THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH

27 DECEMBER 2020

 

          In the Gospel, the focus is on Jesus.  Joseph and Mary recognize their son as a gift to them.  But they also regard him as a gift to God and the community.  That is why they present him in the temple.  Too poor to offer the sacrifice of a lamb, they bring two young pigeons to signify the sacrifices they will make to allow their child to grow up to do the will of his Father. 

            Mary and Joseph are not alone.  They are joined by Simeon and Anna.  Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Simeon speaks about the child in contrast to the silence of the shepherds. He gives thanks to God that he has been blessed to live long enough to see the Savior.  He also speaks of the mission of the Savior and the swords that will pierce his mother when her child will allow himself to be sacrificed out of love.  Anna is the old faithful widow who also gives thanks.

We speak of our church as a teaching church.  The Sagrada Familia Church in Spain can teach us about what it means to be a holy family.  From a distance, the four main towers look like giant sandcastles on the beach.  But as you get closer, you discover that they are spindle-shaped, mind-bending masterpieces. Designed by Antoni Gaudi, it has been under construction for more than 135 years.  He labored over this church for 43 years.  During the last 12 years, he focused on nothing else.  In a real sense, he sacrificed his life to the project.  He was killed in a streetcar accident in 1926, as he was walking to the job site.  Gaudi gave his all to God, or at least to the Holy Family, which is what the Spanish phrase “Sagrada Familia” means.  The Church has recognized his holiness, and his cause is being considered for canonization.

            Except for the interruption of work in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War, Gaudi’s church has been under construction ever since.  Its architecture is ornamental and grand, filled with geometric shapes and images plucked from nature.  The next step will be the completion of its final spire: a 550 foot high “Tower of Jesus.”  This Jesus Tower will join 17 other towers, named for the 12 apostles and the Virgin Mary.  The Tower of Jesus is scheduled to be completed by 2026, the 100^th anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

            Even though Gaudi was the original architect of the Sagrada Familia, the work on his church has continued for years by many others and will be completed by many more in the next five years.  That is why the towers of the church include 12 apostles and four evangelists along with Joseph and Mary.  Like the construction of the Sagrada Familia Church, our families are not alone in constructing “domestic churches,” forming faith in the home.  Your active membership in this parish community of faith is important.  Supported by the sacrifices made by this parish community, families are constantly “under construction” with the help of others.

            We can never compete with the holiness of the Holy Family of Nazareth.  We know that our human families are not without sin.  Neither is our parish family.  Even with our faults and weaknesses, we can be assured that this connection is necessary.  At the heart of this connection is the Lord Jesus, present even during this pandemic, when we have not been able to gather socially to build our community in visible ways.  Our eyes have been opened to the spirit and courage and efforts of so many people.  That includes friends, relatives, teachers, coaches, colleagues, and mentors.  Like the building of the church of Sagrada Familia, the Lord will continue to be present in our efforts, no matter how imperfect, to build a community of faith, rooted in the human family.  With the presence of the Holy Spirit and supported by many people, we can enter this New Year without fear to give of ourselves freely, as Joseph and Mary did.  Like Antoni Gaudi, we can continue to make sacrifices to construct happy and holy families.  Even when we do not see the results of our sacrifices now, they will endure into the future.

 

THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD

25 DECEMBER 2020

 

          Christmas teaches us a very important lesson about how the Lord chooses to love us.  He did not choose to love us with power or domination.  The Lord loved us by becoming vulnerable.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, he took flesh in the womb of the Virgin.  He was born not in an antiseptic birthing center, but in a stable designed for animals.  He had to have his diapers changed.  He had to be taught how to walk and talk.  He had to be taught the Sacred Scriptures and traditions of his faith.       

At the birth of the Savior, the angels do not proclaim the good news of his birth to the powerful and wealthy.  They proclaim the news to shepherds, vulnerable vagabonds with no standing in the culture.  As an adult, Jesus will choose to become the Good Shepherd and make himself vulnerable to the sheep that were lost.  He will heal the vulnerable and offer miracles not to coerce faith, but to invite people to see his true identity.  He will avoid speaking of his role as messiah in terms of power and might.  Instead, he will remain vulnerable as the suffering servant who will wash the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper.  He will enter into the most vulnerable condition feared by all – death itself.

Christmas invites us to reflect on how the Lord has chosen to love us.  We are celebrating this Christmas in a particularly vulnerable condition.  All of our lives have been changed by a virus that is completely out of our control.  We have been isolated from one another.  We gather to celebrate Christmas in smaller groups.  We wear masks, wash our hands, and maintain social distancing as a way of protecting the most vulnerable from being infected.

The Lord is using our celebration of Christmas this year to teach us to love better by being vulnerable.  We are vulnerable when we admit the truth about ourselves before God.  God has blessed all of us with many talents and abilities.  But we all have weaknesses, and those weaknesses make us more drawn to sin by turning away from God.  We are more vulnerable when we do not put on airs or try to impress others.  True holiness involves being transparent.  Others see what they get in transparent people.  We love those in our families when we refrain from controlling or manipulating them.  We love those who annoy us or treat us badly by giving to them the mercy that the Lord gives to us in our weakness and vulnerability.  We love best when we apologize for the times we have offended others.

In normal times, we gather for Christmas pageants.  Children dress up like shepherds and magi to enact the stories of the birth of Jesus found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  In the absence of these pageants this year, we can reflect on the images presented in the Prologue of the Gospel of Saint John.  Those images cannot be acted out in school Christmas pageants.  Saint John tells us that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  This Word shining in the darkness became flesh and dwells among us.  We see his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son. 

This is the essence of Christmas.  In the Mystery of the Incarnation, that Word continues to dwell in our midst.  The Lord Jesus continues to remain vulnerable, present to us under the ordinary forms of bread and wine.  The Lord Jesus continues to speak to us with ordinary words from Sacred Scripture.  The Lord Jesus invites us to imitate his love, not by resorting to power or greed or dominance, but by being vulnerable in the way we relate to one another.  It is risky to choose to love in this way, because making ourselves more vulnerable opens us to rejection.  However, it also allows the light of Christ to shine more clearly in the darkness of our world.  No darkness can overcome that light.

 

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

20 DECEMBER 2020

 

          In the first reading, we meet a prominent and powerful King.  David has conquered his enemies.  He has combined the twelve tribes of Israel and established Jerusalem as the capital of a united nation.  He has built himself a fine palace made of cedar.  He knows that his success is the result of God’s blessing.  As a prominent and powerful king, he wants to construct a suitable temple that will house the ark of God, symbolic of the Lord’s presence.

            Initially, the prophet Nathan agrees with him.  However, Nathan receives a message from the Lord later that night and comes back with a surprise for the King.  Speaking for the Lord, he informs David that he will not build the temple.  Instead, the Lord will do something much greater and much more lasting than a physical temple, which his son Solomon would build.  The Lord will establish a house for David.  The Lord promises that his house and his kingdom will endure forever.  This Covenant is depicted in the center aisle of our church.

            In the Gospel, we meet a young teenage girl in a remote village in Galilee.  Mary is neither prominent nor powerful.  She is betrothed to a local carpenter from the house of David.  She certainly knows about the Covenant made with King David and looks for that time when the promise will be fulfilled.   Like David, Mary is surprised by a messenger sent by the Lord.  The angel Gabriel informs her that God has chosen her to play a critical role in the fulfillment of this ancient promise.  She will become the new ark of God.  The promised Messiah will be conceived in her womb not as an ordinary human person, but as the Son of God.

            Just as David is granted much more than he could ever have imagined, the same is true of Mary.  Earlier, the angel Gabriel had announced to Zechariah in the sacred temple in Jerusalem that he and his wife Elizabeth would conceive a son, even though they had been barren for many years.  Zechariah was surprised and asked for proof.  The only proof offered to him was that he was struck dumb, unable to speak.  In contrast, the humble virgin in the remote town of Nazareth asks for instruction.  “How can this be?” she asks.  Even though she could not understand what is happening, she trusts the angel’s words that the same Spirit who had hovered over the formless earth in the Book of Genesis would hover over her and form the child in her womb.  Even though she had not asked for it, she receives from the angel proof anyway.  Her barren cousin Elizabeth had conceived a child in her old age.  With humility, Mary agrees to be the handmaid of the Lord.  “May it be done to me according to your word,” she says.

            Both King David and the humble virgin of Nazareth trusted that nothing will be impossible for God.  David did not live to see the fulfillment of the promise made to him.  However, Mary continued to trust that nothing would be impossible for God as she witnessed all that happened in her life.  She kept that trust when she wrapped her newborn son in swaddling clothes in a stable in Bethlehem.  She continued to trust in her exile in Egypt.  She did not lose that trust when she wrapped the dead body of her son in burial cloths after his execution.

            We ask Mary’s intercession to maintain that same trust in our lives.  We will celebrate Christmas this year in ways we could never have imagined.  We will be stripped away of so many traditions and customs of the season.  But stripping away can also help us focus better on the actual Mystery that we celebrate.  The consent of the humble virgin opened the way for God to become like us in all things but sin.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit hovering over us, we can trust that our more simple celebration of Christmas will draw us more closely into the Mystery of God dwelling in our midst in ways that might surprise us.  We can trust that nothing will be impossible for God as we face the darkness of our world together.       

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

13 DECEMBER 2020

 

          The Prophet Isaiah speaks to a people who are in a very dark place.  They had just returned to their homeland from exile in Babylon to find Jerusalem and their temple in ruins.  In this darkness, it is easy for them to be discouraged.  But Isaiah gives them hope.  He tells them that the spirit of the Lord has anointed him to bring glad tidings to the poor.  As God’s servant, he will heal the brokenhearted; proclaim liberty to captives, release to the prisoners, and a year of favor from the Lord.  Isaiah promises them a day of vindication by our God.

            This passage is familiar to us who are familiar with the Gospel according to Saint Luke.  Early in that Gospel, Jesus reads this passage from a scroll in the Synagogue in Nazareth.  He rolls up the scroll and announces that this prophecy has been fulfilled in him.  That is what Saint John tells us in the beginning of his Gospel.  John proclaims that Jesus is the light shining a world created by God but darkened by rejection, rebellion, and sin. 

            John the Baptist is the first witness of this light shining in the darkness.  Throughout the course of this Gospel, Jesus will repeatedly assert his identity by proclaiming “I am,” as God had told Moses that “I am” when Moses asked his identity in the burning bush.  When John the Baptist is questioned about his identity, he says what he is not:  I am not the Christ; I am not Elijah; I am not the Prophet.  Instead, he is the one making straight the way to the Lord, who is the Light of the World, who is the Good Shepherd, who is the bread of life for whom we wait.

            We know our share of the darkness of this world.  We find ourselves in the midst of this pandemic that has changed our lives in ways we could never have imagined.  We dwell in the darkness of division, anger, hatred, and violence.  We inhabit the darkness of confusion about what is true and what is false.  We huddle in the darkness of fear about our future.

            The Baptist’s proclamation of the coming of the Messiah provides hope that this darkness will not last.  We wear rose vestments to express our conviction that the Lord has already come to save us.  In celebrating that first coming at Christmas, we can heed Saint Paul’s words to the Thessalonians.  In his letter, he gives the three basic attitudes which serve as the foundation of Christian hope and holiness.

            First, he tells us to rejoice always.  Saint Paul knew from his own experience that the emotion of happiness is not always possible.  In fact, he knew times of great sorrow and loss.  But he knew the joy of the Lord’s presence in his life.  We can rejoice at the ways in which the Lord extends his loving mercy, especially when we find ourselves embracing the darkness of this world with our pride, arrogance, vanity, and destructive habits.  Please come to our Advent Penance Service.  You can participate in the virtual Service on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings at 6:00.  Then come to the church between 7-8 each night for confession and absolution.  There will be ten priests each evening, with socially distanced and mask wearing.

            Second, he urges us to pray without ceasing.  During this year of prayer for our parish, we offer many online opportunities to teach us new ways of praying and reinforcing old ways we may have forgotten.  Nourished by the Eucharist, the source and summit of our life of prayer, we can work at making prayer a daily habit in our lives.

            Finally, we need to give thanks in all circumstances.  Knowing the joy of the Lord’s presence and sustaining it in prayer, we can give thanks for all those blessings that we take for granted.  A deep sense of gratitude keeps us from being discouraged.  Expressing our gratitude reminds us that even in the worst of times; the Lord has not abandoned us, any more than he had abandoned his people at the time of Isaiah the Prophet.

 

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

6 DECEMBER 2020

 

          In this section of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the prophet speaks to his people in exile in Babylon.  They know that this calamity was a result of their bad choices.  They had ignored their Covenant with God.  They had made disastrous treaties with kings they should not have trusted.  They had ignored the poor.  Their halfhearted desire to be in union with God had been reflected in their haphazard sacrifices in the temple.  But instead of rubbing their sins in their faces, God speaks through the prophet to offer comfort.  The people can take comfort in what God had done in the past.  God had rescued their ancestors from slavery in Egypt.  Led by Moses through harsh desert of the Sinai Peninsula, they encountered the locusts of their bad choices.  In that harsh desert, there were few distractions.  In the desert, God had taught them how to put together a new life, how to leave behind their slavery, and how to behave as free people in the land promised to their ancestor Abraham.  Having learned those lessons in the desert, they followed the leadership of Joshua and crossed the Jordan River into the Land of milk and honey.

            Assuring his people of the comfort of God’s love, the prophet today proclaims the glad tidings and good news that God will save his people again.  God will reveal his glory by using the pagan king Cyrus to free them and lead them through another desert back to their promised land.  They will rebuild their city and temple on Mount Zion.

            Today, we hear the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint Mark, a Gospel we will hear on most Sundays during this liturgical year.  Saint Mark makes it clear that the prophecy of Isaiah has been fulfilled in ways that no one could ever have imagined.  Saint Mark proclaims the good news of a new creation. Just as God had begun the work of creation in the Book of Genesis, God is beginning a new creation in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ.

            These glad tidings are announced by John the Baptist, who lives in a barren desert to encounter God without distraction.  John proclaims to everyone their need to repent.  His diet is symbolic.  He invites them to repent of the locusts of God’s judgment and enter the Jordan River to be baptized, much as their ancestors had entered that same river at the end of their journey through the desert, to accept the honey of God’s mercy.  John is humble in his mission.  He is the one who points the way to the Messiah.  Those who embrace the Good News of Jesus Christ will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, guiding us on our way to salvation.

            These same words are addressed to us.  When we began this year, none of us could have imagined the ways our lives have changed in these last ten months.  We could not have predicted the harsh desert of this pandemic and all our divisions and the darkness in which we now dwell.  We know for sure that this pandemic is not God’s punishment for our sins. Instead, we peer through this darkness to recognize the comfort of God’s love in the midst of this mess.

Isaiah invites us to look at the ways God has comforted us in the past and to recognize the comforts of God’s love now.  The Lord has not abandoned us, and Advent invites us to see his comfort now in unexpected ways.  As the Letter of Saint Peter says, we live between his first coming at Christmas and his second coming at the end of time, when he will come like a thief.  One of the ways that the Lord comes to us now is in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  In this Sacrament, the Lord comforts us with the honey of his mercy.  Knowing that we have little control over so much chaos these days, we can bring our own darkness, our own locusts of turning away from God and each other, to the honey of God’s mercy.  Please consider coming to the Sacrament during this Advent Season.  It is a powerful tool to turn more completely to the Lord, reconciling us and bringing us a peace the world cannot give.

 

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

29 NOVEMBER 2020

 

          The Prophet Isaiah expresses the frustrations of his people in today’s first reading.  They had just returned to their homeland after fifty years of captivity in Babylon.  Instead of finding a familiar environment, they find incredible devastation and huge frustrations in rebuilding the temple and Jerusalem.  He acknowledges that they had sinned and deserved punishment.  But it seems that God has hidden his face in their darkness.  The prophet begs God to “…rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you…”

            It is easy to identify with Isaiah’s frustration in the midst of our current darkness.  The pandemic continues to rage and disrupt our lives, and we see no foreseeable end to it.  There are bitter divisions in our nation, in our Church, and even in our families.  Civil unrest continues to threaten our peace.  Everyone is on edge.  We might wonder where God is in all of this.  Is God paying attention?  Why doesn’t God give some tangible signs of his presence in this mess?

            Many saints and mystics have asked this same question.  Even Saint Teresa of Calcutta, known for her faith and care for the poorest of God’s people, asked that question.  In her journal published after her death, she speaks of a spiritual loneliness.  She wrote of bearing a “terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”

            That is why we need this Season of Advent so badly.  Advent prepares us to celebrate the reality that God has already rent the heavens and come down.  God did not part the seas and rend the mountains as he had done in the Exodus and at Mount Sinai.  God has rent the heavens in the most intimate of ways – in a small town in Israel, through a young couple who could not find a place to give birth to their child.  God shows up, not with thunder and lightning, but in starlight.  God appears not as a warrior king, but as a child who is vulnerable and poor.

            Advent prepares us to celebrate this first coming at Christmas and renew our faith that God has not abandoned us.  But Advent also challenges us to prepare for the Lord’s second coming at the end of the world and at the end of our lives.  Because we cannot know when that second coming will occur, Jesus insists that the best way to prepare is to be watchful.  His first disciples failed to be watchful when they fell asleep during his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.  That trial has remained with the Church ever since.

            If we remain watchful, we can peer through the darkness and gloom to see signs of his presence now.  We can listen carefully to his Words in Scripture.  We can reaffirm our faith that he is truly present in the Eucharist.  Each of us has our own work, our own ministry, which takes us beyond ourselves and our own fears to serve the needs of others.  In those sacrificial actions of love, we can recognize the reality of our true identity when we participate in the Eucharist:  Christ’s Body present in the darkness of our times.

            Perhaps the best way to be watchful is to spend more time in personal prayer.  We are invited to renew our Stewardship of Prayer during Advent as a way to heighten our need to stay awake and be watchful.  Please listen to Jess Kimmet, as she speaks of her own life of prayer and how it has affected her life, her marriage, and her children.

Witness Talk: Stewardship of Prayer

St. Pius X—Advent 2020

Jessica Kimmet

Hello, friends! My name is Jess Kimmet. I’ve been married to Mark for six years and we have two kids so far: Marty is four and Lucas is almost two. I’m so grateful to be able to talk to you a little today about stewardship of prayer and how my own faith has grown through my imperfect but ongoing attempts to pray.

Since becoming a parishioner at St. Pius, I’ve been really struck at how the parish approaches stewardship as a holistic way of life and an identity we can grow into. Stewardship is our response of gratitude to the many gifts God is always giving us. As good stewards, we strive to give a first fruits gift back to God. When we’re talking about stewardship of prayer, that’s a gift of time, but is maybe even more a gift of attention. Our attention is so fragmented and splintered by the way our culture demands we live our lives, and any time we can focus on another person without distraction we are giving them a great gift. This is true of God, too!

Now, I’m not very good at this! I’m a task-oriented person who loves checking things off a to-do list, and simply giving my attention to someone never feels like much of an accomplishment. It’s something I’m working on being more patient with in all my relationships, and especially in my relationship with God, who does not normally demand my attention in the loud and insistent ways my children might, but rather gently invites it and patiently waits for me to respond.

And even though I don’t feel like I’m good at it, I do keep trying to respond, and my response looks really different as I move through the different seasons of my life. Before I had kids, I loved to pray with the Liturgy of the Hours, setting aside specific times and getting out my fancy book with the ribbons and flipping back and forth through the complexities of praying the Psalms with the Church. After having kids, I rarely find myself with enough free hands to handle all those ribbons, so I’ve found myself returning a lot more to memorized prayer, praying the rosary a lot more, sometimes counting my Hail Marys on the toes of the baby I’m nursing. The pandemic threw another wrench into my prayer life as it derailed all of our routines; but I’ve been finding a lot of joy in intercessory prayer, praying for the specific needs of others as a way of staying connected during this time of social distancing.

In my mind, a “successful” prayer life looks like having a regular time and place for prayer, but this season of having little kids means that the needs in my house are frequently changing, so my best times for prayer are constantly shuffling. I used to see this as a failure, but I’ve come to see it as an opportunity. It calls for flexibility and creativity and a little bit of stubbornness on my part, and God is always there waiting when I sort it back out again. Through all these changes, I’ve been really grateful for a class on prayer that I got to take my junior year of high school. It gave me the opportunity to explore a lot of different types of prayer, so I have this toolbox to pull from when things need to change. The monthly prayer challenges St. Pius is providing during this parish Year of Prayer are another great opportunity

Another big challenge for my prayer life was when I had postpartum depression last year. I couldn’t find the energy to do much more than go through the motions of anything; but I want to put in a plug here for going through the motions. I don’t feel super in love with my husband every day, but I still act like I’m married. It’s in the choice to act lovingly that love transcends the fickleness of our human emotions and becomes a virtue, something we can practice and get better at. Prayer isn’t always emotionally gratifying; it doesn’t always make me feel good. God doesn’t always show up in the ways I would have chosen, with the highs of a retreat or the consolations I was looking for. But I keep showing up, even if imperfectly or irregularly or distractedly. And the gift is that God shows up, too, always, and turning my attention to God with whatever regularity I can muster helps me learn to see God in places I didn’t expect.

 

OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, KING OF THE UNIVERSE

22 NOVEMBER 2020

 

          In the ancient world, rulers and kings were expected to tend the people of their kingdoms with the same care and concern given by human shepherds to the sheep of their flocks.  The prophet Ezekiel speaks some 600 years before the birth of Christ to his people who had suffered from bad leadership.  Because their shepherds were more concerned for their own comfort than for the welfare of the people they were supposed to serve, the people of Israel had been scattered by the Babylonians when they destroyed Jerusalem and the temple.  Ezekiel promises that God himself will seek out the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the injured, and heal the sick.  Those who had abandoned them (the sleek and the strong) would experience God’s justice.

            Throughout the course of this Liturgical Year, we have been hearing from the Gospel of Matthew.  Sunday after Sunday, we have heard about the ways in which this prophecy has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  Jesus has been seeking the lost.  He has been bringing back those who have strayed, even the religious leaders resisting his call to repent.  He has healed the wounds of those who have been injured by neglect.  He has healed the sick over and over again.

            Today, we hear the final words spoken by the Good Shepherd before he is betrayed and crucified, laying down his life out of love for his sheep.  In this final parable, he talks about final endings.  Unlike sheep, we have the choice to respond to his love or ignore it.  He is honest in telling us that there are consequences when we choose to ignore his love.  He invites us to carry plenty of oil with us (good works) like the five wise virgins in the parable two weeks ago.  He insists that we invest our talents wisely like the first two servants in last Sunday’s Gospel.  Today, he warns us that we need to be among the sheep at the end, avoiding the fate of the goats.

            Today’s parable speaks about how these endings are surprising.  The first surprise is that all of those judged by Christ are surprised in the Last Judgment.  Both the sheep and the goats are surprised by the criteria by which they are judged.  Both the sheep and the goats ask the same question:  “When did we see you naked, or in prison, or poor?’  The sheep are saved because they responded to these needs, even when they did not recognize Christ in those they served.  The goats are damned because they failed to respond to these needs.

            The second surprise is that small and concrete acts of kindness are used for the criteria of judgment.  We expect great rewards for those who do great deeds, and severe punishment for those who commit horrendous acts of cruelty.  But the sheep are rewarded their compassionate responses in small ways to the hungry or thirsty or naked or strangers.  The goats are condemned for the hardness of their hearts in the face of small requests in the name of human dignity.

            The third surprise is that the endings sound so negative to our ears.  In each of the three parables, the faithful are rewarded first.  The five wise virgins are welcomed to the wedding banquet.  The first two stewards are praised for the ways they invested their talents.  The sheep are welcomed into the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.  But the five foolish virgins are locked out of the wedding feast.  The third servant is thrown out into the darkness.  The goats go off to eternal punishment.

            We hear these parables at the end of this Liturgical Year. Jesus tells them not to cause us to be obsessed with the inevitability of the end or to live in fear for the rest of our lives.  We hear them so that we will not be surprised when the Lord comes, either at the end of time or at the end of our lives.  The Good Shepherd knows each of us by name.  The Good Shepherd loves us and has laid down his life for us.  He wants us to respond and share in his eternal kingdom.  He does not want us to be surprised.

 

THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

15 NOVEMBER 2020

 

          The earliest prophets of the Old Testament used the term “the day of the Lord” to give hope to the people of Israel that God would bring victory to them over their enemies.  However, as time went on, later prophets used that same term to warn people of the result of their infidelity to the Covenant.  These later warnings were realized when the Babylonians invaded to destroy Jerusalem and its sacred temple on “the day of the Lord.” 

            Saint Paul uses that same term when he writes to the Thessalonians.  He responds to their question about the timing of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  Calling that event “the day of the Lord,” he reminds them that no one knows when the Lord will come again.  Instead of predicting when it will occur, he tells them to remember the light of Christ that they received at their baptism and to stay alert and be sober.  While their pagan neighbors remain in darkness, concerned only about avoiding the wrath of their Roman rulers, they should live their baptismal promises. In living those baptismal promises, their sacrificial love will reveal the presence of the risen Christ in the lives of their families.

            Saint Paul addresses this same message to us today.  He reminds us that we cannot know the timing of “the day of the Lord,” either in the Lord’s Second Coming, or when we will die.  Like the Thessalonians, we too are children of light, challenged to allow the light of Christ to shine through us when we live our baptismal promises.  Jesus has given each of us generous amounts of talents, as the man in the parable gave to his servants.  The Lord has given each of us natural abilities and talents.  He has entrusted to us financial resources in the comfort of the First World.  He has provided spiritual gifts.  Throughout the course of this Liturgical Year, he has entrusted us with knowledge of the workings of the Kingdom of Heaven in our midst.

            We are tempted to be like the third servant who does not think that his one talent matters.  Instead of taking a risk and responding with love to the talent he has been given out of love, he buries his talent and cowers in fear.  Talents are meant to be shared, not buried or hoarded.  That is what happened at the beginning of this pandemic.  When we entered the lockdown, people became afraid of lacking valuable commodities.  The shortage of toilet paper is an example.  Experts called it “zero risk bias.”  Instead of sharing toilet paper, too many hoarded it out of fear.  We cannot remain hidden and living in fear and darkness.  We must invest our talents.

            Every year, we sponsor a retreat for our eighth graders, as they prepare to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit when they are confirmed.  They could not be gathered in one place this year.  So, they have participated virtually.  At two Masses this weekend, they are being enrolled as Candidates for the Sacrament of Confirmation.  As we support them and pray for them, they encourage us to put the gifts we received to use our natural abilities and talents to build up our human families and our parish family.  They encourage us to set aside a portion of our financial resources to assist the most vulnerable, especially those affected by this pandemic.  As they have learned about the Holy Spirit in class, they show us the need to participate in adult education offerings to deepen our understanding of the faith.  As they have listened to the Gospel of Saint Matthew this year, we can reinforce our faith that the Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst, keeping the Holy Spirit’s gift of hope alive in this darkness.

            The Book of Proverbs praises the industrious wife who puts her obvious skills at the service of her family and her community.  We can do the same, trusting that the risks we take in investing our many talents will bring light to a darkened world and keep us alert for “the day of the Lord,” whenever that day arrives.

 

THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

8 NOVEMBER 2020

 

          Saint Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians is the earliest writing in the New Testament.  The members of that Church expected that Jesus Christ would come again in their lifetimes.  That is why Saint Paul responds to their concern in today’s second reading.  Those who were mourning the death of loved ones were concerned that they had died before Christ had come again.  What will happen to them?  Saint Paul tells them that they should grieve the loss of their loved ones.  But they should grieve in hope, because Christ has already won the victory over death. 

            By the time Saint Matthew had written his Gospel, it was clear that the second coming of the Lord would be delayed.  Jesus uses the setting of a Mediterranean wedding feast to warn the Church about the danger of being complacent about his coming.  In the ancient world, marriages were arranged by parents.  When it came time for the actual wedding, the wedding party would process from the bride’s family to the groom’s family, where the new couple would live.  In the parable, Jesus does not give the reason for the bridegroom’s delay.  Instead, he contrasts the wisdom of the five virgins who had brought extra oil for their lamps with the foolishness of the five virgins who did not.  By the time the foolish virgins ran to the convenience store to buy more oil, it was too late.  The door to the wedding feast had been closed.

            This parable is addressed to the Church today, because our Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, has delayed his coming for two millennia.  In addition, our secular culture avoids paying attention to the reality of our own deaths, when the Lord will come for us.  For those reasons, we must make sure that we have plenty of oil.  The oil represents our deeds of righteousness.  In performing good works, we do not earn our salvation.  The Lord has already won that salvation for us.  Instead, our good works are a response to his presence and action in our lives.  When we perform those good works (giving humble service, respecting the dignity of each human person, attending the needs of the poor, putting the needs of others before our own), we allow the light of Christ to shine through us into a world filled with darkness.  The Lord’s message is clear.  We need to be prepared for the end by doing good works now.  We cannot be caught without oil in our lamps when Jesus returns.  But we do not prepare ourselves by cowering in fear.  We do so by expressing our deep relationship with Jesus Christ by our deeds of righteousness.

            Every year, our Diocesan Office of the Propagation of the Faith assigns every parish a mission preacher.  Last year, Father Larry Kanyike was our mission preacher, and we responded generously to assist him with his deeds of righteousness in his parish in Uganda.  This year, we have been assigned the Holy Cross Mission Center.  Because of the pandemic, they have asked me to make their case for them.  Please read the information in the bulletin and online.

            I have had personal experiences with the work of the Holy Cross Congregation in Africa.  Over thirty years ago, I visited their new center in Jinja, Uganda.  They had already opened a school for the children in the area, and they were establishing a seminary to attract African vocations.  They lived in a very humble dwelling, and I slept in a tool shed.  We also met refugees from the Holy Cross mission in Rwanda.  They had escaped with their lives.  They may have shared the waters of baptism.  But they had been born into the wrong tribe, threatened with genocide.  At the end of the trip, we stayed at the Holy Cross parish in Dandora, a very poor suburb of Nairobi, Kenya.  They were building a church, and they lived among the poor.  I can testify to the deeds of righteousness, the good works, of the Holy Cross Missions in Africa and trust that they are doing good work in Mexico, South America, and Bangladesh.  On behalf of the Holy Cross Mission Center, thank you for your support.

 

ALL SAINTS

1 NOVEMBER 2020

 

          Those who read the Book of Revelation often think of it as future oriented.  In a sense, that is true.  The Book of Revelation points to the Last Judgment and the realization of the new and eternal Jerusalem in the new heavens and the new earth.  But too many readers have tried to interpret the Book of Revelation to predict when those end times will occur.  They read the symbolic numbers and apocalyptic images to fit their personal reading of this incredibly complex Book.  They forget that the Book of Revelation was written at a time of great persecution to give hope to faithful disciples.  They forget that Jesus himself says in the Gospels that no one, not even the Son of God, knows those times. 

            In today’s reading from the Book of Revelation, the author shares a vision of a present reality.  His vision reveals the essence of heaven:  the throne of God surrounded by countless men and women who had been marked with the seal of the Lamb.  144,000 is a symbolic number of the remnant of the twelve tribes of Israel who acknowledge the Lamb who was slain.  Then the author has another vision of a great multitude, which no one can count.  Wearing white robes and carrying palm branches, they have shared the victory won by the Lamb who was slain.  The saints already share the blessedness of the Beatitudes in today’s Gospel. 

            In the heavenly kingdom, they are truly poor in spirit, because they are completely detached from material things.  They had not been afraid to mourn, because they had been freed from an addiction to “feeling good.”  They are meek, because they are not self-centered.  They no longer need to hunger and thirst for righteousness, because they are completely detached from sin.  They know the mercy of God, detached from revenge.  They are the clean of heart, detached from evil thoughts.  They are truly peacemakers, because they are free from hatred.  Many had been persecuted for their faith on earth.  But they do not care what other people think.

            We celebrate this present reality on this Solemnity of All Saints.  We not only honor those who have been officially canonized by the Church.  We honor all those who are now in the eternal presence of God, many of whom have touched our lives personally.  They challenge us to see the Beatitudes not as ideals that are impossible to grasp, but as practical guides to enable us to live holy lives.  In art, these saints have their heads surrounded by haloes.  Those haloes reflect the fact that they have achieved ultimate holiness, ultimate blessedness.  In picturing the essence of heaven, of being in the absolute presence of God, artists depict God in terms of a bright fire burning to dispel the darkness of death and sin.  That is why the Book of Revelation says that there is no sun in the new and eternal Jerusalem.  The fire of God’s love shines through the saints in heaven, because they are completely and totally transparent.  Nothing separates them from God or from each other in the Communion of Saints.

            The saints not only challenge us.  They also intercede for us.  They pray for us, that we see the Beatitudes not as ideals impossible to grasp, but as invitations to detach ourselves from those things that keep us from being transparent, of being truly holy.  Like them, we can continue to turn more completely to the Lord Jesus, so that we too can become more transparent, more holy.  We too can learn to detach ourselves from material things, from the addiction of feeling good all the time, from being self-centered, from being detached from sin, revenge, evil thoughts, hatred, and worrying about what others think of us.  We too can hunger and thirst for righteousness.  They are pulling for us now, because they want us to join them when the Lord calls us into the fulfillment of the Kingdom of heaven.

 

 

THIRTIEH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

25 OCTOBER 2020

 

          The religious leaders have been stung by the parables of Jesus, because they have portrayed them in a very bad light.  In last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus outsmarted the Pharisees and Herodians when they tried to snare him in a political trap.  Today, the Pharisees try again.  They want to discredit this teacher.  The Pharisees have developed 613 laws from the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.  They have labeled some of these laws as “heavy,” and others as “light.”  248 of these laws are “thou shalt.”  365 of these laws are in the form of “thou shalt not.”

            Only scholars of the law could navigate their way through this vast number of laws.  That is why the Pharisees regard so many people as “sinners.”  The laws are too complicated for most peasants to comprehend.  So, a scholar of the law tests him with a complicated question.  The scholar refers to Jesus as teacher, revealing his contempt for a Galilean rabbi with no formal education in the law.  “Teacher,” he asks, “which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

            Jesus does not hesitate.  First, he quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, which faithful Jews continue to pray every day.  It is the Shema Israel: the Lord our God is one.  The Lord our God is holy.  “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart (the center of a person’s being), with all your soul (the life source of a person), and with all your mind (the source of understanding and decision).”  He points out that this is the greatest and first commandment.  Then he says that the second is like it.  He quotes Leviticus 19:18:  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

            In quoting from the Torah, Jesus is teaching nothing new.  What he does, however, is to link those two commandments in such a radical way that they can never be separated.   In the Biblical sense, “to love” has very little to do with emotions or feelings.  “To love” means “to belong”.  Jesus reminds his listeners that God had entered into a Covenant with their ancestors and continues it with them.  He loves them, not because they deserve to be loved, but because they belong to him and to each other as his people.  In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus expands the definition of neighbor.  We who claim to love God must extend that love to anyone we encounter who needs our help, as the Good Samaritan did.

            As Saint Paul reminds us in his Letter to the Thessalonians, we are members of the New Covenant sealed with the Blood of Jesus Christ. We must respond as members of this Covenant not so much with our words, but with our actions.  He calls us to treat others as God as treated us.  The first reading from the Book of Exodus provides guidance.  The Lord speaks to his people who are now comfortable and prosperous in the land which he had promised to Moses and the Israelites.  In their comfort, they might oppress the alien, those immigrants who do not enjoy the protection of families and friends.  In their wealth, they might neglect the widows, who had depended entirely on men for their care.  In their security, they might forget the orphans, whose source of income is dead.  Nor can they take advantage of the poor who are desperate for help.  They cannot keep their cloaks as collateral, because they need them for warmth at night.

            The Lord speaks those same words to us.  Many of us are descendants of immigrants.  As residents of the First World, most of us enjoy comfortable lives.  We must do more than speak of our respect for human dignity of those pushed on the margins of our society.  We must continue our tithe to our sister parish of Saint Adalbert and our concern for Father Larry’s parish in Uganda.  We need to continue to support our Saint Vincent de Paul Society as they minister to the needs of the poor in our name.  We must also connect our love for God with our care for the immigrants, the widows, the orphans, and the poor of our day. 

 

 

TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

18 OCTOBER 2020

 

          For the last few Sundays, we have been hearing the parables of Jesus about the kingdom of heaven.  Speaking in the temple, the house of God built on Mount Zion, Jesus has fulfilled the prophecies of the ancient prophets.  These parables reveal that his risen body will replace the current temple, and that he is the successor of the current religious leaders of the people.  He will build up a temple, not made of stones, but of living stones, the Body of Christ.  Wounded by the rebukes of the parables, the Pharisees want to get even with Jesus.

            So, they team up with the Herodians, with whom they have nothing in common.  The Herodians work closely with the occupying Roman forces.  The Pharisees reject any cooperation with the Romans, whom they regard as unclean.  They approach Jesus, not to receive his honest opinion, but to trap him with a dangerous question.  First, they flatter him by telling him that he is a truthful man, teaching the way of God in accordance with the truth, not concerned about other people’s opinions, without regard to their status.  Then they ask him the loaded question:  Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?  If Jesus answers “No,” the Herodians will report him to the Roman authorities for inciting rebellion.  If he answers “Yes,” the Pharisees will expose him as siding with the hated Roman repression of a people waiting for a messiah.

            Jesus sees their malice and calls them “hypocrites.”  In a brilliant move, he asks them to show him the Roman coin. “Whose image is this?” he asks.  They have to admit, “Caesar’s.”  They all know the inscription on that coin:  “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, high priest.”  In response, he says:  “then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

            In his answer, Jesus clearly states that everything belongs to God.  When he asks for the image on the coin, he uses the word “Icon.”  Icons express the truth that all people are made in the image of God, even Caesar.  He calls those his disciples to be conscientious citizens on earth, and members of the kingdom of heaven, always mindful that everything belongs to God.

            By the time Saint Matthew wrote this Gospel, his readers were being persecuted by the successors of Caesar.  Some were put to death.  They struggled with the tensions between being citizens of the Roman Empire and members of the kingdom of heaven.  This Gospel is addressed to us, as we find ourselves in a divided society in a very contentious election season, made more difficult by the pandemic.  That is why our Bishops, the successors of the Apostles, are giving us guidance in our role as disciples and citizens.  They urge us to participate in the political arena and to vote.  Instead of telling us which party or which candidate for whom we should vote, they give us guidance in their statement, Forming Consciences for faithful Citizenship.  If you have not done so, please read the condensed version in our bulletin.  You can read the entire document on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  It is a good review of Catholic Social Teaching.  There are also pamphlets available in the Parish Life Center.  The statement challenges us to examine our responsibility to see all human life, from conception to natural death, as created in the image of God, demanding respect and protection.  It also challenges us to be attentive to the ways in which the dignity of human life is not respected between conception and natural death.

            In these divided times, it is easy to see our disagreements.  But, there is much more that unites us as Catholics than divides us.  The principles in this document enumerate those issues that unite us.  As Saint Paul reminds the Thessalonians, we respond to God’s gifts to us by our work of faith, our labor of love, and our enduring hope in Jesus Christ.

 

TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

11 OCTOBER 2020

 

          The prophet Isaiah speaks to a people whose daily diet barely sustains their lives.  He promises that on this mountain, the Lord of hosts will provide a wonderful banquet, including rich food and choice wines.  On this mountain, he will swallow up death and wipe away the tears from every face.  On this mountain, people will recognize the Lord who will save them.

            When Isaiah speaks of “this mountain,” he refers to Mount Zion where the temple, the dwelling place of God is, built.  Today, Jesus continues to speak to the chief priests and elders of the people on this mountain in the temple.  He tells them another parable to explain the dynamics of the kingdom of heaven. 

            A king invites guests to a wedding feast for his son.  Like Isaiah’s banquet, this wedding feast is lavish and beyond the means of most inhabitants of his kingdom.  In 2005, Oprah invited hundreds of rich and famous people to a fabulous banquet.  They all came!  In this parable, the guests refuse to come.  So the king graciously sends out his servants to invite other guests.  These guests ignore the invitation and mistreat his servants, killing some of them.  Enraged, the king burns their city and sends his servants to invite anyone they encounter, good and bad alike.

            Throughout the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Jesus has been inviting everyone to be part of the rich and gracious feast that is the kingdom of heaven.  The chief priests and elders have refused the invitation.  Their ancestors had murdered God’s servants, the prophets, who had repeatedly invited them to repent and embrace the Covenant.  Now, they are refusing to accept the invitation of God’s only Son.  After they have had him killed, he will be raised from the dead and form a new temple.  This temple will not be built of stones.  It will be formed from his risen body and include all those who have been invited to participate in the wedding feast of the Son.

            You and I have accepted that invitation.  The Lord has invited us, not because we have deserved to be invited, and not because we have been good, but because he loves us and wants to include us in the kingdom of heaven.  As members of his Body, we are gathered here at the wedding feast of the Lamb, fed by the finest food anyone can imagine.  By participating in this Eucharist, we are being formed into a temple made of living stones.

            However, the parable has a warning for us today.  And that warning has nothing to do with a “dress code” in the Kingdom of heaven.  In a wedding feast at the time of Jesus, the king would have provided the guests with wedding garments.  He addresses this guest who is violating the dress code as “friend.”  His lack of response shows that he has no intention of changing.  In the parable of the workers in the vineyard, the owner addresses as “friend” the last one paid who complains that he got paid as much as the ones who worked for only one hour.  When Judas is about to betray Jesus with a kiss, Jesus calls him “friend.”  The Lord addresses us as “friend,” because he loves us and wants us to repent and be part of his kingdom.

            This parable challenges us to do more than simply show up at the wedding feast of the Lamb.  We must wear our baptismal garments and carry the values of the kingdom out of this church and into the world in which we live.  We are more than invited guests of the Bridegroom.  We are actually his bride, the Church.  Wearing our baptismal garments means that we take our faith seriously.  Mother Theresa said it best:  “We are all called to  be contemplatives in the heart of the world — by seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time, and [God’s] hand in every happening; seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.”

 

TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

4 OCTOBER 2020

 

          In recent Sundays, Saint Matthew has been helping us to understand the conflicts which Jesus has been having with the religious leaders of the people.  After he had thrown out the money changers from the Temple, he tries to help the chief priests and elders of the people that he has the ultimate authority over the temple.  But they refuse to listen to the words of John the Baptist calling them to repent.  They are like the second son in last Sunday’s parable.

            Today, he tells them another parable.  They are familiar with Isaiah’s song of the vineyard.  In that song, Isaiah used a vineyard as an image for the people of Israel.  Echoing the words of Psalm 80, he pointed out that God had transplanted them from Egypt and established them with great care and love.  But, they turned away from the Covenant and put their trust in false gods.  Despite God’s care and love, they had produced wild grapes.  As a result, God allowed his people to be overrun by the Babylonians.

            Jesus draws the chief priests and elders of the people into his parable.  He tells them about the servants who had been badly treated.  Then he tells them about the owner’s son.  He asks how the tenants should be treated.  When they agree that they should be punished, he clearly tells them that he is that Son.  He reminds the chief priests and leaders of the people that they are the current tenants of God’s vineyard.  Just as their ancestors had badly treated the prophets, they are the ones who will take the Son of God outside the vineyard and kill him.

            Then Jesus switches metaphors.  He speaks this parable in the temple, which had been undergoing a complete renovation for fifty years.  Just as the builders are choosing the ideal cornerstones to hold the structure together and rejecting those that do not fit, he identifies himself as the cornerstone.  He has been rejected by the builders and will form a new temple and invite those who embrace his message to become human stones being built into a magnificent structure.

            Jesus addresses this same parable to us today.  We are the current tenants of the vineyard.  We live at a time when so much of what we use is disposable.  All our goods are designed to be used for a short time and discarded.  The “state of the art” technology purchased in 2008 for our Parish Education Center is already out of date.  I have gone through at least three disposable printers for my computer since then.  Unfortunately, our culture has this same attitude toward human life.  Instead of regarding all human life with the dignity that comes from believing that humans are created in the image of God, our culture regards human life as disposable.

            Unborn children have no protection as human persons under our current laws.  Too often, euthanasia and assisted suicide are seen as solutions to difficult problems of aging and disability.  Human embryos are being destroyed in the name of research.  The death penalty is being used to combat crime.  And we are too quick to resort to war to address international disputes.

            We are tempted to believe that we can do nothing about the state of affairs in today’s vineyard.  Focusing our attention and prayers on life issues during this Respect Life month can give us the hope that comes from our union with Jesus Christ, the stone rejected by the builders.  We can study the Bishops’ guide to forming consciences for Faithful Citizenship as a way of growing in our understanding of Church teachings on life issues.  We can take another look at all the opportunities offered by Barb Williams and our parish pro-life activities.  We can support the effective work of the Women’s Care Center in reaching out to expectant mothers.  In a time of division and loss of objective truth, we can make more a difference than we think.  We must remain on the firm foundation established by Jesus Christ, the stone rejected by the builders.