Thy Kingdom Come!

 

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

29-30 January 2022, St. Lambert Parish

Jer 1:4-5, 17-19

1 Cor 12:31—13:13 or 13:4-13

Lk 4:21-30

        They say that discretion is the better part of valor, so on his behalf I want to let you know that Deacon Thomas is keeping to his bed this weekend with what may just be cold or flu symptoms. I told him that even though he did not feel that bad and thought he could tough it out, that out of respect for the parishioners present at Mass he should not come to church. The only drawback, of course, is that this has put me on deck to preach at the last minute in his place. You can tell me after Mass how I did with the homily prepared on short notice.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        Before I start, it might be good to point out a general, structural principle for the Lectionary in Ordinary Time (the selection of Scripture Readings that we use outside of the great feasts and times like Advent, Lent, Christmas and Easter). 2022 is the third year of the Sunday Cycle and so we are usually going to read from the Gospel of St. Luke. The Second Readings on Sundays are thematically unrelated. They are continuous readings mostly from St. Paul’s Letters and these days from his First Letter to the Corinthians. The First Readings from the Old Testament, this week from the prophet Jeremiah, seek to underpin or illustrate the Gospel which sets the tone or the theme for the particular Sunday.

        On the 4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, St. Luke recounts “part two” of the scene in the synagogue at Nazareth, that is, the reaction of the people to Jesus proclaiming that He is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah. Different from last Sunday’s reaction of the people assembled for the reading from the book of the law in the Book of Nehemiah, the people in today’s Gospel reject Jesus the Word of God and attempt to throw Him off a cliff. From the mouth of Christ, we hear that He wasn’t the least bit surprised by them, He fully expected their negative reaction stating, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.”

        To my way of thinking, we need to take the Gospel account and these words, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place,” as a challenge to ourselves regarding the Word of God. Time and again today you will hear preachers, but also serious Catholics in the social media, insisting or accusing that we have unthroned Christ the King in our day. People and even priests and bishops may no longer believe or certainly they do not behave as if the Catholic Church were any more than one of a possible number of religious confessions. They seem to be cool with the expression that freedom of religion has to do with being able to attend the church of your choice on Sunday. This happens at the expense of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the Church established by Jesus Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. The Council taught that there is one Church of Christ, and it is the Catholic one. We refer to all the various Protestant denominations as just that denominations, but not Church in the fullest sense of the term.

        When we do not hold to solid and constant Catholic teaching and especially as we lump all the various non-Christian religions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and so forth) into this same pot of denominational expressions, then all of a sudden Christ is diminished. In America, where from the beginning we Catholics have always been a minority, albeit a very important one, that has generally and rightly translated into respect for one another. But as soon as we move out of the Christian sphere, which is our American heritage, then all of a sudden Jesus is no longer the Christ, God’s Anointed, our only Savior. In this sense we can say that Christ has been deprived of His Throne and Crown.

        “Jesus began speaking in the synagogue, saying: ‘Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.’”

        This no sooner being said and the people in the synagogue start denying the possibility of Christ’s words being truly prophetic, of their truly being the last word, so to speak, and the rule of their lives, as having come from the mouth of God.

        For the parish mission I preached over the weekend of the 2^nd Sunday of Advent, the priests of St. Michael Parish gave me the assignment not only to prepare the faithful for Christmas but also to address the scandal of the lack of faith in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist affecting the Church generally today. There are a number of reasons for this crisis of faith in the Eucharist, but one I did not spend much time on at St. Michael’s, but which strikes me looking at the readings for today, is that of the nature of prophecy, both Old and New Testament, which is meant to be confrontational. In today’s First Reading, God speaks to the young prophet Jeremiah and tells him to ready himself for strife and rejection by God’s People unwilling to hear his words.

        “But do you gird your loins; stand up and tell them all that I command you. Be not crushed on their account, as though I would leave you crushed before them; for it is I this day who have made you a fortified city… against the whole land… They will fight against you but not prevail over you; for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”

        Jesus walked away from that crowd from the synagogue on the brow of the hill outside Nazareth that had rejected Him and wanted to make an end of Him and silence Him, by pushing him over the cliff to His death. Eventually, in Christ’s own good time, after He had completed His prophetic mission, they through Satan’s pride thought to have put an end to Him and to have silenced Him, by mistreating Him and finally nailing Him to a Cross. His death, however, swallowed up sin and death, winning victory in His glorious Resurrection. Christ our King is risen!

        We have been brought up and rightly so not to insult, despise or lord it over our non-Catholic relatives, friends, and neighbors. Within the community of the Church, however, we are confronted by the Word of God for Who He is. The obedience of faith would have us give the Lord Jesus His due, His Kingship over every aspect of our lives. Don’t be deceived by those who claim to be Catholic and refuse to bow under the mighty Hand of God and His truth! This last week was the great march for life in Washington and elsewhere. There are no exceptions concerning the absolute respect we own to all human life from conception to frail old age. And there should be no surprise that we are rejected for choosing God’s part. We cannot take life given by God in the womb and preserved by His Will in both disability and severe illness. O Lord, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!

        Things should go as they did in open space before the Water Gate of the Temple in Jerusalem, as the people rejoiced in rediscovering God’s law and adhering to it. More often than not, though (“Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.”) familiarity breeds contempt and people deny the prophet his due.

        Pray for conversion to the fulness of faith in Christ, for yourselves, for your families and friends, for the Church of God! O Lord, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Save Us from the Wrath to Come!

 

3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

22-23 January 2022 – St. Lambert

Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10

I Cor 12:12-30

Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        “Then they bowed down and prostrated themselves before the Lord, their faces to the ground. Ezra read plainly from the book of the law of God, interpreting it so that all could understand what was read.”

        “Ezra read plainly from the book of the law of God…”

        That’s from our first reading from the prophet Nehemiah and our Gospel passage from Luke pictures the Lord Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth reading and interpreting from the book of the prophet Isaiah. In both instances we’re talking about Sacred Scripture, both Old Testament passages, the first from the book of God’s law and the second from one of the prophets. In both cases we are talking about the Word of God. In the first case God’s word to his people is being interpreted by Ezra the priest scribe, obviously an authority in Israel, and in the other case by Jesus, the Son of God, Who is Himself the Word of God made flesh.

Granted, both of these situations are extraordinary. In the case of the prophet Nehemiah, God’s people had recovered the book of the law the observance of which had been neglected by their forefathers and the knowledge of which had gone lost to them. It must be said, from this reading it is evident that the people of Israel were a bit confused and overwhelmed at this recovery or discovery; they were filled with no small amount of emotion and regret. They had to be comforted and told not to be fearful or sorrowful but rather to rejoice and celebrate because by coming once again to an understanding of God’s law they were being taken back into their historical covenant, into their relationship with God their strength. At least for this Sunday, the passage from Luke’s Gospel does not represent an exact parallel; it stops short of giving us the second part, namely the people’s reaction to coming face to face with God’s Word. That part of the account will come next Sunday, as we continue reading from St. Luke’s Gospel. But already today, we note that Jesus very clearly proclaims Himself to the people of His hometown for Who He is:

        “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” …He said to them “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”  

        Sticking closer to Nehemiah so as to leave the Gospel part for next Sunday, my question is whether we are as moved by God’s Word as were those people standing there in the open place before the Water Gate.

I am not pointing fingers, but I am thinking of the scene in George Bernanos’ novel, Diary of a Country Priest, where an older priest advises a young priest not to open his heart to the people of his parish, especially to guard himself against the cruelty of the farm kids in his catechism class [Bernanos wrote his masterpiece back in 1936 in French and I have a copy in English of the 12^th edition printed in 2002. Just to say: It is a very popular book with much to say even yet today]. My point would be to let you know that people today share a lot in common with French peasants and petty nobility from back before WWII. Hearts can be fickle, but more to the point, people in every day and age can be ignorant of the faith, its power to transform and save us.

Another one of my favorite examples in the same vein is of a Dominican priest saint, St. Vincent Ferrer, who lived from 1350-1419, nicknamed “The Angel of the Judgment”. He traveled around the countryside in Europe preaching from makeshift pulpits set up in fields at the edge of villages and towns. He called people to repentance before the impending judgment of the world: his was the time of the Great Western Schism, when the Church was in very bad shape. Some other authors title St. Vincent the angel of the Apocalypse and many times in paintings you will see him depicted with wings. St. Vincent preached the fear of the Lord; he preached the coming judgment of all the world. He preached to big crowds and did not just threaten. He had a group of confreres who accompanied him, who would work then individually and in small groups to teach the people their basic prayers, even the Sign of the Cross, basic catechism and prepare them for the sacraments, Baptism for those who had not been baptized and Penance for those who had not been to confession in a long time.

From the time of Ezra reading the law, from Jesus and the Apostles themselves, over the course of 2000 years of Church history, the call has been for repentance but couched always in the terms of the book of Nehemiah.

“Do not be sad, and do not weep” – for all the people were weeping as the heard the words of the law. He said further: “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks, and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared; for today is holy to our Lord. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength.”

Today, just as in other periods, such as that before the time of Saint Vincent or later during the Enlightenment in Europe, when kings, emperors and petty nobles pressured priests and monks into limiting themselves to practical moral preaching about how to be good citizens and good farmers, neglecting prayer and penance, you commonly hear lay people complain that the Church, that Catholic preachers are not feeding them with the full Gospel. By the same token, many people are scandalized by the laxity of those called to exercise sacred ministry within the Church. The message is discredited because of the unworthy messengers.

My message to you today, would be to look to the book of Nehemiah for inspiration. His Excellency Nehemiah and Ezra, the priest scribe, were just as ignorant of what was in the book of the law as were the people who heard the book read that day. But both together were ready to let Sacred Scripture transform them in accordance with what was proclaimed in the assembly and interpreted for them by the Levites. Nehemiah and Ezra fulfilled their responsibility before God and His people, calling the people back to the observance of the law, back to living under God and thereby calling them back to God’s love and His abundant favor.

The Church’s liturgy of the Word today reminds us that we are called to do the same. As a watchman or a guard dog, to use two images from Scripture, I cannot be silent. Your priests and deacons, charged with preaching and teaching, cannot neglect to proclaim to you, to confront you and themselves at the same time with the fullness of the Gospel message. We must call you to repentance, to reform of life before the impending judgment. Unworthy as we are, if we don’t do it then who will call us back to the straight and narrow, who will tell us of God’s love and of what counts in life?

Knowledge of who God is in Jesus Christ, knowledge of your basic prayers, faithfulness to the Commandments and to the Precepts of the Church, genuine repentance, which involves renouncing sin and avoiding the near occasions of sin, having regular recourse to the Sacrament of Penance, all go a long way to assuring that just like those people so long ago in the open space before Jerusalem’s Water Gate, so we too can rather rejoice in the Lord Who saves us and sets us free from Satan’s pride for happiness with Him in this world and in the next.

Just one recommendation! It has been a month already since most of you made your confession for Christmas. Consider making a good confession now as a preparation for Lent which starts on Ash Wednesday, March 2^nd. It could make your 40 days of Lent more fruitful and help you make an even better Confession during Lent in preparation for Easter.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Making Christ Manifest

 

2^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Lambert Parish, 16 January 2022 

Is 62:1-5

1 Cor 12:4-11

Jn 2:1-11

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        “For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse. As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.”

        It is kind of rare to find people who think about their relationship with God using the language of Isaiah the prophet. To ask why that is, is not the point, but to note the fact is important and could challenge us to look more closely at how we understand faith’s role in our lives. Making room in our lives for an appreciation of this marriage imagery and the relational character of the life of faith which exists between God and us could make the faith which is ours more what it should be. Isaiah is speaking of a relationship between God and a nation, Zion or Jerusalem. We as Catholics have a communal identity as God’s people as well. Our faith must have a relational impact on our particular lives as part of that people, His Church, beloved of God in Jesus Christ.

“For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse. As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.”

Can you believe that it is already the 2^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time? In the kind of circles I frequent, there is always lots of back and forth at this time of year about when Christmas is really over. Apart from various family traditions about when to take down the tree and store the crib scene for another year, everyone seems to have an opinion: Do you take things down on New Year’s Day? Is the Epiphany the last day to celebrate? Is it the Baptism of the Lord which closes the season? Or should Christmas have a lively place in our hearts, homes, and parish churches all the way through the feast of the Presentation in the Temple on February 2^nd?

        I bring this point up because of the readings assigned for this, the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time. I am thinking, yes, about this quote from the prophet Isaiah, but even more so about the Gospel of John recounting the miracle, His first, which Jesus worked at His Mother’s behest at the Wedding Feast in Cana, changing water into wine so that the party could go on. You see, Cana is central to the Christmas feast. It is as much Epiphany as are the Magi and the Baptism of the Lord by John in the Jordan. The divine office, the Liturgy of Hours at Evening Prayer for the feast, best recounts the great mystery of Epiphany in the antiphon for the Magnificat:

        “Three mysteries mark this holy day: today the star leads the Magi to the infant Christ; today water is changed into wine for the wedding feast; today Christ wills to be baptized by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation.”

        Ordinary Time or not, in reflecting on the Lord’s first public miracle at Cana in Galilee, we are still very much in the spirit of Epiphany, of Christ’s manifestation. What is my point? Why do I bring this up? I suppose because I worry an awful lot about the Church fulfilling its mission. What is our mission as baptized people if not to make Christ manifest to our world? Different from the wise men and the star and even very different from the manifestation of Christ at the Jordan, a wedding party is a wedding party and very much a part, a beautiful part, of real life. Ultimately, I as a bishop, okay retired, but still an uppity up in the Church, I need to be showing Jesus, True God and True Man, to the world around me. That essentially is my mission. I have by reason of Holy Orders a role to play in making the Lord known, in glorifying His Name before the nations. Beyond good example, preaching and teaching is the lion’s share of my task. Baptized into Christ that is the job of all of you as well, to make Him manifest. We do it less by preaching but rather in real human terms as is evidenced in the language of this Sunday. By our lives we make Christ manifest and thereby treat everyone we encounter to the marvel of the water of humanity in those stone jars changed into the truly great wine of life at one with the Lord.

        “For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse. As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.”

        If we believe all the surveys out there, it would be hard not to conclude that Catholic people, at least in the Western World (Europe and the Americas for sure), are more disconnected from life when it comes to the faith than they, than we have been in a long time. How long? In a sense the length of time doesn’t matter, and we can argue from the principle in Church law about custom as a source of law, which establishes that an immemorial custom is any one which has been held or practiced as long as anyone can remember or at least for more than 50 years [an immemorial custom]. I would contend that our disconnect has been forever. To make my point another way, many Catholics for over two generations at least haven’t had much of anything invested personally in the faith. They may identify as Catholics without giving any evidence of what that might mean in their everyday lives. The imagery of the romance of bridegroom and bride is lost on them.

        Oh! Archbishop! How can you say that? Easily! Ask yourself, even if it is not your favorite way of describing your faith if you can at least appreciate doing it by identifying with the bride and bridegroom imagery of the prophet Isaiah to describe your relationship with Christ in His Holy Church! Is that really necessary? Must it be? I think yes, even if wedding feasts are not exactly an everyday thing. If entered into rightly, the imagery of holy matrimony can be a beautiful and upbeat interpretive key for what we mean by “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part”. I am talking about living the faith so as to give witness of its truth and beauty to the world around us. I am talking about how we pass the faith on to our children. I have my childhood memories [more than 50 years ago] from both Mom and Dad of how they passed on or witnessed to the good wine of our Catholic faith! It was nothing flashy, but it was genuine, and they shared their faith with us very simply, naturally if you will, without being preachy or pretentious. I miss that as a general pattern in our families today. 

        “For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse.” If I can appreciate God’s love for me, how He delights in me, how can I resist sharing it with those around me, who should be confirmed in that good news as well? The message we have to share is sublime, but we do so as naturally and normally as we can, even if what we have to share is the shockingly great news of how we are loved by God.

        “When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servers, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’”

        The scripture scholars all have their pet theories about why Jesus responded as He did to His Mother. “Woman, how does your concern affect me?” Mary didn’t bat an eye: “His mother said to the servers, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’”

        It is not much of a message for this Sunday, but like Mary, we should not bat an eye in asking and being confident that the Lord can change our water into wine for the sake of the feast. Confess Jesus for Who He is, let Him be made manifest in your homes and in our world as the one who loves us and delights in us just like the bridegroom does in his bride.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Living in the Truth and Human Flourishing

 

“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life." [John 6:68]

If I had to single out an existential quandary, which has been troubling me a lot and that I have faced and not faced time and again in this year just concluded, 2021, my first full year from beginning to end as a retiree, it would be that of how to decide whether to take someone, most anyone at his word. I know that sounds odd coming from someone who was not born yesterday and has had his experience both with stupidity and with human treachery, but that is just what makes it all so troubling. How do you get beyond Pontius Pilate's cynical "What is truth?" when dealing with people, be they strangers or not? Can I rely on any person's word, whether spoken, printed or uploaded?

So-called fake news is not even the half of what concerns me here. I guess that liars, people of bad will or intention, will always be. Into this basket I would also place materialists, the conniving and greedy, whose agenda has no room for the Lordship of Christ and for subjecting our world and our lives to His reign. They are, however, less my problem, because they can be more easily exposed and shunned for our own protection as well as for the protection of those whom we love. I am even less worried about being led astray by the petty and foolish. My difficulty has to do with other groups, and which are sometimes labeled as well-intentioned and worthy of respect. I am troubled by all those givens, confidently possessed, defended, and proclaimed by a middle aged to older sort of conservative establishment, ready to tolerate way too much for the sake of not confronting the status quo in government, business, and labor, not to mention what we are supposed to believe is mainstream Catholicism.

Above all, I guess, I am troubled by those who take their stance for and against others based more on fealty or comradeship and less on what I would think was personal integrity and an uncompromising search for truth. Jockeying for the advantage, testing loyalties, and the frequency with which others are accused of betrayal seems to trump authenticity and personal integrity.

It appears that mine or someone else's pearl of great price does not interest or give pause to those who seemingly hold the high ground, be it intellectual or moral. This supposedly friendly opposition, masquerading as allied forces, will not move beyond fortress walls and revise positions perhaps imposed upon them in their childhood or youth and never revisited.

I just read an article by someone I know as a totally integral person, whom I know I can trust. I cannot join her as she proclaims the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI to have been undermined by reason of their failure to confront and do battle with what many brand as neo-modernism. She castigates neo-conservativism and outlines a program for rallying to the banner of tradition in defense of the fullness of the faith. I suppose her experience of betrayal leads her to cancel not only what shows itself ugly in our times, but which ends up being branded as its logical precedent and equally culpable. Book burnings no longer make sense, but her search seems to be for some sort of damnatio memoriae.

What I miss in her position and in that of many others is the witness of St. Vincent Ferrer, O.P. “The Angel of the Judgment” [1350-1419], who was less into church politics and totally consumed by his preaching. I am still looking for that kind of saint in our times.

Join me in storming heaven for another "angel" like St. Vincent to call people to conversion before the great day of wrath!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI