tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43562891749568885822024-03-05T16:50:31.299-06:00Fr. Steven BeattySt. Bernard Albers, St. Damian DamiansvilleFrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.comBlogger215125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-51487452191392894912022-09-25T13:17:00.003-05:002022-09-25T13:17:56.863-05:00Jesus' Sharpest Parable: 26th Sunday OT 2022<div><a href="https://soundcloud.com/steven-beatty-332422989/homily-9-25-2022?si=bc24850f7ffd493e8ace0f2a865afd11&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing">Click here to listen</a></div>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-27455246464263377082022-08-07T13:19:00.005-05:002022-08-07T13:31:17.397-05:00Sometimes Faith Means... 19th Sunday OT 8/7/22<iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1319626255&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe><div style="font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;line-break: anywhere;word-break: normal;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/steven-beatty-332422989" title="steven beatty" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">steven beatty</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/steven-beatty-332422989/19ot2022" title="What faith means... 19OT 2022" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">What faith means... 19OT 2022</a></div>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-13659009397644818562021-07-31T13:54:00.002-05:002021-07-31T13:54:39.719-05:00A Free Lunch or a New Self? 18th Sunday OT<p> <span style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px;">We heard last week from the start of John chapter 6, and that fantastic sign of the multiplication of loaves and fish, and I loved preaching on that story and love it as an image of our relationship with Christ. But the truth is, that was only the warm-up. That sign comes at the start of the chapter, and we’ll be hearing from it for five weeks total, and the multiplication of loaves is only the warm-up for what comes next. Because what’s coming next, as the sixth chapter of John continues, is that Jesus begins teaching about the Bread of Life.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The setting has changed. After the multiplication of loaves and fishes, Jesus crosses the lake but the lectionary skips ahead to this scene in Capernaum. People track Him down there and are surprised, asking “when did you get here?” And I’m not surprised they were confused because the answer is, He got across the lake by <i>walking on water</i>. </p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">But Jesus doesn’t answer their question by explaining His unconventional travel options. Instead, He looks at their motives: “you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” He’s saying they aren’t following Him out of real conversion and belief, but because He gave them bread. It’s not about being a real disciple, it’s about a free lunch. And that’s not really what He’s looking for. Jesus wants us to come not with hungry bellies but with hungry hearts. </p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We could ask the same question of ourselves, right here in this room right now. We’ve got a crowd here come to gather around Jesus. Why have you come? Why have I come? For me, if I hadn’t shown up here, I’d be in trouble of a very practical kind with you and the Bishop. I have to be here. Imagine how sad it would be if that was my only reason!</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> You don’t <i>have</i> to be here, in the sense that practical and worldly consequences will follow if you aren’t. But you do have to be here in a spiritual sense; and sometimes maybe that’s part of what brings you to Mass. You know and believe that you have a real obligation, as a Catholic, to worship God not just alone on your own terms but as a member of the Body of Christ, gathered around His Altar. That obligation is real, and meeting an obligation is a good thing. That reason isn’t a bad one, but of course you’d hope to have more reason for being here than mere obligation. Wouldn’t it be sad if you were here <i>only </i>out of obligation?</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">How about inertia? If you’ve been going to Mass for years and years, after a while there’s just a force of inertia — meaning that once something’s going, it tends to keep going. If you’ve been to Mass every weekend for basically ever, it’s not likely that you’re going to break that pattern. It’s a habit. Maybe you didn’t even make a conscious decision, like it’s not even a question you ask yourself, it’s just what you do. You don’t even consider not coming. Well, that’s a great habit to have! It’s not a bad reason, but again, you’d hope to have more reason for being here than mere habit.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Really, it’s hard to name a bad reason to be at Mass. Maybe you find it helps your week go better. Maybe you’re anxious to avoid the sin of skipping Mass without sufficient reason. Maybe you enjoy the company and the chance to see your neighbors and talk. Maybe you find the music or the message inspiring. Maybe there’s a particular intention you’re praying for. Maybe you’re hoping to take away some lesson that will make you a better person, or make your life better. Maybe in a way you can’t fully explain, it just feels good. It feels right.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Those reasons are all good! It’s just that… they aren’t quite good enough. Not by themselves. The crowd following Jesus weren’t wrong to seek more miracles, more worldly benefits, fuller stomachs and easier lives. But Jesus wants more for them. He wants them to want more for themselves.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We can back up to the second reading, where the Christians in Ephesus get the same kind of motivational challenge from Paul. He’s telling them, this is Eph 4:22-24, “that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I hope we can all hear how radical that is. Do you hear how radical that is? Paul isn’t calling them in Jesus’ name to clean up their act a little, or to smooth over some rough edges. He’s talking about a total transformation in Christ. He’s talking about becoming a <i>new person</i>. </p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Is that what you want? Is that what you’re looking for in your relationship with God, your religious life, your prayer, your coming to Mass, your trying to follow the Commandments?</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I know for me, if I’m honest, a lot of the time I can be motivated by something more like the crowd around Jesus that day. I want people I love to be healthy. I want their illnesses healed. I want them to have success in careers. I want all kinds of things that will make my life, and the lives of people I love, a little less difficult. Those are all fine and good things to want, and they’re all ways I ask God to change the world around me.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We’ve all got long lists of how we want God to change the world around us, and those are good things to pray about. But God seems even more interested in changing me, and you. So I don’t know about you, but this is kind of a lifelong argument between me and Jesus. I keep wanting Him to change my circumstances, while He wants to change my heart.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">If that’s you, too, we can relate to the crowd at Capernaum, and the Christians in Ephesus, and we can definitely relate to Israel in the desert. That was our first reading, they’re in the middle of this long, super difficult 40-year journey through the wilderness. Again and again, they ask God to change these circumstances, which in fairness, are rough. They see all the challenges of the wilderness as the problem. Anybody would. And they’re asking God constantly to change these circumstances, to fix their wilderness problems. In God’s eyes, though, the wilderness is not the problem. The problem is their hearts, and in God’s eyes… the wilderness is the <i>cure</i>.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">God had already freed them from physical, external slavery — that job was done. They were no longer slaves on the outside. But real freedom, interior spiritual freedom, is so much harder, and it’s a longer process. God could’ve taken them by a short, easy route to the Promised Land… it wasn’t very far! But God’s main project wasn’t about getting them there. It was about who they would be when they got there.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The same is true for us. We want to skip to the Promised Land, the Kingdom of God where we want for nothing and there is no hunger or thirst or frustration or grief, where dreams never fail and hearts never break. Sounds good, that’s where I want to be. That’s where we all want to be. And like the Israelites, and like the Ephesians, and like the people gathered around Jesus for more bread, our first prayer and desire might be for God to fix up our circumstances to be a little less wilderness and a little more Promised Land. But it isn’t just about getting to the Promised Land; it’s about who you are when you get there.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">All of these readings involve the question of what we really want. The Israelites thinking maybe slavery wasn’t so bad after all, Paul talking about the ‘deceitful desires’ that keep up from becoming a new person in Christ, Jesus looking at a crowd that wants what He can do for them but maybe doesn’t want Him for Himself… it’s all about this question of what we’re really after. Why are you really here? What do you really want?</p>
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<p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Jesus told them, “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” There are a lot of good reasons to crowd around Jesus, but only one reason that’s good enough. Do you want a free lunch, or do you want to become a new person? Do you want to skip ahead to the Promised Land, or do you want to become the person God wants you to be when you get there? Do you want the things that Jesus can do for you, or do you want Jesus Himself?</p><p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkW7x2cCUmB1JlGwvW0csugk0ot3e9lslL8zEmwGLubRdkgHxKIlOTIsss17A1CLNAPcwfip3zTDwp0Xa2d8YkFqKHKBWQ2lsZhEeS1yVlnZy6XTA5AsK2SKOFaguI8I4R3-NuCed47Sc/s847/eucharist01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="847" data-original-width="690" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkW7x2cCUmB1JlGwvW0csugk0ot3e9lslL8zEmwGLubRdkgHxKIlOTIsss17A1CLNAPcwfip3zTDwp0Xa2d8YkFqKHKBWQ2lsZhEeS1yVlnZy6XTA5AsK2SKOFaguI8I4R3-NuCed47Sc/s320/eucharist01.jpg" width="261" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: Didot; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-58885363299961898902021-07-25T22:48:00.001-05:002021-07-25T22:48:22.950-05:00Two Stupid Fish: 17th Sunday OT, 7/25/21<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/piUmU4Lp038" width="320" youtube-src-id="piUmU4Lp038"></iframe></div><br />FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-40411273097301755672021-06-20T10:45:00.004-05:002021-06-20T10:45:49.451-05:00Into the Storm: June 20, 2021<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> (click "read more" if video doesn't start)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://youtu.be/3PIMwnInklM"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="367" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3PIMwnInklM" width="291" youtube-src-id="3PIMwnInklM"></iframe></a></div><br /><p></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-57479576587040382452021-06-13T14:02:00.004-05:002021-06-13T14:07:25.882-05:00Strongest: 11th Sunday OT<p><span style="font-size: 15px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhham26CD4d_iY04y_axJJ_P4re_afzr-kEVTQ4VEDQkRXw8wHMrPXyf00nWoXxXjw9NtT_BtoaDIN3k7Nalin7PbLwe6C1ckqTtoXMdY8mHmaRzx67VBVu_SEzU1GNWd4Ysxka9x_0o74/s1080/dark+stairs.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhham26CD4d_iY04y_axJJ_P4re_afzr-kEVTQ4VEDQkRXw8wHMrPXyf00nWoXxXjw9NtT_BtoaDIN3k7Nalin7PbLwe6C1ckqTtoXMdY8mHmaRzx67VBVu_SEzU1GNWd4Ysxka9x_0o74/s320/dark+stairs.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><p><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p>How strong is your faith right now? How's that for an icebreaker, right? But I’m really asking. How’s your faith life? That’s a big question you could think and pray about all month, so for now I’m asking you to just notice your first gut reaction. How’s your faith life, what’s your first gut reaction? But believe it or not, important as that question is, it’s only a lead-in to the question I really want to focus on, which is: how do you know?</span></span><p></p>
<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Saul of Tarsus knew a lot more than most of us. He had a top-tier education with the great Rabbi Gamaliel. He knew the Scriptures inside and out. He was steeped in the wisdom and traditions of generations of his people. He knew in his deepest guts that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the one, true, and living God, and that every other worship is idolatry. And he absolutely knew that this executed criminal, this Jesus of Nazareth, was a blasphemer and that his cult was a growing threat to the true religion of Israel. Precious children of Abraham were being led astray, and Saul of Tarsus saw this clearly: it must be stopped by any means necessary.</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">He could <i>see</i> that so clearly… and then one day on the road to Damascus there was a flash of light so bright that it blinded him, as Jesus called his name and spoke to him. And then for three days he couldn’t see anything. </span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s such a dramatic story that maybe you’ve never thought too hard about this one aspect of it, so let’s really think about that blindness, and try to imagine what this experience must have been like. How long those last miles must have been to Damascus. Not skilled and adept without sight like blind people can become; he’s new at this. Maybe he was mounted, maybe walking. Not knowing how to even move his feet, being led, helpless. He’d hear people passing by but not see them. Maybe some of them asked, ‘is that guy ok?’ He wasn’t. There was no telling if he’d ever see again. How many times did he stumble, stub a toe, trip a little? Step after step, hour after hour, with no sense of where we’re at, or progress being made. I’m sure the companions leading him said things like ‘almost there’ but you know that doesn’t tell you much.</span></p><p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0K9zcuYcRkOhXgjKfDb_fOxk9tswuCKzB-yNd9YZvdE1VnZe3ssku_3Ysx9MUh55F0k7cmIsuEKbpnr8l676zcf3kgYlbZIYH8ksYpL3kLouPHgAyiHear4OdpRIFC9C8l2XgjX-_Sz8/s2048/Caravaggio+Paul.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1390" data-original-width="2048" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0K9zcuYcRkOhXgjKfDb_fOxk9tswuCKzB-yNd9YZvdE1VnZe3ssku_3Ysx9MUh55F0k7cmIsuEKbpnr8l676zcf3kgYlbZIYH8ksYpL3kLouPHgAyiHear4OdpRIFC9C8l2XgjX-_Sz8/w320-h217/Caravaggio+Paul.png" title="Caravaggio, Conversion on the Way to Damascus, detail" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caravaggio, <i>Conversion on the Way to Damascus, </i>detail</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Then for the rest of three days he sat in blindness. Imagine waking up and it’s just black, and remembering each morning in those first waking thoughts that it might actually be light out, remembering that his sight was gone. Imagine trying to eat his meals, even going to the bathroom, trying to relieve boredom by — what? Walking around the rooms feeling the walls? How long were those hours?</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This was Paul’s first experience of being a Christian. This is the first effect that meeting Jesus had on his life. There would be other seasons to come in his relationship with Jesus, very different seasons, but this was his first. He didn’t see more, but less. He wasn’t more powerful and sure of himself; he was helpless and lost. </span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And this is the man who told us in our second reading: <i>We walk by faith, not by sight.</i></span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There’s an irony in his blindness, because one of the things Jesus told him in that first conversation was “I am sending you to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light.” Paul’s mission to bring the Light began by being plunged into darkness.</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How else are we going to learn?… to walk by faith and not by sight. What about you? Are you walking by faith?</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">— You’ve got a big decision to make, school, vocation, relationship, marriage, work, whether to move, a decision for your family, these big turning-point decisions. And you love God and you want to do the right thing. But you’ve prayed and prayed and still you just aren’t sure. What’s going wrong? Where’s the clarity? Shouldn’t a relationship with Jesus Christ show you the way and light your path?</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It might not be the answer you want to hear but the Biblical, Christian answer is: sometimes. Sometimes in life the darkness is of your own making, it isn’t God’s will for you, and you need to repent and go to confession and get yourself a disciplined, regular life of prayer. But if you’ve done those things, sometimes in life you need to stop telling God “You have to shine some light so I can follow You!” and hear Him telling you “I’m asking you to trust me even in the darkness.” To walk by faith, not by sight.</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">— You’ve had bad news or a bad turn in life. The doctor asked you to sit down and closed the door. The marriage is over, you couldn’t save it, or the one you were sure you’d marry just broke up with you. You’re losing your health and energy and don’t know what to do with yourself or what these days are supposed to even be for. Someone you love with all your heart is in terrible trouble and it’s tearing you apart and there’s nothing you can do but pray. Whatever it is… it’s a hard season, and you want to be a person of faith. You want to take up your cross and follow Him. You want to believe that all His promises will come true and everything will be full of light in the end, but this yoke <i>doesn’t</i> feel easy, this burden <i>doesn’t</i> feel light. It’s <i>hard </i>and it’s <i>heavy </i>and you can’t see how the light will ever shine through, this time. You’re walking by faith, not by sight.</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">— You used to pray easily and it felt so warm and comforting, you felt God near to you and knew you were being heard and loved. You could pray for something or someone and feel satisfied and confident that you’d really been heard and God was in charge and serenely say “Thy will be done.” But not anymore, maybe not for a while. You try to pray and feel nothing. Your offering seems not to be accepted because it’s so little, you aren’t feeling it, you have that awful sense of going through the motions when it all feels pointless and empty. What happened to the spiritual warmth and comfort you used to feel? What happened to that sense of God being so close to you? Why would He let you feel this way when you’re trying to be close to Him? You’re walking by faith, not by sight.</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">See, sometimes the story you’re telling yourself about your life, the story you think you’re living, is totally different from the real story that God sees. Your relationship with God <i>cannot </i>be about how you feel. </span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We can return to Paul to prove this so clearly. Because Paul, ten seconds before that flash of light, felt so certain of God’s will. He understood with perfect clarity the right thing to do. He felt total assurance about his mission, about where his life was going, and that he was close to God. Paul was plagued by no doubts as he confidently and efficiently went about doing the work… of Satan. Ten seconds later all of that knowledge and certainty and confidence was gone. He was lying on the ground, shocked, blinded, confused, his whole world upside down, his whole life in question, and that was God saving him, loving and saving his misguided servant.</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I’m going to repeat that because this could not be more important, and yet it’s such a hard lesson to really learn and understand — I know I’m not the only one! Paul felt most confident in his mission, most sure about his life, most certain about God’s will when he was doing the work of Satan… while in the most grace-filled and salvific moment of his life, he felt more blind and lost and confused than ever before. </span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So what’s this hard lesson? Is it that feeling confident and sure is always bad, and feeling lost and confused is always good? No, of course not. The lesson is that how you feel is not a guide to your relationship with God. It just isn’t.</span></p>
<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For another Biblical example from a more positive angle, think about the Apostles at the Transfiguration, beholding the glory of Jesus in radiant clarity. I’ll bet if you asked them right then, ‘how strong is your faith now?’, they’d say ‘now we really see, now we really believe, our faith is stronger than ever.’ But that wouldn’t be true. It was a beautiful moment, a gift of sight, but that isn’t faith. Faith is when you <i>don’t</i> see. Faith is when it isn’t bright and clear right in front of you. Faith is strongest when it feels weakest but doesn’t fail.</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: arial;">Faith is strongest when it feels weakest but doesn’t fail.</span></i></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">All the virtues work like this. When do you feel most courageous? Isn’t it when you feel strongest and least afraid? But that’s not your moment of real courage precisely because you feel strong and unafraid. It’s when you <i>feel</i> like your courage is weak, when you’re most afraid but don’t give up, that you’re really showing the most courage.</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Now notice this pattern everywhere. You’re showing the strongest courage when you feel the least courageous but don’t give up. You’re showing the strongest generosity when you feel ungenerous and don’t want to let go but you do anyway. You’re showing the strongest patience when you feel the most impatient but overcome it and don’t let it show. You’re showing the strongest chastity when you feel most weak and tempted but don’t give in.</span></p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And your faith might feel weakest, but is really at its strongest and most beautiful, in exactly those times when God is asking you to walk by faith and not by sight.</span></p><p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqVS810aYTsFShzQK8raCzzEX3ci9dj7N-N0i_cFzYWu78-UBUEnA9PKOLJgtghouEF9nSLjIs12aNxlSZSqiy2hcBoYJt1_zjshx4ouNsBJpsUn92MYgVg_1YdsXmEzaREyBqSTXFGBM/s1080/dark+stairs.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqVS810aYTsFShzQK8raCzzEX3ci9dj7N-N0i_cFzYWu78-UBUEnA9PKOLJgtghouEF9nSLjIs12aNxlSZSqiy2hcBoYJt1_zjshx4ouNsBJpsUn92MYgVg_1YdsXmEzaREyBqSTXFGBM/s320/dark+stairs.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-20272882866679482352021-06-06T10:53:00.004-05:002021-06-06T10:55:36.889-05:00Corpus Christi, June 6th, 2021<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z6k1QjbYJk"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_z6k1QjbYJk" width="426" youtube-src-id="_z6k1QjbYJk"></iframe></a></div><br /><p></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-85614643157658820012021-05-23T06:36:00.005-05:002021-05-23T08:41:37.792-05:00Pentecost 2021<div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-family: arial;">In tonight’s Vigil readings, the Church pairs up the Feast of Pentecost with a story you might not expect, the Tower of Babel from Genesis chapter eleven. If you think about it for a second you realize: oh, yeah, the language thing! The miracle of everyone understanding across language barriers at Pentecost is the undoing of Babel. Cool.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div>
<p style="font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiYvATDgh5OcOJc9VBFpV-6huNs0skHTzLSp6J6puGvAxHYiSGGOArnKIf656bD7d6RW1NMmsNTjcG1TIF27l5wlDJKeBiVgZZ6CwGQacYX7nW2B3jnKMrP3EfOIOrUCJyOGEa0DaaNRE/s715/person-with-a-question-mark-34.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="715" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiYvATDgh5OcOJc9VBFpV-6huNs0skHTzLSp6J6puGvAxHYiSGGOArnKIf656bD7d6RW1NMmsNTjcG1TIF27l5wlDJKeBiVgZZ6CwGQacYX7nW2B3jnKMrP3EfOIOrUCJyOGEa0DaaNRE/w200-h181/person-with-a-question-mark-34.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;">If you keep thinking about it, this actually runs incredibly deep. The building of the Tower of Babel begins with people saying “let us make a name for ourselves.” In English we use that phrase to mean something like getting famous, making your mark. In the Biblical Hebrew it’s much deeper than that. In seeking to “make a name for themselves,” their project is to create and choose for themselves an <i>identity</i>. To make up for themselves who they are and what their lives are about.</span><p></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This sure resonates in the world you and I are living in. Isn’t this the way our young generation is being brought up, isn’t this what they’re being told by the world? Create your own identity, decide who you want to be, decide what you want your life to be about, and what it all means. The big question the world has for us, especially the young, is: how do you identify? Tell us the name you have made for yourself.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Genesis tells us the result of this quest: that people are scattered and can no longer understand each other or work together. And the more you think about this, and the more you look around at our own world, the more it makes sense. Because if I’m whoever I decide I am and you are whoever you decide you are, then how in the world can we really feel profoundly connected? We all begin as islands unto ourselves. Maybe our chosen identities will overlap in places, such that we can be allies in very superficial ways, and in ways that will always divide us from others, and right there you’ve got your identity politics.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But here’s the even bigger problem. A life that only means what you decide it means is a life that is inconsequential — and ultimately just so intolerably boring. If I tell you that you can do whatever you want to do and be whoever you want to be, and that nobody else can tell you otherwise, maybe that sounds like a message of empowerment. Maybe it sounds like I’m being welcoming and tolerant. But what I’m really saying is that <i>you don’t matter at all</i>. There’s nothing we need from you. There’s no mission that will go unfulfilled if you don’t show up. You just don’t matter.<br /><br /></span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">No wonder so many of us are dying inside from anxiety and depression. And all the world can tell us is try to ignore that and keep laying another course of bricks in the Tower of Babel.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But the Spirit of God comes and it comes with fire. It lights that fire deep inside you and says, <i>I made you. I have made you a name from all eternity. I have a mission for you, and I need you to live it because you matter. You’re necessary. You’re needed. You have a place in this world and you have been given a name.</i></span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And now we can understand each other again, because now there is a connection between us that’s real. And a mission, a quest, a war that we’re in together. We’re at war with injustice on the other side of the world and close to home, we’re at war with the loneliness of people in our own neighborhoods, we’re at war with everything inside of ourselves and of each other that is keeping us from being who we were made to be.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Because we matter. Because we’re in this together.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Church, we’ve got an amazing opportunity staring us in the face right here and now, an opportunity like I don’t think every generation of Christians sees. People are hungrier than ever for real connection. More aware than ever that nothing that happens on our gadgets and screens comes close to cutting it. And connection… that’s our <i>thing</i>. Not just connection, but Communion. The Church should shine now like never before in our times, by setting an example and inviting others into it. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Let’s be creative about it, let’s be smart about it, but most of all let’s beg the Holy Spirit to take the lead, to show us the way and make it His work. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How do we start? Let’s start with the basics. I really do think this time calls for creativity and innovation, but let’s <i>start </i>with the basics. Come to things. How’s that for basic? Come to things. A whole lot of you worked on that great event or showed up for it last weekend. We needed it, didn’t we? And we need much much more of it. No guilt trip if last Sunday didn’t work out for you, that was just one thing. There will be more things. Come to them. We have a Holy Hour every first Friday of the month; we average about a dozen people. Let’s pack the house. Why wouldn’t we? Let’s show that there’s a real hunger for Adoration in this parish and that we need so much more than an hour a month… how I’d love to see that! </span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Get involved. Two suggested alternatives here. One, think of the parish thing you’d be most excited to be involved with, and start showing up. Or, think of the one thing you most wish the parish was doing, the biggest hole you see in our mission, and get to work filling it. Recruit a few others and get started doing the thing you think the parish ought to be doing.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This Church is the Church called and instituted by Jesus Himself, and the same Holy Spirit that blazed on Pentecost is with us now. Let’s throw some fuel on the fire. Let’s start with reasonable, modest goals. Reasonable and modest goals, like doubling the size of this parish. For a start. And I’m serious about that because I know you actually could do it. You have a name spoken by God from all eternity. You have a place. The people around you right now… look around… these are your brothers and sisters, your teammates, your companions on the front lines.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Incredible things <i>will </i>happen when brave, willing hearts and the Holy Spirit get together. We have Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit will show up. How about us?</span></p><p style="font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEpRk2UPYd88cARC_scP0GToTKXHfCzXt37tD1f0sVyZRJ3TRkhv67v9Jk85bda1ZA8D0y166lU33hKdxpfZ3FbU4gRPN7bj5iWcXG7NCaGSao27Pu7_o3W4q-i2Dxg4RiJ29YtXt8KN0/s307/fire.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="205" data-original-width="307" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEpRk2UPYd88cARC_scP0GToTKXHfCzXt37tD1f0sVyZRJ3TRkhv67v9Jk85bda1ZA8D0y166lU33hKdxpfZ3FbU4gRPN7bj5iWcXG7NCaGSao27Pu7_o3W4q-i2Dxg4RiJ29YtXt8KN0/w320-h214/fire.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-60964759146598531932021-05-17T12:43:00.001-05:002021-05-17T12:44:28.236-05:00Home? Alone?: Ascension 2021<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px;">I think our first babysitter was Heather. Then Jennifer. Then another Heather. There were lots of Heathers in the 80’s. But one day came when Mom and Dad were going out, and there was no babysitter. It was just going to be me and my little sister. They announced that I was now old enough. There was a positive but very serious briefing, everybody put on a brave face, and the door shut behind them and just like that we were…. <i>home alone</i></span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px;">.</i></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It was exciting because it meant I was growing up, and because being trusted is exciting, and because responsibility is exciting, and also because I imagined all the awesome things we would do free of supervision, none of which really materialized. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">On the other hand there was one thing that made it seem much more weighty and serious than it would otherwise have been, and that was that I wasn’t home alone <i>alone</i>, in point of fact, but my little sister and I were home alone together. She had to be looked after and kept out of trouble and all that sort of thing. I’m sure her actual needs were only a shadow of the monumental responsibility I imagined in my head, but there it was. And having Mom and Dad away made being a big brother take on a whole new meaning. I really was my sister’s keeper. And — though I was too full of myself and my two-and-a-half years’ seniority to realize it at the time — she was mine.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Well, I’m sure you can see the analogy I’m building to the Ascension of Jesus. There’s a kind of responsibility and growth that can only happen when we’re left at least a little bit on our own. I’m not talking about abandonment, but just a certain stepping back and letting us have at it. The giving of responsibility, real responsibility, that necessarily involves risk and consequence or it isn’t real, it’s only pretend.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">There’s a spiritual growing up that we have to do that maybe wouldn’t be possible with Jesus still walking around bodily on the Earth. There’s a taking of responsibility that would maybe never happen without the Ascension.</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">You can see Peter making this step in the first verses of Acts as we just heard. He asks the question of the Risen Lord, “Lord, are You now going to restore the Kingdom to Israel?” Which, for Peter, meant the restoration of peace and justice and right in the world. He was asking Jesus, “now that You’ve risen, are you going to fix the world?” And we could ask the same question today. Sometimes people do ask that question, quite pointedly. “If Jesus is who you say He is, why is the world so messed up? If Jesus is our Savior, why doesn’t the world look more… saved?”</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Do you remember what Jesus answered when Peter asked if He would fix the world? He said: “<i>you</i> will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses… to the ends of the earth.” See, Peter, this isn’t something I do for you, it’s something you must do with my help. Later we heard from the last verses of Mark, which say that they went forth and that “the Lord worked with them.”</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">St. Teresa of Avila wrote a poem that might sound familiar to you:</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Christ has no body now on earth but yours,</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">no hands but yours,</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">no feet but yours,</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">is to look out to the earth,</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Look at your hands. Are you looking at the hands of Christ? Do these hands reach out with help and healing? How many times have they touched a modern-day leper, alienated or outcast? Look at your feet. Are you looking at the feet of Christ? Have they carried you into the desert to pray and seek unity with the Father? Have they carried you to help the helpless, including and especially those who didn’t deserve help? Does Christ’s compassion look out through your eyes? Do you see other human beings with the love with which He sees?</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It’s tempting to want to stay in spiritual infancy. We’d love for God to just do everything for us. We’d love for Christ to stick around and do all the touching of lepers and helping of the outcasts and suffering with and for others out of love. We’d love for Jesus to be on a world tour making stadium appearances so that nothing resembling faith would ever be necessary. It would be nice for everything to be served up to us, and nothing left for us to do but mumble a ‘thank you’ now and then. But our God is too good a Father to spare us the growing pains of growing up, or to deny us real responsibility… the profound and ultimately eternal joy of spending ourselves in a worthy cause, and serving others out of love.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I started writing this sermon with an example — being ‘home alone’ — that I thought would come full circle with reference to the Ascension. But the opposite happened, and the truth is we aren’t home. The Ascension reminds us that we are on our pilgrim way toward our <i>real</i> home. And we are aren’t alone. We have brothers and sisters to look after.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">If that isn’t happening, or not enough, if people are still hungry and forgotten and abused and neglected and outcast, we don’t need to look at the media or the politicians or whoever we like to blame things on. If the work of Christ is left undone, we should look to those He has called in Baptism to continue that work, empowered with His Holy Spirit and fed with His own Body and Blood. </p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Christ has no body now on earth but yours,</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">no hands but yours,</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">no feet but yours,</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">is to look out to the earth,</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaZvf5_MnNBtUSULcU51BEy158FjhWa0H4zpVh962J3q2iSEVpeeKoSswbWuhLqeBIqvnBRzmpDxzDHKEr62Rq-PzASDd28LjjFksAu4hTTLI0fc-oFihhlYUYCMejwAGvGaMyW4EulFY/s2048/ascension-icon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1550" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaZvf5_MnNBtUSULcU51BEy158FjhWa0H4zpVh962J3q2iSEVpeeKoSswbWuhLqeBIqvnBRzmpDxzDHKEr62Rq-PzASDd28LjjFksAu4hTTLI0fc-oFihhlYUYCMejwAGvGaMyW4EulFY/w242-h320/ascension-icon.jpg" width="242" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-15221093957031024222020-12-26T11:39:00.001-06:002020-12-26T11:41:08.654-06:00A Wish and a Promise: Christmas 2020<p> Merry Christmas! I hope it really is, for you. “Merry” is kind of a single-use word; we basically never say it except in front of the word “Christmas.” What are we wishing each other? It’s not the same as ‘happy’, like the English or Spanish say, or ‘joyful,’ like the French say. ‘Merry’ is more of a mood; it’s that light-hearted, uplifted, all-is-well kind of feeling. It’s maybe shallower than happiness in a way, and much shallower than joy, but it’s so nice when you have it. Maybe this year we need merriment more than usual. That means conquering the gloom. Gloom can be heavy; but for most people nothing has more upward lifting power, against that heaviness, than Christmas.</p><p>I’ve heard different conversations about people’s favorite Christmas songs, and Christmas movies, and opinions vary but there’s a little common ground. Every reasonable person agrees that <i>The Muppet Christmas Carol</i> is fantastic, and that <i>Little Saint Nick</i> is horrid. And you won’t find many people who don’t like <i>How the Grinch Stole Christmas</i> in both versions. I watched the original this week (strictly as homily preparation, of course).</p><p>Most of you know the basic point: it’s a story about learning that there’s a meaning to Christmas more important and more profound than getting presents. That’s a great moral, and definitely important especially for kids. I can remember, sympathetically, how as a kid presents are so exciting that it can be hard to see past them. And that’s not bad, it’s just incomplete. So hooray for the lesson that if you take all that away, the essential core of Christmas is still there. The title of the movie is ironic because of course the Grinch couldn’t steal Christmas; Christmas is something that no one can take away from us.</p><p>So why are we talking about a movie? Well — and please remember, I’m on the record as liking the movie and celebrating the message — but this is a fact: at no point from beginning to end is the incarnation of Jesus Christ mentioned, implied, or relevant. There are Christian hymns in the 2000 version but in the original, if the Eternal Son had never become incarnate as man you literally wouldn’t have to change a single thing. What would you think, if that’s all you had to go on, that Christmas is about? It seems to be about family and love and togetherness. And hooray for those things, obviously, we Christians can affirm and celebrate that message. It’s just that we also, as Christians, have so much <i>more</i> to say. Something more; something truly radical.</p><p>Because that core message, of seeing the deeper joy that can't be stolen, is one we need to take a step further, maybe this year especially. Because if we leave it there then for many of us we’d have to say that where the Grinch failed, the virus has succeeded — and that 2020 is the story of how the Covid stole Christmas. We could imagine an alternate 2020 version in which the Grinch, having loosed covid upon Whoville, cackles with delight on Christmas morning as the usual celebration failed to appear, as the town square stood silent and empty and all the Who’s stayed in their houses. Sure, some of those houses hold merriment and togetherness, but at least some people are in those houses alone.</p><p>But you know what? That’s true every year. If Christmas is only for people who can feel light-hearted, only for people who can be together with people they love, then Christmas isn’t for everyone and never has been. </p><p>There’s another important and beloved strain in our pop culture that acknowledges that part of it. When “White Christmas” was first publicly performed by Bing Crosby, it was seventeen days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was about distance and separation and nostalgic longing, about what was missing that year for so many people. A few years later in 1943 Crosby had another huge hit, as troops in Europe and in the Pacific and so many of their families back home wiped tears from their eyes hearing “I’ll be home for Christmas… if only in my dreams.” You don’t really understand that song in context until you imagine it being sung by a man shivering alone in a foxhole on the other side of an ocean.</p><p>The Gospel we're here to celebrate today, the reason for our radical joy that can't be stolen, is that Christmas is for everyone. It can’t be taken away by stealing our presents... but it also can’t be taken away by loneliness or separation or war or a virus or even death. Some will celebrate this Christmas in a way that’s great and actually pretty normal for them. Others will have celebrations, also great, but smaller and different. Others will be broken-hearted and lonely. But that’s true every year, and the Gospel is the same. We're here for a greater joy than just that we happen to be the lucky ones right now. We're here for a greater hope than just that we will be the lucky ones in the future. Christmas is for everyone because Jesus came for everyone. </p><p>It’s Jesus. It’s our Savior, Who saw a lonely broken-hearted world, lonely for God, hearts broken by sin and death, and Who came to us in Bethlehem to be laid in a manger. To make it true — not just a nice thought or a beautiful wish, but really actually true — that no one is alone.</p><p>I wish, with all my heart I wish you a Merry Christmas… but I promise you this: God is with us. God is with all of us.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglE14pvSr0u7VoPIdFWVeIAHw7PGJEO5FspUePBvXlPX6hy4nQaMOYpit48_Cuvt7N_tfSDJ4H6BFSYpfVOjbqPj8YLdZSkKivKTHN6u9tS2Vb0WSUVnQbXUsvWPWIACnMTKwRb-q9m08/s1312/131384144_3680083388720951_6533964428810300774_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="1312" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglE14pvSr0u7VoPIdFWVeIAHw7PGJEO5FspUePBvXlPX6hy4nQaMOYpit48_Cuvt7N_tfSDJ4H6BFSYpfVOjbqPj8YLdZSkKivKTHN6u9tS2Vb0WSUVnQbXUsvWPWIACnMTKwRb-q9m08/w400-h195/131384144_3680083388720951_6533964428810300774_o.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-73475800974021586182020-10-25T10:42:00.000-05:002020-10-25T10:42:01.569-05:00Our Religion In 19 Words: 30th Sunday OT<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> (click the title or 'read more' if video won't start...)</span></span></h2><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="361" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m2NB5La7j20" width="521" youtube-src-id="m2NB5La7j20"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-45328030095408589932020-10-11T10:54:00.000-05:002020-10-11T10:54:16.207-05:00Invited and Pursued: 28th Sunday OT<p> (click 'read more' if video won't start...)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/czeT1XDOjyk" width="320" youtube-src-id="czeT1XDOjyk"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-55420514393501354972020-10-04T17:34:00.003-05:002020-10-04T17:34:22.150-05:00A Cliffhanger Parable: 27th Sunday OT<p> Did you notice anything about the Gospels of the last three Sundays? In case you didn’t catch it, that makes three consecutive Sundays of Jesus telling parables about vineyards. Two weeks ago it was the owner who hired people throughout the day, and paid the latecomers the full wage just like the early risers. Last week it was the two sons he asked to work in his vineyard, the first of whom said “no” but changed his mind and went, and the second who said “yes” but didn’t follow through. And now this, making it a trilogy of vineyard parables, all from Matthew 20 and 21.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizl8UyOAzDuICJcMooA1uFVY4dOP4FvENPAtmizxiMlWYvvVt-vmfMlQaeiqRmMuLWLU2Xo-0La5Xpklmy2rvKsbsfHKO7cxOSFWDkcSzIu0Tkf5PPUhP4IoZdThM53OG0vh9WrrSXmko/s1500/grape-vine-winery-vineyard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizl8UyOAzDuICJcMooA1uFVY4dOP4FvENPAtmizxiMlWYvvVt-vmfMlQaeiqRmMuLWLU2Xo-0La5Xpklmy2rvKsbsfHKO7cxOSFWDkcSzIu0Tkf5PPUhP4IoZdThM53OG0vh9WrrSXmko/s320/grape-vine-winery-vineyard.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>It’s a sort of climax of the three, this bracing story about the tenants of the vineyard who are not just wicked, but bizarrely, inexplicably so. This, the parable makes clear, is the story of the endlessly broken Covenant by God’s people. In the next chapter of Matthew Jesus will say, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill prophets and stone those who are sent to you!”</p><p>Finally, the owner of the vineyard sends his son, with the heartbreaking reasoning that “surely they will respect my son!” And you know what happens then.</p><p>So how should we take this story today? Does God’s Word perhaps give us this lesson so that we can judge others by it, and be glad that we’re better? That’s probably not it.</p><p>Aren’t we the ones who’ve been working all day supposedly under the landowner’s employ, living lives as Christian people? Aren’t we at least sometimes the second son who said he’d work in the vineyard but never really showed up? Aren’t we the tenants who haven’t produced the fruit we should? And what about the blood of the Son? If we’re going to say that Jesus died for our sins, and really mean it, then that’s on us too.</p><p>This is a message of conviction — but it isn’t a message of despair. There is a challenge in these words of Jesus, and we should take up that challenge with courage and joy. To be welcoming to the newcomers in the vineyard, to make sure every person who encounters us is made to feel like a full part of things, given the ‘full wage.’ We could do better at that. Let’s do better at that! To make our actions every day of the week more perfectly match the words we speak inside this church on the weekend… we could do better at that. Let’s do better at that! And to be tenants who represent the true Lord, the one who will return, the one in whose name we labor until he returns, to bear fruit for the Kingdom of God… let’s take up that challenge with courage and joy.</p><p>Because this parable isn’t really about our wickedness; it’s about the power of God’s mercy and love. It sounds like a bad ending: “What,” Jesus asks, “do you think the owner will do to those wicked tenants” who have killed his son? They give the obvious answer: “He will put those wicked men to a wicked end.” Well, yes. Of course he will….</p><p>… Right? It sounds like a bad ending, but this isn’t the ending. Notice that Jesus doesn’t accept that obvious answer. “Have you never read in the Scriptures, ‘the stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone?’” hinting that when the Son is put to death, all is not lost after all.</p><p>It will be just a little later that Jesus answers the question that for now He leaves hanging: What will the Father do when they… when we… have killed His Son? And the answer to that question is the reason we are all here, the reason we are people of joy, the reason that we are people of unbreakable hope.</p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-58603676653331109212020-09-27T13:00:00.005-05:002020-09-27T13:02:39.283-05:00Today: 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time<p> Click "read more" if video won't start...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NItjpJZ0FQM" width="320" youtube-src-id="NItjpJZ0FQM"></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-64120258545333222192020-09-13T10:33:00.000-05:002020-09-13T10:37:41.129-05:00It's Mercy or It's Hell. 24th Sunday Ordinary Time<p> Click "read more" to access the video</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_UaJS9VkXsU" width="320" youtube-src-id="_UaJS9VkXsU"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-49599406300587264482020-08-23T10:37:00.003-05:002020-08-23T10:39:13.997-05:00The Army at the Gates: 21st Sunday OT<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">(click 'read more' to access video)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ozt3AZmJ4Ug" width="320" youtube-src-id="Ozt3AZmJ4Ug"></iframe></div> <p></p>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-10920772299136802582020-08-02T23:39:00.000-05:002020-08-02T23:39:41.621-05:00Love that Cares: 18th Sunday Ordinary Time<div>The Bible says a lot about how much God hates sin. I don’t think you can miss it. I think most every Catholic knows that God really hates sin. I’m not so sure that everyone understands why.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think sometimes people imagine God hating sin because He’s so incredibly angry at the thought of someone breaking His rules. Like “<i>I’m in charge and what I say goes and how dare you defy Me</i>?” But I don’t think that’s the best way to understand God’s hatred of sin.</div><div><br /></div><div>For a better understanding - and this is a bracing example, but that's why I chose it - imagine the father of a young man who has become addicted to heroin. He raised this boy with big dreams, and now he’s watching them all fade to black. He would’ve died to protect this child, but he can’t keep him from knocking on the dealer’s door. He worked and worried to provide for this boy, to raise him healthy and strong, and now he’s watching that healthy body wither, ravaged and sickly.</div><div><br /></div><div>How much does that father loathe heroin? What white-hot hatred burns in his heart for that drug?</div><div><br /></div><div>And you know why: he burns with hatred for what is hurting his child. But you can see that the hatred of the evil isn’t the first thing. His love for his son is the first thing. His feelings have nothing to do with being resentful and petty that his "no drugs" rule was broken; that would be foolish to imagine. And it would be even more foolish to imagine that since he hates the drug so much, he must also hate the son who keeps taking it. Of course not! It’s just the opposite. The hatred of the drug is a direct result of his love for his son.</div><div><br /></div><div>It seems so simple and clear when we think of a human father. So why do so many people misunderstand the heart of our heavenly Father? It’s really just as simple. God hates sin because it hurts His children. The hatred of sin is because He loves us so much. </div><div><br /></div><div>We hear God’s fatherly heart through the Prophet Isaiah: “Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what fails to satisfy?” There is a tone of pleading here, a Father watching the ones He loves take wrong turns and heartbreaking mistakes that just make us miserable, and it doesn’t have to be this way, He wants so much more for us.</div><div><br /></div><div>To have a good relationship with our heavenly Father, it’s just essential that we understand this, that we receive His commandments as guidance from a fatherly heart, that we understand His hatred of sin as an expression of fatherly protective love for us.</div><div><br /></div><div>And to be His messengers in the world, it’s just essential that we imitate this love. We have the same hatred of sin and for the same reason. We look at others with the same compassion and love. We don’t look at the world going astray with disgust and revulsion, but with compassion and pity. It’s not “ugh, so much sinfulness, everyone is so awful.” It’s that pleading of love: “I care about you and I want so much more for you!”</div><div><br /></div><div>We have to do better at carrying this love into the world. We fail too often in both aspects of it. We fail to hate sin as we should, and we tell ourselves that it’s because we’re so tolerant and nice and want to get along with everyone. When in reality it’s just that our love is so small. We simply don't care about others enough to be all that bothered by what's keeping them from the holy joy God wants them to have. If that father said “heroin? I’m cool with it, whatever,” we wouldn’t praise him for being so tolerant. We’d say he’s a bad Dad. We’d wonder how he could love his son so little.</div><div><br /></div><div>But if we do hate sin, we too often go on to fail at the even more basic part by failing to love people like God loves them. Or, if we really do look at people with love and compassion, we fail to make them see that. When the Church says this or that choice is wrong, do the people making that choice feel loved or condemned? You know the answer is, very often, they feel condemned. They think the religious people are looking at them with disgust and anger. Maybe some of them are, and they need to stop. Maybe some of them aren’t, but they need to try harder to communicate the love behind the teaching.</div><div><br /></div><div>A lot of us struggle with this in our families and among our friends. When someone you love so much is choosing actions that you believe are against God’s commandments, and you know the reason they’re against God’s commandments is that they’re ultimately bad for the person you love so much, it’s so hard to even talk about that. Because you’re so afraid they won’t know how much you love them, how much you like them. You’re afraid when you try to say “this isn’t the right path and I want so much better for you” what they’ll hear instead is “you’re gross and I think you’re a bad person, please change so you will be less awful to me.” It’s tough. But with family and friends we tend to put the first emphasis on making people feel loved and welcome and wanted and liked. I think that’s a good instinct, and the same goes for our public witness as a Church. We can’t claim to love people if we don’t care about sin, but talking about sin probably won’t work very well if they don’t believe they are loved and welcome and wanted and liked.</div><div><br /></div><div>The closer we get to God, the more our hearts will burn like His… first with love for every human person, and as a necessary consequence with hatred for those things that hurt them and lead them away from the heavenly joy that they were meant to have. We’ll plead with Isaiah, “Come to the water!” We’ll hear the mission of Jesus just like the Apostles: take care of my people. That day by the waterside, the Apostles didn’t see the crowd as Jesus did. They saw the hunger, and their response was “well, we’d better send them away.” But Jesus didn’t establish a Church to see needs and send those people away. He told them to start feeding them. You know the rest. They said the same thing we always say: “We aren’t up to it, we don’t have what it takes, we aren’t enough.” </div><div><br /></div><div>The thing is, Jesus doesn’t seem to think that’s relevant at all. After all, He didn’t ask them and He isn’t asking us to give whatever we can come up with on our own. He’s asking us to offer them what He provides, what people truly need more than anything… and that’s nothing other than Jesus Himself. He is the gift, and He is enough.</div>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-34506372411395852852020-07-27T21:41:00.003-05:002020-07-27T21:43:44.596-05:00Sunday, July 26th Homily(click "read more" to watch video) Since the homilies these days are often recorded and broadcast, I thought I'd try linking them to this blog. I'm sorry I haven't been posting for a few months as technological efforts have been focused elsewhere. Let me know if you find this valuable, please; if so I'll keep doing it.<div><br /></div><div>Sunday, July 26th: What do you want above everything else?</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CZE0RF-_t3k" width="320" youtube-src-id="CZE0RF-_t3k"></iframe></div></div>FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-71296424008997720782020-03-29T11:28:00.000-05:002020-03-29T11:28:22.295-05:005th Sunday of Lent, 3-29-20<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-63076807783904078562020-03-02T10:35:00.000-06:002020-03-02T10:35:09.376-06:00We're all Parselmouths: 1st Sunday of Lent<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the old cartoons, when a character came to some moment of temptation, a sort of moral crossroads, remember how they’d always show that? You’d have a little angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, each whispering into the ears. It’s one of the great classic tropes, from Mickey Mouse to Homer Simpson to modern Disney and <i>Pirates of the Caribbean</i>. So common, because it just works. We can relate.<br />
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The Bible points to more than a little truth behind that whimsical image; we’ve just heard two conversations with the Devil. Notice they take place in two extreme and opposite settings: Eve in the lush Garden of Paradise, and Jesus in the barren desert wilderness. I’m sure there’s an awesome sermon there somewhere but for now, it at least shows: the devil can bug you anywhere.<br />
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Just as they have opposite settings, they also have opposite endings. Eve’s story, of course, is the one that goes wrong. A foolish person might take this story as an explanation of who to blame. A wise person will see themselves in it, and learn what it teaches us about human nature, and temptation, and how the serpent works in our lives.<br />
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So in that spirit, let’s do a little forensic analysis on this debacle; let’s see if we can unpack it and scratch the surface of some of those lessons. The first one I want to call out right now is one you might skip over. What’s Eve’s first mistake? Give that just a moment’s thought. Her first mistake…<br />
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I’m going to suggest that her first mistake was: she talked to the snake. Don’t talk to the snake. This actually can be avoided, not all the time but a lot of the time, and it’ll save you a lot of trouble. Don’t talk to the snake. How do you know when it’s the snake talking? Well, you do learn to recognize him in different disguises. You don’t see a red cartoon guy with horns and a pitchfork on your shoulder, but there are certain things that when you hear them whispered, you know who’s whispering.<br />
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“Look at you trying to be all holy. Who do you think you are?”<br />
“That person’s no good, some people are just no good.”<br />
“<i>You’re</i> no good, who are you kidding, you’re scum and always will be.”<br />
“Stop trying to pray, you’re only distracted and wasting your time.”<br />
“Just do it, you can always just go to confession later.”<br />
(later:) “Don’t go to confession, you don’t want God and God doesn’t want you.”<br />
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The spirit of discouragement… it’s <i>always</i> the snake. The spirit that tells you, any time you try something good and noble and worthwhile, that you can’t do it, you’re not enough, it’s not worth it anyway. Stop it. Don’t talk to the snake. Shut up, snake.<br />
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Well, Eve talked to the snake, and there will be times you find yourself in a conversation like this in spite of any efforts not to listen, so let’s keep following the story. Here’s Satan’s opening line: “Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” If I may rephrase, “Does following God’s way mean you can’t have <i>any</i> pleasure or fun or joy?”<br />
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Now you and I, sitting here safely and with hindsight, can marvel at the raw insanity of that question. This is paradise. There is nothing wrong. God specifically told them “except for that one, eat any of the fruit you want,” and how many was that? There are lots of trees in the Garden. They’re pleasant, good, and enticing. Adam and Eve are surrounded by pleasures and delights; that’s God’s will for them! So many trees, so many delights in our world! Isn’t that still true for you and me?<br />
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But then, how could we ever go wrong, how could we choose evil, when good is so pleasurable and so delightful and so available? That’s the serpent’s first problem to overcome<br />
. To tempt Eve to choose the wrong, he first has to turn her away from all that innocent good. He has to make her dissatisfied even though being dissatisfied is insane. Well, he’s really good at that. In the midst of all these innocent delights, somehow the one thing forbidden captures her attention. It becomes the only thing in the world, the only thing that matters. Suddenly all the good things life offers her fade out of focus. She’s fixated, obsessed on the thing she knows is forbidden. Know what that’s like? Sure you do.<br />
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Learn this trick, this strategy of the devil: he’s exaggerating the burden of God’s commandment. God only forbade the fruit of one tree while giving them free access to pleasures beyond number. When you’re talking to the snake, those all fade out of focus and the forbidden thing is all that seems to matter, the only thing that seems real and desirable. It feels like it’s the only thing you really want.<br />
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Eve puts up a timid fight (better certainly than her silent husband!) but she leaves the door open. She says, “God allows us the other fruit, but this one we aren’t allowed to eat or even touch.” See? She’s focused on what’s forbidden. He’s got her staring at it.<br />
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Also notice this: in the text, God never actually said anything about not touching it. It sounds like Eve has swallowed a bit of the poison: she’s exaggerating the burden. We all know what this is like. In the moment of temptation, God’s Commandment seems so unreasonable, so impossible. And you tell yourself, “hey, I have needs.” Or “hey, my life is harder than other people’s, I should be allowed this” or if you’re an especially corny person without the self-respect to avoid the most tedious cliches, “How could something be wrong when it feels so right?”<br />
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Time for the next move, and it’s the knockout punch. “No, you won’t die. God knows that if you eat it, your eyes will be open and you will be like gods.” Temptation makes God out to be the enemy. God is an obstacle, a rival. God isn’t looking out for you, he’s keeping you from what you really want!<br />
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Eve’s decision isn’t whether she wants the forbidden thing; she wants it. It’s appealing. Neither is her decision what God has to say about it; that’s also clear. She knows what God commands, and her decision is whether to trust Him.<br />
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If I asked “where did Adam and Eve go wrong?” you might say “when they disobeyed God” and picture that first chomp into the forbidden fruit. But they actually went wrong a moment before that. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way (#397): Sin entered the world when man “let trust in his Creator die in his heart.” Sin entered the world in that moment before Eve reached out her hand, when she decided that God’s commandments wouldn’t make her happy, wouldn’t be enough for her, weren’t in her best interest.<br />
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And every sin you’ve ever committed has involved that same decision. You don’t sin because you want to be miserable. You sin because you want to be happy, and you’ve decided that following God’s Commandments isn’t the way to accomplish that. You think, “I need this,” and reach out for the forbidden. You know it isn’t God’s way, and you’ve stopped believing that God’s way is your best option. You’ve let trust in your Creator die in your heart.<br />
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If you really take this story to heart, it’ll arm you for these battles. Best case scenario, you make it easy on yourself and DON’T TALK TO THE SNAKE. But if you do find yourself in this kind of moment, maybe you’ll spot the tricks. You’ll be prepared to say, “shut up snake, I know this move. You’re making God’s commandments out to be so terrible and burdensome. You want me to forget all the innocent delight and goodness that I can just reach out and enjoy. You want me totally fascinated, laser-focused, on what I shouldn’t have instead. Most of all, you want me to think of God as an obstacle to my happiness. You want me to not trust His commandments to be my best choice.”<br />
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In the cartoons, you know when the character has made their decision; they show it by having either the angel or the devil ‘poof’ disappear, and you know what they’ve decided to do. Which is pretty much exactly what happens when the devil is defeated by Jesus in Matthew 4:11: “And the devil left him, and God’s angels appeared and looked after him.” I’ll bet you can relate to that moment, too. It’s a good feeling. Sooner or later, easy or hard, peace follows victory. Whether your life is a garden or a desert this particular day, it’s really all about trusting God, and that means trusting His commandments.FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-35030045883526681992020-02-23T08:50:00.000-06:002020-02-24T07:31:06.140-06:00Open the Tabernacle: 7th Sunday OTFr. Bill Peckman was pastor a few years back of St. Clement Church in Bowling Green, Missouri. He was also chaplain at a summer camp (sounds like a great guy). Well this one particular July weekend he was away at camp, so it was a visiting priest who opened St. Clement for the 9am Sunday Mass. He immediately saw, and even more immediately smelled, that the church had been vandalized. Fr. Bill made the three hour trip back; I’ll let him describe it:<br />
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“My Church sits dormant. It is lifeless. No sacraments can be celebrated in her right now. Late Saturday night, she was desecrated. Her confessional, baptismal font, holy water font, presider’s chair, lectern, altar, and tabernacle were smeared with human feces. The Holy Oils were emptied into the carpet. Her books used for Mass destroyed. Her vestments soiled with wine. Worst of all, the Blessed Sacrament within the tabernacle desecrated…”<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM5zFI8nxQ1LYKI6r4t1RXAuCjqC9T_U6bIQbspY9UIWj7K8utYLOjJUSe0q9ts2-QoVwHL7aDhoq4lGlx00mC8a9JxlLShSp9eiSTutAQp0zLWeaPp-rgv-nBs0GwxZkFU5PXfq8bbUs/s1600/th.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM5zFI8nxQ1LYKI6r4t1RXAuCjqC9T_U6bIQbspY9UIWj7K8utYLOjJUSe0q9ts2-QoVwHL7aDhoq4lGlx00mC8a9JxlLShSp9eiSTutAQp0zLWeaPp-rgv-nBs0GwxZkFU5PXfq8bbUs/s1600/th.jpeg" /></a>Think what an outrage that is. What a direct and targeted offense, not just to other people, but an offense directed right at God… for someone to go into a church, God’s house, a temple, and desecrate it. Would you do that for a million dollars? That’s not just a rhetorical question, like, really ask yourself, would you? I know you wouldn’t. I’m just asking you to feel for a second your horror at the very thought of it. Got that? Feel it?<br />
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Then hear this: “Brothers and sisters: do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” That was 1 Corinthians 3:16. The same idea is echoes a few chapters later in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.” Paul is pleading with them against sin… why? Because they are God’s dwelling. We are God’s dwelling. We, our bodies, we are Temples of the Holy Spirit. We have been washed in the saving water. We have been anointed with God’s Spirit. Don’t defile the Temple!<br />
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You wouldn’t come in here and spread filth around. You wouldn’t do that in a million years. You wouldn’t do that for a million dollars. Unthinkable. Never. But you know what? If you could see yourself through God’s eyes - if you could see yourself the way God sees you - you’d feel just the same about committing any sin. This is key, now: it isn’t that you shouldn’t sin because you’re supposed to be holy. It’s that you shouldn’t sin because you <i>are</i> holy. You are baptized and anointed, you belong to Jesus, and you can’t set that aside. Sin fits into your life like vandalism fits into this sanctuary.<br />
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And Jesus makes it clear that we are to look at each other the same way. Even our enemies.<br />
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Fr. Peckman wrote the day after: “We must pray for those who perpetrated this attack. We cannot give into the anger or fear such an attack can muster. We cannot respond to sin with sin. We will rise above this and show not only the larger community but the attacker themselves that the fullness of God’s mercy can be found at St. Clement.”<br />
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A week later the Bishop came to preside at the special prayers for a desecrated Church, ending with Eucharistic Adoration. By then, police had identified the person who committed the vandalism. Fr. Peckman said, “My parishioners have responded beyond any hopes that I would have expected. Not one asked what we were going to do to the woman who visited this tragedy upon us. Not one. Instead I had multiple request as to how we might help her. This is the way of Christ. No vengeance. No fear. No overreaction. Just mercy and forgiveness.”<br />
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I think in some ways it’s easier to find that mercy in these bizarrely outrageous cases. It’s so over the top that your first reaction might be “who did what to you? What are you carrying that came out in this way?” Maybe it’s actually harder for smaller, more mundane offenses. But anytime someone hurts you and your response is “what can we do to help her?”, you have truly taken to heart the words of Jesus: “When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand over your cloak as well.”<br />
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Forgiveness is still our strongest witness short of martyrdom. What would you say was the most powerful moment of Christian Gospel witness in our nation in, say, the last ten years? I know my answer. I’d point to the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. That’s where a young man walked into a Bible Study in June 2015 and took nine lives. His motive was simple, straight up racism. Members of the church, especially families of the victims, found themselves looking into camera lenses, with microphones held out to their mouths, being asked for their response. Eventually, they even testified in court with the defendant sitting right in front of them. Not all of them responded the same, but many did. Again and again, these broken-hearted, crushed, grieving people spoke of forgiveness and mercy. And America listened, and America saw, and we were just in awe of the power of the Gospel in these people’s witness.<br />
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There was a similar story in the Amish community of West Nickel Mines in Pennsylvania in 2006. And I can’t help but think of the incredible story of St. Maria Goretti, whose relic is under our altar at St. Kateri.<br />
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If you could see yourself the way God sees you, you’d never commit another sin. If you could see others the way God sees them, you would forgive and love every one. Because all these stories are not just ours. The Emanuel AME Church’s story wasn’t only theirs. The West Nickel Mines story, and Maria Goretti’s stories weren’t only theirs. They are all the story of Jesus Christ, forgiving and praying for his enemies: “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.”<br />
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That story can shine in us, too, just like He told us two weeks ago: our light must shine before others. You are God’s temple, and it’s the power of God’s mercy that you have to draw on. Whoever you need to forgive, you can. If you’ve been struggling with a grudge, struggling to find mercy for someone, here’s a hint: stop searching inside for your own mercy, and start reaching for God’s. If you can’t find love of your own, tap into God’s love for them. Open the doors of the Tabernacle that you are and let that love out. You’ll find there’s enough of it of for you and the person you need to forgive, both.<br />
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You have to know that forgiveness isn’t about your feelings. This mistake is a big obstacle for a lot of Christians who struggle to forgive. Forgiveness is an act of the will. It is choosing to love and to will the good of the other person, choosing not to insist that they get what’s coming to them, but to hope for their eternal happiness and salvation. Jesus commands us to do that. He doesn't say “have warm, happy feelings about your enemies,” or “start enjoying the company of your enemies,” or even “stop feeling the hurt your enemies caused;” He says “pray for your enemies.” That’s an act of the will, not a feeling, and you can do it the moment you decide to do it. Then keep doing it, over and over.<br />
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The last line of that Gospel reading was “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” What are we supposed to do with that, we who are so very, very far from perfect? Ah, but we are the Temples of the one who is. When our love doesn’t measure up, when our mercy runs out, when our virtue falls short, the grace we need is there for us. Love with His love. Forgive with His mercy. Call on His strength. You are God’s temple.FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-43110037672939891512020-02-17T11:47:00.003-06:002020-02-17T11:51:33.668-06:00What is WRONG with you? (Lent 2020 and the Predominant Fault)To spare you wasting your time I’ll disclaim right off the bat: this sermon is long and didactic and really only applies to people who have something really wrong with them. I mean character-wise. So if that’s not you, feel free to tune out.<br />
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But maybe don’t do that too fast. I heard a famous psychologist say from clinical experience that pretty much everybody has <i>some</i> character flaw that’s darn near fatal, something that would quickly wreck their lives if they let it. He wasn’t speaking in a religious context but I related what he said to what I’d been reading in the Catholic tradition, especially books about spiritual direction. It’s about trying to identify and work on your predominant fault.<br />
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That term “predominant fault” might sound fancy but it’s a very simple idea: that most of us really have one fault that’s our main problem, that would be really good to diagnose and focus on. Experience as a priest, I’d say, would tend to agree. Even people who are doing really well and have their stuff impressively together, it’s generally still true that there’s something in their character that could ruin their lives very fast if they let it. They aren’t letting it, and that’s why they’re thriving.<br />
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So if this is true, it will be bad news to anyone who thinks they’re pretty close to perfect — this brazen suggestion that there might be something really wrong with you. But if you’re like me, it’s a very hopeful and relieving thought. I’d love to think that there’s <i>one</i> big flaw I could really focus on, instead of two or three or thirty.<br />
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I think it could also help some of us feel less alone. They look inside and they see that ugly thing, and they look at others who seem to be so much more pure and to have flaws that are so much less ugly. If that’s you, I hope with all my heart that you’ll somehow believe this: the presence of some deep and ugly fault that you’re always having to fight… you aren’t specially twisted. You aren’t an imposter or a hypocrite. And when you know others in whom you don’t see any such ugliness, don’t be discouraged — take heart! They aren’t proving that your flaws are uniquely awful; they’re proving that our flaws can be dealt with and conquered. And I’ll bet you’re handling yours better than you give yourself credit for. There are Christians who think they are bad people because in their struggle to be good they are having to constantly overcome some ugly monster. You beautiful, beautiful child of God… that’s the very definition of a good person.<br />
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This predominant fault idea will make more sense with a few concrete examples. These are hypothetical, this is not a public confession! But let’s say I’m examining my conscience, and I go to confession with four things. Let’s say I confess first that I’ve been vain and obsessing too much over my appearance. Second, I can think of some times I lashed out with inappropriate anger. Third, I lied to someone. And fourth, I gossiped, sharing something unflattering about someone else without a compelling reason.<br />
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So I’ve confessed four different faults: vanity, dishonesty, anger, and gossip.<br />
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Is there an obvious common thread between vanity, dishonesty, anger and gossip? Not really. But this idea of a predominant fault is to look for a deeper problem behind most of them, or maybe even all of them. So I start looking deeper. Why do I obsess over my appearance? Maybe I decide the reason I obsess over appearance is that I’m trying to make people like me. What about the dishonesty, where did that come from? Maybe I think back to why I lied, and it was to make myself look better to others… oh, that’s kind of the same thing. Anger, then… when did I get angry? I realize that what really got to me was the feeling that I was being disrespected or belittled… which is never good, but I took it <i>really</i> hard. Since the pattern is getting pretty clear now, I’ll naturally ask if my gossiping is related. Maybe I realize that, yes, the reason I wanted to blab was that I wanted to be the person with the juicy news, and that too was about wanting to impress and be liked.<br />
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So the super clear pattern that’s emerging is that these four faults, which on the surface are so different — vanity, dishonesty, anger, gossip — in this example, they all tend to stem from insecurity about how other people see me. It’s fine to want to be liked, we all want to be liked, but I’ve discovered that my insecurity is wreaking havoc in my life. It’s my predominant fault!<br />
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An example with a different confession: Let’s say I got into some unchaste internet trouble, and I’ve been watching too much tv, and eating too much, and having too much to drink.<br />
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Is there an obvious common thread between those four? Yes, this time. The predominant fault here might be simple lack of self-control. I can’t say no to whatever urge comes along. My life is being run, and wrecked, by whatever appetite happens to show up at that moment.<br />
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On the other hand, I might find that all of those things are coming less from impulsiveness than from boredom. I’ve got nothing filling my life with mission and purpose, and nothing but time on my hands. The old saying about the devil loving idle hands is the story of my life. So I might discern that the root problem is laziness; I get into trouble because I have way too much idleness because I’m lazy.<br />
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Just for kicks here’s a third possibility from that same confession: I may realize that I don’t have too much idle time, it’s more that I can’t cope with any amount of it. I’m suffering from that very modern problem of being actually afraid of silence and stillness because I’ve lost the ability to think and pray, and my predominant fault is fear of silence and need for constant distraction.<br />
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So there are a few examples; we could multiply them all day. But getting an idea of a predominant fault starts with prayer and examination of conscience. Looking behind your sins like these examples is really helpful. Another clue can be what most preoccupies you, what drives your mood, what most makes you happy and sad?<br />
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Here’s a very powerful clue: what criticism are you most sensitive to? Often, your predominant fault is the one thing you absolutely can’t stand being called out on. And while you’re at it, ask your family and closest friends. If you dare. If you’re married, and if you haven’t given much thought to your predominant fault, I guarantee your spouse has.<br />
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Now, just to be careful: this isn’t some kind of unbreakable law or Church doctrine. If you decide you really think you have a couple of different root faults and no predominant one, you might be right. And for sure, we don’t want to force everything into this clever little scheme. If I’ve learned that my predominant fault is insecurity, that doesn’t mean that every sin I ever commit has to somehow be traced to that. My examples are very neat and tidy because I made them up that way. In reality we aren’t that simple.<br />
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But taken in the right spirit, it’s a powerful idea and I’m offering this “predominant fault” thing as an invitation for a good Lenten focus. Approach it prayerfully and courageously: “Jesus, help me know myself and show me what’s holding me back.” In spiritual life, just as much as in medicine, a correct diagnosis is critical! And in spiritual health as in physical health, it’s a positive revolution to move from merely managing symptoms to healing an underlying disease. This idea could be that same revolution in your soul.<br />
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You can do that once you have a good idea of a predominant fault; you can find some good concrete ways to address it. Like for my examples: if my root problem is insecurity, I might start praying the Litany of Humility first thing every morning and focus on letting someone I trust really see my struggles and flaws. If it’s self-control, I can embrace penances and mortifications to practice denying myself and strengthen those self-control muscles. If it’s laziness, I might start an exercise discipline, or find a volunteer opportunity, or a learning project. If it’s that I can’t cope with silence and stillness, my prescription might be to take thirty minutes each evening, half to read the Bible, and the rest to sit in silence. You’ll know you’re getting it right when it seems way harder than it ought to be.<br />
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Lent is a perfect time to embrace those kinds of things, and it isn't too soon to start prayerfully planning any projects or penances or disciplines... we’re that close, a week and a half! I hope praying and thinking about this great idea from the Catholic tradition might help you become closer to Christ. Because that’s what this is all about. It’s not about self-helping ourselves to Heaven because that doesn’t work. It’s about you and Jesus working together on your conversion, and working together to overcome any obstacles between you and Him.FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-24525608359150456452020-02-04T14:38:00.001-06:002020-02-04T14:43:10.606-06:00Return to Your Temple: Presentation of the LordI'm going to try to tell a 600 year story so I hope you grabbed a bulletin to read. It's especially challenging because the context is the Babylonian Exile, and I don't presume many of us know much about that. I think most Catholics could do a decent job telling the story of Noah. I think most of us could probably tell the Exodus pretty well. Maybe we could sketch out the basics of the time of King David. But how many of us could say much at all about the Exile? For many Catholics, maybe the word is kind of familiar, they’re aware in a vague way that it was a thing, but maybe couldn’t really begin to say what exactly it was.<br />
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And yet, the Exile takes up more Biblical real estate than any of those events I described. It’s the main context of most of the Prophets. If you held between your finger and thumb the part of the Old Testament that’s centered around the Exile, you’d be holding pretty much the last third of the whole thing.<br />
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The tenth chapter of the Prophet Ezekiel is among the most crushing in all the Bible. It’s a vision of Ezekiel as the exile is just beginning, the people are conquered and being forcibly taken from the land promised to the Abraham, dispersed and relocated, exiled to Babylon. Think about the loss of that promised land and what it meant to them and their history and identity, the hopes and certainty they’d staked on it, and imagine how devastating it was to be exiled. But in this devastating moment of Israel’s history, that isn’t the worst. The worst is what Ezekiel saw and described in his tenth chapter: he saw the Glory of God rise up out of the Temple and depart.The Lord left His Temple. Ezekiel knew, then, that the city was finished and that the nation was headed for ruin.<br />
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Somehow Ezekiel and the other Prophets also knew that God had not abandoned His people. They trusted that even this was part of God’s plan of salvation. The people had abandoned God, and the exile was God’s way of not abandoning them, not giving up on His plans for them. He sent them away physically so He could bring them home spiritually. The Exile was the toughest medicine ever dispensed in all the Old Testament, but it was medicine. It was love.<br />
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So Ezekiel promised a return even as he wept over the exile. The return happened and it was a glorious, joyful moment. But here’s something strange: there’s no reverse scene of what happened in Ezekiel 10. Later in chapter 43 he has a prophetic vision of God’s glory returning in the future, but nothing really fulfilling this seems to happen when they do return. It’s a striking thing to be missing.<br />
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And everything I’ve said so far is context to understand our first reading, which isn’t from Ezekiel at all, but from a few hundred years later in the prophet Malachi, who says “Lo, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me; And suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom you seek.”<br />
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Malachi’s promise is beautiful, but also acknowledges that even after the exiles returned and rededicated their Temple, the Lord’s return was somehow still being waited for. In the meantime they kept up the Temple worship. Generation after generation of priests took their turns in the sanctuary. The candles kept burning and the sacrifices were offered.<br />
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They were still keeping it up about four hundred years later when a priest named Zechariah took his turn to enter the Holy of Holies. Zechariah came out of there unable to talk. He’d had some kind of vision but he had been struck dumb, and couldn’t speak until his son was born. When he finally could speak, he’d had plenty of time to think about what to say, and this was it: “You, my child, shall be called the Prophet of the Most High, for you will go before Him to prepare His way.” It was a direct and unmistakable reference to Malachi’s promised messenger. Zechariah quoted the words of Malachi from four centuries before, and claimed them for his own son, and John the Baptist would indeed do exactly that.<br />
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But that wasn’t the only part of Malachi’s prophecy, and that wasn’t the only pregnancy coming to term. And that brings us to our Gospel. When the time came, they brought Him for the ritual presentation in the Temple.<br />
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I love that Luke begins that Temple scene by introducing us to two of my favorite people in the Bible: Anna and Simeon, two faithful elderly Jews who we learn were always in the Temple, who were waiting for the Lord. They stand there for all of us, for everyone who’s ever waited and hoped. They are like so many today who spend the later season of their lives in prayer, who you might say are ‘always in the temple.’ There are so many Annas and Simeons in our parishes! But for them it was a hope not yet realized, a Promise they trusted would be kept… someday.<br />
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I picture them in quiet prayer in the candlelit Temple. I picture the shadows darkening the door, cast long across the ground, the foster father and the mother holding the child. I picture Simeon and Anna looking up.<br />
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The Lord had returned to His Temple.<br />
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And His Presence remains to this day. Not in a single Temple on the other side of the world, but in every tabernacle in the world. Here. All the time. The Real Presence.<br />
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And that’s incomprehensibly beautiful and amazing, but we’ve got to take it one more step. Because in the New Testament, God’s Word doesn’t say that the churches we build are Temples of God’s Spirit. It says that we are. Our bodies. 1 Corinthians 6:19. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, because Jesus’ Eucharistic Presence isn’t just something we can visit, but Someone we receive.<br />
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And the Lord returns to His Temple again and again. Hopefully we never drive Him away, but if we do, He will return the moment we allow Him. Go to confession first if you need to, because Jesus also cleanses His Temple! But let Him return. Let the Presence of Jesus Christ fill your spirit, your mind, and your body. We are His, and in every Mass we witness Malachi’s prophecy fulfilled in a way so far beyond anything he could have imagined. Come, Lord Jesus, and return to Your temple.FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-69655295002882695442020-01-31T10:37:00.000-06:002020-01-31T10:37:27.266-06:00Where the Light Gets In: 2nd Sunday OTWe just heard the same words twice, in the First Reading from Isaiah and repeated by Matthew in his Gospel. Isaiah promised that the Land of Zebulon and Naphtali would see a great light, and six hundred years later Matthew remembered that promise and claimed it had come true when Jesus walked that seaward road and settled in Capernaum. Matthew does a lot of this in his Gospel. As he’s telling the story of Jesus, he throws in these side notes about how Scriptural prophecies are being fulfilled all over the place.<br />
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Bishop Fulton Sheen noticed that there’s a beautiful conversion there for Matthew. When Jesus found Matthew, he found him at the tax collectors’ table, collaborating with the Romans and so labelled as a traitor to Israel. But after meeting Jesus, Matthew is the proudest son of Israel! More than any other Gospel, he focuses on, delights in, rejoices over, the way that God has kept His promises to Israel. Maybe because Matthew had been unfaithful to his people, he was especially appreciative and sensitive to God’s covenant faithfulness. Bishop Sheen used Matthew and other Biblical examples to show how conversion to Christ often involves our greatest faults becoming our greatest strengths.<br />
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We find a similar contrast in Isaiah’s promise that the people dwelling in darkness would see a great light. Of course, lights seem brighter the greater the darkness around them. I think there’s a really common mistake that we Christians make about this. It starts when we find a contrast between the light we long for in Christ and the darkness we find within us, whatever about us is ugly and stupid and dark, and it can take us to that place of guilt and shame. So we run from the darkness and try to hide from it. It’s the basic move beginning with Adam and Eve hiding from God after their sin. It’s dumb, but we do it. We try to hide from God and hide from ourselves the things about us that are ugly and stupid and dark.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Adam and Eve Hiding From the Lord</i>, Gustav Doré</td></tr>
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But that’s the opposite of how Jesus works in the Gospels. From the basic fact of His incarnation, to the details of how He went about His ministry, Jesus doesn’t refuse to deal with darkness. If anything, He heads straight for it. Maybe if we want to be close to Him, we shouldn’t be running from our own darkness. Maybe we should be looking for Him exactly there. Like Matthew, in our weakest and darkest parts, maybe that’s exactly where the light of Christ is ready to shine.<br />
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After quoting the prophecy of Isaiah, Matthew writes that Jesus began to preach, and his description of his message is short and to the point. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” How you feel about being told to repent is probably related to whether you’re able to face your own darkness and meet Jesus there. If you’re full of shame and embarrassment, “Repent” probably sounds incredibly negative. We hear this all the time, that huge cliche about ‘Catholic guilt.’ You know who talks that way? People who’ve skimmed across the surface of Catholicism and never seen the heart of it, who might say they were ‘raised Catholic’ or went to Catholic school but never really met Jesus. And their experience of things sacred and holy is all about guilt and shame.<br />
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But to those who actually do the repenting, and invite Jesus into whatever darkness we may have, it’s the most joyful good news! The choice to repent is the incredibly optimistic belief that things can be better, that we can be better. It’s the ability to face the whole truth about who you are, not in fear and shame, and not in resigned apathy, but in hope. It’s the trust that the light of Jesus Christ will shine in any darkness, even mine.<br />
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We start every Mass with this. I can imagine how it seems to the ‘Catholic guilt’ people when almost the very first thing we do is the penitential rite: The Sign of the Cross, ‘The Lord be with you’… now THINK ABOUT YOUR SINS! But pay attention to exactly what’s said: “Let us call to mind our sins, to prepare ourselves to…”<br />
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… remember the word there? “To prepare ourselves to <i>celebrate</i>.” We rejoice in having met Jesus in our darkness. What joy, what freedom, in being able to come here and stand before the altar in all our weakness, with all our pasts, as who we really are. What a relief to stand here among all of you, not having to pretend I’ve got it all together, not having to put on a hypocritical facade. Here I am, I’m a sinner. Oh, you too? Well, here we are, as who we really are. To celebrate!<br />
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As today’s passage concludes, Matthew describes the call of four other Apostles — not tax collectors, but fishermen. Jesus asks Simon and Andrew, James and John, to follow Him. And once they start following Him, He starts sending them. The ones who received Jesus as a light in the darkness are now sent into the darkness of others. That’s what our lives are meant to be. We can only share the light if we have ourselves received the Lord. And if we have truly received the Lord, no power on earth and no power in hell could stop us from wanting to share that light. And it will make us more merciful and less judgmental with other people. If we’ve met Jesus in our own darkness, we won’t be afraid to walk with others.FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4356289174956888582.post-75367738815737778002020-01-11T22:20:00.000-06:002020-01-11T22:22:04.457-06:00Basics: Baptism of the LordOn your way into Church today you probably dipped your hand into holy water and made the Sign of the Cross. I’d bet confidently that most of us did that automatically and without any thought at all, just a sheer act of habit. I don’t mean that as a scold or judgment, it’s just human nature. You do something like that so routinely, your brain tends to slip into autopilot. So if that gesture is typically done unthinkingly, I don’t think you should feel terrible about that. But I do think we should all push back against that tendency, try to keep it real and prayerful.<br />
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Because when you do that simple action, you are doing something intensely meaningful. Even the placement of the water is no accident. It’s at the door of the church because Baptism is the door into the Church. Coming into the church, especially for Mass, is a big deal of a thing to do. Jesus is Eucharistically present. We are here to share in a foretaste of Heaven, a little reflection and invasion of Heaven on Earth. That’s not something you just casually stroll into and slump into a seat. You want to get in the right headspace for that. You want to act like it matters. That’s why we genuflect to Jesus in the tabernacle. Even before that, it’s why we ritually invoke our Baptism with holy water ever time we enter this space, and make the Sign of the Cross to remind ourselves what that Baptism means and to recommit ourselves to living it out.<br />
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It’s super basic, and that’s why it matters so much; the most basic things matter the most. Remember your Baptism! It makes you a member of the mystical Body of Christ. It claims you for Jesus and fills you with His life. It also gives you a mission, as priest, prophet, and king. You are not your own; you have been purchased at a price. To you, life is Christ and death is gain, because now you live, not you, but Christ lives in you.<br />
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Are those things true in your every thought and action? Nope. That’s all the more reason to keep remembering our Baptism, to keep going back to that water, to ask God over and over for the grace to live it out. To sign yourself with that water is a penitential act because you can’t do that without recognizing you don’t always live up to the calling of your Baptism. It’s a hopeful act because you’re signing up to stay in the fight, trusting that grace won’t let you down. It’s a joyful act because there is no greater joy than to know Jesus Christ and to live with Him and in Him, because even death has no power over you anymore, because eternal life is already yours.<br />
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That’s more meaning and mystery than you could plunge into every time you come into a church. But just as we only dip our hands into the water, we can at least dip our minds into the mystery.<br />
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Then we make the Sign of the Cross. If you grew up Catholic this is probably the first prayer you learned. I’ve noticed at family tables when the blessing before meals is prayed, in my family and in other families with little children, the adults often make a big deal out of encouraging and demonstrating the Sign of the Cross to the little ones. They fold their hands in a more deliberate way; they speak slowly and make the motions precisely and deliberately and slowly, with an eye on the toddler to see if they are following along. Everything about that moment says “this is important, this is something important to learn.”<br />
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I’m afraid this is something many Catholics seem to grow out of a few years later, though. The gesture becomes an abstract wavy caricature, the prayer becomes a few mumbled slurred not-quite-syllables. But we shouldn’t grow out of it. When we take such care teaching our little ones, there’s a profound insight at work there, maybe one that’s more instinctive than conscious. There is something foundational and basic going on in that gesture and those words.<br />
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I’ll try to <a href="https://mindpumppodcast.com/1165-bishop-robert-barron-on-physical-fitness-gene-editing-satan-evolution-psychedelics-much-more/" target="_blank">channel Bishop Barron a little here</a>**, who I think explains this beautifully. We start with a hand moving upward, invoking the Father. We experience the Father in an ‘up there’ sort of way, transcendent and holy and beyond. In the scene of Jesus’s Baptism, the voice of the Father came from the sky, unseen and unseeable, ‘up there’ in Heaven. But then our hand descends, as God the Son descended to take on our humanity, took flesh and dwelt among us, God visible and touchable. God sent His Son down — all the way down, into our brokenness and weakness and even, amazingly, to experience Godforsaken-ness on the Cross. And then we come to the Holy Spirit, the love of the Father and Son that lives in us… and our hand moves shoulder to shoulder, because this love that connects them is now the love that contains me! I, this body, am now included in the mystery and inner life of God.<br />
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Does the infant in the high chair comprehend all that? Well, I sure don’t. But we have our lives to spend living deeper into that identity, deeper into the pattern and identification with the Cross of Christ. From the toddler just beginning to clumsily trace the pattern, to the dying Saint who has become a living icon of that mystery of God’s love, this is not a prayer we should ever grow out of. It’s a prayer that our life’s highest goal should be to grow into.<br />
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** From the excellent MindPump podcast linked, at about 22:30</div>
<br />FrStevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08551795157677935434noreply@blogger.com1