What Does It Mean To Be a Church?

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Easter is the most important time of the year for us as we celebrate the gift of the Eucharist, Jesus’ Crucifixion, and his Resurrection not as three separate events but one event over three days intimately linked together (for more on this see http://renewaloffaith.org/ls/easter2008.htm).  What we celebrate at Easter defines who we are as Catholics but what are we to do with this?

During our Easter season we read from the Acts of the Apostles that tell the stories of the early church.  When hear the word Church what do you think of?

Do you think of our church building?  Our building is important as the place where come together to worship and pray.  Our church building is part of who we are as Catholics but it does not define us.

Do you think of the church as a parish?  As a parish, we are not just a building. We are a community of believers just as we hear of the early church community in the Acts of the Apostles.

Do you think of the church as an institution?  As Catholics, we have a hierarchical church that functions as an institution in many ways but the church does not exist for itself.

Do you think of the church as something spiritual?  The church is made known to us through our buildings, parish, and institutions but the Church is much more than the this.

As church we have a purpose. That purpose, our mission, is given by Jesus in Matthew 28:19 when he says “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.”  If we are not doing this, we are not fulfilling our mission. We need to evangelize our ourselves towards a deeper faith and to evangelize others to come to know our faith (for more on evangelization see http://renewaloffaith.org/basics/disciple/evangelize.htm).

How do live you live out this mission?  have you shared faith with the children around you?  have you shared your faith with your friends?

Peace,

Fr. Jeff

2nd Sunday of Easter Year A Homily

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2nd Sunday in Easter, Year A
Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
April 26, 2014

 

Last Sunday we heard that the disciples had found Jesus’ tomb empty. We know this to be good news because Jesus is risen but Jesus’ disciples were in a quandary to understand what happened.

To add to their stress they fear for their own lives. They are afraid that the people who had Jesus arrested and crucified will have the same thing down to their. So the disciples fear for their very lives.

In their common fear they come together to be with one another and to support one another but in their fear they do it behind locked doors. This is the beginnings of the post-resurrection Christian Community.

The idea of community is essential to our Catholic faith. As we hear in the Acts of the Apostles, the early Christians dedicated themselves to the communal life, to pray, and breaking bread.

We don’t always do it well but generally we have some notion of what it means to pray, we break bread together as we celebrate Mass, but what is our sense of “communal life?”

For the early disciples we are told that everyone sold what they have and shared the money “according to each one’s need.”

I suspect a lot of people don’t like this. It’s seen as socialism and many feel they have worked hard for their money and resent the idea of giving all their money away. So, very few people live the communal life is this way. Our church recognizes the value of private property as long as we are generous and don’t hoard the money.

We can, albeit in a different way than the first disciples, live the communal life by sharing some of what we have. But communal life isn’t just about money.

Communal life involves prayer and breaking bread. We can pray alone but we also pray together. We are praying together right now as we celebrate Mass.

We also come together today to break bread, to celebrate the Eucharist just as Jesus did with his disciples.

Let’s go back to the disciples right after the tomb is found empty. They are in fear and in fear they could have scattered in separate directions but they did not. They remained together to support one another.

It is in their act of coming together that Jesus appeared to them. His first words?, “peace be with you.” He comes to them knowing their fears. He also comes knowing their doubts. They don’t understand the Resurrection and Jesus knows this. That’s why he shows them his hands and his side so that see the marks of his Crucifixion to know it is truly him and not a ghost.

One disciple was missing, Thomas. Because was not there he doubts. He gets a bad rap and has been known as “doubting Thomas”. We need to have faith but is Thomas really that much different than the rest of him. Jesus knows our doubts. That’s why he showed the disciples in the locked room his hands and his side, to help their belief.

How much doubt do you have?

Many in today’s world insist on proof. This means science, reason rather than faith. People want to see for themselves before they accept. Where is the faith in this?

God gave us minds to learn but reason is not enough. We are never going to have all the answers. At some point, we have to make a leap of faith.

Peter writes about how great it is to have faith without proof. Jesus tells Thomas blessed are those who have not seen and believe.

We come here today, never having seen the risen Jesus in physical form for ourselves yet we believe he is risen. Why? Because those early disciples wrote down what they had seen. Even though we have not seen for ourselves, we believe because of what the early Christian community shared with us in the scriptures.

Do we have perfect faith? I know I don’t but I do believe.

Do you have doubts? Do you still believe?

May we always share faith so that we can make the leap of faith together.

Homily – Easter Vigil, Year A

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Easter Vigil, Year A
Genesis 1:1-2:2
Genesis 22:1-18
Exodus 14:15-5:1
Isaiah 55:1-11
Romans 6:3-11
Matthew 28:1-10
April 19, 2014

Last Sunday we began Holy Week with the gospel proclaiming Jesus entering into Jerusalem.  Thursday night we remembered how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and gave us the Eucharist.  Yesterday, we celebrated Jesus’ Crucifixion but that seemed to end in death but now the tomb is empty.  Jesus is risen!

Given all that we have celebrated this week, one might think we could just pick up to start tonight’s Mass where we left yesterday, with Jesus laid in the tomb.  But we don’t….

Instead our readings go all the way back to creation, when there was nothing except God.

Nothing…

We started our Mass tonight in darkness, like the darkness that existed before God created light.  Without God there would be no light.

Recognizing God as the source of light, we start with the blessing of the Easter fire, giving us light and we blessed our new Paschal candle.  As we blessed the candle, the prayers described God as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  God was there when creation happened and will be there at the end.  Our Paschal Candle has the current year on it, reminding us that God is also present with us now.

Dan sang for us the Exsultet, telling Salvation History and tonight we have more readings than normal to include much of Salvation History.

There is the Creation Story, telling us how God creates, not to provide a scientific explanation but to explain the divine order of things so there is meaning to creation.  Big Bang and evolution do not provide meaning for life.

Then we hear the story of Abraham and how his faith is so strong that he is willing to sacrifice his son.  In the end he does not need to and God provides for the sacrifice to be made that day but we must see this as a foreshadowing of God making the ultimate sacrifice giving up his Son for us.

Then comes the Exodus where God sets his people free from slavery in Egypt as they cross through the waters of the Red Sea.  All this, as Isaiah says, without price or cost.  Crossing the waters of the Red Sea, they entered into new life.  Tonight we have six people who will enter into this new life through baptism.

Much of this liturgy centers around our six to be baptized and the four who will complete their Christian Initiation with them but the Church invites us to see this as a reminder of our own baptism and what it means to die and rise with Christ.  To do so we will all renew our own baptismal promises.

At this point our readings bring us to Jesus’ tomb.

The tomb is empty!

What does this mean?  The angel tells the women that it is because Jesus is Risen!

Yesterday, we celebrated Jesus’ death.  We don’t normally celebrate death.  We normally see death as sorrow.  In the case of Jesus’ death, it came seem like utter defeat.  That’s why to understand Jesus’ death, we must know of his Resurrection.

Death is not the end!

Remember how Jesus healed people thought to be dead?

Remember how he called Lazarus, after he had been dead for four days, forth from the tomb?

Not even death has power over Jesus.  In his death and Resurrection, Jesus shows us that there is so much more to life than what we see in this world.

This changes everything.  It should put a whole new focus on what it means to live.  Material things are not important.  God is!

In our Easter Triduum we have much to celebrate, three days but all one event.  On Holy Thursday, Jesus gave us the Eucharist.  Knowing he was going to be crucified he speaks of the Eucharist as his body and blood that are given up for us, giving up on the Cross, so the Eucharist forever celebrates the sacrifice of the Cross.  Then we have Jesus’ death and Resurrection.  We need to both to make sense of either.

So we celebrate!

 

Homily – Good Friday

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Good Friday, Year A
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42
April 18, 2014

Our passion began with saying that Jesus went out.  Jesus was not dragged away with force like a resistant criminal.  Jesus went willing, knowing everything that was going to happen and knowing it was his Father’s will.

Jesus is put on trial.  When the high priest questions Jesus about what he has said, he stands by what he has said because he knows it is the truth.

When Pilate asks the people what charge they bring against Jesus they respond, “If he were not a criminal, we would not have handed him to you.”  They avoid the question and provide no charge.  Why?  Because Jesus is innocent!

Pilate asks Jesus what he has done for the people to do this.  Jesus simply replies, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.”

Often Pilate gets a bad rap but he is the one who three times says he finds no guilt in Jesus.  Pilate’s only sin is giving into the mob.

So why was Jesus crucified?

The answer to this question was actually given a few hundred years before Jesus was born by Isaiah in the first reading where Isaiah speaks of the suffering servant.  Why is the suffering servant treated in this way?

“Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured… he was pierced for our offenses.”

Why?  Because, “We had all gone astray like sheep, each followed his own way.”

Jesus brings us Truth, truth with a capital “T”.  This Truth cannot be changed but when we do things our own way, trying to change Jesus’ truth is exactly what we are doing.

We think we have the answers about life and death, about what is moral and what is not.  Why do we think we know better than Jesus?

In a moment we will offer our Prayers of the Faithful.  Normally on a Sunday each parish writes its own set of intentions but today the intentions are entirely written out word for word as part of our Good Friday Service so every Catholic Church in the world is praying for the exact same intentions.

I think the wording of these prayers should remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.  In the very first intention, we pray for your church, meaning not our church but God’s church.  God determines what the Truth and God wants everyone to know what it is.  That’s why our prayers today include not just Catholics, but also other Christians, Jews, and even those who do not believe at all.

We know all this and yet we still can stray from God’s ways.  The good news is that Jesus has given us a remedy for our sins.  He has died so that our sins may be forgiven.  After our prayers, we will come forth to venerate the Cross.  As you come forth, think not of death but how Jesus gives us new life through his death for us.

Homily – Holy Thursday 2014

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Holy Thursday, Year A
Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-5
April 17, 2014

As we began Mass tonight, the season of Lent came to a close and the event of Easter is upon us.  Tonight begins the Easter Triduum.

Triduum is Latin for three days.  However, while we celebrate these events over three days, we must not see these happenings as three separate events.  The Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection can only be properly understood as one event.

With that in mind, tomorrow we will celebrate the Crucifixion and then the Resurrection for Easter, but tonight is the Last Supper.

It was no ordinary meal that Jesus celebrated that night.  It was the Passover, the most important time of the year for the Jewish people.

At that meal, Jesus gives us the Eucharist.  I want to emphasize gift because it truly is just that, a gift.  He takes the bread and wine that were already part of the Passover meal and turns it into his Body and Blood.

Thus, we become a Eucharistic people.  The Eucharist was not meant to be celebrated just once.  Paul writes of how Jesus commands us to do this is remembrance of me.  Just as the Passover was declared a memorial feast and a perpetual institution, so too has the Eucharist come to be at Jesus’ command.

What does it mean to be a Eucharistic people?

Obviously, it begins with coming here to celebrate the Mass and to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in the form of bread and wine but it does not end there.

At Mass we hear God’s word and receive the Eucharist and that is paramount to our faith but our faith is not simply to be a passive faith.  We must do something with the faith we had received.

We need to put our faith into action.  We need to take what God has given us and put it into action as people of service.

We need to serve others…

This is what Jesus shows us when he washes the feet of his disciples.  To understand the significance of Jesus washing the feet of disciples we need to look at the customs of the time.  When a person arrived at your house, their feet would be dusty from walking on ‘dusty’ roads.  It was polite and custom to offer a washing of the feet but it was not role of the host to do this.  It would have been the slaves that did it.

So Peter would have been shocked to see Jesus get down to wash his feet.  Jesus was the messiah and should never be the one washing the feet of others.  But Peter accepts Jesus’ words that it must be so.

In just a moment we will commemorate Jesus’ washing of the disciples as I wash the feet of twelve people representing the various demographics of our parish.  It is not a show of who gets to be up front.

I have been in the past both the one having my feet washed and the one doing the washing.  On either side it can be a humbling experience.  For the ones having their feet washed, it can be a humbling experience letting someone else do a task we normally do for ourselves.

As the one doing the foot washing, it’s humbling to me, to bow down before the people I serve but it is a healthy reminder that God did not send me here to have others wait on me but to serve all of you.

How do you serve others and how do you let others serve you?

 

Homily – Passion Sunday, Year A

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Passion Sunday, Year A
Matthew 21:1-11
Isaiah 50:4-7
Philippians 2:6-11
Matthew 26:14-27:66
April 13, 2014

Today we begin a very special week.  The events of this week climax with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus but we need to think about the week as a whole to understand the importance of the individual moments.

We began today with the blessing of the palms to enter into this week as Jesus entered into Jerusalem.  As he entered Jerusalem he was greeted with a royal welcome fit for a king and a king he is.

As we enter into Holy Week we already know the story of the whole week.  Jesus’ disciples did not but Jesus himself did.  Jesus knew what God’s plan was and that he must be crucified and why.

We see that God is in control in the prophecies that are fulfilled this week beginning with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the colt/ass.

While Jesus’ disciples fight back against Jesus’ arrest, he does not.  They see it as impossible for the messiah to be treated in this way.  Jesus knows it is God’s will and serves a greater purpose.

Jesus came into our world for this very purpose, emptying himself to become like us.  As Son of God, Jesus knew what had to happen and accepted it.  As a human being Jesus struggled with his Passion.

As Jesus prayed in the garden, he knew he was about to arrested, put on trial, and crucified.  In his humanity, he did not want to suffer and prayed “My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will but as your will.”

He prayed this not once but three times.  In the end, he accepted our Father’s will.

Do we accept suffering?  I do not believe all suffering comes from God.  God does not cause tragedy or terrible illness but God is present with us as we walk through it.

We can pray that we do not need to suffer, that God removes our sufferings but we need to do it in a way that accepts the reality of suffering.

However, neither do I think this means that we need to run headlong into our sufferings, nor do we need to go looking for suffering.

We just need to do exactly what Jesus does.  We need to pray that God might take away our suffering but that in the end, God’s will and not ours be done.

Throughout the events of the Passion, Jesus remained calm.  He knew God had a plan.  He even knew the details of the plan.

God has a plan for each of us.  Unfortunately, we don’t know all the details but as we enter into this Holy Week, let us have the strength we need to hand our lives over to Jesus, always trusting in the love he shows for us in the passion.

 

 

 

Homily – Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A

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5th Sunday in Lent, Year A
Ezekiel 37:12-14
Romans 8:8-11
John 11:1-45
April 6, 2014

Lazarus is ill.  He is also a friend of Jesus.  Jesus has healed lots of people.  So one would think that when Jesus receives word that Lazarus is sick he would immediately go to Lazarus and heal him.  He won’t have even needed to go to him.  Jesus had healed some from afar.

But Jesus doesn’t go immediately to heal Jesus.  In fact we are told that when he heard that Lazarus was sick he remained where he was for two days.

Then he goes but by time he arrives there Lazarus has already died.  Has Jesus failed?  Of course not!

Both Martha and Mary speak to Jesus, stating their faith that if Jesus had been there, Lazarus would not have died.  Theirs is a great faith but it is not a “complete” faith.

Jesus speaks to Martha of “rising”.  Martha says she knows that we will rise in the resurrection on the last day.  She does not realize that Jesus is the Resurrection.

By the time Jesus arrives at the tomb, Lazarus has been dead for four days.  It is important that it says four days because in the Jewish understanding of the day, the soul lingered for three days but after four days there would be absolutely no hope of life.

That does not prevent Jesus from performing a great work.  Martha, Mary, and many others have come to believe in Jesus’ power to drive out demons and cure the sick but no one would ever fathom that Jesus had power even over death.

That’s precisely why Jesus does this miracle!

For them death seemed so final but what is death?

Death is an end to life as we know it here on Earth but it is not an end to life.  This distinction is essential to our faith.

Every burial I do at the graveside, the intercessions start off with Jesus’ words from today’s gospel, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  There we are standing at the graveside.  When can death ever some more certain than when we stand at the grave?

Yet, that is the precise moment when we receive these words of Jesus that if we believe we will not die.  In human words, it makes no sense.

But in faith, it takes on a whole other significance.  In the scope of eternal life, physical death means little.  Yes, it means we no longer live in this physical world and is no easy thing to accept.

Seen without faith, physical death is an end.  Seeing as God sees, physical death is merely a rite of passage to be with God in Heaven.

So what is the death that we must fear?

The death that matters is eternal separation from God (Hell).  Ezekiel speaks to the people in exile the Lord’s promise that he will open their graves and raise them up.  We see this as a prophecy of the Resurrection in Jesus but with the next line “and bring you back to the land of Israel” it speaks of how the Israelites feel they have been separated from God in exile.  We know that God is everyone but in the days of the Exile, the understanding was that when you leave a land, you left the god of that land behind.  So the Israelites, felt separated from their god.  God promises to fix the separation, returning them to Israel.

What separates us from God?  What causes spiritual death?

Sin!  Jesus can fix that too.

Physical death is not easy to take but as people of faith, it is spiritual death that we should fear.

Thoughts on Lent

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From this week’s bulletin cover. 

The calendar says Spring began on March 20th but since then we have seen cold temperatures and snow.  So, we wonder when we will really see some spring weather.  I’m writing this on Tuesday when the temperatures will reach 50.  Looking at the ten-day forecast, most of the forecasted highs are in the 40’s.  That’s not particularly warm but it is an improvement from the weather we have been having.

March 20th marks the Spring Equinox when the tilt of the Earth and orbit places the center of the sun rays on the equator.  It means spring weather is coming but it isn’t an instantaneous arrival.  The temperature rises over time.  That’s the nature of our seasonal weather.

These seasonal changes are a natural part of life on Earth.  When people move south and return home for a visit, I hear them talk about how they miss the changing of the seasons (they don’t miss the cold!).   It’s part of the divine order that God has set for us.

Recognizing that seasons are a natural part of our rhythms, we have seasons in our Church.  The dates of the seasons all center around two days, Christmas and Easter.  Easter is the most important day of the year for us as Christians.  It marks Jesus opening the door for our salvation.

We will celebrate Easter in two weeks but first we have to finish our season of Lent.  How are you doing at keeping your Lenten promises?  I have to admit I am not doing as well as I would like.  For Lent, I pledged to make Stations of the Cross each Friday.  That much I have been doing (we have Stations in the parish each Friday in Lent at 7 p.m.).  I also said I would give up my favorite candy bar and snacking.

I do this as a witness that I am willing to give up one of my favorite things just to say Jesus is important.  I also do it to lose weight.  I can honestly say I haven’t eaten my favorite candy bar during Lent.  Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for snacking in general.  When it comes to snacking I have little will power to resist.  That’s why I don’t like to keep snacks in my house.  They get eaten very quickly.

It would be good for me not to snack for my physical health but it is also to avoid overeating to be mindful of those who do not have enough to eat.  I need to do better.  How about you?

Peace,

Fr. Jeff

Homily – 4th Sunday in Lent, Year A

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4th Sunday in Lent, Year A
1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41
March 30, 2014

Jesus encounters a man born blind.  The fact that he was born this way is important.  If he had become blind, maybe there was an illness that went away on its own.  The fact he was born this way makes it clear the healing is a miracle.

The fact that Jesus restores the man’s physical sight is no small thing but the fact that the passage begins with Jesus’ disciples asking why the man was born blind should alert us to the fact that the passage is not simply about physical sight.

The disciples would see his blindness as evidence that either he or his parents had sinned but Jesus says that is not how God sees it.

This is not the first lesson that the Bible offers on “seeing as God sees.”  Our passage about Samuel and the anointing of David makes that clear.

Samuel is sent by God to anoint a new king to succeed Saul.  As Jesse brings his sons to Samuel, Samuel is sure that Eliab must be the one based on his physical appearance.  God immediately says no, he is not the one.  God tells Samuel not to just based on appearance or stature for “not as man sees does God see…but the Lord looks into the heart.”

It is David that God has chosen to succeed Saul.  David is a “youth handsome” with a “splendid appearance” but God chooses him for what is in his heart.

Turning back to the man born blind, early in the passage his physical sight is restored but as the story continues he comes to see who Jesus really is.  At the end it is the Pharisees who are blind.

The man accepts the healing of his physical sight without question.  He knows he can see.  Everyone else begins to question it.  Is he really the man born blind?  How was this done?  Who did it?

So the people take him to the Pharisees.  When they hear that the man has been healed, their first reaction is to claim that Jesus cannot be from God because he does this on the Sabbath.  They are blind to the fact that Jesus’ healing proves he is from God because they are spiritually blind.

When they question the man about who Jesus is, he responds “He is a prophet.”  Clearly, he is coming (but not there yet) to faith to know who Jesus is.

Next, the Jews try to dispute that the miracle happened, claiming this isn’t really the man born blind.  His identity and blindness is confirmed by his parents.

They continue to question the man, identifying Jesus as a sinner, but it is the man who says to them, how can Jesus be a sinner because God is obviously working miracles through him and God doesn’t listen to sinners.

At the end, Jesus finds the man born blind and the man comes to see that Jesus is the Son of Man.  He sees Jesus as God sees Jesus.

How well do you see?  I don’t ask this about your physical eyesight.  I can tell that some of you need glasses.  I know some of you are wearing contacts.  But physical eyesight is not what is most important.

How is your spiritual eyesight?

Do you judge based on outward appearance or do you look into the heart?

How do you look at suffering and illness?  Do you see only the physical illness or do you see God’s presence in the midst of the suffering?

Think about what this week will bring for you?  Does this bring to mind tasks that you must get done this week or do you think about what you might use what you will do this week to make the world a better place, making God’s kingdom known?

When you look at the person standing on the corner with a sign asking for help, do you see a “bum” or do you see a “child of God?”

When you see a crying child do you see a disobedient and disrespectful child or do see the love of God in the child’s heart?