With an Undivided Heart

We all have bad days. Days when we feel sad or downcast, days when we are especially bothered by the things that aren’t perfect in our lives. This is all the more true when we are facing something quite serious, even dangerous, whether to our lives, or our loved ones, or our well-being. Sometimes it can all just get to us, and our mood and outlook is affected, and we have a rotten day.

At first glance, it might seem as if Jesus is having one of those days in the Gospel today. He seems to be a bit glum about the fact that he has no place to call his own: “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” And he seems to be less than sympathetic to the relatively reasonable requests of two prospective disciples, one who wants to bury his dead father and another who wishes to say farewell to his family. If Jesus were feeling sullen, we might be able to guess at the reason. The Gospel passage begins by telling us “that Jesus resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.” Until this time, Jesus’s ministry has been confined to his home region of Galilee, but now he’s headed for Jerusalem. He knows perfectly well though what awaits him there: betrayal, arrest, suffering, and death. If we knew those things were in our future, it’s safe to say we might have a bad day as well.

But I don’t think we can explain this Gospel passage as easily as Jesus is just having a rotten day. The Son of God is human like us in all things but sin, and so we can’t rule out the fact that he was feeling a little nervous or downcast about his upcoming Passion in Jerusalem. But more than that, Jesus was always teaching – everything he did and said in some way revealed God and God’s plan for us. Therefore, there must be something else here that he’s trying to teach his disciples.

Walter Rane, Foxes Have Holes and Birds of the Air Have Nests (2014)

If we look at the Gospel more closely, it becomes clear that this story is really about discipleship. Jesus is offering us a spiritual lesson about what it takes to follow him. Holy men and preachers were not uncommon in Jesus’s day, and many developed followings of disciples who sought to learn from them. Jesus, though, is different than other teachers; he wants disciples who are willing to learn from him so completely that they become like him. This is still our calling today. A Christian is not just someone who follows Jesus, as one might admire or learn from a celebrity or public figure. Rather, a Christian is one who seeks to become “Christ-like,” someone who actively tries to adopt the identity of Jesus for oneself. As St. Paul says, “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

How then do we allow Christ to live in us? What can prevent us from truly becoming Christ-like? Jesus shows us three obstacles in today’s Gospel. The first is the desire for favor and acclaim. As Christians, we will encounter resistance, even rejection and persecution, because of our faith in Christ. Rather than get offended by this, as James and John do, we should humbly pray for those who do us harm. If Christ himself was nailed to the Cross, then we have to realize our fidelity to him is sometimes going to make our lives harder, not easier.

A second obstacle to being Christ-like is becoming too comfortable in this world. If the Son of Man had nowhere to rest his head, then ultimately we are not going to feel perfectly at peace here either. As citizens of a kingdom not of this world, we can love our lives, we can see the good in this world, but ultimately our hearts should always be focused on the world to come.

A third obstacle to truly becoming like Jesus is being half-hearted about following him. The world offers a lot that can claim our affection and allegiance, but to be a disciple of Christ we must be entirely devoted to him before all else. When Jesus says “let the dead bury their dead,” he may sound as if he’s being unreasonable, but he’s using hyperbole to make a point about how discipleship on our own terms is not going to work. Fortunately, if we seek to follow Christ with an undivided heart, loving him before all else, then it will necessarily lead us to properly treat those other things in life we may feel drawn to: our families, those around us, even ourselves. We learn to love others properly only when we love Christ first.

Friends, our Gospel today is challenging – there’s no two ways about it. The Lord who has come to give us everything asks for everything in return. Only by handing all to him can we truly receive all that he has to give us. Following Jesus means real sacrifice – it means giving up what is easy, familiar, and safe. But in return we share in the very life of Christ, not just as disciples in this world, but hopefully as his saints in the world to come. That is Good News that can lift our spirits no matter how bad our day might be. May this Eucharist nourish us in our journey of faith and make us “fit for the kingdom of God.”

Grace Before Meals

Christ with the Peasants (c. 1888) by Fritz von Uhde

Does your family say a prayer before meals? I hope so. It’s a wonderful tradition to have, and if you don’t currently practice it, you might consider starting. However, I can’t say too much because I myself am sometimes bad about taking that extra moment to thank God for my food. You can see from my waistline that when a delicious meal is in front of me, I’m not usually waiting around too long before diving into it!

Grace before meals is important though for lots of reasons. For one thing, it can be a great way to train our young people in the traditions of our faith. When I visited my sister’s family for a few days early this past week, I practiced making the Sign of the Cross with my niece and older nephew and what the proper words were to say. Our family hopes that they incorporate those practices into their lives so that they become second nature as they grow up.

Another reason we pray before eating is to ask the Lord’s blessing. We ask God to keep us safe from illness and malnourishment in the food we are about to receive and that instead it will make us strong and capable for the work we have to do. The power to bless is found all throughout the Scriptures, and not just in priests, but also in parents, those in authority, and even in the poor. When we bless our food we invoke God’s power to bestow his favor upon it and, by extension, upon us as well. 

While these are good reasons for saying grace, thus far I haven’t mentioned the most important reason we do so: to give praise and thanks to God. In a sense, this is the fundamental purpose for everything that we do – to glorify the One who is the source of all that is and who thus has given us all that we have. When we pray before a meal, we remember that it’s not just the food in front of us that is God’s gift, but everything else as well. Even those things that we strive hard for, the bread that we earn by the sweat of our brow – even that is sheer gift, because our abilities and our opportunities come from him. As St. Therese of Lisieux once said, “Everything is grace.”

In the Gospel today, Jesus feeds the five thousand. He satisfies their physical hunger, but before he does so offers a blessing over the food that he will multiply. This miracle is, of course, a foreshadowing of the spiritual meal that we gather to celebrate every Sunday, where the Lord satisfies not our physical but our spiritual hunger. The Eucharist is very much a family meal, in a sense – it’s the banquet of the Lord’s family, the Church. It might be helpful to think of the Mass as the grace we say before partaking of this spiritual banquet. We offer prayers to God for some of the reasons we say grace in our homes as well: to instill within our children and ourselves a renewed appreciation for the practice of our faith, and to ask for God’s blessing upon us. 

But the most important reason for the Mass, the motive for why we come to pray each week, is the same reason we do everything: to offer praise and thanksgiving to God, the source of all good. More than any other prayer, more than anything else we can do in life, the Eucharist is the highest and most perfect form of giving thanks. The very word Eucharistia in Greek means “thanksgiving.” For Christians since the time of Jesus until now, it is in and through the Mass that we give perfect praise to God. We unite ourselves to the prayer of Jesus, our High Priest, who offered himself to the Father as perfect sacrifice for our sins. In the prayer of the Mass, we become sharers in time to the Lord’s offering of himself that extends beyond time; we glorify our Heavenly Father by giving thanks to him in the way that he loves most, the self-gift of his Son. And then because the Father finds his Son’s sacrifice eternally acceptable, he gives us in return that same gift of the Son: the Lord’s Real Presence in the Eucharist. The whole Mass is, in this way, an exchange of praise and thanksgiving – the Son, and us along with him, praising and glorifying the Father, and the Father then glorifying his Son by allowing us to share in the sacrificial meal of communion. 

Philippe de Champaigne, The Last Supper (c. 1648)

If you think that sounds like a lot of high theology, you’d be right. But that is what the Church believes about what we do at each Mass, and it is important for us to at least try to understand what it is we are doing when we gather around the altar. This participation in the prayer of Christ has great value for us, even when we may be prevented from actually partaking in the Eucharistic meal. At times, for various reasons, we may not be able to actually receive the Lord’s Real Presence in communion, but we can always share in the prayer of praise and thanksgiving that is the Mass as a whole.

Perhaps you and I might ask ourselves today: How well do I enter into the prayer of the Mass? Am I prepared spiritually before coming to church? Do I take time to recollect myself when I do arrive? How well do I listen, reflect, and respond to the prayers of the Mass, that is the prayer of the Body of Christ made to the Father? Do I have the tendency at times to think of the Mass as a show that I sit back and watch rather than an act of worship I am called to participate in? Do I remember to offer a prayer of thanksgiving, a Eucharistia, after communion to glorify the Lord for the gift I have received? Above all, do I make sure I never miss Mass through my own fault? 

Friends, if we are honest with ourselves, each of us can probably do better in one or another of those areas. I know I certainly can! Because while I hope you and your family do take the time to say grace in your home, the most important prayer before a meal is the prayer of the Mass, when we participate in Jesus’s prayer of praise and thanksgiving to his Father for our good and the good of all the world. On this Feast of Corpus Christi, let’s recommit ourselves to striving to pray this act of worship well – to prepare for it, to participate fully in body, mind, and soul while we are here, and to take a brief moment to give thanks afterward. As we prepare to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice, in this Mass and always, may we find in this sacred meal true satisfaction for all our hungers and encounter the Eucharistic Jesus with hearts full of praise and thanksgiving.

Family Matters

NB: This homily was preached on my first weekend in my new parishes of Holy Rosary, Stuttgart, and Holy Trinity, England. 

On Tuesday of this week, I became an uncle for the third time. I know you all don’t know a lot about me or my family yet, so allow me to share just a few personal details.

I have been a priest for almost seven years. I was born and raised in Little Rock, where my parents still live. My younger brother is also a priest for our diocese, and he is assigned at the church down in Lake Village. Our sister moved to Nebraska when she married, and it is she who had a baby boy this week. Our family is close, and because my brother and I are priests, my sister’s family is pretty special and gets a lot of attention from us. All week long I have been receiving updates and pictures, and I have made a few calls over FaceTime to see how things are going. As for any family, welcoming this new child has been an amazing gift, and a reminder of the awesome gift of life that comes from God.

A new baby brings a lot of excitement and joy, and as I begin my time with you here at Holy Rosary (Holy Trinity), I can’t help but feel a bit similar to my little nephew. My infant days are long past, but like him, I have stepped into a completely new world, and into a new family as well. What a joy it is to finally arrive here after several months of preparing to come! Like my nephew, I know I have a lot of new things to experience and to learn about this great community, and probably a lot of growth to do as well. No doubt you will help me to do that. I know it’s never easy to go through a pastoral change, and it necessarily will take time for us to get to know each other. But while there may be challenges and growing pains along the way, we know that just like a human family, our parish family is founded upon and established in love, and it is love that it is the context for all that we do.

The Holy Trinity, attributed to Francisco Caro (c. 1650)

Today, our parish family celebrates with the universal Church the feast that reminds us, perhaps more than any other in our year, that love is the foundation for all reality: specifically, the love that is God himself. Since Easter, we have been celebrating how exactly God has revealed himself to us. Jesus Christ, the Word of God and the Second Person of the Trinity, shared our human nature in order to reveal the Father’s love for us; he did so most clearly and visibly in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The Holy Spirit, sent to us by the Father and the Son at Pentecost, now guides us in the ways of truth, as we heard in today’s Gospel, reminding us of all that the Lord has done for us. Thus, the one God has revealed himself as a Trinity of Persons: Father, Son, and Spirit.

That God has revealed himself to us in this way is an act of love. He desires that we come to know him, as he really is, because he loves us. And it is out of this love for us that he has revealed he is himself Love – in his innermost reality, God himself is the communion of love shared by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Most Holy Trinity is more than just an abstract theological concept – it is the most fundamental reality, it is what is more than anything else. Everything else that exists – you and I, all of creation, anything that we can think of – shares in God’s existence.

God exists as a Trinity of Persons, as Father, Son, and Spirit, and so we might say that God’s very essence is family love. It’s no coincidence then that our families can so often be such wonderful sources of experiencing the love of God. The most wonderful moments of family life give us a glimpse into the mystery of God’s life, into the mystery of his love. Just gaze upon the face of a newborn child to be reminded of that! But this pattern of divine love found in the family extends beyond just our individual human families. It is true most especially of the People of God, the Church. The Church is truly the family of God; indeed, we say that we are the children of God, adopted sons and daughters of the Father in Christ. In the end, God reveals himself as a Trinity of Persons not only so that we might know the one from whom we draw our earthly existence but ultimately because he invites us also to share in his heavenly life – in the love of his own family, you might say. That’s why God has created each of us, that’s why he has redeemed us in Christ, and that’s why he continually sanctifies us through the power of the Spirit throughout our earthly journey – so that at the end of our days, each of us might also come to share in for all eternity the communion of Love that is the basis of all reality, the Trinitarian love of God.

Since the love of God has been revealed to us in this way, as the love of a divine family, that same love must be the touchstone for all of our families as well. In our human families, in our parish family here at Holy Rosary (Holy Trinity), we should be rooted in Trinitarian love. It's that love that “has been poured into our hearts,” as St. Paul says, and it should be made visible in all that we do. Our model for how to accomplish this is the life of Christ, especially in his example of sacrificial love – of a love so great that one can lay down life itself for the good of the other. That must be always the standard and the model for our own love, the love found in our families, the love displayed in our parish here as well.

My friends, I feel very honored and joyful to become a part of your family here at Holy Rosary (Holy Trinity), and I look forward to sharing your life. As we begin this journey of faith together, let’s remember that it is by the love of our families – our families at home and our parish community here – that God is always seeking to draw us more deeply into his own divine life, forming us truly into his family. As we prepare to share in this Eucharist, may the Love that is the Most Blessed Trinity be renewed in each of our hearts so that we may come to share that love ever more deeply in all that we do.

Holy Fire

If we were to make a list of mankind’s greatest achievements, we might start with things relatively recent in our history: putting a man on the moon, mapping the human genome, summiting Mount Everest, etc. Those things are impressive, surely, but sometimes I wonder whether they can compare with the achievements of our ancient ancestors that we tend to take for granted: the invention of the wheel, for example, the domestication of animals, and maybe most influential of all, the ability to create and control fire. 

Fire, of course, is one of nature’s greatest forces. Its power is something that man and beast alike appreciate and respect. But anthropologists tell us that when our earliest forefathers learned to harness fire for our own purposes – as a source of warmth, a means of protection, and a way of procuring and cooking food – it marked a pivotal moment in our history. In many ways, it was the foundation for virtually every achievement that came later.

The Pentecost [detail] (1613) by Fray Juan Bautista Maíno 

In the iconography of the Church, fire has always been symbolic of the Holy Spirit, and we heard the reason why in today’s first reading (Acts 2:1-11). Other than the form of a dove that appeared at the baptism of Jesus, the tongues of fire that came to rest upon the apostles in the Upper Room is the only visible manifestation of the Holy Spirit in all of the Scriptures. That particular form is surely no accident, precisely because of all that fire symbolizes for us as humans. Fire is powerful, deadly even, but it is also purifying and renewing. It has the ability to burn away what is dead and impure in order to allow what is new and unsullied to spring forth.

The Holy Spirit does exactly the same thing. In the psalm today (Ps 104:30), we asked the Lord to send the Spirit to “renew the face of the earth.” If you think about it, it is hard to make something new, and it can be painful as well. We shouldn’t be surprised then that much of the work of renewal is challenging; whether we are talking about the renewal of our own hearts, resolving again to turn away firmly from sinfulness, or the renewal of our Church, praying for and insisting upon meaningful steps to purify the Body of Christ from all that corrupts her, or the renewal of our world, striving to build the kingdom of God. None of that is easy – and it shouldn’t be really, not if what we really desire is something new. When we ask the Lord to renew us by the power of his Spirit, we should think of the renewal that comes from fire: purifying, cleansing, transforming. 

Fortunately, the Spirit’s work of renewal is not just to purify but also to strengthen and confirm. In the Gospel today (Jn 14:15-16, 23b-26), Jesus promises the disciples that the Spirit will remind them of everything that he has taught them. Jesus knows that our hearts at times can grow weary, and that our spirits can be distracted and dismayed by living in the world. That’s why he sends forth the fire of his Spirit to renew us – first to burn away all that is unnecessary and unhelpful, and then to fortify us by filling us with the invigorating power of his grace. The Spirit reminds us, as St. Paul says, that “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:3b) and that his Lordship should be the foundation for all of our desires, motivations, actions, even our very lives. Each day we choose to place our hope in the belief that Jesus is Lord over all, and the Spirit helps us to make that choice again and again, especially when it is difficult. As St. Paul says, the Spirit gives each of us particular gifts – gifts that we call “charisms” – by which he empowers us to share in his work: the work of renewal. 

Later this week, the priest assignment changes in our diocese officially take effect. That means that this is my last Mass here at St. Thomas as pastor. It has been a wonderful four years here, and as I said several weeks ago, I am very grateful for the many blessings the Lord has given to me in and through this community. I know pastoral changes can be difficult, but they can also be an opportunity for growth and renewal. I hope the gifts that God has given me have benefited this community. I know Fr. Jason will have new and different gifts to share. In all things, we should remember it is really Christ who shepherds us, not the fallible man we see before us.

Sometimes we can fall victim to the idea that everything stands or falls based upon the priest leading us. That mentality isn’t really Catholic though, for two reasons: first, because it forgets that it is really always the Lord leading us, and he is always trustworthy; and second, because it minimizes the importance of the community as a whole and the identity you have as the People of God. That is why I really can’t imagine a better way to conclude my time with you than by celebrating today’s feast with you. Pentecost shows us clearly that the Holy Spirit is active and at work in each of us and in every community of the faithful. Yes, pastors are important, but pastors come and go. What remains is you, the People of God, and it is in you that the Spirit is active and present, inviting all of us – and not just the clergy – to utilize the gifts we have been given to participate in the Spirit’s work of renewal. 

Herrad of Landsberg, Hortus Deliciarum: Pentecost (c. 1180) 

Perhaps more than any other feast of our liturgical year, Pentecost reminds us of the role that the laity have in building up the kingdom of God. Blessed John Henry Newman, the English priest and cardinal who will be canonized a saint later this year, was once asked a sarcastic question about what value the laity have in the Church. He replied, “The Church would look rather silly without them.” How right he is, especially today! Whenever we as Catholics place an emphasis and importance on clergy to the exclusion or detriment of the laity, we look rather silly because we have inverted the way that Jesus intends his Church to be.

In a very real way, the Church’s emphasis is always on you, the laity – in a sense, you truly show what it means to be “Catholic” today. You are the ones who are on the front lines of the culture, living out the Gospel in the world, proclaiming the Good News by word and action, demonstrating the love of Christ to others. We clergy aid and assist you; we encourage you and teach you and absolve you, and hopefully never scandalize you. But the true work of renewing the world cannot be done by us – it must be done by you, in your homes, in your workplaces, in the places of culture and business and the arts and beyond. In every facet of life, in every sphere of society, the Good News of Jesus must be proclaimed, and it is you the laity who principally must proclaim it! Thus, the Spirit comes as fire to each of us. That is the essence of our Pentecost celebration – to be renewed in our spirits by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that each of us can share in the Lord’s work of renewing the face of the earth. 

Friends, our celebration of today’s solemnity is a pivotal moment in our history. For while we are two thousand years removed from that Pentecost event, the Spirit is as alive and active among us as it was for our earliest forefathers in the faith. The Spirit’s action is always new, always renewing, helping us to go ever deeper into the identity of Christ. This year and every year, Pentecost reminds us not to take for granted the Lord’s sending of the Spirit upon us, that gift which is the foundation for every good work that he calls us to do. What we celebrate are not our own human achievements, but rather what God has accomplished for us: that he has poured into our hearts the fire of his love through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Lord invites us to be renewed in that fire this day – to let all that is impure be burned away and then to be strengthened and confirmed in the grace of the Spirit’s gifts. Having been renewed, he then charges us – each of us individually, all of us as a community – to use those gifts to share in the Spirit’s work of renewing the face of the earth. By our own paths, according to our own callings, guided by the Spirit’s movements, may we each continue to burn with the holy fire of mission and forever proclaim, “Jesus is Lord.”