Homilies from St. Anthony, Allston, MA

Be Children of Light

Well here we are in this bizarre situation of the quarantine. If I were to pick a verse for us today to reflect on in light of the current conditions, I could not have picked anything better than today’s second reading. I especially say that in light of the season of Lent.

Do remember this would have been the day that the priest would wear rose for it is Laudate Sunday. It is the day we rejoice because Lent is almost over. That is indeed true, however, I cannot say the same thing for our quarantine.

This passage really invites us for this time to rediscover our faith and all that Christ is calling us to experience in our growing love for Him and our neighbor.

This is a great time to do this, why?

Well first we are forced to look at our situation and even bring it to prayer. For all of us, this is a whole new situation. I think it is reasonable to assume that none of us have been through anything like this, unless we lived in Europe during the Second World War. So, we experience our situation in whole new ways and a new understanding. Some are saying that this is bringing us to a new reality.

Maybe this will be the 9/11 of the 2020’s. Many of us remember September 10, 2001. It was the last day of the reality we lived which terrorist attacks the following day changed forever. So, we can say that what we experienced prior to learning about the virus outbreak and the news out of Wuhan, China is a reality that is no longer with us.

 

We need to re-evaluate our day to day situation and as Catholics look at it in light of our faith. So, this brings us to these words which really call us to turn away from every form of darkness and to live as children of the light. What a great opportunity that has fallen in our lap that forces us to do come to a deeper relationship with Christ.

We really need to do this now.

The reason is that Christ calls us to a dynamic relationship with the Holy Trinity through Him. So many Catholics understand their faith statically. You and I have the opportunity to correct that misunderstanding.

What do I mean?

A dynamic faith is rooted in our union with Christ and deepening our relationship with him, not only through prayer, but through putting that prayer into action. We need prayer to understand how to act.

St. Paul is calling us to live as children of the light and to live in ways that are pleasing to the Lord. This is a great time to ask the Lord what he wants of us and we do that in prayer.

Why is this so necessary right now?

It is something I have noticed for quite some time. So many Catholics understand their faith through rules and laws.

Obviously, I have time to look at some Catholic postings on the internet lately and discovered just how many people see God as a computer. So, they feel they have to please a computer to get to Heaven.

That makes no sense. God is Father not the Unimactritransistorial computer. Yet, how many people see God as this computer like being that insists that rules must be followed to the letter or you will go to Hell. They do not know the real God and they certainly cannot show Him to others with that attitude.

This is especially true in Lent because every Friday I read of people, not here, in a panic because they feel they committed a grievous sin for forgetting that they cannot eat meat on that day and accidentally will end up in Hell. Well in fact Unimactritransistorial would cast them into Hell because it would compute it as a violation of the rules. But God is not Unimactritransistorial, he is our heavenly Father. We call a father that would punish his child for forgetting not to eat meat at meal on Friday abusive. Why would say that is the way God is? If we understanding God that way, we reflect that God to others. The God people who thing that way is Unimactritransistorial not our Heavenly Father.

God is calling us to know him deeply in faith, to experience His love. When we experience His love, we turn from those things that lead us into darkness and turn toward those things that lead us into his light.

The more we do that, the more that we reflect God to others in his love and mercy. That is exactly what God want us to do.

This is a great time to understand our faith, to live our faith and to grow in our faith as we unite ourselves to Christ.

The government calls us to stop and do little so that we can prevent the spread of the virus. It is a time to read, to stream video to watch TV and to reflect on what we are doing. It is a time to understand what we cannot change and to see what we can and it is a time to think of our neighbor in two ways. One not to spread the virus to another and two to mindful of the needs all may have at this time and more importantly when this is over so because of the drastic effects to our economy.

Finally, go online and read Paul’s words to the Ephesians today, which you will find as the second reading for today, the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Take them to heart and use them to grow closer to Christ, to increase your witness to Him. Do that by growing as children of light, not of darkness.

Download Be+Children+of+Light_1030

Fear Not

One of the reasons why I always say that we do not earn our way to Heaven by being good or lose Heaven by being bad is because when we think that way, we live at that level of existence. We try to be good to go to Heaven or we get lost in presumption by assuming we are good enough to get to Heaven. No one by the way is. We get to Heaven by responding to God’s love for us in our lives and acting upon it.

There are many reasons why thinking this way is important. One of them you are living right now.

Did you do panic shopping this week? One person bought a whole bunch of toilet paper and when they asked her why, she said, “because everyone else was buying it.”

I hope not we are not doing that. 

Granted I hope you went shopping for what you reasonably need. However, please keep in mind that you and I have a whole different way of looking at things because we are rooted in the love of God and our hope is in the promises of Christ.

That means that we witness to these promises by living them and not by living in fear.

We have just finished a world wind week economically, socially and politically. All of this week has been driven by fear and apprehension. However, you and I have a mandate not to live in fear and apprehension. We have to live in the confidence of God’s love in our lives.

Why? Because that is how we serve others who do live in fear and apprehension.

How many times has anyone asked you in passing and even in joking if you believe this is a sign of the end times? It has happened to me a few times but of course people are going to ask me because of what I do.

By the way, do I believe this is such a sign? No.

One of the most powerful sayings in the Bible is “fear is useless what is needed is trust.”Mark 5:36

One of the most powerful sayings in the Bible is “fear is useless what is needed is trust.”Mark 5:36

Jesus many times warned against the living in fear. He even warned that fear will lead you away from God.

If you are afraid, express your feelings to God and take your concerns to God, as do I.

However, as St. Paul says we must live with the knowledge that the love of God has been poured into our hearts so that we may be signs of that love to those who do live in fear.

For that past twenty years many in our society have done all they can to teach people to stay away from the Catholic Church and for that matter to stay away from Christianity in general because unlike Christ they have the answers. That may be true to a point, but they do not have the answers when fear overtakes them.

Our answer is in confidence that Christ will get us through this. However, we must realize our goal is not to go through the current issues free of fear, our goal is to help others especially those who do not now believe get through the current issues free of fear.

We can only do that when we realize that God has poured out his love in our lives, as St Paul says, so that we may live that love in our world.

Let me give you an example: Those who are panic buying are making sure they have what they need and more, however, we want to make sure we have what we may need but not more than that so that others can get what they may need.

If we are concerned only about what we may need we are not living the gospel.

Fear and anxiety will lead you away from Christ. Living off of innuendo and rumor will lead you away from Christ.

I had suggested that during Lent people do a family Rosary and I would encourage that because the greatest danger is not the virus it is fear.

In fact, the scariest fact I learned this week has nothing to do with people getting sick or prices dropping in the stock market. The scariest fact I learned this week is gun sales are up in some places. That is a sign of fear and its dangerous elements.

This week we saw a volatile stock market due to fear. Do you not remember that only ten years ago the stock market fell so far it was at $600?

Now imagine if you acted without fear and bought stock then?

One stock dropped in value to 12 cents. That is twelve pennies. If you panicked and sold that stock for a great loss you would have born the fruit of your panic. However, if you instead did not panic and bought 1000 shares of that stock for twelve cents, you would have paid one hundred twenty dollars. Wednesday, when I wrote this, that same stock was worth 6 dollars a share. You would have made five thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars something like a 5000 percent return on your investment. 

During the last market crash one man called one of those financial shows, he was afraid of a run on the bank and took out his whole life savings and brought it home, a few days later his home was robbed and the thieves took among other things that money. He lost everything. Why? Fear.

We do not know what is going to happen tomorrow so we trust God to care for us not only for tomorrow but forever.

That is the point of our faith. Those who reject our faith have faith only in this world, we have a whole different way of thinking. However, in our service to them we need to live in that faith and trust in God.

Fear is useless what is needed is trust. Now is the time when each of us Catholics have a mission to act in faith and show our trust in God to help others live without fear as well.

Meanwhile, I am going to ask you to consider watching a TV show this week. It is from the first year of the series The Twilight Zone. The title is the Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. Look it up and watch it and then pray and live without fear. That is our duty as Catholics.

Questions for discussion

at home or work:

1. How can you serve others quietly and without contact?

2. Can you help others to not be afraid?

Download Fear Not Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent_8597

Our Mission

Today, we see one of the most profound readings in the Bible and I am not talking about the Transfiguration.

One of the most powerful realities in the epistles, the letters in the New Testament, is that like many letters they express Gospel truths simply and powerfully.

In Paul’s second letter to Timothy, we can see these powerful words:

He saved us and called us to a Holy Life.

 If we read that in context to the line prior, we can see that by our holy lives we boldly give testimony to the Gospel.

That is our mission. It is the mission you received at your Baptism and it is the mission that we are called to live.

The obvious next question is, how do we do it.

We draw our strength from the Lord and we live in touch with his will through our union with Christ in prayer and liturgy and we act accordingly. Now, notice something closely. This is what I mention all the time in different forms.

Paul, in this exhortation says nothing about morality. There are two reasons, one is the morality is already a given. So, everything he says has the morality in the background. However, the other reason is that there is more to living our faith than living our morality. That is the base value but we need to build upon  it.

 

So, Paul is not just saying to live a moral life, but to live a life according to God’s own design and grace.

Our Catholic faith is about living Christ’s vision for our lives. That vision will be beyond our own vision of where Christ is calling us.

If you look carefully you will also notice that St. Paul is saying to bear your share of the hardship of the Gospel. Now many will take that to mean that to live Catholic morality is difficult. Actually, it is not. What is difficult is living one vision of how to be on this earth in a sea of other visions most of which are counter to what we believe.

Let me give an example in light of the recent primary election we have. You do realize that there is not a single party or a single candidate that promotes values that perfectly align with Catholic teaching. Not one.

You also realize that at least at one point in their histories both political parties had an anti-Catholic plank in them.

We need to look at what we believe in light of Christ’s vision for our lives and see that it will run counter to what others believe, even among people whom we agree with somewhat politically somewhat socially, somewhat medically

Whenever there is a dispute there are always positions and there are issues.

Should we put a traffic light at the corner of Holton St. and Franklin St.? Immediately, there will be positions: some will be for and some will against. In order to settle this, we need to look at the issue: Safety vs. Traffic flow. You cannot settle the question until you address that issue.

People will complain about the Catholic stand on such things as artificial contraception and the definition of marriage and so much more. What they do not understand is that the purpose for marriage in the Church is counter for the purpose of marriage outside the Church.

The purpose for marriage inside the Church is procreation and growth in the sacramental love of the couples as they mutually grow in love of God and neighbor. In technical terms that means procreative and unitive.

The reason why we run counter to the concept of marriage in society is that reason is almost the exact opposite. The unitive purpose is first and the pro-creative is either not a factor or it is much further down the line.

The issue is not then whether to use artificial contraception and who gets married to whom, it is what is the purpose for marriage. In the Catholic Church the purpose for marriage is to bring children into the world and raise them within the context of a holy family in witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That purpose is the foundation for our positions.

There is a radical difference from our understanding of the purpose of marriage and the understanding outside those doors.

The whole focus of our existence is not simply to do good but to testify to the resurrection of Christ and his power and grace in our lives.

You can fight all the positions and all the parties until the cows come home, but until you understand that fundamental difference you are not going to get anywhere.

Once you understand that difference you will understand that people will see you differently and you will at times find yourself at odds with the world around you. Remember, at least one point in the history of the two main political parties they had an anti-Catholic plank in it.

Our positions on artificial contraception and marriage are rooted in our purpose for marriage.

Our positions on how we should live our lives is rooted in different understanding of our purpose as human beings.

If we understand that our purpose is, as St. Paul says, to live a holy life in testimony to the risen Christ, our values, goals and life focuses will be completely different. That does not mean that we will all become monks, but we will live our lives in that perspective.

Whether we are a janitor, a CEO, a rock star, an actor or a homeless person. St. Paul calls us to live our lives with that understanding of mission and when we do, we are challenging people’s concept not of morality but of anthropology: Who they are and what is their reason for existence. I pick those occupations because I have met or know of good Catholics in each of them.

St. Paul challenges us to look at our lives and evaluate them in light of the powerful work of Jesus Christ in our lives. 

Photo: Cowboy at Prayer photo By Billy Hathorn - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11230724

Questions for discussion

at home or work:

1. Have you ever found yourself at odds because of your faith?

2. How does our definition of what it means to be human run counter to others in our life?

 

Download Our Mission as a PDF in booklet form. 

Root Yourself in God's Strength and Wisdom

Today we see the temptation of Christ in the desert. Let’s look this scenario. We see the devil using his form of reasoning to encourage Jesus into various actions in obedience to Him. He not only tempts but gives his reason why Jesus should do what he wants him to do.

Jesus responds in each case using the word of God.

There are some powerful lessons in this.

The most important and it is central to this is the devil is cunning and smart and if we do not root ourselves in the wisdom of God, he can talk circles around us. He can convince us that up is down and down is up, unless we are properly grounded in truth. This is why a world without God will not become liberated but imprisoned because human wisdom is no match for the wiles of the devil. The wisdom of Christ alone can defeat this.

Put it this way, all sin begins in the mind and then moves into action and it moves into action because it made sense at the time. It sounded like a good idea. When disaster strikes do we realize it was a bad idea.

Let us look more closely at the temptations: the three temptations begin with these words: If you are the son of God. It is exactly the same temptation Jesus experiences on the cross. If you are the son of God get yourself off that cross and us as well.

It is one of the many signs of the demonic presence trying to get Jesus to falter on the cross.

 

Now notice:

Turning rocks into bread: Nourishing the body without the soul. It is a powerful temptation and it is common in our time. That is the source of communism. The Church teaches that we do have to care for others, but we have two sets of responses the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It is just as valid a service to God to feed the poor physically as well as it is spiritually. Indeed, one of the curses in the Old Testament is that the people will have a famine of the bread of life which is the word of God.

The second is forcing the angels to catch him if he throws himself down off the parapet. That is to flaunt his divinity, it is to glorify himself. We have a mission to be humble. Once we fully acknowledge our humanness we can better comprehend the divine. God made us to be human, we have the temptation to seek what we are not which is to be gods. In fact, that is the first temptation: you will be like gods. We need to embrace the fullness of our humanity and in doing so, we will come to appreciate it and God’s action in our lives. We cannot do that if we are always trying to be what we are not.

The third temptation has a fascinating element to it. The devil proclaims that all worldly authority has been given over to him and Jesus does not deny it. Never forget that, especially in an election year. If we turn from God then we will end up walking down a path that will lead us away from God personally and as a nation. There is no middle ground.

One of the most fascinating things I learned in some of my reading comes from Chris Hedges in his book: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists, (2009;Free Press)  where he points out that at least one of the world class atheists quoted often by the media believed in a nuclear pre-emptive first strike against the Muslim nations to prevent terrorism. Catholic doctrine rooted in the teaching of St. Augustine does not believe in a pre-emptive first strike of any type ever.

But if you reject the wisdom of God, your only response is to embrace the wisdom of the world and the devil himself teaches that this wisdom belongs to him.

When we are people of prayer and root ourselves in Christ then in God we have the wisdom to see through the wiles of the devil.

That is the lesson we see here. We do not have the strength nor ability to fight the wisdom of the devil on our own. We need to be rooted in Christ through our prayer to understand the greater wisdom—the divine wisdom. If we do not root ourselves in prayer first then everything the devil says will make sense.

We are watching it today. You literally see this play out on your news every night when people say things and others listen and say: “That makes sense!” When in fact it does not.

The people most vulnerable to the wiles of the devil are those who are wise in their own eyes. Our role is to present another wisdom, the wisdom of God so that people will learn the truth and be free of the crazy arguments of the devil that trap people every day.

This Lent is a good time to decide to deepen our faith and come to know Christ more and more as we live our faith. That way we grow in the wisdom of Christ and in doing so help others to see the deeper truth that they cannot see.

Do not assume that just because you are not ordained or do not have a theological education you cannot tap into that wisdom. Conversely do not assume that just because someone is ordained he has tapped into that wisdom. We discover that wisdom through prayer, humility, bible study and the quest for holiness.

Jesus demonstrates that we need to be rooted in the wisdom of God to fight the temptation of the devil. This year more than any other might be a time to deepen our understanding of that teaching especially during an election year because remember the devil said that all worldly political power has been given to him and Jesus never refutes him.

 

Starting Today you can download at PDF form of this homily that you can read on your tablet, computer, etc. with your e-reader (including the Amazon Kindle App) that can read PDF's

Just click on this link below. 

This homily was delivered at St. Anthony Allston, MA

Download Homily in PDF for ereaders for 1st Sunday of Lent_3355