Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time - August 31, 2014

Homily for August 31, 2014

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary time

Don’t Waste Your Life

 

            St. Charles Borromeo, a sixteenth-century Italian bishop, had a great fondness for playing pool. One day he was playing a pleasant billiards game with a couple of his priests when one asked him, “Bishop, what would you do if you knew that you were going to die in five minutes? Would you drop to your knees asking for God’s mercy, would you run off to confession? Would you say your final goodbyes to your family?”

            The bishop calmly responded as he lined up for a shot, “I would continue playing pool. I began this game with the intention of giving glory to God, so why should I stop it?”

            Here’s someone who knew why he was put on this earth – to become holy. If our goal isn’t to glorify God and get to Heaven, then we’re just wasting our time.

            Consider this: if the Lord Jesus appeared to you at this very moment and said to you, “Tell me why I should give you another day of life.” What would you say in response? Will we be honest and say to the Lord, “Well, Lord, honestly I’m probably going to waste it.”

            The only true waste of time is to go through life without intending to please the Lord.

            The second reading is my favorite passage of St. Paul’s. Listen to the impact of his words: “Offer your bodies to God as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing.” This means that everything we do in this bodily life must be directed towards Him. He goes on to say: “Do not conform yourself to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

            Let’s take a look at that. Don’t conform yourself to this age: what are the negative values that this twenty-first century American culture espouses? Things like self-centeredness and narcissism. Just look at the recent phenomenon of the “Ice Bucket Challenge” – for those who don’t know what that is, it’s where people challenge other people to take videos of themselves dousing themselves with ice water to raise money for Lou Gehrig’s Disease research. While I’m all for raising money for a good cause, this has been a perfect example of our “look-at-me” culture. People try to outdo one another online as they post videos that are all about how generous they are. Jesus instead said, “When you give, don’t let your right hand know what your left is doing” – a far cry from, “Take a video of yourself being generous and post it online!”

            Other values our culture espouses are things like idolizing physical perfection – just look at all of the media attention given to LeBron James when he switched teams. Somehow I doubt a computer programmer taking a new job would garner such excitement. Our culture promotes physical pleasure as something to worship – I mean, this is the culture that produced Fifty Shades of Grey, for goodness sake! It’s also a culture that focuses on political correctness and tolerance instead of right and wrong.

            So St. Paul tells us not to conform to this age. Jesus says likewise to Peter: He criticizes Peter for thinking, not as God does, but as human beings do. If we want to know God’s thoughts for us, it’s very simple. God is passionately, personally in love with us and wants us to spend eternity with Him. Do we think the same way about God – that we are passionately in love with Him and desire, more than anything else, to spend eternity with Him? Or have we bought into the values that our culture espouses? What is the driving force of your life – Heaven, or the things of the world?

            At the end of our lives, we will have to give an account to God of how we’ve used this precious gift of time we’ve been given. How much of it will we have to admit we wasted because we used the time to serve ourselves instead of trying to get us to Heaven?

            Now, don’t get me wrong. To be “a living sacrifice” like St. Paul says does not mean that we have to pray all day. Continue going to work – but do your best in your work, because you are pleasing the Lord, not man. Continue going to the store – but smile at the checkout girl and be gracious when the person with 16 items gets into the 15 and under line. Continue playing sports – but learn how to be a good sport, to play fairly and with charity. Continue doing what you enjoy – so long as it isn’t sinful – as long as you take time out of your busy day to read Scripture or pray the Rosary.

            Don’t buy into our culture that says that your life is all about you. It’s not about us, it’s about giving our lives away to others, and ultimately about getting to Heaven. If that’s not our main goal, then we’re wasting our life.

Homily for Teacher's Retreat at St. Catherine of Siena in Trumbull, CT

Homily for Tuesday, August 26^th

St. Catherine of Sienna Parish Teachers’ Retreat

Handing on Traditions

 

            It kind of boggles my mind that it took about thirty years after Jesus’ death to write down the Gospels. I mean, if I just saw my best friend do some incredible miracles, raise the dead, multiply bread and fish, heal the sick, walk on water, and preach sublime truths in simple parables, then be tortured and crucified, die forsaken on a Cross, then on the third day rise again, ascend into Heaven, and send the Holy Spirit into our hearts through tongues of fire – if I experienced all of this, I’d probably want to write it down. At the very least, it would make the NY Times bestsellers list.

            But they didn’t write it down for several reasons. First, they were too doggone busy spreading the Gospel to write it down. Second, they believed that Jesus would return again within their lifetimes, so they didn’t bother writing it. Third, they lived in a culture where things were passed on more orally than in writing. But I think there was a fourth – and more overarching – reason why they didn’t write it down. It’s because the tradition was so written on their heart and in their lives that they didn’t need to write the Gospel, they lived it.

            St. Paul instructs us in today’s first reading to “hand on the traditions” they have received – in other words, to teach others about Jesus Christ. What a perfect thought for those who are preparing for a new school year! That is our mission – to pass on the Faith to a new generation. What we teach here this year will impact eternity! It will form these souls to become closer to Christ, closer to becoming saints!

            I love the story of St. Francis Xavier, the great missionary who ended up baptizing tens of thousands in India and the Pacific Islands. He wrote in a letter to his friend, St. Ignatius of Loyola: “I have noticed among (the natives) persons of great intelligence. If only someone would educate them in a Christian way of life, I have no doubt that they would make excellent Christians. Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: ‘What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of Heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!’ I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books!” In other words, he saw an incredible openness to God among the people – all they needed was someone to help form them in the Catholic Faith!

            I see that same openness in today’s world. I’ve been blessed to work in youth ministry for the past thirteen years, and as our general culture gets more and more messed up (in many ways), I really believe that God is raising up a new generation of young saints who want to live for something more than the selfish goals of pleasure and money and ambition that the media is portraying. It’s up to us to help form that new generation of saints.

            For example, just recently I was taking with the twelve-year-old son of some of my friends from Bethel, and he was telling me that recently when he was praying the Rosary during a thunderstorm, there was a huge bolt of lightning that hit nearby right as soon as he began the Rosary, and another huge lightning and thunder as he concluded the Rosary. He thought it was so cool that the lightning was so well-timed – while I was amazed that this twelve-year-old public schooled kid prayed the Rosary on his own, apart from his family. Wow!

            Or as another example, I was talking to another one of my youth group kids from Redding, who was telling me that his parents one weekend didn’t take him to Mass, because they were just too busy. So on Monday morning in mid-July, he got up early and walked two miles along a busy road with no sidewalks to Mass. He said that when he got back home, his parents were angry at him for doing such a dangerous thing – but at the same time they looked at him differently because they realized that he really did take his faith seriously. This kid is thirteen years old, a student at St. Mary’s school in Bethel. Yes, there is a hunger, and God is raising up new saints who want real heroism, real traditions, real holiness.

            If we present the faith and the traditions of our Catholic Faith with enthusiasm, they will be welcomed. It’s up to us to form the saints out of the next generation.

            Honestly, a part of how to do this is to keep that goal in mind during this whole school year. Our mission as a Catholic school is not, fundamentally, about good grades, getting Blue Ribbon status, having the best facilities or the highest enrollment. It’s about forming souls for Heaven, it’s about forming saints. You are not merely at a job – you are doing ministry. You are handing on the traditions that have been handed on to us. Think about it – we are here this morning, hopefully, because we are motivated by a burning, passionate love for God, one that we wish to pass on to these kids. We have received this love for God from many sources – from our own personal prayer, from hearing talks and reading spiritual books, but probably mostly from those who have taught us about the faith. Maybe it was our parents, or a priest or nun, or a religion teacher. But someone has probably influenced your personal friendship with Jesus Christ – that is the hope. And now it’s up to us to set these young souls on fire with love for Him who first loved us.

            But we can only do that if we are striving for holiness ourselves. We have to have those traditions of faith so written on our hearts that we live them out in our daily lives. And that, my friends, is the subject of my next talk.

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time - August 24, 2014

Homily for August 24, 2014

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Church Universal

 

            The first time I thought seriously about becoming a priest was because of an incredible experience I had when I was fourteen years old. I had the privilege of taking a pilgrimage to Rome for 10 days – without my parents, which was awesome! – and it was really life-changing. For the first time, I realized that the Church was so much bigger than my little parish back home – it was truly universal, it was both ancient and new, it was something that martyrs shed their blood for. My parish was great, but here I was, at 14 years old, surrounded by about 800,000 people from every continent, gathered together in the presence of the Pope. You could feel the universality of the Church at that very moment!

            Since I arrived at St. Benedict’s, I have heard from many of you how important your parish is in your life. Some of you have been parishioners here for fifty, sixty or more years. And what a blessing you have been to this parish! I am so glad to hear that St. Benedict’s has been such an important part of your life for so long. Even those who have been here for less time speak fondly of their attachment to this parish.

            But I hope that along with your love for St. Benedict’s, you have a love for the Universal Church as well. Six years after my trip to Rome, my home parish back in Maryland burned to the ground. It was a horrible accident – someone who was doing some roof work left a hot iron on the roof when they went to lunch, and when they returned, the entire 160-year-old structure was engulfed in flames. Very little was salvageable; it was almost completely destroyed. And all of us – parishioners and our pastor alike – were heartbroken.

            But this too taught me that the Church is bigger than my individual parish. During the four years that it took to rebuild our parish church of St. Peter’s, we held Mass at local Protestant churches and in our social hall. The CHURCH of St. Peter’s was still intact even though the building had burned down, because WE are the Church. Our faith was much bigger than a building, much bigger than a parish. It was a community of disciples who gathered to worship the Lord, to receive the Eucharist and celebrate the Sacraments, all in union with the teaching of the Pope, who is the successor of Peter from today’s Gospel.

            I know that this parish has undergone some turmoil in the past few years. But I urge you to hold fast to what the Church truly is – it is the community of disciples. In Greek, the word for Church is “ecclesia” – which literally translates to “called out of”. We are people who are called out of the world into a body of believers in Jesus Christ. For this reason, we must not become too attached to a place, to a building, or to a name like St. Benedict’s, because those things come and go. What remains is our Faith. Jesus promised in the Gospel that “the gates of Hell will not prevail” against His Church – in other words, His church will never disappear; it will always remain faithful to the teachings of Christ and to His mission of saving souls. He never promised that our church buildings will always be here; He never promised that our parishes will remain the same that they were ten or fifty years ago. He promised that the Faith would never change, and that the universal Church will always be here.

            That’s why it’s great to be a Catholic. The word “Catholic” means universal, and we truly are a universal church. A couple of summers ago, I did a long walking pilgrimage across Spain – 32 days of walking 498 miles to get to the bones of St. James in a town called Santiago de Compostella. The walk was called “El Camino” – the Way – and it’s one of the most famous pilgrimages in the world. Along the journey, I attended Mass in six languages – English, French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian, and Korean – and though I definitely don’t speak those languages, I knew exactly what was going on because the Mass is the same throughout the whole world! I was really struck by the universality of the Faith that I belonged to – the Catholic Faith is much bigger than my own parish!

            And we are Catholic, ultimately, because it is the True Church that was founded by Jesus Christ. Just recently I was having lunch with someone who made an offhand comment that their college-aged daughter was getting involved with a boyfriend who was an evangelical Protestant. My friend commented that, “Well, at least she’s going to church, and after all, it’s pretty much the same as Catholicism.” To that I wanted to respond, “Yes, we have many things in common with our Protestant brethren, but we’re Catholic because the Catholic faith is the True Faith! It is the church that was founded by Jesus Christ upon the rock of Peter, the first Pope, and this Catholic Church is the only one that has the fullness of truth! It is the only one that was promised by God that the gates of Hell will never prevail against it! It is the surest and safest way to salvation!”

            That is ultimately why we are Catholic. Not because of the great preaching, not because of our beautiful church buildings, not because of our fun parish picnic coming up on September 7^th. We are Catholic because it is the Truth. Because it was founded by Jesus. Because it is the clearest path to Heaven. Because it will never disappear. Regardless of what happens to our individual parish, regardless of where we travel in the world or where the journey of life takes us, we build our faith on the rock of the Catholic Church, which is the most solid rock we could ever build our lives upon!

Homily for August 17, 2014 - 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for August 17, 2014

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sinners Saved by Grace

 

            Is it possible for a gang leader who was also a murderer, rapist, and thief to become a saint? It is not only possible – it happened. St. Moses the Black started out as anything but saintly. He lived in Ethiopia during the late 400s and quickly became notorious as a gang leader, leading a group of 75 men to terrorize the countryside, pillage towns, and steal and murder. For years he lived this hard gang life, adding sin upon sin as he and his gang were feared by all.

            One day he came upon a monastery in the wilderness, and he led his gang to it in the hopes of looting the monastery. He was greeted at the monastery door, however, by the abbot, who welcomed him in warmly. Moses was so stunned that he was welcomed – and even more amazed at the peace and joy that radiated from the abbot’s face. Instead of rioting and looting the place, he had a long conversation with the abbot, who showed him such love that Moses dismissed his gang and decided to join the monastery. After many years of prayer and penance, he became a monk, and towards the end of his life, he actually founded his own monastery with 75 men – in reparation for the 75 men that he had led into the gang lifestyle, he now wanted to lead 75 men to God. St. Moses the Black went from being the most feared thug of his country – to a saint – by the incredible mercy of God.

            And, you know, we are not far off from St. Moses the Black. I may never have murdered anyone – but haven’t I killed another person’s reputation through gossip? We may not be guilty of adultery – but haven’t we committed adultery in our thoughts through lust and impurity? I may not have lost my faith and stopped going to church – but haven’t I put other things before God, haven’t I been too lazy to pray? I may never have stolen anything – but have I always been generous with my money and time, or were I selfish and I didn’t give to the poor what I could have given?

            The fact is, all of us – ALL of us – are sinners. It’s simply a lie to say, “I am a good person.” Yes, perhaps compared to some people, we are pretty good. But when compared to the infinite holiness of God, we are all flawed, weak, and stained with the stain of sin.

            For this reason, we cannot save ourselves; we can’t get to Heaven on our own efforts. Some people make the mistake of thinking, “If I just pray enough Rosaries, if I just try to stay out of trouble, then I’ll make it to Heaven.” We only make it to Heaven because of God’s mercy! We are only forgiven because of His mercy!

            We are so weak without God’s grace. Ever heard that phrase, “There, but for the grace of God, go I?” That phrase came to my mind recently when learning about Robin Williams’ death. Who knows what demons he struggled with – but one thing is certain, if it’s not for the mercy of God, we too could suffer with the same struggles. No amount of money, fame, good looks, or talent can make us immune to the weaknesses and sins of human nature. There’s a fundamental weakness in all of us that cries out for God’s mercy.

            This fundamental weakness is often called “original sin.” When the first human beings on earth sinned, they turned away from God and created a rift between us. Ever since then, we humans have had something wrong with us! We have needed God’s mercy in order to be healed and to get to Heaven!

            I go to a lot of funerals, being a priest. And one thing that drives me crazy is that most eulogies make it seem like the deceased person was perfect. I’ll never forget the one funeral I celebrated where the man got up to say a few words about his deceased father, and he started off by saying, “My dad loved two things more than anything else: he loved his God, and he loved bikinis.” I had a good laugh over that one. But I think it proves the point – we are not perfect people and for this reason, we are desperately in need of God’s mercy.

            His mercy is dispensed in the Sacrament of Confession. I don’t think we take advantage of this Sacrament enough. After all, if we only showered once a year, that’d be pretty nasty. If we are truly seeking God and want to get to Heaven, we should confess frequently – because we sin daily, all of us. If we think we don’t sin daily, I doubt we really know ourselves. If we were honest, we could recognize that we could have been more kind, more prayerful, more patient with others. We could have said that kind word that we left unsaid. We could have offered up that small suffering that instead we complained about. It’s these things that we can improve in Confession, where we submit ourselves to the ocean of God’s mercy. I, personally, try to go to Confession monthly.

            My friends, I’m not trying to make us feel ashamed by saying that we are sinners. Rather, it should give us great hope, because God is rich in mercy, as our second reading tells us. As Jesus revealed to a great Polish nun, St. Faustina, “The greater the sinner, the greater right he has to My Mercy.” We will never get to Heaven on our merits or by our own efforts. It’s only when we recognize that we’re NOT good people, that we are sinners, that we can be transformed by His grace, by His mercy!

Homily for August 10, 2014 - 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for August 10, 2014

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

            A couple centuries ago, an old man was riding in a public carriage through the streets of Paris with some others, when another man got in and began to ride with the group. Upon seeing the old man silently praying the Rosary, the beads flowing through his hand, the young man struck up a conversation with him.

            The younger man began to say, “Why are you still praying the Rosary? Such superstition! Science is beginning to prove that religion is useless. Technology is the new religion – we won’t have any need for God in the future!” The young man continued for quite some time to explain why science made faith obsolete.

            The older man listened patiently, and when it came time for him to disembark the carriage, he gave the younger man a card with his name and address, saying, “I would love to discuss this further with you. Please come and visit me.”

            When the older man had gone, the younger man looked at the card and was speechless…he had been speaking with Blaise Pascal, one of the greatest scientists in history, and a man of deep religious faith.

            Why did Jesus do so many miracles in the Gospels? It was to encourage us to have faith in Him – to believe that He really is the son of God. You see, Jesus was not just a good man. Some people would have us believe that Jesus was just a nice guy, who taught us how to love and was kind to children. But Jesus could not have been a nice guy – because nice guys don’t claim to be God. And besides, nice guys don’t get killed on a bloody cross.

            Jesus claimed to be Someone unique. He claimed to be God. He did this by doing things that only God could do – like forgiving sins, performing utterly astonishing miracles, changing the Jewish Sabbath laws. He even said that He and the Father are one – a completely amazing claim. So if He claimed to be God, then there’s only three options of who He could be – He is either Lord, liar, or a lunatic. He either is who He says He is, or He is lying about being God, or He’s just plain crazy. So which one is it – Lord, liar, or lunatic?

            Let’s look at the evidence. His greatest miracle, above all else, is His Resurrection from the dead. No one else in history, before or since, had risen himself from the grave, after he had been dead for three days. We have the testimony of the Apostles who saw the risen Jesus – and eleven out of the twelve were put to death for their faith in the Resurrection – so we know that they weren’t lying. Jesus really did rise from the dead, proving that He truly is God. Even before the Resurrection, the Apostles recognized that Jesus was divine – at the end of today’s Gospel, they declare that this was “truly the Son of God!”

So what does all this mean for us? We didn’t see the Resurrection, but it is my hope that we have the gift of faith. Faith, as the book of Hebrews tells us, “is the evidence of things unseen.” But that doesn’t mean that faith is blind. We should examine our faith to try to understand it, but it DOES mean that some mysteries are beyond our human understanding, like the mystery of Christ’s divinity.

And the fact is, faith changes everything. If Jesus really was God, then God has invaded human history in order to have real relationships with His creatures. Of course, since Jesus is God, and God eternally lives, then we can still have a personal relationship with Jesus.

Really, if our faith is true, then it’s earth-shattering. History rises and falls on the reality of Jesus. Even our calendars are based on Him – this is the 2,014^th year after Jesus’ birth. Everything we do, everything we are, everything we possess, should revolve around Jesus Christ. If we have a God who is so madly in love with us that He would take on flesh, die on a cross, rise again on the third day, and invite us to spend eternity with Him, then this should change everything! No longer can we live for ourselves, for our selfish wants and desires, for this world alone.

I think Jesus’ complaint in the Gospel is one that He could make with us. He seems pretty frustrated when He says to His disciples, “Oh you of little faith! Why did you doubt?” If Jesus Christ does not have a daily impact on our lives, then we too have little faith! If we do not have an overwhelming desire to get to Heaven, then our faith is weak! If we do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then we don’t really know Him, because He has been thirsting for your love in return for His immense and infinite gifts to us!

My friends, faith is both a gift and a choice. Today, we ask God to increase our faith in Him, and we choose to follow Him more radically, with more passion, more wholeheartedly. What else is there to live for? He alone has the words of life.

Homily for August 3, 2014 - 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for August 3, 2014

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Hungry Yet?

 

            So I’m a big fan of Snickers bars, and I think they have a pretty catchy ad campaign. I’m sure you’ve seen it – their tagline is, “You’re not yourself when you’re hungry.” They had one in the Super Bowl a few years ago where there’s a backyard football game being played by a group of guys – and an old lady. After the old lady drops of a pass and gets tacked by a big man, the old lady eats a Snickers’ bar, and magically morphs into a tough football player, because the football player just wasn’t playing like himself when he was hungry.

            Have you ever noticed that the tagline is true, that “we’re not ourselves when we’re hungry”? People get so grouchy and mean sometimes when they don’t have food! It’s almost as if they’re not themselves when they’re hungry.

            And perhaps that’s why Jesus did an incredible miracle of food in the Gospel today. You see, food for the ancient people is very different than food for us. Food is really easy to get here in America – we just walk down the street to the Grade A (Shop-Rite) and pick up a sandwich or something. But if you lived in ancient Jerusalem, think about how much more difficult food was to obtain – you had to till the ground, plant the seeds, water the fields, wait several months for the grain to grow, then harvest the grain, grind it, and bake it into bread. This was a several-month process involving a lot of effort, blood, sweat and tears. Food, therefore, meant a great deal to the ancient peoples – it took a lot of effort to produce a relatively small amount, so it was very valuable.

            And Jesus just gave them an incredible amount of free food! Who doesn’t like free food, even in today’s modern world? Whenever I did youth group events at my former parish, the number-one rule was: serve pizza. Free pizza will get kids to come to pretty much anything. So the ancient Jews, naturally, are thrilled that they receive free food, especially considering how valuable it was!

            But Jesus was not primarily interested in feeding their physical hunger. He fed their physical hunger, but in John’s Gospel, He goes further. He begins to talk to them about their deeper hunger. We all have a hunger to love and be loved, a hunger to find a home, a hunger to know that life has meaning and purpose. These hungers can only be satisfied in God. Only God is the one who loves us infinitely; only Heaven is our true and lasting home; only in seeking a life of holiness do we find our life’s meaning and purpose. Our hungers can only be satisfied in God.

            And in what specific ways do we feed this hunger? Through the Word of God and through the Eucharist.

            The Word of God – the Bible – is God’s love letter to humanity, but not just humanity in general – to you in particular. It’s a story of how our passionate, unpredictable God has acted in human history, and how He continues to act in the world today through the Holy Spirit living in the Church. When we read the Scriptures, we hear the good Lord speaking to us, trying to win our hearts for Himself. Don’t let a day pass by without being fed by God’s word!

            In addition to the Word, our hunger for meaning, purpose, and love can also be fed in the Eucharist. Not too long ago, I was talking with a kid from my former youth group up in Bethel. He was telling me that his parents refused to take him to Mass one weekend, claiming that they were too busy. So on Monday morning, this thirteen-year-old boy got up early, walked two miles on along a busy road without sidewalks, and went to Mass. When he got back, his parents were angry that he did something so dangerous, but he knew that he had an inner hunger for God that could only be satisfied in the Holy Eucharist – Jesus’ true Body and Blood.

            We are all hungry. We are hungry for physical food – and so Jesus performed an incredible miracle of abundance in today’s Gospel. But more than that, we’re hungry to know that we are loved, that our lives have meaning. And Jesus satisfies that hunger, if we feed on His Word in Scripture and on His Body in the Eucharist.

            Because, as the old commercial says, “You’re not yourself when you’re hungry.” I think a good definition of holiness would be, “To become the best version of yourself.” A saint is you, just the best version of you, with all of your gifts and talents, your personality and your possessions, all being used to love God and our neighbor. So one could paraphrase the Snickers commercial and say, “You’re not the best-version-of-yourself when you’re spiritually hungry.” Don’t go hungry. Feast on His Word and the Eucharist. And become the best version of yourself – become a saint.