Homily for Funeral of Hazel Cacioppo

Homily for the
Funeral of Hazel Cacioppo
Jan. 24, 2017
John 6: 37-40
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.                                      

“This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day” (John 6: 40).

I have to have a warm spot in my heart for someone who was a fan 60of Ki-Ki Cuyler and Gabby Hartnett—who played way before my time but whose baseball cards I owned, from some kind of special Hall of Fame series, when I was a baseball-addicted kid in the early ’60s.

But as good and faithful as Hazel was—as mom, wife, Cubs fan, and disciple of Jesus—we don’t come to her funeral rites to celebrate her accomplishments.  Rather, we come to this Eucharist, like all Eucharists, to celebrate the goodness and faithfulness of God our Father.  We come to celebrate the salvation won for us not by our deeds but by the deeds of Jesus Christ, his cross and resurrection and his gift to us of forgiveness.  We come to ask humbly that the Father receive Hazel into his kingdom of eternal life thru the mercy won for us by Jesus; thru the pardon that she and all of us need for our inevitable moral failures, our sins.

Jesus said repeatedly that he came to do his Father’s will, and as we heard in the gospel a couple of minutes ago, it’s the Father’s will that everyone who believes in the Son, i.e., in Jesus Christ, should share in the eternal life that Jesus enjoys; that all Jesus’ followers should follow him into the resurrection on the last day, the day of judgment.

For there will be a last day—for everyone and, in God’s own time, for the whole created universe.  There will be a day of judgment.  For unrepentant sinners, that day will be, as the old funeral liturgy used to sing in fearful trembling, a dies irae, a day of wrath, a day of doom.

We have better hope, however, for Hazel, who tried to walk faithfully with Jesus thruout her long life.  We have hope that the Holy Spirit given to her in Baptism stayed with her and is saying now, “Let her find rest from her labors, for her works accompany her” (Rev 14:13)—her work of keeping God’s law (it is hard work sometimes, isn’t it?), her work of adhering to Jesus, of daily prayer, of fulfilling her role as wife and mother, as businesswoman and librarian, as catechist, of loving and serving her neighbor.

“Grace and mercy are with his holy ones, and his care is with his elect,” Wisdom says (3:9).  “Elect” means “chosen.”  God chose Hazel in Baptism to receive his grace and mercy, to be a holy one, a saint, by following Jesus—as he has likewise chosen us.  It’s our prayer today that Hazel did that faithfully to the end.  We know that Jesus was faithfully with her to the end thru sacramental anointing and thru the accompaniment and prayers of Charlotte and others.  We pray that Jesus has seen her into her new home, her heavenly home, her place of rest and joy and light.

Homily for 3d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
3d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Jan. 22, 2017
Matt 4: 12-23
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

“Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, … the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light…” (Matt 4: 15-16).  (For those who don’t know, Zebulun and Naphtali were 2 of the 12 tribes of Israel, and they were allotted land in the northern part of the country, what later became known as Galilee.)

St. Matthew picks up a prophecy of Isaiah, using a Greek translation that was in general use in the Greek-speaking parts of the Roman Empire in the 1st century; hence the slight variance in wording between our 1st reading, based on Isaiah’s Hebrew, and the gospel reading.  Matthew finds the prophecy’s fulfillment in the ministry of Jesus, which he introduces us to with 2 very general summaries of it sandwiched around the calling of the 1st 4 apostles.

The 1st little summary is that Jesus moved from Nazareth, which was off the beaten track, and “went to live in Capernaum by the sea” (4:13), i.e., the Sea of Galilee, along a principal trade route between Jerusalem and Damascus, north and south, and east-west between the Mediterranean coast and the lands beyond the Jordan River.  And in this little crossroads town, this center of commerce and the fishing business, he “began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (4:17).

www.LumoProject.com

The 2d little summary, after he calls 4 fishermen to follow him, is that he went all around Galilee “proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people” (4:23).

When Jesus preaches repentance, he uses a word, metanoeite in Greek, that means “to change one’s mind, to be converted in heart, to turn one’s life around.  John the Baptist, too, whose arrest precedes Jesus’ preaching (mentioning that, Matthew sounds an ominous note to his readers), had preached this repentance in view of the coming of the Messiah.  Jesus, on the other hand, calls for repentance in view of the kingdom’s presence.

If Galilee has been a land in darkness, as Matthew says, the darkness is that of evil:  of sin and its effects.  Jesus comes as light.  He comes to cast away sin, to heal souls, to forgive.  The prerequisite is repentance:  the willingness, the desire, to be rid of sin and walk in God’s light.  Unless one admits one’s sins and sincerely wants to throw them off, wants to amend one’s life, the grace of God in Jesus Christ is useless; it can’t touch the unrepentant heart.  (But we can pray that unrepentant hearts be converted; or, in the words of Ezekiel, that hearts of stone be turned into hearts of flesh [36:26; 11:19].  That’s one of my own most frequent prayers, for the conversion of my own heart, and when I say to some of you that we priests need your prayers, that’s one of the reasons I have in mind.)

Jesus preaches, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Unlike John the Baptist, he doesn’t say, “Someone’s coming.”  He says, “It’s at hand.”  Jesus himself embodies the kingdom of God.  He is the gentle hand of God that rules the universe—a rule that he demonstrates in his power to turn fishermen into fishers of men (4:19), courageous apostles (that was a miracle in itself!)—and his power to “heal every disease and illness.”  Matthew says, as if pointing to a parallelism, “He proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom and cured every disease and illness among the people”—“proclaiming” and “curing” running together like 2 rails of track.

The evils of disease and illness are signs of the greater evil of sin, pieces of the realm of the prince of darkness.  They are pieces of the darkness covering the land.  Jesus’ power over sickness is an outward sign of his power over the sickness of our souls.

When people brought their illnesses to Jesus, he healed them.  But 1st they had to come to him, personally or thru an emissary like the Roman centurion (Matt 8:5-13).  No one got healed without some kind of a request, a plea because of need.  Such healing was a sign that the Good News of the kingdom was present.  The light had arrived to conquer the darkness.  The next step for the victory of light was repentance, turning from sin.  It took quite a while for Jesus to get that message across, that he’d come for the forgiveness of sins and the healing of the relationship between God and men (turning the apostles into fishers of men!).

And that kind of healing, too, required an admission of need, an admission of sinfulness—a conversion of heart.

Last Saturday, a columnist in the Washington Post headlined his opinion piece, “Dear God, are we being punished?”  He rehearsed some biblical examples of the punishment of sinners, like Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis and Ananias and Sapphira in Acts before asking what we—whoever his “we” is—have done “to deserve punishment in the form of Trump.”  Then he mentioned our social sins like ignoring the needs of immigrants, education, the social safety net, better wages for workers, attention to our democracy—so many needs that we ignore, such values as the Rev. Martin Luther King stood for; he was writing a column for the King weekend.  And he called for a “fair, just and inclusive America” such as Dr. King and a recent President “fought hard to create.”[1]

Well, yeah, whether you think Trump is “punishment” for our collective sins or have a different opinion on that subject—I’m not going there!—you have to admit there are social injustices in America.  And I suggest that the columnist missed the most egregious examples of the sins of our society, sins that we don’t seem willing to admit, much less to seek remedies for, to seek healing.  Rather, we celebrate our sins and call them progress.  On this anniversary weekend of Roe v. Wade, we recall the gross injustice of killing unborn human beings, which our Washington Post columnist didn’t mention.  We need to mention the injustice our Western society does to children by promoting the breakdown of the family; more and more children being born out of wedlock, being fatherless, being the victims of divorce and therefore being far more likely than children in 2-parent families to drop out of school, to commit acts of delinquency, to join gangs, to do drugs, to get involved in sexual activity at an entirely inappropriate age, and to live in poverty.  Something in our family life and social values breakdown is causing an epidemic of teenage suicide, of which I was reminded in a personal email this morning.[2]

Let us acknowledge and pay homage to the heroic efforts many single parents make to raise their kids to be virtuous, to complete their education, and to become good citizens and even saints.  Our Salesian founder St. John Bosco was raised by a single mother, and many single moms and dads do their jobs well.  But, statistically, the overwhelming tendency is otherwise.  Studies repeatedly show that “the central problem underlying … child poverty is family breakdown”[3]—and family breakdown is largely the result of self-centeredness, individualism, “my freedom at all costs.

A fundamental disregard for the nature and purpose of our sexuality, a disregard that leads to porn, easy sex, contraception, a lack of commitment to marriage, the abuse of others, homosexual activity, confusion about sexual identity—these are sins for which God is punishing us—not with this or that elected official but with chaos and violence in our schools and our streets, and sometimes even with political dysfunction.  The violence of abortion and assisted suicide fosters the “life is cheap” or “expendable” mentality that gives us gang warfare, shootings on our streets and in our schools, assaults on the handicapped as a form of entertainment.

If we want God’s grace, God’s blessing, as individuals, we have to admit our need and turn to God for healing, with a purpose of amendment, an intention to try to change our ways.  Thank God for the healing offered us in the sacrament of Reconciliation!

“Dear God, why are we being punished?”  As a nation, too, we have to admit our need, admit the sins that have brought us where we are, amend our attitudes and intentions, and seek healing:  in respect for all human life, in treating everyone with decency and fairness, in recognition of the irreplaceable role of marriage for the shaping of a healthy society.  Let us walk in the light and not in the darkness.

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[1] Colbert I. King, Washington Post online, Jan. 14, 2017.

[2] Jan. 22.

[3] Russell Shaw, “Child Poverty and Marriage,” The Pilot online, Jan. 18, 2017.

Homily for 2d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
2d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Jan. 15, 2017
1 Cor 1: 1-3
John 1: 29-34

I was well into homiletic preparation for today before I remembered that the deacons preach on the 3d Sunday of the month.  I decided to finish and post the homily even tho I didn’t actually preach it.

The revision of the sacred liturgy after Vatican II has been a wonderful thing.  To mention just 2 blessings that the Church has received thru this revision we celebrate God’s Word and worship in language we understand (mostly—sometimes liturgical language even in English is a bit strange); and we hear a much vaster selection from the Sacred Scriptures.

The revision has also left us with some oddities like calling today the “2d Sunday of OT” when it’s the Sunday of the 2d week of OT but not really the 2d Sunday in this season we call Ordinary Time.  So you didn’t pull a Rip Van Winkle and sleep thru the 1st Sunday.

You may have heard me introduce the new liturgical year back on the 1st Sunday of Advent by telling you we’d be listening mostly to the Gospel According to St. Matthew this year.  Before we resume reading Matthew next week with the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, however, we have an interlude this week with St. John’s Gospel (1:29-34), speaking John the Baptist’s identification of Jesus as the one on whom the Spirit of God has come down and whom the Father has missioned to baptize people with the Holy Spirit.  This is John the Evangelist’s version of Jesus’ baptism and his appointment by God to go and sanctify humanity.

Baptism of Christ by Lambert Sustris

Before Jesus ascended into heaven, he handed that mission to his apostles, who were confirmed in the mission by the descent of that same Holy Spirit upon them.  So eventually St. Paul preaches the Gospel to the Jews and the pagans of Corinth in Greece.  Today we hear Paul addressing the little Christian community there with the opening words of what we now know as his 1st Letter to the Corinthians—words that speak of their sanctification, their call to be holy.  He greets them:  “Paul … to the church of God that is in Corinth, to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy” (1:1-2).

Let’s consider those words.  He addresses the people—his own disciples, converted to Christ by his preaching and his staying among them for over a year; and they are his friends, besides—he addresses them as “church.”  That’s the Greek word ekklesia, meaning “those who have been called out,” an assembly, a gathered community.  And these people have been called out and gathered by God; they are the ekklesia of God.  If they are followers of Jesus, it’s God’s doing, God’s grace.

That’s true wherever and whenever we speak of the ekklesia—same word in Latin—or of iglesia in Spanish, eglise in French, chiesa in Italian.  It’s primarily the assembled people of God, only secondarily the building in which we assemble.  In fact, in Paul’s day and for a quarter of a millennium longer, there were no Christian buildings for the faithful to gather in because the Church was basically illegal, regarded as a subversive organization, people of suspect loyalty to the imperial regime.  (Does that sound at all familiar?  It’s estimated that last year, 2016, some 90,000 Christians were killed because of their faith.)  So we who are the Church today are the Church of God, the people whom God has called together to be his own—we, the Catholics of Holy Cross, the Catholics of the diocese of Peoria, the Catholics of the entire worldwide ekklesia united in apostolic faith with the successor St. Peter.

Why has God called us?  Paul says straightforwardly, “to be holy.”  Of ourselves, we’re certainly not holy.  We’re sinners, sometimes very wretched sinners.  But God wants us to be otherwise, and so he invites us to a share in his very own life, to a share—in some mysterious fashion—in his own nature.  He calls us to be holy as he is holy.  He is “the fount of all holiness,” as the 2d Eucharistic Prayer says, and that fountain gushes with grace pouring out over us—the grace of Jesus Christ (cf. John 4:14; 7:37-38), sanctifying us.

St. Paul says we’ve already been “sanctified in Christ Jesus.”  Our union with Jesus—the Holy One of God, the Lamb of God—sanctifies us.  In practical terms, Baptism inaugurates us into the divine life, the holiness of Jesus.  Every sacramental encounter with Jesus deepens that union, roots us more deeply into Christ.  That’s why we come regularly to the Eucharist—all of us called to gather to be made holy by Jesus.  That’s why we approach Jesus regularly in Reconciliation—to be restored to holiness, if unfortunately we’ve gone astray, or to be confirmed in holiness by the gentle touch and encouragement of Jesus.

Baptism banner:

Holy Name of Jesus Church, New Rochelle

These vital sacramental encounters occur in and thru the ekklesia, the assembly of God’s people called to be holy, called to be Christ’s presence in the world, called to be Christ’s instrument or his means of contacting individuals and drawing them to himself—to Baptism in the Holy Spirit (cf. John 1:33), to Eucharistic communion, to the forgiveness of sins.

As the assembly of God’s people, we join together to thank the Father for such mercy, for such a calling, to be united to him in Christ, thru the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Homily for Memorial of St. Andre Bessette

Homily for the Memorial of
St. André Bessette
January 6, 2017
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

Can you imagine a million people taking part in a funeral?  You witnessed that at the death of JPII.  Another such funeral, which none of us witnessed, was that of a humble Holy Cross brother in Montreal in 1937.

John the Baptist:  “I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals”—a humility that places him in a position lower than a slave (Mark 1:7-11).  That was the humility of Bro. André Bessette.

St. André (1845-1937) was born into a poor family near Montreal.  His father was a carpenter and woodcutter, which may have influenced his devotion to St. Joseph.  By age 12 he’d been orphaned and had to work to survive—common enuf at that time.  He worked for a while in Connecticut, like many young French Canadians.

But all his early life he had such poor health that the Congregation of the Holy Cross were reluctant to take him in as a candidate. That's the same congregation to which our bishop belongs and to whom the Univ. of Notre Dame belongs.  Poor fellow lived only to the age of 91!

André was uneducated and barely literate.  So Holy Cross had him to menial cleaning work, carry messages, bring in firewood, and answer the door.  But he was extremely sensitive to people, especially the poor and the sick—the lowly of Montreal.  When he became permanent doorkeeper of the HC school, crowds of people came to talk with him.  He listened to their woes, joked with them, prayed with and for them.  Characteristically gentle and patient, sometimes he did get upset, and he confessed he was “only human.”

Altho exhausted from a long day of that, after hours he’d go to visit the sick and the poor in their homes.  He prayed especially thru the intercession of St. Joseph.

People noticed that when he prayed for the sick, often there were healings.  During a smallpox outbreak at the HC house of formation that had killed several of the young men, he went to assist the sick; the epidemic ceased and no one else died.

With a growing reputation as a healer, Bro. André could no longer receive his many visitors at school; the parents complained about the disturbance.  He went to a street car station to receive visitors; the passengers complained.  So he went looking for some land where he could build a little oratory to receive visitors—dedicated to St. Joseph.  He found property atop Mt. Royal—which the HC congregation had been eyeing for some time but which the owners refused to sell.  Bro. André scattered medals of St. Joseph around like seed, and shortly after the owners changed their mind.  The HC superiors told him he could build his oratory if he could raise the money; the money came.

So he built a little oratory, people kept coming, Bro. André kept praying with and for them, and then he raised money to build a new, grander shrine to St. Joseph—which today dominates the whole city of Montreal from the top of Mt. Royal and is the largest church in the world dedicated to St. Joseph.

Lowly, semi-literate Bro. André was a man of prayer and kindness, the faithful servant of St. Joseph and of the sick and the poor.  And a million of them turned up for his funeral rites after he died on Jan. 6, 1937.  He was beatified in 1982 and canonized in 2011.

St. André teaches us to attend to the poor and the lowly and the sick, to people in need, and to treat people with kindness.  He teaches us the importance of the saints, and particularly of some favorite patron saint whose protection we invoke and whose life we seek to imitate.

Homily for the Solemnity of the
Epiphany
Jan. 8, 2017
Matt 2: 1-12
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem…” (Matt 2: 1).

Adoration of the Magi

Fra Angelico, ca. 1445

Who are these strange visitors, these unusual visitors, these magi “from the east”?  We certainly wish St. Matthew had told us more.  The oral tradition of the early disciples of Jesus, passed down—we presume—from our Blessed Mother to the apostles to the 1st generations of Christians probably had lost track of some of the details of the story; you can think, maybe, of some of your own family stories going back to your grandparents or great-grandparents.  When Matthew, sometime in the 8th decade of the 1st century (we estimate), wrote the story down to introduce his Gospel, he included only information that the Church considered truly important, perhaps all that was remembered with any certainty.

According to renowned New Testament scholar Fr. Raymond Brown, the term magi, or magus in the singular, referred to men who were “engaged in occult arts:  astronomers, fortunetellers, priestly augurers, and magicians of varying degrees of plausibility.  Matthew probably thinks of astronomers.”[1]  I’m not sure why Fr. Brown would call astronomy an “occult art,” but perhaps in the 1st century it was more akin to astrology, which is another art altogether.  Had Fr. Brown been writing a few years later, he might also have mentioned Jedi knights or Dumbledore and his pupils.[2]  Be that as it may, we’ve come to understand the magi as “wise men” in general.  I hope it doesn’t shake anyone’s faith to realize that they weren’t kings at all; that’s a medieval legend, about as reliable as the old English carol “I Saw Three Ships” come sailing into Bethlehem (which isn’t anywhere near the water).

While Matthew says the magi brought 3 gifts to the Christ Child, he doesn’t say how many wise men made the journey “from the east,” i.e., from Babylonia or Persia.  They could have been 2, 3, 5, 10—and a long journey “from the east” would have invited a much larger party than 3 if only for safety.  Matthew doesn’t say clearly when they arrived in Jerusalem, but he does say later, in the story about Herod’s murder of all the male children in and around Bethlehem, that they had 1st seen the star up to 2 years previously (which, by the way, would place the birth of Jesus in 6 or 7 B.C.  Herod died in 4 B.C.).  And he says that they found “the child with Mary his mother on entering the house” where they were (2:11)—not in a stable.

But those sorts of details are secondary.  What’s the message of the magi’s coming to Bethlehem and paying homage to the newborn king of the Jews (cf. 2:2,11)?  1st and most important is that this Child is king of all peoples, both Jews and Gentiles.  Matthew doesn’t tell us anything about Jewish shepherds coming to the manger (that’s St. Luke); he presents these foreigners, these pagans, these Gentiles, as the 1st ones to honor Christ, to submit themselves to his majesty.  Matthew will end his Gospel on a similar note, when Jesus commissions the apostles to go out into the whole world and “make disciples of all nations” (28:19).  The Good News that Jesus “shall save his people from their sins”—the angel’s words to St. Joseph in ch. 1:21—is for all people everywhere.  All people are his people!

These pagan wise men began their discovery of God’s Good News by observing a star.  From ancient times men and women have been able to discover something about God and to worship him in some fashion based on natural reason, on philosophy, on the observance of nature, on the natural instinct for justice that’s in the human heart, etc.  That’s still true today for honest searchers into truth and wisdom.

But the magi couldn’t find this Savior on their own.  The star led them to Jerusalem—the logical place to look for a new king of the Jewish people.  But then they were lost.  They needed some additional help, and this they found in divine revelation, in the Sacred Scriptures, which the chief priests and the scribes had studied and which they revealed to King Herod and the strangers from the East.  While we can know God to some extent from natural reason—nature, philosophy, etc.—we can’t know him fully without revelation.  To know God more completely, we must have the Scriptures opened for us; we must encounter Jesus Christ, the living Word of God; we must listen to the teaching of Christ’s Church, not making new revelation but interpreting the ancient revelation of the Scriptures and the Person of Jesus.

The chief priests and the scribes presented the revelation to the magi and King Herod.  Then all of them had to make a decision.  What would they do about what had been revealed to them?  They all knew about the star and the magi’s understanding of its meaning, and they all heard what the Hebrew prophets had said about the Messiah.

The magi continued on their mission, seeking the One whom God had sent.  They paid him homage, presented their gifts, and submitted themselves to Christ the King.

Not so Herod, the chief priests, and the scribes.  Matthew makes the point that “all Jerusalem” was “greatly troubled” by what the magi reported, and no one—no one!—went along with the Gentile searchers to seek and meet the Messiah.  They were indifferent or even hostile to God’s greatest revelation.  They chose to continue living in their fear, to cling to their fragile earthly power, to do vicious violence upon the innocent, to reject the One who offers to all humanity a heavenly kingdom so much more precious than ruling over Judea.  Here Matthew of course is foreshadowing Jesus’ condemnation 35 years later by the successors of King Herod and these Jewish leaders.

What is our decision about “the newborn king of the Jews”?  How seriously are we looking for God?  Where do we look for him?  If we think we’ve found him in a cute baby lying in the hay, we haven’t looked far enuf.  When the truth and goodness of Jesus are presented to us in the Gospels, in the rest of the Scriptures, in the teaching of the Church that Jesus commissioned to make disciples of all nations, are we ready to accept that truth and goodness, submit ourselves to them, live by them, practice truth and goodness as God’s revelation shows us?  God’s revealed truth convicts us as sinners because like Herod and his friends in Jerusalem we often choose darkness rather than light, fear rather than love, evil rather than goodness.  God’s revealed goodness, on the other hand, assures us that our repentance brings us the forgiveness and mercy we don’t deserve and can’t earn, thru the passion and resurrection of Jesus.  How much homage do we pay to humanity’s King, and what treasures do we offer him?

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[1] An Adult Christ at Christmas. Essays on the Three Biblical Christmas Stories: Matthew 2 and Luke 2 (Collegeville, 1978), p. 11, n. 18.

[2] I’m sure he wouldn’t have done that in his scholarly publications; maybe in a less formal lecture.

Homily for the Solemnity of
Mary, Mother of God

Jan. 1, 1979
Gal 4: 4-7
Luke 2: 16-21
Guardian Angels, Harvey, La.
Our Lady of Prompt Succor, Westwego, La.

This New Year’s Day (2017) I was traveling.  Here’s the 1st homily I ever preached for this special solemnity in honor of the Mother of God.

by Robert Campin (c. 1375-1444)

The Christmas liturgy has for centuries focused on 2 key persons in the history of salvation:  Jesus and Mary.  He is the long-awaited Savior; she is the instrument in the Father’s plan of salvation.  He is the Son of God, made man; she is the most highly favored daughter, become a mother.

Today let us turn our attention briefly to 2 aspects of Mary’s part in the divine mystery of the Incarnation.  1st, St. Paul writes, “God sent forth his Son, born of woman … so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5).  2d, St. Luke records, “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

“God sent forth his Son, born of woman.”  Jesus is fully human. He was born like any other person.  That he should be a complete, genuine member of our race is important, even necessary.  The Fathers of the Church are fond of saying that unless Christ is truly man, we men are not truly redeemed, and likewise, unless he is truly God, we are not truly redeemed either.  And St. Paul implies such divinity quite strongly when he says, “God sent forth his Son … that we might receive adoption as sons.”  By taking on our condition right from the moment of his entry into our lowly history, the Son has raised our status to his own glorious place.  As the early Fathers express it, “God became man in order that man might become God.”  And a key role in this divine plan is the glorious one assigned to and accepted by Mary, the beautiful but demanding role of motherhood, the role without which the Son of God could not have become the son of man.

“Mary kept all these things in her heart.” Luke tells of the wonders surrounding the Savior’s birth and how the shepherds marvel and retell the story and lead others to marvel too; and how Joseph is present.  But only Mary reflects on these things and what they might mean.  She is apparently the only one of all these figures to begin to penetrate God’s mysterious workings.  She is surely the only one to reappear later on in Jesus’ active ministry and in the early days of the Church as one of the believers.  Her place as 1st believer may begin with her “yes” to Gabriel at the annunciation scene in Nazareth.  But what she does now in Bethlehem is no less important.  She stores away in her memory and turns over in her heart what she has seen, heard, and felt.  In a word, she meditates upon God’s workings in her life.  She reflects upon what God is doing for his people through her.  Thus she prepares herself to go beyond the beautiful role of motherhood to the greater one of discipleship.  Remember, it is also Luke who records the episode of a woman in the crowd crying out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you,” and of Jesus’ response, “Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it” (11:27-28)—which is exactly what Mary is doing.

Perhaps many of you are pondering over New Year’s resolutions.  That marvelous Christian masterpiece, the Imitation of Christ, tells us that if we were to correct one fault each year, we would soon become perfect.  For myself, I don’t know about the “soon” part, but for all of us, I suggest a step in that direction:  To imitate Mary’s discipleship, her meditation, her prayer.  Advice columnist Abby Van Buren yesterday recommended:  “Just for today I will have a quiet half hour to relax alone. During this time I will reflect on my behavior and will try to get a better perspective of my life.”  If we do that each day with the help of God’s holy Word, in the context of prayer, our lives will begin to look more like Mary’s and like her Son’s.

May God’s peace reign in your hearts.

Presenting Christ's Nativity

Presenting Christ's Nativity

For a good many years it's been the custom at the Church of the Holy Cross in Champaign to enact the story of Christ's birth at the 4:00 p.m. vigil Mass on Christmas Eve.  The youthful actors (elementary and high school students) act silently while the pastor reads the Gospel--in this year (and perhaps in other years), a text sewn together from the evangelists Luke and Matthew and from Fr. Dave Sajdak's imagination.

Here are some pix of the celebration:

Before Mass starts, Deacon Ed Mohrbacher does some prep work in the sanctuary.

The traditional crèche scene is covered over in the center of the sanctuary.

Also before Mass, Fr. Dave put down masking tape to demarcate where the tykes in attendance

would set themselves down for the homily, addressed to them.

Under the direction of our outstanding music director, Scott Montgomery,

the parish's children's choir provided music before and during Mass.

Our 3 shepherds passing time in the sacristy before Mass.

The 4 o'clock vigil Mass is always the most crowded of Holy Cross's 5 Christmas Masses.

It appeared to your humble blogger that about 100 people had to stand in the back and the side aisles. 

Not sure of the seating capacity--maybe 500?

Joseph begs the innkeeper (right) for a room while Mary stands off to the left.

Joseph, Mary, and a live baby Jesus (just delivered by his real mom, exiting behind the altar).

The angel appears to the shepherds.

The magi and the shepherds with the Holy Family.  One shepherd, lower right, didn't wake up when the angel came.

Fr. Dave preaching to the little ones and expanding the story with a tale of the little shepherd boy.

Joseph meets the late-arriving shepherd boy and welcomes him to the manger.

The complete Nativity ensemble, minus "live Jesus," who had to depart suddenly when he raised a squall and required Mom to come to his assistance.  (He was able to resume his place sometime later.)

Fr. Dave sent the tykes back to their parents with instructions to tell them that they love God and them--

which these 2 faithful little parishioners did.

Homily for the Vigil of Christmas

Homily for the Vigil of
Christmas
Dec. 24, 2016
Is 62: 1-5
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.

“As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you” (Is 62: 5).

Let’s talk about marriage!

That’s a strange topic for Christmas Eve.  But there it is in the reading from the prophet Isaiah, and in the reading from St. Matthew’s Gospel, where the angel instructs St. Joseph to take the Virgin Mary as his wife.

Christmas is very much about marriage, indeed!  Speaking thru Isaiah, God tells his people Israel, “Your Builder shall marry you,” and God shall rejoice over Israel like a groom rejoicing over his bride.  When the eternal Son of God became incarnate—took on our humanity—God our Maker wedded himself to us.  God became man.  The 2 became 1 flesh.  From that moment in history, God totally embraces the human race, and his intention is to bring us into his own home, as Joseph took Mary into his home (Matt 1:24).

Joseph's Dream, by Cerezo Barredo

This divine-human marriage is shown to us, as well, in the Virgin Mary.  “It is thru the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her” (Matt 1:20).  God chose Mary to be his spouse.  God, so to speak, has married into our human family.  We could almost say that we all have God for a father-in-law!

So at Christmas we celebrate the great festival of God’s union with the human race, a union personalized in Jesus Christ our Savior.  The angel informs Joseph that this son of Mary “will save his people from their sins” (1:21).  His people!  We are his people, his kin, his brothers and sisters, because the eternal God has come down to us, has asked to join the family—he asked, I say, because, in Matthew’s account of the story of Jesus’ birth, Joseph had to agree to take in Mary so that the Old Testament prophecies could be fulfilled, that Jesus should belong to the house of David (1:20).  And in Luke’s account of the Annunciation, Mary had to consent to the heavenly Father’s request before the Son could take her flesh and bone, her genetic code, all the essence of humanness that she could offer him.  She had to welcome the Son of God into the home of her womb, allow him to become part of her family, and thru her of our family.

God loves irony.  The Scriptures are full of irony.  So we celebrate in Christ’s coming the marriage of divinity and humanity, and of human beings receiving God into their home, their family.  Why does God do all that?  Why does he plan events in this fashion?  In order to invite us into his home, as I said earlier, to take us into his household.  One of the great images of the Sacred Scriptures is that we, God’s people, are his spouse—“your Builder shall marry you,” Isaiah prophesied; St. Paul teaches us, likewise, that Christ loves the Church as a husband loves his wife, and vice versa (cf. Eph 5:21-33), and that we are members of God’s household (Eph 2:19).  God redeems us by flipping the situation, which is ironic.

So today, as we rejoice in the appearance of the Eternal God in the manger at Bethlehem, we meditate upon the significance of that appearance—an appearance that has forever transformed the relationship between our Creator and us, between God and sinners.  “Blessed the people who know the joyful shout,” the psalmist sings tonite (89:16).  More particularly, we the redeemed of Christ, sing, “Blessed are those called to the wedding of the Lamb,” as the Book of Revelation says; “Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to God the Almighty, for the wedding day of the Lamb has come” (cf. Rev 19:7-9).

Homily for 4th Sunday of Advent

Homily for the
4th Sunday of Advent
Dec. 21, 1986
Is 7: 10-14
Holy Cross, Fairfield, Conn.

At Holy Cross in Champaign, it was the deacons' turn to preach this weekend. Here's a homily from the other Holy Cross in my life.

“The young woman shall conceive and bear a son and shall name him Immanuel” (Is 7:14).

In the 1st reading this morning, we heard the 1st messianic prophecy of Isaiah.  Isaiah delivers a message from God to King Ahaz, a message reinforced by a sign.

From 500 questions.wordpress.com

King Ahaz sounds very devout; he says he doesn’t want to make God prove his power.  But Ahaz is really an irreligious man, and his piety is fake.  It’s 735 B.C., and the armies of Syria and of Israel – there’s an unlikely pair for you! – the armies of Syria and Israel are invading Judah and threatening to capture Jerusalem and overthrow the royal family of King David – David, from whom the messiah is supposed to come; David, whose house and kingdom shall endure forever before God, as God himself promised (2 Sam 7:16).

The 1st two verses of Is 7 tell us that when Ahaz heard of the invasion, his heart and the hearts of the people “trembled, as the trees of the forest tremble in the wind.”  So Ahaz wants to ask for help from his friendly local superpower, pagan Assyria.  But Isaiah tells him not to, he should rely on God instead, because God will deliver Jerusalem and the house of David.

While Isaiah is telling the king all this, Ahaz is busy inspecting his forts, and he doesn’t want to listen.  So the Lord offers to give him a sign, a proof that he means what he says, that Isaiah is telling the truth: “Let it be as deep as the underworld, or as high as the sky!” (7:11); ask for anything you can imagine!

Ahaz refuses the sign, and he sounds very pious.  But he’s already decided what he’ll do: He will not listen to the word of the Lord.  He’ll do what he’d planned to do all along; he’ll rely on human salvation rather than divine.

Isaiah gives the king a sign anyway, just in case it might help change his mind:  “A young woman shall conceive and bear a son and shall name him Immanuel” (7:14).  “Immanuel” means “God is with us”; it’s a pretty strong hint to Ahaz that he should be trusting in the Lord rather than in the Assyrians.

The Hebrew word almah, which is used here, means a young woman of marriageable age.  We presume that some young lady in the royal family fulfilled the sign of Isaiah.  Perhaps it was Ahaz’s wife; maybe the son was his eventual successor, Hezekiah, who continued the line of King David and was a good king, tangible proof that God was still with his chosen people and his holy city.  It was only 800 years later that St. Matthew connected the Emmanuel sign to the birth of Jesus, with the help of the Greek word for “young woman of marriageable age,” the word parthenos, which also means “virgin.”

In the meantime, King Ahaz didn’t change his mind.  He called up Assyria for help, and the Assyrians came gladly:  to crunch the Syrians and the Israelites, to demand a bundle in tribute from Ahaz, and to make Judah part of their empire.  Ahaz’ plan backfired on him and Judah.

God doesn’t usually send prophets into our lives to show us what he wants us to do.  But he does send us lots of messages:  we have his word in the Bible; he uses our bishop and Holy Father, sometimes our friends and neighbors, even things that happen around us.  Like Ahaz, we’re left free to decide for ourselves whether to listen to the Lord or not.  Like Ahaz, we may find some unpleasant consequences to choosing our own wisdom rather than the divine wisdom, the wisdom of Jesus Christ, the wisdom handed on to us by Christ’s Church.

We certainly don’t have to be like King Ahaz.  The gospel this morning shows us how one man did listen carefully to what the angel told him.  The message was even harder to believe than what Isaiah told the king.  But St. Joseph, the son of David, listened and believed and acted.  He accepted the divine word that Mary’s child was of the Holy Spirit, that God himself was wondrously intervening in our sinful human history; and he took her into his home as his wife (Matt 1:18-25).  Thus did Joseph become a member of God’s own family.  Thus was the ancient promise to King David fulfilled.  Thus did Isaiah’s ancient sign take on a wonderful new meaning.

As Christians we’re members of God’s family.  That’s what St. Paul means in the 2nd reading when he calls us “God’s beloved, called to holiness,” to be saints (Rom 1:7).  That means we have to imitate Joseph rather than Ahaz.  We have to listen attentively to the ways by which God speaks to us today, pray over what we hear, and consider how God wants us to act.

Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you (Rom 1:7).