Homily for Advent 1, 2021 - Kerygma Sermon Series 1 of 4

Homily for Ordinary Time 33 - November 14, 2021

 

Homily for Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

November 14, 2021

Joyful Apocalypse

 

            Once upon a time there was a class of fifth-graders. They were, for the most part, a well-behaved class, eager to learn. One day, their teacher had to step out for a minute, so she gave them some work to keep them occupied.

            For ten, fifteen minutes, they diligently worked on the assignment. All was well until one boy declared, “This is boring!” and he threw down his pencil and started to read a book. Some of the other students began to follow his lead and slack off on the assignment.

            The teacher continued to be delayed. Fifteen minutes stretched into a half-hour, then forty-five minutes. The students began to get restless. A few kept at their work, but most of them began to goof off as it became clear she wasn’t returning. “What if she never returns?” they asked themselves with laughter as they began doing all the things they were forbidden to do – shooting spitballs, tossing a football in class, rummaging through her desk.

            A few good students tried to speak up – “Get back to work! What if you get caught breaking the rules?”

            But the other students scoffed at them – “She’s not coming back! We own this classroom!” And the chaos only got worse. Some kids started breaking things, the class bully started beating up the smaller kids, some were even trying to climb out the window.

            What will happen when the teacher returns? That depends on the student. Those who thought the teacher will not return will face a pretty severe punishment. But those who were diligent and followed the teacher’s instructions will be praised and rewarded.

            Our world is in a much worse shape than even a classroom without a teacher. Chaos rules every realm – from politics to our families, from our media to our financial system. I think we can all agree that our world is in pretty bad disarray. Part of that is because we do not see our Teacher, Jesus Christ. Yes, He is here, truly present in the Eucharist – but He is hidden, and most people do not recognize Him.

If we had followed His instructions in the Gospel, we would find our world to be tranquil and at peace. But as it is, we disobeyed our Savior, and our world is badly broken. Sin has multiplied, and all of us carry the scars.

            But our Teacher is returning. This is good news! He will return to judge the living and the dead, as our Creed professes. He will return, not as a hidden baby in poverty, but as a glorious and mighty King. This Second Coming of Christ will be visible to all, and no one will be able to deny His authority.

            We don’t know exactly when. When Jesus tells us in the Gospel that “no one knows the hour, not even the Son of Man,” it means that by natural knowledge alone, no one can know the day of His return. Of course, in His Divinity, Jesus knows when He will return. But by human knowledge, no one can figure out a specific date. I can remember people saying in 1998, 2000, 2012, and 2018 that the world was supposed to end – and yet here we are! If anyone gives you a specific date for Christ’s second coming, do not believe them!

            Yet a search of Scripture and the saints give four specific clues about what will happen beforehand. St. Paul talks about a great apostasy – in other words, a large amount of people will leave the Catholic Faith – are we seeing that, as fifty percent of Americans no longer claim to have a religion? Jesus warns of severe natural disasters before His Coming – and it does seem like we’ve had quite a few recently. The Book of Revelation speaks about economic collapse. I am not an economist, but one might wonder if we are heading in that direction. Finally, Our Lady revealed to Sr. Lucia at Fatima that the final confrontation between God and Satan will be over the family – and the family is under attack from all sides, from those who wish to redefine it to the vast number of families falling apart to the number of families who are not taking seriously their calling to lead their kids and spouse to Heaven. Every generation is called to remain vigilant and read the signs of the times.

So, could Christ’s Second Coming be soon? I certainly hope so – because what a joyous day that will be! Christ will come to finally destroy chaos, disorder, and sin. If we love sin, we will fear His coming. But if we love Christ and hate sin, then we will rejoice when He comes. No human effort can clean up this mess that we’ve made – the mess in our lives, our families, our nation, our world. No, it requires Jesus Christ alone to “make all things new”.

And if we are living holy lives, we have nothing to fear at His coming! I love the story of St. Charles Borromeo, the sixteenth-century bishop of Milan. He loved to play billiards, and was quite the pool-shark. One day he was playing billiards with a fellow priest, who asked him, “Bishop Charles, what would you do if you knew you were going to die in five minutes? Would you drop to your knees, or run to Confession?” The holy bishop replied, “I would continue playing billiards.” The priest looked shocked, so the bishop continued, “My soul is clean, in the state of grace, and I began this game with the intention of glorifying God. Why should I stop playing, if this is giving Him glory?”

If we are living as we should, we have nothing to fear when Christ comes again. On the contrary, how joyful it will be when He finally comes to destroy sin and death forever!

Homily for November 7, 2021 - Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Homily for November 7, 2021

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

In the End, the Soul Alone Remains

 

            Imagine a kid building a sandcastle at a beach. It’s an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. But up walks a structural engineer, who says, “Hey kid, I noticed you’re building a sandcastle. Do you have permits for that? I notice it’s not ADA compliant. Are your footers secured to the bedrock? Is the electrical up to code?”

            The kid would probably respond, “Hey mister…it’s just a sandcastle!” We don’t need to make any special effort if we’re building something that’s going to be washed away in an hour. When we go camping, we don’t worry about landscaping around our tent, because we know our stay is not permanent. Temporary things don’t require the same amount of care that permanent things require.

            But when we consider it, there is only one truly permanent thing we own. Not our bodies, not our bank accounts, not our cars or houses or our position in the company or our sports trophies. The only thing we will own forever…is our soul.

            How often do we think about our soul? Probably much less than we ought! Our soul is immortal. It is made in the Image of God with an intellect and free will, and will continue to endure long after the mountains have been reduced to dust, long after every ocean has dried up. Unlike the animals, who live for a while and then die, our soul will live forever. CS Lewis puts it this way: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

            Your soul will either be an everlasting splendor, radiantly holy in Heaven with the glory of God, or an immortal horror, separated from God for eternity in the pits of Hell. There really is no other option. Thus, it is absolutely critical for us to care for our soul much more than we care for the very temporary things of this world.

            We see this dynamic in the Gospel. This story of the widow who gives her two last pennies to the Lord is sandwiched between two stories of people who marvel in transitory things. First we see the Pharisees, who “love honors and money.” Second, immediately following this story of the Widow, the very next verses in Mark’s Gospel read: “As Jesus was making his way out of the temple area one of his disciples said to him, “Look, teacher, what stones and what buildings!” Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be one stone left upon another that will not be thrown down.” His disciples were marveling at the beauty and majesty of the Temple in Jerusalem.

            But where is the Temple now? It was destroyed in 70 AD, and none of it remains. Where is the Pharisee’s honor, where is their money? Nowhere – their bodies are lying in graves somewhere, and no one knows their name. But the Widow – she was giving her whole self to the Lord, trusting Him for her every need, generously loving to the point of sacrifice. And that made her soul beautiful, radiant, holy…which she still enjoys in Heaven. Her heart wasn’t set on passing things, but on eternal things – and her reward, therefore, is eternal.

            So how do we care for our eternal, immortal soul? Consider how we care for our bodies. We feed our bodies – we feed our souls by coming to Mass every Sunday and worthily receiving the True Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. We clean our bodies – we clean our souls by regularly receiving the Sacrament of Confession. We rest our bodies – we rest our souls by going on a retreat, and spending time in prayer. We exercise our bodies – we exercise our souls by doing good works. We discipline our bodies by dragging ourselves out of bed in the morning and by passing up the donuts at work – we discipline our souls by fasting and sacrifices done for love of Jesus.

             I think of the beautiful example of a little-known Catholic saint, St. Joseph Moscati, who realized the value of the soul. He was an Italian layman in the early-1900s who became a very accomplished doctor – he taught in medical schools, was one of the first ones to pioneer the use of insulin to treat diabetes, and published hundreds of scholarly articles in medical journals. But he was first of all a man of faith, who went to Mass daily and would pray before each patient entered the room.

            He would tell his patients that the “first medicine” was not pills or shots, but the Sacraments. After listening to their physical ailments, he would ask about the state of their soul, if they had been to Confession recently or whether they were practicing their Faith. Along with healing their bodies, he brought many of them back to the Faith, and they found the spiritual health that they had long lacked. He wrote to a younger doctor one time, “Remember that you must treat not only bodies, but also souls, with counsel that appeals to their minds and hearts rather than with cold prescriptions to be sent in to the pharmacist.” Here was a man who realized that, as important as the body was, the soul was our only possession that lasts forever!

            So I ask you – do you care for your soul as much as you should? What do we need to do to take care of it? Regular Confession, daily prayer, weekly Mass, practice of the virtues. At the end of our lives, everything else will be just as temporary as that sandcastle, washed away by the waves – our soul alone will remain.