The homily I preached - August 25/26, 2018 - 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B - St. John the Evangelist Greece

Scripture readings:   http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/082618.cfm

I don’t know about you, but I’m angry.  I’m also feeling sad, dismayed, confused, disillusioned and embarrassed.  But most of all angry.

Our Church, which is supposed to be a witness to the truth, and the holiness, of Jesus Christ in a wayward, secular, even evil world, is being dragged through the mud in the newspapers and TV news, subject to attorney general investigations, first in Pennsylvania and now in a number of other states.  We are being mocked and laughed at, and generally we the Catholic Church look like a bunch of complete hypocrites. 

I’m speaking, of course, of the most recent chapter in the priest (and bishop) sexual abuse scandal, on the heels of the Pennsylvania Attorney General report, the Cardinal McCarrick scandal, and just this week, 70 miles to the west, scandal in the Diocese of Buffalo.

It is an evil age, as we heard in last Sunday’s readings, and the Church is supposed to be a light in the darkness.  That light seems mighty dim right now.

I’m angry that I am forced to feel so embarrassed.  Embarrassed for the Church I love.

The other evening I read a letter from my former pastor, one that was on one hand apologetic but on the other hand saying, well, these things happened 30-50 years ago.  That’s true, Father, many did, yes, but not all.

Just over the past couple days Eyewitness News in Buffalo ran an in-depth investigative report – allegations about two Buffalo diocesan priests – not so much abuse of children but abuse of young, male adults.  And the lack of firm and appropriate response on the part of the bishop of Buffalo.

Yesterday a number of political and civic leaders were calling for the Buffalo bishop to resign.

And we know of former-Cardinal McCarrick of Washington DC, and how he was able to perpetrate similar abuses all during his long career, as he rose in the ranks of the hierarchy.

And it is not at all clear what the leaders of the Church, right up to the Holy Father, plan to do about this.

That makes me angry.

And I don’t think I’m alone to say that all this makes me want to walk away, look for another religion, another place to practice my faith in Jesus Christ.

So, what’s stopping me?  Nothing more than the words I just proclaimed from the ending of the sixth chapter of the Evangelist John’s Gospel.  Asked “do you also want to leave?” Peter responds “Master, to whom shall we go.  You have the words of eternal life.”

If we were to leave, to whom shall we go?  For as flawed and sinful and even hypocritical as our Church is, we have something here that no other church has – and for five weeks we’ve been hearing it proclaimed, we have here Jesus Himself, Body Blood Soul and Divinity.

All this year we’ve been reading from the Gospel of Mark, but for these past five weeks we’ve been hearing from the sixth chapter of St. John – the Bread of Life discourse.  We’ve heard Jesus promise His disciples and us the bread that He will give – His flesh for the life of the world.  Amen I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in you.

This amazing gift our Lord gives us and this is the only place we can get it.

Make no mistake – there is a devil, and Satan hates you and he hates me and he wants us to be eternally separated from God.  He wants to destroy Christ’s Church.  After all, the Church is Christ’s means of bringing salvation to the world.

Satan especially hates the Eucharist, the Sacrament in which we are united in sublime communion with Christ and with one another.  And he hates the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the sacrament in which we are reunited with Christ when we’ve strayed from Him.

So it should be no surprise that we are witnessing Satan’s all-out attack on the Church, not an attack from outside but an attack from within, an attack especially on her priests and bishops, for these men are our only means of our only means of receiving the Body and Blood of Our Blessed Lord in Eucharist, and our only means of hearing the magnificent words of absolution – words of Christ’s mercy and forgiveness.

Make no mistake, this is a battle, this is war, and this is a call to arms.  So what do we do?  Brothers and sisters, we are not powerless.  In fact, at this point in history, at a point when we are most tempted to throw in the towel, I think we are being called to lead.

First, to lead in holiness.  To double down on our own commitment to the Lord and especially to these two Sacraments – Eucharist and Reconciliation.  To examine our own lives and purge all that is not holy, all that stands in the way of our perfectly following our Blessed Lord, all that stands in the way of our being a perfect witness to His truth, love and mercy in our broken world.

Second to lead in prayer.  Prayer especially for our Bishops and Holy Father, as they address the issues we face, that they may recognize the depth of these issues and take firm steps to reform our Church and especially our clergy to be the more perfect, more holy, more visible Body of Christ in our world.

Third – pray some more - pray and fast.  Our Lord said that certain demons can only be driven out by prayer and fasting and make no mistake, there are demons afoot in our Church.  Let us pray and fast for Holy Mother Church, and especially for her priests and bishops.  That those men who’ve answered the call, who’ve given their lives as disciples of the Lord, may increase in faith and holiness and become more and more perfect Alter Christuses – “Other Christs” – to lead and sanctify the people of God.

Finally, to trust.  Trust that our God can and will bring good out of every evil situation.  And renew our faith and hope.  Sisters and brothers, let us not lose hope.  We have the assurance of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ that even the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.  Let us ask His Blessed and Immaculate Mother, in her titles Mother of the Church and Mother of Priests, to intercede for us.  And in faith, let us move past our anger and disillusionment and embarrassment and renew our faith and hope in the promises of the Lord.

Homily preached Sunday, July 22, 2018 - Sixteenth Sunday in ordinary time - cycle B - St. John the Evangelist Church

Today's readings -   http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/072218.cfm

“…His heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”

When He ascended to the Father, Our Blessed Lord, in His infinite goodness, left behind a Church - led by twelve Apostles (which we know today as bishops) and He appointed one Apostle as the preeminent apostle.  That was, of course, Peter, who became Bishop of Rome, and whom we know as our first Pope.

You see, just as in today’s Gospel, Our Lord saw the need for the people to have a shepherd, and so entrusted the care of all of us to shepherds to this day.  We have our local shepherd, Salvatore, and we have our preeminent shepherd, Francis. 

The job, the mission, of the bishops and the Holy Father is simple in concept but what an awesome responsibility – to safeguard the Faith handed down over the centuries in Word and Tradition, and to boldly teach that Faith – to lead the sheep to the eternal Shepherd.

This coming October, we will celebrate the canonization, Pope Francis will declare a “saint” - of a great shepherd, Blessed Pope Paul VI, the very first pope I can remember as a kid, who will then be known as Saint Paul VI.  Paul VI was elected in 1963 upon the death of John XXIII, who was canonized along with Pope John Paul II four years ago.

Even though John XXIII usually gets credit for calling the second Vatican Council, his call to “throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the Spirit blow through,” it was Paul VI who presided over almost the entire length of the Council, which lasted from late 1962 (just months before John died) until 1965.

But what is Paul best known for?  Best remembered by?

Something we will remember, and yes celebrate this week.  For this Wednesday marks the fiftieth anniversary of Paul’s best-known work the encyclical Humanae Vitae, or “Human Life.”

It was 1968, a year I’m old enough to remember well.  A turbulent year, a turbulent time.  Here in the U.S. Martin Luther King assassinated.  Bobby Kennedy assassinated.  Riots in Chicago.  And the “sexual revolution” was in full force.

That sexual revolution could be traced, in part at least, to the more and more widespread acceptance of artificial contraception, and John XXIII decided to establish (and Paul then expanded) a Papal Commission on Birth Control.  The Church had always held that artificial contraception was gravely sinful – in fact until beginning in 1930, all Christian religions taught the same thing. 

But the “times they were a changin’” so the Holy Father thought it best to examine the issue and this Commission was established.  And the Commission came back recommending that Holy Mother Church change her mind on this issue.

But to the surprise of many, the shepherd Paul VI, said “no.” The Holy Father, in Humanae Vitae, said NO to changing the Church’s consistent teaching – NO to artificial contraception.  History remembers this as a big NO.

But what he really said was “yes” – YES to God’s plan for human sexuality, YES to remembering and teaching the intrinsic link between the sexual act and the co-creation with God of new human life.

YES to remembering the seriousness of the great gift of our sexuality.  The first sentence of this great encyclical, translated into English, reads “The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator.”

The sexual act, after all, was invented by God, the very way in which He creates new children of God!  It doesn’t get any more serious, or sacred, than that!

Tragically, Humanae Vitae was and has been largely ignored and even rejected, certainly by an increasingly secular and even hedonistic western culture, and even by many or maybe most within the Church – clerics and married couples alike.

Which is, if you ask me, very sad.  For this document, if you take time to read it fifty years later, was profound and even prophetic.  We’ve been reading of the Old Testament prophets these last three weeks – Ezekiel, then Amos, now Jeremiah.  I dare say Paul VI was a prophet.  He told us fifty years ago what would happen if artificial contraception were to become generally accepted.

And what were his prophecies?

There were four - that contraception would lead to an increase in marital infidelity, that contraception would lead to a general lowering of morality, that Contraception would lead men to cease respecting woman in their totality and would cause them to treat women as “mere instruments of selfish enjoyment” rather than as cherished partners, and that widespread acceptance of contraception by couples would lead to a massive imposition of contraception by unscrupulous governments.

Each of these prophecies, it cannot be denied, has come to pass, even the last, as certain countries have forced sterilization and even abortion on their populations.

But what about what Paul didn’t foresee, didn’t’ prophesy?

That widespread acceptance of contraception would eventually lead to a widespread disordered understanding of human sexuality.  That sex would come to be seen completely removed from its God-given purpose – the transmission of human life.  Are any of us completely immune from this understanding, so prevalent in our culture today?

And the fruits of this disordered understanding? Some include the scourge of legal abortion, which is after all generally “backup contraception.”  The epidemic of pornography.  A widespread and increasing acceptance of same-sex sexual relationships.  A rejection of the belief that God created us male and female, even acceptance of the idea that we can somehow select our gender. Even entire nations contracepting themselves out of existence. Blessed Paul’s native Italy, for instance, has a birth rate far below replacement level.

All of these things would be impossible to even imagine if it weren’t for the notion that sex can be divorced from its God-designed purpose – the creation of new life.  A notion that was once unthinkable.  A notion now ingrained in our culture and ways of thinking.

What’s our takeaway, then, fifty years hence? 

First, I think we owe it to ourselves, our Church and the Lord that we take another look – and reconsider - the prophetic teaching of this great encyclical Humanae Vitae.  That we reconsider all the ways our thinking and beliefs have been formed by “this world” rather than in conformity to God’s plan.

If our beliefs, behaviors and even lives have strayed from God’s plan that we beg His mercy.  And beg His grace to re-form our beliefs and understanding of sexuality to conform to His.  God, please - help me to see rightly 

And that we ask for His power and strength to teach and proclaim His truth against a culture increasingly hostile to it.

Blessed Paul VI, please pray for us.