Guess Who

This past week, I spent a few days at my parents’ home in Little Rock visiting with out-of-town family, including my niece who is four and my nephew who is two. As a priest, without a family of my own, my home life is relatively quiet and uneventful and so I really enjoy those rare chances to be around the hustle and bustle most families experience every day – cooking and cleaning, games and toys, the joys and dramas that surround meal time, play time, bed time, etc.

One particular experience that marked much of my week was the game “Guess Who?” It’s a two-player children’s game, in which each player takes turns asking questions about the character card of the other player, things like: “Does your person have glasses?”, “Is your person wearing a hat?” Eventually one player makes a guess about the identity of the other player’s card. My siblings and I had this game as kids, and my sister gave it to her daughter (my niece), thinking she would enjoy it. Boy, did she ever! I think I’ve played more games of “Guess Who?” in the last few days than I have in the last 25 years combined. Of course, I loved every minute of it.

Our Gospel today also describes an episode of domestic life, but one not nearly as tranquil as playing games at home. Instead, we are told of the rather fraught experience of Mary and Joseph searching for the 12-year-old Christ, believing him to be lost, and then finding him somewhere completely unexpected. Why do we have this story on this Feast of the Holy Family, instead of something more peaceful and joyful, something set in the tranquil setting of the home at Nazareth? Because this story helps us discover again who Jesus really is. We might even say that the Gospel writer Luke presents this Gospel episode to us as a kind of “Guess Who?” exercise, in which the details of the story act as clues to Christ’s true identity.

Let’s look again at the story, but this time looking for hints about what the Evangelist might be trying to tell us about Jesus:

• Jesus goes up to Jerusalem with his parents to celebrate the feast of Passover. This tells us that the family of Jesus are faithful Jews, doing that which God had commanded the nation of Israel to do each year to mark their freedom from slavery in Egypt. But Jesus is not just any 12-year-old; he is the Messiah, the heir of David, and thus by entering Jerusalem, he enters into his own city, the city of which he is the rightful king. Luke accentuates this point when he tells us that, when his parents began the return trip to Galilee, “Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem.” 

• Mary and Joseph search for the seemingly lost Jesus for a period of three days. This length of time is not accidental. Throughout Scripture, a period of three days is understood as a time of trial after which God intervenes and restores the one who is suffering to fullness of life. There are too many examples to list here, but this idea can be found in the Book of Hosea, in the Psalms, and in the story of Jonah. Of course, all of them – including this instance here – foreshadow the period of three days between Christ’s death on the Cross and his Resurrection. 

• And finally, we have the most important part of the Gospel, when Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the Temple and confront him. They ask him, very understandably, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” But Jesus’ response explains the whole episode. The Temple was understood as the place of God’s presence, and Jesus – as the literal Presence of God become Flesh – takes up his place in his Father’s house. He reminds his mother and foster father that he is not just any “Son” – he is truly the Son of his heavenly “Father.” Through his presence in it, the Temple has truly become the “Father’s house.” 

Taken together, these clues from St. Luke answer the question of just who this boy Jesus is. He is the son of Mary and Joseph. He is a precocious 12-year-old. But he is also the Incarnate Word, the Son of the heavenly Father born into our time and reality. 

The Finding of the Savior in the Temple (1860) by William Holman Hunt

And this is Good News not just for Mary and Joseph, but also for us, because this Son has been born for us as much as for them. If Jesus has shared every part of our earthly life – including the realities of family, home life, and all of the joys and challenges therein, – then that means every aspect of our earthly lives can also be means of encountering him, of deepening the relationship we have with Christ in the here and now. We all know that the joys of family life can be one of the primary ways we encounter God’s love. But think also about the parts of your home and family life that are challenging: care for children and loved ones, the mundane tasks of the day-to-day, the rhythm and grind of work and family, even the sorrows that inevitably come. In the light of the Incarnation, those become opportunities for grace, avenues by which we can find the Lord’s presence among us, if only we look to find him.

This also means that, in light of who the Holy Family is, we have to view our own lives and families differently. Jesus desired to share our reality so completely that he became a part of a human family. We, in turn, must desire to make our human families part of his heavenly Family, participating each day in the divine life of God. In many ways, family life – the life lived at home – is the locus of our daily sanctification, the very place by which we learn how to place our trust in Jesus. We all want the best for our children, our loved ones, our families. Only Jesus truly gives that to us. As we saw in the Gospel, without him, we are lost and dismayed. It is only with his presence among us that we are at peace. How important it is for parents and grandparents and children and everyone who is part of a family to understand again how there can be no true happiness at home if Jesus is not known.

Friends, perhaps in this Christmas season the Lord is inviting us to realize not just his true identity but ours as well. Guess who? To be adopted sons and daughters of the Father, heirs to God’s divine life. Jesus shared our human life in order to make it possible for us to share in the communion of love that is eternal life. By his grace, he makes it possible for us to begin to experience that life even now, especially in the holy duties of the family. In the Eucharist we will soon share, may we find with eyes of faith the One who nourishes us, dwells among us, and grants us peace.

A Christmas Story

I would like to share with you a Christmas story. 

A few hours before midnight on Christmas Eve, 1993, unexpected visitors arrived at a monastery in the village of Tibhirine in the mountains of northern Algeria. The seven monks of the Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas might have expected well-wishers from the neighborhood, come to bring them early Christmas greetings. Instead, their sanctuary was invaded by armed militants, demanding medical supplies, and threatening to kidnap their physician. The monks of Tibhirine were able to turn away the militants that night, but they knew they would return. Conflict throughout the region had been increasing: skirmishes between rebels and regular army, innocent villagers wounded and killed, kidnappings for ransom, executions. The increasingly precarious position of the monastery had convinced many, including some of the monks, that it would be best for them to leave. They had received death threats, and they knew that spurning the militants once would not turn them away forever. It was simply a matter of time before they too would face death. As it turns out, they were right. A little over two years later, the seven fathers and brothers were abducted, held hostage for a time, and eventually assassinated.

This story may seem a little grim for a Christmas homily. In many ways though it is the story of the Christian experience – all the way back to the Christmas story itself. There is a tendency these days to treat Christmas as a momentary respite from the storm around us, as if to say, “The world is dark and terrible, but here for a moment, let’s have a little light and peace and joy.” But just what is the story that we are remembering? What is the context of the Christmas event?

In the Gospel we just heard [at the Vigil Mass, Mt 1:1-25], St. Matthew tells us precisely. He recounts for us the genealogy of Jesus Christ, listing his ancestors according to the flesh all the way back to Abraham. The names may be unfamiliar to us, but the lineage is full of people who did some pretty unsavory things – prostitution, incest, adultery, murder, blasphemy, idolatry. It is from this line of sinners that the Son of God takes upon himself our humanity. Today we celebrate the feast of his birth – and yet even that birth has a kind of brutality that cannot be overlooked. Christ is born in a dirty, smelly stable, because the hardness of men’s hearts found no room for his mother in the inn. Soon, his family will be forced to flee to another country because of the jealousy of a mad king, and innocent children will meet their deaths as a result. And finally this child, laid upon the wood of the manger in the cave of Bethlehem, will be crucified upon on the wood of a Cross and laid out in a cave outside of Jerusalem. Viewed in a worldly way, the Christmas story can seem as grim as the story of the monks at Tibhirine.

Kazimierz Sichulski, 3 Works: The Birth of Jesus, Light of the World (c. 1915)

There is, of course, one thing that I have left out – and it is the one thing that makes all the difference, in both stories: “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means "God is with us" (Mt 1:23).” My friends, those few words are why we celebrate tonight, despite all of the unsavory externals and brutal outcomes that I mentioned before. It is why we celebrate at all, it is why we are truly a people of light and peace and joy. The world around us harbors much darkness; our Church is riddled with moral decay and dysfunction; our personal lives are full of brokenness and suffering. And yet, still we rejoice – tonight, and every night, in this season and in every season – not because those things are untrue, but because what is also true and real and enduring is that “God is with us.”

If we reduce Christmas to the story of one night, to the birth of a babe in a manger, then there is the danger that it becomes for us little more than a fairytale, a child’s bedtime story. Instead, we must remember Who this babe is – He is the God-Made-Man, the Lord of heaven and earth, who has assumed our human nature precisely so that he may redeem it, who has become part of humanity precisely so that he may die for it. The God that we worship, the God that we praise, is not a god who shies away from our wickedness, who tosses us aside or hold’s us at arm’s length because of our evil tendencies. No, our God is “the God-with-us”, whose love for us is so great that he entered into our midst, into the very heart of our darkness so as to illuminate us with his light. And he still does so, and nothing can keep him from doing so – not the sins of Old Testament fathers and forefathers, not the woes of the world, not the scandalous depravities of priests and bishops, not our own half-hearted affections. God enters into the ugliness of all of it in order to transform it anew.

The great 20th century writer J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’– though it contains some samples or glimpses of final victory.” Surely, we know what he means by the “long defeat;” but do we also know just as truly the “final victory”? No matter how long the losing streak might feel, we see those previews, those glimpses of triumph through the gift of faith. Faith in what? Faith in the Christian story – faith in the Christmas story: in Emmanuel, “the God-with-us.” If we come to believe in that Story as our essential reality, as our fundamental truth, then every other darkness and suffering and sadness is transformed by his Presence, by his being-with-us. The birth of Christ is not a respite from the storm of sin that is the human story, that is our story – it is the onslaught against it, it is the rewriting of the world by the light of God in such a way that no darkness can obscure it.

In many ways, we face a choice about how to proceed from this night forward. This Christmas can be for us as it is for so many: a pause from the squalls around us, with a joy and peace that is temporary at best and contrived at worst. Or – it can be a chance to discover again our place in the true story of the world, the Story of the love of a God-Made-Man, to be reawakened to the deep joy and abiding peace whose source is Emmanuel, “the God-with-us,” who brings light to every darkness: in our world, in our Church, in every aspect of our lives. To celebrate Christmas must be for us more than happy memories and sentimental merrymaking – it must be to renew our belief in the long and unfolding victory of Jesus, oft obscured perhaps, but never undone.

The Trappist monks and martyrs of Tibhirine were beatified on December 8, 2018.

The seven monks at Tibhirine, whom I mentioned at the beginning, faced a choice twenty-five years ago tonight. They could have fled from the darkness, from the threat of violence, but they decided to stay, to remain with the people to whom they ministered. No doubt they did so because of their faith in Emmanuel, “the God-with-us,” who never flees from our darkness but enters into it, who shared not only our life but even our death in order to save us. That faith helped those monks understand their own place in the great Story of the world, and they suffered death for it, but no doubt they did so with a glimpse of that final victory to come. A few weeks ago, they were beatified, declared “blessed” by the Church, and now they see, not in glimpses but with full face, the glory of the God-Made-Man.

My friends, may the Christmas story – as it truly was, and as it truly is – touch our hearts as it touched theirs. May we be reawakened to its power and its mystery and find again our place in it, for it is, after all, our story too: “because a Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).

Making Ready

I don’t make it out to many movies these days. However, a few weeks back, I made a rare trip to the movie theater to see a documentary about something that happened about eighteen months ago, which made headlines around the world and which has fascinated me ever since. In the early morning of June 3, 2017, Alex Honnold, one of the world’s most accomplished rock climbers, scaled the face of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley in California, all 3,000 granite feet of it. Not just any climber can climb “El Cap,” but those who do normally take two or three days to do it. Alex climbed it in a little under four hours.

However, the really stunning thing about Alex’s achievement was that he climbed the face of El Capitan in a style known as “free soloing,” that is, without any ropes or safety equipment. It’s simple and yet terrifying: the only thing keeping you on the mountain is your own strength. One slip of the foot, one loose fingerhold means instant death. The documentary that I saw, Free Solo, described how Alex trained for his climb for months, even years beforehand. Physically, he had to practice the route over and over, so that there were no absolutely no surprises once he was up there without ropes. But even more rigorous was his mental and emotional preparation – imagining every foothold and handhold in his mind, and then visualizing himself climbing the route without any gear.

The movie is gripping and nerve-wracking because even though you know Alex survives the climb, it’s hard not to envision him slipping and falling to his death. What fascinated me the most about Alex’s preparation was that the psychological element was much more intense than the physical. He trained so completely that he says he felt no fear and no anxiety during the climb at all. That may seem hard to believe, but for him, everything that could have possibly happened on the mountain had already been worked out before in his mind. He knew that handling his emotions would probably mean the difference between life and death, and so he prepared by processing all of the possible scenarios and eventualities in advance. For four hours, Alex climbed a perfect route up the mountain face, but even more impressive was how he maintained his composure and calm while doing it.

Alex Honnold climbs the "Freerider" route on Yosemite's El Capitan, from the movie Free Solo.

Preparation not only makes us ready for something daunting. It changes us – it transforms the very way that we face that difficult thing. As was the case for Alex, the most important kind of preparation often is on the interior, managing our own selves, making ourselves ready for what might otherwise seem overwhelming.

In the Gospel today, John the Baptist promotes just this kind of interior preparation. This obscure prophet in the desert proclaims news of great importance that the other men mentioned, tetrarchs and high priests, knew nothing about. The coming of the Messiah, the arrival of the long-awaited Heir to the throne of David, was something that the Jewish people had dreamed of for centuries. Now, John tells them that he is at long last at hand, and that they must make ready to welcome him. The Church gives us this story from the Gospels every year on the Second Sunday of Advent as a kind of reminder that we too must make ready in this season. Our hearts should be just as joyous and anxious to receive Christ into our lives in a new way as were the people of Israel two millennia ago.

In what way does John say that we, like they, should make ready? Through repentance. In Greek, the word is “metanoia.” “Repentance” in English has a connotation of guilt, sorrow, and regret, but that isn’t the meaning in Greek. Instead, “metanoia” simply means “a change of mind,” a turning of the heart away from something trivial or unsuitable and toward something true and lasting. Just like a rock climber might prepare himself for his climb by retracing his route in his mind, repentance is a kind of spiritual training that allows us to see the paths our souls are taking and what kind of course correction might be needed. Repentance is a method of preparation, but a preparation by which we signal that we need to make a fundamental change.

It is important to realize that we don’t make this change all by ourselves. The Lord calls us to make our hearts ready for his coming, but it is he who will primarily do the work. Nonetheless, he won’t force change upon us – we have to make the interior turn toward him, showing our willingness to allow him to prepare us in the ways we need.

Sometimes, what the Lord asks can be challenging. It might mean that we allow him space to “make low” the “mountain and hills” of our lives: perhaps by helping us to detach from material things or unhealthy relationships; or by ridding us of sinful habits of mind and heart; or by removing excesses of pride, anger, lust, and selfishness. But for every place where the Lord may humble us, he also “fills in a valley,” lifting us up through the hope of eternal life, gifting us with friendships that bring us closer to him, consoling us with peace and a sense of his presence in our own quiet prayer and meditation. In the end, if we let the Lord do his work, we will find that the Lord has created within us a straight path, a highway for deeper communion with him. The coming of the Savior doesn’t mean that all of our problems will vanish instantly, or that we will no longer face suffering or discontent. But it does mean that we have an assurance of God’s love and presence in the flesh – in the human life of his Son Jesus.

Friends, the kind of Advent preparation we face is nothing nearly as difficult, nor as dangerous, as the preparation Alex Honnold needed for his climb. But it is just as important, since it requires our interior conversion, allowing the Lord to straighten the paths of our hearts and correct the course of our souls. His work might require some change on our part, but there’s no cause for fear or anxiety because God is in complete control. As we continue our ascent through the Advent season, let us ready ourselves through repentance, signifying our willingness to be remade in such a way that like the people of Israel we can welcome the Lord into every part of our lives.

A Curse... and a Blessing

Are you familiar with the phrase “a blessing and a curse”? Usually, people use it in reference to themselves, about some personality trait they have that is both helpful and also a hindrance. For example, having a really great memory is certainly a blessing if you’re trying to recall someone’s name, but it could be a kind of curse as well if you have trouble forgetting painful or difficult memories. 

The Church has long viewed humanity’s sinfulness in precisely this double-edged way, except reversed: as a curse and as a blessing. In the first reading, we heard about how the sin of disobedience committed by our first parents unleashed all of the terrible things we experience in life: pain, sorrow, death. The fundamental disunity and discord that is at the heart of all of our negative experiences is not God’s doing – rather it is the fruit of humanity’s own sinfulness, begun first by Adam and Eve and then continued by each of us.

But as much as sin has been a curse for humanity, as Christians we also understand that without our sinfulness, we would not have received the greatest blessing God has ever given us – Jesus. On the night before Easter each year, the Church sings in its Vigil liturgy an ancient hymn of joy, including one line about how the disobedience of Adam and Eve is a “felix culpa,” a “happy fault.” In other words, our sin is a kind of self-curse, but God also used it as a blessing, since it is because of our sinfulness that He sent his Only-Begotten Son as our Savior and Redeemer. Through Jesus, we have human beings have received “every spiritual blessing in the heavens”, in the words of St. Paul, not only healed of our sinfulness but also raised to become co-heirs with Christ of all that God has promised.

Today, we recall that God’s blessings upon humanity began even before Jesus was born. God’s plan to redeem us from the ancient curse of sin commenced with the Immaculate Conception of Jesus’ Mother, Mary, when God preserved her from the stain of original sin that has marked every human being after Adam and Eve. God foresaw that Mary would perfectly accept God’s will for her to be our Lord’s Mother, and so at the moment of her conception he applied to her the grace of Christ’s future passion. Mary, then, is the first one who has been remade by God’s grace – the fullness of her being is a blessing, untouched and unhindered by sinfulness.

As we celebrate the amazing way in which God acted in the life of Mary, perhaps there is a chance for each of us to reflect upon how God has acted in our own lives. Do I recognize sin and disobedience to God’s will as the source of much of the pain and sorrow in my own life? Do I thank God for how he has healed me of sin’s curse, and transformed me by his blessing, first at my baptism and then each time that I receive his grace, especially in the sacraments? Am I willing to listen to what his plan might be for my life, as Mary did, and proclaim the Lord’s greatness by following his will rather than my own?

Friends, our Mother Mary is the “New Eve,” the Mother of all those who live not under the curse of sin but in the blessing of being God’s adopted children in Christ. Through God’s grace, she is the instrument by which his plan of redemption begins, and she continues to intercede for each of us, that we might be always free of the ancient curse of sinfulness and receive all of the blessings that God has in store for us. As we continue through this Advent season, may we continue to praise the Lord for how he invites each of us – through his grace, and with his blessing – to respond with Mary’s “Yes” to our part in the mystery of redemption.

Sober and Alert

The Wise and Foolish Virgins (3) (c. 1848) by Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow

Time is a funny thing. Philosophers debate about how *real* time is – whether it is truly accurate to view it in the terms we commonly do as past, present, and future, or whether it is more accurate to see time as an uninterrupted chain or block that only appears to unfold progressively. Whatever their answer, most of us know the feeling of how time can often seem to play tricks on us. For example, I bet Thanksgiving break already feels like ages ago to many of us, but the start of the semester – comparatively – not that long ago. We have just flipped the calendar to December, and many of us may feel, “Where has 2018 gone?” The days get longer, it seems, and the years shorter.

Today we start the new season of Advent, a season very much about time, and for that reason, it’s kind of a strange season as well. For one thing, it’s short – we have only a little more than three weeks until it ends. Indeed, there is a temptation to skip Advent altogether, and just jump on ahead to celebrating Christmas. The culture around us certainly encourages us to do that. The Church, as you might guess, takes things more slowly, in their proper order. There is another reason that Advent is kind of a funny season. On the one hand, it is a preparation for the season of Christmas and the celebration of the birth of our Savior Jesus. But at its heart, Advent really isn’t about Christmas at all; instead it’s about remembering the passage of time, especially how God is its author and time is not forever.

We hear this quite clearly at the beginning of the Advent season. In the first reading today, the prophet Jeremiah foretells the days when the Lord will at last bring his justice upon the world, righting all wrongs and settling all accounts. In the Gospel, Jesus talks again about his return at the end of time, a day that will catch people off guard, and which will bring an end to time as we know it. This Gospel reading – which, let’s admit it, is a little frightening – would be out of place if this new season of Advent were only about preparing for the birth of Christ. But as I said, Advent is a little strange. In order to properly celebrate Jesus’s coming long ago, we first call to mind his Second Coming; to rejoice that he has come once, we remember that he will come again.

This may seem a little strange, but there’s a good reason for it, and it has to do with how we tend to treat time. Most of us live our day to day lives planning different things, making arrangements, and generally operating as if our lives have no end in sight. Of course, we know that we are mortal, and our time here is not infinite, but we generally don’t let that knowledge impinge too much on our way of thinking. Inevitably, then we look for fulfillment in the passing things of time – stuff, pleasure and satisfaction, career achievements, the esteem of other people. The problem, of course, is that eventually we will be caught off guard – we will be reminded of our finitude in some shocking or disturbing way, or we may even find our time drawn to a close in a far too quick way.

The followers of Jesus have to operate differently. As he tells us in the Gospel, the things of this reality are ultimately unreliable, incapable of providing us with true meaning and fulfillment. It is only when we live with a view to the coming reality – especially to him as the constant that guides and forms how we treat everything else – that we have a proper approach to the things of this world.

Jesus warns us about three things that can easily distract us from this. The first thing he mentions is “carousing,” sometimes also translated as dissipation or debauchery. Basically, it is indulgence in the pleasures and attractions of this world. We could think of a lot of examples: sex, money, entertainment, sports, politics, possessions, social media, even knowledge and curiousity – the list could go on. The second thing to avoid is “drunkenness.” It is a sin, usually a serious one, to intentionally do anything which takes away our ability to reason, our sensibility. Certainly, alcohol is a major danger in this regard, and one that our culture misuses terribly, especially on college campuses. But we can become “drunk” on things other than booze, as well – power, prestige, greed, but also anger, despair, sarcasm, and anything else that can overwhelm right judgment and sober thinking. Finally, if those don’t cover all the bases, Jesus warns us not to be weighed down by the “anxieties of daily life.” That’s something we all can take to heart. Jesus knows that we have problems and concerns in our lives right now, but we can’t become so weighed down by them that we abandon faith and hope for an attitude of worry.

In addition to warning us of what can distract us, Jesus also tells us what we can do to make ourselves ready for the Lord’s action in our lives. First, we should “be vigilant” – that is, we should watch, be on guard, and see things with a spiritual perspective. There is a great line from the First Letter of Peter: “Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith.” We should have a discerning eye toward how we view the situations, cares, and things of this world, recognizing that within them often lie temptations. We have to be on guard against whatever might disturb our relationship with the Lord, and rob us of inner peace. This leads to Jesus’s second command – “pray.” We only can be truly ready for the Lord if we are continually communicating with him, speaking to him about the circumstances and concerns of our day to day reality, lifting up what we have and who we are in a offering of love and praise, and then receiving from him the grace to keep persevering, watchful and alert.

Friends, time may be a funny thing – inevitable and yet unreliable – but Jesus is the Lord of the past, present, and future. When we recognize that – when we live now ready for his action, mindful of his coming, in whatever form that may be – then we can regard the things of this world in the proper way. Let’s use the three weeks and change of this Advent season not just to prepare for Christmas, but as a time to rouse ourselves from drowsiness, reassessing how we view all the aspects of our life and whether the Lord is at the center. Let’s keep our mind’s eye always on the coming of Christ, so that we can regard the things of the here and now with a sobriety and alertness that makes us ready for whatever life may bring.

A Provident God

Giving Thanks (c. 1905) by Harry Roseland

Thanksgiving is a holiday all about traditions: from recalling the circumstances of that fabled first Thanksgiving in the Plymouth colony four centuries ago, to the particular traditions established by our own families. There is one tradition though that many families seem to share: the one where each family member must recount what he or she is thankful for. Often, this tradition – at least as it is depicted in the movies – happens right at the beginning of Thanksgiving dinner, after everyone has sat down but before anyone is allowed to start eating. As each member takes his or her turn recounting the things for which they are grateful, the list grows longer and longer, and inevitably someone complains, “Hurry up already, I’m hungry!”

Taking time to be grateful is an important tradition, not just at Thanksgiving but at all times. In fact, for the Christian, gratitude is more than a tradition – it is an obligation, a part of the general spirit of worship and praise that we are called to have for God at all times. The fact that you are here at Mass this morning – on a day when the university is closed, on a day that is not a holy day of obligation – means that you probably know this very well. There is no better means by which we can show our gratitude to God than to participate in this liturgy, this Eukharistia (Greek for “Thanksgiving”), the Church’s sublime act of worship offered to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.

As we age, our gratitude grows and deepens as well. A child might be grateful for food on the table, the chance to visit with friends and relatives, perhaps the toys he or she is already looking forward to receiving at Christmas. An adult’s gratitude goes a little deeper: for family harmony, for the opportunity to work and provide for others, for experiences with and memories of loved ones no longer present. In time, of course, we come to realize that everything we have, however fleeting, is a blessing and so gratitude should be at heart of our very being. It is, in many ways, the foundation of an authentic relationship with God.

That’s not to say that gratitude is always easy. At times, it can be difficult to give thanks: there are blessings that come in unexpected or seemingly untimely ways; other blessings are difficult to receive or to know how to utilize; and perhaps most especially there are events and occurrences in life that don’t appear to be blessings at all. When we are in the midst of trial, disappointment, loss, want, or any other kind of suffering, to give thanks may be the very last thing our soul wants to do – but even then, we have an obligation to praise God, and to thank him. If nothing else, there is always at least the blessing of being invited to share in the sufferings of Christ and to be freed of our attachments to the present reality so that we might long more deeply for the eternal one to come.

In the second reading today, we heard St. Paul tell the Corinthians that they have received “the grace of God bestowed… in Christ Jesus,” such that they “are not lacking in any spiritual gift” but “enriched in every way.” Those words do not mean that all was joy and laughter for the Corinthians; in fact, from what we hear about that community in Paul’s letters, it was more of the opposite. But as Paul tells them, even sorrows and trials can become blessings for those who see with the eyes of faith. We are servants of a provident God, not an inscrutable one. In Christ, especially in his Resurrection, we have already been shown a glimpse of how God has arranged all things in the end unto our ultimate good. In the meantime, we call upon the Holy Spirit to help us believe "how all things work together unto good" for those who love God (Rom 8:28).

Friends, on this Thanksgiving Day, let us seek to be grateful not merely for the individual blessings that may come easily to mind today, but for everything, for the entirety of our relationship with God, including, even especially for the most difficult blessings. In the end, it is all sheer gift: our creation, our redemption, our sanctification – the very fact that you and I are here in this place, right this moment, participating in this Mass, this Eukharistia, this sacramental Thanksgiving. The greatest blessing God gives to us is that of he himself – our ability to know him, to praise him, to be in communion with him, so that in all things we may have faith in him, believing that even in sufferings and sorrows, there is a grace that he wishes to give to us. May a spirit of gratitude be renewed within us so that we may never fail at all times, in all seasons, to give praise and thanks to God.

What Will Last

A few months ago, I took a little vacation time. Nature has always been one of the primary ways that I feel a sense of God’s presence, and so I decided to head out west to visit a few national parks that had long been on my wish list. I always find that I gain a little perspective when I spend some time out among the ancient things of nature – the mountains, the desert, the wide-open sky. Our lives are full of so many changing realities; there is a sense of comfort and stability that comes from being in the midst of things that have been around for eons. 

However, that perception – of permanence, stability – is really an illusion. Any geologist can tell you that the earth is constantly changing, shaped by both tectonic forces below and the elements above. Any astronomer can tell you that the stars in the night sky have lifespans, much longer than our own but nonetheless finite. The natural things of the world around us may seem permanent, but they are anything but. All that we see around us is ultimately transitory, created things which are passing away.

Our readings for this Sunday remind us of this fact if we had forgotten it. In this 33rd week of Ordinary Time, the second to last week of our liturgical year, our lectionary has taken an apocalyptic turn. The prophet Daniel speaks about a time of great trial and distress which ends with the resurrection of those who are dead, some to eternal life and some to “everlasting horror and disgrace.” In the Letter to the Hebrews, we hear how all things have been made subject to Jesus the High Priest, who at the right hand of God is bringing all of his enemies under his rule. Finally, in the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples not to be caught off guard by the suddenness of what will happen – the Son of Man returning in glory to judge all things.

Gustave Doré, The Triumph of Christianity Over Paganism [detail] (c. 1868)

The passage we hear from the Gospel of Mark is actually the end of a longer passage in which Jesus describes how the end times will be marked by the dissolution of many of the things that seem to give order and structure to this reality: nations will rise up against up each other, kingdoms will fall, families will be split apart, even the earth itself will quake and become barren. Rather than describe particular occurrences that we can track as predictions, the point that Jesus is making is how everything that seems stable and permanent will be overturned. No doubt this is frightening, both for us and for Jesus’s listeners. What exactly are we to make of this dire prophecy? Where is the “Good News”?

Believe it or not, these readings are fundamentally readings about hope. At the end of the liturgical year – and then, immediately following, in the first few weeks of Advent – our readings are apocalyptic, not because the Church wants to frighten us but because it wants to remind us of what ultimately will last. We tend to think of that word, “apocalypse,” as the catastrophic end of all things. But that’s not really what the word means in Greek. “Apocalypse” is not mass destruction but rather is closer to our word “revelation.” It denotes a disclosure, a tearing away of the veil so that what truly is can be fully seen. For the Christian mindset, the Apocalypse is not the end of all things the fulfillment of all things – the true revealing of what actually and permanently is.

And what is it, in the end, that is the most fundamental reality? If nations and kingdoms will pass away, if families and relationships are to be upset and disrupted, if even the earth and sea and sky are going to pass away, what ultimately will last? Jesus says it plainly – the Son of Man, that is, he himself. In the Gospels, Jesus refers to himself as “the Son of Man” whenever he intends to describe his role as the One sent by God as our Savior and Redeemer, the One who must suffer and be rejected, even to the point of death, but who in rising again will be given all power and authority in heaven and on earth. In the end, all of the other aspects of creation will be overturned, not for the sake of destruction but for the sake of revealing that in the end Christ alone will remain.

As I said, that is a message of hope. Why? Because we know intuitively that this world and this life are not permanent; at times, we are reminded of that fact in very sudden, very painful ways. Many of you know that this past week we suffered a loss here in our own parish community. One of our students, Connor Kordsmeier, who was active and among us just a week ago, passed away after a sudden illness. That sense of loss – and especially that sense of disruption, of being reminded so violently of the impermanence of this reality – can be really disorienting. It can shake our faith. What we need in these moments is the virtue of hope. Faith is the belief in things that we cannot yet see, but hope is the certain expectation of receiving those things that we believe in.

Whenever we suffer loss – whether it is the passing of a family or a friend, or something lesser, like a disappointment, a trial, a grievance, an expectation unfulfilled – we are reminded that this reality is not permanent, not lasting, but rather is the anticipation of a new reality that will one day be completely revealed. And at the center of that reality is Jesus, the only One who truly lasts, the only One who fulfills our desire for stability and permanence. When we renew our hope in the Son of Man – the One who has been given all power and authority, the One who will come again in glory – then we can bear with perseverance all of the sorrows and disappointments of this world, all of the disruptions and instabilities of this life, because we remember that nothing in the end will last that is not a part of Christ.

Let me give you just three quick ways that we can learn to place our hope in Christ, not in the world, on a daily basis. 

• First, begin each day with a short prayer, offering to God everything that may happen to you that day – all of your experiences, all of the things you will do, all of your joys and all of your sorrows. When we do this, even the seemingly routine, mundane parts of our daily lives become something imbued with spiritual meaning.

• Second, make sure you are regularly receiving the sacrament of confession. We are all sinners, but the key to growing in our spiritual life is not to rely upon our efforts to become better but to turn to the sacrament of God’s mercy and healing, whenever we may need it.

• Third, try to keep in mind your own death every day. That may sound morbid, but for the Christian it shouldn’t be. Death, after all, is meeting God, and if we are living the way we should be, that should be a joy and not something to fear. St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience… Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren’t fit to face death today, it’s very unlikely you will be tomorrow…” 

St. Francis of Assisi in His Tomb by Francisco de Zurbarán (c. 1634)

Friends, in these days, there are a lot of reminders of our own impermanence, from the passing of a member of our community to the fading of the natural world around us. We can let such reminders become a cause for fear or disturbance, or we can see them as an opportunity to place our trust in the only One who will truly last. Jesus, the Son of Man, will return for each of us, either in glory at the end of time, or when we see him face to face at the close of our lives. Let us strive anew to find comfort and stability and hope in him, not in the changing things of this passing world. As we prepare to encounter him in this Eucharist once again, may its graces help us to strive to be ready at all times to encounter him face to face, so that when we do it is not with fear, but with faith, expectation, and joy.

Strange Accounting

When I was growing up, my uncle helped teach me the value of money. He would put a coin in the palm of his hand so that when I reached out to shake it, I would find myself a few cents richer. Sometimes it was a couple dimes, sometimes a quarter. I soon began to learn the denominations of currency – a quarter is worth more than a dime, a dime more than a nickel, etc. Nowadays I myself am an uncle, but it’s a different era, and I’m not sure this same game would work with my nephew. He’s more likely to play with a credit card than with coins. 

Learning the value of money is an important life skill for all of us. Some lessons we learn at a young age: a whole stack of green bills with the face of George Washington are worth less than a single green bill with the face of Benjamin Franklin. Other lessons require more maturity: a compound interest rate is much different than a simple interest rate. Good teachers, and good examples, go a long way in helping us understand the things of this world.

Though he owned little to nothing himself, Jesus clearly understood the importance of money. He talks about it a lot in the Gospels; but he does so often in surprising ways. There’s the parable of the generous landowner, for example, who pays those who had worked for only an hour in his vineyard the same full daily wage as those who had labored all day. That’s kind of strange. In another place, he says that for the one who has, more will be given, and that the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Again, that doesn’t make a lot of sense according to our thinking about money.

Today’s Gospel provides another example of Jesus’s strange way of accounting. He and his disciples observe the poor widow at the treasury who puts in two coins worth a few cents. And yet, he says that she has contributed more than anyone else. What? This seems demonstrably false. The scribes have contributed much larger sums, certainly amounts larger than a few cents. How could one possibly say that the widow has contributed more than the rest? 

Of course, we know what Jesus is referring to – there is a kind of accounting that is much more important than mere dollars and cents. For example, one can be generous in two ways. The first is by giving a lot because one has a lot. A philanthropist may make a generous donation to a foundation or a university; but the value of his gift, while a lot in terms of dollars and cents, is tempered in the measure of generosity, since it is one he can well afford. Compare that kind of giving to that of a family of modest means who helps another family to pay its medical expenses, or who sponsors a child to go to Catholic school, or who contributes to the annual church campaign. True generosity is to give more than what one can – or, put another way, to give even when one cannot really afford to do so.

Jesus’s example of the poor widow in the Gospel is intended to remind us that God sees the value of our giving not so much in terms of dollars and cents, but according to what we have been given. As we heard a few weeks ago, riches can be an impediment to the kingdom of God: it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. We all should learn the value of money – but not as an end in itself but rather as a means to provide for those for whom we are responsible, including the poor and needy. The truly generous person remembers that every gift has its origin in God, and so our gifts are not truly our own, but only entrusted to us to be used for his purposes. 

The Widow's Mite (1890) by William Teulon Blandford Fletcher

Today’s Gospel clearly has implications for how we view money and possessions, but we might consider what else it can teach us about how we “spend” things that we “possess”. If the widow’s coins might be thought of not as currency, but as grace – if we think in terms of a generosity of spirit, rather than of purse – what might we learn?

Think about all of the spiritual things we know that our world needs more of – indeed, that we ourselves need more of: humility, patience, forgiveness, honesty, empathy, charity of spirit, love. We tend to operate as if we can give or show these spiritual gifts to others only when we have them in abundance ourselves. But remember that, in Jesus’s way of accounting, true generosity is to give even when we do not have much to give – to give not from abundance but from our own poverty. The Temple scribes gave because they wanted honor from others; they sought to use their resources to win favor, both of God and of other people. But spiritual gifts are like material ones: they have their origin in God, not in us. The widow in the Gospel trusted that God would provide for what she did not have.

What if we did the same? What if we sought to be patient even when we are running low on patience, or if we sought to express concern and consolation to another even we are feeling anxious ourselves? What if we sought to be empathetic even when we find ourselves feeling critical, or to forgive even if we don’t feel very forgiving? What if we sought to embrace Jesus’s strange way of accounting – believing that God rewards those who give from their own poverty, and that he cannot be outdone in generosity?

Friends, we each need good teachers and good examples of how to regard the things of this world. But we need the same for the qualities of the spirit as well, and we can be those teachers, those examples to a world so clearly in need of spiritual gifts. Jesus reminds us today that the most important thing we possess is our identity in him and the grace we have received from being in relationship with him. God’s way of accounting may seem strange to us, but that is because it is rooted in his goodness and in his compassion – he can give us the power to show generosity if we first recognize how he has been generous to us. May the Eucharist we will receive today prompt us to rely upon him and to seek always to be giving, like the widow in the Gospel, especially when we feel we have little to give. Whether it is material resources, or those spiritual gifts that we have been given, it is from God that we have received, and from him that we will receive again.

Rules of the Road

Rules are a necessary part of life. As much as we may not like the idea of them, we all know implicitly that we need them. I realized this in a very concrete way when I visited South America about a decade ago. Immediately after getting off the plane, our group hopped in a taxi to get to our hotel. What followed was nothing short of a near-death experience. I quickly came to appreciate how many laws about driving we have here in the U.S., since I saw what it looked like – and what it felt like – to not have them at all. 

In the Gospel today, a scribe asks Jesus about his understanding of rules. He’s not interested in transportation though but in the rules that govern our relationship with God – what we call commandments. In the Jewish religion, there were 613 commandments – 365 commandments to not do something and 248 commandments to do something. With so many rules, it was a matter of discussion and debate about which were the most important. The scribe comes to Jesus to ask him how he sees things.

The scribe comes to Jesus because he understands him to be a teacher, perhaps a prophet, certainly someone that others followed and respected. But our Gospel writer St. Mark also wants us to see Jesus as someone greater than these human attributes. He wants us to understand Jesus as the one whom Mark has been slowly revealing him to be throughout his Gospel: namely, the Messiah of the Jewish people and, even more, God-in-the-Flesh. As we wait for Jesus to respond then, we understand that his response will not just be the opinion of another human being; we are about to hear God himself tell us what he values as the most important rule governing our relationship with him. Jesus is not just describing the commandment, he is the One who pronouncing it to us anew.

So, what does Jesus say? On the one hand, what he says is perfectly expected: “you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” This prayer is called the Shema, from the Book of Deuteronomy and which we heard in our first reading. It is at the very heart of the Jewish faith. As a good Jew, Jesus would have recited it every morning and every evening. It’s also the prayer that some Jews place on small scrolls outside the doorposts of their homes or even wear in bands on their heads and arms. For Jesus to be asked “What is the first commandment?” and to respond with the Shema is not in the least surprising.

What is surprising is that he quickly adds a second commandment. “To love your neighbor as yourself” is a commandment that comes from the Book of Leviticus, but in no way was it considered to be on the same level as the commandment to love God with your whole being. Jesus is at the same time affirming the core principle of the Jewish faith, while also updating it, intensifying it, re-contextualizing it in light of all that he has come to reveal. He shows that the love of God and love of neighbor are inextricably linked together, and that if we try to do one without the other, we will fail at both. If we try to love God without loving other people, we risk becoming fanatical and closed off from the needs of people in the real world around us. If we love other people without loving God, our love will devolve into relativistic sentiment, unable to truly know what is for another person’s good since we’ve lost sight of the Source of all good. It turns out that in order to do either one, we have to do both – to love God with our whole being, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

These two loves can seem very abstract, but believe it or not, each time we come to Mass, we have the opportunity to put into practice exactly those two things. The Mass, at its heart, is not about being uplifted in spirit, or hearing an informative or inspiring homily. Those things are good, but they are secondary to the act of worship that we make to God – as the Body of Christ, we offer worship through Jesus to the heavenly Father. If at no other time during our week, the Mass is our best opportunity to remember how the love of God should be at the very heart of who we are and all that we do.

The Mass also offers us the chance to deepen our love of others. We pray for those whom we know who are in need, we practice charity to those who are around us, we remember our beloved dead and we pray for them especially in this month of November. Perhaps more than anything, we pray for wisdom so that God can show us how he wants us to practice love of him and love of neighbor in concrete ways, in the situations and circumstances of our daily lives, according to the vocation to which he has called us or is calling us.

Friends, the commandments of God – and those of the Church as well – are not given to us to be oppressive and restrictive. Rather they are like rules of the road for our souls: they help us to be well that which God has created us to be. Each time we come to Mass we learn anew how to praise God in and through Jesus our Lord, and we learn how to let his love take root in us so that we can love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus doesn’t just command this of us – he comes to us in the Holy Eucharist to help us achieve it. Let us turn our minds and hearts toward our loving God, in praise of him, and in gratitude for the ways that he enables us to accomplish all that he has commanded.

Washed by Blood: All Saints' Day

Fra Angelico, Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven (c. 1430)

One of the things you learn at a university is how to begin to take personal responsibility. If you don’t have it already, college definitely teaches you – often via a “sink or swim” method – that you are responsible for yourself. You can wake up in time to go to class, or not. You can learn good study habits, or not. You can learn how to exist on something other than Ramen noodles, or not.

The sharp learning curve of the university experience can be a bit harsh, but it also can be a good introduction into how our culture tends to operate. After all, self-reliance and self-motivation are virtues that we value very highly. Whether it’s sports or business or personal growth, most of us tend to believe that nothing is beyond our reach if only we are willing to put in the effort to get there. Even the hardest or highest goals, we tell ourselves, can be reached if you’re willing to put in the blood, sweat, and tears.

Today’s Solemnity of All Saints, at first glance, might indicate that this idea is even true in terms of our eternal salvation. After all, a saint is nothing other than a person who is in heaven, and surely those in heaven had to work hard to get there! Jesus gives us a kind of road map of how salvation can be worked out in today’s Gospel, and it certainly sounds like it must take a lot of effort. Being poor in spirit, merciful, clean of heart, peacemakers, even persecuted for the sake of righteousness – that all sounds like a lot of hard work.

But there’s something inherently wrong with believing that getting to heaven is mostly about our own efforts. In the last few months, Pope Francis has been writing and speaking about how often we operate out of the belief that we can be good and holy without God’s help. That view is actually an old heresy called Pelagianism that the Church condemned long ago but which still crops up all the time. As Pope Francis says, because we are formed in a culture that values self-reliance, individual autonomy, and hard work, we tend to think that our salvation is ultimately something that depends upon us and our own efforts, like making it to class, studying for a test, or eating something other than Ramen.

The problem with this view is that it doesn’t have any place for God. Holiness is not something ultimately about merely trying hard enough, or developing sufficient interior strength to make it happen on our own. Rather, holiness is about receiving what God wants to give us, and ultimately being conformed to Christ. There’s no doubt that holiness does require self-discipline and hard work, at times, to become the saint that God has created us to be. But everything starts with God and what he is doing, rather than with us. The saints are not super-humans who had capacities for self-discipline and moral excellence far beyond our own. They were ordinary men and women who became extraordinary because they got out of God’s way and received what he wanted to give them.

In the first reading today, John the Evangelist describes his vision of seeing “great multitude… from every nation, race, people, and tongue.” This is the apocalyptic vision of the men and women who are in heaven at the end of time. But as John describes, they didn’t get there through their own striving, but rather because they have been made clean through the blood of the Lamb. Blood would seem to be a strange thing to use to make something clean; unless you are talking about sins and washing them away through the blood of Jesus Christ. The saints are not those who tried hard enough but rather those who were washed clean from their sins by the grace of Jesus Christ and through that grace they became like him. They lived out those Beatitudes mentioned in the Gospel not through their own efforts alone but by cooperating with God’s gift and his power working within them.

Friends, we are called to be a part of that “great multitude” that St. John describes. To get to heaven is the highest goal – indeed, the only true goal – that any of us should have. But if we rely merely upon our own blood, sweat, and tears to reach it, we will fall short. Instead we must rely upon the blood of the Lamb – God’s grace given to us in Christ, which we receive especially through the sacraments. Having received it, we then can seek to follow Jesus’s road map of becoming “blessed” and joining that heavenly number.

Our High Priest

A number of years ago, when I was still in seminary, I had the opportunity to spend about two weeks in the Holy Land, including about one week in Jerusalem. Among the highlights of the trip for me was a visit to the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism and a place that has always fascinated me. If you’re not familiar, the Western Wall (sometimes called the Wailing Wall) is made of stone, about four stories high, right in the middle of Jerusalem’s Old City. It is the only remaining visible part of the ancient Jewish Temple Mount of the first century, the rest of which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Today, pious Jews visit the Western Wall out of respect and remembrance for all that the Temple symbolized. But for the Jews of Jesus’s age, the Temple was understood as God’s dwelling place here on earth. On high feast days, the Jewish people gathered there to worship the presence of God and each day the Temple priests offered sacrifices in penance for the people’s sins. When the Temple was destroyed, this ritual culture was destroyed along with it, and in many ways, the Jewish religion was changed forever. God’s presence was no longer something near, dwelling among them; instead it felt distant, far off. No longer could sacrifices be offered for sins, but only the private prayers of the people. Today, when Jews from around the world visit the Western Wall, they do so mostly to honor the memory of the past. They may recite quietly a psalm, or place a prayer or intercession on a slip of paper in a crack in the wall, but they are there to recall what once was and to pray for its return.

I mention all of this background because it is helpful to understand the second reading that we heard today. For the last several weeks, our second reading at Mass has come from the Letter to the Hebrews, and we will keep hearing from this letter for the next several weeks to come. The whole purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews – or as we would call them, the Jewish Christians – is to explain how Jesus Christ is the new High Priest, the one who by his Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection has forged a New Covenant between God and humanity. The author of this letter wants to help his readers to understand that God’s presence is not distant, far off, or unapproachable because of our sinfulness. Rather God still dwells among us, not in a Temple, but in the very person of Jesus Christ, he who is like us in all things but sin.

This week, we hear what may be the very heart of the Letter to the Hebrews. Jesus is our High Priest not because he has taken this honor upon himself, but because God chose him for this role. Why? Because unlike other human priests, Jesus was able to offer a perfect sacrifice for sin – his own sinless self, his very life in exchange for our lives. Because of this, God has glorified him, raising him to his right hand. Because our humanity is now with the Father, we share in the identity in the Son – through him, we have become God’s beloved sons and daughters.

That's the general gist of the Letter to the Hebrews, and hopefully, this is not new information to us – this reality is at the very heart of our Christian faith. But the Church reminds us of it in these weeks through the readings of the Letter to the Hebrews in order to gently encourage us in an area that we need encouragement. After all, don’t we often feel like God is distant, far off from our daily realities? Don’t we too often let our sins and shortcomings and limitations prevent us from approaching him? Don’t we unwittingly tend to adopt a mindset of believing God’s presence as something inscrutable or intangible? If you’re like me, the answer is undoubtedly, “Yes.” 

19th cent. Russian icon Christ our Great High Priest and King

It is important to understand that while we may feel this way at times, this is not how God wants us to feel, nor how he truly is. God is not distant from us but utterly near, utterly approachable. In the person of Jesus, God has taken a share in our humanity and has provided for us a remedy for our sinfulness. Because Jesus shares our humanity, we are in a sense present already before God; and because of that, we can call upon his presence at every moment – to heal us, to strengthen us, to remind us that God is not distant but truly near, dwelling among us in the person of his Son. Jesus, our High Priest, did not just save us long ago – he continues to save us even now, interceding always to his Father on our behalf and reaching out to restore our humanity with his own.

“What do you want me to do for you?” That’s the question that Jesus asks in love to Bartimaeus in the Gospel. In love, he asks it also today of us. Like Bartimaeus, we need to give him a concrete answer! Call to mind right now the area of your life where you feel the most broken: the sin that you feel you cannot be rid of; the situation or relationship that needs healing beyond your own powers; the mindset or tendency that draws you away from your identity as God’s beloved son or daughter. Whatever your fault, believe that it is also an opportunity, because it is your answer to Jesus’s question: “What do you want me to do for you?” Through the power of our High Priest, that area of weakness can become an encounter of salvation. How often God wants to give us precisely what we most need, but we fail to ask! Or if we do ask, and we don’t see an immediate a response, we grow discouraged, instead of waiting patiently and confidently to see how God will respond in a way better than we knew.

Friends, as important as it is, there is another site in Jerusalem even holier than the Western Wall. It is the Tomb of Christ – notable because it is empty, because Jesus, chosen from among us to restore us to God, is now risen and at his right hand interceding for us still. Each time we approach the sacred altar, as we will in a few moments, we receive upon our very tongues not only the Lord’s Holy Divinity but the fullness of his Sacred Humanity as well, which heals us of our weakness, restores us in his grace, and reminds us of our identity as God’s beloved sons and daughters. May our Eucharist this day help us to experience anew his Presence dwelling among us and fill us with joy at the “great things he has done for us,” and can do still.

The Path to Glory

All of us, at times, are guilty of it. Amid the routines of our daily lives, especially the challenging or tiresome parts, we think about what it would be like to win the lottery, to release a hit album or bestselling novel, to run for political office and win. We fantasize about how our lives would change if we were transformed into someone rich, famous, or powerful. It’s hard not to let your imagination run wild.

Jesus of Nazareth certainly wasn’t rich or powerful. But he was famous, probably the most famous person that most ordinary people had ever seen or heard before. Imagine what it must have been like to be one of his disciples, even more of one his twelve apostles, among the inner circle of his friends and confidantes. The apostles had come to know Jesus when he was still relatively unknown, and had left everything to follow him. Before their very eyes, Jesus’s fame and authority grew, and as his inner circle of friends and confidantes, so did theirs as well. Naturally, they began to imagine about what would happen when Jesus came into the fullness of his authority, and how they would be affected. They began, in short, to fantasize about their own prospects of power.

In the Gospel today, these daydreams take concrete form: two of Jesus’s inner circle of apostles openly ask to share in his power and authority. With the possible exception of Peter, the brothers James and John might be described as the boldest of the apostles. Earlier in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has nicknamed them “Boanerges”, or “Sons of Thunder,” probably a description of how they were especially bold and passionate in demeanor. If that’s the case, it’s little wonder then that these sons of Zebedee are the ones to openly ask for what all of the others had been dreaming of.

Rather than immediately dismiss them for arrogance or criticize them for being power hungry, Jesus instead asks if they are really committed to doing what it takes to achieve the glory they desire. Jesus uses two phrases to describe the tests of their resolve – they will be baptized with the “baptism with which I am baptized” and drink the “cup that I will drink”. Those words give us a clue that Jesus is perhaps not thinking of glory in the same way that James and John are envisioning it, but they don’t seem to be dissuaded in the least. They see Jesus not just as a friend or teacher, but as their ticket to an earthly influence that they could never before have dreamed of. They are ready to hitch their wagon to Jesus’s star, to borrow an old phrase, so that he can bring them what they truly desire.

I imagine that we tend to look at James and John with mild pity at their naïveté, or disgust at their ambition, or some mixture of the two. But the truth is that James and John are not far off from the right path. Following Jesus – and being baptized in his baptism, drinking the cup that he drinks – will indeed bring them great glory, though not the fame and influence that they desire. Rather, the glory they will have is a share in the Passion of Christ, which is the only path to sharing in the victory of the Resurrection. Jesus shows the depth of his own greatness when he pours out his very life on the Cross, and so fulfills the mission that his heavenly Father had entrusted to him. To be the disciple of such a master means, as he says, to learn the lesson of suffering, to see service and self-denial as the precious ambitions that lead to true glory.

The Apostles James and John, Sons of Zebedee (c. 1533) by the Master of Ventosilla

While we may think ourselves much wiser or much nobler than James and John, the uncomfortable truth is that we’re probably not. Like James and John, we too want the good things that we believe following Jesus can offer us, but we look to receive them in the here and now. Even if we don’t desire riches or fame for being Christians, we expect to receive other things which are no less worldly: acceptance and admiration, for example, solace and comfort, a general avoidance of suffering, sorrow, and self-denial – despite the fact that Jesus has precisely said that those things cannot be avoided if we wish to follow him.

This Gospel affords us the chance to look at how well we are living up to the standard that Jesus has given us: “to serve rather than be served.” If we are frank with ourselves, it’s likely that often we are not much better than the rest of the world in the very things we should be, if we truly sought to make the Lord’s mindset our own – things like: bearing gracefully insults and slights that come our way; guarding against judgmentalism of mind and heart; seeing in the poor, downtrodden, or detestable the face of Christ himself; desiring not fame, influence, or riches, but a conformity to Christ that will show others and ourselves we are serious about following the Master.

The good news is that no matter how often we may fall short, we can begin anew. Jesus has left us an abiding testimony of his love for us the sacrifice of the Cross; but it also is an example for the kind of love and service that he calls us to. The Cross is not just an unavoidable stop on our path to glory; it’s the very road to get there. What a worthy practice it is to carry a crucifix with us each day to remind us of this, or to make sure we always pray with one, to remember the kind of love that Christ calls us to. Being a Christian is not a self-improvement project – it’s about learning how to love in a true way, in a way that must die to self in order to serve the other.

Friends, following Jesus won’t bring us earthly fame or success, but it should transform our lives nonetheless. Even more, it can secure for us our heavenly reward. James and John, those “Sons of Thunder,” received at long last – and continue to enjoy – the glory they so greatly desired, but it came as the fruit of the love and service, rather than of ambition or self-interest. It is the glory promised to every person who accepts the vocation to Christian service that Jesus calls us to and for which he has given us the Cross as the path to follow. So, let us be bold and passionate and ambitious – not for ourselves, but for Jesus, and for others, by practicing humility, love, and service. Christ has called us, and has shown us how to follow after – let us begin!

The Danger of Riches

I have been a priest for a little over six years, and thus far, I have been blessed to minister quite a bit to young people. I’ve been the pastor here at St. Thomas Aquinas for just over three years, and before that, I was chaplain and administrator at a junior high school in Fort Smith. If there is one thing about young people that my experiences with them have taught me it’s that they value, above all else, authenticity. They love a "straight shooter" – someone who tells it like it is, who lays his cards openly on the table, because it’s honesty that they love best and deceit that they hate most. Even if they disagree with you, they appreciate authenticity. 

In today’s Gospel, a rich man approaches Jesus with an honest question. The Gospel according to Mark that we heard doesn’t mention it, but we know from the other Gospels that this rich man is also a young man. Perhaps he is used to people trying to beguile him because of his youth, or flatter him because of his money. He sees in Jesus a straight shooter, and so he rushes up to him to ask him the question that dominates his thinking: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s very much the question of a young person – direct, sincere, and focused on what he has to do to get what he wants. Anyone who has worked with young people recognizes such eager intensity.

Christ and the Rich Young Ruler (1889) by Heinrich Hofmann

How does Jesus respond? Gently. He reminds him of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments – specifically those that relate to how we are to treat others: to not kill; to not commit adultery; to not steal, bear false witness, or defraud; to honor father and mother. The young man responds that he has been faithful to these commandments, and Jesus takes him at his word. But having affirmed him in what he is doing well, he now tells the young man where he is “lacking.” As the Gospel says, he looks upon him with love, and then tells him to sell all that he has, to give it to the poor, and to come and follow him. If the young man desired straight shooting from Jesus, he certainly got it. Even today, we might tend to think that Jesus is asking an awful lot, perhaps too much. After all, this is by all accounts a decent man, a man who treats others fairly, who wants to receive eternal life. Must he really give up everything in order to enter heaven?

One of the deepest truths of our faith is that God knows us better than we know ourselves; he sees us as we really are, beauty spots and blemishes. The Letter to the Hebrews today says that the “word of God … is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating… able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” When Jesus Christ, the Word-made-Flesh, encountered the young man, he saw him at the deepest possible level. He saw that he was at heart a decent person, and that he had obeyed the commandments that related to others. However, he also saw that he was lacking in the first and greatest commandment: to love God above all else, with one’s heart and soul and mind and strength. The young man immediately understands how right Jesus is; he has allowed his material possessions to occupy the primacy of place at the foundation of our very self that only God must have. Only by giving up worship of a lesser god can he secure what he rightly desires: eternal life with the true and living God. Perhaps we can see then that, far from being unfair or too demanding, Jesus has helped the man go directly to the crux of the matter – he has given the man the insight to see himself as God sees him.

Sadly, as we see, the rich man is not ready to follow Jesus’s invitation. There are many things that can prevent us from hearing and heeding the voice of God. Among them, though, it seems that wealth – especially the love of possessions – presents a particular risk. Why is it so dangerous? Perhaps because it is so attractive, so alluring, and so misleading. Riches and possessions can lure us into the false sense that we are safe and secure, protected from many of the things that can cause unhappiness in this life. The rich young man in today’s Gospel certainly did not have to worry about the things that many people in first century Palestine did: how to secure another day’s wages, how to put bread on the table for another meal, how to keep a roof over their family’s head. But while his wealth offered him a certain amount of worldly security, it did not answer the deep longing that he had for the assurance of gaining eternal life. In fact, as we saw, in the end his riches became the primary obstacle for the heavenly inheritance that he desired.

The Gospel today presents us with a chance to examine how we treat the things of this world, especially our material possessions. We may not tend to think of ourselves as overly wealthy – certainly we can think of others who have more than we do. But the truth is that – compared to others whom we know, compared to others in our society and around the world, certainly compared to others throughout history – most of us in fact live lives that are quite comfortable and comparatively well off. How subtly at times do we fall into that mindset of making our material possessions the standard by which we judge our security, the goal toward which all of our efforts and striving are aimed!

Friends, we would do well to listen to the voice of Jesus, speaking with love to us – he who knows us so well, and who desires our perfection. Like the rich young man, most of us are decent enough – but it is not mere decency that will save us. Instead, we must be willing to do what the young man was not: to give up whatever occupies the primacy of place in our hearts that is not the living God. Do we give greater attention to material rather than spiritual matters? Do we treat our resources as an end, rather than a means to provide for those in our care, to help the less fortunate, to build up the Church? Have we let the desire for possessions or a focus on financial security distract us from the heavenly inheritance that God calls us to share? Do we spend more time thinking and worrying about what we have, what we don’t have, or what we want to have than we do about the state of our souls?

Pope Benedict XVI once said, “Christ did not promise an easy life. Those who desire comforts have dialed the wrong number. Rather, he shows us the way to great things, the Good, towards an authentic human life.” The rich young man in today's Gospel was not ready to accept the Lord’s invitation, but there are many who have. Today in Rome, Pope Francis canonized seven new saints for our Church – men and women who heard the voice of Christ speaking to them, and who responded. Unlike the rich young man, they knew that true, lasting wealth lies in being in relationship with the living God, and they sought to love him with all of their heart and soul and mind and strength, forsaking whatever else threatened to take his place. If we desire to join their company, let us hear the Lord’s gentle, loving invitation this day, and respond by doing whatever we must to inherit eternal life.

A "No" for a Deeper "Yes"

As a priest, I am used to being asked a lot of questions. Some are easier to answer than others. “What time is Mass?” That can be answered pretty easily. “Why do we believe in Purgatory?” That one takes a little longer. 

Maybe the most difficult questions though are the ones not about beliefs but about behavior. “Is such-and-such wrong?” “Can I do X?” “Why should I feel bad about doing Y?” These questions are hard because to answer them well can take a long time. It’s easy enough to say, “No, you shouldn’t do that,” but explaining the “why” behind it is often a more elaborate exercise. Generally, the point that I try to explain is that when the Church teaches us that not to do something, it is so that we can fulfill a higher or deeper good. A child hears its parent say, “No,” – perhaps as it reached out to touch a hot stove or tried to run out into traffic – but that “No,” is really founded upon a deeper and fuller, “Yes,” a “Yes” to the child’s ultimate well-being and happiness. In just the same way, our faith teaches us that many things are wrong – not because it wants to spoil our fun, but because it wants us to avoid those things that can turn us away from the deeper happiness that God wants for us.

In the Gospel today, the Pharisees confront Jesus with a seemingly simple question: “Is divorce lawful?” The question is straightforward but also deceptive. Divorce was lawful for Jewish people, since it had been allowed by Moses; but it also was understood as something less than what God had intended in the beginning. The Pharisees pose the question in the hope that Jesus will either seemingly compromise the higher ideals, or contradict Moses, either of which would make him appear ridiculous to his followers. But Jesus is the Son of God – he is the very Author of human life and love, the one “through whom and for whom all things have been created” (Col 1:16). To answer their question, he will not be tricked into giving a simplistic “Yes” or “No,” but rather he wants to give them a deeper explanation, the full “why” that lies at the heart of their question.

The Pharisees are fixated upon divorce as a legal reality, as something “right” or “wrong” in the context of behavior. But Jesus shows that to consider the lawfulness of divorce, you really have to consider what marriage is and what purpose it has in the plan of God. In creation, marriage has two natural purposes: the loving partnership of husband and wife, and the procreation and education of offspring. That is God’s plan “in the beginning”, as Jesus says – that man and woman should find in each other a commonality and a complementarity such that together they form a new family, and from the love of their “one flesh”, new life springs forth. Marriage, in short, has a purpose in God’s creation of helping us to thrive, to prosper, and to be happy.

Jacob de Backer, The Garden of Eden (c. 1575)

God’s plan for marriage doesn’t end there. It has those natural ends that I mentioned – the union of the spouses, and the raising of children – but it also has a supernatural purpose as well. God foresaw in the love of man and woman an image of his love for humanity. In the radical self-gift that is marriage, he foresaw the total self-gift of his Son on the Cross for us, to save us from sin and to reconcile us to him. Thus, marriage in God’s plan is not just an earthly reality but a heavenly sign. It is, in short, a sacrament – a means by which human beings can participate in the very love of God himself and become themselves a symbol of the union he intends for us to have with him for all eternity.

After looking at what God desires marriage to be, perhaps we can better see why divorce is a corruption of his plan. If marriage were only about making us happy on earth, we might conclude that divorce is fairly sensible; after all, who wants to be in an unhappy marriage? But marriage is about more than mere happiness on earth – it’s intended to be a sign of the heavenly marriage of God and his creation. Through the mutual sacrifice, commitment, and self-gift of marriage, spouses learn to love each other in a way that goes beyond mere nature – they learn to love with God’s love, and so help each other get to heaven.

That, in short, is God’s vision for married love – but as we know, that is not always how it works out. Some people, for example, deeply desire to be married, but never find the right person to whom to give themselves. For others, they know personally the sting of divorce. While God has intended for marriage to be lifelong, it is true there are times and situations – such as chronic instances of infidelity or abuse – in which divorce might be not only justified but necessary. And some people are called to give up their natural desire for married life in order to give themselves to a higher reality – to priesthood, to religious life, or to the consecrated single life.

We can’t really do justice to all of these matters here – they would have to be topics for other homilies. Instead, if there is one thing that we should take away from today’s readings it is this: as Christians, we have to view everything about our earthly lives in view of the heavenly calling we each have. God’s plan for marriage is about earthly happiness, but even more it is about preparation for the life to come – a kind of training course of sacrifice, of mutual self-gift that opens our hearts to learn to love with the love of Christ. That is not just God’s plan for marriage, though – it’s the plan for every vocation, every call to holiness that is planted in the heart of the Christian.

Friends, the great thing about our God is that he never ceases to draw us to himself. If you are married, or if you believe yourself called to marriage, God is offering you the amazing gift of allowing your married love to be a sign to all of his eternal love for humanity. Remember though that marriage, like all the things of this world, is a preparation for the life to come and we have to keep that eternal destination in mind whenever it, or anything else in life, becomes challenging. If marriage is not your calling – or if something happened along the way, and loss or divorce or some other sadness has touched your life – do not despair! Our primary identity, as Jesus says at the end of the Gospel, is children of the heavenly kingdom, and whatever the circumstances of our lives, God can transform the love we have now into one that is purer, deeper, more like the love of Christ’s, more like the love of heaven.

Our lives our filled with numerous questions – about what we can do and about what we should do. All of us are created for relationship, either in marriage or in some other vocation. At times, we will run up against a hard “No” to what we may desire, either because of the circumstances of the world or because of what our faith teaches. But when that happens, we must discern beneath it the deeper “Yes” that God speaks to each of us – the calling to eternal life with him, and the invitation to regard all of the things of this life as an aid in getting there. That is the answer to every question, the response to our every desire. May the Eucharist we will receive in a few moments help us to regard our relationships, our marriages, our sins and struggles, and every aspect of our lives, in such a way that we may hold fast to that eternal reality to come.