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Homily

21st Sunday Ordinary Time – Key of the House

Posted on by Deacon Joe

Is. 22:19-23; Ps 138:1-3, 6, 8; Rom. 11:33-36; Mt. 16:13-20

Who has the key to God’s House?  “The key of the House” of God has been entrusted to his anointed from Abraham to David to Peter.  When Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of God this is nothing new.  Looking back in biblical history God has always called on someone to lead his people with great authority as we see today in the first reading “what he opens, no one shall shut, when he shuts, no one shall open”; and in the gospel “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”.  God is trusting humanity with the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  It begs the question “what were you thinking, God to give the key of the House to your servant?” 

Of course, our thinking is not the mind of God.  In fact, we are to put on the mind of God, to see with the eyes of faith, to trust with the heart of love, to be an imitation of Christ by dying to oneself that he may live in us.  I was listening to catholic radio and a caller this week said the priest at the church she attended said Jesus had made a mistake with the Canaanite woman and she corrected him when she said “even dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters”.  If Jesus is God and that we profess then God is perfect in his divinity and the ones who make mistakes are his people.  This is the perfect example of Jesus responding “Get behind me, Satan, you do not think as God does but as man” as he said to Peter who he gave the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  Again, “what were you thinking, God to give the key of the House to your servant?” 

Consider for a moment “who do we trust with the keys to our house?”  We may trust our kids, a servant that does our housekeeping, a family member who does not live with us, even a neighbor who has gained our trust.  We are by nature in need to trust others in order to function, to live in harmony, to ensure in an emergency someone can enter the house and take action.  We are in need of interdependence to be at peace.  Some say they don’t need church, just God and themselves.  How foolish to believe God operates by our rules and not his.  God instituted “Church” as his way and we are wise to follow his way. 

You and I, deacons, priests, religious in our humanity are imperfect but God chooses the imperfect to demonstrate his perfection when we surrender to his will.  Salvation comes through Christ and we come to Christ by coming to his house of prayer.  The Church holds the keys of the kingdom of heaven.  It is the Church that gave us the books of the Bible bound in heaven and earth as sacred scripture, the Word of God.   It is the Church that gives us the channel of grace through which Christ makes himself present to us in the sacraments.  It is the Church that guides the people of God to discern the will of the Father in our times as we deal with the issues of society.  It is the will of God to institute a Church governed by his anointed to whom he gives the keys to his house and through his house to the kingdom of heaven. 

God’s way is not our way as we read “For who has known the mind of the Lord” but the Lord’s way comes to us by revelation as we come to accept “how unsearchable his ways”.  The Lord reveals himself to his people where two or three are gathered in his name.  This is a truth that the Lord calls us all to be in fellowship coming to his house of prayer to receive him.  The Lord’s will is to come from him to us in the Eucharist, through him in the Holy Spirit, and for him by our worship in God’s house as one body of Christ. 

When Peter responds to Jesus saying “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”, Jesus confirms “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father”.  We come to God’s house of prayer to receive from the Trinity God’s inspiration, the revelation and confirmation of truth that cuts to the heart of a person and sets us free.  This freedom of the soul allows to face all our trials, all that God may be asking of us this day with confidence as solid as a rock, the rock of the Church. 

Some have said and continue to say “I do not agree with everything the Church teaches”.  There is a litany of issues people object to from celibacy of the priesthood, ordination of men only as priest, the church position on abortion, euthanasia, death penalty, confession to a priest, even the requirements for the sacraments.  The Church is an institution of authority instituted by Christ for his people.  The Church however is its people in which we all share responsibility for building up the kingdom of God. 

Some say the Church is not a democracy and we do not all get to vote.  The Pope is selected by vote from the Cardinals.  There have been many Councils in Church history called by Popes that gather together to address matters of church governance approved by vote.  The conference of bishops comes together to establish some policies and norms for the Church in its region or territory by vote.  What about the voice of the laity?  The Church is also called to listen to the people of God and calls together Synods in which the people are called to contribute as members of the body of Christ. 

Synodality is a process by which laity and bishops share in collaboration and discernment as part of the body of Christ.  Synodality means a “journeying together as a People of God” to listen to each other how God speaks through the one and the many.  Pope Francis describes synodality as “an ecclesial journey that has a soul that is the Holy Spirit”.  Synodality is a shared responsibility to walk together as baptized Christians for the life and mission of the Church. 

Some confuse synodality as God coming to listen to us, our judgments, our wants, our intent to “fix” what we see is wrong in the Church.  Synodality is us coming to listen to God through prayer, reflection, and discernment of God’s will for us guided by the Holy Spirit.  The guiding principle of synodality is that it is not about us, it is about God’s will for us.  Not only are we called to walk together but God walks with us so that our hearts may burn with his Spirit just as it did to the two disciples who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmus. 

The key of the house of God is like a jigsaw puzzle in which all the people of God hold a piece of the key through baptism but it is when we come together to worship as one body that the mystery of faith is opened to unlock and set free the gifts of the Spirit upon all the body.  We each hold and share in opening the house of God to all his people.  The key of the house of God is the way into the kingdom of God.  Blessed are we that God finds us in his House.  The key to the house of God begins in the heart of a Christian.  Together we care for God’s House and together we build up the kingdom of God. 

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Homily

20th Sunday Ordinary Time – “A house of prayer”

Posted on by Deacon Joe

Is. 56:1, 6-7; Ps 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Rom. 11:13-15, 29-32; Mt. 15:21-28

The Lord provides a “house of prayer for all peoples” who “observe what is right, do what is just”.  This is that house of prayer that Jesus instituted as he poured down the Holy Spirit upon his people on Pentecost.  Pentecost is considered the birth of the Church with Jesus as our High Priest and the disciples as the new Apostolic priesthood for the world.  The Lord makes joyful this house of prayer uniting our worship of the one true God with all the angels and saints in the Eucharistic celebration of the body and blood of Jesus.  It is the presence of Jesus in his house of prayer that is welcoming all people calling us to observe all that he taught. 

St. Paul calls himself “the apostle to the Gentiles”.  The other apostles were going out to minister to the Jews in the synagogues that had spread throughout the ancient territory during several periods of exile called the Diaspora.  While the Jewish population was significant it was also small compared to the rest of the Gentile world.  Paul saw his calling was to the Gentiles who were pagan and followed many gods.  In the end, Paul became the greatest evangelizer of the world.  Paul desires “to make his race jealous” that they may see the face of God shine upon the Gentiles and come to conversion and “thus save some of them”. 

Years ago, in the 1970’s when I was going to college in California, I went to a Native American festival.  People kept asking me what tribe did I belong to.  They saw in me what I did not recognize in myself.  More recently I had a DNA test done and found out that I was 53% Native American.  It makes me wonder without St. Paul being called by Jesus which tribe would I belong to today?  St. Paul takes Jews and Gentiles and binds us all together as God’s creation for we all belong to the one human race God created in his image. 

St. Paul reminds us that “God delivered all to disobedience” meaning we were all born with the original sin of disobedience from Adam and Eve.  We all fall short of the glory of God.  We all sin and are in need of forgiveness.  We are also all called to conversion that we may all receive the mercy of God.  Within the Christian world of this day there is a misconception among some that profess they have been saved and thus are no longer sinners claiming to belong to the righteous people.  They then are forced to project the illusion of perfection while hiding the secret of their sinfulness within the passions of the flesh. 

There is a joke which I will modify out of respect to our separated Christian faithful.  It says, “Catholics drink their beer in the front porch of the house while other denominations drink theirs on the back porch where no one can see them.”  This so called “joke” gives the impression that Catholics seem to accept being sinners without desire to change while other denominations hide their struggle to change for the better.  This is a sad duality to live in for it denies God the opportunity to pour out his mercy on his people when we fail to recognize our sinfulness and confess our sins. 

The Catholic Church in its wisdom by the gift of the Spirit recognizes that if we are to give worship to God in his house of prayer we first must come and admit our sins to be forgiven and for our sacrifice of worship to be acceptable to the Lord.  This is why our Mass begins with the Confiteor.  It is the visible testimony of our need for God to fill us with his grace and strengthen our resolve to be a better Christian, to live more holy lives, and to seek his perfection that his face may shine upon us as a visible sign of God’s mercy upon us.    

 It is in the Lord’s house of prayer that we come to plead “Lord, help me”.  The Lord hears the cry of the poor and humble.    In the gospel the Canaanite woman pleads to Jesus for healing for her daughter.  Jesus speaks to the truth of his coming “to the lost sheep of Israel” but as we discover the lost sheep not only did not accept him but crucified him.  Jesus in his divinity understood what was to come yet he spoke to fulfill the law and then he acted to perfect the law through the Canaanite woman, the law of love, mercy and grace. 

Jesus spoke harshly to the Canaanite woman for she represented a culture that was polytheistic, worshiping many gods who were condemned in the Old Testament.  Canaanites were inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by fire directly by God.  They were hostile to the Israelites as God gives to Abraham in Genesis the land of Canaan.  In this context we can say that the “enemy” of the Israelites is now asking for a favor from Jesus and he makes the comparison between children and dogs.  The woman however has the great comeback “even dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters”. 

A child comes into this world through the womb of a mother.  She gives life to this child, blood of her blood and through the womb a mother knows sacrificial love.  When a child becomes sick a mother’s desire is to wish the sickness on herself if it would heal her child rather than see her child suffer.  It is humbling to see a child suffer and from deep within the sincerity of prayer comes to life our nothingness if we don’t have God.  The Canaanite woman was both humbled by Jesus and filled with faith from her love of a daughter. 

I have a small inside dog and I feed him before sitting down to eat.  He knows to not be asking for food from the table and sits just watching.  He also has a great nose to smell and if anything falls on the floor, he is quick to walk around and snap it up.  He is a canine vacuum cleaner when it comes to food on the floor.  In this woman Jesus discovers the sincerity of her heart and her persistence in pleading to the Lord.  She gives witness to his disciples of great faith granting her petition and extending his mercy and love beyond the people of Israel.  If he can heal a Canaanite child then his law of love is now for all who come to him with great sincerity of heart. 

As we come to Mass today let us come with the same sincerity of heart as the Canaanite woman not acting out of the law of compliance but out of the law of love.  Let our prayer speak to our minds and reach deep into our hearts.  It is easy to fall into repetition of prayer and never truly pray.  Prayer comes from deep within, an honest expression of our very being, thoughts, feelings and experience of life as an offering of ourselves to God in this his house of prayer. 

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Homily The Deacon Joe

19th Sunday Ordinary Time – Tiny whispering sound

Posted on by Deacon Joe

1 Kgs. 19:9a, 11-13a; Ps 85:9-14; Rom. 9:1-5; Mt. 14:22-33

The Lord came to Elijah in “a tiny whispering sound”.  We live in a time with great focus on “climate change” and preserving the environment.  For centuries people have been waiting for the final coming of the Lord and the “end times” also called Eschatology “the study of the last things to come”.  When major tragedies of events happen in the world many question “could this be the end times?”  Today we hear of records being broken for high temperatures, major fires from Canada, the melting icebergs, record flooding in some areas while others have major droughts and again many ask “could this be the end times?”    Elijah the great prophet teaches us today that the Lord is not in the crushing wind, or the earthquake, or the fire but in the tiny whispering sound. 

The Lord speaks to us in the silence but we must be very still to hear his whispering in our hearts.  There is a retreat center not far from us along the King Ranch area called Leb Shomea where the rule of the center is “silence”.  You arrive in silence and you leave in silence and you determine how long you wish to stay.  The goal is captured in the Greek word “Prautes” meaning “with a still heart”.  If we really desire to prepare ourselves for the coming of the Lord then we must find time to be still and silent to hear his tiny whispering sound speak to us and enlighten us to his presence already with us.  The Lord comes to those who wait upon the Lord having prepared themselves for his coming.  Are we prepared today that he would come to us this day and reveal to us his love, his mercy, his presence through the Holy Spirit?  Have we prepared to receive him body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist, with prayer, sacrifice, charity, and love?

The end times comes every day, sometimes suddenly and unexpected to the individual who takes his last breath of mortal life and passes on to his day of judgment.  The end times has come to every civilization that has existed in the past most having only a few centuries of history before collapsing.  The end of an age has come from prehistoric, to ice age, Bronze age, Middle Ages and so on all coming to an end and passing on to a “new world order”.  For the world it is about the existence of the planet and the people who inhabit it.  For God it is about the Kingdom of God that has come to those who call upon the Lord to receive it.  When we pray “thy Kingdom come” we pray not for the end times to come but for the present kingdom of God that is with us.  We pray to be in his kingdom this day guided by the Holy Spirit, received by the Father and brothers in Christ Jesus. 

We pray to let thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.  It does not come in the thunder of the world but in the silence of the heart as a whispering sound.  We pray “let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation” this day from every evil and temptation we face.  Save us from the snares of the devil, save us from sin of the flesh, and save us from the pride of the heart. The Lord saves us in the whispering sound of his truth that speaks to our hearts, in his justice looking down from heaven that convicts us when we stray from the truth, and in the blessings that increase when we walk before him in the “way of his steps”.  God has given us his footsteps to follow.  It is in his word, in his sacrifice on the cross, in his food we receive in the Eucharist, and in his mercy and kindness we experience from his love.  That is why we say “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” because it is here, if only we open our hearts and listen for his voice in the whispering sound. 

In the gospel today, Jesus goes up on the mountain to pray by himself, seeking silence to listen to his own heart and be in union with the Father.  The disciples however are “a few miles offshore” on a boat when Jesus appears to them walking on the sea towards them.  These are grown men yet they cry out in fear like little children.  Jesus reassures them to “take courage, it is I; do not be afraid”.  Peter’s courage is short lived at first asking to go to Jesus on the water and then as soon as he does fear and doubt take over and he begins to sink calling out “Lord, save me!”  When the Lord call on us, he desires us to get out of our comfort zone, to walk in faith with courage called to make a leap of faith.  Most people are like the disciples who would not even think of trying to walk on water.  Peter dared to ask and was granted this blessing but like the seed that fell on rock soil his faith soon died and he sank into the water.  The Lord said to Peter as he says to us “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” 

This reading came to my mind a few years ago when I was at a conference.  One of the conference evening activities included the opportunity to do the “fire walk”.  They laid out burning wood creating a path of about ten yards and people who wanted to experience the fire walk were invited to participate.  The instructor first gave us the demonstration and slowly some chose to walk on fire and others not.  This reminded me of Peter who climbed out of the boat and discovered he could walk on water.  As I saw other people do it, I realized fear was the only thing stopping me and so I decided that even though I did not know how it was possible, my eyes saw that it was possible and so I did it.  What is God calling us to step out of the boat and onto the water for him?  What is the fire that makes us fearful and avoid becoming even a stronger person of faith?

I just read a short book by Mathew Kelly called “Everybody Evangelizes About Something”.  When we become excited about something we almost can’t keep it to ourselves.  If we get excited about something new, we bought, we tell others how we are enjoying it.  This is not only free marketing but a form of evangelizing a product.  If we are excited about a sports team, we love talking about it and promoting the team.  The question then is why do we fear evangelizing about our faith in God, as Catholic Christians?  Letting others know our identity as a Catholic Christian is an open invitation to dialogue about our faith.  Perhaps the next time someone asks, “what do you do?” instead of answering with what work you do consider first responding with “I practice my Catholic faith in order to serve God first.  I try to do it in everything I do”.   How is that for a segway to evangelization. 

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Homily

Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord

Posted on by Deacon Joe

Dn. 7:9-10, 13-14; Ps 97:1-2, 5-6, 9; 2 Pt. 1:16-19; Mt. 17:1-9

The Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord is a reminder of the “prophetic message” of what waits for those who trust in the Lord.  The gospel truth that Peter, James, and John witnessed was the window into the prophesy of life after death.  It is a confirmation of the word from God as Jesus says “He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”  When someone we know dies, we pray for the dead, we offer Masses, and we can even pray to them to ask for their intercession for us all because we believe they remain alive waiting for the Lord’s final return when our souls will be reunited to our body. 

In the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus, Moses and Elijah appeared beside him meaning they were recognizable, alive and conversing with Jesus.  At the same time something was different in Jesus with his face shining like the sun and his clothes as white as light.  The transfiguration of the Lord is a sign of holiness we are all called seek in order to see the face of God and live.  Sin cannot exist before the presence of the Lord.  The Lord hidden within the cloud proclaims “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”  The Lord is pleased with Jesus fulfilling the divine purpose for his coming into the world.  The Lord is pleased with us when we follow his commands fulfilling our calling for the greater good. 

In the prophetic vision of Daniel, the “Ancient One” who is God the Father is with “One like the Son of man” who is Jesus receiving “dominion, glory, and kingship”.  They however are not alone because of the “thousands and myriads” ministering and attending to him.  Who are these who minister and attend to the Lord?  We know the choir of angels are before the Lord but we also believe in the resurrection of the dead who responded to the call to holiness and are in communion with God as saints in heaven.  Heaven is waiting but not all have accepted the call. 

Some believe there is no life after death.  They believe without the brain the human person ceases to exist.  It is a false materialistic view of what it means to be a person.  Modern science keeps making progress in identifying aspects of the brain associated with cognition and emotion which if damaged ceases to sustain the identity of a person.  In the extreme circumstances It has been called “brain dead” even as the rest of the body remains able to sustain life. 

The theory is that the “self” requires a body to exist.  Science however falls short of being able to capture the nature of self-awareness, the essence of having “experience” and the process of reasoning to produce creativity.  The soul is the essence of life united to the body as a visible image through which it manifests itself.  The body decays and dies but the soul remains alive.

Some try to resolve the conflict of life after death by claiming life eternal is process of “reincarnation” into another human person living in this earth as a soul that gained a new body.  The problem is that this would then be another person and not the same person.  This is not what the disciple saw in the transfiguration when they witnessed Moses and Elijah next to Jesus.  What this group tries to create and explain away is that there can be no after life outside of this world.  To this we say, did not Jesus appear to the twelve disciples and then to many in his resurrection?  He was not only recognizable but also came in body to be touched and to join in a meal and yet something was different.  For one his body was not limited by matter as he passed through the door to enter the house where the disciples were gathered.  This was not a vision but the real presence of Jesus with his disciples. 

The Catholic Christian view is in the resurrected body to come and in the life of the person continuing at the moment of mortal death.  Many try to make an argument that it is unknown when personhood begins after conception, thus the defense for abortion is that “it” is not a person with equal rights.  This argument of lack of personhood is even pushed beyond the moment of birth. It feeds off the belief that it takes a material body at some stage of development to be a person.  The Catholic view is that life begins at conception with a God given soul, a created identity of a person and one that remains alive after mortal death of the body.  The soul does not depend on the body but the body does require a soul to be a person. 

The soul has a God given identity with the capacity for self-awareness, a free will to make conscious and moral decisions even in sacrifice of self.  Artificial intelligence is ultimately a programming process of information creating a product that is produced through a linkage of data points with known probabilities of the expected outcome yet no self-awareness, no conscience of right or wrong, and no moral capacity to experience what love is.  The soul is created in the image of God that sets us free to be aware of a God outside of ourselves, beyond the world as we know it, with the capacity to love and share our experience because we were created in his image.

The Transfiguration of the Lord is our hope and our window to the afterlife.  Let us believe and prepare for this glorious day. 

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