Confined to the Reservation?

    Korazym.org (here) published in Italian a sort of odd article expressing skepticism over the intent of the particular audiences granted by Pope Francis to representatives of the FSSP on last February 4 and to Rev. Davide Pagliarani the Superior General of the FSSPX on February 8 and the consequent steps or declarations emanating from the Holy See.

    Korazym does not seem to make much of the papal document of February 11, securing for the FSSP and seemingly for all the other Ecclesia Dei Institutes the guarantee that their constitutions are held upright and in their own churches or houses or with the blessing of the local ordinary they can continue their mission rooted in the ancient usage for Holy Mass, the Sacraments, the Breviary and devotions. The Italian Catholic news service compared the move by the Pope to the historical creation of reservations in the wastelands of the United States for the sake of confining the native American peoples.

   Regardless of what you might think of that comparison, Korazym's intent was to clearly write off these recent events as nothing more than a malevolent strategy of containment on the part of the Holy Father, which in no way detracts from his endgame very much still at odds with Church Tradition and bent on consigning our liturgical patrimony to the dustbin of history once and for all.

    I guess for my part I have always underestimated the visceral hatred of the last elements standing of a generation older than mine, which since the 1950's at least have mindlessly pushed forward the "Star Trek" agenda of venturing where no man has gone before. Condemnations of "rigidity" are no more than a smokescreen to cover an old vendetta, rooted as much in a petty modernist agenda as in hatred of all things starched and trimmed with lace.

    Desperately holding to the Novus Ordo and the delusion that it might represent a way forward must be in its death throws. With confidence we will hold for tradition and the hope that true religion will stand forth upon the rubble of the edifice of the last 60 years marred as it is by violence and dissimulation.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

I place before you a blessing and a curse: choose life!

 

6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

12-13 February 2022 – St. Lambert

Jer 17:5-8

1 Cor 15:12, 16-20

Lk 6:17, 20-26

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

“Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings… Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord.” That’s from the Old Testament Prophet Jeremiah!

        Our Gospel today presents the Beatitudes as they appear in St. Luke. They are about the same, but the wording is not as familiar obviously as that of those we know from St. Matthew’s Gospel. “Blessed are you who are poor… But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”

        Blessed are you, cursed are you, woe to you! Both these accounts, that of the Prophet Jeremiah and that of the words of Jesus in the Gospel, are so constructed to balance out or contrast the blessings with the curses and the woes. The back and forth does just what it is intended to do; it brings clarity. With both the blessing and the curse on each topic you know just where you stand. You are blessed for being poor, for being hungry, for weeping, for being hated by people on account of the Son of Man. You are cursed, if you are rich, your stomach is full, if you are without cares, if people speak well of you.

Both with Jeremiah the Prophet speaking in God’s name and with the Lord Jesus speaking in His own name, if you listen attentively, you will know where you stand before God. There can be no mistaking about whether you are saved or you are at risk of being damned. Judgment is unavoidable; all of us will be judged by God. Divine judgment and retribution (reward or punishment) must come sooner or later, and it won’t come from the tribunal of popular opinion. “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.” Judgment always comes from God and from Him alone. Sadly, for the way our world today works, most people do not want to hear that message, and most people fear the judgment of men. Their heads are easily turned by words of praise from fellow human beings, and they tremble at the possibility of being criticized or, to use a popular word of our time, they are in utter dread of being cancelled by the media, by the powers that be in our world. They’ll gladly take the “blessed-are-you” part of the Beatitudes, but they tend to take it rather badly when they are condemned, even when the condemnation is not coming from man but from God the Judge of all. What can I say? That seems to be a common experience.

        Given this back and forth and the mentality of not few people today, I ask myself whether it is appropriate to spend a Sunday homily examining the question of where we stand before God. Do people really care about God’s judgment? Do they hope for His love and approval? Well done, good and faithful servant, come and share your master’s joy! No matter what anyone may tell you to the contrary, this world and the approval of men in society is not what counts. It is ultimately a question of whether we are blessed or cursed by God and not just for a day or a lifetime, but for all eternity.

Obviously, final judgment is the end of the process. We live in the hope of time and opportunity to grow beyond our mistakes, our sins, and shortcomings. We believe that correction is a good thing, especially when admonition brings us to our senses and puts us on the right path. Nobody likes being corrected or challenged, but in point of fact it is salutary. Thanks to making amends, to changing our ways, we can live in hope. As believing people we hope to be able to live forever with God in the joy of His Kingdom.

Perhaps the question is why does Luke concentrate on these four blessings? Since Matthew lists eight Beatitudes, we can conclude that Luke’s list of just four from the teaching of Christ is not exhaustive. It is not that the other four in Matthew are not equally important or that Luke had not heard about them, but rather that the Evangelist had a specific lesson in mind in choosing these four. You are blessed for being poor, for being hungry, you are blessed for weeping, for being hated by people on account of the Son of Man.

But these four things which ultimately mean suffering or misery for people, how can they be blessings? And how can their opposites, material wealth, enough to eat, freedom from sorrows, and the esteem of our colleagues and friends, how can these humanly good things be curses before God?  

The Church in its liturgy also had something in mind when it tied this Gospel passage to the blessings and curses uttered by the Prophet Jeremiah. “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.” Even in the Old Testament wisdom and prophecy teach that having things too good cannot help but put us at odds with God. That is the gist really of the Exodus experience, of Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the desert and bemoaning the loss of the so-called fleshpots of Egypt and all the leeks and melons they could eat. Poverty, hunger, sorrow, and unpopularity are the yield in this life that comes from relying solely on the Lord. As we know from elsewhere in the Gospel, we know that it must be so, that you cannot serve both God and mammon.

The Letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 11, explains the Exodus experience and much more.

“All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.” [Hebrews 11:13-16]

Time and again in the life of the Church, there have been crises followed by periods of renewal and genuine flourishing. Without exception the renewal has been marked by some kind of austerity or simply by the embrace of a life of poverty. The first great success of the Church was forged in the terrible furnace of persecution. As it is said, the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians. No sooner had the Church replaced paganism as the established religion of the Roman Empire than heresy began to tear her apart. Thanks to all the desert fathers and monks, who renounced wealth and privilege to follow Christ in poverty, chastity, and obedience, the Church was able to recover her orthodoxy. Her next fall from grace in the Middle Ages was counterbalanced by the extreme poverty of the mendicant orders, like the Franciscans and the Dominicans.

My question to you and to myself would be, whence will come deliverance and renewal in our day in time, where once again the Church seems to be faltering? We need to turn toward Christ Who calls us blessed for being poor, for being hungry, for weeping, for being hated by people on account of His Name. Enough of being cursed for being rich, for having a full stomach, for having been spared the cares and sorrows of this life, for having enjoyed human respect and popularity!

As clear as the blessings and curses may be, the Church has always had to struggle to find the path forward. Besides clarity of thought, we need courage and confidence in God to follow Him into the desert. It is that time of year again in the Church. In the old Church calendar this Sunday marked the beginning of what was referred to as pre-Lent, which was supposed to ease us into the greater penance of the 40 days of preparation for Easter to start on Ash Wednesday. I would suggest that you start praying already now that the Lord may grant you the true blessings. May the Lord help us set our hearts on the life of the world to come! May we be spared the curses of those who choose the easy life and have nothing to hope for in Christ’s Kingdom!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

From our parishes and from our homes!

 

5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

6 February 2022 – St. Lambert

Is 6:1-2a, 3-8

1 Cor 15:1-11

Lk 5:1-11

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        What do we mean by a divine or supernatural vocation? That question deserves more thought than what it gets in our time. What do we mean by a divine or supernatural vocation?

This last week I saw some more statistics about the increasing average age of our priests and religious in the Church, and most worrisome about the advanced age of parish priests in different states here in the US. The article talked about the overall decline in the number of practicing Catholics, as well as about the decline in the number of men studying for the priesthood in our country. Some dioceses are terribly short of young priests or priests in general, and others not, but in every place, it would seem that Catholic people and their priests and sisters are older. We are a ticking time bomb or rather a clock which may soon run out.

Not even South Dakota is without its worries. I remember years ago Bishop Carlson praying that all the men we had in seminary would persevere and promising to help not only with the military ordinariate, but also with our neighboring dioceses in Minnesota which were already in bad shape back then. Meantime sadly, we have similar issues here in our diocese, even if to be fair to all of you, it should be noted not only the sisters and the two priests which families of your parish have offered to the Church in the last couple of years, but the other hopeful sign that in the last few weekends here at St. Lambert all of the parish bulletins have been taken, and Tracie has had to print more bulletins. It would seem at least here at St. Lambert that folks have their general COVID anxiety behind them and are coming back to Mass on the weekends, and of course, that is very good news.

At the first of the year, I had a visit with Bishop DeGrood, and he told me he is worried both that the rural parishes especially continue to shrink, and that more and more of our priests are reaching retirement age. In terms of seminary numbers, we are all aware that if, please God, all four men possible are ordained to the priesthood this coming spring, then there will be no one ordained in the diocese for maybe three or four years. Other dioceses in the area which were famous for big numbers of seminarians, like Lincoln, Nebraska or Wichita, Kansas, also have noted a sharp drop in the number of candidates.

I ask myself, why? Where do vocations come from? How can we help men persevere in the seminary and in the priesthood?

Not so much that news article, but the readings for this 5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time provoked this line of thought in me. Both the Old Testament Reading and the Gospel today recount very dramatic vocations stories. Neither story is exactly typical for our day. Honestly, I can’t say as I have ever met a priest whose vocational experience was comparable to that of Isaiah the Prophet in the first reading.

“Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember that he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it, and said, ‘See, now that this has touched you lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.’ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?’ ‘Here I am,’ I said, ‘send me!’” As I say, nobody has ever told me of such an experience on their path to priesthood. For several hundred years now, especially in Europe, the choice to study for the priesthood does not seem to be connected to visions of the heavenly court and angels coming down with burning coals to purify men and dispose them to say yes to God’s call.

No doubt this exceptional account from the Book of Isaiah has something to do with the exalted calling which the prophet received. As such, it may not exactly fit the profile of your average priest. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?’ ‘Here I am,’ I said, ‘send me!’” But then again, maybe it should?

Even the miraculous catch of fish in the Gospel today, which preceded Simon Peter’s profession of faith in Jesus as God’s Holy One; “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Thereafter followed Christ’s call to Peter, James, and John to come after Him as fishers of men. Here too, the scene is spectacular in its own way and may not be something most of the priests I have known over the years could relate to. Being so struck by the holiness and power of God in Jesus Christ would be something we wished for all Catholics and especially for our priests, but it does not seem to be all that typical of people in the Church.  My own vocation, for example, was not accompanied by lightning and thunderbolts, or boatloads of fish but was and is a gentle kind of thing which has developed, and which has grown with me even up until today. And I guess generally, that is kind of what we expect from young men who aspire to priesthood. They need to be open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, which means that generally they come to the seminary and priesthood not exactly sure of their calling, but with good will and a readiness to grow and be transformed by a very subtle grace. That is why many men talk about how for a time they resisted their call from God, either not recognizing it, because it was so subtle, or stubbornly refusing it as they personally seemed to want something other than what they themselves for whatever reason could not see as something which God wanted for them. They were convinced they wanted marriage and family, with some sort of a career, but were for the most part romanticizing about things far from real life or even farther from what God had created them and chosen them to be from all eternity. There are good reasons for resisting a call, as we see in the lives of saints like St. Andrew Corsini who was already a religious and hid himself when he was elected bishop of Fiesole. It goes without saying that such examples of humility are rather few and far between. Men are less apt to flee honors than they are to flee responsibility or duty.

[By way of an aside, the article I read reported a drop in the number of Catholic marriages as well. This is for me another symptom of the flight from responsibility in life and ultimately from the only real joy or consolation in this world, which is and by God’s will must be intimately bound up with self-sacrifice and life-long dedication.]

The question, I suppose, is where do we go from here?  I think all of us are called to have a response to my initial question. What do we mean by a divine or supernatural vocation? We need to do so against the assurances we have from Sacred Scripture that the Lord will not abandon us. He will not leave His flock untended. Or as some people say it, when it comes to priesthood, the Lord does not fail to call men to priesthood in sufficient numbers for the needs of His Church. If there is a priest shortage then it has to do with the freedom equation, namely that God forces no one to accept a calling and hence men can refuse and thereby deprive themselves of the happiness willed for them by God.

In the vocation equation we all have our part to play. The burden of responsibility lies with the young: with children and young people who need to open their eyes and ears, open their hearts to God’s call: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?’ ‘Here I am,’ I said, ‘send me!’” Even so, those advanced in age and those already settled in their life’s vocation, whether it be to marriage and family or to priesthood or the religious life need to make clear to all whom they meet [this goes especially for young parents with their children from little on up] their hunger, their profound desire for good priests who stand at the altar for them and for religious men and women, who dedicate themselves to Christ the Bridegroom with singleness of heart.

If I thought there was one particular reason for why young people resist or balk at the idea of embracing a supernatural vocation, it would be for lack of an example of self-sacrifice at home.

Lent will be here before you know it and it might be good as you choose your Lenten penance practices for this year to add to it a special intention, namely please God for priestly and religious vocations from our diocese, from our parish and, yes, from our homes. The Lord will not abandon His flock, but we need to help open ears and hearts to the call of the Good Shepherd.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Shining a light into a dark place

Though it border on the sinful, perhaps for presumption, I confess that I wish I possessed the kind of intellectual and moral authority to be able to speak a word and clear the air in the present situation of controversy in the Church. Even without reference to the Supreme Authority in the Catholic Church, there seem indeed to be different camps and partial positions which have people pitted against each other and pointing fingers of blame at others they accuse of questioning the legacy of the Second Vatican Council or perhaps of espousing a neo-modernist agenda which perverts the faith and, well intended, the legacy of the Council (this to name only two factions or positions on the broad spectrum of conflict, which resembles less a field of battle and more a free for all). 

I found this short video (Here) quite articulate, even if strident, in grounding the defense for recourse to adherence to the tradition over and against the Novus Ordo experiment of 50+ years. I understand the reserve of NLM, but it is indeed time to throw in the towel and look again with a bit more detachment at what the Council Fathers had hoped to achieve in championing a pastoral agenda at the Council and at which they may just have failed miserably. 

There is something to be said for the advice that old, retired archbishops should just hold their tongues and keep their heads down... Living longer and having memories does not necessarily give one an edge or additional perspective on things. Let me however weigh in on the side of tradition and offer two examples of where I see older and experienced as indeed better: the first being rather innocuous and the other not so much. In doing so, my intent is to cast something upon the waters, regardless of its probable failure to contribute to easing the pain and division. I hope not to be hurtful in my description of the second case.

Just recently, I happened on a video explaining the revival of the practice of women and girls veiling in church. The presentation was very well done but seemed to go way beyond my childhood experience simply of both veils and hats as being just that, a head covering. The young lady in the video made no mention of the white round doilies I remember especially in elementary school, which small girls and young women tended to wear once they graduated from baby bonnets. At least in our part of the country, dress hats far outweighed in popularity the veil, and I doubt if few in my mother's generation would be able to address the topic of color-coding veils by the occasion: white, black, blue or beige. I never saw veils in the liturgical colors of red or green, let alone purple, when I was a child.  

Just the other day, young Dr. Taylor Marshall made an attempt in a video to wrap his head around the absolute hatred nurtured by Pope Francis against the tradition. Marshall sort of questioned or insinuated that maybe it could be traced back to an incident from his childhood or youth recounted by the pope in a children's book, in which he recounts falling down on the altar in front of everybody with the big missal. The good doctor seems oblivious to the fact that most scrawny little ten-year-old boys took a tumble on the altar. He also seems oblivious to the fact that the default position of a goodly number of people over 80 years of age is still one of virulent hatred against the tradition. They drank the "cool aid" of post-conciliar iconoclasm, wreck-ovation or whatever you want to call it. No doubt the urgency of the pope to press his agenda of hardnosed repression is fueled by the realization that the most virulent anti-traditionalists all have one foot in the grave. People my age and younger, if they are not neo-modernist supporting the agenda of rupture with the past, then they do so for opportunist motives, as seems evident in the case of some bishops and cardinals whose only stake in the game would be their quest for prestige or power. In his wisdom, with Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI had all but succeeded in taking the sword out of the hands of the last diehards of the revisionist crowd, leaving hope for the recovery of those with no stake in the game and who did not understand that the Church lives in continuity with its past, rooted in the historical figure of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Do we find ourselves in the Church in a dark place and since when? Or maybe, why do so many people seem to prefer darkness to the light? Sinfulness is certainly a key factor. It is preposterous to attribute to the Council the intention of making of Christ's Church a sort of Starship Enterprise venturing out where no man had gone before. That is fantasy and has nothing to do with regular life and human culture, and even less to do with the mission entrusted by Christ to His Church.

I seem to have lost my courage for now to press the matter further. Let me repeat my appeal for the recovery of a genuine shepherding stance, which would live and let live. Until we can figure out how to do it, we need to foster the traditional Mass and Sacraments, traditional catechism and custom, in hopes of affirming and strengthening Catholic family life and promoting virtuous living. You might say that without pressing, repressing or the violence typical of the late '60's and '70's, I am hoping that younger generations might have the opportunity to be won over by the goodness, the beauty and truth of that fixed point in our turning world, which is light and life already for those who have discovered it.

Lord, save us from our enemies and restore us to grace!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

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