Homily: Solemnity of All Saints

Readings: Rv 7:2-4, 9-1; Ps 24; 1 Jn 3:1-3; Mt 5:1-12

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Good evening, all you saints in training!

"Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?" [Rv 7:13]

I’ve always loved this verse from the Book of Revelation. This might sound odd, but whenever I read it, I can’t help but think of a line from the movie, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, when Cassidy, the outlaw, speaking of the posse tracking them so successfully, asks, “Who are those guys?” It’s really what was asked of John when he encountered that crowd in his heavenly vision: Who are these people?

Who are these saints? Where did they come from? How did they manage to live in this weird world of ours and yet live such holy lives? Yes, it’s these people and their lives of heroic virtue, these saints, that we celebrate at this vigil Mass of the Solemnity of All Saints.

Some years ago, during the canonization ceremony of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, I heard a news anchor say, “Today the Catholic Church made two saints and let them enter heaven.” What an odd thing to say. Of course, he was wrong, terribly wrong, and provided another good reason to ignore what the secular media say about the Church. In truth, the Church doesn’t make saints. God makes them. All the Church does is recognize a few of the saints God has made.

Perhaps more importantly, the canonization of a saint doesn’t get them through heaven’s gates. Indeed, canonization does absolutely nothing for the saint, who is already with God. No, the Church canonizes saints for us, for by doing so she hopes to inspire you and me to strive for the holiness that is our true destiny. This is why the Church chants the Litany of the Saints at its most solemn liturgical celebrations. That Litany is the roster of the Church’s Hall of Fame, its family album, the names of those who form that “great cloud of witnesses” so eloquently described in the Letter to the Hebrews [Heb 12:1].

One of my theology professors at Georgetown, who taught me the New Testament 60 years ago, was a priest who had spent years in a Communist Chinese prison. Once, while speaking of St. Peter, a man filled with doubts and fears and so often lacking in faith, this saintly Jesuit said, “All saints are sinners, but not all sinners are saints.”

The difference, he went on to tell us, is that the saints recognize, understand, and repent of their sinfulness because they accepted God’s grace and recognize the Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. More than anything else they desire union with Jesus Christ and so they struggle mightily in the lifelong process of conversion that God offers us all. The others, he said, not only don’t recognize the Son, but too often don’t even recognize their sinfulness for what it is. And that, he believed, was an eternal sadness.

Yes, brothers and sisters, we are all called to be saints, to be one with Jesus Christ. Even now, in this life, we’re united with the Communion of Saints, a part of All Saints, Christ’s Mystical Body, the People of God.

By our baptism we were sanctified, made holy, deep down, in grace – no longer banished, disaffected children, outside God’s family. In Baptism we become part of the in-crowd. Even though we’re sinners, as John reminds us, we’re still God’s children, adopted children of the Father. John continued, “What we shall be has not yet been revealed…But we shall be like Him” [1 Jn 3:2].

Yes, there’s so much we don’t know. Our vison is blurred by the mystic’s “cloud of unknowing,” until clarity comes when we rise with Jesus Christ. In the meantime, we move in the world – not just the world of good, of God’s creative act, but the world of a fallen race, the world that won’t recognize us because it won’t recognize Jesus Christ [1 Jn 3:1]. It’s a world that tries to extinguish the light of Christ, to drown out the Gospel with a cacophony of meaningless noise. It’s a world that ignores All Saints Day, preferring instead Halloween, All Hallows Eve, by celebrating the craziness of our world.

But God continues to raise up saints, and He wants each one of us to be among them; so, He gives us a guidebook, a map, to help us find our way to His Way. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel distills the essence of His teachings. And it opens with the Beatitudes, the essence of the essence.

When we first hear them, our tendency is to select one or two qualities as applicable to us. “Oh, yeah, that’s me, the merciful peacemaker. I guess that means I’m okay, living the life Jesus wants for me.”

But that’s not what the Beatitudes are. They’re not items in a cafeteria from which we can pick and choose what we like, while ignoring the rest. They’re really a manifesto for the complete, normal Christian life.  Christ opens to us eight avenues through which we will find the fullness of blessing. To be blessed means to find wholeness, joy, well-being – to experience the true peace of Christ. To be fully blessed is to depend solely on God.

With that we come to recognize our own spiritual poverty, the insignificance of all we thought was so important. And when we cry out to God, fearful, hopeful, thankful, He sends His Spirit to show us the way. In sorrow, not only for our own sin but the sins and injustices of the world, we encounter the deep, abiding presence of the Holy Spirit.

Mourning our dead, praying for their salvation, we cast our prayers into eternity knowing that “with God all things are possible.” God blesses us with wisdom and compassion as we carry God’s love to others. 

Called to be meek, not weak, we walk with a humility that recognizes Jesus Christ in everyone we meet, reminding us that we are called to love. We move, not filled with vengeful anger, but as living signs of God’s mercy. 

Through prayer we experience the shock of humility, a rightness in our relationship with God, with each other, and with creation. True humility is merely the acceptance of reality, that we are all completely dependent on God. Humility is to recognize God’s divine life in others, and the need to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself.

I remember a story about a young mother who was trying to help her little boy understand God’s great commandment. “God put us here to help others,” she told him. He thought for a moment and then asked, “What are the others here for?” The little lad would have made a good Pharisee.

Yes, we’re called by Jesus to extend to each other the same mercy we expect from Him. At the soup kitchen we had a saying, “We don’t serve food, we serve Jesus Christ.” But do we open ourselves wide so that all who walk in that door, see Jesus in us?

As we long and work for peace in our lives, our merciful God rests His hand gently upon our heads and speaks to us as His favored children. Having received a sevenfold blessing, seized by the Holy Spirit, taken captive, we allow ourselves to receive an eighth blessing, to be emptied and enter into the perfection of Christ.

Then, being like Christ, we’re not surprised when called to share in the likeness of his suffering and death. For we, too, will carry our cross knowing always that Jesus walks by our side. Perhaps, then, someone will look at us and ask, “Who are they who seem to love so much?”

And for this, like the Saints we honor today, we will be greatly blessed.

 

Homily: Christmas Mass at Night (12/24/2019)

I've embedded a video of this homily below. The complete text of the homily follows the video.

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Readings: Is 9:1-6; Psalm 96; Ti 2:11-14; Lk 2:1-14
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Well then, Merry Christmas, and welcome to the Midnight Mass. But since midnight is way past our bedtime, we cleverly celebrate it at 8 p.m.

Tonight, we celebrate an encounter with God as He had never been encountered before. And it’s really a most remarkable thing.

Before this night, for thousands of years, humanity had accepted the existence of a God, or of multiple gods, who they believed had brought all of creation into being. This belief in a Creator’s existence was universal. You simply don’t find atheists among either the most primitive or the most civilized or our ancient ancestors. Atheism, and its weaker, little brother, agnosticism, are really modern inventions, simply the result of man unwilling to accept a god other than himself.

But the ancients accepted their limitations. Applying their senses and their minds, they realized the beauty and wonders surrounding them could not have come into being simply by chance. Because our ancient ancestors lacked revelation, their gods took on many different forms, but most were simply the result of men creating gods in their own image. They were certain of God’s existence, but He was a distant God, unapproachable, unknowable. We get brief glimpses of this in those first few chapters of Genesis.

But then God, the only God, makes Himself known. He speaks to a man whom He calls Abraham and begins a 2,000-year-long process of revelation in which He gradually reveals Himself and His plan for humanity. Remarkably, He does all this through Abraham’s descendants, a most unlikely tribe of nobodies that God had chosen simply because of their weakness and anonymity. Indeed, it is through their weakness that they magnify God’s glory. For 2,000 years God revealed Himself and His expectations for us, His creatures. And what a gift this Revelation is!

Do you realize how blessed we are to be Catholic Christians? What we believe and how we worship are not things we’ve concocted. They’re not a collection of man’s feeble attempts to placate some higher power. No, our Christian Faith, our Sacred Liturgy, are God’s Word and God’s Work. It all comes from God Himself.

It’s not a religion, brothers and sisters; it’s a Revelation! It’s a Revelation that runs through many generations, from Abraham to Moses to David, through all the prophets, and eventually to Jesus Himself – Who is the fulfillment of it all.

Yes, it’s a Revelation completed in the Incarnation when Mary, as Luke reveals to us:

“…gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” [Lk 2:7].

Once again, God’s glory is manifested through weakness. Mary knew this, accepted it, and expressed it to the ages when she proclaimed:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” [Lk 1:46-47]

As I said earlier, this is an encounter with God as He has never been encountered before.

You see, brothers and sisters, God has not only made Himself known to us, but almost beyond imagining, He became one of us. We have a God Who has skin on, a God who took on a human body from the Virgin Mary through the power of the Spirit of God. We rejoice tonight that the God Who created the universe from nothing was born one night of a young Jewish girl in a manger in a little town called Bethlehem. Yes, He is our God, a God of skin and bones and flesh and blood, and tonight we celebrate His birthday.

Birthdays are wonderful celebrations, aren’t they? To wish others a happy birthday is to tell them how much they mean to us, to express our joy that they were born. Tonight, we say the same to Jesus. We gather in this church, at this rather unusual hour for Mass, to express our joy that He came into the world.

When His birth was first announced, not to kings and queens, not to emperors, but to shepherds in the hills of Judea, the angel revealed to the world that it had reason for great joy:

“For today in the city of David a Savior has been born for you Who is Christ and Lord” [Lk 2:11].

Yes, He is their Savior; He is our Savior; He is the Savior of the world. It is through Him, and only through Him, that you and I can safely reach the end of our pilgrimage on earth and see our Savior in all His glory, our Savior, our God with skin on. He is a God Who does the unexpected, a Creator who humbles Himself, coming to us in weakness, and a God who offers gifts on His birthday.

And what a gift it is! This God who shares our lives, offers each of us, individually, a share in the very life of God. The infant, Jesus, born of Mary, was like any other infant, and needed the care that only His mother could give. But He was also different, so very different. Within that tiny body the life of God Himself lay hidden.

Later, as a grown man, He would give to all who would receive Him a share in that life of God, a gift described by John when he wrote:

“But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name…” [Jn 1:12]

Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is already within us through sanctifying grace.

But He continues to call us, through His Church, to renew that grace by living a life free from sin, free from the undue attachment to the things of this passing world. This is one of the special graces offered to us by God in our celebration of the solemnity of Christmas each year.

Yes, we rejoice tonight, for not only was our Savior born, as each of us was born into the world, but He offers to each of us the gift of a new and deeper share in that life which was his from all eternity. The birthday gift Our Savior gives is the gift of Himself; but we shouldn’t celebrate empty-handed. What gift can we give Him Who is Lord of all? The psalmist sums it up, doesn’t he?

Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
let the sea and what fills it resound;
let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult.
They shall exult before the LORD, for he comes;
for he comes to rule the earth [Ps 96:11-13].

What can we give to the ruler of the earth? The only gift we can offer our newborn Savior, the only thing He does not yet possess, is our hearts. It is this gift we place on the altar when we celebrate the Eucharistic Sacrifice. And what a gift this is! The same gift Jesus offered to His Father, the gift of Himself.

“…a body you prepared for me…Behold, I come to do your will, O God” [Heb 10:5,7].

For here, on this altar, Jesus Christ, gives Himself to us, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, and allows us, the members of His family, to join Him in the most intimate way imaginable. Here, as we come forward to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we also join each other in a unique Communion. Eucharist – “the source and summit of the Christian life” – means thanksgiving. It is like a great family dinner, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners all rolled into one, yet far more wonderful and fulfilling. 

Brothers and sisters, we are sons and daughters of God! These roots are deeper, stronger and longer lasting than any human family roots. Indeed, they’re so strong they’ll carry us all the way to eternal life.

And so, tonight, as we rejoice in the birth of our Savior, let us also rejoice that our names are written in heaven, as members of the family of Jesus Christ.

And let us be the people our loving God wants us to be, imitators of our Lord, Jesus Christ. In the words of one of our newest saints, Saint John Henry Newman:

“May each Christmas as it comes find us more and more like Him who at this time became a little child for our sake, more humble, more holy, more happy, and more full of God.”

Come, Lord Jesus! [Rev 22:10]

Homily: the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Readings: Rv 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 45; 1 Cor 15:20-27; Lk 1:39-56
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Many years ago, back in my Navy days, I was sitting alone in a restaurant in Keelung, Taiwan. It was Christmas Eve, but you wouldn’t have known it – no Christmas decorations, no crèche, no last-minute shoppers, not even the secular symbols of reindeer or snowmen. It was just another bleak December evening in this country of few Christians.

Keelung Night Market

The restaurant was fairly crowded and so a young Chinese couple asked if they could join me at my table. Of course I agreed. They wanted to practice their English and so we talked as I picked at my rice and pork.In those days Navy chaplains gave out pocket-sized copies of the New Testament and Psalms. One was sticking out of my shirt pocket and the young woman asked if it were a dictionary. I think she wanted a copy. "No," I replied, “It’s a copy of the New Testament, a book of Christian Scripture.”

Well…that generated a blank look. So I asked if they were Buddhists. They said their parents were but that they weren’t believers. Then the woman said, “Can you explain it, tell us about it?”

Have you ever tried to explain Christianity to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it, nothing of Jesus Christ and His saving work? Where to begin to tell these two well-intentioned people about our faith? I suppose I could have started with Abraham and Moses and David, but that would take hours.

For some reason, maybe because it was Christmas, I instead went back to Nazareth, to the greatest event in human history, to that day when Mary gave her consent to God to become His Mother.

After brief stops in Nazareth and Bethlehem, I went on, struggling to tell them something of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, something of the Gospel and the gift of faith. I told them of the Holy Spirit, and about the universal, Catholic Church founded by Jesus, and its mission to make disciples of all nations, even Taiwan.

But throughout it all, I found myself coming back to Mary, the Mother of God, this unique woman who always points to Jesus and by doing so has inspired and brought faith to so many; for she is humanity’s greatest advocate. Throughout her life, again and again, she pondered in her heart the mysteries of the Incarnation; and as St. John reminds us, in total faith and remarkable strength of character, “She stood by the Cross of Jesus” [Jn 19:25].

Yes, her life of faith, fullness of grace, and perfect discipleship is bracketed by two miraculous events, two of God’s gifts to Mary and to all of humanity.

Her life on earth began with the Immaculate Conception, when she was brought into being with a perfect, sinless soul – for the vessel that will carry and nourish our divine Savior must be perfect.

And that earthly life ended with the Assumption, when her body too was brought into perfection, into God’s heavenly presence. After all, how can this body, this body that gave flesh and blood to God Incarnate…how can this body suffer corruption?

Telling all this to my young Taiwanese couple while struggling to eat with chopsticks is no easy task. And so to reward me they bought me a beer. I repaid them by giving them my New Testament. As I left them I hoped that my weak attempt at evangelization might have yielded some fruit. But that’s the Holy Spirit’s job.

Later, walking back to the ship through a soaking rain, I remembered that I had used a holy card as a bookmark in that little New Testament. On one side was that beautiful painting of the Assumption by Titian, a painting that hangs today in the Frari Basilica in Venice. On the other were the words of the Magnificat, Mary’s prayer of praise and thanksgiving.

Titian's Assumption behind the Frari's Main Altar (Venice)

Yes, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary – today’s solemnity.

Although the Assumption wasn’t officially declared a dogma of faith until 1950 by Pope Pius XII, it was a common and accepted belief within the entire Church for centuries. Indeed, we find homilies on the Assumption, or the “Dormition” as it is often called in the Eastern Church, dating to the fifth century.

The Assumption celebrates Mary’s singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection by which she was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory when the course of her life was finished. Why did God do this for her? With partial understanding, we can say that Christ has a unique relationship with the body and soul of Mary, for her body held the Incarnate Body of God Himself.  And so, when her life on earth ended, God glorified Mary, both body and soul.

We see implications of this in our first reading, from the Book of Revelation, where Mary is seen as the "woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" [Rev 12:1] – as one who is above all of creation. She’s also depicted as a mother, which she is, many times over: Mother of God, Mother of the Church, Mother of us all.

But as a disciple of Jesus Christ, she’s also our Sister. And as the perfect disciple, she’s our model, our model of how to live the Christian life, our model of faith and hope. She is among "the first-fruits" [1 Cor 15:20] that Paul refers to, the first-fruits of "all who are called to belong to Jesus" [Rom 1:6] and who share in His triumph. 

We see her in her role as disciple most clearly in today’s Gospel passage from Luke. What a remarkable scene! The young Mary, now Mother of the Incarnate God, is told by Gabriel of her aged cousin’s pregnancy; and in a humble act of love, she leaves in haste and makes the difficult journey from Galilee to Judea to visit Elizabeth.

Yes, Mary is a true disciple, a fact that Elizabeth points out when she greets her: “Most blessed are you among women...”  An inspired Elizabeth, recognizing who has come to visit her, continued, “…and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” [Lk 1:42-43] But the Spirit’s not through, for John leaped in Elizabeth’s womb at Mary’s greeting.

Mary acknowledged the divine grace that filled the whole scene: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior” [Lk 1:46-47]. All three, Mary, Elizabeth and John, greeted one another filled with the Holy Spirit, and filled too with thanksgiving and joyful anticipation of the fulfillment of God's promise to give a Savior to all of creation.

How fitting a reminder to us today that Jesus Christ was greeted first by a baby in the womb, an unborn infant who pointed to His coming as the Holy Spirit revealed the presence of the King to be born. This is the power of the Holy Spirit, brothers and sisters, the gift that enables us to know and experience the indwelling presence of God and the power of his kingdom. The Holy Spirit is the way in which God reigns within each of us. And so Mary, filled with the Spirit and full of grace, joyfully receives the gift of God’s presence.

From this you and I learn that God visits us in the everyday experiences of our lives, encounters steeped in God’s love. We also come to realize that God remains with us in all our human activities, for He is the presence that holds us up. As St. Paul reminds us, “In Him we live and move and have our being” [Acts 17:28].

And it is through these divine encounters, these everyday meetings with God and His people, that we are saved by God’s tender mercies. As our model of faith and hope, Mary shows us all this and more. She accepted her mission with uncompromising faith and obedience. She acted with unwavering trust because she believed that God would fulfill the Word He had spoken.

Her great hymn of praise proclaims the favor of the Lord: He has "lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things” [Lk 1:52-53]. And He does so through us. The Holy Spirit is ever ready to renew faith and hope in God's promises and to make us strong in love for God and our neighbor. Yes, Mary is our model in this too, especially in this age of violence and hatred, an age that celebrates the culture of death.

Let us, like Mary, be the vessels that carry God’s love, God's life into the world. For her Son came that we “might have life and have it more abundantly” [Jn 10:10].

Let’s thank Mary, our Mother, for her fiat, for her acceptance of God’s presence within her, so that today, through the Holy Spirit, we too might receive within us the Body and Blood of her Son, all for the Glory of the Father.

Homily: Wednesday, 23rd Week of Ordinary Time

Given the busyness of my life in recent weeks, I neglected to post this brief weekday homily. Better late than never, I suppose.
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Readings: 1 Cor 7:25-31; Ps 45; Lk 6:20-26

How did Paul put it? “The world as we know it is passing away” [1 Cor7:31].

Kind of a scary thought, isn’t it? Well…not really, since it’s one of those statements that’s always going to be true, for the world and those who live in it are always undergoing change, always, in a sense, passing away. So it’s really not that radical a thought…at least not to our way of thinking today.

But for the ancients, who lived when Paul wrote these words –the Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Romans – these words were radical indeed. About the only people of that time who would have accepted this idea were Jews and Christians. You see, the Greeks and virtually all other pagan societies saw the world in cyclical terms. To their way of thinking, all of life, all of history, imitated the seasons, the movements of the heavenly bodies, always returning, constantly repeating, never moving toward any defined end.

If you think about it, this way of thinking was utterly depressing, and led to nothing but despair. It saw humanity as spending eternity on the global equivalent of a gerbil wheel, expending lots of energy but never really getting anywhere. And their pagan religions mirrored this thinking. The pagan concept of the divine came from within man and depicted the gods as man envisioned them.

But Judaism and Christianity were different…very different. You see, their concept of God -- our concept of God – comes from God Himself. It’s not so much a religion as a revelation. The pagans described their gods as they saw them, created in their image. The Jews and later the Christians received God’s revelation of Himself. They described God as He revealed Himself and His relationship with humanity. God creates us in His image.

God reveals Himself to Moses with the words, “I am who am” [Ex 3:14-15] – in other words, I am existence itself -- words no pagan, with the possible exception of Aristotle and perhaps a few other Greek philosophers, would likely have used to describe a divinity.

"I am who I am." ...This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.

At the center of this revelation – this self-disclosure by God – is His plan for the future of humanity. And it has an end – eternal life and the consummation of the world – an end revealed in those closing words of the book of Revelation, “Come, Lord Jesus” [Rev 22:20]. Yes, the world will be consumed, and so as Christians we must avoid getting caught up in the things of this world…always considering ourselves as poor in spirit.

For the Kingdom of God belongs only to those who experience this stark poverty. Brothers and sisters, never deny that reality. Never fail to acknowledge the hunger of your heart for God's food. If we don’t experience poverty in its realistic starkness, let us be poor in spirit and accept our own inner poverty. And let us always be oriented practically to the needs of the poor, Gods blessed ones.

And so let us pray today that we may not be conformed to the world but transformed by the Holy Spirit with the spirit of poverty.

“Come, Lord Jesus.”

Homily: December 17

For the past few evenings our pastor, Father Peter, conducted a mission in the parish on the meaning and spirituality of the Eucharist. It was a wonderful mission in which he shared many insights into God's gift of this special sacrament, the "source and summit of the Christian life." Yesterday evening we completed the mission with a Mass of Thanksgiving, at which Father Peter was assisted by the deacons of the parish. I was honored to be asked to preach. The following is my homily.

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Readings: Gn 49:2, 8-10; Psalm 72; Mt 1:1-17

One of our sons is very into genealogy. So far he’s limited his efforts to my wife’s side of the family. Among her ancestors – and sadly they’re all very English – are many early settlers in Virginia, officers who fought in the American Revolution, and even an adviser to the first Queen Elizabeth.

I hope our son tires of all this before he begins to investigate my family, mostly Irish dirt farmers who probably worked as serfs for Diane’s ancestors. I’d prefer to leave them in the fog of family history.

My Grandfather, Father and Great-grandfather (1911)

And yet, our roots, even when they’re not very distinguished, have real meaning, don’t they? Indeed, one of my favorite family photos was taken over a century ago, in 1911. It’s a photo of my father, who was just a toddler, standing with his father and grandfather. Looking at it the other day, my grandchildren came to mind. For them, that same photo will be even more remarkable, since it depicts their great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and great-great-great grandfather.

Now for the McCarthys, that’s something, since in their poverty my ancestors didn’t generate a lot of genealogical material. But that’s better than a friend. Adopted as an infant he never knew anything about his birth family. And then sadly, when he 16, his adoptive parents died in an accident. He was again an orphan. As he liked to say, “I’m a man with no roots.” He said it as a joke, but always with a trace of sadness.

I once told him he was wrong – that as a Catholic he had deep roots, spiritual roots that stretched back 4,000 years to Abraham, our father in faith. Not only that, I told him, but you can trace that spiritual lineage from the priest who baptized you, through the bishop who ordained him, all the way back to the apostles and to Jesus Himself. And from there he need only turn to the opening verses of Matthew’s Gospel and follow the path all the way back to Abraham.

Through his faith his roots are deeper, stronger and longer lasting than any family roots. Indeed, they’re so strong they’ll carry him all the way to eternal life. And do you know something wonderful? You and I share those roots, we have that same family tree.

What a gift this is! And it’s one of the key messages of the Gospel. The Gospel takes us deeply into those spiritual roots, and binds us in a living connection with Jesus Christ Himself.

In many respects, each of our four Gospels begins with the same message: each identifies Jesus, and each in a different way.

Mark, in his usual Sergeant Friday, just-the-facts-Ma’am approach, begins by saying: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God…” [Mk 1:1] Yes, Mark wastes no time telling us who Jesus is.

Luke, well he’s much more subtle and takes half a chapter before he finally gets to Jesus, and then he lets the angel Gabriel do the honors: “Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” [Lk 1:35]

And John? He echoes the opening words of the Book of Genesis and proclaims the eternal divinity of the Logos, of Jesus, the creative Word of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” [Jn 1:1]

But Matthew is different. Writing to a Jewish audience, he offers them a very Jewish family tree of Jesus Christ, true God and true man. He begins by proclaiming: “...the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” [Mt 1:1]

Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham…These are titles any Jew would recognize, for these are Messianic titles. At the very start, Matthew is declaring Jesus to be the Messiah, the chosen one.

Then, filled with the Spirit, he presents us with a family tree, one generation after another…right here in the very first verses of the New Testament. It’s as if God can’t wait to tell us all about His family.

Realize first that Matthew didn’t intend his genealogy to be complete. And his Jewish readers would know this too. No, Matthew wants to make a point. He wants his readers to understand and accept Jesus’s messianic roots. And so he divides his genealogy into three sections of 14 names, or 6 sections, each with 7 names. To the Jew 7 and 14 symbolized completion or perfection. And so Jesus would complete this by being the first and only name in the 7th group. For a Jew that was about as perfect as you could get.

Many of the names we recognize, although some sound a bit strange to us; but they’re all real people and they give us a glimpse into the entire history of God’s People. As we run through that list of names we encounter every aspect of human life, and not just the good parts, but also murder, treachery, incest, adultery, prostitution…

Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, Mary

Among these names are those of 5 women, not something often found in ancient genealogies. The last is Mary herself, but the first four – Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba – are all Gentiles: 2 Canaanites, a Moabite, and a Hittite. Yes, Jesus’s family wasn’t so purely Jewish, was it? Those Gentiles among His ancestors highlight the fact that He came from all of us, for all of us.

And it was also a family of sinners. Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute to fool her father-in-law, Judah, and ending up giving birth to his twin sons. Rahab was a prostitute, and yet a faithful woman. And Bathsheba? King David watched her bathing from the roof of his house, invited her in, seduced her, and had her husband killed, so he could marry her. And Solomon, their son, who started right with God, eventually joined his many wives in worshiping idols.

Some members, like Mary and Joseph, are extraordinary; others, Ruth and Josiah, are faithful; some, like Manasseh and Rehoboam, are despicable; others, like Eliud and Azor, are anonymous, nondescript, men about which we know nothing.

Yes, welcome to my family, Jesus tells us, welcome to my world. It’s the world we encounter when we open the Bible and realize how forgiving our God is. We discover that Jesus’s family is a human family and like most human families, has its share of saints and sinners. But from this, we learn that God’s plan was accomplished through them all, and that He continues to work through us, His people.

Matthew completes his genealogy with the words: “...Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.” [Mt 1:16]

The genealogy relates father to son, father to son, father to son…except here. For Matthew does not declare Joseph to be the father of Jesus. Jesus, the Christ, is born of Mary, the virgin, with God as His Father.

Abba! Father!

I’ll repeat myself: what a gift this genealogy is, to be members of God’s eternal family! Indeed, what a gift all of Revelation is!

Do you realize how blessed we are to be Catholic Christians? What we believe and how we worship are not things that we’ve concocted. For Christianity is really a revelation rather than a religion. Christianity is God’s Word and God’s Work; it’s not something we came up with. It’s not a collection of man’s feeble attempts to placate some higher power. It comes totally from God Himself.

We believe that God revealed Himself to us through all those many generations that Matthew enumerates in his genealogy. It’s a Revelation that runs from Abraham to Moses to David through all the prophets and eventually to Jesus Himself – the fulfillment of it all. Yes, it’s a revelation that reaches its climax in the Incarnation when Mary gives birth, as Matthew describes it, to “Jesus, who is called the Christ.” [Mt 1:16]

You see, brothers and sisters, it’s all a gift. As St. Paul asked the Corinthians: “What do you possess that you have not received?” [1 Cor 4:7] The answer, of course, is “Nothing!”

And right there at the top of the list of God’s gifts, is that which we receive through our Baptism: the gift of adoption. We became sons and daughters of the Father, part of the Family of God. And so we can join Jesus on that same family tree described by Matthew. We become heirs and can inherit the fruit of the promises God made to Abraham and to all those who followed him. But as members of God’s family we must behave as any good son or daughter would behave. We must live in a way that honors the father, in a way that doesn’t dishonor the family.

Another great gift that comes out of this adoption is the privilege of eating at the table of the Family of God. Yes, we can take part in the Eucharistic Feast, the Mass. And what a gift this is! For here, at this altar, Jesus Christ, gives Himself to us, body and blood, soul and divinity, and allows us, members of His family, to join Him in the most intimate way imaginable. Here, as we come forward to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we also join each other in a unique Communion.

Pope Benedict wrote that “Eucharist, in which the Lord gives us His Body and makes us one body, forever remains the place where the Church is generated, where the Lord Himself never ceases to be found anew; in the Eucharist the Church is most completely herself – in all places, yet one only.”

Eucharist, which means thanksgiving, is like a great family Thanksgiving dinner, and yet far more wonderful and fulfilling than any family meal at home.

Brothers and sisters, we are sons and daughters of God!

Let us rejoice that our names are written in heaven, as members of the family of Jesus Christ.

History and Revelation

I'm neither a historian nor a theologian so any comments I make on history and revelation are just that, my comments, my own unenlightened thoughts on a subject that was thrust on me the other day during a conversation with a parishioner. 

He and I were chatting casually about the state of the world when he said, "I'm sure glad that God is on our side." Assuming he was referring to the Church, I asked, "And what side is that?" His reply? "Why the United States of course." 

Now that's hardly what I would call a "catholic" comment, but I let it slide until he repeated it a moment later in slightly different terms. At that point I could no longer restrain myself, and asked him first, why he believed God was on our side, and second, in what conflict had God chosen us as His allies.

His answers were a bit confusing, at least to me, but I think I can boil them down to the following: God likes us best because we're a democracy, and the conflict involved is the ongoing battle of good versus evil. I won't bother relating the rest of our brief conversation because despite my best efforts I really don't think I had any appreciable effect on his beliefs. Indeed, he probably went away thinking I was, at best, some kind of anarchist.

But our brief conversation got me thinking about a few things, specifically history and revelation. And whenever I find myself thinking about those two subjects I usually turn to St. Augustine.

St. Augustine

It's pretty easy for us, especially for us naturally patriotic Americans, to see our time and our nation as something special, something set apart from the rest of the world. We've been, in effect, conditioned to do so by a culture that, at least until recently, set our nation apart and placed it above the rest of humanity, as John Winthrop envisioned it: a "city upon a hill." Ronald Reagan, perhaps our most optimistic president, and certainly a patriot, echoed Winthrop's vision when he gave his "Shining City on a Hill" speech and declared the United States "the last best hope of man on earth."

Now, I really like Ronald Reagan and wish we'd had more presidents like him, but I can't agree that the United States is man's "last best hope." I won't deny that the way of governing conceived and put into place by our founding fathers is doubtless the best ever experienced by humanity...at least from a human perspective. It has brought about more freedom and more wealth for a greater number of people than any other system of government. It isn't perfect, far from it, but that's to be expected. It was, after all developed by men, not by God.

And that's the problem. Our nation is part and parcel of Augustine's City of Man, and therefore will always be in conflict with the City of God. Our nation is an earthly city, one ultimately ruled by self-love and contempt for God and His Law. One need look no further than the decisions of the highest arbiter of our law, the Supreme Court, to recognize the truth of this. Our courts, our legislators, and our executives choose, as they always have, man's law over God's Law, man's will over God's Will. The United States may well be the best that man has to offer the world, but it's still man doing the offering.

No, the last best hope of man is not the City of Man but the Church, the presence of the City of God on earth. It cannot live in total peace with the City of Man because it is ruled by something very different. In the words of Augustine, it is ruled by "love of God even to the contempt of self." Despite this, the two cities do, however, live together, interwoven as long as they share the world. As Catholic historian Christopher Dawson wrote, the two cities "have been running their course mingling one with the other through all the changes of times from the beginning of the human race, and shall so move on together until the end of the world, when they are destined to be separated at the last judgment." It will, of course, be a final and complete separation. As for me, at the time of the last judgment -- that is, at the very end of time itself -- I hope I will be judged to be a citizen of the City of God and not the City of Man.

Augustine believed that God is very much involved in our history. The very fact of the Incarnation itself should remove any doubts on the part of the Christian. Augustine saw God's hand in the order and beauty of the cosmos, of all of His creation. But, perhaps more importantly, Augustine saw the possibility of human freedom operating within God's plan of salvation. He sees God entering our world of time to transform it through His self-revelation. And from that revelation, God allows us to take part in the work of that transformation. 

History, then, is much more than just the passing of time measured by the actions of men and women, by the rise and fall of nations and civilizations. History is Revelation. History is God making Himself known in the lives of His people and in His created order right here on earth.

No, God is not on our side; rather, He calls us all to be on His side.