Preached this morning at Christ the King - Memorial of St. Vincent DePaul:

I was out in South Bend Indiana four weeks ago, and there was a picture on the wall of the hotel we were staying at. It was a picture from 1930 of a ticker tape parade in downtown Chicago.  The streets crammed with people celebrating the arrival of the victorious Notre Dame football team, just returning from the west coast having defeated archrival Southern Cal to clinch the national championship.

Maybe it’s macabre, but what struck me about that picture was that every single one of the people in that picture <pause> is now dead, some 85 years later.  I looked carefully at the picture, for ten minutes or so, trying to see if maybe there was a baby or small child in the picture, SOMEONE who might still be alive today.  But alas, I found none younger than maybe 25 or 30.

This picture came to mind as I was praying with our first reading from Ecclesiates. 

For this reading gives us a sense of just how temporary our lives here are.  How quickly they pass and are over.  How nothing much seems to change in the world, but we come and go, and generations from now, who will remember us?  Our lives here are indeed fleeting.

But we live in a world, in a culture, where most people seem to live as if they’ll never die!  A culture that denies death.  Where vanity is a perfect word to describe many if not most of us.  We go to health clubs and work out, we buy cosmetics and visit plastic surgeons and spend billions trying to look and feel young.  Quoheleth would laugh at us, at our vanity.  Oh, that day will come, Quoheleth would tell us.

And given that, the question is “how will we live?”  If our days are numbered, and they are, how should we spend our days.  The message of Ecclesiastes is that we should spend our days clinging to God and living according to His law.  Faithfully following God who is, after all, unchanging in His constant love and mercy for us. 

And the message of Jesus is that we must faithfully love God and show that love in all we do and say, especially by loving our neighbor.  We celebrate today a great saint, Vincent DePaul, who even though he was surrounded for much of his life by the wealth and vanity of his day, remained unattached and unimpressed, and lived a life of devotion to the poor and the imprisoned and the sick.  A man whose life is not forgotten, 400 years later. 

Let us, then, resolve similarly to spend our days in service to Our Lord whom we encounter each day in our neighbor and in the poor.  And let us partake of the One Body of Our Lord to give us the strength and spirit to so spend our days.

Preached at the Thursday morning masses at Christ the King, September 20:

            Luke presents us this morning with a sharp contrast between the Simon the Pharisee and the woman in this morning’s Gospel. 

            On one hand, we have Simon,  a leader in the faith, someone who is, we can be sure, carefully and faithfully following the letter of the law, striving to be a good and faithful Jew, but someone for some unnamed reason has invited this “prophet” Jesus to come and dine with him.  But we see that he keeps his distance from Jesus, he’s sizing him up, perhaps ready to somehow “trap” him, and he disrespects Jesus by knowingly ignoring the established customs of hospitality.

            On the other hand, we have this unnamed woman, undoubtedly a well-known public “sinner” someone who violates all the rules by coming into the home of the Pharisee, not invited we can be sure, and no doubt is considered “unclean.”  She scandalously touches the Lord, and we can imagine the shock on the host’s face as she demonstrates her love for the Lord, washing his feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, anointing them with ointment.

            In the Pharisee’s worldview, he is righteous and this woman is an unclean sinner, and he is shocked that Jesus, a good Jew, would associate with such a woman.  He not only keeps his distance from Jesus rather than warmly welcoming Him, but he judges the Lord and even holds Jesus in contempt – “what kind of prophet is this?”

            And the answer to that is - the kind of a prophet who can see peoples’ hearts.  Who can see right through outward appearances and look right past the way we typically judge each other.   And who loves both but makes a clear call for the kind of response the woman gives.  Which is this – the woman, realizing she is a sinner in need of Christ’s mercy approaches Him in sorrow.  With faith that He, and only He, can give her forgiveness, freedom, and peace.  And her response is love and thankfulness.  She pours out her love and thankfulness in a beautiful and tender act of caring for the Lord.  And, scandalous or not, Jesus lovingly accepts the woman’s love.

            Jesus turns the Pharisee’s worldview upside down.  Because rather than demanding adherence to the law, Jesus invites repentance, faith and love.  He invites a real change of heart.

            If I’m honest with myself, I’ll have to admit that too often I’m like that Pharisee.  I too can think pretty well of myself and too often I place myself in judgment of those around me, of those in society, the “public sinners” of our own times.  At those times my heart is like Simon’s – not very open and not very hospitable to the Lord.   At those times I forget that I am but a sinner in need of Christ’s redemption, as are we all. 

            And that we are all in need of the Lord’s grace to soften our hearts so that we can be more like this woman – truly sorrowful for our sins, and, overwhelmed by the Lord’s love and forgiveness, anxious to tenderly pour out our love for the Lord. 

Preached for 24th week in ordinary time at Christ the King site (Isaiah 50:4c-9a, James 2:14-18, Mark 8:27-35):

          We have a policy where I work that says you can’t carry over your vacation days at the end of the year.  So this past Tuesday, looking at an absolutely perfect weather forecast for the Adirondacks, I decided to use one of my remaining vacation days and take Wednesday off from work to go hike in the mountains.  I had another motive for getting away too - I decided it would be a good opportunity to put some thought and prayer into my weekend homily.

            Well I decided to hike the Santanoni range, probably the most remote of the Adirondack high peaks, and after hiking and climbing for three hours, I reached the top of Santanoni Peak, the first of the three mountains I planned to climb that day.  The skies were cloudless and blue, the sun was warm and the breeze was cool and you could see probably forty or fifty miles in any direction from that mountaintop.

            I was surprised to see other human beings on this hike, that’s how remote these mountains are – but on top of this mountain I met two hikers from Syracuse, Rick and Eddie, both about my age, both playing hooky from work like I was.  They were next heading to the same two mountains as I was, so I asked if I could tag along.  And so we hiked for the next two hours to the next mountaintop, having a pleasant conversation and enjoying a splendid day in the woods.

            After eating lunch on the second mountaintop, we had to start the five hour hike back toward the parking lot and Eddie told Rick to go on ahead to that third mountain, leaving just the two of us.  Eddie asked where my kids go to school, and I told him one at Notre Dame, one at Clemson, and one at St. Mary’s College.  He said “oh, you must be a good Catholic boy.” 

            Now perhaps you’ve had a similar experience, but then Eddie proceeded to give me a 40-minute witness talk, about how he grew up Catholic but then at age 19, he found Jesus, he found the Lord.  How on December 19, 1979 he professed his faith in Jesus Christ and was saved. 

            Before he got to the inevitable question, “Ed, are you saved?” I explained how I could never abandon the Church, how important the Eucharist is to me, how most mornings my wife and I listen to the Word of the Lord and then receive the Sacred Body and Blood of the Lord, how that fuels my life.

            He asked me if I was familiar with John chapter 3, the story of Nicodemus, how we must be born again.  I said yes I was, that I was born again on June 6, 1959, the date of my baptism.  After he raised his objections to baptizing babies, I explained the biblical basis and early Church history of christening infants.  We had a good theological back-and-forth and I let him know that I’m an ordained deacon, and I asked if I could mention him in my preaching this weekend.  Pretty much at that point he told me that he wasn’t planning to hike the third mountain after all and that I should go on ahead of him.  We amicably parted ways and we descended from the mountain range by different trails.

            Now why do I tell you this story?  First of all, I was impressed that Eddie could tell me the date in 1979 when he professed his faith in the Lord.  In the first part of our Gospel this afternoon/morning, Jesus is asking for just such a profession of faith.  “Who do you say that I am,” He asks Peter and the disciples.  And He is asking you, and asking me, this same question today.  Who do you say that I am?  Peter says “You are the Christ!”  Who do you say that I am? 

            Now I was saddened that Eddie found it necessary to leave his Catholic faith when he “found the Lord,” for don’t we profess our faith in Jesus Christ every time we come to mass on Sunday?  “I believe in One Lord, Jesus Christ... For our sake He was crucified, suffered death and was buried and rose again on the third day…He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”  We say the words.  We profess the faith.

            But what do the words mean to us?  And do they make a difference in our lives?

            In the last part of the Gospel, Jesus tells us.  He says that to be His disciple, we must take up our cross and follow Him.  Take up our cross.  That could only mean one thing to His disciples, especially after He had just finished telling them that He must die.  It means that we must die for Him, die to ourselves.  It means that we must give up our lives for Him.  It’s unlikely that you or I will ever literally be asked to give our lives for Him (although that does happen daily in many parts of the world) but what it means is that we must live not for ourselves but surrender our lives to the Lord.  That Jesus Christ must be the Lord of our life.  That everything we do, everything we say, must be for the Lord, for the glory of His Father.  It means that our lives should look very different from those who do not believe.  Jesus is telling us that this is what it means to have faith in Him, that faith is far more than just words.

            No, as St. James tells us in the second reading, real faith is visible, it can be seen through our works, our actions, our love.  Make no mistake, we cannot earn eternal life from our good works and our virtuous lives.  Only by the grace that comes to us from our faith in Jesus Christ, by His death and resurrection, do we gain eternal life.   But if our faith is alive, it is also on fire, it can’t be contained, it expresses itself in all that we do.  Not only in our concern for the poor, the hungry, the sick and the grieving, but in our reaching out and helping the poor, the hungry, the sick and the grieving.

              We believe that this faith is NOT a one-and-done thing, say the words and you’re saved.  It’s a lifelong journey of ever-deepening commitment, of living more and more faithfully for Jesus Christ.  A decision every day to follow the Lord and Him alone.

            I don’t know about you, but that’s a real challenge, a very high bar.  I fall far short of it much of the time. We are blessed indeed to have the sacraments to give us the grace to persevere  – the Sacrament of Reconciliation where we confess to the Lord how we’ve failed – in what we’ve done and in what we’ve failed to do – and the Eucharist, where we gather as one people united in faith around the Lord’s table, to share in His body and blood, to be strengthened and nourished and enlivened to go forth to be His presence in the world around us.

            So as we go through this week, let us pray to the Lord, to deepen our faith, and increase our love and to use us to be His presence in the world.  To give us the strength and courage and love to witness to Him, by our words and by our works.

            In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Preached September 8/9 at Blessed Kateri Parish, St. Cecilia site:

(Isaiah 50:4c-9a, Jas 2:14-18, Mark 8:27-35)

People don’t seem to like to talk these days.  My kids prefer to text or tweet or communicate on facebook rather than to actually have a conversation.  They look at my cell phone which doesn’t do a whole lot more than make phone calls, and they look at me like I’m some kind of dinosaur.  Fact is, more and more of our communication these days is visual.  Books, magazines, computers, i-phones, twitter, facebook, the vision in television – it’s all visual communication.

            Well that wasn’t so in the day of Our Lord, back when our Gospel story took place.  So let’s wander back in our 2000 year time machine and imagine for a moment that we are right there, in the crowd in the region of the Decapolis.  We’ve heard all about this miracle worker, Jesus, and we’re very interested in finding out if all we’ve heard about Him is true.  We know the words of Isaiah, promising one to come who would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, and make the mute sing!  Is this the one?  And now we see Him walk off with the deaf mute.  This poor guy – he can’t hear anything and can barely say a word.  It’s a huge disability, for we’re living in a time when nearly all communication is verbal, through hearing.  Almost nobody in the crowd with us can read, and there’s almost nothing to read – we have scrolls and primitive books, but they must be transcribed by hand, after all.  News and knowledge - all passed by word of mouth.

            Now imagine you are that deaf man.  In a culture that relies almost exclusively on verbal communication, you’re pretty much cut off, even from the people around you.  You can’t know what’s going on.  You probably have very little communication with anyone, outside of simple hand gestures.  And your deafness has basically left you unable to speak.  You are, in a word, imprisoned – imprisoned in your own world, unable to fully participate in the world around you, the culture of your day.

            You need a healing, to be sure.  And Jesus, responding to the begging crowd of gentiles, invites you aside, one on one.  He does something very strange for that day and age – he touches you.  People just aren’t accustomed to touching much, not even among family members.  But this Jesus, He puts his fingers in your ears.  A real act of intimacy,   Then he does something not strange to you at all – he spits and touches your tongue – for spittle was often employed in healing.  He groans and looks up to heaven and cries out “Ephphatha” – be opened!  And you are healed.  Perhaps for the first time in your life, you can hear.  And suddenly you can speak clearly.  Most importantly, you are set free – free to interact, to be in community, to be in relationship.  No longer locked up in your own silent world.

            Now let’s get back in our time machine and fast forward 2000 years to this evening/morning. 

            Now you and I are not deaf or mute, but I am willing to wager that each one of us here tonight/this morning is in need of some sort of healing today. 

            It might be a relationship that needs healing.  Perhaps you’re far away from someone who should be close to you.  In your marriage. Perhaps with your children.  Siblings.  Parents perhaps.  My own mother, a wonderful Catholic woman, was estranged from her own sister for the better part of thirty years.  It wasn’t something she talked about, and certainly wasn’t proud of.  Praise God there was some healing and relationship rebuilding there before my mom died.  I’ve had some relationship problems with my own adult kids, relationships that I frankly botched, that I pushed dangerously close to the breaking point, relationships that desperately needed healing.

            Or it might be an attitude that needs healing.  Often times I can have a quite prideful attitude.  It’s all about me – my wife is often dismayed when she tries to tell me something and somehow I respond and twist it around and make it about me.  It could be an attitude of arrogance, or possibly inferiority.  It could be a grudge we’re holding onto, or forgiveness that we refuse to beg for, or are reluctant to give.

            Or it might be a habit or an addiction.  An addiction perhaps to drugs or alcohol, or pornography, or an addiction to a particular person, or maybe to video games or the internet, or to gossip.  Or maybe it’s a bad habit like smoking or overeating. 

            We need healing for these things because like the deafness in the Gospel, it is imprisoning us, keeping us locked up within ourselves, keeping us focused selfishly, inwardly on ourselves, keeping us from being in full relationship with others, and from being all that we’re called to be.

            Whatever it is in your life, in my life, in each one of our lives, that needs healing, that needs redeeming, the good news of today’s Gospel is that we don’t need a time machine and we don’t need to imagine to bring that to the Lord for healing.  If we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, if we humbly bring that to the Lord and beg Him to heal us, if we admit that we are powerless without His mercy and grace, He will take us away from the crowd, touch us, and heal us. 

            We need to believe He can do it.  We need to trust that He wants to do it.  Our Lord wants nothing more than to heal us.  He came into the world to save us and make us whole. 

            We Catholics are blessed indeed for we have a special place, a special Sacrament in which we encounter the Lord and experience His extravagant mercy.  Yes, it’s the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  It’s where we can tangibly experience the healing presence, the healing touch of Our Blessed Lord, where we can hear the words of forgiveness, where He sets us free, and we can truly “go in peace,” unburdened from all within us that needed healing, strengthened to go forth to do His will.

            And we are blessed indeed to be invited to the altar, to receive His sacred body and precious blood, to be restored to wholeness and communion, and go forth to live Eucharistic, thankful lives.

            As we go through our day this weekend/today , and all this week, let us reflect on what it is in our lives that needs the Lord’s healing, that only Christ can restore and make whole.  What is it that is keeping you, keeping me, from being all that we’re called to be?  Let us humbly bring this brokenness to Jesus, Jesus who longs to heal us, Jesus who is Lord forever and ever.  Amen.