LAST MONTH'S HOMILIES
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Feast of the Holy Family A
December 26, 2010
Jesus Christ is God is all-powerful, His authority and power are unlimited. He could have chosen to form a body for Himself out of the dust of the earth just as God had for the first man. Instead, He chose to take on human life in all its dimensions, entering into a family and giving real people, especially Joseph and Mary, essential parts in the plan of salvation.
God did not whisk Jesus, Mary and Joseph away to safety when Herod was looking for them. He gave that job to Joseph. God didn’t give Mary special powers to know when Joseph was right or wrong, He simply gave her the vocation to be a faithful wife and a loving mother to Jesus. God guided and helped them but He didn’t do everything for them. He gave them real responsibility, made them real partners in His work of saving the world. Their decisions, choices, courage and creativity mattered.
This is still God’s general policy. He has chosen to bring salvation through the action of the Church, not just the priests, bishops and religious, but each of us as followers of Christ. As Saint Augustine put it, “God created us with us, but he did not will to save us without us.”
When Joseph and Mary were packing their mule at midnight and sneaking out of town, they probably did not feel especially glorious. When they were traipsing through the desert on the way to Egypt, they probably did not feel particularly heroic or exceptional. And yet, it was in those difficult times that God was saving the world.
Today, God is reminding us that He wants us to do the same thing in our lives.
- When we are stuck in traffic on the way to work.
- When we are having trouble paying the bills and keeping food on the table.
- When a crisis wakes us up at midnight and requires immediate action.
- When suffering moves into our homes.
These are not just accidents to be endured or ignored. God is present in them and God is acting through them. And when we struggle to stay faithful to Him in the middle of them, we can be sure God’s grace is working in our souls and we are contributing our part in saving the world.
Joseph and Mary did not make any headlines by their daily acts of faith and love. And yet, God’s grace was working. Maybe we will never make any headlines but God can still keep on saving the world through us as long as Christ is at the center of our hearts, our families and our dreams.
As we continue celebrating Christmas, let’s put Christ right there, right in the center of 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
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Christmas 2010
The angels announced to the shepherds that a Savior was born for them. They called this “news of great joy,” since the Savior was going to bring peace to those on whom his favor rests.” The peace that Christ brings is the source of joy. The two always go together. Without peace, there is no joy. Christ came to give us true, lasting joy because He came to establish true, lasting peace.
But the Kingdom of Christ is not a material kingdom. So first we have to suspend one of our prejudices that the material world is somehow “more real” than the spiritual. When I mention “spiritual” you probably begin to think in abstract, “unreal” ways. The opposite is true, the spiritual is MORE real than the material. God is more “real” than I am even though I am available to your senses. God is the root and foundation of the material world. So, the spiritual is most REAL.
The Kingdom of Christ is spiritual. He was born in a stable, not in a palace. Its secret is humility not power; it grows in love not violence. So the peace that Christ brings is the interior, spiritual peace that comes from a heart cleansed by forgiveness, a heart that knows the love of God. No one can take away from such a heart the knowledge that we are loved by God. That is why Christ’s peace is lasting. This interior peace can also overflow into external peace, peace in families, among people and nations, but only when enough people in a family, a community or a nation have it first in their hearts.
But, from Christ’s perspective, the external is secondary. All earthly kingdoms and the conflicts of this world will pass away. So the angels don’t hesitate to announce their “good news of great joy,” because they know that Jesus Christ does bring lasting peace to everyone who lets Him be their King.
Pope Benedict says it well, “When no one listens to me anymore, God still listens. When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone to help me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human capacity for hope, he can help me.” (Spe Salvi, #32)
The angels announce peace and joy to the world but on that first Christmas Jesus didn’t take away all the evil and suffering in the world. And since then, although we have celebrated over two thousand Christmases, there is still evil and suffering in the world, even in our own lives. Were the angels wrong?
Emphatically NOT! The light of Christ dawned in Bethlehem when the world was still in darkness. And just so, the joy of Christ shines in our hearts even while the storms and trials rage on the surface. That is why in history Christians have been able to even to go to their deaths with a smile on their lips.
The message of Christmas is that we are just travelers through this earthly life and that God has come to travel with us and that, if we stay by His side, we are guaranteed to arrive safely at our final destination: the everlasting life of Heaven.
The message of Christmas is NOT that the journey will be easy but that the journey, when it is taken with the Lord, is well worth the struggle. That is why we can be full of joy even in the middle of tears and difficulties. It is because we know that our Redeemer lives, stands at our side and will never abandon us.
Jesus not only wants to give us the joy of true peace but He also shows us how to accept the gift. The biggest roadblock to Christ’s grace in our lives is an IDEA, a wrong idea.
Our modern advances in science, technology, media and medicine have created a culture that tells us a hundred times a day, in every ad, movie and on billboards that we can have heaven on earth. The right combination of stuff, the world tells us will produce a tranquil, fun and relatively painless life. This is the wrong idea but we breathe it in daily and so it has its effect on us.
It is wrong because it relegates Jesus Christ to the religious sector of life, while leaving ourselves at the center. It wrongly promises that by human strength alone we can achieve complete fulfillment in life. That is the same lie the devil used with the first people at the beginning of human history.
No, we cannot have Heaven on earth. We cannot achieve the deep joy and lasting peace we were made for by our own limited human strength. We need to get out of the driver’s seat and give the wheel to Jesus Christ.
A Savior has been born for us and it is “news of great joy” for all of us longing for peace. It is this Child who offers the answer to our greatest problems. He offers peace in our families, peace in our towns, peace in our world, but most of all, He offers peace in our hearts.
Oh, He offers Heaven too, and it will surely come, but only if it begins in our hearts. What better time than Christmas for Christ to be born in our hearts 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
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Fourth Sunday of Advent A
December 19, 2010
With all the activities swirling in this week before Christmas, the Church wants to make sure that we don’t get so caught up that we lose sight of the real meaning of this great Christian holiday. Christmas is the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, the day we celebrate the “Mass” of “Christ’s” birth, the two words becoming “Christ-Mas.”
The usual exchange of gifts, the time we spend with family and friends, these are all good ways to celebrate. Exchanging gifts is to remind us of the greatest Gift that God gave us, His Son, our Savior. Spending time with family members reminds us that the result of that Gift brings us adoption into the family of God through the grace we received at Baptism.
That is the heart of Christmas. But it is not something that happened in the past. There is a sense that at every Mass is a new Bethlehem since Jesus Christ comes among us and to us. And He renews the invitation to us that He brought that first holy night.
What is the invitation?
Saint Paul described it well in the second reading. He wrote that a Christian is someone who is “called to belong to Jesus Christ” and “called to be holy.” Christ comes at Christmas but He doesn’t come passively. He comes to save us, to call us out of lives centered in ourselves and into a life centered in Christ.
That is what it means to “belong to Jesus Christ” and “to be holy.” And that is exactly what all of us are called to.
Living a life centered in Christ means dedicating ourselves to Christ’s priorities and His highest priority is building up the Kingdom of God.
In a sense, we could say that Christ has chosen to limit His omnipotence in order to involve us in His work of salvation, to give us an active part in building up His Kingdom. This is why He became human on Christmas because He wanted us to be able to become sons and daughters of His Father, co-workers in His Kingdom. He came to share in our humanity so that we could share in His divinity.
During World War II, a church in Frankfort, Germany, was heavily damaged in the bombing. At the end of the war the parishioners began repairs. One badly broken object was a statue of Christ. They finally found all the parts and put them together except the hands. After some debate and discussion the people decided to leave the statue without hands. They put a plaque beneath it that reads: “Christ has no hands but our hands.”
This is His invitation to us: To be His hands.
We know Christ. We know the true meaning of Christmas. Our lives are not perfect by any means, but we have heard the call of Christ and have set out on the path that leads to the only fulfillment available to human beings.
We at least have hope and this gives us strength in our struggles. It guarantees that even in the darkness of winter at least some of the light of Christmas is shining in our hearts. This is all because someone took the time to tell us about Jesus Christ. Thank God for that person, for them, for parents, teachers, friends.
In these beautiful days ahead, let’s keep our eyes open for those who need someone to tell them about Jesus Christ and pass on the Good News. That is the best gift we can give this 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
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Third Sunday of Advent A
December 12, 2010
On the Third Sunday of Advent the color of the vestments changes. It is a visual reminder that Christmas is closer. Just as the dark night begins to glow with a pale, rose-colored light as the sun begins to rise, so the color of the vestments goes from the darker purple to the rose.
In our hearts, too, the color should be changing. For the first weeks of Advent, we have reflected on our need for God, our sinfulness and our helplessness to gaining the meaning and fulfillment we long for. Today we switch gears. Without forgetting about our need for a Savior , we focus our attention on the Savior Himself. Christ came on the first Christmas in order to make His dream for a fallen world come true.
When Jesus came to earth, He met the blind and gave them sight; the poor and gave them hope; the lame and gave them strength. He has started the same work in us and longs to complete it:
We are blinded by ignorance and selfishness, and He offers us light in His word and in the teachings of His Church.
We are poor in virtue, and He fills us with the gifts of His Holy Spirit.
We are lame, unable to pray as we should, to give witness as we should, to love as we should,
and He heals and strengthens us by giving us Himself in the Eucharist.
Jesus has a vision of each one of our lives and He is coming to complete that vision. That is why the Third Sunday is “Gaudete” Sunday, the Sunday of Rejoicing. The Lord is near and He brings us hope, grace, forgiveness, peace, purpose, meaning. He brings us salvation.
There is a famous scene at the beginning of the Broadway musical, Oliver. The main character in the play from Charles Dicken’s novel, Oliver Twist, is an orphan. The orphanage where he is living is a miserable place. It is dark, crowded, too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer. There’s never enough food, never clean clothes or soft beds.
In the first scene, the orphans are eating their daily allowance of gruel under the threatening watch of the supervisor. Oliver finishes his small helping but he is still hungry. So he brings his empty bowl to the supervisor and asks, “Please, sir, may I have some more?” The supervisor goes ballistic. He is amazed and angry by the request, and so, naturally, he launches into a song in which he explains that no one ever asks for more in an orphanage, that no one ever asks for anything. They should be satisfied with the little they get.
Our hearts were made for more. The passing pleasures and achievements of this world don’t fill us up. Even the really good things of this world don’t fill us up, no matter how many times we go back for more.
Only Christ can fill us. If we bring our empty hearts to Him, He fills them with the true happiness that begins in this life and overflows in the life to come. Christ is coming close to us again this Christmas precisely because He wants us to ask Him for more. He is eager and waiting to give us the “more” that we long for.
We are the lucky ones, we know this. We know why Jesus Christ came, to reveal God’s love, to atone for our sins, to make Heaven available to us. And we know why He is coming again in our hearts this Christmas, to bring each one of us a new surge of grace, a new outpouring of His wisdom and strength that will help us understand and gain the vision He has for our lives. We know what Christmas is all about.
How can we prepare to receive this new blessing that He wants to give us? The best thing we can do is to help someone else prepare their heart.
Teachers often say that they really only began to learn when they started to teach. The spiritual life is similar. Our faith and our friendship with Christ become deeper when we share them with others. Many of our friends, co-workers and family members never knew or have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. They have put the dream that Jesus has for their lives on the shelf. They no longer think that true and lasting Christian joy is possible.
But Christ has not given up on them. He longs to enter their hearts. A little extra generosity from you, a little extra effort beyond the “season’s greetings,” a little extra prayer, a bit of reaching out to them, these are windows that can open into their lives so that the grace of Christ can stream into their hearts.
We still have nine days before Christmas. We can open a lot of windows in nine days. And the result can be a better Christmas for us and a real Christmas for someone else.
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
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Second Sunday of Advent A
December 5, 2010
God is faithful and that is what we need to have hope.
Seven hundred years before the coming of Christ, when the Kingdom of Israel was falling apart, God promised that He would not abandon His people. He promised to send a Savior, a descendant of King David, a “shoot from the stump of Jesse,” Jesse was David’s father. About 2000 years ago (God has a wide, long vision) Christ was born and that promise was fulfilled.
And to make sure that the suffering people of Israel would recognize the Savior, God sent a messenger to announce His coming. That was John the Baptist. Before Jesus started the public part of His ministry, the Holy Spirit sent John to make the preparations. He was to remind the people of their covenant with the God of Heaven and earth. He was to tell them that the promised Savior was coming soon. And he was to teach them about how to get ready.
Just as God kept His promise to the people of Israel, God keeps His promises to us.
On the day of your Baptism, God promised that He would never abandon you. He adopted you as His child and became your Father, our Father. He promised that He would never stop sustaining us with His grace, His love, His truth.
The words of John the Baptist today remind us of that: God is faithful. It is well said in a quote from Pope Benedict:
“If this absolute love exists, with its absolute certainty, then – only then – is man
‘redeemed,’ whatever should happen to him in particular circumstances. This is what
it means to say: Jesus Christ has “redeemed” us. Through him we have become certain
of God, a God who is not a remote “first cause” of the world, because his only-
begotten Son has become man and of him everyone can say: “I live by faith in the Son
of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
In this sense it is true that everyone who does not know God, even though he may
entertain all kinds of hopes, is ultimately without hope, without the great hope that
sustains the whole of life. Man’s great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all
disappointments can only be God – God who has loved us and who continues to love
us “to the end,” until all “is accomplished.” (Spe salvi, #26-27)
God’s faithfulness is the rock solid foundation of Christian hope. Hope is the engine of life. If a our hope is strong, our lives are strong. And knowledge of God’s faithfulness is what keeps our hope strong.
One night at a dinner a man who had spent many summers in Maine told a fascinating story about his experiences in a little town there called Flagstaff. The town was to be flooded as part of a large lake for which a dam was being built. In the months before it was flooded, all improvements and repairs in the whole town stopped. What was the use of painting a house if it was going to be covered by water in 6 months? So, week by week, the whole town became more run-down and dilapidated. Then the man added, “Where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present.”
Consider our present society and culture. It is materially wealthy but spiritually run-down. Popular culture is full of trends making it more self-indulgent, superficial and decadent. Morality and common sense are being lost and falling apart just like that town. That shows that there is a lack of hope. Many people have nothing to live for except pleasant distractions.
But the message today is that God is faithful. Floods may come and storms, but His faithful promise for the future can give us all the power we need to live in the present.
Advent tells us that God is faithful and He is worthy of our trust.
In this modern, post-Christian world, we need someone we can trust. How can we keep on the right track when we are surrounded by so many opinions that contradict each other? How can we know what is really true and good, what is morally right, with 400 TV stations and 1 billion web sites all giving their version of the truth and their values? How can we find happiness in life when every year there are 100,000 new books printed in the United States alone, each one pointing to happiness in its own direction?
God is faithful. His Gospel is trustworthy and true. His Church which He has promised to guide until the end of time, in spite of human weakness, always reminds us of what is essential, how to order our priorities and keep on the path to interior peace and real success in living.
God is faithful. To obey His voice in the commandments, in the inner voice of a well-trained conscience, in the teachings of the Church about faith and morality is to put ourselves and those we love safely in the only boat that is guaranteed to make to the final shore.
God is faithful. He asks for our trust as we come here again 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
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