Homilies from St. Anthony, Allston, MA

Oh Oh

Currently, we are at the beginning of the end of the liturgical year. There are thirty-four weeks of ordinary time and we are at the beginning of the thirty-third. If you look at our readings, they are a stark focus for this time: the end of our lives and in this case the end of the world.

It is a subject that comes upon us often in popular culture especially of late. We hear of NASA keeping an eye on asteroids and then we hear of wars, dissensions, fights and everything else and, of course, we hear of people saying that we have less than twelve years to live unless we stop using airplanes. Well you know I hate to fly, so I have done my part, don’t you know.

Notice that Jesus says to ignore all those rumors. What does He indicate is the actual sign of the end times? It is division. Everything that causes division between members of families, between nations and cultures, all of this on the extreme level is the sign of the end times. Remember, God’s greatest desire is unity not division. War is caused by disharmony. The greater this dispute, the larger the war. Many years ago, I saw the Church sign at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Holyoke, MA “God adds and multiplies, the devil subtracts and divides.” Always remember that formula.

One of the greatest problems in our country right now, something I warned about when it first became apparent back just after the turn of the century, is the attitude of people demanding our world their way. It has only gotten stronger and today when various mainstream publications are warning the division in this country is reaching its breaking point, people today ask me my opinion and my response is the same—I warned you seventeen years ago this is where we would be.

 

Why are we here, because what we believe is true! Remember what we believe is that we are humans and humans have a flaw that leads to division. Our original sin makes it impossible for us to create the perfect world. You cannot create a peaceful world unless you put an end to what causes disharmony. It is only in Christ we will find the ultimate form of unity. Therefore, we cannot build our world our way and create peace. We cannot create a world of peace on our own. It is just not part of our DNA. Over and over again, our race has tried to build a world of peace and over and over again it fails, what is the result: wars and rumors of wars.

What we believe is that when we focus on God and seek to do his will, then alone will we find peace, because in him is unity in his wisdom and grace. If we do not lay the foundation in peace then humans will accomplish great things but they will not create peace because we have a flaw that makes it impossible.

One of the greatest errors in our world happened in the 1930’s when then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain worked out a deal with Hitler to prevent war, that was in September 1938, less than 365 days later, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. Everyone believed they could create a perfectly peaceful world and instead the greatest war of the history of humanity happened. What was at the foundation of the war, the fundamental belief that humanity could build a perfect world. It has never happened and it never will happen unless we root ourselves in Christ.

Cardinal Sarah, an African, is warning the West that we are in the same spot that the Romans were at the fall of the Roman Empire. Remember, as an African he is looking at us from another perspective. However, what fell in Rome was a Christian structure that was shakily built upon a pagan foundation. Christianity was an evolutionary development in the Empire. What the west has now is a pagan structure that removed the foundation of the Christian, it is again on shaky grounds. The same shaky grounds on which 1938’s Munich Accord was built. They compromised with the pagan ideas coming out of the enlightenment because they promise peace.

Our faithfulness to Christ is a thorn in the side of the secularists who seek to build a world without God. However, it is a reminder that we are here when their world collapses again.

We cannot forget we are called to be signs of the truths that are Christ to a world that seeks what it cannot find, because it looks in the wrong places. It seeks from humanity what only divinity can provide.

We are the those called to remind people that Christ is the way, the truth and the life because that is our mission as Baptized Catholics. Those forces that reject Christ will do all they can to silence us and that is their current mission. Unfortunately, some of the bishops whom I also warned many years ago are lost and aloof to this.

You come to Church when the Catholic Church has suffered great pains. But notice something about the Church. Few remember that the Boston Globe reported numerous times that the abuse issue has always been at a lower percentage in the Catholic church than anywhere else. The Southern California school districts paid out one third of a billion dollars to settle lawsuits for the same issue since 2014. No one focuses on them or any other school district. One evangelical who is also an FBI agent declared that the Evangelical churches have a more serious issue with abuse than the Catholics. So why are they focused only on the Catholics? Their tactic is simple, taught by Saul Alinsky, if you want to silence the Church go after her sins. St. Paul warned that those trying to silence the Church would use the sins of her members to give them more ammunition. Let us not take any of that lightly.

There will come a time when all those who sought to silence the voice of Christ in the name of their demands to create their world their way will come close to their goal. It will be then as Jesus predicts, they will learn the truth and that they were on the wrong side against it, but it will be too late for them.

Until that time, our perseverance is an essential sign to the world that Christ is real, his teaching is true and our message to the world is urgent. Now is the time to lead all, especially those against us to embrace Christ and for us in unity to be signs that Christ is the way, the truth and the light.

 

Leading People to Encounter Christ

Today we see in the Gospel a story of conversion. Zacchaeus changes from living a sinful, money centered life to one that seeks to do the right thing. There is an important part of this story and if we miss it, we will do everything else people do in evangelization that turns the world off. We will focus on what he was doing and not how he changed.

What was he doing? He was extorting people, he was a miser and he made his god the money he gained by underhanded practices as a tax collector for the Roman Empire. I am sure the Romans would make it quite advantageous to be a tax collector. You realize it was an unpopular position within the Jewish community, especially if someone was Jewish. So, if the Romans wanted their taxes they would have to keep their tax collectors happy. What would make them happy? Make them rich.

Now, all of a sudden, Zacchaeus stops being the money hungry tax collector and instead becomes one who follows tax law and Jewish law and does what he is legally required to do. Notice by the way, he does not stop being a tax collector.

 

What brought this change of heart?

If you do not get this, and you want to evangelize others, you will only succeed in angering them. Ready???

He encountered Jesus.

 The best way to evangelize is to lead people to encounter Christ personally and intimately. That means to teach people to pray. Let Jesus do the conversion as He does here.

Cardinal Sarah in his latest book, which I highly recommend to you—I cannot emphasize how important that book is for our time—reminds us that we do not follow a system we follow a person and that person is Jesus Christ.

We encounter Him in prayer and understanding the Bible and in seeking Him in all we do. Once we encounter him, it is then we conform our lives, as Zacchaeus does because through Him, we begin to see ourselves and others differently and we change are way of living. Jesus, however, changes our self-understanding as we come to a deeper way of knowing Him.

Going back to the Gospel story, when Jesus encountered Zacchaeus, he was a crooked tax collector. We do not know what Jesus said to change his way at his dinner, but I am sure it was something that led him to understand himself in a new way. It was the encounter with Jesus that changes him.

St. John Chrysostom taught that it is through obedience to God a soul becomes filled with grace. A soul will obey God when it understands God is the source of its being. When it realizes God is leading the soul to the fullness of what He seeks it to be and that happens when the soul begins to know God.

I read a lot of material from secular sources of people who feel hated and despised by Christians including Catholics. What causes this, I realize is they learn that in order to know Christ they must live a moral life.

This is not what happens here. Zacchaeus encounters Christ and then He changes because his heart changed first.

You will find the same message written in a kind of code in the story of the Magi.

Once they encounter Christ they end up going home a different route. Matthew is teaching this is what happens. When we encounter Christ our life changes for good or for ill. Whose life changes for the bad? We may find that contradictory, however, the pharisees would not. They would say instead, this principle is true for they would be doing great until the Jesus came on the scene and tipped their applecart, literally in the terms of what He did outside the temple.

Many of us may remember the song Signs from our time growing up. It is not a Christian song at all. It is about a man who encounters one sign after another telling people things like if they trespass they will be shot, if they had long hair they would not be hired, etc., The song ends with the man fighting against all these signs and just sits down and prays. “Thank you Lord for thinking about me I am a alive and doing fine.”

If you want to evangelize you need to lead people to come to know Christ personally. Teach them to come to the Church and pray before the Blessed Sacrament and to believe in Christ.

You need to do this before you teach them any rules, because if they do this, they will ask you how to follow the rules. That is because the rules help us to deepen our relationship with Christ. If you teach them the rules first, what do they learn about Christ: rules.

It is kind of like when you go to a Catholic parish, not this one, you park your car and what do you see first? The beautiful architecture praising God and proclaiming his name? No. What you see first is:

No ballplaying

No skateboarding

No bike riding,

No overnight parking

No public parking

Why is that there? Because their insurance company is not in the evangelizing business.

The very reason for Jesus’ coming on the scene is for people to meet God face to face, to encounter Him.

Even if we tell people they are not ready to receive communion or not properly disposed. What we really say is when you come to communion encounter Christ on His terms and you will know him more. Do not encounter him on your terms or you will never understand your encounter. Again, it is not about rules first but about encountering Christ first.

That brings us to the rules.

The rules lead people to the path to encounter Christ more deeply. But if we teach them the rules first then they will not encounter him at all.

Let us teach people to encounter Christ taking Zacchaeus as our model and you will evangelize correctly because you will be taking Christ as your model.

Questions for discussion

at home or work:

 

1. Are there rules of the Church that you do not like?

 

2. What would you ask to Jesus about those specific rules? What would he respond? (Assume telling you not to obey them is not an option.)

 

Dr. Peter Kreeft, John's Gospel and Writing

Boston College philosophy professor Dr. Peter Kreeft is a prolific writer. He uses his Socratic writing skills to teach about how to come to know God and how to live as a Christian.

His latest book Probes: Deep Sea Diving into Saint John’s Gospel. (Ignatius) is written as a series of 1450 reflection questions to dive deeper into the message of the Gospel. The format is, actually, passages from John’s Gospel and then discussion questions that challenge one on all elements of faith and life in the world today. The intended audience is not any group exclusively, such as Catholics, but anyone interested in probing John’s Gospel including non-believers.

I spoke with Dr. Kreeft recently about Probes, his writing style, the Church and the unique format of his presentation of the Gospel of John.

Talking about your book Probes, I was fascinated by it, especially because it is not written like any other study on any other part of the Bible. Normally, one asks what led you to write this book, this is that question and more importantly what led you to write this book in the format you choose.

People often ask me questions like that and I can’t answer them. I don’t know where the inspiration came from. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I admire Socrates and the Socratic method and I write a lot of dialogue books where Socrates interviews the great philosophers. I have this habit of dividing my mind up into two halves each half asks the other questions and answers them. So, the method of question and answer I think is a good and natural method, especially from the Bible because it comes from the Rabbinic method which is similar to the Socratic method. Jesus participated in that at age of twelve in the temple. What was he doing there? He was asking and answering questions so I think it is quite appropriate.

I do not know if this had anything to do with it. It reminded me of some of the tests I had in college because it was all questions.

Yeah and the Bible tests us. Usually you look at it as a set of answers to puzzles, but equally a set of questions and we have to give the answer. The Epistle to the Hebrews says that the word of God is a sharp two edge sword piercing asunder the soul and the spirit (cf Hebrews 4:12). It actually questions you, when you read the bible right, that is when you read it as prayer. Reading and praying can be simultaneous. You don’t look at a dead picture hanging on the wall, you look at somebody looking at you from the other side of the window.

That is a great way to put it. I like that experience even in the fact of if you are looking at piece of art you are not just looking at just a dead picture you are looking at the whole communication of the person.

Unless the art is an icon and the icon in the orthodox theology mediates the actual presence and soul of the saint. So, there you are interacting indirectly with a person who is acting back on you. You are not just looking at it, you look along it.

One of the fascinating statements that you make on page 106 is: “Why do many feel threatened by great saints rather than great sinners?” I never thought of this, but now that is exactly what we see.

We obviously see it in Christ; people so threatened by him that they had to kill Him.

The Church is going through a hard time and we know some of the reasons for it but I also think there is a part that people feel threatened by the Church.

Of course, because the Church calls us to a higher ideal than we find comfortable. We like to sit on our laurels and take it easy and the Church keeps kicking us in the pants and says: “Get moving. God calls you to be a saint, you are along way from that yet.”

Something you wrote on page 135 describes miracles as an eyewitness account and what that means. It is done in the context of the previous question — interpretation is not the same as belief. So here you address the concerns of this discussion of many interpretations but then you say interpretation is not the same as belief.

Where are you going with that?

Well I am trying to counter a very common mistake that we make in reading, not just the Bible

 but in many other books too. The mistake is to interpret the book in accordance with our own beliefs and that is a confusion because the book comes from another person’s mind. You want to understand that mind before you decide whether to agree with it or not, to believe what it believes or to disbelieve what it believes. In order to decide whether to believe or not, you first of all have to understand it. Therefore, you have to interpret it according to the author’s mind not according to your mind.

Similarly when a Gospel writer says I was there I saw it happen and I heard these words being spoken you can’t interpret that symbolically as if he is only telling a story, a parable

When a Gospel writer says: “I was there. I saw it happen and I heard these words being spoken.” He tells us that, you can’t interpret that symbolically as if he is only telling a story, a parable.

As I was reading that, one of the thoughts I had is that this teaching plays a part in everything that has to do with people arguing over certain elements of doctrine.

Yes. Since the Church is the body of the Holy Spirit, if the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, when we deal with Church doctrine, we are not dealing with a personal abstract idea. We are talking about the mind of a person and, therefore, we have to interpret those words in the context of the knowledge of that person and all the rest of that person’s revelation to us — the person, of course, being God himself

Which is exactly your point with interpretation is not the same as belief.

Right first you read it, then you interpret it and then you decide whether to believe it. You cannot reverse that order.

I am here in Allston, Massachusetts and I have a Brazilian Community and the Brazilian Bishops are very much into the Bible. A few years ago, they had a financial drive to get the Bible into the hands of every Brazilian in the country. They also reserve September as the Bible study month and they offer one book to study. It just so happens that this month they are studying the Gospel of John. I found their work and their display of the Bible fascinating.

It seems the US Bishops are not as so focused. Obviously, they are a whole different group they are not the same.

I wonder if you feel that has any issue with respect to the culture or any source of that in the culture. Why would you think the Brazilian bishops are focused on the Bible this month where I don’t see that in the Americans.

I am not a sociologist and I cannot answer that as Brazil vs America but as an amateur theologian, I think that neglect of the Bible is inexcusable because here we have the very word of God — divine revelation. It is a touchstone for everything else. So instead of interpreting the Bible by anything else like our culture’s presupposition or our needs or your sincerely held but only personal beliefs, I think you have to interoll all other things by the Bible. Like Christ himself it claims to be the very word of God and if it isn’t, it is the world’s biggest fake and if it is, it is the absolute standard.

You write this book not just to Catholics but to anyone who wants to read it but you make it clear it does not matter if you are Catholic or not or if you even believe or not.

Right, Protestants and Catholics have at least the Bible in common. We disagree about the Church and the Church’s tradition but at least we have the Bible.

Thomas Aquinas says when you are arguing with someone else the first thing is to find out is what premises you share. So, for instance, he says that when you argue with Jews argue from the Old Testament and when you argue with Muslims argue from those passages in the Koran corroborated by the Bible and when you argue with pagans argue by natural reason.

You know I found the way you write this book, even though it is questions for discussion, you deal with just about every issue we deal with, not just in the Church but in the faith. For example, you address the issue of prosperity doctrine, you even address that Jesus calls God Father when in fact you mention that God has no gender. Maybe I should ask what led you to the different passages. As a writer myself, I am one of those seat of the pants writers. I write as I see it come together. Did you plan that out ahead of time?

Absolutely not. I don’t write that way. I don’t first of all identify a need and then write a book to fulfill that need. In this case, I find a great book, perhaps the greatest of all the books in the Bible and it just happens to cover these hot button issues and pretty much everything else that we need to know. That is why I address them. In other words, I don’t use the book as vehicle to go where I want to go. I am a passenger and I let the vehicle take me where it will.

So, you are almost as they call them a seat of the pants writer?

Yeah, I like to think it something like what the Jews call midrash — personal interpretation, intuitive interpretation of the book, trying to let the book speak through you.

What do you see is the greatest issue facing the Church today?

Same as it always was good vs evil, Christ vs Anti-Christ, light vs darkness. How to be a saint and how to combat the devil who does not want you to be a saint.

And what about the nation the United States?

Well in the Bible you don’t have a fundamentally double standard. The nation prospers when it is good and holy and individuals prosper when they are good or holy. So, the relation between the nation and God and relations between the individual and God, are obviously structurally differently but it is not ontologically different. It is the same God. So in so far as the nation would within its public and not private bounds and pluralistic and not singly religious identity in so far as that nation does God’s will, it will be blessed and as far as it doesn’t, it won’t. 

I think that is the main reason for the great decline in America today. If you read the Bible carefully, you find those basic principles reiterated over and over again. Obey my will and you will be blessed, disobey my will and you will be the opposite of blessed, cursed.

This usually comes up around Christmas, I always bring up that whenever you see first John the Baptist and then Jesus appear on the scene, imagine a big clock count down from forty to zero. I explain that forty years later the Romans are going to come in and destroy the temple and I think Masada happens a few years later. Do you see any similarities between that time and our current time?

That is a good question. No, because I don’t claim to have a crystal ball. We read the bible with Epimethean vision instead of Promethean vision that is we look back on things we know already happened rather than looking forward with the eyes of the prophet. No, I am not a prophet. All I know is that our future is open. There is free will. We can choose between good and evil and we can repent and convert and be blessed or we can continue to slide down the way of decadence into the garbage can.

Is this the first book in the series?

It is not a series I do not know if I am going to write another like it or not it is a one of kind as John’s Gospel is one of kind.

Dr Kreeft's Book Probes is available through Ignatius Press.

https://www.ignatius.com/Probes-P3367.aspx.

 

The Wide and Narrow Road

In Luke 13: 22–30 The Apostles ask Jesus who will be saved? The answer is a perennial one that has varying degrees of accuracy. 

There are those who will pronounce that few will be saved and there are those who will pronounce that virtually everyone will be saved. The most important answer, however, is the correct one which is somewhere in the middle.

One of the two inaccurate extremes can be found in the urban legend of a saint who went to Heaven and then returned to meet his friend only to tell him that out of the whole town only three people made it to Heaven. It is what is known as apocryphal literature and personal revelation and not required for belief. One must be careful with this literature because the obvious response can be, “well if only three people are saved out of the whole town, what are the chances of me being one of the three? Virtually none, so why waste my time seeking salvation.” That becomes a temptation to the sin of despair which is one of the sins against the Holy Spirit. Forget the story and don’t tell it. You do not want to be responsible for someone getting too discouraged to pursue the road to salvation.

The other extreme can be found in the story that when we die, Jesus appears to us and his grace is so overwhelming that it would be impossible not to convert right then and therefore virtually everyone is saved. That has absolutely no basis in Catholic teaching and even Jesus said that is not true when in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, he says that if they do not listen now, even if one should resurrect from the dead it would not change their hearts. That opens the door to the sin of presumption which also is a sin against the Holy Spirit. It leads one to think: “I assume that I am saved no matter what, so why do we need to have anything to do with God. Eat Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we will die and go to Heaven anyway.” Forget that story too.

So what is the actual answer.

 

Fr Paulo Ricardo Azevedo Jr. gives the best answer I know.

He says when you look carefully at this reading, Jesus never mentions numbers. What he says is “You choose the narrow road.”

So we have a call to live our faith, because it is part of our vocation. Remember, Jesus calls us to be his witnesses. Again, we do not earn our way to Heaven, we do his will. Our role is to witness to Christ so that He can work through us for the salvation of the many. Over and over again he calls us to live by a different standard so that we can testify to the risen Christ and that others will be saved. He warns us that if we are just like everyone else then we are basically useless to him, we are salt that lost its flavor or light hidden under a bushel basket.

This can bring us to a good discussion of Heaven and Hell. Who does go to Hell? The answer can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that those who remain obstinate in sin, who choose their own will over God’s consistently and to the end, they go to Hell. There is your answer.

Who goes to Heaven? Those who die in God’s grace and friendship. The reality is that if you seek Christ you will find Him.

One of the great errors that comes from the everyone goes to Hell crowd, is that our salvation is all on us. We have to work hard so that on the day of judgement God will let us into Heaven. Until that time, it is all on us.

That is false. They will tell you that if you commit a mortal sin, God abandons you and leaves you on your own. That is false too.

God does everything He can to see that you get into Heaven and the most obvious example is the second person of the trinity giving himself up to death that many may be saved. God does all he can that we can be saved.

Padre Pio taught that if we commit a mortal sin, God does distance himself from us, but leaves his angels to help us back to the right path. Part of that right path is the sacrament of penance which restores our union with God.

We are Catholics, therefore, we also believe in Purgatory, which is where those who are not yet ready are purified so that they can receive what they need to enter into Heaven. Anyone who enters purgatory leaves there a saint. God has the structure in place to ensure that we get to Heaven. If you find yourself walking down a path to sin, the best response is to begin to pray and God gives you everything you will need to get back to the path.

St. Alphonsus Liguori taught that those who pray are saved and those who don’t are not.

God and all the hosts of Heaven do all they can to ensure you have the grace to choose the road to salvation.

Therefore, those who go to Hell are those who hardened their heart against God obstinately refusing his grace to the very end.

Do they exist? Yes. The most obvious example are those who demand their world their way. They demand the Church their way and they teach you to join them.

Remember, after his resurrection, Jesus never returned to the pharisees. He never spoke to King Herod or the bad thief on the cross. Indeed, notice his form of condemnation — “I never knew you.”

These are the people filled with pride, obstinacy and a hardened heart.

Many of the people who promote the idea of universalism — we have a reasonable hope that all will be saved — are usually theologians who do not live in the real world where people encounter evil. So, they do not encounter it.

Those who live in the real world have usually had some form of experience with evil that many of those theologians do not. Robbers, drug dealers, extortionists, manipulators and so much more.

Meanwhile, those who seem to dance in celebration, in the offices of their so called ministries, at their belief that most people are going to Hell, do not seem to understand the mercy of God, but only his judgement. I do not hold much hope for them going to Heaven either, to be honest for God said, it is mercy I desire and not sacrifice.

We have a vocation and a duty to do all we can that the most hardened of sinner knows God’s mercy and call to repentance.

We need to testify to truths of Christ and His Church. God through his grace and his heavenly hosts gives us all the assistance we need to do his will and live the faith.

We live the narrow road of following Christ so that others may be saved.

Kanetsu [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

The Strength of Humility

Today’s first reading continues, as it does every Easter, through the Acts of the Apostles. Obviously, this teaches the early days of spreading the faith.

Today in the first reading we see an intensely significant moment in the early days of the Church. It is here that the faith is now seen as something to spread to the previously excluded gentiles throughout the world. If this moment did not happen, you would not be here.

St. John Chrysostom in the fourth century likened this moment to Jesus’ parable of the king who throws a banquet and the invited guests do not come, so he sends his messengers out to invite to the others.

There are several lessons here.

First, we must understand that God makes it clear in the Old Testament that his word does not return to him fruitless. His word will do what he sends it out to do. God is God and although it often appears that He works slowly, we who are human cannot overpower his intentions for his people. We pray for it everyday and it happens: His will be done.

Those who stand in the way of his will, will eventually either have to submit to it or be cast out.

 

We see this consistently in the Old Testament. Anytime the Hebrews turn from God either through discouragement, impatience or any other reason and after repeated attempts at conversion fail, he casts them out. This we see when other forces come and conquer the nation and taking the people hostage sending a clear message to the Hebrews that they have abandoned their God.

This happened in the eight century when the Assyrians conquered Israel and wiped it off the face of the map. The name of Israel as the name of the Jewish nation did not exist again after that moment until 71 years ago—a 2700 year difference. If you go to the Museum of Fine Arts, you can see what is mostly likely the statue of the god the Assyrians prayed to before they went out and overran the Israel.

Two hundred years later it happens again when the Babylonians overran the nation of Judah, which is the home of Jerusalem. They destroyed the temple and captured all the leaders of the Jews, dragging them into exile into Babylon, what today is Iraq. They were only restored after, what the Jews considered a miracle, forty years later when Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon, restored Jews to their homeland and helped them rebuild the Temple.

It happened other times finally not long after this passage in Acts when the Romans came in and again destroyed the Temple and eliminated the political entity called Judah.

Here we also see that God is now turning to the gentiles and bringing his message of mercy to them not through the Jews but despite them. This is not a message about Jews, it is a message about God and one that we need to listen to as well.

The movers and shakers of the Jews who refused to open their hearts to Christ and His holy spirit were left behind. Many of the rank and file Jews embraced the new Christian way. The Lord can do the same thing to us and maybe doing the same thing to us.

Anytime there is great strain happening among the people of God, it is the Lord’s way of getting their attention and calling them back. When they refuse, He has to let them go.

The most dangerous attitude for the people to have at that point is the worst sin one can commit. God forgives, but one must first repent. The worst sin in the Old Testament is idolatry, but the mother of all sins is the worst one we can commit and it is the easiest. It is pride.

This is the sin you see before you in the Gospel. Pride. Pride has only one solution: humility. The Apostles were able to spread the Gospel because they had humility and were able to be docile to grace. The leaders of the Jews were filled with obstinacy and refused to listen to the Apostles’ appreciate the miracles and more. They became so lost that the Lord had to bring the message of salvation to the gentiles without these leaders of the Jews.

When people ask about who goes to Hell, the answer is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It teaches that the obstinate heart is one the that goes to Hell. This is not just the sinner, but the one who refuses to repent. He won’t repent because how can he, he does not sin at least not in his own mind.

St. Teresa of Avila taught that with humility you can draw God into your heart by a thread. Humility is being docile to grace and it is the greatest virtue to pray for because it is the mother of all virtues. It is the port to salvation.

Pride is easy to fall into because you consider yourself greater than you actually are. Humility forces you to accept yourself as you truly are, but that is the door to holiness.

Imagine these fishermen who were disciples of Jesus coming before the Sanhedrin. Imagine one of our national news agencies covering the event. Who are they going to favor, obviously the educated men in the Sanhedrin and report dismissively of the fishermen going out and preaching about this person Jesus.

St. Paul, formerly working for the Sanhedrin could easily argue that everything the apostles are saying is true. However, I am sure the imagined coverage would lean in favor of the Sanhedrin, because they were the educated ones who appeared to know better.

 “Of course, who will win out in this dispute the educated Sanhedrin or the upstart fishermen led by an rebellious rabbi? We will keep you updated as this plays itself out. Reporting from Jerusalem—Jake Roberts St. Anthony News." 

It is the humble among them who will be most successful in their evangelization. It is the humble among us who will grow closer to Christ.

When pride moves in disaster happens. We are seeing that in the Church and the nation and the world today. However, the more we embrace humility and the more we pray for it, the more we grow closer, stronger and more powerful in Christ just as happened in the Acts of Apostles and throughout the history of the Church.

 

 

 

The Greatest Gift

 

Today, we celebrate the day that is the whole focus of who we are as Catholics. It is the resurrection of the Lord.

This day is so important that St. Paul warned that if Jesus did not resurrect from the dead, then we are wasting our time. Nothing we do as Catholics makes any sense outside the resurrection of the dead.

You may remember that I said on Good Friday that Jesus’ death without His resurrection makes him Socrates and no more. I said on Thursday that his death and His resurrection create a revolution of understanding of who God is and who we are. Nowhere else in history is there an understanding of God himself coming to save us from the effects of sin by giving his life that we could be saved.

However, here on this day, we see that Jesus resurrected and that simple reality changes everything.

Let me show you a great example: read the New Testament from Acts to Revelation and you will see that all of that is focused on how everything we come to know is changed once we understand the resurrection.

I want you to reflect on what that means.

Our Church has been in an intense struggle lately and let us look at these troubled times in light of the words of St. Teresa of Avila who taught it is a stupid idea that a road which ends with the greatest of all treasures would not be filled with difficulties and  dangerous obstacles. This means that there are forces outside and even inside of our Church that seek to take away from us the greatest treasure. 

When we look at the big picture, we can see that there is a tremendous force to get us to reject Christ and his promise of eternal life. Let’s take the story in Genesis. Then Pope Benedict XVI reminded us in 2011 that Genesis is not a mechanistic account of the creation of the world. Understanding that, we can see it is an account that there are forces of death that will do everything they can to convince you that there is no such thing as eternal life, but that God himself will overcome all those forces. This is what we celebrate today. We join with Christ and fight those forces every day in and out of the Church.

The point of today is to see the promise that there is eternal life and we can only experience the fullness of humanity when we pursue it.

 

It is possible that we as a Church took our eyes off the prize. We looked at the Church as an NGO or a social service agency and forgot our main focus is to help people pursue the greatest prize in their lives—eternal life in Christ.

We are not here as a branch of this or any other government, as the religious wing of any political party. We are not here to help people become more socially accepted. We are really not here to change the culture. We are here for one reason: to pursue our own journey to the eternal life Jesus’ resurrection promises to us who follow him and to lead others to understand, seek and find it as well.

One of the greatest tools of the devil is to get us to forget that and turn us into a social service agency or an NGO.

Science works in a rather simple way, one takes a theory and notices if the theory is true then certain things will happen and if the theory is false then others will happen.

I am reminded of a movie No Highway in the Sky starring Jimmy Stewart, which I saw on probably Dialing for Dollars when I was home sick from school one day. Stewart plays a man who sabotages a plane because he warned it was about to crash if it took off.  The authorities deciding that he was crazy arrested him. Low and behold when they repaired the plane and got it to fly again, the tail fell off as it taxied after landing from a test flight. He was not a terrorist or a psychic. He was a scientist and who knew the effects of metal fatigue on aircraft. His theory was that this plane had flown a certain number of hours that were beyond the ability of the metal to withstand and the tail would fall off. That is exactly what happened.

Either what we believe is true or it is not. If we assume it is not, which means there is no resurrection of the dead and there is no story from Genesis, then we can assume that we as human beings can create utopia. This is the theory of many of our idealistic political systems to say nothing of John Lennon’s Imagine which drives many atheistic political ideas. However, if we assume what we believe is true and there is original sin and there is a resurrection from the dead, then we can assume only in Christ can we find our destiny which is eternal life in Him. Further, if what some people say, that our church is loaded with corruption is true then how much more corrupt will be those institutions that are built on the belief they are filled with people capable of building a perfect world if humanity in fact cannot?

You may or may not know that I hate to fly. I am not afraid, but I hate it. So, I avoid flying at all possible costs as I would avoid a root canal. The rare times I fly, I check luggage if I have any and just take my backpack on board. I leave it under the seat in front of me and ride with all I need to get through my experience on the flying tube of torture called an airplane. I noticed that by doing that, I don’t end up in the overhead bin lottery where people vie to be the first on the plane so they can pack their bags in the overhead bin. After a certain point, it becomes a real contest to find space. Losers in the lottery have to check their luggage.

We are focused on the next the life through the resurrection of the Christ. That is why our main focus is in serving the less fortunate, the marginalized, the rejected because like those who lose the overhead bin lottery, they too find themselves on the outs with what is left. We invite them to join our experience of focusing on Christ, and let the rest fight it out for the little this life can offer them. We do what we can to please Christ for he gives us what nothing on this earth can promise, the greatest of all treasures—the fullness of our humanity through eternal life.

Now is the time for us to get back to the original message. Our Church is not about political parties, political alliances, alt left and alt right biases. It is about one thing, which is being the door to eternal life which can only be found in Christ and which Christ alone offers us. During this year, especially as we look forward to a rather stormy primary season next year, let us remember one thing. If we are not focused on our journey to the resurrection, if we are not leading others to Christ then we are in the wrong business and all our endeavors will fail.

We must seek only one thing, holiness in Christ and let those who listen to false voices that teach there is no resurrection, there is no eternal life and Jesus did not resurrect from the dead, fight it out among themselves for what is left.

We carry within ourselves the message of Christ who leads us to the resurrection of the dead and the fullness of humanity and only in Christ will we find it, but further no one can take it away from us no matter who or what they are.

 

Photo Credit: Nikolay Koshelev The Harrowing of Hell, via Wikimedia.org, public domain

 

 

 

 

A Healing Parish

Today’s gospel is the famous parable of the Prodigal Son. Like many of these popular parables, it is often misinterpreted or simplified. So, the deeper message is lost.

In order to understand it, we need to know that many will tell you the story has three characters—it actually has four. We will address the fourth in a few minutes.

We know the basics of the story—the younger son demands his inheritance and goes off by himself to live a bohemian lifestyle.

In the process, he flies through his money in partying and loose women until he has nothing.

It reminds me of Willie Nelson’s famous song: If you have the money honey, I have the time. When you run short of money, I run short of time.

This is what happens to him. But look more closely. He is working with pigs and does not even have enough money to buy food. That means he has been rejected completely by his jewish community, because he is living with gentiles. Jews have nothing to do with pigs. Notice, he cannot even buy food for himself and no one cares about him. It is possible that he is homeless and living with the pigs because he has nothing else.

This means that he has been rejected by everyone.

Fr. Rufus Pereira used to teach that the greatest pain we may suffer is abandonment. Hence why Jesus says on the cross: “My God, my God why have you abandoned me.”

This man is completely abandoned by everyone. The one who had the whole world in his hands, through his money, is now abandoned and forgotten and nobody cared.

 

                Now he returns to his Father’s home just to live as a hired hand. Imagine, he is in gentile territory and returns to Jewish territory. How many farms did he pass by on the way, he could not have hired himself out to any one of them? Obviously, not.  Remember, whatever job he had, whatever he paid, it would have paid more than he had at that time. However, he had been abandoned by everyone.

He is the guy who is hated, rejected, chased off. The one you see sleeping on the Boston Common alone and everyone chases him off their property. He is no more than a thing to get rid of like bugs.

When he returns to his father’s home. His father alone sees him as his son.

Remember, I told you that there were four characters. The fourth is one of the servants who stirs the pot with the older son. He tells him that the Father is celebrating his return in a way that makes the older son angry. This means that even the servants at his father’s farm did not want to see him back either. But the Father alone sees in him what no one else can see. The son he loves. They see nothing else. He sees right into his soul and sees a humbled, repentant man who learned a painful lesson. He experienced the worst of all pain being abandoned by everyone. He is repentant and asks for help.

Now, here is the next step. We know that this is how Our Father in Heaven looks at every repentant sinner. No matter what he or she has done. But just as the father in the parable tries to instruct the other son to understand his mercy, so God tries to instruct us to understand his mercy as well.

When the repentant sinner walks through that door, he must be welcomed into the community. Because if we are channels of God’s grace, we will not only be a welcoming parish but a healing parish. This does not mean we are naïve. However, that is the point. When people are in trouble, where do they come? They come to the Church, because that is where they find the Father. You and I are His representatives. He calls us to have His vision.

We need to discern from the repentant sinner, to the manipulative one who wants to take advantage of us, that is why we have to be cautious or we’d welcome the prodigal son in his selfish, unrepentant, manipulative stage. Remember, all of us need the mercy of God. We can only find it if we are repentant. We need to extend the mercy of God to the repentant as well. When we do, we become channels of God’s healing mercy. That is what we are all about.

We need to understand that people may enter that door looking for the mercy of God and they must find it in our parish. The more we seek to be a holy community, the stronger and more healing this parish will be. The more we risk the most broken people to come to this parish, because they realized that they need God’s mercy, the more powerful this parish becomes.

This parable not only reminds us that God’s mercy is ours even if we are not as bad as the prodigal son, but that the prodigal son or daughter may be present in this parish right now and we need to be representatives of God’s mercy to him/her.

Remember, every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

The world has no concept of this and because of it, those in the world will end up eating themselves. They do not believe in forgiveness only justice. Forgiveness without justice is naiveté, but justice without forgiveness is tyranny.

Every Catholic parish must be a place that can properly balance justice and mercy to a point that we become channels of God’s healing power. We can only come to that point by being people who seek holiness. The more we seek holiness, the more we become channels of God’s healing love. That is our call that each of us has so that every repentant sinner who walks through that door finds the healing love and mercy they need because we become, as a parish, channels of God’s mercy.

 

 

Bear Fruit for the Kingdom

 

Today's Gospel is somewhat puzzling and, therefore, challenging. First, we have Jesus warning people if they do not repent, then they will also perish. But will not all people in fact perish? I am reminded of the joke about the priest who began his homily by saying that everyone in this parish will one day die. One man in the back of the church began to laugh. The priest called out to him and asked him why he was laughing. “Because,” he responded. “I am not from this parish.”

So, Jesus says that if they do not repent, then they will perish. But if they do repent, they will perish, so what does he mean here?

 

The answer may be found in the parable that follows and it also gives us an important lesson.

 

The tree was not bearing fruit. Why? Because it was not fully alive. Something was wrong and, ultimately, it was dying because a tree that does not bear fruit is dying.

 

He gives the tree more time after he cares more for it. He does all he can to make sure the tree bears fruit, giving it three years.

 

He does what he can to make it more alive. Notice if it is an apple tree, it will not just bear apples, it will grow more healthy leaves, limbs and seeds. It will be stronger, healthier, and more alive.

 

Catholicism is not just about doing the right thing, it is about being fully alive. We can only be fully alive if we are in Christ, because he is the source of our life.

 

If we fill ourselves with anything else, we may appear alive, but, we may actually be closer to being half dead. That is because we are not following the right path to being fully alive.

 

Following the right path, may not mean living a pristine life. It means actually more relying on Jesus and bringing our lives closer to him every moment.

 

It means to take risks in the name of our faith and to live in such a way that others are attracted to our faith.

 

One exercise I teach confirmation students is from St. John Bosco who was greatly involved with youth. He used to teach them do what you want, just don’t sin.

 

So, I would ask the confirmation students to give a list of things they can do that are not sins. I am always amazed by the answers:

Brush your teeth, do your homework, go to school.

I always explain that this is a bad list for the list of things you can do—and not sin—is huge.

 

Skydiving, at which I suggest that they have someone take them to watch the skydivers at Jumptown in Orange Massachusetts.

 

Mountain climbing at which I remind them that Pior Giorgi, who is a blessed, was a young Italian Mountain Climber. He also was a pool hustler. He would play someone in pool and wager that if he won then his opponent would join him in a holy hour.

 

Guido Schäffer was a surfer, but he was also a doctor and would care for the homeless, especially those near Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro. He had money, so he would do it for free.

 

Dorothy Day was a journalist and a writer.

 

If they had something in common, it was each of them had a deep relationship with Christ and allowed that relationship to affect every aspect of their being.

 

St. Paul tells us to do all for Christ. When we do that, we become dynamic people who lead others to know Christ. That is despite the fact that we are sinners, so we have confession which is to help us turn from sin so that we may grow in grace and bear fruit for the kingdom.

 

When the Vatican is studying whether someone should be a saint, the investigators always check to see if the person had a sense of humor. Not having a sense of humor is a sign that one did not reach heroic sanctity. It does not mean that they are in Hell, but they are not model saints.

 

The opposite is also true. Occasionally, you meet someone who takes themselves so seriously, they grow into great despair when they sin. The Saints always warned against this explaining that such attitude is a sign of pride.

 

            As we see in the parable—through confession, we trust in the Lord to help us in grow in grace and in doing His will. We grow in our ability to bear fruit. We trust in him to convert us more and more daily and help us continue. We trust in his mercy and his grace.

 

So, our call as Christians is to bear fruit by becoming fully human and fully alive. (St. Irenaeus). Like the tree that becomes more alive, a good Catholic is not morose, but alive in the knowledge that he is living in Christ, surrounded by his grace.

 

Those destined to perish were dying because they sought life where it could not be found. Christ calls us to the fullness of life which can only come when we allow Him daily to transform us and make us more holy and alive through our cooperation with his grace.

 

The final note here is that often you hear about the need to remain in a state of grace to ensure that you go to Heaven. However, that is an individualistic understanding that is a misunderstanding of Catholic teaching. We need to remain in a state of grace that we may bear fruit for the kingdom as we journey to heaven.

 

If our sole focus is to make sure we are in a state of grace that we may go to Heaven, we miss the point of the need to bear fruit. We become like the tree that looks alive but never bears fruit. We need to remain in a state of grace not only to journey to Heaven, but also to make sure others get there as well.