Homily 30th Sun O.T. Year A – When Man is Loved, God is Loved

In last weekend’s readings, when our Lord taught the Pharisees and the Herodians that the People of God should be able to fulfill their civic duties and their duties to God at the same time, they marveled at his teaching and went away. Before our Gospel reading today, the Sadducees who denied the Resurrection, tried to stump Jesus, but they too “were astonished at his teaching.” Now the Pharisees will try one last time. Infuriated that he was able to silence the Sadducees, they gathered around Jesus and, putting forward their most clever scribe, they asked him, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” By calling him “Teacher” they pretended to be humble and respectful, but really, they thought they already knew it all.

With this question they again hoped to stump him. In the old Jewish Law there were 613 laws which the scribes and Pharisees rigidly imposed on God’s people. Although these 613 laws were divided into light and grave offenses – with the grave ones being punishable by death – and further divided into small and great offenses, the Pharisees followed all 613 with equal force. So when the scribe asks Jesus which one is the greatest, he is trying to test Jesus’ faithfulness to the law. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” he asked.

To this Jesus gave a two-part answer, the first part easily recognizable to any faithful Jew. It was no surprise: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.” This is a direct reference to Deut 6:5: “Hear, O Israel,” it says, “The Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Faithful Jews prayed this prayer three times a day, every day.

It is the second part of our Lord’s response, though, that would have been the most surprising to his audience. Jesus continues, “The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Here, in an unprecedented way, He formally joins love of God to love of neighbor by quoting Lev 19:18 “You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” Such a combination of texts is nowhere to be found in the writings of the rabbis down through the centuries. They did not connect love of God to love of neighbor. The prevailing Jewish attitude toward non-Jews at the time was of bitter contempt.

In this episode, Jesus again answers the question they should have asked. Earlier when they asked him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?” he answered with what should be paid to Caesar and to God. Here they ask him which commandment in the law is the greatest and he gives them the greatest and the second-greatest! The reason he does this is because he understands the true spirit of the Old Law and he does not wish to separate love of God from love of our neighbor. These two commandments summarize the spirit of the entire Old Testament and of all 613 of its laws. They even summarize the 10 commandments we all know and love today.

True love of God leads us to love our neighbor. St. Thomas Aquinas said, “When man is loved, God is loved, for man is the image of God.” This is also echoed elsewhere in Scripture. The first letter of St. John tells us, “If anyone says, ‘I love God’, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also” (1 Jn 4:20-21). But who is our brother or our neighbor?

The Jews, before and during the time of Christ, had a strict interpretation of the term “neighbor.” They had a strong national identity and a bond with each other as the chosen Sons of God, his people set-apart to bring the entire world to Him. Therefore, naturally, “neighbor” was a fellow Jew. But, just as Jesus was the first to formally join the two texts of the Old Testament together, love of God in Deuteronomy to love of neighbor in Leviticus, so was he the first to expand the notion of neighbor beyond their national identity. So who then is our neighbor? A scribe in Luke’s Gospel asked our Lord this very question and he answered with the story of the Good Samaritan.

We all know the story, right? There, a Jew is robbed, stripped, beaten, and left for dead. When the Jewish priests and Levites, who were trained in the law and thus more responsible for it, passed him by, finally a hated Samaritan stopped to help. But, he doesn’t just bandage him up and run away even though he could have because there was such hatred between the Jews and Samaritans. No, he poured water and wine on the man’s wounds, took him to an inn, cared for him, and paid for everything. In this story the Samaritan teaches us that our neighbor is everyone in need, friend or enemy. Every person is my neighbor, more particularly the one in need.

This story of the Good Samaritan also teaches what love is and how to love. Christ is the Good Samaritan, the wounded man is the human race robbed and beaten by sin and the devil, the oil and wine are the sacraments and the inn is the Church where we are cared for and where our wounds are healed. Looking at it this way, we see that love is more than how it is popularly portrayed; it is more than just a feeling. Our feelings come and go, but love is constant. It is an act of the will; to choose the good of another whether it feels good or not; to put another’s good before our own.

Imagine what it felt like to be the Samaritan. He knew the Jews hated his people and he was in their land. He probably was afraid and wanted to journey as quickly as he could. But, knowing the true spirit of the Old Law himself, and loving God first, he was moved to love his wounded neighbor despite the fact that he was a Jew. And this love had no mushy, buddy-buddy feelings to it. It was probably expensive to use his oil and wine on the man’s wounds but he did it anyway. It was probably difficult and dirty and tiring to dress up his wounds on the side of the road. It probably didn’t feel good and probably took a lot of energy to pick up the man and place him on his horse and then slowly ride him back into town despite the jeers of other priests and Levites who passed by. Then the Samaritan cared for the man all through the night and paid two days wages to ensure that he would be taken care of at the inn while he was gone. This is true love, a love centered on love of God and self-sacrifice. The Samaritan’s love for the wounded Jew was true love because it came from the overflow of his love for God first. Plus, if the Samaritan had waited to feel love before he showed it, then he may not have showed it at all. Now, certainly, when great feelings come with love then they are good and can bring much Joy. But, remember: Love is not a feeling, it is an act of the will, a choice.

How do you love God? How do you love your spouse? Your family? Your coworkers? Your friends? Your neighbor? Love God first and you will love the rest. But if you love your spouse first or your family first then your love is out of order, and that person becomes an obstacle to your love of God. When you love God first and most of all, then you will be able to love others as He does, as Christ does, with patience and sacrifice. Then you will care for what matters most: the salvation of the souls God has placed in your path. Then like Christ, you will be their Good Samaritan.

As you journey through life, go to where your family, your friends, your coworkers are and bring them to the Inn of the Church where they can be saved and refreshed by the “oil and wine” of our holy sacraments, a salvation paid for not by two days wages, but with the priceless grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, whom our psalm called our rock, our fortress, our shield, our strength. Let your love be self-sacrificial, a love of God and a love of your neighbor, and God’s law will always be a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light.

Homily 29th Sun O.T. Year A–To Caesar and to God

Over the last few Sundays, our Gospel readings have been from St. Matthew’s Gospel and, parable after parable, Jesus has been putting the Pharisees squarely in their place. And with each parable they have been increasing in anger toward Jesus. He has stumped them and caught them trapped in their wickedness and so now the Pharisees decide to try to return the favor. They “went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech.”

Their plan seemed fool-proof. First, in an act of false humility, they compliment our Lord’s truthfulness and his disregard for opinion or status. Then, they ask him “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” They figured that if he said “Yes,” then they could discredit him among the Jews as one who advocated Roman rule. But, if he said “No,” then they could report him to the Romans for inciting anti-taxation sentiments. He answered not “Yes” or “No”, but this: “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” This was much more profound then the Pharisees expected: “When they heard it, they marveled; and they left him and went away.”

What did Jesus mean by this? Because this passage could be easily misunderstood, let’s look at what Jesus is not saying. He is not saying, “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar” on one hand, and repay “to God what belongs to God” on the other hand. Jesus is not teaching us the separation of church and state here. The simple word “and” between the two phrases tells us that they should be read together as one. Let us be on the look out for those who would use this passage to advocate the divorce of faith from the public square. Faith and Science, Church and State, Religion and Politics are distinct, but should never be separate. Therefore we must pray that more Catholics – who are faithful to Church Teaching – will enter into the fields of science and politics.

A Catholic’s faith should inform every aspect of his life, from the home, to the bedroom, to the office, to the voting booth, to the floor of the Senate, and the Oval Office. If we only allow faith to impact the comfortable areas of our life – mass on Sunday, conversations with the pastor, religion class, etc – and not the areas of our life that challenge us, then what is the sense in having faith at all? Our Lord does not want lukewarmness, he wants a faith that is complete and alive. We can’t separate our private convictions from our public actions without diminishing both. Pope John Paul I only reigned for 33 days but still had much wisdom in this regard. He said:

In this same society there is a terrible moral and religious void. Today all seem frantically directed toward material conquests: make money, invest, surround oneself with new comforts, live the ‘good life’. Few think also of ‘doing good.’ God – who should fill our life – has, on the contrary, become a very distant star, to which people look only at certain moments. People believe they are religious because they go to church; but outside of church they want to lead the same life as many others, marked by small or big deceits, acts of injustice, sins against charity; and thus they totally lack coherence.

We must pray and work for a society in which faithful citizenship can harmoniously repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.

But, remember, the Pharisees in our Gospel only asked Jesus about Caesar, why did he add the bit about God? I think Jesus is also teaching us here about the religious dimension of man. It is true what Aristotle taught us: “Man is by nature a political animal,” – it is natural for him to be social, to form partnerships, to form cities. But his whole being is not exhausted by his dealings with the cities, his politics. No, human beings have an immortal soul and have God’s law imprinted on their hearts. This soul, nurtured by faith, hope, and love, should inform all that a citizen does, thus making him a faithful citizen. This is why Jesus added the words, repay “to God what belongs to God”.

Obedience to civic duties is the responsibility of all who follow Christ as long as these do not conflict with our duties to God. If they do then God’s law wins out in the end. But, when they are in harmony, one’s attention to his civic duties can be a path to holiness. The Second Vatican Council taught us that:

The laity accomplish the Church’s mission in the world principally by [blending conduct and faith] which makes them the light of the world; [by uprightness in dealings which is an incentive for others] to love the true and the good and which is capable of inducing [them] at last to go to Christ and the Church; by that fraternal charity [which prepares all hearts] for the action of saving grace; [and by personal responsibility] in the development of society, which drives them on to perform their family, social, and professional duties with Christian generosity.

We must realize that our faith has much to bring to the world, to science and to politics. Faith is not an obstacle to the fullest realization of these things, but rather must serve as their guide. Science and technology, guided by faith, recognize the rights of all human beings from the moment of conception; recognize the horror of human cloning and embryonic stem cell research; and recognize that the inherent dignity of our elderly brothers and sisters is not found in the integrity of their biological systems or their functionality, but in their simply being human. Only this type of science can be truly progressive and reach its fullest potential. Science unguided by faith falls into mere ideology, a dominating, ravenous, caricature of what it was meant to be.

Politics, guided by faith, recognizes that marriage, by definition, is between one man and one woman, and this, coupled with its unbreakable bond, guarantees the health of society: it is in the state’s best interest to protect the integrity of marriage, of the family, of the upbringing of children, of Christian education, etc. A Catholic with a well-formed conscience can do much for the common good!

But, a society with politics unguided by faith is “at the mercy of aggressive elements and prey to a gradual dehumanization.” Thus we have a society in which the death of 4000 human beings to surgical abortion each day is lauded as freedom and equality; and the destruction of human embryos, tiny human beings, for unsuccessful medical treatments is advanced for political gain rather than real cures. In the Presidential election, a year away now, remember that a vote is a political act but it is also a moral act with moral implications.

In the periods of silence today, let us examine ourselves and where we stand with these principles. And I include myself. What have we done to bring our Catholic faith to bear on the common good? Are we proud of our faith in some areas, with some people, but reject it in others? Have we abused the gifts of science and technology in our own lives or damaged the larger common good through internet addiction, artificial insemination, contraception, or even abortion? Have we elevated our politics over our faith and distracted ourselves from issues concerning faith and life directly, themselves? If we have done these things, let us be assured that there is hope. This hope lies not in our vote or our candidate but in Jesus Christ. Did he not teach us: “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his [soul]?” As Isaiah foretold twice in the first reading, Jesus Christ “is the Lord, there is no other.” Jesus is the Way when we have become lost in the political hype; the Truth when we have bought the lies of the evil one; and the Life when we have fallen to his temptations. In Jesus Christ we are secure and can exclaim with our psalm today “For great is the LORD and highly to be praised; awesome is he, beyond all gods. For all the gods of the nations are things of nought, but the LORD made the heavens… The LORD is king, he governs the peoples with equity.”

The Marian Talk at the 60th Annual Living Rosary

It is a great honor for me to be able to give the Marian Talk this, the 60^th Living Rosary Presentation. I believe some clever friends from St. Athanasius had a hand in my being chosen, I’ll talk to them later! Seriously though, as this is the first “living rosary” that I have been able to attend, I hope I am able to continue the tradition established by the good speakers who have given this talk in years past. Adding to the occasion, we celebrate this year’s event at Assumption High School whose name comes from one of the most beautiful Feast days that Holy Mother Church celebrates. With our theme being Vocations and World Peace, the Blessed Mother, in her Assumption, actually speaks well to both of these.

I fondly remember an inscription on the baldachino standing over the altar at the seminary I went to, St. Mary’s, in Baltimore, MD. It is the first phrase of Mary’s canticle of praise to God - Magnificat anima mea Dominum – My soul magnifies the Lord. At every daily Mass at the seminary, going back to when I first entered seminary in August of 2005, I read that phrase and pondered its meaning. What does it mean for one’s very soul to magnify the Lord? What does it mean for all of us today who celebrate Mary in a place named for her Assumption?

The answer begins in the Old Testament with the widow Judith. In the Book of Judith we read how she was highly praised for her victory over the Assyrians on behalf of the Israelites. Due to her splendid beauty and surpassing wisdom, she was able to get close to the enemy king. She had great courage and faith in the Lord’s protection and strength. When the king was asleep she took his sword and decapitated him, much to the horror of their enemies who fled in fear and were defeated. The Israelites praised her as blessed “above all women upon the earth.” They declared that God had magnified her name on that fateful day and that her praise shall come from the mouths of men forever. Judith was considered the glory of Jerusalem, the joy of Israel, the honor of her people.

The Church Fathers saw Judith as one who prepares God’s people to turn their eyes to the woman par excellence, most resplendent in beauty, most blessed among women, whom all generations shall call blessed – the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the glory, the joy, the honor not only of Israel, but of all mankind. By her courage in saying Yes to becoming the Mother of God and by her faith and hope in God’s promises she brought about a victory much greater than one nation over another. As Judith won victory for Israel by a fatal blow to the head of the enemy king, Mary brings about the victory over Satan by bearing our Savior, Jesus Christ, who crushes the head of sin and death underfoot. The Lord God prophesied to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” But, Mary does not magnify herself by her virtues. She sings, “my soul magnifies the Lord.” What does this mean? It means that her entire life joyfully proclaims to all generations our Lord’s conclusive victory over sin and death.

Due to the fall of our first parents, sin took hold over the beginning and the end of human life. At his conception, man inherits original sin and what we call concupiscence or the tendency toward sin. And at his very end he must suffer the wages of sin which are death and the decomposition of his body. But, the Blessed Virgin Mary escaped both. She shines forth as a beacon from God’s heavenly kingdom, showing us even now, before Christ’s second coming, that he is completely victorious over sin and death. The Lord, by Mary’s Immaculate Conception, saved her from original sin before she could be sullied by it, thus showing his victory over the beginning of life. By freeing her from the snares of concupiscence, he prepared her to live a life free from actual committed sin, thus showing his victory over the course of life. And by assuming her body and soul into heaven he showed his victory over the end of life. Mary was saved completely from the dominion and the bonds of sin and death.

When Pope Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption in 1950 he defined the essence of the dogma to be thus: “The Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death” (Munificentissimus Deus). This is what Catholics must believe. But what does this have to do with us?

First, Mary’s Assumption is the guarantee that those who share in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, will share in his glory. By sharing in Christ’s suffering and death at the foot of the cross, she proved to us that Jesus keeps his promises: she shares in his heavenly glory. If we offer up our sufferings, great and small, to the Father and die to ourselves, our passions, and our own will, each and every day, we too will share in Christ’s glory alongside our Blessed Mother who reflects the glory of her Son every time we look to her.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary also teaches us the honor due to our father and mother. Jesus followed the fourth commandment to its ultimate degree by bringing his mother, body and soul, quickly to his side at the moment of her “death.” He crowned her queen of heaven and earth. As Mary described in her canticle of praise, “He that is mighty, hath done great things to me; … he hath exalted the humble.” Fr. Matthias Scheeben, the brilliant German theologian of the mid 1800’s, described beautifully the honor that the Son of God showed His Mother: “As He on the third day had raised from the sepulcher… so also this mother was snatched from the grave and conformed to her Son; and as He had descended to her, so she, as being closely united with that greater and more perfect tabernacle, was taken up into heaven.”

How do we honor our father and mother, especially as they approach old age or death? Do we forget them or abandon them? Do we “honor” them by squabbling over money or inheritance? Jesus Christ is calling us today to honor our father and mother as if they were his Heavenly Father and his Blessed Mother for they have been given to us to lead us to these Holy Parents.

So, again, two of the main principles we learn from Mary’s Assumption is Christ’s victory over the beginning, duration, and end of life and the honor due our father and mother. The way that Mary models Christ’s victory over life and death is itself a call and a challenge for us to model this same victory in our own lives. In our world, all too often, the forces of sin and death reign over the beginning, duration, and end of life. At its beginning, man’s life is plagued by abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and human cloning. Through its duration, man’s life is plagued by disorder and unjust war. At its end, man’s life is plagued by euthanasia and unjust uses of capitol punishment. We must follow Mary’s model of Christ’s victory rather than the allurements of Satan’s reign. Only then will true peace reign over the beginning, duration, and end of life. Christ, the Prince of Peace, is challenging us with Mary’s example to let him reign in our lives too. Her Immaculate Conception is lived out in our lives when we pray and work to eliminate abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and human cloning. Her freedom from the tendency toward sin is lived out in our lives when we pray and work to bring order to society and free it from unjust wars. Her Assumption is lived out in our lives when we pray and work to eliminate euthanasia and unjust uses of capital punishment.

Peace is a value, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church teaches, and a universal duty founded on a rational and moral order of society that has its roots in God himself, “the first source of being, the essential truth and the supreme good.” Peace is not merely an absence of war, nor can it be reduced solely to the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies. Rather it is founded on a correct understanding of the human person and requires the establishment of an order based on justice and charity (CSDC 494). Peace is the fruit of justice… and is threatened when man is not given all that is due him as a human person, when his dignity is not respected and when civil life is not directed to the common good. Peace is also, [and primarily], the fruit of love (494). Similar to the culture of life, a “culture of peace” must reign. In a climate permeated with the harmony and respect for justice [and charity], an authentic culture of peace can grow and can even pervade the entire international community (495). Mary’s life, shining forth Christ’s victory, is of primary importance in forming a culture of peace.

The second principle we learned from Mary’s Assumption, about the honor due our father and mother lends itself to vocations in the Church, vocations which are sorely needed in order to extend Christ’s reign of peace in the hearts of man so that it can then, and only then, spread out and influence the larger community. We need strong families in which mothers and fathers are honored so that young men can then grow up into the honorable position of father and young women into the honorable position of mother. When need strong fathers so that young men will desire to in turn be fathers of many spiritual children. We need strong mothers so that young women will desire in turn to be mothers of many spiritual children, to be the spouse of Christ, to be the handmaidens of the Lord. Through strong families in general, Mary’s model of peace can reign in the hearts of our children. This peace in turn will not admit to them the many distractions in life that detract from a religious vocation. When children are raised in a spiritual and lasting culture of peace they will more readily hear the call of God to mimic Mary’s “Yes” and respond to him generously.

Now that I have been ordained a priest, I sometimes miss kneeling in the chapel at the seminary and reading that inscription over the altar each and every day – Magnificat anima mea Dominum – My soul magnifies the Lord. Oremus pro invicem – Let us pray for each other, today and during the rest of this year. If we avail ourselves of the intercession of our Blessed Mother, Queen of Heaven and Earth, we will not magnify ourselves by our faith and works, but instead always magnify our Lord. If we trust in her intercession we will share in Christ’s suffering and death and so share in his glory. If we honor her intercession we will honor our father and mother and give them the crown that they deserve. If we trust in her model, we will allow Christ’s victory to reign over our entire lives and so serve to instill peace in our hearts which will radiate into our families, communities, and world, also giving rise to many vocations. Finally, through her intercession, we have hope that we too will be brought swiftly to the side of our Lord when we die.

Homily 28th Sun O.T. Year A–The Marriage Feast and The Call

I am sure we have all, at one time or another, experienced the disappointment of working and planning diligently for a major event only to have very few people show up. Especially when it is a parish event, you can feel so defeated and discouraged when you know that a presentation or a speaker could have been so helpful to so many people and you want so badly for the gifts of the Church to have an effect on everyone. But imagine the big occasions in your life where it is obligatory that a lot of people show up. Imagine if only a handful came to a milestone birthday party, or a family reunion, or worse yet, your wedding reception? I was thinking about how disappointed I would have been if my Ordination had been like that. The challenge today is for us to consider that sometimes we do that to God, leave him high and dry. Really mankind has done this to God throughout salvation history.

Beginning with the Israelites of the Old Testament, God sent them the prophets to continually call them to Himself, to salvation, to eternal life. What Isaiah called “a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines” was the salvation God had in store for them. Throughout the Scriptures the image of a great heavenly banquet is used to illustrate the great intimacy that God desires to have with us, in order to share with us His greatest gifts. Through the prophets, God proclaimed continuously, in the words of Jesus’ parable, “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.” They don’t have to bring anything. God doesn’t split up their last names and have A through H bring a meat, I through P bring vegetables, and Q through Z bring a dessert! He just wants them to be with him.

But, the Jews at that time either ignored the call – preoccupied as they were with worldly or family concerns – or, worse, rejected the king’s feast and killed the prophets who were sent to invite them. Remember, Jesus is in Jerusalem for his passion. He is making one last attempt to stir the consciences of the scribes and Pharisees, to help them see that they have fallen in line with the wicked tenants of last week’s parable who killed the servants and the landowner’s only son, who were sent to collect the produce of the vineyard. And now, Jesus says, they are like the invited guests who ignore and kill the servants sent to invite them to the feast.

But, in order to prove once and for all God’s great patience even for those who reject him, Jesus will go the greatest length himself to show that any and everyone are called to the feast, “bad and good alike.” He will go to the point of the cross to gather all he has found. He will suffer a three-fold rejection – He is the King that gives the feast, mocked by the purple robe and the crown of thorns – He is the Son around whom the feast is prepared, mocked as an illegitimate blasphemer before the Sanhedrin – He is the servant sent to proclaim the good news, mocked and jeered at as he hung on the cross.

When we get so caught up in our worldly concerns – “one to his farm, another to his business,” as the parable puts it – then we, in effect, are making this type of three-fold rejection of Christ the King, the Son of God, the Servant of our salvation. When I say, “I’m too busy to pray morning prayer” then I am making this three-fold rejection. Other examples could be saying, “I don’t want to get up for Mass” or “I’d rather watch the football game” or “I’m too afraid of what people will think if I invite them to Church or challenge their behavior”.

When Jesus says in the parable that “The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city” he foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D. For us, if we choose over and over to reject God, our destruction, so to speak, will come about through the natural consequences of such choices: a feeling of alienation and distance from God, a sense of loneliness during times of difficulty, a less and less fulfilling way of life. Ultimately, if we receive Hell, it will be not because God sent us there, but because we chose it, consistent with the choices to reject him in our earthy life. One of God’s greatest acts of love for us was giving us the ability to choose to not love him in return. Love is free or it is not love. God will not force us to choose good and avoid evil. Only when we choose to love God rather than reject him will the love between us grow into an earthly life and an afterlife full of the richness and bounty of God’s gifts and graces.

The point of Jesus’ parable, and really this homily too, is not to beat up those who have rejected him, but to help them and us see the richness and the beauty of what is at stake and to challenge us to live our lives according to such great gifts. Our readiness for these gifts – the feast of the Eucharist, the gifts of the sacraments, the richness of the sacramentals that are constantly available to us: holy water, blessings, the rosary, the crucifix, the scapular, religious medals, and icons… our readiness for these gifts is illustrated in the wedding garment that the guests were required to wear to the feast. Those who wear the garment of a life of conversion and virtue joyfully share in the celebration. Today’s designation as Vocation Awareness Sunday also helps us to look at this parable in a positive light. Who among us is God calling to lead us to the celebration?

We all have the responsibility to answer the call of Christ to come to Him through his Church and to help others to answer his call. But, it falls particularly on those in the priesthood or consecrated religious life to be the servants of this call in a special way, to empower the laity to “Go out, therefore, [even] into the main roads” and “into the streets” to ensure Christ’s call is heard by all, and to do their own part in making it known. The King needs servants. The Church needs young men to hear the call to be priests and to extend the call of salvation to all the world. The Church needs priests who will offer, as Isaiah called it, the “rich food” of the Body of Christ and the “choice wine” of the Blood of Christ to the people gathered at the Eucharistic feast. The Church needs young women to hear the call to consecrated religious life, to be wedded to the Son, to make the Eucharist in their hearts a true wedding feast, to meditate on the call to salvation and help the wider Church understand it.

How many in our three parishes are willing to let their son, grandson, or nephew join the priesthood or their daughter, granddaughter, or niece enter consecrated religious life? To most of our children, this is never even presented as an option. It is never even considered. Sure, what was described in the parable could happen to them too, they too might be rejected or persecuted because of God’s message, especially in our increasingly hostile society. But, I can personally testify that St. Paul’s comforting words to the Philippians are true as well for those who receive a religious vocation: “My God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

Throughout seminary and into my priesthood, I am constantly amazed at how he has helped me along the way, helped me when formation was difficult, helped me to do things I never thought I could do, like preach, and teach, and minister to people at the most profound moments of their lives. Plus it is incredibly fulfilling to stop and think that it is my hands and feet and voice that he uses to, as the Responsorial Psalm described it, lead God’s people “beside restful waters” and refresh their souls; to guide them in “right paths for his name’s sake”; to be at their side and give them courage; to “spread the table” before them; to anoint and to “overflow” them with graces. These things make it a tremendous blessing and a joy to “dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come.”

We are blessed here to have six members of the clergy in constant contact with you: Fr. Chuck, Fr. Stan, Deacon Joe, Deacon Bill, Deacon Karl, and me. We must encourage our children and our grandchildren to follow their good example. We are doing very well as a cluster in having three seminarians from St. James who are in the seminary, and one is a Deacon. Let’s keep up the momentum. The Holy Spirit is moving in this archdiocese and there is much cause for hope and excitement! When I entered seminary in 2005 I was one of three men studying to be a priest for the Archdiocese of Louisville. Now we have almost 20 seminarians and more on the way!

As we all strive to hear and answer Christ’s call in our own unique way, let us pray with St. Augustine, “Help us, Lord, to disown our vain excuses. We want to attend the banquet… Don’t allow our pride or sensuality or attachments or idle curiosity to get in the way of our attendance. Make sure that we show up… We have been invited by the wealthy one who became poor for our sake… We will come… and we will tell him: “Keep steady my steps according to thy promise’ (Ps 118:133).”

Homily 27th Sun O.T. Year A - Respect Life

This time four years ago was one of the most memorable events of my seminary career up at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, MD. October 1^st, 2007 was a very exciting day as people packed into the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, just around the block from St. Mary’s. I was sitting in a pew with many other seminarians and I remember thinking how neat it was to see so many different religious orders, many of the faculty from St. Mary’s, so many priests and deacons, even a good number of bishops. That wonderful event was the Mass in which Abp. Edwin O’Brien became the 15^th Archbishop of Baltimore, at the same time becoming the “first among equals” of the American bishops. He just recently moved to Rome though as the new Grand Master of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Not only do I remember vividly the setting that day, I also remember well the homily. With today being Respect Life Sunday, we would do well to recall what Abp. O’Brien proclaimed to Baltimore and to America on his first day as the Archbishop of Baltimore. His words were full of conviction and resolve, full of certainty and hope. Indeed, he was like a modern day St. Paul writing to the Philippians in our second reading: “Brothers and Sisters: have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition… make your requests known to God.” Like, Paul, Abp. O’Brien instructed us rely on God and the Church for help. He said:

I pledge that I shall make every effort possible to continue and intensify the defense of the right to life that has been waged by my predecessors. And I pledge more. No one has to have an abortion. To all those in crisis pregnancies, I pledge our support and our financial help. Come to the Catholic church -- let us walk with you through your time of trouble, let us help you affirm life, let us help you find a new life with your child, let us help you by placing that child in a loving home. But please, I beg you, let us help you affirm life. Abortion need not be an answer in this archdiocese....

What a rousing call! It certainly stirred up the flame in my fellow seminarians and me to do more spiritually and publicly for the pro-life cause. I remember how we often gathered with students from Johns Hopkins University on early Saturday mornings in front of a local abortion clinic to pray the rosary and to offer counseling to women as they entered and left the clinic. We were filled with compassion and zeal. We wanted more than anything to help, to make a difference. But when people would heckle us or mock us, I had moments in which I felt like the prophet Isaiah at the end of our first reading: “he looked for judgment, but see, bloodshed! For justice, but hark, the outcry!”

Aren’t these the cries of so many in the pro-life movement when we consider the magnitude of our mission? When we consider that abortion is allowed throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy! When we consider that over 1 million surgical abortions take place every year in the United States, over 4000 every day, and that they are mostly done for non-medical reasons! How can we move forward, how can we continue to witness to the Gospel of Life, in the face of such a formidable foe?

The psalmist seems to cry out right alongside Isaiah. He does so because he has faith that the Lord can help him. The Israelites were the Lord’s vineyard but they were unfaithful and yielded no fruit. They only yielded “wild grapes” – the Hebrew behind that phrase literally meaning “stinking things”. Therefore the Lord left them to their own devices and allowed his vineyard to be broken into and trampled, scattered about and overgrown. He even commanded the clouds not to send rain upon it. If they wanted to be ruined then so be it. But, the psalmist sings out to God: “O Lord of hosts, look down from heaven, and see; take care of this vine, and protect what your right hand has planted… Then we will no more withdraw from you; give us new life, and we will call upon your name.”

In many ways, we have reaped what we have sown in this culture of death. But, we must have faith that God does look down from heaven on us, that he can protect us and give us new life. We must never stop praying for this. Faith is the key when we feel discouraged in our work to end abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and all other offenses against the life of God in us.

On the whole, especially with so many youth involved, I see the pro-life movement filled with hope and joy. But sometimes when we become discouraged, the source of our discouragement is not the culture of death, but rather the things we have done to lessen our own faith in God. This happens, for example, whenever we let despair overcome us, whenever we have division in the pro-life movement, or whenever we resign ourselves to idleness or shrink from our responsibility to defend life. Sometimes when we feel discouraged or unmotivated it is the cumulative effect of these that we are feeling.

What we can do to ignite our faith again is to make an Act of Faith. You have heard of the Act of Contrition, right? It is the prayer we say during the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Remember? It goes, “O my God I am heartily sorry for having offended you…” and so forth. Did you know that there is an Act of Faith as well? It goes:

“O my God, I firmly believe that you are one God in three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I believe that your divine Son became man and died for our sins and that he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches because you have revealed them who are eternal truth and wisdom, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. In this faith I intend to live and die. Amen.”

An Act of Faith is the proper response to the culture of death, not fear. Your Act of Faith could be the formal prayer or it could be an actual act of faith. For example, you could volunteer with a local pro-life group. Today, in Elizabethtown, where I’m assigned, we are having a “Life Chain” in front of the Mall where people from the community will stand shoulder to shoulder praying the rosary for an end to offenses against human life. We are also having a Holy Hour for Life at 3:45pm with brief readings from several Church documents on various life issues. With October being Respect Life month, there are many opportunities to volunteer at a local pregnancy resource center or pray in front of a abortion clinic in Louisville. There are many prayers and acts of Faith that you can make.

By our faith, the victory that Christ won over sin and death by the power of His Cross can reign in our lives, in our families, our Churches, our neighborhoods. By our faith that victory can reign in Meade County and everywhere in Kentucky. By our faith we can show that we have become the new vineyard and we, with the Son, are the heir of the Father’s riches. But, like the wicked tenants before us, our sins too are intimately related to the death of the beloved Son. We are now expected to render a timely account. Will we yield much good fruit or will we allow sin to yield what Isaiah called “wild grapes” or literally “stinking things”?

God has prepared us well. We are grown on the fertile hillside of grace. We have the choicest vines, the blood of the grape, the Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We are spaded and cleared of the stones of sin through the sacraments of Baptism and Reconciliation. The tenants are our priests and bishops and the watchtower is the Magisterium.

Never lose faith in the victory of life over death that has already been won. Our Lord desires to work through you to apply this victory to our place and time. And he has limitless mercy and forgiveness for those who have been wounded by abortion. Make an Act of Faith! Go out with courage and proclaim to all the world that our Faith and our Lord are the hedge built around this vineyard and we will no more be trampled and destroyed.

Homily 26th Sun O.T. Year A - The Parable of the Two Sons

Since I was only ordained about 4 months ago, I still remember it very well. There were several parts to the Ordination ritual and because I was the only one to be ordained I made a point to memorize the order of the different parts so I would know exactly what to do. There wasn’t a guy next to me that I could just glance over too if I was unsure. I was it!
After being called forward and presented to the congregation, I was questioned. I promised to diligently perform the duties of the Priesthood. I had rehearsed the order over and over in my mind. I thought for sure that the Litany of the Saints was next, when I would lie prostrate on the floor as the names of the saints were chanted over me, imploring their help and prayers. But, I had forgotten one very important step. The M.C. subtly motioned twice for me to go up to the Archbishop but I shook my head “No, it’s time for the Litany of the Saints!” Archbishop Kurtz finally had to whisper “You have to promise obedience first!” I was mortified; of course I do! How could I forget the Promise of Obedience! Although I was kicking myself inside for forgetting, I gladly went up the steps of the sanctuary and knelt before the Archbishop. I placed my hands in his hands, looked him directly in the eye, and he asked me “Do you promise respect and obedience to me and my successors?” I answered with all the love and confidence I could give: “I do.”
Promising obedience is not easy, for some priests it is the hardest part of the priesthood. In obedience, a priest has to be willing to respond with trust to his bishop’s instructions, to be willing to go to any parish where he is needed, to be willing to go back to school for further studies if necessary, or to take on additional parishes or responsibilities.
Although these can be difficult, obedience can also bring great joy and fulfillment. It gives a priest direction – he knows who he is and what he is called to do. He doesn’t have to worry constantly about which parish God his calling him too or how long he should minister there. He knows that the Holy Spirit works through his bishop, guiding his ministry, and leading him to the people that God wants him to serve. This is very liberating.
It is very important that a priest promises this obedience in a public fashion, before God, his fellow clergy, and all the people of God gathered there. It is a sign to the world that obedience, although it entails sacrifice, does not have to be bitter or reluctant. It can be free and loving and can bring fulfillment, happiness, and grace to one’s life. When St. Paul tells us in the second reading that Jesus was obedient even to the point of death on a cross, he shows us that in Christ we find the true model and definition of obedience – one that springs from love and freedom and leads not to death but to life.
“Obedience” comes from the Latin “ob-audire” which means “to hear or listen to.” To our modern ears, Christ-like obedience sounds terrible. We don’t like to be told what to do, or how to act. We have highly exalted personal autonomy: “I have the right to do whatever I want as long as I’m not hurting anybody and you don’t have the right to tell me otherwise!” We think that having to obey someone constricts our freedom because then we have to do what that someone tells us rather than what we want to do. The Church is a prime example.
But, True Christian Obedience springs from love and freedom and increases love and freedom. It is not white-knuckled, bitter, disgruntled, rumbling-under-your-breath, Oh-If-You-Say-So, obedience. No, True Christian Obedience is joyful because it gives us that fulfillment in life that comes from being what God made us to be and doing what God calls us to do. God doesn’t want obedient robots or puppets. God wants obedient sons and daughters. And sons and daughters of God the Father, obey him not out of force or fear but because He loves them and they love Him in return.
When we see our obedience as part of a relationship with a loving Father then it can make more sense. There are many real-world examples that illustrate how sensible obedience is: Someone driving cross-country doesn’t mind the lane markings on the road. They don’t constrict him, rather they give him the fullest freedom possible with which to successfully complete his journey. A train conductor, chugging along the tracks, doesn’t resent the tracks because they prevent him from going along the roads like the cars can. No, he hugs the tracks because they allow him to be the fullest extent of what he was mean to be at that moment, a train conductor. A fish in a lake, if he could think, does not resent the confines of his lake which prevent him from flopping onto the banks. No, the confines of the lake give him the freedom to be what he is, a fish. If he were to rebel against the lake and jump out onto the banks he would surely die.
The point is, when one obeys out of love and willingness because the authority, like the Church, is good and trustworthy then he will find that his freedom and happiness is secured, not taken away. Obedience is good for us. A life of disobedience, free from rules or guides, may feel free at first, but it really only binds one to a spiral of confusion, uncertainty, disappointment and heartache.
Msgr. Cormac Burke, an Irish Canon Lawyer, wrote a book called Authority and Freedom in the Church. In it he said, “For the person who wants to follow Christ, the law is never a burden. It becomes a burden only insofar as one fails to discern the call of Christ. Therefore, if the law sometimes seems burdensome, it may not be the law so much as our keenness to follow Christ that needs amending. [After all, our Lord said,] ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments’ (Jn 14:15).” Furthermore, although we know of course that Christ always has, does, and will love the Father, he says “I love you” out loud to the Father only once in Scripture – and this one time, interestingly enough, is in a statement of obedience. In John’s Gospel, we hear Jesus say to his disciples, “I do as the Father commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.” Christ obeyed the Will of the Father, not merely because he had to, but because he chose to, he wanted to, he loved to! So too, we must follow his commandments relayed to us through the teachings and precepts of the Catholic Church promptly, cheerfully, and humbly. We too can obey like Jesus did, even if we bring to the table a history of much disobedience.
Our Gospel told the story of how one son told his father that he would not work in the vineyard but later repented and did. His second son said that he would work in the vineyard but never showed up. It was the first son that did his father’s will. It was his later repentance that the father remembered, not his initial refusal.
Their story gives us much hope for our own lives. How many of us are more like the second son than the first? Those who said “Yes,” in essence, at their Baptism, at their First Confession, at their First Communion, but have later said No by lives of disobedience – can still have hope.
Like the tax collectors and prostitutes, it is never too late to heed the Father’s call, to repent, to say Yes to him, to follow his will, and work in his vineyard, even if we have spent long lives away from Him. It is this change of mind and belief for him that he will remember. If you find yourself lacking discipline, then grow in love, because discipline is the fruit of love. St. Thomas Aquinas taught us that “A very good sign of one’s being on the right road in the spiritual life is one’s willingness to obey others.” And the prophet Ezekiel proclaimed in our First Reading, “if someone turns from the wickedness he has committed, he does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life; since he has turned away from all the sins he has committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die.”

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.