HOMILY ARCHIVES
....................................................................................
First Sunday of Advent A
November 28, 2010
The part of the Gospel we heard is only part of a long conversation that Saint Matthew has in Chapters 24 & 25. Up until this point in the conversation, Jesus has been explaining what the age of the Church, the time of history between the Resurrection and His Second Coming will look like.
He has explained to the apostles that the age of the Church will be marked by both wonderful growth but also painful persecution. He has said that Jerusalem, the focal center of the Old Covenant, will be destroyed making a clear way to the New. He has said that the world itself would eventually be destroyed to make way for the creation of a new heavens and a new earth. (Did you know all this was to happen?)
And then, He uses the example of Noah to say that although these things will happen, the Apostles can’t know when, “you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”
Jesus spoke about what He knew. These are not just theories. And when the Apostles heard them, they recognized the ring of truth in His voice. But why did Jesus tell these things? And why does the Church remind us about them every year as Advent begins?
God wants to realize that our time is limited, that all time is limited. He wants us to know this because He wants us to use our limited time wisely. Jesus considers this lesson to be so important that He dedicates four separate parables to it before He finishes to drive the point home.
“Here too we see a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness” (Spe Salvi, #2).
“Human life is a journey. Towards what destination? How do we find the way? Life is like a voyage on the sea of history, often dark and stormy, a voyage in which we watch for the stars that indicate the route. The true stars of our life are people who have lived good lives. They are lights of hope. Certainly, Jesus Christ is the true light, the sun that has risen above all the shadows of history” (Spe salvi, #49).
Once there was a little candle in a room filled with other candles, most of them much larger and more beautiful that she was. Some were decorated and some rather simple like her. Some were white, some pink, some blue, some green. She has no idea why she was there and the other candles made her feel very small.
When the sun went down and the room started to get dark, she noticed a man walking toward her with fire on a stick. She suddenly realized that he was going to set her on fire. “No, no!” she cried. “Don’t burn me, please.” But she knew she could not be heard and got ready for the pain that was sure to come. To her surprise, the room filled with light. She wondered where it came from since the man had extinguished the fire. To her delight, she realized that the light came from her. Then the man lit the other candles in the room, one by one.
During the next few hours, she noticed that, slowly, her wax began to flow. And she became aware that she would soon melt away. With this realization came a sense of why she had been created. “Perhaps my purpose on earth is to give out light until I die” she thought. And that is exactly what she did. (“Hot Illustrations,” Youth Specialities, Inc., 2001)
Every candle, every light we see this Advent and Christmas season should remind us that life here is the path, it is a journey, a mission; it is not the goal.
One more thing, we should invite someone else to find the same meaning for their lives. This is a great season but it can be lived in busy-ness and distractions which do not bring the promised hope or peace. Knowing it has a purpose, that we have a purpose makes all the difference in the world.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Christ the King C
November 21, 2010
The Gospel calls us to consider the cross. When we look at the cross, we are looking at the central moment of human history: Jesus Christ crucified on the hill of Calvary. From one perspective, it is a disastrous moment since it shows humanity rejecting its Creator, Savior and God. And yet, today is the day the Church celebrates the Kingship of Christ.
Aren’t kings supposed to be powerful? Aren’t kings supposed to be successful? Aren’t kings supposed to be winners? So why do we stare at a dying helpless man on a cross? Because the cross is the throne of our King. Christ rules not from a velvet covered, gold plated seat like passing earthly kings but He rules from the cross.
How does this work? How can a sign of complete defeat be a sign of our King’s victory? This is what is called the paradox of Christ’s Kingship. Christ’s Kingship begins in this world but it is not of this world. It begins in the hearts of people, like us, His followers, who believe in Him and obey Him. The Church and the saints are living signs of His Kingdom much like buds in the spring are signs of the coming summer.
And since the Kingdom transcends this world, it makes sense that His throne is different from earthly thrones. Christ’s Kingdom is built on the power of God’s unconditional love for each one of us. On the cross that love is shown by Jesus suffering and dying for our salvation even while we were still sinners. In the Resurrection, He will reveal the real power of that love.
The Good Thief understood this. The bad thief didn’t. The rulers and powerful people didn’t understand it. They sneered and jeered as He was on the cross showing God’s love for us. They knew that He claimed to be the Messiah, the Savior, the King, but they could only imagine kingship in earthly terms. And so they challenged Jesus to show that He was a king by coming down from the cross. If Jesus could eliminate human suffering and injustice, shown by coming down from the cross, they thought that would prove that He was a king. But Jesus didn’t do it. He didn’t even try to explain to them. He simply kept suffering unfairly until the end.
And as He suffered, the Good Thief realized the truth. He realized that there is more to the human story than what we see, experience and understand here on earth. He realized that Jesus held the key to a Kingdom much greater than any the earth would ever know. He realized that this Kingdom could begin on earth through faith, hope and obedience, but that it would reach its fullness after here and so he prays, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
To that prayer, Jesus answered. As a true King, He granted the favor. He did not take the suffering of the Good Thief - Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world – but He gave it purpose: He made it the path to Paradise.
And as the Good Thief hung on the cross, dying, tortured and in pain, he was joyful because he had placed himself under the protection of the King and this King would keep His promise.
Christ rules from the cross. He conquers hearts through the power of love and forgiveness. But He doesn’t do it all by Himself. We are His ambassadors. We are the ones called to bring His cross into every corner of society so that His love can bring light and hope to those living in suffering, darkness and hopelessness. To do this, each of us must carry our own cross with faith.
We must not expect complete happiness in this life. The cross is anchored to the earth but it stretches into Heaven. Just so, our happiness begins on this earth when we discover the depth of God’s love for us but it will never be complete until, by God’s grace, we reach Heaven.
In this life we are called to work and fight, resisting the pull of selfishness each day. We are called to reach out to our neighbors who don’t know Christ and who have no purpose in the midst of their suffering. We are called to defend Christian values with courage even when they are unpopular. Above all, we must never limit our faith to our private lives. Our faith must affect everything we do and all that we are.
Because we are followers of Christ the King, we should be more dependable professionals, more self-sacrificing parents, more responsible workers, more cooperative students, more active and joyful citizens.
As long as history lasts, this King will have enemies and, if we really love Him, we will fight them using the same weapons that He used: obedience to the will of God and unselfish love of neighbor.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 14, 2010
Every Sunday when we recite the Creed right after the homily, we say that we believe that Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
The Church has never claimed to know when the Day of Judgment will come. It could be later today, in the middle of the night or 1000 years from now. Jesus Himself told us that we can know “neither the day nor the hour.” So if anyone ever comes knocking on your door to tell you that they know the exact date, you can be sure they are off track.
But the fact remains, Jesus is coming again to judge the living and the dead. That is when the battle between good and evil will come to an end. On that day, as the first reading says, “the proud and the evil doers” will have neither root nor branch.” Evil will be made powerless. But those who have spent their lives battling sin and injustice, living in friendship with Christ, will be completely freed from what remains of sin and selfishness. They will experience the fullness of life they have always hoped for but could only know in part while the battle continued.
Judgment Day is coming. Jesus is coming again. There will be an end to the battle between good and evil and good will win. We know this. God has revealed it. But the majority of people in the world throughout history and even today do not know it. For those who do not believe in Christ, the future is a dark and threatening mystery.
Those who do not know this can be divided into two major groups in today’s world: the radical secularists who try to manage the world and its problems totally without reference to faith or God and the radical Islamists who try to manage the world with a religious faith that is totally separated from human reason.
For us, the world and all that is in it and our lives only make sense as we look to the victory of God in the end. We know this in faith, but Christian faith is a faith completely grounded in reason.
Knowing that judgment is coming sets us free to live a full life because it puts everything in proper perspective.
Charles V was one of the last great European emperors. In the 1500’s, he protected Europe from the endless attacks of the Turkish Empire. At the same time he brought together the leaders of Europe to re-establish political and religious unity among Christians after the revolt of Martin Luther. He almost succeeded until his most powerful ally betrayed him.
In the prime of his life, one of his closest friends and advisors who had served him from his youth was sick. Charles was at his bedside as the man was dying. The emperor was deeply moved by the man’s suffering and wanted to offer whatever comfort he could. He said, “My friend, you have been a faithful servant all these years. Please, let me do something for you. Ask anything of me and I will do it.”
The dying man turned his eyes to his king and whispered, “Sire, here is one favor I desire.” The emperor was glad and leaned forward, “Tell me,” he said, “What is it?” “Give me one more day of life, just one more!” Charles’ face fell. He answered simply, “You know that I have not the power.” The man smiled weakly, and said: “Yes, I know. Even the greatest earthly king cannot give life. And now you see how foolish I have been. I served you well all these years, but I gave no thought to my Heavenly King, and now I must go to Him with empty hands. Pray for me.”
These were his last words. (The Catechism in Examples, by Rev. Rev. D. Chisholm)
Remembering that Jesus Christ knows what the future will bring. Remembering that He is Lord of that future; that He is guiding all things to their proper end; that nothing is out of the range of His wisdom and power, this is one of the secrets to interior peace, to peace of mind.
At every Mass, after we pray the Lord’s Prayer together, I add, “protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” Since we know that Jesus is coming, and that we will be judged by Him not on how much money we made, or on what diplomas we earned, or on how popular we were, but simply on our effort to love Christ and serve our neighbor, we can be at peace if we are making that effort.
This should put all our worries into perspective. It can cut our fears down to size. The earth will pass away, but until it does, we are called to take each day to love God and neighbor. Every situation, difficulty and opportunity has take son value as it helps us or interferes with us doing that. We know where we stand, what a relief!
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time C
October 31, 2010
The meeting between Jesus and Zacchaeus is a parable in action. It shows the whole point of why Jesus came, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.” His whole purpose was to bring people back into friendship with God and to establish His Church to continue that mission. It is so obvious but we tend to forget so easily.
This is the Good News, the Gospel, of Jesus Christ. That in Him we can once again have a relationship, a friendship, with God, our sins can be forgiven and we can become what we were created to be: children of God, members of God’s family.
Original sin had broken that relationship between the human family and God. That happened when humans rebelled against the law of God which is built into our human nature. As a result, we were lost and the rebellion spread. We had tried to gain happiness by our own power, without God. But that is impossible. We were created to live in communion with God. Our happiness, on earth and in Heaven, depends on living in friendship with God. Jesus came to restore that relationship. That was His mission.
Whenever people trusted Jesus enough to let Him accomplish this mission in their lives, like Zacchaeus, they begin to know deep and lasting peace. There is no doubt that Zacchaeus found much more satisfaction in giving back the money he had extorted than he had found in taking it. That happiness and satisfaction is what Jesus wants for all of us, to bring us into a right relationship with God, to give us the desire and the courage to live as we should so that we can experience the satisfaction we were meant to have.
The power of grace was able to change this evil and greedy man, who had spent his life consciously working on his selfish tendencies. If Christ was able to do that, He can certainly change us who WANT to follow Him.
A story. A teaching Sister has a girl in her 8th grade class who had given nothing but trouble. She was unruly, lazy, loud, rude and constantly acting out. Teachers were not only annoyed at her, they were afraid of her. One day Sister noticed a complete change in the girl. She was quiet and attentive. She had her mind on her work. She was polite and considerate. What could have possibly happened?
Maybe the girl had A.D.D. and was now on medication. Maybe she had been depressed or had problems at home and the difficulty was being taken care of. She watched her carefully. But the only thing she saw was that now and then the girl put her hand on her chest. Sister waited for the right moment and asked, “Why do you put your hand on your chest? Do you have a pain?” “No, Sister,” the girl answered, as she pulled out a small crucifix. “Remember on Good Friday when Father brought the cross to the altar. He told us to hold on to the cross and to look at it when we are tempted. That is what I am doing when I put my hand on my chest; I am feeling my crucifix. Please don’t tell anyone.”
Never underestimate the power of Christ who has come to “seek and save what was lost.”
We all want to experience the transforming power of Christ in our lives. And the best way to do that is by helping others experience it. That is what Zacchaeus did.
Jesus reached out to him and came into his life. Jesus has also reached out to us, made us Christians and members of His Church. Zacchaeus responded by welcoming Jesus into his home. And we welcome Him into our lives whenever we pray, whenever we come to Mass, when we receive Him in Holy Communion.
But the encounter did not end there. Salvation had not yet come to Zacchaeus’ house. The full power of grace had not yet been unleashed in his life. Only after Zacchaeus promised to spread his wealth to those around him instead of hoarding it for himself, to turn his selfishness into self-giving, to let God’s goodness towards him affect his actions towards others….Only then did Jesus say, “Today salvation has come to this house.”
This week, let’s spread whatever wealth we have received in life, our time, our talent, our treasure, to those around us. While here, ask the Lord to show us how we can let His goodness affect how we act towards others and when He tell us, promise to follow through.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
October 24, 2010
Why was the tax collector’s prayer better than the Pharisee’s prayer? Because the tax collector actually made a connection with God but the Pharisee only made a connection with himself.
Tax collectors were despised. They were Jews who collaborated with the occupying Roman forces by collecting taxes from fellow Jews. And they often collected more than the law required and pocketed the extra. The Pharisees were just the opposite. They were the most respected members of the community, the elite religious leaders. And yet, Jesus praises the tax collector’s prayer and criticizes the prayer of the Pharisee.
Through the centuries, the simple prayer of the tax collector, “O God be merciful to me a sinner,” has been used often as the heart of the Christian life. There are even some examples of monks who made this their only prayer.
This prayer makes a connection with God because is recognizes two things.
First, it acknowledges God’s greatest quality in relation to us: Mercy. The word “mercy” comes from the Latin “misericors,” “miser”, wretched, miserable, and “cor” which means heart. Literally, it means to take someone else’s wretchedness into one’s heart. That is what God does with us.
Second, the tax collector’s prayer recognizes the need for that mercy. He accuses himself of being a sinner, someone who has selfishly abused and used God’s gifts instead of loving his neighbor. The Pharisee’s prayer shows no knowledge either of God’s mercy or of his need for God. Rather, it is an exercise in self-congratulation.
God wants to connect with us but He can only do that if we let Him and we can’t let Him if we don’t think we need Him.
In 1945, the Christian author, C.S. Lewis published a fascinating and disturbing novel called, “The Great Divorce.” It tells a story of a middle class English man who has a dream.
In the dream, the man travels first to hell which is shown as a boring, gray and unpleasant suburb where the neighbors are always gossiping. Then he gets on a bus that drops him on the outskirts of Heaven which is shown as a beautiful countryside with an enormous, magnificent castle off in the distance. When he gets off the bus, he is met by a guide who explains the place and the meaning of the journey. While they talk, they see many different people and the guide explains who they are.
At one point they see a queen and her entourage. The queen is amazingly beautiful. Her face glows, her movements are graceful, he smile is bright. She is surrounded by a crowd of admirers, each one overflowing with health and joy and filling the air with laughter and song. The group is heading for the distant castle.
The man thinks that she must have been some famous prime minister or queen. But his guide explains that on earth she was very poor, uneducated, and quite plain-looking. She spent her life scrubbing floors and washing dishes, serving everyone around her with never a moment to herself. But through all those years, she stayed close to God in prayer and she always looked for ways to ease the suffering of those around her.
Like the tax collector, she accepted her humble position, acknowledged her need for God and trusted that in His mercy He would take care of her. And He did. She humbled herself, and, as Jesus promised, she was therefore exalted.
Today’s Gospel is the second time in Luke’s Gospel that Jesus says, “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” He must really want us to get the message. But it is not an easy one to get.
The Pharisee thought he was doing great. Everyone else thought so too. He went to the synagogue every Saturday. He prayed his prayers. He didn’t commit any terrible sins. He thought he was on the right track for a gold medal from God. But he wasn’t; in fact, he was heading in the completely wrong direction. It is easy to be blinded by spiritual sins like arrogance and vanity. The tax collector’s sins were more obvious and easier to recognize. He cheated, extorted and bribed. But how can we recognize the sins we can’t see?
The answer is in the parable: by looking at our thoughts about other people. Every person in the world is loved by God. God’s mercy has no limits. As Christians, we are called to the same respect and love, even for the people who get on my nerves, let me down or make my life miserable.
If we look into our hearts and discover that our respect is limited, that we think vindictive, self-righteous thoughts, and if we look at our actions and discover that we play favorites or that we take pleasure in criticizing others, if we see that- thanks be to God! Because then we know we are not blind. So we can pray like the tax collector knowing our need for God’s mercy and confident we will receive it.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Anniversary of the Dedication of the Church
October 17, 2010
(Genesis 28:11-18; Ephesians 2:19-22; Matthew 25:31-40)
This weekend is the Anniversary of the Dedication of this church. It was consecrated to the honor and glory of God on October 15, 2006. And the Church allows us to celebrate it every year on the weekend closest to that date.
Where is God to be found? In every place, even the most unlikely. That’s what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins meant by saying that, “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.” With Jacob in the first reading, we can say, “Truly, the Lord is in this spot, and I did not know it.”
In the story from Genesis, Jacob is on the run from his brother Esau. He lies down in a rocky place under the open sky. As night falls, he has a dream that changes him from a person who is unaware of God to someone who suddenly knows that God is with him. “Truly, the Lord is in this spot and I did not know it.”
God introduces Himself, “I am the Lord.” With this name, God chooses to stand with Jacob. Notice that the place is referred to several times in the seven verses. “How awesome is this shrine.” Later, Moses chooses the name Bethel for this spot because it means “house of God.”
From the very beginning human beings have discovered or created holy places, places where the community comes together to worship, to offer prayer, for healing, for comfort. We do this with great care because the place itself becomes part of our religious imagination. What do I mean by that?
I can still clearly recall the sadness when we left the old church after the last Mass. It had become “part of our religious imagination.” We pictured ourselves praying in that place and actually wondered if the Lord would be with us in this one; or at least if we would feel or experience His presence.
When the Word became human in Jesus, again and again, people find themselves saying, “Truly God is in him and I did not know it.” It is most clearly said by the soldier at the foot of the cross who says, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” Notice that there is often some surprise in the discovery.
After the Resurrection, the first Christians gathered to pray and discovered as they did that Christ was present in the community, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” We are members of the Body of Christ and we get direction, support, witness and fresh vision from the body coming together for worship.
We are living stones “with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. We are “being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:202-22). As the Body of Christ, we open the word and we share in the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion. We can say, ‘Truly, Christ is present in this gathering and I did not notice it. Truly Christ is present under the appearances of bread and wine and I don’t always notice it. Sometimes the idea should be so overwhelming that it takes us by surprise.
How many times we meet Christ in the poor, in the hungry and the homeless, the sick, in the prisoner, in the addict, in the person who is in our face, in those who are tired and frustrated, in those who weep and mourn.
Our first reaction may be to turn away, or to run away, to pass to the other side. If we resist that impulse, we can be surprised and humbled. Truly Christ is present in that person even though I did not know it.
This feast calls us to bring together our seeing, our knowing, our believing and our action, so that we will know God in holy places, to recognize holy places. We need an awareness like Jacob to know Christ in the members of His body and in the Eucharist, in His Body and His Blood. We need to look to recognize Christ in the least ones knowing that sometimes we are the least ones. We need to see so that we can be surprised by the joy of knowing Christ. And, today, especially knowing Him in this place, so we can say, “Truly the Lord is in this spot….This is nothing but an abode of God and that is the gateway to heaven!”
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
October 10, 2010
At the end of the fourth Gospel, John’s Gospel, we are told that if everything Jesus did during his short life on earth were written down, the entire world could not contain the books. We can conclude, then, that many, maybe most, of the miracles that Jesus performed were not recorded in the New Testament. So why did Luke include this one? Clearly because of the lesson that Jesus teaches: Gratitude.
The one leper that came back to thank Jesus is praised for his gratitude. We can almost hear the sadness in the heart of Jesus when He asks where are the other nine. Why is gratitude so valuable to Jesus? He doesn’t need it for His self-esteem. No, it is because gratitude is valuable for us, for the health of our souls.
In the first place, gratitude keeps us grounded in the truth which is the key for our relationship with God. To be ungrateful to God is not only unjust but it is an illusion. The simple fact is that everything we have is a gift from God: creation, life, talents, opportunities, hope of Heaven, the grace that strengthens us to do good. These are all God’s gifts. We don’t create ourselves.
In the second place, gratitude is an antidote to sin. Sin, in one way or another, turns us in on ourselves; gratitude opens us up to God and others. It directly contradicts self-centeredness, self-indulgence and self-absorption. It builds bridges, unites communities and softens hearts. It counteracts depression and releases anxiety. Gratitude is really a miracle-working virtue.
There is a verse in the Letter to the Hebrews that sums up the power of gratitude: “What gives true strength to a man’s heart,” it says, “is gratitude” (13:9). Why is that? Gratitude is a like a river that feeds a reservoir. It fills it up but it only lasts as long as it continues to be filled. If we neglect gratitude, our souls dry up. It keeps us in the knowledge that we are loved by God, cared for by God.
Knowing that we are loved by God is the only way to satisfy one of the two deepest needs of the human heart: the need to know we are loved without limit and without conditions. Gratitude keeps our attention on God’s goodness to us, on His love for us. It makes sure we never forget that we are loved which is the only source of lasting joy in this world full of difficulties.
When we neglect it, we start focusing on ourselves, our own achievements, on our desires but none of these things can satisfy the fundamental need of our soul. Just as no reservoir can keep itself full, it needs to be fed by a source outside itself. When we find ourselves becoming habitually angry, frustrated, stressed or depressed, it’s because the reservoir is getting low. That is when we need to look to God and His love and open the river of gratitude.
Gratitude helps us to experience the interior joy that comes from knowing we are loved by God without limits or conditions. It is so important that God put it at the center of our worship, the Eucharist which is from the Greek word that means “thanksgiving.”
That is why we don’t just stay home and say some prayers or go to the mountains and enjoy the view. These are good things, but what happens here, at this altar, is much deeper.
In creating and redeeming us, God has done us a favor much bigger than we could ever hope to repay. But rather than leave us frustrated and unable to return His love, He provided a way to offer Him perfect thanksgiving, an act of gratitude in the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is Christ, Himself, really present, body, blood, soul and divinity, under the appearances of bread and wine. And since Jesus Christ is present, all His actions and prayers, most especially the sacrifice of the cross, are also present. By uniting our minds and hearts, and even our bodies, in Communion, to the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist, our human prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude becomes divine. That is what we have some to do here today.
Today and every Sunday, we can be grateful like the Samaritan man. Let’s give thanks with all our hearts.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time C
October 3, 2010
The Apostles did the right thing this time. They had been traveling with Jesus for more than a year: living with Him, hearing Him preach, watching Him perform miracles and change people’s lives. They had been His disciples long enough to start realizing that they were not very good disciples at all. They still could not help people as much as Jesus did. It would have been tempting at that point to get discouraged. But, instead, they go to Jesus during a break in the day’s activities, they ask for His help. They ask Him to increase their faith.
The response of Jesus is mysterious. He looks at them and smiles. He must have been pleased that they asked for help instead of giving up. Then He tells them that they don’t need more faith, they just need to use the faith they already have. He explains that a tiny bit of faith, the size of a mustard seed, about as small as something can get without being microscopic, is enough to do marvelous things.
We are all like the apostles. We sense in our hearts that we are capable of doing much more, that we are made for greater things. But we don’t realize that God has already given us everything we need to achieve them. He has already planted the seed of faith in our souls at Baptism. Now it is up to us to exercise it and, if we do, it will grow. And the more it grows, the more rooms God has to accomplish more with us and through us.
Sometimes we don’t experience the full power of faith in our lives because we have the wrong idea of what faith really is. We may think that mature faith makes for smooth sailing in life. In fact, it doesn’t.
In a book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, many of the letters of Blessed Mother Teresa to her spiritual directors were published. Much of the reaction that followed was shock. Everyone thought that Mother Teresa was the happiest person in the world, that her faith was so strong that nothing bothered her. And that is exactly the wrong idea of what faith is.
Mother Teresa is a saint. Her faith was mature, strong and contagious. Her faith moved mountains and it’s still moving mountains, but it didn’t make her crosses disappear. Her faith was so strong that she fulfilled her promise never to deny God anything that He asked. But it didn’t take suffering out of her life. For 50 years she struggled with an interior darkness and the feeling of being abandoned by God.
In on letter she wrote:
“Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me?
“The child of your Love, and now [I have] become as the most hated one, the one You
have thrown away as unwanted, unloved…
“Where is my Faith? Even deep down right here in there is nothing but emptiness and
darkness.”
Faith isn’t some problem-free way of living. Faith is ‘strength with length.’ It’s the power to persevere through difficulties because we know that God is in charge. With that idea of faith, like Mother Teresa, we can move mountains.
The Psalm from today gives us a way to empower our faith, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart.”
Faith is practical. If we believe in God’s wisdom, love and power, we will obey Him. We will follow where He leads. And He is always leading us somewhere; always making His voice heard. The most common way is through what we call “conscience.”
Our conscience is like an inner radio. But it has to be tuned to God’s voice. God’s voice is not the only station out there and it’s not always the loudest. Sometimes the stations that carry the voice of peer pressure and fashion are really loud. And those dedicated to self-indulgence and irresponsible pleasure can be deadening. That is why the Psalm says, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”
We need to decide ahead of time to pay attention to God’s voice. And we should decide ahead of time that if we aren’t sure exactly what our conscience is saying, but we know it is saying something, we will get some good advice from someone who knows Jesus and His teaching before we decide to act. That is the only way God will be able to empower us to move mountains, the mountains of sin and sorrow that clutter the world. That is the only way that God will be able to guide us home from exile and give us the peace we long for.
Let’s promise the Lord before leaving here today that we will pay special attention to His voice this week.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
September 26, 2010
How many times during the past week did you think about Heaven? Maybe your answer is, “not too many.” And, yet, that is where we are going. That is our destination as Saint Paul reminds Timothy in the Second Reading.
If we were on a family vacation setting out for Cape May or to the Grand Canyon, wouldn’t it be strange if we never mentioned or thought about where we were going while on the way? Yet that is often exactly what we do in relation to Heaven. And it is extremely dangerous because it leaves us vulnerable to temptations. We are more easily turned off the right road when we see some attractive billboard if we aren’t thinking about our destination.
This is very much the context of Paul’s advice to the young bishop, Timothy.
Paul has just warned him about the dangers of money. In fact, the previous verses contain that famous quote, “The desire of money is the root of all evil.” The desire for money can distract us from our destination. Money is a means for achieving worldly success, stability and pleasure. But all of those things will pass away.
So Saint Paul encourages his friend to keep his sights set on Heaven, to keep his destination in mind at all times. He encourages him to “compete well for the faith” and “to keep the commandment without stain or reproach until Christ comes.
If the rich man in today’s Gospel had followed Saint Paul’s advice, maybe he would have ended up better. But instead, he forgot his destination. He “received what was good in his lifetime,” in Abraham’s words. In other words, he let wealth and pleasures distract him from his true mission in life: to love God and neighbor.
In the 1400’s, Joan of Arc saved France from being conquered by England. She was just a teen when God gave her that mission. Saint Catherine, Saint Michael the Archangel and other saints were sent from God to guide and encourage her. When she prayed, she would hear their voices in her heart. She referred to them as “her voices.” (That would later get her into a lot of trouble!)
Finally she got an audience with Charles, the real King of France, who had not been crowned because the war was going so badly. She explained to him her mission and “her voices.” The King didn’t believe her at first but eventually she mentioned some things that only he would know that her voices had told her.
As the King realized that she was really sent from God, he got irritated. He told her that if God wanted to save France, He should send the voices to him, to the King, not to some ignorant peasant girl. Joan answered, “They do come to you; but you do not hear them. If you prayed from your heart and listened you would hear the voices as well as I do.” The King wasn’t in tune with God. He wasn’t listening. He had lost track of his true destination and it took this teenage girl to get him back on track.
How can we do a better job at keeping our sights set on Heaven? One practical way is to adopt the commitment of the Boy Scouts: to keep looking for an opportunity to do at least one voluntary, selfless act of service every day.
A few years ago there was a movie Pay It Forward. There is also a movement started by Dr. Chuck Wall in 1993. He was listening to a news discussion of “random acts of senseless violence.” The next day he assigned his college psychology class the homework of committing a “random act of senseless kindness.” There began the “Random Acts of Kindness” movement.
Doing good deeds is simply a natural good thing. But, as Christians, doing a daily good deed can have a much deeper meaning, an eternal meaning in fact. Our acts have a supernatural motivation. They are done through Christ, in Christ and with Christ. As a result they become channels of grace, the means that God Himself can reach out and touch peoples’ hearts with His own love and goodness. And that is much more powerful than just ours alone.
Sometimes this happens because we actually clothe our act of service in Christian terms. At the very least, committing to perform at least one voluntary, selfless act of service every day will save us from the blindness that proved to be the downfall of the rich man.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
September 19, 2010
It may sound strange to hear Jesus praise the steward in the parable for being sly. But that is only because we may not know the Lord as well as we should. His point is simple, “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”
The steward knew that his time of employment was about to end. So before his last day, he uses his connections and position to prepare for the future. He was smart. The Greek word translated that we translate as “prudent” can also mean “astute.” Jesus is saying that it’s a good quality to have. We are supposed to be creative and ingenious in life.
But then He reprimands His followers for not applying that same quality to the more important project of preparing for eternity.
We are all like that steward. We know that our lives will come to an end, sooner or later. We know it for a fact. But are we using our resources and opportunities to prepare for what will come next? This is the question that Jesus wants us to ask ourselves. Are we using our energy to build the Kingdom of Christ now so that we can enjoy it forever later?
Many of the great men and women of the world, the CEO’s, the athletes, the movie stars, the political leaders, are exceptional in their tenacity, their determination and their cleverness. They set a goal and let nothing stop them from achieving it. They turn everything into an opportunity to advance their cause.
Imagine how different the Church, and the world, would be if each of us went after living the good life, reached for grace and holiness in the same way.
There are different types of astuteness. Sometimes it’s a matter of coming up with creative ideas, like the man in the parable. But other times it’s just a question of endurance, of not giving up until we have reached our goal. Theologians list this kind of endurance under the virtue of prudence and under courage because not giving up is the smart thing to do when we know that our goal is worthwhile.
When Andrew Jackson became president of the United States, the newspaper reporters had a field day. They loved the idea of a frontiersman becoming a statesman. One asked his childhood friends if they thought he would become president. They all agreed that they didn’t know what he would become but that it would be something big. When they asked why, they explained.
Jackson was never the best in his class in school. He was not the most popular kid in town. He wasn’t even the best athlete; in fact he would lose 3 out of 4 wrestling matches. But that is why they knew he was going places. The reporter pressed for more information.
“Well,” one answered, “After losing the first wrestling match, Jackson would challenge the same person to a second match. When he lost that one, he would challenge him to a third. When he lost that one, he would challenge his to a fourth. At that point, the other guy was usually so confused and worn out that Jackson would win the match. That’s the way he was with everything.”
Sometimes, being a wise steward simply means not giving up.
The Gospel today reminds us to be intelligent stewards of the gifts we have. In the parable, the steward was in charge of his master’s account books, so he exercised his intelligence by rearranging the debts people owed. We don’t have control over our Master’s books. But we do have three things that can be managed prudently.
How much time do we give to Christ and His Kingdom? We all give some time, that is why we are here. But can we give more? Should we give more? We are called to be wise stewards of our time.
Second is our talent. Our talents are also resources we have. We are called to invest them in loving our God and neighbor. Perhaps we can be more prudent.
And, third, there is treasure. It is an obligation that every Catholic should support the works of the Church, each according to their means. And there is a longstanding tradition of tithing. Tithing means giving the first 10% to the Church and charity. If we don’t do that, we should ask why not. Would it be a bad investment? Or is it the prudent thing to do in terms of the return we will get?
Today, once again, let’s ask for the grace to hold back nothing and to be wise and prudent stewards
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
September 12, 2010
The parable of the prodigal son offers many insights into what it means to follow Christ. One of these insights has to do with the greatest danger facing all of us who are “practicing Catholics.” The danger is to live the faith on the surface but not let it penetrate the depths of our hearts. The parable shows that it is possible to live in the “Father’s house” without really getting to know the Father.
The younger son didn’t really know his father. He didn’t know how much his father loved him and wanted him to have prosperity and joy. As a result, he gave his father an enormous insult by asking for his share of the inheritance while his father was still alive. It was a way of saying that this father would be of more use to him dead than alive.
The older son was no better off. On the surface everything seemed right, but he also had no idea how much his father loved him. That is why he resented the celebration on his brother’s return.
Although they lived their whole lives under the same roof, the two brothers had never opened their hearts to their father. They were both closed up in themselves.
It is easy for us to do the same thing. We can spend our whole lives as Catholics going through all the right motions and looking great on the outside but not opening our hearts to God, not getting to know Him on a personal, intimate level.
In July 2007 a group of Christian sociologists published the results of a study that they conducted over a five-year period called, “The Obstacles to Growth Survey.” It was conducted on 20,009 Christians between the ages of 15 and 88 most of whom came from the United States.
The survey found that 4 in 10 Christians say they “often” or “always” rush from task to task. About 6 out of 10 say that it is “often” or “always” true that “the busy-ness of life gets in the way of developing my relationship with God.” According to the survey, professionals whose busy-ness interferes with developing their relationship to God are 72% of lawyers, 67% of managers, 66% of nurses, 65% of pastors, 64% of teachers, 61% of salespeople, 61% of business owners, and 57% of homemakers. The conclusion is that the level of activity and the speed of everyday living is distracting us from God.
Here was how they reasoned:
1. Christians are assimilating to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload, which leads
to
2. God becoming more marginalized in Christians’ lives, which leads to
3. a deteriorating relationship with God, which leads to
4. Christians becoming more vulnerable to adopting secular assumptions about how to
live which leads to
5. more conformity to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload. And then the cycle
begins again.
It is possible to give too much weight to surveys but this one seems to fit with the two sons in the parable. Something made them so self-centered and distracted that they were never able to get to know their father. Maybe they were too busy, maybe it was something else. If nothing else the survey gives us even more food for thought.
The best defense is a good offense. There is one way we can be sure to avoid living in the Father’s house without really knowing the Father. That is communicating to others what we know about God. Pope John Paul used to say that there is no better way to grow in our faith than by giving it away.
Well, our faith tells us that God our Father loves us with an everlasting love. It tells us that He loved each of us so much that He sent His Son to be the sacrifice for our sins. It tells us that God is always watching over us, especially when we stray from the flock or get lost in the dark. Our faith tells us that God never gives up on us. If the brothers in the parable had strong convictions about these qualities of their father, they would never have fallen into their joyless and fruitless rebellions.
We can learn from the brothers. If we make an effort to tell others about this God who is pure goodness, untiring mercy and all powerful wisdom, we will find our own knowledge of him deepening. If our minds are constantly full of the truth about God, there will be no room for lies.
Sometime this week, an opportunity will arise to share your knowledge and love of God with someone else. I’ll go even farther and say that you will know when it happens. You will sense the invitation. Speak and know that you will helping someone else and also assuring that you will remain safe in God’s heart.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time C
August 29, 2010
What is the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament? The two pictures painted for us today in the Letter to the Hebrews tell us.
One is a picture of Mount Sinai where God gave His Law to the people of Israel through Moses. Mount Sinai is a picture of the entire Old Testament.
The other picture is of Mount Zion which is where Jerusalem is located. This was a symbol of Heaven, of the city of believers that entered into communion with God, not through fearful obedience to God’s strict laws but in loving obedience to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. These are the members of the New Testament.
Both the Old and the New are covenants, solemn, committed relationships entered into freely. The relationship in both cases is between God and the people He has chosen, between God and those who believe in Him. This relationship gradually matured as God revealed Himself more and more from the beginning of the Old Testament until the New.
These two pictures can give us a good idea of the difference between an immature and a mature relationship with God.
In the Old Testament people had an incomplete idea of who God is and so their relationship with Him was immature, NOT wrong, but needed growth. The predominant characteristic of their relationship was fear.
In those times people were much more aware of the seriousness of sin and the punishment that sin deserved. They were also more aware of their sinfulness. That double awareness inspired fear since God hated sin and they knew they were sinners.
This is the attitude that Hebrews calls to mind when it describes the experience of the people receiving God’s law at Mount Sinai. They were so intimidated by God’s holiness that they “begged that no message be further addressed to them.” Moses himself described his experience of being in God’s presence by saying that he was “utterly terrified and trembling.”
God was holy. People were sinful.
In those times, people were also very aware of God’s majesty, much more than we are today. They saw wonder and greatness in the world around them. And they knew that the Creator of such a world had to be even more wonderful and magnificent. This is seen from the description of Mount Sinai cloaked in “blazing fire and gloomy darkness and storm and a trumpet blast. Here is a God who is not only holy but mysterious and transcendent and immensely powerful. And so they were full of awe when they thought of God and when they entered His presence in prayer and worship.
This was long before people started putting religious faith in human science while looking down on those who believe in God.
The fear and awe of the Old Testament view of God were not wrong, but they were incomplete. God seemed far away and people were suspicious of God. But God did not want people at a distance.
When God saw that the time was right, He built a bridge over the abyss that kept human beings and God so far apart. The bridge was God becoming man in Jesus Christ. Christ is the bridge that draws people into closeness with God. He offered Himself for our sins showing that God’s mercy can release us from fear. And He rose from the dead to prove that in Him we don’t just have to admire God’s majesty from far away but we can actually enter into it and enjoy it from the inside.
That is what we see in the picture of Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. It shows us a city where God is present and surrounded by immense crowds. His angels are at His side. All the men and women who have been faithful to Him make up “the assembly of the first-born.” In other words, each one has been welcomed and honored by God as His own child.
This is what Christ has won for us: closeness to God; intimacy with the Creator of the universe; healthy fear turned into confident love; and frightening awe transformed into delight.
We are called to live in this relationship with God. We are not strangers to God, as on Mount Sinai, but members of His household, called to live in closeness, as on Mount Zion. Is that how we are living? We can check the vital signs.
First, there’s Confession. The immature Christian stays far away from Confession. For him it is like the thunderous mountaintop. It only inspires fear. For the mature Christian, Confession is an intimate conversation with the Lord who never is tired of forgiving.
Second, there is morality. The immature person sees following the moral teachings of Christ and His Church as a burden, like following a list of random and inconvenient rules. For the mature Christian, following Christ is a joyful mission. It can be hard but so can so many other things in life that are worthwhile.
Finally, there is mercy. The immature Christian enjoys criticizing less faithful people and talking about their faults. The mature Christian sees every person as a brother or sister and treats them with respect, always giving the benefit of the doubt.
No doubt, this check-up shows there is room for improvement. As we continue to pray, let us ask God to help it happen by opening our minds and hearts to see and know Him as our loving Father and faithful friend.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time C
August 22, 2010
The Gospel today reminds us of three things:
First, that there is a Heaven. This is the banquet in the Kingdom of God, the way Jesus describes salvation and eternal life.
Second, that there is a hell. That is what's outside that banquet where there is "wailing and grinding of teeth." They are images of the hopelessness and frustration that the human soul experiences when it is cut off forever from friendship with God.
And third, that in order to make our way to Heaven, we have to keep doing our part. It is not enough to have a superficial knowledge of Christ, like the people who said, "We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets." That's kind of like saying, "Remember, I met you once..."
Rather, we have to have a living, lasting, growing relationship with Christ. That is what we were created for and what will lead us to true life. And since friendship always involves effort, self-sacrifice and the investment of time and energy, the same applies to friendship with Christ. Salvation comes from actually following Him, from trying to know Him better and live His teaching.
That is what Jesus means by "the narrow gate" that leads to salvation. To get through a narrow gate you have to leave all excess baggage behind. It is possible to be labeled a Christian without really making the effort to be truly Christian in our hearts. It is even possible to come to Mass, to be involved in parish activities, and still never enter into a committed, life-changing, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
The Lord wants us to know that going through the motions isn't enough. We need to let His grace change our lives.
The conversation that Jesus had about how many people will be saved is not easy to take. We can picture Jesus resting from His travels, sitting on a stump or a rock outside a town, or maybe on a low wall in town. He is surrounded by a crowd of followers and some curiosity seekers speaking to them about God and the meaning of life.
At one point, someone asks Him if only a few people will be saved. We don't know who the questioner is, maybe someone who just lost a loved one. We do know it was someone who believed in eternal life but was wondering if it was hard to achieve as the Pharisees said. That few people would be saved was the opinion of the Pharisees, the religious teachers. In our culture, the prevailing view is just the opposite. It says that most people are nice and so most people, maybe all people, go to Heaven. But what does Jesus say?
Jesus doesn't give a direct answer. He doesn't say that only a few will be saved. And He doesn't say that many will be saved as today's popular culture teaches. Instead, He changes the focus from general statistics to the individual. He speaks to the one asking the question, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate." And then He tells a parable to reinforce individual responsibility by showing that on the Day of Judgment there will be a lot of surprises- the first will be last and the last will be first.
What Jesus wants is clear. He wants us to take seriously the adventure of life. He wants us to responsible for our choices. He wants to lead us to Heaven but He can only do that if we decide to follow that lead.
Maybe we can learn this best by taking the words of Jesus, "Strive to enter by the narrow gate." The Greek word used for "strive" is "agonizomai." It has the connotation of a supreme effort. Our word agony comes from the same word. The Greeks used this word to describe contests in their Olympic games. And they used it to describe hand-to-hand combat with an enemy. Other Bible versions translate it as "make every effort" and "try your hardest."
The invitation from Jesus today is to leave our comfort zones and strive to follow Him more closely. He only asks this because He loves us and love always seeks the best for the beloved. Each of us should examine our hearts to see where we have been falling into routine or where our Christian lives have gotten lazy.
Maybe you already know, but if not here's a suggestion. We cannot strive with all our strength to follow Christ if we do not know Christ. So, why not make the resolution to know Christ better? This can be done in reading the Bible, renewing your life of prayer, finding a book about Christ.
Whatever each of us decides to do, let's be sure we do something depending not on our own strength but on God's grace.
Jesus is eager to help us through the narrow gate. But He cannot do His part unless we strive to do our part.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
August 1, 2010
There is not a very bright tone to the first reading, is there? “Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanities!” In fact, this line sums up the book of Ecclesiastes. If you read through it, you will find that it is addressed to people who are well off. While we may not all be wealthy, in comparison to the vast poverty of the world, most of us are certainly “well off.” So, we can’t just pretend it applies to someone else.
Ecclesiastes is a wise person’s reflections on life. Today’s passage reminds us that nothing survives death: no success, reputation, gain or profit will last beyond a person’s lifetime. It is a somber reflection for a summer Sunday. What can we say about it?
Well, it does point to the Gospel. Ecclesiastes con sober us up in case we are intoxicated and distracted by a reliance on what we have achieved on our own. If we base our worth and merit on what the world values, then Qoheleth says to us today, “Wake up you dreamers, what you treasure is ephemeral and lacking in permanence.” We can gain from his wisdom if his words lead us to look over our lives and examine where we are investing our energies and what dominates our attention.
At a recent retreat a preacher said, “If you want to know where your heart is, look over the stubs in your checkbook…where your money goes, that’s where your heart is.” I think we could say the same thing about our calendars. Look over the last few months and see where you have spent your time. With whom? Doing what? As we review these things, do the words make us squirm? “Vanity of vanities…all things are vanity.” I doubt we would invite Qoheleth over for a nice dinner with friends. But here in church, he can be a wake-up call directing our attention away from what is passing towards what will last and be enriching for us, as well as making some contribution towards a better world.
We also need Qoheleth to remind us that in this life the good don’t always get rewarded, justice does not always prevail and hard workers are not always paid the most. For much of the world’s people, life is not fair, far from it, it is imperfect, limited and oppressive. Granted that all of us may not be feeling the pinch but some are.
Only the Gospel of Luke has the parable of the rich fool. Here is a person who doesn’t seem to have heard Qoheleth’s wisdom about placing trust in passing things. Here the rich man has pinned all his hopes on what he owns but has ignored who he really is. The man already has enough for himself but his appetite is for more. It reminds me of watching some people’s plates at buffets! What about us? Do we know when enough is enough?
The farmer in the story isn’t a bad person. He is rich but that is not a sin. But notice that he has isolated himself from the community. He never consults with anyone, not God or someone in his family or community, to discuss what he might do with all the excess. Instead, he set about tearing down his barns to build bigger ones. As far as we can tell, this farmer had a very good year but his gaze turned only on himself. “I think I’ll buy a bigger house, get a nicer car, save some money, get a boat.” He’s not a bad man, but God calls him a fool. He should have read Ecclesiastes and gained some perspective.
Luke is making his usual point. Christians have to share what they have and live in trust that God will provide what is really important, deep and meaningful life. That is the “daily bread” we pray for. And remember from last week, we get the best gift of all, the Holy Spirit, unearned and totally free.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
July 25, 2010
Jesus makes some bold statements in today’s Gospel. He says that whoever asks will receive, whoever seeks will find, and whoever knocks will get the door opened. Did He really mean that? Shouldn’t He have said, almost everyone? Can He make such an unconditional guarantee? He can. After all, He is all-powerful and all-knowing. Even so, it still seems to be too good to be true. It’s hard to accept these phrases just as they stand. We want to treat them like poetry, to admire their beauty without taking them literally.
Jesus knew that we would be tempted to doubt them. So He reiterated them by giving examples. Would an earthly father worthy of the name torture his children by giving them stones instead of bread or a little balled up scorpion instead of an egg? Of course not. Even though we are, as human beings, selfish sinners, “wicked” as Jesus says, we still try to give good things to those we love. Then we can begin to understand how God, whose love is unhindered by even the slightest selfishness, is even more willing to give good things to us whom He loves without measure.
Just as Jesus answered His disciples’ request to teach them how to pray by giving them the Our Father, the most perfect of all prayers, so He will hear every request we ask of Him and answer it even more generously than we could possibly have hoped.
Yes, those who ask will receive, and those who seek will find, because God is simply too good not to answer every prayer He hears.
Sometimes, however, God does not give us the answer that we want. That when we find out our level of spiritual maturity. A immature Christian will react as if the prayer was not heard at all. He will become angry and resentful at God. In order to justify the anger, he/she may become convinced there is no God. This is fundamentally self-centered.
The only time we doubt that God hears our prayers is when we don’t get what we want right when we want it. If we say a prayer of thanksgiving or praise, for example, we never doubt that God hears it. Uncontrolled frustration at supposedly unanswered prayer is a sign of spiritual immaturity. Most mature Christians accept that God hears and answers every prayer.
If we ask God for something in prayer, God can say one of three things in response:
First, He can say OK and give us what we ask for.
Second, He can simply say no which means that what we are asking for is not good for us. This is still an answer to prayer, and, as every parent knows, sometimes it is the most loving answer of all.
Third, He can say OK, but not now.
Yes, no and not now, these are answers that God can choose from and He always chooses on. Keeping this in mind can, or should, help us from throwing a spiritual temper tantrum when God doesn’t do exactly what we want.
We need to be reminded that we are not God. We need God. We will always need God. Asking, seeking and knocking didn’t go out of style with electricity and computers. God wants us to admit and accept this need. If we do, we allow Him more room to work in our lives.
It is a sign of spiritual maturity to approach God in prayer, persistently and confidently with all our needs. If we aren’t doing it regularly, chances are that we are drifting away from God. Today hear the invitation to come back, to come closer, to keep asking, seeking, knocking.
Today let’s lift up all our prayers from the depths of our hearts. What could warm a Father’s heart more than that?
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
July 11, 2010
The parable of the Good Samaritan is so familiar to us that we often see it from only one side. We tend to focus on what is there that we should imitate. Jesus finishes the parable by saying, “Go and do likewise.” In that sense it is a clear explanation of the great commandment, “love your neighbor as yourself.”
But this parable has another dimension. The Good Samaritan is, above all, a picture of Jesus and what Jesus has done for us, for the human family as a whole, and for each of individually. We were like the man left on the side of the road to die. Each of us had been robbed of our original holiness by sin. Our selfishness and sins and the sins of others have seriously wounded our souls. We lay on the side of life’s path in need of Someone to help.
Jesus comes to us like the Good Samaritan. He is the merciful One who heals and restores us with the oil and wine of His grace and sacraments. He is the One who pays for our salvation with His own sacrifice. He gives all that is necessary to the innkeeper which is His Church. And the Church watches over our progress and recovery until Jesus returns. If Jesus commands us to be Good Samaritans to one another, it’s only because He has done the same thing before us.
Jesus continues to be the Good Samaritan for the world. His word and sacraments are the healing ointment for our wounds of selfishness and sin. This is His message and He has communicated this in different ways through the years.
One was a series of visions to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun. These visions were the beginning of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
When Jesus first appeared to Saint Margaret Mary, He stood in front of her and showed her His heart, describing it as a furnace of love. Then He reached out and took her heart in His hand. She saw her heart as if it were a tiny atom. Jesus put it inside His own heart where it caught fire and started to burn with the flames of His love.
On another occasion, He allowed her to look directly at His heart. She wrote later that it was bright as the sun and clear as crystal. Driven into the top of it was a cross. On one side was a deep gash, the wound He got when the soldiers put a spear into His side. And wrapped tightly around the middle of His heart was a ring of thorns. Jesus explained that these thorns were the indifference and ingratitude that He received from the men and women who He loved, for whom He died and for whom He had become the Good Samaritan to the world.
We need Christ. We live in a fallen world. We ourselves are fallen. Christ is our Good Samaritan and only His help can get us back on our feet, keep us there and give us the inner, spiritual strength we all know we need and should have.
The Church reminds us of that today. We should thank the Lord for coming to rescue us, for not walking by like the priest and the Levite, but stopping to help.
Our thanks is best made by reaching out to others who have been robbed and beaten up by the troubles of life in this fallen world. Remember that this week. Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.”
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
July 4, 2010
When Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples to work with Him in the mission, the number was important.
When Moses was leading the people of Israel into the Promised Land, God had him appoint seventy elders to receive the same spirit as Moses and become his assistants. Later, the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Israel, was made up of 71 elders.
The number 72 may have even more meaning since the Book of Genesis described the division of the non-Jewish world into 70 nations. So 72 might reflect those nations, Israel and the Church, the new People of God.
Either way, the Old and the New Testament insist that God chooses coworkers to build His kingdom. And the Lord came not only to announce the Gospel but to set up His Church, the community of disciples, His coworkers, to keep spreading the good news to the ends of the earth until time ends. (“Who is the Church?” “We are!” “Where is the Church?” “Right here!”)
Jesus is saving the world, but not by Himself. He wants to do it with our help. From the pope to the most recently baptized person, we all share the same mission: To help Christ build His kingdom.
And this should be one of our greatest joys. As Pope Benedict said recently,
“I am convinced that there is a great need for the whole Church to rediscover the joy of evangelization, to become a community inspired with missionary zeal to make Jesus better known and loved.” (November 27, 2006)
Jesus longs for our friendship. And friends share their most important tasks, so He shares with us His most important mission: building up the Kingdom, spreading the Gospel, saving souls. He doesn’t want pets, He wants friends and collaborators.
The longing of the heart of Jesus for our friendship and it comes across in the expression He uses at the beginning of the instructions to the 72 disciples. He tells them, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.” Imagine the emotion behind those words. They express an urgency, a burning desire to reach out to all people who so desperately need direction, meaning and love in their lives, and lead them to the Kingdom. So many needs, so many hearts ready for the Gospel.
The real friends of Jesus, the ones He can count on, know the echo of this love and desire in their own hearts. He longs for each of us to be that kind of friend.
All of us are called to be coworkers but some are called to dedicate themselves in a special way to bringing in this spiritual harvest. When Jesus tells us to “ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest,” He is referring above all to those who have these special vocations, to the men and women God calls to the priesthood and religious life in the Church.
When He tells us to “ask the master of the harvest,” He is telling us to pray for vocations. This is something every one of us can do. Asking God to send vocations to the priesthood, consecrated life and missionary life shows that we care about what Jesus cares about, that we are His coworkers. The more sincere the prayer is, the more effective it will be.
And if it is sincere, it means that we will not only ask God to call others, but we will be generous in responding to whatever He asks us. Blessed Mother Teresa was once speaking to a young man who wanted to do something for Christ. He was sad about all the problems he saw in the world and spoke of his frustration. He told her, “I’m only one person, and the world is in such a mess! What can I do?” She answered, “Pick up a broom.”
We all care about continuing the mission of Christ and building His kingdom, that is why we are here. So during this Mass, and in this week, ask God to send more workers into the harvest. And as soon as we finish the prayer, let’s pick up a broom and get working.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
June 27, 2010
In the Gospel, along the way to Jerusalem, Jesus meets three men who have His call in their hearts. They want to join His group and become His followers. These encounters teach us three tough lessons about what it means to follow Christ.
Today I would like to focus on just one of them. If you want to follow Christ, we have to expect difficulties.
(If you want to know the other two:
1. Following Christ means relocating the source of our security from ourselves to God, “foxes have holes and birds have nests…;”
2. Following Christ means actively taking risks, “letting the dead bury the dead” means leaving behind one’s plans and comfort zones in order to put all our eggs in Christ’s basket.)
It is popular now to focus only on the benefits of being a Christian: the sense of mission and purpose, the blessings God wants to give us, the forgiveness of heart and mind that comes from it, the strength God’s grace gives to live really good lives. These are the real benefits. They are not to be ignored. We should want them and be grateful for them. But they are not the whole story.
We live in a fallen world. When we declare ourselves to citizens of Christ’s Kingdom, in a sense, we lose our citizenship in this world. We become like aliens, refugees waiting to return home to Heaven, or as the Bible often says, pilgrims. This earth is no longer our home and the closer we get to Christ, the more we realize it, the more we notice and feel its imperfections and its sufferings. Christ lonely reached Easter Sunday by passing through Good Friday and Christians can expect nothing less.
This is the lesson Jesus teaches with His comment about setting our hands to the plow. Once we decide to follow Christ, there will be times when we will feel like turning back, because it will be hard work. But if we do turn back, we may lose our place in the Kingdom. He loves us too much to force us to continue. Jesus wants us to be clear about this. He gives no false promises.
The image of setting hands to the plow would have been very clear to those who listened. They lived close to the land and knew about farming. They would have known that plowing fields by hand was not easy.
The farmer hitched the plow to the oxen or cattle, or sometimes even to a donkey. As the animal made its way across the field, the farmer held the handles of the plow and pressed the blade into the ground cutting a furrow that would later be used for planting. To make the best use of the field, the furrows had to be straight. This meant keeping an eye out constantly to direct the stubborn animals. To make sure the seeds would grow, the furrows had to be deep. This meant keeping a firm and steady hand on the plow itself, for long periods of time, in spite of rocky soil that resisted. It was slow and exhausting work.
Many times the farmer would be tempted to take a rest or relax his grip. But the plowing season was short because the planting season was short. If the farmers didn’t keep their hands to the plow, the harvest would be small.
Following Christ is no different. Once we get into it, we discover how difficult it can be. And when difficulties and trials pop up, we are tempted to look back at the apparent ease and comfort of a self-centered life. But is we surrender to that temptation, we lose. Only Christ’s Kingdom lasts forever, only God can fill the deepest longings of our hearts. The hard work and faithfulness to God required pays for itself with eternal rewards.
Some of us may be in the midst of a trial or difficulty right now. To you, Jesus says, ‘Do not be afraid. Trust in me and keep going. Keep your hands to the plow; the harvest will come.
All of us will face trials before long. So let’s be prepared. Learn the lesson that Jesus is teaching so that when following Christ gets tough, when the trials do come, we will keep our hands to the plow.
It is a sad fact that many of our brothers and sisters who are facing the hardest difficulties and trials are not here with us this weekend. Many of them have taken their hands off the plow. They have turned to look for their strength and comfort in the wrong places. Let’s not forget about them. Let’s remember them today, as we are given strength in God’s word and in the Eucharist. Surely, Jesus wants to be close to them as well. But they won’t pray; they won’t ask His help. We must pray for them.
And if in God’s care, we meet up with them this week, offer them your hand. Lend them support.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
The Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
June 20, 2010
Jesus is the Christ, the Lord, the Savior sent by God to redeem the world, the Son of God become human. That is what Saint Peter says in today’s Gospel and Jesus does not correct him. But that has not stopped people from coming up with ideas of their own such as He is a great philosopher, a good teacher, a misguided nut. The real identity of Jesus has fascinated people for 2000 years. And even for us who are committed Catholics, it is an important question.
But the important thing in today’s Gospel is not only the fact that the question is raised but how the question is presented. Jesus actually asks two questions, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” It is not enough to have some general discussion, one that has no effect on us.
Sometimes earthly ruler are satisfied with a superficial allegiance, as long as they get our vote, they won’t invade our personal space. This is not like that. To be Christian in name only, a nominal or cultural Catholic is not enough. It is not enough to know what other people say about Jesus. Each of us has to answer for ourselves personally. We need to proclaim that He is Lord not only with our lips but with our lives. We need to say not only that Jesus is Lord but that He is OUR Lord, MY Lord, and that we willing to follow wherever He leads.
It is this personal allegiance to Jesus Christ, taking responsibility for our faith that opens the door to spiritual maturity and bring the wisdom, joy and interior peace that come with it.
One reason that the saints were able to live joyfully and energetically even in the face of terrible struggles, is that they learned this so well. The central principle of their lives is God’s personal, not generic, love for them. Everything else flows from that.
Saint Paul explained the motivation for everything in his life in his Letter to the Galatians, “He (Christ) loved me and gave himself up for me” (Galatians 20:20). This is the source of his courage, confidence, perseverance and happiness. As he says in the Letter to the Romans, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). And in the life of every saint it is the same story. Experiencing the reality of God’s personal, intimate love for them brings their life to a new level, giving them the power to overcome selfishness and become God’s faithful friends.
Saint Faustina Kowalska, the Polish sister who gave us the revelations about Divine Mercy described it wonderfully. One day she went to pray before the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel of the hospital where she was staying and the Lord allowed her to feel His love for her in a special way. Here is how she described it in her diary, remember that the heart of Jesus symbolizes His love:
“And all of a sudden, my soul was flooded with the light of the knowledge of God. Oh,
would that I could express even a little of what my soul experiences when resting near
the Heart of the incomprehensible Majesty?
“I cannot put it into words. Only a soul who has experienced such a grace at least once
in his life, will recognize it. When I returned to my room, it seemed to me that I was
coming from real life into death.
“When the doctor came to take my pulse, he was surprised: ‘Sisiter, what happened?
You have never had a pulse like this! I would like to know what has speeded it up so
much.’
“What could I tell him, when I myself did not know that my pulse was so rapid. I only
know that I am dying of yearning for God, but this I did not tell him, for how an
medicine help in this instance?” (Diary, #969-970)
There is no better way to deepen our relationship with Jesus Christ m than daily prayer, and I want to say today, especially Christian meditation. This is not therapeutic or transcendental meditation. They are both forms of mental discipline but not real prayer. They focus on the self and not on God. Christian meditation involves mental discipline but it is really prayer with its focus on God.
It is different from vocal prayer which is speaking to God using words we learned. The Our Father and the Hail Mary are vocal prayer. They are like the skeleton of our spiritual life and we should pray them every day.
But mental prayer can go deeper. We can look to know and understand God better and if we speak, we use our own words, often from the quiet of our hearts. It is easy and we can all do it. The easiest way is to take a passage from the Bible and follow the three R’s: read, reflect, respond.
Read the passage slowly, remembering this is God’s word and God always has something to say to us. Then reflect on the passage: what does it tell you about Jesus? What does it mean for you and your hopes, your plans, your struggles?
Then you will naturally find that you want to respond, speaking to God from your heart, thanking Him, praising Him or maybe asking for guidance and strength.
It is that simple: Read, Reflect, Respond. And who knows what God has prepared when you give Him that time?
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time C
June 13, 2010
In all of the writings of Saint Paul, few passages are as famous as the one we just heard. Paul is making the distinction between works and faith.
Saint Paul says that salvation comes from “faith in Christ.” That’s what brings us into a right relationship with God. This view of salvation was quite different from what most people held at the time. They thought that salvation came through what Saint Paul calls “the works of law.” They thought that by perfectly following the law, the Ten Commandments and the thousands of specifications and rituals that came from them, you could get into a right relationship with God. That was the mainstream view and Paul was preaching against it.
The Christians in Galatia received Paul’s message but when he moved one some Jewish Christians started to go back to the old ways. When he heard about that, he wrote the letter in which he crushes the old, law-centered view of salvation. He writes, “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.”
We need to hear this just as much as the people in Galatia. We are still vulnerable to the old temptation that trapped Adam and Eve; the temptation of trying to achieve fullness of life and happiness through our own efforts. We are easily convinced that arranging our lives with just the right combination of religion, popularity, money and position, we will create our own heaven on earth. But that’s a lie.
As Saint Paul says, “If justification comes through the law,” in other words, if happiness and peace can come through our own efforts, “then Christ died for nothing.” Happiness, peace and life are in Christ alone, in union and friendship with Him.
Once again, I found a simple story to show this.
A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. The conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor came from the kitchen with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups, porcelain, plastic, crystal, some plain and some expensive looking. He put them all on the table and told everyone to help themselves. When they all had a cup of coffee, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken first, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. Why is that? The cup itself adds nothing to the coffee. What all of you really wanted was the coffee, not the cup, but you went for the best cups…” Then they started looking at each other’s cups. “Do you think this can tell you something about your problems and stress?”
It is a simple story. It may not have even happened. But it demonstrates Saint Paul’s point. With our own efforts in life, all we can do is make cups. Jobs, money, prestige, popularity, appearances, these are all just the cup, just the outside, jus the container of life. But no real cup, no matter how beautiful can satisfy our thirst. The coffee cup is useless without the coffee. Just so, all our efforts and achievements in life are meaningless unless they are filled by a relationship with Christ.
Now, does this mean we should make no effort in life at all? That we should believe in Jesus and stop there? Not in the least.
Saint Paul says, “I died to the law, that I might live for God.” In other words, he has given up trying to achieve perfection and happiness by his own strength and instead he is seeking happiness in a relationship with God. And relationships are a lot of work. A relationship is not like a math problem that you figure out once and then it’s done. It’s a journey, an adventure.
The work of a Christian, then, is the tough job of following Christ. Again, as Saint Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, not longer I, but Christ lives in me.” Daily we are given chance to live that:
We can speak the truth even when it’s unpopular.
We can make time for prayer no matter what.
We can fulfill our responsibilities even when we are exhausted.
We can forgive even when we feel like taking revenge.
We can be faithful in the storm and say no to dishonest shortcuts.
We can befriend the friendless and defend the defenseless.
These are real Christian works, fruitful ones done out of love for Christ.
Let us ask that Christ strengthen us this week so we can know the joy of living in Him.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Trinity
May 30, 2010
In the Gospel, we hear words from Jesus that can hardly hold the meaning that He gives them in this passage from the Last Supper. He teaches something amazing. Jesus gives us a glimpse of the very nature of God. Like a flash of lightening, He lights up for just a moment the “structure,” so to speak, of God.
The Holy Spirit, Jesus tells, can only speak what He hears from the Son. And everything the Son has, He received from the Father. That means that each one communicates their entire selves to the others. They don’t just share some points of view, information or experiences: they actually communicate their whole selves, their entire divine Persons.
What is God? God is a total unity of three Persons, an eternal community of living love, of mutual self-giving. There is no holding back, there are no hidden agendas, there is no manipulation. The inner life of God is absolute, no-holds-barred generosity, eternal and unlimited self-giving. That is God: three perfect divine Persons who perfectly share the unique divine nature.
How can this be? How can God be three distinct Persons and still be only one God? We simply don’t know. We can only get an inkling of it from our human experience of life in a family.
We are created in God’s image and so the love that unites a husband and wife and brings forth new life, this is a reflection, a dim one, of the divine Family of the Trinity.
Those who are not Christian often criticize the idea of the Trinity. They say the ‘one in three’ is a contradiction. But, in fact, the very mystery is a sign that it rings true. No simply human mind could have made up such a thing; only God could have made it known. And, anyway, if we could understand God completely, then He wouldn’t really be God!
In our world, we tend to think little of these theological matters. To many they seem to be only theoretical. But we should remember that in past ages the Church defended these truths in blood.
In the first period of Christian history, the biggest enemy was the Roman Empire, which for 300 years tried to wipe the Church out by violent persecution. But the Church survived and eventually became the main religion. When that happened, the biggest enemy changed. Instead of coming from outside the Church, it came from inside. The enemy was false teaching or heresy. During this period the councils took place, each to defend and make clear what the Church believed. We still profess these in the Creed.
The early Church recognized something very important: If our idea about God is wrong, then our idea about how to love and obey God and gain our salvation will also be wrong. So generations of saints battled false beliefs to keep the Catholic belief in God pure.
One of the most famous of these was Saint Athanasius, a fourth century bishop in Alexandria in Egypt. He fought against the Arian heresy that denied that Jesus was God. This heresy tore at the Church for 100 years. Athanasius was the anchor holding the true faith in place and supporting the pope. But he suffered for it. He was put in prison, slandered, framed and exiled five times. He had to hide in the desert to escape being killed. All of that to defend the Trinity we are reminded of today.
The more deeply we consider and reflect on this revelation of God, the more we will love Him. And the more we love God, the happier we will be. We were created in order to love God. And whenever we do what we were made to do, we experience meaning and fulfillment.
But in order to love God more, we need to know Him better. An old proverb says, “You cannot love what you do not know.” To use a plain example, someone who has never tasted apple pie can’t say, “I love apple pie.” But if a person has tasted a piece of homemade apple pie then he can say, “I love apple pie.”
If we know who God is, if we go beyond a vague, fuzzy idea and get a clear view of His glory and His goodness, it will stir up our love.
Today, on the feast of the Trinity, we need to consider how well we know God. Are we satisfied with the bare minimum? Are we striving to know Him better? Do you know Him better than you did a year ago, five years ago, twenty years ago?
Today when we profess our faith in God, let’s consider the price our ancestors paid. And let’s ask God to stir up our desire to know Him better.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Pentecost
May 23, 2010
Pentecost is the celebration of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the disciples of Jesus. It is one of the most important events recorded in the New Testament. As amazing as the story is, our question is what really happened at Pentecost and, the second one follows from it, what might be a genuine manifestation of the Holy Spirit?
The event we celebrate today happened on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, one of the three great feasts that fell 50 days after Passover. There were three manifestations of the Spirit’s presence. First, there was a noise like that of a strong driving wind. Acts does not say there was a wind but a noise like a wind. Second, there appeared tongues like flames of fire, resting on each one present; not necessarily literal flames of fire but tongues like flames. Third, there was speaking in other tongues, not unknown tongues or sounds but other languages.
Pentecost, like Easter, was a once-for-all happening. It had not happened before and it would not happen again. The Acts of the Apostles begins with this dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit but, as we move along, such manifestations of the Spirit’s presence are like a declining angle. There are no more sounds of rushing wind, no more fiery flames and only two times where it mentions someone speaking in tongues. But the Holy Spirit remains in the Church.
Saint Paul says in Galatians that the “fruit” of the Spirit are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” In First Corinthians, Paul makes it clear that the greatest gift of the Spirit is love. The native “language” of the Holy Spirit is love and all that flows from love, primarily unity. It follows then that the opposite signs of the presence of the Spirit are lack of love, disunity, lack of harmony.
Most of us probably remember the events surrounding the death of Pope John Paul in 2005. Those extraordinary few weeks gave us a glimpse of the work being done by the Holy Spirit, the work of uniting the human family.
More than 3,000 journalists descended on Rome as Pope John Paul was dying. Almost overnight hundreds of broadcast tents were put up on the edge of Vatican City. World-wide media gave around-the-clock coverage to people around the globe, of every age and ethnic group. During the week before the funeral, 2 million people paid their last respects in person. Some of them waited in line for 24 hours. On the night before the funeral 800,000 people spent the night praying and waiting in the streets of Rome. Most of these were young people who had come from everywhere. All night long you could see them waiting in line for Confession at makeshift, outdoor confessionals that the priests has set up on doorsteps and under lamp posts.
The funeral itself was followed by hundreds of millions on TV and radio. The amount of world leaders present at the funeral was extraordinary. It included four queens, five kings, seventy prime ministers and presidents and more than 100 others. Dozens of Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish religious leaders joined them. It looked and sounded like the first Pentecost.
I tell this, not so we can sit up more proudly as Catholics, but because the whole thing was like a living symbol of what God is doing, has been doing and will continue to do through His Church until the end of time: making one family out of a divided world.
This is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Church: bringing unity to the divided human family with God and with each other. And most people would agree that this is a wonderful goal. In fact, there are all sorts of groups dedicated full time to the causes of world peace, eliminating poverty and reducing the arms race. The world is full of initiatives for unity. But, as Christians, our efforts are different.
We aim not only at the symptoms of disunity but at the cause. The fundamental cause of disunity in the human family is sin, the rebellion of the human heart against God. How can we be united unless we all love and obey one Father? The root of the economic crisis that continues to plague the world is in sin, primarily the sins of greed and lust for power. The greatest gift is love not money, power or worldly success. And Pope Benedict was so right when last week he clearly said that the source all the terrible scandals in the Church is not to be found in the media but within the Church in the sinfulness of its members. The fruit of the Spirit is faithfulness and self-control. The root of so many of the problems of society is also found in sin: disharmony in families, abuse of alcohol, drugs and sex. God’s Spirit brings peace and joy to living.
It wasn’t the human brilliance of the Apostles that allowed them to speak foreign languages on the first Pentecost. It was God’s grace from the Holy Spirit working through the Church. And so, if we are to carry out the mission of God’s Church, if we are to be active, efficient and effective builders of unity in our families, schools, communities and places of work, we must, first and foremost, be in touch with the Holy Spirit. We must live in grace, in God’s life.
It was while in prayer that the Apostles received the Holy Spirit. It is only prayer that will bind us to God and give us the strength to bring together what is separated. It is our prayer that will makes us partners of the Holy Spirit. And only sincere and routine prayer that will bring us the fruit of the Spirit, what our hearts really desire.
Today, the Holy Spirit renews His presence in us and in the world. We should renew our commitment to becoming people of prayer so that the Church can carry out its wonderful mission.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Seventh Sunday of Easter C
May 16, 2010
Why didn’t Jesus save Saint Stephen from being killed? Had Jesus forgotten about His faithful disciple, His holy deacon? Not at all. Jesus did save Stephen; he did come to his rescue. And the way He did teaches us a crucial lesson about what Jesus really cares about.
What we just heard in the Acts of the Apostles takes place at the end of along speech by Stephen. He was on trial before the Sanhedrin, the kind of Supreme Court of Jerusalem. In his speech he summarized the whole history of salvation, explaining that Jesus was the Messiah and correcting the leaders for rejecting Christ. Instead of believing him, they flew into a rage.
That is when Jesus made His move. It tells us that Stephen saw Jesus “standing at the right hand of God.” The New Testament describes Jesus at God’s right hand many times but this is the only time He is standing there. Every other time He is sitting. Jesus has stood up; He has actively come to help Stephen by giving him this vision. It did not save him from the violent anger of his enemies. It didn’t save him from his suffering. But it did renew his courage and strengthened him to stay faithful to Christ. Jesus doesn’t just save Stephen from the evil of others, rather He saves him from falling under pressure and faltering in his faith.
This teaches us clearly that what interests Jesus most is not our comfort but our faithfulness. He wants us to stay true and He will never fail to help us do that. Understanding that this is Christ’s priority helps us make sense of a lot of things that happen in life, especially the bad things. God allows, sometimes even sends trials, because He knows that true happiness comes not through comfort but through virtue. Jesus knows in the face of suffering we able to exercise our faithfulness. Love shows itself not on the honeymoon but in the crisis. Jesus knows that suffering can actually lead to salvation and holiness. It can open our hearts to the vision of glory just as it did for Saint Stephen.
I read a clever analogy that can help us learn what I’ve been talking about.
Suffering is like boiling water. It has a different effect on people depending on how they choose to react. If you put carrots in boiling water, they get soft. That’s like the person who has made comfort and pleasure the goal of life. When suffering comes, it drains him or her of all desire for living.
If you put an egg in boiling water, it gets hard. You get a hard-boiled egg. That’s what happens to some people, especially those who arrogant and self-centered. When life gets hard, they also get hard. They clench their fists and lose their smile. They become angry and cynical.
If you put coffee in boiling water, the water releases the coffee’s hidden flavor. It fills the room with its aroma and makes the water taste good. The soul that trusts God with courage in suffering, holding on to the cross and staying faithful, learns to love like Christ, to be humble and to persevere. That person’s life gives off an aroma of mature joy and is filled with the flavor of purpose and wisdom.
In this world, there will always be suffering. God allows it but He also wants it to release our full potential.
Jesus is always with us. Like Stephen, there are times that following Him can be especially tough, when we feel pressure, when we feel like giving in. He allows these times but never leaves us to face them alone. At these times, Jesus no longer sits on His heavenly throne, He stands and comes to help.
The question for us is how can we recognize His help? How can we hold on to it in times of trouble? Spiritual writers tell us there are at least two things we can do.
First, we can prepare ourselves ahead of time. No good soldier waits for the battle to begin before getting his weapons ready and studying the battle plan. In the same way, we have to stay close to Jesus in the good times. We have to work to know Him better and to love Him more.
Second, during the trial itself, we can turn our thoughts to Jesus, instead of turning in on ourselves. What did Saint Stephen do when they started to stone him? He prayed and entrusted his soul to God and asked God to forgive his enemies. These are two of the same prayers that Christ made when He was dying.
This week some of us will find ourselves in times of trouble, difficulties or suffering. Let’s follow the example of Stephen, pray and focus on Jesus.
Some of us will find ourselves in times of peace and prosperity. Let’s be sure to stay close to Christ while the sun is shining so that we can easily find Him when the darkness comes.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Sixth Sunday of Easter C
May 9, 2010
What are we supposed to do when there are disagreements in the Church? That same question was faced by the Christians in Antioch as we heard it in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
Antioch, unlike Jerusalem, was a cosmopolitan city because it was on a trade route connecting Asia Minor with the ports of Palestine. There was a large Jewish community and a large Gentile or non-Jewish community of Greeks and Romans. When the Gospel was preached there, it won converts from all three groups, Jews, Greeks and Romans. And as the community grew, a disagreement rose up.
Some of the Jewish converts were saying that the Gentiles who became Christians should follow the law of Moses, the law of the Old Testament, about circumcision and dietary rules. But others said that since Christ had fulfilled those laws in Himself, it was no longer necessary to follow them. The argument became heated and threatened to divide the church community.
Had the Holy Spirit made a mistake when He inspired the apostles to preach to those who were not Jews or when those same people received the Holy Spirit? No, God knew that disagreements would arise among Christians, as they do in any community, and He had established a church structure through which the Holy Spirit would resolve them.
The Christians in Antioch sent a delegation to Jerusalem where Peter and the other apostles were still living. Peter called the Apostles together in a council about how to deal with the disagreement and it was decided that the Gentile Christians didn’t have to follow the Law of Moses.
The reading today shows us the process unfolding. It tells us that disagreements are natural and unavoidable. It also tells us that the Church has been equipped by God to resolve them.
If you ever watch EWTN, you might have seen Marcus Grodi. He is the host of a weekly program on the network. Marcus was a Presbyterian who became a Catholic. While still a Presbyterian pastor, he had a crisis.
Here is the dilemma in his own words:
“Every Sunday I would stand in my pulpit and interpret Scripture for my flock, knowing that within a fifteen mile radius of my church there were dozens or other Protestant pastors, all of whom believed that the Bible alone is the sole authority for doctrine and practice, but each was teaching something different from what I was teaching.
‘Is my in interpretation of Scripture the right one or not?’ I’d wonder. ‘Maybe one of those pastors is right, and I’m misleading these people who trust me.’
There was also the knowledge… that… I would be required to answer not just for my own actions but also for how I led the people he had given me to pastor. ‘Am I preaching truth or error?’ I asked the Lord repeatedly. ‘I think I’m right, but how can I know for sure?’”
It was as if he found himself in the community at Antioch, but, unlike Paul and Barnabas, he had nowhere to go to resolve his doubts and disagreements. He could find no peace of heart, because he hadn’t found a church equipped to give it to him. Eventually, God led him through his crisis into the Catholic Church, the one that Jesus had established with real Holy Spirit-given authority.
We are members of the same Church that those Christians in Antioch belonged to. Like them, and like Christians of every time, we have our disagreements, though our issues are different. Until recently, for example, things like embryonic stem cell research and artificial contraception were not even possible and so posed no questions. In future times, the issues will change again, but the Church will still be the same and it will still be equipped to resolve disagreements. Staying faithful to that Church is the sure way to know the inner peace that Jesus promised in today’s Gospel.
It will not always be easy, as it was not easy for the Christians in Antioch who had been lobbying in favor of the opposite side (following the Law of Moses). But often it is much easier than we think. Like a good Mother, the Church always tries to explain her teachings and decisions. Jesus asks that we obey intelligently. That is why the Church has a Catechism. That is why Pope Benedict gave over 350 speeches, talks and homilies last year alone. It is up to each of us to make the effort to know and understand what we believe. And that certainly means not being satisfied with what the newspapers have to say.
The peace of Christ is a gift, a gift that follows faithful behavior. Let’s renew our commitment to stay faithful to Christ and faithful to His Church.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 2, 2010
The Church gives us seven weeks of the season of Easter. We need this extended time to reflect on what Jesus taught us in His passion and resurrection. Much like plants have to spend time outside to gradually absorb the sunlight to grow, our souls gave to spend time in the light of Christ’s teachings.
Today we are especially reminded of the New Commandment that Jesus gave on the day before He suffered. We are brought back to the Last Supper when Jesus gathered with His closest friends and opened His heart to them. It was the night when His heart overflowed with love. That night He revealed the secret identity of every Christian, the distinguishing mark: “This is how all of you will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” And not just any kind of love, but love like His: “I give you a new commandment… As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”
Being a Christian is much more than belonging to a club. It means having a mission, an important mission in life. It means being another Christ in the world. Jesus gave His life in order to do the will of the Father and win salvation for sinners. Each of us is called to reproduce in the circumstance of our lives the exact same thing: we are to dedicate our lives to discovering and doing God’s will, and trying to help as many people as possible come to know, love and follow Christ.
Mahatma Ghandi, the leader of India’s independence movement, was educated in Europe. Although he was not a Christian, he had many chances to study the Christian faith and get to know Christians. Later in his life he commented on his experience. He said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
G.K. Chesterton, the famous English convert to the Catholic Church, made a similar statement. He was responding to critics who claimed that since Christianity had been around for so long, but hadn’t solved the world’s problems, it must be false. Chesterton answered: “The Christian ideal has not been tired and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
Those two quotations remind us of something we already know: Too often many Christians are satisfied with simply being mediocre. But Christ wants more for us. He wants us to let free our full potential. And what is that potential? It is our capacity to love, to know others as Christ knows them and to give ourselves to their good. How can that happen? It has to start right here, right in our hearts. Christ has already promised His help, His grace. But that will not matter unless each of us decides to have one goal in life: to take up the difficult but sure path of knowing, loving and following Christ.
One idea that can hold us back in trying to follow the New Commandment is a false idea of what love should feel like. We tend to think that true love always brings nice feelings and if the feelings go away that means the love has gone away too. That is what TV, movies and culture tell us but it’s not what the Gospel tells us.
Love, true love, goes much deeper than feelings. It demands sacrifice, self-giving and forgetting oneself. Love like Christ always involves a cross. If we can get this truth to sink from our heads to our hearts, we will be free to love more as Christ loves and we will live happier and more full lives.
Maybe the words of a real expert in loving like Christ will help us. This is from Blessed Mother Teresa (of Calcutta):
“People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway. Why? Because in the final analysis, all of this is between you and God…It was never between you and them anyway.”
“I give you a new commandment… As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Third Sunday of Easter C
April 18, 2010
In the second reading, Saint John gives us a picture of Heaven. His vision used to be inspiring but in the last hundred years this image of Heaven as filled with choirs of angels singing and throngs of saints bowing has given Heaven a bad reputation. It makes people think that Heaven is boring, hardly inviting. What happened? Why did the idea of “praising God for all eternity” inspire the first Christians but doesn’t do the same today?
In recent times many Christians have forgotten what “praising God” really means. In the Scripture, “praise” means much more than singing songs and clapping our hands. Listen again to Saint John’s description: He writes, “The I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe, cry out: ‘To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor, glory and might, forever and ever.’”
He says that all creatures, all things in the universe cried out with praise to God. How can they do that? How can rocks and the rings of Saturn and mosquitoes cry out with praise to God? Certainly not by singing songs of praise. That is not the heart of praise. Rather, they praise God by being fully what they were created to be, by reflecting God’s wisdom by being true to themselves. We praise God by becoming fully alive. In Heaven we will praise God fully not because we will float on clouds playing harps but because we will finally be fully alive. All our capacities for knowledge, love, wisdom, joy and creativity will be full.
One of the films rated by the Vatican among the top 45 of the Twentieth Century is “Chariots of Fire.” It was a low budge, independent movie. But when it came out in 1981, it took the world by storm and even won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The movie tells the story of two men, Eric Liddel and Harold Abrahams, both of whom won gold medals on Great Britain’s Olympic track team in 1924.
Eric was a Christian missionary from Scotland. He started running as a way to bring attention to preaching about the faith. But he was amazingly fast. People saw this and encouraged him to try out for the Olympics. But when he qualified, he faced a tough decision. Joining the Olympic team would require him to temporarily turn over his missionary work to his sister. He needed to devote himself full time to training. His sister didn’t like the idea, not because she did not want to do the work, but because she didn’t understand how Eric’s running in the Olympics could be of service to God. In a beautiful scene, Eric convinces his sister that it can be. At one point he says, “I believe God made me for a purpose but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.” In other words, when he runs, when he does the things God made him able to do and does them well, he praises God.
When the Bible tells us that in Heaven we will be praising God, it means we will be experiencing the pleasure of living out fully the life we were created to live, of becoming fully the person we are meant to be. It’s not about the clouds and harps but about being fully alive. In Eric’s case, it was about being fast.
Understanding what it means to praise God can help to stir up our desire for Heaven. That is a good thing. It is what the virtue of hope is all about. It keeps us on track in life by reminding us where fulfillment and meaning and happiness really can be found.
But what it means to praise God also opens up a new vision for how we can love our neighbor as ourselves. We were created to praise God, to show forth His goodness by becoming all that He has created us to be, to develop our potential. And so, when we help others develop their abilities, when we encourage them, educate them, we are helping them to achieve their purpose in life and to give glory to God. When we discourage people, stifle their hopes, their dreams, their possibilities, we interfering with their mission in life. In other words, taking an interest in others, encouraging them to grow their talents, both their human gifts and those of grace, is one way to obey the command to love our neighbor.
So today, when we come to give glory to God, let’s remember that we certainly do it with our words and our songs, with our hands and our hearts. But we also do give glory to God in our living and in helping others live fully too.
Give God the glory today by encouraging somebody.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Second Sunday of Easter C
April 11, 2010
New York City is famous for all sorts of things, one of them is its diversity. So when the new archbishop, Timothy Dolan, arrived, many were anxious to hear what he would say the first time he climbed the pulpit at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. What he had to say spoke to everyone in the city and beyond. Archbishop Dolan declared simply, “Everybody is somebody.”
Everybody needs to hear this. The archbishop was saying that whether you are a doorman at the Plaza, or a clerk in Bloomingdale’s, or a short order cook in the Bronx, you matter. In a city where ambition is all and power is everything and who you know is often more important that who you are, everyone needed to hear this. “Everybody is somebody.”
But Archbishop Dolan was saying more, he was also reminding them why, no matter what others may think, the truth is that everyone carries a spark of the Divine. Every life has dignity.
That is why the greatest Somebody, Jesus Christ, surrendered Himself to the cross and why He rose from the dead. And when He finally appeared to His followers, His first message was a word of consolation to all those who feel frightened, insecure or alone, whether in that upper room, or in the Brooklyn, or here in Pike County. “Peace,” He said. Peace was the first gift after He had risen.
In that same spirit, God continues to offer us a gift this today, the one that gives this Sunday its name: Divine Mercy. It says simply, “You are loved, no matter what. Because everybody is somebody.”
We get a glimpse of that in the Gospel today. It is the familiar scene of Jesus appearing to a doubting Thomas and offering proof that He has risen. “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says, “and bring your hand here and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
But here we encounter something the world has never known before: we meet a God with scars, wounds. A God who endured pain, suffered and bled. The invitation to Thomas is also to us: “See,” He says, “I have known pain. I understand.”
He has walked with us, struggled with us, fallen with us, shed blood for us. He did it for you and for me. He did it for those who are grieving, hurt or worrying God knows our wounds. He shares them with us and He wants to see them healed. It is His Divine Mercy that can ease the pain of a troubled heart, a scarred soul or a broken world.
I know that the surest way to know God’s mercy is to share it with others. And so I am giving all of us the opportunity to know God’s mercy and care by extending it to some people who are in desperate need.
The news of the people in Haiti has long since disappeared from the headlines. But the people who have lost everything continue to try to live out their days having lost everything. We can help by touching the lives of the people in a parish there.
I have come to know the pastor, Father Jean-Jacques Frederic, and I have offered for us to become friends with him and his people. Their church was destroyed, the clinic where they offered medical care to the entire community also.
In May I will celebrate my 60th birthday and I am asking you to help me, not by giving gifts to me, but by giving gifts to them. What they need most is money. But keep in mind the money we send will strengthen their hope. It will tell them they are somebody. There is an insert in the bulletin announcing a small reception on May 16 after the 11:00 AM Mass. All money collected will go directly to Notre Dame du Perpetuel Secours Parish.
I know in my heart that when we become messengers of Divine Mercy to these people, we will know that mercy like never before.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Easter
April 4, 2010
On the first day of the week, the third day of the Passion, Jesus Christ rose from the dead. That is today.
Many great figures in history have led inspiring lives, taught very wisely and even died for the truth. But only one was raised from the dead. Among all of the great human heroes, we only can say about Jesus Christ, “He rose again on the third day, in fulfillment of the Scriputures.”
Only in Christ’s Resurrection do goodness and power finally unite. The good guy does win! Only in Christ’s Resurrection does love prove stronger than death. In Christ and in His Resurrection, a new, a wildly new, hope is born for all people, the hope that if we stay united to Him through faith and grace, we will rise with Him, rise from our own graves, and live with Him forever in the never-ending adventure of Heaven.
No one else offers such hope because no one else has risen from the dead to be able to offer it- only Jesus Christ the Lord. The Resurrection is unique in the history of religions; it makes the Christian faith unique. In the Resurrection, reality becomes more wonderful than myth.
Only the Resurrection can explain the history of the Church. A few weak and uneducated fishermen from Galilee, frightened out of their wits when Jesus was arrested and executed, suddenly become world travelers, amazingly successful preachers and courageous martyrs.
And the Church they spread continues to spread after they die, holding to the same truth they preached, century after century, in country after country. Only the continuing Presence of the Lord can explain this and only the Resurrection explains the Presence of the Lord.
That is what makes us Christians and makes us different.
This is our hope. If Christ has not risen from the dead, what good would His suffering been? What good would His love have been if suffering and evil and death had been able to kill it? Only the bright light of the Resurrection gives meaning to the darkness of the cross. We can only endure Good Fridays because we know that Easter is just around the corner.
The great artist, Michelangelo, showed this in a small, little known marble sculpture of the risen Christ that can be seen in a church in Rome (Santa Maria sopra Minerva). The figure of Christ in the sculpture is glorious. He stands firm but not stiff. He is young, muscular, confident and energetic- like a boxer before a fight or a soldier coming home from a victory.
esThe Lord stands alone. The only other figure in the sculpture is His cross. He holds it in His left arm. It is small, almost puny. It is much too small to have been used to crucify Him. It just a flimsy little wooden cross and He holds it as easily as we would hold a bunch of flowers.
And that is the whole point of this work of art. The life-giving power of Christ Risen has overwhelmed the deathly power of the cross. That is what Easter does for us. That is what the Resurrection means for us. It makes the light of hope shine so bright in our lives that it shrinks our crosses down to size. We can carry them now, even with joy, because we know they are leading us towards the victory of the Resurrection. The Resurrection is our hope.
How different our lives could be if we held to this truth with our whole hearts! We know the future. We have seen what is coming.
The sick child who had to be operated on is in pain and frightened. But the parent can reassure him because the parent knows that operation, as painful and as frightening as it might be right then, will bring health and happiness in the long run. We are those children! The sufferings and struggles of our lives can bring us pain and fear. We are those parents! Because we know that the suffering will make us more like Christ and they will bring us a share in the glory of the Resurrection.
How can we let the power of Christ’s Resurrection seep into the depths of our minds and hearts? There is one simple thing we can do that will make all the difference: Remember that every Sunday is a day dedicated to cornerstone of our faith, the Resurrection. That is why we come week after week, to be sure we remember where we are going.
But we also need to do our part and just being here is not enough. We need to make each Sunday different than the rest of the week. Sunday for those who believe in the risen Christ should be different than those who not believe.
Today is the greatest Sunday of the year. Let’s honor the Lord not only with our voices but with our hearts. Let’s pledge to give Him this day and every Sunday so that He can give us the vision of new life promised in the Resurrection. Amen! Alleluia!
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Good Friday
April 2, 2010
The history of salvation began with a breakdown in trust. That is what the Original Sin was. The temptation presented to the first people was to make them suspicious of God. The devil undermined their trust, “Did God really tell you that you couldn’t eat the fruit of these trees? You won’t really die if you eat it…” And when they stopped trusting in God, their relationship with God, like any relationship, was shattered. At that moment the human race was cut off from its source of happiness. From that moment on we needed to be saved. We needed someone who could re-establish communion with God.
Re-creating communion with God was the mission of Jesus. And it is the cross that repairs the shattered trust. The cross is a bridge of trust that makes it possible for us to return to communion with God who is the source of our life and happiness. On the cross, Jesus Christ is trusting God the Father for us, in our place. He reverses the Original Sin. That is what the mystery of the cross is all about.
Jesus willingly comes down to our level. He willingly allows Himself to suffer. And when evil made it hard for Him to obey God’s will, just as the devil made it hard for the first people to obey, Jesus continued to trust. He continued to trust right through the cross and its terrible suffering. “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered…” (Hebrews). That is what we mean when we say that Christ saved us by dying on the cross.
The cross of Christ shows His unlimited trust in the will of His Father and His unlimited love for us. That is why we kiss the cross today. That is why it teaches us how to bear our own crosses. The trust of Jesus makes it possible for us to place our total trust in God.
Our own crosses represent an intersection of wills. When our natural preferences contradict what God asks or permits, we are faced with a personal cross. For example, when God permits sickness to come to me, my first reaction is that I would rather be healthy. But God has permitted me to be sick. That is the intersection of wills: God’s will is going in one direction and my will is going in another. If, in that moment, I turn to the cross of Christ, it reminds me, through His example, that God can be trusted. In the cross of Christ, then I can find the strength to trust that God knows what He is doing and I can embrace my cross.
This brings us to the mystery at the heart of our faith. It is the mystery of suffering, the mystery of the connection between suffering and spiritual life, between suffering and holiness. The mystery of the cross is central: that Jesus, over the objections of His disciples, had to pass to eternal life through suffering and that we too must follow the same way.
We are all tempted to avoid the hard way, the hard choices. We might even say that is the essence of sin. Temptation whispers to take the easier way. And the consequences of choosing the easier way, to always choose to avoid suffering and sacrifice, are always the same. Death. Because without sacrifice, there is no life.
Jesus could not be more clear. If we want to follow Him, we must take up the cross. But why should this be necessary? Why should we have to suffer and sacrifice? This is the heart of the mystery: If we do not empty ourselves and embrace the cross that each of us must carry, we miss something, we miss our destiny. We are lost.
As long as we are filled with ourselves, our agendas, our pleasures, we are empty of God. Jesus invites us to empty ourselves so that God can fill us. This is the meaning. This is the secret. Unless we suffer, we will not be freed of ourselves, and unless we are freed of ourselves, we cannot be free in God and with God.
The cross teaches us that suffering and death are part of every human life and that it is only through suffering and death that we gain the glory of the Resurrection. That is why Saint Paul says that we are heirs with Christ, but only if we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him (Romans 8:17).
So here is the mystery of the cross: Suffering must be embraced in order to gain the glory that the Father gave Jesus. And that the sufferings of the present are not worth comparing with the glory that is to come. We “glory in the cross” because we have hope that any sufferings we endure are nothing compared with the life of eternal happiness that waits.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Holy Thursday
April 1, 2010
The three days of the Triduum, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, celebrate the heart of our Christian faith: the saving death and resurrection of Jesus. The entire year leads into and flows out of these three days.
Throughout the ages, people have spent countless hours trying to understand the meaning of life. For those looking through the eyes of faith, this search focuses more on understanding God’s intention and design. The mysteries bring us exactly where we need to be: deep in the parts of life that both lift us up and confuse us. Choosing to love even when we have been betrayed, embracing suffering rather than always looking to ease it and dying to be born again are choices that make no sense to our world.
We begin tonight by focusing on the Eucharist and the Priesthood. On Tuesday, the priests of the Diocese, as in every diocese, gathered at the cathedral for the Chrism Mass. At this Mass, the oils used in the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, the Anointing of the Sick and Holy Orders are blessed. This year the principal celebrant was Cardinal Rigali as we await the Episcopal Ordination of our new bishop. The focus in that Mass is the Priesthood. For that reason, and for others, I would like to do the same this evening.
Tuesday, your priests were reminded and encouraged to be faithful to the Priesthood of Jesus Christ which we received at Ordination. In order to do this, we must remember that at the altar, not only do we represent Jesus the High Priest, but also Jesus the victim. They are one. In other words, I cannot be content to offer Christ to the Father in the signs of bread and wine, I must also offer myself with Christ.
As a priest ordained by the Church, I say the words of consecration in the person of Christ (“in persona Christi”). I believe that, thanks to the power of the Hoy Spirit, they have the power of changing the bread into the Body of Christ and the wine into His Blood. At the same time, I consider all of you before me who I am to serve and so I should make the words my own, “Brothers and sisters, take and eat, this is my body; take and drink this is my blood.”
The offering of the priest and the whole Church, without that of Jesus, would not be holy or acceptable to God. We combine our offering to that of Jesus, together they are complete.
Imagine that in a family there is one child, the oldest, most devoted to the father. He wants to give him a present for his birthday. However, before giving it to him he asks all his brothers and sisters to add their names to the gift. It then is presented to the father as the gift of all his children and a sign of the love of all of his children but really only one has paid the cost.
Jesus loves His Father. He wants to give to Him every day the most precious gift He can think of, His life. He invites His brothers and sisters to add their signatures to the Gift so that is reaches our God as the Gift of all His children. But, we really know that only One has paid the price.
So imagine if at the moment of the Consecration all of you silently said, “Take and eat, this is my body. Take and drink, this is my blood.” A mother, then, comes to celebrate Mass and goes home and begins to offer herself in a thousand little ways. But all she does is much more. It continues the celebration of the Eucharist. A father, continues his day and all he does continues the offering of himself. And for all of us, then our bodies become consecrated, made holy, by the one offering of Christ. The body of the teenager, of the single person, becomes something holy, an offering to God. Then it can no longer be given in any way not conformed to Christ.
Tonight we are invited to enter into this mystery, the mystery that holds the key to a new life. The way for us to benefit most is to join our hearts this holy night to the heart of Jesus, our lives to the life of Jesus, our gift to the Gift of Jesus.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only. Special acknowledgement to a homily by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Palm Sunday C
March 28, 2010
Today we begin Holy Week. Catholics throughout the world turn their minds and hearts to the suffering and death of Jesus. We start by declaring His victory over sin and hopelessness and for this we use the palm branches, an ancient symbol of triumph. But we need to dig deeper into this mystery and not be satisfied with the symbols.
God is all-powerful and He could have chosen another way to save us from sin, so why in suffering? What is the meaning of the Passion? Because the Passion tells us clearly the message we most need to hear: God is faithful; you can trust Him.
Trusting God is the most important thing for us but it is also the hardest because our trust has been violated. We have all been wounded because of let downs in little things and even in big things. As a result, we all tend to built up walls around our hearts to protect ourselves from being let down again. But those walls also keep God out. And unless we let God into our hearts we can never experience the fullness of life and happiness we long for. This is where the Passion comes in.
The Passion is to win our trust. It is God saying to us: “No matter what you do, I will keep on loving you. I will never let you down.” If we reject Him, scourge Him, crown Him with thorns, betray Him, even if we crucify Him, He continues to love us, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” God’s love and faithfulness do not depend on us being perfect. We can trust Him no matter what. That is the message of the Passion.
The Catechism says, “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what the first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (397).
Jesus Christ wants to break through the walls around our hearts and bring us the assurance of His love. He wants to take the pressure off our lives. He wants to convince us that we don’t need to struggle to earn His love and that we don’t need to be afraid of losing it. He wants to take our wounds on Himself so that we don’t have to suffer alone and He can heal us. Will we let Him?
This week, this Holy week, is a time to let Him win over our hearts, to let Him convince us that we can trust Him. But to do that, we have to give Him a chance. We have to carve out some time to spend with Him.
When people get married they go on a honeymoon. They go away to be alone together so that their love can grow. Holy Week is a time when we as a Church, which is the Bride of Christ, go on a ‘honeymoon’ with Christ.
We should not let this week be just like every other week. We need to decide that we will take the time to let the victory of Christ break into our hearts a little bit more so we can experience life as He wants us to know it, a life of peace.
We need to take some time to be alone with the Lord and to worship Him. Thursday evening we begin the holiest part of the week with Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Friday we turn to the cross with the Service at 2pm and then Living Stations of the Cross in the Milford Cemetery at 6pm. Saturday we gather to begin the celebration of Easter with the Vigil at 8pm.
Let’s start now with planning the rest of the week but also listening, loving and letting Christ into our hearts today.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fifth Sunday of Lent C
March 21, 2010
In this world, we are confronted by sin and sinners every day. There are two wrong ways to react to this.
First, it is wrong to ignore that sin is real. This is a major mistake of the popular culture which considers “tolerance” to be of the highest value. It is what Pope Benedict calls “the tyranny of relativism.” It is the common attitude that says that everyone can do whatever they feel like, that nothing is objectively evil, that is always and for everyone. In other words, sin doesn’t exist.
If we accept this point of view, we end up condoning evil. It is equal to approving while people destroy themselves because sin is always self-destructive. So it is wrong to avoid the reality of sin.
In the story we just heard, in fact, Jesus clearly condemns the sin. He tells the woman caught in adultery: “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.” He did not ignore the sin.
But it also wrong to condemn the sinner along with the sin. When a person commits evil, that person is not rejected by God. God still loves that person and wants that person to repent and be saved. As God’s children we are called to have the same attitude. In fact, Christ actually gave His life for people who are sinners. He is the Good Shepherd who goes out in search of the lost sheep.
Why is it that we are not to condemn the sinner? Because only God can see that person’s heart. Only God knows how responsible that person is for the evil choices. Only God knows the person’s whole history. And so, only God can judge people fairly.
We can and should condemn evil actions. As a society, we can even punish people for crimes and limit their freedom so that they do less damage, but only God can condemn the person. We are allowed to condemn the sin, just as Jesus did with the woman in the Gospel, but we are not allowed to condemn the sinner. With Jesus, we must say, “Neither do I condemn you.”
We need to consider whether we are capable of condemning the sin without condemning the sinner. If we cannot separate the sin from the sinner, it may mean that we don’t really value people for who they are- God’s children- but instead we value them for what they can do. As Christians, we are to value people simply because they are created in God’s image and have been redeemed by Christ.
A few years ago a youth minister has an experience that taught this lesson well. He was leading a discussion on ethics. The situation was this: the twelve members of the group were survivors of a shipwreck. The lifeboat only had room for eleven. The challenge was to discuss who should be sacrificed so that the boat would not sink and all of them would be lost. The discussion was lively
The group found different reasons why each of them should be saved: one was physically strong and they needed him to row the boat; one young woman was very intelligent so they needed her to help them figure out how to survive.
One girl in the group didn’t have any outstanding quality. She wasn’t particularly pretty, athletic, artistic or smart. As the discussion progressed, she started to feel that there was no reason for her to be saved. Finally she spoke up; “Just throw me overboard; I’m not good for anything.” There was only silence. No one answered her. No one said anything. That was exactly what they had all been thinking.
That night, the ‘average’ girl tried to kill herself. Thank God, she did not succeed. But the experience deeply changed every member of the group. They finally understood what it means to love one’s neighbor as oneself. It means to value them for who they are, not for what they can do.
Have we learned that lesson? If not, we will never be able to condemn the sin and love the sinner as Jesus teaches us to do.
One way to improve our ability to separate the sin from the sinner is to practice. Like every virtue, it grows as we exercise it. And one place we have plenty of opportunities to practice is in our conversations.
From time before memory, people have gotten pleasure from talking badly about other people. We run into every day. It often begins with, “Did you hear about what so-and-so did…” and then comes the story about something bad that someone did. If the person really did the evil thing, spreading the news, unless someone really needs to know about it, is the sin of detraction. If the person didn’t do the evil thing, spreading the rumor is the sin of slander.
It is a simple application of the command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Do we really want people speaking badly about us? Of course not. So we should make it a policy not to listen to people speaking badly about others. We may not be able to avoid hearing some stories, but we can refuse to take pleasure in them and refuse to believe evil about another unless we see it with our own eyes.
Starting today, let’s establish this policy. We will grow in virtue and learn how to love the sinner and hate the sin.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourth Sunday of Lent C
March 14, 2010
We find ourselves midway through the season of Lent. We are halfway to in our Lenten journey towards the Passion and Resurrection and the Church invites us to rejoice. Once again, that is the meaning of the color of the vestment (rose not pink).
But in speaking about Christian joy, I am going to distinguish it from normal joy which I am going to call happiness. Happiness goes away because the things that cause it, like winning championships, snow days, vacations, all go away. But Christian joy is based on something that never goes away: friendship with Jesus Christ. Loving Christ and being loved by Him, that is friendship with Christ. It does not change with the seasons. He is always faithful. This explains why Christians can sing hymns inside concentration camps, in prisons and on their way to death, because nothing can take away the love of Christ.
That is the joy that Church invites us to renew today. And we do need to renew it.
Most of us, if we are honest, do not always experience that joy. Why not? What is the obstacle? We have faith that is why we are here. We believe that Christ loves us. So why don’t we experience Christian joy more deeply, more consistently?
One obstacle to Christian joy is routine. It is falling into routine in our relationship with God. That is what happened to the younger son in the parable.
The younger son went looking for joy in all the wrong places because he was tired of living with his father (maybe he was “bored”). That is exactly what happens to us when we look for happiness in sin, in disobedience to God. The older son had also lost sight of the father’s goodness. He let the routine of life make him bitter. He forgot that his father was actually giving him everything.
That happens to us, also. On the outside we are good Catholics but the inside is angry and critical and so we are sometimes just going through the motions. We have let the fire go out of our relationship with Christ. Routine in our relationship with God is an obstacle to experiencing Christian joy.
The story of Saint Drithelm, not one your best known saints, is the story of an ordinary man living in England in the Middle Ages. One day he died, or so it seemed. The next morning, while his family and friends were gathered around and praying, he suddenly came back to life, freed from all the signs of the sickness that had seemed to kill him. He immediately sold all his property, divided it equally among his family and the poor, and made a request to join a local monastery. From that day on he lived for God and for others, giving good example and such good advice that conversions surrounded him.
What happened on the night of his “death” that made such an impression? God had broken him out of his routine by allowing his guardian angel to give him a tour of the life after death.
First, he was take to a valley burning on one side and frozen on the other, with souls being tossed back and forth from side to side. The angel explained that this was where souls who had repented on their deathbeds were being purified for Heaven.
Then he saw a burning pit, filled with countless people and terrible demons. It gave off a disgusting smell and bloodcurdling screams. That was hell.
Next, he was brought to a lush, green valley where thousands and thousands of people danced and laughed in little groups. Many flowers gave a delightful smell. He thought it was Heaven, but the angel told him that was where the souls who were a decent, but not excellent, Christian life went after death. There they learned the perfect love of the saints so they could eventually go to Heaven.
His last stop was on the edge of a place full of light and even more beautiful music and laughter. It made the other place seem dark and boring. The angel would not let him in there; it was Heaven, and he had to be satisfied with only a glimpse.
When he came back to consciousness, he resolved to take on a life of prayer and penance to help as many as possible gain Heaven. Routine had stifled his potential. But the vision had renewed him.
God has created each one of us to be a saint, to do great things for his Kingdom and for those around us. He wants us to know real Christian joy but our potential can be stifled by letting our friendship fall into routine.
Each of us is to be an ambassador for God’s goodness and love. In our words, actions and example, God wants others to come to know Him so they can enter into His friendship and also know joy in their lives. If each of us this week were to reach out to one prodigal son or daughter who is afraid to come home or who thinks no one cares, hundreds of lives can be touched.
And whenever we let God work through us, our friendship is deepened and so is our experience of Christian joy.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Third Sunday of Lent C
March 7, 2010
The comment that Jesus made about the people who had died tragically in the incident with Pilate’s soldier’s and in the collapse of the tower would have surprised those listening. Popular opinion at that time drew a direct line from people’s suffering to their personal sins. By this logic, the Galileans who were killed by Pilate’s soldiers must have deserved it. And those who were killed in the construction accident in Siloam were thought to be paying the price for their sins. But Jesus takes a different approach.
Jesus emphasizes that everyone who refuses to repent will stay separated from God. That is the symbol of the barren fig tree: the person who lacks the fruits of repentance. And if they die in such a state, and death can come at any time, they will continue that way for all eternity, “if you do not repent, you will all perish.” Even if the consequences of our actions do not always make themselves completely felt in this life, they will show up, for good or not. Tragedies here should remind us of the passing nature of this life.
This is a truth that can makes us uncomfortable but one that we are especially reminded of during Lent. We need to repent from our sins. God is always ready to forgive but we have to ask. We need to live each moment of our lives in communion with God. Repenting of our sins, trading in our self-centered habits for habits of self-giving, is necessary if we want our relationship with God to grow. It is also necessary for the rest of lives to grow.
Every sin, every thorn of selfishness that we leave festering in our hearts stunts our growth, not only as Christians, but also as human beings. Leonardo Da Vinci learned this lesson when he was painting his famous “Last Supper.”
While he was working on the painting, he had a bitter argument with another painter, an enemy that he had disliked for a long time. To vent his anger, Da Vinci used that artists face as a model for the face of Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus. He felt a sense of evil satisfaction in coming with this idea that everyone would recognize and would last for centuries. As he worked on the faces of the other apostles, he often tried to paint the face of Jesus but he could not make any progress. He made progress in painting all the figures except Jesus, the most important one. And he became more and more frustrated. In time he realized what was wrong. His hatred for the other painter was holding him back from painting the face of Jesus. It kept him from being able to see Jesus clearly. Only after making peace and repainting the face of Judas was he able to paint the face of Jesus and complete the masterpiece. We are not made for sin and selfishness. Sorrow for sins and repentance frees us to see Christ and to become all that we are created to be. We all need to be reminded of the necessity of sorrow and repentance. We should also pray for those who did not come to Mass this weekend. They need to know it too. As Catholics, we have a very clear, concrete way to repent as often as we need to. It’s called “going to Confession.”
In this sacrament, when we do it from the heart, we return to the arms of our loving God, hiding nothing, freely admitting our need for Him. Confession opens our souls wide to Christ’s grace. It gives Him room to work in our lives. In Confession Jesus purifies our hearts, heals our wounds and enlightens our minds. Confession gives us the assurance of God’s forgiveness and the grace that we need. It is God’s gift to us just as Baptism and the Eucharist. It is there for us to use since He wants it to be easy for us to come back to Him, to repent and to live in relationship with God. He wants us to hear the words of forgiveness not just in our imagination but with our ears. You can find the schedule for Confessions from now until Easter in this week’s bulletin and the bulletin is also on line. Last week, I suggested we choose one thing to do during Lent as a preparation for Easter. I hope that is working. This week, I will say that none of us will be fully prepared without a good and heartfelt Confession.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Second Sunday of Lent C
February 28, 2010
One of the problems Saint Paul was dealing with in his letter to the Philippians was some who believed that Christians still had to follow all the regulations of the Old Testament. They included complex dietary rules which is why Paul writes that “Their God is their stomach.” He says that they are putting those who put their hope in these external regulations are “enemies of the cross of Christ.” Not one to mince words! We may think that none of this applies to us since we are not even remotely tempted to follow all those rules, but it does apply to us.
They liked the external regulations because those rules were under their control. They could use them to measure their holiness by how well they kept them. We can be tempted to do the same thing, to measure our worth by our achievements and appearances — by things we can control. But that is not where true holiness comes from.
True holiness comes from having “our citizenship in heaven.” That means following the law of Heaven, which is the law of Christ, the law of love of God and neighbor, an interior law. To follow Christ, in other words, we have to give up control. It is no longer our achievements that matter; it is our trusting obedience to Christ. We cannot save ourselves no matter how hard we try. So what God asks is for us to trust Him completely, to give Him a blank check.
We have to ask ourselves if we are trying to get by with small payments or have we given all to Jesus.
The issue of control is a common theme in literature because it’s such a fundamental issue in everyone’s relationship with God. One example is found in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It is all about control or surrender. The ring of power which the hobbit Bilbo finds underneath a mountain is a symbol of control. It makes the one who wears it invisible allowing eavesdropping, stealing and sneaking. It also gives its owner long life and the power to enslave others. But the ring always ends up ruling over the person who tries to use it.
The spiritual life is similar. Every sin is based in asserting selfish power. The businessman who lies to get a contract signed is dominating another person. The neighbor who spreads gossip is trying to be superior at the expense of someone else. These sins which seem to increase our power and offer us greater freedom actually turn us into slaves. In fact, every time we sin, we become more addicted to power. We become less free to choose as our selfish urges take over our lives. Just as whoever used the ring of power fell more and more under its influence.
The only path to true freedom, as Saint Paul teaches, is to surrender the desire to dominate, to be like God. We must surrender to Christ, letting Him be God and obeying His will. We have to throw our hopes for happiness into the fire of His love just as the ring had to be thrown into the fires of Mount Doom.
How can we learn to surrender control, to give everything to Christ as He wants and needs? Saint Paul gives us one way. He encourages us to stop occupying our minds with “earthly things” and to become more aware that “citizenship is in heaven.” That takes time and effort and is only possible by prayer. Without often going up the mountain with Jesus to pray, like Peter, James and John, we will never learn to see ourselves and this world from a truly Christian perspective.
We all need to improve our life of prayer. We just have to choose a way, a concrete activity that we can do to give Jesus the opportunity to speak to our hearts.
It might be to read a good book on the spiritual life before Easter. You could download a daily meditation online everyday (www.regnumchristi.org). Learn and practice a new devotion or return to an old one, perhaps the rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Carve out 15 minutes a day to read the Bible or simply to sit in silence.
Jesus is waiting for us to surrender and to trust in Him so that He can fill us with His grace and lead us to the happiness we long for. Today let’s at least take out the check book even if we are not ready to sign a blank one. Let’s not leave here without committing to go up a notch in prayer before the next week is out. If we give Him that much today, He will be able to give us much more tomorrow.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
First Sunday of Lent C
February 21, 2010
C. S Lewis wrote a spiritual classic on the temptations of the devil. It is called The Screwtape Letters. It is a collection of messages from Screwtape, an experienced tempter, to his nephew and apprentice Wormwood. Lewis writes from the perspective of the tempter about what works to draw humans away from the One that Screwtape calls the “Enemy.” That is God. In one of the letters, Screwtape writes, “It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
On the First Sunday of Lent the Church always gives us the temptations of Jesus in the desert. This year we hear about them from Saint Luke. It really is very good news for us since we are always challenged by temptations. The Letter to the Hebrews says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin” (4:15). Christ sympathizes with our weaknesses and He shows today how our weaknesses will not be overcome by temptation. He wins the victory for us against every temptation.
How does Jesus win the victory for us? It can be described in several ways. One can be seen through the use of memory. If it is true that the tempter’s best work is done by keeping things out of our minds, as C.S. Lewis says, then it is also true that the Lord’s best work is done by putting something in our minds. In each of the temptations, Jesus recalls Scripture as the best defense against the devil. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 after the first temptation and Deuteronomy 6:13 after the second. The devil seems to have caught on and so he quotes twice from Psalm 91 to tempt Jesus the third time. (Even the devil can quote Scripture!) Then Jesus returns again to Deuteronomy (6:16). That time the devil “departed from him for a time.”
Memory plays an important part in our relationship with God. The first reading is from the same book that Jesus quotes, Deuteronomy. The name means “the second law.” It is a remembering given in the form of Moses reflecting near the end of his life before the people enter the Promised Land. It tells the people to remember how they were once aliens in Egypt. How after being maltreated and oppressed, they cried to the Lord and He heard their cries. He brought them out of Egypt with signs and wonders and brought them to the Promised Land. Memory is the motivation for them to give thanks. How can we give thanks if we do not remember God’s goodness? In the same way, in the second reading from the Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul recalls the Lordship of Jesus and how He was raised from the dead. How can we confess that Jesus is Lord if we don’t remember the power of the Resurrection? Having a memory formed by Scripture can transform our state of mind from temptations to giving thanks and confessing our faith in Christ.
How does this relate to the First Sunday of Lent for us? We often think about what we give up for Lent, which is a good thing. But now is a time to think not so much of chocolate, TV or meat as overcoming temptation to sin. Every temptation is a narrowing of reality. It takes some good and highlights it in disproportion to the whole. By God’s grace, we want our memory to be equipped to withstand temptation because we remember the whole of God’s goodness. Then temptation collapses into a single moment seen under a single spotlight. Our memory can help us realize that temptation is too small; it is not enough for us.
This remembering can be done in many ways. It might mean memorizing some short verses of Scripture for times of temptation. For example, “God come to my assistance. Lord make haste to help me” is the beginning of Psalm 70 a prayer for help in time of trial. We may not have a particular passage to remember but we remember Jesus Christ and His victory over temptation.
There are all sorts of things to remember to help in times of temptation: God’s love; the promise of Heaven; the final judgment. We might remember what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony and his Passion, and gave himself up for each one of us: ‘The Son of God…loved me and gave himself for me’” (478; Gal. 2:20).
When the devil tries to keep things out of our minds, we can have our memory filled with Christ!
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Baptism of the Lord C
January 10, 2010
What would you like to hear someone say to you when you apologize when you have done something seriously wrong? “Give me a little time to think about it.” Or, “If you do this and that, I will forgive you.” Wouldn’t you prefer a response that is short and sweet to the ears like, “Forget about it, what’s done is done.” Then the past has clearly been put behind us and we can start new. As the old banner of some years ago said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” God, speaking today through the prophet Isaiah, is saying something similar: “Despite your transgressions and unfaithfulness, let’s put the past behind us. Let’s make a new start. I’ll make it possible.”
How will God do what seems impossible: take away sin and free us from guilt? God will do it personally. The prophet describes what God has in mind. God will save the people by one in whom God will “put my spirit.” (“Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am well pleased, upon whom I have put my spirit; he shall bring forth justice to the nations…”) The identity of this servant was not clear at the time. But, today, looking through the lens of our Christian faith, we acknowledge Jesus as the person whose life and ministry would bring about God’s plan. Jesus fulfills the role by freeing us from the exile of our sin and more, from death itself. John’s Baptism begins the fulfillment of the promise in Isaiah.
The feast of the Baptism of Jesus brings us to the end of the Christmas season. This feast is not a quiet scene in a stable with a few local shepherds as witnesses. The baptism is a public ritual with lots of people around. These people have just acknowledged the darkness of sin in their lives by accepting baptism from John in the Jordan River. Jesus goes into the same waters and. After His baptism, the Spirit descends on Him. Jesus is the promised “chosen one” predicted by Isaiah.
We who have been blind to God are having our eyes opened again today. We who have been deaf to the Word of God can hear God saying, “I am about to put the whole thing behind me.” Or as that banner said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” How does God go about doing this impossible renewal, not just for Israel but “for the nations?” Today’s baptism of Jesus makes very clear hints what God has in mind.
First comes John the Baptist, the one appointed to announce to the people that the one predicted “is coming.” Imagine the excitement! Then the One arrives and quietly enters the waters to be baptized by John. The Gospel doesn’t tell us of the actual baptism. The “main event” is the anointing of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. And as often happens in the Gospel, important events are in the context of prayer. That is because without prayer we are liable to look in the wrong places and measure the success of our efforts by wrong standards, like numbers, approval ratings or how good we feel about it.
If those hearing the message of John had judged by their own standards and expectations what the “chosen one” would look like and accomplish, they would have missed Jesus entirely. Prayer opens eyes and ears to recognize Jesus when He appears and when He speaks hidden in the ordinary events of our days.
John baptizes with water but he tells the people that, while his baptism is of water, one “mightier” is coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. “Baptism by fire” is how we describe a person going through something difficult that tests their strength. In the Bible, fire also means purification. It destroy evil and all that is against God. People who accept the Baptism of Jesus will be refined and purified like gold in a fire. The “fire” of Jesus will destroy what seemed to be indestructible, sin.
Baptism in Jesus brings the possibility of total purification and change in a person’s life. Even when we are sorry for doing wrong, there remains the strong pull to return and repeat it. Baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire makes it possible to break the old mold and start a new way of thinking and acting. John names the Spirit “holy” not only because of the Spirit’s own holiness but because through the Holy Spirit it is possible for us to be holy too. It really can be “The first day of the rest of our lives.”
This can happen for you this year if you follow some simple guidelines: Live the Ten Commandments and the five “Precepts of the Church.” The precepts, or laws of the Church, are the minimum necessary for living a Catholic life. They can be found in today’s bulletin and online. They are:
1) You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and rest from servile labor.
2) You shall confess your sins at least once a year.
3) You shall humbly receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least during the Easter season.
4) You shall observe the days of fasting and abstinence established by the Church.
5) You shall help to provide for the needs of the Church.
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2041-2043)
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Epiphany of the Lord C
January 3, 2010
The Bible prophesies that worshippers will come to God from all far away places, from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth….The idea is that people from the whole world will come to the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Saint Paul groups all of these people under “Gentiles.” So we have the Jews, the chosen people who gave Christ to the world, and the Gentiles. That means everybody. The phrase “Jews and Gentiles” includes everyone.
The universal kingdom also extends to all times. Saint Paul says that before him the mystery was only partly revealed to the people of Israel, so it stretches back to the first people. Now, in his time, it is fully revealed to all people from the time of the coming of Christ until He comes again at the end. This Kingdom, then, brings together the beginning of human history with the end.
The coming of the Magi, representing the Gentile peoples, tells us that we are part of this Kingdom that extends through all time and space.
In the square in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome there is an ancient Egyptian obelisk. It is of a single block of marble almost 100 feet high, shaped like the Washington Monument and weighing 330 tons. It is the oldest obelisk in Rome coming from about 1850 BC. It had been a monument to the Pharaoh, and it stood over 2000 years of Egyptian history, the longest empire in history. It stood there when Abraham was called, when Joseph was in Egypt, when Moses led the people out in the Exodus.
At the time of Christ, soon after the Magi came to worship, the Roman Emperor brought it to Rome as a sign of Rome being superior to Egypt. There it was for 400 years, a symbol of the Roman Empire, the largest in history. The ashes of Julius Caesar were placed on it. It stood there when Saint Peter was martyred. Then the barbarians invaded Rome and in the Middle Ages, Rome fell. It was covered with ivy and half buried.
But the barbarians converted to Christ, Saint Peter’s was rebuilt and the pope (Sixtus V )moved the obelisk to where it now stands. No longer is it a sign of the long-gone empires of Egypt and Rome. Now it is a sign of the universal Kingdom that will have no end. Now it is topped with a cross.
How much peace of mind and heart that should give us. We belong to a Kingdom that will never end. As long as our relationship with Jesus is healthy, our lives have a meaning that no one can take away, one that change the world around us and give us the purpose we long for.
The difference between a mediocre Christian and a saint, a heroic Christian who knows all the benefits of Christ’s Kingdom, is very small. The mediocre Christian believes in His Kingdom as we all do, or we wouldn’t be here. But the saint lives according to that faith.
If Christ’s Kingdom alone lasts, then our first priority should be, like the Magi, to serve that Kingdom. To offer to God our talents and efforts (the gold), our prayers and worship (the incense), and our sufferings and sorrows (the myrrh). Which of those might need to be offered more completely? Which needs to be laid before Jesus today? He wants for us the same joy that the Magi experienced when the followed the star.
Today, in this Mass, lay at His feet whatever would please Him most. Give Him whatever will make you more like a citizen of His everlasting Kingdom.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Mary, the Mother of God C
January 1, 2010
Children take after their parents; their parents’ example teaches them how to be human. The same thing goes for the spiritual life.
In the second reading, Saint Paul reminds us that through God’s grace we have all become brothers and sisters of Christ, and therefore children of God. This is what happened at Baptism. At that moment we were born again. You might say that God infused His DNA into our souls. The spiritual life, then consists of the gradual spread and development of that DNA until each of us becomes a mature, wise and fruitful follower of Jesus Christ.
Today’s feast reminds us that if we have become brothers and sisters to Jesus, they we have also become spiritual children of Mary. She is His mother in the flesh and she is our mother in grace. And just as we learn from our natural mothers how to be good human beings, so we learn from Mary how to become true Christians. She is the living school where we learn the virtues that lead to happiness and holiness.
In the Gospel, she teaches us one of the most important virtues of all: wisdom. Saint Luke tells us how Mary responded to all that God had done in and around her, “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” Just as she was open to receiving God’s living Word in herself, so her heart was open to receive God’s ongoing communication in the events of her life. The ability to reflect in our heart on what God is doing is both a sign and a source of wisdom.
Our lives tend to become noisy, distracted, rushed and full of self-centered worries and self-absorbed preoccupations. At any moment of the day, if we could x-ray the inner room of our soul, it would probably look like a messy basement or a cluttered garage with all kinds of ideas, desires, regrets, hopes and half-baked thoughts all around.
But Mary’s inner chamber was different. Not because she did not have a busy life, she did. After all, there were no microwaves, washing machines, telephones…And yet she kept her inner chamber neat and ordered. As a result, she was able to hear the many gentle messages of God sent through the events of her life. She “kept all these things and reflected on them in her heart.”
Mary’s heart was like the smooth surface of a deep lake: clear and quiet and able to reflect the sky. And when a rock was thrown into it, she absorbed it in deep reflection and soon the disturbance was smoothed out and she was back to clarity and light. Her heart was like well-made canoe: light and flexible, able to receive God’s Word, welcome it and continue moving calmly through life.
There is a tool to help us develop the same kind of inner life that has a 100% success rate. It was given by Mary in a vision to Saint Dominic and since then has been used by peasants, queens, popes, mothers, widows and soldiers. All of us know about it but not enough of us use it. It is the rosary.
Don’t get scared. The rosary is much more flexible than you imagine. You don’t have to pray the entire rosary, a decade will do. It should never just be a series of hurried prayers but some time of letting the light of God’s grace shine in our hearts.
It might make a good New Year’s resolution to let our spiritual mother teach us how to let God put order, peace and wisdom in our lives.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Holy Family C
December 27, 2009
For thirty of His thirty-three years, Jesus “was obedient to” His parents in Nazareth, as Luke tells us in today’s Gospel. In other words, He lived the most normal life that we can imagine. He did chores, studied lessons, went to the synagogue on Saturdays, played with His cousins, helped his mother. He did nothing spectacular for thirty years. Is He trying to teach us something? Of course He is.
Everything He did in His life on earth is for us, for our salvation and instruction. These thirty years show us that to be a Christian, to be a saint, begins with faithfully fulfilling the normal responsibilities of life, and most especially the normal duties of family life. To be a good human being means first and foremost trying to be a faithful son, daughter, father, mother, aunt, uncle or grandparent. Our family members are our closest neighbors and the commandment to “love our neighbors as ourselves” starts right there. That is the first lesson of today’s feast of the Holy Family.
God created us to be living images and messengers of His goodness. And becoming that kind of person is where we will find true fulfillment. And to do that, we don’t need to win awards , make millions of dollars or be famous. We just have to make a good effort to be faithful in the little things of life, starting at home. In fact, it really is the little things that make a home. Sometimes you find families who forget this. They have all the big things, a 3-car garage, a large screen TV, a manicured yard, but they are distant from each other.
There is a story about a family in the Midwest that was struggling to survive during the Great Depression.
The father lost his job and they moved to the city to find work. They couldn’t afford to buy their own house, so they lived in the basement of someone else’s house, paying a large rent for the tiny space. It was not the most comfortable: mom, dad and 5 children cramped in the basement. But they made the best of it by pouring as much love as they could into the little things. They kept the place neat and clean. They had their small meals together each day. They prayed each morning and evening. And whenever they could, they even tried to help other families who were in more difficult situations.
One day, one of the children’s teachers stopped to visit. She was shocked at the cramped space, The next day at school she pulled the little girl aside and tried to comfort her. She said, “I am so sorry that you don’t even have a home to live in!” But the little girl was surprised and answered, “oh no! We have a wonderful home; we’re still looking for a house to put it in!”
It’s the little things that make the difference.
Family life is full of opportunities to show God’s goodness in doing little things for those around us. One of those opportunities is simply forming the habit of “making the first move.” It means not waiting for others to do the right thing first but taking the initiative.
In a family argument, for example, it is common that both share some of the blame. Don’t wait for the other person to apologize first, even if you think they are more at fault. Make the first move. Or when you notice that another family member is having a bad day or a bad week, don’t wait for them to ask for help, make the first move. If you know that something you do bothers someone else in the house, stop before they have to tell you.
God never does all our work for us. He wants us to collaborate with Him. He gives us opportunities to let grow in our hearts the same unselfish love that He has. But He will not force us to move but leave us free.
As we continue, let us thank God for all His gifts. But let’s thank Him especially for the gift of family life. It is the first and best place to learn to be faithful especially in the little things.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Christmas 2009
The day was December 25, 1914. It was the first Christmas of World War I (remember the “war to end all wars?”). The British army and the German army had fought to a standstill in northern France. Thousands of soldiers on both sides stood in muddy trenches glaring at each other across the narrow strip of land that divided them. For the first time in weeks, the guns had been quiet the night before. In the silence of the dawn, everyone was wondering what the day would bring.
When daylight fully came, the British soldiers saw three men rise up from the German trenches. Slowly and cautiously, the moved forward. Their hands were stretched out with open palms to show that they carried no weapons. They moved past the barbed wire barriers until they stood unprotected in No Man’s Land. Suddenly hundreds of soldiers began pouring out of the trenches on both sides and rushed out to meet their enemies. Their hands met in friendly greetings as in broken English and broken German they wished one another “Merry Christmas.”
Only the day before these men were trying to kill each other. But today they exchanged gifts of candy bars, cigarettes and canned rations. The British sang “Joy to the World” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and the Germans sang “Stille Nacht” and “O Tannenbaum.” They sat in small groups and showed pictures of their families and carried on conversations as best they could. Not a single shot was fired that day. Then, as the sun started to set, they went back to their trenches and prepared to continue their missions of death and destruction.
What brought about this strange event in the middle of a war? Why did two armies put down their weapons for one day and treat each other like friends? One thing is sure: No one planned it. No one arranged it. This short peace just happened. It was a spontaneous reaction to Christmas. If we will let it, Christmas has an amazing power in it. No group or government said, “Let’s have a holiday once a year when people will try to be nicer to each other.” To be sure, we have invented many of the trappings of Christmas and we have even picked the date. But the event that inspired this day was a gift, the best GIFT the world has ever received. A baby was born who was not like any other person who ever lived.
The idea we have of someone affects how we relate to that person. If someone is always nice to me, I think he is a good person and I will likely treat him well. If I find that a friend has been stealing from me, I am going to think she is a traitor and the relationship will turn cold. Our idea of someone affects how we interact.
What is our idea of God? What do we think God is like? The Catechism says that God is the origin and end of all things, and “man was created to live in communion with God, in whom he finds happiness” (#45). Communion with God, a relationship with God, this is what we were created for. But the quality of that relationship depends on what we think God is like.
Someone who does not believe in God at all will have no relationship with Him. Someone who thinks God is an angry intolerant tyrant will have a relationship based on fear. Someone who thinks God is a distant and impersonal force will have a cold, distant relationship.
God became human on Christmas to correct all our mistaken ideas about what He is like. He wants us to have the right idea about Him so that we can live in a right relationship with Him. What is this right idea? Look at the baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger, smiling helplessly at His mother. That is the true God, the God who comes to meet us right where we are. Everything God wanted to share with the world was poured into a single human life. To communicate with humans God is revealed in human form, in a human life. In this baby God communicates in ways that words alone cannot.
One of the most popular, but wrong, ideas about God is at the center of the Star Wars movies. It sees God as the invisible cosmic Force that holds the universe together. It governs human history much the same way that gravity governs moving bodies: automatically, unchangingly, impersonally. It is not a new idea since it is also expressed in the idea of Karma. And it has seeped into Christian thinking because it seems to offer some comfort. But the comfort is deceptive.
It seems to offer us some control in that we become more powerful as we tap into the Force. All we have to do is learn how to use the Force. That is why Luke Skywalker doesn’t pray to the Force; he just uses the Force.
But if God is the impersonal Force, then He cannot also be the Person who created the universe. In that case there would be nothing outside the universe, so the universe itself is god, which means that we are just little pieces of god, not different than a speck of cosmic dust. Then we say goodbye to human dignity, free will and the possibility of being loved, loving and making any difference in the world.
Jesus became a baby in Bethlehem to save us from that lie; to climb into our arms and stir up our love, to teach us that God is not a Force but a Father. This baby is perfect picture of God, God in the flesh.
Every gift has two sides. On one side is the giver, on the other side is the recipient. Both are necessary to the process of gift-giving. Jesus, God’s best Gift, calls for our response. We can accept it or reject it. It is the same with the gift of friendship, the gifts of forgiveness, hope, joy and peace. Each must be not only given but accepted. The best Gift, when it is received, is so powerful it can bring a world war to a dead stop and transform enemies into brothers, at least until the sun goes down.
This is Christmas and God is knocking on the door of our hearts. He wants to come in and remind us that we are not alone; that the sufferings, disappointments and failures of this life are only temporary; that friendship with Him is so much greater.
This is the time of God’s favor, the time to give us new hope. Our hearts may be full of old straw like the stable in Bethlehem. But if we let Christ come and live there, His strength, His hope, His light can make it like gold. If we welcome Christ into the inn of our hearts, He will make our hearts more like His, and we, like Him, will bring to this world and our own little part of this world, the joy, the peace and the power of Christmas.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Third Sunday of Advent C
December 13, 2009
As I mentioned last week, rather than Jesus, John the Baptist takes the center stage.
Often in painting, movies and even in popular imagination, John is often shown as ill-tempered, a fire-and-brimstone preacher who scared people into repentance. There is something wrong with that picture. First, it doesn’t explain why he was able to attract such huge crowds and win over so many hearts. And, second, it misses the main point of his message which was that salvation was near. That is just the opposite of something dark and fearsome. In fact, when we really understand and accept it, it is the source of a deeper joy that any other we can know in this life. And that is the whole point of today’s celebration.
The Third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete, the Sunday of rejoicing. That is reason for the change in vestment color. That is why the readings mention the word “joy” twelve times. Jesus didn’t come to intimidate and oppress us but to save us. He came to offer friendship with God and the security of living in communion with our Creator.
This is the message of Christmas.
In the second reading, Saint Paul commands us to “rejoice in the Lord always.” And just in case we thought he was exaggerating, in the next sentence he says, “I say it again, rejoice!”
We can only rejoice “always” if our joy is based on something that goes deeper than the passing pleasures of this world. What is that deeper thing? Salvation, friendship with God, something that never ends and something that no one can take away from us.
The joy of Christ and knowing Him, is different from the joys that the world offers in three ways: First, it doesn’t wear out. Second, Christ’s joy gets more and more intense as we advance on the journey of faith. And third, the more we give this joy to others, the more we will have for ourselves.
First, it doesn’t wear out. That is because it comes from something alive: our relationship with Christ. That is the reason the tree is an evergreen. In winter, the other trees are leafless and dormant but the evergreen is still green. It symbolizes hope in the dark, cold days of winter.
Second, Christ’s joy gets more intense as we move along on the journey of faith. That is why the vestments today are rose colored. They remind us of the sky at the very beginning of dawn when the sun is just beginning to come up. The horizon takes on a pale rose color that gradually gets redder and brighter as the sun rises. For faithful Christians, life is like a long sunrise, and death is the entrance into full brightness of the everlasting day.
Third, the more we give his joy to others, the more we will have for ourselves. And this, of course, is the reason behind exchanging gift on Christmas. Jesus told us that “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). We have all experienced that when we do something for others, even if it costs us or makes us uncomfortable, we know fulfillment and satisfaction. But when we give into our selfish tendencies, we shrivel up like Scrooge. It’s like lighting one candle from another, we lose nothing and gain more light.
This is the joy that Jesus wants to bring to us: a lasting, growing, self-multiplying joy that comes from accepting the gift of our Savior. Listen to this quote from Pope Benedict:
"If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you... Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life. Amen." (Pope Benedict XVI, Inaugural Homily, 24 April 2005)
If friendship with Jesus is the source of lasting joy, then the deeper the friendship is, the more we will experience this joy. Spiritual writers agree that the friendship depends on three things: knowing, loving and imitating Jesus.
The fact that we are here today means that, to some extent, we already know and love Jesus. But what about imitating Him? If someone was to follow us with a video camera from the moment we left Mass to the moment we come back next week, what would they record? Would our days and the week be filled with efforts to consciously imitate the honesty, integrity, purity and selfless love of Christ?
There are two weeks left of Advent, let’s make it our goal, top of the list, to imitate Jesus better at the end of these two weeks than we do today. Then we will know the joy our hearts seek.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Second Sunday of Advent C
December 6, 2009
People wonder why the second and third Sundays of Advent talk about John the Baptist rather than Jesus. This is because the Gospel message is not intended to be a biography of Jesus but the story of God’s plan of salvation. In this plan, John the Baptist had a large part to play.
The Gospel also sounds like a history lesson, I hope that did not put you off, “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar…” We are not used to so much attention to history and geography. This is because Saint Luke wants to be sure we understand that salvation is not a children’s fairy tale, ‘pie in the sky,’ but is a very concrete event in history.
John the Baptist is the voice announcing the beginning of a new age: the time of Jesus and His ministry. The time announced by John will end with the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. Then, the third age begins, the age when the Church brings the work of Jesus into the present until the end of time. So, there is the framework of all time: the age of the prophets about to be fulfilled in Jesus; the age of Jesus and His work; and the age of the Church in which we live.
There is no escaping or watering down what John is asking, “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins…” He is calling people to change their ways, but not some cosmetic makeover, rather a complete turning around. He wants people to stop going in their own direction, move toward God and be open to what God is about to do for them. Such a turn requires a profound change in thinking and in acting.
Most people don’t have to be told that they are sinners, in fact, many carry the burden for things done in the past through their entire lives. That guilt affects how we think about God, ourselves and how we treat others. John the Baptist is presented in severe terms, a frightening prophet. But his message if one of relief and fulfillment: God is coming near with the offer of forgiveness and will do for us what could not do for ourselves.
We are not yet celebrating the birth of Christ. Instead, we are preparing for the coming of the adult Christ who takes away sin. As wonderful as the feast of Christmas is, John points us not to the child Jesus but to the coming of Christ who saves us. And he makes it clear that God reaches out to all people. God’s salvation is for everyone, no one is to be left out.
In the time of the Babylonian empire whenever the king traveled workers would go ahead of him leveling the ground and filling in ditches to make the way smooth for his chariots. By quoting Isaiah the prophet, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths,” John directs us to look at the landscape of our lives: where are the “valley,” the empty places that the coming of Christ can fill in? What are the “mountains,” those forces that tower over us and leave us feeling powerless: old habits, sins, addictions, social pressures… Those of us who look for Christ’s coming this Advent must admit that we have not yet responded completely to the call to prepare the way.
There are still twists and turns that divert us from the straight paths that open the way for Christ. There are valleys of discouragement and frustration and mountains of resistance. We need help if we are to continue the work of Christ in this age. We are the community that had been given the Spirit of Christ to continue the work of straightening the winding roads, filling in the valleys and making the mountains low.
We who hear this Gospel today are in the third age of history, the time of the Church. And anyone of us can affirm that it is a time of stress, confusion, anxiety and, for some, persecution. Advent reminds us that it is also a time to practice patience and hope: God’s kingdom will come! We may live in difficult times but we also live in the new age of grace.
How do we know this grace and the presence of the Spirit of Jesus? Saint Thomas speaks of a special knowledge that Christians have which is not based on reason or anything like scientific sureness. It is more like two hearts beating in unison. He suggests that all those who are truly in love with God have an almost instinctive awareness of what they should do and how they should behave. They are guided by the gift of the Holy Spirit that helps them to choose wisely what is pleasing to God. That helps us to know what needs to be straightened in our lives and what needs to be leveled in the world around us to prepare for Christ.
What Saint Thomas speaks of does not substitute for study of Jesus, His word and His teaching, but we have all had the experience of people with very little knowledge of the things of theology who have an interior awareness of what is right and what is wrong. This comes only from a generous heart, prayer and being open to the Holy Spirit.
Lastly, rather than be discouraged, we should remember the words of Saint Paul in Philippians, “I am confident of this, that the one who began the good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published of copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Christ the King B
November 22, 2009
This is the feast of Christ the King. I would like to begin by considering the First Station. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, is face to face with Jesus. Pilate is aggravated by the circumstances. Jesus is exhausted from the first 12 hours of His Passion, but filled with the love and determination that brought Him to this hour. He came to save Pilate; it is God’s design that they are together. Jesus wants to draw Pilate to His heart. And all the conditions are set for Pilate to recognize that in Jesus is the God that his heart wants. Yet, that is not what happens. He is in the same room with Jesus, talking to Him, but he stays unmoved. Why?
Jesus gives us the explanation when He tells Pilate, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” With that, Jesus teaches us all the secret to finding and living in relationship with God. Whoever will be led by what is true will be drawn to Christ, will hear and answer God’s invitations and follow Him. But being led by the truth requires humility.
It begins by recognizing ah authority higher than myself: if I am obliged to discover, accept and conform to what is true, then I am not a rule unto myself, I am not the master of my universe, I am not God. Coming to that humility freed from selfishness is hard. Our human nature is fallen and tends toward pride, control and dominance. To resist these takes courage.
In 2008, a Catholic author wrote a book that captured this message. The author is Dean Koontz and the book is Your Heart Belongs to Me. The story follows a health crisis of a young multi-millionaire named Ryan. Ryan discovers that he has a congenital heart condition that will certainly kill him unless he can get a heart transplant. He becomes afraid that he may not survive long enough to reach the top of the donor recipient list. He ignores a series of dramatic encounters that warn him to be patient and he panics. He uses his wealth to bypass the ordinary channels and within a month he has a new heart. What he doesn’t know is that the heart was taken illegally from a political prisoner who was in good health. She was killed in order to use her organs. The rest of the story is Ryan’s life as the consequences of his sin catch up to him.
The author sums up the morale like this: “The roots of all violence are found in the hatred of the truth.” In the novel, Ryan’s selfish refusal to face the moral truth of his actions led to the murder of healthy, innocent woman and the transformation of his life into a nightmare. In the Gospel, Pilate’s refusing to face the truth leads him to condemn an innocent man and it would haunt him the rest of his life. And in our own lives, it is often a self-centered refusal to face the truth that leads us down a slippery slope, destroying relationships, peace of mind and our friendship with Christ. If we refuse to humbly accept Christ’s Kingship, His rule, over our lives, then we cut ourselves off from the benefits of living in His Kingdom.
The freedom of the Kingdom of Christ is an interior freedom, a peace and strength of soul that only His grace can give us. If up until now we haven’t experienced it as deeply as we would like, maybe that is because we don’t fully accepted this truth, that God is love.
Fully accepting that truth, which Pilate refused to do, involves at least three things.
First, it means accepting it new every single day. Each day we remain free to decide how we will live. And so each day we need to recommit to the Kingdom of Christ or we will slowly be drift away.
Second, accepting the truth that God is love means admitting that we need God. If we try to achieve happiness by our own efforts, we will shut ourselves off from the love of God. The most direct way to admit we need God, to allow His love to be part of our lives, is to regularly submit to His mercy in Confession.
Third, accepting the truth that God is love means trying every day to love as God loves. All the laws of God’s Kingdom can be summarized in ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ (Romans 13.9. If we refuse to forgive, to serve, to treat others as we would have them treat us, we distance ourselves from the God who is love and the benefits of His Kingdom.
We continue today acknowledging that the truth will set us free. Let’s pray for the grace and courage to accept that truth each day.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time B
November 15, 2009
If you ever spend time in an airport, you can’t help but notice that the warnings are so familiar that no one seems to pay any attention to them. “Do not leave your luggage unattended. Do not accept any packages from a stranger.” Maybe when they announce that we are in code orange alert some people look up for a moment. But everyone quickly decides not to be too alarmed.
Do you remember right after 9/11 and being very aware of any planes that were flying low? Planes we had never noticed were all of a sudden right in the center of our consciousness. We were on red alert, a higher level of awareness.
The reading from Daniel is a “red alert” reading. The Gospel of Luke today fits in the same category. If we listen carefully and take these readings to heart, we might feel a sudden jolt of fear or a heightened awareness. But, then again, we have heard these readings year after year and the sun isn’t darkened and the stars haven’t fallen from the skies. Fringe groups come and go predicting the end of the world and catastrophes do happen. Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the earthquake in China too quickly fade from our awareness until some reporter does a follow-up months or years later showing that the devastation is still affecting many people.
For the most part, our lives are spent in the in-between times. Daily life is repetitious. We are not in major end-times but in transition times. A spiritual writer, John Shea, speaks about it this way: “the time of transition itself has been characterized as that moment when the trapeze artist has let go of one bar and has not yet grabbed the next bar. It is midair living” [Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers: Eating with the Bridegroom: Year B (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2005)].
“Midair living” is the state in which most of us exist. The past is gone. The future isn’t here yet. “Midair living” is living in the present. For the past, we say “thank you.” For the future, we stand in faith and trust that all will be well. But we live right now, right here. Spiritual writers all agree that living in the present is one of the most essential skills we can learn. Actually, it is all we have. The past is gone. The future is not here yet. We have “now” the “in-between” time.
What we do with this “now” is built on the past and leads to the future. We all carry plenty of baggage, the stream of thoughts running through our heads. If it is left unattended, it can be explosive. Here in this present moment, what are you thinking? How long this is going to last? The things you left at home that need to be done? A fight you had with your spouse or children? How you are going to spend the rest of the day? Can we focus our thoughts on God for this hour, in this present moment? It’s really a lot harder than it appears. Right now can I thank God for the past and trust Him for the future?
Thoughts do lead to words and actions. While we live in the present, we have to put guards around our thoughts. Scripture always warns us to put aside thoughts of lust, murder, of harming others, thoughts of envy or coveting. Again, it is much harder than we may think. Can you color code the danger of your thoughts? Is it yellow, orange, maybe red?
Nature abhors a vacuum. So we need to make our thoughts positive, looking for the good and beautiful in the world and in the people around us. Living in the present requires that I look up and look out. That I see the world around me and thank God for it.
As we live in the present moment, we stand on the edge of the future. As Catholics, our belief in the Resurrection should strongly color our thoughts. “I believe in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting.” These words are a reason for hope. Where we walk, Jesus has walked. He has passed through death and entered new life. Where He has gone, we hope to follow.
The Gospel tells us that we “will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.” That is an alert that should get our attention!
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time B
November 8, 2009
There are two ways of being generous: the way of the scribes and the way of the widow. The scribes were the experts in interpreting the Law of Moses which was the heart of the culture. And so they were highly respected. But Jesus was unhappy with them.
There was no doubt that they worked long, hard hours. They were always busy with worthy projects. But their gifts and their position had gone to their heads. Instead of exercising their leadership as a service, they flaunted it, increased their comfort and built their reputations. The higher they climbed, the more they looked down on everyone else. They considered themselves superior because they gave more of their time, talent and treasure to the Temple than anyone else. They had forgotten that all those things were actually gifts that God had given to them in the first place.
What God really wants from is something more, something deeper: He wants our love and He wants us to trust in Him more. That is what the widow gave Him.
She didn’t just share some of her abundance; she handed over to God all her wealth, something the scribes never did. They thought they were doing God a favor by serving Him but the widow understood that God was the One doing the favors.
That is the generosity God wants to see grow in each one of us, the generosity where we give to God not just our stuff but our hearts.
The same lesson is in the first reading. We don’t know if the widow who was gathering sticks recognized Elijah as the famous prophet. It is likely that she would not have. Remember, there was no TV, internet or newspapers to spread pictures of famous people. Either way, she had no reason to respond to his request for a drink of water. A drought and a famine had destroyed the country and she and her son were on the edge of starving. She was suffering greatly, had serious problems of her own and plenty of reasons to respond differently to someone who ignored her suffering and asked favors.
It is in times of difficulty and stress that our true character shines out, no matter how we’d like to say otherwise. In the case of this widow, her true character was selfless and generous. She left aside her own work when Elijah asked the favor, loving her neighbor as herself. And when she was asked for more than she could give, she didn’t get angry but just stated the facts. She recognized her dependence on God and, as a result, was able to be generous toward others in need without getting all tangled up in her own needs. She reflected God’s goodness and God rewards her for it. He showers her with blessings proving she was right to trust in Him.
God does not always insulate us from suffering in this world as He did this widow. But, if we recognize our dependence on Him by living with a generous heart we will not lose our reward.
Unless we gradually change from being self-centered like the scribe into being humbly generous like the widows, we will never gain real Christian wisdom or know true Christian joy. We can do two things to help this change along.
First, we can ask God every day to purify our hearts because without His grace we can do nothing.
Second, we can practice. Real, life-changing virtue can only be developed by conscious effort. It doesn’t come from pills or feelings but from exercise. Virtues are like muscles , the more we use them, the stronger they get. And the best place to exercise selfless generosity is at home. In fact, family life is meant to be a gym for Christian virtues.
It is easy to put on the appearance of generosity, like the scribes, when we are among people outside those who know us best because they only see once in a while and usually at our best. At home, our family sees us all the time, so they know the good, the bad and the ugly. And so, finding creative ways to serve our family members is a sure way to purify our hearts of selfish motives. They simply will not be impressed with our efforts, they know us too well.
There is little chance of family praising us too much for helping with someone else’s chores even if they do not ask. Or if we are the first to forgive after an argument or fight no matter who was at fault. Or if we leave the last cookie for someone else without expecting anyone to notice.
God wants us to have the freedom and joy of a heart that is really generous. And He will give us the help we need if we ask and if we practice especially at home.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
All Saints’ Day
November 1, 2009
Life on earth is hard. Job said, “Continuous warfare” (7:1). The Christian explanation for this is that the world is fallen; it is filled with obstacles to justice, peace and true happiness. And each one of us carries within a fallen human nature that tends toward selfishness and sin in spite of being loved by God and having been redeemed and renewed by His grace. As a result, the life of every Christian is a battle to stay faithful to Jesus Christ and to help others do the same.
We know this and have accepted the challenge that is why we are here today. But, still, we get tired of fighting. We get worn out if not worn down. That is one reason we have this feast of All Saints: to inspire our hope.
Today we lift our eyes from the battle to Heaven where we see “a great multitude, which no one could count” gathered about our King, enjoying the reward of their work, enjoying victory. These are the saints in Heaven. They are people just life us, from every age and place and walk of life, who “survived the time of great distress,” as Saint John calls life on earth in the first reading. We look to them to renew our strength, inspire us and encourage us. Christ is always victorious and the “gates of hell” cannot resist the power of God’s grace!
This feast has an interesting beginning in Rome back in 609. At that time, one of the older areas of the city was near a huge Roman temple called the Pantheon. It had been built 400 years before by the emperor Hadrian. It had housed huge statues of all the gods honored by the emperor’s family, so its name, “pan-theon” meaning “all the gods.” Since that time the Roman Empire had become Christian and the Pantheon was abandoned.
By 600 the people who lived there started complaining about it. When they walked by the old temple, strange things would happen. Voices would threaten them; bricks would fall down; ice cold breezes blew out of it and worse things. It was clear that the place was haunted by demons. By 609, the people took their complaints to the pope, asking him do something about it.
Demolishing the large temple was too big a job, so Pope Boniface found another solution. He decided to exorcise the temple and re-consecrate it as a Christian Church, not dedicated to all the gods but to “all the Roman martyrs” and to “Mary, the queen of all saints and martyrs.” Soon after the complaints stopped. It still serves as a church today, in fact I was in it in June. The anniversary of the consecration of that church became so popular that the whole Church gradually started to celebrate it. All Saints’ Day was born. It is a reminder that the powers of evil are no match for the power of Christ.
Looking to the saints reminds us that we are part of a bigger story. All the sacrifices and struggles we go through here to be faithful to Christ and His Church are worth it. We need to know this.
But the most famous saints often led such extraordinary lives that it’s hard for us to even think about imitating them. It is easy to honor the saints but we need to do more than that. That is where All Saints’ Day comes in.
Today we honor all the men, women and even children who have not been canonized, who are not famous, but still followed Christ faithfully and have taken their place in Heaven. These are the saints that lived ordinary lives on the outside and extraordinary lives on the inside. And there is no shortage of them. They make up a “great multitude, which no one could count,” Saint John tells us.
Most of us live ordinary lives on the outside. And maybe some of us, because of that, think we can’t measure up to the high standards of the famous saints who did miracles and lived dramatic lives. This day is to assure us that, if we live each day as Christ wants, striving to do God’s will with all our strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves, then our lives, which look ordinary on the outside, will be extraordinary on the inside.
Today should be a day of hope! Remember that as we celebrate Christ with us in the Eucharist which has been the food of all the saints. He gives Himself to us because He knows that, with His help, we can be faithful children of God one day be counted among the saints!
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Anniversary of the Dedication of the Church
October 11, 2009
The Gospel has a surprising observation in the meeting between Jesus and the rich young man. After the young man explains that he has followed the commandments since his youth, it says that, “Jesus , looking at him, loved him.” Imagine what that look was like.
It was the look of the Creator directed toward the creature He loved. It was the look of an older brother towards a younger brother in need. It was the look of a father on a son who is trying to do the right thing.
But even more surprising is what Jesus said to the young after giving him this look of love. He tells him to go off and sell all his possessions, the very things that this young man is most attached to. Now, if Jesus really loved this young man, why would He ask him to give up what he valued most? If Jesus really loved this man, why would He be so demanding? Why would He make him uncomfortable?
We all know the answer: It’s because love seeks what is best for the beloved. Love is by its nature demanding; it will never settle for average. And this young man, because he was so attached to money, possessions and worldly success, was in danger of settling for a mediocre, stifling and frustrated life. So Jesus, out of love, invites him to choose the path of wisdom rather than comfort, the path of following God’s will rather than self will.
The Lord is always doing the same for us: Looking at us with deep, personal love and inviting us to follow Him more closely even though it will mean leaving our comfort behind.
Imagine that you are in a coffee shop holding a cup full of warm coffee. Now, you like coffee and are used to coffee, but in the back of your mind you are convinced that there may be something that will satisfy your thirst better than coffee.
So you bring your cup to the counter and ask for something more satisfying. The man says, “Sure! We have just the thing. It is a special brew that tastes fantastic, fills you with energy and lasts the whole day.” But when he reaches for your mug, you hesitate.
You have never tried this special brew before and you are a little suspicious. What if it’s not as good as the man says it is? Maybe you should stay with what is familiar. You can’t have both because you only have one mug. In order to get the special brew, you need to pour out the coffee.
That is the situation the young man finds himself in. His mug is full of wealth and possessions. Jesus is offering him lasting wisdom, promising that it will give him the satisfaction his money cannot give him. But he hesitates, afraid to take the risk.
The image can help us understand the nature of sin in general. Sin is putting something in God’s place; putting something that ought to be second place into first place; filling our mug with warm coffee when God gave us the mug so that we could drink His special brew.
The Seven Capital Sins identify the seven most common “somethings” that we tend to put in God’s place, seven brands of warm coffee. They become obstacles to our happiness.
Pride puts our own achievements in God’s place, as if we were able to
give ourselves the meaning and fulfillment that only comes from
God.
Lust puts sexual pleasure in God’s place.
Gluttony puts the pleasures of food, drink or drugs in the mug.
Anger puts our own self-will in God’s place. “It’s my way or the highway.”
Envy puts out reputation or popularity before God.
Sloth puts our comfort before God.
And greed, as in the case of the young man, puts money and possessions before God. Unless we pour out what is in our mugs, whatever it may be, we simply will not have room in our souls for what God wants to give us to bring true satisfaction and fulfillment.
Now think of the next image, Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”
There is the obvious interpretation but some biblical scholars suggest that it can be taken differently.
In Jerusalem at the time there was a back door in the city walls, a small, short narrow gate used mostly by the locals who called it “the eye of the needle.” When merchant caravans came for business, if they wanted to enter through this gate, they had to strip their camels bare, taking off all the supply packs, saddles and goods.
It is possible that we that we are like those merchants. Maybe we are loaded down with so many self-centered hopes, habits and worries that we are unable to enter into a deeper relationship with Jesus. Maybe we still think that the right house, job, promotion, spouse, bank account or something is going to fill our hearts with the happiness we long for. But it won’t. Those things must take second place to our relationship with Jesus Christ. It is in Him alone we can find the inner peace, meaning and strength we want.
As we continue, take a few minutes to consider what is hindering our spiritual progress. Let’s ask God, who is looking at us with love, what we need to do.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-seventh in Ordinary Time B
October 4, 2009
The Gospel today is one of those that tempts a preacher to look someplace else for inspiration. How do we reflect on the words of Jesus without, on one hand, seeming to judge a large portion of the population or, on the other hand, watering down what Jesus says about marriage and divorce? We know that many people, including a large number of good Christians, have suffered through the pain of divorce.
To start, we might consider why the Pharisees asked the question in the first place. They were not really interested in the answer so much as putting Jesus in what they hoped would be a no-win situation. Among the religious teachers of the time there were two dominant opinions. One held to the Law of Moses that said that a man could dismiss his wife for unfaithfulness. Notice it is one-sided. The other group allowed divorce for any reason at all, something like “no fault” before it’s time. No matter how Jesus answered he would offend one group. But He used the question to speak a central truth of marriage: That whatsoever God has brought together, we should not separate. That suggests that we should think about the meaning, the power and the wonder of marriage as God intends it to be.
In the first reading, God said of the first two humans that the “two shall be one.” In some marriages the intention of the Creator is realized but in others, tragically, it is not. The ideal is, “two shall become one flesh.” The reality is, “two may become one.” The Swiss doctor Paul Tournier told of a couple who came to see him. He said, “While the husband is talking to me about his wife, I think what he would have said about her when they were first engaged.” Before marriage the man “had seen her with the eyes of love,” and formed a perfect image of her. It was the image he loved. Now he had a different image, but it was no more his wife than the former image was. In both cases, false images kept the man from knowing his wife.
Our culture has a radically idealized and romanticized view of marriage that creates impossible expectations. There simply are no perfect partners, and “happily ever after” exists mostly in fairly tales. If two really become one, it will be at least as much through sacrifice and painful growth as “moonlight and roses.” Biblical marriage is a “covenant” like the covenant between God and God’s people; it involves both privileges and responsibilities. It rests, not on something as changeable as emotions and feelings , but on the solid rock of commitment. The huge increase in the rate of divorce suggests that the intention of the Creator is largely unrealized. People who are primarily concerned about having their own emotional needs met will find marriage to be an impossible challenge. Even the first marriage degenerated into defensiveness and blaming. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. They lived out their lives in the land of Nod which was a far cry from the Garden of Eden.
It is just as easy for us to miss the point as the Pharisees did in their question. What is marriage? Some insist that the purpose of marriage is to produce children. That is a purpose but not the only one. Others argue that the purpose is for the spouses to “fulfill” or “complete” one another as though single persons are not whole beings in and of themselves. A good marriage will bring some fulfillment to both partners but it is not whole point of marriage. There are even some who say that the purpose is to give a sanctified context for the physical expression of love. That, too, is fine but it is not the central purpose.
If you are engaged or married, you have probably been asked , “How did you meet?” While the answer could be interesting, it is not as important as, “Why did you meet?” Why does God bring two people together?
From Genesis, we are told that, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” So the fundamental reason for marriage is that we best reflect the image of God in relationship. God is love and so it is in loving that we are most like God. And God’s love always gives life. So we are most like God in a loving relationship that gives life. From this we could say that two people being brought together by God is nothing more and nothing less than a assignment by the Creator to learn love and to teach love. Thus, the “I do” of your marriage vow is as much a yes to this assignment as it is a vow to your partner. And it is not a yes that should simply renege on because we grow tired of it.
Granted, there are some instances, sad and painful as they are, when divorce becomes the only option. But there are all sorts of factors in society that push too quickly in that direction. Many come from an unrealistic picture of what marriage is meant to be. “In-loveness,” as that may be, often takes the place of real love and people may enter marriage for reasons that will not stand the test of time. If the marriage is to be a place of real love, sooner or later those reasons have to be strengthened or replaced with relationship building.
Many couples spend many hours and too much money preparing for weddings and often give much less thought to getting ready for the marriage itself. That makes as much sense as painting and polishing an airplane while ignoring the engine and expecting it to fly!
So, where are we? Marriage is an assignment from God, a vocation. God does not call you to be perfect spouses from the beginning. He does call you to enter into a process in which you will learn and teach love. It takes both time and work. As strong as the love is at the moment of the wedding, it is only with time and effort that love will deepen. No one can love at the same level later as they do in the beginning. It will either be more or it will be less and the direction it takes depends on what the two people put into it.
So the yes at the beginning needs to be lived out in the months and years that follow, in the things said and not said, in things done and not done. “In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health until death do you part.”
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
September 24, 2009
It is not uncommon to hear Catholics, usually those who have fallen away from the Church, complain about “Catholic guilt.” They claim that as they grew up they were constantly told about sin and were taught that God is angry and punishing, watching every move, just waiting for a chance to catch us doing something wrong. This negative view of God and religion stunted their spiritual growth, they claim. So, thinking it not healthy and not liking it, one day they left the Church and simply didn’t come back. The second reading from the Letter of James seems to fit right in with that kind of experience.
James is clear, direct and forceful as he denounces sin. He reminds us that if we let greed rule our lives then we commit an injustice against our neighbor in order to enjoy comfort and there will be a painful punishment. Even the Gospel uses very strong language to convince us that sin is a horrible thing, the worst thing in the world as a matter of fact.
So far, we see, it is true that the Catholic Church is forcefully against sin. We believe it is real, destructive and to be avoided at all costs. Sin is the ‘enemy number one’ of God and people. It is the biggest obstacle to the happiness and fulfillment we desire.
But the next part of the criticism isn’t so obvious, the part about God being always angry and our spiritual lives being stunted by guilt. In fact, that comes from a misunderstanding of what the Church teaches about guilt. If we can have the right understanding of guilt, we may be able to avoid straying from the right way and help those who have wandered back to Christ and His Church.
Basically, there are two kinds of guilt: good guilt and bad guilt.
Good guilt is like a spiritual nervous system. Our physical nervous system helps us to recognize and avoid physical danger. For example, if we touch something hot, our reaction is to pull away so we don’t get burned or damaged. If smoke enters a room, we begin to cough and we know we had better get out of the room. Without a healthy nervous system to warn us, we could be in danger.
Good guilt, healthy guilt does the same for our souls. As our bodies need physical health, our souls need moral health. Moral health is doing good and avoiding evil. If our conscience is in good condition, it will register guilt when we do evil or even consider doing it. The guilt is a warning against evil because doing evil damages us. With this understanding, we know that the Bible’s warnings against sin are not the expression of any angry and punishing God. The opposite is true; they a sign of God’s love. He knows that evil, even though it appears to give short-term benefits, is destructive. In fact, punishment for sin is not something God adds on, the way a judge in court sentences a criminal. The punishment is the pain and misery caused by the sin itself, just as a child who plays with knives even though he has been warned suffers pain and misery when he cuts himself. It would be mean and selfish God who did not warn us! It is a good, wise and loving God who has given us a conscience to help us know guilt to warn us against sin and to move us to repent if we have sinned.
The second kind of guilt is bad guilt. This is guilt that occurs when we have done nothing wrong. This kind of unhealthy guilt can stifle spiritual growth and emotional maturity. It makes us blame ourselves for things where there is no blame. This can get us emotionally and spiritually tangled up. That is because there is no escape from this guilt: we cannot be forgiven for something we were not responsible for or for what was not a sin. So this is like a cul-de-sac, we go round and round trying to find mercy and fresh start but we can’t. It leaves us feeling unworthy of God and the friendship of others, so keep both at a distance.
In the case of either kind of guilt, good or bad, the cure is the same: going to the loving embrace of God our Father. If it is good guilt, we need to ask forgiveness and mercy which Jesus made available by His suffering and death. God never runs out of mercy and is always waiting to give it. That is the reason He made Confession, to make the giving of His mercy as close and easy as possible.
If it is bad guilt, then we need to go to God in prayer, reading and reflecting on God’s word which assures us, over and over again, that we are infinitely valuable in God’s eyes and that we have nothing to fear.
Today’s reminder about sin comes from wisdom and love. We should hear it ourselves and maybe share it this week with someone who is not here because of confusion about guilt.
As we continue, let us remember especially all those who have wandered away from Christ and His Church.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
September 20, 2009
In the Gospel today Jesus has just taught the disciples about His coming suffering, death and resurrection but they didn’t understand. They seemed to want to change the subject, as we would most likely do too. So He takes the opportunity to teach them the nature or True Success.
When Jesus and His apostles sit down to relax in Capernaum after a day of walking the hot, dusty roads of Galilee, He knows exactly what they have been talking about: success, glory and greatness. But the apostles are too embarrassed to admit it. They are on the road following Him and He was going to suffering and death. What did they think was going to happen to them. Surely not glory and seats of power! But the response of Jesus is surprising.
Jesus does not tell them that they should not want to excel, to achieve, to do great things. He doesn’t condemn their very normal impulse because He knows that achieving things, making a difference in the world is a basic need known in every human heart. This is one of the purposes of living: to be a sign of God’s goodness by making a positive difference in the world. So Jesus does not scold them for wanting to do something great. Instead, He tells them what true greatness really is. Jesus tells them that they need to shift their attention to an investment in the future that will not fail them. Who is the “greatest?” If the disciples want to gain lasting glory they must be willing to serve.
The great work for every Christian is not to achieve fame and fortune, popularity, power and worldly success. Rather, it is the same work that Jesus Himself took: to serve others, to reach out to others especially the weak and those in need, like little children. Greatness in the Kingdom of God involves humility, an attitude of the heart that puts the good of others ahead of one’s own. It is self-giving, not self-getting.
Jesus did not say to the apostles, “Don’t strive to achieve great things,” but He does point out where true, lasting, fulfilling greatness is to be found and that is in loving the neighbor as Christ loves them.
Kay Poe and Esther Kim grew up as best friends and strong competitors. Their sport was tae kwon do, a form of martial arts that was show for the first time in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. As Kay and Esther got older they found themselves in different weight classes so they rarely competed with one another. In the pre-Olympic trials they were each favored to win in their classes. There was only one problem. The United States was going to send representatives from only two of the four weight classes, so only one of them would be able to go to Sydney.
In the last minutes of the semi-final match, Kay seriously dislocated her kneecap. In spite of her injury, she fought well enough to win the match and her division. As she hobbled off the floor her dream of going to the Olympics seemed to be over. She only had one match left and that was against her friend, Esther. Esther saw the coach carrying her friend back to the dressing room. The outcome of the final match was clear. All that Esther had to do was show up and she was on her way to the Olympics. Her injured friend didn’t have a chance.
But Esther saw the situation from a different perspective. She saw a chance to do something really great for her friend. She decided to bow out of the final match and give the victory to Kay. She was willing to give up her dream so Kay could realize hers.
When Esther told Kay what she decided, Kay protested but Esther told her: “You deserve it more than I do. I’m not throwing my dreams away; I’m putting my dreams in you.”
Esther signed the scorecard and withdrew from the match. Then the two friends had to bow to each other on the mat to make it official. Kay’s coach helped her walk to one side of the mat; Esther walked to the other. The two bowed and referee signaled that Kay was the winner. Then the two locked arms and walked off the mat together with tears in their eyes, smiles on their faces and the crowd’s applause in their ears. Later, Esther told reporters, “There is more than one way to be a champion.”
Most of us can easily see the beauty of humility and humble service to others. We understand why this is the mark of True Success and Achievement. But putting it into practice is not so easy.
We are willing to perform “random acts of kindness” now and then. They even make us feel good. But real spiritual progress requires a deeper commitment. And the best place to start is at home.
It is in our closest relationships, those of our family, that our selfishness comes out most easily. And so change this, to grow in humility, we need to attack it there. Humbly being of service to your spouse, our siblings, our parents- this is true virtue, this where we learn to have a heart like Christ.
Our family members know us well. They are familiar with our tantrums and selfish habits. They are unlikely to be impressed by an extra act of kindness or self-control, by an extra effort to be patient or hold our tongue. That’s why it is the best place to start because there is no reward or recognition involved.
If we gradually learn to think about others before ourselves in our homes, it will become second nature in other places. And then we will be on the fast track to True Success.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
September 13, 2009
“Faith, of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” That’s what we hear from Saint James the second reading today: “dead.” Without an active love giving life to the faith, faith is dead. I may have all the faith that moves mountains, but without the love that shows faith alive in works, I nothing (cf. 1 Cor. 13.2). James knows that the devils believe, but what good does it do them? Even Satan can recite the words of the creed but he Satan will not give evidence of a living faith active in love. Works of love flow from a living faith because they flow from the One in whom we believe and who calls us to imitate Him. Our faith is in Jesus and His work or love is the cross. So the first part is simply about faith.
We all agree on the value of faith but there are all kinds of faith. You can have faith in the one true God. Some people have faith in the daily horoscope or even witchcraft and magic and still others in human reason. The last one is as questionable as the first three! We need to know what we mean, what people mean when they say, “Have faith.” It may mean simply, “Believe in yourself.” Or it may mean, “Practice positive thinking.” Some faiths are worthy and some do not have any merit at all. Some reflect reality and others distort it. Some are even dangerous. Faith must be honest and realistic. There is true faith and there is false faith.
However, while it is important that I believe the right things about God, the world and myself, that by itself does not make true faith. True faith must also be a living faith.
Today’s lesson from James was once shown by the cartoonist, Charles Schulz in “Peanuts.” It is winter and the gang is headed to school. They are all dressed in coats, mittens, boots and scarves. They see Snoopy sitting alone and shivering on the ice and snow. They stop and look at him as wondering if there is something they should do for him. Finally, Charlie Brown raises his hand and says, “Peace be with you.” Then off they go. In the last frame Snoopy is watching them go, still shivering. He has a big question mark over his head as if thinking, “What was that all about?”
James says that if someone is cold and hungry and you say to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them clothing and food, what does it profit? Faith without works, James says, is dead faith. In other words, faith without action is cold and lifeless. Then to demonstrate the truth, he says that the devil and his followers have true faith. They know all about God so obviously just having the right faith is useless.
James has the full support of Jesus who says in Matthew, “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits” (Mt. 7).
One of the worst things that can happen to a church or a believing person is the tendency to deny with our lives what we speak with our lips. It was true in Israel, it was true in the time of the New Testament and it is true today. There are many Christians, many Catholics who want the benefits of faith without the obligations of right living.
The Baptists once had a prophet in a man named Carlyle Marney, but they kicked him out! He said that he had long since stopped asking God to fix anything in the Carolinas. Why? He was ashamed to ask because, he said, “God had a majority of Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians in that area for 200 years. If we had a mind to,” he continued, “we could have whipped racism, poverty, oppression and corruption in business and politics years ago.”
Faith and works are partners. They are inseparably linked together. According to James, “pure religion” requires good works, “for as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead (2:26).”
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time B
September 6, 2009
The sacrament of Baptism empowers us to be ambassadors for Christ. With Baptism, we put on Christ and take up the mission of the Gospel. At the end of the celebration of Baptism, there is a prayer called the “Ephphetra prayer” which says, “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the mute speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word and you mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father” (Rite of Baptism for Children, 65).
The origin of this prayer is found in today’s Gospel. And this prayer is meant to have the same effect on the one who is baptized as it had on the deaf man who was healed in the Gospel. Unfortunately many well-meaning Christian people have a clear disconnect between the sacrament that gives us new life and what happens in our daily life.
This prayer calls us to reflect since it unlocks part of the true meaning of Baptism. The first part acknowledges the living, redeeming and healing presence of Christ in the life of all who are baptized. It also suggests that we must be healed and changed before we can do anything with the gift of faith.
We all come to life with impediments. These are things over which we stumble as we attempt to give life the best shot. They may be physical in nature or psychological or spiritual. They are almost always the result of Original Sin and we have the choice to do something about them or surrender to them. It is always our choice. God is not going to pluck them from our lives but by the power of Baptism we have the tools to cope with them and even rise above them.
But before we can do that, we have to know what they are. What are the things in our lives that we need God to heal? Better yet, what are the things in our lives that prevent us from jumping head first into the Gospel and living the life God calls us to live? Do I have an exaggerated sense of self-importance and so take offense easily? Is it fear and anxiety? Is my present life plagued and scarred by past hurts? Have I done things in the past that still haunt me? Just as Saint Paul had a “thorn” in his side, so we have imperfections that cause us to stumble.
The Ephepheta prayer acknowledges that God can do something about all of this. In fact, we have to allow God to do something about it. And often, like the deaf man in the Gospel, we need someone else to ask for our healing. Notice that some people bring the deaf man to Jesus. Often we do not see our own limitations since they are so close and so familiar to us. Others may need to show us and to help us in asking for help and healing, to ‘to bring us to Jesus.’
Once the obstacles are out of the way, then we can turn to the heart of the prayer. “May he soon touch your ears to receive his word.” May God touch our ears! But if we are in a crowded room filled with noise, we cannot easily hear the voice of a friend even one standing next to us. We need to move away from the distractions to a quiet place. Do we ever stop and ask God to touch our ears? And do we move away from the noise so that we can hear?
If we do, then we can receive God’s word. It comes to us in Scripture, in the teaching of the Church, in the voices of other faithful people around us. It is a word asking us to respond. It is a word asking us to love. It is a word that forgives our past and opens doors to our future.
Once we receive the word, it must be spoken. The truth asks us to live a certain way. It asks us to resolve conflict and seek peace. It asks us to offer mercy and forgiveness when we are hurt. From the moment we wake until the time we sleep, it is asking us to live a different life. It has to touch our families, our work, when we are on the streets, at school or at home. We live “to the praise and glory of God the Father.”
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time B
August 30, 2009
Have you ever felt that were simply going through the motions of you day-to-day existence? We get up, get dressed, go to work, come home, have supper, go to a meeting, go to bed and then repeat it all again the next day and the next and the next. Because of the unavoidable repetition of the daily routine, we tend to fall into a rut that can be boring but comfortable. It can also carry over into our spiritual lives. We find that our prayers are simply words, our participation at Mass is more a habit than heartfelt. Our religion can become only skin deep and we can even sink into a place of hypocrisy.
Each reading today speaks to this. True piety is not a practiced routine but a holiness that rises from a heart that is really, consciously in love with God. This is the God who is so close that every human cry, every prayer is heard. This God gave a law to Moses meant to lead to life and well-being, to wisdom and intelligence. The law was not meant to be an imposition or a punishment but a guide toward holiness and a full life.
The law started out rather simple as it ruled the relationship between God and people, commandments one to three, and between people, commandments four to ten. It eventually became so complex that ordinary people needed professional help to make their way through it. The professionals were the Pharisees. They were well-intentioned and holy men but some began to pay more attention to the law than the spirit of the law. Gradually, the keeping of the law became more concerned with externals than interior holiness. Jesus warns against this. He calls for a commitment to make sure what is practiced comes from a heart totally given to God.
Jesus is right; we are driven by what is within our desires. Most of our infant life is made up of sucking everything in sight into our mouths. Our desires gradually direct us toward the future. A girl waits anxiously to be an adolescent. For a boy, the first shave can be nearly a religious experience! Eventually we realize that all our desires will not be fulfilled; that we are not as important as we thought. And hopefully, we learn to tame our desires in much the same way we train a pet. But then, whose pet are we? Pet of the spouse, the job, the Church, the culture? And what happened to the passion of our youth? How did we become so dull? Remember where we started with the routine. Partly, maturity happened. But why can’t the 50th shave be as exciting as the first? Because natural things tend naturally to lessen.
Fortunately, that is not true with spiritual desires. They are not lessened by use but grow richer. The more we love, the more we are able to love; the more we hope, the higher our hopes; the more we dream, the bolder our dreams. So if we are less happy than we used to be, less joyful, less alive, it is because we have allowed our desires to die. We have lost our passion for life; we have become bored.
How can we be bored in an ever-expanding universe? Or lonely when surrounded by 6 billion people? Did God waste His effort in creating such an exciting world? Perhaps He should have created only you and a TV so you could watch actors in unreal circumstances (“Reality” TV?).
It is our spiritual desires that raise us above the other animals. If we cannot share our space with those different than ourselves, we are like wolves guarding our turf. If we cannot give others a share of our food, we are like vultures defending our prey. If we cannot forgive an offense, we are like dogs growling at the stick that beats them. If we cannot love, we are like the eagle soaring around looking for a lonely perch. And if we are lost in physical desires, we are like pigs wallowing in mud.
To be fully human is not to dampen our desires, it is to arrange them in proper order. It is to discipline our desires, to direct them toward goals worthy of creatures made in the image and likeness of God.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time B
August 23, 2009
Marriage is under attack. It is attacked from the outside by those who want to redefine what it means. The two most serious attacks are the one that seeks to change it from a life-long committed relationship to a temporary one, one subject to human power to dissolve it. This particular attack has just about won the minds and hearts of people, even Catholics. And the other attack is to change who the parties to marriage can be from one man and one woman to any two consenting adults.
The second reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians offers us the opportunity to consider two essential characteristics of marriage. One is complimentarity and the other is the ordered relationship between the spouses.
The first characteristic is that marriage is essentially complementary. Husband and wife, male and female, are equal but not the same.
We know from the book of Genesis that when God first created the human race, He created us male and female, man and woman. This is the not a random result of mindless evolution but an essential part of God’s plan. From the beginning He created two genders. And from the very beginning, it was part of God’s plan that these two would be complimentary, that they would have different characteristics that complemented each other. This difference helps explain why men and women sometimes find each other so difficult to understand. And the complementarity explains why men and women have always experienced such a mysterious attraction. Biologically, chemically, psychologically, emotionally and even intellectually, men and women show general tendencies and characteristics that are not only different but complementary. This is a basic fact of experience.
It is also a theological fact. God created us male and female because we are called to image His own divine nature here on earth. And the essence of the divine nature is self-forgetful, fruitful love. And the complementary differences between man and woman are a God-given circumstance in which this kind of total love can happen. Husbands and wives forming families by loving each other faithfully and totally, this mysterious, fruitful complementarity is one of the most basic facts about marriage from God’s view.
The second characteristic is that marriage as designed by God is built on an ordered relationship between the spouses. This is what Saint Paul means when he says that a husband is “the head of his wife” and that wives should be “subordinate to their husbands. These are very uncomfortable words for our age. We tend to want to dismiss what Saint Paul says as applying to the culture of his day but not fitting our own. But Paul is not merely stating a personal opinion or a cultural description. He is putting forth a theological truth.
Paul is saying that one of the “great mysteries” of marriage, one of the reasons that Jesus made it a sacrament, is that marriage is an image of the relationship between Jesus and the Church. This helps us understand that the order of relationships in a marriage is not a political order. The husband is not mean to be the head of the wife in the sense that the wife is a the servant or slave. Not at all. As Saint Ambrose put it, speaking to Christian husbands, “You are not her master, but her husband; she was not given to you to be your slave, but your wife…Reciprocate her attentiveness to you and be grateful to her for her love” (quoted in Pope John Paul’s II’s Letter to Families, #25).
The distinction is one of function, not nature.
By nature the husband and the wife are, in the first place, completely equal in dignity. Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve both shared the same dignity as human beings: both were created in the image and likeness of God. Their complementarity did not mean that one was inferior to the other by nature. And in the second place, they are both necessary and dependent on each other. A husband cannot fulfill his calling as a husband without the commitment of his wife. A wife cannot fulfill her calling as a wife without the commitment of her husband. A husband and wife together build the marriage and the family, just as the head and the heart together keep the boy alive, growing and healthy. The hearts it subordinate to the head in the sense that it would be never be insubordinate or rebellious, just as the head would never neglect or abuse the heart. That is why Saint Paul begins this section of his letter by telling all the Ephesians: “Brothers and sisters, be subordinate to one another.” And that is why he insists that the husband must love his wife as totally as Christ loves the Church.
Christ is the head of the Church and has given His life to her and for her; and the Church is the bride of Christ, totally consecrated to Him and to His Kingdom.
Finally, just as the law of gravity is the basic force ruling our physical environment, so the family is the basic cell holding human society together. And marriage, as God created it, is the core of family life.
Understanding and accepting the law of gravity has allowed the human race to make all sorts of remarkable technological advances. The more we understand and follow God’s plan for marriage and family, the more we will experience the remarkable revolution of Christ-like love, a revolution with eternal consequences.
As we continue in this Mass, let us thank God for the having created us man and woman, in His image and likeness. Let us ask forgiveness for when we have not lived up to this noble calling. And let us renew our commitment to building Christ’s Kingdom in the world by doing all we can to, with God’s grace, to live, support and spread the “great mystery” of marriage as God designed it.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
August 16, 2009
I want to begin with an overview of the first reading and the Gospel and the connection between them. Then I mean to offer some reflection that is, hopefully, spiritually helpful to us.
The first reading from Proverbs speaks of the invitation to a banquet offered by “Wisdom.” Wisdom invites to her banquet “whoever is simple” and “lacks understanding.” It is open to all who seek to “forsake foolishness…and advance in the way of understanding.”
The Gospel reading continues to be from John. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is presented as “the Word”. Jewish religion taught that God’s “Word” was the creative force that brought everything into being. And the “Word” was personified as God’s Wisdom in the world. For John, Jesus as the Word made flesh was also Wisdom in the flesh.
In today’s Gospel we continue to hear about the bread of life. As Jesus speaks to the crowds, the “murmuring” among them heard last Sunday has now grown into “quarreling” among them: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Here wisdom is shown by those who believe in Jesus and in His words. Those who are murmuring or quarreling lack wisdom because they do not believe Jesus when He says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.” They decline the invitation to this banquet of food and drink.
We are surrounded by food it seems. Look at the grocery store aisles overflowing with choices. How many varieties of cookies do we really need? The nightly TV shows advertise enticing snacks every few minutes. You can almost smell the French fries. Those who sell food pour millions of dollars into developing new snacks and convincing us that we cannot live without them. Yet so many people feel empty and are looking for something to satisfy their hungry hearts.
Part of that emptiness may be our growing awareness of the hunger that surrounds us. Around the world hungry children cry until they give up hope. God hears the cry of empty stomachs and hurting hearts and sends the harvest and the bread of life.
Jesus looks out a crowd of people with hunger in their eyes in the Gospel. His response was not to send them to the garden or to the store to buy something. He offered Himself as the bread that has come down from Heaven to feed their deepest hungers. His Body will be our food. His Blood will be our drink. And this food brings eternal life.
As Jesus offers us His Body and Blood He knows our deepest hungers, our desperate thirsts. He can satisfy us. His death of the cross proves His claim that His very Body will be offered up for us and His Blood will be poured out for us.
A familiar technique on TV shows like CSI and House is to go deep inside the body tissues and show how the body was affected by the bullet or the disease. If we could look deep into our own bodies, would we be able to see the evidence that we have eaten the Body and Blood of Jesus? Has He become part of our bone and tissue? Does He flow through our brains? Does He affect how we see, what we say? If we eat His Body and drink His blood, there should be some evidence.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
August 2, 2009
Last week we heard about the feeding of the 5,000. Today and for the next three Sundays we hear about the meaning of the miracle, how it is a sign that Jesus is our true nourishment and the fulfillment of our deepest hopes.
The first reading about the miraculous feeding of the refugees in the desert provided a frame and a contrast. Jesus explains that the story is not about what God “gave” but that God “gives” and the true bread is not manna but “that which gives life to the world,” Jesus Himself.
Our faith does not look primarily to stories from the past but to present hunger and to what really satisfies it.
Over 50 years ago a Christian radical, Thomas Muntzer, referred to the “honeysweet Christ” who is acceptable to “our murderous nature.” This is a Christ who promises us a comfortable life this side of death and eternal life beyond. This Christ doesn’t disturb our security or threaten our cultural values. This is the Christ who is at the center of the “health-and-wealth gospel,” the Christ who will work with whatever agenda we set for him. This is the Christ of all our hopes and dreams. The problem is that this useful Christ exists only in the imagination.
We cannot use Jesus. It is not that we should not use Jesus. We cannot. Jesus will not allow Himself to be used for our own personal whims. While He did come to serve, He did not come to serve at our pleasure. He came to serve God, and He serves us as an instrument of God’s will not of our will.
Jesus was concerned about human need at every level. He cared about poverty and hunger. We see His concern in the feeding of the 5,000. But after the miracle people keep after Jesus so that He could keep feeding them. People with empty stomachs have a hard time focusing on their spiritual needs. So it can be difficult for us to distinguish between our genuine needs and our desires. It is easy then to assume that Jesus wants what we want or that He will give us whatever we think we need. Christ loves us and invites us to follow Him but He will not be used.
It is an inexcusable moral problem that so many people in our world live in almost constant hunger and that so many children die of malnutrition. It is a moral problem because it is completely unnecessary. There are enough resources on this earth to feed all the people. It is a sin that third-world countries are desperate for food while our most modern nation has an epidemic of obesity. Besides physical needs, we also have emotional and spiritual hungers. As Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel continues, we learn more about Jesus will satisfy these hungers. But for now, why not try to name the hunger we know most at this moment in our lives or the hungers we experience in our families and hold out our hands to Jesus to feed us. Our deepest hunger is best expressed by Saint Augustine, “O God, thou has made us for thyself, and our souls are restless till they find their rest in thee.”
One of the worst tragedies of human life is our incessant attempt to satisfy this hunger in superficial ways. The desire for material goods is one of them. Material goods have a narcotic quality. More and more is required to gain the same feeling of satisfaction and security. We do not satisfy the need for drugs by taking more drugs. We are made for God and all our substitutions are temporary measures at best.
Jesus says, “Do not work for food that perishes, but for food that endures for eternal life.” True Christians, in other words, understand that real fulfillment comes from more than just making a living; it comes from making a life, a life that will last here and beyond.
It is certainly not a sin to desire and to work for happiness in this life as long as we have the right expectations. Jesus is very clear that the complete fulfillment and permanent satisfaction our hearts long for will never be found here on earth. All the pains and pleasures of this world, all the accomplishments and achievements that look good on resumes, these are all passing things. We are made for greater things.
It is a healthy thing to ask ourselves where we are looking for true happiness: from the satisfactions of this work or from our lasting relationship with Jesus Christ? One way to gauge this is in our use of entertainment.
Then the people ask Jesus, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” He answers with the heart of the Gospel message: the first work you must do is to believe in Christ, “the one God sent.” Having faith in Jesus is to believe God already loves us (John 3:16). We don’t have to earn that love, Jesus is the visible sign of it. Accepting Him and His message means to eat the bread of life, which “gives life to the world.”
Living the life of Jesus in the world is hard. We can get discouraged, want to give up or even lose our way. Sometimes evil and death in the world seem to be winning over the life God wants to give us. The front page of any newspaper is enough to discourage us. But the Gospel today reminds us that we are not making the journey alone. We travel with one another sustained by the Bread of Life given by a loving and gracious God.
Here we are 20 centuries later still being fed on the Bread of Life. It is feeding the hungry on every continent. It is nourishing people of every language and culture. It is satisfying those who long for hope. It is filling the emptiness of those who yearn for love. It is strengthening those who feel ignored, weak or rejected.
You can’t buy it. You can’t bake it. You can’t have it delivered. There is only one thing, maybe two, that you need to do to have it. You have to believe and you have to be spiritually prepared. You have to believe in Christ and the power of His life, death and resurrection. You have to believe that He is the Bread of Life. And you have to prepare in prayer, reflection and Confession if necessary.
Today Christ renews His commitment to us. Let’s pray that He help us renew our commitment to Him.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
July 19, 2009
One of the most common ways we have to greet one another is to ask, “How are you feeling?” Most of the time someone asks you this question, however, they are not looking for an honest answer. If you doubt this, the next time someone asks you the question, tell them exactly how you are feeling! How you are feeling, of course, is important, if only to you. But what is the relationship between faith and feelings?
We are emotional creatures. As humans we have a great range and a profound depth of feelings. To be human is to feel ecstatic and sad, gratitude and resentment, enthusiasm and boredom, anger and apathy, awe and anxiety, delight and dread. Throughout many periods of history, some fairly recent, people were expected to hide their feelings. Some cultures considered the expression of feelings as a sign of weakness. Children were seen and not heard. Women were given prescribed ways of expressing emotions. Men were encouraged to behave as if they had no emotions.
In what some call our society there has been a growing recognition of the importance of our feelings. Psychology has gained prominence and respectability. In medicine, psychiatry has been almost divinized. The media gives headlines to celebrities who reveal their personal feelings and experiences. Today feelings are not only important, they seem to what is most important. Somewhere between hiding or denying our feelings and letting them rule us there must be some way of understanding and dealing with our feelings.
Consider these aspects of human feelings. There is a sense in which we simply cannot help how we feel. Feelings come uninvited, spontaneous reactions. We are not guilty for what we feel but only if we act wrongly because of how we feel. And we do not all have the same emotional make-up. Some of us are must more volatile emotionally and some are more subdued. Feelings themselves are unpredictable, there one moment, gone the next. Yet for all that is unpredictable and changeable about them, they are very important. Some suggest that feelings may be more important than how we think, given how they influence our thinking. Herbert Spencer said, “Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings and not the intellect.”
Jesus had feelings. As totally human, he had the full range of human feelings. The Gospels do not tell us all about His feelings, but they do give us insight into some of them. Today’s Gospel tells of a multitude of people pursuing Jesus and His disciples as they were looking for a place to be alone and rest. What feeling might that bring from you? Mark tells us that when Jesus saw the great throng He was “moved with pity for them.” Other translations say He “had compassion on them.” Why? Because they were like sheep without shepherd. The response of Jesus to His feelings was “to teach them many things.” On other occasions Jesus found it necessary to go beyond His feelings in order to do what was necessary. In the Garden the night before He died, Jesus was afraid. He prayed that He might be able to avoid the cross. With God’s help, He put aside these feelings and was faithful to the end.
Our feelings are important but equally important is our responsibility to decide how to deal with them. Sometimes we need to act on our feelings as Jesus did in today’s Gospel. Sometimes we need the will power to transcend our feelings in order to act responsibly or to do nothing at. Feelings are never acceptable reasons for bad behavior.
To be human is to have feelings. But it would be inhuman to be totally at the mercy of our feelings. Feelings make good servants but bad masters.
God has created us with an almost infinite capacity to feel. But God has also given as an even greater capacity to will. Growing means expanding and refining our capacity to feel. Growing also means developing our capacity to will. Created in God’s image, we can choose, decide and make commitments that transcend our feelings. Jesus taught that true love is more a matter of the will than of emotions. After all, He said, “love your enemies.” If we love only when we feel like it, we will miss all the higher joys God intends for us. Marriage won’t work. Family won’t work. Vocation won’t work. Vocation, citizenship, discipleship and even faith won’t work.
The faith perspective is that life is made up, not of good feelings, but of commitments. Isn’t this true? What if parents only cared for children when they felt like it? What if married couples only loved when they felt like it? What if workers only went to work and students only studied and teachers only taught and firefighters only fought fires and rescuers only rescued when they felt like it?
It is the covenants and commitments by which we live that make life worth living and, ironically, become the source of our most wonderful and treasured feelings.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
July 12, 2009
When we were baptized, we became members of the Body of Christ, the same Body that reaches out to people in every age in order to lead them to God. That is the mission of Jesus; that is the mission Jesus gave to His apostles in today’s Gospel: He sent them to reach out to others with the good news of the Gospel of Jesus.
In fact, the word “apostle” comes from a Greek word that means: “to be sent.” Every one of us is sent to bear witness to Christ, to being His wisdom and His healing touch to those who are in need. Under the supervision of our bishops (“bishop” means “overseer”), who are the successors of the Twelve Apostles, we are called to spread the Kingdom of God, to be agents of the Gospel.
The missionary instructions you heard in the Gospel apply in some way to all followers of Christ, including us. You might summarize these instructions in two words: trust and perseverance.
Besides the clothes on their backs, the Apostles are only supposed to bring a walking stick and their sandals. Every need they have along the way will be met, but it will be met by God’s Providence, not by their own self-sufficiency. They are to trust in God to support and sustain their efforts. The walking stick and the sandals symbolize a determination to continue moving forward, to persevere in their efforts. Even when they face opposition, persecution or a cold welcome, which they will, they are not to be deterred. They are to continue.
Trust and perseverance are two key qualities of Christian living and CHRISTIAN MISSION. Let’s consider MISSION.
The idea we have of missionaries is likely someone sent to a place far away. But that was not the original idea and it is not the notion of today’s Church. All of us are considered missionaries. How else do you explain that Saint Therese of Lisieux, who said her mission was love, became the patroness of missionaries but never traveled far from her home?
We need a better understanding of mission. Mission is what God does for a living, God’s job description. God is always sending out and going out from Himself. God sent the prophets like Jeremiah, Isaiah and Amos whom we heard about in the first reading.
Jesus was sent to us as God’s most precious gift to fulfill His mission, to suffer, to die and to rise and then to send the Holy Spirit. Jesus calls each of us to a mission, a call to an adventure with Him. But we prefer stability and hold back like Jeremiah, Isaiah and Amos who resisted in the beginning.
One part of being a disciple is to internalize the word of God. Mary did this well and then her immediate mission was to go to Elizabeth to help her. Being faithful requires that we allow ourselves to be changed by what we hear.
Mission is not a program but a call to carry on the work of Jesus in the world. We need to raise our flag and move forward. And we will not be able to say “mission accomplished” until our last day. We have to be more like marathon runners then sprinters and prefer the crock pot to the microwave which requires more patience. The Church does not have a mission but the mission has a Church. Our parish does not have a mission so much as the mission of Christ has a parish. We do not so much have a mission as the mission should have us.
Experts point out that if we are using 20% of our potential that is extraordinary. Anthropologists hold that if we using 10% of our brain power, we are above average. If that is true, each of us has a lot of untapped potential. Your friends may tell you about the gifts you have, but do you listen as God speaks through them? We need to pray as in the Psalms, “Show me the path I should walk, for to you I entrust my life” (143:8). Each of us has talents that God can use if only we will leave our excuses behind. We need to have fear replaced with hope.
When Jesus sent the apostles out, their training was far from complete. But He sent them out anyway. Jesus trusted them to share what they had learned so far from Him. So what’s our excuse for not carrying our faith to others? True, you may not be a theologian but you have what the disciples had at that point: Your experience of living the faith, of knowing Jesus.
Jesus summoned the Twelve and He summons and send us. Ephesians reminds us that God has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.” Rather than look at what you are lacking, why not put more trust in what you have been given? That should go a long way in helping us answer questions like, “Why are you a Catholic?” or “Who is Jesus for you?”
There was a college student who volunteered to lead a scripture sharing group. When asked what made him volunteer, he answered, “I don’t know. I just felt called. So, I decided to take a chance and try it.” I doubt Jesus went to the dean’s office to check the student’s grade-point average. Instead, what Jesus found was a heart and mind willing to “take a chance and try it.” Then there is a grandmother who takes her two unchurched grandchildren to Mass and explains it to them. A lawyer attends a lunchtime faith discussion group. A retired man writes to prisoners and answers their questions about his faith. Ordinary people who were “summoned” by the Lord and responded.
“Go the Mass is ended” does not mean we can go home and relax but that we are sent on a mission, com-missioned by Jesus. Your hands, your heart, your talents, your personal contacts are needed to carry on the work of Jesus today. When we leave here today, hopefully we leave renewed to live our mission.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
July 5, 2009
Jesus and Ezekiel didn’t come from the outside, as strangers, to preach to the people. The readings today remind us that they were “local boys.” It is good to remember that since we are often called to speak a word or set an example for those right around us, those in our family, among our friends and in our local community.
Ezekiel and all the leading citizens of Jerusalem were deported to Babylon. There, an exile among exiles, he got the call to be a prophet to his people. Why would people in exile need a prophet? Well, besides being downcast and losing hope in God, many had gotten very comfortable in exile. They adapted very well; settled in and made themselves at home there. When a chance came to go back to their native land, these people decided to stay. They fit in so well that they had even adopted the gods of the Babylonians who seemed to be stronger and more successful then the God of Israel. Who won, after all? Why not go with the winners, what is more powerful and more likely to bring success?
Get ready, here’s the rub. The exiles weren’t that much different from us were they? After all, don’t we live in a foreign land? The values of following Christ and the teachings of the Church are not exactly the motivating forces of the surrounding culture. So we get along; we don’t make waves. And if offered a chance to change, to make some sacrifices, uproot and turn to a more faithful way of living, praying and serving God, would we? Or like the exiles, have we settled in and accepted or at least compromised with the values around us?
The exiles in Babylon needed to reconnect with the God who had brought them out of slavery in Egypt and who was once again offering them freedom. But they were not disposed to such a rebirth in their relationship with God. Still, God acts first and calls Ezekiel to be a prophet to them. God doesn’t give up on us but sends His word to wake us up.
The call of the prophet was not a whisper or a little interior voice or feeling. It seems to have been a very personal and powerful experience for Ezekiel. He says, God “…spoke to me, the spirit entered into me and set me on my feet…” God is acting with determination and power to get a message to His people who are drifting.
I wonder what Ezekiel was doing that God had to “set” him on his feet? Maybe he was weak-kneed and hesitant. He might have felt what we all feel when we need to be upright and firm in the presence of resistance. Then, why not pray for what Ezekiel received, “God, speak your empowering word, send your Spirit to me and set me on my feet.”
Like Ezekiel we are called to speak for God in our land. No person of faith should feel entirely comfortable or “at home” in any land here. What country on this earth fully reflects what God wills in coming to the help of the needy, rescuing those who are deprived, feeding the hungry, defending the dignity of all life?
On this weekend of Independence, we should pray that God will not give up on us as a nation because we, too, have some history of being obstinate and not listening to God’s word. Of course, the voices of the prophets are not always nice to listen to. Politeness and proper etiquette are not always the ways of prophets.
Jesus went to the people of His home town and they did not listen to Him. The crowd is not very receptive to a local boy who seems to have gone beyond their expectations and wants. Jesus brings them up short by telling them that it takes outsiders to see what the locals refuse to see. It is hard to be rejected by the people who know us the best.
Perhaps we know that it is hardest to be a good Catholic in our own homes, among our family members and those we work and socialize with. “My kids pay no attention to me.” “My brother thinks I am a religious nut.” “My husband refuses to come to church with me.” and so it goes. “A prophet is not without honor except in his or her native place.”
Let’s beg God for the gift of His Spirit to set us on our feet so we can live faithful lives in this our land and so we can help to lift up others in their search for God and their desire to do God’s will.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
June 21, 2009
Why did Jesus, who is God, allow Himself to fall asleep just when things were really getting tough for His friends?
This is a question we have to face sooner or later. Maybe we won’t be on a boat during a storm that threatens to sink us but each one of us will run up against some kind of storm, probably many, before we finish this journey. In fact, in this world, it is fairly safe to say that the storm is the norm.
It may be the long and painful sickness of a loved one. It can be the death of child. Maybe it’s the damage caused by a family member’s addictions or infidelities. It can be on a grand scale, the ravages of war, a natural disaster, financial ruin. Or it can be very personal and almost invisible like lingering depression or a deep loneliness.
Why does an all-powerful God go to sleep in our boats and let the storms rage against us? The Catechism of the Catholic Church tell us clearly that we will not understand God’s ways fully until we meet Him face to face on the other side of death.
“The fact that God permits physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life” (Catechism #324).
We can understand God’s way partially, if we understand God’s agenda for our lives. And here’s the beginning of that: God’s agenda for our brief journey on earth isn’t perfect comfort and unbroken pleasure.
Rather, He wants us to gain the wisdom, courage, joy and inner balance of spiritual maturity, in other words, to be prepared for Heaven. And that involves learning to trust in Him more than in ourselves. That is probably the hardest lesson to learn since it goes against the spiritual DNA we inherited from original sin. And so sometimes God seems to be asleep in our boats while the storms rage, so that we will come to know and accept the reality of our limitations and the truth of our dependence on Him.
A classic example of someone having trouble accepting God’s agenda is Job. In today’s first reading, we get a sample of God’s efforts to teach Job a valuable lesson in wisdom.
Job had been complaining about all the bad things that have happened to him. And God answers by reminding him that the Lord is Master even of those bad things, that He controls and limits them according to His wisdom.
The ocean in the Hebrew Scriptures, because of its mystery, power and unpredictability, was often used as a symbol of evil and chaos. But God tells Job that He has “set limits for it.” God does not tell Job all the reasons behind everything He does and allows. He can’t! How can we, limited human beings, expect to understand all of the wisdom of the Creator? And so instead of a long explanation, God reminds Job that He is all-powerful and that He will never abandon His children.
Learning to accept our limitations and dependence on God is especially hard in today’s world which is so technologically advanced that it tends to put an almost religious faith in what people can accomplish. There are still some problems that we have not yet solved, but the myth of scientific progress tries to convince us that it’s only a matter of time until we do. This is not so: We cannot make Heaven on earth; we cannot save ourselves.
This religious faith in science is very seductive for at least two reasons.
First, because it is so popular in today’s culture. It’s built into advertising, movies and TV shows. It is even the motivation behind some activist groups promoting things like abortion and homosexual marriage. They try to solve “unwanted” pregnancies and sexual orientations not by looking for God’s help to follow His design for human happiness but by trying to redefine or redesign what it means to be human.
Second, it is seductive because it flatters us, tells us what the devil told Adam and Eve: “You shall be like gods.” But, of course, that is as much a lie today as it was at the beginning.
And so God continues to give us opportunities, storms, to learn to trust Him, to surrender to Him. How can we learn to take advantage of these opportunities? The best way is to learn to pray better.
It was by going to Jesus, asleep in the back of the boat, that the Apostles discovered His greatness and survived the storm. Prayer is going to Jesus. Prayer is the school where we learn God’s wisdom. Prayer is the gym where we exercise and strengthen the faith that allows Jesus to become Lord of our lives not just in theory but in practice.
We can begin again to understand that only God can bring us the calm we seek right now, right here, in this Mass.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ B
June 14, 2009
Every year, after we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we turn to two core beliefs of our Catholic faith. Last week, Trinity Sunday reminded us of the mystery of God’s revealing Himself to us, trying to explain an infinite reality to our very limited minds. Jesus became one of us to draw us to the internal love of the Trinity and to show us God’s love for us. The concrete and lasting sign of that love is the Body and Blood of Christ shared with us today and at every Mass.
If you have ever read a story to a child, you know that often he or she already knows the story and how it will end. (They even know if you try to skip a page in the interest of getting them to bed sooner!) The child on your lap is not looking for information as much as entertainment and having that time together with you. But one precocious child said to his grandfather, “I know what happened, but what does it mean?”
We can look at the Scriptures in the same way. We have heard many of the stories many times. We already know what happened and how the story ends. But that is not all there is. Much of what is there is meant to communicate more than simply what happened.
Today’s story of the Last Supper in Mark’s Gospel is a good example. So, how do we hear it? If there were a child on your lap asking what it means, what would you answer? What is the message and what does it mean?
Knowing how that meal came together and what happened is not the whole point. Rather, learning from it and being inspired by it is very much the point. Literally, to be ‘inspired’ means to have new life breathed into us. So let’s look for the meaning and the inspiration on the feast of the Body and Blood of the Christ.
Throughout history the people of God have shared a covenant relationship with God. All contracts are about two parties making an agreement, signing on the dotted line, but a covenant is about relationship. Like marriage, there is much more on the line in a covenant than just the legal realities. How could God sign on the dotted line? God finds a way. With Noah God wrote a rainbow across the sky as a sign of His promise after the flood. When God made a covenant with Abraham and promised to be His God the sign of and the warning for breaking the covenant was animals sacrificed by being cut in half and burned. As if to say, ‘May this happen to us if we are not faithful.’ And at the time of the Exodus, Moses read the covenant, sprinkled the people and the altar with blood and the people agreed to be faithful.
The letter to the Hebrews says of Jesus that “is the mediator of a new covenant: since a death has taken place for deliverance from transgressions under the first covenant, those who are called may receive the promised inheritance.” And at the Last Supper, the night before He died, He knew that He would be taken, He would be blessed and He would be broken, He would be given. His blood would be poured out. As our High Priest, He gives us the ritual to enter that covenant, whenever the Bread is broken and the Wine is poured out, Jesus give Himself to us. This allows people of every place and every time to share in that Supper and gain eternal life. The realism of giving His Body to eat and His Blood to drink has always been much too real for some to take. But this is Catholic faith.
Let’s be precise.
When we do this “in memory of Jesus” we do not engage in nostalgia. Nostalgia is trying to recreate the past. We are not trying to feel what Jesus and His disciples felt at that Last Supper. It’s not about feelings at all, although that might be good for private reflection. The Mass is about making real now what happened then and participating in it. The Mass makes present for us the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.
It is not bread we eat or wine we drink. It is the Body and Blood of Christ. More precisely, in what seems like bread and wine, the Risen and glorified Christ is totally and really present. They are not bread and wine any longer, they only look like it. They are the living Christ Himself.
When we are in the presence of the Eucharist, we are in the presence of Christ. But too often, how we talk and how we act does not show that clearly. Peter Kreeft tells a story of Isa, a devout Muslim, who asked John, a fellow student, “Do Catholics really believe that thing, that piece of bread, is not bread at all but Jesus Christ?” “We do,” John said. “Your church teaches that he is really present there, yes? That what’s there is the man who was God?” “Yes. The formula is “Body and blood, soul and divinity.” “And you believe that?” “Yes.” Isa made as if to say something, but stifled it. John assured him he would not be offended. Finally, reluctantly, Isa said, “I don’t understand.” “I understand how you feel. It sounds very shocking.” “No, you don’t understand. That’s not what I mean. You will take it as an insult, but I don’t mean it to be.” “I promise I won’t take it as an insult. But I really want to know what’s on your mind.” “Well then…I don’t think you really do believe that. I don’t mean to say you’re dishonest, but…” “I think I know what you mean. You find it shocking. You don’t see how you could ever get down on your knees before that altar.” “No, I don’t see how I could ever get up. If I believed that thing that looks like a little round piece of bread was really Allah Himself, I think I would just faint. I would fall at his feet like a dead man.” For a moment, John could say nothing. Then, after a while, just “Yes.”
Anyone who begins to grasp the dept of the love of Jesus for us, when we begin to really believe what we say about the Eucharist, we should be inspired to say the same. We would prepare for Him as for a most honored guest. We would find the time to spend with the One who stays with us. We will be willing to suffer with Him and for Him.
Finally, this miracle is not just about bread and wine becoming Christ. It is also about those of us who receive the Eucharist changing. It is about those who receive this Christ living in a way to change the world in which we live.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Holy Trinity B
June 7, 2009
The title of today’s feast can be misleading. This is not a day when we celebrate a Church dogma. Doctrines are important, but we don’t worship them. We only worship God.
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we have more wisdom about God and the world than the wisest person who lived before Christ. Before Jesus, wise people learned about God from the outside, from reflecting on the beauty of creation, for example, or thinking about human experience.
This is what the great philosophers and religious thinkers did: Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, Zoroaster. They dedicated themselves to looking at God from the outside. There is much truth in what they discovered, just as there would be a lot of truth in what an FBI agent would discover about you or me if he put under surveillance for a while. But if we were to sit down with that agent and honestly tell him everything he wanted to know, he would make much more progress and faster. And that is what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.
God was not satisfied with being partially or doubtfully known which is the only way our human efforts could lead to. He wanted us to know His heart, to reveal Himself to us, to show us His nature, essence, thoughts and desires. He has even given us the inside story on Himself. Through our faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit enables us not just to know about God, the way we know about some in a magazine article, but to know God the way we know a friend. And what we learn is that God is dynamic, personal and involved in our lives. In short that He is a Trinity of divine Persons.
Pope Benedict says it this way:
“Thanks to the Holy Spirit, who helps us understand Jesus’ words and guides us to the whole truth (cf. Jn 14:26; 16:13), believers can experience, so to speak, the intimacy of God himself, discovering that he is not infinite solitude but communion of light and love, life given and received in an eternal dialogue between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit- Lover, Loved and Love, to echo St Augustine.”
God wants us to know Him because He knows that the happiness we long for can only come from living in relationship with Him. When we experience stress, anxiety, exhaustion and depression it can be a sign that we have lost touch with God’s Word, that we have lost sight of His goodness, that we aren’t taking care of that relationship.
Let’s reflect on an experience.
There is a 56 year old woman who is a vibrant and fun-loving person. She loves her family and they return that love. She has been described by her children as “the glue that holds the family together.” She had severe back pain and an X-ray showed a broken vertebrae.
When she was in surgery they discovered cancer. Further tests showed the cancer had spread to her lungs. It had metastasized. Her daughter called a young woman friend and cried hysterically over the phone asking, “Why did God do this to her?” It is a question we have all heard during similar times of crisis and maybe it is a question we have asked at times in our own lives. It is a question we ask out of pain and confusion, when life takes a bad turn and threatens our faith.
Consider it a “Trinity question.” Who is our God? What is God like? When Jesus looked at what was coming His way that night of agony in the Garden He felt it was more than He could bear, so He asked God to take it away. But God wanted to stick it out with us, not pull the emergency break and get off. If Jesus had been given a quick exit that night, then we would feel even lonelier in our struggles and pain. Instead God stayed with us; Jesus showed in His obedience that no matter what physical or emotional pain we have, God is not a stranger to our pain: no stranger to emotional pain- Jesus cried; no stranger to physical pain- Jesus was broken on the cross. That is in the Scriptures.
What is not in the Scriptures is that God sends us pain an suffering to test our faith. After all, what good parent would do a thing like that to a child? And we do believe God loves us and that we are God’s children, don’t we? The letter to the Romans says it, “The Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God,…”
What is also not in the Scriptures is what some people say to others who are in pain to console them. “God never gives us more than we can bear.” When people say things like that, I imagine God pressing down on someone to test them but stopping just short of their breaking point. What kind of a God would do that? Here’s another one: “God helps those who help themselves.” People say that like it’s in God’s Word. When we are struggling and feeling lonely, we don’t need to hear about a God who will help us but only if we can first help ourselves.
No, life has its ways of testing us; sometimes giving us more than we can bear. God is the one who helps us carry the burdens. Not only so we can just bear up but so that we can even grow and mature in our struggles. God can bring us through to the other side of suffering stronger than when we first entered in. Now that is the One God in Three Persons that Jesus sends His disciples into the world to proclaim.
When Jesus send His disciples to baptize, it is in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That is God the Creator, the source of life who loves all that He has made. God the Christ, the God who took our flesh, walked the same journey of life right through death to resurrection. And God the Spirit, the very life of God.
So, how do we define the Trinity? Jesus tells us: “I am with you all days, until the end of the age.” Jesus has “defined” God for us, revealed God already with us. So when someone calls on the phone or cries on your shoulder and asks, “Why did God do this to me? What have I done to deserve this?” We can answer as the young woman I mentioned earlier did, “I don’t understand all this. But I know God didn’t put this suffering on your mother. God is with her in this. He chooses to be with us.”
That is from a young woman, not a theologian. And she just talked to her friend about the Trinity: God who loves all He has made. God who is with us in all things including suffering because He knows it personally. God who strengthens us.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Pentecost B
May 31, 2009
Almost everyone likes good fireworks shows. They are exciting, impressive and exhilarating. The first Pentecost had some spectacular fireworks.
The Apostles with Mary and the other disciples were gathered “in one place together.” We don’t know exactly where but it was probably somewhere near the Temple in Jerusalem since right after the fireworks, crowds started to gather. It may even have been the same large room where Jesus and the Apostles gathered for the Last Supper.
But they were all in one place when a thunderous noise like a strong wind, like a tornado, came from the sky. And then flames appeared. Flames of fire appeared out of nowhere spontaneously hovering in the air. And these flames divided up and started floating through the air until they came to rest on each of the people gathered. But the fireworks didn’t stop there.
All of a sudden the disciples started speaking in languages that they didn’t even know. A crowd had gathered by now with visitors from all over the world who were in Jerusalem for the feast. Each one heard them explaining the Gospel in their own language. It was dramatic and spectacular.
The images of wind and fire are not unique to Pentecost. Fire symbolized the presence of God sealing a lasting covenant with Abraham. Fire called Moses to the presence of God out the burning bush. A pillar of fire led the Israelites through the desert as they escaped from Egypt to assure them that in their journey they were led and protected by God. Fire also purified the prophets who were chosen to speak God’s word. And a perpetual fire burned near the altar in the Temple to witness that God had chosen to draw near to and stay with His people. For the same reason the candle burns near the tabernacle reminding us of the constant Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
From the beginning, as told in the book of Genesis, wind has also symbolized the power and the presence of God. Sweeping over the unformed waters, wind brought life, order and harmony. From that point on, wind would be seen in the Scriptures as the breath of God, the inspiration of God and a sign of God’s Spirit who blows wherever and whenever and in whomever God chooses.
This is the background to the coming of the Holy Spirit announced in a thunderous wind and tongues of fire coming to rest, not in a burning bush or near the altar in the Temple, but on every believer present. In that moment of wind and fire something new and different began to happen.
This original Pentecost is presented to us as an encouragement this day. But we would be wrong to conclude from the fireworks of the first Pentecost that this is the Holy Spirit’s ordinary way of acting in our life. In fact, it is just the opposite. God’s action in our life is most often gentle and hardly even noticeable at first.
The Gospel of John tells us that after His resurrection Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to His Apostles by breathing on them. Jesus quietly breathes on them. How does Saint Paul describe the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church? Like the soul of a body, powerful and essential but invisible and subtle.
Consider the example of Mary. Mary was there in that room, waiting with the Apostles for the coming of the Holy Spirit. She was the mother who had given birth to the Head of the Church in Bethlehem. Now she is the mother helping to give birth to the Body of the Church at Pentecost.
What was she doing? Certainly, she was praying with them. But we can guess she was probably also serving them, being a mother to them in their confusion and anxiety. They might have asked her about Jesus and listened, maybe for the first time, to the story of His birth and His childhood. Maybe this is when they heard about the Annunciation, the day when the angel came and explained that, “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you….You will conceive and bear a son.” She might have told them of the many conversations she had in her heart with the Holy Spirit after that day, the ones mentioned in the Gospel where it says, “And Mary kept all these things, contemplating them in her heart.”
This is the key. To contemplate is to go over an idea in the silence of your heart and in conversation with God. Cooperating with the Holy Spirit and becoming the mother of Jesus didn’t bring fireworks into her life; it brought meaning, mission, wisdom and courage. All of them virtues that take root and grow in the quiet center of the soul, just as seeds take root and grow in the unseen darkness of the soil. Quiet, gentle, unseen, yet powerful and transforming, that is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Blessed Mother Teresa put it well when she said: “God is the friend of silence. See how nature- trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls.” We might add that God needs silence to be able to touch our souls.
Chances are that this feast will pass without any of us hearing a driving wind or seeing flames hover over our heads. But we can still know fire in out bellies compelling us to a new love of God and neighbor. We can know a fire within making us want to excite others to the same love of God and neighbor. We can experience the wind at our back pushing us forward to fight the good fight, to stand up for what is right and good and holy.
God’s wind still blows; God’s fire still burns and enlightens. The Spirit of Jesus continues to breathe on us. For our part, we must be willing to be moved, to begin again to be the people God has made us to be.
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
And kindle in them the fire of you love.
Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created
And you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen!
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Sixth Sunday of Easter B
May 17, 2009
I am sure you remember that last week we considered love. This week the readings, once again, lend themselves to the same consideration. John spells it out: “In this is love: not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son.” And in the Gospel, we heard: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
A good place to begin then might be to ask ourselves to list those for whom we would “lay down” our lives. Who do you love so much that you would die for them?
Love is primarily an action. True, it can spur feelings, but action is what counts over words or feelings. Our love is really known by our deeds. C.S. Lewis wrote:
Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.” (Mere Christianity, 116)
I want to tell you a love story about a man named Thomas S. Vander Woude. He was a pilot during the Viet Nam war and after the war flew commercial airliners. When he retired, he liked to spend time farming and doting on his children and grandchildren. He and his wife, Mary Ellen, raised seven sons. One son became a priest. Another, their youngest, twenty-one year old Joseph, was born with Down Syndrome.
One day Joseph and his dad were working in the yard when tragedy struck. Joseph fell through a piece of metal that was covering a septic tank. His father heard him yell and ran to help. Seeing what had happened, he jumped in after him.
He quickly sank into the sewage but managed to life Joseph above his head to keep him above the muck. Mary Ellen heard the cries and called 911. They came to pull Joseph out but Thomas was unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital but they couldn’t save him.
It was a couple of days before they could tell Joseph what had happened to his father. When he heard the news and understood, he just closed his eyes and cried.
Over a thousand people were at the funeral. They remembered a man of uncommon kindness and generosity, a man who had died trying to save his son. He was not famous. He simply loved his family and loved his faith; he went to Mass every day. He donated money to anyone who needed it. He even co-signed a loan so a neighbor could buy a house. It was said that his last act was “the crown of a whole life of self-giving.”
Jesus says in the Gospel, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Love, once again, is God’s word to us today. It comes in the parting words of Jesus to His disciples. And it is amazingly deep: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” Then He follows with a challenge that is equally as deep, that seems impossible, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
In other words: As deeply as God loves His Son and as powerfully as Jesus then loves us, that is how we are to love one another. Jesus is asking of us nothing less than to love the world as God does.
Most of us probably feel we can never measure up to that standard that Christ is setting. We have enough trouble getting along with our neighbors, coworkers and family members. Like that woman who never says hello to you or the man who seems to pretend you don’t even exist. It’s unlikely you would jump into a septic tank for either of them!
“This I command you,” Jesus says. “Love one another.” But it’s a command the world has learned to ignore. And to be honest, so have Christians.
Love is harder, richer and deeper than we can imagine. It is giving when we know we will get nothing back. It is sacrificing when we know there is nothing to be gained. It is jumping into the pit when we are not sure we will get out. To love like this is the “fruit” that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel.
The fruit of knowing that God loves us is to take the strength that comes from that and turning it into love for another. God has loved us first and, in turn, we are to love one another.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fifth Sunday of Easter B
May 10, 2009
This section of the letter of John is something like the game Twister. God abides in us and we in God and loving brother and sister is loving God who loves Christ, who loves us. It is like having all the legs and arms twisted up. John not only speaks about love but shows it in how he writes. He intertwines the word love twenty-nine times in these fourteen verses. The words wind in and around each other until you can’t tell the relationships apart. But there is one thing for sure: we are all intertwined in God’s love. God’s love enfolds us, surrounds us, upholds us so that we are able to love one another.
Love is the connection in which we live. It is the material, the tension, the process and the product, a great tapestry that is life itself. Love is what holds all of us together, and when it really comes down to it, is what really matters. Love is the most powerful, universal force in the world. Poetry and literature have been obsessed with love since forever. People of all times have been on a search for love. And for John, the search ends where it begins: Love is from God and God is love. Notice that John says it in two ways. They are similar but not quite the same.
First, John says, love is from God. If you know love, you know God. If you want a sense of who God is, love someone. Love anyone. In loving another person you will get a glimpse of God. But we might object that loving in this world is dangerous and it can hurt in the deepest ways possible. How can this be of God? It is true that people have managed to distort and mess up even the most beautiful gift of God, loving one another. And our experiences of love, sometimes disappointing and painful, cannot contain God. That’s why John says it a second way. He does not say love is God. Rather he says, God is love. Love does define God; God defines love. God is love. God loves first. God loves through all the distortions. And God will love last. So if you want a sense of what love is, what it really is, you must look to God.
God has not shown us love in some great cosmic, abstract way. God has revealed love to us in a personal, intimate, concrete way: Jesus Christ. In Christ, God gives Himself to us and we are reunited with Him. This is love: When two separate persons belong to each other, friends, children and parents, spouses. So it is with God and His children.
Jesus shows the splendor of love: its healing power, the power of love to open hearts and minds. Jesus takes this loving to a new depth by taking on Himself all the pain of our loving. It cut through His skin and His soul like nails. It cut through his heart: betrayal, manipulation, violation. And by taking it to Himself, He shows us the true character of love. God is love. God loved first. God loved right through it all. God will love last.
We already learned weeks ago that this love has a special name, in Greek: agape. It is not how we love mac and cheese or our car or our house. We can love a walk on the beach and we can love our parents. All of these are real but very different. John uses the word agape all twenty-nine times. It is an unconditional love, amazing, boundless, sacrificial. God’s agape love is given no matter what we have done, no matter how much we have hurt or betrayed. God’s love is freely given no matter how much we have been betrayed or hurt. This love never considers the risk involved or the consequences of what would happen if you were left or what the personal benefits might be.
Maybe you are having trouble imagining such a love. That is because you are thinking of all the examples of human love you have eve known in your life and you have never known one that quite fits this picture. If you are, then are getting close to a glimpse of God’s love. God’s love is bigger, deeper, wider, more beautiful, more powerful that we can begin to imagine.
The love of God is like the ocean. No one has ever seen the whole ocean at once. We can breathe its salty air. We can taste it. We can dip our fingers and toes in it but only near the shore. And if there was in the middle of the ocean a fountain shooting streams up into the sky with tiny droplets spraying, then one of those small droplets might represent our love. They are part of the ocean. It is the same ocean, the same water, but only a small part of the whole. But don’t be fooled into some romantic idea of God’s love or the ocean. It is not always warm and predictable. It is not always easy and comfortable. But once exposed to it, it is irresistible. We long to trust ourselves to its power, to feel it surround us. There is nothing like it.
Let’s pray in this feast of love that we may have the grace to know its breadth and length and height and depth, to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourth Sunday of Easter B
May 3, 2009
This Sunday is often called “Good Shepherd Sunday” because of the Gospel. There we find Jesus saying, “I am the good shepherd (who)…lays down his life for the sheep.” It is likely that we have heard that so often that we miss its impact.
It is true that protecting a defenseless flock in open fields at night might involve times of danger. It is also understandable that a shepherd who owns the sheep would take risks to protect the sheep that a hired hand might not. But here the analogy breaks down. No shepherd willingly dies for sheep! A shepherd may accidentally lose his life responding in an emergency, but Jesus freely chooses to “lay down” His “life.”
This extraordinarily faithful Shepherd calls us, in turn, to be faithful members of His flock.
With this in the background, I would like to change images.
“Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply held religious belief- I don’t care what it is.” These words are attributed to Dwight Eisenhower. Some say they are a classic statement of what is referred to as “American civil religion.” Eisenhower himself was a Presbyterian.
Lots of people would agree with his words. They would say that religion is a private matter. It’s personal. It’s nobody’s business but your own. Are they right?
Peter wouldn’t say so. In his speech recorded in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles he makes it clear that the Christian faith has a very definite cornerstone, the very foundation of our faith. The cornerstone, of course, is Jesus Christ. To Peter, a person of “deeply held religious belief, it certainly does matter what that belief is.
Jesus Himself once told a story about the importance of having a firm foundation for our faith. In the Sermon on the Mount, He tells a parable about a wise man who built his house on a foundation of solid rock. This man’s house survived the strongest storms. This was not true for every house. Those who did not heed His teachings will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand: “The rains came and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell- and what a great fall it had!”
Great is the fall of those who try to build their religious faith without firm foundation. In times of trouble, such a faith simply cannot survive the storms.
So what does a firm foundation look like? It is much more than a loosely held private matter. It implies practice, spiritual discipline. That discipline expresses itself in, among other things, regular worship.
There are some interesting studies on the importance of going to church, not only for individuals but for society. Back in 1992, the Search Institute conducted a national survey. It established that young people who are involved in a community of faith are half as likely as those who are not involved to show “at-risk” behaviors. “At-risk” behaviors include such things as drinking, drugs, casual sex and suicide attempts. This conclusion comes not from a religious organization but a secular educational one. It brings home the image of Jesus as the cornerstone. You know that in a building the cornerstone is what the foundation rests on.
A very recent study showed that while attending religious education classes and youth groups was a good thing, the most decisive difference for whether the young remained connected to the Catholic Church as adults was whether their parents brought them to Mass each week.
Jesus has a role in society. Because of Jesus, many forces for evil and chaos are held away, to the benefit of everyone both those who believe and those who do not. Even atheists benefit from living in a society in which many are motivated by Christian values.
Remember the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, about George Bailey, the small-town banker. He was at the point of suicide when an angel allows him to see what his town would be like if he had never been born. It was a much darker, gloomier place and even had a different name. Imagine, if you can, what the world would be like if Jesus Christ had never been born.
Very likely without Jesus Christ and those who have followed Him, there would be no such thing as modern secular society that guarantees religious freedom for all. Many of the things we take for granted from universities to hospitals to social service agencies grew out of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Christians can become lazy or too quick to assume that faith will always be there like a remedy in the back of the medicine cabinet. If our faith is really going to make a difference, we need to build and live our lives on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ.
Our Christian faith is not just a personal preference or a private matter. It is nothing less than the cornerstone, the foundation, of our entire culture. Christian faith is a treasure to be cared for and passed on. Faith that is shared will never run out, in fact, the more we give it, the more we seem to have.
My friends, there are more than the usual storms of life out there. And the strength of their floods and winds is powerful. Houses built on sand will not stand. Only lives built on the sure foundation of Jesus Christ will weather these storms. Take a good long look at the foundation of you life and the foundation you are building for your children and grandchildren. It’s a matter of life and death.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Third Sunday of Easter B
April 26, 2009
Imagine being a disciple of Jesus in the beginning. They dropped everything to follow Jesus, teaching and preaching with Him for a few years. It was one adventure after another complete with danger, excitement, good times and bad. Then when things seemed like they couldn’t get better, they witnessed His horrible execution as a common criminal. As if that is not enough, then comes the news that the tomb is empty. Now they don’t even have the grave to go to and mourn. Then there are reports about some of the disciples having seen Jesus. They say He walked with them on the road and spoke to them about the Scriptures.
As they are anxiously talking about all of this, they are confronted by a man who comes to them with words of peace. Doubt is their first response. How difficult it must have been to try and get their minds around the possibility that Jesus Himself was standing right in front of them.
In a gesture of love, Jesus calmly offered His hands and feet as proof that it is Him. He invites them to touch Him and get in touch with the present moment. The disciples were outside themselves talking about the past and what it meant for the future. They had lost their center, being grounded in the present moment. Jesus helped them to refocus on now, what was happening right in front of them.
Anxiety is all about not being in the present. It focuses on “what ifs?” of the past or the future. When we are anxious we are not grounded and we fail to connect with God’s love and the gift of His Spirit within us. The invitation of Jesus to look at His hands and feet helped the disciples to focus on the present and see that He was right in front of them. It was as if He said, “Get in this moment with me…Yes, it is me.” With His presence He calmed their anxiety.
Presence has proven health benefits. People who have pets know about the joy and comfort their presence brings. Research has shown that pets help calm people, lower blood pressure and heart rate and people with pets visit doctors less often. One key aspect researchers says is that pets accept unconditionally and without judgment. God will forgive me if I suggest that in that they accurately reflect the attitude of God toward us: unconditional love.
In anxiety we stay so focused on what makes us anxious. Once the disciples were present to Jesus in the moment, they were able to hear God’s word of promise and grace. Their minds opened to understanding. You see, they did not understand that God’s promises were fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. They did not make the connection because of anxiety and doubt. It was only when they settled into the presence of Jesus, when their anxiety was calmed, that they were open to God’s amazing grace.
In this age so far removed from the first century, we do not have the privilege of seeing Jesus physically. We do not get to touch His hands and feet. But we have the record of those witnesses. We can see how the Scriptures are fulfilled and we have the presence of Christ in the Eucharist available to us even today.
Jesus said, “Look at my hands and my feet.” How do we see the hands and feet of Jesus today? How do we use our senses of sight, touch, hearing to enter into the grounding, calming presence of Jesus? First, it always involves trying to stay in the present moment, being aware of the people around us and what is right in front of us. It may be in hands extended in love and support. It may be offering food to someone at the food pantry. It may be knowing someone’s shoulder as strength. It can be walking with someone on their journey or walking the floor with a crying baby. However the presence of Christ comes, our acceptance of His presence opens our hearts and minds to calm our anxieties and know the forgiving love of God.
Presence is also healing and transforming. When Peter and John passed a beggar outside the Temple gates, they offered him their presence. They focused on him; they were present to him, connected to him. And in that connection, the man experienced the miracle of healing in the name of Jesus Christ. This man who was once at the mercy of others was transformed into a man leaping and dancing for joy. And now he entered the Temple to worship with the others. And the moment of connection allowed Peter to testify that God was continuing to act.
When we allow ourselves to be present to one another in the name of Jesus Christ, we enter a different space, one of grace. There is all the difference in the world between a half-hearted look at a child’s attempt at art and really looking at the child, touching her arm to feel and really listening. The second shows the child that she is loved and important. Loving presence helps calm another’s fears and allows them to experience the love and grace that comes from God. It can even make room for a miracle and bring the person to know joy and praise God.
When the disciples were settled enough for their minds to be opened to God’s word, Jesus sends them to announce to others, in His name, God’s grace in repentance and forgiveness of sins. Once we know the presence of God and His faithfulness, then can share it. We can pass on the peace we have known in God’s forgiveness. We become the hands and feet of Jesus for others.
When we, though imperfect as we are, know God’s presence, then God can be known through us. That is the power of presence and grace. May we allow ourselves the miracle of accepting the presence of Christ in our lives and then bringing that miracle to those we meet.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Easter
April 12, 2009
The heart of the Scriptures today is in the Gospel: an empty space. “They have taken the Lord from the tomb” say the women; and Peter and the other disciple go to see the empty tomb. The foundation of what we celebrate at Easter is emptiness and wonder. It is only slowly that they come to the realization that Jesus has been raised from the dead.
Let’s not misunderstand this: we are not talking about resuscitation. The divine breath is not merely breathed back into the body of Jesus. Instead, just as God called light from darkness at creation, God calls Jesus into a resurrected life, a new creation. The resurrected Lord will never die again. Death itself is swallowed up in God’s new life in Christ.
Do you get it? God’s life cannot be stopped by our sin. People had done the worst thing possible: they made sure Jesus the Son of God was dead and tucked safely away in a tomb. But in three days there is an explosion of God’s power. Stones cannot seal caves, guards cannot silence gentle women and death cannot hold down the life God pours into Jesus Christ. Easter means that God has won!
We can be assured that God’s power for life is stronger than any other power in the universe. God’s message is life. Christ is alive. How different our day-to-day lives would be if we believe this truth with our whole hearts!
Expectations may blind us. We may not be able to see what we aren’t expecting. Take Mary Magdalene for example. She is one of the closest disciples. She has seen the dead body of Jesus placed in the tomb. So when she finds the tomb empty, her first conclusion is that someone took the body. Even when she talks to angels, her focus is only on finding the dead body of Jesus. What she expects limits her understanding. Amazingly, even when the risen Christ Himself appears in front of her, she cannot identify Him. Jesus stand alive in front of her and she does not see Him! Her assumptions blind her.
So no wonder a two thousand year old miracle story may not make much sense to twenty-first century minds. We know dead means dead. Truth be told, some of us gather here because we always come to church on Easter, but we don’t expect things to change. Even though we are here today, Monday we will still have mortgage payments and taxes are still due on Wednesday. Tomorrow your arthritis will still hurt and the kids won’t give you and extra hour of sleep. Even though we might be able to pay our bills, we know lots of people are really hurting. Why would we suppose that something great will happen at Easter when many can barely afford a basket?
Here we are holding the picture of what we expect so closely in front of our eyes that we have no chance to see around it, to see what might be happening. What we expect is what we see.
The only chance is to hear Christ call each of us by name. Those who study human nature are quick to tell us that, for every person, the sweetest sound in world is the sound of one’s own name. Certainly it worked for Mary Magdalene. She was completely oblivious to the reality of the Easter miracle until the risen Jesus speaks her name, “Mary.” Then everything falls into place. In one wonderful moment she recognizes Jesus alive and her world is changed.
Everyone lives by one major story which seeps into our consciousness and gives an overall structure to how we see the world. The really large story of the Christian faith is the cross and the resurrection, love that leads to sacrifice and sacrifice that leads to resurrection. On the other hand, there is the over-reaching story that has taken over our culture, the one told over and over by advertisers. It is almost exactly the same except for one detail.
The story goes like this: buy this product and it will make you happy and fulfilled. They tell the story by showing the product, whatever it is, together with something that stirs up pleasurable feelings. Only on little detail makes this story different from Christian faith: it promises Easter without Good Friday.
Which story do we live by? Do we expect happiness from following Christ up to the cross by denying our selfishness and fulfilling God’s will? Or do we expect happiness from the right job, the right spouse, the right house, the right school, the right friends, the right clothes, the right amount of money put away?
Easter reminds us that Christ’s story is the true story. The resurrection proves that. Jesus Christ claimed to have the secret to eternal life, to a completely fulfilled life, to the kind of happiness that we long for in the deepest part of our being. Others before and after have made similar claims: Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Zoroaster, the modern gurus of the New Age spiritualities. But have any of them passed the test? Even one? Only Jesus Christ has won the final victory and shown that what He said is eternally trustworthy. He did this by rising from the dead! You can trust a man who rose from the dead!
Easter reminds us which story is true. There is no life without death. There is no crown without the cross. Only in love that endures to the end is found the life that lasts beyond all ends. Easter invites us to claim this story as our own once again.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Good Friday
April 10, 2009
We began Lent as Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert. He tempted Him to turn stones to bread; to perform a miracle by jumping down from the top of the Temple; to rule over the world through power and intimidation rather than through self-sacrificing love. All of these temptations, like all temptations, had something in common: the devil was trying to get Jesus to reject the plan of His Father for His life. They all asked Jesus to say, “my will be done” instead of “thy will be done.” But Jesus did not reject the plan of God the Father; He completed His mission exactly as the Father wanted Him to, in obedience, true humility and selfless love.
Now Lent is over and we have reached the climax of all human history, the moment when Jesus reverses original sin and ends the rule of the devil over the human heart. And now the devil comes back to tempt Jesus again. But this time it is different, Instead of trying to seduce Him with lies, as in the desert, he comes to Him with pain, psychological and excruciating physical pain. He tries to make His mission so hard, so painful that He would simply give up. He assaulted Him in the Garden where Jesus experienced emotional and spiritual agony. And then he assaulted Him through the humiliation of false trials, the heart-breaking betrayals and abandonment by His closest friends, the violence of the scourging and the awful agony of death by crucifixion.
At any point along the way, Jesus could have ended His tortures simply by saying, “not thy will be done, but my will be done.” Why didn’t He? Why did he endure all of this suffering?
For love of you and me. All of this for love of you and me.
First, to pay the price for our sins as Isaiah tell us: “He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins...he shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses.”
Second, to win back for the human race the eternal life that original sin had lost, as the reading from Hebrews tells us; “He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
Third, to make sure we never, ever have to suffer alone again in this fallen world, which bring us so much sorrow. Again, as Hebrews says, Christ is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” and in Him we are able “to receive mercy and find grace for timely help.”
He suffered for us. We place crucifixes in every church and in our homes so that we never forget or doubt His love. And we place the Eucharist in every tabernacle throughout the world to show us that He remains with us, still loving us.
Many years ago King Edward VII of England visited a town and the town brought together a choir of 11, 000 children to sing “God Save the King” to welcome him. Afterwards, a little girl was found crying. Her teacher knelt down to comfort her and said, “What’s wrong, child? Didn’t you get to see the king?” “Yes,” the little girl answered between sobs, “But the king didn’t see me.”
That can never happen to us. Our King is unlimited and from high on the cross, He is always looking at us, for us, thinking of us, loving us, strengthening us.
This Good Friday, Jesus wants us to know without any doubt that His love for each of us is total, eternal, personal and unlimited. We need to know that we are loved simply for who we are, not for what we can do. That is the most basic need of human nature. And we have another, we need not only to be loved but also to love. Unless we learn to love as Christ loves, selflessly, constantly, to the point of sacrifice, we will not fulfilled. The crucifix is the sign of Christ’s love but also show us how to love.
How can we make this real? Already the Spirit in our hearts is giving us some ideas, we need only to listen.
Maybe we need to forgive someone who doesn’t deserve to be forgiven as Jesus forgave those who betrayed Him.
Maybe we need to rip out, with the help of God’s grace, a destructive habit of self-indulgence or disobedience to the will of God.
Maybe we need to reach out to someone who doesn’t know Christ and tell them of the love of God for them.
Maybe we need to say yes to what God is asking, maybe to a vocation to be a priest or religious, to be open to having another child, or to put our time, talents and treasure more fully at the service of God, His Church and those in need.
Today as we receive Holy Communion, the same Body and Blood that suffered for us on the cross, let us thank God for His love and ask for the strength to love as He does.
Nothing would please Him more than to answer that prayer.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Holy Thursday
April 9, 2009
The season of Lent officially ended with the beginning of this Mass. Now we have entered the sacred Triduum that forms the center of our liturgical year and celebrates the central mysteries of the Christian faith.
Each Holy Thursday, the readings are the same: Exodus 12, First Corinthians and John 13 with the words and example of Jesus at the Last Supper.
What we celebrate tonight on Holy Thursday puts us in contact with three thousand and five hundred years of salvation history. With this Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we are obeying the command Jesus gave at the Last Supper. We heard it in the second reading, “Do this in remembrance of me.” And at that Last Supper, two thousand years ago, Jesus was giving a new meaning to the Passover, ritual meal that had been celebrated by the Jews ever since the time of Moses in 1500 B.C.
The Passover celebration, which our Jewish brothers and sisters are celebrating now, was established by God Himself as we heard in the first reading. It was established so they would never forget all that God had done for them: how He had freed them from slavery in Egypt and led them to the Promised Land. The Passover was a remembrance of that, but it is a sacred remembrance, not just a memory, so it also renews the special relationship of the Chosen People with God.
In the same way, Jesus commanded His Church to continue ordaining priests and celebrating Eucharist. The Eucharist is a remembrance of what He has done for His people: how He saved us from sin and death and opened the way for us to enter eternal life. And as a sacred remembrance, it also renews and makes present the sacrifice of Christ. Our celebration tonight, in fact every Mass, is not just a trip down memory lane, it draws aside the curtain of time and space so that what is past is actually made present for us today.
We might call this feast a night to remember. Of all the great acts that Jesus performed in His lifetime there was only one He asked us to remember. That one was what Saint Paul speaks about concerning the institution of the Eucharist. We remember what Jesus has done for us: that He suffered, died, rose from the dead and sent us the Holy Spirit. No wonder the Second Vatican Council calls the Mass the “summit and source” of our Christian life. Here we are fed and nourished so we and face the harsh realities of life. Here we are to be transformed to be more like Christ.
Why is God so intent on reminding people of all He has done?
We need to be reminded of God’s great love that sacrificed His own Son in order to save us because the challenges of life tend to give us tunnel vision. Let’s face it, life is tough. We have many joys and delights but they don’t erase our crosses. We live in a fallen world of injustice, hardship and loss. It hurts sometimes. Sometimes it hurts a lot. We ourselves are fallen. We lose our tempers, give into temptations, get involved in things we shouldn’t. When we do these things, we add to our own misery and the misery of those around us. And in the midst of all these difficulties, it is hard to remember the bigger picture: That God never gives up on us and that He can always bring us through our Good Fridays into Easter.
On this holy night the Church, instead of giving us one of the stories of the Last Supper from the Gospels, presents us with the disturbing picture of the Lord kneeling before His friends to wash their feet in an act of humility and service.
Just imagine the scene as Jesus take a pitcher of water stoops down and begins washing the feet of the disciples. He teaches them and us that true freedom and new life are not won by ruling over cheering crowds from high places or by multiplying offerings on temple altars but by walking with and serving the poor and lowly along the way.
On this holy night as Jesus drank from the Cup of His Blood and stooped to wash feet, the voice of God speaks to us through His own flesh and blood, “As I have done for you, so you must also do.” What we should hear through the ages is, ‘You must remember His sacrifice in the Mass, but you must also remember His command to go out and serve the world.’
At the Last Supper, Jesus teaches us that true authority in the Church comes from being a servant, from laying down our lives for our friends. His life is a feast for the poor and for sinners. It must be the same for those who receive the Lord’s Body and Blood. We are to become what we receive. From the Eucharist must flow a genuine care for our neighbors and for strangers.
This is our Passover from sin to freedom and death to life. Jesus tells us that He is the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14.6). When His Way of service is not our way, faith in what He taught is difficult to come by. When His Truth is not our truth, faith is difficult to come by. When the Life to which He calls us is not the life we are living, faith is difficult to come by.
This is the challenge and the invitation of this holy night. Accepting the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist means accepting His Way, His Truth, His Life as our own.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Palm Sunday B
April 5, 2009
Today we remember when Jesus entered the city where He would meet hostility and violence and He is showing the powers that He is not afraid of them. He is not afraid of their malicious and slanderous words or their power to crush and destroy Him.
What an insignificant figure He would make. Jesus enters the city without any fancy trappings, with the cloaks of simple people on the colt. In the Gospel Jesus doesn’t have very much: He borrows a boat from which to preach and a room to eat the Passover with His disciples. Even His tomb will be borrowed.
Jesus doesn’t draw attention by displays of power or because He is spectacular but because He holds out hope to the weary and hopeless who have suffered under the dominance of the religious, military and economic powers of the world.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian killed by the Nazis, warned of “cheap grace,” if we do not take seriously how terrible sin is and our call to serve.
This week, we disciples of Christ are called to follow and die with Him; to die to sin and self. This week must be also be kept in focus. The full story is revealed on Easter when Jesus defeated death and was raised to new life. We should be able to see some of our own lives this week in the sufferings of Christ and we can also experience the transforming power of our God who raised the dead to new life.
The Gospel of Mark that you just heard spend some time describing the directions of Jesus to the two disciples and their search for the colt Jesus would ride on. They are given a very ordinary job. Earlier two disciples has asked to sit on thrones to His right and to His left.
Jesus is the “teacher” and He continues to teach. The crowd is looking for a glorious king. Jesus sitting on a donkey is saying clearly He is not that kind of king and those who follow Him will be asked to serve, not in wonderful crowd-pleasing ways but in ordinary things. The disciples of Jesus must be willing to be “donkey getters” for the Lord, willing to serve in simple and humble ways. The way we follow Christ is often by performing humble, routine and tiring tasks.
So we should ask ourselves:
What is there about Jesus that draws me to Him and keeps me following Him?
What can I do to reflect His simplicity and humility in my life?
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
Fifth Sunday of Lent B
March 29, 2009
We live in a technology-centered world and we pride ourselves on being able to take care of our own problems. By itself there is nothing wrong with that until we try to apply it to our spiritual lives. We can forget that as Christians what matters most is not what we are able to do for God or for ourselves, but what God has done and wants to do for us. Jesus is first and above all our Savior, not our consultant.
Jeremiah makes this clear in the first reading. Through the words of the prophet, God explains that He will make an everlasting covenant with us. He will plant the law of freedom and inner peace in our hearts. He will forgive our sins and remember them no more.
The letter to the Hebrews reminds us of the same. Jesus does not point out how to reach eternal life and then send us on our way as if we could make the journey by our own efforts. Rather, through His life, death and resurrection, He becomes the “source of eternal salvation.” It comes from Him, not from us.
And in the Gospel, we see that it is the total love and obedience of Jesus, even to dying on the cross that is the turning point in all of history. What God has done for us in Jesus matters more than anything we can possibly do for God. Pope Benedict puts it this way,
“It is easy to be entranced by the almost limitless possibilities that science and technology place before us; it is easy to make the mistake of thinking we can obtain by our own efforts the fulfillment of our deepest needs. This is an illusion. Without God, who alone bestows upon us what we by ourselves cannot obtain
(cf. Spe Salve, 31), our lives are ultimately empty. People need to be constantly reminded to cultivate a relationship with him who came that we might have life in abundance” (Discourse to bishops in Washington, D.C., 17 April 2008).
Jesus did make it clear that there is a condition for being His follower. That condition is bearing the cross. “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me” (Luke 9.23). And as His passion draws near, He stresses the same condition, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12.24).
To be a Christian is to be where Christ is: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also my servant will be” (John 12.26). And where is Jesus? He is pouring out His life for others on the cross, giving Himself for the good of others. Remember last week? In this we see and know the self-forgetful love of God. This is the lesson of the cross and of the Eucharist we celebrate which extends the sacrifice of Christ through history and brings it to us.
And that is also where we should be: giving our lives for God and out neighbors. The great commandment Jesus gives us is to love others as He has loved us. We see the example of that on the cross and we hear the lesson in His words at the Last Supper, “A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13). To be a true Christian means not just wearing a cross or hanging one on the wall but bearing the sign of the cross in how we live our lives.
From the outside looking in, all this can seem like unnecessary risk, even foolish. Yet each act of sacrifice for others or for God, as Jesus says, “produce much fruit” and preserve our lives “for eternal life.” When “eternal life” is used in John’s Gospel, it is not speaking so much about the future life of Heaven as the present life. It means we draw from a deep well of life and meaning and we come to know a joy and peace that cannot be obtained by human effort alone. One who observes from outside will never be able to understand fully what Jesus means, only those who put His saying into practice do.
Haven’t we all enjoyed the fruits of the sacrifice made for us by others, parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors? Those who worked long hours to house and feed us, who gave up their time for us when we were in need?
When the Greeks came asking to see Jesus He replies, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” The “hour in John’s Gospel is the time for both His suffering and glorification. We can understand something of what the “hour” means in the Gospel if we think of our own experiences. One man said that his “hour” came when he found out the company he worked for was cheating its customers. He took a stand and lost his job. A teenager says his friends are constantly getting drunk and he does not want to join them, so he has lost those friends. Hours are not always sixty minutes. Our hour comes when who we are is on the line; when we are called on to make a sacrifice; when we have to make a decision that will cost us. The “hour” often puts our choices at odds with others and we must decide if we will live out what we believe.
The Greeks, who are not identified in the Gospel, will get to see Jesus in His “hour” of suffering and glory. They will see that He does not back down or compromise but enters His hour freely. While Jesus will admit that He is “troubled,” fear will not conquer him. His approaching death was no easy matter for Him. We are the ones who benefit from the willingness of Jesus to face His hour and come through it completely faithful to God.
Jesus is a completely faithful servant to God, the One who shows total generosity, willingness to give up everything for us, holding back nothing in reserve. He shows us that defeat and even death can open up new possibilities. Where we would see endings and lose trust, He offers hope.
But, I repeat, from the outside looking in all of this seems foolish. It is only when we follow Him and take up the cross every day that we begin to understand. It is only when we meet our hours of decision with courage that we know His power. It is the way to eternal life, the joy and peace we want in our lives.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourth Sunday of Lent B
March 22, 2009
You heard in the first reading that God allowed the people to return to Jerusalem after their exile. Why did He allow the return when they were the ones who had been unfaithful to His love?
They had started worshipping other gods, breaking the commandments and disobeying the prophets. As a result of their sin, they suffered the consequences: they were conquered and taken into exile. Sin always does damage both to us and to those around us (think the world-wide economic crisis). While they were in exile, many forgot God completely. But even in the face of that, God did not give up on them. He sent more prophets to give them hope. He promised to restore them and, when the time was right, He did. Why? Because God’s love, God’s faithfulness, does not depend on our being worthy. He does not love us because we are perfect; he perfects us because He loves us.
This is the good news of the Gospel, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3.16). Saint Paul makes it even clearer, “God…because of the great love he had for us… even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ.”
Part of our problem in understanding such love is the word “love” itself.
The New Testament was written in Greek not in English and Greek has at least four different words for the single English word “love.”
The first and most basic word in Greek is “storge.” This means natural affection, the bond we feel because of some natural connection. It can be sweet and superficial, such as I love ice cream, and it can also be deep and apply to the bond we have with family members. It does not come up very much in the Bible.
The second is “eros.” This is the love we talk about when we say that someone has “fallen in love.” It is passionate with intense emotions. It can apply to romantic love or the love a sportsman has for a sport or the passion of an artist. What is common is that is that it tends to carry us away even to doing unreasonable things. We need God’s grace to channel it and use the passion in a good way.
The third word for love is “philia.” This is when people share a common interest or ideal and is most commonly used for friendship. It is not instinctual affection or passion. The key characteristic is that the people are equals. It would not be used to describe the relationship between a father and a son or a master and a slave. This word does show up in the New Testament. Jesus uses it for His disciples at the Last Supper. God’s grace not only forgives our sins but raises us; it makes us like Him. It is like if we could take our favorite pet and give him the ability to interact on a human level. We are friends of Jesus!
The fourth word for love, the one used more in the Bible than all the others combined, is “agape.” Probably the best translation is “Christ-like love.” This is word in today’s readings, “God so loved the world…because of the great love he had for us.” It is also the word used in the Great Commandment, “love one another as I have loved you.” This is the love that focuses on doing good to others, serving them, helping them in their needs regardless of how I feel or what I might get in return. It is generous love, self-giving love. This is the love of Jesus from Bethlehem to the cross. He did not pour out His life as a response to passion but because we needed it. When Saint John says, “God is love,” this is the word he uses.
God is completely self-forgetful, completely focused on our good, happiness and fulfillment. That is why He created us: not for His happiness but for ours. That is why He forgives us as often as we need to be forgiven. That is why He offers Himself to us in the Eucharist. That is why He carries our crosses with us, never leaving us to suffer alone.
And since we were created in God’s image, this God who is love, we will find the fulfillment we long for as we gradually learn to love in this same self-forgetting, Christ-like way.
This is the heart of the Gospel. It is to this love that Jesus, lifted up on the cross, draws all people too. We should settle for nothing less. We can settle for nothing less.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Third Sunday of Lent B
March 15, 2009
The Ten Commandments have become, for some, a rallying cry to return to a more simple understanding of what is right and wrong. James Madison supposedly wrote years ago, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of…each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God” (on the controversy see Robert Ally “Public Education and the Public Good,” William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Summer 1995, pp.316-318). Whether or not Madison said this, many think he should have.
The Ten Commandments are part of the covenant between God and His people. Living them is how we show our loyalty to God. Living them is an expression of our love for God. What are some of the useful implications of the commandments for people today? They look very simple yet behind each of them is a deep sense of life in God.
The first three commandments have directly to do with our relationship with God. The final seven have to do with our relationship with one another. Some commentators have said of the final seven that “they come from a people too busy with survival to worry much about motivation. They had no time or energy for endless self-analysis on a psychiatrist’s couch. Only two deal with attitudes: “You shall not covet…’ All the rest are actions: murder, adultery, theft, lying, disrespect. Hebrew people were like most of the world’s people today. We are a departure from the norm. We are the first people to afford the luxury of probing our psyches for cause of our discomfort. We fret over lingering effects of long-ago incidents; most of the world simply has to get on with living. The commandments of Moses focus on how we deal with each other, not how we feel about it” (Bob Burrows, St. David’s United Church, West Vancouver, B.C.).
One way to read all of the commandments is to see them as an elaboration and application of the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). The commandment on the Sabbath, for example reminds us not to let our work become our god. The commandment not to murder remind us not to let out enemy become our god making us forget our duty to all God’s children. The commandment not to covet tells us not to let our neighbor’s possessions become our god. In other words, each commandment reminds us who God is and who we are.
You will be relieved to know I am not going to try and cover all ten of the commandments. Some of you are thinking I should be near the end already! So let’s consider the commandment to “Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.” We shorten it to “Rest and be thankful.”
Resting and being thankful are not things Americans do all that well. We look with admiration on New York City as “the city that never sleeps.” And respect sayings like “time is money.”
Several years ago, a man named James Gleick wrote a book called Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything. In it he makes the point that our daily lives are accelerating exponentially. We are like kids on a merry-go-round, lying flat on our backs looking up at the clouds, while some mischievous friend goes charging around in a circle, spinning us so fast, we risk losing our lunch. A reviewer of the book on Barnes and Noble’s website summarizes:
We have become a culture that sleeps less, compulsively presses the door-close button in elevators, opts for speed-dial on our telephones, and day trades on the Internet. We multitask. Our attention spans have dwindled. We rely on the secondhand on our watches and clocks. We absolutely hate to wait, and long to fit as
much as we can in as little time as possible.
It happens that the Bible has a cure for this. It is one known to all of us but one we are just as likely to disregard as an old-fashioned idea. It’s the concept of sabbath and it’s the Third Commandment. Imagine taking one day in seven to rest and be thankful!
The keeping of the sabbath is taking on a different kind of identity, one grounded in God’s freedom. And it is amazingly practical. It has kindness and compassion at its center. It is God’s antidote to stress and burnout. It is also the world’s first fair-labor law. The simple truth is we need the sabbath in order to function. Psychologist Rollo May said, “It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.”
There is a story called “sharpening the saw.” It’s a little parable of two lumberjacks who are laboring hard to cut down a mighty tree, using one of those cross-cut saws. Back and forth they pull their saw, their motions synchronized with each other in perfect rhythm. Yet, the longer they work, the less effective their labors become. Each stroke of the saw takes less of a bite out of the tree trunk. Still the men keep sawing. What they need to do is stop and sharpen the saw. Yet there is something hypnotic about the rhythm of their work. The more tired they get, the easier it is to imagine that if they just work a little harder, they’ll finish the job.
That is what the sabbath is for: to sharpen the saw (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey).
The Lord’s Day, why don’t you give “rest and be thankful” a try? Try stepping away for just one day. Enjoy the life God has given you. Hold hands with someone you love. Enjoy a good meal. Go for walk. Know that life is short and love is eternal. Rest and be thankful.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Second Sunday of Lent B
March 8, 2009
How did you do for the first full week of Lent? If you did well, congratulations! If not, don’t let that discourage you from starting now.
The season of Lent is a time when we are on the road to crucifixion and resurrection. This is not a road we are called to travel on our own but a road on which we follow Jesus.
Today’s Gospel reading is a turning point in Mark’s gospel, where the journey started for Jesus and where it should begin for us. Just before this, Jesus had spoken to His disciples for the first time about what was ahead in Jerusalem and then “he called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’”(Mark 8.34) At this point He takes chosen disciples up on a mountain “and was transfigured before them.” It is meant to be a reminder in the darker times to come of who Jesus really is.
Sure we say we already know who Jesus is. But on our journey through life, in times of failure or guilt, disappointment or confusion, we may forget. Then we are to remember the heavenly voice that says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” Listen to Him even if the words seem strange, hard and unbearable, like the word of the cross.
When things are running smoothly and all is going well, it’s easy to believe in the God who is enthroned in Heaven kindly looking over the world. But when things are not going so well, what then?
Our first job during Lent is to think more often than usual about God. That is exactly what the devil tempts us not to do by making us too busy. Instead, he wants us to become obsessed with our problems, the evils in the world, our shrinking bank accounts and IRA’s, our self-centered ambitions, the problems other people cause. He knows that if we think less about God, the less we will trust Him. And if we trust God less, we are more likely to walk away from Him, reject His commandments and words. That is what sin is: a walking away from God, a breakdown in our trust of God. And sin is what the devil uses to enslave us, to poison our hearts, darken our minds and bury time bombs in our lives.
But Saint Paul in the second reading steps in to give us a shield against discouragement and frustration. He writes to the Romans, and to us, one of the most famous sentences: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Then he points out that the whole message of Christ’s death and resurrection is, to put it simply, that God is, without any doubt, entirely for us. Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, suffered and died on the cross not because He had sinned but because we have sinned. This is how much God loves us. And in the resurrection, God proves that this love is more powerful than any evil and even more powerful than death. When we remember that God, with His power and mercy, is on our side, that He is for us, all our problems and difficulties look entirely different. Then it becomes much easier to trust Him and follow where He leads.
That said, we will have at least one area of our lives where we find it hard to trust God, one are where we have chosen to do our own thing. Maybe in other areas we do fairly well at trusting God and obeying Him. But as long as there is one part that we have not put into God’s hands, we are spiritually tied down. Remember, even one string can keep a mighty eagle trapped on the ground. Lent is a good time to identify the areas where we find it hard to trust God. It’s a time to cut that string. We can do that in three easy steps.
First, identify the problem area or areas. That is relatively easy. The problems that cause us frustration, stress, sadness and anger are most likely connected somehow to the things we don’t want to trust God about.
For example, some marriages run into difficulties for what seem like no reason at all. But, in fact, the couple is not following the teaching of the Church on contraception and not trusting God in that area of their lives. And not trusting in one area flows over into other areas.
Second, make a good confession. In a good confession, God cleans off the grit and grim built up by our habits of selfishness and lack of trust. Then we can see God and ourselves more clearly.
Third, make simple prayers of trust in the silence of your heart. “Jesus, I trust in You; You can handle this; show me what to do.”
In this Mass, by renewing His sacrifice on the cross, Jesus renews His commitment to each of us. Let us renew our trust in Him. After all, if He is for us, who can be against us?
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
First Sunday of Lent B
March 1, 2009
Why not make Lent a kind of personal retreat? Most cannot pick up, leave all responsibilities behind and go on retreat. But you can take a hold of the time that is given and make the best use of it. I will try to make each week’s homily a kind of retreat talk providing something for reflection. That will be six weeks, plus a meditation on the Eucharist for Holy Thursday, on the sufferings and death of Jesus on Good Friday and finally on the new life we have in Christ on Easter.
You should spend some time in prayer each day. Use a break in the day for a few minutes of reflection or to pray the rosary. Step off the treadmill of life and follow the steps of Jesus which lead to the places where He forgave, fed and cured those who needed healing. These steps take us to His cross for salvation and ultimately to the new life of the resurrection.
Here are some thoughts for our consideration from the readings today. Noah’s ark is all about renewal in the mercy of God. As the waters of the flood cleansed the earth, so the waters of Baptism cleanse us from sin. In the Gospel Jesus goes into the desert and having stepped away from the routine of daily life, He is met by temptation. There is no escape from temptation. We are presented with the same very human temptations but Jesus gives us the power to walk away if we focus on His grace and example.
So Lent is an opportunity to step aside from the ways of the world but never to escape. Faith does not eliminate temptations but strengthens us to face them and Jesus is our example.
Let’s step back for a few minutes and consider the temptations of Jesus. To do this we have to go beyond the Gospel of Mark since he doesn’t give us any details.
To fully appreciate the temptations of Jesus, we need to see how ordinary human beings are tempted and then see how that applies to Him. And then, while our temptations are less dramatic, they can be traced to their origin in those of Jesus.
Within us there is a divide between what we are and what we do. We find that we cannot totally forgive without something remaining of the hurt, pain and dislike. We can never completely rejoice without a hint of sadness. We don’t entirely applaud the success of another without a trace of envy. We don’t love another completely without a pocket of self-love. All of that is the result of sin.
It was different for Jesus. Because His divinity completely informed His humanity, His personality was whole. Jesus did exactly what He was; He was totally what He did. When Jesus forgave, He did it without qualification, as God forgives. Jesus did not just rejoice; He was joy. He did not just show mercy; He was mercy. He did not say: “I will show you the way,” He said: “I am the way.” He did not say: “I will tell you the truth,” He said, “I am the truth.” He did not say: “I will show you how to live,” He said: “I am the life.”
The temptation to turn stones to beard was not about bread at all. Jesus would later multiply bread at will and even change bread into His Body. The temptation was about the condition of being human. He had accepted the will of the Father to be human, would He now ask for a divine exception?
For us that is also the temptation to reject the human condition and all it implies. Do we accept that even suffering and death are part of being human or do we expect God to step in and free us from being totally human and if He doesn’t we grow angry or disappointed? Are we content to be creatures rather than God knowing that we do not completely control our lives or our destiny? Or do we constantly fight for control and treat the world and other people as if we are lord and master?
The temptation to worship Satan in return for all the kingdoms presented a false choice. They belonged to His Father and He could have them anytime He chose. The temptation was about compromising the wishes of God.
Here lies the temptation to make a good result justify evil means. Do we make what sound like good excuses to do or say what we know to be wrong because we think something good may come of it? We need to remember that not only the result must be good but the way I get to it, the means I use, must also be good.
The temptation to test God by attempting suicide was maybe the most subtle and the most devious. When someone says: “Prove that you love me,” that love is already threatened to the core. Love will not survive such a deep mistrust.
Do I really believe in God’s personal care for me or do I constantly want Him to prove it? Is it God I love or the things I think He can do for me?
So there you are for this week. There is plenty to think and pray about. And it is best done in some silent moments.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time B
February 22, 2009
This is the last Sunday before Lent begins and the Gospel could hardly be more appropriate. The miracle in Mark is in a story where Jesus claims the power to forgive sins. And the crippled man himself is cured thanks to the faith and determination of his friends.
And in the first reading, Isaiah invites us to turn our attention away from our memories and toward the new things that God has planned for us.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been a long time since my last confession. I can’t remember when it was.”
Catholics sometimes forget about or simply ignore the wonderful power of the sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation. Today’s Scripture remind us of a great opportunity: finding newness of life in God’s complete forgiveness of our sins. Through confession and absolution, God becomes oblivious to the sins of the past; He remembers them no more. And God works this unearthly power on earth through humble, human means. He does it in a way that is visible, certain and easy. But still people avoid the sacrament because they don’t understand it.
Think about the Gospel we just heard. Some scribes were asking themselves, “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?” They were partly right. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “Only God forgives sins. Since he is the Son of God, Jesus says of himself, ‘The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,’ and exercises this divine power: ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ Further, by virtue of his divine authority he gives this power to men to exercise in his name” (CCC 1441; cf. Mk 2:7, 5, 10; Lk 7:48; Jn 20:21-23). After Christ rose from the dead, he came to the apostles and breathed on them saying: “Receive the holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them” (Jn 20:22b-23a).
This power to bring God’s forgiveness continues in the Church today in the sacrament of Penance which is given to us for the forgiveness of sins committed after Baptism. Also called Confession or Reconciliation, by whatever name it is called, God gives this sacrament for our salvation, our healing and our renewal. Like the spiritual and physical healing in today’s Gospel, confession is visible, certain and easy.
Some people, however, question the sacrament. They wonder why they need to tell their sins to a priest when they can just say them to God alone. We are always free to speak to God wherever we are- but think about the conditions of the Gospel. The four men wanted to bring the paralyzed man to Jesus- a visible act. He did not simply pray in his room but needed contact with the Lord. The personal encounter of the man with Jesus gives us an image of our personal encounter with Christ in the sacraments- something like that is impossible if we just stay home.
Others think, “How can you be so certain that God forgives?” It’s true that sometimes people are presumptuous of God. It would be presumptuous to think that God forgives if the person is not sorry, does not resolve to avoid sin or do penance for sin. Yet we have the certainty of God’s forgiveness when these conditions are met and through the priest saying, “I absolve you.”
Some may think confession seems too easy. That seems so for the divine power working but on the human side, it was not so easy for Christ. The cost of forgiveness is His suffering and death.
And the sacrament can be difficult for us personally. Some find it extremely difficult not only to admit they have sinned but to admit to a priest. And especially hard is to resolve not to sin again. Conversion of heart hurts; we are supposed to have hearts broken and contrite. But we have to admit, confession is easier than suffering the punishment we deserve.
We need to focus on God’ mercy, knowing that God is kind and merciful, slow to anger and full of compassion. When we have hearts focused not on ourselves but on the mercy of God, confession becomes easier.
The effect of a good confession is a sense of newness, whether we feel a great high or not. Through confession we come into the awesome mercy of God who makes all things new.
Now there is something to do for Lent. And I promise it will unleash the power of God in your life.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
February 15, 2009
It’s hard for us to imagine having a sickness that is so dreadful and so threatening that you are officially excluded from society, including your family. Imagine being quarantined with groups of others having the same disease. Imagine being required to wear torn clothing and to let your hair grow long and loose so you can be easily identified. Imagine having to cry out, “Unclean, unclean,” whenever you saw someone who did not have the same disease.
Imagine that your only hope was someone like Jesus. Maybe that is where we should start. Is it really using our imagination to think that Jesus is our only hope?
Today the name “leprosy” is used for Hansen’s disease but in the time of Jesus it referred to several types of skin disease. The leper broke the law in approaching Jesus, so great was his need and his confidence that Jesus could heal him. Jesus, in turn, had no fear of the leper or of the law that required his isolation. And while He could have healed him with a word, He performs the healing by touching him.
There is a lot in the Bible about cleanliness but not as we understand it. They had developed a complex system of “cleanness” and “uncleanness.” But it was strictly religious and ceremonial. A person could become “unclean” in hundreds of unlikely ways, such as eating the wrong thing or touching the wrong thing. And, to make matters worse, uncleanness was contagious. Jesus ignored all of this and insisted that true uncleanness was a matter of the heart.
It might help our imagining if we saw ourselves represented by the leper as we stand before God. Have you even felt unclean? Do you feel unworthy of God’s favor? Some are held captive by feelings of guilt. Maybe you are burdened by some secret cause of shame. Perhaps you live in fear that something you have done will become known. Our hearts are often confusing places of so many different and conflicting feelings. We can say with Saint Paul that we do not understand when we fail to do the good we intend and do the evil we wanted to avoid. Then our prayer should be from Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” (v.10)
The Gospel is good news for all of us. No matter where we find ourselves we can approach God with confidence knowing that we will find acceptance, love and healing. God does not wait for us to meet some standard of cleanness, confessing our need is enough. And God’s love is no ordinary love; it is a love that transforms us.
Finally, a confession that I am sure you can understand. When I was in elementary school, one of the last stops on the bus was to pick up some children, one a girl classmate, in front of their house. By then the bus was full and we had to move in and sit three to a seat. But all of us tried our best to decline because these kids had “cooties.” They did not announce they were unclean, but we did! I know now that their only sin was to be poor and it brings pain to my heart and tears to my eyes to think of the pain we inflicted on those children.
Once we have known God’s acceptance and love, we must be the first to reach out and touch others with the same welcoming love. In that love there is also a power we share with Jesus, we can heal. We can raise people from their lowly places, wipe away their guilt and ease their pain.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal used only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
February 1, 2009
We all know that the pendulum of what is acceptable in fashion swings back and forth. It is the reason you save both the narrow ties and the wide ties, why there are short skirts and long skirts. It is also true in how to raise a child going from rigid rules to simply “going with the flow.” It happens in religious attitudes too and in our thinking about God. Many older people can remember being raised with the idea of a vengeful God who seemed anxious to punish every small sin. God was seen as a large eye that watched everything. The pendulum has swung to the opposite: there is no watchful eye of God, but our loving Father. And His Son is often shown smiling, even laughing.
The Gospel for today gives us a picture of Jesus as a man of strength and authority. The place is a synagogue in Capernaum. The service would have resembled our Liturgy of the Word with prayers, readings from Scripture and a teaching.
One way the teaching could have happened was for the rabbi or a scribe to give his opinion and then an “on the other hand” might be given by someone else. Jesus was so different. He spoke from his own authority, not that of someone else. He did not quote the tradition.
Then, while the people are still amazed at the authority of His teaching, something more amazing happens. A man in the congregation causes a disturbance. Not only is Jesus teaching on His own authority, He is entering the realm where the evil ones are in control. He is trespassing into their territory and they don’t like it!
What image do you have of Jesus? Does it match the one in the Gospel of an intelligent, strong man with obvious authority?
Why is this important? Because Saint Paul tells us that we are to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” We sometimes hear so much about love that we forget the strength, courage and righteousness of the love of Jesus. He stood face to face with evil and commanded it to get out! In our day and age we often live side by side with evil and ignore it in order to be tolerant. We say, “It’s none of my business if the man next door is abusive with his wife and children.” If my tax accountant suggests a way to cut corners that no one will notice, we just go along with it. He knows best. If I am undercharged at the store, it’s not my problem. If I drink too much and drive home, it’s alright as long as I don’t get caught.
We can go even deeper. Do you think it’s perfectly OK for people to live together without being married? Do you consider abortion to be a personal choice? Have you come to think of Mass on the weekend as optional? How about the evils of gossip? Do you work a full day for a full day’s pay? When evil is shouting out loud, do we sit quietly or do we stand with Jesus and tell it to get going?
Remember also, Jesus condemned the evil in the man, not the man. It was because of His love for the man that He confronted the evil. Whenever we confront evil, it must be out of love and not out of some sense of self-righteousness.
Practically speaking, we can witness with authority not if we can just parrot the words of Jesus but if we have put on His mind and heart. Only this gives real authority to what we say, only if we see the world as Jesus does and chang our way of thinking to conform to His will we be like Him.
We have more to offer than words in a creed or a religious lesson. As the Body of Christ we have more than the world can give. We have the Light of the world for people’s darkness. We have the Bread of Life for their hunger. We have the living Christ for all who struggle with the powers of death. If we will lift Him up in all we do, Jesus will draw us all to Himself.
Those who follow Jesus become like Him. It is inevitable if we seek to know Him and follow Him with sincerity of heart. In the end, the only witness to Christ that matters, that can make a difference, that can defeat the power of evil, is the authority of a faithful life.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Pro-life (FOCA)
January 25, 2009
On Thursday, a bus like thousands from all over the United States, left Saint Patrick’s for Washington D.C. There we joined a crowd of people, most of them younger than me, for the March for Life. In the media you will find no estimate of the numbers since they say that it is too difficult. Funny, the media had no problem estimating the numbers at the inauguration just two days before. Anyway, reliable sources say there were about 200,000. Prayers were lead and speeches given by people from all sorts of religious backgrounds. The belief in the dignity of all human life is not just a Catholic cause. But, be clear, it is a Catholic cause.
It is a firm teaching of the Catholic Church, one that has not changed and will not change, that there are some things we can never do or cooperate with because they are always incompatible with the love of God and love of neighbor. These things are called “intrinsically evil” because no circumstances can make them right. At the front of these intrinsically evil actions is abortion.
That said, it is not true that the Church is only concerned about abortion. No other non-government institution in the United States provides more educational, charitable and social services than the Catholic Church. But no other issue, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not capital punishment, no other issue has cost almost 50 million human lives since 1973 or so lessened the regard for human life. It now reaches to embryonic stem cell research and the push for euthanasia.
Let me be clear: No Catholic can appeal to any argument, to any exceptions, to conscience, to anything, and make such an intrinsic evil as abortion into a matter of choice. It is everywhere and always a grave offense against God. The deliberate taking of innocent human life is always wrong.
Now contrast what I just said with what President Obama said on Thursday. For the first time in 8 years, the president of the United States did not address the thousands of citizens gathered only blocks from his house, but he issued a statement that included:
"On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose."
Mr. Obama is wrong! No woman, no man, no one, can be allowed the “choice” to kill an innocent human being. Mr. Obama also said:
"On this anniversary, we must also recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights and opportunities as our sons: the chance to attain a world-class education; to have fulfilling careers in any industry; to be treated fairly and paid equally for their work; and to have no limits on their dreams. That is what I want for women everywhere."
That more than implies that pregnancy and children are a hindrance to those aspirations and cannot be allowed to interfere. Let’s guarantee that first they have a birthday!
In case you doubt that Mr. Obama means what he said, in having been president for only 3 days, he wiped out the ban on federal funding for agencies that promote abortion internationally and has permitted the use of stem cells from destroyed human embryos to be used in human trials. Just last week our Catholic Bishops asked the new president precisely not to do this. The battle has been joined like never before!
To be Christian, a disciple of Christ, to be a Catholic, calls on our deepest sense of justice to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Now is not the time to retreat but to move forward with renewed conviction and courage. Not too hidden in the shadows lurks the most extreme pro-abortion agenda in the history of the United States.
Let us be clear, God will require an accounting for what we have done and for what we have not done. And a country that tries to build its future on ignoring the dignity and the rights of the weakest and most innocent cannot stand. We have to look no farther than the current
financial crisis and its source in sheer greed which is against God’s law to see the consequences of choice. There are dire consequences for choosing to ignore the laws that God has written in the hearts of all people. And those consequences will follow as the day follows the night.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time B
January 18, 2009
The readings this week give us another opportunity to consider voices and listening. If you remember, we did that last weekend. There is the voice in the night calling Samuel in the first reading and the call of the disciples, especially Simon who is given the name Peter.
Notice, first, how personal God’s call to Samuel is. It is so personal, so human, that Samuel keeps thing that Eli is the one who is calling him. Eli is someone that Samuel knows well and Eli knows him. That Samuel is able to confuse God’s voice with Eli’s shows just how close and personal God’s call is. God knows Samuel through and through and calls out to him not from far away but from very near. That is how God calls each of us. In fact, God knows us even better than we know ourselves.
In the Gospel, when Jesus meets Andrew’s brother, Simon, the one who will be the leader of the Apostles, He gives him a new name, Peter. It is a way of calling him to the fullness of what he was made for. That is how God relates to each one of us, at least that is how God wants to relate to each one of us.
Do you ever hear voices in the night? Oh, maybe not literally. But who hasn’t experienced the thought that wanders through the mind at the edge of sleep? Or maybe it’s the interesting idea that won’t go away, or the dream you can’t seem to forget about. Sometimes these are true voices that call us by name, by our real name, to stand up and do what we should, be who we really are, do something that matters.
There are voices but we may not notice at all. Because, as I said last week, there are so many voices and not nearly all of them are worth listening to. There is the pull of the voices we grew up with- parents, teachers, classmates- voices that tell us who we are and what kind of world we live in. They may or may not be right. Some of what those voices say may need to be re-examined. Then there is the flood of commercial voices telling us about the good life and what it takes to have it. They do not come from any real concern but what sells best.
Often we hear the voices of negativity and fear. I’m thinking of the continual news about the economy. Voices that tell us that things can’t be changed and no matter what we do, it couldn’t possibly make any difference. “Who do you think you are?” and “What do you think you’re doing?” They are not from God.
Samuel hears the voice while he is in the Temple. We, too, will find our calling if we spend time “in the temple” and I don’t mean just in church. We need to spend time in the temple of our hearts, coming to know ourselves and the values we hold most dear. There is a story about the rabbi, Zoysia that recognizes this. “When I die and stand before God,” the wise old rabbi said, “God will not say to me, ‘Zoysia, why were you not Moses?’ Instead, God will say to me, ‘Zoysia, why were you not Zoysia?’” Each of us is unique. Think about it: “One author says, “The universe is having you in it for the first and only time.” And it is a serious spiritual duty for each of us to listen to our deepest self and to become the person that only we can be.
Another “temple” is here when we come together as a congregation. We need to spend time here too, where our values and traditions are fed and grow and visions are nourished.
Then there is the misunderstanding that a “calling” is a religious thing, that it’s only about becoming a priest, a deacon or a sister and the rest don’t have to worry about it. That isn’t so. A call is not always about a religious vocation or even about a career. It might be about a new direction in doing what you are already doing or a new attitude, maybe a renewed purpose for life.
If we listen, we all hear such calls. An accountant may have a vision of helping people through a financial crisis and offer some debt counseling. A parent may recognize the need for soccer coaches or teachers’ aides. A writer may send letters to the editor. Some one in an office may hatch a way to save paper.
Whoever we are and whatever we do, our talents and our present circumstances come together with how we see ourselves in the world and this coming together brings calls and opportunities. If we listen, we will hear the holy voice telling us what is especially ours to do. It may not be a big thing, but, then again, it may be. Edmund Burke, a political philosopher, said, “No one could make a greater mistake then he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
God calls each of us to do the little we can, to listen in the night to the voice that tells us who we really are and to live out the best vision of ourselves.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
The Baptism of the Lord B
January 11, 2009
While the spirit of Christmas should somehow last all year, the Church’s celebration of the mystery of Christmas ends with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. A consideration of the Baptism of Jesus can provide some wisdom and insight into our own Baptism and the life that flows from it.
“And a voice came from the heavens, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’”
Why isn’t God’s voice more distinct than all the other voices shouting for our attention? Perhaps one problem is that we tend to only listen to voices like our own. We have fallen in love with the sound of our own voices, often ignoring voices that are different from our own. Voices that sound too different- that have a different accent, that are higher or lower than ours, that speak a different language, that use too large a vocabulary, or that speak of ideas or opinions we don’t share- often fall on closed ears and dull hearts.
The Baptism of Jesus was a rather quiet event to those watching. The Gospel tells us that Jesus is the One who sees the heavens open up, Jesus is the One who sees the dove descend and Jesus is the One who hears the heavenly voice.
It’s up to Jesus to follow God’s call, to share the news of God’s love and salvation, to accept the call of baptism. It’s up to Jesus to keep the voices of the world away- the voices telling Him to leave things as they are, stay away from the sick, the poor, the outcast and to keep with His own. It’s up to Jesus to keep listening for God’s voice.
Did your mother ever say to you, “God gave you two ears, but God gave you only one mouth, so that you would listen twice as much as you talk!” It’s easy to forget that as we hear voices everywhere. Greeting cards speak to us, elevators announce the floors, answering machines tell us who’s calling, cars give us directions. The key is to quiet our minds and hearts, drown out the noise around us and listen for God’s voice. It is in the quiet of the waters that Jesus hears God’s voice.
Those who follow Jesus are called to come where He is. To walk where He walks is not an easy life of voices in harmony always singing a common tune. Jesus invites us to walk with Him, but to walk with Him means starting with the waters of Baptism and ending at the cross.
Baptism is a powerful expression of not only how God relates to Jesus but how God relates to all of us who are baptized. For us, Baptism shows God’s support of us and that support is unearned. Baptism calls us to be different, to be passionate people who don’t bow to the world’s voices. It calls us into the Holy Spirit; it calls us to follow Jesus away from the water and into the world, to change the world. We are not to just stay on our side of town, in our own comfort zone, surround ourselves with people we feel most comfortable with and listen to the voices that agree with ours.
Our Baptism is a call to action. We are to show what it means to live in relationship with God- to bring peace in times of crisis, compassion in times of injustice and love in times of hate.
Have you even been in a crowded swimming pool, with laughing and yelling people around? Have you ever gone under the water for a few minutes and just listened? The noise above the water is muffled, and for those moments, it is quiet. Baptism is that moment of the quieting of the world’s voices and noise, but it is supposed to last even when you come away from the water. When you come back from Baptism, hopefully, we find the voices of the world quieter, you will keep them in the background and you will clearly hear the calm and loving voice of God calling you to follow His Son.
Baptism celebrates a claim that God has on our hearts and provides us with an identity that will forever change our lives. Our search for happiness, contentment and peace would be so different if we believed with all our heart and soul that our identity is confirmed as a child of God. ‘You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter; with you I am well pleased!’
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Epiphany of the Lord B
January 4, 2009
The great recurring image in the Scripture for this weekend is, of course, the star. The Gospel tells us that the Magi were overjoyed at seeing the star that led them to the newborn King.
“Star of wonder, star of light…” the song goes. If you go looking you will find all sorts of possible explanations for this unusual “star.” But we would do better to try and see it, not as some scientific curiosity, but as a radiant gift of light. What better to point to Christ?
This is the Epiphany, and the star in the Gospel is the ‘star.’ The star is the original GPS device guiding the Magi from the East toward Christ. Perhaps there is nothing that symbolizes the hope and serenity of the season more beautifully. And in Milford, you can drive down Broad Street on a clear night and see the star up on the knob over the town.
The word “epiphany” means “manifestation.” Webster’s dictionary puts it this way, “an intuitive grasp of reality through something simple and striking.” Something as simple as a child. Something as striking as a star.
History is silent about just who or what the Magi are. In some translations, they are astrologers, in others they are kings or “Wise Men.” We don’t even know how many there were. But because they brought three gifts- gold, frankincense and myrrh- we usually go with three.
Three is a very biblical number. Three is the number of Persons in the Trinity. Three is the number of days Jesus spent in the tomb before the resurrection. But it also means something more meaningful and much more important. It represents a community.
Again and again, when Christ is revealed to the world, He doesn’t show Himself to just one person at a time. Think of the night He was born, when the angels announced the news to the shepherds. There is another group, a kind of community. And in the three Magi, there is another kind of community.
This will happen over and over. Next week at the baptism of Jesus, there will be a crowd of witnesses. When He preaches, he speaks to multitudes. When He performs His first miracle, it is at a public gathering, a wedding. When He appears after the resurrection, it will be to a roomful of disciples. Even on the road to Emmaus, Jesus presents Himself not to one person but to two.
This is part of the message of the Christian faith. We are meant to receive it together, to live it together, to celebrate it together and share it with others. The simple fact remains: Christian faith is not a solitary experience. Thomas Merton put it well: “Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. We find it with another.”
The other important thing to remember about the Magi is that they didn’t come empty-handed. “They opened their treasures and present him with gifts…” And like the Magi, each of us has a treasure to offer to Jesus. Today we should ask ourselves what it is. What do we have to give?
There is a story told by Barbara Glanz, a marketing expert. She gave a talk to a group of supermarket employees on the subject of customer loyalty- how to get people to come back. She told her audience, “Every one of you can make a difference and create memories for your customers that will keep them coming back.” And she challenged them to think about that.
One of the people in the audience was a 19 year old bagger named Johnny. He had Down’s syndrome. He thought very carefully about it and talked to his father about it. Then he decided that every night after work he would find a thought for the day. If he couldn’t find one, he would make one up. He had his father type them and make copies. Johnny would then cut up the sayings and put one in each bag.
Barbara was impressed with the idea but did not think much about it until a month later, when she got a call from the store manager. He said that every day Johnny’s line got longer and longer. People who normally only came once a week were coming back more often, just to get Johnny’s thought for the day. Eventually others started looking for ways they could make their part of the store better and the whole place was transformed.
Watch it: www.stservicemovie.com
No matter who we are, where we come from or what we do, each of us has a treasure to offer, a gift to give to Christ and others. The Magi were just the first, not the last.
So let’s ask ourselves what we can give to God and to one another. What are your treasures? The Christmas season will soon be over but the season of giving does not have to end.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Mary, the Mother of God B
January 1, 2009
The month of January gets its name from the Roman god Janus. He had two faces, one looking forward, the other looking back. This is a good image for January 1. We look back over the past 12 months, then we turn our faces to the future with hope and resolutions for the New Year.
It is also appropriate that the first day of the year is a celebration in honor of Mary, the Mother of God. Surely, Mary must have wondered what the future held for her child. At the same time, the Gospel of Luke says, “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” Mary remembers the past, the things that happened already, and then turns to the future.
We might look at Mary, the mother of God, as the “first lady” in the Kingdom of God. She would be the first to say that the spotlight is not on her but on her Son. Mary would always be next to her Son, supporting Him, pointing to Him.
But Jesus would be the first one to say how much He treasures her, how much He loves her, how much within Him is there because of her. He would point to her and advise us to keep an eye on her. She plays a very important role. As “first lady” in the Kingdom, she is a trend-setter. We look at her style, her internal, spiritual style. But what do we know about that?
The name of this feast speaks volumes. Mary, the Mother of God is the earliest title given to Mary. It came out of the Council of Ephesus in 431. That council meant to answer a heresy, a wrong belief, which many in the Church had fallen into. The opposing sides were so serious that they killed each for in support of their position! One group believed that Mary was the mother of Christ but that calling her the mother of God was going too far. The other argued that Jesus is truly God, and Mary, as His mother, was the mother of God. The council ended the argument by calling Mary the Theotokos, a Greek word meaning “God bearer.” She truly carried God!
What does this say? First, that Jesus is God. Then it teaches who Mary is. And finally, it teaches who we are. Since we have God’s life in us, we are also “God bearers.” What does this mean in our lives? As we look to Mary, standing in the shadow of her Son, how is she an example to us?
Mary was aware of the surprising ways that God was present in her life and in her surroundings. She saw God in everything and taught her Son that same awareness: remember Jesus teaching about the birds of the air and the flowers of the field? He watched her put yeast in flour and learned about leavening. Maybe they helped a neighbor find a lost coin. And, as a family, they probably watched shepherds out in the fields. There were good shepherds and not-so-good shepherds. Jesus taught the difference. His mother helped to open His eyes and ears to God in the world that surrounded them.
Mary walked a path not everyone chooses. She was not only aware of God’s presence always surrounding her little family, but she constantly tuned her ear to hear God’s tiniest whisper. Mary listened and obeyed. That’s the hard part! That is seen in the Gospel. The reason this family is even in Bethlehem is out of obedience. Jesus is born because Mary was obedient. His name is Jesus because she listened to the angel who told her, “You shall name him Jesus.”
Mary can be our teacher on how to be a God-bearer. Just as she reflected on all that happened, just as she kept all these things in her heart, we can reflect on what God has done in our lives this past year. Have we recognized God’s presence? Have we listened to His gentle voice? Have we obeyed?
At the same time, again like Mary, we can turn to the future. Rather than making New Year’s resolutions. Let’s substitute the intention to reflect on our lives. Where is my life going? Did I notice God today? Did I hear the whisper of His voice? Was I willing to say yes as Mary did? New Year’s resolutions have a tendency to fade, but daily reflections will move us closer to the example of the first lady in the Kingdom of God and make us better able to carry the presence of God in our lives.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Feast of the Holy Family B
December 28, 2008
We try to squeeze an awful lot into a week’s time: Christmas, the weekend in-between and then New Year’s Day. And here is the weekend in-between, the Feast of the Holy Family. I simply had no time for a full-blown homily unless I did on the part of one day I spent with my family. So I offer a reflection.
The world has two primary images of Jesus. During the Christmas season we think of Him as a baby. The rest of the time we think of Him as an adult. The silent years between are frustrating for what we do not know. How we would love to watch Jesus grow from a baby to a child and on to adult. What we know of the visit to Jerusalem at the age of twelve only makes us want to know more. Maybe we could understand Him better if we were allowed to watch Him grow. And what kind of relationship did Jesus have with Mary and Joseph? Parenting at best is hard work. Can you imagine raising Jesus?
A small window into Jesus growing is given at the end of chapter 2 of Luke, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” It basically means that Jesus grew like all of us grow. He is totally human and experienced physical growth just like us. Through the years many have guessed about His physical appearance. What did He look like? Short or tall? Attractive or ordinary? Lacking any evidence, we should probably assume that there was nothing physically extraordinary about Him.
When Jesus was a boy, He was a real boy. He was not a man, or a full-grown Savior, in a boy’s body. His parents, like all parents, were wise to let their child be a child. They seemed most concerned when He did things not typical of children, such as at the Temple when He was twelve. His physical growth was probably helped along by working with Joseph. So we can imagine that He was agile, strong and capable of hard work. He grew in the natural world like a tree on a river bank, rooted in the earth but reaching for the sky.
Some of the people who wonder about how Jesus looked may also wonder about His I.Q. Here, too, we have no way of knowing. His parents probably had the same kind of joy watching Him grow in wisdom as they did in seeing Him grow physically. They saw Him learn from new experiences and from taking risks. They watched Him grown in wisdom.
Wisdom in the Bible has to do with God, for Jesus to grow in wisdom meant to grown in His knowledge of God. This is the point beyond which parents and friends cannot go. This is true not only of Jesus but of all. We travel to wisdom very much on our own.
Our ancestors in the Bible had no confusion such as we do about the difference between intelligence, knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is not theoretical but practical, not so much information as common sense. Wisdom has to do with how to live and how to serve God. Jesus grew in wisdom, so should every child.
Children belong more to God than to their parents. Christian parenting is a process of giving children back to God from whom they came. That is not to downplay parents and families but to see the larger picture. Mary and Joseph did not raise Jesus, God raised Jesus. Mary and Joseph provided the proper environment where this could take place. The best thing you can do for your children, the most lasting thing, is to lead them to God, to love them and give them to God.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Christmas 2008
December 25, 2008
Silent night, holy night. A night (day) of peace and light. In the darkness of the night we come to be with one another, to be with God, to wait and see what will happen.
This is a night of mystery, a magic night, a night of new birth, a night when anything can happen. We tell stories about this night and even though we have heard them all over and over again, they reveal something of the mystery of this night.
Stories tell that at midnight the farmyard animals- oxen, donkeys, geese and sheep- in memory of their ancestors in the stable of Bethlehem, receive the gift of speech so they can tell the story of the birth of the Child and lift their voices to praise God.
Another story tells that on this night, entire plants would burst into full bloom to glorify the newborn Christ. The poinsettias at Christmas continue that legend.
Even the totally secular stories tell of magic and mystery. Rudolph, the rejected reindeer with the special nose, becomes the first among the reindeer tonight. We sing of a snowman who comes alive to sing and dance and love.
These stories tell of the mystery of this night of Christmas. Some feel that the latter ones detract from “the true meaning of Christmas,” as if the truth of Christmas was something somber and serious. But these stories remind us that tonight anything can happen. They are children’s stories for sure, but it is good we have them. Christmas is a time for telling stories.
Family stories should be told: what Christmas was like when Daddy was a boy; how Grandma celebrated Christmas when she was little. Stories of how the tree kept falling over and about parts left over after all the bike was put together. Stories about the fruitcake that only Aunt Rose could bake and how the turkey never got cooked one year.
We even adopt other families at Christmas to enjoy their stories: Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with Scrooge and Tiny Tim and George Bailey and his family in It’s a Wonderful Life. We can hardly imagine Christmas without hearing these stories again.
And, of course, we tell the story from which all the others get their wonder…the story behind all the others: the story of the birth in Bethlehem. That is not just a children’s story. But parents are right to tell it to their children. It is important that their children learn that story. But it is not a children’s story. It has magic and mystery like children’s stories, but it is a story for adults.
Christmas is for children and for adults. This, of course, contradicts the culture which tries to make it all about children. Christmas is for children, they say, which seems to suggest that there is nothing that those of us who are all grown up may hope for, nothing that can spark our imagination. Let the children be excited; we are too old, too serious to hope for anything new. Let the children’s eyes get wide; we are too old for wonder. Let the children dance for joy; we are too serious, too frozen to jump with joy. Christmas is for children, they say. The adults should watch and somehow find happiness secondhand.
But children don’t need Christmas for joy or wonder. That comes natural to them. Their lives are filled with wonder. They believe willingly and with trust.
What does it mean to be al grown up? To be able to sit in church at Christmas without being distracted by the excitement of what is coming next. A grown-up is a terribly serious, responsible person. Adults really need Christmas!
We need the story of a man, Joseph, and his pregnant bride, Mary, who left home for Bethlehem. Of how while they were there the Baby was born. The mother wrapped Him up there in the stable because there was no place else for them to stay. We need to retell the story of the shepherds not far away watching their flocks. How the skies were filled with angels singing “Glory to God in the highest.” And how the shepherds went to Bethlehem. Imagine, the grown-ups believed and got excited enough to go and look! The story calls us back to our roots, back to a sense of wonder that we may have thought we had outgrown. It comes as a gift to us at Christmas, and this gift is what makes Christmas so different especially for grown-ups.
Children begin with a sense of wonder and awe and imagination, you see. There are presents this Christmas that will bring untold excitement to children and open new worlds of imagination. Which brings us to another part of being grown up. It is to know that however pleased you are by a gift, you know it will not bring lasting joy, it will not make your life much different. To be grown up is to know that what you really want, what you really need cannot be wrapped and put in a box or under a tree.
You cannot put a bow on a sense of meaning and purpose for life. Knowing that you are loved and can love cannot be wrapped. Real peace, real satisfaction, real joy does not wait under trees.
The message of the angels at Christmas is that only God gives these gifts, that God pours out peace, joy and hope on everyone. That is how God intends people to live. This we find as we look to the mystery of Christmas and believe that on this night anything can happen. Anything.
Let me tell one more story: Click here to read the story!
Because of this night, anything is possible.
Tonight, the Lord of all creation is a baby in a stable and we are adopted as God’s children. Just as the animals of the stable can speak tonight, we can also find words to praise God and give thanks for life and for love, for this night.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourth Sunday of Advent B
December 21, 2008
Well, it’s the last Sunday of Advent and our time or preparation for Christmas is reaching the end. And so it might be good to ask ourselves a question: Are we ready for Christmas?
How can you know the answer to that question? Well, it’s a good start to know that it’s not if our shopping list has everything checked off. It is not about making sure our decorations are out and up. It’s not about making sure that all our Christmas cards made it out the door. These are all good things, but they are secondary and external.
The real preparation for Christmas happens on the inside; that’s where we will find the answer about whether we are ready. As I mentioned last week, this is a challenge especially at this hectic time of the year. It is tempting to ignore the simple invitation to follow the star to where the Child is.
In this season we call “blessed,” we often feel anything but. We can be tired, anxious, stressed, worried and blue. But we do not always feel blessed. I wonder how Mary managed to be in a place of blessing. We know that she was not really expecting anything. The angel’s visit was a divine surprise, an interruption from God. But everyone needs to be ready to see God’s hand at anytime. We need to be open to hearing the Lord in unexpected moments.
Imagine Mary quietly going about her daily chores the day she had a surprise visit from the angel. It would have been natural for her to be afraid. Her heart was probably racing. Then the angel Gabriel greeted her. Today the words, translated freely, might sound like, “Good morning! You are beautiful with God’s beauty, beautiful inside and out! God be with you!”
There are some extraordinary miracles here: a virgin giving birth and God and humanity being joined in this holy Child. But perhaps one of the most amazing miracles in the story, one that we don’t usually pay attention to, is that Mary would even believe the announcement that she, rather than some other girl, was chosen to the Mother of God.
Believing that God is active in our lives is at the center of what it means to be Christian. Believing that God chooses us to be His partners in healing the world with words and actions that bring hope to the lives of people is what it means to follow Christ. Believing in the power of God to save us and grace us is what keeps us going on the spiritual journey of faith.
Hearing the news of the angel fills Mary with questions but she chooses to put them aside in order to say yes to what God is doing. And so it is with us. It is possible, even likely, that there are messengers from God holding out new possibilities from God at this very moment. We can have questions and wonder whenever we sense God’s Spirit. But we are also faced with choosing how wide we can open our hearts.
In “Stations of the Nativity,” Raymond Chapman describes it this way:
“When we are too busy to notice them, angels may pass through the familiar room sometimes with human voices, sometimes in silent love, calling, promising, pointing the way- because things happen when God wills them and not when we think it is appropriate.” (Stations of the Nativity, p.11).
Things do happen when God wills them, and we are repeatedly given chances to be part of what God is doing. But another author, Barbara Brown Taylor, writes about these moments:
“If you decide to say No you simply drop your eyes and refuse to look up until you know the angel has left the room and you are alone again. Then you smooth your hair and go back to your spinning or your reading or whatever it is that is most familiar to you and pretend that nothing has happened… or you can set your book down and listen to a strange creature’s idea. You can decide to take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body.”
Mary is our model. She is the young woman who believes enough in the presence of God to listen to an angel speak. She opens her ears, her mind and her heart to the messenger who tells her God’s plans. Mary teaches us to listen.
You and I are ordinary people graced by God like Mary. When we listen for God with open minds and hearts, we can hear the invitation to make grace come alive in the world. We may not always feel blessed. Some days are better than others for that. But if we believe that God has a message for us and have the faith to listen; if we are willing to say yes and hope in God’s future; then we are just about ready for Christmas.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Third Sunday of Advent B
December 14, 2008
The readings for this Third Sunday of Advent focus on the joy of the season. This is why it has traditionally been called Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is the Latin word for “rejoice.” This is the reason for the rose colored vestments and candle. This Sunday has had this name since the 6th century. And the reason is that the message that is being given is good news. The coming of Christ is the only source of true and lasting joy.
Isaiah reminds us that this good news is all about healing, freedom, relationships with God and one another, and taking good care of the poor. In the Letter to the Thessalonians, Saint Paul says that the good news of salvation calls for joyous and confident prayer to God, “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.” And John the Baptist witnesses in the Gospel that Jesus brings light into every darkened corner of mind and heart. That light represents the very life and love of God.
Although this good news is welcome, its voice seems to get muffled by the loud noise of bad news. We have to admit that the bad news around us has infiltrated every nook and cranny of life. Since about the time of the Vietnam War, when the injustice and violence of war came into our living rooms through the TV, we have been unable to escape the wave of bad news. With the internet you can download bad news at any time of the day or night. The result is that we are bombarded with a continuous stream of badness and sadness.
Today we are reminded that there is good news, and that we, like Isaiah and Paul and the two Johns, are the ones to not only hear it but announce it. Ours are the voices given the job, the vocation, the responsibility and the privilege of making this good news known wherever we are and to everyone we meet.
More, as heralds of good news, we are to deliver our message with joy. Our joy is not silly or naïve or unaware of how serious the world’s problems are. It knows about all that hurts, all that wounds, all that kills. But we are not defeated by evil. The contrary is true; our hold on God and on God’s loving goodness is so tight that we can withstand evil. We can always find a way to a joy that is so contagious that it will lift up and strengthen those who lost the cause of their joy.
But before we can find our own joy and give it others, we have to ask ourselves some questions. Do I really believe that what God has said through the Scripture is really good news? Do I believe that this good news has something to say that matters to a person in the 21st century? Is this good news only for Sunday? Is the influence of this message meant to be confined to the church? Does it really speak to my daily life?
Each of us has to be able to answer these questions in truth and in faith. But if each of us has even the faintest whisper of such faith trying to grow within us, then we need to gather ourselves together into the One whose coming we are preparing for.
Together in Christ, the One we believe in and whose messengers we are, we will find the strength to be the good news that so many need to hear, that the world needs. Together, we can be the good news that God IS, that God is PRESENT, that God HEARS and CARES and GRACES all who reach out to Him. And when they cannot reach out, then we are to bring God to them. We become the Gospel.
To do this requires a joyful heart that proclaims a confidence in the power and presence of God. True joy cannot be faked. It fills every part of who we are. It lifts our spirits so that we can lift others. And if we have this joyful heart, our lives and our faces will show it.
In the ten days we have before Christmas, let’s commit ourselves to doing two things. First, we need to take enough time for personal prayer so that we stir up our own Christian joy. There is a conspiracy between the culture and the devil to keep us so busy that we can’t do that; let’s outsmart them. Second, let’s reach out to someone who needs to discover the only source of lasting joy: a deep, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If we make even a small effort, God can work a miracle. Just like the miracle He is about to work when we put just a small bit of bread on the altar.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Second Sunday of Advent B
December 7, 2008
An author named Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book, The Preaching Life, reflected on the word “home” and all the images that simple word calls to our minds: “My house is much more than my residence,” she wrote. “My home is a promise I make to myself when I get too tired to go on. ‘You can go home soon,’ I tell myself, and the knowledge spreads through me like sun on a cold day so that I can go on, for a little longer at least….Home. What a compelling elusive word that is,” she wrote. “What a strong hunger the human heart has for home, and what hard thing it is to find and keep a home- not just a building, but a place to belong- a place to be from and a place to go to…A safe place where one is known and a safe place from which to know the world: a nest, a family, a stable fortress in a vast and often frightening universe.”
If you have ever been at a place in your life when there was nowhere you could call home, if you have ever been taken away from everything you love, if you have ever looked around and nothing seemed familiar, the Bible has a word for it. If you have ever wondered about where God was and what God was doing and why God allowed certain things to happen, if you often remember the good old days and long for them, it might help to know that the Bible has a word which covers all of that. It is the word “exile.” Exile is when you feel abandoned. Exile is being cut off from home. Exile is dreading the future. Exile is a time when God seems to be at least silent, maybe even absent, or even worse, unconcerned.
One of the darkest, most dreadful times in the history of God’s people was in the 6th century BC when they were in exile. The Babylonians had destroyed the Temple and the holy city of Jerusalem, taken the people from their homeland and all that they loved and moved them to a strange land. They cried until they could cry no more. Then their tears turned to anger.
Then comes the prophet speaking for God. ‘Encourage my people. Give them comfort and announce that the exile is over. Prepare the way of the Lord right here in the wilderness. Clear a path and make a highway for God in the desert. For every wrong will be made right. Every valley will be lifted up, every mountain and hill be made low. The uneven ground will become level and the rough places will be made smooth.'
This encouraging word from the prophet received mixed reviews. It had been 50 years since the people had been taken captive. Babylon was now the only life many of them had ever known. Some went back and found it all different from what they remembered. If you have ever been away from home for any length of time and then come back, you know that it is never quite the same. The place is different, the people are different and you are different.
Eventually many of the people began to realize that home is not ultimately about a place. Home is about a face. Home is about a relationship. “Behold your God,” the prophet said. Home is where God is. Anywhere can be home when you are with God and when God is with you.
Fast forward some centuries and John the Baptist uses the same prophecy in announcing the coming of Jesus. John says that even when our sinful disobedience has led us away from home, God has left the porch light on. It is not just that God will bring you home; it is that God will BE your home. Wherever you are, God will be your home. Whatever you’ve done, God will forgive.
This is the good news of the Gospel- news too good to keep to ourselves. The good news is not just that we can be where God is, but that in Jesus, God has come to be where we are. Home is not just where we can be with God in the life to come. Home is where God has come to be with us in this life, in the middle of exile, while still in the desert.
The picture we should get this week is not so much of a place because the place, any place is incidental. The picture is of God. Will you be home for Christmas? Home is where God is. And there really is no place like home.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
...................................................................................
First Sunday of Advent B
November 30, 2008
This is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of a new Church year for all of us who worship and believe and act in the name of Jesus. Throughout this year we will hear from the Gospel of Mark. Unlike the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark’s Gospel does not begin with the birth of Jesus. He goes right into the mature Jesus being baptized and then beginning His mission of preaching and teaching. And these are the first words, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the gospel.”
If you thought that preparing for Christmas was the next biggest stress in your life, we are being reminded that Jesus has expectations too.
Turning the page of a calendar gives us a fresh start and a chance to make a new beginning with a clean slate. The Church has always recognized the need that people have to leave the past behind and start new. We call it Reconciliation and it is a sacrament rooted in the healing ministry of Jesus Himself. If we “repent and believe,” we can be sure that we are prepared to celebrate Christmas.
The prophet Isaiah calls on Heaven for us today. He is begging God to come down and make things right. The people are feeling lost and alone, abandoned and unfaithful. Isaiah offers comfort and a challenge by pointing out that God alone is our redeemer who can save us, even from ourselves. If our sins and guilt were wiped away, we could take advantage of this opportunity. We would be on God’s side and follow God’s directions.
And the Gospel gives us the warning of Jesus to not be complacent in thinking we are doing the best we can and all is well. “Be watchful! Be alert! What I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” This message is for all of us: children who are in the beginning of their lives, young people facing each day with strength, adults working the long hours of the day and seniors watching the ball slowly descend in the night of their lives.
Children: Watch the important people in your lives. Learn from them. Care for them. Youth: Watch the choices you make. Keep your eyes fixed on your goals. Let your strength and faith in God carry you along. Adults: Watch the shadows that might bring you down and overwhelm you. Stay faithful to your commitments and deepen your trust in the One who has been faithful to you. Let the hand of God continue to form you. Seniors: Watch for opportunities to share your wisdom and leave a legacy of faithfulness behind you. Let the hand of God support you.
This is a new chance to start again with God. Jesus encourages us to watch for the things that will point us in the right direction and keep us faithful. This is our chance. If we are watching, we will see the hand of God working. If we are watching, we will that God is saving. If we watch, we will notice the Kingdom of God.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King
November 23, 2008
This is the feast of Christ the King and so my reflection today is on the kingship of Christ in our hearts and in our homes.
In 1908, the famous English historian and writer, Hilaire Belloc ran for the British Parliament. Those who opposed him tried to scare his supporters by claiming that since he was a faithful Catholic that would prevent him from being objective. Belloc answered them in a speech:
“Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell its beads every day.
If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God for having spared me the indignity of being your representative.”
The crowd was shocked for a minute, and then burst into applause. He went on to win that election and many more. If Catholics cannot bring the wisdom, goodness and grace of Christ into our society, what do we have to offer? All we have left is our own limited human wisdom and our tendencies to be self-centered. If Christ is King, which He is, we should not be afraid to spread His Kingdom.
Christ is King. But being followers of Christ the King does not mean that we should force people into the Church. That is not the way of Christ and so it should not be ours. As Pope John Paul said on more than one occasion, the Church does not intolerantly impose its beliefs, she proposes them. But we must be courageous in making that proposal.
We are ambassadors of Christ the King. We represent Him to the world. It is through us that the wisdom of Christ enlightens our culture. It is through us that His grace reaches into every corner of the human community and heals it of selfishness, greed and injustice.
Our job as ambassadors is simply to be loyal. That means, first of all, that we must know the desires and priorities of the King. Do we know them well? Are we constantly trying to know them better? An ambassador must also put the King’s program into action. Are we active ambassadors? Are the truth and grace of Christ reaching more people through us, through our words, deeds and example?
There is a useful image that puts the Church and us in relation to God and Christ. Picture a four-tiered fountain. Imagine a fountain in which God’s glory, the first tier spills over into Christ, the second tier. The glory of Christ spills over in the Church, the third tier, and the glory of the Church drenches the whole universe, the fourth tier. Creation, the world, is brought to perfection by the glory of Christ that has spilled over into the members of the Church. It is our job to fill the world with the glory of God.
As a final thought, let me finish with this quotation from the Catholic writer, G.K. Chesterton:
“What puzzles the world, and its wise philosophers and fanciful pagan poets, about the priests and people of the Catholic Church is that they still behave as if they were messengers. A messenger does not dream about what his message might be, or argue about what it probably would be; he delivers it as it is.”
Let’s invite Christ into our minds and let him rule there. Let’s invite Him into our wills, that part of us where we make our decisions, and let Him rule there through obedience to His commandments, especially the commandment to lover our neighbors as He has loved us. Let’s invite Him into our hearts, that secret center of our souls where we treasure things, and let Him rule there by putting every natural desire in second place behind our desire to know, love and follow our King.
Today, let’s put more meaning than ever into the words that sum up the mission of every Christian, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.”
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
....................................................................................................
The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
November 9, 2008
Today we celebrate the dedication of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. You may wonder why the Church sets aside the usual Sunday in Ordinary Time to celebrate a church in Rome.
It dates back to the time of the emperor Constantine. On November 9 in the year 324, Pope Sylvester consecrated the first public Christian church in Rome and it was called the Church of the Savior. In the 11th century its name was changed to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran and it continues today to be the cathedral for the Bishop of Rome who we know better as the Pope.
But it is much more than an old building with historic and sentimental value. It is the mother of all church buildings. And it stands as a physical sign of the promise of Christ that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ, so since Christ is indestructible, so is the Church.
I joked last weekend that you could find anything you wanted to buy in the narthex after Mass. Every time we sell things, the Gospel about money changers in the temple somehow comes to mind. But the point was not about buying and selling but the effect on true worship and cheating.
The scene was Passover and Jews from all over came to the Temple to remember God’s salvation. The Temple was alive with visitors and the money changers were right there waiting to charge the Temple tax on every person over nineteen. And the sellers were there to offer unblemished oxen, sheep and doves for the sacrifices. And the Temple prices were sometimes twice what the same lamb would cost from a local shepherd.
Into this mix comes Jesus. Each of the four Gospels tells about His prophetic outburst driving home the point that God cannot be used and places of worship ought not to exploit the poor and humble. Turning over the money changers’ tables was the beginning of something new. It was a sign that God could not be contained in a stone building built by human beings. The Temple, even though it was built to help people’s relationship with God, was limited. Then there is the quote from Jesus: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” He invites them, and us, to stop thinking literally about a temple to hold the presence of God and see that He is the temple of God’s presence and all who are joined to Him hold the presence of God.
The anger of Jesus is worth considering. Some of us have never gotten comfortable with anger while others are much too used to it since it is a constant companion. Anger gets a lot of attention in psychology, theology and sociology. And it should since anger can block the soul from the joy of relationships. Anger that blocks, hides, attacks or takes revenge is always destructive and needs to be tamed by practice and tempered with forgiveness.
But here we see another kind of anger, prophetic anger. It pays attention to human suffering and injustice. It sees when governments or institutions take away freedoms or pay no attention to the poor. It recognizes that often the dominant culture, what is accepted, is wrong and needs change. It is prophetic anger that is at the root of peace movements, that moves for racial equality, lobbies for the poor, defends the rights of the innocent such as those before birth and the handicapped and the sick and elderly near the end of life. Society and the Church need temple purifiers, voices that cry out for those who cannot take care of themselves and people who turn over tables of injustice. They are the ones who are the whistle-blowers in large corporations, in governments, and even in churches when things are not as they should be. And, like Jesus, they announce something new, something different from the status quo and give a voice to those who have none. They announce a better world. And we need to remember that the new world cannot come without the end of the old.
So who are these people who speak for God, sometimes motivated by prophetic anger? Listen, again, to Saint Paul, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” We are those who are to speak for those with no voice to speak for themselves. In the power of the Spirit, we are the ones who need to be angry over injustice and oppression. We must be the water that flows from the temple making fresh all it touches. We flow out of here, strengthened by Christ, to purify and make things new according to the will of God. We are those people, the disciples of Christ, His Body.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls’ Day)
November 2, 2008
On November 2 of each year, the Church celebrates the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, better known as “All Souls’ Day.” On this day we remember our departed loved ones and offer prayers for them.
Anyone who has lost someone very close knows that the grief is a lifelong process. Just when we think we have turned a corner toward healing, something comes our way that seems to bring us right back to the beginning. Learning to live our lives without the physical presence of the ones we love is difficult. We may even find ourselves wondering if it will ever get better or whether we will ever find peace again.
All those of us who are beyond a certain age know what it is to have a broken heart and to long for healing and some reassurance from God that everything will be all right and those we love are OK. In the midst of the pain, it is difficult to discover this comfort and doubt and fear can lead us in the opposite direction. Let the words from the Book of Wisdom echo in our minds, “The souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment shall touch them…But they are in peace.”
In the First Letter of John we read that God is love. This deep insight has the power to change the way we look at our life and our death. Our ability to love comes from God. It is not something we conjure up ourselves. Think for a moment of all those you remember today, those you pray for, maybe your grandparents, your parents, a brother, a sister, a loved friend or teacher. The love that you have for them is real today. It is not just a memory of the past or of times long gone. It is true and it continues.
Without love we would be shallow and empty. Life would have no purpose and no meaning. Most importantly, love is eternal and has no limits of time or place. Love connects one real person to another. The love you have for those you remember today is real because they are real. They are not just past memories or something we hold in our hearts. The only difference is where they can be found.
The process of grieving is learning how to relate to those we love in a different way. It is not about learning to live without them but learning to live with them in a different way.
The biggest decision we have to make in dealing with death is in regard to faith. Either we believe in God’s promises or we do not. Most of the difficulty we have with death and grieving is due to a war we wage between doubt and faith. Once we embrace faith and stop the battle with doubt we can begin to accept God’s vision of death. Then our loss can be changed into a longing for the day or reunion. And that longing can become a longing for God in whom our souls alone will find rest. Then we know we can go on living and that it is all right to laugh and find joy and that does not decrease our love for those already gone.
Faith allows us to see that God causes our salvation, not our death. We must not fall into the trap of linking tragedies and untimely deaths with God’s will. Those things are better placed with human error, imperfections or sin. God does not take lives to gain “angels” in Heaven or take people from this life for some unknown “heavenly purpose.” Those kinds of ideas do not help to bring us nearer to God.
This day also reminds us that our love should compel us to pray for those who have died. Why pray for them? Because at the moment of death, none of us is fully prepared to receive God’s promises and needs to be purified. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. The Church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned” (CCC #1030-1031).
This day gives us the opportunity to connect with those we love, and even with those who might be forgotten. As we celebrate the Eucharist, let us remember that this holy sacrifice opens the door to Heaven for us here on earth and brings us to the eternal, that place where God and all those who have gone before us now live.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time A
October 26, 2008
You often hear the call to post all sorts of biblical quotes, like the Ten Commandments, in public. Isn’t it strange that the call is never made to display what we find in today’s readings: “You shall love the Lord your God….and your neighbor as yourself” from Matthew or “You shall not molest or oppress an alien…you shall not wrong any widow or orphan…you shall not act like an extortioner…by demanding interest” from Exodus.
In the Gospel for today, Jesus packs all the wisdom of the world into two short commandments. Jesus, the Son of God, is giving us the meaning of life, the way to fulfillment and the secret of happiness. But it is likely that we have heard it so often that we have to make a special effort to squeeze the juice out of it.
The key word, of course, is love. But usually we associate this word with some pleasant feelings, intense and delightful emotions. But the word that Jesus uses means something much deeper. It is the word “agape,” and it refers to the love that means desiring union with what is loved. If we love a person, it means we love spending time with them, getting to know them, sharing experiences of life with them.
But using the word agape isn’t quite enough. Jesus wants to make completely sure we understand. So He explains how love applies to our two key relationships: with God and with other people.
We must love God with all our heart, mind and soul. We must desire what God desires; this is the heart. We must value and understand all things the way God does; this is the mind. And we must actively live according to those desires and that understanding, choosing what God would choose in our place; this is the soul. Then, we must love our neighbors as we love ourselves, treating them as we would want them to treat us regardless of how we feel. This is Christian love: not some passing, self-indulgent emotion, but a way of living that requires the courage to put God first, others second and self third.
Learning to love like this, like Christ, is a life-long project. It is the primary adventure of the Christian life. It starts and continues with God’s grace but also requires our cooperation. And one of the reasons that we have not made more progress has to do with a wrong idea we may have. If we correct this idea, Christian love will have much more room to grow and fill our lives with meaning and lasting joy. What is this wrong idea? We tend to think that loving God and loving our neighbor are two separate things. As if we love God with one spiritual muscle, which gets exercised when we pray and worship, and that we use a different spiritual muscle to love our neighbor. But that is not true.
The Pharisee asked Jesus for the single most important commandment, and Jesus answered with two commandments. He was saying that they are really the same thing. There is only one muscle that we use to love God and neighbor, the heart. That is why it is impossible for us to treat our neighbor that includes family members, friends, classmates, the way we should unless we have a life of prayer. Christian love for our neighbor requires seeing them the way God sees them, but we can only do that if our mind and heart are full of God’s perspective and that happens in prayer. That is why the Catechism can say that “we live as we pray.”
Along with prayer, we need to work. The first thing we need to do is tell God that we sincerely want to follow His commandments. This is how we love God by wanting what He wants. At Mass is the perfect time to renew that commitment. Then, after having decided to love as God does, we need to be sure there is nothing blocking God’s grace because without the help of His grace we can make no progress. So the second step to loving like Christ is a good confession to be sure no sins stand in the way.
Then we are ready for the real work and it starts by treating the people closest to us with sincere respect. We need to start with our family, our coworkers, friends, our classmates. It is easy to put on the appearance of loving like Christ with people we don’t deal with all the time. But we are not interested in keeping up appearances but in true Christian love. And that is the only path to life.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Anniversary of the Dedication of the Church
October 12, 2008
“Can it indeed be that God dwells on earth?”
“Do you know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
We are the temple of God, God’s building, God’s Church. And it is the mission of God’s Church, of the members of the Church, to announce God’s love and mercy. In order to announce God’s love and mercy, we have to first realize in the depths of our hearts that God loves us. I need to be able to say deep within myself with conviction, “GOD LOVES ME.” This message of love and mercy is the only thing of value that we have to give to others and to our world.
Consider how desperately that message of being loved is needed, perhaps especially in the midst of the financial crisis engulfing the world. In California an unemployed accountant killed his wife, his three children, his mother-in-law and himself apparently in despair. There are people living entirely without hope for all sorts of reasons. And, we, who have been given the gift of hope, have the mission to spread it.
We spread the hope that comes from faith in God’s love and mercy by first moving to Jesus and then moving from Jesus. We move to Jesus in the Eucharist, in knowing God’s generous mercy in Confession and in our private prayer. Then we move from Jesus out to those who need to know the good news and the hope that the Gospel brings.
Our moving to Jesus, our hearts touching His heart, in the Eucharist, the sacraments and prayer should lead us to “Be not afraid.” It should strengthen in us trust in God. But first we acknowledge what it is that we fear. What causes us to keep our faith to ourselves making it a private and personal matter while we are surrounded by people who so desperately need the message of hope?
I want to suggest that Saint Paul can help us.
On the road to Damascus, Saint Paul had some extraordinary experience which is usually called his conversion. It was the decisive moment in Paul’s life. There a complete turnabout took place, a total change of perspective. After that, everything that he had considered important was now “loss” and “rubbish.”
You probably know some of the details of Paul’s experience such as light from the sky, his fall to the ground, the voice that called, his blindness, the curing of that blindness and his fasting. But all the details point to the heart of the event: The Risen Christ appeared as a splendid light and spoke to Saul transforming his thinking and his very self.
In the early Church, Baptism was called “Illumination” because this sacrament gives light. It allows us to really see. Paul was not transformed by changing his thinking but by an event, by the irresistible presence of the Risen Christ. And this did not happen at end of his own reflection but of an intense event, an encounter with Christ. This is the fundamental point: The Risen Christ spoke with Paul, made him an apostle and gave him a mission to preach the Gospel to the pagans. But at the same time, Paul learned that even though he had met the Risen Christ, he had to enter the community of the Church, be baptized and live in unity with the other apostles. Only in this communion can he be a true apostle. This whole change came, not from within Paul but from outside, from an encounter with the Risen Christ. This enlarged his heart and opened it up. He did not lose anything that was good and true in his life.
Now let’s consider our own situation. What does this mean for us? It means that also for us, being Christian is not a new philosophy or a new morality. We are Christians ONLY if we encounter Christ. Of course He does not have to show Himself in the same amazing and irresistible way as He did to Paul. We can encounter Christ in the reading of the Word of God, in prayer and in the sacraments of the Church. We can touch the heart of Christ and feel Him touch ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, in this encounter, do we really become Christians.
Pray to the Lord that He will enlighten us, that He will grant us the encounter with His presence and give us a lively faith, an open heart and the love that is necessary to share the Gospel.
That is what it means to be the temple, the Church of God and to recognize that the Spirit of God lives in us.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may be otherwise published or copied. It is for personal use only. Much of the material in today’s homily comes from the Catecheses of Pope Benedict XVI on Saint Paul.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time A
October 5, 2008
A PASTORAL LETTER FROM BISHOP MARTINO
Respect Life Sunday
My brothers and sisters in Christ,
The American Catholic bishops initiated Respect Life Sunday in 1972, the year before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the United States. Since that time, Catholics across the country observe the month of October with devotions and pro-life activities in order to advance the culture of life. This October, our efforts have more significance than ever. Never have we seen such abusive criticism directed toward those who believe that life begins at conception and ends at natural death.
As Catholics, we should not be surprised by these developments. Forty years ago, Pope Paul VI predicted that widespread use of artificial contraceptives would lead to increased marital infidelity, lessened regard for women, and a general lowering of moral standards especially among the young. Forty years later, social scientists, not necessarily Catholics, attest to the accuracy of his predictions. As if following some bizarre script, the sexual revolution has produced widespread marital breakdown, weakened family ties, legalized abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, pornography, same-sex unions, euthanasia, destruction of human embryos for research purposes and a host of other ills.
It is impossible for me to answer all of the objections to the Church’s teaching on life that we hear every day in the media. Nevertheless, let me address a few. To begin, laws that protect abortion constitute injustice of the worst kind. They rest on several false claims including that there is no certainty regarding when life begins, that there is no certainty about when a fetus becomes a person, and that some human beings may be killed to advance the interests or convenience of others. With regard to the first, reason and science have answered the question. The life of a human being begins at conception. The Church has long taught this simple truth, and science confirms it. Biologists can now show you the delicate and beautiful development of the human embryo in its first days of existence. This is simply a fact that reasonable people accept. Regarding the second, the embryo and the fetus have the potential to do all that an adult person does. Finally, the claim that the human fetus may be sacrificed to the interests or convenience of his mother or someone else is grievously wrong. All three claims have the same result: the weakest and most vulnerable are denied, because of their age, the most basic protection that we demand for ourselves. This is discrimination at its worst, and no person of conscience should support it.
Another argument goes like this: “As wrong as abortion is, I don't think it is the only relevant ‘life’ issue that should be considered when deciding for whom to vote.” This reasoning is sound only if other issues carry the same moral weight as abortion does, such as in the case of euthanasia and destruction of embryos for research purposes. Health care, education, economic security, immigration, and taxes are very important concerns. Neglect of any one of them has dire consequences as the recent financial crisis demonstrates. However, the solutions to problems in these areas do not usually involve a rejection of the sanctity of human life in the way that abortion does. Being “right” on taxes, education, health care, immigration, and the economy fails to make up for the error of disregarding the value of a human life. Consider this: the finest health and education systems, the fairest immigration laws, and the soundest economy do nothing for the child who never sees the light of day. It is a tragic irony that “pro-choice” candidates have come to support homicide – the gravest injustice a society can tolerate – in the name of “social justice.”
Even the Church’s just war theory has moral force because it is grounded in the principle that innocent human life must be protected and defended. Now, a person may, in good faith, misapply just war criteria leading him to mistakenly believe that an unjust war is just, but he or she still knows that innocent human life may not be harmed on purpose. A person who supports permissive abortion laws, however, rejects the truth that innocent human life may never be destroyed. This profound moral failure runs deeper and is more corrupting of the individual, and of the society, than any error in applying just war criteria to particular cases.
Furthermore, National Right to Life reports that 48.5 million abortions have been performed since 1973. One would be too many. No war, no natural disaster, no illness or disability has claimed so great a price.
In saying these things in an election year, I am in very good company. My predecessor, Bishop Timlin, writing his pastoral letter on Respect Life Sunday 2000, stated the case eloquently:
Abortion is the issue this year and every year in every campaign. Catholics may not turn away from the moral challenge that abortion poses for those who seek to obey God’s commands. They are wrong when they assert that abortion does not concern them, or that it is only one of a multitude of issues of equal importance. No, the taking of innocent human life is so heinous, so horribly evil, and so absolutely opposite to the law of Almighty God that abortion must take precedence over every other issue. I repeat. It is the single most important issue confronting not only Catholics, but the entire electorate.
My fellow bishops, writing ten years ago, explained why some evils – abortion and euthanasia in particular – take precedence over other forms of violence and abuse.
The failure to protect life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community. If we understand the human person as ‘the temple of the Holy Spirit’ – the living house of God – then these latter issues fall logically into place as the crossbeams and walls of that house. All direct attacks on innocent human life, such as abortion and euthanasia, strike at the house’s foundation [emphasis in the original]. These directly and immediately violate the human person’s most fundamental right – the right to life. Neglect of these issues is the equivalent of building our house on sand. Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics, 23.
While the Church assists the State in the promotion of a just society, its primary concern is to assist men and women in achieving salvation. For this reason, it is incumbent upon bishops to correct Catholics who are in error regarding these matters. Furthermore, public officials who are Catholic and who persist in public support for abortion and other intrinsic evils should not partake in or be admitted to the sacrament of Holy Communion. As I have said before, I will be vigilant on this subject.
It is the Church’s role now to be a prophet in our own country, reminding all citizens of what our founders meant when they said that “. . . all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Church’s teaching that all life from conception to natural death should be protected by law is founded on religious belief to be sure, but it is also a profoundly American principle founded on reason. Whenever a society asks its citizens to violate its own foundational principles – as well as their moral consciences – citizens have a right, indeed an obligation, to refuse.
In 1941, Bishop Gustave von Galen gave a homily condemning Nazi officials for murdering mentally ill people in his diocese of Muenster, Germany. The bishop said:
“Thou shalt not kill!” God wrote this commandment in the conscience of man long before any penal code laid down the penalty for murder, long before there was any prosecutor or any court to investigate and avenge a murder. Cain, who killed his brother Abel, was a murderer long before there were any states or any courts or law. And he confessed his deed, driven by his accusing conscience: “My punishment is greater than I can bear. . . and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me the murderer shall slay me” (Genesis 4:13-14)”
Should he have opposed the war and remained silent about the murder of the mentally ill? No person of conscience can fail to understand why Bishop von Galen spoke as he did.
My dear friends, I beg you not to be misled by confusion and lies. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, does not ask us to follow him to Calvary only for us to be afraid of contradicting a few bystanders along the way. He does not ask us to take up his Cross only to have us leave it at the voting booth door. Recently, Pope Benedict XVI said that “God is so humble that he uses us to spread his Word.” The gospel of life, which we have the privilege of proclaiming, resonates in the heart of every person – believer and non-believer – because it fulfills the heart’s most profound desire. Let us with one voice continue to speak the language of love and affirm the right of every human being to have the value of his or her life, from conception to natural death, respected to the highest degree.
October is traditionally the month of the Rosary. Let us pray the Rosary for the strength and fortitude to uphold the truths of our faith and the requirements of our law to all who deny them. And, let us ask Our Lady to bless our nation and the weakest among us.
May Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Lord of Life, pray for us.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Most Reverend Joseph F. Martino, D.D., Hist. E.D.
Bishop of Scranton
........................................................................................................
Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time A
September 28, 2008
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to find Catholics who openly disagree with teachings of the Church. We probably all know people who say they are Catholic but don’t come to Mass on Sunday. And rather than just admit they sin, they claim it is not necessary to be a good Catholic.
In this election year, we are also aware of politicians who claim to be practicing Catholics who publicly support positions and laws that go directly against some of the most important moral teachings of the Church. And, if we would be honest, we should recognize this tendency in our own lives. We present ourselves as practicing Catholics but we spend little or no time working a life of prayer. We spend hours learning to be good at our jobs but little in learning the faith. We hold on to hidden habits of selfishness and sin while criticizing others for their more visible faults. If we think about it a little bit, we have to admit that this contradiction between what we believe and how we live is not a good thing.
It is like the second son in the parable. He impressed his father with the right words and a good show of obedience. But underneath it all, he was still living for himself and not for the greater good of his father. When we settle into the contradiction, we should not expect to grow in our experience of Christ’s love and grace. And it is not wonder that we do not grow in wisdom, inner peace and the deep Christian joy we long for. Faith, when it’s real, has an impact on every aspect of our lives. When it doesn’t, our spiritual growth is stunted.
Jesus told this parable near the end of His life, the week before the crucifixion. And He tells it for the leaders and scholars in order to break through their blindness. The one who will soon arrange for His death are those who serve in the Temple, study the Scriptures, preach to the crowds and rule God’s people. They claim to be following God’s commandments better than all others. Yet they do not recognize Jesus as God’s Chosen One.
Why are they unable to see the truth? Why do they, like the second son, say there are God’s followers but refuse to obey? This is an important question for us since we are here at Mass, the ones who at least appear to be following the Lord. We are in danger of falling into the same blindness of thinking we are doing God’s will but actually not doing it. What happened to them can happen to us. And what is the cause? In a word, hypocrisy. The danger of keeping up the appearances of being good Catholics but compromising on the substance.
The surest way to banish any hypocrisy is to adopt as our personal motto the line from the Our Father: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done.” God’s will is dependable and true and when it is our highest priority, we will also be dependable and true.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary
Time A
September 7, 2008
It may surprise you to know that the Church of Jesus Christ has a long history of internal conflict. The earliest Christians were hardly serene and peaceful. Much of what is written in the New Testament was in response to some sort off conflict. The largest disagreement was about whether Gentiles could become Christians without becoming Jews first. Over conflicts were over less significant matters, as they often still are.
There is a story of a small rural church that was discussing the proposal that they buy a chandelier for the church. The debate became heated. Finally, one of the older members stood up and said: “I’m against it for three reasons. First, we can’t afford it. Second, there is probably no one here who could play it. Third, what we really need is more light in here!”
It is the most natural thing in the world to think that when there is a conflict between people the person at fault should make the first move by confessing and asking forgiveness. When we have been offended, we tend to pull back, puff up, turn silent and wait. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. One reason it doesn’t always work is that the offending person may not even know that you have been hurt.
Jesus places the major responsibility for making peace on the one who has been offended or sinned against. This is not because the offender not responsible but because the wronged person is in a better position to act first. Jesus is also concerned that reconciliation happen without unnecessary public exposure. When we genuinely look for reconciliation, we must put aside all needs to punish or embarrass. It is only when all private efforts have failed that another person might become involved.
In the
Gospel Jesus is not speaking of all situations where there is conflict, though
it gives us a good outline to follow. Jesus is speaking of conflicts with the
Church, with the parish, among us who worship together. And He gives a model
for discipline within the Church: the motive, the spirit and basic procedure.
There are four steps to be taken for reconciliation. First, ideally reconciliation should be tried only by those immediately involved. That may be only two people. The motive is always simply to make peace. Second, if this fails, a second effort may be made with one or two other people. Third, only if the first two have not worked, the offender should be called before the “church.” The same motive rules the church: To make peace and draw the person back. Fourth, if the offender refuses to listen to the church, then it is not so much that the person is excluded from the community as they have excluded themselves. Jesus says to “let such a one be treated as a Gentile or a tax collector.” But remember that Jesus was always nothing but kind to them.
These four steps are much superior to some choices people often make. The first is to ignore the problems and allow them to fester into irreconcilable differences. The second is to turn to the civil courts to sue a fellow church member without trying to make peace first.
Conflict is not wrong. It is inevitable. No healthy human relationship is without conflict. The good marriage is not one free of conflict but one where conflict is managed with some success. The same is true of any church or parish.
Finally, communion, unity in the church is not the absence of conflict but the triumph of Christ and of Christian love over our differences.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time A
August 31, 2008
Saint Paul sets the tone for our reflection today: “Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” The world and culture in which we live are always urging us to adapt to their ways. And the way of God is often judged to be outdated and avoided in order to be “with it.”
The perspective of “this age” always gets it wrong: the crowds mock Jeremiah and Peter has to be brought up short. The way we frame our life, not only our life of faith, but our everyday life, will affect our view. To take God’s rule seriously means to question the commonly accepted wisdom and probably makes us uncomfortable at least sometimes. Are you ready?
In Stephen King’s novel, Needful Things, the people of Castle Rock will do just about anything to get valuable objects in a store called “Needful Things.” When they enter the store, they see things they immediately think they cannot live without, anything from baseball cards to magical objects that cure disease. They don’t even have to spend money to buy them; they only have to perform strange little favors for the owner, Mr. Gaunt. Soon these favors have thrown the whole town into turmoil and the people begin to realize the things they thought were necessary to be happy were nothing special at all and actually bring heartache and trouble.
It would be easy to pass this off as only in a work of fiction if we didn’t also have such desires. On a shopping trip to a used car lot, the young woman says to her father, “I cannot live without that Mustang.” The man tells his wife that his life will not be complete unless he has the flat-panel wall sized TV in time for the Super Bowl. The woman announces to her friends that she would give her right arm to see Jon Bon Jovi in concert. Over and over we say to one another, “I’ve got to have this!” “I’ll die without that!” “I’d give my life for that!”
All of these things we call necessary for our lives. And once we have them, we refuse to admit that they added very little, maybe nothing, to the quality of our lives. We just move on to the next thing we need to have for happiness or to be fulfilled. On the other hand, Jesus in the Gospel is quite clear about what is necessary for Him, for His disciples, for us. And what He claims to be necessary is more than a bit unsettling.
The Gospel follows last week where Peter identifies Jesus as “The Christ, the Son of the living God.” He was right but he was also wrong because he didn’t understand what was necessary for Jesus to be the chosen One of God.
Jesus knew what was necessary, “he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” The word “must” really means “it is necessary.” It is not just a command, not a strong suggestion, but something that has to happen according to the very plan of God.
Peter cannot accept such a necessity. “Say it isn’t so,” he cries. Jesus can accept the version of life that Peter wants for Him but He turns away from it and turns toward the necessary thing, the one thing that brings the rule of God into the world. This is what Jesus asks us to set our minds on and not on the human things of desire and glory, possession and ownership and anything else we think we need but really don’t.
In turning, Jesus invites us to turn with Him. As He move along toward the cross, He looks over His shoulder, straight into our eyes, and says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” This cross-carrying thing becomes the necessary thing for us too. It is a choice. We can choose it or we can choose all the other things we think we need. More, we can choose that cross all the time. You won’t die if you don’t have that pair of shoes, but you will be less if you don’t stop and listen to your child. Your life will not be less if you miss that game, but it will be more if you give some of your time or your money to your church.
Finally, the sacrifice is not God’s final word. What “is necessary” also applies to the resurrection. “It is necessary for me to be raised on the third day.” And that is given to us as well, “those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Willingly giving up all the small things we think we need, offering up what is not essential, will bring us the one thing we need most- life –life lived well here and now and life lived well in the presence of God forever.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time A
August 24, 2008
Who do we say Jesus is? Who do you say Jesus is? Walk into any Catholic church and the most prominent image will be one of Jesus. It would be clear even to an alien from outer space that whatever happens here has something to do with Him. But the question of who He is remains to be answered.
We know what the Creed says: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father.” A very long sentence that basically says Jesus is unique in history; He is “Lord” and “Christ,” the anointed One of God; as well as the “Son of God,” with a special and personal claim to God as His Father. “Eternally begotten,” there was never a time when He was not or came into being. “Not made,” Jesus is not simply a creature like the rest of us, but “one in being with the Father,” sharing God’s own life and substance.
The Creed goes on to profess that He was born of a mother, the virgin Mary, and became flesh like all of us. And that He was crucified by human power too, “under Pontius Pilate,” the only other name mentioned in the Creed. He rises, ascends and He will preside over the judgment at the end and the Kingdom He announced will last forever!
This is who we say Jesus is. But saying isn’t believing and believing isn’t behaving as if it’s true. Like Peter, we can come up with the right answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and still get it wrong in all the ways that really matter.
Peter’s profession of faith is a stellar moment that Jesus describes as coming from the inspiration of God. Because of it, Peter was given a special share in the ministry of Jesus. He would be “Rock,” and he would have the keys that would open doors for others to enter and share in the blessings of salvation.
But every moment in Peter’s life was not so stellar, the darkest was probably when he denied knowing Jesus and swore to it three times. He was the same man but different. What had happened to Peter? Fear had happened. He was afraid of the consequences of knowing and believing Jesus. But Peter did not remain in fear; grace would take hold of him again, finally allowing him to die for love of Jesus.
Like Peter, we have some moments that are better than others. Some that might cause us to hang our heads in shame. Like Peter, we have fears that cripple and corrupt us. But like Peter, who was humble enough to tell us his story, we are also offered countless gifts of grace for the times when our words and work do not reflect our faith. For those moments, God has created grace; for our part we have to lay hold of it and allow it to lay hold of us. In the grip of grace we can be sure that God loves us in the stellar moments of our lives and maybe even more in the moments that bring us shame.
Peter, in the moments when he was seized by grace and in the moments he failed, remained the “rock” on whom Jesus built His Church. It was to Peter that Jesus handed the keys of the kingdom of heaven granting him a share in God’s power to open and close the doors to the Kingdom of God .
Here is the connection with the first reading where authority is taken from Shebna and given to Eliakim, “placing the key of the House of David on his shoulder.” The “key” is a symbol of authority giving the power both to open and to shut.
Jesus uses these words as he gives Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” saying “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This response of Jesus to Peter’s confession of faith is a God-sized vision for Peter’s future. Jesus sees ahead to the creation of a new community, the Church. This community of believers will carry Jesus to the world and continue His mission. It will be a community of faith with Christ Himself as the Head. But Jesus chooses to share His authority with Peter and those who follow him. Jesus gives Peter the keys, the symbol of authority, to rule the Church in His name.
When Pope Benedict visited the United States this year, maybe you noticed the yellow and white flag, the same one that stands over by the organ. On it are the crossed keys indicating that Benedict XVI is the successor of Peter and exercises the authority of Christ in the Church. “You are Rock and on this rock I will build my church,” gave us not only Peter, but Benedict, and John Paul and Paul VI and Pius and all the others in the long succession of popes.
We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. We also believe that the Son of the living God has given His Church the pope. And this is not the only evidence of that in the New Testament. Jesus renamed Peter, meaning “rock,” in John’s Gospel. His name had been Simon. Renaming in the Bible means giving a new mission. Jesus prays especially for Peter at the Last Supper and gives him a unique position after the resurrection. Finally, curiously enough, Peter’s name always comes first on the list of the Apostles.
There is one Lord, Jesus Christ. And He founded a Church to continue His mission to bring God’s love and the power of grace to all people. And the keys of that Church are in Peter’s hands.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time A
August 3, 2008
If I were to announce that the homily today is about tithing, there would be many initial reactions. We will leave those for the moment. But you would also likely expect that my main point, whenever I got to it, would be that we should to it, right? But what if instead, I said, tithing is just a concession to how far we have fallen from how God intended us to be? What would you think then?
Actually, my main point is not about tithing (you can breathe now). It’s not about money or the parish budget, though you might want to apply it that way. But I do want to start with tithing and I do mean to say that it is a concession to our sinfulness.
Consider the Garden of Eden before sin. There is no mention of tithing and God certainly did not tithe. He put Adam and Eve in a wonderful garden and said, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden.” God went on to warn them away from one tree, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” but that was not because God wanted it for Himself but because it was not good for them, “ for in the day you eat of it,” God said, “you shall die.” God gave generously, not withholding any good thing.
But one result of the sin is that generous spirit does not flourish in people; it seems more natural for most of us to consider first how much we can keep for ourselves. So, God gave the instructions about tithing so that when we are calculating how little we can give away and still consider ourselves to be good, we have a figure to work with.
And we need a guideline because in our world there are very serious issues of supply and demand. 100, 000 people die every day from lack of food and malnutrition while others spend their days trying to figure out how to avoid too many calories. The rising costs of food staples, rice, wheat and corn, has made it almost impossible for millions of people in about 40 different countries to get what they need daily while we talk about converting thousands of tons of corn into ethanol to save on gas prices for our SUV’s.
It is today’s Gospel where Jesus says, “Give them something eat yourselves,” that has gotten me here. So let me provide the context.
We know about starving around the world. Each night on the evening news there are disasters, the political scene, the unending war in Iraq. And one thing is certain, we watch this poverty, famine and violence either before or after a good meal and we wonder what we could possibly do to contribute to the well-being of so many people.
In the Gospel, we look into the eyes of Christ who embraces the His people with pity and sees them like sheep without a shepherd. In that we catch a glimpse of the evening news through God’s eyes. “Who will feed them?”
And we should be led to ask how we can make the abundance of God seen in the miracle happen now. What do we have today that can be multiplied just like those five loaves and two fish? May it is compassion which literally causes us to “feel with” another.
The response of Jesus to the ignorant, the hungry, the blind, the lepers, the widows and all those who came to Him with their suffering flowed from the compassion of God. We need to pay close attention to His words and actions.
It is tempting to become cynical. “This is a deserted place and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” What can one person do?
Compassion requires getting moved from our comfort zones; it requires prayer. And the starting point of compassion is to respond to the others with kindness, forgiveness, generosity and love, even if that person is someone we live with or the grumpy neighbor next door or the rude person in the store.
The evening news can become the time when we go into the deserted places with Jesus and look at the crowds with compassion.
I started by saying that tithing, giving 10 percent of what we have, is God’s concession to our sinfulness. But is we join the crowds at the seashore, we see God’s way with us is not one of bargaining but of abundance and generosity. And when we see what Christ can do with even the little we offer, we realize there is no need to bargain anyway.
The only thing that is needed is to not to figure out how much we can keep for ourselves, but how generous we can be.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time A
July 6, 2008
Here we are on the Fourth of July weekend. It always reminds me of my grandmother who used to say that on July 4th the summer was almost over! I prefer to believe that is not true. But a holiday weekend is a good time to consider rest.
It has been said that rest is “an un-American activity.” Americans, generally, are highly motivated doers, eager beavers, “can do” people. Productivity is taken for a virtue and success a high value. These often result in a driven, pressurized way of life. And there is a price to pay for this. It does not lead to wholeness of life.
It’s fair to say that at no time in human history have people been so busy. The idea was that modern technology would help and give us more free time but it has actually gotten worse. All this rushing around has made health problems such as chronic fatigue, stress and anxiety a fact of everyday life. We even take Sunday and holidays and make them into opportunities “to get things done.”
We all need to take time out from our busy schedules to rest. Just as rest is important for physical health, it is absolutely necessary for spiritual health and well-being. We can recognize immediately when our bodies are tired because we lose energy, our muscles ache and we get sleepy. But, do we know when our soul is tired?
Among the symptoms of a tired soul are boredom, loneliness, irritability and anxiety. And, where do we turn when our soul is empty and our spirits need a lift? Too often when we feel lonely or anxious, we turn to TV, alcohol, food or to other empty ways of wasting time. The result is we can feel emptier than when we started. This is especially true if you turn to sinful ways of finding comfort.
Jesus said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” These words have given consolation and strength to people in all sorts of circumstances. The rest that Jesus gives is healing and transforming. It reaches into our depths, gets to the heart of the matter, and begins the rebirth that leads to hope. In times of stress, physical rest is usually a necessary part of recovery. Sleep can be almost miraculous. We have ancient wisdom on this, Psalm 127:2 says, “It is in vain for you to rise early and put off your rest at night…..God gives to his beloved in sleep.”
The Bible’s understanding of rest does not mean just physical rest. Physical rest is necessary, of course, but in the Bible rest is first mentioned in relation to God. At the end of the work of creation, God rested. It was not “physical” rest. Sabbath rest was God’s gift to people and it affects us physically, psychologically, emotionally, relationally and spiritually. Rest restores, replenishes and renews.
While Jesus appreciated the importance of physical rest, the promised rest of which He spoke was also spiritual in nature. Much of our physical weariness has a spiritual cause. When the spirit is renewed, the body responds. From Jeremiah: “Stand besides the earliest roads, ask the pathways of old which is the way to good, and walk in it; thus you find rest for your souls” (6:16).
In fact, both our restlessness and our rest are deeply spiritual. We can understand the prayer of Saint Augustine: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee.”
The invitation of Jesus to rest involves a change of “yokes.” “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” When we take the yoke of Jesus, we find the focus of our lives shifting from ourselves to others. This is often the beginning of overcoming weariness and depression.
Finally, in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, there is grim vision of eternal separation from God; “The smoke of the fire that torments them will rise forever and ever, and there will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast….” (14:11).
And rest in the Bible often refers to our eternal life with God, “O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest” (Ps.55.6). And we pray, “Grant them eternal rest, O Lord…” This does not mean we should picture eternal life as empty, endless lack of activity. God’s promised rest involves peace as the world cannot give it. This “rest” is the fulfillment of our longing to at one with God, the goal of our journey.
We are to rest in the Lord, not only then, but now.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Saints Peter and Paul
June 29, 2008
If you went into your bathroom, closed the door and stared at yourself in the mirror, who would be looking back? Do we really know who we are? Some people do this regularly as a kind of reality check to stay grounded.
Father Richard Rohr once told a conference that after they ask themselves who they are, they might also want to ask themselves “whose” they are. Who do we belong to? Who do we follow? Keep that question running in the background for today.
This feast celebrates the greatness of two very different men who received God’s call and God’s grace and became living pillars of the Church. Aside from their shared faith in Jesus, there is little else that would have brought Peter and Paul together or made them partners in the building of the Church of Christ.
As different as night and day, they found a union in Christ that continues to call others to a similar communion. Shared faith has the power, or should have the power, to bring together the most unlikely people making them complimentary and effective partners. The fact that Peter and Paul could overcome their differences for the cause of Christ is a challenge to each of us to be willing to do the same.
With Peter, we are invited to answer that ultimate question on which all other questions and their answers depend. Like Peter, we need to answer: You are the Christ, the Savior, our hope, our model, our way, our open door, our teacher, our friend, our life our brother, our God. With Peter, we are to shake off all chains that bind us and walk in the freedom that Jesus has won for us.
Standing with Paul, we remember that all our life can be offered as a sacrifice, an offering poured out in praise of God. Paul reminds us that Jesus stands by to give us the strength and encouragement through all ups and downs, through every turn and detour we may meet along the way.
Christ chose Peter as the “rock” on which He would build His Church. This is the same Peter who denied the Lord three times on the night of His betrayal and arrest. Hardly the dependability you would expect from a rock. It is said that Peter wept for his sin at least once a day for the rest of his life until the tears word two pale tracks down the skin of his face.
Paul started out as the leader of a violent persecution designed to crush the Church at the beginning. But he was chosen to announce the Gospel all over the ancient world. God did not choose Saint Paul because he was charismatic or a great speaker. Second Corinthians says, “His bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account” (2 Corinthians 10.10).
How did these two, so flawed, so human, become the two unshakeable pillars of the Church? What made them saints and martyrs? God’s grace. The same grace that has kept the Church alive and growing for twenty centuries; the same grace we all received at Baptism.
It is clear that the ability of Peter, traitor turned saint, to work miracles and stay faithful to the end was not from his own power but from Jesus. In the Gospel for last night (tonight), Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Three times Peter answers but he needs to learn that loving Jesus is not enough, he must act on this love, “Feed my sheep.”
And Paul, persecutor turned apostle, was able to preach the Gospel fearlessly even to the point of losing his life by the power of God’s grace. He had to freely choose to be faithful to Christ and the will of Christ for his life day after day, year after year. It was not Paul achieving things on his own; it was God working through him. All they had to do was believe, cooperate and obey.
We do well to take a good look at these men. They were fully human in every sense of the word and also belonged totally to Christ. By imitating them, we might one day be able to say with Saint Paul, “I have completed well; I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time A
June 22, 2008
An elderly woman had worked all her life and finally had saved enough money to fulfill her lifetime dream of visiting the Holy Land. But she had never been on a plan before and was very afraid. Even four bishops on the plane did not comfort her. When the plane finally reached its altitude and was over the ocean, she finally opened her eyes and looked out the window. Just at that moment, one of the plane’s engines broke off and fell away. She shouted, “We’re all going to die!”
The flight attendant tried to calm her by assuring her all was well and the pilot could fly safely back to New York with three engines. But she kept yelling, “We’re all going to die!” So the attendant said to her, “Don’t worry, God is with us. We have only three engines, but look, we have four bishops.” The woman replied, “I’d rather have four engines and three bishops!”
Now that is humorous. But it hinges on a very serious aspect of being human, fear. And fear can sometimes gain the upper hand.
What is it that you are afraid of? What makes you catch your breath and causes your heart to race? For the woman, it was flying. For some it’s speaking in public. Some are afraid of heights; others of thunder storms. Some fear the insecurity of losing a job. Some are afraid of snakes or spiders or rats. Still others fear growing old, sickness and dying which comes to all of us.
Aware of all that can cause fear to rise up and strangle human strength and life, in the Gospel Jesus speaks to all our fears, reasonable and unreasonable, “Do not be afraid.”
Jesus offers strength in the face of fear by reminding us of God’s careful, loving presence. Everything is known to God. Knowing that, we are not to nurse our fears but allow faith to help manage it and finally to conquer it altogether.
But to be more specific Jesus is talking about fear it very clear to His disciples that, if they are to follow Him, persecution will follow. When Jesus says, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body,” those who are hearing the Gospel of Matthew were well aware that most of the Apostles, as well as many other Christians, have been killed for the faith. But still Jesus assures them, “fear no one.”
Sometimes you will find preachers who say that if only your faith is strong enough, Jesus will take away any suffering. Jesus not only did not promise that, but He said that if we would follow Him we have to take up our cross every day and walk in His footsteps. He told His apostles not to be afraid of those who kill the body but He didn’t say that no one would try to kill them.
The warning of Jesus remains into our own day. All over the world people are persecuted for being Christian in such places as North Korea, China, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It is estimated that over 200 million Christians are persecuted in 45 different countries. In fact, it is impossible to follow Christ faithfully without facing some opposition. Being Christian requires courage, perseverance and faithfulness.
So how do you live the Catholic faith with courage, perseverance and faithfulness? By never hesitating to announce that you are Catholic and that you not only believe in God but that you love the Lord. That means that you do not appreciate the wrong use of God’s name or jokes that degrade human sexuality or are racist. That you do not join in gossip.
It means that you do an honest day’s work for your pay or that you pay your employees an honest wage. That you stand up for the dignity of all human life even if it’s unpopular. Certainly we should never fear upsetting someone by defending what is right.
It certainly means exercising our God-given right to worship by being at Mass every weekend remembering especially those millions of Catholics who would love to be able to join us. And it means sharing what we have with the poor and for the upkeep and the works of the church.
If from any of this there comes some suffering, we wear it like a badge of honor for having been faithful and living without fear.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ A
May 25, 2008
We celebrate today the mystery of the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. And so the readings from the word of God aim to help us to reflect on the meaning of this Gift that God has given to us.
Taking Communion into our bodies can do little to feed our souls unless we take that Bread of Life into our hearts. Making Communion is God’s work. Whether it makes a difference requires our cooperation.
I often wonder what has become of our Sundays. Despite the remarkable efforts in the last 40 years after Vatican II to make the Mass easier to understand and to invite the participation of all, less than 30% of Catholic in the United States are at Mass on any given weekend.
More seriously, though, we may ask what has become of the Eucharist. If a majority of Catholics are not participating in Sunday Mass, could it be that the Eucharist has become uninteresting, boring or irrelevant to their lives? Of course, we all agree that Mass should not be a matter of an “obligation” or done because of social pressure.
Could it be that in our extremely busy schedules there is no matter or reason to gather to give thanks to the God? Or that we are so right living and strong in and of ourselves that we do not need the grace and strength of the Lord?
Moreover, in the same context of our craving for communication and always being in touch, I wonder how and when we are going to be able to connect with Christ and remember Him. After all, the primary reason we celebrate the Eucharist is to obey the command of Jesus to “Do this in memory” of Him, to hear His Gospel, to be full of thanksgiving and to renew our commitment to live faithfully.
We cannot answer for those who are not here, but we can and we should answer for ourselves. Let me say this as I begin. There are good and valid reasons for not receiving Communion. In fact, in some circumstances, NOT receiving Holy Communion is more faithful than receiving. For example, if your life is not lived in communion with Christ, if you are aware of serious sin or lack the necessary reflection to do it well.
I mean to invite all of us to a renewed appreciation of the Eucharist and Christ present there, but I do not mean to cause unnecessary guilt in those who are faithful to Sunday Mass but for whatever reason cannot receive Communion. But to those who can receive Communion and don’t, I am talking to you. And to those who might receive Christ in Communion but live sinful lives, who have mortal sins that have not been confessed, or who do it without the necessary reflection, I am talking to you.
We show our faith by our reverence. Of course that applies to reverence in church and how we receive but it should not be seen so narrowly. Reverence also applies to what should happen as a result of receiving the Eucharist. That means cooperating with the liberating, protecting and nourishing Lord in how we live outside the church walls. And ultimately how reverent we are answers the question of whether we believe or not. Lack of reverence, lack of reflection, lack of preparation is rooted in lack or weakness of faith.
Let’s make our prayer, “Lord I do believe, help my unbelief.”
In the Gospel of John, Jesus asks the crowds to “remember” their “ancestors who ate and still died.” They are to remember the strength and power of God when He “guided you through the vast and terrible desert,” that God brought forth water for you from the flinty rock and fed you in the desert with manna.”
Jesus then pushes beyond anything even dreamed of by the crowds with words impossible to understand. Just as the manna in the desert was “a food unknown to your fathers,” Jesus offers a new food that is unknown to the people of His day. Jesus offers “bread that is His very flesh.” He is not saying that the bread symbolizes His flesh; He’s saying it is His “flesh for the life of the world.” Is it any wonder that they quarreled among themselves? They asked how this could happen. Can you hear the echo here of Mary’s question to the angel? She asked how could this be possible. How could she conceive a child? Gabriel answers that it is through the power of the Holy Spirit. Now the question is how can Jesus become food and drink? And the answer is the same: Through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Gospel tells us everything we need to know, provided we listen, understand and act on it. “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” There is no doubt that Jesus intends to give Himself to us completely so that sinners might have faith and faith might lead to eternal life. Jesus gave Himself in his life, in His ministry, in His total surrender to the Father, and ultimately in His death. But most of all, He gives Himself as real food and drink so that we might have life because of Him.
And just when you think there could be no more, there is.
Communion with the Body and Blood of Christ must lead us to communion with one another. Together we walk to receive Communion while joining our voices in song. Having received the Body of Christ, you return to your places as the mystical Body of Christ. We are one Body. As Saint Paul wrote, that because the one bread becomes the one Body of Christ, then those who eat that one bread become the body of Christ.
We are one with all who have gone before us, our loved ones, our ancestors and all the saints. We are also one with those yet to come, our children, grandchildren and generations to come. In God time is collapsed in the moment of Communion!
No wonder that the Second Vatican Council tells us that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life.” “In the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church…” (Catechism #1324).
This is the mystery, the Gift, brought before us this day. May it change our minds, deepen our faith, move our hearts and bring to eternal life. Amen.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Pentecost A
May 11, 2008
Today we reflect on the guiding force of the Church and of our lives, the Holy Spirit. As baptized Christians we are supposed to open ourselves to be used as the Spirit wills. But how do we know that the Holy Spirit is acting in our lives, that we are being transformed into the image and likeness of God? The answer is found in the type of fruit our lives are producing.
First, we need to remember that we are talking about divine power that is within us. Of course we find such a thing hard to believe. But consider the effect on those who first received the Spirit. With the Spirit, they discovered that they could not contain themselves; or perhaps better put, they could not contain the Spirit within them. They were overflowing with God’s love for the world. The Scripture tells us they were “driven out into the streets of Jerusalem proclaiming God’s mighty deeds.”
Before the Spirit, they had doubts about who Jesus was and confusion about His mission. Afterwards they began to understand and were able to set aside their own disappointed expectations and accept the surprising ways and will of God. Before the Spirit’s fire and light, they were eager for power, prestige and good places at the table. After the transforming Spirit, they began to put others first and exercise their power as service. Before the Spirit came on them, they were suspicious of foreigners and their differences. With the fiery transformation their horizons were broadened and their vision was widened.
If all this and more could happen to them, what might happen to us if we let the Spirit move within us?
Our spiritual lives are like gardens; we need to tend them by pruning back branches, pulling the weeds, tilling the soil and fertilizing the plants. We do this by keeping check on the influence of our weaknesses and sin on our thoughts and actions, developing an active prayer life, enlightening our minds, pursuing the presence of God and trying to live by the Gospel. By doing these, we make space for the Spirit to work.
But how do we know that the Spirit is working? If our “fruit is good” and that we are really drinking of the one Spirit? The presence and continued growth of virtue is the evidence. But what are some of the virtues that will be seen in a person of prayer who is moved by the one Spirit? They are faith, hope, love, humility self-forgetfulness, sensitivity to the needs of others and zeal for the glory of God and for extending the God’s Kingdom.
As a person develops a relationship with God and relies on the presence of the Spirit, faith will deepen. You will begin to trust in God’s presence active in your life. It is not that doubts will disappear but that you will see reality more clearly and grow in confidence.
Saint Paul always told the young church to have hope. Hope can see a person through the most difficult of circumstances. Hope comes when we realize there is always a better day to come, that we are never abandoned but embraced. Hope brings a joy that fills our hearts and stretches us beyond what we can imagine.
The First Letter of Saint John says clearly; “God is love.” When we drink of the Spirit and deepen our relationship with God, we automatically increase in love. The more God takes over the heart of a person, the more the person is filled with love.
In secular circles, humility is not seen as a virtue. We tend to think of humble people as mousy, timid, nervous and quiet. But to be humble means to recognize our sinfulness, to see we share the same weaknesses and quirks as others. Humility empties us of all arrogance.
Growth in the Spirit makes us begin to think less of ourselves and more about others and what is happening around us. We know the Spirit is working when concern for others is first. Finally, we develop zeal for the glory of God, for spreading His Kingdom and we participate in the work of the Church.
This is the feast of Pentecost. It is our duty as Christians to continue to drink fully of the Spirit, to allow our spiritual gardens to be refreshed, renewed and watered, and to examine our lives for evidence of the good fruit of the Holy Spirit.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Third Sunday of Easter A
April 6, 2008
The encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus is one of the best stories in the Gospels. And it is literally full of material for reflection and offering consolation and hope. There is no way that I can do it justice in the time we have here, but I hope we can all leave with something more than we came with.
The core truth is that the risen Christ comes to us in the “breaking of the bread,” that is, when we celebrate the Eucharist. So we might begin by asking whether we sometimes do not recognize Christ. Many of us spend lifetimes receiving His Body with our eyes unopened.
There is the case of Peter of Prague, a 13th century priest. Even after years of witnessing the Consecration in his own hands, he simply did not believe in the real presence of Christ. One day during Mass while in Italy on his way to Rome, he was amazed when the Host he raised began to shed small drops of blood. Believing that Christ had revealed His true Body to him in the breaking of the bread, Peter left and continued to Rome where he begged forgiveness from the Pope (Urban IV). The stained linen is still kept in the cathedral at Orvieto.
For us, we likely have to hope that the story can make our hearts burn with faith.
The two disciples head out for Emmaus, a distance of seven miles from Jerusalem. It had been a terrible week of grief and crushed hopes. They probably would have left on Saturday but they could not walk more than 3,000 feet on the Sabbath. The journey was not that long in miles but what a journey of faith they were about to make.
It’s important to remember that they have all the details, they know the whole story. Now the body is missing. They have heard talk of angels and such stuff. But they see no sign of life, no reason to hope. Their grief and disappointment are too much. Listen to them.
“We hoped He would make things better, that He would set the people free. We hoped He would save us but He couldn’t even save Himself.” It’s easy to understand their disappointment.
Sometimes even those we trust and love can let us down. Sometimes our friends are not there when we need them. Sometimes family doesn’t care as much as we think they should. Even the people of the church can leave us disappointed. And the greatest disappointment may not be from friends, family or the church. It might come from the One in whom we place our faith. Sometimes even God can disappoint.
We expect God to be our protector and our savior. We expect Him to do something about pain, illness and disease. We expect Him to do something about poverty and suffering in the world. What of disasters and war and violence? Yet peace does not come, wars continue and disease never ends.
“He let us down,” the travelers say. “He should have done something.”
“I’m not so sure,” the stranger says to them. “Let’s keep walking.”
He reminds them of the times when the people of God went through hard times, grief and disappointment, like the forty years in the desert, forty years of difficult days and long nights. And God did not abandon them.
The stranger tells them that prophets told of a Savior who would come into the world and overcome suffering not with power or might but with humility and love. This Savior would enter into the world and suffer through it, even become part of the suffering of the people. This Savior does not take away suffering but makes a way through suffering. He does not take away hurt and pain but makes a way through the hurt and pain. He does not take away death but makes a way through death so that death no longer has the last word.
Now they have at least heard enough that they know they need to hear more, “Stay with us.”
Then the stranger takes bread and says, “Blessed are you Lord God of all creation; through your goodness we have this bread to offer. This is my Body.”
They see the bread that is broken and the hands that hold it. Their eyes are opened and they see Jesus holding the bread with the holes in His hands. As soon as they recognize Him, He disappears. That was all He was trying to get them to do: to recognize Him. They recognize that He was with them the whole time; He was with them in their grief and sorrow and suffering.
“He was with us the whole time!” one of them says. “Didn’t our hearts burn when He was talking to us? Wasn’t there something deep within us telling us we were not alone?”
There is nothing else to say except that the same Jesus, the same power of Heaven is waiting for us here at this sacred table.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Second Sunday of Easter A
March 30, 2008
Easter Sunday is a big day for hope. Now we are here the Sunday after Easter. If we look around, things are different from last week. Seats are easier to find. The flowers are not quite as fresh. Things even smell different. Whatever the situation was before Easter, we seem to be back to it now. Or are we?
Easter is about faith and so this week, one week later, we hear about the first disciples and how they came to believe. At the center of the story is Thomas.
Listening to the story, we all probably have a touch of envy: wouldn’t it have been great to be in that upper room and actually have seen the Lord? But we do receive the blessing from the Lord given to “those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
But what is faith?
Since Easter is about the resurrection of Jesus, many think faith means believing in life after death. Of course, that is part of it. But Christians are not the only ones who believe in life after death. Those who belong to most of the world’s major religions also believe in life after death. And life after death, by itself, is not necessarily something to be desired. Many popular ideas about heaven are downright silly. Floating around endlessly on a cloud playing a harp is not high on my list of things I’ve always wanted to do. Eternal life as endless existence is not especially attractive. Does the Gospel have something better to offer?
The Gospel of Jesus Christ, faith in the resurrection, offers us a quality of life. Jesus came to give us, not only endless, but a different quality of life. Mark Twain told a story about a night when the Mississippi River broke through a narrow neck of land and the course of the great river was suddenly changed. He said that a man had gone to sleep that night as a slave in Missouri. He woke up the next morning to discover the change. Now he stood in Illinois and was, because of that, a free man. Overnight the whole world changed for that man, as did his quality of life.
When Easter faith offers us a different quality of life, this does not mean a life without suffering. What we often want is to be saved from suffering, from pain, from inconvenience. God sets out to save us from sin, and from ourselves, but not necessarily from suffering. Every human journey goes through the real world, not around it. Easter faith means believing in the power of the resurrection. It means believing that out of death God brings life. It means believing that in every human situation there is a saving possibility.
This second Sunday of celebrating Easter faith is Divine Mercy Sunday. The image of this Sunday is Jesus with a rainbow coming from His chest. That rainbow is for you and for me to remind us that in Christ our lives are eternal and our sins are forgiven.
Rainbows can pop up against the darkest clouds. The sun peaks through the storm and every color of light is painted in the sky. The Bible says that God made the rainbow as a reminder that no darkness or evil can resist the mercy of God. God has promised to set aside anger and punishment for compassion and mercy.
Saint Faustina says in her mystical vision of divine mercy: “Here the misery of the soul meets the God of mercy.” It is wonderful that she saw the mercy of God, but how much more blessed are you who have not seen yet still believe in God’s forgiveness. We believe that there is nothing we can do or fail to do, no one we can love or fail to love, nothing we can say or fail to say that cannot be redeemed.
Once we know that we are given a mission: Keep on forgiving as you have been forgiven. True disciples must be prepared to take the next step, from being on the receiving end of mercy to reaching out to others with mercy, healing and consolation.
To bring us back to the beginning, if can be different this week, on this side of Easter, if once we have known the mercy of God, we are agents that others might also know the love and forgiveness of God. So that together we may all know that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Easter Sunday
March 23,
2008
Isn’t joy the experience most connected with Easter? Today is a day of joy. Inside and outside off churches Easter is celebrated, either as a holyday or a holiday. It is the best loved festival of spring and the most joyful celebration of life. Joy, however, was not the first response of the first Easter. This may seem curious, but in all four of the Gospels the impact of the resurrection brings not joy but fear.
The Gospel of John tells us about the first reaction of the disciples to the empty tomb of Jesus. Not all react the same way: Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple each react differently. Mary clearly does not believe that Jesus is risen but rather that the body was taken. Peter investigates the tomb but we are only told what he sees. The beloved disciple also enters the tomb but the Gospel tells us something different about him: “he saw and believed.” What all three do not understand, the beloved disciple believed without understanding.
Consider Mary. When she gets to the tomb, it is dark. It was not simply the darkness of early morning. With the death of Jesus, the light had gone out of Mary’s life.
John intends to tell us more than that the sun not yet come up. He is giving us a description of the state of Mary’s mind and the minds of all the followers of Jesus. In fact, he is making a poetic and philosophical statement about the state of the world and the entire human race. It was dark. It was as dark as hell.
We know that there is darkness in the world. Whatever joy life might bring, there is always an end to it. Whenever there is a celebration, whether a wedding, a birth, a victory, we know it will end. The same for all human relationships. No matter how much you love someone, you cannot keep that person forever because either the person will leave you or you will leave that person. That is what death is all about. No matter how lovely the light of any day or any event or any person, darkness eventually creeps in.
So the Gospel has it right when it tells us that when Mary came to the tomb that morning, it was dark. And when she discovers the tomb is empty, she must have thought the darkness had grown deeper than ever.
Easter was not born in the light. Easter was born in the dark. And it still comes to us in the dark. Whatever the dark place may be in your life, however deep that darkness may be, Easter comes there in the person of Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Because when the power of death was broken by the resurrection, all the power of darkness was broken.
Is it the darkness of some habit you can’t break? Maybe it’s thoughts you hate to even admit to yourself. Or is the darkness simply unfulfilled dreams or a loneliness so deep it hurts? Or is it fear of someone, of some bad memory, or even of death itself?
Because Easter was born in the dark, wherever there is darkness, Easter comes still to bring its light.
Now to know the light of Christ risen, Easter has to be brought from the past to the present. If we simply recognize that a couple of thousand years ago the Son of God rose from the dead, we will be like Mary and Peter who see the evidence but still do not believe. Remember that the Gospel tells us that John saw the same and "he believed.” Faith surpasses human understanding. What is important is believing.
Bringing the resurrection from the past to the present means simply this: God’s love has triumphed over sin and death. And the power of that love is available to you each and every moment of your life. Just as that love triumphed that first Easter, it can triumph in the present.
The resurrection tells us that the sky is the limit and all things are possible. It tells us that there is always tomorrow and no road is a dead end. It tells us about the power of God, if only we believe that God is working today, right now, in our lives. The resurrection tells us that God wants what is best for you and for me and the He is working with us to make that happen even though it may not always seem that way.
Consider this. When we look at the mountains and deserts and glaciers, we may think that the core of the earth is empty or solid. But when we consider a volcano, we can trace the flowing lava to a molten, liquid center. So at the center of the universe and of all reality rages the eternal fire of God’s love and goodness and it will not, it cannot be contained!
It may be easier to leave the resurrection in the past. It is certainly more comfortable. But once I realize and admit that God desires to bring the new life into every day of my living, then things begin to change. God does not only promise a new life to come but endless resources to deal with whatever life on earth can bring. Living with an Easter faith means knowing that I never walk alone.
The world is not as we thought: It is God’s world and our lives are God’s gifts, given not for 20, 30, 50, 70 or even 90 years but for eternity. And given, not because we deserve it, but out of generosity and mercy.
Easter is more an invitation than a fact. You are invited to “Think of what is above, not what is on earth” (Colossians).
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Good Friday
March 21,
2008
What is it that separates great sports teams from average or even good teams? The great teams know how to win. They have full confidence in themselves and in their teammate that, even when trouble and hardship comes, they will face it with the best they have to offer.
Would we live our lives differently today if we knew we were on the winning team? How much more confidently and courageously would we live and act if we could be certain?
On this Good Friday, we hear a long portion of the Gospel of John. Chapters 19 and 20 tell the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross. The death of Jesus on the cross is the climax of God’s great mission to bring restoration, healing and hope to the world He created. God’s creation was broken, fractured, and continues to be broken by the moment-by-moment decisions of men and women to depend on their own strengths and to follow their own plans and desires separate from the lives that God created them to live. Earlier in the Gospel, Jesus offered the reason for His coming: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10.10).
Jesus came that we might know the life God originally intended for us to live. This life was known in His teaching and seen in His compassionate service. Through the cross, Jesus made a path for all people to God and a way for them to become the people God created us to be. Through the cross God unleashes those who put their trust in Jesus to become the people God created them to be. Their trust in the victory of Jesus gives them the strength to make the strongest impact on the world for God.
As we reflect on the final hours of Jesus, what sort of life does the suffering and death of Jesus call us to live?
The Gospel opens with the story of the arrest of Jesus in the garden. Jesus already knows that this night will be His last. He has prepared Himself through prayer and He is ready to fulfill His mission even though that means death on a cross. His disciples, however, are not yet ready.
Jesus understood the cost of the mission. He was resolved to see it through. He trusted the future into the hands of His Father and turned to face the storm.
Do we trust that God has our best interests at heart? Are we willing to risk the present for the sake of the future that God plans to bring about?
The middle of the Gospel is made of contrasts. Jesus courageously faces trials before Annas, the high priest, and the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. The final trial before Pilate leads to His being flogged and crucified.
In with the story of the trials are two stories in which Peter, representing the disciples, denies his association with Jesus three times. When Jesus faces the cross, He walks toward it with determination seeing in it the fulfillment of God’s purposes. In contrast, Peter retreats even to the point of denying the one whom he has given up everything to follow. In denying, Peter loses himself. In going to the cross, Jesus gains life.
We may learn a lesson for this on the plains of this country by watching the cattle and the buffalo when they face a coming storm. The herd of cattle will as a group try to run away from the oncoming storm. Ranchers lose many head each year because of this. The storms catch up with them anyway and greater suffering takes place. On the other hand, he buffalo seem to know instinctively that a crisis must be met head-on to survive. When a storm comes, the buffalo turn to face it, put their heads down and walk through it. Fewer of them die in storms than the cattle.
Are we more like cattle or buffalo? Peter or Jesus? What storms do we need to face in order to be faithful to living the lives God has created for us?
Continuing in John, we come to the actual crucifixion and death of Jesus. Just before He dies, Jesus cries out, “It is finished.” Then He breathed His last and died. It is at this moment that the mission of God to bring salvation to people has reached its highest point. The work of Jesus was finished. But God was not done.
God writes the last part of the story in life, not death. Good Friday is only good in the light of Easter. When we put our trust in Jesus, we join the winning team. That does not mean the present is never bleak. But it does mean that when the end of the game comes, no matter what the score, our team takes the victory.
This is a truth that can change your life. Are you ready?
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Holy Thursday
March 20,
2008
Tonight with this Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we make an important transition: the season of Lent officially ends and the sacred Triduum, Latin for “three days,” begins. These sacred three days, which begins tonight and ends with Evening Prayer on Easter Sunday, marks the heart of the mystery of the Christian faith.
And remembrance is at the very center of what we celebrate this evening.
Saint Paul’s letter to the people at Corinth is the earliest account ever written of the Last Supper. It is even earlier than each of the four Gospels. It is so close to the actual event that its words have become part of our Eucharistic Prayer, spoken at every Mass, at every altar all over the world for almost 2000 years. These words that created the Eucharist are the beating heart of our Catholic faith.
And through it all, there is a word that jumps out at us: Remembrance. “Do this in remembrance of me.” In other words, “This is how I want to be remembered. Those words echo similar words from the first reading, “memorial feast.”
This is more than remembering. It means to commemorate an event of God’s grace from the past and it means that each generation must relive it in the present.
Saint Paul claims that he has “received” it “from the Lord.” But this happened through the living community since Paul never met Jesus in person before His death and resurrection. And then Paul very formally says, that he “handed on” to them the same.
In the Gospel, Saint John does not even mention the Last Supper or that Jesus commanded that remembrance. He gives us something else to remember: Jesus Christ “who came to serve rather than be served. He presents Jesus the servant. “You ought to wash one another’s feet,” Jesus says. “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” In other words: remember what I have done. Do this too in remembrance of me.
All who keep the remembrance at the table and share in His Body and Blood are also called to serve, to wash one another’s feet in humility and love, just as Jesus did. This, too, needs to be remembered and relived by every generation.
So we are a people of remembrance. Not a people who just remember, but a people who do the remembering in our living.
Our ancestors in the faith, the Jewish people, are also a people of remembrance. The first reading from Exodus describes the institution of the Passover, the very meal that Jesus was celebrating with His disciples on this night.
In Exodus it is God who is speaking and He tells His people: “This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your generations shall celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a perpetual institution.” In other words, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
It is no secret that the older you get, the more you forget. This makes the remembrance tonight all the more amazing. For 5000 years God’s people have relived the great Passover.
For 2000 years we have gathered around the altar of the Lord and repeated Saint Paul’s words, the words that the Corinthians heard and took to heart.
For generations we have knelt and watched as the Body and Blood of our Savior has been raised to God. And we have watched as we, too, have been raised with Him as offerings to God in praise and thanksgiving.
And we have knelt and washed feet with love and a sense of purpose that has sometimes changed the world by making Christian love the most powerful force on the planet. If we remember rightly, it can be just that powerful again in our own time.
All this we do “in remembrance” of Him.
This night our journey toward Calvary is just beginning. But the journey to the cross is also the journey to Easter. Our food for this journey is the Eucharist. It is our strength. It is our hope.
Let us do this in remembrance of Him.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fifth Sunday of Lent A
March 9, 2008
In these last days of Lent, the readings are long and deep. I am sure that the length is not lost on you. Let’s hope we can pay just as much attention to the depth.
The prophet Ezechiel cries out this message from God today, “O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them.” The whole idea this week is that we have nothing to fear from death. Saint Paul tells us that if the Spirit of God lives in us we will live forever. And above all, the Gospel about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead deserves our special attention. Try to find some time to read the story again quietly to yourself. There are many emotions there, so it is easy to place yourself somewhere in the story. We see Martha and Mary crying and we hear Martha’s hurt disappointment that Jesus did not come earlier. We see Jesus Himself weep over the death of His friend. Finally, we hear the clear call of Jesus to His friend: “Lazarus, come out!”
Here is a great chance for us to examine just where we stand with regard to our faith in the resurrection. All three of the readings leave no doubt whatever about God’s power, promise and commitment to give us new life and free us from the power of death. But do we believe that the word of God is stronger than death? And do we live the new life that faith gives us?
I am always surprised at the number of Christians, Catholics being no exception, who hold some sort of vague belief in “life after death.” Think how amazed some people are at what are called “near death” experiences. Thank God that people get a fresh look at their lives and better appreciate living. But honestly, do we Christians need to be at the point of death or hear stories of light and tunnels to believe there is life after here? If we do, what should we make of what Saint Paul says, “If there is no resurrection, then neither Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty too is our preaching and empty is your faith” (1 Cor. 15.13-14). The bottom line is: Do we believe in the resurrection? Before anything else we need to be clear about that and what it means.
In the Gospel be sure that Jesus directs His question not just to Martha but to those standing around and to all of us 20 centuries later. “Do you believe this?” Martha’s answer becomes the measure for disciples: “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” To be honest, most of us have only just started to live that. To enter it completely means that we can walk to the end of the road without fear.
Saying the words is important. We say them every week, “I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” But believing them is more important so they become words that we live by. If we do not put our hearts in the words we speak, we just may find that our treasure lies someplace else.
This Gospel should force us to examine ourselves at the deepest level of our faith. Any doubt, any resentment at the loss of a loved one, any unresolved grief, any personal fear about our own dying, all this falls under the light of the Gospel. Not a harsh light but one softened by the tears of Jesus. His own agony and death is in front of Him and He will be with us in ours. He has gone before us in that final journey to show us the way. He also knows that anything that is killing us, anything that leaves us bound, anything that shatters our faith does not have the final say. He knows that the power of all things is broken by His loud voice calling, “Come forth!”
In the shadow of the cross, Jesus cries right in front of us. He stands before death and the tomb and was not afraid. His promise is that our hopes and dreams will be fulfilled. Someone who loves us will call out our name. But what will we do when Jesus calls us and invites us to “Come forth” into eternal life? Those who paid little attention, whose hearts were not in the words or who dismissed all such ideas as fantasy may hear nothing to disturb their sleep.
Let me tell you a secret: People of faith know that if we obey the call to new life now, nothing will hold us to death in the end. Little by little we are called out of the grave of every sinful situation. We are rescued from every turn down a blind alley and restored to life.
People have trouble with death because they think it’s the end of life. Christians know that it is the door to a different kind of life. People have trouble with death because they think it is the destruction of all they worked for. Christians know that death is the culmination of life, or, as Jesus called it, “his hour of triumph.”
If we really believe these things, then death would lose whatever grip it has on us.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Third Sunday of Lent A
February 24, 2008
There are two important questions in the readings for the Third Sunday of Lent: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” and “What are you looking for?”
The first reading is from Exodus Chapter 17. The people were still in the beginning of their journey through the desert, having just crossed through the Red Sea and escaped the Egyptian army. But in a short time they start to fight among themselves and grumble and complain against Moses. They ask that age-old question, “Where is God?” They just phrase it differently, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” And they were thinking not. It is their grumbling and complaining that blinds them to the presence of the Lord.
The Gospel reading is from John and we hear about the woman at the well. The whole conversation starts with “Give me a drink.” In the Gospel, the chief characteristic of a true disciple means bringing others to Christ. Here the woman does just that, going into the town and telling everyone that she has met Jesus ‘Who told her everything she had ever done.’
Let’s take a few minutes to see what we might gain for our Lenten journey.
Exodus, as I said, gives us the Israelites grumbling. Again. What is there problem? It seems no matter what God does for them, they are never satisfied. A nation out of a childless couple? Done. A land for a group of nomads to call their own. No problem. Rescue them from famine. You got it. Rescue them from Egypt when it turns out badly. Sure thing. A sea is parted when helpful and then restored over the enemy. God’s presence with them. God is happy to be among them.
Still they grumble, sounding much like us, sometimes. Now it’s water; next it’s bread; then it’s meat. We are talking life and death, so the people have a right to be concerned, and we would likely be first in line to cry if we had no water and no food. It’s just that these people in this particular generation ought to know better than doubt that God would provide for them. All they have to do is ask: Give us this day our daily bread. And it’s done. Don’t they know that?
Thirteen hundred year later Jesus will teach His disciples that prayer. They seem to still not know that God is committed to providing for them. We still don’t ask. We would rather grumble and complain.
The problem with the people and the woman at the well, and us while we are at it, is trust. God has been as clear as daylight about being concerned for us, compassionate toward our needs and troubles. For the people then, God was in the Tent of His Dwelling. For us He is in the Word and the sacraments, in the Eucharist and in His Body, the Church. He lives within us in the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts. He is also in other people, in our neighbor and in the stranger. You want to stand in the presence of God? I would say that it is one of the easiest things in the world. But at times we would rather grumble instead of asking for what we need in prayer like true believers.
“Is the Lord in our midst or not?” the people asked. God might have answered, “You tell me!” God might say the same to us. God lives with us; that has been His promise right along. Whether or not we choose to believe that idea is up to us. It’s up to you.
What are you looking for this Lent? To get closer to God? To clean up your act a bit? To feel more religious? Or to lose a few pounds? We need to be honest about our goal, because we are bound to find what we are looking for. And the right answer may not be what we think it is. We don’t have to get closer to God. We can’t: God is right here. God lives in us. Getting closer to God’s will might be a good choice but we are often far from that.
If we find ourselves complaining that Lent is not working, that the religious feeling isn’t there, then maybe the answer it to spend some time being aware of how close God is. Spend one hour aware of God in every person you meet and every place you go, Keep searching with your eyes, your mind, your heart. If we practice believing what we say we do, that God IS in our midst, we just may meet Jesus like the woman at the well.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Second Sunday of Lent A
February 17, 2008
Ten days after Ash Wednesday we are at the Second Sunday of the season of Lent. The scriptures today give us the call of Abraham and the transfiguration of Jesus. These are two moments in history where God communicates an important message: trust Me to be your guide and listen to my Son. Then there is the passage from Second Timothy that invites the reader to accept the hardships of holy living by entering into Christ’s suffering, and through that into His glory, “Bear our share of hardship…with the strength that comes from God.”
The Transfiguration gives the three a momentary vision of Christ in His glory. It is given to strengthen them to face the tests to their faith which the crucifixion and death of Jesus would bring. It is told to us today for the same reason, to encourage us to persevere in making a holy Lent and in living a holy life. If we share with Christ in His sufferings, we will share with Him in His glory as Saint Paul reminds us.
This is a truth we too easily forget. That is we cannot and do not get to Heaven in a limo. Our time on earth is the chance given by God to work toward an eternal reward. And this reward is beyond the wildest imagination of any human. We could never earn it, but God accepts the little we do and makes up the balance with His infinite mercy. Yet there are some, maybe many, who refuse even that little bit that is asked of them, and so run the risk of not being part of God’s plan for their eternal happiness.
Are they any happier during the few years they have here by not living in hopes of God’s mercy? Does ignoring God and their duties toward Him remove all pain, all sorrow, all sufferings in this life? Death, that total separation from all we possess and love in this world, is waiting for each of us. Who can face it with more calm and peace? The one who is convinced that it is the door to new life and who had done his best to enter it, or the one who has acted all life long as if death was not coming and has gone about pretty much shutting the door?
Illness, troubles and disappointments come to all. But if we know the purpose of life and strive to reach what God has planned, we can see in life the hand of a loving Father preparing us for what is to come. Suffering becomes understandable and more bearable. Christ has asked that we follow Him, carrying our cross daily. And the end of our journey is not the cross but the glory of the Resurrection. And we get a glimpse of that in the Transfiguration.
How would you like a little boost to your spiritual life, something permanent you can come away with from this Lent? The Gospel offers the way.
A note in the New American Bible for today’s Gospel points out that the meaning of the mountain of transfiguration is “theological rather than geographical.” In other words, the mountain where the apostles saw Jesus transformed is not bound by space and time. It is available to us here and now, always.
So what glowing glory of God have you seen today to strengthen you on your journey? How about the baby you held in your arms or the kid across the aisle. How about the sky? Maybe it was the sunlight falling on the iced trees earlier in the week or the half moon. There are many wonders that we see every day that can be transfigured when seen with the eyes of faith. We can see the glory of God in the people and the things all around us.
Most of the time, I suspect we see our lives and the world around us in shades of gray. But what if we woke up every day took our first waking breath and felt the amazement of being alive? Of having another day to create a path, to make decisions, to explore new ideas, to learn something new. What we recognized that every day is a cooperative effort between God and us to bring good news and make it real. What if we, the free children of God, actually believed in our freedom and exercised it? It could happen. It is no dream. The truth is that our world exists in layers and most of us hardly glance at the surface.
Last week it was the devil talking. This week God is the One with something to say. And we can listen to either side of the conversation at any time. This is a choice we make all the time.
God says to Abram: I promise you seven things you don’t have right now. I can change your reality so that you will wonder if you are really the same person, if this is the same planet as the one you lived on yesterday. I can give you and Sarah, a couple beyond children, a whole nation of descendants. I can promise you, a stranger in a strange land, a territory of your own. I can bless you from here to eternity. What do you think of that?
Just trust Me to be your guide. And to us: Listen to my Son. Bear your hardships and sufferings but keep your eyes on the goal. Keep the vision in front of you.
No need to go looking for a mountain. Jesus is in front of us now, transfigured. It only takes the eyes of faith to see.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time A
February 3, 2008
This is the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time but we really are at the point where this season moves into the season of Lent. We will sing out last “Alleluia” until the Easter as we prepare to walk with our Lord on His journey to the cross. On Wednesday we begin the 40 day retreat we call Lent.
The readings call us to be humble before God and to be grateful for our call to follow Christ. The Gospel gives us Jesus speaking the Beatitudes where He speaks of the poor, the meek, the lowly and the peacemakers as the ones who are really blessed by God. These are powerful words to consider before we begin Lent, a season given to prayer, fasting and sharing with the poor.
Maybe some reflection today can help to make us meek and humble as we look to Lent 2008.
There is no one short of Jesus Christ who would ever say the Beatitudes. It just does not make sense to say that the poor, the sad, the trampled, the abused and the insulted are blessed. There is no way on this planet that such people are favored or happy or maybe even doing well. Nor are those with tender hearts and peaceful intentions obviously blessed. They are despised by cynics and hawks; they will be ridiculed and harmed whenever possible. For Jesus to call life’s losers the blessed ones is not the conclusion of anybody with eyes to see. If such people can rejoice now, it is only because they trust that the word of the Lord would be fulfilled. Their joy has more to do with their faith then with their circumstances.
The Beatitudes ought to fill us with some dread and fear because much of the time, many of us here are prosperous in every sense of the word. We should be grateful for that but it comes with obligations. The Catechism of the Catholic Church uses the phrase “universal destination of goods” to refer to the fact that the goods of this world are meant for everyone. Now if the universally destined goods end up stored in our closets and bank accounts, how do you suppose we will ever be able to explain that to God?
We who possess the land and the goods of the earth are stewards and must use them with moderation, “reserving the better part for guests, for the sick and the poor” (CCC 2405). Notice, not the hind part, the leftovers but the better part. I will not ask for a show of hands as to who is following that because in most cases it would be embarrassing for everybody including the one doing the preaching.
Let me suggest that one of the Beatitudes can help: “Blessed are the meek.”
“Meek” did not mean to Jesus what it likely means to us, that is a person with no self-confidence, no initiative. Meekness to Jesus was based on a combination of open-mindedness, faith in God and the realization that God’s will for us is something better than we could think of for ourselves. Meekness is our willingness to receive the will of God, giving up any idea of self-sufficiency and false pride. But do those who are meek actually inherit the earth?
The “earth” in the Bible does not mean the planet on which we live or all its material things. It means a person’s outer experience. When our lives are really centered in God’s will, our actual experience is that “all the earth is filled with the glory of God.”
Everyone who has tried to literally possess the earth has failed miserably. Their attempts have burned the earth, destroyed countless lives and brought misery to millions more. The earth belongs to the Lord. We have been made caretakers and stewards of the earth. Yet the desire to own and control the earth is so strong in people that even some so-called Christian voices announce prosperity and property as signs of God’s favor.
The meek of the earth recognize that all things belong to God. One author has suggested that “The great trouble in human life is that looking and eating are two different operations.” Many evils, crimes and sins are attempts “to eat what we should only look at.” The meek know that relationship with something or someone is infinitely better than possession. They are free to care for God’s good creation for God’s sake.
If we are meek then, humble before God’s creation, we do not look to own it and use it, but to care for it and share it.
There’s an attitude to work on for Lent.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Holy Family A
December 30, 2007
The Sunday after Christmas is always dedicated to the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Before we get to that though we have to face two problems:
First, we all have assumptions about families and there is much national discussion about “family values.” Some of this is sincere and some is not. So we have to be careful in trying to find in the Scripture what we want to be true. It is always a serious mistake to read our own ideas into the Bible and it is often done.
The second problem is we might seriously wonder of a family made up of a mother who conceived her child as a virgin, a child who is called “Son of God,” and a father who is not the biological father, can in any sense be offered to us as a model. Besides, none of our families has ever had the privilege of making decisions according to direct instructions of an angel.
But the Gospel does not offer them as a sociological model of the perfect family but as a model of how to live a life of faith as a family, and in terms of faith, it hard to find better than these three. Mary believed what was told her from God; Jesus was totally obedient to the will of His Father; and Joseph, from whom we do not have one spoken word, journeyed in silence and in total trust in God.
If one thing needs to be highlighted, it is this: the family life that Joseph and Mary chose to live with Jesus was filled with many tensions and much that was unexpected. No parents raising children, the Holy Family included, are free from struggle and pain. But in all of this, the way to having a successful family is to maintain trust and faith in God.
Times have changed drastically since the days of Holy Family, first in Bethlehem and then in Nazareth. Change is always a mixture, it is not all bad and it is not all good. But the purpose of the family remains the same: to form people who will know, love and serve God and be good citizens.
Parents would do well to examine themselves on this. Back in October at the Pike County retreat here, Father Knight pointed out that if a coach says your child has to be at every practice no matter what or will not be on the team, parents find that perfectly reasonable. But if the Church requires that your child participate in Mass every Sunday and make all religious education classes, that is thought to be unreasonable. Don’t get me wrong, education and the development of your children’s talents and abilities is a wonderful thing, but it is not more important than the things of God which last for both time and eternity.
We can draw some lessons from the Holy Family.
First, this was a family, as I already said, that trusted completely in the will of God. They were ready to do whatever God wanted of them. Their hearts were open and they were unafraid.
Second, the Holy Family was one that lived an ordinary kind of life. They were not rich. They enjoyed no privileges and had no special influence. They were just Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the carpenter’s family, in the small back water town of Nazareth. In that, they were just like us, each of us lives in our own Nazareth, the place of everyday life and everyday problems. A carpenter worked his trade, a mother kept her house and a little boy grew into a man. What grace can be found in everyday life?
The answer might be found in the letter of Saint Paul to the Colossians. Paul is not talking about romantic love. His letter is about how to form a healthy and holy Christian community. From it we can gather lessons on how to form a healthy and holy Christian family. Put on Compassion. Kindness. Lowliness. Meekness. Patience. Forgiveness. And Love.
It’s all that simple. And it is that difficult because it is a challenge to live those virtues. No, you cannot force them on your family, not on your spouse or your children. The only thing that is in your power is to live them yourself.
Mother Mary, Father Joseph, pray for our families. Jesus, grant grace to parents and children.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Christmas
December 25,
2007
The pumpkins were barely off the porches before we began to see Christmas decorations, first in the stores and then on homes. Whatever your taste in Christmas decorations, from some simple lights to theme park size blow ups, we look forward to the twinkle, glisten and flash in our neighborhoods. Both inspiring and overwhelming, the lights add a touch of warmth to the long, dark, cold winter. Christmas lights glow differently in colder climates. With snow on the ground and freezing temperatures, lights reflecting off the snow, and even the ice, brighten the night.
But no matter where we live, all people desire light in their lives. We require light outside but don’t we also need it inside? We know about darkness outside and we certainly know enough about darkness inside. So it’s light I will talk about, not darkness. What if each of those strings of lights brightening up a window, a tree or a yard was also able to light up the inside? Be a light to the soul? What if we spent as much time, energy and money decorating the inside with beauty and color as we do lighting up homes, windows and lawns making our Christmas spirit highly visible?
Light is one of the themes of Christmas. Isaiah says, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light…” Christ is referred to as the “Light of the World.” And hear the words at the beginning of the Gospel of Saint John: “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1. 3-5).
A man tells a story of a visit to Orlando with his family when they discovered by accident that a night launch was scheduled that night at Kennedy Space Center. So they changed their plans on their way to other “amazing” worlds and magic kingdoms and decided to park and wait. They waited from 3 in the afternoon until 9 and finally the sun set.
And then it came. Suddenly as the rockets ignited and the power systems engaged, complete darkness became complete daylight. They looked at the sky not believing what was happening. The whole area glowed as bright as midday. So much energy and force and power was released that nature itself was transformed from night into day.
Jesus is like that. The light exploding into the darkness. The light that not only changed the darkness of the outside world but the darkness within. The eyes of the blind were opened to dazzling light and that light brought hope and possibility. When the dark becomes light, everything is changed.
When Christmas is over and gone, we need to keep the season of light in ourselves and make it last all year long. Jesus is the source of the light so we could find it and see it and live by it. The light of a night launch at the space center is nothing compared to the light that Christ can bring to our lives.
As light brings brightens the dark winter nights, so the light of Christ brings hope. Darkness is a lack of hope, and the lack of what hope brings with it, namely, confidence in the future, vital drive, creativity, poetry and joy in living. Nothing can be done in the world without hope. We need hope like we need oxygen to breathe. People marry in hope for the future. Parents have children because of hope. We plan for the future in hope. When someone is about to faint we say, "Give them something strong to help them breathe." Something similar should be done for a person who is about to let themselves go, to give up on life: "Give them a reason for hope!" When hope is reborn in a person, everything looks different, even if nothing in fact has changed. Hope is a force in itself. It literally works miracles.
Next time you see some Christmas lights, recognize a challenge and hear it,” Do I light up the world as much as a simple string of Christmas lights? How bright and beautiful, warm and wonderful do I make others feel by the light, the glow, the hope I bring to their lives?
No light is exactly the same as another: some twinkle, some are steady, some flash, all are lights and needed to light up the world so darkened by fear, jealousy, worry and violence. We need to help each other engage this Light. This Light can warm us, help us and challenge us. Jesus is that Light that allows us to see, not necessarily what we want to see but what we have never seen before.
The Gospel has something essential to offer our people in this moment of history: Hope with a capital "H," the virtue that has God himself as its author and guarantee. Earthly hopes -- home, employment, health, successful children, etc. -- even if they are realized, will sooner or later delude us if there is not something deeper that supports them and keeps them going. Consider what goes into the making of a spider web. The spider web is a work of art. It is perfect in symmetry, elasticity, functionality. The threads that stretch out horizontally on all sides make it taut. But it is held upright in its center by a thread that comes down from above, the thread that the spider had spun to lower itself down. If one of the threads on the side breaks, then the spider repairs it. But if you break the thread that comes from above down to the center, everything is destroyed. The spider knows that there is nothing it can do and goes away. In our lives Hope is the thread from above, that which sustains the whole plot of our lives.
On Christmas, hope I born like a light in the darkness. Jesus is the Light. Jesus brings hope. Light from within is never out of season.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Fourth Sunday of Advent C
December 23, 2007
Not yet. Even though you might have plenty yet to do, there is the impulse to begin Christmas. But here the atmosphere is still one of promise and hope. I invite you, and I hear the invitation myself, to step back for a few minutes for some pre-Christmas reflection.
Crossroads in life are difficult, especially if there are no road signs. That’s where we find Joseph today. We have only seven verses in the Gospel, Those seven verses cover hours, perhaps a few days, of a terrible agony for Joseph.
We are familiar with our custom of dating, getting engaged and then marrying. In those times the customs were different. The Gospel tells us that Mary was betrothed to Joseph. That means a lot more than being engaged. In a sense, Mary and Joseph were already married. That is why the Gospel calls Joseph “her husband.”
Marriage in the Jewish tradition was made up of three steps. The first was before they were betrothed. The bride price was agreed on and the groom would show that he could support the bride. Then the bride’s family would agree to the contract. Next was the betrothal when the couple would give their consent to the marriage and promise themselves to each other. The groom would give the bride a token of their promise, usually a ring. The contract was read to those who were present and the couple was considered husband and wife with rights to property and inheritance. And if necessary, in order to separate they needed to divorce. The third step was the home-taking which took place months or even a year after.
This is the crossroad where Joseph stands. Mary and he have been betrothed. She is his wife, but they have not yet come to the home-taking. Now Mary is found to be pregnant. What is he going to do?
Both the Jewish and the Roman law pointed the way for Joseph. The laws required couples to divorce if either party committed adultery. If Joseph took this road, he could reclaim the bride price and even keep the dowry. He would save his honor. But, if he divorced Mary, there was another law that demanded her death. There would be public trial followed by a public stoning.
The alternate path was to back out of the agreement and cancel everything quietly. It would be the equivalent of abandoning her after being responsible for her pregnancy. Joseph would be the shamed one.
Here at the crossroads, Joseph prayed. He remembered the history of his people. There were many before him who stood at crossroads. There were many times they doubted that God was with them. When they were slaves in Egypt, was God with them? When they were trapped between the sea and the army, was God there? When they wandered in the desert, where was God? When they were dying from lack of food and water in the desert, had God abandoned them? As Joseph thought, he remembered the mighty works of God. He remembered that God never abandoned His people but was always with them. Joseph prayed and trusted that God was with him. And God sent a messenger to this faithful man.
“Do not be afraid!” the angel said to Joseph in a dream These words allowed Joseph to shake off what must have been a nightmare or worry about Mary, the coming child, about the need to do the right thing as well as keep the law and the curious away. The words are spoken countless times in Scripture. God told Abraham to “fear not before making a covenant with him. Gabriel said the same to Daniel when he was terrified by a vision. The angel said it to Zechariah when he announced the birth of John the Baptist. Gabriel said it to Mary. Angels said it to the shepherds. Jesus said it to His disciples when they thought He was a ghost walking on the water.
Each time the people had good reason to be afraid. And the same words are spoken to us, “Fear not.” How does “Be not afraid” speak to the loss of a job? A diagnosis of cancer? A child addicted to drugs or alcohol? How does it help us deal with the death of someone we love? The effects of hatred, crime or violence? How about storms, floods, or fires? The reason for the words is clear and simple: Believers should not live in fear or allow it to dampen their spirits or drown their hopes because through it all, within all and despite it all, God is with us. “Be not afraid” and Joseph’s agony is over. The darkness is lifted. He chose to believe his dream when he could have dismissed it. God not only wanted the “Yes” from Mary but waited for “Yes” from Joseph. Joseph obeyed and took now pregnant Mary as his wife.
These people in the Gospel give us tremendous examples for our lives. We stand at crossroads, small and large. Though we may not have a visit from and angel, we are invited to trust that God is with us. We may get a gentle nudge or hear a quiet whisper in our hearts, “go this way”….”choose the right”….”forgive first”….”stand up for what you believe.” We may even be asked for bigger things, “Give your life to God.” At that moment we need to believe it is a message from God and answer “Yes.” We need to obey.
Obedience to God is the golden thread that is woven throughout the Christmas story. May God grant that our hearts be open to recognize His message and willing to bow in obedience to the path we are shown.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
Third Sunday of Advent C
December 16, 2007
The Third Sunday of Advent is named after the opening word of the Entrance Antiphon in Latin, “Gaudete.” It means “Rejoice.” On this Sunday called “Rejoice Sunday,” I want to talk some about doubt and disillusionment.
John the Baptist had strong convictions, probably from childhood. He believed that he was born to fulfill a great mission. His training, the way he dressed, the way he lived all showed this conviction.
John takes great risks. He does not hesitate to correct the rich and the powerful in public. He dares to speak in God’s name and claims to be preparing the way for One Who Is to Come. John insists that accepting his baptism is necessary to show a change of heart. He is fearless in giving people precise instructions about the reforms that each must make in order to please God. Even the king does not escape his criticism and judgment. John is feared and admired even by his political and religious enemies. He is like the prophets before him, a pillar of iron with a face like flint.
Yet he doubts. How does a man like John the Baptist come to a time in his life where things are no so certain? John had told his own disciples with no hesitation that Jesus is the Lamb of God, the one the world is waiting for. After alienating and annoying every powerful person with his judgments, John goes to prison waiting for his death. The idea of dying does not disturb him. But the possibility of being wrong about the One Who Is to Come, that thought shakes him to the core.
The bottom line of John’s life is quite simple. He understands that he is the witness, the one who goes before, the voice preparing the way. How he ends is not important but his mission is essential. What if, in the end, he pointed to the wrong one? To die after doing this one great thing is nothing. But to die and NOT having done it is unbearable.
So John sends the message to Jesus directly. How will I know for sure? “Are you the One Who Is to Come or should we look for another?” Jesus does not scold John for lacking faith or for being weak. Instead, He sends the most wonderful reply to the man with the heart of a prophet. Jesus tells John that what Isaiah had predicted in now. He assures John that trusting in Him will be a blessing.
We never learn how John responds to the answer. We do know that he is executed soon after but we do not know what comfort he got from this last message from Jesus. John knew he must decrease; he disappears from the story entirely. But the words of Jesus hang in the air for us: “Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”
Does that mean we must surrender all doubt to follow Jesus? I’m not sure that is humanly possible. The apostles who walk behind Jesus were always mumbling and questioning. At different times, they doubt the wisdom of Jesus and the meaning of His words and actions. They doubt themselves and their role. Still, when the getting out is good and many in the crowds do go away, Peter makes the best case for continuing on the way: “Lord, to whom can we go?” Faith in Jesus does not wipe out all doubt. But it does mean walking in His way EVEN without being certain.
Part of John’s problem was disillusionment. Jesus did not speak and act in the way that John expected. Not only his doubt but his disillusionment is ours too. It is the story of everyone who looks for a Lord who does not come or who comes in a way we did not expect. But disillusionment, taken literally, means the loss of illusion. Loss of the illusions we have about God, about the world or about ourselves. Although often painful, it is never a bad thing to lose an illusion that we have mistaken for the truth.
Disillusioned, we discover that God does not conform to our expectations. We get a glimpse of our place in the great plan. We review the job description given us by God and are shocked to discover that God has a different one.
Did God fail to come when you rubbed the lamp? Did God fail to punish my enemies? Does God not make everything run smoothly? Over and over again, our disappointments draw us deeper into the mystery of God. Every time God does not meet my expectations, an illusion dies and I am invited to see God’s truth.
In the second reading, James gives us the image of a farmer as the example of faithful living. The farmer puts seed in the ground: small, insignificant and unpromising. And while he is doing it, he has visions of waving grain, beautiful vegetables and abundant fruit. The farmer trusts in the potential of the seed and the soil. But he also has to trust in things entirely out of his control, like the early and late rains. He looks at the sky every day, praying, hoping, believing his work is not in vain. If the farmer did not have faith, he would pack his bags and move to the city. If we want to be disciples, we have to learn the patient surrender of the farmer to God’s care.
The answer to doubt and disillusionment is patience and trust.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................
First Sunday of Advent A
December 2, 2007
The Advent season serves three purposes: preparing us for the coming season of Christmas, reminding us of the continual coming of Jesus into our lives and making us ready for the time of the final return of Jesus in glory. The first Sunday tends to focus on the last, what is called the “Second Coming of Christ.”
And on this Sunday, all Christians who gather to worship will hear the call to conversion from Saint Paul, the encouragement from Matthew to be vigilant and Isaiah’s vision of the end of war.
A Spanish poet once said that the entire Gospel message comes down to the instruction, “Wake up!” Today’s Gospel, in which Jesus urges us to stay alert for His coming, is a good example. The danger is that we might sleepwalk through our entire life. We need to do all we can to wake up spiritually. And Advent is a great season to make the effort to start.
Hikers are familiar with the saying: The journey is the destination. You go on the hike not simply to reach the top of the hill or the end of trail but to enjoy the scenery all along the way. If the point of taking a hike or a walk was to get from point A to point B, there are usually quicker ways to do it.
In the same way, Advent becomes a trail we travel, not simply to make it to Christmas, but for its own sake. Anticipation makes us alert and watchful. Just remember a time when you were waiting for a loved one to come home after a long absence. How many times did you straighten the rug, plump the pillows, check the food and look at the clock before the door actually opened? You become alert to every sound on the street, the length of each minute, the beating of your own heart. Waiting makes your senses sharp and increases the longing. It also increases the delight at the end.
When Jesus tells His disciples to stay awake, to be prepared, He is inviting us to this kind of being alert. He is also welcoming us into a new awareness of life, of what it means to be alive and what the gift of life is for. In a world of instant gratification, too often we become dulled by having nothing to wait for, maybe even nothing to live for. We just pass the time. Advent reminds us that today is a part of the journey and that we are on the way to what is yet to come.
This season of waiting also brings the chance for personal growth. When we look at life as a journey and not a comfortable couch, we become aware that there is always somewhere more to go than where we happen to be.
We can learn from who we are and what parts of ourselves needs attention if we sit still, just a few moments each day, and listen to what is going on in our head, our heart and our gut. Maybe we are tired, or in pain, or needy, or lonely, or anxious, or angry. What’s causing these feelings and how can we deal with them to become whole, not to mention HOLY.
We can only throw off the old “works off darkness,” as Saint Paul calls them, when we first admit them to ourselves: name and claim them and stop making excuses for them or blaming them on somebody else. Before we “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” we need to take off the old clothes.
This waiting season can bring us delight along the journey and allow for reflection, repentance and change.
We can clear some space in ourselves for a fresh perspective. We may find ourselves climbing Isaiah’s mountain and beating old weapons into new tools.
Isaiah, along with Saint Paul and the Gospel of Matthew set the tone for the season, reminding us that this season of waiting requires more than being sentimental. It’s not enough to hope for justice, we have to do things that bring justice. It’s not enough to want peace, mutual animosities have to be surrendered sometimes without the satisfaction of proving we are right. If real peace and justice are ever to come, the seeds must be planted and tended in our hearts.
Do you have any swords that need to be surrendered to ‘let there be peace?’ The choice is ours, the season is now and, as they say, Christ is the reason.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
........................................................................................................