Christ offers himself for our embrace – Luke 2:22-40

 Holy Family, Year B; St. Adalbert's and St. Casimir's.

Video (Homily starts at 17:40).

Ordinarily, the times that bring families together are often the happiest times and the saddest times. We gather for weddings, baptisms, graduations, holidays. We gather for funerals, or for crises. More and more these days, of course, we “gather” remotely. What brings us together in these times, what leads us to tolerate imperfect technology, is the conviction that at the most important times in one another’s lives, it’s important for family to support one another and show that support in some real, tangible way. That’s true of the Church as one big family, that’s true of each of our families, that’s true also of the Congregation of Holy Cross, the religious family to which I and Fathers Ryan and Zach belong. And one way we learn to do that is from the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. 

God is with us – Isa 62:1-5; Matt 1:18-25

 Christmas (Vigil Mass); Christ the King parish.

Video (homily begins at 13:30)

Our readings tonight started with a statement of protest. “I will not be silent; I will not keep quiet.” Our lector brought to us the Spirit-inspired proclamation of a prophet who wrote around 2,500 years ago, over 500 years before the birth of Christ, a prophet who refused to sit down and shut up, a prophet whose words were a rebellion against hopelessness and despair, a prophet who had good news to proclaim. You might be thinking, “aren’t we here to talk about the baby Jesus?” Well, we are. But we’re here to talk about the baby Jesus not as someone cute or tame, but as God’s daring proclamation of good news, God’s protest against human despair. And we get to hear what God is saying in the baby Jesus more clearly if we spend a little time first with the words we opened with from the book of the prophet Isaiah.

 

Dios crea un hogar con la gente común – 2 Sam 7:1-16, Lc 1:26-38

 4o Domingo de Adviento, Año B; San Adalberto y San Casimiro.

Video (homilía a 44:30).

Dios le da a David el descanso. Dios le da a David el pastor un palacio, le da el reinado, mucha riqueza, pero, tal vez lo más importante es que dios le da a David el descanso. Digo que el descanso es lo más importante porque la mayoría de nosotros no queremos ni palacio ni reinado. Pero creo que hay muchos que estamos cansados y cansadas, cuyas vidas parecen estar llenas de luchas, contra el virus, y contra muchísimas más cosas. Dios le concede a David descansar y un día vendrá cuando dios nos ofrezca lo mismo.

Christ meets us in our offering – Isa 63:16b-17, 19; 64:2-7; Advent I collect

 Advent I, Year B; St. Adalbert's parish

Video (homily starts at 14:40).

We live with all kinds of distance and separation and isolation right now. And maybe there are actually ways to use that fruitfully for our spiritual lives. It’s like how we fast in Lent. Now, hunger isn’t a good thing, hunger is a bad thing we want to eradicate, but we can use a bit of hunger in our spiritual lives, because what we feel so easily in our stomachs is just as real, but sometimes harder to sense, in our hearts and in our souls. We hunger for holiness, we hunger for God, and a little dose of hunger in our stomachs can help us recognize and name that and respond to it. In this same way, any pangs we feel of distance and separation from loved ones, very real, not a good thing, but maybe they can help us recognize and name that just as real but sometimes harder to sense distance from God. That distance that led the prophet in our first reading to cry out, “Would that you would rend the heavens and come down!”

 

Jesus hungers for us – Matt 25:31-46, Ezek 34:11-17

 Christ the King, Year A; St. Adalbert's.

We feel so scattered right now. Isolated, divided. That could be physically, in terms of what we need to do for our safety and that of others in this pandemic, and the social losses that come with that. It could be grief for loved ones. It could be political divisions that seem to be becoming more and more entrenched. Or it could be a feeling of distance from God. Where is God in all of this?

God gives us what we need to prepare for joy – Matt 25:14-30

 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A; Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Video (Homily starts at 13:56)

How would you like to be given $217,500?  Or, more precisely, to be trusted with $217,500 of someone else’s money?  That’s fifteen years worth of full-time minimum wage employment in Indiana.  And that’s what a talent was. That unit of currency was a huge sum of money. A ‘talent’ was a unit of currency worth 15 years’ worth of day laborer pay.  That’s what the least trusted servant is entrusted with: $217,500, one talent. When the master we hear about in the gospel is doling out these sums of money, it’s not always clear to us what meaning they actually carry.  And going back and doing a little economic history this week wasn’t just me indulging my geeky side, but a step in appreciating the grandeur of God’s grace.

God is close, and we have enough oil to light up the world – Matt 25:1-13, Wis 6:12-16

 Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time; St. Casimir's.

Ever have the experience of looking for something that’s right under your nose? Like going searching for your glasses when you’re wearing them (which I guess would make them on your nose, not under it, but the point stands). Or, my personal favorite, the time a little while back when I noticed that my trouser pocket seemed a little light, reached down to check what was in it, thought “Oh no! Where are my car keys,” then realized… I was driving. Well, both our first reading and our gospel are about that kind of possibility, only not with glasses and keys, but with Wisdom, and Wisdom incarnate, Christ at his coming.

God makes us saints – Matt 5:1-12; Rev 7:2-14

 All Saints; St. Adalbert's Church

Video (homily starts at minute 18)

What we’ve just heard in our gospel is, I think, one of the most beautiful readings in scripture; the beatitudes. I remember being excited that I was going to get to teach this text to our confirmation students when I used to work at Holy Cross parish and school here in town, but then having an odd moment of discomfort when I noticed quite where in the textbook it was. They’d put it in the morality section, on the right-hand page of a double-spread, I remember, with the ten commandments on the left-hand page. And I remember finding that really odd, because those are such different texts. The Ten Commandments, of course, are wonderful too. They pretty obviously belong as the first thing in a section of Catholic religion textbook on morality. A list of do’s and do not’s that we all could do with being more faithful to. I could tell the kids, make sure to honor father and mother when you get home. Tomorrow, maybe work on not coveting so much. And there are plenty of similar moral texts in the New Testament that could have sat on that right-hand page next to them. But you can’t use the beatitudes in the same way. You can’t use them as a to-do list to make yourself a saint. Firstly, because you can’t make yourself a saint, that’s God’s job. And secondly, because they’re not a to do list. At least, they’re not our to do list, though in a way they are God’s.

 

Christ leads us through suffering to eternal life – Matt 16:21-27, Rom 12:1-2

 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time; St. Adalbert's.

One year at Notre Dame’s baccalaureate Mass, I was the person tasked with purifying the vessels after communion. As I was purifying the main, celebrant’s chalice, I noticed whose it was.  It had belonged to Fr. Sorin, Notre Dame’s first president, who had left his home country of France to make the long dangerous journey to Indiana to found a school, taking risk after risk to help this school survive and then grow.  It wasn’t the chalice he’d received at his ordination, but one he’d been given on one of his ordination anniversaries by a benefactor.  The precious metal alone must have been worth a pretty penny, the craftsmanship and artistry more, and the history behind it probably made it the most expensive thing I’d ever held, and certainly the most expensive thing I’d ever swilled water around in and drunk out of.  The most expensive thing I’d ever held, but not the most valuable: for a little while before I’d embraced fellow Christians in the sign of peace (how we long to be able to return to that), and a shortly after that I’d held the body of my Lord briefly in my hand, before I consumed it.  “What could we give in exchange for our life, or the life of anyone?”  Jesus asked.  Nothing, we could give nothing so valuable as a life.  What would he give for our life?  Everything.  He would give his clothing, his blood, his body, his very life, to lead us into eternal life.

 

El reino de dios crecerá para dar la bienvenida a todos – Mat 13:24-43

XVI Domingo ordinario, Ciclo A; San Adalberto

Los trabajadores están bastante seguros de que pueden notar la diferencia entre trigo, la planta que se quiere, y cizaña. El amo les dice que se equivoquan. La apariencia no nos dice en que se convertirá algo. La aperiencia no nos dice en que se convertirá alguien.

Jesus comes to us – Zech 9:9-10; Matt 11:25-30

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A; Moreau Seminary & St. Adalbert's parish.

One of my favorite “Bible quotes” that’s nowhere to be found in the actual Bible is “this too shall pass.” The first occurrence of that phrase in English seems to be in a nineteenth century English translation of Sufi poetry, and, in a speech in 1859, Abraham Lincoln claimed that an unidentified “Eastern monarch” had charged his sages to come up with an adage that would be true and appropriate in all situations, and that what they had offered him was this: “this too shall pass.”

God keeps on feeding us –Deut 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Jn 6:51-58

Corpus Christi; St. Joe parish (South Bend).

I’ve spoken to a number of people recently who have articulated to me in different ways the same conviction: that they wish they’d been more grateful for certain things before the pandemic. That there were things they’d taken for granted that they promised themselves they would never take for granted again. And my reaction to all of that is… complicated. In some ways it isn’t. I think gratitude is a wonderful thing, of course. It’s an act of justice towards God, the giver of all good things, and towards people of good will who when they cooperate with God’s generosity. Being grateful for what we have can keep us from being proud over what we have, or jealous of what others have, and can make it easier to be generous with what we have.  The reason that my reaction to this impulse is complicated isn’t that I think gratitude is unimportant, and more that I know how hard it is.

Jesus breaks for us – Luke 24:13-35

Third Sunday of Easter, Year A; Moreau Seminary.

A couple of months after my priestly ordination, I ended up checking in to Holy Cross House. For about a week, I’d been really tired and had an annoying cough that wouldn’t go away, and then one Sunday evening, I passed out while saying Mass. It turned out that I had walking pneumonia, which isn’t a lot a fun at the best of times I’ve heard, but that also interacted another condition that I thought I had been managing adequately, and resulted in gastric fluid collecting in my lungs. After a few really difficult days of isolation on the medical floor, which were certainly difficult because of the pain and the fever, but even more because of the complete lack of knowing what was going on, I was finally allowed out of my room, and allowed to come down to concelebrate Mass. Still smarting from the realization of how out of breath I was from walking from the elevator to the chapel, I remember well the first time I concelebrated Mass at Holy Cross House. I remember saying, “This is my Body,” and it meaning something new and different than the last sixty or so times I’d said that. I remember seeing the Body broken at the fraction rite and knowing that I now knew Christ in a new way. I knew him in the breaking of the bread.

Jesus quenches our thirst – John 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

Third Sunday of Lent, Year A, with a reception into the catechumenate; Holy Infant parish.

Why was this woman going to the well on her own at noon? Let’s start with the easier part of that question. Why was she going to the well? Presumably, she was going to the well because she wanted water. Or, probably, because she needed water. It seems that this well was some ways out from the village. She must have needed water badly enough that she was prepared to walk through the noon day heat to go to the well. She was thirsty. Why did she go on her own, and why did she go at noon? Noon in a hot climate is not the best time to do your well run. And leaving the village alone is not a normal safe thing to do. Maybe, and we’re left with guesses about this woman, maybe she chose noon precisely because it was not a popular time to go to the well. Maybe she was not just lacking in water, but in community, not just having no one to go with, but really preferring not to be around others.

Christ brings the heavenly down the mountain for us – Matt 17:1-9; Gen 12:1-4a

Second Sunday of Lent, Year A; Holy Infant parish.

“Luke, I am your father;” the de-masking at the close of the Marriage of Figaro; the transformation of the Beast into Belle’s prince; the quite frankly bizarre moment in more than one Shakespeare play when a woman lets down her hair and only then do the rest of the dramatis personae realize she’s not a boy: we’re fascinated by these kinds of scenes, where a character’s true identity, hidden from other characters or even from the reader, gets made visible, when the dramatic x-ray machine cuts through flesh and marrow and discloses bone.  This is the vision God granted these three disciples, a disclosure of the glorious light Christ was in their midst, in contrast to the hiddenness and homelessness with which he was more normally clothed.  But this is not just a revelation about Jesus with no relevance for the rest of humanity; this is a preview of the glory of resurrection that awaits us. It’s a re-echoing of the heavenly voice from Christ’s baptism, the unwavering assertion of his beloved sonship, and another invitation to hear that voice speaking to us.

Christ raises us to be who were created to be – Gen 2:7-9, Rom 5:1219, Matt 4:1-11

First Sunday of Lent, Year A; Holy Infant.

I have to admit that whenever I’m bored, one of my go-to “this’ll-distract-me” instincts is to pull out my phone. Of course, it doesn’t always work, and I have at times caught myself looking at something on my phone, still being bored at it, or frustrated at how slowly something’s loading, and realizing that my left hand is instinctively reaching down to my pocket to take out… my phone. Forgetting what I’m doing makes me think that something’s going to satisfy me that isn’t, in this case that isn’t even there. We so often reach for what is ultimately unsatisfying when we forget what we’re doing, forget who we are.

God loves us disproportionately – Matt 5:38-48

7th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A; Holy Infant parish.

The sun produces energy at a rate of 400 Yotta-Watts, that’s 400 Yotta Joules each second, and that’s 4 with 26 zeroes after it.  That’s the equivalent of this: if every man, woman and child on God’s green earth had their own nuclear power plant, and ran it for fifteen years, the total amount of energy produced would be the same as what the sun produces each second. That’s powerful.  That’s energetic.  God makes the sun rise. That’s a tiny fraction of God’s action in the world, of God’s love, of God’s grace.  And God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good.

God has changed the world that we might love like Him – Matt 5:17-48, Sir 15:15-20

6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A; Holy Infant parish.

Suppose we were all good law-observant Jews. Like Sirach in our first reading, we read the law of Moses, and we find it refreshing as water when there’s fire all around, and reach out to it and try to follow it. Then we hear these words of Jesus’ and they’re compelling and we decide to follow them. The next day I have to go out of town, and I ask you if can look after my ox while I’m gone. You’re a decent sort, and pretty well set up for ox-tending, so you say, “sure!” Unfortunately, while I’m away, the ox catches what you think is a nasty cold. But then, it gets sicker and sicker and finally dies. I come back, and I’m pretty upset about my dead ox, who wasn’t a cute pet, but really essential to my ability to provide for my family (let’s say we’re all subsistence farmers here too). I demand you pay me the price of an ox, something you definitely do not have the resources to do, not without ruining yourself. “Hold on,” you say, “that’s not fair, it wasn’t my fault, the ox just got sick and died.” You remember that the law of Moses actually deals explicitly with this situation, and you’d just heard Jesus say that he hadn’t come to abolish the law. The law says that in this exact situation, all you have to do is swear an oath that the ox’s death wasn’t your fault, and I would have no claim against you. But, Jesus just said no oaths. None at all. And the law of Moses doesn’t say you can swear an oath if you like, it says, Exod 22:10-11, in this situation, you must. The debt-collectors are at your door, and they’re telling you, “follow the law, the law God gave on Sinai, if what you’re saying about the illness is true, and swear the oath. If not, cough up.”

Christ offers himself for our embrace – Luke 2:22-40

Feast of the Presentation; Holy Infant parish.

A recent Taylor Swift song opens with the defiant statement: “We could leave the Christmas lights up ‘til January // This is our place; we make the rules.” Only, I’m not really sure quite what she thinks she’s defying. Of course you can, Taylor, it’s still Christmas in early January. While Christmas Day being on December 25^th has been pretty consistent throughout Christian history, quite when the Christmas season ends has varied a little. Currently, in the Roman Catholic Calendar, as reformed in 1970, the Christmas Season ends with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which is normally the early side of mid-January. We celebrated that on the twelfth this year. For a long time before that, about four hundred years prior to 1970, the Christmas season ended on Epiphany which was always twelve days after Christmas. I went to a great twelfth night party just under a month ago, where we had a King Cake and a rosca de reyes, which are really variants of each other, but both great ways to celebrate Epiphany. Anyway, before the reforms that followed the council of Trent that standardized Epiphany as the last day of the Christmas season, in some places, including parts of England, the last day of the Christmas Season was today, or rather, tomorrow, February 2^nd, the Feast of the Presentation, or Candlemas as it’s also known. So, if somebody could let Taylor know… if she becomes a super-old-fashioned pre-Tridentine Catholic, she can leave the Christmas lights up ‘til February!

God shines the light of the Word – Matt 4:12-17, Isa 8:23-9:3

3rd Sunday of OT, Year A, Sunday of the Word of God; Holy Infant parish.

Pope Francis has designated this the first annual celebration of Sunday of the Word of God. Each year, on this the third Sunday of Ordinary Time, is now marked as a time to marvel at the reality that God has given us the gift of scripture. Of course, we read scripture every week at Mass. We have three readings, many of our prayers contain bits of scripture. But, sometimes, we’re so concerned about the particular passages of scripture that the Church lifts up for us each week, that we don’t take a step back just to ponder and to marvel at the fact that God gives us scripture. God gives us the gift of words, words which reveal God in a special way, words which are worth holding high and processing around the church with, words which in a very real way are relics of Christ.

Jesus baptizes us – John 1:29-34

2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A; Holy Infant parish.

When do we celebrate the baptism of Jesus? Well, that depends what “of” means. If we mean the baptism of Jesus in the sense of the event of Jesus being baptized, Jesus’ baptism in that sense, we celebrated it last week. This week, our gospel gives us another possibility for ‘of,’ though. This week, we celebrate the baptism of Jesus in this sense: the event of Jesus baptizing. In our gospel we hear John the Baptist report that he heard a message from God that this Jesus, whom he baptized, would one day baptize with the Holy Spirit. And he has.  The promise has been fulfilled.  Brothers and sisters, Christ has baptized us.  That’s what makes us sisters and brothers! There’s something amazing because each of us were baptized by someone else. Someone else poured the water and said the words, but it’s still true that Christ baptized us.

God grasps us by the hand – Isa 42:1-7; Matt 3:13-17

Baptism of Christ, Year A; Holy Infant parish.

As an undergrad, I was involved in student politics, and I once received some advice from someone who was much more successful than me in that area, and a generous mentor in a lot of ways, and she told, “Never run for anything, unless you truly believe that the job is important, and that you’re the best person to do it.” As grateful as I am for her generosity, I’ve come to conclude that this is terrible advice. The first part is OK as far as it goes, we should do things we think are important, though we also need to do things sometimes just because they’re fun, or relaxing, or sometimes we just need to trust that something might be important because others assure us it is, even if we can’t see that yet. But I want to concentrate more on the second half – the idea that you shouldn’t put yourself forward to do something unless you’re already convinced you’d be the best at it.

God reveals joy to us – Matt 2:1-12

Epiphany; St. Joe parish.

I don’t know if any of the rest of you had this experience this morning, but as I was driving along a tree-lined street, I looked at the bare tree branches each with their little white overline of snow, and stopped and thought, “Wow; isn’t this beautiful.” I remember one time in seminary, one Spring, walking round the lakes at Notre Dame and stopping by one of the trees outside Moreau seminary that was in full pink bloom. One of our priests was also stopped by it, looking at it, and commented (to God, but possibly conscious of my overhearing), “You didn’t have to give us this too.”