Ex 17:3-7; Rom 5:1-2, 5-8; Jn 4:5-42

Where you focus your heart will follow.  This week I had the blessing and honor of baptizing two children and in the celebration after there were some newborn infants among the extended family.   The joy of being able to hold an infant was seen in the gazing eyes upon each child, both in a tangible sense of growing love in the eyes and warmth in the arms as each person took turns carrying a child.  At the moment a focused heart on that child was all that was important. 

Lent is that invitation to have a focused heart for “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” and it does not disappoint.  Jesus is focused on our salvation waiting our response.  This Lenten journey is an invitation to refocus from distractions and temptations through a discipline of abstinence, fasting, and “other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety” (Canon 1253).  Focus on the face of God on the cross for our sins, on the face of God in the poor, homeless, orphan, widow and the greater sense of suffering in the world with love that leads to acts of charity. 

Focus on the deeper sense of sinfulness in the silence of our hearts revealed through scripture study, in prayer, and in communion.  In the Lenten discipline we can enter into the Exodus experience of the people who hunger and thirst and are tempted in weakness to harden their hearts away from God.  Our awareness of suffering is a challenge of faith but also an opportunity to turn to God in repentance, humility, and trust in God’s mercy.  Do you believe? 

In contrast the Samaritan woman living in sin had faith to believe.  The encounter is with a stranger, a Jew who does not follow the cultural norms of avoiding a Samaritan but engages her.  Jesus’ thirst for water is both an act of humanity and divinity as he prepares her heart for living water after confessing her sinful lifestyle.  Jesus arouses her faith as she responds, “Are you greater than our father Jacob?”  How often we encounter someone of a different faith but share a belief in one God.  Is not our search for the same living water and our encounter an opportunity to draw water from the well of faith in the other?  In dialogue a Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim is an encounter with “a spring of water welling up to eternal life”.  The faith of our ancestors meets at the mountain of God to do the will of the Father. 

Our mountain is the altar of sacrifice in the Eucharist where we offer our sacrifice of worship and thanksgiving in spirit and truth to “acclaim the rock of our salvation”.  With joyful praise our hope and focus is to turn to the one who says, “I have called you friends” (John 15:15) and invite him to stay with us.  St. Thomas calls friendship a virtue which is an excellence of attention to love of God and love of neighbor. 

In the celebration event following the baptisms there was plenty of deserts to eat.  One young man asked his mother if it was ok to cheat a little and have some desert.  Apparently he had given up sweats for Lent.  The mother responded, “that’s between you and God.”  His focus shifted to a conversation and he passed on the temptation.  Let us keep our focus on him in trials and temptation and listen to the voice in our hearts where the spirit dwells ready to well up our souls with spiritual food for eternity. 

 

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Is. 8: 23-9; 1 Cor. 1:10-13, 17; Mt. 4:12-23

To the universal church, wherever you go God is there.  Have you received a warm embrace from heaven today?  Perhaps it came through the hug of a spouse, a child, a parent or perhaps in a word that reaches into the heart.  Perhaps it is simply an act of kindness when it reaches into the interior as a gift of grace from the Holy Spirit. 

Having attended the Deacon’s retreat for deacons and their wives at the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle in San Juan, Texas this past weekend, our retreat master was Fa. Greg Labus.  Fa. Greg focused on the kerygma, which is the apostolic “proclamation” of salvation through Jesus Christ, coming into our lives.  It is founded as the simple but profound message, “Do I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”  This is a common calling from our separated brothers and sisters from other denominations but somewhere between the call and the summit, Jesus Christ in the Eucharistic celebration of the Mass we have not dispelled the darkness that hovers over the “land west of the Jordan” our land in a culture of death.  Is “The Lord my light and my salvation”? 

The Catholic call for a “New Evangelization” began with (Saint) Pope John Paul II, continued with Benedict XVI (Emeritus), and now Pope Francis challenges us to be witnesses to the light.  The challenge is not anything new but a return to a process of evangelization that begins with that embrace from heaven in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.  

We also reflect in today’s readings from 1 Corinthians that what is current among Christianity is not new.  We could place ourselves back in time and say, “I belong to Paul the Evangelicals;” or “I belong to Apollos the Baptists” or “I belong the Cephas the rock of the Catholic church” or simply “I belong to Christ in the Mega churches, no sacraments just Christ and me.  Yes what is new is not new.  It remains a struggle for unity of faith when we separate Christ into pieces and claim to have Him for ourselves.  We want to hold onto Him when it is He who holds us in his embrace. 

Paul’s writing to the Corinthians does not resolve the potential division when he says, “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel”.  Is Paul minimizing the sacrament of baptism and potentially all the other sacraments in favor of the Kerygma?  Is he the founder of proclaiming the Word as “scripture only” authority?  A definite “No”!  Paul is understood in the historical contextual meaning of the Word in place and time.  Corinthians was known for its sea side “C’est la vie” such is life filled with sin and corruption as a major hub of commerce.  Baptism was the opening of the heart to Christ to allow the gift of the Holy Spirit after repentance of our sins.  Thus the soul was then receptive to the kerygma through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, those infused virtues to grow in faith, hope, and love.  Paul understood the baptized as a “child” of faith in need of catechesis in order to grow in the word or division would prevail among the community.  

What was then is now as more and more people claim to be atheist according to gallop polls and as a culture of death rises in genocide of the unborn, and as science races to be the first in man’s search to clone himself as his own God.  Meanwhile, the essential core of human goodness, truth, beauty, and love is shattered and replaced by a core value in separation of church and state. The new evangelization is a need to go forth into the world with the kerygma, the “proclamation of the word” to the unbaptized and the baptized to grow in their faith, hope, and love through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. 

The kerygma is a call to conversion in which we evangelize before the mind is prepared to be catechized to live a life sacramentalized least we become scandalized when faith and reason don’t meet with truth, goodness, beauty, and love.  The process of conversion, the kerygma is to be a voice in our times for truth, goodness, beauty and love comes in the person of Jesus Christ.  The witness of the “sacramentalized” is beyond any preaching as pastors, parents, or friends.  It is being the light of Jesus to others, to know Him and to bring others into an encounter with Him.  Then our sacraments in how we “deal” with Him become how we allow Him to deal with us. 

As fishers of souls we must begin anew with our evangelization, not in the practice of “catch and release” but in the call to “come home”.  If we catch and baptize only to release to a culture of death our institutions will continue to decrease in faith in souls who do not hunger for Him.  Christ himself in the church, the sacraments, and the faithful is always present.  Wherever you go He is there.  Catch and release becomes baptized paganism for souls who appear for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, but whose lifestyle and values appear more secular than a testimony of faith and life in Jesus Christ. 

It has become a tradition to attribute to St. Francis of Assisi the expression, “Preach always, and speak when necessary” but there appears to be no official record to verify this.  Still in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi I would say, “Preach always by your witness and proclaim the kerygma”, that is the whole life and ministry of Jesus Christ by your faith in action. 

As we reached the second day of our retreat we were “sent forth” with a message from our bishop, Daniel Flores.  He reminded us of the three pillars of the church, preach, worship, and charity.  We preach the Word that leads to the summit of worship in the Mass with our acts of charity.  Today as yesterday we have many poor in our churches, homes, and among the homeless.  Yes that includes those without the means of food, clothing, and shelter but we also face the greatest poverty in our community, that of spiritual poverty who have not accepted the embrace of heaven. 

That today we hear his voice and feel his embrace.  Come home to holiness in Jesus Christ.  Come home to the fullness of truth, goodness, beauty, and love.  Come home to the universal church in his body, his sacrifice, his love, always present.  Come home to Jesus Christ.  Wherever you are, He is there.     

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Happy New Year to the redeemed in Christ!  Renewed in Christ we give thanks because the gift of God’s son fills us with his blessings.  Because he has come we can say “Our Father”, not slaves of the world but heirs to his kingdom. 

Jesus born of a woman is in the heart of the believer.  Jesus fully human and fully divine we call God, and Mary the Mother of God in the mystery of the Trinity.  Today among many Christian denominations it is scandalous to call Mary the Mother of God.  God is the creator of all without beginning, the uncreated.  How can Catholics say she is the mother of an uncreated God?  We say it because the uncreated God came to us as a child through Mary.  God the son has always been with the Father and the Spirit and now he comes to be with us.  To deny Mary as the Mother of God is to deny Jesus as God incarnate, a blasphemy. 

This truth was a struggle for the early church believers since his coming and remains hidden behind the veil for some Christian denominations.  Some tried to make him half human and half God, others lower than God the Father but higher than humanity, an in between God.  Even today there are many who cannot deny the reality of his history on earth and accept him as another great prophet in the world. 

The resistance to Mary as Mother of God is the resistance of Jesus as God fully human and fully divine.  To be renewed in Jesus is to cast away all doubt that in his coming he forgives our sins, heals the sick, and gives life to the dead.  He opens the way to salvation and brings comfort to all our trials in life.  Believe and have faith that he is with us and in our repentance he gives us his blessing.  It is the blessing to have courage, to trust, to go forth filled with his grace. 

Mary was full of grace preserved without sin since her conception to be the perfect vessel for his coming.  This week I was listening to a television evangelist who asked the question, “who has cheated death?”  He boldly claimed he knew of only one and that is Jesus Christ in the resurrection.  We proclaim Jesus suffered death and rose again and is seated at the Father’s right hand.  That is our creed but I suspect there is someone else who is next to Him also, Mary.  What we believe from Mary’s perfect fiat of love is that she also defied death and was assumed into heaven.  Many Protestants don’t have a Mariology belief.  For many she is just “the woman” who gave birth to Jesus.  Mary’s perfection in Christ conquered death and we can too, that is our hope.  Mary is the model of humanity to be perfect as God is perfect.  In this we are to avoid sin and the near temptation to sin and be children of the light to the world.  When we sin we are to seek forgiveness and reconciliation, and he will “cleanse us from every wrongdoing”.  Perfect faith, perfect hope, and perfect love rest in Jesus who came to show us the way. 

Even as we celebrate this Christmas season in the church we are reminded of the empty tomb, the purpose of his coming.  The sacrifice of the Mass is the sacrifice he still suffers for our sins and his coming again to redeem us.  Jesus expiation is “not for our sins only but for those of the whole world”.  Just as in times past the forces of evil in the world appear to be gaining strength against the forces of good.  The evil one believes in Jesus as a sign of contradiction against his limited powers and every day in the Eucharist he is being overthrown by Jesus sacrifice of the Mass. 

As soon as the child Jesus is born the angel warns Joseph to take Mary and the child and flee into Egypt.  King Herod in his paranoia and fear understood and believed at least in part in the power of the lowly rising up in revolt against him.  He understood that this child was a “sign of contradiction” against his kingdom. 

Herod is the embodiment of evil at that time in history.  He had no trouble ordering the massacre of those Holy Innocent children who were under two years of age.  Why?  He had already committed the sin of killing his own children to preserve his power.  The next step came easy in killing the children of others. 

This is one reason we have become a culture of death.  Once a society accepts as good what is evil in the freedom to kill the unborn the next step is easy.  The elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled will follow because they are the “other” unlike those in power.  Today there are reports on the increase of children being killed in the home and Child Protective Services keep increasing their caseloads of child abuse. 

The evil one continues to seek and find new souls who will carry his evil and destruction as we see in Aleppo where there continues to be a massacre of innocents while the world watches from afar.  We must pray for the sins of the world.  We need more than a conversion of souls we need a cultural revolution against the powers of darkness.  We need to return to “In God We Trust”. 

Let us learn from the shepherds who found Mary, Joseph and the infant in the manger.  They believed and received the light of Jesus and immediately became a vessel of the light and went forth to make known the message.  They also returned to glorify and praise God. 

On Friday we celebrated the solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  Jesus sanctifies and establishes the family and the center of faith.  Recall that in the Old Testament what carried importance was what tribe the person belonged to, like the tribe of Judah.  Jesus comes and makes our families the center of his presence to sanctify others. 

Fathers when was the last time you gave your blessing to your children, was it when the priest asked you to at their baptism?  Before it was the practice of the parents to give your children a blessing before they left the house in the morning.  It was also the practice when someone was dying to have the family come and receive a blessing before the person died.   Let us not wait until death is knocking at the door to give our children a blessing.  You may be surprised at how it improves behavior because it is a sign of love, acceptance, and encouragement to go forth into the world knowing God loves them and you love them. 

Mothers are you a contradiction to the world?  The world expects mothers to serve the world’s labor shortage.  Many mothers work two jobs, one full time and one part-time while the average number of children per family continues to decline.  It is considered “irresponsible” to have many children in these times.  We raise children to expect to live their own lives and we don’t want to be a burden to them as we age.  It is the mother who is the teacher of learning how to care for others as Mary cared for baby Jesus.  In the home the child learns to be helpful, share his time, talent and treasure with his siblings.  Mothers have the gift in their voice to be strong yet gentle, firm yet compassionate, an authority and yet a friend.  Just ask the children “who’s the boss at home” and most say “mom”. 

Jesus came into the world to be a contradiction and bring the fullness of righteous change.  He is the change agent to make a better world but he is working through us as he did through the disciples who became Apostles and it begins in the home. 

May the Lord bless you, his face shine upon you, be gracious to you, and in his kindness give us his peace.  Amen. 

           

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