Getting Ready for Lent

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It’s almost here.  Lent begins with our celebration of Ash Wednesday on February 13th this year and will go to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday (March 28th).

When you hear the word “Lent” what do you think of?  Ashes, abstaining from meat, giving up something, or fish?  This can be the “routine” things of Lent but how much do we really think about what we do for Lent.  Why do we even have a season of Lent?

If you are familiar with RCIA, then you probably know that the participants are sent before the bishop at the beginning of Lent for the Rite of Election.  This rite marks the beginning of their final preparation to be baptized or received into the Catholic Church at Easter.  It becomes time for them to make their final decision to become Catholic.  In the early church, this was a period of “retreat” for the RCIA participants to deepen their conversion to the faith.

As the early church saw them spend this time in “retreat”, it came to realize that we are all in need of ongoing conversion.  None of us are perfect.  Lent then developed as a special time to focus on our sins and the need for ongoing conversion.  As first the length of Lent varied but settled on forty days.  Forty is a frequent number in scripture.  There are the forty days of rain in the Great Flood (Genesis 7:12).  Moses spent forty days on the mountain with the Lord in Exodus 24:18.  Jesus himself was tempted in the desert for 40 days (Luke 4:1-13).

Remembering these events, we spend these forty days of Lent seeking to come closer to God.  Ashes are a sign of our repentance (Judith 4:9-15, Matthew 11:21).  Originally the ashes came from the burnt sacrifices made for the forgiveness of sins.  We receive the ashes on our forehead as a sign of our repentance, seeking to bring an end to our sins.  We give up something for Lent to show that God is more important to us than what we give up.  We might even think of given up something that isn’t good for us with the hope of giving it up for ever.  That’s real conversion.

We can also do something extra.  In terms of sacrifice, it would be a sacrifice of time, making the time for something important.  Examples of this would be coming to daily Mass every day during Lent.  If that isn’t possible, could you go to daily Mass one day a week?   Or maybe we pray Stations of the Cross every Friday during Lent recalling what Jesus went through for us.

It could be spending ten minutes a day reading from the Bible or taking a walk and thinking about God during the walk.  Another opportunity would be to spend time in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. 

We talk about the things we do during Lent.  These are all external things but as externals they are meant to be signs of what’s going on in our hearts.  Lent isn’t just about doing these things.  Remember the word conversion.  Lent is about making positive changes in our lives.  Yes, Lent is a penitential time to think about our sins but not in misery.  Sorrow for our sins, yes.  But not misery.  We think about our sins to know what we need to change and then seek God’s help to make the needed changes.

I need to decide what I am going to do for Lent.  Among these I will refrain from snacking (with a lot of help from God) not just to give up snacks.  No, I really need to stop snacking.  My doctor keeps telling me to lose weight but I snack too much.  I will pray the Stations of the Cross to remember what Jesus enduring during his Passion because of my sins.  The Stations remind me of my own need for conversion.  These are two things I try to do every Lent but I will also think about something different.

What will you do this Lent to help bring you closer to God?

Peace,

Fr. Jeff

 

God is Love. We are Created to Love

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4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19
1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13
Luke 4:21-30
February 3, 2013

Our reading today from Paul is probably the most often picked second reading for weddings.  Sometimes, I think couples just pick it because it has the word “love” in it a lot.  It used six times but the whole passage really is about love.  I always tell the couple they can have this reading but that they should think about what it says about love and not just pick it for the word “love”.

That makes it fitting for weddings.  Marriage is meant to be about love, two people coming together in love.  But the word love should not be taken lightly.

It can be like the word “friend”.  To me a friend is someone we are close to and do things with just to be with them.  Then there is Facebook.  Maybe it started out great but I’ve seen people brag about having 400 friends on Facebook as a milestone.  It’s no milestone.  They’re not your friend.  A friend is someone you share a close connection with and really know who they are.  Not just everyone friending everyone else to increase their numbers.

What does the word “love” really mean to us?

Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is to love our neighbor.  We are to love everyone but love comes in different levels.  In love we are to care about everyone, doing what we can to make sure everyone has what they need.

But love goes deeper than just doing things for one another.  And married love is meant to be the deepest form of human love there is.

Paul describes what love is like, patient and kind.  Paul also describes what love is not, jealous, pompous, inflated, rude, or self-serving.  We think of these words as adjectives describing love but fully understood and lived they are not just adjectives.  They are verbs, meaning actions that we live in love.

In speaking of love, Jesus says there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life one’s friends.  Jesus sets a literal example of this in his Crucifixion when he freely gives up his life for us on the Cross.

Jesus sets the perfect example of love.  God is love.

God isn’t simply an example of love.  He defines what it means to love.  God loves every one of us more than we can ever imagine.

God knows us better than we know ourselves.  God knows us before we are conceived in our mother’s womb.  As he says to Jeremiah, before we were in our mother’s womb, he has had a purpose for us.  He has an appointed calling for us.

That appointed purpose is always good because God loves us.  It doesn’t matter what we have done, God wants us to know his love.  That’s why God sends Jesus his Son to die for us.  Because there is nothing God won’t do for us.

There is nothing we can do that irrevocably separates us from God.  I say irrevocably because we can separate ourselves from God.  It’s called sin.  In venial sin, we do things that hurt our relationship with God.  It shouldn’t seem that strange to us.  We do the same things in our relationships with other people.  Then there is mortal sin, that breaks the relationship.  Again we do the same thing in our human relationships.

The good news is that even when we do sin, God can fix our relationship with him.  In fact, he’s dying just to fix it.  The problem is we have to let him.  If we don’t let him, God can’t fix it.

Can we stop God?

Technically, God can do what God wants.  But God gives us free will and he doesn’t force himself on us.  God is eager to forgive our sins but he wants for us.  And when we come to him in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, confessing our sins, he gives us the great gift of forgiveness.

And he does so out of love.

If you go back and read the passage from Paul before the one we read today, you will find Paul speaking highly of the gifts we have been given but today he reminds us of something better than those gifts, love.

We are created in God’s image.  We are created to love.  We are created to be loved.

Let’s think about “gifts” in a different sense, the gifts we receive and give.

Sometimes when we get gifts we really enjoy the “things” we receive.  It may be the perfect game, a great toy, a good book.  But when you think about it, in maturity is the “thing” what makes it so great?

What is greater than the thing we give?

Love.  Think of it this way.  When we are little children, the gifts we give our mom or dad generally aren’t worth much money.  Why do we give them these gifts?  Because we love them.  I’m betting some of our parents have fonder memories of the little simple gifts we give as children than some gift that costs more money as an adult.  Love is of infinite value.

Love is what we are created for.  Married love is meant to be the highest form of human love.  Married love is for better, for worse, in sickness and in health.  It is a sign of God’s love for us.

God’s love never fails.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.  May our love be the same way.

 

On Being Pastor

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It has now been a little over seven months since I became the Pastor of Immaculate Conception Church.  It has been a busy seven months.  As I have written before we have a lot going on, ranging from our church with Sunday attendance over 700, a parish school, and two cemeteries.  I’m the type of person who is involved in almost everything so I keep very busy.  We are in the design stage for some upcoming building repairs on the church and office.  We’ve recently started a strategic planning initiative for our parish school.  I wrote recently about the presentation I did about my own faith journey.

During Lent, I will be doing two more presentations.  The first will be “Talking to God: A Conversation About Prayer” on Monday, February 25th at 7 p.m. in the parish hall.  Here I will talk about how we enter into prayer and our attitude in prayer and ask do we listen to God in Prayer?  The second talk will be “Talking About God: Sharing Our Faith” on Monday, March 18th at 7 p.m. in the parish hall.  Here I will talk about how we find words to describe what God means to us so that we might share it with others.  And soon I hope to record a short two-part video on the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

It might seem to some that I am “tooting my own horn” about how much I am doing.  If you know me well, then you would know I do all this not for my own good but to fulfill the ministry that I believe God has called me to.  I hold myself to a high standard because I take seriously the words in the Book of Jeremiah about the bad shepherds and the story found in Ezekiel 3:17-21.  It is my role as a pastor and priest to help each person that I minister to deepen their relationship with God.

My support for the school is all about helping the students to know God so they may fulfill his calling to them.  When I do these presentations, it is to help the people know God more fully.  When I write here on the blog, it is my attempt to help each of you see how our faith is relevant in our world today.  It isn’t about me.  It’s all about Jesus.

I do all this knowing that I am not perfect.  For instance, for my talk on prayer on February 25th, I don’t profess to be a great expert in prayer.  When I did my first presentation in January, people asked about prayer.  So, I just hope to share what prayer means for me and hope the people who come can relate to what I share to help find what works for them in prayer.  What works for me doesn’t work for everyone.  Ultimately, prayer is meant to draw us into a deeper relationship with God.

Prayer can be a struggle for many.  People tell me that their prayers aren’t answered.  I know part of my personal prayer as pastor is asking God to tell me what I’m supposed to be doing before I do it.  I joke about how nice it would be if God sent an email each morning telling me exactly what to do.  It doesn’t happen.  Sometimes in prayer God does direct me beforehand.  At other times, after prayer, I do my best, and I find later God gives me assurances that things are going the way he wants.  An example of this lies in our Strategic Planning Committee for our school.  It’s been in my mind since I arrived here to start a strategic planning process.  In December we finally formed the committee.  For several months, there is a woman I was thinking about being on the committee.  I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to ask her to be part of this except knowing her faith is important to her.  When I finally asked her, she thought it was a great idea, she would love to be part of it, and then explained that in a job she had, a major part of it was strategic planning.  I didn’t know exactly why I was asking her to be part of this.  I listened to God and God provided the name without my realizing it.  God always provides what (or in this case – who) we need to do his will.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff

The Value of the Word of God

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3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12:12-30
Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21
January 27, 2013

The first verses of our gospel today are the very first verses of the Gospel of Luke.  Here Luke tells us why he writes the gospel, “to provide an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.”

The fact that Luke  and the evangelists took the time to write down the gospel is a gift for us.  Without this and the other gospels we would not have this record of Jesus’ ministry and teaching that is so important to understanding who we are as Christians.

The first reading today begins with Ezra bringing the law before the people and reading out of it.  He then interprets it so that all might understand it.

We can parallel this to what we are have are doing.  We just heard readings from the Bible and now break open the Word.  We spend half our Mass on it and we call it the Liturgy of the Word.  As Catholics, the Bible as the Word of God is important to us.

But there is a little more to the story with Ezra and Nehemiah that should help us appreciate the written Word all the more.

The people had not heard the Law read to them in a long term.  When we say “law” we are referring to the writings of Moses and what God prescribed through the writings.  It had been a long time since it had been read.  Without the written Word, the law may have been lost forever.  This is why we should be grateful that Luke and the other evangelists wrote down the gospels so that we might still have them today.

It is God’s Word that helps bind us together in our faith.  Because we have a universal lectionary used in every Catholic Church across the world, as we celebrate Mass today, we are hearing the same words that every other Catholic who comes to Mass today hears.

It also binds us across time with everyone who has shared the Bible.  The Bible is not just God’s Word written down for people who lived 2,000 years ago.  It is a living breathing document.  Some say we just need the Gospels (and the rest of the New Testament).  They think the Old Testament is no longer relevant, superseded by Jesus.  But the Old Testament is vital to understand the story of God’s relationship with his people throughout the ages.

Their story is our story.

Paul writes of how we are one body in Christ.  We are different.  I already commented on how every Catholic Church will use these same readings today.  But the readings will be done in many different languages and broken up in many different cultures.

In the homily, the words from scripture will be broken open (interpreted) according to the community in which they are heard.  A community facing a tragedy this week may hear the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and think about how they are praying that Jesus come into their community to bring healing.  Meanwhile, another community may have celebrated a joyous event and give thanks for all that Jesus has done for them.

To me one of the great gifts of our Catholic Church is the unity we share through our bishops and pope, celebrating a common Mass rather than everyone doing their own thing.  I went to a Mass once in Vietnamese.  I do not know a single word of Vietnamese but because of our common Mass, I knew throughout the whole Mass what was going on.

We live in a world that teaches us to focus on ourselves and the accumulation of material goods.  What’s in it for me?

In this thinking, there is no common truth.  Everyone is out for themselves.  We look for people who agree with us.  In this way of thinking people develop their own “truth.”

This is not what our faith teaches us.  Our faith does not look for us to prove ourselves right or develop our own truth.

We don’t have to develop truth for ourselves.  We can find lots of facts (science) about how things we work.  We can know facts of history and dates.

This is not the truth we are called to seek in our hearts.  The truth that we are called to is not a matter of the brain but of the heart and soul.

Jesus brings us the “Truth” that really matters.  It is “Truth” with a capital “T”.  It is a Truth that never changes because it comes from God.   Jesus tells us that he is the way and the truth and the life.

We have only begun to understand what the Truth really is but the Truth has been set by God from all eternity.

Through the Spirit we are united in the Truth of Jesus Christ.  May we always seek and follow his truth.

The “New” Translations for Mass

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Recently, I have had a couple of people ask me questions about some of the words in the “new” translations of the prayers for Mass.  I put “new” in quotations because we have been using the new translations for fourteen months now but fourteen months is still pretty new considering we used the previous translations for more than twenty-five years.

While there have a couple of words I have needed to look up in a dictionary like “prevenient” from the Offertory Prayer on December 8th, I like the new translations.  One of the things I like about them is it is easier to seek the biblical roots of the some of some of the prayers.

With these questions coming up and being that I serve in a different parish now then when we began using the new translations I thought it would be a good time to direct the newer readers of this blog to the materials I wrote before we moved to the new translations.  You can find my homilies and bulletins on my website at http://renewaloffaith.org/ls/implement.htm.  The bulletin articles and homilies can be found through the links near the bottom of the page.

I encourage you to read through these materials and if you have questions please feel free to ask by commenting to this post.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff

A New Model for Catechesis

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Yesterday I attended workshop in our diocese entitled “The Challenge of Catechesis Today”  given by Bishop Frank Caggiano (Auxillary Bishop of Brooklyn).  Last fall the New York State Catholic Bishops released a new document called “The Catechetical Leader in the Third Millennium.”  I just want to share a couple of highlights with you.

Catechesis is the education for us to learn about our faith.  We live in a world of high-tech communications.  As a Church, we need to make use of technology to reach out to people, whether it be by texting, websites, blogs, social media, or any other means.  This is the way our young people today communicate.  If we wish to reach them, we need to “go” where they are at.  The Internet is a big part of “where they are at.”

I want to share with you two terms he used.  The first is “Truth” with a capital “T”.  Today there are people who feel there is no absolute truth when it comes to religion, ethics, or morality. Both Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor have spoken of this as the danger of relativism.  As Catholics we believe there is.  The Truth (with a capital T) comes from God.  This Truth does not change.  It is God who determines what is right or wrong.  The goal of catechesis is to help us all know that truth.

The second term is “love”.  He defined love in a way I had not heard before.  He said love is effectively willing the good of the other.  Do we care about the other enough to work for their good?

Bishop Caggiano also spoke of evangelization.  When we think of evangelization, we often think of people who don’t go to church.  Evangelization does call us to reach out to the people we know who don’t go to church but it begins with us.  We need to learn more about our own faith so that we can better share it with others.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff

Life is a Gift

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This week marks the 40th Anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.  On Friday, January 25th, many will unite to march in Washington.  There will speakers and Masses said in support of life.

There are many people who argue abortion is about a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body.  A woman does have a right to make choices about what she does with her body but this is limited to her body.  When a woman chooses to engage in physical relations with a man, she must realize that pregnancy is a possible result of her actions.  She has made her choice.  The baby is not an extra part to her body.  I realize that in the case of rape, it was not her choice then.  Rape is a terrible crime that ranks among the worst crimes and sins that can be committed.  As terrible as rape is, we must still stand for life.

Our Catholic Church sees life as a gift.  Our Church also believes that life begins at conception, not just when the baby emerges from the womb.  Some argue that the baby is not alive on its own until it emerges from the mother’s womb.  Before then, the baby is totally dependent on the mother for life.  This is absolutely correct.  The baby in the womb is totally dependent on its mother for life.  However, the baby is still totally dependent on others for life after birth too.  After birth, a baby is no longer exclusively dependent on their biological mother.  Others can care for their needs but a newborn baby could not survive on its own.  The point when life begins is not determined by a baby’s independence.

I ask the question, “When does the baby become a unique individual?”  When the egg cell and sperm cell come together, they form a new genetic makeup with a unique identity that belongs only to that baby and will never be exactly repeated.  I believe that makes it an individual with rights, including the right to life.

On Sunday, the Knights of Columbus Council in Ithaca led a Rosary for Life.  The Knights were present and joined by both our Senior High and Middle School Youth Groups from the parish, along with a few parishioners, and myself.  It was about 25 degrees with winds over 20 mph but we prayed the Rosary outside by the Monument for the Unborn that stands by our Catholic Charities Office and our parish school.  It was not a good day to be outside but life is important enough to put up with the weather.

The timing of this Rosary for Life does coincide with the 40th Anniversary of the Roe v.  Wade Supreme Court decision and the March for Life.  Yet, while our prayers centered on the question of abortion, our prayers also included prayers for the aged too.  The respect for life of the aged is decreasing.  People think they have a right to end their life whenever life doesn’t seem worth living when the health begins to decline.

When health declines, life does become difficult and painful.  It is still not for us to decide.  We do not have to receive medical treatment that does not seem worth it.  I remember the difficult time my family had deciding to withdraw the ventilator for my mother but it was a decision to stop treatment that the Church recognizes as acceptable.  It was not a decision to end her life.  The ventilator is artificial treatment and we are not bound to receive it but that is a far cry from taking a lethal dose of a medicine to end a life.

Life is a gift from womb to tomb, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.  A life might seem inconvenient.  It can be difficult.  It is a gift.  It is not ours to decide to end.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff

P.S. For further reading check out the section of my website called “Social Teaching and the Respect for Life.”

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Relationships

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2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Isaiah 62:1-5
1 Corinthians 12:4-11
John 2:1-11
January 20, 2013

Jesus changes water into wine.

No small thing and it isn’t meant to be.  This is first of seven great signs in John’s Gospel meant to show us who Jesus is as the Son of God with the power of God at work in him.  The signs are great miracles but the miracles serve to show Jesus not just as a miracle worker but as the one the Israelites had been waiting centuries for.  The miracles show us the power of God at work in Jesus.  Jesus is not miracle worker but teacher with authority from God as his son.

So, we need to look not just at the signs but also the whole story around the signs.

In today’s story, the setting of the miracle says something.  It is a wedding celebration.  The Church has taught us that Jesus’ presence at the wedding identifies weddings as something important.  Jesus won’t have gone if it was something bad.

Why are weddings good?

Weddings are about relationships.  Most specifically a wedding is about the relationship of a man and woman coming together in love.  God is love.  Jesus values the love of man and woman as husband and wife.

We also see another relationship in the story, the relationship of Jesus and Mary.  Certainly this is a relationship of mother and son and that’s important.  But it’s more than that.

When his mother Mary tells him that they are out of wine, he says it’s no concern of his but he does what Mary asks of him.

What does Mary say when she hears they are out of wine?  She tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”  Mary doesn’t just say this as “mom.”  She says this as a disciple of Jesus, knowing and believing that Jesus will do what’s right.  She doesn’t know what Jesus will do but she totally trusts him.  She is the model disciple.

As the model disciple, Mary was present at the foot of the Cross where Jesus said to the beloved disciple and to us, “behold your mother.”  Mary becomes the Mother of the Church and so we enter into relationship with her.

Still thinking about relationships, let’s go back for a moment to the changing of the water into wine.  I said it was the first of seven signs.  As signs, they point us to who Jesus is so that we might enter into relationship with him and seek to continue to deepen our relationship with him.

But relationship with God is not new with Jesus.  Our relationship with God takes a new direction with Jesus but God has always sought a relationship with his people.

The Bible is Salvation History.  It is the story of God’s relationship with his people.    Think of the stories from Genesis where God is our creator.  Stories of Abraham and the Exodus where God set his people free.  There are the stories of Samuel and David.  These stories tell us how God has always been present to his people, always been in relationship with his people.

Even in the prophets, we hear of God’s relationship with his people.  Today Isaiah speaks of God’s relationship with his people.  Without God we are forsaken and desolate.  Isaiah tells us that God will espouse his people, marrying the Church.  Without God we cannot be all that we are meant to be.

So we need to have a deep relationship with God.  Relationships take work.  We know this in our human relationships.  We do things that hurt our relationships with other people but the relationship survives.  In our relationship with God, we call this venial sin.

We also do things that hurt our relationships with other people.  In our relationship with God, we call this mortal sin.  We can break our relationship with God through sin but the good news is that God always wants to be in relationship with us and when we confess our sins, seeking Reconciliation in the Sacrament, God restores our relationship with him through Jesus’ Crucifixion.  Jesus came into the world to restore our relationship with God to what it was always meant to be.

We need to talk about our relationship with God but this isn’t easy.  Each of us experiences God in our own way.  There are common experiences like celebrating Mass together but we each perceive it differently because of our past experiences.  It can be hard to find the right words to express our relationship with God to others.  The only way we are going to learn is to start talking about God.

For a starting point, let me pose a question to you.  I remember when I was taking a spirituality course in seminary.  We were discussing the Trinity.  The teacher then asked who do we pray to.  Do we pray to the Father, or the Son, or to the Holy Spirit?

Someone might like to ask, ‘Does it matter?”  In one sense, it doesn’t.  They are one God but yet it can say a lot.  For instance, do we relate more to Jesus since he is the one who became man and knows what it is like to be human and to suffer?

Do we pray to the Holy Spirit for wisdom, understanding, or guidance?

We pray based on what we have experienced in our relationships.  What is your relationship with God like and how do you experience it in others?

A Special Presentation

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Before Christmas our Parish Evangelization Team was brainstorming on ideas to reach out to the people who come to Mass on Christmas and those who may not come to church at all.  It was decided that I would do a presentation on my own story of going up Catholic, my years of not going to church, what brought me back, and how I have been called to priesthood.

I want to emphasis that the point of this is not talk about myself.  I do not want the focus on me in any way.  It isn’t about me.  It’s about Jesus.  Everything I said in this presentation and, for that matter, everything I do as a priest and pastor is not about me.  I do it all to help people deepen their own relationship with Jesus.  By sharing my story in the way I do, my goal is to help people see how God is present in all our lives.

So, the presentation was scheduled for January 8, 2013.  We announced it in the bulletin, at Christmas, and every chance we had.  As time drew near, several parishioners told me they were planning on coming to hear my story.  A couple told me they were trying to get their family members who don’t go to church to come.  In the end we had almost a hundred people.

So, we are planning for future presentations by me that won’t be my own story but I will use examples from my own life.  Right now, the first presentations will probably be on how we talk to God (prayer) and how we talk to others about God.  All that is yet to be decided.

For today, I want to let you know that my presentation on January 8th was recorded and is now available for online viewing.  Follow this link

http://renewaloffaith.org/aboutus/presentationjan82013.htm

to my website to view the presentation.

Peace, Fr. Jeff

Why Should We Care About Social Justice?

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Around Christmas Time I had a person ask me if I supported social justice.  I said yes to which she responded that the previous pastor did too but she doesn’t.  I don’t remember exactly what her next comment was and I don’t want to put words into her mouth.  Whatever she said, my response was, as my initial response almost always is on this subject is to read Matthew 25:31-46.

To anyone who has read my website, it should be no surprise that I support Catholic Social Teaching (If you haven’t read my writings on Catholic Social teaching check out http://renewaloffaith.org/sj/socialjustice.htm on my website and http://renewaloffaith.org/blog/?cat=7 on this blog).

Catholic Social Teaching often gets the label of “liberal” attached to it.  People see it as something new because the church never wrote an official document on social teaching until Rerum Novarum in 1891.  Maybe the church didn’t write a document exclusively on social teaching until 1891 but again I point to Matthew 25:31-46.  Jesus himself told us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.  Clearly, helping others in need is to be part of our faith.

I want to open the door a little wider.  There are two ways we put Catholic Social Teaching into action.  The first is charity where we help people with their immediate needs.  This can include but not limited to donating food, clothing, and helping the sick.  It is direct action.  One of the concerns expressed on this is people who say they are willing to help someone who is truly in need but they don’t want to help someone who is too lazy to work.  The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) calls us to pay a wage by what people need (just wage) when they work.  Paul calls us to work for what we receive.  It isn’t about given “free handouts.”  Our calling is to those truly in need.

The second part of Catholic Social Teaching is justice.  Here we work to change policies or systems that keep people down.  I think of things like government regulations about farm labor.  Are you aware that the minimum wage for farm workers is lower than regular minimum wage and that farm workers have to work well beyond 40 hours to get overtime?  How is that fair?  A worker working full-time making minimum wage with a family falls below the poverty line and to think the farm wage is even less.  This is a policy that needs to change.

Catholic Social Teaching is concerned with both answering the immediate need for food, clothing, etc. with charity and a longer term approach in justice.  Remember the proverb, “Give a man a fish, you find him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.”  We need to do both.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff