Respect Life Sunday

“Destruction and violence are before me.” These are the words of the prophet Habakkuk in today’s first reading.  On this Respect Life Sunday, we draw attention to the destruction and violence that continues against innocent human life, especially the unborn.  And sometimes we may feel like the prophet Habakkuk as he cries out:  “How long , O Lord?”  As Christians, our actions are to show the unique and priceless value of every human life.

Perhaps one of the ways we can support the unborn is by supporting their mothers who are afraid, scared and worried about the unknown.  We can do this in many ways.  One of these is through crisis pregnancy centers.  These women and girls should know that we will help make life as easy as possible for them during this temporary situation.  We are called to Christian generosity to give them everything they need so they can choose life.

And sometimes the obvious needs to be pointed out:  Nobody stays pregnant forever.  It’s only temporary.  And the death of an innocent person is a little too permanent a “solution” for a temporary inconvenience.  But people overcome by fear and anxiety make such rash decisions every day.  For those who have made these decisions in the past, there is great hope for healing.  There is no longer any need to carry around these secrets that cause overwhelming regret and emotional pain.  All people who have been complicit in abortion can get the healing they need in Project Rachel or any number of apostolates for healing the Church offers.  These apostolates reflect the compassionate heart of Christ.  And of course, they are confidential.  There is a loving God who desires to forgive and heal all who turn to him.  His offer of forgiveness and healing remains constant no matter what we have done.

There is a culture of death.  It’s not mysterious.  It shows itself whenever someone has to die in order to make the life of another person more comfortable or convenient.  That’s it.  And our bishops have pointed out for over a year that the HHS mandate from our federal government is immoral.

We Christians have an important role to play as citizens.  Last year, Pope Benedict challenged all the faithful to move beyond mere collaboration to a shared responsibility in the Church.  Our responsibility is to engage the culture as Christians.  It’s not just the job of the clergy, but of all the faithful.  No matter how we decide to get engaged, let’s remember the words of St. Paul that we heard today:  “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather or power and love and self-control.  Do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord.  Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”  Our bishops continually remind us that we must express our Catholic faith and morals in the public square whether it’s done in the voting booth, contacting elected officials, raising awareness, organizing events or whatever.  Voting is a moral act, so we are not to participate in evil with our vote.

The other thing we have to do as a Christian people is pray.  October is the month of the Rosary.  This is great opportunity to reinvigorate our prayer lives and beg the Lord to change hearts in the culture.  Pray for our country.  Pray for our world.  Pray for all who have chosen abortion in the past that they will seek God’s forgiveness, healing and loving embrace.  As we pray for the conversion of hearts, we recognize more and more the awesome dignity of all human beings at every stage of development, the pinnacle of creation, wonderfully made in God’s image.

Tattoos and abortion

Two articles comparing tattoos to abortion in Washington D.C.
You'll be amazed to find out which one may require a 24-hour waiting period.

http://www.lifeissues.org/thelatestnews.html

http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/09/24-hour-waiting-periods-ok-for-tattoos-but-not-for-women-contemplating-an-abortion/

Take 'em to task

One thing that drives me crazy is when people hang out with a bad crowd and they justify it by saying: “Jesus hung out with sinners and ate at the homes of the Pharisees.”

Notice in every one of these instances in the Gospels, Jesus is either taking the Pharisees or sinners to task, or it is a person who is ready for repentance and conversion.  The Lord had the power to read their souls.  The Lord knew the hearts of Zacchaeus, the woman at the well, and the woman caught in adultery.  Never once do we see Jesus becoming chummy with hardened sinners and leave them in their sin.  That would not be loving.  And He is the most loving of all.  He takes people to task or approaches those who are ready to leave sin behind and see what God has to offer.  So, if we hang out with the bad crowd, we better be ready to take them to task lest we become hardened in our sins.

NFP Awareness Week

The following is my homily from this past Sunday, July 21, 2013.

“I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah will then have a son.”  This was good news for Abraham and Sarah.  Children were seen as a blessing.  Sterility was seen as a curse.  But notice how this has flip-flopped in our culture.  The opposite is often the case.  Human fertility is seen as a curse rather than a blessing.  Fertility is seen as a liability.  The culture says something must be done about the fertility monster.

Today begins Natural Family Planning awareness week.  So, in this week we are given the opportunity to remind ourselves that new human life is a blessing, not a curse.  Fertility is a gift from God, not a liability.  He invites husbands and wives to be co-creators with him; what an awesome responsibility and privilege.  Nobody denies the fact that sacrifices will have to be made for each new life.  But sacrifice is the Christian way.  The cross is our reminder.  Christian history is 2,000 years of sacrifice and generosity.  But notice how it has deep roots in the Jewish faith.  In our first reading from Genesis, we heard that Abraham and Sarah were extremely generous and hospitable with three complete strangers.  Later they were credited for having entertained angels.  We are called to no less.  We are reminded today that we are to be extremely generous and hospitable as well.  We also will be recognized as having cared for God’s little angels.  If everything is a gift from God, how could we not be generous gift givers ourselves?

Now, why NFP awareness this week?  We are commemorating the 45^th anniversary of the encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae.  In this encyclical in 1968, Pope Paul VI made some predictions on what would happen if the use of artificial contraception became widespread.

All of his predictions came true.  In these 45 years, we have seen a general lowering of morality with the destruction of youth and family.  We have seen a proliferation of out-of-wedlock births, and single-parent families.  We have seen a great increase in venereal diseases.  And we have seen an increase in marital infidelity, divorce, and spousal abuse.

Finally, what’s further repulsive is that our government is now forcing organizations to pay for the very things that help bring about the decline of our society and calling it healthcare.  I was recently talking to an elderly gentleman who was a child during the Second World War  He told me he remembers hearing about Hitler promoting the sterilization of certain groups of people, and how he just can’t believe that our own government has gotten in that business.

Yes contraception is a problem because it’s unhealthy for the human body, but it’s especially problematic because of the harm it can do to relationships.  Human biology shows us that the conjugal embrace brings about two physical things: new life, and unity of the couple: procreative and unitive dimensions, if you will.  It’s procreative because it’s God’s way of bringing new human life into the world.  And it’s unitive because it’s God’s way of bonding a man and woman in married love for the rest of their lives.  People who are open to both unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal embrace are presumably giving themselves fully to each other.  There is a full self-giving for the benefit of the other.  Sounds like love, doesn’t it?  Nothing is held back, not even fertility.

When a barrier is placed in the way, there is no longer a full self-giving.  Now something is held back.  We would never say to a spouse, “I love you except for your fertility.  Hold back that part of you.”  So we shouldn’t say it in our actions either.

So we see that in diminishing the procreative meaning will take the risk of diminishing the unitive meaning of the conjugal embrace as well.  Imposing barriers in this most intimate of settings can quite often manifest itself in emotional ways too.  If the physical barriers are in the way, it becomes easier to put up emotional barriers or communication barriers as well.

As human beings, we are designed to have a very powerful unitive bond, but we can do things to diminish it.  The worst thing about contraception and sterilization is that they reject God and his plan for our happiness.  Furthermore the contraceptive mentality feeds the despair of the culture that new life is a curse.  But life is a gift and a blessing.  Natural Family Planning keeps the unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal embrace intact while effectively helping married couples space children if they prayerfully discern they have a grave reasons to do so.  NFP is more effective than contraception but without the destructive side-effects.  And it has proven to enhance marital love rather than diminish it.  It forces the husband and wife to communicate, thus building their relationship, rather than taking the risk of using the other for selfish reasons.  I just heard new data on statistic this week that reinforced what I heard several years ago:  Married couples who are not contracepting have the most satisfying sex lives.  Of course; it’s God’s plan.  It makes sense.

Today’s gospel tells us Mary sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.  Martha was anxious and worried.  Martha is busy working her own agenda.  Her trivial distractions take her away from his presence.  Obviously something is a little off in her soul.  She even tells God what to do, saying to the Lord:  “Tell her to help me.”  We are called to be Mary and sit beside the Lord at his feet and listen to him speak.  He is still speaking to us through his Church, and his way is the way that works.  Jesus says, “There is need of only one thing.”  We hear what that one thing is in the Psalm today: to live I the presence of the Lord.

Christ is still trying to teach us something very good through his Church.  Will we sit beside him at his feet and listen, or will we reject him?  The invitation is here for us to learn what the Church teaches and why.  And we all know people who need to learn it as well.  Let’s have the courage to trust in the Lord and invite others to the happiness that only he can bring.

Fortnight for Freedom

The following was my Sunday homily on June 30, 2013:

Jesus is making it unmistakably clear that nothing is more important or more compelling than our participation in the Kingdom of God, but very often, we hesitate.  Elisha hesitated in the account we heard in our first reading.  Other people hesitate in the Gospel we just heard from St. Luke.  One guy in the gospel wants to go and bury his father.  This seems like a good thing. It’s a corporal work of mercy to bury the dead.  But evidently, it will delay his participation in the Kingdom of God and that participation is much more urgent.  Another guy wants to say goodbye to his family at home.  This seems like a good thing.  It’s even socially considerate to let them know so they don’t wonder what happened to him.  But this delays his participation in the Kingdom of God.  Hopefully we are picking up on the urgency.

Jesus talks about the Kingdom more than any other subject in the Gospels.  And we can see from today’s Gospel that not even the world’s most sacred values are more important than our participation in the Kingdom of God.  Is the Kingdom our ultimate concern? Or is it something else like wealth? Pleasure? Power? Being liked by others?  Or are we ready today to get fully engaged in participating in the Kingdom of God? 

You may have noticed some “Preserve Religious Freedom” signs in the church yard.  Our bishops have recently been pointing out that the Kingdom of God is starting to take second place to the earthly kingdom here in our country.  The bishops of our country have led us into the midst of the second Fortnight for Freedom which will continue until we celebrate the anniversary of our independence this coming Thursday.  This is a great opportunity for us to remind ourselves from exactly what we were gaining independence.  Wasn’t it a tyrannical government that did not allow people to live their lives in accord with the beliefs they held sacred?  So the new nation, the United States of America, put in its bill of rights the freedom of religion.  Notice that it is not merely the freedom to worship.  It is the freedom to put beliefs into practice every minute of every day, not just for an hour on Sunday.  The bishops have been pointing out that these are the freedoms that are currently under attack by our own government.  It is not O.K. that our government is forcing people to pay for things that are objectively immoral.

Archbishop Schnurr has given all priests permission to use different Mass prayers today.  This is a big deal, not something that is done willie nillie.  We are permitted to use the “Mass for the Nation”, or the “Mass for Persecuted Christians”.  Every Sunday is a solemnity and the Mass prayers may not be changed without the bishop’s permission.  Sometimes the reason is so great that permission is given. So we can see the gravity of the state in which we find ourselves. 

It is very likely that the subject of “freedom” will be discussed at family gatherings this coming week over the Independence Day holiday.  St. Paul talks about freedom in his letter to the Galatians that we just heard:  “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”  We would be fools to allow ourselves to repeat history and become enslaved to anyone except almighty God himself. 

This is a timely topic in the wake of this week's Supreme Court decisions.  It is disappointing, but I am not surprised because we have the exact government we deserve.  We have the exact government we have put in place.  Our culture is in need of a major conversion.  When the people are sanctified the government will be sanctified.  In Daytime Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours today we pray Psalm 118 which reminds us “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.”  But we have placed too much trust in the human princes that govern.  Human beings will always fall short.  And they have fallen short this week by failing to defend marriage as the unbreakable union of one man and one woman.

In Marriage We Imitate the Trinity

Even though Trinity Sunday was a week ago, I thought I would publish this to support everyone living the holy vocation of Marriage:

The celebration of the Most Holy Trinity is a celebration of love.  The important thing is not that we try to understand the Mystery of God as Trinity.  We don’t have the capacity to grasp the fullness of the Mystery.  As the Lord continually draws us in more and more, the important thing is that we are open to what God is trying to show us.  What is God modeling for us to imitate?  When we enter into the Mystery of the Trinity, we notice that God is a communion of persons.  And the principle characteristic of this communion of persons is love.

We imitate the Trinity when we participate in a communion of love.  A very good example of this is the communion of husband and wife.  In the communion of marriage, husband and wife are imitating God as a communion of persons.  Living out the sacrament of marriage gives praise to God as it is lived out because it follows his pattern of self-giving love.  Those of you who are married would agree that it is a self-giving, sacrificial love.  We see the sacrificial love of the Son for the Father every time we look at the crucifix.  It’s not a love of emotion, or a romantic feeling, but one of full self-giving.  God has revealed himself as an eternal exchange of love.  We are called to imitate that exchange of love in sacrificial ways carrying our crosses for the good of others.  Jesus did that for love of the Father.

Because it is a self-giving love, it is a fruitful love.  Some say that the love of the Father and Son is so fruitful that the love between them is the person of the Holy Spirit.  Notice how married love is also a fruitful love, bringing about new life.  That love becomes incarnate.  It is a generative love.  New human life becomes the symbol of the fruitful love of husband and wife.

Of course we know that the evil one will not miss any chance to attack our loving God.  So the evil one attacks married love because it so well represents God himself, a communion of persons.  It is difficult to pass a single hour, let alone an entire day, without seeing an attack on married love, the great symbol of God himself.  Pornography is an industry of several billion dollars, perfect for weakening married love.  Crude humor distorts the beauty of the human body in order to boost ratings for the radio station during their morning drive time.  State governments redefine marriage into something it cannot possibly be.  This list of attacks on married love could go on and on.

 

The Christian does not give in to afflictions but boasts in them as St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans.  He points out that these afflictions yield endurance.  Endurance leads to proven character which leads to hope; and hope does not disappoint.

These are not only attacks on God himself but on his entire plan for humanity.  Without strong, sacrificial, fruitful married love, the family dissolves.  As families dissolve and crumble, so society as a whole dissolves and crumbles.  Without the family, there is little chance of hearing the good news of Christ and being formed in light of it.

 A 14^th century theologian once pointed out that we experience the sweetness of the Trinity within us in proportion as we are conformed to it.  If the essence of the Trinity is sacrificial love, we must love sacrificially.  We must cherish the divine image in each of us most attentively.

What else is there?  That means we strive for purity of heart.  In purity of heart, we make room for the Trinity to be active in our lives.

The Trinity is active love.  We are called to imitate that active love.  We are designed to share ourselves.  As we share ourselves, we build up the Kingdom of God.

I’ll close with a quote I heard on Catholic radio just the other day:  The essential thing about family is not that parents have children, but that children have parents.

Corpus Christi - Sunday Homily

The Gospel sets up for us a real nice contrast between what we can do on our own without God and what we can do with Him.  In the Gospel, the apostles can do very little to feed the crowd.  When Jesus commands, “Give them some food yourselves,” they notice all they have are five loaves and two fish.  This wouldn’t be enough for a dozen people.  But with the supernatural power of God, they are able to feed 5,000.

Even as cool as this miracle was, it’s not the real miracle the Lord would eventually do.  These people would be hungry again the next day.  This miracle was good, but was still of finite value.  The real miracle would come at the Last Supper when the Lord would give his own body, blood, soul and divinity for the salvation of the world.  He would give a divine, supernatural food that lasts.  He would give his disciples liquid love to change their hearts that would set them on a path for eternal life.  What we do on our own does not even compare with what God can do. 

Without God, we can have a nice little memorial meal with bread and wine.  With God, the sacrifice of his Son on the Cross is made present for us.  We eat the body and drink the blood of the God-Man who saves us.

Without God we can get a maximum of about 100 years of life.  And one of the psalms tells us most of these are emptiness and pain.  With God, we get eternal life of complete fulfillment that we can’t even imagine.  John Paul II reminds us that the sacrifice of the Body and Blood is what brings about our destiny for eternal life.  With God we share the life of Christ now, and we share in his life forever.

Without God, we eat food that nourishes the body.  And since the body doesn’t last, this food is of finite value.  With God, the Eucharistic food of his body and blood nourishes the soul.  And since the soul is immortal, this Eucharistic food is of infinite value.

Without God, the food we eat becomes part of us.  We started out as small babies, and as we were nourished with food, we became larger.  With God, we become what we receive.  We become divinized.  We become more and more like him by feeding on Him.

Let’s imagine two rivers coming together.  One river is crystal clear, and the other river is muddy.  In the natural world, the two rivers come together and of course, the new river they form is muddy.  Imagine though the crystal clear river making the water of the muddy river crystal clear also.

Without God, the body decays.  With God, we are destined for the resurrection.

Our Eucharistic roots can be traced way back to the Old Testament.  We hear about Melchizedek in our first reading and Psalm today.  He brought out bread and wine and blessed Abram.  Like Christ, he had a priesthood that would last forever.

Also in the Old Testament, we know the story of the first Passover.  We may recall that God asked Moses to have the Israelites put lamb’s blood on their doorposts.  Without God, this is blood of an irrational beast making the doorposts kind of nasty and stinky, probably drawing lots of flies.  With God’s power, that lamb’s blood was used as His means to free His people from slavery.  With God, it’s a sign of the Lord’s blood that will be shed for us to save us and free us from our slavery to sin.

St. John Chrysostom asks, if the angel of death saw the lamb’s blood on those doors and did not dare to enter, how much less will the devil approach us now that he sees not a figurative blood on our doors, but the true blood of the Son of God on our lips?

As we enter into these sacred mysteries, we receive an abundance of grace.  Let’s participate with that grace so that we may appreciate the gift of the Eucharist that it truly is, the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus.  And may our lives conform to the mysteries that we receive.