Seeing God

Do you remember the first time you saw him?  I mean really saw him.  Do you remember the first time you saw the Lord Jesus with the eyes of faith?

Maybe it was when you were a little kid, and your grandmother told you that Jesus, through whom you were made, was in that little white host and that fancy gold cup that the Priest was holding on the Altar.  And with the faith of a little child, you looked up and saw him.

Caryll Houselander once described that moment so well in her book Mass for the People, written way back in 1942.  She wrote:

“Slowly, exactly, Father O'Grady repeated the words of Consecration, his hands moved in Christ's hands, his voice spoke in Christ's voice, his words were Christ's words, his heart beat in Christ's heart.

“Fr. O'Grady lifted up the consecrated Host in his short, chapped hands, the server rang a little bell, the sailor, the handful of old women and the very old man bowed down whispering "My Lord and my God" and the breath of their adoration was warm on their cold fingers.

Father O'Grady was lifting up God.”

And with the eyes of faith, every innocent child and old faithful woman and man looked at that white host and gold Chalice and saw God, Jesus, their Lord and their God!

Maybe that was the first time you saw God. Or maybe the first time you were with the old sick lady or that guy who lived on the street or that person who really needed you.  And you consoled them and wiped their sweaty brown, or fed them as they gobbled it down hungrily, or dried their tears as they cried about how hard their life had become. And maybe when you looked behind their tears or between the wrinkles of their wizened visage you saw Jesus, smiling back at you. Maybe that’s the first time you saw his face.

Or maybe it was after that time you had really messed up, and your life was in a shambles, and you had cried through endless nights of dark despair. Until, in a dazzling moment of blinding light, someone forgave you, God absolved you and you were overwhelmed, drowning in a gratuitous mercy that you never could have deserved. And way down deep in your broken heart, now overcome with healing love, you saw his face, maybe for the first, but certainly not for the last time.

 And suddenly, you were like Isaiah, so aware of your littleness set against the infinity of God’s glory. Your grubbiness, set against the the purity of seraphims praising the holiness of God.  And, like Isaiah, you cried out:  "Woe is me, for I am doomed!…a man of unclean lips…”

And you were like Saint Peter, drowning in your own narcicissm and sin, fearful of the deep water and incredulous at what God proposed to do through your unworthy hands.  And, like Peter you cried out, “"Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

But then, just when you’re positive that you’re just too little, too unworthy and weak to do anything but be astonished, Jesus smiles softy and whispers those three amazing words: “Don’t be afraid.”

Don’t be afraid. I will make you fishers of men!

Don’t be afraid. Just believe!

Don’t be afraid. For you are worth more than a flock of sparrows!

Don’t be afraid. For even the hairs of your head are all counted!

Don’t be afraid. For you’ve been made for the Kingdom of God!

Don’t be afraid. It’s just me, Jesus, the Risen Lord!

       And I will be with you always, until the end of time.

365 times, the Lord says to us in the Bible: “Don’t be afraid” 

From Genesis to Revelation.

Don’t be afraid. Just look, it’s me, the God through whom you were made, 

rich inll mercy and compassion, who loves you more than 

you will ever know.

So don’t be afraid, ever again.

Herod and the corrosive power of sin...

Sin never really goes away until we repent, confess and let God put it all back together. And Herod is the perfect example.

Did you hear it?  At the beginning of today’s Gospel we are told that people were saying that Jesus was really John the Baptist, come back from the dead.  And the one who really seems to believe this ghost story is Herod, who had the Baptist beheaded.

You heard that story too. How Herod has John the Baptist imprisoned after John told him that it was sinful for him to marry his sister-in-law.  Now put yourself in Herod’s shoes.  He knows it was wrong to marry his sister-in law and he knows it was wrong to put the man who told him that it was wrong in prison…and now they are urging him to kill John the Baptist, and he knows that would be the worst sin of all!

But then, thanks to the urging of Salome, Herod commits the greatest sin of all, and beheads John the Baptist.

Which brings us back to the beginning of today’s Gospel, as Herod’s sin, like some ghostly specter, is haunting him and gnawing at his soul.

For that’s the way sin is. It eats you up, until you spit it out, confess it, and let God put it all back together for you.

Meeting of Extraordinary Ministers for the Spanish Community

   

Click to download:

Communión a los Enfermos

Rites for a Lay Person to Bring Holy Communion to the Sick

Just go!

Today Jesus tells his Apostles how evangelize.  Don’t take anything extra, he tells them: just go! And don’t worry about where you are to stay, just stay wherever you land: just go!  And if they throw you out, shake the dust from your feet, and just go!

How do you become an effective Apostle of Christ?  Just do it!  Just go!

And it makes sense, really, because these words come from the same Jesus who opens his arms on a cross and just lets go of everything; the same Jesus, who was not just stripped of his clothing, but even of his life, offering the perfect sacrifice of praise on the Altar of the Cross.

So, the next time Jesus asks me to do something and I am tempted to sit down and make a master plan, figure it all out before I even start, maybe I should think of his instructions to the Apostles, and just do it…let go!

Welcome to the Cathedral...

  

Nagasaki and a Jesuit Brother

After the Second World War had ended, my father, who was a Master Sergeant and a cook, was sent to visit Nagasaki, near the southernmost part of Japan.  It was, as you know, the target for the second atomic bomb.

Last night I looked at the black and white pictures which he had taken of the devastation. It was horrific, unbelievable and almost impossible for a seventeen year old American soldier from Upton to understand. As you know, 37,000 people died in Nagasaki in 1945. 

But what you may not have known is that three and a half centuries before that, twenty-six Japanese martyrs were crucified on a hill looking down upon Nagasaki. Franciscan and Jesuit priests, brothers, alongside catechists, doctors and servants, old men and innocent little children—all having died for their love of Jesus and their willingness to give up their lives for him.

So let us learn from them, and especially for the Jesuit Brother, who from the cross he was tied to declared to those gathered: ‘Just ask Christ to help you to become happy. And if you obey him, you will be.’

And the greatest of these is love...

Here are some thoughts for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time...

Who are our heroes?  Who are the great men and women of our time?

CNN asked that question of its viewers last Christmas, and first on their list of heroes was a Peruvian Doctor who established a place for families to stay while their loved ones were in the Hospital. Also on the list was a Nigerian programmer who teaches impoverished women to write computer code in the slums of Lagos, a woman who connects restaurants and programs to feed the hungry, and a paralyzed ski instructor who provides physical therapy to people with mobility impairments.

It strikes me that, when I was a child, the all heroes were politicians or soldiers or famous people about whom books or big newspaper headlines were written. But the CNN heroes were people about whom books will be written. For they are not famous for for their power, but for their love.

And who are your heroes?  Are they the great and the rich and the powerful, or are they the single mother whose husband died two years ago, who works two jobs to keep the kids fed and clothed and then rushes home to tuck them into bed and read them stories before she goes to her night job?  She is their hero, because she loves, with a love that is patient and kind.

Who are your heroes?  They are the couple who has been married in good times and in bad for sixty-six years, whose kids and grand-kids are a lasting testament to a love which is neither jealous nor pompous, nor inflated nor rude; a love which is not quick-tempered, but rejoices in the truth.

Who are our heroes?  They are the folks like Joe Brady, who died this past week, and who for fifty years served at this altar and cared for the people of Saint Paul’s with a gentle love which sought not its own interests, but only to care for others and to do the right thing.

Who are our heroes?  They are the good priests and sisters, like Sister Maria Luisa, who with her Xavarian sisters left her native country and came to this Cathedral Church to minister unselfishly for seventeen years with a faithful love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

And who are my heroes? They are sitting in the pews in front of me right now. The ones who seek only to be faithful to Christ and to show to their children and friends their love of the stranger and the poor.  

They are the ones who gave Justin a new backpack last week, because they know he sleeps on the street and the old one got stolen.  

They are the ones who teach Religious Education, because they want the next generation to know the truth, and him crucified.

They are the ones who go out in the cold with Deacon Walter to make sure people get fed at the food pantry.

They are the ones like Rosemarie and Vo, who go to the homes of the vulnerable elderly to make sure they are alright and have the services they need.

They are the good and quiet folks who, despite the crosses God sends them, still try to do his will by loving and forgiving those who are not so easy to love.

They are you and me, people God chooses to form in the image of his Son, to whom God gives the grace to love rather than hate, and to sacrifice rather than cling to selfishness.

The real heroes are not the great ones who speak with angelic tongues, or who have been given the gift of prophecy.  

The real heroes are not the the brilliant ones, who understand all the mysteries or who possess an infallible knowledge. 

The real heroes are the ones who love. Quietly. Gently. Humbly. They choose to love.

For in the end, our great patron reminds us, there are but three things that last: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.