Sunday, July 31, 2016

Papal Intentions for August 2016

Papal Intentions for August 2016

Universal Intention: That sports may be an opportunity for friendly encounters between peoples and may contribute to peace in the world.
Mission Intention: That Christians may live the Gospel, giving witness to faith, honesty, and love of neighbor.

Prayer for the Pope

V. Let us pray for Francis, our Pope.
R. May the Lord preserve him, give him life, 
and make him blessed upon the earth, 
and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies.
Our Father... Hail Mary...
O God, Shepherd and Ruler of all Thy faithful people, look mercifully upon Thy servant Francis, whom Thou hast chosen as shepherd to preside over Thy Church. Grant him, we beseech Thee, that by his word and example, he may edify those over whom he hath charge, so that together with the flock committed to him, may he attain everlasting life. 
Through Christ our Lord. 
Amen.


Monday, July 25, 2016

Signs of the Times - Homily for July 24 (Feast of St. Ann)



Readings from July 24 (Feast of St. Ann)
Genesis 18:20-32
Psalm 138
Colossians 2:12-14
Luke 11:1-13

Announcement: St. Ann Parish has a website now: www.goodsaintann.com - check us out!

The Lord often uses physical, relatable examples in his teaching to his disciples. Today He uses a clear one of someone coming at midnight to ask for food. Every one of us knows that even if we don't want to get up, their persistence will lead us to give them whatever they want...even if we do it less than gracefully and kindly. He also uses physical things to teach in numerous other examples so as to help the people understand. He does this because He knows that we are good at understanding physical realities, but the more important for us is to understand the spiritual realities. Speaking to the disciples, Jesus told them that they know well the 'signs of the times' physically; how to read the skies and understand that when the wind blows this way rain is coming, or when plants change that seasons are changing, and so forth. They rightly read those things, but the greater gift is to be able to read the signs of the times in the Spirit. To know that when things are happening around us what is the work of God and what is the work of the evil one. 

Reflecting these past few weeks on the Sunday scriptures, as well as the saints' feast days that we've remembered through the course of the week and the recent events around our country, it seems rather clear to me that the signs of the times are all pointing toward a common refrain: pray, pray, pray. 

It is good for us to pray, but if we don't know how to pray or how to pray well, our efforts may be less fruitful than otherwise may be the case. The disciples recognize this and wisely ask Jesus for help: "Jesus us how to pray just as John taught his disciples." In response the Lord gives them a little catechism lesson on prayer. In it He gives us what we can discern as three main points today.

The first point is the fact that we need to pray. When the request is made the Lord doesn't shrug it off as something inconsequential, but rather immediately responds. Unlike many places where He asks questions or invites them to reflect, He acknowledges the importance of prayer and feeds them with the proper manner of prayer. The prayer He gives, an abbreviate form of the Our Father is what is given by St. Luke, even reminds us that we cannot provide our own daily bread - our legitimate needs and other desires - but that it comes from God. We can forget this sometimes and go through the course of our day forgetful that the gifts we have and exercise are there only because of God's goodness and we can implicitly take them as our personal traits or skills we've honed and developed. But it is the Lord who does these things and it is He to whom we turn for help. 

The second point on prayer is that we must begin with the Lord first and our petitions second. St. Peter Julian Eymard, known often as an Apostle of the Eucharist and one who wrote and preached extensively on the Most Blessed Sacrament, said that when we go to prayer before Our Lord, we ought to begin by loving the Lord and pouring out our love for Him. This is modeled by Jesus as He begins the prayer with "Father, hallowed be your name...". Honored be Your name, holy be Your name. Saturday was the feast of St. Bridget of Sweden and the Office of Readings for her feast was a beautiful reflection on the Passion of Christ. What is different than most narratives is that preceding each portion of the Passion reflection is a line to the effect of 'Glory be to You, Lord', 'Honor be to You', 'Eternal praise be to You', and the like. She poured out her love and then would reflect on the petition or need. So, how often do you begin your prayer with "In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, I need your help right now with...." or something to that effect? I know that I do it often because the time when we our to prayer most quickly and fervently is when we are in need. But the Lord reminds us to praise Him first, pouring out our love, and then after having done so being able to bring forward our petitions and needs which now have a new strength and power because they are purified by our praise and adoration. 

The third point is the need for persistence in prayer. How many souls have been lost for the lack of persistence! How frequently have I seen in other and myself the struggle of faith when a petition is prayer about for week, month, or years and right when it seems like the Lord is about to move, the prayer is given up for lack of faith and persistence. Right at the threshold when the gift was to be given! Persistence in prayer is everything because it shapes our heart to become more like loving nature that is the Lord God's. The problem with persistence is that we often treat it like a great haggling match with God. When we hear the reading from Genesis today we can think that Abraham is talking God into not destroying the city, almost as if God is really angry and Abraham is the merciful one. Jesus' description of God as a good father helps us to reorient things. Abraham thinks he's going out on a limb asking God to preserve the city if there are 50 righteous ones there. Abraham sees bargaining but the Lord sees the call as way too little to ask - our Good Father wants to much more for us! As Abraham goes from 50 to 45, 40, 30, 20 & 10, it's as if the Lord is saying in response, "Abraham, I will go much farther than you think. I love you and these people so much more than you realize! To what depths I would not go to prove this!" It is not Abraham who is haggling for souls, it is the Lord haggling with Abraham in an attempt for Him to realize the Love that is within the heart of our Heavenly Father. Persistence was not so much about changing God's mind as changing Abraham's heart. In the end, there were not even 10 righteous people found and the city was lost (a testament to the wickedness of the people and not the vengefulness of God) but Abraham learned a valuable lesson that day about the Lord and His goodness toward us. We must persist in prayer. We must ask, seek, and knock continuously on the Heart of Christ. He is all-loving and wants to give us good things, more than we even want to receive them.

So we pray. This week we were asked by our bishop to pray and fast for peace. Join me in persisting in that prayer; let's keep it going. And let us pray that the prayers we have offered, the fasting we have taken up, and the acts of charity that we've shown may be taken up into the hands of St. Ann, where they can be purified, sanctified, and made fruitful in the sight of our good and loving Father and bring forth peace. Good Saint Ann, pray for us!

Sunday, July 17, 2016

It's Time to Pray



Sorry I couldn't get to the typing of the actual text. The last minute crunch on our parish website and the preparations for the feast of St. Ann this weekend have been quite the time consumers.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Listening to Heartbeats



Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Psalm 69
Colossians 1:15-20
Luke 10:25-37

It’s nice to be home. I want to begin by thanking you all for your prayers for me while I was on retreat. It was a week of many blessings and much peace, I believe on account of your prayers and love. I have to admit that it was disheartening to come back from such a profound experience of joy and peace into the social climate so full of unrest, injustices, violence, and divisions, coming now even to our area in Baton Rouge. Moving from one experience to the next really gave me something to reflect on as I drove home – the need of the human heart for peace. We were created for it, we long for it when it isn’t there, and even those who war against others and commit violence ultimately still seek peace as the final goal. The world offers us many ways to have peace. We can simply be without violence. We can work to gain the things that make us happy, the worldly possessions that make us content in some way. We can have a peace that comes by way of simply giving up our own (often religious) beliefs on ‘hot topics’ and thus smoothing things out. But none of these aspects of peace are lasting. There is only one place that gives lasting peace and it is the Heart of Jesus Christ.

The familiar story of the Good Samaritan is one that provides a great variety of options to pray with it. Certainly it is prescriptive in how we ought to live the Christian faith – the clarification of ‘who is my neighbor’ and ‘go and do likewise’ compel us to action for the spread of the Kingdom of Mercy. Too, we can reflect upon the individuals of the story and see in them aspects of our own life – the time that I have been the Samaritan, innkeeper, priest or Levite, wounded man, or the robbers. These are fruitful and help us to become more understanding of the mercy to which we are called.

As I’ve done mentioned in other homilies, the story is also that of the Lord Jesus. The wounded man on the roadside is us, humanity; all of us. The priest & Levite are those who do what is expected of them in the culture of the day; it was actually proper for them to avoid a person who was bloodied or dead, as it would make them ritually unclean and unable to perform some of the services expected of them. The Lord is the Samaritan who breaks the rule of what ought to be done and instead shows mercy to the one in need, at great personal cost. He pours out his wine and oil – signs of the Sacraments – and binds the man up and then brings him to the Inn for continued care. He stays for a short time and then departs, assuring that he will return and pay back everything given. The early Church Fathers saw in this the reality that Christ came to bring humanity to the ‘inn’ that is the Catholic Church, where we are to be continuously cared for until the Lord returns. What I spent time praying with this week was that while the oil and wine – symbolic of the Sacraments – was necessary for the healing of the man, it was not all that was provided at the inn. The innkeeper would surely have had to continue the work of the dressing and cleansing of wounds, but would have also to give food, shelter, clothing, conversation, and more to the man in the time of healing. This latter part, it seems to me, while not part of the sacramental order of things is of vital importance. And so to the Church provides for us the Sacraments and to compliment them, various devotions to feed and clothe us in the grace and peace of God.

The more I try to hear the voice of the Lord in prayer and try to read the signs of the times, the more and more I am convinced that right now all of our problems can be solved, all of our questions answered if we but simply have recourse to one particular devotion in the Church and that is the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart is, in a sense, hidden within this parable of the Good Samaritan because the parable is one of a love that seeks to show mercy. This is the merciful and Sacred Heart of Christ. In the 1600’s Our Lord appeared in a vision to St. Margaret Mary and stood before her, His Heart visible to her eyes. She marveled at it because it was ablaze with fire – a furnace of love. Another time He appeared and the same thing happened, except this time she gazed even deeper at the Heart and noticed that the brightness was far beyond that of the Sun, and yet it was also clear as crystal. Purity and passionate love. Seeing this, He reached out and took her own heart and placed it within His. As a log catches fire in the fireplace and gradually becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the flames, so too her heart began to catch flame and to burn with that same love in the Heart of Jesus. He then took her heart and gave it back.

In these days we must seek to do the same. We must rest in prayer and allow the Lord to set our hearts on fire with His love. We must turn to prayer first and foremost and there learn what to do. This, of course, has won me the ridicule of friends and others who see prayer as the ‘easy way out’. It seems that when things get too tough, the best thing is to simply say ‘pray about it!’ and all is better. While it could easily become the easy way out, I’m convinced it’s really not. One retreat I came across a timely quote by Catherine Doherty that affirmed this insistence upon prayer: “We must trust, resting peacefully on God’s breast, listening to His heartbeats, and realizing that in listening, we will find the answer to our questions.” It is in resting upon the breast of God, spiritually speaking, that we are able to truly discern what it is that God desires of us. Prayer is vital because it purifies us and allows us to seek the Will of God and not simply go with our own response. Every homily that you get from me is version 2.0 because the first homily in my heart is what I want to say, then that homily has to be purified before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer, where it is filled with the Love of God and given in a new way that I pray is fruitful.

Again, the parable calls us to action and mercy, but how do we show it? What do we do? What do we say? Where do we go? How Who is our neighbor? The answer to these and every question can be found in the quiet heartbeats of God. So I want to invite you to take up once again the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Read a book about it. Find the prayers. Read one of the 4 papal documents written on it in the last 125 years. We have the statue here in church and many of you have images or statues in your homes. Take a minute this week and sit with that Sacred Heart. You don’t have to say anything, you need not ask a single question if you don’t want to. But know that if you take the time and listen, the Lord God will soon speak.


Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine.

Friday, July 1, 2016

Papal Intentions for July 2016


Papal Intentions for July 2016

Universal Intention: That indigenous peoples, whose identity and very existence are threatened, will be shown due respect.
Mission Intention: That the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean, by means of her mission to the continent, may announce the Gospel with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.

Prayer for the Pope

V. Let us pray for Francis, our Pope.
R. May the Lord preserve him, give him life, 
and make him blessed upon the earth, 
and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies.
Our Father... Hail Mary...
O God, Shepherd and Ruler of all Thy faithful people, look mercifully upon Thy servant Francis, whom Thou hast chosen as shepherd to preside over Thy Church. Grant him, we beseech Thee, that by his word and example, he may edify those over whom he hath charge, so that together with the flock committed to him, may he attain everlasting life. 
Through Christ our Lord. 
Amen.