Hearing the Voice of Love

The grandmother- and mother-to-be

(The following is the homily I preached for the Fourth Sunday of Easter)

First, let me wish everyone a very Happy Mother’s Day, especially to those of you privileged to be mothers. From the rest of us, we certainly hope you are happy. For one thing, you deserve it. And for another – well, you know that old saying – “If mom ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” That’s very true – and so I wish a very Happy Mother’s Day to each of you.

For me personally, this Mother’s Day has an additional significance because my sister, for the first time, is a mother-to-be. And that also means that my own mother, for the first time, is a grandmother-to-be. Our family is very excited, of course. Recently I was reading about what my little niece or nephew is like at this moment, so let me bore you with some details. He/she is about the size of a large eggplant. They can blink their eyes and are sensitive now to light. Their lungs and brains are continuing to develop, and most interestingly to me, they are beginning to recognize sounds.

Scientists tell us that one of the first sounds that a child learns to recognize is the sound of their mother’s voice. Tests have been done to show that within the first few minutes after birth, and indeed even while still in utero, babies respond differently to their mother’s voice. They recognize it and respond to it. They are able to distinguish it from other voices and hear in it, somehow, the love their mother has for them.

Do you know who else’s voice should be like that? The voice of God. In the Gospel today, we hear the voice of Jesus the Good Shepherd, who tells us that his sheep hear his voice, they recognize it, and they follow him. In the time of Jesus, shepherds often allowed their sheep to intersperse with the sheep of other shepherds – good pastureland was hard to come by and so often was shared rather than divided. Soon the sheep became a big mob, undistinguished, unmarked. We might wonder how the shepherd could retrieve the sheep that belonged to him? Easy. The sheep knew the shepherd’s voice. They recognized it; it resonated with them. It spoke to them lovingly in a way that was unlike anyone else’s.

Do you hear the voice of God in that way? Our lives are so often consumed in noise – voices, human or otherwise, that speak to us about what we ought to do or should be doing, voices from the outside and inside that demand something of us, make excuses for us, critique us, coddle us, shame us, scandalize us, lead us into confusion and error and sin. Amid the din, God desires his voice to ring out for us, clearly, like the voice of a shepherd, distinctively, like a mother’s voice, lovingly, like only his voice can be.

How do we hear that voice? It comes to us in various ways. It comes to us in the habit of daily prayer and in the living words of Scripture. It comes to us in the words of a spiritual friend who may console us or encourage us or challenge us depending on what we may need. It comes to us in our conscience, if we truly seek God’s will and not our own.

Perhaps the most important way that God’s voice calls to us in our lives is in our vocation. Our country today celebrates Mother’s Day, but our worldwide Church today celebrates the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. What is a vocation? Nothing more than the voice of God speaking to us, made individual for each of us, unique, asking us to follow him in some specific way. Just as a mother dreams of the future for her child, God has a wonderful plan for every one of his children, and it is only in finding that plan that we will happy.

The Church has traditionally identified three distinct vocations to which God might call us. For some of the young men of our parish, perhaps some of you sitting here today, God is calling you to be a shepherd after the heart of his Son, Jesus, to care for his people as a priest, like Fr. John and Fr. Pius and myself, loving them, laying down your life for them, helping them to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and to follow it. For others among us, God is asking you to consecrate yourself to him in the single life, to live a life of radical otherness marked by prayer, sacrifice, and service for the good of all of us and the universal Church. For most of you, like my sister and her husband, like my mother and father, God is calling you to the vocation of marriage and of parenthood, a vocation which while commonly undertaken is so rarely lived to its fullest potential. What is so exceptional about being a spouse or a parent? To you and to no one else does God give the gift of expressing the love that he himself bears for your spouse, and to receive from your spouse the love he has for you. To you and to no one else does he entrust the mission of raising a human life, of forming their heart and mind and conscience to know him, to love him, to be successful not only in this world but to live with him in the next.

Jesus the Good Shepherd (fresco), San Callisto catacomb, Rome, 3rd century

In a few months, my sister and her husband and our family will joyfully welcome a new child, a child whom they will love and nurture, and a child for whom God will have a special vocation, just as he has for each of us. The voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus, calls each of us – whether we’re young or old, whether we’re searching for our vocation or found it long ago, and importantly, even if for whatever reason we are unable to fulfill the vocation God designed for us – Jesus calls to us, he calls to us with love, inviting us to a life of happiness and purpose which he himself has created for us. Are we listening for his voice – will we recognize his voice amid all the other noise of our life? Are we helping those we love, those we nurture to hear him and respond?

I invite us now to pray, for our mothers – but also for our fathers, for our wives and our husbands, for our priests, for our religious brothers and sisters, and especially for our young people, that all of us, whoever we are, wherever we are in life, might hear the voice of God speaking to us.

Let us pray. O God, who enlightens the minds and inflames the hearts of the faithful by the Holy Spirit, grant that through the same Spirit, we may know our true vocation in life and have the grace to follow it faithfully, that we may live with You in eternal life. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Mercy and the Saint: My JPII Story

Fr. Karol Wojtyła, with a First Communion class in Niegowić, Poland, 1948.

The first time that I visited Rome I came as a pilgrim. More exactly, I came as a backpacker. Nearing the first week of a month-long trip that would see us criss-cross Europe to eke every dollar out of our Eurorail passes, two buddies and I arrived there after a variety of mishaps and misadventures, very much looking forward to a shower and to sleeping in the same place for consecutive nights. Our time in the Eternal City was, in short, fantastic, and probably the most memorable and meaningful stop on a very memorable, meaningful trip.

On our last day in the city, having already made a 70-mile, $200-trek to the airport to retrieve some very stubbornly errant lugage, my friends and I debated how we wanted to spend the day. We thought briefly of trying to make a hurried trip to Assisi, to see the famous medieval town of Umbria and the birthplace of St. Francis. But perhaps out of a desire to capture a few more brief moments in the Caput Mundi, perhaps out of mere exhaustion, we decided merely to bum around the city for a few more hours, heading back especially to the Vatican. I am eternally grateful that we did. Emerging onto the Via Ottaviano from the metro stop of the same name, and making it past the Piazza Risorgimento onto the Via di Porta Angelica (I knew none of these names at the time), we ran smack into a mob of people. It just so happens that on that Sunday, May 18, 2003, we happened upon a Mass being celebrated in St. Peter's Square by Pope John Paul II. We had visited St. Peter's and the Vatican earlier in the week but had not known the Holy Father would be celebrating a public Mass that Sunday, let alone a Mass in which he was canonizing four saints (specifically. St. Virginia Centurione Bracelli, St. Maria de Mattias, St. Ursula Ledóchowska, and St. Józef Sebastian Pelczar).

The occasion was impressive, but I remember being more struck by the fact that I was actually seeing John Paul II. He was the only pope I'd ever known; he defined the papacy for my generation, not just as an office but as a personal ministry. He was, by this time, feeble and wracked by Parkinson's, but even as he struggled to lift his head enough to address the crowd, the power and sanctity of that man was visible to me from afar. We didn't linger at the Mass for long, but I remember feeling very grateful that luck (or, more likely Providence) had given us the fortune to be there for a moment, so that I could see John Paul II in the flesh.

Looking back now, my momentary connection to that great man was more lasting and meaningful for me than I realized at the time. A year or so later, I would begin to question my plans for graduation after college, thinking seriously again about the priesthood. Some two years later, I would watch as the world mourned the passing of that pope who embodied the meaning of suffering love, cheers of "Santo subito" echoing through the crowds. A few years after that, having entered seminary, I would have the privilege of visiting the pope's homeland, and I have visited it now three times, seeing among other things: his hometown of Wadowice, seeing the font where he was baptized in the local church; the image of Our Lady of Calvary at Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, to which Karol's father took him after the death of his mother, saying to him, "She is your mother now"; the Divine Mercy Shrine that he consecrated, just steps from the Solvay Soda Works where he worked, and the tomb of St. Faustina Kowalska, whom he canonized in 2000; and the palace of the archbishop of Krakow, where he lived and worked for years, including the chapel where he celebrated his first Mass as a priest, clandestinely during the Nazi occupation. Since his death, I had the great privilege of attending his beatification, and my personal chalice was used for the very first time at a Mass offered at the altar above his tomb in St. Peter's Basilica by Bishop Anthony Taylor, assisted by yours truly as deacon, a few months before I was ordained a priest.

Today, along with Pope John XXIII, in that same square where I first glimpsed him, John Paul II was declared to be among the canon of saints in heaven, who enjoy the beatific vision and see God face to face. I have no doubt that that is true, not only because the Church declares it to be so but because of personal conviction as well. The experts say that John Paul II was seen by more people than any other person in human history: some 500 million or so, due to his more than one hundred pastoral visits around the globe. And yet, what was his message at its heart? Know and love Christ. Jesus was always at the center of John Paul II -- his life, his spirituality, his theology, his public word.

As wonderful and holy as John Paul II was, he pales in comparison to Jesus Christ. All the saints do. Karol Wojtyla and Angelo Roncalli were men; men in need of mercy and forgiveness, men with shortcomings and faults and sins. We celebrate their lives and their holiness, not because they were perfect, but in a sense, because they were imperfect. They were not divine beings or angels or superheroes. They were human beings who opened themselves to the grace of Christ and were transformed by it. In no way does that diminish their greatness; rather, their greatness lies precisely in that.

In the Gospel for this Second Sunday of Easter, this Divine Mercy Sunday, Thomas touches the wounds of the Risen Jesus, putting his finger into the nail marks, and his hand into his side. Thomas touches and believes. But is it not true that, touching, Thomas is also touched? The Risen Lord touches Thomas at the core of his being, healing him of his incredulity, softening his heart of stone. At the essence of sanctity lies this personal encounter between each person and Christ. St. John Paul II and St. John XXIII knew that touch of Jesus -- they experienced his infinite Divine Mercy in a real, redeeming way, and they allowed the life of grace that they received from him to radiate through them, such that we saw not them, but Christ.

My friends, fellow pilgrims on this earth, none of us are perfect, not even the saints. All of us need the Divine Mercy of the Son who desires to give it to us. And yet, as we know from the lives of Karol and Angelo, holiness really is possible. Not just for them, but for you and me as well. Let us give thanks to God for the gift of his saints, who prove for us the reality of the possibility of holiness. And let us open our hearts to the Risen Christ, who desires to touch each of us with his divine hand, to share with us his Divine Mercy, to make us saints as well.

The Resurrection of the Lord

 The Anastasis ("Resurrection") fresco, Parekklesion, Chora church/museum, Istanbul

For those who heard my homily on Good Friday, you may remember I began with a little Latin. Fr. John always likes it when I do that. I said, “pro nobis”. Jesus died, for us, in our place, and that is a truly wondrous thing.

On this Easter Sunday morning, allow me continue to impress you with my linguistic abilities, especially with Fr. John here, this time with a little Italian: “già ma non ancora.” That was a favorite expression of my classmates and myself when we were studying in Rome. It became a sort of catchphrase among us, because it seemed, in one way or another, that every Scripture passage that we studied, every aspect of theology we investigated, was ultimately summed up by our professors with that phrase: “già ma non ancora.” Everything about our faith was: “già ma non ancora.” Already but not yet.

Perhaps we seminarians should have guessed it, but this phrase – “already but not yet” – seemed to be at the center of our priestly studies for a good reason: it is at the heart of the Christian experience. It is, in fact, perhaps the best way of summing up what the Resurrection means for us today, and tomorrow, and all of our days in this life – the Resurrection is “già ma non ancora”. Already but not yet.

Now, don’t get me wrong! Jesus has truly risen. That’s the “already” part. In the Gospel, we hear how Mary Magdalene and then later Peter and John go to the tomb and find it empty. At first they do not understand what has happened – Mary seems to suspect theft, while Peter and John are clearly bewildered. Has the Resurrection happened? Yes! … “already.” Do they realize it? Well… no, not at first. In fact, the Gospel explicitly states that even when they enter the tomb, and see the burial cloth rolled up, and begin to believe, they still do not fully understand.

How much of the Christian life exists between those two poles – believing in things that are, without yet seeing them. We believe (now) in a God who is good and just and holy – even as we wait (yet) to see the end of violence and malice and suffering. We believe (now) that, for those with faith in Christ, all suffering and pain we endure can have meaning and that our parting from our loved ones is only temporary – even though none of us have (yet) seen that for ourselves. We gather (now) here this morning, every Easter, indeed every Sunday, proclaiming our faith in the Resurrection – even though none of us have (yet) ever seen the Risen Jesus. We even will come forward to receive that Risen One in his Body and Blood … and even though we believe in that Real Presence, none of us fully understand.

These things that we believe are not foolish – they are true, more true than we know. They exist now, they are “already”, and we believe in them… but we also wait for the part of them that is “not yet” – to fully understand them, to fully experience their true occurrence for ourselves, to fully witness their final unveiling. Even Mary Magdalene and Peter and John – who saw the Lord as Resurrected, and came to understand by the power of the Holy Spirit the reason for Jesus’s dying and his rising – even they, in a very real sense, are waiting for that final unveiling of the Resurrection. “Già ma non ancora.” Already but not yet.

All of us, all of us who live after the Resurrection and before the final Resurrection of the Dead, exist in this in-between time. Last night at the Easter Vigil, Fr. John solemnly announced the Paschal Proclamation, the Exsultet, that great and ancient hymn which declared among other things: that Jesus Christ, the one true Lamb, has wiped clean the record of our ancient sinfulness, has banished the darkness of sin, has broken the prison-bars of death and risen victorious from the underworld, has dispelled wickedness, has washed fault away, has restored innocence to the fallen and joy to mourners, has driven out hatred, has fostered concord, and has brought down the mighty.

And yet, this morning? Nothing seems out of the ordinary. The sun shines upon a world that seems just as broken as yesterday. What is different? Anything? Well, yes! Christ is Risen! And his Rising means that God’s victory has been achieved even as we wait to see it. The Resurrection is here, it has happened, it is present to us now, and has already changed the world. And … it is also a sign of things to come, a promise for us that the world will not remain as it is. Even more, in the Resurrected Christ we see reality as God sees it – changed, redeemed and glorified.

Let me offer an example of just one person who I think truly understood this meaning of the Resurrection, of “already, but not yet”. The great American writer, Flannery O’Connor, herself a devout Catholic, is most famous for her novels. Yet she also wrote many letters, and in one letter, addressed to a friend who did not believe in the Resurrection of Jesus because it defied the physical laws of nature. Listen to what Flannery wrote:

"For you, it may be a matter of not being able to accept what you call a suspension of the laws of the flesh and the physical, but for my part I think that when I know what the laws of the flesh and the physical really are, then I will know what God is. We know them as we see them, not as God sees them. For me it is the child born of a virgin, the Incarnation of God, the Resurrection of Christ which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws."

What a beautiful statement of true faith – to say that the things of faith, the things we believe without yet seeing – that those are the truly real things. It is for that reason that, for the Christian who truly believes, sorrow and suffering, as terrible as they might sometimes be, will never lead us to hopelessness or despair. No matter what we face in this moment, we can find meaning in the promise of what awaits us.

Flannery O'Connor, at her home in Milledgeville, GA, with one of her pet peacocks.

Shortly after writing this letter, Flannery died at the young age of 39 of lupus, after having suffered for many years from that devastating illness. In many ways, her experience on this earth was much closer to a Good Friday than an Easter Sunday, and yet as she said, death, decay, destruction – these things are not real; it is the Resurrection of Jesus that is real.

My friends, our entire Christian life is defined by the Resurrection of Jesus, which was real, is real, and will be even more real for us in a future to come. We wait in hope for that day when the full unveiling of that eternal mystery we celebrate today is made real for us, and made real *to* us. In the meantime, may we strive, as St. Paul says, to cast out the old, to welcome in the new, to live – even amid the sufferings of this present time – always in the grace and the joy and the love that come from knowing the Risen Christ, that come from seeing the world and our lives and everything that is, not just as we see them now, but as Jesus in his Resurrection has truly made them to be.

Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)

Stabat Mater (1873), Evgraf Semenovich Sorokin

“Pro nobis”.

The earliest Christians were very wise when they included these words in the Creed. When they wished to put down in definitive form what they believed about God and his Son Jesus, they added two little words – “pro nobis”. “Pro nobis”, the Son of God became man, and “pro nobis”, he was crucified, died, and was buried.

Today, perhaps above every other day of the year, those two little words should resonate with us – “pro nobis.” For us.

“Why did Jesus have to die?” I remember that was the very first question that I was asked when, as a newly admitted seminarian, I visited a 3rd grade classroom at the school of my home parish. What a simple question – and yet, how mysterious. If you begin to think about it, it is a question that bewilders the mind, that confounds reason and logic, a question that seems almost unanswerable. The saints in history have penned long and beautiful sermons, men and women throughout the ages have fled the civilized world to the silence of the desert to pray and meditate, entire books of the Bible have been composed – all in an attempt to answer it.

And yet, as the earliest Christians knew, the answer is succinct enough: “pro nobis.” Christ came to earth and suffered and died for us – that is, not simply “for our benefit”, to rescue us from the sin that had plagued us from ancient days, to defeat once and for all the power of the devil and the curse of death that sin had inflicted upon the world. He also died “pro nobis” – that is, “in our place”, submitting to the awful fate that would have been ours. Jesus died because, out of love for us, he took upon himself what was our due.

There is a tendency among us, even among us faithful Christians, to water down this idea. We tend to think, as the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, that the Cross was just the terrible end to an otherwise happy and god-fearing life – that Jesus, out of humility and love, submitted to a cruel fate as a testament to non-violence and forgiveness. But, this idea – and it’s one that all of us at times fall victim to – misses the crucial point: God did not just cancel our debt: he paid the debt himself. He did it knowingly and willfully, “pro nobis.” For us. In our place.

The Cross reveals to us who God is and how God loves us, and this is very very important. Nowadays everyone talks about God, everyone has an idea of what God might be like, but isn’t it true that that “god” is so often a projection of ourselves? How often do we hear, “It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you believe in God.” But what God? How God? What does God do? The answer to these questions is not in our conceptions or ideas but in the image of the Cross. “God is love,” we say, and he is, but not just warm, fuzzy love that makes us feel good – God is Love with pierced hands and feet and side, crowned with thorns, and dying in agony from the Cross. Pro nobis. For us. In our place.

If any of this is a bit unsettling, and it probably should be, then perhaps it’s a sign for us that we haven’t really incorporated the meaning of the Cross into our lives. It’s true that we are “an Easter people” as they say – and we never want to think about the Cross as if we didn’t also know about the Resurrection. But the reverse is also true – the Resurrection could not have occurred without the Cross. The Cross without the Resurrection is utter despair; if Jesus has not risen, as Paul says, we are the poorest of fools. But equally true is that the Resurrection has no meaning without the Cross – it is just superficial, empty, devoid of meaning. Easter Sunday and Good Friday are inextricably linked, and we cannot have the one without the other.

Perhaps we might think, "Well, I don’t like thinking about the Cross – it’s too painful, too dark, too sad." Exactly right. The Cross declares to us, “Evil is real! And you must admit it! You have to face it!” Things are not right. The world is not it should be. There is evil. There is the devil. There is sin. These things exist, they are real, and they are terrible. We can’t color over them. We know them all too well. People get sick. People suffer devastation from tornadoes and floods and mudslides. People die from airplane crashes and bombs and wars and crossing deserts to try to find better lives for their families. People die from hunger and hypothermia, sometimes on our very street corners, and people die out of desperation that their life has no meaning. People are thrown out of their countries and their homes, children are abused and enslaved, people are victimized by addiction and greed and despair and injustice, and all of us suffer in silent ways, hidden ways, ways that only we know about. And all of that is real. And all of that and more is what God faces on the Cross, it is what God on the Cross pronounces his judgment upon, and it is what God on the Cross forgives.

So, “why did Jesus have to die?” Remember the answer: “pro nobis.” The one who said “I AM WHO AM”, appearing to Moses on Mount Sinai, the one who said “I AM” to answer the call of Judas and the betrayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, the one who, at the end of all time, will say “I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One who is, who always was, and who is to come” – took upon himself all suffering, all sin, all death – for us, in our place, to declare judgment upon the sin and evil that separate us from him, and to take it away, to forgive it, to carry us – in himself – to the very depths of hell, and having utterly redeemed us, having made all things new, he rose to give us a share in his eternal life.

We gaze upon the Cross today with reverence and awe at such profound forgiveness. And we will venerate it in just a few moments, with love and worship. We do so all too aware that, for us, now, the Cross as a symbol of pain and suffering; and yet, we also must believe that contained there, in its meaning, it is also the sign of God’s power and victory, a glory which we will only understand once we also behold the Resurrection. And, yet, in the Eucharist, we will be drawn ever more closer to that final reality, as we receive the One who hung upon the wood of the Cross, now Resurrected and at the right hand of his Father. We taste there, in his Body and Blood, now glorified, a preview of the joy of the Resurrection.

So, my friends, “Ecce Crux Domini” -- Behold the Cross of the Lord. Behold in it the infinite power of a God who humbled himself for us; behold the ineffable majesty of a Lord who loved us and took our place, who suffered for us in order to forgive us, who died for us in order to redeem us. “Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world. Come, let us adore.”


(Grateful acknowledgement to Hans Urs von Balthasar, Robert Barron and Thomas J. Neal for some of the ideas and language herein..)

Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

Entry into Jerusalem (c. 1620), Pedro Orrente

“Hosanna to the Son of David… Hail Jesus, King of the Jews… Truly this was the Son of God…”

In a way, those three quotations from the various readings today capture the dramatic moments of today’s liturgy. Palm Sunday is such a fascinating liturgy because within it, from reading to reading, the drama intensifies, and where we end is a different place from where we began.

We began by gathering together, outside, not just recalling but reenacting the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. This was the moment that all of Israel had been waiting for for centuries – an event that every Jewish child knew by heart, because their parents and grandparents had described to them what it would be like. The king of Israel, the Messiah, fulfilling the words of Zechariah, at last would enter into his own kingly city to take possession of his throne, to overthrow Israel’s oppressors, gather together the lost tribe, and finally establish a kingdom of justice and peace. Imagine then the joy and exultation of not only the disciples but all of the people of Jerusalem as, at last, their dream became reality. “Hosanna to the Son of David!,” cried the young and old alike, as this Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth, arrived in the city prepared for him.

And then, how quickly things change. For the people of the time, it took just a few days, and for us, in the liturgy, just a few moments, to shift from the triumphal joy of the entrance into Jerusalem into the cruel humiliation and sorrow of the passion, the Cross, and the death of Christ. Whatever expectations had been present, whatever anticipations the disciples and others had established in their minds, quickly disappeared in the face of such brutality and bewilderment. The mouths that been full of praise and adulation for Jesus a few days before, now spat at him and cursed. “Hail, King of the Jews!”, they mocked. Behold the Christ, who came to bring liberty to those enslaved, now himself made captive; behold the Lord, who welcomed all, rejected and abandoned by all.

And so, as I said, in this liturgy, we bear this stark contrast in mind: that Christ has rejected what the world deemed as royal and noble so that he might more fully share in the weakness of our humanity. Jesus indeed came as our king, but not as a king who desires to rule and to dominate us. He entered into Jerusalem not to take possession of what was rightly his, but, as St. Paul says, to empty himself to the fullest degree. For our sake, he desired to experience the depth of every pain, every humiliation, every suffering that we ourselves might experience, even to the point of a criminal’s execution – so that everything in the human condition might also be the experience of God himself, and so also redeemed by God himself. Surely that was the realization of the centurions who, looking upon the face of the crucified Jesus, exclaimed, “Truly, this was the Son of God.”

My friends, as we enter into this most Holy Week, we know that we will end it in a far different place from where we begin it. We are called to walk this Passion journey with Christ, and so to be changed with him. Each day this week, let us take a moment to reflect upon this momentous love of God, upon this wondrous love of the King who desires only to reign in our hearts. As we walk the steps of our week, let us bear in a conscious way – in our minds, in our hearts, in all of our experiences – the certainty that we have a king who desires to exalt us in our lowest moments, who desires to lift from us our burdens, who desires to place upon us his kingly favor. May we look upon the humility of a God who humbled himself even to the point of death, so as to save us from eternal death, and find there the strength to say, with love and awe,

Hosanna to the Son of David… Hail Jesus, King of the Jews… truly, the Son of God!

Ash Wednesday

It seems like Ash Wednesday is one of the most active days of the year for my Facebook wall. Have you noticed this? First, there are the numerous people who change their profile picture or their cover photo, announcing for the rest of us that Lent has begun. Then you have the more zealous folks who post articles and videos like “20 Creative Things to Do for Lent”, “5 Ways to Keep Your Lenten Penance,” “How to Explain Your Ashes at Work,” etc. Finally, you have the really radical ones among us who announce in some way – “BRB in 40 days – gone for Lent”,telling us heathens who remain that they will be doing holier things than Facebook for Lent.

If you've done one or more of these things, don’t feel too bad – some of the worst offenders on my wall are my priest friends, and I've even done some of them myself. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to declare to others that Lent has begun and that we’re taking it seriously. Just this afternoon, I read an online link about public people – business consultants, politicians, even ESPN television hosts – who receive their ashes today and then continue to wear them, in the workplace, on the senate floor, in front of the camera.

And is there anything wrong with all of this? No. Indeed, there’s something very right about being open and public with regard to our faith. But there is, nonetheless, an inherent danger, I think, that can creep into our attitude. And that is that we fall into the trap of showmanship, of hypocrisy, that once a year, today or even for the 40 days of Lent, we engage in the exteriors of Lent, but only the exteriors. But here’s the thing – the exteriors don’t matter at all if there’s no interior change.

This isn’t a new challenge – the people of the ancient world were subject to the same trap. For example, in Israel, in the days of the prophets and the kings, sinners would publicly cover themselves in ashes and dress in sackcloth, they’d even tear their clothes or tear out their hair, as a sign of the great distress they had at having offended God. But what does the prophet Joel say to them, and to us, “Rend your hearts, not your garments.” In other words, God doesn’t want us just to make a show for him, but to really return to him and ask him for his mercy. Clearly, back then, and probably now as well, far too many were getting their ashes without accepting the call to conversion. But, again – the exteriors don’t matter at all if there’s no interior change.

In the Gospel today, Jesus speaks to us about the three traditional penitential practices that are associated with this season – almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. But notice how he does it – he doesn’t say, “You know, disciples, you should give alms, or pray or fast like those people over there.” No, he says, “Don’t be like the hypocrites”. Don’t fall into the trap of doing good things, things which can bring us closer to God, without also having the interior sense of conversion that should go along with them. Giving money to the poor and the needy, trying to better orient ourselves by spending more time in prayer, even fasting from food and drink or whatever thing we might like – those are great things. But, again – the exteriors don’t matter at all if there’s no interior change.

So, what are we to do? Well, I suggest one thing that may sound easy but is far harder than any exterior penance we might adopt – and that is kindness. This Lent, in addition to giving up chocolate, or television after supper, or even *gasp* Facebook, take on as well kindness. Real kindness, exterior and interior. The kind of kindness that leads you to stop complaining at work about your boss, but that also prompts you to think well of him or her interiorly as well. The kind of kindness that leads you to stop nagging your husband or to be more appreciative of your wife, but that also leads you to go out of your way to serve him, or her, out of love. The kind of kindness that leads you to not just repent for having harmed that family member or that friend, but that spurs you on to reconnect with them and ask their forgiveness. All of us, young or old, with family or not, whatever our circumstances in life – all of us can find one person this Lent who really tests our kindness, and then we can go out of our way to love them.

My friends, so as we begin this season of Lent once again, at the end of Mass, we’ll come forward to receive our ashes. And we’ll exit the church with that sign of our faith on our foreheads. But remember, the exteriors won’t matter at all if there’s no interior change. So whatever we may be giving up for Lent – great, keep at it – but don’t forget about your hearts.Because no matter what we put on our heads, or in our mouths, or even on our Facebook pages, it’s what in our hearts that really matters to God.

The Lord's Epiphany

The Epiphany, the Darmstadt Altarpiece (c. 1440), by Unknown German Master

A few weeks ago my mom sent my siblings and me a text. It said, “Dad and I met 40 years ago today, and life has never been the same since!” In their case, they met when they were 19, and while they didn’t get married for another 9 years – my dad took a little convincing! – my mom still remembers that very day. Somehow, she knew her life would not be the same.

That got me to thinking – what events in life change us so dramatically that life is never the same afterward? Certainly, we could list many – both joyous and tragic – but in my experience, if people had to identify just one, most people would say it is the birth of their child. That’s not something I’ve experienced, of course, but from the way you mothers and fathers describe it, the moment you first hold that child, the meaning and purpose of your life is forever changed.

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, when we celebrate that the Christ child, born in Bethlehem to Mary, is in fact a child born for all of us. The child Jesus is God made visible, God who has now entered into our time and history, and so through him, the meaning and purpose of all of our lives has forever changed. Not only is Jesus the true heir to the throne of David, the Messiah, but the salvation he brings is not just for the Jewish people but for all of us. As St. Paul says in the second reading, “the Gentiles (that’s us) are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners” in God’s promise of salvation in Jesus. In Jesus, the entire history of God and humanity is fulfilled.

So if Jesus has been born for us, for all of us, how do we respond? How are we called to change? In the Gospel today, St. Matthew presents us with a right way and a wrong way to respond to the arrival of the Christ child:

1) The wrong way is represented by Herod. A pretender king, in league with the Romans and not even Jewish, Herod had used murder and incest to grab and then hold on to power. Yet remember, Jesus has come for all of us, because all of us need salvation. So Herod too could have responded with repentance at the coming of the true King. Yet, as we see from the story, Herod responds with fear. He’s so occupied with his own comfort and self-interest, that he will go to any means necessary to resist the revelation of God.

2) The right way is represented by the Magi. Not Jews themselves, they nonetheless had been anticipating the coming of this Messiah, and when they saw the sign of his arrival, they left the comforts of their homes and homeland and journeyed to find him. They endured hardship and difficulty, gave gifts of prized possessions to him when they found him, and even were attentive to the danger of giving up the child’s location to Herod.

For both the Magi and for Herod, the arrival of the Christ child meant that their life would never be the same. For the Magi, they journeyed back to their homeland having glimpsed God become man, having understood perhaps God’s great plan of bringing all peoples together through this child, hoping to share one day in that final, eternal salvation. For Herod, as we know, he began a campaign of destruction that led to the slaughter of innocent children, and still failing to find the Christ child, as we know from history, he became depressed and paranoid, and died shortly thereafter.

Jesus, the newborn king, has come for all of us, but his arrival demands that we choose to seek him or to reject him. Because God has become one of us, because he’s entered human history, our lives can never be the same. If we seek to live as we did before, if we remain mired in our own self-interest and comfort, if we are fearful of letting God’s love touch our hearts, then the coming of Christ will mean nothing for us. Indeed, out of fear, we may even pull back, into further loneliness and despair and sorrow.

But if, like the Magi, we raise our eyes to the light of faith that guides us closer to God, not always sure perhaps where we’re being led, enduring at times difficulty and hardship along the journey, having to make the sacrifices of our gifts and treasures, and understanding that our wishes and plans may sometimes have to be changed in order to accommodate those of God, then we will indeed be changed for the better by this encounter with Christ. We will certainly be able to live out our days full of the joy and the hope that comes from knowing the one who is our Savior.

The birth of a child is a wonderful thing. It’s something that changes our lives, which gives us new purpose and meaning. And if that child is Jesus, the child in whom God has fulfilled every promise, the child who is God himself? Then all the more reason to hand everything over to him – our purposes, our desires, our very lives themselves. Let us, with the Magi, come again before the Christ child today – the same Jesus whom we will receive from this altar, in adoration, bringing our gifts of love and faith and sacrifice, so that through him, our lives may never be the same.

The Mother of God

The Virgin, Jesus, and Saint John the Baptist (1881), William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Christmas was a week ago. If you look around town, it seems like we’ve moved on. The lights are coming down, trees are being pitched to the side of the road, the stores are already moving on to sell their wares for the next holiday season, which I guess is Valentine’s Day.

But, as often seems to be the case, the Church is not so quick. Indeed, for us Christmas has just started. Only today do we end the Octave of Christmas, the special eight-day feast when each day is like a new Christmas all over again. And not for two more weeks does the liturgical season of Christmas finally end.

Why does the Church seem to linger on so? Well, for one reason, God’s ways are not our ways, and so too, the Church’s calendar is not always the same as the world’s. But for another, perhaps we take our time, because it’s only by doing so – me taking time to ponder, to reflect, to contemplate – that the depth of the mysteries of this season, or any other, become clear.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. In many ways, the theme of today’s feast is the same as that of Christmas – that the almighty God has become one of us – but now with one additional note – that he did so through one of us, by being born of a woman. Consider the following, not just about Jesus but about Mary too:

- The Infinite, Eternal, Almighty One now becomes an infant, held in his mother’s arms.

- He whom the very heavens cannot contain, who holds all creation together in himself, the Alpha and the Omega, now was carried in a mother’s womb and cradled in her lap.

- He who looks down upon all creation now looks up into his mother’s eyes.

- The hand from which formed the universe, the hand which guides the stars and the heavens in their courses, now stretches out to grasp his mother’s finger.

- The mighty Word, the very utterance of the Father, who was with God and was God from the beginning, is now expressed in the cooing and crying of an infant.

- He who is our food, the Bread of Life, who gives us his own Body to eat, is himself fed by the body of his mother.

My friends, there would have been no Christmas without Mary; we would not have Jesus without her. As we begin this new year, let us reflect again upon the wondrous love by which God chose one of us to be his own mother and our mother by his grace. Each of us has some area of our life – some pain, some fear, some weakness – that needs her love, her renewal, her intercession. Let us turn again to she who is our Lord’s mother, and our mother by grace, that through her we might encounter again, cradled in her lap, the newborn Lord.

O Mary, loving Mother of the Redeemer, pray for us.

Christ Our Light

Nativity (detail), Correggio, 1530

Someone asked me recently what my favorite memory of Christmas was. I had to stop and think, because there’s so many to choose from – memories of Christmases with family and friends, memories of heading off bundled up for Midnight Mass, memories of all the special sounds and smells and tastes of the season, memories of the joy of being a kid on Christmas morning knowing that Santa had come.

As special as all of those are, however, I answered with a memory that is much more recent. A few years back, when I was in seminary, I had the opportunity to travel to the Holy Land during the Christmas break. On a cold Christmas morning, we priests and seminarians celebrated the Mass at Dawn – the very Mass we are celebrating now – on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, close to the place where Jesus once multiplied the loaves and fishes. Just as we began Mass, the sky began to soften and brighten a bit, and as the Gospel was read – this same Gospel that the deacon just proclaimed – the first rays of the dawn appeared over the hills across the sea. Soon, the whole outdoor chapel where we were celebrating Mass was illuminated by the rising sun, and the warmth of its rays shone upon us.

I suppose the memory of that Mass has stayed with me because it helped make clear for me one of the important ideas about Christmas: that at Christmas, we celebrate the coming of the Light of the world. In fact, since the early days of the Church, Christians have used this image of light to help explain for themselves the mystery of this feast. For example, it’s the symbol of Christ as Light that permeates all of the ancient antiphons and chants, all of the old collects and hymns. The earliest Christians used light as the most fitting image of what Jesus meant for them – that in the newness of the Christ child, the light of God has shone forth in humanity. No longer are we just wretched sinners – our very nature has been redeemed by the fact that God has become one of us. In that sense, Jesus’s birth is a radiant dawn for all of us, because the splendor of eternal light is now something that we too can bask in.

The same thing can be seen in the great works of Christian art. If you look at the masters of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, whenever they painted the Christmas event, they didn’t use any external source of light, like a moon or a fire or a lamp. Rather, the light for the scene comes from Jesus himself. Mary and Joseph and the animals in the stable are all themselves illuminated by the babe in the manger, for he is the source of light.

If we recall this image, of Christ as Light, of his birth as the Dawn of our salvation, then I think we are able to remember two important things about Christmas Day:

1) If Jesus is the light, then he has come to illumine our darkness. Recall the words of Isaiah, a people in darkness have seen a great light. We are those people. We have seen the light, and yet, as we know, so often the darkness around us remains. Perhaps we feel distant from God, perhaps we have fallen out of the practice of prayer, perhaps we are dismayed at the terrible things we see in the news or in the loss of a loved one whose light has passed beyond this world. Into every darkness we have, Jesus the Light promises to light our way. Into every valley of shadow of death, the dawning of the Sun of Justice will shine forth. His coming once as a child in the manger of Bethlehem is but the promise of his final coming, in glory and majesty, when he will set all things right.

2) The light of Christ is manifold. It is meant to be shared. For us who have dwelt in darkness, and have now been illuminated by his light, we should shine forth to be light for others. Slowly, slowly, the darkness around us will fade the more that we seek to let the light of Christ shine forth through us. Like the shepherds, who heard from the angels the Good News of our salvation, the lives of others can be radically changed, radically saved, if only they be led by us to encounter that one who is our light, the Prince of Peace who awaits us.

It is that reason – that Jesus has come for us, to embrace us with his love – that Christmas is too important to be celebrated merely once a year. I think that is the heart of what I realized that morning in Galilee a few years ago. With each sunrise, we must again remind ourselves that Christ our Light has come into the world, to shine upon our path, to guide our feet into the way of peace. And with the dawning of every new day, we must again convince ourselves of the importance of not only remaining in his light but of guiding others to encounter it.

So whatever we do this Christmas – whatever gifts we receive, whatever delicacies we eat, and more importantly whatever joys we are glorying in and whatever pains and sorrows we are enduring – let’s make this Christmas truly memorable – memorable not because of those things, but because of who it is that we welcome once again. Let us strive to encounter again today, and every new day, whatever our daily circumstances, the radiance of the light of the newborn Christ. Let us allow him, today and every day, to illumine again our minds and hearts, to let his light shine forth in our deeds, so that the Son of God on high, the radiant dawn, the morning star, the splendor of light eternal, will make known his salvation to all the world.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Jesus Our King

Hans Memling, Christ Surrounded by Musician Angels (detail), 1480s

Here is my homily for the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

Today the Church celebrates its last feast of the liturgical year – the Feast of Christ, King of the Universe. Kingship and kingly imagery is perhaps not something that we’re very familiar with in this day and age and in this part of the world – perhaps it feels to us as though it belongs more to another place and time, faraway from 21^st century America. 

And yet, it is for that reason that this idea of the kingship of Christ is all the more important for us. In the medieval mindset, the king was much more than a ruler or a monarch. He was – or was intended to be – an image of the ideal man, the one chosen by God to rule in his own place, the one who was divinely appointed to be the very definition of life for his subjects. The king was the everyman, the advocate of all, the servant of all.

And yet, as we know, earthly kings very often fell far short of such a standard. Earthly kingship came to be corrupted by self-interest, greed, and ultimately exploitation and subjugation of the very people the king had been charged to serve. Kings and monarchical rule are precisely what our founding fathers sought to flee, because their image of them had been so corrupted as to become nothing other than a negative one. 

In Jesus, however, we see a different image of kingship – indeed, in the Gospel reading today, we see the image of the true king of the universe. Christianity, as you know, is full of paradoxes, and perhaps there is none greater than to claim that a man who is broken, bleeding, and suffering a humiliatingly public death is our king, the king of our hearts and the king of the universe.

And yet that’s precisely what we do say. We make that claim with conviction and with pride and with faith, because we know that for our king, the Cross is not a defeat, it is indeed the battlefield of his greatest victory, it is his very throne. On the Cross, our king reveals for us just how far removed he is from earthly kings – from self-interest, greed, exploitation and subjugation. This Jesus – who Paul tells us is the very image of the invisible God, the one through whom and for whom all things were created, through whom all things hold together – now suffers for us the ignoble death that is the result of our sins. He proves with the very shedding of his blood how he is our advocate, how he has come to fulfill the divine purpose of saving us from our mortal enemy of sin.

“He saved others, let him save himself”, sneered the crowd. With the eyes of faith, we know that Jesus could have come down from that cross; he could have chosen to show all who were watching in that moment the fullness of his glory. And yet Jesus chose not to save himself, because his work of saving others was not yet complete. He saves the repentant thief, to whom he gives the promise of paradise. And he saves the whole world, you and I and all who believe in him by faith, we who would have no salvation if not for that bloody Cross. Jesus suffered death that we might share the glory that he now has, the glorious Resurrection that lasts forever. 

Jesus is indeed our king, and now he reigns forever in glory. His kingdom is not of this world, as we know, and so his kingship does not mean we will not avoid sufferings and pains in the here and now; yet, on the Cross he shows us how we can bear those with hope, with the firm faith that we are working out our own salvation, that we are drawing ever closer to sharing in his glorious kingdom. 

Jesus, our King, on the throne of his Cross, knew the name of each and every one of us, and he died for us purposefully, willingly, with great love. Now he reigns forever in glory, inviting by name each of us to share in his kingly majesty. In a few moments, he will humble himself again, coming before us in the form of bread and wine, nourishing us with his very life so that we might endure the present and march onward to our final victory. Let us choose again today, in a purposeful way, to answer the call of our king, to respond to the grace he gives to us by choosing to be again his loyal subject. Let us strive to live out now the defining marks of his kingship, his Cross and his Resurrection, now so that when he returns in glory we might have a share in his final victory, “to be with our king forever in Paradise.”