About the Mayan Calendar...

“You will show me the path to life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right forever.” (Psalm 16:11)

Twenty years ago, after finishing a summer of mission work, I visited the pyramids of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula.  They are remarkable structures built by the Mayans who were a very advanced civilzation.  These days the Mayans are part of everyday conversation because of their calendar.   I remember when I preached on today’s readings three years ago that I did a little research about this fascination with the Mayan calendar:  “Apparently the Mayan calendar runs out during the winter solstice on December 21, 2012. The Mayan calendar runs for exactly 5,126 years, and wouldn't you know it, it runs out [next month].  This date is also significant because it will be the first time in 26,000 years that the Earth and the Sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way.”  Fun, right?  So I guess I don’t have to do any of my Christmas shopping because we won’t make it past December 21^st.  People keep making jokes about how all the terrible things happening in the world point to this calendar expiring and the coming apocalypse.  I guess they didn’t read today’s gospel in its entirety.

I am always amused by people that are obsessed, yes, obsessed with the end of the world.  They look for clues in the Scriptures, especially in the beginning of today’s gospel, to point to things that are happening in the world that are perhaps, maybe, possibly alluded to in the Bible.  (Let me clarify once and for all that the results of the recent election were not foretold in the Scriptures.)  So instead of scaring you this weekend with images of a darkened sun and falling stars, let me offer some words of hope:  only the Father knows the day or the hour and the Son assures us that he will be with us right to the very end.

So why worry?  If we are living the Christian ideal that Christ spelled out for us two weeks ago, love God and neighbor, then we shouldn’t worry about the end times.  We should delight in mighty hand of God, as the psalm says, instead of fearing it.   We spend so much time worrying about things that we cannot control in the future when we should be focused on the present and following Christ and his commandments in the here and now.  This morning I was reading a passage written by St. Augustine who said:  “Let us not resist the first coming, so that we may not dread the second.”  There you have it:  if we’re doing what the Lord wants us to do, why worry?  We are a people of hope and of joy.  If we are in the good graces of our God, why should we fear?

Who Would've Imagined?

“Praise the Lord, my soul!” (Psalm 146:1b)

In the spring of 1984, right here in this beautiful church of the Divine Providence, I received for the first time the greatest gift that Christ left us: the gift of the Eucharist. My first memories of my faith were forged right here in this parish where my parents tirelessly worked as parishioners from 1980-1986. I remember the beautiful Masses, the Good Friday processions, the first “Griterias,” and the fun of the annual festivals. It is here where I received catechesis in CCD, where I discovered the beauty of the Mass when I made my First Communion, and where the beginnings of a priestly vocation journey began.  My childhood friends, who are still my friends today, were raised here with me, and we would run out to the lake after every Mass to toss rocks into the water.  We would get in trouble for being too noisy during Mass or for rolling down the very tiny hills that made up the parish grounds, but it is here that I as a little boy discovered the precious gift of my faith. Who would’ve imagined that Providence would bring that little boy back to this parish so close to his heart to serve you as your pastor?  I have come home!

What an honor the Archbishop has bestowed on this unworthy servant.  As soon as he told me the news, I feel to my knees asking God to give me His strength as I put my total trust in him.  This is exactly what the widows in today’s readings did despite their poverty.  They gave everything they had to God and God greatly blessed them.  As Christians, we must constantly commend ourselves to God despite our unworthiness, our sins, and our failings, and trust that he will provide for us.  We must have the faith of these widows to throw ourselves into the unknown knowing that our Lord will provide for us.   

I have come simply to serve. I only bring with me the Word of God on my lips and the joy of Christ in my heart. It is this Word and this joy that Christ gives us that we, as Christians, are called to share. And these are my memories of Divine Providence Parish: a community full of joy and filled with the love of God. The Archbishop has truly honored me with this precious gift of allowing me to serve you at the altar of Our Lord. As I commend my new ministry to the Lord, I also commend myself to all of you. I ask you to pray for me and for all priests so that we may be faithful and holy servants of our Lord Jesus Christ. With the help of God and the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, Our Lady of Divine Providence, together we will continue the beautiful mission of this parish of sharing the Good News with the whole world. Who would’ve imagined that a little boy who used to sit among you and look up at this beautiful Risen Christ would one day serve this community as its pastor?  What a joy to be back home! What a joy to be able to serve this holy people at the altar of Our Lord!

Goodnight Saint Gregory

“You are not far from the kingdom of God.” (Mark 12:34)

Two weeks ago, Archbishop Wenski called me to give me the joyful news that he was naming me the pastor of Our Lady of Divine Providence Parish in Miami.  I am honored by this appointment, however it means that I have to say goodbye to my parish family here at St. Gregory that I have grown to love over the last year and half.  This appointment becomes effective on Monday, November 5^th.  Every priest makes the promise of obedience to his bishop at both his diaconate and priestly ordinations, and I’m sure you can ask any priest and he will tell you what I have come to discover: that it is always difficult to leave a parish because of the bonds you form with the holy people of God. 

Tonight I am filled with mixed emotions.  I am excited to take on the challenge of my first pastorate, but I am conscience of all the work that I had yet to do here that I must now leave behind.  We have such a vibrant parish here at St. Gregory.   I am going to miss dancing around with the ladies at the Life After Fifty nights, leading prayer for our newly formed Knights of Columbus Council, giving out the vocations prayer baskets, having fun with our teenagers on LifeNights, visiting our classrooms during school and CCD, being part of huge bear hugs during Emmaus retreats, barging into the Thursday night Spanish Scripture studies for a good laugh, celebrating School Masses, giving classes to a captive audience of Catechumens, standing up with our Respect Life group, listening to our divine 10:30am and 6pm choirs, having lunch every day with our school kids, and watching our new Spanish Mass take off and blossom into one of the largest Masses of the weekend with one of the largest choirs and an abundance of ministers in just one short year.  None of this was my doing, but the work of God through all of you.  To be honest, what I am going to miss most of all is preaching and celebrating the Eucharist with you, for it is at the table of the Lord where our Church comes to life.  You were always so complimentary about my homilies.  Those precious few minutes that I had every Sunday were so important to me because I wanted to share with you the passion that I have for the Gospel and the joy that Christ has placed in my heart which I was ordained to share.

In today’s readings, Jesus sums up the whole law in one simple word:  love.  Love of God and love of neighbor is what I have tried to instill in you with my preaching.  Make no mistake, priests may come and go, but no matter what man stands behind that altar, it is all of you that make St. Gregory great.  This is your parish.  These are your deeds.  It is your love of God and neighbor that you share with the world that helps make this parish one of a kind.

As I take my leave from you now, I ask you for only one thing:  your prayers.  I need your prayers as I become a pastor for the first time.  Your faith has always inspired me, and your devotion to prayer, particularly the rosary and Eucharistic Adoration, has led me to spend even more time at the feet of the Master.  I take all of you with me in my heart and encourage you to continue doing the good work that makes St. Gregory so great.  Please take care of Father Hoyer and Father Naughton and my successor, and after 16 all too brief months witnessing this holy outpouring love before me, I leave you with the same words that Jesus told the Scribe in today’s gospel:  You are not far from the kingdom of God.

Bringing Christ To All

"Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God...No one takes this honor upon himself but only when called by God..." (Hebrews 5:1, 4)

A few weeks ago, I heard this powerful story from Archbishop Flynn:

Back in World War II, several young priests from Albany, New York volunteered to go into the armed services. One young priest was assigned to the Marines who were trying to retake an island from the Japanese in the South Pacific. The Marines were trying to advance on the beach with the Japanese having the advantage of being on higher ground. This young priest tried to minster to these Marines who were at a disadvantage in the foxholes they had dug on the beach.  The priest went from foxhole to foxhole giving absolution and distributing Communion. He arrived at one particular foxhole to find three young faces looking up at him all helpless. He gave them absolution and then the Eucharist. As he crawled out of this foxhole he heard a terrible explosion and he looked back to see his worst nightmare. A shell had gone into that foxhole of these three young men who couldn't have been older than 18 or 19 years of age to whom this young priest had just given the Eucharist. He crawled back into the hole and found that two of them were gone from the blast. The other one was in the foxhole and he was bleeding to death. The young Marine looked up at the priest and asked, "Father, am I dying?"  The young priest responded, "Yes, son.  You're dying." And the young Marine responded, "Isn't it something, Father.  I just received Jesus and now I'm going to see him."

That young priest went on to become an Archbishop later on in life, but on that day, on that beach, he brought the light and the living presence of Jesus Christ into the darkness of war.  A priest whether in his church or in a hospital or in the front lines of a war zone brings this Glorious Presence.  As the second reading reminds us, he does not take this honor upon himself but only when called by God.  

I write this as I fly back from New York with our football team.  We are flying around a hurricane and the plane ride has been bumpy to say the least.  When we were boarding, many were nervous about the prospects of even taking off because the winds were picking up and the airport was about to close.  As I took my seat, one of our young equipment managers took his seat in front of me and said, "Boy, am I glad to be sitting next to you!"  I smiled and reminded myself that the collar I wear around my neck is supposed to bring peace to those around me even though the man that wears the collar many times falls short of living up to such high a calling.  Yet, despite my sinfulness, despite my fears, faults, and insecurities, somehow Christ chose me to be his priest to bring his presence to others.  Sometimes in the most unlikeliest of places.

A few months ago, I was wondering what plan God had in store for me as I began ministering to the Dolphins.  I knew that it was more than just celebrating Mass for them.  Many of my brother priests (most of them retired after many years in ministry) have pointed to the black collar I wear around my neck on the sideline.  Last month, my old spiritual director wrote to me that just my mere presence on the sidelines wearing that sacred garb would evangelize millions that were watching on television. Praying the rosary before the game, giving the rosaries to coaches, players, and staff and just simply being there brings Christ to others.  It definitely is not nearly as heroic as that young priest in the South Pacific, but the joy that I receive from bringing that joy of Christ to others is beyond anything I could possibly have imagined.   I do this for the team, I do this for my parishioners at St. Gregory, and I will do this wherever the Good Lord leads me on this grand adventure that is the priesthood.  I wake up every morning felling blessed to be a priest, to be to offer up a Holy Sacrifice to God in the Eucharist, and to bring the presence of Christ to those that he places before me.

One last thing: last night I was sitting in my hotel room along the Hudson River staring out my window and gazing at the World Trade Center.  The Freedom Tower, or One World Trade Center, is nearing completion as it rises triumphantly over that hallowed ground on the southern tip of Manhattan. It's lights reflected beautifully off the waters of the Hudson. I spent a great deal of time last night and before dawn this morning just staring at the World Trade Center and thinking and praying for the victims and heroes of that fateful Tuesday morning. And of course, I thought of Father Mychal Judge who ran towards the towers as they burned.  He wasn't in a war zone in the South Pacific.  This time the war zone was on our soil and he rushed to bring Christ to those who were suffering.  Many of you know that Father Judge gave his life that day just as throughout history priests have given their lives sharing Jesus with others.  So tonight, I ask you to say a prayer for those priests who minister despite impossible obstacles, who place their lives in danger to share the Gospel, and especially for those who courageously serve the brave men and women in our military by making Christ present in the most unlikeliest of places.  "Isn't it something, Father.  I just received Jesus and now I'm going to see him."

A Missionary and A Toilet Brush

“…whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant…”

Today the church celebrates World Mission Sunday. Every year on this Sunday, I’m reminded of my experience of missions in Mexico when I was a teenager.  I remember specifically the first day we arrived in our village.  We were going to spend two and a half weeks out there in the mountains of southern Mexico serving the poor, and when we got there we were assigned chores.  I have never forgotten that when we sat down to divvy up the daily chores, one of our young college missionaries named Jimmy was the first one to raise his hand to volunteer to clean the toilets every morning.  I was 15 at the time and thought this kid was crazy.  Why would he want to do such a disgusting chore every single day?  Little did I know at the time that he was teaching me a great gospel message that we hear in today’s gospel.  Greatness lies in total service to others without thinking of one’s self.  Jimmy was hard on me that first of three summers that we spent together on missions.  I never realized how self-centered I was as a teenager until one night that Jimmy basically spelled it out for me.  No one except my father had ever been that harsh with me but at the same time, he did it with great love.  Here I was thinking I was going to Mexico ready to set the world on fire by preaching God’s word but it was in the little things that God really made himself present:  in taking care of children so their parents could go to Mass, in doing my own laundry by hand in a bucket, in drawing water from a deep well for the other missionaries, in walking miles just to bring the presence of Christ to someone who may have felt forgotten by their Church.  It was in the selfless examples of my fellow missionaries, it was in the great faith of the poor people we were called to serve, and in my long and sometimes difficult talks with Jimmy and seeing his dedication to our mission that this young teenager slowly started to discover his priestly vocation.

Next summer it will be 20 years since I went on missions to that place that I once called an “oasis of Christianity” because you see the gospel come to life in the love and the faith of the poor.  They rely solely on God and not on anything of this world.  It is there that I met some of the poorest people I have ever known, but at the same time some of the greatest and most powerful.  Christ reminds us that to be the first, to be truly powerful, we have to be the slave of all.  Being able to experience this first hand at such a young age set the tone for the rest of my life.  These people who we were coming to serve delighted in serving us!  They would constantly be giving us food that more often than not meant that they were depriving themselves and their families of food so that the missionaries would could eat from their harvest.  The priest that accompanied us always said that the bread that these poor people gave us was as sacred as the bread that we broke on the altar.  It was such a joy to be a missionary, and I carry that spirit now as a priest.  World Mission Sunday is supposed to remind us that not only are we called to remember those who are preaching the gospel and helping the poor around the world, but also that we don’t necessarily need to travel to foreign lands to be a missionary:  we are called to be missionaries right here in our homes, our work, and our schools.  We are called to serve and be a slave to all even if it means doing something as menial as cleaning toilets so that somebody else doesn’t have to.  For it is in the small tasks preformed with great love that we truly achieve greatness.

What Must I Do?

What Must I Do?

"Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)

This past week, I spent five days on retreat with about 40 of my brother priests from the Archdiocese of Miami.  I’ve been on these retreats before with other priests and it never ceases to amaze me how serious we take these moments of solitude with God.  Our retreat master was Archbishop Harry Flynn, the archbishop-emeritus of Minneapolis, who I heard speak up in the Twin Cities 6 years ago and is a truly gifted speaker.  I witnessed 40 priests who preach the gospel every day, witness to Christ every day, who know what it takes to be a good Christian, approach this retreat with the same question that the man in today’s gospel posed to Jesus:  “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Like the man, we know the answer, but as priests, we must run to the Master to be reminded.  This is why we go on retreat:  to be reminded of these truths that help us inherit eternal life, to be reminded of God’s wonderful love for us, to be reminded of his endless mercy, to be reminded that we have received true richness in Christ’s gift to us of the priesthood, and to be reminded that as men of God in a secular world, we must rededicate ourselves all the more to prayer for our people.

All of us here are like this man in the gospel.  We approach the Lord asking him “What must I do?”  We genuinely want him to tell us what we must do to please him, to honor him, and to gain for ourselves admittance into the kingdom of heaven.  We ask this question because we honestly don’t know the answer.  We come before the Lord with humility and he gives us the answer, but we look back and realize that we are very much tied down to the world.  This gospel is not so much about being rich in wealth, but about letting the things of this world hinder us from a life totally dedicated to God.  The tragedy of this story is that the rich man could not detach himself from his possessions.  Jesus looked on him and loved him.  Notice that little detail that St. Mark throws in there.  He looked on him and loved him.  That is how he looks on every one of us as he calls us to enter into a deeper relationship with him.  But what is holding us back?  What is distracting us?

An entire day of our retreat was dedicated to the importance of prayer in our lives.  We all expect our priests to be men of prayer.  I pray every day not only in Mass but before the Blessed Sacrament as well.  Yet, I always feel like I should be dedicating more time to praying for all of you and to listening to the Lord.  Archbishop Flynn began his talk on prayer by telling us quite boldly, “Until you are convinced that prayer is the best use of your time, you will never have time for prayer.”  I spent most of that day meditating on those words and thinking about all the time I literally waste on trivial things, which is time that I could be spending before the Lord the Blessed Sacrament.  When you’re on retreat it is easy to enter into prayer, but when you’re in your room surrounded by your possessions and your gadgets and your computer and TV and other things that distract from a deeper prayer life, it’s not so easy.  Detachment from the material is necessary.  Each of us clings to things of this world that prevent us from entering more fully into the mystery of God’s love.  “What must I do?” you ask.  Spend an extra few minutes in prayer each day.  Be alone with God.  Disconnect yourself from this world and be one with Him.  It is in prayer that we find answers because not only are we speaking to God, but more importantly, he is speaking to us.

I want to end with one last anecdote about our retreat.  On that day that was dedicated to prayer, we concluded it with a reconciliation service.  I sat in the back of that chapel and watched as each one of your priests humbly went before one of the Passionist Fathers who were hosting us to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  It is there in that confessional that we accomplish total detachment because we are no longer weighed down by our sins.  Once we are not weighed down with our sins or the things of this world, we can approach the Lord and genuinely ask him with an open heart, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”