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.

Stirring Up Faith - Homily for June 24

Readings for Sunday, June 24 / Nativity of St. John the Baptist: Isaiah 49:1-6  |  Psalm 139  |  Acts 13:22-26  |  Luke 1:57-66, 80

The birth of John the Baptist brings his father Zechariah from doubt to faith. In his public ministry, John called the Israelites to repentance and deeper faith. He continues to do the same for us today. 

Better Than You Found It - Homily for November 19

Readings for Sunday, November 19 / 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31  |  Psalm 128  |  1 Thessalonians 5:1-6  |  Matthew 25:14-30

When God entrusts something to us, He expects us to make use of it. What blessings have been given to you? How can you use them to make the world a better place?

The Priest - Homily for November 5

Readings for Sunday, November 5 / 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time: Malachi 1:14-2:2, 8-10  |  Psalm 131  |  1 Thessalonians 2:7-9, 13  |  Matthew 23:1-12

The priest exercises an office of great dignity, but if he forgets the dignity is not his own he is the greatest of fools. Let us pray for our priests to recognize the dignity of their vocation and exercise humility in carrying it out. Let us pray, too, for more young men to respond to this great call to give one's life for the good of the Church.

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.

Building Blocks: Where did the Bible come from? - Homily for January 22

Readings for Sunday, January 22: Isaiah 8:23-9:3  |  Psalm 27  |  1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17  |  Matthew 4:12-23

I'm heading out to the March for Life in Washington, D.C. in a few minutes, so this week is only the audio for the homily. Please pray for safety for all those attending the March and for the growth of a culture of life in our world. Our prayers will be with you too.

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 Foundation of the Christian Life - Homily for August 28

Readings for August 28, 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29  |  Psalm 68  |  Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24  |  Luke 14:1, 7-14

A few years ago a trilogy of books was put out and movies subsequently made about them titled Divergent. It was set as a future of America, more or less, where society had kind of crumbled and they were living a completely type of different state than what we would be used to. Rather than individuals being part of a complex social system, society was divided up into five specific groups. There were individuals who kind of represented five essential characteristics or virtues of the human person. But it was a taken to an extreme, and each of those individual groups were called to live out that extreme to the highest. There were the Dauntless who embodied the virtue of courage to an extreme of craziness, such that it was almost a rule for them to have tattoos and wild hair and had to jump off of trains as their mode of common transportation - it was kind of bizarre. There the Erudite whose entire life was consumed with knowledge and education. There were other groups as well, and then there was one group called the Abnegation. They were the extreme embodiment of selflessness or humility. They were required to wear drab gray clothing, rather than bright colors that might indicate something special. They were required to have a certain hairstyle, not to have fancy things, nice things or many things, but rather to be abundantly simple. You were unable to express your gifts and to use the good things that were part of your own natural life because you were Abnegation. You had to necessarily quench and reject all of those things. Whenever you were in the presence of members of the four other branches of the society, the Abnegations were always the ones who had to had to step back and defer to the other groups. 

I mention that because this weekend we hear the words of scripture inviting us to reflect upon humility, and often time when we hear "humility" we think the "abnegation" - we have to have the drab gray clothing, a sense of unable to be .......*TRAIN!!!*....... Anywho, when we think about humility, we often think of that extreme version. "O yea ... you know ... I'm not really good at that. I don't really have that gift." It's this false humility that basically is a lie. When St. Benedict - the founder of Western monasticism of the great Benedictine monasteries - was writing his rule on the monks and their gifts, he said it would be a shame, even more a sin against God if a monk who had a good voice intentionally neglected it because he didn't want it to stick out. It would be a sin for one to reject their gifts that were rightfully given to them by God. And unfortunately that's what we can think humility is - a rejection of the gift that is something that could lift us up, that could exalt us. 

St. Thomas Aquinas said to recognize truth and to live truth was humility; to be humble was to recognize that every single one of us was created in the image and likeness of God - that we are created for heavenly life. But at the same time, on account of our sins, we deserve hell. But on the other hand, Christ has saved us and redeemed us. And by the gift of Baptism we are heirs to the kingdom of God, but we have to work and labor for it. So it's recognizing the truth that I am a sinner who is called to be a saint. 

St. Theresa of Avila, when she was in her own convent with the Carmelites, she was struggling with how to live out humility herself as a religious sisters. One day she asked the Lord point blank in prayer, "Lord, what is humility?" and the Lord Jesus responded to her, "Knowing what you can do and knowing what I can do." Knowing what you can do - and the limits thereof - and knowing what I can do and the fact that there are no limits to it. That's humility. It's knowing that in our weakness, we have many great gifts that come from God, but they rely upon Him. Everything is reliant upon the Lord Jesus. That's humility - not this false humility that rejects all of the goodness in us, but a recognition of the good and where it comes from.

Humility is very important in the Christian life. It's not one of the virtues that's taken among all the virtues. It's the most important virtue of all. Today is the feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo, a great doctor of the Church. He was a man who lived a life of revelry, of partying, of debauchery. But he was converted. He became a great priest and bishop of the Church, one of the most profound bishops. He was a writer that was absolutely incredible at his writings. Sixteen hundred years later and we still haven't translated them all into English, so prolific was he. A profound writer. And as he was reflecting on the spiritual life, he came to the understanding in his prayer and said that if we don't have humility, every other virtue that we appear to have is a lie. Because every other virtue I appear to have, if I don't have humility, ultimately is just about me. It could look really good on the outside - it could look positively saintly on the outside - but without humility, it's really about me. 

That's humility - the call to us to be humble before the Lord. It's the foundation of the Christian life. It's our everything because it's the first place that Christ comes to redeem us. In the Fall, their first sin was a sin of pride, the sin of exalting themselves, and it's the Lord who came and humbled the Lord. But in response, the Lord Jesus comes to undo that same sin, and what is the remedy? Humility and obedience to the Father. He comes, empties himself and takes on our flesh, and saves us. Without humility, we are lost, and only with humility are we saved. So we must have it, but how do we get it? How do we grow in this virtue that's the foundation of everything that we do and are as Christians. 

St. Benedict has this nice little 12 step approach where you can climb the ladder of humility. I have a hard time remembering three points quite often, so I don't expect you to remember twelve points, so if you want to find them out, you can find it HERE. I'd like to bring what he says and that part of the rule, as well as other writings, and it's emphasized in three main points. 

The first point is to pray for humility. To pray for humility is immediately to recognize that I can't do it myself. If I'm pretty sure I can make myself humble by my own will and my own choosing, I am at the height of pride. It's only the Lord who gives us the grace to be humble; it's only He who allows us that virtue to be alive in our hearts. So the Lord Jesus comes and He gives us the graces as we ask them. Pray for humility, seek it out, ask for the gift - to seek, to ask, to knock - and to know that it will be given to us. If you want a specific prayer, I encourage you in praying the Litany of Humility (found HERE), a wonderful prayer composed by a cardinal about a hundred years ago. The Litany of Humility is a profound prayer; it strikes at the root and it hurts a little bit whenever you pray it. The first time I prayed it, I felt pretty rough afterward like "Lord, we got some work to do!" The priest who first introduced me to it said that when he was given the Litany of Humility, he read through it and was so afraid to pray it that he gave it to a religious sister and asked her to pray it on his behalf. He became a good and holy priest, so apparently her prayers were effective. But it's first and foremost to pray for humility. 

The second thing is to allow humility to come forth in our speech, to allow our conversation to be marked by humility. Archbishop Fulton Sheen was remarking that in a particular chapter of one of the letters of St. Paul the words "I," "me," and "my," were a litany, where it seemed like every fourth word, something to the effect of over 30 times in a single chapter. He said these words over and over again, and at the end of the chapter he paused to reflect upon the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and how that was His glory. Archbishop Sheen said it's interesting to note the next chapter of the letter doesn't mention "I," "me," or "my" once. How often in our conversation it can turn to "I," the focus upon myself. But as we turn to the Lord and allow Him to increase humility within us, as we allow Him to convert our hearts, it becomes more about the other than about myself. And that's what the Lord calls us to - to be conscience of our words and to focus on asking the other things - to focus on you rather than I. Simply that practice trains our mind, thoughts and speech to focus on the other, but not just in those types of things but even in the midst of conversation how easy it is for our conversations to be for a purpose of us gaining something for me, and not always in a positive sense. To gain knowledge, wisdom or spiritual insight is good, but to gossip for the gain of power and authority over someone else, because you know what they did or didn't do, is not good. So to gain for ourselves in a wicked sense, an evil sense, is not of God. So the Lord too invites us there too to seek humility, to humble ourselves and focus on others that they might be exalted.

The last thing is to do things that humble us. The Lord Jesus says explicitly in scripture to go take take the lowest seat so that whenever the host comes they can say to take the higher seat, rather than to take the higher seat and have the host come and say "Hey, you're not number one, sorry," and have you move down. What a tragedy that is, what shame is experienced, humiliation, embarrassment. And so the Lord invites us to be humble, ourselves. And here's the catch, no matter what, the Lord will always allow us to gain graces of humility; it’s just a matter of whether we gain them by choosing to humble ourselves or Him sending humiliations our way. Personally, I'd like to have a little say in how I get humbled - maybe that's my pride - so I can choose the situations rather than to be unexpectedly publicly embarrassed. So for us to take up those actions of humility, so that we grow in it ourselves by our own choosing and desire, rather than to wait for someone else to knock us off our horse. 

The Lord calls us to humility in a great way, but He also shows us here at Mass. That's something that I think we can reflect upon much more deeply - the humility the Lord expresses here in this offering. He does each of those things: the prayer of humility, the words of humility, the actions of humility. The Lord Jesus invites us to come here; it's incredible in itself. Our first readings says that you're not coming to something that you can simply touch and experience. You're coming to the dwelling place of God. You're coming to the Holy City - Zion. You're coming to meet our Lord. By the simple fact that we are here today should bring us to our knees in humility, and indeed it does in various parts of the Mass. To be humbled to come and to speak with our God - to love Him and to be loved by Him. 

The prayers in the Mass, as I spoke about last weekend, invite us to humility. Lord have mercy ... Lord I'm not worthy ... Thanks be to God ... these sorts of things are the words that we speak that the Lord gives to us. I think one of the things most often and easily overlooked because it's so normal to us, regretfully, is the humility of the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist. St. Peter Julian Eymard, in his reflections on the Eucharist, says the fact that Jesus comes among us in the Eucharist is the highest expression of His humility. It was incredible that He came among us as flesh, but in His own flesh and blood. He could walk away, He could go away, He could do all these things whenever people came to attack Him. He could've left. But in the Eucharist, anything that happens to Him, He humbly submits. He chooses obedience to the Father, and to us. We could take the Host and toss it in the yard, throw it in the street, use it for target practice, and the Lord would not once stop us. Not once. It would be a sacrilege and very serious sin, but He wouldn’t stop us. That's the humility of Christ Jesus who loves us, who came to sacrifice Himself for us. That's the humility of Christ, and it's that humility that he invites us to - to be able to draw near to Him, to allow Him to teach us by words and by deeds, what it is to be humble, what it is to know the truth and to live it. What we can do and what God can do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hidden Saints

A few of the saints...

Readings for Sunday, November 1/ All Saints Day:
Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14

Psalm 24
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

Today we have the joy of celebrating in the Sunday celebration the feast of All Saints, that blessed feast when we call to mind the great crowd on men and women who have gone before us and reign gloriously with Jesus in Heaven. One of the awesome points is the universality expressed by such a fact: that all are called to Heaven. Male and female, rich and poor, old and young, regardless of time or place or any other factor that is found in this world. If you are a human, you are called to heavenly life, called to be a saint.

In other homilies I’ve mentioned the fact rather clearly that you and I are called to be saints and from time to time I hear remarks to the effect that ‘Father, I certainly can’t be a saint!’ My response is simply this: you can and you must, for there is but one fate for those who are not saints and it’s not a pleasant one. To be a saint is not necessarily to be a superhero of the spiritual life. Too often when we think of saints we call to mind those great men and women of faith whose lives are models of sanctity to which it would indeed be difficult for us to attain. St. Jean Vianney would survive for days at a time on a few meager bites of old potatoes. St. Pio of Pietrelcina endured the wounds of the stigmata for some 50 years. St. John Paul II was shot in an assassination attempt and them went to forgive the shooter personally. St. Francis of Assisi in his zeal to strip himself of all earthly things began to give away his possessions and when confronted by his father who said, ‘You cannot give everything away, for that tunic was purchased with my money!’ stripped himself naked in the middle of town and went away to go find some scraps of cloth with which to make a new wardrobe. Now, I’m pretty sure we’re not called to strip naked in town at this point, that was presumably one of those events that just had to happen once in the life of the Church to mark it off the list. I mean, we’re going to be in Heaven for eternity, it’s good to have a great store of stories to fall back on to tell! But more seriously, those are the images we often recall when we think of saints, but the truth is that for every one of those great saints there is a great number of humble quiet saints who are enjoying the fruit of a life lived well, though not notably. Is this not what we profess in our faith?

As I was driving around the area blessing graves this weekend I noticed the great many cemeteries in the area – family cemeteries, public ones, and ones connected to various congregations – all full of stones marking the faithful departed. How many thousands just in our little slice of the world have died with the belief that they would be given the reward of their labors in this life? Are they not saints? I sure hope they are, or at least on their way!

Regardless of whether one’s life is a light shining on a mountaintop for the world to see or hidden in the Heart Christ, the call remains the same: to become saints. And to accomplish this we look to those who have gone before us as models and intercessors. The prayers of the Mass remind us of these realities over and over. They are models for us to follow, images into which we look and discern how we might imitate them. Here is the beauty of the universality of the saints in Heaven – that there’s a patron saint for anything and everything you can endure in this life. Are you a teenager (most of us here aren’t) but there’s a patron saint for you – St. Maria Goretti, whose relic happens to be here on the altar today. Do you like shooting handguns? There’s a patron saint of handgunners, St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother, who is also here on the altar. Do you suffer from headaches? St. Teresa of Avila is the patron saint of people who suffer from headaches. Did you know there’s a patron saint of the internet? True story. It’s St. Isidore, who happens also to be the patron saint of farmers. Maybe the Church in her wisdom is subtly telling those who spend much time on the internet to go outside and play in the dirt once in a while? These and others are the ones who have walked the paths before us and provide us a model of how to live and can intercede for us on account of their special connections to us. Just as we’re attracted to people with whom we have things in common, so it is with the saints. And not just that – there are saints we can pray to as patrons of our parish, diocese, ones whose feast lies on our birthday, baptismal day, confirmation, wedding, children’s birthday and more. Saints all over the place! And rightly so. It’s the normal course of the Christian life to become a saint, Pope Francis reminds us, but it is a course that must be chosen. And here is the key to everything: choosing.

St. Paul of the Cross

The closing line of the reading from Revelation that we heard noted the great crowd before John, saying of them, “These are the ones who have survived the great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” They survived the great distress. In other words, they bore the cross God offered to them. They knew that the cross of Jesus was His throne of glory and their own crosses were the ladders to heaven and they rejoiced to climb them. This is how to become saints: by accepting what comes our way from Christ in such a way as to turn it into our glory. To do all things for love of Jesus. And if you struggle with carrying your cross, St. Paul of the Cross founded the Passionist Fathers, whose community shows us the joy of the cross - he's here on the altar too. Pray to him. Pray to all of them. Pray that we can become the saints we’re called to be.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.

St. Joseph, pray for us.

St. Ann, pray for us.

St. Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

All you holy men and women, pray for us.

The Response

Readings for Sunday, June 28/ 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time:
Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24
Psalm 30
2 Corinthians 8:7,9,13-15
Mark 5:21-43

In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis spoke to us these words: “The family is experiencing a profound cultural crisis, as are all communities and social bonds. In the case of the family, the weakening of these beonds is particularly serious because the family is the fundamental cell of society, where we learn to live with tohers depite our differences and to belong to one another; it is alos the place where parents pass on the faith to their children. Marriage no tends to be viewed as a form of mere emotional satisfaction that can be constructed in any way or modified at will. But the indispensable contribution of marriage to society transcends the feelings and momentary needs of the couple. As the French bishops have taught, it is not born ‘of loving sentiment, ephemeral by definition, but form the depth of the obligation assumed by spouses who accept to enter a total communion of life.’”

As you all presumably know, the Supreme Court of the United States announced their opinion Friday, decided by a 5-4 vote, to reject the traditional view of marriage in light of a new definition that permits ‘same-sex marriage’ in all 50 states. While this may upset us, it should surprise us because traditional marriage has been under attack for a long while and this is just one more step. Catholic theology on marriage notes that marriage has two ‘ends’ or ‘goals’, namely procreation and the good of the spouses, which basically means the union is emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, & physically beneficial. We can see that attacks on procreation began decades ago with the introduction and encouragement of contraceptives. This fundamentally separates marriage and its first end. Following behind it is the continued attack on children. Abortion necessarily follows because when contraception fails there has to be a means to be rid of the child one sought first to avoid. From there society made ‘advances’ in being able to choose certain attributes of their children and ‘get rid of’ children who had undesirable attributes. In vitro fertilization and other unethical means of creating life only further the chasm between marriage and the gift of children. The good of the spouses came under attack with the introduction of no-fault divorce, which necessarily makes marriage less binding and thus less valued. To this we can add the devaluing of women in general. It’s interesting to me that in an age when feminism fights so strongly for the rights of women to equal pay, equal job opportunity, etc. (rightly so!) that the culture continues to treat women worse and worse. Women are generally not valued in themselves for the gift that they are, but rather are used for their bodies and their ability to increase sales. This is only encouraged by the acceptance of pornography and pornographic films and books, which only seek to make people objects to be used instead of persons to be loved. With all that has happened to the two ends of marriage, it is no surprise then that the very definition of marriage itself should be free from attack.

The question is this: how do we respond?

I’ve seen responses ranging from fear, anger and despair to excitement, relief, and celebration. As Catholic we ought to stand on neither end of that spectrum but rather firmly planted in the middle full of faith, hope, and love. We are called to have faith that God is in control of this country and this world, regardless of what happens around us. We are called to have hope that Marriage would shine brightly in our culture and remind us of the love of God for us and our call to heavenly life. And we’re called to love. Love of every single person who stands in front of us, regardless of their age, sex, race, social status, sexual orientation, or any other personal attribute, because they are a person. Because they are created in the image and likeness of God. Because they were made to love and be loved.

A lot of times the Catholic Church is painted as this hate-filled body that spews its hatred and condemnation at people who identify as gay, lesbian, transgender, bi-sexual, queer, etc. But did you know the Church says the stands for the exact opposite? The Catechism says unambiguously that we are called to show them ‘respect, compassion, and sensitivity’ and that we are to avoid any sign of unjust discrimination toward them. Holy Mother Church loves all of her children and wants to have all of humanity rest in her loving arms. Sadly, we Catholics and fellow-Christians often failed to convey this truth, but the call still stands for us to be images of God’s love ourselves. This doesn’t mean that we condone or celebrate ‘same-sex marriage’ or relationships that lead to such, but it does mean continuing to love the other by showing respect, compassion, sensitivity, and honoring the dignity of others.

So our response needs to be one of faith, hope, and love, which is exactly the same at it has always been. The Supreme Court can say whatever it wants, but the ultimate reality is that the true King of this world is Jesus Christ. I love my country deeply, but we all have to remember that we’re Catholic first and American second. And that means that our Catholic faith informs everything we do. And what is our mission as Catholics? To shine with the light of Christ.

Did you hear the Collect at the beginning of Mass today? It’s easy to miss but it was beautiful: “O God, who through the grace of adoption chose us to be children of light, grant, we pray, that we may not be wrapped in the darkness of error but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth.” I love that last line ‘be seen to stand in the bright light of truth’; not just to stand there, but to be seen standing there. We are called to be witnesses that reflect the Light of Christ as the moon reflects that of the sun.

As I noted last weekend, Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders both are sacraments of service. The entire goal of the individual is to get the other person to heaven. I’m a priest. I’m obligated to be a holy priest, a saintly priest. The Catechism tells me that my life as a priest is to be entirely consecrated to service of the others. Every moment of my day is to be dedicated to getting every single one of you and many others to walk through the pearly gates of heaven and sing the Gloria along with the angels and saints. And if I get there too, good! My call is to shine with the Light of Christ in holiness and priestly ministry.

Single people, your call is much the same. To consecrate your days to loving whoever stands before you. Love them as if it were Jesus Himself and seek to recognize in them the Christ who seeks to love you as well. Be holy and happy Catholics, radiating the joy of the Gospel in your eyes as well as on your lips. Seek the Lord at all times and trust in His guidance of you through all that life brings.

Married people, your call is the same, but even more important. When marriage is under attack, the need is for good, holy marriages to be even more visible and even more effective in their outpouring of love and witness of the goodness of the sacraments. You are called to be icons of the Most Blessed Trinity! The love of husbands for their wives and wives for their husbands is a powerful sign of the love of God for us, and the love of both for their children speaks even more fully of the life and love of God in Himself – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Husbands and wives, remember that your goal is not to get to Heaven and hopefully to drag your spouse along with you. The goal is to get your spouse to Heaven and for them to drag you! When this mutual selfless love is present then it produces saints, both in the parents and the children. The parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, Bl. Louis & Bl. Zelie Martin, will soon be canonized and only for the fact that they were a holy family. Be models for your children and for all the world of the gift of God’s grace, and the joy of selfless giving. It can seem that you have little effect on the world, ‘what good can I do in such a big world?’ you might be tempted to think. But remember that Pope St. John Paul II called the family the basic cell of society and a blessing to the world. Strong words. St. John Chrysostom has some strong words too in a homily on marriage as he reminds each and all of us that “The love of a husband and wife are the force that welds society together.”

Be the force and the weld. Be the blessing and the light. Be saints.