Easter 4 - The Death Of A Shepherd

 

Homily for Easter 4 – Good Shepherd Sunday

April 21, 2024

Shepherd Dies So Sheep May Live

 

            There was once a four-star general in the American army who was retiring. A friend of mine was at his retirement party, and was amazed by how his subordinates didn’t just respect him, but loved him as a father. My friend asked the general, “How were you able to win over the hearts of your men?” He replied, “It was a simple three-word philosophy that I tried to live by…Officers Eat Last.”

            That’s the difference between being a boss and being a leader. Leaders eat last; bosses make sure to pay themselves the bonus. Leaders are the first to sacrifice and the last to get rewarded. Bosses reward themselves and ask others to sacrifice (this is becoming a huge societal problem – in 1989, CEOs made 59 times what the average employee made; in 2021, their pay was 399 times more). Leadership doesn’t come from a title or an office, but from the courage to set a good vision and sacrifice for it; bosses depend on external positions and titles. Leadership is based in humble service; bosses are often motivated by their ego.

            The greatest leader in human history, of course, was Jesus Christ. As a shepherd, He did nothing for His own glory. He had no pride, no ego – His only concern was for us and our salvation. He was unafraid to sacrifice, even to the point of laying down His life. He “set the vision” – pointing the way to everlasting life with the Father. Such a leader should not have to force, but rather inspire us to follow Him to that joyous Kingdom.

            The saint whom we honor this weekend, St. Padre Pio, is another beautiful example of a shepherd laying down his life for his sheep. As most of you know, he was gifted with the stigmata – one day in prayer, light shot out from the wounds of Christ on the Cross and penetrated his hands, feet, and side. From that moment on, he had wounds in his hands, feet, and side that bled for the remainder of his life. One time a woman asked him, “Do those wounds hurt?” To which the wry saint replied, “Do you think God gave them to me for good looks?” But he knew that if he wanted to help bring souls to Christ, he would have to suffer for these souls in union with Christ. So asked Christ to use those wounds to bring souls to be reconciled to the Lord.

            But his stigmata had to be lived out in a daily dying-to-self for souls. He would spend up to fifteen hours each day in the Confessional, which was exhausting and taxing, but he loved to offer God’s mercy for souls. One time, a woman asked him, “Why do you give such easy penances?” He replied, “I give you a small penance, and I do the rest of the penance for you.” Here was a shepherd who was willing to offer his life as a living holocaust!

            And people responded to such a good shepherd. Many people began to join the “prayer groups” that he would form, and tens of thousands of people per year would visit his monastery – they heard the voice of the Shepherd. Even Americans would flock to his Confessional – and he would welcome all, bringing thousands of souls to Christ.

            People hear, and respond, to a good leader who lays down his life for his sheep.

            Certainly in our lives we’ve met both leaders and bosses. At some point, most of us will have the opportunity to influence others, too, either as a leader or a boss. Perhaps we become a parent and have to lead our family; maybe we’re promoted to manager at work; maybe we’re called to coach a team or teach religious education or mentor someone.

            How do we know if we are a good shepherd, a good leader? There is one clear litmus test – what does life like for those we are leading? Are they flourishing? Do they find joy, and abundant life? Are they growing spiritually, socially, physically? A good leader should not be primarily concerned about keeping the higher-ups happy, or being financially successful, or climbing the success ladder – a good leader should primarily be concerned with serving God by serving those whom God has entrusted to them. Leaders are stewards, and we will have to give an account of how we have led these souls to authentic human flourishing.

            Let us follow the example of Christ – and St. Padre Pio – to become a leader, as we lay down our lives for our flock, whomever they may be.

Homily for Easter 3 - Not Seeing Is Believing

 

Homily for Easter 3

April 14, 2024

Not Seeing Is Believing

 

            Once when I was taking a final exam in college, I was shocked to see a huge spider climb up right next to my hand. I screamed, leapt up from my chair, and threw my pen across the room. Imagine my chagrin when I realized that what I thought was a spider was just the shadow that my pen and fingers were making on the paper! Our senses can sometimes be wrong!

            Generally, we get to know the world through our five senses, and they’re usually pretty reliable. But it would be an error to believe that the only way to know the world is through our five senses.

            For example, I have never seen germs, or Saturn’s rings, or Julius Caesar. But I believe people who have seen these things, and who told me about them. Every day, we believe many things that we have not independently verified.

            So we believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, not because we have seen it, but because the Apostles did see the Risen Flesh of Jesus. They saw Him eat fish, touched His wounds, and heard Him speak to them. And they were so confident that they actually saw Him and not an illusion that every single one of the Apostles was willing to die, professing that Jesus Christ is alive.

            Our faith is not based upon our five senses or us “feeling” Jesus’ presence, but upon the testimony of those who have experienced Him. This testimony has been written in the Scriptures – this is why, when Jesus rose, He explained “everything that referred to Him in Moses and the Prophets” – because the Scripture is the written testimony of people who have personally encountered the Lord or been inspired by His Holy Spirit. And Christ did not leave us only with the Scriptures, but left us a living interpreter of the Scriptures – the Church.

            Thus, it is far more important to base our faith on Scriptures and the unchanging teachings of the Church than to base it on our feelings or our senses. What does this mean for us?

            I speak with many people who tell me, “I just don’t feel God in prayer” or “I feel disconnected from God”. Perhaps you’ve had that experience. But our faith is not based upon what we “feel” in prayer. Many of the great saints felt very disconnected from God. For example, St. Therese of Lisieux said, “I remember that parents love their children as much when they are asleep as awake, so when my soul seems asleep, I trust that the Lord knows my weakness.” Another saint, St. Mary Rosello, was plagued with fears that she was damned to Hell, but she knew that these fears were not based in the truth. She persevered with the motto, “Cling to Jesus. There is God, the soul, and eternity – the rest is nothing.”

            So if you feel disconnected from God or you don’t feel God’s presence at all – a spiritual state known as desolation – do not give up! Faith and love are NOT feelings at all.

            Rather, faith is a firm conviction that what God has revealed in the Bible and the Church are true, and love is a choice to live for God. Our second reading teaches us that “to love God is to keep His commandments.” So whether or not we “feel” God’s presence, we know that we love Him because we make the choice to obey Him, develop a serious prayer life, read Scripture, and live for Him.

            Conversely, faith and love that is based on feelings is very transient. What good is it to “feel” connected to God if we choose to disobey His commandments? The person who skips Mass for a sports game, or live with someone outside of a Sacramental marriage, or refuses to forgive someone and thinks that they love God are fooling themselves. Love is proven in deeds and in obedience, not in ambiguous feelings of “connection” to God.

            The other important takeaway from faith not being based on feelings or senses is that there is so much more to our faith than meets the eyes. Like an iceberg where only ten percent of it is visible, most of what is really, truly going on in our Catholic Faith is beyond our ability to sense. For example, when a child is baptized, all we see and feel is water poured over our head. But in reality, that soul is being filled with the radiant divine life of God and adopted as His son or daughter. This past week, seventy of our eighth-graders received the Sacrament of Confirmation – to our five senses, we may have seen the chrism oil and smelled its pungent odor, but the unseen reality is that the souls of these seventy kids have changed, so that they are more conformed to Christ and entrusted with His mission to bring the world to salvation. We cannot see the soul, but our desires for God, our ability to appreciate beauty, our longing for Heaven is evidence that we truly have one. We cannot see Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist, but He told us that He is there, and as Jesus is Truth Himself, He cannot lie.

            At times, we must use our imagination to picture the unseen realities of our faith. Consider the Mass, for example. Listen to the words of St. John Chrysostom: “The angels surround the priest, the whole sanctuary and the space before the altar is filled with the heavenly Powers come to honor Him who is present upon the altar. Think now of what kind of choir you are going to enter. Although vested with a body, you have been judged worthy to join the Powers of heaven in singing the praises of Him who is Lord of all. Behold the royal table. The angels serve at it. The Lord Himself is present.” We do not see the tens of thousands of angels that surround this place; we do not see our Blessed Mother worshipping Her Son; we do not see the Sacrifice of the Cross being made present again in an unbloody manner, as Christ offers Himself once again to the Father for our salvation. We do not see it – but we believe it to be true, for this is what our Scriptures tell us and Christ’s Church teaches us. So do not allow yourself to be dependent upon your senses or your feelings – because Truth is firmer when it is based upon the testimony of those who have encountered the Risen Christ and wrote about it, rather than our senses and feelings.

            Because this is difficult, however, we have sacramentals to help us. It’s hard to believe in that which we cannot see. Hence, we have beautiful angels in our stained-glass windows to help remind us of what is truly present, yet invisible, in church every time we attend Mass. We have crucifixes in our home to remind us of the historical event of the Crucifixion, which has such an invisible but real effect of saving us from our sins. We light candles and use incense and dip our fingers in holy water to make clear to our senses that we are walking into the House of God, Whom we love and worship. These help direct our senses to that which is beyond our senses to the invisible realities that occur here.

            My friends, we get to know the physical world through our five senses. But we get to know the invisible world through what God has revealed to men and women through the Bible and the Holy-Spirit-inspired teachings of His Church. And that which we do not see is far more real than that which we see and touch.

Divine Mercy 2024 - The Door of Mercy

 

Homily for Divine Mercy Sunday

April 7, 2024

The Good News of Mercy

 

            The world was in disarray in 1930. We had just experienced World War I, the bloodiest conflict in human history with over 20 million casualties, and the saber-rattling for World War II had already begun. The world had just seen the Communist Revolution in Russia and China, and within two decades, over 25 countries would go through their own bloody revolution. Abortion was legalized in Russia in 1920, and this began to spread throughout the world. In 1930 at the Lambeth Conference, the Episcopal Church became the first Protestant denomination to allow contraception, sowing the seeds of the Sexual Revolution. The “Roaring Twenties” had led to decadence and flaunting of moral norms, while the Stock Market Crash of 1929 had led to starvation and despair.

            Into this situation, God sent…not a warrior, not a Pope, not a leader…but a young peasant girl from Poland named Helen Kowalska. Ordinary in every way, she became a nun and worked as the convent gardener and cook. She would have lived and died in obscurity if it were not for the events of February 22, 1931.

            During prayer that day, Jesus appeared to her in a vision and began to teach her that, in His words, “I am giving mankind the last hope of salvation, that is recourse to My mercy. Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My mercy.” In a century that was so full of misery, the answer from Heaven is His Mercy.

            Over the next several years, Jesus continued to reveal the secrets of His Mercy to Sr. Faustina. What secrets? That God burns, aches to have mercy on mankind! Jesus said, “The flames of mercy are burning Me, clamoring to be spent. I want to keep pouring them out upon souls, but souls don’t want to believe in My goodness.” He has so, so many mercies to heal the broken hearts, to forgive the sinners, to give love to the unloveable, to free those trapped in the chains of addictions, to bring hope to the despairing – but He cannot pour these out on souls unless we ask for them and trust in Him. This is mercy – where God’s love meets our misery! No one is excluded – Jesus said, “The greater the sinner, the greater the right they have to My Mercy.”

            In particular, there are three parts to the Divine Mercy devotion. The first is the Feast of Divine Mercy, which we celebrate today. How fitting it is that Pope St. John Paul the Great instituted this feast in 2000 – and then died on this feast in 2005! Our Gospel speaks about Jesus bestowing mercy on the Church as His first gift after the Resurrection. It was as if Jesus had to leave this world to return to Heaven to bring back an endless treasury of mercy – a treasure that had been paid for by His Blood – and then He gives that treasure to the Apostles, our first Bishops, to distribute. The treasure of mercy is distributed through Confession, the Sacraments, the merciful teachings of the Church, the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

            A second part of the Divine Mercy message is the image. Why this image? Notice Jesus’ hands are raised in blessing, and that He touches His Most Sacred Heart, from which flow out rays of red and white – a symbol of the Blood and Water which flowed from His side on the Cross – and a symbol of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. When we see His hand blessing; the blood that was poured for us; the words beneath, encouraging us to trust in Him – we see a visual of His goodness. I’m amazed how many Catholics think that God is against them, that God doesn’t really want their happiness, or that God’s commands are to put us through a brutal test. Divine mercy blows that idea out of the water! He is for us, on our side, desiring to shower blessings…maybe not the physical things we pray for like a new job or healing from cancer, but the deeper blessings of eternal happiness, sanctification, and unbounded love.

            Finally, there is a beautiful prayer that was revealed to St. Faustina called the “Divine Mercy Chaplet.” It is a powerful prayer which begs God to have mercy on the whole world, by remembering what He did to obtain it – His Passion and Death. The Chaplet is prayed on regular Rosary beads, and the leader begins, “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion,” and the others respond, “Have mercy on us and on the whole world.” Let’s pray a decade…This prayer is particularly powerful for the dying – I always pray it at the bedside of a dying person.

            This time of mercy, however, will not last forever. Jesus said to St. Faustina, “Before I come as a just Judge, I first open wide the door of My mercy. He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice.” The door of mercy is closing fast, and Christ is coming again, very soon. This is not radical apocalyptic thinking – it’s been the longing of the Church since the very beginning, but now it reaches a certain urgency. After all, Jesus said to St. Faustina, “You will prepare the world for My final coming.” Let us take advantage of His mercy – in the Sacrament of Confession, in praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet, in repenting of our sins and truly seeking the Merciful Face of Christ – lest we be forced to face His justice.

            What a joy to know of God’s mercy! Mercy is not a license to sin; rather, mercy says that our sins have been paid for on the Cross. Turn to His mercy, trust in His mercy, extend His mercy to others.