Easter 2024 - Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead?

 

Easter Homily

March 31, 2024

Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead?

 

            In a little over a week, much of America will be fascinated by the solar eclipse that will cross our country. Some people are even going to travel to different states to get a better view. Despite the fact that the sun rises every day – a little blessing that we so often take for granted – we are more fascinated by the darkness than by the light.

            Isn’t that always the case? How many of us slow down so we can get a better view of a car wreck? As much as we say we don’t, let’s be honest, most of us enjoy reading the bad news. Why does a scandal or a crime make headlines, but the thousands of people who volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters never get recognized? How many of us watched, perhaps over and over again, the video of the bridge that recently collapsed in my hometown of Baltimore – a bridge that I have driven over multiple times? Even when I’m preaching, when I speak about Jesus and what He did for us, people’s eyes glaze over and they yawn, but as soon as I mention the devil, people sit up and cry out, “Tell us more!”

            Because of original sin – that fundamental brokenness in our human nature – we are more drawn to darkness than to light; more drawn to sin than to goodness; more drawn to death than to life. And so it is that the three women return to the tomb. Despite the fact that Jesus predicted three times in the Gospel that He would rise from the dead, they could not believe it, because they believed the fundamental lie of human history – the lie that death wins in the end.

            But when they meet the angels, according to Luke’s Gospel, they ask the women a very pointed question: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Why do you seek the living among the dead? Do you really believe that life will triumph, or do you think that the death will have the last word? Do you believe that the wicked who have disobeyed the commands of the Lord will win, or will God bring about the victory of justice? Will sin conquer, or will righteousness? As Christians, we must believe that God wins in the end.

            In a few minutes, we will make a six-fold declaration of our Baptismal promises. The first three promises are renunciations – we declare that we will no longer follow Satan, his works, or his empty show. Then the final three promises are declarations of our belief in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. In the early Church, the people used to turn to the West to renounce Satan – turning to the darkness, where the sun sets, to declare that darkness will have no power over our lives. They would then turn to the East, to the place of the sun’s rising, to declare their allegiance to the Lord in Whom they have believed. They turned from the darkness to the light in a very physical manner to demonstrate what must go on in our soul.

            So have you really turned from darkness to light? Why do you seek the living among the dead? Why have we pursued our careers, or success on the sports field, or entertainment, or social media, or pleasure as if these would bring us life? Christ offers us a better way to live – a way that stands in opposition to the tomb of the world. A tomb is dark, it’s a dead-end (no pun intended) and it is a place where death seems victorious. The women are told to leave the tomb immediately, because Christ their Life has arisen and is no longer there. You, too, are to leave the tombs of this world – those dead-end pleasures and riches and popularity of this world, which promise us happiness but leave us empty – to follow the Risen One Who walks in the light.

            In the mid-1800s a young British man named Francis Thompson was studying medicine with every hope of becoming a rich and famous doctor. He became ill, however, and to treat his illness he was prescribed opium – and he quickly became hooked. His addiction became so severe that he dropped out of school, became homeless, and lived on the banks of the Thames River, selling matches for a living. But during this time of deep desolation, he became acutely aware of being pursued…by God. In the depths of his personal tomb, he sensed a call to live in the light – that God hadn’t given up on him, but that in some mysterious way, all of this was part of God’s plan for his life. He scribbled down his reflection of God’s great pursuit of his soul on a dirty scrap of paper, and sent it to the editors of a very popular magazine. The editors, devout Christians themselves, published the poem – which led to a remarkable writing career, and the rescue of this young man from the darkness of the tomb.

            This poem is entitled “The Hound of Heaven”, and it describes a man running away from someone. The man runs as fast as he can, trying not to think about his pursuer. He tries to distract himself with tears and with laughter; he tries to hide in out-of-the-way places, he tried to disguise himself as a rich man, as a socialite, as a pleasure-lover…yet he is continually pursued. We discover that the pursuer is God, Who will not give up on the man, and sees through the disguises and is faster than his flight. Toward the end of the poem, God speaks and says, “All things have left thee, for thou hast left Me” – everywhere he had sought happiness left him empty because he was running from the God Who is his joy. In the end, the man gives up, and God calls to him mercifully, “Ah My son, the blindest and weakest…I am He Who thou hast seekest!”

            Have you sought life amidst the tombs? It is time to arise from the empty vanities of this world and live for Christ alone. Wake, O sleeper, and arise, for Christ Who is Risen will give you light and life.

Homily for Good Friday - Participation In the Cross

 

Homily for Good Friday

March 29, 2024

A Reason To Suffer

 

            Where there’s love, sacrifice is easy.

            Well, perhaps not easy, but where there’s love, suffering takes on meaning and purpose. Christ’s suffering, of course, has the deepest meaning: it demonstrated the depths of God’s love for us; it paid back the debt we owed due to our sins and thereby opened for us the gift of salvation. But one other effect of the Cross is that it gives meaning to our own suffering and death. No longer do we have to cry out with Job, “Why have You done this to me?” No longer do we have to cry out with the millions of innocent victims of every age and time, “Is God silent, absent?” We have an answer – and the answer is the Cross.

            The modern world sees suffering as meaningless, and we ought to avoid it at all costs. Euthanasia has been legalized in ten states across the country, because people see no reason to suffer. The core of our modern drug epidemic is that people want a quick-and-easy fix to the suffering of everyday life. How much of our entertainment industry and social media is really aimed at distracting people from their daily burdens?

            But in light of the Cross, human suffering finds its ultimate meaning, in two ways.

            First, suffering becomes the concrete artform of love. St. Padre Pio says that “The proof of love is to suffer for the one you love.” When we look at the Cross, we realize that love is not a warm, fuzzy feeling – but rather three cold, hard nails and two beams of wood. But this is love, because it was borne for us – and so suffering becomes a gift when it is borne out of love.

            There was a young saint from Italy in the early 1900s named (Servant of God) Guiseppe Ottone. He was born into a tragic situation – his mother was unwed and wanted to abort him, but her friends urged her to give him up for adoption. The adoptive family was tough, too – alcoholic, abusive father. But the saving grace was Guiseppe’s adoptive mother, who was kind and taught the boy about the Lord. Guiseppe loved prayer, visiting the Blessed Sacrament, and making pilgrimages, but in every other respect was a normal boy. Sadly, the mother got struck with a serious illness. The doctors gave her very little chance to live. On the day of his mother’s surgery, twelve-year-old Giuseppe was walking with some friends, very concerned about his mother, when he happened to see a holy card of the Blessed Mother blowing in the wind. He picked it up, kissed it, and said aloud, “I will happily offer my life if my mother is well.” Immediately, he fell to the ground unconscious, and his friends rushed him to the hospital. Sadly he died a couple of days later – but his mother recovered and lived until she was 88. His love was made incarnate in sacrificing his life for hers – and he gained Heaven in the process!

            But suffering can also be used to help Jesus save souls. St. Paul tells us Christians that we are to “make up in our flesh what is lacking in the suffering of Christ.” But what could be lacking in Christ’s sufferings? Weren’t they perfect? Yes – but we as members of the Body of Christ, the Church, can continually unite ourselves to Christ’s redemptive act. Jesus Christ suffered two thousand years ago on a Cross – but Jesus also wants to suffer in Connecticut in 2024 through you, if you allow Him the privilege. Our suffering, united to His, makes manifest His saving death in our modern world, and allows us to be co-redeemers with Him.

            Throughout the Church’s history, God has allowed certain souls to embrace a great deal of suffering for love of Him. They are called victim souls – often mystics who experienced parts of His passion, or other sufferings. St. Padre Pio had the wounds of Christ on his hands, feet, and side – known as the “stigmata”. St. Gemma Galgani used to feel all of the agonies of Christ’s Passion on Fridays. Mother Teresa experienced the deep darkness of the soul, feeling abandoned by God as a way of participating, interiorly, in His sufferings. These are not signs that God has abandoned them, but rather that God esteems them so highly that they are granted a share in His most precious cross. They – and we – become His coworkers and intimate friends when we partake of the Cross. As St. Therese of Lisieux said, “The greatest honor that God can pay to anyone is not to give him much, but to ask much from him.”

            My friends, throughout human history, men and women have wrestled with the problem of evil and suffering. Why does God allow it? What does it mean? But as Pope St. John Paul II said, “Love is the fullest answer to the question of the meaning of suffering. This answer has been given by God to man in the Cross of Jesus Christ.”

Homily for Holy Thursday - The Food of the Humble

 

Homily for Holy Thursday

March 28, 2024

Humility

 

            Probably most of us watched the Super Bowl this year, which featured the commercial about people washing each other’s feet. I thought it was nicely done, but the following day on social media, most comments said, “Ew! That’s gross. Why are those people washing each other’s feet? Nasty!” On one hand, it shows just how far removed we are from a Christian culture, where most secular people may have never heard the story that we just read, of Christ washing His Disciples feet as an act of service. But on the other hand, perhaps people found it so offensive because it embodies one of the least popular virtues in today’s society: humility.

            To wash one’s feet is slave labor. Only the lowest servants were given this disgusting job. In a few moments, when I wash the feet of several of our parishioners, I have instructed them to carefully pre-wash their feet so that it’s not an unsanitary task…but in Jesus’ day, these Apostles’ feet were probably muddy, smelly, perhaps deformed. They may have stepped in something gross. So it brought Jesus to the lowest of the low – true self-emptying.

            There is a word in Greek for this pouring-out-of-oneself – kenosis. Jesus began His kenosis when He left Heaven to be born in a stable. But tonight He empties Himself even more, making Himself a slave of the slaves. This only prefigures the complete kenosis that He will endure the following day – being humiliated, beaten, stripped, jeered at, and left to die. Tonight He pours water on feet in humble service; tomorrow He will pour His Blood upon the earth in complete humility.

            And so I ask you – are you willing to imitate this example of lowliness? Sometimes we enjoy spending time with the wealthy and sleek, the good-looking and the talented – if that is the case, cultivate relationships with those who are “the least” of society – the disabled, the janitor, the immigrant, those with no influence, no money, nothing that the world says is exalted. Once, the Catholic social reformer Dorothy Day was speaking with a homeless man, when a reporter came up to ask her a question. Dorothy continued her conversation for some time, before noticing the reporter, and asking him, “Did you wish to speak to one of us?” Despite her fame, she never assumed that the reporter was there for her…the homeless man and herself were on the same footing.

            Sometimes we think that certain tasks are beneath us – if that is the case, be willing to clean the bathroom, take out the trash, clean up the mess. St. Rosanna Negusanti became a nun after his children died, and would always choose the most menial tasks in the convent. She was so effective that the abbess renamed her “Sister Umilita” – Sister Humility. She was given the large task of organizing the building of a new convent, but instead of telling the workers what to do and where to go, she would find the stones herself and build the walls along with the workers!

            Sometimes we think that our opinions always have to be right in every argument – humility urges us to look beyond our ego and submit our wills (on non-essential matters) to our spouse, our coworker, our parents.

            But in this scene of the washing of feet, there are other characters that must practice humility – the Apostles. It is a humbling thing to allow someone to do something for us! It means that we are vulnerable and needy. How many of us bristle at that thought! We want to be independent, able to handle life on our own!

            And how many of us carry this over into our own spiritual life? “I don’t need God every day,” we think, “Just when things get really bad. Otherwise, I’ve got this.” Only a humble person prays, because humility recognizes that we desperately need God – we don’t have this, and are dependent upon Him for every single breath.

            Humility is also the hallmark of the other mystery we celebrate tonight: the Eucharist. Is there anything more humble than that God of the universe taking on the appearance of bread and wine? God, Who can create the stars and the planets with just a word, places Himself at our disposal – to be loved, or to be mocked; to be received with reverence, or to be treated with disrespect. What humility! Can there be any more way for God to lower Himself than to become our food?

            And such a humble Food must be the food of the humble. Proud and arrogant men have no use for the Eucharist. For those puffed up with pride will say that it is silly to believe He is truly here; or they say they have no need of Him and they stay away from Mass. It takes humility to accept, with faith, that this is truly Jesus…but the only path to Heaven is the path of humility.

            As a spiritual writer once said, “In Paradise there are many Saints who never gave alms on earth: their poverty justified them. There are many Saints who never fasted: their bodily infirmities excused them. There are many Saints too who were not virgins: their vocation was otherwise. But in Paradise there is no Saint who was not humble.”

Lent 5 - Unless A Grain of Wheat

 

Homily for Lent 5

March 17, 2024

Unless A Grain of Wheat

 

            Back in the early 1900s, a young medical doctor named Dr. William Leslie had a profound conversion to Jesus Christ, and began to feel a burning desire to bring the good news of the Gospel to people who had never heard of His salvation. So he began a medical mission in the Congo, working among the Yansi tribe to provide medical care along with the Good News of Christ. But after working for years and years, very few Yansi tribesmen seemed interested in the Gospel – they preferred their tribal religions, where they worshipped their ancestors and animal-spirits. Discouraged, Dr. Leslie left after 17 years, having only baptized a few people, feeling like a complete failure.

            Fast-forward to 2010. Another missionary named Eric Ramsey traveled to the Congo with the same hope, to reach souls for Christ. He expected to find the paltry faith that Dr. Leslie preached to have completely died out. But he was completely unprepared for what he saw.

            When he first reached the first tribal village, the villagers heard he had come to preach Christ – and they took him to the brick church that they had built in the center of the village! Moving on to other villages, he was shocked to see that they had built a 1,000-seat stone cathedral in the middle of the jungle! The faith that Dr. Leslie came to preach had not died out but grown exponentially, with the majority of the Yansi people believing in the Name of Jesus!

            It seemed a failure, but because it was God’s work and not Dr. Leslie’s, it was a resounding success – even though he never lived to see it. Truly the words of the Gospel were lived out: “Unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it remains a grain of wheat…but if it dies, it will bear a great harvest.”

            Pope St. John Paul II said so perfectly, “Man can only find himself in a sincere gift of himself.” The vocation of every Christian is the vocation to self-gift. In matrimony, the call is to make oneself a gift to one’s spouse and children. In the priesthood or religious life, our self-gift is to Christ and the Church. In the single life, the self-gift is to sanctify the world through your work, your example, and your service.

            No life, no vocation is about self-gratification. Our world says, “Find yourself…follow your heart…be true to yourself…blaze your own path.” Recently I was watching a documentary about the first man to ever attempt a triathlon on Antarctica. It was quite the endeavor – he quit his job, spent months training and over a hundred thousand dollars on gear, hired a whole team, and then sailed to Antarctica. The triathlon was considerably harder than he anticipated – the snow was fluffy and thick, which made biking tremendously difficult. As a result, it took him much longer than the 36 hours they had marked out for the event – and a blizzard arose…for days. The men began to freeze, run out of food. The wind was so strong that it snapped one of the anchors for the ship, so some of the team had to brave severe danger to take a tiny boat back to the ship during the blizzard to keep the ship afloat. Finally the storm subsided and he was able to finish the race, after 100 hours…far longer than they anticipated. The whole documentary made it seem like this was a grand human achievement, and it was…but for what purpose? He undertook this challenge simply because he was bored with his life and wanted a challenge…and in doing so, he risked the lives of ten other men who almost died to help him achieve his dream, which was really all about boosting his ego. Yet our world holds this up as an example – follow your dreams, no matter the cost.

            Christ offers us a better way to live. Don’t follow your dreams…follow His plan for your life. And no matter your vocation, His plan has those two parts: “Unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die” (your vocation is self-gift, dying-to-self, living-for-others)… “It will then produce a rich harvest” (your vocation, well-lived, will produce fruit).

            What type of fruit? Two types. First, virtue within yourself. As St. Francis said, “Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.” Every vocation is meant to form virtue within you – virtues such as courage, humility, purity, patience, and most especially charity, which means that we love as God loves, sacrificially. Aristotle defined virtue as “excellence in being human” – every life is lived excellently if one develops virtues within themselves.

            The other type of fruit is the souls that are brought to Christ through you. If your vocation is marriage, then God expects you to lead your spouse and kids to Heaven, and anyone else within your sphere of influence. If your vocation is priesthood or religious life, then your parish or ministry is your “mission field”. If your vocation is the single life, then one must evangelize one’s friends, coworkers, and neighborhood.

            Both the fruit of virtue and the fruit of souls led to Christ are the natural consequence of living one’s vocation with generosity and heroic self-gift. Despite what the culture tells you, your life is not about self-fulfillment, but self-gift. Christ’s self-gift on the Cross brought billions of souls to salvation. Your self-giving life will likewise have eternal repercussions. Paradoxically, this self-giving life is where we will find joy.

            After all, man can only find himself in a sincere gift of himself.

Lent 4 - God So Loved the World

 

Homily for Lent 4

March 10, 2024

God So Loved The World

 

            In 2008, a Catholic father of seven from Virginia named Thomas VanderWoude was working out in his yard, when he noticed he hadn’t seen his youngest son Joseph in some time. Joseph had Downs’ Syndrome, so it was always frightening when he couldn’t be found. Quickly running through the yard, Thomas discovered that the ground on top of his septic tank had collapsed, and his son had fallen through.

            Without a second thought, Thomas jumped in and held his disabled son’s head above the sewage for over fifteen minutes, calling for help all the while. They were both eventually rescued, with Joseph having survived – but Thomas had lost his life, drowning to save his son.

            What heroism! What love-in-action! And what a perfect representation of the Gospel!

            For when we were drowning in the sewage and filth of our sins, our good Father looked down and did not merely extend a hand. No, He was willing to jump into the sewage and lift us up to the life of grace, dying for us that we might live. For God so loved the world that He did not stay aloof, but “took on” the penalty of sin, although sinless Himself.

            But some of us prefer swimming in sewage. As the Gospel testifies, “Men preferred the darkness to the light.” Why is that?

            For some, it’s all they’ve ever known. Until you have tasted the sweetness of a clean conscience and peace with God, we have no concept of how good it is to seek holiness. A man once made a very difficult Confession of some very serious sins to a priest, and afterward he was filled with such joy that he wept, and he said to the priest, “For ten years I assure you I have lived in Hell, but now I feel such joy that I do not think I can feel more joy in Heaven.”

            For some, they stay in sin because they are afraid to give up their idols, as they think they need it to be happy. One day Blessed Giles, one of the early followers of St. Francis, was speaking with a renowned and wealthy judge. The future saint said, “Do you believe that the gifts of God are great?” The judge said, “Yes, I have great faith in the goodness of God.” Blessed Giles replied, “No, you do not believe that, and I can prove it. How much are you worth?” The judge was curious and thought for a moment, saying, “My property is worth a thousand gold pieces.” The monk replied, “Would you be willing to give up all your property in exchange for a hundred thousand gold pieces?” “Of course, that would be a profitable exchange,” said the judge. The holy man replied, “But surely you would agree that the things of Heaven that Christ promised us are far greater than the things on earth. So why would you set your heart on the things of this earth, instead of exchanging them for the far greater things of Heaven?”

            Those “greater things” – possessing Christ – comes through belief in Him…and all that it means to believe in Him. Recently I was questioning a mother about why she insisted her son should come to religious education when they never went to Mass, and she said something revealing: “Oh, I just want my son to have his faith in case he needs to rely upon it.” Huh, interesting – so Jesus is just in our back pockets in case something bad happens? That’s not the saving faith that Christ speaks of. Because if we have faith in Christ, and He says that He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, then He is king of our whole life, not just the God in our back pocket when things go wrong. A lot of people like the Jesus Who is conveniently close to them when bad stuff happens, or when they need some sentimentality on Christmas and Easter, but not too many of them love the Jesus Who demands that they abandon their sin and conform their lives to Him in holiness.

            But the good news is that if we truly abandon our sin, His mercy can make us genuinely new. Martin Luther used the horrible example of a heap of manure covered in snow. He said that Jesus leaves us like manure but covers us in His righteousness so that the Father doesn’t see our sin, He only sees Jesus’ mercy. But we as Catholics don’t believe that at all – our sin is not just “covered over” but completely gone, completely wiped away! We’re not just rescued from drowning in the sewage, we are cleaned off, given new clothes, and allowed to dwell in the mansions of Heaven! I can testify that this new life in Christ overflows in freedom and joy.

            Once a young man made a difficult Confession to St. Francis de Sales. Afterward, the saint encouraged the young man, saying how proud he was of him. But the young man replied, “You’re just saying that, because you know what a miserable wretch I am.” St. Francis de Sales responded, “You were a miserable wretch, but now you are a man of holiness!” That is how completely transformed we can be – truly sons and daughters of God.

            So what must we do? Our Gospel gives us two things. First, we must confess our sins and be willing to truly turn from them. Don’t wait – come to Confession! Make a new start! It is the way that Jesus Himself established to pour out His boundless mercy on us. Jesus once spoke to St. Faustina and said, “Tell souls where they are to look for solace, that is, in the Tribunal of Mercy [the Sacrament of Reconciliation]. There the greatest miracles take place [and] are incessantly repeated. To avail oneself of this miracle, it is not necessary to go on a great pilgrimage, or to carry out some external ceremony; it suffices to come with faith to the feet of My representative and to reveal to Him one's misery, and the miracle of Divine Mercy will be fully demonstrated. Were souls like a decaying corpse so that from a human standpoint there would be no [hope of] restoration and everything would already be lost, it is not so with God. The miracle of Divine Mercy restores that soul in full.”

            Second, we must acknowledge Jesus as Lord and begin to live accordingly. Not a Divine Butler Jesus Who stays out of the way until you need Him, but the One Who has a right to rule over every aspect of your life: your work, your school, your friends, your conversations, the media you consume, your relationship with your spouse, even your thoughts and affections. They are His – are you living like they are His?

            God so loved the world that, instead of abandoning us to the filth of sin, chose to enter our filthy world to lift us up to the new life of the children of God. He offers us a better way to live, in the light and not the darkness. Abandon the darkness; confess your sins; believe that He is King of all.