Homilies & Reflections

Homily of the Second Sunday of Lent (February 28, 2021)

Today’s first reading and gospel remind us how confusing and wonderful it can be to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. To be a true disciple is to listen and obey God, even when it hurts as Abraham did when he submitted to God’s will and agreed to sacrifice His son. To be a true disciple is to begin living in a new dimension of reality, as Peter, James and John entered into along with Jesus on the top of the mountain. It is to begin living in eternity right now, today, to begin living in the kingdom of God before that kingdom is fully actualized. And that is confusing and difficult.

The disciples and apostles had problems with it all along. Uprooted from their families and occupations, they followed Jesus the wandering preacher and healer because of the power of his call to them. Surely it was their hearts that responded, because the pure of heart see God. But their heads took much longer to convert and see the light. Jesus was (and is) all things to all people; He lived the broad scope of eternity that defies human minds and logic, while the apostles kept trying to understand him through their own categories of thought and logic. And so the disciples would ask Jesus questions like, “NOW are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel and Judah?” …meaning so that the Romans can be driven out. Jesus kept dashing their earth-bound hopes, as in his parables, saying the kingdom was like a mustard seed… not at all like the glorious kingdoms of David and Solomon…. and in his teaching that the first would be last and the last first (after they argued among themselves over who would be first)… that Caesar was entitled to his earthly power and authority, 
which must be respected. The gospels tell us that when Jesus told the disciples that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, many left him, thinking he had really lost his mind and any sense of reality. But some responded to the challenge, again with their hearts more than their minds (for even our minds cannot grasp the fullness of the real presence in the Eucharist.) When Jesus asked them aren’t you going to run off too with those who left, Peter answered for the twelve. “Lord, where would we go? YOU have words of eternal life.” Yes, it was a real challenge to follow Jesus then, as it is now. 

And so in this morning’s gospel Jesus takes with him the leaders of the disciples, the most pure of heart…Peter, James and John… and goes to the top of a mountain where in a landscape of eternity, filled with the light of God’s presence, he meets the other great prophets who met God on mountain tops – Elijah and Moses. As related in the Gospel we just heard, God speaks: “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Peter says in his second letter, “We ourselves heard this voice.” It was an unmediated, direct revelation. Needless to say, the three select apostles were dumfounded, awestruck and characteristically confused. But never at a loss for words under any circumstances, Peter speaks for them, and says, “It is good that we are here! Let us make three tents.” As I said, it’s confusing to be a follower of Jesus. Peter understandably misses the point of the Transfiguration. Having just glimpsed eternity and the unveiled reality of Jesus’ person, Peter, in his enthusiasm, thinks they should stay there.

But no. God’s voice said “Listen to my beloved Son,” which is what they did and accompanied him down the mountain. Having glimpsed eternity, you can well imagine their discussion about the resurrection of the dead was more than theoretical and took on a new urgency. But when they reached the bottom of the mountain and rejoined the other disciples, they confronted a very real problem, a father who had brought his son to be healed, a son whom the disciples, who had previously been able to heal and work wonders,
were powerless to help. Welcome back to reality.

But Peter was quite right in what he said on top of the mountain. “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” Where are we now? In the first reading, God called to Abraham. And Abraham replied ‘HERE I am.” It’s a special word in Hebrew: hineni, used only a few times, when Moses, Samuel, Isaiah answered God’s call to his presence. So HERE is where we are, and it is a good thing. We come together on Sunday to celebrate, really celebrate, the Eucharist; to celebrate our real redemption by Jesus Christ, to celebrate his real presence in the sacrament, and to celebrate our oneness in God and each other through the Holy Spirit. It is a mystical experience, like the apostles experienced at the top of the mountain with Jesus. 

Notice that the altar in most churches is like the top of a very little mountain. In the Mass and the Eucharist we can experience a real closeness to God that is not possible any other way, we can experience God with and through our community. But to do this we must pray with our hearts, and not get confused by our heads and not try to make God fit our personal preferences and categories. Each person that receives the Eucharist  is transfigured with Jesus Christ. That is a vision seen more with our hearts than the eyes in our head. It is very good for us to be here – together in the Church – with Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit  giving worship to the Father. As part of the mystical Body of Christ, we are beloved of God and in union with Christ, God is pleased with us. I don’t know if any of you are so caught up in the mystical experience of Mass that you wish to pitch a tent and not leave, but at the end of Mass we are supposed to come down from the mountain. We are sent out… That’s why at the end of Mass the priest says “Go” – not “Have a nice day.” We are commissioned to go out into the world and bring to it what we experienced in the Eucharist… the love of God, the joy of celebration, and the healing ministry of Jesus Christ  in and through his Church, his people. I know that some people are so anxious to get out there and do that, that they leave just a little bit before the Mass is ended so they can get a head start. May God bless their enthusiasm.

Just as the Jesus and the apostles confronted a real knotty problem at the bottom of the mountain, we confront those knotty problems too, all the time, every day. The world is brimming with problems needing the word and attention of Jesus Christ through us, who profess our faith in him and who experience him. There is ignorance, loneliness, illness, dissolving marriages, rebellious children, abandoned and neglected children, abused mothers, abortion, addiction, poverty, homelessness, dishonesty, injustice, egotism, consumerism, racism, social discord, violence, war. We are sent from this union with Christ to do our part in making the kingdom of God more real here and now, and to live our daily lives in the faith, hope and love that God has given us, given us as a foretaste of that kingdom and as tools with which to build it further in this world and focus on what we can do rather than on what we like. It is good for us to worship together in the Eucharist, to be here, in person or online, wherever your “here” is. This is our Transfiguration experience, worshipping God in his real presence with all God’s people and prophets, past present and future. This is a real gift, which other Christian churches do not have. To worship God and spirit and in truth at the Mass, it doesn’t matter what the homily is about or if it makes sense or if it’s any good at all. 

Maybe you’ve seen those signs in front of some churches advertising the title of the sermon for the coming Sunday. Thank God we don’t have to do that. As a priest, not just a preacher, I can say that some weeks are a lot better than others when it comes to inspiration. And as listeners of homilies you can surely tell. A priest doesn’t have to preach an All-Star homily to bring you close to God, because God is here in His Church – all the time – in the sacrament, in that tent we call the tabernacle. The priest’s role – the church’s role – is to bring God close to you, to make God present, so that you may respond to God’s loving initiative, and say: “Hineni…Here I am. Send me.” 

Like the apostles, you and I and the church have our good days and our bad days. You’d think that Peter, James and John after what they had experienced at the top of the mountain would have been clear thinking, on fire, perfect disciples after that. No, they went back down the mountain to the reality of themselves. They still thought – or at least hoped – that Jesus would be the king to drive away the Romans; they all ran away when Jesus was arrested, although John went not far and came back with Jesus’ mother to witness the crucifixion. Peter was more scared than loving and denied Jesus. Jesus did not expect them to be perfect, which was why he came back to them, forgave them and strengthened them. And God does not expect that we will be perfect either after the experience of the Mass, which is why he comes to us and forgives us and strengthens us in the sacrament of reconciliation. 

God is serious about us as a church and as individuals. God wants his kingdom built. God is here in his beloved son, with whom God is pleased and through whom God saved us. In his word, in his church, in his sacraments, but most of all in our hearts, let us listen to him. Clean of heart, we too shall see God.

Homily of Saturday, February 27, 2021 (Lent Week I)
Deut 26: 16-19; Mat 5: 43-48

“Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

If we really think about these words, we’re quickly faced with a tension that looks like it can’t be resolved. It’s the tension between ourselves, who can achieve nothing on our own, and Christ’s command to faultlessness that culminates in an unheard-of demand “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” We find a link connecting these in Paul’s letters and in the first three gospels where talk of grace and that of demands meet and merge. The link is divine superabundance. That is, the vast excess of grace offered by God to us in support of our efforts toward perfection. We know that all human righteousness is inadequate, concealing as it always it does our ingrained habit of calculating just how much we must do to leave ourselves feeling good about being proper Christians. We know that if it depended on us no one would enter heaven, the realm of perfection, full righteousness. Faced with Our Lord’s demand for perfection we might feel like Sisyphus endlessly rolling his stone up the mountain only to watch it roll back down. 

But the Gospel doesn’t leave us there. As he did in his Sermon on the Mount where he composed a new edition of the second Table of the Law, Jesus reveals the limit of our righteousness and requires us to step beyond with him.  And with him our shortcomings appear as indications, pointers toward how we are thrown back on the total gift of the Father’s superabundant love. That love is his Word, Jesus Christ, whose sufferings and glory we share. He is the righteousness of God which infinitely surpasses our efforts and carries us beyond ourselves. Lent, especially, is when we learn that we live first and foremost as beneficiaries of the Eucharistic Christ, the superabundant self-expenditure of God.  In him, as members of a people specially his own, we are called to act as donors, poor and grateful for what we’re given, and generously passing what we can on to others. Human righteousness can only be attained by abandoning our own claims and being generous to others and to God. It’s the righteousness of “Forgive as we have forgiven.” This is the human righteousness that God seeks to assume into his divine perfection.

Homily of Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Here we have two thoughts from Saint Augustine of Hippo, suitable for Lent. Both are from sermons on the psalms. The first: “God calls us to correct ourselves and invites us to do penance. He calls us through the wonderful gifts of his creation. And he calls us by granting time for light. He calls us through the reader at Mass and through the preacher. He calls us with the innermost force of our thoughts. He calls us with the scourge of punishment. And he calls us with the mercy of His consolation.” And then in another sermon on the psalms: “Lord, see your work in me, not my own work. For if you see my own work, you condemn me. But if you see yours, you crown me.” That’s very much Saint Augustine’s thinking.

Homily of Lent Sunday I (February 20-21, 2021)

The Gospel of Mark, which will be read on many Sundays this year, moves very quickly. In the first Chapter, we’re immediately introduced to John the Baptist as the one who prepares the way for the Lord, he immediately baptizes Jesus, and Jesus immediately goes into the desert for 40 days to be tempted before returning to Galilee. Unlike in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark does not elaborate on anything that happens in the desert: the Spirit inspires Jesus to go there for 40 days, then he comes back preaching the core message around which his ministry is built: Repent and believe in the Gospel. As Fr. Michael told us on Wednesday, this text, one of two options a Priest is given in the Missal when he sprinkles ashes, implies that Lent is a period of time when we are called to repent: to turn back to God, so that we can burn better, produce better ashes, leave good behind us as we are consumed.

Today’s first and second readings turn this theme around a little bit. Instead of ashes, left over after a fire has burnt, today’s readings focus on water. Like fire, water has great destructive potential. In the book of Genesis, when God decides to start over with creation, he uses 40 days and nights of rain to wipe away the established pattern of sin. The only living animals or birds saved from this destruction are Noah, his family, and the animals they took with them on the ark God told them to build. This destruction by water builds on a particular symbolic meaning that water held in ancient Mesopotamia: water stands for chaos, something uncontrolled and dangerous, and somewhat mysterious. It is closely tied into the story of creation. When God creates from nothing at the beginning of the book of Genesis, we are told that the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. This water is a kind of nothingness: a way to describe God before there is any matter, a way to describe a void that doesn’t exist yet. So, in the water of Noah’s flood, there is a kind of undoing of creation: through the wickedness of man, all the things that had been created good by God, except for Noah, were no longer good, so God covers them with water and starts over.

However, water does not only destroy, but it is also necessary for cleaning. This is the image of the ark that St. Peter builds on, so it’s worth looking at exactly how this can apply to a story in which all of creation except for 8 people and the animals carried on the ark are destroyed. The Bible doesn’t give us much information about the time of Noah, other than that the people were wicked. We have no historical information that can tell us whether there even was historically a flood, so it doesn’t really make sense to speculate on how exactly the people were wicked, we have to just take as a given that they were. They were wicked, doing wicked deeds that had corrupted their entire being into wickedness. This wickedness is what God washes away. God takes Noah, raises him and those with him above the waters in an ark, and washes away everything else. This leaves a kind of new creation: Noah, his family and all the animals on the Ark emerge, cleansed through their encounter with water.

In the aftermath of this destruction, God makes a covenant with Noah. This is a repeated pattern in the Old Testament: God makes covenants with Abraham, Moses, and David that serve to establish Israel as God’s chosen people. Each of these covenants serves to unite the people more closely to God, and creates obligations for Israel to live according to God’s will. The covenant God makes with Noah, however, is a bit strange. Unlike the later Old Testament covenants, it is not made with one nation among many, but it is made with all of creation: everybody descended from Noah, and every animal descended from the animals on the ark. It also doesn’t seem to require any action on the part of Noah or the rest of creation: God simply makes a covenant whereby he promises not to use water to destroy all bodily creatures again, and gives the rainbow as the sign that he will keep this: a pattern in the sky that appears when rain and sun are both present that can serve for us as a sign that the rain will pass. The implied condition is that the descendants of Noah will not be fully corrupted by wickedness in the future, in the way the world was at the time of Noah.

Like the other covenants of the Old Testament, the Covenant God makes with Noah and all of creation points towards the New Covenant established by Christ, which is also made with all of creation, and not just one particular nation. Through Christ, God fulfills his covenant with Noah by taking on the implied condition: humanity no longer has to be destroyed by its sins because God Himself has taken them on and offers forgiveness for them, God makes it possible for us to be cleansed of our sins. Our entry into this life of grace is baptism, our rebirth through water. As St. Peter points out, the water of baptism is not used to remove dirt from us, but symbolizes an appeal for a clear conscience. Like the flood, there is a destructive side to this: the destruction of our sinful nature. Like the flood, in baptism there is a new creation: cleansed of our attachment to sin, we are recreated in Christ, becoming part of His body. God cleans our nature so that we can enter His body. Like the flood, although this destroys our permanent attachment to wickedness, it does not entirely wipe away our tendency to sin. Soon after the flood, Noah got drunk and was mocked by one of his sons, sin survived the flood, even though the wicked did not. Through baptism, original sin, the directing of our lives towards sin that we have inherited from Adam and Eve, is destroyed. However, we still undergo many temptations, and, for us, these temptations lead us into many failures. God gives us the grace to make it possible to not sin, but unless we fully participate with that grace, we quickly fall back into sin and failure.

This brings us back to the desert. In the desert, there is a notable lack of water. Water is not just a destructive force, and not just an element of cleansing, but also an element necessary for life. Without any water, an average human being can survive for only a couple days. Due to the heat, I’d imagine it would take even less time to die of thirst in the desert. Immediately after he is baptized by John, and the Spirit descends on him like a dove, the Spirit drives Jesus into the desert, this place characterized by hunger and thirst, an inhospitable place where people cannot survive for long. We are told he goes there and experiences an aspect of human nature that we are constantly subject to: temptation. These 40 days that Jesus spends in the desert, are taken up by the Church as an inspiration for the season of Lent, the 40 days plus 6 Sundays of preparation for Easter. This season is an opportunity to go into the desert with Christ, to recognize our thirst for righteousness and truth that can only be satisfied by Christ. Doing this will allow us to speak Jesus’ call as he returns from the desert in our way of living. “This is the time of  fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”

Homily of Saturday, February 20, 2021

This is a Lenten reflection by Ruth Burrows, English Carmelite nun and spiritual writer: “To be baptized, to live in the state of baptism, is to live in and by faith. Not just to make acts of faith now and then, but to live our lives by faith, absolute trust in the forgiving, self-giving God. What we tend to do is live faith in fits and starts, acknowledging Him in some areas, denying Him in others. Baptism only becomes total when faith is total and truly we have died with Christ to a purely human life and risen to His divine way of being. There can be no realism in our living unless we keep our eyes on the blessed Passion of Christ. And Lent is the time when the Church bids us accept the pain of having this sacred Passion always before our eyes. In the Passion, we measure the greatness of His love, the seriousness of our lives with their countless choices, the certitudes upon which we base ourselves. Lent is the time of effort, warfare, discipline. Let us look and look again at the suffering Jesus and take the weight of shame and sorrow. It is often said, and rightly, that we cannot contemplate the death and resurrection of Jesus save in the radiance of the Resurrection. But because of what we are there is a need that at a particular time of year we should, as it were, step out of this radiance and stand in the unredeemed dark, looking at what our sins have done, looking at what our redemption cost the Lord. You have been baptized in Christ and are clothed head and foot in Christ. Let us accept the shame of the necessary stripping, so that we may indeed rise anew at Easter clothed in the glory of the risen Jesus.”

Homily of Thursday, February 18, 2021
Deuteronomy 30: 15–20; Luke 9: 22-25

In today’s first reading we hear Moses telling his people just before they enter the Promised Land: “I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom… I have set before you life and death. Choose life.” Then in today’s Gospel, Jesus follows the prediction of his passion with the words: “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it.  But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” Is Jesus contradicting Moses?  Not at all.  The key lies in the phrase “for my sake”. We don’t enter into the time of Lent for our sakes, but for Christ’s. The words of Moses and Jesus are linked in the concept of conversion, an action noun from the Latin convertere, to turn around. In Christian usage it most commonly means to reverse direction from a life of obsessive self-involvement – “for my sake” - to a life rooted in charity – “for Christ’s sake”.

Our Father Benedict (Lang) passed away several years ago. For me he will always be the exemplar of conversion. Just before he died, realizing what a humble and saintly man he was, I spontaneously asked him: “When did you ever get this way?” He looked at me quizzically as though he’d never thought of it, and answered, “I don’t know.” Two things about that answer deeply impressed me afterward. First, he knew exactly what I was talking about. My question made him aware for the first time, in perfect humility, that he was indeed a saint. I could see that in his eyes. And second, he really didn’t know. His holiness was a product of many years of simply and quietly following the Holy Rule, which is just life lived according to the Gospels. 

Especially on this first full day of Lent, it might be good to remind ourselves of a few things about conversion. First, it’s a development of the whole person, not just the intellect. It doesn’t happen in response to arguments or reason. For many this comes as a surprise. Instead it’s prompted by movements of the will and heart. Related to this, the influence and example of others is a hugely overlooked factor effecting conversions. And most importantly, it’s a process. It’s not a single event, and it can’t be hurried. The life of Father Benedict will always be for me the model of this. We don’t convert on the first day of Lent, or on the last day. It’s most often a grace we receive unaware, during an extended, day-by-day period in which we remain alert and vigilant, on the lookout for signs from the Lord that we are being offered opportunities to stand aside and let him reshape us – to turn us around, really. St. Benedict tells us that the life of the monk, like Father Benedict, should always have something “Lenten” about it. But for any Christian willing to convert, “lenten” vigilance is an important kind of prayer. It’s the prayer that’s always answered.

Homily for Ash Wednesday (February 17, 2021)

In just a few moments we will have our heads marked with ashes. This marks for us the beginning of Lent, which should be an out of the ordinary time for us. Ashes may seem a strange symbol to us. We don’t come into much contact with ashes anymore. Maybe we do if we use a fireplace at home, or if we go camping. Most people don’t smoke any more, so you don’t come into contact with those ashes. Nobody gives ash trays as gifts any more. Ashes have a very ancient symbolism for humanity. In the oldest form of Hinduism, the god Shiva was believed to live in the places where bodies were cremated and the ashes left. Ashes were believed to have regenerative power for the human spirit, and those who were most serious about serving God were advised to lie in beds of ashes and rub ashes on their bodies.

Just like control of fire was a skill that radically changed the way all humans lived: with fire they could cook food, purify water, heat homes on cold nights and at winter, bake clay into pottery, refine ores to make metal tools… all these important activities produced ashes from the fuel that was burned. Almost everything we see around us and use in our human lives, almost all human progress, can be traced back to fire. So, ashes are a product of human mastery of the material world and also a hint of what was to come for every human being.

Before the ashes are placed on your head, I will say “Remember that you are dust; and unto dust you will return.” Someday in each of our futures, all that will be left of each of our bodies will be ashes or dust of the earth. None of us will escape. Our lives burn like fuel. They ignite, burn, growing for a while in intensity, and then gradually or suddenly burn out. What sets you on fire? With what do you feed the flames of your life? That’s what makes the difference. Certain ashes and substances smell good and they smell good when they burn and so their ashes smell good. Other things smell badly when they burn and their ashes stink. Among other things, it was the smell of cigarette ashes that motivated me to stop smoking. Cedar and incense smell good as they burn; garbage smells very bad. We learn how to burn. We choose in life…one way or the other…what will burn us out. We choose what fire we will plunge into and what our ashes will smell like when our fire burns out. And if you refuse to choose, that is a choice itself. Some fire will find and consume you. During Lent we have the opportunity to think about and refine the fundamental choice of our lives and to refine our skills in living it out. 

We are taught to give up things during Lent as a penance. But here is another thought, a suggestion. Lent is six weeks long. Behavioral psychologists will tell you it takes just 6 weeks for something to become a habit. So, Lent is the perfect time to do something good. It is the perfect time to make some new good activity a habit in your life. No doubt we all have bad habits we’d like to be rid of. One of the best ways is to replace them with good habits. As St Peter says in his first letter, Charity, love, covers a multitude of sins.

The other words I say before the ashes are put on you are “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” Repent, turn in the right direction, make the right choices. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to burn well. Remember, you are fuel, you are dust and ashes. Be well and do it well.

Homily of Tuesday, February 16, 2021 

In today’s gospel, our Lord upbraids the disciples for their lack of understanding and for hardness of heart. The Rule of Saint Benedict has us hear every morning the words of God to his people in Psalm 95: Harden not your hearts as your forebears did at Meriba. Hardness of heart is a condition that will not let grace and the gospel penetrate. It is a sort of self-protection against grace. Today’s gospel reading shows you can be hard of heart and still be with Jesus, hear his teaching, be a follower, and still your heart is hard and you are without understanding. Maybe that is why Saint Benedict wants us to have this psalm read to us every morning: to guard against that situation. In St. Luke’s gospel the Virgin Mary is the one who does understand. She does think about things. She ponders things and turns them over in her mind. And of course she believes what she has been told by God. Her heart is not hardened. Maybe she, the Seat of Wisdom, can help us improve.

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Vigil of Saturday, February 13, 2021; Mass of Sunday, February 14, 2021) 
Lev. 13: 1-2, 44-46; 1 Cor 10:31 – 11:1; Mark 1: 40-45


Cardinal George of Chicago once famously said that we live in a culture that permits everything and forgives nothing. We despair of forgiveness. Fearing condemnation we conceal our weaknesses and guilt, mostly from ourselves. We’re left confused, isolated and lonely.  To the extent that this is true, we’re in a situation similar to that of the leper in today’s gospel, only worse.

Leprosy in Jesus’ time was incurable, inflicting people with severe and disfiguring nerve damage and finally death. Today’s pandemic gives us just a hint of the terror people felt at infectious diseases like leprosy back then. As today’s reading from Leviticus describes, the only recourse available was to isolate the infected. Simply left abandoned in some out-of-the-way place, they were condemned to a slow death. There was nothing more anyone could do. Because their leprosy was contagious, contact of any kind was totally forbidden. The sick person was completely cut off from the people of God, a fate worse than death for a Jew of that time. Indeed, leprosy was regarded by the rabbis as being a living death. But the leper in today’s gospel commits an unheard of act. He boldly approaches Jesus. He seems to have no fear of being a source of contagion.  “If you wish, you can make me clean.” he says. It’s clear that the man trusted Christ’s ability, because he doesn’t say “If you can”. He’s asking for a miracle, and he’s sure Jesus can do it.  Responding to the leper’s faith in him, Jesus answers with great compassion: “I do will it. Be made clean.”  And the cure is instant. Jesus’ word is powerful and it’s creative. And so is his touch. Like the leper, Jesus does something equally unheard of.  He touches the infected man. But far from contracting the infection, he makes it vanish. With his word he commands a cure and with his hand he affects that cure. It’s the very pattern of a sacramental act, and, in fact, it became our sacrament of Reconciliation on the night Jesus rose from the dead when he said to his disciples, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained.” (John 20:22-23) 

Then Jesus does something surprising: he orders the man he just healed not to make his cure public. Why does he do that?  This is why - because the healed man was aiming too low. His faith was admirable but it had its limits. He sought physical healing and nothing more. If the word spread that Jesus was dispensing nothing but miracle cures, he was sure to be misunderstood, his true message distorted and his salvific mission severely hampered. The cured man didn’t understand that the physical healing of his body might signify the possibility of a spiritual healing for his soul. And here’s the point. The bedrock of Jesus’ mission was the forgiveness of sins. The goal of his teaching was to make people aware of this. He was adamant that it not be cut short. It’s entirely possible that he sensed in the situation Satan’s malevolence, lurking and intent on doing just that. This would explain the dire urgency of his words. The gospel tells us that he gave the man a “stern warning” not to spread word of his cure.
 
The translation here is faulty. “Stern warning” in no way conveys the intensity of Jesus’ manner. If we want to know how vehement he really felt about this, we should consider that the original word translated “stern warning” doesn’t even mean that. In Greek it means “to snort” - to snort or snarl, like an angry beast. Make no mistake. His severity was not directed at the man he had just cured. For him Jesus felt nothing but pity. His ferocity was focused completely on wickedness – the wickedness through which all lack of life: disease, death, hatred and corruption had entered the world. People will see him this way again, when he reacts in the very same way at the sight of death, just before he raises Lazarus. (Jn 11:33) 

Jesus hatred of sin represented nothing new in Israel. The Jews were familiar with how in the Old Testament Yahweh confronted it head on. The Israelite people had faced his overwhelming wrath time after time because of their infidelities. The Hebrew word describing his unleashed fury comes from the same root as the word for the “smoking muzzle of a bull”. (Ps 18:16) But we should never let this frighten us. God is setting us a great example.  He doesn’t do deals with the devil. Neither should we. The wrath of God reveals his absolute refusal to have any dealing with iniquity. It expresses the total incompatibility between the divine fullness of Being and any sinful denial of being. Obviously Our Lord means business. The problem is, often we don’t. 

This Wednesday – Ash Wednesday – is the beginning of the season of Lent. Lent is the first sign of Spring. In fact “lent” is an Old English word for spring. It’s the season of planting, seed-time and new life. It’s when we prepare for Easter, the culmination of the Paschal Mystery by which the Son of God, having taken on our fallen nature opened for us on his cross the floodgates of salvation. This is what we celebrate at Easter. As we begin to look forward to this, let’s abandon the illusion that we have no need of forgiveness. Let’s approach Christ and ask that he perform a miracle for us. What I mean is let’s begin making frequent use of the sacrament of reconciliation.

The leper’s faith in Christ’s healing power brought him to seek a cure. Our faith in Christ’s saving power is the key to our salvation. Our faith is the springtime seed that only we can plant, the seed that, watered by his sacramental mercy, rises in us to new, divine life in the gentle light of his grace. This Lent, our faith is the springtime seed that only we can plant, the seed that, watered by his sacramental mercy, rises in us to new, divine life in the gentle light of his grace. At the source and summit of our Christian life, at the high point of the Eucharistic moment, in a few minutes we’ll hear our Lord’s words: “This is my body given for you… this is my blood which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  This is the forgiveness the world cannot give. Let us step out into the Springtime sun and accept his cure.

Homily from the feast of Saint Scholastica; Tuesday, February 10, 2021

The account in the breviary this morning for this feast is from Saint Gregory the Great’s Dialogues about Saint Benedict. He and his sister Scholastica were meeting for their yearly visit and she wanted him to stay with her through the night, talking about God and holy things. He said, “No, I’m going back to the monastery.” And she prayed and got a storm of rain to come upon them, which prevented him from doing what he wanted, and he had to do what she wanted. Saint Gregory says that Saint Scholastica could do more because she loved more. That is a reminder to the church of the importance of love and that it is superior to everything else. As St. Paul says: Faith, hope, and love abide, but the greatest of these is love. Saint John says: God is love and he that abides in love, abides in God and God in him. Saint John of the Cross says: Love is the measure by which we will be judged. And Saint Therese of Lisieux says: I have said it all; all is fulfilled; it is only love that matters.

Homily of Saturday Vigil Mass, 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 6, 2021

You perhaps have asked yourself from time to time: why does the church make such a fuss about our going to Mass every Sunday, every weekend? Why is that so important? There are a number of ways of answering that question, the first being that it is the third commandment, from the Ten Commandments. The first commandment is you shall have no other gods than myself before you; then you shall not take the name of the Lord in vain; and then remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day. Now the Sabbath Day for the Jews was and is Saturday, because it is the day according to Genesis when God rested from his labors of creation. So why do we come to church on Sunday? That is our holiday because Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday. That is why Christians come on Sunday. There are some Protestants who say no, we should go to church on Saturday too, because that’s the Law of Moses. But all other Christians say Sunday, the day of the resurrection. 

The other thing, of course, is that we are to know and to love and to serve God with all our hearts; to love him. And one of the ways, the way in which we show our love for God, is by keeping the commandments, or at least trying to. And one of these commandments is honoring him on Sunday, for us, for Christians. But why do we have to go to Mass? Why couldn’t we just say some prayers in our bedroom or go for a walk and say some prayers? Why wouldn’t that work just as well as having to come to Mass? If we really find that a difficult problem it’s because we don’t understand what is the Mass. The Mass is the greatest prayer that we can offer our Lord, our God. Why? Because it’s not our prayer – it’s the prayer of Jesus Christ, who is in the Mass, who is our true priest, and who is offering himself and his prayer on our behalf. And we can, we should, join our prayers to his. That is why it is so important. What is present in the Mass is the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, the very events that saved us from the power of the devil. And we are present with them in the Mass, present with Christ in the Mass. And as I say it is not our prayer that is so important, but his. And we join our prayers and our offering of ourselves to him. It should be on our part an act of love. We are supposed to love God. That is what you are trying to learn, or should be, and it is what I am trying to learn: to love God and love your neighbor. And remember that the way to love God is to keep his commandments. And one of his commandments is to honor the Lord’s day.

In the old days, in addition to going to Mass on Sunday, Catholics did not do work on Sunday. There are two interesting stories about this. The first one is about the mass. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, probably the greatest saint, the most popular saint of the 20th century, said it would be easier for the world to exist without the sun then it would be without the Mass Now that might strike you, and I have said that to people who have found it to be, ridiculous. They say that’s nonsense; to say the least it’s an exaggeration. Well, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s not, because if anybody at that time or at any time knew the mind of God, it was Padre Pio, and that’s what he said is the importance of a Mass. In my youth, everybody went to church – Protestants and Catholics, and on Saturdays the Jews went to synagogue. Now relatively few Catholics go to Mass; Protestants don’t go to church. I don’t know about Jews. There was another great scene in the 19th century named John Vianney, who was a pastor in a small town in France, Ars, He was noteworthy for many things, but he was a reader of souls. You could go to him for confession and if you left something out of your confession, he would remind you of it. Or if you tried to hide something, he would tell you: no, you have to tell that. Somebody once asked him why is it that the Protestant country, England (in the 19th century this was), is the greatest country in the world? It has a vast empire. The sun never sets on the British flag. Why is it so great? And John Vianney said: because they keep the Sunday. They go to church; they don’t do business. Well, England today: they don’t go to church and they do do business. And are they the greatest country in the world? We would like to think that we are the greatest country in the world. As I say, fifty years ago, we went to church, and we didn’t do business on Sundays. How is it now? Where are we going? It’s something to think about.

Homily of Wednesday, February 3, 2021

I think we probably celebrate this Mass in honor of Saint Ansgar because Bishop Ansgar Nelson, who was a Dane and who became bishop in Scandinavia, in Sweden, was a member of this community, a much beloved member of this community. This is what Donald Atwater says about Saint Ansgar:  “Saint Ansgar was the first missionary to North-western Europe. He was a monk, first at Corbie in Picardy, then a New Corbie (Corvey) in Westphalia. In 826 he went to preach the gospel in Denmark, but was soon driven out, whereupon he turned his attention to Sweden, with some success. In 831 he was consecrated archbishop of Hamburg, and Pope Gregory IV confided the Scandinavian peoples to his care. The Dane’s destroyed Hamburg in 845, and Ansgar was given to see of Bremen, but he was unable to establish himself there for a long time. Meanwhile, he returned to Sweden for a time, and to Denmark, where he labored under more encouraging conditions. But after his death the work he had begun came to a stop; Christianity did not begin to make headway in Scandinavia until two centuries later. In answer to one who ‘cracked up’ the miracles with which the bishop was credited, Saint Ansgar spoke words which represent the attitude of all the saints in this matter: ‘Were God to choose me to do such things, I would ask him for one miracle only – that by his power he would make me a good man.’” That’s a remark that our Bishop Ansgar might have made too.