August 1st - 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (English)

August 8th - 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (English)

August 15th - Feast of the Assumption of Mary (English)

August 22nd - 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (English)

August 29th - 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (English)

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

     You’ve heard the phrase, “There is no free lunch!”  In other words, nothing in this life is free.  If you think that something is free you haven’t figured out where the cost is, but it is there.  I suppose in a business sense that may be true.  When you receive a gift in the mail or a little extra when you buy something, someone has paid for that.  Someone has had to work to produce that.  That person received pay for doing their job.  So, the company paid for it and the consumer who buys the product will ultimately be paying for the “freebie.”
     But in another sense everything is free.  Consider any product that you buy.  If it is natural it is produced in the soil.  God provides the sunlight to make things grow.  God made the soil rich through millions of years of preparation.  No human being put the ores in the rocks.  If human hands produce the product it is made in a factory.  The coal, oil, and natural gas that we use to power our cars, houses, and factories were produced by millions of years of compression.  The plants and animal life that made these natural resources were gifts from God.
     We know today that energy is never lost.  God placed all the energy that is necessary to make everything work here.  All that ever happens is that the energy changes.  Molecules and matter change shape and form, but remain constant.  So, in a very real way, the Eucharist that we eat today is part of the matter of the bread that fed the crowds on the mountainside in Jesus’ day.
     Because we live with the illusion that everything has a cost we can’t imagine how God can love us unconditionally.  We don’t know why God would forgive our sins over and over again.  We are at a loss as to why the earth is so rich in resources.  Certainly we never think that what we have is enough.  We can’t imagine that we would have enough energy to love another child or the strength to forgive one more time.  We don’t think it would be possible to reach out to the poor.  We don’t have enough.
     Today’s readings remind us first of all, that no matter how much we think we control our destiny we do not.  Everything is in the presence of God.  Jesus was looking for a place to grieve in silence; to mourn the death of his cousin John.  That wasn’t in the cards.  The crowds kept coming.  It wasn’t something Jesus planned or hoped for.  It happened.
     When Jesus was curing the sick and teaching the crowds it became evident to the disciples that there would never be enough food for them to eat.  They realized that there was a need that they didn’t create.  It just happened.  They also knew that they were helpless alone to do anything about it.  The second thing we learn today is that God can make enough out of our nothingness.
     Jesus took the meager food supplies.  A few loaves and fishes certainly aren’t enough to feed this huge crowd.  The disciples didn’t think there would be enough food.  They sounded kind of like people today who say, “There are too many people on this planet.  There isn’t enough food for everyone.  We need to cut population otherwise people will starve.”  The disciples thought the same thing.
     Jesus took their small amount of food, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples to give out.  There was enough food.  There was so much food that all had enough to eat and there were twelve baskets of leftovers.  Jesus uses the loaves, little though they are, and divides them to provide enough food for everyone.  The disciples didn’t think they could do anything about the crowds or the lack of food.  Christ showed them that they had enough.  With His power they could do great things.
     Finally today, we learn that great things happen only when we are placed at the service of Jesus.  The disciples couldn’t feed the crowds alone.  When they were instructed by Jesus to do so, they had enough food.  The food on the hillside was given for all gathered there.  It’s fascinating that Matthew makes a point of saying there were five thousand men, not counting women and children.  In other words, the food was sufficient for those who count in this world and for those who don’t.  The Kingdom of God is an invitation to everyone.  Yet, too many get forgotten or left by the way.  Why?  Because so many people think they can’t do it.  They can’t reach out to neighbors or co-workers.  They don’t have the ability to teach children or provide comfort to those who are grieving.  We have enough in the power of Christ who is greater than our weakness and provides bounty beyond belief.
 
 

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

    In the nineteenth century there were probably many people who refused to believe in Christ.  But at the time there was one who was somewhat famous.  He even made a profession of mocking Christianity. One day he thought to himself, "People are still enamored of Christianity and this man Jesus Christ.   I’m a writer. I will write a book exposing Jesus for the fraud that he is." The man’s name was General Lew Wallace.
    Wallace began to research his book to expose Christ. First he read the Bible. Second, he did some background reading. Finally, he went to the Holy Land, and began to talk to people of great faith.  The book he wrote was Ben Hur.  Wallace's careful and painstaking work to expose Jesus as a fraud had instead turned Wallace into a believer.
     What happened?  What did he discover?  I can only imagine that what Wallace discovered was that faith in Christ was not a faith in a philosophy or in a well-worked out treatise.  It was faith in a person and having a relationship with a person.
     That is why Paul is so exasperated in the reading we have today.  Paul can’t understand why his own people, the Jews, haven’t accepted Christ as he had.  He says that they were the inheritors of the Covenant, the kingship, the prophets, and all the promises.  God spoke to them, freed them from the yoke of slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Promised Land.  A God who was so close to His people did all this.  That same God sent Jesus to live among them.  Still, there were many that could not accept Christ.
    Paul had come to accept Christ as a person.  He had an encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus.  Jesus was real to Him, not just a historical figure.  That was the difference.
     It is the same difference that Elijah had over the false prophets in his day.  Elijah would not accept the false worship the queen had brought into Israel.  He could not believe that the commandment to love God alone was irrelevant.  So he preached to the queen.  He condemned the false worship. The queen sent out a band of soldiers to kill the prophet.  Elijah was scared.  He hid in the mountain of God.  It was there that he found the presence of God, not in the spectacular or awesome events of nature, but in the stillness of his heart.  He heard the voice of God within and listened and was strengthened by that presence.  You see, that is the same presence that we have found.
     You and I can be awed by a huge mountain.  We can look into the Grand Canyon and see mystery there.  We can see the beauty in a sunset on the ocean or a sunrise after a storm.  All of these things are wonderful to behold, but what we have that is even more amazing is the presence of Christ right here.  Sitting beside you is a person created by God.  That individual is loved and cherished by God.  Jesus dwells within.  We discover that here.  In the Eucharist we don’t see laser lights and booming drums.  The voice of God doesn’t come down each Mass and say, “This is my Body.”  No, instead it is in the silence that we behold the mystery of Christ at the altar.  When we proclaim the Gospel or the other passages from scripture we pause in silence to listen to that voice speaking to us.  God speaks in the tiny whispering voice more often than in the powerful forces of nature.  That is why we are here.
 Peter had forgotten that for just a moment.  In the storm at sea the apostles were frightened.  But, when Jesus appeared they no longer were afraid.  In fact, Peter even asked the Lord to give him the courage to step into the storm.  Jesus agreed.  It was only when Peter took his eyes off Christ and saw the storm that he faltered.  When he kept his heart and mind focused on Christ he was at peace.  He no longer feared the storm or the power of nature.  He knew that Christ was with him.
     You and I are privileged indeed.  We have so many ways that the Lord speaks to us.  He uses His words in the scriptures to give us comfort and to challenge us.  We are nourished with the Bread of Life, the Eucharist.  We experience Christ in the other sacraments often in the sharing of words; quiet words of faith and hope.
 Take some time this day and this week to listen to the voice of God speaking to you.  It might be through your teenager.  Maybe you will hear that voice through a song on the radio or a billboard on your way to work.  You might see the mighty power of God in a storm or in the strength of an oak tree.  But more often than not, you will experience the peace and power God has in store for you in the quietness of your heart in silent prayer.  Don’t forget to listen to that word and let the strength of God uphold you, especially in those stormy times when all looks lost.  Amen.
 
 

Feast of the Assumption of Mary

     Today’s feast day is particularly Catholic.  It’s not just that the feast of the Assumption is a dogma of the Church.  It is that.  Pope Pius XII declared it so in 1950, the last dogma defined.  No, the reason this is a Catholic feast day is that it speaks directly about how important and valuable the world is.  It’s a feast day that says the earth and everything physical made by God is good.  That includes human beings.  Each of us is made in the image and likeness of God.  Despite sin and the effects of sin, we are still precious in God’s sight.
     Catholicism has taught that since God created the world good it would only be natural that He would use the world to show Himself.  The presence of God was made known to Israel through a burning bush, a pillar of fire, a pillar of cloud, a mountain wreathed in smoke, the ark of the covenant, the temple, the blessing of Moses and Aaron, and in many other varied ways.  Israel came to know their God in the ebb and flow of daily life and the physical world.
     In time, God chose a woman, Mary, to be the mother of the savior.  Jesus could have come from heaven fully grown.  He could have been like an angel, without a human body.  But God didn’t choose any of those ways.  Instead, he decided to be born as an infant, to grow through childhood, and adolescence into adulthood.  Jesus would grow in wisdom and understanding the scriptures tell us.  That means that he went to school.  That he was taught by Joseph and Mary what all the animals were, what foods taste like, the beauty of nature, and the meaning of human love.  Jesus would experience everything that we experience, except sin.  God thought that being human was so valuable that His only Son, Jesus would inhabit a body for 33 years.  Then, when he was raised up, it was not just as a spirit, but in His glorified body.
     Years after Jesus ascended into heaven, the church grew and spread throughout the Roman Empire.  One tradition says that Mary was taken into the home of John, the beloved disciple.  He lived in Ephesus and that is where Mary died and was assumed into heaven.  Some other traditions have Mary living in Jerusalem and from there she was assumed into heaven.  In either case, it has been the belief of the Church since at least the 5th century that God would not allow the Blessed Mother to undergo corruption in her body.  It wouldn’t be fitting that the body that bore the savior should have to endure the effects of sin and decay.  Instead, as a sign of what awaits each of us, her body was taken up to heaven.
     While it is true that proof for this claim rests on very little evidence, it fits completely with our understanding of God and of His work in our salvation.  God loves us so much that He would take on human flesh.  Jesus used bread and wine to share His life with us for all eternity.  God calls the Church always to care for the poor, the sick and dying.  All human beings are important to God.  No one is expendable.  An infant in the womb, an Alzheimer’s patient in a nursing home, a handicapped person, an athlete, a prostitute, a child, the healthy, the rich, all are special to God.  The values we place on life are not the ones that God places.  He sees good in us even when we can’t see it.
     So, today we are reminded by the words of Mary herself that God cares for the poor.  God’s vision of the Kingdom includes all peoples and nations.  God will use us, His people to provide for the lowly of the world.
     Today’s feast day is a promise held open for us.  Our bodies are special.  We should treat them with respect while we are alive.  It is good to watch what we eat, to exercise and to avoid harmful things like drugs.  When we die our bodies are not useless appendages.  We honor them in death.  Have you ever noticed the length we will go to recover bodies from a natural disaster?  We instinctively know that there is something special about the human body, even in death.  Our Church’s funeral rites attest to that.
     At a funeral we place a white pall on the casket, we sprinkle holy water and incense the body of the deceased.  Why do we do this?  We know that we are destined for glory.  Our bodies will also be part of that glory.  Mary’s assumption is God’s promise to us.  As we honor her, we await our glory.  What we do on earth, how we treat the resources of the planet, how we care for others, and most especially, how we treat the dead reminds us of the glory that will be for all of creation when Christ returns.  Amen.
 
 

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

     When Don Shula was head coach of the Miami Dolphins he took his family on vacation.  On one rainy afternoon they went to the movies in a small town.  When they arrived there were very few people in the theater.  However, the few who were there began to clap when Mr. Shula and his family walked in.  The coach was no stranger to applause, but surprised in this small town, far away from Miami that so many would recognize him.  Whereupon one of the moviegoers said, “We don’t really have a clue who you are, but just before you arrived, the projectionist said that unless a few more people show up, the movie would be cancelled.”
     Sometimes we can get an inflated view of ourselves, even when we are in positions of importance.  Jesus always warned the apostles about that danger.  He knew that it was so easy for them to get caught up in titles, positions of honor, and the privileges that went along with that.  He told them to instead seek out the grace of God and allow His grace to be the guiding force in their lives.
     It was such an error in judgment that we get a glimpse of in our first reading.  The prophet Isaiah was called to condemn the king’s servant Shebna.  It seems that Shebna realized his king trusted him to the point of allowing him to make decisions for the realm.  This went to Shebna’s head.  He even had the king’s men working on building him a tomb to rival the king’s.  The prophet tells him that he will be deposed and another will take his place.  Shebna had become like some lower level politicians we have seen through the years who acted beyond their scope of authority.  They would begin making decisions that would inevitably get the country in trouble.
     Peter is Jesus’ right hand man.  He is the one to whom is entrusted the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Peter has confessed through the grace of God that Jesus is God’s anointed, the Messiah.  This wasn’t Peter’s doing.  This could only have come through the power and grace of God.  Jesus doesn’t want Peter to ever forget the source of his authority.
     Throughout the history of the Church, the successors of Peter, the popes, have sometimes realized beyond a doubt where their power and authority come from.  We have had saintly men become pope who were martyrs, who cared for victims of the plague, who used the powers of their office to seek unity and peace in the church and among civil leaders.
     There have been at other times popes like Shebna.  They have forgotten that the power of the keys given to Peter was not to establish an earthly reign, but to further the reign of God.  They would build magnificent palaces.  They would raise money to fund armies to conquer lands.  They would coerce civil kings to bow to their authority or be excommunicated.
     After Peter’s profession of faith, Jesus would tell the apostles that being Messiah would not mean entering Jerusalem or Rome on a white horse and deposing the king.  It would not mean establishing the Kingdom at the point of a sword.  It would instead mean the cross and suffering.  It would mean giving up everything that the world values as important.
     It’s always been amazing to me that Christ trusted his apostles as much as he did.  He gave them the power to make him present in prayer, in the Eucharist, to forgive sins, and to make decisions that God would abide with.  That’s rather impressive.  It has always been proof to me that the Church has been founded by Christ and led by the Holy Spirit.  For certainly as we look to things like the Crusades, popes who had enemies murdered, and others who were richer than any king on earth, we could easily dismiss the church as just another flawed human institution.  We could even believe that the Church has no claim on us for certainly any institution like this is open to error and flaw.  That would be true if the Church were only human.
     But, isn’t it fascinating also that throughout history that same Church has survived all these crises.  Despite human weakness the Church thrives and grows.  There are over 1 billion Catholics and half that number of Protestants.  The Church has stood for life and for the dignity of the person in the midst of wars and oppression.  The Church has rightly challenged the world to address poverty, the role of women in society, the care of immigrants, and compassion for ethnic minorities.
     The Catholic Church, and especially the Pope, has to always remember that it is only through the power of God that its authority comes.  We pray every day for our pope, bishop, and clergy.  We ask God to guide our church leaders to govern wisely and with love.  We ask also that we might have the same confidence in our Church that God has in it.  For if God could trust Peter and his successors to lead the church in every age, so can we.  We pray that God will help us heal divisions within Christianity.  That we are not united is a terrible scandal to the world.  We pray also that Christ will help us to seek His reign in our hearts and in the world.  Amen.
 
 

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

     Last week we heard Jesus declare that Peter was the Rock who would lead the Church.  He was given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Power and authority were given to the apostles to do as Jesus had done.  This week we hear “the rest of the story.”  We see that if Peter and the other apostles are really going to do as Jesus had done they must take up their cross and serve others.  These are qualities that don’t seem very regal.  Instead, they are seen by the world as the ways of loss and defeat.  Peter can’t understand how this can possibly make sense.
     The Christian life is always a strange mix of power and servitude.  Christ has given us great power.  We have the power to heal.  (Tonight we pray that the gift of healing be given to those members of our community who will be anointed.)  We have the power to forgive.  We have the power to make Christ present in the Eucharist and the other sacraments.  We have tremendous power.
     But all of this power only makes sense when it is used in service of others.  When we have used the power of Christianity for domination we have strayed from Christ’s will.  When we have used the power of the Gospel to bring hope to the poor and lowly then we have done as Christ intended for His Church.
     At some points in history it was believed that the proper role of Christians was to win the world to Christ by force.  Heresy was rooted out by torture and execution.  If someone or a group of individuals professed a belief that was not in harmony with the central teaching of the Church they were forced to change or be killed.  This happened with those who questioned the doctrines of Christ being God and flesh, in the role of the papacy, and with Jews, Muslims, and Protestants.
     How could this happen?  Wasn’t Christ clear that he did not intend his followers to take up swords and clubs to defend him?  Wasn’t he clear that the way to salvation was the cross and through suffering?  Wasn’t he clear that a Church that was a servant would convert the world faster than a church that was militant?  From our perspective in history it seems hard to imagine that people of earlier times could have missed those fundamental principles.
 Yet, in every age there are well meaning people who believe that God’s way isn’t the best way.  I was watching a little bit of TV on Friday night.  I happened upon one of the religious channels.  There were two people who were discussing the anti-Christ in the Book of Daniel and Revelation.  They alluded to the fact that according to scripture the anti-Christ of the Bible would have to come from the Middle East and persecute believers and Jews.  Who else could that be but Muslims?  In effect these two Christians were convincing people that the anti-Christ must be a Muslim.  The result of this kind of teaching can easily lead people to assume that Muslims must be evil and cannot be trusted.  I don’t think that was their intention, but you can easily see how one could make that assumption.
     Is it any different than Peter saying to Jesus, “Lord, certainly there must be another way than the way of the cross?”  You see, the anti-Christ image is of an individual with power to convince or seduce believers into trusting in the ways of the world rather than in the ways of Christ.  It is a power that Jesus rightly condemned in Peter.  “Get behind me Satan!” Jesus declares.  He isn’t saying Peter is Satan, only thinking and speaking as Satan.
     Today, what are the powers that seduce us?  Are we too easily taken in by the belief that those who are poor must be feared, especially if they speak a different language or are of a different race?  Are we seduced by the world, which says that only wealth and power matter?  Unless one has money they don’t count for anything.  Maybe our seduction is by leisure and pleasure.  We have become accustomed to thinking that it is our birthright as Americans to have plenty of leisure time.  No one should expect us to give up our cars, boats, vacations, and time off on weekends.  Golf, the mall, or that fishing trip take precedence over Sunday Mass.  That is such an easy seduction.
     The prophet Jeremiah talked about being duped or seduced by God.  Unless we take on the mind of Christ and become imbued with His will we will be too easily swayed by the violence, pleasure, or wealth of our world.  We will too easily cast people aside who are different from us or try to change them by coercion.  That is not the mind of Christ.  We are called this day be seduced by Christ.  Let His way and will fill us up.  Anything that gets in the way of Christ’s will must be changed.  It is the only way that the Way of the Cross and the way of sacrifice of Jesus will make sense.  Otherwise the Lord will say to us, “Get behind me Satan.  You are not speaking as God, but flesh.”  Amen.