Mark 10:45

Category: Homily

  • Walking on the Water: Monday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

    Walking on the Water: Monday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

    Jeremiah 28:1-17; Matthew 14:13-21

    Each evangelist has a particular view of the Apostles in his gospel. In Mark, the Apostles never seem to get it right; they constantly misunderstand or respond inappropriately. In Luke the Apostles also misunderstand and make mistakes but there is always an excuse; they were tired or stressed. Matthew is perhaps more realistic. He shows the Apostles struggling; there is tension between faith and doubt. This comes through in his telling of the storm at sea and I think it reflects things true not only of them but all of us.

    Let me point out two things about how Matthew sets the scene. First, Jesus sends the Apostles across the sea without him while he prays to his Father on the mountain. As he remains serenely at prayer a storm rages on the sea, tossing the Apostles’ boat in every direction. Second, Jesus does not come across the sea until the 4th watch of the night – some time between 3 and 6 am. In other words, he lets the Apostles get tossed around in the storm for several hours before going to them.

    We can all identify with this in our own way. Think of a time when you were under great stress, when life seemed to toss you about, when every minute seemed like an hour and the stress was more than you thought you could bear. You prayed and prayed for relief, and… nothing. How did you feel? As for myself, I would say that I felt alone; doubtful that God was ever going to help; vulnerable; tense; above all, afraid.

    Fear is perhaps what we have most in common with the Apostles. It can be paralyzing; we don’t know what to do, who to listen to, how to respond. We want to run away but we’re trapped; we can’t.

    At such times we are most susceptible to the kind of false prophet we hear about in the first reading, in our case someone who either tells us what we most want to hear or what confirms our worst suspicions and deepens our darkest fears: We’re alone; being punished; God has abandoned us, will not help us, or worst of all, is not there. It isn’t surprising that in fear the Apostles chose the worldly explanation on seeing Jesus: It is a ghost (Matthew 13:26).

    But God is truth and as Matthew has made clear from beginning to end in his gospel, Jesus is Emmanuel, God-With-Us (1:23), and will be with us always until the end of the age (28:20). So he comes, but notice how: From within the storm itself. In this we learn that God is with us not above and beyond the storms of life but deep in the midst of them. However we suffer, however we feel, we are not alone; Christ is compassion and speaks to us in that suffering. It may be the grace of long-suffering, patience, or fortitude; he does not tell us but as the Divine Physician he comes, gives us grace, and strengthens us for whatever journey he has in mind.

    Moreover, Christ does not simply appear in the storm – he calls from it:“Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid” (Matthew 14:27). He does this not to criticize or overpower but to give courage and to encourage; not necessarily to calm the storm raging around us but to bring calm and inner peace to the storm that rages within.

    Those who love Jesus as Peter did will do what true love does – cast aside fear and risk everything to be with the Beloved. This is one of Peter’s most endearing qualities – the recklessness of his love for Christ – and we do well to imitate it. Our Lord rewards such love; he bids Peter,“Come” (Matthew 14:29).

    Yet as St. Augustine said in his Confessions, “My weight is my love, and this it is that bears me in whatever direction I am borne” (Confessions XIII 9, 10). Although Peter did love our Lord, fear got the better of him: when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened (Matthew 14:30) and began to sink. The question is, in what direction are we borne? Let us bring that to prayer today, asking for the grace that does not allow fear to bring us down amid the storms of our life but to keep our eyes fixed on Christ, our feet on firmly with his, facing those storms from the top of the water.

  • The Wounds of Love: St. Birgitta of Sweden

    The Wounds of Love: St. Birgitta of Sweden

    Galatians 2:19-20; John 15:1-8

    I once instructed a woman in the RCIA program who excelled in her studies of the faith. After receiving the sacraments she moved away and I lost track of her. Years later, I learned that she had stopped practicing the faith. She was now “spiritual but not religious.” I think that means she believes that while there is a spiritual dimension to the world, it isn’t what we understand as the faith most fully revealed to us in Christ.

    The sticking point for her, as for many, may well have been the passion and death of our Lord. Indeed, the crucifixion was called by St. Paul a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). But to one of the saints, St. Birgitta of Sweden, the crucifixion held a special place; it was the nexus of the physical and spiritual worlds.

    Birgitta lived a life full of the joys and sorrows of family. Born in Sweden around the year 1303, the daughter of a governor, by age 42 she had already been a wife for 28 years and a widow for one. She had a wide and deep experience of motherhood; as mother of 4 boys and 4 girls, she saw one daughter run off to marry a troublemaker, one son die as a boy, one as a man, and another daughter grow up to become St. Catherine of Sweden.

    She also knew the life of the working world. While raising her own children she served as lady-in-waiting to the queen of Sweden. Her kind, motherly way drew her into the confidence of the king and queen, both of whom tended to enjoy worldly life too much for their own good. Birgitta worked as hard as she could to keep their religious concerns before them; this became a frustrating and unfortunately futile struggle.

    Finally, Birgitta knew the religious life as well. After becoming a widow and devoting herself to care of the poor, who greatly loved her, she dedicated buildings and land on family property to a new contemplative order. She wrote the rule for her order which became known as the Order of the Most Holy Savior.

    At the same time, Birgitta lived a full life in the spiritual world. She was a mystic. At age seven, she had a vision of being crowned by the Blessed Mother. Three years later came her most profound mystical experience: The crucified Christ appeared to her and bid her gaze upon him. When she asked who had so cruelly treated him, he replied, “Those who despise me and spurn my love for them.” This was her own Damascus road moment; although she had many visions, dreams, and locutions afterwards, she devoted the rest of her life to the contemplation of Christ’s suffering.

    After wisely consulting her spiritual advisor and obtaining his approval, Birgitta began to share her visions with the world. She met with Magnus, the king of Sweden, and advised him that Christ would visit a plague on the land if he and the queen did not change their ways. As usual, he laughed off her vision. The Black Death came two years later, wiping out half the population. Needless to say, the king stopped laughing.

    Birgitta next focused her attention on the popes, who had long since deserted Rome in fear for their lives. Leaving Sweden with her daughter Catherine, she moved to Rome. In the midst of its crumbling churches and society, Birgitta ministered to the sick, fed the poor, housed pilgrims, and called on the pope to return. Her call took on a special intensity due to her dislike of pope Clement VI, who she called “a murderer of souls, more unjust than Pilate and more cruel than Judas.” During a thunderstorm on the night of December 3rd 1350, lightning struck the bells of St. Peter’s, melting them. Birgitta prophesied this as a sign that Clement’s life was coming to an end. He died a few days later. When the next pope fled to get away from her Birgitta literally chased him down, begged him to approve her order, which he did, and to return to Rome, which he did not do. After her death in 1373, her call for the popes to return was taken up by St. Catherine of Siena. Not long after, the papacy returned to Rome to stay. Birgitta was vindicated.

    In the first reading, St. Paul wrote:

    I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me (Galatians 2:19-20).

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    Birgitta’s life is a testament to the triumph of St. Paul’s words. From the moment of that first overwhelming spiritual encounter with the suffering, crucified Christ when she was 10 years old, she began to internalize them; to sense as we all must, not only the pain of Christ’s passion but the passion behind his pain. The ultimate reality of the cross is love, a love so great it unites heaven and earth, the physical and spiritual. What else could it be but love that would cause God himself to take on our humanity, our sinfulness, and in the face of humanity’s rejection, nail it to the cross? Birgitta spent her life contemplating not the pain of futility but the pain which Oscar Wilde called the wounds of love. In her own way, St. Birgitta spent her life showing her family, her king, her people, and her pope that this is not only a love worth dying for; it is a love worth living for – eternally.

    St. Birgitta, pray for us.

  • No Reluctant Prophet: Monday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time

    No Reluctant Prophet: Monday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time

    Micah 6:1-4, 6-8; Psalm 50:23; Matthew 12:38-42

    So far in this chapter of Matthew we have seen Jesus being treated by the Pharisees like a man on trial. They have twice accused him of violating the sabbath, once of being in league with demons, and now, joined by the scribes, they confront him with the demand for a sign from God (Matthew 12:38).

    Given their lack of faith in Jesus this may seem reasonable but it betrays at least two problems they have in their relationship with God. First, no scribe or Pharisee, no human being is ever in a position to put God on trial or make Him prove anything. If anyone is on trial it’s us, as the prophet Micah said in the first reading: the LORD has a plea against his people, and he enters into trial with Israel (6:2). What’s more, we don’t get to tell God who He works through or how He does things. As He also said through Micah, I brought you up from the land of Egypt… I released you… I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (6:4). God calls the people, God determines the path. Second, notice how Christ responds to the demand of the scribes and Pharisees by speaking of an “unfaithful” – or “adulterous” – generation (Matthew 12:39). This nuptial language goes to the heart of the real problem, which is the failure of these men to understand that our relationship with God is not a contract, or something we negotiate. It is a covenant, a mutual giving of our entire selves one to the other; a commitment that is total and unto death.

    Jesus drives this point home with true irony by bringing up Jonah for as everyone knew, Jonah was a prophet who was “total” only in his defiance of God’s will and “unto death” only in his effort to avoid doing it. The so-called “reluctant” prophet, Jonah sailed the other way when God called him to preach to pagan Nineveh, tried to drown himself in the sea when he got caught, spoke as little prophecy as possible, angrily complained when Nineveh repented, and worried more about losing the shade from a plant than about the possibility of over a hundred thousand Ninevites dying. Jonah was the perfect example of how not to commit yourself to God.

    Yet Christ took that prophet and made a sign out of him: Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale… so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40). Out of that one point of deep darkness – the disobedient man’s descent into the belly of the beast – Christ brings one point of brilliant light – the obedient Son of Man’s descent into the heart of the earth, or, as we say in the Apostles’ Creed, his descent to the dead. There of course he would preach as Jonah could only wish to, and release those repentant souls who had been awaiting the redemption only He could bring.

    Had the scribes and Pharisees recognized the prophetic truth that Christ had just spoken, they would have known that all they had left was the question from Micah: With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow before God most high (6:6)? Since they did not, we turn to ourselves, for we too are on trial. In our own ways, we are all guilty of being a reluctant prophet: Avoiding various calls to serve, stubbornly resisting God’s will, doing the minimum possible, complaining to God about people whose repentance only He can know, and worrying more about our own comfort than about the suffering of many around us.

    So, with what shall we come? Scripture makes it clear: Prayer and sacrifice. As Micah urges us to do right, love goodness, and walk humbly with God (6:8), we pray for the virtues: Prudence, to know what is right; fortitude, to do it; wisdom, to see and love God’s goodness in all people; humility, to walk with God where He leads; and faith, to trust and praise Him at all times. This is a sacrifice, for like Jonah we are inclined to do what we want, love what we want, and walk where we please. But through the psalmist God reassures us: He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me; and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God (Psalm 50:23). The Salvation of God is Christ, who does only right, is love and goodness itself, and who walked in perfect humility all the way from the heart of his Father to the womb of his Mother, from the height of the cross to the heart of the earth, and from the Sacraments he has given the Church into the hearts of all believers.

  • Out of Blindness: Feast of St. Maria Goretti

    Out of Blindness: Feast of St. Maria Goretti

    1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20; John 12:24-26

    The priest, psychologist, and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once said that there are two types of spiritual loneliness, each a kind of blindness. The first comes from being out of touch with God; this is the blindness of too little light. The second is just the opposite; it is the blindness of too much light, or an intimacy with God that exceeds our thoughts and feelings. Both kinds of loneliness, and their cures, are hinted at in our readings and in the lives of St. Maria Goretti and her neighbor, Alessandro Serenelli.

    Luigi Goretti and Giovanni Serenelli partnered as sharecroppers on an estate just south of Rome in the early 20th century. Their families occupied separate flats but shared a kitchen. They had little else in common. The Gorettis were pious and hard-working, their daughter Maria charming and of unwavering faith. The Serenellis were religiously indifferent and struggled with alcoholism, mental illness, and physical abuse. Their son Alessandro, 8 years Maria’s senior, was sullen, withdrawn, and mired in the pornography of the time.

    Fr. Nouwen wrote that the loneliness of being out of touch with God leaves us anxiously searching for something or someone to give us a sense of belonging and home. In his loneliness, Alessandro could have reached out in friendship to Maria but he preferred the darkness, blind to the truth spoken by St. Paul that as members of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit, the body is not for immorality (1 Corinthians 6:13). To him, Maria was not a person to relate to but a thing to use. On a hot July afternoon in 1902 the 20 year-old finally cornered the girl and tried to force himself upon her. Repeatedly Maria cried, “No! It is a sin! It is not God’s will! You will go to hell!” Angered and frustrated by her resistance, Alessandro stabbed her 14 times with a metal file, then fled. For 20 hours Maria suffered from those wounds until she died, just three months before her 12th birthday.

    The second loneliness mentioned by Fr. Nouwen is the blindness of too much light; not a poverty of God’s presence but of our ability to relate to it. This requires love; as we fail to love we feel without God, though he is all around. In the gospel Jesus says, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain – or more literally – it remains alone (John 12:24). Christ doesn’t want us to remain alone; he wants us to remain in him (John 15:4) by loving one another as he has loved us (John 15:12), even to the death.

    Maria Goretti knew this. While she did not care for Alessandro the way he wanted, there is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend (John 15:13) and she was his friend to the end. She resisted his advances not only for her own sake but also for his, keeping him from sinning against his own body as well as hers. She reminded him of the primacy of God’s will and warned him of the eternal consequences of his actions. Ultimately she showed him the importance of the virtue of chastity by martyring herself for it and, most Christ-like of all, she died forgiving him to the point of praying that one day he would be with her in Paradise. We should all have such a friend.

    This is the love that bears fruit and eventually did in the life of Alessandro Serenelli. Years into his incarceration, little Maria came to him in a dream and once again made clear that she forgave him and was his intercessor before our Heavenly Father. From that moment, the grace of conversion worked within him; he became a model prisoner, was released early, begged forgiveness of Maria’s mother (which was granted), and worked in a monastery for the rest of his life, devoted to the little-girl-now-Saint who he knew was waiting and praying for him.

    You and I know both kinds of blindness from our own experience. Perhaps we have at times allowed ourselves to drift away from God, to remain comfortable in the darkness of a particular sin or sinful way of life; to seek gratification in places and things that can never satisfy us. It is a true friend who has the courage and love to tell us, “No. It is a sin. It is against God’s will.” And what a great blessing to be that person for someone else; to help strengthen the graces of faith and hope within them, as Maria Goretti did. And maybe we have also suffered the blindness of too much light; times when we knew God was calling us deeper but we had grown comfortable where we were; times when when we took him and his merciful love for granted; times when we spoke of our great love for Christ but then ignored him, needy on the street. Again, it is a true friend like Maria Goretti who is willing to model for us the virtuous love that leads us out of that blindness, the love to which Christ calls us all – the love that glorifies God in our body (1 Corinthians 6:20) and preserves our life for all eternity.

    St. Maria Goretti, pray for us.

  • The Vision of True Faith: Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

    The Vision of True Faith: Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

    Genesis 12:1-9; Matthew 7:1-5

    In the story The Emperor’s New Clothes, author Hans Christian Anderson cleverly lays bare not only the emperor but also the human tendency to go along with the crowd. This becomes most obvious near the end of the story, when a child proclaims the truth that all can see but none are willing to admit: “He hasn’t got anything on!”

    In the England of the 16th century, King Henry VIII was emperor and his new clothes were the pretension that he alone held supreme authority over the Church in England. For reasons related to his marriage annulment from Catherine of Aragon it was convenient for him to believe this, and history is clear that those who surrounded the king were like the crowd in Anderson’s story; they knew it was fantasy but called it reality anyway.

    Jesus had a word for them, and he used it in the reading from Matthew: hypocrites. The meaning of the word hypocrite has changed over the centuries. Nowadays we think of a hypocrite as someone who says one thing and does another, but in those days a hypocrite was someone who pretended, like an actor; a person who got along by going along.

    In the reading from Genesis, Abraham went along with God, but there was no pretense. Although to the naked eye he held a promise as invisible as the emperor’s new clothes or King Henry’s pretensions, Abraham was in reality clothed by God in a seven-fold blessing that made him the father of one nation and a blessing for every other nation on earth. Abraham would never live in the Promised Land but he would build an altar there to worship the one, true, and living God.

    This is the vision of true faith; it is the eyes to see the truth and the courage to live out the destiny that beckons, come what may.

    Born of the same faith, this was the same vision given to St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. When King Henry VIII demanded not a denial of the faith but a redefinition of it, they looked past their earthly king to their heavenly one. Christ was their help and their shield, and it was love for him and his Church that emboldened them to expose the naked ambition of a king who would arrogate to himself the keys of the Kingdom of God. Of course, that kind of courage comes at a cost, but the same courage that compelled them to remain with Christ did not abandon them when their own journey led them up the platform at Tower Hill in London to be executed.

    While we must remember the courage and faith with which these men died, we must never forget that this was same courage and the same faith by which they lived; it is the same faith and courage by which we too must live. In our own time we have heard politicians warn, “Religious beliefs must change.” Henry VIII might have said that. How little things have really changed.

    Like Bishop John Fisher, Sir Thomas More and all holy martyrs, our conscience must choose. Will we be the hypocrite who marvels at the emperor’s new clothes or the child who sees the truth and calls it what it is? The witness of the saints testifies now and for all time that there is only one Emperor; he who shed his vestments at the foot of the cross yet was clothed in the glory to which we all aspire and who comes to us cloaked in a host. Ask him and he will remove the wooden beam from your eye that you may better behold the wooden beam that saved the world.

    St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, pray for us.

  • The Sanctity of Suffering: Feast of St. Germaine

    The Sanctity of Suffering: Feast of St. Germaine

    2 Corinthians 5:14-21; Luke 10:29-37

    Of all of life’s difficult questions, perhaps the most challenging concerns suffering. It can be put very simply: Why do good people suffer? Of all the saints, the one whose life most clearly poses that question is the young girl known as St. Germaine.

    She was born Germaine Cousin in 1579 in Pibrac, a small village in south central France. When Germaine was just a baby her mother died. Laurent, her father, soon married a woman named Hortense who for some reason intensely disliked Germaine. It may have been because Germaine was born with a deformed arm, prone to illness, and suffered from a disease that caused unsightly, discharging lesions on her neck.

    Under the pretense that she might infect others, Hortense insisted that the little girl live outside, either in the unheated barn or under the stairs. So, Germaine slept on mat, was given only table scraps to eat, and never owned a pair of shoes. By the age of five, Hortense forced her to work every day shepherding sheep or spinning a quota of wool, a difficult task given the deformity of her arm. Regardless, failure meant starvation. As if all this weren’t enough, neighbors saw her stepmother regularly beating the child.

    Her one consolation was also the greatest; Germaine loved our Lord and His Mother. Denied a formal education, she taught herself enough about the faith to receive First Communion. She loved adoring and receiving Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist and never missed daily Mass even though this meant leaving the flock, which she innocently and simply entrusted to the Good Shepherd. No harm ever came to it. She loved to pray the rosary and would fall to her knees to recite the Angelus at the sound of the bells, no matter where she was. The other children noticed Germaine’s piety and would gather around her to listen as she taught them about Jesus and Mary.

    Adults also noticed but dismissed her as either a lunatic or religious fanatic. Still, no one could deny her charity. Even though all she had to eat was bread, she gave it to the poor whenever she came upon them. When some townspeople witnessed the waters of a local stream part for Germaine on her way to holy Mass, everyone began to realize that God was specially present to this starved, frail, abused young girl.

    Once this news reached her family, they began to repent. Her father finally put a stop to his wife’s abusive behavior and offered his daughter a place at home with the other children. In her humility, Germaine begged to be allowed to remain outside and it was there, early in the summer of her 22nd year, that her father found her. She had passed away during the night, lying on her bed made of twigs.

    The life of St. Germaine is so compelling, so heartrending that we cannot help but ask again: Why would God allow such suffering to happen? I think that before we focus on God, we should use the story of St. Germaine to take a deeper look inside ourselves.

    First, we cannot blame God for the suffering we willfully inflict on each other. Of her own free will, Hortense banished Germaine from the house, starved her, overworked her, and beat her. While few of us have ever gone this far, we have all found ways to hurt others. In anger, pain, or frustration, we’ve banished people from our lives, starved them of affection, demanded too much from them, and even been verbally abusive toward them. Like Hortense, they may be some of the people closest to us.

    Then there is the suffering we don’t cause but also don’t do anything about. Laurent stood idly by for years and allowed his wife to abuse his daughter. On top of this, neighbors watched in silence as Hortense physically abused Germaine. They may have thought it was none of their business, but the parable of the Good Samaritan reminds us that the true neighbor is the one who shows mercy (Luke 10:35-37). Again we must ask ourselves how we are Good Samaritans to the hungry, sick, addicted, imprisoned – all the needy of our time.

    Finally and most mysteriously, there is suffering that just seems to happen. No one caused Germaine’s birth defect, frailty, or skin disease. We look to God and wonder why He would allow anyone to suffer like this.

    Although we cannot know the answer in this lifetime, the example of this little saint gives us some insight into it. St. Germaine did not endure suffering, she triumphed over it. Suffering was not a test given to her but a means through which she might glorify God and sanctify herself. No one likes to have misfortunes or hardships come their way, but how would virtues such as fortitude, patience, humility, or long-suffering develop without them? Without virtue, the terrible conditions in which Germaine found herself would have been a living hell; with them, they became a sanctifying fire. Thus, it was not anger or revenge but love of Christ that impelled her (2 Corinthians 5:14); for the sake of that love she drew closer to Him and in imitation of it she brought others to Him. Such is the marvelous, inscrutable way of God that Germaine would become the instrument by which Hortense herself, the source of so much of her suffering, would repent and be converted.

    Let the example of St. Germaine always remind us that we are not defined by what we’ve been given but by what we give; not by who we are but by who we become; and not by our suffering but by our God-given dignity.

    St. Germaine, pray for us.

  • A Mother’s Love: Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

    Acts 1:12-14; John 19:25-34

    If my mother said one thing to me consistently from the time I can remember, it was that she loved me. She said it all the time. When she felt the need to go beyond that, she’d say, “You will never know how much I love you until you have children of your own.”

    To me, that’s a way of saying that the deepest love cannot be described, it can only be experienced. That may be true, but perhaps science has begun to come close. I came across a recent study that tried to capture the bond between a mother and her children neurologically. In one part, a group of mothers were shown images of people under stress and asked to imagine themselves in that situation. Various brain responses were recorded. Next, they were asked to imagine their children in those same situations and were again measured. The responses of many of these women were nearly identical in both cases; in other words, mothers tended to feel what their child was going through as if they themselves were going through it. As far as they were concerned, they and their child were one.

    In light of this, let us pause and reflect on the scene in our gospel reading today. Notice that John, unlike the other evangelists, places Mary right at the cross, not at a distance from it. Our instinctive reaction is to imagine what she felt watching her child suffer so. What mother would not suffer at such a moment, let alone the Blessed Mother? Despite the pain, despite the abandonment of nearly everyone else, Mary remained at his side. Over and above this consider her lifelong, steadfast faithfulness. The gospels make it clear: Mary is the only person to be with Jesus at every pivotal moment of his life from conception to death. She is his mother, but she is his disciple first. Her life is a testament to the advice she herself gave to the wedding stewards at Cana: Do whatever he tells you (John 2:5).

    Knowing that, her Son gives his mother more to do. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” (John 19:26). Note the high regard Jesus has for Mary. He speaks when he sees her; he speaks first to her; most importantly, he expands her role as mother to now include the ideal or Beloved Disciple. In the words of theologian Fr. Raymond Brown, this is Christ’s “ last-willed … act of empowerment that both reveals and makes come about a new relationship.”1

    That new relationship is Mary as mother of the Church, for Christ has raised her from being mother of the head to mother also of his Mystical Body. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Church proclaims from ancient times that she was born from the wounded side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross.2

    jesus-284515_640Mary understood this and, as in all things, obeyed her Lord. That is why in the first reading we find her with the Church – the disciples in the upper room – in prayer. Mary has the most marvelous intercessory role; obedient daughter of the Father, mother of his only Son, and spouse of the Holy Spirit. She is in the perfect position to intercede for the Church.

    Someone once said that the word ‘mother’ isn’t a noun as much as it’s a verb. So today, on the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, consider how Mary’s role from the beginning has been to ‘mother’ people to God by being a model of prayer, discipleship, and unconditional love. And operating on the principle that we will never know how much our Mother loves us until we have children of our own, we must remember that Mary’s model of motherhood is meant to be imitated; we too are called to ‘mother’ people into the Church.

    If we don’t know where to start learning from her, begin with the rosary. From the joyful mysteries alone we learn humility, love of neighbor, poverty of spirit, obedience, and piety. Every major event in her life a mystery, every mystery with its own fruit, every fruit centered on Christ. That is the key; Mary teaches us through the rosary what she teaches through her life; that bringing people to the Church is nothing more or less than bringing them to her Son and allowing him to stir within them the flame of divine love which truly cannot be described but only experienced, and in which we are truly one.

    Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.

    Mass, June 1 2020

    1Brown, Fr. R.E., SS (1994). The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.. p 1021.

  • Truth Beyond the World: The Feast of St. George

    Revelation 21:5-7; Luke 9:23-26

    When I was a boy my favorite comic book was The Amazing Spiderman. Every month I haunted the drugstore waiting for the next issue. When it finally arrived I’d read it over and over again. It was great fun imagining myself as the quirky yet powerful superhero.

    Although comic books date back only to the 1930’s and 40’s, the kids of bygone eras had something every bit as exciting: The Golden Legend, a classic of the faith from the 13th century, which contained in great and often colorful detail the dashing exploits of the heroes of ancient Christianity.

    Among the most dashing was St. George. Like most saints of the early Church, little is known. He appears to have been a young soldier martyred in Palestine around the year 304. What we do know is that there must have been something especially appealing about him, for he quickly became legendary. The Golden Legend includes a few stories about him, the most familiar being the dragon. Passing through a foreign kingdom and coming upon a princess about to be devoured by a dragon, George slayed the dragon and converted the kingdom to Christ. There is also the amazing story of his martyrdom. Arrested during a persecution of Christians, George was handed over to the torturers. Despite their best attempts, which included beating him literally to pieces, crushing him beneath heavy spiked wheels, and submerging him in molten lead, George miraculously reassembled unharmed. Amazed and inspired by this, the governor’s own wife converted to the faith. Infuriated, he had her executed and George finally martyred by beheading.

    But that’s not the end of the story. If he was powerful in life, St. George was even more so in death. The Legend tells of victories won by soldiers carrying his relics into battle, of healings at his tomb by those placing their hand in it, and of healings of those who touched the chains he wore in prison. His tomb became a place of pilgrimage and churches bearing his name were built as far away as Italy. Little wonder that England, whose Crusaders brought home his story, chose him as its national patron, that a kingdom in the Caucasus mountains was named Georgia in his honor, or that to this day Palestinian Muslims, Jews, and Christians would all honor him and ask his intercession for those suffering from various illnesses. Clearly, St. George became a man of mythic proportions.

    Unfortunately many stumble on the word “myth.” As early as the 5th century, the stories of St. George were dismissed as fantasy. Like some ancient, amazing Spiderman, he was too large for life; his adventures unreal and unrealistic; the product of uneducated, unsophisticated people. A fairy tale.

    They completely miss the point, as Chesterton knew when he said, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” Or, to paraphrase the French philosopher Jean-Paul Ricœur, the purpose of myths is not to tell the truth about the world but the truth beyond it. The deeper truth about St. George is written between the lines of the stories, not within them. What matters is not that St. George slayed a dragon but that, in committing to follow Christ, he received the grace to slay the dragons in his own life. Similarly, it doesn’t matter whether he was actually beaten to pieces, crushed by wheels, submerged in molten lead, and miraculously reassembled; the truth is that St. George loved Christ and did what he asked in the gospel; he took up his cross daily and followed him (Luke 9:23), saving his life by quite literally losing it.

    statue-1394654_1920Of course these truths are not reserved to St. George, they are for all of us. In Revelation Christ says, Behold, I make all things new (Revelation 21:5); for that to mean anything, we must ask for the grace to find and slay our own dragons. We all have them; they are the sins we allow to linger, the attachments we find hardest to put aside, and the fear, self-doubt, and self-condemnation that keep us from drawing nearer to God. The fear is real because the pain is real; it is the pain of having our pride beaten to pieces, allowing our bodies to be crushed by illness or infirmity, and submerging ourselves in the depths of humility. Nevertheless, the truth is that if we allow the power of God to work within us, we will experience what even the legend of St. George could never imagine: The joy of being reassembled into the person that Christ has called us from all eternity to be.

    St. George, pray for us.

  • The Other Side of Suffering

    Hebrews 5:7-9

    From the time we first became Christians, we have learned that the standard for our behavior is not those around us but Christ. Given that, it might be easy to give up and say that we can never reach that standard of perfection.

    That’s true. Left to ourselves, we can’t.

    But as the author of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us, we aren’t left to ourselves. In his infinite mercy, Jesus sympathizes with our weakness. Even though he himself never fell to the many temptations that weighed on him like a cross and surrounded him like a crown of thorns, he knows what it’s like to carry them, to bear their weight and feel their pain, but also to endure and overcome them.

    Fully man, Christ knows what it means to feel the kind of pain that leaves us without words; able only to offer prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him (Hebrews 5:7). Enduring that kind of torment, he must also have felt the natural reaction of the human body to fight against and relieve the pain – on this day, to come down from the cross – yet Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8).

    good-friday-2264164_640But Jesus also taught us through his obedience unto death that glory waits on the other side of suffering; that being made perfect is not a matter of doing all things on our own, but the opposite: Letting go of control and uniting ourselves more and more to the will of the One who is our true strength.

    This is the ultimate lesson of Good Friday. Christ’s triumph over self-will and self-reliance did not enable him to merely sympathize with our suffering or feel our pain but to be perfectly in himself the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him (Hebrews 5:9).

    We adore you O Christ and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

  • Holy Thursday: The Primacy of Service

    John 13:1-15

    Today we read from John’s account of the last evening that Jesus spent with his disciples before his Passion and death. The other evangelists take this opportunity to provide us with the Institution Narrative, or the words spoken by Christ that to this day are repeated by the priest during the Consecration at holy Mass.

    John does not do this; rather, he uses the occasion of the Last Supper to depict Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and commanding them to do likewise. We don’t know why, but it’s possible that by the time the evangelist composed this gospel account the Breaking of the Bread had become an occasion for people to segregate into groups and eat and drink their fill, rather than to unite and commemorate the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord as one body.

    passion-3807312_640By showing Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, the evangelist re-emphasizes the primacy of service. Those who would be greatest must become the least. This is the humility and love behind the gift of his life poured out for our sake, by which he becomes one with us and we become one with each other.

    As we approach the Eucharist this evening let us take his words and his actions to heart, for together they show that love leads naturally to service. Christ has shown us the greatest love through the gift of his Body and Blood broken and poured out for our sake and at the same time that this is the love that allows us to see others not as things to be used but as people to be served.