Four People, Four Characteristics

Homily for the 26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
27 September 2015

       I hope that you’ve been following a little of Pope Francis’ visit to the United States. In a lot of ways, this has been a phenomenal time for the Church in America. Our Holy Father continues to witness to the Gospel among the people of this great nation.

       Some of you may have had the chance to catch the Pope’s address to Congress this past Thursday. During that talk, the Holy Father mentioned four Americans for us to emulate: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. These four people, the Pope tells us, point to four characteristics that we as Americans – and for us, especially, as Catholics! – should practice: openness to God, social justice and rights, liberty, and plurality. Each of these characteristics can be traced to the example of Moses, and that, as Pope Francis reminded us, should lead us to God, Himself.

       These four characteristics are also realized in our readings this day. As we have listened to a portion of the story of Moses and the Ancient Israelites, and we reflect upon the ministry and teaching of Jesus, we realize that our vocation as Christians must include the examples of Lincoln, King, Day and Merton.

       As we consider Abraham Lincoln and his characteristic of liberty, we recognize that it is this liberty that God gives to us to live in, to pursue, and to exercise our free will. This gift of liberty is the essential and primordial present that the Lord gives to us. It is this gift which we first choose or reject God. Liberty is that characteristic in which we enter into the life God gives us and allows us to pursue the happiness that we’re all searching for. The Ancient Israelites were experiencing this now-found liberty, and, while still pining for their days in Egypt, they began to understand this gift that God had given them, and how to remain faithful to Him through the struggle from slavery into freedom. It is this gift of liberty that Jesus provides for us to be able to follow Him, to do His will, and to preach the Gospel in word and deed. It is that liberty in which that anonymous person was driving out demons in the Name of Jesus, and it is that liberty in which we are free and able and called to do the same.

       When we turn our attention to Martin Luther King and his characteristic of plurality, we come to the recognition of how it’s not left to a select group of people to fulfill the will of God and the building up of the Kingdom. Rather, each person has the obligation to labor in the vineyard of the Lord. Just as Eldad and Medad began to prophecy in the camp of the Israelites, to that anonymous person exercising demons in the Gospel, we are given the examples to see how the Spirit of God will move as He will, and that – in liberty – we, as individuals and as a community, have the choice to cooperate with Spirit whenever He moves us. This characteristic of plurality reminds us that each person and each community has the opportunity and obligation to work with each other for the spreading of the joy of the Gospel.

       This leads us to consider the example of Servant of God Dorothy Day. This convert to Catholicism and her characteristic of working for social justice and rights bring to light how this gift of plurality ought to be used to work for the benefit of our neighbor and the advancement of the common good. The working for social justice and rights is NOT socialism, but is, rather, the ordering of the society to work for the human society because of the underlying understanding of the dignity of the human person being created in the image and likeness of God. Though Dorothy Day worked primarily with the physical needs of the people, her work was based in the Gospel. She understood that working for social justice and rights was not simply a matter of giving people some clothing, food or shelter. Rather, she understood that to be the image and example of Christ, she would do more than something physically good for her brothers and sisters, but could also help them in their spiritual longings, as well. She understood the Gospel teaching that to truly care for our brothers and sisters, we must take an integrated and holistic approach: that the body and soul must be taken care of simultaneously. To work for social justice and rights, we look at the person as person and recognize their dignity of being our brother or sister – no matter their race, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or religious creed. But we must work towards those justices and rights through the understanding of the teachings of Christ and His Church, and apply those teachings to the working of building up the dignity of humanity as an image of God, fully alive in body and soul. As we can glimpse through our readings today, the understanding that to take care of a person’s physical well-being could also heal them spiritually and vice versa was commonplace. It is an awareness that we have lost in this post-modern age, because we have separated the spiritual and the physical. The human person is body and soul – and both have to be taken care of. And as we work together to ensure the liberty of each person – born and unborn – we do so because the work of ensuring the justices and rights of each person is done for the building up of the common good and the Kingdom of God.

       Yet none of the three previous characteristics – liberty, plurality, working for social justice and rights – make sense or have any weight if there is not first an openness to God, as Thomas Merton examples for us. Merton, as Cistercian monk, lived a life that was always searching for that which would fulfill him. Until he truly opened his life to have that freedom, that liberty, to encounter God, Merton, himself, could not truly live. It is the same with us. This openness to God is at the very heart of who we are as Christians. It is this openness which allows us to be Christ-like to the greatest and the least of our brothers and sisters. If we do not have this openness to God, then our attempt to live out the Gospel is futile. Pope Francis made mention to how Merton was a man of dialogue, which he truly was. But he could have never been a man of dialogue if he didn’t first have that openness to dialogue with God first. As Merton teaches us, it is in the silence, solace and solitude of our hearts that we truly encounter the Presence of the Living God. We must be open to first dialogue with our God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – before we can ever begin to dialogue with others, or even begin to work for their good and the common good. It is this openness to God which we see working in the prophesying of Eldad and Medad among the Israelites; it is this openness to God which we see working in the anonymous person in the Gospel. It is this openness to God that you and I must have at the very depths of our hearts, the very core of our being, if we are to truly be Christ to one another and to others. It is the same openness to God that our parish family must be during this time of discernment within our diocesan cluster of Brookline and Beechview. If we cease in any way our openness to God, we cease being a human being fully alive; we cease being a Church alive. Merton reminds us so plainly in his life how the dialogue with God gives us the grace and the openness to do His will.

       Those who are open to God, open to a true dialogue with God, and open to the movement of His Spirit will always choose the liberty He offers, not simply for themselves, but for the common good of their brothers and sisters. We will recognize that it is the job of each man and woman to labor in the vineyard of the Lord so that the justices and rights that are given to us by God – and not those deemed essential or necessary by humanity and the whims of society – are established and secured for the dignity of all mankind. Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton all understood this. Pope Francis understands this, as well, and calls not simply the Congress to live this out, but is calling the United States of America to once again be a land and a people who are open to God, so that greatness of our nation may be an example of the true liberty, the true freedom and the true exercise of rights given to us by God may be an example to the rest of the world. And, at the same time, we are to be, in that openness to God, a people who champion for the dignity of all life, defending the unborn, the elderly, the sick, and the imprisoned – especially those on “Death Row” – so that all people may know and experience the mercy, compassion and life that our Risen Lord promises in this life to prepare us for the next. It is this openness which will truly allow us to experience the intimate encounter of our God in the Eucharist, and through the Eucharist, be sent back out into the world, so that our brothers and sisters may, themselves, learn what it is to be truly open to God so that they, like Dorothy Day – and like we should be, may be servants of the Gospel first, and our own desires second.

       Our Holy Father’s visit to our country truly has been a time of great excitement. However, that excitement must be that which opens us up to dialogue with God in the silence, solace and solitude of our hearts, leading us to defend and champion the liberties, rights and freedom that true justice in God provides. We are to be a people who are not afraid to be like Eldad, Medad, Moses, Jesus or the anonymous person – for each brought forth the glory of God to their time and place, to their neighbor and community. It is time for us to do the same. It is time for us to lead our society out of the darkness of sin and into the light of God.

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Enjoy the journey . . .

Servant-Leader

Homily for the 25^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
20 September 2015

       This past week, I caught a little of the Republican Presidential debate on CNN. There are some candidates that I like; others I would hope would step aside. But through it all, and  as I look at the candidates on both sides of the fence, I’m not just looking to the best leader, but someone who reflects what Jesus taught His disciples in today’s Gospel: I’m looking for someone who will be a servant-leader.

       What, then, is a “servant-leader”? It is a person who does not lead because of power or prestige, but, rather, is a person who leads because, at the heart of who he or she is, recognizes that the Christ in them must serve the Christ in others. The servant-leader leads others to the common good and the fulfillment of the Natural Law because they, themselves, have been led to and sent from the Heart of Christ.

       Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, is a wonderful example of what it is to be a servant-leader. He has encountered Christ, found joy in that relationship, and allows his life to be an invitation for others to encounter the joy of the Risen Lord. He takes seriously his title of “Servant of the Servants of God.” The Holy Father, by his teaching and lived example, seeks to bring you and me – and, in fact, all of humanity – to serve each other with the heart of Christ.

       And that’s not only the example we need to follow, but is, in fact, the example we are to show to others.

       Pope Francis reminds us in his recent encyclical, Laudato Si’, that “when human beings place themselves at the center, the give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative” (LS 122). Not only is the Holy Father talking about the care of creation, but is talking about how we interact with each other as the human family. When you and I live a life that’s “all about me,” we fail to lead others to the Heart of Christ; we fail in serving others in the Name of Jesus Christ; we fail in leading others to the joy of the Risen Lord.

       When you and I become servant-leaders, the words spoken in our First Reading from the Book of Wisdom will come to life. We will be condemned; we will be put to death. Because our society shuns the truth of Christ and the Truth Who IS Christ, we will be mocked and we will be hated. Our society is one that “places [human beings] in the center,” and we have become witnesses of our own demise and downfall.

       Yet the words of Wisdom also serve us not just as a warning, but more so as a rallying cry for us to be faithful and faith-filled witnesses of the Gospel. They should be for us words of inspiration to endeavor in our fidelity to Jesus Christ and His Church. People will mock us, shun us and hate us because we choose to lead others to Jesus Christ and serve in His Name and His example. And while our society may condemn us, we strive for the righteousness of God, cultivating His peace, as Saint James reminds us in our Second Reading, for it is that peace  which a servant-leader brings forth to the world from the Heart of God.

       When you look at yourself, when I look at myself, and we contemplate our relationship with the Risen Lord, can we honestly say that through our Christian service we lead others closer to Christ? Does our love of God and neighbor enable us to use our thoughts, words and actions to bring others to the truth Christ teaches through His Church? Or do we place ourselves in the center of our existence, that we end up not only compromising the Church’s teachings, but also our relationship with God and each other?

       Thus weekend, we celebrate Catechetical Sunday. It is more than just an opportunity to celebrate and appreciate those who mission to pass on the Catholic Faith, but is also for each of us a reminder that, as servant-leaders, we are charged by our life’s vocation and state of life to teach and pass on the truths of Christ and His Church through our gifts and talents, and by the way we live our lives.

       We are also reminded on this Catechetical Sunday that our teaching of and passion along of the Faith is not limited to what we do on this parish campus or simply the programs we offer. We remember that parents are the first and primary teachers of the Faith, and that their charge as servant-leader is to bring their children closer to Christ – no matter how young or old they may be. As your spiritual father, this is a charge I take seriously towards you, my spiritual children. Nevertheless, what we do in our Religious Education Program, our Catholic schools, youth ministry or adult formation programs is only secondary to what is to be taught in the home. The “Domestic Church,” as Saint John Paul II called it, is the first and primary environment in which we encounter and Jesus Christ.

       As a community today, we welcome the children among us. As we heard in the Gospel, whoever receives a child in the Name of Jesus receives Jesus, Himself. In welcoming the children in our midst, we welcome Christ, Himself. And in welcoming Christ in this way, we are reminded that as servant-leaders, we are called to become like Christ in the most child-like fashion: We are called to become vulnerable. Vulnerability is not always a bad thing. Children remind us that being vulnerable opens us up to being trusting, dependent and open to the support and care of others. While our society has become rather apathetic to the world around them, as servant-leader we understand that the child-like vulnerability we embody allows us to be more empathetic so that we may better lead others to the Heart of Christ. We welcome the children today, for they are the servant-leaders teaching us what it means to be vulnerable, for we are all dependent on God.

       My brothers and sisters, in a few moments you and I will have the opportunity to remind ourselves how vulnerable and dependent on God we really are as we receive the gift of the Eucharist. In a few moments, we will be reminded in the most intimate fashion of what it is to be a servant-leader as we are led to the very Heart of God through the Most Blessed Sacrament. And from His Heart we are sent to the world to serve and to lead our neighbors and community closer to Christ.

       As our nation once again enters the cycle to elect the next president, I pray that whoever is chosen will have the heart of a servant-leader, so that he or she may remind us of who we have been called to be: People on a mission to teach and to lead others to the very Heart of God by serving them through our thoughts, words and actions.

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Enjoy the journey . . .

Homily for Ascension

The Solemnity of the Ascension that we celebrate today is also the day in which we begin the great preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Yet part of that preparation is to use the gifts that God has equipped us with for the proclamation and spreading of the Gospel. For the Lord has commissioned some of us as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, all to equip and assist each other for the work and within the work of ministry.

The question arises, however: Are we afraid to go out into the world? In some ways, yes; in other ways, no. There are moments where we will answer with haste the call to go out to all the world and tell the Good News. And there are moments where we will be dumbfounded, and continue to stare into the clouds, waiting for something miraculous to happen in our lives.

Whether we are afraid or not is not the question. Ultimately, the question becomes: Are we faithful to the call, to the vocation (in all aspects of the word), that the Lord has given to us? Remember the adage: God doesn’t call the equipped; He equips the called. For we have been urged to live in a manner worthy of the call that we have received; that with all humility and gentleness, with patience, we are to bear with one another through love, always striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as we have been also called to the one hope of THE call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism...

Our Lord ascends today to be seated at the right hand of the Father, raising our humanity to an unparalleled state. It is our hope and calling to one day join all the saints and angels around the throne of God. However, for us to be present in that august body of creatures, we are to be faithful to the mission and ministry we have been called to. We are to trust that the Lord will equip us for the mission at hand.

We are to faithfully enter fully into that vocation to go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.

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 . . .