Homily for Second Sunday of Easter | Sunday of Divine Mercy

The readings for Second Sunday of Easter | Sunday of Divine Mercy may be found at:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041121.cfm

We’ve all had a nickname at one point or another.  

For some of us, nicknames might have been given when we were very young and never left - and they’re not always flattering are they?  

To be honest, Tony Bologna stuck to me a lot longer than I would have liked - and there were others too, but I choose not to share those here.

Today, St. John portrays Saint Thomas The Apostle as “Doubting Thomas” - a nickname that has stuck to him for more than 2,000 years.  

That’s a long time.  

Now, the moral of this story is often that all someone needs to do is to close their eyes and believe in order to see.  

But to do that, to focus on Thomas and judge him as someone NOT to be, is not right.  

Today’s gospel is about how those closest to Jesus didn’t recognize Him after the resurrection.  So, this isn’t just a Thomas thing.  

We sometimes forget that Jesus was Jewish - as were his disciples.  

Jews didn’t have a concept of resurrection, plus Jesus looked somewhat different when he appeared to them.  

Let’s also not forget that their teacher, their Messiah had just been brutally tortured, publicly mocked and executed for all to see on Good Friday.

His guys, His posse - all ran away on Holy Thursday, before the first scourging and long before the first nail.  

They ran.  They hid - afraid they too would be imprisoned, tortured and killed.  

It’s no wonder they locked themselves out of sight.  

It’s not until Jesus shows up with his wounded hands and feet that they believed.  

Thomas was just the one who spoke up.

In fact, you could look at Thomas’s insistence to see the marks of Jesus’ wounds, not as a matter of doubt, - but as a way of making the point that the resurrection was a real thing.

That the resurrection was not just something spiritual, but that it was physical - and that Jesus’ body, with its wounds still intact, connected the man who suffered on the cross with the Risen Christ.  

This was no ghost or spirit in front of them, but a human with a real body.

Now, none of us understands how the resurrection worked.

The resurrection is a great mystery, but it is also the cornerstone of our faith. 

Likewise, our faith is probably as mysterious to us today as it ever has been.   

For most of us, we don’t know why, or how we believe. 

But to proclaim Christ risen from the dead is to make real - the power of God in the world and in our lives. 

To proclaim Christ risen from the dead is to make known God’s power to transform us - and the world through his Divine Mercy. 

But that transformation is not an easy thing to grasp.

It’s not an end and beginning - it’s a continuation.

  

The risen, glorified Christ carries with Him His full humanity, including all the scars of his human suffering. 

So I ask you - Is our faith life any different? 

For all of its divine source and power as a gift, our faith is carried in our human bodies - 

with all of our frailty, uncertainty, insecurities, anxieties and weakness.   

I think this is a good point for us to reflect and to pray on.  

Do we need to see to believe?  

Do we bargain with God - if you do this, I will do this?  

Do we ask Him to prove His love to us?   

Especially this Divine Mercy Sunday, when we can gain a plenary indulgence that removes all punishment for sin for a soul in purgatory.  

Do we take the time to earn one?

Unlike Thomas - We have 2,000 years of history, we have Scripture, we have Oral Tradition - 

We have the Church, the Sacraments, we have the real presence of Jesus, in the Holy Eucharist.  

We have the promise of the risen Jesus bringing mercy to the whole world as we celebrate this Divine Mercy Sunday.

Yet we still doubt.  

Still we hide behind our own locked doors…

…….so, let’s give Thomas a break.

Let us act on the great gift of mercy that has been promised to us.

This week, let us pray for the intercession of St. Thomas The Apostle - 

so that we too can say with firm belief, love, hope and not a shred of doubt, 

“My Lord and my God” 

just as he did.

Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

The readings for Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion may be found at:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040221.cfm

Several years ago, a software developer that I worked with, I’ll call him Ahmed, because that’s his name, asked me why Christians call today, “Good Friday”.  Being a logical thinker and based on the facts, he thought it should be called “Sad Friday”.  

I wish I had said to him, what I’m about to say to you.

It’s true that the cross was the most brutal, drawn out way to bring suffering and death at the time - a place where a person was literally hung until they died.  

The Roman soldiers took it even further with Jesus.  They struck His face, flogged Him, put a crown of thorns on His head, kept striking Him, forced Him to carry the cross alone, crucified Him and for good measure, after Jesus was already dead, pierced his side with a spear.  That’s not a Good Friday.

The cross was suffering and death.  It was pain and loss, sorrow and separation.  

If that wasn’t enough, the ones that Jesus had met, loved, served, taught and healed all disappeared.  

Peter wasn’t even able to look at the cross or Jesus.  

When asked if he was Jesus’ friend, Peter answered, “I am not”, “I am not”, I am not”.  That’s certainly not a good Friday.

Peter wanted to follow Jesus as a disciple, learned from him, ate at the Last Supper with him, and insisted that he would follow Jesus even to death. 

But despite his best intentions, Peter fails miserably when forced to choose in a difficult situation.   

If we are honest, we know at times, we’ve been unfaithful to Jesus.  

Peter’s actions remind us not to underestimate our own weakness and to be careful not to put ourselves into situations where we are pressured to sin and deny our relationship with Jesus. 

But, if today is just a day to reenact the execution of Jesus, with its suffering and brutality, its disappointment and loss, then it is not a Good Friday.  

But, for Jesus, the focus is not on suffering and death. It is on love. 

That’s why Jesus can give himself to the cross. 

He doesn’t look at the cross, he sees through it.  

The crucified love of Christ is stronger and more real than death. 

The crucified love of Jesus does more than join us in our sufferings - it carries us through them. 

That’s what makes this Friday “Good”. 

God’s love defeats sin and death every time.

As with Peter, God’s mercy is far greater than the worst of our sins. God is always ready to forgive those who return to him.

To my co-worker Ahmed, Jesus’ death on the cross represented defeat and humiliation, but in fact it is God’s victory and triumph. 

God freely chose the humiliation and agony of the cross to demonstrate how great his boundless, self-giving love is for us.

Today is called Good Friday because Jesus died to save us and reconcile us to God.

Today is called Good Friday because Jesus Christ gave His life so that we could live abundantly. 

Today is called Good Friday because His love frees us from our sins, heals us from our hurts and reconnects us with God in a way that we could never achieve on our own - it’s a gift, freely given.

Today, let us pray and reflect on that great gift.  

If we do that, it should leave no doubt as to why today is called “Good Friday”.

Homily for the Third Sunday in Lent - Year B

The readings for the Third Sunday in Lent (Year B) May be found at:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030721-YearB.cfm

Just when you think you know someone.

As I was reflecting on the words of St. John, I remembered an image I saw a few years back that had a caption that read as follows: 

If anyone ever asks you ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ Remind them that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibilities.  I just love that.

We all think we know Jesus don’t we?  I mean we get a picture of Him in our minds, His personality, how He carries Himself and who He is.  We see Jesus as warm, kind, gentle, forgiving, compassionate, loving - not an angry bone in his body.

We don’t see Jesus as angry or zealous or as having the full range of human emotions, even though He was fully human and was just like us in every way except sin.

But clearly based on His reaction in the temple, Jesus had a temper.

So Jesus isn’t always this soft, give me a hug, everything is ok as long as you’re true to yourself kind of person.  

He is strong - a carpenter before there were power tools and a man who withstood unspeakable pain and torture to die so that we could live.

So why did Jesus suddenly grab a whip and flip tables?

Put simply, the temple was His Father’s House - the temple was God’s property.  It was the place where God made himself known and received their worship.  But instead of reverence, Jesus found a mess.  

Now there was nothing new about the buying and selling in the temple - that had been going on for a long time - for generations.  But just because something has been going on for a long time doesn’t make it right.

The temple was supposed to be a sacred place - a place where God was present and Jesus found it unrecognizable.  

So I ask you to consider….are our souls any different than the temple?  

We each have a soul.  

We were made in God’s image and likeness and we belong to Him.  

At times in our life, our souls have been in a state of grace, when we were baptized or when we last made a good sacramental confession.

On that day our soul was pristine, but then we made a choice here and compounded it with a choice there.  These choices led to sins and then maybe areas of neglect or indifference and possibly grew into a pattern of sinful behaviors.  Once sins became a habit - maybe we felt like we were broken beyond repair.  

That’s exactly what the devil wants, by the way, for us to feel lukewarm, hopeless and to give up.  If we do that - he wins.

But we have a way to get right with God and we don’t have to flip tables or chase people with a whip to do it.  All we need is to make a good sacramental confession.  That’s it.

That’s when we confess our sins to Jesus through a priest who hears our confession and where Jesus absolves us from our sins.  

We need confession so that we can have a proper communion at Holy Mass.

If we receive communion and haven’t been to confession in a long time, chances are we are only making a bigger sin.  Just like the temple - a mess created over time.

If you do nothing else this Lent, make a good sacramental confession.  

If you don’t want to go to your parish priest, there are other Catholic Churches or Our Lady’s Chapel downtown.  It’s anonymous, you can even change your voice if you like, if that makes it easier to do, but whatever you do, do it.  

I can guarantee you that know matter what you confess, the priest has heard worse.

It’s not enough to say, I am a good person, I confess my sins directly to God - NO, Jesus left us the sacrament of confession as a way to get right with God and we don’t make one as often as we need to - present company included.

It’s Lent for a few more weeks.  

You still have some time to make a good sacramental confession.  

If you do that, the tables will be turned, the spiritual mess will be washed away and your soul will be returned to a state befitting of God - 

and no matter what you confess - 

there will be no whips involved - I promise.

Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

The readings for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) May be found at:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020721.cfm

In today’s gospel, we get a sort of instruction manual on how to live the Christian life.

If we recall last weekend, St. Mark told us that when Jesus entered the synagogue and taught, a man with an unclean spirit cried out.  

We all remember what happened next, Jesus drove out the evil spirit, amazing everyone in the process.

Fast forward to this week, after leaving the synagogue, Jesus goes to Simon’s house to heal his sick mother in law who then waits on them.  

Now, the morale of today’s story is not that if you help your mother in law, she will do stuff for you - that’s not the point.

But if you think about it, Jesus went to the synagogue - he healed there before going home and healing some more.  

There’s a lesson there for us.  To take God home from Church.  

That’s exactly what we’re called to do.  

Here we are in church, being nourished by the Word of God.  

In a few minutes, we’ll be fed by Jesus himself, by His most precious body and blood in the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist.  

But we can’t just let it end there.  

We’re called to take that nourishment out of this Church and to do something with it.  Do we do that?  

Once we leave this building, would anyone know based on how we act and what we do, that we had been here at all?  

Or do we blow it before we get out of the parking lot?

So we need to take God home from Church.

Now, Jesus didn’t stop at healing Simon’s mother in law, he helped many in the community - curing all the sick.

Having been nourished by the Word and the Eucharist, we’re called to carry Christ into our daily lives and help others.

Sound simple enough.  

But this is where we make things hard - is Church something we do for forty-five minutes, once a week?  

Is it a selfish thing we do and keep to ourselves? 

Or do we bring our faith to others and, in a way, heal as Jesus did? 

Next, St, Mark tells us that Jesus went off to a quiet place and took time to pray. 

Christ spent time with the Father to refresh himself, to listen to the will of God.  

Christ needed it and so do we all, I think.

Every day we need a quiet place to pray, to listen to what God wants to tell us. 

And given how busy our lives are, it probably makes sense to schedule a time for prayer each day so that it actually gets done.

Christ took the time. 

We need to do that too.  

We need to set up a prayer routine, to schedule prayer time each day. 

After Jesus finished praying, he reached out.   He said, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also.” 

We need to do the same thing.  To take our faith to others. 

And we don’t need to go door to door handing out pamphlets or to spin a big sign to do that.

 

We proclaim Christ to our neighbors when we pray with them or near them.  

When we pray before meals, especially, when at restaurants, when we make the sign of the cross driving by a church,  when we say “Thank you Jesus” for a blessing big or small, we publicly proclaim our faith. 

What Jesus did, we’re called to do. 

After going to church and being fed, we are to live our faith. 

To bring God into our daily lives. 

To pray, to stay refreshed and to listen to the Father. 

Then, refreshed by prayer, to live our faith; to proclaim the good news to those around us.

It’s like a set of instructions that if we do them feed on themselves, like a big flywheel that helps us to live as Christians.

And for extra credit - don’t forget to take care of your mother in law.

Homily for the Baptism of the Lord - Year B

The readings for the Baptism of the Lord (Year B) May be found at:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011021.cfm

These days, it’s hard not to feel lost.

Each day we see people struggling with grief, worry, anxiety, concerns for their health and the health of those they love.  

Loss of jobs and income have affected all of us and those we know in one way or another.

And it seems that each day, we’re reminded many times just how angry, divided, unequal and unforgiving our society is.  

The events of this last Wednesday in the U.S. Capitol, I think, shocked and saddened most everyone I’ve spoken with.  

When you put it all together, it’s hard not to feel like we’ve lost our way.

Thankfully we are reminded of who and what we are in the Baptism of Jesus.

We were born with original sin and need Baptism to cleanse our soul.

But Jesus didn’t need Baptism - He was without sin, but He humbled Himself just the same and allowed Himself to be baptized to remind us of who we are and who we belong to.

Jesus already knew that he was the beloved son of the Father.  

When the voice from heaven announced this, it didn’t do it for Jesus’ benefit, it did it for ours so that we would know that Jesus is the chosen one, the beloved and that we are to listen to Him.

 

Now, up to this point in his life, Jesus hadn't done anything too impressive that we know of, no miracles, no great speeches to the masses, no massive conversions.

He had spent thirty years living in Nazareth in a humble dwelling, helping his foster father in the carpentry shop and doing errands for his mother.

And yet, the Father was well pleased with him. 

Why?

Because Jesus has been doing what God asked him to do, and doing it with love.

He doesn’t expect great things from us, it is He who makes things great.  

What God wants from us is not complicated.  What He wants is for us to know, love, and follow Jesus better by doing what He asks of us.

And when we do that, we find a simple peace, wisdom and a calm that wasn’t there before.  One we can’t get on our own.

We can see this in the lives of the saints.

While many of them did amazing things, worked miracles and converted hardened sinners, not all of them did.

Many saints lived ordinary, hidden lives, pleasing God by living their daily duties with love and sacrifice.

St Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower entered a French Carmelite convent when she was just fifteen, where she prayed, worked and served her community.

When she died nine years later, her convent sisters debated whether to even include her death in the newsletter that was sent to the other Carmelite convents with the relevant news of the day.

That's how simple and humble her daily life appeared to them.

And yet, today she is one of the world's most well known and most inspirational saints and a Doctor of the Universal Church.

We are related to the Little Flower and are a sibling of Jesus Christ because of the great and miraculous gift of Baptism.

The sanctifying grace of Baptism began a journey for us of following Christ through this life.

God-willing it will culminate with the everlasting joys of heaven.

This journey is not easy and we can’t do it alone.

In a few moments, Jesus will give us renewed strength for this journey by feeding us with his own Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist.

When He does, let us thank him for this priceless gift and ask Him to help us know, love, and follow Him better by doing what He asks of us.

Homily for Third Sunday of Advent (Year B)

The readings for Third Sunday of Advent (Year B) May be found at:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121320.cfm

In this third week of Advent, we recognize Gaudette Sunday, when we wear pink and allow ourselves to celebrate a little, the joy and hope we have because of what God has done for us through Jesus.  Our color and our mood reflect - just a little - the bright light that is to come.

In today’s gospel we’re told that John was sent by God to testify to that light.

 

In all four gospels, John the Baptist appears at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as one who prepares the way for Jesus.  

But that wasn’t the only reason that John stood out.

We know from scripture that John lived in the wilderness, wore camel hair clothing and fed himself on locusts and wild honey, like someone you might see on a survival program.  On those shows, the goal is to survive - to be resourceful and to prove yourself strong and worthy and to challenge yourself.

But John wasn’t living to prove anything about himself.  John came to testify to the light and to help others prepare for the coming of Jesus.  

Because of the way John lived, the way he carried himself, the message he shared - people wondered who he was - and the priests and Levites asked him directly, “Who are you?”  And his response couldn’t have been more clear.  He was sent by God to be a witness to testify to the light.  His whole purpose, his whole reason for being, much like the disciples yet to come, was to make Jesus known to the world.  

John’s voice was one of hope. 

Now, we may not think of it this way, I mean our clothes, grooming and food choices are different than John’s, thankfully, but we’re not supposed to be very different from him.  

We’ve been placed here by God just as John was - to testify to the light and to prepare the way for Jesus.  

Like John, our role - all of ours - is to bring people to Christ.  

Does that mean we need to stand on the street corner with a sign or go door to door or monopolize every conversation with talk of scripture, no.

What we’re called to do is to try and live our lives in a way that people will be able to know through us - that our faith in Christ makes all the difference.  

To express our faith in a joyful, grateful way.  To talk about our faith.  To invite others to learn more about our faith.  To live in a way that brings hope.

I once heard someone say that hope doesn’t make life easy - it makes life possible - and i think that’s true.

Especially in times like these, hope reminds us that it won’t always be like this.  There is light coming.

Now hope doesn’t just happen.  Hope takes practice.  Practice could mean to rejoice - especially when it’s hard; to pray without ceasing - especially when we don’t want to and to give thanks in all circumstances - especially when all we want to do is complain. 

Hope is a way of approaching our day and how we do things.  It’s a way of seeing and hearing and it allows us to know Christ better.   It also has a way of rubbing off on those around us. I mean, would you rather be around a hopeful, thankful person or a miserable person who only points out the bad?  

Hope might not change the circumstances of our life, but it does change us - and in the process changes everything.  

It makes us a better witness and it allows us to better testify to the light and to better prepare the way for Jesus as John did.

The fact is, we give a witness to the light, to our faith in Jesus Christ every single day in our actions and our words.  What kind of witness do we give? 

The pink candle on our Advent wreath is lit - only one purple one left.  Jesus is coming.

How well prepared will he find his way when he gets here?

Homily for Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year A

The readings for the Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A) May be found at:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102520.cfm

All of our theology and preaching, in one way or another comes back to the same basic message of God’s love for us - in fact, love is why we were created in the first place.  

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells us that if we love God and our neighbor, everything else falls into place.

We know that as Catholics we are supposed to love God, but that doesn’t always happen.  We get busy.  We lose track of what’s really important.

As we race through our busy lives, do other people even know we’re Catholic?  I’m not talking about Mass or with church friends where we know how to speak, act, dress and look Catholic.  I’m talking about whether we live our lives in a way where it is obvious to people, by our actions that we are followers of Christ.

To live a life like that, God must be at the center of it.

God must be at the center, because we can only truly love and serve others when our relationship with God is right first.

The simple fact is that we can’t be Catholic if we don’t love God and love our neighbor.

It’s easy for us to love those neighbors who think like we do, look like we do and who do the things we agree with, but what about the ones we may not know or who find fault in everything or never have a good word to say about anyone?  Is that the one we must love?  Is that our neighbor?  We may not want to hear this, but the answer is yes.

Having a love for our neighbor is based on our love for God.  If we say we love God and don’t love our neighbor, we‘ve got it wrong.  

Now, you might say, “How can I love my neighbor when they do the things they do?”  Their front yard could be filled with political signs.  They may refuse to wear a mask or imagine this, they may fly a New York Yankees flag or something else that we find disagreeable.

The answer is we can only love them as God loves us, wanting better for them and expecting nothing in return. 

The great Cristian writer, C.S. Lewis’ words about humility capture what it’s like to love with the love of God when he wrote, “it is not about thinking less of yourself, it is about thinking of yourself less.” 

To truly love others, we need to see the image of God in them. We must get it through our head that each person is valuable in God’s sight, no matter how they look, no matter who they are, regardless of whether or not we agree with what they do.

When we treat each other with that same kind of love, when we see the potential rather than what’s superficial, when we give the benefit of the doubt rather than assuming the worst possible motives, we are loving like Jesus does.

Now, this isn’t always easy. Sometimes people are hard to love. 

The good news is that we know Jesus perfectly kept the Law on our behalf, and died for us to show God’s love. He knew that the greatest command of all is love. He loved others, and still loves us. Because of that, we can share His love with those around us, no matter what they might say or do to us. And when that seems hard, we can ask God to help us. 

Let’s do that now.

Dear God,

Thank you for your commandments,

Help us to remember that to love you and our neighbor is your greatest command,

Help us to share your love with those around us and to love like you do, especially when it is hard to do it,

And thank you for your love, Amen.