Homily preached Sat/Sun September 5/6 - all three St. Kateri sites (4:30p, 9a, 11a)

Today's readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090615.cfm

            My father in law is 84 and a wonderful guy, but like many his age, he’s hard of hearing – to carry on a conversation with him you have to speak quite loudly and enunciate your words very clearly.  Which reminds me of a story I recently heard:

An older man had serious hearing problems for many years.  He went to the doctor and the doctor was able to have him fitted for a set of hearing aids that allowed the man to hear 100%.

The old man went back to the doctor a month later and the doctor said, “your hearing is perfect.  Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again.”

The man replied, “Oh, I haven’t told my family yet.  I just sit around and listen to their conversations.  I’ve already seen my lawyer to change my will three times!”

            Many of us have also hearing problems – I know I do.  With each passing year I find myself more and more asking others to repeat themselves.  My wife has started to tell me “you really need to get your hearing checked.”  The other day I tried out an on-line hearing test, one that has progressively higher-pitched sounds.  Our dog was going crazy but I couldn’t hear a thing.

            In our first reading from Isaiah, the prophet is speaking hopeful words to the people in captivity in Babylon.  Promising, says the Lord, that God is coming to save you, to vindicate you, to clear the ears of the deaf, open the eyes of the blind, and the tongue of the mute will sing!

            And in today’s Gospel, the people bring a deaf man to Jesus, a man who also had a speech impediment, and we hear the amazing story of Jesus’ cure of both his deafness and his speech.  As we journey through the Gospel of Mark, as we witness these miraculous works of Our Blessed Lord, we learn more and more that this Jesus is “the one,” the one who is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

            This is “good news” indeed, but the message, I think, is not so much for those with physical disabilities- blindness, deafness, speech impediments – as it is for all of us who by original sin are to some extent blind, or deaf, or unable to speak clearly.

            I’m speaking now of spiritual deafness, spiritual blindness.  And we all suffer from it, don’t we?  Are our eyes fully open to the needs of those around us?  To the injustices in the world around us?

            We come to church and sing “the Lord hears the cry of the poor” but do we?  Are our ears fully open to hear the cries of the poor?  Now I’m preaching here as much to myself as to anyone else here today, for truth be told, I don’t hear, spiritually hear, all that well.  Or maybe a better way to put it is I don’t listen all that well.

            Nor do I see all that well, or maybe I too often close my eyes to put out of my mind that which is going on in the world around me.  This became very apparent a couple days ago when I was confronted with the vivid image of a little three-year-old boy, who along with his family had been fleeing, refugees from the ongoing war in Syria, trying to join relatives in Canada.  The dinghy they were in was overloaded with people and capsized, and this little boy, his brother and his mother all drowned.  And this picture showed this tiny little boy lying prone in the sand, his lifeless body having washed up on the beach.

            How could I help but have my eyes opened to the plight of these immigrants, I asked myself?  And not just the immigrants “over there” but the immigrants right here among us, whom our faith calls us to welcome.

            And all summer there have been these undercover videos, nine of them released to date, which lift the veil so to speak and starkly show the utter depravity of what’s going on day in and day out at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.  I’ve considered myself “pro-life” all my life, have opposed the evil of abortion, but these videos, difficult as they are to watch, have opened my eyes and my heart in a new way.

            And while I haven’t yet read all of it, Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si” presents some real challenges to us in many many ways but most especially in how we care for our common home, the earth.  The Holy Father is calling each of us, all of us, to open our eyes and our ears to what’s happening around us, to reflect on the fact that this little planet is our only home, that this little planet of ours isn’t ours, but belongs also to all the generations who will come after us.

            In our Christian faith, we are all on a spiritual journey, a journey of conversion of heart, a process of being more and more molded and fashioned by God’s grace into images of Our Blessed Lord.  And this process requires that Our Lord do the same to you and me that He did to this deaf man in Mark’s Gospel – that He open your ears and mine, your eyes and mine, your heart and my heart. 

            We see a vivid example of this process of transformation in the life of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa.  Already devoting her entire life to Christ’s service, already having served as a schoolteacher for nearly twenty years, Our Lord gradually opened her eyes and ears to the suffering and hopelessness of the poorest of the poor on the streets of Calcutta.  One day she heard clearly the voice of Christ Himself, the words of Our Lord from the cross, “I thirst!”  And Mother left her teaching position, headed out into the streets, caring for those poorest of the poor.

            Sadly, as many of us grow older we gradually lose our hearing, our spiritual hearing.  Become more blind, more hard of heart, more set in our ways.  More pridefully clinging to our ways of thinking.

            But today Jesus says to us, commands us, “be opened!”  This is a call to humility.  It’s a call to open our minds and our hearts, to question, to search, to allow Him to mold us and transform us, more and more into His own image. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans said that we are all to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, conformed not to this world but to the pattern of Jesus Christ.

            And so, brothers and sisters, let us pray and meditate today, this weekend, this week on Our Lord’s simple but life-changing command to the deaf man, and to you and to me – “ephphatha! Be opened!”  And let us listen with new ears and hearts for the voice of God. 

            Open my ears, Lord, help me to hear your voice.  Open my eyes, Lord, help me to see your face. 

Homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, preached August 22/23 at St. Kateri at St. Cecilia

Today's readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/082315.cfm

            We all know someone, I’m sure, who’s left the faith.  Who’s either gone someplace else to Church, or just stopped going to Church altogether.  Maybe a son or daughter, brother or sister, perhaps a parent or cousin, friend or co-worker.  If you’re like me, you just don’t get it.  I mean, I love our faith, I love the Mass, I can’t imagine why anyone would walk away.

            I met a man just this (yesterday) morning who told me he used to be a Catholic.  We were both participating in a peaceful, prayerful protest vigil over on Ridge Road in Greece in front of the Planned Parenthood clinic there, part of a nationwide protest of Planned Parenthood, in response to the recent undercover videos (which you won’t see in the mainstream press but which are thankfully readily available on-line). Videos which lift the veil of secrecy and reveal the abhorrent practices going on there.

            Well it was near the end of the vigil that this man came up to me – he saw that I had on a shirt that identified me as a Catholic deacon – and I suspect he wanted to engage me in a discussion of faith.  I would have welcomed that.  But I think we both recognized that we weren’t there to try to win each other to each other’s brand of Christianity, but rather we were there united, witnessing against the evil of legal abortion.  He told me he’d love to get together with me to talk faith, and perhaps we will.

            As I was driving home, I kicked myself as my mind and heart moved to today’s Gospel reading.  Why, oh why, I said to myself, didn’t I at least invite him to go home and read and meditate on this Gospel?  Why, I said to myself, didn’t I simply invite him to take another look at the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel?

            That chapter, of course, contains our Blessed Lord’s “Bread of Life” discourse, which we’ve been proclaiming now for five weeks, and we conclude today, returning next weekend to our journey through the Gospel of Mark. 

            You’ll recall that last week, Jesus said to the crowds, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  Our Lord went on to proclaim “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”

            In today’s Gospel, we see the result of that very hard teaching.  “As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him,” John tells us.  You can almost hear the crowd murmuring “Dang, I thought He was ‘the one’ sent to save Israel.  But eat his flesh? Drink his blood?  This guy must be a madman!” Went back to their former ways of living.  Left discipleship, stopped following the Lord.

            And our literal belief in this teaching, our belief that in the appearance of bread and wine at this altar, Jesus is really and truly present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, a teaching that wasn’t an issue at all in the early Church, well this is one of the main dogmas that now separates us from unity with our non-Catholic brothers and sisters.

            But, I have to believe it is also this teaching that will restore that unity, will bring folks back to the Church, will bring folks to His Church, to His altar.  If only we will share it.

            Perhaps we’re reluctant to share this belief with others because we have our own doubts, our own share of disbelief.  If you and I read and learn and study and take into our hearts this “hard teaching,” then we have His assurance that He will set our hearts on fire.  He will come into our bodies and souls in a real way and dwell within us and His Spirit will convict us of His real and sacred presence.  And we will not be afraid to share this belief with others, as I failed to do this (yesterday) morning. 

            Or perhaps we’re simply numb to His presence, we come to Mass and go through the motions and we take for granted the awesome miracle that we witness and participate in here at this altar.  We take for granted that the Lord of the Universe, through Whom all was created, becomes right here in the re-presentation of His sacrifice on Calvary, really and truly present, really and truly available to us.  A real and true gift of Himself to us.

            If that’s the case, then maybe you and I aren’t spending enough time preparing our hearts to receive Him, prayerfully meditating on what is about to happen here.  Examining our consciences – am I worthy, free of grave sin, to receive Him?  Asking Him to not let us ever take this gift for granted.

            Or maybe we’re not spending enough time after receiving Him.  Do we head to the doors immediately upon receiving Him, in a race to see who can get out of the parking lot first? Or do we kneel and pray in humble and heart-felt thanksgiving that He who created the stars would condescend to come and dwell with and within us?

            This belief in His real presence, is at the very heart of our faith, for Jesus in His sacred Body and precious Blood is the very source and summit of our faith, so say the fathers of the second Vatican Council.  Rekindling the belief in Our Lord’s real presence in the Eucharist is the only thing, our Bishop Salvatore said at his Mass of Installation, the only thing that he hopes to accomplish in his time as our shepherd.

            If our faith in His real presence is rekindled, we will unashamedly invite others to receive this same wondrous gift.  He will be ever so much more present to us on our journey, to inspire us to follow Him more closely, to love Him and one another more deeply, and out of love and gratitude to Him, to serve each other, and especially the poor, the disenfranchised, the powerless more faithfully.

            I’d like to close with a beautiful passage from Dr. Scott Hahn and his wife Kimberly’s book, “Rome Sweet Home.”  A Calvinist by upbringing and seminary education, Dr. Hahn had been more and more drawn to the Catholic faith until one day, he decided for the first time to see what this Catholic Mass was all about.  He writes:

            “I watched and listened as the readings, prayers and responses – so steeped in Scripture – made the Bible come alive.  I almost wanted to stop the Mass and say, ‘Wait.  That line is from Isaiah; the song is from the Psalms.  Whoa, you’ve got another prophet in that prayer.’

            “I realized, this is where the Bible belongs.  This was the setting in which this precious family heirloom was meant to be read, proclaimed and expounded.  Then we moved into the Liturgy of the Eucharist…

            “I wanted to stop everything and shout, ‘Hey, can I explain what’s happening from Scripture? This is great!’ Instead I just sat there, famished with a supernatural hunger for the Bread of Life.

            “After pronouncing the words of consecration, the priest held up the Host.  I felt as if the last drop of doubt had drained from me.  With all of my heart, I whispered, ‘My Lord and my God. That’s really you! And if that’s really you, then I want full communion with you.  I don’t want to hold anything back.”

            <pause>   Sisters and brothers, as Father _____ again holds up the Sacred Host, as we receive Him, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity into our bodies and souls, let us this day proclaim with all of our hearts, “my Lord and my God.”

Preached Saturday, August 15, 2015 - Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (8:30a, St. Cecilia)

It was 1870

            It was 1870.  One hundred forty five years ago.  The fathers of the First Vatican Council declared that the Pope, whenever speaking “ex cathedra” – “from the chair” – on matters of faith and morals, speaks infallibly.  Meaning that when he so speaks, when he so teaches, he does so without error, we can be confident that he infallibly speaks the truth.

            Now infallibility gets a lot of press even to this day, but in that one hundred forty five years, we’ve had twelve popes but only once…once…has any Holy Father ever taught “ex cathedra” – ever taught infallibly.  And that is the dogma we call to mind and celebrate today – Mary’s Assumption into heaven.

            What Pope Pius XII declared in 1950, what we believe, what to be Catholic we must believe, is that Our Blessed Mother was assumed, body and soul, into heaven at the end of her earthly life.  That her virginal body, conceived without stain of sin, her sacred womb having served as a living tabernacle for the Son of God, would not and could not and did not undergo the corruption of the grave which awaits all of our earthly bodies.  That God willed that she did not have to wait until the end of the ages to experience the redemption of her body.

            To be sure, the Pope didn’t have to worry about opposition to this teaching from the faithful, as the Church has believed in the assumption of Mary since its earliest centuries.  But proclaim this teaching, and proclaim it infallibly, he did.

            And I think it was prophetic of Pius XII to do so.  Inspired by the Holy Spirit, perhaps he could foresee what changes were coming to our culture, changes that cause us to shake our heads as we look back but which we continue to experience.  Perhaps God gave him an inkling of how the sexual revolution would lead people to ever more greatly devalue and objectify the human body.  He surely wanted this teaching to uniquely stress the sacredness of the human body, how we are not merely souls, or even souls with bodies, but we are body and soul.  And how at the end of time, our resurrection will be of both body and soul.

            And might the Holy Father have foreseen a world in which so many proclaim “it’s my body and I’ll do what I want with it?”  In a world steeped in that attitude, we celebrate today this simple woman’s triumphant entry into heaven, made possible because by her fiat she said to God not “it’s my body” but rather “may it be done unto me according to your will.”

            And could the Holy Father have foreseen a world hellbent on rejecting all authority, a world ever more disobedient.  We celebrate the heavenly reward bestowed by Our Blessed Lord on His immaculate mother, by whose perfect obedience to the Father’s will, we have the hope of salvation.

            Yes, this is a powerful, counter-cultural feast we celebrate this day, because it is a counter-cultural woman we celebrate today.  And perhaps the most important part of this feast, the greatest reason to celebrate is this – we rejoice today that this most holy of women is with her Son in heaven, interceding with her Son in heaven on our behalf.  There she is cooperating in our salvation. 

            We have in Mary a sure guide, a sure help as we navigate through the troubled waters of this fallen and sinful world toward our own heavenly homeland.  With a mother’s tender love, she beckons us to come close to her merciful Immaculate heart, and she takes us by the hand and leads us to her Son, Our Blessed Lord.  As her children, if we entrust ourselves to her loving care, we have her assurance that she will protect us and never let us go astray.

            It’s what Mary is all about – always leading us to her Son, always pointing the way to Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

            Always leading us so that as she so perfectly glorified God by her life, we, too, may glorify God by our lives.

            Always guiding us so that as she brought forth, by her “yes!” the fruit of her womb, the very salvation of humankind, we too may, by the devotion of our lives and our “yesses” bring forth good fruit for the advancement of Christ’s mission.

            Always interceding for us so that as she was welcomed triumphantly into heaven, body and soul, we too may one day experience the glorious resurrection of our bodies and life everlasting.

            So let us praise and celebrate our Blessed Mother and invoke her powerful intercession:  Hail Mary…

 

Homily - 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B - preached August 2, 2015, 8 and 11a, St Kateri at St. Margaret Mary

Today's readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/080215.cfm

 

430 years.  A long time.  In our own history as a nation, if we were to go back 430 years that would put us 35 years before the Mayflower Pilgrims landed at Plimoth.  But that’s how long the Israelite community had been enslaved in Egypt.  Imagine - 430 years of slavery – without freedom, without dignity.  For 21 generations.

And we know the story – God miraculously intervened in their history - by plagues and finally the pass-over, led them through the Red Sea, set them free after 430 years of bondage!  And the very next scene is today’s first reading  - we see the community of Israel in the desert, less than two months later…complaining!  Grumbling.  Longing, even, to return to their enslavement where at least there were fleshpots and plenty of bread to eat.

Now my first inclination was to preach about their ungratefulness.  About their grumbling.  To think that they’d be complaining so soon after their freedom, especially after 430 years of slavery!  After all, aren’t we each, to some extent, ungrateful?  Don’t we all, at least a little, take for granted what we’ve been given and sometimes grumble?  Some people more than others, of course.  Some people, and I’m thinking now of a woman I recently met and got to know over a few months, seem never to be satisfied.   Nothing is ever quite good enough, never quite pleased.

But after further reflection, what I realized is this – the Israelite people were hungry!  Starving.  And physical hunger is a very powerful motivator, such that the “entire community” joined in grumbling against Moses and Aaron.  More powerful a motivator, apparently, than freedom.

Now if I were God, hearing this complaining and grumbling immediately after freeing this people, I might just have smote them, but our loving and merciful God does nothing of the sort – no, He listens, and He feeds them.  Quail in the evening, flakes of bread every morning – manna, it’s called, the Hebrew word for their question, “what is it?”

Food, He gives them, for strength, to sustain them for their journey to the land He has promised them. Food to satisfy their hunger.

In our Gospel, Our Blessed Lord also speaks of hunger, but a different kind of hunger.  Each of us is not any less dependent on our daily bread than the Israelite community to keep from bodily hunger, but each of us has another, different, even greater kind of hunger – the hunger for God, the thirst for His love.   This hunger is imprinted in our being, God created us with this hunger, indeed God created us for intimate union with Him.  At the very beginning of the Catechism, we read “the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself.”

But so many of us go through life seeking to satisfy this hunger, quench this thirst, in all kinds of ways that are not God.  “Looking for love in all the wrong places,” so to speak, as the song goes.  And the inevitable result?  As Mick Jaggar sings, “I can’t get no satisfaction.”

Now it’s true that many of us get some satisfaction, become quite comfortable, with the things of this world, so that this hunger for God is kind of buried deep down.  Like the crowd in this Gospel whom the Lord had just fed with the loaves and fishes, fed til they were full, with twelve baskets left over.  So satisfied, so comfortable, that the flame of desire for God in our lives becomes barely a flicker.

But even so, that hunger is always there.  Whether we know it or not, whether we admit it or not, and many people go through life denying it, each of us has this hunger for God, for God’s love, imprinted on our hearts.  It’s a restlessness - a hunger of which St. Augustine wrote at the very beginning of his book Confessions: Lord, “You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.” 

Now just like the Lord God satisfied the hunger of His children in the desert, so He satisfies our hunger for relationship with Him as well – and He does so in the person of His very Son, Jesus Christ.  That is the message of the Gospel today – He, Jesus, is the only way our hunger for the eternal can ever be satisfied.  It is only He, the “true bread from heaven” as He calls Himself, given by our loving, merciful Father, who gives “life to the world.”

The message today, what Our Lord is saying to each of us, and not only us but to everyone out there who doesn’t know Him yet, is that we will only be satisfied, we will only find rest for our restless hearts, in relationship with Him.  “Whoever comes to me will never hunger.  Whoever believes in me will never thirst,” He promises us.

He, Jesus, is the new manna.  He is the new Man - sent from heaven as sustenance, as strength, as food for our journey – as we journey to the Land the Lord has promised.  In this life so often filled with pain, heartache, with sin, it is only in faith in Him, in intimate relationship with Him, in following after Him that we find peace, joy, rest.

And He will teach us at length in next Sunday’s Gospel and the week after that, He, Jesus, is the new manna here at this altar, here in Eucharist.  He has given to us this most amazing gift, Himself, His sacred body and precious blood, his real presence hidden under the appearance of bread and wine.  In this true bread from heaven He feeds us and nourishes us to sustain us on our journey to the land He promises us. 

Let us never take for granted, let us always be thankful, for His most amazing gift to us.  And let us always be filled with His fire to share this most amazing gift with others.

Homily - Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - St. Kateri at St. Margaret Mary July 19, 2015 8a and 11a

Today's readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071915.cfm

Link to Prof. Janet Smith's presentation "Contraception: Why Not?"   http://catholicaudio.blogspot.com/2007/07/janet-smith-contraception-why-not.html

Link to USCCB resources on NFP:  http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/natural-family-planning/awareness-week/index.cfm


Today's homily:

          Last week our readings spoke of prophets; this week we speak of shepherds.  One of the finest shepherds, and prophets, around today in my opinion, is Father John Riccardo, pastor of Our Lady of Good Council Church in Plymouth MI and a regular on Catholic radio. 

            As I often do as I prepare to preach, I listen to and read homilies from three, or six, or nine years ago, just to get ideas and a sense of how others have preached on the same readings.  This past Monday I listened to the podcast of Father John’s homily from three years ago this week, and immediately called him up, asked him if I could “steal” that homily, and he said “sure.”  Now while this homily isn’t the exact same, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you I’m borrowing liberally from his words.

            As I said, this week we speak of shepherds – Jesus looking with pity on the crowd who were like sheep without a shepherd.  Jeremiah’s stern warning to those shepherds who would mislead and scatter the flock.  And of course, the 23^rd psalm – the Lord is my shepherd.

            Many of us are shepherds in one way or another, huh?  Certainly Father Joe and our priests. Bishop Salvatore. Pope Francis.  Parents – moms and dads tasked with shepherding their little flock – keeping them safe, raising them rightly.  Coaches, teachers, administrators, bosses – all in a way shepherds.

            And shepherding is a big responsibility, huh?  For when sheep don’t have shepherds, one or more of three things happens – they get lost, or scattered, or they get devoured!

            As a parent for the last 26 years, I’ve always felt the weight of this responsibility – that Pam and I have been entrusted with the heavy responsibility of raising our three daughters to become godly, faith-filled women living in a culture that has become anything but godly. As they’ve grown, I’ve been able to relate to Our Lord’s feeling in this Gospel – “moved with pity” – as they’ve gone out into the world.  For it’s a frightening world – all sorts of pitfalls and traps to lead a soul astray.

            And when Bishop Clark laid his hands on my head three years ago and ordained me a deacon, I took on an added responsibility as shepherd –he gave me the privilege and awesome duty to stand before you and preach – the responsibility to proclaim and teach our faith, the responsibility to care for your souls!

            In those three years I’ve also had the privilege and responsibility of preparing a number of couples for marriage, and I’ve met with a number of individuals and couples on the other side of their wedding day, facing difficulties, impending breakup, or putting their lives back together after divorce.  It’s dawned on me that few things have left as many of us wounded, lost or scattered as both a lack of understanding of, or an all-out attack against what I would call simply biblical sexual morality.

            There’re two things which have brought this about, I think.  The first is simply a reluctance of shepherds - to teach, to pasture their flocks – not just clerics but all of us who share in the task of shepherding.

            The other part that’s left a trail of wreckage which so many experience has been the increasing volume of the voice of false, lying shepherds, who promise euphoria and liberation if we would just throw off all the restraints which are found in God’s word.

            Next Saturday, July 25, marks the 47^th anniversary of a letter written by a good shepherd, one not reluctant to teach, one who was moved with great love for his flock to speak about an issue which at that time, 1968, was just beginning to cause unrest and confusion in our culture. 

            We know that shepherd today as Blessed Pope Paul VI, and the letter was called Humanae Vitae, or in English “On Human Life.” It’s one of those documents of the Church which is unfortunately read by very few people, but which would profit many of us greatly.

            Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the Church’s constant teaching from the very beginning as to why contraception is harmful to married love, and in fact reduces what God intended to be an act of total self-giving to a lie, whereby though the bodies are saying everything I have is yours, in fact, because of what’s being practiced, that’s not true.

            In our culture, contraception is presented by the media as a Catholic hangup.  Few are aware that all orthodox Christians, virtually without exception, until 1930, taught and believed that contraception was intrinsically evil and harmful to married love.  It wasn’t until 1930 that the Anglicans voted to allow it but even then in only certain circumstances and only for husbands and wives dealing with very particular issues. 

            Martin Luther taught that it was intrinsically evil.  So did John Calvin and John Wesley.  All the reformers taught the same.  Many of us are surprised to learn that people as diverse as Freud, Teddy Roosevelt and Gandhi taught the same thing. 

            Now we might sit here and say yeah but a lot of bright people used to think the world was flat but we’ve arrived at some data which has proven otherwise.

            But I’m afraid we don’t have any data like that with regards to the so-called sexual revolution. In fact, the data just are overwhelmingly in favor of what God in His word has always taught us.

            Paul VI in Humanae Vitae prophesied four things if in fact contraception was to be widely embraced:

            First, there would be an increase in infidelity within marriage.

            Second, there would be a general lowering of morality and moral standards especially among youth.

            Third, men would more greatly objectify and degrade women, seeing them more and more simply as an object for pleasure.

            And fourth, governments would use contraception in coercive ways.

            Now - can anybody reasonably challenge the prophecy of those predictions?

            The reality of the sexual revolution is we don’t have more euphoria, more happiness or even liberation. We don’t have better relationships between men and women.  We don’t have stronger marriages.  There’s no doubt an increase in sexual immorality.  We have an increase in STDs.  In unwanted pregnancies. 

            In an endless pursuit of pleasure, we have completely divorced sexual intimacy from its God-ordained purpose, that being the co-creation with God of new human life. 

            Perhaps most disturbing, we have come to trivialize abortion, which is simply backup contraception.  The research arm of Planned Parenthood acknowledges that more than half of all the women who come in for abortion are on contraceptives at the time of their pregnancy.

            Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate!           Maybe it’s time to try God’s way. Maybe it’s time to ask for help.

            The Gospel is good news - not just with regards to heaven.  It’s good news with regards to now.  God has a plan for us.  And the most tragic result of the fall, after the separation between us and God, has been the increase in division between men and women.  What St. Paul refers to in our second reading as a “wall of division” which exists on many fronts but perhaps most thickly between men and women. Ever since the fall, men have more and more objectified women, and women have more and more allowed themselves to be objectified. 

            But God gives grace to heal that.  He gives us strength to overcome the temptations that we all have to objectify each other, to reduce each other, to use each other, so that in fact we can love each other, pour our lives out for each other, be sincere in our relationships with each other, which will then, in fact, lead to real happiness.

            So - what can we do on a day like today?

            Five ideas:

            First, just step back.  Look around at the wreckage of our culture.  Look at all of the lives, all of our lives, which have been chewed up, scattered, lost, wounded, as a result of not understanding what it is that the Lord teaches us in His word with regards to sexuality.

            Second, study, read, learn.  As a start, I’d suggest a talk by Professor Janet Smith entitled “Contraception- Why not?” It’s available free on youtube.  I can’t encourage all of us enough, especially for those of us who’ve never taken the time to understand or learn or listen why the Church teaches what she teaches on this, to take the time, with an open mind, to read, study and learn.

            Third – just repent.  Say to the Lord, “Lord, I don’t understand.  I have a mind distorted with regards to sexuality. Make me see rightly.” It’s impossible to live in this culture and not have a distorted understanding of sex.  Everything around us tells the lie that it’s all about pleasure. 

            Fourth – consider godly alternatives to contraception in regulating the size of our families.  Pope Francis recently said that we’re not obliged to have large families.  Our U.S. bishops named this week National Natural Family Planning Awareness week, and there are all kinds of resources available about NFP on the US bishops’ website.

            And lastly, ask for God’s grace, especially for those of us who are married.  Just as when Father Joe raises the bread and wine and they will become the Body and Blood of Christ, so when we who are married were blessed in Church and a hand was extended over us something happened, we were changed.  God gave us grace! Strength.  To do what He’s asking us to do.  That means we’re not alone, we’re not on our own, we can call on Him for help. 

            Help so we can overcome the temptation to use.  So that instead we can give, sincerely.  Pour our lives out, sincerely.  Lay down our lives for each other, sincerely.  And in the process, help to rebuild a culture that is scattered, lost, and very deeply wounded.

Homily - 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time - July 11/12 - St. Kateri at Christ the King

Today's readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071215.cfm

In order to understand our readings from God’s Holy scripture today, I think we have to take a step back a second and ask the question – what exactly is a prophet?  Now I used to think a prophet was somebody who was able to predict the future.  Sort of like up on Ridge Road over in Greece, right by Mt. Read – there’s a house with neon signs advertising “palm readings” or some such.  And I think that’s a pretty common way of thinking of a prophet, huh?  Sort of like a modern-day psychic or sooth-sayer.

But I’ve come to realize that while that is one definition of prophecy, and in fact Amaziah the priest of Bethel does call Amos a “visionary” in our first reading today, that’s not usually what we mean when we speak of prophets.

What we usually mean by the word “prophet” is, and this is my own paraphrased definition now, a prophet is one who interprets the way things are and speaks the truth about them, speaks of the way they ought to be.  Interprets the way things are and speaks of the way they ought to be.  It is said that a prophet is one who afflicts the comfortable, and comforts the afflicted.

With that definition, we can think of many prophets in our own day, people who speak the truth about the way things are and who see a vision of the way they ought to be. 

Martin Luther King was a prophet, no doubt.  He saw injustice, he was uncomfortable with the status quo, and he had a vision, a dream, of a different world, one in which people would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  Rosa Parks was a prophet – she got on that bus that day and when the bus driver told her to surrender her seat to a white person she said “no.”  Enough.”  “This is not right.”  And she refused.

Barbara and Jack Willke were prophets.  Shortly after the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v Wade decision in 1973, they founded the National Right to Life organization, making it their life’s work to speak out on behalf of the tiniest and most defenseless among us, the unborn.  Protesting the injustice of that decision, they had a vision of an America in which all might have the protection of law, the right to life.

And our Church has had modern-day prophets as well.  Pope Saint John XXIII envisioned a Church that was more outward-focused, more engaged with the world, and he called for the Second Vatican Council to “throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the Spirit blow through.” 

Blessed Pope Paul VI saw a burgeoning contraceptive culture spreading throughout the world and proclaimed that the Church is to be a “sign of contradiction” against this sexual revolution.  Go online and read his powerful encyclical Humanae Vitae, so much ignored and even ridiculed over these fifty years, and judge for yourself if his voice wasn’t prophetic.

In his Theology of the Body teachings, Pope Saint John Paul II teaches of the dignity of the human person, and proclaimed a prophetic “yes” to the beauty and goodness of authentic human sexuality, a vision so lost on much of our 21^st century secular culture.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Pope Francis.   In all kinds of ways, in many different areas, the Holy Father is calling for us to re-examine our beliefs and ways of living that may conflict with the message of the Lord and the rich teaching of the Church, calling us out of our comfort zones to be sure.   

Francis preaches of our need to better care for our common home, the earth.  On the need to strengthen the family.  He has spoken against abortion and same-sex marriage.  Just this week of the evils of unfettered capitalism.  And most frequently about our need to care for the poor, for least and most forgotten among us, and to envision a more just world for our one human family.

And almost 3000 years ago, Amos was a prophet as well  A reluctant prophet to be sure.  “Me, a prophet? I had no desire to be a prophet.  I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores,” he says, “but the Lord commanded me to speak.”  Amos answered that call, prophesying to the kingdom of Israel of many evils, chief among them a growing disparity between rich and poor.

Sisters and brothers, here’s the point - you and I might not think of ourselves as prophets. But God’s commanding the same thing of you and of me.  He is calling each of us to prophecy.  In fact, at our baptism, as our heads were smeared with holy oil Chrism, you and I were anointed “priest, prophet and king” in the image of Christ Himself, who was anointed “priest prophet and king.”  You and I, by our baptism, are called to prophecy.

You and I are called to interpret the way things are, envision the way they ought to be and speak the truth, not remain silent.  It’s, no doubt, a calling out of our comfort zones. First of all to examine our own lives and repent and conform ourselves to Christ.  And to no longer remain silent in the face of the growing evils in our world.

 Often it’s a very uncomfortable calling, just as it was for Amos, just as it probably was for the disciples whom Jesus sent out two by two.  And what is it that they were sent forth to do?  They were called to be prophets too.

They were given authority to drive out unclean spirits, and they were sent forth to preach of repentance.  To anoint with oil, heal the sick.  Whether it was unclean spirits, sinfulness or illness, theirs was a mission of healing.

To go out into a world desperately in need of the love and mercy of Jesus Christ and confront whatever is evil, whatever is opposed to Him, and by word and loving service proclaim repentance, mercy and healing.

Their mission is ours too, brothers and sisters.  As Father Warren just prayed in our opening prayer, the collect, it is a mission “to show the light of truth to those who go astray, so that all may return to the right path.  So that all Christians may have the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honor.”

The perfect model of this kind of prophecy is the Lord Himself.  Think of the scene - Jesus, confronted with the men about to stone the woman caught in an act of adultery.  Confronted with sin – hers, and theirs - their hypocrisy. Our Lord’s was a prophetic and loving encounter with each – “let the one among you without sin cast the first stone,” He said, and each went away.  He then turned to the woman, told her if no one condemns you, then neither do I, and commanded her “go and sin no more.”

Sisters and brothers, nourished here in this place by His word and His sacred Body and Blood, you and I are called to go out from here to be this same presence, His presence, this same prophetic call to repentance, this same face of encounter, love, mercy and tenderness, in this broken world of ours today.  Let us pray for the grace, courage and great love to live this calling as He did.