Becoming Heavenly - Homily for February 24

Readings for Sunday, February 24 / 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time:  1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23  |  Psalm 103  |  1 Corinthians 15:45-49  |  Luke 6:27-38

Within every baptized person's heart is a battle taking place between the Earthly and the Heavenly parts. Which one is winning in you?

The Gift of Touch - Homily for September 9

St. Peter Claver

Readings for Sunday, September 9 / 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time:  Isaiah 35:4-7  |  Psalm 146  |  James 2:1-5  |  Mark 7:31-37

Even though words have power, Christ still uses the gift of touch to heal us.

Integrity and Confession - Homily for September 2

Readings for Sunday, September 2 / 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8  |  Psalm 15  |  James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27  |  Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Today the Lord calls us to integrity. There's no better place to ensure that than in the place of mercy - the confessional. 

Lent: Why the Cross - Homily for March 25

Readings for Sunday, March 25 / Palm Sunday: Isaiah 50:4-7  |  Psalm 22  |  Philippians 2:6-11  |  Mark 14:1-15:47

Why the Cross? Because any other way would be too easy to dismiss the message that the Cross conveys.

Papal Intention for December 2017

Pope Francis invites us to join in prayer for the elderly during this month of December:

That the elderly, sustained by families and Christian communities, may apply their wisdom and experience to spreading the faith and forming the new generations.

While we're at it....

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.

Lent: The Blind Leading Those With Sight (Homily for March 26)

'Healing of a Blind Man' by Brian Jekel

Readings for Sunday, March 26 / 4th Sunday of Lent: 1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13  |  Psalm 23  | Ephesians 5:8-14  |  John 9:1-41

The Lord loves to use physical signs to convey truth about spiritual realities all through the Scriptures. And He still does it today: the Seven Sacraments.

Welcoming the Slave - Homily for September 4

Readings for Sunday, September 4/ 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Wisdom 9:13-18  |  Psalm 90  |  Philemon 9-10, 12-17  |  Luke 14:25-33

Yesterday, September 3, was the feast day of Pope St. Gregory the Great - one of the few saints in the church that has that title "the Great," added on to his name on account of the number of gifts he brought to the church and the profound impact he's had on the life of the Church since his reign as the Holy Father. He himself was a man who knew his weaknesses. He was raised in the world, and then left to join the monastery became a Benedictine monk and enjoyed living a life of quiet prayer and simple labor until he was elected as the Holy Father. He was in the world, then removed from the world, and then thrust back into the world. In one of his reflections on the prophet Ezekiel, he lamented the fact that how so often he was easily caught up in prayer in the monastery, and yet when he was busy about the things of the world he often found it easier to sin than to be caught up in the things of prayer, to be consumed of the stuff of the world than the things of God. In that same reflection, he also mentioned the fact that every church, every community, has a watchkeeper, one who is supposed to be set on the heights and who is able to see the whole terrain so as to guide the flock most effectively. He said in proclaiming that I automatically condemn myself because I, the leader of the Catholic Church, myself fall short of being a good watchkeeper.

St. Gregory the Great is my patron saint. I took him as my confirmation saint when I was in eleventh grade because he is the patron saint of musicians and I wanted to be a rock-star, so I figured the patron saint of musicians could help me reach that end. Little did I know that I would take a different route in following him and become a watchkeeper myself, a watchman in the pulpits, and to be able to be called by Christ as a priest, to watch the terrain and see where it is that the flock is called to go. Much like St. Gregory I am condemning myself because I stand here every day and proclaim to you the things of God, knowing good and well that I don't fulfill them perfectly myself. So, if ever my homilies seem a little bit harsh and a little bit hard, you're in good company because I'm preaching to myself. And I said that especially in regards to the homily this weekend.

The Letter of St. Paul to Philemon is a beautiful and striking letter. If anyone has ever had a desire to read a whole book of the Bible, you should read Philemon - it's one single chapter. It'll make you feel good about things ... "I read a whole book of the Bible today!" I encourage you to go read it even though we have a good portion of it here and get the main part of it in what we just heard, how Paul is in prison writing a letter to Philemon. Philemon has sent one of his slaves, Onesimus, to Paul in his imprisonment to help him and to care for him for a short time. Maybe he brought him letters, correspondence, or something of that nature. Maybe he sent him some bread and wine so he could offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice in prison. We don't know. But Onesimus went to go serve Paul, and Paul says: I wish I could keep him here for myself, I wish I could keep him because he's like a son to me now, a brother, a friend. I love him with all my heart, and I wish I could keep him here with me, but I'm not, I'm sending him back to you Philemon, but I'm sending him back a little bit different. He gives Philemon a challenge. He says I want you to receive him back not as a slave but as a brother. He says if you regard us as friends, receive Onesimus your slave, as if he were me, your father in faith. It's quite a challenge - to receive a slave as if he was his father in faith, as if he was the one who gave us life.

Whenever I came here to our community, I was warmly welcomed. There was little signs at the rectory, little balloons and all kinds of things. We had the reception and cake, and more cake, and more cake ... the cake hasn't stopped in two years much to my frustration. But there is a very warm welcome I received, and was glad to receive. That's one of the trademarks of parish, also of our local community - being welcoming to others. Whenever people come from other places, they are warmly received and welcomed, and rightly so - they should be. But the question the Lord invites us to reflect upon, especially with Onesimus and Paul, is: How do we receive those not who are coming from far away, but those that are right here in our community but haven't been here in Church in a while? How do we welcome them? How do we welcome the ones who maybe have strayed from the faith for a little while, gone away for a few years and we haven't seen their face? What about the ones that have done or said something or committed some sin that we have deemed unforgivable and we hold it against them, and we know it, we know what they have done? What about those that simply are here, but not here, that are in and out at times, inconsistent? Maybe that them is me. Maybe it's that I hold myself to those things. How do we respond when people we know and love come to church when we don't expect them to?

A lot of times whenever we see it, it can that response of Onesimus; we have that response of either we can keep in slavery or we can unbind in freedom and welcome as a brother. Sometimes it's those things, it's other stuff, maybe it makes us uncomfortable, maybe it's someone who is a little bit different from us. How easy it can be for us to hold something against someone else and make them as a slave. Again, it can be the sins of the past, the absence from Mass, it can be characteristic flaws that we don't like in them. Whatever it may be, we allow it to be a binding force that separates us, that excludes them and doesn't welcome them. In fact, Christ calls us to freedom - all of us.

Whenever we welcome somebody in church we haven't seen in a while, there's a number of responses we can have. And one of the things that I think is natural in us, there's a difficulty sometimes in how to respond. What do we say? There's a sense in which we have to acknowledge that we are happy to see them, rightly so. I think we usually are. Most of us are not upset when people show up to church. So we are happy to see them. But I think sometimes there is that difficulty of how do I address the fact that I'm happy to see you and yet I haven't seen you in a while, where have you been. And when we say that, we try sometimes to break the ice a little bit with humor, but the humor sometimes comes with a little dagger in the back of it. "Wow I haven't seen you here in awhile! Who let you in this place? I hope the walls of the church don't fall in. Did the holy water sizzle when it touched your head?" We laugh, but these are the things I've heard from the lips of people as I've stood at the entrance of the door of the church, sometimes at our own parish. And I've known people who've told me that exact same thing - that they went to church for the first time in a long time, and they felt like the Lord was leading them back to church, and they were welcomed with one of those greetings, and they turned around, walked out the door and never came back. Never came back. How much are words can have an impact. I got an email this week from a young man I ministered to in a youth group, and I thought I was doing well, I thought I said the right thing, and he sent me an email this week saying, "Fr. Brent, I haven't been to church in several years on account of you." Something I said. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was saying the right thing. He hadn't set a foot in the church because of me. Our words have great power - for ill, but also for good. When someone comes through the door that we haven't seen in a while, whats the proper response? "Good morning!" .... "Hey! How's the kids? How's the family? How about those Tigers ... the Saints" ... pick a more pleasant topic to talk about ... anything ... Anything. Be able to simply love the person who came in. It's a temptation sometimes because the tension in us wants to resolve, but everybody knows it's there. It's just to show love - to love the other person. Period.

This morning the Holy Father celebrated the canonization of now St. Teresa of Calcutta - Mother Teresa. St. Teresa is also someone who provides us with a little extra encouragement this weekend in that same regard - to welcome the other, to love the other, even when they may be entirely different from us, even entirely unlovable in a sense from a worldly view. She shows us how to love.

In the community of the Missionaries of Charity that Mother Teresa founded, each morning they would have a holy hour in community and then they would have Mass offered.So every day, they would spend an hour in prayer in their chapel before the Blessed Sacrament, and then they would have Mass, then go off and do their work serving whoever it was, whatever mission it was that they went to go out and serve that day. And on several accounts, various sisters came to forward to ask her different scenarios saying "Mother we spend so much time in the chapel. What if we cut that time in half - maybe to 30 mins in prayer, then did Mass and then went out, we would be able to serve that many more people. We would be able to be that much more effective in our community." Mother Teresa wisely responded, "It's only because we know the Lord Jesus here in our time of prayer, in our Mass - it's only that we know Him and love Him here  - that we can see Him out there and serve Him. If we lose Him here (the chapel), we can't find Him there." So the Lord invites us the same - that whenever we come to Mass, whenever we find ourselves with an opportunity to pray in church, to know that there we can find our Lord. We can come to know Jesus, to love Jesus, to be loved by Jesus. And only in doing those things can we go to the doors of the church and beyond and see Christ in other people. Until then, we will only be able to be bind up in chains. But in Christ Jesus we can bring freedom.

So we pray the grace of the Lord to be with us today through the intercession of St. Gregory the Great and St. Teresa of Calcutta, that we will be able to draw close to the Lord Jesus in this Mass, that we may be able to know Him a little bit more, to be able to love Him more deeply, to be able to go forth to see Him, to serve Him, and to bring freedom to our brother and sisters around us.

Papal Intentions for September 2016

Papal Intentions for September 2016

Universal Intention: That each may contribute to the common good and to the building of a society that places the human person at the center.
Mission Intention: That by participating in the Sacraments and meditating on Scripture, Christians may become more aware of their mission to evangelize.

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.

Papal Intentions for June 2016

Papal Intentions for June 2016

Universal Intention: That the aged, marginalized, and those who have no one may find–even within the huge cities of the world–opportunities for encounter and solidarity.
Mission Intention: That seminarians and men and women entering religious life may have mentors who live the joy of the Gospel and prepare them wisely for their mission.

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.

Papal Intentions for March 2016

Papal Intentions for March 2016

Universal Intention: That those involved in scientific research may serve the well-being of the whole human person.

Mission Intention: That the unique contribution of women to the life of the Church may be recognized always.

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.

God Speaks

Readings for Sunday, May 10/ 5th Sunday of Easter:
Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
Psalm 98:1-4
1 John 4:7-10
John 15:9-17

How does God speak to you? How does He reveal Himself to you?

For myself, I have come to know God and hear His voice speaking powerfully through Sacred Scripture, in the liturgy, in creation, in theological writings, and many other ways. But if I’m honest with myself, the place that God has revealed Himself to me is through other people.

It was the words of a priest that helped me discern my call to the diocesan priesthood. It was the voice of my girlfriend breaking up with me to open my path to the seminary in the first place. It was the remarks of one of my youth group kids at my first parish that shaped the way that I’ve lived my priesthood in the parish. These are just a few of the many ways that God has shown Himself to me and spoken to me through others. But the love of God for me? That came through my parents.

For years the mother who gave me the gift of life and bore me in her womb for nine months was a subject not of my appreciate but of resentment. I couldn’t understand how she could ‘give me away’ and it was a source of much anger in my heart. But thankfully the Lord has shown me such was not the case. In a particular way this week I was struck by the intense realization that she laid down her life with me for me. When I hear “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” I often think of literally laying down one’s life, like Christ on the Cross or the many martyrs of the faith, but the Lord reminded me of the ‘white martyrs’ who die to themselves and their desires. It really hit me this week just how much my birth mother gave up of her own joys – first words, first steps, first day of school and many more events – in order for me to have an upbringing she couldn’t have otherwise provided for me.

And my adoptive mother, shows me another side of this Divine Love. The simple fact is that she had no obligation to me; I’m not her flesh and blood and she could just as easily have let me go elsewhere, and yet she didn’t. She welcome this infant child into her family and has never treated me differently than her other children. This, too, showed me something of the love of God for me in that God, Who has no obligation to me, gave His Son up to death in order that I might be able to be welcomed into the Most Blessed Trinity. In this is love!

Both of these show me in some way the Love of God for me because they, like every action of charity, are reflections of Divine Love itself. This is the beautiful thing: that charitable actions are simply the life and love of God being made manifest in and through people. And if God has shown Himself and His love to me so many times through other people, how much does He also want to do it through me? This is the point of the Gospel this weekend: “It was not you who chose me but I who chose you to go and bear fruit that will remain.” Fruit that will remain.

Those many times that people have spoken something, done something that was a reflection of the life and love of God for me are that fruits that remain. The words of a priest have had a lasting effect on me. The words of my youth have had a lasting effect. And surely the love of my parents has had a lasting effect on me. They are fruits that remain because they are points when the individuals have tried to ‘remain in God’. When we remain in the Lord and try to be people of faith, true disciples of Jesus Christ, the simple fact is that He will work in and through us to speak to other people and bear fruit in their lives that will remain as He has done the same in us.

So ultimately the question isn’t really ‘How does God speak to you?’ so much as it should be leaving from here today ‘How does God speak through you?’ May the Lord grant us the grace to remain in Him today and every day that indeed we might bear fruit that will remain.  

Papal Intentions for March 2015

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.

Papal Intentions for March 2015

Universal Intention: That those involved in scientific research may serve the well-being of the whole human person.

Mission Intention: That the unique contribution of women to the life of the Church may be recognized always.

The Most Important Sacrament

Readings for Sunday, February 15/ 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46
Psalm 32:1-1, 5, 11
1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1
Mark 1:40-45

One day in seminary our sacramental theology professor simply asked us the question, “Which sacrament is most important?” and off we went each debating the importance of the sacraments and essentially playing a highly theological game of paper-rock-scissors, as each point was able to be trumped by another. In the end the point of the exercise was to recognize that each sacrament of the Church really is ‘the most important sacrament’ in regards to some specific situation or theological truth.

A couple of weeks ago I preached about the priesthood and the weight that it can sometimes carry for those who exercise such a ministry. In practical terms, this often comes out as the community looking to the priest as having the more difficult vocation and ‘taking one for the team’ by not getting married and serving the Church. While this latter view is clearly a poor understanding of the priesthood, it seems to me in many respects that the former assertion is also false. Why so? Because while I may be obliged to a higher level of holiness because of my ordination, at the end of the day I return to a rectory wherein I can leave my stuff where I feel like it, I can wash the dishes or just leave them in the sink, I can squeeze the toothpaste tube wherever I want, etc. In short, priestly life is intense when in the community but in the rectory I am left to myself and able to maintain a life according to my preferences and not be concerned about others’ conflicting with mine. A married person does not have that luxury but necessary interacts with another person – and in a family, multiple people – who challenge some of those preferences and provides the raw material of growing in holiness, namely the opportunity to serve others rather than self.

When I asked several ladies at my previous parish assignment the secret to a good marriage they quickly responded ‘separate sinks, separate closets, and a lot of love’. This gets to that reality that marriage necessarily involves some challenges to the personal space and preferences, but even more, it confirmed what every single one of us knows about relationships: that love must necessarily be present for it to work.

In the scriptures we just heard proclaimed we hear about the life of lepers. To be a leper was bad enough just from the illness itself, but this was intensified by the isolation that accompanied the illness. In the Jewish context, to be a leper made one unclean. To be unclean wasn’t that one was a sinner, so much as they were unable to enter into worship at the Temple. To be unclean was also a restriction in interacting with others because if an ‘unclean person’ touched a ‘clean person’ then they were both unclean. For this reason, and for health reasons with the leprosy, the lepers were made to keep their bodies visible for others to see the illness and stay free from them. Additionally, they had to shout ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ as they walked around so that others might stay clear of them.  And if that weren’t bad enough, they were made to dwell outside the camp away from the community. Imagine the intense isolation that one felt in such  a situation; separated from family, friends, the larger community, and even your God! The human person simply cannot take such isolation. It’s written in our hearts to love and give love to others. Remember the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks. What happens when he finds himself stranded alone on an island? He finds a volleyball, makes a face on it and give it a name all in an attempt to have an ‘other’ with which to interact. That’s why the leper in the gospel responds the way that he does. Some might be shocked that he disobeyed the command of Jesus not to tell anyone but, honestly, I would be shocked if he hadn’t gone to tell everyone. Imagine the joy of being able to go tell everyone what God had done when before he hadn’t even been able to interact with others.

Again, the need to be in relationship with others is written in our hearts and the God Who put it there knows that need and created the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony as a way to fulfill it for those called to the vocation. I say vocation because it is indeed a calling from God. Often when we hear ‘vocations’ we think only of priesthood and religious life, but the Church has always held marriage as a sacred vocation and the basic cell of the Church and the world. It is only by holy marriages that the faith is passed from generation to generation, as the family is the place in which faith is first learned, later deepened, and later personalized in the vocations of the youth. This all happens to the extent that the family resembles the Blessed Trinity. You thought the burden was heavy for me simply to try to live up to being Christ Jesus in the midst of a community, but the family is called to image in a similar way the Trinity itself – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – in your complete gift of self and outpouring of love for the other. The family, founded on a holy marriage, is a place in which the world should look and find the face of the Triune God. Married people: do you feel the weight of that?

All of that is the reason the Church calls people to marriage not on the beach, the mountains or the nice plantation home, but at the altar of God. It is recognizing that God joins the couple together and it is God alone who can sustain them. Just as the man in the Gospel was able to enter once more into relationship with the community by the healing of Jesus, so too Jesus works in a miraculous way to unite two souls together in Holy Matrimony and sustains them in His love and grace so as to be that image of love for the world despite the trials, temptations, and sufferings that come with the natural course of life. This weekend we honor those who are celebrating special anniversaries this year in recognition of their fidelity to each other and the Lord, to set them as models for younger couples to look to for encouragement and wisdom, and to honor the God who has held them in His embrace since their wedding day. May the Lord continue to watch over them and all married couples, strengthening their love for each other, blessing them in their families, and training them in holiness so as to spend eternity together beholding the face of our God.

Pyramids & Furbabies

Readings for Sunday, October 5/ 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:9, 12-16, 19-20
Philippians 4:6-9
Matthew 21:33-43

I’ve always enjoyed building things. There’s something about doing something with your hands that gives you a great satisfaction at the end. One night when I was in 6^th grade I went to my mom with the words that every parent loves to hear: “Mom, I just remembered I have a project due tomorrow morning. I have to build a pyramid.” My mom shrugged her shoulders at her forgetful son once again we got to work building my project. We had a cardboard base and found some sand-colored carpet in our garage to make a nice landscape. Then we took the cardboard and made a pyramid and covered it with the only things we had that would come close to looking decent: birdseed. A few small rocks and a fake tree supplied the finishing touches and I was thrilled. I brought it to school the next day proud as a peacock. I don’t remember what grade I received on it, but I remember bringing it back home and, unlike other projects that found the garbage asap, I placed in on my shelf to marvel at. Even when we moved houses a couple of times in subsequent years, I made sure to have a special box to ensure my birdseed pyramid arrived safely at the next place. I was proud of it, this little masterpiece I had made.

In the Scriptures today we hear of the Lord God making a masterpiece of His own, but rather than a little school project the masterpiece God was creating was His people, a nation that would spread the good news of His presence to the surrounding nations. But we hear that this wonderful masterpiece that God made didn’t turn out exactly as He had desired it. God put in a great effort to shape this people, this vineyard of the Lord, as our responsorial psalm calls to mind. He gets the best soil, sets up the terrain perfectly, builds all of the necessary elements, and plants the choicest grapes. And what does He get in return? Wild grapes that you can’t do a thing with other than leave it for the animals to devour. And so He does. Their mission to be the light of the world came, in the end, to them simply snuffing our their lights to remain in the darkness of sin. And with their choice made, the Lord had to change plans and choose a new path.

The Gospel account gives us the same tale but in a different form. This vineyard produces the fruits God desires, but here the tenants are the ones symbolizing the people of Israel and they refuse to give up the fruits that belong to the owner. This is the story of the Israelites. The servants were sent in the form of prophets and they were killed by the Israelites because they didn’t want to turn from sin. More prophets were sent, with the same results. Finally, the only son of the landowner is sent and he, too, is killed, as the people thirst for power, wealth, and honor. Rather than give the landowner what was rightly his, they sought to take it by force. Rather than wait for blessings from God that would come in the end, the Israelites sought to take blessings for themselves from the hand of the Lord, much like Adam & Eve in the beginning. They failed in their mission and because of that, new tenants were brought in that would cooperate – the gentile people, which includes most of us. The mission to spread the good news of God now falls to us and it is we who have the obligation to accomplish what was left undone before – to produce good fruits and to give them to the Lord for His glory, knowing that we will receives our inheritance at the end of our labors.

This weekend we celebrate Respect Life Sunday. This is a weekend each year where the Church invites us to reflect upon the dignity of the human person. That our dignity comes not from anything we do or possess, not from where we live or what ethnicity we are, nor from any characteristic other than that we have been created by God in His own image and likeness. The world doesn’t get this reality, but instead places the value of a person in how much they can produce, what they can do, what others can benefit from their presence. I’ve encountered it numerous times in my ministry and have heard of it many others secondhand. For instance, on several occasions I have visited with people who had a family member who was non-responsive, in a vegetative state, as it is often described. And the advice from doctors to these families was ‘if we withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration, it will help speed up the process of their death, since they really don’t have a purpose.’ Basically, the suggestion was ‘lets stop feedings them and giving them water so they can die, since they aren’t worth much as they are’. The families instinctively said, “Father, that doesn’t sound like it’s moral.” And I agreed. It’s likened to saying ‘well, if we just remove their oxygen, it’ll speed things along.’ Foolishness! I read recently about a woman in Oregon who had cancer and the chemo treatment she was offered by the doctors gave a 45% chance of extending her life over a year; most of us would likely jump at such odds. The problem was that her insurance wouldn’t support such a move. BUT they suggested that if she would pursue physician-assisted suicide, they would pay the bill in full. Respect for life? Or what about the 1.2 million children killed each year through abortion because ‘they aren’t really children; it’s more like a clump of cells’ or some other specious argument that never gets at the truth of the dignity of the child who is alive in the womb. Even in Louisiana, the most pro-life state in the country according to laws, we have men lined up at Angola waiting to be put to death because a judge has deemed them no longer worthy of having life; they aren’t productive anymore.

And the one that really gets at me because of the madness of it: furbabies. That’s right. Furbabies. How many in my generation and others don’t want to be inconvenienced with the gift of life that is a child, so they get a cat or dog as a substitute. They make a child created in the image and likeness of God equal to or even inferior to an animal, treating the animals as if it were a person. You may have seen the signs around town sometimes that say “Fill the void in your life” and it has a cutout of a cat next to a person. What?! Y’all, if the void in your life is filled with a cat, we have some serious problems to address! I love animals as much as anyone, but they aren’t people! To act otherwise is to blatantly reject the truth of the goodness of the human person.

The world around us doesn’t have a clue sometimes about the value of human life, so they need us to show them. They need us to bring them to an understand of their own worth and that of every other person on this earth from the smallest in the womb to those who are moments from crossing deaths door. We need to help the world see, but we have to make sure we can see it ourselves. There was an article recently about a museum where a janitor picked up what he thought was a bag of garbage, only to find later that it was an artist’s work of art. While I think that is an insightful commentary on the state of modern art, it also highlights the fact that sometimes we are like the janitor and can easily look upon others and see ‘trash’ where God sees a masterpiece that He has shaped and molded in His image.

The world needs our witness and the Lord longs to see zealous laborers in His vineyard producing great fruits. May the Eucharist we come to celebrate and receive today transform us, that we might be able to love as God loves and see as God sees, that in the face of each person we encounter we might recognize the image of God Himself and rejoice in the gift of yet another masterpiece form the Divine Artist.