3 E B We are witnesses of God’s forgiveness

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

What do bunnies, chocolate, or eggs have to do with the resurrection of Jesus? It’s all wrapped up in the Easter celebration, right, but what is the connection between them? Several comedians have very joyously pointed out that there is none. We’ve really rammed together two celebrations that share the same time frame. One celebration is about spring and the new life that is associated with this time of year. Birds' eggs hatch in the spring and give us baby birds. Rabbits have bunnies in the spring. Chocolate is the international symbol of love and romance for couples. Love is in the air and, while I know Jesus’ death and resurrection are very much actions that show the Father’s love, Easter celebrates something more profound than fertility. 

In the first reading, Peter is speaking to his fellow Jews who were in the crowd on Good Friday shouting “crucify him” and freeing Barabbas. He has every right to be hurt, angry, and upset at his religious brothers and sisters who were instrumental in crucifying the Lord. Yet, he excuses them, saying they acted out of ignorance, and invites them to “Repent, therefore, and be converted that your sins may be wiped away.” Similarly, in the second reading from St. John’s first letter, the Beloved Disciple says that he is writing to his followers so that they will not sin. But, if they do sin, Jesus is sending another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who is the expiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world. What allows these two apostles to be able to preach about forgiveness of sins?

Undoubtedly, it was because they had experiences like the one recounted in the Gospel. After Jesus’s appearance to the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus, they ran back to Jerusalem to tell the twelve apostles all that had happened. Then Jesus appears to them. After he shows that he’s not merely a ghost, he tells them that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name. Then, he calls them witnesses to this. 

During lent, we emphasize the importance of repentance and forgiveness of sins. We encourage people to go to confession and we make extra time for it. There are some priests who get annoyed by last Sunday’s celebration, Divine Mercy Sunday, because of its emphasis on going to confession. They ask how much sinning someone can do in the two or three weeks since we had all that extra time for confession during lent. And I think they’re also concerned about living up to the criticism that is leveled against the church about it being entirely about making people feel guilty and telling people they’re bad. 

However, the truth is that I think a lot of people feel bad about themselves without having anything having to do with the church. Isn’t the point of makeovers, plastic surgery, and stapling your stomach because you feel bad about the way you look? Pope Francis has recently brought up concerns about surrogacy because it uses women as an instrument in an effort to purchase a life so that people will feel better about their lives. Even changing a person’s gender stems from a dissatisfaction with who they are and a feeling that they have to change the very genetics of who they are to not feel bad about themselves. 

The message of Easter, the message we are called to witness to, isn’t about making people feel guilty. Far from that. It’s that we don’t need to change anything about ourselves to be good. We can’t fix ourselves in fact. We can ask for forgiveness if we’ve done something bad but goodness is not contingent upon someone else’s recognition, not even our own. We are good because we have been created that way. We are created in God’s image likeness and nothing we can do can destroy that. We are called by Jesus to witness to the fact that people have dignity and that they can bring anything that makes them feel bad about themselves to God for healing and forgiveness. How do we give witness to this reality in our interactions with one another, especially the unchurched?

2 E B: Begotten by God

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

In 1967, television producer Sherwood Schwartz had an idea to create a show depicting a perfect socialist utopia. He envisioned a situation in which seven people from different walks of life were forced to exist with one another. They all just happened to be on a three hour tour that got involved in bad weather and blown onto a deserted island. I’m, of course, talking about the television show Gilligan’s Island. You’ve probably never considered that this silly show was an attempt to put forward a vision of socialism. But think about it. Despite coming from very different walks of life, the members of the group are forced to form a community that shares all things in common.  Pretty much everyone but the intellectual professor are kind of dimwitted individuals. In particular, the ultra rich millionaire and his wife don’t contribute anything to the community other than forcing the laborers to serve them. It’s kind of amazing they didn’t have a Bernie Sanders type of politician at some point lecturing them about how “the economy is rigged!”

In our first reading, we heard a passage that is often used by the more progressive side of the church to push a socialist agenda. They use it to say that the church in its origins was really socialist. And, if you read it, it certainly sounds like that. The believers shared all their property and there were no needy people among them. They sold all their property and put it at the feet of the apostles who would distribute to people according to their need. 

The stark difference, though, between socialism and what is happening in the first reading has to do with the rationale. Socialism is a form of government with the goal of organizing society. It’s utopian in nature because, just as the word utopian means “No land” or Nowhere, so there’s never been a functioning society organized along socialist principles. It would take perfect people leading a perfect life. Instead, socialism almost always leaves a vacuum in leadership that is filled by a dictator. 

In contrast to socialism, in the first reading, the people who have had a direct experience of Jesus Christ realize that nothing is more important than him. They willingly give up everything because Jesus is the only thing they cannot do without. They are even willing to give up their houses because it’s just another thing that will distract them from focusing entirely on Jesus. They deeply understood what St. John was talking about in the second reading for today’s Mass in that, by believing in Jesus, they are begotten of God. They want to be children of God so they are following his commandments. They see everything they have as coming from the Father and, therefore, belonging to him. 

As I said at the beginning, the more progressive members of the church will criticize capitalism using this passage. However, I’d like to suggest that 2000 years of experience and growth has taught us some important truths. First, we seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness not an earthly kingdom. We don’t have a preferred form of government, just some that are worse than others. Socialism tends to be worse because of the power vacuum that gets filled all too easily with dictators. There’s a reason that, just before Hitler’s form of socialism moved into Poland before being kicked out in favor of the Soviet Socialist Republics’ form of Socialism, St. Faustina gave the Church the celebration we have today, Divine Mercy Sunday, as a sign of hope. If we go to confession, receive communion, and pray the Chaplet, we get special graces that give us hope in difficult times.  

Another thing we learned in the last two thousand years is that Jesus is worth giving things up but we can also have personal property. The two aren’t necessarily contradictory. Lastly, while it’s important to be charitable to the poor and people struggling with brain health, rich people can be selfish or charitable just like poor people can be selfish or charitable. 

The real challenge that this passage should offer us is that they gave up all they had because they saw Jesus everywhere. We, instead, tend to miss him like St. Thomas did on Easter Sunday. The challenge to us is if we can see him and believe him in the Eucharist and in the neighbor we serve. 

Easter B - Go get dressed and get to work

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I am not a morning person. I marvel at people who enjoy waking up early. I wake up at 5:40 most days, not because of personal desire but because that’s the time they wake up at Conception Abbey in Missouri where I am an oblate. This way, I can start prayer with them at 6:00 and mirror their day until I enter the confessional at 7:45 am. During that entire time, there’s a subconscious part of me that would very much like to curl up and go back to bed. However, I know that, once I get my black clothes on, the time for sleep has passed and it’s time for work. I’m like a service dog with a vest on. 

Last week, during the reading of the passion according to St. Mark, you may have heard a rather interesting detail. It’s present only in that gospel and tends to be forgotten quickly after it is read, if you don’t remember this, don’t worry. The detail I’m specifically talking about comes from Chapter 14 verses 51 and 52. This happens as the temple guards are arresting Jesus. Judas comes and betrays him with a kiss. One of the bystanders cuts off the high priest servant’s ear and Jesus says they could have arrested him when he was teaching in the temple but, instead, they waited so that the scriptures could be fulfilled. All of Jesus’ followers flee and then it has the two verses I alluded to which say, “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking, that this is the origin of interrupting a sporting event by streaking. However, I think that more comes from a type of arrogance that can only be spawned from some form of liquid courage. Most commentators believe this young man is meant to symbolize the shame the disciples feel in deserting Jesus in his hour of need. Shortly after telling him they would never desert him, Jesus’ followers all do so and, just as the naked Adam and Eve felt shame after they ate from the Tree of Good and Evil, so this naked young man comes to symbolize the shame of the apostles. 

When Mary of Magdala and the other women go to the tomb, they are greeted by a man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side of the tomb who assures them that Jesus is not there because he has been raised. The commentary I read said, just as the young man in the garden symbolized the shame of the disciples, so this young man, perhaps the same young man, symbolizes the life of the baptized. Indeed, during the Easter Vigil in the early church, men and women would be led off separately to a separate room called the baptistry where they would remove all their clothes, enter the baptismal font to become fully immersed in the waters of baptism, and then exit to put on a white baptismal garment. We don’t do that here at St. Patrick’s but some other churches may do a variant on this. The Catholic Church has, nonetheless, retained the idea of putting on a white garment after you are baptized to symbolize the purity of being washed clean of our sins. Note, however, that we don’t return to the naked and unafraid state of original innocence that Adam and Eve alone experienced prior to The Fall. We have been forgiven of original sin n baptism and walk with the innocence and grace offered to us and sons and daughters of God. 

I think it’s also instructive that the young man tells Mary Magdalene and the other women to go and tell Simon and the disciples that he is going to Galilee and he will see them there. It’s like they’re all being told that it’s time to get to work. There’s no time to keep staring into an empty tomb. People need to know that Jesus has been raised and has conquered sin and death. That’s really the message that isn’t confined to this interaction with these women early on a Sunday around 29 AD. It’s time for us to put on our work vests and tell others that Jesus is risen, that he has forgiven us, and that he loves us. In this world where the gospel message seems to be increasingly relegated into people’s private lives, we must share the message of this young man: He has been raised!

Good Friday - 2024: Unite your sufferings with Jesus on the cross

The challenge of preaching on Good Friday is that the Passion contains too much content to do it adequately, let along completely. To employ a cliche, it’s like drinking from a firehose. Just to give one example, I could talk about how Jesus begins our salvation from sin in a garden. He enters a garden to undo the destruction wrought by Adam and Eve in the Garden. Jesus’ is, therefore, the new and more perfect Adam sent to reverse the punishment of death that was given to Adam and Eve through disobedience. That’s just one piece in a million pieces I could focus on.

Instead, I really felt God drawing me to the words of Fr. Etienne Huard, a monk of Conception Abbey in Missouri this morning. He wrote

“As we venerate the cross and meditate on Christ’s passion, let us also unite our own sufferings, struggles, and burdens with His. Just as Jesus embraced His cross with courage and love, may we learn to embrace our crosses with faith and trust in God’s providence.”

Some people criticize Christianity because they say it is an escape. They think we are praying to a higher power in the hopes that God will be nice to us and make our life easy. Indeed, that seems to be the message of some mega church pastors who believe in the so-called prosperity gospel.

Contrary to this message is the passion we read. Being a faithful follower of Jesus means accepting that there are sufferings and uniting them to His sufferings. It doesn’t mean we get to avoid them, as though he anesthetizes us from them. Or that he makes them enjoyable, as though we become masochists. Instead, we can find meaning in suffering. It unites us to him. Fear is from the evil one but suffering is different. We are tempted to react to suffering and sorrow with fear but that only makes us paralyzed. If we can unite our sufferings with Jesus on the cross and share them with him, we may find that he lightens the load because he always takes more than us. But, ultimately, we also get to see that there is a larger plan to this world and he trusts us and loves us so much that God even lets us share in it.

Holy Thursday 2024: Proclaim to remember

Friends

Peace be with you.

Have you ever been sitting with some friends and started telling stories about the past and had a flood of memories come to mind? I’m guessing we all have. Sometimes they’re positive and sometimes they’re negative. It tends to happen for me when I get together with college friends. We start to talk about a choir tour trip or a class we had together with a particularly enigmatic professor or a rooming situation and memories come flooding back.

I have a feeling, this is how the scriptures were written. With all due respect to the Chosen’s theory that St. Matthew and St. John were both writing down things as they happened in the field, the Gospels feel more to me like reflections on past events than they do a blow-by-blow description of an event as it is happening. Which is okay. In fact, contrary to our contemporary truth that the farther away you are from an event the less you remember details, I think that the disciples and we, their successors, needed some time to reflect on what just happened to understand it.

In the second reading, St. Paul twice quotes Jesus saying of the bread and wine that we are to “Do this in remembrance of me.” There have been entire books written about the word remembrance as it is used in these sentences. When we think of remembrance or remembering things, we tend to think of calling to mind a memory of something that happened in the past. The trouble with that understanding is that we have undoubtedly had an experience of remembering something completely different than someone else. This may in part have to do with the differences between a society that is bombarded with information from screens and a society that relied on telling stories for entertainment. It’s harder to remember details when we have a million of them being thrown at us all day long. However, another part is a difference in understanding what a memory is.

As I said before, we think of remembering as a calling to mind a memory that is restricted to our mind. However, for St. Paul and Jesus, a memory is a calling to the present of something that happened in the past. It’s closer to but not exactly like what I was talking about when I began my homily. Oftentimes, when I find myself talking to college friends about the past, it feels like I’m transported back to that time. I can remember the feelings I had at the time and even start to feel them. I cringe when I remember some dumb thing I said or did. I have to check myself if I am reminded of a time when I was arrogant or cocksure. I feel happy and ecstatic when I remember a really fun or exciting experience.

At the end of the Second Reading, St. Paul clarifies that “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” It’s not that we are expected to proclaim the death of the Lord after you receive communion, though that is undoubtedly true too. It’s that, by eating and drinking the Body and Blood of the Lord, you are proclaiming his death until he comes. Jesus called it giving us an example in the Gospel, using it in reference to his act of humbly washing his disciples’ feet. It’s like we’re setting aside the mundane world in which we live and entering into the world of Jesus, entering into the very life of Jesus. It’s all a gift to us, not something we could ever earn or deserve. This is really his body, blood, soul, and divinity offered to us to bring to mind and enter into his life. It is the same body and blood that was shed for us on the cross fulfilling the Old Testament sacrifice of the Lamb. And, whenever we gather here, we proclaim to the world its importance.

That’s the reminder for tonight, the importance of gathering in service to our local community. We have been doing that on Fridays in a special way at our fish fries, in loving service to this community. We can do it when we serve at St. Vincent De Paul or Metro Catholic Outreach or other places. But we primarilly do it when we gather for Mass. Is Mass a place for you to serve the Lord by proclaiming his death or is it more of performance meant to serve your pleasure?

Palm Sunday - 2024: Jesus planned it all

Friends

Peace be with you.

Should we be having a fish fry on Good Friday? I get this question from people outside and inside the parish each year. Yes, we should and here’s why. First, I understand that it is one of two days, along with Ash Wednesday, of both abstaining from meat and fasting from food in general. But, fasting means we get to eat one regular-sized meal along with two smaller meals that don’t equal the large meal. The fish fry meal is our regular-sized reward after a full-day of smaller meals that don’t equal it. How could anything equal the best fish in town anyway, right?

A connecting aspect of both the Gospel we read at the beginning of Mass and the Passion that really struck me was that Jesus had made plans for both. He planned on where his disciples would get the donkey he would humbly ride into Jerusalem. Unlike an invading king on a mighty warhorse, Jesus would have looked rather pathetic riding in on a donkey. But that was part of the plan. He planned where he would inaugurate the Eucharist during the Last Supper. He arranged for his disciples to meet a man there with the code words beginning with “The teacher says…” He even warned the 12 apostles that they would abandon him, despite their protests. Amidst the chaos of his arrest, he indicates that it is a fulfillment of scripture.

This isn’t a scenario of a failed coup, a plan that started well that gets out of hand. He knew what he would say and not say all the way through. Jesus invited Pilate to faith when he asked him if he was the King of Jews. “You say so”, he says to this powerful individual. Please say it, please believe it, he seems to plead with him. His final words come from a Psalm that begins in utter frustration but ends with “And my soul shall live for him, my descendants serve him. They shall tell of the LORD to generations yet to come, declare his saving justice to peoples yet unborn: “These are the things the LORD has done.” We are some of those descendants. We need to be able to gather to serve the Lord and be part of the plan that Jesus has to bring about salvation, yes, even at a Good Friday fish fry…if we’re open to it.

2 L B: Christianity is not a pithy pop song

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

As some of you know, the series The Chosen has been released in theaters. Last week, I had the opportunity to watch the first three episodes and this past Thursday I watched the next three. If you haven’t watched any of this season and intend to do so, don’t worry. I’m not going to give away any of the plot but I will talk about a couple of feelings I’ve had that I don’t think will have any effect when you watch it. One of the challenges they face is trying to integrate all four gospels into a singular story without needing to add details that are not present in the gospels. I feel like the director, Dallas Jenkins, balances this pretty well by delving deep into the meaning of words and asking himself what may have caused something down the road. One of the feelings I find myself constantly having throughout all four seasons of the show is a constant skepticism as to if this character said something because they will say something else later on or if this act is foreshadowing something else. Yet there is another challenging feeling that I feel like they take on very hard in episodes three, four, and five that is also present in the gospel and first reading. 

In the first reading, we hear a story that probably seems kind of confusing. If you’re like me, you may have tuned out the entire reading and only started paying attention during the gospel because, let’s face it, most of the time I only preach on the gospel. As a preamble, you need to know that it was a common practice to sacrifice your first born son for some of the tribal nations surrounding the Israelites. This was done, in part, as a thanksgiving offering for the gift of a son to carry on his father’s familial responsibilities and as a show of trust that more sons would be born to the couple to carry on those duties. Sons were valuable in tribal societies because they could hunt for food, build houses, as well as waging war so there were fewer of them, in general, when it came to propagating the species. Sacrificing a child probably seems rather barbaric and, I’ll admit, I’m trying to use language that some of my little friends may not understand for a reason. The Jews were the first not to offer this sacrifice but to offer an animal instead. It was the first reading by which they decided to do this. Had it ended differently, had the one true God called Abraham to offer his son Isaac, they would have followed all their neighbors in this barbaric practice. But, instead, at the last possible moment, God halted the hand of Abraham and told him to sacrifice a sheep instead. He even gave Abraham the sheep to slaughter. That’s why, on February Second of each year, the Feast of the Presentation, the Bible says in the Gospel of Luke that Mary and Joseph brought a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons to the Temple to be sacrificed, because Jesus was Mary and Joseph’s first born son. It also tells us that they were too poor to afford a sheep, by the way, since they could only afford some inexpensive birds. 

We, Christians, believe there is deeper symbolism to this as well. We believe the animal sacrifice that replaced child sacrifice was itself temporary and symbolic. At Mass, I say “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the World…” We believe the sacrifice of Jesus was the once-for-all sacrifice that ended the need for the Temple Mount sacrifice. The reason Jesus tells Peter, James, and John not to tell the others what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration is because it would only make sense when his own sacrifice was completed. Jesus’ transfigured glory could only make sense after his brutal death on the cross. It’s like Jesus is trying to show them the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel even before they’ve entered the tunnel. He’s trying to give them resurrected, glorified hope before they’re hopeless. I think it’s also why Peter didn’t get it, because he hadn’t experienced the death of his friend yet.

As I was watching the Chosen, there were a couple of really sad scenes. Again, I’m not going into detail but I found myself questioning if they needed to be that bleak or that dark. And it reminded me of how pedestrian we can make the crucifixion. A few years ago, when the Passion of the Christ came out, I talked to a few priests who weren’t going because they felt it was too dark. They wanted the upbeat crucifixion in Godspell, or Jesus Christ Superstar, or Jesus of Nazareth. 

The challenge is that Christianity isn’t always upbeat. Sacrifice isn’t always upbeat. I get concerned because I worry that we’ve made Christianity too much like a pithy pop song. We’ve become a church of the Middle Class or a church of comfort. I get concerned because we are a church born from a sacrifice that has more martyrs today than ever before in history and prioritizing comfort is hardly preparation for belonging to that kind of church. I get concerned because Christianity without sacrifice is not worth belonging to. It’s too boring. 

But I get it. I like comfort as much as the next guy. I don’t like to feel sad. Who would? I’m not saying we should look forward to the sadness of the crucifixion like a sadist. 

Nonetheless, lent is a time for us to put aside some comfort to get a small sense of what Jesus went through. If you’re like me, you’ve probably messed up on your acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving at this point. You may have eaten between meals or not had a quarter to put in the jar after you said a bad word or not set aside the hour for prayer. You may even have messed up a couple of times and are starting to wonder if you should just give up. Please don’t. Take the mulligan and start again. It’s okay. Start today. Who cares that you’re not going to get the gold star sticker for forty days of fasting? The only day that matters is today. That’s all we have anyway. That’s the point of the transfiguration. There may be sadness and suffering in our lives but Jesus is the light at the end of the tunnel, he is our transfiguration. We may have to sacrifice before we get to experience the glory of the resurrection but that’s why we sacrifice today, because Christianity isn’t always happy or pretty or easy or comfortable. But it is worth it because, in the end, we get to share in his transfigured glory.