Homilies & Reflections
2022

Homily of Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter (April 27, 2022)
Acts 5;17-26; John 3: 16-21 

In today’s Gospel St John says “Whoever believes in Jesus will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned…”.  Similarly, on Monday we heard St. Mark’s words: “Whoever believes … will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned”. St Paul put it all in a nutshell when he wrote to the Romans “Whatever does not proceed from Faith is sin”. (Romans 14:29) This close identification of Faith with our salvation, and lack of it with condemnation is an item we come across often in the Gospels, but we skip over it, tending not to give it much thought. We should. We commonly contrast sin with virtue and that’s good.  But it’s vitally important that we listen carefully to the authors of the Gospels when they contrast sin instead with Faith.  Likewise, our habit is to see the opposite of Faith as doubt.  But the Scriptures tell us its opposite is something far more perilous: sin. For most of us this can seem a bit odd and unfamiliar.  That’s because we have been poorly catechized regarding the connection of Faith to truth, and it represents a gap we ought to fill. The gift of Faith enables us to perceive and assent to God’s truth.  Faithlessly entering into the darkness of Satan’s lie rather than following the light of God’s commandment was the beginning of the Fall, and continues to be the beginning of every fall. Pilate, a follower of the father of lies, cynically asked “What is truth?” and then let Truth itself be crucified because he first crucified truth in his own soul. The first step in banning sin is our refusal, strong in Faith, to listen to anything that contradicts God’s revealed truth. Faith, nurtured and properly supported, is our most effective bar against condemnation.    

Homily of the Tuesday within the Octave of Easter (April 19, 2022)
Acts 2:36-41; Jn 20:11-18 

The immensity of the mystery of the Resurrection can’t be contained in a single day of celebration, so the church’s liturgical calendar is arranged in such a way as to extend the celebration into the following days and weeks.  The first unit of this time is the Octave, a set of eight days beginning on Easter Sunday and continuing to the following Sunday.  Today we’re in Tuesday of that Octave.  On these days the liturgy reflects the intensity of the Vigil and of Easter day, even as we return to our regular activities. Also beginning on Easter Sunday, the liturgy counts forty days to the day of the Lord’s Ascension.  Between Ascension and Pentecost ten more days pass, and in those days the church’s liturgy has us praying for the gift of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus had promised. During these fifty days the Church’s readings expose us to virtually all the key scriptural texts on resurrection – from the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the book of Revelation, and many passages from the letters of the apostles.  These, along with the church’s prayers are meant to deepen our participation and understanding of the mystery. For instance, on each day of the Octave, the gospel passage we read describes an appearance of the risen Jesus.  Yesterday we heard of his sudden and dramatic meeting with the overjoyed Mary Magdalene and the other Mary as they hurry from the tomb.  Today’s gospel creates a mood of a different sort.  Mary is alone and weeping at the tomb.  When first she sees Jesus, she mistakes him for the gardener but recognizes him when he speaks her name. In both gospels we see Jesus appearing for a set purpose: to send those who encounter him to announce his resurrection.  In both scenes we are meant to perceive the way in which the Lord works mysteriously in each of us as he commissions us to do the same.  
 

April 11, 2022 (Monday of Holy Week)
Is 42:1-7; Jn 12: 1-11 

Our first reading today, taken from the prophecy of Isaiah, is one of the most beautiful, mysterious and profound passages from the Prophets. In it we hear the Father who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spreads out the earth, describing his Son: “…my chosen one with whom I am pleased, upon whom I have put my Spirit” and calling him to the victory of justice, to open the eyes of the blind and those who live in darkness. What is utterly unforeseen, completely undreamed of, is that this should occur in a particular place and time in the created universe, indeed that it should take place from within the realm of death, that realm set up by rebellious creation which had ruptured the relationship with God, the exchange of love that God meant to share between himself and human beings. If this can occur even within the realm of death, this means that the power of that realm is undone. From within the realm of death Jesus said “Father” and into that realm, as we hear in today’s reading, the Father calls to his Son. From within that realm, in prayer during this Holy Week we too call to our Father, in confident surrender, hoping to hear ourselves addressed by the name with which he raised his Son: “My Beloved.” In the liturgy of these weeks we follow Jesus through his death, resurrection, ascension, and finally the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and establishing of the Church. The expression “Paschal Mystery” means all of this at once, all of this as one single, huge deed of God posited in our world.  It’s the highpoint of all the deeds of God in the created universe. Resurrection is the foundation and message of each of the four gospels. We know of this mystery fundamentally through Scripture. Christians have pondered Scripture for millennia and their insights are what we call theology. These truths come alive when they are proclaimed in the liturgy. In the liturgy we find the themes and images that form, enrich and express our piety.  Not only are we presented with abundant materials for exploring and deepening our understanding of the truths of our faith, but they become sacraments through which we sacramentally die and rise with Christ. Our liturgical gathering is the primary context for our encounter in the here and now with the crucified and glorious Lord Jesus. All this makes it possible for us to live in a new way in the world as messengers of his resurrection, as evangelists. Resurrection light diffuses itself through everything that we believe and proclaim and know to say about Jesus.  

April 6, 2022 (Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent)
Dn 3:14-20, 91-92, 95; Jn 8: 31-46 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks directly to the Jewish leaders who want to kill him. He tells them that they are hardened in their sin. He says: “Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” In the Christian tradition sin involves a willful clinging to a kind of non-being, an illusion. To live in sin is to stubbornly make ourselves the center of an unreal world. Our mind becomes confused and our will disoriented. This helps to explain why the devil is so often referred to as the “father of lies”. All of us sinners have, to one degree or another, bought into that lie. At the heart of the lie is our tendency to put our ego in the place of God. I make myself the center of the world, with my needs, my fears and my demands set up as absolute requirements. And when I make myself the center of the universe, the first thing to vanish is love, the tie that binds all things to one. The basic reality now becomes rivalry, competition, violence and mistrust, the kinds of evils that kept the Chosen People whose leaders were now intent on killing Jesus, in constant bondage for centuries. “Jesus”, as St. Augustine comments, “is here explaining that we will not be freed from slavery to overlords, but from the devil; not from captivity of the body but from malice of the soul” (Sermons, 48).

 

Laetare Sunday, 2022 (Homily of March 27, 2022)
(Jos 5:9a, 10 – 12; 2 Cor 5: 17 – 21; Lk 15: 1 – 3, 11 – 32)

Today my chasuble isn’t the Lenten purple we’ve been seeing.  Today its colors are a festive rose and gold.  That’s because today, the fourth Sunday of Lent, is “Laetare Sunday”. Laetare is a Latin word meaning “rejoice” and it was the first word you heard sung in the entrance antiphon at the beginning of Mass, reflecting on the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her.” Today, in the middle of Lent, our prayers express hope and joy, and these colors express a glimpse of the joy that awaits us at Easter. So, it’s fitting that in today’s Gospel a celebration, a party, figures prominently in what is Jesus’ greatest parable. In it he introduces us to a man with two sons.  The younger son comes to his father with a request that’s shockingly rude and presumptuous. “Father, give me the share of your property that should come to me”. His son has in effect told his own father to drop dead, because no one received an inheritance before one’s father had passed away. What the boy is saying to his father is essentially “I can’t wait for you to die.” He demands as a prerogative something which he ought to await and receive as a gift at the proper time. 

If we can see ourselves as acting in this way toward God, we have a problem.  God our Father, proclaimed by Jesus, is a God of mercy, superabundantly generous, whose very nature is to give.  The correct response to this God is to receive what is freely offered, and then in gratitude offer it to others as a gift.  This gracious response opens for us the gates of divine life beyond anything we might have imagined. The son has all of this backwards.  Long story short: his kind father gives him what he asks, he runs off and throws it all away and his plans crash and burn.  He finally returns to his father chastened and starving.  Expecting no mercy, he plans to cast himself helplessly at his father’s feet – and then gets the surprise of his life. His overjoyed father, spotting him from a distance, throws caution and respectability to the wind and runs out to meet him in total exaltation.  This particular detail would have caught the attention of Jesus’ listeners, since it would have been considered totally unseemly for an older man, a patriarch, to run to meet anyone.  Rather, people were expected to present themselves to him. The father embraces his son, orders his servants to put a ring on his finger (a symbol of restored union) and shoes on his feet (restoring him to his dignity).  He cuts off the boy’s carefully rehearsed speech of remorse by declaring a general celebration, because, as he says: “this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found”. 

This is no less than Jesus’ absolutely brilliant and deeply moving portrait of his own divine Father, a Father who does not play games of calculation and recompense, but “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good” (Mt 5:45), a Father who knows nothing but to love.  What we are meant to grasp is that union with the One Who Gives leads to sufficiency and even abundance, because God’s love for us (another word for grace) never runs out - never. Not so with the older brother who returns home and hears the sound of the celebration.  He learns that it’s a feast for his long-lost little brother. He smolders with resentment and refuses to join the party in spite of his father’s pleading. “All these years I’ve worked like a slave for you and you did nothing for me,” he shouts “but for this son of yours, who threw away half your property, you throw a party!” At first glance it appears he’s demanding simple justice.  But let’s look more closely.  Does a person like him, stiff with justice, really want the sinner converted?  Would the older brother prefer to see him remain locked in sin and forced to bear the consequences?  He seems to suspect that his brother’s conversion is an underhanded trick played at the expense of justice.  His attitude is a perfect example of Cicero’s proverbial expression:  Summum jus, summa injuria – Justice supreme may be supreme injustice.  

Well, it’s true: conversion does break the bounds of mere justice.  It’s a creative new beginning, calling forth mercy. That’s important because according to the cruel logic of evil, sin blinds us.   Blinded by our sins we stray into ever deeper sin, which in turn leads to more profound blindness, ultimately ending in complete darkness and death. And this is crucial: we do not have the capacity to break this cruel cycle for ourselves. That involves conversion, and the grace of conversion is God’s direct intervention for us.  Like the father in today’s parable, he offers us something which we cannot give ourselves no matter how hard we try: forgiveness. His loving mercy is the only means for breaking the vicious circle of sin’s cause and effect.  Conversion is nothing less than a victory of grace. Both sons, each in their own way, were prodigals.  Both dropped out of relationship with their father.  And it’s not hard for us to see ourselves in each of them at one time or another. But before we finish, let’s glance back for a moment at the father in this parable and seek the origin of his actions. 

What exactly does justice consist of?  Obviously, giving each his due.  As St. Benedict famously affirms in his Rule, justice does not imply universal equality.  Rather it’s a vital order, always taking into consideration the diversity of people and things. To know what a person really deserves and needs, we would have to be able to see to the bottom of his soul.  Only God can do that.   Not having this ability ourselves, and wishing to avoid new injustice, charity calls us always to give others the benefit of the doubt – always.  Just as God’s love for us never runs out, so our mercy toward others should never run out. The father in our parable wisely did this for his sons, regarding them both with the eyes of love. Accordingly, he had given his younger son what he demanded, and when the boy returned with his life in ruins, he welcomed him with open arms, the same open arms that he later extended to his recalcitrant older brother. He knew that only in the light of love’s freedom would his sons ever be able to unfold to their full stature. As Christians, we’re called to do more than work for “peace and justice”, necessary as those two things are in hearts as well as in society.  Beyond “peace and justice”, our Faith calls on us to work for peace through forgiveness. 

The return of the younger son introduces a moment of destiny for his older brother, whose father invites him to join the celebration.  Jesus doesn’t tell us whether he finally accepted, but we can hope that in the end he had a change of heart and did.  If so, he will have found himself to be the first beneficiary of his willingness to forgive.  It’s himself he sets free.  In allowing mercy and healing to enter, he will have found himself part of the celebration, the feast of creative freedom that awaits beyond justice.  

Happy Laetare Sunday! Let’s continue with our celebration.
 

Reflection for the Act of Consecration for Russia and Ukraine (March 25, 2022)

God answers prayers, if what we ask is what God wants or permits. We pray, “Thy will be done,” every time we say the “Our Father.” Sometimes God will give us what we ask for if we want it badly enough, if we persist in asking. In this God is like a human parent, who sometimes only give us things if we ask. God is a person, and just like a human person, there are other persons, people close to him, like close friends. We call these persons saints. They are with God. And they also can pray to God for us, and their prayers are powerful because they are so close to him. The greatest of these saints is Mary, the Mother of Jesus. And her prayers are the most powerful. When he was on the cross, Jesus gave Mary to us to be our mother, the mother of the people of God, Mother of the Church. Mary loves and cares for us just as God does.  

History shows that Mary exhibits this care. She is not a disinterested observer of human affairs. She showed up in North America at Tepeyac in Mexico and we know her as Our Lady of Guadalupe. She visited Lourdes in France in 1858, and where people still experience miraculous healing from illness, and where you may have a chance to visit this or next summer. She showed up at Fatima in Portugal in 1917, when the world was at war. She showed at Medjugorie in Bosnia, and apparently still does. These are just the most recent and well-known appearances of Mary, who is especially close to Jesus her son; Mary, who prays for us. One of her titles is Mary Undoer or Untier of Knots; Mary, who can solve difficult human problems. Mary is the Queen of Peace. And in fact under that title she is the primary patron saint of this monastery and school. And so today we are praying to God through Mary, asking her to add her prayers to ours, as we pray for peace in the Ukraine and Russia, as we pray for peace to be maintained in the world. 

Homily of Saturday, March 12, 2022
Dt 26: 16-19; Mt 5: 43-48 

In today’s Gospel Jesus says: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” St. Peter wrote the same thing in slightly different words in his first letter: “As He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct.” Perfection is synonymous with holiness. The Church has always identified herself by what are called her “four marks”. These four marks of the Church are (1.) that the Church is one, (2.) holy, (3.) Catholic and (4.) apostolic. For two reasons holiness is of special importance among them. First, holiness is the Church’s final end and goal. We are made holy - a people sacred to the Lord - by being incorporated into his holy mystical body, the Church. Because of this we’re called to live as Christ taught: “Be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Second, holiness is the Church’s number one selling point. Authentic holiness is irresistible. Eleven out of twelve very ordinary men became saints primarily as an effect of their remaining near Jesus. He did not guide them to holiness. He was their holiness and he is ours - as he was Mother Teresa’s and John Paul II’s. They brought far more people into the Church by their witness than by any polemics, even the best. Sanctity itself is a highly infectious condition. The Church is holy because her Lord is holy and his call to us is holy. That means our goal is to lead a different kind of life. We’re to be beacons to the world, living gospels for the world to read. Every pope for the last century has insisted that to be a Catholic is to be a missionary, called to bear open and courageous witness. Tragically, that has yet to take wide hold in the Church because most miss or short-change the one and only means to sanctity. It is repentance, the reason for Lent and the one-word summary of the message of all the prophets. In other words, willing God’s will. It’s summed up in another single word, Mary’s “yes” when she made the most important decision any human being ever made in all of history. All our favorite methods and teachings, our familiar techniques and practices, are roads either in that direction or roads away from it.  

Monday, March 7, 2022 (Lent, Week I)
(Lev 19: 1-2, 11-18; Mt 25: 31-46)

In today’s Gospel Jesus predicts that when he returns in his glory he’ll say to those on his right “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you…”.   As we know, that kingdom is heaven and those on his right are saints. Heaven, from the foundation of the world, is the model for this earth.  When God’s will is accomplished perfectly on earth as it is in heaven, then earth will become heaven, because heaven is just that: where God’s will is perfectly fulfilled in every heart. There is no other way of realizing that goal than through the willing of God’s will.  And the only way to do that is for us to renounce self-will. When we pray the words “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, what we long for is the most beautiful thing in the world – in fact more wonderful than the whole world – heaven on earth.  Our prayer sometimes leaves us frustrated that we don’t see heaven yet.  But we do see it, or at least we can, with the eyes of faith. If we will, we may see clearly right now something even more glorious than what is meant by that word ‘heaven’. We can see among us the reality it symbolizes – human souls willing God’s will, in other words, saints. And the most beautiful thing in all creation is the soul of a saint.

Homily for Mass for the School (March 2, 2022)

Your Father, God, who sees what is hidden will reward you. Later on in this Gospel, Jesus asks a good question … What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Related to that, I have a question for you to think about and answer.  Do you know what’s good for you?  That’s actually not such a great question since it only requires a yes or no answer. But it’s a starting point, and Ash Wednesday is a starting point. Do you know what’s good for you? Most of us really don’t know by ourselves what is good for us. If we had it all our way, we wouldn’t exercise much, we would sleep too much, watch more TV or play more video games, eat more French Fries and ice cream and we would all be very overweight and unhealthy. Some of us who are very athletic would probably work out too much, and then fail some courses in school or get behind in our work and get fired from our jobs. 

We are taught what is good for us by those in the know and forced to be productive and active, and healthy eaters. Our appetites deceive us because they require an active control by us, which does not come naturally. That is an effect of original sin, which affects all of us. Our natural appetites also include things like anger, which works for self protection, and lust, which works for self-reproduction, and pride, which motivates us to maximize our gifts for the welfare of those we love. But all of these are affected by original brokenness or sin, and they lead us to sin against others when we misuse and fail to control them. And we do fail, all of us. We are naturally selfish; we sin, and God has told us that when harm others or ourselves, when we sin against others or our own selves made in His image, we sin against him.  

By ourselves, we really do not know what is good for us. If that applies to our physical lives, our lives in this world it most certainly more applies to our spiritual lives which are much more mysterious to us and much less obvious. Spiritually we are all affected by a terminal illness - original sin – which is only curable through the grace of Jesus Christ. We cannot do it all by ourselves. And this too we have been told by those in the know, by Jesus, the prophets, the apostles, the saints, the Church, but they do not force us to do anything about it. It is totally up to us if we believe them and know what is good for us.  

The season of Lent which begins today is a time of preparation for Easter, the central day of Christianity, the central day of eternal life, and it’s also a time of concentrated preparation for our eternal life. And that, you must believe, is quite real. The testimony of all religions past and present, of the human experience of the paranormal, of spirits and angels, the experience of psychology and vision of literature all testify to this higher plane of reality. It’s there waiting for you, eternal happiness or eternal pain. 

Lent is the time to cooperate with the cure Jesus Christ offers us; the time to take control of our spiritual lives by controlling our physical lives, since our bodies and souls are inextricably connected. Lent is a period of six weeks, which is exactly the time that behavioralists and psychologists tell us is the time that it takes to form a habit or habits. We can control our physical lives and minimize sin by disciplining our appetites and denying their satisfaction. We can control our spiritual lives by doing exercise, by doing more good, by acts of charity, and by praying more. St. Peter tells us in his first letter: Charity, love, covers over a multitude of sins. All these things will form good habits in us that will not only do us good in this life but will help us enter eternal life and unending happiness. If we really know what’s good for us, we will use this time of Lent wisely and purposefully. Do good, avoid evil, pray, discipline your selfish impulses. Sign up for the Lenten Fast in the dining room and help feed those who go hungry. Your Father, God, who sees what is hidden will reward you.

Homily of Thursday, February 24, 2022
(Readings: James 5: 1-6; Mark 9: 41-50)

In the first reading for today’s Mass, St. James doesn’t mince his words.  “You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter.  You have condemned; you have murdered...” Saint James uses the example of the rich who cheat their workers.  He assures us that these laborers, when they cry out, are seen and heard by God. In our Gospel, Jesus doesn’t mince his words either.  He warns us to do whatever is necessary to force ourselves to stop committing sin, to avoid sin at all costs. In our world relativism has become so ubiquitous that sin is no longer seen to be real.  If we don’t remain absolutely vigilant, this mentality slips into our own attitudes so delicately and quietly that we hardly notice. We were born with the natural law written in our hearts. Even people of little or no faith understand what conscience is. Jesus talks about that in Gehenna, “where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” That represents conscience which will convict us and will never end or be quenched unless we once again become convinced of sin and seek God’s forgiveness. For Catholics that means the sacrament of Reconciliation.  

Jesus warns us not to let ourselves become lukewarm in our faith. “Everyone will be salted with fire,” he says, and he continues: “Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor?  Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another.” Therein lies the problem for us: becoming so equivocal that sin hardly seems real.  Our sins are real and they are seen and heard by God. That is a fact regardless of what we think or feel.  We may let ourselves slip into indolence but that does not mean innocence. The fire we are assaulted with is our own tendency to sin, and worse, our accepting sin in ourselves and in others.  This is when salt becomes insipid.  In the long run there is no peace until our sins have been addressed and dealt with. A superficial peace is no peace at all.  God grant that it may not be the prelude to unquenchable fire. 

Homily of Saturday, February 19, 2022

One of the Church’s wonderful ancient traditions is the devotion of Saturday to Our Lady. If there is no conflict with a feast on that day, Mass is usually celebrated in her honor. Today being one of those days, it’s fitting to dedicate our little ‘homilette’ to her. In Luke’s account of the Annunciation the angel’s greeting is not the Hebrew shalom, “peace be with you.” Rather it’s the Greek greeting “chaire” which means “rejoice”, but which we translate “hail” – as in “Hail Mary…” This word “rejoice” marks the true beginning of the New Testament. The same word reappears during the Holy Night on the lips of the angel to the shepherds: “I bring you news of great rejoicing.” It appears again in John’s Gospel at the encounter with the risen Lord: “disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” Also in John we hear it in Jesus’ farewell discourse: “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice.” So with the angel’s salutation “rejoice” a chord is sounded which then resounds throughout the New Testament and in our lives as members of the Church. 
 

Homily of Thursday, February 10, 2022 (Feast of St. Scholastica)

Saint Gregory the Great, in his Dialogues, in recounting the life of Saint Benedict tells us of the incident, the meeting, that Scholastica and her brother Benedict had every year. And the one that was to prove the last one went on as usual. But then when it became late, Saint Benedict and his monks were going to go back to the monastery. She said: No, let’s stay and talk and pray further. And he said: Sister, I can’t stay out of the monastery at night. And then she prayed. Saint Gregory says that she put her head down clasped her hands and prayed, and a storm suddenly came up that prevented Benedict from leaving where they were meeting. Although he was upset about it, they could continue there talking and praying throughout the night. Reluctant, says Saint Gregory, as he was to stay of his own will, he remained against his well. So it came about that they stayed awake the whole night, engrossed in their conversation about spiritual life. He said: May God forgive you, Sister, for what you have done. Well, she answered, I asked you and you would not listen, so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can in this storm, and return to your monastery. Then Pope Gregory says that it is not surprising that she was more effective than he, since, as John says, God is love: “It is absolutely right that she could do more, as she loved more.” I guess that’s the thing we should keep in mind. And it seems Saint Paul is right, for he says there are three things that abide – faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is love. And Virgil says: “Amor vincit omnia”: love conquers all.

Homily of Monday, February 14, 2022

Well that was a short Gospel (Mk 8:11-13).  Jesus is patient, but also a good judge of character. He does not, as the proverb says, cast his pearls before swine. Jesus offers a simple choice…life or death. Those who understand choose life. As Saint James points out in his letter, these things do not look to the world as they look to a believer, as they look to one whose heart is open. Life in this world is fleeting. Life with God is eternal. Death in this world is the entry point to our eternal destiny…life or death. We remember today a young man who understood this, a young man who chose life. Michael Meads, an alum of our school, died just a little over a year from graduating. His short life was lived in charity, faith and hope in the promise of life. He chose life and entered into eternal life much sooner than he or anyone would have expected. But if life in this world comes to an end in 20 years or 80 years, those years are mere seconds in eternity, but they are seconds which determine how we spend it. While we are in this world we are in danger of becoming of two minds as we are battered by fate and bolstered by fortune. Let us pray that we have the grace of perseverance in our choice, and unwavering trust in God’s promise of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (February 13, 2022) 
(Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16:20; Luke 6:17, 20-26)

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah lived during the final years before the Babylonians destroyed the land of Juda and took most of the people off as captives. In today’s first reading we hear a part of one of his homilies. In it he reminds the people of how God constantly calls them back to fidelity in their faith and how they turn their backs on him relying instead on their own resources. Jeremiah’s words prepared the way for those of Jesus as he introduces the Beatitudes seven hundred years later, when condemns four things: compulsive grasping at concerns of this world, brutish gluttony, empty-headed contentment, and muddled craving for human glory. And in doing this, he requires that we face facts. The central fact here is justice. God is merciful, but he’s also just. On the cross he reconciled justice and mercy when he died to forgive our sins. God could have just said “forget it”. That might have been merciful but not just. Instead he forgives sin and forgiveness costs something. If you owe me $100.00 and I forgive your debt, I still have to pay somebody the $100.00 out of my own pocket. Debts, whether financial or spiritual, require always repayment.  

Justice is a fact, an eternal necessity and not an arbitrary whim. Judgement must always fall – somewhere, sometime on someone, somehow. That can be a pretty scary fact. Except that it need not fall on us. It falls on Calvary two thousand years ago, on Jesus Christ. His death is a fact of the past, but his salvific act is eternal. We were redeemed on Calvary.  In the sacrament of Reconciliation, we receive the fruits of that redemption, the forgiveness of sin. As Paul wrote to the Romans: “The wages of sin is death”, and Christ shoulders it. Death here includes spiritual death, alienation from God, hell. No soul in hell suffers more than the one who willingly accepted death on a cross in payment of our debt of sin. True, the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, and it is ours if we want it. 

We have trouble understanding why Christ died for us. That’s because we don’t take justice and judgement seriously. There’s justice in every single act of our lives. For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction – in the mental world as well as the physical and spiritual. For instance, if we ignore or try to suppress a problem, we don’t bury it dead, we bury it alive, and sooner or later it rises from the dead to haunt us. Our only escape from judgement is in the one who refused to escape it, but accepted it in our place. We also have trouble understanding why Christ died for us because we confuse facts and feelings. We don’t believe that the human mind can know objective reality, so we reduce justice to something like vengeance, which is nothing but a subjective motive. And more dangerously, we reduce our faith from objective truths to comfy, feel-good glop. But mainly we have such trouble understanding why Christ died for us because we flee from any distinctions that demand of us a decision. How, we ask, can life present us with ultimate choices, but along opposing paths?  Isn’t life like a mountain where everyone will finally meet happily at the top?  Life itself shows us in a thousand ways that this is a childish fantasy. 

Life is more like a tree than a mountain. It’s full of branches shaped like forks. It involves numberless choices, paths and offshoots, but they most certainly do not all end up in the same place. Instead they lead us to one of two final destinations: life or death. There are two ways, not one. Two destinations, not one. That’s why we strive to learn how to judge wisely; to clearly see the difference between life and death, between God’s gift and the sad wages of sin. 

All three of today’s texts demand an ultimate decision from us, and this is based upon how we see ourselves. Do we turn our backs on God and rely instead on our own human resources or do we owe ourselves to our Creator and Redeemer?  There isn’t a third path between the two. We can’t bargain with God or argue with his judgement because it’s simply the truth. It’s simply the truth of who we are. God is just and justice is permanent. Christ did not set God’s justice aside. He fulfilled it. The law, God’s unchangeable demand for perfection, is fulfilled only by Christ, and our eternal destiny is completely dependent upon our relationship with him. The connection, then, between our Lord and everlasting life is that there is only one perfect man, Jesus Christ. We share his destiny because we share his nature.  But it’s not a matter of imitating him. Rather it’s a matter of being incorporated into him. Our deliverance comes through his redemptive work. He has enabled us to become sons of the Father and coheirs with him in the glory that is now his, and into which we hope to enter. “I am the vine, you are the branches.”  The same everlasting life runs through the vine and the branches, through the head and body, through Christ and Christian. That means that when we participate in the Mass, as we are about to continue to do, we don’t simply offer Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice to the Father. In union with him we offer ourselves as well, and in that way come to share in his divine nature.

Homily of January 28, 2022 (St. Thomas Aquinas)

Lately hope seems to be in short supply.  I think Saint Thomas Aquinas, the saint we celebrate today, can tell us something helpful. In his book Summa contra Gentiles Thomas asks a question: If we receive a revelation that we’re to be condemned, what should we do? The saint answers bluntly: don’t believe it. Such a revelation would be opposed to the virtue of Hope. Even if an angel from heaven brought the message, the certainty given to us of the divine virtue of Hope is above all the angels of heaven. God has promised us eternal blessedness. That promise, says Thomas, is as good as actual possession because we receive it within the ambit of the hope He has planted in our hearts. Our hope is not based on our liberty or on our limited strength, but upon the promise of God who is Truth itself. 

Yet someone may object that God has promised beatitude only under certain well-set conditions. True, but Thomas says that all these conditions can be reduced to a single one. It was proclaimed by the angels in Bethlehem: “Peace on earth to men of good will.” They didn’t say to “men of character”, nor to “men of great virtue”, but to “men of good will.” Hope is a requisite effect of good will, that is a will conformed to God’s will. Near the end of his life, when St. Thomas’ sister Theodora asked him how to obtain salvation, he answered her with one short word: “Velle!” which means “Will it.” Our salvation demands from us only this one condition: our good will; that we truly will it.

Homily of Tuesday, January 25, 2022 (Conversion of Saint Paul)

The church has been celebrating the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity” this week. There is that expression: “In all essentials unity, and in other matters charity.” Saint Paul is an interesting person. But he was also a difficult person. His conversion marked a change in the development of the church. He had different ideas for many of the other apostles and Christians. He had some severe disagreements with Saint Peter. And, for that matter, he had some severe disagreements with other Christians in places that he went to. The church was not quite sure back then what the essential work of the faith was. Faith was in development, in terms of its understanding and expression. I think the contrasting figures of St. Peter and St. Paul are models for us today. The church held together. Saint Paul did not go off and found his own church. Saint Peter did not expel him. They worked together, had the same faith and the same one Lord Jesus Christ. Our church and our nation, for that matter, are riven by divisions where people cannot work together. May we look to Saint Paul as a model for, us as we encounter those who disagree with us. And may we work with them charitably. 

homily of the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (January 23, 2022)

(Neh 8:2-4, 5-6, 8-10; Cor 12: 12-30; Luke 1: 1-4; 4:14-21)

The word ‘today’ figures prominently in both our first reading from the Old Testament, and our Gospel from the New. “Today is holy to the Lord your God.” These words are spoken by Ezra the priest, in our first reading. In them, the word ‘today’ is an Old Testament upbeat for the New Testament ‘today’ spoken by Jesus, centuries later. The Israelites, returning from exile in Babylon, restore the ruined Temple in Jerusalem.  During the work a lost copy of the law is discovered, something that had been tragically missing for a generation. The priest Ezra assembles the people and to them reads the entire book.  They are finally hearing God’s pledge to fulfill his promises.  Ezra tells the jubilant people that “Today is holy to the Lord your God” and encourages them to rejoice, “For rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength.” 

In stark contrast, the word ‘today’ from the mouth of Jesus, five hundred years later, as he actually announces the fulfillment of these promises, calls forth quite another reaction. “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus reads the Scripture in the synagogue of his home town.  After reading the prophecy of Isaiah, he declares that what God promised so long ago, He has begun to fulfill, today, right now, at this moment, even in their hearing.   Today He will begin to “bring glad tidings to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.” Then Jesus applies these words to himself, saying “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” and arouses the violent fury of his listeners, many of whom have known him all his life.  We’ll see this played out in the Gospel of next Sunday. In his own hometown, he steps forward out of the obscurity of his youth into the immense light of a totally new Today; right into his role as Messiah.

So - what does ‘today’ mean for us? St. Paul, in our second reading gives us the key. “All have been given to drink of the one Spirit.” He writes. That is our Today. Paul explains:  Unlike the ancient Israelite nation which was an aggregate of many individuals, our faith community is an organic whole, a body taken up into the Today of Jesus himself.  We don’t live just beside each other.  We exist within each other, interrelated, each with a unique part to play, within the mystical body of Christ, the Church. For Paul, Christian life has a mystical element.  It entails an identification of ourselves with Christ and of Christ with us. This identity has two parts.  First, we receive ourselves from the Father and second, we live beyond ourselves, making of ourselves a gift to others in Christ. We could never do this on our own.  It’s the work of the Holy Spirit, a grace, divine life leading us to be obedient to the “Spirit of the Lord” that rests upon us, as it did upon Jesus at his Baptism, shortly before that day in the synagogue.      

This is an ethical, not a psychological matter. And it’s is not symbolic. It’s real. And it’s about to happen right here and now for all of us.  The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Blessed Trinity will come among us during a part of the Mass called the epiclesis.  That’s the prayer when the celebrant (me today) calls upon the Father to send down his Spirit among us. 

In the Mass this happens twice, and for two different reasons. The first time you’ll hear me ask the Spirit to bless the bread and wine preparing them to become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The second time, you’ll hear me ask the Spirit to unite us in the one body of Jesus Christ. The first epiclesis prayer will come soon after the Preface.  These are the words: “Therefore, O Lord, we humbly implore you: by the same Spirit graciously make holy these gifts we have brought to you for consecration, that they may become the Body and Blood of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose command we celebrate these mysteries.” You’ll recognize these words and know what’s coming to pass. And this is the second epiclesis prayer.  You’ll hear it soon after the consecration and elevation: “Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church, and, recognizing the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ.” Again, recognizing the words, you’ll appreciate their import.  

St. Paul writes that all of us “are given to drink of the one Spirit.” These moments are exactly when and how that happens.  Each of us is given the divine ability “to bring glad tidings to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed”, in other words to fulfill the promises of God given in Isaiah. Again, that is our Today, in which we ourselves are called and joyfully privileged to fulfill the ancient hopes of the people of God in all the world’s hearing, granted, a world that will usually react with fury and violence, as it did with Jesus. But this should not discourage us. Instead let’s remember Ezra’s wonderful words “Rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength.” And let us fervently pray that we may imitate the courageous willingness of Jesus to persevere in his mission to the end, and for his humility in calling his work simple obedience to the “Spirit of the Lord” that rested upon him, and upon us today.    
 

Homily at the votive Mass of the Holy Spirit in prayer for the abbatial election (Monday, January 17, 2022)

Our invocation of the Holy Spirit this morning is a great act of trust: trust in God, trust in the community, and trust in myself. We trust that God will guide the abbatial election. We trust that the brethren will be the means by which God guides us. And I trust that my own vote will also express God’s will. An abbatial election is not a popularity contest. It is about God’s will for this community of Portsmouth Abbey. We set aside all considerations of personal comfort, and choose the one who will lead us into living out the will of God. Our trust, however, cannot be naïve. Mistrust is part of human nature. The story of Adam and Eve shows mistrust in fallen human nature at work.  Adam and Eve mistrust God, they miss trust each other, and finally, they mistrust themselves when each realizes they are naked. And God tells them: “Who told you you were naked?” Who told you not to trust yourself? The grace of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of overcoming the original sin of mistrust. We pray for this grace not only during the election, but also during the term of the new abbot. He and the brethren must learn to trust each other more and more. The Holy Rule shows us how to do this. For example, by gathering the community for consultation and shared endeavor. But above all, we overcome mistrust through prayer and the self-knowledge that God gives us in prayer. All this culminating in the prayer and the sacrifice of the Mass. Our communion of life finds its source and summit in our communion at the altar. But we cannot come to the altar in a spirit of rancor – that is a precept of the Gospel. And it is also one of the tools of good works: Pacem falsam non dare. So, we now ask for the grace of the Holy Spirit. We ask that it may fall upon us like the dewfall as we invoke the Spirit over these gifts at the altar. May the Spirit come upon us like the dewfall, with all its gentleness and its fruitfulness. Our eucharist is a thanksgiving for that grace that falls upon us, and a pledge from Christ that he gives himself to us as the means of that grace. For all this we give thanks.

Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (January 16, 2022)

Two weeks ago, the Church celebrated the Epiphany. The readings told us about the Magi following a miraculous star, visiting the Christ child bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and their interactions with Herod the Great, the wicked king of the region sponsored by the Roman Empire, who had all the infants in Bethlehem murdered to try to kill off this potential rival. However, this is not the only mystery commemorated at the Epiphany. During Vespers, the evening prayer that forms part of the Divine Office recited by all clerics and religious, which is sung publicly at 5:30 here every evening, one of the texts tells us that the Epiphany actually commemorates three miracles. The visit of the magi, who followed a miraculous star to the infant Christ is only one of these. In addition, Epiphany commemorates the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist in the river Jordan, as well as the miracle related by today’s Gospel: Jesus changes water into wine. This seems like a strange combination of events from the Gospels: one story from Christ’s infancy, and two from the beginning of his public ministry. So, what unites these three seemingly distinct mysteries of Christ’s life? Why would the epiphany commemorate these three particular mysteries: the visit of the magi, the Baptism of Jesus, and the changing of water into wine at the wedding-feast in Cana? 

I think the key to this is found in the word epiphany itself. It comes from a Greek word that means appearance or manifestation. So what is it that appears during these three mysteries? What is made visible, revealed, manifested to us by the visit of the magi, the Baptism of Christ in the river Jordan and the changing of water into wine?  

Each of these mysteries reveal in a particular way Christ’s divinity, and they each point towards his mission to save human beings from the consequences of our sins. The magi’s gifts of gold and frankincense disclose Christ’s nature as king, and God, but the myrrh they also bring foreshadows the sacrifice He will offer of Himself on the Cross. Jesus receives a baptism of repentance from John the Baptist, a baptism of water the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire does not need, but immediately following this, the Holy Spirit descends upon Christ and the voice of God speaking from heaven proclaims him as His son. 

We see something similar in today’s Gospel, the story of the wedding-feast at Cana. On the surface level, we recognize that Jesus shows his power by changing water into wine, the first of the signs that revealed his glory to his disciples, so he manifests himself as God with authority over material reality. Since it serves as the beginning of his public ministry, a ministry that culminates in passion, death and resurrection, it also manifests his mission to redeem us from the consequences of our sins.  

However, the use of water and wine serve to emphasize both of these meanings. At the last supper we also see a miracle involving the changing of a substance and wine. At the wedding-feast of Cana, water is changed into wine for guests. Three years later, after the Paschal meal celebrated in Jerusalem with the 12 Apostles, Jesus would take the precious chalice filled with wine, give thanks to God, say the blessing, and give the chalice to his disciples saying “Take this, all of you, and drink from it. For this is the chalice of my blood.” With this, the substance in the chalice would be changed from wine into the blood that Jesus would offer on the Cross the following day. The next day, when his side was pierced by a spear after he died, blood and water poured out of the wound. So the wine that he shares with the guests at the wedding foreshadows the blood he will pour out on the cross, and then share with all those who believe in Him and partake of His body. 

Wine has also symbolically been taken to point towards Christ’s divinity. During the offertory, while a small amount of water is poured into the wine that is used for the Mass, the Priest or Deacon doing that says, sotto voce, “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” The water and wine themselves symbolize our humanity, and Christ’s divinity, the two natures united in the one person of Christ. In the Gospel, water is drawn, then taken to the waiter, where it is shown to have been changed into wine. The presence of this wine is itself a sign of Christ’s divinity. This act of a transformation into wine reveals Christ’s divinity. 

There is another element to this, however: our participation: in this transformation, we see a foreshadowing of our destiny to be transformed through Christ. We are called to share in both Christ’s divinity, and his mission: we are called to take up our Cross and follow Christ. This we do as we share in Christ’s work on Earth, fighting against our sins, and working to restore the world to God’s image through love of our neighbors as exemplified by the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ parable, who cared for the traveler beaten by robbers and left on the side of the road. We are also called to receive a share in Christ’s divinity. This happens primarily through the sacraments, outward signs instituted by Christ to give inward graces. Through these inward graces, we are transformed, reborn, and integrated into Christ. Through Baptism, we enter the Church, the new Israel that is the bride espoused to the bridegroom. We receive a share in the glory of God, a share in God’s divinity, as described in the First reading from Isaiah. Through confirmation, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are increased within us, making us capable of fulfilling God’s will for us in our own, unique way, as described in the Second reading, from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. 

However, the deepest union with God we receive, comes from the sacrament of the Eucharist. When we consume the Eucharist, even if we only consume the host, we consume the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ. This brings together, in reality, both elements of Christ revealed through the miracle of wine at the wedding of Cana: Christ’s blood and Christ’s divinity. This is not automatic: we must be prepared to receive the sacrament. This involves holding in faith that we receive the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, being in a state of grace, that is, without mortal sin, a sin that breaks our relationship with Christ and requires the healing of the sacrament of confession, and being properly disposed to receive Christ Himself both by spiritual preparation and by maintaining the eucharistic fast that is currently an hour before receiving the sacrament. With this preparation, done in cooperation with God’s grace, the reception of communion can be transformative: we take Christ Himself, God Himself, into us and he becomes part of us, transforming us and truly giving us a share in His divinity. 

There is one final, unrelated note I would like to make. This afternoon, the Monastery will begin the process of electing an Abbot, the Superior who will serve as the community’s leader for the next 8 years, God willing. I would ask all of you to pray that God’s will be done in this election. Tomorrow morning, at 7:20 AM, the Abbot President will celebrate a Mass of the Holy Spirit here to pray for us to be receptive to the will of God in this process, and I would encourage any of you who are willing and able to come to that.

Homily of Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Saint Aelred had been head of the royal household for King David’s family in Scotland as a young man. In his 20s, he came to England in search of a religious vocation and became a Cistercian. A few years after the monastery of Riveaulx was founded, and within 13 years had become its Abbot. By the time he was finished there were several hundred monks in the monastery - it had grown quite a bit This was in the heyday of monastic life in England And he had become certainly the most well-known Cistercian. I think what he is most well-known for, justifiably, in our days, is the writing that he did on spiritual friendship. Quite a new idea at the time. His writing was based on Aristotle. One idea in Aristotle, in particular, in his philosophy when he talks about human relationships, love relationships, friendship relationships, is that they turn tail and collapse in time when two people become friends or lovers and focus on each other completely. Finally, it gets stale, because we are limited beings and it doesn’t last. On the other hand, as Aristotle pointed out, if there’s what he called a “creative third” involved, if two people come into a relationship with each other and together focus on a third thing – whether they’re starting a business, beginning a family, writing a book, whatever they are doing – the relationship grows and grows and grows that way and potentially has no end. This was an Aristotelian idea that Aelred picked up on and basically took the spiritual step, where he said if two people in relationship together focus on God then the relationship has infinite possibilities, can last forever, and they become for each other a royal highway to heaven. They become a medium of salvation for each other when the relationship focuses on spiritual realities. This is a very important thing that I think is extremely germane for our life in the world today, where relationships tend to top out very quickly and very early, for exactly the reasons that Aristotle pointed out thousands of years ago and Aelred describes beautifully in his writings. I highly recommend his book. I think it’s called On Spiritual Friendship. Really a wonderful read from the Middle Ages. I recommend it very highly.

Homily for the Second Week in Ordinary Time (January 9, 2022) 

This week the tree will be down, the lights and all the poinsettas gone. The manger scene here will go back into storage. Today marks the end of the Christmas season, and tomorrow begins what we now call ordinary time, a new time made possible by the birth of Jesus Christ. But “ordinary” is an unfortunate name for this time, set into motion with the Baptism of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, which we celebrate today. This time we begin tomorrow is in fact extraordinary. At Jesus’ Baptism, the Holy Spirit makes his first appearance in revelation and the Father speaks “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” Those are Powerful words, and they complete the picture of the very first appearance of God as the Trinity. 

If you came to our 9:30 mass last Sunday, you would have heard something probably not heard in most other churches. Fr. Edward sang the Epiphany proclamation, which began: “The glory of the Lord has shone upon us, and shall ever be manifest among us, until the day of his return.” Those too are powerful words. They particularly refer to the Church and its celebration of the liturgy, the Mass, which re-enacts Jesus Christ’s life and saving sacrifice. But those powerful words also refer to each one of us, you and I, as individuals. The Church is the people of God, and you and I are people. The people of God would be incomplete without any one of us. Inside the monastery chapel at St. Louis Abbey there is a very large, very old Persian carpet, 17 feet by 25 feet, which covers the entire floor. Spaced on the edges of the carpet are 32 small panels which contain quotations from a poem by the Persian Sufi mystic Hafez. This poem uses the metaphors of music and wine to celebrate ecstatic intoxication with God. Why I think about this carpet now is that last Sunday we celebrated the visit of the three wise men, the magi, to the child Jesus. The carpet in the monastery comes from, and Hafez lived in, the same area where the Magi came from, Persia or Iran, and the poem by Hafez in the carpet in fact mentions the Magi… the very same Magi who recognized the sign of the Messiah, and followed the star to Him. And so it occurred to me that this carpet has a lesson for us about our baptism, about membership in the Church, about membership in this Portsmouth Abbey community. 

This carpet, like any large oriental carpet you may have seen, like this one I’m standing on, has a tremendously complex pattern, with medallions, flowers, leaves, tendrils, geometric figures, and several borders. These figures and the background are created by hundreds of thousands of threads knotted around the strands of the woven backing. It would have taken a score of people years to complete that rug… first designing the pattern, then choosing the colors and dyes, uniformly dying the skeins of thread, so the color would be the same at the end as at the beginning. Next would come weaving the backing with particularly strong fiber, and then one by one tying each tiny knot, with painstaking accuracy, getting each brightly colored thread in exactly the right place to form the complex patterns. Some parts of the overall design are more noticeable than others. The central medallion stands out, as do the panels with the verses of poetry. It is easy to ignore the colored background or the framing borders; you would never even notice the woven matrix 
that holds the knotted threads of the pattern and except for the fact that in places it shows through, because the carpet is so old and worn Yet every figure of the design, every knotted thread is necessary for the perfection of this work of art, a work of art which manifests in its own way the glory of God in human accomplishment. Each one of us is like one of those knots, tied by our baptism onto the fabric of the Church, by our birth into the fabric of humanity and by our presence here into Portsmouth Abbey. 

This is humanity which now can and does share in the divinity – the God-ness - of Jesus Christ, who became human in order, not that we “could” – Jesus was not interested in abstract possibilities – but that we WOULD become like God. As each knot in its own way reveals the beauty of the carpets design, and each of us in our own unique way reveals the glory of the Lord Jesus until He comes again. Each of us is needed to complete the people of God who reflect and show his glory. The carpet in St. Louis’ chapel is an antique; it has been subjected to a lot of wear and tear over its 250+ year lifetime. There are places where the threads have been worn down or pulled away by friction. Loose knots are always the first ones to go. As knots tied in the pattern of God’s kingdom, we are unusual. Not only do we experience the hurts and stresses of life, and so may break under the strain, we can choose to become loose, to untie ourselves and break away. We can choose to leave or disrupt the pattern. Or we can choose to hold on, pull tighter and strengthen the design and the whole structure, securing the others near us. 

That is a great part of the glory of being human, and a great part of the glory of God. We can choose, as Jesus chose, to do our part, meaning, to do God’s will which considers the whole picture rather than just the view or piece of the picture which is in front of any one of us. For we humans tend to see only that which benefits or affects ourselves. But some people do see the same big picture. During a Christmas party in San Bernardino in December 2015, two gunmen burst in and shot to death 16 people, wounding many others. One man shielded one of his coworkers with his body and died protecting her. “I got you” he said, as he wrapped his arms around her. Eleven years ago, there was another incident in which a man considered the whole picture. Just as a train was approaching the station in Harlem, a teenager standing on the subway platform, suffered a seizure and he fell onto the tracks. Being run over by a train is generally fatal, and if in trying to avoid a train, you touch the third rail you would probably be electrocuted. But a 50-year-old black man was on the platform with his two young daughters, and he saw this young white boy fall. He jumped down onto the tracks to get him up, but as he was helping him, the teenager had another seizure, and there was no hope of getting the young man or himself out of the way of the now very close approaching train. 
The rescuer rolled the teenager into the narrow and relatively shallow gutter in the rail-bed between the 1st and 2nd rails, and lay on top of him as the train passed overhead, knowing surely he would save the young man’s life, but also knowing he would surely be endangering his own. Like the Good Samaritan, this man knew who his neighbor was, a stranger, whom he was enjoined by God to love, without preference to himself. He admitted that he did think of his children, however, and about how it would affect them to see a man killed in front of their very eyes while people stood by who could have saved him. Last November 30 at the Oxford Michigan High School, 16-year-old Tate Myer, instead of running away in a panic like everyone else, died trying to take the gun away from the deranged student shooting his fellow students in the hallways. No human being has greater love than that which these three had, and in that is the Glory of Jesus Christ made visible and clear: Three ordinary people, three extraordinary heroes, just three strong knots in the tapestry of the human race that Jesus came to save. 

Here we are at the beginning, one week in, to the Year of Our Lord 2022. Here we are at Portsmouth Abbey, one small picture figure in the overall design of the tapestry of the church and humanity. This figure of ours is necessary for the completion and beauty of the whole, and each of us is a knot. I’ve now been Prior here for 3 years and 3 months, and I can tell you, you are unique knot, brilliant knots, talented knots, beautiful knots; lots of different lengths, and thicknesses and colors. Each one of you is needed to make us, this Abbey Community, complete, to make us, Portsmouth Abbey school, who we are, to allow us to reveal God’s glory. When we were conceived the Holy Spirit breathed life into us. When we were baptized the Holy Spirit came upon us just like He came upon Jesus, and the Holy Spirit spoke for the Trinity, saying to us, “I got you.” It is that Holy Spirit during this extraordinary time who keeps us together as a faith and school community family, despite our different ideas about religion, music and liturgy, despite our dissatisfaction with the preaching (I know some of you are thinking “Is he ever going to shut up.”), dissatisfaction with the sound system, the discomfort of the pews and kneelers. So be kind to one another. Hold on tight to the fabric of our Abbey family. We must – it takes each of us – keep our part of this design together. 

I can’t speak for God, although He and I do agree on many things, but You are, each of you, a beloved son or daughter of God, of Portsmouth Abbey, the Church. And I, for one, am pretty well pleased. And I expect God is too. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being strong, especially during these strange Covid times, times which do stress us more than usual. Let’s hold on together. In the words of the poet Hafez, whose words are on that beautiful carpet in St. Louis, “Know your heart, (that place in you where God lives) 
and discover that joy is near.”



 

Homily of Wednesday, December 29, 2021

“Behold this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel.” Today is the feast of the martyr, Thomas Becket. He didn’t begin a martyr – of course, no one begins a martyr. He was one of the Lord Chancellors of England, one of the great ones, in fact, for one of the great kings of England, Henry II. In the 12 century, for about seven years he was the Lord Chancellor. He was a bosom buddy of the king. They went hawking together, gaming together, things that I can’t mention in church together. They were intimate friends. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, a leading spiritual figure in England, died. Henry had the idea of making his good friend, his Lord Chancellor, also archbishop, and combine both duties in one, under the king, of course. But when he became archbishop, when he was consecrated, ordained etc., he changed, changed radically. Again the meaning of Christ can change you. He can lift you high or knock you down very low. In his case, it lifted him very high. He took his spiritual responsibilities very seriously, which kind of scared and angered, actually, his good friend the king, Henry II, which led eventually to Beckett’s death, his martyrdom, his murder, and the penance that followed. For Jesus is the figure that lifts or destroys. When we meet Jesus, we can become better people, saints, holy people. We rise to the occasion, or the very challenge that Jesus gives us can destroy us, bring out all of our wickedness, our evil, resistance to the good. For Thomas Becket, it was the best. He rose to the challenge. He met Christ and became the fullness of what he was meant to be, a saint and a martyr. Let us use this season, this blessed season in which the infant Jesus comes to us, challenges us to be better than we are, to be all we are meant to be. And we too – we may not have to be martyrs as Thomas Becket was – but we will rise to the occasion and be all we are meant to be, are called to be, destined to be.

Homily of Monday, December 27, 2021

Donald Attwater says the following about Saint John: 

“John, apostle and evangelist, is called “The Divine“, i.e., theologian. He died at Ephesus at about 100. He was a Galilean fisherman, and he and his brother, the sons of Zebedee, were called from mending their nets to follow Jesus Christ. The brothers apparently had an excitable and quick-tempered side to their character, and Jesus nicknamed them “Sons of Thunder“; on the other hand he chose them, with Peter, to be with him on the momentous occasions of his transfiguration and his agony in Gethsemane. Moreover, tradition has always identified John with the unnamed ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’, who leaned on his Master’s breast at the Last Supper; to whom Jesus on the cross confided the care of his mother;  who ran before Peter to the tomb on the morning of the resurrection and, seeing it empty, believed; and who first recognized the risen Lord by the sea of Tiberius. In the Acts of the Apostles John is again found associated with Peter, at the healing of the lame man in the temple, sharing his imprisonment, and going with him to the converts in Samaria. Saint Paul names John with Peter and James as pillars of the church in Jerusalem.

“In later years John was exiled to the island of Patmos, ‘because I had preached God‘s word and born my testimony to Jesus’. John is said to have passed his last years at Ephesus and to have died there at a great age. Saint Jerome wrote that when he was too old to preach, John would simply say to the assembled people: ‘Love one another. That is the Lord‘s command: and if you keep it, that by itself is enough.’ The story that he came to Rome and there emerged unharmed when thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil is apocryphal. The feast of Saint John ‘at the Lion Gate” which in later times was referred to this event, was expunged from the general calendar of the Roman church in 1960. The fourth Gospel, three biblical epistles, and the Book of Revelation (the Apocalypse) traditionally bear the name of St. John as their author. In modern times the authorship and historical value of these works have been the subject of serious debate among biblical scholars, some of whom deny that it is possible to know who wrote them. But the traditional attributions have by no means been wholly discredited.”

And I would just add to that the interesting point that it says in John’s Gospel that when Jesus was arrested, Peter and John, the beloved disciple, having fled, returned from a distance following Jesus; and that John then, the beloved disciple, was let into the high priest’s house without any difficulty, but then went back and got Peter and explained to the door keeper that he should let him in. It says John was known to the high priest. Now. the question is: how did this poor fisherman from Galilee know the high priest, or be known by him? There is another (I don’t know if it is a legend but somewhere in early Christian writing); it is written that Saint John, when he celebrated the Eucharist , wore a priestly miter. Does this mean that John was of a priestly family, of priestly stock; that he was, as it were, thereby known to the priestly families? This is one of the many things that, as it has been said: the Bible tells you what you need to know, not what you want to know.
 

Feast of the Holy Family, Sunday, December 26, 2021
John 3: 1 – 2, 21 – 24; Samuel 1: 20 – 22, 24 – 28; Luke 2: 41 – 52 

There are three different Gospels for today’s feast of the Holy Family, one for each year of the Church’s three-year cycle. In year A. we read of Joseph being visited by an angel and given instructions for the protection of his new family.  In year B. we followed this little family as they brought their infant son to the Temple in obedience to the Law of Moses.  Today the Gospel for year C. tells the story of the Holy Family in crisis, the crisis of a lost child. Their crisis speaks eloquently to us in a world where all forms of human life are of so little value and all forms of harmony are being progressively destroyed. The story told in this Gospel is often titled “The Finding in the Temple”.   But it’s good to remember that this reunion was preceded by what must have been three unspeakably fearful days for Mary and Joseph, as they searched the city for their lost boy. Only males 12 and older were required to make this journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem, about 70 miles through wild country. 

On pilgrimages to and from Jerusalem the Jews went in two separate groups – one of men, the other of women.  Children could go with either group.  This explains how they could go a day’s journey before they discovered the boy was missing.  No doubt Mary and Joseph realized this only when the families regrouped to camp for the night. For centuries their desperate efforts to locate the lost child have stood as an example of how we too are to seek him urgently, especially when we lose him through the destructive effects of sin. 

Mother Theresa of Calcutta spoke of sin’s impact in 1979 as she received the Nobel Peace prize, when she said the greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child.   On today’s feast of the Holy Family, we might rephrase her statement slightly: The greatest destroyer of the family today is the cry of the innocent unborn child.  Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb, taking his flesh from hers.  At the moment of conception Mary became a mother, the Mother of God.   And the Holy Family came into being then as well. From the body of Mary, God fashioned the new body of her child and at the same time he miraculously created a new soul out of nothing.  The Son of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, united himself with this body and soul.  Prior to this he was God alone; now was both God and man. God has gifted our human nature with the ability to “pro-create”.  Procreation is co-operation with God’s most important act of creation, that of a human being, with an immortal soul, destined to live eternally.  

When God creates a new human soul out of nothing he does so only when a man and a woman, by their physical communion, together conceive a new child’s body.  At this moment motherhood and fatherhood begin and a family is born. This applies fully to every child ever conceived, whom God has called by name, whether welcomed into this world or not.  Motherhood and fatherhood don’t somehow vanish if one or both of the parents decide to forbid the child’s birth.  In spite of this they remain a mother and a father. That sacred identity will last forever, just as will the body and soul of their lost child. Each of us has been affected, directly or indirectly, within the circle of our family and friends, by the tragedy of the elective termination of a pregnancy.  And we have all witnessed its painful effects on someone we love.  As Catholic witnesses then, about to approach the Eucharist today, may I suggest that we observe this feast of the Holy Family, along a line we may not have considered up to now:   

In spite of all else, and leaving judgement aside, may we pray earnestly today for all who, by their own decision have lost a child, and especially may we bless, honor, and venerate the holy and lasting maternity and paternity of those who remain forever their child’s parents.

Homily of Christmas Morning, 2021

The prophet Isaiah tells us this morning: How beautiful are the feet of him who announces peace, bears good news, and announces salvation, That is worth thinking about, all that was announced then and is being announced today. 

A couple weeks ago in class while discussing the creation story in Genesis, a student asked, “You mean we don’t believe in the big bang?” I’m not sure how she thought that, But we do believe in the big bang…a couple of them. It was a Catholic priest scientist in Belgium who first theorized the Big Bang in the 1931. it is revealed in Genesis, just as today’s Gospel says: In the beginning was the Word. God’s Word is unimaginably powerful. God spoke the words, “Let there be light” and light, energy, God’s first creation exploded into being. And we know that over the billions of years since the universe has evolved under God’s guidance into what is now. And during these years in the fullness of time God’s Word again exploded into this creation, another Big Bang, and the Light of the World was born 2025 years or so ago. 

No one saw that first big bang, and only a few saw the second one. No one heard those first words Let there be light, And only a few heard the announcement of Jesus birth. That too is worth thinking about. As I read the story we all know of the first Christmas as told in the Gospel of Luke, it seems to me the story as he told it is mostly about the Shepherds, who got word from the angels. 

The Gospel says: When the angels went away from (the shepherds) to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.  

Why did God send his messenger angels to announce this earth-shattering event to simple shepherds? Why not to the Levites or rabbis in Bethlehem…. all those scholars and religious professionals who were waiting for the Messiah? God obviously had his reasons, but perhaps those experts were not ready to accept the surprising truth. As the Gospel we just heard says: the world did not know him. So the shepherds are standing in for us, the people Jesus came to and for. They stand for those ready to accept and recognize God’s word for what it was and still is. The shepherds made known the amazing message that had been told them, and so should we. The shepherds believed. All the nations around Israel had imagined God to be something exotic like the animal-headed Gods of Egypt or superheroes like the God’s of Greece and Rome. Israel rejected those images and worshipped the transcendent spiritual reality of God. But to the shepherds he revealed the truth in a newborn human child. The Gospel of John says The Word became flesh, that is became human, and he pitched his tent among us, like those shepherds who lived in the fields with their sheep.  Whoever sees him sees the Father. This is what and how God is like. And he made is possible for us to become like God.  

No, the religious experts would not have been ready for that. And many people today are also not ready for that, cannot believe, even those who once did believe. Even today we see: some of his own people do not accept him. The chaos of the world 2000 years ago, to which the angels announced peace, good news, and salvation, the chaos persists. Our world still needs peace and salvation. Our world still needs Jesus Christ. A daily glance at the news reveals the surface of the chaos….  pandemic, political hate and conflict in America, a hot war in Africa, a potential war in the Ukraine, superpower tension and distrust, starvation in Afghanistan, repression in Myanmar, climate disasters… there’s too much to list it all.  

Beneath it all is a profound interior chaos in people of selfishness, a preoccupation with pleasure, comfort and wealth that shows itself in one of its most dark manifestations… abortion on demand for birth control. Christmas tells us that in the middle of this chaos and darkness God still pitches his tent. In this darkness the Light of the World, the Light of the Human Race is still to be found. But it is not a blinding light, but a lantern to light our path, to illumine the way, his way. And the way is not what the world expects of a king or a God or a savior. 

Once I was old enough to look back on my life with some perspective, I realized with great wonder and appreciation how the parents of baby-boomers like me totally lived their lives for their children, as many no doubt do today. I think the darkness of World War II and the Great Depression gave them a perspective that fully appreciated the way of love. What can you possibly give more than yourself, and that’s what love makes you do. That’s what God did at Christmas. and what he still does. That is God’s way.  That is why He gave himself totally to us and for us; that is what he shows us in the child in the manger and the man on the cross. This divine love is the light that leads us out of our personal and communal darknesses. He gives, he trusts but does not force us. 

This way of love is the way of the kingdom of God, the one established by this child born on Christmas, the kingdom he entrusts to us to keep in order and to continue building by our love. It begins again each day for each of us as we wake up and decide…do I believe; as we decide do I…will I... follow this way of divine love in the face of the way of the world and the way the world misdefines love?  For God so loved the world that he sent his Son into the world so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  

Thank God for this beautiful event. Thank God for Christmas. Thank God for His kingdom among us. Thank God for each other that follow His way along with us and believe His Truth. May all of us be lights living this love in the darkness. 

Homily of Midnight Mass, Christmas 2021

The prophet Isaiah says: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. That is worth thinking about. Have you seen it? A couple weeks ago in class while discussing the creation story in Genesis, a student asked: ”You mean we don’t believe in the big bang?”mI’m not sure how she thought that, But we do believe in the big bang…a couple of them. It was a Catholic priest scientist in Belgium who first theorized the Big Bang in 1931. In Genesis it is revealed God spoke, “Let there be light” and light, energy, God’s first creation exploded into being. And we know that over the billions of years since the universe has evolved under God’s guidance into what is now. And during these years in the fullness of time God’s Word again exploded into this creation, another Big Bang, and the Light of the World was born 2025 years or so ago.

No one saw that first big bang, and only a few saw the second one. That too is worth thinking about. As I hear the story of the first Christmas in the Gospel of Luke, it seems to me the story as he told it is mostly about the Shepherds. We only heard the first part tonight. The Gospel continues from where it left off tonight. When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.

Why did God send his messenger angels to announce this earth-shattering event to simple shepherds? Why not to the Levites or rabbis in Bethehem…. all those scholars and religious professionals who were waiting for the Messiah? God obviously had his reasons, but perhaps those experts were not ready to accept the surprising truth. The shepherds are standing in for us, the people Jesus came to and for, those ready to accept and recognize God’s word for what it was and still is. They made known the amazing message that had been told them. And so should we. The shepherds believed. 

All the nations around Israel had imagined God to be something exotic like the animal-headed Gods of Egypt or superheroes like the God’s Greece and Rome. Israel rejected those images and worshipped the transcendent spiritual reality of God. But to the shepherds he revealed the truth in a newborn human child. The Gospel of John says: The Word became flesh. That is became human, and he pitched his tent among us, like those shepherds who lived in the fields with their sheep.  Whoever sees him sees the Father. This is what and how God is like. And he made is possible for us to become like God.

No, the religious experts would not have been ready for that. And many people today are also not ready for that, cannot believe, even those who once did believe. The people who walked in darkness: that describes our times just as well as it describes the world 2000 years ago; darkness more than the darkness of ignorance surrounds us. A daily glance at the news reveals the surface of the darkness: pandemic, political hate and conflict in America, a hot war in Africa, a potential war in the Ukraine, superpower tension and distrust, starvation in Afghanistan, repression in Myanmar, climate disasters… there’s too much darkness to list it all. Beneath it all is a dark and profound personal selfishness, a preoccupation with pleasure, comfort and wealth that shows itself in one of its most dark manifestations: abortion on demand for birth control. Christmas reminds us that in the middle of this darkness God still pitches his tent. In this darkness the Light of the World, the Light of the Human Race is still to be found. But it is not a blinding light, but a lantern to light our path, to illumine the way, his way. And the way is not what the world expects of a king or a God or a savior.

Once I was old enough to look back on my life with some perspective, I realized with great wonder and appreciation how the parents of baby-boomers like me totally lived their lives for their children. We were very much the center of their lives. I think the darkness of WW2 and the great depression gave them a perspective that fully appreciated the way of love. What can you possibly give more than yourself, and that’s what love makes you do. That’s what God did at Christmas, and what he still does. That is God’s way. That is why He gave himself totally to us and for us; that is what he shows us in the child in the manger and the man on the cross. This divine love is the light that leads us out of our personal and communal darknesses. He gives, he trusts but does not force us. This way of love is the way of the kingdom established by this child born on Christmas, the kingdom he entrusts to us to keep in order and to continue building by our love.

It all began with this second big bang 2000 years ago, and as with the first big bang, God’s creation is still developing, growing. It begins again each day for each of us as we wake up and decide: do I believe, as we decide: do I, will I, follow this way of divine love in the face of the way of the world and the way the world misdefines love? For God so loved the world that he sent his Son into the world so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. Thank God for this beautiful event. Thank God for His kingdom among us. Thank God for each other that follow His way with us and believe His Truth. May all of us be lights living His love in the darkness.
 

Exhortation before the Petitions (Thursday, December 23, 2021)

Certainly when each of us were born, our parents wondered what we, newborn children, would turn out to be. Whether we are with the Lord, that is our choice.

Homily of Wedneday, December 22, 2021

This morning in the gospel we hear that great song of praise and thanksgiving which Mary gives at the Visitation with Elizabeth, the Magnificat, which has become an essential part of the church’s worship, as every evening throughout the world the church proclaims the Magnificat. Today is an opportunity for us to reflect just a little bit upon the humility of God. As the story has unfolded in these past few days, we know that God left the fate of the entire cosmos up to the decision of one human person. Mary had freedom, and therefore her choice to say yes to God was an exercise of absolute freedom. And God allowed the whole fate of the universe to rest upon her decision. It tells us first and foremost how much God values the gift of free choice that he has given to us as human beings, because it reflects the very nature of his own being. God, who is completely and infinitely free to choose, and therefore infinitely and completely free to love, and he wants us to share in that freedom. Mary’s yes changed the fate of the universe. We have the same opportunity to say yes and to exercise our freedom as we open our hearts up to the salvation that God offers us in Christ. It may not change the universe, but it will change us. In these last few days before the great celebration of Christmas, let us pray that the Lord will give us the grace to open our hearts ever more fully and say yes to this great gift of salvation.

Homily of Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Jesus gets the name at his birth, as it were, of Emmanuel, which we know means “God with us.” And a way you can read the Bible, at least it seems to me one way, is that it is the story of God‘s attempt, desire, his method, of dwelling with the human race. That is to say, He created us and would like to live with us. But so far that has failed, so to speak, because, first of all, it failed with Adam and Eve – they sinned and they were driven from His Face. And then after a while the whole human race had become so degenerate that, apart from Noah and his people, they were destroyed.  And then He decided, it seems, that instead of concentrating on the whole human race he would concentrate on a certain family, so he chose Abraham and what we called the Hebrew people to be His particular people, with whom He would well. And again, that culminated in His being incarnate, the Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, dwelling with the chosen people. And they, of course, put Him to death. The situation seemed again to have failed. So, He chose us. And here we are now. And He would like to dwell with us, with the Christian church. And the question is: will we allow Him to do that? And some might well say that, with the situation we are in today, that would indicate that again it may not turn out as He wants. However, in the end we know it will turn out and He will get what He wants, because it says in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible: “I saw a new heaven and new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying” – (and here it is) – “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them; they shall be His people and God Himself will be with them.” So we have that to look forward to.
 

Homily of the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 19, 2021

I am sure that many of us have seen It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s become a classic for Christmas. In 1946, when it was first released, it was not terribly successful, unfortunately. But it has grown in favor with time, and so now for a great many people it is part of Christmas. One thing you do is see this movie for Christmas. And Friday, the day before Christmas, Christmas Eve, NBC will be showing the movie at 8 o’clock. It rarely shows the movie: it bought back the movie, and it shows the movie on special occasions and one time will be on Christmas Eve. Now this movie is not your normal kind of Christmas schmaltzy movie, one of the things you want at Christmas, all the indulgence, all the good princesses. It wouldn’t have been so successful unless there was something more there something, much, much more. Because you do see a power and a drama and a darkness and fear that really transcends any normal Hollywood movie, any movie you normally see on TV, certainly for Christmas - it’s all about good feeling, happy feeling, etc., etc. 

If you know the true story behind Jimmy Stewart, the main actor of that movie, you understand why the power is there, that darkness and drama is there, which makes the movie so effective as a Christmas movie. Jimmy Stewart was a famous actor. He already had done two very spectacular movies: You Can’t Take it With You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, two classics of the Silver Screen. In 1941, he won the Academy Award for The Philadelphia Story. An impressive resume, an impressive resume. But the war was happening and he wanted to fight in this war. Not just for the kind of Hollywood stuff, where you really do nothing and traipse around and dress up, etc. But actually fight, suffer as good men suffer, as good people suffer and experience, as service. And despite the objections of his studio, MGM, he got that to happen. For about four years he was a bomber, a real bomber, B-24, leading bombardments of Germany primarily, about 20 of them, particularly the big week in 1944 when we had a great invasion and attack upon Germany itself. And he was very good at this. He became a leader. Sometimes he led 150 planes in a squadron in these bombing invasions, in these bombing attacks. And they were also very dangerous, very, very dangerous. Lots of his good friends died in this process. A lot of his dearest friends died in this process: colleagues, people he trained, people he had been under, people he had been over. This is a lot of horror, a lot of evil, a lot of death. And that does change you. That does make you different. And one time he barely survived. He was able to get his plane back, barely, to England, much damaged. Towards the end of his career as a bomber and a very successful one, he was kind of put on leave, as it were, what they called “Flak Happy,” which we might call today PTSD. He had the shakes, the nightmares, the horrors, all the things that are characteristic of what we now call PTSD, of the deep trauma that happens when you see such horror, such evil, such darkness. By the time he returned to Hollywood in ’45, he seemed washed up. He had been away for a very long time. And the studio of Louis B. Mayer wanted to put him in a biopic, “The Jimmy Stewart Story: His Heroic Life and Adventures,” which he refused to do. He wouldn’t cheapen his experiences by doing something so mercenary. So Louis B. Mayer said, “He’s washed up in Hollywood; he’ll never work here again.” And it seemed that was true. He lived at a friend’s house, because he had no place to go. His life was washed up or it seemed so. He was much older, paler, with a lot fewer hairs. He looked pretty bad, so song no one could even know him when they saw him after he got back from the war. That’s what war, real war, does to you, even for the best of us, particularly for the best of us. He tried to get a job and couldn’t get one. 

But one person believed in him, Frank Capra, and he got a job in this movie called It’s a Wonderful Life, which he did not like, by the way, didn’t care for this movie. But he did it. But he did it. And the movie is very powerful. For those who don’t know the story, here’s just a little bit, because I want you to see the movie if you can, if you haven’t already. It has this character, George Bailey. All his life, he sacrificed himself for other people: his family, his friends, over and over and over again. He made a personal sacrifice to help other people, and now his life is falling apart. Now everything is collapsing. He’ll be arrested, he’ll be humiliated; everything he has will disintegrate and be gone. And there you see real despair, real darkness as only a good man can be filled with despair, as only a good man can be filled with darkness. And it’s very powerful. You don’t normally see that on the Silver Screen - it’s all fluff, it’s all artificiality. And this is powerful stuff.

What does it have to do with Christmas? Everything, which is why it’s shown at Christmastime. It’s not just that it happens at Christmas, as it does. But it’s all about the incarnate redemption, about our Lord entering this world, about our Lord becoming through the child and all that follows a member of this world. He lifts it all up, he restores it, he rectifies and he heals it identifies it he raises it. That’s what we celebrate Christmas. It’s not all the tinsel, all the other stuff, the presents etc. These reflect the joy that should come from the power of God, the power of Christ made manifest, to bring us to happiness, to bring us out of the darkness, out of despair, or whatever else we suffer from. All of us suffer from something. Some of us have reached the bottom, others have not yet. All of us suffer from something, so we cannot heal ourselves and satisfy our suffering, no matter how good we may be, no matter how lucky, how successful, etc. Which is why he came into the world, Why Christ came into the world, a small child, a small child. So, while today we will be celebrating him still in the womb, it’s about his destiny, as the Son of God made man, as the restorer of the world, as redemptor, the redeemer of mankind. That’s why there’s joy, that’s why there’s peace, that’s why there’s concord. He restores it. No one else, he restores it. We have one week left before the great celebration of Christmas, when this child is born to us. Let us use it to follow him, to imitate him, to be filled with his power and light, because it is a power and it is a life. We are called to a supernatural existence and he makes it possible. Let him make it possible.

Homily of Saturday, December 18, 2021

Around Christmas time, in the Scriptures and in the readings that are given to us, we hear a lot about angels. An angel appeared to Mary. An angel appeared to Joseph. Angels appeared to shepherds. We have an idea from artwork what angels, we think, are supposed to look like. And if something like that appeared to us, we would recognize it. One has to wonder: how did Mary, Joseph, the shepherds recognize that what they were seeing or experiencing were angels? The function of an angel is to bring a message from God. We may ask ourselves in what ways have we been given messages from God. Probably nothing as earth-shattering as those messages that were given to Mary and Joseph. Nevertheless, God acts and works in ways that defy our expectations, that are often difficult for us to realize, because they are not what we expect. God continues to speak to us through his Son. He continues, one way or the other, to give us messages. The time of Christmas, when the unexpected sort of messiah who arrived in the world comes, is a time for us to look in our own lives and see what God is trying to say to us, and what God wants us to do.

Homilette of Friday, December 17, 2021

Today we begin the final period of Advent, the last eight days, in which we prepare for Christ’s coming by hearing the infancy narratives in the gospels, up until the point where Christ is born. And we start this by looking at the genealogy of Christ, by looking at the human preparation, at his ancestry, at what he inherits when he comes into the world. And he inherits, basically, the promises given to Abraham at the beginning of Genesis. He inherits the promises given to David in the Old Testament. He inherits everything that was given to Israel in the Old Testament.

Homily of Wednesday, December 15, 2021

The blind see, the lame walk, and the poor have the good news, the gospel, preached to them. In more recent years, Catholic apologists have tried to use social utility as a way of defending the faith: “Look at all the good things we inspire – the wonderful hospitals and orphanages, all the other good works.” And that has some usefulness, some utility, some effectiveness, and you can see that. But it is very limited for many, many reasons that I can’t get into right now. It’s very limited. If you look back to the gospels themselves, they have a very different criteria by which they judge what is the truth of something. And our Lord gives it in today’s gospel: the power of God. The power of God to change lives radically, often by miracles of healing, of the blind can see, the lame can walk, and so on. The raising of the dead. The changing of lives, sometimes extraordinarily, miraculously, but sometimes more intimately. But truly, really, powerfully. And that’s for all of us. That’s why the gospel exists in the first place, to lead us to transformation, happiness, the true authentic life, Reality. Which begins in this world but is not completed by this world. And we have this season to prepare ourselves to experience the power of God, be changed by God, radically so. The season we call Advent. We can’t experience the power of God, the power that Christ offers us in his Incarnation, unless we get rid of all the bad stuff, all the sin, all the mediocrity, all the cowardice, all the selfishness, etc. So God can fill us with his own incarnate power, His own awesomeness. And if we do that, if we authentically try to change our lives, radically so, to be open to what He gives us – His grace, His power, His life – then we experience powerfully His reality. We are not just inspired by Him, not just, you know, entranced by his example. We are changed radically by His presence, by His power, by his Majesty. So we have this season of Advent to prepare ourselves to meet the Lord, first by repentance and then by experience. Let us use this season. Let us use this time. Let us turn to the Lord, powerfully. And we will know Him powerfully, and be changed powerfully, and be happier and more fulfilled, more completed people, powerfully.

Homily of Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Here are some thoughts, ideas, that come from Saint John of the Cross, from his collection of Counsels and Maxims. He says: “The language that God hears best is the silent language of love.” Another: “Love does not consist in feeling great things, but in having great detachment and in suffering for the beloved.” And then there are twelve means, and this is really for us monks, twelve means for arriving at the highest perfection: Love of God, love of neighbor, obedience, chastity, poverty, attendance at choir, penance, humility, mortification, prayer, silence, peace. And then there’s the very famous one: “At the end of your life, you will be judged by love.” And there’s an ambiguous statement, at least it seems to me, and that’s because you don’t know if it means you will be judged by him who is love itself, so that’s true, or does he mean it will be your life, what it is, that will be judged. Maybe it’s both.

Homily of Monday, December 13, 2021
(Numbers 24: 2 – 7, 15 – 17a; Matthew 21: 23 – 27)

In today’s Gospel Jesus is confronted in the Temple by by the chief priests and elders.  They ask him by what authority he had been acting. Just prior to this, Jesus triumphantly entered the city, let himself be proclaimed Messiah and king, threw people forcibly out of the temple precincts, and remained to teach and heal the rest – some pretty attention-getting activity, to say the least. In response to the hostility of the temple leaders, Jesus produces a completely unexpected master-stroke. He answers their question with a question.  This was (and is) common to rabbinical teaching.  It is intended to prompt a student to inspect the implied assumptions behind his question, an effective way to advance discussion on any topic. No doubt the twelve-year-old Jesus would have encountered such teaching methods during those three enormously formative days he spent in the Jerusalem temple with the teachers and elders who were so impressed with him.  Focusing our attention on his parents’ justifiable anxiety, we seldom do credit to the importance of that time spent – “in his Father’s house” (Lk 2: 49) – on the young Jesus’ formation as a teacher. So, in today’s Gospel we see him years later, nearing the end of his time on earth, again in the Temple boldly applying what he had learned there so long ago.  What he was offering, in fact, was a sort of pedagogical examination of conscience, something routinely proposed by any master to a disciple. These elders must have been galled at finding themselves placed in this sort of a subordinate position.  It’s not hard to understand their resentment.  In fact they found themselves in a complete bind between embarrassment and fear, totally incapable of speaking with authority themselves. Having opted out of the discussion, by astonishingly pleading ignorance, they showed themselves as hardly meriting Jesus’ time and attention.  So they missed the chance of a lifetime when Jesus simply refused to discuss with them the grounds of his own authority.   

Homily for Gaudete Sunday (Advent III), December 12, 2021

Today is what used to be called ‘Gaudete” Sunday. The theme the Church gives us in today’s mass and readings is rejoice. Be joyful and happy. Christmas is only a week and a half away.  Advent – that season of preparation and getting ready – is over the hump, as they say, winding down. Celebrate that what we have been preparing for is almost here. That, you may say, is somewhat like rejoicing at 3 PM because 6 PM dinner time is almost here. You may rejoice if you want to, but that doesn’t fill your stomach. True enough. But such early happiness can fill your spirit in a way that a full stomach could never achieve.

One summer I had the privilege to officiate at 3 weddings. It was a special experience to meet these wonderful couples in love, as they were preparing and looking forward to a special day that would change their lives forever. I have never seen people more happy than in the last meetings with them, a short month away from the weddings. They were fully caught up in the breathless joy, the palpable anticipation, the excitement, the realization that after all the discernment and planning and waiting, that their wedding would indeed happen. Their happiness then was even greater than it was during the actual wedding celebrations when they were swept up and along by the many events, the photographers and social obligations to relatives and friends. There is something special about the joy of anticipation, the joy of realizing intellectually before actually experiencing.

The joy of expectation of the pure concept is free from the imperfections and complications we unavoidably experience in this world. In anticipation the perfection of the form can be experienced. I have never had the experience, but I know that a newly expectant mother is radiant with joy. The sure knowledge that she will bring a new image of God into the world must be so fulfilling, so joy filling. But later on, the expectant mother who endures morning sickness and the burden of carrying extra weight, whose body image has been compromised by her joyful burden, is maybe a little less radiant. And I am told that in the throes of birth many a mother has wished she had joined a convent. This impulse passes, of course, but the realization of reality can have its harshness.

I think even God himself had this experience. In those months before his birth in Bethlehem, even God must have been excited. God though he was, he had never experienced life as a human being. He never experienced a hug, a refreshing drink of cold water, the exhilaration of a rapid climb up a tall hill. All these things and many more God had to look forward to in the incarnation of His Word. And God knew too that his people had been waiting for this, and although many would be taken by surprise, many would welcome him with open arms and caress his feet.

God must have very much looked forward to this. And He must have enjoyed it because he chose to remain in a physical presence in the Eucharist so he could continue to be touched by us, so his physical presence could still witness the love in the eyes and hearts of his people. Indeed, God must have rejoiced in anticipation in the short weeks before his birth. Simeon too experienced this rejoicing in anticipation when he beheld the Child Jesus being presented in the Temple. He knew, he had seen in the eye of his mind and soul the salvation promised by God. It was no matter that the eyes of his body would not witness the paradoxical paschal triumph of the messiah. He had seen the light which would illumine the world and his joy was complete as was his life.

This kind of joy in anticipation, the joy of the spiritual experience of the platonic form, requires faith on our part and a strong view of the positive workings of God, a real trust that for those who love God all things work for the good. That is because everything we happily anticipate does not turn out to be okay in human terms in our experience in this world. The angel at the annunciation never mentioned to Mary the problems there would be. In God’s excited anticipation of His incarnation, as God only, He could not have known the depths of fear fighting despair which he came to know in the garden of Gethsemane; He could not have known just how painful and life draining His passion would be. The perfection of the forms and spiritual realities we know intellectually and from faith are not meant to be perfected in this world.

Many Jewish people gave up on God after the Holocaust, saying a real God would never allow such a thing to happen. Many people in France, after 2 world wars in 30 years, also gave up on God and raised their children as atheists. I wonder what those people thought here in America, those who were executed but whom DNA evidence later showed were innocent. Their mothers bore them, they had dreams and anticipated joyfully many things, which were not to be realized here. They are extreme cases obviously, but just as obviously real. But they show that this world is not so real in the long run. The Risen Jesus ascended from this world to the truly real. The Jewish people who had faith In God and his promise saw the rebirth of Israel. The French who kept their faith would see little miracles in a Polish and then a German Pope and a Cardinal Archbishop of Paris who had been a Jew. And those innocents who lost their lives in this world but kept the joy of their faith, would gain their life fully in the next. We must rejoice in the Lord always. We must never – ever - lose our hope and joy. That is the message of Advent this Sunday.

In the Gospel today people ask John the Baptist: What should we do? He answers with his Gospel which prepares us for the coming of Jesus Christ. It’s so simple but so hard: Do Good, don’t lie, don’t cheat, be just, follow the ten commandments. This is the necessary preparation to recognize and receive the surprise Messiah about to arrive who will set up his Kingdom not of this world in this world.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: Rejoice! The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Rejoice. Be glad. We have a lot to look forward to. Not just on December 25, but everyday. But it is what we commemorate on December 25, that made it all possible, that made it possible for us to be happy not for just a day or a lifetime, but forever in eternity. The kingdom of God is here and God is with us.

Homilette of Saturday, December 11

One way you can understand the season of Advent is that it is a prolongation of the petition in the prayer that our Lord taught us: “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done.” In other words, it’s four weeks in which that idea is emphasized, and an event for which we pray. The other thing is that the last words of the Bible for Christians, practically the last words, are: “Come, Lord Jesus.” And, again, this season can be seen as a prolonged meditation on those words, and a prolonged prayer that that prayer of the New Testament be accomplished.

Homily of Thursday, December 9, 2021 (Memorial of Saint Juan Diego)

I know it’s a little early in the morning for math, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to do a little bit of it. Our Lady of Guadalupe: this was in the 1530s; Juan Diego died in 1548, at the age of 74. Therefore, he was born about 1475, somewhere. Cortez did not conquer until 1517. So Juan Diego grew up as a pagan - where they would take the victims, take them out, and tear their hearts out. The way they got their victims was from military action; the point of war, for the Aztecs, was to take captives, to go out to the weaker members of the tribes, nations in battle, and take prisoners, take them back to the temple. I’ve been wondering: did Saint Juan Diego take part in this? Was he a soldier when he was younger? Did he delight and praise the gods, as he saw people scream and die? Yet this is the same man that Our Lady filled his cloak, his tilma, appeared to him, conversed with him: because God reached down to him, and Juan Diego reached up, with purity of heart. “Yes, my beloved.” Both saying, one to the other: “Yes, my beloved.” let us reach out to that God who is always, always calling out to us: “Yes, my beloved.” And blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

Homily of Tuesday, December 7, 2021 (Memorial of Saint Ambrose) 
(Isaiah 40: 1 – 11; Matthew 18: 12 - 14)

In today’s Mass we remember especially St. Ambrose, 4th century Bishop of Milan and Doctor of the Church. In a homily on the text of Isaiah which formed our first reading today, St. Ambrose said this:  “ A voice cries out in the desert: Prepare a way for the Lord.  Build him a straight highway.  What way shall we prepare for the Lord?  Is it not a way within ourselves?  Is it not a straight and level highway in our hearts that we are to make ready?  The human heart is vast and broad if only it’s pure.”  The “human heart” Ambrose speaks of is our soul. Beginning with Aristotle, the human soul has been seen to be something mysteriously simple, unlike the physical body which is complex, made up of separate organs each with its distinct function. Intellect, will, and emotions, for instance, are powers of the entire soul. They don’t originate in separate compartments or organs within it.  Accordingly, when we sin, evil doesn’t “park” itself in a separate, secret place of its own in our soul. Rather, it affects everything. It’s something like a drop of ink falling into a glass of water. The entire glass becomes stained. Likewise, no part of our soul remains unaffected by wickedness. Sin clouds the intellect and stunts intuition, but even so we remain aware of its insidious presence. We could say that within our soul, there are no secrets. That's why an examination of conscience works. The problem, of course, is that we do it so seldom. Advent is when we prepare ourselves for the arrival of the Word of God. When He comes to us we know it. If our hearts are so vast and broad, then, why do we so often “not get it”, or “not see it” or remain so dull? Because our hearts are not pure; because we remain quite blinded by all the “little”, harmless faults we permit ourselves. Every year, especially in Advent, the Church exhorts us to prepare a way for the Lord, to build him a straight highway, in other words, to purify our souls by a renewed interior conversion.  

Homily of Monday, December 6, 2021

Today is the feast day of Saint Nicholas of Myra, an early fourth-century Bishop. In fact, there is not much we know for certain about this man. We know him by a decidedly different name: he is Santa Claus, Saint Nick, Father Christmas. Is Saint Nicolas an Advent Saint? All Saints are proper saints for Advent. Because in the lives of Saint Nicholas and an all saints we see the same things that we have seen and see in Advent, in the first and second parts. As we see in the first part of Advent, there was a great examination of self to see if any part of us is unworthy of God and worthy of Christ, on the horizon of eternity and judgment. We examine ourselves and remove from ourselves all that is impure, sinful, defective, small, petty, etc. And like the second part of Advent, we fill ourselves with and prepare ourselves for Christ, by our spiritual transformation, by our growth in grace and virtue and holiness. So, all of us should imitate Saint Nicolas. All of us should imitate all of the saints, because in the lives of all the saints we see the same reality - of the austere penitential aspect of Advent in the first few weeks, and rejoicing in participation, in anticipation of the glory of the Lord, the transformation of the Lord, the incarnation we see in the second part of Advent. So, Father Christmas, Saint Nicolas of Mira, or Saint Nicholas of Bari as some people know him, is a very appropriate saint for this season, both in his austerity and simplicity and in his transformation and reinventing himself, in his filling of self with the Lord. Let us imitate this good saint. Let us imitate all of the Saints. We can’t go wrong imitating any of the saints, and we will find on Christmas Day something very special for ourselves, which no man can take away; something true, something lasting, something real. 

Homily of the Second Sunday of Advent, December 5, 2021

It’s Advent. The readings at Mass are supposed to help us to re-experience longing and hope, the sort of longing and hope of the long-suffering children of Israel a longing for a world without terror and hate, a longing for genuine and lasting peace. Longing for a more full and more real life, longing for a perfect love relationship with no mistakes and no regrets, and with hope for fulfillment. Longing for a real understanding and experience of God. Longing and hope for all these things which are encompassed by that word “salvation”. In Advent we remember that once the condition of humanity was such that all this was beyond reach. And the Old Testament prophets spoke with one voice, like John the Baptist in today’s Gospel, a voice of one crying out in the desert. Deserts are characterized by isolation, loneliness and dryness, and all of us experience desert times in our lives. But properly approached, these times are always a preparation for something. In the desert the prophet John says, preparing the way of the Lord.

The prophet Baruch today speaks of a very specific desert experience in the first reading. The chosen people of God had been taken captive and carried off to Babylon, far away from Jerusalem and the sacred temple within it which had been reduced to rubble. The city of David, the Temple of Solomon in the heart of the promised land meant everything to God’s people. What a temptation to hopelessness and despair this must have been. How much they must have seen this not only as a desert experience but as being deserted by God. And yet the chosen people learned something very important during their time of exile, something that has sustained them from 580 BC even until now, and which continues to sustain us too. They learned the importance of The Word of God, the scriptures, something they had not paid much attention to before. But without the temple it was the only thing left to them and proved more meaningful and more lasting than the ark of the covenant and sacrificial rituals. In the midst of this exile, the prophet tells the empty and ruined city of Jerusalem: “Led away on foot by their enemies they (the chosen people) left you: but God will bring them back to you.” He says Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight.

Now this part is confusing for us 21st century sophisticates. Mountains and valleys are beautiful to us. I’ve been to Chile several times, and 2/3 of the pictures I take are of the Andes Mountains. And no road is as boring as a straight road on a flat plain as anyone who has driven Interstate 70 thru Kansas knows. But in 580 BC, you didn’t go up and down mountains and cross valleys and rivers except on foot, carrying your stuff, suffering a lot of hardship on winding roads. The idea that a pristine landscape and scenery are beautiful is a relatively modern notion. Taken into exile, the Jewish people were force-marched far to the north, then east thru deep valleys and over mountains before they came down into the Tigris-Euphrates valley where Babylon was. In this journey there was no beautiful scenery in their eyes. They had to go this round about way to avoid the terrible desert that lay directly between Palestine and Babylon. If they were ever to go home, it would have to be by the same arduous way they came.

But NO! The prophet Baruch says: Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. In another place Isaiah says the winding roads shall be made straight. God will make a highway thru the desert, a straight direct route to take the people home as quickly and comfortably as possible. That is, God is going to make it easier for you. And so he did, but the sad thing is, that when the Jewish people were allowed to leave Babylon, few of them did. Jerusalem was a ruin needing to be rebuilt; Babylon, was nice, warm, comfortable, civilized. It had a scintillating night life. It was where the action was many of them had become successful and rich in business there. Babylon was tempting. That’s why in reggae music Babylon is a metaphor for evil. It had all the glamour of evil that we reject in our Baptismal promises. And so, St. Paul writes to his converts at Philippi, that he prays for them as they wait for the second coming of Jesus Christ… “that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, This tells us that we are now in the age of a Second Advent waiting for that next coming; This is not an advent of just 4 weeks for us, or of 60 years like it was for the Jewish people in Babylon, but an advent of hundreds or thousands of years. Yet for each of us, Advent is our whole lifetime. During this time we too must discover and decide … as the Jewish people had to in their exile… what is critical for our salvation… for the successful outcome of our lives and what is not, we too must discover and decide what are our opportunities amid our problems and amid the changes of the world and society; we must discern and decide what changes we must make and which we should resist.

Like John the Baptist told those who would listen    to him. We have to change our ways, not just a cosmetic makeover, but a complete turning around. We need to stop going in our own directions and move towards God and be open to what God is doing for us. That requires a change in our thinking and acting. We too are surrounded by the glamour of evil and perhaps even more by the glamour of the trivial. Society is constantly trying to get our attention and influence us to buy something - this or that product, or to believe in this or that idea to follow this or that leader. to spend our time on games, TikTok, sex, cannabis or slot machines. After I bought a house, I was astonished how very little time it took for me, who had previously only lived in a one bedroom apartment, to fill up all its rooms, the basement, the attic and garage with all kinds of stuff I absolutely had to have… furniture, garden and household tools, stereo equipment and records my growing collection of antique pattern glass, my growing collection of parrots. There was no end to my acquisitiveness. In addition to this terror of not having the things we want, we are also surrounded by the terror of evil, as has been made so clear to us from Michigan this last week…and the mindset of fear this terror can create in us can be a great hindrance to salvation, forcing us to be too protective and selfish if not uncharitable, angry or hateful. Again and again in the Gospels Jesus tells us: Don’t be afraid. Your Father is happy to give you the kingdom.

It is important for us to keep our eyes set on our ultimate happiness, on what is of value and of ultimate, lasting importance, on what lasts forever and not just for a time. It is important for us not to squander all our time and energy during our relatively short and quick moving lives    on someone else’s agenda or ideas of power or profit or pleasure. God has made it relatively easy for us. He has shown us the way, the high-way, filled in the potholes and removed all the detours, put watering places, rest stops and filling stations along our way. He has done that through Jesus Christ, of whom John the Baptist speaks in the gospel today. If we follow him, we will see God with our own eyes, and those we love who have gone on before us. 

Advent is the time to prepare for that, to be joyful with certain hope, to long a little, for our terrifying but ultimate and happy destiny with The Father, The Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, who became one of us so that we could become like Him. For that, in this Eucharist, we give thanks and praise to God who loves us so.

Homily of Thursday, December 3, 2021

In a place that is more or less Christian, particularly if it’s a very weak Christianity, it’s easy to lose sight of what it means to be a Christian. Which is why a feast like today’s, the great missionary Saint Francis Xavier, the 16th century Jesuit missionary in the Far East, is so important for us. When you are a missionary, you meet lots of people who have no idea of what Christianity is, so you must know what you are preaching. You also will meet, as Saint Francis Xavier did meet, particularly in India, bad Christians, lots of them, which are not a very edifying kind of reality. In fact, dis-edifying, which makes your work much more difficult. It makes your thought about what it means to be a Christian much sharper, much more insightful. And that fits very well with the season of Advent, particularly the beginning of this season of Advent, where we examine ourselves and whether we are in fact good Christians or bad ones, if we’ll Christ or not. It’s easy to be bad Christians: we’ll just be what we are, usually, more or less - not terrible, not great, just kind of in between. But great missionaries like Francis Xavier, his life, his example and his writings, and the season we are in, which talks about what it means to be truly faithful to God - the advent of Christ’s last coming, the coming that will judge the living and the dead, our final destiny - focus what we should be. And how also we can be happy if we follow Christ with faith like we see in today’s second reading, the reading from the gospel, as these people did. They had great faith, deep faith. If we follow him, then the great bounty and power and happiness that is made for us, in the second part of Advent you might say, the coming of Christ, the bounty that comes with the coming of the Lord, in the fulfillment of that reality in the second coming, will be ours. And that’s what it is all about, really. Francis Xavier was a missionary for a purpose, wanting to convert people, to get them to think as he did. But being a missionary made him realize far more profoundly what it means to be a Christian and to preach that more purely more intensely, and from that life of intensity  comes great joy

Homily of Wednesday, December 1, 2021 

Advent is about the church expressing her longing for the return of her Savior and the desire for Christ. Here are some texts from Saint Augustine for Advent. He says in one of his sermons: “My brothers and sisters, believe firmly what you believe, that Christ will return. What does it matter when? Prepare yourself for his coming. Live as though he were coming today, and you will not fear his coming.” This is a prayer of his, a commentary on Psalm 142: “Enter not into judgment of me. O Lord, my God. I may imagine myself to be ever so just, but when you bring forth your treasury and apply it to me, I am found to be evil. Enter not into judgment with your servant. I am in need of mercy, for I am a fugitive, returning and seeking peace, but I am not worthy to be called your son.” And then finally, this is from one of his sermons on the gospel of John: “Our every breath yearns for Christ. He alone is the desired one, the most beautiful of all. Christ loved us in our unloveliness in order to make us beautiful like himself.”

Homily of Tuesday, November 30, 2021 (Feast of Saint Andrew, apostle)

What would you do for someone you loved so profoundly and deeply? To what depths of humility and humiliation would you go and have gone? What would you give and give up out of love? Paul tells us that Christ took on the form of a slave, slave to sin, for us, out of love for us. Christ called Matthew from being a tax collector, where he was working. If you get into the history of Roman taxation, Matthew, between what he should be getting legitimately and what he was getting through bribes and outright extortion, it was a very lucrative position. But he immediately left. Peter and Andrew, if you go through the other Gospel accounts, there is their father and the hired men. This is quite a business enterprise. And how long do you think it took that family to build that business up? They leave, instantly. It is an almost sacred duty at that time for a Jewish son to bury his father. Remember the young man who came to Jesus and said, “I will follow you, just let me first bury my father.” In other words, what he was telling Jesus was wait until he dies and I have fulfilled my duties. And Jesus said, “No, follow me now.” They up and go. They left instantly their life on the water. 

Water, in the Jewish culture, is a symbol of power, the floods and the desert wadis come roaring down, wiping out tents and flocks. And then, these good desert people come to the Mediterranean and see the storms. Genesis - water, symbol of chaos, a reality of disorder and nothingness, raging. Water is a sign of God‘s blessing, of God’s presence and power. Water is also a symbol of death. You cannot stop the raging water. You cannot live in the raging water. It consumes, always. Always has room for more. You lose one boat going out. Don’t worry, the sea has plenty more room for all the other ones. Death is where we disappear. We drown in the raging, chaotic, nothing of death, because it is not part of our being, part of our nature. The fisherman, Andrew, with the power of Christ and his church, draws us out of the waters of death and casts us into the bark of Peter. Some of my students have replied: well, water is fine for fish what’s the problem? I point out to them: well, we are not fish. Death is a distancing from God. It is an effect of our distance from God. Salvation, as a very smart person once wrote, salvation is about the annihilation of distance between ourselves and God. So is prayer. Let us all annihilate the distance. Let us draw ourselves and others out of the waters of death into the bright light of love of God, infinite and eternal being, infinite and eternal love for us. Let us annihilate that distance and find ourselves all in the kingdom of God. Tell you what, I’ll do it my way, you do it your way. But always in our hearts let us keep the commandment that Christ gave the apostles at the last supper: love one another as I have loved you.

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2021

Today, we move into the season of Advent, the first season of the liturgical year, and an unusual season with a varied history. Like Lent, it is a preparatory and penitential season, which is symbolized by the liturgical color of purple. I haven’t yet seen any explanation for how this use of purple developed aside from speculation that perhaps purple came about from using old black vestments that had lost their color over time. This may seem an unexpected connection to us because, unlike Lent, there is currently no additional fasting or abstinence in Advent on top of the Friday abstinence from meat present throughout the year, which can be replaced by some pious or charitable act.  

This current practice, however, was not always the case and is not the case everywhere. The symmetry between Lent and what would develop into Advent was more closely observed in the early medieval Church: Church councils from the 6th century specify a period known as “St. Martin’s Lent,” which started after the feast of St. Martin on November 11 and lasted until Christmas, during which strict fasts were observed on all Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. A forty-day Nativity fast, starting November 15, is still observed by many eastern Churches. For the Roman Church, however, the fasts gradually died out. 1917 marked the end of obligatory Friday fasts in several American dioceses. The "Ember days" were days of fasting observed during each of the four seasons. While the winter Ember days in the middle of December had taken on an Advent character, the entire practice was made optional in 1969, and mostly disappeared. Instead, the focus on Christmas and the coming of Christ came to dominate. In the Liturgy, we are presented with three different ways Christ comes to us: in history at the Nativity, into our hearts at our baptism and through the Church, and into glory at the end of time, when the living and dead will be judged. 

These three comings can each be seen in today’s readings. Jeremiah, writing as the Babylonian exile is starting, with Jerusalem destroyed, and the house of David seemingly brought to an end, looks forward to the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel, when a just shoot will be raised for David, which will restore safety and security to Jerusalem. This would happen when Christ came in time, although not necessarily as most expected. In justice, Jesus does establish safety for Judah and security for Jerusalem. However, this is not the physical city of Jerusalem or the physical state of Judah, which would both be destroyed by the Romans not long after Jesus’ crucifixion. Instead, the New Israel, the Church, is established by Christ, built on secure rock. 

The reading from St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians is put into the context of Christ coming at the end of time. Paul tells the Thessalonians they should abound in love for one another, “so as … to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.”  Exactly what this second coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones looks like is the central idea of today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus makes a, perhaps for us, unexpected move. He starts by describing, in stark terms, what will happen when he comes again: signs will be seen throughout the day and night: in the sun, the moon, the stars and the earth; nations will be in chaos; people will die of fright. At that moment, the Son of Man will appear, coming in a cloud down from heaven, with power and glory. This is the day of wrath described in one of the most influential works in music history, the Dies Irae. Our response to this is not, however, fear and dread, but raising our heads because those will be the signs of our final redemption, when Earth will pass away, and be replaced by a new Earth, which has God visibly at its heart, as described in the final chapter of the book of Revelation. 

There is, however, a caveat. These two arrivals of Christ in history and at the end of time are not just facts of faith that we passively assent to. Instead, they require that we also receive Christ into our hearts: they require us to be conformed to the image of Christ so that we can receive His glory with Him at the end of time. After telling his disciples, and therefore us, to raise our heads high when he comes again, Jesus warns us. Our hearts should not “become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life.” In order to raise our heads high at his coming, and not shrink in fear of judgement, we must “be vigilant at all times and pray that (we) have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.”  A similar idea is present in the second reading. The coming at the end of time is not really the essential point St. Paul is making. He is instead using our need to appear holy and blameless before Christ when he comes again as the context for his exhortation that the Thessalonians should abound in love for one another and should keep ever more strongly to the conduct the Apostles, including St. Paul, had taught them. 

This leaves a need for us to prepare for Christ’s coming at the end of time, to prepare for Him a place in our hearts, and to prepare for the Incarnation, as Jeremiah and the prophets of the Old Testament did. This leaves a space for Advent as a penitential season, which is why I am currently wearing purple vestments, and why we did not sing the Gloria at the beginning of Mass. Penitence requires that we express sorrow for our sins, offering them up to Christ, in particular through the sacrament of Confession, and fortifying ourselves against sin. Alongside prayer and almsgiving, one important way this fortification against sin can be done is through bodily mortification: in particular fasting. Then, when the day of judgment comes, and it will always be unexpected, we will be able to raise our heads high and not be found wanting. 

Homily from Saturday, November 27, 2021

This is from Saint Ambrose, Doctor of the Church and great bishop of Milan. He says, speaking of Our Lady: “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit after conceiving a son; Mary was filled before. ‘You are blessed,’ said Elizabeth, ‘because you have believed.’ You too are blessed, because you have heard and believed. The soul of every believer conceives and brings forth the Word of God and recognizes His works. May Mary’s soul be in each of you to glorify the Lord. Let her spirt be in each of you to rejoice in the Lord. Christ has only one mother in the flesh, but we all bring forth Christ by faith. Every soul, free from contamination of sin and inviolate in its purity can receive the Word of God.” May the Holy Virgin Mary pray for us, to hear the Word, understand it, and conceive in ourselves the Holy Word of God.