Hedonism and the Narrow Gate

“Strive to enter through the narrow door.”  (Luke 13:24)
 

Hedonism: the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life.

Last week, I unloaded a big word on you that I’ve never used before as I described the attitudes of Jesus’ times compared to ours and noted that not much has changed over the last 2000 years.  The big word was “hedonism.”  I used it as an addition to the two other deceiving ideologies that our popes have warned us about: relativism and secularism.  A couple of weeks ago, my father and I were talking about many of the themes that I have been mentioning in my homilies over the last few weeks.  We talked about how the world is deceiving Christians everywhere into living a lifestyle that goes totally against all of our basic and intrinsic values.  My father wisely noted that what is deceiving young people today and all Christians in general is a hedonistic culture that seeks only to find pleasure no matter what the cost or the consequences that it may have in our relationship with others, our relationship with family and friends, and more importantly our relationship with God.  I found Webster’s definition for hedonism fascinating: “the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life.”  Imagine that!  A doctrine!  Unfortunately, it has become a doctrine for so many: “if it feels good, do it.”  A shoe company has spent 30 years telling us to “just do it.”  So as a result of the prevailing hedonism that exists in our culture, we have people who consider themselves Catholic getting swept up in this “do what feels good” mentality.  Young people who were raised Catholic see no problem going from party to party getting drunk to the point that they can’t remember where they actually were the night before.  Young Catholic couples see no problem engaging in pre-marital sex just because “it feels right” or “it’s the right time,” or my favorite “because we love each other.”  And then either they break up to engage in this behavior with someone else, or they go further in their relationship because they’ve achieved a level of intimacy that is reserved exclusively for the sacrament of Holy Matrimony and have no problem living together “because it’s convenient.”  I’m just talking about young people here.  What gets me is the parents who profess to be uber-Catholic who look the other way and allow this behavior to go on “because it makes my children happy” and of course we don’t want our children to be happy, but at what cost?

Today Jesus tells us that we must strive to enter through the narrow gate.  Now Christ himself is the narrow gate because he is the only one that can lead us to true happiness and joy.  In the opening prayer of the Mass today, we implore our Heavenly Father to help us “that, amid the uncertainties of this world, our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found.”  So right there in our opening prayer we debunk the myth of hedonism, for true gladness can only be found in heaven.  Yes, there are many things that can make us happy in this world, but they should not be the “sole or chief good in our life.”  That place is only reserved for Christ.  Let me put it another way:  true joy is only fleeting if it is not rooted in Jesus Christ.  Everything else is a myth that the world is selling and that we shouldn’t be buying.  As I mentioned last week, as Catholics we must stand up to these false ideologies and grow a backbone especially if we have young people under our care.  We cannot expect to continue living a hedonistic lifestyle and expect to enter through that narrow gate like the people in the gospel.  My friends, these are challenging times for Catholics, but with Christ, who is the reason for our joy, there is no evil that the world can throw at us that we cannot handle:  even if it comes gift-wrapped in a package called “pleasure.”

CAPTION READS: "I TOLD YOU BROTHER, WITHOUT CHRIST, WE'RE FRIED!" 

Spiritual Warfare

“...let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.” (Heb 12:1-2)

“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. (Luke 12:51)

There is so much happening in the world that troubles me.  The violence in Egypt against Christians, immigrants dying seeking a better life, the total disregard for traditional Christian family values and the re-definition of what a family and marriage actually is, the rampant secularism that seeks to eliminate God from the public square as if the Almighty were a nuisance...I could go on and on with this list.  These things that are taking place are not so different from what Jesus encountered in his time.  There was violence in the Middle East back then too, and the Romans lived and promoted a hedonistic lifestyle much like what we are seeing today.  This is why Jesus seeks to set the world on fire because the love of God transforms, consumes, and eradicates all that may alienate us from his Divine Love.  Of course, embracing this love and embracing the Kingdom of God involves ridding ourselves of sin and of all those pleasures we seek with disregard for how it affects others.  The words from the Letter to the Hebrews in the second reading are very direct: “let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.”  Sin clings to us a like a bad odor.  It infiltrates every part of our life and of our being until we feel like we no longer deserve and no longer can receive God’s forgiveness.  Yet he forgives us anyways and calls us to persevere through the journey of life with eyes fixed on him.

Living our Christianity to the fullest will also be a cause of division among families as Jesus says at the end of the gospel.  So many are rejected, even among family members, for how they practice their faith.  I’ve spoken about this before:  how we sometimes put adjectives in front of the word “Catholic” such as “devout Catholic” or “conservative Catholic” or my favorite “fanatical Catholic.”  Truth is the world sees people that faithfully go to Mass every day, say their rosaries, help the poor, and participate in the ministry of the Church as fanatical Catholics when really they’re just Catholic.  Even after 11 years of priesthood, I still am amused at how some people react to seeing a young man (humor me, please) walking around a shopping center wearing a Roman collar.  I am a sign of contradiction, a sign of division.  Yet Christ calls all of us to be a sign of division and to stand up for what we believe in.

I preached about this on Thursday on the Solemnity of the Assumption but wanted to expand on it a bit more this Sunday morning.  We are living in a time of spiritual warfare, if you will, where we have to take a stand.  We are surrounded by so much amorality that assaults our children, but we cannot be passive.  We must fight back.  Pope Francis implored the young people in Rio three weeks ago to be protagonists of history and to not get stuck in the back of the line and let history be written without Christian input:

Please, don’t leave it to others to be the protagonists of change. You are the ones who hold the future! You … Through you the future is fulfilled in the world. I ask you also to be protagonists of this transformation. Continue to overcome apathy, offering a Christian response to the social and political anxieties, which are arising in various parts of the world. I ask you to be builders of the world, to work for a better world. Dear young people, please, don’t be observers of life, but get involved. Jesus did not remain an observer, but he immersed himself. Don’t be observers, but immerse yourself in the reality of life, as Jesus did. (Prayer Vigil with Young People, July 27, 2013)

This task isn’t exclusively for the young as this week I’ve seen scores of grandparents come into our offices wanting their grandchildren to receive the sacraments in our religious education program because their children (my generation) have grown indifferent or apathetic towards God and haven’t passed it on to their children.  We MUST give a spiritual response to the ills of the world and also recognize that this is a spiritual war.  In a war, we must be armed which is why on Mary’s feast on Thursday I pulled out my rosary.  Our Blessed Mother walks with us during this journey as we go forth to set the world on fire with her beloved Son.  My friends, make no mistake about it, we will be attacked by forces in this world and outside of this world.  The devil exists and the Holy Father called him out by name almost immediately when elected Pope.  I see good people trying to lead good Christian lives struggling with sin and all sorts of issues especially family issues.  I’ve seen husband and wives divided because one wants to go to church and the other doesn’t.  I’ve seen young people come to Mass by themselves because their parents won’t bring them.  So the prophecy of our Lord has been fulfilled.  Jesus does indeed come to establish division, but the question remains: on which side of the division do you stand?  Will you lead the charge against the evils of this world or will you get swept up in the current that allows you to do whatever makes you happy?  Only one side leads to eternal life.  Choose wisely.

We Walk By Faith

“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1)

This past Friday, I was able to visit with Bishop Felipe Estevez in St. Augustine as I traveled with the team to Jacksonville.  We had a very nice time together having lunch and going to the holy sites of St. Augustine to pray.  During our conversations, we talked about the brilliance of Pope Francis and his recent encyclical letter on faith.  The bishop mentioned that he was going to use excerpts from it in his homily this weekend.  Since I had not yet written my homily as of Friday afternoon, I told him that I would probably do the same (amazing how the Holy Spirit works.)  The bishop and I started talking about most of the things the Holy Father had been focusing on and how similar it was to all the things Bishop Roman spent his life preaching about: getting out of our churches to spread the faith.  Faith is central to today’s readings, but a faith that comes alive and doesn’t grow stale.

In his encyclical letter Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith), Pope Francis points to Abraham as a model of faith just like today’s second reading does:

Faith opens the way before us and accompanies our steps through time. Hence, if we want to understand what faith is, we need to follow the route it has taken, the path trodden by believers, as witnessed first in the Old Testament. Here a unique place belongs to Abraham, our father in faith. (8)

Abraham recognized the voice of God, and with great faith (and with much to lose) uproots his entire clan to go to a distant country where God promises descendants and great prosperity.  Because of his unwavering faith, Abraham is indeed blessed with descendants and given the land that we call holy today.  But he first had to recognize the voice of God and respond to it.  Once he responds, God’s blessings journey him because faith, after all, is a journey:

The word spoken to Abraham contains both a call and a promise. First, it is a call to leave his own land, a summons to a new life, the beginning of an exodus which points him towards an unforeseen future. The sight which faith would give to Abraham would always be linked to the need to take this step forward: faith "sees" to the extent that it journeys, to the extent that it chooses to enter into the horizons opened up by God’s word.(9)

Faith does indeed call us to a new life, but as the Holy Father points out, just as it did with Abraham,
our faith points us to an unforeseen future because our faith is always prompting us to change.  If faith is indeed a journey, then we can never be in one place.  While faith itself never changes (our beliefs and our morals), our understanding and the practice of our faith does.  Herein lies the challenge to seek better understanding of what we believe in.  Faith should take us into those different “horizons opened up God’s word” so that we may grow more and more in our love for the God that we cannot see.  Our journey through this world is a pilgrimage which faith and hope tells us will one day lead us back into the arms of our Father in heaven.  That is why our faith must constantly be on the move.  Jesus tells his disciple that we must always be dressed to move, to travel because we do not know when the Son of Man will come. 

It took great faith for those first missionary priests to sail out into the unknown and to plant that first cross here in Florida.  Like Abraham, they too ventured into the unknown relying only on God.  If our faith is as deep and as unwavering as that of Abraham, then our pilgrimage through this world will indeed be accompanied by God’s blessings and ultimately lead us back home to Him.  So let our prayer today be that of the disciples, “Lord, increase our faith.” (Luke 17:5)

 

 

The Pope Wants Noise

“Do not bother me…” (Luke 11:7)

 

Almost every Sunday I look out at the faithful and find several faces sitting in the pews with stern facial expressions that scream: “Don’t bother me.”  They are like the man in the parable that Jesus tells in today’s gospel.  This man does not want to be bothered by a friend who is asking for a favor, but Jesus says that the persistence of his friend wins out in the end.  So it is with our God who is so incredibly generous to us.  He is persistent in his longing to have a close relationship with us, to shower us with his blessings, and to give us the joy and the peace that our hearts long for.  Unfortunately, too many times when Christ comes knocking on the doors of our hearts, we tell him not to bother us.

 

All week long we have been transfixed by the words and actions of Pope Francis in Rio during the World Youth Day festivities.  Each word, each action is worthy of its own homily or reflection.  He has reached out to the poor, he has destroyed almost every security protocol by wanting to be close to the people, and his words have turned the Church on its ear.  The Church that the Holy Father is clamoring for is definitely not a “don’t bother me” church.  The status quo will no longer do.  We have a critical, soul-saving mission to accomplish, and we must do better in promoting the gospel.

 

My favorite homily from the past week was the one that the Holy Father delivered at the Marian Shrine of Aparecida in which he proposed three attitudes or characteristics for every Christian which are vital: hopefulness, an openness to being surprised by God, and living in joy.

 

Hopefulness:  Pope Francis says: “How many difficulties are present in the life of every individual, among our people, in our communities; yet as great as these may seem, God never allows us to be overwhelmed by them. In the face of those moments of discouragement we experience in life, in our efforts to evangelize or to embody our faith as parents within the family, I would like to say forcefully: Always know in your heart that God is by your side; he never abandons you! Let us never lose hope! Let us never allow it to die in our hearts!”   Even when we are at our lowest, we must never lose hope.  God always reaches down and lifts us up.  We must always be a people of hope.

 

Openness to being surprised by God:  “God always surprises us…God always saves the best for us. But he asks us to let ourselves be surprised by his love, to accept his surprises. Let us trust God! Cut off from him, the wine of joy, the wine of hope, runs out. If we draw near to him, if we stay with him, what seems to be cold water, difficulty, sin, is changed into the new wine of friendship with him.”  I loved this attitude that was proposed by the Holy Father.  Each day our God wants to surprise us, but we are not open to his surprises as if he were going to give us something that would harm us.  Open your hearts.  Let God surprise you!

 

Living in joy:  “Dear friends, if we walk in hope, allowing ourselves to be surprised by the new wine which Jesus offers us, we have joy in our hearts and we cannot fail to be witnesses of this joy. Christians are joyful, they are never gloomy. God is at our side.”  This is the tell tail sign of the Christian.  We must be joyful!  If Christ has redeemed us, forgiven us, loved us, died for us, then how can we be anything less than joyful.  If you want to ask why Christianity or Catholicism is losing out to other religions it’s because our people aren’t sharing the joy that must abide in every Christian heart.  It must be a transparent joy and a contagious joy.

 

And this brings us back to those “don’t bother me” people who sit in our pews who I love nonetheless.  They make stern faces, barely crack a smile, and sit there with grim faces.  Let me be honest:  they are ugly faces!  God made each of us beautifully!  If we truly believe that Christ is present here, then how can we be anything less than joyful?  If we truly believe that we are in the presence of the Almighty in this sacred space, then how can we be stern or cross?  It goes back to a very simple saying from my youth: smile, God loves you!  Isn’t that enough?

 

But the “don’t bother me” people have met their match with Pope Francis.  It’s as if the Holy Father was tapping them on the shoulder and telling them, “psst, you’re going to be bothered now” when he spoke to the Argentinian youth and told them what he wanted as a result of World Youth Day: he wants noise!  (This is a very poor translation to the word “lío” that he used in Spanish which means that he wants young people to shake things up.)  The noise that we saw on the streets of Rio, in the packed beaches of Copacabana as 3.2 million pilgrims showed up this morning for Mass, the joyful noise of the Good News of the gospel is about to be felt in every corner of the world.  He told the youth of his native land: “I want you to make yourselves heard in your dioceses, I want the noise to go out, I want the Church to go out onto the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static, everything comfortable, everything to do with clericalism, everything that might make us closed in on ourselves.”  The man in the gospel was closed in on himself and did not want to be bothered.  We can’t afford to live our Christianity like this anymore.  Over and over again, Pope Francis, and Benedict before him, has spoken of the crisis of culture, of relativism, of secularism, that calls out to our youth and leads them astray.  It is a culture that discards things to rapidly from food to material possessions to even marriages.  Don’t like it…throw it away.  Sometimes that is applied to our faith.  No more!  The Church is about to make some joyful noise that will definitely shake things up and will definitely bother those that don’t want to be bothered. 

 

So I’m putting everyone who walks into church on Sunday to simply fulfill the third commandment on notice:  I am going to start bothering you.  The challenge of the cross and of the gospel is supposed to bother us.  It’s supposed to make us look into our hearts and realize that we can do better and we should do better.  What a leader the Spirit has chosen for us!  His words have been challenging especially to bishops and priests.  We cannot close ourselves off to the world any longer.  We cannot stay in our churches, in our sacristies, in our offices; we must take the joy of the Gospel out into the streets!  And we must do this now!  But this applies to all of us.  We must live with hope, with an openness to be surprised and with joy.  At the end of the gospel, Jesus says, “seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will opened unto you.”  Today Christ is knocking on the door of your heart to be part of this exciting time in the history of our Church.  How will you respond?  Will we respond “don’t bother me” or we will let him in so that we make a joyful noise?

Genuine Hospitality

“Martha welcomed Jesus…Mary sat beside the Lord.” (Luke 10:38-39)

Every time I would visit my paternal grandmother, from the moment I would walk in through the door she would begin cooking.  I would sit down at the table as she brought plate after plate of food.  It seems like she would empty out the refrigerator during every visit.  Each time I would implore her to sit down to eat with me but there was always something that she was warming up in the oven or a dish that needed to be washed.  She did this with great love, and in the quiet moments after we had gone home or even if we stayed, she would do her prayers.  She would walk to Mass every Saturday evening to a mission church near her apartment and had a profound love for Our Lady of Charity.

The figure of Martha in today’s gospel reminds me a lot of my grandmother: always vigorously serving.  Martha always gets a bum rap because we think that Jesus is rebuking her.  Jesus is simply pointing that when it comes to service and prayer, prayer is the most important of the two.  This morning Pope Francis reflected on the hospitality offered to Jesus by Mary and Martha.  Both were hospitable in different ways: one through prayer and one through service.  Put simply, we cannot serve without prayer.  Jesus correctly says that we become anxious about many things.  We worry about minutiae that doesn’t serve the greater good.  When service isn’t accompanied by genuine prayer, it can become hallow.  This happens a lot in the church when we busy ourselves with different activities, all very good, but don’t dedicate enough time to just sit at the feet of the Master like Mary.  These activities can at times be self-serving when everything we do must point to and point others to Jesus Christ.  If these good works are accompanied by prayer, then we can’t go wrong because we will be led by the Spirit. Which prompts me to ask this question:  how much time do we dedicate to God each day?  Do we have a genuine communion with Him that leads us to authentic service of our neighbor?

In today’s first reading, we see the example of Abraham who offers genuine hospitality to the three strangers that approached his tent.  It can be said that Abraham was a perfect mix of Martha and Mary because he was so in tune with the will of God that he recognized that he needed to serve these strangers.  Pope Francis points out the greatness of Abraham’s faith and his closeness to God in his recent encyclical.  We have always looked to Abraham as a model of faith, but today we look to him as a model of hospitality: prayer and service perfectly joined to welcome others.  So as we look to Martha and Mary we must reflect on where our priorities lie.  I must confess that sometimes I too get bogged down with busy work (all in the name of service to the Church) and don’t dedicate the necessary time to sitting at the feet of the Master to discern what it is that He wants from me.  If there’s one thing my dearly departed grandmother taught me is that even after all the service and all the busy work is done, there always needs to be time for quiet.  Many a time after she was done serving me a meal, she would just sit by my side in total silence.  I of course would nod off and take a quick nap after all that food and when I would wake up, there she was just sitting there.  Just being in each other’s presence enriched both our lives even if no words were exchanged.  Imagine what can happen if we spent more time in the presence of the Lord.

A Genuine Encounter With Christ

“...he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:50)

For forty hours this past week, people filed in and out of our chapel to pray. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed for adoration as our parish committed 40 hours to give thanks for our 40^th anniversary and to pray for our parish and each other. We never had less than 20 people even in the overnight hours on Thursday night. When I gave Benediction on Friday night to end the 40 Hour Devotion, there were over 100 people in the chapel. I was in awe at how many people were always present in the chapel and the profound silence and intensity that accompanied their prayer. The faithful came to have a genuine encounter with the Lord and to throw themselves at the feet of the Master just like the woman in today’s gospel. She barged into the house of the Pharisee and clung to the Lord. Everyone else merely observed this spectacle. Only the woman had a true encounter with Christ.

So it is with us. So many times we are observers when it comes to our faith. We sit in the pews and observe what’s going on without offering a genuine prayer. I must confess this happened to me this week during the 40 hours. I would go into the chapel and sit or stand in the back, but it wasn’t until I spent a good hour sitting in the second row with all distractions behind me and focused intently on the Eucharist that I truly entered into prayer. It is so very hard to enter into silent prayer because we are used to noise all around us, but once you engage the Master, once he captures your short attention, like this woman, you don’t want to let go. It was getting close to Midnight, and I was kneeling staring at the Monstrance. The clock out of the corner of my right eye told me that I had to get up to go prepare for Benediction, but I didn’t want to get up. I had one of those Simon Peter “it is good that we are here” moments. But time to go always comes when we encounter Christ because he sends us forth to spread his presence to others. He tells the women at the end of the gospel the same words we will hear at the end of Mass today: “go in peace.”

We go in peace to share the presence of the living Christ and to share his love and mercy. There are so many who long to have the experience this woman had with the Lord, the experience so many of our brothers and sisters had over those 40 hours, but who will invite them? Who will bring them to the feet of the Master? It is up to us. For 40 years this parish has been a place of refuge, of comfort, of peace, of mercy. Yet there is always room for improvement when it comes to the spiritual life until we attain perfection in heaven. This morning Pope Francis tweeted: “Let the Church always be a place of mercy and hope where everyone is welcomed, loved, and forgiven.” This is the Church that the Holy Father wants. And on this Father’s Day, as your spiritual father, this is the church I want for my people as we celebrate four decades of true love. Let everyone who walks through those church doors feel welcomed, loved, and forgiven so that they may have a true encounter with the Lord like this woman, and then forgiven and freed, that they too may go in peace to help bring others back to this holy place where our Lord waits with his arms wide open.

Young Chains

“As Jesus drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the city was with her.  When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, “Do not weep.”  He stepped forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!” (Luke 7:12-14)

 

June is traditionally the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  This past Friday, I concelebrated at a beautiful Mass for the Sacred Heart at the seminary.  When Mass was over, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed and adored all through the night until 6am the next morning.  I spent some time in prayer that night, and for some reason I kept thinking about today’s gospel and the widow of Nain.  Another image that came out of nowhere was the image of St. Peter in Chains.  You may be wondering what St. Peter in Chains has to do with this gospel or with the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Let me explain.  Three years ago, I celebrated Mass with the Archbishop in St. Peter in Chains Church in Rome which is right across the street from the Coliseum.  The church is the jail that housed St. Peter in Rome and below the altar are the chains that bound St. Peter in Jerusalem and were broken by an angel.  The reason I was thinking of this image on Friday night was because I was praying for all those that I know that are chained to the vices of this world.  To connect this to today’s gospel, we look to St. Ambrose who gave this beautiful explanation of the Scripture: “the widow signifies Mother Church, weeping for those who are dead in sin and carried beyond the safety of her gates.  The multitudes looking on will praise the Lord when sinners rise again from death and are restored to their mother.”

 

So as I knelt there in prayer, I was thinking of all those young souls who are “dead in sin” and are somehow chained to this world and cannot escape.  I was thinking of all those mothers who have come to me crying because their children have stopped going to church.  I was thinking of all of my former students or youth group kids who, though they keep in touch, have wandered far from home and from the arms of a God who loves them to no end.  I must confess that I spent the better part of last week thinking about “my kids” because I saw a good number of them 10 days ago at a college graduation party.  Many of them I had not seen in 8 years since they were in middle school and now they stood in front of me as college graduates.  On three separate occasions that night, three different young people came up to me saying that they either missed going to Mass or missed youth group or lamented that they weren’t as close to God as they were when they were younger.  I asked what was stopping them from returning, from starting a young adult group at their parish, or even reconnecting with God on a personal level through prayer.  It was if each one of them were like the rich young man in the gospel as he bowed his head and turned away in defeat because he couldn’t sell all his riches.  Each of these kids gave an excuse that college got in the way or that they partied too much almost as if returning to church would just get in the way of the lives they currently lead.  Now those of you that know me well know that I love each and every one of my kids as if they were my own children and would with no hesitation give my life for them, but as much as I love them and as much as I loved being with them that night…I wanted to slap each and every one of them across the head.  Since when does Jesus get in the way of our happiness?  Since when does Jesus prevent us from leading joy-filled lives?  A part of me wished that the hands of time would turn back to when  I had a captive audience in the classroom or in youth group, but another part of me knew that these young people who are living the best years of their lives had to rediscover Jesus Christ in a whole new and exciting way.  This hope is what fueled my prayer throughout last week and on Friday night.

 

But I prayed for our young generation in general that is deceived into thinking that life is a grand party where you do what you like, what pleases you, what makes you feel good (if only for a second), and you simply move on to the next party after that.  This is a generation that has been deceived into thinking that you go into and out of relationships on a whim, that you enter into and out of marriage at your convenience, and that you just do what makes you feel good no matter what the consequences.  It is a generation that lives, as the Archbishop likes to say, “as if God doesn’t matter.”  But God does matter because he constantly goes out of his way to lift us up and to break the chains that bind us to the sins of this world.  But do we really want to cast off our chains?  Do we want to break free of the vices of the world and enter into the freedom of God’s children?  I see so many young people who are held back, who want to do what is good, but are held back by the lures of the world.  It’s as if they dip their toes into the waters of God’s grace and find that it’s too cold or too warm.  There’s something that is always holding them back from being immersed in God’s mercy.  They shouldn’t just dip their toes.  They should abandon themselves to the grace of God and cannonball themselves into the deep end of the pool.

 

There is nothing in this world that will bring us life and joy if it is not connected to God.  Today Jesus touches you as he touched the son of the widow and tells you: “arise!”  Christ wants to break the chains that have you shackled to this world and give you true life and freedom.  This morning Pope Francis told us: “The mercy of God gives life to man, it raises him from the dead. The Lord is always watching us with mercy, [always] awaits us with mercy. Let us be not afraid to approach him! He has a merciful heart! If we show our inner wounds, our sins, He always forgives us. He is pure mercy! Let us never forget this: He is pure mercy! Let us go to Jesus!”

A Eucharistic People

"Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.” (Luke 9:16)

There is a beautiful movement going on in today’s gospel.  On the surface, we simply see the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, but if we dig deeper, we see elements of the Eucharistic celebration that we are taking part in right now.  The gospel begins with Jesus speaking to the multitudes about the Kingdom of God.  It was the homily if you will.  After the teaching, the disciples want to send the people away from the deserted place to go find food and lodging.  Jesus has other ideas when he tells them: “Give them some food yourselves.”  Like the apostles, we always look for the simple solution.  The apostles no doubt had probably had a long day and wanted to rest themselves.  Jesus however wants them to go outside of themselves and find a different solution.  So they bring before the Lord five loaves of bread and two fish.  Jesus blesses the food, breaks it and gives it to the disciples for the people to eat.  This is the same movement that happens during the Mass:  we bless the bread, break the bread and give the bread.  And St. Luke tells us that all ate and were satisfied.  I’ve asked this question before:  are we satisfied when we receive the Eucharist?

The Eucharist is Christ’s great gift to us.  In turn, because we receive this gift, we too must be gift for others.  On this feast of Corpus Christi, our Holy Father Pope Francis said on Thursday:  “Jesus speaks in the silence of the mystery of the Eucharist and reminds us each time that following him means going out of ourselves and making our lives not something we 'possess,' but a gift to him and to others…”  Receiving the Eucharist should make us more like Christ.  It should take us out of our comfort zone and lead us to go “out of ourselves” to be a gift to the Lord and to others. Our lives are not our own, they belong to God even though we go out of our way to constantly do what WE want. Receiving the Eucharistic should make us more selfless and make us long to do His will and not our own.  The Holy Father continues, “The Eucharist is the sacrament of the communion that takes us out of our individualism so that together we live our discipleship...” We are indeed called to be a Eucharistic people: a people nourished by this Presence and called to share this Presence with others.  It is a gift that calls us to be a gift for others.  It should not draw us inward but out towards the service of others.  The Eucharist should also lead us to hunger Christ all the more.  It should lead us to a genuine desire to spend more time with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  To sit there in quiet contemplation allowing Him to speak to us.  Jesus longs to be with us.  He calls us out of ourselves to enter into a real communion with him.  We should always hunger for this presence.  That is why I invite everyone in this parish to spend one hour with our Lord during the 40 Hour Devotion that we will have in the days leading up to our 40^th Anniversary in two weeks.  One hour so that we as a community may give thanks for the gift of our parish, pray for our parish, and pray for one another.  It is there at the feet of the Master that we truly become one in Him.  We must be a Eucharistic people.  I long to see the fruits of those 40 hours of prayer because if each of us can dedicate one hour to Him, then the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down and the glory of the Lord will truly shine forth in all of you.  The more we adore Him, the more we become like Him.  The more we become like Him, the more the world will feel His presence through us! 

On this Feast of Corpus Christi, we thank the Lord for this precious gift of the Eucharist, this “precious and wonderful banquet that brings us salvation and contains all sweetness,” as the angelic doctor Thomas Aquinas tell us.  This gift calls us to be a gift, to go out of ourselves to be a gift for others.  O divine Sacrament, help us to be a Eucharistic people, so that we may bring your loving presence to all those who hunger for you.

Immersed in God's Love

"I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” (John 16:12-13a)

Whenever I go on vacation, at some point I always go to the beach. I like to go where there are few people where the only thing you hear is the waves crashing on the sand and the wind rustling through the palm trees. There at the water’s edge standing on the sand, you can feel the soft breezes coming off the ocean that refresh us during the cruel heat of summer. I have always felt that those breezes, like in Scripture, are the embrace of the Holy Spirit that, like the wind, moves us in different directions. Eventually, I go into the water and after a swim, I just simply wade in the ocean. It is never lost on me that I am surrounded by God’s majesty especially when you’re an hour or two from sunset. You see the sun reflecting off the clouds with magnificent colors. The sea begins to calm a bit. The roar of the waves gets softer. And there I am wading in the immensity of the ocean, staring off into the horizon at God’s wonderful handiwork. Like on the shore with the wind, whenever I wade into the vast ocean, I feel the embrace of our Triune God. The ocean is vast, mysterious, powerful, and deep. Just like our God. I must admit there have been times that I have wandered far from shore because I start contemplating this strong force that engulfs me and how it compares to God’s love for me. The depths of our God are great and far surpassing our understanding, yet we are still called to wade into those depths.
 

As we celebrate the Holy Trinity today, we are reminded by our Catechism that “the ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God’s creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity (260).” We are called to eventually enter into this great mystery of love that exists between Father, Son, and Spirit. That is yet to come, but the Catechism reminds us that “even now we are called to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity (260).” We may not understand this great mystery. That’s fine. Even Jesus tells the disciples in today’s Gospel that he has much more to tell them, but they cannot bear it until they receive the Spirit. That is why, like we did last week, we must ask for that Spirit and let this Divine Mystery dwell in us. God is a mystery of love that must dwell in us to transform us and guide us. 
 

It’s not about understanding high theological concepts. It’s about understanding that we are called to dwell in this community of love that we call the Holy Trinity. When we allow God to abide in us, we are capable of reflecting His glorious love to the rest of humanity and in turn call humanity back to God which is our ultimate destiny. In the ocean, I forget about all else and am totally immersed in that divine moment. Mind and heart clear of all thoughts of the world which makes it possible to better contemplate the majesty of our God. During this long weekend, when so many of us seek to “get away” and find peace, where is your place where you can clear your mind and heart? Where is your beach or your ocean? Where can you leave the world behind and contemplate the depths of God’s love? Sometimes you don’t have to go very far because everything that God is and the totality of his love is manifested every Sunday right here on this altar. This weekend, allow yourself, if only for a brief moment, to leave the world behind and be immersed in the depths of God’s love.

 

The Spirit and Annoying Catholics

"No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3).”

Over the last couple of weeks, Pope Francis has been delivering some powerful homilies about the Holy Spirit and what it truly means to be a Catholic.  He did this over the course of three homilies that he preached as the Church prepared for Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit.  First, he said that the Church must be wary of “lukewarm” Christians that lack courage and only cause the Church to look inward and become tepid.  If we are lukewarm, the Pope says, then we don’t seek to expand our horizons and open ourselves to the wonderful possibilities that the Spirit has in store for us.  The second homily that drew my attention is when he told us to be wary of “part-time Christians” that live our faith on a part-time schedule or when it suits them or is convenient. Our faith is a full-time job, and if we don’t open our hearts to the Holy Spirit, then “our being Christian will be superficial.”  But the good Pope Francis doesn’t end there, just last Thursday he said in his morning homily that we must be careful with “couch potato Catholics.” As only he could, the Pope was reflecting on what a nuisance St. Paul was because he irritated those he preached to.  One translation has the Holy Father calling out coach-potato Catholics, but here’s the official translation of what he said:  "There are backseat Christians, right? Those who are well mannered, who do everything well, but are unable to bring people to the Church through proclamation and Apostolic zeal. Today we can ask the Holy Spirit to give us all this Apostolic fervor and to give us the grace to be annoying when things are too quiet in the Church the grace to go out to the outskirts of life. The Church has so much need of this! So let us ask the Holy Spirit for this grace of Apostolic zeal, let’s be Christians with apostolic zeal. And if we annoy people, blessed be the Lord. Onwards, as the Lord says to Paul, ‘take courage!' "

So the Pope is asking us to be annoying, to be a nuisance like St. Paul.  Well, I’m being too simplistic, but we get the point.  The Holy Father doesn’t want us to be “pew-sitting” Catholics that don’t contribute anything to the mission of the Church.  He doesn’t want us to be closed off to what the Holy Spirit can do in each one of us.  And the thing is that good Catholics are indeed annoying.  We’re annoying to society because we stand up against basically everything that the secular world promotes.  We become a nuisance to people that don’t want to hear that there is life in the womb at conception, that marriage is between one man and one woman, that the death penalty is wrong, that the proliferation of guns is wrong, that everyone has a right to health care as long as we don’t have to compromise our morals to get there, and that Jesus Christ is the one Savior of the world.  When we annoy people, when we stand up for our faith and become a nuisance: that’s when we’re really living our faith!  I’m sure workers at abortion clinics across the country drive in to work every morning and see people praying the rosary silently across the street and consider them a nuisance even though they’re only praying.  I’m sure there are politicians in our government that consider the Church annoying because we just won’t shut up about all issues that have to do with the sanctity of human life.  And next month when the Supreme Court decides on how marriage is defined, the Church will continue to annoy people with her “archaic” teaching that God did make us male and female and only a male and female can become one in marriage.  That last line is going to get me arrested one day but I really don’t care.  I’m just trying to be annoying.  As the Holy Father said:  “If we annoy people, blessed be the Lord.”

So on this Pentecost Sunday, we must call down the power of the Holy Spirit upon us because we need that life giving Spirit now more than ever.  If we want to be courageous Catholics and not part-time Catholics, we must pray to the Holy Spirit daily to guide us, to speak for us, and to help us defend our faith.  The Spirit renews, refreshes, and recreates.  We need some of that fire of the Spirit to penetrate our hearts so that can boldly go forward with courage and set the world on fire.  And if we annoy some people along the way…blessed be the Lord!