Commendation

Homily for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

(All Souls' Day)

2 November 2014

"Into Your hands, Lord, I commend My Spirit."

These are not just words of Jesus, but of all the faithful who have passed from this world. We pray for all the faithful departed this weekend, not only for their salvation, but because, when our time comes, we want somebody to pray for us - to remember us.

We commend our spirit to the Lord each day through the way we live out the Paschal Mystery. We die so as to live like Christ.

Our brothers and sisters who have passed from this world have commended their spirits, their souls, to the Lord in the hope of experiencing the same Resurrection we just heard about. We commend their souls to God because we love them, and wish for them to be embraced by the peaceful and loving arms of God. And one day, we, too, will commend our souls to God one last time, hoping that He will embrace us in His mercy.

Trusting in our merciful God, we now take a moment to once again commend the souls of the just into the hands of God. Let us take a moment of silence to pray for our family and friends who have passed, commending their souls to the mercy of God.



** In Paradisum . . . **




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Enjoy the journey . . .    

Seek the Face of God

Homily for the Solemnity of All Saints
1 November 2014

          My brothers and sisters, we ought to be jealous!

        Today, we celebrate all the women and men, known and unknown, who stand before the Face of God in fullness of His glory.

        We ought to be jealous, because, ultimately, we want to be like them. We want to be in the fullness of God’s glory.

        That is why the refrain of our Responsorial Psalm is so apt for today: We are the people who long to see the Face of God. Yet, we also recognize that those saints who we celebrate this day had that same longing, that same desire. And now their longing, that desire, is fulfilled.

        We pray that one day we may join them in the fullness of Divine love and ecstasy.

        But how are we to do that?

        Our answer, as always, is Jesus: His words, His example.

        Our Gospel today gives us the instructions on how to seek the Face of God: Be blessed!

        We must understand that throughout our lives there will be moments when we are poor in spirit; when we will mourn; when we will be meek; when we will hunger and thirst for righteousness; when we will be merciful; when we will be clean of heart; when we will be peacemakers; when we will be persecuted for the sake of righteousness; and, yes, even times when we will be insulted and persecuted and have every kind of evil uttered against us falsely because of Christ. If and when we recognize these moments throughout our lives, we should rejoice and consider ourselves to be blessed, for we are to recognize the presence of Christ in that moment. Doing so, we seek and see the Face of God.

        It is in these moments, these blessed times of our lives, that we achieve a similar glory to the saints – for they, too, have sought the Face of God, and now praise Him in the fullness of His glory. We live out in our lives in the here and now a foreshadowing of the glory to come. We see glimpses of the Face of God in others, but await the glorious day when we truly behold our God face-to-Face.

        Yet, as seek the Face of God in this life, praying to behold It fully in the next, we also recognize the blessings, the rewards bestowed upon us, as we reflected upon in our Responsorial Psalm. Though the Church Triumphant celebrates these blessings, these rewards in their fullness in Heaven, we, once again, have the foreshadowing here on Earth. For, like the saints, we celebrate the glimpses of the Kingdom of Heaven given to us here on Earth; we are comforted; we inherit the land and its fruitfulness, becoming true stewards of all that God has given to us; we are satisfied when true justice is brought about; we are shown mercy; we see God in the moments of innocence and joy; we are called children of God; and we trust in the promise that our reward will be great in heaven if we remain faithful to the covenant and commands of our God.

        We seek the Face of God because, as sinful as it sounds, we are jealous of the saints whom we celebrate today. We are jealous because we want what they have: Eternal bliss and ecstasy with our God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And, yes, we should be jealous! But if we’re truly jealous, if we truly want what they have, then we have to work for it – we have to actively seek the Face of God. We have to not just put the Beatitudes into practice, we must incarnate the Beatitudes, becoming blessed, ourselves.

        As we become more of that lived beatitude in our lives, the more people will become jealous of us, a jealousy that hopefully leads to Christ, to His Body, and, ultimately, to a life lived with the saints.

        The joy that the saints now live in and experience is given to us in the foreshadowed glory celebrated here in the Mass. As we offer and receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Father through the Holy Spirit, we join with our brothers and sisters in glory, praying that they will pray for us, praying that one day we will be able to join with them in the fullness of glory.

        My brothers and sisters, be jealous of what the saints have, and pray that (God willing) one day, we will have used that jealousy to pursue holiness, so that each one of us here will share in the fullness of the glory of God in Heaven. Be jealous, so as to seek the Face of God in this life so that we may behold It in Its fullness in the next.

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Enjoy the journey . . .

Where Is Your Heart?

Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
26 October 2014

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.

        These words of the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton expound on the great lessons we have learned in our First Reading and Gospel for this weekend: Namely, we cannot love God or neighbor exclusively. Love for God is rooted in our love for our neighbor; love for our neighbor is rooted in our love for God.

        This, then, is the basis for the understanding of Catholic Social Justice. This, then, is the basis for Christian charity.

        And so the question arises: Where is your heart?

        The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that: The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw." The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant. (Paragraph 2563)

        If, then, our heart is that place that not only we withdraw to, but is also the place of truth and encounter, where is it to be?

        The old adage of “Charity begins at home” becomes a lie, for lack of a better word, when we look at the heart. Charity, love, truly begins in the heart, not in the home. Charity begins when you and I withdraw and personally encounter the living God – heart speaking to Heart. Charity begins when you and I choose whether we will live in the freedom of God’s grace or choose to die due to our selfish decisions.

        Where, then, is your heart?

        For the Christian, charity is never an option – it is the way of life that we adhere to and live out because it is not only what Jesus commanded us to do (“Love one another as I have loved you” [John 15:12].), but we enter into the fullness of our participation in living out the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. For the Christian, charity becomes the very heart of who we are and not simply what we do. Our intertwined love of God and neighbor compels us toward compassion, concern, empathy, and action.

        In his encyclical, Veritas in Caritate, (Charity in Truth), Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI teaches us the following: Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law (cf. Mt 22:36- 40). It gives real substance to the personal relationship with God and with neighbor; it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones). For the Church, instructed by the Gospel, charity is everything because, as Saint John teaches (cf. 1 Jn 4:8, 16) and as I recalled in my first Encyclical Letter, “God is love” (Deus Caritas Est): everything has its origin in God's love, everything is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it. Love is God's greatest gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope. (VC, 2)

        Think back to the opening words from Thomas Merton. We never worry about whether or not someone is considered “worthy” to receive our love. Who cares if another is worthy or not?! “. . . Everything has its origin in God's love, everything is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it.” Charity is what we practice in relation to our neighbor because charity is what we have received from God.

        Yet, the question arises once again: Where is your heart?

        This is the question Pope Francis has been asking the Church to reflect upon since his election. Our Holy Father has been stressing that we are not just a Church of teachings, dogmas and doctrines. Rather we are that AS WELL AS a Church of mission. We are a Church of charity. Our mission to proclaim the Gospel is rooted in our personal experience of how the love of God and neighbor has embedded itself in our hearts. Pope Francis points back at the teachings of Pope Benedict, and becomes the example of how to put that teaching into action. Pope Francis challenges us to understand that our hearts must be rooted in the Heart of Christ, since, through the Paschal Mystery, we see the fulfillment of Love in action when we look at the Cross. When we see just how far Love, Himself, would open His Heart for us, we must ponder how much we would open our hearts not only for God, but for our neighbor – including those we would deem unworthy or undesirable, for no one is unworthy of God’s love; no one is undesired by God.

        On this day, then, we approach our God in our brokenness, asking Him to strengthen us in holiness through our reception of the Word and Sacrament. We come before our God, struggling to open our heart to His Love as we struggle to open our hearts so that we may love our neighbor. We place before the Sacred Heart of Christ our unworthiness so that we may become worthy. We acknowledge those moments of feeling undesired, knowing that God always desires the whole of who we have been created to be.

        And so, where is your heart? If we’re honest, it is “the dwelling-place where [we are], where [we] live; . . . [it] is the place "to which [we] withdraw." The heart is our hidden center . . . ; [the place where] only the Spirit of God can fathom . . . and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision . . . It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter . . . it is the place of covenant.” Yet our hearts are also the places where we struggle, and, finally, where we surrender.

        Ultimately, our hearts are searching and striving. They attempt to keep the love of God and neighbor intertwined while living in this world. They toil to practice charity while hearing the quiet whispers of the Devil to do otherwise. They wander between the ecstasy of union with God and the despair of a life wrought by sin.

        Our hearts are never complacent in living out the charity Christ has exampled and commanded us to do. Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

        Looking, then, to the Cross, we pray that the Lord’s example may be that which compels us to charitable action. Looking to the Cross, we struggle to follow the Law and the Prophets as we pray:

Most high, glorious God,
enlighten the darkness
of my heart and give me Lord,
a correct faith, a certain hope,
a perfect charity, sense and knowledge,
so that I may carry out
Your holy and true command.

AMEN

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Enjoy the journey . . .

Groaning

Homily for the Parish Celebration of Vespers for the Solemnity of Saint Teresa of Avila
15 October 2014

        We all know what it is to groan.

        We groan when we’re tired. We groan when we are sick. We groan when we stand up. We groan when we sit down. We groan in anger. We groan in frustration. We groan at the telling of a bad joke.

        We groan when we have nothing left to say.

        We groan when we don’t know what to say.

        And here we find ourselves celebrating a woman who had a lot to say, and we recognize that throughout the course of her life, she groaned.

        But Saint Teresa, this first woman Doctor of the Church, teaches us more than to groan because of frustration, sickness or the occasional bad joke. She instructs us on how to groan through and with the Spirit.

        The groaning of our hearts – the way that the Spirit stirs us to speak and to act – is the manifestation of the groaning of God to wake us from our sleep to the newness of life; it is the way in which our God calls us from a life of hopelessness to a life that is filled with hope. The groaning of our hearts to the Heart of God is that groaning of two lovers, whose expressions of love go beyond glances and actions, who speak only in the groanings of ecstasy.

        And this is what our prayer is to be: Moments when our hearts and the Heart of God join in ecstasy, groaning because words we would use are not needed or not to be found. This is what Saint Teresa teaches us, because it is what she, herself, experienced in her life.

        In his summary of his examination of the life of Saint Teresa, Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI says the following:

Dear brothers and sisters, Saint Teresa of Jesus is a true teacher of Christian life for the faithful of every time. In our society, which all too often lacks spiritual values, Saint Teresa teaches us to be unflagging witnesses of God, of His presence and of His action. She teaches us truly to feel this thirst for God that exists in the depths of our hearts, this desire to see God, to seek God, to be in conversation with Him and to be His friends.

       

        Our life lived in the here and now needs to be full of the moments when our thirst for God is expressed in our inexpressible groaning through the Holy Spirit. We seek Him with our faith and reason. We see Him through grace-filled moments, especially when carrying out the Corporal or Spiritual Works of Mercy. We are ceaselessly in conversation with Him not only through our participation in the liturgies of the Church, but also as we surrender our lives to His will, as we submit our will to His Divine Plan.

        Saint Teresa knew the ecstasy of union with the Divine; she also knew of the painful limitations of human existence. And whether experiencing either end of the extremes, or simply being stuck in the middle, she knew that her groanings were never futile, never left unanswered, for her groanings were groanings rooted in the Holy Spirit, inexpressible expressions of her desire to always be united with God.

        This is how her teachings are timeless.

        Let us take a moment and reflect upon some of her words of instruction and intellect:

O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.

The devil will try to upset you by accusing you of being unworthy of the blessings that you have received. Simply remain cheerful and do your best to ignore the devil's nagging. If need be even laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Satan, the epitome of sin itself, accuses you of unworthiness! When the devil reminds you of your past, remind him of his future!

For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.

I am asking you only to look at Him. For who can prevent you from turning the eyes of your soul upon this Lord? You are capable of looking at very ugly and loathsome things: can you not, then, look at the most beautiful thing imaginable? 

 

        My brothers and sisters, we have entered into the eternal groaning of our hearts this evening, seeking the Lord, recognizing His presence in our midst. We have turned our gaze to Him who is the most beautiful thing imaginable. We have entered into our prayer as friends of God. We laugh at the absurdity of Satan’s lies. We do all this through the praise of our God.

        Saint Teresa ultimately teaches us one thing tonight: Do not be afraid of the groanings of our soul. They are that crying out of our souls to the Lord; they are our inexpressible expressions seeking the ecstasy found in the union of the Loved and the Beloved. Don’t be afraid, then, to allow your soul to groan, for the Spirit groans within us to awaken us to the ecstasy that awaits us – in this life and in the next. It is in the reckless abandon of our hearts to God’s that we testify and witness to the world – through our groaning – that “God alone suffices.”

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Enjoy the journey . . .