Homilies from St. Anthony, Allston, MA

Walking A New Road

Today’s second reading is from St. Peter’s first letter and we can see it is an instruction on how to live our faith in Christ.

Look at the letter closely. Peter writes to new Christians who were, for the most part, converts as gentiles. So, they were previously what today we would call pagans. They had a  completely different world view than Christians, just as atheists have a different understanding of the world than we do. The new Christians accepted Christ and the new vision of the meaning of their existence. They now seek to know Christ and to follow him, but that means that they are following a new way of living different from what they knew growing up. This is the message that Peter is writing in this first chapter and we can see it in this passage. He is calling them to understand the old ways led nowhere, so they must be left behind. The new ways lead to eternal life.

The new American Bible Revised Edition reveals that they lived a form of Godless conduct brought upon by their pagan influence. Now their life in Christ has completely changed their self-understanding of the meaning of life.  Peter is teaching them that the new meaning of life and the old understanding are incompatible. He calls them to live by the new understanding for that leads them to eternal life. St. Irenaeus taught that this means being fully human and fully alive. So now he calls them to pursue holiness. Let holiness drive them and form them anew.

Remember, the words of the Prologue of John. These do not give us new philosophies to follow, they give us a new vision of who we truly are. We are now the receivers of the promise of eternal life in Christ. It is a promise of something that the former life in the Roman World could not grant them, nor can the secular philosophies of our world grant us. It is an understanding that Jesus allowed himself to become the Lamb of God so that we may all have eternal life in Him.

 

St. Paul separately reminds us that we have a calling to a renewal of our mind so that we see the world more and more through the wisdom of God instead of the wisdom of the world.

He says that we are being rebuilt into new men and woman through Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

This gives us a new spiritual vision and a new spiritual understanding.

Let me give you an example. Many people today say that we must change our teachings in order to make them conform more to the world. This is doing the exact opposite of what St. Peter calls us to do.

So to whom do we listen. Obviously, St. Peter, but why?

The answer surrounds you.

Have you been watching the news lately? I am sure you have been watching it more in this quarantine. You see the political battles and the statements made from various figures and heads of US states in press conferences throughout the country and often throughout the day.

Where do we stand in regard to these political battles? Maybe on neither side.

Many people in these battles fight for their vision of the world. They will be loud and boisterous, they will manipulate words and ascribe intentions to actions that may not be there. This how you fight a battle of words and a war of ideas. What is the prize in this battle?  On what does each side base their vision and their actions? On what do they base their decisions? Where can they take us in light of how they see what it means to be a human? We are looking for an end to the quarantine and a return to where we were in January. However, it looks like that once the virus passes we will be in a new world. What will it look like? How will it apply to us?

St. Peter is now asking his readers to understand who they truly are now that they accepted Christ and how they are no longer like those they left behind. They did not learn a new form of morality but a new vision of being. Therefore, he teaches his readers to understand that vision and not to conform to that of the pagans around them. Embrace the new vision and direct their lives in it.

In light of this political battle that is happening on television, twitter and the internet should we take Peter’s lesson to heart as well? Should we leave those battling for their political visions to continue their fight, while we pursue the higher calling to Christ.

Take this time to pursue what that new vision is that Peter talks about. Continue your prayer devotions. Don’t forget the Eucharist in exposition 24/7 at the rectory and offer yourselves to Christ where you allow him to form you in that new vision in that call to holiness.

Our world is changing and our country is changing. Everything may return to normal in several months or maybe nothing will be normal. That is why Peter’s words to us today are reminders that we need the true stability in the pursuit of holiness and the vision of the new person that Christ gives to us.

There will be winners and losers in the ongoing battle in those daily news conferences from Washington, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Albany, Lansing and more, but in the words of St. Peter we find the life giving path to a witness that the world really needs to know. God is wiser than those battling for their vision of the country through their response to the corona virus pandemic.  

We need to pursue His wisdom and leave the all other battles behind until the pandemic comes to an end. We must live by the vision that Christ formed within us and will forge in us more during this quarantine. That is the true vision that gives life, that is the vision that we need to live for the good of our neighbors, our country and our world.  

How Is God Working In and Through Us Now.

In the midst of this Corona Virus shut down, our lives have been turned upside down. Nothing is what we expected it to be and our world has come to a stop. We are in a way lost in a bit of confusion.

Some people are asking the question where is God in all this?

This brings us to the famous question that those who do not believe may ask when things go wrong. If God exists things like this would not happen?

It is an important thing to consider at this time. Let us continue: Does God exist, is he real?

When people bring up that argument the immediate response we can understand is that in fact God exists, but what does not exist is a false concept of God.

If God does not meet our expectations that does not mean he does not exist, it means that our concept of God needs to change. That is what St. Thomas discovered.

Since I was ordained over twenty-six years ago, I always argued against calling St. Thomas doubting Thomas. He did not doubt. He refused to believe. Doubt is if God exists how can the corona virus issue happen? St. Thomas says: I refuse to believe until I put my fingers in his hands and my hands in his sides. That is not doubt, it is anger, frustration, disappointment, despair, but not doubt.

His concept of Jesus was that he would free Judah from Roman occupation and restore the sovereign nation of Israel to the Earth, then it could be assumed that he would die and return to the Father.

 

So when Jesus died in what St. Thomas saw as a total failure, he grew angry. Jesus did not meet his expectations.

But lets look for a second at what would have happened if Jesus did what Thomas expected. He would have been known today as a great military leader. People would talk about his military accomplishments in war colleges along with the tactics of Hannibal, Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great and Julius Ceaser. They would then quote his philosophy like they quote Albert Einstein. However, no one would be talking about eternal life, no one would be talking about a whole new understanding of what it means to be human and no one would be talking about a new anthropology. They would be talking about Jesus in limited circles.

Jesus died as what appeared to be a failure, but then by rising from the dead, he literally changed our whole understanding of what it means to be a human being.

When St. Thomas says, “My Lord and My God” he begins not only to believe in the resurrection, but that life is changed drastically. Nothing is the same once we believe in eternal life. Nothing.

Jesus in obedience to the Father through the Holy Spirit did something that was beyond the expectations of St. Thomas and the Apostles.

The fact is that what Thomas learned to doubt in was his concept of God.

Now let us go back to the question: If God exists why are we suffering from the Corona Virus?

That concept of God, that he protects us from all difficulty is what does not exist. God leads us through difficulty to where he is calling us to Heaven. He leads his disciples through their difficulties to a whole new form of understanding and a whole new way of being.

Therefore, as St. Thomas understood, the question is not about whether or not God exists, whether Jesus resurrected from the dead. It is instead what is God doing now that we do not see?

What is God doing in your life right now? If you remain faithful to Him, he will not only lead you to eternal life, he will work through you right now. What is he doing in your life right now, through your difficulties? Will you let him use this crisis to change you?

One of the ancient principles in the Bible is that our difficulties change us and make us like purified gold.

What is He actually doing right now in your life? You might not see anything, you might not understand anything, but I assure you that it is happening.

 The more you stay faithful, the more you are being transformed.

One of the questions that has come up during this time is: Is God punishing us? God does not punish but he does discipline. Punishment is a tool of justice, discipline is a tool of teaching.

The Bible says that we must not disdain any discipline because that is a tool of correction in love.

Is it possible that God is disciplining us and if so, it is so that we may be more transformed to be more like him.

This is the perfect time to ask the Lord to help us understand what he is doing in our lives individually, as a parish and as a nation right now. How is he changing us right now and ask the Lord to lead us to be docile to that change so that we may be stronger and more powerful as Christians.

As I said many times over the past eighteen years, we as the Catholic Church have been through a horrible time, but God was strengthening his Church because difficult times were coming. Those difficult times are here and the people need to know that God is stronger than their concept of him.

God’s greatest desire is the salvation of all and he is using us right now at this time as his instruments of that salvation. However, he is further forming us, purifying us and leading us to be source of his strength for others at this time.

If God has disappointed you at this time, then understand it was not God, it was your concept of God which failed. That is a good thing, because he is calling us to see him more clearly, to be transformed by him everyday so that we may further His work which is the salvation of all souls.

Easter Homily 2020

Today, we have one of my favorite Gospel stories. It is the road to Emmaus.

It takes place on Easter Sunday and as you can see these two men are just completely confused. They know that Jesus died on the cross and with His death all their hopes in him were dashed.

Doesn’t this story bring us to the pain and confusion we are experiencing right now?

Remember, their whole world had been turned upside down when they witness that Jesus died. Imagine what that night must have been like when they saw Jesus, this one in whom they had total hope was laid dead in a tomb. Gone, and with it all the love they experienced in him. All that he had promised and all the hopes that they maintained. Gone.

There would be sadness, confusion and shock. Then maybe anger too.

Take those feelings when you realized that restaurants were closed, jobs were lost and everything brought to a standstill. Think of the shock you felt as I felt when I saw a line outside one of our local supermarkets. A line, just like the Soviet Union. Our world is certainly not the same as it was three weeks ago. We have seen a change in it completely.

Now take all that pain, anger, frustration and confusion and put yourself into the thinking of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They would have had similar emotions and pains.

Then they receive the good news and they do not know what to make of it, until two things happen. One the stranger explains that this was supposed to happen and then they recognize him in the breaking of the bread.

 

One of the questions people ask  me is, are we experiencing the end times?

I have no idea, I am assuming no. But what would that mean if we are? We are referencing what the Word of God would be saying to us.

Well, what is the word of God saying to us about this time that we are experiencing.

Nothing happens without God knowing it and without permission of God. That does not mean that God wills it, but that God knows it and is with us through it.

Even in this confusion we know that God is with us, as he was with the men on the way to Emmaus.

What else do we know?

God is doing great things that we have yet to see. What it is we do not know, but we must wait until it happens, but we will see God in this if we root ourselves in Christ.

The stranger had to explain to the men on the way to Emmaus that their experience, as pain and shocking as it was opened the door to a great rebirth.

We do not know what is going to happen when this is over, but we know that already our country has changed and our people have changed.

How have we changed and how are we changing?

Where are our hopes and our dreams and in what is our hope.

There is one constant here and that is that Christ is alive and in him we put our hopes.

If you really think about it our government has changed overnight. There is not even any legal recourse to fight back against these restrictions, none.  

Our greatest question is: Are we going to be able to return to the freedoms we enjoyed prior to the quarantine?

That is an interesting lesson, even something as solid as the freedoms of our own country, which we grew up with and with which people from all around the world envy. Those freedoms can be taken away in minutes as they actually have been here due to the virus.

Our economy has been shut down and our way of life is changed radically.

All these things that we considered as solid as rock we learn are not solid at all in the face of this virus. Therefore, it leads us to reflect on what do we truly hope? In what can we place our trust? The answer is in Christ and Christ alone. He alone conquered death in him alone is there a hope that nothing can eliminate.

The predominant emotion at this time is fear. We are seeing a world lost in fear. Fear of the virus, fear of the long term affects of our situation and fear even of death.

With what do we conquer this fear. It is in the hope we have in Christ promised us at his resurrection.

Now ask yourself what is Christ saying to us through this time. If he were the stranger appearing in our homes what would he be telling us and how would he be comforting us?

I am sure he would be telling us that God is still with us. He may explain to us some corrections he had to be made in public attitudes that have arisen in our country.

I thought strongly about the governor of another state who said that losing one life is too many, yet six months ago he was celebrating passing a law that allowed the abortion of a baby up to full term. They had a party. One life was not too many then.

Now we are subject to something beyond our control and at least in my life it is showing me a whole new view of government, one that leads me to embrace Christ even more. Government is fragile, freedoms are fragile, Christ is alive. Death for Christ’s disciples is conquered forever even among those who succumb to the virus.

Those who do not know Christ have hope in only what this world can offer. Those who embrace Christ have a greater hope and as the disciples on the way to Emmaus learned. No one can take that away from us ever.