Palm Sunday

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032915.cfm


Just a brief thought about the Passion.

There is an odd little story that seems to come out of nowhere in the middle of the Passion according to Mark. I'm talking about that story about the young man who was following Jesus to Gethsemane. The guards tried to seize him, but he left the linen cloth he was wearing behind and ran off naked. This story can seem so out of left-field that it can be hard to know what to make of it.

Many scholars think that the young man was St. Mark, the same person who wrote the Gospel. Many think that he included the rather embarrassing story to help establish that he really was there; that he was truly a witness to Jesus' arrest and the beginning of His Passion.

The Early Church seems to have been all about showing that they have eye-witness accounts of what happened at the Passion and the Resurrection. They wanted other people to know that this is a true story and not something that was made up. St. Mark also takes the time to tell us about three women who were present at the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. Mary Magdalen, the other Mary and Salome are also the first to see the empty tomb on Easter morning. They are the witnesses to what took place in those days and where it all took place.

We are called to be witnesses as well, brothers and sisters. Even though we were not there at the actual historical events, we are still witnesses of faith to the fact that Christ suffered and died for you and me. May we be given the courage and faith necessary to share with others what we have witnessed.

Fifth Sunday of Lent

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032215-fifth-sunday-lent.cfm

There was a priest on staff at the seminary I attended who is known for his jokes. The man loves puns. If you are sitting across the dinner table from him, chances are he will at some point during the meal pick up the salt shaker and begin to put some salt on his food. He would then gently shake it in your direction so that a little salt would come flying towards you. He would then say in a dead pan voice, “You have just been assaulted”. On rainy April days, he was known to come up to people and ask, “If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?” When the bewildered seminarian would say that he had no idea he would reply, “Pilgrims! Get it? Mayflowers?” This would typically follow with a few chuckles and a lot of groans.

One of my favorite jokes from this priest usually came up when two seminarians were having a conversation about who did a better job on something. Sometimes one of the guys might act all macho, pretending like he thought he really was the best. This usually resulted in some good natured teasing or ribbing from the other guys. This priest would often jump in by giving what at first sounded like a complement to the one who acted all macho, but then would finish with a back-handed complement. He acted like he was saying it under his breath, but he still said it loud enough so those around him could hear. It usually went like this: “Hey! Don't be hard on him. He's angel, (fallen). He's a gem, (cracked). He's a treasure, (should be buried)”. The jokes were of course done all in good fun and were always taken as such. The seminarians always seemed to liked how those “complements” were contradictory or paradoxical but still flowed together so well.

People in our culture seem to be attracted to things that are paradoxical or contradictory. We like a character in a book or a movie or a TV show that starts out as flawed, and unsavory, and maybe rough around the edges who turns into a hero by the end of the story. People love an underdog at a sporting event. If a team that is expected to do poorly in a season or even just in a specific game, if they start doing well a whole bunch of “closet fans” come out of the woodwork to cheer on the team. Fans love it too when a player who very few people have heard of before suddenly gets into his groove and gets really good at his game. People like those Cinderella sports stories because, like the unsavory character who turns into the hero, you don't expect them to do even remotely well. It's the joy of realizing that we were wrong about the person and that everything has turned out good in the end.

During this Season of Lent we Christians reflect on and indeed we celebrate an event that is perhaps the biggest paradox in the history of humanity: I am talking about how Our Lord Jesus Christ died so that we, His followers, might inherit eternal life. This is beautifully talked about by Jesus in our Gospel reading for today. “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”. Technically, I don't believe that a botanist would say that a grain of wheat, or any seed that falls from the plant, is necessarily dead. If it were dead, no amount of watering or sunlight would get it to sprout a new wheat plant or stock. The life within the seed is dormant until the proper water and soil allow it to germinate. For Jesus' purpose of symbolizing His passion, however, the analogy is still a good one. When we see a leaf or a seed or a flower or a nut or any other twig fall from a plant, for most people it will probably appear to be dead. You cannot reattach a seed, or a flower, or a leaf, et cetera that has fallen from the living plant. Yet through little miracles that God has given us in creation, a little soil and water can cause a seed to sprout and begin a new life. If we did not study that in science class as we grew up we would probably never expect that to happen.

It is contradictory to say that something can die and then become alive again and bring life to others. A thing (a plant, an animal, or a human) cannot be dead and then alive, yet that is what at least appears to happen on the surface with wheat. It makes even less sense to say that a man would die and then rise again. Yet that is precisely what our Christian faith professes in regards to Jesus Christ. Even more paradoxical, Jesus does this, not for His own sake or for His own pleasure, but for all of us. A grain of wheat produces a plant, which produces more wheat, which is able to provide life by feeding people. Likewise, by dying and rising again, Jesus provides everlasting life for those who believe in Him.

Jesus is fulfilling a special covenant between God and all of us. Remember, a covenant is more than just a promise or a contract between two people or businesses. It is more like a vow or an oath that a person takes in order to agree to something. In this case we agreed to follow God when we were baptized, and God agreed to bring us to everlasting life through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus. That is the covenant that God has established with us. He speaks about this new covenant through the words of the Prophet Jeremiah in our First Reading today. God explains that this new covenant will not be like the old covenant that He made with the Israelites when He lead them out of Egypt. That covenant was broken again and again by the various sins of the people in the Old Testament. The problem seemed to be that they did not know who their God was. In this new covenant, God says, His law will be written in their hearts. “I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ... All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.” God wished to forgive our sins and to bring us to everlasting life. That is why He gave us His Son.

It may seem odd that a man should die for us. It may seem odd that God would send His Son to die for us, but that's what He's done. Let us work to respond to God's covenant. For He sent His Son to bring us salvation.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031515-fourth-sunday-lent.cfm

I know that I have preached before about how forgiveness and mercy can be very hard to understand and accept.  We don’t always understand how it is that others can forgive us and show us mercy for what we have done.  We may also struggle with how to forgive and show mercy to those who have hurt us in some way.  Forgiveness can be quite difficult.  I am certain that we can all think of times when we have been hurt by others and times when we have hurt others.  Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding.  Perhaps it was an accident.  Then again it may have been their fault, or it could be my fault.  The point is, someone got hurt.  Our Christian faith teaches us that when we are guilty of sinning against another, we are to apologize for what we did and try to make amends if possible.  That same faith teaches us to forgive those have sinned against us.  As I said, this is not always easy and it is easy to question in our minds how we are able to forgive and how others can forgive us.

When I was a child, I got in trouble for various things more often than I care to remember.  I would get into fights with my younger sister and sometimes I would physically hurt her as a result of that fight.  Sometimes I would break something in the house or cause a huge mess.  There was also the occasional report card and test I would bring home from school that showed that I was struggling in a certain subject.  All of these things usually meant some sort of punishment or some other negative reaction from my parents.  Now, this usually meant that I was given a serious lecture about what I did.  I might be sent to my room for a time, or have certain privileges taken away, like time on the computer or TV.  Sometimes the punishment was simply having to get along with my sister (that could be the hardest).  My parents have always been firm, but I would never call them harsh disciplinarians.

That being said, my imagination would often run rampant as I imagined how my parents would react to things I had done and the severe punishments that were certain to follow.  I’m sure at some point I pictured being kept in my room for days at a time and having to do forced labor around the house.  I thought I would have to beg to be shown the love of my parents once more.  Deep down I knew my parents would never stop loving me, but I would still wonder at times if I could still be forgiven for some of the things I had done.

Of course, the actual punishment never came close to what my runaway imagination had concocted.  There was usually a talk from one or both parents about what I did wrong and what I should have done.  If I was punished, it was typically less than I expected.  And my parents were always there to forgive me and love me after it was all over.  In fact, I think many times I felt so guilty that it took me longer to forgive myself than my parents to forgive me.

I hope that all of you have had a similar experience of being forgiven.  If not, I pray that you will.  We might not always understand how it happens, and we might not always feel like we deserve it, but it is important that we experience forgiveness in some form or another.

The overall theme of the readings for today is about the mercy of God.  God’s mercy is all about His never ending love and forgiveness that He has for all His children.  When you read through the Old Testament, it can be tempting to assume that God is more vengeful than merciful and that He takes pleasure in seeing the wicked punished.  Whenever we are tempted to think that, all we have to do is look at a passage like our First Reading from Second Chronicles to bring us back to reality.  The reading starts out by talking about the people of the land of Judah and how they chose to turn away from God.  We are told that again and again God sent His messengers (His prophets) to try to bring their hearts back to God.  “For He had compassion on His people and His dwelling place” the speaker says.  God is compassionate and gives many chances for the people to repent before He punishes.  The people do not listen though and mock those messengers and continue to go against God’s commandments.  As punishment, God allows the Babylonians to destroy the temple and take the people into exile.

Several decades later, a new king comes to power, Cyrus of Persia.  Cyrus is famous in history for allowing the Jewish exiles in Babylon to return to Jerusalem.  He even gave the people money to rebuild the Temple.  The writer of Second Chronicles makes sure to explain that the reason King Cyrus is so generous, is because of God mercy.  The people sinned, God punished them, they served their time, and now God has forgiven them and blessed them.  God is merciful.

Of course, the New Testament is full of examples of God’s mercy as well.  In our Second Reading, St. Paul tells the Ephesians (and all of us) that God is rich in mercy and that even though we were dead because of our sins, He raised us up with Jesus Christ and has given us a place in Heaven.  How was God able to give us so great a mercy when through the choice of our own sins, we had already condemned ourselves to eternal death?  How is God able to continue to give us that mercy?  The answer is nothing short of the Cross.

The Gospel Reading today from John gives us that famous dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus.  John 3:16, “For 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”.  Again, we have this great summation of God’s infinite mercy.  This is possible, and only possible, through the Cross of Christ.  “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.”

Today is Laetare Sunday.  Laetare means joy.  Even in this penitential season of Lent, we are able to find joy, because God has given us mercy through the Cross of His Son.  Let us not fear punishment or death, but trust in that mercy.

Third Sunday of Lent

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030815-third-sunday-lent.cfm

How do you get yourself to do something you need to do, but you just don’t want to do it? Sure, there is always good ol’ will-power where you just make yourself do it, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier. You still have to do those tasks, but no matter how good you are at ignoring them, they just never seem to go away.

These tasks I am talking about might be the household chores that no one likes to do. Maybe it’s those last few things on the “to-do” list that have managed to survive all your best attempts at procrastination. Perhaps it’s the least popular job at work. It may even involve having to deal with people you would rather not have to deal with. The tasks themselves might not be all that difficult or all that unpleasant, but we could probably think of a long list of things we would rather be doing than that. The point is they need to be done.

When I was growing up, one of my household chores was cleaning the toilets and sinks in the two bathrooms in my parent’s house. Now for the most part, I really didn’t mind doing this chore. In fact, sometimes it even felt good to know I was helping keep our house clean. However, one thing became very clear early on. I could be doing absolutely nothing at the time, but as soon as my parents told me to go clean the bathrooms or do my chores, all I could think of was about a hundred different things I would rather be doing than cleaning a toilet. I eventually figured out that the chore itself was not that bad, but I hated being told I had to do it. I found that it was actually much easier for me to do it if I took some initiative and actually chose to do the chore before I was told to do it. Somehow making my own choice of when I was doing it made all the difference in the world. I think it allowed me to take ownership of the job I was doing, rather than feeling like I was being forced to do it when my parents told me to.

That being said, my own human imperfections still got in the way. I would still forget to do my chores before doing the fun things that I wanted to do. My parents still had to remind me to do my chores sometimes. I still complained about having to do them and would think of my hundreds of things I would much rather be doing than scrubbing toilets and sinks. It was those times I could get it done without being told, without being forced into it that I felt like it was something I had chosen to do, and therefore, something I actually wanted to do.

As Catholics, it can be very easy to get bogged down in all the rules that we have to follow. We have all those rules that are in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We have the hundreds of laws in the Code of Canon Law. We have liturgical law that tells us how we are to worship and pray. Within moral theology we have different morals and ethics we have to follow, and we even talk about a thing called “Natural Law”, which God established when He made the world and no human being can change. And of course, we have the Ten Commandments as they are listed out in our First Reading today. This Decalogue, as it is sometimes called, is really the basis for how God wants His people to live a morally good life. All the other laws that are in the Bible and all the other rules that the Church and civil authorities have established throughout history, all stem from these Ten Commandments. Instead of getting bogged down in all the many rules and laws we have today, it is good to start by looking at these first ten.

Some of the commandments are easier to follow than others. We know that it is wrong to kill; we know that it is wrong to commit adultery; and we know that it is wrong to steal. However, it is much easier to covet someone else’s goods. It’s easy to disrespect our parents when we disagree with what we are talking about. We would never dream of murdering a person, but it is easy to stay angry with a person over an argument. We don’t steal from a bank or shoplift at a store, but it can be easy to justify wasting time at work, thus stealing from work. However hard it might be to follow any of these Commandments, they all point back to the very first Commandment that God established and that we are all called to follow: “I the LORD am your God… you shall not have other gods besides me”. God goes on from there to elaborate: we are not to carve any idols for ourselves. God, we are told, is a jealous God, meaning that if we turn from Him and make other things in our life more important than Him, He is not going to be happy. He wants all our focus to be on Him. Isn’t that what all the Commandments and the laws and all the rules are all about? The LORD God is our God. We are to serve Him and honor Him and love Him for our whole lives.

When we sin, we make other things more important than God. We essentially make idols to replace our one true God. Jesus gives us a very profound image to reflect on about this when we read the story of the cleansing of the Temple today. Jesus comes to the Temple and sees all the money changers and all the people selling animals to be sacrificed in the Temple. In a sense all these people served a useful purpose at the Temple. People needed to exchange currencies and they needed to buy animals to sacrifice. Those individuals were also there to make a profit, however, and that is why Jesus takes offense. God is supposed to be the center of our lives, yet in the Temple (God’s own house, of all places) you have people who are more interested in taking advantage of others through monetary gain. So He turns the tables over and drives them out. “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

We know what we need to do. We know we must keep God first in our lives. It’s hard. We have many other things in our lives and we are tempted to make those things the most important. How do we get ourselves to do the things we need to do, when we don’t want to? God is telling us what to do with the Commandments, but we need to choose it for ourselves. We need to choose to make God first in our lives. Only then will we no longer worry about doing the right thing. Because by choosing God, how can we go wrong?

Second Sunday of Lent

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030115.cfm
In 1989, an 8.2 earthquake leveled most of Armenia. In about four minutes, somewhere around 30,000 people died. From this tragedy, a true story came out about a father and his search for his son. Soon after the earthquake, this father rushed to his son’s school where he had dropped him off that morning. His heart sank as he saw that the school had completely flattened. He remembered a promise that he had made to his son: “No matter what, I’ll always be there for you.” 

  Determined to find his son and keep his promise, the father went to the back of the school where he knew his son’s classroom was located. He began digging through the rubble with his bare hands. As he dug, other grieving parents came by and tried to pull him away from the wreckage. “You’re too late!” “They’re already dead.” Even firemen and police tried to get him to go home, telling him it was too dangerous for him to be there. To all of these people the father would simply say, “Are you going to help me now?” Nobody offered to help, and he just kept digging. 

He dug for 12 hours, and then 24 hours, and then 36 hours. At the 38^th hour, over a day and a half of digging, the man finally heard his son’s voice. The father cried out his son’s name. The son replied: “Dad?! Is that you? It’s me Dad!” Two pieces of the building had wedged together, forming a triangle shaped cave that protected the son and several of his classmates from the collapse. “I told the other kids not to worry,” the boy said. “I told them if you were alive, you’d save me and they’ll be safe. You promised that Dad! ‘No matter what, I’ll always be there for you.’ You kept your promise!”

Just like the father in that story, all fathers know that they have a special duty to care for their sons and daughters. That father knew that no matter what had happened to his son, he needed to be there for him. He worked hard for 38 hours in order to keep his promise. A good father knows that he has to keep his promises to his children and that he has to be there for them. God, our Father in Heaven, also takes his promises very seriously and is always there for His children. He has an undying love for all His children.

The love that God the Father has for His children is best shown in the love that He has for His own Son, Jesus. Notice what He says about Jesus in today’s Gospel reading about the Transfiguration. “This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him.” God wants the disciples and all of us to know that Jesus is His Son, that He loves Him and that we should all listen to Him. Remember, there is a greater purpose to the Transfiguration than a cool sound and lights show that Jesus is putting on for Peter, James, and John. This takes place only a few weeks before the Passion. By hearing God refer to Him as Son and by seeing Him transfigured and standing with Moses and Elijah, those three Apostles were given a big clue into what Jesus was up to. Jesus’ death would not be the end; He will rise again with a resurrected body, not unlike His transfigured body. The fact that the Father calls Jesus His Son also tells us something about God’s love for us. God loves us so much He was willing to sacrifice His Son (whom He loves) for us, so that we too might join Him in Heaven. That is a Father who will be there for us no matter what.

Before the Gospel, we heard about the Sacrifice of Isaac in the Book of Genesis. This Old Testament story is very symbolic of another story about sacrifice: the Passion of Jesus Christ. Abraham as the father is symbolic of God the Father. Abraham certainly did not wish to sacrifice his only son, but he did so out of obedience. Likewise, God the Father sacrificed His only begotten Son because He knew it had to happen in order to save humanity. 

Isaac becomes the symbol for Jesus. It was not a coincidence that God told Abraham to sacrifice his son on a mountain in the land of Moriah. It was on that same mountain that the Temple of Jerusalem was built and where the people of Israel offered their sacrifices. It was a short distance from there that Jesus sacrificed Himself at Calvary. Isaac had to carry the wood for the sacrifice on his back as he climbed up the mountain. Jesus likewise had to carry the Wood of the Cross to Calvary. Isaac was obedient and willing to be the sacrifice. He was somewhere in his twenties or thirties at this time, so he certainly could have gotten away if he had been unwilling. Jesus was obedient to His Father’s will also. At anytime He could have called upon legions of angels to rescue Him and take Him off of the Cross. Yet He knew what had to be done. 

Both Jesus and Isaac were beloved sons, both were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice for God, both were obedient until the end, but only Jesus had to actually be sacrificed. The Story of Abraham and Isaac simply foreshadows what will happen later on in Salvation History when God the Father accepted the Sacrifice of His Son as ransom for our sins. God knew that He wasn’t loosing a Son, as Abraham would have with Isaac, but He gained all of us as son and daughters. 

St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, “God is for us”. He, “did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all”. He even points out that the Son, who died and was raised for us, intercedes for us. Who could make a charge against us? Who could be against us? We have the love of God. God is the Father who, no matter what, will always be there for us. Remember that fact as we continue our Lenten practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, for it is through His love and grace that we will come to eternal life.