Spiritual Ruminations

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Living God?

2012-01-14T18:15:00.000-08:00

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. January 15th, 2012

“Behold the Lamb of God.” With these words, John the Baptist announces the coming of Jesus, as he begins his public ministry, and begins to call disciples to Himself. I want to stop and reflect on these words- Lamb of God. We have just celebrated the mystery of the coming of the Lamb of God, Jesus. Jesus, the invisible God, second person of the Blessed Trinity comes into the world in the flesh, in a human body. And, it is through his Body that He will offer himself to His heavenly Father, as the true Lamb of Sacrifice for the salvation of mankind. God has become incarnate, and everything, everything has changed.

It is important to remember that the Incarnation of Jesus did not end with the death of Jesus. Jesus resurrected and He did so in the flesh. His resurrection was a bodily resurrection, a physical resurrection--“touch me Thomas, see I am not a ghost!” This is why Jesus came to earth as a little baby in Bethlehem, He came so that He could die in His body, in order that He would be able to give us this body to save us. The resurrection makes it possible for Jesus to give us His Body. This is the body that the priest holds up and proclaims, Behold this is the Lamb of God before we receive Him. Jesus is still in a body and it is this sacred body of Jesus that will save us, if we adore It.

It is also through the incarnation, God coming in the flesh, that Jesus reveals to us who we are. We too are called to live out our lives in holiness in the flesh—in a body, just as Jesus did. In fact, because of Jesus, our bodies can now actually become real temples for the living and true God to dwell in. As St. Paul says to us today, our bodies are Temples of the Holy Spirit- we are in Baptism, reborn and we become living temples of the living God. This image is not just a spiritual one- we are reunited to the Father and become children of God, literally this means to have the Life of God alive in our souls. This has huge consequences for our bodies. We are indeed true sons and daughters of God- this is truly who we are. And so as sons and daughters of God we are to live our lives in a way which shows forth this great truth to all around us.

At the end of the world, at the resurrection of the dead, our souls will be reunited with our bodies. We will be judged for the acts we did, both bad and good in and through our bodies and depending on the outcome of that judgment we will spend eternity in our bodies in one of two places, either in eternal bliss of heaven or eternal misery of hell. So St. Paul says, because our bodies are holy, temples of the Holy Spirit, our bodies are not to be instruments of sins-our bodies are not for fornication, but instruments whereby God uses us for holiness, for His glory.

This brings us three important considerations all having to do with the body as temple of the Holy Spirit. And how a failure to understand the holiness of the body leads to all sorts of desecrations and one could even de-sacrilization of the body. First, the subject of married love, second how do we take care of the building of the temple and thirdly, how do we treat the body after death.

In the sacrament of marriage our physical bodies reach their finality, meaning what they were designed for, when they are united to another body of the opposite sex. When they are used properly our bodies will be fruitful, and the fruit will be children who are one of the greatest gifts of God and who are destined to become sons and daughters of God as well. Our culture degrades the body, especially in this area, in the area of sexual morality.

If we use our bodies improperly and not according to the design of God and His holy will, we degrade the living temple of our bodies and force the Holy Spirit out of the temple. Think of all of the ways our modern world desecrates the body. Our culture is one of sexual excess. The so called sexual revolution is no more than an excuse for sexual sin. It starts in simple ways- like dressing in an immodest, seductive manner. By the way, the person who dresses in such a manner, draws upon their soul, all the sins that lead others to impure thoughts or actions. Because they lead others into sin by the way they dress, they share in these sins. And so by merely walking down the street or down the communion line, one can draw multiple and very serious sins upon one’s own soul.

This degrading of the body then progresses to fornication, that is using our sexual powers outside of marriage, such as in living together; adultery, in which ones fails to love ones spouse as ones loves own body, artificial birth control which shuts of the fruitfulness of life and refuses to be open to this greatest of God’s gifts. Abortion, which destroy the fruit of the union between two bodies, which is another body of a human person destined to be born in order to adore and glorify the Creator of life. We could go on and on, but you get the picture. Jesus desires us to use our bodies for His glory- instruments of his love and mercy.

Next, the second point, how we dress our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, holy and sacred objects were always, always, veiled. The veil reminded the view that that which lies behind or under the veil was sacred, only and belonged to God. And because it was holy it could not be looked upon with ordinary eyes and a casual glance. IN other words, it could not be look upon as ordinary or secular but as something holy and sacred to the Lord God. The holies of holies containing the Ark of the Covenant was hidden always behind a veil and no one could look behind the veil except one appointed by God,that is, the priest.

Later in the New Testament, the chalice and paten which would hold the Body and blood of Christ would be veiled until the appropriate time during Holy Mass. And the human body itself was veiled, by clothing because it was holy and Sacred. This by the way is the where the ideal of veiling woman came from. The woman’s body was holy and sacred and one was not to look upon it with eyes of lust and filth. Only the husband who body belongs to the woman because he consecrated himself by a sacred oath to her and she to Him, only he could remove the veil and see the sacredness and beauty behind.

Because our modern society as too often removed the veil outside the marital bond the body as become something dirty and filthy. Why is there the modern attempt to piece, tattoo and surgical altar the body? Is not this a sign that body is now hated so much that it is mutilated and changed, in order to try to make it more sexually desirable.

Let’s move to the third point, the end of life. Never before have we seen the sacredness of the body more disregarded at death than in our day. The Church and society informed and formed by the Church and her teachings, has always in the past seen to it that the human body received a proper burial. In fact, one of the corporal works of mercy is to bury the dead. This practice presupposed a belief in the sacredness of the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and as well, a belief in the bodily resurrection of the dead on the day of Judgment. By the way, the masons attack this bodily resurrection of the dead and so tried to convince others, especially Catholics to have their bodies cremated at death to show their denial of the churches teaching that the body would be resurrected. If the body was cremated, so they thought, it couldn’t be resurrected, this why the Church banned cremation for a while.

While Today the Church reluctantly allows cremation, it will not allow it if the person is being cremated because he doesn’t believe in the resurrection of the body. It must be said that Church certainly doesn’t prefer cremation; it would rather have the body intact at burial and for sure the body present and intact at the funeral Mass. The problem with cremation is that because of the denial of the Body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, families are not burying the body. They are dumping the cremated body at sea, keeping it on their fire place mantel, and even making it into jewelry. This is a denial of the sacredness of the body. The cremated body must be treated as a former temple of the Holy Spirit and so the body in cremated form needs to be buried.

In the end we are not just souls without bodies and we are not souls held captive in the body. We are body and soul, and even more because of our Baptism our bodies are now temples of the Holy Spirit, holy and sacred instruments. We are to adore our God not only in Soul but in our body as well. We need to change our attitudes and behaviors to reflect the reality to which we have been baptized into- we are all uniquely children of God. With this confidence, we can then use our bodies to glorify God. This includes using our body in the worship and adoration of God at Holy Mass.

We use our bodies to genuflect, kneel and bow in order to show our interior desire to adore God. This use of our body should also be reflected in how we dress our bodies; we should dress modesty, always wearing our Sunday best. But we are also to adore God in our bodies outside of Mass by living upright, moral and holy lives by not sinning in the body. At Mass our bodies are united with Jesus in a holy marriage when we receive His Sacred Body in holy Communion, so our bodies must be pure like our souls in order to receive Him worthily.

In a few moments, we will begin the Eucharistic prayer. In the communion rite I will elevate the body and Christ and say, “This is the Lamb of God. When we receive this body of Christ- it is truly the flesh and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, we can be transformed. The Eucharist, the body of Christ will give us the power we need to live lives of purity and holiness in the body. By receiving Jesus, He will transform us into members of his own sacred body, if we let Him. May we be open to the graces we need to live out this high calling as disciples of our Lord live out not only in the soul, but in the body as well, so that at the resurrection of the dead, our bodies will be with us in heaven reflecting the glory of God through Jesus Christ.

Hail true Body, Holy Body, born of the Virgin Mary, who truly suffered and was sacrificed on the cross for men. From your pierced side streamed blood and water. Be a foretaste of heaven to us in our death agony. O dear Jesus! O kind Jesus! O Jesus, Son of Mary. Amen

Following the star of faith we come in body and soul before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in order to adore His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity

2012-01-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

Solemnity of the Epiphany. January 8th, 2012

Today we celebrate the feast of Epiphany. The day the three wise men came from a far to Bethlehem to adore the newborn King. Epiphany means manifestation. This great solemnity is the Church’s way to commemorate the first manifestation of the Son of God to the Gentile or pagan world. Every since the fall of mankind, God the Father has desired that all of mankind would return back to communion with Him, back into His Family, a Communion of Love.

The Father’s plan was to begin to reveal the truth to the Israelites and then use them as an example to lead all the nations (the gentiles) back to Him. The gentiles were of course all the people who were not Jews or Israelites. The wise men coming to Bethlehem signify the Father moving beyond just the Israelites to all mankind. He wants to reveal to all men of good will the fullness of the Truth, found in the Divine Person of His only begotten Son-Jesus.

The Wise-men were probably astrologers and philosophers before they were converted to the Christ Child. The Wise-men, in their wisdom followed the star, which led them to adore God become man, who was before them as a little child in great silence and simplicity. The Wise-men, who were seeking the truth, open to the truth, prostrated themselves to the ground, worshiping and adoring the infant Child Jesus.

Today, the Father wants us to understand that to reach the truth we must imitate the Wise-men and adore with our body and soul in great simplicity and littleness, the Child Jesus. We must be humble because God doesn’t manifest Himself in the way we might expect or in the way the world might expect. When we are seeking the Truth, we must like the Wise-men, end in adoration of Jesus, the Jesus who came and who continues to come to us not in riches, fanfare or sensationalism, but in poverty, silence and simplicity.

The star that lead the Wise-men safely to Jesus was itself a gift given by the Heavenly Father to safely lead all those who desire with their whole heart the one thing that would fill the ultimate desire of every human heart—Jesus Christ, Truth Incarnate, Truth Itself in the flesh. It was the Father Who placed in the open hearts of the Wise-men the desire to follow the star in search for the Truth. Those, such as Herod, who didn’t follow the star by listening to the Father in humbleness and purity and in the silence of their hearts didn’t find the Truth, Who was Jesus. Sadly like so many today, Herod lacked wisdom, and so only saw in Jesus a threat to his way of life, a threat to his so-called “freedom;” He had closed his heart to the Truth-Jesus.

What about us today, what star is there to manifest to us the truth about Jesus Christ, and the Truth Who is Jesus Christ? The Father also desires us to be lead safely to His Son, the Incarnate Jesus. He wants us to come to know Jesus even more intimately than ever. He may not give us a large star in the sky; nevertheless, God wants to give us, interiorly, that is, in the silence of our hearts, the star of His grace and wisdom in order to point us to the true Jesus. Not to who the Herod’s of this world think Jesus is, or not to who we think Jesus is or who we think He should be. The Father wants to manifest to us who Jesus really is, the fullness of Father’s Revelation about Himself, the fullness of the truth about God and man; and I would add the truth about each one of us, for we can only truly discover ourselves in the light of Christ.

The star given to us today from our Heavenly Father is the gift of faith--faith in His Church and faith in the truths God gives us through the Catholic Church and her teachings, which we faithfully live out in our daily lives with the help of God’s grace, given to us throught the Sacraments. For the star given to us today, ultimately points us to the Sacraments, especially that Most Blessed of All Sacraments, the Holy Eucharist, the source of all grace, because it is Jesus himself-Truth Incarnate.

Holy Mother the Church has always seen in the adoration of the Wise-men, an example of the adoration that we must show before the Blessed Sacrament. We must come before Him just like the wise men- bowing down and offering every treasure of ours to him; thus, making an act of faith in His Incarnation; that is, and act of faith that He is still truly bodily present, and so still truly with us in the Holy Eucharist-God with us!

Following the star of faith we come in body and soul before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in order to adore His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. We come before Jesus who manifests himself to us in even greater humility and silence than His manifestation to the three Wise-men. Before the Blessed Sacrament we come to adore the same Jesus--Incarnate, in the same body that lay before the three wise men in the crib. And in our adoration of Him we come to share in the divinity of Him who humbled Himself to share in our humanity--Jesus the way to union with Father. Adoration of the Holy Eucharist more and more opens our hearts to God!

Holy Mary, stella Maris, stella orientis, ora pro nobis—Holy Mary, star of the sea, star of the east, pray for us; you are our star that points us to the divine Child-Jesus, the God-Man who is still with us in the Holy Eucharist. Obtain for us an increase of faith that the Holy Mass is that privledge place where the Holy Exchange of God with men continues to take place, where heaven and earth continues to unite, where the divinity of God cointinues to stoops down to take on our humanity that we may be taken up to share in His divinity in order to become one with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and with one another, in a union of eternal love. Amen.

,,,because of Mary, heaven continues to come to earth.

2011-12-31T12:14:00.000-08:00

Holy Mary, Mother of God. Sunday January 1st, 2012

I want to begin by wishing everyone a very blessed New Year. With this great feast of Mary, Mother of God, we come to the end of the Octave of Christmas; that eight days of solemn celebration of the Nativity of our Lord; eight days of intense joy, in which we renew our faith in the Incarnation.

This Solemn feast of our Lady is a relatively new solemnity, in which the Church desires to draws us more deeply into the mystery of the Incarnation of our Lord. In other words, the Church wants us to contemplate and consider what truly happen on that blessed night two thousand years ago we now call Christmas, and to do so in order to grow deeper in our knowledge of and our love for our God, in order to enter into a deep abiding union with Him.

Hopefully we know the catechism's answer of what happened that night: It was the Incarnation- when the invisible God became visible in the flesh, which He took from the Blessed Virgin Mary nine months earlier. Now the whole world can ‘see’ its God because He actually condescended from heaven to become one of us, physically born of the same Blessed Virgin Mary on Christmas Day. Now in Christ the fullness of deity resides in bodily form. But what did the birth of Jesus really do for us? Perhaps to answer this question we could quickly take a look at what the world was like before Jesus’ birth.

Well to sum it up in just one word, "Cruel,"; the world was cruel. The human person had no value; people were only valued only in so much as what they could produce. Woman were consider less than slaves, for the most part only consider the personal property of their husbands; property which could be discarded for any reason whatsoever. Babies, especially female babies were killed often by exposure because they were “inconvenient.” There was terrible, terrible immorality, dishonesty, and cruelty--everywhere. Although it’s hard to believe, conditions back then were much worse than they are now.

You see, back then there wasn’t much love for God because God in the hearts and minds of almost everyone, including the Jews, was so very far away. He was in His heavens light years away, infinitely distant. God, for average person, was a Divine Being who had to be pacified; God was an angry God who had to be made calm. So awesome was He (and His is awesome) that no one was even supposed to say His name.

The people back then did not have a personal intimate relationship with God; they didn’t even think such a thing was possible. One’s relationship with God was merely in the sense that if you were good, God would bless you; if you were not, He would not bless you. Proof of God’s favor was wealth and prosperity; proof of God’s disfavor was disease, economic poverty and political oppression. Unless you were wealthy and had power, you were in a bondage no better than a slave or even an animal for that matter; economically, for the most part, there wasn’t such thing as a middle class there where only the rich and poor.

And so most folks looked for the coming of the prophesied Messiah, the chosen and anointed one of God. But too often they only hoped in His coming so that when He came, He would grant them material prosperity, comfort, security, and so-called “freedom.” Most folks were looking only for a political Messiah-a “bread king,” one that would fill their bellies, their emotions, and free them to do what they wanted, not necessarily to do what they should.

Even more than all of what I just mention, there was something even more terrible and dark in the world at that time, even though most weren’t aware of it; there was something that was the cause of all the unhappiness, suffering and evil in the world. Because of it, souls lived in a bondage and poverty more terrible than any caused by an opposing earthly enemy or material or economic poverty. Souls before the birth of Jesus were in bondage with no hope for true freedom, they were held in slavery to sin, the most horrible evil on earth, the antithesis of love, and the actual cause of the separation and infinite distance between God and men; because of sin all men were enemies to God, separated from God who is Love Itself; they weren’t free to choose the Good, the Beautiful and the True, to choose Love.

And so, before Jesus, no one could make it to heaven at all; everyone, everyone, was consigned to death, eternal death. This is why, as the bible tells us, the Christ had to be named Jesus. The name of Jesus means “God saves”—in other words, “Savior.” The name was assigned by eternal decree; likewise the reason: “For it is he who will save his people from their sins.” Today’s Gospel carefully records Jesus being given His name, that Most blessed of all Names.

And so, Jesus has come to offer to all men the possibility to be free, free from sin and free from eternal death. And if that wasn’t enough, He as even made it possible for those who would repent and believe in the Gospel, not only to be free from sin, but to become adopted sons and daughters of God the Father; free to choose He who is Goodness, Beauty and Truth Itself, Who is Love Itself.

Think of it: Do we really realize our great dignity? The Son of God became a son of man, so that the sons of men could become sons of God, actual partakers in the Divine Nature of God Himself. How can we even begin to begin to appreciate what the birth of Christ as done for us, each one of us? WE are now free to love, truly, authentically, fully!!! Free to love God and our neighbor for love of God, and even to love ourselves properly.

And so this is why we celebrate this Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God; it is because of her that we are able to celebrate Christmas. It was by her fiat, her yes of consent freely given that we received Jesus the Savior, while we were still in our sins, as today’s second reading reminds us. Without her yes, which she was free to not give, none of us here would have any hope of reaching God, reaching heaven. She has made it possible for God to come us, so that it would be possible for us to go to God. If not for her, no matter how “good” we would be, there would be no hope for eternal salvation. Because of her, because of her sacrifice we now have hope. She has given God a baby, His own Son, to offer in sacrifice for our life! To keep this solemn feast then is to show her our immense gratitude and love to the Blessed Virgin Mary as well as to Jesus.

Yes, in some respects our world today doesn’t seem much different than it was before the coming of Christ—men’s hearts are still cruel, the human person is still in many cases, such as in abortion, not valued much; and there is still immorality, dishonesty, and cruelty—everywhere; sadly, even among members of the Church. Souls are still separated from God by sin. But the big difference is now we have hope. God is no longer distant, somewhere out there high in His heaven; now because of Christmas and because of Our Lady, He is close, infinitely close to each one of us; closer in fact than we are to ourselves.

Because of Our Blessed Mother we can be free from sin and even more, infinitely more, we can enter into a divine union with God even while we walk yet on earth; a deep intimate friendship which goes beyond what the mind can even imagine or words can describe. Heaven has come to earth because of Mary, our heavenly Mother.

But, because of Mary, heaven continues to come to earth. The Incarnation of God as man is not just something that occurred two thousand years ago…No, it occurs now in our midst at the Holy Mass. Christmas is something that we can experience in our lives now!

In just a short while God descends, condescends from heaven to be “reborn” on this sacred Altar. This is the Mystery of Faith, and it has the power, infinite power to renew us and to renew our world through us. But only if we believe, only if we come before the “newborn” child with faith, and believe, adore, hope and love Him truly present in the Holy Eucharist in the flesh, as a man, as God still among us.

Now at this beginning of this New Year as in everyday of our lives, while we still breathe, we can begin a new, through the grace of the Sacrament of Confession, we can leave sin behind and choose to live in the freedom of God’s beloved sons and daughters. Because of the Mother of God we not only have a model to imitate but a advocate a helper to be with us as we strive to become better, holier, by turning away from sin to a new more fuller life in Christ. In the Holy Eucharist God is with us…He has come to free us from the one thing that can separate us from Him; He has come to save us from our sins.

Our Blessed Mother is with us at this Holy Mass and every Holy Mass, inspiring us to turn to the Eucharist in faith and “do whatever He tells us.” She will lead us to live more fully with her Son Jesus, who is God now with us. She will help us find Him and see Him, with the eyes of faith, both in the Holy Eucharist at every Mass, and in the depths of our souls were He longs and desires to become one with us, to actually share His Divinity and so His divine life within us, so great is His love for us.

Jesus chose to come into this world through Mary, and he continues to come into souls through holiness by grace which by divine decree comes only through her. And so obviously, we would all be well to turn to her for help as we make our New Year resolution to start anew in our growing in our love, our hope and our faith in Jesus our Lord and God in the Holy Eucharist. She will help us if we turn to her, to believe even when we don’t fully understand; to grow in prayer and so intimacy with Christ; to expand every ounce of our energy to bring Christ to others and of course to avoid sin and anything that might distract from her divine Son, to whom she points with confidence, hope and love.

Through Mary, heaven has comes to earth; through Mary, Heaven-Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, comes to dwell in each one of us!

2011-12-28T11:49:00.001-08:00

God continues to give us the gift of His Whole Self!

2011-12-24T13:43:00.000-08:00

The Solemnity of Christmas December 25th, 2011

Christmas as arrived. With it we are invited to enter into the crib at Bethlehem; and there, with the Virgin Mother and St. Joseph, behold the God, who out of love for us, became a little helpless babe and gaze upon Him with faith, hope and love. For only love inspired by faith and hope can believe this wonder, the wonder of the Incarnation-the true and living God who became man, one of us, who remains one of us and who remains with us.

In this wonder, the wonder of a child, we discover that Christmas is for children, because Christmas is all about a Child, the newborn Christ-child. Christmas invites all of us to become children before the Crib looking in humility at our God made man with the all of the wonder of young Child at Christmas looking at the presents under the tree. In this case, however, we look at the greatest of all presents ever given to the children of men, Jesus, Our Emmanuel-The God who is still with us in the Holy Eucharist, truly present in all the tabernacles of the world.

In the light of the Holy Eucharist, who is Jesus, we discover that Christmas is so more than just an anniversary of the birth of the baby Jesus, who was God among us, God become one of us. It is this, but much much more. Because it was the birth of Jesus who was and is our God became man. And because Jesus, Our Lord and God is still in the flesh, is still a man, Christmas is an event that can occur now in our midst. God continues to give us the gift of His Whole Self in the present.

At Holy Mass, not only at Christmas, but at every Holy Mass, God continues to become man on this Altar and all the altars of the world….He continues to come down from heaven in order to be “born” on our altar during Holy Mass. But we for our part must become as little children to open ourselves to the believe in this wonder…it isn’t a fairy tail, it isn’t a myth….it is the truth above all truths, the reality above all realities…it is where the hope and fears of all the world are met in Jesus tonight, who becomes truly present to us, not only in spirit but in the flesh as God among us.

In this mystery of faith, God offers us 'today,' now, to me, to you, to each one of us, the possibility of acknowledging and receiving him like the shepherds in Bethlehem, so that He might be born in our lives and renew them, illumine them, transform them by his grace, by his presence." (Pope Benedict )

I want now to speak here especially to the children among us. Dear Children you can see that we here have a very special new statue that was donated to us by some very special friends of our parish family. It is statue of Jesus as a little Child. Isn’t He wonderful! Ask your parents to bring you up next to the crib after Holy Mass, in order to see him closer, and to see him in the crib as well.

In fact, if you compare this statue of the little child Jesus, you can see that he resembles the baby Jesus in the crib in this way. See that His hands are open up just like the baby Jesus our crib. His hands are open because he wants to embrace you. He loves you so very much. Jesus is calling to all of you…He wants you to know that He is your very truest and dearest friend, and He will always listen to you if you call to Him in prayer.

Notice I have place the child Jesus over the tabernacle. In the tabernacle the child Jesus really and truly dwells. The tabernacle is like the crib at Bethlehem. Yet, Jesus is really there. And Jesus waits there with his arms open, with his heart open for the little children to come unto him in faith in order to be loved by Him. He offers you all of his love; He offers you, dear children, His heart.

Respond generously to the Lord Who calls you to be friends with Him. I promise you, He will never let you down." (Pope Benedict).

"Dear children, my friends. "I would like to ask you for one thing. As you answer this beautiful invitation from Jesus, take it to your friends and tell them. “Look, I have responded to Jesus’ call to me, and I am happy because I found a great Friend that I meet in prayer and that I can visit at any time, because He is truly present on earth with us in the Holy Eucharist, dwelling in the tabernacle and on the Altar at Holy Mass. I can hear Him speak to me in my heart and in the readings at Holy Mass…I can even receive Him into my heart and soul at Holy Communion.

My dear Children, my Christmas wish for you is that, you would come often to Church to embrace by Jesus who is holding His arms out to you as He offers you His Sacred Heart. And you would say to Jesus, “Dear Jesus, my dearest friend, come into my life and I will listen to you always.”

Finally, dear children, be sure to visit me after Holy Mass for I have a very special Christmas gift for you. Never forget that Jesus loves you so very much.

And now to all of God’s children both young and Old. In light of the mystery of Christmas, which is a mystery of God’s love, and now that all preparations have been made and we celebrate Christmas with our loved ones, now that the presents have been purchased and we share to joy of giving to those we love, have we overlooked one the most important aspect of Christmas? Have we prepared properly and given the present to the one who loves us the most-Jesus? It is His Birthday after all. Have we given to the Christ Child the one present that He desires this Christmas?

And that Present the Jesus wants most this Christmas is the gift of our self. Jesus wants us to give Him our heart for Christmas, our whole heart, and all of its love. Jesus wants us to give Him the gift of our lives, of all we are, all we do, and all we have.

Christmas is all about children. Let us not disappoint any child this Christmas. Most especially, let us not disappoint the Christ-Child who is God with us in the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar; and who comes to meet us this night, at this Holy Mass with arms open to embrace us, and Who holds out His Divine and Human heart for a present for us to embrace.

This Christmas, let us give Jesus the Present of ourselves, the present of our humble and contrite heart; let us give ourselves to Jesus totally, not just in words but through our worship and adoration of Him, not only at Christmas but every Sunday at Christ’s Mass, and by worshiping and adoring Him with our very lives in all that we think, say or do.

On behalf Fr. William, the parish staff and myself, I wish you and yours a very Merry, Blessed and Grace filled Christmas. And may the Christ Child who is calling to you, bless you and your family abundantly during this joyous season!!!

Forever and Ever...!!!

2011-12-17T18:36:00.000-08:00

4th Sunday in Advent. December 18th, 2011

Have you ever noticed when you listen to the readings on Sunday how many times the word forever is mentioned? It’s not only mentioned in the readings, but it is also mentioned at every prayer the priest prays at every single Mass, including this Sunday. I know our very own Fr. William even ends every homily with, “forever and ever.

As we continue with our joyful and penitential preparations for Advent, perhaps we can ask ourselves, “Do we take forever and ever for granted and gloss over its meaning for us? As a young teenager my mother once asked me when I was being particularly nasty with her, “Do you ever think of eternity son?” My glib answer was to tell her that I didn’t, since I didn’t have the time.” But how true her words were and still are. Eternity is forever and ever. It’s not that life is too short, it is that eternity is so long…forever and ever.

This Sunday as we almost complete the Advent Season and approach Christmas, let us all contemplate the eternal God who existed from all eternity and entered into our time and space and was born in a small stable at Bethlehem; and continues to reborn to us on the stable of our sacred altars and to remain with us in littleness in the Bethlehem of our Tabernacles. Whether we like it or not we too are going to exist forever and ever, with Him or without Him. It boggles the mind never ever, ever, never an end, but forever. I not sure we think of this enough…am not sure we take our eternal salvation seriously enough; so many distractions by things so much less important than forever.

The Christmas season is almost upon us and it is the one time when millions more than usual at least, think about the birth of Jesus. But why did He, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, why did He, the eternal God, become one of us? And in light of this questions, “What is the purpose of our lives?...Why do we exist…what or Who have we been made for…?” It is important to ponder all of this, since where we shall exist forever and how we shall exist forever and ever depends on our answer now, while we live in time and can still choose.

In the Gospel today, Mary’s response is a total ‘yes’ to God’s plan. Fiat, let it be done to me according to Your Will. Now, because of her ‘yes’ we can also freely choose to become and live as actual adopted sons and daughters of the God who chose to become one of us, in order to, not only save us, but to save us for Himself. And so, only those who decide to say ‘yes’ to Jesus, not only with words, but like Mary with their lives, will know the real meaning of Christmas; for millions others it is just another occasion to party and feast and to accumulate more material possessions, living their lives, not only like there is no tomorrow, but like there is no eternity. Yes, they can fool themselves with the concept that there is no heaven, or with the the false idea which believes that every goes to heaven any way, thinking to themselves after all I am good person, it’s the rest of the world that as to change. But is forever worth risking with such glib and incredible indifference.

This Sunday really listen to the words forever and ever. Ponder and pray about them; ask God to grant you the grace to change your heart in light of them. May you will never forget them now and each time you attend Mass; and may these words cause you to change your life for the better and even change your final destiny.

In light of forever and ever… let us turn to the Virgin Mary and ask her for her fervent love in our hearts so we too can receive our savior Jesus and as a result, be submissive to His Holy Will in our lives. When we receive Holy Communion, by our Amen we should be saying, ““Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum… Be it done unto me according to Thy Word.” Let me die to my self, to my will and let Jesus Christ be reborn in my very being so I can live with Him, Mary, Joseph and all of the angel and saints forever and ever and ever…Amen.

“Forever and ever…”

QUAERITUR: How to get Gregorian chant and a TLM in the parish.

2011-12-10T12:48:00.000-08:00

QUAERITUR: How to get Gregorian chant and a TLM in the parish.

"I am not the one. Jesus is the One!"

2011-12-10T12:43:00.001-08:00

Gaudete Sunday. Third Sunday in Advent. December 11th, 2011

We rejoice and are glad as we await the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is what we proclaim today as we celebrate this Third Sunday of Advent. The rose colored vestment symbolizes this great joy-Gaudete! We await Jesus coming just like His herald, John the Baptist. John shows us the way to Christ and how to wait with patient, but joyful hope.

In order to really understand today’s Gospel, we have to remember that during the first century in Israel, the Romans controlled the entire political and religious life of the people. And so, many people at the time of John were looking for political answers to this great oppression by the Romans. Now we have never had to live under foreign occupation in this country so it’s hard to image how terrible it must have been for the Israelites. In light of their great hardships, they asked; “Who would ever come to free them, who could possibly grant them liberty? They were a people whose hope was almost gone; the only hope they had left was in the prophecy of the coming of the Messiah.

These were the people who went out to see John the Baptist and so, “They asked John, “Are you the one, like Moses or David or Elijah that will lead a glorious and powerful army to victory over the Romans? Unfortunately, in their questions we see all too clearly that what little hope they had left, was placed solely in human power and solutions, such as politics and war. In other words, they trusted in man alone to save man; their hope was in a human Messiah, not a divine one. No wonder their hope was so weak.

John knew all too well the state of affairs in the country of Israel. Yet he saw hope not in human solutions, like politics and war, but in divine solutions. John saw the greatest enemy was not Roman’s, but was the people’s own infidelity to the Lord. He preached boldly about the need for repentance, about turning from the real oppressor-sin. He knew that the real problem of the day was the hardness of people hearts, their refusal to give their total yes to God as shown by their refusal to following God’s commandments and teachings and so offer true worship to the Lord. And so, John called them all to task, no exceptions; he called everyone, even Kings, to repentance-to turn away from the real cause of all the unhappiness, suffering, and even war in the world, which is sin, and to turn back in fidelity to the true and living God, the worship of Who, alone could give them true happiness and peace.

But John not only preached repentance, he lived it. John saw who he was in relation to God; he saw that he, himself was totally dependant on God for everything. “I am not the one, Jesus is the one.” John knew the truth, he knew he needed a savior, he knew he could not fix his own problems, he knew man could not and can never save man; and so he hoped in God alone--God alone can save.

And so, John pointed the world to the One who would come and who alone could fix the world—Jesus is the One. He is the one who will bring Glad tidings to the lowly, healing to the sick & liberty to the captives,. What glad tidings these are, and they make up the Good News of Jesus, the Gospel. This Gospel is not just a message, not just a holy book, the Gospel is a Person, a Divine Person, Jesus Christ—He is the Message! He is THE friend to the lowly, the poor in spirit, the sick and the oppressed, especially those who are sick, oppressed and in slavery to sin. Jesus will bring a victory, a victory much greater than any military victory over any enemy of this world.

Jesus shows us His definitive victory. One of the greatest military powers the world has ever seen threw everything that it had at him, even their greatest torture--crucifixion. The power of hell itself, threw everything it had at Him, even its greatest torture, the very power of death itself. And Jesus in return showed them and us an even greater power, the very power of God Himself. And because Jesus was God, it was His own power; and He used it to defeat the power of hell itself by His glorious resurrection. The Resurrection show us definitively that God’s power can swallow up anything the power of this world has to offer, anything the power of hell as to offer…especially the power of sin and death. This is indeed THE GOOD NEWS for us, for you and for me.

Jesus side is the winning side, the battle as already been won. But now the battle needs to be fought in each soul, inside each of us. If we are on His side, we will be victorious as well. But, we have to always keep in mind that the victory Jesus will lead us to will be primarily to a spiritual victory, like His. Jesus will not necessarily take all our troubles away, we still have to, like Him, suffer and die, but He will give us His own Divine Power in order to, not only to prevail and to persevere over our self will, over sin, but to do so with Joy and peace even amidst great sufferings. If we are with Jesus, no power in this world can defeat us; not even the devil himself; not even one of our greatest enemy, which is ourselves, can take away our hope in finally being victorious over our sins. With Jesus, and only with Jesus, we will reach the reward for all the victorious, union with God Himself and life forever with Him in heaven.

We live in a broken hearted world, one that is marked with conflict- wars, divisions, and a general disregard for God and the things of God. We want to see the solutions to all of our problems apart from God. It’s too easy fall into the trap of thinking that we can save ourselves; that we can solve all of our problems without conforming our lives to God’s truth and will in order to do it. Yet, this is so far from the truth. We are helpless and cannot save ourselves nor solve all of our problems apart from God and His truth. Politics can’t save us; only God can save; and He does so in the Person of Jesus Christ the Son of God who has become one of us in order to save us.

Jesus alone is the Answer…and Jesus comes to us through the Sacraments. It is only through the Sacraments, that the power of Jesus’ victory flows in order to brings liberty to the captives, captive to sin, which is all of us. The Sacraments alone have to power to set us free, to heals us, to save us. The Sacraments have the power to restore our fallen world; for the Sacraments have the power of God Himself…in fact one of the Sacraments is called the Most Blessed of all Sacraments because It is God Himself, in the flesh, in Person with all of His divine power and glory. And so this Sacrament of all Sacraments, the Holy Eucharist is alone the Answer because it is Jesus, and as I said, Jesus Alone is the Answer.

But we can only, access this Power of all powers through faith, by believing, adoring, trusting and loving, and begging pardon for those, including our own lack of faith, who do not believe, adore, hope and love. We will never, never, overcome our current woes, not to mention prevent our world from sliding more into chaos, into hell, until more Catholics come with strong and living faith, before the Holy Eucharist, having first been purified by worthy Sacramental confessions, and there in front of the very Person of God’s Divine Mercy, Jesus, present in the fullness of His Humanity and the fullness of His divinity, beg the Eternal Father for mercy on us and upon our whole world.

Gaudete! Let us rejoice, we have a God who has come, and who comes again in through the Sacraments in order to offer us His saving and healing power, the power of His Humanity and Divine Love. Let us have hope…for Hope has a name, and that name is Jesus, and through faith, we process this Hope in the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, the God who heals, frees and saves those who come to Worship Him and adore Him.

Let us pray. St. John the Baptist, through your intercession, help us to have your same attitude, help us to have a humble submission to God and to live for Him alone. Help us to see that the cause of all, all, unhappiness, suffering and unrest in the world, even war, the cause of all man’s problems, is not great opposing military, or great power in the world, but the cause is our own infidelity to the Lord, that is doing our own thing, in other words, sin. John show us that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus--the Lamb of God, the One alone who has the power to free, to heal, and to save. Help us to be like you, faithful to the Lord even to our last breath, so that by our lives and even by our death, we too may point out to others, the true Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world-Jesus truly Present in the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.

Our Lady of the New Advent, through your intercession obtain for us the grace of the Holy Spirit to help us to open the gates of hearts fully at this Holy Mass in order that the Heart of Christ truly present in the Holy Eucharist, may come fully in, and make us one with Him and through Him, one with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“BACK TO THE PEOPLE!” “AGAINST VATICAN II!” “COMMUNION IN THE HAND!” “PARTICIPATION!” “LATIN!”

2011-12-08T07:35:00.000-08:00

“BACK TO THE PEOPLE!” “AGAINST VATICAN II!” “COMMUNION IN THE HAND!” “PARTICIPATION!” “LATIN!”

The Immaculate Conception

2011-12-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

In 1854, Pope Pius IX's solemn declaration, Ineffabilis Deus, clarified with finality the long-held belief of the Church that Mary was conceived free from original sin. In proclaiming the Immaculate Conception of Mary as a dogma of the Church, the pope expressed precisely and clearly that Mary was conceived free from the stain of original sin. This privilege of Mary derives from God's having chosen her as Mother of the Savior; thus she received the benefits of salvation in Christ from the very moment of her conception.

This great gift to Mary, an ordinary human being just like us, was fitting because she was destined to be Mother of God. The purity and holiness of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a model for all Christians. But not just a model, she is the also the hope for all Christians. She is the hope because through her we can have access to Christ in a otherwise inaccessible manner. Through her, by the "overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, we can become, like her, though divine grace, worthy dwelling places of her Son.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says of the Immaculate Conception of Mary:
490. To become the mother of the Savior, Mary "was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role". The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as "full of grace". In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God's grace.

491. Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1844:
"The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of
almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all
stain of original sin." (Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, 1854.)

492. The "splendor of an entirely unique holiness" by which Mary is "enriched from the first instant of her conception" comes wholly from Christ: she is "redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son." The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person "in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" and chose her "in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love."

493. The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God "the All-Holy" (Panagia) and celebrate her as "free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature". By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.

The immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary has its origins in today's Gospel. The Archangel Gabriel said to Mary in greeting: Hail, Full of Grace. This name given to Mary- Full of Grace- is a title to her and shows us that God HImself calls her Full of Grace.

Full of Grace means all of the merits and graces gained by her Son, Jesus Christ as he died upon the cross- were given to Mary at the moment of her conception in the womb of Saint Anne. (you may want to say a few words about devotion to her.)

The Fullness of Grace given to Mary as a gift were never lost or diminished in her life- until she was Assumed into heaven. The grace of Christ was fully given to her throughout her life. Mediating on the mysteries of the Rosary helps us to see this.

For us, we must know because of the Blessed Virgin, there is available to us this same fullness of grace. We are sinners and are in great need of grace. Our Lady helps us obtain the grace we need to be faithful disciples of Christ.

We need help with our daily struggles and crosses. We too often try to limit our Lord in answering our prayers. Like the Virgin, we must follow the way of the cross. However, we tend to draw back and naturally are not wanting to do this. Life, however, takes over- the circumstances which we have no control over, cause us to suffer, to struggle and sometimes to loose hope. Todays feast should revive our hope, for there is unlimited grace in Christ.

But even more; God prepared a worthy dwelling place for his Son in the Immaculate Conception; God too, by grace and holiness, wants to prepare a worthy dwelling place in us for the Son in the Spirit. We for our part must, like the Virgin, give Him our yes, our fiat! This of course is not a one time thing; our fiat is given each time we choose right over wrong, truth over error; the Church’s teachings over the teachings of the world; virtue over sin; in other words; each time we choose God’s Holy will over our own selfish will; each time we for love of God put the needs of others before our own.

While this seems like an impossible task; what is impossible for men is possible for God through the intercession of the Virgin. If we turn to her in greater love and devotion, she will help us to draw closer to her Son, Jesus; through her powerful intercession, through her fiat her yes, the Holy Spirit will come and rebirth the Son of God in us through holiness. And then although not conceived Immaculate, we will live Immaculate and die Immaculate; in other words, we will be saints, one with God, God dwelling in us; God going out to the world, in us, through us, and with us.

Come Holy Spirit Come, Come by means of the powerful intercession of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Thy well-beloved spouse. (3x) amen. Immaculate Conception, Mediatrix of All Grace, Co-redemptrix, pray for us poor sinners who have recourse to thee. Amen.

2011-11-26T19:22:00.000-08:00

Homily for Mark 13:33-37
First Sunday of Advent 2011-12

Today we begin the season of Advent and this one is particularly special for us as we begin to use the new translation of the Mass. Over the next few weeks we are all in the process of learning the new prayers. It may be a struggle for us, as all of us are used to say the same things for Mass for the past forty years. Yet, I invite you to take a new look at the prayers of the Mass and in particular, when you hear something new, take a moment to reflect on it and the new language. There will be many, as the opening collects, prayers over the gifts and post communion prayers are all changed. Just think for the next three years you will hear something new at Mass each week.

We can begin with the opening collect from today’s Mass. Our prayer said that we “resolve to RUN forth to MEET Christ, with righteous deeds at his coming.” Our time of advent is this- to RUN to meet Christ. It is a great way to look at our advent preparations. Think of how much running around you will do between this weekend and Christmas. Perhaps you ran this weekend to the store for gifts. But the verb run is one that is active. We just do not want to run to the store, but run to meet Christ.

The Fact is, is that Jesus has come down from heaven in order to run to meet us. God runs to embrace us. But we for our part must run to meet him. We can all picture two lovers running toward each other to embrace. This is what we must do with Jesus, Run to embrace the God who runs to embrace us. How do we run to meet Christ?

We run with our righteous deeds. This means more than just being good. One way we can run to Christ with righteous deeds is by beginning this Advent to be more faithful to our daily Prayer. Prayer is one of the main ways we can run to embrace Christ who comes to us.

Secondly we can run to meet Christ by studying our faith this advent, learning more about our God who loves us so much He runs to us from heaven in order to embrace us on earth. He comes in order to takes us back with Him to be one with the Father as He is one with the Father. To know God is to love God, to discover His love for us and to return that love by allowing our intellect to inform our will to chose God in all things and to do His will and not our own. Love always sacrifices the will for the will of the other.

Another way we can run to meet Christ is through the Sacraments. Our sins weigh us down and inhibit us from running to Christ who runs to us. Our sins make us tumble and fall. Advent itself, is a penitential season, a time to look at ourselves and resolve to repent and reform our lives.

And finally the best way to run to meet Christ is through the Sacred Liturgy. In fact, here at Holy Mass is where God literally comes from heaven and runs to meet us in the Holy Eucharist. But we can’t just sit here, we must lift up our hearts and run to embrace Him..this is really what it means to take an active and full part in the Holy Mass. We begin by studying more about the Mass. All of the prayers that we say at Holy Mass are now better, fuller, more accurate and more theologically rich, they are a treasure house of grace for us. We can read these prayers before we even come to Mass and mediate on them and pray them.
The “Magnificat” is a wonderful resource here. New daily missals will be coming. Or we can go online to the bishops website.
Advent is a time for new beginnings. Surely this Advent is a unique time in history, an unprecedented time of grace for us. Ten years from now the liturgical landscape is going to be much different. I don’t know if the numbers of those attending Holy Mass is going to rise, but I do know that those who are attending will be stronger, holier, Catholics. They will know and understand the liturgy better, they will truly be participating in the liturgy more fully, actively, consciously, and this will bear great fruit in their lives and in the world.

The Eucharist is literally the Lord running to embrace you…He is coming….He is running to meet us at this and every Holy Mass. Let us rise and go to meet the Lord, through adoration. Let us rise and run to meet the Lord…May our Lady, mother of the New Advent run with us to meet the Lord, to embrace Him to become one with Him in the unfathomable intimacy of Divine Love. Amen.

Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

2011-10-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. October 16th, 2011

Today’s Gospel brings out the darkness of the hearts of those who opposed Jesus’ intrusion into their lives—they were religious in appearance but in their hearts they sought to live a life far apart from God—they refused to give to God what belonged to Him, namely their lives, their hearts and wills; in other words they refuse to adore Him, they refused to accept Him and his teachings and open their lives to His Divine Grace in order to begin to conform their lives in obedience to His Truth and His Will.

And so to justify themselves, these so-called religious tried to trap Jesus in catch 22. They pose a very clever question. If Jesus would answer “that the tax should be paid, the Pharisees would accuse Him to the people of collaborating with the Romans. Because the people saw paying taxes as nothing less than financing Rome’s continual domination of the nation of Israel, the people would then turn against Jesus and no longer follow Him. If Jesus would answer, “not to pay the taxes,” then the ill-willed Herodians would have grounds to turn Jesus over to the Romans and have Him arrested for His opposition to the state, for his trying to stir up rebellion among the people.

In response, Jesus gives His enemies a very clever and profound answer, an answer which goes far beyond their twisted expectations. He doesn’t just give them a yes or no answer, He gives them the true perspective—“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. In other words, Jesus teaches them and us the proper relationship between church and state, and of our obligation to support both the Church and the state. Jesus puts back into order what was out of order. First and foremost, Jesus taught the Herodians and all those who were listening, that God is first, and so God alone is the determiner of truth, not man, collectively or individually.

Today, Jesus continues to teach us that the state does not enjoy absolute power and dominion. Yes it has its own sphere of dominion, but it is limited. As a consequence, the rights of the state cannot usurp the rights of God, and go against the rights of the human person created in the image and likeness of God.
God has revealed to man what is right and wrong; He has even written it on the heart of man. And so, no man is free to decide for himself what is right or wrong; to call virtue vice and vice virtue; to reject the truth about sin as an offense against God and against man. The government for its part is called to uphold this proper order between Creator and creature; to uphold the rights of God.

And so, the laws of the state, if they are to be just, can never contradict the Laws of God. Instead, the principles of God and the sacredness of human life, should be the guiding light for the enactment of the laws of state. By the way, the political debate should be the means, the method we use to ensure God’s law is respected and human life is protected; and this is why we are obliged to promote the truth and fight unjust laws-laws which go against the common good of all. Like paying taxes, this is a duty we Christians owe to the state.

The notion that we Christians should not and may not participate in the public forum and make our voices known is to exclude God Himself from the public square. Ultimately, it is man literally ignoring the existence of God, at its heart this is what communism and secularism does. In the words of the Second Vatican it is a practical atheism.

When man tries to create a society devoid of God and his truth and laws, the collapse of the society is inevitable, but not before a great increase of evil, tyranny and the resulting catastrophic suffering and death. One would think we have enough examples from history to prove this point. If we Catholics don’t do everything we can to end this current trend of Godlessness and its resulting holocaust against human life by our own turning more from sin, repenting, and turning more to God through intense prayer and penance, then the very least of our worries will be the economy, I can assure you.

With regard to taxes, giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s, Christians have a duty to give to the state whatever material and personal services they are able in order to support the common good. But the state then has the corresponding responsibility to enact laws and govern with the greatest respect for the common good of all people including, and most especially, the most vulnerable, those that cannot protect themselves. This obligation of the state includes the protection of human life from the moment of conception to natural death, the defense of the family and consequently, the protection of marriage as an in-dissolvable union between one man and one woman as define by God and by natural law as a means to bring new life into the world to adore God, the protection of religious liberty and the rights of parents, not the state, to be the primary educators of their children.

So we must support the state so it can fulfill its earthly natural purpose or end--which is domestic peace and harmony; but even more so, Jesus points out today as well, our higher obligation to support the Church so that it may carry out its supernatural purpose or end: which is to bring about eternal peace and harmony-better known as the kingdom of God, that kingdom for which man was created and for which he is to be saved. Politics alone cannot save society or man. According to the Code of Cannon Law, which is the internal law of the Church, the law necessary for her to exist as a visible society, and the law that every single Catholic is obliged in conscience to obey in order to show their love for Jesus, according to Canon law:

“Christ’s faithful have the obligation to provide for the temporal needs of the Church, so that the Church has available to it those things which are necessary for divine worship, for the works of the apostolate and of charity and for the worthy support of the ministers.” (code of Canon Law n. 222).

However, this duty of ours goes far beyond just the gift of treasure or tax to the support of Christ’s Church. We must also support the Church with our time and talent, and most especially support it spiritually. We must always remember that the collection at the offertory only represents our offering of ourselves to the Father in union with Christ’s Sacrifice on the Altar. This is why the priest says, “Pray brethren that our sacrifice, mine and yours, may be acceptable to God our Father.” We are not asking the Father to accept the Sacrifice of the Mass, that is Jesus’ sacrifice, of course that’s acceptable. We are asking Him to accept our individual sacrifice, not just our money but more importantly ourselves, all that we have and are, especially our will. WE are to offer our lives for the love of God and for the mission of the Church (including the church in our midst-St. Patrick’s parish family. Love of God must be shown by our love for our parish family and support of it’s mission) and what is the mission of the church? The evangelization of the world to the truth of the Gospel message for the spread of the Kingdom of God and for the conversion and salvation of souls for Christ..

This points out very clearly what Christ does not mean by this verse, “give to Caesar what belong to Caesar and to God what belongs to God,” Christ doesn’t, does not, mean that we relegate our service to God, that is our faith to the private sphere. Christ did not intend to relegate religion to a private affair only carried out in the temple, but not in daily life in the world, as if the world could somehow develop apart from God’s law and Christian law and morality. Of course, that is an illusion; as we have said, the world trying to go along without God’s law is doomed to failure and collapse—God is God, he pervades the entire world—it is His and without Him it cannot exist. Religion is the necessary element that forms the consciences of its citizens and brings about the “creation of an ethical consensus in society” (Pope Benedict). Religion is the conscience of a country and faithful Catholics are it’s soul, it fact they are the anima mundi—the soul of the world!

Every Christian, each one of us is called and challenged to be light and salt in the middle of the world. We are all called to love God, have an intimate and loving prayer with Him through prayer, study, and the Sacraments. And because of this love, we are call to go live our mission; to take the truth about God and man, and the truth about God’s love for man, out into the public arena, to all our neighbors. We are called to live as children of God in order to bring his light, his truth and his way into the halls of our schools, of our governments, our jobs as well as in the living rooms of our friends, and yes, a resounding yes, into the voting booth.

Ite missa est!!!, Not the Mass is ended go in peace, but go forth, fulfill your mission, take what you have received in the Holy Eucharist, namely Jesus, the God who is Love, and through Him, with Him and in Him, transform the world in which you live and work, transform it through Love. By our holiness of life, and with God’s love in us, we can transform the world, we can make it more humane, more human, changing our current culture of death into a culture of light and life, then and only then will we have peace and security.

Us Catholics truly do have the answer for our modern age’s terrible moral and religious void and consequently its spiritual darkness, which is the very source of its current woes. Let us with the help of the blessed Virgin Mary mother of all nations, give unto God what belongs to God, our obedience to his truth in love and our entire life and everything in it for His honor and glory. Let us ask her to help us to pray in order to make reparation for the exclusion of God and His truth from our society. Ultimately to give to God what is God's means to give Him ourselves, for we are His and to Him we belong and are called to return; may we indeed be counted among those he has chosen and be instruments of salvations for others as well. Amen.

Our love of God is to actually first to receive His love and mercy.

2011-10-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

Homily for Matthew 22: 34-40 Thirtieth Sunday (Extra-Ordinary Form).

In our Gospel today, we continue with more testing of Jesus by the chief priests and elders. Their intentions are of course not pure. They don’t care about the truth, they are just trying to trip Jesus up…get something they can use against him. As we heard last week, Jesus silenced them regarding the question about healing on the Sabbath.

Today, Jesus is asked which of the 613 laws are most important. It would seem to be a fairly hard question. Out of the 613, if I ignore one, how will that affect the others? Often, such as last week, Jesus does not answer the question directly. Jesus is very clever; he usually turns the question back on the chief priest and elders. He does this however, not just to trip them up but to answer the question in way that would lead those who are open to His grace closer to God; in other words, to lead them closer to Himself.

Today however, Jesus does answers the question directly: What is the greatest commandment? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."

Love God and love neighbor. We hear something we hear so often, and yet we find it so hard to do. Jesus says something so simple and we really want to love God and love our neighbor, but we really struggle; especially we want to love our family fully, yet it seems the more we try the more we fail. We have to ask ourselves why we fail; why can we love the way we ought or the way we want?

I think we often can accuse ourselves of a lack of effort as the reason for your failure to love:

-we have not loved God with all our mind- we have failed to diligently study our faith by reading the Scriptures or the Catechism or other resources for our faith.

-We have failed to love God with our whole heart: we have not put enough effort in our prayer live. We have failed in prayer by failing to make it a priority in our lives; perhaps this is because of our busy schedules or the children or we become so distracted in our prayers that it seems futile or we just don’t “feel” like it.

-We have failed to love God with all our strength because we have put our own will before His. We have put our comfort before really doing what God wants us to do.

I would like to suggest perhaps something you might not think. Perhaps we have failed to love God because we have not placed first things first. If Jesus says we have to love God, what does Scripture say about loving God? “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.” Our love of God is to actually first to receive His love and mercy. This is what Jesus is trying to do with his hearers today…He is trying to lead them to Himself, to recognize in faith His divinity so that they can adore Him and open themselves to His Divine Love and Mercy.

The fact that we fail to love Him and fail to love our neighbors is because we are not full of His love, but full of our own self-love. The more we open ourselves to the love of God the more his love overcomes our selfish love, purifies us for love, and strengthens us to, for love. We just cannot love our neighbor, especially our family members, unless we first open ourselves to God’s love and mercy in our own lives. But we can love God and Neighbor, if we allow God to love us first. We do this most fully by our adoration of God.

The first Commandment is really first and foremost a commandment to adore God. Adoration places us as humble creature before God recognizing our complete and absolute dependency on God our Loving Creator. Adoration places us in contact with this Creator God who is Love Itself. We adore God not for God’s sake, but for our own. Adoration opens us to God’s love in our lives and in our families.

Our adoration of God can occur any time, but primarily it must occur before God incarnate truly present in the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is the God who is Love become Man before us in order that we can be in the presence of He who is Love. Jesus, as I said wants to lead us to Himself. In His True Presence we can experience Love of God is way like no other, we can receive His mercy in order open ourselves up more fully to His love. And by opening ourselves to His love we can offer ourselves to Him in order to become one with Him. This oneness can then occur sacramentally as we literally receive our Love in Holy Communion.

Adoration of God in the Holy Eucharist is not always easy especially for us moderns who have to be “doing” something. And so, just being present before the Holy Eucharist in silent adoration can seem like we are wasting our time. However nothing can be further from the case, time spend before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament can be the most active time we can spend on this earth…Heart speaking to Heart, Love making us one with Himself, us allowing Him do to so, so that we can love Him and love our neighbor, our friends, parishioners and family members as we ought as we desire; even more so we can love them for Jesus, with Jesus’ love.

Let us ask make a new priority in our prayer-Jesus today, just like in our Gospel wants to lead us who are open, more and more to His divinity by leading us more and more to His Humanity in the Holy Eucharist. Through the intercession of the Blessed Mother may we be given the grace to be open to God’s love in our lives, especially during our adoration the God-Man Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. May the Adoration of Jesus truly present in the most Blessed Sacrament of the altar be the priority of our lives and the lives of our families, including our parish family as well. Amen.

2011-10-01T14:24:00.001-07:00

This week in place of my regular homily I am reading the following statement from Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo.

STATEMENT FOR RESPECT LIFE MONTH
Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo Chairman, Committee on Pro-Life Activities United States Conference of Catholic Bishops September 26, 2011
This October the Catholic Church throughout the United States will observe Respect Life Month, an annual tradition now in its fortieth year.

Beginning on October 2, 2011—Respect Life Sunday—Catholics across the nation will join together to witness to the inherent equality and transcendent value of every human being.

In countless liturgies and events we will give thanks to God for the gift of human life, and pray for his guidance and blessings on our efforts to defend the most vulnerable members of the human family.

We will voice our opposition to the injustice and cruelty of abortion on behalf of those victims whose voices have been silenced. At the same time, we will remind the living victims of abortion—the mothers and fathers who grieve the loss of an irreplaceable child—that God’s mercy is greater than any human sin, and that healing and peace can be theirs through the sacrament of reconciliation and the Church’s Project Rachel Ministry.

The theme chosen for this year’s Respect Life Program is I came so that all might have life and have it to the full. In this brief explanation of his mission (cf. John 10:10), Jesus refers both to our hope of eternal life, to be restored through his death and resurrection, and to our life in this world.

By following Jesus’ new Commandment of unselfish love, our lives can be richly fulfilling, and marked by joy and peace. In contrast, treating others as either means or obstacles to one’s self- serving goals, while never learning to love generously, is an impoverished way to live.

Viewing life as a “zero sum” game, in which advancing one’s interests requires putting aside the needs of others, can lead to callous unconcern for anyone who is especially weak, defenseless, and in need of our help. The unborn child, the aging parent who some call a “burden” on our medical system, the allegedly “excess” embryo in the fertility clinic, the person with a disability, the cognitively impaired accident victim who needs assistance in receiving food and water to live—each today is at risk of being dismissed as a “life unworthy of life.”

Jesus’ promise of “life to the full” is especially poignant today, when our culture and sometimes our government promote values inimical to the happiness and true good of individuals and society. We face increasing attempts to expunge God and religious discourse from public life. This promotes the dangerous proposition that human beings enjoy no special status by virtue of their God-given humanity. Some now even seek to eliminate religiously motivated people and organizations from public programs, by forcing them to violate their moral and religious convictions or stop serving the needy.

The same forces, aided by advertising and entertainment media, promote a selfish and demeaning view of human sexuality, by extolling the alleged good of sexual activity without love or commitment. This view of sex as “free” of commitment or consequences has no place for openness to new life. Hence contraceptives are promoted even to young teens as though they were essential to women’s well-being, and abortion defended as the “necessary” back-up plan when contraceptives fail. And fail they do. Studies report that most women seeking abortions were using contraception in the month they became pregnant. Again and again, studies show that increasing access to contraception fails to reduce rates of unplanned pregnancies and abortions.

Both these trends—a distorted view of sexuality and a disdain for the role of religion—are exhibited by the Department of Health and Human Services’ recent decision on the “preventive services” to be mandated in virtually all private health plans under the new health care law. The Department ruled that such mandated services will include surgical sterilization and all FDA- approved contraceptive drugs and devices—including the abortifacient drug “Ella,” a close analogue to the abortion pill RU-486.

The decision is wrong on many levels. Preventive services are aimed at preventing diseases (e.g., by vaccinations) or detecting them early to aid prompt treatment (e.g., screening for diabetes or cancer). But pregnancy is not a disease. It is the normal, healthy state by which each of us came into the world. Far from preventing disease, contraceptives can have serious health consequences of their own, for example, increasing the risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease, such as AIDS, increasing the risk of breast cancer from excess estrogen, and of blood clots that can lead to stroke from synthetic progestin. Mandating such coverage shows neither respect for women’s health or freedom, nor respect for the consciences of those who do not want to take part in such problematic initiatives.

The “religious employer” exemption offered by the Department is so extremely narrow that it protects almost no one. Catholic institutions providing health care and other services to the needy could be forced to fire their non-Catholic employees and cease serving the poor and vulnerable of other faiths—or stop providing health coverage at all. It has been said that Jesus himself, or the Good Samaritan of his famous parable, would not qualify as “religious enough” for the exemption, since they insisted on helping people who did not share their view of God.

All these misguided efforts to foster false values among our youth, to silence the voice of moral truth in the public domain, and to deprive believers of their constitutionally-protected right to live according to their religious convictions, must be resisted by education, public advocacy, and above all by prayer.

The founders of our nation understood that religion and morality are essential to the survival of a freedom-loving society. John Adams expressed this conviction, stating: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

Catholics must not shrink from the obligation to assert the values and principles we hold essential to the common good, beginning with the right to life of every human being and the right of every woman and man to express and live by his or her religious beliefs and well-formed conscience.

As Pope Benedict XVI reminded us last year in one of his Ad Limina addresses to visiting bishops, “a society can be built only by tirelessly respecting, promoting and teaching the transcendent nature of the human person.” That common nature transcends all accidental differences of age, race, strength, or conditions of dependency, preparing us to be one human family under God.

During this Respect Life Month, as we celebrate God’s great gift of life, let us pray and reflect on how each of us might renew our commitment and witness to “respecting, promoting and teaching the transcendent nature of the human person,” thereby shoring up the foundations of a society sorely in need of this guidance.

God's ways are not our ways!

2011-09-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

Matthew 20, 1-16 Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Sept. 18th, 2011

Today in our first reading God, through the prophet Isaiah, invites us sinners to gaze at the sky and see how far it is above the earth. In our day, we would probable say it this way, “look up and see how infinite far are the reaches of the universe, how vast it’s space.” Isaiah here is pointing out the reality that even vaster than the reaches of the universe, God’s ways are above our ways. So much so is this true, that we are unable to grasp the infinite ways of God who continually invites us and all sinners, no matter how big, to receive His forgiveness and His unearned, infinite, merciful love. Today’s psalm goes on to tells us that God is near to all who call upon Him.

In light of last week’s Gospel in which God our Lord commands us to forgive “always,” even those who most terribly trespass against us-sin against us, we can easily agree with Isaiah. This past Sunday, I heard a newscaster interviewing a priest about 9-11. He began by reading last Sunday’s Gospel’s on forgiveness and then asking the priest, “does this mean I have to forgiven even the men who killed all those innocent people when they flew those planes into the World Trade Center?” The answer is of course, “Yes! Even them.” So far are God’s ways above ours.

This past week as well we celebrated the feast of the “Exultation of the Holy Cross.” This feast points out to us that God’s ways are definitely not ours. We have a God who became man in order to die to forgive the worst sins, to save the most harden and evil sinner. Although the most innocent of all men, He allowed himself to suffer the most horrible torture and death by these same sinners, crying out to the Father, “forgive them for they know not what they do!” Here, Jesus, was not just speaking of those who tortured and killed him, but of all sinners throughout the ages, including you and me, whom he would die for in order to offer the possibility of salvation, of eternal life.

I think this is the way to understand the parable in this week’s Gospel, which is by the way, I think, one of the hardest parables to accept. This parable seems to goes against our sense of justice, our sense of fairness! But when you look at it in terms of salvation it makes perfect sense. The “day” that the parable speaks about is really the day of a lifetime. Origen, one of the Father’s of the Church, said, “For the whole of this present life may be called one day, long to us, short compared to the existence of God.” To us life seems so long, but it is really just a “day” in the eyes of the Lord.

Our Lord desires that all men be saved, and so his patience is directed toward salvation. As long as one lives, God offers His Divine Mercy and love to the soul; and so even though the soul comes to Christ late in life, God will still draw near and take the soul to Himself. Every soul is precious in the eyes of the Lord.

With all that being said, this parable is also a warning for those of us in the Church already. Jesus is saying to us, “You have received the great privileged of having come into the Church already. In later days others will come in, but you must not claim a special honor and a special place because you came before them. Again, all men, no matter when they come, are equally precious to God.” Here Jesus is warning those who think that because they have been members of the Church for a long time, the Church practically belongs to them and they can dictate its policy. All the members of the Church are then supposed to bow down to what they want or think, to their own personal likes or dislikes… This points out another deeper warning.
While we have to be in the vineyard, that is, in the Church in order to be with Jesus, we also have to toil in the vineyard, producing the fruit of leading souls to God. We can’t be idle within the vineyard. Here’s what Pope Benedict said about this parable:

It is clear that that denarius {used in this parable} represents eternal life, a gift that God reserves for everyone. Indeed, precisely those who are considered "last," if they will accept it, become "first," while the "first" can run the risk of becoming "last." The first message of this parable is in the fact itself that the owner does not tolerate, so to speak, unemployment: He wants everyone to work in his vineyard. And in reality, being called itself is already the first recompense: Being able to work in the Lord's vineyard, putting yourself at his service, cooperating in his project, constitutes in itself an inestimable reward, which repays all toil.

The Holy Father goes on to say:

But this is understood only by those who love the Lord and his Kingdom. Those who, instead, work solely for the pay will never recognize the value of this priceless treasure (Pope Benedict’s Angelus Message September 21, 2008).

To work for “pay” only, that is what we are going to get out of it, leads to seeing God’s great generosity of bringing souls into the vineyard and giving them the same pay and friendship with Him only as unjust or unfair. If we are practicing stewardship, that is, giving of ourselves, our time, talent and treasure for the Kingdom of God and its work of saving souls, far from being jealous of new comers we will welcome them as members of the family, members whom we ourselves have worked hard to bring in, in order to join in the labor for other souls. It goes without saying then how much faithful stewardship has to do with the very essence of what it means to be Christ’s “faithful stewards.” Not to practice stewardship will ultimately lead us to becoming last in the Kingdom, not matter when we came in, and we will lose our eternal reward.

This advent the New Missal to be used in the English Speaking world will be implemented. One of the Changes will be with the words of consecration said over the wine in order to change it into the precious Body and Blood of Jesus. Now the priest says, “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the New and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins will be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.” The new translation will be, “This is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for the many. Do this in memory of me.” Beside the obvious change from cup to chalice…(one drink many things from a cup…coffee, tea, etc, but the precious Blood of Jesus Christ is drunk from a chalice) besides this obvious change there is another…the change from saying, “shed for you and for all” to “shed for you and for the many.” (in the Latin it has always been for the many or “multis” in the original Latin).

This change in the English translation more fully brings out the fact, that while Christ died for all, not all will accept his gratuitous infinite gift of salvation, only the “many” will….the others will remain idle either within the vineyard or with out. In the end justice will be fully served and we will receive our recompense for what we have done or fail to do. Only those who come into the Kingdom and work and sacrifice themselves in the vineyard for love of God and for love and for the salvation of souls out of love for Him will share in the fruit of the final harvest. And that fruit is eternal life, unbelievable happiness immersed in the eternal Family of God, in the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and all the angels and saints.

The Virgin Mary is the perfect vine in the Lord's vineyard. From her there grew the blessed fruit of divine love: Jesus, Our Savior. May she help us to respond always and with joy to the Lord's call, and to find our happiness in the possibility of toiling for the Kingdom of Heaven. (The end of Pope Benedict’s Angelus Message September 21, 2008"

To forgive is divine.

2011-09-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

Matthew 18, 21-35. Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary time. Sept 11, 2011

The Book of Sirach, from which our first reading was taken, must have been one of Jesus’ favorite books of Scripture because He often talked about the moral teachings that are included in it. The Book of Sirach was, in fact, written about 200 years before Jesus was born; and ever since that time it has frequently been used for moral teaching and for its insights into human nature, or I should say fallen human nature.

In today’s reading we hear the author of the book, a man named, Jesus Ben Sirach, writing, "Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail." Sirach, then goes on to argue that one who has been faulted must forgive if he is to really keep the commandments; especially the highest of all Commandments-to Love God above all and then to love your neighbor for love of God.

In our gospel, Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive the sins committed against him. Peter asks, "As many as seven times?" I don’t know about you but (in our society) seven times seems kind of high; we have a very vengeful society-just look at our movies. As the bad guy is getting his, by the good guy who is dealing out vengeance more than justice, how many of us haven’t egged the “good guy” on, and in our minds hoped that vengeance would be served? In our hearts we may have even cried out, “kill the creep.”

But, what does Jesus tell Peter? (Pause) We must forgive seventy-seven times, which literally means we must never stop forgiving—or as it means in the original Hebrew, we must forgive always. It seems to me that if we take what Jesus tells us seriously, we truly must have a change of heart. To forgive as Jesus instructs us, commands us, we must we truly become serious followers of Christ, and as St. Paul tells us, "live no longer for ourselves but for Christ." We must become so imbued, so filled with the Holy Spirit that forgiveness becomes part of our nature, part of who we are.

All of us have been sinned against, trespassed against. To live in the real world is to be abused or to be betrayed, to not be respected or to not be listened to, to be cheated and lied to, to be pushed around, to be used and to be insulted, sadly, even by those in our families or in our parish family; us priests or not exempted.

But what do we do with the pain of abuse that is thrown at us? Do we hold the pain in our hearts and, as Sirach says, "hug wrath and anger tight?" Are we resentful to those who have hurt us? In our spare time do we think of ways to get back at those who have hurt us…vengeance? Do we close our hearts to them and act as if they don’t exist? Do we wait for them to come crawling back to us, groveling back to us? Or, do we have some other way to justify our un-forgiveness, and so avoid forgiveness, hang on to the resentment and "hold tight to our wrath and anger?" (Pause) Or, instead do we follow Jesus’ commandment to not hate our neighbor and instead act as Jesus does; forgiving even when the person who is to be forgiven does not, by any worldly standard (or our own standard), either deserve or maybe even care to be forgiven?

Because forgiveness is a divine attribute, it is not an overstatement to say, “that to forgive someone who has really hurt us is divine”- to forgive is divine. In order to forgive as Christ asks us, to forgive as Christ forgives, we need the help and grace of God. How incredibly much God as forgiven each one of us (no exceptions). In light of this truth, St Jose Maria Escriva, said, “Force yourself, if necessary, always to forgive those who offend you, from the very first moment. For the greatest injury or offence that you can suffer from them is as nothing compared with what God has pardoned you.”

When we realize how incredibly much God has forgiven each one of us our trespasses, how can we but not forgive those who have trespassed against us. I remember someone confessing to me that they had committed a sin equal to murder; and then later on saying that they could not forgive one of their loved ones who had wrong them. The forgiveness of our brother becomes easier to the extant that we realize how grievous our own personal sins really are, how much they offend God and hurt our neighbor and ourselves. We need to realize how much an act of Mercy it is for God to forgive our own sins, for the one who has been forgiven much, and realizes how much they have forgiven, loves much, and so is also very forgiving to others.

One of the things that becomes apparent when looking at cases in both the medical field and psychological field is that the root cause of many illnesses could be directly attributed to a lack of forgiveness. A common example is a daughter or a son who refused to forgive the failings of a mother or a father and who for decades held on to their resentment or hatred for their parent. Holding on to anger, often unconsciously manifests itself in depression, anxiety disorder or even some physical illness. The same can be said of refusing to forgive ones brother, sister or spouse, or dare I say even one’s priest, for some real or imagined slight. (I say imagined slight, because if we have not dealt with the sin in our lives, we can project that sin onto others around us, seeing in them the sin that is in our own heart even though they may not be guilty of it all.) Both anger and un-forgiveness is like a cancer that eats away the soul and destroys its peace. This spiritual cancer can even manifest itself in physical cancer.

To forgive is to live in freedom as children made in the image and likeness of God. Forgiveness is freeing both to the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven. I want to insert true story here about a Nazi Commander. He shot and killed the entire family of a woman in front of her husband; he killed her mother, father, sisters and brothers. Her husband never told her who it was who killed them. One day the Nazi commander came into the store that this lady and her husband owned. Her husband was working at the counter and of course notice the commander right away. The man began to tell this Nazi about the forgiveness and mercy of God. The commander mocked him: “You Christians and your mercy and forgiveness, what is mercy and forgiveness?” The husband said, “I will show you.” He called his wife down from the upstairs and said to her; “Honey this is the man that killed your entire family.” She immediately walked up to the commander and gave him a hug and said in his ear. “I FORGIVE YOU!” The commander immediately fell to his knees sobbing and converted right there on the spot. And so, we see that forgiveness not only leads us closer in our relationship with God, but with one another. And remarkably, our forgiveness of the other has the power to move them closer to God and to us as well. Forgiveness has the power to save.

But how can we forgive a grievous sin against us? First, as I said before, to forgive, especially very hurtful offenses, takes the grace and help of God. If you need to forgive someone, realizing that it is to your advantage to do so, beg Christ to give you the gift of forgiveness. And, then, keep begging until he gives you the grace to be able to do so from the heart.

Second, to forgive does not mean that we forget about what was done to us, or try and somehow say it was okay or was nothing. If the act against us was wrong, it was wrong—Call a spade a spade. “What you did was wrong, and you deserve to be punished, but I forgive you any way.”

Third, we need to remember that we don’t need to “feel like it” in order to forgive. To forgive is an act of our will. In order to be able to forgive does not mean the feelings of un-forgiveness, anger or even hatred need to disappear first. To forgive is not a feeling; it is, like love, a choice. We can, with God’s grace, rise above our feelings of un-forgiveness, vengeance and anger. I choose to forgive this person, because Christ commands me to, because Christ has forgiven me for even greater offenses. And so I chose to love this person because Christ has loved me, died for me and He loves this person as well and died for them also.

Today when we receive Christ in Holy Communion, let us all think of someone who has hurt us and for whom we may hold resentment or anger. Ask Christ, who becomes one with you during Holy Communion, to give you the grace to truly to forgive them, to let the anger and hatred go. And by the way, if you refuse to forgive someone, please don’t receive our Lord in Holy Communion; it will do you more harm than good. Let us pray: Jesus you have told us, ‘if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.’ Jesus, in light of all that you have forgiven me, in light of your love for me, I choose to forgive, please help me to forgive completely from my heart. Our Lady of Divine Mercy pray for us.

We are our brother's keeper!!!

2011-09-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

Today’s scripture readings have an underlying message that we may at first miss. The message is this, “we really are our brother’s keeper”. Cain’s infamous answer to our Lord’s question in the Book of Genesis comes to mind here, “Cain where is your brother?” And Cain’s reply, “Am I, my brother’s keeper?” Remember, Cain had killed his brother, Abel, out of jealously. Let’s use this story to look at our commitment to one another more closely.

Abel, for his part, had worshiped the Lord with full, active, and conscious participation, that is with full heart, mind, soul and strength. Abel’s offering of his earthly treasure really reflected the reality of his inner offering. In other words, Abel really offered himself, humbly and completely, to the Lord in loving thanksgiving for all that the Lord had given to him (which was everything). And the Lord for His part accepted Abel’s true act of worship and love, done for love of God and by the way love of neighbor.

Cain, on the other hand, merely fulfilled the prescription of the Law, but his heart and mind was not in it. He merely showed up for Sunday Mass, if you will, in order to fulfill an external observation of the law but he did not offer himself in love to his Creator who loved him so much.

As a result, Cain’s offering was rejected because it wasn’t done in love; that is, it didn’t reflect the offering of himself—love always gives the gift of self to the one loved. And so, Cain refused to truly love God and worship God fully, and as result he refused to truly love his neighbor, which in this case was his brother, Abel.

Cain’s refusal to love God with his whole heart, soul and mind actually led to him to despise his brother Abel, who did, so much so that Cain killed Abel. This story shows us the connection between the love and proper worship of God and love of neighbor, especially love of neighbor within our Christian Community. We are to worship God not only as individuals but also together as community. Our act of adoration with Jesus while being our most intimate and personal act is at the same time also our most communal act. It is the most important act we do as a community together because we worship our God as a community. In fact, our individual worship is bound to the act of worship of our entire community.

We must love God above all and then we must love our brother and sister and care for them, to love them more than self in order to show our love for God; this is the perfection of love. If we do not care for our brother as our other self, then we, in a sense, perpetuate the rotten fruit of Cain’s selfishness and murdering act of his brother. And so, are we our brother’s keeper? Our Blessed Lord’s answer to Cain and to us today is a definitive and thunderous YES!

Our Lord in our readings points out our binding personal responsibility to our brothers and sisters, if we are to love Him and worship Him fully and properly. We are bound to one another by Charity, St. Paul reminded the early Roman Church in today’s second reading. This clearly means that we do have a responsibility toward the Christian community and to those individuals who make it up. This is an aspect of our faith that many Christians today, I think, don’t realize. It can never be just about “me and Jesus.” We live our faithfulness and our relationship to Jesus within a community, again I like family better; we live our relationship with Jesus within a family of believers or we don’t live it at all.

No one of us can say I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love outside a family of faith. Just as a child without a family to raise him never reaches maturity and in fact, becomes developmentally and mentally stunted, so too the believer who tries to believe without the family of faith becomes spiritually disabled, never able to reach that maturity that is God’s call for each individual in Christ Jesus. This all brings up something that I have spoken about many times. That is our need and our great responsibility to the parish family as our family of faith.

It is not true Christian living when we do not make our relationship with our parish family and integral part of our relationship with Christ. In fact, we cannot have a true authentic relationship with Christ without an active, actual and full participation in the entire life of the parish family. Not to do so would be spiritually immaturity; it would render our soul incapable of ever coming to the mature love God calls us to. Just as we receive love and learn to love in our individual families so to, and in an even more deeper way, we receive love and learn to love in our parish family; you just can’t have one without the other if you are to love as God commands, that is as He has loved us with His own love alive with in our hearts, minds and souls.

As a parish family we are indeed one another’s keepers; we have a grave responsibility to one another; a responsibility of perfect love and charity. Our eternal salvation, and I am not exaggeration here one bit, our eternal salvation depends, absolutely on whether or not we are faithful to this responsibility. The parish is more than just the place where one shows up to grab the morsel and then runs; in fact, the first person to do that was named Judas. This is not being bound together in love, in Charity.

Our parish is the family in which we have a responsibility to actively partake in the life of this family by our presence, our commitment, and by our fidelity and faithfulness to the parish and to its individuals. Love begins in the family, and is perfected in the “Family of families,” the parish family. Our individual lives and our individual family lives should then revolve around the parish family’s life, not the other way around, for it is from her that we receive the graces we need to become holy and thus to live lives of authentic Christian witness to others in order to live and help others live in the freedom and joy of children of God. We cannot make it without the parish family; we need it and we need one another in order to be happy in this life and in the life to come.

All of this teaches us that the Parish family life can never be placed on the periphery of our own lives; that is, off to the side. And so, it is a sign of Christian immaturity, an immaturity of love, when members of a parish family do not get to know one another; yes, first by worshiping God with one another every Sunday at Holy Mass, but also by getting to know one other while partaking in parish events and activities.

It’s a sign of Christian immaturity when we don’t correct one another in love, support one another, help one another and yes, forgive one another.

It’s a sign of Christian immaturity when we don’t pray for one another, fast for one another and even offer our sufferings and our whole selves for one another.

And it is a sign of Christian and spiritual immaturity, an immortality of love, when members of the parish family do not support one another by sharing generously and sacrificially their time, talent and treasure to the parish family. It is not at all authentic faith and witness when we fail in stewardship; our very relationship with Jesus depends on our faithful stewardship. Sadly, there are many members of the family that don’t give a dime to the support of the family and don’t share their time and talent in any way. This is not being our brother and sister keeper.

And I have to add this; it is a sign of Christian immaturity when there is not fidelity to the parish family, when one runs off somewhere else because it is too difficult here or because they like an easier message somewhere else or because they don’t like someone here or because they don’t get their own way. Again we need each other’s full presence here, as we adore God together, helping one another to offer ourselves lovingly to the Lord.

Let us then be bound together by love, by charity; let us truly be one another’s keeper, concerned for one another’s well being, especially for one another’s spiritual well being and eternal salvation. Often I think about how difficult it is to have lost for a lifetime, someone I loved. But then I think how much more difficult, and unbelievable difficult to know what it is to lose a soul for all of eternity. And so I pray, as should you, that your or I never be a cause, in word or in deed of any soul turning away from God or not drawing near to God. And even more so, I pray that your and I would be able to lay down my life for the sake of my brothers and sisters, that is for you my dear parish family and all those souls who are depending on us for their eternal salvation.

We truly are responsible for the salvation of one another’s soul; we are our brother’s keeper; this cannot be a responsibility we take lightly. Our parish family must truly be a Family of families helping one another get to heaven and depending on one another to get to heaven!

At this holy Mass let us pray for the grace to love one another as God loved us by loving and adoring Him, offering ourselves totally as a sacrifice of love to our Father in union with Jesus’ sacrifice on this altar by the power of the Holy Spirit for the love of God and for the love and salvation of our brother and sister’s in our parish family, the family of St. Patrick’s…a family of love. Our Lady, Mother of our Parish family, pray for us sinners who have recourse to thee. Amen.

Oh Lord You duped me, and I allowed myself to be duped!

2011-08-27T19:32:00.000-07:00

Everyone who has truly tried to authentically live the Catholic faith has experience to some degree what Jeremiah did in today’s first reading. For proclaiming, authentically, God’s Word, Jeremiah experienced mockery, derision, ridicule and criticism. And he did so from the majority of those around him, especially (and this is important to note) from those within the household of God. Yet prophecy he must! To Jeremiah, God’s name, God’s truth and Will, was like a fire raging within his heart and mind; overcome with charitable zeal, that is love for God and love for neighbor, he simply had to speak out, no matter what.

To be a Christian is to be Jeremiah like; we are all by our baptism, called to be prophets. By prophet, I don’t mean we are called to see or foretell the future, but we are called, by our witness to show others the way to the good, the beautiful and the true. Which really means we are called to show others the face of Christ, Who is Goodness, Beauty and Truth itself. To do this we are to lead them to Christ’s Church, which alone proclaims and shows forth Christ fully and authentically.

Because of our baptism, St. Paul in today’s second reading, reminds us that we are all members of the royal priesthood of Christ; so we too must, like Christ, be willing, no matter the cost, to offer ourselves as living victims of sacrifice to our God. Not that we are to destroy ourselves or be destroyed, but that we are to forsake our selfish will for the Holy Will of God and for His Glory. Our of love, we are to give our life for God’s truth, (both by proclaiming it to the death if necessary, but also by dying to self and sin, in order to live the truth fully for all to see). Jesus in today’s Gospel, with the authority of God Himself, puts it plainly:

“If a man wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross, and begin to follow in my footsteps. Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Christ here shows us the only way to authentic happiness and freedom in this world, even though the world will never accept it; and that way is to accept the sweet yoke of Christ, which is His Truth, His Way and His Life all of which comes to us through His Church, through her Sacraments and through her teachings, which are not just to be believed but are to be experienced and lived in love.

And so, a true commitment to Christ—living one’s faith in the midst of a misunderstanding even mocking world—is our calling and really is our privilege. There is no higher calling than to be asked to walk in the footsteps of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we place our faith, hope and love, living within our own lives His life of self-oblation to the Will of the Father; setting aside our will for the Holy Will of the Father, for His glory and for the salvation of souls. Far from being a negative, this is the royal way of the cross, the narrow way that leads to authentic happiness, authentic freedom and the fullness of life--life in abundance. When we give our lives totally to God, far from losing our life we save it.

Yesterday we celebrated the feast day of St. Augustine, a man who before his conversion had fallen into great error and so into great sin, living a life far away from Christ and His truth and so His Church. Commentators have said that one of the principal errors that caused Augustine to go astray was the mistaken notion that a person can somehow follow Christ without faithfully following the Catholic Church. Augustine fell into the same error that many in our day have fallen into, thinking that they needed to leave the Catholic Church in order to find or adhere more fully to Christ.

After years of seeking the truth in all the wrong places, and so looking for love in all the wrong places, Augustine, through the grace that his mother constantly implored for him, became convinced that only in the Catholic Church was he to find truth and peace for His soul. He concluded that for faith to be sure, the divine authority of Christ found in Sacred Scripture and guaranteed by the Church was required. The Church and Jesus were one. To find fully the true Jesus and not one of our or some else’s own making, and to become one with Him, we must be one with the true Church.

True commitment to Christ means then, for us, commitment to His Church, founded, as we heard last week, on Peter the Rock and on the rest of the Apostles and their successors the bishops who are in union with the Holy Father. This Catholic Church is our Savior’s principal and universal sacrament in the world. It is here, and only here, that the fullness of truth and grace are found. It is here, and only here, that we, through the Sacraments, meet, hear, embrace, and are embraced by the living Jesus Christ in the fullness of His humanity and in the fullness of His divinity.

In the ancient Nicene Creed from the 3rd century, which we profess every Sunday, we describe and profess our Church as One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.”

One, because she is the one and only Church founded personally by Jesus Himself; a living community, better yet, a living family, with one head, one shepherd appointed by Christ, the Bishop of Rome, who not only succeeds Peter but is the Sweet Vicar of Christ on earth;

Holy, not only because she is the perfect and spotless bride of Christ but because she and only she possesses the fount of all holiness--The Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist; Jesus’ real bodily Presence, as well as the other sacraments which spring forth from the Pierced Heart of the Eucharist…the Sacred Heart. In the Holy Eucharist we can go to Jesus just as did the Apostles and sit at His feet and adore Him; if we love Him we should want to be with Him in the Holy Eucharist when ever we can.

Catholic, because as we said a couple of weeks ago, she is the universal sacrament of salvation through which our Lord desires to save all men. And so, her mission is universal, she preaches the truth that all men need to attain salvation;

And she is Apostolic because it is the same community of the apostolic era; there is continuity between the early Church depicted in the Acts of the Apostles and our Church today. And so, the truths she teaches come to us from the twelve apostles themselves, through their successors, the Pope and the bishops in union with Him. And by the way where did the apostles get the truth? From the lips of Jesus Himself. And so ultimately, we believe the Church’s teaching because we believe Jesus, who is God among us, God who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

Catholicism therefore is unique. There is ancient adage: “Love Christ, love the Church.” St. Cyprian wrote that, “One cannot have God for his father, if he does not have the Church for his mother.” St. Augustine argued that “to the extent that one loves the Church of Christ, one possesses the Holy Spirit.”

Too love Christ; listen to the Church. The Church speaks for Christ. Blessed John Paul II once said, “How could there be any authentic evangelizing, (that is leading souls to Christ and to His truth and so to salvation), if there were no ready and sincere reverence for the sacred magisterium, in clear awareness that by submitting to it the People of God are not accepting the word of man but the true word of God?”

To be a Catholic—to return to Jeremiah—to speak the truth, but especially to live the truth can be especially difficult today. Sometimes we feel like saying, “You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed. All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me.” We can even say to ourselves, “I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more.” But then if we love Him, by loving His Church, if we turn to Him by converting more fully through our submission and obedience to His Church, accepting and living her teachings with the help of the grace of the Sacraments, then, then, we will say, “But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it, I must, must speak it and live it even if men in the world don’t want to hear it; because even if they don’t know it, they need it.”

Let us not be duped by men, even some priests, who tell us what we want to hear but not what we need to hear; let us instead turn to the voice of our Lord which becomes audible and infallible to us in the teachings of our Beautiful Catholic Faith; the faith of the apostles and the faith of all the saints. Let us want to be spend time with the One we love, Jesus truly present in His Church and truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar which comes to us from His Church.

Let us pray; Jesus in our world today there are many false prophets who are proclaiming a message that sounds good to our ears but is detrimental and even deadly to our souls. Help us with your grace to hear your message, your truth, the fullness of which comes to us through the Catholic Church you founded. Help us to be open to the truth so that we may accept it with our intellect and embrace it with our wills, and so live according to the Will of the Father in order to inherit life and share that life with others. Jesus we want to be truly committed to you; only by our acceptance of your truth will we find a solution to problems of our present age; The answer does not lie in political and economic reform; for what does it profit us to gain the whole world and lose ourselves?” I know that to abandon the Church and her teachings is to abandon home, family and life, for it is really to abandon you. Help me to forsake all else in order to possess and be possessed by you and your love, that is all I need. Our Lady, Mother of Christ, Mother of the Truth and Mother of the Church, pray for us sinners who have recourse to thee. Amen

With Faith in Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, we can "walk on water."

2011-08-06T20:11:00.000-07:00

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. August 7th, 2011

You know, this Gospel reading is one of my favorites. I am sure most of us have seen paintings depicting this scene of Peter meeting Jesus out on the water (I myself have multiple depictions of this poignant scene). Peter is sinking as he is desperately grabbing for Jesus’ hand. Jesus, for His part, is very much in control as He calmly reaches out his hand to Peter. Jesus takes Peter’s hand and rebukes Peter for his lack of faith, “O man of little faith why did you doubt?”

It is easy for us to be hard on Peter and want to “rebuke” him as well for his lack of faith. The interesting thing about this story that we must remember, however, is that-- Peter got out of the boat. How many of us would do the same? You see in this boat, at this point in their relationship with Jesus and at different stages in their faith in Jesus, the twelve apostles represent the different types of people found in the Church today.

There were those apostles who said, “It’s a ghost, it is not true. In others words, they were content with mediocrity. These correspond with those in the Church today who, while being Catholic, just don’t want to be “too Catholic.” They are content with mediocrity with regards to their relationship with Jesus and His Church. So better to not rock the boat; they think, “maybe if we ignore Jesus, that is if we just do the minimum, just enough, he will go away and leave us alone.”

There were those apostle in the boat who knew it was truly Jesus walking on the water towards them; they wanted to go to Him, but they lacked confidence in Him. They saw the waves and they were afraid; the Gospel tells us the boat was beaten by the waves. These represent those in the Church today who want to want to walk on the water, that is follow Christ totally, but they are afraid of what it might cost them, what they might have to give up or to suffer. These persons may even give Jesus a lot, they just won’t give Him their all. They want to give Jesus everything, but are afraid he might just take it all. In the end, they don’t trust God totally.

Then, there was a least one disciple in the boat who didn’t care one way or the other. He was in the boat but not with Christ and the others. He coincides with those in the Church who are indifferent to the words and teaching of Jesus, given to us through the pope, and the bishops and priests in union with him. They say, “No pope, no bishop, and for sure no priest is going to tell me what to do.” In this, they show that they are indifferent to the very person of Christ who is truly present in the Church in the Holy Eucharist and who shepherds His people through the pastors of His Church. Like Judas, they feel it is every one else who needs to change and not them; they’re a good person after all. They refuse to see their need to chance, for repentance, and so refuse to see their need for God’s Divine Mercy in their soul.

Finally, there was the one who got out of the boat. It was Peter alone got out of the boat in the midst of the great wind and waves. How much confidence Peter must have had to get out of that boat in the first place. How much he must have loved Jesus to risk it all to walk on the water toward Jesus. And Peter did just that; he performed the miraculous-walking on water, that is until the gospel tells us, “he looked at the wind and began to sank...In other words, Peter took his eyes off of our Lord, and as a result Peter’s confidence waned; his faith grew weak.

Peter represents those souls in the Church today, who thou not perfect, see that Jesus is their Way, their Truth and their Life, and so take the risk and get out of the boat; they struggle to leave mediocrity behind in order to give themselves totally to Christ. They begin to trust Jesus more and more…even enough to “walk on water.” And even if they begin to sink they call out to the Lord as Peter did, “Lord Save Me!” And that is what Jesus does, he holds out His hand and says, “my child why did you doubt, have confidence in me’, and as in the gospel the winds cease, if not in the world, within the soul.

I think for most of us Catholics, if we are honest, we can admit that at different times in our faith life we have been like each one of the twelve in the boat. Yet, the important thing for us today is to recommit ourselves to the person of Christ and turn toward Him with greater faith, reach out to Him in great trust and cling to Him with greater love.

To do this we need to ask God to increase our faith that Jesus is still in the boat, that is He is still physically present in His Church through the Holy Eucharist. And then, we need to ask Him to help us to keep our eyes on His presence there. We need an increase in our faith that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus, Our Lord and our God, and adore, trust and love Him there.

In our spiritual life and in our everyday life (the two should never be separate) we can indeed follow Jesus anywhere, fully, if we just keep our eyes on Him. To often however, we take note of the wind and the waves, we see the dangers, the difficulties, and the sufferings and so we fail to keep looking at Jesus. In our relationship with Him, we then begin to count the cost of following Him totally, fully and absolutely in love, and so we take our eyes off of Him and begin to sink in to despair, despondency and even, God forbid, loss of faith and love.

Yet even so, if we just call out to him and return our gaze to Him, reach out to him through our adoration of Him, then He will grab us by the hand and save us from sinking; He will increase our faith, hope and love. And then with Jesus, and our eyes daily focused on Him, we can do anything He asks us to do. United to Him we can even do the miraculous, that is we can leave all behind in order to follow Christ and become great saints.

But we must keep our eyes on Jesus, not as some ideal, but as a divine person who is truly present in His Church. And we can keep our eyes on Jesus only if we adore His very Person in the Holy Eucharist both at Mass and outside of Mass. The more we adore Him there in faith, the more we can handle the great winds and waves of this present world and of the spiritual life; the more we trust Him the more we can overcome the tempestuous, temptations, passions, and persecutions of our age. And the more we love Him in the Holy Eucharist, the more closely we can be with Him always, united to Him in love, until He finally leads us to the safe harbor of eternity.

In the Holy Eucharist we have to remember Jesus, our Lord and our God, doesn’t manifest Himself to us in great and stupendous marvels, or speak to us in a thunderous voice, but He comes to us hidden in the smallness of a little white host, and He speaks to us in the silence of our hearts with the tiny whisper of His Divine Love. Yet, united to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, with our eyes focused on Him in adoration, trusting in Him completely and with hearts united to Him in love, listening to Him speak through His Church and accepting her teachings as His, we will never sink for He will unite us to Himself forever and ever.

It is the blessed Mother who will help us to keep our eyes always focused on Jesus through adoration of the Holy Eucharist, which is Him. And as a result of our adoration of her divine Son in the Holy Eucharist, she will help us to keep our eyes on Him during the events of our every day lives and so never lose hope. She will help us draw closer to the Sacred Heart of her Son in the Holy Eucharist and keep us there until we reach the safe harbor of eternity.

O Most Holy Trinity, I adore you! My God, my God, I love you in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

2011-07-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time. July 31st, 2011

Our Gospel today reminds us that there is only one thing in this world that will ultimately fill our greatest hunger. And this one thing that will fill our greatest hunger is the Holy Eucharist. Our greatest hunger is for love. And St. John tells us that God is love. And so our greatest hunger is for God Himself. Because the Holy Eucharist is God, the Holy Eucharist is Love Himself; our greatest hunger therefore is for the Holy Eucharist, approached with faith, adoration, hope and love.

Ultimately the greatest crisis in the world, according to Pope Benedict is a crisis of faith. Not just a crisis of faith in God, but a crisis in faith in the Holy Eucharist, especially among Catholics. This crisis of faith in the Holy Eucharist as the God who is Love among us has literally affected our whole world. And it has embolden the enemies of our faith. Our Catholic Faith is being attacked as never before, in the media, and even in our schools, colleges and university.

I don’t know if you remember this, but a few years ago, a biology professor at a prominent university in America desecrated the Holy Eucharist. He ran a nail through a consecrated host and called the Eucharist a cracker. After posting a picture of the desecrated Host he wrote the following:

“Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanity's knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind."

Meyers went on to say how amazed he is that many Catholics mindlessly believe this silly symbol of superstition. Of course by saying this he includes in this category, of the mindless, all of the great Saints of the ages from the Twelve Apostles, to Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas (arguably one of the smartest men that ever lived) St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, St Ignatius of Loyola, St. John Vianney, St Theresa of Avila, St. Therese the Little flower, St. Padre Pio, Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta, blessed John Paul II, and the countless others who all, everyone of them, believed that the Eucharist was indeed Jesus, God among us. It is a fact, that the most brilliant minds the world has ever seen (ones a lot more intelligent than Dr. Meyer) have believed in the Holy Eucharist…

The attacks like this one and the attacks which continue to be on the rise were actually predicted by the Blessed Virgin when she appeared at Fatima. Even though this apparition of Lady happened in 1917, Fatima is just as relevant today as ever. Fatima was really a message for our times.

The message of Fatima is a message all about the Eucharist; a warning of a great loss of faith; in fact, a great apostasy of faith that would occur if men did not believe and turn to God and away from their sins. Fatima was a call to faith.

Fatima was a call to all Catholics, living then and now, to an increase of faith in the Holy Eucharist. Fatima was a call to faith in Mysterium Fidei-THE Mystery of our faith—the Holy Eucharist. It was a call to adore the Eucharist as God. And it was a call for Catholics to make reparation for the sins of the world, especially those committed against the Eucharist (like the act committed by Dr. Meyer, but most of all the sin of unbelief and indifference on the part of Catholics toward the Holy Eucharist).

And because we need the Immaculate Heart of Mary to lead us to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist, Fatima was also a call for us to make reparation for the sins against the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Fatima was therefore a call to an increase of faith in, Adoration of, hope in and love for Jesus, Our Lord and Our God truly present in the Holy Eucharist.

As terrible as Dr. Myers actions were we may not have thought about how us Catholics can desecrate or dishonor the Eucharist. Let me go over just a few ways we can dishonor and even desecrate Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. First of we can do so by:

*Receiving Jesus without faith. Scripture tells us about the first person to
receive the Holy Eucharist without faith, without believing that it was really
Jesus in His human body. Scripture even give us this person’s name…it
was Judas.

*Receiving Jesus in the state of sin mortal sin.

*Receiving without pure souls made so by frequent confession.
Everyone, almost, goes to Holy Communion but many do not go to
Confession on a regular basis.

*Receiving Jesus improperly, irreverently (like we are receiving a cracker). i.e. hands low, not checking for particles, etc.

*Not participating fully, actively and consciously at the Mass both externally
by our actions and responses and interiorly by offering ourselves in love to
God at the Holy Mass.

Other ways, we can dishonor can Jesus in the Holy Eucharist

*Not attending Holy Mass. Shows a lack of love for Jesus in the Holy
Eucharist and a lack of thankfulness in His Sacrifice on Calvary, which the
Mass makes truly present) for our salvation. A failure of justice (what the
creature owes the Creator); and a failure of Love….no wanting to be with
the God who loves us, the God who is Love.

*Not Attending properly dress; not dressed in our Sunday best as for a
wedding because Mass is THE WEDDING.

*Leaving Mass early (without a good reason), constantly, habitually arriving
late.

*Talking in Church in the presence of the Holy Eucharist, which also interrupts those who are praying to Jesus.

*Complaining that Holy Mass is too long…St. Josemaria Escriva said… “Mass is too long because your love is too short.”

*Not respecting and obeying the sacred ministers, bishops and priests
with out whom we could not have the Eucharist.

*And probably worst of all; indifferentism, not caring one way or the other. (Caused our Lord the most suffering during His passion; why HE sweated blood).

All the above are really about a lack of faith. Again, Pope Benedict said that the greatest crises in the Catholic Church and in the world is a crises of faith. This crisis of faith has it very roots in the failure of so many Catholics who refuse to believe that the little white host is God, and so refuse to adore Him, trust in Him and Love Him.

If you really think about it, all of this is really not about what we should not do to dishonor Jesus in the Holy Eucharist but it is more about what we should do to show our love for Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. A man in love surely is concerned about the “shall nots” but he is more concerned about how to show his love for the woman he loves. And so lets look at what we can do receive Jesus more reverently and so with greater love. We can:

*Receive Jesus with faith. Faith is a gift from God and so we need to beg
God to increase our faith in order to truly believe that the little white Host is
our Lord and God in His true Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

*Receive Jesus only in the state of grace; If we have committed a serious
sin, if we have purposely missed Sunday Mass or a Holy Day of obligation
we need to go to confession first before we receive Jesus…it is not enough
to make an act of contrition before receiving.

*If you are in an unlawful marriage, that is you have been married outside of
the Church, don’t receive Jesus until you take care of your situation. If you
need help please see me or Fr. William; we would be more than willing to
help you.

*Make a frequent confession, at least once a month at the least once every
other month.

*Receive Jesus in purity and love, with reverence; consider returning to the
age old practice which the Church most desires, that of receiving
Jesus on the tongue.
Our Holy Father Benedict has made known his wish for Catholics to return to that age-old tradition of receiving communion kneeling and on the tongue. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, you will watch the W.Y.D events on T.V., that the youth and I are attending. At the WYD Mass and all papal Masses you will see that all of those who receive communion from the Holy Father receive Jesus kneeling and on the tongue, unless they are physical unable to kneel; but then they still receive on the tongue. (By the way, it is good for Catholics to know, that Communion in the hand was merely an indult giving to certain missionary countries. It was never meant to be the normal way of receiving. (Show the Tee Shirt the youth made for the last W.Y.D. here… “If at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend…What about before the very person of Jesus?”). Kneeling again would be a great way to make reparation for all of those who don’t believe, adore, hope and love Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.)

*Adoration of Jesus at Mass offering our selves and all we have especially
our self wills in a sacrifice of love to Him and to the Father through Him.

*Proper behavior and dress in Church; silence in His presence; dress as to a
wedding for Holy Mass is the wedding of your soul with God’s.

*Adoration of the Holy Eucharist, Jesus, outside of Mass.
1 hour a day for those who can. At least one hour a week for others (Wednesday night adoration and all night Saturday night; Children and family adoration).
. About just coming to Mass early to adore Jesus as a preparation for
Mass. Or staying afterwards, just for a few moments, as a thanksgiving
for the gift of being able to be present at Holy Mass and receive Jesus in the
Eucharist (Mention St. Anthony’s here).

Adoration of Jesus is the best way to atone for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference of men like Dr. Meyers and others; especially the indifferentism of Catholics.

*Watch for desecrations of the Holy Eucharist at Mass. You have my
permission to stop someone who has not consumed Jesus in the Eucharist;
in fact, you have an obligation to do so. Do so however; with kindness and
love; don’t assume they are doing so intentionally.

*Finally, learn more our beautiful Catholic faith; study the Church’s teachings on the Holy Eucharist in order to grow in faith, hope and love for Jesus really present there. Study the Church’s teachings on the Holy Mass; read our Holy Father’s writings and come to understand why he is making the changes to the liturgy that He is. One of the reasons for the upcoming changes in the liturgy beginning in Advent is to address the lack of faith in the Holy Eucharist.

In the End, we all need to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in our heart…People need the Holy Eucharist…all people, not just Catholics…If the Eucharist is really Jesus the God Man among us, then we should want everyone to come into the Catholic Church to be able to adore Him by sacrifice themselves to Him in love and uniting themselves to Him in Holy Communion. And we should ourselves pray before Jesus until all men believe that He is really there and so come as well to adore Him. Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is the pearl of great worth for all men… He is the only way to the Father and so the only way to salvation…unless you eat my body and drink my blood…He is the True Bread from Heaven…

Before Our Blessed Mother appeared in Fatima, heaven sent an Angel to the three Shepherd Children. The Angel suspended in the air a Host above a Chalice filled with the Precious Blood. The angel then prostrated on the ground, that is fell on his faith and prayed three prayers, three times each before the Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, thus teaching the children and us through the Children these same prayers of adoration.
My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love Thee! I beg pardon for all those that do not believe, do not adore, do not trust and do not love Thee.

O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in all the tabernaclesof the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary I beg the conversion of poor sinners.

O Most Holy Trinity, I adore you! My God, my God, I love you in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Our Lady then asked the Children to make say the following prayer as way to make up for sins against her Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of her Son. This prayer, spoken sincerely, effectively allows any hardship, illness or pain in one's life to be offered as Acts of Reparation.

O Jesus, it is for the love of You, in reparation for the offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and for the conversion of poor sinners [Some add here "that I pray/do this"].

You can find these prayers on page 3 of the St. Patrick Hymnal.

"Ever Ancient, ever New!"

2011-07-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

Homily for Matthew 13:44-52 Seventeenth Sunday of the Year July 24th, 2011

We have for the past few Sundays heard many parables from Jesus. Today we continue with more; the buried treasure, the pearl of great price, the net thrown into the sea, and the goods from the storehouse. All of these parables, however, have a common theme—and that is, our relationship with Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ is the Pearl of Great Price.

Jesus concludes His teaching today with a short discussion with His disciples, asking them if they had understood; and they replied they did. Then he adds one more parable- the Kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.” Jesus’ teaching was very much like this, bringing the Old, presenting the Old, with a new perspective. This new prospect certainly invoked many emotions not only in the disciples, but in all of those who heard Jesus words.

Certainly in recent history, our Church has gone through this process of presenting old with a new perspective. In fact, this is exactly why Vatican Council II was called. The Fathers of the Council desired to present the Old with a new perspective, to show the world that the prenial teachings of the Church, which are the teachings of Christ Himself, are ever ancient every new.

Before the Council was held in the mid 60’s the Church knew who she was and what she believed. There was no such thing as an identity crisis. Because of the surety of faith the Church was experiencing, the Fathers of Vat II, wanted to boldly take the truths of our faith and all of its beauty out into confident dialogue with the modern world. In other words, instead of hiding from an ever increasing secularize world, the Church wanted to take its great patrimony of faith and its 2,000 years of human experience and use it to confront the great challenges facing the modern world.

Along with this, the Church wanted to rid itself of a type of Jansenistic harseness that too often had crept into its practices. The best way to describe this harshness is that a few in the church presented the truth of her teachings more with a club, than with the kindness and charity of Christ. I recently read one example of this harshness. It seems the very first catechesis class one person received while in first grade began with the teaching of mortal sin, and how just one unrepentant mortal sin would lead a person to hell. While this is true, it’s definitely not a teaching you want to use to begin teaching a 7-year-old child their faith, you’ll of course scare them to death.

Over the past 40 or so years, the Church has struggled much to try to understand this ideal of Vatican II—this, presenting the old with a new perspective. However, in the last forty years since the council there has arisen the mistaken notion of a pre-Vatican II church and a post-Vatican II church, as if the Church before Vatican II was somehow different because the council “changed” the Church’s teachings, change the nature of the Church herself. The truth is, is that Vatican II changed nothing; the truth is the truth and as such is unchangeable. Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday and forever. And so to with His Church; the Church is the same Church, with the same teachings as before.

Probably nowhere is this confusion of a “new church" brought out more clearly as in the Liturgy, that is in the way we celebrate Holy Mass. After the council, some of the changes in the Liturgy were drastic and were too often changed over night, with out any explanation to the people. Many people were distraught and many left the church never to return. I’ll still meet many people who had gone through those times saying, one Sunday everything was in Latin and the next not a word. The shock was very hard on many people.

Others saw the changes as refreshing, especially with a let up in the Jansenistic harshness as I just described. However, now, many times instead of the truth of the Church’s teachings being taught with a club, they weren’t taught at all. We had only Catholicism light. People were led to believe that the Church’s teachings themself had changed; that the Holy Mass had changed.

In fact, the changes in the Liturgy we seen as proof that the church was evolving and so her teachings where changing as well and so now a person in good conscience could go along with the rest of the world in all things secular and profane. An example of this was in regard to the Church’s teaching on contraception, which many assumed would just automatically change
in light of the rest of the “changes” in the Church. And of course this did not happen, but many, including bishops, priests and theologians decided they would not listen to the Church anyway.

Now forty years after the council, we see the Church coming to look at Vatican II with renewed vigor. The Late John Paul II said many times that Vatican II has still not yet been fully and in some cases, correctly implemented. Pope Benedict has renewed this statement of John Paul. He says that the problem with the documents of Vatican II is that hardly anybody has ever read them. And so, he has called for a return to the Documents of Vatican II, to look at them ever closer, to prayfully study them in order to bring about just what the Holy Spirit was trying to accomplish.

As a result of this beginning to return to the actual documents and a turning away from the so-called “Spirit of Vatican II, we are now beginning to see some changes; especially in the Sacred Liturgy-in the way we “celebrate Holy Mass.” And so, just like the changes in the Sacred Liturgy after the council, recent changes in the Mass can stir up strong emotions. Many are pleased to see a return to the tradition and patrimony of our past. Some have much fear of “Going back.” The fact of the matter is however, is that no one wants to go back. The church is ever new, ever living in the here and now, she is progressive in the real sense of the word. She is ever fresh, and her teaching, because they are the truth of God himself, are ever relevant (The changes that are happing now are more like this, example of an airplane adjusting its course).

When we look at the documents closely, we find that so many of the changes after Vatican II, especially in the liturgy, were not called for by Vatican II. For instance, even though it called for the vernacular to be used in the liturgy, nowhere did the council call for a complete annihilation of all Latin, especially in our songs; or nowhere did it call for the sanctuaries of our beautiful churches to be stripped of things like high altars, stain glass, statues and communion rails. In fact just the opposite was the case, the documents tell us that Latin is to be maintained as part of who we are and were we came from, especially with regards to Gregorian chant; it is to be given “pride of place” in the Sacred Lituryg. The documents also called for the bishops to protect the irreplaceable beautiful art contained in our churches, like the beautiful high altars and commion rails.

When strong emotions occur over the attempt to restore the sacred, to bring back the beauty and transcendent nature of our sacred liturgy, could it be that those who feel these emotions are not so much afraid of a little Latin or incense, but are afraid of the harshness coming back that was sometimes seen in the church before Vatican II. By the way, no one wants the harshness back. No one is attracted to mean priests and mean nuns, although (smile) not all of the racks by the ruler did me much harm.

In light of all that I have said, we must look to our Holy Father, who has the grace from God guaranteed to help us navigate these changes. In fact, I would recommend one of his books call “Spirit of the Liturgy” in order to help understand these changes. This year we will see more changes in the Liturgy as we have discussing, such has a new and more accurate translation of the official language of the Mass, Latin into English. Remember, the Official language of the Mass is still Latin, English is only a translation. In the years to come, we may see additional Masses offered in some places in Latin, but we will not, will not, see current masses in English all changed to Latin; and we will not see the changes implement in the same way as after Vatican II, that is drastic and overnight.

Before the new Missal takes effect this Advent there will be much education in the changes and the reasons for them. Here at St. Patrick’s we will talk about them during homilies; we will offer classes on them; we will “walk” through the Sacred Liturgy, not only to explain the changes but to help you, to help us all, grow in our understanding, appreciation and love of the Sacred Liturgy? Why? So we can participate in it with “full, active, and conscious pariticipation” Why? So we can adore God in spirit and truth, giving Him due glory and entering into union with Him, a union for which we have created; and so we can be fruitful instruments of His grace to lead others into this same eternal union of love; which is the desire of the heart of every man woman and child who ever was, ever is and who ever may be.

In our Holy Mass today, we ask this grace of Jesus- the grace to have Him alone as our only treasure. Let us discover anew the awesome mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and our true Treasure, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist; the Holy Eucharist is the Pearl of great price. May we abandon ourselves completely to Him and allow His grace to fill our hearts.

Our Lady of the Holy Eucharist helps us to be aware of the Mystery of the Holy Mass, help us not just to sing and pray at Mass but to sing and pray the Mass; in others words, help us to adore the Blessed Trinity through uniting the offering of our lives to the Sacrifice of Your Son on this Altar to the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. God Bless You!

May our lives become beautiful notes in the symphony of God’s good creation.

2011-07-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

Sixteeth Sunday in Ordinary Time. July 17th 2011

Many of you, especially the youth, have heard of the novel known as the “Lord of the Rings.” The “Lord of the Rings” is actually a Trilogy of three different novels, all of which were made into blockbuster movies within the last ten years. The writer of the “Lord of the Rings” was a man by the name of JRR Tolkien. Tolkien was a very devout Catholic. He also wrote many other books, which are familiar to many, such as the “Hobbit,” which is part of the story of the “Lord of the Rings.”

There is another part to the story of the “Lord of the Rings” which is told in another one of Tolkien’s less known works called the “Silmarillion. The Silmarillion is part of the chronology of events that makes up the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. It is a type of a “Book of Genesis” of these great works and describes the origins of all of the characters of the Lord of the Rings, such as the Hobbits, Gandolf and the evil lord, Sauron.

As I said, the Simarillion is the least known of all Tolkien’s books. It is a long mythology about the creation of the world. In this book, Tolkien created characters representing both God and Satan, the Good Angels and the bad, the demons. The character for God, creates the world in a void and then allows his created “spirits” to form the earth and to give it order. The order is described as a great “symphony” of the most beautiful of all music.

The most powerful of these created spirits is Melkor, who is created good but then because of his pride, turns into the Satan like character. In an act of pride, Melkor places “discord” into the great symphony that is creation and tries to “spoil” the melody by “playing his own tune,” creating his own truth. The story then goes on to tell of the many battles that the powers of good and evil fight amongst each another.

In the Simarillion, the chief weapon of Melkor, the evil one, is lies, lies that cause discord in the symphony of truth. Tolkien writes of this, “Long was he (Melkor) at work, and slow at first and barren was his labor. But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed while others reap and sow in his stead.”…. So along with the truth sown by the good god, Melkor the evil spirit had also sown some evil seeds, seeds of lies.

Even though it took these evil seeds much time to bear fruit, eventually Melkor, being patient, found some itching ears that would heed him, and some wagging tongues that would enlarge what they had heard; and his bad seeds, his lies, “passed from friend to friend, as secrets of which the knowledge proves the teller wise…” as the book tells us. The story continues by saying that:

“When he saw that many leaned towards him, Melkor would often walk among them, and amid his fair words, others were woven, so subtly, that many who heard them believed in recollection that they arose from their own thought.”

This little commentary on lies from the Silmarillion, may help us better understand our Gospel today and indeed the battle over the soil of our hearts and minds. Unlike the battles in the Silmarillion, however, this is a real battle, one in which we need to be sober, for Jesus tells us, “whoever has ears ought to hear.”

Jesus tells us that he goes and sows seeds in the good ground; yet Jesus very clearly lets us know that Satan is also there, sowing bad seed, the seed of lies. The seed of truth that Jesus sows, however small like the seed of the mustard plant, will grow. So too with the lies of Satan, they will yield a harvest as well, but one that is evil and is rotten, fit only for burning.

Let us take an modern example. In 1968, Pope Paul VI wrote an encyclical letter on human life- Humanae Vitae. The issue at the time, was whether artificial birth control could be used or not used in accord with the Church’s teaching and thus according to the plan, the “symphony of God”. In the encyclical, the Holy Father upheld the Church’s perennial teaching saying that artificial birth control went against the divine plan of God for the Human Person; and that it places discord in Marriage and family Life and so in society itself. The Holy Father wrote:

“Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity, the lowering of regard of the woman, instead of her being seen as a trusting companion, she would be seen as an object to be used for one’s own selfish gratification and finally it would cause a general lowering of moral standards.”

Pope Paul here warns us about the danger of lies. Once any spouse believes that he or she can withhold a part of himself or herself, such as their fertility, in their love for the other, a lie is sown and takes root in their belief and the lie grows in their love for another and so begins to destroy their life together; and leads eventually even to the destruction of the life of human persons.

One look at our world today and we can see this lowing of moral standards in our world, especially in a lack of respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life and of the Human Person. Also, we can see a direct proportion to in the increase of divorce and abortion to the increase of the use of artificial birth control. Indeed the lies have grown and produced bad fruit—as seen in our current culture of death.

Yet, the seeds of truth are stronger and will endure. Jesus is the one who gives us the truth through the teachings of the magisterium of the Church, which is the pope alone and the bishops in union with the pope. The truths of the magisterium bear good fruit—the fruit of eternal life. Think of the seeds of truth sown by Blessed Pope John Paul and the good fruit that resulted.

Pope John Paul spoke the truth to the communist countries of Eastern Europe, and they came tumbling down. The seeds of truth produced the downfall of these atheistic ideological governments. John Paul reminded us that the teachings of the truth, of the Church, far from restricting our freedom, actually protect and even ensure our freedom and life—there is no freedom in lies, only slavery and death.

Our current Holy Father, Pope Benedict continues to sow the seeds of truth. As a good, protecting German Shepherd, he reminds the world, each of us, that any attempt in the building a society without God and the worship of God being primary; any such attempt, will end in colossal failure. He, like Bl. John Paul, lived through the lie, patiently sown by satan, of politics replacing theology. The lie claims that we can have politics without God; and so there needs to be a separation of Church and state in which the state is protected from any Church interference.

The truth is, is that the ideal of the separation of Church and state is not to protect the state from interference from the Church, but to protect the Church from interference by the state. The father of lies has completely turned it around. By the way, this is really what lies at the heart of the evil atheistic ideological government regimes of the world, from Nazism, to Communism and to socialism. Hitler himself once said that, “if you tell a big enough lie long enough and to enough people, they will eventually begin to belief it. Each one, Nazism, communism and modern socialism promise a man made utopia without religion, without the worship of God, without the Church, but instead they give us nothing less than a man made hell.

Pope Benedict is taking on the bad seed sown by the “father of lies” and he is very clearly pointing out the modern lies. He is not afraid to take, head on, the error of our day sown by the evil one. And, I would add, he is doing it very well, in a way that anyone can understand. I would even say he is more easily understandable than John Paul the II. We are particularly graced with his pontificate; so how we all need to listen closely to this Pope and follow his instructions and deligently study them. By learning from His teachings, which are the teachings of the Church, which are the teachings of God, we will allow good seed to be sown into our hearts that will produce good fruit in our lives and in our world.

Let us also realize that there is a field in which it is okay and necessary to pull up the weeds before the harvest time, the judgment time, and that field is the field of our hearts. We pull the weeds in and through repentance and the help of the grace of the Sacrament of Confession—the Sacrament that has the power to even change weeds into good wheat through God’s patient mercy; divine mercy in which he desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth, the truth that sets men free, the truth that saves.

Today, as we celebrate this Mass, let us ask Jesus to sow and nurture the seeds he has sown in our hearts. May these seeds produce in us great fruits, and through our faithfulness, bring many, many souls back to our Heavenly Father. May our lives become beautiful notes in the symphony of God’s good creation. Let us pray to Our Lady, “Mother of the Good harvest,” that she would obtain for us the grace of the Holy Spirit, to worship our God in Spirit and in Truth and to make Him and His divine will always primary in our lives. Amen.

Preparing the Soil well.

2011-07-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. July 10th, 2011

Today we read a very familiar passage-a parable we have heard many times. Jesus speaks to us about the planting of seeds- about the soil, how it grows, and ultimately the harvest. I think we would all like to imagine that our hearts are the good soil and that we produce a good harvest with our lives.

But perhaps the truth is that we are not as open to the Word of God as we would like to think, and so we need more of the fertilizer of God’s Grace to help us produce more good fruit. In today’s Gospel, Jesus points out the obstacles of the world, obstacles that try to hinder us from allowing the word of God to fully take root in our hearts and minds in the seedbed of our faith.

One of the obstacles Jesus speaks of is the devil. Satan, like a crow, steals away the seed before it even has a chance to grow; he does this by lies. Our world today is full of the “spirit of the evil one”, the “father of lies.” Even though it has much good, our western culture nonetheless is one steeped in many, many lies, which have been sown by the devil himself. Believing the lies is often justified with reasons such as “it’s my choice” or “it was for the good of others” or “I deserve it” or how about this one- “the child would have had a difficult life anyway.”

In this environment the devil also tries very subtly to make us question basic truths of our faith. It begins with a question we have about some aspect of our faith—now, nothing wrong with questions, questions mean our intelligence is searching for the truth. However, instead of forming our intellect and enriching our faith with and through the teachings of the Church, we choose to hear the voice of the world telling us the Church is wrong and out of date. Then doubt creeps in along with the temptations that come from the modern media and movies that are continually attacking our Catholic faith, the Holy Father, the Church herself, even God Himself. For example, best selling novels like the “DaVinci code”. Ignorance can then mislead us to questions like, “is the Church really hiding from me and from the world some great secret—like did Jesus really marry Mary Magdalene and did the two of them have a daughter. And did the Church over the last two thousand years try to kill of this bloodline of Jesus which is really the Holy Grail.” I am not making this up. These are the ridiculous accusation in a novel that has sold millions of copies to poor souls, many of whom are catholic, souls who because of their lack of knowledge, actually believe such unfounded lies sown by the devil himself and spread by poor souls taken in by him.

To combat this obstacle to our faith, the devil and the spirit of the world, we discover that for the Word of God to take deep root in our minds and hearts, we must work hard to prepare the soil of our souls in order to make it good soil so the devil can’t snatch it away from us. To do this, we need to continually study the truth that comes from God, because God is Truth. When we study the Word of God in Sacred Scriptures, given to us through the teachings of the Church, which is the Divine Institution and instrument in which God gives us the fullness of the truth, the seeds of faith have a good soil to fall into and take root and grow.

Additionally if we work the soil, the seeds of faith, which are sown when we hear the Gospel proclaimed and explained each week, can more and more begin to produce fruit in our lives; and consequently, we can begin to more fully have a living and vibrant faith. To work the soil well, we need to humbly ask God for help in order to open ourselves more fully to the seed of His truth.

And God will help us, if we do our part by listening more carefully to the prayers and readings, especially the Gospel, in order to understand and remember what we hear in the homily. Remember in the homily Christ speaks to his people in and through his priest, however, limited the priest may be. The priest may be a more or less effective homilist, his message may come through loud and clear or dull and garbled, we may like him or not, but God nonetheless can and does speak to you through him, if you keep the soil ready. It’s the message that is important, not the messenger.

Other obstacles to the Word of God not taking root in our lives stem from trials, persecutions, or from caring too much for material security and comfort or pleasure. At the root of these obstacles is something fundamental to all humans and that is-- we fear suffering, we do not like to suffer in any way. When we have trials - our greatest fears are realized. In the midst of our trails we look at others who seemingly have no problems and we begin to think, “If God were really good, he would just change or remove all of my problems.”

Likewise, in persecutions, we fear being ridiculed for our faith. We don’t want to suffer being embarrassed or ashamed. Sadly, we fear the loss of human respect, much more than offending our Blessed Lord. Or, our fear stems from our lack of knowledge of our faith which prevents us from being able to stand up to other’s who mock our faith and call the Church’s teaching into question.

Also, in caring too much about worldly and material security or comfort, we fear that in following the Gospel more fully we might have to do without or be inconvenienced; we then end up becoming indifferent to our faith. We look instead for pleasure, even illicit pleasure to make us feel good. We can then become narcissistic looking only to our own needs wants instead of the needs of our neighbor, the needy and poor. We then refuse to change, only seeing that others need to change and not ourselves.

In battling this obstacle to our faith, and really to combat all the obstacles to our faith, it is necessary that we have to be willing to deny ourselves, to suffer; in fact, suffering is an essential part of our life of faith. Without suffering a little, we would not be able to grow in virtue and character. Let me explain with an example. I once remember an interview with Michael Jordan, the retired great Basketball player for the Chicago Bulls and time World Champion. Was it just an easy or natural thing? Someone said to him, “it must be great to have been so gifted of a basketball player.” Jordan responded something to the effect that, yes it was a great blessing; however, don’t forget all the hard work, the many hours I practiced everyday; the great sacrifice and even suffering I endured to make use of that talent. I was on the court when no one else was, practicing, honing my talents” But if it is this way it is in ordinary human affairs, like basketball, how much more so with spiritual affairs, our relationship with God.

However, in light of the intense effort our spiritual life of faith entails, St. Paul encourages us not too lose heart; “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.” We see small glimpses of this glory in human affairs- such as Michael Jordon’s victories. Yet, the glory of human success pales to the fruit of spiritual success, in other words growing in our relationship with god. St. Paul, reminds us of how much athletes suffer and deny themselves in order to win a crown that fades away, but how little man is willing to suffer for a crown that never fades, the victor of eternal life.

Remember, St. Paul, himself, suffered so much in an effort to follow the pattern set by Jesus our Savior. Jesus passed through terrible suffering to arrive at the resurrection. So too must each one of us. A seed sown must die to bear fruit; we must suffer and die to self, in order to bear good fruit. Nothing good comes easy, especially the good of heaven, we have to deny ourselves so we can love God and others in order to achieve it; “The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force.” So we join our sufferings, however small to the passion of Christ. Jesus then transforms our suffering into fruit that lasts eternally. Jesus builds in us virtues-both human and divine. Human- as we can be more loving to our neighbor; and Divine, for the theological virtues are deepened in our hearts. We grow in our exercise of faith, hope and charity- the wonderful gifts we received in our baptism; we bear the fruit of God’s love in our lives, we can then share God’s love with others.

Let us today, as we celebrate this Eucharist, ask Jesus to make our hearts the good soil for His Divine work. We don’t have to go it alone, Jesus will help us if we only ask Him in prayer, He desires to help us for He knows how weak we can be. Let us surrender to Him all of our fears, all of our sufferings, past, present and future, and unite them to His passion, which will in a few moments be re-presented to us at this Holy Mass. Let us beg Him to deepen virtues in our lives, so that we can grow in love of Him and through and in this, love one another bear good fruit in our lives. Holy Mary, mother of our faith, mother of our hope, mother of our charity, pray for us. Help us to bear the fruit in our lives that will last for eternity. Amen.

You gotta want it!!!

2011-07-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. July 3rd, 2011

Many times homilies given at Holy Mass are based on the Gospel, but today I want to base this homily on the Second reading of this Sacred and Divine Liturgy. In today’s second reading we hear from St. Paul from the letter to the Romans. This past week we celebrated the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul; and so, it would be good to talk about St. Paul today.

In this letter St. Paul gives us advice about common struggles in our lives of faith. The Baptized Romans in Paul’s time were struggling with living out their faith just like we do. They found themselves struggling with a culture literally immersed in sin; especially the sin of hedonism--hedonism is the enjoyment of pleasure, entertainment and comfort in a way that is in opposition to the Holy Will of God. It’s not that God never wants us to enjoy pleasure, comfort or entertainment but that we must do so in a moral way, never placing our own will before His Will; in other words, never placing pleasure, comfort or entertainment before love of God and neighbor.

Pleasure, comfort and entertainment in Paul’s time had become the peoples’ god; while God, the true God was merely paid lip service, if even that; excessive pleasure and comfort had actually dulled their consciences. Remember that the Roman Empire at this time had dominated the entire known world. They had integrated many different religions and philosophies into their vast empire; no one religion or philosophy was thought to be better than another. You could basically believe what you wanted and practice in the way you wanted as long as you didn’t “push” your beliefs on others or onto the main stream culture; as long as you worship the Roman gods. The Roman’s practiced syncretism, that is, just mix all beliefs together and keep everyone happy and enjoy economical prosperity; whatever it took to keep the peace; in the end it was just plain paganism, a type of practical atheism. “What is Truth?”

And so enters St. Paul. St Paul was well versed in all religious and philosophical thoughts of the day; with keen insight, he addresses the situation in which the Baptized find themselves. Even though they had received the powerful life transforming grace of baptism, they still found themselves struggling with sin and couldn’t understand why. Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict says that St. Paul’s time is much like our own time. And so Benedict reminds us that even though St. Paul wrote close to 2,000 years ago, his writings still have great relevance in our lives today, maybe more than ever. The constant struggle between good and evil played out in our own lives, within our own selves, is the same as in Paul’s day; it is a struggle, better yet, a war being waged between our souls and our bodies, between the Spirit of God and the disordered desires of the flesh, that is our passions and our fallen human nature; it is a battle within.

For us who are trying to follow God faithfully, our soul or spirit desires to do good, to follow the Gospel; it desires to be kind and considerate to our neighbor, to our family and even to share with them the truth of our faith courageously and with confidence. But instead, we often are short tempered or fearful, or just plain rude because we are in a bad mood. Many of us truly do desire to repent from our sinfulness and convert to truth in order to draw closer in intimacy with Jesus. Yet, sin is so attractive that it seems we will never be able to turn away from it; it seems that following Jesus is just too hard and demanding for us, and we love our own will. Comfort is much easier. As Saint Paul himself says, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. In his letter, St. Paul addresses people who are perhaps down on themselves in their struggles and failures; perhaps he addresses me and you.

St. Paul first reminds them that they were baptized and have received the Holy Spirit: “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also.” St. Paul reminds us that our baptism is a baptism into his death and resurrection. Through our own baptism, we have all died to that spirit of the world that opposes the Spirit of God. The death that works within us, that being the death of sin, is now reborn with the grace of Christ, who defeated death-sin on the cross. As Jesus was resurrected, so too are we resurrected or born again in the life of grace; and so in part, we share already in Christ’s victory of sin and death. The grace we receive in baptism has the power to give us all of the strength, courage, perseverance we need to finally win in our struggle with sin, with ourselves. But first we must first have faith in this Divine Power, call upon it, trust in it and in Charity use it and cooperate with it in our lives, persevering to the end of our lives on earth no matter the effort needed.

The problem is that too often we don’t call upon and so use the grace of our baptism; instead, we can be so lazy, spiritually speaking. We too often really don’t put up a big enough struggle to resist sin in order to practice virtue, and so we weaken or even lose our Baptismal Grace. St. Paul puts it this way, “you have not yet resisted to the shedding of your blood,” so in other words we need to keep trying harder. So many times we extend so much effort in the other activities of our life, but yet when it comes to our external salvation we don’t seem to think it’s worth the effort that is needed. Many there are who work hard for a crown that withers and fades, so work harder for the crown that never perishes, the crown of eternal life... Many don’t think that an effort even needs to be made, after all everyone goes to heaven. St. Paul says instead, “Work out your Salvation with fear and trembling”. He knew that even he could have lost eternal life; if St. Paul could have, what about you and me.

St. Paul today encourages us that we are not debtors of the flesh, to live according to the flesh and its desires. If we live according to the flesh and its desires, we will die (everlastingly); this is the truth, plain and simple. But, if by the Power of the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body we will live; this also is the truth plain and simple. We have that Spirit available to us because we have been baptized into Christ death and resurrection; what hope we possess within us.

All of this, of course, doesn’t remove us from the struggle against sin; it doesn’t make it easy, but it does make it possible for us to overcome sin, if we only desire it and make the effort…we have to be determined. If we are not yet saints the problem isn’t with the grace of our baptism; no, the problem is with us, its that we don’t desire enough to be saints. However, in our struggle, Paul reminds us, we have the Holy Spirit, the Power and the Love of God, given to us mainly though the sacraments; it is the power to change our hearts, to make us Saints, that is one with God. As the saying goes, “we just gotta want it”…we’re talking about eternity here and our eternal happiness; as well as the eternal happiness of other souls. The Holy Spirit helps us to want it more than anything or anyone else; He leads us to the Sacraments of the Church to accomplish His work.

The Sacraments are intimate encounters with Christ, where we can take the burden of our sins and our labor to resist them, and give them to Christ’s redeeming Power. If we have lost the grace of our baptism or it’s power has become weak in our lives because of our failure to cooperate with it in order to resist the temptations of our flesh; as a result, if we have given into our passions in a disordered and moral way, then all is not lost, we can turn to Christ in Confession and have the heavy burden of our guilt taken away and our weaken state strengthened.

And if we need to nourish our soul because it has become thirsty for Christ’s love we can come to Holy Mass and give ourselves to Christ in order for Him to quench our thirst in Holy Communion. Feeding on His true flesh and blood nourishes our soul, increases our love and so makes us stronger to overcome the disordered desires of our flesh and blood. The Holy Eucharist is the unique way we can come before Jesus in our labors and in our burdens and find rest for our souls. “Come to me in the Holy Eucharist all you who are labored and burdened and you will find rest for yourselves. When we come before the Eucharist it is like standing before a source of radiation; we can’t necessarily feel its effects immediately on our soul, but nonetheless, the radiation of the Son—S.O.N., infuses our soul with His Divine light, Power and Love. We become like the One we adore.

May we today, in receiving Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, the fullness of Jesus Christ, beg our Lord for grace for this coming week to struggle and to never give up hope in our struggle against the one thing that keeps us from God’s love—sin. May we never choose love of comfort and ease over love, love of God and love of neighbor. Jesus our Lord and God truly present in the Holy Eucharist, we adore Thee and Love Thee, through your Mother and our Mother—The Blessed Virgin Mary, help us to love Thee and Adore Thee more. Amen.

The Answer to Everything!

2011-06-25T15:26:00.001-07:00

Today we celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi. This feast explains to us to the point of everything. That’s right to the point of everything. When somebody is telling us something that we don’t understand or something in which we just don’t see the point, we respond with “What’s the point?” Well today we can ask the question, “what is the point of everything, everything that exists, everything that is, including you and me and life itself?” As I said, today’s feast actually answers this question, “What’s the Point of Everything?”

Let’s start by thinking about the answer to the following questions: I not going to call on anyone, but try to answer these questions to yourself in five words or less.

1. What is the deepest desire of the human heart?

2. What is the center, the point, the meaning of life?

3. How I can be truly happy?

4. What does it mean to be a woman?

5. What does it mean to be a man?

6. What does God look like?

7. How can we bring about peace in the Middle East and in the world?

8. How can we end world hunger?

9. How can we fix our seemingly insurmountable economic woes?

10. How can we know if there is life after death?

11. What is the greatest of the seven sacraments?

Were you able to answer all of these questions? Chances are you couldn’t give the answer to a lot of them, must less do it in five words or less… What would you think if I told you that not only can I give you the answer to each one of these questions, I can actually answer each one of them in one word; that’s right just one single word. There is a one-word answer for each of these above questions, and it's the same answer for each one. Can you guess it?

This past week I read an article by Bill Donaghy, a speaker for the Theology of the Body Institute. His article was the impetus for this Homily. In his article entitled “the Answer to Everything,” Mr. Donaghy said, that some scientists and philosophers have been trying for years to compile one overarching, all encompassing "Theory of Everything." He said, that, he believed that we have it already in our midst. Present in millions of places worldwide, nestled in golden boxes beneath glowing candles that never go out, for two thousand years the secret has been with us; the center, the point of everything, the Answer to our questions; the answer to all questions. You've guessed it... the Holy Eucharist.

Blessed Pope John Paul II, in his great encyclical on the Holy Eucharist entitled, “Ecclesia de Eucharistia,” or the “Church of the Eucharist,” said about the Holy Eucharist: "Here is the Church's treasure, the heart of the world, the pledge of the fulfillment for which each man and woman, even unconsciously, yearns."

Today is the day in which the Church around the whole world celebrates the Feast of Corpus Christi, the true Body and Blood of Christ. The Church has been celebrating this feast for millennia. Throughout these centuries the Church has been proclaiming the wonders of the Blessed Sacrament to everyone and anyone who would listen; anyone who would be open to the truth. She has been giving the secret to life; in fact the secret to eternal life; the true “fountain of youth” if you will. The Church tells us the Holy Eucharist is not a “theory of everything”; it is the Truth of everything; the Reality of everything; it is Truth Itself; Reality Itself; the Beginning and End of everything and everyone.

So as Mr. Donaghy says in his article, “So why don't people come a'runnin' to our churches and our adoration chapels? Why aren't the phones ringing off the hook asking for our daily and Sunday Mass schedules? I would add, “Why don’t we here at St. Patrick’s have to build a bigger Church to handle everyone? Why doesn’t every single person in a parish, in our parish partake
in the Eucharist Procession on Corpus Christi?” Mr Donaghy asks, “is it because of poor marketing skills?”

The following was supposedly overheard by a monsignor at a Papal Mass who was standing beside our beloved Blessed John Paul II (though it sounds a little pessimistic for him). Watching thousands come to Holy Communion in St. Peter's Square he is supposed to have whispered, "So many coming to Holy Communion, so little change."

Ouch! Oh we of little faith. Us Catholic’s have the answer, the only answer in fact, to all of the world’s mysteries; the answer to all the world’s dilemmas’; in fact, we have the answer to everything. And we have, without a question, the power to transform our world. The Eucharist is the Answer because it is Jesus Christ, the God-Man, the savior of the World among us; it is THE POWER.

Yet, Jesus can only transform our world through us. And this can only happen if we first allow Jesus to transform us; to transform us into saints, into His other selves. If the world is not being changed for the better the fault is that you and I, are not tapping into the most powerful reality in the entire universe; the power of Divine Love; the power of the Holy Eucharist, which is the power of God Himself. The same power that brought everything into existence out of nothing; the same power that keeps everything in existence.

Yet despite our great lack of faith, the power for transformation remains, and is available at our Catholic Churches; here at our Catholic Church of St. Patrick’s. The Eucharist is Power, the Source of all power. But it is only faith that unlocks this power; a living faith that not only believes, but adores, hopes and loves; and begs pardon for all of those who do not believe, adore, hope and love. A faith that in humility, reverence and awe, falls on its knees before this same Jesus truly present in the Holy Eucharist the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. For, “if at the name of Jesus every knee must bend in the heavens and on the earth…What about the before the very person of Jesus?” And the Holy Eucharist is the very Person of Jesus Christ!!!

When we think we have an answer to a question but it doesn’t quite come to us, we say, “You know It's on the tip of my tongue!" Well exactly. In the Eucharist, the Answer to our questions, all of our questions; all of life questions and problems; to all of our own individual questions and problems; to all of the questions of the universe; is literally in our midst and on our tongue.

The Answer has been given, it has been given in the form of a gift; it's just that we Catholics have yet to fully unwrap it! At least some of us Catholics, for the saints and mystics have unwrapped it, and they show us how. They opened wide the doors to Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the doors of their hearts, minds and whole lives and He filled them to capacity; in fact, He filled them with Himself—God filled them with Himself.

Being filled with God is our destiny, that for which we have been created. We are in fact all capax dei - "capable of God." Dr. Peter Kreeft, a Catholic philosopher and writer said it well, "Your heart is like an infinitely large hole, and only God is big enough to fill it." And in the Holy Eucharist He has become just small enough it fill it.

Do we believe this? Do I believe this? Or do we keep trying to stick cheap imitations in the hole in our hearts? C.S. Lewis called this the long, sad story of humanity, this vain attempt at seeking something other than God that will make us happy. Our hearts are made for greatness, for Infinite Greatness. Nothing else but God will accomplish this, because our hearts have been made for God who is Infinite Greatest; and the Holy Eucharist is this Infinite, Great and Awesome God. Our hearts have been made for the Eucharist Alone.

Psalm 81 says, “I am the LORD, your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Open wide your mouth that I may fill it. But my people did not listen to my words; Israel did not obey me." The Church, you and me, we are the new Israel. Will we listen to the Lord and obey Him, or will be like Israel of old and die in the desert?
God has given us the answer to everything; He has given us the Answer to the deepest longing of our hearts, will we take Him at His Word? The Eucharist is the Answer, because it is, “The true Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ; The Eucharist is very simply GOD! It is the very Person of Jesus Christ in His physical resurrected body; it is Him; it is Him; it is Him.

Do we believe it? We better believe it, because it true; but we better do more than believe it, we better fall on our knees before the Eucharist and adore, hope and love our God truly present there in every tabernacle and on every altar at every Holy Mass and during Holy Hours of Adoration. Jesus is however not content to stay in the tabernacle and on the altar because out of love for you, He wants to come into you and dwell within you and use your heart as His pillow.

The Church doesn’t need a better media consultant; no, the Church needs you and me to be saints; and saints are mad in love with the Holy Eucharist; He is the Point of their everything, the Answer to their everything. So, let us open our hearts wide to Eucharist; let us open our hearts wide to Christ. He is the answer to everything, for He is the God who is Love Itself.

“Oh Jesus, Source of Joy, Filler of Hearts, Food of Angels, Drink for the Thirsty. Draw us to you, show us the way to this Table, this Banquet, this Feast of Love, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Let us respond in a new way at this great Feast of Your Body and Blood, a way of absolute surrender. Give us a hunger in the pit of our stomachs, a yearning for You alone to fill us. For You are "the Church's treasure, the heart of the world, the pledge of the fulfillment for which each man and woman, even unconsciously, yearns."

Join me this afternoon, my brother and sisters in Christ as we take Jesus in solemn procession out into our streets proclaiming to all…God is with us—the Eucharist is the Answer to Everything!!!

The Trinity is Love

2011-06-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

Homily on John 3:16-18--Holy Trinity

Today brings the return to ordinary time in the liturgical calendar; we have finished Lent, Easter and Pentecost. Now the Church starts this so-called “ordinary” time with two celebrations central to our Catholic Faith: the Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi. Today, we celebrate the Holy Trinity, the mystery of one God in three Divine Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The liturgy of this great solemnity invites us to contemplate the central mystery of our faith. And the Trinity is a great mystery; in fact it is the Mystery of all mysteries. It is a mystery of God’s own inner, intimate life and the very source of all gifts and graces; the Trinity is the source of everything including our very selves. So you can see how important this mystery is to our lives-it is the mystery of what is most essential to us-He Who created us, Who brought us into Being.

To help us enter into the contemplation of this mystery, that is to try to turn our hearts souls and minds toward it and to even to become one with the Mystery of the Trinity (for that is the goal of contemplation), to do this, we must begin by first understanding that we can never fully understand this great mystery. Here below, our intelligence is just not simple, pure, enough to really enter into full contemplation of the Trinity. Here below, we walk by faith, not by sight, so we will always stand in awe of the three persons who are one in being.

Actually, it is the simplest of persons, that is the humble saints, that have come to the deepest understanding of this central mystery of our faith. In fact, sometimes the more theologians or the great intellectuals have tried to get their minds around the mystery, the more errors they made. Either the Trinity loses their personhood or their essential unity—we end up with just one personhood or more than one God. If even trained theologians can mess up, what are we, who are not theologians, to do?

Well, just because we cannot fully understand this great mystery, doesn’t mean we can’t understand it at all. The fundamental stance we take in front of so great a mystery is one of awe. It is analogous to looking at something beautiful in nature, such as a sunset. The quality of the colors in the sky, the light rays turning color- we stand and say “wow!” It just leaves us speechless. So too with contemplation of God- the first stance is awe. We stand before God in prayer, looking with our minds at the mystery of the Three in One- we are in awe, Wow!

Today the Church helps us to contemplate the mystery of the Holy Trinity by helping us enter into the very center of the mystery of the Trinity-the center which is--Love. This revelation of God, in which He reveals to us that He is Love, is as were, a secret help given and revealed to us from deep within the Trinity, Himself. Never in the Old Testament did God reveal this mystery to anyone. God loved the chosen people-Israel, but he was a God who was distant and remote, a Master not a intimate friend. So the ideal of a God who would actually draw close to us, so close that He actually become Incarnate, became a man like us, was beyond their wildest dreams.

This incarnate God is who today’s Gospel passage speaks of. We read that God so loved the world, that he sent His only Son. God sent Him not to condemn the world, but to save the world. This revelation of the true purpose of Jesus coming into our world reveals what is the motive of God. And by knowing God’s motive, we can better contemplate the mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity.

God loved the world-this is His motive and this motive reveals who God really is--God is love. Yet, this Love did not just stay in heaven, it dwelt on this earth, and then this Love was sent into the hearts of all of those who would believe. So love is not just a quality of God, like we would say of us humans—we have love; so we could say that those two persons, that husband and wife really love each other, just like God really loves us. But the problem with this is that God doesn’t love like us—God doesn’t just love—God is Love Itself, or we should say God is Love Himself. In other words, we are not pure love, God is pure love; love is not our essence; but it is God’s. While the bond of marriage is deep, and we can say that two persons in marriage love each other, that a man loves his wife and vice versa, but love is not who the man is or who the woman is. Only in the Holy Trinity do we find Persons who do not just love each other, but are Love Himself.

Here is the heart of the mystery and here is where we enter in- we enter into the essential love the Father has with the Son and the Holy Spirit. The very life of the Divine Trinity is love and we, through our prayer and through our worthy and proper celebration of the Sacraments, being of humble and pure heart, can enter directly in. We are then caught up, as it were, in the loving gaze of the Father to the Son and Holy Spirit, the loving gaze of Jesus to the Father and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit’s loving gaze to the Father and the Son. This love changes everything in our lives-it goes beyond mere emotions and feelings. Through faith, using our minds and our hearts, we are able to return to the source of Love in order to be loved, by Love, so we can in turn love one another and become one in Love.

So you see, the mystery of the Trinity is not an extraneous believe of our Catholic faith. WE can’t just ignore it and say it’s a mystery and leave it at that. The mystery of the Trinity is the starting point of all revealed truth, it is the source of our existence, the fountain from which proceeds our supernatural life, and it is the goal toward which we are headed and hope to attain; it is a Mystery to experience to enter into to and become one with in love; We are children of the Father, brother’s and co-heirs with the Son, and we are continually sanctified, made holy, by the Holy Spirit to make us ever more resemble Christ.

The more through study and intense prayer we deepen our understanding of this truth of our relationship with each of the persons of the Trinity, the more we, ourselves become living temples of this same Blessed Trinity. The more we adore the Blessed Trinity the more He comes to make His abode in our souls and the more we become like Love itself-Love reveals Himself to us and makes us His Own.

We hear the Blessed Trinity constantly invoked in the Holy Mass and all the Sacraments, because it is the central mystery of our faith. We were baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and in their name also are our sins forgiven, in Their Name we became God’s Children. We begin and end many prayers by invoking the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Often during the day we should say the prayer of adoration to the Trinity, “All Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end Amen.

God is my Father! If you meditate on it, you will never let go of this consoling thought!

Jesus is my Lord and Savior who has come not to condemn me but to save me.

The Holy Spirit is my Consoler, who guides my every step along the road.

Consider this often: you are God’s and God is
yours.

Dear Soul, remember you have been created by the Father, redeemed by the Son and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. You are a child of God, you belong to God and you are called to return to this God from whence you came. What Love you have given—Love Himself.

Holy Mary, Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, and Spouse of the Holy Spirit, pray for us that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ and return to that Love from whence we came—the Most Blessed Trinity. Amen.

Come Holy Spirit Come!

2011-06-12T04:59:00.000-07:00

Today we end the Easter Season with the celebration of Pentecost and the coming of the promised Holy Spirit upon the Church. It’s really the celebration of the beginning of the Church. The eleven apostles, along with the Virgin Mary are in the cenacle, the Upper Room, united in mind, heart and voice, praying for the coming of the Spirit. And as a result, they receive Him in a most dramatic manifestation, as we just heard from the book of Acts. With the coming of the Holy Spirit and His sweet anointing from above the apostles are transformed from men cowering with fear to bold men proclaiming salvation by forgiveness of sins through the Lord Jesus Christ.

So many times, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict has asked that each one of us become more effective witnesses of hope. He has stressed that the world, so mired in despair and hopelessness, needs a strong witness from each and every Catholic. However, when we hear these words of our Holy Father, words that challenge us, we too can cower with fear just like the apostles did before that miraculous event occurred in the upper room.

I am sure if we try, we can make a long list from our daily lives of times when we have been called by God to give witness to Christ and our faith in Him and His Catholic Church, but failed in fear. Fear is that emotion which causes us to cower and so “go with the flow”, saying, “I am just plain afraid of what following Christ unreservedly might cost me!” Fear is what causes us to make excuses like, “everyone is doing it” “who I am to judge;” and so we can mediocre Catholics, becoming lukewarm and indifferent to what is really important in our life.

And what is most important in our life? It is our faith in and relationship with Our Loving God shown by our worship and adoration of Him in the Sacred Liturgy; that is, the Holy Mass and the other Sacraments. Additionally, flowing from this faithful and proper worship is our concern and love for the salvation of our neighbor; that is concern for whether or not those we know and love make it to heaven; especially the members of our family and parish family.

Because Christ has sent us the advocate we need no longer be afraid to witness to the truth; the Holy Spirit will strengthen us and console us; if we ask Him, if we call upon Him to help. Today He offers to each of us the very same supernatural gifts that transformed the apostles. These gifts, which we received at our personal Pentecost, that is at our Confirmation, these gifts have the divine power to transform us, to make us holy so we can live holy lives; and holiness of life is that universal language which speaks to the hearts of all men regardless of their tongue.

If we open our hearts and minds to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, these sublime gifts will enable and transform us to be bold witnesses to the hope and joy that we hold in our hearts…to be bold witnesses to the Risen Christ, just like the apostles in our reading today; we can lead others to Jesus and His love for them. The question for us today is however, “How do we more fully open our hearts and minds to the Holy Spirit in order to use, in our daily lives, His gifts that we received at our confirmation.

To begin with, we must be more docile to the Holy Spirit workings within our soul. It is He who directs our thoughts to the good, to the only one who is good and that is God. He directs us to carry out all that God expects of us for love of Him and love of neighbor for love of Him. Those inspirations you have to goodness and holiness are from Him, not from you but from Him.

And so it is He who leads us to be open to Christ’s teachings and commandments and accept them with our whole minds. It is He who gives us the strength to accept them with our whole will in order to live them in our lives, thus proclaiming by our lives the truth of Christ which alone gives authentic freedom and life and so which alone gives the hope that doesn’t disappoint.

Second, we must pray to the Holy Spirit. Prayer to Him opens us up to his working in our soul. Christian life in fact, requires a constant dialogue with God, One in three Persons, and it is to this intimacy that the Holy Spirit leads us. In our live of prayer we discover that because of our baptism and confirmation, the Holy Spirit and His divine power and love is present and moves in us. Only by Him can the praise and adoration of God grow within our hearts, fill our minds and come off of our lips. Through prayer, especially the prayer of the Holy Mass, we are able give ourselves to the Holy Spirit in the obedience of love and the meekness of love and become united with Him and become transformed by Him in love.

Finally, the Holy Spirit leads us to union with the cross, because in the life of Christ, the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost were preceded by Calvary. This order must be followed in the life of any Christian…The Holy Spirit comes to us as a result of the Cross—that is as a result of our total abandonment to the Will of God and His truth, of seeking only His glory and of renouncing ourselves and our wills completely.

The Holy Spirit leads us to accept the fruits of Christ cross in our lives by helping to offer ourselves unreservedly at the Altar and by leading us gently to the Sacrament of Penance, to confess our sins there, to raise our heart to God throughout the day and to carry out some particular work well. It is He who suggests to us and gives us the strength to live the Holy Mass by accepting all of the crosses in our daily lives, including doing our daily work well and by making some small sacrifice or accepting some discomfort, irritation or inconvenience as and act of love for God and sorrow for our sins and the sins of others.

Let us ask today for a renewal of the gifts of the Holy Spirit we received at confirmation; if you have been confirmed see me. Because you need, we all need these seven-fold gifts of grace to help us transform our lives and to help those around us to have faith and hope in Jesus Christ. It is impossible to lead an authentic Christian life without the Sacrament of Confirmation.
If we are docile to the Holy Spirit we can grow in the intimacy of our prayer and union with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit will transform us into other Christs by helping us to die to self so that Christ may live and love in us. We will then participate in His work of Redemption, bringing the hope of Christ to the world around us by the power of the same Spirit who through the apostles first brought to the world the light of faith, the promise of hope and the fire of God’s love! (pause)

If we want to have a deeper friendship with the Holy Spirit, nothing is so effective as a close friendship with Mary. She it was who was opened, followed and obeyed, as no other creature ever did, the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. The Apostles, before the day of Pentecost, with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the woman and Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Let us do the same at this Holy Mass and every Holy Mass as the Holy Spirit through the Sacred Priesthood makes present Heaven on earth in the Holy Eucharist, which is our only hope on earth. Come Holy Spirit come, come by means of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Thy well-beloved spouse. (x3) Amen.

The Eucharist is our resurrected and ascended Lord. The Eucharist is Jesus and where Jesus is there is our hope, there is Heaven on earth.

2011-06-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension of the Risen Lord Jesus, to the right hand of His Father in Glory. Yet, if you think about it, this seems to be a contradiction. After all, Jesus said in the Gospel we just read, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” So, if Jesus ascends into heaven, how can he be with us until the end of time? If Jesus wanted to be with us until the end of the world, how come he didn’t just stay in Jerusalem and be available to everyone there? If he truly loved us, wouldn’t he have stayed so that we could encounter him, personally, just like his disciples, so that we too could see him, touch him--hear him? These are good questions. How can we answer them?

In our own lives, we can certainly feel as if Jesus has left us alone, especially when we experience bad things, like the death of a loved one, a personal tragedy; but also we can seem abandoned by Jesus our God even in just the everyday struggles of life. In ordinary life we can often experience sadness or loneliness, or sometimes even incredible anguish. I believe the apostles and disciples of Jesus felt many of these things, especially after Jesus was cruelly crucified—he left them alone through the stark reality of his death and then later apparently, through his ascension into heaven. How did they overcome their anguish and how do we overcome our own? Where lies our hope in this life?..... Well, the answer is simple, yet hard; but the ascension gives us the answer. The ascension points to our hope.

At the Ascension the Disciples believed in Jesus’ promise. So we, like them, also must believe in His promise. They believed in faith that even though Jesus was with the Father in heaven, and at the same time He was with them; and not just in their memory or in their heart. They believed that Jesus was still on earth physically with them, in His resurrected and now glorified body.

This brings up one of the mistakes that many can make in their understanding about Christ’s ascension into heaven. The mistake is to think that Jesus is no longer with us here on earth. When we think of the ascension, we can wrongly picture Jesus standing before the apostles and then floating up into the clouds disappearing from their sight. This is not what the language of the Gospel means. We have to understand the words of today's Gospel mystically; because they are speaking of great mysteries.

Mystically speaking what does it mean, as we are told in today's Gospel, "and he was taken up into heaven."? Well first of all Heaven is not a place up in the sky somewhere beyond the clouds or beyond the stars at the edge of the universe; nor is heaven some type of other dimension or parallel universe, talk of which is so in vogue now a days; heaven is not the stuff of science fiction. Heaven is all around us because God is all around us. There is however, a veil that separates heaven from us. Heaven goes beyond our senses; even though it is all around, it transcends our ability to see it, touch it, taste it, hear it or smell it. Yet is more a reality around us than that which we can sense….we believe in what is invisible…

To be taken up into heaven means then to enter through that veil that separates heaven and earth; it is to go beyond our sense perception and behold that which we can only see now through the eyes of faith. To be taken up into heaven is to behold that reality above all other realities which no eye as seen, no ear has heard nor has never even entered into the mind of man. It is to behold that God who is all around as He truly is, to behold Him face to face, which means to become One with Him in an eternal union of unending Love. Heaven is the ultimate reality all around us, more real than what we can experience with our senses.

At His ascension then, Jesus in His human body enters through that veil and becomes the way, in fact the only way for us to enter through as well. And so Jesus' humanity has become a type of doorway, if you will, from earth to heaven. And so where He has gone in His human nature we can also now go with Him, in Him and through Him-He is the Way. By the way, we can do this not only at our death but beginning already here on earth; this is our hope.

Hang with me here... Because of the ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost to the Apostles, who were the first priests (which we will celebrated liturgically next week), Jesus' Human body can now be present both on earth and in heaven at the very same time. And so, in His Human nature, in His human body, blood, and soul--heaven and earth become one. In Jesus, heaven and earth unite.

The fact of the matter is, and this is very, very important to understand....the fact of the matter is, Jesus is also still on earth as He is in heaven. Not just spiritually, not just in the minds and hearts of the faithful, not just mystically in His Body the Church. Jesus is still present on earth in his human, corporal, physical and resurrected body. His human body, with all that makes up a human body: His hands and feet, His bones and blood and yes, His Human Heart alive and beating and His eyes looking lovingly at us, and ears with which to hear us, our pleading and our words of love.

The ascension was merely the end of His visible presence on earth, not the end of His physical presence on earth. Don't ever say, "when Jesus was on earth; and if you hear someone else say that correct them immediately. To say when Jesus was on earth is heresy. Jesus is still on earth, He is still on earth; He is still on earth.

But where, where is Jesus on earth as He is in heaven? At the Holy Mass, and only at the Holy Mass. It is at the Holy Mass that heaven and earth unite. At Holy Mass the veil is lifted and we entered into eternity and experience the resurrected and ascended Jesus sitting at His Throne at the Right Hand of the Father. The Heavenly Liturgy and the Earthly Liturgy literally become one; we worship and adore our God with all the angels and saints.

When we are in the presence of the Holy Eucharist we are at the same time both on earth and in heaven; in fact more in heaven than we are on earth. Where Jesus is there is heaven. Whether we encounter the Holy Eucharist, which is Jesus in His resurrected and ascended body, at Mass or outside of Mass in the tabernacle or at hours of adoration through Jesus in the Holy Eucharist we enter already through that veil that separates heaven and earth; we begin to process already that which we hope in; being embrace in the love of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Yes we can't see with our human eyes the body of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist because we can't see Heaven. Yet, through faith we can know with certainty that He is really there and we can touch Him. "In faith God present in the Holy Eucharist can come to us, and show himself to the eyes of our heart." How we must present our self, before the throne of God at Holy Mass. Exteriorly, how we must act, how we must dress, even during the summer months, always wearing our Sunday best; dressed for the wedding feast of the Lamb not for a day at the park or the beach. Interiorly how we must present ourselves, how souls cleansed and made pure by confession,

Because Jesus is still on earth in the Holy Eucharist we discover that this, "The Mystery of Our Faith," is our hope in the present life of struggle and fear. But we must believe with our whole hearts and minds that He is really there in the tabernacle and on our altars after the words of consecration are spoken; and we must, we must, if we are to possess hope, live out that belief by adoring Him in the Holy Eucharist, falling on our knees and crying out in love, "Oh my God I believe, please help my unbelief. We must allow our encounter with the Eucharist, Jesus, to transform us.

The Eucharist is our resurrected and ascended Lord. The Eucharist is Jesus and where Jesus is there is our hope, there is Heaven on earth. …we go to heaven to the extent we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him… (Pope Benedict) Let us turn to Our Lady for help…Holy Mary, Mother of our hope, Queen of Peace, pray for us. Come Holy Spirit, Come by means of the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Your well-beloved spouse. Amen.

How can we love one another in the parish family if we don’t give ourselves...

2011-05-14T19:36:00.000-07:00

Fourth Sunday in Easter-"Good Shepherd Sunday." May 15th, 2011

Today is commonly called Good Shepherd Sunday, since all the readings, antiphons, and the alleluia verse have a pastoral theme. In fact, the word “shepherd” or “sheep” appears in all the readings and verses except the first reading. In the first reading, though not mentioned, they are however implied, because Peter and the Apostles were the first shepherds of the sheep chosen and led by the Chief Shepherd Himself, Jesus the Good shepherd.

By the way, our English word “pastoral” comes from the Latin by the way of an Old English word which has to do with the task of leading, safeguarding and nourishing flocks, especially flocks of sheep. And so early in Christianity, “pastoral” was applied to the priestly work of bishops and priests chosen by Christ to be our visible and audible shepherds and so the visible sign of His presence and His audible voice. This is why scripture uses this concept of shepherding so evident in today’s readings…Jesus is the good Shepherd but He continues His work of shepherding the sheep of His flock, the Catholic Church by and through bishops and priests who are in union with the visible Chief Shepherd the Holy Father, the Pope.

The word “pastoral” is also related to the word “Parish” which is also a Latin derivative, through it reflects the Greek. The original meaning of “parish” interestingly, is “alongside one’s house.” The parish is our home alongside our earthly homes. In fact, it is really where we can encounter our true home, heaven, alongside our earthly homes; and so, it is even more deeply our home and our family. This is why the early Christians viewed themselves as strangers passing toward their true home, heaven; heaven which is reflected in a unit of the Church in miniature, namely the parish. This means that the institution of the parish is at least 1500 years old, its structure dating from the emergence of the Church from the catacombs during the early fourth century.

A parish is truly a spiritual sheepfold wherein the work of the Good Shepherd is carried out by an ordained priest who acts in the authority and in the name, and so in the Divine Power of the Good Shepherd. The faithful and the active sheep of the parish are called to assist the priest, so he can faithfully share in the work of the Good Shepherd. If the shepherd and the sheep are faithful to the voice of the Good Shepherd, shown by their faithfulness to the Chief shepherds on Earth, the Holy Father and the bishops in union with him, then by its nature, the parish reflects all dimensions of Jesus’ loving care for us.

Thus, it is in a parish, our parish, that Jesus says, as He does in today’s Gospel, “I know my sheep….” And “ mine know me…” For it is in a parish church, such as this, that we gather every Sunday as a whole, as a family, and diligently listen to His voice in the readings. And then listen to the readings explained in the teachings of the Church expounded in the homily.

And so it is here in our parish family where we allow Jesus to “know us” which really means to love us. And in His love He feeds
us by His word; and gives us, by His word become flesh, the Holy Eucharist which is the source of all grace and love because it is Him, Jesus, the Good Shepherd in Person in his Risen Body and Blood. Known by His love, we then come to know and so love the Good Shepherd in return.

By the Holy Eucharist, if we participate with faith, and so with full, active, conscious participation, we can actually enter into a Holy Communion of Love with the Good Shepherd, thus being filled with His love and life, with His very being, in order to be shepherded and come to bear good fruit, the fruit of love. In our lives we can then share this fruit of God’s love, life and Communion with others, helping one another in the parish get to heaven, and helping even those not of our flock get to heaven. As Christ’s flock, as His family, we are truly called to be a “Family of families helping one another get to heaven!”

It is here in our parish church that we first enter Christ’s sheepfold, through the spiritual rebirth of the waters of baptism. Here we achieve maturity in faith, through Confirmation and so through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is here that we come as prodigal children when we suffer an illness of soul cause by our sin so that we may experience God’s loving mercy, His forgiveness and healing. Here marriage vows are taken. It is from here that the oils of the Last Anointing are brought to the seriously ill in order that they may be healed, primarily spiritually; and if it be God’s Holy Will, even healed physically as I have myself witnessed on occasion.

Today’s second Reading recalls that through we were once scattered, we are now one in Christ. We are now gathered into this parish; in other words, it is Christ the Good Shepherd who has gathered us as one flock, as one family. Here as well we are connected to the larger flock of Christ, as found in the Diocesan family and the family of the Universal Church. Here at this parish, in this flock, the portion of Christ’s larger flock in the world, we encounter the life of which today’s Gospel speaks; here we can receive this life if we open ourselves to it in faith and love.

To bring all this down to a very concrete level, three basic expectations can be assigned by the Good Shepherd to each member of a parish flock. They are: 1. Registration; 2 involvement, and 3. Support, which includes both spiritual and financial support. Too, there should be concern for outreach; a thrust beyond parish limits that can be implemented by social service such as through St. Vincent de Paul, and a thrust for social services by ecumenical activity and education programs.

One Archbishop said that, “The real purpose of parish is, in fact, to develop saints who praise God together, who as a community, who as a family, carry out the two great Commandments…” And what are the two great Commandments? First and foremost is the Adoration of our God, which means to love Him with our whole heart, and with our whole soul, and with our whole mind, not only as individuals but together as a family. And the second springs from the first and is like it; because of this love of God we must then love our neighbor as ourselves.

These two Commandments are carried our principally through Holy Mass and our presence and active participation in it. It is here that we encounter the Good Shepherd, as we can nowhere else; and through this encounter here we can enter into a loving intimate encounter with our Heavenly Father. And so it is here that through our encounter with God, our Communion with God, we can then enter into a Communion of love with one another, a loving communion which has it’s source in the Communion of Love of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

It is only through this encounter, brought about by encountering, listening to and following the Good Shepherd, that we can have life and have it more abundantly and share that abundant life with our world. It is through the Holy Mass and our Communion with Good Shepherd and through Him with the Father in the Communion of love of the Holy Spirit that we follow the spirit of the first generations of Christian and all the other faithful Christians up until our own time. In our parish we and they are one, in the Oneness of the Most Blessed Trinity.

This oneness in the God who is three in One, and the God who is Love, allows us and empowers us to love one another. Again, this love of one another begins first and foremost in our parish family, for Charity begins at home. Love is shown by deeds. Full, active and conscious participation in the Sacred Liturgy must, MUST be followed by full, active and conscious participation in our Parish family life. This is not an option in our Catholic faith or in our efforts to “love one another.”
Somewhere along the lines of the past decades came the erroneous idea that to be a faithful Catholic all one had to do was to show up for Holy Mass. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, we must celebrate the Holy Mass, but then we must live the Holy Mass, giving of ourselves for the love of the other; and this begins right here in St. Patrick’s parish family.

But, how can we love one another in the parish family if we don’t give ourselves, if we never volunteer, if we never give of our time, talent and treasure to support the parish family, if we never participate in our parish family’s life out side of Holy Mass?
The fact is, is that it is an active parish life that helps us to love one another in our individual families and in our community. Our world will only be transformed when our parish families are renewed. And or parish family will never be renewed until more and more families and family members of the parish family revolve their lives around the Good Shepherd truly present in the Holy Eucharist. And from that source of Divine Love and Mercy, revolve their lives around the parish family’s life.

Our parish family of St. Patrick’s is a piece of heaven on earth because here is Jesus the Good Shepherd in the tabernacle and on the Altar at Holy Mass and Holy Hours of adoration. Where Jesus is there is heaven because there is love and so there is the God who is Love!!! The Eucharist is the Good Shepherd and so it is only through Belief, adoration, trust and love of the Holy Eucharist that we enter into the flock of the Good Shepherd.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, Mother of our parish family, pray for us sinners, help us all to grow closer in love to your Son, the Good Shepherd, truly present in the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.

Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.

2011-05-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

For anyone has not seen all that as gone on in the past week, we could ask them the question found in this week Gospel… "Are you the only visitor…who does not know of the things that have taken place… in these days?" In this past week we have all been witnesses to unbelievable historical events. I am not speaking here of the death of Bin Laden, that was indeed big news. But, I am speaking of an event that has even more ramifications for our world and our future, and that is the Beautification of John Paul II.

Present at His beautification were about 1.5million people. Present at His funeral by the way, was, it is estimated, the largest crowd of people ever gathered. Blessed John Paul when He lived was a man who was seen by more people in person than any other man in history—He was a man who had convened the largest gathering of humanity ever in one place and at one time.

As sure all of you remember his funeral just six short years ago. I remember that the overall press coverage was positive. And many of the networks at the time even had priests & theologians as guest commentators. But I also remember that this niceness in some of the media outlets very quickly changed after the funeral into a type of cynicism. Shortly after John Paul’s funeral some of the media pundits began saying, “You know the pope was a nice old man but he was really out of touch with modernity. He was just too conservative, not with the times.” They began then to say the same old tired line, “You know, the Church needs to change; it needs to go along with rest of the world, with the current opinion polls.”

The world here was trying to apply political titles to a man that didn’t fit into “political titles.” John Paul wasn’t conservative or liberal. The fact is John Paul gave us the truth, and truth is also neither conservative nor liberal, it is just the truth; it is the way things are; it is reality as it is.

John Paul, when he was alive, listened to all of his and the Church’s detractors-he listen to the pundits. He was intelligent enough however to critique their viewpoints and point out where these viewpoints were wanting and untrue. He pointed out all of the errors in these so-called expert’s modern views very clearly, and he showed why they were false. And for those who take the time and effort to read them, his many writings continue in our day to point out the errors in our day and point to the way to happiness and life…to Christ.

One only has to read these works, where he responds to the hard issues such as homosexuality, abortion, contraception, euthanasia, open divorce, woman priests, the dignity and sanctity of the human person, marriage; love and responsibility, etc., to see his responses show clearly and definitively by the light of the Gospels, why so many of the modern viewpoints and ideas are just plain wrong and will always be plain wrong no matter if the vast majority thinks differently…for right is right if no one believes it and a wrong is wrong if everyone believes it.

I remember during the funeral coverage of John Paul II, one reporter upon interviewing Fr. George Rutler, a regular on EWTN television, posited this question to Fr. Rutler, “If only the pope was for birth control, if only the pope was more modern, if only the pope wanted woman to be priest. Tell us about your thoughts in hearing that, Fr. George Rutler.” Fr. Rutler responded. “If only the pope had done all those things… nobody would be covering His funeral…”

Fr. Rutler went on to say, “For a man who is so out of touch with the times and so irrelevant he is getting the biggest funeral in human history. No other funeral has been bigger, period, bare none. Mother Theresa, some of the others, the big ones, the other heads of state, Ronald Reagan, they pale in comparison to Pope John Paul the second. That would not have been the case if he would have just gone with the flow. Look at all the religious sects and denominations which have fallen apart because they have follow exactly the prescriptions of some of those commentators.

Isn’t this so true what father Rutler said. One hears commentators in the media even today who come off like theologians with no idea or understanding of the teachings of the Church, or reality for that matter. Even worst, are those priest and theologians in the Church, who deny the unchangeable teachings of the Church, as if they themselves were the pope teaching dogma to us. They speak so authoritatively and knowledgeable but they have neither authority nor knowledge. Fr. Rutler went on to say, “These issues that people talk about very glibly have been tried and failed miserably. That is why John Paul II has said we are living in a culture of death. Some of these issues have been reduced to political terms that they cannot be. They are not political matters.” In other words, John Paul the II taught us, and our current Pope, Benedicts continues to teach us, that you just can’t take a poll in order to find the truth. And so, truth doesn’t come from a majority view; it comes from God. The majority can be wrong, and in many cases it is. The fact of the matter is, is that truths of our Beautiful Catholic faith are true because they come from God, not from Man.

This all just underscores the fact that all of us need to learn and understand our Catholic faith more and more so that we can overcome the current attacks on our faith, attacks, which will become even more severe in the days to come. Ordinary Catholics will not survive what is coming down the pike.

This why the Beautification of John Paul is so important to us; we still need him to help us from his place in heaven. And we need to study John Paul the II’s writings to learn the truth from them in order that truth may save us and set us free. We need as well to read Pope Benedict’s writings and learn the truth from them as well. God as given us these two great pontiffs at this very pivotal time, to use the words of JPII, “this decisive time” in the history of our world…This is part of God’s Divine Mercy on us and on our world.

This brings us to why I personally loved John Paul the Second. I didn’t love him because of his charismatic personality or that he was the people’s pope. I loved him because he gave us the truth, the truth that I need and you need to reach heaven and our eternal salvation. John Paul not only preached the Gospel to the entire world with superhuman strength, but he brought the very light of Christ to all whom saw him, heard him, and touched him. In the end, this is what attracted people to John Paul II and this is why the Holy Spirit led the Church to Beatify him.

What people saw in John Paul II was the same Person the disciples on the road to Emmaus saw in the breaking of the bread—Jesus Christ. People saw JPII, but what they really were attracted to was Christ Himself--they saw Christ and His truth and love alive in JPII; and were our hearts not burning when he explained the scriptures to us.

And John Paul saw Jesus in the breaking of the bread. And there at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, along with the Sacrifice of Jesus to the Father, John Paul throughout His life offered Himself as a sweet oblation of love. The Holy Mass, the Holy Eucharist was His entire life, and from it He derived all His energy, love and his deep prayer life. From His willing sacrifice of self on the altar of Sacrifice John Paul was able to bring the Light and the life of Christ to a world ever more steeped in darkness, but at the same time, a world so hungry for the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We must follow His great example. John Paul showed us that humans are capable of imitating the very being of God—Who Is Love- in the giving oneself in a total gift of self for the love of the other. In his pontificate John Paul went out to the world, and Benedict continues to do the same, all in order to show us the way of living this type of love so that we can have life and have it more abundantly.

Shortly before his death, John Paul proclaimed 2005 as the year of the Holy Eucharist. By doing so he gave us the very secret to, I don’t say his success, but to his holiness, his deep prayer, his power to bring hope, joy and love to everyone he met. His secret was the Holy Eucharist; The Holy Eucharist was and is the secret of all the saints.

The Eucharist has the power to transform us into the light of Christ for the entire world—It is the power, divine power of the Risen Christ Himself. But it requires--demands, a response on our part—a yes on our apart…a total yes. The Eucharist calls us to conversion, to turn away from the old self to a new self in Christ. It requires a death to self, a contempt of self in order to arise to new life, one which allows Christ to live anew in us, to love God above all else.

As John Paul II wrote in the Encyclical on the Eucharist, the Eucharist leads us to conversion and penance. And conversion and penance open our hearts to the transforming power of Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist. Only in, through and with this power, the power of the Risen Lord--His own power, can we truly change, becoming the Light of Christ to the world, to every one we meet. This is the calling of the Second Vatican council, the universal call to holiness.

We must see Christ in the breaking of the bread so that He can change our hearts into His Heart in order to take Him and His love out into the world, into our homes, our work, our schools, yes even our sports. This is the great example John Paul the second showed us; it is the same example that our currently Holy Father Benedict shows us.

Let us then follow JPII's example and give God our total yes, at this Holy Eucharist. Let us beg him for the grace to accept the divine mercy He gave to us in our beloved Pope, in his life and in his death and now in his beatification. And let us offer it through the heart of the immaculate one, just has John Paul did. The Holy Father found the purest reflection of God's mercy in the Mother of God. And from the mother he learned to conform himself to Christ. Totus tuus (Cardinal Ratzinger Funeral homily for JPII).

Blessed Mother, help us to do the same. Here is our yes, our whole lives take it and offer it for us to your divine Son Jesus. Totus tuus, Mother, totally yours.

(Let us end with the last part of Cardinal Ratzinger’s, now Pope Benedict, funeral homily for John Paul the II.
“None of us can ever forget how in that last Easter Sunday of his life, the Holy Father, marked by suffering, came once more to the window of the Apostolic Palace and one last time gave his blessing urbi et orbi. We can be sure that our beloved pope is standing today at the window of the Father's house, that he sees us and blesses us. Yes, bless us, Holy Father. We entrust your dear soul to the Mother of God, your Mother, who guided you each day and who will guide you now to the eternal glory of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.” (Cardinal Ratzinger Funeral homily for JPII).”

Blessed John Paul II from your place in heaven, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.”

2011-04-30T13:54:00.000-07:00

Today as we celebrate this Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we ask the newest blessed of the Church, Blessed John Paul II to intercede for us. As you know Pope Benedict the XVI will beautified John Paul II (today) Tomorrow in Rome; It is no coincident that his beatification (was) will be celebrated (today) on the feast of Divine Mercy. This is Beatification is a great gift to the Church just as is the Feast of Divine Mercy. It was John Paul himself who was primarily responsible for bringing the revelation given to St. Faustina on the infinite mercy of our Lord to the whole world.

It is important to note that St. Faustina’s revelations which focused on the mystery of Divine mercy occurred just as two great evils in our age were taking shape, those of Nazism and Communism, which both denied any notion of objective truth-they were an attack on the truth especially about the truth of the dignity and sanctity of the Human Person. In a world, which seemed to be on the verge of being totally overtaken by these two evils, the one message that showed the world evil would not overcome the world was given to this obscure nun in Poland. And that message was and is this--that God is Mercy, and this mercy has a name, it is Jesus Christ, the merciful risen Savior—He is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it, nor will it ever overcome it. And even more, this Divine Mercy named Jesus is with us in Person in the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is at the heart of the Message of Divine Mercy because It is Jesus and so is the font of God’s Mercy for us and the whole world. It is by faith, adoration, trust and love in the Eucharist that we shall call down God’s Mercy on us and on the whole world.

As these two evils were being overcome, that of Nazism and Communism, John Paul, who lived through both of them, saw very clearly that the source of these evils and every evil is Man trying to usurp the rights of the Creator God. Man rejects God as Creator and consequently rejects the very source determining what is good and evil. And so man tries to find happiness apart from God.

Since the fall of our first parents, Man has a tendency to put himself in the place of God, to be the creator of his own history and his own civilization. Alone, apart from God, man now decides what is good and what is bad. Man is now the one who would exist and operate, as if there were not a God. Another way of saying this is that man loves himself, more than he loves His creator—or as our Holy Father has put it, self-love to the point of contempt for God. It was this corrupt love of self that drove our first parents out of the garden, bringing sin and death into the world throughout human history.

The fruit of Divine mercy is this, that the Church has been given by the Holy Spirit the power to call evil by its name; in other words, to call sin for what it is, the cause of all unhappiness, pain and sorrow in the world. The Church however, calls sin for what it is, not to condemn the world, but so that we can over come evil by the power of Divine grace—grace which pours forth from the merciful heart of Christ. And we can only overcome the evil in our world if we open ourselves to the Mercy and love of God, to put our love for God over and above all else; and to love our neighbor as our self.

Our Holy Father points out that this is what divine mercy is all about. In Jesus Christ, through his suffering, death and resurrection (the Pascal mystery), God bends down over man to hold out a hand to him, to raise him up, and to help him continue his journey toward God with renewed strength. Man cannot get back onto his feet unaided; he needs the help of the Holy Spirit sent by God. However, if man refuses this help he commits the sin against the Holy Spirit, because man refuses the love and the mercy of God, since he believes himself to be God. He believes himself to be capable of self-sufficiency.

Our world needs the message of Divine mercy more than ever. Our world is proclaiming freedom, but too often it is freedom apart from truth, apart from God and His truth. Our world that says men must be “Free” to do what ever each one personally feels is right. However this is false freedom; because true freedom comes from not doing what we want, but from doing what we ought. True freedom gives us the ability to choose the good, the true and the Beautiful. It is the freedom of a child of God to do the right thing according to the truth that comes from God and has its source in God. And so it is the freedom to love, truly love and to be loved by Love.

As a result of this misuse of freedom, we now see replacing the evils of communism and Nazism a new type of extermination of the human person. So many died during these horrible regimes, but now we are seeing more and more the legal extermination of human beings conceived but unborn. And in these cases, the extermination is beginning legalized by democratically elected governments. This extermination is spilling over into other areas such as the destruction of the family as God has created it through the legal recognition of homosexual unions as an alternative type of family, with the right to equal rights and protection under the law, even to the point of adoption of children; even in some states forcing Catholic adoption agency to do so; Catholic agencies which have stopped adoptions whether than to go against their moral principles.

And too, we are now seeing the right to kill, euthanasia being more and more upheld in the courts. It has now become legal to refuse to give to another human person who is not dying, but who wishes to die or who someone wishes to have die, the very basic necessities of life--food and water. Not extraordinary care, mind you, but basic comfort care, on the same level as blankets and warmth. Back when the case of Terri Shiavo was in the headlines, someone told my mom that they would not want to live if they were like Terri Shiavo. My mother said, she would not want to be like Terri Shiavo either, but who are we to decide who lives and dies. Terri was not dying, she was only disabled--brain damaged but not brain dead. Other than her disability she was in good health, that is until food and water were taken away from her. Food and water are not life support, they are basic human needs; and unless one is at the point of death or cannot assimilate them, they must always be provided.

Additionally, we all must never forget the great value of suffering and its redemptive power of saving souls when it is united to the cross of Jesus. In fact, Blessed John Paul in His own great suffering at the end of his life taught as anew the value of suffering and the great dignity of the human person even amidst such sufferings. In his sufferings, John Paul has taught us anew that with the cross comes the grace of God through His mercy, not only to carry it, but to carry it with great joy, if we but trust in Him.

And this last point is the great proclamation of the message of Divine Mercy. It invites us to face with confidence, through the Divine benevolence of God, the difficulties and trials that mankind will experience in the years to come, and that we individually will face in the days and years to come. Evil has a limit, and for those who place their trust in God, it will not overcome them, just as it did not overcome the savior who defeated evil when HE rose triumphantly from the grave-Love won the victory.

The Paschal mystery, the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord made truly present for us at every Mass, continues to confirm that good is ultimately victorious, that life conquers death, that love triumphs over hate. The Limit imposed on evil which man is both the perpetrator and victim is ultimately Divine Mercy. Of course there is also justice, but this alone does not have the last word in the divine economy of the world. God can always draw good from evil, he wills that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth: God is love. Christ, crucified and risen, just as he appeared to Sister Faustina (point to picture), is the supreme revelation of this truth.

The message of Divine Mercy is then a call to a lively active faith, a faith that humbly submits in love to the revealed truth of God and then lives it out in loving deeds through the assistance of Grace; contrarily, a lack of lively loving faith only leads to despair and to a culture of death. God is mercy for all of those who turn their lives completely over to Him and live according to His truth, for He is truth itself—this is where true freedom lies, and where the way to life lies.

This faith and the power to live it comes first of all from the realization that the Divine Mercy of God in Jesus Christ is Son is still available to us on earth through His Catholic Church, in the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is Divine Mercy Himself; and so, the Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of the authentic faithful loving Christian life.

The Eucharist is God Himself and so it just goes to reason that contact with the Eucharist in faith put us in touch with the Divine Power of God which is really the Divine Power of God’s Love. The Eucharist is the Risen Christ among us; the same Christ who defeated our greatest enemy by the power of Love. If we come before the Eucharist in faith, adoration, hope and love, not only at Holy Mass but also during Holy Hours of adoration or before Him in the tabernacle of our Churches then we can experience the Love of God, share in His victory of Love, and call down His Divine Mercy upon us and upon the whole World.

John Paul the second’s first words after he was elected Pope were the words of Mercy itself--Jesus, “do not be afraid.” Has You behold Jesus held up in front of you at this Holy Mass cried out to Him in your heart of hearts, Jesus I trust in Thee, Jesus I trust in Thee; Jesus I trust in Thee…Eternal Father, have Mercy on us and on the Whole world.

Jesus, help us not to be afraid for we place our trust in Thee. Help us not to just admire Blessed JPII but to follow his example of fidelity to the truth of the Gospel revealed in the teachings of Your Church. For there is no meaning in life apart from the Truth, because Jesus you are the Truth, as well as the Way and the Life. Have Mercy on us and on the whole world. Jesus I trust in Thee, Jesus I trust in Thee, Jesus I trust in Thee!!!

Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere! Christ is Risen! He is truly Risen Indeed!

2011-04-23T16:49:00.000-07:00

Homily for Easter 2011

Tonight/today we celebrate the holiest of our feast days- the very core and center of our Christian faith- the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ--a fact of faith; a fact of history.

In the last weeks of Lent we saw all of the apparent contradictions of life in the accounts of the Samaritan woman, the man born blind and the raising of Lazarus. During this Holy Week we have tried to enter more deeply into the mystery of the passion of our Lord and of His great love for each one of us. We began last Sunday as we triumphantly processed with Christ on Palm Sunday; we commemorated the Last Supper and the institution of the Holy Eucharist and the Sacred Priesthood on Holy Thursday; and finally, we entered into His passion and death on the cross on Good Friday.

The disciples during the first Passiontide were left scattered and confused; some where even despairing. Only a few disciples were faithfully at the foot of the cross, including Mary Magdalene. She had been saved from seven demons by Jesus and became a close intimate faithful disciple.

The Fathers of the Church saw Mary Magdalene as the woman who had loved Christ much by crying in repentance on the feet of Jesus and drying them with her hair. Mary Magdalene, who had been forgiven much by Christ, loved Christ deeply, for only those who have been forgiven much can love much. One can speculate that her Holy Saturday was spent weeping (which is really how all repentant sinners should spend it).

Because she loves Christ much, she is then the most eager to properly prepare the dead body of Jesus for permanent entombment. All must have seen lost to her as she walked. When she arrives at the tomb, she is expecting to ask the soldiers move the stone so she can do her very sad act of love—anointing the dead body of her savior. All of us who have been in the presence of the dead body of someone we love knows how she must have felt.

But when she arrives at the tomb, the stone is already moved and the body of her beloved Jesus is missing. Her love for Christ had drawn her to the tomb to do this last service and yet she (can’t) even do this last gesture of love and respect. All of her plans were dashed-could things get any worse?

But beyond all of the hopes and expectations of Mary Magdalene and the disciples, Jesus had risen. When He had told them that He would love them to the end, the end didn't mean to the death, but to resurrection; it meant that His love would conquer even death itself. All of the paradoxes, contradictions and confusion are defeated by this love. Christ’s love has defeated all hatred (and so all death); For Christ is the God who is Love truly among us.

The celebration of Easter is a reminder to us all that it is only through a firm, active and actual living faith in the resurrection that we can overcome the difficulties in our own life. The paradoxes, contradictions, confusions, and sufferings in our life, and even our own death, can only be overcome by love; but it must be authentic true love. And authentic true love has its only source in the love of Christ. Jesus is the God who is Love and has come to earth to conquered even death itself so that we might live.

Our faith in Christ must be active and alive. It's not enough for us to say, "I believe!" Our faith must be lived out by deeds of love, because faith without love is dead; without love we are dead, and so without Christ who is love we are dead. So let us today rejoice, open our hearts and receive this victorious love, the Love of Christ. Let today be the first day of a new intense life with Christ and in Christ.

But good intentions are not enough, we need to come in contact with the Power of Christ's Resurrection. And that Power is available to us in the Sacraments, especially the Most Blessed of All Sacraments-The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Holy Eucharist is the Power of Love for us to be freed from sin and so freed from death in order to live in Christ.

Here at the Holy Mass and only at the Holy Mass can we participate in this life giving, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. For the Holy Mass makes these events truly present before us, not just at Easter but at every Sunday Mass which is a miniature Easter. This is known as the Pascal Mystery...the life, passion and death and Resurrection of Jesus, actually become present to us in time and space, in reality, so that we in faith can be present at them and actively draw from them their transforming and life giving power, which is the power of God’s Love for us.

Our Catholic faith is not just about remembering the past events, no, the power of Christ love makes present to us these events for us in the now. Christ has come, yes, but He will come again, both at this Holy Mass and in glory at the end of the world. If we in faith and love open ourselves to the Mystery of His Divine Love present in the Holy Eucharist, then Christ will transform us into His image and likeness so that we can be saved by His love. Then becoming one with Christ, we can take His Love out into the world, so that it too may be transformed and saved in and through us. This is the cause of our Joy, of our Hope!

Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere! -Christ is Risen! He is truly risen from the dead; He is alive. They have not taken our Lord from the tomb, our Lord Himself has taken Himself from the tomb; and we who have the true faith know where He is; He is truly with us in His Resurrected body in the Holy Eucharist about to made truly present at this Mass and every Mass and He desires to give Himself and His love fully to us in Holy Communion--this is THE mystery of our Faith. The Eucharist is the God who is Love; only with faith in the Eucharist and in His love, only in Jesus can we be victorious. Alleluia!

The Friday we call "Good."

2011-04-22T07:56:00.000-07:00

On this day we call "good," we Christian take time to remember that God so loved the world that He sent His only Begotten Son so that we might have life and have it abundantly. Jesus is God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. And so today we remember that it was no ordinary man who died on the cross; no, it was God who died on the cross.

We are told in today's gospel that there was an eclipse of the Sun for three hour along with an earthquake. However, these words don't begin to begin to describe what it must have been like to been present at the foot of the cross. God is Killed, men commit that greatest crime "Deicide-the killing of God." The earth is not only shaken, it is shaken to its very core...The whole universe is affected...now we know how bad our sin is...it was our sin that put God on the cross...So momentous were these events of the crucifixion that the centurion and others were converted on the spot...surely this must be the Son of God...surely this must be God.

In our day this is a great indifference to the cross of Christ. This indifference is what most grieved our Lord as he hung on the cross. There was poem that was written after a man had witness the horrors of World War II and returned Home. He had seen the effects of man's sin in that war: He knew that War was a result of sin, of man's turning away from God...Now maybe after the horror of this war, man would in love, return back to the God who died on the cross for man...However, after he returned to His hometown of Birmingham England, He was appalled at the great lack of faith He encountered, appalled at the great indifference he encounter to the Cross of Christ and so indifference to Christ's love.. And so, he wrote the following poem:

When Jesus came to Golgatha they nailed Him to a tree.
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red where His wounds and deep.
For those were crude and cruel days and human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham they only let Him die,
They would not hurt a hair on Him
they only passed Him by.

For men had grown more tender, they would not cause Him pain,
they only walk on by and left Him in the rain.
The winter rain that soaked Him through and through.

And when all the crowds had left the street
with no soul there to see
then Jesus crouched against a wall
and sighed for Calvary.

G. Studered Kennedy

It was the indifference of men, to His dying for them that caused Jesus so much pain; in the end it wasn't just men's sin that Killed Jesus, it was their indifference to His love...to Him. Just as there were those present at the foot of the cross who were indifferent to the supreme act of Love that Christ was showing for them, so too sadly still today.

I believe it is still the indifference of the hearts of man to His Love that most grieves our blessed Lord. He once told a mystic that He would go through his passion more than once for a single soul if He could move the heart of a single indifferent soul. How is man indifferent to the cross of Christ in our day? I believe it is shown most by the indifference to God's love that still keeps Him on earth in and through the Holy Mass.

At The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass we become the people who are at the foot of the cross...At. Mass we witness in faith Christ again pouring out His blood, His life, His love anew for love of men...At Mass we too are able to behold He who we have pieced as He is lifted up anew for us in the Holy Eucharist to behold. Will we be indifferent to the love of a God which leads Him to give Himself to us as His food. Will we refuse to give this God our love in return by offering ourselves to Him who has offered Himself totally to us.

Love himself is present at Every Holy Mass on the Altar at the consecration; love Himself is present in every tabernacle of the world; Love himself gives us Himself as our heavenly food; The greatest crime in this world today stems from the indifference of the hearts of men; Love is truly present in the Holy Eucharist...yet sadly, Love is not loved.

Faith opens the momentous events of Christ's Pascal Mystery, His passion, death and resurrection. By faith we can enter into them and even experience them. However, Faith is not enough, faith must be infused with Love, or it is dead faith. We must love the one who died for us and then rose for us...

Our love must not be sweet words it must be backed up with deeds, deeds of Love. These deeds of love must begin by being present, not only in body, but in mind, heart and soul as well before His true Presences in the Holy Eucharist. He is present to Us in love, we must be present to Him in love, in order that His Love can transform us and through us transform our world..

It was and is the indifference of Men to His Love which caused Jesus the most pain on Calvary; it is this indifference today which so grieves His Sacred Heart. Today, let us, you and me change this...let us never be indifferent to God's love which keeps Him in the tabernacle day and night waiting for men to visit, waiting for men to return His great love...waiting for you and for me to return His love....

Jesus Christ, after having given us all he could give, that is to say, the merit of his toils, his sufferings, and bitter death; after having given us his adorable body and blood to be the food of our souls, willed also to give us the most precious thing he had left, which was his holy Mother. (St. John Vinney).

2011-04-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight we enter into the most sacred moments of the liturgical year: we enter into the Holy Triduum- the Holy three days. The central mystery of our faith is the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ; this mystery is known as the Pascal Mystery. These sacred moments begin with Holy Thursday and the Lord’s Last supper, the moment where Jesus before His passion, institutes the Holy Eucharist.

Jesus, in the Upper Room, ordains the apostles as priests and bishops in order to give them the Divine power to make truly present the Holy Eucharist. This Divine power shared only with the Twelve, and to their successors, all this priests and bishops throughout the ages. This Divine Power, Jesus own power, not only makes present Jesus, but also makes truly present in space and time, in our midst, the whole of the Pascal Mystery, that is Jesus actual suffering, death and resurrection.

Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist before His suffering and death. The Holy Eucharist is then the doorway for us to enter into the suffering, death of Jesus in order to share in the resurrection of Jesus. The Holy Eucharist invites us to enter, body and soul into the death and resurrection of Jesus—a mystery of transformation and a journey of transformation. In other words, these three days symbolically recall our own life, our whole life, for we too will endure a passion-suffering and death in our own bodies. Just as Christ enduring suffering and death and then entered into His glory, we too in our struggles and trials of our life in our daily dying, we too are mysteriously called to unite this all to Jesus in order to come to share in His glory, to be transformed into His likeness, which is of Love.

The Holy Eucharist is more than a Mystery of Transubstantiation; it is a mystery of transformation. This tiny piece of bread becomes Jesus; And so the Eucharist calls us from death into life, calls us to change to be transformed deep within ourselves. We need to enter into this sacred mystery with littleness, with humility, with poverty, with hunger and thirst. Jesus is present in the Eucharist but we for our part have to draw out the life giving water of His love, we have to thirst for Him, we have to drink from the Heart of Christ.

Tonight is a chance for us to with faith, gaze on the Eucharist, to contemplate the Eucharist. Contemplate means to become one with what we see. Tonight is chance to look upon Jesus in the Eucharist and be transformed by Him who we look at, the Crucified one present there. After Mass you have a chance to spend time in silence before Jesus asking Him to transform you into His other self. Jesus is Love; and so we are call to be transformed into Love for the World.

It is especially in silence that we can hear the call of God within us. The problem is for us moderns is that too often we run from silence, we are too afraid of silence. Our modern world runs from silence as it runs from pain, runs from suffering, runs from the cross. But, true Christianity is all about what to do with your cross, what to do with your suffering and pain. Our world today is full of suffering and pain. This is always been the case, however our world today is different in that now it is world full of people who don’t know what to do with their pain.

There is an axiom in the spiritual life, that what is not transformed is transmitted. And so pain and suffering that is not transformed by the cross of Christ, by His love becomes anger and hatred, which is pain and suffering transmitted onto others. That is why in our world today we have so many who are so bitter; because a heart and a pain that is not transformed into Love, through the mystery of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, becomes a heart that transmits, hate violence and anger. Either we allow Jesus to take our pain and suffering and transform them into love by offering them, uniting them to His pain suffering and death or we become bitter and angry; we become bitter and angry because we try to run from the cross, which of course always and eventually finds us.

The truth is, we can’t run from the cross, nor should we want to. The world is running from the cross because it doesn’t know that love of which there is no greater. A love in which a man is willing to lay down his life for his friends. The cross then is the way to love, true love. No cross, no sacrifice, no self-offering no love.

Over the next few days, we need to ask Jesus to allow us to follow Him in his journey to Calvary. We need to beg Him for the grace to follow Him on the path of Golgotha, which is really a path of liberation and transformation, in order to share in Jesus’ sufferings, becoming like Him in death in order to know Him and become like Him in the power of His resurrection.

Our sufferings, our death, united to His become a path to joy, peace and life, not only for us, but for the whole world through us. This is the path that each one of us is called to travel with Jesus, in order to learn its lessons, lessons that lead us to glory. No cross, no glory; no pain, no gain; no death, no resurrection. We have to go through the Pascal mystery with Jesus in order to share in His glory; we have to die to self in order to share in the glory of His resurrection in our lives and share it with others. That is why, by the way, it is not enough just to be at Mass, or to learn our catechism, or even to go to confession, we have to allow ourselves to enter into the Pascal mystery, to share in the sufferings and death of Christ in our lives so that we can be transformed by His love and transform our world in His love.

When we receive the Eucharist, we have to let it transform us and change us into Jesus, letting us live in us anew, to suffering and die in us anew and so resurrect in us anew. The priest prays to the Father before the consecration of the bread and wine that they may transformed into the body and blood of Jesus, but there is this secondary meaning in these words. We too are to offer ourselves that by receiving the Holy Eucharist we too may be transformed into the body and blood of our blessed Lord in order that we can take him out into the world.

Jesus is constantly calling us into this going down with Him in order to rise with Him, becoming stronger and better people, holier people. He is calling us to carry our cross with Him and not be afraid or to resist. He is with us, one of us he has been weak like us, and He has suffered and died like one of us. And so, with Him and through Him, everything that happens to us can be used, all can be renewed and all can be saved.

Everything in our lives, especially our sufferings and struggles can be used to make us grow in love if we trust Jesus enough and stay close to Him. If we ask Him at and before the Holy Eucharist to transform all in our lives by the power of His own death and resurrection, nothing is wasted. Far from being negative this is optimistic, the cross is not a negative, it is positive, it is a way to joy and life; it is in fact, the tree of life.

St. John tells us, that when Jesus knew that his hour at come to depart out of this world to the Father having love his own that were in the world, He loved them to the end. So this is the night when Jesus reveals His love for us by giving us an Ultimate gift, the ultimate Gift…Jesus doesn’t just give us something, a thing, He gives us Himself. He is God and He gives us His body and His blood. Jesus becomes our living bread to satisfy our hunger for God. Tonight’s Gospel, tonight’s celebration helps us to fathom the depths of Jesus love. Jesus loved them, us to the end; end here doesn’t just mean to the end of his life, but it means to the uttermost of His capacity and His capacity is infinite because he is God, His everlasting infinite love.

We have to be like St. John resting on the bosom of Jesus in order to understand the intensity and the beauty and the awesomeness of this Sacrament of the Eucharist where God gives Himself totally to each one of us. Tonight we have that opportunity to rest on the bosom of Jesus by contemplating Him in the Eucharist. If we really contemplate Him truly present there all the unimportant and insignificant things just disappear. It is not enough to know Jesus is present in the Eucharist, we have to be present to Jesus there.

Being present to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist helps us to realize that as God He is present to us everywhere, no matter what the circumstance may be, even in our deepest sufferings. Let us, while contemplating Him in the Eucharist, ask Him, through the intercession of His Mother, to help us enter into the Pascal mystery, not only over the next few days, but throughout our own life in order that we may enter into the glory and the joy of the Eternal Easter, beginning this Sunday. (This homily is greatly indebted to Fr. Thomas Joachim, fj)

How dare we ever be indifferent to His great love for us.

2011-04-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

Palm Sunday April 17th, 2011

Over the past weeks of Lent, our readings have been building up to the events which we have just heard—the great climax of our Lord’s passion and death. Each of the Gospels, from our Lord’s encounter with the Samaritan woman, His healing of the man born blind, to the miracle of Lazarus rising from the dead, all have spoken to us of our Lord’s Divine compassion and ability to go beyond what we might expect. God’s ways are not our ways.

Today is no different. The events of the passion speak loud and clear of how Jesus overcomes the struggles, the opposition, the betrayals, and all the paradoxes of life which so often seem to be outright contradictions. The only Man who was truly innocence becomes a convicted criminal sentence to death. Through His immense sufferings He overcomes all sufferings, through His own brutal and underserved death He overcomes death; in His lying down of His life for us, we have life. Through His sufferings, through His passion and death Jesus truly, profoundly, enters into the very midst of human misery in order to save us from the ultimate human misery, which is seperation from God. By His stripes we have been healed; In His great love for us, we discover what Love really means and is.

And so, today we begin the most solemn week of the Church’s liturgical year. The reading of the passion that we heard today sets the tone for the entire Holy Week. We begin with Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. People are rejoicing and excited about what this Messiah will accomplish.

But while we celebrate Jesus triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, this day also has a more somber note to it. The people rejoicing in the Gospel today misunderstand Jesus mission, they think he is going to help them in their political struggle to be free from their slavery to the Romans, they are only thinking in political and economic terms. They fail to see that Jesus really came to die for their sins in order to free them from their most intense slavery so that they could enter into a true freedom, a life of divine intimacy and union with God.

So we rejoice this day also, but we do so in a quiet and solemn way because today in our liturgy and in our personal prayer and in the liturgy of the Church, we begin that walk with Jesus on that terrible journey towards his passion and death. During this week, we follow Jesus from the gates of Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, to the Garden of Gethsemane, to the steps of the Praetorium, to the hill of Calvary and then to the tomb in the garden where he gloriously rose from the dead.

The mystery of these events is endless and we can spend a lifetime contemplating each aspect, each event, and each word of Jesus. With each blow of the hammer, with each scourging of the whip, and with the shedding of each drop of blood, God’s ultimate manifestation of love is shown to us. Jesus, with the strength that only Divine Love Himself could endure, gives his very life for you and I. Yes today we celebrate the beginning of Jesus triumph over sin and death, but not without recalling the price he paid for our salvation so that we could see the depth of his love.

This week we will realize more deeply that it was God who died on that cross for us. And that it was our sins that put Him there; it was our sins that put Him to death. Yet, in His love for us He willing allowed Himself to be crucified; However, Divine Love is stronger than death; and so, the God who is Love defeated sin and so defeated the grave in order that you and I might have the hope of sharing in the Victory and Joy of His Resurrection. How dare we ever be indifferent to His great love for us.

In light of Christ love for us, we discover that our religion is not just a religion of the past…No it is a religion of the present and of the future…for we adore a God that has come, comes now and will come again…and so we are people of hope because our God is coming soon; in fact, He comes now through the Holy Eucharist. Palm Sunday is not a thing of the past. Just as the Lord entered the Holy City Jerusalem that day on a donkey, so too He comes again and again in the humble appearance of bread and wine at this and very Holy Mass.

In faith, we can greet the Lord in the Holy Eucharist as the one who is coming now, the one who enters into our midst. We can greet Him as the one who continues to come, the one who continues to leads us toward His coming. We are to meet Him at this and every Holy Mass where He comes to take us with Him in His ascent to the cross and Resurrection, to the definitive Jerusalem that is already growing in the midst of this world in the communion that unites us with His body. (cf. Jesus of Nazereth-Pope Benedict).

“Let his grace draw near, and let this present world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David. Whoever is holy, let him approach; whoever is not, let him repent. Maranatha (come O Lord come). Amen” (Didache).

Let us then open our hearts in faith to Jesus’ power to save us and through us to bring souls who are dead back to life.

2011-04-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

Fifth Sunday in Lent. April 10th, 2011

In this last Sunday before we begin Holy Week, as next Sunday we will celebrate Palm Sunday, we continue with accounts of Jesus performing signs before He enters Jerusalem, and so enters into the hour of His passion. Today, we hear of the last public miracle of Jesus and it’s very dramatic to say the least: Jesus raises a man from the dead…could you even begin to image what that must have been like, to witness such an event?

Like last Sunday’s account of the healing of the man born blind, this account includes many paradoxes. And these paradoxes lead us to the greatest paradox of all times, the paradox of the Cross-of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we will celebrate in the Liturgy of Holy Week.

As in the story of the man born blind we heard last week, Jesus again seems to have ignored a poor man’s plight by passing him by. Again, Jesus has His gaze on the heart of a man and sees a man open to faith. Last week the blind man regains his sight and becomes a disciple of Jesus by “seeing through the gift of faith who Jesus really is, while those who are able to see, are really blind because they don’t “see,” that is, don’t have faith; they refuse to accept the truth about Jesus, and so they reject God’s grace being offered to them in order that they would repent and change their lives for the better.

As He did with the blind man, this week Jesus again uses an opportunity to paradoxically manifest Himself and His divinity by a miracle in order to show forth the goodness and the mercy of God. Jesus receives word that His dear friend Lazarus is ill-“Lord, he whom you love is ill.” Paradoxically, Jesus doesn’t stop everything and rush to his friend’s side: No, Jesus waits two days before He even leaves. In fact, by the time Jesus finally does arrive, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days…puew, very stinky… Yet, even so, Jesus proclaims, “This illness is not unto death, it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it.”

How will this be? How will the Father glorify the Son through the Sons failure to arrive in time? How can God be glorified in such evil as sickness and death; how can God be glorified in a stinking corpse? Well again the answer is found in paradox, the paradox of the raising of Lazarus. How could Jesus raise a man who was in the tomb for four days and was already quite decomposed? To such a question Jesus gives a response that we don’t expect: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Perhaps, we could have expected Jesus to ask for forgiveness for not coming right way, something like, “Please forgive for arriving too late, I was delayed. You have my deepest sympathy for your lost. Or, I wish I could have done something.” These responses are certainly something we might say—they would be most appropriate for us; BUT FOR JESUS? I think not. I mean after all, Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?” It was His friend after all.

However, by saying, “I am the resurrection and the Life”, Jesus says something beyond the immediate understanding of Martha and Mary. How could Jesus be the resurrection and the life…How can someone be Resurrection or be Life Itself? In order to help them understand and to help their weak faith, and ours, Jesus calls out, “Lazarus, come out!” And even a dead man obeys Jesus, when most of the living will not.

As great as this miracle may have been, we have to understand that the resurrection of Lazarus is only a prefiguration of the true resurrection. It is more of resuscitation, for Lazarus would still die in the end—death in Lazarus case was not definitively beaten. Jesus himself however, would be the “first born from the dead.” And here is the paradox of all paradoxes-the Passion and death of the Christ. Jesus would have to pass through mankind’s greatest enemy- suffering and death in order to gain victory over it—By being defeated He would be victorious…And so, Jesus would be the very first man to truly rise from the dead and defeat death for good.

And so, it is through His Passion and death that Jesus is glorified. One might think that the Glory of God would be revealed most fully in Jesus’ miracles or His teachings or His large number of disciples and even bigger crowds that would desire to see Him. Next week on Palm Sunday, we will read about His glorious triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. However, this is not the Glory of the Father to the Son. God’s glory would be and is actually revealed most fully in the suffering of the Son and in His obedience to the Father unto death,

Jesus dies the most ignominious death possible, a death reserved for only the most vile and corrupt of men; Jesus is crucified and his close friends, the disciples, betray him and leave him in his hour of greatest need. Certainly not events that we might think would lead to glory; in fact, in the eyes of the world these events seem to be the ultimate failure.

Paradoxically, Jesus death really was the greatest failure the world really has ever seen, but because of His resurrection, it now has become the greatest victory the world has ever seen and will ever see. Never before had any man beaten death, and by this one man’s death, death has been beaten. By his stripes we have been heal, by His death we have saved…Jesus has shown us in His great sufferings the true meaning of the love…to sacrifice oneself for the sake of one’s friends. Jesus could have saved us with just an act of His will, but instead he chose to save us by the cross to show us how much he really love us.

And so Christ is the Victor-Love is stronger than death. Jesus not only has the power to raise a decomposed corpse, but He has the power to raise himself; and so, He has the power to raise those who believe in Him and love Him by faithfully following Him through His teachings and living for Him alone-Our faith is not in vain!

For those who, like Lazarus, die in friendship with Christ, they too will rise, thus sharing in Christ’s own victory over death. Yes, all friends of Christ will still have to pass through suffering and physical death. But by doing so with Christ by being faithful to Him by carrying their cross to the last, they too will defeat death for forever.

However the reverse is true as well, those who through sin live without friendship with Christ and His Church though still living are really the truly dead, their corpse may not stink, but their souls sure do (phuew); and if they die un-repented they will be dead forever, for forever they will be separated from Jesus who is the LIFE.

In these final weeks of Lent, we may be discouraged in our efforts to become holier. We may even feel “dead” on the inside. We may have prayed for Jesus to come and help us, as did Martha and Mary-“Lord, you know I love you, come and answer my prayers!” And yet, it may seem that we didn’t get an answer, that Jesus is “delayed.” Maybe we even thinking that perhaps I am not so loved as I think I am.”

Yet faith tells us that in this most common of our paradoxes in life, no matter what darkness we are in, no matter how much it seems that God has abandoned us—He has not; no, Jesus is present to us with all of His divine power and love ready to manifest, through our suffering and through us, the goodness and the Divine Mercy of God.

Faith tells us that through the Cross of Christ, if we share in His suffering and death, then in our weakness we are made strong. Belief in Jesus will not necessarily take our problems and sufferings away, and it will surely not save us from physical death; but faith in Him will, if we place our trust in His Divine Mercy, and love Him above else by faithfully following Him, it will save us from eternal death and give us a share in Christ’s own victory, bringing us eternal peace and joy.

But it doesn’t stop there; if we unite our struggles and our suffering and death to the power of Jesus’ cross, then through the power of His Resurrection, our lives and even our death will be used to bring souls who are dead to sin back to life in Christ. Then in the paradox of the cross we like Christ and in union with Him will manifest to the world the goodness and Divine Mercy of the God who is Love; God will be glorified through our lives and we ourselves will share in the glory that the Father has bestowed on the Son.

We celebrate liturgically the passion and death of our Lord during Holy Week; but we must never forget and always believe that it is re-presented, that is made truly present to us at each and every Holy Mass. And so the resurrection and its power to save us is made truly present as well, but we can only access this Divine power and love through faith. Let us then open our hearts in faith to Jesus’ power to save us and through us to bring souls who are dead back to life.

Our Lord is not silent, but comes here and now at this Mass, in this sacred place, in order to tell us that He alone is our hope; He does so through the Holy Eucharist, which is really Him! So as we come to the end of this Lenten season, may we trust that the paradoxes in our lives would be united to Jesus crucified in order that through the power of His death and Resurrection, available to us at Every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, our greatest paradoxes, our greatest crosses and defeats, would be turned into our greatest victories, leading to the Glory of God and the Sanctification and salvation of souls, both our own and others as well.

At the cross stood the mournful mother weeping…It is by sharing in the sorrow of the Mother, that we can enter into the sufferings of the Son, in order to experience the Joy of the Resurrection.

By the Cross with thee to stay,
there with thee to weep and pray,
is all I ask of thee to give.

Virgin of all virgins blest!,
Listen to my fond request:
let me share thy grief divine;

Let me, to my latest breath,
in my body bear the death
of that dying Son of thine.

Wounded with His every wound,
steep my soul till it hath swooned,
in His very Blood away;

Be to me, O Virgin, nigh,
lest in flames I burn and die,
in His awful Judgment Day.

Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence,
by Thy Mother my defense,
by Thy Cross my victory;

While my body here decays,
may my soul Thy goodness praise,
safe in paradise with Thee. Amen.

"O' Lord that I may see!"

2011-04-02T13:33:00.000-07:00

Homily for John 9: 1-41 Fourth Sunday of Lent- Laudate Sunday. April 2nd, 2011

Today, although we are in the very middle of the Lenten Season, we pause for a Sunday of anticipation- today we anticipate and look forward to the joy of the Resurrection. Like many things in life, today is a paradox- here we are in the midst of a penitential season, a season when we mediate on the suffering and death of our Savior; and yet, we are called to be filled with joy. And so we celebrate early- using the Rose vestments, rose the color of joy, instead of the violet—the color of penitential sorrow.

Why this respite of joy in the midst of sorrow? Aren’t sorrow and joy incompatible? There are two reasons for this joy: first, Holy Mother Church knows that penance is difficult and desires for us to see the end- the joy of the Risen Lord. The efforts we have so far put into Lent are not done in vain, even if sometimes we fail. Even if our efforts don’t seem to be bearing much fruit, the Church wants us to know that our efforts, if they are sincere, can still lead us into a deeper relationship with our Lord, as we saw last week with the story of the Samaritan woman.

And the second reason is that the Church wants us to have this same joy in this valley of tears of this world; this joy is not incompatible with suffering. It is a joy that comes from always keeping our eyes on the future goal, heaven—an eternity of love in union with our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and with all the angel and saints. Joy in this life comes from living our lives with our eternity always in mind.

When we struggle during this season of Lent (and during the “Lent” of our lives in general) to reform our lives, we often encounter lots of paradoxes, such as, “ things seem to get worse before they get better;” or, “the further we grow in faith, the darker things can seem to become and the harder it becomes, as the more obstacles seem to appear in our path of holiness.” We saw these paradoxes in the life of many of the saints such as St. Therese the little flower and Blessed Mother Therese of Calcutta. They both spent the last years of their lives devoid of warm fuzzy spiritual feelings and consolations and full of contradictions and oppositions from both friend and foe; yet they were intimate friends with our Lord; one could say even one with Him; and so despite it all they were filled with joy, out of this world joy!

This life of paradox is certainly true of the man born blind whom we heard about in our Gospel today. The poor blind man had to spend his days begging for alms-a tough, hard life, spent in darkness and mostly discomfort, hunger--suffering. He is sitting and begging one day, with his hand stretched out into the darkness, hoping for just a few coins in order to buy some food, when Jesus passes by.

At first it would seem that Jesus ignored him since there is no mention of Jesus even noticing the man. This would be natural, as a “good” Jew believed that anyone suffering from physical illness was doing so because of their personal sin and so deserved their fate…so why bother. And so, the disciples must have assumed that Jesus passed this blind man by because he was nothing but a poor sinner, who certainly had no faith and was suffering justly from his sins.

And so the disciples decided to take the opportunity to ask Jesus one of those nagging questions that we all have in the back of our minds- who is at fault? Was it he or his parents who sinned and caused this man to be blind? We heard this type of question with regard to the people of Japan? Did they “do” something to deserve this? It is really a question about evil.

The truth is, is that Jesus in fact did not ignore the man. As a divine person Jesus already peered into this man’s heart and saw that this poor blind man had a heart open to faith. Jesus also knew the question that was on the minds of his disciples; and so purposely, he appeared to pass this poor man by so that He could use this occasion and the evil of this man’s blindness to show the power, the goodness and the mercy of God. Paradoxically, Jesus was going to use evil, which is an absence of good, like blindness is an absent of sight, to manifest and point to ultimate goodness.

And so, Jesus makes a mud that he puts on the blind man’s eyes and tells him to go and wash in the pool. Mud in your eyes- one might think it would only damage further the eyes. Wouldn’t a natural reaction be, “Get that stuff out of my eyes- it hurts!”? Yet, the poor beggar obeys Jesus in faith and washes in the pool. Yet, a paradox- he washes and is healed; blind he now can see; mud instead of dirtying, cleanses, clears instead of smudging; and the invisible faith hidden in the man’s heart and mind is brought out and made visible to all who care to see.

Yet, in the goodness of healed vision and restored faith, immediately this man has his new faith put to the test by obstacles. The man who once was blind now sees and everyone is questioning him about what happen. People really didn’t know what to think, so they turned to their leaders, the Pharisees, who were supposed to have the faith and who were suppose to “see” things clearly.

Yet, in another paradox, the Pharisees, men of ‘faith’ don’t have any-they who can see with their human eyes, have the worst kind of blindness because they are unable to see with the eyes of faith, unable to see the truth about who this Jesus really is. The poor beggar, who is not well trained in the Law, has to endure the integration of this group of lawyers, who are well trained and smoothed tongued. To make things worse, they call his parents to testify about the matter. Paradoxically, the ones who should stand behind him the most, almost disown him. One might think that they would be happy to see their son healed and able to see. And after living their whole lives thinking that it was their sin, which perhaps was the cause of their son’s blindness; one would think they wouldn’t have cared what anyone now thought.

And so the poor man who was once an outcast because of His blindness is now paradoxically again all alone, seemingly with no one around to help… Yet, now that He had his faith he discovered he was not alone at all. Now He has hope for God is with Him. And with God, the poor man is able to confound even the Pharisees. They for their part get angry and throw him out. On the surface this seems like a terrible blow- a very dark moment in his life, yet it again paradoxically was the greatest moment of His life, for he now was able to testify and to suffer for the Name of this man Jesus, the who not only healed him of His blindness but gave to Him the eyes of true faith and so hope in the midst of the darkness of the world.

It is at this moment when Jesus reveals Himself to the man, who immediately makes an act of faith and worships Jesus. Suddenly, all the paradoxes are explained. Those who were able to see were really blind and the one who was blind really saw or said in more plain terms, the ones who were supposed to have faith did not and the one who was supposed to be without faith, has faith. And this blind man with his new faith has it put to the test but only so that his faith may be strengthened even more and His love of God increased.

For us, it may be the same. The more we try to grow in faith, the more it seems to get worse. The better we try to become, especially in the little things, the worst we seem to become. And when we begin to make our faith and our relationship with Jesus and draw closer to Him, the more obstacles we face and the more we can be attacked, and our families and even our dearest friends can behave like the parents of the blind man and want to disown us.

Yet, if we desire to follow Jesus and are obedient to His requests, we can know in faith that if we experience these paradoxes and contradictions from the world we are in the right place. It may be dark and difficult for us, however, we must know that our faith is being tested, but tested in order to grow and be purified as gold is purified by the trial of fire. And here is where the paradoxes of our faith and even our life become the most profound. To save our live we must lose it; He who humbles himself will be exalted and he who exalts Himself will be humbled; He who has much grace, more will be given to him, the one who has little, even what he has will be taken away from him; the more we give the more receive; the way to happiness, joy and eternal life is the way of the cross, bitterness, suffering and self defeat; and finally, it is dying that we are born to eternal life.

Let us ask our Lord today, as we celebrate with joy the half waypoint of this Lenten season, that we might have our faith strengthened and deepened in order to truly see. But first, we must recognize that we are the blind man and so turn to the Lord that we may healed of our blindness and see. If we are to see then, if we are not to remain in our blindness, we must have frequent intimate contact with the One, the only one, who can heal us. And this One is Jesus truly present in the Holy Eucharist.
The more our blind eyes behold His glory hidden behind the veil of the Whiteness of the Host, the more clearly we can see. Like the eye is blind without the light of the sun, so the eyes of faith are blind without the eyes of the Son; And the true Son is the Holy Eucharist, the Light of the World!

The Center of the prayer “The Hail Mary” is the Eucharist, and so let us pray, Our Lady, cause of our Joy, pray for us, help us keep our eyes on Jesus, truly, really, physically present in the Holy Eucharist; He is our true Hope and our true Joy; He is literally our Heaven and so our happiness both in this life and in the life to come! Amen.

"Give Me a drink!"

2011-03-27T05:00:00.001-07:00

Third Sunday in Lent March 27th, 2011

“Give me a drink.” This simple statement begins the encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan woman in our Gospel today. This simple statement, “Give me a drink” reveals a lot about Jesus, and how he draws this woman into a new and profound relationship with God. Conversely, the way in which Jesus deals with this woman can also teach us a lot about how Jesus deals with us; that is, how He constantly tries to draw us into a deeper friendship, love and deeper union with Him.
As we begin the story, it is important to note a couple of important details: John tells us it was midday- the start of the heat of the day. “Respectable” people just didn’t go to the well at the midday. For one thing, it was too hot. So you’d always go first thing in the morning or closer to sundown; it was cooler then. You’d only go at midday if you wanted to avoid others, that is, if you had a reason to hide, which is another reason why respectable people only went in the morning.
And so, the fact that the Samaritan woman comes at this time reveals to us a lot about her. It reveals that she is definitely has something to hide, has a reason to hide. First, she was a Samaritan, hated by the Jews, living in the midst of Jews; second, she was a woman, and as such considered beneath a slave; and third, she was living in sin and so committing public scandal. With all this being the case, how does Jesus deal with the situation…deal with her?
To begin with, Jesus takes a bold step here even speaking to a Samaritan woman, not to mention one who is trying to hide. A Jewish man would certainly not address a woman in public; and certainly would not address a Samaritan woman, not even to mention a Samaritan woman living in public sin! No wonder why the Samaritan woman is totally surprised by Jesus; but she was about to be surprised even more.
Jesus then says to her, “Give me a drink.” Unthinkable! If he accepts a drink from her a sinner, a Samaritan, and worse a woman, he will surely become unclean according to Jewish law. Yet, Jesus is poor; He has no bucket. He has no vessel to drink with, but He’s really thirsty- it is noon and he has been walking in the heat of the day. But is his thirst really just for water, or is it a thirst for something more, much more?
And so, Jesus asks her for water, yet He will say that He Himself is the source of a new type of water—“Living Water” that will satisfy unlike anything she might have drunk before. Jesus uses this simple request of water to get at something much deeper- a deeper thirst that Him Himself has; He thirsts for her love, for Her heart, for her soul, FOR HER;
Ands so Jesus asks her for water. Yet as he does so, his request reveals something else to this sinful woman. She begins to see her need as she comes into contact with and experiences the divine person of Jesus, the very source of the living water, of new life – She realizes that she is the one who is really thirsty and so she ends up asking Jesus for "living water." And then this woman begins to taste, to drink in the gift of faith that is being offered to her by the one who thirsts not for water, but for her. She begins to experiences the waters of His divine grace, life and love.
The story continues with another request from Jesus to the woman- “go and call your husband.” This seems to be quite a jump; yet, in the way Jesus was leading her,” it was the perfect next question. Once Jesus had made a personal contact with her, his divine presence and His thirst opened up in her, her desire for the love of God. However, Jesus saw the big obstacle in her life, which was keeping her from true happiness, keeping her from intimacy with God and His love—that obstacle was her sin and the consequences of her sin. This woman was living in adultery as a result of being married before five times.
Through grace, Jesus gently brings her to acknowledge truthfully her sin, yet it was not a condemning way, but very gently in order to heal her soul and begin to quench its thirst for holiness. No doubt, she knew what sin was and she certainly knew the consequences of the sin, for she had been deeply wounded by the failed marriages. And her current situation surely couldn’t be called love, by living together with a man who was not her husband, she was basically being used-true love only comes from a life-long commitment of love within the sacred bond of marriage.
And so, she was full of guilt and was so ashamed, that she did not want to even show herself in public. She came to the well at midday because she had really lost all self-respect; she had lost hope because she had lost her trust in love. She had been looking for love in all the wrong places; she had given up true love for pleasure
But now she realized Jesus loved her…God loved Her! So she went to confession. We don’t know all of what she confessed to Jesus, but she told the people- “He told me everything I have done.” Jesus told her the truth, and the truth set her free. He read her soul and forgave her of her sins. He healed the shame she felt, healed her heart and soul, He flooded her soul with the waters of his grace, which cleansed her of her guilt. The joy of repentance and forgiveness was so strong, that she went and told everyone in her village about Jesus, her new love, and her one true love. With her burden lifted and her hope renewed, they believed her and so she evangelized them to the forgiveness and healing of Christ and to His love for which they too were thirsting.
Jesus brought to this woman the great gift of faith. He healed her by forgiving her sins and placing His love in her heart. And then He renews her hope by showing her what or better yet, Whom to place her hope in, by showing her the source of all love, human and divine. In other words, Jesus showed her that seeking human love alone, apart from God, only leads to thirst, deep unquenchable thirst that effects the soul. Humans thirst for the God who remarkably thirsts for them.
Today we realize that we are so often in the same position as the woman at the well. We are burdened by the struggles, trials of life; this life is so full of struggles and we’re sometimes so tired. Through out our Lenten practices, if we have really been doing them, we can see ever more clearly the degree of our defects and our sins in this life. It can seem that we’re not making any real progress; we may even want to imitate the woman at the well and just hide; or worse we may just slip into denial…I’m not so bad.
And so, like the woman, we can be discouraged and so begin to lose hope. So often and in so many ways, we have in our lives placed our hope in the wrong things, instead of in Jesus and His love. So often we have sought only human love alone, and failed to seek the love that is above every other love…God’s love-So often, we have fail to seek out, with every fiber of our being, The God who is Love! We must love God first!!!!
Today at this Holy Mass Jesus comes to us as well and he tells us that He thirsts. And then he points us, as He pointed the woman at the well, to the source of living water and how we can come in contact with it. And how we come in contact with the Living Waters of God’s love, is adoration of God. Adoration of God is where faith and hope opens itself to love. Jesus is God on earth and His is the only source of this living water. We only lose hope and become discouraged when we don’t look at Jesus, when we don’t adore Jesus and place our trust in Him first and foremost above all else.
Another name for a failure to adore and trust in Jesus is sin. Sin is when we adore ourselves—we trust in our selves, love only ourselves by putting our will before the will of God; we put our truth and our reality before THE TRUTH and before the way things really are, before the reality that God has created. Yes we get our own way, but sadly we create our own hell in the process, life without God and his love; we then begin to die of thirst and don’t even realize it.
But if we are to truly adore Jesus in Spirit and in truth, we must trustingly give ourselves completely to Him and experience Him through faith-we must put Him first. To do so, we begin by first opening our hearts to His grace by confessing our sins as did the woman; when we experience His forgiveness and mercy, Jesus for His part pours into our hearts the grace of his love and the grace of a deeper conversion to Him.
We must drink deeply from the only well that can quench our thirst and that well is the Heart of Christ. Drinking from any other well will leave us dying of thirst. Yes, we must seek human love, human love is good, (we’re not angels), but we cannot seek human love apart from Divine love, the love of God, we can put human loves before God. And we must drink always from the well of divine love, which is the Heart of Christ.
And the Heart of Christ is the Holy Eucharist; however we can only experience Christ in the Holy Eucharist if we have faith that He is really and truly there, if we believe that the Holy Eucharist is Christ and so is God. And if we believe it then our actions must correspond with what we believe. And so we must not only receive Jesus once and while but often-weekly, even daily, with a pure heart cleansed by frequent confession; but we must not only receive Him, we must also most especially adore Him both within Mass and outside of the Mass at Holy Hours.
Only when we adore God in Spirit and in truth by believing the Eucharist is really Jesus, our lives cleansed by His forgiveness in confession, and entrusting ourselves totally to Him by offering ourselves and all our love to Him at Holy Mass, only then will we begin to experience and quench our thirst for love….both authentic human love and even more importantly, God’s infinite love, God Himself through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Oh Heart of Jesus, from which Blood and Water gust forth as the source of the Sacramental life of the Church- as a fount of love and mercy for us and for the whole world, I trust in Thee. Immaculate Heart of Mary, St. Joseph pray for us.

By seeing Jesus’ glory through the eyes of faith, we can be strengthened just as were the disciples.

2011-03-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

Second Week in Lent. March 20th, 2011

I am sure that all of us have been deeply affected by the incomprehensible tragedy we have been witnessing in the country of Japan. Almost 8, 000 dead so far, more than 10,000 still missing; human suffering beyond imagining. A humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, one that has been sending shock waves around the world, affecting the entire world, even the global markets. Things look to get worse before they get better. Our thoughts prayers and support continue to go out for the all the people of Japan. We pray that God would grant them the grace of consolation in this unprecedented tragedy and loss.

The great human suffering and tragedy in Japan reminds us that for us as Christians, who are people of Hope, we must see all things through the eyes of faith. This is the message of today’s Gospel. Today, we hear Peter, James and John witness the great moment of the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor. The disciples hear God the Father Himself proclaim, with thunderous power, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” By these words we have God the Father Himself witnessing that Jesus is God the Son. And since we have the testimony of the Father, who is God who can neither deceive nor be deceived, we should never doubt the divinity of Jesus and so never doubt the power of Jesus and His love.

At the same time they hear the voice of the Father, the disciples see a hint, just a tiny hint of the glory of Jesus’ Divinity shining through His humanity. Yet even that tiny glimpse made the disciples speechless. They had seen a peek at that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it even enter into the mind of man… Is it any wonder that Peter did not want this moment to end—he was content to stay on that mountain forever? I am sure he felt he was in heaven itself; no wonder, for he had peered into heaven itself.

But Peter and the other disciples had to eventually come down from that mountain—led by Jesus they descended to what was waiting for them—a time when their faith would be tested as never before; a time when their hearts would be pulled asunder, a tragedy, greater and more horrible than any the world had ever seen, or will ever see—they would witness the terrible passion and death of Christ— deicide-the killing of God. And if that wasn’t enough they would experience their own weakness and sinfulness in their failure to remain faithful to Jesus even, even when they now knew Him to be the true and living God.

By His divine foreknowledge Jesus knew only too well, how badly His disciples’ faith was about to be tested and their hope shaken, as Jesus embarked on His journey to Jerusalem to be condemned, mocked, scourged and crucified. In their fear and weakness they would abandon Jesus in His hour of need. And so Jesus wanted to give them a reason not fall into despair when this happened so they would be able to eventually repent and turn to Him for pardon and strength.

In their future struggles as well, and even in their own future passion and death, Jesus wanted them to know that in His love for them, He would always be with them supporting them with the power of His divinity, with the power of His divine love. And if they would but remain faithful by relying on His divine power, and not their own, they would share one day in the fullness of Jesus’ glory in heaven, that glory on which they glimpsed on that mountain. This would help to maintain their hope throughout their life so that they could persevere to the end; and so they did.

The Transfiguration informs us as well, that in our own struggle we should never forget that the Jesus whom the three Apostles were with on Mount Tabor is the same Jesus who is daily at our side. Jesus knows how much we are going to be tested by the struggle and the crosses in our lives, the ones we may be carrying now or the crosses to come. Jesus knows how weak we are, how weak is our hope. In His compassion, He desires to give us grace and strengthen our hope even in the midst of our darkest fears and sorrows.

The truth is, is that we like the disciples have so many times abandon Jesus and failed to faithfully follow him; nevertheless, He doesn’t want us to fall into despair but instead to turn to Him for pardon and strength. And in our future struggles, failures and even in own future passion and death Jesus wants us to know that in His love for us, He will always be with us to support us with the power of His divinity. And if we but call upon His help and remain in His love, we too will come to share in the fullness of Jesus’ own glory in heaven, a glory that even now we can get a glimpse of through the eyes of faith.

It is here at the Holy Mass that we, like the apostles, are able to get our glimpse into that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it even enter into the mind of man. And so, we need to desperately ask for the grace to be like St. Peter and not want this incredible moment to end, being content to stay on this mountain forever. We need an increase of faith to realize that time as no place at the Holy Mass, just as time as no place in heaven.

At the transfiguration, Peter only got a tiny glimpse of heaven; but, at the holy Mass where heaven and earth unite, we are actually more in heaven than we are on earth. Jesus’ gift of allowing the apostles to be present at the transfiguration doesn’t compare to His gift to us to be able to present at Holy Mass—Our gift is much greater, infinitely greater. Here at Mass, Jesus transforms in front of our eyes with a greater glory than even at the transfiguration. This is why we can’t see look upon it with our human eyes but must see it with our eyes of faith, for no one can see the face of God and live. By seeing Jesus’ glory through the eyes of faith, we can be strengthened just as were the disciples.

The transfigured, glorified Jesus in all of His glory and with all of the power of His divinity becomes present to us in the Holy Eucharist as the priest pronounces the words of consecration. His sacrifice on Calvary becomes present as well along with its power to save us and save the world. This power is offered to us and we can receive it into our lives if we but in thanksgiving offer our lives in return, by dying to sin and selfishness and turning to and living totally for Jesus.

As the priest raises Jesus up for us to adore, we too, if we listen, can hear the words of the Father, “Behold this is my beloved Son, listen to Him.” Like the apostles, this is what gives us the strength we need to face our own trials and sufferings that await us; this what will help us to get back up when we fail in our efforts to follow Jesus; this is what will help us see that the struggle and what ever we have to sacrifice or endure in this life for love of Jesus is worth it, by far.

The glory of Jesus in the Eucharist has the power to renew us, if we let it by turning our lives to Him and offer our lives to Him.
It is good for us to be here at this Holy Mass and every Mass where we can ourselves come to Mt Tabor. It is good for us to be able to come anytime to sit before the glory of Jesus hidden in the little white host contained in the Tabor-nacle. The more we behold Jesus in the Eucharist and the more we believe, adore, hope and love Him there, the more our faith is strengthened, our hope renewed and our charity increased. It is in the Eucharist that Jesus comes to us, touches us and say, “Rise, and do not be afraid.”

In a few moments, we come to the altar to receive Christ, not only transfigured, but also truly risen and glorified. Like the apostles had to eventually come down from that Mountain of Tabor, we too will have to come down from the mountain of this Holy Mass and so go out and face the events and crosses of our daily lives; but, as the remembrance of the Transfiguration strengthened the apostles to face the struggles and fears of the rest of their lives, the Holy Mass is that principle source of divine grace that will provide us what we need to face the struggles and fears that lie ahead in our own lives. With Mass attendance at an all time low, and understanding and belief in its mysteries at an all time low, and that it is being celebrated in so many cases unworthily and with so many liturgical abuses, no wonder suicide rates continue to climb…

In the Holy Mass alone, we discover that the sufferings of this present life are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us, and so the Mass also strengthens us in the midst of all the horrors and fears found in our world today. The Holy Mass is the source of our hope in this valley of tears, for the it makes present Jesus Who is our Hope; and Jesus is the Hope that never disappoints. Our Lady, Mother of the Eucharist help us to see Jesus transfigured, risen and glorified in the Holy Mass, in the Holy Eucharist so that we may share in His glory both now and at the hour of our death. Amen. St. Joseph pray for us.

Lent is really a season for a radical change of heart.

2011-03-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

First Sunday in Lent. Marcy 13th, 2011

As we begin our Lenten season, we recall that this season is a call to radical repentance and deep conversion. (As we spoke last week), often times we approach this season as the season to give up something for 40 days: we struggle for 40 days not to eat chocolate, but then on Easter Sunday, smug with our success, we eat a full 5 lb. box of chocolate and end up committing the sin of gluttony. So what good did it do us? In the end, all we can really say is, “I gave up chocolate for forty days.” But did we change for the better; did we become holier and so closer to God and to our brothers and sisters, in our family and in our parish family?

Lent is really a season for a radical change of heart. And so it is a privileged time of grace offered to us to assist us in our intense efforts to become a better, more faithful intimate follower of Christ. Lent is a time to strive, with all our might, to love God and neighbor more through acts of penance and self denial, which are meant to help bring about this radical conversion within us through a dying to selfishness and self-centeredness, to egotism and sin in order to live a more virtuous life of grace.
This radical conversion through our penance is, of course, not an easy task; it includes nothing less than the cross, upon which we nail our self-wills and upon which we die to self in order to live more fully true life in Christ. In the process we can expect to, if we are serious about it, experience not only our weakness, but also outright temptations from the devil, himself.

During Lent, most of us really do desire to love God more by praying more; and for love of God, to love more our family members, parish family members, our neighbors or even that very difficult person in our life. It seems however, the more we try, the more we struggle, the more we find it to be so very difficult; in fact, it can seem so hard that we begin to question whether its worth the effort. We can even begin to even question our good intentions for the Lenten season.
Seeing his opening through our discouragement, the devil seizes his opportunity and comes to tempt us. As a result, we can end up saying, “Oh, I’ll never change; why try.” Far from getting better, my life seems to be heading in the wrong direction; things seem to be getting worse instead of better.” In this, we discover the nature of the devil’s temptations. He wants us to give up already here in the first week of Lent.

The good news for us today is that our Blessed Lord has gone before us and not only gives us an example to follow, but gives us extra mercy, the grace of His love during this season of conversion. By looking at Jesus and studying his own temptation in the desert we can see clearly that even though we may fail in our Lenten resolutions, we should never succumb to the devil’s temptation to give up or lose heart. Instead, we should get up and try all the more intensely to persevere; just like a child trying to learn how to walk.

But if we are to do so, we must first understand the devil’s tactics. In our first reading we read about these tactics of satan as used in his first temptation of man. As the devil tempts Adam and Eve, it is important to note that there is a progression in the temptations; they actually become more serious as they go on. The devil first begins by tempting Eve to eat the fruit; it seems like such a little thing, after all its good fruit. The devil here plants the seed of doubt that perhaps this is not such a big sin, after all God put it in the garden and everything in the garden is good. It looks so sweet and juicy, so why not eat it? God can’t really mean it. It can’t be a mortal sin if I it eat, but maybe just a little sin of gluttony. Surely God won’t send me to hell for enjoying a little apple, or…enjoying a little meat on Friday or a little bit of what I gave up; or giving in a little to that vice I am trying to get rid of or failing in showing kindness to others or gossiping about them.

Next, the devil tempts Adam and Eve to a greater sin by saying eating would make them enlightened- “your eyes will be opened.” They could be wise and better than other creatures and closer to God if they would just eat the apple. This is the sin of vainglory. Adam and Eve now want to be wise and not only look important in each other’s eyes but important in the eyes of all those who would come after them. At this point it becomes all about them, an all about me attitude, they no longer care about what God thinks or about His glory and His honor, but only about their own. This is a further step the devil plants in the minds of Adam and Eve.…look how good I am; I don’t need to do Lenten penance to change, I am already a good person, I’m already a good person, surely I will go to heaven; it’s the rest of the world that needs to change; if they could only be more like me; look how wonderful I am). Already, the devil has led Adam and Eve down a path towards yet a more serious sin, a deadlier sin; the sin of pride.

And so the devil at last lays on them the grand finale, “You shall be like god.” In other words, “if you eat the fruit you’ll know good and evil; in fact be like God and so be able to create your own good and evil, your own truth, what’s personally true for you. This is sin of intense pride in which we creatures think we don’t need God and we don’t need to be obedient to Him and His commands and His teachings, which are the teachings of His Church. “If you just eat the fruit, you can follow your own conscience apart from the tyranny of God, apart from the oppressive rules and teachings of God found in His Catholic Church and her teachings”…I’m Catholic but…I am personally opposed to abortion but I acknowledge a woman right to choose…to choose what…to choose to kill her child… and so we now play God.)

In the end, by a progression of sins resulting from giving into at first small temptations and then greater ones, Adam and Eve end up separating themselves from God; they ruptured their relationship with God and are destined for death. Their sin has now become our sin and we their descendants inherited from them a propensity to sin. What seemed so small at first ended with the greatest sin and death enters the world.

This is the way the devil always tempts; he starts with a minor, little offense toward God, and then it grows into a temptation to more serious sin, to mortal sin, which when knowingly and freely committed, kills the very life and love of God in our soul; this is better known as spiritual death and it is the worst kind of death which if un-repented leads to eternal death and damnation. In this, we quickly discover that we need to be faithful to God beginning with the seemingly small things.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus faces this same progression of temptations, but instead of succumbing, He conquers. Our Lord has fasted 40 days and no doubt was hungry. The devil tempts Him to do a miracle to satisfy His hunger—seems reasonable. But Jesus responds by saying that what is more important than physical food is the Word of God—the truth that comes only from God through His Church, truth which when lived in our lives becomes our true spiritual food—the Will of God. And for this to happen, it takes more than bread for our belly for this to happen, it takes the true Bread from Heaven, the Holy Eucharist.

Second, Jesus is tempted to vainglory- look at me. If He would throw Himself off the Temple, the angels would save Him. He would instantly become the talk of Jerusalem and win the people over to himself. Salvation without sacrifice; love without the cross. Jesus responds by saying simply that we should never be presumptuous of the mercy of God and never put Him to the test; in other words, for our part we should always realize our personal need for repentance and conversion and don’t presume we’ve already made it; love never stops at good enough; love goes all the way to the cross.

Third, Jesus is tempted for riches and wealth- things apart from God, as they are worshipped rather than God: the sin of pride and of worshipping God the way we want to not they way He demands. Jesus, here teaches us that we need to approach Holy Mass and the worship of God with great humility, reverence, devotion and love, realizing that we are here to adore God, not ourselves; it’s not about making the Mass for our entertainment or enjoyment in order to feel good, but it’s about giving God His due in Justice, thanking Him for all He as giving us, which is everything, by adoring Him in love by offering ourselves in return for the offering of Himself for us.

In the end, Jesus rebukes Satan. He would not be lead down the path of the temptation of false love. Jesus would conquer by the cross in order to offer all men, including us, the grace needed to be able to conquer satan in our own individual lives. But to accept this grace, to open our hearts to it, we need to turn to Jesus through our repentance, calling upon His Holy Name in prayer and through the sacraments in order to convert our lives more deeply to His and so grow in our loving and intimate union with Him.

In our time of Lent, temptations come because the devil knows we all desire to become more Christ-like. And so, we will always face the progression of temptation, but let us not try to rationalize away our sins and faults or become discourage in trying to overcome them; let us not blame others for them either. As we face the temptation to give up trying to become better, holier Disciples of Christ, let us put our confidence in the power of the Divine grace and Divine mercy of our Lord Jesus to sustain us.

Our Lord Jesus faced the temptations and was victorious, only in His victory will we find our own. Because Jesus has experienced our temptations in His, He alone knows them and so He alone can give us the knowledge and the grace we need to fight them this Lent and all throughout our lives. He is truly present in the Holy Eucharist, may we turn to him there and call upon Him to help us this Lent to truly love Him more deeply and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, or better yet as He loves them; especially the members of our parish family.

To be known by Love!

2011-03-05T20:10:00.000-08:00

Matthew 7: 21-27 Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. March 6th, 2011

Over quite a few weeks now we have been hearing the complete teaching of the Sermon on the Mount; and today we continue with more of this teaching from Jesus. If you remember weeks ago we began with the actual listing of the beatitudes and have worked our way through many of the teachings that are included in this whole discourse, which spans many Chapters in the Gospel of Matthew.

Last week’s Gospel from this discourse pointed out the fact that Jesus considers us infinitely lovable, as we are more precious than even the birds of the air or the flowers of the field. However, this week in his teaching Jesus, I believe, is basically asking each one of us a very interesting and unnerving question. In todays teaching Jesus is basically asking us, “Do I know you?” Think about this. Jesus is asking each one of us personally, if He knows who we are.

How uncomfortable do we feel when someone comes up to us, greets us and begins talking to us; and for the life of us we cannot think of whom this person is or what their name might be. When this happens we’re generally quite embarrassed and feel very foolish. We search our memories trying to figure out how we know this person or how they know us; Or, “do they really know us, or are they confusing us with someone else?”

Many times we may even try to pretend like we do know them. And we become especially anxious if they come right out ask us if we know them. Very few of us, I would think, come right out and ask them, “Do I know you?”

I have to admit, that this experience may happen to us priests more than anyone; we meet so many people and have to try to remember so many people. It is certainly not purposeful that we forget people, but when you only have one contact personally with someone, or only hear their name once or twice, it is hard to remember. And when someone asks us if we know them, we don’t want to hurt them by saying, “I don’t remember you, I forgot who you are, I don’t know you.”

Yet here today, it is Jesus who is asking if He knows us. Jesus is God, and yet He is asking us if He knows us! This seems odd, especially if you recall in last week’s Gospel, Jesus tells the crowd and us that we are more precious than the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. Recall also that it is God who has created us in His image and likeness and desires for us to receive His love so that in turn we can love Him in return. So why is Jesus asking us if he knows us?

Well, today I believe, Jesus is addressing all the “good people,” in the world. They may have even done mighty deeds in His name; yet, Christ tells them that He does not know them. They might respond to Jesus by saying, “But Jesus we were good how can you not know us!” But Jesus tells them in a very direct and one might say harsh manner- “I never knew you; depart from me you evildoers.”

Please note here that Jesus doesn’t say, “You don’t know me.” He says that He does not know them. I think the key to understanding this very direct and perplexing question to us from our Blessed Lord is that by this question Jesus is telling us that we must allow ourselves to be known by God. The question becomes for us then- do you let God know you?

This question is even harder to answer, as we may assume that God knows us, after all we think we have been good; hasn’t he come to know us by the good thing we have done? Doesn’t he know that we are good people? Also we might also think that in His divine knowledge God knows us even better than we know ourselves. But the answer to this question isn’t really a matter of intelligence; it is a matter of love.

I think something that might help explain what I mean is to use the wonderful example of this marriage. I remember while I was in seminary, I was part of a team of couples who prepared engaged couples for marriage. At the end of our day, we asked the couples for their opinion of our day. The couples and I would review the comments, some helpful and constructive and others rather revealing. I recall one couple said in their comment section that they did not anticipate any major problems in their marriage because they really knew each other. One of the married couples sighed and said, “Boy; are they in for a big surprise!”

I also have worked with a group called Retrouvaille, which is a group for married couples that are struggling. These couples, many of whom have been married for many years, will often say, “I woke up one morning and realized that I did not know the stranger sleeping next to me; and they didn’t know me.” Sadly, they had lived in the same house, sometimes for years, yet they “did not know” each other.

These couples had stopped communicating; they had stopped growing in their love because they had stopped growing in the knowledge of who each of them really were; Sons and daughters of God created in image and likeness, infinitely loved, infinitely loveable, able to love each other infinitely by their love and knowledge of the Creator. Thankfully, though the grace of Christ, their relationships can be healed and these folks can get to know each other again and so “rediscover” their love for one another.

The point is, is that knowledge of another requires the giving and receiving of love. To love a person is to not only know that person but to be known by this same person by our love for them. This is particularly true in our relationship with Christ. Do we let Christ get to know us through our daily prayer? Do we take the time each day to adore Him and struggle to give Him glory in everything we do, no matter our small and insignificant the task at hand may be? Do we examine are consciences at the end of the day and make an act of contrition for our failures in love of God and neighbor? In all of this, “Do we let Christ know us by our love for Him, and our love for others for love of Him?”!!!!!

And, so do we regularly allow an intimate encounter with God in our lives by frequenting the Sacraments of the Church, especially the Holy Eucharist and Confession? This, I think, gets to the very hear of the matter, to the answer of Jesus” question to us, “Do I know you?’ You see, ultimately, the Lord knows us through our union with the Church. Only in the Church can we have an intimate union with Him through and in the Sacraments.

It is the grace of the Sacraments that, if we open ourselves to them, transform us and strengthens us in love in order to more and more fulfill the Father’s Holy will here on earth as it is in heaven. And what is the Father’s will, “to love as we are loved, to be known by love!” And when we do the Father’s Will we become like His Son; He then knows us, and we know Him, because we become united to Him in Love. The Sacraments are the very means to be known by God because they are the means to be transformed not only in the knowledge of God’s love for us but by experiencing and being consumed by that love, in order to be united to God in a union of love.

In the end, God know us by our love, by our Charity, which is much more, infinitely more, than just knowing us by our “good” works…even the pagans can be “good.” But the pagans can’t love through Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus, as Jesus loves. And so, today we discover that we are not called to just “be good” but to be holy, that is to do God’s will in order to know God and be known by Him in order to be one with Him in a union of love, now and forever. God of course is a Trinity of persons and we are called to believe in Him, to trust in Him, to adore Him in Spirit and in truth in order to love him, to love like Him and so be “known” by him. I think that this really sums up the essence of the message of our parish mission given this past week by Father Wade Menezes.

As you know, we enter the season of Lent this week and the first thing that people begin to consider is “what am I going to give-up for Lent?” I think that we should reflect on this question this week with the question we asked earlier- does Christ know me? In other words, will my Lenten observance bring Christ knowledge of me and through Christ and in Christ allow the Father and the Holy Spirit to “know me” by my love? Will it allow me to receive His love, forgiveness and mercy and so place all my trust in Him?

Too often we take what I call the coffee and chocolate course through Lent; that is, we give up coffee and chocolate for 40 days, but in the process we’re miserable and often in a bad mood and so fail in charity to others, especially with our family. Then after the 40 days, we just resume our consumption of coffee and chocolate. The only thing we can say at the end was we were able to give up these things; but it really doesn’t change us at all. I think we’d do better by just eating the Chocolate and drinking the Caffeine and being happy…and fat!

So perhaps instead this lent, you might “do” something instead of “giving up” something and maybe failing in charity. Perhaps this Lent you can commit both as individuals and families to spending one hour each and every week in adoration before the Holy Eucharist apart from the Holy Mass. There, in the physical present of the divine and human Jesus, the God who is love incarnate still among, you can allow the Rays of Jesus’ love and mercy to penetrate your heart, to transform it; there you can allow your God to love you in order that you would be known by Love Himself!

In today’s Gospel, Jesus continues with the Beatitudes by teaching us more very strong lessons on how we must live our lives

2011-02-12T18:05:00.000-08:00

Sixth Week in Ordinary Time. February 13th, 2010

Two weeks ago we heard Jesus’ incredible teaching know as the Sermon of the Mount. In these teachings Jesus tells us what we must do, how we must live, what our hearts and mind must be like if we are going to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Last week, Jesus said we must live the Beatitudes not only so we can make it to heaven but also so that we can help our neighbor, that is our family members, parish family members, our friend’s coworkers, and even strangers and our enemies make it to heaven. Charity dictates, “Either we seek the salvation of others or we will not be saved ourselves.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus continues with the Beatitudes by teaching us more very strong lessons on how we must live our lives; and even more deeply, what must be in our minds and our hearts if we are to truly live the beatitudes and not merely give God lip service. Jesus today is reminding us that the Beatitudes are not suggestions, they are commands, commands that must be follow if we are to fulfill the great Commandment of Love, loving God above all things and our neighbor as our self for love of God.

And so the commandments that Jesus gives us today are linked to the Beatitudes, they are more details in the living of the Beatitudes. Let’s look at the connection between the Beatitudes and the commandments of Jesus in today’s Gospel:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” This poverty goes far beyond merely living simply or doing with out, it extends even to living spiritually without an eye or a hand if either “causes you to sin.” Poverty of spirit requires a radical detachment from anything that would send us to hell and keep us from the paradise of heaven. And poverty requires a radical detachment from anything that would prevent us from being solicitous in helping our neighbor do the same.

“Blessed are they who mourn.” Among the sorrowing, are those who suffer from other people’s sins. Being injured by our brother, and the resulting experience of mourning that results, cannot lead us to hate but to forgiveness. When our brother injures us we must initiate the reconciliation between us if we are to bring our offering to the altar. If we forgive them, then with this act of self-emptying comes the grace to be able to worship worthily the God who will forgive us only to the extent we forgive others.

“Blessed are the meek.” Those who are truly the meek, are those lowly enough to put aside their own ideas and opinions in order to accept humbly the commandants of God in all of their fullness. The meek accept the truth that comes from God and is revealed to us through the teachings of His One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and her Magisterium. Those who accept the teaching of the Church, and strive to live them with the grace of the Sacraments, are “called the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” These are those who have no duplicity of life. They aren’t Catholic in name only. They again strive to live their life according to the Creed they profess. These are those who hunger and thirst for holiness and so strive to live integrity of life. Their yes, means yes and their no means no. We must believe what we read in the Gospel, we must proclaim it to others, and we must live what we proclaim. Anything else is from the evil one

“Blessed are the merciful.” How easy it is to not be merciful and to let our anger overcome us, to control our life. Yet, if we become angry with our brothers and sisters we become “liable to judgment,” the judgment in which we can expect the same lack of mercy from God that we showed to others. If we call another, “you fool,” we will become the fool instead. However, if we are merciful, we will receive the Mercy of the Father-Jesus, who is the Divine Mercy of the Father.

“Blessed are the clean of heart.” The pure of heart are those who realize that sin begins in the heart and so realize that adultery and impurity begins in one’s heart. As a result they realize the importance of guarding our heart. Only the clean of heart shall see God and the things of God; only the clean of heart shall see things the way God sees them, other words the way things really are; only the pure of heart will see their neighbor as another Christ and not as an object for self-gratification. But being pure of heart also causes others to see Christ and his love in us.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.” Peacemakers will go to any lengths in order to settle things quickly with their opponents. They don’t hold grudges; they don’t seek to settle the score. They are truly children of God at peace with Him for they are at peace with one another.

“Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.” This includes those who stand up for that which is Good, True and Beautiful, those who teach the commandments and teachings of God and his truth with a righteousness that surpasses the Scribes and the Pharisees, that is that surpasses the self-righteous. And, “Blessed are you when they insult you and…utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.” If us Catholic Christians refuse to take false oaths; if we refuse to give into that spirit of the world that opposes God and His Catholic Church; if we accept the truth even if no else does and refuse to accept lies if every else does; if we by our holiness of life show that right is right even if no one is doing it and wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it, then we can expect, for sure, to be vilified by the world, a world which is utterly threatened by anyone who lives a life of uncompromising integrity without a shred of care for what anyone else thinks, save for God the Almighty. Thus persecuted however, we should rejoice for our reward will be great in heaven.

In order to receive the grace and love we need to live the Beatitudes and experience what they promise we must believe, adore, hope and love, and pray for other to believe, adore, hope and love the Teacher of the Beatitudes in the Holy Eucharist the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. The Holy Eucharist is the very source of the Beatitudes; the very source of Heavenly Happiness for it contains the physical presence of Jesus Himself. And where Jesus is there not only is happiness, there is Beatitude, for there is Heaven Itself. Our Lady of the Beatitudes, Mother of the Eucharist, pray for us Sinners, now and at the Hour of our death. So we can enter into heavenly Beatitude. Amen.

We have lost our taste, and who can restore it?

2011-02-05T18:31:00.000-08:00

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. February 6th, 2011

In Last Sunday’s Gospel we heard Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. The Beatitudes are the very conditions that Jesus lays down for entering the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Beatitudes, Jesus demands that we live what we believe if we are to be happy, better yet, blessed. The Beatitudes reminds us that love consist not just in avoiding sin, but in doing acts of love in order to show forth our love of God and love of neighbor. In other words, love is shown by deeds not by sweet words.

Today Gospel follows on the heals of Jesus’ teaching of the Beatitudes. It reminds us that living the beatitudes is not just for our own spiritual well-being, but for the well-being of other souls as well. Every single Christian is called to strive for holiness by living the beatitudes in order to be a witness to the whole world to God’s truth and love. By our lives of holiness we are called to seek not only our own salvation but also the salvation of others. As one Jesuit priest put it, “Either we seek the salvation of others or we will not be saved ourselves.”

Vatican II, reiterating the ancient teachings of the Church, called this vocation of ours of using our life to seek the salvation and the sanctification of others, the apostolate. We are to be witnesses throughout the earth by living the beatitudes that is living lives of holiness in order to lead others to God so that they may be saved and so enter into a eternal union of love with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the apostolate; living our lives for love of God and love of neighbor, and love of neighbor consist primarily in working to save our neighbor, even given our lives for the sake of their salvation if necessary. “Whosoever shall seek to save his life, shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose it, shall preserve it.”

Today, Jesus teaches us this by using the images of salt and light. In the old days, as my mom as told me many times, there were no refrigerators, or freezers, the only way meat was kept from spoiling was to store it in salt. Salt preserves food from spoiling; it also brings out the flavor of food and makes its more pleasant. So too, with the world. The world is only kept from spoiling by us Christian Catholics being the salt of the earth, by having the light and the life of Christ alive in our souls.

The holiness of Christians also gives flavor to life in this world, for we, if we live our Catholic faith authentically, remind the world and it’s inhabitants of meaning and goal of man’s existence. Man has been created by God for God; the world is God’s good creation; it sprung forth from the Word of God, and through that same Word it is redeemed and called to return back to the God from which it came. We, you and me, are called to save the world through our holiness of life, witnessing to the world the truth of God and taking the light and life of Christ out into its darkness. We are to help in leading the world back to God, by bringing His grace out into the world.

Jesus today however, also reminds us that salt can lose it taste; it other words we are called to be salt to the world by our lives of holiness but if we fail to become holy we loose our taste, that is we fail to be witnesses to the world. What good are we then, but to thrown out and trampled under foot. And so, if it is possible for us to lose our flavor, our Divine Grace, and to be thrown out, how then to we guard from losing our taste, the taste of holiness. How can we be truly light for our world? How can we give the hungry bread to eat?

It is by the Holy Eucharist received and adored with faith weekly, and if possible even daily, that keeps the salt from losing it taste; It is the holy Eucharist approached with love and devotion that helps our light shine before Men, for our light is Jesus, He who is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is our daily bread, better yet our super-substantial bread, the Bread of Life by which we can feed the world. The world is hungry for the Eucharist, starving for the Eucharist.

The Father’s of the Church wrote that Faithful Catholics who participate fully, actively and consciously in weekly Mass, and receive the Holy Eucharist worthily and in the state of Grace are the anima Mundi, that is, the “soul of the world.” In other words, the world would die in its sins if not for Catholic Christians with the life of Christ, Christ Himself alive in their souls. This life is called charity and we are to share it with the entire world in order that it might be saved.

When we take part in the Eucharistic action, we allow the Holy Spirit to apply to us the salvation won for us on the cross by God the Son. When we share in the Eucharist, we cooperate in the continuing process of our salvation, which must continue during our whole lives if we are not only to be saved, but become one with God. And in our union with God, lead others into this same union, a union of love with Love.

When we pray the preface of the Eucharist, the priest, in Christ’s name, asks us to lift of our hearts, and we respond, we lift them up to the Lord. It is a wonderful gift of offering ourselves completely to God in, through and in union with Christ’s offering on the cross. By the power of the Holy Spirit, this unites us to Christ fully and we become his witnesses, just like the apostles and all of the saints. What an awesome calling we have been given, this is how and only how, we can be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

It must be said that this awesome gift comes an awesome responsibility as well. It brings to light why every Catholic must attend Holy Mass every single Sunday and every single Holy Day of obligation, unless he is prevented from doing so by a serious reason, like an illness. To too, brings up the constant teaching of the Church that it is a very serious sin to deliberately miss Sunday Mass or a holy day of obligation, it is actually a mortal sin; and it is a complete failure in Charity. When Catholic miss Mass deliberately, they turn our backs on Christ and on the process of their redemption, they refuse to carry out Christ’s command to, “do this in commemoration of me”, and they refuse to receive him and his salvation and thus become salt that has lost its flavor. They can no longer feed the world by bringing it the light of Christ and His Divine Love.

The utter folly of what we do by willfully ignoring our Mass obligation is somewhat analogous to a deep-sea diver’s putting a crimp in his air line so that no air can come through to keep him alive. By a decision to miss Sunday Mass or a holy day of obligation the operation of sanctifying grace is suspending in the life of a Catholic, the life of charity in their soul dies, and they can no longer bring the light of Christ to those we meet in our daily lives.

Even our good acts, become devoid of the power to lead others to Christ, because they become merely our own acts, devoid of Christ’s power to elevate them to acts of Charity. Our good human acts are only Charity when the life and light of Christ is alive in our souls. Thus to bring the light of Christ back alive in our souls after we have deliberately missed Mass, and for the sake of our eternal salvation, we must go to confession in true contrition as soon as possible and take the crimp out of air line, so to speak, allowing sanctifying grace again to flood our souls.

But we must do more than just attend Holy Mass we must participated it in with full hearts, minds and voices. We must enter into it sacred mysterious, experience them and allow ourselves to be transformed by them. To do this we must offer ourselves to the Father in union with the offering of Jesus being made truly present on the Sacred Altar by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the gift of the Sacred Priesthood. We must place ourselves on the paten next to the bread, that with we too might be transformed into the Body of Christ, for the sake of the whole world.

What I am about to say is not easy to say. We Catholic Christians are called to be salt and light to the world; we are called to give the hungry of the world some of our bread. If our world is falling into darkness, the problem is not with Governments, politicians, the economy, the terrorists, the radical Muslim, or some great power in this world; no, the problem lies with us Catholics. We have then lost our taste, and who can restore it? Only Jesus, Jesus Truly Present In the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, Jesus who truly continues to offer Himself on the Sacred Altar of every Mass, while at the same looking for those who will give themselves to Him so that He can use them to continue his saving work out in the world by leading souls back to the God who loves them.

As we approach the holy season of lent, let us ask our Lord for the grace to turn from sin and to draw ever closer to Jesus Christ, truly present in the Holy Eucharist. Let us pray too for the grace to enter into the Holy Mass each and every Sunday with deep devotion and deep love, offering ourselves there, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the Father in union with Jesus’ offering on the altar of Sacrifice.. Let us realize the awesome gift we have been given by being able to attend Mass and to receive Jesus, the light of the world, every time we receive Holy Communion, so that we can truly be salt for the earth, and light for the world. And let us make our offering with and through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, help of Christians...Amen.

Just as nothing on earth can give us the happiness that every man seeks, if we are united to God nothing can rob us of it

2011-01-29T13:15:00.000-08:00

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. January 30th, 2011

Today in our Holy Gospel we hear the teaching of the Beatitudes from our Blessed Lord. The Beatitudes are the very conditions Jesus lays down for entering the Kingdom of heaven. The Beatitudes take the negatives commands of the Ten Commandments-“Thou shall nots,” and they elevate and present these demands of Jesus on his followers in a positive way, “Blessed are they who do these things.” For the fullness of love of God consist not merely avoiding things, like sin but in doing things, in backing up our words of love with deeds of love.

The Beatitudes are a promise of salvation that extends, not to just to particular kinds of persons, such as the poor or rich, but to everyone whose religious dispositions of heart and moral conduct meet these great demands of Jesus. In other words, salvation is promised to all of those who are poor in spirit, who are meek, who mourn, who hunger and thirst after righteousness, are merciful, pure in heart, are peacemakers and those who suffer in their search for holiness. And so these differing demands of the Beatitudes cover everyone, no matter what their position in life might be, every one who wants to be a true disciple of Christ and inherit His promise of Salvation, which is union with God forever.

Last week I spent the weekend with the youth in Washington D.C. at the March for Life; An event that I wish you could all experience. This event and others like it, remind us how our love for Jesus must move us to protect and defend and witness publicly to the dignity of human life from conception until natural death. And beg out Lord in the Holy Eucharist for the graces of conversion of our country and our world. Only when more Catholics do these acts of love will we defeat the culture of death, and turn it into a culture of life, a culture at peace, where we are all truly blessed.

Perhaps, we can better understand the Beatitudes if we compare them to the corresponding attitudes currently found within the culture of death, which is sadly so prevalent in our world today.

1) Where Christ advocates poverty-being poor in spirit, the culture of death in the world despises the poor, not just the physically poor but also especially the spiritually poor; and instead it canonizes those who are rich and famous, movie stars, politicians and sports figures, no matter how they live their lives.

2) Where Christ praises gentleness always seeking the good of others by serving instead of being served, the world belittles meekness and extols those who succeed by using or removing anyone, even through murder, that stands in the way; using people as means to get what they want; Non-Servium! I will not serve.

3) Blessed are those who mourn:--Where Christ encourages mourning and sorrow for our sin and penance as a way to atone for sin in order to show God we are sorry.-- the world instead revels in pleasure, comfort and the noise of empty laughter. The world here refuses to see the suffering in this world as a consequence of sin and refuses to repent of its crimes, seeking forgiveness and the grace to amend one’s life.

4). Where Christ promises true Joy only to those who seek justice and peace by seeking holiness, that is those who accept the truth and strive to conform their lives to it, the world and it’s culture of death offers satisfaction in the enjoyment and pleasure of sin and so living one’s life in accordance to lies.

5) Where Christ bids us forgive and show mercy to those who have offended us, to forgive just has the Heavenly Father does to our offenses when we ask for forgiveness; the world for it’s part will not let go of the past, it seeks vengeance, and its law courts are filled with demands for retribution.

6) Where Christ blesses those who are pure of heart and promises that they alone shall see God, the world scoffs at chastity, makes a mockery of purity and makes a god of sexually immorality.

7) Where Christ tells the peaceful that they shall be rewarded, the world teaches just the opposite in constant rebellion, disobedience, violence and massive preparation for war.

8). Where Christ teaches the incredible doctrine of accepting persecution and resignation to God’s Holy Will. The world dreads nothing more than criticism, rejection and loss of human respect, which means acceptance by society and one’s peers is the moral norm without any concern for what God thinks.
In all of this we come to understand that striving with the help of God’s grace to live the Beatitudes is the only way to sanctity, happiness and life. The Beatitudes are Jesus’ promise that there will be no obstacle to happiness and joy for those who truly seek to follow Him, not just in sweet words but most especially in deeds. He says to us, even if men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account, instead of sorrow, rejoice and be glad, your reward will be great in heaven.

Just as nothing on earth can give us the happiness that every man seeks, if we are united to God nothing can rob us of it. Our happiness and our fulfillment come from God alone, the God who became man to share in our in our existence, to share in both the happy and sad moments of our life. One saint put it this way, “Oh you who feel the weight of the cross bear more heavily on you! You who are poor and forsaken, you who mourn, who are persecuted for the cause of justice, you who pass silently by, who suffer pain unknown to others, take heart---You are the best loved in God’s kingdom, the kingdom of hope, of goodness and of life. You are brothers of the suffering Christ, and together with him, if you wish, you can save the world.”

When in our search for happiness we men attempt to follow other ways, other than those willed by God—other than those marked out by the master, we instead find only loneliness and sadness. In other words, apart from God and His ways, there is no lasting happiness, but only loneness and death, the source of our current culture of death. Contrastingly, those who trust in God and humbly pray to Him especially during times of despair and anguish move His divine heart to compassion—God then accompanies them in every instant of their lives.

Even in times of great distress, natural disasters and wars, the person that turns to God’s ways and walks humbly in His paths of righteousness, discovers the loving face of God before him. Before God’s continence this man joyfully discover that God never abandons those who love Him, but guarantees that, notwithstanding trials and tribulations, in the end good always triumphs over evil, life over death; in other words all things work out for the best, for those who love God.

Holy Mary, Mother of the beatitudes, at the end of our life, we will be judged on our love, pray for us so that we may be blessed in the eyes of your Son and receive the reward of eternal life. Help us in faith to see the source of our eternal happiness and so our eternal beatitude is truly present in the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. You told us at Fatima that by coming on bended knee before this God hidden in the little with host, and adoring and loving Him there we could bring peace upon the earth. So help us dear Lady, to live your Message of Fatima, which is the message of the Gospel, all the days of our life, and so turn our culture of death into a culture of life by praying for the conversion of poor sinners everywhere, those in our own homes and in our own families, most especially that sinner who looks at us each morning in the mirror. Amen.

This Weekend I am in D.C. for the March for Life. Below, In place of a homily, I thought I'd share my bulletin Article for this weekend.

2011-01-20T14:00:00.000-08:00

My dear parish family,

As you read this bulletin article this Sunday, I will be with the youth from our parish participating in the annual March for Life in Washington D.C. You will undoubtedly hear very little about the March on T.V. And this very limited coverage is always quite bias. Sadly, last years coverage on the major media networks was nothing more than a travesty.

Sadly this year will probably be no different. You will hear very little about the March. Or the media will cover only the small, very small group of Anti-lifers (they are called by the Media, Pro-Choice or Abortion right proponents, while the pro-lifers are called anti-choice or abortion right opponents. A man being trained to write for a local newspaper told me just the other day that he was instructed to write with this language when referring to the pro-life moment. He was told basically to use negative language when referring to the pro-life movement and positive language when referring to the anti-life movement). In fact, last year one couldn’t find any pro-death supporters. However, even so the media was able (and they really had to look) to find one small group of them (about six of them). Even so, the picture of this small group holding pro-death signs were plastered on the front page of many newspapers and magazines across the country with no accompanying picture of the more than 350, 000 pro-lifers that were marching. Why doesn’t the media have the courage to cover this annual event honestly?

I wish everyone had the opportunity to march in the PRO_LIFE crowd, of mostly young energetic and joyful people. One media outlet said last year that the crowd was made up of mostly people over the age of sixty and that in a couple decades all them will be dead. Another said that what was obviously missing from the “protesters” were young women. While I was there, and any one in our group can tell you, that the majority of the participants where not over 60, but under 30 (and probably under 20). And, there where more teenage girls and young woman than any other demographic group present at the march. Why does the media have to lie? What are they afraid of? LIFE???

It is interesting that during the Civil Rights time in the 60's the media covered "the largest march in history" when Dr. M.L. King spoke his famous speech. It was the biggest media blitz ever. There were only 250,000 there. Yet, at the Pro-Life march on Washington last year over 350,000 people were there but no media cameras and not a word on TV news? One media outlet showed a picture of a sparse crowd taken either way before the march began or after many of the marchers had dispersed.

Please keep our young people in your prayers as they courageously and publically stand up for life. Also watch the coverage on EWTN if you want to get a true picture of this momentous event that takes place every year, and yet is ignored for the most part, or given mere lip service by the media and our government. Eventually, the Pro-life movement will when if not simply by attraction. The pro-deathers are either killing their babies or avoiding them by contracepting; while the pro-lifers are allowing all of their children to live and are remaining open to all the life, the babies, the human persons, that God wishes to bless them with. However, how many souls will be lost in the meantime until the culture of death dies?

We are on the side of life and so we are on the winning team!!! Let us pray and do penance that every single Human person would be defended and protected from conception to natural death. Let us especially spend time before LIFE Himself, Jesus truly present in the Holy Eucharist, begging Him to convert our current culture of death into a culture of life and holiness.

*I want to share with you a response of Cardinal Canizares Llovera when He was ask about the connection between life and Belief, adoration, hope and love for the Holy Eucharist. The Cardinal began by saying, “ There is no doubt about the connection.”

He went on to say, “To recognise what is the Eucharist is to recognise Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Son of God that became man. Christ is the most absolute 'yes' of God to man. He is the revelation of God and the revelation of the truth about man. Man cannot be separated from God; man was created in the image and likeness of God.

In creation, God manifests Himself as love in favour of man. In His Son, the true image of the Father, we have been created in the image of the Son. For that reason, all human beings have a greatness and a dignity that cannot be separated or violated.
Jesus Christ shows the face of God that loves man to the utter extremes. The biggest demonstration of this love of Jesus for Man is seen on the cross, dying for man. But this love could not be destroyed or chained by death. It has triumphed over death. The love of Jesus, Son of God, brought to an extreme on the cross, shows how all men are loved by God with a love from which nothing and no one can separate us. Each man has been saved or repurchased by the blood of Christ, which is the blood of God. This is how much every human being is worth, the blood of God.

For that reason, between the Eucharist and the defence of life there is a link that cannot be separated. To live the Eucharist, is to enter in communion with Jesus Christ and as a consequence with His love. This is a communion of life and makes us participate in the life, which is Christ. Divine life, eternal life, but at the same time it makes us be givers or carriers of love and defenders of life.

If the Christians would live all that the Eucharist means, we would be defenders of life in every moment. (My emphasis !!!)

Formerly Archbishop of Toledo, Spain, Cardinal Cañizares is the current Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, that has competence over the way in which Mass is celebrated throughout the world. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI.

Our Lady of Fatima showed the three children hell and told them that in our age souls where falling into it like snowflakes.

2011-01-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. January 16th, 2011.

Last week we celebrated the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. We recalled that Baptism is one of God's most beautiful and magnificent gifts because it is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit and the door which gives us access to the other sacraments. This is why baptism is necessary for salvation.

Today we begin ordinary time with the same event, but this time from the Gospel of St. John. The Church has done this quite deliberately—to get our attention on how important Baptism really is. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons and daughters of the all mighty and every living God. By our baptismal grace we become members of the family of the Most Blessed Trinity; and we become members of Christ, are incorporated into His Mystical body the Church, are made sharers in the Church’s mission of the salvation of souls, and we incredibly actually become partakers of the Divine Nature of God.

With the joy of Christmas still fresh in our minds and hearts, last week we also spoke about being faithful to our baptismal graces. The eternal life we all received at our baptism will remain ours only if are faithful and obedient to these graces by being faithful to the Catholic Church and her teachings. God’s promise to us will remain valid for us, in other words, if we bring the purity of our baptismal souls, unstained to that day when we stand face to face with Jesus our redeemer--the day of our judgment, the most important day of our life.

If this is all so, and it is, then we should often reflect on our own faithfulness to our baptism. This week let us take a deeper look at our faithfulness by asking ourselves some very important questions. First, have we been faithful to the graces we have received at our baptism? In what ways have we not been faithful? Have we in the sacrament of confession frequently asked our God for forgiveness for these sins and with the help of His grace repented of them and struggled to amend, that is change our lives for the better?

These questions remind us that losing the gift of our eternal life is really the only thing in this life that we should ever fear because it is to be separated from God forever in the pains of hell. Yes, to live out or not to live out our Baptismal graces each and every day has major consequences, even eternal ones. We cannot be lulled into thinking that once we are baptized, we are automatically going to enjoy heaven for eternity. For by being unfaithful we show our rejection of God, we make our choice against Him and He will not interfere with our free choice.

I recently read an article in Homiletic and Pastoral review, a very reputable Catholic magazine. The article spoke about the denial of many of the possibility of ever losing the gift of eternal life. This article pointed out that there are many Catholics that don’t so much deny the existence of hell, but they deny that there are any human beings there or that any human beings can go there. To put the matter in another way, many Catholics now believe that every one is saved, that all go to heaven. This belief is often referred to as “universalism”; perhaps we could call it “salvation universalism.” Either way the Church from the beginning has condemned it.

This article went on to point out that ideas have consequences in peoples lives and in our world. Catholics who think that no one will go to hell will ultimately have a lax view of morality. As a result they will not work out their salvation with fear and trembling and they will definitely not be concerned about converting non-believers to the Catholic faith. For if all are saved, what does it matter what you do, why confess your sins, do penance and amend your life--why pray, do penance and sacrifice for those who are apart from God and His Church. The truth is however that this is not being faithful to our baptismal graces, and it is not fulfilling our part in the Mission of the Church to cooperate in the salvation of souls.

If a Catholic, or anyone else for that matter, thinks that no one is in hell and that no one will go there, it will have a profound effect on his view of morality and the Ten Commandments and so will effect how he lives his life. All of us are subject to temptations, and a strong and good motive for resisting temptations to lust, envy, revenge, theft, etc is the fear of going to hell. Our blessed Lord actually mentions Hell in the Gospels at least 30 times; there are only a few things he mentions more often. St Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises recommends the fear of hell as a good motive for avoiding sin, if one’s love for God is not strong enough to resist temptation. Also the existence of Hell is a unanimous teaching of all the early Church Fathers. While the Church has never definitively said that a certain person is in hell, she as definitively stated that are souls right now in hell. The Church teaches infallibly, that is with the authority of God Himself, that the souls of those who die in personal grievous sin descend immediately into hell, where they will be tormented by the pains of hell—that is the pain caused by eternal separation from our all loving God.”

By the way, Our Lady of Fatima showed the three children hell and told them that in our age souls where falling into it like snowflakes. She said that many souls go to hell because there is no one to pray for them. She then told the children to pray much for sinners, to fast and do penance for the conversion of poor sinners. She also pointed out that sin, that turning away from God has dire consequences for our whole world. She said, “If mankind does not turn away from its sin and stop offending God who is already grievously offended, the world would descend more and more into hell. Isn’t this happening to our world troubled by so many problems- abortion, promiscuity, divorce, all kinds of discrimination, social injustices, great violence (a member of congress shot in the head, along with ten other injured and six killed including a nine year old girl) terrorism, war and general unhappiness and despair. This is not an accident-the world is more and more rejecting God and it is slowly is being transformed into a “hell”. In the end our Blessed Mother said God would intervene and would if necessary purify the world by fire. In in the end, she said, her Immaculate Heart would triumph, but not before much suffering and misery and loss of life, both physical and eternal.

Let’s look at the issue of Hell practically. If heaven is to spend all eternity in an intimate embrace with the object of our faith, Jesus Christ and through Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit (to be wedded to God), how can anyone expect to enter into this embrace when they have not cultivated an intimate friendship throughout their lives with Jesus by doing what Jesus Himself said one must do be his disciple, his beloved friend? Some believe that they will just repent at the end of their lives and choose Jesus then. But how can one chose Christ at the end of his life, if he has never chosen him throughout His life? This would be like a man saying to a woman, “I never talked to you; I treated you poorly when I spent time with you; I messed around with other women all the time. In my actions I never showed you I loved you, now let’s get married.” Love just doesn’t work that way.

The article in Homiletic and Pastoral review goes on to mention that the notion of universal salvation has invaded the Catholic Church on all levels and that maybe this is one of the main reasons the Church is in such a state of crisis at the present time. It reminded that it is a constant teaching of the Church that Hell exists and that those who die in the state of mortal sin will condemn themselves to hell for all eternity, whether they are catholic or non-catholic.

It is interesting that in many countries, including our own, Catholics are leaving the Church in droves to join Evangelical Churches, which preach regularly about the existence of hell, demons, & Satan. While it is true that many times these Churches don’t speak enough about the mercy of God, is it not also true that maybe these people are leaving because they don’t hear enough about the justice of God in our Catholic Churches and that there are consequences to ourselves, others and our world because of our sins.

By the way, speaking of evangelicals, I once heard an Evangelical preacher on the radio that was reminding his congregation that all of us like to come to church to feel good, to listen and sing to the music, to meet our brother and sister, to embrace them and pray with them. However, He said that sometimes we need to be reminded about things we don’t like to think about or talk about. And then he told them that a fireman would not be much of fireman if he didn’t warn people about fire, or a doctor would not be much of a doctor if he didn’t warn people about disease, and that he as a preacher sure wouldn’t be much of preacher if he didn’t warn his people about hell; nor by the way, would he, would I, be loving them the way we should.

How many loves have been lost because the lover became careless and he neglected and ill treated the one he loved because of complacency, never believing he could ever lose the love of his life? It is not true that we can only realize the great gift of our baptism, if we believe that it is possible for us to lose it if we neglect it? Let us not make that mistake; let us never be complacent in our love for the greatest Lover the world has ever seen, Jesus Christ, who wills all men be saved. Let us beg Him at this Holy Mass for his grace to not only remain faithful, but to become more faithful to the grace of our baptism. Let us beg Him in the Holy Eucharist for his help to believe, adore, hope and love Him more.
God doesn’t want us to love Him just because we fear hell; He wants us to love Him because He is worthy of all our love; He wants us to be saved and spend and eternity of loving bliss within His eternal embrace, a joyful bliss which can begin on this earth; this is why He sent His only Son to die for us in order to be able give us Himself in the Holy Eucharist. But we for our part must chose Him, and we do that by being faithful to Him and to His Holy Catholic Church.

Let us trust in His mercy and His love, by leaving sin behind and turning to Him completely, so that on the day of judgment we may hear those most blessed of all words, “Well done my Good and faithful servant enter now into the joy of your master house.”

2011-01-14T14:42:00.000-08:00

Jesus was manifested to reveal to us that we are called through our baptism to participate in the Divine life and love of God Himself.

2011-01-08T19:09:00.000-08:00

Baptism of the Lord January 9th, 2011

This Sunday, the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, marks the end of the Christmas season. It is also the last of the three feasts, which celebrate three manifestations of our Lord, Christmas, Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord. And at each of these three manifestation of Jesus there is testimonies given by reliable persons to the fact that Jesus is the invisible God made visible in the flesh; in other words, that Jesus is the Son of the Living God…God Himself become man.

On Christmas, Jesus the mighty one was made manifest in the flesh when he became visible to the entire world as a humble, poor, defenseless little child. This manifestation of God in the flesh was testified by an Angel who said to poor shepherd “for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” Then on epiphany, this savior was revealed and manifested as the light of the nations. This was testified by the adoration of the three wise men and their gifts all of which pointed to the divinity of the Christ child. And then on this great feast day, the Baptism of the Lord we really have the greatest manifestation of Jesus because of Who it is who testifies to the identity of Jesus. And who testifies is not angels, nor wise men, but God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Theirs’ is obviously the definitive testimony of the person of Jesus Christ because it is the definitive testimony of God Himself.

These three manifestation of Jesus to the world testify to the truth of the incarnation: that in the person of Jesus Christ, God came in the flesh, that Jesus is the Son of God become Man, the invisible God became visible as one of us. But these testimonies were given not only to manifest to the world who Jesus is, but in the light of Jesus’ identity who we are as well; to manifest our great calling and vocation as baptized Christians. Jesus was manifested to reveal to us that we are called through our baptism to participate in the Divine life and love of God Himself.

At Christmas, Jesus the love of the Father came down from heaven to earth in order to raise us up to the love of heaven and unite us to the Heavenly Father. This is what the incarnation of Jesus, that is His coming in the flesh, is really all about. The divine came down from heaven as a man in order to lift men up to the divine. St. Leo the Great put it this way, "The Son of God ... joined himself to us and joined us to himself in such a way that the abasement of God to the human condition became a raising of man to the heights of God."

Our Holy Father pointed this out in Rome last Wednesday during his weekly audience with Pilgrims of Rome. Benedict declared that Christmas must be rescued from an "overly moralistic and sentimental mask. He said that "The celebration of Christmas does not propose to us only examples to imitate, such as the humility and poverty of the Lord, and his benevolence and love for men," he said. "But it is rather an invitation to allow oneself to be totally transformed by him who entered into our flesh."
Christmas is an invitation to a total transformation wrought by participation in divine nature of God, which because of Christ’s coming we can enter into and participate in here and now. And so, Benedict says that when we celebrate Christmas we don’t just remember the birth of Jesus and his incarnation, but we experience a mystery present to us here and now, a mystery to experience and be transformed by here and now.

Our Holy Father points out the fact that in the liturgical celebrations of these holy days of the Christmas season we live in a mysterious but real way the entrance of the Son of God into the world and we are illumined once again by the light of His brilliance. Benedict said that each celebration of this Holy Season is an actual presence of the mystery of Christ and in this mysterious presence is prolonged the history of salvation.

And so, our Holy Father said that God's manifestation has its purpose in our participation in divine life, in the realization in us of the mystery of his Incarnation. This mystery is the fulfillment of man's vocation. Man is called to share in the life of God, not just in heaven, but even now here on earth.

On this feast of the baptism we discover that Jesus didn’t receive baptism for his sake, for He was God without sin, but Jesus was baptized for our sake. By his own baptism he imparted to the waters of baptism the power not only to wash away sin, but to rebirth or regenerate the Children of men in to the Children of God, partaking in the divine life and love of the Family of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Each one of us, through the waters of our baptism made holy by Jesus own baptism, have now become adopted Sons and daughters of the Father being able to call him Abba, or daddy. The baptism of Jesus manifest that we are children of God and so we are! We hear this so many times, we say the Our Father so many times, that we can easily become complacent to what it really means to be a Child of God-image we are children of the almighty and all-powerful God-Creator of all things!

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

Just as the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and produced in her the God-man-Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit now descends on the Church and produces in her maternal womb, which is the baptismal rite, the rebirth of the children of men into the children of God. By the waters of baptism God fills each one of us with his own supernatural love and by doing so he raises our human love to a divine level and imparts to us divine life, eternal life.

We are not only reconciled to Him, we now have new life, which is a share in his very life. We become divinized, we become like God, we share in His divine love and life, and so share in His own eternal happiness. We are also empowered to share that love and life with others around us by living our baptismal promises.

Through our baptism, we are also members of God’s family on earth, the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. As a result, our baptism opens up for us the sacramental graces we need to be nourished in order to grow and reach maturity. Fed by Jesus’ own body and blood in the Holy Eucharist at Holy Mass, which makes present for us the birth of Christ and all the mysterious of Christ life, we begin to be transformed more and more into His image and likeness, and thus begin to already here on earth share in His Divine glory.

O’ Christian soul realize you dignity, realize your great worth and realize you great responsibility to live like the child of God that you are. St Leo the Great put it his way, “Recognize O Christian, your dignity, and, made participant of the divine nature, be careful not to fall again, with unworthy conduct, from such greatness into primitive baseness.'"

It is possible for us to lose the graces of our baptism and so lose our friendship and eternal life with God. If we are children of God we must not commit any acts that go against our adopted divine nature. When we purposely, intentionally and with full knowledge commit serious sin, mortal sin, the divine life within us actually dies. And lesser sins, although not destroying, damage this life and so our closeness to God. God the Father has chosen us His beloved Sons and daughter, and so we must choose Him by our love for Him by avoiding anything that offends Him and doing those things that please Him.

At our baptism we were given an incredible gift, but one in seed form. It is up to us whether that seed, the seed of eternal life and happiness dies within us or whether it grows to the maturity of holiness and eternal life forever in union with God and the saints. Lets us ask God for forgiveness for our failures to live our baptismal promises. Let us implore the mercy of God by making frequent use of the Sacrament of Confession, which restores us to our original state of baptismal purity if we have lost it through mortal sin, heals it if we have damaged it with venial sin and strengthen us to live more deeply our baptismal promises.

Let us turn to our Blessed Mother for help. Blessed Mother, Queen of the Angels, please help us to become like children because children are poor and humble. And when we are poor and humble we can then truly adore and love Our Heavenly Father and Jesus his only Son whom He sent to redeem us all in order to be united with them both, the Father and the Son in the Love of the Holy Spirit. O God, creator of our souls, Father of our soul, we adore you we love you, help us to love you more, fill us with your love; we are your children, help us to be with you both now and forever. Amen.

We like the wisemen need to turn to the Star of the East, Mary...

2011-01-07T17:40:00.000-08:00

Epiphany January 3rd, 2011

Today we continue our Christmas celebrations with the feast of the Epiphany, which means manifestation. We know it more commonly as the day of the visit of the three wise men to the house at Bethlehem. The word epiphany derives from a Greek word for an official state visit: the formal appearance of a king in an outlying district. The Epiphany in our sense is when the King of all kings, the King of heaven and earth made His formal appearance to the outlying district of the world and to all of its inhabitants.

The story can be rather fascinating; as we can speculate much about who exactly were the three wise men or what actual star did they see. Have you ever wondered why only the three wise men recognized the significance of the star and so followed it? No one else in the area could recognize the star, not even the ones who were supposed to be wise; nor did they follow it to find the Truth that lie beneath it. We read today that Herod and his court were thrown into confusion over the arrival of these three men with their caravans. So why did they not recognize the star and to Him whom it pointed? The scriptures are silent on this point in today’s passage. The Dead Sea scrolls incidentally contain a star-chart predicting the Savior’s birth. Some think this might contain a key to the mystery of the Magi; perhaps they were astronomers who had the same chart. Maybe so, but we can conclude for sure that the main reason why the Magi recognized the meaning of the star and Herod and his supposedly wise court did not, is because of faith; the Magi were open to it, Herod and His court were not. To see in the Christ child the divinity of God is an act of faith.

Herod and the court, as well as most, saw Jesus as a political rival; they lack faith. Herod professed to be a religious man, a Jew; however, he expected the Messiah to be manifested with great spectacle and power when He came. As a result, because he did not want to give up his kingdom and power, he tried to have Jesus killed, demonstrating of course, his lack of faith.
The wise men however did demonstrate faith. As an act of faith, they brought to the Holy Child gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh: gold- the offering to a king; frankincense- the gift given only to Divinity, and myrrh- the spice of burial. Faith alone allowed them to do this; the gifts represented them giving themselves and all they had in adoration to the God Child there before them.

If then we want to find a practical lesson today, the message and the meaning of the star is foremost. Jesus Himself said: “seek and you shall find.” God sees to it that people who really care, who are really looking for right answers with a sincere, humble and open heart will find him. For the person of good will, who really wants to know where Jesus is, where he or she can find Jesus, God will send them there own personal “ time of the star” to find Jesus through the eyes of faith, just as through faith the Magi found the star to lead them to Him. God will help anyone find Jesus, believe in Him and follow Him if they will seek with their whole heart and mind.

A Second lesson is that like the star in the heavens, God makes Himself available from every corner of the earth, from the darkest recesses even of every human soul. Which is to say that his Gospel of truth, love, forgiveness and redemption reaches out to all people everywhere who are of good will. God will provide the means for every person to reach the truth they need to be saved, and he will also provide the grace that person needs to live their lives in accord with that truth in order to attain their salvation. The person for their part however must be of good will in order to both know the truth and accept it by changing and living their lives by the help of God’s grace in accordance to the truth they have received-they will then be able to receive the peace promised by the angel to all men of good will.

A third lesson is that we who have experienced the time of the star in our own lives can help others to do so as well. So many only look for Jesus in the spectacular instead in the ordinary simple ways He manifests Himself to us. We can in a sense by our faithful witness, kindness and service help others to see the star of Christ in their own lives, to find Christ who comes to them in the simplicity of a poor manger. Our very stance as a Catholic can shout out (as today’s reading does);

In a sense this third lesson is most relevant of all today. All around us, in our neighborhoods, in the offices, factories, stores, schools, or hospitals in which we work and move, there are scores of people who, for various reasons, have never taken the time to look up to see if there is a star in the heavens for them. Our joy in Gospel living, our fidelity to Christ and to His One True Church, our service to others, the very way we speak or act, can help these people “look up.” We call this evangelization: drawing others to search for, and to experience, the light and warmth of the Star of Bethlehem.

However, I speak not only about the non-believer but about so-called believers as well; remember Herod professed to be a Jewish believer and still missed the meaning of the star. How many there are today, who while they say Jesus’ name and profess to believe in Him, nonetheless deny Him on His altar. How many Catholics have left the Church to “find” Jesus, not realizing that they had His true physical presence all the while right before them in their Catholic Churches, on her altars and in her tabernacles? They have failed to realize how close our Lord is to their lives because God presents himself to us under the insignificant appearance of a piece of bread, because he does not reveal himself in his glory, because he does not impose himself irresistibly, because he slips into our life like a shadow, instead of making his power resound at the summit of all things. How many souls are troubled by doubt because God does not show himself in the way the expected! They have looked for Him in the spectacular and in the emotionally charged, but there in the Eucharist He waits in a greater simplicity, silence and poverty than in the crib of Bethlehem. Perhaps they never knew, maybe no one told them, maybe they only think God will be only be found in vibrant and emotionally charged worship services and so miss His bodily presence in the Holy Eucharist; We can’t however assume they are not open to the truth. It is up to us to manifest to them the truth; that the God-man is still with us, along with his sacrifice offered in love for us at every Holy Mass. It is up to us to tell others that the star given to us today from our Heavenly Father is the gift of faith--faith in His Church, faith in the Eucharist only available in His Church and faith in the truths God gives us through the same Catholic Church and her teachings, which we faithfully live out in our daily lives with the help of God’s grace.

And so we if we are to lead others to the star of Christ we must first in imitation of the wisemen come in faith before the newborn king reborn on the crib of the altar of the Holy Mass. And there, just like the wisemen as well, we too in an act of faith are to bring our gifts of gold, incense, and Myrrh. In our case though, our gold is the treasures of our heart to be offered to Jesus made present to us in the Eucharist. The Incense we are to offer is the sweet fragrance of our good works, of our little acts of love done each day for the Love of God, and as our witness to others of our love for God. And what of the Myrrh? The myrrh is the very sacrifice of ourselves, our hearts, all that we have and are, offered to the Heavenly Father as an oblation of love in union with the sacrifice of His only Son made truly present by the power of the Holy Spirit before us on this and every altar where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered by one of Christ’s priests.

But the sacrifice of our gifts, of ourselves, isn’t the end. When we leave our gifts before Jesus newly born on the altar, He, never being outdone in generosity or love, repays the sacrifice of our gift with something not even the wisemen were able to experience. Jesus leaves the crib and offers us the gift of Himself in Holy Communion. And through our communion with Him, if we open our hearts in faith and allow ourselves to be changed by Him, He will possess our hearts and consume us in love. Then we can take the gift of faith out to others and lead them to Jesus by the witness of our love for Him. But he can only remain in us, if we leave all our earthly treasures behind, just as did the three wisemen, which is why they are called wise.

We like the wisemen need to turn to the Star of the East, Mary and ask her to help us lead others to Jesus who waits in with simplicity, poverty, humbleness and silence in the Eucharist. His is the antidote for all our anxieties and fears, including pain and death. He is the Bread of Angels that removes our pains, our cares, our worries; He alone brings joy and peace to our soul, he alone satisfies our whole being. Holy Mary, stella Maris, stella orientis—Holy Mary, star of the sea, star of the east pray for us, lead us safely to Jesus. Amen.

Let us resolve with the Mother of God’s help to make 2011 a year of intense adoration of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

2010-12-31T14:21:00.000-08:00

Homily for Luke 2:16-21 Holy Mary, Mother of God January 1st 2011

As we continue our celebration of Christmas, today (this evening) we celebrate the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God. At the stable of Bethlehem, we turn our eyes slightly from the infant child Jesus to the one who is holding Him in her arms, His mother Mary. She is the Mother who reveals to us not only the face of Her divine infant, but His Divine Heart and so His Divine Love for each of us.

The Blessed Virgin has been at the heart of the mysteries of Christmas from the beginning of Advent. God chose her from the beginning to be the one who would bear His only begotten Son which was announced at the coming of an angel: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Marie! Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto! The Angel of the Lord Declared unto Mary and she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Now, at the stable in Bethlehem, we join the Blessed Mother in the contemplation of the mystery of God incarnate; Et Verbum caro factum est! Et habitavit in nobis! And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us! We read, “All who heard it were amazed” and “Mary kept all these things, keeping them in her heart.”

This indeed is the true Christmas spirit- our eyes of faith fixed in amazement at the mystery of the Mother holding the Infant child Christ-the mystery of a Mother holding the very God who created her. Like small children, we are awe struck, as it were, caught up in the love that the invisible God has for us and now so wonderfully has made visible to us to in the little Christ Child.

The Mother of God will assist us in our prayer of adoration if we ask her. She offers us her example of deep adoration, as she is the one wholly given to God. She is mother to us, always praying and helping us to be joined more fully to Her Son. She desires us to be the bearers of Christ as she was- that our hearts might be the dwelling place for Jesus, just like the stable in Bethlehem. So we too might lead the little ones to the Child.

So as we continue this Christmas season and begin a new year, let us stay close to the Blessed Mother. May she obtain for us all the graces we need and desire in order that we can offer our hearts fully to the baby Jesus, the God who still dwells among us in the Holy Eucharist. Let us resolve with the Mother of God’s help to make 2011 a year of intense adoration of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix. Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi. Pray for us O Holy Mother of God, that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ! Amen.

Happy New Year and God Bless you!

2010-12-28T05:26:00.001-08:00

Holy Mass - Holy Innocents:
The Holy Sacrifice versus Human Sacrifice
Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

The title of our present meditation is certainly strange. In fact, it is really two titles wrapped in one. Both parts of the title are contrasts. The first is between the Holy Mass and the innocents who were killed by King Herod. The second is a contrast between the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifices of human beings.

Our first task, therefore, is to explain what we are talking about. We are basically talking about two things. We are relating the Holy Eucharist as the Mass to the slaughter of the innocent boys whom King Herod ordered to be killed. Our second contrast is between the sacrifice which Jesus made of Himself on the cross and which is perpetuated in the Eucharistic Liturgy with the present-day paganism which imitates the pagan sacrifice of children in the religions of prechristian society.

Our best approach to this delicate and difficult subject is to restate the title in more prosaic terms. We wish to speak about the Sacrifice of the Mass as the source of the graces we need to live lives of sacrifice ourselves, and to obtain for others the corresponding grace to live sacrificial lives. All the while we keep in focus what is at the root of the culture of death that has penetrated once civilized societies.

Whatever else abortion is, it is the tragic result of self-idolatry even to the murder of unborn children who are considered an obstacle to self-gratification. There is no possibility of converting, or re-converting, what I have come to call the New Pagans. The old pagans, as we used to call them, had and have a plurality of gods whom they worship. The new pagans are strictly monotheistic. They believe in only one god. That one god is the Self.

To bring these new pagans to their senses and have them return to the worship of the one true God will require not just a miracle but a litany of miracles in countries like our own. It is not a question of how these miracles are to be obtained. It is rather a question of who will perform them. There is only one answer: it must be Jesus Christ whose death on the cross is re-enacted in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Just before He died on Calvary, Jesus worked the miracle of bringing the repentant thief back to the grace of God. The other thief did not receive this divine mercy. Why not? Because he did not repent. But the repentance of Dismas was the fruit of the grace which the dying Christ offered to a criminal who repented his life of crime.

The Mass as the Sacrifice-Sacrament of the Eucharist

As Catholics we all believe that the Holy Eucharist is a sacrament. We know that a sacrament is some visible or sensibly perceptible ritual which Christ instituted as a channel of grace which is signified by the ritual. Thus the sacrament of baptism, which involves the pouring or immersion in water, signifies the cleansing of the human soul from the guilt and consequences of original (and personal) sin. Thus again Confirmation, which is received by anointing with oil, shows the strengthening of the soul, which is signified by the oil that medically strengthens the body.

Certainly the Holy Eucharist is a sacrament. But it is a sacrament three times over. Pope John Paul II is especially clear in insisting on this triple way in which the Holy Eucharist is a sacrament. What is the fundamental grace which the Eucharist confers on human beings? It is the grace to practice Christian charity, as prescribed by Christ at the Last Supper. On Holy Thursday night Our Lord did two things. He told His disciples until the end of time they are to practice such charity towards others as He, who died for our sins, practiced by His death on the cross. Needless to say, He had to provide the means for His followers to love unlovable people. Consequently Our Lord went on to institute the Holy Eucharist, as a sacrament of love, to enable His followers to do the humanly impossible.

This sacrament of love provides the graces which the followers of Christ need to live up to Christ's expectations of them. Among these expectations is the need that a believing Christian has to surrender his will to the will of God which is the precondition for loving others selflessly. This is the first and most basic form of grace which the Holy Eucharist was instituted to give to the world. It is the sacramental grace of self-surrender which Christ merited by His sacrifice on the cross and which He now communicates especially through the Sacrifice of the Mass. In later conferences, we shall explain how the Holy Eucharist as the sacrament of love also confers the grace of seeing Christ in everyone who enters our life, and in sharing what we have with others as the fruit of Christ's sharing Himself with us in Holy Communion

We return to where we began: to see how the Sacrifice of the Mass is the Sacrament of the Mass. The Sacrifice of the Mass communicates, you might say radiates, the divine assistance that our wills need to surrender themselves to the mysterious and often demanding will of God. As one saintly apostle of the Eucharist declared, the world would have long ago been destroyed for its sins of selfishness except for the Sacrifice of the Mass which has been offered over the centuries.

The Holy Innocents who were killed shortly after Christ's birth were the beginning of so many murderers of unborn children since the time of Christ. As historians of early Christianity tell us, one striking quality of believing Christians was their acceptance of the children whom they believed God was giving them. Abortion in the Roman empire at the time of Christ was legal, universally accepted, and simply assumed as the culture of the age. Already in the first Christian century a formal document was issued, called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which condemned abortion as murder. No follower of Christ, it was declared, would dare kill an innocent human being in his mother's womb.

Where did the Christians obtain the grace to live such lives of self-sacrifice? They obtained it from the Holy Eucharist. We have already said that the early Christians went to Mass and received Holy Communion every day. What we wish to stress in this meditation is that the Sacrifice of the Mass was instituted by Christ precisely to be the Sacrament of the Mass to enable the followers of Christ to live sacrificial lives.

There is more hidden here than appears at first sight. Left to himself, man is so selfish he will even destroy others to get what he wants. When God became man, He taught His followers to do the very opposite. They are to be willing to give up themselves, even their very lives, out of love for others. It is the Sacrifice of the Mass that offers us a share in Christ's generosity; and Christ offers us a share in the self-giving that He revealed by His death on the cross.

Abortion as Pagan Sacrifice

We know what the word "sacrifice" means. It means the surrender of something precious to the god in whom a person believes. Sacrifices have been part of world religions since the dawn of recorded history. Without exception, the deities of all the religions of the ancient world demanded sacrifices in their honor. The Egyptians and Babylonians, the Greeks and Romans, the deities of prechristian India and of the continent of Africa required that their inherents offer what we call sacrifices in their name.

What is less well known, however, is that these religions also required the sacrifice of children as an oblation and even as a condition, for obtaining blessings from the gods. We read in the Office of Readings for today's Divine Office that the Lord spoke through the prophet Jeremiah, charging the Jews of imitating the pagans in their practice of child homicide. Said the Lord, "They have built high places for Baal to immolate their sons in fire as holocausts to Baal: such a thing as I neither commanded nor spoke of, nor did it ever enter my mind."

As we read statements like the foregoing, we ask ourselves: how could human beings be so deluded as to seriously believe that their gods required human sacrifice as a condition for receiving divine favors? The key word is "deluded." Thirty years of teaching comparative religion has taught me that there is no limit to the irrational, indeed insane, practices that religious mythology will not put into practice as a mandate from the deities in whom they believed. Thus we read in the history of the Aztecs in South America before Columbus that they would kill up to ten thousand children on a major feast day in honor of one of their gods. Although seldom mentioned, infanticide as a religious ritual was practiced in India before its colonization by Great Britain.

We return to the thesis that should be explored far beyond the time we can give it in this conference. Abortion as the widespread practice that it has become today is incredibly a religious practice. It is inspired by the evil spirits who, in Christian terms, were and are the malignant deities of paganism. These deities, often goddesses, demanded the sacrifice of children to be propitiated. Unless children were killed and offered to these gods, they would avenge their anger against the people in the most devastating ways.

As believing Catholics, we know that behind the murder of unborn children is the superhuman mind and malevolent will of Satan and his minions. To know this is to also know that only divine power is a match for the demonic power behind abortion. This divine power is the power of the God who became man in order, as He told us, to conquer the devil as master of this world.

How did Christ provide for the conquest of Satan and his agents? He did so by dying on the cross. The one who died on Calvary was man, but this man was the living God. On these premises, Calvary is the divine sacrifice because it was God who assumed a human body and a human soul which could separate in a human death on Good Friday. Except for this divine sacrifice of Jesus Christ there would be no hope for the human race.

However, let us be clear. Christ did die for our salvation. He shed His blood on Calvary. In that sense, He completed the mission given to Him by His Father. But really that was only the beginning. By His sacrifice on Calvary, He won for us, the title to the graces we need to reach our eternal destiny. But this same Jesus Christ made sure that these graces would be communicated to mankind until the end of time. The principal channel of these graces is the Sacrifice of the Mass.

The graces which Christ pours out on a sinful world through the daily offering of Mass are the graces which a homicidal world needs to return to its worship of the one true God, and cease committing the crimes of abortion which are really acts of worship of the evil deities who we know are the evil spirits.

The Sacrifice of the Mass, therefore, provides us with the light and strength we need to live sacrificial lives. But we must use these graces and really live lives of sacrifice. If we do, and in the measure that we do, we shall obtain for the agents of death the miraculous graces they need to abandon their idolatry and return to the worship of the one true God.

Our faith tells us that the Sacrifice of the Mass is at once the sacrifice of Christ and our sacrifice, too. Christ has done all that He could by dying on the cross. We must do all that we can to follow in His footsteps and die to ourselves out of love for Him.

The mystery we will look at today is that of Jesus who lived in a family.

2010-12-26T08:53:00.000-08:00

Feast of the Holy Family. December 26th, 2010

Merry Christmas. Just yesterday we celebrated the wonderful day of Christmas. We are again back at Holy Mass today to celebrate the feast of the Holy Family. As part of our prayer and reflection of Jesus coming into this world, the birth of Jesus is just one of the mysteries we will look at over the next eight days of the octave of Christmas. The mystery we will look at today is that of Jesus who lived in a family.

In today’s Gospel, St. Joseph showed himself to be truly the Protector of the Holy Family. It was not the first crisis for Joseph. Several months before, he was overcome with fear and doubt over the mysterious pregnancy of his young bride, Mary. Now a powerful and ruthless king threatens the life of Jesus. Decisions had to be made. God did not abandon him but sent angels to help. First, angels explained how Mary had conceived her child through the power of the Holy Spirit. Now they urged him to take his family to Egypt. Later, an angel was to tell him to return to Nazareth of Galilee with his family.

Mary and Joseph must have been aware of the awesome responsibility they had. Angels helped them make right decisions, but it was up to them to show faith and courage in danger. All holy families struggle with fears and dangers. They should always ask God to help them act with faith and courage and to make right decision. God will never abandon families who turn to Him for help; He will even send angels to our families to help if need be.

God knows there are so many dangers to holy families in our day, everything from divorce, to a godless, secularist society which is becoming ever increasingly tolerant of everything but God and His Church. It condones things that up until now, have always and everywhere been condemned, such as abortion and legalized homosexual unions. These are all such great threats to the family in our day. It is so hard to be a holy family these days, I would say harder than any other time in history.

The devil knows and has always known the importance of true authentic Catholic Christian family life. He knows the family has been given to us to help us to live and love in order to learn to love like the family of God so that each family member can reach heaven. He knows that it is in holy families that the members learn to give up their selfishness and live for each other in sacrificial love for each other. The devil knows that the Church herself is only as strong and holy, as her families are strong and holy. He knows that the family is the “domestic Church.” the very foundation of the entire society and the Church. He knows that to weaken and destroy the marriage and the family in any one society is to weaken and destroy the church in this same society. Destroy the family and you destroy the church and consequently there is no hope for salvation.

So how do we restructure authentic family life, strengthening it not only in our own families, but also in order to help and strengthen other families as well? The only way to restore sound family life by Catholic families is to learn, accept and live up to the teachings of Jesus Christ and His Church, the Catholic Church. In our day, ordinary Catholic families cannot and will not survive. Just as there is no middle ground individually to follow Jesus fully, so it is with families. Families must be holy and heroic families in order to stand up against the demonic onslaught of marriage and the family experience in today’s world.

Families must become more and more authentic witnesses to the truth of the family. Like the Holy Family, they must be willing to suffer if need be for living a truly holy family life. Witness in the Gospel comes from the Greek word for Martyr. Any time you hear the word witness in the Gospels, the word there in Greek is really Martyr. Catholic families must be willing to suffer martyrdom for their faith. These Families must then reach out to other families in apostolic zeal to help them to become holy and live the Christian life. They must be willing to suffer in order to show others their fidelity to Jesus and his teachings. And in a society, which is no longer Christian, but is really pagan, they will suffer for their faith if they live it authentically, maybe even in some places of the world to the point of death. This all reminds us that the truths of our Holy Catholic faith matter, they matter with regard to salvation, that is, whether or not one lives in eternal bliss within the life of the family of God or eternal misery separated from the Trinity.

In order to renew authentic family life in our country, married couples and families must renew their efforts to follow Jesus Christ. It goes with out saying, that going to weekly Sunday Mass as a family to pray is indispensable, but we must do more. We must, as couples, families, and individuals escape the busyness of the world on a daily basis and ask the Family of God, in prayer, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit from whom all families have their origin, to strengthen our families in the face of so much which is against them. Just as the Couple that prays together stays together, so the family that prays together stays together.”

Essential to this renewal of Catholic family life, is for the family to put itself under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her help is indispensable, without it Catholic families will not survive. She is God’s mother, so she is powerful and we need to pray for her intercession to obtain from God, the graces we need in our families. I can personally attest to her powerful help with regards to the problems of my own family, as I am sure many of you can as well. We must go through Mary to Jesus for our family.

This can be done in practical ways. We must as Catholic families pray daily together to the Blessed Mother. The most obvious way is to pray the rosary together. A priest friend of mine recently lost his dear mother. When we where in seminary together he shared with me how he grew up seeing, after every evening meal, His parents on their knees in the living room holding hands and praying the rosary together. After His mom died a few weeks ago, we talked about his experience again. He shared with me that the whole family prayed the rosary every single night together growing up. They were farmers and where usually in bed by 8:30, but one night events on the farm caused them not to be able pray the rosary that evening. It was 10:30 before they were able to get into the house; yet, they still stayed up and prayed the family rosary together. Father told me how blessed he was to grow up in such a holy family; holy because it had holy parents. By the way, this priest is one of the holiest persons I know.

Another way to restore authentic family life is we must return to the custom of praying the Angelus together as a family at least once a day. A good time for this is before meals. Every Catholic family should have a least one picture or painting of Jesus, Mary and Joseph hung in a prominent place in their homes.

And families should have a least one statue of Mary in which to make a Marian shrine to allow family members to pray daily, at least one Hail Mary before it. And family members should return to the custom of wearing the brown Scapular of our lady and her miraculous medal and frequently pray the prayer “O Mary conceived without original sin pray for us who have recourse to thee.” There many other ways the family can practice a devotion to the Virgin Mary for her help and protection. Family devotion to Mary is absolutely necessary to obtain what it needs to receive at her hands from her Son.

Today, I have given some of the most important way for us to restore and strengthen authentic Catholic family life in our families, and in the life of our parish family. It goes with out saying how absolutely essential is the parish family in renewing our families. We all need the parish family, which again is a “Family of families helping one another get to heaven.” Let us end by praying together a parents’ prayer to the Holy Family:

Jesus, only-begotten Son of the Eternal Father, beloved Son of the Blessed Virgin and foster child of St. Joseph, we fervently implore you, through Mary, your ever blessed Mother and your adopted father, St. Joseph, to take our children under your special charge and enclose them in the love of your Sacred Heart. They are the children of your Father in heaven, and they were created after his own image. They are your possession, for you have purchased them with your precious blood. They are temples of the Holy Spirit, who sanctified them in baptism and implanted them with your precious blood. They are temples of the Holy Spirit, who sanctified them in baptism and implanted in their hearts the virtues of faith, hope and charity.
O most loving Jesus, rule and guide them, that they may live according to our holy faith, that they may not waver in their confidence in you and may ever remain faithful in your love.
O Mary, blessed Mother of Jesus, grant to our children a place in your pure, maternal heart! Spread over them your protecting mantle when danger threatens their innocence. Keep them firm when they are about to stray form the path of virtue, and should they have the misfortune to fall, then raise them up again, and reconcile them with your divine Son.
And you, O holy foster father, St. Joseph, do not abandon our children! Protect them from the assaults of the devil, and deliver them from all dangers of soul and body. Joseph and Mary, parents of the holy child Jesus, intercede for us also, that we may bring up our children in the love and fear of God, and one day attain with them the beatific vision. Amen.