Feast of the Archangels

Though we celebrate the feast of the Archangels today, the 2nd reading from the Book of Revelation (Rev 12: 7-12) shows that the ultimate victory against evil is won by martyrs. Martyrdom reveals God’s goodness and truth and destroys the lies of evil. The martyr proves to the world that by the grace of God he is superior to the seduction and to the threat of evil. To choose to suffer for truth and love is the defeat of lies and hate.

The victory of the martyr is won through the blood of the Lamb—Jesus Christ. Through his Cross and Resurrection, Jesus fell to the nadir human existence (despair and hatred) and overcame it; and the martyrs participate and share in this costly victory of forgiveness. The world will not be saved by anonymous Christians, rather the world will be saved by the blood of those, who surrender their lives to Christ in order to be given away to the people of God—the world will be saved by martyrs for Christ. May we ask the Archangels to protect us, as we make journey to our martyrdoms.

The Demands and Costs of Discipleship

Gospel Lk 8:4-15


This Saturday we hear possibly the 1st parable ever spoken by Jesus. It is a parable that speaks about the mission of Christ and about the ones who desire to follow him; it is a parable that illuminates the demands and costs of Christian discipleship.

In the Parable of the Sower we are reminded that the Word of God is always good, but the outcome of it depends on the heart and the mind into which it falls. The Word of God falling on good soil is equal to a person with a good and generous heart. The person with such a heart listens attentively. He allows Christ to grow in his heart and mind and ponders over the meaning of Christ for his life—he discerns where Christ is calling him. After his deliberation, he acts upon it.

As disciples, we follow in the footsteps of Christ by sowing or spreading the Good News to others. In our labor for the Kingdom, we are warned that we may not be completely successful. Yet we are counseled against despair. Though some of our efforts may not bear fruit, we are assured of a harvest. This parable reminds us that, though we may have our heart aches and losses in our mission for the Lord, no enemy can defeat the ultimate victory of God and we are to live in and out of this victory in our struggle for truth, goodness, and beauty.

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Today we celebrate the exaltation of the Cross. The Cross in the light of the Resurrection reveals to us the love between the Father and the Son in the communion of the Holy Spirit. It is a love that defies fear, hatred, despair, and death. It is a love that transforms fear, hatred, despair, and death.

In Paul’s moving letter to the Philippians [2: 6-11], he points to the important characteristics of Jesus’ life: his humility, obedience, and selfless love. Within all this we find the glory of Jesus. It is the glory that should lead everyone to fall on their knees and to give Him praise. Yet, the impetus of our praise and worship does not ultimately come from fear. It comes from love. Jesus won the hearts of men and women, not by forcing them through his power, but by embracing both saints and sinners on the cross. Jesus did not take up the finer things in this world. He also took up the ugly things in this world on the cross, brought them to the Father in the Spirit, and transformed them into beauty.

Labor Day Thoughts

Paul’s Letter to the Colossians (Col. 1:24-2:3) in today’s readings for Mass is appropriate for our Labor Day celebration. In the beginning of his letter Paul strikes a bold thought. He thinks of his sufferings occurred in ministry as “completing” the sufferings of Christ. Jesus died to save humanity and to gather a Church. Yet the Church ought to flourish and grow; She must be kept strong and free from error. Thus, anyone who labors in and for God’s people and ensuring their well-being and protecting them for harm, is doing the work of Christ. And if such labor entails suffering and sacrifice, that affliction is a participation in the suffering of Christ. To labor and suffer in service of Christ is neither a punishment nor a chore but a glorious opportunity and privilege for sharing in his work to renew creation and humanity.

My Brothers and Sisters,

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church.

One of St. Augustine's great contribution to the life of the Church was his insistence on the humility of the 2nd Person of the Trinity. In Christ's self-emptying love to the frailty of human life and to the death on the Cross he renewed humanity. For St. Augustine, it is by Christ's death that the sacraments are bestowed upon us. It is his by his death that the ugliness of hatred and despair is taken up and renewed into the beauty of love, forgiveness, and hope. It is by the Cross that humanity is brought back from the ugliness of sin and into the beauty of the redeemed Body of Christ. According to Augustine, the power of God's love is most evocative in the vulnerability of His self-emptying love for us. It is the encounter and the reception of this kenosis that enables persons to surrender their lives in the name of the One who is Love. Only something so beautiful can move a person to give his life to God and neighbor.

"Do we love anything but that which is beautiful? What, then, is beauty? What is it that attracts us and attaches us to the things we love? (Confessions X, 13, 20)"

Into the third week of Easter, we begin to see a kind of pattern emerging which is THE pattern of our lives as Christians...life, death and resurrection. It is the pattern of the life of Christ obviously. It is also the pattern of his followers.

In the liturgy today we hear proclaimed the story of Stephen professing faith in the Father who sent the Son with confidence and he pays with his life for such a proclamation. he also asks for forgiveness for those who kill him. Sound familiar? The pattern is established as the Church's first martyr follows the Lord all the way to death and beyond.

Watching in the wings is another who will be drawn into the same pattern of life death and resurrection- Saul of Tarsus who will become The Apostle- Paul.

And so, the first generations of Christians begin to follow and imitate the Lord Jesus. And new life comes from their fidelity. Had they refused the pattern, we would not be calling ourselves Christians today. We are their inheritors. We have life because they gave theirs. What will we do with ours?

The Lord's descent into hell

"What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.

Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam's son.

The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: 'My Lord be with you all.' And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.
‘I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise.

‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.

‘For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form; that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden.

‘Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image.

'See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one.

`I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.
‘But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God.

"The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages."

A reading from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

http://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010414_omelia-sabato-santo_en.html

Palm Sunday and Worldly Power

A few years back in the mass for Christ the King, a lector at our parish proclaimed not that Jesus was "robed in majesty", but "robbed of majesty". Though she got the words in the reading wrong, the sense was right on.
We celebrate the same kind of confusing mystery on Palm Sunday. Jesus enters "triumphant" into the city where he will be humiliated and defeated, on his way to ascend to his "throne", the cross on Calvary.
In the last several days, we've seen lots of images of the most powerful political figures in the world gathered at the G20 Summit. Lots pf posturing and promising was made about how each was going to lead and how together they would solve the world's problems. We pray that some of it might come true.
But on this Palm Sunday we are reminded that, in the end, the only real victory and power comes not by way of strong militaries, high apporval ratings or treasuries flush with cash, but rather only by way of love. Indeed, this way of love necessarily runs right through the via crucis. None of those G20 leaders or their entourages have in their sights anything like the scene from Calvary, but with the eyes of Christian faith we know that that's the only way to true victory, to true power, to life.
Let's ask the Lord as we enter into another Holy Week, that the pattern of his victory on the cross might be lived out in our own world, in our own lives and in our own hearts. Let's not fear being "robbed" of majesty, but instead be "robed" in what is truly noble in the eyes of the heavenly kingdom.

What are we turning from (and toward) in Lent?

These days during Lent we focus on the ways in which we need to turn away from sin. But what exactly is sin anyway? We might say we know it when we see it, for sure. But it might be helpful to propose a working “definition” of it in order to help our reflection together.

Let me suggest that sin is nothing more (and nothing less) than the disruption or breaking of relationship with God. It can be particular in that particular actions on our part can harm or break off to varying degrees, our relationship with God. Or sin can be more fundamental or pervasive in that ongoing attitudes or dispositions of selfishness or desires for isolation from God can rightly be called “sin”.

Recall that in the mass, we pray in the Gloria, “Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin (singular) of the world”. But we also pray at the Agnus Dei, “Lamb of God, you take away the sins (plural) of the world”.

We are conscious every time we celebrate the liturgy that this ruptured relationship between God and us is one characterized by both the particularity of our individual sins, but also by the generality of our collective condition in humanity which is in a state of “sin” broadly understood. Consequently, we need saving as individuals, but we also need saving together. We believe that God wishes to oblige us on both accounts.

Jesus Christ: Kenosis in its Perfection

“Though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped at, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Phil 2:6-7). The hymn St. Paul refers to so early in his letter to the Philippians is a classic expression of the self-emptying nature of God in Christ. The fact that this was most likely already being used as a kind of formula of faith for believing communities, suggests that the faithful, at some deep level, were able to appropriate very early on this reality of the saving action of God in Christ. Even if it would take centuries to hone the meaning of the Incarnation in terms of the effects of it on Jesus’ humanity and divinity, it seems that almost immediately, there was some substantial degree of assent of faith to the core reality very early on in the history of Christian faith.

Triune Thumbnail

Relationship is at the core of the doctrine of the Trinity. To say that God is Triune is to say that at the heart of who God is, is a set of relationships. In Jesus, Christians believe they are seeing in incarnate or human form, the face of the divine, specifically, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. But notice the intimacy with which he speaks of his relationship with his Father and the Spirit. The intimacy is so profound that there is a oneness or unity which is both the source and aim of these relations. The threeness is one and the oneness is three. There is stability and dynamism at once.
If we turn to our own lives for a moment, we realize that those moments or experiences which carry the greatest meaning are those which somehow are marked by relationship, intimacy and forgetting of self in “the other”. To use a romantic image, the man and woman who fall in love with one another undergo a change in that the focus is no longer on the self, the individual, but on the other. Each “forgets” him or herself in the loving gaze at the other. In the course of the relationship, they solidify that love in marriage and the mutual love and giving away of self results in a third. The child now enters into the picture, the fruit of the love of the two. The love could not be contained simply between the husband and wife. The goodness and beauty of the relationship overflowed, if you will, and the product of that love is another who would now become the object of the love of the parents and over time, as the child becomes cognizant of the love shown by the parents, he or she also actively engages in this dynamic of the loving gaze, toward the mother at one time, toward the father at another and of course a similar, if distinctive gaze is returned by the parents. At their best, each of the three “forgets” him or herself for love of the others.
While this of course is not a constant in the life of the family (the teen-age years do approach inevitably), hopefully there are at least moments of this kind of goodness and beauty. These moments are the truth of our lives. In them, we see our best selves, our true selves. If it is true as Christians and Jews believe, they we are made in the image and likeness of God, then somehow, God is like this. God is expressed in his very nature as relational. In the establishment of the covenant with Israel, that loving gaze is made formal. For Christians, this covenant is brought again into focus in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And through this Jesus and the relationship he attests to with the Father and the Spirit, Christians come to believe that somehow the very nature or essence of God is relationship. As such, he acts always in a relationship of love toward his creation but also in himself, Father, Son and Spirit. To remind ourselves then, what our own true selves look like, Christians do well to consider the mutual love and relationship of the Trinity, both in itself and in the way that Trinity reaches out in love to humanity. At the same time, we come to have some felt experience for what the Triune God is like in so far as we reflect upon the truth, goodness and beauty of our own lives and the experiences of love and intimacy and mutual outpouring we have and recognize in them, glimpses into the very life and heart of God.