Homily 25th Sun O.T. Year A–The Vineyard of the Mass

This weekend, we celebrate Catechetical Sunday, a time we take every year to thank those who have dedicated themselves so generously to the immensely important role in the Church of catechesis, of facilitating a deep relationship with Christ, and of handing on faithfully Catholic teaching and practice. In 1979, Pope Blessed John Paul II published a document on catechesis titled Catechesi Tradendae, or On Catechesis in Our Time. In the last chapter of the document the Holy Father wanted to “sow courage, hope, and enthusiasm abundantly in the hearts of all those many diverse people who are in charge of religious instruction and training for life in keeping with the Gospel.” Today I personally thank all of you who are involved in this great work and I will give a special blessing to you at this Mass, after the petitions. I also want to join my sentiments with those expressed by Blessed John Paul II in that document:

“I am anxious to give thanks,” he said, “in the Church’s name to all of you, lay teachers of catechesis in the parishes, the men and the still more numerous women… who are devoting yourselves to the religious education of many generations. Your work is often lowly and hidden but it is carried out with ardent and generous zeal, and it is an eminent form of the lay apostolate, a form that is particularly important where for various reasons children and young people do not receive suitable religious training in the home. How many of us have received from people like you our first notions of catechism and our preparation for the sacrament of penance, for our first communion and confirmation!... I encourage you to continue your collaboration for the life of the Church.”

One very important role of the catechist that we all will benefit from throughout the coming weeks is helping the parish to grow into a deeper reception, participation, and understanding of the Holy Mass. As many of you have seen in the Record and in our bulletin inserts, the Church in the English-speaking countries of the world, is preparing to receive a new translation of the Roman Missal, or the “Sacramentary”: this being the book that the priest uses at the chair and the altar to pray the prayers of the Mass. A few of our catechists and those involved in planning the worship of our three parishes will be introducing some of the prominent changes in brief 3-5 minutes talks before Mass each weekend until Nov 27, the first Sunday of Advent, when the new Missal will be implemented.

I ask that everyone please try to come a few minutes early for the next several weeks so that you can benefit from these talks. One of the mistakes of the implementation of the Novus Ordo, the new order of Mass that came out of Vatican II, was that very little preparation and catechesis was done. In some parishes people heard Mass said in Latin one weekend only to come to Mass the following weekend and hear it all of a sudden in English and see it celebrated in strikingly new and different ways. This sudden change from one form of the Mass to another was a grave injustice. Many Catholics, understandably so, were offended and embittered by the way the “New Mass” was implemented and carried out. We Do Not want to repeat that mistake. Although the changes of this upcoming revised and corrected translation will not be as startling as the introduction of English and new practices were back then, we still want to do all we can to teach and to prepare you to receive deeply what truly is a great gift and grace to our Church: a translation of the Mass that brings out more profoundly the depth and the richness of our prayer and our faith. I wholeheartedly support and embrace the new Missal that is coming. I am truly excited about it and cannot wait to use it to celebrate Mass with you! In my own role as a catechist, I will be giving a few of these short talks also as well as giving a couple of evening conferences that you all are invited too. See the bulletin for the dates of those.

While I am enthusiastic about all of this, I realize too that change can be hard. Although I haven’t heard any grumbling from you all, perhaps you have from your family or friends. Maybe you could share the following points with them.

Often, when what we are used too gets shaken up, anger is our first reaction. Our Gospel reading today addresses this very thing; it shows us that God’s generosity doesn’t have to conform to our expectations. In the parable we heard, our Lord describes how a landowner hired some workers at the beginning of the day, about 6am, to work in his vineyard. Then he continued to go out throughout the day calling others to work in his vineyard – some at 9am, some at noon, some at 3pm, and still finally, some at 5pm. What St. Matthew doesn’t tell us though is that according to the Law, a day’s wage must be given before 6pm. So we see that the workers who were hired at 5pm only worked an hour and yet still received the same amount of pay as those who had been working since 6am that morning! This story sounds very odd doesn’t it? It sounds as if our Lord is advocating injustice or unfairness.

Some of those who have criticized the new Missal have concluded the same thing. They have said that the Church is being unjust or unfair in expecting the people to change the words they have used for 40 years in beloved prayers like the Gloria and the Nicene Creed. “Why can’t the Church leave well enough alone?” they say. But, they are missing a very important point, the point made by the prophet Isaiah in our first reading: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”

Often – and this new Missal is only one of many examples – we try to make God conform to our plan, our thoughts, our ways, instead of conforming ourselves to his. Our responsorial psalm teaches us the proper attitude we should have. We should rejoice when we are able to behold the great generosity of God, even when it comes in a way that we do not expect or would not have chosen ourselves. “Great is the Lord and highly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable… The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.”

After the first-comers complained, the landowner soon asked them, “Are you envious”? The underlying Greek of this passage literally means “Is your eye evil?” We must not have an evil eye toward one another or toward the Church, because an evil eye sees evil where there is only good. God is incapable of injustice. As our responsorial psalm told us, “the Lord is just in all his ways and holy in all his works.” It’s not that God is blind to the fact that the new Missal will change some of the phrases that we hold so dear and in ways we may not have expected or preferred. The point is that his generosity is never restricted by our measures and expectations. This new Missal truly is an example of this immense generosity toward us. St. Augustine taught the famous Latin maxim: lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of prayer is the law of belief, meaning that the way we pray is affected by what we believe and it in turn informs our belief. Whenever we can grow toward a truer worship, a constant endeavor of the Church throughout the ages, then we can grow in Faith. And Faith, along with Hope, and Love, are God’s greatest gifts.

The Mass is the vineyard that we are being called to work in and for. Listen to these inspiring words of our late Holy Father… “This is the vineyard, this is the field.” There is no better opportunity, we have the graces necessary now, here, to be coworkers in the vineyard, to grow closer to Christ and bring others to him. No one should cross our path in this life and be able to say that he wasn’t encouraged to love Christ and His Church more. Not one of our coworkers, not one of our classmates, not one of our relatives, not one of our friends should reach the dawn of his life and say that no one showed him genuine sacrificial love. Do not be afraid! Do not be afraid to “Go you also into the vineyard”!

Every one of us has our own unique role in bringing each other closer to the Mass, not just our catechists. Our children can listen carefully to the instruction they receive at school and be a good example to their friends in how to behave at Mass. In our upcoming server training, we will improve upon the already excellent job that our servers are doing so that they can serve in a way that coincides with the dignity of the Mass that will come out in new and deeper ways in the prayers. Our adults too, especially the parents of the children to be baptized today, have a responsibility to lead their families; the elderly and homebound can pray for us; etc.

St. Gregory said, “The people who really work for him… are those who are anxious to win souls and bring others to the vineyard” or as our Gospel calls it, “the kingdom of heaven.” The Mass is a taste of the kingdom of heaven on earth. There is no greater thing to work for. Although it us ultimately the work of God, if we work hard to receive it and understand it well then we will be repaid for our effort with God’s own divine life: the greatest un-expectation.

Homily, 17th Sun O.T., Year A–Christ, My True Treasure

For the last few Sundays, we have heard Jesus use several parables in order to describe the Kingdom of God and how the message of His Kingdom should be received. Today we have heard the final ones that Jesus will use, at least for now. This message is arguably Jesus’ most important message, the message he was sent by the Father to proclaim. In the whole New Testament, the phrase “Kingdom of God” occurs 122 times and 90 of these are from Jesus Himself (Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth I, 47). Whenever Jesus speaks of the Kingdom then, we should listen up. “Whoever has ears ought to hear” (Mt 13:43).

In these parables, Jesus used everyday language and images familiar to his audience to reveal deep truths about the Kingdom of God. Do you remember some of these parables? First he described our souls which can be more or less receptive of the word of the Kingdom just like soil can be more or less receptive of the seeds that the farmer sows. Then Jesus explained that the Kingdom, as it is manifest on earth, is made up of both good and bad people who will only completely be divided on the last day, just like wheat and weeds that grow together until the final harvest. Next Jesus showed the power that a seemingly small and insignificant message can really have, just like the tiny mustard seed that can grow into the size of a tree, or the tiny amount of yeast that can make many, many pounds of dough rise. Finally, the kingdom of God is priceless like hidden treasure, beautiful like the most valuable pearl, all-encompassing like a fisherman’s net, and timeless like the mysteries shrouded in the Old Testament and fully revealed in the New.

For me, the two short parables of the hidden treasure and the valuable pearl, hit closest to home. These parables describe how I ultimately came to be a priest. But it all goes back to a Protestant girl – yes, a Protestant girl put me on the road to the priesthood! Up until my senior year in college, ’01-’02, I had been a lukewarm Catholic at best. I knew what the Church taught, but I didn’t know why, and it didn’t even dawn on me to care. I was completely happy with a very superficial, shallow Catholic faith. I never knew or imaged what a deeper Catholicism even was. I was blissfully ignorant. For all I knew, I was a good, normal Catholic. It’s not that I rejected a more profound living-out of my faith, I just simply never heard of it.

At the beginning of my senior year I started dating a girl who was Christian, but non-denominational. The longer we dated, the more she got to know me and my family, and soon she began to ask me questions about my faith that no one had ever asked me before and that I had never asked myself before; like “Why do you go to confession to a priest? Why do you have statues in Church? Why do Catholics pray the rosary? Why does the priest put a piece of the host in the chalice at Mass?”…. wait… He does what!? I never even noticed that! At the height of my lukewarm-ness, I could only answer, “Pfff, I dunno, that’s just what they told us!” I had no idea why I did what I did, why my fellow parishioners did what they did, or why I was who I was. She helped me to realize how utterly clueless I was about even the basic elements of being a Catholic.

In order to feel less lame, I got on the Internet to try to find the answers to her questions. But, I was a treasure-hunter without a map and stumbled on many websites that only complicated my search further – sites from people attacking Catholicism, sites from Catholics attacking themselves, and sites from Catholics who thought they knew what they were talking about but didn’t. Finally through much trial and error I came upon a few that were very clear, faithful to Church teaching, easy to read, and very helpful. Two I remember the most are the website for the Catholic channel, ewtn.com, and the website for Catholic Answers, catholic.com.

When I finally found the Truth, I felt like I was living both of today’s parables at the same time. In the parable of the hidden treasure, the man who finds it stumbles upon it by accident. In early Palestine there were constant wars and pillages. We can imagine that it would be fairly common for a man to be tilling his garden and unearth treasure that had been stolen and buried for safekeeping decades before him. But, according to the laws then, “Finder’s Keepers” did not apply. If someone found treasure on a piece of land that wasn’t his, he had to buy the land in order to keep it. For the man in our parable, even though it was an accidental find, he spared no expense in acquiring the land where he found the treasure. It cost him dearly, but it was a sacrifice that was worth making.

In the parable of the valuable pearl, rather than dealing with a treasure accidentally found, this is a true treasure-hunt. Here the pearl merchant is on the lookout for the most valuable pearl he can find. He knows it’s out there, he’s been looking everywhere for it, he would give anything for it, he must find it. When he finally does, nothing else matters, and he sells all that he has in order to buy it.

I, no doubt, was told at one point or another why we believe what we believe – I distinctly remember having a good Catholic education. But this time I was listening with ears that wanted to hear, and eyes that wanted to see. I discovered, for what felt like the very first time, why we go to Mass, what the Mass means, what… rather Who… the Eucharist is, why we go to confession to a priest, why we pray the rosary, what statues mean and so much more. I discovered why I had gone to Catholic schools all those years, why our family went to Mass every Sunday, what we did there every Sunday, what the priest did, what GOD did, every Sunday. I discovered why I made the Sign of the Cross all the time, why my dad taught my brothers and I the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Angel of God, and other prayers. It all came together for the first time. My mind was flooded with all new vistas of the Catholic faith that I had never imagined. I felt fully alive. I had indeed stumbled upon a hidden treasure, a hidden treasure that was in plain sight. At the end of the day, this treasure wasn’t a set of teachings though, or a set of well-worded answers, it was a person: Jesus Christ, who called me to see and hear and chose me to reveal himself too more deeply, through His Church.

Because this treasure was really Him, I felt at the same time like the pearl merchant, searching more and more for the Truth. I kept reading more and more, devouring everything I could find that explained or defended the many doctrines and values of Catholicism. This search for more and more of the Truth changed my life… it had to change if I was going to have any integrity at all, if I was going to try to live up to the faith I was given. Great and beautiful treasures come at a great price. My relationship with my Protestant girlfriend didn’t work out; several of my friends rejected me for my newfound life as a faithful Catholic trying to actually be Catholic; I gave up a relatively high-paying job as a software developer for an investment firm in downtown Louisville…

The cost and the sacrifice have been more than worth it! The Truth doesn’t bind you up. It not only sets you free, it makes you free. Those sacrifices gave me meaning and purpose and direction in life. I came to know Christ and His Church for what seemed like the first time. I had someone and something to fight for, to live for, to die for. I had a challenge I could face and work hard for. I had someone and something to love. The more I learned about Christ’s actions in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Confession, the more I fell in love with those and the more I began to imagine what it would be like if I was celebrating Mass or hearing confessions. Christ’s Holy Priesthood was the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price.

I don’t tell you all of this because I’m perfect or anything like that – I have ducked, dodged, and sabotaged God throughout the treasure-hunt that has been my vocation and discernment. I tell you all of this as a witness, as someone who can say that this is really true, that when you make Christ the treasure of your life, the most valuable pearl worth searching for, then he will help you make the sacrifices that are required. St. Teresa of Avila assures us in her famous work, the Way of Perfection, “God never fails to help someone who decides to leave all things for his sake” (Navarre, note Mt 13:44-52). And St. Bernard describes beautifully how Christ is like no other treasure, “He is always new, and constantly renews the soul; he never grows old because he will never fade away” (ibid.). We cannot say that about any other treasure, even our most valued relationships. Christ must be our treasure if we are to be truly happy. Perhaps you may find that when you stumble upon him and make sacrifices to bring him into your life that it was actually he who was searching and longing for you the whole time. You are his pearl, a pearl so valuable that he gave everything, even his own life, to make you his own. What will you give for him?

Homily 16th Sun O.T., Year A–Unity and Uniformity

Since I’ve been ordained, and especially now as we approach a new school year, I’ve been reflecting on my years of seminary from an outside perspective. It is clearer to me now how the gravity of our mission there, to be formed into priests of Jesus Christ, sometimes caused us to over-emphasize certain things, or to make too much of things. For example, I could have been on time for Morning Prayer for 30 days in a row, but being late on the 31^st day would be the one everyone noticed the most. Or… everyone on my side of the chapel would be reciting their part of the psalms of Morning Prayer in perfect unison, but it would be that one guy who read too fast that would most catch our attention. This type of perfectionism was not very helpful.

Perfectionism can creep into a parish also, on both of our parts. For me, in my first months of priesthood, as I am growing as a celebrant and wanting to pray the Mass exactly as it is given by the Church; sometimes it is the one missed word or messed up gesture that sticks out in my mind the most. On the other hand, it wasn’t too long ago when I was in your seat noticing the one family who came in late or the one who left early. This type of perfectionism isn’t helpful either. What is most helpful I think is for us to distinguish between two things: unity and uniformity.

There is a big difference between the two. Unity is more internal, uniformity is more external. Unity comes from above and is a gift from God; it is something that we cannot ultimately make ourselves. Uniformity is something we can make ourselves when we get everything looking the same. We should be more concerned with unity than uniformity

For example, at the seminary, on a rare day we may have all been reciting the psalms in perfect unison, in perfect uniformity, but with a far from perfect unity – one guy may have been meditating carefully upon each stanza as he read it, while another, though keeping pace, was miles away in his head thinking about the paper he still had to turn in while the words ran mindlessly from his mouth. Again, unity is a much deeper, more profound reality than uniformity. Uniformity is when we are all doing the same thing at the same time. But true unity is when God gives us the grace to be one in our hearts and minds.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a man who sowed good seeds of wheat in his field. But, the man’s enemy crept into the field and later sowed weeds among the wheat. The type of weeds the evangelist has in mind is a type that looks exactly like the wheat but if eaten is toxic to humans and animals. It can only be distinguished from the wheat once they are both fully mature – then the farmer who knows his fields like the back of his hand is able to tell the slightly smaller and more slender ear of the weeds from the taller and more healthy ear of the wheat. When the farmer’s servants learn about the weeds they become concerned with the uniformity of things and they ask if he wants them to pull up the weeds. But the farmer, who is more concerned with unity, forbids them, because the servants don’t have the close eye that he has – they may accidentally reach for and pull the wheat thinking it is the weeds. This is where we get the common phrase, “Taking the good with the bad.” The farmer is concerned with the unity of the wheat and its inner integrity – the wheat should not be pulled as if it was a weed to be discarded. The two should be allowed to grow together until the very end when the taller ears of wheat can be harvested together, cut near the head, leaving only the smaller weeds behind. It is then that the weeds can finally be pulled and cast into the fire.

In our nearest, most visible experience, the kingdom of God, the field of seeds, is the Catholic Church with God as the farmer and us as the wheat. The devil is the enemy, and those who come from him, those who do evil, are the weeds. The field, the Church overall, is good, but it endures the harsh reality of being made up of some members that are good and others that are bad. Even though the devil was defeated once and for all by Christ’s Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, his victory will not be completely manifested until the end of time when Christ comes again in glory. Until then, God allows those who do evil to live and work alongside those who do good according to his larger plan. But, when the last day comes, the Son of Man must present a perfect kingdom to his Father. Then Christ will execute his judgment through his angels who will gather together like a harvest those who are in sin and are doing evil deeds and give them the reward they have earned and have shown they have wanted: an eternity of pain that comes from being in the darkness of separation from God. This is where we get the popular image of the Grim Reaper – the angel who reaps what we have sown. On the other hand, those who are in a state of grace and have led lives of good works of faith will shine as bright as the sun in the Kingdom of the Father.

What should we do then between now and the last day, whose timing only God the Father knows? What does this parable mean for us? I think it reveals the lesson that we should concern ourselves more with the deeper reality of unity, like the farmer, than with superficial uniformity, like the servants. One way that we can do this is by looking at our personal lives, our families, our groups of friends, our parish, and our Church in general and embracing only what is true, good, and beautiful. Like unity – truth, goodness, and beauty come from God and if we can carefully discern what these are and live our lives according to them then we will be responding to the grace and the call to unity and we will truly be unified.

The Catholic Church is one of the finest handmaidens of the gifts of goodness, truth, and beauty. But how can we make our part of the kingdom truly unified by these gifts if we reject them elsewhere? If we consume the toxic weeds of lies, distortions, slander, gossip, and deceits of the world then it will be hard for us to be unified by the often challenging Truth of Catholic teaching. And so we can all uniformly recite the creed but in our hearts not really believe everything we are professing. If we consume the toxic weeds of accepting certain behaviors or lifestyles of the world then we will begin to demand that the Church conform to the world, rather than the world conform to the Church. And so we hear people often challenging the Church to accept as Good the world’s definition of marriage, divorce, contraception, etc. If we consume the toxic weeds of things that are ugly – praising architecture, music, artwork, or prose that lacks any objective standard, depth of meaning, or historical continuity – then it will be hard for us to accept true Beauty in the Church and we become satisfied with lower forms of architecture, music, artwork, or prose that take away our Catholic identity.

The devil wants us to be concerned merely with uniformity – as long as we busy ourselves with saying the same things or looking the same way then to him we’re all right, because we’ll be distracted from the deeper values that affect true Christian unity. The devil wants us to uniformly sell the farm on trivial things. To combat this, we need to help each other discern what is really True, Good, and Beautiful in every area of our lives and only accept those things rather than their distortions. In our world, sometimes it is hard to discern the difference between the wheat and the weeds. But the more we tell the truth, choose and do good works and value what is beautiful deep-down, the easier it will be to discern them and be united by them.

We have to let ourselves be formed by them. When you commit yourself to no more white-lies at work or to only telling the truth to your spouse then you become a truthful person and the truths the Church professes become more acceptable. When you commit yourself to only acting like a gentleman or a lady when you’re out with your friends or doing good deeds for others on your day off, then goodness becomes part of your lifestyle and the morals that the Church upholds you will want to instill in your family or the world around you. When you read Scripture, spiritual works from faithful authors, or classic novels; watch movies that are well-written and with a positive message; or listen to music of true quality, meaning, and talent, then you can appreciate the beauty of manifestly Catholic architecture, sacred hymns, religious artwork, and quality appointments and vestments – even in a small country parish.

Be formed by what is True and you will be truthful. Be formed by what is Good and you will be good. Be formed by what is Beautiful and you will be beautiful. Accept only these and your family, your circle of friends, your workplace, and our parish will in turn be True, Good, and Beautiful. And we will be truly Unified by God. Yes, the false, evil, and ugly will grow up right along with us. But if we concentrate on forming ourselves for true inner unity rather than be distracted by mere superficial uniformity then we will have nothing to fear. We will come to full stature in Christ. We will become the acceptable sacrifice in his hands, for the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of all his Church.

Homily 15th Sun O.T., Year A–The Soul of Fruitful Soil

I’m very glad to be with you all today to celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving for my Ordination to the Priesthood and to thank you all for your prayers and support and for helping to form me into the man I am today. I feel like I should briefly explain why I am a priest of the Archdiocese of Louisville rather than the Diocese of Owensboro! I grew up in this parish and my mother Jan was one of my teachers at Blessed Mother school. I then went to Catholic Middle and Catholic High and after going to Lindsey Wilson College I got a job in Louisville as a software developer for an investment firm. That job, which I had for about 3 years, is what brought me to Louisville and it was during that period that I discerned that God was calling me to be a priest. I felt like he had led me to Louisville and that I was called to serve the people of the Archdiocese of Louisville. But, every time I use the word “home”, I still think of Owensboro. I love this diocese and this parish and will always look forward to the opportunities to visit. Besides, we gave you one of our priests as your new bishop so I’ll probably be made pastor of 4 or 5 parishes one day because of that so we’re even!

Shortly after I entered seminary at St. Mary’s in Baltimore in 2005, one of the first steps toward being ordained was being Instituted a Lector, or being made an “official” reader in the Church. After that we were Instituted as Acolytes or “official servers” and then as Candidates, professing publicly our intent to be ordained. In our preparation for receiving the Ministry of Lector, I remember well that our first reading today from the prophet Isaiah was the reading that we had to practice over and over: “Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth…”

When each one of us were instituted as lectors we knelt before the bishop who placed a Bible in our hands and said, “Take this book of Holy Scripture and be faithful in handing on the Word of God, so that it may grow strong in the hearts of His people. Amen.” I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed at that point. It is God who plants his word in our hearts, like a sower of seeds, and I was to be an instrument of that planting.

In a sense, we all received this ministry at our Baptism. After we were Baptized, the priest made a sign of the cross on the crown of our heads with the Sacred Chrism saying, “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people. He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life. Amen.” Then after we were clothed in a white garment and received our lit baptismal candle the priest prayed the Ephphetha prayer, which is Aramaic for “be opened.” With his thumb he touched our ears and lips saying, “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the mute speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father. Amen.”

The Ephphatha prayer is one of the last prayers of the ritual of Baptism. In that way it is a sort of commissioning. In a very real way, our life’s mission was given to us at that young age. Each one of us was meant to live a life of opening our ears to receive God’s word and our mouths to proclaim his faith. We were anointed as Prophets. This is what we were called to be, no matter what our vocation, or job, or state in life: we were made to be lectors in our everyday lives.

At our Baptism we were brought into the kingdom of God, made co-heirs with Christ of all of the spiritual riches of that kingdom, and given the grace we need to lead holy lives. Then how do we account for such a wide diversity among Catholics today? Some Catholics only go to Mass on Christmas or Easter, others go every Sunday or every day. Some spend one or two hours a week in Adoration, adoring our Lord present in the consecrated host. On the other hand, many still do not believe that the bread and wine at Mass truly become the Body and Blood of Christ. Some Catholics go to confession once a month while for others it has been decades. If the seeds of God’s word were sown in all of our souls why then do those seeds bear fruit and yield a hundred fold in one, sixty in another, or thirty in another? The sower is the same for each of us, the seed is the same, the difference is the soil. “God pours himself into our souls in accordance with the degree of welcome He finds there” (In Conversation, Fernandez, 4/19.3).

In the parable of the sower in our Gospel, Jesus reveals how the mysteries of his kingdom should be received. Unfortunately, throughout our lives we have a tendency of disturbing the soil of our souls: matting it down to where it becomes only a hard pathway so that the seed stays at the surface and is eaten by the birds; or making it rocky and shallow so that the roots cannot take hold and the seeds are scorched by the sun; or littering it with thorns so that they are choked and overcome by them. With these images Jesus reveals the three constant sources of all of our troubles, the three traditional sources of evil in our lives: the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Those who have souls matted down and trodden underfoot can only accept external, superficial things. They never even consider supernatural realities or their spiritual lives. They never think of anything beyond what their passions demand of them. When asked to think deeply they are dumbfounded. They hear God’s word, they may even hear it every Sunday. But they do not listen to it and so it stays at the surface, easily snatched away by the devil.

Those who have souls of rocky ground can receive the seeds of God’s word but do not have an inner depth in which the roots can take hold. They can become excited about a new insight they have discovered that helps them in some way or encourages them in a particular practice. But this enthusiasm is easily scorched when the weakness of this first blush of commitment is tested by a real trial or difficulty. They are tempted to turn back to their former way of life when the Gospel begins to demand too much.

Those who have souls of thorns growing all around it are also able to hear the word but the cares of the world and the delight in riches stifle it, and it proves unfruitful. An excessive ambition or an excessive concern for being well-off and comfortable is evidence of the thorns of worldliness and materialism. Becoming obsessed with acquiring one big thing after the next is a thorn that will always wound us. We all have had times of each type of soil.

I know all of this sounds a bit negative, but it is important that we see others and ourselves for who we really are: our life’s mission – to receive God’s word and proclaim it in our own way – is at stake. “But,” I could ask, “if I’m perfectly fine with the way my life is going, why should I care what type of soil my soul is for receiving the seeds of God’s word? Because those ultimate questions of life, of religion, of God will always escape us if we don’t prepare the soil of our souls to receive the mysteries of God’s kingdom in a deeper and deeper way. The questions like, “Why am I here? Why am I doing this? What is all of this for? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why was I laid off? Why did my mother or sister or brother die? Why am I suffering? Why am I doing so well when others are doing so poorly? Why me, God? These are questions we all have asked, no matter who you are. And that’s why we should care. Because the answers come easy to those who allow God’s word to bear fruit in them. But they constantly plague those who refuse him.

Those questions may not bother us now, but some day we will come face-to-face with something we can’t explain and those of us with souls producing the flowers and fruits of grace, wisdom, and the light of the Holy Spirit will find comfort where those souls left open to the devil or overcome by human weakness or worldly cares will be desperate to know where to turn.

The hope in all of this is that we all have been given the gift of free will, the freedom of self-determination, the freedom to make ourselves whatever we want to be according to our decisions. No soul is too hard for God to break through, too rocky for God to take root, or too full of thorns for God’s presence to grow strong and free, if that is what we want. No evil spirit is too greedy or too quick for God to overcome – that victory has already been won. No doubt or hesitancy or uncertainty is too much for God who is Truth Himself. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in, Adoro Te Devote, his hymn of adoration: “Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:/ How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;/ What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do; Truth Himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.” Finally, no worldly concern, no vacation, no cushy retirement, no pile of cords and gadgets, no high-paying job comes close to the infinite worth of one drop of Precious Blood or one tiny piece of a consecrated Host. The choice for God is ours to make. No matter where we’ve come from or what we’ve been through, all of us are able to have a soul of rich soil, to hear the word and understand it, and bear fruit in a life of holiness that yields not just thirty or sixty but hundredfold. Indeed, as the Psalm says for Saturday’s Morning Prayer: “The just will flourish like the palm tree/ and grow like a Lebanon cedar./ Planted in the house of the Lord/ they will flourish in the courts of our God,/ still bearing fruit when they are old,/ still full of sap, still green,/ to proclaim that the Lord is just;/ in him, my rock, there is no wrong” (Ps 92).

Homily 14th Sun O.T., Year A–The Law of Love

My Canon Law professor at the seminary, Msgr. Fulton, had a way of teaching Church law that made us actually enjoy learning it; he made it a joy to know the law and to help others to know it too. He had a great sense of humor in how he applied the law to particular situations. By having a sense of humor with the law, the point he made to us, without explicitly saying it, is that the law of the Church, which is a reflection of the law of the Lord, should be taught and learned and followed with joy and from the heart. The law is not intended to be something that embitters us. The law is not meant to be followed with white-knuckled anxiety or with demands that are impossible to meet. Laws, when they are just, do not bind up… they set free.

Now, it is certainly true that we all bristle under the law every now and then – whether it’s that speeding ticket for going 5 miles over the speed limit or that sudden realization that it’s a Friday in Lent right before you bite into a steak. This is nothing though compared to what the Israelites felt in Biblical times under the weight of law put onto them by the scribes and Pharisees. The 10 commandments, as awesome as they are, were ultimately national laws for public observance. “Thou shall not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain” meant that henceforth it was illegal for them to do so. “That shall not kill” made murder illegal. Breaking one of the 10 commandments brought grave punishments. And on top of these were the hundreds of other laws, 613 to be exact, that governed almost every aspect of their way of life.

But, these laws were good because they helped to separate the Israelites from the pagan influences of the peoples that surrounded them. They helped to set the standard for exhibiting a right relationship with God. These laws helped set their nation apart, to define and protect them, as God’s chosen people. The point of the old law was that God was preparing them for a New Covenant in Jesus Christ that would inscribe the law of God on their hearts. By training them to follow external observances he was preparing them to follow the internal law of love.

This was the point of the law that the scribes and Pharisees missed. Rather than accept Jesus who fulfilled, completed, perfected, and transformed the law into the means of their salvation, they based their salvation in strictly observing “the smallest letter” and “the smallest part of a letter” of the law, every “jot and tittle” as they used to say (Mt 5:18). Thank God we don’t have the same burdens placed on us. Thank God Jesus really did fulfill and transform the law from something heavy and external to something light and heartfelt. “My yoke is easy,” Jesus said, “my burden light” (Mt 11:30). No more do we have laws that are impossible to follow. Under the Kingship of our Lord, we are given a new moral law that brings right along with it the aid to carrying it out.

So for example, none of us needs the law “You shall not kill” because we have been given the grace and blessing of a good upbringing, well-ordered hearts and minds, patience, mercy, and forgiveness. We can say we are free of the demands of that law. But Jesus wants us to go deeper. What about the anger in our hearts that kills our relationship with our parents, or our siblings, or our coworkers? What about the lack of patience with ourselves that we cannot let go of? What about the revenge that we secretly desire every time we are offended? These thoughts and desires that spring from the heart cause us to suffer a hundred tiny deaths throughout our lives if we do not let the law of the Lord, the law of love, set us free from them.

It is this kind of deeper meaning that Jesus wants us to see in each of the 10 commandments as we strive to follow them. They are still true for us, as true as they were for the Israelites. But now God is asking us to love him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, not just with our external observances. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever” (Jn 14:15).

And St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.” We are given grace and the Holy Spirit that make following God’s laws, and by extension the Church’s laws, peaceful rather than bitter, and motivated by love rather than external conformity. Because of our fallen nature, laws will always be a burden, but just laws are a burden of love. St. Augustine said, “Any other burden oppresses and crushes you, but Christ’s actually takes weight off you. Any other burden weighs down, but Christ’s gives you wings. If you take a bird’s wings away, you might seem to be taking weight off, but the more weight you take off, the more you tie it down to the earth. There it is on the ground, and you wanted to relieve it of a weight; give it back the weight of its wings and you will see how it flies” (St. Augustine, Sermones, 126, 12).

Christ, our King, is not one who wields the law like a tyrant. He is a “just” and “meek” savior, as the prophet Zechariah foretold. Jesus himself said that those who come to him, will find not oppression but “rest” for he is “meek and humble of heart.” When we see that such a master as this is behind the law then we have no trouble following it. And when we follow the law with simplicity and humility, like “little ones” do, he will show us the Father and we will grow more and more in intimacy with Him. But, if we follow the law like some of “the wise and the learned” who try to over-rationalize it, make it too hard, or find loopholes through it, then intimacy with the Father will be hidden from us. This is precisely why our Lord asks for obedient disciples, because he is not the kind of Master that would oppress us, and because he wants to take us to His Father. The more we show love through obedience, the more we will grow in love. The more we grow in love, the more we are compelled by it rather than the law. The more we are compelled by love the more our spiritual lives will soar, like St. Augustine’s bird, to the heights of heaven rather than be tied down to the bitter legalism of this world.

Homily Corpus Christi, Year A

 

I am so happy to be with all of you today as I celebrate the first Sunday Mass of my first priestly assignment as the Associate Pastor of St. James, St. Ambrose, and St. Ignatius. They say I was sent here to loosen up Fr. Chuck! But, I think it will be the other way around! Seriously, though, ever since I was ordained on May 28 and learned of my assignment here, everyone I have talked too has said what a good cluster of parishes this is, and how faithful a people you all are. This has eased my nervousness and made me excited to come here and I am truly looking forward to serving all of you, celebrating the sacraments with you, and getting to know as many of you as I can. Like I told those at the daily Mass on Thursday, as a recently ordained priest, unfortunately, you all become the beneficiaries of my foibles, so I implore your patience as I grow more and more into the identity of a priest.

It is remarkable to me that in the first weekend of my first priestly assignment, we are celebrating that great feast of the Church, Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ… really what the Priesthood is all about. I want you to know that the Eucharist is one of the highest priorities of my life and of my ministry to you. The Mass is a great joy of mine and I have worked hard to understand and learn it well in light of our continuous tradition from ancient times to today and onward. I regard it as the highest form of service that I could offer. What greater gift, what greater form of help could I give you than the real and true Body of Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself? As we hear often, it is the Source and Summit of the life of the Church. Who we are and what we do as Catholics comes from the Eucharist and finds its highest point in the Eucharist.

It sounds nice to say that for our parish, the Eucharist it its source and its summit. But, that’s also a little too easy to say if we don’t also consider that the only way the Eucharist can fully be the source and the summit of our parish is if It is the source and the summit of each one us. We make up the parish… the Eucharist makes up the parish… Does the Eucharist make up me and each one of us? Every year that we celebrate this Solemnity we are invited to think for ourselves what we truly believe about this Sacrament. We are invited to ask ourselves: “Do I know what the Church teaches about the Eucharist? Have I tried to understand it? If a non-Catholic friend asked me tomorrow what the difference between my Communion and his is, would I be able to say? Do I really believe that after the words of Consecration – “This is my body” and “This is the cup of my blood” – what looks, tastes, feels, and smells like bread is not really bread at all but the Body of Christ… and what looks, tastes, feels, and smells like wine is not really wine at all but the Blood of Christ? If this is the Source and the Highpoint of what we are really about as Catholics, it is important that we ask ourselves these questions in such a concrete way… simply to know what we are all about and say that we’re all about.

I think God is calling us today to consider the Body and Blood of Christ in a precise way. After all, Jesus Christ Himself presents It in a precise way to the Jews he was addressing in the Synagogue. He carefully and deliberately chose his language, with full knowledge of the meaning his words would invoke in the minds of his listeners. When Jesus said, “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world,” the Jews quarreled among themselves saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They were outspoken in their disagreement for they knew he wasn’t speaking metaphorically. In response, Jesus did not change his language, rather he spoke even more explicitly by adding that they should also drink His Blood. Their angst came from their misunderstanding him to be advocating cannibalism. Cannibalism is the eating of dead flesh, which truly is repulsive. But, Jesus gives us his glorified humanity as it is after he rose from the dead. This is why he calls himself the “living bread” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, Jn 6:52-53, footnote). After all, the characteristics of his Body and Blood are hidden behind the characteristics of bread and wine even though they are no longer bread and wine. This is meant to facilitate our frequent reception of his entire self, his real and true Body and Blood as well as his Soul and His Divine Life, so that he may be our strength, our healing, and our life. It is truly a miracle.

It is also true that under the Old Covenant the Jews were forbidden to drink the blood of animals because it contained the life of the animal and doing so would lower them to the level of animals. But here too, the Eucharist is different. Here Jesus gives us supernatural life and does not lower us but rather raises us to the heights of heaven. Any other food, once eaten, breaks down into smaller and smaller parts until it is assimilated into our body and becomes part of us. But the Eucharist is the only food that we eat that causes us to become It, that assimilates us into It. St. Cyril of Alexandria used the image of two pieces of wax melted together to illustrate this point. And St. Therese of Lisieux went so far as to call her first Communion not a meeting with Jesus, but a fusion (A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, Jn 6:57).

As partakers of the Body of Christ, we become the Body of Christ. We become the many members of his One Body. The Eucharist unifies us, draws us together, and forms us, despite all of our different origins and circumstances, as a Catholic parish, as a Catholic Church. By receiving Him together, he make us unified. Therefore, it is painful to me that some members of my family and friends who aren’t Catholic or who are non-practicing cannot receive Communion with me. I want us all to experience the intimate union the Eucharist brings. But I have to remember that the Eucharist is the highest form of communion, not just one among many ways we can show our togetherness. By receiving Communion we are showing in the highest way that we are in communion. It isn’t the first step to communion, but the ultimate one.

All of the points I have made I think are important for you and I to be reminded of because they influence how we live our lives as Catholics and the way we approach the Eucharist. The more we are aware of not what we are receiving but Who, the more we grow in reverence and devotion toward the Eucharist and the more we grow in the depth and confidence of our Catholic identity. Refreshing our memory of what we believe can help you and I to grow in love with the Eucharist and not to take it for granted. For example, this causes us to genuflect reverently to the tabernacle when we enter and exit the pew; to receive Him carefully and mindfully in the hands or on the tongue; or to spend some time adoring Him, our God, hidden under the appearance of the consecrated Host. Here at St. James, times for Adoration are offered from 7-10pm on Mondays, 8:30am-5:30pm on Fridays, 8-9am on Saturdays. Believing He is truly present inspires us to want to spend time with Him, to come to know Him as a friend, to share all of our sorrows and joys with Him, and to receive his help and consolation in return.

Finally, our belief in the Eucharist inspires us to desire and even hunger for heavenly things rather than earthly or material things. As human beings we have natural, in-born desires and longings for happiness, for love, for companionship, for joy, and peace. But so often we try to satisfy these longings with things that couldn’t possibly match up with the capacities our Lord created in us. He made us for himself and only he can bear the weight of our happiness. If we try to put that weight on food, or shopping, or another person, we soon realize that our desire is never quenched and the object on which we misplaced it is consumed, crushed, or abandoned leaving us still wanting more. We must look to Christ who wants to be consumed by us, but not abandoned, so that we can be completely satisfied. Our desires are not too much for Him. In the Eucharist, we receive all the heavenly things our Lord wishes to give us – grace, unity, forgiveness, and peace, even His entire self – if we are only open and disposed to receiving them.

Homily Pentecost Sunday, Year A

Following is my homily for Pentecost Sunday which has a different set of readings than the Pentecost Vigil. I used some material from the homily for the Vigil Mass.  This particular Mass was a Mass of Thanksgiving for my Priesthood Ordination that I celebrated at St. Athanasius parish in Louisville, KY – I had been assigned there for my Pastoral Year as a seminarian and celebrated my Diaconate Ordination there last year.

I am so happy to be here this morning! Around this time last year I celebrated my Diaconate Ordination with all of you. And now I stand here as a priest, thanks to God's grace and your prayers! And I am bringing to this Mass all of the wonderful memories I have of the academic year I spent with you a couple years ago. How powerful the Holy Spirit is, to have brought us together in this way, under such joyful circumstances! I am also glad to have been at the presbyteral assembly this past week with Fr. Gary and all of the priests of the Archdiocese. I am happy to be Fr. Gary's brother priest.

Add to that the fact that today is Pentecost Sunday! Aside from Easter, if you were to ask someone what the second most important Feast Day of the year is, he would probably say "Christmas" or "Halloween"… maybe even "St. Patrick's Day"! But, I would argue that Pentecost is the second most important Feast Day of the year. It brings to an end what we call "The Great Sunday," the 50 days of the Easter Season. It marks the birthday of the Church as it is sent forth, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to proclaim the praises of God and to forgive sins. All of this gives a special meaning to this day for me.

    Today the Church has placed us in the middle of two of the most powerful events in salvation history. The Risen Lord appeared to the apostles on the evening of Easter Sunday, breathed into them the Holy Spirit, and gave them the power to forgive sins – a sort of foretaste of the Spirit the Apostles received in full, 50 days later at Pentecost. Then, the Holy Spirit almost seems to be breathed into them from the lips of God the Father Himself – "suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were."

This isn't just one among many miracles. The power breathed into them on Easter Sunday and the filling of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost are intimately connected. The only other times in Scripture when God breathed on mankind, was in the beginning – in the book of Genesis, when "the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Gen 2:7) – and in Ezekiel, where God raises an army of corpses to new life by the breath of the Spirit (37:9). Just think of how the apostles felt! They probably remembered when Jesus breathed on them on Easter Sunday and they knew the Scriptures of Genesis and Ezekiel. All of this comes together in one magnificent moment in which the apostles receive a newfound courage and zeal and the ability to praise God in languages they didn't even know. Their hearts, and souls, and minds are filled with God, the Holy Spirit. The Church is on fire and alive! Today this moment is ours too! We are that same Church today. We are the Church of the Apostles, still alive, still on fire, forever young with the exuberance of the Holy Spirit!

    God the Holy Spirit wants to fill us too. He wants us to receive the same fullness of Himself that the Apostles received on this very day, over 2000 years ago. In fact he has done this already. He infused in our souls Faith, Hope, and Love through the waters of our Baptism and he enhanced and completed these gifts when we were Confirmed. But He hasn't stopped there! The Holy Spirit wants to fill our souls every single day so that the Church 2000 years from now will still be on fire and alive.

    We have our own part to play in this. Most importantly, I think, would be to simply pray to God, the Holy Spirit. Often times we have no problem praying to God, the Father, because we can imagine a fatherly figure, with gray hair, and a beard! And we can pray to God, the Son, because Jesus Christ is so vividly depicted in the Gospels and in artwork. But the reigning image of the Holy Spirit is a dove! We don't pray to doves! Most of the time we think of God, the Holy Spirit, simply as a force, or a power, that comes and goes, as if He is the magic pixi dust that God sprinkles on us every now and then! He is much more than this! He is God.

    Throughout my childhood and still today, my Dad always encouraged my brothers and me to pray to the Holy Spirit. Any time we were nervous about a minor league baseball game, or a test at school, or an argument with a friend, my Dad would always tell us to pray to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and guidance. I recommend that for us today. If you have not been in the habit of praying to God, the Holy Spirit, today is the perfect day to start, the day when we celebrate how generously He filled the apostles, and us, with courage and zeal.

    The Holy Spirit comes to each of us in His own way. "There are different kinds of spiritual gifts," St. Paul said, and different forms of service and different workings. But, "To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit." And, he continues, "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body." Therefore, today we, myself certainly included, must ask ourselves: As one member of the entire Body of Christ… As one Catholic in the whole universal Catholic Church… How am I serving the larger body? How am I portraying the Catholic Church to the world around me? Do I make the life of a Catholic one that others would want to follow so that they too can be helped by the graces given to me through the Church? Does my life cause others to want to be one with Christ too?

    Being a faithful Catholic would be a heavy yoke, burdensome, and impossible really if we were only to rely on our own power. But, neither God nor the Church gives us responsibilities and then leaves us to our own devices. Rather, we have been given the power of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son and with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified. It is this same Holy Spirit, who spoke from all time through the prophets and through the Church today, who is our help, our advocate, our guide. He is the one who makes the yoke and the burden of the life of holiness, the life of a Catholic Christian, easy and light. He makes life as a child of God one of joyfulness, happiness, peacefulness, and calmness.

    We have only to acknowledge and remember the great things He has already done for us, plead for Him to come again and again, be willing to receive Him, and then be willing to live according to Him. The Holy Spirit will even help us ask. For as St. Paul says, "the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought." With His help we can be a people who courageously speaks to all ethnic and social classes of the "mighty acts of God," exclaiming that "Jesus is Lord", sharing with them the true peace that comes only from the Lord, and drawing each other together as one Body united to our head, Jesus Christ.

Homily Pentecost Vigil, Year A

Following is my homily for the Pentecost Vigil Mass, which has a different set of readings than the Mass on the day of Pentecost. This particular Mass was a Mass of Thanksgiving for my Priesthood Ordination that I celebrated at Bl. Teresa of Calcutta parish in Fairdale, KY – I had been assigned there for two summers as a seminarian and celebrated my Diaconate Ordination there last year.

    I am so happy to be here this evening! This very time last year I celebrated Pentecost Sunday and my Diaconate Ordination with all of you. And now I stand here, thanks to God's grace and your prayers, again celebrating Pentecost Sunday, but now as a priest! How powerful the Holy Spirit is, to have brought us together in this way, under such joyful circumstances! I am also glad to have been at the presbyteral assembly this past week with Fr. Bob and all of the priests of the Archdiocese. I am happy to be Fr. Bob's brother priest.

    As part of my seminary formation, one of the things that the Church requires of us is that we take what is called a "canonical retreat." Canon Law, the law of the Church, requires that we take a five-day retreat in order to prayerfully prepare, in a more intense way, both for our Diaconate Ordination and our Priesthood Ordination. For each one I chose to go to the Passionist monastery of cloistered nuns in the Diocese of Owensboro, where I am originally from. I highly recommend this monastery to all of you. Their chapel has a unique feature that is especially relevant for the feast of Pentecost that we celebrate today.

    It was most often the case before the Second Vatican Council that if a religious order was cloistered – meaning that they devoted their entire lives to praying in one place, as the heart of the surrounding diocese – then their privacy was strongly guarded so that they could be single-minded in their prayer and not be distracted by the things of the world. This would often mean that when the nuns were in chapel with other laypeople, they would be set apart by a screen or a wall with a type of window. After the council this type of separation was kept in place but relaxed so that the People of God, consecrated religious and laity, could pray better together as one Body of Christ.

A view of the channel from the font to the altar

    In the Passionist monastery, the nuns are set apart by a water channel with about a two-foot stone boundary that runs from the steps of the sanctuary all the way down the center aisle of the chapel to the entryway that has a waist-high holy water font. In this way, the laity pray on one side of the channel and the nuns on the other and both are still in view of each other. What makes this water channel so beautiful is that it maintains the cloister that the nuns require but it also gives deep meaning to the chapel and the liturgies that are celebrated there. Ultimately, it is a symbol of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit who are often symbolized by water in Holy Scripture.

    Jesus, as St. John's Gospel tells us, stood up and exclaimed to all the people, "Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. As Scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me.'" And John explains, "He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive." For Jesus, timing is everything. This happened on the last day of the Jews' great seven-day celebration called, The Festival of Booths. During this annual liturgical celebration, pilgrims who came to Jerusalem would live in huts made of braches that they called "booths." One of the major rituals of the week would consist of the high priest drawing water from the Pool of Siloam, carrying it in procession into the Temple and then pouring it on the stone altar of sacrifice to commemorate the time in which the Lord God provided for his people during their Exodus journey through the desert by making water flow from a rock. It is against the backdrop of this celebration that Jesus stands up and exclaims that he is the source of spiritual water and that it is he who satisfies all that we thirst for.

    Plus, Jesus and the people both knew that the name for the pool that the priest drew water from, "Siloam," means "Sent." By connecting himself to that pool, Jesus helps them to know that as the Source of Life, he will send them Life Itself in the form of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost

    Everything that water means for the body, now has meaning for our soul. Just as water cleanses the body, gives us strength, and refreshes us, so the Living Water of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, cleanses our souls of sin in Baptism and Reconciliation, gives us strength in Confirmation, and refreshes us in the Eucharist and the Anointing of the Sick. The Holy Spirit is active in all seven of the sacraments constantly forming and transforming us as the New People of God as we wander in our Exodus journey through the desert of this life to the Promised Land of Heaven.

    How are we doing on this journey? At times are we a "stiff-necked" people, doubting that the Lord can provide for us or rebelling against his commands? If we see ourselves as God's chosen people, bound to Him by a covenant, with the goal of following Him faithfully in this life so that we can be happy with Him forever in the next, then we can give our lives a proper context. We can ask ourselves, "Am I faithfully keeping my covenant with God? Do I avail myself generously of all that the Holy Spirit provides me through the Church in order to stay faithful to God? Or am I not content with these and turn to other things to satisfy my deepest thirsts?" It can be helpful, in trying to live as faithful Catholics day-by-day, to see ourselves as that Old Testament people and seeing the Holy Spirit as the giver of all that they needed and all that we need today.

    Our first reading began to describe how God forged the covenant with his people; it was done amid the majesty of Mt. Sinai, amid thunder and lightning, heavy clouds, loud trumpet blasts, columns of smoke and fire, and earthquakes. This was done in order to show His people that his might and power exceeds that of all the other pagan gods. God is the One, True, God of Power and Might. This was also done to show them the great significance of what they were being brought into, what it means to be the chosen people of such a powerful God.

    The Lord said to His People, then and now: "If you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people, though all the earth is mine. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." Our covenant with God wasn't forged amid fire and lightening, rather, it was forged at our Baptism amid the fire and light of our Baptismal candle and the fire and light infused in our souls by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Holy Water. Just like the water channel in the Passionist monastery, we are sent through the Church to be transformed and to transform the world around us. Just like the water from the Pool of Siloam, we are Sent as God's People with the aid of all that the Holy Spirit gives us. With His grace, we become more and more God's special possession. In fact, we become, as Moses foretold, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. As a people set apart, for all the world to see, as an example to the world of how they should live and what they are capable of with God as their Father, we must ask ourselves today: As one member of the entire Body of Christ… As one Catholic in the whole universal Catholic Church… How am I serving the larger body? How am I portraying the Catholic Church to the world around me? Do I make the life of a Catholic one that others would want to follow so that they too can be helped by the graces given to me through the Church? Does my life cause others to want to be one with Christ too? Do I act in a priestly way – and this question is for all of us. Do I make sacrifices for other people? Do I offer up my sufferings to God? Do I pray for my family and friends? In these ways we all, ordained or not, can become the holy nation that God wants us to be.

    All of his would be a heavy yoke, burdensome, and impossible if we were formed as God's people and then sent forth to rely on our own power. But, neither God nor the Church gives us responsibilities and then leaves us to our own devices. Rather, we have been given the power of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son and with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified. It is this same Holy Spirit, who spoke from all time through the prophets and through the Church today, who is our help, our advocate, our guide. He is the one who makes the yoke and the burden of the life of holiness, the life of a Catholic Christian, easy and light. He makes life as a child of God one of joyfulness, happiness, peacefulness, and calmness. Does this describe our lives today?

    The Holy Spirit comes to each of us in His own way. But we can find hope in knowing that the Holy Spirit has indeed come to all of us. At this Vigil Mass we anticipate and long for Him to come again in our lives. This is His desire too. We have only to acknowledge and remember the great things He has already done for us, plead for Him to come again and again, be willing to receive Him, and then be willing to live according to Him. The Holy Spirit will even help us ask. For as St. Paul says, "the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought." How happy the Lord will be to look down upon his people and see in each one of us rivers of living water flowing forth in a life of holiness and a world transformed by His Power in us.

[picture credit: the nuns' blog]

Homily Ascension Year A

    I am so happy to be with here with all of you today. I was ordained a priest just last weekend and I still can't believe it; it hasn't fully sunk in yet. Last summer I was assigned here to St. Gabriel as a deacon and I cannot say enough how grateful I am to Fr. John, Fr. Jim, and all of you for that experience. Even as a deacon Fr. John and Fr. Jim treated me as a brother in ministry which helped me to begin to experience the life of a priest. My first times preaching during Mass were here at St. Gabriel, and I appreciate your patience as I continue to develop the art and science of preaching. My first Baptisms were here too, a set of five boys that Deacon Bowling helped me to keep organized. During my last year of seminary, I studied the theology of the Eucharist, Ecumenism, and pastoral leadership; and I learned how to celebrate the Mass and the sacraments of Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick. But the ministry of Holy Orders began here and I am so thankful to all of you for your continued support and for allowing me to celebrate this Mass of Thanksgiving with you.

     Reflecting on the Solemnity we celebrate today, the Ascension of our Lord into heaven, I remembered one of the most significant developments in my spiritual life since I entered seminary in 2005: that is, when I finally transitioned from appreciating what is said in the Bible as if it was a museum piece to appreciating it for what it is saying to me and to the Church. For too long, I was accepting the Scriptures as something good but outside of myself. Seminary, thank God, helped me to interiorize what the Scriptures mean for me personally. I am convinced now that I would be a lousy priest if I had not made that transition. In fact I would be a lousy Christian! Until we accept from God his Holy Word into our hearts and minds, we can never really be transformed by It. If I had not been receptive to God in this way, I would have been no different than a secular historian who appreciates an ancient text of human history.

     The texts that describe Jesus' Ascension into heaven are some of the most challenging – and consoling – texts for us personally. After Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to many of his disciples as proof of his resurrection, his apostles still had troubling believing Him. They did not believe Mary Magdalene when she described how Jesus appeared to her in the garden outside of the tomb. They did not believe the two disciples with whom Jesus walked on the road to Emmaus. All told, the New Testament records 11 separate appearances of Jesus after his Resurrection. Despite all of this, today's Gospel says, when the apostles saw him, "they worshipped, but they doubted." Even so, Jesus did not give up on them. He knew their hearts and knew what they would be capable of once they received the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. So he gave them the Great Commission: "Go… and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."

     If we receive this scenario for ourselves, we can see that we too have been sent and are being sent on this great commission, in our own lives and in our own ways. But we have had our own doubts too, haven't we? I, for one, when times were hard at the seminary, sometimes doubted if I had what it takes, if I could cut it as a priest. Perhaps you have had doubts about God too: when a loved one died, or when there was a divorce in your family, or when a child stopped going to Church, or when there were lay-offs at work, or when you failed in some way at school. Due to this fallen world and our fallen nature, hardships inevitably have come and will come to all of us.

     But the point is, at this Mass, we are his apostles, standing shoulder to shoulder with all of the hardships and doubts we have endured, together looking up to heaven trying to understand what God is telling us. Before the Eucharistic Prayer, I will say "Lift up your hearts" and the response will be "We lift them up to the Lord." Our hearts will be wide open for God to see. Yet I still, at the very end of the Mass will say, "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord." We will then each have to ask ourselves: "How will I love and serve the Lord? How will I make disciples and teach others to observe all that Christ has commanded me?" By that point though, we will have what the apostles didn't have when they asked themselves these same questions: the power of the Holy Spirit renewed in us by the Eucharist. True, they too received the Eucharist at the Last Supper, but they had not yet received, like we have, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the gift we will celebrate next Sunday.

     Today's celebration, the Ascension, is one of the reasons I am a firm believer in spending some brief time in quiet prayer before or after Mass or after Communion, giving thanks to God for the gifts he has given us and asking Him and ourselves "How will I love and serve the Lord? How will I make disciples and teach others to observe all that He has commanded me?" The instructions for the Mass, when describing the necessity of silence, say that the people should spend some time after Communion praising and praying to God in their hearts. "Even before the celebration itself," the instruction continues, "it is commendable that silence be observed… so that all may dispose themselves to carry out the sacred action in a devout and fitting manner" (GIRM 45). And Canon Law, the law of the Church, says that the priest too "is not to neglect to prepare himself properly through prayer for the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice and to offer thanks to God at its completion" (can 909). If these readings are meant for us, how can we receive them if we don't spend the time to ask God "How" and "Why" and listen to His answer?

     Our youth who prepare for Confirmation and our parishioners who celebrated the Easter Vigil are especially primed and ready for this. They have been discerning in an intentional way how they have been chosen by God and what his great mission is for their lives. But just because most of us were baptized as babies doesn't mean that we can't have this same enthusiasm and zeal too. Each one of us, at our Baptism, died with Christ when we were lowered into the water and when we were lifted up out of the water, rose again with Him. The whole rest of our lives then is our experience of the Ascension that follows. For us, evangelizing all nations means more than just encouraging someone new to convert to Catholicism, it means helping to bring about the conversion of the entire culture, making every area of our lives more Christian. Being Baptized is only the first step in the process of growing in holiness and making our world holy.

     One of the treasures of the teaching of St. Josemaria Escriva, and the spirituality of Opus Dei that he founded, is that oneness with God is not only limited to our time spent at Mass or in the parish. It can be experienced and even cultivated in the midst of our day-to-day lives. At Mass we receive, in a special way in the Eucharist, the grace to go and live out God's Great Commission. And in our silent prayer we can discover how we are to convert our culture, how we are to love and serve the Lord, make disciples, and teach others to observe all that He has commanded us.

     When he ascended to the right hand of the Father, he never really left us. In the Eucharist, in the Gospel, in the person of the priest, and in all of us praying together and doing good works, he still lives and ministers to our fallen world. How will each one of us bring Him to our families, our friendships, our work, our school, our recreation, our parish?

     This will be different for each one of us, but it could take the form of saying grace before meals, even in a restaurant, if you aren't in the habit of doing this… or saying a decade of the rosary privately or together with family before going to bed. In our friendships this could mean not participating in gossip or working hard to be a good influence on each other. At work you could attend daily Mass during your lunch break or before the work day begins. The Cathedral downtown is within walking distance of many of the major business centers. And our late Archbishop Floerish made sure that there was a parish in almost every neighborhood. At our school we can be sure to continue to give religious education the highest priority. In our athletics and recreation we can avoid participating in things that only bring about anger or bitterness. And in our parish we can try to become more active Catholics, caring deeply about each other, even those we don't know, and praying together more often. We can do all of these things. We have already been given all that we need. We can continue to make St. Gabriel not a parish of the status quo, but of the Ascension – a parish of people who take their faith seriously and are not afraid to be counter-cultural, to convert our world, and to let God convert our hearts.

Sermon for Solemn High Mass for Fr. Paul Beach’s 10 Year Anniversary of Priesthood

    It is a great honor of mine to have been asked to give the sermon for this Solemn High Mass, a Mass of Thanksgiving marking the tenth anniversary of the Ordination to the Sacred Order of the Priesthood of my good and dear friend Fr. Paul Beach, our celebrant. Assisting him as Subdeacon is Bro. Edward Olsen of the Oratorians and myself, Deacon Matthew Hardesty. I acknowledge also his brother-priests from the Archdiocese of Louisville and elsewhere who are attending in choir and have come to join in this celebration. And I thank our servers who should be commended for their reverence and fidelity. Today most of all, though, we celebrate the Holy Priesthood, that precious gift which our blessed Lord, Jesus Christ Himself, through the hands of the bishop and the power of the Holy Spirit, has chosen to give to these men, and God-willing to me in 9 short days, as the way to bring about our perfection and salvation. After all, God's will for each and every one of us is the way in which he desires to make us saints, if we have the will to accept it. And for a few chosen men, that way is the Priesthood.

    The epistle and the Gospel for this Holy Mass together both exalt this noble vocation and humble it at the same time. They are both challenging and inspiring. What truly Catholic heart is not enflamed with pride and zeal for his religion upon hearing the words of St. Matthew's Gospel? This indeed is my favorite passage of Scripture. It was a great joy for me to chant today's Gospel, the Good News: "Et ego dico tibi: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam; et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversum eam" (And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it). What hope and security this passage gives us when it seems like, at times, that the powers of hell are pressing upon the Church, our Holy Father, the Priesthood in general, and even upon our own hearts, with ever increasing force. Of these powers, we need not fear: The gates of hell SHALL NOT prevail. They may wound us, the may exploit our weaknesses, but in the final estimation they shall not prevail.

    While this passage speaks primarily of St. Peter and his successors the popes down through the ages to Pope Benedict himself, it, by extension, speaks also of the priesthood and exalts it greatly… for great power is given to the priest to share in the prevalence of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, to share in the victory over evil. In my early years of discernment, before I entered seminary, it was the awesomeness and power, especially of the Mass and of the Sacrament of Penance, that inspired me most to pursue the Priesthood. How awesome it is to affect another man's soul!... To be concerned for another's eternal salvation and to be able, with, by, and for Christ to actually bring it about! Howe awesome it is – with these two shaking hands, and with this feeble tongue – to make a child a Son of God in Baptism and a soldier for Christ in Confirmation, to absolve one's sins in Reconciliation, bless a couple's marriage in Holy Matrimony, give the strength of the Holy Spirit in Extreme Unction, give myself in Ordination, and most of all to transform mere bread and wine into the Real Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Jesus Christ Himself. I thought to myself, "is there a greater vocation than this!?" This is the power of Jesus Christ teaching, sanctifying, and governing his Holy People, age upon age, until the end of time. He has never stopped doing these things. In the men he has called to share in His one Priesthood, he has always and everywhere been bringing about our salvation and the salvation of all the world.

    But, lest a priest think that this power is his own possession, that it springs from his natural abilities… lest he forget that his ministry is only good because Jesus Christ is Good, our Lord humbles Peter in our Gospel today and every priest as well. It is a subtle gesture that could easily be overlooked, but it is there nonetheless, and should be taken seriously. As one to soon be ordained a priest, I say this to myself as well, perhaps most of all. After Peter gave his profound profession of faith in Jesus – "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God" – Jesus replied, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven." Before all that Peter was soon to be given Jesus reminded him – and every priest – that he is still a son, a child of his Father in heaven. And as sons we should always remember humility before Him.

    Our epistle gave a similar message: "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking care of it, not by constraint, but willingly, according to God: not for filthy lucre's sake, but voluntarily: Neither as lording it over the clergy, but being made a pattern of the flock from the heart" (1 Pet 5:2-3). Peter himself this time is warning the shepherds of the local Churches not to misuse their authority grudgingly, greedily, or oppressively. A priest's authority is exalted only insofar as it is ordered to the service of others. It is this great service that is its purpose and its goal. A priest's authority is not for his own gain but rather for the salvation of souls. It is for all those within his reach, Catholic and non-Catholic, so that they may be taught, sanctified, and governed toward eternal life. This means that a priest should be charged with an ever-present and increasing zeal for souls, with charity, generosity, and hospitality, always ready and always willing to serve either by his own person or by God's grace at any moment it is called for. And he doesn't do these things to make himself look exalted in the eyes of the faithful, or his brother priests, or his bishop. He does these because he loves his people with a love that could drive him to give his entire self for them. True love enflames his heart, it does not burn him out. But he does not impose or oppress them. "A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench" (Isaiah 42:3). The pastor is to shepherd his sheep with a humble firmness, a serenity, and a calmness which evokes trust, peace, confidence, and security among them.

A priest's humility also includes his example. St. Gregory the Great teaches that the pastor of souls "should always give the lead, to show by his example the way to life, so that his flock (who follow the voice and actions of the pastor) are guided more by example than by words; his position obliges him to speak of elevated things, and also to manifest them personally; the word more easily gains access to the hearts of hearers when it carries with it the endorsement of the life of him who when giving instructions assists in their fulfillment by his own example" (Regulae pastoralis Liber, 2, 3). Priestly example and humility are not opposed. His example should never betray his humility. And his humility should never forbid his example. Both should work together in a priest. They are two sides of the same coin.

    Fr. Paul Beach, as much as he has insisted that I train my eye on more fitting priests for the example of the way to life, has been that example to me and to so many others throughout his ten years of priestly ministry. His advice and fraternal correction over the years have helped me a great deal. But, as a testament to his humility, the moments of his witness unbeknownst to him have led me as well. For example: witnessing the joy, and welcome, and happiness he engenders in anyone who spends some leisure time with him… Or watching him, in my timid years of discernment, celebrate Holy Mass with such care and reverence, motivating me to enter seminary… Or the constant signs of generosity he has shown, often at great personal expense, and always spontaneous that brought me a more fulfilling experience of being a seminarian. Today, the day we celebrate his ten years of priestly ministry, the most profound thanks we can give him is not with our applause or our gifts, but with our hearts and our prayers. Today we are reminded to give gratitude to God for the Holy Priesthood, to express to God our thanks for the priests who have led us to Him by the power of His grace and the virtues of humility and good example, and to beg him to allow other young men to join the ranks of so noble a vocation.

Mother's Day Homily, Year A: Word and Sacrament

            Following Easter Sunday, Jesus’ disciples did not have the same joy that we have felt.  After a full season of Lent, intensifying our prayer, offering up things as sacrifices to God, giving more generously of ourselves for others, purifying certain aspects of our lives, we naturally are relieved when Easter finally comes.  All of the grace we need to do those things throughout the year is given to us anew.  The whole Church is filled with great joy.  After subduing our worship and not saying the Gloria at the beginning of Mass or chanting Alleluia throughout Lent, it gives me goosebumps every year when the organ finally bellows the Gloria again at the Easter Vigil.  Grace is always a surprise but at least we have the benefit of 2000 years of Tradition to give us an idea of what to expect.  It was a different story for Jesus’ disciples.

            After Jesus’ Passion and Death his disciples were still unsure of what exactly would happen.  They feared for their lives.  They were sad and had lost hope.  Their Lord had disappeared and they didn’t know why.  Instead of joy, they have confusion and despair.  But Jesus, having risen from the dead, appeared to two of his disciples as they walked to Emmaus.  They were talking about what had happened and debating with each other what it all could mean.  But they did not have the light of faith that would have allowed them to see with their spiritual eyes the deeper meaning of the events outside of Jerusalem and on Mount Calvary.  And this darkness also kept them from being able to recognize the risen Jesus.  So they explained to him what happened as if he was a common passer-by.

            Little did they know that they would receive a very, very special and privileged gift.  This stranger who they did not recognize, our Risen Lord Himself, then took the opportunity as they walked to explain all of salvation history, starting with Moses and the prophets, and how every aspect of his life, from his birth, to his ministry, to his death, and Resurrection was foreshadowed in Scripture.  Can you imagine?!  Having Jesus Christ Himself, the Eternal Word of God, walk with you and explain the Scriptures to you!  What I wouldn’t give to have been an eavesdropper in their conversation!  I’m sure we can all call to mind times when we, like these two disciples, were sad, or without hope, or afraid, or confused and wanted to turn to the Bible but weren’t sure were to go.  Or when we have read a certain passage and could not figure out what it meant.  Who do we have that can explain the Scriptures to us?

            When the two disciples and Jesus arrived in Emmaus they did not want him to keep going, they wanted him to stay with them because finally they were beginning to understand with true Faith, Faith which brought them to a higher level of understanding than their unaided reason was able to take them.  Their hearts which were filled with the darkness of doubt were now filling with light and love.  Their hearts burned within them as Jesus spoke to them on the way and opened the Scriptures for them.  It was the meal that was the climax of their experience with him though.  It was in sharing a meal together that they finally recognized the risen Jesus and knew him for who he really was.  It was in the meal that Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them.  Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  He took… blessed… broke…and gave… the same words used in the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, and more importantly, the same words used at the Last Supper, the first Eucharist.  Starting with the Scriptures and ending with a meal, our Lord gradually brought them to greater and greater Faith and greater and greater knowledge of Him.  Who do we have that can help us to believe in Jesus in the Eucharist?

            One of the things that I like to do when I celebrate Baptisms with young families is to explain how it important it is that they take their duty as Christian parents seriously and work diligently through prayer and teaching to raise their children in our Catholic faith and to guard and protect the priceless graces they receive through the waters of Baptism.  Who do we have that can explain the Scriptures to us?  Who do we have that can help us to believe in Jesus in the Eucharist?  I think today gives us the answer… our mothers.

            As a young deacon, about to be ordained a priest, I have celebrated about a dozen Baptisms and each one has truly been very joyful for me.  And the faith that each set of parents has shown has been commendable.  But sometimes I am a little disappointed when I learn that parents have delayed the Baptism of their child, not because of medical or family troubles, but because they want their child to decide for himself if he wants to be Baptized or they feel like they don’t want to impose a particular faith on their child.  With mothers this is the hardest for me to understand.  From the moment a mother learns she has conceived her child, she naturally begin to plan the future – what type of house will be needed, if her and/or her husband’s job is making enough to give them the security they need, how she will feed, clothe, and nurture the child, what neighborhood the child will be raised in, what family and friends will be available to him, what schools he will go to, etc.  All of these decisions for the child’s natural, physical well-being are decided long before the child has a say.  Why then do some mothers today leave their child’s supernatural life and their eternal well-being up to chance?  Having a neutral attitude with regard to a child’s religious life is in fact not a neutral choice but a negative choice that deprives the child of an essential good.[1]  This good is the aid of a mother who will, from the beginning, nurture not only his natural health, but his spiritual health as well.  A child’s mother is naturally, then, the one he has who can explain the Scriptures to him and to help him to believe in Jesus in the Eucharist.  Who else but a mother can say to her child when he is old enough to receive Communion, “My son, I fed you with milk from my own body so that, at least for a while, you would not be hungry, but here Jesus feeds you with his body so you will never be hungry again.”

            The benefit of becoming a child of God, one of the many gifts of Baptism, is something that I think mothers should give their children as soon as they can and afterwards nurture with all of the feminine genius at their disposal.  The time honored practices of the family rosary or gathering together to read the readings before Mass are simple ways a mother, along with her husband, can gradually raise their children in the faith.  When my three brothers and I were children, for whatever reason, our family didn’t pray the rosary or read the Scriptures together.  But I clearly remember my mom encouraging my dad to come to our rooms and teach us how to pray when he came home tired from a long day’s work.  My mom was and still is a Catholic elementary school teacher.  She may not have sat down and explained the Scriptures to us but she taught us our faith and helped us to understand it when we came home from school.  I remember riding in the car on the way to school, she would rehearse with us the prayers we were learning in religion class.  We said the Act of Contrition over and over until we learned it.

            Today I want to thank and encourage all of the mothers, grandmothers, and godmothers who have been faithful from the very beginning in nurturing the bodies and the souls of their children.  I don’t know if I would be a deacon today, on my way to the priesthood, if it wasn’t for my mother helping me along the way, keeping me on track, and coming to my assistance when I was sad, without hope, afraid, or confused.  But I also want to challenge today the mothers who may not have realized that this was their duty or who haven’t been as faithful to it as they could be.  Today, Mother’s Day, is not a religious holiday, but it can still be one in which the Holy Spirit calls us to be grateful and to thank the Mothers of our parish for all they have done to raise us in the faith.  And it can be an opportunity for us to support our mothers, to reach out to the mothers in our extended families or groups of friends, and help them to be the supportive mothers that they are called to be.

And should you be among those today who are reminded of the loss of your mother, be not afraid.  Your Mother the Church, has always been here for you, always willing to give you the help that you need, especially through the Mass, that most precious gift that she has preserved for 2000 years.  For all of us, through the Mass each and every day our Holy Mother the Church opens up the Scriptures for us and makes Jesus known to us in the breaking of the bread.

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[1] Instruction on Infant Baptism, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, October 20, 1980