God welcomes and embraces us – Luke 1:39-45

Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C; St. Ann's Parish.

One of my favorite statues is by Fr. Tony Lauck, CSC, a member of my community who had died before I joined. From a distance it looks like a black cone, about 6 feet tall. As you get closer, though, you realize that the surface is not smooth, but imitates the folds you would see in cloth, and that there’s a subtle divide that means that two clothed figures are depicted. Emerging from those fold, you can see four hands, and if you look from the appropriate angles, you can see one face or the other of two women who are embracing, heads nestled on each other’s shoulders. It’s a depiction of the Visitation, the Gospel passage we just heard, Mary and Elizabeth embracing.

God levels all obstacles, including our sin – Bar 5:1-9, Luke 3:1-6.

 Second Sunday of Advent, Year C; St. Ann's and Chapel of Mary.

Every valley filled in; every mountain and hill brought low. Why? So we can walk home. In its original context, this prophecy is addressed to the Israelites during their exile in Babylon. The Babylonians had come and destroyed the Temple, that placed where they found God so powerfully, had blinded the king, and had taken the people away from the Promised Land and brought them to Babylon. A lifetime later, news comes that there’s a new military power in the Ancient Near East. The Persians are coming, and they’re likely to conquer the Babylonians, and let the Israelites come home. The prophet proclaims: This is God’s doing, and now our task is to walk home, and God is going to do everything in God’s power to help us do that, even reforming the earth to help us take the most direct route home possible.

 

Jesus’ reign reflects its brightness off of us – John 18:33b-37; Rev 1:5-8

 Christ the King, Year B; St. Ann's.

Crucifixion was not just designed to kill. It was not just designed to superadd pain or terror on top of what would necessarily accompany death. It was designed to mock. Specifically, it was designed to mock those who had “ideas above their stations,” those who thought they were higher than they were. When people who were enslaved revolted or harmed their slaveholders, crucifixion was a common punishment meted out. The message was clear: “You think you were high and mighty? Well, we’ll show you who’s mighty: The Roman Empire is. And we’ll show you just what happens to people who try to exalt themselves: we’ll exalt you, we’ll lift you up, as we slowly kill you.”

 

Jesus offers everything for our love – Heb 7:23-28; Mark 12:23-282

 Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Ann's parish.

So, I’m not trying to make excuses, but I think this is a really hard gospel passage to preach on. I was discussing this with a friend earlier this week and he asked me, “what’s it about?” I replied, “it’s Jesus telling us to love each other and love God.” “Well, that sounds like good advice,” he said. And I have to disagree. I don’t think it’s good advice. “Use lemon juice to erase yellow highlighter in a book,” or “dryer lint makes a great fire starter”: those are examples of good pieces of advice (you’re welcome by the way if you didn’t know that); simple instructions designed to solve a problem by adding a new piece of knowledge to your collection. “Love each other and God” isn’t like that. I think it would be a wonderful outcome; if all of us left this place more ready to actually love each other, the rest of humanity, and God more whole-heartedly (and, we should add, whole-bodiedly, whole-mindedly, whole-spiritedly), that would be probably the best of all possible outcome. But I don’t think simply being told to love more is going to get us there.

 

Christ leads us home together – Heb 4:14-16

 Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; Immaculate Conception and Chapel of Mary.

Journey and homecoming are two themes that fascinate us. Some of the oldest stories we know, like Gilgamesh and the Odyssey, involve journeys and going home. More recently, we have The Wizard of Oz, so such classics as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, or even Spiderman: Homecoming. Maybe journeys fascinate us so much because that’s how God is saving us.

 

God fills us to overflowing – Mark 10:17-27, Heb 4:12-13

 Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Ann's

You’ve all probably heard that familiar adage that a pessimist says a glass is half-empty and an optimist says that it’s half-full.  Well, as Christians, we’re not called to be pessimists or optimists. We’re called to be something much more exciting; we’re called to be people of hope. A person of hope doesn’t deal in these half measures: hope pays attention to the reality of the water and the reality of the space, and hope proclaims that the glass can be filled.  Christian hope in particular is the assurance that God can fill us up, that through the blood of Christ out poured, we can be filled to overflowing with holiness and love. God longs to fill us up. God is acting to do just that. That’s what Jesus means when he says that “All things are possible with God.”

 

Jesus brings us back to God’s creative love – Mark 10:2-12, Gen 2:18-24

 Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St Ann's and Chapel of Mary.

“Go back to the beginning… how did this all start?”  When something that was meant to be wonderful starts to taste bitter, that can be just the question to ask.  What was it that so exited me and led me to take this job, to begin this course of study, to play on this team, … to marry this person?  How can I bring that initial fervor to life again, in the more mature way that’s needed to deal with our more seasoned problems?

 

No bodily impairment keeps us from Kingdom Joy, but sin does – Mark 9:38-48

 Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Ann's.

There’s really no good transition from plucking eyes out to anything else, so I’m not even going to try. I’m just going to start talking about St. Lucy’s day, and that’ll get us back to eyes soon enough. I don’t know if any of you have ever been to a St. Lucy’s day celebration. It’s December 13^th, and a traditional day in many parts of Europe to take a little break from the Advent focus on waiting and celebrate. Lucy’s name is derived from the Latin word for light, so in parts of France it’s a day to let off fireworks. In parts of Scandinavia, it’s an occasion for parades in which young women wear headdresses containing lit candles. As the winter darkness draws in, these things can be wonderful reminders of how the light Christ is scatters all that’s dark. But, there’s an aspect of St. Lucy I haven’t discussed. She was an early martyr, under Decian, and legend has it that as part of the torture they subjected her to prior to her execution, her eyes were gouged out. Iconography of her often features her holding those eyes on a platter. There’s something somewhat macabre or spooky about that, but it’s a thoroughly Christian kind of spooky: As much as Roman Imperial Power tried to degrade her, she lives in Christ; as much as they tried to snuff out the light of her eyes, she inspires festivals of light among so many people; her risen life as a saint with Christ, welcomed by him into the kingdom, is full of light and joy, so full that she doesn’t need her eyes back in her sockets to know heavenly joy.

 

Jesus embraces us – Mark 9:30-37; James 3:16-4:3

 Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Ann's / Chapel of Mary.

There’s a puzzle that British newspapers like to publish called ‘spot the ball.’  They’ll take a photo of a moment in a soccer match, use computer wizardry to render the ball invisible and invite readers to reconstruct where it must be.  It sometimes takes some thought, but it’s an eminently doable puzzle, because all the action really is revolving around the ball; everyone on the pitch treats it as the most important object in the world and focuses their attention on it.  It’s the same when someone really important, really valued, is walking somewhere.  They’re surrounded, in the center, all conversations and interactions are focused around the great one in their midst.

 

The love of Christ urges us on – Mark 8:27-35

 Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Ann's.

Mr. Rogers used to say that whenever some disaster strikes and we feel scared or dejected or hopeless, the place to look is to look for the people who are helping, and its in them that our hope can be reawakened. Recent extreme weather events, close to home and further away, have provided yet another opportunity to do that. One story that really moved me came out of Tennessee when they were hit by flooding in late August. I read of Jeff Burkhead who went out in his boat to travel round deeply flooded streets to try to rescue people, and I read of Hope Dretska, a nurse who was perfectly safe herself, but flagged Jeff down and asked to come along in his boat to be able to provide care to anyone he rescued, and I read of people they were able to get to safety. Now I don’t know Jeff or Hope, I’ll probably never meet them, but I’m guessing they didn’t go out because they like danger. No, they went out because they had a love for their neighbor that was greater than their perfectly rational fear of danger.

 

Jesus heals our hearing and speaking – Mark 7:31-37.

 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Peter's, Provincetown.

I was talking to a friend of mine this week who also teaches college students, and she told me about an exercise she regularly does. She has them read a certain historical set of letters from the period she teaches, and the students just have to do a short write-up of what was remarkable, or different from their culture, in them. One of the topics in these letters is a lively back and forth between the different writers about whether or not it’s OK to go to gladiator games. In previous years, she told me, they would often comment on the fact that there were real gladiator games to go to. This year, though, a surprising number of students commented instead on the fact that the letter-writers could disagree deeply and sharply about something really important and weighty and still be civil to one another, and even remain friends.

Christ’s resurrection ripples raise us up – 1 Cor 15:20-27, Lk 1:39-56 (Assumption)

Solemnity of the Assumption; St. Andrew's, Taunton.

Some things can’t help but spread.  Laughter would be one, hiccups definitely another.  True goodness is the same way, and that’s true in any field: the greatest musician isn’t the diva or divo who tuts about their accompanist’s tempo, but someone who makes everyone around them play better when they pick up their instruments; just as a great athlete doesn’t hog the ball, but raises the play of the whole team.  Virtue’s the same way too: the virtuous person is contagious with goodness and walks around lighting fires of zeal and coating everything with a soothing balm of hope and patience.  And if that’s what virtue does, then that’s what resurrection does too.  Resurrection is the fruit of the greatness of Christ’s love, it’s what happens when a human life was lived so perfectly, so holily, so virtuously that someone dared to love us enough not just to die for us, but loved us so much that not even death, death at our hands, could keep him from being with us.  The fiery furnace of Christ’s love erupts in resurrection.  And it spreads. It spreads to Mary, which is what our feast in particular celebrates today, and it spreads more broadly still; it spreads to us, which is what we celebrate at each and every Mass.

 

God is enough for our “much” – 1 Kings 19:4-8

 Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; Chapel of Mary (Stonehill College).

Our first reading teaches us that, when things feel too much, sometimes what we need is a nap and a snack, and then everything’s OK. Well, kind of. I’ll get to why Elijah feels the way he does, and what God does about that, soon. But before going there, I want to sit a while with Elijah’s heartfelt, brutally honest prayer. And I don’t want to minimize the kind of pain he’s feeling, because properly attending to his pain will help us attend to our sisters and brothers in pain, and might even help us name and understand better our own.

 

God prays through us – Rom 8:22-27, John 7:37-39 (Pentecost Vigil)

 Pentecost Vigil; Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

I am the proud sponsor of a pipe. Not a pipe you smoke, or a pipe that carries water or oil, but a pipe of a pipe organ. A church I used to be a member of, long before I entered seminary, was installing a new pipe organ and, as part of the fundraising efforts, they offered the opportunity for people to pay to sponsor a pipe. Larger pipes were available for larger donations, and smaller ones for those with less resources. I was a student at the time, so I ended up sponsoring one of the higher-pitched E♭ flute pipes. Now, when I paid my money, there was an attached promise that not only would I get a certificate (which I got), but that when the organ was ready to be played, there would be an evening reception for all pipe-sponsors, at which we would be allowed play our pipe. As far as I know, that happened, but I’d already moved a long distance away, and never got to go.

 

God tends to our fruitfulness – John 15:1-8

 Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B; Breen Philips Hall.

Last week, we heard from Jesus’ Good Shepherd speech in John. We heard Jesus say that he 100% commits to us, that we are His and He is ours, that He’s willing to suffer for us, to know rejection for us, and lead us on in our pilgrimage. Today, in this image of the vine and the branches, Jesus uses a different image to say a lot of the same things, but there are some different emphases.

The rejected Jesus commits to us – Acts 4:8-12, John 10:11-18

 Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; Breen-Philips Hall.

Press play, and you hear Antonio Cipriani sing in a beautiful yet subdued way, “That I would be good, even if I did nothing.” Then the melody passes to Celia Rose Gooding, who responds, “That I would be good, even if I got the thumbs down.” They continue alternating lines: “That I would be good, even if I got resentful; that I would be good, even if I gained ten pounds.” Lauren Patten then comes in with this plaintiff descant, “why won’t you accept who I need to be?,” as Antonio and Celia keep on alternating, before Lauren takes the melody and turns it up to eleven, coming in and belting out: “I need to know that I would be loved, even if I am my true self; that I would be good, even when I am overwhelmed.”

 

Jesus perfects our love – Luke 24:35-48; 1 John 2:1-5a

 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year B. Breen-Philips Hall.

Jesus, after his resurrection, appears in the midst of his disciples, and they’re terrified. So, Jesus wishes them peace. Not peace in the sense of having no conflict or struggle in their lives. In fact, he’ll soon send them out to witness to him knowing that that will mean martyrdom for most of them. No, Jesus wishes them the kind of peace in their hearts that will allow them to do that. The kind of peace in their hearts that will let them not be terrified to see him.

 

Christ breaks any barrier to be with us – Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-21

 Sunday in the Octave of Easter, Year B; Breen-Philips Hall

We’ve had so long now of having to think about distance. The 6-foot wingspan touchdown Jesus reminds of one thing we need to do to keep one another safe. Distance, barriers… physical things we need right now, but I wonder if we’ve let them get a hold of parts of our spirits where they really don’t belong. I’m glad that Notre Dame tries to be consistent in its messaging in using the phrase “physical distancing” rather than “social distancing,” because it’s so important that we strive to remain socially connected, throughout this pandemic, throughout our lives. And being socially connected doesn’t just mean superficial interactions, but genuine, vulnerable, intimate friendships. And behind that lies spiritual connectedness. Keeping close to God, and allow our other relationships to feed and deepen that central relationship. Sometimes things that are hard feel too heavy to hold, and so we put up barriers and make distance in our spirits. We don’t let ourselves feel another’s pain, or even our own, we don’t offer that to God, let ourselves be inspired to act.

The resurrection light grows – Acts 10:34-43; 1 Cor 5:6b-8; Mark 16:1-7

 Easter Sunday, Year B. Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

If you’re into setting records, those of you gathered here in the basilica this morning should know that we’ve collectively come in precisely second in one particular competition. That’s the competition to see how few people you can have at an Easter Sunday Mass in this basilica. Now, as the basilica hosts more and more Masses over the course of today, those Masses will equal our numbers and share our silver medals, but there has been no previous Easter Sunday Mass here that has come close to our number. Prior to 2020, of course, every single Easter Sunday Mass here has been full to the rafters (at least, since the basilica has been a basilica). Last year, though, the only people present were Holy Cross priests and brothers who lived on campus, and select campus ministry staff who were exercising some kind of liturgical ministry. Our celebration here is so much bigger than 2020 while still being so much smaller than all that came before, and (we hope and can with some confidence expect) than all that will come from 2022 on.

 

Jesus quenches thirst, ours and his – John 4:5-42, Exod 17:3-7, Rom 5:1-8

 3rd Sunday of Lent (Year A readings); St. Adalbert and St. Casimir parishes

We all know the experience of being thirsty. That tickle in our throat, that as thirst grows worse can become more uncomfortable, and then painful. Maybe it comes with a headache, or with fatigue. Thirst is actually quite hard to describe, because it’s so basic to being alive: being thirsty feels like thirst and we know what that feels like. We also know how good a cool glass of water feels on a hot day. Our first two readings use those feelings we all know so well and name something equally basic to being human: the reality that we are thirsty people and God refreshes us.