Homily: Saturday, 7th Week of Easter

Readings: Acts 28:16-20,30-31; Ps 11; Jn 21:20-25

My! Today's readings sure give us a lot on which to reflect, to pray, and to preach; so, I decided just to turn it over to the Holy Spirit and ask for His help.

You see, today’s readings complete the Easter season by presenting us with the final verses of both the Acts of the Apostles and John's Gospel. In a sense they sum up all that’s gone before.

Luke began and ended his Gospel in Jerusalem, and it's in that city, too, where he began his second book, the Acts of the Apostles. In Acts we follow Paul on his journeys through the Greek-speaking world, as he establishes local churches and calls people to Christ while moving inexorably toward his destination, toward Rome – in one sense, the new Jerusalem.

In today's reading we encounter Paul in the final days of his ministry. Imprisoned in Rome, he awaits execution at the hands of Nero, the emperor who will also take the life of Peter. And it's there, in Rome, Luke tells us, that Paul "with complete assurance and without hindrance proclaimed the Kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ" [Acts 28:31]. Yes, Paul remains the true disciple as he completes his earthly journey of faith.

Our journey of discipleship is much the same – one of discovery, and praise, and wonder, and stumbling, and prophecy fulfilled – a journey filled with a lifetime of experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Like Paul, we, too, sometimes encounter obstacles or outright barriers, or simply head off in the wrong direction, only to be called back by the Holy Spirit. Just like Paul, we need to rest along the way and regain our strength, for discipleship is no easy road. Jesus knows this, for He experienced it too. He knows our weaknesses, all those little pieces of us that crave attention, all that call us away from Him. And so, He comes to us again and again, giving us a taste of that which awaits us.

How did Paul put it to the Jews who visited him in Rome, and to us? We share in the hope of Israel, a hope fulfilled in Jesus’ death and resurrection [See Acts 28:20]. Keep the faith, Paul says, don’t let all the stuff of our lives distract us from the eternal.

Peter, too, learned and preached this. But as John’s Gospel comes to a close, we find Peter just beginning his formation as a disciple. Filled with questions, Peter still awaits the fulness of the Holy Spirit. In his heart Peter knows he’s been given a very special task – “Feed my lambs…feed my sheep” [Jn 21:15,17] – and no doubt he fears all it will bring.

Suspecting Jesus has given him the hardest road to travel, he points to young John, the fair-haired boy, the one whom Jesus loved, and asks, “What about him?” Peter is so devilishly human, isn’t he? He’s so much like you and me, so worried about himself, always comparing himself to others, unaware that God doesn’t compare, that God sees each of us exactly as we are.

Jesus tells Peter this, in effect saying: “Look, Peter, don’t worry about John, or my plans for him. It’s really none of your business. Just do the work I’ve given you.” And to ensure Peter understands, he adds, “You follow me!” [Jn 21:22]

How often are we just like Peter, so caught up in what others are doing that we neglect the work God has given us.

What is God calling you to do – not next week or next month – but what’s His will for you today, right now? Life is a gift, brothers and sisters, and it can end at any moment.  If we take each of those moments that God gives us, and simply follow Him, always doing His will in all those seemingly little things, one moment to the next, He will lead us to the big things.

Even though we’re struggling and broken and torn and sinful, God continues to call us to the work He has for us. He calls us in the moment, in the little things of our lives, in the things He knows we can handle.

This is what Divine Mercy is really all about: it’s about God’s love bringing us back to Him, repeatedly, one tiny piece at a time.

And discipleship? It’s nothing complicated, just a total offering of self, an offering of all those pieces, an offering that God willingly accepts. Through His love, His mercy, and the working of the Holy Spirit, He makes us whole again so we can do our part to complete Christ’s mission on earth.

Yes, indeed, we tend to complicate things, but Jesus keeps it simple: Just follow me!

Homily: Monday 1st Week in Ordinary Time

Here's my homily from last Monday's daily Mass. Forgot to post it...

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Readings: Hebrews 1:1-6 • Psalm 97 • Mark 1:14-20

Today, as we begin the liturgical year’s Ordinary Time, our readings also present us with beginnings. The Letter to the Hebrews opens with a statement that sums up God’s plan as it’s revealed to us through Sacred Scripture:

In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through the Son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe… [Heb 1:1-2].

It says it all, doesn’t it? Spanning the countless centuries from creation to Abraham to Moses and the prophets, it all leads ultimately to Jesus Christ and His Church. All that Old Testament revelation, confusing as it sometimes seems, is fulfilled through the Father’s Son, Jesus Christ, who not only comes to us in flesh and blood, but is eternally present with the Father from the moment of Creation.

I remember when I first actually thought about the eternal presence of Jesus Christ. I was a freshman at Georgetown taking an Old Testament course taught by an old Jesuit (who was probably years younger than I am now). Here's what he told us:

“You know all those verses that refer to the patriarchs and others walking and talking with God? Well, most scholars just assume it’s a metaphor. But what if it’s not? Is not the Eternal Word of God present throughout all time? Could the Son not walk and talk with Adam and Noah and Enoch and Abraham and Moses? Time, after all, is no obstacle to our eternal, omnipotent God, to Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.”

Well...that certainly got me thinking.Is this what Jesus meant in John 5 when He revealed the Son’s work and challenged the Jews?

For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me [Jn 5:46].

Or at the Transfiguration when Moses and Elijah converse with Jesus about His future redemptive act on Calvary? [Lk 9:30-31]

St. Augustine reminds us, “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old; the Old is made explicit in the New.” Yes, just as God, through His Eternal Word, led the Israelites through the wilderness, so too does His Eternal Word, Jesus Christ, lead His Church.

We see this in today’s Gospel passage when Jesus begins His public ministry with the simple message:

This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel” [Mk 1:15].

A simple message…but what does it mean? Let’s look at the last part first. We use the word, “repent,” but the Greek word is metanoia, and the translation can cause problems. 

Most people think of repentance as being sorry for something. But metanoia means so much more. It means to think differently, to change. We’re not called just to be sorry and then continue on. As Paul reminds us, we’re called to “put on the new self" [Col 3:10], to be something new. We’re not called simply to change what we do; we’re called to change who we are.

Did the Apostles realize this? Did Andrew and Simon, and James and John know what Jesus was calling them to do when He said, “Follow me”? Why did they drop everything – those entangling nets, their work, their homes, and follow Jesus? Did they really understand it all?

No, they didn’t. But they sensed it…they sensed the Presence of the Holy Spirit, the Presence of God, in Jesus and His call. It was overwhelming. They knew they’d been called to something special, even if they didn’t know what it was. And so, they followed.

Brothers and sisters, it’s pretty much the same with us. “This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel”

It’s still the time of fulfillment, the time of Jesus’ Presence in the world.The kingdom, God’s reign, is here, a kingdom founded on love, on our relationships with God and with one another.

He calls us to repent. He calls us to a radical conversion. We don’t know exactly what God has in store for us, but we do know He wants us to change, to renew ourselves in Him. What kind of change? The kind that comes straight from the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. To “believe in the Gospel.” Not just to accept all the Gospel teachings of Jesus, but to believe in Him, to pattern our lives on Jesus Himself. 

It means living the Gospel without compromise.

It means a new beginning every day, not looking backwards, not regretting the sins of the past; allowing God to forgive you; forgiving yourself; putting on that new self, starting anew with God.

It means forgiving others, letting go of all the pain, all the hurts caused by others…starting anew with all those in your life.

It means following Jesus. The path may not be all that evident, but the destination is eternal life.

 

Homily: Monday, 4th Week of Easter

Reading: Acts 11:1-18; Ps 42; Jn 10:1-10
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Today is the optional memorial of Our Lady of Fatima, and how blessed we are in this parish to have our prayer warriors who pray the Rosary together here in our Church after daily Mass.

They pray for the Church, for our parish, for the intentions of our parishioners, all in response to our Blessed Mother's hope that the Rosary will be prayed daily throughout the universal Church. In doing so, they join many other parishioners who pray the Rosary daily in their families. 

Yes, we are blessed to have them.

And because Mary appeared to three shepherd children, it's also fitting that today's Gospel passage should focus on the Good Shepherd.

We hear Jesus say many remarkable things in the Gospel, but I really think far too many Christians don't seem to believe He always means exactly what He says...even when He turns to metaphors and other figures of speech.

For example, in the verse that immediately follows our Gospel passage from John, Jesus says:

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" [Jn 10:11].

Now I've known only one person who could remotely be called a shepherd since he raised sheep. But I really don't think he would have sacrificed his own life for that of a lamb. For him it was simply a business and I would guess that for him an occasional lost sheep was part of the cost of doing business.

But Jesus isn't simply "a shepherd" or even "a good shepherd." No, He calls Himself "the Good Shepherd" - the one and only Good Shepherd. 

And will He really lay down His life for His sheep? Well, yes. He already did so, didn't He?  For we are His sheep; and to rescue and gather us to Himself, He paid a price, and the price was His life.

Hearing this, so many find themselves asking: Can this possibly be true? Can the Creative Word of God, the God who brought everything into existence, have such love for His creatures?

He can and He does. But not just for us as the human race, as a people, but for every single, unique one of us. 

"...the sheep hear His voice, as He calls His own sheep by name..." [Jn 10:3]

He calls us by name, every single one of us. You and I can't hide from God's love. It's simply far too great, and it reaches out to us even when we seem surrounded by darkness. It's an ineffable love, a love taken to extremes, this love of God. In fact, He takes love to such an extreme that we finally come to understand what St. John meant when he said, quite simply: "God is love" [1 Jn 4:8].

And God's love has a purpose. Recall Jesus' words:

"I am the gate for the sheep...Whoever enters through me will be saved..."  [Jn 10:7,9]

He, then, is the gateway to eternal life, to a life we cannot imagine. Here again, the metaphor describes a truth, for salvation comes only through Jesus Christ, only when we follow the Good Shepherd, only when we choose the good. In other words, He created us, not as robots programmed to respond as He desires, but in His own image and likeness, with intellect and will, able to make moral choices.

"He walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow Him, because they recognize His voice" [Jn 10:4].

To make the right choices, then, we must recognize His voice, listen to the Word, and believe in the Gospel. For like the sheep called by the shepherd, we are called by Jesus to follow:

But then Jesus says something that should cause to look more deeply within:

"I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me" [Jn 10:14].

Yes, Jesus knows His sheep, but how well do we know Him?  Do we even try to know Him, or do we simply accept what we're told and go on with our lives?

The Lateran Basilica in Rome has a remarkable and very large baptistery. And right beside the font is a statue of a deer leaning down and thirsting for a drink. Do you recall the words or today's Psalm?

"As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God" [Ps 42:2[.

At Easter we all renewed our baptismal promises, and were then sprinkled with the newly blessed baptismal water. Did we thirst for that water, that saving water?

...the living water that made us children of the Father?

...the living water that filled us with the Holy Spirit, "the Lord and Giver of life," the Holy Spirit Peter described in today's reading from Acts?

...the living water that cleansed us of sin?

...the living water that brought us into Christ's Church?

How did Jesus put it when He described His mission?

"I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly" [Jn 10:10]

That's what Jesus wants for you and me, brothers and sisters, what we should all thirst for: a life of abundance, an eternal life in the embrace of the Good Shepherd. We need only follow Him, loving our God and our neighbor.

Homily: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

Readings: 1Sam 3:3-10,19; Ps 85; 1Cor 6:13-20; Jn 1:35-42
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Do you remember that poem, "The Hound of Heaven", by the British poet, Francis Thompson? If you attended a Catholic school way back when, you probably do. Remember the first lines?

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
    Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

"I fled him..."

Those words, and the rest of that long poem, didn’t mean much to me when I was young, but now…well, I’ve come to understand it. Because that’s the way God is: He doesn’t let go. I know, because He’s been after me all my life. That’s right…it started when I was just a kid, and hasn’t stopped.

“Follow me,” [Jn 1:43] He says. Always asking me to stop what I’m doing and change the entire direction of my life. And didn’t He say something about not being worthy to follow Him unless you “took up a cross?” [Mt 16:24] Now, I don’t know about you, but I certainly didn’t like the sound of that.

But, you know, the more I ignored Him, the more persistent He became. Really irritating. I wasn’t leading a bad life. I suppose it wasn’t a particularly good one either. It was…well, it was normal. Anyway, there seemed to be plenty of folks out there who needed God a lot more than I did. So I went through the motions of Christianity, and ignored the hard stuff…you know, the Cross. But God just kept coming like that “Hound of Heaven”, and I responded…well, just as the poet did…

Foolish, isn’t it? To think we can simply run away from God, that like Adam and Eve in the Garden we can hide from Him, or like Peter we can deny Him: “Who? Jesus? Don’t know Him. Never saw Him before in my life.” Or that we can make so much noise in our lives that it will somehow drown out God’s incessant, but gentle call. And do you know what? Here I am, old and in Florida and He’s still calling -- “Follow Me” -- still leading me to new forms of discipleship.

And if my past is any guide, I’ll take them on in fits and starts. For unlike Samuel in today’s first reading, or Peter and Andrew in the Gospel, “Follow Me” just won’t be enough. As He has in the past, He’ll have to drag me behind Him kicking and screaming.

I suppose that’s the question for each one of us: “What does God want of me?” Well, first of all, He wants us – that’s you and me – simply to listen and to respond to His call.

"Speak, for your servant is listening."

Look again at today’s 1st reading. Samuel is just a child, and when God calls him, it takes Eli to explain what’s happening, to point the way. And so Samuel responds to God’s call with an act of faith: “Speak, for your servant is listening” [1 Sam 3:10].

This is the first thing God wants from each of us. He wants an act of faith. It was pretty much the same for Andrew and Peter in today’s Gospel. Like Eli, John the Baptist points the way: “Behold, the Lamb of God” [Jn 1L29] The disciples heard and followed. This is Jesus’ call, the same call God issued at the very dawn of salvation history when He told Abraham to: “Walk in my presence and be blameless” [Gen 17:1].

Notice, God’s always the One who takes the initiative. It’s He who calls Samuel in the night. It’s He who seeks out Abraham and Moses and Paul, the persecutor of Christians. It’s He who turns to the disciples and speaks to them. Later on in John’s Gospel Jesus states this clearly: “It is not you who chose me. I chose you” [Jn 15:16].

But discipleship has a cost. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young Lutheran pastor and theologian who was executed by Hitler in the final days of World War II, wrote a wonderful book, The Cost of Discipleship. In it he writes:

“And if we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us? What decisions and partings will it demand? To answer this question we will have to go to Him, for only He knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ…knows the journey’s end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy. Discipleship means joy.”

Yes, discipleship has a great return, but also a cost.  Only Jesus knows the cost. Only He knows the demands. And so He keeps this “cost of discipleship” from the apostles...at least for now.

Behold! The Lamb of God!

That’ll come later, much later. For now He just asks them. “What are you looking for?” Why have they turned to the Lamb of God? But they don’t answer the question, and instead ask one of their own: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” [Jn 1:38]

You see, they’re not exactly sure what they’re looking for, but they know they’ve found it in Jesus. They want to be with Him. They want to spend the day with Him. And Jesus knows this. His answer is brief, “Come and you will see” [Jn 1:39]. But He’s not speaking of a house. He’s speaking of discipleship, for Jesus stays wherever His disciples are. He abides with them and within them. It’s just what happened to Samuel after responding in faith to God’s call. How does Scripture put it? “Samuel grew up, and the Lord was with him…” [1 Sam 3:19].

To be Jesus’ disciple, to be a Christian, we must first respond to His call, and we must do so in faith. But that’s not all. We must live in Jesus Christ and He in us. In other words, we must follow Him wherever He leads us. And of one thing we can be sure. Following Christ always leads to the Cross.

Now I don’t mean that, like Peter and Andrew, every Christian must suffer martyrdom, although in today’s world many Christians are doing just that. There’s no discipleship, no following of Jesus, that doesn’t include His cross.

“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks the disciples. And He asks each of us the same question. What exactly are you looking for? Why have you turned to Jesus?

Is He your security blanket, something warm and fuzzy to hide you from a hostile world?

Is He your problem solver, the one you call on when you mess up some piece of your life?

Is He your miracle worker, a superman-God, the one you turn to when things get really bad?

In other words, are you the kind of Christian who calls on Jesus to follow you? Or, like Samuel and Andrew and Peter, have you turned to Jesus simply because He called you? Simply because He whispered, “Follow me.”

He’s really called you, you know. He’s called each of us. I’m not going to argue the point, because if you don’t believe this, you’re not a Christian. He called Samuel to be a prophet and a kingmaker. He called Peter – weak-willed Peter, full of bluster and empty promises – He called Peter to be the head of His Church. What has He called you to do? You’ll never know until you respond in faith.

“Come and you will see,” Jesus says.

Only if you say yes to Him: yes to joy; yes to sorrow; yes to all His brothers and sisters – the weak, the hungry, the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, the despised, the hated and the haters… all those sinners out there, sinners like you and me. Come and you will see…only if you say yes to God’s call to live the life of Christ.

“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks. What kind of disciple are you? Follow Jesus and you will come to know Him. Live like Him and you will love Him. Live in Him and He will live in you, and you will die with Him and live eternally with Him.

Oh, yes, one final thing…If, like the poet, you decide to run away from Him, if you decide not to be His disciple, your decision means absolutely nothing…because He’ll keep calling and chasing you right up to the moment you breathe your last breath. He does this because He loves you…and that, brothers and sisters is the Good News.