Fr. JC Maximilian

We all have cravings of our hearts, desires that are just so profound, that we get to a point where we feel as if these desires and cravings are just going to cause us to erupt.  I am not talking about simple needs like for food or drink or even for companionship.  Those needs we can satisfy, at least for a time.  When we are hungry, if we grab something to eat, then that desire, that craving or need is satisfied.  Of course we will become hungry again, but at least for a brief time our need for food will be satisfied.

While those needs are very important, they are not the deepest desires and needs of our heart.  No, those deepest desires of the human heart are for Truth, Beauty, and Love.  We can never get enough of those.  In fact, we have an infinite yearning for those goods.  Often we might try to fulfill those deepest, infinite needs with finite things – such as food, drink, material possessions, drugs or sex – and when we try that they become our addictions, because in the end those finite things never satisfy the deepest desires of our heart no matter how much of them we get.  The deep desires and cravings just continue to build within us until our hearts reach a point of eruption within us.  At that point we can either embrace reality or slip into delusion.

If we choose to embrace reality and reason, then we humbly acknowledge that we do not have inside us what is needed to fulfill and satisfy our deepest longings and desires.  We come to recognize that there MUST be a being that IS infinite Truth, Beauty and Love.  We come to recognize that there is an Infinite Mystery, an Infinite Presence that alone can satisfied our deepest desires.  It is then that we encounter God, and like the Prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading, we cry out to the Infinite Mystery, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.”

Advent is a time of desire.  Advent is the season when we recognize our need for the Infinite Mystery, who alone can satisfy the deepest yearnings of our hearts, and we cry out to God.  Often we do not realize that Advent is a penitential season in the Church’s liturgical year.  It is the reason that we wear violet during this time, and we prepare ourselves for the celebration of Christmas.  Advent is a time for us to look at all the things that keep us from recognizing our infinite need and desire for God, so that we can let go of them.  We prepare our hearts for the Infinite Mystery who alone can satisfy our deepest desires, by turning away from our sins, and we pray, “Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.”

Our experience of helplessness before the reality of our boundless desire “moves us to ask for fellowship with God’s Son, Jesus Christ the Lord” (P.J. Cameron, Magnificat, Vol. 10, No. 9, November 2008, p. 409).  We come to recognize our need for a Savior, so we should “Be watchful! Be alert!”

Today we are joined by six people on a journey.  They have been looking at the deepest desires of their hearts, and they have come to recognize that Jesus is the Infinite Mystery who alone can fulfill their deepest longings.  They have discerned that they need to follow Jesus; the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  Four of them are preparing themselves to receive the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and Eucharist at the Easter Vigil.  We welcome them, and will be accepting them into the Order of Catechumens; members of the household of God.  The other two are already a brother and sister in Christ through their baptism.  We now welcome them as candidates for full communion in the Catholic Church.

Together we prepare our souls from the coming of our Savior.  Let us be watchful and alert, so that we will not miss welcoming Christ who comes to be present among us.

This has been a particularly busy week, here in the parish. Last night we hosted a concert, “A Classic Fall Night.” This has been a dream of Fr. Mick, the administrator, to have several of his friends who sing opera come and give a concert. I was a lot of work to put together. Thankfully, the parishioners here at St. Theresa’s are very generous with their time and talent, so we had a lot of help. We sold over 800 tickets, and raised close to $9000 for our new parish center.

As I mentioned, Fr. Mick has several friends who have trained as classical singers, who have sung in operas around the world. They very generously agreed to come to perform. In addition, we have some tremendously talented people here in the parish, so we augmented the program with our “local” talent — a 15-year-old self-taught prodigy on the organ, a 14-year-old flutist, and a brother (12 years old) and sister (14 years old) who are very talented singers (the young lady is also incredibly talented on the Celtic Harp, having won the US National competition this past year, and finished 4th at the International competition in Ireland). It really turned into the cultural event of the year here in Tuckerton/Little Egg Harbor. People were talking about it for weeks. It was a smashing success. Oh yeah, Bishop Smith attended as well.

I say all this by way of an excuse. I did not write my homily this week. Of course I prayed over the readings, and looked at various commentaries, and I knew what I wanted to preach about. I just never got a chance to actually sit down and write it out. I had a few notes, and preached off the cuff. So what follows is my attempt to reproduce what I preached on; the fruits of my contemplation.

Jesus Christ makes an unique, and unambiguous claim, namely that He is the King of all the Universe, the King of everything that exists. He does not claim to be one wise man among many, nor one philosopher among many. He does not claim to be just a good teacher, or exceedingly compassionate and generous person. No, Jesus Christ make the claim that He is the King of all the Universe, that all nations will come before Him to be judged, that all the angels in heaven make up His royal court, and that He holds in His hands the eternal destiny of every man and woman of ALL time.

There is no other way of understanding today’s Gospel reading. Now, that means that we face an important decision in deciding what to think about Jesus. Either we accept His claim of being Christ the King, the King of all life and history, or we must conclude that Jesus was a madman. He is either the most sane person the world has ever known, or He is a lunatic who is completely out of touch with reality.

Bill Maher, the comedian — or at least he is claims to be a comedian, though I personally have never found him to be funny but rather just a very angry man — has gone public as to his decision concerning Jesus’ claim. Thinking himself an important social commentator, Bill Maher put out a movie about a month or two ago, called Religulous, in which he says that anyone who believes in God is a complete fool. For about 2-hours in the film, Mr. Maher mocks anyone who claims that they believe in God, in general, and Jesus in particular. Mr. Maher thinks that the story of Jesus is just a plagiarized retelling of the ancient Egyptian myth about the god Osiris. In the myth, Osiris dies each fall, but each spring comes back to life making the land fertile. For Bill Maher belief in Jesus is ridiculous; at best Jesus was a good teacher, but was essentially a madman because of His claims to be God

So, is Bill Maher right? We have to look at the evidence in order to make a reasonable decision. The first thing that we notice is that Jesus is nothing like Bill Maher’s example of Osiris. Like all of these ancient myths, no one claims to have been alive when Osiris was killed and then came back to life. All of these myths occur long before there were any human beings. Jesus, on the contrary, was an historical person. Even His enemies acknowledged that Jesus actually existed. He was born at a particular time in history. He spoke and did certain actions. There are just so many witnesses, even those who did not accept Jesus’ claim to be the only-begotten Son of God, who attest to these words and actions of Jesus.

So, I really do not think that there can be any serious thoughts to Jesus just being a myth. But was He just a madman? Has any other lunatic or madman ever founded an organization or movement that has not only lasted, but grown for 2000 years? And during all that time, the followers of Jesus have stayed faithful to Him; not just to His teaching, but to Him, in a personal way. Countless number of men and women have completely dedicated their lives to Jesus, often leaving all behind to follow Him. Thousands have followed Jesus so closely, and had so much faith in His claim and promise to His followers, that they willingly died for Jesus.

Looking at this evidence, it seems apparent that the claims of Jesus are true. He is the co-eternal Son of God. God, the Father, did love the world so much that He sent His only-begotten Son into the world. In fact, God continues to so love the world that His Son, Jesus, continues to be present among us. Jesus is the Christ, He is our King, and the King of all the world. As the Second Vatican Council states; “Christ is the Lord and goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the fulfillment of all its yearning” (Gaudium et spes, #45).

As His followers, we share in the uniqueness of Christ Jesus. We see this uniqueness in today’s Gospel. It shows just how united Jesus’ two great commandments — to love God with all our hearts, minds and soul, and to love our neighbors as ourself. Jesus says in todays Gospel that what we either do, or fail to do, for the least of our brothers and sisters we fail to do to our brothers and sisters, we either do or fail to do for Him. When we fail to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, cloth the naked, visit the sick we fail to see Jesus, our King, right there in our midst. When we do feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, cloth the naked and give compassion to the sick we are saying “Yes, Jesus, I see you! You are my King!” It is not enough to be nice. As followers of Christ, we are called to be holy. To be holy is to live the fact that Jesus Christ is our King.

We cannot sit on the fence forever. We need to make the choice. Do we accept Jesus’ claim to be our King, and the King of all the world, or do we see Him as a madman? We are called, as followers of Christ, to boldly declare our belief that Jesus Christ is our King to all the Bill Mahers of the world.

Today’s Gospel reading is one that we have all heard quite often during our lives.  I probably could ask any number of you to get up here and give a homily on this parable; even off the cuff.  Most likely we would get something about not neglecting what God has given us, but making the most out of the talents and gifts that we all have from God.  After all, that was why the wicked, lazy servant was cast out.  Right?

First, I think it will be helpful to clarify what a “talent,” as used in the Gospel, really is.  In this parable we often think of a talent as being just that, a gift or skill that God has given us.  Or maybe, since the Master in the story talks about putting the talent that the lazy servant received into the bank to get interest, we realize that Jesus is speaking about money.  Unfortunately, since we do not use “talent” as a unit of money anymore, we often just substitute a unit we are familiar with for “talent.”  So we might hear that one servant received $5, the other $2, and the third $1.  Or because those amounts seem too low, we might multiply them by a hundred or maybe even a thousand.

That does not even come close.  A “talent” was approximately 15 YEARS worth of salary.  Yes, I said YEARS worth.  So, think about how much you make each year, and multiply that by 15, and you have one talent.  As a priest, I don’t make that much, but even by my salary, one talent would be an extremely large, generous gift.

Let’s get back to the parable; why did the one servant fail?  Of course, the Master suggests that it was because he was wicked and lazy, and undoubtedly there is truth in that, however I think there was another important reason for the servant’s failure.

He had a wrong idea of his master.  It seems that the servant was afraid of his Master.  The parable tells us that he saw his Master as a very demanding and scary person, even taking what did not belong to him.  The servant was afraid of losing his Master’s money and being punished.  The servant might even have been angry at his Master because he was jealous of his fellow servants because the Master gave them more than he received.  His fear and self-centered greed seems to have paralyzed him, and he did not accomplish the mission that his Master entrusted to him.

How are we like this failed servant?  Do we ever have a wrong idea about God, our Master?  I think that if we are really honest with ourselves, we can see how we are just like this failed servant, and have a wrong idea about God.  It all goes back to the Garden.  The real deception in the Garden of Eden was not about the nature of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  No, the real deception was about how to view God.  The serpent, convinced Adam and Eve into thinking that God was harsh and unreasonable.  If we think of God in these terms then it provides an easy excuse for giving in to laziness and self-pity, something our fallen nature loves to do.  Fear of God becomes just that, fear and trembling about being punished by a God who is just waiting for us to screw up so that He can land on us.

Is this how we really should think about God?  Of course not!  Jesus is not a harsh and unjust master; He is a good, generous, and powerful King!  He proved that by selflessly suffering and dying on the Cross for US!  Jesus also proved it by the clarity of his teaching, like the revelation He gives us in this parable, a crystal-clear, unambiguous explanation of the meaning of life.  He shows us that our life-mission is to take our God-given gifts and put them to good use, shaping the world around us as Christ would have us.  Our destiny, He shows us, depends on our making a decent effort to fulfill that mission.

Our parish’s patron, St. Theresa of Lisieux, is a wonderful witness to the right idea that we should have about God.  This is the key to her “little way,” that has so touched the world.  St. Theresa teaches us to have utter, complete, total confidence in God, a perfect Father whose goodness is absolutely unlimited.  She once wrote: “One has to recognize one’s nothingness and to expect to get everything from God, just as a child looks to its father for everything….  Even if I had on my conscience every sin it is possible to commit, I should fling myself, my heart broken with sorrow, in to the arms of Jesus, for I know how he loves the prodigal child who returns to him.”

Believe it or not, this is what the Church means when it teaches us that “Fear of the Lord” is one of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  It is not a fear of being punished by a harsh God, but rather the fear of causing God sorrow by my sins, of disappointing Him.  Unlike the servant in the parable, we should not fear being punished by God, but rather fear disappointing and being ungrateful to God who has shown us such unimaginable love and mercy.

St. Theresa’s idea of God was so magnificent, and not just abstract and theoretical.  She confesses in her autobiography that for years she often fell asleep during prayers and even after receiving Holy Communion.  She comments on this by saying, “I ought to be very upset, but I’m not, for I know that children are loved just as much by their parents when they are asleep as when they are awake.”  That’s the right idea of God, and that’s the idea God wants us to have.

So, how can we get this right idea about God?  How can we purify our minds and hearts from the wrong ideas about God that we are too often bombarded with?  One of the best ways is to spend time with Christ Jesus in the Eucharist.  “During Mass, at the words of consecration spoken by the priest over the bread and wine, Christ himself becomes truly present.  The fact that Jesus has chosen to remain with us in this way reminds us of what kind of a God he really is. He doesn’t want to frighten us with His power, intimidate us with His knowledge, or dazzle us with His glory.  Instead, He wants to strengthen our souls with His divine food, just as natural food strengthens our bodies – that’s what Holy Communion is all about” (“My Homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time [A],” Homily Packs, www.epriest.com, Nov. 16, 2008).

Jesus also wants to accompany us, to listen to us, to simply stay with us.   And so, after Mass, the Hosts that haven’t been received in Communion are kept in the Tabernacle.  For the rest of the week, Jesus waits there, patiently, humbly, quietly.  He is thinking of us all the time, continuing to offer Himself as a sacrifice to the Father for our sake.  And we can come into the Church and visit Him at any time, for five minutes or for five hours, sharing our joys and sorrows, begging for His help, praying and meditating, or simply sitting with Him and letting His grace penetrate our minds and hearts.  Receiving Holy Communion frequently and frequent visits to the Eucharist in the tabernacle heal our suspicions of God, gradually transforming us into better followers of Christ, just as the words of consecration transform bread and wine into His Body and Blood.

Today let’s thank Jesus for giving us this constant reminder of God’s goodness and generosity, the Eucharist, and let’s promise Him that from now on we will use it better than ever.

I know that it has been a while since I posted anything on this blog, but I have been away.  Over a year and a half ago I planned a vacation, from October 31, 2008 until November 10, 2008.

One thing about me, which I have not mentioned much on this blog, is that I belong to the Apostleship of the Sea, USA.  This is an organization, run by the US Bishops, for meeting the spiritual needs of “the people of the sea,” those people who large work on ships.  The Apostleship of the Sea, USA (AOSUSA) has several programs and responsibilities for these people, including port chaplains and the program I belong to, the Cruise Ship Priest program.  Basically, a number of years ago, several cruise lines were having concerns that when they asked for a Catholic priest to serve onboard to say Mass for the passengers and crew, they were getting “rent-a-priests,” men who had left the active priesthood (some suspended others even laitaized) for various reasons.  These men no longer had the faculties to celebrate any of the sacraments, and they would upset passengers by introducing them to their wives.  The AOSUSA developed the Cruise Ship Chaplain program in order to defend against this.  Each year I need to send them a letter from my bishop verifying that I am still a priest in good standing.  In return, several cruise lines have agreed only to use priest from AOSUSA.

I will be honest, it is a nice way for a priest to get an inexpensive vacation.  Our cruise is usually free, so we just have to pay for our transportation to and from the ship, and any excursions we go on.  In return we say Mass each day, sometime during the cruise say Mass for the crew, and on Sunday lead a non-denominational prayer service.  Yet, there are times when our pastoral duty is more.

This past cruise was a 10-day cruise that left Barcelona, Spain and made stops in Marseille and Villefranche (both in France), Livorno, Citiavecchia and Naples (Italy), Malta, and Tunis.  It rained a lot for the first few days, but we (I took my mother) got to see Pisa and Pompeii, and when we got to Malta the weather was beautiful.  However, this cruise was a bit more work.  Early in the cruise, one of the members of the crew died unexpectedly.  So I made myself available to the crew who were in shock.  I also lead the memorial service.  The doctor onboard, a devout Catholic, was struggling with a medical ethics issues so I spent time in prayer and discussion with her.  There were passengers who wanted to speak to a priest.  All of it just underscored why this ministry really is important.

The day after I got back was my 44th birthday.  I slept in and then went through the mail that had piled up while away.  Since then the pastor and I have been busy.  There are so many good things happening here at the parish.  It is exciting, but it does cut into blogging time.

I am hoping to do some good things on this blog.  First, you may have noticed that I have been posting more homilies.  That’s because here at St. Theresa’s the deacons preach once a month and not twice like at my previous assignment, so I have more homilies to post.  I think I will be having more of my own reflections.  I don’t want it to be like a diary online, but some bloggers have encouraged me to share more of my own opinions.  After all, it is MY blog, and not a homily to the parish.  In homilies the priest should be more restrained about his opinions because people can think that he is speaking for the Church (as he is in some ways).  However, in a blog I am speaking for myself.  Now I hope that I am always speaking WITH the Church, I can have my own opinions (whether it is about who I think should win the SuperBowl or what I think about the recent elections or other political events) that would not necessarily be things that the Church would speak directly about.

Finally, I hope to use this blog for School of Community.  I am a member of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, one of the new ecclesial movements, and our most basic “gesture” is our weekly School of Community meeting where we share a reading and then our own experiences of encountering Christ Jesus in our everyday life.  It has really helped me keep from becoming abstract, and being more connected with reality of every day life.  The School of Community becomes your friends and your mutual witnesses to the Goodness of God, as we together continue to journey with Jesus.  I started a School of Community at my previous assignment, but that is over an hour away from where I am now.  It would be too soon to start one here (first people need to get to know and trust me.  Then they might say, “Father, can we learn more about CL?”).  A few people have asked me about CL here, so we might be able to start a School of Community in the near future here, but in the mean time I still want to make the time for prayerful reflection on the works of the Movement.  So I thought I might just read a bit of the current book the Movement is reading, and share my reflections (brief summary of the reading) and experiences as related to the reading on this blog.  If others want to start a conversation about it GREAT, that’s what the comments are for.  We will see how it all works out.