Fr. JC Maximilian

[In the Diocese of Trenton, our bishop transferred the Solemnity of the Assumption to Sunday, August 16 this year. Even though the Assumption is not a holy day of obligation, our Cathedral is dedicated to the Assumption, so he wanted us to celebrate it on Sunday]

“When the course of her earthly life had ended, she was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.” It was with that simple sentence that Pope Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. It is not difficult to understand what this dogma means, but many people do not understand why it was so important for the Pope to define this Dogma concerning our Lady. After all, it is not in the Scriptures; notice that today’s Gospel has to do with Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth, before she had given birth to Jesus.

The years preceding the definition of the Dogma of the Assumption were filled with a lot of despair. The world had just come out of the Second World War. In less than 30 years the world, largely the “Christian” nations, had experienced two devastating wars. The technological revolution which had promised so much at the beginning of the century still left millions in poverty. A lot of people were asking the question “why?”

It is a question that many people still seem to be asking themselves. We do not need to look hard to find the atrocities that plague the world: terrorism, widespread drug use, high unemployment, abuse of children, women, the elderly, gang violence, even piracy is on the rise. There are hurricanes, mudslides, swine flu, and so many other disasters that add to human suffering. Why? Why all this suffering? It is easy to give into despair.

To counteract just this despair is the reason that the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Assumption. It is a celebration of hope. It is a sign that God’s promise to draw all things to Himself will be fulfilled, that He truly does love us and wants us to live in communion with Him. Mary is experiencing now, in the completeness of her body and soul, all that God promises everyone who follows Him

What is hope? The Solemnity of the Assumption teaches us that hope is not merely wishful thinking. Rather hope is a certainty; it is a certainty about our future based on the certainty of something here in the present. In other words, there is no separating Faith and Hope. Faith is our relationship with Christ Jesus. By encountering Jesus, we recognize an exceptional Presence in our lives; a Presence that touches the deepest desires of our heart. Faith is not merely an assenting to a set of doctrines. Rather it is all about a living relationship with Jesus. By recognizing the mighty works of Christ Jesus in our lives NOW, we have a certainty about our future. We are certain that when Jesus says that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, that He really is all those things. By our relationship with Jesus we know that He really is the Resurrection and the Life. Real Faith in Christ Jesus leads to the certainty about the future which is Hope.

The Blessed Mother lived that Faith, and she bore witness to that Hope. Her living relationship with God allowed her soul to proclaim the greatness of the Lord, and for her spirit to rejoice in God her savior. She recognized the might works of God – the mercy He had shown on those who fear Him, the strength of His arm which had scattered the proud in their conceit, and how He had filled the hungry with good things – and this allowed her to have hope in “the promise He made to our father….”

Of course, this living Faith and certain Hope is not just for the Blessed Mother. Today we have three children who will be baptized in just a few minutes. Their parents have brought them to the Church to share with them Faith. Obviously these children do not know a lot about Jesus right now; that will come in time. Their parents bring them for baptism not just to share with them information about Jesus. Rather they come to share with their children their relationship with Jesus. They want for their children the new life that Jesus offers to all of us through baptism. In bringing their children for baptism, these parents are saying that they have recognized the exceptionality of the Presence they have encountered with Jesus, and they want to share that exceptionality with their children. They should know that like in any relationship, baptism is not a one-time event. Rather it is an ongoing experience of companionship. It involves teaching their children about Jesus, bringing them to Mass each week so that they can encounter His Presence anew in the Word of God proclaimed at Mass, in the community of Faithful who by the power of the Holy Spirit form the Mystical Body of Christ in the world, and when they are older and prepared, in the Eucharist, the very Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. It will be in this living relationship with Jesus that they will give to their children Hope – a certainty about the future that will cast away all doubt and despair.

All of us here are disciples of Christ. As Bishop Smith says in the new Pastoral Plan for the Diocese, “Led by the Spirit,” which we kicking off this weekend, “As disciples of Jesus, we cannot be content to take a passive approach. Discipleship is about mission.” We will be hearing a lot about this new Pastoral Plan for the Diocese over this coming year. It is an invitation to deepen our Faith – our living relationship with Jesus, to witness to our Faith to those who do not yet have that living relationship with Jesus, so that together we will have the certainty of Hope. Then like the Blessed Virgin Mary, our spirits will rejoice in God our savior.

In the neighborhood where I grew up, we have the largest stop signs I have every seen. I’m not kidding, it takes two of the typical poles to hold them up. As my college roommate said when he first saw them, “You gotta be blind to miss them.” Yet, despite their great size, people do drive right through the stop signs. Sometimes no matter what you do to communicate, some people just will not get it.

Jesus must have felt that way a lot. I can see Him shaking His head in exasperation. Today’s Gospel is pretty much a continuation from last week’s. If you recall, Jesus performed the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes last week. This week, after crossing the sea – during which Jesus walked on the water – Jesus and His disciples are in Capernaum. The crowd, whom Jesus had fed and left on the other side, notices that Jesus is gone, so they go looking for Jesus. It is always a good thing to go looking for Jesus, but as Jesus points out to the crowd, we need to do it for the proper reason. The crowd had come looking for Jesus just because they had eaten the loaves and fish. They were looking for another free meal, and maybe a healing. Jesus tells them that they should come looking for Him so that they can receive the food that “endures for eternal life.” Jesus tells them that the bread and fish that He had multiplied were only a sign, a sign pointing to a deeper reality. He was pointing out to them that their physical needs, while important, should never distract them from the deepest needs of the human heart. The need for God. And how does the crowd respond to Jesus? They say, “What sign can you do?” Just the day before they saw Jesus take five loaves and a few fish more than enough to feed over 5000 people, yet they still want a sign for Jesus to prove who He is. Some people just never seem to get it.

Last week we mentioned that for the next several weeks, the Church takes the Sunday Gospel reading from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which is known as the “Bread of Life” discourse. The first part of this sermon, which we hear more of today, is really an invitation to have faith; particularly faith in Jesus. Jesus tells the crowd, and us today, that He is the Bread of Life; “whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” So what does it mean to have faith in Jesus?

Often when we think of the word “faith” we think of a list of truths to which we give assent. This makes faith something abstract; all in the head. While faith does involve the use of reason, it is so much more that just a “head thing.” Faith involves the whole person. Most essentially, faith has to do with a relationship of trust with another person. We really cannot have faith in a concept. We can only have faith in a person.

This is why the Word became Flesh, why the Second Person of the Trinity took on our human nature. God wanted to make it easier for us to have faith, easier for us to enter into a living relationship of trust with Him. Faith begins with an encounter, and encounter with a living person – with a presence. Yet this is no ordinary encounter, rather in the encounter we experience something exceptional. How do we know when an encounter is exceptional? We know that something is exceptional when it corresponds to the deepest needs of our heart; corresponds to that for which we move, and live, and have our being.

Such an exceptional encounter invokes in us a sense of wonder. We know to know who this person is. Don’t we see this dynamic in this beginning section of the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Something attracted the crowd to Jesus. Yes, it was mostly their physical needs, yet in encountering His presence, they are filled with wonder. They want to know who this man is, who speaks to them with such authority and does so many powerful works. Jesus then invites them to see beyond just the physical, to recognize the real, the deepest needs of their hearts. They know that bread and fish will only satisfy them for a limited amount of time, then they will get hungry again. Jesus wants them to see that they were created for something much more than just satisfying these recurrent physical needs. We were created for the infinite. We were made for communion with God. Jesus invites them, and us, to be His companions along the road to eternal life and for to trust that He will give us the food for the journey.

The final characteristic of faith is our human act. Do we accept the invitation of Jesus? Do we put our trust in Him? Do we follow Him and allow Him to feed us with His Body and Blood, the Bread of Life and the Cup of eternal salvation? Do we have faith in Jesus? Do we get it?

[“The multiplication of the loaves,” by Giovanni Lanfranco, 1582-1647]

One of the most beautiful, and theologically rich chapters in the Gospels is the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which we hear the beginning of today. This chapter is so important that we spend five weeks, starting today, reading from this one chapter. This chapter is known as the “Bread of Life” discourse, and contains a profound teaching on the Eucharist.

St. John tells us that this event, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, occurs near the time of Passover. Passover is the most important of the Jewish holy days, for it recalls the mighty works of God in freeing the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. In particular, the Feast of Passover commemorates the Angel of Death passing over the homes of the Israelites which were marked with the blood of the sacrificial lamb, on which the people were feasting. A sacrifice within the context of a meal — a very important theme for us to keep in mind.

Jesus, in the Bread of Life discourse, starts to reveal that He is the real sacrificial lamb on whose Body and Blood we will feast. The great work of God which will be accomplished in Christ Jesus will not be simply a liberation from a physical enslavement. Rather it is the liberation from sin and death. It is the food that brings us to eternal life.

In this first part of the 6th chapter of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus is concerned about feeding the “large crowd” that followed Him. The crowd has been drawn to Jesus in their suffering, and Jesus has been healing the sick. Jesus surrenders Himself to the reality of human suffering so that He can truly feed them.

Let us focus on three sayings of Jesus in today’s Gospel to help us understand this wonderful mystery. Jesus asks Phillip, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” This question highlights the human impossibility of the situation. Yet it also strengthens the faith of those who hear it. How often do we find ourselves in impossible situations? Perhaps it is unemployment, or an illness, or family discord. Yet faith in Christ Jesus turns what seems absurd and futile, when left to human devices, into a cause of celebration and rejoicing. “To receive the Bread of Life, we must first sacrifice our negativity, our self-reliance, and our negligence towards God” (Cameron, To Praise, To Bless, to Preach: Spiritual Reflections on the Sunday Gospels, Cycle B, p. 101).

Next Jesus tells His disciples, “Have the people recline.” As the Apostles invite the crowd to recline on the grass, they are also encouraging the people to put their trust in Jesus. In other words, the Apostles foster hope in the people. The certainty that they have now in their relationship with Jesus gives them a certainty about the future — Jesus will provide. Elsewhere in the Scriptures, we are told “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope….” (1 Peter 3:15). We, as witnesses of Christ, are to foster hope in those around us. By fixing our eyes confidently on Jesus, we unite ourselves to the Lord in a communion of holiness.

Lastly, Jesus commands the disciples to “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” Why did Jesus insist on gathering up the left over fragments? It was to emphasize that what the people had just experienced was much more than an ordinary meal; it was an extraordinary encounter of Divine love. This extraordinary encounter of God’s love, experienced through the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, will find its fulfillment on the hill of Calvary in Jesus’ death on the Cross. The Divine love is without limits.

The disciples gather up the fragments so that they can be shared with others. Likewise we gather up the fragments — the brokenness — of our lives so that in our suffering, united to the Cross of Christ, God’s love is released for the salvation of the world.

To partake in the Bread of Life, we must be willing to make an offering of ourselves that is equal to Christ’s. As He gave His all for love of us, we must give all we have for love of Him.

[Icon of Jesus, the Eternal High Priest. Chosen for this Year for Priests]

St. Mark tells us in today’s Gospel reading that when Jesus got off the boat, upon seeing the vast crowd, “His heart was moved….” “His heart was moved….” What an amazing phrase, when you stop to think about it. What a very different image comes to mind when you hear, “His heart was moved…”, then the image one gets when you hear Aristotle describe God, philosophically, as “The unmoved Mover.” With Aristotle’s description, you only get an impersonal, abstract construct or idea. But when you hear Jesus described as having His heart moved, you know that we are speaking about a person. When we are talking about Jesus, we know that we are not talking merely about an abstract concept or idea. Rather, we are dealing with a God who loves us so profoundly that He took on our human nature so that He could be one with us. Jesus has a human heart; He took one on purpose so that He could be close to us. Jesus really cares for us. Jesus feels our needs and struggles even more deeply than we feel them ourselves. And he continually reaches out to be our leader, our light, and our strength. When we accept these gifts, he is pleased, truly gratified. But when we reject them, he is hurt, truly stung by our ingratitude.

Through the Holy Spirit and the Church, he extends his friendship to us, trying to draw us more fully into the indescribable joys of his own divine life, so that someday, when the time is right, we may enjoy that place he is preparing for us in heaven. We all know this, but how deeply do we believe it? Not deeply enough; that’s why the Church constantly reminds us that God urgently desires our friendship. Every human being desires to live in communion with God; only those who find Christ get to live out that communion in the form of a real, human friendship.

Two of the most beautiful signs of God’s love for us, which the Church has continued to encourage all of us to receive frequently, are the sacraments of the Eucharist and Confession. It is not surprising that these two were so special to St. John Vianney, the patron saint for parish priests. This year we will celebrate the 150th anniversary of St. John Vianney’s death, and Pope Benedict XVI has taken this opportunity to proclaim the Year for Priests, a year in which the whole Church reflects on the gift that God has given to the world by establishing the Catholic priesthood.

For those who do not know much about St. John Vianney, he lived in France during the 1800s. His journey towards priesthood was a long one; he was not considered a very good student. When he was finally ordained, he was sent to Ars, which was considered one of the most unfavorable assignments. Ars was basically a town bars, brothels and gambling joints. Few of the people went to Mass, and even fewer went to Confession. St. John spent long hours, days, and years witnessing to God’s love for the people of Ars, and God’s strong desire for them to turn away from their sins, and embrace the friendship that Christ offers everyone. His persistence in God’s love paid off. There came a profound spiritual renewal in Ars. St. John would spend long hours in the confessional – 12 to 15 hours a day – celebrating the sacrament of God’s mercy not only with the people of Ars, but also with the many pilgrims who came to hear him preach at Mass. St. John had a deep love for the Eucharist. He would spend hours in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. One of my favorite quotes from him is when he was asked what he does during his long time in adoration, St. John said, “I look at Him, and He looks at me.”

Two days before St John Vianney died at the age of seventy-three, he received Holy Communion for the last time. He was extremely weak, unable to rise from bed, completely exhausted from his decades of tireless service to his little parish of Ars. The parishioners gathered around his rectory, kneeling in prayer, tears streaming down their faces. After receiving his last Holy Communion, he whispered: “How kind the good God is! When we are no longer able to go to him, he comes to us.”

That’s what Jesus does for each of us in the sacrament of the Eucharist – he makes it easy for us to find him and go to him, and when even that is beyond our power, he himself comes to us. That’s the Heart of our Savior, a heart burning with love for us.

In this Year for Priests, this message is especially powerful. The Holy Father, in deciding to call for a year in which the Church puts the spotlight on the priesthood, is not trying to feed the egos of the priests. He is trying to remind all Catholics that God is present, active, and interested in our lives. God hasn’t abandoned us and never will abandon us. The priest, the priesthood, the sacraments, still around in spite of persecution, cultural transformation, and scandals – are proofs that God is still with us.

There are at least two things each one of us can do to help the Church celebrate this Year for Priests. First, we can pray for our priests. Jesus turned some very rough and very normal fishermen into the Twelve Apostles, men who were faithful to their mission up to the point of giving their lives for it. If Jesus did that with the Twelve, He can do it with today’s priests too – and we can help with our prayers. Second, we can pray for God to call more young men to the priesthood. In today’s Gospel we heard how Christ’s heart was moved at seeing the crowds, who were “like sheep without a shepherd.” That is a good description of popular culture in our society today, which often reveres celebrities who are models of self-indulgence more than self-sacrifice. We need more reminders in this world that there is another way to live, another purpose beyond satisfying our basic instincts. Priests are meant to be those reminders; we should all ask God to give the world more of them.

As we continue with this Mass, and as we then in Holy Communion we receive the bread of life from our Good Shepherd, let’s thank Him for not giving up on us, and let’s promise that we will do our part to keep His plans moving forward.

[La Petite Bergere, by Jean F. Millet]

I am sure that most of us know that Harry Potter is the boy who lived in the cupboard under the staircase at his aunt and uncle’s house – at least until the second book or movie. How many of you have heard of the girl who really lived in the cupboard under the staircase? That really was the bedroom of St. Germaine of Pribac. St. Germaine was born in the late 1500s into a middle class family in Pribac, France. When she was a small child a serious illness left her with a crippled hand. Her mother also died when she was still a little girl, and her father remarried. When her stepmother started to have her own children, she started to treat Germaine more as a servant, eventually forcing her to sleep in the cupboard underneath the stairs. At age nine, despite her crippled hand, Germaine was sent out into the fields to shepherd the family’s flock of sheep. Basically her family just wanted her out of their way.

Despite this poor treatment, Germaine found great consolation in her deep faith. She made herself a Rosary out of some string – kind of like this one – and she prayed the Rosary everyday as she watched the sheep. When she got older she would gather the younger children in the village and teach them the Catechism. And she never missed Mass. Even if she was out in the fields, as soon as she heard the church bells chime, indicating that Mass was going to start, she would stick her shepherd’s staff in the ground, tell her guardian angel to take care of the sheep, and then walk over to the church to attend the Holy Sacrifice. Her guardian angel did a good job; she never lost a sheep.

What’s even more important, she grew in holiness and happiness, becoming an inspiration and example even for her harsh stepmother. She was so gentle and wise, in fact, that God couldn’t wait to get her home to heaven, and she died in her sleep when she was only 22-years-old. She heard the voice of God’s love in those church bells, and she heeded what she heard.

HEARING and HEEDING. This are two important things from today’s Gospel. Jesus and His disciples are in Nazareth; the village where Jesus grew up. As He teaches in the synagogue, we are told that the people were “astonished” at what they heard. They wanted to know where Jesus had gotten all this wisdom. His words made a big impact on the villagers of Nazareth, yet they took offense at Him. Jesus was “amazed at their lack of faith.”

How do we make sense of these two reactions by the people of Nazareth? Their lack of faith consisted of their perceiving the truth of Christ’s words, but refusing to welcome that truth into their hearts. They did not want what they heard to change their lives.

Faith, then, which is the foundation of Christian life, involves two things. It involves hearing God’s word, and also heeding that word. God is always speaking to us, and we usually hear him – in our conscience, in the teachings of the Church, in the words of the Bible – but oftentimes we don’t heed what we hear, and that stunts our spiritual growth.

This was God’s constant complaint in the Old Testament, as we just listened to in today’s First Reading. God sent them prophets over and over again, to show them the way to a meaningful and abundant life, and they heard what the prophets had to say, but they didn’t heed it; they “resisted” it, they “revolted” against it.

Following Christ means both hearing and heeding the Word of God; it means keeping “our eyes fixed on the Lord… as the eyes of servants are on the hands of their masters.”

Our fallen human nature is like spiritual gravity; it’s always pulling us towards following the easy path of comfort and self-indulgence, to go with the flow of popular culture.

Today we can ask ourselves: What has God been saying to us that we have been resisting? It may have something to do with a relationship – someone we need to forgive, or ask forgiveness from, for example. It may be bringing some long-hidden sins to the fountain of God’s mercy in confession. It may be some part of Church teaching that the world around us disagrees with, and which we have not accepted or tried to understand more deeply. Or it may be an interior nudge from the Holy Spirit to go deeper in our prayer life, to take a step towards our true vocation, or to make a change of direction in some other way that has long been weighing on our hearts.

God’s wisdom, power, and goodness are infinite and unbreakable. When he asks us to change, in little ways or big ways, it’s always because he loves us and he is drawing us towards spiritual excellence. The residents of Nazareth resisted that draw, that change, and as a result, Jesus “was not able to perform any mighty deed there.” Today, as Jesus renews his commitment to us in this Mass, let’s promise to hear and also to heed him, every day, so that his mighty deeds will have free rein to work wonders in our lives.

[This homily is based on the Homily Pack for “Jul 5, 2009, Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B),” from www.epriest.com.]

[The Raising of Jairus' Daughter, 1878, oil on canvas, by Gabriel Max (1840-1915)]

It is funny how a homily takes shape.  I usually read the readings for the next Sunday the Sunday or Monday before, and in prayer a theme or two will come to mind.  Then during the week, as I continue to pray on the readings a specific idea comes to the forefront, so that by the end of the week I can start to organize my thoughts for the homily.  Occasionally, however, at the last minute a new thought becomes pressing and sweeps away what I had been planning to speak on.

This was one of those weeks.  All week I kept thinking that I would talk about the meaning of Jesus’ miracles for our life of Faith.  Last night however, a completely different thought came to mind, and it really seemed to be more pressing, although I was somewhat reluctant to preach about it because I was concerned that despite my best effort, some people might get upset.  But Jesus tells us to not be afraid.

The Gospel this week gives us the account of two of Jesus’ miracles of healing.  Given the national debate that is going on in our nation concerning health care reform, I think that the Gospel is particularly fitting.  What does our Catholic faith have to say about health care?  It is important for us to know what the Church teaches, so that we, as responsible citizens and committed Christians can contribute to this national debate.

About 16 years ago the Bishops of the United States issued a statement called A Framework for Comprehensive Health Care Reform: Protecting Human Life, Promoting Human Dignity, Pursuing the Common Good, (FCHCR) which still provides a relevant framework for bringing important values to our national debate on health care.  As we heard in today’s first reading, “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.  For he fashioned all things that they might have being…. For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him.”  The Bishops emphasize, as the fundamental principle for grounding all discussion about health care, that the sanctity of human life and the dignity that all human beings have flows from the basic fact that we have all been made in the image and likeness of God.  From this most fundamental human dignity, flows the right that every human being has to adequate health care.  In other words, adequate health care is not just a nice optional benefit that can be provided to people.  Rather it is a basic human right.  It is rooted in the biblical call to heal the sick and serve “the least of these.”  The Bishops state, “We believe that our people’s health care should not depend on where they work, how much their parents earn, or where they live.”

Even back in 1993 when they issued their statement, the Bishops recognized that the existing patterns of health care in the United States did not meet the minimal standard of social justice and the common good.  Things have not improved in the last 16 years.  An estimated 47 million Americans lack health care coverage.  Most of these uninsured people, 64%, have full-time jobs.  In our current economic crisis, it has been estimated that 14,000 people each day are losing their health care coverage.  Clearly, this is one of the most pressing problems that we face as a nation.

The Bishops’ comments do not come from an abstract reflections on this problem.  The Catholic Church continues to be deeply involved in health care.  Catholic health care facilities are the largest network of non-profit hospitals and nursing homes in the United States; serving more than 20 million people each year.  Of course our Bishops are also employers who know first hand the importance as well as the difficulties of providing their employees with adequate, affordable health care.  It is from this experience that the Bishops identify four key policy priorities that we as Catholics should advocate in the current health care reform debate.

First, we must promote a look at health care reform from the bottom up.  “Genuine health care reform must especially focus on the basic health needs of the poor” (FCHCR).  This includes a call for universal access to health care.  There should not be a two-tiered health system:  one for the poor which is very minimal, and one for the wealthy which truly promotes human dignity.  The Bishops suggests that the best assurance of comprehensive benefits and quality care would be linking the health care of poor and working-class families to the health care of those with greater resources.

Second, “real health care reform must protect and enhance human life and dignity” (FCHCR).  Every human being has the right to quality health services, regardless of age, income, illness, or condition of life.  “Neither the violence of abortion and euthanasia nor the growing advocacy for assisted suicide is consistent with respect for human life” (FCHCR).  This means that any form of health care reform that would include abortion coverage, and would compel individuals, institutions or states to pay for or participate in procedures that fundamentally violate basic moral principles and their consciences would be inconsistent with what Jesus teaches us about the value of human life and the freedom we enjoy as God’s children.  This week I heard a doctor at the Mayo Clinic complain about the amount of money that is “wasted” – his words – on the elderly and sick who are going to die soon anyway.  Can we really put that kind of monetary value on human life?  Even at the end of life, people are made in God’s image and likeness, and their dignity must be respected.

Thirdly, we must guard against those things that can undermine real reform in health care.  There are powerful special interest groups who have a major stake in maintaining the status quo.  Neither those groups, nor unnecessary partisan political diatribes can be allowed to undermine real reform.  The Bishops wisely note that debate can be advanced by a continuing focus on the common good and a healthy respect from genuine pluralism.  Genuine reform must respect the religious and ethical values of both individuals and institutions involved in the health care system.

Finally, authentic health care reform must include effective mechanisms for restraining risings health care costs, while still promoting human dignity.  Without effective controls for constraining costs, the living standards of many working families will continue to decline.

Notice, the Bishops do not give us specific answers to this important problem.  They do not suggest specific ways of constraining costs while expanding coverage to include the 47 million people in our country who do not have health care coverage.  Rather the Bishops point out the important principles that must be considered while different reform plans are debated.  Our elected officials need to hear our voices.  We need to let them know about the values that we hold, especially concerning human rights and human dignity.  None of us can afford to remain uninvolved on the sidelines during this debate.  We are all called to participate in God’s work of healing the sick and serving the “least of these.”

[You can listen to this homily here]

[Stained glass in the chapel of Westminster College, Cambridge. The glass is by Douglas Strachan and dates from 1921.]

As you drive into town, you see signs welcoming you to Tuckerton Seaport. We live in a seaport, and we heard a lot about the sea in today’s readings. I don’t know how many of you still make your living from the sea, but I am sure that many of you go out on boats. I see a lot of boats as I drive around this area, so someone must use them. We are familiar with the conditions of living on the sea, maybe even making our livelihood from the ocean. This is an important image.

We see it incorporated into the design of our church here. The first time I came to visit this parish, Fr. Mick brought me into the church, and started to explain the architectural features of the church. The color of the floors remind us of the sand on the seashore. Then as you come in through the main doors we have the water of the baptismal font and pool as the first thing that you see. While we describe this church as being “in the round,” it is really an elongated circle, meant to remind us of being in a boat, with the walls bowing outwards, and the ribs on the walls. Then of course, we have the sails above us, hanging from the ceiling — one for each of the apostles. There, in the center, where the Altar is, is the compass star, showing that Christ has come to save all people — from the north and south, east and west.

It is important for us to listen and understand what the readings, which today speak so much of the sea, means for us, and the importance of the boat as a symbol for the Church. For anyone who spends time on the ocean, you know that conditions can change very rapidly as storms seem to come with little warning. The ancient people, especially those civilizations that arose around the Mediterranean Sea, often saw the sea as a place of danger and chaos, even evil. Marvelous to behold, but also dangerous. In Genesis, before the creation of the world, the chaos that existed before is described as waters — that God breathed on the water and brought order out of the chaos. This showed that only God had real sovereignty over the sea.

That is what we hear in today’s first reading from the Book of Job and in the Psalm. The sea is an image of chaos, an image of something dangerous that only God can bring order to. As we move into the New Testament, the sea is also seen as an image of conversion. Oh, it is still dangerous and seen as chaotic, but it is also a place of conversion. The first apostles are called along the seashore, and frequently we hear of Jesus being near the sea or references to fishing. Jesus is the Fisher of Men; He brings order out of that chaos, and sets men and women free from danger and evil.

We have this account from early in St. Mark’s Gospel of Jesus asleep on a boat as the apostles face a storming sea. St. Mark’s account does not sugarcoat it. In St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s account of this incident in Jesus’ life, they kind of sugarcoat things; making it seem as if the apostles wake Jesus up to present their concerns. Scholars say that in the original Greek, St. Mark uses words that says that the apostles basically rebuke Jesus for being asleep while they are all in danger because of the storm. They say rather sarcastically “don’t you care”. They are rebuking Jesus for being asleep, while the sea has turned dangerous and violent. Jesus gets up and rebukes the wind and the sea, and not only do they become calm, they actually become still. Then Jesus rebukes the apostles, asking them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

Jesus is trying to teaching them that He is the Messiah, that He is the Divine, the Work made Flesh. As God alone has power and authority over the wind and the sea, Jesus wants them to recognize that divinity in Him.

Aren’t we so often like the apostles? I mentioned before that it is very fitting that our church here is designed in a way to invoke the image of being in a boat, because a boat is a very ancient image for the Church — cast at sea, a sea that can often be turbulent. Isn’t that very much as our lives are often?

I often have people — whether they are converts to the Faith, or what we sometimes call “re-verts,” people baptized in the Faith but who had practiced the Faith until recently because they have had this encounter with Jesus — and they are on fire with the Holy Spirit, but then they are surprised because all the difficulties that they had before their life changing encounter with Christ are still there; they haven’t magically gone away. They still have that job that they do not particularly like, they still have those arguments with their spouse and children, they still have those aches and pains and illness, and they wonder why is Jesus asleep in the boat?

Job, who we hear about in our first reading, was like that. It is hard having the readings from Job, because you really need to read the whole story of Job to understand it. Job was a righteous man who lived the covenant with God very faithfully. He is very wealthy and respected. Satan comes to God and says that of course Job is faithful, because he has the good life. Satan says that if Job was made to suffer, he would curse God, so God allows Satan to do horrible things to Job — his flocks are killed or stolen, his children die in a horrible accident, Job himself becomes covered in painful boils, and his wife mocks him. Then these friends of Job come to support him in his time of need, but they basically say that Job must have brought all this on himself by his own sinfulness, so he best just repent of his sins, and perhaps God will forgive him and take away his suffering. Job says that he has been faithful to God’s covenant. Finally Job gets angry with God, and wants to know why all this has happened to him. In today’s first reading we hear part of God’s reply to Job. God asks Job, “Where were you when I made the sea? Where were you when I ordered the heavens and the earth?” God is trying to teach Job, and us, that we might not always understand God’s will, but we must recognize His sovereignty over nature, and more importantly over us. Further we must recognize that God’s sovereignty is a sovereignty of Love.

God loves us! God wants the best for us, and while at times what is happening in our lives may not seem to be for the best, we must learn to trust God. We must God as our guide, as our pilot. That is why the early Church Fathers often used the boat as a symbol for the Church. Jesus is not asleep in the boat. That even if it seems that Jesus is asleep in the boat, He really is in control of it all. It is when we are together, in the Church, allowing Christ to guide us, when we are following Jesus, that the sea can throw its worse at us and Christ will see us through to safe harbor. That is why the ancient symbol of the virtue of hope is an anchor. Because of our certainty based on our relationship with Christ now, our certainty that He loves us, that He cares for us, and that He is God, we can have certainty about our future. We can have certainty that because Christ who loves us now, that we are called to have a relationship with now, we know that our future is secure if we just follow Him. We just need to allow Him to lead us. That is what Hope is; a certainty about our future based on our certainty of something in the present. We must encounter Jesus now! When we have fear, when we are terrified, it is a sign for us to turn to Jesus now, and see Him present, right here and right now in our lives, and to turn that fear over to Him. Trust Him, and that is where we will find the calmness, despite the storm.

God loves you. Live in His love.

[For the first time in about 10 months, I am posting a podcast of this homily to my homepage, http://web.mac.com/frjcmaximilian/Fr._JC_Maximilian/Podcast/ Podcast.html.  With my new iPhone 3G and the new 3.0 software, there is a voice memo program that allows me to record my homily as I give it, and then import it right into iTunes.  If this works as I hope, I plan to record all my homilies and put them on my webpage as a podcast]

Corpus Christi, the great celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ, has long been one of my favorite solemnities. The Eucharist truly is the source and summit of our lives as Christians. It is in the Eucharist that we have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. As I was reading different things about this marvelous feast, I came across a homily that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger gave on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. It was so wonderful, that I thought I would share his main theme with you – hey, if you are going to borrow material for a homily, you might as well borrow it from the Pope!

The Holy Father reflected on three components, or actions, which especially make up the distinctive way that Christians have celebrated this feast. They are standing before the Lord thus standing together side by side, walking with the Lord or the traditional Corpus Christi procession, and finally the climax, kneeling before the Lord in adoration, rejoicing in His presence among us.

When our Christian faith was first spreading out across the world, there was a great emphasis on each city having just one bishop, and only one altar. It was by standing before the Lord around this one altar that the community of believers expressed their unity which was brought about through Jesus, our only Lord. The central meaning of the Eucharist is that by receiving the ONE bread we enter into the ONE heart, and become a new living organism, the ONE Body of the Lord.

The Eucharist is not a private affair. It is not celebrated only in a circle of friends, or in a club of like-minded people. The Eucharist is the public worship of all those whom the Lord calls. The Roman nobleman and the slave were brothers standing before the Lord around the one altar. The wealthy merchant, the prostitute and the sweaty, smelly Corinthian dock worker stood before the Lord as equals. Just look at our gathering here; I am sure we have doctors and nurses, teachers, bankers, tradesmen, and captains of industry – from a great diversity of backgrounds, yet all followers of Jesus Christ, who makes us sisters and brothers. I once read someplace that William F. Buckley, Jr., the conservative writer, and Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, where both daily communicants at the same parish in New York City. Standing before the Lord in the Eucharist makes us one.

When Christianity grew in numbers, it was no longer possible for all the faithful in a particular city to gather in one place for the celebration of the Eucharist, so the first parishes were established. There the priest would celebrate the Mass, but it was always done in union with the local bishop. This unity with the bishop was made visible by sharing from his altar. The deacons would assist the bishop, who always celebrated the first Mass on Sunday. Each deacon would be give a piece of the host from the bishop’s Mass, and they would take it to the priest in the parish, and the priest would place that piece into the chalice at the parish Mass. In fact there remains a symbol of this unity with the bishop in the Mass. During the Lamb of God, I will break the host, and put a small fraction of it in the chalice. This unity, was also expressed by the bishop processing to each parish in his diocese each year.

Of course, we can only stand before the Lord if we first allow the Lord to lead us, and we walk with Him. Each of us could tell our own story of our relationship with Jesus, of what brought us here together. Each of us walk with the Lord in our own way – rather in the way He leads us, but to the same goal – heaven. “We can come to the Lord only . . . in this moving out and moving forward, by transcending our own prejudices, our limits, and our barriers, going forward, going towards him, and moving to the point at which we can meet each other” (Ratziner, God is Near Us, Ignatius Press, p. 111). In the light of Corpus Christi, the Exodus event has new meaning. Not only are the Israelites set free from their physical slavery in Egypt, but they learn to rely on the Word of God to literally provide them food. We can only find our way if we allow ourselves to be led by God’s Word who gave His body for food and His blood for our drink. It is only when we are walking with Christ Jesus that we are free.

Lastly, this leads us to kneeling before the Lord: adoration. Since the Lord gives us Himself in the Eucharist, it is only fitting to bow before Him, to glorify Him, and to adore Him. What a joy and privilege it is to be able to kneel before the Lord, loving Him with all our mind, all our heart and all our soul. He is our freedom. He is our life!

Again this week, after spending time meditating on the readings, and developing my thoughts for a homily, I just did not get a chance to write out my homily.  I did record it, so maybe I will be able to embed a link to the MP3 file so that all of you can listen to it, but I will try to reconstruct what I preached on below.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!  Today we celebrate the great solemnity of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.  I hope all of us paid close attention to the beautiful sequence, sung by Jean our music director, for it really explains why we see the Holy Spirit as a gift given to us by Christ Jesus.

What do we mean by calling this the birth of the Church?  What is the Church?  Surely the Church is not a mere building.  Even though we gather in this beautiful, 3-year old church, the building itself, while referred to as a church, is not THE CHURCH whose birth we celebrate today.  The Holy Spirit did descend upon the disciples as they waited in prayer in an upper room, so a building, but that space was not the Church.  In fact, once they received the Holy Spirit, they rushed outside to proclaim the Good News.

The Church is not the teaching and administrative structures of the Church.  Jesus certainly established an hierarchical governing structure for the Church, that structure is not the essence of the Church.

What is the Church?  The Church is a life.  Namely it is the life of Jesus.  Jesus did not abandon us by His Ascension into Heaven.  No, He promised to be with us until the end of time.  And He is with us because He has poured out His Spirit to unit the members of the Church and to give them a new lift, His life.

I know that we have so doctors and nurses hear, so you can ask them, but there is a difference between a living body and a dead body.  The parts are the same — generally both have two lungs, a heart, etc — yet something, something intangible, is missing from the dead body.  LIFE is missing.  Our Christian Faith tells us that it is the soul that unites the parts of the body and gives them life.  In the same way, the Church is not merely a collection of people who share a common belief.  Rather the Holy Spirit unites us into a new reality, a new life.  The Holy Spirit unites us into the Mystical Body of Christ, extending Jesus’ incarnation throughout time and space.  This is why we say in the Creed that the Holy Spirit is the “Giver of Life.”  This new living reality, this new life, is the Church.

This week I visited a member of our parish who is in hospice.  He is a devout man, but he said that he really did not want to call for a priest, because he did not feel that he was ready for “Last Rites” because I felt he still had time to live.  But he wanted to put his wife at ease.  I told him that one of the reasons the Church now calls it the Sacrament of the Sick, is because we do not need to wait until the end to receive it.  Rather it unites us in a sacramental way to the suffering of Christ; a suffering that the entire Church takes up for the salvation of the world.  The Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick is a visible remider of the new life we have in the Church.  As a priest, anointing him, I was being Jesus’ loving, compassionate, healing presence to that man.  When the deacon goes each week to bring him the Eucharist and to journey with him during this last journey in this world, the deacon will be Jesus, again showing compassion, which means to suffer with, that man.

But participating in this new life of Christ which is the Church is not only for the ordained.  When Rose goes to visit those in Seacrest nursing home, she is being Christ’s presence to those elderly people.  The same goes for Jan and Earl who visit the residents in Arcadia.  Dan and Anna, and all those who volunteer at the Food Pantry are bringing the life of Jesus to the poor and hungry.  Yet it goes beyond just these more obviously “church” activities.  The parent who teaching their children their prayers and brings them to Mass, is Jesus crying out, “let the children come to me, do not hinder them.”  The child who tells their classmates or friends to stop picking on another child is being Jesus’ voice call out for justice for the downtrodden.  When at work we say we are not going to “fudge” the books or cheat in some other way we are being Jesus who is the Truth.  Living out our Christian Faith is participating in this new life which is the Church.  We do not do it on our own, we share in this new life only when we are united to the Church, following the teachings and commandments of Christ Jesus revealed to us by the Spirit of Truth.

This is what we celebrate today.  We celebrate a new life, the life we call the Church.  The continuing life of Jesus Christ in the world.  Truly the Holy Spirit is the Gift of Life, the life of Christ Jesus.

I did preach this weekend, so there will be a posting of it coming soon. It will not be the text that I wrote because I did not write my homily out for today.

This week was a bit busy. Being a priest in NJ, we do not move the Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension to the Seventh Sunday of Easter. I am really glad that we do not. While I know that there are places in the USA where traveling to church can be a hardship (often more so for the priest in those parts who might have 3 or 4 missions to also get to), that is not generally the case in NJ. There are still plenty of Catholic churches to go to. Some times I fear we do too much to make things easy for Catholic. They start to forget about the importance of sacrifice, and putting God first in our lives.

That being said, I did have a homily to write for the Ascension. I then left on Thursday and drove about 500 miles to Durham, NC. My niece, Sydney, graduated high school on Friday, and I wanted to be there for that. But since I did have Mass this weekend, I had to drive back to NJ yesterday — a 9 hour drive.

Now, I had been praying over this weekend’s readings all last week, but when I got home last night I was too tired to write up my thoughts. So it was not really off the cuff, but it was more spontaneous. I did alright, and I recorded it. I should be able to write up a summary of it tomorrow.