6th Sunday of Easter - A Reason for Your Hope

Location: Basilica of Saint Francis Xavier (Dyersville, IA) – 5 p.m. Saturday & 8:30 a.m. Sunday

                Saint Boniface Catholic Church (New Vienna, IA) – 10 a.m. Sunday

Date: Sunday May 25^th (6^th Sunday of Easter, Year A)

READINGS:

1^st Reading: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17

Resp. Psalm: Ps. 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20

2^nd Reading: 1 Peter 3:15-18

Gospel: John 14:15-21

FOCUS: Following St. Peter’s command, we should be prepared to explain and defend our faith.

FUNCTION: Attend the Cluster CRHP retreat; take time to read your Bible; learn your faith.

            Every once in a while, I’ll watch a TV show like Law & Order, and it’s always very fascinating; it’s interesting to see how the law gets played out (often in a dramatic way, but, hey, that’s TV).  Someone’s accused of a crime; one attorney in the legal drama is the prosecutor, who’s trying to bring about a conviction for the person charged with a crime, who’s known as the defendant; and it’s then up to the defense attorney to come up with an argument, testimony, and evidence about why the defendant should not be charged with the alleged crime.  Then the jury takes the testimony, the evidence, and the arguments presented by the prosecutor and the defense attorney, deliberates on it, and returns with a verdict of either guilty or not guilty regarding the alleged crimes.

          It’s exciting stuff; the lawyers have to be ready to give some good arguments about why someone should either be convicted or acquitted.  In a similar way, this weekend’s second reading says we should always be ready to give a defense for what we believe and why we believe it.  Obviously our defense or explanation won’t be quite as dramatic as the presentation by the defense attorney in a TV show like Law & Order, but it what’s we’re called to do, regardless.  St. Peter says, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence…” 

          This verse is often used as the basis for Catholic apologetics.  Now, the word “apologetics” doesn’t have anything to do with apologizing – we’re not called to go around saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry for being Catholic, this is just the way I was raised…..yeah, I’m sorry that we believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist…...yeah, I don’t know why we have a Pope, either…..you’re right, we do make too big a deal about Mary.”  No, no, no….nothing like that.  Apologetics is about offering up reasons – based on Scripture and Tradition – for why we believe what we believe.  This is something that we Catholics need to be able to do a much better job of.  Many of us don’t know our faith like we should.

          Yes, we believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but we might not have any idea where to turn to in the Bible or the tradition of the Church for why we believe in the Real Presence; and to do that, we should be familiar with the Gospel of John, chapter 6, where Jesus speaks about Himself as the Bread of Life in His famous “Bread of Life discourse.”  And we should know about someone like St. Ignatius of Antioch (from the early 2^nd century), who frequently talked about the Church’s faith in the Eucharist in his letters. 

          Likewise, we give Mary the highest honor after God Himself, but perhaps we can’t adequately explain why; and to do that, we should be familiar with the text of the Annunciation to Mary in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, and how the Archangel Gabriel addresses her as “full of grace,” and how that means that she’s been specially chosen by God and set apart in a special way to be the mother of His only-begotten Son; and we should probably know a little bit about her title, “Mother of God,” and how that title came about because the early Church Fathers in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries were trying to defend the divinity of Christ from heretics who tried to say that Jesus wasn’t actually God.

          Furthermore, we all know that we have a Pope, but we might now know why we have a Pope, and how that position in the Church came about; and to do that, we should be familiar with the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, and St. Peter’s confession about the identity of Jesus, and how Jesus named Him Peter and said that He would build His Church upon Peter, whose name means “Rock,” and how Jesus gave Peter the keys of the kingdom, giving Him the power to bind and loose.   And we should know about how St. Peter became the Bishop of Rome, and how successors were chosen after He died, and how the Church in Rome developed a primacy among Christians because of Peter’s authority among the apostles.

          The Eucharist, Mary, the Pope – these are just a few of the many topics that we should be able to talk about intelligently as Catholics; we should know our faith and be ready to give an explanation for our hope to people who ask.  How do we do that?  I think we all have to spend a little more time learning about our faith.  Maybe we need to spend a little more time reading our Bible; or listening to a good CD from Lighthouse Catholic Media; or reading a good Catholic book by someone like Scott Hahn or Patrick Madrid or Edward Sri or Brant Pitre; or visit a website like catholic.com (the website for Catholic Answers) or cuf.org (the website for Catholics United for the Faith) and read some of the content they offer.  There are so many ways we can grow in our faith.

          We must not be accidentally Catholic; we have to be intentionally Catholic – because we believe that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God, that He founded the Church upon Peter, the first Pope, and that He died and rose from the dead, and sent His disciples out to preach to the whole world the truth of the Gospel and God’s plan of salvation.  That’s why we have to be intentionally Catholic; we have to know our own story; we should be familiar with our family history as Christians, as members of the Church, the family of God.  If we’re just going through the motions, then we’re missing the point.  Faith is something that either needs to be continually growing, or it will shrivel up; faith is like a plant – you have to water a plant in order to keep it alive; the point is, if our faith isn’t being nourished by continued learning, we shouldn’t be surprised if it feels kind of dead.

 

          One way to nourish your faith would be to get involved in the Cluster CHRP retreat – Christ Renews His Parish.  Many people have learned that when they started giving more to God, God gave them a lot more in return.  Is it a sacrifice?  Perhaps, because it means we’re not doing something else.  But could it be just what you need?  Absolutely.  Give God a little, and He can do great things. 

          I especially encourage our Catholic men to step up to the plate about attending the upcoming CHRP retreat, quit being afraid, and become the kind of spiritual leader that your wife and family and this community needs.  The point is this: if we know our faith, then we’ll always be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have in Christ.                    

Holy Thursday - The Call to Serve

Here's the homily I preached for the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper.  Comments are always welcome.  God bless you!

Location: Saint Joseph Catholic Church (Earlville, IA) – 7 p.m. Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Date: Thursday April 17^th, 2014 (Holy Thursday of the Lord’s Supper)

READINGS:

1^st Reading: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14

Resp. Psalm: Ps. 116:12-13, 15-16bc, 17-18

2^nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Gospel: John 13:1-15

FOCUS: Our faith in Christ calls us imitate Him in a life of sacrificial service.

FUNCTION: Serve those around you, especially the poor and the marginalized. 

          To set the tone for what’s about to unfold tonight, I’d like to share with you a few thoughts; they are the thoughts of Fr. Robert Barron, the creative mind behind the Catholicism Series and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.  Fr. Barron says this about today’s celebration:

          “Christianity is a revolutionary religion.  It turns everything upside down, reversing the values and expectations of a sinful world.  Throughout his life and ministry, Jesus tried to inaugurate people into this new world that he called the Kingdom of God.  The nature of this Kingdom became especially apparent as Jesus gathered with his disciples in the upper room, a place of heightened awareness.  There he did something extraordinary.  Jesus took off his outer garments, tied a towel around his waist, poured water in a basin, and washed the feet of his disciples.  He performed an act that was so humble, so lowly, that it was considered beneath the dignity even of a slave. 

          We catch the novelty and shock of it in Peter's response: "Master, are you going to wash my feet?"  This is just too much for him; it is such a violation of the world that he had come to accept, a world in which masters were masters, slaves were slaves, where the dignified and important were waited upon while the lowly did the serving.  In that world there was a clear demarcation between up and down, worthy and unworthy, clean and unclean.  Jesus is putting his followers through a sort of initiation rite.  Unless they pass this test, unless they begin to see the world in a new way, they will not get into the Kingdom. 

          And this is why Jesus says to Peter, "Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me."  In the vision of the old world, one's life comes to its high point at a moment of honor, praise, glory, or recognition, at a moment when one's distinction and superiority over others is most evident.  The old world is predicated on the great divisions between master and slave, superior and subordinate, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, included and excluded.  Most of our energy goes into maintaining these distinctions, or trying to get from one side to the other, or keeping certain people on the far side of the divide. 

          But in the vision of the Kingdom of God, the climactic moment comes when one is the lowliest servant of the other: yes, even despised, reviled, spat upon, and handed over to death.  It is only when we have passed through this startling initiation that we are ready for the full manifestation of the Kingdom.”

          Now for my own thoughts.  It’s humbling for me, as a priest, to wash people’s feet on Holy Thursday, in imitation of what Jesus did for His disciples approximately two thousand years ago.  It’s humbling for me to stand at the altar and repeat – almost verbatim – the words that Jesus said at the Last Supper when He instituted the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist and told His disciples to celebrate that same sacrifice in remembrance of Him.  It’s a reminder for me that to lead means to serve; it’s a reminder that all true authority is oriented toward serving others.  I have been ordained to serve, to preach, to teach the Catholic and apostolic faith, to pastor God’s flock, and to help sanctify His people through the celebration of the Lord’s sacraments.  My life as a priest is at the service of the priesthood of the baptized.

          That is simply what my vocation is all about; but it’s not just my vocation – service is the vocation of all the baptized.  We are all called to serve.  When Jesus spoke to His disciples at the Last Supper in the Gospel of Luke, “He said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them and those in authority over them are addressed as ‘Benefactors’; but among you it shall not be so.  Rather, let the greatest among you be as the youngest, and the leader as the servant.  For who is greater: the one seated at table or the one who serves?  Is it not the one seated at table? I am among you as the one who serves,’” (Luke 22:25-27).

          Jesus offers each of us a model to follow and imitate.  How well do we serve our spouses, children, extended family members, brothers and sisters, neighbors, co-workers, and even strangers?  If we were brought before a court for having been accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict us?  I sure hope so!  It is not enough for us to be Christians in name only; we must also be Christians by practice.  Our faith must always lead to action.  How do we tend to deal with people who annoy us, or who tend to frustrate us and make us angry, or who like to push our buttons?  How do we tend to respond to people around us after we’ve had a bad day? 

          It’s when “push comes to shove” that our true character is revealed – we are who we are on our worst day.  It’s easy to be a Christian by name and by practice when things are going well; it’s often a little harder when nothing seems to be going right.  Could it be, that on our worst days, the Lord is offering us a little test to see how well we live up to the name, “Christian”?  Probably all of us have some work to do if we want to live up to our vocation to be disciples of Christ the Lord.

          How does that happen?  We have to live up to the call to serve.  We have to do it every day.  We have to do it not only in exceptional circumstances, but in the ordinary context of day-to-day living.  When you’ve had a bad day, don’t make it all about you – think about others; maybe they’ve had a bad day, too, and your bad attitude is only making things worse!  When your children or grandchildren or your spouse or other family members of co-workers or neighbors or even strangers ask for your help, try not to be grumpy; offer a helpful hand with a smile on your face.  Let your actions speak louder than your words.  Don’t tell people you love them; show them you love them. 

          Let your life look less like your own and more like the life of Our Lord – He was willing to roll His sleeves up, so to speak, and get messy helping others.  This isn’t something extraordinary; this is the ordinary call of what it means to be and to live as a Christian.  To be a Christian means to serve, to imitate Jesus, to practice what He taught, to follow where He leads. 

          May our celebration of the Holy Eucharist and our remembrance of how the Lord washed the feet of His disciples inspire us to serve others, and through serving them, to serve Him.  And may He draw each of us closer to new life in the kingdom of God.                                   

14th Sunday in OT - How's God Calling You?

Here is this Sunday's homily - sorry I've been so terrible about not adding them (tempus fugit).  I welcome any comments you might want to make or checking any of the ratings boxes immediately below the post.  God's blessings to each of you! 

 

 

Location: Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church (Earlville, IA) – 8 a.m. Sunday

                  Saint Boniface Catholic Church (New Vienna, IA) – 10 a.m. Sunday

Date: Sunday July 7^th, 2013 (14^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C)

READINGS:

1^st Reading: Isaiah 66:10-14c
Resp. Psalm: Ps. 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20
2^nd Reading: Galatians 6:14-18
Gospel: Luke 10:1-12, 17-20 (OR Luke 10:1-9 {short version})

 FOCUS: Promoting vocations is the work of the whole Church.

FUNCTION: Pray for vocations and support them within your own family and the community. 

          At the beginning of his ministry as a prophet, the Lord said to the Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you,” (Jeremiah 1:5).  This verse is a good reminder that God knows each of us from the first moment of our conception in our mother’s womb, and even before our conception since He is outside of time.  And it also reminds us that God has a plan for our lives.

          But what is God’s plan for our lives?  Does God really have a plan, I mean, for everyone?  Doesn’t it seem a little far-fetched?  We have to remember that He is God – He is not like us; He is perfect: all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good.  And because He’s perfect, God has a wise and loving plan for each of us – a plan that respects our freedom: a plan we can say “yes” to (like the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation) or “no” to (like Judas Iscariot who betrayed the Lord for thirty pieces of silver).  And God gives us that freedom – the freedom to say “yes” to His plan, and the freedom to reject it. 

          God has a plan for each of us; each of us has a “vocation” or a calling in life – a plan that, if we say yes to it, will bring us an immense amount of joy and peace, perhaps in this world, but especially in the next.  And it’s up to us to say “yes” to that vocation in life – no one else can say “yes” for us.  We can’t “pass the buck” – we can’t say to ourselves, “Someone else will do what I feel called to do.”

          Have you ever heard of the idea of “diffused responsibility”?  It usually happens when you have a large group of people: each individual in that group believes that someone else is going to take action – for instance, helping someone in distress – which often results in no one taking any action at all.  So it could happen that someone on the streets of Chicago or New York falls down and has a seizure and no one in the crowd calls 911 or offers the person in distress any aid.  It’s a pretty scary thing when you stop and think about; it reminds me of a quote often attributed to Edmund Burke – “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

          Sometimes the same thing happens in our spiritual life – God inspires us to perform a good work, but we brush it off, thinking that someone else can do it.  But the reality is often the opposite – God didn’t inspire someone else; He inspired YOU.  And in that moment, YOU have to respond.  Think of how much poorer our world would be if no one responded to the inspirations they felt – we wouldn’t have the Statue of Liberty or the Mona Lisa or the Declaration of Independence or the Panama Canal or automobiles or any of the other things – big and small – that we so often take for granted; these things wouldn’t exist if someone didn’t take the initiative and create them.

          My point is there’s important work to be done in the world; and part of that important work is the work of evangelization – the work of proclaiming the Gospel to the next generation and passing on the Catholic and Apostolic faith to the people of tomorrow.  In the Gospel, Jesus said, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”  Jesus is saying there’s a need – a need to gather in the harvest (a harvest of souls for the kingdom of God); He also points out that there aren’t that many laborers (priests, catechists, evangelists, etc.) to gather in the harvest, so we need to ask the master of the harvest (God) to send out laborers for His harvest.

          We often talk about vocations when we hear this passage, and rightly so.  The Church (and the whole world) needs priests, because without priests, there is no Mass; and without the Mass, there is no Eucharist; and without the Eucharist, there is no Church; and you cannot have the corporate Body of Christ, the Church, without the sacramental Body of Christ, the Eucharist.  We are the Church of the Eucharist – the Church founded upon faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Church nourished and strengthened to live out her mission by the grace of the Eucharist, the Church who daily feeds on the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.

          We need priests; and we can no longer afford to think, “Someone else will answer the call.”  Unfortunately, the no. 1 obstacle to a person embracing a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, from what I understand, is often the disapproval of parents.  Do parents make a sacrifice if one of their children wants to become a priest or nun?  Yes – it means that they will never have grandchildren from that child, or that their child will have to move far from home, or that they might not get to speak to or see their child as often as they would like.  But it’s still a big deal to have a child say “yes” to a vocation to the priesthood or religious life.

          When I was ordained, there was a custom for new priests to give their parents something from their new priestly ministry – I gave my mom the cloth that was used to wipe the oil off my newly-anointed hands and I gave my dad the stole that I used to hear my first confession.  The tradition is that the parents of a priest are then buried with these things after death, and when they go before the Lord and the Lord asks them what they did for Him, they can respond by saying that they gave Him their son as a priest.  Now, we priests are not perfect – far, far from it; my parents can easily attest to that.  But, we live an awesome life – able to be with people at key moments in life: celebrating a baptism or a wedding or sending a soul home to God in a Funeral Mass; and there are other graces, too – being able to proclaim the Gospel and preach and celebrate Mass and absolve sins in the sacrament of reconciliation and lead people closer to heaven.  It’s a great life.

          As we know, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few...” Now’s the time to heed Jesus’ words – “…so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for His harvest.”  Promoting vocations is uniquely a priest’s job; but it’s also the work of the whole Church – we’re all responsible for promoting vocations.  And so let’s promote it – in our families, among our relatives, to our friends, and in our parish community; and one day our community can have the joy of saying, “We gave the Lord one of our own.” 

           

 

 

 

The Greatest Human Hunger is the Hunger for God

Homily for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Location: Basilica of Saint Francis Xavier (Dyersville, IA) – 5 p.m. Saturday & 7 a.m. Sunday

                Saint Paul’s Catholic Church (Worthington, IA) – 9 a.m. Sunday

Date: Sunday July 29^th, 2012 (17^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B)

 READINGS:

First Reading: 2 Kings 4:42-44
Responsorial Psalm: Ps. 145:10-11, 15-16, 17-18
Second Reading: Ephesians 4:1-6
Gospel: John 6:1-15

 FOCUS: Our greatest human hunger is a hunger for God – and only He will satisfy that hunger.

FUNCTION: Approach the Eucharist with faith that God alone satisfies the human heart.

The Greatest Human Hunger is the Hunger for God

          The story of the feeding of the five thousand is unique because it appears in all four of the Gospels.  We’ve been listening recently to readings from St. Mark’s Gospel, but over the next four weeks – actually for the entire month of August – the Gospel passages will all come from the famous 6^th chapter of St. John’s Gospel – the chapter in which Jesus begins His “Bread of Life Discourse.”  This passage is uniquely situated at the very beginning of that discourse as a kind of precursor to what will follow.  This is a very important chapter of the Bible for us as Catholics, because it’s part of the basis for what we believe about the Eucharist.  But I’ll get more into that during my homilies for the month of August.  Here and now, I’d like to talk about the subject of hunger. 

          To feel hungry is a basic human experience.  Our experience of hunger reminds us that we’re not self-sustaining; we need to be sustained by something outside of ourselves – by food and drink.  We know that if we didn’t eat and drink, we’d eventually die.  We get hungry and we know we need to eat.  We get thirsty and we know we need to drink. 

          We might think for a moment about all the hungry people in the world who go without the basic necessities of life – food, drink, shelter, and clothing, among other things.  The Missionaries of Charity, for instance, and their work among the poor people of India come to mind.  They have devoted themselves to helping the poorest of the poor all over the world – people who are always hungry, who don’t have enough to eat, who daily face the possibility of starvation, and who are most in need of life’s necessities. 

          Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta once said, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”  She also said, “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”  She clearly sought to follow the example of the charity of Christ – His love for the poor, the hungry, the unloved, and the forgotten.  It was the charity of Christ that she wanted to share with the poor and hungry people she encountered.  She desired to care not only for peoples’ bodies, but also – and more importantly – for their souls.  She wanted to address not only the poverty of living without food and drink, but also the poverty of living without God, Who alone can satisfy the hungers and the thirsts of the human heart. 

          Physical hunger is an important need to address in people’s lives, but spiritual hunger is an even more powerful need – it’s the hunger and thirst we have as human beings for the presence of God.  In the Gospel, Jesus was clearly in touch with the peoples’ physical hunger.  He put Philip and Andrew to the test about the need to feed the people.  And when they failed to understand the Lord’s power, He worked a most amazing miracle for them; He took the five barley loaves and the two fish, and after He had given thanks, had them distributed to the hungry people.  And then, “When they had had their fill, He said to His disciples, ‘Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.’  So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat.”

          Jesus created a super-abundance of food – more than enough to feed the vast crowd of five thousand people.  But, in the language of St. John’s Gospel, this was only a “sign” – a testimony to the identity of the One Who had come from God.  After He had fed the people’s physical hunger, they realized that they were still hungry for something more, because “When the people saw the sign He had done, they said, ‘This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.’”  The food that Jesus multiplied fed their physical hunger, but only the One who had multiplied those simple elements could feed their deeper, spiritual hunger.

          But they still didn’t get it – “Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry Him to make Him king, He withdrew again to the mountain alone.”  Sometimes, no matter what you say or do, people will still miss the point.  These people also missed the point – they saw that Jesus was able to feed the hungry crowd and they wanted to make Him king, not realizing that He didn’t come to end physical hunger (as important as that is); He came, instead, to end the hunger of our human hearts – these hearts of ours that are always hoping to satisfy a deeper and more profound hunger – a spiritual hunger.

          And that is the drama of our time.  Everyone’s looking for food when the more important thing is the search for God.  To be very honest, we are living in a cultural context that has removed itself more and more from God.  We’ve begun looking more for bread than we are for faith; we’ve begun looking more for temporal goods than we are for spiritual goods; we’ve begun to place a greater priority on other commitments than on our commitment to God.  Somehow, God has become optional rather than essential – something you can either take or leave rather than something you can’t live without.

          And so it’s no wonder that we’ve lost our way – socially and spiritually.  We’ve drastically inverted our priorities.  It seems that popular culture is ready to begin an all-out war on religion and God.  Some people advocate having the phrase “under God” taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance.  Some people advocate overturning God’s plan for marriage and the family.  Some people forbid prayer in any kind of public place.  Some people try to tell Christians that they can’t act on their fundamental beliefs as owners and operators of business. 

          But there is hope – there’s always hope.  Even though culture may change – and sometimes for the worse – our human hearts remain the same.  It will always be true that only God can truly satisfy us.  The good news of the Gospel continues to be proclaimed all over the world and every day more and more people are embracing faith in the God who alone can feed our spiritual hunger.  And we continue to celebrate the Most Holy Eucharist – the food that will really satisfy us, the food that can lead us to eternal life, the food and the drink that will truly satisfy the hungers and the thirsts of our hearts.

          And so let us turn to Jesus not for the multiplication of loaves and fish, but for the food which is His Body and the drink which is His Blood.  And right here – at this sacred altar – God will satisfy our hunger for food and our thirst for drink, and more importantly, our spiritual hunger for Him.