Homily for Feast of St. Lawrence

Homily for the Feast of
St. Lawrence
Aug. 10, 2016
Collect
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

Today’s collect noted St. Lawrence’s “faithful service” and “glorious martyrdom,” and it asked God that we might “love what he loved” and “practice what he taught”—in other words, that we might imitate him.

St. Lawrence

Church of St. Lawrence, Shelton, Conn.

We don’t know much about Lawrence.  We do know he was 1 of Rome’s 7 deacons, and that in 258 he was martyred 3 days after Pope Sixtus and 4 of the other deacons were put to death; their memorial is Aug. 7.  We suspect the remaining 2 deacons also were caught and martyred.  The Church’s persecutors like to go after her shepherds 1st and either cow them into submission or make examples of them so that the sheep will fall into line.

We also know that devotion to Lawrence became immensely popular after his martyrdom.  His name is included with the apostles and a few of the other early martyrs in the Roman Canon; liturgically, he has a feast, not a memorial like most saints; and the Emperor Constantine built a beautiful church over his tomb, which still today is considered one of the 7 major churches of Rome and is worth a pilgrimage if you go to Rome.

Then there is the legend about Lawrence that underlies his enduring popularity.  He is reported to have had special charge of the Church’s almsgiving, and thus access to the Church’s funds.  The Roman prefect carrying out the imperial orders of the persecution told Lawrence—so the story goes—that Christ instructed his followers to render to Caesar what was his and to God what was his.  So Lawrence should bring in the Church’s wealth for the emperor, and the Church could give God the worship he wanted.

Lawrence agreed to produce the Church’s treasures; he just needed a few days to collect them.  That may be why he was martyred 3 days later than the Pope and the other deacons.  After 3 days he showed up in court with all the Roman poor whom the Church was assisting with alms.  He informed the prefect, “Here are the Church’s treasures!”

The prefect, needless to say, was not amused.  He ordered Lawrence barbecued to death.

Lawrence made a link between what the Church does inside its places of worship and what it does outside; or, in the ideas contained in the collect, between “love” and “practice”; his “faithful service” led to his “glorious martyrdom.”

My brothers and sisters, we’re aware of how the Church is being persecuted in our time—Christians taxed, robbed, exiled, beaten, burned, beheaded —in the Middle East.  The new leader of Boko Haram in Nigeria announced his intention of killing all the Christians he can.  Priests who denounced drug lords in Mexico or the Mafia in Sicily get killed.  North Korean Christians risk death or labor camps.  This kind of list could go on a lot.

And here our bishops are reminding us that we face a regular barrage of harassment and constant legal threats, which is why Bp. Jenky has us praying at every Mass for the freedom of the Church.  Our practice outside these walls is under a relentless secular, atheistic assault:  our universities, hospitals, nursing homes, places of business, and personal consciences.  Popular entertainment, the mass media, and academia jump to label us as homophobes, women-haters, and opponents of science—because we uphold natural law against the depravities of the sexual revolution and uphold the dignity of the tiniest human beings:  no experimenting on people, no treating human beings as lab experiments nor as marketplace commodities.

One of the issues in this fall’s elections is religious freedom.  One party’s official platform has a whole paragraph on that, including a sturdy defense of the rights of conscience.  The other party says it will defend the rights of religious minorities in the Middle East, but here at home, “We support a progressive vision of religious freedom that respects pluralism and rejects the misuses of religion to discriminate.”  That’s in the paragraph on LBGT rights, which outweigh our religious beliefs or our freedom to act on our beliefs or, at times, even to voice our beliefs.  That position has also prevented the passage of legislation that would guarantee the rights of doctors, nurses, and hospitals to refuse to be involved with abortion or sterilization.

As St. Lawrence gave his life because his faith required a public stand, we have to do more than believe; we have to practice what we believe.  I am a follower of Jesus Christ, and I follow him in both public and private.  As a free man, Lawrence would not be coerced into worshipping the emperor, into letting the emperor rob the Church, into leaving the poor without protection, or into doing what he was personally opposed to but it was more convenient to do anyway.

Homily for 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
19th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Aug. 7, 2016
Heb 11: 1-2, 8-19
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance” (Heb 11: 8).

As I prepared to move out here from New Rochelle in June, I went to AAA and asked them to prepare a trip-tik for me.  I knew where I wanted to end up, and with whom, what the distance was and how many days it should take.  I needed only to have the best route marked out for me.

Other people use GPS for the same purpose—probably more than use a trip-tik or even Mapquest.  I tend to be a bit old-fashioned and definitely not P.C.

A century ago, 2 centuries ago, our ancestors came to this land more blindly. 

Immigrants arriving in Boston, early 20th century

Maybe they had a relative here already who’d receive them and guide them on arrival, or maybe they’d connect with one of the many immigrant aid societies to help them find housing and employment.  Or maybe they wouldn’t.  Maybe they came expecting to find the streets paved with gold—and then, as has been said, learned the streets not only weren’t paved at all, but they were the ones who were going to pave them.

But the 19th- and 20th-century immigrants to America had a rough idea where they were going, and the possibility, if things didn’t go well, of returning to Ireland, Germany, or Italy—as many of them did.  They came to America with great hopes for freedom and opportunity, as to a new promised land, and their children inherited a better life.

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Abraham “sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country” (11:9), that “promised land” being the Promised Land:  Canaan, which would become Israel when his descendants did finally occupy it.  The letter tells us Abraham went there “not knowing where he was to go” (11:8)—quite a contrast to our ancestors’ trek across the ocean or how we move about today; it seems some people can’t go to the grocery store without GPS!  Abraham moved his family, tents, and herds not only without GPS but even without a compass or a map (like an unprepared Boy Scout)—perhaps with just some oral guidance to the next watering spot or grassy meadow; and with abundant faith in God’s direction, as we read in Gen 12:  “The Lord said to Abram:  ‘Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.’  Abram went as the Lord directed him” (vv. 1,4).

Journey of Abraham and His Family

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, 1664

Even when Abraham arrived in Canaan, the land pointed out to him and promised to him and his descendants, it remained just a land of promise.  He had yet no children for the fulfillment of God’s promise that his descendants would inherit the land thru which he wandered for years as a nomadic herder “dwelling in tents” (11:9).  He didn’t possess an inch of it until he purchased a cave in which to bury Sarah when she died (Gen 23).

What Abraham did have was faith in God.  He went where God led him and did as God instructed him.  And God fulfilled his promises of descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky, and possession of the land, the land we call today Israel after Abraham’s grandson.

The Letter to the Hebrews offers some additional examples of people of faith, which our reading this morning skips over.  Their faith, the letter says, was in “the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God” (11:10), a city in “a better homeland, a heavenly one” (10:16).  That’s the point the author wishes to drive home to us:  that in this life we are wanderers, homeless nomads, pilgrims on our way to our real home—what the hymn “O Salutaris” calls “our true native land with thee,” i.e., with God.  Jesus told his apostles at the Last Supper that he was going to prepare a place for them (John 14:2-3).  This is our faith, a faith pointing us, like Abraham, to a place we haven’t seen, a place we don’t know, a place to which God is leading us.  Our GPS, our map, our sure guide is God’s Son, our good shepherd.  Our prayer a short while ago was “that we may merit to enter the inheritance” God has promised to us (Collect)—like Abraham and his descendants.  Similarly, the 3d Eucharistic Prayer prays “that we may obtain an inheritance with [God’s] elect,” his chosen ones, his saints.

In a different context, St. Paul makes a strong argument that we are descendants of Abraham—not on the basis of physical descent but on the basis of faith (Rom 4).  We believe what God has promised.  We are marching—or perhaps sometimes we’re trudging or shuffling—on a journey to the homeland prepared for us.

When we set out on this journey at our Baptism, most of us weren’t aware of what we were doing, or what God was doing in us. 

When we’ve reaffirmed our journey—by Confirmation, by a return to the Church, by a firm commitment to Jesus Christ and to his Father—we still don’t know any more than Abraham did about the journey ahead of us.  When we collect a college degree, when we start a new job, when we get married, when we become parents, when we enter religious life, when we get ordained, we don’t really know what we’re getting into.  When I was ordained 38 years ago, I’d never heard of Champaign, Ill., altho it was already a stopover on my pilgrimage route; altho my ministry was already part of God’s trip-tik for you.  (Pray that we all stay on the right road!)

We start out on our journeys with faith and hope.  The same with our lives as disciples of Jesus:  we’ve decided to walk along with him, not knowing the route by which he’ll guide us home, or what obstacles we’ll meet or whom we’ll be traveling with (besides him).  The journey will get us where we want to go, however, as long as we let Jesus lead us:  he is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) as well as the good shepherd.  Attend to him, then; listen to him, follow his directions—in the sacred Scriptures, in the sacred liturgy, in the teachings of his Church, and in your daily prayer.

God bless you!

Homily for Funeral of Mary Byrnes

Homily for the
Funeral of  Mary Byrnes
Aug. 5, 2016
1 Thess 4: 13-18
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

                    

“We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope” (1 Thess 4: 13).

Note that St. Paul doesn’t say that we shouldn’t grieve at the death of our loved ones.  Jesus wept at the tomb of his dear friend Lazarus (John 11:35), even tho, presumably, he knew what he was about to do!

But St. Paul tells us not to “grieve like the rest, who have no hope.”  By “the rest,” he means the pagan world in whose midst these mid-1st-century Christians lived at Thessalonica.  Is there anything more grievous, anything sadder, than the mourning of people who don’t believe in God or don’t believe in the resurrection, in life after death? who believe that this life and its transient joys and inevitable sorrows are all there is? who believe that, in the words of a catchy but cynical tune of the late ’70s, “All we are is dust in the wind”?

Actually, there is something sadder, something more grievous than the mourning of unbelievers, of those “who have no hope” because they don’t know “that Jesus died and rose” (4:14) and “thus we shall always be with the Lord” (4:17).  What’s sadder is the death of someone who lived like a pagan, someone who died unrepentant of his or her sins and left loved ones mourning in fear for his or her salvation.

In his preaching Jesus constantly invited us—all of us, for all of us are sinners, after all—to repent and turn to him.  And he made those who came to him welcome, healing souls as well as bodies.  But he also had stern warnings for those who refuse to repent, refuse to prepare themselves for judgment:  words like “depart from me, you evildoers” (Matt 7:23) and “they will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 8:12; cf. 25:30).

On the other hand, while we’re alive, it’s never too late to turn to Jesus with a plea for forgiveness, as we learn in the gospel passage immediately before the one I read, the passage about the so-called “good thief” executed for his crimes alongside Jesus, who asked Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom and was promised paradise that very day (Luke 23:39-43).

How refreshing to hear a life story and the virtues of someone like Mary Byrnes!  As you heard Diane [Ruedi] describe, she embodied kindness to people and to all God’s creatures.  She also suffered patiently for 3 long years—unintentionally also giving her children the chance to grow in holiness by patiently attending to her needs.  And she welcomed the sacraments of our Lord Jesus for a final time last week.

The people whose passing from us to the house of the Father we mourn are people who, as best we can see, lived virtuously, lived like Jesus as much as we frail humans can—worshiping God faithfully, practicing kindness, patience, generosity, chastity, humility, etc.  But our mourning isn’t like that of those without hope—hope of eternal life, hope of God’s tender mercy.  Our hope is ever in “the living one” who “has been raised” from the tomb (Luke 24:5-6),

who will snatch up all his faithful people to be with him always, raising them too from their graves, to “shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament,” to “be like the stars forever” (Dan 12:3)—not the Hollywood stars, but the most resplendent stars of God’s creation, resplendent because they radiate God’s own glory, God’s own light, God’s own goodness.  We pray that Mary enjoy such splendor forever and that, in God’s good time, we may join her in the Father’s house, in the place “prepared for us from the creation of the world” (cf. Matt 25:34).

Homily for 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
18th Sunday of Ordinary Time
July 31, 2016
Col 3: 1-5, 9-11
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

“If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Col 3: 1).

In the 1st 2 chapters of the Letter to the Colossians, St. Paul presents some basic Christian doctrine.  E.g., last week he told his readers—and us—“You were buried with [Christ] in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him thru faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (2:12).  In the 3d chapter, where we are this evening/morning, Paul applies the doctrine to life, i.e., to our daily attitudes, choices, and actions—to morality.

Baptism, he implies, has identified us with Christ.  Our descent into the sacred waters—early Christians were baptized by immersion—is a symbol of Christ’s death and burial, and our coming out of the waters, of his resurrection.  Our union with Christ thru the sacrament is so powerful that it will carry us, too, thru death into the immortality of the resurrection.

Do you remember how you anticipated Christmas when you were child?  All during Advent could you think of anything else than Santa, presents, and the tree?  Paul urges us to place the same laser focus of our minds on our Lord Jesus Christ.  He commands us to live as if we’re already risen, already enjoying the life of heaven, life above, with Christ our Savior:  “Seek what is above….  Think of what is above. . . .  Put to death the parts of you that are earthly….  You have put on the new self, which is being renewed … in the image of its creator” (3:1,2,5,10).

Paul uses an image we understand:  changing clothes, like getting out of our work clothes or beach clothes for an appointment or celebration that demands something more formal, something cleaner, something dressier, like dinner at a fine restaurant, a wedding, or coming to church (in our “Sunday best”).

Even more would 1st-century Christians grasp the change-of-clothes image.  For their Baptism into the new life of Christ, they literally stripped to be immersed in the waters of life, and on coming out put on the clean, new, white garment of the neophyte, the newborn member of the body of Christ.  They had put on a new self, a new persona, symbolized by a dramatic change of clothes.

Baptismal ritual in the early Church

(source unknown)

We have echoes of that today in the baptismal ritual, in which a white garment is still presented to the newly baptized—which adults usually put on over their street clothes and an infant wears symbolically for a moment or 2.

In the old days, when a young man or woman was vested in the habit of a religious order, often these words of Paul, or their parallel in Ephesians, were quoted; the religious was taking on a new persona, undertaking a newer and more intense union with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and was committing himself or herself to act accordingly.  With that new persona often came a new religious name, e.g., Thomas Merton became Fr. Louis Merton—that’s what you’ll see on his gravestone at Gethsemani Abbey—and Edith Stein became Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  Some religious orders continue these practices today for the same reasons.  (FYI, the Salesians have changed the formula for their clothing investiture, and we never changed our names.)

You know, of course, that a newly elected Pope takes a new name, indicating his new persona as the successor of St. Peter and the vicar of Christ—no longer merely shy, quiet Jorge Bergoglio from Buenos Aires, but bold, outspoken Francis, bishop of Rome.

To return to Paul.  What’s he telling the Colossians to take off, to put aside, like dirty or raggedy clothes?  Their pagan way of living!  Paul names some prominent vices, and you know very well they’re not afflictions of only the 1st century:  impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, and idolatry are listed in our passage; in v. 8, which the reading skips over, Paul names in addition “anger, fury, malice, slander, and obscene language.”  Then the reading picks up with lying.

Paul has hit on most of the capital sins, the so-called 7 deadly sins that are at the root of just about all the evil that people commit:  pride, lust, greed (or covetousness), gluttony, anger, sloth, and envy—which, if left unchecked, will land you in hell faster than the Cubs can blow a late-inning lead.

The new self clothed in Christ “seeks what is above, … thinks of what is above,” desires what is above, where Christ our life is.  From our heart come our words and deeds.  If we aspire to “appear with him in glory” (3:4) when he returns on the Last Day and raises everyone from our graves for the final judgment, then our hearts must assume that mind, that attitude, which was in Christ Jesus, as Paul exhorts the Philippians, an attitude of humility and sensitivity to the needs of our brothers and sisters.  The new self clothed in Christ is humble, chaste, kind, attentive, patient, and joyful.  It exercises self-control, exhibits fortitude, practices piety and other virtues.

The Last Judgment, by Hans Memling

Yes, we all fall short; none of us is a perfect image of the new man who is the Risen Christ.  That’s why Christ in his mercy and wisdom left us a sacrament that’s like a new Baptism, viz., Reconciliation.

Our reading today ends with a reminder of the universality of God’s call, God’s gift, God’s grace in Christ Jesus.  (It also ends our short series of Sunday readings from Colossians, altho the letter itself goes on for another chapter and a half.)  Paul reminds us that in Christ there are no distinctions between different races or nationalities or social standing or economic status.  Christ wondrously transforms all who seek him sincerely, all who open focus hearts on him.

Homily for Wednesday, 17th Week of Ordinary Time

Homily for Wednesday
17th Week of Ordinary Time
July 27, 2016
Jer 15: 10, 16-21
Marian Mass
Holy Cross, Champaign

You all remember reading Hamlet in high school?  You might even remember the advice the courtier Polonius gives to his son Laertes before he heads off to university.  Amid the 20 or so lines is this:

            Neither a borrower nor a lender be,

             For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
             And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry.[1]

(For those not up on 17th-century English, husbandry means “control and judicious use of resources.  But we still speak of “husbanding our resources, don’t we?)

But borrowing and lending aren’t what’s gotten Jeremiah into a black mood, into a deep hole in Jerusalem’s social life.  Poor Jeremiah!  Altho he says today that he’s devoured the Lord’s words, and those words “became my joy and the happiness of my heart” (15:16), he’s not at all a happy fellow.  He’s the prototype of the prophet of doom:  “a man of strife and contention to all the land!” (15:10).  In the 1st line we heard tonite, Jeremiah laments his birth, and in another passage he curses the day of his birth and the man who brought its supposed good news to his father (20:14-15).

Michelangelo's Jeremiah: Sistine Chapel

Why?  Because he himself is the object of men’s curses—not because he’s been a stingy lender or a profligate borrower, but because of that word of God that he’s devoured; because he bears the name of the Lord of hosts, meaning that he knows he’s a prophet of the Lord, however unwilling, and everyone knows he claims to speak in the Lord’s name, whether they want to believe it or not.

The trouble is, they don’t believe it, or don’t want to believe it:  not the king, not the nobles, not the priests (and Jeremiah himself belongs to a priestly family).  We don’t really know what the common people—the 99%—thought, and in biblical times that didn’t count for much anyway.  And nobody likes someone who’s always got a big black cloud over his head, warning of God’s anger and the coming destruction of Western civilization, or in Jeremiah’s case, of Jerusalem and all of Judah.

So Jeremiah is alone, an outcast:  “I did not sit celebrating in the circle of merrymakers; under the weight of your hand”—he’s addressing God—“I sat alone because you filled me with indignation” (15:17).  Jeremiah’s indignant because of his people’s sins—their worship of Baal and Astarte, their oppression of the poor, their violations of the Sabbath, their disregard for the covenant between them and the Lord God—and indignant because of the situation that God’s put him in:  “Why is my pain continuous, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?  You have indeed become for me a treacherous brook, whose waters do not abide!” (15:19).  Another time he yells at God, “You deceived me, O God, and I was deceived” (20:7), or in Msgr. Ronald Knox’s more colloquial rendition, “[You] sent me on a fool’s errand.”

Jeremiah’s ticked off at God and is telling him so.  We’ve all heard, “No good deed goes unpunished,” and Jeremiah’s going thru that in spades.

Consolation isn’t exactly what God answers him with:  “If you repent, so that I restore you, in my presence you shall stand.  If you bring forth the precious without the vile, you shall be my mouthpiece.  Then it shall be they who turn to you, and you shall not turn to them” (15:19).  The Lord goes on to promise that Jeremiah will be able to withstand the insults and assaults of the people because God will stand by him.

Do you ever feel like Jeremiah?  Feel like you’ve done everything you’re supposed to do to be a good family member, good employee, good disciple of Jesus—and you get the cold shoulder, unfair blame, insufficient credit, or worse?

Unfortunately, that’s part of life.  Not only Jeremiah but also Jesus had the experience.  Like Jeremiah, Jesus felt isolated and abandoned.  His chosen friends betrayed him, denied him, and ran away.  Even his Father seemed to have forsaken him, as Jesus cries out from his cross, quoting Ps 22 (Mark 15:34).  The psalmists, too, do their share of moaning to God.

Both Jeremiah and Jesus show us that we can complain to God about the events of our lives, the people in our lives, the flow of our lives.  We can lay it all out—because God is our Father, our abba or daddy, Jesus calls him and teaches us to call him (last Sunday’s gospel—Luke 11:2).  God can handle our distress, our anger, our despondency; and we ought to express them to him.

Then, like Jeremiah, we have to listen to God’s reply.  God told him to suck it up, to get his prophetic act back together—to be faithful to his vocation, and God would be faithful to him.

Faithfulness was Jesus’ approach too.  “Abba, not what I will but what you will,” he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:36); and on the cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

Mother Teresa used to say, “God doesn’t call us to be successful but to be faithful.”  That’s a struggle, for sure, for us who aren’t Mother Teresa.  Yet from her private letters we know now, years after her death and approaching her canonization, that she spent years in spiritual darkness, not feeling, not experiencing, the presence of God in her life.  But she persevered, as all of us can—because we know God loves us.  That love is the treasure in the field for which we risk everything, the pearl of great price that we grab hold of (cf. Matt 13:44-46) because we know its incomparable value.

We look also to the example of our Blessed Mother, who experienced untold pain and grief—her traditional 7 sorrows—but we know how richly God has rewarded her faithfulness and perseverance.  We invoke her protection and intercession as we too strive to be faithful and persevere in following her Son.

---

                [1] Hamlet, I, 3:75-77.

Homily for 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
17th Sunday of Ordinary Time
July 24, 2016
Collect
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

O God, protector of those who hope in you, … bestow in abundance your mercy upon us” (Collect).

You know, of course, that about 5 years ago we started using a new form of the Roman Missal at Mass, with a heavily revised translation of all the prayers, a translation that’s more literal, more formal, and—truth be told—more accurate than what we had in the Sacramentary of 1970.  This new translation’s also harder to follow, often harder for priests to proclaim, and harder to understand at times.

The collects, which we used to call the “opening prayers,” are particularly challenging.  Take for example the one we prayed today.

Like all the collects, it has 3 parts:  a statement of some attribute of God, a petition, and an intercessory conclusion—the part that usually begins, “Thru our Lord Jesus Christ….”

In the 1st part of today’s prayer, we call God the “protector of those who hope in you.”  We all want protection, of course.  We want national security.  We want safe highways.  We have government rules to protect us like building codes and food inspection.  In this part of the country, we’re likely to have a tornado shelter; that’s a new one to me—where I grew up, we needed hurricane shelters.  But the collect isn’t looking to God in the sense of physical safety, but rather in the sense of the next line:  “without [you] nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy.”

We look to God, we trust in God, we hope in God (as the prayer indicates) as the foundation of our lives.  We need to be grounded in God, to base our lives on God:  on his 10 commandments, the beatitudes, a warm and loving relationship with him who loves us more than we can imagine—so much that he became our flesh and blood and lived among us, and left us his flesh and blood to nourish us and transform us into his flesh and blood.

Nothing is holy without God.  No one is holy without him.  The goal of our entire existence is holiness, i.e., life with God, eternal life.  As Jesus asks, “What does it profit someone to gain the entire world but to forfeit himself?” (Luke 9:25).  Only God can protect us from what threatens our holiness, which is temptation and sin.  In the last line of the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, we pray to be delivered “from the final test”; that’s a prayer for protection.  Only he can extend to us the mercy that restores us to holiness when we do sin.

And in fact, that’s the 1st gift we pray for from God today as we come to the 2d part of the collect, the petition:  “bestow in abundance your mercy upon us.”  We need forgiveness and guidance and strength to walk with Jesus in this earthly life with all its distractions and falsehoods.  We depend on God’s mercy and not on our own wisdom or power to live virtuously or to return to the right path after we’ve strayed from it.  Jesus himself is our assurance that the merciful Father truly desires this.  Defending his decision to stay at the home of the tax collector Zacchaeus, he explains, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10).

By Gunnar Bach Pedersen - Own work (Own photo)(Randers Museum of Art, Randers, Denmark), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1428023

Second, we imply a prayer that God will be “our ruler and guide.”  The original temptation of the human race, we read in Gen 3:5, is that we want to be “like gods.”  We want to be in charge!  We want to write our own moral codes, plot our own route thru life.  When we look at modern history or the current breaking down of Western society, we see what happens when the true God, the Creator, the Father of us all, is tossed aside.  We’ve seen what becomes of society when Marx or the Fuhrer becomes our ruler and guide.  We will not find a firm foundation or holiness in a political party or Planned Parenthood or Wall Street.

We will find a firm foundation for our lives and holiness in him who created us in his own image; who put into our hearts an unquenchable thirst for himself:  “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you,” St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions.

In today’s gospel (Luke 11:1-13), Jesus teaches his disciples to pray—Luke’s version of the Our Father, just a little different from Matthew’s (6:9-13), which is the version we’re more familiar with.  When we pray that God’s kingdom may come (Luke 11:2), aren’t we praying that he be our ruler and guide?  We want to be citizens of his kingdom in this life and, of course, in the future life; and we hope, we pray, that every single person will be part of that great kingdom, the new Jerusalem that Revelation 21 speaks of so glowingly.

We need God’s guidance on our way to the heavenly city; guidance in making choices that honor God as our ruler.  So our collect asks God our protector to help us “use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that endure.”

The created world is full of good things!  On the 6th day, God reviewed all that he had made and found it “very good” (Gen 1:31).  Family life is one of the greatest blessings of this life.  Food and drink are good.  One’s native country is good.  Self-esteem is good.  The woods and the fields, the mountains and the lakes are good.  Air conditioning is very good!  Recreation is good.  The arts and sciences are good.  This list could get really long!

Lake Skenonto, Harriman State Park, N.Y.

August 31, 2008

But all of those things—all of them—are “good things that pass.”  Unlike our very selves, to which Jesus referred in his comment about gaining the whole world, they won’t last into eternity.  So we can’t make these passing things ends in themselves; can’t turn them into idols; can’t use them for evil purposes.  In the National Catholic Register online today/yesterday, there is/was an article titled “John Paul II’s Advice on Using Media Well.”  Both the mass media and social media are created things with potential to do a great deal of good, and the Church encourages us to use them to promote the Gospel and human dignity and many other values, which many Christians are doing in a marvelous way.  The writer in NCR speaks about how most of us use TV and computers:  “There seem to be limitless options, but I know most of them are not worth watching.  Why would I spend time watching something that will make me a worse person the next day?”  She’s talking mainly about how the media disregard the virtue of chastity, but we could be considering any number of moral values—or lack of them, such as violence, the idolatry of the self, greed, etc.  You remember the line from the movie Wall Street, “Greed is good.”  No, it’s not!

Rather, we strive to use God’s good gifts for good purposes:  to honor him, to assist our brothers and sisters, to keep our lives in harmony; e.g., to enjoy recreation without neglecting our responsibilities as parents, students, or workers; to celebrate our sexuality within the context of hetero marriage; to spend money on what we need while sharing our surplus with the poor; to use our artistic or scientific talents in ways that respect human life and dignity; and so on.

In short, we strive to use God’s good but passing things “in such a way as to hold fast even now to those [good things] that ever endure.”  St. Paul tells us there are 3 things that last:  faith, hope, and charity (1 Cor 13:13).  Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, “Store up treasures in heaven, whether neither moth nor decay destroy, nor thieves break in and steal” (Matt 6:20)—the treasure of our relationship with God (remember last week how Mary chose the better part by sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to him? [Luke 10:42]); the treasure of our care for one another (2 weeks ago we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan with its command to go and do likewise [Luke 10:29-37]).  For the honor that we give to God and the good that we do to our sisters and brothers will endure into eternity.

May God in his abundant mercy guide us in our choices and our doings.

Homily for Wednesday, Week 15

Homily for
Wednesday, Week 15
July 13, 2016
Is 10: 5-7, 13-16
Marian Mass
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

“Thus says the Lord:  Woe to Assyria!  My rod in anger, my staff in wrath” (Is 10: 5).

Prophet Isaiah

St. Mary's Church, Fredericksburg, Va.

Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem in the kingdom of Judah for some 40 years in the 2d half of the 8th century B.C.  During that time, the northern kingdom, Israel, with its capital in Samaria, was collapsing under the weight of its sins, especially idolatry and social injustice, and from the might of the expanding empire of Assyria, in what is now northern Iraq, with its capital at Nineveh.  (In the news you’ve heard about ISIS capturing the Nineveh plain and driving out the Christians living there.)

The Assyrians were strong, proud, and brutal.  When they overran Israel in 722-721 B.C., they destroyed the nation and took the 10 northern tribes (Asher, Napthali, Manasseh, Zebulon, Issachar, Gad, Ephraim, Dan, Rueben, and Simeon) into exile, and those tribes disappeared from history.  Later, the Assyrians also threatened Judah, but Jerusalem was miraculously delivered, as you can read in both 2 Kings 19 and Isaiah 37.

Our reading from Isaiah this evening concerns what the Assyrians did to Israel, the northern kingdom.  The prophet asserts that God sent them to punish Israel for their sins:  “against an impious nation I send him” (10:6).  But the Assyrians went further than the Lord intended by utterly destroying the kingdom and its people.  Isaiah chastises Assyria for its boasting of its might, its claim, “By my own power I have done it, and by my wisdom,” and so on (10:13-14).  Isaiah reminds his audience that God is the one calling the shots, not the mighty Assyrian empire:  “Will the ax boast against him who hews with it?” (10:15).  And the Lord promises to humble Assyria:  “Instead of his glory there will be kindling like the kindling of fire” (10:16)—which happened when the Babylonian empire crushed the Assyrians in the next century.

Assyrian Empire

By Ningyou - Own work data from Based on a map in 'Atlas of the Bible Lands', C S Hammond & Co (1959), ISBN 9780843709414., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=600659

Contrast the Assyrians with the one whom we honor in our Mass this evening, the one who describes herself as “the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38), the one who readily acknowledges, “He who is mighty has done great things for me” (1:49).  She was one of those childlike people to whom the Lord is able to reveal his deepest mysteries, as Jesus says (Matt 11:25; cf. Gospel verse).  God did great things in the Virgin Mary, using her as his instrument, because she humbly allowed him to do so.  We believe that the Lord continues to do great things thru her, e.g., the wondrous delivery of Christian Europe from Turkish invaders in 1571—it was after the great, unexpected victory at Lepanto that St. Pius V added the invocation “Help of Christians” to the Litany of Loreto—and 1683, and the liberation of Pope Pius VII from his imprisonment by Napoleon in 1814 (noted on your prayer cards).  I dare say that Mary, to whom St. John Paul the Great was so devoted, assisted him in the role he played in bringing down the Evil Empire that ravaged Eastern Europe for 45 years in our own lifetimes.

Mary’s example and the Word of God delivered to us this evening challenge us to let ourselves be instruments of the Lord—axes or saws for him to wield, clay for him to shape, his servants listening for his voice suggesting to us what choices we should make, how we should be brother and sister to each other, what faults we need to turn away from.  He created each of us, as he did Mary, to be his instrument in some particular fashion.  It may be a very humble fashion, even a childlike fashion; but all that matters is that we trust him and let him direct our steps, direct our hearts.

2016-2017 Pastoral Assignments, Round 3

2016-2017 Pastoral Assignments, Round 3

On July 16, Fr. Steve Shafran, provincial, announced another round of assignments for the coming pastoral year.

Fr. Donovan

They include 3 changes at province level. Fr. Dennis Donovan, province treasurer, will take on also the responsibility of delegate for communications (an office that has been vacant for the last 3 years or so) and will continue to lead province planning for care of our senior confreres.

Taking from Fr. Dennis the post of delegate for the Salesian Cooperators is Fr. Tom Dunne, our former provincial.

The province secretary, Fr. Dave Moreno, will also serve as archivist. (The secretary already supervises the archives ex officio, but he doesn't necessarily do the actual work there.)

The current archivist, Fr. Ken Germaine, will move to the St. Philip Residence in Tampa, as will Bro. Charles Mayer from the Haverstraw community. Both confreres are suffering from some decline in their health.

Fr. Rich Alejunas has been assigned to St. John Bosco Parish in Chicago, departing from the role of CYM at Salesian HS in New Rochelle. Bro. Steve DeMaio will become CYM there. Bro. Bernie Dube also has been assigned to Salesian HS.

Salesian HS's long-time principal John Flaherty really is retiring this year after an attempt to do so last summer. Fr. John Serio, already the school's director-president, will take on the additional role of principal. (Two searches in the last 2 years did not bring forward a candidate that the school's leadership found suitable for the responsibility. This blogger supposes that the search will continue.)

John Flaherty with Cardinal Dolan during the cardinal's

visit to Salesian HS in November 2014.

Fr. Tom Brennan, the Salesian Society's official representative at the United Nations. is moving to East Boston to "explore possible college campus ministries throughout the province." Nothing is said in Fr. Steve's letter about the U.N.

Fr. Jorge Rodriguez, a confrere on loan from the province of Medellin, Colombia, will serve as an assistant pastor at Corpus Christi-Holy Rosary Parish in Port Chester, N.Y.

Bro. Adam Dupre, who has been studying theology for a year in Jerusalem, will continue his studies at Immaculate Conception Seminary in South Orange, N.J., and be part of the formation community in Orange.

In another province-level move, the vocation office will relocate from Orange, N.J., to the provincial house. Fr. Dominic Tran, incoming vocation director, will take up residence in the provincial house (when he's not traveling).

Mary Help of Christians Comes to Champaign

Mary Help of Christians Comes to Champaign

Almost from the moment the Salesians came to Holy Cross Parish in Champaign, Ill., 3 years ago, our pastor, Fr. Dave Sajdak, has been eager to place a larger-than-life statue of Mary Help of Christians in the parish church.  This past week--on Tuesday and Wednesday--it finally happened.

It was the end of a long saga, I've been told by parishioner-artist Harry Breen.  Harry designed the renovations of the church after the 2d Vatican Council, and in last few years he's been involved in further alterations of the worship space because Bishop Daniel Jenky, CSC, of Peoria mandated that the tabernacles in all church should be placed in the center of the sanctuary, as in the "old days."

So within the last 3 years, that was done at Holy Cross, leaving the beautiful chapel that Harry had designed for worship of the reserved Blessed Sacrament vacant.

The Blessed Sacrament chapel, just to the right of the sanctuary,

following the removal of the large marble, now-disused tabernacle

early in July to prepare for the arrival of the new Marian statue.

The statue that arrived at Holy Cross last Tuesday (July 12) actually was the 3d one designed for us by the Chinese sculptor commissioned for the work.  (I don't know the name of sculptor or company.)  Harry rejected the 1st one because it was done in inferior marble and the 2d one because both Madonna and Child had oriental features.  (I don't know how Harry made his determinations, but I don't think they were actually shipped here.)

Another stage of the preparation for this Mary's coming was the removal of the life-sized statue of her that was already in the church. It was taken from a little shrine on the left side of the nave

and moved temporarily to the parish center, where it has a nice setting for the time being.

The plan is for Harry to design an appropriate shrine for the statue in the little cloister garden between the church and the parish center.

So those were the early stages of this Marian saga.  With the statue's arrival around 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, another stage began.  I witnessed some of its phases during the 2 days it took to unload and erect our new statue, which is 7' tall and weighs about 1,500 lbs.  I missed other parts while doing necessary work or going out for medical appointments.

1st, it took quite some time to position the truck delivering the statue from Georgia, where parts of it had been gilded after shipment from China. For several hours it completely blocked Clark St. at the front door of the church.

Then the 2 deliverymen spent more than 3 hours uncrating the statue, which sat perpendicular to the side walls of the truck, and turning her to go out feet first.

By the end of the day, they had managed to get her thru the church doors, up the center aisle, and to the altar rail in front of her destination.

Then they started to set up scaffolding and a pulley system with which to hoist the statue up to its pedestal and then stand it up. The statue's lying overnite in the prone position led to quips about celebrating our Lady's Dormition.

The workers got the statue upon the pedestal shortly after morning Mass on Wednesday.

Then it was a long struggle to secure the statue with straps, balance the weight, keep the pulley chains moving freely without excessive contact with the marble, etc. Shortly after noon they thought they were ready to hoist her upright and made a start before determining that something wasn't right--which may have been clearance at the top.

Thru most phases of all this, various onlookers gathered to watch and to take pictures.

Harry Breen is standing at the right. He is extremely pleased with both the statue and its siting.

By 4:00 p.m. they'd gotten the statue upright but facing backwards.  Unfortunately, I missed the raising while out to see a doctor.

These 2 men worked hard for several more hours to turn the statue slowly and dismantle the scaffolding. Finally, on Thursday a.m. we got to see the Help of Christians in her glorious new setting.

The parishioners have been voicing a lot of admiration for this addition to our church.

Homily for 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
15th Sunday of Ordinary Time
July 10, 2016
Luke 10: 25-37
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

“A scholar of the Law stood up to test Jesus and asked, ‘Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’” (Luke 10: 25).

As we heard, Jesus answers that we must love God totally, entirely, with our whole being, and our neighbor in the same way we love ourselves.  Moses tells the Israelites that God’s commandments aren’t “mysterious and remote” (Deut 30:11) but “very near” them, already in their mouths and hearts (30:14).  Learning from Jesus, we see that God’s command is as close as our neighbor.

The scholar of the Law—literally, the “lawyer”—who was testing Jesus, asked a follow-up question:  “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29).  Luke tells us that he asked this “to justify himself” (10:29), i.e., to be given a pat on the head and the assurance that he’s a good chap who’s faithful to the Law and beloved of God.

According to the Law of Moses, the Jews were obliged to regard all their fellow Jews as their neighbors and to assist them in need—even those who might be personal enemies.  But there was no obligation whatever to help a Gentile; with clear conscience you could watch him drown.

As we heard, Jesus doesn’t give the lawyer a direct answer.  He tells one of his most famous parables, the one we know as “the Good Samaritan.”

The road between Jerusalem and Jericho was notoriously dangerous, lonely, winding, with many places where a traveler might be ambushed and robbed.  So it happens to the anonymous man in Jesus’ story.  Once he’s been stripped of his clothes and beaten unconscious, there’s no way to identify him, neither ethnic garb nor language.  He might be Jewish, Arab, Greek, Egyptian, Phoenician, even Samaritan.

The priest and the Levite who pass him by could easily justify their behavior.  If the robbers’ victim is dead—you can’t tell without touching him—they’ll become ritually unclean from that touch, and unable to perform their sacred duties.  Besides, the road’s dangerous enuf without lingering on it.

No doubt Jesus shocked his audience by introducing as the 3d character not a Jewish layman but a Samaritan.  As you know, Jews and Samaritans hated each other.  And this Samaritan—evidently well-to-do because he’s got a donkey and some cash and is a frequent traveler on this road—stops to help, with no idea whom he’s helping, except that it’s a fellow human being in desperate need.  He gives 1st aid and transport and arranges for 1st-century hospitalization (such as it was), at some risk to himself, both obvious and less obvious.

The Good Samaritan (Rembrandt)

Then Jesus asks the scholar of the Law almost the same question the lawyer himself had asked:  which one proved to be a neighbor to the man in need (10:36)?  The lawyer practically chokes on his answer.  The Jews so despised Samaritans that he can’t even say the word, but only, “The one who treated him with mercy” (10:37).

Jesus’ final answer is, “Go and do likewise” (10:37).  This answers the lawyer’s original question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  That, of course, is the question for every one of us.  And Jesus’ answer for each of us is the same:  Do what the Samaritan did in the parable—treat every man, and woman and child, as your neighbor.  Have compassion, extend mercy, to everyone, including people you don’t know and people you don’t like—to anyone in need.

You remember the Pope’s answer to reporters during his press conference on his return flight from Mexico last February?  It’s not Christian to build a wall to prevent people from seeking refuge from violence or from economic desperation.  Refugees—whether they’re fleeing Central American violence or Syrian violence—are our neighbors.  Are we as a society prepared to “Go and do likewise”?

(The Southern Cross)

We hear often that we should stop providing foreign aid and take care of our own people 1st.  Yes, we should take care of our own people.  We should see that everyone in the U.S. has enuf to eat, has adequate health care, gets a good education and job training.  We should repair our racial tensions and prejudices, maintain our infrastructure, support clean energy and a healthy environment, and so on.

But taking care of our own 1st doesn’t excuse us from taking care of those in need in other parts of the world when we have more than sufficient means to do so.  The Samaritan traveler probably was not taking care of one of his own.

Now it’s true that Americans are among the most generous people in the world, if not the most generous, in responding to terrible natural disasters like the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or the Haitian earthquake in 2010.  It’s also a demonstrable fact that people of faith are much more generous in their charitable giving than secularists.  That needs to be acknowledged.  (Give yourself a pat on the back!)

But we have to ask whether we as the wealthiest nation in the world are doing enuf to care for the world’s 65 million refugees (not counting internally displaced persons), or the hundreds of millions whose income at home is under $2 a day, or the one billion people who lack clean, potable drinking water; enuf to end human trafficking; enuf to rescue children forced into dangerous employment in mines and factories, or coerced into taking up arms in various civil wars (as portrayed, e.g., in the 2006 film Blood Diamond).

U.S. foreign aid, even including military aid, is about 1% of the total federal budget.  Is that the best we can do for our neighbors in need?  As a country, are we afraid if our taxes were higher we couldn’t eat out as often, go to as many movies, buy as expensive a car, or go skiing in Colorado every winter?

There’s a kind of parallel between this parable and the one in Matt 25 about the Last Judgment, when the Great King welcomes into the heavenly kingdom all who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, welcomed strangers, visited the sick, etc., because in doing so they were treating him with mercy; and those who failed to do those acts of mercy toward the people in their lives—well, they were not welcomed into heaven but sent elsewhere.  Both parables tell us what we must do to inherit eternal life.

If you’re already doing as the Samaritan did in some fashion—none of us can rescue the entire world, of course—may God bless you with his peace, a joyful heart, and knowledge that you’re walking with Jesus on the path toward eternal life.