Marriage

 (27th Sunday, B)

I’m a little hesitant to try to preach on marriage, given especially that I have no experience of it. In fact, I don’t even know very many married people on a personal level, except for my parents—whom I got to know pretty well because I first met them when I was very young.

Nevertheless, I’ve given homilies at plenty of weddings, especially early on in my priesthood, and therefore have reflected some on this great Sacrament. So, I’ll give it a shot, and you, especially you married folks, can feel free to take what I say with as many grains of salt as you see fit.

Priesthood

(32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, B)

(Follow this link for my introduction and apology for this homily.)

For the past five weeks we have been hearing the letter to the Hebrews in the second reading here at Sunday Mass. Since we finish the lectionary’s selections from Hebrews today, I thought it might be good to stop and reflect upon its teachings. On these Sundays in Ordinary Time, the readings from the gospels and the first reading from the Old Testament are selected to match and complement each other, while the second reading proceeds on its own cycle. Because of this, preachers sometimes don’t pay a lot of attention to the second reading during Ordinary Time. Hebrews is worth our time, however, and the readings given by the lectionary lead us into a reflection on the priesthood of Christ. This priesthood matters for us, because we all have a share in it. In some ways, it is the good news of our whole religion.

When we think of the priesthood, we often think just of the ministry of ordained priests in the Church. That’s too bad, because for us Christians priesthood is much more than that. In the simplest terms, a priest is someone appointed to offer sacrifice to God. Since the earliest times, indeed since Adam and Eve’s sons Cain and Abel first offered sacrifice to God, the loving relationship between God and his people has been ratified, exercised, and bonded by sacrifice. Under the old covenants sacrifices of all kinds were offered to God, day after day, year after year. The Temple of Jerusalem, the preeminent place to offer sacrifice in God’s Presence, became the center of the world for the people of God.

The New Covenant ratified in the Precious Blood of Christ reveals all of these prior sacrifices to be foreshadowings of his own sacrifice of himself. Jesus fulfills, ends, and goes beyond all of these sacrifices of religion by offering himself as the perfect, eternal sacrifice, once and for all. In his Passion Jesus takes upon himself everything we are at our worst, even to our dismissing, torturing, and killing each other. On the Cross Jesus enters into the deepest misery and suffering that we have brought upon ourselves and each other with our sins, up to and including the searing alienation from God our modern world knows so well, to the depths of losing even our consciousness of our Creator and the Ground of our being: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.”

But though Jesus could suffer and die in the humanity and human body he borrows from us through our Most Blessed Mother, death could not hold on to his divinity. The divine Son of God bursts forth from the death we have brought upon ourselves and brings our humanity and human body with him into the new life of the Resurrection. This is what we call the Paschal Mystery of Christ, his passing over through our death into what can now be our new life.

This is why Christ is our High Priest; he is the one who offers the perfect sacrifice to God, and indeed, within God. So in Christianity, there is really only one priest, Jesus Christ, because there is only one Sacrifice. This priesthood of Christ is the priesthood of the Church, because the Church is the assembly of those who have baptized into the death and Resurrection of Christ, and who become his broken body and blood poured out in the offering of the Eucharist.

What this means is that each of us who is a Christian, a member of the mystical Body of Christ, shares in the priesthood of Christ. Each of us is a priest, because the communion each of us enjoys with Christ enables us to offer our own sacrifices and have them drawn up into the one, saving sacrifice of Christ.

This isn’t necessarily some big or glamorous thing. Many of the sacrifices we make in our day to day lives are very small. We give someone our ear or some of our time when we don’t want to. We let go of some our feelings or plans and enter into the messiness of someone else’s life so as to give them some mercy and comfort. Not that there aren’t immense sacrifices that people often make in life, such as the many ways ordinary people give up possibilities and opportunity in order to care for or give to others. The good news for us who share in the priesthood of Christ, is that God raises all of our sacrifices, large and small, to a certain divine dignity. By our baptism and our Communion with the sacrificed Body and Blood of Christ, God draws the sacrifices of our individual lives into the one, perfect, and eternal Sacrifice of the Son of God. Our sacrifices become part of the Sacrifice that saves and renews the world, leading us all from the meaningless of death to the hope of Resurrection. Each of us is a priest of the New Covenant, a sharer in the one Priesthood and one Sacrifice of Christ. This is our dignity and our joy as the priestly people of God.

As we offer our humble gifts at God’s altar today, let each of us offer the sacrifices of our own lives, uniting them to the Sacrifice of Christ we make present in this Eucharist, and let us be grateful to the God who makes us a priestly people in the Blood of Christ.

The Scandal of the Cross

(24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, B)

Today we arrive at Mark the Evangelist’s account of St. Peter’s great confession: “You are the Christ,” the basic and fundamental confession of faith of Christianity. Peter’s confession, which is recorded by the gospels of Matthew and Luke as well, is important for us on many levels. First of all, as we know from St. Matthew’s version, Peter’s faith is the Rock on which Jesus builds his Church, and this faith is kept for us in an unbroken handing-on, a “tradition” down to St. Peter’s successor in our own day, our Holy Father Benedict XVI.

Along with that, Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ,” is important for us on a personal level. We’ve all had that moment or moments of the interior realization of faith, of confession that Jesus is the Christ, or else we wouldn’t be here at Sunday Mass. And our confession of faith has consequences that are not easy, as Peter learns the hard way.

As soon as Peter expresses his faith that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus goes on to tell him what this means: that the Christ will be rejected and killed, but will rise on the third day. Peter is scandalized; he is offended. To be the Christ is to be a great person, indeed the greatest of people; he should be like the powerful of this world who sit and dispense benefits on their friends and trouble on their enemies. That’s what the Christ should be like, Peter thinks, perhaps. Jesus regards this as a temptation, and rebukes Peter in turn, identifying him with the tempter himself, Satan. “Get behind me…you are thinking not as God does, but as humans do.”

This is the scandal of the Cross, and it is the heart of Christianity. In Jesus the almightiness and the power of God are revealed not in a lording over the world or a need to control, but in a perfect self-sacrifice. Our God is not a god who sits above us like a worldly ruler, doing good for his friends and condemning his enemies. No, our God is a god who places himself below us as a “suffering servant,” offering salvation and grace to all, deserving or not, grateful or not, good and bad.

As if this isn’t hard enough to swallow, Jesus goes on to say that if we wish to follow him, the Cross is our destiny as well. So when we have the realization, the grace of making the confession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, we know that the Cross awaits us. “Whoever wishes to come after me, must deny himself.” That goes against everything the world teaches. For the world teaches us to take care of ourselves, to get for ourselves what we need and want, and to protect our security once we have it.

Where has the worldly doctrine of self-service gotten us? What has it done to the world? Well, the evidence is all around us. The world teaches us to seek comfort, pleasure, convenience, wealth, and security, but it is a cult of values that do not exist, and it has left us with a world plagued by divisions and injustice. It is has left the conscience of the public so seared and confused that we can even entertain the question of killing our unborn children or of destroying God’s earth in the name of our extravagant and indulgent lifestyles, for example.

But we must not be discouraged, for Jesus has demonstrated for us the way that this world can leave this selfish self-destruction behind and find salvation instead. We are to follow him by taking up the Cross, by imitating him as suffering servant, as the self-emptying and self-sacrificing savior. If we care about the world and its well-being—as God does so passionately as to turn over his own Son into our violent hands—may we let go of our cult of comfort, convenience, and security, forget about ourselves and offer ourselves in sacrifice for each other. Anybody who has ever done direct service to the poor, cared for their own or someone else’s child, or even prayed for a friend knows that self-sacrifice in imitation of Christ is the path to true freedom and happiness. Let us follow that joy, for it is the taste of the Passion and passionate Love with which God longs to save the world through the Christ.

We Are God's Building

(Dedication of the Lateran Basilica)

After hearing the introduction to today’s Mass, you may wonder why we are celebrating the dedication of a church four thousand miles away. Well, here’s how it works: in any given church, like this one for example, the anniversary of the dedication is celebrated as a solemnity. For a cathedral, the principal church of a diocese, the anniversary of dedication is celebrated throughout that diocese. Now the Lateran Basilica—dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist—is the cathedral church of Rome. That is to say that it is the Holy Father’s church as bishop of Rome. Therefore, it’s kind of like the cathedral for the whole Catholic Church, and so the celebration of its dedication is universal.

Now there’s something inherently ironic about the Mass for the anniversary of a dedication of a church. On the surface, it seems like we’re celebrating the dedication of a building. But the readings and prayers don’t bear this out. In fact, the readings and prayers for this Mass suggest to us that we we’re not celebrating buildings at all, but the spiritual structure we ourselves have become in Christ.

St. Paul expresses it beautifully in the second reading from the first letter to the Corinthians: “You are God’s building,” says Paul. “You are the temple of God.” So when we talk about the Church, we aren’t talking about Sacred Heart church in Yonkers or the Lateran Basilica in Rome, or any physical structure. We are talking about a people who are called together and bonded to one another by our mutual communion with the humanity of Christ. That’s what the Church is, a spiritual building built of the “living stones” of human hearts and lives. That’s us, together with all the baptized here on earth and in heaven above.

When we build a physical church as a place to pray and offer the Eucharist, it’s only an expression of the Church which is us. And so everything about a church building is meant to express a spiritual truth about who we are as Church. For instance, here at Sacred Heart, in a wonderful imitation of the Lateran Basilica in Rome, images of the apostles adorn the pillars. This is to express the spiritual truth that the apostles are the foundation and basic structure on which the Church is built. To borrow another example from Pope Benedict during one of the homilies he gave when he was with us this past spring, consider the stained glass windows. From outside they just look dark, but here inside we can see how they depict the mysteries of the faith with delightful beauty. And so it with the spiritual building that is the true Church. Those on the outside don’t “get” the great mysteries of the faith. But to us within the Church, the mysteries of the faith illuminate our lives and bring to each mind and heart a peaceful and delightful light.

So whenever we find ourselves praying in a beautiful church, as we are today, let us always consider that these delights for eyes and ears are only expressions of who we ourselves as God’s building. Let us be God’s Church for the sake of the world. Let each of be a safe place for people to come and open their hearts. Let us imitate Jesus himself in ejecting from ourselves anything that profanes the sacred spaces of our lives. And let us offer ourselves as spiritual sacrifices, that we might become the living water the prophet Ezekiel saw flowing from the Temple, giving refreshment and new life to the world around us.

You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God

(21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

The Gospel we hear today has always been very important to us Catholics, for it contains the scriptural origin of the Petrine ministry: the ministry of St. Peter of teaching and unity for all the churches, which we believe has continued through the years in the bishops of Rome down to our Holy Father Benedict XVI. In this famous exchange, Peter makes his great confession of faith, proclaiming his belief that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

In response to his confession of faith, Jesus gives this Simon, son of Jonah, a new name: Petros in Matthew’s Greek, a play on the word for rock, petra. Jesus then proclaims that Peter will be the Rock on which the Church will be built. But in what does this foundation consist? In other words, what is the “rockiness” of this man on which this church will be founded? It sure isn’t Peter’s leadership qualities or understanding; in the very next passage of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus calls Peter a skandalon, a “stumbling block” or hindrance, because he does not understand the prediction of the Passion. And we all we know the shame of Peter’s denial, the night before Jesus’ suffering and death, that he even knew Jesus.

No, Peter does not become the Rock on which the Church is built because he is a great leader or theologian, but because of his confession of faith. It is the confession that this Jesus of Nazareth is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” that is the Rock, the foundation of the Church.

But what does it mean for us, we who have inherited the apostolic faith that has been passed down to us? We confess that this man, this one human life, this Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew of the first century, is the Christ. By Christ we mean the anointed of God, elected by God to be priest like Melchizedek, prophet like Elijah, and king like his father David. In addition to all that, we confess that Jesus is the Son of the living God. Our faith and belief is that the Eternal Word or Wisdom of God, which is such a perfect reflection and self-expression of God that it is also God, became this human life, this Jesus of Nazareth.

Thus, we believe that Jesus is the perfect Revealer of God. In the preaching, teaching, and interactions of Jesus with people, we see, on our terms, the nature and the personality of the otherwise unknowable Source from which all existence comes, that Mystery that we perceive obscurely somehow behind and beneath everything that is. In his patient suffering, humble death, and glorious Resurrection we see the Eternity towards which we are all traveling as we make our way through this life.

This is the basic “good news” of Christianity; that this obscure reality we call “God,” this Mystery of existence that we only kind of perceive through or experiences of wonder or love, has been perfectly revealed. Even better, God has been revealed on our terms, in a way that is perfectly available to our human understanding. This is what it means to say that God became man, and that Jesus is the Son of the living God.

This is our confession of faith. And it is God’s desire to continue building his church on the solid rock of this confession in each Christian life. God will do this! In Christ, God is saving, reconciling, and sanctifying the world. If we allow this faith to be the foundation of our lives, God will make us part of the work. In our families, and workplaces and communities, we will truly be Christians, “other christs” through whom God is reconciling and sanctifying the world.

Beginning the Pauline Year

(14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

Last week the universal Church began the year of St. Paul, a celebration of the bimillenium of the birth of this great apostle to the nations. That is to say that for the next twelve months, until the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul next year, we are celebrating the 2000^th anniversary of Paul’s birth.

Paul’s influence on our faith is incalculable. Apart from Jesus, Paul is the only person in the New Testament that we really know anything about in terms of personal history. The Pauline epistles, written either by Paul himself or his disciples, associates, or those inspired by him, actually make up the majority of the New Testament.

And yet, I think we don’t often hear about Paul’s teaching at the Sunday Eucharist. I guess that this is at least partly due to the way the readings are arranged for us in the lectionary. In these weeks of Ordinary Time we read continuously in one of the Gospels. This year, of course, we have been reading along in Matthew. The first reading is then selected to match with the Gospel, showing the hidden presence of hoped for Christ in the Old Testament. For example, in the Gospel today Jesus speaks about how God passes over those who are clever and learned by the world’s standards and reveals himself to those who receive him simply like “little ones.” To complement this, in the first reading we hear the prophecy of Zechariah, who looked forward to the Messiah who would arrive like a “little one,” seated on a donkey. And we know well that this prophecy was fulfilled by Jesus in the humble arrival at Jerusalem we celebrate each Palm Sunday.

The second reading, however, at least in these Sundays of Ordinary Time, proceeds on its own cycle and isn’t necessarily related to the Gospel or the Old Testament reading. So, I think that faced with a beautiful Gospel and an Old Testament related to it, preachers often concentrate on those, and leave the second reading alone. But it’s in the second reading that we hear St. Paul. So, in celebration of the opening of the year of St. Paul, and because we are in the midst of Paul’s beautiful and deep letter to the Romans, I want to preach a little on St. Paul.

In the selection we have from Romans today, we hear Paul setting up the classic device of “there are two kinds of people in this world.” There are those who live according to the flesh and those who live according to the Spirit. Now here we have to be very careful. By “flesh” and “Spirit” Paul is not talking about two parts of ourselves, like our soul and our body. Instead, he is talking about two spheres of influence or two centers of spiritual power which are in constant competition for our attention, allegiance, and obedience.

The flesh is that center of power which is set against God. It is everything out there in the world—and in our own hearts—that is selfish, that puts us and the welfare of our own bodies, communities, and nation ahead of the good of all. It is the culture of violence that believes in retaliation, preemptive war, and puts convenience ahead of the sanctity of life. The glittering promises of this arrogant world of the flesh are all around us. We see them everyday in the world’s advertisements, for example.

But to follow this selfish world that Paul calls the flesh leads only to misery and meaninglessness. That’s the mystery of Jesus’ own words that the one who seeks to save his own life will lose it. Paradoxically, concentrating only on ourselves—whether it be me, my community, or my country—leads to unhappiness. And just as a life lived “in the flesh” has the proximate result of misery, depression, and isolation in this world, so Paul tells us that it terminates in eternal death.

The other option, Paul tells us, is a life lived “in the Spirit.” What is this Spirit? Paul tells us: it is “the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead.” Think about that for a moment and notice how amazing it is! The exact same Spirit which effected the Resurrection of Christ is available to you and to me. Because of the humanity that we share with Christ we are linked with him and the same Power that raised him from the dead lives in us. This is the meaning of our Baptism, by which we are baptized into the dying and rising of Christ. It is the meaning of the Eucharist, by which we become the Body of Christ we receive. As the great mystic of the Dominican Order, Meister Eckhart said, the difference between physical food and spiritual food is that the physical food we eat becomes us, but when we eat spiritual food—as in the Eucharist—we become it. That’s why we’re here at the Eucharist: to be transformed into the Body of Christ risen from the dead and the place where the Spirit lives in the world.

Thus, to live in the Spirit is the opposite of living in the flesh because the Spirit teaches us how to let go of our addiction to selfishness, how to let go of the tyranny of thinking only of ourselves or only of our families, communities, and nation. Paul says that just as the Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, the same Spirit living in us—if we allow it—will raise our “mortal bodies also.” This means that here and now the Spirit of God can lift us up from whatever holds us down—whether it be sin or selfishness, anxiety or depression. To live in the Spirit is to be free and at peace, knowing that God is with us. It also means that those who live in the Spirit, because they are already lifted up in the Resurrection of Christ, have their eternal destiny in that same Resurrection. There they live forever as those who were willing to become the self-sacrificing Body of Christ on earth and that now lives forever with God in heaven.

Living Stones

(5th Sunday of Easter, A)

As we come to these later days of the Easter season we are always aware of a shift in our reflection. At the beginning of Easter we are overwhelmed with wonder at the re-creation of the world and the renovation of our humanity in Jesus Christ risen from the dead. But as the Easter season moves on, we are invited more and more to reflect on how it is that the Risen Lord continues to be present to us.

This is, after all, the core of our faith: to confess that the blessing of God abides with us, his people, in the mysterious presence of Jesus as Risen Lord and in his gift of the Holy Spirit. We Christians are always using language that affirms this truth. We begin and end our prayer together with a confession of Jesus’ presence among us: “The Lord be with you…and also with you.” In the deepest way we affirm the presence of Christ among us when we receive Holy Communion, and someone looks at us and addresses us with our truest name and identity, “The Body of Christ.”

We who are Christians—the people who are “of Christ”—are meant to live in this world as the presence of Jesus Christ risen from the dead. We are to be witnesses of the possibility of living a risen life, freed from sin, freed from anxiety, freed form depression and from anything that holds us down to earth. And we live this risen life by the power of Christ and his Spirit living within us.

This is what St. Peter is getting at in the second reading when he urges us to allow ourselves, “like living stones,” be built by the Holy Spirit “into a spiritual house.” That’s what the Church is, not a place we go or a building—no matter how beautiful—but a people. Each of us is a stone made living in Christ and together we are built into a spiritual building by the Holy Spirit present in the world. And this spiritual building that we form is meant to be a place of safety and refreshment for the world around us that has made itself tired by violence and sin and despair.

This is what it means to be “in Christ.” That’s why this assembly, the church, is called the “body of Christ”. And this is exactly what we confess in Holy Communion—the Communion we receive, the body and blood of Christ, is who we really are who we are to become.

It is us who are meant to be the presence in the world of Jesus Christ risen from the dead. We who are buried with him in our baptism and made into this body in this Eucharist are empowered by the Holy Spirit to be the risen Body of Christ in the world. And thus our mission as individuals and as a Church is to continue Christ’s work of teaching, of healing, of reconciling, and of making peace. These missions are to be our work in our most personal relationships and activities all the way up to our intersection with public debate, politics, and issues affecting our whole society and world.

In short, that’s who we are, a people who form the Church which continues the presence and mission of Christ through history. And let’s not forget the Gospel we hear today, which assures us that if we do this, if we live in Christ in this life, we can trust that Jesus in his Resurrection has prepared an eternal dwelling for us in the Father.