Rend Your Hearts

Homily for Ash Wednesday
18 February 2015

       Here we are once again. The great season of Lent is upon us.

       As the prophet Joel reminds us, this is the time for us to “rend [our] hearts . . . and return to the Lord.” And Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that this is done through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

       The rending of our hearts is the beginning of the great conversion that you and I need to be struggling with this Lenten season. The “how” of our rending is through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

       Lent is our annual God-given opportunity to re-focus our lives back to the Lord and our neighbor, and taking the focus off of ourselves. Our prayer should always assist us in decreasing our prideful ways and, in humility, allow both the love of God and of neighbor to fill our hearts.

       Our fasting shouldn’t be simply giving up something that we like, just to pick it up again after Easter. Our fasting should come from the deepest struggles from our hearts. What we fast from during this Lenten season shouldn’t be the chocolate or coffee or beer that we abstain and fast from year after year. Rather, we need to abstain and fast from those sins which keep us separated from God and our neighbor. We need to abstain and fast from those decisions in our lives which allow us to remain far from the love of God. If we struggle with addictions or sins of alcohol, drugs, pornography, gluttony, anger, sloth, lust, gossip, envy, pride or anything of the like, then these are the preoccupations and obsessions of the heart that our Lord wishes for us to abstain from, for this is how turn our hearts back to Him.

       Our almsgiving, or works of charity, then become for us an extension of our love of God and neighbor. They are the physical and concrete ways in which our conversion is shown. And this is more than just throwing money toward a charity – which is still a good and just action, by the way. It’s offering a smile or doing a good deed toward those who irritate us. It’s holding our tongues and not speaking ill of someone who has done us wrong. It’s walking away in silence when someone wants to fight us with either words or punches.

       Rending our hearts means that we tear them apart so that the Lord can heal them. We return, we turn back to the Lord simply because we are wounded and are in need of healing. Conversion of heart is that which we practice this Lenten season not just because we are sinners in need of God’s mercy, but because we know that the only way we will become more like Christ is by turning our hearts back to Him.

       It is at this moment, then, that we accept the invitation of Christ to follow Him into the desert, to face our physical and spiritual mortality, and rend our hearts so that the Lord may heal them.

       The ashes we receive today are a reminder that as we rend our hearts in this great and solemn – yet, joyful – season of Lent, we join our sufferings to the Cross of Jesus Christ, so that our prayer, fasting and almsgiving may allow us to remain faithful to the call of the Gospel.

       For, behold, today is the day of our salvation.

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Enjoy the journey . . .

Restlessness

Homily for the 5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
8 February 2015

       In our First Reading, Job, in his desolation, recites: I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.

       Fast forward a few millennia, and the great Bishop and Doctor of the Church, Saint Augustine of Hippo, writes in his Confessions: You have made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.

       This notion of spiritual restlessness is something that I would suspect most of here have wrestled with at some point in our lives: Where the presence of God seems distant, ambiguous and hidden from us, and we slump into a spiritual desolation like Job, believing that we “shall not see happiness again.”

       Spiritual restlessness is something that I have wrestled with throughout my life, including my time in the seminary and as a priest. And, so, yes, I still wrestle with this spiritual restlessness even now.

       Perhaps some of you here today are wrestling with this restlessness yourselves, right now.

       Spiritual restlessness deals with something being unsettled in the soul. It leads us to recognize a lack of peace in our lives. It can lead us into knowing loneliness, frustration, temptation, fear and despair. This kind of restlessness opens up the wounds caused by living a life apart from God – a life based in pride and sin. We search for meaning; we search for fulfillment; we search for healing.

       We turn to those things in life in which we believe that we will find alleviation for the loneliness, frustration, temptation, fear and despair. We turn to the physical pleasures and passions of our lives to attempt to calm the restlessness which overwhelms us.

       In dealing with this spiritual restlessness, the key is found in the Gospel. We must, like the people of Capernaum, seek out Jesus; we must search for the healing that only He can provide. Only in this way do we truly understand the words of Saint Augustine, that “our hearts are restless until they rest in [the Lord].”

       But there are also the moments when we need to allow the Lord to find us. Just as Jesus left Simon’s home early the next morning to seek out the lost and suffering, so, too, must we allow Jesus to search us out so that He may offer to us that peace which the world cannot give. He wishes to come to us, to preach to us the Good News of the love, mercy and compassionate healing that our God provides.

       Our First Reading from the Book of Job reminds us that the human heart will lose its way when overwhelmed by the ways of the world. Our hearts become lost in the distractions of the desires of the flesh, in our pleasures and passions. It is in these moments of spiritual restlessness that we turn from the calm of the Sacred Heart of Christ to the discontent of the heart of the world. We turn from the One who can give solace to our soul to the many which fight for our soul’s attention.

       What is it, then, that we need to be healed from? What is it in life that keeps our hearts restless? Is it our job? Is it one or more of our relationships with our friends and family? Is it something in our vocation to marriage, the single life, the religious life, the diaconate or the priesthood? Is it a habit – past or present – that continuously seems to gnaw at us? Is it a past sin that we can’t seem to let go of? Is it a situation in life that we have no control over, but we can’t let go of the thought of losing control? Is it because our relationship with God is not where we want it to be? Is it because we have a sin on our soul that needs to be confessed, yet we’re afraid of the belief that God won’t forgive that particular sin?

       No matter if it is one of these questions or another one that’s quivering the soul, we must allow the Heart of Christ to become ours; we must quiet the restlessness of our lives within the solace of the life of Christ and the life of His Church. We come to encounter the Lord this day in Word and in Sacrament to strengthen us – spirit, soul and body – so that we learn what it means to trust in our God – to be a son or daughter of the Father and a brother or sister in Christ.

       Like Job, our hearts will be “restless until the dawn” if we allow the darkness of sin and fear to overwhelm us. We will “not see happiness again” if we continue to choose the distractions of this world over the peace that our Lord offers us. Our hearts will continue to be restless until we lay them down at the feet of Jesus and learn what it means to rest in His Heart. We need to learn to surrender our lives to the Lord, for He does hear the cry of the poor, for our God is generous in supplying what we need, as long as we are courageous in asking for it.

       Through Word and Sacrament at this Mass, then, seek the solace of the Heart of God. Allow your heart to rest in His. Pray for the peace He offers, and receive it with open arms. Run to the Sacrament of Reconciliation if you need not only the grace, but most especially if you need the necessity of absolution – particularly if you have a mortal sin on your soul.

       Pope Francis reminds us: Our mission as Christians is to conform ourselves evermore to Jesus. We cannot do this if we allow our hearts to remain restless. We cannot do this if we don’t seize the opportunities our God places before us to trust in Him, to accept His peace, and to place before Him all that keeps our hearts restless so that we may rest in Him alone.

       And so, we pray:

Dear Lord Jesus, it is my will to surrender to You everything that I am and everything that I’m striving to be. I open the deepest recesses of my heart to You and invite Your Holy Spirit to dwell inside of me.

I offer You my life, heart, mind, body, soul, spirit, all my hopes, plans and dreams. I surrender to You my past, present and future problems, habits, character defects, attitudes, livelihood, resources, finances, medical coverage, occupation and all my relationships.

I give You my health, disabilities, physical appearance, home, family, marriage, children, sexuality, and friendships. I ask You to take Lordship over every aspect of my life. I surrender to You all my hurt, pain, worry, anxiety and fear, and I ask You to wash me clean.

I release everything into Your compassionate care. Please speak to me clearly, Lord. Open my ears to hear Your voice. Open my heart to commune with You more deeply. I desperately need to feel Your loving embrace. Shut the doors that need to be shut and open the doors that need to be opened. Set my feet upon the straight and narrow road that leads to everlasting life. Amen.

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Enjoy the journey . . .

Authority

Homily for the 4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 February 2015

       “You know, Father,” my friend said to me, “we’re supposed to be the clay, not God. Yet our society tries to mold God into whatever we think He’s supposed to be. We cannot mold God; God is to mold us for whatever it is He needs us to be. WE need to learn to become subordinate to the will of God in our lives.”

       These words to me by one of our fellow parishioners struck home to me as we were talking about not only the Gospel for this week, but, as is custom in conversation, the events of our lives.

       Saint Mark mentions not once, but twice, this authority of Jesus. The people were surprised by this “new teaching”, which was not like that of the Scribes. There was something truly different about this Jesus of Nazareth. This aura of authority was something both confusing and alluring to the people in the synagogue because they had never encountered anything like it before.

       However, two thousand years later, the authority of Jesus isn’t even awed or found alluring, but is rather seen as commonplace, bland and rejected.

       And this is so very true for us in Twenty-First Century America.

       As a Democratic Republic, our Revolution and Independence were birthed through a rejection of hierarchical authority. We live and breathe a government “of the people, by the people, for the people, [which] shall not perish from the earth.” We are a culture and society which are guided by the authority of the self.

       And this is probably why we as Catholics in America have a hard time submitting to the authority of the Church, which we believe is a direct extension of the authority of Christ, since she is established through Him and ultimately for Him.

       The most basic example of the authority of the Church that we as Catholics are called to follow are the Five Precepts of the Church. As the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us: The five precepts of the Church are meant to guarantee for the faithful the indispensable minimum in the spirit of prayer, the sacramental life, moral commitment and growth in love of God and neighbor.

       “The indispensable minimum” – Meaning that Christ and His Church are placing before us the minimum of what is being asked to enter into a relationship with our God. And still because of our stubbornness of heart, we refuse to even do the bear minimum because either, (1) we’re too lazy, or (2) we believe that we know better than God what’s good for us.

       As humans, we reject Divine Authority primarily for the latter reason of thinking that we know better than God. We, as individuals and as a society, often think, “He’s not living my life, so I have to make the decisions that I believe are best for me.” But, as Christians, we must always remember that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Christ left us the Church and His authority within the Church so that we could cultivate the authentic relationship with God that we have been called to have.

       If we reject the authority of the Church, we are rejecting the authority of Christ. In these moments, we are doing what my friend said: We’re molding God into what we want Him to be, instead of allowing God to mold us into what He needs us to be. Only by submitting ourselves to the authority of God and His Church do we really begin to open ourselves to the endless possibilities of fulfilling God’s call for our lives.

       My brothers and sisters, if we fail to follow God’s authority in the “indispensable minimum” requirements of our Faith, then there’s no way we will ever be able to submit to His will when life itself presents to us obstacles to truly rely upon the grace of God. If we choose to reject the authority of Christ in small matters, it becomes easier for us to become those “cafeteria Catholics”, who pick and choose what it is from the wealth of the Church’s riches that we’re going to accept, either because we’re afraid to be challenged by the Church’s – and Christ’s! – authority in our lives, or because the pride in our hearts refuses to allow us to acknowledge that it’s ultimately God who’s in control of our lives.

       If you’ve forgotten the Five Precepts of the Catholic Church, here they are:

1.   You shall attend Mass on Sundays and on holy days of obligation and rest from servile labor.

2.   You shall confess your sins at least once a year.

3.   You shall receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least during the Easter season.

4.   You shall observe the days of fasting and abstinence established by the Church.

5.   You shall help to provide for the needs of the Church.

The question now is: Can you and I submit to the authority of Christ and follow these five requirements to be His disciples? The question now is: Can you and I recognize that the authority of Christ and His Church is not meant here to limit the expressions of life and of faith, but, rather, exists to give us more freedom in the way that we approach our relationships with God and neighbor?

My brothers and sisters, we submit to the authority of Christ and His Church because, through our faith in Christ and in the way we believe He guides His Church, we have confidence that as we submit to His authority to the small things of this world, we are assured that His desire will rule the world and the life to come.

Ultimately, the authority of God is to be used to mold us into the disciples we have been called to be. We cannot allow ourselves to reject the authority of Jesus Christ just because we think we know better; we cannot allow ourselves to mold God into what we want Him to be. Learning to become subordinate to the authority of God is not just simply becoming a weakened person or someone who is led by blind faith. Rather, learning to become subordinate to the authority of God in our lives is to realize that we need to trust in Him more, and that He truly leads our lives to the fullness of His grace.

And so, we pray:

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures -
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.

Amen.

(Prayer by Blessed Charles de Foucauld)

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Enjoy the journey . . .