers and sisters, generations of people have been drawn to the Twenty-Third Psalm because its promise, and the promise of Jeremiah’s prophecy from our first reading, is that we are not left alone to wander lost, confused, scattered, and abandoned.  God promises: “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock.”  The days are coming when I will shepherd my people so that “they no longer fear or tremble.”

And St. Paul confirms in today’s second reading, in his letter to the Ephesians, that all those who were far off, scattered, lost, or divided have indeed been brought near, have been reunited in Christ Jesus.  Paul says that in Christ we have been made “one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace and reconciling” us to God.

Jesus is, of course, the Good Shepherd through whom God fulfills His promise to guide, nourish and protect His flock. That’s why the very first piece of Christian art ever produced depicts Jesus as a shepherd, and that’s why Christians have always seen the Twenty-Third Psalm as a description of Jesus’ mission.

Still, you and I might ask, how can we come to experience this promised unity and peace?  How, in the midst of our still feeling very much divided and lost – how in the midst of terror and tragedy can we truly know the comfort that Psalm Twenty-Three offers us?

I think the answer is contained in the very first lines of today’s Gospel. 

Remember that in last week’s Gospel Jesus sent the Apostles out in pairs, scattering them to various towns and villages of Galilee and Judea to preach and to heal in His name.  Now He gathers them back together, they report what they have accomplished, and Jesus says:

“Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”

After being separated and scattered – after encountering the broken lives of the people they went to serve, after facing down the Devil in all his many manifestations, Jesus calls the Apostles to be alone with Him and to rest.

Friends, this is how we come to experience the wholeness, the peace, the security, and the comfort that Psalm Twenty-Three promises us.  In taking time to go away, in resting a while in Christ’s presence – in other words, when we pray – then and only then can we know the love of the Good Shepherd. 

Perhaps in our hyper-busy modern world, it’s precisely because we don’t take enough time to be alone with the Lord that so many of us feel so scattered and so lost.  Because also in our own time, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta certainly faced what it means to be lost, abandoned, internally divided, to be the victim of terrible violence. She worked with people day in, and day out who suffered in these ways and she knew such suffering herself.

And yet, she also wrote:  “In our congregation, we used to have adoration once a week for one hour, and then in 1973, we decided to have adoration one hour every day… And from the time we started having adoration every day, our love for Jesus became more intimate, our love for each other more understanding, our love for the poor more compassionate, and we have doubled the number of vocations … The time we spend in having our daily audience with God is the most precious part of the whole day.”

In other words, even while daily facing such terrible suffering and loss, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and her sisters found the goodness, the repose, the courage, and the bounty that are promised to us in Psalm Twenty-Three, all because they took time each day to come away with Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, during the slower months of summer perhaps we can start to make a little more time in our daily schedule for going away by ourselves, and resting a while in Jesus’ presence.  After all, Jesus’ invitation is made to us as surely as it was made to the Apostles in today’s Gospel. 

Then maybe even in the busyness of our lives – even in the moments we feel lost, or scattered, or afraid – maybe even then we can come to know that God spreads a table before us, that His goodness and kindness follow us all the days of our lives, and that we shall indeed dwell in the house of the Lord, for years to come.

“Citius, Altius, Fortius ... Faster, Higher, Stronger"

This coming Friday the Games of the 30^th Olympiad will be officially opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.  For two weeks, athletes from around the world will gather in London to represent their countries, to contribute to peaceful international exchange, and to compete for gold.

At Little Flower Parish we have particular reason to celebrate as one of our fellow parishioners, Katie Ledecky, will compete as a member of the U.S. Swim Team and will be our nation’s youngest Olympian. We congratulate and thank Katie, her parents and brother, and we wish Katie the very best of luck in her competition!!

In recent years especially, sports have taken up an even greater place in people’s lives, to the point that we can say that sports are a “characteristic phenomena of the modern era.”  But there is the danger that sports might become for us an end in themselves, that we might lose sight of the deeper values and virtues of sport, and that we might fail to apply sport’s important lessons to the rest of our lives, including most importantly our spiritual lives.

Blessed Pope John Paul II celebrated the Olympic Games as “a fitting occasion to give thanks to God for the gift of sport, in which the human person exercises his body, intellect and will, recognizing these abilities as so many gifts of his Creator.”  An athlete himself, John Paul II also reminded us that, at their best, sports should help young people develop important values “such as loyalty, perseverance, friendship, sharing and solidarity.” 

Most of all, he pointed out that the great athletes we admire “sacrificed themselves for years, day after day, to achieve their results.”  He called this “the logic of sport, especially Olympic sport” and he reminded us that “it is also the logic of life: without sacrifices, important results are not obtained, or even genuine satisfaction.”

In ancient Corinth there was a stadium where the Isthmian Games were held.  It was fitting, therefore, that when St. Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians he used athletic competition as an image for Christian discipleship, and spoke of the logic of sport and life: “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things,” he wrote. “They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one … So run that you may obtain it!" (1 Cor. 9: 25, 24).

We are all called to wear the laurel of everlasting life in heaven.  But we must run the race of life and discipleship so as to win such a prize.  We must daily train and sacrifice, exercise self-control and practice the virtues, so that we can be strong “athletes of Christ.”  As we enjoy the Olympic Games these next two weeks, may the athletes we watch inspire us to recommit to the disciplines of the faith, and to run the race, so as to win the prize of everlasting glory.

The above will appear this weekend in the "Clergy Corner" of our parish bulletin at The Church of the Little Flower, Bethesda, MD.

The Wonderful Wizarding World of Harry Potter

A few weeks ago I mentioned in one of my homilies that I was heading to Florida for a bit of vacation, and that I'd be visiting Universal Studios in Orlando. In particular, I noted that I would be visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Before I get too far removed from the trip I thought I should follow up and say that Nate, Stacey, and I had a wonderful day and that the park is truly amazing.

Universal Studios has expertly recreated the town of Hogsmeade from J.K. Rowling's famous Harry Potter series. When you enter the town, by way of the Hogsmeade train station of course, all of the irregular chimneys, lampposts, and store signs make you forget that you're in Florida not in the magical England of the Potter books and movies ... though I have to admit, the heat of the day was solid reminder!

Hovering over the entire town is the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Within the castle visitors can see recreations of Professor Dumbledore's office, the portrait hall, the Griffindor common room, and the Dark Arts classroom among others. 

Each of these venues includes video projections of the characters from the movies, but perhaps the most impressive of these video presentations is the portrait hall at the entrance to the School. Flat screen technology was used to create "portraits" that speak to the visitors and to each other. But the screens don't emit light in the same measure as a T.V., and the images really do look as if they have the texture of a painted canvas, not a glass or plastic screen. When even a technophile like Nate is impressed, you know you've done something right!

Indeed, throughout the park we all thought that every aspect of the experience - from the buildings, to the staff and their costumes, to the souvenirs, and the concessions - were done with with fantastic forethought, creativity, and care.  Above, you can see some of the stuffed owls for sale in the gift shops, and Nate as he selects his wand ... or should we say that his wand selects him! In fact, the staff at Olivander's will help you find the wand that fits you based on special dates such as your birthday or anniversary.

And finally for eats, there are not only the Berty-Bot's Every Flavor Bean that are available from Jelly Belly around the country, there are also chocolate frogs, Pumpkin Juice (which is apple cider with pumpkin and apricot puree) and Butter Beer (which is essentially cream soda with a whip cream 'float') which are unique to the Wizarding World theme park.

Altogether, the experience was well worth a visit to Universal Studios ... even for someone who only rode one of the three roller-coasters!

Homily for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

I’ve just returned to Little Flower from a couple weeks of retreat and vacation with my religious community, the Congregation of Holy Cross, and a good bit of that time was spent at the University of Notre Dame.  So you’ll have to excuse the fact that I was thinking a lot about the history of my religious community and my alma mater when I prayed over the readings for this Sunday’s Liturgy and prepared this homily.

I think I’ve told you before that the Congregation of Holy Cross was founded in France in the years immediately after the French Revolution.  Prior to the Revolution there were some 60,000 priests in France, some 55,000 nuns, and religious communities owned some ten percent of the surface area of France.

But during the Revolution all that land was confiscated, some 20,000 priests abdicated their posts, some 30,000 fled France entirely, and nearly 800 were executed or died in prison.  By the spring of 1794 only 150 parishes in the whole of France had Mass on Sunday!

Suffice it to say that at the beginning of the nineteenth century very few observers would have bet on the survival of the Church in France.  But, in fact, the Church not only survived, it experienced a new flowering.

The first 80 years of the new century saw some 400 new religious orders for women founded and some 200,000 women enter religious life.  Blessed Basil Moreau founded our Congregation at precisely this time, and out of the inauspicious setting of post-Revolutionary France, his order grew and spread all around the globe. Today Holy Cross has over two thousand priests, brothers, and sisters in 16 countries on five continents. 

One of the places Moreau sent his religious was to the American frontier.  In December 1842 Fr. Edward Sorin stood on a snowy hillside overlooking a frozen lake in northern Indiana.  He and seven Holy Cross brothers had only a tiny log cabin in which to huddle against the elements.  Sorin wrote a letter to Father Moreau back in France in which he named the place Notre Dame and pledged to build a school there in Our Lady’s honor.

 

Fr. Sorin made this prediction:  “As there is no other school within more than a hundred miles, this college cannot fail to succeed.... Before long, it will develop on a large scale ... It will be one of the most powerful means for good in this country … at least, that is my deep conviction. Time will tell if I am wrong.”

Observers at the time would have thought Sorin insane, but today he’s been proven right a hundred times over.  Notre Dame did indeed grow into a massively successful international research and teaching university, even if at the beginning most sane people would have scoffed at Sorin’s run-down log cabin.

I thought of these historical examples when I read this Sunday’s readings, because the interpretive key to all the other readings is found in today’s second reading from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.  Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

Friends, human sight, reason, logic, economic statistics, and demographic projections would never have come up with the rebuilding of the Church in France after the devastation of the French Revolution.  They would never have foreseen the development of the University of Notre Dame from a single ramshackle log cabin in the desolate Indiana countryside.

And yet with the eyes of faith, the followers of Christ have been “beating the odds” from the very beginning.  After all, human sight, logic, and reason would never have foreseen the Resurrection on Good Friday afternoon, and could never have fathomed twelve Galilean fishermen building an international Church of billions of members that has endured for two thousand years!  And yet, here we are in Bethesda, Maryland in 2012.  “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

That’s the key to understanding the first reading.  The prophet Ezekiel had been a priest in the Jerusalem Temple, but when Israel had abandoned the covenant and God delivered the nation into the hands of the Babylonians, Ezekiel and the rest of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were sent into exile.

And yet, in our first reading, Ezekiel uses the poetic imagery of a large cedar tree to predict that the family tree of King David would indeed survive – and that through David’s family tree, all the nations of the earth would find blessing in the Lord.

To most of Ezekiel’s listeners this must have sounded like a cruel joke. No one would have predicted such a future for Israel while it was in exile and bondage, and yet … “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

That’s the key to understanding today’s Gospel reading as well. First, we have to understand that today’s Gospel is not the passage from Luke, in which the disciples ask for an increase in faith, and Jesus tells them that if they had “faith the size of a mustard seed” they could uproot mountains and drop them in the sea.

No, today’s Gospel is from Mark and it begins with Jesus saying: “this is how it is with the kingdom of God.”  So Jesus’ analogy employs the image of a seed not to describe our faith, but to tell us about God’s kingdom.

First, Jesus says that like the seed buried in the earth, and watched by the farmer – the kingdom grows and spreads, and has its effect, “we know not how.”  In other words, God’s saving activity in the world is a great mystery.  It cannot be fully seen, explained, comprehended, or predicted. 

And therefore it requires a certain kind of patience, both with God who sows the seed and with our own hearts and minds that provide the soil for the seed’s growth.  The kingdom of God is indeed present and growing in our midst, just like a seed.  But just like a seed, it requires time for hidden growth before its fruit becomes obvious to the human eye. 

Second, Jesus says the Kingdom is like the mustard seed which starts small and produces an exponentially larger plant.  So large, in fact, that all the birds of the sky find a home in its branches. 

If you think that sounds a bit like the first reading from Ezekiel you’d be right.  Jesus is the descendant of David through whom all the world finds blessing.  So, like the mustard seed, the kingdom of God starts in the smallest, seemingly insignificant and least obvious ways – in a manger in Bethlehem, and on a cross outside Jerusalem – and yet it grows into an immense reality.

Here we might add something that Jesus doesn’t explicitly point out: namely that the mustard plant is an invasive species! It can easily get out of control and takeover even where it isn’t planted or wanted!

So too, the Kingdom of God is capable of taking control of our lives, even when we would sometimes choose to keep it out, or to give it only a small portion of our attention and commitment.  All the better if we yield to it, and comply with it – that we cultivate and nourish its growth and help it to bear fruit in us and in the world.

Brothers and sisters, throughout our lives there are any number of instances in which human sight, logic, and reason would have us believe that God has abandoned or rejected us, or that there is no future to hope for, or that the Church is dying, or … well, fill in the blank.

But friends, “we walk by faith, not by sight.”  We have faith and trust – like Blessed Basil Moreau, and Fr. Sorin, and St. Francis of Assisi, and Mother Theresa, and all the great saints throughout history – that even when sight, and logic, and reason find it difficult or even impossible to recognize God’s activity in our lives and in the world, He is in fact bringing about a future even better than what we could hope for or imagine.

In this Eucharist we ask for the grace to continue to walk by faith – to patiently trust in God’s grace active within us, to yield evermore fully to His grace, so that God’s grace might produce abundant fruit in us, and His kingdom might be built in our midst.