"Queen of heaven rejoice, alleluia. For He whom you merited to bear, alleluia. Has risen as He said, alleluia. Pray for us to God, alleluia. Rejoice and be glad O Virgin Mary, alleluia. For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia." With these words, the Church salutes the Virgin Mary during the Easter season. Today I would like to speak about Mary because May is the month dedicated to her, and today is Mother's Day (and May 13th is also the feast of Our Lady of Fatima).
Specifically, I want to mention how Mary, whom Jesus gave us to be our spiritual mother when He said from the Cross, "Behold your mother" (Jn 19:27), communicates to us an atmosphere of receptivity before God, to receive from God His own life, love and joy. Jesus Himself directs us toward Mary as a model of "feminine" receptivity for the Church and each human soul.
Today's second reading and Gospel contain a bold and comforting reminder of God's love for us. "This is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10). And Jesus reminds us in the Gospel: "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you" (John 15:9). "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12).
This is a great joy and consolation for us, but for so many Christians, we hear the Word of God and its message of love, but we don't really receive it into our hearts or experience it. Mary can help us because she is the first and most perfect disciple of Christ who not only heard the Word of God and obeyed it (cf. Luke 11:28) but also conceived the Word made flesh in her womb.
Once, when Catherine Doherty of Madonna House was giving a talk on their spirituality, a priest asked her why she had not mentioned Mary. Catherine replied, "what can I say about the air I breathe?" This statement became the title of this fine book by Fr. Denis Lemieux on Catherine's "Mariology." (The Air We Breathe: The Mariology of Catherine de Hueck Doherty. See also The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe by Gerard Manley Hopkins). In Ottawa in May, sometimes as you are walking along a street breathing the air, the most lovely fragrance can catch you by surprise. You look around and see a lilac bush or another flowering tree. Mary as the air we breathe. She will help us live and breathe an atmosphere of trust and abandonment to God, with a spirit of "feminine" receptivity.
I recently re-read another Marian book by Fr. Denis Lemieux, on the Virgin Mary and the Church's encounter with modernity in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger. The Pope observes that the modern world, (especially with technology) has been dominated by a "masculine" active-manipulative stance toward reality to the diminishment of the "feminine" receptive and contemplative element (p. 116, n. 270). If we are to receive anything from God, then we must recover this Marian "feminine" receptive and contemplative aspect of the Church and each human soul.
I would like to read you part of the Mass in the old and new translation, and ask you to point out the differences. This is from the prayer before the sign of peace. Old translation: "Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom." New translation: "Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity." Difference? The Church is referred to as "her."
From the first Eucharistic Prayer, the old translation: "We offer (these gifts) for your holy catholic Church, watch over it, Lord, and guide it; grant it peace and unity throughout the world." New translation: "(these gifts) we offer you firstly for your holy catholic Church. Be pleased to grant her peace, to guard, unite and govern her throughout the whole world." (Second Eucharistic Prayer: "make us grow in charity." New translation: "Bring her to the fullness of charity").
In the old translation, the Church was called "it." In the new translation, the Church is referred to as "her." If the Church is only an "it," then it could be seen merely as a thing, a human production, an institution. But if the Church is "her," then she is also feminine because she is the Bride of Christ and our spiritual Mother. I don't have time to go into detail, but these truths go all the way back to Scripture, specifically to Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation and the woman clothed with the Son. This woman is both Mary and the Church. She gives birth to the Messiah (Rev 12:5), and she is the mother of Christians, those who give testimony to Jesus (Rev 12:17). If we rediscover the feminine aspect of the Church, we might become more aware of the feminine dimension of our own souls.
Our spiritual mother Mary can help us and communicate to us a spiritual atmosphere of feminine receptivity before God, a spirit of trust and abandonment, so that we can delight in being creatures, in being human. Often in our culture we seek after "creature comforts." Mary teaches us instead to find comfort in being creatures who gladly receive everything from God, remembering that each one of us is, in the words of Pope Benedict, "the fruit of God's thought and an act of His love" (Pope Benedict's message for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, April 29th, 2012).
We can learn from Mary to be like Mary in order to better receive Jesus and the gifts He wants to give us. Jesus Himself directs us to Mary. Last week I had here an icon of Jesus. This week I am displaying one of Mary painted by a priest in Honduras named Padre Ramon (he gave it to me last May). It's based on a famous icon called "Our Lady of Tenderness." As Christians, we are meant to model our lives on Jesus. And what is Jesus doing in this icon? As a child, He is reaching out to embrace His mother, seeking comfort from her. As imitators of Christ, we should follow His example, and in all our needs reaching out to Mary, our spiritual mother.
Since I was raised Protestant, my first instinct was to go to Jesus. But as a new Catholic, since I trusted in my "Mother" the Church, I learned about Marian devotion. And I found that Jesus Himself directed me to Mary, so that I could become a better disciple - more humble, open, receptive, trusting - so that I could "go back" to Jesus to receive even more graces from Him. After Communion, I will say a little prayer to entrust our parish to Mary, so that we can be formed by her spirit to better receive and love her Son Jesus (there's a more detailed explanation in the bulletin).
Fr. Denis Lemieux of Madonna House once gave a talk in Ottawa on Catherine Doherty's relationship with Mary. I asked him a challenging theological question: God can listen to a million prayers at once because He is God, but how can Mary, as a human being, possibly listen to even thousand of prayers? And you know what he said? We have very little idea of what the original model of the human person was like, of the natural and supernatural powers that God gave to Adam and Eve, that He gave to Mary conceived without sin. If some of the saints could bilocate, levitate, raise the dead and perform other miracles, why could not the Mother of God, still human but perfectly united to the divinity, accomplish even greater works?
This icon here remind us that this heavenly woman with extraordinary powers is very close to us. She is a real person. She is our spiritual mother. We can have a relationship with her. By looking at her icon or praying even part of the Rosary or even one "Hail Mary" she will help us recover this feminine "Marian" receptivity in our souls and the Church, to be more closely united with Jesus Christ.
Past Homilies
Fifth Sunday of Easter
(First Holy Communion)
May 6, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
I am so happy that we have some more children receiving Holy Communion, so we can talk about the Eucharist, and in this Easter season, highlight the link between the Resurrection of Christ and Holy Communion, in which we receive the risen Body of Christ and the gift of His Presence that abides within us.
In today's Gospel, Jesus speaks about our union with Him under the image of the vine and the branches: "Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me" (Jn 15:4). Today's Gospel and second reading use the word "abide" ten times. Jesus gives us Himself in Holy Communion to live, dwell and abide within us.
Jesus is our best friend who always wants to be in communion, in communication with us. We receive Holy Communion once a week on Sunday. But how often are we in communion with Jesus? How often do we think about Him, talk to Him, listen to Him, spend time with Him, and let ourselves be loved by Him?
The children here might imagine their best friend, who moved to another part of town, but you talk almost every day on the phone. Or imagine a young man and woman in love who live far enough apart that they can only see each other on the weekend. They remain in communion and communication with each other every day, but they only see each other face-to-face once a week. It's the same with our relationship with Jesus - in communication every day through prayer, but we see Him "face-to-face" as it were, once a week in Holy Communion. I placed this icon of the face of Jesus in front of the ambo to remind the children and all of us of the real Person we are receiving in Holy Communion.
I would like to ask the children, and everyone here: how can we spend time with Jesus, since He really is supposed to be our best friend? Any thoughts? ... Reading the Bible, slowly and prayerfully. In the Western Church, it is common to have a crucifix in a home, or to pray before a crucifix, which reminds us of how much Jesus loves us, since He died for us. But in the eastern Church, they have a tradition of icons. You can see here this icon of Jesus that a friend of mine painted for me. One way to spend time with Jesus is simply to sit in silence looking at a crucifix or icon or picture of Jesus.
This past week I was visiting a priest friend of mine at the Ukrainian Catholic seminary. Their chapel has a wall of icons that hide from our eyes the great mystery which occurs in the sanctuary on the altar, the sacrifice of Christ, the coming of the Spirit, the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
In their tradition, they try to promote reverence for the Eucharist by hiding it. But in the Western Catholic Church, we try to reveal the mystery of the Eucharist, holding up the host (the Body of Christ) during Mass for everyone to gaze upon. My priest friend told me that in their tradition, people will come to Church and spend time with Jesus by looking at an icon. They believe that just as Jesus makes Himself present through the Gospel, so He makes Himself present through icons.
But in the Western Church, we have a tradition of spending time with Jesus in the Eucharist even outside of Mass. In Eucharistic adoration, the moment of the elevation of the host (the Body of Christ) is frozen in time, as the host is placed in a display case called a monstrance, which I have put in front of the ambo as a sort of "show and tell" for the children. I don't expect children to come alone to a Holy Hour, but you children can definitely learn to spend silent time with Jesus, and one effective way for all of us is Eucharistic Adoration, which, as I mentioned last week, we have every Tuesday from 6pm-7pm before Mass.
John Paul II wrote about this in his letter on the Eucharist in 2003: "It is pleasant to spend time with him, to lie close to his breast like the Beloved Disciple (cf. Jn 13:25) and to feel the infinite love present in his heart..." Then he adds a personal note: "how often, dear brother and sisters, have I experienced this, and drawn from it strength, consolation and support!" (Ecclesia de Eucharistia #25).
If we learn to abide with Jesus whom we receive in Holy Communion, and to spend time with Him, I think we will better appreciate the link between Holy Communion and the Resurrection, which we celebrate this Easter season.
Children, I remember my first Holy Communion very clearly because I was twenty-five years old! That's when I became a Catholic. And you know the first thought that came into my head after I received the host, the Body of Christ? "I have just received eternal life."
In the same letter on the Eucharist, Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote about the connection between Holy Communion and the Resurrection. First, he quotes the words of Jesus who promised, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day" (Jn 6:54).
John Paul II comments: "in the Eucharist we... receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world... the flesh of the Son of Man, given as food, is his body in its glorious state after the resurrection. With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the "secret" of the resurrection. For this reason Saint Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as "a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death" (Ecclesia de Eucharistia #18).
Pope John Paul II is trying to explain how we live forever by receiving Holy Communion - because we receive the risen Body of Christ. In Easter we have been reading about the mysterious appearances of Jesus after He rose from the dead: He had a real Body that the apostles could see and touch, (whom St. Paul saw with his own eyes, as we heard in the first reading - Acts 9:27), but also a mysterious Body that could pass through walls, appear and disappear.
The Body of Christ in Holy Communion is also a mysterious Body, because it is invisible. The Church has always taught that when the bread and wine change into the Body and Blood of Christ (transubstantiation), the appearance of bread and wine remain, but their substance or inner reality changes.
A skeptic might say, "You Catholics are crazy to believe in the invisible! I only believe what I can see with my own two eyes!" Well, it's true that to believe in Holy Communion, we must believe that there are real things that we can't see. The more we think about life, the more we realize how close the invisible reality is to us. What do we know about each other? Can we read each others' minds? Can we see each others' souls? No. We see each others' bodies, but something about the other person is always hidden, mysterious and invisible. So it should not be too hard to accept that there is something about Jesus Christ in Holy Communion that is real, but hidden, mysterious and invisible.
I will give the last word to Pope Benedict from his apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist in 2007. He wrote, "Today there is a need to re-discover that Jesus Christ is not just a private conviction or an abstract idea, but a real person" (Sacramentum Caritatis #77). Jesus is a real Person. Look at His face on the icon in front of the ambo. This is the Person we receive in Holy Communion, who loves us and wants to abide with us and in us every day of our lives.
Fourth Sunday of Easter
World Day of Prayer for Vocations
April 29, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
I would like to begin by sharing some very good news with you, which I'm sure you have heard before but it may not have sunk in yet... Christ is risen and we have risen with Him (Col 3:1) and all creation is joyful, even dancing! The Church must never tire of proclaiming the Resurrection of Christ to the world throughout this Easter season, as surely as St. Peter and the apostles did, as we heard in the first reading.
Today is "Good Shepherd" Sunday, the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, and as vocations directory of the diocese (part-time) I will mention vocations, but I want to keep our focus on Easter and the Resurrection! Christ our Good Shepherd is risen from the dead! He has laid down His life on the Cross and taken it up again in the Resurrection (Jn 10:18)
You can see from our vocations' poster that we have 9 seminarians (one has left to discern a call to the Trappists), the most we've had in 20 years (that's the Good News) but we need double or triple that amount. And the diocese actually lacks the funds to sustain this high number of seminarians; for this reason the bishop is making a special appeal this year for the collection for vocations. And please do continue to pray for an increase in vocations to the priesthood; your prayers do indeed make a difference. Thank you.
One Friday a month I host a gathering with men discerning the priesthood. We had 5 men here two Fridays ago. I spoke to them, as I did with all of you last week, of the importance of Christian joy, in particular in bearing witness to the risen Christ.
In the first reading, there's the silent witness of a very joyful man, who was completely transformed through the Resurrection of Christ. St. Peter spoke to the Jewish rulers, elders and scribes about "this man standing before (them) in good health" (Acts 4:10). This man had been a lame beggar who sat every day at the entrance of the Temple. Peter had told him, "in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk!" (Acts 3:6). He was instantly cured, then entered the temple, "walking, leaping and praising God" (Acts 3:8).
St. John Chrysostom commented that "this cure testifies to the resurrection of Christ, of which it is an image" (Navarre Bible, p. 737). Christ's Resurrection raised up this man, not only so he could walk, but also enter the temple almost dancing, and praising God with joy. The power of Christ's Resurrection is also meant to transform our lives, so that we can stand up straight, free of sin and enter into worship in this temple, leaping, dancing and praising God!
For most Christians, however, the Resurrection of Christ barely touches their lives, let alone fills their hearts with joy. We are like the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers that St. Paul met in Athens. When they heard Paul mention the words "Resurrection" and "Jesus" they were mildly curious at his promotion of these foreign deities (Acts 17:18). It would be like someone telling us about... Neptune and Pluto. For those many baptized Christians who do not yet have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the words "Jesus" and "Resurrection" are like "Neptune" and "Pluto": distant heavenly bodies that exert no gravitational pull on their imagination and make no difference in their lives.
How can this change? How can we who believe have a deeper faith, and experience the joy of Easter, a joy that will draw others to Christ? There's many little things we can do. For instance, it helps immensely to proclaim the Resurrection to ourselves. If we detect in ourselves pessimistic patterns of thought, we need to stop ourselves and say, "Wait a minute! Christ is risen! All things are possible!" And we can help each other. We can love each other to spread some joy. Husbands and wives, parents and children and friends can proclaim the Resurrection to one another. If, in a conversation with someone you love, he or she is being extremely negative, just say it, "Hey! Christ is risen! All things are possible!" (By the way, all of you are welcome to proclaim the Resurrection of Christ to me as well. This past Thursday I was sitting where you are in the pews, at a monthly priests' recollection, listening to someone else proclaim the joy of the Resurrection to me. I also need to hear the Good News).
As vocations director, I tell the men discerning the call to priesthood how important it is for them to radiate joy to others. There's a little bit of "pressure" on me, if you will, because if the vocations director is not a happy and joyful priest, or if their own pastor is not happy and joyful, why would they want to sign up? But I could put a similar question to you: if you are not happy and joyful Christians, why would your unbelieving or non-practicing friends want to join us? Is the pressure on us to fake our smiles so we can get more parishioners and the bishop can get more men in the seminary? Well, if Christ were dead in the tomb, yes, we would have to fake it. But the truth is, Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. The universe has been transformed, and you and I are a new creation. Our joy is built on truth.
And we must also be convinced that Jesus Christ deeply desires for us to rejoice in Him, despite all the problems in the world and the sufferings of life. Jesus Christ Himself was a man of joy. As He Himself said elsewhere in John's Gospel: "I have said these things to you that my joy might be in you, and that your joy may be complete" (Jn 15:11). Pope Paul VI, in his letter on joy, to which I referred last week, wrote of the "secret of the unfathomable joy which dwells in Jesus and which is special to Him." What is the "secret" of the joy of Jesus Christ?
"The inexpressible love by which He knows that He is loved by His Father."
This love that is stronger than death and the secret of joy, Jesus freely gives to us. We hear an echo of this love in today's Gospel, where Jesus states: "I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father" (Jn ). Jesus is speaking of intimate knowledge akin to love; for this reason, He also says, "as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you" (Jn 15:9).
In His love for us, the risen Christ invites us to rejoice and even dance. In a parable, Jesus once said: "We played the flute for you and you did not dance" (Mt 11:17). The Son of Man came eating and drinking, "playing the flute" by inviting others to the joy of the banquet of heaven, but gloomy and grumpy people rejected Him, saying that He was a glutton and a drunkard. Or in the words of the hymn, Jesus says, "I danced for the scribes and the Pharisees, but they wouldn't dance, and they wouldn't follow me."
Jesus invites us to rejoice and dance, so let us pray for a heart that is prepared for joy, for "dancing with the daffodils." Have you ever heard about these "dancing daffodils"? We have them right here in Ottawa!
Every spring and Easter, I think of Wordsworth's poem, "I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o 'er dales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils, beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze... ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in a sprightly dance." He goes on to write of recalling this scene in moments of contemplative solitude: "And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils."
How many people in Ottawa have driven by busy intersections like Queen Elizabeth Drive and Pretoria Bridge, and never seen the daffodils, or noticed they were dancing? How many Catholic Christians have passed through Mass this Easter and yet do not know that Christ is risen? What is it about the heart of a poet that can see the dancing daffodils? It is simply the heart of a Christian who chooses to active his or her baptismal potential for prayer and contemplation.
When we do so, we allow Jesus the Good Shepherd, risen from the dead, to proclaim His Resurrection to us. In today's Gospel, He mentions how the sheep hear the voice of the Good Shepherd (Jn 10:16). Yes, we must listen to His voice in times of prayer. One way is to listen to God's Word in prayerful reading of the Scriptures. I would also like to mention the Holy Hour of Eucharistic Adoration we have here every Tuesday before Mass, from 6pm - 7pm. (St. Mary's on Bayswater has Eucharistic Adoration in a chapel all day every day, so people can stop by for even a short visit).
I promise you that if you make time in your life for some sort of Eucharistic Adoration, the risen Christ will personally proclaim to you His Resurrection, and show you how you have already risen with him, so that you too can praise God, and leap and dance for joy.
Third Sunday of Easter (First Communion)
April 22, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
"I've got this joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart, down in my heart. I've got this joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart, down in my heart to stay. And I'm so happy, so very happy, I've got the love of Jesus in my heart ... "
Children, you may have heard this song before. I think it is very appropriate to sing about this joy in the Easter season on the Sunday that you receive your first Holy Communion.
We heard in today's Gospel, when the apostles met Jesus after He rose from the dead - they saw Him with their own eyes and touched His Body with their hands - they were "disbelieving for joy" (Lk 24:41). Just imagine if someone you loved died, and two days after the funeral, your doorbell rings and there they are! "Hey, I'm alive!" After recovering from fainting, you would know how the apostles felt. They had never experienced such joy in all their lives; they didn't even know that such happiness was possible. It must have been a preview of heaven.
If you only remember one thing I say today, one thing, it is this: when you receive Holy Communion today, you receive the exact same God that the apostles saw when He rose from the dead.
The first line of today's Gospel hints at something very important: "The two disciples told the eleven ... what had happened on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread" (Lk 24:35)
You may have heard this true story, of how Jesus, after He rose from the dead, appeared to two of the disciples while they were walking to a town called Emmaus. But the disciples did not recognize Jesus at first. But then later, at dinner, He said the blessing and broke the bread, then they recognized Him as Jesus, but then He disappeared.
"Breaking of the bread" is a very important phrase in the Church, because it's another way to say "the Mass" or "the Eucharist" or "Holy Communion." At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread and broke it saying "this is my Body." We do the same thing at Mass.
The priest says the words of Jesus; the bread becomes the Body of Christ. Then the priest breaks it and gives it to the people.
The exact same son of God who rose from the dead 2000 years ago is the one you receive today in Holy Communion. Consider that one reason that Jesus might have disappeared the moment He broke the bread was to teach the apostles a lesson: they no longer have to see Him with their bodily eyes and touch Him with their hands to know that He is present. Every time they celebrate the Last Supper, the breaking of the bread, Jesus is truly present, the exact same God.
Children, in many ways you have more faith and more joy than we adults. As Jesus says, "unless you become like children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." You trust in God, and you believe in Jesus, that He loves you and gives Himself to you today. This is the source of your joy. But on this day of your first Holy Communion, I would also like to say a few words to the adults, so that they can share in your joy.
We are still at the beginning of the Easter season, which lasts until Pentecost on May 27th. That means the whole Church - all Catholics, all Christians - are called to rejoice in the risen Christ. Through the liturgy of the Church, it's almost as if Jesus says to each one of us: "I was with you in Lent in your sufferings, trials and temptations. Now, this Easter season, I want you to be with me in my glory. Come and enter the joy of your master." Jesus offers us His joy, so why are there so few people rejoicing?
Pope Paul VI wrote a tremendous letter on joy in 1975. It's short and very accessible, and I recommend it to everyone. It's called "Gaudete in Domino" and you can find it on the Vatican website under Paul VI and "apostolic exhortations." He writes, "Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy. For joy comes from another source. It is spiritual."
He provides the classic definition of joy as being the possession of a known and loved good, and the greatest joy is the possession of God, known and loved as the supreme good (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 28 aa. 1,4 and q. 31, a.3)
So, how do we possess God in order to have joy? Well, we don't have to grasp at God or try to control Him, because He is infinitely generous and He loves us; He freely gives Himself to us. Perhaps there is something in us that prevents us from receiving the gift of God's life and love, and thus, being joyful.
Pope Benedict, in his encyclical Charity in Truth, writes of the "astonishing experience of gift ... the human being is made for gift." But often we do not receive the gift of God because of a "purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life" and from being selfishly closed in upon ourselves as a result of original sin (#34). We need to learn to open our hearts to accept the gift of God in order to find joy.
I offer this analogy. Imagine you get in a fight with a good friend of yours, and a few days later he rings your doorbell: "Hey, how are you?" (You're wondering what he wants) Pretty good. How are you?" "Good, thanks. Listen, I brought you a gift." "A gift? You didn't have to do that." "Come outside and I'll show you." "Outside? ... " You follow him outside and see - a new car! You are in shock: "What? A new car? You must be joking!"
"I actually won a lot of money (but I don't want people to know about it). And you have an old rust-bucket for a car, and we've been friends a long time, so I thought I would buy you a new one." "What? I don't deserve this!" "That's true that you don't deserve it, but I want you to have it. Here." (offers the keys) "I can't accept this." "Please, I want you to have it. I won a lot of money. Share your joy with others - you can drive senior citizens to their doctors' appointments - whatever! Please accept it."
What would your final answer be? "I'm sorry but I don't deserve this and I can't accept this gift," or "I don't deserve this, but I accept! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!"
Jesus Christ risen from the dead comes to us in many ways: in His Word, in other people, in the Eucharist (the exact same God). He says to each one of us, "For you I have suffered, for you I have died, for you I have risen from the dead. In every Holy Communion, I say to you, ‘This is my Body, given up for you.' I want to give you a share in my immortal life, my divine glory, and the joys of paradise. Come enter the joy of your master. All you have to do is accept the gift. Please accept it."
"Oh, no, Lord, after what I've done, I don't deserve this. I can't accept this gift." Is that your final answer? "I can't (I won't) accept this gift"? Or will your answer be, "Lord, I don't deserve this, and I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof and through the locked doors of my heart, to freely give me a share in your life, your love, your joy, but ... I accept the gift! I accept!
Children who are receiving their first Holy Communion, and all those receiving Communion today, after we receive Jesus, during the silent time of prayer, perhaps we can all say to Him as we open our hearts to the joy He wants to give us: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you ... "
Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday
April 7 and 8th, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
Christ is risen! Truly He is risen! The liturgies for Holy Week and Easter speak for themselves - that has been my theme.
Easter Vigil: So allow me to comment on one of the most visible symbols of the vigil, the Easter candle. When I was practicing the exultet,, I found it difficult at first with the new translation. But in my sufferings, I thought of the long hours of practice of this choir, in preparing for the Triduum. Thank you Dan and Janet, all the musicians and singers, for making this Easter truly the highlight of the year. So, in practicing the exultet, I thought it strange at first how it mentions "bees" twice and the candle five times (candle, torch, pillar). Bees make wax used for candles, but why sing about it? The new translation really emphasizes the tangible reality of the Easter candle Why? I think because we Catholics are so sacramental, and take the stuff of creation so seriously. Like the Cross on Good Friday, the candle represents Christ, this time as Christ our light, so every detail of its composition is important - wax from bees. The stuff of creation is taken up by Christ and transformed through His Incarnation, death and Resurrection. Wax from bees becomes a candle that represents Christ. Human flesh is taken up by Christ in His Resurrection and Ascension, to share in the divinity of God.
Easter Sunday So allow me to comment on the waters of baptism. Last night I spoke about the symbolism of the Easter candle. Truly the Easter vigil is the most impressive liturgy of the year, (but it can be late for small children). Easter Sunday is still the most important Sunday of the year. Every Sunday is a little "Easter" in which we celebrate the Resurrection, but Easter Sunday is the commemoration of the actual day Jesus rose from the dead.
The Easter Sunday liturgy is like any other Sunday except that it highlights the water and grace of our baptism into the death and Resurrection of Christ. Every Easter, we renew the promises of our baptism. I have spoken about this several times in Lent, that through the prayers and penances of Lent, we want to prepare to re-commit ourselves to Christ as we renew the promises of our baptism. Just as a married couple would renew their wedding vows on their anniversary, and just as priests renew the promises of their ordination at the Chrism Mass, so all the baptized renew our promises to Christ on Easter. Let's be sincere!
Water is one of the most obvious and powerful symbols of life. We began our lives in the water of the womb, and most of our bodies are composed of water. We need to drink water daily to live. Water gives life to plants for our food. Water washes away dirt, and in baptism through the power of the Holy Spirit, our sins. In Scripture, Ezekiel had a vision of water flowing from the temple and irrigating the desert, giving life everywhere it flowed (Ez 47:1-12). In one sense, this prophecy was fulfilled when Christ's side was pierced on the Cross, and blood and water flowed out - blood the symbol of the Eucharist, and water the symbol of baptism.
The water that flowed from Christ's side flowed into the font where we were baptized as children, and flows into this baptismal font today. We need to see the living connection between the death and Resurrection of Christ, our baptism in the past, and the renewal of the promises of our baptism today, and consider how the Resurrection of Christ affects our lives today.
Vigil and Sunday:
The Resurrection has the power to transform us, if we believe. How? First, we know and believe that the Resurrection of Christ really happened. We trust in the eye-witness testimonies recorded in the Gospels, (Vigil: of Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, and Salome Mk 16:1 Sunday: of Mary of Magdala and St. Peter and St. John John 20:1-9). We trust in the witness of thousands of Christian martyrs who have been willing to die for their faith, something impossible if Christ had not risen to assure us of the reality of eternal life. We believe in Christ's Resurrection 2000 years ago, but we still don't know how it is supposed to make a difference in our lives today. Is this not true? Perhaps we need to re-acquaint ourselves with the deepest desires of the human heart, and see how they correspond to the resurrection of the body.
First, let us consider what we might call the Nietzschean critique of Christianity, the intellectual atheist "psycho-analysis" of Christian belief. It suggest that we Christians believe in heaven because we are weak and stupid. If we were strong and smart, we would have the courage to accept the stark truth of meaninglessness, that after we die, we return to nothingness, with no awareness of ever having existed. Some people can't handle the truth, so they invent various myths like Christianity to console them. That's one of the intellectual atheist critiques of our belief in the resurrection of the body.
But psychology works both ways, and these intellectual atheists who disparage Christianity can also be psycho-analyzed by us, as the psychologist Paul Vitz has pointed out in his book Faith of the Fatherless. This analysis reveals that these intellectual atheists, in a strange form of self-loathing, are deaf to their own heart-beats and inner voice; they repress and deny the goodness and holiness of their own natural, human desires.
So, let us briefly examine our desires. Does anyone here want to die? Probably not. We want to live forever. But life in this world does not perfectly fulfill us - something always seems to be missing - and plus, we know we can't stay forever on earth, so we look for eternal life in heaven. But even more specifically, does anyone here want to be a fairy or ghost or disembodied spirit? If we think about it, no. In our desire to live forever, we want to be ourselves, which means a man or a woman, a boy or girl, a human being - body and soul together. Do we all agree? That the deepest desire of the human heart is to live forever (in love) not as a disembodied spirit, but as the man or woman (or child) you are.
Intellectual atheists are human beings like us, who naturally desire to live forever. But somehow they convince themselves that their desire for eternal life is a dangerous illusion that must be uprooted from their hearts . How sad, and how mistaken they are!
Consider the beauty of Christian truth. Something that seems so far away from us and so long ago - the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ - corresponds exactly to the deepest desires of the human heart. The Creator of the universe planned from the very beginning to one day reveal His gift of eternal life in the resurrection of the body. The Scriptures alluded to it, and human beings began to vaguely and dimly hope for it, until all was made clear that first Easter morning.
Jesus rose from the dead in a human body. (Easter Sunday: As St. Peter preached in the first reading, the apostles "ate and drank" with him after his resurrection from the dead (Acts 10: ). He still has a human body in heaven, but it is a spiritualized human body, transfigured in the Resurrection. The same will happen to us. (Vigil: As St. Paul writes in the second reading, "we shall also imitate him in his resurrection" (Rom 6: ). God has revealed our future in the Resurrection of Christ. One day our immortal souls will be reunited with our glorified bodies, so that we will be real men and women in heaven, not ghosts.
In his encyclical on hope, Pope Benedict wrote, "faith (which we could apply to faith in the resurrection of the body) is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent... it gives us something... Faith draws the future into the present... The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality" (Spe Salvi #7).
The fact of our future personal bodily resurrection changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality. I can leave this with you to pray about on your own. Take some time to remind yourself that one day you will have a risen body like that of Jesus Christ. You will one day experience this. That knowledge should change our present reality, perhaps making us more appreciative of the beauty, truth and goodness of everything that exists: of the earth and sky, trees and flowers and (Easter Vigil: and bees that make wax!), of our family and friends and everyone we love. Of all that is good in this world, nothing will be lost in the end, only transformed in the resurrection. Knowledge of the future as a positive reality in the resurrection can also remove the fear that often enslaves us, as we fall into various sins trying to seek a false and impossible security in this world.
I will leave the rest to you this Easter season, to pray about how Christ's Resurrection and knowledge of your own future resurrection, can change your life today.
Good Friday
April 6th, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
The Cross is at the center of the Good Friday liturgy, the Cross which we will soon be venerating. I would also like to talk about the face of the man who died on the Cross for us, the God-man Jesus Christ (there are pictures of His face in the pews and at the entrance).
First, we venerate the Cross because we worship Christ crucified, and we honour and seek to imitate the love with which He suffered. To appreciate Christ's love for us, we might compare it for a moment to what often passes for love in today's society.
One priest has called it "liquid love." He commented, "Love is a communion that springs from the gift of oneself. And that gift is a total self-giving. This is what gives the foundation to a relationship. It's what does not happen in a relationship of 'liquid love,' of individuals who don't have the capacity for sacrifice, self-giving and fidelity, who are not capable of promising because they regard the future as something uncertain." (Fr. Leopold Vives. See Zenit, September 16th, 2009).
How can you touch, venerate or hold on to liquid love? You try to grasp it, and it slips through your fingers. It's like trying to nail jello to a wall, to try to get some people to commit. They want all the pleasures of love but none of the sacrifices.
What is the opposite of liquid love? Committed love. (Prop). The solid, enduring wood of the Cross. The human flesh that was nailed to the Cross, the body of the man who was committed to us until death.
We human beings have a deep need and desire to be recipients of this committed love, which says to us, "It is good, it is wonderful, that you exist, that you are who you are. I love you" (On Love by Josef Pieper p.167, 170). Everyone wants to receive this love, but who will give it? Only if we first receive it from Christ can we offer it to others. So we venerate the Cross, and we gratefully accept His love, which in turn gives us the grace and courage to live out this committed love.
If you look at these little cards in the pews, this is the face of committed love, the face of God, of Jesus Christ from the shroud of Turin. The shroud reveals the body of man who was 5 feet 11 inches, weighing about 175 pounds. He has holes in his wrists and his feet, and wounds on his head from a crown of thorns, and 120 lashes on his body. It fits perfectly with the description of the sufferings of Christ in the Gospel; indeed, for this reason some people call the Shroud the "fifth Gospel."
I don't have time to enter into all the exhaustive points about the authenticity of the shroud, but consider these three points:
modern scientists know the image is scorched or burned on to the linen fibers, but they are unable to re-duplicate it. It appears that it was caused by a burst of light, heat and radiation that we would associate with the moment of the Resurrection.
The carbon-14 dating, done in 1988, that placed the origin of the shroud in the Middle Ages, was inaccurate because the sample was taken from a contaminated part of the shroud that had probably been repaired. Furthermore, in 1532, the shroud had been in a fire hot enough to melt silver; in 1992, Russian scientists demonstrated how fire of such intensity throws off the accuracy of carbon-14 dating by 700-1300 years.
There is ample evidence that the shroud comes from 1st century Palestine. It reveals images of coins on the eyes of this crucified man, which have been identified as leptons, which were minted during the reign of Pontius Pilate in 29 A.D. Examinations have also discovered 58 kinds of pollen on the shroud from the flowers that were put in the grave with Jesus; 18 of these flowers grow only in the Holy Land. A medieval forger could not have dusted the shroud with pollen from the Holy Land. (See The Passion of Christ in the Light of the Holy Shroud of Turin, a talk by Fr. Francis Peffley. www.lighthousecatholicmedia.com)
We can be reasonably certain that this is truly the Face of Jesus Christ crucified, the face of love committed until death. What do we learn from gazing on this Face? His love for us was not a liquid love of fickle feeling, of hot and cold, yes and no. As St. Paul wrote, "the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was not ‘yes' and ‘no' ... but all the promises of God have their ‘yes' in him" (2 Cor 1:19-20). In the new covenant in His Blood, Jesus promises this permanent "yes" and "I do" to us. This is the face of one who was tempted like us to run away from suffering, but He kept His commitment: "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by, yet not my will, but thy will be done" (Mk 14:36).
This is the face of one who was betrayed, rejected, and abused, but forgave. If you look closely, you can detect a bit of swelling on his right cheek. This swelling had gone down significantly in the 40 or so hours after His death; it must have been much worse during His Passion, when someone struck Him so forcefully on the Face and wounded Him. And yet He prayed, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" (Lk 23:34). Look at the serenity on the Face of the Son of God. Other people who die a violent death often have their death agony inscribed on their features, but this is the Face of one who trusted even when He felt abandoned: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Lk 23:46).
By venerating His Cross and gazing on His Face, by listening to Him speak to us in His Word and in our hearts, by receiving Him devoutly and gratefully in Holy Communion, may we both receive and imitate this committed love, the kind of love that can renew the family and society, this strong, secure and stable love which we crave and which gives us life and joy.
Holy Thursday
April 5th, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
The liturgies for Holy Week and Easter speak for themselves, so we have shorter homilies! What is unique about the liturgy for Holy Thursday? The washing of the feet, among other things. I would also like to comment on the "hidden" liturgy of Holy Thursday, the Chrism Mass, which is meant to be celebrated on the morning of Holy Thursday, but is transferred in our diocese to the Tuesday. Two important events occur at the Chrism Mass: the bishop blesses the holy oils that we have presented in this Eucharist, and the priests of the diocese renew the promises of our ordination. (I will say a few words about the latter).
The washing of the apostle's feet by Christ is a sort of symbolic representation of His whole life and Passion. Christ, the Son of God, humbled himself and took on the form of a slave (Phil 2:7), doing the work of a servant in washing feet. He allowed Himself to be despised, rejected, tortured, crucified -- to pour out his blood to cleanse us of our sins. He poured water on the apostles' feet to wash away the dirt, but more importantly, he poured out His Blood to wash away sins. In serving others, He told the apostles (the first "priests"): "I have given you an example, so you also should do" (Jn 13:15).
In the liturgy of the Chrism Mass, the bishop speaks to the priests of Holy Thursday as "the anniversary of that day when Christ our Lord conferred his priesthood on his Apostles and on us." Each priest should personally renew the promises of his ordination on the actual day of his ordination (for me, May 18th) but all the priests as one body collectively renew our promises on Holy Thursday (transferred to Tuesday's Chrism Mass in our diocese).
The bishop asks the priests three questions; I mention one as an example: "Are you resolved to be faithful stewards of the mysteries of God in the Holy Eucharist and the other liturgical rites and to discharge faithfully the sacred office of teaching, following Christ the Head and Shepherd, not seeking any gain, but moved only by zeal for souls?" We reply: "I am."
In our culture, we have a day to honour fathers: Father's Day, the third Sunday of June. And a day to honour mothers: Mothers' Day, the second Sunday of May. And we really should be doing more to honour married couples on World Marriage Sunday, as I mentioned in my homily on the Sunday before Valentine's Day. At Madonna House, a community of which I am an associate, they honour the women of the community on August 15th, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, and the men on the feast of St Joseph the Worker on May 1st. There is also one day of the year when the universal Church honours the ministerial priesthood, and that is, Holy Thursday.
We priests, despite all our human weaknesses, desire to follow the example of Jesus in washing others' feet, in giving our lives so that others' might find life in Christ. But to do the impossible -- to follow Christ in His total self-giving -- requires a constant and abundant infusion of grace, and the prayers of many people. I would like to read you a quote from one of the holiest priests in the history of the Archdiocese of Ottawa: "No sooner had I arrived (at my new parish), seeing all the work I had to do, that I realized that if I were not helped by the prayers of many people, it would be difficult to obtain all the graces necessary to sanctify all these souls.
One thought came to me incessantly in my meditation, especially before the Blessed Sacrament: in our times, more than ever, it is necessary to obtain for priests more numerous graces, in keeping with the more serious circumstances in which we are living. In my instructions and my homilies, I often asked for the prayers of my parishioners" (Alexis-Louis Mangin by Hector Legros, p. 65-6).
This was written by Fr. Alexis-Louis Mangin, parish priest in Masson, Quebec, which was at the time part of the Archdiocese of Ottawa. You'll never guess when he wrote this - sometime in the 1890's. It makes me smile, hearing about the "serious circumstances" of the 1890's! What was the problem? Only 90% of Quebecers were going to Mass on Sunday? How much more serious are the circumstances in the Church today? How much more do we priests need the prayers of the people! Even one "Our Father" or one "Hail Mary" a day would be greatly appreciated, and would help more than you might imagine.
Interestingly, Fr. Alexis-Louis ended up co-founding, with Eleonore Potvin, a new religious order with the charism of praying for priests. They remain to this day in their Mother House in Gatineau, the Servants of Jesus and Mary. But as this order slowly disappears, who will take up their mission?
At the Chrism Mass, after the priests renew our promises, the bishop turns to the people and says, "As for you, dearest sons and daughters, pray for your Priests, that the Lord may pour out his gifts abundantly upon them, and keep them faithful as ministers of Christ, the High Priest, so that they may lead you to him, who is the source of salvation."
The bishop concludes with these words: "May the Lord keep us all in his charity and lead all of us, shepherds and flock, to eternal life." Amen.
Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
April 1st, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
On this Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord, and in Holy Week and Easter, the liturgy truly speaks for itself, so there's really no need for homilies, right? Well, in the very least, they could be shorter than usual, and simply comment on the powerful liturgies we are celebrating.
So what sticks out for us on this Sunday? How is this Sunday different from any other Sunday? What do we do on this Sunday that we don't do on any other Sunday during the year? We hold palms and we read the Passion.
I'll make a few comments on the palms. The palms we are taking home with us connect us to Jerusalem in the past, to heaven in the future, and to Christ's coming in the Eucharist in the present, when we sing "Hosanna in the highest." The custom of using palms on this day goes back to Jerusalem around the year 400, when "an attempt was made to re-enact in all possible detail the Lord's entry into Jerusalem" (The Liturgical Year by Adrian Nocent, p. 187). At Rome, the ancient custom was to read the Passion on the Sunday before Easter. Eventually, these two traditions merged into what we have today "Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord."
When I visited Jerusalem for the first time in my life in November 2009, I was dazzled by the view from the Mount of Olives, where today's opening Gospel begins. It overlooks the Temple Mount of the city of Jerusalem. Then we followed the path that Jesus took on "Palm Sunday", down the hillside, to the Garden of Gethsemane, then back up the other side of the valley into the city of Jerusalem. Walking in the literal footsteps of Jesus obviously makes the Gospel come alive. I hope all of you will have the opportunity one day to visit the Holy Land and Jerusalem, but until then, we have reminders of the reality of these historical events that could place there, reminders like the Stations of the Cross which we prayed every Friday of Lent, and the palm branches we are holding today.
When you hear the account of the Passion, have you ever wondered why the crowd that welcomed him with palm branches and "hosannas" is later yelling, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" In the past, spiritual writers have cited this as an example of the fickleness of human nature. But in his second book on Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict makes it clear that these were two different crowds.
The crowd that welcomed Jesus with palm branches and hosannas were pilgrims from Galilee, many of whom already knew Jesus (8). The crowd that later called for his crucifixion were supporters of Barabbas, incited by the Jewish temple aristocracy (185-6).
Which crowd are we with? Those who cried out "hosanna," or "crucify Him?" Well, we are holding palm branches to remind us that we are part of the crowd of pilgrims from Galilee who praised Jesus as the Messiah. These palm branches can also remind us that the past becomes present in the Eucharist; the same Jesus who entered Jerusalem on a donkey about 2000 years ago, is the same Jesus who comes to us today and every Sunday in the Eucharist.
In his second book "Jesus of Nazareth," Pope Benedict comments on the link between Palm Sunday and the Eucharist: "The Church greets the Lord in the Holy Eucharist as the one who is coming now, the one who has entered into her midst... As pilgrims, we go up to him; as a pilgrim, he comes to us and takes us up with him in his "ascent" to the Cross and Resurrection... " (11).
Today's liturgy began with a joyful welcome of Jesus as the Messiah-King entering the holy city of Jerusalem. The Gospel today from Mark ends with the death and burial of Christ. But we know that the goal and fulfilment of the Cross is Easter and the Resurrection. In the book of Revelations, St. John sees the saints in heaven wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands (Rev 7:9). That is our goal too - to be holding palm branches in heaven.
From Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, the liturgy speaks for itself. Remember the ashes we received on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday? Traditionally they are made from burned palms. Palms end in ashes, but ashes end in palms. The ashes of that Wednesday, and all our penances of Lent, our efforts to cooperate with the grace of God to die to our old self and put on the new self, prepare us for our sharing even now in the Resurrection of Christ, and the joy and victory of holding palms in heaven, singing with all the angels and saints, "Holy is the Lord our God. Hosanna in the highest."
On the Mount of Olives, there is a small Church called Dominus Flevit, meaning "The Lord Wept," marking the spot where Jesus wept over the city and the people destined to reject Him.
Fifth Sunday of Lent
A New, Pure and Light Heart
March 25, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
Our hearts are made to rise. It is now officially spring (though we just had 5 days of summer!), and everything is rising. Flowers, such as tulips, long buried in frozen ground are rising up from the earth. Birds from the south are rising up, flying north. The temperature already rose dramatically and miraculously this past week (27 degrees on Wednesday!). The same with our hearts. The new heart that Christ has created for us and in us is also designed to rise, to be lifted up.
The first reading and the psalm allude to the new heart that Christ has created in us through His death and Resurrection. In the first reading, we heard God promise through the prophet Jeremiah: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts" (Jer 31:33). There's a similar prophecy in Ezekial: "I will give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the stony heart from their bodies, and replace it with a natural heart" (11:19 ). The psalmist likewise prays, "create a clean heart in me, O God" (Ps 51).
What is a "clean" heart, a pure heart? An impure heart is a divided, distracted, heavy heart. A pure heart is a simple, light heart. Jesus wants to lighten and lift up our hearts. In the Gospel, He prophesies regarding His own death and Resurrection, speaking of the seed that dies and bears much fruit (Jn 12:24) and He adds a reference to His Ascension, "I, when lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (Jn 12: 32)
It is the power of Christ's death and Resurrection, applied personally to our lives, that can transform our hearts, replacing a heavy heart with a light heart, that is drawn upwards by Jesus Christ seated at the right hand of the Father.
We've all seen hot air balloons floating lazily over Ottawa on a warm, summer day. (Has anyone ever been up in one? Not me... ). Compare our hearts for a moment to a hot air balloon that is designed to rise, to be lifted up from the earth. Assuming that the balloon is filled already with heated air, it will rise. What is keeping it on earth? It is tied down, weighed down, with something like this (prop of a brick). And until those weights are released, the balloon will not rise.
What is it that weighs down our hearts? Remember, they are designed by God to be light, to rise. If hearts are heavy, that means something has gone wrong. What? Jesus Himself warns us: "Watch yourselves, lest your hearts become weighed down," Among other things, he mentions "carousing, drunkenness and the cares of life" (Lk 21:34). Even more than this, the weights are the lies that we have believed about ourselves, about God, the Church.
The Father of lies, the devil, who lied to Adam and Eve, who tempted Jesus for forty days in the desert during the first "Lent", also attempts to deceive our minds, depress our hearts, and cast our souls into despair. It has become very clear to me how the evil one in our times is focusing his arrows on the human heart; lies that we believe pierce our hearts and weigh them down. For this reason, St. Paul exhorts us to "hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one" (Eph 6:16). (By the way, if some of you here do not believe in the Bible or the 2000 year teaching of the Church on the existence of the devil, I still think it will be useful for you to learn to recognize and resist these lies, whatever their source).
I will give you one example: "You can have whatever you want in this world, except for love." No one would rationally choose something so empty, but temptation is not rational, and by degrees, we can be lead into very bad choices in life that weigh down and depress our hearts.
We have all experienced some pain and disappointment in love. We have been created by infinite love for an eternity of love, but so often here on earth, we are hurt by those who do not return our love, and by our own unwillingness to forgive.
How do we deal with this pain? Do we open up our hearts and hope? In the second reading, we heard how "in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears" (Heb 5:7). Jesus opened up His heart and hoped; He lifted up His heart and was heard by His Father.
Do we do the same, or do we hunker down, hibernate and hide? The devil might suggest to us, and we might believe him - which is so sad that we would believe in such a lie - that it is better, or at least easier, to live without love. It's safer, less pain. This can even happen in a marriage in which people settle into roles and habits, and no longer make an effort to grow.
If the evil one can persuade us that it might be better or easier to live without love, then he suggests to us a false and deadly consolation, that proves to be a weight upon our hearts. (I notice that this temptation does not work very well among my poor friends in El Salvador and Honduras, but it is very successful in North America). "You may have to live without love, but you can have whatever else you want in its place: food, drink, pleasure, money, comfort, luxuries, entertainment. Loving can be painful, risky, and messy; you are never in control. But what you can see and touch and taste is real. Trust in that!" Lies! "You can have whatever you want in this world, except for love." Lies!
Notice how Jesus preaches to us the exact opposite. In today's Gospel, He teaches: "The person who loves their life (in this world) loses it, and the person who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (Jn 12:25). "What good is it to gain the whole world and lose your life?" (Cf Luke 9:25). What good is it to be rich and depressed? What good is it to have all the material things you could want, but live without love? St. Paul even went as far to say that apart from Christ, everything else was skubalon which can be translated as rubbish, excrement or simply, crap (Phil 3:8). Yes. That's what St. Paul thought of having everything in this world apart from Christ's love!
Our hearts are made to rise. In our baptism into the death and Resurrection of Christ, God has already given us a new heart, a pure and light heart. As I have preached throughout Lent, we are preparing to renew the promises of our baptism at Easter, to renew our hearts as well. We must cast off the weights that prevent our hearts from rising, first by rejecting the lies in our minds before they become weights in our hearts. The lie that love can be painful, so choose instead the security of material things. No! Choose the rich and rewarding insecurity of love. As John Paul II once put it, in our times we must re-discover the primacy of being over having, of the person over things (The Gospel of Life, #98), the priority of love for God and one another.
We must also cast off the weight of sin that prevents our hearts from rising. Don't carry this weight around anymore! It's Lent! It's the time to leave these weights behind in the Church! Come this Wednesday to the Sacrament of Reconciliation in our Penance Service at 7:00 p.m. There will be several visiting priests. Come and free your heart. For those unable to come Wednesday, there is reconciliation available at St. Patrick's basilica before every Mass, four times a day during the week. I am also here every Tuesday before Mass and every Saturday.
Finally, let us also allow our hearts to be drawn by Christ. "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people - all hearts - to myself" (Jn 12:32). Jesus Christ is always drawing and attracting us to Himself through the desires that the Creator has placed in our hearts - the desire for goodness, truth, beauty, love.
It is time for us to become re-acquainted with our own hearts, our own good and holy desires.
If we want a new heart, a light heart, one that loves and is loved, then at some point we have to want that more than anything else in the world. And tell Jesus that explicitly in our personal prayer. Instead of listening to the lies of the devil, to gain the world and lose our soul, we tell Jesus instead that we are willing, if necessary, to give up the world to gain love, to claim our baptism and truly become His disciples.
Third Sunday of Lent
The Grace to Change, and the Death and Resurrection of Christ
March 11, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
Can we change our lives apart from faith and trust in Jesus Christ, apart from the grace of His death and Resurrection? I think we can answer this question first through empirical evidence, a scientific inquiry into human experience, followed by an entirely reasonable act of faith.
We have all been baptized into the death and Resurrection of ChriSt. But at what point has this mystery, historically accomplished in the past, intersected with our lives? When have we experienced a change, a death and resurrection? How have we experienced the struggle, sometimes successful, for freedom from sin?
In Lent, we need to attempt to answer this question for ourselves if we are going to meaningfully renew the promises of our baptism at Easter (as I mentioned on the first Sunday of Lent). In one sense, we renew our personal commitment to Christ every time we profess our faith at Mass, every time we receive Holy Communion, and every time we confess our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. (By the way, I strongly encourage all of you to confess your sins this Lent. We have a Lenten reconciliation service on March 28thwith visiting priests. Please don't miss this opportunity to prepare your hearts for the joy of Easter).
Our baptism inserts us into the death and Resurrection of Christ, both mentioned in today's readings. In the first reading, St. Paul proclaims "Christ crucified ... Christ the wisdom of God and Christ the power of God" (1 Cor 1:23-24). And why would the Church choose this Gospel in Lent? It's related to Easter; Jesus prophesies about his own Resurrection: "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up" (Jn 2:19).
I began to re-discover the grace of my baptism around the age of 23 when my conversion began in earneSt. Today, I will share some of this with you, to try to answer this question - can we change our lives apart from Jesus Christ? After Pentecost, I would like one of you to come forward and after Communion share your testimony of how Christ has changed your life.
I grew up a nominal Anglican Christian. I had heard of the ten commandments, those listed in today's first reading (Ex 20:1-17), such as not committing adultery or coveting your neighbour's wife - I had heard about these things, but up until the age of 23, I did not fully realize (or want to realize) that lust is a sin, in all its various forms, such as pornography, masturbation, and sex outside of sacramental marriage.
And you know who taught this to me? No one in my Church taught me. No one in our post-Christian secular society taught me. It's kind of sad that I had to learn this from a dead poet, a 13th century Italian one named Dante. When I read in the Divine Comedy of people in hell who had committed adultery (Paolo and Francesca in Canto V of The Inferno), and other people who had indulged in lust but repented being purified in purgatory (Purgatory, Canto XXVI), when I realized that lust is an excessive and perverted love than can and must be purified, only then did I have the will to change my life.
I remember talking to a good Christian friend of mine about this issue. Oh! How important it is for us to have at least one good Christian friend with whom we can share our hearts and our struggles! By the way, this is one of the great graces of verbal, sacramental confession. For those things we might not be able to share even with a close friend, we know our secret is safe under the sacramental seal, that we will be listened to with compassion, and our sins will be forgiven in a renewal of our baptism, through the power of the sacrament and Christ's death and Resurrection. But God can also work miracles of healing and conversion through Christian friendship.
I remember expressing to my friend my frustration, my helplessness, my inability to change. Then one night, he said something about giving it over to God, because "with God, all things are possible." Did I then make a conscious act of faith in Christ? Remember, this is a scientific analysis of human experience to get at the truth, so I have to be honest and say "no."
At the time, I revered Jesus Christ as a prophet and mystic, model and teacher, but I did not fully believe in His divinity. But nonetheless, He helped me. Isn't it the same with Alcoholics Anonymous? It offers a successful model of helping people to overcome addictions and sin. Interestingly, an explicit faith in Jesus Christ is not absolutely necessary. The bare minimum is that people recognize that they are helpless over their addiction, that they cannot change on their own, and that they need the assistance of a higher power.
Again, back when I was 23, I did recognize my helplessness to change on my own; I did open my heart and hope in this "higher power" whom I did acknowledge at the time as a loving God. The very next day I noticed a change in me (but I don't have time to go into detail). I knew in my flesh and bones that there is a God, who has the power and the desire to help us change! I was finally re-discovering the grace of my baptism and finally becoming a believing Christian.
To answer the question with which I began: can we change our lives apart from faith and trust in Jesus Christ? Apparently, yes. But the grace to change does come from the death and Resurrection of Christ whether we believe it or not, and only by believing this can we become saints.
This might be a bit abstract, so I offer this very imperfect analogy. Do you have to know where the water in your house comes from for it to quench your thirst? No. What if I told you that it came from massive holding tanks as high as this Church and perhaps four to five times as long? Whether you believe it or not, that's where it comes from; I know, because I've witnessed them on Lemieux Island, where the water from the Ottawa river is pumped into these holding tanks to be filtered and purified before it is pumped out to our homes.
The grace to change our lives comes from the death and Resurrection of Christ whether we believe it or not. We know this through an entirely reasonable act of faith in reliable witnesses such as St. John, St. Paul and St. Peter. Remember St. Peter lived with the Son of God for three years and touched His Body after He rose from the dead. He wrote that we have been redeemed (set free from sin), by the precious blood of Christ (1 Pet 1:18-19). St. Paul, who also saw the risen Christ, wrote that Christ died for our sins (1 Cor 15:3). St. John saw water and blood flow from Christ's side on the Cross - symbols of baptism and the Eucharist (Jn 19:34).
To continue with this water analogy for a moment. What if you lived in an arid land like Israel, where they have such a shortage that they re-use sewage water from Jerusalem to water plants at the Dead Sea? What if water was so rare and expensive that you could not afford it, but someone who loved you paid your bill every month? Then this water that quenches your thirst would not merely be a symbol of impersonal grace but a sign of love, an invitation to a personal relationship.
The grace for us to change our lives and be set free from sin and addictions does not come from an impersonal "higher power" with the click of a mouse, with some information for us to download. It came through blood and sweat and tears. It came from a man like us in all things but sin, who had to face a terrifying choice the night before He died. He could have saved Himself by calling on His Father to send Him twelve legions of angels (Mt 26:53). But then he thought of you. I mean that literally. In His Passion, Christ thought of you. He had to weigh His options: to save you (and me) or save Himself. He chose us, and went willingly to face torture and death. This is the source of the grace that enables us to change our lives.
Yes, we can change without a conscious act of faith in Christ who died for our sins. Because God loves all people and desires everyone to be saved, He only asks for the bare minimum, that we humble ourselves, and open our hearts to His help. But once we recognize the source of the water that quenches our thirst and the source of the blood that frees us from sin - this source that is love - then we will want to enter into a relationship with Christ, and be more deeply transformed, sanctified, deified - made saints.
I've run out of time. The rest is up to you this Lent. If you want Jesus Christ to be more real to you, if you want to change and grow as a human being, then you have to take time to think about your life, humbly ask for help, pray, read Scripture, confess your sins, talk to Christian friends. Then the day will come when each of us will be able to say, in the words of St. Paul, "the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20).
Second Sunday of Lent
Sacrifice
March 4, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
(Children's Liturgy at 9:30 a.m.)
Children, today I would like to talk to you today about sacrifice, because we hear of the sacrifice of Abraham in the first reading, and how God the Father gave His Son for us, in the sacrifice of the Cross. We too are called to make sacrifices in our lives, especially in Lent. Would anyone like to share what they have given up for Lent? And why do we make these sacrifices? Why do we give up chocolate or pop or chips or video games or certain TV shows, etc?
One reason we make sacrifices in Lent and in life in general is to follow Jesus more closely, who gave up all food for 40 days in the desert. We might give up one specific food for 40 days to share in this sacrifice of Jesus. If we are hungry with our stomachs for some food we are missing, we are supposed think of the poor and help them, and we can turn the hunger of our stomach into a hunger of our heart - a hunger for prayer and for God Himself to fill our hearts with His peace and love.
Another reason we make sacrifices is: love calls for love. God created us out of love. He gives us all the good things of the earth to provide for our daily needs. We present some of these gifts back to God in Church - the bread and wine, which are supposed to be a symbol of our whole lives (Dominicae cenae).
You love your parents because they love you, and have made and continue to make many sacrifices for you. Your father would usually not say to you in bitterness, "Because of you I have to go to work today, to feed you. Thanks a lot!" Your mother would usually not say to you in anger, "I was really sick when I was pregnant with you. Thanks a lot!" Why would your parents never say those things? Because they love you and want to make sacrifices for you. And since love calls for love, you are grateful to your parents and love them back, right?
God our Father loves us even more, and He gives us much more than just life in this world and food to sustain us; He gives us Himself. We heard in the second reading how God gave us His Son Jesus ( ). This is the same as saying God gives us Himself in love. Love calls for love in return. God gives us Himself and asks for us to give ourselves to Him.
So children, one way you can show your love for God is by making sacrifices. I ask you in your imagination to think of bringing your little sacrifices to Church. Whatever you gave up for Lent, imagine putting it in the collection basket, whatever it is - a piece of chocolate or candy, pop or chips, a video game. Some sacrifices you can't see. Maybe you did some chores without being asked. Maybe you were really angry one day this past week, but you chose to not to say bad or hurtful words, and to be kind instead - you can imagine putting that little sacrifice right next to the gifts of bread and wine that are placed on the altar.
So children, I wish a happy Lent filled with many little sacrifices with a smile that will help us draw closer to Jesus and to be transfigured and changed, just as Jesus was in today's Gospel, as the power of Christ's Resurrection overflows into our lives this coming Easter.
I would like to say a few more words to the adults about the sacrifice of the Mass. By our baptism, we are a holy priesthood, in the words of St. Peter, "to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Pet 2:5). Last week I mentioned how in Lent we are preparing to renew the promises of our baptism at Easter. An essential part of the priesthood of the baptized is the offering of spiritual sacrifices.
John Paul II wrote in an apostolic letter on the Lord's Supper that the Eucharist is above all a sacrifice (Dominicae Cenae #9, quoted from The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by Michael McGuckian, p. 1). What are we offering God here and now? What is it that we bring to the altar of sacrifice? The collection. The bread and wine as symbols of our spiritual sacrifices (Dominicae Cenae #9).
The offertory of the Mass is an essential part of the Eucharist that I am afraid most Catholics don't think about. The new English translation of the Eucharist highlights the sacrifice in subtle ways. Now the priest says, "Pray brothers and sisters that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable." These words "and yours" were restored in the new translation - a reminder that you the lay people are offering a sacrifice as well.
In the early Church, the sense of the Eucharist as a sacrifice was very strong.
Part of the dignity of the priesthood of the baptized was the person's right to offer sacrifice. In our times, we focus more on communion than on the offertory, but in the early Church it was the opposite. I came across a little book on the sacrifice of the Mass by Fr. Michael McGuckian, with a forward written by our own Archbishop. The author explains how in the modern Church, we would say that a newly baptized adult Christian has the great privilege of receiving communion for the first time, but "the original idea... was that the new Christian was able to ‘offer'" for the first time (The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, p. 63).
The offering of the lay people was emphasized in various ways: people would bring their own bread baked at home, and their own wine, as part of their personal sacrifice. And up until at least the ninth century, there was an offertory procession, in which lay people would bring the bread and wine to the altar; the people even had a special prayer to say, expressing the intention of their offering (66).
For various reasons, these practices disappeared. For hundreds and hundreds of years. It is only in the 1960's with the Second Vatican Council that the offertory procession at Mass was restored. So we do it. We bring the bread and wine in procession to the altar. But do we understand what we are doing?
One reason the Church restored the offertory procession was to promote the full, active, and conscious participation of the lay people. This is above all an interior, spiritual activity of self-offering, of personal prayer and intention: that in our hearts we are sincerely striving to worship God and give Him our lives.
We need to consciously offer sacrifice in order for communion to be meaningful. In fact, we can't have communion without sacrifice. We can't receive the Body and Blood of Christ unless we first offer bread and wine. (Thank you for all your donations to the Church that enable us to purchase bread and wine, to heat the Church and keep the lights on. I also wanted to say something about Mass intentions, but I have little time, so I will put something in the bulletin instead. The idea of a Mass intention ($15) for the living or the dead, is for you to personalize your sacrifice even more, that you are adding a personal offering to the Mass and praying for a specific intention).
Just as we cannot receive the Body and Blood of Christ without first offering bread and wine, we cannot meaningfully receive Holy Communion without first offering our hearts. "Lift up your hearts to the Lord" is a call to worship, to sacrifice. If we are not making some effort to worship God in our hearts and minds, to offer Him a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, petition and atonement, then our offering of bread and wine is merely external, mechanical, routine, boring. Then so will our communion be: cold and lifeless.
It would be something like eating grass. Cows can digest grass, but not human beings; it would just pass through us without giving any life to our bodies. So it is with Holy Communion received without faith, without some effort (God loves us and is pleased with our slightest effort) - to worship, sacrifice and adore Him. Without this sincere effort on our part, Holy Communion will not enter our hearts; it simply passes through us, leaving us alone, untouched, unchanged.
Why would Catholics ever be passive or bored at Mass? I'm not sure... what do you think? Is it possible for someone to know God's love and not love Him in return? I'm thinking that people who are bored do not know how much God loves them. Love calls for love. I mentioned last week how Christ's loving gaze is always shining upon us. If we lived under this gaze for even a moment, then, like children grateful for the love of their mother and father, we would spontaneously offer ourselves to God in union with the offertory procession of bread and wine, symbol of our spiritual sacrifices.
Then we would be transfigured. Christ would shine in our eyes, our words, our deeds, as a foretaste and promise of Easter, and the Resurrection.
First Sunday of Lent
Preparing to Renew the Promises of our Baptism
February 26, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
I remember at the beginning of Lent a few years back, a parishioner coming up to me with a radiant smile, almost trembling with child-like enthusiasm, exclaiming, "I love Lent!" I responded with something like, "I admire you. I like Lent ... I think ... " I recognize that we cannot have Easter without Lent; we cannot have joy in the Lord without sorrow for our sin; we cannot have a deeper relationship with Christ without conversion, which requires both the grace of God and our own spiritual effort to battle temptation and be faithful to the Word of God.
Conversion always includes the renewal of the grace and promises of our baptism. Every Easter we solemnly and publicly renew the promises of our baptism (Do you renounce Satan? I do. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? I do). Every Lent, during which the floodgates of heavenly grace are opened wide for us, we prepare to renew our baptism through our deeper conversion to Christ.
The readings on this first Sunday of Lent highlight the link between Lent, Easter and baptism. The first reading speaks of the covenant between God and Noah after the great Flood (Gen 9:8-15). St. Peter in the second reading makes clear that the Flood, in which eight people were "saved through water" prefigures baptism (1 Pet 3:20-21). In our baptism, we too are "saved through water," as the Holy Spirit comes into our souls to wash away our sins and make us a new creation in Christ.
As we prepare to renew our baptism, we are also spending these 40 days of Lent with Jesus in the desert. In the Bible, the desert is a paradoxical place: both the abode of evil spirits and a place of intimacy with God, away from the distractions of city life. Our beautiful world is in some ways a desert in which we must constantly face the temptations of the Evil One. Yet Jesus is with us, praying in us and for us. He never allows us to be tempted beyond our strength (1 Cor 10:13). Scripture also says, "blessed are those who persevere in temptations ... for they will receive the crown of life which God promises to those who love Him" (James 1:12).
It is interesting to note how Jesus counters the temptations of the devil. In Matthew and Luke's longer account of this scene in the desert, Jesus responds to the Evil One by quoting Scripture. God's Word has power to fight temptation. I recently read in a book called The Way of the Pilgrim about an alcoholic who quit drinking simply by reading the Gospel. Every time he felt the temptation to drink, he would force himself to pick up the Gospel and start reading. Eventually, the temptation disappeared. (I'm not saying this is a simple solution for everyone, but all of us, when tempted, need to learn to turn to Jesus, and one way to do so is through Scripture).
One of the most common temptations of our times is simply distraction. As Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospel, the cares of life can choke God's word within us (Mk 4:19). Sometimes we are so busy and distracted that we don't even hear the Word of God. With our ears we hear it proclaimed in Church but it doesn't reach the heart.
While on retreat the week before last, I had more time to listen to the Word of God. I was staying at a Trappist monastery called Genesee, south of Rochester. The guest house included priests, men and women, so any of you can visit as well. (I am still hoping that some of you will attend one of the Cursillo retreats right here in Ottawa. The women's one is next weekend, but there will be another in the fall. The men's retreat is May 3rd - 6th).
So what happened on my retreat? Visions and levitations? No. Silence can be difficult in the beginning - battling the Evil One in the desert. But then something mysterious happens ... spring comes early ...( one mild sunny day down there melted the remains of the snow on the farmers' fields, and the ice disappeared from the river) ... in the silence something bubbles up within us, like a happy childhood memory that we had forgotten. It is the Holy Spirit welling up inside of us, whispering in our hearts the very words of Jesus, "Believe in the Good News" (Mk 1:15). Yes, we have all heard the Good News, but do we really believe it?
I meet many people who are beautiful and talented, loved and admired, but who think they have to be perfect, and they aren't, so they're sad. Because they haven't heard the Good News, the truth that sets us free! That all of us human beings are poor, weak and wounded, blinded by pride, driven by selfishness, isolated by mistrust and afraid to love: the human condition that we traditionally explained by saying we are sinners. But sinners redeemed and loved by Jesus Christ, with a love as vast as the sky and as bright as the sun that is always shining, though half the earth might be shrouded in darkness or covered in clouds. The loving gaze of Christ is always shining on us - warm, tender, particular to each individual - a love without limits or conditions, a love that was traditionally expressed by the language of the blood of the Cross. Believe in the Good News! We are sinners redeemed and loved by Jesus Christ. The truth that sets us free to accept ourselves, to accept Christ's love, which in turn leads us to a desire for a deeper conversion.
Not everyone can go on a retreat at this moment, but everyone this Lent can give God 5 minutes more a day. I would like to echo the recommendation of the bishop for this Lent. In his letter, he wrote, "this year, I especially encourage families and other households to find a regular occasion to pray together, especially reading and sharing God's Word ... You could meditate the Sunday readings during the week or ponder for a few minutes the Lenten weekday scriptures."
Why not try that out? Each family could spend 5 minutes before dinner, reading the Gospel of the day and discussing it. In the bulletin each week is included the list of readings for all the weekdays of Lent.
I would like to mention some other ways that our parish offers in helping us grow closer to God this Lent. First, the Eucharist itself. I would encourage those who might be irregular in their practice of the faith to attend Mass every Sunday in Lent, to develop a new, positive habit (which the bishop also mentions in his letter). We also have the Stations of the Cross every Friday in Lent at 7:00 p.m., Christian meditation on Monday nights and Evening Prayer on Wednesdays. We also have Mass every Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. It is preceded by a Holy Hour of Eucharistic adoration, a privileged moment of encounter with Christ in silent adoration.
We definitely need some sort of silence in our lives if we are going to hear the Word of God, deepen our intimacy with Christ, and thus prepare ourselves to meaningfully renew the promises of our baptism at Easter. For too many Christians, baptism has become something like a river frozen over in winter. There's life there, but it's hidden and inaccessible. Spring is coming! The word "Lent" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "lencten" which means spring.
Whatever hard crust of habit or indifference that may have formed over our hearts over the years, may the grace of spring and lent break up the ice on that river, so that the Spirit can flow again, so that we can touch again the waters and grace of baptism. To hear and believe in the Good News: that in baptism our sins are forgiven, and we have become adopted sons and daughters of God, temples of the Holy Spirit, co-heirs to eternal life.
Sixth Sunday
Jesus Heals the Leprosy of Our Sin and Shame
February 5, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
There were lepers in Israel in the time of Jesus in the first century, and in the time of Francis of Assisi in Italy in the 13th century, but there are no lepers today in Canada, so what does this Gospel have to say to us? If we go deeper, we see the ways in which you and I are the lepers coming to Jesus for healing, and how we are also Jesus reaching out and touching the lepers who come to us.
First, we are lepers because of our sins. In an excellent commentary on the Gospel of Mark by Mary Healy, she writes, "leprosy is only the outward sign of the inner uncleanness experienced by all fallen human beings. The defilement of sin often causes a deep inner shame, even when a person is not consciously aware of it, that makes a person hesitant to turn to God" (Mary Healy The Gospel of Mark, p. 54).
Jesus wants to reach out and touch us, to heal us of the defilement of sin, the deep inner shame. How does He do so today? Through the sacraments and through other people. There's a prayer of St. Ambrose which some people recite before Mass, which includes these words to Jesus: "Lord, I show my wounds to you, and I uncover my shame before you." We bring our true selves to Jesus, with all our sin and shame - the true self, because that's the person Jesus loves and wants to heal.
Jesus Christ will never put us to shame when we approach Him. Our sins and our pride makes us feel ashamed. But Jesus Christ is pure love and mercy. Just as He healed the leper by touching him, so Jesus wants to touch us today through His Body, the Church. As power flowed from His Body to heal people during His lifetime, the power of love and the Holy Spirit continues to pour out through Christ's Body, especially in the sacraments we can receive regularly, of Reconciliation and Holy Communion.
Tremendous healing can also come through genuine human love, such as the life-long, committed love of sacramental marriage. I want to mention marriage because the Sunday before Valentine's Day is popularly known as World Marriage Sunday. It is not a liturgical feast, but I am hoping that each year, more and more Churches will recognize this day as an important occasion to promote marriage.
Last week, at the Saturday Mass with Carleton students, the bishop mentioned the crisis in vocations, in particular marriage - that young people don't want to get married anymore, because they are afraid of divorce! This is tragic! We must promote the beauty of marriage, children and family life!
When a woman knows that her husband is committed to her for life, and the husband knows this of his wife, and the children know this of their parents - in this context of human love elevated to the dignity of a sacrament - people will have the courage to show their wounds, uncover their shame and know that they are loved. Yes, despite the leprosy of our sin and shame, we are loved! What a joy it is to discover, in marriage and family life, that we are accepted and embraced! And if marriage and family fails us, God will find other ways to heal us: one of them is through Christian brothers and sisters, through the family of the Church.
In one way you and I are lepers coming to Jesus for healing, but in another way, we are Jesus reaching out to touch, welcome and heal the spiritual lepers of our society. Consider the cruel fate of lepers, as described in the first reading: "being unclean, such a one shall live alone with their dwelling outside the camp" (Lev 13:46). Lepers were outcasts, rejected by society, and excluded from entering the Temple and participating in the worship of Israel. Imagine their intense feelings of being unloved and alone. Mary Healy writes, "Significantly, the leper does not ask Jesus to heal him but to make him clean. His deepest desire is to be free once again to partake in the worship of God's people," (to be a part of the community of the "church," the family of God). (Mary Healy, The Gospel of Mark, p. 52-3).
In our culture of extreme individualism, we encounter the "leprosy" of loneliness all the time. Where? Downstairs at our Sunday suppers? Yes. Indeed, there are people who attend who are isolated and alone, who feel alone and unloved, others who struggle with mental illness. What a gift we offer them in loving, serving and feeding them (by the way, we can always use more volunteers!). I was so pleased last week that the Archbishop gave our parish a certificate of appreciation for our Sunday suppers (presented at the 1130 am Mass).
As we do downstairs, so must we do upstairs - to reach out and touch someone, to welcome and love the lonely. At the meeting of parish and finance council with the bishop, we spoke of the things of which we are proud in our parish and of some of our concerns. One of our strengths we mentioned is that we are a small and welcoming community, where people get to know each other.
The bishop witnessed that during his visit. But he also made an interesting comment: that Catholics in general are not very welcoming ...
What happens to someone who is not a Church goer, who has perhaps been living an isolated and lonely life, cut off from the family of God that is the Church? The leper in the Gospel had to gather up his courage to break out of his isolation, to take a risk and go to meet this man Jesus who might heal him. Many people, even in our secular society, seem to know that if they are looking for Jesus, they will find Him in the Church. But it is a risk for someone to come to Church alone. What happens if that person comes and sits in the back pew at St. Patrick's Basilica or Blessed Sacrament or St. Margaret Mary's? Will another parishioner be Christ to that person, to reach out a hand to touch him, to welcome her? Or will that person come and go alone?
Perhaps we need the official ministry of greeters, but each one of you by your baptism is a "greeter," empowered to act in the name of Christ. By your smile, your charity and concern, you help heal others of the leprosy of loneliness, the burden of feeling alone and unloved. I am so glad we have/had the wine tasting event (tonight/last night), and I think we need more events like that (Thanks so much to Mike Charrier and Tim Brennan and the chefs for helping make it such an enjoyable evening). I am already looking forward to our pancake breakfast the Sunday before Lent. Could we not have hospitality Sunday twice a month? I know many of our volunteers are already committed to the Sunday suppers, but how I wish, hope and pray we could find just a few more volunteers to host even one extra hospitality Sunday.
I will close with this: Jesus told the leper, "sshhh ... don't tell anybody about me." But what did the leper do? In his joy in being healed, he went and told everyone! Literally, St. Mark writes that the leper went out to preach and proclaim (kerusseiv) the word (ton logon), the Gospel (Mk 1:45). How different we are! Ever since His Resurrection, Jesus has commanded and commissioned Christians up until this day, saying "go and make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28:19) . I very much like the options in the new translation for the dismissal, one of which is "Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord." But what do we do? Sshhh ... We keep it a secret! ... we don't mention the name of Jesus.
But if, in our personal prayer and in the Eucharist, we bring Him our true selves: "Lord, I show my wounds to you and uncover my shame before you," then He will be irresistibly drawn to us, reach out His hand and touch us, "Be healed. Be made clean." The change in us will be so real that it will appear on our face and be heard in our voice, and we will not be able to keep it a secret. We will tell others about Jesus Christ, so that they can be in communion with us, and discover the fullness of life in His name.
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 95
1 Corinthians 7:32-35
Mark 1:21-28
(Preached by Fr Paul Morris at St Margaret Mary's, January 28/29th, 2012)
The gospel we have just heard records the first impressions of the citizens of Capernaum towards a new resident. Jesus was born in Bethlehem; he grew up in Nazareth. However, after his baptism and the beginning of his public ministry, sometime around the age of 30, he chose Capernaum to be, if you will, a "basecamp."
Capernaum is a very beautiful location on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. I have been there a few times and have walked in the ruins of the synagogue mentioned today. The site is green and lush, covered in palm trees, azaleas, eucalyptus, and other flowers. The area is a migration stop for many species of birds. In the time of Jesus it would have been the size of a small village, with at most, a few hundred citizens.
Today, Jesus speaks and acts, and the reaction from the crowd is one of true astonishment. "With authority!" they say. The people were genuinely taken aback. Perhaps the older we get the harder it becomes to be genuinely surprised toward anything as if for the first time, but that is what the gospel today is suggesting happened - in the best sense, people were caught "off guard" - they were spontaneously brought to awe.
And they remark to one another: "He is not like the scribes…" I do not think we need to find in this remark something altogether disparaging. In the time of Jesus, the scribes were the professional interpreters of the Law in Jewish synagogues. They collected the religious writings of Israel and explained them to the people. But the authority they claimed was never, per se, entirely personal. Their authority rested on being learned interpreters who could trace the teachings back through the various rabbinic schools to Moses himself, the great Lawgiver of Israel.
But here, the authority of Jesus is spontaneously acknowledged by the crowd to be fundamentally different - it is personal. The text doesn't say that the crowds thought about this matter very long; it was quickly acknowledged by all.
In some ways, we have very little early biographical information about Jesus, at least in the common sense of that word. We do not know what he looked like. We do not know the specifics about his early education and formative family experiences - the gospel of Luke has a cryptic reference that says, "he grew in wisdom and stature, in favour with God and all the people" (Lk. 2:52) - but there is precious little else. But today we gain first glimpses of his incredible charisma. Like a snowball rolling downhill, as the pages of the gospels turn, his reputation and fame just keeps gaining momentum and getting bigger and bigger, as more and more people experience his uniqueness.
In saying that Jesus' authority was personal; there is both an objective and subjective sense to that. On the one hand, Jesus is not only an interpreter of God's law, however credible. He is the Messiah. In his person he is the Law and, simultaneously, he is the authentic interpreter of that Law. More so than in Mark, the Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as a new Moses, lawgiver, interpreter and judge, but there is spillover of this theme here too. His very life is normative toward knowing God's mind and will. For all the gospel writers, that is an objective fact.
But there is also a subjective dimension in the way people experienced how Jesus displayed that divine power, for despite entirely legitimate claim, he is incredibly humble; he will not even let the unclean spirit speak the truth of his identity. It knows - "I know who you are, the Holy One of God" - but he will not allow it to speak. Logic alone makes us concede that as the Messiah, he is accountable to no one for what he says or does - he is, after all, God!- yet on a subjective level, concerning how people experienced that divine power, Jesus achieves tremendous personal resonance because of his humility. In the manner he spoke and acted, he revealed that the God of Israel truly continued to be with and love what He had chosen ages ago in the time of Moses. A God of power who continues to reveal himself in gentleness, humility, and vulnerability. This is the authority that people experienced in the person of Jesus Christ at Capernaum.
Jesus travelled through the Galilee, presenting himself to individuals and small groups, one by one, day after day. He spoke about the things of God by employing common images from everyday life - farming, fishing, and nature - yet he also performed amazing miracles that clearly revealed his identity as the Messiah. He never imposed, but only proposed, his message about the Kingdom of God, and left people to decide for themselves. Over 3 years this authority reached a crescendo in the entire Galilee. People were truly drawn in as they experienced a qualitative difference that mattered to them not only theoretically, but very personally, in their individual lives.
In conclusion, I offer two points of reflection for us to consider over the next seven days:
First, we are all called to better match power and personal authority. Whether as parent, priest, teacher, employer, elected official, supervisor, mentor - whatever state in life - the power vested in any position of responsibility is called to be dovetailed with integrity of life and personal witness to the life of Jesus Christ. Yes, we will always have sin in our lives, in our world, and in our Church, but nevertheless, through God's grace, we are called to continually strive to better integrate who we are called to be with how we concretely live. This aspect of the call to holiness is always a grace, but something that must also be desired too.
Second, on a broader level, in the Church we have begun to speak about the urgency for a "New Evangelization," and that is certainly true. But I believe one of the difficulties to achieve this is that many people, even baptized Christians, have never really encountered the authority of Jesus Christ in a personal way. Said another way, if more people did know Christ personally, there would be little need for a new evangelization, at least as far as this mandate is directed to those who have already been baptized. I believe that until this is recognized, the Church in the West is prone toward continuing institutional contraction, including the painful experience of closing of parish churches, and increasing difficulty for the rest to make a go of it. For too many, even those baptized, even those who may regularly be part of the worshipping community, God has remained at the level of abstraction, an idea, or a God only of "convenience" that we are simply not willing to make sacrifices for. For the baptized, Jesus Christ's life is to be normative in directing the way we think, speak and act, on a daily basis. It has seemingly eluded many that God has a name and a face - the person Jesus Christ.
The great 20th century Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, once said, "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance. The only thing it can never be is only moderately important." Personally, I believe this is why the Church is "stuck" right now in the West. Christ's authority remains theoretical. But Jesus can never be merely "a" relatively important aspect of life, one choice amongst many on Sunday morning. Of course, he can if that is what we decide, but really, that makes little sense. If Jesus truly is God, then an "occasional" God, desired when convenient, will have great difficulty bearing fruit in our lives.
Of course we cannot simply create this relationship for ourselves either. Nor can anyone else make our mind up for us - not even God. To acknowledge who Jesus is requires grace. To live the Gospel requires grace. But this grace has to be responded to, naturally, truthfully, and as a personal response. It is something that begins "from above" (cf. James 1:17), but the desire for it must also originate from within us as a truly human existential need, in the belly, very much in the here "below." All of us need to pray for an increase of this gift of faith on a daily basis.
Let us pray for the grace to see and find the authority of Jesus Christ as normative in our lives. Normative to make daily, specific, and concretedecisions based on normative value his words and actions hold for us. We pray for that grace to be truly filled with wonder, awe, to hear and see the authority of Jesus Christ as if for the first time.
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), from his anthology, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, Toronto, Harper Collins Canada.
As Saint Paul says, "For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things…in order that I may gain Christ…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection…that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead." (Philippians 3, 8, 10,11).
Fourth Sunday
Vocations and the Call to be Prophets
(by Fr. Tim McCauley delivered at Holy Redeemer, Kanata)
I would like to begin by thanking Fr. Pierre for inviting the Vocations Director to speak on vocations this weekend at Holy Redeemer. I am also pastor at St. Margaret Mary's, but the bishop suggested that every once in a while I could visit other parishes. Holy Redeemer was chosen first ... do you know why? It's a very significant parish - it's big ... but not only that, it's fertile ground for vocations - of all the parishes in Ottawa, Holy Redeemer had the highest representation at World Youth Day. I was there and I was impressed! Also, by coming to Holy Redeemer I get to visit my friend Fr. Pierre.
The readings today invite us to reflect on the prophetic dimension of any Christian vocation. Moses speaks of a great prophet that the Lord will raise up. Jesus, who preaches and teaches with the authority of God Himself, is this Prophet foretold by Moses. The common vocation of every baptized person includes preaching the Gospel, being prophets who share the good news of Jesus Christ with others. Priests exercise our prophetic role in preaching the Gospel within the walls of the Church. You, the lay people, share the good news of Jesus Christ outside the walls of the Church - among your family, friends and co-workers.
In the second reading, St. Paul articulates his preference for the vocation of being unmarried, so that a man or woman can dedicate himself or herself totally to God. "The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord ... And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit" (1 Cor 7:32-34).
Without getting into a debate on this point, today I would like to comment that the vocations to marriage, priesthood or consecrated life actually re-enforce each other; we need each other. Interestingly, in the month of February, we honour both marriage and consecrated life. February 2nd, the feast of the Presentation of the child Jesus in the temple, is the World Day of Consecrated Life, and the Sunday before Valentine's Day, that is, February 12th, is popularly known as World Marriage Sunday.
Both vocations need each other. You married couples with children remind us priests that we are not bachelors. God created us for communion and community, and not for isolation, which is the situation of more than a few diocesan priests. On the other hand, priests and religious remind the lay people that God created us for Himself, that each of us has a vocation beyond this world where marriage is transcended in the perfect union with God in heaven. We also need each other in our common vocation as prophets. The Word you hear proclaimed by the priest or deacon every Sunday is the Word you share out there in the world.
For young people here today still searching for their life-long vocation, the example of the prophets can help you. First, the prophets teach us that we must confront our fears to respond to any call, whether to marriage, priesthood or religious life.
When God called Moses from the burning bush, and commissioned him to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, Moses was fearful and hesitant, saying, "Lord, I have never been eloquent ... I am slow of speech and tongue" (Ex 4:10). Moses even was so far as to say, "Lord, send someone else!" (Ex 4:13). But God insisted, saying, "Go! It is I who will assist you in speaking and will teach you what you are to say" (Ex 4:12).
I remember once hearing a priest preach on these very words, while I was sitting in the pew as a new convert at St. Francis Xavier Church in Brooklyn, NY. I identified with Moses' doubts, because I am very shy by nature, and slow of speech and tongue, and back then I knew I could have never have a job that involved public speaking, because of fear ... I guess I'll just spend my life as a slave to my fears ... so what happened? Jesus Christ saved me from myself. Jesus Christ, the conqueror of sin and death and hell, who casts out demons with a word, cast out fear from my heart and made me a new man. He will do the same for you, if you ask Him and seek His friendship. Then He will give you the faith that conquers the world.
Do all of you know your pastor's vocation story (or the assistant's Fr. John?) .... Then they should retell it! I know parts of Fr. Pierre's, how he also had his own doubts and fears to overcome, to say yes to God. We all do. My dear young people listening to me, in order to respond to any vocation, to be a mature Christian, you must face your fears. Only then can you act in freedom to respond to God's call.
To all the baptized people here, I would like to say: do not be afraid to be a prophet and speak the word of God. You already have a prophetic vocation by your baptism. And you have received the spirit of Pentecost, the spirit of boldness, in your confirmation. Do not be afraid to tell others about Jesus Christ.
Our civilization is in crisis, and in some ways dying, because there are no prophets and preachers, and those who should be speaking in the name of God are silent. How are we dying? Because we don't have hope; as a culture, we don't believe anymore in marriage and children, in a life-long vocation - just look at the statistics. Without this hope in the future, we descend into depression, despair, and living-death. We need to hear the Gospel of life, the word of God, and a message of hope, to re-awaken us.
There are probably people in your life right now who are waiting for you to speak to them about your faith. The greatest treasure that you possess as practicing Catholics is your faith. But you must open your mouth and speak in order to share it.
I saw an interview last week on EWTN with a man named Bryan Kemper, who almost died of a drug overdose as a young man and is now a leader in the pro-life movement. It all began with a Christian doctor in the hospital who told him, "God loves you. You are valuable to God. There's hope for you in Jesus." He had never heard that before in his life; no one had ever told him that he had value. My friends, your faith, when shared, has the power to change people's lives. So don't use the excuse of Moses, "I am slow of speech and tongue." God himself will give you the words and wisdom you need.
To the single young men here, please do prayerfully consider the call to be a prophet as a priest, to preach the Gospel inside the walls of the Church, to build up your brothers and sisters in the faith, so that they can be sent out to evangelize the world. I could have spoken about the desperate need we have for good holy priests to celebrate the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, but I confined myself to the role of preaching and proclaiming, with respect to today's readings on prophets.
For men discerning the call to priesthood, we have a group called "Quo Vadis" that meets once a month for prayer, fellowship, and a teaching. For both men and women, there is a discernment group called "Duc in Altem" that meets monthly. For the young women here, there has been talk of having a day of discernment, but I will be honest and say that we can't find anyone to help organize it. Perhaps Holy Redeemer could host something like that?
To anyone here who might be called to religious life, as a monk, nun or consecrated person: just as a body that is busy with exterior works needs a heart to give it life, so too does the Body of the Church need men and women at its heart who are totally consecrated to God, who pray without ceasing for a New Pentecost, so that the Holy Spirit will give life to the Word preached inside the Church, and inflame the hearts of the prophets in the pews, who will go forth and work new miracles of healings and conversions in the New Evangelization.
To Listen to Jesus and See Him
January 15th, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
"You called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness." So wrote St. Augustine in the early fifth century in his autobiography, The Confessions.
In today's first reading, God also called and shouted to the boy Samuel. The writer of the book of Samuel explains that in the time of Samuel, "a revelation of the Lord was uncommon and vision infrequent" (1 Sam 3:1). Interesting comment. We could say the same about our times. We profess to know God, but revelations and visions are indeed infrequent.
It is interesting to note how physically close that Samuel and Eli were to the presence of God. Did you catch the very first words of today's first reading? ... "Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was" (1 Sam 3:3). That would be like saying that Samuel's bedroom was in the storage room next to our tabernacle. For the Jews, the ark of God somehow held the real presence of God on earth. The ark corresponds to the tabernacle in Catholic churches where Christ is truly present - Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. Samuel and Eli lived and slept right next door to God but they didn't fully know Him - revelations and visions were infrequent. Could that happen to us Catholics as well? That we would be sitting in God's presence here in the Eucharist and the tabernacle, and still not know Him, hear Him or see Him?
Let us strive to listen to the Lord, so that we can see Him. In many ways, we must first learn to listen before we can see. Samuel, all the prophets, all the holy men and women of Israel over the centuries, culminating in the Virgin Mary, in one sense prepared the way for the miracle we read in today's Gospel - John the Baptist, Andrew and Peter, not only heard God but saw Him in the flesh in the person of Jesus. Notice how often John uses the word "see" in this short Gospel passage. Jesus said to them "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying (John 1:39).
There is a parallel in the Eucharist. In the first part of the Eucharist, we focus on listening to the word of God, which leads us into the second part of Mass, the liturgy of the Eucharist and Holy Communion, our personal encounter with Jesus the Lamb of God, in which we "see" Him and receive Him.
Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist before becoming a disciple of Jesus. Andrew had left his work as a fisherman to go, as it were, on a "retreat" with John the Baptist, where Andrew could learn to listen to the word of God and prepare for the coming of the Messiah. I would like to say a few words about retreats.
One way we can learn to hear and recognize the voice of God is by something called a retreat, a time away from our regular routine and obligations, a time to focus on the primary relationship in our lives, our relationship with God. Priests are required by Canon Law to go on one retreat per year of at least 5 days. I plan to take my retreat in February at the Trappist monastery of Genesee in northern New York (so I am going south for the winter. . ) Deacons in Ottawa also have one retreat per year for a weekend. There are other opportunities for lay people to take retreats. Some Carleton students, for example, went on a silent retreat 2 weekends ago at Galilee centre in Arnprior. There is a retreat center called Chamboise near L'Ange Gardien (30 minutes from here) where you can rent a cabin just for a day, a time of silence and prayer (I visited last December). Madonna House has a residence in Ottawa, near Island Park, where you can rent a room for 24 hours, to be with God and your Bible, in silence.
We are blessed, right here in Ottawa, to have upcoming two Cursillo retreats - one weekend for women in early March, and one for men in May. I would encourage everyone here to consider going on some sort of retreat in 2012. I know people are busy, but the good of your soul is worth investing two or three days a year on retreat.
I mentioned to you last week my friend Paul who had died, and whose funeral Mass I celebrated Saturday morning. He was 45, a father of 4 children, 3 of whom were adopted in the last 9 years. He was an example of a man who listened to God. He suffered, yes, but died in peace because he had found God and served Him with his life - as a husband, father, servant of His Church and community. I would encourage all of you - don't wait to seek a deeper relationship with God, to know Him, love Him, and serve Him. Don't wait because life is fragile and short. God is infinitely merciful, but we should not wait any longer to listen to Him and follow Him.
The more we learn to listen like Samuel, the more we recognize something very exciting - that the same God who speaks in the Scriptures is the one who calls my name and whispers in my heart. God also speaks to us through the Church, if we are listening. He speaks to us through His Word, especially when proclaimed in the Church's liturgy, and through the words of the Mass (and the new translation), which are based on Scripture and inspired by the Holy Spirit.
I want to thank you all for your attentiveness to the new translation. Almost everyone now is adjusted to the new phrase, "And with your spirit." Please do be attentive to little changes we might not notice at first. For instance, the prayer "may the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands ... " is exactly the same as before, except for the addition of one word - "holy" - "for the good of all his holy Church."
I will briefly mention one example of how God speaks to us through the words of the Mass and the new English translation. In today's Gospel, we hear John the Baptist call Jesus the "Lamb of God" (Jn 1:36). This phrase has made it into the Mass: "Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who takes away the sins of the world." "Behold" is a more majestic and evocative translation of the Greek "idou" than merely saying "this is" the Lamb of God. And the repetition of the word - "behold" the Lamb of God, "behold" Him, urges us to do just that - to behold, look, see, contemplate the one we listened to and now are seeing, hidden but present.
It's as if God is calling to us as He did to Samuel, almost shouting, from His Presence in the temple, in the tabernacle - yes, He is shouting out our names, telling us He knows us personally, and inviting us to "come and see" - to see Him, know Him, love Him, follow Him more closely.
I will close with this beautiful quote from St. Augustine's Confessions, with which I began, "Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace."
Epiphany
January 8th, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
What is Epiphany? Besides the wise men, does it mean anything in the imagination of the average person? In one sense, Epiphany is the fulfillment of Christmas. On Christmas Day, Jesus was revealed to the shepherds, but on Epiphany, He is revealed to all nations, represented by the Gentile wise men who came from a foreign country to adore the new born King. The psalm response alludes to this meaning of Epiphany:
"Lord, every nation on earth will adore you."
And it is true that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has spread to every nation, but now in our dark times we need the light of the Gospel to shine anew as part of the New Evangelization.
I would like us all to consider what we are taking away from this Christmas, and how we can go back to our daily life and routine, and share the Good News of Jesus with others. What do we learn from contemplating the Christmas mystery? Certainly we reflect on the miracle of the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, that God became a human being like us in all things but sin. But I think there is an even more basic message that we need to take away from Christmas and share with others. It is such an obvious truth, but one that our spectacularly technologically advanced society is in danger of forgetting - that life is worth living; it is good to be a human being.
The prophet Isaiah spoke of a "thick darkness" that covers the peoples (Is 60:2). When Jesus was born, this thick darkness was partly represented by King Herod, who ordered the murder of all the male children of Bethlehem, aged two and under (Mt 2:16). Today, we live amidst the thick darkness of a culture of death that murders unborn children in the womb, and is moving toward murdering the sick and elderly who are "useless" to society. Like the exhaust from cars on a winter's day, the toxic fumes of the culture of death fill the air, and we breathe it in without even being aware of it. The thick darkness clouds our minds to the point where people in our times start to wonder, "Well, if unborn children and the elderly have no intrinsic value, maybe I don't either. Is it good to be a human being?"
Have any of you seen the articles in the Citizen last week about the drug addiction crisis in First Nations communities in Northern Ontario? "In Fort Hope, 350 km north of Thunder Bay, as many as 75 per cent of adults in the community of 1,200 are addicted to the prescription painkiller (Oxycontin)." The reporter writes of "eerily empty streets as growing numbers of residents spend their days in a cycle of drug addiction, sleep and withdrawal" (Ottawa Citizen, December 31st, 2011).
Imagine you were sent up to Port Hope as part of your work. What would you tell them? Remember, you are a believing Christian and a practicing Catholic, who has just celebrated Christmas; today, with the wise men, you are kneeling spiritually before the Child Jesus, adoring Him as God in human flesh. From all this, what message would you give to the struggling community of Port Hope?
"Just be like us white people from southern Canada." We don't have an epidemic of addiction to Oxycontin or alcohol or drugs, so we must be doing something right. They just need the same hopes we have - get an education, go to university, get a good job and buy a house. It's so simple. Oh, wait a minute. You can't really do any of those things 350 km north of Thunder Bay. Does that mean they have no hope?
I think that we have more in common with these people than we would like to admit. If you look more closely, we will discover that our hope is very fragile; it is a like a thin veneer barely concealing an abyss of hopelessness. For more than a few people, if they lose their job, or get sick, or a loved one dies - all of a sudden their hope is shattered. Therefore, any message of hope that we would deliver to the First Nations people would be a message that we need to hear as well.
I am reminded of a Christmas hymn that I personally just learned this year, which we did sing before the 630 pm Mass on Christmas eve. It was written in the 17th century for the First Nations people, specifically, the Hurons, by St. Jean de Brebeuf. I will only sing one line, "O children of the forest free, O sons of Manitou, the holy child of earth and sky is born this day for you. Come kneel before the radiant boy, who brings you beauty, peace and joy. Jesus your King is born; Jesus is born. In exelsis gloria."
Do the people of Port Hope, Ontario and other northern communities know that Jesus is born for them, and that He wants to bring them beauty, peace and joy? Why don't they know this? Back in the 17th century, St. Jean de Brebeuf and the other missionaries, in their love for Jesus and for all people, were creative in bringing Jesus to the Huron people. So St. Jean actually changed the Christmas story - did you know this? He wrote, "the chiefs from far before him knelt, with gifts of fox and beaver pelt." No mention of gold, frankincense and myrrh, because these gifts meant nothing to someone living in the Canadian wilderness in the 17th century. But fox and beaver fur were special gifts.
What's my point? We need to find new ways to bring Jesus and the Christmas message to the many lost, lonely and hopeless people who live in the thick darkness of our culture of death, whether it is in the northern woodlands of our province, or the small apartments of our cities. The message of Christmas that most people need to hear might be even more basic than that of the divinity of Christ. It is linked to faith that life is worth living, that life is good.
At the end of each year, Pope Benedict gives a talk to the Cardinals and members of the Roman curia, as he looks back spiritually on the past year. As a very holy man and as the spiritual leader of the world-wide Catholic Church, our Pope definitely has good insights into the spiritual state of our world and our need for a simple message of hope. Listen to what he said; it is a longer quote but very rich in meaning:
"Those who are unloved cannot even love themselves. This sense of being accepted comes in the first instance from other human beings. But all human acceptance is fragile. Ultimately we need a sense of being accepted unconditionally. Only if God accepts me, and I become convinced of this, do I know definitively: it is good that I exist. It is good to be a human being."
He continues: "If ever (our) sense of being accepted and loved by God is lost, then there is no longer any answer to the question whether to be a human being is good at all. Doubt concerning human existence becomes more and more insurmountable. Where doubt over God becomes prevalent, then doubt over humanity follows inevitably. We see today how widely this doubt is spreading. We see it in the joylessness, in the inner sadness, that can be read on so many human faces today. Only faith gives me the conviction: it is good that I exist. It is good to be a human being, even in hard times. Faith makes one happy from deep within."
(Address to the Curia, December 22, 2011)
You must know that even if someone you love rejects you in some way, God will never reject you. And if ever you lose your job or fail in some way, you will never lose your importance and value to God. And if and when you grow old or frail or sick, you will remain the beautiful daughter, the beloved son, of this God who loves you more than you love yourself and desires your happiness more than you do. You and I have to be convinced of these truths from deep within, for our own happiness and well-being, but also to agents of hope for others and radiate Christ to them.
Bishop Fulton Sheen once commented on the last line of today's Gospel: the wise men "left for their own country by another road" (Mt ). They left by "another road", because those who meet Jesus Christ can't go back to the same life; they have been changed (Reference from Fr. Robert Barron's Catholicism DVD).
We have lived through Christmas. We have knelt before the Child Jesus with the wise men, and received His love. Now we return to our "own country," to school, to work, to our regular routines. But we return, as it were, carrying the Child Jesus whom we have received in Holy Communion, bringing his light to a dark world, and by our witness and words in the New Evangelization, leading others to this "radiant boy who brings us beauty, peace and joy."
Mary the Mother of God
January 1st, 2012
By Fr. Tim McCauley
I hope you all have had a good octave (8 days) of Christmas; today is the eighth day of Christmas and the feast of Mary the Mother of God (and our Mother too!). Did any of you have a chance to visit with family and friends, or to receive a visit from them? What was it like? When people saw you, did they light up like a Christmas tree, arms open wide and exclaim with joy, "Hi! So good to see you!" or did they pick up the phone or open the door and say, "Oh, it's you ... " Did you experience and offer the warmth of hospitality in a community of love, or did you experience something less in a frantic, busy and self-centered culture in which too often we treat other people like interruptions or inconveniences?
Mary the Mother of God has been teaching me about the importance of hospitality and building a community of love, especially in our families, but in our parishes as well. How has she been teaching me, you might ask?
After Christmas, I spent two days at Madonna House in Combermere, where I am an associate priest. It is a community of laymen, women and priests founded in 1947 by one of the truly great women of the 20th century, Catherine Doherty. She had a very strong mystical and practical devotion to Mary, having been consecrated to Mary, as taught by St. Louis de Montfort and promoted by Pope John Paul II. And she founded a community modeled on the life of Mary, Jesus and Joseph in Nazareth, a community of love, that puts flesh on the Word of God, that teaches by example how to live as a follower of Jesus in today's world.
Catherine's intense, mystical devotion to Mary (and Jesus) was translated into the everyday life of cooking, cleaning, hospitality, Mass and prayer, etc ... One way that Mary has taught me about hospitality and building a community of love is through this spiritual family named after her - Madonna House.
When we turn to Mary, let us begin with the basics of our faith. Recall at Christmas I mentioned something about faith in the divinity of Christ as the basis of our good feelings around Christmas. Faith comes first. What is our belief in Mary? Why do we honour her with this title "Mother of God"?
There was a fourth-century bishop named Nestorius, who objected to the common title of Mary as "Theotokos," God‑bearer or Mother of God. He suggested that Mary could be called Christ‑bearer or Mother of Christ, but not Mother of God. He reasoned that no one could give birth to God. Mary could only give birth to Christ's human nature. The mistake Nestorius made was to separate the divine and human nature of Jesus. Jesus Christ is one Person in two natures. Mary is the mother of the Person of Jesus; Jesus is God ‑‑ God the Son but equal in divinity to God the Father. Therefore Mary is the Mother of God. This was clearly defined an ecumenical council in 431 A.D.
There were other heretics in the early Church who claimed that Jesus was born not "of" a virgin but "by" or "through" a virgin, that He "came to earth with a heavenly body which only passed through the womb of Mary as water passes through a channel" (Mariology ed. Mark Miravalle, p. 176). If Jesus were born only by or through Mary, then He would not be fully human. But St Paul mentions in today's second reading that the Son of God was born "of" a woman (Gal 4:4). The words of the Creed also use the word "of." Jesus was incarnate and born not "by" or "through" the Virgin Mary, but "of" the Virgin Mary, meaning he took real human flesh from her; He took on a real human nature.
Just as a correct belief about Christ helps us celebrate Christmas, a correct belief about Mary the Mother of God and our Mother helps us put flesh on the Word of God and bring Jesus into our homes and our daily lives. Through Mary, Jesus took on a real human nature and He belonged to a real human family. Through Mary, in a mystical and practical way, Jesus wants to continue to take on human nature in you and me, and to belong to a human family in your family and mine, in our parish family.
Catherine Doherty loved to meditate on the life of Mary, Jesus and Joseph in Nazareth, and to draw practical conclusions for her own community. Consider how Mary practiced hospitality - first, toward Jesus, the moment she conceived Him and welcomed Him into her womb. Then she and Joseph welcomed Jesus into our world, wrapping Him in swaddling clothes and laying Him in a manger, and eventually making a home for Him in Nazareth.
We can imagine Mary practicing hospitality in her home in Nazareth, welcoming visits from extended family and welcoming the friends of the child Jesus. She was generous with the poor and needy of her village. All the villagers of Nazareth knew that they could always find comfort and a helping hand in the home of Mary and Joseph. Already on earth, Mary was acting as a mother for other people. As the Mother of God, she knew instinctively that she must have a mother's love for all God's people.
This "Marian" hospitality is modeled at Madonna House. When I arrived at there this past Monday, I was warmly welcomed, and people seemed genuinely happy to see me. One of my priest friends there lit up when I walked into the sacristy before Mass. I was surprised ‑‑ he seemed really happy to see me! Why was I taken aback by this warmth of hospitality?
Because like many of you, I have become unconsciously acclimatized to a spiritual winter. I believe that Jesus Himself prophesied about the times in which we are now living when He said, "the love of many will grow cold" (Mt 24:12). We can become acclimatized to a society which tends to value "things" over "people," and "having" over "being," a culture in which other people, who are our brothers and sisters, adopted sons and daughters of God, are often treated as so many interruptions and inconveniences: "Oh, it's you ... "
Mary tended the fire in the home of Nazareth - the fire for cooking but also perhaps for warming people on those cold January nights, even in Galilee. This fire that warms peoples' hearts is God's love, this love that became flesh and was born a child on Christmas day.
Perhaps our New Year's resolutions might include imitating the example of Mary the Mother of God, who welcomed Jesus into her womb and her heart, and with Joseph raised Jesus in a family, a community of love. Let us turn to Mary for help and inspiration - by praying the Rosary in a spirit of contemplation or even saying one "Hail Mary" with attention, and she will show us how, by practicing hospitality and doing little things exceedingly well for love of God, we can slowly transform our families, our parish and humanity more and more into a community of love.
A Blessed and Merry Christmas
December 25th, 2011
By Fr. Tim McCauley
I thought I might begin by wishing you all a "Merry Christmas" but then I thought, "How can a Christmas be merry if it is not blessed?" But if it is blessed, it will be merry as well. What does a "Merry" Christmas mean anyway? That everyone in our family must be deliriously happy and infectiously jolly? Because of Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer?
Let's start a new trend tonight/today and wish everyone a "Blessed Christmas." A merely "Merry" Christmas might mean that our fickle feelings are the basis of our faith. So often in our culture we are desperately chasing after good feelings. But we can have all the tinsel, trappings and fixings of a "Merry" Christmas with no heart, no soul, no meaning, no faith - - the pleasure principle that ends in nothingness and despair.
But a "Blessed Christmas" means that our faith is the basis of our feelings. Our faith in Jesus Christ makes Christmas blessed, a true Christian festival, a genuine celebration of joy in response to the infinite love of God for His creatures, that the Creator of the universe would humble himself to come into this world as a poor, weak, and helpless child. The marvel of this love is the source and foundation of a Blessed Christmas.
(630 pm Children, thank you for the pageant. You help bring Christmas to life for us, and remind us that our faith in Jesus is based on history, that all these events really took place in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago - God became a little child! And thank you children for your presence! Thank you parents for these children! We need more babies and children in our world! How can we be happy at Christmas without babies and children? You are the ones who remind us, in the flesh, by your small size, that God become small like you, this joyful miracle we celebrate at Christmas!)
About a month ago, some Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door (nice people). It was a Monday and I was not dressed as a priest, but I explained to them that I am the local Catholic priest. But they still said, (robotic voice) "Do you want some of our pamphlets?" "No. I'm the Catholic priest. I don't think your pamphlets will convert me." "Do you want some of our pamphlets?" "No, because I believe that Jesus is God and you don't!" Then we had a short debate ...
Do you know why the Jehovah's Witnesses have so little peace and joy this time of year? Because they do not celebrate Christmas. Why not? Because they do not believe in the divinity of Christ. They think that Jesus Christ is some sort of angel or lesser God, but not equal in divinity to God the Father.
What we believe about Christ has direct consequences on our eternal life and the quality of our life in this world. The Jehovah's Witness false beliefs about Christ prevent them from celebrating Christmas. I would say that for many secular people, their weak faith in Christ also prevents them from rejoicing. Let us all beg God for the gift of faith in Jesus so we can all enjoy a Blessed Christmas!
In the early fourth century, there was a heretical priest named Arius, who taught the same heresy that the Jehovah's Witnesses have recycled 1600 years later: that Christ was not fully God, that He was a lesser God, created in time by God the Father. The Church met in a general council that clarified the divinity of Christ in the Nicene Creed, that we will recite tonight/today, in which we profess our faith in Christ who was "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father" - equal to the Father in His divinity. When reciting the Creed on Christmas eve/day, we pause and genuflect before the Christmas mystery at the words, "and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man." God Himself - not one of his angels or deputees or emissaries - God Himself became one of us ... we pause ...
Jesus Christ, in His Person, united heaven and earth, divinity and humanity. Therefore, everything truly human - - our work and play, marriage and family - - can be touched and transfigured into something holy and god-like. The things of earth can be signs, symbols, sacraments of heaven. Bread and wine can become the Body and Blood of God. This is the teaching of the apostles, the Bible and the Catholic Church over the past 2000 years.
The English Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton had an appreciation for the human and divine elements of Christmas. "In his Christmas articles and poems, Chesterton turns calmly from ... turkey and plum pudding to the Persons of the Trinity and back again ... (He) wanted to prove that the comforting delights of Christmas, all the warmth of families around fire and tree, come directly from the colossal dogmas of Christmas" (Cradle of Redeeming Love, p. 39). All our good feelings surrounding Christmas come from our faith.
So when I eat my turkey and stuffing, gravy and cranberry sause (tomorrow night/tonight) I am going to thoroughly enjoy it because it is a sign of God the Father's love who feeds his children, of my mother's love who prepared; yes, I will enjoy it all, despite some problems in my broken family, because I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ ... true God from true God. When I sip the wine that accompanies the meal, I will relax and rejoice because I believe in the forgiveness of sins, and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, of which the good things of this life are a foretaste.
Everything in life tastes better after we eat the Body of Christ and drink His Blood, because if we have faith, we receive Love in Person. Imagine you are one of the shepherds coming to do homage to the new-born Messiah. You kneel down in reverence, then Mary picks up the baby Jesus from the manger and puts Him in your arms! Jesus is even closer when we receive Him in Communion.
How much joy can we find in turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce apart from Jesus Christ and Holy Communion? How much peace can we find in drinking wine apart from Him? Try as we might to have a Merry Christmas without a Blessed Christmas, and we will be depressed. But if we have Christ, we have everything. Mary and Joseph had a very poor first Christmas in the cave of Bethlehem, but they had Jesus, and an angelic choir (so do we!), peace on earth, and joy in their hearts.
I have many good memories of Christmas as a child and attending the Anglican Church with my family. But as a teenager, I stopped going, and for a few years, I never even went on Christmas! One year, I remember some friends and I went to see the horror movie "Cape Fear" - on Christmas eve - instead of going to Church! (See - all of you are good because you are here tonight!). I was not happy in those days, and I knew it. I kept searching, hoping and I started to pray ... until the day God gave me again the gift of faith in the divinity of Christ, and my life has never been the same. From rebellious teenager to a Catholic priest - a story for another day.
Thanks to Jesus Christ, His birth into this world, it is possible for me (and for you) to be born from above, to begin a new life, to re-live the joys of our childhood, and to either forget or forgive all the painful memories, as they melt away in the burning flame of God's love, mercy and forgiveness.
Why are people so slow to approach Jesus and enter into a relationship with Him? Consider the little baby in the manger. He is our Creator. While ruling the stars, He nurses at His mother's breast (Cradle of Redeeming Love, 129). Why did God become a child, instead of appearing on earth as a full-grown man? Because he wanted to be loved, not feared (Cradle of Redeeming Love, 247).
For those who might not yet have a warm, personal, living relationship with Jesus, then I invite you tonight, before you go to bed, to kneel down and pray. What you say is up to you. Just be honest. God knows your life and your past and every single thing you've done for good or ill. It is never too late to turn back to Him; God will never hold your past against you. Take some time to pray this Christmas. Come and kneel before the Child and look at Him (take a look at our creche in the corner, or perhaps you have one at home) ... Listen ... can't you hear the Child say without words, simply by his littleness, weakness and poverty: "I did not come into the world to condemn the world but to save it" (cf. Jn 3:17) - to save you. He wants to be loved by you. Why would you not love Him?
I've heard some people say that it doesn't feel like Christmas for various reasons, in part because we haven't had much snow. But we had a little dusting on the 23rd, (and it snowed overnight on Christmas eve!). In the Bible, precipitation is often a sign of blessings from heaven. And remember that the octave of Christmas lasts 8 days; according to the Church's liturgy, it is Christmas Day every day for the next 8 days! There's still lots of time for those special moments, for the Holy Spirit to descend upon us like gently falling snow on a Blessed Christmas based on faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Let us stand firm on this foundation, then God will give us peace, and if and when we need them, good feelings, so that we can be happy and joyful, and even jolly and merry. A Blessed and Merry Christmas to all!
Third Sunday of Advent
Rejoice and Accept the Gift
December 11th, 2011
I am going to begin by reading you a quote and asking you to guess where it comes from. Are you ready? "It's a warrant for my arrest - isn't wonderful? I'm going to jail! Merry Christmas!" You want another hint? It's from a Christmas movie ... Yes! It's a Wonderful Life. I mention this movie because the joy of the character of George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, echoes the Messianic joy that the Church proclaims to us on the third Sunday of Advent, as the birth of Christ approaches.
Most of you have seen this movie and know the plot: George Bailey sees what the world would have been like if he had never been born. Many people's lives were a mess; his wife never married; his children did not exist. Then he realizes what a wonderful life he had; he is filled with an intense desire to go back to his regular life despite all its challenges. He returns to town in an ecstasy of joy, yelling out "Merry Christmas" even to the buildings of his town. He rushes home to see his wife and children. Awaiting him is the bank examiner and someone with a warrant for his arrest. It's then he says, "It's a warrant for my arrest - isn't wonderful? I'm going to jail! Merry Christmas!" He rediscovered the joy of the wonderful life he already had. I will return to this point later.
The Church's liturgy, the readings and the rose-coloured candle and vestments are exhorting and imploring us to rejoice. From the first reading: "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God" (Is 61:10). And in the second reading, St. Paul urges the Thessalonians "Rejoice always" (1 Thess 5:16). In the psalm refrain we proclaimed,"My soul rejoices in my God".
What is joy? The technical definition of spiritual joy or happiness is the possession of God, known and loved as the supreme good (Paul VI Gaudete in Domino). I would like all of us to experience joy this Christmas, but it's not so easy. If only we could find a joy-filled Christian, ten people would take hold of that person and say, "let us go with you, for we can see by your joy that God is with you" (cf. Zech 8:23). Tell us your secret!
When Blessed Pope John Paul II came to Toronto in 2002, I was there to hear him say that "true joy is a victory, something that cannot be obtained without a long and difficult struggle. Christ holds the secret of this victory" (Papal Welcoming Ceremony, July 25th, 2002).
True joy is a victory, but at the same time, it is a pure gift from God. Consider the example of John the Baptist, profiled again in this week's Gospel. When he was a child in his mother's womb, and his mother Elizabeth met Mary pregnant with Jesus, John leaped for joy. Obviously, he did nothing in the womb to merit this gift of Messianic joy; it was a pure gift.
How can joy be both a victory and a gift? Partly because it is a struggle to accept the gift. Why wasn't George Bailey happy with his wonderful life? He had planned to travel the world and build skyscrapers, but he ended up spending his whole life in Bedford Falls - not very exciting. He could not accept the gift of joy in what he already had because of his false expectations of himself and life, because of his pride and misguided ambition. He had to undergo an intense trial and struggle - feared financial ruin, suicidal thoughts, prayer to God, a special grace from heaven - for him to learn to accept the gift of joy in the life and love he already had.
What is the secret of joy? Pope Paul VI ponders, in his letter on joy, "the secret of the unfathomable joy which dwells in Jesus." He writes, "If Jesus radiates such peace, such assurance, such happiness, such availability, it is by reason of the inexpressible love by which He knows that He is loved by His Father" (Gaudete in Domino). To rejoice we must accept this gift of love with a humble heart.
Humility is key. Consider again John the Baptist. In chapter three of John's Gospel, the Baptist says upon hearing of the revelation of Jesus the Messiah, "my joy is complete. He must increase and I must decrease." (John 3:29-30). For us to experience joy, we must imitate the humility of John the Baptist. It may sound silly, but we also have to say, "I am not the Messiah" (John 3:28). Of course each of us knows that, but sometimes we feel we have to work and worry all the time, as if we are the Messiah, the Saviour, and everything depends on us. No it doesn't. We are not God - what a relief! We are children of God. We can rejoice because our Father God is taking care of absolutely everything. Sometimes all He wants us to do is to accept the gift, to rejoice and be glad.
Mary is also a model for us of accepting the gift and rejoicing. On December 8th, we celebrated the feast of her Immaculate Conception, meaning that Mary was without sin from the first moment of her conception. We will hear more about her in the liturgy for the fourth Sunday of Advent, but already the Church is encouraging us to reflect on her example in today's psalm, which is taken from Mary's Magnificat. This is the voice of Mary that sings: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour" (Lk 1:47).
Mary experienced a pure and deep joy because in her sinlessness she could fully accept the gift and possess God completely. The catechism explains that all sin is disobedience towards God and lack of trust in His goodness (#397). Mary, being without sin, had a perfect trust in God and fully accepted the gift of His love.
Because of sin, it is a struggle for us to accept the gift of the inexpressible love by which we are loved by our Father in heaven; part of the battle required for the victory of joy is the struggle against our own pride and our lack of trust in God's goodness.
Because of the messiness of human life in this fallen world, in which all of us have been hurt in human relationships, we have an unconscious fear of accepting the gift because we suspect that there might be strings attached, limits and conditions. But God is not like that. He gives a pure gift, a free gift. He asks for our love, our gratitude, our joy. Why is this so difficult to accept?
One way that God heals our lack of trust, binds up the brokenhearted (Is 61:1) and releases the springs of Messianic joy is through the sacrament of reconciliation. When we confess our sins, we don't merely recite a grocery list of all the bad things we have said or done. God wants a relationship with us! So we bring before Him our struggle with our lack of trust, and the ways in which this leads us into particular sins. We ask Him to heal us of our doubts, fears, anxieties.
I mentioned this last week and I mentioned it again - come this Wednesday night to our Advent penitential service with individual confessions. Come and accept the gift of mercy and forgiveness that bears fruit in joy. Come and accept the gift! So that all of us can say, this Advent and Christmas, with the heart of Mary, the first person redeemed by Christ in her Immaculate Conception, "My soul also proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit also rejoices exceedingly in God my Saviour."
Second Sunday of Advent
Messianic Hope
By Fr. Tim McCauley
Children's homily at 930 am
Children, since the theme of my homily is Messianic hope, let me begin by asking you about some of your hopes ... Pope Benedict wrote a letter on hope in which he said we "need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day," but that our "great hope can only be God ... the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each of us and humanity in its entirety" (Spe Salvi #31)
Both today's first reading and the Gospel encourage us to "prepare the way of the Lord" who is coming. There is the immediate preparation of turning away from sin, repentance, confession and reconciliation. But there is a more remote, long-term preparation for God's coming, and that is - hope.
Children, I would like to give you a very brief lesson in hope, then talk a little bit more to the adults. You children already have much hope, because your whole lives are ahead of you. I encourage you now to dare to put all your hope in Jesus. St. Peter talks to us in the second reading about wanting to hasten, to speed up the second coming of Jesus (2 Pet 3:18). We should be like St. Peter. He worked hard as a fisherman, but also in his heart, he was hoping and praying for the coming of the Messiah. We can do both. We can study hard in school or work hard at our jobs, but at the same time pray "O come O come Emmanuel" "Come, Lord Jesus" because we know that on our own, we cannot find happiness, we cannot save ourselves or our families, we cannot create a perfect world.
Children, you may not realize this now, but many adults don't have much hope. Sometimes big people end up hoping in ourselves - in our own strength, our own intelligence, our own money, etc .. . But then we are not really hoping in God.
St. Peter and the Jewish people hoped in God, and believed that somehow, God would save His people, that He would send a great king or prophet to lead them, to give them freedom and peace. And God exceeded their expectations, as St. Peter slowly realized how in Jesus, God did not just send a king or prophet to save the people, but God came in person by taking on a human body, a human soul! No one in the whole history of Israel ever imagined that the Messiah, the Saviour, would be God Himself in human flesh! God is always greater than our hopes and expectations, because He is the God of the impossible.
Our hopes are much, much too small. Imagine if Jesus appeared to you now and asked, "what do you want me to do for you?" "Ah ... could you fix the pot-hole on my street?" And Jesus replies, "Yes, but there must be something else. Is there someone sick you would like me to heal? What about world peace?" "Nah ... that's too much to ask for ... the pot-hole would be great - thanks Jesus!" We must have much bigger hopes, a Messianic Christian hope!
Children, Advent is a time to hope in the God of the impossible, to hope like St. Peter and the Jewish people did before the first coming of Jesus. It is good to hope and pray that God will give us peace on earth, that God will feed the poor children of the world, that He will make all people brothers and sisters, that all people will believe in Jesus. All these things seem impossible. But remember, the Jewish people thought it was impossible for God to have a human body and a human soul, but God did that! God became a little child!
The more we hope in the God of the impossible, the more we are open to God, and we give God permission to act in our lives, and our world is transformed. Then we begin to see Jesus coming in many ways - in His Word, in the Church and the Sacraments, in the poor and other people. But we must dare to hope and dream! Enlarge and expand your hopes! Do not be afraid to put all our hope in Jesus!
Let me say a few more words to the adults. Sometimes people are tempted to lose hope this time of year, because we see the great chasm that separates our hope in happiness from the reality of life in our families and our society. We might have been hoping for a change in ourselves or in our families for years, but everything is still the same complicated mess, over the last 5, 10 or 20 Christmases, so what's different this year? Why bother? It's been 2000 years and nothing has changed, right? "Where is the promise of his coming, his 'advent'?" St Peter quotes the "scoffers" who mock at Christian hope in these words (2 Pet 3:4). Why bother hoping? Because we hope not in our limited human strength and intelligence, to change ourselves or others; we hope in the God of the impossible.
I want to mention one incident from the ministry of Jesus, observed by St. Peter, that dramatizes our call to Messianic, Christian hope. The daughter of Jairus was sick and Jairus was trying to ask Jesus to come and heal her. But then people came to him and said, "your daughter has died, why trouble the teacher any longer" (Mk 5: 35). Why bother Jesus any more? He can't do anything. The devil might tempt us in the same way. "This person is never going to change. The case really is hopeless. Why bother Jesus anymore?"
We can imagine Jairus and St. Peter looking at Jesus intently. What is he going to say? But Jesus replied, "do not fear, only believe", trust, hope !(Mk 5:36). He took the parents, Peter (and James and John) into the child's room, then he took her by the hand and said, "'Talitha cum', which means, little girl, I say to you arise!" (Mk 5:41) And the little girl, who was 12 years old, got up and walked around! Jesus raised her from the dead! All things are possible for God, for those who have faith. If God can become man and raise the dead, surely, with just a little openness and trust on our part, He can change a human heart.
Besides praying for an increase in hope this Advent, there's also something practical we can do. As I mentioned at the beginning, remote preparation for the coming of Jesus is hope, but the more immediate preparation, as we heard in today's first reading and Gospel, is to prepare the way of the Lord through repentance and the confession of sin.
We are hosting our Advent reconciliation service with individual confessions on Wednesday, December 14th. I encourage everyone to attend as part of your personal preparation for the joy of Christmas. An essential part of Advent is reconciliation. As our Archbishop puts it in his reflections in his new book on Mark: "Advent ... is a good time for a yearly spiritual check-up, the minimum for Catholics who wish to grow in the spiritual life" (Living God's Word, p 32). There will be visiting priests here who don't know you and probably will never see you again - it should be easier to celebrate the Sacrament of reconciliation with them!
And I dare say that receiving God's mercy in a personal and direct way, in the sacrament of reconciliation, increases our hope. We encounter Jesus Christ - the same Jesus who once came in the poverty and humility of human flesh in a manger in Bethlehem is the same Jesus who will come again in power and glory to judge the living and the dead is the same Jesus who comes to us in a hidden way in His Word and the Sacraments of the Church. As Archbishop Dolan of New York put it, Jesus comes in history, mystery and majesty - history 2000 years ago, majesty in the future, and in mystery in the present through the sacraments (Advent Reflections: Come Lord Jesus, p. 10).
The more we encounter Jesus in personal prayer, in others, in the poor, in the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist, the more we will love Him and a spontaneous cry will erupt in our hearts "O Come O come Emmanuel" "Come Lord Jesus!" Not only will we not fear His coming, we will long for it, living lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening his coming (2 Peter 3:11-12). Our Messianic Christian hope, our prayer and our longing, will unleash in our own lives and the lives of those around us, the transforming power of the God of the impossible.
First Sunday of Advent
The Art of Waiting, November 27th, 2011
By Fr. Tim McCauley
It is providential that the new English translation of the Eucharist coincides with the first Sunday of Advent and the Gospel in which Jesus commands us to "keep awake!" If there's one thing that changing the words at Mass can do, that's it - wake us up, and begin this Advent to learn the art of waiting for the Lord who is coming.
We have been saying the words of the current translation for about 40 years. How many people here remember anything else? How many remember the Latin Mass? Imagine the sudden change - one Sunday in Latin, the next in English! It must have been a shock to people, but also a delight, to hear these ancient words in our own tongue.
We are privileged to live in historic times, to witness the introduction of the new English translation. People may still wonder why we have a new translation. A good explanation is provided by the booklets at the entrance, and I have spoken about this before. Simply put, the last translation was always meant to be a temporary one. The new translation is more accurate, and I think over time you will discover how it is also more beautiful, reverent and conducive to prayer.
The new translation first requires us to wake up. We can no longer say without thinking, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." No, we will have to wake up and think about what we are doing before receiving the Lord of Creation in the Eucharist. We will have to pause, pay attention, and at first, read our response, (which will be awkward at first) "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed."
The new translation is faithful to the Latin original, and makes clear to us the scriptural source of this prayer - the centurion who told Jesus that he was not worthy for Jesus to come into his house, but if He only spoke the word, the centurion's servant would be healed. Jesus then praised the man for his faith, saying "not even in Israel have I found such faith" (Mt 8:10). The new translation invites us to wake up, and in this particular case, to call to mind and imitate the humility and faith of the centurion before we receive Christ in Holy Communion.
Advent is a time to wake up, to learn the art of waiting for the Lord, and the practice of hope. Jesus states in today's Gospel, "keep awake - for you do not know when the master of the house will come ... or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly" (Mk 13:35-36)
We can be asleep through habit, sometimes saying prayers at Mass without thinking. But we can also be asleep spiritually by being too busy for God. In another passage of the Gospel, Jesus talks about the days of Lot, when people were busy "eating and drinking ... buying and selling", until the day "it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them. It will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed"(Lk 17: 28-30).
The people of Sodom were busy, but they were spiritual asleep. Isn't it the same with us, especially this time of year? Almost everyone in our culture is busy eating and drinking, buying and selling, celebrating Christmas during the Advent season, instead of waiting. In fact, is not fair to say that in some ways we are so busy preparing for the coming of Jesus that we have no time for Jesus?
But in order to welcome Jesus at Christmas, if we expect to find any peace and joy at all, then we must learn the art of waiting and the practice of hope. St. Paul told the Corinthians, as we heard in the first reading, "you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 3:9). The Corinthians were busy living their lives just as we are, but they kept awake, waiting for Jesus to be revealed, hoping in His coming.
The art of waiting is not passive and useless; it accomplishes more than we can imagine. Waiting builds hope, and hope hastens the arrival of the Lord. Waiting is a form of staying awake, of saying no to the frantic busy-ness of eating and drinking, buying and selling. Saying "no" can be a great virtue. Think of the alcoholic who says "no" to the next drink. He is accomplishing a lot; he is working out his salvation!
When we think of waiting, don't think of boredom, like waiting in line. Think of waiting for a child to be born; think of waiting on a mystery to be revealed. Consider the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, waiting for her child to be born. The Church lovingly remembers her throughout the Advent and Christmas season, and we honour her in particular on December 8th, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and January 1st the solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.
Imagine for a moment if the wise men had come a month early to Bethlehem, saying, "let's get this party started!" Mary replies, "but my hour is not yet come. The child is not yet ready." But the wise men insist "We want to see the baby NOW! We want you to open your gifts NOW!" So they drag her off to a modern doctor to perform a C-section so that Jesus can be born in November instead of December 25th, because they just couldn't wait to celebrate the first Christmas!
We think that would be ridiculous for the wise men to celebrate Christmas in November, but that's OK for us - to completely skip Advent, the season of preparation, of waiting and hoping. It's OK for Magic 100 to play Christmas music in November. It's OK for us to eat, drink, decorate and celebrate NOW as if it were Christmas, because of our insistence on immediate gratification.
Listen, I look forward to celebrating Christmas, but let's observe Advent first, and be counter-cultural by saying NO to Christmas in Advent. For Christmas to be special, we must prepare, and live Advent well.
Families can prepare and learn the art of waiting by praying together more in Advent, even for a few minutes a day. Or Scripture reading. People can try not shopping on Sunday and resting instead, learning to "waste" time with God, or just "hang out" with family and friends. Just being. Perhaps even looking out the window at gently falling snow. Let's all try something different to learn the art of watching, waiting, preparing for Someone who is coming.
I mentioned the centurion whose prayer we use before receiving Communion. He also had to wait for Jesus. The centurion was stationed in Capernaum, which Jesus made His home base for his ministry in Galilee. But when the centurion's servant fell ill, Jesus was away preaching the Gospel. What could the centurion do? Neither he nor the "doctor" could heal the servant. The centurion had to pray, wait, and hope, for Jesus to return. We must do the same.
The Archbishop is encouraging us to re-discover the art of waiting in silence even during Mass. Following the general instructions on the Roman Missal, he is urging us to pause for longer moments of silence during the Eucharist (there are copies of his letter at the entrance). Christ truly comes to us through His Word and in Holy Communion. Silence is a good way to stay awake, to watch and wait, to better receive Him.
In silence, something will begin to stir ... a longing ... underneath it all - all the eating and drinking, the buying and selling, the desperate and frenzied pursuit of happiness through consumerism ... we discover something so simple, so basic, a truth that we have forgotten in our culture ... our need for God.
And then we might learn to pray, in the words of Isaiah from the first reading, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down" (Is 64:1). "Come, Lord Jesus, because I cannot heal or save myself. I know I am not worthy to receive you, but I trust in your mercy and love. Come also under my roof, to our house, our family, and our souls shall be healed. "
Christ the King, November 20th, 2011
By Fr. Tim McCauley
At the end of time, all creation be subject in obedience to Christ the King. In both the second reading and the Gospel, we look forward to the end of time, which is appropriate today on the feast of Christ the King, the end of the liturgical year. (Next week, don't forget, we begin not only a new year in the Church, with the first Sunday of Advent, but also, a brand new experience of the Eucharist with the new English translation).
In the second reading, St. Paul writes that all creation will be subject in obedience to Christ the King, and through Him, to the Father, so that God may be "all in all" (1 Cor 15 ). This proclamation should be an occasion for rejoicing; instead, it presents to modern ears a motive for apprehension. "Subject" in "obedience"? We shrink back in horror: "what about my freedom, my rights?"
Think of a lost sheep, harassed and helpless. The Good Shepherd comes and puts the lost sheep on his shoulders. He leads the other sheep to repose in fresh and green pastures, peace near restful waters (Ps 23). Is it a terrible burden for the sheep to be gently led to fresh and green pastures? The Good Shepherd and the King are one and the same person -- Jesus Christ our Lord. It is one and the same act of trust both to follow the Shepherd and obey the King.
In fact, we can only be kings in our own domain and reign with Christ if we first learn to obey Christ. What does it mean to be kings in our own domain? To rule over ourselves, for our feelings and desires to be obedient to faith and reason. We must of course pay attention to our feelings and desires, but not be ruled by them.
An example. Let's say one morning you wake up and you are feeling sad, for no particular reason. Should you submit yourself in obedience to this feeling and say, "Gee, I'm feeling kind of sad. Let me submit myself to this feeling and meditate on all the reasons I should be sad, then follow these feelings in a downward spiral of depression and despair -- yes! Great idea! That's what I'll do!" That's what it means to be ruled by feelings and desires rather than faith and reason.
As an aside, I would like to suggest that the wicked who are condemned by Jesus in the Gospel ("I was hungry and you gave me no food") are people who simply follow their natural feelings of selfishness, without thinking of others, people who in their easy egoism neglect the commandments of Christ the King.
By contrast, I would like to thank and praise everyone in this parish who helps to feed Christ in the person of the poor and assists at the Sunday suppers. Thanks to everyone who has worked so hard to prepare for tomorrow's/today's bazaar. Now you can all help by attending the bazaar (the fundraiser for the Sunday supper) and buying something!
Now back to that feeling of sadness. Instead of being ruled by it, we should subject this feeling of sadness to obedience to Christ our King, as St. Paul writes - to take every thought captive in obedience to Christ (2 Cor 10:5), and to tell Him about it in prayer. And if we listen, we will hear Him say, "Do not be saddened this day; rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength" (Neh 8:10) and "my peace I give you" (Jn 14:27).
What is wrong with this obedience to Christ? It gives us consolation and peace. As we grow in trust, we will discover that this is true with obedience to Christ in every aspect of our lives.
When God created human nature in the beginning, our bodies were obedient subjects of our souls, our feelings and desires were guided and perfected by faith and reason. The way that you and I experience life today is not the way God created us in the beginning. We must be very clear on this. The "fall of man", the historic fact of the disobedience of Adam and Eve in rebelling against God, has wounded and weakened the human nature we have inherited from them. "In Adam, all die" St Paul writes in today's second reading (1 Cor 15 ); through Adam we have inherited a wounded nature, subject to death.
Another way of putting this is: when Adam and Eve obeyed God, their "lower" nature -- their bodies, feelings, desires -- obeyed them. But when they disobeyed God, their own bodies, feelings and desires betrayed and disobeyed them.
The damage is repaired and the process reversed through the death and Resurrection of Christ. "Just as in Adam all die, so in Christ, all will be brought to life" (1 Cor 15 ). If we learn to obey Christ our good Shepherd and our King, then once again, through a slow process of God's grace and our struggle, we will find rest and repose, as our bodies become obedient subjects of our souls, and our feelings and desires submit again to the guidance of faith and reason.
In our culture, we are living amidst the ruins of a failed experiment, which we might call "Freudianism," the theory that our unhappiness comes from repressed desires; just release them, follow your feelings, and you will be happy! For example, don't be constrained by the repressive institution called marriage. Divorce your wife and marry someone younger if that's what will make you happy!
Our culture conducted a radical experiment with this theory, especially in the second half of the 20th century. Did it make people happier? Are we all happier because of failed marriages, broken families, and innocent children murdered in the womb? I don't think so.
Perhaps, in these early years of the New Millenium, it is time to base our lives on a more successful formula, tried, tested and true over 2000 years -- obedience to Christ our Shepherd and King.
But which Christ should we follow, since the modern world offers so many versions? The true Christ, obviously, but which one is He? There's the Muslim, Mormon and Jehovah's Witness Christ, who is a great teacher, but He is not God and has no power to save us, so I would not recommend following Him. There's the Calvinist Christ, a rather severe figure who predestines people to hell. Then there's the secularist and humanist Christ, who always approves of our feelings and lifestyle choices, and never demands that we change or repent. It sounds more like the projection of our own wishful thinking rather than the Jesus of the Bible.
How do we know who is the real Christ whom we must obey in order to find life and peace and happiness? Jesus knew that after He ascended, wolves would come to scatter and devour the sheep, so He set us His Church to guard and protect His sheep. The Church keeps alive the true face of Jesus and allows us hear His words and teaching. We can be sure that we are following Jesus our Shepherd and King when we follow the Church that He founded.
In our times, we jealously guard our freedom and we are very hesitant to obey because we lack trust. So I would encourage each of you to conduct an experiment. We experimented with Freudianism, the so-called "freedom" of self-indulgence, in the 20th century, and it did not make us happy. Why not experiment once again with Christianity? Begin to live by all the teachings of Christ and the Catholic Church and see what happens. I think you will be surprised to discover that the effort of obedience will bring you to the peace of fresh and green pastures.
I'm almost out of time, so I will make one final point. Christ our King wants us to reign as kings in our own domain, but not alone: to reign together, to help each other. We need the Church not only because the Church keeps alive the true face of Jesus and allows us hear His voice. We also need the Church because we need each other. (I will have to expand on this in a later homily). By sharing our joys and struggles with one another, perhaps even in some sort of small Christian communities, or simply with a Christian friend over coffee, God gives us real grace to submit our fickle and wayward feelings and desires, through faith and reason, to Christ the King. Then God's kingdom will come among us and within us, and even on earth we will begin to rejoice that we are co-heirs with Christ of "an eternal and universal kingdom, a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. "
November: The Month to Pray for All Souls
By Fr. Tim McCauley
9:30 a.m. Children's Mass
This is the month of November. For some people, it might be their least favourite month, with February a close second. But we can make November into a very important month by thinking about all the saints and praying for all souls. Each November 1st, All Saints day, we celebrate all the saints in heaven. Each November 2nd, All Souls, we pray for all those who have died; indeed, we remember them throughout the month of November. I am promising myself to pray each day especially for my grandparents, and I have put their names on my fridge to remind me.
QUESTION: Let me begin by asking, "what happens when we die? Straight to heaven?" In his encyclical on hope, Pope Benedict commented that most of us are not perfect enough to go straight to heaven, and most of us do not totally reject God and choose hell. Most people probably go to purgatory (Spe Salvi #46).
The youth catechism offers an insightful way of understanding Purgatory, and I quote: "When Peter had betrayed Jesus, the Lord turned around and looked at Peter: 'And Peter went out and wept bitterly' - a feeling like being in purgatory. Just such a purgatory probably awaits most of us at the moment of our death: the Lord looks at us full of love - and we experience burning shame and painful remorse over our wicked or 'merely' unloving behaviour. Only after this purifying pain will we be capable of meeting his loving gaze in untroubled heavenly joy"
(Youcat #159)
Everyone who is in purgatory ends up in heaven - a very important point! In the imaginative vision of the Italian poet Dante, purgatory is a mountain and all the souls are doing penance as they climb the mountain toward heaven.
QUESTION: Once our souls arrive in heaven, then what happens? We stay in heaven forever with our souls happy with God while our bodies lie in the earth? Not exactly. The souls of the saints in heaven are happy with God, but a greater happiness awaits them. St. Paul writes in the second reading that at the end of time, when Christ comes again, "those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise, and then those of us who are still alive will be taken up in the clouds, together with them; to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thess 4:16-17).
"Those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise. " To rise with their bodies - not the same physical body we have now, but an immortal, spiritual body. Then, and only then, will God be finished creating us. God planned in the beginning that we would only live on earth a limited time in these bodies, in our first life, which is also a sort of test. God is testing us to see whether or not we are going to choose to love Him and others. Those who say "yes" will go to heaven, then later be reunited with their glorified bodies. Those who say "no" will end up reunited with their bodies in hell.
In the meantime, we pray for all those who have died. If they don't need the prayers and we say them, God will use them for someone else. But if our loved ones need the prayers and we never say them, they will suffer longer for no reason. In Dante's Purgatorio, many of the personalities that the character Dante meets in Purgatory beg him, when he returns to earth, "please tell my husband/my wife/my children to pray for me!"
The catechism reminds us that the souls in Purgatory cannot help themselves, but we can help them. The youth catechism states, "Through our fasting, prayers and good works, but especially through the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, we can obtain grace for the departed"
(Youcat #160). A brief note to the adults: I encourage you to have Masses celebrated for departed loved ones. The idea is that the infinite merits of Christ, that He earned for us by His death on the Cross, are applied to the soul of the deceased, as if in that particular Mass, Christ is saying to God, "Father, I offer my life for _____ (this person). "
My third and final QUESTION is: What is heaven like? In today's Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the ten bridesmaids. I don't want to go into detail in this parable, in which Jesus encourages us to be watchful and ready, not to grow drowsy in our spiritual life, but continue to pray and do good works, for we do not know the hour of our death nor the time of His second Coming. But I would like to mention that in this parable, heaven is like a wedding feast, celebrating the "marriage" of humanity and divinity. Heaven is a place of pure joy, happiness, thanksgiving.
The youth catechism puts it this way: "Eternal happiness is seeing God and being taken up into God's happiness. In God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit there is unending life, joy and communion. To be taken up into it will be an incomprehensible happiness for us (human beings). This happiness is the pure gift of God's grace, for we (human beings) can neither bring it about ourselves nor comprehend it in its magnitude" (Youcat #285).
We need to prepare for this happiness, to keep our lamps lit by prayer and good works, so that we can enter the wedding feast of heaven. We also need to learn again how to long for heaven. When St. Jean de Brebeuf and the Canadian martyrs came to Canada to preach to the Huron natives, they told them about heaven, hell and purgatory. Some of the Hurons did not want to go to heaven, because they were afraid of falling out of this place in the sky; others asked if there would be tobacco in heaven, for many were attached to smoking their pipes!
We laugh and think we are so much more advanced than these unbaptized Hurons. Yet despite our ipads and cellphones, we are little better than refined sensualists and sophisticated materialists with embarrassingly clay feet, the wings of our Christian imagination drooping wearily down to earth, our eyes fixated obsessively on the passing trinkets of this world.
As part of the New Evangelization and our re-encounter with the living Person of Jesus Christ, we need to lift up our eyes to the mountains, to detach ourselves from "virtuality", and rediscover reality, God, and heaven through times of silence and prayer (see Pope Benedict's homily for vespers at the Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno, October 9th, 2011).
The souls in purgatory know and feel that they are approaching the light, and despite all the purifying sufferings they undergo, none of them would ever want to return to earth, which they see as a land of darkness and ignorance of God. May the memory of the souls in purgatory and the saints in heaven lift up our thoughts, our imagination and hearts to soar again and contemplate the beauty of heaven.
The Renewal of the Priesthood of the Ordained and the Baptized
By Fr. Tim McCauley
The renewal of the Church must include the reform of the clergy, and each priest's commitment to conversion and on-going formation. In the first reading from Malachi, God rebukes the priests saying, "And now, O priests, this command is for you ... you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instruction; you have corrupted the covenant (Mal 2:1,8)
In the Gospel, Jesus denounces the religious leaders of His time, the scribes and Pharisees, for their hypocrisy, saying that "they do not practice what they teach ... They do all their deeds to be seen by others" (Mt ). His words require all religious leaders to examine our conscience, to make absolutely certain that we do practice what we preach. In my own past life, I have been very hurt by the hypocrisy of certain religious leaders, and I determined a long time ago that even if I never attain holiness or even a measure of some "success", the least I can is strive, with God's help, to always be sincere.
We have all heard in the media over the past few years about all the problems in the Church and among the clergy. It is especially scandalous when priests fall into serious sin. All the baptized are called to holiness, but priests even more so. The overwhelming majority of priests are good men, even a few bad ones are too many.
Sometimes I wonder: even if we priests fail to be holy, can't we all at least be normal and healthy, kind and decent human beings? That should be easy, shouldn't it, with all the grace that God gives us through the sacraments? But the older I get, and the more I look around me at the state of humanity especially in our modern culture, I begin to ponder more deeply.
How many of you know married couples who have had a visibly joyful, fruitful and apostolic marriage for 20, 30, 40 or more years? That should be easy, shouldn't it, with all the grace that God gives us through the sacraments? Why is it so difficult, in our culture in particular, to be a good husband and father, a good wife and mother, a good priest? Our entire society has been passing through an unprecedented breakdown of human relationships - first, with God, in the widespread abandonment of religious practice, then next, with everything else. When we suffer a broken relationship with God, everyone and everything else suffers - marriage, family, priesthood. I am not trying to blame problems in the priesthood on our culture, but simply stating that priests are also children of this age, products of the crisis of faith, the confusion about human nature and sexuality, and the decomposition of the family.
I am trying to do my part in my small role in the diocese as vocation director and a member of the presbyteral council, to offer some concrete proposals for the renewal of the priesthood. We need to strengthen the priesthood of the ordained so that we can in turn fortify the priesthood of the baptized and your mission in the world. My priesthood exists to serve yours.
As an aside, one of the changes in the new translation relates to priesthood, so I will mention it here. The response to the greeting, "The Lord be with you" is changing. (There are photocopies of the new translation at the entrance, as well as booklets explaining the changes). The response was "And also with you," but starting on November 27th, the response will be "And with your spirit. " Why the change? First, because it is an accurate translation of the Latin (et cum spiritu tuo). Most other major languages have faithfully translated the Latin: in French, "et avec votre esprit" and in Spanish "y con tu spiritu" and in Italian, German and so on.
But there is also a theology behind this language. "The name ‘spirit' refers not to the soul of the priest but to the Spirit he has received through the laying on of hands" through priestly ordination (Mystical Body, Mystical Voice: Encountering Christ in the Words of the Mass by Christopher Carstens and Douglas Martis, 135). This distinction of a priestly "spirit" reminds us that the ministerial priesthood (of the ordained) differs in kind and not only in degree, from the priesthood of the baptized. Priests represent Christ and act in persona Christi, in the person of Christ.
Holding this treasure in earthen vessels, priests must always be humble servants. As Scripture states, "No one takes this honour (of the priesthood) upon himself, but only when called by God" (Heb 5:4). The youth catechism adds, "the distinguishing characteristic of every authentic priest ... is humble astonishment at his own vocation" (#250). At times I am still astonished that God would call an introvert like me to publicly preach the Gospel. It reminds me that miracles are possible! Young men who might feel the call to priesthood should never be intimidated or discouraged by their perceived inadequacies.
Once again, the priesthood of the ordained exists to serve the priesthood of the baptized, and priests and people need to work together to renew the Church and evangelize the world. I serve you so that you can serve the world. I preach the Gospel to you, feed you with the Body and Blood of Christ, absolve you of your sins in the name of Christ, so that more and more you can be the Body of Christ in the world, so that you can radiate and communicate Christ to others by your words, deeds and very presence.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, despite all our personal problems and sufferings, at least we know something of Jesus Christ and His love for us! At least we have some assurance of life after death, because of the Resurrection of Christ! Think of those who never come to Church and do not know Jesus! They may have full bellies, warm houses, and big screen TV's, but many, many of them are empty inside, lost, lonely, hurt, angry, despairing. You need to be missionaries to them and mediators of God's love and grace. As the priest is to the people, so are you to the world. The priest is a mediator. He listens to God and preaches to the people. He presents their prayers to God. You must do the same, and be "priests" for the world.
I would like to end with some good news in the Church, as seen in our new vocations poster I have here (it is also posted at the entrance). Thanks to the prayers of many people, I am happy to report that we have 10 men studying for the priesthood (probably the most at any one time in the past 20 years). Despite all the trials and purifications through which the Church is passing, there are still real signs of holiness and divine favour in the Church, as there has been in every age of history. In the face of such continual negative media coverage, there are still men coming forward to offer their lives in service as priests.
God is even calling young men from our parish and Carleton University to be priests, to make that transition from engineering or computer science to theology. One young man is already planning to pursue religious life; another has already asked me for the application form from the diocese! I would like all the young men in our parish to seriously consider the call, that Jesus might be saying to you personally, "Come follow me. Do not be afraid. " I ask everyone to please pray for our priests, seminarians, and an increase in vocations. For the Church to flourish, we need both priests and people to be committed to the call to holiness and a more faithful following of Jesus Christ.
And finally, let us work together to counteract the hypocrisy that Jesus denounces so vehemently. Let us follow the example of Jesus; even His enemies acknowledged that he was "sincere" (alethes - true) and taught the way of God in accordance with truth (Mt 22:16). He himself taught us "Be simple" (akepaioi) (Mt 10:16). Let us be simple and sincere in our prayers, whether our private prayers at home or here in the Eucharist.
Jesus also instructs us to "put out into the deep" (Lk 5:4) and to "Dig deep" (Lk 6:48). Now is not the time to drift away from Christ and the Church, but go deeper in our faith by reading the Bible, studying the catechism, sharing with others in small groups. All priests need on-going formation, to continue to pray and study, and I mean all priests, especially the ordained but also you, the priesthood of the baptized, in your mission in the world. May we all grow in a faith that is deeper and more sincere, capable of giving life to others.
Love of God and Love of Neighbour
By Fr. Tim McCauley
More than ever, I realize that we cannot separate what happens upstairs in the Church and what happens downstairs. You all know what happens Saturday night and Sunday morning upstairs here in the Church? We worship God. And you know what happens downstairs every Sunday night? We serve others with our Sunday suppers. I attended for the first time last Sunday, and I was very touched and impressed by the loving service of the volunteers, the fascinating conversation around the table with some of the guests, the lasagna, salad, bread and cake ... mmmm. (We had two great nights in a row: the parish pot luck on Saturday and the supper on Sunday).
We cannot separate love of God and love of neighbour, worship and service. Pope Benedict wrote about the unity of these loves in his first encyclical "God is Love" : "Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become one body, completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbour are now truly united ... the usual contraposition between worship and ethics (or "service") simply falls apart ... " (#14).
Sometimes I wonder what it was that sent me on 8 mission trips to Central America, (mostly El Salvador). It's worth mentioning this on World Mission Sunday, which includes not only missions to the Global South, but also our mission to share the Gospel with our own friends, neighbours and co-workers (but that will be a topic for another time).
I was motivated in part by the powerful testimony of Dr. Andrew Simone, founder with his wife Joan of Canadian Food for Children, who spoke at the Seminary one day back in 1998 (I believe it was). But I was also inspired by the missionary dynamism of what I was receiving every day at the Seminary, which I had not received for the first 25 years of my life, since I was not Catholic - the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion. You might ask, "what's the ‘missionary dynamism' of Holy Communion?"
The Holy Father writes, "the Eucharist draws us into Jesus' act of self-oblation (meaning His self-offering). More than just statically receiving (Jesus), we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving" (#13). Holy Communion is not static - as if we are receiving something dead, a mere piece of bread - but dynamic, since we receive a Person, Jesus Christ. If we truly realize this, His love will impel us, compel us to share that love with others, those beside us in the pew, or the poor of our neighborhood or our world.
To be a Christian means to be a follower of Christ, to live as Jesus lived, to follow His example of worship and service. Jesus served others His whole life long: "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give His life" (Mt 20:28). He washed the disciples' feet; He healed the sick; He ate with sinners. To be a follower of Jesus Christ, we must love our neighbour and share with the poor. If we don't, then we are not really Christians.
But Jesus did not separate love of God and love of neighbour. In His human nature, He also worshiped God the Father in public religious ceremonies. He attended the synagogue every Saturday - that's what Scripture reports: it was his "custom" (Lk ). He journeyed to the Temple for the major Jewish feasts ( ). At the Last Supper, He instituted the Eucharist and commanded the disciples, "Do this in memory of me. " Ever since that day, Christians have done this, gathering for the Eucharist every Sunday (or more recently, on Saturday evenings).
I encourage everyone to follow the example of Jesus in His public worship, in His fidelity in attending the synagogue every Saturday, by making the commitment to attend Mass every Sunday (or Saturday). As the author to the letter to the Hebrews wrote, "do not stay away from our assemblies, but encourage one another" (10:25). Know that in this place you are loved and you are missed if you are not here. Each one of you is a gift to the community; each one of you is important. Come and bless us with your presence. Come and express your love for God and receive His love in abundance.
God commands us to worship Him and to love Him with all our heart and soul and strength. Pope Benedict attempts to answer the question: can love be commanded? He writes, "in the Church's Liturgy (public worship), in her prayer, in the living community of believers, we experience (my italics) the love of God, we perceive his presence and we thus learn to recognize that presence in our daily lives. He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing" (#17).
I spoke last week how we show Jesus we love and venerate Him at Mass with our bodily gestures of bowing. For those who were not here last week, I mentioned that in the new general instructions on the Mass, the faithful are being asked to bow your heads just before receiving the host in Holy Communion, and to make a profound bow when the priest genuflects at the consecration, and I can remind you by saying simply, "please bow. "
Briefly, on this topic of changes in the Mass, there is a minor yet long-awaited clarification about when to stand after the presentation of the gifts. A parishioner raised this point with me in September, and I'm glad there are clearer guidelines in the new instructions. When the priest says, "Pray, brothers and sisters that our sacrifice might be acceptable ... ", in every parish, there seems to be confusion - when do we stand? Before, during, after the prayer? The liturgist Fr. Bill Burke remarks in his notes on the new instruction that while praying out loud at Mass, we stand, not sit. Therefore, we are being asked to stand for this prayer, and in order to remind you, I will simply say, "please stand. " We will get used to these minor changes in time, but let us continue to be patient with ourselves and each other.
All these "technicalities" of words and gestures in the Eucharist serve the greater purpose of love. I noticed at the Sunday supper how the volunteers served the plates of food with a smile. Is that a mere technicality? No! A smile at a supper or a bow at Mass are important signs of love.
By the way, one of the women guests last Sunday asked me if I had any pull around here. "Not as much as you might think, but what can I do for you?" She said that they used to have entertainment and was wondering if that could be brought back. Well, I said I would mention it. The main thing is we need volunteers to cook, set up, serve, clean up. If we have that covered, perhaps we could do more ... let's see ... I'm not very good at telling jokes but I could lead some prayers. I would be willing to lead a 10 minute prayer service once a month, if someone could help me with that. Maybe even once a year, each person with a hidden talent for music or acting or singing could make an appearance. They are a very forgiving and appreciative audience!
What a blessing it is to spend even a little time serving the poor, or simply hanging out with them. They remind us that we are all poor before God, as creatures dependent totally on Him. And yet, how loved we are in all our poverty, weakness and dependence! If we are poor in spirit, how filled we are with God's love for us in Holy Communion. And when we receive the Person of Jesus in Communion upstairs in the Church, how His love impels us to go share it downstairs, or back home, at school or work, in Ottawa or on a mission trip, to tell others that Christ is the Son of God, risen from the dead, alive in the Church, active in the world, teaching us all the way to happiness - to love God with all our heart and soul and strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.
St. Margaret Mary Feast Day
By Fr. Tim McCauley
Wednesday I attended the funeral of Fr. Bob Bedard, founder of the Companions of the Cross and perhaps the best known priest of Ottawa. It was said of him that he always found new ways to proclaim Christ's love for us and to invite people to entrust their lives to Christ. It's good reminder for all preachers of the Gospel.
Jesus Himself, throughout history, also sought new ways to reveal His love for humanity. He had already revealed His Heart in Scripture (alluded to today in the Gospel - Mt 11:29), but in the 17th century, He chose St. Margaret Mary (1647-1690), our patroness, (whose feast day is October 16th) to reveal more fully the mystery of His love through devotion to His Sacred Heart.
While in Spain for World Youth Day, I came across a book on the Sacred Heart which explains and re-proposes this devotion first promoted by Saint Margaret Mary. The author writes, "It is wonderful when a person begins to be interested in Jesus Christ. It is even better when one sees in Him the greatest person in human history. If one comes to see in Him the God-man, one has penetrated into the truth. There is only one thing lacking - to understand that this God-man is our friend" (En El Corazon de Cristo by Luis Maria Mendizabal, p. 34).
He continues: each one of us can say, "Jesus Christ loves me now more than I love myself, and He loves me as I am - full of miseries" (34), yes, with all our miseries and all our past sins, He loves us.
There is a very telling line in John's Gospel whose significance I never noticed before reading this book - the line in Chapter 17 where Jesus says "(Father) I pray not only for them (His disciples), but also for all those who will believe in me through their word" (Jn 17:20). In other words, in His earthly life, Jesus Christ prayed for you and me. "Each one of us can say: Jesus thought continually of me; the explicit purpose of His life was my instruction and my redemption. He instituted the Church and all the elements that compose it, for me in particular, for love of me, thinking specifically of me ... " (35)
Jesus loves us and desires to be loved by us. He once said to St. Margaret Mary, "I have an ardent thirst to be honored and loved by (humanity)" and He added, to be loved "in the most Blessed Sacrament," meaning the Sacrament of His Body and Blood which we adore at Mass and receive in Holy Communion. (Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ by Jean Croiset, p. 39).
How do we love Christ? Scripture says that just as He laid down His life for us, so we must lay down our lives for each other (1 Jn 3:16), to love and serve Christ in others, and in the poor. But we also love Him and lay down our lives by bowing down before Him at Mass.
This is what the Church is asking of us, the Church that Jesus instituted for love of you and me, the Church which is the mystical Body of Christ, making Him present on earth. The Church which is also our spiritual Mother, nourishing us with the Word of God and the Body and Blood of Christ. We can trust our Mother.
I say this because the Church is asking all Catholics in the English speaking world to change - starting the first Sunday of Advent, to change some of the words we are used to speaking at Mass. Let us look upon this new translation in light of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The essence of Catholicism is a personal relationship with Christ, responding to the love revealed in His Sacred Heart. These coming changes, if embraced with a meek and humble heart, can and will bring us closer in our relationship with Christ.
The diocese is already giving us permission to start singing the parts of the Mass in the new translation. The choir is now working on learning them, and we hope we can start soon. There are also certain new gestures that our Mother the Church is asking of us, to show our reverence and love for Jesus. There are already certain gestures with which you are familiar. For example, whenever we enter or exit a Catholic Church, we always genuflect (go down on our right knee) to honour Jesus in the tabernacle. You may have noticed how priests, at the beginning and end of Mass, kiss the altar. The altar is a symbol of Christ. We are showing Christ we love Him with the bodily action of a kiss.
Now the Church is also asking you to show your love and reverence when you come forward to receive communion, to "make a simple bow of the head" before receiving the Body of Christ (but it is not necessary to bow again before receiving the Precious Blood, as the liturgist Fr. Bill Burke explained at our priests meeting on Wednesday). (See GIRM #160").
The General Instruction on the Roman Missal, which offers us guidelines on the proper celebration of the Eucharist, adds that in places where people do not or cannot kneel, they "ought to make a profound bow when the Priest genuflects after the Consecration" (#43). This is the moment after the priest says, "this is my Body given up for you" and "this is my Blood. " You are being asked to make a profound bow, which is something like this (example). And since I wouldn't expect people to remember this between the homily and the consecration, I can remind you in the gentlest way possible by saying, "please bow. "
I know this is a change, but my brothers and sisters, there are many changes coming throughout the English speaking world. We will have to be patient with ourselves and each other as we are sure to make some mistakes along the way. There are some things that I also have to change. I just heard recently that when the priest reads the Gospel and says, "The Lord be with you," he is not supposed to open his hands, to distinguish this "Lord be with you" from this greeting at other points in the Mass. I have been a priest 9 years but only heard that a few weeks ago! I also need to make little alterations.
I am actually trying to make these changes easier for you by introducing them slowly, instead of shocking you all on November 26th/27th. I encourage you to look at these new gestures as a bodily way to show Jesus Christ that we believe that He is present in the Eucharist and we love Him. Our bodily actions can in turn remind our hearts and minds what we believe; they can help strengthen our faith.
I wish I had more time to speak about devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but I am running out of time. This essence of this devotion is our personal relationship with Jesus. But this does not mean that we should forget the practice of First Fridays of the month, which the older generation will remember is associated with devotion to the Sacred Heart.
Jesus revealed to St. Margaret Mary many promises to those who would receive Communion and the Sacrament of Reconciliation on nine First Fridays. I don't have time to read those promises here, but perhaps I can put them in the bulletin next week.
A reminder that we do have Mass here on Fridays at 12:15, and on Tuesdays at 7pm. This coming Tuesday there will be no Mass (as I will be attending a talk downtown) but Deacon Eugene will be leading the contemplative Rosary at 7pm. Starting the following Tuesday, I will expose the Blessed Sacrament before Mass, for anyone who wants to spend some time with Jesus, to let ourselves be loved by Him, to bask in the sunshine of His love pouring out of His Sacred Heart, to receive this love and respond by saying, "Jesus I love you. I trust in you. Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like yours. "
Thanksgiving: Bringing Our Love to the Table
and Inviting Others to the Wedding Feast
By Fr. Tim McCauley
The Eucharist we are celebrating today is like a wedding feast, as mentioned by Jesus in today's Gospel. And it is also a little bit like a Thanksgiving dinner - to both, we bring our love and our prayer.
Have you ever been to a family Thanksgiving dinner in which one person is distinctly not wearing a "wedding garment," (to quote from today's Gospel Mt 22:11), meaning someone who is not rejoicing or giving thanks but just sitting there, speechless, gloomy? (By the way, I am not even remotely implying that anyone in my family could ever like that, because I come from a Christian family, so obviously there could never be issues like that!)
Normally speaking, we have to bring something to the table: our love, our prayer. We say grace before meals. In some families, especially with children, each person might mention something for which they are thankful. And we must bring our love to the thanksgiving table, our smile, our openness to others, our interest and engagement with them.
If one gloomy person is just having a bad day, we can forgive them - no problem. But other people have to take up the slack and lift the spirit of the conversation to counterbalance the speechless. If 1 out of 8 people are in a bad mood, it's OK. But what do you do if it's 5 out of 8?
What do we do at Mass if a bunch of people are not bringing anything to the table, to the altar, if they are gloomy and speechless in their pews? Maybe they're just having a bad day. But that means the rest of us need to bring more love and prayers to the table.
In the Eucharist we are celebrating today, God the Father throws this wedding banquet for His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the marriage feast of the Lamb, the union between Christ and us, the Church, His Bride. God prepares for us this "feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines" in the words of the prophet Isaiah (25:5).
The Eucharist is also a foretaste of the wedding feast of heaven, to which God invites all people. God loves His people and wants all of us to "be glad and rejoice in his salvation" (Is 25:9). It breaks His heart that many of those He has invited refuse His love; they make light of it and go away to their own business or something else (Mt 22:5). Others come without a wedding garment - as I mentioned, they are gloomy and speechless.
With the new English translation of the Mass beginning in 7 weeks, this is a glorious, historic opportunity for all of us to re-discover what it means to bring our love and prayer to the altar. To re-discover what Vatican II meant over 40 years ago when the council fathers emphasized full, conscious, active participation in the Eucharist. The more love and prayer that each one of us brings, the more love will go around. The love we experience here will in turn inspire us to reach out to all those lost and lonely souls that we come across in our lives, to go out into the main streets, and invite everyone we find to the wedding banquet (Mt 22:9-10).
Some people do not respond to the invitation to the wedding feast because for whatever reason, they just want to be left alone. I think of a child who has run off to his or her room after a fight, or being hurt in some way. The parent peeks in and the child says, "leave me alone!" OK. For an hour maybe but not for 6 months!
(By the way, I notice more people sitting alone at the Saturday 5pm Mass, because we have students from out of town who might not know other practicing Catholics. But I think the following comments can apply to every Mass, because even with a good community spirit, which we have, many people can still be or feel alone). Some people just want to be left alone, and we can respect your space and leave you alone for an hour, maybe, but not 6 months! If you are alone in your sadness, in your anxiety, alone in a feeling of being unloved - whatever it is - we do not want to leave you alone, without a wedding garment, without the joy that Christ wants to give each of us in his love for us.
I am asking for the help of all parishioners. The King of heaven, who is hosting the wedding feast for His Son, is asking for your help in inviting people to the wedding feast of the Mass, inviting them to live the Eucharist - full, conscious, active participation. All of you have family and friends who might be sad or lonely. Why not invite them to Mass? And there are people in every parish who come and go. They might come one Sunday, or two or three, and then they disappear - does anyone know where they went? Off again to their own private lives, their private struggles, their private sorrows.
In the modern Catholic Church, in our extremely individualistic culture, it's almost as if we expect people to be superheroes with their faith. That each individual, if he or she has enough faith, should be able to come to Mass every Sunday alone, sit alone, worship alone, leave alone, remain alone - to be a devout, practising Catholic in total isolation with no support at all. It's almost like the Church today has that expectation of people!
But God also created us as a family and wants to save us as a Church. He wants us to come to Him together. A lot more people would practice their faith regularly as Catholics if you and I were simply willing to bring a little more love to the table, to the altar, to the Mass. To make more friends in Church. To share our faith, to grow in faith together, to do things together outside of Church. If someone has a friend in Church, he or she is much more likely to come each week, to be nourished, to put on the wedding garment of joy.
I will be celebrating Thanksgiving dinner with part of my family on Sunday night. Please pray that no one will look gloomy or feel unloved! On Monday, I would like to invite for dinner at the rectory anyone who might be alone this Thanksgiving weekend. I already know of a few foreign students at Carleton with no family in Ottawa who might be coming. Seniors who might be alone are also welcome - anyone at all. Just see me after Mass. Before you get your hopes up, I really have no idea how to cook a turkey, so it will have to be something simple!
I also want to remind you all of our parish feast day next Saturday night, to celebrate the feast of St. Margaret Mary, which falls on October 16th. The Carleton students will also be cooking spaghetti that night. But we ask others attending to bring a salad or dessert or another main dish. The sign-up sheet is in the foyer. Another reminder that our Sunday suppers for the need begin next Sunday, and we can always use more volunteers; please see the contact info in the bulletin.
I will leave you with one final thought. One day, when the disciples were with Jesus being followed by a crowd of over 5000 men and women and children, the disciples suggested to Jesus that he send them away. You know what He said in reply (before performing the miracle)? "You give them something to eat" (Mk 6:37). That's what we do literally in our Sunday suppers for needy people. Jesus also says this to us in terms of love. We all know people in our lives who are lonely and unhappy, because they do not know that God loves them. Jesus says to each one of us today, "I want you to love them, so that they will know that I love them. You give them something to eat. "
The New Translation of the Mass
By Fr. Tim McCauley
Does anyone know what this is? It's a set of silverware - real silver. (Every once in a while it helps to have a prop to make a point). Have any of you ever polished silver in your homes? I remember helping my mother do that as a child, and after wiping away the tarnish, to see the silver shine, and your face reflected in it like a mirror.
Something similar happens in the Church in times of change and renewal, such as the times in which we are living with the new English translation of the Eucharist, beginning on November 26th, 2011 - a new, more accurate and beautiful English translation. We are taking some of the treasures of the Church out of drawers and cupboards, specifically, the words of the Mass; we are polishing them up so they can shine more brilliantly, and in their mirror, we can better discern the face of Christ and better hear His voice.
I have mentioned in the bulletin, some of the ways we can prepare for the new translation, and in weeks to come I will speak about it at length. First, I would like to say a few words about openness to change, because the new words we use at Mass will present us with a sudden and significant change in our worship.
In the Gospel we just heard, Jesus presents very positively the ability to change one's mind. The first son, who initially disobeyed his father, "changed his mind" and went to work in the vineyard ( Mt 21 ). It is a virtue to be able to "change one's mind", to let go of certain merely human habits, customs and judgements, and to learn to put on the mind of Christ.
As St. Paul wrote in the second reading, "let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God ... (took) on the form of a slave" (Phil 2: ). He underwent this radical change, first in the Incarnation, when being God He also became man. And then in the Resurrection, He underwent the definite change in his glorified humanity, a change that awaits all of us. As St. Paul writes, "we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet" (1 Cor 15:51-52) at the Resurrection of the dead.
In one sense, we prepare for the Resurrection, the ultimate change in our lives, by being open to little changes each day, to let go of our human judgements and put on the mind of Christ, who humbled himself and was obedient. This generation finds it so difficult to be humble and obedient, but we must realize it is connected to trust - trusting in God our Father who loves us more than we love ourselves, and trusting in our Mother the Church who always wants what is best for us, who longs to give us Jesus, as if it were Mary presenting her child to us, or the voice of the Father saying, "This is my Son. Listen to Him" ( ). Seek His face.
Before speaking of some of the changes in the new translation, I would like to say a few words about what cannot be changed. No one - no priest or bishop - has authority to change or omit a single word or translated word of the Mass. Only the Pope and the universal Church can do so.
I remember once in Honduras I concelebrated a Mass with a very nice priest who actually spoke English. But I couldn't help but notice how he left out the penitential rite from the Mass, part of the preparation of the gifts, the main part of the Preface, then he added a long list of names during the Eucharistic prayer ... I barely recognized the Mass! This is wrong. You the people have a right to the Mass of the Catholic Church, to hear the words of the Church which are the words of the Bible and of Jesus Christ.
The same principle explains why a priest can never change the words of the Mass, AND why the Church is now changing the English translation of the Mass - so that all of us can better encounter Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, through the words of the Mass. To hear His voice and in His words, see His face reflected as in a mirror. (Prop) I want to give you Jesus Christ. For that reason, during the Mass, I will never change words according to my preference or my personality, because I am giving you not myself, but Christ.
By the way, for this reason, the priest cannot even change the use of exclusive language in the fourth Eucharistic Prayer. This prayer is noted for its use of "man" to designate humanity. If it had been changed to "us" I would have gladly followed the change. But it wasn't. Some might suggest skipping this prayer entirely, but it contains a profound theology of creation and redemption, and many beautiful phrases not heard in other Eucharistic Prayers, such as the reference to Jesus always loving those who were his own in the world, and loving them to the end.
I usually alternate between the four main Eucharistic prayers, to give you, the people, a chance to hear the fullness of the liturgy proclaimed at Sunday Mass, because in many ways, the law of prayer is the law of belief (we know what we believe in the Church by the content and manner of our prayer)). The more variety we use in our Eucharistic prayers, the more you will hear of the theology of the Church proclaimed.
There are other little changes that a priest can make according to his particular gifts and personality. In my former parish in Russell, Fr. Paul Nwaeze is making little changes, and that's O.K. As long as he respects the history of the parish, and is obedient to the Church, he is permitted to express his individual gifts and personality.
I want you to know that I respect the individual history of this parish, and your freedom to express your particular parish personality. The same freedom that I extend to you, I in turn ask you to extend to me: that you will respect my freedom, while being obedient to the Church of course, to use my particular gifts and make little changes with the same goal in mind as the Church has in the new translation of the Mass: the make the voice of Jesus Christ more audible and His face more visible, to make him better known and loved.
In updating and improving the English translation of the Mass, the Church is actually letting the voice of Jesus, the word of God in Scripture, resound more clearly and more beautifully. I don't have time now to go into many examples. Several changes are subtle but significant. For instance, when the priest lifts up the consecrated host, he says now, "This is the Lamb of God ... Happy are those who are called to his supper. " Soon he will be saying, "Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb. " What's the big difference? Well, with the old translation, I never noticed before that it a reference to Scripture, from Revelation 19:9 "Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. " The new translation lets the word of God in Scripture resound more clearly.
Another example is from the new translation of the words of institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. Currently, the priest says over the cup, "This is the cup of my blood, which will be shed ... " In the new translation, he will say, "blood which will be poured out. " A subtle but significant change. First, the word "poured out" is a more accurate translation of the Latin original (effundetur). Furthermore, as explained in this little booklet, copies of which we have ordered for you, "Jesus did not merely shed blood at the infliction of his wounds; he poured out his blood for us. The Passion is not just something that happened to Jesus, but something he freely chose to undergo" (Understanding the Revised Mass Texts by Paul Turner, p. 38).
Over the coming weeks, both before and after the new translation is implemented, I will share with you more of the subtle and not so subtle changes, and the reasons behind them. The old translation was not wrong, but the new one is better, more accurate and allows the voice of Jesus, the word of God in Scripture, to be heard more clearly, so that in the words of the Mass, we can better encounter Jesus, the Word made flesh, and contemplate His face, to better know Him, love Him and adore Him.
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
By Fr. Tim McCauley
To forgive all those who have ever sinned against us in any way - to forgive them their debt - is commanded and is possible, but usually we must first experience God's love for us and His forgiveness of the debt of our sins.
It is interesting to note that in the version of the "Our Father" that we pray at Mass (Matthew's longer version, not Luke's shortened version), when we say "forgive us our trespasses," the original word for "trespasses" is "debts" which are meant to represent our sins. Each day, in this prayer, we are asking God to forgive our debts, as we forgive those indebted to us, to forgive our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
As Jesus explains in the parable, we must forgive others their debts and their sins against us because God, through the death and Resurrection of Christ, has forgiven all our debts, our sin, our guilt. And the difference between our sins against God and other people's sins against us is almost infinite. It is the difference between 10,000 talents and 100 dinarii. One talent is worth 6000 dinarii; 10,000 talents is worth 60 million dinarii. Let's translate those into dollars. The servant owes his master 60 million dollars; his fellow servant owes him 100 dollars.
You see the point Jesus is making? If God forgives us the debt of all our sins accumulated day after day, year of year, the debt of sin of over 60 million dollars, we must forgive our fellow-servants, who are weak like us, who know not what they do, who must be so much more unhappy than we are if they would sin against others - we must forgive them their debt of $100.
This weekend we are commemorating the terrible tragedy of the terrorist attack in NYC on September 11, ten years ago. Imagine if one of your loved ones had been killed in the destruction of the two towers. Could you forgive? What is so amazing is that yes, there are people willing and able to forgive those who have murdered their loved ones. Can we not forgive those who hurt our feelings, wound our hearts, neglect our love, ignore our needs? Yes, but usually we must first experience God's love for us and His forgiveness of the debt of our sins.
Why are there so many people in our families and among our friends who are unwilling to forgive others their debts and sins? (I can think of my own family but I don't have time to go into detail). Why are there so many people who are, as it were, clutching at each other's throats and threatening, "Pay what you owe" ?
It must be because they are so weighed down and crushed to the point of crawling by an unbearable burden of spiritual debt, of sin and guilt. They do not know the truth that will set them free; they have not heard that their sin has been forgiven and their guilt wiped away through the death and Resurrection of Christ.
Our culture suffers from an epidemic of guilt. People often feel guilty for no reason at all. It is understandable that we feel guilty after committing a sin - that's a good sign; it means we have a conscience. Then we simply go to confession and forget about it (I spoke about confession last week and won't repeat myself here).
But other times we feel guilty for no reason, for no rational cause at all. People feel guilty about something that happened 20 years ago - something for which they are perhaps not responsible. Some people feel guilty for not being perfect, for not making a $100,000/year, for not being a super-model, for failing at something, for being weak or poor or limited in some way. But that's what human beings are before God. We are all poor, weak, dependent. Are we going to start feeling guilty for being human? How absurd!
And yet, there are people who do feel guilty about being human. Our secular culture promised us that once we got rid of religion, we would get rid of guilt. The opposite has happened: the more we have made God disappear (in the name of reason divorced from faith), the more our guilt has increased exponentially. The means the our culture offers us to wash away our guilt (burying our conscience, scapegoating other people or groups, blaming parents or society) none of them work. Our guilt remains. It's like trying to wash our dirty hands in dirty water. You can wash all you want and never be clean.
Reason cannot take away irrational guilt. I have no reason to feel guilty, but I feel guilty; how can reason help me? It can't. But perhaps something beyond reason can take away our guilt. The death and Resurrection of Christ is a mystery beyond reason - not against reason but beyond reason. The man named Jesus is also God the Son, who gave His life to take away the sin of the world, to wipe away your guilt and mine, to make us a new creation. The "irrational" sacrifice of the Cross takes away our irrational guilt.
All Christians find by experience that this is true. Once we get tired of trying to wash our dirty hands in dirty water, to suppress or forget our guilt in all the entertainments, distractions, opiates and self-medications offered by the world, once we tire enough of this, we are ready to trust in the blood of Christ that was poured out to truly and finally wash away our guilt; we are ready to turn to God and ask Him to forgive the impossible debt we owe of $60 million, the debt that Christ cancelled and nailed to the Cross (Col 2:14).
We no longer have to feel guilty for not being perfect, for being poor, weak, dependent - for being human. Instead, we can rejoice in being loved - oh, what a relief, what peace and joy and exultation to be loved by God as we are; this love that in turn inspires us to change and grow, and to extend his mercy to others, in forgiving them the $100 dollars they owe us.
September is a time of new beginnings, not only for students but also in parish life and in Canadian life in general, a time to make some new resolutions. I mentioned this at Friday Mass how at the chaplaincy office at Carleton on Thursday, a young Muslim man asked me about Christ. He feels drawn by Christ and wants to learn more. So I gave him the New Testament, the Gospels, the life of Christ, which he is reading for the first time with great attention and enthusiasm.
Why can't we consider the life of Christ with equal attention and enthusiasm? It is so sad that so many Catholics baptized as infants have no interest in Christ. Is that the kind of "Christian" you want to be? One who only hears about Jesus but never seeks Him, never knows Him, never loves Him? Why? You want life to pass you by?
Do not be afraid to begin again; it's never too late. Begin to seek Jesus Christ by praying each day, by reading the New Testament, by attending Mass every Sunday. You will experience Christ's personal and merciful love for you who has forgiven your debt of sin of $60 million. You will then leap and dance for joy, and share this mercy with others.
Repentance and Confession
By Fr. Tim McCauley
One of the most inspiring moments of World Youth Day, mentioned by some of the Ottawa youth, was to see our Archbishop, just before Sunday Mass at the cathedral of Valladolid, Spain, walk up to one of the priest sitting outside with a purple stole, and confess his sins. Of course people know theoretically that priests and bishops must also go to confession, but to see it live in action is another thing.
The bishop also gave his personal testimony, mentioning how as a priest he had a conversion during an Ignatian retreat, when he realized how, in the past, he may have adopted a particular theological slant from some of his professors, a certain desensitivity or laissez-fair attitude toward sin. But he repented of this attitude, and now he goes to confession every week or two, and he is an example to the priests and the lay people.
I mention this because today's readings speak to us of sin and repentance. "If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you or alone. If he or she listens to you, you have regained your brother or sister" (NAB). Jesus is instructing us both to be open to correction from others - to be willing to repent and confess our sins - and to be loving and courageous in correcting others. In this particular passage, Jesus seems concerned with casting out sin so that the Church may be of one mind and heart, like a close-knit family, so that when two or three of us are gathered in his name, he will truly be among us (Mt 18:20).
Twenty-first century Canadians are uncomfortable with this Scripture because we are so polite we would not dare bring up someone else's fault. But we must be very clear: this is one aspect of Christian charity. Jesus says "if a brother or sister sins against you. " He is referring to a brother or sister in the Church, a fellow Christian, someone we know and love in the name of God.
And the purpose of pointing out others' faults is not to shame them but to "regain" them. An interesting word. "If he or she listens to you, you have ‘regained' your brother or sister. " What does Jesus mean by that? It can also be translated to "win over. " It means to persuade someone, to bring them back to our side, back inside the Church, to communion and community.
It suggests the person was somehow lost and now is found, gained, won over. So if we love others as our brothers and sisters in Christ, we must be concerned about sin and be willing to point out their faults in love, in order to win them back to Christ.
Of course, in order to avoid hypocrisy, we must first repent of our own sins. We must take out the log from our own eye in order to see clearly the speck in our neighbour's eye (Mt 7:5). It is interesting that the bishop told all the youth from Ottawa attending World Youth Day that they should go to confession and gain the plenary indulgence for this pilgrimage. But the bishop first went to confession himself.
In today's Gospel, Jesus seems to be focusing on a verbal admission of faults between Christians, but in other passages, Jesus points us more clearly to the Sacrament of Confession. When He rose from the dead, Jesus breathed on the apostles and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:22-23). Jesus gave the apostles (and their successors) authority to forgive sin. Obviously, the apostles could only forgive people their sins if they knew what those sins were; the apostles could only know these sins if people told them out loud. Therefore, there must have been, from the beginning, some form of verbal confession, what we have today in the Church in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
And the kinds of sins of which we must repent and confess are those related to the ten commandments, as mentioned in the second reading: thou shall not commit adultery, thou shall not kill, etc... Phew! What a relief! I don't have to go to confession! I haven't killed or committed adultery!
We should not be so fast to exonerate ourselves. Remember that our Lord Jesus Christ has updated the Old Testament, and told us that what defiles us is what comes out of the heart (Mk 7:20). He says that if a man looks at a woman with lust, he has committed adultery in his heart (Mt 5:20); he must repent and confess his sin. And under the commandment not to kill, Jesus says that if you or I hate a brother or sister (another Christian or any human being), we are liable to judgement Mt 5:22). We must repent and confess our sins.
For those who live outside the city of Ottawa, it may be more difficult to find a priest for confession. But one of the conveniences of living downtown is the multitude of parishes and priests. Most parishes have confession available before Saturday Mass, and I am happy to make myself available before Saturday Masses starting next week. In fact, I am happy to make myself available before every single Mass, or any time at all (except 3:00 a.m. , unless it's a real emergency!).
Some people actually like going to confession to a priest they know, because they appreciate the continuity, and the advice. Confession is truly a shortened form of spiritual direction. I would go to my spiritual director for confession regularly, but he lives at Madonna House in Combermere, so in the meantime I will go to any brother priest.
But for those who find it to be an insurmountable difficulty to go to a priest they know for confession, then I recommend driving down the street to St. Patrick's basilica where they have confession before every Mass, (and they have daily Mass at 7 am, 8 am, 12:15 noon and 4:30 pm)
(By the way, I'm not saying that people need to go to confession every week. However, in Jesus' revelations to St. Margaret Mary, included in the promises associated with attending Mass nine First Friday, is monthly confession, which I would recommend for anyone who wants to respond to the universal call to holiness).
In the past, it was often assumed that only priests and nuns were called to holiness, to be saints. But now the Second Vatican Council has reminded us that all the baptized - all of you - are called to holiness. So it is a strange form of heresy for lay people to say that the normal means of sanctification, such as personal prayer, the frequent reception of the Sacraments of Holy Communion and confession, are only for priests and nuns. No! If holiness is for everyone, then the means of holiness - personal prayer, Holy Communion AND confession - are also for everyone.
The more we actively employ the means of holiness Jesus has given us through the Church, the more we will be Church and effectively evangelize the world. The more united we will be, so that when we gather in the name of Jesus, especially during the Eucharist, He will be present among us. Our joy and gladness will overflow, and lead many many others to Him.
World Youth Day: Take Up the Cross to Break Open Your Heart
By Fr. Tim McCauley
I feel like I've been gone for a year to another planet, but I was only away for 2 weeks for World Youth Day in Spain. As vocations director for the Archdiocese of Ottawa, it was an excellent opportunity for me to spend time with about 100 youth from our diocese, many of whom are searching for their vocation in life. We pilgrims received many gifts and graces through the trials and adventures of World Youth Day, which we in turn pass on to you; perhaps the greatest gift was simply a stronger love for Jesus and the Church, this Jesus who proves the love of His Sacred Heart for us by dying on the Cross.
We all encountered our own crosses on World Youth Day. One of the youth from our Ottawa group gave her testimony, which I will share with you (I'm hoping that one of these youth could give a testimony after Mass one weekend).
Between 1.5 to 2 million youth from all over the world had gathered at an airfield for the Vigil with the Pope last Saturday night (August 20th). When we arrived, it look like a refugee camp in the desert (it was also 38 degrees that day), and there was a lack of food and water, with 45 minute waits for washrooms. There was no place left in our assigned section to sleep, so the youth had to make do elsewhere. This one young lady, we'll call her Cheryl, came up against the Cross, figuratively speaking. She stood with folded arms looking upward and thinking, "you must be joking. You expect me to put up with this? To sleep on this rock, with all these people?"
Has that ever happened to you in life? In your relationships, in marriage and family, you come up against the Cross; you feel like folding your arms and looking upward and saying, "you must be joking. You expect me to put up with this?"
It got worse. After the Vigil started and the Pope was speaking, the clouds darkened and a storm blew up with violent winds and rain, soaking everyone. The wind blew over a crucifix which hit a bishop on the head and cut him. Even the Pope was getting wet, and he had to stop the Vigil for about 10 minutes. But he stayed with the youth the whole time - almost an image of God the Father staying with us in our trials.
Cheryl, who had been standing with arms folded, slowly put her hands together in prayer and went down on her knees. The youth did the only thing left to them - they prayed. A small circle of young women huddled together and prayed the Rosary during the storm. Then the miracle happened for Cheryl. She felt peace. She slept very well on the ground. She awoke with such peace and joy, and a silly smile on her face. How? The power of the Cross, of allowing pain and suffering to break open our hearts, to teach us to pray and undergo this conversion from folded arms to praying hands, to embrace the Cross and receive Jesus' love poured out from His Sacred Heart.
A pilgrimage is a seeking after God, so we all went hoping for some sort of encounter with God. I went hoping for some sort of message for me and for our parish. I consider it providential that I was sent here, to a parish called St. Margaret Mary, who received a special revelation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with the mission of making Christ's love known to the world, this infinite and personal love as manifested in His wounded Heart.
It just so happens that our diocesan group from Ottawa was spending a few days in the diocese of Valladolid. That name meant nothing to me and it probably means nothing to you. It is Spain's fourth largest city, about 2 hours north west of Madrid. But it is the source and center in Spain of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the early 18th century, Jesus revealed His Heart to a young priest named Fr. Bernardo Hoyos, beatified last year. Fr. Bernardo is the Margaret Mary of Spain. The bishop and I were staying in the same building in which he had lived for 4 years, attached to the basilica dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
To me this is all very providential. But there's more. In the same center we also met a bishop from France who had lived for many years in Paray-Le-Monial, where St. Margaret Mary received her visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And more: during the Vigil before the closing Papal Mass, with about 1.5 million people, the Pope consecrated the young people to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
What does all this mean to you and me? The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not some outmoded pious practice of our simple-minded grandparents. Jesus Christ still wants to reveal to you and me his personal and infinite love, through His Sacred Heart. The words of Jeremiah in the first reading can almost be taken as the words of Jesus Himself, talking about the fire of His love for us: "it becomes like fire burning in my heart" (Jer 20:9). As Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospel, "I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already burning!" (Lk 12:49).
It is this fire of Jesus' love for the Father and for us that brought him to suffering and death on the Cross. Jesus told the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly (Mt 16:21); He must suffer to prove His love for us. We in turn must suffer to break open our hearts, in order to receive His love.
Even though I admittedly did not sleep outside that night with the youth, I did share in all the inevitable sufferings of World Youth Day pilgrims. So often we were tired, hot, thirsty, hungry - all these little crosses we had to bear that broke upon our hearts. I am used to living alone in peace and quiet. But for World Youth Day, I was with people all the time, day and night. But this Cross broke down our barriers, our illusion of control, and opened us up to the other, whether the "other" is another person or God himself.
People opened up their hearts to each other in sharing themselves. Whether it was at breakfast or lunch, walking the streets of Madrid, or waiting in line, waiting for the Pope to arrive, we all enjoyed some of the best conversations of our lives. What a great joy! How do we bottle this grace of World Youth Day and bring it back to Canada, to our diocese, to our parishes? I'm not sure. I asked this question of our entire group of about 100 pilgrims, and I continue to ask this question.
There's so much more I could share with you, but I can save some for the coming weeks. Jesus asks a very important question in the Gospel that we should all ask ourselves: "What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" (Mt 16:26). I would also add, "what profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit God's love, or never to experience God's love?" Think about how much time and energy we expend in life on material things. How much time do we spend in prayer, in listening to God in Scripture, in talking to Jesus and sharing our hearts with Him, in asking Him to reveal His personal love for us?
In his homily for the closing Mass for World Youth Day, the Pope told the 1.5-2 million youth there to speak to Jesus; he suggested these words: "Say to him ‘Jesus, I know that you are the Son of God, who have given your life for me. I want to follow you faithfully and to be led by your word. You know me and you love me. I place my trust in you and I put my whole life into your hands. I want you to be the power that strengthens me and the joy that never leaves me. '" Amen.
Walk on Water to the Heart of Jesus
By Fr. Tim McCauley
When Archbishop Prendergast first mentioned to me the possibility that I would be named pastor of St. Margaret Mary's AND Chaplain at Carleton AND remain Vocations Director for the Archdiocese, my first thought was "how can I possibly do three jobs? I'm only human ... " ... But then, after prayer and reflection, I realized what Jesus was asking of me - to walk on water (and to die and rise again)! No problem! Jesus is asking me to do something that is absolutely humanly impossible! Wonderful! That means that I don't have to rely on myself, but that I can count on the grace of God, while I also ask for your prayers.
Change is hard on everyone. It's a sort of death and resurrection. Fr. John and I have been discussing that a bit through our mutual comings and goings in the rectory. He was happy here. I was happy in Russell. Everything was fine. Why change? Well, as Christians we trust that God in His wisdom has His reasons that we will discover in time, while we are patient with ourselves and each other. Out of every death comes new life. I miss the people of Russell, but I am already meeting some wonderful new people in this parish. I miss the cows and the corn fields of Russell, but I have gained the beauty of the Rideau River ... and the Mayfair theater and Paddy's Pub!
I look forward to getting to know you all, and to collaborate with you, priest and people together, on our common mission to evangelize the world, to invite all people to come to Jesus Christ. I commend you all, parishioners of St. Margaret Mary's, on your commitment to serve the poor (with the Sunday supper program during the year) and for your dedication to, and involvement in, your parish.
I have been an assistant at two parishes, and pastor for seven years at another (Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal) and from what I have seen so far, from your (our) website, and from the people I have met, you are not like some Catholics in some parishes ... merely passive, sitting in the pews then going back to your private lives. This first impression is accurate, is it? Is it true that you are more involved in your faith life, your parish and the Church's mission than is the "average" Catholic? Yes? OK.
As I slowly begin my ministry here and at Carleton, my plan is simple: to trust in God and to trust in you. Most people who go to Mass are good people. The overwhelming majority of men who become priests are good people. I think it is a wise policy to begin by trusting one another even though we do not yet know one another.
Another part of my plan is to do what Elijah did in the first reading - to listen. To listen to the still, small voice of God (1 Kings 9:12). God has a beautiful plan for this parish; I'm not sure what it is right now. But I know that if we listen and pray together, the Holy Spirit will guide us.
And as we pray and listen together, we should not be surprised if we hear Jesus say to us, as He did to Peter, that one simple word "Come. " "Do not be afraid to climb out of your comfortable boat. Come to me over the waters - even the waters of death to the resurrection. Keep your eyes fixed on me. Trust in me and I will give you the grace to do the impossible. "
Our comfortable boat is ultimately our life in this world that one day we must leave to share literally in the death and Resurrection of Christ. But every day, Jesus, through His still, small voice, is whispering, calling, inviting us to little deaths and resurrections.
What is your comfortable boat that you are afraid to leave, to walk on the water to Jesus? I ask myself, "was I too comfortable in Russell?" As God is my witness, I was not complacent, but perhaps I was a little too comfortable. So Jesus said to me, "Come. " There is also an area in your life where Jesus is saying to you, "Come. It is time to change your life. "
But we are all so afraid - afraid of change, of risk, of pain, of rejection, of death. But if it is possible for a mere mortal, Peter, to do the impossible, to walk on water, then all things are possible for us, or rather for God working in us. Because the same voice that invites us to "Come" is the voice of power and love that created the universe, that raises the dead!
What drew Peter to Jesus and inspired him to walk on water? In John's Gospel, Jesus promises, "I will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32), "I will draw them with cords of love" (Hosea 11:4). Peter loved Jesus Christ with all his heart and soul and strength; he even would say to Him later, "Lord, you know that I love you" (John 21:15 ). It's as if love gave Peter wings to walk on water.
Jesus invites each one of us, saying, "come to me ... I am meek and humble of heart" (Mt 11:29). I noticed the painting of St. Margaret Mary at the side entrance, of Jesus revealing His Heart to her (a sort of parish theme?). To each one of us, Jesus wants to reveal more and more of His Heart, of His infinite, personal love, to give us the grace and courage to leave our comfortable boats and come to Him over the waters.
Jesus Christ is truly present in the Eucharist and in the tabernacle - Body, Blood, soul and divinity. We can say to him in our personal prayer this Eucharistic acclamation that could have been spoken by St. Margaret Mary herself: "Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, burning with love for us, set our hearts on fire with love for you. Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, may your Kingdom come through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. "
This is one of life's great adventures: for priest and people to come together to the Heart of Jesus, to be fascinated and captivated by His love, to share His love with the countless lost and lonely people of our society, to proclaim Jesus Christ, true God and true man, risen from the dead - to boldly proclaim Him to the whole world.
