“Who do you say I am?

Mark 8;27-35. Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. September 13th, 2015

In the past couple of Sundays, Jesus has shown us his authority as the Son of the true and living God. Last week he demonstrated His divine authority by curing the deaf and mute man, and the week before, he showed us His divine teaching authority. Jesus was showing His disciples these things to teach them about who He was and still is. These signs which show forth the truth about who Jesus is, are not just for show, they demand a response from every single human person.

So Jesus poses the central question of today’s Gospel and really of our faith: “Who do people say that I am?” Why does Jesus ask such a question—one so seemingly obvious we have to wonder if it is worth asking? The variety of the responses given—John the Baptist, Elijah, a prophet—reveals that the answer is not so clear, and that even those closest to Jesus really aren’t sure who he is. Yet, it is crucial that we personally answer Jesus’ question, and that we, each one of us, come to understand more deeply who He really is. For the way that we regard Jesus determines the way that we relate to Him as well as respond to Him.

Your see, if Jesus is merely John the Baptism, that is, just a moral instructor who tells us to “be good”, then we will look to Him only for instruction on moral formation that is how we should act. But if he is only that, only one who tells us do that or don’t do that, then he doesn’t have the power to help us “be good, much less to become perfect, that is to love perfectly.”
If he is merely Elijah, then we might regard Jesus merely as a mystical figure who speaks of the end times, but not the One who is supposed to come again to Judge the Living and the dead. As a result, He really has no relevance in our current times, in the here and now, only sometime in the far off future.

And if Jesus is merely a prophet, then He is only one spokesman for God among many, and not God in the flesh, not God among us, not God Himself, not Truth Itself. And if Jesus is not Truth itself, then His truth is just one of many “truths.” His truth is, in other words, just His own personal opinion or notion of “truth.”

Therefore, Jesus’ question to us today, “Who do you say I am? _ is really a challenge that prompts each one of us to probe our own preconceptions, our assumptions, our own ideal, and labels of him. In light of the this unavoidable question we discover that we just cannot make Jesus to be what we want Him to be; He cannot be made to fit who we think He is or should be… In other words, it can never be about who Jesus is for me, but about who He really is!!!

The truth is, is that we really do need to know more fully who Jesus is, in and of Himself, not who we think is, but WHO He truly is. Our idea of Jesus must be purified by grace, it most grow in knowledge by study, because Jesus is not our idea of Him. This is so important because Jesus is Truth and we cannot know truth unless we know Jesus. To know Jesus is to know the Truth, the full truth, the absolute truth, the unchanging and unchangeable truth. Unlike other religions, our Catholic Faith is not based just on the teachings of the founder, but on the founder Himself.

It is only by knowing Christ that we can know His truth, his teachings and vice versa. If we do not know Him, He who is Life, then we want to have life our own way instead of the way of God. We then end up doing our own thing and become disobedient to God, thus losing our way, because we have lost the truth and so risk losing our eternal life.

But additionally, if we do not know the true Jesus but only a construct of our mind, then we cannot truly know ourselves. That is why, in giving our response to the question of “who Jesus is,” we can discover the answer to another very important question: Who do we think we are? Only Jesus Christ can reveal to us who we truly are. Just as it is our friend who really reveals to us ourselves, even more so it is our divine friend Jesus who reveals us to ourselves. Christ is the Light of World and only in this Light can we see ourselves as we are, as He created us. In fact, only Christ can reveal the true beauty and dignity of each human person, and he does so by inviting us to discover who He is, true God and true man, our Way, our Truth and our Life, the very source of our being.

In our Gospel today, it is Peter who makes the declaration: “You are the Christ-the Messiah.” But what does Peter mean by such an assertion? To claim that Jesus is the Christ requires that we must give up our mistaken ideas about happiness, power and salvation. Later in Mark’s gospel when Jesus is arrested and crucified we see others beside the apostles who fail to understand Jesus, the Messiah's true nature. For example the high priest who interrogates Jesus and the people who taunt him on the cross; they all posses a wrong understanding of the Messiah and so miss who it is they are dealing with. In fact, their only concern is what the Messiah is going to do for me, politically, materially, worldly, but definitely not spiritually and eternally.

So important and necessary is this need to understand Jesus’ Messiah-ship that Jesus even rebukes Peter, the rock, for trying to hold Jesus back from the ultimate meaning of Messiah-ship; that is, a ruler who would suffer the agony of the cross in order to teach men the truth about love so that they would imitate Him in that love, sacrificing oneself for the sake of one’s friend. Peter is rebuked because he is only judging Jesus by human standards. IN other words, Peter is judging Jesus according to how Jesus is suppose to live up to the popular notion of who and what the messiah should be—according to the Gallop poll of what and who Jesus should be.

Once we know the truth about Jesus’ Messiahship, then and only then we can fully embrace the truth about ourselves and live in a way that is in accord to that truth, for Jesus is the Truth. That is why the next thing Jesus does is “summon the crowd’ and inform them of the three prerequisites for true discipleship:-1) denying self or holy self-forgetfulness; 2) picking up one’s cross; and 3) following Him.

Without deny, without holy self-forgetfulness we end up remembering things about ourselves that only lead us away from Christ. With holy self-forgetfulness we forget our own ideas, opinions, feelings and take on the mind and heart of Christ, and of His Church.
Despite its arduousness, we take up the cross of Jesus in order to be saved from taking on things that would otherwise destroy us. We die to self and begin to live for Christ alone and others for love of Him. And we follow in Jesus’ footstep to avoid pursuing our own damning will and whim. We pick up our cross and live according to His truth, to His commands, to the teachings of His Catholic Church, and thus we find true freedom, true happiness and the fullness of life.

To follow Christ then is more than just being good, obeying the law and the teachings of the Church. It is these things of course, but Jesus wants us to live according to His truth not out of compulsion, but out of our desire to love Jesus and in loving Him to obtain Him, He who our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. To know Jesus Christ as He is, is to fall totally, madly in Love with Him. To know Him is to realize this love of His, He Himself, is available to us through the power of the Sacraments of His Holy Catholic Church. In fact, only there we will find His power, the power of His love to live according to His truth, not out of coercion, but freely;

It is in the Sacraments, especially in the Holy Eucharist, that we will find the true Jesus, the One who can touch us, heal us, save us. To the person who is in love, there are no burdens in carry out that love, only the desires of the heart to please the one we love. NO matter what we lose in the process in living for Jesus alone, we end up gaining everything, for we gain Jesus Christ our only happiness, the only fulfillment to our every desire, to our happiness and to our life.

Let us ask His Blessed Mother at this Holy Mass and at every Holy Mass to help us give Jesus the offering of ourselves, of our life, of our families, of our possession, of our everything….Let us give her our heart so that she herself can place it on the paten next to the host. Receiving our heart from her hands, Jesus will accept it as if it was hers, and allow it to be transformed into His own image and likeness so it will be accepted by His Father as if It was Jesus’ own heart. She will obtain for the grace to live out our life offering in every detail of our daily live, to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow her Son. She will then use us as her little ones in order to renew the face of the earth. Amen.

At this Holy Mass, as we receive the Word of God become flesh in the Holy Eucharist, along with His pierce heart still flowing out blood and water, the source the sacramental life of the Church, let us ask Him, Jesus-God Himself, to heal us. We are like the deaf and mute man in our Gospel today- we need Jesus to take compassion on us.

Today in all of the readings and prayers of the Holy Mass we hear a call to hope and to absolute confidence in the Lord. In and through Jesus Christ all mankind can now find healing by drinking from the inexhaustible springs of grace flowing fourth from Jesus pierced heart, a pierced Heart still available on earth through the miracle of the Holy Mass. In fact, the Holy Eucharist is the pierced Human Sacred Heart of Christ. The grace flowing from this pierced Heart—from the Eucharist, converts the whole world into a new creation in and through Christ. The Lord has transformed everything, healing men’s souls, at least those who open their hearts to His Sacred Heart, who offers their in response to the offering of Jesus’s Heart to them.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus performs a miracle of grace- He opens the ears of a deaf man and heals his speech impediment. Jesus reaches out in compassion to this poor man, revealing to those who witness this miracle (and to us) His divine power…Jesus raises His eyes to heaven, and says to the man, “Ephpheta!” (That is, Be opened) and at once the man’s ears where opened. The man was freed from his impediment, and began to speak plainly.

As could be imagined, the people who witnessed this were astonished. They wondered who this Jesus might be. They all knew the book of Isaiah well and knew the prophecy we heard in our first reading; so the thought in their minds was, “could Jesus be the messiah?” They knew this miracle was a sign of the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah (that we heard in our first reading). And as result, it raised their expectations of Jesus being the long promised Messiah, and it awakened their hope in God’s promises. In this man—Jesus, God was indeed was fulfilling everything He had promised. Let us look closer at this miracle and discover what it means for us.

A person who is deaf and cannot speak is unable to really communicate with others. A loss of hearing is very isolating, some say even more so than losing ones sight. The deaf can be left out of conversations and activities because they cannot hear what’s being said. Hearing lose can cause depression, fear; and even more so than isolation from others, isolation from God Himself resulting in a loss of hope. (I personally experienced this through three ear surgeries. During my last surgery, shortly after I was ordained, I almost completely lost my hearing for a time. I felt incredibly isolated, so much so that I began to get Closter phobic; I never imagined a hearing loss could cause such feelings, I even thought my priesthood was over before it ever really began-- I must admit I even began to lose hope).

I think probably even tougher than not begin able to hear, is not being able to talk. I have had experience with those who have suffered a stroke. Again, it must be a very isolating and lonely place. A person wants to talk, wants to communicate with those he loves, the words are right there in his mind, but the words and ideas just won’t come out right or won’t come out at all. How incredibly isolating this must be.

I am sure then, it was the same for the man we read in today’s Gospel—try to put yourself in his shoes. He cannot hear or speak. He must have been very alone and isolated, living as it were separated from family and friends. Jesus comes to him, and heals these afflictions and the man is not only healed of the hearing loss and speech impediment, but he is now able to be united with his family and friends, to communicate with them and tell them with his own voice that he loves them and to be able to hear them say they love him in return. He begins to have hope again.

As important as the reunion with his family and friends must have been, even more importantly is his being reunited as it were, with God. In other word, more important than his physical healing, Jesus heals this man’s rupture with God. This man can now actually hear the voice of God Himself--Jesus, and so receive the truth needed in order to be saved. He hears the teachings of God from Jesus’ own lip; thus fulfilling another prophesy from Isaiah, “your children shall be taught by God…” (cf. Isaiah 54;13).

However, not only can this man now hear Jesus’ audible voice (and so, God’s audible voice), but he can also now hear the voice of God and His Holy Word in his soul. By healing the man’s isolation from God caused by deafness and muteness of the man’s soul, Jesus restores the man’s supernatural hope! Through the healing of grace received from Jesus this man can now receive the Word of God and through the same grace speak the Word of God in thought, word and deed and so become intimate with God, speaking and hearing God, becoming one with God.

We ourselves, may not have any physical problem with our physical hearing or our ability to speak, but do we have a problem with our spiritual hearing and speech. In other words, do we truly listen and allow the Word of God to penetrate us and to transform us, to change us more and more? For all of us, we may develop, however slowly, a deafness in our receiving the Gospel and a muteness in speaking the Gospel.

The truth is, is that the noise and clamor of the world can so easily drown out the whisper of God, leaving us with only the things and cares of this world ever in our ears and on our lips. We can allow ourselves to be deaf to Jesus’ call to conversion in our daily lives and so lose our ability to speak; and even more importantly, lose our ability to live the Gospel we have heard. Our Holy Mother Church, in the prayers of her sacraments, constantly reminds us of our need to ask God for the grace of healing of our ears, of our hearts and minds, so we can speak the truths of the Gospel to others with our mouths and more importantly with our actions.

In the earliest times of the Church’s life, and even till today, the Church in administering Her incredible, powerful sacraments, which dispense the healing power of Jesus, of God in our day, uses the same gestures that Jesus used in today’s Gospel. For example, at the moment of baptism, the priest prays over the one to be baptized, or should I say, Jesus through the priest prays over the one to be baptized; and He uses the priest’s finger to make a sign of the cross over their mouth and ears, saying, “May the Lord Jesus who made the deaf hear and the dumb speak, grant that at the proper time you may hear his Word and proclaim the Faith (especially with your life).”

And today at this Mass, and at every Mass, just before the Gospel was proclaimed we made the sign of the cross on our forehead, on our lips and over our heart. Hopefully we thought about what this gesture means and why we do it just before the proclamation of the Gospel. The signing is a plea to the Lord for the grace each one of us absolutely needs in order to allow the Word of God to be always on our minds, on our lips and in our hearts. And more deeply it means that Gospel should be deeply rooted in our very person, penetrating and renewing the faculties of our soul, of our very being. The listening to the Word of God, each and every week at Sunday Mass and in our daily reading of it should change us; it has the power to do so if we let it. It should penetrate our hearts and minds so we can live what we have heard, live it in thought, in word and in deed. But first we have to open our hearts, and we need Jesus to help us.

The reading and taking into ourselves as our own the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the antidote or cure for our sins of commission and omission, that is for our deafness and muteness. We receive the Gospel so we can be healed of our sins and begin again to live in freedom in order to do what Jesus asks us to do, in order to love. We allow the truth, which we know from the Word of God, to take root in us, to affect the way we live each and every day, less we become hearers of the Word only and not doers of the Word, thus deceiving ourselves (James 1:22).

In the healing in today’s Gospel we can see the healing that our Lord wishes to perform in our own soul. He frees this man from sin; and by doing so, He opens his ears to hear the Word of God and loosens his tongue to praise and proclaim the marvelous works of God. We all need Jesus to heal us from the ways we have closed off ourselves from receiving the Gospel, namely our sins. We need Jesus to come with his compassion and heal the inner deafness and muteness that creeps into our lives in order to free our hearing to listen to His words, to loosen our tongues in order to announce His words, His teachings, His truths, to the world by what we say and most importantly what we do.
St. Augustine, in commenting on this passage of the Gospel, says that the tongue of someone united to God will speak of the Good, will bring to agreement those who are divided, will console those who weep. God will be praised, Christ will be announced…And I would add, Hope will be restored.

At this Holy Mass, as we receive the Word of God become flesh in the Holy Eucharist, along with His pierce heart still flowing out blood and water, the source the sacramental life of the Church, let us ask Him, Jesus-God Himself, to heal us. We are like the deaf and mute man in our Gospel today- we need Jesus to take compassion on us. Jesus, the healer of our deafness, of our muteness, of our souls, is truly present in the tabernacle and in just a short while on this Altar, let us surrender ourselves to Him, because the doctor can’t heal us unless we come to him, and Jesus can’t heal us unless we come to Him fully and with faith, come to Him not only in body but with our whole heart, mind and soul as well, offering ourselves completely in love and with total trust in response to His total offering to us in love. Our Lady, Mother of our Hope, pray for us…Lead us to the Eucharistic.…

Lord Jesus truly, physically present in the Holy Eucharist, we believe You are with us in the Blessed Sacrament. We believe You are inviting us to join with You in conquering the world in love for Your heavenly Father. But we are blind. Enlighten our minds. We are weak. Strengthen our hearts. Make us Apostles of the Eucharist in our day; make us Apostles of life through the Eucharist. Help us to understand the Eucharist now on earth by faith-as a prelude to seeing You, our Incarnate God, face to face, for all eternity. Amen. Holy Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, pray for us.

John 6;60-69, Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time. August 23rd, 2015.

Today we end our teachings on the Eucharist that Jesus gives us through St. John. For the past few weeks we have read from the same chapter, starting with the account of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes. Next, we read Jesus teaching his disciples about the meaning of the sign-the meaning of the multiplication- that he would do a greater miracle in giving us the bread of life from heaven. He explained that this bread would be his own flesh for the life of the world. This brought about some opposition, how could Jesus give us his own body and blood as food and drink? Jesus answered them by calling them to faith, that indeed he would give his own flesh as food. This would be done by his dying on the cross and resurrecting from the dead in His body. In the Holy Eucharist we receive His Resurrected Body which is no longer bound by space and time, which can longer suffer or be divided…we eat His flesh but do not tear it asunder…we drink His blood but can no longer kill Him.

Today, we read the last response of the vast majority of his disciples. They had enough. They must have thought something like this, “this Jesus giving us his own flesh as food is just too much.” They left. And even more of surprise, Jesus did nothing to try to get them to stay—He didn’t tell them that he meant it symbolically. The teaching was too hard for the majority of His disciples. Jesus had given them the gift of faith, but when the faith was tested, really believing and trusting in Jesus, in his words, in his divinity, they turned away (interestingly the verse is John 6;66—the Great Apostasy...Our Lady at Fatima and elsewhere warned about the great apostasy in our day).

In a sharp contrast to those who left, we read Peter’s profession of faith with the beautiful expression, "Master, to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God." In other words, Peter was saying, I am not sure how you can give us your flesh and blood to eat, but we believe in you and trust your words because you are God who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Yes, Peter struggled with this truth but he opened himself to divine grace and allowed himself to be filled with the light of understanding by the Holy Spirit.

The two responses to Jesus’ teaching on the bread of life show an interesting contrast between Peter, who had faith and asked God to help him believe, and the other disciples, the majority, who did not believe, rejected grace and left, no longer following Jesus. But John gives us the response of another disciple at the end of this passage. In the very next verses, unfortunately which we did not read today, St. John gives us Jesus response to Peter’s act of faith when Jesus answers them, “Did I not choose you twelve? Yet is not one of you a devil?” He was referring to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot; it was he who would betray him, one of the Twelve.”

Many of the great saints have explained this passage by saying that St. John is revealing to us who Jesus meant when he said earlier in this gospel passage, “But there are some of you who do not believe. Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.” It was Judas.

Judas’ betrayal actually began when he rejected Jesus’ teaching on the Holy Eucharist but stayed in the company of the apostles. While the other disciples of Jesus at least left when they didn’t believe, Judas hypocritically stays with Jesus. The betrayal of Judas was really a denial and a refusal to accept in faith Jesus teaching of the Holy Eucharist--that Jesus is the Holy Eucharist. Later on, St. John in chapter 13th tells us that Judas receives the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper and because he doesn’t believe, he receives a sacrileges communion and satan enters into Judas.

For us as well as for Peter and the Disciples of Christ, faith in the Eucharist is the barometer of our Catholic faith. To believe in the Holy Eucharist is to believe in Jesus. To accept his teaching is to accept Christ himself. Every major break in Christianity has been over the meaning of the Eucharist. The vast majority of those who call themselves Christian no longer believe in the real presence at all or believe it incorrectly. There are hundreds of interpretations by protestants and sadly by some Judases in the Catholic Church of those words of Jesus “My flesh is real food, my blood is will drink,” “This is my Body…This is my Blood.” “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not have life you.” Only the Catholic Church in her infallible teachings understands these words correctly, that Jesus really meant what he said, because he is God who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

To believe in the Eucharist as a Who, that is, to believe that it is Jesus Christ, His whole person, physically, corporally, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, truly present is to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. To deny the reality of the Eucharist is really to deny Jesus and His One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church. Why? Because the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Church. Without the Eucharist there is no Church. And as one holy Jesuit priest told us, “Because without the Eucharist as a reality, there is no priesthood instituted by Christ, there is no sacrament of Holy Orders. In a word, there is no visible Church which Christ founded on the Apostles whom He ordained at the Last Supper in order that they might consecrate bread and wine to become the living Jesus Christ on earth in the Holy Eucharist.”

At the root of the great crisis in our Catholic faith today is a crisis of true faith, a crisis of faith in the Eucharist. Fullness of faith in Jesus is one in which a person believes with one’s whole mind and will, with one’s whole being that the Eucharist is Jesus Christ. We do not make any qualifications. The Eucharist is the exact Jesus who was conceived at Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, died on Calvary, rose on Easter Sunday, and ascended into Heaven on Ascension Thursday. A person with the fullness of faith is one who believes that although Jesus is in heaven, he is also just as truly still on earth. He is truly in every tabernacle and on every altar of the world in which, through a validly ordained Catholic priest acting in the person of Christ offers Holy Mass. Jesus uses the body and voice of the priest. It is Jesus through the priest who says the words of consecration making truly present the whole Christ, with his Humanity and Divinity, with His eyes and lips and hands and feet and His Sacred Heart. A person with the fullness of faith believes that without the priest there is no Eucharist, there is no Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and hence there is no way, no way to reach Heaven. Without the Mass salvation ends. A full faith believes that Jesus Christ is now offering Himself in every Mass. He is on earth, with His human body and blood, and human will. A person with true faith believes that we receive Him in Holy Communion. That we receive Him no less than the Apostles did in the Last Supper. That He is now gloried. His body enters our body, His soul enters our soul. A person with the fullness of the true and living faith believes that this is no mere symbolism or metaphor. It is real, really, truly.

We need to take this information and what we have learned from these past weeks listening to the Sixth Chapter of St. John to prayer and study. Yes this is a “hard saying” so we must, like St. Peter, we must beg God to help us in our struggle to believe, in struggle to understand more deeply the mystery of the Eucharist. We must all personally become very devoted to the Holy Eucharist as the real, true present of Christ, as the Sacrifice of the Mass, that is his sacrifice on Calvary and to the Eucharist as Holy Communion-Christ coming intimately, and truly into our bodies and souls. We must come to realization that there is no solution to the problems of the world, to the problems of the Church or to the problems in our families except through the Holy Eucharist.

We must all do everything in our power to promote by word and example a deeper faith in the Eucharist as Real presence, Sacrifice of the Mass and Holy Communion. We must prayer for a deeper understanding of the Blessed Sacrament especially among priest. And we must live lives of reparation, begging God to pardon and enlighten those who neglect the Holy Eucharist by deserting Jesus, or by distorting the truth about His true presence in the Holy Eucharist. We must ask God to renew our reverence for the Eucharist and our reverence when we are in the sanctuary of the Church in front of the tabernacle. And finally, and I mean this literally, we must pray for the grace to be ready to pay any price, to suffer any pain for our belief in the Holy Eucharist and to suffer for those who don’t believe or who believe and don’t love the Holy Eucharist-Jesus Christ.

Today in our midst, Jesus Christ wants to work great miracles in our lives, in our families, in our Church and in the world, even greater miracles than we hear about in the gospels. He wants to accomplish this by increasing our own faith, hope and trust in Him and most importantly increasing our love for Him in the Holy Eucharist. Jesus desires to totally give us this very day, His Sacred Heart, His complete self in Holy Communion in order to leave with us the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we could become more and more united with Jesus, being transformed into His image and likeness. And so becoming His other selves, united with Him in the marriage that St. Paul speaks about in our second reading (Eph. 5; 21-220, Jesus desires to use us as His instruments of Love and mercy for our world, which so desperately needs Jesus. But before Jesus can do this we have to give Him our YES, we must believe in Him, adore him, trust in Him and love Him in the Holy Eucharist by offering unreservedly our hearts to Him in return.

Let us pray, Lord Jesus truly, physically present in the Holy Eucharist, we believe that You are with us in the Holy Eucharist the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar—help our unbelief; increase our faith. We believe that You are personally inviting us to join with You in conquering the world by love for Your heavenly Father. But we are blind—enlighten our minds. We are weak—strengthen our hearts. Make us Apostles of the Eucharist in our day; make us Apostles of life through the Holy Eucharist. Help us by faith to understand the Eucharist now on earth, as a prelude to seeing You our Incarnate God, face to face, for all eternity—For Heaven truly is the Eucharist unveiled for those who believe. Amen. Holy Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, pray for us. Amen *This homily relies heavenly on a talk given by Fr. John Hardon).

Holy Mary Mother of the Holy Eucharist pray for us, lead us to a deeper love for Your Son, Jesus, in the Holy Eucharist…Use me as your little child to save souls and transform out world. Amen.

John 6; 51-58 Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time. August 16th, 2015

As we continue on the teachings of Jesus in the bread of life discourse, today, we have Jesus speaking very plainly to his hearers (and to us) about what He means that He Himself is the Bread from Heaven. There is no other way to take His words but literally, (which is probably why the early Christians got accused of cannibalism). But before we come to what Jesus says, it is good to take a step back and see just how Jesus has prepared his hearers (and us) to hear this message today so that we can accept it fully in faith, with our whole heart, mind, and will.

From the beginning to the end of Chapter 6 of St. John’s Gospel, we discover Jesus taking it step by step in order to help us to accept and so believe His teaching on the Eucharist. It is as if Jesus is slowly preparing the soil of our mind to receive the seed, which is the disclosure of the Great Mystery of the Holy Eucharist.

The first step is that Jesus lets us know that He alone knows our true hunger and so he multiplies the bread and the fish. Second, Jesus by his miracles shows that He is God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity and as such, has power over nature itself; and so, along with the multiplication of the loaves, He walks on water in the midst of a storm. Finally, after preparing us with these two great miracles, Jesus at the synagogue at Capernaum, springs on us “THE MYSTERY OF FAITH” when He says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

In all of this step by step teaching, Jesus demonstrates His desire to meet all of our needs- from the most basic—food to keep our bodies alive in this world, to our more important spiritual need—food for our eternal life. By the way, this is food not only to keep our souls alive forever, but also food to glorify our bodies so that they too, like the body of the Virgin Mary, might be with us in heaven as well. Yesterday was the feast of the Bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary…We too, if we believe in the Eucharist, adore Jesus there, trust Him there and love Him there, we too will have a glorified body in heaven.

Jesus incredible teaching on the Holy Eucharist reminds us that our most profound need of all is to be loved by God-to be one with God. We are literally made for God, made for His love, made to love Him in return and serve Him in this life so that we can be happy in this life and in the next by becoming one with Him in a unending union of love. The Eucharist is the gift of the Love of God because it is truly the God who is Love in the flesh. This is the greatest of gifts of the Father to us, because it is the Gift of Jesus Himself. The Holy Eucharist is then the greatest Gift of Love-to us, who receive Him in faith. And we have to receive Him with faith!!! For Happy are those who are called to His supper and attend with faith!!!

As we penetrate the teaching of this Gospel, we discover that Jesus uses the power of His Divinity, not to scare us, but to actually manifest His divine infinite love for us. He wants to show us that nothing can block or inhibit this Love of His from reaching us in, through and with the Holy Eucharist—except if we chose not to believe. Unfortunately, the choice to not to believe, to not take Jesus-God at His Word, is shown by the people in our readings over the past few weeks. By their unbelief they failed to open their hearts and minds to Jesus and to the great gift of Himself offered to us in and through the Holy Eucharist. Last week they murmured, this week they complain by saying Jesus’ words were “Intolerable”.

Jesus today opens His heart of love and shares the great secret, the greatest of all secrets, that Jesus would give His very life for our salvation. He does this by giving us the gift of Himself, of His life in the Holy Eucharist. In John Chapter 6, Jesus foretells His self-offering and sacrifice of His flesh on the cross and at every Holy Mass in order to give it to us to eat for our salvation.

The Bread of Life is indeed His true flesh and blood, His complete self offering to us. His love for us has absolutely no limits. It is in the Holy Eucharist that we, living today, can receive personally Jesus’ gift of His life poured out for us. It is through the Holy Eucharist that we can not only be saved but become one with the entire Blessed Trinity in unending love.

The Holy Eucharist is a true miracle—It is the Miracles of all miracles…for the bread and wine at the words of Consecration are changed physically into the physical reality of Jesus Christ who is now bodily present-the bread no longer exists, only Jesus exists, whole and entire true God and true Man. With the Holy Eucharist, God not only personally has entered into the world, He is still here physically and He desires to enter into us so we might become one with Him-this is the greatest manifestation of God’s love for the world. Now, Love Himself has a direct and immediate, unfathomable intimacy and communion with our hearts…But we on our part have to believe and receive Him worthily by being in the state of grace, free from serious sin and in union with His Mystical Body on earth, the Catholic Church and Her teachings.

The Holy Eucharist is the only answer for our modern day troubles, It is the only answer to the deepest desires of our Heart, for it is not a It at all, but a Him, THE HIM, Jesus Christ our Lord and our God, who is the only savior of the world and so the only answer to the human condition. If we want to Change our world for the better we must adore the Holy Eucharist as the True and Living God physically among us in the flesh. “Without adoration there is no transformation (Cardinal Ratzinger).” In fact, our world is only transformed to the extent that we Catholics allow Jesus in the Holy Eucharist to transform us. And we can only be transformed to the extent that we offer our whole selves in response to the God who offers His whole to us in the Holy Eucharist. This is what the Holy Mass really is, the unique place for an exchange of Hearts…Where God offers anew His Sacred Heart to us and we in order to become one with Him offer our hearts to Him-the two hearts then can become One—the human with the Divine.

Let us end by always remembering that an age prospers or dwindles in proportion to its, faith in, hope in and love for to the Holy Eucharist.

O My God I believe in thee in the Holy Eucharist, I adore thee in the Holy Eucharist and I love thee in the Holy Eucharist. Please help my lack of believe, lack of adoration, lack of trust and lack of love as I beg pardon for those who do not believe, adore, hope and love thee in the Holy Eucharist. Amen…Holy Mary Mother of the Holy Eucharist pray for us, lead us to a deeper love for Your Son, Jesus, in the Holy Eucharist…Use me as your little child to save souls and transform out world. Amen.

Holy Mary, Mother of the Holy Eucharist, help us to love Jesus in the Holy Eucharist above all things and to offer our love, our hearts and our whole self to Him at this Holy Mass. Help those who are struggling with faith in the Holy Mass and the Holy Eucharist, obtain for them, for all us from Your Divine Son a deeper faith, complete and absolute trust and perfect love for our God for one another. Jesus I trust in Thee. Amen.

John 6:24-35 18th Sunday in Ordinary time. August 2nd, 2015.

In today’s Gospel we read the account of the people looking for food. We will continue to read from St. John, Chapter 6, for the next couple of weeks. If you recall, last week we read about the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. This week, we pick-up where we left off with this very enlightening passage where Jesus tries to teach the people that the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes is really a miracle to help them and lead them to faith in a much greater miracle, the Miracle of the Holy Eucharist. I think that the way Jesus teaches and leads the people is very instructive. So, let’s take a closer look and see what it might teach us.

First, the people question Jesus about how he had arrived in that place. Jesus doesn’t really seem to answer their question- he doesn’t say, “I crossed over here by land because you all wanted to take me off to Jerusalem and make me King.” Instead, Jesus responds with something unexpected. He looks into their hearts and sees their motives- they want only bread to eat. In other words, they mistakenly want only their earthly needs met; they want only a earthly messiah-a “bread king;” that is, a politician who would fulfill their earthly needs and desires and give them freedom; but not freedom in its truest since, the freedom to worship God by their holiness of lives, the freedom to live the truth, to choose the Good, the True and the Beautiful; but instead, they want freedom to do whatever they please.

And so, the people in today’s Gospel really want only a temporal leader, an earthly king-president that would only free them from the oppression of the Romans instead of freeing them from the worst oppression, the oppression to sin. You see, sin is the real oppressor, because it takes away true freedom, the freedom to love for the other’s sake alone, and instead imprisons one in disordered self-love.

And so, in the multiplication miracle, the people recognized merely a worldly sign. Could Jesus be the one to lead them to easy street and good times? They wanted Jesus to be a geo-political messiah that would bring bread, much like Moses had done in the O.T; and then lead them to the promise land flowing with milk and honey. But a “promise land” understood as only a land of economic peace and stability, instead of land of freedom to not only worship God privately, but to worship Him publicly, by living one’s faith publicly as a witness to the truth and beauty of the Gospel.

And so, the Divine Jesus reads their hearts, knowing they’re not understanding what the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves was really trying to teach them. He sees that they just want some free gourmet food to fill their bellies, but fail to understand that economic prosperity only comes from being a faithful and moral people, a people who are walking in the ways of God and in His Love. And so Jesus sees that they fail to see that their geo-economic problems, their oppression and slavery and terrible economic times, the evil in their day, were not the result of the Romans or any other enemy or worldly power, but were instead the result of their own infidelity to the Lord.

So, with great compassion, and understanding their true hunger, Jesus tells them to search for the Food that will give true life and freedom, the fullness of life here on earth ending in heavenly joy. Jesus tells them to search for heavenly food. With this food they would never be hungry again. Jesus wants to give them food to fulfill their deepest desire, food supernatural and eternal life- not merely temporal life.

Jesus was not the one to fulfill their earthly desire for a political leader, but he would go far beyond their earthly desires to the inner depths of man’s heart-to his deepest desire, which is to be loved, to be loved by Jesus the One who the Father has sent. Jesus wanted to be their King, but King of their hearts for He is the King of Love, the King who is Love, because He is the God who is love. In His Love, Jesus is the only One to fill all their desires earthly and heavenly.

Yet, the people respond with a question to continue to test Jesus, “How can we do the works of God? Well, for them the work of God meant very temporal or earthly realities; it meant to them merely being good people; that is doing the minimum in order that God wouldn’t get mad at them; it wasn’t a question of love, of giving of themselves totally to God and to neighbor without measure. So, Jesus confronts them and brings them back to Himself- the work of God is to believe in the One sent by the Father, which of course was Jesus himself; and then to live that faith out in love by doing the Will of the Father.

Again they continue, “but what sign can you give that we would have faith in you?” (Remember now that Jesus had just finished doing so many signs-miracles. He multiplied the loaves and fishes and cured many who were ill; he brought the dead back to life, walked on water, and yet they still did not believe, still did not trust, still did not love). They just would not give up their own ideas of who the Messiah should be. So they refer to Moses. After all they believed it was Moses who led them out of slavery and gave them bread to eat. They believed wrongly that the new messiah promised by Moses would merely lead them out of physical slavery and give them earthly bread. So it would be only this person, this earthly type of messiah, leader-president that the people would put their trust in.

Jesus cuts to the chase; HE counters and corrects them by saying it was not Moses who gave you food in the desert by my Father in heaven. It is my Father who gives you the real heavenly bread. God’s bread comes down from Heaven and gives life to the world.” They respond that they want this bread for the life of the world.

And this is where it seems, Jesus really goes too far- he tells them that He himself is the Bread of Life, and that, “the one who comes to me will never hunger and never thirst.” I do not think they could even begin to grasp what Jesus was saying to them, for they lacked faith. They just would not accept this teaching, in fact this is the only time in the Gospels were we are told, many of his disciples left and no longer believed in Him, “This is a hard saying who can believe it; that Jesus would give Himself, His true flesh and His true Blood as their True Food (cf. John 6;66…that’s right! 666!).

By looking more closely at the discourse in today’s Gospel we can discover that the more things change the more they stay the same. We too, even us who are followers of Christ, can too often look only for an earthly messiah and earthy leader as the only answer to our problems, as the only one who will fill our desires. Instead of looking to the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ truly present in the Holy Eucharist to fill the desires of our heart and to help us solve our problems, we instead turn to political leaders who promises to fill our desires by bringing about economic prosperity but yet political leaders who at the same time go against the Commandments and precepts of God.

However, as History proves over and over again, any leader who tries to build the kingdom of man without reference to the Kingdom of God, to God’s Laws and His Holy Church is following in the footsteps of other so-called earthly messiahs who promised the same-- nero; lenin, stalin, hitler; and Mao se tung... These false messiahs at first may have seemed to fixed the economy, but in the end destroyed it and the soul of their country; and in the process killed millions, born and unborn, while so many people looked the other way. Lured by the empty promises of their false messiah so many mistakenly put lesser issues before the non-negotiable issues of life, family, traditional marriage; and before, the freedom to worship God and freedom to follow their informed conscience, informed by God Truths-the teachings of His Holy Catholic Church and not their own opinions.

This is what is so extremely dangerous about our current situation. These are very troubling times, economically, politically, culturally. History shows that in tough times and in desperation, people will sadly too often turn to a charismatic leader for solutions, instead of God. And in the process, they end up losing their freedoms, many of them their lives, and even worse risk losing their soul and the soul of their country to follow this so-called “messiah.” And as a result, dignity of the human person is rejected and the most abhorrent crimes against humanity result…just look at the selling of baby parts by Planned Parenthood in our own day—grizzly on a level that at least is equal to, if not surpassing, the holocaust-the womb as become a killing field and a place of gruesome acts on the level of Joseph Mengele.

For us, deeper faith is the answer to all our problems; faith in Jesus, faith that Jesus is really, truly physically present in the Holy Eucharist and that He love us; the answer is deeper Faith in the Holy Mass as the source and summit of the graces we need to change and convert our country, our world, our families and ourselves. Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and through the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass wants to work miracles of grace in our world and our families; but He can only do so through the hearts of those who truly believe, through our faith, adoration, hope-trust and love in Him.

Faith is a gift we’ve been given but it needs to grow to maturity. It takes our personal effort to cooperate in Its growth. We need to work at it with all our heart and soul, mind and will, with all our strength, and not just on Sunday, but all week; 24/7/365, every day remaining of our live; Our Faith in Jesus and His true present in the Holy Eucharist needs to become our absolute priority. For Faith reminds us that this life is short and eternity is oh so long.

In the end, Faith grows by spending as much time as we can outside of Holy Mass with the One we love and who loves us, Jesus, the Bread of Life, truly present in the Holy Eucharist, kneeling before Him begging his mercy on us and on our whole world and the leaders of the world; and asking Him to increase our trust in Him and so our love in Him. Time in front of Jesus reveals to us who we really are, for better and for worse, so Faith grows as well by frequent reception of the Sacrament of Confession. And finally faith grows by desiring, studying and praying to know more about Jesus, about his teachings, which the Church gives us

Let us at this Holy Mass ask Jesus to strengthen our resolve and efforts to know our faith and to know and love the Holy Eucharist which is truly Jesus Christ. When we receive Him in the Holy Eucharist let us spend some time kneeling in our pew adoring and loving him, and asking him to help us to adore, love, trust and believe in him more. Let us spend some time with after Holy Mass, just a few minutes to thank Him for the great privilege of being able to not only attend Mass, but actually to receive Him, His Body, blood, Soul, into our body, blood and soul; His divinity into our humanity.

Holy Mary, Mother of the Holy Eucharist, help us to love Jesus in the Holy Eucharist above all things and to offer our love, our hearts and our whole self to Him at this Holy Mass. Help those who are struggling with faith in the Holy Mass and the Holy Eucharist, obtain for them, for all us from Your Divine Son a deeper faith, complete and absolute trust and perfect love for our God for one another. Jesus I trust in Thee. Amen..

An important Message!

John 6, 1-6; Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. July 26th, 2015

Dear Friends,

Again, sadly, we have had another deadly shooting at a movie theater, just three years from the deadly shooting that took place in Aurora Colorado. Shortly after that shooting, three years ago, I shared with you a very important message from Fr. Mitch Pacwa, a Jesuit priest who is a regular on E.W.T.N. I reread his important message from three years ago and know that it is even more true today. Please read it carefully and prayerfully. Included are the additional comments I made three years ago as well. God bless you and may God bless America by bringing us to our knees in repentance and conversion. Our Lady of the Americas pray for us...St. Joseph protect our families. Amen.

Father Lange

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This past week I heard a very powerful message from a holy priest who was speaking about the horrible massacre which took place at the movie theater in Aurora Colorado; this priest’s name by the way is Father Mitch Pacwa. I know that many of you know Him. I want to share this message with you today.
We are very shocked and concerned about this terrible tragedy and our hearts continue to go out to the families of the victims; and we continue to pray for those who were killed and injured. We also pray for all of the law enforcement and EMS personal who had to be greatly affected by such unspeakable horror.

I am sure we are going to hear plenty of people tell us what we need to do to prevent such a tragedy from occurring in the future. But I think, as did this good and holy priest that I listen too, that we have to keep something very important in mind as we struggle to come to grasp with such evil and seek a remedy for our society. I think we have to keep something very important in mind that has to do with the nature of our great country. And now, Fr. Pacwa:

"When the Constitution of these Unites States was written, the founding Fathers said they wanted to restrict the size and power of the federal Government. Remember when they came to America, they had just escaped from an oppressive government and did not want to form a new oppressive Government. So they focused on restricting the federal government and limiting its power and its reach.

But when you read some of the document of these first founders, especially Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and others, they emphasized that with such a government structure, that placed so much on individual responsibility, you depend on having a moral people, that the people themselves have to have firm moral characters. In other words, they knew that their vision would only work with a nation of Godly people. And so these same founders emphasized that this character is going to have to be fashioned by faith in the true God and His Ten Commandments and Teaching, that it has to be fashioned by their Religion. This is exactly why the founding Fathers knew the importance and necessity of religious freedom and so emphasized it in our founding documents. Without religious freedom the America experience dies from immorality.

When you look at all of history we discover, shockingly, that the last century has witnessed some of the most horrible mass murders ever seen. In fact, before 1890 we would be hard pressed to find such atrocities as we just witnessed in Colorado. Even though these unspeakable crimes begin around 1890, we see them begin in earnest in the early part of the century; but where you really see them increase is from 1965 forward. From 1965 on we can count about 60 or so serial killers and mass murders; who interestingly, use for the most part small caliber weapons in perpetrating their killing. Colorado was rare in its use of a large caliber weapon.

What’s interesting, and I think this points to the real problem at hand, it is interesting that about this time (1965 and on) we can see the beginning of a strong diabolical movement to get God and the truths of the Christian religion out of the public sphere, out of the public discussion, attempting to keep God away from this aspect of public life. We also see at this same time many corresponding societal revolutions shaking the foundation of our Judeo-Christian culture--the sexual revolution and the drug revolution.

And so in most of these mass murders, not in all but by far in most, the constant underlying theme has included something twisted on the sexual side and, drug use. And most especially, you see a hatred for God and the sacred things of God, including and especially His true Church on earth, the Holy Roman Catholic Church. It is as if, when God is kicked out of society a vacuum results which becomes filled in by pure evil.

And so, all of us as faithful Catholic Christians, as faithful Americans have to raise up, doing more of what we can to in righteousness to confront the people and organizations in our country that are trying to remove God from the public discourse. It is time for us to ever more start standing up to the forces of the media, some in the judicial system, and in organizations such ACLU, who are doing everything they can to squash religious freedom in order to keep God out and to keep Christians, especially Catholic Christians, out of public life and so silence the moral voice of the Catholic Church which is the audible voice of Jesus Christ Himself, the True and Living God incarnate.

And all Americans, beginning with us Catholic Christians have to, with God’s grace, repent more deeply in order to get back to ever more fully living a deeper moral life that is rooted in what God has taught us, rooted in the truth that comes from God and is proclaimed infallible by His Catholic Church and her teachings, all her teachings including those which are deemed unrealistic in today’s more modern age. To live this moral life is to live our life fully because we are living in Christ, through Christ—living life with Christ.

We, as a Country and as a people of God, have to get back to a morality that is base on what God has told us is the difference between right and wrong even when it is not politically or socially acceptable or even tolerated, even when it is politically incorrect. And even we are mocked and called names or accused of being judgmental, we have to stand up for what is right and stand against what is wrong. We as Catholic Americans are called by Jesus Himself to, in love for our all of our brethren, speak up and teach the truth about what is right and what is wrong, to teach the full unadulterated Gospel; and to do so, most especially, by how we live our lives. WE have to proclaim with our voices but most especially by our actions that right is right if no one is doing it and wrong is wrong even if every one is doing it.

And in confronting our current culture of death, we have to especially proclaim the Gospel of LIFE!!! Because what is universal in every single case of mass murder, serial murder and massacre is that none of the perpetrators have any sense of the dignity of other people; they have no concern for them being real persons. They treat their victims merely as objects; they have no concern whatever for human life; they are a product of our society that is doing the same with it’s culture of death, a society which discards the unborn as if they were non-person, kills the sick and elderly under the premise of so-called “mercy,” and rejects the sanctity of life by experimenting on it without any regard for Lord and Giver of Life; they are a product of a society which seeks to redefine that which God has defined to bring forth new human life into the world and nurture it, namely, marriage between one man and one women, the family itself.

And so we, you and I, all of us have a grace responsibility to teach that it is God who gives us our dignity as people. We have to proclaim without fear, that is God the Creator who give us our dignity as human persons as our own declaration of Independence makes clear; and that our inalienable rights come directly from the Creator, to each individual, no exceptions, from the moment of conception to natural death.

With all due respect, I know our president will talk about our inalienable rights but notice he refuses to talk about them as coming directly from the Creator; he refuses to acknowledge this truth, this reality; he always skips the part about the Creator when he quotes or mentions this part of the Declaration of Independence. But you can’t skip this truth; it is the Creator Who is the source of these rights, not the government, not any government and not any man or group of men.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to be the ones to remind everyone, including our elected officials, that God is the source of human dignity and rights, and that each human person must be seen as an individual endowed with these rights from God. And in light of this perennial truth, as the declaration also says, everyone of us will be answerable to God Himself for what we do or what we fail to do. By the way that’s also in the Declaration. A lot of people don’t pay attention to that part; but in the last paragraph it is there, that everyone is responsible before God for protecting the dignity and rights of the human person, especially the right to life and religious freedom. We have to remind people of this, we have to call people to that accountability to God, not to an accountability to the government, not to a priest, but to God our Lord the Almighty Creator and sustainer of heaven and earth.

One last point, this holy and wise priest made. In watching the news over the last few days what was impressive was the number of heroes…the number of people who gave their lives to protect others, men literally laid themselves on top of their girlfriends in order to be human body shields taking the bullets, giving their lives so they could live. These people are heroes, they are heroes because they did see the dignity of life, did see the dignity of the human person, so much so that they gave their life to protect this dignity which comes from the Creator, who is the Lord of Life. That’s why we celebrate them as heroes, for no greater love is there than this than that a man would lay down His life for his friend.

There were other heroes as well, those who praying for those who were injured, those who although injured themself still tried to come to the aid of others who were injured, those who even though bleeding themselves prayed for others; and all those other heroes who put them self in harms way, in grave and mortal danger in order to come to the aid of others…God has send us and our county a powerful message by the selfless actions of these heroes and we celebrate them."

Father Pacwa ending his powerful message by saying that in light of all this incredible heroism of so many to protect life, because of its dignity and worth which comes from the Creator, we should pray that we all can be heroes, like these heroes, in our society and call people to respect the God given dignity every human person, born or unborn, innocent or guilty, male or female, black or white, conscious or unconscious, rich or poor. And if it be God’s will to have the courage to sacrifice all we have and all, even our lives in order to save life, especially eternal life, the eternal life of souls.

It’s up to us, you and me, to do whatever we can with the help of God’s grace in order to convert our current culture of death into a culture of LIFE. We are all so weak and fearful; but let us not fear, our strength is in the LORD! He loves us so much. Let us fall on our knees in faith and love before out God Truly Present in the Holy Eucharist and cry out, “Jesus I trust in Thee! Jesus I trust in Thee! Jesus I trust in Thee! Have mercy on us and on our whole world, have mercy on our beloved country, the United States of America, convert her for in God, in You, we TRUST! O my Jesus forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are in most need of Thy Mercy. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, patroness of our Country pray for us, obtain the grace we need to faithful even to the foot of the cross. Amen.