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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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Homily

17th Sunday Ordinary Time – Kingdom of Heaven

Posted on by Deacon Joe

1 Kgs. 3:5, 7-12; Ps 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-130; Rom. 8:28-30; Mt. 13:44-52

Jesus compares the Kingdom of heaven to a treasure we can hold, fine pearls to appeal to the eyes, and a great catch to appeal to the appetite and yet it is none of this.  Jesus has a way of drawing us in appealing to our interests yet taking us to a place we cannot imagine.  That is because the kingdom of heaven is not a “thing” we hold but a way of being.  Being in the kingdom of God is something that is lived.  We cannot grasp it with our hands but we can know we are there by living it and by the fruit of our lives where we can see the hand of God at work to sanctify us, save us and answer our prayers. 

There is the story of an atheist teacher who said to the class “There is no God.  Has anyone ever seen God?”  One student then asked the teacher, “Have you ever seen your brain?”  The teacher said “no”.  Then the student replied “then you have no brain”.  The kingdom of God come to us through invisible grace seen at work through visible signs.  We hear in the Old Testament how no one can see the face of God and live and yet God reveals himself indirectly through visible signs, the burning bush, the voice in the clouds, the angels as messengers.  It is the will of God to reveal himself to us but we have to seek him.  That requires our time to be in prayer, receiving the sacraments, and responding to the movement of the spirit in us. 

The Kingdom of God is reflected in what Solomon asked of God.  He asked for understanding as a way of being able to see, hear, and know how to lead his people.  The inspiration of understanding produced the fruit of a good leader.  The kingdom of heaven comes to us through the spiritual gifts from God while we are in this world.  They allow us to see him in our world and to serve him by our very being in this world.  The kingdom of God is transformative of our humanity into his divinity. 

God plants his law into the heart of a person to live in freedom within his kingdom.  It is a kingdom where two hearts are united as one.  The sacred heart of Jesus united to the sacred heart of Mary, the giving of self in the sacramental love of a man and a woman in holy matrimony, the call to Holy Orders for a priest consecrated to the Church and our baptismal vows for every Christian to be one with Jesus all reflect the real kingdom of God.  It is a kingdom of love in the giving of ourselves to the other.  This was the request of Solomon to receive the gift of understanding in order to give of himself to his people as a wise leader and servant of God. 

How do we reflect the kingdom of God in our lives?  Perhaps we don’t realize the great miracle of how God is working in and through us each day simply because from within the kingdom we have been sheltered by his grace not having lived outside of his mercy and love.  Recall the story of what is commonly known as the prodigal son who left his father and went outside the kingdom to live his own life.  How soon he discovered the consequences of mortal sin coming from being outside of the kingdom.  At the same time the other son who always stayed within the kingdom of the father did not appreciate all that was his and felt resentful of the father for his mercy to his brother.  The kingdom of God “revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom” and in baptism we are all his little ones.  Sometimes we simply don’t know what to ask for that God is ready to grant us. 

The Lord’s desire is to enrich us with the gifts of the Spirit that we may all be saints.  This cannot be unless we ourselves come to him with the desire to serve and not be served as Solomon did.  Solomon was the prototype of Jesus who was to come to serve the Father for our salvation.  The love of God is the love of his commands.  It is to see in his commands the good seed of his word given to us in order to serve him by our lives.  Service is at the heart of being Christian. 

There is an expression in Spanish “cada cabeza es un mundo”, every head is its own world.  It implies that we are all a unique individual, and in many ways different than any other individual that has walked this earth.  Thus, we often focus on our differences and what separates us.  We should also recognize what unites us is that we are all created in the image of God.  Jesus prayed to the Father that we may all be one.  It is a prayer that we may all find our identity in Christ and follow in his footsteps.

In baptism we then all carry a new beginning with a Christ centered image and purpose.  Christ is the sower of the field and the field is our heart.  In our hearts he places his law to come to him, to know him and to love him.  The seed is his word that is to bloom in our hearts and the fruit of the bloom is our love for God and others.   The pearl of life then is our identity in Christ to know ourselves not only as a child of God but as a saint in the kingdom of God reflecting the image of Christ by the gifts we have received and live by. 

This all seems great until we recognize his image includes the wood of the cross, love through sacrifice and justice through mercy.  Can we really love our enemies?  How can this be?  It can only be in the heart of the one who knows “all things work for good for those who love God.”  Our God is a transformative God.  Recall those toys called “Transformers” of the 1980s, how they transform objects to come to life as action heroes and villains.  God is the ultimate transformer of lives from what is to what we are called to be. 

Whether in life or death, God promises “those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified”.  In the end it is not whether we live or die in this life but how we lived and died for the eternal promises of the kingdom of heaven. 

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Homily

16th Sunday Ordinary Time “Master of might”

Posted on by Deacon Joe

Wis. 12:13, 16-19; Ps 65:10-14; Rom. 8:18-23; Mt. 13:1-23

The “Master of might…comes to judge with clemency”.  God is the Master of might who is all knowing and all powerful.   He comes through the Spirit “to the aid of our weakness”.  The Spirit within reaches to the heavens to “intercede with inexpressible groanings” uniting our will to the will of God.  God’s will is for all to seek forgiveness and receive clemency for our sins to enter the kingdom of heaven.  God’s care is for all but not all care to receive it. 

The kingdom of heaven lies within the soul having come through Jesus himself in baptism.  He is the gift of the kingdom for eternal life.  Today Jesus explains the parable of the good seed and the weeds in the context of salvation history.  The baptized have become the “good seed the children of the kingdom” and the “weeds are the children of the evil one” sown by the devil and the battle is waged for the souls of humanity. 

Our world then is divided into the “haves and the have nots”, those who have God in their life and those who God is seeking because they have not received him, for he desires all to be saved.  However, before we become naïve into assuming salvation is ours and we own it as an entitlement while the weeds are lost forever consider that for the Master of might all things are possible “for your might is the source of justice”.  The lost can be converted while the righteous can become perverted. 

There is also a different way we could interpret the parable of the good seed and weeds.   The good seed can also be Jesus and the gifts of the Holy Spirit while the weeds are the sin we carry still with us.  The mercy of God allows us as children of the kingdom to exist waiting for us to pull out the weeds of sin we carry by coming to receive him in the sacramental life of the Church.  The evil one always seeks to plant more weeds in our soul tempting us to feed the weeds by our indulgence in sin.   Sin however cannot remain when we call on the Spirit to grow stronger and deeper in our souls.  This is our time to purge ourselves of our sins with the power, love and mercy of God. 

There is among some in the Christian world outside of the Catholic faith who believe “once saved always saved”.  Salvation comes from God and the day of judgment awaits us all. This is why we hear today in the book of wisdom “you gave your children good ground of hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.”  Repentance is not a “one and done” act of faith that we put in our back pocket and then go on to live our lives.  Repentance is a daily act of seeking forgiveness for the sins we have done and what we have failed to do in our call to serve God. 

I recall my mother telling me the story of going to visit her friend when I was but 3.  Her friend had a son with lots of toys to play with and so we played together.  When we returned home, she noticed I was acting different so she began questioning me.  I started to walk backwards to where the bed was and under the pillow I hid a little toy taken from the friend’s house.  She made me return it.  Some say children don’t sin.  Did I know it was wrong?  Clearly my behavior said “guilty”.  Did I do it intentionally knowing it was wrong?  Again “guilty”!  Did I have to make amends?  My punishment for doing wrong was always going to kneel down and pray by my bed.  Do children sin, take candy from the store and hide it in their pocket?  

Since we are all children of God what have we stolen from him to whom everything belongs beginning with ourselves?  We can be guilty of taking our time, talent and treasure for our own indulgence never offering anything of ourselves for him.  We can also fail to love others as he has loved us without giving from his charity, we have received from him.  All we have and all we are is to serve his greater purpose. 

Sin is a constant condition of humanity in the weaknesses of the flesh, the mind and the will.  This is why we must call on the Spirit to come to the aid of our weaknesses that are multiple.  As St. Augustine said, “the spirit” speaking of our own spirit “is willing but the flesh is weak”.  We are weak to the many sins we must overcome in a lifelong battle till the end.  Our hope lies in the mercy of God who in his mighty power makes him “lenient to all”.  Hope is for all to come to the Master of might for our salvation. 

The Master comes with his power to empower the children of the kingdom.  We are empowered through the Spirit with the gifts of the Spirit to be warriors against evil.  Therefore, he will “rebuke temerity” if we deny him before others.  We deny him when we remain silent in the face of injustice.  We deny him when he comes to us in the poor, the sick, and the hungry.  We deny him when we fail to pray as we ought and become indifferent in our prayer life.  We must look to the gift of the Holy Spirit to intercede for us and overcome our indifference to God’s presence or we dare to one day hear from the Master of might “I do not know you”. 

Children of God are not timid in their faith.  We may appear as timid by remaining humble but humble people have the strength of spirit to remain faithful, enduring hardship, persevering not by might but by love of God and willing to deny themselves for the greater good.  God “rebukes timidity” as a sign of lack of faith.  The God of might gives us of his power for every encounter in life to stand firm with him.  Timidity reveals a superficial “skin deep” commitment to God and a fool’s religion to the world that sees only weakness to be exploited. 

Children of God are called to be battle ready.  The battle will come from the enemy, the evil one who looks for our weaknesses and knows how to bring on the attack.  Are we ready for the spiritual battle?  With every victory over evil, we become like the mustard seed growing bigger and stronger in our faith.  Others come like birds seeking to receive cover, nourishment and a blessing from the holiness of a child of God.  We want to be that person who shares in the cross of Jesus and is not afraid. 

The kingdom of God comes through Jesus the “unleavened bread” who we receive in the Eucharist.  He comes to take our mere mortal existence and raise it up like yeast to become part of his body in the divine life.  We in turn offer ourselves up to him to be the source of bread to the world not alone but with Jesus who transforms us.  In our love we become partakers in the bread of life for eternal salvation. 

The Lord is good and forgiving, not once or twice but constantly looking to build up the kingdom of God through his people.  The plan of salvation calls for the people of God to be faithful and the Master of might will provide the strength and power in our weakness.  We are his people called to come and receive Jesus, body, blood, soul, and divinity; called to take up the cross and go forth to be the difference this world needs. 

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Homily

15th Sunday Ordinary Time “Parable of the Sower”

Posted on by Deacon Joe

The parable of the Sower is the revelation of Christ himself, the word made flesh revealing God’s truth to his people.  It is a revelation also of the heart of mankind at all stages of faith and desire for the mysteries of God.  It begs the question “how much does it matter to see, to listen and to understand what God desires to reveal to us?”  Jesus is the seed that comes to us in baptism with hope to grow strong within the soul of a person and reveal himself in all his love and splendor.  The seed of baptism is the beginning of the gift of Jesus himself but it is up to us now to attend to this gift by our priorities.  Where our time, energy, and focus is spent reveals what really matters in our lives and God knows it. 

It could be that it really doesn’t matter that much to the one who does not understand the reality of God’s presence in the world and dismisses it as mythology.  We are all born ignorant and must be taught the “how to” of life, how to speak, read, walk and even how to understand our roles as a child, student, parent, and worker.  We all know that the first teachers of our children are the parents.  We love it when they begin to talk their first words and learn their ABCs.  Ignorance is replaced with knowledge, and knowledge with understanding and understanding with wisdom.  For many the sins of the parents is having failed to bring their child in the knowledge of God teaching them all about survival in the world and little about salvation from the world. 

Even the agnostic can attain wisdom since that person too is a child of God but without God it is a limited wisdom of the world.  The atheist however has heard of God and rejected God to be their own god.  Without the seed of Christ their hour of salvation is quickly coming to an end as they sink deeper into the quicksand of death.  Did they ever have anyone to teach them there is a God who loves them?  Ignorance of God is death. 

We also must be taught to know ourselves as a child of God.  Do we rejoice by teaching our children the “Our Father” in the same way as reciting the ABCs?  In baptism class, I often ask parents if they know the prayer to their guardian angel.  Not surprising few were taught the prayer as children themselves.  We cannot live a faith we have not learned how to live.  If we wait for them to grow and learn later in life the evil one will have the advantage like a bird that comes to eat up any signs of faith in God.   The evil one is the master of denial, deception, and doubt to bring confusion of faith and loss of hope in a God. 

It could be that God revealing himself to us matters only when it comes to the wonders and gifts God brings us like a mythical Santa Claus to the world but the heart quickly loses interest in the gift when it requires commitment, practice, or sacrifice. Now the road becomes rocky even facing tribulation.  We can quickly lose heart in pursuing the things of God.  The seed on rocky ground lacks maturity of discipline and perseverance.  It is excited to go to retreats, Christian concerts, and even enter into different religious movements but soon the excitement wanes never taking root in any commitment to the faith.  

We all live in a culture full of thorny ground.  Common sense understanding of life such as such as male or female is no longer accepted as a reality but a state of mind.  Christian values are under attack and the concept of go along to get along no longer works in segments of society.  The thorns of a culture of death are here to choke out any life of faith in a God.  Then there is the weakness of the flesh exposed to sin where sin is now a freedom to be honored not just with tolerance but with reverence in society. Compliance is demanded in order to be accepted in a thorny world.  It becomes easy to lose focus on living an active spiritual life by trying to “fit in”.   This is the test of our times no longer able to remain silent but expected to participate in the sins of this world.  Whose fruit will we bear and which god do we serve?  The God of heaven or the god of the world waiting to devour us.

Finally, is the one who has eyes to see the hand of God working in his creation, has ears to hear his call to do his will as an instrument of God’s love, and whose heart understands the truth of the mystery of redemption not in theory but in practice bearing fruit in all seasons.  We become “that one” the person of faith in the one true God who reveals himself within his kingdom where we are called to enter and see, experience and love, and live our God-given purpose.  We not only have to live it but it becomes our identity as a child of God.  Christianity is not something we do it is who we are. 

Some people will say “I don’t do religion I am just spiritual”.  Translation is they don’t belong to a God they are their own god as they meditate on themselves.  We respond “I don’t do religion either, I am of God”.  Religion is not something you do it is something God does and gave us to bring us to him.  A person of God comes to church so God can do his mystery of love in the sacraments and give of himself to us.  

We are call called to be that person but to be that person we must also be “shrewd as serpents and simple as doves” says Jesus to his Apostles “as sheep in the midst of wolves”.  As we often hear “ignorance is no excuse”.  We must not only walk by faith but know our faith and follow the teachings that comes through Jesus to his Apostles, his church, and his people as a community of believers.  Jesus is with us to help us navigate through what Saint John Paul II called a “culture of death”.  We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us otherwise it is a battle of the wolves seeking to prey on the weak that is “p-r-e-y” not “p-r-a-y”. 

Every day can turn into a day when the ground beneath us will tremble, the sun will be overshadowed and darkness can cover us.  It is then that we will discover what really matters and our readiness to walk without fear in the light of Christ.  If we desire to be and to remain as the person of faith, hope, and love in all seasons, then let us remain close to Jesus, receive his body and blood in the Eucharist, spend time with his Word making every day an offering of ourselves as we do the work before us.  Jesus comes to the humble heart that is that person of prayer who knows “I am of God”. 

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Homily

14th Sunday Ordinary Time “Life in the Spirit”

Posted on by Deacon Joe

Zec. 9:9-10; Ps 1451-2, 8-11, 13-14; Rom. 8:9, 11-13; Mt. 11:25-30

The Lord says, “Come to me…and I will give you rest” by living life in the Spirit.  The Lord invites us to bring him our burdens and learn from him.  The Lord says, “come to me” and he will teach us how to live and never die when “the Spirit of God dwells in you.”  The Spirit of God comes to us from the moment of baptism to be at our side, to lift our burdens and dominate our flesh.  Then we ask, “why do we suffer, why is life burdensome, why do we give into the temptation of the flesh and do what we know not to do and avoid what we need to do?”  We remain a student of the teacher and not always a good student of living life in the Spirit. 

When Jesus appears to his disciples in the upper room his greeting to them is “peace be with you”.  I imagine they were startled, not sure if they were seeing a ghost or a reality and fearful of how to respond.  His greeting however was more than just an effort to calm them down.  It was a gift of peace they were going to need in order to carry forth the mission to come.  The future was not a kingdom of luxury, royalty, or peace as the world defines it.  It was a future of hardship, persecution, hunger, and martyrdom for many.  Few would survive it but none could endure it without having the peace of Christ to trust in the Lord what was to be the “big picture” of salvation. 

The disciples were willing to be instruments of God’s love and focus on doing what Jesus taught them and sent them out to do.  They were obedient to the Lord even unto death unwilling to deny him to the powers of this world.  They received the gift of peace that comes with life in the Spirit. 

I was at a training and the trainer asked us to answer three questions and discuss them at our table.   One of the questions was “what makes you happy?”  As you can imagine and even among your family there are going to be a variety of responses.  We don’t all agree with what makes us happy and answers can vary from “a cold beer on a hot day” to “family, friends, or going on vacation”.  When we look to happiness, we look to tangible things we can touch, see, feel, taste.  We seek happiness in the exterior life where it tends not to last forever.  Even family and friends pass away and then what?  

When it was my turn to respond to the “happiness” question I said “to be at peace”.  We all know the famous quote from St. Augustine who said, “we are restless until we rest in Thee oh God”.   This restlessness is more than an uneasiness, it is a search for purpose and peace.  It drives us to keep searching.  The disciple knew their purpose and so they were at peace even in the midst of hardship.  We find both in God but we often seek it in the exterior life where it is transitory and we can never hold on to it.  Not money, fame, or power brings peace, not to our lives or to this world.  It comes as a gift from God that opens us up to life in the Spirit so that all things are then for his glory and our eternal peace, joy, and love. 

To live life in the Spirit is not this automated artificial intelligence as robots or puppets where God pulls all the strings and we respond without freedom.  Life in the Spirit is freedom as we grow in the spirit of God.  The Sacramental life is there to teach us from the moment of baptism with the coming of the Holy Spirit but it is only a beginning.  We must be fed from the body and blood of Christ through Holy Communion.  We must accept the invitation by our own free will in confirmation and we must continue to grow in faith, hope and love and all the Cardinal virtues in living life in the Spirit of God.  Most of all we must come to him in a loving relationship to be his own children. 

How is our relationship with our God, King of kings, and Lord of lords this day?  When was the last time we invited God to come to us and be “my Lord and my God”?  It is to be a daily invitation to God that he remains in us and reveal himself to us as we go about doing and living our God given purpose.  Life in the Spirit is an active life of love of God and love of neighbor.  It is a life filled with decisions to make.  The decision to come to Mass or not, to be patient or get upset, to seek righteousness or allow injustice, to be a peacemaker or a rebel rouser.  Life is filled with choices but we are remined that the choice we make, makes us who we are.  We desire to be better then come to the Lord to find the choice that comes from God. 

When I was going into middle school, I had a major decision to make that would determine my future for the next six years.  It was going to be football or band because in those days both were not allowed in school.  I turned to my mother for advice hoping to get some guidance.  I considered my mother a woman of wisdom, always giving advice to people and many of my cousins referred to her as “mama Chela” for her motherly ways.  The last thing I expected was for her to look at me and say “You will have to decide.”  That was it, that was all she said.  I was going to have to make this decision, own it and live with it.  Her job was to help me grow and prepare me to make difficult decisions and this was going to be one of them.  In life a parent prepares their children to make choices, especially because as a parent we are not always there when our children have to make a choice in life. 

Jesus was often referred to as “teacher”.  He prepared his disciples with many lessons for three years knowing the day was coming when he would leave them and they would have to look back and remember the lessons learned and follow his teaching.  Jesus also promised them and us he would send the Holy Spirit to discern the will of God and unite our will to his that we may be one with him.  This is our comforter but we too in the end have to make the choice to accept the teaching, to follow, or to go our way.  Life in the Spirit is the way. 

I saw a picture on Facebook of a little girl looking very stern and pointing a finger out.  On top are the words “Don’t worry about dying, you will live forever.”  Then on the bottom it says, “All you have to worry about is Location, Location, Location.”  Heaven, purgatory or hell and purgatory is the final cleansing of our souls to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.  You will have to decide the road you take but in the end the road you choose makes your destination.  Life is a choice, choose wisely!  The Lord’s love is for us to be in heaven.  

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Homily

13th Sunday Ordinary Time “Died with Christ”

Posted on by Deacon Joe

2 Kgs. 4:8-11, 14-16a; Ps 89:2-3, 16-19; Rom. 6:3-4, 8-11; Mt. 10:37-42

Worthy is the one who had died with Christ.  In baptism we have entered in death to sin and risen into life with Christ.  Life with Christ is a surrender into living the life of Christ, imitators of his passion, worthy of the cross, and recipients of the eternal gifts.  We died with Christ to be a royal priesthood, a holy nation.  If we have died with Christ in baptism then death has no power over us.  We surrender our mortal bodies in order to receive the eternal rewards of heaven each according to the fruit of our love for Christ.  This reward is according to how we received him in this life, how we served him in righteousness, how we cared for the “little ones” most in need. 

Elisha, a holy man of God personifies the image of God whose generosity is beyond our imagination.  The woman in the first reading is not mentioned by name yet she is recognized for her generosity to Elisha.  She, a childness woman could not have imagined Elisha would have intervened with God to grant her “a baby son”.  This is not the only time God comes to grant a childless woman a baby in scripture and yet we know that all Old Testament scripture points to the child Jesus who is to come into the world, the greatest of gifts.  When we give in generosity God’s blessings are multiplied in our life. 

Spinoza the philosopher says, “If love is the goal, then generosity is the road to it”.  We all search for love, need to feel loved, and desire to love.  Love is the spiritual bond that unites us to God, to each other, and to creation.  Recall the lyrics from the movie Urban Cowboy “searching for love in all the wrong places”.  The problem is the approach, the more you search the harder to find however the more you give the more it is revealed to you.  Generosity begins with a generous God who teaches us how to love and discover love.  If we seek love without God we will be greatly mislead.  In generosity we discover our true friends who love us at all times and prove themselves in adversity to be faithful.  God is faithful and generous and his love is everlasting.   Seek God first and true love will be revealed through God as he makes all things possible. 

This is why Jesus says “Whoever loves father or mother…son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”.  This seems a hard teaching unless we recognize that we only have a father, mother, son or daughter because of God.  Our purpose for living cannot be a parent or a child realizing that one day one will die and the other move away and it is not always the parent who dies and then what?  Our purpose for being is God who in his generosity has given us earthly parents and children but even they belong to God first.  They help us fulfill our purpose before God for our good and the good of others.  God first and all things will work for his greater glory. 

Our parents, our children are a gift from God that will return to him some day as we will.  Then we will realize how much we died with Christ in this life or failed to receive him in all his “little ones”.  Worthy is the lamb of God who is calling us to give our lives and follow him.  Jesus came into the world and carried his cross faithful to the Father.  He came to show us the way of the cross.  It is foolish to believe that we can escape the cross that is to come in this life.  The offering of the cross comes daily in all the ways we can endure the challenges we face.  We then must choose how we will respond to the cross.  Will God recognize us by our love response or deny us for having denied the cross.  We deny the cross each time we respond with “not me” let another or “why me” take it away.  A warrior for Christ embraces the cross with “let me” thanks be to God.  This is the way he sent his disciples as sheep to face the serpent.  This is the path to holiness and heaven.  Are we ready for heaven yet?  It begins with taking up our cross having died with Christ and in generosity to his love responding with “let me, Lord”. 

The Lord recognizes in his people their imitation of Christ and gives a just reward.  For Christ his justice is unbound and his reward is eternal.  The Lord hears the cry of his people and is attentive to our needs.  Let us forever sing the goodness of the Lord.  How?  Begin and end the day counting your blessings.  We are so quick to overlook all the goodness of the Lord when things are going well and so quick to lose heart when things go wrong.  We love the Lord?   Let it then be on our lips as we recognize all the goodness of this day.  We sometimes sarcastically say, “It is a good day when I wake up and know I’m still alive”.  No joke!  Let us be grateful we have one more day to get right with the Lord.  Make it count! 

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Homily

12th Sunday Ordinary Time “Fear no one”

Posted on by Deacon Joe

Jer. 20:10-13; Ps 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35; Rom. 5:12-15; Mt. 10:26-33

“Fear no one” except for “the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna”.  In this world we are to fear no one as sheep under the care of our shepherd.  Without fear we are to be bold Christians unafraid to stand for our faith and acknowledge our God before others.  This is what the culture of death cannot accept, that we are not to fear proclaiming our faith in the public square.  In fact, the test of fortitude is to acknowledge our heavenly Father before others or we too will be denied before the Father. 

Consider the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance.  With prudence the Holy Spirit can guide us to right action and with justice we can discern what is just in the eyes of God but unless we have the fortitude to stand for what is just and take right action, we can fall into the sin of omission afraid of being judged by the world and compliant by our silence.  Do we have the courage to let others know “I am a Catholic”; to silently pray by making the sign of the cross before a meal at a restaurant or if you are a student at lunch on campus?  Do we dare repeat the words of the church when it says abortion is intrinsically evil?  If we deny our faith before others, have we denied God himself?  Let us pray for prudence to take right action before others, 

We also receive the gift of temperance that we may recognize the right balance in standing for justice without falling into sin by extremist reactions.  We are called to be warriors for Christ by following as imitators of Christ and not imitators of the evil one.  Recall how Jesus corrected Peter for his wrong intentions, “Get behind me, Satan.  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” (Mk. 8:33) We must always discern right action in times of wrong by seeking the mind of God or risk becoming zealots of our own ideology.   

Just as in the early church there was a time of persecution for proclaiming the one true God, today the cancel culture is back seeking to destroy anyone who does not accept the mantras of what is viewed as “progressive” ideology.  There was a time when the compromise seemed to be silence, just keep your views to yourself and leave politics, religion, and money out of the conversation.  That is no longer the approved standard. 

Unless you demonstrate support for progressive ideology with chosen pronouns, gender affirming language, even required colors in clothing that support certain views there will be an effort to punish and cancel a person.  Unless people demonstrate support for freedom without restraint in termination of life of the unborn, assisted suicide, and gender transitioning at any age you will be persecuted. 

What is true for Jeremiah is become true for society at large.  There is “terror at every side!” ready to denounce anyone who dares to oppose what is labeled as “progressive”.  Ironically to call the current culture “progressive” is an oxymoron.  Our times reflect the words of Isaiah 5:20 “How terrible it will be for people who call good things bad and bad things good, who think darkness is light and light is darkness”.  This is nothing more than the work of the evil one and many have fallen seduced by a “feel good” philosophy.  If it feels good then do it.

Did it feel good for Jesus to suffer and die on the cross?  Not at all.  By his goodness he opened the gate into heaven by way of the cross.  Does it feel good to face your fears in order to overcome them?  Not at all.  It would seem best to run from those fears but that only adds greater fear.  It is in facing our fears that we struggle and learn how to overcome them.   Does it feel good to get old and see our body struggle with illness, our mind lose cognition, and lose our independence?  Not at all.  Yet, it is in dying that we are born again into the kingdom of God, the resurrected life and the glorified state.  This the world cannot understand or accept but we have come to believe in the Son of God sent to redeem us and give us true freedom. 

The “feel good” philosophy is the gate to Gehenna where some fall into damnation and others come to be purified by fire.  Gehenna between the 7th and 10th century B.C. was a valley where child sacrifices were made to the gods, the modern-day abortion world to the god of self.  In the time of Jesus, it had become the city dump outside of Jerusalem where the trash was burned, the modern-day confessional where we go to dump our sins and be forgiven.  For Jews it also came to represent a sign as a “place of purification” which in Christian eschatology is taken to be purgatory (Britannica.com) the modern view of washing our baptismal robes of our sins.  Gehenna is the fire of transformation from great sinner to great saint but not for all. 

It does not have to be Gehenna for us when we choose God’s way.  God’s way is the imitation of Christ.  Christ is the image, person, and God we are to follow.  For this he came to show us the way to salvation.  “Fear no one except the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna”.  Who has the power to do this?  Is it God after all he is the one creator of all who can destroy all; is it the evil one who comes to destroy body and soul through sin; or is it something we have done to ourselves by our own free will?  Let us pray that we will not be the one to find out the answer by having denied Jesus.  Remain in him and he will remain in us.    

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Homily

11th Sunday Ordinary Time “Repent and believe”

Posted on by Deacon Joe

Ex 19:2-6a; Ps 100:1-2, 3, 5; Rom. 5:6-11; Mt. 9:36-10:8

“Repent and believe in the gospel” is the beginning of our salvation.  In order to repent we have to believe we are guilty of sin.  Sin is defined by the standards set by the law giver and not by our standards.  God reveals his way when we are in right relationship with him.  The first step to being in right relationship is repentance.  To repent we must recognize our sin in the eyes of God and not by our eyes that become blinded with self-justification.  We must have a relationship with our God to know how to live by his ways. The word of God cannot be simply a list of rules and commands to follow as lost sheep in ignorance of our God.  The word of God is his incarnation in Jesus to be in right relationship with him.    

To believe in the gospel is to believe in Jesus Christ the word made flesh.  The word of God is beyond a collection of books of people, places and historical events that speak to our faith in God.  The word of God is a revelation of God that requires study to understand the gospel in the history of salvation.  If the Mass is where we come to offer our worship of the Lord where is our instruction, our catechesis for right teaching and interpretation of the word?  Where do we begin then to learn the gospel that we may live the gospel and become better Christians of the faith we profess?  We begin by turning to the Church for proper instruction with endless resources.  For example, the bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church work together to deepen our understanding of the gospel message.  The key is to begin and allow God to direct us to his next revelation of truth. 

Repent and believe in the gospel.  God is the just judge of what we have done and failed to do and his standards are based on perfection, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” we are remined in Mt. 5:48.  Who can say a day goes by in which we loved God perfectly, acted perfectly, forgave perfectly, and was perfectly charitable?  Clearly not I.  It is easy to say “I am a good person.  I have nothing to confess.” avoiding the reality that God knows our every thought and motive behind our actions.  God’s ways are not our way so we must come to know our God by way of God’s truth.  In a world that tries to deny there is a God, deny there is absolute truth, deny there is a day of judgment coming, “sin” is simply a personal sense of right and wrong at best and at worst nonexistent to the truth deniers. 

Every believer is called to seek God through prayer, word, fellowship and service.  Prayer is personal and intimate but it is also unitive. God says “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:20).  As Catholics we pray and we offer our prayers.  The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray and he gave them the Lord’s prayer.  The Bible is filled with psalms of prayer to become our prayer.  In the Mass we unite our hearts as we respond to the prayers of the Church.  We also go into our inner chamber where only our soul and God can enter to reveal himself to us, awaken us to his loving presence, and give us his light to follow his way.  Without prayer we remain but lost sheep, a doubting Thomas, simply another truth denier.   

The word of God is a revelation of God himself.  It is a gift of knowledge to be studied with right interpretation.  To correctly understand the fullness of scripture it comes through a literal, moral, allegorical, and mystical synthesis within the context of salvation history.  It is too easy to be misguided and to misguide others if it is only viewed through the literal sense.  Even those who try to accept only a literal interpretation of the bible admit none dare to cut off their hand or pull out their eyes for committing sin.  Scripture is like a Rubik’s cube of four colors where all the sides must come together at the right place to complete the perfect picture.  Centuries have been devoted to giving us that perfect picture of God’s revelation through his word but unless we seek and search, we remain in the darkness with only our own ill informed and limited understanding of the word of God. 

We are called to be a community of faith.  In fellowship we gather to offer our worship bringing together our prayers, the word of God, and to offer our service to do his will.  Anyone who claims they don’t need church and rely on their own prayer to God is like someone seeking water from a dripping faucet on a hot day.  The water quickly evaporates in a dry mouth unable to quench the thirst.  Graces come from the one body by the authority Jesus gave to his disciples to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.”  Jesus instituted his church so that through the sacramental life of the church his graces may be poured out on the harvest.  This is God’s way in Jesus with the Holy Spirit and through his church that we may “boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

To believe in the gospel is to believe we have a calling to service.  For some it is to the priesthood but for most it is to be a witness of Jesus’ love and mercy by the way we lead our lives in service to others.  Is our work a blessing we offer up to God or a simply a duty to fulfill for pay?  To believe in the gospel is to believe that God can transform every act into a gift of service and a moment of grace in which he unites his people to be interdependent for a greater good.  We become one body in Christ not in silos between God and each person but as a communion of saintly people who believe, follow and live the gospel truth.  

In keeping God’s covenant, that is his promise to us by living his commandments we become his special possession.  In baptism we join his kingdom baptized priest, prophet and king as a member of his holy nation.  As members of his holy nation, we live the gospel message in service to each other.  Then again nothing happens until it happens that we repent and believe in the gospel. 

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Homily

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

Posted on by Deacon Joe

Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Ps 147:12-15, 19-20; 1 Cor. 10:16-17; Jn. 6:51-58

The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist is the celebration of the summit of our Catholic faith.  We believe the Body and Blood of Christ remains with us in the Eucharist “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” to be received on the day of the Lord.  Believe it or miss the greatest gift from God we can receive in this world, Jesus himself the source of life.  Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross needed to be in order that we would continue to receive him in his body and blood, soul and divinity. 

The word of God already existed before the incarnation in the person of Jesus.  Jesus offers himself up that we may receive divine life “or you do not have life within you”.  Jesus says, “the one who feeds on me will have life”.  Was this to simply feed on his word or something greater beyond our understanding?  The summit of the Catholic faith is to receive the one true God in his body and blood in the Eucharist as the greatest act of worship. 

Moses said, “not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord”.  God provided Moses and his people the word of God and manna to eat yet they still died in their sin.  Jesus affirms it “Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will life forever”. This is a much bigger contrast that Jesus brings us for our salvation.  Jesus comes to perfect what was imperfect among the people of God.  The Church of God cannot remain in Old Testament times as our separated believers from Jewish and Protestant faith teach.  The Church of God is a Eucharistic body of believers to eat and drink of the one body, the body of Christ. 

The word of God provides us a historical account of the history of salvation.  It provides us the truth, goodness, beauty and unity that comes from God.  It also provides us a teaching working through the prophets, apostles and Jesus himself.  The word however remains only a word until it becomes incarnated into our very being.  In Jesus we have the incarnation of the Word and he gives us his body and blood that we may become incarnated in him and the word in us.  This is the mystery of faith that the Word became flesh and by receiving his body and blood the word becomes our identity in Christ, our very being of who we were created to be.   

“The Jews quarreled among themselves, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat’”.  Jesus did not respond with “I misspoke” or “I only meant it in a figurative way”.  He defended his statement by reinforcing it “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” as if to say “Am I clear!”  For this many abandoned him as many have left him today unable to recognize Jesus truly present in the Eucharist and in the Catholic church.  Why?  In the word of God, we can come to a conviction to choose God by way of reason but in the Eucharist, we must come to him by way of faith.  It is the greatest miracle on earth that Jesus has left us and yet we look for other miracles in order to believe.  There is none greater than Jesus truly present body and blood in the Eucharist. 

Jesus is the living bread that came down from heaven which we are to eat.  Old Testament sacrifice of animals for atonement of sin, sprinkling of blood on the people, and the eating of the meat were all part of the act of worship of the Lord, be it an imperfect act as it was it prefigured the one true act of sacrifice of the Lord Jesus to come.  Here we see the continuity of what was begun in the Old Testament being finalized in the New.  Jesus proclaimed he came to make all things new not by doing away with the old but by perfecting it in himself. 

Moses speaks to the Jewish people after forty years of wandering in the desert before he was to die unable to enter into the promise land.  What does her remind them to never forget as most important in his final discourse, how they were fed “with manna, a food unknown to your fathers.”  Then he adds “in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes for the from the mouth of the Lord.”  The Word was to become incarnate in Jesus, one leads to the other and Jesus in turn becomes the bread of life to be our food for the journey. 

When we come to Mass, we hear the word of God and receive a brief interpretation called biblical hermeneutics to grasp the meaning of scripture as it applies to our salvation.  It is the doorway to the soul of our humanity to open ourselves up to God in preparation to receive him in the fullness of knowledge and understanding of the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  Scripture lifts our souls up so God can come and carry higher into the divine life.  It is a life within the Church to be church to others.  To be church is to belong to the body and blood of Christ and to be a sign of Christ to the world. 

When we come to Mass, we come to enter into the divine life of Jesus not for him to return to our humanity.  We come to offer our sacrifice of the day or week in thanksgiving for all that God is in our life.  We come to worship and praise God for the forgiveness of our sins and the salvation of our souls.  We come to hear and listen to his word seeking so we may enter into his word in spirit and in truth.  We come to receive his body and blood as food for the journey in this life to get us to eternal life.  This is our liturgy, this is our divine worship, this is the proclamation of work of Christ in our lives and this is our act of charity to come together to pray, give alms, and to go forth to do the will of the Father.  This promise comes to us as we humbly come forth to receive him body, blood, soul, and divinity in fulfillment of his command, “eat and drink, this is my body, this is my blood.” 

Amen. 

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Homily

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Posted on by Deacon Joe

Ex 34:4b-6, 8-9; Dn:3:52-56; 2 Cor. 13:11-13; Jn. 3:16-18

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity and with it comes the revelation of God as the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit.  Today God reveals himself as “Lord”.  What is in a name?  For God everything is in a name.  God comes to Moses and proclaims his name “Lord”.  John proclaims whoever “has not believed ‘in the name of the only Son of God’ has already been condemned”.  God changes the name of Abram to Abraham, and Saul becomes Paul.  In baptism a parent is asked “what name do you give your child” and in confirmation the person can take on a spiritual name.   Religious are given a spiritual name after the saints and the Blessed Mother Mary when taking vows and the Pope takes on a Fatherly name as Vicar of Christ.  Why such importance to a name? 

A name gives identity to a person as a child in the image of God in the Most Holy Trinity.  A name carries with it a charism in how we come to the Lord to offer our very being to be one with God united to him by the gift of self in order to know, love and serve God.  No mind can capture the totality of God but by our name we can respond to our call from God and enter in union with him.  A name can represent the doorway through which we come to love and to serve God. 

Here I am Lord, I Paul, Mary, John, Elizabeth and let us add our name to answering the call.  We are called by name to salvation “for God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” through his name.  What name was he given as the Son of God?  Jesus!  Jesus saves!  The love and mercy of God comes to us through Jesus. 

Thus, condemnation is of our own making as it was for Lucifer and all the angels who fell from heaven.  Lucifer refused to bow to the Son of Man as the Word made flesh falling into eternal damnation.  Moses bowed down to the Lord and confessed his people were “indeed a stiff-necked people” as it is today full of wickedness and sins.  Moses prayed to the Lord to “receive us as your own” and the Lord sent his Son that we may be one with the Most Holy Trinity.  If we fail to place God first in our lives, we carry the sin of pride and break the first and greatest commandment. 

The cultural war of our times is a battle of pride over which group is entitled to be first.  One race over another, one social class over another, one gender identity over another, a woman before the unborn child, the trans before natural birth identity and yet the Lord says “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” in speaking of the final judgment. (Mt. 25:45) In the end the first shall be last because we did not respond to God in our midst.  The final judgment begins at the moment of death.  We prepare for that moment by the way we choose to live each moment.  Each moment is an opportunity to dedicate ourselves to the will of God that we may not be caught by surprise. 

In the Most Holy Trinity we receive grace, love and fellowship to live the moment with the joy and peace of the Lord.  Grace comes with the Lord’s favor to be a child of God, love comes with mercy to forgive us of our sins, and fellowship comes with the gifts of the Holy Spirit to build up the kingdom of God by the sharing of those gifts.  It is not a formula but a way to live our lives.  This is what we rejoice in that the one true God has called us to be his chosen people. 

The Lord has called us by name.  He knows us better than we know ourselves because he created us with an identity that is God given.  The world claims that identity is in the mind.  A person can choose to identify by any gender or sexual orientation and free to change their mind as if the mind was separate from the body. 

We were created for the Lord in mind, body, and spirit.  Otherwise, the body becomes simply an object of the mind to be treated as a canvas for art, mutilated to reflect another gender, sold as an object for sexual pleasure, and intoxicated with substance abuse to an early grave.  When we claim we belong to God, we belong to him in body, soul, and spirit in which we become the temple for him to remain in us.  What impacts the body impacts the soul and the body is to be given the same honor with which we value our mind. 

We come to honor our identity in God through the virtue of chastity.  Chastity allows us to not to fall into the sins of indulgence but to govern our mind and body through discipline.  The work of discipline sets us free to raise our souls to God.  Discipline of the mind to stay focused on God and discipline of the flesh to remain chaste for God for the impure cannot contain the pure and holiness of God.  Only in his name can we discover our true self, our calling and purpose that reveals the identity for which we were born and the doorway to heaven. 

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