Fr. JC Maximilian

Every day the sun rises and the sun sets, yet most of us take it for granted; we do not even notice.  Yet I am sure that all of us can remember a particular sunrise or sunset, one that was particularly beautiful or just meaningful to us, even it it was years ago.  Maybe it was part of a romantic get away with that someone special.  Maybe it was during a dark time of our lives, and it was the sign of light in that darkness.  It was in the beauty of that particular sunrise or sunset that we truly saw the sun for what it is.

In today’s second reading, St. Peter is remember such a special moment.  It had been many years early, and in a now far away land, but St. Peter could still vividly recall that singular moment of beauty when Jesus was Transfigured before him, James and John.  The Apostles already knew that there was something special about Jesus; that was why they followed Him.  Peter himself had already made his great proclamation, “You are the Christ, the Son of God,” yet they still did not fully appreciate who Jesus was.  Then, on that holy mountain, the glory of Christ Jesus was displayed to Peter, James and John and in that beauty they realized the singular presence of Jesus, the God-Man.  While they did not see Jesus always in that way, they could never forget what they had seen, and in remembering, they continued to see more clearly the reality of the Presence that they followed.

The Church gives us the Feast of the Transfiguration to help us remember and continue to recognize the real Presence of Christ Jesus in our lives.  While Jesus lived in history, He still lives among us.  He still walks we us, and we are still called to follow Him.  In remembering the Transfiguration, we recall that we are called to be “con-figured” to Jesus.  We are to recognize His singular, glorious presence in our lives, and be “figured with” Him, so that with St. Paul we can cry out that it is no longer we who live but it is Christ who lives within us.

We remember so that we can recognize now the Presence of the Lord.

“Spe Salvi:  Saved in Hope”
A Presentation to the Hamilton Council of the Knights of Columbus
On the Pope’s Recent Encyclical”
April 28, 2008
Fr. John C. Garrett

In October 2000, I had the privilege of being in Rome for the canonization of St. Katharine Drexel.  There were several persons raised to the Altar of the Saints that day; one of them being St. Josephine Bakhita.

St. Josephine was born in the Sudan, and at the age of 9 she was kidnapped into slavery.  As a slave, she was beaten regularly.  Throughout her entire life she bore 144 scars left from the many times that she was flogged.  Five times she was sold in the slave-markets of Sudan.

In 1882, when she was about 13, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the consul Callisto Legnani, who then took Josephine back with him to Italy.  It was then that she came to know a completely different kind of “master,” and I do not mean Mr. Legnani, who did treat her kindly.  No, Josephine learned about the “master” above all masters; the living God, who was goodness in person.  She came to know that this “master,” the Lord, knew her and loved her.  She came to know that this Lord had been flogged like her, and now awaited her at His Father’s right hand.

In fact, she came to more than just know about Jesus; rather she encountered Him through His disciples, His Church.  From her encounter with Jesus, Josephine came to have hope.  Not just a hope to have a less cruel master, but the great hope.  In her own words, “I am definitely loved, and whatever happens to me — I am awaited by this Love.  And so my life is good.”

In 1890 Josephine was baptized, and in 1896 she took vows as a Canossian Sister.  In addition to working in the sacristy and as the porter, Sr. Josephine promoted the missions, “the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people” (Spe Salvi #3).

Now you might be wondering what does this story about St. Josephine Bakhita have to do with the topic of tonight’s talk, Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Spe Salvi, which is translated, Saved in Hope.  I started with this personal connection to St. Josephine Bakhita because His Holiness holds her up in his encyclical as an example of true Christian hope.

What is hope?  The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes hope as, “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC #1817).  In developing a deeper understanding of this definition of hope, the Holy Father starts by presenting an analysis demonstrating how throughout much of the Sacred Scriptures, particularly in the New Testament, the word “hope” is often used interchangeably with the word “faith.”  I will not go through all the examples of this from the New Testament that the Holy Father uses to show this — you will have to read the encyclical for that — rather I just want to emphasize the importance of this point.  For many people in our world the word “hope” is equated with the idea of a wish for a better future, but largely cut off from any connection to the present reality of their lives.  The Christian concept of hope is much different.  While certainly looking towards the future, it is not focused on just the “not yet.”  Certainly the Kingdom of Heaven will not come to completion until the end of time, as Christians we are called to start building up the Kingdom of Heaven here and now.  Our faith in Jesus Christ draws the future into the present, so that the present is actually changed.  Life itself is given a new basis.  If we really have hope, we live our lives differently.  As the Holy Father says in the encyclical, “Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future:  it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness.  Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well” (Spe Salvi #2).

What is Christian hope?  It is to come to know God, the true God.  St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians says that before they encounter Christ Jesus, through his preaching, they were without hope because they were without God in the world.  Christianity is not a message calling for some kind of social revolution.  Rather Christianity is an encounter with the Lord of Lords, the living God, or the Master above all the other “masters” as St. Josephine Bakhita discovered.

A point emphasized by the Pope is that our encounter with Christ is both informative and performative.  By this His Holiness means that it is not sufficient to know a lot of facts about the Church.  It does not matter if one has memorized a bunch of the doctrines of the Church.  What is essential — that is pertaining to the core or heart of the matter — is the encounter that changes how we now live our lives.  It is not necessarily a changing in “what we are doing” but a change in “how and with what attitude we are doing it.”  As Christians, that is as a person who has encountered the Risen Christ and has formed a relationship with Him, we live as pilgrims:  living in the here and now, the particular circumstances of our lives, while always remembering that our true homeland is heaven.

Why is this encounter with Christ Jesus so profound?  The Holy Father uses two images found on ancient Christian tombs to explain this.  The first image is that of the philosopher, represented on the tombs as Jesus holding a staff and a scroll.  When we think of an image of a philosopher today, we probably think of the stereotypical “absent-minded professor” who seems to be lost in the world of ideas and out of touch with the practical reality of normal life.  This is not the idea of the philosopher in the ancient world.  The philosopher was someone who taught the essential art, the art of living and dying, the art of being authentically human.  The philosopher was seen as a person who really knew what life was all about.  The early Christians clearly saw Jesus as someone who really knew what life was all about, and took seriously His promise, “I have come that you might have life, life to the full.”

The other image from the ancient Christian tombs is one one more familiar to us; Christ as a Shepherd. The image of the shepherd recalls for us the dream of a tranquil and simple life.  In the words of the Holy Father, “The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through:  he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through.  The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his ‘rod and staff comforts me’, so that ‘I fear no evil’ (cf Ps. 23 [22]:4) — this was the new ‘hope’ that arose over the life of believers” (Spe Salvi #6).

The Holy Father asks each of us a fundamental question:  Is the Christian faith for us today a life-changing and life-sustaining hope?  Does it change the shape of our lives?

The Pope then uses the example of the Baptismal Rite as means for exploring this issue.  In the Rite of Baptism, the priest or deacon should meet the child to be baptized with their parents at the door of the church.  Then, after asking the name given to the child, the priest asks, “What do you ask of God’s Church for this child?”  One of the responses that the parents can give is “Faith”, and then the priest asks, “What does faith give you?” and the parents respond “Eternal life.”  This is what baptism is really all about.  It is not just an act of socialization within the community.  It is about receiving the gift of Faith, which is oriented towards Eternal life.

Perhaps the reason so many people seem to reject the Faith today is because they are not attracted to the prospect of eternal life.  The Pope points out that this is due to confusing eternal life with living this life forever.  What we call “life” in everyday language is not real “life.”  Ultimately we do not know what the reality of the blessed life is really like, but there is a knowing in our not knowing.  We know that this blessed life exists because we desire it.  “We do not know what we would really like; we do not know this ‘true life’, and yet we know that there must be something we do not know towards which we feel driven” (Spe Salvi #11).  We want a true life, untouched by death.  This unknown “thing” is the true “hope” which drives us.  It can cause despair if in our pride we are not patient with our not knowing.  The Holy Father describes eternal life as “To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality” (Spe Salvi #12).

The Holy Father then turns to an analysis of the modern world’s critique and deformation of Christian hope.  The most common critique of the Christian concept of hope is that it involves an abandoning of the world to its misery, in order to take refuge in a private form of salvation.  Christian hope is portrayed as being individualistic.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  Sin was understood by the early Church Fathers as the destruction of the unity of the human race.  They understood redemption and salvation as the re-establishment of the unity.  In fact the word “community” comes from the Latin “com” which means “with” and “unitas” which means “oneness.”  Thus the redemption and salvation that Jesus won for us begins to take shape in the world through the community of believers, which we call the Church.

It is rather interesting that this critique that the modern world makes of Christian hope — that it is individualistic — really stems from its own deformation of Christian hope.  The basis of the modern age is the correlation of experiment and method to arrive at an interpretation of nature in conformity with its laws.  Everyone can see that Man’s dominion over the world has become disorder (as Christians we would say it is because of the Fall), and up until the modern age it was expected that what was lost by the Fall would be recovered (redeemed) by faith in Jesus Christ.  However, with the modern age came the idea that redemption/recovery of the lost unity and dominion will only come through scientific discovery that is put into practice (what we might call a short definition of “technology”).  In doing this, religious faith is not denied explicitly, rather it is just made a purely private matter that is irrelevant for the world.  Hope becomes “faith in progress.”  Just consider the example of all the “promises” made on behalf of embryonic stem cell research — if only the religious fanatics would stop bringing their religious faith into the public square we are promised we will have cures for all the worse diseases in the world.  They rather not be bothered by the “inconvenient truth” that other, more ethical means that respect the dignity of the human person are available, and have already demonstrated to be more useful than stem cells from embryos.

This “progress” which we are now expected to put our faith in is the growing dominion of “scientific” reason.  Progress is the overcoming of all forms of dependency so that we can achieve “perfect” freedom.  Both “freedom” and “reason” are seen by the modern world as being in conflict with religious faith.  This “faith in progress” develops not just in natural science but in political “science” that calls for new structures of society that will lead to freedom; i.e. communism.

Pope Benedict asks what does this progress really mean?  Certainly scientific and technological progress offers new possibilities for good, but they also offer possibilities for evil; e.g., nuclear weapons, the “Final Solution” that attempted to rid the world of those races that were “scientifically” seen as inferior.  Clearly these scientific and technological developments need to be checked with ethical development.  Moral growth is also needed.  We need a criterion of measurement in order to tell good from evil, and when we look at every human criteria all are found lacking.  Something infinitely Good, True, and Beautiful is needed.  We discover that Man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope for discovering the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.  Faith and reason are not in conflict with each other, rather they need each other in order for each to fulfill their mission.

Incremental progress is only possible in the material sphere.  While we can build on the moral treasury of the past, moral decision making is always new and free.  Science can help, but it cannot redeem Man.  Man is redeemed by Love, which implies a relationship, and unconditional Love provides true certainty in life.  An honest looking at our relationships with other people shows us that they cannot provide this unconditional love we need for certainty.  No matter how hard people try, we human beings are all finite.  Hope can only be founded on our relationship with He who is Goodness itself, Truth itself, Beauty itself.  Hope is our relationship with He who is the source of life; God, who embraces the totality of Reality.  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

Finally the Holy Father discusses several settings for learning and practicing hope.  Unsurprisingly, the first setting is prayer.  St. Augustine once said that “prayer is the exercise of desire.”  Man was created for God, however our hearts are too small for the greatness to which they are destined.  God stretches our hearts.  God always listens to us even when others do not.  Prayer is not a stepping out of history into a private happiness.  Rather it must be incarnate, it must be rooted in our time and place.  While prayer is personal, an encounter with God, yet it is guided by the public, liturgical prayer of the whole Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ.

Another setting for learning about and practicing hope is action and suffering.  While we cannot “build” the kingdom of God by our own efforts, we can receive the grace of God’s Kingdom.  We must open ourselves to allow God to enter us.  We must open ourselves to truth, love, beauty and goodness so that we will do God’s will.  While we should do what we can to banish suffering, we must have the humility to recognize that it is not within our power to completely banish suffering.  By accepting our finiteness we open ourselves to God’s infiniteness.  “The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer….  A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through ‘com-passion’ is a cruel and inhuman society” (Spe Salvi #38).

Allow me to end with the invocation that the Holy Father ends the encyclical, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you.  Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine upon us  and guide us on our way!” (Spe Salvi #50).

Broken Dreams

As children bring their broken toys
With tears for us to mend,
I brought my broken dreams to God
Because He was my friend.
But then instead of leaving Him
In peace to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help
With ways that were my own.

At last I snatched them back and cried,
“How could you be so slow”
“My child,” He said, “What could I do?
You never did let go.”

Robert J. Burdette

I first heard the poem I just read, written by Robert Burdette, many years ago when I was in graduate school. As I thought about what to say in this talk, the poem came to my mind again as an example of how we often lack trust in God. Our Lord revealed to St. Faustina that “Sins of distrust wound Me most painfully” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #1076). What does it mean to trust in the Lord, and why would our distrust in Him wound Him so much?

The Oxford American Dictionary defines trust as “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something.” While some would like to define trust as an irrational belief in someone or something, arrived at without investigating the matter, I believe that the act of trusting someone is a very profound act of reason. While we might not be able to prove with mathematical or scientific precision why we trust the people we do, our trust is earned, often through our experience with the person or thing that we place our trust in. I trusted that my car was going to start when I had to run over here to Roman Hall after saying Mass. Why? Because for the past three years since I have had my car it has always started when I got in and pushed the start button. When I arrived I trusted that Msgr. Arnister was not going to shock me with a joy-buzzer when I shook his hand, because in the years that I have known him he has always been a friendly, gracious person. Because of my past experience with Msgr. Arnister, and my car, I was able to place trust in them; that they would be reliable and true.

While these may seem like somewhat silly examples, I have come to realize that in order to know God we need to look closely at our experiences. Otherwise God becomes too abstract; just a theoretical construct, and the Christian life becomes just following a set of rules. This is what St. Paul wrote so much against in his letters when he spoke about becoming free from the Law. St. Paul realized that the Law had become mere moralism and not a sharing in the Divine Life. Yet God is not abstract, He is not distant. In fact He loves us so much that He demonstrated His personal commitment to our salvation by sending His only-begotten Son in the flesh. Jesus is the God-Man, He took on flesh so that He could walk with us, touch us, talk with us. In other words by becoming flesh, Jesus became someone that people could experience, and through their experience with Jesus they could come to see that He was reliable, true and had the strength and ability to establish the Kingdom of God as He claimed.

Yet the ability to have a personal experience with Jesus did not end with His death on the cross, because He rose from the dead. And it did not end with His ascension into Heaven because He promised that He would remain with us until the end of time. Jesus remains with us in His Church, which cannot be reduced to being merely an institution or building or organization. Rather the Church is a Life. It is the Life of Jesus. The various members or parts of His body are joined together and enlivened by His Holy Spirit, and it is through our encounters and experiences with the Church that we continue to encounter and experience Christ Jesus. And for certain blessed souls, Jesus expresses this continued encounter through extraordinary ways. St. Faustina was one such soul, and that is why her diary is more like a dialogue with Jesus who speaks to her as she speaks with Him.

As beautiful as her diary is, even as beautiful as the New Testament is, if we merely read them as just something disconnected from us, then they will not help us trust Jesus. Rather all spiritual reading is meant to provoke us to examine our own experiences so that we recognize our own encounters with Christ. It is only through looking at our experiences with God that we will develop trust in Him.

So, why should we trust in God?

Let’s just look at our most fundamental experience. We experience ourselves as existing; we have being. This implies that there was a time when we did not exist, when we did not have being, and all that means that we were created. If there are creatures, of which we are each one, then there must be a Creator, and our faith tells us that God is that Creator. When God revealed His name to Moses through the burning bush, He said that His name is “I AM.” God’s name is the verb “to be” which indicates that He is the source of all being, of all existence. So our encounters with all the creation around us sings of the Glory of God our Creator.

Next we might ask, what kind of Creator is God? Did He just create everything and then dusted off His hands and let things run on their own without taking much interest in what became of His creation? Starting with the Old Testament we see that this is not the case. That even when we lost God’s friendship because of our disobedience, He continued to care for humanity; He continued to reveal His will to human beings so that we would know the way of His Divine Life. This indicates that God loves us. In fact St. John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, reveals that God not only loves but He IS love. Have you ever experienced love in your life? All of us can surely recall experiences of love in our lives, and when we ponder those experiences we recognize God’s presence in the midst of all that love. Since God is love, where ever love is there is God.

God has revealed to us, both through the prophets, and most perfectly by the Incarnation, that His love is that of a Father for His children. God is our Heavenly Father, and the source of all true fatherhood. So we can look at our experiences with our own fathers as experiences of God.

Remembering my father, I know that he put his family above his own desires. He worked very hard to provide for us. Oh sure, there were times when my sisters or I wanted the latest fad and we didn’t get it, and we felt disappointed and angry. However as we look back on it, we see that most of the time we did not really NEED what we wanted, and that Dad had our long term happiness in mind. As we matured, Dad allowed us to make more of our own decisions. I am sure that we sometimes didn’t make what he thought was the best decision — I can remember making a bad decision involving a french curve — but Dad allowed us to experience the consequences of our decisions, protecting us from those that would overwhelm us, so that we would learn from them. And of course he was always there for us, and quick to forgive.

Now many people have not had very positive relationships with their fathers, but we can all look at our relationship with our Heavenly Father. He does have plans for us. He said to the prophet Jeremiah, and says to us, “For I know the plans I have for you; plans to prosper you . . . plans to give you hope and a future” (Jer. 29:11). I am sure that Jeremiah did not see clearly all that God’s plans had for him and for the Chosen People, but he trusted. God also gives us free will, and often we abuse that freedom by choosing sin, choosing to follow our own will and not God’s. Yet God does not turn His back on us. He continues to call us to repentance, and He continues to offer us His loving forgiveness, and we call this loving forgiveness His Mercy.

Think of the good things in your lives. Think about the fact that you did not have to search the gutter for food this morning. That you have warm clothes. That you were able to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In all these things we see how God is providing for us.

The greatest gift that our Heavenly Father has given to us is His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus demonstrated the infinite love of God by offering everything that He is for us, by His passion and death. All these experiences demonstrate that God the Father and Jesus are reliable, they are true, and they are able to provide for our happiness, so that we can have life to the full. If there was going to be anyone that we trusted it really needs to be God, for He has demonstrated His trustworthiness more than anyone. Yet, at times we still distrust.

Jesus said to St. Faustina, “Distrust on the part of souls is tearing My insides . . . despite My inexhaustible love for them they do not trust Me. Even My death is not enough for them. Woe to the soul that abuses these gifts” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #50). Why do we tear at the insides of Jesus by not trusting in Him?

There are two principles reasons why we often lack trust in God — pride and fear. Since pride is the root of all evil, let us first look at it, and how it impedes our trust in God. And let us turn again to the poem that I read at the start. As our loving Father, God wants us to bring our needs to Him, including our broken dreams. That is an initial act of trust, because we would not bring our needs to someone if we did not think that they could help us. “But then instead of leaving Him In peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help With ways that were my own.” How often do we do just that? This is our own pride acting up, thinking that we know better than God what will make us truly happy. It is a distrust in God’s plan; we become impatient and want things done our way and according to our timeline.

We need to keep in mind that we are finite, and we do not know everything, whereas God is all-knowing. It is fitting that today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, for in today’s Gospel reading we have a perfect example of trusting in God’s plan. While we do not know for sure, it is likely that Mary was a teenager of 14 or 15 when the Angel Gabriel came to announce God’s plan to her. Gospel account says that Mary was troubled by his greeting and wondered what it meant. I am sure that part of her thought that all this was happening too fast; not according to her timeline. She had planned to get married first, and then have a child. Yet Mary’s experiences with God assured her that He was her Heavenly Father and that she could trust Him. She knew that God’s will, while mysterious to her, was so much superior to her own. So in trust she answered, “May it be done to me according to your word.”

The other reason we often distrust God is fear. I think that is why Jesus says over and over again throughout the Gospels, “Do not be afraid.” Often when we see God’s will for us we also see the difficulties, struggles and even persecutions that will be involved and we are afraid. We don’t think we can do what God is asking of us. We might not understand why He is asking it of us. Can we really trust that God will not abandon us in our difficulties and need?

I think we need only to look to the Garden of Gethsemane to see how to respond to God’s will when we are afraid. Jesus was afraid. In His human nature He was afraid of the torture, suffering and death that His Father was calling Him to endure. He asked His Father to let the cup of His passion to pass away from Him if it was possible, but He did not allow His fear to destroy His trust in His Father. He said in the end, “Not my will, but thy will be done.”

We are not often called to face the persecution and suffering that Christ faced in dying on the Cross for us, yet often we allow our fear to undermine our trust in God. We are afraid that others might think less of us if we say “no” to some activity that we know is contrary to the Divine Life. We fear losing friends and family if we talk about God too much, if we invite others to join us at Mass, or bring up the Church’s teachings on some of the issues we are facing in our lives. Often we are afraid of giving up the sin in our lives because we have become too comfortable with it. Or we are afraid of Christ’s Mercy.

Part of the message of Divine Mercy entrusted to St. Faustina is for all of us to utterly place our trust in God. Jesus said to her, “When a soul approaches Me with trust, I fill it with such an abundance of graces that it cannot contain them within itself, but radiates them to other souls” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #1074).

In thinking about a title for this talk I decided to call it “Christ makes Himself Dependent on Our Trust.” I took it from the following passage from St. Faustina’s diary, “Suddenly I heard these words in my soul: My daughter, I assure you of a permanent income on which you will live. Your duty will be to trust completely in My goodness, and My duty will be to give you all you need. I am making Myself dependent upon your trust: if your trust is great, then My generosity will be without limit” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #548). Christ makes Himself dependent on US, on our trust. As Jesus depended on Mary and Joseph to care for Him when He was an infant and child, He continues to humble Himself to make Himself dependent on us. He desires to fill the world with His Mercy, with His love. He wants all of us to have life, life to the full. He offers us all good things. Will we trust in Him, even if the road gets difficult and we might need to endure persecution for our faith in Him?

JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU!

[This was a talk that I gave to the Jesus Divine Mercy Ministry of Yardley, PA. They have a monthly day of inspiration at the Roman Hall Restaurant, Trenton, NJ]

Jesus said to his disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!  There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!  Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division.  From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father,  a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

With all the wild fires burning in California, some might be tempted to think that today’s Gospel reading is coming to fulfillment.  After all, it was in California that one of the world’s leading genetic researchers recently announced that he had created a new life form.  It was in California that the so-called “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” seems to be given unrestrained liberty to mock the Catholic Church.  It was in California that the governor signed a law that would make the mention of “husband” and “wife” illegal in public schools because those terms could be seen as anti-homosexual.

It is very tempting to say that the fires in California is nothing but Divine retribution for the arrogant mocking of Divine Law.  I am certainly not going to presume to know the mind of God, and I do think that God sometimes uses chastisement as a means for “waking us up” so that we can see our need for repentance.

I do think that today’s Gospel reading has a particular relevance to the tragic events in California, . . . but not in the way we may be tempted to say.  Why is it that California, and to be honest our society in general, seem to be not only non-Christian but anti-Christian?  Because Christians have not lived out their baptismal commitments.  The fire that Jesus speaks about casting on the earth is the fire of the Holy Spirit which should inflame the hearts of Christians with a passion to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to all the ends of the earth.  As Christians we must be people of fire.

Too many Christians want to keep their faith in nice, neat little boxes.  We pray only at certain times, we go to church for an hour on Sunday, but then we really do not think that our Christian faith should have much of a role in the rest of our lives.  Politicians who say things like, “I am personally opposed to (fill in the blank, e.g. abortion, capital punishment, etc.), but cannot impose my personal beliefs/faith on others,” make me sick.  We are not talking about IMPOSING, which would involve some use of force to make another person do something against their will, but rather WITNESSING to the Faith.

Our Christian Faith must transform everything in our lives.  That is the fire, the passion that we must have to truly be called Christians.  So, where are all the Christians?  Where is their witnessing to the Faith, to the Gospel?

I believe it was the Lutheran minister, Deitrich Bonnhofer, who said, “The only thing that must happen for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”  The evil that we see in our society is because most Christians are not burning with the passion of the Gospel.  They are not witnessing to the Faith.  They have not allowed their encounter with Christ Jesus to transform them into a new creation.

We must all stoke up the fire of our faith and set the world aflame with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

One of the joys of priesthood, at least for me, is the sacrament of Reconciliation.  I guess I have been lucky, since I have always been at parishes that have promoted this wonderful sacrament.  At St. James in Red Bank, we heard Confessions everyday, except Sunday, and there almost always were people seeking the Lord’s Mercy.  At my current assignment, while we do not offer the sacrament as often as St. James, we always have a good number of people on Saturday.

Greg and Jennifer Willits has produced another wonderful episode of That Catholic Show, and this episode is about Confession.  There is only one thing that I would add to what they say about the sacrament (and maybe they did but I missed it), in addition to the principle effect of forgiving sins, the sacrament also gives us the grace to grow in holiness.  This is why the confession of things that we regularly struggle with, even if they are not mortal sins, is valuable.  We need to overcome even the “small” vices.  One of the prayers that the priest may say, after giving absolution, with I think is very beautiful and brings out the effects of the sacrament goes, “May the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and of all the saints, whatever good you do and suffering you endure, heal your sins, help you to grow in holiness, and reward you with eternal life.  Go in Peace.”

Enjoy That Catholic Show, Episode #8, “I Confess”

Today we celebrate the memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.  This feast was started in the 13th century to remember the vision of St. Simon Stock, who received the Brown Scapular from our Lady, with the promise that whomever devoutly (this is the key word) wears the Brown Scapular as an external sign of their commitment and dedication to our Lord Jesus, through His most Blessed Mother, will be given special graces at the time of their death.  This is a celebration especially for members of the Carmelite Order, who have a historic root of being contemplatives on Mount Carmel in northern Israel.

Mount Carmel has a long history of being a special place for encountering the Lord.  Today we had a special coincidence, liturgically.  Typically on a memorial, when praying the Office of Readings, the first reading, which is from the Scriptures, is taken from the regular liturgical cycle, so today from Monday in the 15th Week in Ordinary Time.  It just so happened that that reading was from the First Book of Kings, where the prophet Elijah prevails over the false prophets of Baal and Asherah.  You probably remember the story; both the false prophets of Baal and Asherah, and Elijah prepare a sacrificial bull and call on their respective gods to consume the offering.  Of course when the false prophets of Baal and Asherah cry out nothing happens, but when Elijah calls out to the Lord his offering, which his doused with water, is immediately.  And where did this showdown occur?  On Mount Carmel!
As I prayed that reading this morning I was struck by the following words of Elijah, addressed to the people of Israel, “How long will you straddle the issue?  If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.”  OK, I don’t think we have too many worshipers of Baal and Asherah around any more, but I am becoming more convinced that many people are de facto pagans.  How many different excuses have I heard of why a person has missed Sunday Mass — there was football, soccer, cheerleading, or we were on vacation.  I have startled more than a few parishioners when I tell them that they have made those things gods in their lives, above God, the Lord of the Universe.  We put ourselves above God when we cling to a favorite sin, “because it really doesn’t hurt anyone,” or because we disagree with the Church’s teaching.  Politicians who use the excuse, “I am morally opposed to abortion/homosexual unions/embryonic stem cell research/etc., but I will not impose my views on others,” are saying that their careers are more important that God.

In today’s Gospel reading at Mass Jesus tells us that the person who hears the Word of God and obeys that Word is His mother, brother and sister.  Clearly He is not diminishing his mother, Mary, but rather holding her up for all of us as a model.  Mary heard the Word of God and responded by saying, “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according you your word.”  There was no straddling of the issue for Mary.  She clearly acknowledged the Lord as God and followed Him.  We are called to do the same.  Stop straddling the issue — the Lord is God!  Follow Him!

[Drawing by Fr. Robert Staes, O.P.  You can view more of his drawings at http://www.domcentral.org/LIBRARY/BobStaes/default.htm]

The deacons are preaching this weekend, but here is a quick little Corpus Christi story. When the Pope was planning to extend the celebration of Corpus Christi to the whole Universal Church, he asked the two leading theologians of the time, St. Thomas Aquinas, OP and St. Bonaventure, OFM (in the drawing above), to each compose the proper prayers for the Mass for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.  Both St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure were professors at the University of Paris at the time.  When both had completed their Masses for this Solemnity, they went to see the Pope.  In the presence of the Pope the lot fell to St. Thomas to read his Mass first.  When he was finished, St. Bonaventure allegedly  stood up and threw what he had written into the fireplace, say that nothing could top what St. Thomas had written.  Hence the prayers at this Mass were originally written by St. Thomas Aquinas (though through “translation” through the years they do not preserve the beauty of his original Latin prayers).

[A mural in the basilica at Conception Abbey in Conception, MO; sorry, I do not know who the artist is]

HAPPY PENTECOST!

OK, a little survey.  At how many of your parishes did you have one (or more) of Mass readings in a foreign language, that is in a language other than the dominant language of most of the parishioners?  What languages did you hear?

I had all four of the Masses at the Our Lady of Sorrows campus, and the second reading was done in Polish, Phillipino, Spanish and Hungarian.  Of course the vast majority of the parishioners speak English.  The Gloria was sung in a mixture of English, Spanish, and we signed (American Sign Language) part of it.  Also this was done to “re-create the experience of the first Pentecost.”

What’s wrong with this?  Well, first it fails to recognize that the celebration of Pentecost (fifty days after Passover) started over a thousand years before Jesus Christ.  Pentecost was, and is, one of the top three holiest days for the Jewish people, and time for given thanks for the first fruits of the land.  It was a pilgrimage feast, meaning that all the men of Israel were suppose to offer a thanksgiving sacrifice in the Temple.  That is why there were Jews from all over the Meditterean there.

The reason why the Apostles were given the gift of speaking in foreign tongues was so that the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus the Savior, could be understood by all those gathered around them.  This is what we mean by a charism of the Holy Spirit; they are not give necessarily for the recipient’s  benefit, but rather for the building up of the Church.  The focus really should not be on the speaking in tongues, but on the universality of Christ’s message of salvation.  I wonder how many people really understood that when they sat there (hopefully reading the second reading in the missalette) as they heard the Word of God proclaimed in a language they did not understand.  I fear that instead of “re-creating” the experience of Pentecost, that we were actually “re-creating” the experience from the book of Genesis, namely the Tower of Babel.  Of course the lesson we are suppose to get from the story of the Tower of Babel is the effect of human pride and arrogance, thinking that we can reach God all on our own effort.  Instead of promoting universality it created division.

The funny thing is that as Catholics of the Roman Rite we do have a language that is meant to be used to promote our unity and the universality of the Gospel — Latin.  How many of you heard any of the readings, any of the Mass for that matter, proclaimed in Latin?  Probably not many, yet every Pope since the Second Vatican Council has reaffirmed the teaching of that Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, see #36 and 54).  In fact, Pope Benedict XVI, in his recent Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis, again encouraged the use of Latin in the Mass, particularly at international gatherings.

What is Pentecost for the Christian?  It is the birth of the Church, and what is the Church?  The Church is a life.  The Church is nothing more and nothing less than the Life of Jesus Christ, remaining incarnate throughout history in all places.  Msgr. Luigi Guissani, in his book, Why the Church? (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), says this about the Church, “What the Church is for all men is Jesus Christ’s self-communication to the world” (p. 86).  Giussani then goes on to quote from another important theologian of the 20th century, Romano Guardini, “What does the event of Pentecost mean for the Christian life?  Before it happened, Christ presented himself — in person — ‘to the eyes’ of men; there was an abyss between them and Him.  They did not understand Him; He did not come to be something of ‘theirs.’ … Pentecost makes Christ, his Person, his Life and his redeeming action part of ‘their’ reality . … Pentecost is the hour the Christian faith was born, the moment of being in Christ; not because of a mere ‘religious experience,’ but by the hand of the Holy Spirit” (Romano Guardini, Vom Wesen des Christentums, Wurzburg:  Werkbund Verlag, 1938, pp. 41-42).

As we celebrant the third holiest day for us Christians, let us make that Life become the most vibrant part of us.  Let it enliven every aspect of us, so that like St. Paul we can cry out, that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.  We must avoid the heresy of dualism, where we put our Catholic Faith in one box and the rest of our life in another box.  Our Catholic Faith must BE our life; in our parish church and community, in our family and homes, at our work-place, in the marketplace, and in the public square.  Vivo Christus!

[Pope Gregory VII excommunicates Emperor Henry IV]

One of the three saints who we can honor in Mass today is St. Gregory VII, Pope.  He was born in Tuscany, in 1028 and was named Hildebrand.  He went to Rome for study, and there entered a monastery.  His keen intellect and holiness of life brought him to the attention of several popes, who used him on several occasions to be an emissary.  Finally he was elected to the seat of St. Peter.  He died in exile in 1085.

Given some of the controversies concerning Catholic politicians today, we would do well to learn from St. Gregory VII, ask him for his prayers, and model his courage and holiness.  As Pope, Gregory spoke out strongly condemning simony, clerical marriage, and lay investiture.  The latter was a movement, which pops up from time to time, which called for the members of the laity in a given area to elect their own bishops and pastors.  The Emperor at the time, Henry IV, directly challenged Pope Gregory VII’s authority to teach in matters of faith and morals, and Pope Gregory excommunicated him for his disobedience.  The painting above (sorry, I do not know who painted it) shows Emperor Henry IV doing penance before Pope Gregory VII, so to be received back into the full communion.  Unfortunately Henry’s repentance was short lived; he later sent Pope Gregory into exile, where he died.

When politicians think that the Pope should not speak out against grave injustice and immorality, because it has “political” implications, they are making themselves just like Henry IV.  We need courageous bishops, and a Pope, who will tell them that they must live their Catholic faith at all times and in all circumstances.  You can NOT be “personally opposed to abortion, but still vote for it.”  To cooperate in grave moral evil, directly and willingly, means that you have separated yourself from communion with the Church, and thus you are not to receive Holy Communion.  When the then Archbishop of New Orleans excommunicated a Catholic politician who opposed civil rights, and supported segregation, back in the 1950s, the Archbishop was rightly hailed for his courage.

Today, if Catholic politicians who support abortion-rights, embryonic stem cell research, and homosexual “marriage” will not on their own recognize the grave separation between them and the Church’s moral teaching, and exclude themselves from the reception of Holy Communion, then bishops need to take the painful, strong action of excommunicating them.  This will be a witness to courageous truth — the truth of Jesus Christ.

Of course during this Holy Season of Lent we “downgrade” the liturgical celebrations of the saints to commemorations, but I would like to mention a little about these two noble women. They both lived in Carthage (northern Africa) at the end of the second and beginning of the third centuries. They were martyred on March 7, 202 and St. Perpetua wrote a wonderful description of the horrors of their imprisonment, “The Passion of Perpetua,” to which is generally appended a description of their martyrdom by a witness (some think it was Tertullian, the great early Christian writer). Here is a bit of my reflection on these two women which I shared at Mass this morning.

Lent is a time for us to identify the idols in our lives — those things to which we place more importance on than our relationship with Christ. Idols are distractions, counterfeits, things that we think will satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts and bring us true and everlasting happiness. Of course idols cannot truly satisfy, they cannot make us everlastingly happy. Only God can. He made us to be in communion with Him, to share His divine life. That is the destiny written on our hearts, for which we yearn. That is why St. Augustine said, “My heart is restless until it rests in You, Lord.” So what are we unwilling to give up for Jesus Christ?

St. Perpetua was a young mother, and St. Felicity actually gave birth while imprisoned for her faith in Christ. Both of them were urged to renounce their faith in Christ so that they could raise their children. In her “Passion” St. Perpetua expresses her anxiety for her son, and Felicity’s daughter, but she knew that to deny Christ would be to deny her destiny; the deepest yearning of her heart. Undoubtedly she remembered the words of Jesus, that anyone who was not willing to leave mother, or father, or family for Him was not worthy of Him. Perpetua, Felicity and their fellow martyrs placed all their trust in Christ Jesus, and they offered up their lives for their destiny, and as a witness to all of us.

What are our idols? Let us ask the Lord to give us the grace and strength to give up our idols, to truly live for Him first.