Holy Family Sunday

Weren’t you just here yesterday?  I thought that was you!

But here we are again, continuing to celebrate the Christmas Season, for like Easter, Christmas is too great of a mystery to celebrate it in just one day. Easter last for fifty days, and Christmas for twelve, as the song reminds us.

And on the Sundays of Christmas we meditate on three realities of the Incarnation: On Christmas itself we center on the child born in a manger. On Epiphany (next week) we reflect on the Glory of God made manifest in our darkened world. But in the week in between we reflect for a bit on the mystery of the Holy Family.

For of all the places God could have chosen to come into the world, he chose a family.  Just like your family. Maybe it’s a big family (you needed two pews at Christmas) or maybe it’s a little family. Maybe it’s a new family, or maybe a couple of you have grown very old. But we all belong to a family. We are all someone’s child. And that’s what the Church asks us to reflect on this week.

The mystery of the Holy Family is, it seems to me, as mystery of love, of love incarnate, God calls every child to honor his parents in gratitude for the “gift of life, their love, and their work.” (CCC, no. 2215) The author of the Book of Sirach tells us as much: "With all your heart honor your father, and do not forget the birth pangs of your mother. Remember that through your parents you were born; what can you give back to them that equals their gift to you?" (Sirach 7:27-28)

As a child, we owe our parents not only respect, but obedience, for they are our first teachers of all the mysteries of life and living. As Proverbs reminds us: “keep your father's commandment, and forsake not your mother's teaching. . . . When you walk, they will lead you; when you lie down, they will watch over you; and when you awake, they will talk with you.” (Proverbs 6:20-22)

This is why Saint Paul reminds children of their obligation to "obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” (Collosians 3:20; Cf. Ephesians 6:1) Day to day, in everything from waking up to going to school, children should obey their parents: it is what God wants them to do. It’s their job!

As children grow up, they still owe a debt of love and respect to their parents, although this takes on new and unique dimensions. For no son has ever grown up to be exactly like his father, and no daughter will be exactly like her mother. Which is why adolescence, the end of childhood and the beginning of being an adult, is such an interesting time!

As years pass into adulthood, the obligation of obedience grows into an obligation of respect, as new challenges emerge. For the first time, sons and daughters begin to see their parents for who they really are: as human beings with strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears. There is a wonderful opportunity at this stage of life to make friends of your parents and to learn from the couple of decades of experience they have under their belts. 

There are temptations at this stage as well. Such as the temptation of allowing unresolved adolescent tensions to become petrified states of alienation between child and parent. The only cure for such temptations, of course, is the forgiveness and love which can lead to respect of another adult, who, with their gifts and faults, first helped you (literally) to stand on your own two feet. 

It’s like the great story of Naomi and Ruth. Naomi’s son, Mahlon, fell in love with and married Ruth. Then Mahlon died. So the widow Naomi, sobbing and all alone in the world, tells the still young Ruth that while she will miss her and bless her for all she had done for her now dead son, she must now go back to her own mother, for Naomi has nothing more she can give her.

But Ruth protests to her mother-in-law: "Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you! For wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Wherever you die I will die, and there be buried." (Ruth 1:16-17)

Ruth provides an example for every child of the debt they owe to their parents, to ever be their child and to love and respect them until the day they die. So Ruth returns to Bethlehem with Naomi and, with the help of God, provides for “the comfort and support of her old age.” (Cf. Ruth 4:15)

So it is with each of us. We all grow old, parents and children alike (although parents have a bit of a head start on their children). But when we are old, the obligation of respect and love perdures. “As much as they can,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, children must give their parents “material and moral support in old age and in times of illness, loneliness, or distress.” (CCC, no. 2218)

So, when parents and children grow old (although parents have a bit of a head start on their children) and we find ourselves caring for those who first cared for us. It’s when Sirach’s advice should be heeded: “when [your father] is old...be considerate of him...for kindness to a father will not be forgotten…” (Sirach 3: 14-16)

And even once our parents have returned to God, our obligation to them continues, as we owe them a debt of prayer, that God might look upon them with mercy and show them perfect peace. Our love for them, like theirs for us, cannot be stilled, even by the separation of death.

For what makes the Holy Family holy is the honor and respect which Jesus, Mary, and Joseph held for each other. May we follow their example, showing to those who brought us into this world that “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” which the Lord had shown to us.” (Collosians 3:13)

A Christmas Homily

Once upon a time there was a great tall tree on a hill in the woods. He stood there all day long, dreaming of what he might become. Some days he would dream that he would be carved into a great treasure chest, filled with gold, silver and precious gems and decorated on every side so that everyone would admire his beauty. On other days he would dream that he would form the massive timbers of a mighty ship which would carry kings and queens across the oceans to the four corners of the world. He wanted to be great and powerful.

One day a woodsman came and looked up at the tree and cut it down, making it into neither a beautiful chest nor a mighty ship, but a feed box for the animals. He placed it a barn and filled it with hay. The tree was very sad, because he would never be great nor powerful.

Then one day, a man and woman came to the barn. She gave birth and placed her baby in the feed box, because there was no place for them in the inn. But then a strange thing happened, as the whole manger seemed to fill with light, and there were angels and a star above the baby’s crib, and shepherds and wise men came to worship the child, not like a baby in a crib, but like a King upon the finest royal throne.

But soon they all left and the memory of that wondrous night began to fade, and over the years the barn grew old and the crib grew rickety, until it was sold for scrap to some Roman soldiers and carted off to Jerusalem, where it was made into a Cross for the execution of criminals.

That was the cross they placed on the shoulders of a man who was made to carry it, a man who who seemed to glow with the same light as the baby so long ago in Bethlehem. The man fell three times and was finally affixed to the wood with nails which dug deeply. The people jeered at him and mocked him, while only his mother and a younger man stood weeping at his feet, until the man looked to heaven, prayed and breathed his last.

And three days later, when the sun rose, so did the man rise from the dead, and the tree stood taller and prouder than he had since he lived in the forest, for he knew now that now he was, indeed, great and powerful, having been made little and weak. He had never been a chest for earthly treasures nor a ship for powerful princes, but he had been a throne for the Son of God, as his crib and his cross.

And what about us? Do we want to be rich and powerful? Do we want the whole world to acclaim our beauty and our strength? Sure we do.

In fact, especially at Christmas we expect that everything is going to be perfect. It’s that idea of Christmas that people my age got from the Cleaver family in the 1950’s. Everyone sitting around a beautifully decorated Christmas Tree with a perfectly constructed fire burns in the fireplace, decorated with overflowing Christmss stockings with the name of each child neatly inscribed on each.

And everyone is singing Christmas carols as they smile at each other with understanding and love. There’s grandma in the rocking chair sharing her wisdom with all who sit in rapt attention, while mom and dad look lovingly on, holding hands with the trace of a tear in their eyes. Meanwhile, each child asks permission to open their next gift and giggles with joy at each lovely surprise. Soon they will leave for Church as snow gently falls from the sky and dad leads them in Christmas carols until they genuflect and kneel in their pews dressed in their new Sunday clothes….

At Christmas time we expect everything to be perfect, but most of the time it is not. Many of you lost someone you loved this year, and they are not here this Christmas because they have died. Some who hear my voice fought about some stupid little thing all the way to Church and are not particularly looking forward to going home in the same car. Some worry about what the doctor said or about the people at work who already got laid off or about their son who did not come home from school this year. Some worry about addiction or that one who drinks too much, or about how hard it is to pray or even to sleep.

But the great good news of this night is that you do not have to be powerful or perfect. The great good news of this night is that, like the tree on the top of the hill, you need only be little enough to be a throne for the Son of the Living God. Little enough to make your hands into a throne to receive his incarnate flesh…Little enough to prepare your heart to be a crib where the incarnate Son of God might rest this night…with his healing, his love and his hope.

God does not expect from us perfection or power. We are not made for that. God waits for us to make ourselves as little as the Babe of Bethlehem, that we might receive him this night and he might rest in our hearts.

Just one more week...

Just one more week until Christmas, and the Church helps us to prepare with the story of the Visitation. You heard it: Mary, having learned that she is pregnant with Jesus and that her elderly cousin Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist and goes to visit her.

In the words of our beloved Pope emeritus, “Before worrying about herself, Mary…thought about the elderly Elizabeth, who she knew was well on in her pregnancy and, moved by the mystery of love that she had just welcomed within herself, she set out in haste to go to offer Elizabeth her help.”

Elizabeth recognized the immaculate holiness of her cousin, which is why, when she catches sight of Mary she exclaims: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb…and blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

Blessed is the fruit of your womb. How many times have we said those words? And today we reflect on their meaning.

There’s an ancient story, told from the Middle Ages, that supposes that the Angel Gabriel was sent from God the Father to search for a place worthy enough for his Son to be born into the world. 

At first, the story goes, the Angel considered the most magnificent Temple on earth, bedecked with fine jewels and built atop ten thousand marble steps From its’ gates four powerful rivers flowed, abundant with life and embanked with the tallest trees and most beautiful flowers. Surely this would be a worthy dwelling place for the Son of God, he thought. But when he suggested it to God, he found it was not worthy enough.

And so the Angel flew to the peak of the highest mountain on earth, where winds blew the snows to even greater heights, and upon which the sun glistened and danced. Nowhere was the sky more blue or the heights more breath-taking. Perhaps here, the Angel thought, we could build the temple with jewels and marbles and rivers, that this might become a worthy dwelling place for the Son of God. But it was not worthy.

So Gabriel, the story continues, looked up at the heavens, where the stars twinkled and shone against a cold night sky with an unimaginable beauty, where God had so woven the distant stars together that they seemed to embrace the earth with a transcendent power all their own. Here, at last, he thought is a worthy dwelling to enthrone the Son of the living God. But it was not worthy.

Discouraged, the old story goes, the poor angel returned to heaven and begged the Most High God to show him a worthy dwelling place upon the earth for his co-eternal Son.

And so it happened, that the Angel Gabriel was “sent from God

to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.”

She, in her littleness, of all the great palaces and places upon the earth, was the only one worthy to carry the Son of the Most High God as the fruit of her womb. This confused and frightened little girl, was alone full of grace. This handmaid of the Lord, who surrendered all to his will; she alone was worthy, and she alone was “a fit dwelling place” for the Son of God.

So, when you are looking for God, when you want to see him and listen to him and offer him the gift of your life, there is only one place to find him. He’s not enshrined in a mighty jewel-encrusted temple on the top of a mountain, or so far up in the sky that he dwells beyond the stars. No, he’s as close as the little virgin Mary, who runs to carry the fruit of her womb to the hill country to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and runs even more quickly to you.

So, like the Magi, let us go to this beautiful lady who holds in her arms the one who is our hope and salvation. Let us entrust ourselves to her intercession, her example and her care. And let us beg her in whose womb the Lord willed to be formed, to teach us how he might be formed in us, as well.

On John the Baptist

 Today the Church introduces us to the perfect Advent companion: Saint John the Baptist. You, no doubt, recall the pictures of him dressed in the skin of a camel roughly tied with a leather belt. He is the the wild eyed prophet, proclaiming Make straight the way of the Lord.

Saint Augustine described him this way: “John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word.” He is the forerunner, the last of the prophets to point to the coming of our Redemption. And his whole purpose in God’s plan is to prepare us for Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One of the Lord.

Here’s the way Zechariah, his father, spoke of his son’s mission: “And you, my child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.”

The fulfillment of this prophecy came to be when, thirty years after his father spoke those words, the Baptist earned his name by calling people to repentance from their sins by baptizing them in the Jordan River in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. 

And that’s where we meet John in today’s Gospel, baptizing the people and preaching the coming of the Christ. We hear him announce the one who is coming, who is mightier than he, and who will baptize not in water but in the Holy Spirit and Fire.

His passion was contagious, Saint Luke tells us, and “the people were filled with expectation” for the coming of the Lord.

And that is why he is such a good companion for Advent, because with us he longs for the coming of Christ and thus helps us to prepare our hearts as a sort of manger for the Lord.

But how do we do that? What should we do?

You heard the people ask John that same question in Gospel a few minutes ago, and he gave them three answers, three ways to prepare their hearts to recieve the Lord when he comes.

First, he tells the soldiers: Stop lying to people: “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone…” Jesus will go a step further, telling his disciples to forgive even those people who lie about you, who “revile us and utter every kind of slander about you.…” We are to forgive them even as we wish to be forgive, not just seven times, but seventy times seven times…as many times as they ask us to forgive them.

Then to the tax collectors he says stop stealing, “Stop collecting more than what is called for by the law.” Again, Jesus will go one step further and tell us to: Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.”

And finally to the crowd: John tells them to prepare for the Lord not just by lending them your posessions, but when you have two coats, give the second one away. And, as you guessed, Jesus goes even further, saying that if someone wants your shirt, give it to them, and go get your coat out of the cloest as well and give them that as well!

So how does the Baptist tell us to get ready for Christmas? Stop lying to people, forgive people, don’t steal from them, and give them whatever they need.

In other words, love, for God is love and the Son of God became a little child out of love for us and died on a cross that we might learn to love others as he has loved us. That’s how to prepare our hearts to recieve him this Christmas: by loving others, as he first loved us.

Reflections on Being Thankful....

Timothy Dexter is one of the most colorful characters to walk the fields of Massachusetts in the decades following the American Revolution.  Born in Malden, he made his first fortune by speculating in Continental currency.  His continuing success was due to a combination of audacity and incredible good luck.  

Against all odds, he exported wool mittens to the West Indies, at just the time an exporter in that tropical climate began shipping to Siberia.  Next, he literally sent coals to Newcastle, at just the moment a British coal miner’s strike made him a fortune there.  He exported Bibles to the Muslim East Indies, stray cats to the Caribbean, and having hoarded a warehouse full of whalebone, by necessity invented the whalebone corset, which became all the rage in nineteenth century New England.

He was eccentric, but wise beyond his capacity, and never ceased to attribute his multiple successes to those who helped him along the way.  Indeed, gratitude was, in his view, the most important of virtues.

 “An ungrateful man,” he would frequently say, ‘is like a hog under a tree eating acorns, who never looks up to see where they came from.’

Remember the nine lepers in the Gospel parable who were just such narcissistic hogs?  Only one came back to give thanks, but the nine who were cleansed of their disease, cured of their disability, now set on getting on with their life, with not a smidgen of gratitude and not a word of thanks to the Lord who cured them.

And we are not so very different.  Sadly, ingratitude is so rampant in our day and age that we often become surprised by folks who are habitually grateful.

On the day I received my last postgraduate degree I practically sprained my wrist patting myself on the back.  But did I think of Miss Lucasak who first taught me cursive in third grade, or Miss Morin who encouraged us to write those one page essays with the pictures two years later.  Did I think of the Priest who first inspired me with a love for the Liturgy, or my parents who put me through College, or the inspiring professors I had come to know along the way.  Did I think of the scholars who had constructed that world of knowledge in which I had gained some small degree of proficiency, or those who built the institutions which had led me through those mysteries.

No, I thought of none of them, I never gave them a thought or a prayer.  I never said thank-you.  Just like the ungrateful lepers, I got on with my life and I never looked back.

But here we are, you and me, trying to give thanks, at lest on this day, trying to crane our necks to at least look back.  To break the bread, to tell the story, and to give thanks as best we are able.

For that is what we do each day in this holy house: We celebrate the Eucharist, the thanksgiving: a memorial of recollection and gratitude, in which we remember all that He has done for us, from our first breath to our last, the love, the mercy, the sacrifice....the faith which makes sense of the darkest days and the mystery which defeats the deadly with eternal joy and eternal life.

Which is why, at Mass, Fr. Paul, acting in the person of Christ himself, will call out to us:  Lift up your hearts.  And we lift them up to the Lord.

And unlike ungrateful lepers or hogs, we will give thanks to the Lord our God.  For it is right to give him thanks and praise.

Reflections on the Ordination of Deacons

 Last night I was privileged to gather with those discerning a vocation to the Diaconate and review the rite of Ordination of Deacons. I hope you will enjoy the presentation (you can follow along with the attached copy of the Rite of Ordinations of Deacons).

Rite of Ordination of Deacons (text)

That they all might be one...

Here is my homily for 

the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Does it ever seem to you like everyone is fighting with everyone else? To the devil’s delight.

The devil loves division, all kinds of division. Can’t talk to that uncle about politics. Satan giggles. Don’t trust those people who don’t speak English. He’s thrilled. How about the people who watch that other network? He’s love you to hate them, too! Or that person who always makes dumb decisions at work. Go ahead, the man with the little red tail whispers in your ear…destroy her.

The deeper the division and the more ferocious the hate, the happier the devil is. And on some days lately, he must be really happy.

As he was in the diaspora. The Greek word diaspora means division, the spreading of seeds across a field. So when,  six centuries before the birth of Christ, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, including the Temple, and the enslavement and exile of “all the princes, and…men of valor, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths; none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land.”

According to the Prophet Jeremiah, the Jewish nation was utterly destroyed and made “an everlasting ruin…a ruin and a waste.” (Jeremiah 25:11)

The desperation of the Babylonian exile is recalled by the author of Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon…we sat and wept, remembering Sion;

If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!

if I prize not Jerusalem above all my joys!

But, as we hear from Jeremiah and from the Psalmist this morning, all was not lost. For they dreamed of the day when the Lord, the Father of Israel, would gather-in the remnant of Israel, scattered across the face of the earth, and lead them back to Jerusalem. They paint a picture of the immense throng on a straight road: the blind, the lame, pregnant mothers and everyone else. They left in tears, but they would return rejoicing. They will be like men dreaming, their mouths filled with laughter, proclaiming the greatness of the Lord.

So it was for the Jews of the diaspora and so it will be for us.

Such was the promise of Jesus, to send the Holy Spirit to make us one. Do you remember the Lord’s prayer at the last Supper? 

Ut unum sint!  “…that they all might be one, Christ is one with the Father, that we might be one in him. (Cf. John 17:21)

It is what we pray for in the Eucharistic Prayer: “in your compassion, O merciful Father, gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world.”

But such a work will not happen magically. God will not wave a magic wand. Rather he has commanded us to be the agents of his in-gathering, by loving others as he loved us. It is like the old song, “Let there be peace on earth, but let it begin with me.”

And such peace, such unity will not come about when we figure out the best words with which to convince all those people to think like we do. It will come only with love.

So are you sick of all the division and of tickling the devil’s little red ears with our hate for each other and endless arguing.

Then love your neighbors, for even in the least of them is an opportunity to love Christ. “Whatever you do the least of them, you do to me.” Be willing to lay down your life for them. Even your enemies and your persecutors. 

Seek out the good in them, rather than seeking their faults as reasons to reject them. Don’t compete with your neighbor, love him.  “The greater divider,” the Holy Father reminds us, tempts us to seek out “the weaknesses of [our] brothers and sisters. He is cunning: he magnifies their mistakes and defects, sows discord, provokes criticism and creates factions.” (Pope Francis, 20 January 2021)  But Jesus does the opposite. He teaches us not to see in our brother someone to compete with, but someone to love.

For if we love one another as he has loved us, Christ will gather us in from the diaspora of our sins and be make us one in him, that the “full number of the nations, gathered together in Christ, [might] be transformed into [his] one people and made perfect in [his] Kingdom.” (Rite of Ordination, Prayer for the Ordination of a Priest)

Jesus, son of David, make it so. Make us one in you.

Diaconate Discernment: Week Three

Here are the slides for the third week of Diaconate Discernment, as we examine the history of the theology of the diaconate in the Latin West. 

WORCESTER DIACONATE RETREAT

I was delighted to spend the weekend with the Permanent Deacon community of the Diocese of Worcester, leading their retreat, entitled THEY WILL BE DONE, at the Franciscan Monastery Guest House in Kennebunk, Maine.

In order to download the slides from this retreat, which centered on the necessity of discernment in our lives, just click here. My lecture notes for the major talks follow.

I

Discernment with Christ: in the Desert and the Garden

Friday, 7:00pm

Following my commentary on the slides for this talk, I concluded with the following:

Christ discerned in the desert, before assuming his sacred ministry.

The Fathers suggested that he may have gone out into the same place where, after God had freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, they first rebelled from him. Where they wandered in the desert in search of the Promised Land, and were are thirsty. So, we are told they grumbled and quarreled with Moses, to the point where he was fearful for his life. Grumbling and quarreling are translated into Hebrew, by the way, as Meribah and Massah.

Christ also discerned in the Garden of Gethsemane, agonizing as he stood before his passion and death, preparing to offer the perfect sacrifice upon the altar of the Cross. That Cross, set atop Golgatha, is said by the Fathers to be the site of the grave of Adam, our first parent, whose disobedience condemned the human race. From the wood of the Cross, the new Adam, Christ’s blood dripped into the soil and upon our first parent’s desiccated bones, redeeming us by the blood of the Innocent Lamb.

So do I invite you to enter your own deserts and gardens this weekends, seeking God’s will for your lives.

Accompanied by Christ, may you hear his voice, discern his will and receive the graces you need to do it.

II

Discernment and the Cross

Saturday, 9:30am

What do I need to be happy?

To do God’s will, certainly. And most of the time I go around convinced that his will is that I have a really good time…that he give me all the gusto I can take.

That he make me powerful and famous.

Many of us think like that.

But the truth is, while the road to success may be satisfying for brief moments, but it’s not the key to happiness. 

Well how about money?  Will money make me happy? There’s a friend of mine who likes to say that if money can't buy happiness, at least it can rent it for a little while.

What if I won a million bucks; would that be enough to make me happy?  Would it? Maybe not. One study shows that most young people who win the lottery or inherit a windfall will, after just five years, lose half of the money through poor spending and bad investments.

Another study tells us that 10 years after winning the lottery, the average winner has only saved 16 cents of every dollar originally won. Even worse, around 70 percent of people who win the lottery or get a big windfall eventually end up in bankruptcy. 70% of the time!

So neither money nor success will make me happy. But something else, or rather, someone else, will.

Do you remember when Jesus told his disciples how to preach the Kingdom of God? Go from town to town, he tells them, and proclaim at the top of your lungs: “the Kingdom fo God is at hand!”  But then he says something strange: “take nothing for the journey but a walking stick—no food, no sack, no money in your belts.” Don’t even bring a change of clothes.

Because none of those things are necessary. None of those things will bring happiness. The only thing we need, and the only thing that will make us happy is the love of God.

The Psalmist says as much: “The LORD himself will give his benefits; [in him] our land shall yield its increase.”

So, you wanna be happy? Just listen to Saint Paul: “be holy and without blemish before him.” Love God and love everyone he sends your way. It’s that simple.

Saint Francis of Assisi understood how to be happy. One cold winter’s day he was walking with Brother Leo, coming down from the Carcere, the winter retreat where he would pray for weeks at a time (even in the wind and the snow). Brother Leo turned to him and asked, “tell me, Father Francis, how to be happy? What is perfect joy?”

That’s a good one!  Francis replied. For if we could perform all sorts of miracles, cure the lame, exorcise demons, make the blind see and bring speech to the dumb, and even raise people from the dead, if we could preach sermons that would convert the world…if we were successful enough to do all these things, we would still not have perfect joy.”

Then how do we find perfect joy, the puzzled Leo asked him.

Trudging through the snow, the shivering monks could see smoke coming from the chimney of a farm house in the distance, and as they got closer they could see a family gathered around a table before a roaring fire, each with a big dish of pasta in front if them, laughing and singing. 

Ahhhh, brother Leo shouted. Now I understand, for soon these folks will invite us to sit by the fire and warm our frozen fingers and feed us a big bowl of pasta and sing with us and laugh.  That is, assuredly perfect joy!

No, Father Francis said. That is not perfect joy.  So they trudged on toward the monastery, where from a distance, Brother Leo could smell supper and knew that after the prayers the brothers would gather around the fire and sing together as brothers do and eat and be merry. That, he turned to Francis again, now I know what perfect joy is, Father Francis.

No, Father Francis replied. Now would not be perfect joy.

So the puzzled companion approached the big door at the front of the monastery with the the equally frozen Saint Francis. It seems that the door was manned by the youngest and newest of the monks, who had not yet met Francis or Leo, both of whom now looked like two scruffy and smelly bums, half frozen by the wind.

So when they knocked on the door, the young porter answered, and thinking them ne’r do wells, grabbed them both by the scruff of the neck and threw them into the snowbank, slamming the door behind them.

Brother Leo dusted himself off and ran to Father Francis, who smiling, looked up from the snowbank and said, There Brother Leo is perfect joy. To share in the suffering of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the most rejected of men. That, brother, is perfect joy.

Not in money. Not in success. But only in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. As Saint Francis tells us in his prayer before the crucifix:

Most High and Glorious God,

give light to the darkness of my soul.

Give me right faith, certain hope and perfect charity.

Lord grant me wisdom and insight

that I might always discern,

your holy and free will.

III

Discernment and Authority

Saturday, 1:00pm

As most of you know, I spent more than twenty years of my life working in one way or another with the translation of the Roman Missal, and of the thousands of words with which we struggled, perhaps the hardest to understand was the Latin word Supplices

As in the Roman Canon, the First Euchristic Prayer:

Súpplices te rogámus, omnípotens Deus

In the end, the Bishops rendered supplices with the words “in humble prayer.”

In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God

Supplices is the word of a supplicant, one kneeling, begging, entreating in humble submission…beseeching God.  That’s why it's used where it is in the Roman Canon.  There’s a wonderful poetic ballet played out as we bow low saying supplices and ask that Christ bear the gifts we have placed upon this earthly altar to his altar in heaven!  

The supplices of the Roman Canon thus signifies the joining of our sacrifice to his, a union of heaven and earth, and even a glimpse into what we shall know, God willing, in the eternity of heaven.

And it all starts with supplices.  But I’m afraid, we're not very good at it. 

We’re not very good at facing the fact that I am little and God is big: that God is greater and more beautiful, omniscient, omnipotent, all loving…Bigger than I could ever imagine.

The hardest thing for our culture and time (let’s face it, the hardest thing for us!)  is to recognize our littleness and God’s greatness, our utter dependence on his grace.

Supplices means I have to obey, and obedience is not exactly one of my favorite things. I'm not too thrilled by littleness and obedience, and it comes out in the strangest ways sometimes. Ask my best friend, who turned to me one day after a long period of my spouting all knowingly and said, you know James, you're the only one I know who can make me cry with frustration.

Yet, we are made for obedient love, and from the moment we went down into those waters of Baptism with Christ were joined to his death, it's all we've been about. A constant conversion to life from death, and to purity from sin, and to light from darkness.

Such a continuing conversion is rooted in a sense of self that emerges from a radical humility, an assuredness that I am not God....the Shema Israel, which heralds and caps every act of Jewish worship, says it all: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one." It's a takeoff on the first commandment: “I am the Lord your God and you shall have no false Gods before me.”

But we fight against it all the time.  Indeed, is there anything which I fight against more instinctively than the sense that I am not God. I once heard a certain Roman cardinal utter the ultimate sharp rebuke to a staffer who was heatedly trying to convince him of something: “Suppose, Father, just for a moment, that you were not God.”

We fight against those incontrovertible truths with our every waking breath.  Just like our first parents, whose sin, ultimately, was not the fruit stolen from the tree, but the disordered conviction that they could be God if they just ate the right kind of fruit.

You see it in every three year old, possessed by the absolute conviction that he is the center of the universe, the ultimate arbiter of meaning, justice, and truth, in other words that he, stamping his feet, screaming and crying is God.

It happens to us all.  We scream and threaten and hold our breath until we turn blue.  

But then we reach the point where we stop stamping our feet and find ourselves knocked off of our high horse and on our knees.  That’s why those moments in life are such a blessing, because they knock you off your feet and onto your knees.

We are made for obedient love. It is our dignity. It is our destiny. It is our purpose for being.

A practical note, drawn for the Saint to whom this year of Saint Joseph is dedicated.

Why are we called to be obedient to our legitimate superiors?  Is it because they are always right?  They are always brighter than us, more talented than us and always more capable of making the right decision?

Not necessarily.  Because sometimes your legitimate superior will be less bright than you, less experienced and sometimes even less capable of making the right decision.  

But you obey with docility because God has made this man your Bishop or your Pastor and its up to God alone to make sense of it.  And for now God calls that person to make the decisions and you to obey them, as a participation, if nothing else, in the kenotic self giving, the obedience unto death which is at the heart of Christ’s perfect sacrifice of love upon the Cross for our salvation.

Saint Joseph helps us understand obedience in a very real way.  Actually Origen does, when he writes:

"Joseph understood that Jesus was superior to him even as he submitted to him, and, knowing the superiority of his charge, he commanded him with respect and moderation. Everyone should reflect on this: frequently a lesser man is placed over people who are greater, and it happens at times that an inferior is more worthy than the one who appears to be set above him. If a person of greater dignity understands this, then he will not be puffed up with pride because of his higher rank; he will know that his inferior may well be superior to him, even as Jesus was subject to Joseph.”

I think of another Joseph, Joseph Ratzinger, our beloved Pope emeritus.  After experiencing the increasing weight of his physical limitations he set aside the Petrine office for a life of prayer.  "I am,” he told us, now a “simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this Earth.”

And then he, the Pope did a remarkable thing.  Joseph of Bavaria made a promise of obedience, “unconditional reverence and obedience,” to whoever his successor will be.  A promise he has kept.

Did he do it because he knew his successor would be a better theologian than him, a more powerful preacher or a more effective Pope.  No.  He did it because there could be only one Pope, and he, the emeritus, would render him unconditional obedience and respect.

He did it because he belied the words he preached years before:

 “Only if we know how to lose ourselves, if we give ourselves, may we find ourselves. When this occurs, it is not our will that prevails, but that of the Father to which Jesus submitted himself: ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.’ (Lk 22:42)…. This is what St. Joseph has taught us, with his renouncing, with his abandonment, that in a certain sense foreshadowed the imitation of the Crucified Jesus, the paths of fidelity, of the resurrection, and of life.” (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, homily 19 March 1992)

Let me close with Saint Benedict's description of the three ways of loving God. You remember it.  At first, Saint Benedict tells us, we love God because we love ourselves. I don't want to go to hell, so I do what he wants.

At the second stage, I love God because he is lovable. I have no choice. I have so deeply fallen in love within him that I want only to do his will.

And then there's the third stage of loving God, the one which few reach but the only state in which true holiness and purity reside, wherein I love me only because God loves me. Only then does my every waking moment seek the will of God. My next breath has value only if it is part of God's plan. My fondest hopes and my deepest desires are but cinder and ash unless they are a part of his plan. In other words, it is not my will but his, not me, but Christ Jesus in me, it is I, like John the Baptist, who must decrease and he who must increase.

IV

Discerning the Voice of God

Saturday, 7:00pm

I begin with story. From the Book of the Prophet Samuel. One day Eli was asleep in his usual place. His eyes had lately grown so weak that he could not see. The lamp of God was not yet extinguished,^* and Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the LORD where the ark of God was. The LORD called to Samuel, who answered, “Here I am.” He ran to Eli and said, “Here I am. You called me.” “I did not call you,” Eli answered. “Go back to sleep.” So he went back to sleep. Again the LORD called Samuel, who rose and went to Eli. “Here I am,” he said. “You called me.” But he answered, “I did not call you, my son. Go back to sleep.” Samuel did not yet recognize the LORD, since the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. The LORD called Samuel again, for the third time. Getting up and going to Eli, he said, “Here I am. You called me.” Then Eli understood that the LORD was calling the youth. So he said to Samuel, “Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’”

When Samuel went to sleep in his place, the LORD came and stood there, calling out as before: Samuel, Samuel! Samuel answered, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”  Samuel grew up, and the LORD was with him, not permitting any word of his to go unfulfilled. Thus all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba came to know that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.

Holiness means listening for the voice of the Lord. And answering him.

Saint James: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”

And again, in the rule of Saint Benedict: “Listen carefully…and incline the ear of your heart.” Listening with the ear of the heart is what every good therapist or a great spiritual director does, one of whom once described his work as “listening people into health.” It’s what friends do, as the old saying says: “Friends are those rare people who ask how we are, and then wait to hear the answer.” 

So you begin the healing by listening….not listening for what you to hear, but listening to what they want to say.  Listening with your heart.

Even at Mass, Pope John Paul II, in an address to Bishop of the United States in 1998 told us about the essential value of listening. “Active participation,” he suggested, “does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness and listening: indeed, it demands it. Worshippers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily, or following the prayers of the celebrant, and the chants and music of the liturgy. These are experiences of silence and stillness, but they are in their own way profoundly active. In a culture which neither favors nor fosters meditative quiet, the art of interior listening is learned only with difficulty. Here we see how the liturgy, though it must always be properly inculturated, must also be counter-cultural.”

The fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew begins with the beatitudes. Then Jesus speaks of salt and light, teaches about the law and about anger, adultery and divorce. Then he speaks about retaliation against out enemies, concluding this remarkable series of moral exhortations with the simple phrase. "So, be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect.”

It’s just like what the Lord said to Abraham when he established the first Covenant: “I am God the Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless.” God’s part of the bargain is to reveal himself to us.  Our part, is to become like him. 

Our beloved Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI suggests we can find the secret to this holiness by imitating the lives of the saints, who “let Jesus so totally overwhelm their life that they could say with St Paul “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

The Saints, like St. Francis, who when he heard the voice of Jesus speak to him from the crucifix in the crumbling church of San Damiano, set out with a naïve stubbornness, taking the Lord’s command literally: Rebuild my Church!  

He set about literally rebuilding the church of Saint Damien and then the little chapel we now call the porziuncula, the site of both the birth of the Franciscans and the death of their founder.

I have always loved the porziuncula as a prototype of what a church could be.  Unpretentious but washed in grac; beautiful, but with a beauty which points beyond itself, its walls encrusted with the prayers and the tears of generations of folks like you and me.

But what impresses me the most about this impressive little chapel is what it says on the floor at the door as you enter.  Hic Locus Sanctus Est.   “This Place is Holy.”  It is the ultimate iconium to a building, and the ultimate purpose of each man’s life: to be called holy, beatus, sanctus.

Of course, only God is truly holy, as the angels who stand before the throne understand. But the Saints who aspire to join their voices with the heavenly hosts know that they were made by God to reflect his glory, to shine with the splendorous light of the face of God.  It may be only a reflection, but we were made for this great work. 

And we spend our lives polishing our souls and refocusing our hearts that we might be worthy of the work.

The Council fathers wonderfully envisioned the whole world called to holiness: priests and popes, and parents and toddlers, even politicians and pawn brokers, each called to holiness, preparing themselves for an eternal destiny of praising the God whom they have spent a lifetime seeking to reflect (as in a mirror, darkly), day by day. 

“...all the disciples of Christ, persevering in prayer and praising God, should present themselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.”

Classically, the holy life is described as characterized by the exercise of the Cardinal virtues:

Temperance

Fortitude

Justice

Prudence

“Temperance,” Saint Augustine wrote, “is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved.” It is seeking balance, letting go more than clinging to the things of this world and valuing the way of God more than the way of the flesh. 

“Fortitude,” Saint Augustine insisted “is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object.”  It is hanging in there despite the cost.  It is loving in the face of rejection. It is perduring to the end because it is the right thing to do.

“Justice,” he advised, “is love serving only the loved object.” It is wanting to do the right thing rather than the expedient thing. It is thinking of love before thinking of self-interest.

And “Prudence,” the Bishop of Hippo insists, “is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it.” Prudence is probably one of the hardest won of the virtues, for it is not biting the head off the person who says something to hurt us.  It is thinking before we act. It is considering the implications of what we are about to do before we do it.

Like Eli, we seek to live a life of holiness, that we might hear the voice of God, whispering into our souls.

V

Can you drink the cup?

9:00am Sunday

So here we are at the end of our retreat. We have spent these days with Christ in the garden, seeking to drink from the cup which God has given to us and discern his will.

In doing so, we seek only the will of God and to turn away from everything which keeps us from him. In other words, we seek to go to the Lord with clean hearts.

“Create a clean heart in me, O God,”¹ the Psalmist prays. But how does that happen?

The surest way to a clean heart is hinted at in the Book of Revelation when we read that the Saints have washed their robes in the Blood of the Lamb. Robes that become sparkling white when washed in the Blood of the Lamb. The Blood of the Lamb. The Blood of Jesus.

And where does Jesus’s blood flow from?  It flowed from the heart that beat within his very human chest. A Sacred Heart, which sometimes broke.

The Gospels tell us of two times the Lord’s heart broke when he went to visit his friends in Bethany. You remember the famous times, when, a few weeks before today’s Gospel, Jesus witnesses the dead body of his friend Lazarus.  He trembled, the Gospels tell us. The Lord trembled, and then he wept. Not sniffled. Not cried, But wept. For weeping is a sign of a broken heart.

And in today’s Gospel, back at Lazarus’ house, the Lord’s heart breaks again, as he contemplates the suffering and death he is about to endure.

 ”I am troubled.” he tells his disciples in a remarkable admission. And what troubles him is the suffering he knows he will soon endure. The scourging, the nails and the excruciating death. And, perhaps even worse, the rejection, the condemnation and the execution of their wrath.

“What should I say?” he blurts out, giving us a window into the storm of agony which inflicts his heart.  “What should I say?” Father, save me from this hour?' But it was for this very purpose that I came to this hour.” 

Jesus’ heart is negotiating with itself, the way human hearts do. This or that? Saint Paul describes what’s going on:

"In the days when Christ Jesus was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered."

And, of course, in the end Jesus chooses obedient love, faithful love: “Father, glorify your name.” And he opens his arms on the Cross. He wills to become the stone rejected by the builders, the suffering servant and the grain of wheat, crushed and buried for love of us and the glory of God’s name.

✴︎

Saint Patrick, whom we too often consign to shamrocks or witty cards, understood the deep struggle of the human heart.

In his Confessions he writes about one of the most important turning points of his life. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Having escaped his enslavement to the Irish, he has returned home, where his family begs him to stay. But then he has a vision of a letter being read to him by an Irish saint, saying: “We ask you, holy boy, to come back and walk among us.”

Patrick tells us that the vision cut him to the heart. For he was torn between answering God’s call to convert the Irish (a life which promised frustration, suffering and exhaustion), or living a nice comfortable life back home with his family. So he prayed. And this is how he described it: “deep within me…I heard this: He who has laid down his own life for you is speaking in you. And I was thus awakened rejoicing greatly. And again, I saw him Praying within me,”

Who did he see praying within him? “He who had laid down his life for you,” the Lord was praying within him.  He goes on: “and I looked…way down deep inside my body…and there he was praying earnestly within me with groans…”²

As Patrick was agonizing, struggling to find the strength to be faithful, he was not alone. But rather deep within his heard, Christ was praying alongside him. The one whose heart was troubled was right there groaning along with Patrick…the one who knew temptation and fear and dread, was as close to Patrick in his agony as he had ever been, with (as Patrick wrote) “unspeakable groans which could not be expressed in words.”

And you know just what Patrick was talking about.

✴︎

Think back to the most desperate moment in your life. The time you were convinced you did not have the strength to do the right thing. The Cross was too heavy, the fear was too great and you knelt there bleeding from the eyes with a broken heart.

Maybe it was the day you were betrayed, or you had to bury the one so cruelly taken from you. Maybe it was when everyone else believed the lie about you and scoffed and whispered behind your back. Maybe it was when they told it was malignant and terminal and all that stood between you and the grave was suffering. Maybe it was…

And there you knelt, like Patrick, with a knife in your heart. And it hurt like nothing else had ever hurt before.

But at that moment, whether it was yesterday, tomorrow or even today…like Patrick, you were not alone. For the one who wept blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, knew what it meant to have a troubled heart, to doubt, to tremble from the inside out in fear…

And he is the faithful God of infinite love, the Son obedient unto death out of love for us, the Lord who walks his Passion with us when we are too little or too weak or too poor or in too much pain. He walks there beside us and he strengthens us, for he is never so close to us as in his Passion and Cross. 

For here is the great mystery of our lives: that “suffering is the inner side of love…”³

So the next time your heart is broken and you weep the prayer of suffering, look to your side and you will see Christ there, kneeling beside you, joining your Passion to his own.

And remember the advice once offered to us by St. Francis de Sales:

“The everlasting God has, in his wisdom, foreseen from all eternity the cross he now presents to you as a gift from his inmost heart. He has gazed at with his all-knowing eyes…to see that it be not one inch too large, not one ounce too heavy for you.

He has blessed it…taken one last glance at you and your courage….and sent this cross to you from heaven — a special greeting from God just to you — a gift of his all-merciful love.”

And that is how God creates a clean heart in you.

FINAL BLESSING