Preached 2nd Sunday of Advent Cycle C - December 5/6, 2015 - St. Cecilia (5p 9a) and St. Margaret Mary (11a)

Today's mass readings:     http://usccb.org/bible/readings/120615.cfm

            My day job is as an accountant – a bean-counter some would say, but I sometimes wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have been an engineer.  Whenever I’m driving through mountains on a nice road or an expressway (and as an avid hiker I drive through mountains a lot!), I find myself admiring the huge amount of work it took to build that road. 

            As an example – driving down on what used to be Route 15 through northern Pennsylvania – I recall a time when that was a narrow two-lane road that wound up and down and around the mountains and it seemed like it took forever to get through that state.  Now it’s mostly expressway all the way from Corning to Harrisburg.  As I’m driving that road, I’ll marvel at the sides of mountains that have completely dynamited away, the deep valleys and gorges that have been filled in or bridged, amazed that I’m able to drive through this mountainous region at 65 miles per hour. 

            That’s what came to mind as I was reading and praying over our first reading and our Gospel.  Both the prophets Baruch and John the Baptist are calling to mind the prophet Isaiah, chapter 40 – “Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain and hill made low; the rugged land shall be a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.”

            That’s literally what the civil engineers who built Route 15 did, and it’s what our Lord wants to do with each of us in this season of Advent.

            You see, I think it helps to think of the mountains as our sins.  All the ways in which we turn away from the Lord.  All the ways in which we wound our relationship with Him. 

            Might be the rocky heights of our pride and hard-heartedness.  Our obstinately refusing to open our hearts to Him and submit to His will.  Not being open to the teaching of His Church.

            Might be the jagged peaks of our greed, our covetousness, our grasping self-centeredness.

            Or the cold, snow-covered pinnacles of broken relationships, of hearts closed off to forgiveness.

            We all have these kinds of mountains in our lives, huh?  Perhaps lust, envy, greed or pride.  Maybe gluttony, wrath or sloth.  If you’re like me, you can probably check off more than one of those boxes to be sure.

            And Advent, brothers and sisters, is a time of these mountains and hills being made low.  Not by dynamite and earth-movers, mind you.  No, but by the tender mercy of Our God.  This is a time of examining ourselves, coming to a realization of our sins, and by God’s grace being made truly and deeply sorry for them, and humbly seeking God’s boundless loving mercy. 

            His mercy, which is more powerful than any dynamite, which can make soft and tender our hard and rocky hearts.  His mercy, which we will celebrate beginning this Tuesday, the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, in a year-long Jubilee of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis.  Sisters and brothers, this Advent season is a time of seeking His mercy, of being washed clean by His mercy, and so invite you, whether it’s been a week or thirty years, to avail yourself of His mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Our Lord waits for us there with open arms and so wants to let us know that our sins are absolved and we are healed!

            Now, if the mountains are our sins, the valleys are all the missing virtues in our lives.  We speak of them in the Confiteor – “in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.”  All the missing works of mercy that you and I are called to do.

            Just as Our Lord will remove the mountains in our lives by His mercy, so too will He enable us by His grace to fill in the valleys.  As St. Paul writes to the Philippians in today's second reading, He fills us up with His love.  He sends us forth, back to our homes and out into the world and be merciful, to be His mercy.   Pope Saint John Paul II said "Jesus Christ taught that we not only receive and experience the mercy of God, but that we are also called "to practice mercy" towards others.

            And how do we practice mercy?  By our doing the corporal works of mercy –feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting and caring for the sick and imprisoned, burying the dead, and giving to the poor.

            And by doing the spiritual works of mercy – instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, admonishing sinners, bearing wrongs patiently, willingly forgiving offenses, comforting the afflicted and praying for the living and the dead.

            Whenever we fail to live our faith, fail by our actions to be Christ in our world – in our marriages, our families, our workplaces, communities and world – those are the valleys and gorges in our lives that Our Lord so wants to fill in and make whole.

            Brothers and sisters, the good news of the Gospel is that He, Jesus Christ, came into the world to make low the mountains and fill in the valleys in our lives.  During this beautiful and holy season of Advent, and all during this Jubilee year of mercy, may we be bathed in His wondrous tender mercy and love, and go forth to be in our world living signs of His wondrous tender mercy and love.

Homily First Sunday of Advent (cycle C) - Preached St. Kateri at Christ the King, November 28/29 (4:30p and 10a)

Today's Mass Readings:   http://usccb.org/bible/readings/112915.cfm

            Yesterday/Friday was of course Black Friday, and in keeping with the idea of getting a bargain, today you get two homilies for the price of one.  Now my preaching professor said if you preach two homilies, the people won’t remember either one, but I guess we will see.

First homily -

            Advent.  When we think of Advent, we should think of a time of preparation – of getting ourselves ready - ready for the coming of Christ.  Both His coming on Christmas morning as an infant, and His coming at the end of time, or at the end of our time, mine and yours. 

            Our readings today speak both of that first coming – Jeremiah the prophet speaks for the Lord, saying “I will raise up for David a just shoot.” And His last coming.  St. Paul, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, prays for his readers, and for you and me – that our hearts may be strengthened and that we may be blameless in holiness at the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

            And in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples, as well as you and me, to be vigilant at all times and pray that we have the strength to endure tribulation and stand before the Son of Man.

            Sisters and brothers, it is good, I think, to remember that you and I will one day stand before Our Lord and render an account of our lives. So it’s good for us to always be prepared.

            Advent is a time of preparing ourselves – examining our lives, seeking His strength and growing in holiness, preparing for that day that the Lord comes.  And part of that preparation, like the season of Lent, involves penance and reconciliation.  Oh maybe not to the same degree – no times of fasting and abstinence in Advent to be sure, but a time of purification nonetheless.

            This year, the beginning of Advent is very close to the beginning of the Jubilee Year of Mercy which our Holy Father Pope Francis proclaimed, beginning a week from Tuesday on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.  So I think it will profit us greatly to think of this Advent as a time of mercy.  Of seeking out and being washed clean in the mercy of Jesus Christ.

            Mercy – You’ll recall one of the most enduring and memorable ideas Pope Francis has taught during his short pontificate is the idea of the Church as a field hospital for sinners.  A place for spiritual triage, for binding up the spiritually wounded, a place of healing.  Mercy to sinners, three words that sum up the entire mission of Our Blessed Lord, huh?  The catechism tells us quote “The Gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God’s mercy to sinners.” And the angel announced to Joseph “You shall call Him Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins (Mt 1:21).”

            That’s easy to forget, huh?  In the hustle and bustle and everything that goes on in a Catholic parish, it’s good to remember that the reason we’re here, the reason we come here, the reason HE came, is mercy.  Mercy for our sins.

            For we are all sinners.  It starts, I think, with that recognition. One of Pope Francis’ most memorable lines in his short pontificate was the very first, when being interviewed for a magazine article and asked to describe himself, his simple and humble response?  “I am a sinner.”  When I first read that, I was taken aback – the Pope? A Sinner?  Wow.  But I must say I was strangely comforted – wow he’s a sinner, too, a sinner like me.

            And by sin, we’re not just looking at violations of the law, violations of the commandments, violations of a list of rules.  But for me at least, I think it’s helpful to think of sin in terms of relationship with God – in my sin I turn away from God, I wound my relationship with Him.  In mortal sin, we in fact sever our relationship with God.

            But the good news of the Gospel, the great joy of the Gospel, is that Jesus came to call sinners to repentance, to conversion, to reconciliation with Him.  Jesus came to bring us His mercy, the mercy we are celebrating all next year in the Jubilee year of mercy.  It’s a celebration not that our sin is somehow OK, or that sin doesn’t matter anymore as the world would have you believe. 

            No, it’s a celebration that we don’t have to be stuck in our sin, slaves to our sin, that even though we turn away from God and wound our relationship with Him and sometimes even cut off that relationship, He is always waiting for us with open arms, like the Father of the Prodigal, standing at the window, staring off down the road, waiting patiently for our return.  Waiting until He sees us coming so that He can run, sprint out to embrace us and welcome us home.

            Sisters and brothers, one of the greatest gifts Our Blessed Lord left us, a gift I am most thankful for, is the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  You see, He gave Peter the keys to the Kingdom and conferred upon Peter and the Apostles the power to forgive sins, the power to lavish us with His mercy, and that power has been passed down over 2000 years to our bishops and priests. 

            Our Blessed Lord is calling each of us this Advent to come home to Him, to come to a realization of all the ways in which we’ve wounded or broken our relationship with Him, to come to a deep sorrow for those sins, and to come to Him in the confessional, whether it’s been one week or thirty years - to seek His unfathomable mercy, to trust that He will embrace us in His merciful love and shower us with great grace to grow in strength and holiness, fully ready to stand before the Son of Man when He comes.

Now the second, and I promise - much shorter homily –

            The United States Catholic Bishops met a couple weeks ago and spoke out for the first time about a specific sin.  That specific sin is the epidemic of pornography in our nation, in our world, and yes, even among believers in the Church.  I could cite statistics, but in the interest of brevity, suffice it to say that with the advent of the internet, pornography has become something of an epidemic in our culture, even if rarely acknowledged.  Affecting men, to be sure, but also women, teenagers and youth.  A sin to be sure, but also something that can become habitual, and even an addiction.

            At their meeting, the bishops approved a formal pastoral statement entitled “Create in me a Clean Heart: A Pastoral Response to Pornography,” beautifully citing David’s psalm of repentance, Psalm 51 – create in me a clean heart.  Their statement, along with many helpful resources, is available at the bishops’ website, usccb.org.

            Now some might expect the bishops to sit in harsh judgment and wag their finger, but reading through this statement, nothing could be further from the truth.  Their statement is filled, I think, with love and mercy.  Bishop Malone of Buffalo, who led the effort to develop this pastoral statement, said the following:  “virtually everyone is affected by this in some way.  So many people – including within the Church – are in need of Christ’s abundant mercy and healing.”

            And that is the very good news the bishops are proclaiming in Create in me a Clean Heart – that for this sin, as for every sin, Christ is our hope!  That Christ’s abundant mercy is always available, that no sin, no matter the shame, no matter the despair, no matter how deep the wound, can ever put us out of reach of Christ’s redeeming grace.

            The bishops write:  quote “Jesus is the way of freedom.  The Church says, ‘Be not afraid!’ Come to the Lord Jesus, whose mercy endures forever! The Lord never tires of forgiving.” 

            This pastoral statement, brothers and sisters, is a powerful invitation to all in sin, and not only this sin but every sin, to turn back to the Lord and trust in His unending love and mercy, and find in Him healing, to grow in strength, holiness, and purity of heart.

Homily for Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - Feast of St. Martin of Tours and also Veterans Day - preached at 6:30a Christ the King Church

Mass readings:       http://usccb.org/bible/readings/111115.cfm



 

If you’re at Mass two weeks from tomorrow, Thanksgiving morning, you’ll hear this very same Gospel proclaimed.  Which is quite appropriate for that day, as this Gospel is a beautiful story of thankfulness – it’s all about thankfulness.  The ten lepers went off, and one, upon realizing he was healed, came back to glorify God and fall at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving.

But Jesus asks the key question – where are the other nine?  He’s rightfully pointing out the real problem – with those nine lepers, and with you and me.  Too often we fail to be thankful, too often we take our blessings for granted. Or worse, we come to believe we are somehow entitled to what is really God’s gratuitous gift. 

The feast of Thanksgiving is about recognizing, for one day at least, our giftedness.  It’s about recognizing that we have a fundamentally unbalanced relationship – God is the gracious giver and we are the unworthy receiver.  That all that we have, our relationships, our material goods, our faith, our very lives! – are gifts from God which we can never repay.  So all we can do is give God our deep gratitude.  And out of deep gratitude, freely share our gifts with others.

Today is a day for recognizing, for one day at least, the gift we’ve been given by our veterans.  We all desire peace and freedom and long for the day when there will be no more wars.  But until that day comes, we live in a world in which military service is necessary to secure our safety, freedom, and peace.  It’s so easy for us to take the blessings of peace and freedom for granted, forgetting the great sacrifices paid by our veterans to secure that peace and freedom.  And so we pause today to give thanks for our veterans, and to our veterans, for their great sacrifice and service to us and our nation.

And as Christians we pray for that day when the Kingdom of God is fully realized, that day when the need for standing armies is a thing of history, that day when all people and all nations may live together in true peace.

 

Homily Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B - preached November 7/8 2015 at all three SKT sites (5p, 8a, 10a)

Mass readings for today:       http://usccb.org/bible/readings/110815.cfm

            Maybe you’ve seen this – it’s called the “simplified Form 1040” – it’s a two line income tax return.  It shows up in emails and on facebook around every April 15.  Line 1 asks “how much money did you make last year?”  And line 2 says “enter total from line 1” and “send it in.”

            This simplified 1040 came to mind as I pondered the poor widow in this Gospel, whom Jesus points out as having been the most generous of the folks’ offerings at Temple.  Indeed, He points her out as having given all she had!  How much do you have?  Send it in- give it all.

            Now theologians debate whether Jesus is really pitying the poor widow as a victim of the evil scribes, but even so, I think there’s no question that He’s praising her generosity, her faith, her trust. Despite the faint clink clink of her couple coins as they land in the treasury, compared to the loud, impressive clanking of the coins the others throw in, Our Lord is praising her as the most generous. 

            Generosity and trust are the two words that kept coming back to me as I prayed over these readings, in fact.  And thankfulness.  This poor widow is an example to you and me of great generosity, perfect trust, and we can infer, a most thankful heart.

            First of all, trust – how can one show greater trust than to give all one has, trusting that the Lord will provide tomorrow, and in the future.  The widow in our first reading from First Kings shows this kind of trust as well.  In the midst of a great famine, the widow about to make her last meal, Elijah asks her to share the tiny bit she has left, and promises her (actually prophesies that the Lord is telling her) that her “flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, until the day when the LORD sends rain upon the earth.”  And while we’re not told how, she and her son eat for a year, until the rains came again we can assume.

            To listen to Elijah and do as he asks – what great faith, what great trust, huh?  And the widow in our Gospel, putting her last two coins in the treasury – an act of placing her entire providence in God’s hands. 

            Widows, you see, in Jesus’ (and Elijah’s) day – had no “social security,” couldn’t work, or own property, and had no inheritance rights (even her own husband’s estate passed to the children), so basically had to rely completely on others’ generosity.  Such a person might be tempted to clutch on to what little she has, be it a bit of flour and oil, or a couple small coins.  But no, each of our widows shows a radical trust that God will somehow provide. 

            And that radical trust in God leads to radical generosity – we see in each widow not a grasping, a holding on to what she has, but completely the opposite – a radical generosity, a complete detachment in the heart from her “stuff,” and full openness and willingness to share that little bit with others.  There can be no doubt that Jesus, who sees each person’s heart, is praising the good and generous heart of this poor widow, who has given her all.

            And I think it’s safe to say that each widow has a thankful heart, too.  I don’t think it’s possible to fully trust in God, or to have great generosity, unless it comes from thankfulness.  From recognition that all that we have, all that we are, is unmerited gift from God.

            Unmerited, you say?  “I go to work each day and work hard for what I have,” you might argue.  Yes, and from Whom did you receive the good work ethic, the knowledge and skills to successfully work, even the next breath you’ll breathe?

            The simplified 1040 is funny because we all have a bit of this attitude.  Very few of us like paying taxes – I know I don’t – I suppose I have an attitude of “hey it’s my money and I work hard for it and I don’t like the government taking it from me.” 

            But a heart turned to God in thanksgiving recognizes not that it’s the government’s money, nor mine really, but that it’s His, God’s!  That all we have, all we do, all we are, all our time, our talents, our treasure, are God’s generous gift to us, that God is entrusting it all to our care, to our stewardship. 

            And as that sinks in, as we recognize that all we have and are is God’s gracious gift, we realize that He calls us to give our all back to Him.  How much do you have? He asks.  Now generously give back to me!

            It’s a good thing, I think, for us to ponder these readings and this message in these next couple weeks leading up to Thanksgiving – to seek to recognize God’s generous gift in every thing and every situation.  From that recognition, to ask God to form within us more and more grateful hearts. And from truly grateful hearts, we may learn ever more greater trust in God’s great providence, and ever more perfect generosity.

* * * * * *

I’d like to now introduce Donna/Kevin/Karin who is/are here to speak to us about the Rochester Diocese Catholic Ministries Appeal.  I stand here as someone whose formation and education to prepare me for ordination as a deacon was entirely funded by CMA monies, and it wouldn’t have been possible for us to pay for a masters-level education without the CMA, so I encourage you to listen to Donna/Kevin/Karin with open minds and hearts.