Homily for Sunday, October 21

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

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

Dealing with the Thorns - Homily for July 8

Readings for Sunday, July 8 / 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Ezekiel 2:2-5  |  Psalm 123  |  2 Corinthians 12:7-10  |  Mark 6:1-6

When 'Thy Will be done' and my own personal will are not the same, how do I respond? Today's readings help us to see the 'how not to respond' and a beautiful of example of 'how to respond' in the person of St. Paul. 

Easter: Peace - Homily for April 15

Readings for Sunday, April 15 / 3rd Sunday of Easter: Acts 3:13-15, 17-19  |  Psalm 4  |  1 John 2:1-5 |  Luke 24:35-48

Christ comes to bring us the fruits of the Resurrection: peace. May His presence and grace fill us with this gift always. 

Triduum & Easter Homilies

Here are the recordings of the Triduum and Easter liturgies as celebrated here at St. Ann Church & St. Vincent Mission.


Readings for Holy Thursday


Readings for Good Friday

Readings for the Paschal Vigil

Readings for Easter Sunday

Papal Intentions for March 2017

Papal Intention for March 2017

That persecuted Christians may be supported by the prayers and material help of the whole Church.

Prayer for the Pope

V. Let us pray for Francis, our Pope.

R. May the Lord preserve him, give him life, 

and make him blessed upon the earth, 

and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies.

Our Father... Hail Mary...

O God, Shepherd and Ruler of all Thy faithful people, look mercifully upon Thy servant Francis, whom Thou hast chosen as shepherd to preside over Thy Church. Grant him, we beseech Thee, that by his word and example, he may edify those over whom he hath charge, so that together with the flock committed to him, may he attain everlasting life. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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?

...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.

Where's Your Coffin?

Readings for Sunday, June 5/ 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
1 Kings 17:17-24
Psalm 30
Galatians 1:11-19
Luke 7:11-17

It’s nice to be back in green! I don’t know about you, but one of the things I enjoy about the liturgical year is that each season goes on just long enough to make me look forward to the next one. And so it is with joy that I vest today in the vibrant green of ordinary time. We pick up, and will continue until November, reading the Gospel of St. Luke. He is the only Gentile (non-Jewish) writer of the four Gospels and so he focuses often on the outreach of Jesus to those who were on the periphery of society, the outcasts, and the most vulnerable. This would have included the Gentile peoples, but also included women in general, widows, orphans, and those with disease or major affliction. So it is appropriate that we pick up here this weekend with the story of Jesus raising up the son of a widow. And it is appropriate, too, that it is prefaced with the story of Elijah.

As you may recall, the Jewish people was a faith but also an ethnic group – their faith was the nationality – and their oral culture was steeped in the telling of their stories. The people were so well-versed in their history that, despite the lack of books, they knew the major people of their culture and the stories that accompanied them. The Church gives us the reading for Elijah to help us prepare ourselves for the encounter with Jesus. Elijah, we hear, goes to stay at the home of a widow in Zarephath. The prophets were not desirable folks to be around because their presence often was accompanied by great works but also terrible trials. The prophets very frequently bore bad news to the Israelites since the people often fell away from the Law of God, and this was not well received. It is with this stigma that Elijah, the greatest of the prophets, comes into the scene. He stays at the widow’s home and right on cue, the terrible things begin to surround him in the form of the sickness and death of the son of the widow. She immediately arrives at the conclusion that it is because Elijah has come that her son has died and tells him such rather bluntly. In response Elijah takes her son, goes up to the room where he stayed, prayed three times as he extended himself over the boy in prayer, invoking the Lord to bring the boy back to life. In response to his prayer, the boy is revived and he is brought back to his mother and she exclaims joyfully that Elijah is truly a man of God, that rather than a curse, he has brought great blessing.

With this as our backdrop, we return to the story of the Lord. We see Him into the city of Nain with a large group following, when He comes across a funeral procession. A funeral procession was something of great importance in that time, with many people joining in the journey and even professional ‘wailers’ who would come to lament and cry out in sorrow on behalf of the deceased and their family. Unlike the majority of such scenarios, when a person from the crowd approaches Him with some plea for help or a disciple makes someone’s need known to Him, here the Lord sees the woman in great sorrow and His heart is pierced with pity for her. He knows that she is a widow and that this is her only son. She would now be completely vulnerable and unable to care for herself, requiring others to provide for her for the rest of her days. It would have been kind of the Lord to go up to her and to assure her of the salvation of her son, or to call to mind the life of the world to come, or to give some charitable donation to her from his pocket. And yet He doesn’t. He tells her “Do not weep” and proceeds to the coffin, where He touches it and says to the young man, “I tell you, arise!” The boy rises and begins to speak and the Lord gives him back to his mother. Instead of a kind word or some assurance of faith, He raises the son from the dead! The people respond with two different acclamations. The first recalls the story of Elijah, as the crowd says “A great prophet has arisen in our midst.” They acknowledge the similarity between the two occasions and connect the dots that Jesus is a great prophet, one who speaks the word of God. But the difference between the two is in the second response: “God has visited his people.” Elijah had to call out to the Lord to ask for the boy to be raised but Jesus simply commands it. Elijah is a man of God, but Jesus is God himself – the God who has visited his people. The people see it and are in awe.

The occasion is one in which the Lord shows mercy to a widow as well as reveals Himself as God and man. He showed the people that God was with them, walking among them. Furthermore, He walked up and touched the coffin, which was something that was not to be done. To touch the dead was to be rendered ritually unclean and thus unable to enter the Temple and worship, as well as unable to touch others, lest they too become unclean. And yet He reaches out to that thing which ought not to be touched and with his presence He brings the boy back to life. And He wants to do the same to us.

So the question is: where is your coffin? Where is that place in your life that Jesus ‘shouldn’t touch’, that place where Jesus ought not to go because He’s not supposed to. A place of pain, shame or fear, that thing which we wish would be revived in us but that we don’t even normally think to bring before the Lord Jesus. That’s the place the Lord wants to come to touch when we come to Mass. He does just as He did in the Gospel and comes to us on the altar and then descends to us without being called upon in order to touch us, to raise us to life. So ask for the grace to know where it is that you need the Lord’s touch today, where we need new life, new hope. And bring it before Him today, that we too might be able to rejoice and say that truly “God has visited his people.”

Hands and Boxes

Dominic enjoying a box

Readings for Sunday, September 27 / 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Numbers 11:25-29
Psalm 19
James 5:1-6
Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48

Pope Francis!

I really hope everyone is reading his homilies and addresses if you’re not watching them. Such richness in his words and some real challenges that invite us to do a little soul searching. If you haven’t, do take the time to read them.

*****

Anybody that comes by the rectory and goes into the main part of the house is likely to notice something that might seem a bit odd: a few empty boxes scattered here and there.  The reason is pretty simple. Cats like boxes. There are tons of videos on the internet of cats trying to fit into all sorts of little boxes and even some of lions and tigers playing in huge boxes, noting that it’s not just little cats that like them. Cats enjoy boxes, it is said, because it is a place of comfort. There is protection around their sides and it eases their nerves. Looking around the rectory this week got me thinking about what my own box looks like. What is my comfort zone? As NASCAR cars have logos of sponsors and who they support all over them, I began to question what the stickers on my comfort zone box would say. Through the course of the Pope’s visit I’ve been intrigued to see the response of some Catholics whose comfort zones were not acknowledged, or at least not as much as they’d have liked, by the Holy Father and how it became a source of tension. It made me wonder if sometimes rather than being fervent Catholics if we Americans aren’t instead fervent Democrats, Republicans, etc. who simply cover our political logos on our box with those of the Gospel. While the Church is made up of members each with different gifts and who are called to labor and focus upon particular missions and ministries in the Church, we must be willing to stand up for the fullness of the faith and not simply parts of it. It challenged me to pray about not just what my comfort zone is, but also what are those things that ought to be there on account of the faith that I am reluctant to agree to? What are those places where I’m not comfortable with the Church’s teaching or practice? What are those stickers from the Gospel that should be on my box, but aren’t?

This weekend the Scriptures are quite clear in calling us out of our comfort zones. In Numbers we hear of how the Lord God sought to spread around the spirit He had placed upon Moses and to let the 70 assist in the prophetic place he held among the Israelites. This was fine with the Israelites until Eldad & Medad enter the picture. These two were outside of the meeting tent, the place of encounter with God, and received the spirit out in the camp amongst the regular people. Upon receiving the spirit they prophesy and a young man runs to tattle on them to Moses, whereupon Joshua chimes in commanding Moses to ‘make them stop!’ It was fine for the spirit to be spread around. It was fine for Eldad & Medad to receive it. It was fine for them to prophesy. BUT – they had to do it in the confines of the meeting tent. They didn’t know how to handle when things were done differently. What might happen if they start prophesying in the midst of the people? What if the spirit begins to stir things up the camp? What happens if things get messy and don’t go as previously planned? In short, if Eldad and Medad prophesy in the camp, the comfort zone can easily be challenged and things have to be addressed that might be difficult to explain or make sense of.

The Gospel has a similar situation with John running to tell the Lord about a man who was casting out demons in His name. His concern wasn’t that he was casting out demons, though. His concern was ‘he does not follow us’. He’s not on our team and he’s doing things that are unexpected and about which we don’t know how to respond. Moses and Jesus have similar responses: don’t prevent them. The situation must certainly have been an uncomfortable one because the disciples had no way of trying to rein in this random exorcist and they’d simply have to do their best to respond to things as they went along. Whoever is not against us is for us.

When we live a life as faithful children of God, as much as we might like to keep things comfortable and as convenient as possible, the Gospel demands that we allow ourselves to get into the messiness of this world and to allow the Gospel to spread in the ways that sometimes challenge us in our faith. The question is this: are we willing to let go of comfort?

Look, Ma! No hand!

You see my hands? I’m quite attached to them. My hands and I have been together for 31 good years now. I know the stories behind the scars and all the imperfections. And not only that, I’m intimately attached to them physically – flesh and bones, tendons and veins. My hands enable me to do so many things with such ease and to accomplish many good works that would be impossible otherwise. And yet the Lord God says that if my hand causes me to sin, it would be better for me to cut it off. No matter my attachment to it – it’s been there my whole life! – it would be better than to keep it and go to Gehenna, aka Hell. The Lord isn’t literal in this statement, otherwise we’d all be fumbling around with no feet, no hands and no eyes and we’d be quite a site to see for people visiting from out of town! The Lord is illustrating for us the importance of being able to let go of those things that encourage comfort and prevent us from living the Gospel more seriously, even if we've been attached to them for whole life. Is my comfort zone worth clinging to all the way to Gehenna? Am I willing to let go of some of my convictions at heart and experience another step in my life-long conversion process?

I’m not saying we need to change the faith. I am saying that we need to revisit from time to time why we do the things we do, why we don’t do the things we don’t do, and whether our deeply held convictions are in accord with the Gospel. May the Holy Spirit, our advocate, come with his gifts of wisdom and courage that we might take up the words of Pope Francis and keep moving forward. Always moving forward.  

Be Good and Be Blessed?

Readings for Sunday, September 20/ 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Wisdom 2:12, 17-20
Psalm 54
James 3:16-4:3
Mark 9:30-37

As the day nears for Pope Francis to arrive here in the U.S. I see more and more speculation about what he will say while he is here. While I don’t have mystical gift to see the future, I am willing to bet that while he will say many things that are encouraging and uplifting to us as a nation, but he’ll also say some things that upset people. This shouldn’t surprise us, though, since it seems his entire mission as Holy Father is to shake things up a bit. If he doesn’t ruffle our feathers a bit, it means we’re not listening to him enough! It’s striking if you think about it; the Vicar of Christ on Earth, the head of the Holy Catholic Church is a man that is loved by many but who also is the target of numerous slanderous words, hateful remarks, and violent intentions. It flies directly in the face of an idea that is not Christian but that has made its way into the mind of many Christians these days and it is the idea that if we are ‘good people’ or ‘good Christians’ that everything is going to be okay for us, that we’ll be ‘blessed’ in some concrete way.

The Jewish people had a clear nation that being good meant one would be blessed. We see it most clearly in Job, who is contrary to that idea. Job lost his wealth, his cattle, his children, and his wife all in a short period of time. His friends come to him and ask what he had done wrong. When he says he had done nothing wrong they are shocked because they thought ‘if you’re not blessed, you’re not in God’s good graces’. In like manner, there are numerous Christian sects that have trumpeted a ‘Gospel of prosperity’ that says if you live a good life God will bless you. That if you go to church on Sunday and put money in the collection plate that God will bless you. If you are kind to others, God will be kind to you. If you post a picture of Jesus on your Facebook wall, you will be blessed. All of these implicitly  treat the relationship with God as a contract – I do X and deserve Y in return and if I don’t receive Y then God has let me down.

The readings this weekend paint for us a different story. The Book of Wisdom clearly shows us that the wicked see the good as obnoxious and seek to bring them to a wicked end, to tear them down as much as possible and put them to a shameful death, all the while saying, “oh, but I thought your God was going to save you!” We see it fulfilled in its cruelest form with the Lord Jesus on the Cross as the passers-by shouted ‘He claimed to save us, let him save himself!’ and the like. Here the good person enjoys anything but worldly blessing. Instead, for his goodness he becomes a target of hatred, envy, and wrath. Quite a blessing there!

St. James takes things a step further for us and reminds us that it is not just a group of ‘wicked people’ who do wicked things. It can easily become the just who allow their passions to well up within them and issue forth in wrath, hatred, and harmful words. These two ideas came together for me quite clearly in the form of one of my brother seminarians. My friends and I were pretty comfortable in our spirituality and faith at the seminary; we did the things expected of us to grow in holiness – daily Mass & prayer, the rosary, joining in community prayer, retreats, and on. Then along came a new seminarian who was more pious than any of us. He would be found kneeling in the hallway staring out the window at the image of Mary in our courtyard and we’d remark ‘Doesn’t he know the hallway is for walking, not a chapel?’ or we’d see him arrive early for Mass and stay late afterward and remark ‘He’s always in the chapel, I wonder if he has time to shower.’ How quickly my heart turned from good to wicked when faced with someone that rubbed me the wrong way, that upset my norm, and challenged me to do more than what I was currently doing in the way of faith. My brother was obnoxious to me and I tried to kill him with my words.

This all comes together in the Gospel as we see the Lord give the clearest explanation of the Passion to that point – ‘We’re going to Jerusalem, I’ll be handed over, they’re going to kill me, and three days later I will rise from the dead.’ Seems pretty clear and yet the disciples don’t understand His words. Why? Because they were too busy focusing on themselves and their own blessings to be received shortly. Jockeying for first, you can imagine how they easily sought to increase their own value and decrease that of the others. How on may have said to Peter, ‘You can’t be #1 because you tried to walk on water and fell because of your lack of faith.’ And Peter responding, ‘Well, I didn’t see you get out of the boat in the first place, did I?’ and so on. So consumed are they with the blessings they’d get for being good disciples that they miss the message of their leader.

Pulling a child into the scene, Jesus illustrates to the crowd that true blessing consists in one not seeking oneself but rather in receiving others in the name of the Lord. It is a holy indifference about ourselves that desires rather to look to the other for love of Jesus. The end point is this: the Lord Jesus calls us to an ever-deepening relationship with Himself without seeking what we get out of the deal. If through the course of this life we are blessed to have good health, wealth, the joy of family and friends, and all goes well for us, God be praised! But if through the course of this life we must daily take up a cross of poverty, poor health, loneliness, and countless crosses til the day of our death, God be praised! More clearly put, this life can bring many things to us but ultimately we are simply passing through this life. Heavenly life awaits the faithful and there will be such joy there that the worst day of our life on this earth will seem as nothing at all, and the best day of our life on this earth will be the same. In that sense it is absolutely true that if we are good Christians we will be blessed, but simply being blessed with Heavenly joy isn't our goal since that's still self-centered. If we do our best to live each day in union with God in this life - whether it be full of blessings, crosses or both – we will know the joy of beholding our God, seeing Him face to face, and enjoying His embrace as the child enjoyed the embrace of Jesus for those few moments. But let us not go there alone, seeking only our salvation! Rather, let us make it our goal to suffer well the things of this life so as to bring many souls along with us, that all of us might together reign with our God, whose love is shown in such mysterious ways.