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?

Love is... - Homily for February 3

Readings for Sunday, February 3: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19  |  Psalms 71:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 15-17  |  1 Corinthians 12:31--13:13  |  Luke 4:21-30

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?

John 6: The Invitation - Homily for August 12

Readings for Sunday, August 12 / 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time: 1 Kings 19:4-8  |  Psalm 34  |  Ephesians 4:30-5:2  |  John 6:41-55

Come to Me.

John 6: Why Are You Here? - Homily for August 5

Readings for Sunday, August 5 / 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time:  Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15  |  Psalm 78  |  Ephesians 4:17, 20-24  |  John 6:24-35

Food from Heaven

The crowds followed Jesus not because of the signs but because their stomachs were filled. What
brings you to Mass today?

Corpus Christi - Homily for June 3

Readings for Sunday, June 3 / Corpus Christi Sunday:  Exodus 24:3-8  |  Psalm 116  |  Hebrews 9:11-15  |  Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

The Miracle of Bolsena/Orvieto brings us to honor the great mystery we celebrate every Mass: the Body and Blood of Christ.

Easter: Really Listen (Homily for May 6)

Readings for Sunday, May 6 / 6th Sunday of Easter: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48  |  Psalm 98  |  1 John 4:7-10  |  John 15:9-17

Today we hear much about the of God and loving one another. These messages from the Scriptures can become so familiar to us that they lose their power. Today the Lord invites us to really listen to them, as if for the first time.

Lent: The Hour Has Come - Homily for March 18

Readings for Sunday, March 18 / 5th Sunday of Lent: Jeremiah 31:31-34  |  Psalm 51  |  Hebrews 5:7-9  |  John 12:20-33

Throughout the first half of John's Gospel we hear Jesus refer to 'my hour' and that it had not yet come. Today, the Hour has finally come and the Lord longs for us to join Him in it. 

The Importance of Oil - Homily for November 12

Readings for Sunday, November 12 / 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Wisdom 6:12-16  |  Psalm 63  | 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18  |  Matthew 25:1-13

The Lord clearly reminds us this weekend that we must have oil to be prepared for His coming and the oil is the life of faith and the celebration of the Sacraments. Don't be caught off guard without a full tank!

The Greatest Commandment - Homily for October 29

Chapel of St. Claude la Colombiere

Readings for Sunday, October 29 / 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Exodus 22:20-26  |  Psalm 18  |  1 Thessalonians 1:5-10  |  Matthew 22:34-40

The Lord reminds us that the great commandment is to love the Lord with all of our heart, all of our mind, and all of our soul. When it happens, beautiful things happen. The lives of the saints show us what it looks like.

Holy Mass: Holy Communion - Homily for September 24

Readings for September 24 / 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Isaiah 55:6-9  |  Psalm 145  |  Philippians 1:20-24, 27  |  Matthew 20:1-16

The moment after we receive Holy Communion is the most intimate moment we can have with God this death of death. Don't miss the opportunity to speak to the Beloved and to love Him with all of your heart.

We Found the Pearl - Homily for July 30

Readings for Sunday, July 30 / 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time: 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12  |  Psalm 119  |  Romans 8:28-30  |  Matthew 13:44-52

The pearl of great price and the hidden treasure, both of which we ought to be willing to sell all to

obtain, is the Catholic Church. Why? Because the Church is Christ Himself - we are the Body of Christ, she gives us the Words of Christ in the Scripture, she gives us the teaching of Christ, and we even receive the Body of Christ to truly make us united to His Body in flesh and blood. What a gift! And what sadness to go without it. 

Easter: If you love Me... - Homily for May 21

Readings for Sunday, May 21 / 6th Sunday of Easter: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17  |  Psalm 66  |  1 Peter 3:15-18  |  John 14:15-21

The Lord tells us today, "If you love Me, you will keep My Commandments." The keeping of the Commandments of God is, then, not so much a matter of checking boxes off as it is a measure of our love for the Lord Himself. Lord Jesus, we love You. Help us to love You more!

A New Beginning - Homily for November 27

Readings for Sunday, November 30 / 1st Sunday of Advent: Isaiah 2:1-5  |  Psalm 122  |  Romans 13:11-14  |  Matthew 24:37-44

Happy Advent! We not used to "Happy Advent" necessarily, but it is good that we are here and it is
good that it is Advent. 

"Advent" means "to come to" - In the whole course of the season we hear in the prayers of the Mass of that preparation of the Lord to come to us, as well as for us on the last day to come to Him. Each year we celebrate Advent, we start the new liturgical year, we begin that old familiar cycle as we go through the seasons. And it can seem as if we are kind of on a merry-go-round that we just keep going in circles over and over and over - doing the same prayers, the same rituals, we hear the same readings - and it can seem rather mundane. But rather than a simple merry-go-round, I invite you to think of our liturgical year and our celebration of the liturgy as basically a corkscrew for a good bottle of wine. Rather than simply going in circles, it digs deeper into the cork to go down and down. It goes in the same circle but always deeper. I pray that can be our experience of our relationship with the Lord Jesus - that as we go through the course of our years, each year we find we are a little bit deeper, a little bit closer to Christ than where we were at the same spot last year. It's an opportunity and invitation for us to continue to go deeper and deeper into the heart of God. 

In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus makes no bones about the fact that we ought to be prepared. He says that we must be prepared, "stay awake." In the days of Noah, people were not expecting a flood. There were out in the field, they were in the grain, taking care of things as normal. And out of nowhere, Noah (the fool) becomes a smart man. When no one was expecting anything, Noah is saved and they are washed away. In the same manner, the Lord Jesus says it will be when He comes again in glory. People will be at their normal work, will be out at the fields, be at the store, the house, at church, we'll be wherever, and one of us will be taken and the other will be left He says. It will catch us by surprise, so be prepared. 

But it's hard to be prepared for that, because for 2,000 years we've been here. For 2,000 years the Lord Jesus hasn't come back yet. For 2,000 generation after generation has lived thinking maybe we are the last ones and they were wrong. And because we have such a long track record of being wrong, thinking that maybe this is the time that the Lord Jesus is going to come back, it's easy for us to think that maybe it's next generation. And so we become comfortable. We stay “ok” to be where we are and don't really prepare. Because we've presumed for 2,000 years things have gone as normal. Surely it can't happen in our time now. It's been 2,000 years, what's special about our age. But the Lord says, "Prepare. Stay awake." Those words were spoken for every single generation. 

For the last couple of years my homilies, the focus and push of my homilies, has basically been to try and encourage you (but more often than not, me, because I preach to myself) to encourage us to love the Lord Jesus more deeply, whether it's in love of God, love of the Eucharist, love of the Liturgy, Our Lady, the saints, love of one another, love of virtue, and love of the things of our faith - the scriptures - in love of all of these things, ultimately to come and love Jesus more deeply. But there has been something on my heart that for a while now to make a little bit of a change. A little bit of a tweak in my celebration of the liturgy, particular in the preaching of the homily. And I've been kind of wrestling with it for several months now, but as I was praying with the scriptures in preparation for this homily, it seemed that all of that was confirmed by the Lord and said, "Just do it. Stop fighting. Quit overthinking it. Just do it." And it came from the words of Isaiah the prophet, "Come let us climb to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the Lord, that He might instruct us in His ways and may walk in His paths." Ultimately what I have been trying to do is encourage you to walk in the paths of the Lord. What the Lord Jesus, rather bluntly, showed me was "Brent, you need to also instruct them in the ways." Instruct them in the ways then we walk in the paths. And so what I would like to do is take my homilies and go back to the basics. Not to have every single week a separate homily on some random spiritual topic according to what the scripture says, but rather to have a sort of systematic series of addressing the essentials of our faith. The basics. Not to get caught up in all the big lofty things, which are good and holy and necessary for us, but just to start with the simple things of what it means to be a Christian, what it is to be Catholic, what is the gift of our faith. So many questions that are asked routinely, or at least pondered if not asked directly to the priests, I would like to respond to throughout the course of this year. One of the things I would also like to do in conjunction with that is most of my homilies are stand alone homilies; you come and this weekend you get one message and next weekend you get a different message; sometimes they connect, sometimes not. But I would like to do series of homilies beginning more or less next week, rather than just to come and get one dot here, one dot here and one dot here, but to have two, maybe three or four weeks at a time, where we will have a system where we will address one particular aspect of our life of faith in the Church so that we can go deeper. One thing that may actually happen is the homilies might be a little bit shorter, as I don't have to jam everything into one one single homily. But if I permit myself to stretch it over two, three, four weeks ... so I'm not promising you shorter homilies, but they could be a by-product. 

But all of that is essentially to say that I want to get back to the basics for you, but also for me. I recognize that my love for the Lord is not where it should be either. And as Isaiah simply says, let us go to the house of the Lord, so that He might instruct us in His ways. So I need to learn from my God for myself, and we need to learn from Him as well as He speaks with us, and then we may walk in His paths. 

Anyone who is married, I'm pretty sure you know a little bit more about your spouse today than on the day of your wedding. Hopefully you like them a little bit more now. For those of you with children, much the same. You knew them, but as they grow and develop you learn more and more about them. In any relationship, you come to know more about a particular person, and in doing so, hopefully we learn to love them more. I've experienced that in my experience of the priesthood just on a practical level, a personal level, getting to know so many of you in a more personal way by various means. But one of the ways it has struck me is in the confessional. I've heard a thousand times, and I know I've thought and presumed similar things myself ... "When I go to confession, surely the priest is going to know who I am, especially if face to face, and next time he sees me, he's going to be thinking of my sins. I know it. Next time I see him at the market, the ball field or wherever, he's going to be looking at me thinking 'Uhuh ... it's one of those sinners over there.'" And it's this presumption that the priest looks upon on us with our sins in mind. I'm guilty of it myself, even as a priest. But what I have discovered personally for myself, I've never heard it from another priest, but I presume much could be said the same, is that in the sacrament of Reconciliation, in Confession, there's something strange that happens. I can only gather that it is the grace of the Lord Jesus conforming my heart to be more like a good priest like a should be, and it's whenever you come in and sit before me - I know you and love you on that level for what I see in the normal world - but as you open your heart, I am able to love you not only in your goodness but also in your brokenness, to love more of you. And that's the thing that has struck me, as a priest I learn to love people more on account of their sins, not less. Not to be more judgmental, but to be more compassionate, to be more joyful in the presence of others. That's our desire for the Lord Jesus with this - to be able to come to the Lord and learn more about Him, learn about the richness of our faith, that in the course of it, our love might increase. I can stand up here all day and tell you to love Jesus, but if I don't give you any fuel for the fire, it doesn't really help. And too many times I feel I've been just standing here saying love Jesus, but haven't given fuel haven't helped you to love Jesus as you should. Nor have I given myself the same. So it's my intention for us to enter into this year as an opportunity for catechesis, formation - being formed and shaped by our faith. 

A couple of weeks ago or maybe last week, I mentioned the FORMED.org online program. I know a handful of you have already made use of it and I am delighted at that. But I really want to encourage each and everyone of you, if you have internet access at all, go to formed.org and check it out. I saw that because there are audio, books, videos, movie programs, Bible study, small groups, prayer groups, everything under the sun is there. But there are two special things that I think would be helpful for us immediately today: one of them is that they have a scripture reflection on the main page so that you can go and listen to reflections breaking open the word of God in the scriptures each week but they also have an Advent video program on reflections for the Advent season. I am mentioning that as a way of kind of holding myself accountable, that if I am saying I'm going to do it and telling you to do it, I have to actually do it. I've been wanting to do it, but need an extra push. So, I'm going to ask you to hold me accountable to make sure I'm actually keeping up with it myself. 

Again, we are called to enter into the season, to begin again. To look forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus, to look forward to the day where He comes to us at Christmas, on the Last Day as well as each day in the encounter of our Christian life. I encourage myself and each of you with the words of Isaiah, "O house of Jacob, [Church of God,] come let us walk in the light of the Lord." Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

What Can I Do? - Homily for November 6

St. Jose Sanchez del Rio

Readings for Sunday, November 6/ 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time:
2 Maccebees 7:1-2, 9-14
Psalm 17
2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5
Luke 20:27-38

This weekend's set of readings begins with readings from the second book of Maccabees which is a
noteworthy book for us. It's one of the latest written, was only about 150 years before the life of Christ whereas some of the other books date back to more than 1000 years before the life of Christ. And so it shows to us how the Jewish faith had experienced some growth, change and development as well as cultural experiences. We see what was taking place was a persecution - the people were being persecuted on account of their faith. What the seven brothers show us today, in the abbreviated account of their martyrdom, is that if we hold to our faith, it will cost us something. These were the martyrs of the Old Testament, but the same is said of the martyrs of the New Testament - that if we hold fast to Jesus Christ, it will cost us. 

Jose was a young boy - you may have heard his story before as I have preached about it. He was one who wasn't really alive in his faith, just like most of the boys in his town. They had a town priest and from time to time they would pick on him, throw things at him, make jokes - wasn't very serious about it. Jose began to experience a conversion of his own heart and began to draw close to the priest as the priest began to take Jose under his wing to teach him the things of the faith. Jose was still a little far away from the Lord though, he didn't have that dramatic, living gift of faith, but he was getting there. The time began when the Church where Jose lived began to be persecuted. To be a priest in your clerics meant that you could be shot on the spot. If you celebrated Mass, you could be shot. If you attended Mass, you could be shot. There was no catechism, no sacraments, n -o faith in the public forum according to the law of the land. A number of people began to rebel against this, desiring to live, express and practice their faith. Jose was among their number. As he began to understand the importance of faith and what the lack of it meant for him and his people. He joined a group of "rebels" - Catholics who wanted to remain Catholic and live their faith, to have the freedom to practice it in the public square. Jose was ultimately captured and tortured. The soles of his feet were cut off, and he was marched across town ... to a grave that was dug. It had all the dirt and the hole ready to go, and at the head of the grave were his parents and his godfather. And they said, "Jose, all you have to do is deny Jesus. You don't even have to mean it, you just have to say it. Just deny Jesus and you can go home. This will end, the suffering will stop, you can go be with your parents, your godfather, your family and your friends again." And Jose looked at them, and then his executors, and said "Viva Cristo Rey! Long live Christ the King!" and he was killed on the spot. With his last bit of energy, in the dirt on the ground ahead of him, he drew a small cross as a testament to his faith. Jose was 14 years old when he died, and it was less than 100 years ago in Mexico. Not in a land far, far away in a time long, long ago. A lot of times we think that the martyrs of the Church were way back, but as Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and now Pope Francis have also proclaimed and try to draw our attention to is that in the last 100 years, the Church has seen more people martyred for the faith the previous 1800 years combined. To be a Christian and cling to Jesus Christ is to know that it will cost us something. 

For many people today it costs blood. We pray not that it will be the same for us. But even if it doesn't cost us blood, it costs us something else. The story of Jose is one that I love, I'm fascinated by the gift of faith that was bestowed upon that man especially at such a tender age. but what strikes me even more is the reading from Maccabees this weekend. Jose had a dramatic experience; it was something that he had to deny Jesus, verbally at least. Even if he didn't believe it in his heart, he had to verbally say, "I renounce Jesus." That's a big thing for a Christian. What the Maccabee brothers experienced was something much smaller. It was the desire of God that the Jewish people not partake of pork, and the only thing that was asked of them, seven brother martyrs in front of their mother (whom they saved for last to watch them all die - shows you the wickedness of it all); all they had to do was eat a little pork. They didn't have to renounce their God. They didn't have to worship other gods. They just had to eat a little bit of pork. And it got me thinking as I was praying with that vision, that understanding of just how much they were willing to go just to uphold the smallest of laws of their faith. 

Who among us on a Good Friday - one of the two days of the year that the Church invites us to fast or abstain from meat - who of us when presented with a gun to our head and a steak in front of us would not take a bite. Think about it. Who among us? I'd be willing to pick up a fork and a knife and start cutting. There's always confession, right? But seriously. We laugh, but that's exactly what the Maccabean brothers did, and their mother .... We get the abbreviated form of the story. There was seven brothers and all seven of them all said something. And you would think the mother would say, "Just eat the pork!" But instead the mother said, "Honor us. Lay down your life." Imagine watching all seven of your children die, and you encouraging them on account of faith, for pork. How seriously do we take our faith these days? How quickly we are willing to fall away and abandon anything and everything that our faith teaches us to say a little hair on our hide. How quick we can be to cast off Jesus even in the small ways for the sake of a little comfort. 

I would like to think that whenever the big times come that I could persevere and follow Jesus - that if someone came to me, put that gun to my head and said choose Christ or Jesus, I would like to be able to say that I would choose Jesus. But I'm not really sure, and the reason I'm not sure is because in the last several months, I think I've made 7 a.m. Mass at the Church on time once. Once. Seven o'clock Mass. I prefer the comfort of my bed and a few more minutes of sleep than to get up for the love of Christ, for His people and be at Mass on time. And that's my job, it's my vocation ... I literally laid down on the cathedral floor for that - to offer Mass. I can sit in front of the TV and watch the World Series until midnight and be perfectly in tune, but you put me in front of the Blessed Sacrament after 9 p.m. and I'm gone in three minutes. Where is my love for Jesus? Am I willing to suffer for Him? Am I willing to be inconvenienced for Him? And are you? It's the simple things: to have another drinks or not, to have a little more food or not. Sunday Mass .. meh. Holy days of obligation ... the Lord understands, I'm busy. I have things going on. And those are big things. What about the little things? The course of prayer throughout our day, to be with Jesus Christ even for a few moments of prayer, and how often I, myself, am busy about the other things than about the things of the Lord. It's easier to play on the computer or play with a cat than it is to visit with Christ. 

There is a little sign above my desk that I put there on purpose that I try to remember, but too often I forget. It's a quote from Sirach that says, "When you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials." It's the reminder that when I come to serve Jesus, it's supposed to cost me something; it's supposed to be uncomfortable. It's supposed to be difficult sometimes; it's supposed to feel like a cross because it means we are in union with Jesus. Jesus taking on flesh wasn't a pleasant thing for Him - it was a cross, it was humiliation, suffering, sorrow, ultimately was pain, rejection and loneliness at the last hour, and He did it for love of us. The question is: What can I do for love for Him? And what can you?

Where is Lazarus - Homily for September 25

Readings for Sunday, September 25 / 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Amos 6:1, 4-7 | Psalm 146 | 1 Timothy 6:11-16 | Luke 16:19-31

This weekend we have the uncomfortable reminder that our salvation is not just based off of me and Jesus, but it's me, Jesus and every person I come in contact with through the course of my life - which again should be a little scary for us.

The reading from the prophet Amos and the psalm are a study of contrast to help us get primed for that reflection. The prophet Amos is the type of person that likes to point people out and call attention to the things they are doing and go about the litany of their hard heartedness. And we hear more of that today - how he looks at Israel as the whole entire people, and says "Look, you're sitting on your ivory beds, your nice linens and fancy couches, and you eat all the finest things. You're so self-concerned and complacent. There is nothing really in your heart, except that." It's a very strong rebuke he gives to them.

In contrast to that we have the example of God, who comes in Psalm 146 and describes ways that are entirely unselfish, ways that He pours Himself out simply for the love of others. How the Lord comes to set captives free and give sight to the blind, raise the lowly, protect strangers, help widows and orphans, and certainly we could add to the list. It's interesting - these two: to be self-concerned or to be selfless. That's what it is when it comes down to it.

A lot of time whenever we think about ourselves as sinners, whenever we think about our sins, it seems that we consider most the sins of commission - the words, deeds, thoughts, the actions that are actively done, we know they are bad, and yet we do them anyway. How many times have we said in the confessional, "I thought bad things.  I said something negative about someone. I gossiped. Cursed at the TV last night during the game. Cursed the coach. I drank or ate a little too much .." We think about the things that we do and we think that stuff is bad - and it is - but are we mindful of the things we failed to do that we should've done? That's what the Gospel calls us to reflect upon - the sins of omission, that we have omitted something we ought to have done out of love for Christ.

We see that the Lord gives us the example of, a presumably fictional account, a rich man and Lazarus with Abraham acting there in the midst. The rich in the end, much like that of Israel, has all the fine things: a purple robe, a sign of royalty and richness; his fancy linens; he dines sumptuously each day. It shows the extent to which he is taking care of himself. It's not bad to take care of oneself, but in the midst of it, we have to be concerned about others as well. The rich man passes Lazarus each day as Lazarus sits on his doorstep. As Jesus describes the story, He doesn't say that the rich man actually did anything sinful. He didn't walk outside the door and curse Lazarus. he didn't call him names, kick him or spit at him on the way out. He didn't even think bad thoughts about him necessarily. He didn't do anything - and that's exactly the problem. Lazarus was there, day by day, right outside his doorstep, and the man knows it. And he knows Lazarus - and that's the catch. Whenever he sees Abraham far off, he sees Lazarus and he asked Abraham to send Lazarus - not that guy at the doorstep - send Lazarus. He knows his name. And yet still the hardness of his heart was so much that he didn't do anything for him. A grievous sin of omission, and it is because he failed to do something he ought to have done and thus finds himself in the torments. Again, so often we focus on what we've actually done that was bad. But remember when we fail to do what is good, also bears great weight in the story of our salvation.

One wanted to come up with a little jingle for it, but I didn't because I wanted to get it stuck in your head and get frustrated that you wouldn't get it out. I want a question to roll around in your mind through the course of this week, and if anyone wants to make up a jingle and let me know afterward, by all means, I won't be upset. I want you to think of one question over and over, throughout the day and the course of this week; maybe put a sign in your house or in your car. The question I want you to think over and over again is: Where is Lazarus? As you go to work, to school, on the road, to the store, in your home ... All through the course of our week we encounter many Lazaruses. It doesn't have to be the extreme example of the Lazarus in the story where he is sick, wounded and hungry at our doorstep dying in a sense. It doesn't have to be to that extreme, but sometimes it is. More often that not it's some small needs - someone who is need in a little way - a little word of encouragement or a small deed of kindness, a simple act of love. Those little things, that unlike the rich man, we can crucify our hearts to be able to let Christ come forth from us and show love, to allow my self-concern be set aside, my comfort to be set aside so that Christ can come forth and love.

That's the main piece: Jesus calls us to love, which is a positive action. When asked what was the greatest commandment, He had the 10 Commandments which were all "Thou shalt not's" and He opted for something different that was more basic: love God and love neighbor - positive things. Not just to avoid something pad, but to choose to do something good because it's harder. It's harder to reach outside of ourselves and do good. It's easy to shrink back from doing bad - you just don't do it. But to go the extra step to do something good is a different story.

So we ask the Lord to be with us this week, the grace of this Mass, the grace of our time of prayer - that the Lord may give us new eyes, in a sense, to see as we go through the course of this week "Where is Lazarus?".

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.

...the rest of the story.

Readings for Sunday, June 19/ 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Zechariah 12:10-11; 13:1
Psalm 63
Galatians 3:26-29
Luke 9:18-24

Earlier this week I sat down and decided to look through our parish directory from the early 90’s. I looked through every page and every family, recognizing many faces and knowing that there are others not pictures and many who have gone to their eternal reward. It was neat to see everyone 20+ years ago – and not just because of the hairstyles! – because it helped me to remember that there is still much about you and this community that I don’t know.

When we get to know another person or place, we only know it from our first encounter onward and the past is but a story and not something we can experience firsthand. It can be easy to forget about all of the past things and simply see the person as the one we’ve come to know, but in doing so we necessarily miss some things. This is exactly what the Lord is helping the disciples to realize today in the Gospel passage we just heard. The disciples knew Jesus from His ministry and saw Him largely in that light. The people from His hometown, on the opposite end, would struggle to see the great wonder-worker because they only saw Him as the regular guy from their hometown. And the Lord has to provide to all of them the fuller picture. He asks who people say that He is and they respond with the answers of various great prophetic figures. Without even acknowledge the responses, He asks who the disciples say that He is. This is something every one of us must give thought to at points in our life, who is the Jesus we claim to know and serve? Peter’s response wins him a rebuke and in other Gospel accounts the note that he received this knowledge from the Father and not simply early wisdom. Not to stop there, the Lord continues with the rest of the story. The disciples would have no problem accepting the Lord as a miraculous person, a wonder-worker of the highest order who did things that none had ever seen before. They could accept Him as a great ruler, meant to save the Israelites from the opposing nations. But what they struggled to accept was the very truth of what followed: the necessity of the suffering to come. The proclamation that the Lord would soon be rejected by the rulers of the land, crucified, and be then raised from the dead was a hard pill to swallow. And what’s more, the Lord said they would have to pick up their cross daily to follow in His path.

No innocent man was meant to carry a cross. It was the condemned who carried the wood to their place of crucifixion and so the Lord invites us to see ourselves as already condemned, as already dead to this world. If we submit to this reality, then we can truly be raised up in a sense to a new life in this world that is marked by the virtues and life of Christ. And so we pick up our cross. Daily. Each day has it’s cross and the biggest of crosses that each of us has to bear is other people. And for those other people, the cross is you and me.

Last week’s tragic violence in Orlando has given our world one more opportunity among others to reject the cross and to seek shelter in our ‘safe places’. It’s a natural tendency of the human person to seek others with whom we find similarities – the people who have similar interests, similar histories, who speak the same, and believe the same things. We find what is comfortable in our circles, which is not bad in itself. The problem is that so often these differences are used to build walls around ourselves so that we become various groups of ‘us versus them’ and the difference are used to assert superiority. This is what St. Paul is writing about to the Galatians. They are beginning to squabble over groups – male and female, Jew and Greek, slave and free. These would traditionally be understood as one being superior and the other inferior. In response St. Paul writes to remind them that in Christ all are one and that there is not male and female, Jew and Greek, slave and free. He isn’t saying that those difference don’t exist, indeed they do, but that the differences don’t matter when it comes to equality and the charity toward others. And the same applies to us in our society today. There are so many groups that are different from one another, but we find ourselves on shaky ground when we begin to use those as indicators of superiority or as the limits of our charity. That because someone is in the group of ‘them’ regarding LGBT, muslims, guns, Trump, Hillary, or whatever that we have no obligation to love them or show kindness. And this is the cross – the obligation to love our neighbors even when we don’t agree, especially on very important things. In this we follow the example of Jesus that we heard recently as He at in the house of Simon the Pharisee – that the woman was weeping at His feet and Simon thought to himself “If he knew who and what sort of woman that this is, he wouldn’t let her do this!” ‘She’s one of the THEM!’ he thinks to himself and in doing so shows his lack of charity toward her, as well as toward the Lord. The Lord loved her, despite her sinfulness and ‘otherness’ and in doing so, drew her to Himself.

I came across a quote from St. John Bosco earlier this week that has resonated with me through these recent days: “This was the method that Jesus used with the apostles. He put up with their ignorance and roughness and even their infidelity. He treated sinners with a kindness and affection that caused some to be shocked, others to be scandalized and still others to hope for God’s mercy. And so He bade us to be gentle and humble of heart.”

The Lord loved everyone before Him from the sinful woman to the hard-hearted Simon and in doing so gave every person the chance to follow after Him. He acknowledged differences, but chose to love the other still. In doing so there is a great ease in ruffling feathers and causing controversy. He knew this and it was because of His humility that these things did not matter; He simply bore the daily cross, which culminated in the greatest of humiliations on Calvary. Are we willing to do the same? To recognize divisions, yet to see ‘them’ as worth loving and liking. To forgive when the other isn’t sorry. To accept harsh words and to bite our tongue instead of spouting harsh words back. When someone hurts us somehow the temptation can be to assume the worst, but it is the call of the Christian to go out of our way to make excuses for ‘them.’ “They know not what they do” the Lord pleaded to the Father in the midst of crucifixion. And so we have the joy daily of picking up our cross and following the Christ by showing love to each person before us, even to the point of death.

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