Christmas Homily 2022 - Love Made Visible

 

Christmas Homily

December 25, 2022

Love Incarnate

 

            It was St. Francis of Assisi who created the first-ever creche scene, like the one we have up front in church – except his was alive! It was in 1223 that Francis was visiting an Italian town called Grecio where he was to celebrate Christmas. He knew that the people of that town had lost much of their love for God, and were very lukewarm Christians. So, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he found a small cave near to the town square and brought in hay, donkeys, sheep, and had a man and woman play Jesus and Mary with an empty manger. Then, before the Midnight Mass, Francis called together the townspeople to visit the manger, as he began to preach to them about the Incarnation of God taking flesh.

            St. Bonaventure, a contemporary of St. Francis, tells us that as he began to preach, a marvelous thing happened – several people noticed that there was a beautiful baby boy in the manger, even though Francis had not arranged for a child to be brought there. Clearly this was a child of heavenly origin! When the preaching concluded and people filed into the church, the babe was nowhere to be seen, but the people gathered up the hay and kept it as relics – finding that those who touched the hay were miraculously cured of their diseases. But more importantly, the people of Grecio were cured of their hardness and coldness of heart when they beheld, in the flesh, God upon the earth.

            I have a very heavyset friend who likes to say, “Food is God’s love made edible!” Sometimes I want to tell him, “Mike, you need a little less of God’s love in your life!” But I like the sentiment, and I would say that the Christ Child is God’s love made visible. If you want to know how God feels about the human race, look at the child in the manger.

            Consider some aspects of love. First, love desires to be close to the beloved. When two people love each other, they find ways to be together: going on dates, doing fun things together, just hanging out. For His part, God so loved the world that He sent His only Son to dwell with us. For some reason He enjoys our company!

            Second, love desires to give to the beloved. You may recall the famous Christmas story “The Gift of the Magi” by American author O. Henry. It features a young husband and wife, penniless, who wanted to get each other a gift for Christmas. The wife goes to a hairdresser to sell her hair to make money to buy a chain for her husband’s pocket watch. When the husband comes home from work, he gives her the gift of ivory hair combs, having sold his watch to purchase the gift! Despite not being able to use either gift, their love was confirmed and deepened by the giving. So, as God loved the world, He wished to give that which was most precious to Him – His only beloved Son, Who took flesh to give His life for us on the Cross.

            But here’s the thing – love that only goes one way isn’t love, it’s infatuation. It must be reciprocated to truly bring about the completion of love, which is the union of two-into-one. There is another beautiful story of St. Francis, who one time went missing. His religious brothers couldn’t find him for several days, and they began to be very concerned. Finally, one brother stumbled upon the saint in a clearing in the forest, crying out over and over again, “Love is not loved! Love is not loved!” His heart was broken that the depths of God’s love would go unanswered, unloved.

            It is significant that Jesus was born in a manger, with no room left in the inn. Sometimes our lives are so full that we run out of time for Him. We’re exhausted at the end of the day and we collapse into bed without a moment of prayer…we schedule our weekends so packed that there is no time for Mass…we make our life’s plans and don’t turn to Him to see what His beautiful will is for us.

            Christmas demands a response. God has taken the lead, extended His hand, offered an invitation. His love should move us, as it moved the people of Grecio, to begin to love Him in return. He came to dwell with us – will we spend the time in prayer to dwell with Him, and allow Him to dwell in us physically in the Holy Eucharist? He came to give Himself to us – will we give Him our lives, that He may make us holy like Himself?

            Behold, in the manger, God’s love made visible. Now welcome that Divine Love into your soul. Will you return love for love?

Homily for Advent 4 - December 18, 2022

 

Homily for Advent 4

December 18, 2022

God Is With Us

 

            Who is this King Ahaz in the first reading? We pick up a small snippet of a much bigger story. Ahaz was the King of Judah, which was the southern kingdom (at this point in Israel’s history, the kingdom was split into two – Israel in the north and Judah in the south). His land was being attacked by the Assyrian Kingdom, who had already attacked the north and decimated it. So Ahaz decided to do what any reasonable king would do – he wanted to form an alliance with Egypt, to defend his kingdom from the Assyrians.

            But Isaiah the prophet warns against it. He says, “No! Don’t you trust the Lord? He has been with you all along! He will fight for you!”

            This is where we pick up the story – Isaiah even offers Ahaz that God will do a “sign” (a miracle) to prove that God will fight for him. But Ahaz declines – not out of humility, but because he has already decided that he will disobey the Lord and doesn’t want to be dissuaded out of it! So Isaiah says, “Well, despite your hardness of heart, God will give you a sign, even if you don’t want it – the sign that a virgin will conceive and name the baby boy Emmanuel, which means God-with-us.”

            How many times have we been like King Ahaz? We think to ourselves, “Well, God might be up in Heaven, but He doesn’t have anything to do with my everyday life, so it’s up to me to figure it out and make my life what I want it to be.” When in reality, God isn’t just “up there” – He is also right here. Emmanuel: God-with-us.

            This past week we remembered one of the most tragic events in recent memory – ten years since the school shootings at Sandy Hook. During that time, a lot of people were asking that question, “Where are you, God? How could you let this happen?” I must admit, those questions crossed my mind quite a bit on December 14, 2012. I was in my first assignment at St. Mary’s in Bethel, a mere seven miles from Sandy Hook. All day long, I was watching the news and texting Fr. Luke, who was at St. Rose in Newtown. We kept asking if there was anything we could do to help, and he just told us to keep praying.

            Finally, at 10pm that night, he texted me and asked if I could gather the other priests and head down to the firehouse in Sandy Hook. We all headed down there, and joined the crowd of other clergy and police officers. The police chief decided to form teams of three people: an officer, a psychologist, and a clergy member, and each team had to drive to the home of the family of the slain and give them the official declaration of death.

            I’ll never forget the utter terror I felt as we drove to the home of Jack Pinto, one of the six-year-olds who had been killed. What can you say? How can you bring God’s presence into the worst shooting America had ever seen? When we got to the house, we heard cries of utter anguish from inside. We knocked on the door, and the parents cried out, “We know he’s dead! We know he’s dead!” Still, we had to officially deliver the news, so we let ourselves in and told them what we knew about their son.

            After that, we sat in the living room with the family. They didn’t want to talk, and we had no words. They wept, we wept. We couldn’t do anything to take away the pain, but we could walk with them through it. I realized – perhaps because it was Advent, and in ten days we would be celebrating the feast of Emmanuel – that God was there, in the pain. Why was He allowing it? I don’t know. I do know that we will know in eternity why He allowed it. But I also know that He was Emmanuel – God-with-us. In the midst of this tragedy, in the midst of the darkest day I have ever experienced, He was there, walking with us. God didn’t need to say anything – He didn’t need to do a miracle. We didn’t feel His presence, we heard no consoling words from the Lord. But our faith told us that He was there. It was a cold act of faith, to be sure. But I believe that He was present in that school, in that living room, in every single person’s life in this church today, no matter where they’re at.

            In three days we will observe the shortest day of the year. The pagan Romans had a custom of celebrating, on December 21, the festival of Sol Invictus – the feast of the Unconquered Sun. These pagans had an inkling of what we as Christians know with certainty – that in the face of what seems to be gathering darkness, there is an unconquered Son Who brings the light into the blackest night the evil of man could ever create. When faced with the enormity of sin and evil – like that night, ten years ago – it can feel like darkness is winning.

            Christmas tells us otherwise.

            Because in those dark nights, we have the light of Emmanuel.

            Remember – He promised. He is with us.

Homily for Advent 3 - December 11, 2022

 

Homily for Advent 3

December 11, 2022

Waiting On the Lord

 

            We often hear that Advent is a time of waiting. Okay…waiting for what? I mean, Jesus already came two thousand years ago, so what are we waiting for?

            It’s very simple. Jesus came to begin the healing – but it isn’t completed yet. We still see sin, division, addictions, wars, oppression. We still experience depression and anxiety, sickness, and death. We talk about the victory, but we’re still fighting the battle.

            So we are waiting for the completion. We’re waiting for everything promised in the First Reading: for the desert to bloom, for the deaf to hear and the blind to see, for the joy that was promised by Christ to reach its full completion. Yes, we experience it in bits-and-pieces here (as St. Paul says, “the down payment”), while awaiting the rest of the riches of Christ.

            So, we wait for it. Our second reading urges us to be patient. Remember, James was writing to a church that was expecting Christ to come again in their own lifetime. When the years dragged on and the persecution intensified, when they saw Peter and Paul and the other Apostles killed for their Faith, they began to wonder – has God forgotten about us? Are His promises ever going to come true? James says, “Yes, they will…but we must be patient.”

            How can we be patient? Because we know that God is faithful. He made over 500 promises in the Old Testament that He has already fulfilled in Jesus Christ – will He not also fulfill His promises for the future, as well?

            On December 7, 1988, an 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck Armenia, killing more than 25,000 people. In the aftermath of the earthquake, one father dug for 38 hours in the rubble of his son’s elementary school, which had completely collapsed. Miraculously, he found his son and 13 other classmates alive. Eyewitnesses said that when the children were unearthed, all of the youngsters were calm and peaceful, and the son turned to his classmates and said, “See? Didn’t I tell you that my father would come for us?”

            That is patience, born of a firm confidence that God Who fulfilled His promises two thousand years ago will fulfill the promises that are yet to be fulfilled!

            So what do we do while waiting? Well, in English, waiting has a different meaning – someone who is a waiter or waitress will “wait on” customers. That means being attentive to their every need and desire. So as we wait for the Lord, we should also wait on the Lord – looking to Him for direction for every aspect of our lives.

            For example, we all know of the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the priest who was a martyr in Auschwitz when he gave up his life to save another man. But before that heroic act, he spent a couple years as a missionary in Japan. Upon arriving in Japan, he didn’t know the language very well, and was praying for guidance about how he could best minister in this very foreign culture. He felt like God was asking him to start a printing press to put out Catholic literature in the Japanese language. Although excited about the prospect, he asked God where he should build it, and he felt like God was asking him to put it on the far side of a mountain, far away from the town where they lived. Fr. Kolbe was initially incredulous, “Really, Lord? You want us to build it miles away from the city, on the other side of the mountain? How are we going to haul the ink and paper and materials up there?” But out of faith, he built the printing press and began a very successful ministry of publishing Catholic books and pamphlets.

            Fast-forward two years. Fr. Kolbe was now back in Poland, but the printing press he built was still doing good work, despite the fact that Japan was embroiled in World War II. In 1945, that town of Nagasaki was hit with the atomic bomb, destroying most of the city – but the printing press was saved because of its location, protected by the mountain. Maximillian Kolbe knew to “wait upon the Lord” – look for His guidance, wait for His leading, do His will.

            Recently a dear friend (Gonzalo Martinez) was telling me about waiting on the Lord. He was driving up to pick up his daughter for Thanksgiving from college in upstate Massachusetts, and had gotten his car filled up with gas for the trip. As he was coming back, he noticed his gas gauge reading empty. He thought this was very strange – there should have been enough gas to get him there and back with plenty to spare. He wondered if the Lord was up to something…so he prayed, “Lord, whatever this is, lead me.” He stopped to get gas and noticed a woman sitting in a car off to the side of the service station wiping her eyes. For some reason, he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Finally after getting his gas he went up to the car saw she had been crying. He knocked on the window, asking, “Are you all right?” She told him that she was completely without gas and far from home, without a cell phone or money. My friend then knew exactly why he was called to be right there, right then – and helped her fill up her car, let her make a phone call, and got her on her way.

            But that’s a life of “waiting on the Lord”. We look to Him for our decisions each day. Certainly in the big ones: we ask the Lord what job to take, what college to attend, how to lead our family. But also the smaller ones: we say, “Lord, today, how do You want to use me? How can I best please You?”

            Advent, and indeed the whole Christian life, is a time of waiting – waiting for the final victory of Jesus Christ over sin and death and evil. So while we wait, we wait upon the Lord, as servants anxious to do His will.

Homily for Advent 2 - December 4, 2022

 

Homily for Advent 2

December 4, 2022

God and Sinners Reconciled

 

            In the early 1900s in a small town in Italy, there was a very, very poor family: the Goretti family. They were so poor that they continually had to move to smaller and smaller homes as their crops failed, the father became ill and died, and eventually they had to move in with another family, the Serenellis, and share a house with them

            The eldest girl was a very devout young lady named Maria Goretti. She loved to attend daily Mass and pray during her daily duties. Though uneducated, she knew that she loved the Lord and always wanted to please Him.

            The Serenellis had a nineteen-year-old boy named Alessandro. Unfortunately he had started looking at dirty magazines, and began to have unholy lustful desires towards twelve-year-old Maria. He would try to get her alone, but she would always insist, “I will never sin with you! I will never displease the Lord!”

            Finally, one day when everyone was out in the fields and Maria was home mending clothes, Alessandro insisted one last time that she sin with him. She refused, saying, “It is a sin!” Enraged at her constant refusals, Alessandro picked up a knife and stabbed the innocent girl fourteen times before fleeing.

            Her family heard her cries from the house and immediately tried to take her to the hospital, but it was too late to save her. As she was dying, she said, “I forgive Alessandro,” before passing on to the Lord.

            The police, of course, quickly found Alessandro and a judge gave him thirty years in prison. For the first many years, he was angry and hateful, refusing any visits from priests. He was feared for his surly manner, and his heart was rock-hard. But one night, he had a dream in which he saw Maria in glory, holding out fourteen lilies in her hand, assuring him that she had forgiven him before he died.

            Alessandro awoke a changed man. He made a good Confession and lived out the rest of his sentence in prayer and penance. When he was finally released, he went first to Maria’s mother and begged for her forgiveness. Maria’s mother was able to say with a smile, “If Maria could forgive you, how can I do any less?” The very next day, the two of them went to Mass and received Holy Communion together, and they were side-by-side in Rome when Pope Pius XII made St. Maria Goretti a saint. Alessandro lived the rest of his life in a monastery and died a holy death in 1970.

            How could these two people – Alessandro and Maria’s mother - who should have been mortal enemies, be reconciled to each other? How could they have formed a friendship: the murderer and the victim’s mother? Only in Christ does such reconciliation take place.

            Today’s first reading gives a beautiful view of mortal enemies becoming friends: the lion and the lamb, the bear and the goat, the baby and the viper. What a great vision of the Kingdom of God…but not one that we see in the world. Here, we see Russia versus Ukraine…Palestine versus Israel…Republican versus Democrat…and even division and hatred in our own families. How many of us have family members that we’re not talking to any more? I’ve got at least one in my own family…

            So where is this reconciliation that we hear promised by Isaiah? The key is the Gospel – repent. Unless we are at peace with God, we can never be at peace with one another. Christ is the great reconciler – don’t we sing in that beautiful Christmas carol, “God and sinners reconciled”?

            At every Mass when we mingle the water and wine, the priest or deacon prays silently a very beautiful prayer: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” Just like we can’t take the water out of the wine once it’s been mingled, we can no longer separate the divinity from the humanity in Jesus Christ – which means that He’s in it for good. He has wedded our frail, weak humanity to the unconquerable power of God. This is the true meaning of Christmas – that God has united, in the Person of Jesus, the Creator and the creature, fallen flesh with pure divinity, a man like us with the All-Holy One.

            And those who are in Christ – who repent of their sins and believe in Him – have the joy of knowing the peace of God. And we can’t have “peace on earth” until we are first at peace with God.

            So – what is holding you back from peace with God? If He stood before you now, would you embrace Him, or would you go and hide? I ask you to do two things this Advent to get to peace with God – first, consider what hidden sins are in your life that prevent you from living and breathing for Christ and in Christ. What secret sins are we hiding that we need to repent of? And secondly, get to Confession. If we accuse ourselves of sin in Confession, Jesus will not accuse us of sin when we meet Him as our Judge.

            Let’s make Isaiah’s vision a reality – peace among men of good will. This starts by making our peace with God.