Jerusalem and Athens

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2020-01-01T18:11:00.088-05:00

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves"
(Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio )
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A Powerful Witness

On EWTN, Mother Angelica had a guest, Fr. Steven Scheier, who gave a powerful witness of his near-death experience. To see and hear his witness, click here.

Dinner with Jesus

What would you do, what would you say, and what questions would you ask if you had an opportunity to have dinner with Jesus ?

Political Correctness vs. the Gospel

Our first amendment rights, both with respect to religion and free speech, are dissolving with an ever-growing rapidity. The following one-hour program was banned from WOOD-TV (Grand Rapids, MI) because of pressure by radicals opposed to the Gospel:

http://www.silencingchristians.com/

Persons and Putative "Animal Rights"

Brute animals deserve humane treatment, but not because of any "rights" that they putatively possess.

http://deaconsforum.blogspot.com/2009/10/putative-animal-rights.html

EXPOSITIONS
Teachings, exhortations, and doctrinal summaries:

Human Respect and Political Correctness
The Most Important Person in the World
Twelve Miracles Associated with the Eucharist

DISQUISITIONS
In-depth articles:

A Critique of Fundamental Option Theory
Mary, Holy Mother of God
Spiritual Warfare

NOTEWORTHY ITEMS
Some items of note culled from the web:

Fr. Steven Scheier's Powerful Witness
Dinner with Jesus
Liturgical Abuse
A Comparison of the Traditional Tridentine Mass with the Novus Ordo Mass

HOMILIES
Homilies presented at St. Thomas the Apostle, Ann Arbor, MI, 2004-2010:

Sunday Homilies
Weekday Homilies

We Are Children of the Light and the Truth

2010-05-20T20:20:00.000-04:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTER (C)
19 MAY 2010

Acts 20 : 28 - 38

[Acts 20:28] Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the church of God that he acquired with his own blood.
[Acts 20:29] I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock.
[Acts 20:30] And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them.
[Acts 20:31] So be vigilant and remember that for three years, night and day, I unceasingly admonished each of you with tears.
[Acts 20:32] And now I commend you to God and to that gracious word of his that can build you up and give you the inheritance among all who are consecrated.
[Acts 20:33] I have never wanted anyone's silver or gold or clothing.
[Acts 20:34] You know well that these very hands have served my needs and my companions.
[Acts 20:35] In every way I have shown you that by hard work of that sort we must help the weak, and keep in mind the words of the Lord Jesus who himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"
[Acts 20:36] When he had finished speaking he knelt down and prayed with them all.
[Acts 20:37] They were all weeping loudly as they threw their arms around Paul and kissed him,
[Acts 20:38] for they were deeply distressed that he had said that they would never see his face again. Then they escorted him to the ship.

John 17: 11 - 19

[John 17:11] And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are.
[John 17:12] When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of perdition, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled.
[John 17:13] But now I am coming to you. I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely.
[John 17:14] I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
[John 17:15] I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.
[John 17:16] They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
[John 17:17] Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.
[John 17:18] As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.
[John 17:19] And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.

In today’s Gospel, Our Lord prays to His Heavenly Father for his apostles and His other disciples. Jesus emphasizes two realities as He prepares to undergo His passion and death, His resurrection, the details of the Church which He is founding, His ascension, and His sending forth the Holy Spirit.

1. Jesus is sending His disciples into the world as His Heavenly Father sent Him into the world. He does not pray that they be taken from the world, but that they be kept from the evil one. Satan, although utterly defeated, remains the prince of the unredeemed world, and will do so until the end of time.

2. Jesus prays that His disciples be consecrated in truth.

They, the nascent church and we, the maturing church, are to be the prolongation of Jesus’ presence on earth by sanctifying the world. Their and our witness to the truth is to cause an ongoing diminution in the unredeemed world of the usurper. Satan is the father of lies. Our Heavenly Father is the Father of Truth, and that Truth is His Eternal Word, Jesus Christ. Our witness to the Eternal Truth, the Word of God, is empowered by the Holy Spirit acting in us in much the same way that He acted in Jesus during Jesus’ public ministry.

Here is the true meaning of the “priesthood of the laity”. This priesthood is not manifested primarily in there being lectors and extraordinary ministers of communion. Its principal manifestation is involved in the sanctifying of the world, and indeed of all creation. As St Paul says

[Rom 8:19] ...creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God;
[Rom 8:20] for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it...
[Rom 8:21] (We hope) that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Just how do we sanctify creation? We do so both proactively and reactively.

Proactively, we establish a relation with every creature, animate and inanimate, with which we come into contact as we progress in our state of life, which is conducive to our salvation, the edification of our neighbor, and the glorification of God.

Reactively, we avoid any relation with any creature which would hinder our salvation, disedify our neighbor, or not glorify God.

Enemies of the truth are all around us. Their enmity is usually not based on some misuse of intellect, the perfection of which is to know the truth, but more often on a hatred of the truth itself, which shines a glaring light on their wicked deeds. As St Paul says in Romans 1:

[Rom 1:18] The wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness.
...
[Rom 1:24] Therefore, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies.
[Rom 1:25] They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator...
...
[Rom 1:29] They are filled with every form of wickedness...
[Rom 1:32] Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

We are children of the light and the truth. Let us manifest this in our daily lives by unflinching witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, whether convenient or inconvenient. In everything we do, let our chief aim not ever be the approval of sinful men, but always be the approval of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. We witness now to Him with Whom it is our highest hope to dwell throughout all eternity.

It is Expedient that Jesus Ascend

2010-05-20T20:14:00.002-04:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE SIXTH WEEK OF EASTER (C)
12 MAY 2010

Acts 17: 15, 22 - 18:1

[Acts 17:15] After Paul's escorts had taken him to Athens, they came away with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.
...
[Acts 17:22] Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said: "You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.
[Acts 17:23] For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, 'To an Unknown God.' What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.
[Acts 17:24] The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands,
[Acts 17:25] nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.
[Acts 17:26] He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions,
[Acts 17:27] so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us.
[Acts 17:28] For 'In him we live and move and have our being,' as even some of your poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
[Acts 17:29] Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.
[Acts 17:30] God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent
[Acts 17:31] because he has established a day on which he will 'judge the world with justice' through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead."
[Acts 17:32] When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, "We should like to hear you on this some other time."
[Acts 17:33] And so Paul left them.
[Acts 17:34] But some did join him, and became believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them,
[Acts 18:1] After this he left Athens and went to Corinth.

John 16: 12 - 15

[John 16:12] "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
[John 16:13] But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming.
[John 16:14] He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
[John 16:15] Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.

While Jesus was on earth during the forty days between His resurrection and ascension, He told His apostles, “it is expedient for you that I depart..” Having rejoiced at the resurrection of Our Lord, the apostles must surely have been saddened by this.

But suppose Jesus had not ascended, but had remained on earth? Strangely, He would have been less accessible to each of us than He is now. Christians would long to make the “grand pilgrimage” to the Holy Land to be in the presence of Jesus Christ: body, blood, soul, and divinity. Some Christians would in fact have the means to make that pilgrimage at least once in their lives. Many others would not.

Reflecting on this makes it easier to understand why Jesus stated that it was “expedient for Him to depart”. His departure meant opening the way for the descent of the Holly Spirit on the Church at the first Pentecost, and His abiding presence in the Church all the way until the end of time. By the power of the Holy Spirit active in the Christian priesthood, Our Lord today is fully present: body, blood, soul, and divinity in each of the tabernacles in Churches throughout the entire world. No pilgrimage is necessary: His accessibility is precisely the accessibility of the nearest Catholic Church (Western or Eastern).

I had the privilege of traveling to Jerusalem in 1994. During my stay there, I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher the (historically) most sacred place in Christianity. What struck me the most as I visited the last five original stations of the cross, was the fact that I was just as close to Jesus Christ in both His divinity and in His humanity as I was back at St Thomas the Apostle in Ann Arbor.

During the final forty days of Jesus’ historical presence on earth, He finalized the details of establishing His Church, His mystical body. Just as He constructed the body of Adam out of the elements of the earth, and vivified it by the breath (ruah) of life, so did He then vivify His mystical body on earth by ascending into heaven and sending forth His Spirit. We thus speak of the Holy Spirit as mystically being the “soul” of the mystical body of Christ, the Church. In today’s Gospel, Our Lord states the following:

[John 16:13] But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.

The Holy Spirit is the invisible head of the church--He continues elucidating the truth over the course of millennia. The truth itself is of course unchanging, but our knowledge of that truth continues to undergo development, especially with regard to the applicability of that truth within any given century’s moral milieu. For example, the Church’s teachings prohibiting in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research only emerged in the twentieth century, because before that these things were nonexistent.

Truth is unchangeable...our knowledge of it undergoes change. Protons and neutrons certainly existed in 29 AD, the year of the first Pentecost. However,our knowledge of these building blocks of nature only began to emerge around the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Holy Spirit is teacher and vivifier of the Church, the mystical Body of Christ. He also brings sanctifying grace, in the form of His seven sanctifying gifts, to each baptized Christian. He is almighty God, along with the Father and the Son, and is therefore deserving of latria, that profound adoration that is due God alone. As Pentecost approaches, we should renew devotion to the Holy Spirit. One recommendation is the “Holy Spirit Prayer Book”, by Father Lovasik.

Let us now together recite the prayer to the Holy Spirit:

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of Your love.
Send forth Your Spirit and they shall be created .O God, Who did instruct the hearts of the faithful by the light of Your Spirit, grant that by the same Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in His heavenly consolation--through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Transition from Easter to Pentecost

2010-05-20T20:11:00.000-04:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE FIFTH WEEK OF EASTER (C)
5 MAY 2010

Acts 15: 1 - 6

[Acts 15:1] Some who had come down from Judea were instructing the brothers, "Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice, you cannot be saved."
[Acts 15:2] Because there arose no little dissension and debate by Paul and Barnabas with them, it was decided that Paul, Barnabas, and some of the others should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and presbyters about this question.
[Acts 15:3] They were sent on their journey by the church, and passed through Phoenicia and Samaria telling of the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers.
[Acts 15:4] When they arrived in Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, as well as by the apostles and the presbyters, and they reported what God had done with them.
[Acts 15:5] But some from the party of the Pharisees who had become believers stood up and said, "It is necessary to circumcise them and direct them to observe the Mosaic law."
[Acts 15:6] The apostles and the presbyters met together to see about this matter.

John 15: 1 - 8

[John 15:1] "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
[John 15:2] He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
[John 15:3] You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
[John 15:4] Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.
[John 15:5] I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.
[John 15:6] Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.
[John 15:7] If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
[John 15:8] By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

We are now in the fifth week of the Easter season, a season of profound rejoicing at the absolute victory over sin, Satan, and death won for all of us by the Resurrection of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. However, today’s gospel reading seems to strike a somber note in the midst of our Easter rejoicing. In this Gospel, Our Lord states that His Heavenly Father

[John 15:2] ...takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does bear fruit he prunes so that it bears more fruit.

Of course, it is not the case that this Gospel reading inhibits in any way our Easter joy. In fact, at this point in the Easter season, the emphasis of our rejoicing is making a transition from the birth of our salvation at Easter to the manifestation of that salvation at Pentecost, and the profound responsibility that lies upon each of us to be a fruitful instrument of that manifestation. As Our Lord stated in John 7:

[John 7:38] Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him.'"
[John 7:39] He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

In our individual lives, we receive the Holy Spirit at the Easter of our Baptism. We can then be likened as fragile vessels containing the living waters of the life of God Himself. At our Confirmation, which is our own personal Pentecost, we become fountains from which that living water flows out for witnessing the Gospel to the world.

Pentecost is not a feast which contrasts with Easter, any more that one end of a yardstick is in contrast with the opposite end. Rather, Pentecost is the crown of Easter. Easter Sunday is the first day of the fifty-day Easter season, and Pentecost Sunday is the final day. However, the entire fifty days of the Easter season constitute an indivisible unity of the celebration of the Resurrection.

On Easter Sunday, we experience the indescribable beauty of the dawn of our salvation. We rejoice in a beautiful dawn by regarding the Eastern sky with its heavenly pastel of color. We are looking at the sky more than that which is around us, which at dawn has a subdued appearance. As Easter is dawn of our salvation, so Pentecost is the blazing high noon of our salvation. We can no longer look directly at the sun, but when we look about us, we see the things of creation in the brightness of full color.

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit brings into full operation His seven sanctifying gifts. One of these gifts, the gift of understanding, enables us to see the creation in which we are to work out our own personal salvation with something like the way God sees it. We possess a supernatural power which enables us to ascertain whether each created being which we encounter in our daily lives is a stepping stone on our journey to our heavenly home, or a hindrance.

Today’s Gospel delineates our transition from rejoicing over the gift of salvation received at Easter to rejoicing over the empowerment granted to the Church at Pentecost to manifest spiritual maturity in ministering the Gospel message of that salvation to the world. Our Lord states that anyone who does not do so will be separated from Him by His Heavenly Father like a branch separated from its vine, where it will wither and subsequently be burnt. In contrast, anyone who is in fact faithful to the grace given to him, ministers the Gospel to the world through Christian witness within the arena of his state in life. Our Lord goes on to state that such a person, bearing the good fruit of the Holy Spirit, will be pruned so that he will bear even more fruit.

Pruning here means cutting away anything which is not helpful, or possibly even which is a hindrance, to the bearing of more fruit. Let us pray for an increase of the supernatural gift of understanding, so that as we proceed on our Christian walk, we will relate to created beings--not necessarily as we perceive their place in working out our salvation--but as they are perceived by Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, Who uses us as His hands to hold up, His feet to spread, and His voice to proclaim the living Gospel of Truth.

Mary, the Mother of God

2010-05-20T19:53:00.002-04:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE FOURTH WEEK OF EASTER (C)
28 APRIL 2010

Acts: 12: 24 - 13: 5a

[Acts 12:24] But the word of God continued to spread and grow.
[Acts 12:25] After Barnabas and Saul completed their relief mission, they returned to Jerusalem, taking with them John, who is called Mark
[Acts 13:1] Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Symeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who was a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.
[Acts 13:2] While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."
[Acts 13:3] Then, completing their fasting and prayer, they laid hands on them and sent them off.
[Acts 13:4] So they, sent forth by the holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and from there sailed to Cyprus.
[Acts 13:5] When they arrived in Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues.

John 12: 44 - 50

[John 12:44] Jesus cried out and said, "Whoever believes in me believes not only in me but also in the one who sent me,
[John 12:45] and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me.
[John 12:46] I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.
[John 12:47] And if anyone hears my words and does not observe them, I do not condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world.
[John 12:48] Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words has something to judge him: the word that I spoke, it will condemn him on the last day,
[John 12:49] because I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak.
[John 12:50] And I know that his commandment is eternal life. So what I say, I say as the Father told me."

Preamble

Today the Church celebrates the memorial of St Louis Mary Grignion de Montfort (1673 - 1716).

He was born to a poor family in 1673, at Montfort-La-Cane in Brittany, and was ordained at the age of 27. He had a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and wrote a book, The Secret of the Rosary, which is the first work to describe the method by which the Rosary is prayed today. He founded the Company of Mary, a missionary band of men, and the Congregation of the Daughters of Divine Wisdom, a religious institute of women devoted to the poor.

Let us meditate on how we might share in St Louis' devotion to Mary, Mother of God.

Introduction

Whatever we say about the mystery of the Word made flesh is not intelligible without reference to Mary.
Whatever we say about Mary predicates from her unique relation to Christ.

To say that "Mary is the mother of God" is a rephrasing of "Jesus Christ is true God and true man".

Mary facilitates our union with Jesus. She does this in two ways: as guide and as example. As guide, she shows us a path to Jesus. As example, she shows forth her perfect union with Jesus.

Mary and the Communion of Saints

We affirm the doctrine of the "communion of saints" each time we recite the Apostles' creed.

In this communion of saints, the body of Christ, the Church, the Holy Spirit courses through its members, sanctifying them by enlivening them, principally through the sacraments, with that grace which is the very life of the Blessed Trinity itself.

Each member of the body of Christ cooperates with the Holy Spirit in being both recipient and conduit of His grace.

As recipient of God's grace, each of us is to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, the divine life given to us a precursor of our life in heaven. As conduit of God's grace, each of us is to mediate this grace to one another, in particular by intercessory prayer.

Our Lady is the pre-eminent Christian. She is pre-eminent as recipient of God's grace, and as our model for each of us as recipient.

She is pre-eminent as one who mediates this grace to others through her intercessory prayer, and as our model for mediating grace through our intercessory prayer.

When Mary and the rest of us experience the divine life of the Trinity; the divine life is not thereby multiplied; it is shared.

Likewise, when Mary and the rest of us mediate grace through intercessory prayer, mediatorship is not multiplied; rather, it is a sharing in the unique mediatorship of Jesus Christ.

Triumph Over the Evil One

Mary has made possible the liberation of the entire human race from Satan, sin, and death. Satan tricked the first Eve into sin, and so sin entered the world and Satan became the world's usurper. In return, Mary, the second Eve, tricked Satan and sin was overcome. How did Mary do this? She did it by wrapping the infinite one with her own flesh, to make visible him who had been invisible.

Mary gave to the world Jesus, triumphant victor over Satan, over sin, and over death. Our Lord's victory would not have been accomplished without Mary's fiat.

Coda

The Son of God is the linchpin of the creation: all things were created in him, through him, and for him.
The Son of Mary is the linchpin of the new creation, because she has bestowed on us its divine author.

WITHOUT THE SON OF GOD, THERE IS NO CREATION.

WITHOUT THE SON OF MARY, THERE IS NO RE-CREATION.

We Imitate Jesus by Being Light for the World

2010-04-21T14:36:00.002-04:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE SECOND WEEK OF EASTER (C)
14 APRIL 2010

Acts 5: 17 - 26

[Acts 5:17] Then the high priest rose up and all his companions, that is, the party of the Sadducees, and, filled with jealousy,
[Acts 5:18] laid hands upon the apostles and put them in the public jail.
[Acts 5:19] But during the night, the angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison, led them out, and said,
[Acts 5:20] "Go and take your place in the temple area, and tell the people everything about this life."
[Acts 5:21] When they heard this, they went to the temple early in the morning and taught. When the high priest and his companions arrived, they convened the Sanhedrin, the full senate of the Israelites, and sent to the jail to have them brought in.
[Acts 5:22] But the court officers who went did not find them in the prison, so they came back and reported,
[Acts 5:23] "We found the jail securely locked and the guards stationed outside the doors, but when we opened them, we found no one inside."
[Acts 5:24] When they heard this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss about them, as to what this would come to.
[Acts 5:25] Then someone came in and reported to them, "The men whom you put in prison are in the temple area and are teaching the people."
[Acts 5:26] Then the captain and the court officers went and brought them in, but without force, because they were afraid of being stoned by the people.

Luke 3: 16 - 21

[John 3:16] For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
[John 3:17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
[John 3:18] Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
[John 3:19] And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.
[John 3:20] For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed.
[John 3:21] But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

When someone has been in a dark room for about half an hour, his eyes become accustomed to the darkness, principally through the buildup of long photosensitive molecules within the eyes, called “visual purple”. If a light is turned on, the visual purple is “bleached” by the influx of light, and the person is unable to see until he becomes reaccustomed to the light.

This natural process can serve, to an extent, as a metaphor for the effects on a person of spiritual darkness and spiritual light. In today’s Gospel, Our Lord states that

[John 3:20] ...everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed.

The metaphor falters in that saying that the eyes become accustomed to darkness--what is strictly meant is that they become accustomed to low light levels, not absolute darkness. In the spiritual reality, the moral darkness of the evil to which evildoers cling is absolute--that is, there is no vestige of the light of truth in any evil deed.

The person who clings to evil recoils from the light that exposes that evil--to the extent that he remains attached to the evil is to the extent that he hates the light. Again, using the metaphor of the dark room with a light suddenly switched on, the evildoer hates the light because he is blinded by it, as Our Lord states in John 9:

[John 9:39] ...Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind."

In today’s Gospel, Our Lord states the result of the coming of light into the world:

[John 3:19] ...the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.

We know that this light is Our Lord Himself, as He states in John 8:

[John 8:12] Jesus spoke to them..., saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Those who have the light of life themselves become sources of light for the world in which they live, as Our Lord states in Matthew 5:

[Mat 5:14] You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.
[Mat 5:15] Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house.
[Mat 5:16] Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

As disciples of Our Lord, we baptized Christians are to have our light shine forth. Men of good will will welcome this light, and men immersed in evil will hate this light, which means that they will hate its source. The contemporary culture in which we of this time and place are to live out our Christian calling is fraught with a moral darkness so absolute it is nearly palpable. Each of us, if faithful to our baptismal promises, will be a blazing torch piercing this darkness--good men will be drawn to it, and evil men will be repelled by it and hate it.

The light that has been given to us to have shine forth in front of men consists of the natural light of well-informed reason united with the light produced by supernatural grace. In following Our Lord in manifesting the light that He has bestowed on us in Baptism, nourished in us by the Eucharist, and renewed in us by Reconciliation, we can expect to be attacked by the world evil as He was attacked by the world of evil. When this happens, we know that we are doing something right, as Our Lord states in John 15:

[John 15:20] Remember the word I spoke to you, 'No slave is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

Logic, reason, and the witness of a life of grace are the enemies of the evil which they unmask. We pray daily to the Holy Spirit that we will grow in wisdom, grace, and strength before God and men, as did Jesus when He walked the earth, showing evil for what it is, and showing the grace-filled life for what it is.

Holy Communion is a Pledge of Future Incorruptibility

2010-04-21T14:24:00.001-04:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK OF EASTER (C)
21 APRIL 2010

John 6: 35 - 40

[John 6:35] Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.
[John 6:36] But I told you that although you have seen (me), you do not believe.
[John 6:37] Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me,
[John 6:38] because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.
[John 6:39] And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it (on) the last day.
[John 6:40] For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him (on) the last day."

At baptism, we are freed from separation from God through original sin. Moreover, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, by whose power the Blessed Trinity dwells in our souls, infusing them with the very life of God.

As natural food nourishes our human lives, so does the Word of God nourish the divine life within us. In today’s Gospel, Our Lord states:

[John 6:35] ... "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

We grow in belief in Jesus through scripture, spiritual reading, and a disciplined prayer life. We grow in the divine life given to us in baptism through prayer and the sacraments, and by the Holy Eucharist in particular.

As we progress through this, the wayfaring state, our bodies are subject to sickness, debilitation, and finally, corruption. This is a consequence of the proclivity of our fallen nature to commit sin, resulting in the actual sins that we do commit. The connection between lack of or lesser holiness and bodily corruption has been manifested to us by Our Lord in reverse: there are scores of saints of great virtue and holiness whose bodily remains have undergone little or even no corruption even centuries after they have experienced physical death.

In 1 Corinthians 15, we read:

[1 Cor 15:53] ...that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality.
[1 Cor 15:54] And when this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality, then the word that is written shall come about: "Death is swallowed up in victory.
[1 Cor 15:55] Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. We have the promise of Our Lord that our corruptible bodies will be clothed in incorruptibility, as it is His will that we live forever with the Blessed Trinity in heaven.

A foretaste of incorruptibility is granted to each of us whenever we partake worthily of the Body and Blood of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ in Holy Communion. Each time we approach Our Lord in Holy Communion, we remind ourselves of these words of 1 Corinthians 15. We take into our corruptible bodies that which is incorruptible, as a pledge of our eternal salvation and incorruptibility. An appropriate prayer before receiving Holy Communion is as follows:

I forgive all who have injured me, and I beg pardon of all whom I have injured: especially any whom I may have scandalized.

Let not the partaking of Your most spotless body and Your most precious blood, which I, Lord Jesus Christ, all unworthy presume to receive, turn to my judgment and condemnation. Rather, through Your infinite mercy, compassion, kindness, and love, may they be for me a pledge unto salvation; a saving plea unto forgiveness; a well-taken remedy for mind, body, and spirit. Amen.

Our Collaboration with God

2010-03-04T22:27:00.002-05:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE 2ND WEEK OF THE YEAR
20 JANUARY 2010

1 Samuel 17: 32 --51

[1 Sam 17:32] Then David spoke to Saul: "Let your majesty not lose courage. I am at your service to go and fight this Philistine."
[1 Sam 17:33] But Saul answered David, "You cannot go up against this Philistine and fight with him, for you are only a youth, while he has been a warrior from his youth."
...
[1 Sam 17:37] David continued: "The LORD, who delivered me from the claws of the lion and the bear, will also keep me safe from the clutches of this Philistine." Saul answered David, "Go! the LORD will be with you."
...
[1 Sam 17:40] Then, staff in hand, David selected five smooth stones from the wadi and put them in the pocket of his shepherd's bag. With his sling also ready to hand, he approached the Philistine.
[1 Sam 17:41] With his shield-bearer marching before him, the Philistine also advanced closer and closer to David.
[1 Sam 17:42] When he had sized David up, and seen that he was youthful, and ruddy, and handsome in appearance, he held him in contempt.
[1 Sam 17:43] The Philistine said to David, "Am I a dog that you come against me with a staff?" Then the Philistine cursed David by his gods
[1 Sam 17:44] and said to him, "Come here to me, and I will leave your flesh for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field."
[1 Sam 17:45] David answered him: "You come against me with sword and spear and scimitar, but I come against you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel that you have insulted.
[1 Sam 17:46] Today the LORD shall deliver you into my hand; I will strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will leave your corpse and the corpses of the Philistine army for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; thus the whole land shall learn that Israel has a God.
[1 Sam 17:47] All this multitude, too, shall learn that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves. For the battle is the LORD'S, and he shall deliver you into our hands."
[1 Sam 17:48] The Philistine then moved to meet David at close quarters, while David ran quickly toward the battle line in the direction of the Philistine.
[1 Sam 17:49] David put his hand into the bag and took out a stone, hurled it with the sling, and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone embedded itself in his brow, and he fell prostrate on the ground.
[1 Sam 17:50] (Thus David overcame the Philistine with sling and stone; he struck the Philistine mortally, and did it without a sword.)
[1 Sam 17:51] Then David ran and stood over him; with the Philistine's own sword (which he drew from its sheath) he dispatched him and cut off his head. When they saw that their hero was dead, the Philistines took to flight.

Mark 3: 1 - 6

[Mark 3:1] Again he entered the synagogue. There was a man there who had a withered hand.
[Mark 3:2] They watched him closely to see if he would cure him on the sabbath so that they might accuse him.
[Mark 3:3] He said to the man with the withered hand, "Come up here before us."
[Mark 3:4] Then he said to them, "Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?" But they remained silent.
[Mark 3:5] Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out and his hand was restored.
[Mark 3:6] The Pharisees went out and immediately took counsel with the Herodians against him to put him to death.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In today's Gospel, we read that when Our Lord entered a synagogue, He saw a man who had a withered hand. He knew that His enemies who were present were observing His actions to see whether He would break Sabbath laws concerning work. The first thing that Our Lord did was say to the afflicted man,

[Mark 3:3] ... "Come up here before us."

He thus brought the man close to and in plain view of His enemies, to attempt to soften their hardened hearts by appealing to their humanity. When this failed to move the observers to pity, Our Lord grew angry. We read in today's Gospel:

[Mark 3:5] Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out and his hand was restored.

We observe two things from this short verse. First, Our Lord, being fully human, experienced all the joint activities of the human body and soul: the emotions. On this occasion, He grew angry. Since Our Lord was not capable of sin, we see that to experience anger is not a sin per se. St Paul warns us about dangers associated with anger in Ephesians 4:

[Eph 4:26] Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun set on your anger,
[Eph 4:27] and do not leave room for the devil.

Anger becomes sinful when harm is desired toward the person who is the object of that anger. Our Lord has commanded us to hate the sin, but love the sinner. For example, we are angry with someone who performs abortions, and hate what he does, but we never allow our anger to become sinful by desiring harm to the abortionist himself. Rather, we pray for his conversion--and, where possible, witness to him the truth.

The second thing that we observe from the verse of today's Gospel cited above is that Our Lord told the afflicted man to "stretch out his hand". The man stretched out his hand and then Our Lord healed him. This tableau by itself teaches us all the lesson that when we collaborate with the grace of God, we have our part to do, after which God does His part.

St John Chrysostom addresses how the Christian properly cooperates with the grace of God. He states:

I exhort you that you not carelessly slumber so as to leave everything to God. Nor, when diligent in your endeavors, imagine that by your own exertions the whole work is achieved. God does not will that we should be indolent. For God does not do the whole work by Himself by fiat. Nor is it His will that we should be entirely self-sufficient. For God does not commit the whole work to us alone.

Our collaboration with God always involves our doing that part which is within the power of human nature to do, and leaving to God that part which only He can do. When the farmer raises crops, he does what it is within his power to do. He tills the earth, and plants the seed. Then with patience he awaits what only God can do. The rains come, and the DNA which specifies the crop replicates itself within the multiplying cells of the plant. The farmer then harvests the crop at the appropriate time, and stores it for subsequent use.

Another example is provided by the raising of Lazarus, as described in John 11:

[John 11:43]...He cried out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"
[John 11:44] The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, "Untie him and let him go."

Jesus did what only God can do--He restored life to the dead Lazarus. He did not, however, loosen Lazarus' burial bands. He commanded those close by to do so, because that was what was within their power to do.

Whenever and wherever we collaborate with God for some good purpose, we must always keep the following in mind:

WE CANNOT DO IT WITHOUT GOD; HE WILL NOT DO IT WITHOUT US.

The Servant of the Servants of God

2010-03-04T17:11:00.001-05:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE SECOND WEEK OF LENT (C)
3 MARCH 2010

Jeremiah 18: 18 – 20

[Jer 18:18] "Come," they said, "let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah. It will not mean the loss of instruction from the priests, nor of counsel from the wise, nor of messages from the prophets. And so, let us destroy him by his own tongue; let us carefully note his every word."
[Jer 18:19] Heed me, O LORD, and listen to what my adversaries say.
[Jer 18:20] Must good be repaid with evil that they should dig a pit to take my life? Remember that I stood before you to speak in their behalf, to turn away your wrath from them.

Matthew 20: 17 - 28

[Mat 20:17] As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve (disciples) aside by themselves, and said to them on the way,
[Mat 20:18] "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death,
[Mat 20:19] and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day."
[Mat 20:20] Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached him with her sons and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something.
[Mat 20:21] He said to her, "What do you wish?" She answered him, "Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom."
[Mat 20:22] Jesus said in reply, "You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" They said to him, "We can."
[Mat 20:23] He replied, "My cup you will indeed drink, but to sit at my right and at my left (, this) is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father."
[Mat 20:24] When the ten heard this, they became indignant at the two brothers.
[Mat 20:25] But Jesus summoned them and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt.
[Mat 20:26] But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;
[Mat 20:27] whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.
[Mat 20:28] Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

In today's Gospel, Our Lord is confronted by the mother of the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, by her request that they e granted what amounts to the highest place in the Kingdom. Our Lord's response is a model of tact for every Christian. If he had granted her request, He would have saddened the other ten apostles If He had refused her request, he would have saddened the mother and her two sons. Instead, He says, "...this is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father."

Our Lord makes it clear that authority in the Kingdom is not to be exercised in a pattern that is familiar to the world. He exhorts His disciples, and through them all of us, not to seek the highest place but to seek the lowest. He shows this in His own life through His incarnation and forthcoming suffering and death. The infinite God, exalted above every creature, condescended t lower Himself to the level of human nature, uniting Himself perfectly with it, without any diminution of His divinity. As we read n Chapter 2 of Philippians:

Philippians 2
3 Nothing is to be done out of jealousy or vanity; instead, out of humility of mind everyone should give preference to others,
4 everyone pursuing not selfish interests but those of others.
5 Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped.
7 But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being,
8 he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.

Our Lord is even more explicit with regard to ranking in the Kingdom, where He further states in today's Gospel:

[Mat 20:26] But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;
[Mat 20:27] whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.

Pope Leo I applied this passage to himself in a dramatic meeting with Attila the Hun at the gates of Rome. Attila had been threatening an imminent invasion and sack of Rome. To the emperor, the senate, and the Roman people, none of all the proposed plans to oppose the enemy seemed so practicable as to send legates to the most savage king and beg go peace Pope Leo I--trusting in the help of God, Who never fails the righteous in their trials--undertook the task.

When Attila asked Leo who he was, he replied, "I am Leo, the servant of the servants of God". This is how he showed obedience to Our Lord's command in today's Gospel.

The outcome was what Leo's faith had foreseen; for when Attila had received the delegation, he was so impressed by the presence of the high priest that he ordered his army to give up warfare and, after he had promised peace, he departed beyond the Danube.

Leo, the first among the servants of God n the Church, describes himself as last. The expression "servant of the servants of God" has been one of the titles of every Pope since Leo. The original is "servus servorum Dei". Servus is best translated as "slave"--another Latin word famulus, translates as "servant".

Whenever we seek the first place, we are seeking the approbation of men. When we seek the last place, we receive the approbation of God.

It is for each of us not to seek honor and vainglory from en, but always seek to do the good, whence God will give us His true glory in heaven. This is promised to us in Revelation 3:

Revelation 3
21 Anyone who proves victorious I will allow to share my throne, just as I have myself overcome and have taken my seat with my Father on his throne.

The Three-Ply Cord of Eccliastes

2010-02-18T16:37:00.003-05:00

Deacon Les
Homily

ASH WEDNESDAY (C)
17 FEBRUARY 2010

Joel 2: 12 - 18

[Joel 2:12] Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
[Joel 2:13] Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.
[Joel 2:14] Perhaps he will again relent and leave behind him a blessing, Offerings and libations for the LORD, your God.
[Joel 2:15] Blow the trumpet in Zion! proclaim a fast, call an assembly;
[Joel 2:16] Gather the people, notify the congregation; Assemble the elders, gather the children and the infants at the breast; Let the bridegroom quit his room, and the bride her chamber.
[Joel 2:17] Between the porch and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep, And say, "Spare, O LORD, your people, and make not your heritage a reproach, with the nations ruling over them! Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"
[Joel 2:18] Then the LORD was stirred to concern for his land and took pity on his people.

2 Corinthians 5: 20 - 6: 2

[2 Cor 5:20] So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
[2 Cor 5:21] For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
[2 Cor 6:1] Working together, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
[2 Cor 6:2] For he says: "In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you." Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

Matthew 6: 1 – 6, 16 - 18

[Mat 6:1] "...Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.
[Mat 6:2] When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
[Mat 6:3] But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing,
[Mat 6:4] so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
[Mat 6:5] "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
[Mat 6:6] But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
...
[Mat 6:16] "When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
[Mat 6:17] But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,
[Mat 6:18] so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.

1. Introduction

Today we begin the Holy Season of Lent—a time to grow in a special way in wisdom, strength, and grace as did Jesus in His hidden years at Nazareth.

We are invited to grow in wisdom—the instruction given to us by the Holy Spirit in the right way of acting in each of our life’s situations. An effective activity toward this end is quality spiritual reading, especially that of Holy Scripture.

We are invited to grow in strength—the power given to us by the Holy Spirit to exercise virtue and resist sin.

We are invited to grow in sanctifying grace: rather, to grow in our receptivity of the Divine Grace freely given to us by the Holy Spirit—that grace which is a share in the inner life of the Most Blessed Trinity.

Growth in wisdom, strength, and grace is effectively accomplished through public and private prayer, frequent Holy Communion, and weekly or biweekly reception of the sacrament of Reconciliation.

2. Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving: The Three-Ply Cord of Eccliastes

We usually think of the Holy Season of Lent primarily as a time of fasting. In fact, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving go together as three strands woven into a cord which is far stronger than each acting separately. In Ecclesiastes 4, we read:

[Eccl 4:12] Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken.

This verse has been traditionally understood by spiritual writers as symbolizing the three-ply cord of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

2.1 Prayer

The first element of the three-ply cord of Eccliastes is prayer. How important prayer was in the life of Our Lord is expressed in Luke 6:

[Luke 6:12] In those days he departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God.

By this, Our Lord was giving an example to the Church as a whole. The Church today throughout the world continually offers prayer in the form of Masses, The Divine Office, Sacramental Liturgies, public prayer outside liturgy (such as: rosaries, stations of the cross, holy hours including Eucharistic adoration), and private prayer. Each individual contributes his share to the universal, ongoing prayer of the Church. To this end, it is important for each of us, especially throughout the Holy Season of Lent to make a proper morning offering of all our prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of each ensuing day.

The importance of prayer cannot be overstated. Spiritual writers, many who are saints have stated essentially what is expressed in its starkest form in the following aphorism:

Whoever prays will be saved;
whoever does not pray will be damned.

2.2 Fasting

The second element of the three-ply cord of Eccliastes is fasting. Our Lord’s fast is the example par excellence of fasting for the Church. We read in Matthew 4:

[Mat 4:1] Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert...
[Mat 4:2] He fasted for forty days and forty nights...

The forty days that Our Lord spent in the desert fasting is that which forms the basis for the length of Lent.

What are the benefits of fasting? St Augustine gives the following answer in one of his sermons:

Fasting cleanses the soul, raises the mind, subjects one's flesh to the spirit, renders the heart contrite and humble, scatters the clouds of concupiscence, quenches the fire of lust, and kindles the true light of chastity.

Fasting in its strict sense means thedeprivation of a certain amount of nourishment. In a broader sense, it refers to the partial or complete deprivation of legitimate things in which we take delight. Thus, if a person’s health or age makes it inadvisable for him to fast from food, there is no corresponding impediment to his fasting from entertainments such as movies, TV, or the internet. Being surrounded by those things which delight one can soften the will, making it more difficult to remain virtuous. Deprivation of such things, either in whole or in part, can discipline the will, making it easier to maintain and grow in a life of virtue.

The Holy Spirit speaks to us of fasting in Isaiah 58:

[Is 58:5] Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed, and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
[Is 58:6] This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;
[Is 58:7] sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.
[Is 58:8] Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

2.3 Almsgiving

The third element of the three-ply cord of Eccliastes is almsgiving. With respect to almsgiving, we read in Tobit 4:

[Tob 4:7] "Give alms from your possessions. Do not turn your face away from any of the poor, and God's face will not be turned away from you.
[Tob 4:8] Son, give alms in proportion to what you own. If you have great wealth, give alms out of your abundance; if you have but little, distribute even some of that. But do not hesitate to give alms;
[Tob 4:9] you will be storing up a goodly treasure for yourself against the day of adversity.

The essential meaning of almsgiving is the sharing of one’s resources for the benefit of those less fortunate. It includes, but is not limited to, the donation of money. In fact, we speak of time, treasure, and talent. If I do not have sufficient monetary resources, I can give of my time, or talent, or both.

To be concrete, consider the ongoing needs of local homeless people. To this end, there is the Shelter Association for Washtenaw County. It has a shelter, The Delonis Center, which is located at 312 West Huron Street, Ann Arbor. There are plenty of activities in need of volunteers. Information for volunteers can be found at

http://www.annarborshelter.org

3. Conclusion

With reference to all the activities of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, Our Lord sternly reminds each of us in today’s Gospel to do these things, insofar as it is possible, with the Most Blessed Trinity as the sole observer of our good actions.

Let us now pray as we embark on this Holy Season:

Heavenly Father, I am called to walk by the light of Christ, your Son, and to trust in His wisdom.
During Lent, I submit my self to Him more and more and strive to believe in Him with all my heart.
I enter on this path of repentance so that in dying to self I might rise to new life.
Lord Jesus, you spoke peace to a sinful world and brought mankind the gift of reconciliation by the suffering and death you endured. I love you and joyfully bear the name Christian.
Teach me to follow your example. Increase my faith, hope, and charity so that I may struggle to turn hatred to love and conflict to peace.
Loving Redeemer, through your passion teach me self-denial, strengthen me against evil and adversity, and thereby make me ready to celebrate your Resurrection.
Spirit of Jesus, so inflame my heart with Your Divine Love, that during this Holy Season of Lent and beyond, I may be so transformed by Your grace that the Father, looking upon me, may see not me, but Jesus only.
Amen.

The Baptism of the Lord

2010-01-13T21:23:00.001-05:00

BAPTISM OF THE LORD (C)
10 January 2010

Acts 10: 34 - 38

[Acts 10:34] Then Peter proceeded to speak and said, "In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.
[Acts 10:35] Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.
[Acts 10:36] You know the word (that) he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all,
[Acts 10:37] what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached,
[Acts 10:38] how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

Luke 3: 15 - 16; 21 - 22

[Luke 3:15] Now the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah.
[Luke 3:16] John answered them all, saying, "I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire.
...
[Luke 3:21] After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened
[Luke 3:22] and the holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today Jesus is baptized in the Jordan by John. But how is this so? How does this baptism affect Jesus, the sinless one, God and man? John himself hesitates, saying that it is he who is to be baptized by Jesus, not the other way around. Jesus, however, insists that John baptize Him. What are we to make of this?

The baptism of John was a baptism of repentance. It was not the same as the sacrament of Baptism which is in the Church now and will remain so until the end of time. It was, however, a type (or symbolic forerunner) of the sacrament of baptism.

Each of us is born in a state of separation from God, which we call "original sin". None of us is guilty of this sin, but each of us inherits the consequences of the actual sin committed by Adam. In the sacrament of Baptism, two things happen to the person being baptized:

1. The state of original sin into which he was born is extinguished, and

2. the Holy Spirit takes up His dwelling in that person's soul, along with the Father and the Son, for the Blessed Trinity can never undergo separation.

St John the Baptist witnesses that the one who is to come after him will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. The baptized person becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit, one who participates in the inner Divine life of the Blessed Trinity.

Jesus' incarnation is the impetus for this transformation to be caused by the sacrament of Baptism in the Church He is to establish. Many theologians of the Church say that "God became man so that man might become God". In the Christian West, this is called "divinization", and in the Christian East, both Catholic and Orthodox, it is called "theosis".

So great is the love of God manifested by the incarnation, that Jesus does far more than restore the pristine innocence to mankind that was originally enjoyed by our first parents. He does not restore the so-called "gifts of integrity" which they enjoyed--mankind is still to be left with a wounded nature. He nevertheless bestows something infinitely greater--a true, authentic, genuine participation in His own Divine Life, His Life with the Father and the Holy Spirit, which He has had from all eternity.

Remaining faithful to our Baptismal grace, we look forward to the supernatural destiny that God has willed for each of us: to participate in His inner life forever with Him in heaven. Because of our wounded nature, Our Lord provided the sacrament of reconciliation to His church, so that if any of us has the misfortune of falling from grace, we can, through this sacrament, be restored to the pristine purity of our baptism.

We return to the question as to why Jesus would submit to the Baptism of John, which was only a type of the sacrament of Baptism that Jesus would establish for His Church. When each of us is baptized, the water acts as a material conduit for a profound spiritual reality--the flow of the water is accompanied by a flow of divine grace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and with Him the Divine Life of God.

When Jesus was baptized, the water also acted as a conduit of grace--but, as Maximus of Turin and other theologians of the Church have stated, the grace is moving in the reverse direction. It is flowing from the God-man Jesus, possessor of the Holy Spirit, into the waters of the Jordan, and then mystically into all the waters of the world. Thenceforth the creature water, wherever in the world it is located, can serve as the required matter for the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

The material creation had undergone its own mutation after the sin of Adam, as we read in Genesis 3:

[Gen 3:17] To the man he said: "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, "Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life.
[Gen 3:18] Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field.

In some mysterious way, the entire universe shuddered at the fall of our first parents, and underwent a profound change.

We thus witness, at the Baptism of Jesus, the regeneration of water. We also witness the beginning of the regeneration of the entire material universe, a regeneration in which each baptized Christian is called upon to participate, as we read in Romans 8:

[Rom 8:19] ...creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God;
[Rom 8:20] for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope
[Rom 8:21] that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.

To this end, we speak of the "priesthood of the laity". This priesthood is distinct from the ministerial priesthood of Bishops and Priests. The priesthood of the laity is not primarily exercised through such things as being lector or extraordinary minister of communion. Rather, it involves a mission (i.e., a sending) by God to sanctify creation.

How do we sanctify creation? The Church begins this process with the material elements that are used in the sacraments, especially the water for Baptism and the bread and wine for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. At Jesus' command "do this in memory of me", the consecrated elements of the Eucharist become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord--and in so doing re-present His sacrifice on Calvary.

At a different level, the Church establishes sacramentals, setting aside matter to be used for holy purpose outside the sacraments. Examples include holy water, holy salt, holy oil, blessed crucifixes, and relics of Saints.

How, then, do laity participate in sanctifying creation, which is their specific mission as laity? The answer is a simple one: the lay person uses the things of this world for the honor and glory of God, and only for the honor and glory of God. Because living in the world as willed by God involves almost continual multitasking, it is important for the individual to make a good morning offering each day, referring all his actions of the forthcoming day to be done for the honor and glory of God. Material creation is only to be used as a steppingstone for him in this, the wayfaring state, on his journey to his eternal home in heaven.

The restoration of the universe begins as Jesus is baptized by John. The universe to be restored provides the context in which we are given the once-in-an-eternity opportunity to freely say "yes" to Our Heavenly Father in what we think, in what we do, and in how we love--how we love material things, how we love ourselves, how we love our neighbor, and in how we love the God Who created us, Who redeemed us, and increasingly sanctifies us by the outpouring of All-Good, Holy, and Life-Giving Spirit. To Him be honor and glory, both now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

The Gift of Understanding

2010-01-13T21:15:00.003-05:00

WEDNESDAY OF THE 1ST WEEK OF THE YEAR
13 JANUARY 2010

Mark 1: 29 - 39

[Mark 1:29] On leaving the synagogue he entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.
[Mark 1:30] Simon's mother-in-law lay sick with a fever. They immediately told him about her.
[Mark 1:31] He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up. Then the fever left her and she waited on them.
[Mark 1:32] When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.
[Mark 1:33] The whole town was gathered at the door.
[Mark 1:34] He cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him.
[Mark 1:35] Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.
[Mark 1:36] Simon and those who were with him pursued him
[Mark 1:37] and on finding him said, "Everyone is looking for you."
[Mark 1:38] He told them, "Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come."
[Mark 1:39] So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.
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Holy Scripture can be thought of as involving a double inspiration by the Holy Spirit: that of the sacred writer, and that of the prayerful reader, ultimately subject to interpretation given by the teaching Church. This applies emphatically to today's Gospel, which describes the ministries of Our Lord which involve healing of sickness, and deliverance from demons.

One of the seven sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit, the supernatural gift of understanding, is operative in the Christian prayerfully reading this (or any other) scripture passage. He understands the ministries of healing and deliverance to be absolutely distinct, and rejects the false teaching that deliverance from demons is only a metaphor for healing from sickness.

We turn our attention to the gift of understanding, and how it is manifested in the spiritual growth of the baptized and confirmed Catholic.

After Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the temple, He returned with them to Nazareth, where He became subject to them. In Luke 2, we read:

[Luke 2:52] ...Jesus advanced (in) wisdom and age and favor before God and man.

As children of our heavenly Father, we imitate Jesus' life on earth by continuing to grow in wisdom, age, and favor before God and man. In particular, we continue to grow in knowledge through natural and supernatural gifts of understanding. The gift of understanding has been bestowed on the baptized and confirmed Christian so that he will be able to discern not only the natural underlying meaning of things, but also the supernatural relevance of things which we encounter on our present journey in the wayfaring state. St Thomas Aquinas puts it this way:
Since...human knowledge begins with the outside of things as it were, it is evident that the stronger the light of the understanding, the further can it penetrate into the heart of things. Now the natural light of our understanding is (only) of finite power ... Consequently man needs a supernatural light in order to penetrate further still so as to know what it cannot know by its natural light: this supernatural light which is bestowed on man is called the gift of understanding.
The supernatural gift of understanding given to each baptized and confirmed Christian is of paramount importance as he encounters daily the proliferation of teachers and what they teach, as amplified by modern communications technology, especially the Internet. Not all of the teachings encountered conform to the orthodox teachings of the church. In fact, some of the contemporary "teachers" can rightly be classified as "false prophets" in the sense meant by St John the Evangelist, as he states in his first letter, chapter 4:

[1 John 4:1] Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
...
[1 John 4:5] They belong to the world; accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world, and the world listens to them.

One of the most pernicious categories of false teaching is called modernism, which Pope Pius X condemned in his encyclical Pascendi Gregis in 1907 as the "mother of all heresies". Simply stated, modernism is the denial of the supernatural. After Pius X's strong condemnation, it lay dormant for several decades. Then, it underwent a resurgence in the late 20th century. Sadly, modernist teaching still appears with some frequency.

One example of modernist teaching states that references in scripture (such as those made in today's Gospel) to demonic activity is a result of ancient peoples' ignorance of modern medical knowledge, and that the term "demonic" is only a metaphor for a natural illness. That teaching is in direct contradiction to today's scripture readings, which clearly state that healing from disease and deliverance from demons were two distinct ministries of Our Lord:

[Mark 1:34] He cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him.

The life of prayer, sacraments, and works of charity is essential to the growth of the Christian. Also included must be an edifying amount of spiritual reading. Here is where the gift of understanding is to be active, to be on guard against any false teaching that might be present. One excellent rule to follow is to look at the page after the title page, to see whether the approbation of the Church, called the "imprimatur", has been given. In any event, the prayerful reading of Holy Scripture should always be preceded by a prayer to the Holy Spirit.

Let us now pray for an increase of the gift of understanding:

Holy Spirit, divine Consoler, I adore You as my true God, with God the Father and God the Son. I adore You and unite myself to the adoration You receive from the angels and saints. I give You my heart and I offer my ardent thanksgiving for all the grace which You never cease to bestow on me. O Giver of all supernatural gifts, I beg You to visit me with Your grace and Your love and to increase in me the gift of understanding, so that I may apprehend the divine mysteries and by contemplation of heavenly things detach my thoughts and affections from the vain things of this world.

Amen.

Material and Formal Sin

2009-11-28T19:55:00.000-05:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE 34TH WEEK OF THE YEAR
25 November 2009

Luke 21: 12 - 19

[Luke 21:12] "Before all this happens, however, they will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name.
[Luke 21:13] It will lead to your giving testimony.
[Luke 21:14] Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
[Luke 21:15] for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.
[Luke 21:16] You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death.
[Luke 21:17] You will be hated by all because of my name,
[Luke 21:18] but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
[Luke 21:19] By your perseverance you will secure your lives.
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In today's Gospel, Our Lord is prophesying at two levels. First, He is speaking to His apostles and other disciples, telling them of the persecution they are to expect when proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God the Father in a world ruled by the usurper Satan. Second, He is speaking to each one of us here in the 21st century, telling us of the persecution we are to expect when proclaiming the Gospel and living out the Kingdom of God the Father in the world in which we now live.

In part of that world, for which the Church is a signpost for the Kingdom, dwell people who have accepted the salvation and redemption of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ by obeying the Father's commandments, and by living out lives of growth in faith, hope, and charity.

The remainder of mankind dwells in one of two worlds--one for which the Gospel has never been preached, and the other for which the Gospel has been preached but rejected outright. The latter is still ruled by the usurper Satan. Although a defeated enemy, he still maintains power over those who reject the Gospel; those who prefer (as did and as does Satan) to make themselves the center of their universe instead of making Jesus Christ the center.

The grouping of mankind who have one way or another submitted themselves to the sway of the usurper Satan has established itself throughout our own contemporary culture, subverting morals and justice, and following the lead of Satan and his minions in sowing confusion, doubt, and half truths (it has been said that a half truth is a whole lie). This moral malignancy has subverted the print and electronic media, our state and federal judiciaries, our state and federal legislatures, and our state and federal executive branches.

The horrors that are preached and practiced in our contemporary secular culture include the glorification and exaltation of at least two of the sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance: the shedding of innocent blood and sodomy.

Our response as baptized and confirmed Catholics must be accomplished on two levels: our response to the sinner and our response to the sin.

1. Our response to the sinner: we are to love the sinner with the love of the Holy Spirit which Jesus Christ has poured forth into our hearts through Baptism and Confirmation, and which is sustained by the sacrament of Reconciliation and most of all by the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

The Word of God instructs us as to who our true enemies really are in Ephesians Chapter 6:

[Eph 6:12] For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.

2. Our response to the sin: we follow the lead of our Divine Master in hating all sin: the sin that we ourselves commit, the sin committed by public figures with great influence on others, and the sin which characterizes the Zeitgeist of these degenerate times. We must speak out bravely against the proliferation of sin and its underpinnings, especially as such proliferation engulfs our children through a corrupt educational system.

A final note: we must not misunderstand the Holy Spirit when He forbids us to judge our neighbor, as we read in James Chapter 4:

[James 4:12] There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save or to destroy. Who then are you to judge your neighbor?

What is being forbidden is the judgment of the conscience of anyone else. No one can impute formal sin to another person. What is not forbidden, and what is often mandatory, is to make a judgment of the gravity of a sinful act. This is the objective aspect of sin, also called the matter of the sin. We say that murder is a grave sin (that is, we say that grave matter is involved) but we do not say that someone who has killed someone else has committed a formal sin--that judgment is reserved to God.

Hence, when we say that a person in authority is a public sinner, we are speaking only of the gravity and harm of the acts which that person performs; we do not say, and are forbidden to say, that that person has committed formal sin. Our obligation toward that person is twofold: to pray for his conversion, and to pray that the harm he has done will be mitigated by ongoing Christian witness.

Many of us hesitate to give Christian witness against those who lead sinful lives for fear that we will be called Pharisaical. This happens when no distinction is made between material sin (i.e., the gravity of an act) and formal sin (i.e., the state of someone else's conscience as a result of that act).

We read of St John the Baptist's fearless witness to the truth in Matthew 14:

[Mat 14:3] Now Herod had arrested John, bound (him), and put him in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip,
[Mat 14:4] for John had said to him, "It is not lawful for you to have her."

St John the Baptist was ultimately beheaded for his witness to the truth. At no time, however, did St John impute formal sin to either Herod or Herodias. Let us all pray that we might display the courage of St John the Baptist as he denounced King Herod's sinful and scandalous liaison.

Despite the somberness of these considerations, we can rejoice that these are great times to be alive. Our Lord is inviting each of us, in our time, to conquer evil by the conduct of our lives. He never commands us to do that which He does not give us the grace to do--and in these times that grace which is forthcoming to the faithful Christian is to be great indeed. We heed the Holy Spirit's reassuring words which we read in Romans 12:

[Rom 12:21] Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.

We are involved in an ongoing spiritual war under the captaincy of Our Savior. Let each one of us so comport himself in this battle, cooperating with the grace of the sacrament of Confirmation, that we might look forward with confidence to those wonderful welcoming words promised to us by Jesus:

[Mat 25:21] ... 'Well done, my good and faithful servant....Come, share your master's joy.'

Putative "Animal Rights"

2009-10-18T14:00:00.015-04:00

1. Introduction

The thesis presented is that brute animals should be treated humanely and properly, but not because of any putatitve "right" possessed by them.

2. The Definition of Person

St Thomas Aquinas and other scholastic philosophers adopt the definition of person developed by Boethius:

A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.

By rational nature is meant a nature which possesses intellect and will. In Catholic Theology this definition of person includes each person of the Trinity, each person which is an angel, and each human person.

Human persons are rational animals. All other animals are non-rational. The higher non-rational animals are also called brute animals. The distinction between human persons and brute animals then lies in the fact that human persons possess intellects whereas brute animals do not. Brute animals do possess intelligence. Some, like chimpanzees, possess intelligence to a remarkable degree. However, not even the higher brutes possess intellects. What then, is the distinction between intelligence and intellect?

3. The Three Acts of the Intellect

In responding to stimuli from the external environment, sensory percepts and intelligence (human or brute) are involved in ascertaing the existence of a concrete singular object.

There are three acts of the intellect, called apprehension, judgment, and inference.

The first act of the intellect, apprehension, is involved in ascertaining what a thing is, i.e., its essence (e.g., "that object is a tree").

The second act of the intellect, judgment, is involved in predicating attributes of a thing (e.g., "that tree is tall").

The third act of the intellect is inference, which involves reasoning to new knowledge from known propositions.

The standard form of an inference, called a syllogism, is modus ponens (affirming the antecedent):

If A, then B. (major premise)
But A. (minor premise)
Therefore B. (conclusion [inference])

Example:
If x is a horse, then x is an animal. (major premise)
But x is a horse. (minor premise)
Therefore x is an animal. (conclusion [inference])

The next most important syllogistic form is modus tollens (denying the consequent):

If Not-B, then Not-A.
But A.
Therefore B

Example:
If x is not an animal, then x is not a horse.
But x is a horse.
Therefore x is an animal.

It is evident from the above that "If A, then B" and "If Not-B, then Not-A" are logically equivalent.

The faculty of intellect is required to perform the above two syllogistic forms because in each, the following statements hold:

The major premise is a statement about universals ("horse" and "animal" in the universal sense).
The minor premise is a statement about a concrete singular ("x is a horse").

The conclusion or inference is a statement asserting a concrete singular being as a particularization of a universal.

4. Properties of the Intellect which Distinguish it from Intelligence

The faculty of intellect is required to perform a syllogism because to grasp the concept of a universal being, a process of abstraction is performed. The process of abstraction cannot be performed by intelligence alone, such as a brute animal possesses. It can only be performed by an intellective being.

A chimpanzee can know this (particular) banana, but it cannot grasp "banana" in the universal sense.

Another defining property of intellect is that of reflection. A person can know that he is knowing. No brute animal can do this.

5. Responsibilities (Duties) and Rights

Human persons are social creatures. One of the most important (two-way) relations that exist among persons is that of commutative justice. The purpose of commutative justice is to guarantee that no one's personhood is unjustly impeded. The two-way relation which is commutative justice gives rise to the following two one-way relations for each person:

1. Person A has a responsibility (or duty) not to impede unjustly the personhood of any other person B;

2. Person A has a right not to have his personhood unjustly impeded by any other person B.

That is, to every right I possess, there exists a corresponding responsibility which applies to every other person, and conversely.

6. Fundamental Axioms Regarding Responsibilities and Rights

Both responsibility and right are abstract concepts. They are therefore understood only by persons. This leads us to the following axiomatic statements:

ONLY PERSONS HAVE RESPONSIBILITIES.
ONLY PERSONS HAVE RIGHTS.

7. Application to So-Called (Brute-) Animal "Rights"

The principal implication of the statement that only persons have rights is the statement that no brute animal possesses rights.

8. Proper Use of Brute Animals

Brute animals have been an indispensable resource for mankind since the dawn of human existence on earth. Some have been of direct use, such as dogs and horses. Others have served as important sources of protein and other key nutrients in the human diet. These statements refer to the proper use of animals.

There have been and continue to be wanton misuse and abuse of brute animals by humans. One example has been the hunting of elephants for their ivory tusks only, leaving the rest of the carcass to rot. Closer to home, conditions in stockyards, slaughterhouses, and chicken farms have been and continue to be appalling.

An ancient adage (attributed to Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor) is abusus non tollit usum (literally: abuse does not deny use). A free translation runs something like this: "the cure for improper use is not disuse, but proper use".

The cure for the current prevalent mistreatment of brute animals is not to stop making use of them, but to use them properly. This will have to be done primarily through legislation.

9. Why Mistreatment of Brute Animals is Immoral

We assert that mistreatment of brute animals is immoral. Our thesis is that such mistreatment is not immoral because of any putative "right" possessed by any brute animal. Only persons have rights. Brute animals do not have rights.

The reason that mistreatment of brute animals is immoral is that the humans involved in the mistreatment of brute animals are violating in a radical way their own intellectual nature. Being endowed with the light of reason, humans act immorally each and every time they violate their rational nature for some base purpose.

Note that this view of immorality goes far beyond mistreatment of animals. It involves any corruption, perversion, or misuse of the intellectual nature of man.

Regarding our use of brute animals, it is incumbent on all men of good will to exercise their intellectual nature to use the resource that brute animals constitute in a proper, enlightened, and humane manner.

Feast of St Thomas Aquinas

2009-01-31T20:35:00.002-05:00

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE 3RD WEEK OF THE YEAR
28 JANUARY 2009

Mark 4: 1 - 20

[Mark 4:1] On another occasion he began to teach by the sea. A very large crowd gathered around him so that he got into a boat on the sea and sat down. And the whole crowd was beside the sea on land.
[Mark 4:2] And he taught them at length in parables, and in the course of his instruction he said to them,
[Mark 4:3] "Hear this! A sower went out to sow.
[Mark 4:4] And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up.
[Mark 4:5] Other seed fell on rocky ground where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep.
[Mark 4:6] And when the sun rose, it was scorched and it withered for lack of roots.
[Mark 4:7] Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it and it produced no grain.
[Mark 4:8] And some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit. It came up and grew and yielded thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold."
[Mark 4:9] He added, "Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear."
[Mark 4:10] And when he was alone, those present along with the Twelve questioned him about the parables.
[Mark 4:11] He answered them, "The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that
[Mark 4:12] 'they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand, in order that they may not be converted and be forgiven.'"
[Mark 4:13] Jesus said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables?
[Mark 4:14] The sower sows the word.
[Mark 4:15] These are the ones on the path where the word is sown. As soon as they hear, Satan comes at once and takes away the word sown in them.
[Mark 4:16] And these are the ones sown on rocky ground who, when they hear the word, receive it at once with joy.
[Mark 4:17] But they have no root; they last only for a time. Then when tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.
[Mark 4:18] Those sown among thorns are another sort. They are the people who hear the word,
[Mark 4:19] but worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things intrude and choke the word, and it bears no fruit.
[Mark 4:20] But those sown on rich soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."
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Today is the feast of St Thomas Aquinas, priest, theologian, and Doctor of the Church; indeed, considered by many to be the greatest theologian and Doctor of the Church.

As enormous as St Thomas' learning was, his piety exceeded his learning. Indeed, he is reported to have exclaimed that he learned more from the foot of a crucifix than from books. His entire life was the living out of the following verse from Mark 12:

[Mark 12:30] You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'

The imaging of the Trinity in each of us consists of the intellect, the will, and how the intellect and will relate to each other. The intellect is perfected by the truth, the will is perfected by the good, and the movement of the will to what is presented as good to it by the intellect is perfected by love.

The issue of salvation for each of us lies in the will--the extent to which we conform ourselves to the will of the Father, as our Lord warns us in Matthew Chapter 7:

[Mat 7:21] "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Although each of us is to be judged according to how well we have conformed our will to the will of the Father, to the extent that the intellect has embraced falsehood instead of the truth which is its perfection, is that extent to which the will is following a blind guide.

The place of the intellectual life in the church is to increase the perspicuity of truth and to unmask the evil of falsehood. That evil becomes moral evil (i.e., sin) because it leads the will into evil thoughts, words, deeds, and omissions. Error is to the intellect what sin is to the will.

I suggest that the principal strategy of the enemy of our souls in these decadent times is to assault the intellect, which he attempts to accomplish by disseminating error. A highly educated physician looks at the human embryo and sees only a mass of cells. A secular ethicist looks at the practice of perversion and declares it to be merely an "alternative lifestyle". A "theologian" (so-called) confuses development of doctrine with change in dogmatic teaching.

The antidote for the Christian in these spiritually perilous times is to emulate St Thomas Aquinas through prayer and learning under the leading of the Holy Spirit. That is, we pray to the Holy Spirit for an increase of His sanctifying gifts of Knowledge and Understanding. We pray for the grace of being open to the Truth that God wants us to possess. We pray for the grace of properly responding to that Truth. We pray that our response to that Truth be accompanied by manifest love. We are to hate the sin, but love the sinner, by praying for his conversion.

Let us conclude with the prayer to the Holy Spirit:

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the power of Thy Divine Love.

Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the Earth.

O God, Who didst instruct the hearts of Thy faithful by the light of Thy Holy Spirit, grant that, in the same Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in His holy consolation. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

St Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

A Comparison of the Tridentine and Novus Ordo Liturgies

2008-12-23T20:29:00.004-05:00

At the following URL, a comparison is presented (all in English) between the Novus Ordo mass and the traditional Tridentine Mass:

http://www.latin-mass-society.org/missals.htm

In particular, the Eucharistic Prayer Number 1 of the Novus Ordo Mass is supposed to be the "same" as the Canon of the Tridentine Mass. A perusal of how each compared with the other shows that many excisions and abridgments have been from the traditional Canon.

Here is an example:

The Offering of the Host

Tridentine:
P: Receive, O Holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this spotless host, which I, Thine unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, for my countless sins, trespasses, and omissions; likewise for all here present, and for all faithful Christians, whether living or dead, that it may avail both me and them to salvation, unto life everlasting. Amen.

Novus Ordo:
P: Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.
R. Blessed be God for ever.

Here is a second example:

The Offering of the Chalice

Tridentine:
P: We offer unto Thee, O Lord, the chalice of salvation, beseeching Thy clemency that it may ascend as a sweet odor before Thy divine majesty, for our own salvation, and for that of the whole world. Amen.
P: Humbled in mind, and contrite of heart, may we find favor with Thee, O Lord; and may the sacrifice we this day offer up be well pleasing to Thee, Who art our Lord and our God.
P: Come, Thou, the Sanctifier, God, almighty and everlasting: bless (+) this sacrifice which is prepared for the glory of Thy holy name.

Novus Ordo:
P: Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink.
R: Blessed be God for ever.
P: Lord God, we ask you to receive us and be pleased with the sacrifice we offer you with humble and contrite hearts.

Here is a third example:

The Washing of the Hands

Tridentine:
P: O God, Who in creating man didst exalt his nature very wonderfully and yet more wonderfully didst establish it anew: by the mystery signified in the mingling of this water and wine, grant us to have part in the Godhead of Him Who hath vouchsafed to share our manhood, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God; world without end. Amen.

Novus Ordo:
P: By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.

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The traditional Tridentine Mass is the rite attended by literally hundreds of canonized saints.

Let us pray that the traditional Tridentine Mass (the "extraordinary" form) will become more readily available throughout the world, as Pope Benedict XVI has made possible through his motu proprio Summum Pontificorum.

Noteworthy Items

2008-12-10T21:34:00.005-05:00

Some items of note culled from the web:

A Powerful Witness

On EWTN, Mother Angelica had a guest, Fr. Steven Scheier, who gave a powerful witness of his near-death experience.

Dinner with Jesus

What would you do, what would you say, and what questions would you ask if you had an opportunity to have dinner with Jesus?

Liturgical Abuse

Keep praying for the ongoing restoration of sanity in the practice of Liturgy in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.

A Comparison Between the Traditional Tridentine Mass and the Novus Ordo Mass

This parallel-column presentation reveals the excisions and abridgments made to the Tridentine Liturgy as they appear in the Novus Ordo Liturgy.

Disquisitions

2008-12-10T18:36:00.002-05:00

In-depth articles

A Critique of Fundamental Option Theory

A current theory espoused by some moral theologians is based on the concept of a "fundamental option". There are ways of stating this concept which are heterodoxical and can lead to serious confusion. A critique is presented.

Mary, Holy Mother of God

Devotion to Our Lady is a sine qua non for authentic Catholic spirituality.

Spiritual Warfare

There are many Catholics and other Christians today who are unaware of the stark reality of the evil one and his demonic minions, and of the ongoing battle their presence in the world entails.

Expositions

2008-12-08T17:56:00.003-05:00

Teachings, Exhortations, and Doctrinal summaries

Human Respect and Political Correctness

Each of these can become a serious distraction to spiritual development and Christian witness.

The Most Important Person in the World

Who is the most important person in the world for me? This person is the most important because he or she has the more influence on my salvation than any other person.

Twelve Miracles Associated with the Eucharist

St Thomas Aquinas developed a teaching on these twelve miracles. A commentary on this teaching is presented.

Homilies

2008-12-01T22:43:00.029-05:00

Dinner with Jesus

2008-10-02T16:23:00.003-04:00

What would you say to Jesus if you could spend an evening having dinner with Him? What questions would you ask?

The film The Perfect Stranger provides an excellent dramatization of this scenario. It lasts a little over an hour. It is no longer running on the internet, because it is now for sale as a DVD. It can be purchased at amazon.com. Also sold on amazon.com are several excellent related films by Jefferson Moore.

St Matthew

2008-09-15T16:22:00.004-04:00

Homily
FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH WEEK OF THE YEAR
(FEAST OF ST. MATTHEW)
21 SEPTEMBER 2007

Matt 9: 9 - 13

[Mat 9:9] As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him.
[Mat 9:10] While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
[Mat 9:11] The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
[Mat 9:12] He heard this and said, "Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
[Mat 9:13] Go and learn the meaning of the words, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' I did not come to call the righteous but sinners."
------------------------

The conversion, the "turning toward", of any sinner is accomplished at first by God, and then by the response of the sinner. Jesus sought out Matthew, who was in the midst of his duties as tax collector. Jesus said, "Follow me." Matthew's response was immediate--"he got up and followed Him".

A veil was present between Jesus and Matthew--the veil of the humanity of Jesus, whereby He concealed His Divinity. Without that veil, the Godhead of Jesus would blaze forth, and strike terror into the heart of Matthew or of any other sinner. But with the presence of the veil, Matthew was strongly attracted by Jesus, followed Him, and was transformed from publican to apostle.

Later, as a guest at Matthew's house, Jesus dined with several "tax collectors and sinners". Concealing His Divinity, they experienced Jesus' presence in the conviviality of a shared dinner. St. Peter Chysologus wrote that Jesus' feasting was not on food, but on the return of sinners.

During Jesus' historical sojourn on our planet, He placed a veil over His Divinity so He could better attract sinners. In our time, which many spiritual writers refer to as the "middle coming", in the Most Holy Eucharist Jesus not only places a veil over His Divinity, He also veils His humanity. As He did to Matthew, He calls to each of us to dine with Him, as we read in Chapter 3 of the Book of Revelation:

[Rev 3:20] "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, (then) I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me."

During the sacred banquet which is the Most Holy Eucharist, when we receive Our Lord in Holy Communion, He is not assimilated into us--rather, we are assimilated into Him. He indeed has humbled Himself by sharing in our humanity, and humbled Himself even more by His presence in the Eucharist. But His humbling does not diminish His Divinity--rather, it elevates our humanity.

In our ongoing conversion from sin, the Holy Spirit renders us spiritually sensitive to the call of our beloved--He first turns toward us, so that we then can turn toward Him--turn toward Him renewing a daily re-commitment to His Lordship in our lives.

During the time each of us remains here on earth in the wayfaring state, He is assiduous and persistent in making His love known to us, as we read in the beautiful allegory of Chapter 2 of the Song of Songs

[Song 2:8] But Hark! my lover--here he comes springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills.
[Song 2:9] My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. Here he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices.
[Song 2:10] My lover speaks; he says to me, "Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come!

This is the motive and this is the goal of our ongoing conversion from sin--Our Lord invites us to do here and now what we were created to do for all eternity in heaven: give Him our love in return for the love which He has given us.

Triumph of the Cross

2008-09-14T14:35:00.004-04:00

Homily
TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS
14 SEPTEMBER 2008

Numbers 21: 4-9

[Num 21:4] From Mount Horeb they set out on the Red Sea road, to by-pass the land of Edom. But with their patience worn out by the journey,
[Num 21:5] the people complained against God and Moses, "Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!"
[Num 21:6] In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died.
[Num 21:7] Then the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you. Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people,
[Num 21:8] and the LORD said to Moses, "Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover."
[Num 21:9] Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he recovered.

Philippians 2: 6-11

[Phil 2:6] Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
[Phil 2:7] Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
[Phil 2:8] he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
[Phil 2:9] Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
[Phil 2:10] that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
[Phil 2:11] and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

John 3: 13 - 17

[John 3:13] No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
[John 3:14] And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
[John 3:15] so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."
[John 3:16] For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
[John 3:17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
---------------------

1. Introduction

Today is the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, also called the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This feast originally commemorated the finding of the Holy Cross by St Helena, and the consecration on September 14, 335 AD of the Basilicas built by her son the Emperor Constantine on the sites of Calvary and the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

2. The Cross is the Second Tree of Life

After the fall of our first parents, God willed that the estrangement from God of Adam, Eve, and their descendants should not last forever. So He stationed the cherubim to guard the way to the tree of life, lest they eat of its fruit and live forever in their state of separation from God. Such an existence would have been more of a "second death" than life.

Sacred Tradition has repeatedly observed that whereas Satan defeated the old Adam by a tree, the new Adam, Jesus Christ, in turn defeated Satan by a tree. This is stated in the Preface of the Holy Cross of the traditional mass, which says in part:

(Our heavenly Father) set the salvation of mankind upon the tree of the Cross, so that whence came death, thence also life might rise again, and that he who overcame by a tree might by a tree be overcome..."

God forbade Adam to taste of the fruit of the first tree of life. But God planted a second tree of life, the Holy Cross which we exalt today. He invites mankind to taste of its fruit, which is nothing less than the second Adam, His beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. We taste of the fruit of this tree each time we partake of the Body and Blood, along with the soul and divinity, of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Unlike the first tree of life, the life which the fruit of this second tree of life imparts is not an eternity of separation from God which would be a "second death"; the life imparted by this second tree is an eternity of life from which sin and death have been utterly annihilated. Moreover, it is not our own life which becomes eternal, rather it is a profound union of our life with the very life of God, the eternal divine life each of us receives in Baptism.

3. The Bronze Serpent is a Type of Christ Crucified

In today's gospel, Our Lord Himself cites that the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up is a type (symbolic forerunner) of His own forthcoming crucifixion:

[John 3:14] And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ...

Moses did not put a serpent atop a pole; he put the likeness of a serpent atop the pole.

The likeness of a serpent, apparently on the pole in defeat, served as a sacramental of God for the Israelites who had been stricken by live serpents. For, gazing on the likeness of a defeated serpent, their bites were healed.

This is a type of the cross, since:

at the crucifixion of Christ, the likeness of a sinful man, apparently on the cross in defeat, served as the sacrament par excellence of God for all smitten by sin. For, gazing on the likeness of a sinful man, and believing in him, men were healed from sin.

That Jesus was sent to us in the likeness of a sinful man, we read in Romans 8:

[Rom 8:3] ... what the law, weakened by the flesh, was powerless to do, this God has done: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for the sake of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ...

4. The Victory of the Cross

The victory of the "second tree of life", the Cross of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is manifold:

It is a victory over Satan.
Jesus overcame him by whom death entered the world, by winning eternal life for mankind.

It is a victory over sin.
Jesus expiated the guilt of the whole human race, from the beginning of time to the end of time.

It is a victory over death.
Jesus was the first to manifest this victory in His own person by rising from the dead, so that He might be "the first born from among the dead".

5. Our Participation in the Cross of Our Lord

It is not intelligible to think of a coin without its having two sides. It is also not intelligible to think of Good Friday and Easter, either one without the other. Without Easter, Good Friday becomes meaningless. The Romans of those times executed tens of thousands on the cross. However, without Good Friday, there would be no Easter.

When we contemplate a crucifix and what it represents, we are witnessing an execution. On the natural order, a man is being executed. On the supernatural order, what is being executed is nothing less than death itself.

An ancient prayer of the Church states:

For us, O Savior, you endured the Cross and burial; but as God by your death you put death to death; and so we worship your Resurrection on the third day. Lord, glory to you!

Just as Jesus' resurrection is inseparable from His cross, so the personal resurrection of each man is inseparable from his own personal cross. In Mark 8, we read:

[Mark 8:34] He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

These words may be hard for some to hear, but much harder still would be the words:

[Mat 25:41] ... Depart from me, you accursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Our Lord commands us to follow him: to follow Him first in His crucifixion, and then to follow Him in His resurrection and ascension into heaven.

For someone to follow Him in His crucifixion, Our Lord commands him to "take up his cross, and follow me". Just as Jesus' cross and resurrection are akin to the two sides of a coin. so it is with each of us. For each of us it is true that we cannot pass on to eternal life through our personal resurrection unless we first approach the second tree of life, the holy cross. For this, we must do two things:

1. We must accept the cross into our life as a life-giving gift of God. This acceptance is what we call "our own personal cross".

2. We must partake of the fruit of this tree. That is, we must live a sacramental life, bearing in turn our own fruit in faith, hope, and charity.

6. Jesus Asks Us to Take Up Our Cross, Not His Cross

We take up our own cross each day of our life in ways such as the following:

1. Experiencing the buffetings of the evil one in our daily spiritual combat;
2. Experiencing moral evil through the agency of other men, either by ignorance, frailty, or malice;
3. Battling our own proclivity to sin: again, either by ignorance, frailty, or malice;
4. Experiencing damage to mental or bodily health;
5. Experiencing damage to material possessions.

Jesus asks us to take up our own cross, not His cross. Only one person helped Jesus carry His cross: Simon of Cyrene. Simon was forced by the Roman soldiers to do so. We can, however, help Jesus carry His cross in the person of our neighbor--for Our Lord says in Matthew 25:

[Mat 25:40] ... 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Part of our exercise of charity in this life is to freely offer to help our neighbor carry his cross. We can do this by providing our neighbor with spiritual assistance, or by providing him with material assistance--sometimes with his knowledge and sometimes not.

7. We Die to Ourselves through the Cross

The cross is also an means of purification of the effects of sin, after sin has been forgiven. Before a man can enter into the contemplation of the Beatific Vision, he must undergo purification from the effects of sin which have accrued throughout his life. He can do so in this life, through the wholehearted acceptance of his cross. When he dies, whatever purification is still required will be accomplished in Purgatory.

As we progress through this, the wayfaring state, let us keep in mind the following scripture verse:

[1 Cor 1:18] The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

We conclude with an ancient vespers prayer:

Rejoice, O life-bearing Cross, the unconquerable triumph of true worship, O door of paradise, the confirmation of believers, the wall of the Church, through which corruption has disappeared and perished, the power of death has been swallowed, and we ascend from earth to heaven, O incontestable weapon and adversary of Satan….

Amen.

The North American Martyrs

2008-08-30T15:32:00.002-04:00

Homily
FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR
19 OCTOBER 2007

Luke 12: 1 - 7

[Luke 12:1] Meanwhile, so many people were crowding together that they were trampling one another underfoot. He began to speak, first to his disciples, "Beware of the leaven--that is, the hypocrisy--of the Pharisees.
[Luke 12:2] "There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known.
[Luke 12:3] Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops.
[Luke 12:4] I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more.
[Luke 12:5] I shall show you whom to fear. Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna; yes, I tell you, be afraid of that one.
[Luke 12:6] Are not five sparrows sold for two small coins? Yet not one of them has escaped the notice of God.
[Luke 12:7] Even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.
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Today we celebrate the memorial of St. Isaac Jogues, St. John de Brébeuf, and their six companions, known collectively as the "North American Martyrs".

In today's Gospel, Our Lord admonishes us in the following words:

[Luke 12:4] I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more.

Moreover, St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, adds in Romans 12:

[Rom 12:21] Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.

Over three hundred fifty years ago, the truth of these scriptural passages empowered six Jesuit priests and two holy laymen, all from France, who died as martyrs here in North America. These eight men were martyred between 1642 and 1649. They were a group of the bravest and most daring missionaries in the New World. After much hard work, they converted many of the Huron tribe. But the Iroquois, bitter enemies of the Hurons, put them all to death.

St. John de Brébeuf had tuberculosis. Yet he became a marvelous, valiant apostle. His courage amazed the fierce Iroquois as they killed him. St. Gabriel Lallemont was killed with St. John de Brébeuf.

St. Isaac Jogues was killed with a tomahawk by the Bear Clan of the Mohawks. He was killed at the chief village of the Mohawks, Ossernenon, located in present-day New York state. Ten years after his martyrdom, at this same village was born Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the "Lily of the Mohawks". Now beatified, her cause for canonization is well under way.

St. Anthony Daniel had just finished celebrating Mass for his Huron converts when the Iroquois attacked the village. The Christian Indians begged him to try to escape. But Father Daniel stayed. He wanted to baptize all those who were crying to him for Baptism before they would be killed. The Iroquois burned him to death in his little chapel.

St. Charles Garnier and St. Noel Chabenel were both killed with tomahawks. St. Charles was first shot by an Iroquois musket during a surprise attack. Nevertheless, he still tried to crawl to help a dying man. He was then killed by a hatchet blow.

Two lay helpers, René Goupil and John Lalande, were both killed with tomahawks.

These heroes of Christ gave their lives for the native people of North America. After their death, new missionaries were able to convert almost every tribe that the martyrs had known. These brave men were proclaimed saints in 1931 by Pope Pius XI. How well did these men exemplify the ancient adage, "the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians".

St. Isaac Jogues, St. John de Brébeuf, and your six companions in martyrdom, pray for us who have recourse to you. Amen.

The Temptations of Christ

2008-08-28T19:54:00.005-04:00

Homily
FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
13 FEBRUARY 2005

Mt 4:1-11

[Mat 4:1] Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.
[Mat 4:2] He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry.
[Mat 4:3] The tempter approached and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread."
[Mat 4:4] He said in reply, "It is written: 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.'"
[Mat 4:5] Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple,
[Mat 4:6] and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: 'He will command his angels concerning you and 'with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"
[Mat 4:7] Jesus answered him, "Again it is written, 'You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.'"
[Mat 4:8] Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,
[Mat 4:9] and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me."
[Mat 4:10] At this, Jesus said to him, "Get away, Satan! It is written: 'The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.'"
[Mat 4:11] Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.
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1. Introduction

In today's Gospel, we see Jesus confronting and defeating Satan. Jesus endured and resisted temptation, paving the way for grace to be restored to the world. As the new Adam, he resisted that temptation to which the first Adam had been subject, and by which had been defeated, bringing sin into the world.

In the words of St. John Chrysostom regarding today's Gospel:

Jesus' temptation was for our instruction. Jesus did whatever was necessary for our salvation by both acting and being acted upon.

Jesus, true God and true Man, permitted Himself to be tempted by Satan for our instruction and edification. He permitted Satan to act on His person by transporting Him first to the pinnacle of the Temple, and then to the peak of a high mountain.

Imitating Jesus in our Christian walk, we grow in virtue in this twofold manner: by the good we do and by the evil we endure.

2. The Temptations of Christ

St. Gregory the Great says, a father of the church, says regarding today's Gospel:

Jesus dealt with three temptations---to gluttony, vainglory, and avarice. All three recapitulated the (one) temptation of Adam. By this we are taught to answer all temptation with Scripture.

In today's first reading from Genesis, we read that Eve saw that the tree was good for food; she experienced the temptation of gluttony: she wanted to eat something forbidden to her, beyond the plenty already supplied to her by the Lord.

Moreover, she saw that the tree was pleasing to the eyes; she experienced the temptation of avarice: she wanted to possess something over and above the plenitude of that which she already possessed.

Finally, she saw that the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom: she experienced the temptation of vainglory, believing the serpent's lie that she would be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.

Adam, who was with her, also experienced and succumbed to these temptations.

Jesus experienced and resisted these same temptations, winning grace where sin had abounded. As it says in today's second reading:

[Rom 5:17] For if, by the transgression of one person, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one person Jesus Christ.

2.1 The Temptation to Gluttony

Adam succumbed to the temptation of gluttony. Satan presents this temptation to Jesus, saying, "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread." Not that Jesus, after a forty-day fast, would consider eating bread gluttonous. The temptation he resisted was to satisfy His hunger by means of a miracle.

Jesus, the new Adam, resists this temptation by quoting scripture: "'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God." This scripture is found in Chapter 8 of the Book of Deuteronomy:

[Deu 8:1] "Be careful to observe all the commandments I enjoin on you today, that you may live and increase, and may enter in and possess the land which the LORD promised on oath to your fathers.
[Deu 8:2] Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.
[Deu 8:3] He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.

2.2 The Temptation to Vainglory

Adam succumbed to the temptation to vainglory. Satan presents this temptation to Jesus, saying, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down (from the parapet of the temple). For it is written: 'He will command his angels concerning you and 'with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"

Jesus, the new Adam, resists this temptation by again quoting scripture: "Again it is written, 'You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.'" This scripture is found in Chapter 6 of the Book of Deuteronomy:

[Deu 6:16] "You shall not put the LORD, your God, to the test, as you did at Massah.
[Deu 6:17] But keep the commandments of the LORD, your God, and the ordinances and statutes he has enjoined on you.

2.3 The Temptation to Avarice

Adam succumbed to the temptation to avarice. Satan presents this temptation to Jesus, taking him up to a very high mountain, and showing him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,
saying, "All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me."

Jesus, the new Adam, resists this temptation, saying, "Get away, Satan!" Again quoting scripture, Jesus says, "It is written: 'The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.'" This scripture is also found in Chapter 6 of the Book of Deuteronomy:

[Deu 6:13] The LORD, your God, shall you fear; him shall you serve, and by his name shall you swear.
[Deu 6:14] You shall not follow other gods, such as those of the surrounding nations,
[Deu 6:15] lest the wrath of the LORD, your God, flare up against you and he destroy you from the face of the land; for the LORD, your God, who is in your midst, is a jealous God.

3. Jesus Resists the Temptations by Quoting Scripture

Jesus resisted each of Satan's temptations by quoting scripture. He did not manifest his divinity to Satan. Rather than His divinity, what He did manifest was Himself as the new Adam who would defeat Satan's cunning. As it says in the second chapter of Philippians:

[Phil 2:5] Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
[Phil 2:6] Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
[Phil 2:7] Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
[Phil 2:8] he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

He did not manifest His divinity to Satan; that is, He performed no miracle in resisting Satan's temptations. Instead, He quoted scripture. He did so, so that WE WOULD BE ABLE TO IMITATE HIM. He gives us a share in His victory over Satan, by permitting our participation in spiritual warfare, and by showing us how we are to behave while undergoing temptation that is from the evil one.

Are we then, to quote scripture when tempted? The answer is yes--and it can be simply done. The entire New Testament has a terse recapitulation in the Second Chapter of Philippians: "JESUS CHRIST IS LORD". This four-word scriptural quotation is eminently suitable as a weapon in spiritual warfare.

JESUS: Yeshua; Yah-schwa: "Yaweh is savior".
CHRIST: Messiah; the anointed one; the bearer of the Holy Spirit.
IS LORD: Adonai, the God of Israel: of both the old Israel and the New Israel, the Church.

When tempted, stand firm in the power of the quotation "JESUS CHRIST IS LORD". It is not a mantra; it is a witness to the truth of the New Covenant revealed in the New Testament. Recite this quotation in a sober and attentive manner, and then turn to prayer, using the "Our Father" and the "Hail Mary", or better yet, recite the rosary.

Our Lord has won the war against evil, but has permitted each of us to share in his victory through our battles against sin and Satan. Satan is a defeated foe who cannot touch our wills. In resisting his temptations, we follow in the footsteps of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ Who does not say "go on", but "come, follow me". To Him be praise, honor, and glory now and forever. Amen.

Vocations to the Priesthood

2008-08-28T19:40:00.002-04:00

Homily
FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
17 APRIL 2005

John 10: 1-10

[John 10:1] "Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.
[John 10:2] But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
[John 10:3] The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
[John 10:4] When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice.
[John 10:5] But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers."
[John 10:6] Although Jesus used this figure of speech, they did not realize what he was trying to tell them.
[John 10:7] So Jesus said again, "Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep.
[John 10:8] All who came (before me) are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.
[John 10:9] I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.
[John 10:10] A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.
------------------

1. Introduction

Today's Gospel is that of Our Lord as good shepherd. Those who are in his flock follow him, because they recognize his voice. That is, they recognize the revealed truth of God in all that he says, and they reject the strident clamorings of the world, the flesh, and especially, the devil, who would enter in to "steal, slaughter, and destroy".

On this Sunday of the Good Shepherd, Bishop Mengeling has asked that we give special attention to vocations to the priesthood, which is Our Lord's instrument of his continuing shepherdship in the world.

Pope John Paul II declared that:

Along with God's universal call to live and witness to the proclamation of salvation there are particular vocations with specific responsibilities within the Church; these are fruit of a special grace and require an additional moral and spiritual commitment. They are the vocations to priesthood, the religious life, to the work of the missions and to the contemplative life.

2. Pope John Paul II on His Own Priestly Vocation

Pope John Paul II commented as follows on his own vocation to the priesthood:

"I am often asked, especially by young people, why I became a priest. Maybe some of you would like to ask the same question. Let me try briefly to reply. I must begin by saying that it is impossible to explain entirely. For it remains a mystery, even to myself. How does one explain the ways of God? Yet, I know that, at a certain point in my life, I became convinced that Christ was saying to me what he had said to thousands before me: 'Come, follow me!' There was a clear sense that what I heard in my heart was no human voice, nor was it just an idea of my own. Christ was calling me to serve him as a priest.

"And you can probably tell that I am deeply grateful to God for my vocation to the priesthood. Nothing means more to me or gives me greater joy than to celebrate Mass each day and to serve God's people in the Church. That has been true ever since the day of my ordination as a priest. Nothing has ever changed this, not even becoming Pope." (Los Angeles, USA, September 14, 1987)

3. More from John Paul II on the Priestly Vocation

At several times and places during his universal ministry, Pope John Paul II addressed the vocation to the priesthood. Listen now to some of what he had to say.

"The priestly vocation is essentially a call to sanctity, in the form that derives from the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Sanctity is intimacy with God; it is the imitation of Christ, poor, chaste and humble; it is unreserved love for souls and self-giving to their true good; it is love for the Church which is holy and wants us to be holy, because such is the mission that Christ has entrusted to it. Each one of you must be holy also in order to help your brothers pursue their vocation to sanctity." (Rome, Italy, October 9, 1984)

"Your wish is to become priests, or at least your wish is to discover if you are really called. And so the question is a serious one, because you have to prepare thoroughly, with clear intentions and an austere formation" (Rome, Italy, October 13, 1979)

"His calling is a declaration of love. Your response is commitment, friendship, and love manifested in the gift of your own life as a definitive following and as a permanent sharing in his mission and in his consecrations. To make up your mind is to love him with all of your soul and all of your heart in such a way that this love becomes the standard and motive of all your actions. From this moment on, live the Eucharist fully; be persons for whom the Holy Mass, Communion, and Eucharistic adoration are the center and summit of their whole life. Offer Christ your heart in meditation and personal prayer which is the foundation of the spiritual life" (Valencia, Spain, November 8, 1982)

"The world looks to the priest, because it looks to Jesus! No one can see Christ; but everyone sees the priest, and through him they wish to catch a glimpse of the Lord! Immense is the grandeur of the Lord! Immense is the grandeur and dignity of the priest!" (Rome, Italy, October 13, 1979)
"Pray, therefore, to the Lord of the harvest that he send harvesters into his harvest. . ." Considering that the Eucharist is the greatest gift our Lord gives to his Church, we must ask for priests, since the priesthood is a gift for the Church. We must pray insistently for this gift. We must ask for it on our knees." (Rome, Italy, March 25, 1982)

4. The Sacrament of Holy Orders and the Priesthood

Priestly ordination, the reception of the sacrament of Holy Orders, accomplishes two results:

1. it imprints on the soul an indelible character;

2. it confers a special sacramental grace.

The character is an intimate and permanent possession of the soul which enables a man to perform the actions of a priest validly. It is the active power of Holy Orders to consecrate the Eucharist validly, and to absolve the faithful validly from sins committed since Baptism.

The sacramental grace given by Holy Orders enables the priest to perform the duties of his state not merely validly but also holily, and that this spirit of holiness--which is intended to characterize all his work--may develop in unison with his growth in grace and in charity.

Whether the priest is celebrating Mass or ministering to souls, he is another Christ. His priesthood is a splendid participation in the supreme priesthood of Christ; he is Christ's minister, His living, conscious instrument for the saving of souls.

The most sublime action of which the priest is capable is the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In this, he is the equal of any bishop, including the Pope. In addition to this, the priest has been entrusted with a spiritual "sword" wherewith whenever he pronounces the words of absolution in a valid confession, he separates the penitent's sins from the penitent "as far as East is from West", thereby restoring pristine baptismal innocence to the penitent.

5. The Priesthood and Our Lady: First Meditation

From the cross, Our Lord gave Our Lady to St. John as his mother, and through him, as our mother. Tradition has it that St. John afterwards lived in Ephesus. He and Our Lady would have lived there together for some number of years, before she was called home at her Assumption into heaven.

St. John, in obedience to Jesus' command to "do this in remembrance of me", would have celebrated the holy sacrifice of the Mass a great number ot times. Meditate on Our Lady's attendance at these masses, and her own reception of Holy Communion, which was St. John's inestimable privilege to give to her.

Every priest since then has had the opportunity and the privilege of being an alter Christus to living saints, both at Mass and in the confessional, as well as to the rank and file of sinners struggling to be holy.

6. The Priesthood and Our Lady: Second Meditation

At the annunciation, Our Lady's "fiat" opened the way to salvation for the entire human race.

In a lesser, but still vital way, a man discerning a vocation from the Lord to be a priest, must realize that if the vocation is indeed genuine, the salvation of possibly many thousands of souls might well depend on his own "fiat" to the call of God.

Pray for vocations. Pray for the openness, acceptance, and love which the Lord expects from those who are blessed with a genuine vocation.

Praise, honor, and glory to Jesus Christ the High Priest, now and forever. Amen.

Building Bridges of Love

2008-08-27T12:09:00.003-04:00

Homily
ELEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
12 JUNE 2005

Matthew 9: 36 - 10: 8

[Mat 9:36] At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.
[Mat 9:37] Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
[Mat 9:38] so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest."
[Mat 10:1] Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.
[Mat 10:2] The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John;
[Mat 10:3] Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus;
[Mat 10:4] Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him.
[Mat 10:5] Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, "Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town.
[Mat 10:6] Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
[Mat 10:7] As you go, make this proclamation: 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'
[Mat 10:8] Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.
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1. Introduction

In today's Gospel, Our Lord mandates the apostles to go forth and proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This proclamation is to be made first to Israel, the children of God's choice. Afterwards it will be proclaimed to the whole world in what is called the "mission of the Church".

2. [From The Catechism of the Catholic Church: 849 - 865]

2.1 The Missionary Mandate

"...the Church, in obedience to the command of her founder and because it is demanded by her own essential universality, strives to preach the Gospel to all men".

[Mat 28:18] Then Jesus approached and said to them, "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
[Mat 28:19] Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit,
[Mat 28:20] teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age."

"The Lord's missionary mandate is ultimately grounded in the eternal love of the Most Holy Trinity: 'The Church on earth is by her nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, she has as her origin the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit'. The ultimate purpose of mission is none other than to make men share in the communion between the Father and the Son in their Spirit of love."

2.2 The Apostolic Mission

"...And he appointed twelve, whom also he named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach. From then on, they would also be his "emissaries" (Greek apostoloi). In them, Christ continues his own mission:

[John 20:21] (Jesus) said to them ..., "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."

The apostles' ministry is the continuation of his mission. Jesus said to the twelve:

[Mat 10:40] "Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me."

"Jesus unites them to the mission he received from the Father. As the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but receives everything from the Father who sent him, so those whom Jesus sends can do nothing apart from him, from whom they received both the mandate for the mission and the power to carry it out. "

2.3 The Bishops are the Successors of the Apostles

"...the Church teaches that the bishops have by divine institution taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church, in such wise that whoever listens to them is listening to Christ and whoever despises them despises Christ and him who sent Christ."

2.4 The Apostolate

"All members of the church share in this mission, though in various ways....Indeed, we call an apostolate every activity of the Mystical Body that aims to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth."

Let us now look at one historical manifestation of apostolate.

3. Charles de Foucauld

There is a great number of those in the Church who followed Our Lord's missionary mandate to a heroic degree, including St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Francis de Sales. Noteworthy among these is Charles de Foucauld, whose cause for beatification is underway.

Charles de Foucauld was born into an aristocratic French family in Strasbourg, France in 1858. Despite his advantages of birth, as he grew into young manhood he lost his faith. After converting from an unexemplary life, and after an arduous spiritual journey, he was ordained to the priesthood, spent some time in Trappist monasteries, and eventually went to Algeria to live among the Tauregs. He lived with them from 1901 until his assassination on December 1, 1916.

Charles' focus had been on the hidden years of Our Lord in Nazareth: those years that Jesus spent living an ordinary life among ordinary people.

Any distinction between the contemplative and active life melted away in His dual worship of Jesus in the Eucharist and of Jesus in the poor. His "Nazorean" spirituality was manifested in living the same life as those around him to whom he was brother.

His obedience to the missionary mandate of Our Lord was not to be rewarded in his lifetime by conversions. There were even times during his life among the Tauregs that he had to apply to Rome to be allowed to celebrate Mass alone, since there were no Catholics available to be altar servers.

At the time of his assassination in 1916, Charles de Foucauld had not made a single convert. The following verse from John could well serve as his epitaph:

[John 12:24] Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.

Charles de Foucauld did indeed bear much fruit. His vision was to result in several religious foundations, including the Little Sisters of Jesus, whose charism is to provide a continuation of Our Lord's presence in those places where the Church, in the structure in which we know it, is remote to a greater or lesser degree.

4. Our Share in the Apostolate

At baptism, we receive a share in the God's own life. At confirmation, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit with a mandate to evangelize. In the John 7 we read:

[John 7:38] Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him.'"
[John 7:39] He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive.

That is, each of us in his own way is to participate in the Church's mission of being Jesus present in the world. We are to be conduits of the Spirit: rivers of living water flowing from each of us.

Some of us, like Bishop Fulton Sheen, will be like Paul, proclaiming the kingdom of God by preaching and teaching. Others, like Charles de Foucauld, will be doing spade work for a harvest that will be accorded to others.

Whatever form our share in the apostolate takes, like Charles de Foucauld we first build bridges of love. We build them to be strong enough so that they will bear the weight of the truth that is ultimately to pass over them.

The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus: I

2008-08-27T11:46:00.004-04:00

Homily
SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS
3 JUNE 2005

Matthew 11: 25-30

[Mat 11:25] At that time Jesus said in reply, "I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.
[Mat 11:26] Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
[Mat 11:27] All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.
[Mat 11:28] "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.
[Mat 11:29] Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves.
[Mat 11:30] For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."
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Today is the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

When a poker is placed in fire, it eventually begins to glow. It radiates heat; however, it is not the source of that heat. Rather, it takes on the characteristics of that fire into which it has been plunged. Without the fire, it is cold and dark. With its immersion into that fire, it become warm, then hot, then glows red, and can in some cases even become white-hot.

Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, when assuming human nature, became a man like other men, in all things save sin. He had a body like ours, with a heart like ours. The message of today's solemnity is that God has a human heart. As it is with all of us, His heart is a physiological organ necessary for human life. It is also the emblem of human emotions, foremost among which is love. Since the love of God is infinite, that love is focused by the heart of Jesus to make of it a burning furnace of charity.

The more aloof we remain from Jesus, the more our hearts resemble the cold, dark poker. The closer we draw to him, the more our hearts manifest the character of His divine love: first becoming warm, then hot, then red-hot, and in the case of great saints, white-hot. We draw close to Him by a disciplined prayer life and sacramental life, especially in frequent reception of Holy Communion. This corresponds to our acquiring the heat of His love. But just as the poker, when heated, radiates its heat, so do we give out the heat of His love in acts of charity to and with our neighbor.

The divine love manifested to us by His Sacred Heart makes Jesus a true icon of His heavenly Father here on earth:

[John 14:9] Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?

To the extent that our hearts are united to Jesus' heart, we show forth the Father to the world, thereby helping to make grow the Father's Kingdom here on earth.

We say that the love of God is infinite. Our notions of "infinity" are all negative: the word itself means "not finite", that is, without limit. There is no limit to the love of God for each of us, and none of us should place a limit on the love we return in response to His love. As has been well said, "the only measure of our love for God is that we love Him without measure".

Mathematicians have a quaint symbol for what they refer to as "infinity": a figure eight lying on its side. The idea is that this symbol suggests an endless tracing around its contour. But the infinity of the love of God cannot be symbolized by a figure that is closed in on itself.

The true sign of infinity is the cross: its vertical beam joins heaven to earth, and its horizontal beam embraces the breadth of the entire created universe. Where the beams meet is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Jesus Leads us to Ecumenical Witness

2008-08-27T11:19:00.002-04:00

Homily
TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
14 AUGUST 2005

Matthew 15: 21-28

[Mat 15:21] Then Jesus went from that place and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
[Mat 15:22] And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, "Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon."
[Mat 15:23] But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, "Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us."
[Mat 15:24] He said in reply, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
[Mat 15:25] But the woman came and did him homage, saying, "Lord, help me."
[Mat 15:26] He said in reply, "It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs."
[Mat 15:27] She said, "Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters."
[Mat 15:28] Then Jesus said to her in reply, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed from that hour.
--------------------

In today's Gospel, why does Jesus at first ignore, then rebuff, the Canaanite woman's pleas for her daughter? Two reasons have been offered:

1. Jesus wanted to emphasize his mission to the Jews; in fact, He states that He was sent only to the "lost sheep of Israel". He is to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, and only later empower the apostles at Pentecost to preach to the whole world.

2. He wanted to elicit from the woman the manifestation of humility and the declaration of faith which she ultimately made.

These two reasons are connected. His mission to the Jews comes to its complete fruition after his passion, death, and resurrection. The salvation which He wins is ultimately to be applied to all men, as He indicates to the Samaritan woman at the well:

[John 4:21] Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
[John 4:22] You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews.

In stating that "salvation is from the Jews", He reveals that in the whole course of what we call "salvation history", the Jews were chosen to be those people through whom God would manifest His grace and mercy to all mankind in the new creation to be won through Jesus Christ. That is, God shows His intent to impart the supernatural life of grace to redeemed mankind through the collaborative ministry of men.

In delaying his granting the woman's request for her daughter, He elicits from her the declaration of faith which He states quite clearly is a necessary accompaniment of the deliverance granted to her daughter. He did not say, "Your daughter is cured". Rather, He said, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." He accepts the woman's declaration of faith as a collaboration with Him in the healing of her daughter.

Jesus states that His mission is to the "lost sheep of Israel". He is later to charge His apostles with the mission to the rest of the world. As He states in John chapter 14:

[John 14:12] Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

The "greater works" that the apostles will do will include the miracles they will do in the Lord's name, but perhaps more importantly, they will preach the good news to the whole world.

Even though His mission is to the "lost sheep of Israel", there are many places in the Gospel where His compassion and the universality of His mission are manifested: the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman with the hemorrhage, the centurion, and the woman in today's Gospel. These occasions offered contrasts with the rejections that He received from His own people. As St. John Chrysostom put it with regard to today's Gospel:

"...driving away people who were coming to Him was unworthy of His love for humanity. For if one should pursue those who are trying to escape, much more should one not try to escape those who are pursuing."

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We are members of His church, the "New Israel". God continues to apply the grace of salvation, which is His very own life, to men through the ministry of men. We see this in the celebration of the sacraments, in public and private prayer, and above all in the supreme act of worship, the Eucharistic celebration.

Whoever each one of us is, and wherever in the Body of Christ the Lord has willed to place us, we must not lose awareness of our privilege and obligation to collaborate with the Holy Spirit in the ongoing application of the merits of Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection. According to the circumstances of our vocation in the church, we minister to members of the household of faith, to baptized Christians who are not Catholics, and to unbaptized persons.

We keep in mind Peter's admonition:

[1 Pet 3:15] ... Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,
[1 Pet 3:16] but do it with gentleness and reverence...

Whenever and wherever we are called to collaborate with the Holy Spirit in ministering to others, we must keep the following clearly in mind:

We can't do it without God;
God won't do it without us.

That we are each of us called to ministry follows directly from Jesus' own words:

[John 7:37] On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed, "Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.
[John 7:38] Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him.'"
[John 7:39] He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive...

We first receive the Holy Spirit from Jesus; we then impart the Holy Spirit we have received to those to whom we encounter in the circumstances of our lives, through the words we speak and the witness of a Godly life. This activity, which we call "apostolic mission", is mandated and suffused through with grace by the sacrament of confirmation. In the sacrament of baptism, we share in the communion of the persons of the Blessed Trinity; in the sacrament of confirmation, we share in their mission.

Here the vocation of the laity is expressed clearly: Christians are called to make Jesus Christ present in the power of the Holy Spirit ultimately to every single person in the world. The New Israel, the Church, is the signpost pointing the way and enabling access to the kingdom of the Father, which as the Lord petitions in the prayer he taught us, is to come to be in the world as it is in heaven.

Dear Catholic Christian, to emphasize the seriousness of your vocation, consider carefully that there might be persons for whom you will be the only contact they will ever have with Jesus Christ, and that your witness and example might be a necessary instrument God will use for their eternal salvation. When we are faithful to this vocation, He gives us a wonderful promise as is stated in Chapter 5 of the letter of St. James:

[James 5:19] My brothers, if anyone among you should stray from the truth and someone bring him back,
[James 5:20] he should know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Here in the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, we are blessed with a faith community centered on the eucharist, catalyzing ministry to one another and outreach ministry to the community at large. We experience the power of the Holy Spirit acting through prayer and the sacraments, and with and through each other.

We have our ups and downs in our shared Christian walk. But when some of us weaken, support is always at hand from others to share our burden and lift us up. With this ongoing mutual support, our faith grows, our hope grows, and most importantly, our love grows: our love of God experienced through, with, and in each other, always keeping in mind:

We can't do it without God;
God won't do it without us.

Forgiveness

2008-08-24T15:31:00.001-04:00

Homily
TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
11 SEPTEMBER 2005

Matthew 18: 21-35

[Mat 18:21] Then Peter approaching asked him, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?"
[Mat 18:22] Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy times seven times.
[Mat 18:23] That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
[Mat 18:24] When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him ten thousand talents..
[Mat 18:25] Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt.
[Mat 18:26] At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.'
[Mat 18:27] Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan.
[Mat 18:28] When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred denarii. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, 'Pay back what you owe.'
[Mat 18:29] Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
[Mat 18:30] But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt.
[Mat 18:31] Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair.
[Mat 18:32] His master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
[Mat 18:33] Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?'
[Mat 18:34] Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.
[Mat 18:35] So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart."
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Our baptism has incorporated us into the Body of Christ, wherein we receive a share in the life of God Himself, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Our confirmation has empowered us to minister the same Holy Spirit first, to one another, and then outward to the world. The Body of Christ continues to be built up in love through our mutual ministering of the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 4 we read:

[Eph 4:15] Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ,
[Eph 4:16] from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, with the proper functioning of each part, brings about the body's growth and builds itself up in love.

The Holy Spirit makes us one with Christ as sons and daughters of God.

[Rom 8:14] For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
[Rom 8:15] For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, "Abba, Father!"

The Holy Spirit gives us the mind of Christ, whereby we are to conduct ourselves just as He did.

[1 John 2:5] ... This is the way we may know that we are in union with him:
[1 John 2:6] whoever claims to abide in him ought to live (just) as he lived.

The divinity and love of Jesus shines forth in the infinite compassion He has shown us by canceling the infinite debt owed by us for our sins. Thus, to be children of the Father, to conduct ourselves as Jesus did, is manifest in a pre-eminent way when we forgive those who trespass against us, as Our Lord has commanded us, and as the adage has it to err is human; to forgive, divine. The body of Christ is built up in love in a powerful way when we forgive; the body of Christ is damaged when we do not forgive, and the forgiveness of our sins is taken away as well.

When Our Lord taught his disciples the Lord's prayer, He presents the petition for forgiveness of our trespasses to be conditional on our unconditional forgiveness of those who trespass against us. He emphasizes this by repeating it at the end of the prayer, as we read in Matthew 6:

[Mat 6:12] ... forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors;
[Mat 6:13] and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one.
[Mat 6:14] For if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.
[Mat 6:15] But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you your transgressions.

The story Our Lord relates in today's gospel is crystal clear: the forgiveness of our sins is conditioned on our forgiveness of the injuries committed against us by others. The original Greek has it that the debtor who was brought before the King owed the King ten thousand talents. A talent can roughly be considered to represent many years' wages, and hence symbolizes the infinite debt owed by each of us for each of our sins.

The debtor pleaded for time to pay his debt. The King, moved with compassion, knowing that the debtor would never have enough time, went much further and forgave the huge debt in full. Here we see symbolized the infinite mercy of God, as he applies the merits of Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection to the forgiveness of an infinite debt each time a serious sin is brought to the tribunal of the sacrament of reconciliation.

The debt owed by the man's fellow servant is rendered in the Greek as one hundred denarii, which roughly represents a few months' wages. Upon refusing to accept his fellow servant's plea for time to pay his debt, the wicked servant placed himself in the full wrath of the King after the King had learned what he had done, as our Lord relates in today's gospel:

[Mat 18:34] Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.
[Mat 18:35] So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart."

St. John Chrysostom reminds us that Jesus did not say "your Father", but rather "my Father". For it is not proper for God to be called the Father of one who is so wicked and malicious

Our Lord goes even further than this; He states clearly to the scribes and pharisees that anyone who does not believe in what He teaches on this issue or on any other does not have a Father in heaven, rather, the devil is father to such a one, as we read in John 8:

[John 8:43] Why do you not understand what I am saying? Because you cannot bear to hear my word.
[John 8:44] You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father's desires.

Each and every one of us has transgressed upon another, and has been transgressed upon by another, perhaps many times during a lifetime. If we are honest about it, we must acknowledge the tendency to focus more on the bad things done to us than the bad things we do to others.

Today's Gospel is a solemn reminder that we will not go to heaven unless we forgive our brothers from our heart. For some of us, our entire salvation hangs on this single issue. Some have been wronged in ways truly grievous, and have come to believe that they are not capable of the Christ-like forgiveness that we all are commanded to manifest. I suggest the following as short meditations in this regard:

1. Our Lord always gives us the power to do what He commands us to do. Yes, we might not be able to forgive from our heart using our own natural powers. But we hold firmly that the grace that Our Lord gives us is more than sufficient. We must be humbly open to this grace, and believe firmly in His promise to provide it.

2. Second meditation: I have been grievously injured by another, perhaps once, perhaps several times, or even perhaps in a repetitive habitual manner over a long period of time. I must ask myself: am I willing to present myself to Jesus Christ crucified and ask Him that justice be done, understanding that the justice done for me is also to be done to me? Or do I accept the mercy of Jesus for my own sins, and accept in my heart the stipulation that I show mercy to my brother's transgressions against me which, no matter how grievous, are infinitely less?

3. Finally, do I clearly see that I have an opportunity to be like God when I exercise an act of heartfelt forgiveness?

Can we imagine heaven as a place where there is unforgiveness? Because of our baptism whereby we have received a share God's own life, heaven (in a sense) has already begun in the here and now. Forgiveness strengthens our citizenship in heaven; unforgiveness destroys it. In obedience to Our Lord's command, for each person who has wronged us, let us say one of the two following prayers:

If the person is living:

Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive from my heart all the injuries N. has inflicted upon me, and I ask you to grant him/ her health, safety, salvation, and length of days. Amen.

If the person has died:

Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive from my heart all the injuries N. has inflicted upon me, and I ask that he/ she rest in peace, and that perpetual light shine upon him/ her. Amen.

The grace of forgiveness of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ be with us all.

Talents

2008-08-22T15:41:00.002-04:00

Homily
THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
13 NOVEMBER 2005

Matthew 25: 14-30

[Mat 25:14] "(The kingdom of heaven) will be as when a man who was going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.
[Mat 25:15] To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one--to each according to his ability. Then he went away. Immediately
[Mat 25:16] the one who received five talents went and traded with them, and made another five.
[Mat 25:17] Likewise, the one who received two made another two.
[Mat 25:18] But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master's money.
[Mat 25:19] After a long time the master of those servants came back and settled accounts with them.
[Mat 25:20] The one who had received five talents came forward bringing the additional five. He said, 'Master, you gave me five talents. See, I have made five more.'
[Mat 25:21] His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master's joy.'
[Mat 25:22] (Then) the one who had received two talents also came forward and said, 'Master, you gave me two talents. See, I have made two more.'
[Mat 25:23] His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master's joy.'
[Mat 25:24] Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said, 'Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter;
[Mat 25:25] so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.'
[Mat 25:26] His master said to him in reply, 'You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant and gather where I did not scatter?
[Mat 25:27] Should you not then have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?
[Mat 25:28] Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten.
[Mat 25:29] For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
[Mat 25:30] And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'
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1. Introduction

In today's gospel, the original Greek has it that the man in Our Lord's parable entrusted his servants with five talents, two talents, and one talent, respectively. Some sources estimate the value of a talent at more than 16 years' wages in New Testament times. So the single talent given to the third servant still possessed a formidable value.

For us, the meaning of the word "talent" has broadened to include natural skills and spiritual gifts as well as treasure. Our Lord's parable is clear--each of us is to use the talents given to him--entrusted to him--by the Lord to have returned a profit by the time He returns to make an accounting. A profit in what? We have been given talents--each according to his ability--to build up the Kingdom.

2. Natural Talents

A characteristic of a talent used to build the Kingdom is that it is given to be of benefit to others. A concert violinist has a talent that I do not possess. I do, however, benefit from that talent when I attend a concert given by that person. A doctor's talents are exercised for the benefit of his patients; a lawyer's talents are exercised for the benefit of his clients. Such talents, along with a multitude of others, we refer to as "natural talents". How then do what we call "natural talents" build up the Kingdom?

2.1. We build up the Kingdom through the Christian witness we give through the exercise of the talent

Christ has said that whoever ministers to those in need, ministers to Him.

[Mat 25:37] Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
...
[Mat 25:40] And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'

2.2. Hence, to build up the Kingdom, we must see that the needy--those who are the beneficiaries of our talent--belong to Christ

[Mark 9:41] Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.

2.3. We refer all our actions of a forthcoming day to the glory of God by making a suitable morning offering.

In short, we build up the Kingdom through the exercise of our natural talents by doing what Jesus would do. He expects us to be His voice, His hands, His feet, His very presence in this world.

3. Ministry Gifts

What has been said of "natural talents" applies with special force to those talents that are called "spiritual gifts". These are gifts of power distributed by the Spirit each of which is intrinsically ordered to build up the Kingdom. Also known as "ministry gifts" or "charismatic gifts", they show forth the glory of God present to mankind in a manifest way.

The so-called sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit are necessary for salvation--they are traditionally seven in number: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

Like natural talents, but in a more manifest way, the ministry (or charismatic) gifts of the Spirit are gifts of power by which others are led to the reception or increase of sanctifying gifts. The ministry gifts are distributed in different ways among various persons, as we read in First Corinthians:

[1 Cor 12:7] To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.
[1 Cor 12:8] To one is given through the Spirit the expression of wisdom; to another the expression of knowledge according to the same Spirit;
[1 Cor 12:9] to another faith by the same Spirit; to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit;
[1 Cor 12:10] to another mighty deeds; to another prophecy; to another discernment of spirits; to another varieties of tongues; to another interpretation of tongues.
[1 Cor 12:11] But one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.

Whatever the number and kind of talents (whether they be natural talents or ministry gifts) that the Lord entrusts us with, He expects a return. He expects us to use our talents to build up the Kingdom. The work of having the Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven is one in which it is the Lord's will that we are each to collaborate with Him.

How in fact does the exercise of a natural talent or ministry gift build up the Kingdom? It does so by promoting, facilitating, or leading one or more persons to the receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit; the sanctifying grace He bestows which is nothing less than a share in the divine life itself. We thus have "rivers of living water flowing from us" as stated in John 7:

[John 7:38] Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him.'"
[John 7:39] He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

4. The Servants Who Returned a Profit

In today's Gospel, each of the three servants received a number of talents which was proportioned to his ability to return a profit to his master. Each of the profitable servants doubled his master's investment, one gaining an additional five talents and the other an additional two.

[Luke 6:38] Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you."

5. The Unprofitable Servant

The third servant dug a hole in the ground and buried the single talent which had been entrusted to him. Pope Gregory the Great states:

Hiding a talent in the earth means employing one's abilities in earthly affairs, failing to seek spiritual profit, never raising one's heart from earthly thoughts...The prophet (Jeremiah) says of them:

[Jer 4:22] ... They are wise in evil, but know not how to do good.

6. The Profitable Employment of Our Talents

How are we then to use the talents that God has given to each of us? Let us always remember:

Whatever God commands us to do, He gives us the power to do.

The Council of Trent quotes St Augustine as follows:

God does not ask the impossible. His commands exhort you to do what you can, and to pray for what is beyond your power.

Let us add (in the spirit of the serenity prayer) that He will give the wisdom to know the difference.

7. Some Examples

Let us look at some examples:

o Many of us receive a sizeable number of solicitations to worthy charitable causes: often too many to respond to. I suggest that we select a few charities to which we give regular donations, and then offer up prayers for the remainder, especially that each of them will receive ongoing patrons. How we do this varies from individual to individual, depending on the degree they have received material blessings. Here, as in the employment of other kinds of talents it is well to remember that to whom much is given, much is expected.

o Among those solicitations that we receive are those for missionary activity. God gives to some the zeal to participate personally in the missions, and to others the zeal to offer them material support. As the bishop of Fairbanks reiterates: "Some give by going to the missions. Some go by giving to the missions. Without both, there are no missions."

o The poor in our own society are growing in numbers as the middle class declines. We pray for all of them, and are open to giving direct aid to needy individuals that we have the power to help.

o We are open to performing works of charity, such as visiting the sick and those in jail, ministering to the bereaved, the marginalized, those who have left the church, and many others. Here we unite prayer and action by praying for the success of whatever ministerial action we are to perform.

We are to have confidence in the grace that God has given us in our baptism and confirmation, that what we do and what we pray for to build up the Kingdom here on earth will be pleasing to God, so that each of us can confidently look forward to the words Our Lord spoke to each of the profitable servants:

'Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master's joy.'

Interacting in Love

2008-08-22T15:08:00.002-04:00

Homily
SIXTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
12 FEBRUARY 2006

Mark 1: 40-45

[Mark 1:40] A leper came to him (and kneeling down) begged him and said, "If you wish, you can make me clean."
[Mark 1:41] Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, "I do will it. Be made clean."
[Mark 1:42] The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
[Mark 1:43] Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.
[Mark 1:44] Then he said to him, "See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them."
[Mark 1:45] The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.
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Jesus' mission included the preaching of the coming of the kingdom of His Father. He performed miracles, which included miracles of healing, and he cast out demons, as signs which pointed to the validation of His mission.

Because of His love, on particular occasions He would perform a prodigious sign from motives of compassion. Such was the first of His signs at Cana, whereby his compassion, for the potential embarrassment of the newlywed couple should they run out of wine for their guests, motivated Him at His mother's behest, to change water into wine.

In today's Gospel, we see Jesus again moved with compassion at the plea of the leper to cleanse him of his leprosy. Jesus as healer shows forth his coming as savior: as He healed the leper of his physical leprosy, so He had come to heal the world of the moral leprosy of sin, answering Jeremiah's plea:

[Jer 17:14] Heal me, LORD, that I may be healed; save me, that I may be saved, for you alone are my hope.

When unlike things are brought together, they may or may not interact. When oil is combined with water, there is little interaction other than the oil floating upon the water. If salt is combined with water, there is interaction: the salt dissolves into the water. When unlike things do interact, there is often a tendency for them to become more alike. Thus, a red-hot poker thrust into a pail of cold water results in heating of the water and cooling of the poker.

Besides physical interactions, there can also be moral interactions. When a good man and a bad man interact, two possible outcomes are:

1. The bad man can transmit his evil to the good man, making the good man worse.

2. The good man can transmit his good to the bad man, making the bad man better.

As we read in the book of Proverbs:

[Prov 12:18] The prating of some men is like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise is healing.

[Prov 13:17] A wicked messenger brings on disaster, but a trustworthy envoy is a healing remedy.

We speak often of the necessity for everyone, and especially for young people, to avoid bad companions. Man is a social being, and pressure to conform to the moral norms of the society in which he finds himself can, as we know, be quite strong. If such norms are evil, he will be pressured into becoming tainted with that evil. If such norms are good, he will be drawn to becoming a morally better person.

In the case of a physical interaction, some change occurs in both elements of the interaction. Hence, when the poker is plunged into cold water, it loses some of its heat, and the water becomes warmer.

In the case of a moral interaction, however, one of the persons can be changed with no corresponding change in the other. The evil man, having swayed the good man to partake of evil, remains an evil man. The good man who provides the occasion for an evil man to renounce his ways and become good, himself remains a good man.

Our Lord exemplifies this in today's Gospel reading. He, the spotless one, confronts the evil of leprosy, and He does so by loving interaction. He not only commands the leprosy to disappear, He reaches out and touches the leper. Jesus, the infinitely good one, does not change: rather, the leper undergoes a change which makes him spotless as well. Our Lord's touching the leper is not a gratuitous action: by it He is exercising a loving interaction; that He is giving not just a "thing", a "healing", but at a deeper level is giving of Himself. Moreover, He is manifesting His lordship through the power of His love.

Seventeen centuries ago, St. John Chrysostom commented on today's Gospel reading as follows:

He did not simply say, "I will, be cleansed," but he also "extended his hand, and touched him"--an act we do well to analyze. If he cleansed him merely by willing it and by speaking, why did he also add the touch of his hand? For no other reason, it seems to me, than that he might signify by this that he is not under the hand of the law, but the law is in his hands. Hence to the pure in heart, from now on, nothing is impure. ... He touched the leper to signify that he heals not as servant but as Lord. For the leprosy did not defile his hand, but his holy hand cleansed the leprous body.

Jesus shows by His example that our ministry in His name is not to be done in an aloof manner, but requires a manifest degree of personal involvement. This He symbolizes by His act of touching. A profound example of this is found in the life of Blessed Father Damien de Vuester, the "leper priest" of Molokai, as described in the following passage:

The lepers in Molokai became accustomed to seeing Fr. Damien go into the pulpit each Sunday morning, cross himself, and begin his sermon with the same words: “You lepers must always remember that God the Father loves you!” Then he would go on to preach a homily that was always full of joy, hope, and faith. Several years passed and the colony of lepers was slowly transformed into a loving community of believers. Then, one Sunday morning Fr. Damien stepped into his pulpit and with a broad smile began his sermon by saying, "We lepers know and must always remember that God the Father loves us!” This was the first indication that Fr. Damien had contracted leprosy himself. Many came to console him, but he would just smile and say, “God has answered my prayers, now I really am one of you!” He continued to pour out his life for them until his death. He died, one of them, a leper among lepers. Damien wrote once that the most important words he ever spoke as a priest were the words "we lepers". He thought those two words summed up the life of Jesus who joined His life to ours and took on every aspect of our life except sin. Jesus entered into our suffering and asks us, his followers, to be ready and willing, like Fr. Damien to be a “leper among lepers”.

We are charged, as has been often said, with preaching the Gospel, and when necessary, using words. Suppose I am confronted by a hungry person, one who is in genuinely dire need. I can respond to his need in more than one way.

1. I can give money to the person, and then move on. Here I have responded to his need without any significant further interaction. I have "healed" so to speak his hunger, but have not touched him at a personal level.

2. I can invite the person to be my guest at a meal. During the meal, I learn his name, and relate to him at a personal level in other ways. Here now I have followed Our Lord's example of touching that person--I am giving not just the meal, but I am giving of myself. I am properly answering the question, "What would Jesus do?"

As the commercial motto says, we are ready to "reach out and touch someone" whenever and wherever the occasion arises. What about the practical side of all this? Suppose we simply do not have time to invite the hungry man to a meal? When giving him money for a meal, we at least have time to learn his name. I cannot overstate the importance of this simple act, for it is prerequisite to any interaction which involves the giving of one's self, and as such is itself an act of love.

An example of touching someone by speaking powerfully from the heart is given by the story of a woman in poor health who had traveled a considerable distance to the Mayo Clinic to avail herself of the expertise of doctors experienced in treating her rare and serious condition. After preliminary examinations, the doctor in charge came into her room and announced that it was necessary for him to perform an operation on her no later than the following morning. As he spoke to her, she broke into tears at this turn of events. She told the doctor that she was afraid because she was separated from her loved ones and would be so dreadfully alone during the course of the operation. The doctor took her hand in his, and said, "You will not be alone Mrs. Smith. I will be there".

Cardinal John Henry Newman, the distinguished English prelate of the nineteenth century had as his motto "Cor ad cor loquitur": "Heart speaks to heart". The Gospel of Jesus Christ, as proclaimed by each of us in our daily lives, is proclaimed first by our actions, then by our words, but always from the heart, so that we do in fact reach out and touch as Jesus did.

Holy Transfiguration

2008-08-21T17:07:00.001-04:00

Homily
SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT
12 MARCH 2006

Mark 9: 2-10

[Mark 9:2] After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
[Mark 9:3] and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
[Mark 9:4] Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.
[Mark 9:5] Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, "Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
[Mark 9:6] He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.
[Mark 9:7] Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; then from the cloud came a voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him."
[Mark 9:8] Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.
[Mark 9:9] As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
[Mark 9:10] So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.
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The Mountain of the Lord

Holy Scripture tells us: "come climb the mountain of the Lord", as we read in Isaiah 2:

[Is 2:3] ...many peoples shall come and say: "Come, let us climb the LORD'S mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths." For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

The mountain of the Lord has many designations, which include:

Sinai, Tabor, the mount of the beatitudes, Golgotha, and the mount of the ascension.

In today's Gospel, we see described the Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ on Mount Tabor. This Gospel is read on the Second Sunday of Lent because of a tradition that the Transfiguration occurred forty days before Good Friday.

We see Peter, James, and John ascend Mount Tabor with the Lord, Who is joined by Moses and Elias, and Who is then transfigured before their eyes of the flesh, manifesting to them His divinity.

Even this startling event was only a faint, symbolic adumbration of the full glory of the Beatific Vision, intended by God as the fulfillment of our supernatural destiny.

The Eyes of Faith: the Gift of Understanding

We ascend Tabor with the Lord, where there He is transfigured before our eyes of faith, with which we perceive His divinity. What Peter, John, and James saw with their eyes of flesh, we perceive even more deeply with our eyes of faith. As St. Augustine said,

"What the sun is to the eyes of the flesh, that is the Lord to the eyes of the heart."

By "eyes of faith" (also called "eyes of the heart") is meant one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gift of understanding. (We often say "I see" to mean "I understand".) Catholic tradition states that

"The gift of understanding enlightens us by shedding a clear, searching, and extraordinary light on the meaning of revealed truth, and by giving us a certitude that what God has revealed bears such and such a sense and no other."

It often happens that some persons place a wrong reliance on the natural powers of their intellects when contemplating the things of God, along with the things of the created order of nature, and less on the Holy Spirit's gift of understanding. The so-called "wise ones" then can end up with less understanding of the things of God than those whom the world deems to be "less wise". Our Lord, who always taught in a direct and simple manner, rejoiced in the gift of understanding given to those He called "childlike":

[Luke 10:21] At that very moment he rejoiced (in) the holy Spirit and said, "I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit enable each of us to see the Glory of the Lord with the eyes of faith.

[2 Cor 3:17] Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
[2 Cor 3:18] All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Ascending Tabor

How do we ascend Tabor? Three ways to ascend Tabor are prayer, prayerful reading of the Scripture, and participating at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Prayer

We ascend Tabor by prayer, especially prayer to the Holy Spirit. We are on Tabor with James, the apostle of prayer. If we do not have immediate access to the many prayers to the Holy Spirit that are in the spiritual treasury of the Church, we can at least memorize the beginning of the Church's traditional prayer to the Spirit:

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of Your love.

Scripture

We ascend Tabor by our prayerful reading of scripture. We are on Tabor with Moses and Elias, who represent the Law and the Prophets. We are on Tabor with the evangelist John, and with New Testament writers Peter and James.

Mass

We ascend both Golgotha and Tabor with John each time we participate in the holy sacrifice of the Mass. We ascend Golgotha, since the Mass is the re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. We ascend Tabor because we perceive the glory of God in the Eucharist, with the eyes of faith. The church reminds us that Jesus present in the Holy Eucharist is present in His full glory no less than the glory He has seated at the right hand of His Father in heaven.

Coming Down from Tabor

Coming down from Tabor, we see the world around us anew with these same eyes of faith.

We no longer assent only intellectually to the teaching that Christ is in the poor, we now see Christ in the poor with the eyes of faith.

We no longer assent only intellectually to the teaching that the things of this world, good in themselves, are to be used only as stepping stones to heaven--we see that this is so with the eyes of faith.

In his first letter to the Colossians, St. Paul wrote:

[Col 1:24] Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.

We no longer assent only intellectually to this mysterious teaching that we are to complete the sufferings lacking in the suffering of Christ, we see that this is so with the eyes of faith.

When we see with the eyes of faith, we see as Jesus sees.

When we see as Jesus sees, we then come to love what we see with the love that Jesus has, for to see as Jesus sees is the foundation of loving what Jesus loves.

We see the world as Jesus sees it, and hence come to love the world as Jesus loves it.

We see our loved ones as Jesus sees them, and hence come to love them as Jesus loves them.

We see our enemies as Jesus sees them, and hence come to love them as Jesus loves them.

We ascend Tabor so that we may see with the eyes of faith; so that we may see as Jesus sees. We see so that we may love as Jesus loves, in the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God the Father.

Come, let us together climb the mountain of the Lord!

The Crescendo of God's Infinite Love

2008-08-20T17:38:00.002-04:00

Homily
FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
14 MAY 2006

John 15: 1 - 8

[John 15:1] "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
[John 15:2] He prunes away every barren branch, but the fruitful ones he trims clean to increase their yield.
[John 15:3] You are clean already, thanks to the word that I have spoken to you.
[John 15:4] Live on in me, as I do in you. No more than a branch can bear fruit of itself apart from the vine, can you bear fruit apart from me.
[John 15:5] I am the vine, you are the branches. He who lives in me and I in him, will produce abundantly, for apart from me you can do nothing.
[John 15:6] A man who does not live in me is like a withered, rejected branch, picked up to be thrown in the fire and burnt.
[John 15:7] If you live in me, and my words stay part of you, you may ask what you will--it will be done for you.
[John 15:8] My Father has been glorified in your bearing much fruit and becoming my disciples."
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[1 John 3:18] Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.
[1 John 3:19] (Now) this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts before him
[1 John 3:20] in whatever our hearts condemn, for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
[1 John 3:21] Beloved, if (our) hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God
[1 John 3:22] and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
[1 John 3:23] And his commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.
[1 John 3:24] Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit that he gave us.
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1. Introduction

In Holy Scripture, the relationship between Our Lord and His church has been expressed in several different ways:

1. Jesus as the bridegroom of His bride, the church.

2. Jesus as the head of His body, the church.

3. Jesus as vine, and members of His church as branches.

One of the places where Jesus refers to Himself as bridegroom is Luke chapter 5:

[Luke 5:33] And they said to him, "The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same; but yours eat and drink."
[Luke 5:34] Jesus answered them, "Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?

Jesus is described as head of the body in chapter 1 of Paul's letter to the Colossians:

[Col 1:17] He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
[Col 1:18] He is the head of the body, the church.

The metaphor of vine and branches is used by Our Lord in today's Gospel, in which He declares that

"I am the vine, you are the branches."

A branch connected to its vine receives life from the vine which enables it to produce fruit. If the branch is severed from the vine, not only can it not bear fruit, but it withers and dies, and is picked up and cast into fire to be burnt.

So too with each of us. Insofar as we remain connected to the vine; that is, insofar as we remain in union with Jesus, we receive the divine life which enables us to bear fruit pleasing to the Father.

2. Jesus is the Bearer of the Spirit

We participate in the divine life through the power of the Holy Spirit. This John states in today's second reading:

...the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit that he gave us.

When we are in union with Jesus, the Holy Spirit is active within us. If we become severed from the vine; if we become separated from Jesus, we no longer have the Holy Spirit within us, become spiritually withered, and then can do absolutely nothing in the supernatural order. Jesus states this clearly in today's Gospel by declaring that

"...apart from me you can do nothing."

3. Gifts and Fruits

Through our baptism, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are as vessels filled with the living water of the life of God. As it says in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians:

[2 Cor 4:7] But we hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.

When later we are confirmed, we are empowered to minister the divine life given to us to others. We read this in chapter 7 of the Gospel of John:

[John 7:38] Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him.'"
[John 7:39] He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive.

St. Thomas Aquinas states that the proper personal name of the Holy Spirit is "Gift". The one gift of the Holy Spirit is expressed in Catholic tradition in terms of the seven sanctifying gifts of the Spirit:

wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

These gifts of the Spirit are essential for salvation. In addition to the seven sanctifying gifts, the Spirit bestows, on who He wills, a large number of ministry gifts called "charisms", such as word of wisdom, discernment of spirits, administration, and prophecy. These are gifts of power which are used to minister the Spirit to others, through witness and acts of charity.

It is through the sanctifying and ministry gifts of the Spirit that we are to produce the fruits of the Spirit, among which are those listed in Galatians chapter 5:

[Gal 5:22] ... the fruit(s) of the Spirit (are) love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,
[Gal 5:23] gentleness, self-control.

The Holy Spirit does His part through His granting to us His sanctifying and ministry gifts.

We are to do our part by producing the fruits of the Spirit. For this, our union with Jesus is essential, as He states in today's Gospel:

No more than a branch can bear fruit of itself apart from the vine, can you bear fruit apart from me.

4. The Crescendo of God's Love for Us

As branches connected to a vine, our union with Jesus causes us to experience a mounting crescendo of God's love. This crescendo is that of Jesus as savior, Jesus as redeemer, and Jesus as bearer of the Spirit.

4.1 Jesus is Savior

First, Jesus as savior saves us from eternal separation from God and grants us eternal life as we read in Paul's second letter to Timothy:

[2 Tim 1:9] (God) saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began,
[2 Tim 1:10] but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel...

4.2 Jesus is Redeemer

Not only is Jesus our savior, He is our redeemer. He could have saved us by a simple fiat, such as He spoke at the creation of the world. Instead, He redeemed us at a price: that price was His passion, death, and resurrection:

[1 Cor 6:19] Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
[1 Cor 6:20] For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.

4.3 Jesus is Bearer of the Spirit

The crescendo of God's love continues. Not only is Jesus our savior and redeemer, He is the bearer of the Spirit which He bequeathes to us. He promises the Spirit in John 15:

[John 15:26] "When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me.

In fulfillment of His promise, He first gives the Spirit to the apostles:

[John 20:21] (Jesus) said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
[John 20:22] And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the holy Spirit.

Then on Pentecost Sunday, He sent forth His Spirit upon all the church:

[Acts 2:1] When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.
...
[Acts 2:4] And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

The culmination of salvation history, through the Holy Spirit given to us by Jesus from the Father, is the culmination of the infinite crescendo of the love of God.

It is more than being saved from eternal separation from God;

it is more than the power to behold God face to face in the light of glory;

it is in fact the actual, real participation in the divine life itself.

This we are promised in one of the most stupendous verses in all of scripture, in chapter 3 of the Book of Revelation, verse 21:

[Rev 3:21] I will give the victor the right to sit with me on my throne, as I myself first won the victory and sit with my Father on his throne.

In the Christian West this is called "divinization"; in the Christian East this is called "theosis".

This participation in the divine life is conferred on us at baptism, and through the sacrament of confirmation is manifested in our giving glory to the Father by bearing fruit in ministering the divine life to others.

5. Epilogue

On this Mothers' Day 2006, we conclude by saluting all the mothers of this parish and of the world, living or dead, with words from the end of today's Gospel:

"My Father has been glorified in your bearing much fruit."

The Supernatural Gift of Faith

2008-08-19T23:24:00.002-04:00

Homily
FOURTEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (B)
9 JULY 2006

Mark 6: 1 - 6

[Mark 6:1] He departed from there and came to his native place, accompanied by his disciples.
[Mark 6:2] When the sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!
[Mark 6:3] Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.
[Mark 6:4] Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house."
[Mark 6:5] So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.
[Mark 6:6] He was amazed at their lack of faith. He went around to the villages in the vicinity teaching.
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1. Introduction

In today's gospel, we see that Jesus is distraught about the lack of faith shown by those in His native place. So lacking was their faith that He "...was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them".

What does Mark mean when he says that Jesus was "not able" to perform any mighty deed because of the lack of faith shown? Jesus is God, and He could of course directly will any cure or other "mighty deed" that He wished. He is saying that faith is a necessary accompaniment of his healing power.

We repeatedly see Jesus affirming that faith is a necessary collaborative component of His performance of miraculous acts, especially those of healing. He repeatedly states to the person he has healed that "your faith has saved you"

[Mark 5:34] He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction."

[Mark 10:51] Jesus said to him in reply, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man replied to him, "Master, I want to see."
[Mark 10:52] Jesus told him, "Go your way; your faith has saved you." Immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.

[Luke 17:15] ... one of (the lepers), realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
[Luke 17:16] and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.
...
[Luke 17:19] Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you."

Jesus is showing us that our involvement with Him in working for the Kingdom is to be one of our collaborating with Him. He does His part as God; He expects us to do ours as men. What is only in the power of God to do, He does; what is within our power to do, He does not do...He expects us to do it. In a mysterious way this collaboration of God and man extends even to the performance of "mighty deeds", including those of healing. He expects us to collaborate with Him through our expression of faith and trust in Him: in Who He is, in what His mission is, and in the word He speaks.

2. What is Faith?

Why does Jesus say "your faith has saved you" after He has worked a miracle of healing? Note further that Jesus does not say "your faith has healed you", but "your faith has saved you". Why then does Jesus seem to require faith to perform a miracle of healing? In fact, just what is meant by faith?

Scripture defines faith in Hebrews 11, verse 1:

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proof of things not being seen.

Modern Catholic theology defines faith with St. Thomas Aquinas as:

the act of the intellect
when it assents to divine truth
under the influence of the will
moved by God through grace.

Since grace is a free gift from God, we properly speak of the "supernatural gift of faith". Thus we distinguish the supernatural gift of faith from that natural faith that is operative in us every day of our lives--for example, we have a natural faith that there was such a person as George Washington, or (if one has not visited India) that there does indeed exist a building in India called the "Taj Mahal".

3. Jesus' Miraculous Signs Foster the Supernatural Gift of Faith

Why does Jesus require a manifestation of faith as a prerequisite to performing a healing? The faith that Jesus requires is the acceptance of Who He is, the truth of what He preaches

The person who manifests faith in Jesus: Who He is, and what His mission is, has allowed his will to be moved by God's grace to assent to the truth of Jesus and hence to the truth of Jesus' mission. He thereby manifests his acceptance of the salvation offered to him by Jesus, to be made possible through Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection. Jesus ratifies this acceptance by performing the miracle, and then saying "your faith has saved you". That is, "the gift of faith freely offered to you, and accepted by you, has saved you, because your acceptance of that faith unites you to My mission and its fruits, which make possible your salvation".

Jesus primary mission was to make possible our salvation. He used miraculous signs, not as ends in themselves, and not force our belief, but as occasions of the working of the freely-given grace of the Holy Spirit to move our wills to give assent to the the truths Jesus preached, and hence to the truth of His mission; that is to say, to the acceptance of the supernatural gift of faith. Jesus states how his miraculous signs are to be occasions of faith in John 9:

[John 9:1] As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth.
[John 9:2] His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
[John 9:3] Jesus answered, "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.

All mankind is called to receive the supernatural gift of faith by the preaching church, as we read in Romans 10:

[Rom 10:13] For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
[Rom 10:14] But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?
[Rom 10:15] And how can people preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring (the) good news!"
...
[Rom 10:17] Thus faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.
[Rom 10:18] But I ask, did they not hear? Certainly they did; for "Their voice has gone forth to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world."

Hence the supernatural gift of faith becomes operative in the church through the following sequence:

o Jesus tramsmits His truth to the apostles by preaching the Kingdom
o Jesus sends the apostles (and through them their successors) to transmit Jesus' truth
o the successors to the apostles preach Jesus' truth
o people hear the preaching
o the people, moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit, receive the supernatural gift of faith, and are baptized into the life of God, whereby they are set on the path leading to salvation

5. God Expects us to Collaborate with Him: God Does His Part; We are to do Ours

God invites us to collaborate with Him in working for the Kingdom. He accomplishes what requires divine power; He expects us to accomplish what can be done by us.

[1 Cor 3:6] I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.
[1 Cor 3:7] Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth.
[1 Cor 3:8] The one who plants and the one who waters are equal, and each will receive wages in proportion to his labor.
[1 Cor 3:9] For we are God's co-workers; you are God's field, God's building.

Paul is describing two fundamental activities of the church: planting the seed of the word of God, which is missionary activity, and watering the planted seed, which is pastoral activity. Whether the activity is missionary or pastoral, it is the Holy Spirit who vivifies that activity with divine grace. Without the combination of divine grace with human activity, the Kingdom will not grow.

[Psa 127:1] ...Unless the LORD build the house, they labor in vain who build. Unless the LORD guard the city, in vain does the guard keep watch.

Because of this collaborative relationship between man and God, both the activity of the Holy Spirit and the activity of man are required.

As Jesus acted fully as God and fully as man, so the church functions through the intimate union of the natural and supernatural. We see this in the church's ministry of charity, in its ministry of the word, in its sacramental ministry, and in its fullness, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The incarnation of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ is prolonged throughout history until the end of time in the church which He founded. Jesus, eternal God, became united to our human nature so that we could participate in His divine nature. Our human natures have been given a supernatural destiny. In all of this, we are privileged to participate as collaborators with God.

Through conception and birth, God gives me my life. Through Baptism and rebirth, God gives me His life.

Material Wealth; Celibacy

2008-08-19T23:00:00.002-04:00

Homily
TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (B)
15 OCTOBER 2006

Wisdom 7: 7 - 11

[Wis 7:7] ...I prayed, and prudence was given me; I pleaded and the spirit of Wisdom came to me.
[Wis 7:8] I preferred her to scepter and throne, And deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
[Wis 7:9] nor did I liken any priceless gem to her; Because all gold, in view of her, is a little sand, and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.
[Wis 7:10] Beyond health and comeliness I loved her, And I chose to have her rather than the light, because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.
[Wis 7:11] Yet all good things together came to me in her company, and countless riches at her hands.

Mark 10: 17 - 30

[Mark 10:17] As (Jesus) was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
[Mark 10:18] Jesus answered him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
[Mark 10:19] You know the commandments: 'You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.'"
[Mark 10:20] He replied and said to him, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth."
[Mark 10:21] Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to (the) poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
[Mark 10:22] At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
[Mark 10:23] Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"
[Mark 10:24] The disciples were amazed at his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
[Mark 10:25] It is easier for a camel to pass through (the) eye of (a) needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
[Mark 10:26] They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, "Then who can be saved?"
[Mark 10:27] Jesus looked at them and said, "For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God."
------------------------------------------------
[Mark 10:28] Peter began to say to him, "We have given up everything and followed you."
[Mark 10:29] Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel
[Mark 10:30] who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.
------------------------------------------------

1. Material Wealth

The first part of today's Gospel presents Jesus' warnings on the danger to our souls which arises from the possession of material wealth.

Anxiety over temporal necessities leads to a clinging to material wealth for security instead of looking for it from God. This is a form of idolatry, because it is placing reliance on a creature in place of reliance on God, as Our Lord states in Matthew 6:

[Mat 6:24] "No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

By "mammon" is here meant the idol of the love of money.

It is incumbent on the Christian not to become enamored of the present life, for here we have no lasting home. We are reminded of this when we experience setbacks and sometimes tragedy. We are truly pilgrims; we are in the "wayfaring state".

Imagine a steep cliff atop which lies a vast collection of priceless treasures. Imagine further that the way to the top is afforded by a ladder rising up alongside the cliff. The wayfarer begins to climb the ladder...while he is climbing, he cannot see the treasure on top, he knows that it is there only by faith. Suppose he stopped at some point up the ladder and started admiring the rung he was on. This rung is his here-and-now reality; he gets comfortable with admiring it and begins to wish he could remain on that rung forever. He places a greater value on it that on his ultimate goal, the treasure at the top. We would not hesitate to call this person's behavior nothing short of ridiculous.

The treasure at the top symbolizes what awaits for us in our true home, heaven. The ladder with its alluring rungs symbolizes the present world through which we are now passing. For us to become enamored of the things of this life, of the here-and-now, is to act in a profoundly more ridiculous manner than the person of the allegory. As prudent Christians, WE USE THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD (THE "RUNGS") IN A PROPER MANNER ONLY INSOFAR AS THEY LEAD US ON TO HEAVEN AND TO ETERNAL UNION IN LOVE AND TRUTH FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE INFINITE LIVING GOD. Again, from Matthew 6, we read:

[Mat 6:31] ...do not worry and say, 'What are we to eat?' or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?'
[Mat 6:32] All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
[Mat 6:33] But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.

As we step from one rung to the next one higher, we leave the former rung behind., as St Paul states in First Corinthians:

[1 Cor 13:9] For (now) we know partially...
[1 Cor 13:10] but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
[1 Cor 13:11] When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
[1 Cor 13:12] At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.

The Holy Spirit encourages us to put aside childish things and grow to true maturity as sons and daughters of God in this life, preparing for our eternal happiness with Him in the next life. We follow the leading of the Holy Spirit to become fully children of God, as we read in Romans 8:

[Rom 8:14] For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

Following the leading of the Holy Spirit as He reveals Himself in the teaching church, we leave anxiety behind, using the things of this world only as He directs, and look forward with confidence in the promises of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ of a blessed destiny in heaven.

Jesus' warnings in today's Gospel concerning material wealth can be summarized as follows:

To possess material wealth makes salvation difficult; to love material wealth makes salvation impossible.

2. Celibacy

The second part of today's Gospel concerns the vocation to the single state--to celibacy. It is a vocation complementary to the vocation to the married state, and it is helpful to discuss celibacy in the context of that complementariness, and in the context of vocations in general.

To each baptized Catholic, the Holy Spirit is the author of one or more vocations to a particular state of life. These fall into two broad headings: vocations to the married state and vocations to the single state.

In the married state, some are called to the married state with children (by birth or adoption), and others are called to the married state without children, whereby they constitute a special sign of love for the Christian community at large.

In the celibate state, there are vocations to the priesthood in the sacrament of Order, there are vocations to the consecrated religious life by way of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and there are vocations to the single life in the world., including widowhood.

There are several parallels between the vocations to the married state and to the priesthood.

o For each of these vocations, there is an underlying sacrament.

o The sacraments of Matrimony and Order are called the "social sacraments". The sacrament of Order provides for the continuation in the Body of Christ of those who are to transmit the divine life, and the sacrament of Matrimony provides for the continuation in the Body of Christ of those who are to receive the divine life.

o In each of the sacraments of Matrimony and Order, God has provided that sacramental grace be available as a right to those who have received the sacrament.

o To those whom God calls to either of these sacraments, He says to them, "I give to you a power that I have denied to the angels."

--No angel has ever celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. No angel has ever granted a pentitent absolution.

--Moreover, no angel has ever had progeny; no angel has ever been a parent.

The priest receives a third sacramental character (or "mark"), after those conferred by Baptism and Confirmation, which is indelible throughout eternity.

In contrast, the married state comes to an end in this life, as affirmed by Our Lord in Matthew 22:

[Mat 22:30] At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven.

There are those who may be somewhat wistful when they first hear these words of Our Lord. But that gives way when the entire plan of God becomes apparent.

When a man and woman marry, they grow in the love of God through each other. When they are in heaven, they grow in the love of each other through God....and not only love of each other but love of all the saints and angels as well.

The priest and others with a vocation to celibacy begin in this life to grow in love of mankind through God. They are signs of the Kingdom in an ultimate sense: they show forth in this life how each of us is going to grow in love in our heavenly home throughout the course of eternity.in an ultimate sense: they show forth in this life how each of us is going to love in our heavenly home.

Through the grace of the Holy Spirit and the indwelling empowered by Him of the Blessed Trinity, may each of us live out the vocation to which God has called us--in joy through the tribulations of this world, and for the everlasting bliss of the Beatific Vision with the angels and saints in heaven.

Christian Generosity

2008-08-19T18:58:00.002-04:00

Homily

THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (B)
12 NOVEMBER 2006

1 Kings 17: 10 - 16

[1 Ki 17:10] Elijah [the prophet] went to Zarephath. As he arrived at the entrance of the city, a widow was gathering sticks there; he called out to her, "Please bring me a small cupful of water to drink."
[1 Ki 17:11] She left to get it, and he called out after her, "Please bring along a bit of bread."
[1 Ki 17:12] "As the LORD, your God, lives," she answered, "I have nothing baked; there is only a handful of flour in my jar and a little oil in my jug. Just now I was collecting a couple of sticks, to go in and prepare something for myself and my son; when we have eaten it, we shall die."
[1 Ki 17:13] "Do not be afraid," Elijah said to her. "Go and do as you propose. But first make me a little cake and bring it to me. Then you can prepare something for yourself and your son.
[1 Ki 17:14] For the LORD, the God of Israel, says, 'The jar of flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, until the day when the LORD sends rain upon the earth.'"
[1 Ki 17:15] She left and did as Elijah had said. She was able to eat for a year, and he and her son as well;
[1 Ki 17:16] The jar of flour did not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, as the LORD had foretold through Elijah.

Hebrews 9: 24 - 28

[Heb 9:24] Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a copy of the true one, but heaven itself, that he might now appear before God on our behalf.
[Heb 9:25] Not that he might offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters each year into the sanctuary with blood that is not his own;
[Heb 9:26] if that were so, he would have had to suffer repeatedly from the foundation of the world. But now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages to take away sin by his sacrifice.
[Heb 9:27] Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment,
[Heb 9:28] so also Christ, offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him.

Mark 12: 38 - 44

[Mark 12:38] In the course of his teaching he said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces,
[Mark 12:39] seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets.
[Mark 12:40] They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation."

[Mark 12:41] He sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
[Mark 12:42] A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.
[Mark 12:43] Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, "Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.
[Mark 12:44] For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood."
----------------------------
1. Introduction

In today's Gospel, Jesus says that the widow "put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury" because she, like the widow of Zarephath who had fed Elijah, had contributed out of her poverty, not out of her surplus. Jesus praises the excellence of her intent, not the monetary value of her gift.

This woman, like all mankind, had been created in the image and likeness of God. Her generosity drew high praise from the God-man Jesus because it intensified her likeness to her creator. In her simple and praiseworthy act, she manifested the God Who is love. Jesus is praising the widow's generosity, which is a powerful imitation of the Divine generosity which has been manifested throughout salvation history.

2. It is Not Possible to Outdo God in Generosity

The infinite generosity of God has been manifested repeatedly throughout salvation history. In Romans 5, we see the generosity of God at its zenith:

[Rom 5:6] For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
[Rom 5:7] Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.
[Rom 5:8] But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Each of us has been created in the image and likeness of God. Through the treasuries of grace made available to us in the church by the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to grow in the divine likeness by imitating Christ, who showed us the perfectly-lived life of grace. A cardinal aspect of imitating Christ is to manifest Christian generosity within the circumstances of the respective vocations to which God has called each of us. In so doing, we must keep in mind that no one can outdo God in generosity.

This is symbolized in today's first scripture reading by the widow of Zarephath's being rewarded for her generosity to God's prophet Elijah by using the last of her flour to bake him a little cake. God rewarded her generosity by providing her food and drink throughout an entire additional year of drought. We also read in Luke 18:

[Luke 18:28] Then Peter said, "We have given up our possessions and followed you."
[Luke 18:29] He said to them, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God
[Luke 18:30] who will not receive (back) an overabundant return in this present age and eternal life in the age to come."

3. Just What is Involved in Manifesting Christian Generosity?

We now ask, "just what is involved in manifesting Christian generosity?"

The Christian witness of the St Thomas the Apostle parish community is:

Encountering Christ; Encouraging Faith; Enlivening Hearts.

In my exercise of generosity to someone, do I minister the Holy Spirit so that the person is experiencing a genuine encounter with Christ? That is, am I really present to that person so that the presence of Christ is facilitated?

In my exercise of generosity to someone, do I minister the Holy Spirit so that the person is experiencing a genuine encouragement in faith? That is, do my actions provide an additional source of strength for believing the revealed truths of Our Lord?

In my exercise of generosity to someone, do I minister the Holy Spirit so that the person is experiencing a genuine enlivening of heart? That is, do my actions provide genuine enthusiasm [recalling that "enthusiasm" derives from "en theos", the "God within"]?

4. Presence as a Sine Qua Non for Generosity

Each of us can regard Christian generosity as our making available his time, treasure, and talent. An important component of each of these is presence. We speak of the real presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and in a correlative way, in the Christian community. What about our own presence? What about the "real presence" of each of us in the context of dispensing our time, treasure, or talent? When I attempt to exercise Christian generosity, do I make an effort to be really present to the person to whom I am relating?

A woman with a serious medical condition had traveled a long distance to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for a delicate operation. The surgeon who was to operate on her was paying a visit to her in her hospital room the night before the operation was scheduled. During their discussion, the woman broke down and began sobbing. She told the surgeon that she wasn't so much frightened by the surgery itself, but that, far away from family and friends, she was so terribly alone.

The surgeon took the woman's hands in his, and said, "You won't be alone tomorrow. I'll be there."

When each of us dispenses time, treasure, or talent in the exercise of Christian generosity to someone, let us remember that we are not merely performing a function, but that we are to be truly present to that person--truly present so that Christ is truly encountered, so that faith is truly encouraged, and so that a heart is truly enlivened.

Listing of Articles in the Order of their Posting

2008-08-19T16:21:00.026-04:00

Date Posted....Title

02 Oct 2008-- Dinner with Jesus
15 Sep 2008-- St Matthew
14 Sep 2008-- Triumph of the Cross
30 Aug 2008-- The North American Martyrs
28 Aug 2008-- The Temptations of Christ
28 Aug 2008-- Vocations to the Priesthood
27 Aug 2008-- Building Bridges of Love
27 Aug 2008-- The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus: I
27 Aug 2008-- Jesus Leads us to Ecumenical Witness
24 Aug 2008-- Forgiveness
21 Aug 2008-- Interacting in Love
21 Aug 2008-- Holy Transfiguration
20 Aug 2008-- The Crescendo of God's Infinite Love.
19 Aug 2008-- The Supernatural Gift of Faith
19 Aug 2008-- Material Wealth; Celibacy
19 Aug 2008-- Christian Generostity
19 Aug 2008-- Make Straight the Way of the Lord
19 Aug 2008-- Healing and the Kingdom
17 Aug 2008-- Carrying Our Cross in Battle
17 Aug 2008-- Holy Perseverance
17 Aug 2008-- The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus: II
16 Aug 2008-- Human Respect and Political Correctness
15 Aug 2008-- St. Thomas the Apostle and the Wounds of Christ
15 Aug 2008-- The Body and Blood of Christ
14 Aug 2008-- Spiritual Warfare
13 Aug 2008-- Liturgical Abuse
13 Aug 2008-- Twelve Miracles Associated with the Eucharist
13 Aug 2008-- Mary, Holy Mother of God
13 Aug 2008-- Meditation on Hell
11 Aug 2008-- The Most Holy Trinity
09 Aug 2008-- The Most Important Person in the World
07 Aug 2008-- Fundamental Option Theory and Adult Catechesis
07 Aug 2008-- Fr. Steven Scheier's Withess

Make Straight the Way of the Lord

2008-08-19T14:30:00.007-04:00

Homily
SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
10 DECEMBER 2006

Luke 3: 1 - 6

[Luke 3:1] In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
[Luke 3:2] during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
[Luke 3:3] He went throughout (the) whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
[Luke 3:4] as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:

"A voice of one crying out in the desert: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.
[Luke 3:5] Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth,
[Luke 3:6] and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"
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Jesus Who is coming, is both King and High Priest. Gregory the Great points out that this is why the time of John's calling is reckoned in terms of four temporal rulers (Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, and Lysanias) and two high priests (Annas and Caiphas).

[Luke 3:2] ...the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.

John is the last of the prophets of the old law. Like his predecessor prophets, there is an initial calling, expressed by the phrase "the word of God came to him". Because he was the last prophet, and unlike his predecessors, the word of God was also soon to come to him in visible form in Jesus.

[Luke 3:3] He went throughout (the) whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins...

John's baptism did not remove sin, rather, it was a "baptism of repentance" which leads to that forgiveness of sins to be won by Jesus' passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending forth of the Spirit. As manna was a type (that is, a symbolic prefiguring) of the Eucharist; so John's baptism was a type of the Sacrament of Baptism to be instituted by Jesus: that which would impart the divine life by the power of the Holy Spirit. In Luke 3, we read:

[Luke 3:16] John answered them all, saying, "I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming...He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire.

The Old-Testament scripture cited in today's Gospel is found in Isaiah 40:

[Is 40:3] A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
[Is 40:4] Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.
[Is 40:5] Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Isaiah's words, applied to John, begin with:

Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!

These words are addressed to the Israelites--they are also addressed to each of us. One profitable way to prayerfully read and meditate on the Old Testament is for each Christian to regard himself as a "little Israel". Like the old Israel, each of us has been called to a covenant relationship with God. Again, like the old Israel, each of us has been unfaithful to his part of that covenant, through personal sin. As Isaiah says of John calling the Israelites to repentance, so the Holy Spirit says to each of us through John, to make straight a highway for God in the wasteland of our hearts. That is, turn away from all the impediments we have allowed into our lives which inhibit or even completely prevent the growth of grace God wills for each of us.

Verse 4 of Isaiah 40 states:

[Is 40:4] Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.

Moreover, we read in Baruch 5:

[Bar 5:7] For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground, that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.

On our journey to growth in grace in the wayfaring state, the journey is impeded by many obstacles:

the journey is impeded by valleys which are chasms which drop before us;

the journey is impeded by mountains and hills which rise in front of us;

the journey is impeded by the ruggedness of the terrain.

Every valley shall be filled in.

Valleys can be thought of as metaphors for despondency and despair. That "every valley shall be filled in" then refers to the action of God's grace to replace despondency and despair by a reasonable hope.

Every mountain and hill shall be made low.

The mountains and hills to be made low represent the pride which in our lives, which must be eliminated before any genuine progress can be made. The diminution of pride, which is often the work of an entire lifetime, is the result of a grace-empowered growth in the virtue of humility.

There is often confusion regarding the meaning of the vice of pride, and the corresponding virtue of humility. Pride is the wrongful orientation of a person to himself and to his own natural powers, rather than to God, as the empowering cause of what he considers growth. It is not growth at all, but decay, since it has as its goal only a natural beatitude which, far from being a perfection, is a profound perversion of the supernatural beatitude to which God has called us.

The sin of Lucifer, wherein he preferred his own natural perfection to the supernatural perfection of the Beatific Vision for which God had created him, is the archetypal paradigm of where pride can lead. In fact, hell can be thought of as the place where those who prefer to place themselves, rather than God, at the center of their universe dwell for all eternity.

Humility is the proper acknowledging to God that He is the cause of our growth in perfection through His freely-given gift of grace. As pride is the greatest vice, so its opposite, humility, is the greatest virtue.

The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.

"Rugged land" and "rough country" represent the difficulties in our lives which are consequences of sin. We sometimes regard growth in virtue as "hard" and giving in to sin as "easy". This is of course an illusion presented to us by the enemy of our souls at the moment of the commission of sin. The sequel to sin is the rugged land of regret and sorrow.

Holy men and women of both the Old and New Testaments have fled to physical deserts, to be away from the moral desert of their contemporaries.

John, the last of the prophets of the old law, is likewise in a physical desert when he receives the word of God. Like other prophets, he is to call people away from their sins and depravity, back to serving the God Who had made covenant with them, back from the moral desert in which they had immersed themselves.

God did not create us to live in such a desert, as He tells us in Isaiah 45:

[Is 45:18] For thus says the LORD, The creator of the heavens, who is God, The designer and maker of the earth who established it, not creating it to be a waste, but designing it to be lived in: I am the LORD, and there is no other.
[Is 45:19] I have not spoken from hiding nor from some dark place of the earth, And I have not said to the descendants of Jacob, "Look for me in an empty waste..."

John calls us to grow in our resolve to practice virtue, so that the sequel will be following of the leading of the Holy Spirit, after the filling in of gorges and tearing down of mountains, on the level plain in the broad valley which is the precursor on earth of our heavenly home. As sung in Psalm 143:

[Psa 143:10] Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your kind spirit guide me on level ground.

Healing and the Kingdom

2008-08-19T14:07:00.002-04:00

Homily
TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (C)
14 OCTOBER 2007

2 Kings 5: 14 - 17

[2 Ki 5:14] So Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of the man of God. His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
[2 Ki 5:15] He returned with his whole retinue to the man of God. On his arrival he stood before him and said, "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel. Please accept a gift from your servant."
[2 Ki 5:16] "As the LORD lives whom I serve, I will not take it," Elisha replied; and despite Naaman's urging, he still refused.
[2 Ki 5:17] Naaman said: "If you will not accept, please let me, your servant, have two mule-loads of earth, for I will no longer offer holocaust or sacrifice to any other god except to the LORD.

2 Timothy 2: 8 - 13

[2 Tim 2:8] Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David: such is my gospel,
[2 Tim 2:9] for which I am suffering, even to the point of chains, like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.
[2 Tim 2:10] Therefore, I bear with everything for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, together with eternal glory.
[2 Tim 2:11] This saying is trustworthy: If we have died with him we shall also live with him;
[2 Tim 2:12] if we persevere we shall also reign with him. But if we deny him he will deny us.
[2 Tim 2:13] If we are unfaithful he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

Luke 17: 11 - 19

[Luke 17:11] As he continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee.
[Luke 17:12] As he was entering a village, ten lepers met (him). They stood at a distance from him
[Luke 17:13] and raised their voice, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!"
[Luke 17:14] And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." As they were going they were cleansed.
[Luke 17:15] And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
[Luke 17:16] and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.
[Luke 17:17] Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?
[Luke 17:18] Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?"
[Luke 17:19] Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you."
---------------

Today's Gospel relates how ten lepers were healed from their leprosy, and only one returned to Jesus to give thanks. The significance of the Gospel is far more profound than the gratitude of the one and the want of thanksgiving of the other nine. Jesus is using the healing of the ten lepers as one of His many signs of the advent of the Kingdom of God on earth. The one that returned to Jesus, giving thanks to God, received far more than the other nine. All ten received a temporal healing from a loathsome and (in those times) an incurable disease. To the one who returned to give thanks, however, Our Lord gave much more. He did not say "you faith has cured you"; rather, He said "your faith has saved you".

Today's first reading tells of the healing from leprosy that the Lord had given Naaman through the ministry of Elisha. That healing was a harbinger of the fullness of the Kingdom which would accompany Our Lord's first coming. Centuries after this event, the healings that Our Lord gave the ten lepers were more than a harbinger of the Kingdom--the Kingdom was already upon them. The one to receive the effects of that nascent Kingdom was the Samaritan who returned to Jesus to give thanks to God--an act of faith by which Jesus healed him from the leprosy of sin. That it was a foreigner who returned to give thanks and thereby receive the greater gift is symbolic of the fact that the forthcoming salvation to be won by Jesus is intended to apply to the entire human race.

The primary purpose of Jesus' first coming, then, was not that people should receive healing from disease or other temporal evils. The primary purpose was to be the salvation of all mankind. The healings and deliverances performed by Jesus were used as effective signs of the imminence of that salvation.

Ten lepers were healed that day. However, there were many other lepers in that region and throughout the world that did not receive a healing from their leprosy on that day. Jesus, as God, knew each of them by name--however, only those ten who had immediate access to Jesus received the healing. What Jesus was preparing was a means for men anywhere in the world to have access to Him to receive the spiritual healing from sin that Jesus would win for them, by His passion, death, resurrection, ascension. He would do this by His sending the Holy Spirit into the world as the forgiveness of sins.

The old law prescribed that lepers keep their distance from others. The ten lepers "stood at a distance" from Jesus, raised their voices, and begged Him to have pity on them. His reply to them was that they "show themselves to the priests", again in keeping with the old law. While they were on their way, they were cleansed ot their leprosy.

In the present dispensation, men anywhere in the world afflicted with the leprosy of sin do not have to stand afar off and call to Jesus for mercy. Each can now approach close to Jesus and say as did the lepers: "Jesus, Master--have pity on me!" Jesus answers this prayer through His gift of the Holy Spirit. Sins are forgiven, and the Divine Life is re-established or strengthened as sinners are justified. To this end, the Holy Spirit works either through ordinary or extraordinary means. He works through ordinary means in the sacrament of reconciliation. He also works through extraordinary means, by inspiring the sinner to make an act of perfect contrition. For a Catholic, such an act of contrition must include an intention to confess his sins at the earliest opportunity.

Recalling the great importance Jesus attached to the Samaritan's expression of gratitude for the healing of his calamitous disease, we do well to make our first act, upon leaving the confessional, an act of profound thanksgiving to the merciful Triune God. We give gratitude to Our Eternal Father for having sent His only beloved Son into the world. We give thanks to Jesus for having won for us the victory over sin by having become its expiation. We give thanks to the Holy Spirit for Himself being, as the Church calls Him, the "Forgiveness of sins".

We should include in our thanksgiving all our spiritual benefactors, through whose intercessory prayers each of receives the actual grace to make a good confession. In so doing, we remember our greatest benefactor, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She constantly responds to our petition each time we recite a "Hail Mary" by praying for us now, at this present moment, and in so doing fills us with confidence that her efficacious intercession will be applied in full force at the "hour of our death".

Some of you present today might not have made a confession for quite a while. There are as many reasons for this as there are persons involved. For some it might be habit, for others it might be embarrassment, and for yet others it might be a kind of "pride of wickedness" whereby one comes to think of his sins as being so great that expecting forgiveness would be a kind of presumption.

Two things must be kept in mind. First, a person dying with just one unconfessed, unforgiven mortal sin on his soul will be separated from the presence of God for all eternity. His eternal lament will be, "how easy it would have been for it to be otherwise". For such a person to persist in staying away from confession is the greatest folly of which man is capable. To quote Padre Pio speaking to such a person, "run--don't walk to confession".

The second thing to keep in mind is that the mercy of God is infinite. This can be grasped by meditating as follows: if all the sins of all mankind from Eden to the consummation of the world, with all their execrable heinousness, were rolled up into one seething mass of iniquity, that mass would be utterly annihilated when plunged into the ocean of God's mercy. To make that plunge, each sinner is called by the Lord, over and over again as he makes his way through this, the wayfaring state: "Repent--for the Kingdom is at hand".

Carrying our Cross in Battle

2008-08-17T15:54:00.005-04:00

Homily
TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR --
9 SEPTEMBER 2007

Luke 14: 25 - 33

[Luke 14:25] Great crowds were traveling with him, and he turned and addressed them,
[Luke 14:26] "If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
[Luke 14:27] Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
[Luke 14:28] Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion?
[Luke 14:29] Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him
[Luke 14:30] and say, 'This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.'
[Luke 14:31] Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?
[Luke 14:32] But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
[Luke 14:33] In the same way, everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.
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In today's Gospel, Our Lord emphasizes that anyone who does not repudiate absolutely any relationship, which comes between himself and God, does not deserve to be a disciple of Christ. He includes even the closest of human relationships--those with father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even that person's relationship with himself. The word used in the original Greek is misei, which means "hate", a strong word indeed.

The figure of speech used seems strange, since Our Lord commands us to love unconditionally--even our enemies. When He says "he who does not hate his father and mother" He is referring to any part of even that close natural relationship which might be taking precedence over God. A man loves his parents, but must repudiate any part of his relationship even to them, which stands opposed to the will of God. For example, no man can be so misguided in his love for parent or spouse that he would be willing to commit a sin at their behest. This does not mean that he loves them any less--it means that his love for God and for creature must be kept in the right order of the sovereign will of God.

Our Lord then admonishes each of us to carry our own cross and follow Him. He does not ask us to carry His cross, as did Simon of Cyrene; we are to carry our own cross. What is meant by "cross" can perhaps best be understood in comparison with penance. An act of penance is something I choose to mortify my sinful inclinations, and draw closer to God. The cross I am to carry accomplishes the same purpose. The important distinction between the two is this:

I choose my penance; The Lord chooses my cross.

Without minimizing the necessity for acts of penance, I suggest that willingness to carry the cross chosen for me is more efficacious than acts of penance I choose for myself. The cross in the life of a Christian is often experienced as a result of life's unpredictable vicissitudes. However, the pious Christian must acquire the conviction that the cross that he receives is a special loving and salvific gift of Divine Providence. He acquires this conviction through prayer, fasting, spiritual reading, the sacramental life, and the performance of good works.

Our Lord further instructs us in the parables of the tower builder and the king preparing for battle. In these parables, Our Lord admonishes us to prepare ourselves adequately for living the life of the Christian in this world, which will subject His disciples to many trials, some of which will be severe. We read at the beginning of Chapter 2 of Sirach:

[Sir 2:1] My son, when you come to serve the LORD, prepare yourself for every temptation.
[Sir 2:2] Be sincere of heart and steadfast, undisturbed in time of adversity.

The battle for which we are to be prepared is that which is against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Our ongoing preparation is comprised by our growth in the spiritual life, through Sacred Scripture, the sacraments of the Church, spiritual reading, the performance of good works, the evil we endure, and the cross each of us bears.

We do battle against the world: the term "world" has several meanings in Scripture. The meaning referred to here is the world of allurements and distractions, from the truth and love of God, toward those counterfeits of truth and love to be found in a society which does not promote, and often is in open hostility to, our walking the narrow path leading to Heaven. We do battle against a world which winks at sin, ignores the appalling reality of sin, and promotes sophistries which constitute an open assault on the intellect (for example, regarding the human life at certain stages of its development as merely a "mass of cells"). We do battle against a world which even extols evil for its own sake.

We do battle against the flesh: this of course includes the inordinate, unseemly use of the generative and nutritive functions. It also includes what St Thomas Aquinas called the "concupiscence of the eyes", which can lead to aberrations such as compulsive purchasing of unneeded goods, obsessive gambling, and any other inordinate use of material goods which in their proper place should serve as stepping stones, not hindrances, to life with God.

We do battle against the Devil: two errors are possible here--we can make either too little or too much of the activity of Satan and his minions in the world. At this time in history, the first error seems more prevalent. Our Lord has won the complete victory over Satan. Nevertheless, Our Lord permits us to share in this victory by having us repel the pomps of the devil using the spiritual weapons He has given us, especially through the Church.

How can a defeated enemy still have power? A simple parable can be illustrative here. A little girl is walking through a zoo which is owned by her father and managed by her older brother. If she obeys her father and brother, the caged beasts can do her no harm whatever--they are utterly defeated. Nevertheless, they still have power. If the little girl disobeys her father and brother and slips through the bars of one of the beasts' cages, she puts herself in grave peril.

Likewise, we stand confidently against the worst ragings of the enemy, holding our ground won for us by Our Lord's passion, death, and resurrection. We are never so foolish as to do the equivalent of "slipping through the bars of a cage". To this end, we avoid everything forbidden by the First Commandment, including such things as horoscopes, seances, fortune-telling, and any other superstitious practice. Steadfastly following Our Lord as we carry our cross, we battle with Him and look forward to our share in His victory. Listen to what Our Lord promises in the Book of Revelation to those who persevere through to the ultimate triumph in His declarations to the seven Churches:

[Rev 2:7] "Whoever has ears ought to hear what the Spirit says to the churches:"

To the Church in Ephesus:

[Rev 2:7] "...To the victor I will give the right to eat from the tree of life that is in the garden of God."

To the Church in Smyrna:

[Rev 2:11] "...The victor shall not be harmed by the second death."

To the Church in Pergamum:

[Rev 2:17] "...To the victor I shall give some of the hidden manna; I shall also give a white amulet upon which is inscribed a new name, which no one knows except the one who receives it."

To the Church in Thyatira:

[Rev 2:26] "To the victor, who keeps to my ways until the end, I will give authority over the nations.
[Rev 2:27] He will rule them with an iron rod. Like clay vessels will they be smashed,
[Rev 2:28] just as I received authority from my Father. And to him I will give the morning star."

To the Church in Sardis:

[Rev 3:5] "The victor will thus be dressed in white, and I will never erase his name from the book of life but will acknowledge his name in the presence of my Father and of his angels."

To the Church in Philadelphia:

[Rev 3:12] "The victor I will make into a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will never leave it again. On him I will inscribe the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, as well as my new name."

Finally, to the Church in Laodicea, the great promise of salvation history:

[Rev 3:21] "I will give the victor the right to sit with me on my throne, as I myself first won the victory and sit with my Father on his throne."

Praise, honor, power, empire, dominion, and everlasting glory be to Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, immortal redeemer and eternal Victor. Amen.

Holy Perseverance

2008-08-17T15:29:00.003-04:00

Homily
NINETEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (C)
12 AUGUST 2007

Luke 12: 32 - 48

[Luke 12:32] Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.
[Luke 12:33] Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.
[Luke 12:34] For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
[Luke 12:35] "Gird your loins and light your lamps
[Luke 12:36] and be like servants who await their master's return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
[Luke 12:37] Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.
[Luke 12:38] And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.
[Luke 12:39] Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.
[Luke 12:40] You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come."
[Luke 12:41] Then Peter said, "Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?"
[Luke 12:42] And the Lord replied, "Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute (the) food allowance at the proper time?
[Luke 12:43] Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so.
[Luke 12:44] Truly, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property.
[Luke 12:45] But if that servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed in coming,' and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk,
[Luke 12:46] then that servant's master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful.
[Luke 12:47] That servant who knew his master's will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely;
[Luke 12:48] and the servant who was ignorant of his master's will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly. Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.
--------------------

1. Introduction

In today's Gospel, Our Lord admonishes each of us to strive for the virtue of holy perseverance. He does this by reminding us that here we have no lasting home. We are to persevere in doing good, avoiding evil, and being ready at every moment of our lives to render an account of our conduct when He comes as our judge.

2. We are Always to be Prepared

Our Lord admonishes us:

"Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master's return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks."

Our Lord is telling us to be prepared for His coming at every moment of our lives. St. Basil the Great expresses this as follows:

What is the mark of a Christian? It is to watch daily and hourly and to stand prepared in that state of total responsiveness pleasing to God, knowing that the Lord will come at an hour that he does not expect.

2.1 "Gird your Loins"

The expression "gird your loins" seems somewhat archaic to contemporary listeners. The word "loins" in its primary meaning refers to the area between the ribs and the hips, where a belt goes. In the ancient world, most clothing resembled a robe--"girding the loins" referred to tucking the clothes hanging below the waist up into a belt or cincture, so that the person could move with increased agility. The Israelites were told to "gird their loins" on the night of the Passover, to be ready to flee Egypt.

[Exo 12:11] "This is how you are to eat it: with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and your staff in hand, you shall eat like those who are in flight. It is the Passover of the LORD.

For the Christian, Pharaoh symbolizes Satan, and Egypt symbolizes the unredeemed portion of the world over which Satan is still the usurping prince. As the Israelites fled Egypt with their loins girt, Our Lord is telling us that we are perpetually to be ready to leave this world on short notice. He says to us:

"You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come."

2.2 "Light your Lamps"

In addition to "girding our loins", Our Lord also tells us to "light our lamps". Cyril of Alexandria says of this passage:

The lamp represents the wakefulness of the mind.... We say that the human mind is awake when it repels any tendency to slumber off into that carelessness that often is the means of bringing it into subjection to every kind of wickedness. When sunk in stupor, the heavenly light within the mind is liable to be endangered, or even already is in danger from a violent and impetuous blast of wind. Christ commands us to be awake.

Cyril is telling us to beware of the spiritual sloth called "acedia", which literally means "without caring", whereby the soul becomes sluggish and sinks into a state of not caring about spiritual realities.

2.2 "The Master's Return from the Wedding"

Our Lord's Second Coming will be a return from the Wedding Feast of heaven. What we say of His Second Coming also applies in a particular way to His coming as our judge at the end of our earthly lives. He cautions us to be ready for His return. That is, He is exhorting each of us to holy perseverance.

3. Our Particular Judgment

Each of us is will be judged under two criteria:

1. The good we have done and the evil we have endured.

2. the spiritual and material gifts we have been given.

3.1 The Good we Have Done and the Evil we Have Endured

Christian conduct which leads to salvation consists in doing good and avoiding evil. Our Lord tells us in Matthew 16:

[Mat 16:27] For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father's glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct.

Each of us also will be judged as to how well we have endured evil:

[Luke 6:22] Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.
[Luke 6:23] Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.

3.2 The Spiritual and Material Gifts we Have Been Given

Our Lord distributes spiritual and material gifts as He will. To the Jews, He granted salvation as the fulfillment of the Old Law. To the Greeks (who represent all non-Jews), He granted salvation as a freely given gift outside of the strictures of the Old Law. He holds all men accountable for their actions at their particular judgment--however, He holds the Jews to stricter account than the Greeks, as we read in Romans 2:

[Rom 2:6] (God) will repay everyone according to his works:
[Rom 2:7] eternal life to those who seek glory, honor, and immortality through perseverance in good works,
[Rom 2:8] but wrath and fury to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness.
[Rom 2:9] Yes, affliction and distress will come upon every human being who does evil, Jew first and then Greek.
[Rom 2:10] But there will be glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good, Jew first and then Greek.

More broadly, He cautions each one of us in today's Gospel:

Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.

St. Augustine comments on this passage as follows:

You see that this passage shows clearly a person who knows sins more seriously than one who does not know. Yet we must not on this account take refuge in the darkness of ignorance so as to find there an excuse for our conduct. Not to know is one thing; unwillingness to know is another.

4. Holy Perseverance

St. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 9:

[1 Cor 9:24] Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win.

We are always to be prepared for Our Lord's coming, at our particular judgment, at the end of our earthly lives. That is, He is exhorting each of us to holy perseverance.

Let us now say a prayer for holy perseverance:

O sovereign and eternal God, I thank You for having created me; for having redeemed me by means of Jesus Christ; for having made me a Christian by calling me to the true faith, and giving me time to repent after the many sins I have committed. O Infinite Goodness, I love You above all things; and I repent with all my heart of all my offences against You. I hope You have already pardoned me; but I am continually in danger of again offending You. For the love of Jesus Christ, I beg of You holy perseverance till death. You know my weakness; help me, then, and permit me never again to separate myself from You. Rather let me die a thousand times, than ever again to lose Your grace. O Mary, my Mother, obtain for me holy perseverance!

The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus:II

2008-08-17T14:28:00.008-04:00

Homily
THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS
15 JUNE 2007

Luke 15: 3 - 7

[Luke 15:3] So to them he addressed this parable.
[Luke 15:4] "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?
[Luke 15:5] And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy
[Luke 15:6] and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.'
[Luke 15:7] I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.
---------------------

Today is the solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. In it, we celebrate the immensity of the infinite love of God for man. A descriptive summary of this feast is presented in the following quotation from the St Andrew Daily Missal:

(Protestant reformers) in the sixteenth century, and Jansenists in the seventeenth, ... sought to impose a distortion of one of the essential beliefs of Christianity, the love of God for all men. The Church reacted strongly and, guided by the Holy Spirit, instituted the feast of the Sacred Heart to enable all the faithful to celebrate in a special manner the immense love of our Savior for men.
...
Coming after all the feasts of Christ, the solemnity of the Sacred Heart calls to mind all the phases of the life of Jesus which are commemorated in the liturgy from Advent to Corpus Christi.

The material object of the feast is Jesus' Heart of flesh, and its formal object is the unbounded charity symbolized by this Heart and made manifest by all the mysteries of our Savior's life, first and foremost by His Incarnation, His death on Calvary, and the institution of the Holy Eucharist.
...
As these manifestations of Christ's love bring out more clearly the ingratitude of man who answers them with increasing coldness and indifference, this festival (also) exhibits characteristics of reparation.

Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, ordered that the faithful make reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. At the end of the encyclical, he presented a prayer of reparation be recited by the faithful. It is one of the many jewels contained in the treasury of the Tradition of the Church, with language somewhat more forceful than some of us might be accustomed to.

This feast, then, celebrates the infinite love of God for man. We here use the word "infinite" to describe something beyond all human comprehension. Just what does "infinite" mean?

When each of us comes into being, a zygote first is formed from the gametes of the mother and father. At that moment, God creates a soul which is spirit, and consequently is immortal. This act of creation, repeated for each of us, occupies the full creative attention and power of God, just as much as He manifested when He created the cosmos itself. This is an infinite jump: from nothingness to existence. In fact, the word "existence" literally means "to stand out (from nothing). In that sense, it is closely related to the word "ecstasy". This infinite jump is the first manifestation of the infinite love of God in each of our lives.

Not only did He create us out of nothing, He maintains us in existence from moment to moment, and will do so throughout eternity.

The next infinite jump comes at Baptism. In our conception, God gives us our life. In Baptism, He gives us His life. This second infinite jump is a further manifestation of the infinite love of God. Our sharing in the divine life means that it is the will of God that we have not a natural, but a supernatural destiny.

After the fall of our first parents, God promised them a redeemer, a promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. After the incarnation of our Lord, infinite love itself was made manifest in matter. The fleshly symbol of this love is the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a spiritual lens through which the love of God is concentrated upon each of us. With what gratitude we should respond to this love--He asks us to do it in two simple ways: love of God and love of neighbor.

On this feast of the infinite love of God, we rejoice with gratitude for all that God has done for us, and at the same time we repent of how little we have returned to Him for the continuing intensity of His love.

Living in His will, by obeying His two precepts of love throughout our lives, we have nothing to fear when we stand before Him at our particular judgment.

[Rom 8:31] ...If God is for us, who can be against us?
...
[Rom 8:33] ...It is God who acquits us.
[Rom 8:34] Who will condemn? It is Christ (Jesus) who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
[Rom 8:35] What will separate us from the love of Christ?
...
[Rom 8:38] For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers,
[Rom 8:39] nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Praise, honor, and glory be to the Divine Heart which wrought our salvation, and prepared a place for each of us in His Father's heavenly mansions.

There was a great saint who was profoundly devoted to his mother. Nevertheless, that saint is reported to have said that when the time came for him to stand in judgment, he would rather be judged by Jesus Christ than by his mother.

Human Respect and Political Correctness

2008-08-16T23:48:00.004-04:00

In the Gospel of Luke, we read:

[Luke 6:22] Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.
[Luke 6:23] Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.

Our Lord gives special emphasis here to those who suffer for the sake of the Gospel. In this, their suffering is closely allied to that which Our Lord had to endure, especially from His contemporary co-religionists.

He condemns the opposite situation when He states:

[Luke 6:26] Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.

Here Our Lord is condemning what we might call the "idol of human respect", where persons who should be witnessing to the truth of the Gospel, are inhibited from doing so through attaching a greater importance to what men think of them than to what God thinks of them.

In our own time, one of the forms that human respect has taken is that insidious form which we have labeled "political correctness". There are many contemporary situations in which being politically correct is equivalent to betraying the truth of the Gospel.

In George Orwell's "1984", we encounter slogans in its fictional totalitarian society, such as: "war is peace" and "hate is love". In our contemporary secular culture we repeatedly encounter the equivalent of the slogan "vice is virtue". Vice is not virtue; vice is vice. The Latin equivalent is vitia, from which we have the English word "vitiate", which connotes dissipation and the misuse of a natural faculty.

In many parts of the Western world, to oppose vice masquerading as virtue is not only not politically correct, it has become a prosecutable crime. Moreover, movements are afoot to ban the Bible itself, because it contains putative "hate speech".

The time is rapidly approaching, and to a significant extent is upon us now, where we must be prepared to witness to the truth of Jesus Christ in a world that is far more hostile to that truth than was the world in which the apostles evangelized and suffered for the faith. To put it more plainly, we must be prepared to witness to that truth even though to do so will put us in peril, even grave peril.

Most of us have enjoyed the great God-given blessings of living in a free country. In recent years, our first-amendment freedoms of speech and of religion have been undergoing a steady erosion. The question each of us must ask now, is "Am I ready to stand up for my faith--to witness to its truth even though it involve great personal cost?"

When we contemplate the potential dangers that will be, and to an extent are now, involved in witnessing to the truth of the Gospel, we must always keep Our Lord's attitude in mind, whereby we hate the sin, but love the sinner. Our proper and courageous witnessing to truth can, and I believe almost certainly will, be the occasion of salvation for many who would otherwise be lost.

St. Thomas the Apostle and the Wounds of Christ

2008-08-15T20:04:00.003-04:00

Homily
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (C)
15 APRIL 2007

John 20: 19 - 31

[John 20:19] On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you."
[John 20:20] When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
[John 20:21] (Jesus) said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
[John 20:22] And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the holy Spirit.
[John 20:23] Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."
[John 20:24] Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
[John 20:25] So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."
[John 20:26] Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you."
[John 20:27] Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe."
[John 20:28] Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
[John 20:29] Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."
[John 20:30] Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples that are not written in this book.
[John 20:31] But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

1. St. Thomas the Apostle

Today has many names: it is the Second Sunday of Easter, or the Octave Day of Easter, which is now also Divine Mercy Sunday. It used to be known as Low Sunday. In the Christian East it is called Thomas Sunday.

Since St. Thomas the Apostle is the patron of our parish, just a few words about him. Thomas was a Galilean Jew. The name Thomas is either Hebrew or Syriac, and means twin. He was also called by the Greek equivalent Didymus. There is a tradition that states that Thomas evangelized India and was martyred there.

In today's Gospel, Thomas witnesses to the divinity of Christ:

[John 20:27] Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe."
[John 20:28] Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

Thomas witnesses here what John has declared at the very beginning of his gospel: that the Word is God.

2. Doubting Thomas

Thomas seems most remembered as the one who doubted the resurrection of Our Lord based on eyewitness accounts of his fellow apostles. Lest Thomas be singled out for his incredulity, recall that the other apostles were incredulous regarding Mary Magdalene's witness to the resurrection.

[Mark 16:9] When he had risen, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.
[Mark 16:10] She went and told his companions who were mourning and weeping.
[Mark 16:11] When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.

Because of Mary Magdalene=s witness, tradition has honored her with the title of "the apostle to the apostles".

3. The Virtue of Faith and The Wounds of Christ

Two things stand out in today's Gospel: the virtue of faith, and the wounds of Christ, and how they are related.

When Our Lord appeared to the apostles on the evening of the first Easter, he showed them His wounds and they believed.

Thomas had said that he would not believe unless he were to place his finger in the wounds in Jesus= hands, and his hand in the opening in Jesus' side.

When Jesus encountered Thomas, He showed Thomas His wounds. It is not recorded that Thomas said, "I now know that you have truly risen". This truth had been made evident to him through his senses. But the Holy Spirit used the wounds of Christ as the occasion for giving Thomas a word of knowledge, so that Thomas saw through the eyes of faith that Christ is true God.

This is the faith that leads to the forgiveness of sins, as Peter preached to Cornelius:

[Acts 10:43] To him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name."

This is the faith that leads to our sharing in the life of God, as the closing verses of today's Gospel proclaim:

[John 20:30] Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples that are not written in this book.
[John 20:31] But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

4. Those Whose Faith has Become Weak

There are many directions we can go regarding the virtue of faith. For this homily, I want to address the situation where one who has had faith has experienced, through a variety of possible causes, a weakening of that faith.

Perhaps some of you here today recall a time when your faith was stronger than it seems to be now. The buffetings and vicissitudes of life seem to have hammered that faith down to something less than it used to be. In that event, I am especially addressing each of you.

We must first of all realize that faith is a freely‑given gift from God. We can, however, dispose ourselves for an increase of this gift when it has become weak in us, like a farmer making preparation for the growth of his crop. Of the things he has power to do, he plows his field and plants the seed. Of the things that are not in his power to do, he cannot cause the rain to fall, and he cannot cause the seed to grow, so he waits expectantly for rain from heaven to come down and give the growth.

For an increase of faith, what we have the power to do which corresponds to plowing the field is to work to destroy all attachment to sin. This is done principally through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and by frequent reception of the sacrament of reconciliation.

What we have the power to do which corresponds to planting the seed is being open to the Word of God, in scripture and in spiritual reading, and in reception of Our Lord in the Eucharist.

For the things that are not in our power to do, we wait expectantly for the Holy Spirit, symbolized by rain from heaven, to descend and give growth to our faith.

For the seed of faith, take today's Gospel, in which the wounds of Christ are central to the apostles= coming to believe: first the ten, and then Thomas.

As Mel Gibson's movie reminds us, there were many hundreds of wounds which caused Our Lord's suffering during His passion. Emphasis is given, however, to the wounds in Our Lord's hands, feet, and side. They are called the five most precious wounds of Christ: these are the wounds which He suffered which are most closely associated with His death on the cross. Through these wounds His precious blood was poured out as a laver for our sins and for the salvation of our souls. Now meditate on the wounds of Christ. Take a crucifix in your hands. Regard the nails, and then regard the wounds produced by those nails. Then meditate as follows:

Through the wounds of the nails piercing Our Lord's hands and feet, the immortal God comes to experience death of man, so that through these same wounds, mortal man comes to experience the life of God.

Make this meditation in an attitude of open expectancy. The field is plowed, the seed is planted, and the rain will surely come: the Holy Spirit to strengthen faith. Why surely? We have Our Lord's own promise:

[Luke 11:11] What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish?
[Luke 11:12] Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?
[Luke 11:13] If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"

The seed of faith, having taken root, and having been nourished from on high, will grow, mature, and become strong. Buffetings there surely will be, especially in our day and age, but they will be resisted as a mighty oak resists storms.

5. Conclusion

I said to Jesus, "How much do you love me?"

Jesus said, "I love you this much", and held His hands apart...and died.

After the resurrection, Jesus said, "I love you this much", and as He did to Thomas, He stretched out his wounded hands to me, and I came to life.

My dear brothers and sisters, let this be our prayer from now until the end of our earthly lives:

Lord Jesus Christ, I offer up to You now as I will when I stand before You in judgment, Your five most precious wounds, as the only defense for my sins.

The Body and Blood of Christ

2008-08-15T17:48:00.003-04:00

Homily
THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
10 June 2007

Luke 9: 11 - 17

[Luke 9:11] (Jesus spoke to the crowds of the reign) of God, and he healed those who needed to be cured.
[Luke 9:12] As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, "Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here."
[Luke 9:13] He said to them, "Give them some food yourselves." They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people."
[Luke 9:14] Now the men there numbered about five thousand. Then he said to his disciples, "Have them sit down in groups of (about) fifty."
[Luke 9:15] They did so and made them all sit down.
[Luke 9:16] Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.
[Luke 9:17] They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.
-----------------------------
1. Introduction

What is a Christian?

Is a Christian someone who believes that Christ is God? Yes, of course--but a Christian is much more than that. After all, Satan believes that much.

Is a Christian someone who, believing that Christ is God, faithfully observes the Ten Commandments and, if a Catholic, faithfully believes in what the church teaches and observes the precepts of the church? Yes, but a Christian is more than that.

Is a Christian someone who, besides all these things, performs good works according to his state of life? This is certainly true, but what a Christian is, is even more than that.

In today's feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, we have a perfect setting for meditating on the answer to the question, "what is a Christian?".

2. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a Recapitulation of Salvation History

Each day of our lives, we recapitulate our own natural history: we can regard the day as a lifetime in miniature. we awaken, we eat and drink, we work, we love, we play, and then we sleep, in the expectation of rising again the next day.

In a similar fashion, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass can be regarded as a recapitulation of salvation history, from the promise to our first parents of a redeemer, through Pentecost and continuing past Pentecost.

2.1 The Liturgy of the Word

During the Liturgy of the Word, and especially during the readings from the Old Testament, we meditate on the pre-dawn twilight of our salvation, as God gradually reveals His truth and love through His prophets and through His providential care for the first Israel.

2.2 The Liturgy of the Eucharist

During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we remember the dawn of our salvation, as the Eternal Word becomes man in Jesus Christ, like us in all things save sin. He grows in wisdom, grace, and strength before God and men. He suffers His passion, is crucified, rises from the dead, ascends into heaven from where He bestows the Holy Spirit on the children of adoption.

The separate consecration of the Body and Blood of Christ constitutes a mystical separation. It is a true sacrifice. It makes present to us the one sacrifice offered on Good Friday, and with equal force makes us mystically present at Calvary with Mary and John.

At the elevation of the sacred species, we are mystically present as the resurrection of Our Lord at the first Easter. The elevated Host blazes forth to the world the Light of the Eternal Word as the rising sun of the dawn of salvation.

2.3 Holy Communion

As we receive communion, we meditate that as Easter is the dawn of our salvation, so is Pentecost its high noon. Our Lord comes to us, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, and becomes one with us. During the time that He is sacramentally present after communion, which is approximately ten minutes or so, we recall the time between Easter and the Ascension when the risen Lord was with the apostles in Glorified body, teaching them and preparing them for the descent of the Holy Spirit.

When the sacramental presence of Jesus has come to an end, we remember the ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We appropriate to the Holy Spirit the power of the Blessed Trinity to dwell in the souls of the just. So Jesus remains with us, in His divinity, united to us with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The power of the Holy Spirit has brought forth Christ by transubstantiating bread and wine. Through the power of the same Spirit, in the Sacrifice of the Mass and in the worthy reception of Holy Communion, He has transformed us further into Christ, so that we approach St. Paul's goal that "it is not I that live, but it is Jesus Who lives within me".

2.4 The Dismissal

The dismissal is a new beginning. At the dismissal, we are sent forth back into a hostile world by Jesus, Who commanded:

[Luke 10:3] Go on your way; behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.

Finally, it is at the dismissal that we can present an answer to the question, "what is a Christian?". To this end, we consider the following two statements made by Jesus:

[John 14:9] Jesus said to (Philip), "whoever has seen me has seen the Father."

[John 20:21] (Jesus also said), "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."

Since as the Father has sent Jesus, so Jesus sends us, and since Jesus says, "whoever has seen me has seen the Father":

A Christian, then, is a person who can say, "whoever has seen me has seen Jesus".

For the Christian to be able to say this in truth, Jesus must be in him and he in Jesus, just as Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus.

[John 17:22] And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one,
[John 17:23] I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.

This is the unity that is strengthened by participating at Mass and worthily receiving Our Lord in Holy Communion.

3. Conclusion

Today we celebrate the infinite love that has given us the Body and Blood of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. The Holy Eucharist which has been given to us is threefold: it is Sacrifice, it is Sacrament, and it is Presence.

Let this be our prayer each time we participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, partake of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and adore Jesus in His most august presence in this Sacrament:

O Holy Spirit, almighty and eternal God, I ask you so to transform me through the Holy Eucharist that, when the Father looks down upon me, He will see not me, but Jesus only.

I ask further that when anyone asks me to show him Jesus, I can reply to that person in truth that when he sees me, he sees Jesus.

Divine Paraclete, I ask all this of You Who together with the Father and Jesus live and reign, one God, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen

Spiritual Warfare

2008-08-14T12:25:00.025-04:00

THE LORD IS OUR CHAMPION

With battle joined and at its height,
Consider not our seeming plight;
Invoke His name to fill with fright
Those scheming, lying shades of night--
That they may flee from glory bright
With our dear Savior's blazing light!

1. Introduction

We begin with these verses from Psalm 144:

[Psa 144:1] Of David. I Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war;
[Psa 144:2] My safe guard and my fortress, my stronghold, my deliverer, My shield, in whom I trust...

As baptized, confirmed Catholic Christians we are each of us committed to following in the footsteps of Our Lord God and Savior, Jesus Christ. As Phillippians 2 reminds us, He took on our entire human condition in all things save sin.

Each of us is born of a woman; Jesus was born of the perfect woman.
Each of us passed through the joys and trials of those of all growing children; so also did Jesus.
Each of us has experienced the unique trials of the adolescent years; so also did Jesus.
Each of us is tempted by the world, the flesh, and the devil; so also was Jesus.
Each of us is to experience physical death as a prelude to eternal life; so did Jesus.
Each of us has a supernatural destiny of the bliss of the Beatific Vision, as does Jesus, His mother, and all the saints now.

Of all the ways in which we follow in the Master's footsteps, we concern ourselves here with the temptations experienced by Jesus due to the world, the flesh, and the devil. These are the milieu of what is called "spiritual warfare" or "spiritual combat". Jesus has given each of us the privilege of showing our maturing love for God in the context of this combat. In that which follows, our primary focus is on temptations which are due to the devil, either directly or indirectly.

Sacred scripture attests to the stark reality of spiritual warfare in these verses from Ephesians 6:

[Eph 6:11] Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil.
[Eph 6:12] For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.

This passage from scripture also warns us against unseemly combat with men who do evil; we are to battle with the Lord not against men but against the evil spirits. This has been summed up in the perennial phrase "hate the sin but love the sinner".

We remind ourselves at the outset that we can make either too much or too little of the devil and his activity in the world. There are two extremes to be avoided:

1. To minimize or disregard entirely the reality of the activity of Satan and his minions;
2. To have that reality become an object of fascination.

Despite obvious evidence to the contrary in our contemporary secular culture of death, the current Zeitgeist involves paying little or no heed to the supernatural reality of the ultimate source of evil in the world.

2. Doctrine

The truth of the reality of the invisible creation is attested to by Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. It is important to emphasize this in our contemporary milieu, because there are many within the church who minimize this truth or ignore it altogether. There are some, even clergy, who do not even believe in the existence of the devil, let alone that there is such a thing as spiritual warfare.

2.1 The Invisible Creation

The existence of an invisible, supernatural reality is a central tenet of Catholic teaching. By "supernatural" is here meant having to do with rational beings of a higher order than man; i.e., God Himself along with what we call the "invisible creation" which consists of angels, both good and evil. Some authors use the term "preternatural" to describe that which is above human nature but still within the purview of a creature (an angelic nature), and reserve the term "supernatural" for that which only can come from God.

2.1.1 Scripture

The existence of the invisible creation is attested to in the following verse from Colossians 1:

[Col 1:16] For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.

Examples are abundant throughout Sacred Scripture which clearly adduce the existence of the invisible creation, which includes good and evil spirits. Man is the only creature that participates in both the visible world of matter and the invisible world of spirit.

2.1.2 Tradition

Along with Sacred Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches the Church through Sacred Tradition.

It has been the constant teaching of the church, through Sacred Tradition that each man has been created not for a natural, but for a supernatural destiny. Corollary to this teaching, is that of the reality of the invisible world. We publicly affirm this teaching at least once a week when we recite the Nicene Creed where we affirm our faith in God as the "creator of all things visible and invisible" (old translation).

The principal heresy against this teaching is comprised under the umbrella term "modernism", which at its core is the denial of the supernatural. For this reason, Pope St. Pius X called it the "mother of heresies". Modernism lay dormant for several decades after that pope issued his decree Lamentabile Sane of July 3, 1907 and his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis of August 9, 1907, which involved both teaching and church discipline. Modernism then flared up again during the years following the Second Vatican Council, and is now receding rapidly from the current ecclesiastical landscape, as the church is being blessed with a new generation of holy and orthodox priests and bishops.

2.2 Spirit Sin: The Fall of the Angels

Revelation 12 depicts the expulsion from heaven of Satan and those angels who fell with them; the symbolism suggests that these fallen angels (which we call demons) constitute a (symbolic) third of the heavenly host:

[Rev 12:3] Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon...
[Rev 12:4] Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth.
...
[Rev 12:7] Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back,
[Rev 12:8] but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.
[Rev 12:9] The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it.
[Rev 12:10] Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: "Now have salvation and power come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed. For the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who accuses them before our God day and night.

2.2.1 The Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Catechism of the Catholic Church presents a summary of the teaching of the church regarding the fall of the angels in paragraphs 391 through 395:
391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.".
392 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This "fall" consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: "You will be like God." The devil "has sinned from the beginning"; he is "a liar and the father of lies".
393 It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels' sin unforgivable. "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death."
394 Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls "a murderer from the beginning", who would even try to divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father. "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil." In its consequences the gravest of these works was the mendacious seduction that led man to disobey God.
395 The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God's reign. Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries - of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature- to each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that providence should permit diabolical activity, but "we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him."

2.3 The Fall of Our First Parents

After his expulsion from heaven, Satan was permitted to exert a limited degree of power on earth. We read in Revelation 12:

[Rev 12:12] ...woe to you, earth and sea, for the Devil has come down to you in great fury, for he knows he has but a short time."

Satan attempted to draw mankind into his rebellion against God, with apparent success. The scriptural account is presented in Genesis 3:

[Gen 3:4] But the serpent said to the woman: "You certainly will not die!
[Gen 3:5] No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil."
[Gen 3:6] The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
....
[Gen 3:11] (The LORD God said) "you have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!"
[Gen 3:12] The man replied, "The woman whom you put here with me--she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it."
[Gen 3:13] The LORD God then asked the woman, "Why did you do such a thing?" The woman answered, "The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it."
[Gen 3:14] Then the LORD God said to the serpent: "...
[Gen 3:15] I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel."

With the promise of a future redeemer, along with the subsequent call of Abram, what we call "salvation history" begins.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 390, we read:

390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

2.4 The Redemption of Man: Victory over Sin and Satan

By His passion, death, and resurrection, Jesus has destroyed Satan's kingdom of death:

[Heb 2:14] Now since the children share in blood and flesh, he likewise shared in them, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil...

Our Lord delegated His power over evil spirits to His disciples, as we read in Luke 10:

[Luke 10:17] The seventy (-two) returned rejoicing, and said, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name."
[Luke 10:18] Jesus said, "I observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.
[Luke 10:19] Behold, I have given you the power 'to tread upon serpents' and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you.
[Luke 10:20] Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven."

Jesus has given power over the devil to all Christians who remain obedient to the will of God:

[Rom 16:19] For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise as to what is good, and simple as to what is evil;
[Rom 16:20] then the God of peace will quickly crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

The Holy Spirit attests to Our Lord's victory over demons using the cross as His weapon:

[Col 2:14] ...(He obliterated) the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross;
[Col 2:15] despoiling the principalities and the powers, he made a public spectacle of them, leading them away in triumph by it.

3. Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Our struggle to work out our salvation is conducted in the landscape of our spiritual lives. It is in the context of this landscape that Our Lord has given us grace through the Holy Spirit to do good, to avoid doing evil, and to combat evil assault. To be successful in our spiritual struggle, we must have an adequate grasp of the spiritual realities in which we find ourselves on our pilgrimage through this wayfaring state.

Christ's passion, death, resurrection, and ascension have won for us the Holy Spirit, who endows us with His gifts of grace through Baptism and Confirmation. As the soul is the principle of man's natural life, so is the Holy Spirit the principle of man's supernatural life.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit come under three general headings: those gifts that confer sanctifying grace, those gifts which confer actual grace, and those gifts which confer grace for ministry.

1. The Holy Spirit gives us the seven gifts of sanctifying grace, whereby we are empowered to share in the very life of God. These gifts are essential for salvation.

2. The Holy Spirit gives us manifold gifts of actual grace, which strengthen us with power to do good and avoid evil.

3. The Holy Spirit gives us those graces which are ministry gifts (charisms) which strengthen us in our power to build up the Body of Christ by aiding others to receive and maintain the gifts of sanctifying grace in their lives.

3.1 The Seven Gifts of Sanctifying Grace

The Holy Spirit endows the baptized Christian with divine life under the headings of the seven gifts of sanctifying grace: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. Sanctifying grace is absolutely necessary for salvation; it is the divine life within us, without which we cannot enter heaven. It is increased by prayer, almsgiving, works of charity, and reception of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. If lost through mortal sin, it is restored by a worthy reception of the Sacrament of Penance.

The descriptions which follow, of the seven gifts of sanctifying grace, have been taken from the St. Andrew Daily Missal.

3.1.1 Wisdom

The gift of wisdom is an illumination of the Holy spirit, by which our intellect is able to look at revealed truths in their more sublime light, to the greater joy of our souls.

3.1.2 Understanding

The gift of understanding enlightens us by shedding a clear, searching, and extraordinary light on the meaning of revealed truth, and by giving us a certitude that what God has revealed bears such and such a sense and no other.

3.1.3 Counsel

The gift of counsel is a light given by the Holy Spirit, by means of which our practical intellect sees and judges rightly both what should be done in individual cases and the best means to do it.

3.1.4 Fortitude

The gift of fortitude is a permanent power which the Holy Spirit communicates to our will to assist us in overcoming the difficulties which might deter us in the practice of what is right.

3.1.5 Knowledge

The gift of knowledge is a supernatural light of the Holy Spirit which shows us the credibility and acceptability of revealed truths, even for reasons which are based only on the order of creation.

3.1.6 Piety

The gift of piety awakens in our souls an inclination and readiness to glorify God as our Father and to have a filial confidence in Him.

3.1.7 Fear of the Lord

The gift of holy fear, or the fear of the Lord, is actually the foundation of all the other gifts. It drives sin from the heart, because it fills us with reverence either for the justice of God or for the divine majesty.

3.2 The Gifts of Actual Grace

Actual graces conferred by the Holy Spirit are not in themselves marks of sanctity; rather, they are aids to achieve growth in sanctity. Actual graces are given to us by the Holy Spirit to strengthen us in doing good and avoiding evil. They are increased through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, works of charity, and through the sacraments. In a special way they are increased through the Sacrament of Penance. This is the basis for performing "devotional confessions".

3.3 Ministry Gifts (Charisms)

Ministry gifts, or charisms, are given by the Holy Spirit to empower the Christian to aid other persons to receive, maintain, and grow in sanctifying grace--the sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit. Charisms thus empower the Christian to work to build the Kingdom here on earth by his witness to and ministry of the Gospel of Salvation of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit confers charisms on whom He wills and when He wills--but at least some charisms are given to each baptized and confirmed Christian.

The charisms fall into two broad categories: the ordinary and the extraordinary. The ordinary gifts include such things as administration, teaching, preaching, word of wisdom, and counseling. The extraordinary gifts include such things as healing, miracles, bilocation, word of knowledge, visual discernment of spirits, prophecy, and speaking and interpreting tongues.

Whether the charisms are ordinary or extraordinary, they all serve to build up the Body of Christ here on earth.

4. Spiritual Combat

We are privileged to share in Our Lord's victory over Satan and his minions. Our Lord has won the war; we participate in His victory through our own spiritual combat. Satan can still win battles, even though for him the war is already lost. Since we have been redeemed by Jesus through His passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and bestowal of the Spirit, all that Satan can now do is to attempt to seduce as many souls as he can, away from what Jesus has won for us, to join him in his rebellion against God.

Why does God permit demonic activity in the lives of men? St. Thomas Aquinas answers this way: "The demons are permitted this activity lest their utility not be entirely lost in the natural order". The demons are to give glory to God in spite of their efforts to withhold it. Against the faithful Christian, the demons are to confound themselves further, because of the many souls who will grow in grace as they resist the devil, his demons, and their lies.

4.1 Demonic Activity

As a dim counterpart to the ordinary and extraordinary workings of divine grace, we can also distinguish the ordinary and the extraordinary workings of demonic activity.

When contrasting the workings of divine grace with the workings of demonic activity, it is of the utmost importance that we do not regard them as "equal and opposite". Such was the character of Manicheanism that Augustine fell into in his youth before his definitive conversion. The opposite of Satan is not God; the opposite of Satan is Michael. God is infinitely good; Satan is finitely evil.

4.1.1 Ordinary Demonic Activity

Ordinary demonic activity involves tempting a person to evil thoughts, words, actions, or omissions.

The ordinary workings of demonic activity include oppression, disinclination to things religious, acedia (spiritual sloth), drawing the person away from truth by means of lies and half-truths (it is credibly said that a half-truth is a whole lie), and a spectrum of temptations in the context of the seven capital sins: pride, envy, anger, covetousness, lust, gluttony, and sloth.

4.1.2 Extraordinary Demonic Activity

Extraordinary demonic activity involves action done to persons, animals, plants, or inanimate objects.

Extraordinary phenomena associated with demonic activity include possession, infestation, obsession, and counterfeit charisms.

Extraordinary demonic activity can be associated with two categories of person:

1. holy souls whom the Lord has especially chosen to confound the enemy by their witnessing to the power of the Gospel, and

2. persons who have provided openings for such activity either through ignorance, stupidity, or (worst of all) willful disobedience.

4.2 Pitfalls to be Avoided

The church proscribes any activity in which supernatural knowledge and/ or experience are sought which are other than those which are from the Holy Spirit. Many of these proscriptions are ancient--from the book of Leviticus we read:

[Lev 19:26] ... Do not practice divination or soothsaying.

Paul includes sorcery as a "work of the flesh" that will prevent one from entering heaven:

[Gal 5:19] Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness,
[Gal 5:20] idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions,
[Gal 5:21] occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Let us consider an allegory. A little girl is walking through a zoo, which is owned by her father and managed by her older brother. The beasts are caged and can do her no harm. She has strict orders from her father and brother not to go near the cages. As long as she is obedient to the will of her father and brother, she is safe from the beasts. They might try to distract and frighten her by their strident howls, but they can never harm her as long as she remains obedient.

Although the beasts are thoroughly conquered, they nevertheless still have power. That power cannot touch the little girl as she walks thorough the zoo. But if she were to go near one of the cages, either innocently or through willful disobedience, she would be approaching danger. If she actually slipped through the bars and entered one of the cages, she would be in mortal danger.

So it is with us. We can be afflicted by the enemy through their strident, deceptive cries, but they can do us no harm if we obey Our Lord and stay away from deliberately putting ourselves in spiritual danger. Such danger can be understood as participation in any number of activities such as are exemplified by the following:

astrology
false prophets/ apparitions
necromancy (spiritism)
---seances
---channelling
---divination
Tarot cards
I ching
Ouija boards
augury
---tea leaves
---numerology
---palmistry
new age seductions
---enneagrams
---wicca
---guided imagery
transcendental meditation

This list is by no means exhaustive. To willfully disobey the church's proscriptions regarding such activities is to commit a grave sin against the First Commandment.

4.3 Discernment of Spirits

We can undergo spiritual influence under three general headings: the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the promptings of our own spirit, or the promptings of an evil spirit.

We can be prompted to perform a good action by the Holy Spirit. If the action is of a weighty character (e.g., a possible vocation to an ordained or consecrated religious state of life), a careful process of discernment is indicated.

In certain circumstances it can happen that we are prompted to an apparently good action other than by the Holy Spirit. Such prompting might be from our own spirit, or from an evil spirit. In such situations we are to "test the spirit". To this end, there is a charism of the Holy Spirit called "discernment of spirits"; it is one of the charisms described by St Paul.

Whenever we are prompted to some dubious or egregious evil action or omission, we know that the source of that prompting is not the Holy Spirit. It might be an evil spirit, it might be the another man or woman, or it might be our own spirit. Our resistance should be motivated by avoiding the act or omission in question.

The church has a strong tradition of teaching in the discernment of spirits. A scriptural basis is given by the beginning verses of Chapter 4 of the First Letter of John:

[1 John 4:1] Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
[1 John 4:2] This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God,
[1 John 4:3] and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. ...

We then test the spirits by a witnessing declaration such as the following:

I confess that Jesus Christ is true God and true man, who truly suffered, died, and was raised from the dead in complete victory over sin and Satan.

With this declaration, if what was prompting us to the action was the action of the Holy Spirit, this prompting will intensify. If it is from an evil spirit, this prompting will fade away. If it is from our own spirit, the degree of prompting will stay about the same.

Why would an evil spirit tempt us to a good action? It often does so with respect to an intrinsically good action, by making our relation to that action a relation that is less than efficacious and even evil. For example, many persons are hard workers in the vineyard of the Lord, faithful to His mandate to work to build up the kingdom. Suppose such a person is told that there is a need for a coordinator for the preparation of bereavement luncheons after parish funerals; these events are by their very nature performed on short notice.

This is certainly an intrinsically good action: it takes a burdensome weight off of grieving family and friends. However, suppose that the person who is asked to take on this responsibility already is heavily involved in several other parish activities, along with her responsibilities as homemaker. She feels anguish at the prospect of "saying no". Nevertheless, taking on this additional task can be deleterious to her own spiritual life, by leading her into discouragement and frustration.

A powerful antidote to the "can't say no" syndrome is to have a good spiritual director, and to be obedient to him. His counsel and prayers, along with the person's own prayers, put the enemy to rout.

4.4 Weapons for Spiritual Combat

In our battle against evil spirits, the Holy Spirit has endowed the church with a variegated, powerful arsenal of spiritual weapons.

Some of the weapons for spiritual combat are presented to us in Ephesians 6 using as metaphors the various parts of the Roman soldier's uniform:

[Eph 6:10] Finally, draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power.
[Eph 6:11] Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil.
[Eph 6:12] For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.
[Eph 6:13] Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist on the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground.
[Eph 6:14] So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate,
[Eph 6:15] and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace.
[Eph 6:16] In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all (the) flaming arrows of the evil one.
[Eph 6:17] And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
[Eph 6:18] With all prayer and supplication, pray at every opportunity in the Spirit. To that end, be watchful with all perseverance and supplication for all the holy ones.

Specific weapons to be used in spiritual combat include Sacred Scripture, prayer, the holy name of Jesus, devotion to our Blessed Mother, and sacramentals of the church.

It is essential that we keep in mind the following:

1. Our struggle to grow in sanctifying grace is proactive, and our struggle to avoid evildoing is also proactive. Achieving both these ends is aided by: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, works of charity, reception of the sacraments, and obedience to our confessor/ spiritual director.

2. Our struggle to combat assaults of evil is reactive. Our Lord has won the victory for us, so we stand our ground. We do not go "demon-chasing". An example of the consequences of unauthorized proactivity in this regard is provided in chapter 19 of Acts:

[Acts 19:13] Then some itinerant Jewish exorcists tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those with evil spirits, saying, "I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches."
[Acts 19:14] When the seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish high priest, tried to do this,
[Acts 19:15] the evil spirit said to them in reply, "Jesus I recognize, Paul I know, but who are you?"
[Acts 19:16] The person with the evil spirit then sprang at them and subdued them all. He so overpowered them that they fled naked and wounded from that house.

4.4.1 Sacred Scripture

Quoting Sacred Scripture is a powerful weapon to use against the adversary. Here is an example:

[Mat 4:10] ...Jesus said to him, "Get away, Satan! It is written: 'The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.'"

4.4.2 Prayer

o Mary, Queen of the holy angels

o the Most Holy Rosary

Lord Jesus Christ, I claim deliverance from all evil spirits and from the evil in my own spirit.

St Joseph, patron of the universal church and terror of demons, please pray for me (us).

Beloved guardian of my soul, defend me from all evil by the sword of the Spirit (the Word of God), under the captaincy of St Michael, and the queenship of Our Lady the Queen of the Holy Angels.

St Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, and do thou, O prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

4.4.3 The Holy Name

The Holy Name of Jesus gives powerful authority over evil spirits:

[Mark 16:17] These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages.

We see Paul driving out a demon in Jesus' name, in this passage from Acts 16:

[Acts 16:18] ... Paul became annoyed, turned, and said to the spirit, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." Then it came out at that moment.

We too can use the power of the Holy Name of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ to put the enemy to rout. When we have little doubt that we are dealing with an attack by the enemy, we can resist that attack mightily by this direct witness to the attacking spirit:

Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ I come against you.
In the name of Jesus Christ I bind you and any of your minions who are attacking me or any member of my family.
In the name of Jesus Christ I command each of you to stand in front of Jesus Christ crucified to be dealt with according to His holy will.

This is not a prayer (we are not talking to God); it is a witness. Then immediately turn your attention away from evil spirits to prayers of praise and thanksgiving, such as:

Praise, honor, and glory be to you Lord Jesus Christ. For by the power of your Holy Name you have given each of us the power to defeat the machinations of the evil one.

Then conclude with the Our Father, reciting it slowly and attentively.

4.4.4 Sacramentals of the Church

Sacramentals of the church which are used in spiritual combat include blessed objects such as holy water, crucifixes, scapulars, medals, and rosaries.

4.5 Saints in Spiritual Combat

Throughout the history of the church many saints have experienced the awesome power of the holy name of Jesus over evil spirits. In Acts 16, we read Luke's account of Paul's use of this power during their stay in Philippi:

[Acts 16:16] As we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl with an oracular spirit, who used to bring a large profit to her owners through her fortune-telling.
[Acts 16:17] She began to follow Paul and us, shouting, "These people are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation."
[Acts 16:18] She did this for many days. Paul became annoyed, turned, and said to the spirit, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." Then it came out at that moment.

Tradition gives the name "Pythonissa" to this girl, who had an "oracular spirit"; that is, a spirit of augury (fortune-telling). Religious Jews would not have considered this to be a rare occurrence--they regarded someone with such a spirit not as having a good gift, but as being afflicted by evil (something akin to a spiritual birth defect).

St Theresa of Avila had a gift of visual discernment of spirits. It is said of her that one night she was awakened by Satan appearing as a frightening apparition. She said, "Oh, it's you", turned over, and went back to sleep.

St John Vianney, the curé of Ars, spent much of his priestly life in close combat with the devil. The enemy would occasionally appear to him as a cossack, and would keep the holy priest awake at night with the sound of galloping horses roaring through the rectory. To the confounding of the enemy, the curé never succumbed to the devil's wiles--instead, his successful combat, using the gifts which the Holy Spirit had bestowed on him, was a further occasion for great growth in holiness.

5. Everyday Spiritual Combat

5.1 Determining Whether and to What Extent Evil May Be Present

Determining whether evil is present can often be an issue.

5.1.1 Indicators of Evil

The following are sure indicators of the presence of evil, even where some goal is being presented as a good:

o any act contrary to charity
o the presence of lies
o irreverence to holy liturgy, sacraments, persons, teachings, or sacred objects
o actions or omissions contrary to the commandments
o actions or omissions contrary to other scriptural proscriptions
o actions or omissions contrary to that which is proscribed by the church
o syncretism
o heterodox "prayers"
o heterodoxy in worship
-----unauthorized mutation of liturgical norms
-----liturgical dance
-----unauthorized "preachers"

5.1.2 Where Some Evil Might be Expected

Our suspicions should be aroused when such things as the following are present:
o minimizing or ignoring altogether the church's traditions of spirituality
o promised effects imputed to dubious causes
-----energy balancing
-----healing crystals
-----dowsing rods
o anything promising "good luck"
o reference to good things which happen as "good luck" rather than as blessings
o resignation to that which is fated (this vitiates or denies free will)
o a latent coerciveness
"send copies of this letter to three other persons, or you will have bad luck"
o spiritually degrading religious art
o spiritually degrading church architecture
o hymns and "prayers" that extol self rather than praise God
o unauthorized departure from canonical norms in liturgy
o outright inanity

5.2 Our Response to Evil

Not too many Christians are called to extraordinary spiritual combat such as was done by many of the spiritual warriors of the church's retinue of saints. For most of us, our spiritual warfare consists in

1. Avoiding persons, places, or things which place us in spiritual danger, and

2. combating sinful unruliness in our own spirits, the indirect assaults of evil spirits through evil done by other men or women, or combating direct temptations by evil spirits. These temptations are what constitute the ordinary assaults of the enemy.

We can define three steps to follow when engaging in spiritual warfare:

1. When we are prompted to do something good which involves a serious commitment, we pray for the discernment as to whether that prompting is from the Holy Spirit, from our own spirit, or from an evil spirit. Here, a spiritual director is a powerful asset.

2. When we are prompted to evil thoughts or evil acts, once they are perceived as evil, no further discernment is necessary.

3. If we are tempted to a bad action, ignore the temptation and perform some good action in its place.

Our response to a discerned temptation is to do the opposite. If we are tempted not to attend a Mass, Holy Hour, prayer meeting, bible study, or some other sacred event which would be salutary to attend, ignore the temptation and attend the event.

Do not dwell on the temptation; pay attention to doing the opposite. Undue dwelling on the temptation can cause the difficulty entailed in resisting it to fix it more in the mind and weaken the resolve. A good rule to follow is:

IGNORE, DO NOT SUPPRESS THE TEMPTATION. Then do the opposite.

5. The Ultimate Victory

We are assured our full participation in the ultimate victory already won by Our Savior.

[Rom 8:31] What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?
[Rom 8:32] He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?
[Rom 8:33] Who will bring a charge against God's chosen ones? It is God who acquits us.
[Rom 8:34] Who will condemn? It is Christ (Jesus) who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
[Rom 8:35] What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?
...
[Rom 8:37] No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.
[Rom 8:38] For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers,
[Rom 8:39] nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The reward promised to the one who is successful in growth in holiness and in battle against evil is so great as to be beyond full human comprehension. It is stated in Revelation 3:21:

[Rev 3:21] I will give the victor the right to sit with me on my throne, as I myself first won the victory and sit with my Father on his throne.

Liturgical Abuse

2008-08-13T22:23:00.004-04:00

It is ironic that in recent decades in some dioceses, travesties such as the Puppet "Liturgy" and the Clown "Liturgy" were permitted, and the traditional Tridentine Mass was not permitted.

Thanks be to God for Pope Benedict's motu propio Summorum Pontificum (see text and accompanying letter ) which has restored to the people of God the centuries-old Mass which energized many hundreds of saints. Let us keep the Holy Father in our prayers, especially in his work to repair the excesses of Post-Vatican II liturgical reform.

Twelve Miracles Associated with the Eucharist

2008-08-13T21:38:00.012-04:00

Reference:
Father Frederick Faber, The Blessed Sacrament, Tan Books and Publishers, Rockford IL 61105, reprinted 1958 (original written in 1860).

Fr Faber explicates St Thomas Aquinas' teachings on twelve miracles associated with the eucharist:

Two miracles concerning the substance of the bread and the wine
Two miracles concerning the species
Six miracles concerning the Body of the Lord and its concomitants
Two miracles concerning the consecration in the Mass

In response to a comment received, I have listed Father Faber's statements below in bold italics. Following each statement is my commentary.

--Deacon Les

Two miracles concerning the substance of the bread and the wine:

The bread and wine are "annihilated" at the moment of transubstantiation.

At the moment of consecration during Mass, the bread and wine cease to exist, and what becomes present is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Our Lord. The accidents (appearances) remain those of bread and wine. We do not "see" Our Lord with our physical eyes, but with the "eyes of faith".

The perished substances are restored when Our Lord withdraws His presence.

The Lord's eucharistic presence continues as long as the accidents (appearances) continue to be those of bread and wine. When they no longer look like (taste like, etc.) bread and wine (e.g., through the processes of digestion), the Lord's eucharistic presence ceases, and what becomes present is a reversion to what it looks like.

Two miracles concerning the species:

The species hold together and exist without leaning on any substance.

What looks like bread and wine is maintained in existence without the presence of the underlying substance with which it usually associated (there is no substance of bread and wine, only the appearances of bread and wine). Our Lord is not white, round, nor does He taste like bread. That is, the underlying substance (the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Our Lord) is not supporting the accidents (appearances) of roundness, whitness, etc.

The species suffer the same contingencies and are accompanied by the same qualities as if their substances had not perished.

In the eucharist, what looks like bread and wine, even though it is not bread and wine, continues to have all the properties (accidents, appearances) of bread and wine.

Six miracles concerning the Body of the Lord and its concomitants:

The production of the Body and Blood of Christ, existing and permanent in heaven, under the species of bread and wine, so that He is not less truly, less really, or less substantially in the Host, than He is in heaven--

In the eucharist, what looks like bread and wine but in reality is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Our Lord makes Him as present to each of us here on earth as He is to His Father in heaven.

The presence with the Body of Our Lord of His Blessed Soul, with all its sanctity, beatific love, and beatific vision, ornaments and gifts, natural and supernatural, under the same species--

Again, what is present in the eucharist along with the uncreated divinity of Our Lord is the created humanity of Our Lord, which involves His body, His blood, and His human soul with all its attributes.

The presence under the species of the Hypostatic Union, by which the Flesh and Soul are united to the Divine Word--

The "hypostatic union" is the term used by theologians to refer to the one divine person, the Eternal Word, participating in two natures: the divine nature from all eternity, and the human nature from the moment of His human conception at the Annunciation. This union will continue to exist throughout all of eternity.

The spiritual manner in which the Body of Christ exists, with all its corporeal qualities, under the species of bread and wine--

I have read (I can't recall the reference; when do I track it down I will include a citation to it here) that the Body of Christ in the eucharist is that material being which comes closest to behaving as though it were a spiritual being. All of Jesus' corporeal (bodily) qualities (e.g., bodily organs) exist in the eucharist in a way that is a profound mystery. They do so in any small amount of the eucharist, only provided that that amount still has the appearances of bread and wine. (I understand this to be a theololgical opinion, and not necessarily a dogmatic teaching of the church).

The repetition of the presence of the Body of Christ:
as multiplied;
as subdivided--

"As multiplied": Our Lord is present in the eucharist equally in all the tabernacles of the world.

"As subdivided": As remarked above, Our Lord remains present in the eucharist as it undergoes subdivision, provided the smaller portions still retain the appearances of bread and wine.

The retiring of the Body of Christ from the species when they corrupt (cease to appear as bread or wine)

This has been referred to in some of the remarks given above. The usual way the eucharist "corrupts" (I don't think much of this term) is through the processes of digestion. Other examples include that of a person in a hospital with some dementia receiving the Sacred Host, and then becoming dazed and taking it out of his mouth. If there is danger of infection, the minister can place the Host in a cup of water until it dissolves and ceases to appear as bread, at which moment the Lord's eucharistic presence ceases.

Two miracles concerning the consecration in the Mass (miracles of love rather than of power)

The prodigal abundance with which Our Lord has bestowed this immense gift of consecrating--

Many thousands of Masses are offered up all over the world each day.

The facility (ease) of consecration.

Our Lord instituted the eucharist using short, direct expressions and actions.

Mary, Holy Mother of God

2008-08-13T12:52:00.006-04:00

INTRODUCTION

Try to think of a coin which has exactly one side. Such an object is clearly unintelligible. Also unintelligible is attempting to view the humanity of Christ apart from His blessed mother.

Whatever we say about the mystery of the Word made flesh is not intelligible without reference to Mary.
Whatever we say about Mary predicates from her unique relation to Christ.

To say that "Mary is the mother of God" is a rephrasing of "Jesus Christ is true God and true man".

The doctrine of the Trinity was codified by the church at two of its early ecumenical councils, called the "Trinitarian councils", which were convoked to combat heretical teachings regarding the triune God.

The doctrine of the incarnation of the Word of God was codified by two later councils, held at Ephesus and Chalcedon, called the "Christological councils". These councils declared and affirmed that the second person of the Blessed Trinity, divine from all eternity, had assumed human nature and was true God and true man, all the while remaining one person. This truth was expressed by declaring that Mary was the "Theotokos", or "God-bearer".

COUNCIL OF EPHESUS; THEOTOKOS

On 23 December 428, Proclus, a teacher in Constantinople (and later its Patriarch), gave a sermon in honor of Mary in the presence of the newly installed Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius. In his sermon, Proclus declared:

Emmanuel has, indeed, opened the gate of nature, because he was man;
But he did not break the seal of virginity, because He was God.
As he entered through the hearing, so he went out of the womb.
...
The prophet Ezekiel announced:
"The Lord God said to me,
'This door will be kept shut. No one will open it or go through it, since the Lord God of Israel has been through it. And so it must be kept shut'". (Ez. 44:1-3)

Proclus concluded his sermon with the words "Behold! this is an exact description of the holy Theotokos, Mary!"

But Nestorius considered this preaching heretical! Nestorius held that Mary was the "Christotokos", the mother of the human nature of Christ, but not the mother of the divine person united to that human nature.

Indeed, Nestorius' was the heretical teaching. In response, a council was convoked to gather in Ephesus in the summer of 431. The council unequivocally declared that Christ was of two natures, true God and true man, "hypostatically" (substantially) united in the one and unique divine Person of Jesus Christ. This declaration was reinforced by the additional declaration that Mary was truly the Theotokos, the mother of that unique person.
The Council clearly and triumphantly declared:

We confess and proclaim that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten of the Father, is real God and real man. He is composed of soul-reason and of body.
In regard to his humanity, he was born of the Virgin Mary...For us and for our salvation he was born.

He is consubstantial with the Father according to his divinity; consubstantial with us according to his humanity.

The union of divinity and humanity was a real unity in him. Therefore, we recognize but One only Christ, One only Son, One only Lord.

Because of this union without any confusion, we confess that the holy Virgin is Theotokos.

God the Word was made flesh, he was made man. And he united to himself, since his conception, the temple (our human nature) which he assumed from her.

Mary is his mother. Therefore, she is Theotokos.

Crowds of people roamed the streets of Ephesus that night with torches, wild with enthusiasm, shouting "Mary is Theotokos!". [cf. Raya, Theotokos, pp.5-8]

A subsequent council in Chalcedon in 451, reinforced and further clarified this teaching on the Theotokos.

MARY IS THE MOTHER OF JESUS

Jesus, mighty God, during his infancy, subjected himself to Mary's nurturing care. She picked him up, put him down, and carried him about as she pleased.

The intimate reality of the motherhood of Mary while Jesus was an infant was extolled by St. Cyril of Jerusalem in this wonderful lyric passage:

O Theotokos
you stretched out your right arm; you took him and made him lie on your left arm.
You bent your neck, and let your hair fall over him...
He stretched out his hand; and you fed him with the milk which was sweeter than manna.
And he at whom the Seraphim could not gaze, and into whose face the angels were never able to look, did the holy Virgin dandle in her hands, and she made bold without fear,
and called him "My Son," and he called her also "My Mother".

MARY IS MOTHER OF THE CHURCH

Jesus on the cross gave his mother to John, and through John, to all of us.

[John 19:25] Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala.
[John 19:26] When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son."
[John 19:27] Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

[That Jesus gave Mary into the care of John is a further adducement that He had no natural siblings, otherwise she would have been entrusted to their care.]

Mary gave birth to Jesus; Mary was present at the birth of the church on Pentecost.

[Acts 1:14] All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

[Acts 2:1] When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.
[Acts 2:2] And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.
[Acts 2:3] Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.
[Acts 2:4] And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

1. Mary is Our Guide to Jesus

Mary is our sure guide to union with Jesus. As our guide, she never distracts us from Jesus; rather, she facilitates our union with Him.

Many years ago, Cecile B. De Mille made a silent movie about the life of Jesus, entitled "The King of Kings". One scene in this movie depicts Jesus in a home, teaching to a sizeable crowd which is filling the home to overflow. A young boy tries to gain entrance, but the size of the crowd prevents him. He goes around to the back of the house, and looks through the kitchen window. Mary sees him, and comes outside and asks him to come into the kitchen. He explains to her that it is his great desire to see Jesus and speak with Him.

Mary then bids the boy to come with her as she moves into the front part of the house where Jesus is teaching. The crowd, in their respect for her, parts to let her and her companion through. She does not go before the boy; rather, she walks just behind him, gently guiding him toward Jesus. At no time during this scene do we see Mary coming between the boy and Jesus.

This scene symbolizes our relationship with Mary. She facilitates our union with Jesus. She does this in two ways: as guide and as example. As guide, she shows us a path to Jesus. As example, she shows forth her perfect union with Jesus.

2. Mary is Our Paradigm of Union with Jesus

At the last supper, Our Lord prayed to His Father as follows:

[John 17:20] "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
[John 17:21] so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.

The profound unity that Our Lord earnestly prays for, the unity of Christians with each other and with the Blessed Trinity, is accomplished perfectly in Our Lady.

[Eph 5:25] ... Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her
[Eph 5:26] to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word,
[Eph 5:27] that he might present to Himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Mary was conceived without original sin; she is called "full of grace". She experiences that oneness with the Blessed Trinity now, that the whole Church is to experience at the end of time: His bride, the Church, without spot or wrinkle.

MARY AS MEDIATRIX

1. Mary and The Communion of Saints

We affirm the doctrine of the "communion of saints" each time we recite the Apostles' creed.

The Vatican document Lumen Gentium states that

The Church is a "communion of saints": this expression refers first to the "holy things", above all the Eucharist, by which "the unity of believers, who form one body in Christ, is both represented and brought about".

In this communion of saints, the body of Christ, the Church, the Holy Spirit courses through its members, sanctifying them by enlivening them, principally through the sacraments, with that grace which is the very life of the Blessed Trinity itself.

Each member of the body of Christ cooperates with the Holy Spirit in being both recipient and conduit of His grace. We read in the Gospel of John:

[John 7:37] On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed, "Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.
[John 7:38] Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him.'"
[John 7:39] He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive.

As recipient of God's grace, each of us is to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, the divine life given to us a precursor of our life in heaven. As conduit of God's grace, each of us is to mediate this grace to one another, in particular by intercessory prayer.

Next to Christ the head of the body, Our Lady is its pre-eminent member and model for the rest of us. She is pre-eminent as recipient of God's grace, and as our model for each of us as recipient.

She is pre-eminent as one who mediates this grace to others through her intercessory prayer, and as our model for mediating grace through our intercessory prayer.

When Mary and the rest of us experience the divine life of the Trinity; the divine life is not thereby multiplied; it is shared.

Likewise, when Mary and the rest of us mediate grace through intercessory prayer, mediatorship is not multiplied; rather, it is a sharing in the unique mediatorship of Jesus Christ.

2. Christ is the Unique Mediator

Among our separated Christian brethren, there has been a historical difficulty with regard to Mary's role as mediatrix. This difficulty is shared by some Catholics as well.
.
The difficulty can be expressed as follows. We read in Paul's first letter to Timothy, verses 5 and 6:

[1 Tim 2:5] For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus:
[1 Tim 2:6] who gave himself as ransom for all.

Yet the church teaches that Our Lady has a mediating role with Christ, and indeed is called "mediatrix". A scriptural resolution of this difficulty is found, interestingly enough, in the verses of Paul's first letter to Timothy which immediately precede verses 5 and 6 just read. Verses 1 through 6 read as follows:

[1 Tim 2:1] First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone,
[1 Tim 2:2] for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity.
[1 Tim 2:3] This is good and pleasing to God our savior,
[1 Tim 2:4] who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth.
[1 Tim 2:5] For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus:
[1 Tim 2:6] who gave himself as ransom for all.

Paul is requesting a mediating action by the faithful under Timothy's charge. This action is what we call intercessory prayer. By such prayer, each of us shares in the mission of Christ the mediator.

We ask saints for their prayers, since they share more deeply in that mission. Most of all, we ask Our Lady for her intercession, since she most efficaciously shares in Christ's mediation.

MARY IS PERPETUAL VIRGIN

Because Jesus has renewed all things, the destiny of each of us is a supernatural one: to love God and be loved by God, face to face, for all eternity. We are made to give and receive love.

Love can be thought of as the giving of self so that life can issue forth.

In our present wayfaring state, our love of God is most frequently done through the intermediary of a spouse; the life ordinarily issuing forth from that love is the generation of future members of the kingdom. Where God grants a vocation of consecrated virginity, the love of God is direct, with God Himself becoming a mystical spouse. The life issuing forth from that love is the divine life itself poured out into the world.

Mary is privileged to be the paradigm of both consecrated virginity and of motherhood. Virginity for the sake of the kingdom is understood to be a radical opening to the love of God without the intermediary of an earthly spouse. In extolling virginity, nothing is taken away from the good that is marriage.

The life of consecrated virginity is discussed in paragraphs 1618 through 1620 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1618 Christ is the center of all Christian life. The bond with him takes precedence over all other bonds, familial or social. From the very beginning of the Church there have been men and women who have renounced the great good of marriage to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, to be intent on the things of the Lord, to seek to please him, and to go out to meet the Bridegroom who is coming. Christ himself has invited certain persons to follow him in this way of life, of which he remains the model:

[Mat 19:12] Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it."

1619 Virginity for the sake of the kingdom of heaven is an unfolding of baptismal grace, a powerful sign of the supremacy of the bond with Christ and of the ardent expectation of his return, a sign which also recalls that marriage is a reality of this present age which is passing away.

1620 Both the sacrament of Matrimony and virginity for the Kingdom of God come from the Lord himself. It is he who gives them meaning and grants them the grace which is indispensable for living them out in conformity with his will. Esteem of virginity for the sake of the kingdom and the Christian understanding of marriage are inseparable, and they reinforce each other:

Whoever denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of virginity. Whoever praises it makes virginity more admirable and resplendent. What appears good only in comparison with evil would not be truly good. The most excellent good is something even better than what is admitted to be good. (St. John Chrysostom")

God granted to Mary the twofold dignity of virginity and motherhood. The Holy Spirit has spread this truth throughout the church and beyond the church throughout the world.

FEASTS OF MARY; THE ASSUMPTION

There are several feasts in honor of Our Lady during the liturgical year. The feast of Mary, Mother of God is celebrated on January 1, her nativity on September 8, and her immaculate conception on December 8. The latter is the patronal feast of the United States.

The feast of the triumph of her life in the Spirit is that of her assumption. Each year on August 15, the Church celebrates the feast of the assumption of Our Lady, body and soul, into heaven. This singular privilege was accorded to her by Our Lord because of her sinlessness from the time she was conceived until the time she ended her days here on earth.

We rejoice on this feast both for her and for ourselves, because God has shown us through her what He wills for each of us at the end of time: that we be in heaven with him, our souls reunited with our bodies, to enjoy for eternity the vision of Him as He is, face to face.

This feast is a shining jewel which possesses innumerable facets radiating the love of God for us, and His plan for each of us.

Our Lady is assumed body and soul into heaven. Our Lord rushes to greet her, perhaps with words such as these from the Song of Songs:

[Song 2:10] My lover speaks; he says to me, "Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come!
[Song 2:11] "For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone.
[Song 2:12] The flowers appear on the earth, the time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the dove is heard in our land.
[Song 2:13] ... Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come!
[Song 2:14] ...Let me see you, let me hear your voice, For your voice is sweet, and you are lovely."

Meditating on the Assumption of Our Lady into heaven, we rejoice in faith and we rejoice in hope.

We rejoice in faith that Our Lord greets Our Lady with such words as she enters the wonderful place He has prepared for her in heaven.

We rejoice in hope, that we may so live that when each one of us sees Our Lord face to face, He will greet us with words such as these.

SOME SHORT MEDITATIONS ON MARY

1. Mary is the Mother of the Pantocrator

Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ, the Pantocrator: the ruler of the universe. Of her it is sung in hymns:

More spacious than the universe is your womb, O blessed Virgin Mary! For it has carried Him who carries the universe.

2. A Special Veneration is Due Mary

We venerate the saints because they have been confirmed in salvation, and are thus temples of the Holy Spirit forever. This veneration is called dulia.

Because of Mary's pre-eminence, she receives an exalted veneration called hyperdulia. This is never to be confused with that worship due God alone, called latria.

The hyperdulia due Mary is finitely above the dulia due the other saints, but is infinitely below the latria due God alone. Imagine a wide plain on which the sun is brilliantly shining. The plain is populated with a large number of people dressed in resplendent jewels. Each of these figures, to a greater or less degree, reflects the sunlight in a dazzling array of points of sparkling light. Now imagine that one of the figures is wearing a seamless garment which acts as a spotless mirror, reflecting the sunlight without any diminution or variegation. Neither the shining garment of that figure, nor the bejeweled garments of the others, is generating light in and of itself. Without the sun, there is no light at all.

The divine light shines forth from the saints, more or less depending on the merit acquired by each on their earthly pilgrimage. Of all the saints, the divine light reflected from Mary blazes forth in its pristine purity.

The honor of dulia is given to the saints, and that of hyperdulia is given to Mary. But that honor in no way interferes with the latria given to God, the source of light. Rather, latria is catalyzed because it is directed toward the source of the reflected light from Mary and the other saints.

3. Mary as the Reed of God

Another metaphor for Mary, one characterized by Caryll Houselander (an English author of the early twentieth century), is that she is the reed of God. This reed is so pure and devoid of self-interest that the Holy Spirit can course through it, producing eternally sublime melodies.

4. Mary as Ark of the New Covenant

The ark of the old covenant, contained the tablets of the law. Mary, the ark of the new covenant, contained not the law, but the lawgiver.

5. Mary as Burning Bush

Moses gazed on a bush that was on fire but was not consumed. Mary is likened to this bush, since she was imbued with the fire of divinity, but not consumed.

TRIUMPH OVER THE EVIL ONE

Satan, in the form of a serpent, tempted our first parents to eat the fruit forbidden to them by God. They subsequently fell from grace after succumbing to Satan's temptation to disobey God by eating the forbidden fruit. God in his infinite love then promised a redeemer to the human race. He did this by prophesying to Satan that he would be overcome by the offspring of a woman, a new Eve, who would be his mortal enemy, as we read in Genesis:

[Gen 3:15] I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel."

This prophecy of Genesis was satisfied when Gabriel was sent to Mary, who submitted herself wholly to the will of God, so that Jesus would come into the world, He who was to crush the head of the ancient serpent.

[Luke 1:26] ... the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth,
[Luke 1:27] to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary.
[Luke 1:28] And coming to her, he said, "Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you."
[Luke 1:29] But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
[Luke 1:30] Then the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
[Luke 1:31] Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.
[Luke 1:32] He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father,
[Luke 1:33] and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."
[Luke 1:34] But Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?"
[Luke 1:35] And the angel said to her in reply, "The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.
...
[Luke 1:38] Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.

Fiat! "May it be done to me according to your word." Mary's fiat opened the way for God to come into the world by assuming our very nature. With his coming, the usurper Satan was to be utterly vanquished.

Satan tricked the first Eve into sin, so sin entered the world and Satan became the world's usurper. In return, Mary, the second Eve, tricked Satan and sin was overcome. How did Mary do this? She did it by wrapping the infinite one with her own flesh, to make visible him who had been invisible.

As a result, after Jesus died and descended into Hades, Satan reached out to snatch a finite man, and grasped the infinite God, whereupon Satan's kingdom was obliterated.

Mary gave to the world Jesus, triumphant victor over Satan, over sin, and over death. Our Lord's victory would not have been accomplished without Mary's fiat. This victory which Mary made possible has been celebrated in hymns and sermons repeatedly throughout the nearly two-thousand year history of the Church.

In his resurrection homily (circa 400), St. John Chrysostom extols our Lord's victory over all the devil's might, over sin, and over death. Apart from Peter's homily on the first Pentecost, this homily might well be the single most famous homily in the entire history of Christianity. Let us attend to this excerpt from that homily, in which is regaled the triumph of Mary's gift to the salvation of the world:

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God? Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival! Is there anyone who is a grateful servant? Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord! Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!
...Let no one grieve at his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it. He destroyed Hell when He descended into it. He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh. Isaiah foretold this when he said,"You, O Hell, have been angered by encountering Him below."

Hell is angered because it was done away with.

It is angered because it is mocked.

It is angered, for it is destroyed.

It is angered, for it is annihilated.

It is angered, for it is now made captive.

Hell took a body, and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see. O death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!

Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!

Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!

Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead; for Christ having risen from the dead, has become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. To her who bore Him, be everlasting honor and gratitude.

Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

CODA

The Son of God is the linchpin of the creation: all things were created in him, through him, and for him as we read in Colossians 1:

[Col 1:16] For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.
[Col 1:17] He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

The Son of Mary is the linchpin of the new creation, because she has bestowed on us its divine author. That Jesus is indeed the author of the new creation we read in Revelation 21:

[Rev 21:5] The one who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." Then he said, "Write these words down, for they are trustworthy and true."
[Rev 21:6] He said to me, "They are accomplished. I (am) the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

WITHOUT THE SON OF GOD, THERE IS NO CREATION.

WITHOUT THE SON OF MARY, THERE IS NO RE-CREATION.