The Path to Joy - Homily for February 10

 

Readings for Sunday, February 10 / 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Isaiah 6:1-8  |  Psalm 138  |  1 Corinthians 15:1-11  |  Luke 5:1-11

Homily for November 4

Readings for Sunday, November 4 / 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time: Deuteronomy 6:2-6  |  Psalm 18  |    Hebrews 7:23-28  |  Mark 12:28-34

Christ tells us to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. What does that really mean? And how do we do it?

Homily for Sunday, October 21

Readings for Sunday, October 21 / 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time:  Isaiah 51:10-11  |  Psalm 33  |  Hebrews 4:14-16  |  Mark 10:35-45

Suffering is an inescapable part of the human condition. The variable is how we bear it.

Homily for Sunday, October 14

Readings for Sunday, October 14 / 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Wisdom 7:7-11 |  Psalm 90  |  Hebrews 4:12-13  |  Mark 10:17-30

Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Have you asked this question for yourself?

Homily for Sunday, September 30

Readings for Sunday, September 30 / 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Numbers 11:25-29  |  Psalm 19 |  James 5:1-6  |  Mark 9:28-43, 45, 47-48

Today the readings of Holy Mass invite us to reflect upon whether we have attachments that separate us from Christ, and pray for the grace to choose Christ above all things. 

The Chosen - Homily for July 15

Readings for Sunday, July 15 / 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Amos 7:12-15  |  Psalm 85  |  Ephesians 1:3-14  |  Mark 6:7-13

God has chosen you. Rejoice in that fact. And then get to work doing the Lord's will for you as one of His chosen ones.

Lent: The Plan - Homily for March 12

Readings for Sunday, March 12 / 2nd Sunday of Lent: Genesis 12:1-4  |  Psalm 33  |  2 Timothy 1:8-10  |  Matthew 17:1-9

God has a plan for you today. It involves your holiness and some hardship. Bear your share of the hardship in the Gospel and spread the joy of knowing Jesus Christ to all whom you meet.

Listening to Heartbeats

Readings for Sunday, July 10 / 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time:

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.

Seeking Understanding

The Adoration of the Magi by Reubens

Readings for Sunday, January 3/ Epiphany Sunday:
Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72
Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6
Matthew 2:1-12

In many organizations there are certain thresholds that one meets along the way that are so different and transformative that simply recalling the word or phrase permits everyone who has endured it to relate and have an instant bond of fellowship. Pledge week for fraternities and sororities, basic training for military, the spreading of blood on the occasion of killing one’s first deer, etc. One of those thresholds in the college seminary at St. Ben’s is Fr. Augustine’s class because in that class you learned to write papers like never before one account of a philosophy paper being due every single class period. One of the other trademarks of Fr. Augustine’s class was that the students were the teachers. We were assigned a text and had to present it and field questions ourselves. The class I was assigned was a portion of a work from the atheist philosopher Fredrich Nietszche. In preparation for the class I sat down and read the work and got to the end and realized I didn’t understand a single thing he was saying. So I read it again with the same result. And again. And again. After about 6 or 7 times through the text and taking copious notes, drawing diagrams, thinking through it over and over again for hours, I finally had an insight into what he was saying and with it came the whole of the presentation. It was the concrete application of what we had learned in another course: that we learn by a three-fold process of experience, understanding, and judgment. In short, we experience something (the text, for instance) and then we seek to understand it (it can happen quickly or take years) and ultimately arrive at some moment of insight and are led to a judgment of the truth of the issue at hand.

What’s interesting is that the same process of experience-understanding-judgment is what the Christmas season provides for us. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of the little Lord Jesus and we honor Him in the commemoration of the Holy Family. Today we celebrate Epiphany, which literally means ‘revelation’ or ‘manifestation’ and we listen in upon the scene in which the Magi come in search of the new King of Israel. We travel spiritually with them from the east to Jerusalem – searching, seeking – and on to Bethlehem. The light of the star leads them to the Light of the world and they bow before Him, offering gifts and contemplating what would become of this King born in such a strange state. They pondered deeply in their hearts for years and it led them to that moment and they left changed. As Bishop Robert Barron says, ‘We always go away different when we encounter Jesus’ and so they went home by a different route. Next week we will celebrate the judgment in truth that Jesus is the Only-Begotten Son of God, but today we have the joy of seeking understanding.

We come here from different experiences this week and bring different gifts for the King. But we all still come. We are here and we are invited to ponder like Mary, to question with the Magi, to seek truth, and to see the Epiphany of God here in this Mass. Who is this Jesus? We may know the story of the Lord’s earthly life and ministry, but what of Him now? What is the Lord doing today? Where is He continuing to unfold His divine plan before our eyes? What is happening in this Mass where we encounter Him once more? How might we walk away changed today? What might the Lord speak to us in our hearts if we give Him a moment to speak while we listen?

May Our Lord grant us open eyes, ears, and hearts this day, that seeing Him now as through a veil, we might one day rejoice to see Him face to face in Heaven. Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

Slaves of All

A small chain worn as a reminder of Holy Slavery

Readings for Sunday, October 18/ 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Isaiah 53:10-11
Psalm 33
Hebrews 4:14-16
Mark 10:35-45

As you all know, I’m something of an amateur runner. A very amateur runner. One thing that I’ve learned in the past few years of preparing for races is that I’m very bad at setting my own steady pace. I start off at a good quick pace, feeling confident that I can keep it up. And so I begin at 11-12 minute miles. Then after a half mile I’m at 12-13 minute miles. Before the second mile is done I’m often slugging along at 15 minute miles, which is more of a quick walk than a slow run. Not only do I tend to slow down over the time but I find myself out of breath and occasionally unable to finish the intended distance I had set as a goal. In contrast I find that when someone else sets a moderate pace and is consistent with it that I can usually keep up and run for longer distances. And breathe.

That image came to mind as I was praying with the Scriptures for this weekend because it seems that James and John are out there trying to set their own pace and it doesn’t work out so well for them. They walk up to Jesus and in a statement that shows what is either great boldness or great stupidity: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus humors them a bit, knowing the foolishness of such a request but using it as a teachable moment. Upon hearing their request for the seat at the right and left of the Lord’s glory, He immediately responds, “You do not know what you are asking.” He knows what His seat of glory would look like and it was anything other than a comfortable kingly chair; it was a cross. If James and John had understood the reality of their request they would surely have shrunk back in fear and willingly abandoned their desire. The problem is that they were trying to set their own pace and had the Lord let them pursue it, they would surely have been unable to run the full race. Thankfully it is the Lord who always walks with us in our eagerness so as to bring us back to the place where we need to be. He enters into the darkness so as to guide us back into the light.

“Whoever wishes to be the first among you must be the slave of all.” With these words Jesus helps to point the disciples back in the right direction. We all know that as Christians if we seek to exalt ourselves we will be cast down and if we humble ourselves we will be lifted up. And yet we still struggle. Jesus uses this strong language to challenge us to keep up the struggle and indeed to place ourselves in the last spot of all. In the day of the Lord there were essentially two types of people who did the lowest forms of work: servants and slaves. Servants were free persons who did the work for the money. Slaves, as we know, were simply perceived as property of the master. A servant could leave his labor and go elsewhere, but a slave was unable. A servant received a reward for their labor; a slave was simply carrying out their duty. A servant gave a part of himself; a slave gave everything.  A servant sets his own path in some sense, but a slave is simply directed in the way to go. The labor may look the same, but the interior reality is far from the same.

It might startle us a bit to hear Jesus tell us to be slaves, but this is a common theme in the Scriptures. Jesus Himself alludes to slavery also in the last line of the Gospel just proclaimed with the reference to ‘ransoming the many’ – a description of purchasing persons. To this we can also add the other passages in which we are reminded that we all were “purchased, and at a price.” We all were born in original sin, slaves of the evil one and the desires of our flesh. But it is Jesus Christ Who has bought us for God, who set us free from slavery to sin and invites to take up a new slavery, a holy slavery, a slavery not of obligation but of love.

Holy slavery seems like a strange idea, since we are brothers and sisters of the Lord, and Jesus Himself refers to us as ‘no longer servants but friends’. But it is Our Lord that first sets the standard of holy slavery. In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul speaks of Christ “taking on the form of a slave” – He took on humanity. His life in the flesh is not one that seeks to accomplish His own will but the will of the One Who sent Him (God the Father). It is a life in which He willingly submits to follow the pace of the Father out of love for Him. And He invites us to join ourselves in doing the same.

Holy slavery has a great tradition in the life of the Church, but came alive in a new way in the late 1600’s in the preaching of St. Louis Marie de Montfort. St. Louis wrote a book called True Devotion to Mary and numerous saints and popes of the Church have spoken of it as “the highest form of devotion to Our Lady”, “a decisive turning point in my life” and spoke of the graces of following his method of devotion to Mary. And that devotion was holy slavery to Jesus through Mary. The encouragement is to give everything we have to Mary, that she might bring us to Jesus. She is so powerful because she alone among humanity was free from sin here entire life, from conception until her Assumption, and so can help us to follow the divine pace rather than rely upon ourselves and our own plans.

To this end, I will be consecrating our parish to Our Lady on December 8^th of this year, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which will also mark the beginning of the Jubilee Year of Mercy. What I propose to you though is that you don’t allow it simply to be ‘Father consecrating the parish to Mary’ but rather to have each of us consecrate ourselves to Mary that same day as a parish. I have in the back of the church copies of a book titled “33 Days to Morning Glory” which everyone is encouraged to pick up and take home. It is a method suggested by St. Louis of taking 33 days, mirroring the 33 years of Christ’s life, to prepare our hearts by reflecting on our relationship with Jesus & Mary. To conclude in time for the consecration on December 8^th, you would begin on November 5^th. So I invite you to join with me in taking up or renewing this holy slavery. Together let us give everything to Jesus through the hands of our most loving mother Mary, knowing that though the rewards will be many, the great reward will be the consolation and joy that wells up in the Heart of Jesus that we are joining with Him in this labor.

Read more about Holy Slavery HERE.

HWP: Fruitless Efforts

Yesterday was the feast of St. Ansgar (more on him here) who is generally passed over on account of his sharing a feast with the more notable St. Blaise. In reading about him, it actually seems rather appropriate to be so. St. Ansgar had a great desire to be a martyr for the faith and sought this by way of his attempts to evangelize the pagans of Scandinavia. He went on numerous missions and converted a few souls each time but ultimately they lapsed back into their paganism after his departure. His devotion to the poor and sick was a noble example of charity and he lived a life of great holiness, dying of natural causes rather than his desire of martyrdom. St. Ansgar gives us an example of a man who had a desire to do great things, but who often encounter fruitless efforts and had to accept that some things were not the will of God. And so, this week's HWP is one that helps us to align our will with that Divine Will and continue to seek the Lord in all things. Please join me in praying...

An Act of Conformity to God's Will

O my God, I do not know what will happen today, but it is enough for me to know and to believe that nothing will happen to me that is not permitted by You from all eternity for my greater good. 

I adore Your holy and eternal dispositions. I surrender myself with all my heart to Your fatherly love. I make of everything a loving sacrifice in union with that of my Divine Saviour.

I ask, in His Name and through the merits of His Passion, the grace of patience and perfect submission to You in all my sufferings, so that whatever You permit to happen may be for Your greater glory and my sanctification. Amen.