Homilies from St. Anthony, Allston, MA

The Prayerful Family

When we see the story of the persecution of Herod in trying to kill Jesus he kills every male child, we understand that this was the evil of Herod, but that concept of Herod would have been endemic in his kingdom. Herod is the one who was so evil that Augustus Caesar proclaimed that it would be better to be a pig in his house than his son.

Whatever Herod said became law in the land and Herod demanding that all male children under two years of age be executed became the law and it was carried out. It was a horrible thing but reflects on just how evil this dictator was.

It also reflects many things that can be found in the history of the human race. Such things as genocides and even human sacrifice occurred in many places and the killing of children was not unusual practice, especially as human sacrifice. This happened among cultures in the middle east and even the Americas, most especially the INCA.

This day is the Solemnity of the Holy Family which is always the Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s.

For us today, it is an interesting time because our culture is seeking to redefine the family in its quest to redefine the human race. It is the latest form of cultural attempt to control. Not as drastic as Herod but another concept in our history.

How do we respond?

First we have to understand whom we are. We are not just a brand of Christianity, we are Catholics and through our Baptism and Confirmation we receive the Holy Spirit to be agents of God’s kingdom on Earth.

Catholicism is a mystical faith. That means that a central element of our faith is prayer and union with Christ through prayer. This is why we practice such devotions as Eucharistic Adoration, the Mass and the Rosary. These are mystical devotions in which we are centered on knowing Christ more deeply and living our lives influenced by the ways of Christ and growing in divine wisdom.

 

This is so central that we cannot say we live our faith if we are not people of prayer. Even our sacraments are intimate experiences with Christ. They are avenues of grace to lead us closer to Christ our lord.

Therefore, our action has to be rooted in knowing God’s will through prayer and doing it.

Our culture rejects our understanding of the divine and human but that is not our issue. Our issue is living through our relationship with Christ in such a way that others know Christ is alive.

This brings us back to the holy family and to our family.

First, do be aware that the members of the Holy Family in their struggles including being forced to flee to Egypt did so through their prayerful experience with God. You can rest assured that their experience was rooted in prayer.

So if theirs was rooted in prayer, if you want to be a true Catholic family yours too must be rooted in prayer individually and as a family.

Catholic life is rooted in vocation. There are four vocations: the marriage vocation, the single vocation, the religious vocation and the ordained vocation. They are all vocations and they cannot be lived without prayer and not just rote prayers but prayers of communication with God.

So how do we live our vocation in the midst of our current culture that is seeking to redefine the family, redefine the human and take over the decision of who will and will not be born to our world and all the other forms of change being legislated in our world? The answer is simple.

We live our vocation as Christ called us to live it. We must be people of prayer and through prayer learn to be people who are obedient to Christ.

Our role is not to bonk people over the head with our morality because when we do, we become part of the problem not the solution.

Like communism, the current changes in our culture are human concepts rooted in understanding who will and will not be the most powerful in our world.

We are nothing less than witnesses to Christ hence why our role is essential. We are the ones who by our lives must testify to the truth. We have a role to be prophets to a world lost in concepts and to be beacons of light to those seeking what this world does not offer.

We need to model the holy family as people of prayer. We need to be obedient to Christ in our vocation whether that be as a single person, religious or ordained or as father and mother to children and husband and wife to each other in a sacramental marriage.

Just as the holy family had to pray in all their difficult situations, we must do the same thing. When tension arises among husband and wife, they must pray. When difficulties happen in the lives of their children,  they must pray; when someone loses a job, they must pray and all the time in between—they must pray individually and as a family. Prayer has to be the central activity in the life of the family to keep it strong.

The reason is that concepts eventually fail, Christ never does. Herod is lost to History, Christ is not and the true power is in those who did not embrace concepts but became channels of  Christ in their families and in their lives. That is something you and I must do so that the message of salvation may be communicated to all, even those lost in concepts that we reject.

 

 

 

Christmas: The Powerful Event in Our Salvation

 

 

Following A Higher Law

Today’s Gospel reveals an intensely human and real side to Joseph. Like in story of the Magi, this account of Joseph trying to understand Mary’s pregnancy has a deeper message to discover.

We can see the elements, Mary is pregnant with Jesus but she is engaged, betrothed to Joseph—a righteous man.

The law was clear at this time and we can find it in Leviticus. That law will appear again in the Gospel of John. It is in the city a couple caught in adultery should be stoned to death. In the rural areas the woman can be put away because there are not a lot of people around in case they were not dealing with adultery but the man forcing himself on the woman. It is assumed the woman screamed for help but no one was around to hear her. The woman, therefore, would not be responsible.

Joseph, probably considering that Mary had become delusional, decides that he will put her away because that is what the law allows since they lived in the rural areas. So, he is following the law which is what righteous people do.

The dream happens and he decides that he will take the unusual step of taking her as his wife and adopting the forthcoming child because he understands at that point that she is speaking the truth.

 

Let us look at the deeper truth. This is a theme endemic in the New Testament more than in the Old Testament.  

What is the conflict here: It is do I follow the letter of the written law or do I follow the law of love. How do I determine which to follow: the latter or the former. The answer is that in prayer we learn which of the decisions is rooted in the deeper law of love of God and neighbor.

 

 

Joseph takes the powerful step of listening to God in the dream and then responding by obeying the angel of the Lord, which is actually obeying the Lord Himself. This is through the action of the Holy Spirit.

Now let us look more deeply.

The Holy Spirit overshadows Mary, sends an angel to calm Joseph, appears at Jesus’ Baptism, leads Jesus to encounter the Devil. He then appears at Pentecost and bestows his power upon the Apostles. That same spirit empowers us at our own baptism and confirmation.

This spirit is the wisdom of God enlightening Joseph, Mary and the followers of Jesus.

So, what does this have to do with Joseph, his anxiety or for that matter us on this fourth Sunday of Advent.

Everything and it is the key issue in our faith.

One of the greatest transformations that happens at this moment is a change from our subservience to the law, to our listening to the word of God.

Remember Jesus is the Word of God, so, He is the embodiment of the wisdom, love, truth, holiness, goodness that is God.

Jesus is the second person of the Trinity and is God just as much as the Father and the Holy Spirit. To whom would you listen if you were confronted with a conflict between what the law says and what Jesus says. You would listen to Jesus because Jesus is the law. What he communicates is the meaning of the law, not just the letter of the law. He is the fulfilment of the law. If you obey Jesus then you obey the whole point of the law.

Jesus commands us to act in love of God and neighbor, because Jesus does exactly the same thing.

Many times throughout Matthew, we will see a contradiction between the letter and the spirit of the law and Jesus will always say follow the spirit without disobeying the letter.

Joseph was caught up with the letter of the law, because Mary was in the rural area so she had to be put away. Joseph left out one other option—What if Mary was speaking the truth? In that case, he needed to take the Mary as his wife as he already planned and as the Holy Spirit planned for him.

If there is a set of letters I really do not like, it is WWJD? What Would Jesus Do? Why? Because first it appears that Jesus is in the past which He is not. I could change that easily to WWSD and still do the right thing in civil circles. The S there is for Socrates.

The better response is more a prayer—Jesus, what do you want me to do? Because Jesus is the living God. Clearly, Joseph a righteous man, a man of prayer would have in fact prayed seeking an answer. Can we assume that he may have also consulted with Zechariah and Elizabeth who would have guided him all through the action of the Holy Spirit.

Wednesday is Christmas and one of the more common themes of humor is the tension that may happen at family gatherings. How are you going to respond to any such tension that may come up over political issues over moral issues or over other issues. Are you going to stand on the letter of the law or are you going to stand more in the spirit of the law that fulfills it and does not undermine it.

How are you going to respond to that cousin who comes over and hates the Catholic Church rejects God and quotes everything he learned from his political science teacher who now works for a political party that you reject?

Why did Joseph obey his dream, because he began to see that what was happening was bigger than the law. What we stand for is bigger than politics and the conflict  between secular and Catholic morality.

Christmas is all about the beginning of the final stages of salvation history and God invited us to be part of His promised mission to bring salvation to all who seek it. We do that by seeking to respond in the most loving way possible as ambassadors to the kingdom of God. This does not mean that we need to accept the arguments of those who disagree with us, but we do not have to accept any invitation to argue either. We first have to respond in charity. When the times comes in the future, if it does, to discuss differences speak then  but not at Christmas.

Remember, we follow a higher law with a higher purpose—the salvation of every person at your table whether that be on Christmas eve or Christmas day. Joseph decided to obey the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and trust he will sort if out. What will you do?

1. What are some do’s of living our faith in today’s modern world?

 

2. What are some don’ts of living our faith in today’s modern world?

Preaching to the Poor

What I do when preparing a homily is that I, usually on Monday, look over the readings and decide which I will use in my preaching. Often I use the Gospel, but you may notice other times I use the first or second reading. I then research the passage and eventually write the homily after as much as fifteen pages of notes.

This week, I am using the Gospel, but as I read over the passage I found only five pages of notes to work with but I noticed something fascinating. Notice what Jesus says are the signs that He is the one:

the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.^[1]

Ok, let’s look at that list again. Obviously it is filled with miracles and they are great signs of His presence, especially in a world where medicine is so primitive. St. Alphonsus Liguori who wrote in the eighteenth century talking about the great medical use of leeches to bring healing and that was seventeen hundred years after this was written. You can imagine how bad the medicine was during Jesus’ time. The deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, this is powerful. No doctor could accomplish that as some can today, so it is a powerful statement. However, there is one other sign that really fascinated me: The poor have the good news proclaimed to them.

That is not miraculous per se but it is included in the list, giving it the same weight.

Let us define our terms. Who are the poor, the people who have no money—maybe.

Really money is just another form of social capital. People who have money have influence in a society, but there are other forms of social capital. Likewise, people may have money but no social capital, that happens occasionally. Finally, there are the people who have neither money nor social capital. They have no standing in society and have no power in the society. Some of them are too busy trying to survive in order to influence public policy. So, they have no social capital and therefore they have no expectation of any future in this society or any love of anything the society has to offer them. That is basically because society has little to offer them. They are on the margins and for the most part live in obscurity or on the street.

 

 

They are the ones who have the good news proclaimed to them. Why is that so important.

Jesus comes to offer all the kingdom of God. Jesus comes to show that every ton of this social capital is actually nothing compared to the gift of the Kingdom of God. The truth is that the real treasure is when we put our focus on the Kingdom of God.

I am reminded that my pastor when I was in St. Rose in Chelsea was a great fan of the stock market. To this day, he is one of my favorite priests.

It was around that time that the internet was really coming into its own. I asked him if he was going to invest in it and he said no. He said that everything he read on investing in it mentioned the caveat of the 1849 GoldRush on the West Coast. He said the only people who really made money at that time were not the those panning or digging for gold, but the people who sold them their tools: shovels, pickaxes and pans. They knew where the real money was.

He was going to wait until he saw whether or not he should invest. This is the principle that we see in this list.

First, Jesus is actually focused on teaching the people without social capital who usually are the blind, the lame, the lepers, etc. Jesus is teaching them not to be concerned that they are out of the social capital line, because there is another game in town, there are greater riches to seek  by those who discover where the real treasure is.

That is the point of the good news of the Gospel. Jesus preached to the people who had no social capital in His time that there is greater treasure out there. His whole focus was teaching them how to find it.

That is the point of what we do. We seek that treasure, but also help others to join us. This treasure is infinite.

You realize we are surrounded by people busy in the gold rush. Why do people go to these institutions? Because some day they are going to make lots of money. You remember those posters that said: “Justification for higher education with five fancy cars in the garage of a mansion on the West Coast. There is nothing wrong with that. However, remember the focus of these institutions used to be more about vocation. It was not about making lots of money, but it was about being of service to others.

Jesus teaches the people that you can be of service to others even if you have no social capital. That is because your focus has to be on building your treasure in Heaven which is where the real return on your investment is.

This is one of the reasons why I teach it is not good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell, that is bourgeois Catholicism. Jesus never says that, he says build your treasure in Heaven. That is the message of the Gospel and that is what he taught the poor. He taught them where true treasure gives a true return on investment.

He taught them that truth in which they found Christ and lived with a whole different set of priorities to have an even greater return on their investment eternal life in Christ.

 

 

 

 

^[1] Catholic Daily Readings. (2009). Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.

God With Us

There is a fascinating passage in the Bible, it is actually in the Gospel of John, which is not today’s reading, but it will lead us back to it. The passage is Jesus saying: “Destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days.”

It is a fascinating statement, because in a sense it did not happen and in another sense it actually did.

When Jesus dies on the cross, he becomes the lamb of God. He is at that moment the ultimate sacrifice to God. The Father no longer requires the sacrifice of lambs in the temple. Forty years later the temple is destroyed by the Romans, never to be built again. The previous two times it was destroyed, it was rebuilt. The only place the sacrifice of lambs could happen was in fact in the Temple, so that practice stopped permanently with the destruction of the Temple. It started with Abraham.

What Jesus says, actually happens, just not in a three day period.

 

There is an important focus here: We can see it in our teaching: The Church is not the building, but rather it is the people of God. This is exactly what began at Pentecost fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection with the coming of the Holy Spirit.

What we can see in today’s Gospel is that transition beginning to happen. It begins not with Jesus’ Crucifixion but with John the Baptist’s proclamation.

Listen to what he says.

“I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” ^[1]

His message is: “Jesus is coming and He will baptize us in the Holy Spirit and Fire.” We see this happen at Pentecost and this happened to you at your baptism and confirmation. But what else happened. We became the Temple of the Holy Spirit by the indwelling of the Trinity which began at our Baptism and continued at our Confirmation. Now it is not the temple where we find God, but at the center of the meaning of Christmas. It is Emmanuel: “God is with us,” and has been with us since the First Christmas. 

This is significant because unlike the time prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection, God was separated from us.  You needed the Levite to be the intercessor for you. There was a curtain in the Temple that separated the people from the sacrifice given by the high priest and so that action was shrouded. However, that changed with the death and resurrection of Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit. Now we have Christ within us, in our midst and so the Temple is no longer necessary to worship God.

Even this space, the Church is where we gather to worship Christ, to commune with him and be nourished by him through his word and his Eucharist his presence, but the space is still not the presence of God. He is among His people.

Our embracing Him and living as his disciples in such a way that we bear fruit in our lives is essential.

Our Catholicism calls us to live in communion with God that means daily united in Him and led by Him. In the Early days before the name Christian stuck, disciples were called prophets for that is our call. A prophet has an intimate union with Christ which transforms those around them. That is what Christ calls us to do.

We must be people of prayer.

Cardinal O’Malley is strongly rooted in prayer and wants his priests to pray two hours a day, but often I hear many bishops promoting different ideas, but I do not see them publicly speaking on prayer. However, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that you cannot live the rules if you are not a person of prayer, if you are not in union with Christ. Prayer has to be the central part of our experience because in prayer, we encounter Christ. Cardinal Sarah says we bargain with Christ, but we know Christ.

Even Pope Francis says that prayer is essential to live the Catholic life.

Without prolonged moments of adoration, of prayerful encounter with the word, of sincere conversation with the Lord, our work easily becomes meaningless; we lose energy as a
result of weariness and difficulties, and our fervor dies out. The Church urgently needs the deep breath of prayer, and to my great joy groups devoted to prayer and intercession, the prayerful reading of God’s word and the perpetual adoration of the Eucharist are growing at every level of ecclesial life. He Wrote in Evangelii Gaudium.

Cardinal Sarah teaches a parish without eucharistic adoration is dead, again the essential element of prayer.

Now let’s return to the beginning of the homily.

The AP published an article about the new line of lawsuits against the Church that are designed to bring the Church to its knees.

The article included a picture taken of one of the lawyers on the phone overlooking the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan and literally asking “I wonder what that is wort?” The implication is obvious, he was looking to force the Archdiocese of New York to sell the Cathedral so that they can pay those he represents and for his fees as well.

Obviously, the scene was upsetting so I took it to prayer as I do anyway. This brought me to that scene of destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.

I think if we went to Jesus right now and said, what are you going to do to save St. Patrick’s Cathedral? He would say “Nothing. Destroy that temple and I will rise amidst the purified Catholic people of the United States.” God’s presence comes amidst His people and his people have a choice to bear fruit or be swept up in the secular wave that seeks to silence the voice of the Church.

The wave will be cast out to where God is not, but those who seek to bear fruit in Christ, will encounter Him in his full glory.

Those who want to create a world without God will find it and it will be their eternal home, but those who seek Christ no matter how much our culture seeks to silence us, will be welcomed by Him in the world where God actually is in our midst. Let us invite him to deepen his presence in our parish, in our families and in our lives by exploring our faith more and more through prayer.  

 

^[1] Catholic Daily Readings. (2009). Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.

A New Beginning

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, this makes it the First Sunday of the Liturgical Year and also the liturgical cycle. If you did not know, our Church reading calendar is on a three year cycle—Years A, B and C. We just finished Year C, so now we begin the cycle all over again. This cycle and in fact this year will include the national elections and all the hoopla that will surround them, so it may be an interesting time.

We need as always to look at this time through our liturgy.

Our second reading today is from Romans. St. Paul is writing to the formerly pagan Romans and explaining that their lifestyle prior to knowing Christ must now change to a whole new way of living in Christ. It is a good thought for us today. This is from chapter 13, but back in chapter 12 Paul calls all his readers to a renewal of their minds. This is putting that admonition into practice.

Many times, we can forget that the writings of the saints over the centuries were often to Christians, so the sermons against sins and calling people away from the path to Hell were spoken to whole cultures that already embraced our faith.

Now we are living in a culture more like the First Century Rome than Eleventh Century Europe. We live in a time where we are choosing Christ every day in the midst of a culture that truly does not understand Him.

We are also learning that how we live our faith today needs to be radically different than people expect. In fact, the problems in the Church may come from a loss of understanding of what it means to be Catholic. It is that false understanding that people call Catholicism.  

 

Cardinal Sarah, whom I quoted several times over the past several weeks, laments the fact that people assume Catholicism is nothing but morals. He explains that actually Catholicism begins with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is why prayer is so important. It is through prayer that we understand where Christ is leading us and we change our lives accordingly. In fact, he, citing Pope St. John Paul II says that “The path marked out by divine Law is not a moral police ordinance, but the mind of God.”a [1]

This is the point of St. Paul’s teachings: Now that you know Christ, leave your past behind you, embrace Christ and allow him to lead you forward.[1]

He is teaching the pagans who sought out and found Christ that the life they are leaving behind is not compatible with a relationship with Christ. We miss the point if we figure that is the message of Paul. He is not just saying to let go of the past but more to embrace the future in Christ.

This has to be our message as well.

Our Church has been through a real cleansing over the past almost twenty years. However, the time to be cleansed needs to change to a time to walk anew in the Lord. This is especially true for this parish. Never forget whom we are. We are surrounded by Harvard Business School. We are just down the street from one of the powerhouses of the Public Broadcasting System. Not far from Boston University and of course from the Local CBS outlet. Of course, there are the Bruins and Celtics across the tracks. You living your faith by doing something as simple as being people of prayer and by coming to Church is powerful especially right here in this parish.

There are countless lives that are touched by your neighborhoods every day and many of those lives want to see Catholicism is in action.  

Many only understand it in terms of the morality police that Cardinal Sarah decried.

Our faith is something bigger and more powerful than just a system of morality which is why we need to look at what St. Paul is saying.

In about a month people will be talking about New Year’s Resolutions and all the gyms will have specials for the first month of 2020. This new liturgical year is not the time for a resolution but a decision to follow Christ more closely. To grow closer in Christ so that just doing that will change the rest.

I am going to invite you to make this your mission this year. Make it your decision to draw closer to Christ by making time daily for prayer, bible reading for example spend time with the daily readings of the Church and definitely do good spiritual reading. I obviously cannot recommend to you enough Cardinal Robert Sarah’s new book: The Day Is Now Far Spent. Many believe he is a reactionary, nothing could be further from the truth. His teaching is radical for our times.

I want to invite you to consider seeking Christ through contemplative prayer and Thomas Merton is a good writer for that material, especially New Seeds of Contemplation which fifty years on, is still a great book.

I read a great column on Medium by a woman who grew up in a Calvinist background[2], endemic in this area. She wrote that Calvin taught that humanity is nothing more than poor wretched sinners. Never forget the most famous American sermon was given in our own state: Massachusetts, enforcing that same idea of Calvin. The Sermon was Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Rev. Jonathan Edwards in North Hampton, Massachusetts. The title speaks for itself. None of that is Catholicism. However, many people who reject Christ, reject that understanding of Christ which is not Catholic. Christ calls us to know him through prayer and contemplation.

Make this new year, especially during Advent a new beginning in deepening our relationship with Christ. Leave the past struggles behind and let’s walk a new road to Christ. If possible, come visit the blessed sacrament especially on Wednesdays from 6pm-7:30pm after work. Because I have a feeling the next year will be a turbulent one, especially in light of the current upcoming election and the issues surrounding it. People will seek to know there is more to our existence than Green New Deals, Impeachment proceedings, walls on the Southern border and issues coming out of Eastern Europe.

There is everything that is Christ whom we experience personally, communally and profoundly. This year, let us do all we can to experience Christ to the fullest.

 

 

[1] Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Diat Nicholas, God or Nothing, 2015, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, Kindle Version, p. 156

 

[2]Hobbs, Allegra, The Self Help Movement is Upending American Christianity, Forge.Medium.com Citation does not constitute endorsement. I do not agree with use of the enneagram (ed.)