God's Thirst

In the story of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman (John 4: 4-42), Jesus is thirsty and says to the woman who has come to fetch water from a well, “Give me a drink.”  As their conversation progresses it becomes clear that Jesus wants more than a drink of water to quench his physical thirst.  He has a deeper thirst.

He talks to her about “living water,” which she mistakes for “running water,” an aqueduct, perhaps, that she thinks Jesus can make in order to provide her with water at home so she won’t have to carry water every day from the well. But the “living water” that Jesus is talking about is the water of Baptism which will give her the Holy Spirit and eternal life.  The deepest desire of Jesus is for her to know him and his love which will open her up to receiving the Spirit who gives true and eternal life. 

In his 2007 Message for Lent, Pope Benedict reflected upon the thirst of Jesus.  He wrote:  “On the cross, it is God Himself who begs the love of His creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us. … The response the Lord ardently desires of us is above all that we welcome His love and allow ourselves to be drawn to Him.” 

The Son of God loved us so much that he died to save us.  This love is not conditional.  He did not die for those who deserved or had earned his love.  As St. Paul put it: “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5: 8).  In fact, he even died praying that the Father’s mercy would come upon those who were killing them: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” (Luke 23: 34).  In the words of the contemporary Christian song “To Ever Live Without Me” by Jody McBrayer: “You would rather die than to ever live without me.” 

This is God’s thirst: to give each of us his infinite love and to receive us and our love so that we might be one with him forever.  

"Love Your Enemies"

Last Friday I was on Relevant Radio’s “The Inner Life” show with Chuck Neff.  We talked about the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A (Matthew 5: 38-48).  You can listen to the show here, but the following are some of the points I made. 

Jesus continues his “Sermon on the Mount.”  He challenges us to go beyond retributive justice that inflicts on someone who has done us wrong a similar wrong.  He calls us to give to others not what they deserve but what they need.  And what we all need is love—God’s merciful love.  The practical directives of Jesus—“offer no resistance to one who is evil,” “turn the other cheek,” “hand over your cloak,” “go for two miles,”—should, I think, be taken in the same way that we take Jesus’ directives from last week’s Gospel where Jesus said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.”  We do not take those words literally, but we should take them seriously.  In other words, Jesus was saying that it would be better to enter God’s Kingdom of Heaven with one less eye or hand than to end up with eyes and hands intact but alienated from God forever.  We have an obligation to oppose evil people in order to protect the innocent.  We must “go the extra mile” in loving them.

But what does love mean?  The world thinks of it solely in terms of romantic or erotic love.  It sees love primarily as an intense feeling of attraction and pleasure.  But true love—the love Jesus revealed on the cross—is an act of the will.  It means wanting or willing the ultimate good of the other, even one’s enemy or persecutor.  That ultimate good is salvation, heaven.  To love our enemies does not mean we have to like them.  We do not have to work up a feeling of affection for them.  But we must never will the ultimate evil of hell upon them.  Rather, we must pray for the conversion that can lead them to heaven.  In this centenary year of our Blessed Mother Mary’s appearance at Fatima, we follow her call to pray for the conversion of sinners and to do penance for that intention. 

One way to pray for our enemies is to try to understand them.  What leads them to hate or persecute us?  I think a lot of sin in the world is recycled hurt.  There is a saying, “Hurt people, hurt people.”  Where the prophet Jeremiah prayed for God to take vengeance on his enemies, to exercise strict justice by giving them the same suffering that they had heaped upon the prophet, Jesus, on the cross, prays to his Father to have mercy on his persecutors because they really do not know what they are doing.  He takes the hurt behind their violence and allows it to be nailed into his body, rather than recycling it. 

Before he became pope, Benedict XVI said:

Jesus “transforms, from within, the act of violent men against him into an act of giving on behalf of these men—into an act of love. What he teaches in the Sermon on the Mount, he now does: he does not offer violence against violence, as he might have done, but puts an end to violence by transforming it into love. The act of killing, of death, is changed into an act of love; violence is defeated by love.  This is the fundamental transformation upon which all the rest is based. It is the true transformation which the world needs and which alone can redeem the world. Since Christ in an act of love has transformed and defeated violence from within, death itself is transformed: love is stronger than death. It remains forever” (“Eucharist, Communion,Solidarity,” June 2, 2002).

Love has the power to transform.  It is the most powerful force in the world.  In his homily at the conclusion of World Youth Day in 2005, Pope Benedict, speaking about the Last Supper, said: 

“By making the bread into his Body and the wine into his Blood, he anticipates his death, he accepts it in his heart, and he transforms it into an action of love. What on the outside is simply brutal violence - the Crucifixion - from within becomes an act of total self-giving love. This is the substantial transformation which was accomplished at the Last Supper and was destined to set in motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the transformation of the world when God will be all in all (cf. I Cor 15: 28).

“In their hearts, people always and everywhere have somehow expected a change, a transformation of the world. Here now is the central act of transformation that alone can truly renew the world:  violence is transformed into love, and death into life.

“Since this act transmutes death into love, death as such is already conquered from within, the Resurrection is already present in it. Death is, so to speak, mortally wounded, so that it can no longer have the last word.

“To use an image well known to us today, this is like inducing nuclear fission in the very heart of being - the victory of love over hatred, the victory of love over death. Only this intimate explosion of good conquering evil can then trigger off the series of transformations that little by little will change the world. All other changes remain superficial and cannot save.”

Now we receive the Body of Christ and are transformed and empowered to be, as Jesus said, “children of your heavenly Father [who] makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”  To love our enemies as Jesus loved his, means being perfect “just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” 

The Pharisees thought of being perfect as God is perfect in terms of following the Law perfectly.  They thought that once they had done so, they deserved God’s favor.  God owed them.  Their motivation was not love but self-interest.  Perfectionism generally turns people in on themselves. They live in fear and not in love and their relationship with God and with other people ends up suffering. 

Ultimately being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect is not something we can accomplish by our own will power and efforts.  It requires God’s free gift of grace to which we open ourselves.  That grace is given most powerfully in the Word and the Sacrament which transform us to be children of our heavenly Father, members of the Body of Christ, able to love even our enemies. 

A First Mass Homily

Homily for the First Mass of Fr. Vincent Strand, S.J. 
St. Bruno Parish, Dousman, WI -- June 5, 2016

1 Kings 17: 17-24;  Galatians 1: 11-14a, 15a,c, 16a, 17, 19;  Luke 7: 11-17

Two women.  Both are heart-broken. They have lost their husbands, and now, their own flesh and blood, their sons.

The Prophet Elijah was a boarder at one widow’s home during a time of drought and famine.  God miraculously provided food for the three—the prophet, the widow and her son—but now the son dies.  Elijah feels her pain.  He prays.  And God brings the boy back to life.

Jesus was recognized as “a great prophet,” in the tradition of Elijah.  He feels the widow of Nain’s pain and is moved with pity. Then, with his own power because he is Son of God, he brings the youth back to life.

Commenting on this story, Pope Francis said:

This “compassion” is God’s love for humanity, it is mercy--thus the attitude of God in contact with human misery, with our destitution, our suffering, our anguish. The biblical term “compassion” recalls a mother’s womb. The mother in fact reacts in a way all her own in confronting the pain of her children. It is in this way, according to Scripture, that God loves us. What is the fruit of this love and mercy? It is life! … The mercy of Jesus is not only an emotion; it is a force which gives life that raises man.

The restoration to life of the two sons is beautiful, but temporary. They will die again.  Their being raised to earthly life is a sign of something better. Because Jesus rose from the dead, he has power to give not just a temporary extension of life, but eternal life.  He can raise people from the dead to live forever with him in heaven.  This is part of the Creed which we proclaim together:  “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

Jesus shares this power to give new and eternal life with the Church, his Body. 

Vincent, Jesus shared this power with you yesterday. Jesus called you and yesterday he empowered you to heal broken hearts and souls.  Pope Francis, in a recent interview book entitled “The Name of God is Mercy,” said that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not like going to the dry cleaner to get stains removed.  It’s much more, much deeper. It involves healing wounds.  You are now an instrument of this healing and life-giving grace.

St. Paul, as we heard in the Second Reading, experienced the merciful love of God that took him from being a persecutor and zealot to proclaiming the love of God revealed in Jesus.

Pope Francis, at age of seventeen, on September 21, 1953, went to confession and had such a profound experience of God’s merciful love—and the healing and peace that it alone can give—that he chose to become a Jesuit priest.  You have also experienced the profound merciful love of Jesus that has drawn you to this vocation.

In the Novitiate you wrote:

As I grew more and more aware of God’s great love for me, suddenly my vocation seemed simple: to bring the love of Jesus to the world. For me, the love of Jesus was symbolized by the love of his Heart. I felt Christ calling me to share the love of his Heart, to be an apostle of his Heart. This, it seemed to me, was at the core of what it means to be a Jesuit. I knew it was to the Society of Jesus that God was calling me.

The image of the Heart of Christ that you chose for your ordination card is striking.  It’s not pretty, not sentimental. It was etched into a wall in one of the cells in the starvation bunker in Auschwitz. It’s just down the hall from St. Maximilian Kolbe’s cell. 















And on the wall opposite this image is another—
the one that is spoken of in the quote from Pope

Benedict XVI that you chose for the back of your card.  It’s a crucifixion scene—the Cross.

[We know that in the end—as Saint Ignatius of Loyola saw so clearly—the only real “standard” against which all human reality can be measured is the Cross and its message of an unmerited love which triumphs over evil, sin and death, creating new life and unfading joy. The Cross reveals that we find ourselves only by giving our lives away, receiving God’s love as an unmerited gift and working to draw all men and women into the beauty of that love and the light of the truth which alone brings salvation to the world.]

In that place of darkness—symbol of humanity’s inhumanity, of sin, and the hatred and violence it brings, there are images of love—the Cross and the Pierced Heart

You were ordained yesterday to bring the light of Christ’s love into the darkness. You will do this through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 

You will do this through the prophetic ministry of the Word, speaking words that challenge us to believe in the love of God and to have hope when it is so easy to despair; to, as some have said, comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable; to speak and write the truth that saves and to do so with love.

But more, you are now able to bring to people the very One who forgives, heals, and gives eternal life.  When you celebrate the Eucharist, Christ makes himself present through you. He makes present his life-giving death on the cross and his resurrection. Through you the bread and wine become the Body and Blood for us to receive and to be transformed. 

Pope Benedict XVI spoke of this in Cologne Germany at World Youth Day 2005. Your brothers were there, but you were not able to go because you had just entered the Novitiate.

Speaking about the Last Supper, Pope Benedict said:

By making the bread into his Body and the wine into his Blood, he anticipates his death, he accepts it in his heart, and he transforms it into an action of love. What on the outside is simply brutal violence - the Crucifixion - from within becomes an act of total self-giving love. This is the substantial transformation which was accomplished at the Last Supper and was destined to set in motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the transformation of the world when God will be all in all.

In their hearts, people always and everywhere have somehow expected a change, a transformation of the world. Here now is the central act of transformation that alone can truly renew the world:  violence is transformed into love, and death into life.

To use an image well known to us today, this is like inducing nuclear fission in the very heart of being - the victory of love over hatred, the victory of love over death. Only this intimate explosion of good conquering evil can then trigger off the series of transformations that little by little will change the world.

All other changes remain superficial and cannot save. This first fundamental transformation of violence into love, of death into life, brings other changes in its wake. Bread and wine become his Body and Blood.

But it must not stop there; on the contrary, the process of transformation must now gather momentum. The Body and Blood of Christ are given to us so that we ourselves will be transformed in our turn. We are to become the Body of Christ, his own Flesh and Blood.

Through your service at the altar, Vincent, we receive the Bread of Life, the food that transforms us, in Pope Benedict’s words, into “the Body of Christ, his own Flesh and Blood.”  As “the Body of Christ, his own Flesh and Blood,” all of us are now empowered to bring the merciful love of God into our own little corners of the world. The Eucharist, of which you are now a special servant, makes this possible.

We thank God for the call that you received and the grace with which you were able to accept the call. 

St. John Vianney, patron saint of all priests, said:

"The priesthood is the love of the Heart of Jesus.”

This love involves sacrifice, something you’ve obviously learned from the beginning, from the sacrifices that you’ve seen your family make. Thank you for offering yourself to be a priest, a Jesuit, an apostle of the Heart of Jesus.

God in the Flesh, a Real Baby

I was going to post a picture of the newborn Jesus in the manger, but most religious art does not do justice to the reality that the Son of God became an honest-to-goodness baby.  I blogged about this in 2009.

And so, whenever I give retreats and talk about the Nativity, I quote Fr. Al Lauer, a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and founder of Presentation Ministries,  who died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 55. His description in one of his daily reflections that appeared in Presentation Ministries "One Bread, One Body," is one of the best that I've come across.  He wrote:

"He emptied Himself (Phil 2: 7) when He became a helpless Infant. The all-powerful Creator of the world could not walk, talk, or roll over. The second Person of the blessed Trinity talked baby-talk, wet His diapers, and spit out His food. Almighty God weighed just a few pounds, shivered, cried, and nursed at His mother's breast.  

"The message of Christmas and God's incarnation is shocking. He Who created the billions of galaxies with billions of stars, Who created the countless creatures on this little planet, became completely dependent on His parents, just like us. It seems almost blasphemous to suggest that God became a weak human being. Yet He did, out of love for us.... The meaning of Christmas is shocking, but ultimately, it is love."

Yesterday Karen from Nebraska called the Apostleship of Prayer office. Her favorite video among the hundreds of two minute daily reflections that we've produced over the past six years is called "A Helpless Baby."  In it I quote Fr. Lauer.

Pope Benedict said a similar thing in his Midnight Mass Homily of 2008.  He said:

"God stooped down--he himself comes down as a child to the lowly stable, the symbol of all humanity's neediness and forsakenness. God truly comes down. He becomes a child and puts himself in the state of complete dependence typical of a newborn child. The Creator who holds all things in his hands, on whom we all depend, makes himself small and in need of human love. God is in the stable."

Last year in his Midnight Mass Homily, Pope Francis echoed these thoughts:

"God has entered our history; he has shared our journey. He came to free us from darkness and to grant us light. In him was revealed the grace, the mercy, and the tender love of the Father: Jesus is Love incarnate. He is not simply a teacher of wisdom, he is not an ideal for which we strive while knowing that we are hopelessly distant from it. ... Let us pause before the Child, let us pause in silence. ... Let us thank the Lord for having given Jesus to us.  ... We bless you, Lord God most high, who lowered yourself for our sake. You are immense, and you made yourself small; you are rich and you made yourself poor; you are all-powerful and you made yourself vulnerable."

Blessed and Peaceful Christmas Eve to all!

On the Feast of St. Jeanne Jugan

August 30 was the feast of St. Jeanne Jugan, the foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor. I celebrated Mass at St. Joseph’s Home in Palatine, IL. My homily was based on these special readings: Isaiah 58: 6-11; 1 John 3: 14-18; and Matthew 5: 1-12a.

We are celebrating a great saint today—Jeanne Jugan. Of course she would shudder at those words. She aspired not to be great but to be little.  She once said: “Be little, little, little; if you get big and proud, the congregation will fall.” And another time, “Only the little are pleasing to God.”

Why? Because this is God’s way. How did God choose to save the world? Not with worldly power and glory. Not with an army of angels that would force people to follow God’s way. God saved the world by becoming little—a little baby.

In his homily at Midnight Mass on Christmas 2008, Pope Benedict said that our first experience of God is one of distance. God seems so far above and beyond us. This transcendent God drew near, bridging the distance by becoming one of us. Pope Benedict went on to say that our experience of God is also one of glory and grandeur which provoke fear in us. So God became a tiny baby in order that we would no longer fear but love, for people love tiny, newborn babies. 

St. Paul wrote that the Son of God became poor in order to make us rich. He emptied himself and became little and in need of love and care. He shared our life with its sorrows and joys, its sufferings, both physical and spiritual when he felt totally abandoned as he hung dying on a cross. He shared in death itself.

The cross looks like a failure, but God’s ways are not ours. The failure of the cross is really a triumph in which the power of love wins over sin and death. 

“Love.” That word is used in so many different ways that it has lost its meaning. We talk about loving our pets and ice cream. We love whatever and whomever makes us feel good, gives us pleasure. It’s all about “me” and how I am feeling.

In our second reading St. John says that love is not about feelings and not about words, but about deeds and action.

This is why “hospitality” is such an important word. Hospitality is love in action.

It begins in hearts—hearts open to others, to all, especially the poor and the sick, the neglected and rejected of what Pope Francis calls our “disposable culture.”  We must open our hearts to them just as the Sacred Heart of Jesus is open to them.

This is what Jeanne Jugan did. Her heart was open to the elderly poor. She felt their need.  She had compassion and suffered for their sufferings.  And she responded. She not only opened her house to them; she gave up her own bed to that first poor blind woman that she carried into her home. 

This spirit of hospitality lives on today in the Little Sisters of the Poor. Their Constitutions state: “Consecrated hospitality is, in the midst of the world, a witness to the mercy of the Father and the compassionate love of the Heart of Jesus.”

Hospitality means opening our hearts, our doors, our wallets.  But ultimately the greatest hospitality is sharing the life of the other. Jeanne Jugan shared in the poverty of the poor, becoming a beggar for the beggars.  Her complete trust in Providence, not having endowments or investment income, continues today as the Little Sisters depend upon the generosity of others.

In his Lenten Message this year, Pope Francis said that Christ did not love us like someone who gives a little out of his or her abundance. He gave all and sacrificed his very self.

So did St. Jeanne Jugan who wanted to be known by her religious name Sister Mary of the Cross. She shared in the sufferings of the Crucified One as did His Mother who stood under the cross and suffered as only a mother could watching her son suffer and die. Mary joined her sufferings to those of Jesus for the salvation of the world. St. Jeanne also offered herself and sacrificed what was most dear to her, her own congregation. It was taken from her when she was relieved of any leadership position and lived a hidden life in the novitiate where the young did not even know who she was.

She was able to do this because she had become little. She had become the last and least. She found her strength and consolation in one place—in Jesus, who assured her that blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure of heart, blessed are the peacemakers, and blessed are those who suffer persecution.

When he canonized her in 2009, Pope Benedict said: “In the Beatitudes Jeanne Jugan found the source of the spirit of hospitality and fraternal love, founded on unlimited trust in Providence, which illuminated her whole life.”

He went on to say: “This evangelical dynamism is continued today across the world in the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor, which she founded and which testifies, after her example, to the mercy of God and the compassionate love of the Heart of Jesus for the lowliest. May St. Jeanne Jugan be for elderly people a living source of hope and for those who generously commit themselves to serving them, a powerful incentive to pursue and develop her work!”

We gather for the Eucharist, a word that means “thanksgiving.” We are grateful for the Sisters who faithfully live the charism of St. Jeanne Jugan. We are grateful for the staff, workers, and volunteers who share in that charism. We are grateful for the benefactors who support the Sisters in following their charism of total trust in God.  But most of all, we are grateful for the residents who give us an opportunity to love and care for Jesus who said “Whatever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me.”

"My Heart Is Overwhelmed"

The book of the prophet Hosea is one of my favorite books in the Hebrew Scriptures. I don’t recall ever reading it before I entered the Jesuits at the young age of nineteen and so it made quite an impression on me when our novice master quoted from it as he spoke to us about the overwhelming love of God.

Chapter 11 of Hosea is particularly striking. Speaking through the prophet, God says: “I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks.” Like a good parent, God is moved by the pain that a child’s rebellion causes both the child and the family. While God is angry with sin and its consequences, there is also deep compassion for the child who will ever be God’s child.  God says: “My heart is overwhelmed, my pity is stirred.”

In 1981 at a Sacred Heart Conference in Toulouse, France, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke about this line. 

That talk can be found in the book “Behold The Pierced One.” According to the future Pope Benedict, the word “overwhelmed” actually means something much stronger.  He writes:

“God’s Heart turns around—here the Bible uses the same words as in the depiction of God’s judgment on the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrha (Gen 19: 25); the word expresses a total collapse: not one stone remains upon another. The same word is applied to the havoc wrought by love in God’s Heart in favor of his people.”

Then, speaking about how the New Testament is the fulfillment of this prophetic word, he writes:

“Here we see the upheaval in the Heart of God as God’s own genuine Passion. It consists in God himself, in the person of his Son, suffering Israel’s rejection. … God takes the destiny of love destroyed upon himself…. According to Hosea 11, the Passion of Jesus is the drama of the divine Heart.  … The pierced Heart of the crucified Son is the literal fulfillment of the prophecy of the Heart of God. … We can only discern the full magnitude of the biblical message of the Heart of God, the Heart of the divine Redeemer, in this continuity and harmony of Old and New Testament.”

We often use the expressions, “my heart is broken” or “my heart breaks for you.”  While that captures more of the sense of what is translated as “overwhelmed,” it too is not as strong as the original meaning of the word that is used to describe what Cardinal Ratzinger calls “the havoc wrought by love in God’s Heart in favor of his people.”

Who would not be moved to want to bring consolation to this Heart that is broken by and for humanity?  This is the ultimate meaning of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Christ's Ascension and Ours



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According to the first chapter in the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus “was lifted up” in front of his followers “and a cloud took him from their sight.” Jesus disappeared. Does this mean that Jesus is no longer “Emmanuel” or “God-with-us”?  No. Jesus remains with us in the Blessed Sacrament; he comes to us in the Eucharist.  Now we have a connection with heaven where Jesus is with the Father and yet remains close to us.  In the Ascension Jesus passes beyond space and time and is no longer limited to just one place. 

Pope Benedict XVI wrote about this mystery in the second volume of his work Jesus of Nazareth:

Christ, at the Father’s right hand, is not far away from us. At most we are far from him, but the path that joins us to one another is open. And this path is not a matter of space travel of a cosmic-geographical nature: it is the “space travel” of the heart, from the dimension of self-enclosed isolation to the new dimension of world-embracing divine love (p.286).

In the Sacred Heart of Jesus there is no distance. All are one with one another and with Jesus.  St. Paul taught that the Body of Christ is one (see 1 Corinthians 12: 12-27).  Christ is the Head and Heart of the Body. 

The Ascension of Jesus assures us that where the Head has gone, the Body will follow. 
Pope Francis uses the concrete image of mountain climbing to describe this reality:

The Ascension of Jesus into heaven acquaints us with the deeply consoling reality on our journey: Christ opened the path to us. He is like a roped guide climbing a mountain who, on reaching the summit, pulls us up to him and leads us to God. If we entrust our life to him, if we let ourselves be guided by him, we are certain to be in safe hands, in the hands of our Savior, of our Advocate. Dear brothers and sisters, the Ascension does not point to Jesus’ absence, but also tells us that he is alive in our midst in a new way. He is no longer in a specific place in the world as he was before the Ascension. He is now in the lordship of God, present in every space and time, close to each one of us.  In our life we are never alone: we have this Advocate who awaits us, who defends us. We are never alone: the Crucified and Risen Lord guides us.

The Ascension is one mystery with two very consoling consequences: we are never alone and in Jesus the human race has arrived in heaven.

The Vine and Branches

In today's gospel (John 15: 1-8) Jesus says "I am the vine, you are the branches."  It is another way of talking about the Body of Christ.  St. Paul wrote about our union with Christ in 1 Corinthians 12 where he said: "As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ" (v. 12). Through Baptism we are made one with Christ, the Head of the Body. The Eucharist nourishes and sustains that union.   

I've heard this many times but when I consider what this actually means, it's mind-boggling.  Pope Benedict XVI certainly understood the implications of this.   

On September 22, 2011 in his homily in Olympic Stadium, Berlin, Germany, he said the following about the image (better, the reality) of the vine and the branches: 

In the parable of the vine, Jesus does not say: “You are the vine”, but: “I am the vine, you are the branches” (Jn 15:5). In other words: “As the branches are joined to the vine, so you belong to me! But inasmuch as you belong to me, you also belong to one another.” This belonging to each other and to him is not some ideal, imaginary, symbolic relationship, but – I would almost want to say – a biological, life-transmitting state of belonging to Jesus Christ. Such is the Church, this communion of life with Jesus Christ and for one another, a communion that is rooted in baptism and is deepened and given more and more vitality in the Eucharist. “I am the true vine” actually means: “I am you and you are I” – an unprecedented identification of the Lord with us, with his Church.

He went on to explain that St. Paul learned this "unprecedented identification" of Christ with his followers from Jesus himself when he appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Jesus asked St. Paul when he was persecuting him, not his followers or his Church, but him.  Jesus is one with his baptized followers just as the parts of the body are one with the head and form one person. 

Pope Benedict said a similar thing in his closing homily at World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany.  Talking about the transformation that occurs when we receive Holy Communion, he said:

The Body and Blood of Christ are given to us so that we ourselves will be transformed in our turn. We are to become the Body of Christ, his own Flesh and Blood. We all eat the one bread, and this means that we ourselves become one.

Have you ever thought of yourself as the very "Flesh and Blood" of Christ?  We are.  It's an awesome thought and an even more awesome challenge to live out that reality in a practical way one day at a time.  We can't do that on our own by some super-human effort of our own. Jesus said as much when he said "without me you can do nothing."  But as branches joined to the vine, we will "bear much fruit."  That's what living the Eucharist in our daily lives means.

 

 

Our Transfiguration

On the Second Sunday of Lent we always have the story of Jesus' Transfiguration. It brings to mind my 2006 pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Our tour bus for over 40 pilgrims had to park at the foot of Mt. Tabor, the high hill on which tradition has it Jesus was transfigured. Then smaller vans took us up the narrow, winding road to the top.  The view was fantastic, for this high place rises from a plain and one can see, in all four directions, the beauty of the land that was promised to Abraham.  We celebrated Mass there, perhaps on the very spot where Jesus was transfigured.

But what was the Transfiguration? What happened on that high place? Imagine for a moment being with Peter, James, and John. What would you have seen? You would have seen the divine glory of God shine forth through Jesus, so powerful that it even affected the clothes he was wearing. You would have seen Moses and Elijah standing and talking with Jesus. You would have heard the voice of God the Father coming from heaven and you would have been covered by a "bright cloud," the sign of the Divine Presence.  It was a taste of heavenly glory, given to prepare you for the darkness ahead--the betrayal, arrest, suffering, and crucifixion of the one in whom you had placed all your hopes.

Was this, the Transfiguration, the greatest miracle of Jesus before his death and resurrection? Not according to St. Thomas Aquinas.  Then what was?

Was it one or all of the many healings, especially keeping in mind the ones Jesus did from a distance, like the servant of the centurion?  No.

Was it the multiplication of five loaves and two fish, enough to feed 5,000 people?  No.

Was it raising dead people, like Lazarus whose body had been in the tomb for several days or the daughter of a synagogue official named Jairus?  No, not according to St. Thomas Aquinas.

Then what about when Jesus walked on water and calmed a storm? Surely this display of his power over nature was his greatest earthly miracle?  No.

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest miracle of Jesus occurred at the Last Supper.  Here's how St. Thomas Aquinas put it as quoted in a letter that Pope John Paul II wrote for the 750th anniversary of the feast of Corpus Christi on May 28, 1996: "at the Last Supper, after celebrating the Passover with his disciples and when he was about to pass from this world to his Father, Christ instituted this sacrament as the perpetual memorial of his Passion..., the greatest of all his miracles, and he left this sacrament to those whom his absence filled with grief, as an incomparable consolation."

At World Youth Day 2005, in Cologne Germany, Pope Benedict described what happened at the Last Supper this way: "What is happening? How can Jesus distribute his Body and his Blood? By making the bread into his Body and the wine into his Blood, he anticipates his death, he accepts it in his heart and he transforms it into an action of love. What on the outside is simply brutal violence, from within becomes an act of total self-giving love. This is the substantial transformation which was accomplished at the Last Supper and was destined to set in motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the transformation of the world when God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor. 15: 28)."

This is the miracle that takes place every time Mass is celebrated. You don't have to fly across the ocean to see a miracle or the site of a miracle. You don't have to go across town or cross country to see an unusual spiritual phenomenon. The greatest miracle of Jesus happens right here, but we are often so unaware.

There is more. Not only are bread and wine transformed. We are too.  Pope Benedict again: "This first fundamental transformation of violence into love, of death into life, brings other changes in its wake. Bread and wine become his Body and Blood. But it must not stop there, on the contrary, the process of transformation must now gather momentum. The Body and Blood of Christ are given to us so that we ourselves will be transformed in our turn. We are to become the Body of Christ, his own flesh and blood."

Have you ever thought of yourself as the "flesh and blood" of Christ? It seems blasphemous to say that. Yet Pope Benedict says this is what happens when we receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. The two--Christ's flesh and ours--become one and we are transformed. Transfigured, as it were. At every celebration of the Eucharist we are given a taste of heaven. Jesus gives himself to us. The divine glory of Jesus is given to us so that it might shine forth into the world through us.


The Transfiguration of Jesus happened once. Our transfiguration, the transformation that every Holy Communion effects, happens every week, every day even.  We need this transforming "Bread of Life," food for our journey.

The apostles and Jesus descended the mountain and went forth to face the darkness that was gathering. We leave Mass and are sent forth into a dark world with the glory of God within us. We leave to face our own challenges to faith, hope, and love. But we aren't alone as we do so. We are one with Christ, whose Body we have received, and one with our brothers and sisters in the Communion of Saints.  We are not alone in the dark.

Reparation for Abortion

Today is the 41^st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision that legalized abortion in the United States. For Catholics it is a Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children. The March for Life is being held in Washington, DC and the Apostleship of Prayer’s Youth and Young Adult Director, Jesuit scholastic Santiago Rodriguez, has gone to represent us there. 

Last year Pope Benedict XVI tweeted a message of support to the March, saying that he would “join all those marching for life from afar, and pray that political leaders will protect the unborn and promote a culture of life.”  This year Pope Francis tweeted: “I join the March for Life in Washington with my prayers. May God help us respect all life, especially the most vulnerable.”

There are several options for the prayers and readings at Mass today and one of them involves wearing the violet vestments that are seen during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent. This is also a day of penance and reparation for sins against life. 

Reparation is what Jesus came to do. It means repairing the damage that sin has caused, balancing the evil that has been done with prayer, sacrifice, and works of charity. Jesus suffered and died on the cross and in that way took away the sins of the world. We can join him in that ongoing work as we offer our sacrifices, inconveniences, and hardships.

St. Faustina, the Polish nun and apostle of Divine Mercy, wrote in her diary about making reparation for the sin of abortion.  The following is section 1276:

“September 16, 1937. I wanted very much to make a Holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament today. But God’s will was otherwise. At eight o’clock I was seized with such violent pains that I had to go to bed at once. I was convulsed with pain for three hours; that is, until eleven o’clock at night. No medicine had any effect on me, and whatever I swallowed I threw up. At times, the pains caused me to lose consciousness. Jesus had me realize that in this way I took part in His Agony in the Garden, and that He Himself allowed these sufferings in order to offer reparation to God for the souls murdered in the wombs of wicked mothers. I have gone through these sufferings three times now. They always start at eight o’clock in the evening and last until eleven. No medicine can lessen these sufferings. When eleven o’clock comes, they cease by themselves, and I fall asleep at that moment. The following day, I feel very weak. 

“This happened to me for the first time when I was at the sanatorium. The doctors couldn’t get to the bottom of it, and no injection or medicine helped me at all or did I myself have any idea of what the sufferings were about. I told the doctor that never before in my life had I experienced such sufferings, and he declared he did not know what sort of pains they are. But now I understand the nature of these pains, because the Lord himself has made this known to me. Yet when I think that I may perhaps suffer in this way again, I tremble. But I don’t know whether I’ll ever again suffer in this way; I leave that to God. What it pleases God to send, I will accept with submission and love. If only I could save even one soul from murder by means of these sufferings!”

Several weeks ago, on December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, during my weekly radio show on Radio Maria, I interviewed Peggy Hamill, the director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, who is a regular participant in the monthly All Night Vigil of Prayer and Reparation that is held on First Fridays in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. We talked about the importance of prayer and making reparation for the evil of abortion.  You can hear the interview at the Radio Maria website here.

Christmas: The God Who Comes Close

I presided and preached at my Jesuit community’s Christmas celebration today. The readings were from the Mass During the Day: Isaiah 52: 7-10; Hebrews 1: 1-6; John 1: 1-18.

“How beautiful are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news.”  So says Isaiah. He goes on: “They shout for joy for they see directly, before their eyes, the Lord….”  We are filled with joy because we don’t see before our eyes “prophets” through whom “God spoke in partial and various ways,” as the second reading says. We see “directly, before our eyes,” because God has been made manifest, “the Word became flesh.”

In his Midnight Mass Homily of 2008, Pope Benedict spoke about our first experience of God being one of distance. God is so far above and beyond us. But then, referring to a medieval theologian by the name of William of St. Thierry, he said: “God became a child. He made himself dependent and weak, in need of our love. Now—this God who has become a child says to us—you can no longer fear me, you can only love me.” 

This is the good news, the Gospel of Joy!

God became lowly in order to raise us up.  God became human in order to make us divine, as our opening prayer said: “O God, … grant we pray, that we may share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

This is the miracle of the Incarnation: God, “the Word became flesh.”  This is the miracle of Baptism that John writes about in the Gospel.  Through Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection, we have been given the “power to become children of God,” to be “born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.”  This is the miracle of the Eucharist. The Son of God became flesh in order to give his flesh for the life of the world. He makes that offering present in every celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and he unites his flesh to ours in a “Holy Communion.” 

This is “Evangelii Gaudium,” the Gospel of Joy.  As you know, that’s the title of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation in which I’m told the word “joy” appears in one form or another 110 times.

What is the reason, the source of this joy?

In section #164, speaking about catechesis, Pope Francis writes that on our lips “the first proclamation must ring out over and over.”  What is that proclamation? “Jesus Christ loves you. He gave his life to save you. And now he is living at your side every day to enlighten and free you.” 

In other words, God is close, very close to each of us. This knowledge is “first,” according to Pope Francis, because it is “principal.” It is most important. It is the foundation of our lives. He goes on to say that this proclamation is principal because it is “the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another….”

All are called to hold fast to this proclamation and to announce it.  But, quoting from Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation about priests, Pastores Dabo Vobis, Pope Francis writes: “For this reason too, ‘the priest—like every other member of the Church—ought to grow in awareness that he himself is continually in need of being evangelized.’”  We priests need the Gospel of Joy, a deeper awareness that Jesus Christ loves us, gave his life for us, and is now living at our side every day.

As Jesuits we’ve been given a gift that helps us go deeper in this awareness. Through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, we don’t just think about how God has come close to us. We, as it were, “see directly.” Through the imagination and bringing the senses into our prayer, we experience the birth of Jesus. In this way the familiar stories and the high theology of the first chapter of John, do not remain here, in our heads, but enter our hearts where they can transform us. 

The Bridegroom of Souls

As far as I can determine, December 21 is the only day of the year when there is a Mass reading from Song of Songs, a title which basically means “The Best Song.” It’s also known as Canticle of Canticles and The Song of Solomon who is thought to have been its author.  This Old Testament book consists of a series of love poems and it’s the only book in the Bible that never mentions God. 

The Mass readings for December 21 offer an option to be used instead of the passage from Song of Songs 2: 8-14 which begins “Hark! My lover—here he comes springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills.”  This passage accompanies Luke 1: 39-45, the story of the Visitation when Mary, bearing the newly conceived Son of God in her womb, went to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth.

Jesus is the “lover” who travels across mountains and hills.  Jesus is God-in-the-flesh who, like any lover, wants to be with his beloved. He wants to be with humanity.  He wants to unite himself to each one of us.

I suspect that a second option is offered for the first Mass reading for December 21 because some people are squeamish when it comes to the love poetry of Song of Songs.  Various Biblical scholars have even described it as a celebration of erotic love which some might judge has no place in sacred writings. Yet erotic love or eros is not by its nature sinful.  It is only sinful when it becomes infected with lust which turns another person into an object to be used for pleasure.  In fact, God, who St. John declares is Love, is the origin of eros. God loves each person with a passionate love that is eros.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote about this in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) which was issued on Christmas Day, 2005.  Writing about Song of Songs, he said: “According to the interpretation generally held today, the poems contained in this book were originally love-songs, perhaps intended for a Jewish wedding feast and meant to exalt conjugal love.”  He then wrote about eros and another form of love, agape, or self-sacrificing love: “God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape.  The Prophets, particularly Hosea and Ezekiel, described God's passion for his people using boldly erotic images.”

In his 2007 Message for Lent, Pope Benedict explained this interplay of eros and agape in God. He wrote: “These biblical texts indicate that eros is part of God's very Heart: the Almighty awaits the ‘yes’ of his creatures as a young bridegroom that of his bride. … Dear brothers and sisters, let us look at Christ pierced on the Cross! He is the unsurpassing revelation of God's love, a love in which eros and agape, far from being opposed, enlighten each other. On the Cross, it is God himself who begs the love of his creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us.”

This is the meaning of Christmas. God loves humanity and each individual so much that he sacrifices himself, empties himself, so that we could be one with him forever. Love desires union with the beloved and God sacrificed all in order to be one with us. 

It should be no surprise that the erotic poetry of Song of Songs is in the Bible. While expressing the passion of human romantic love, it also reveals the passionate love of God who has traditionally been called “The Bridegroom of the Soul.”

 

Our Lady of Czestochowa

One of my favorite images of the Blessed Virgin Mary is Our Lady of Czestochowa. Of course being 100% Polish could be a reason for this, as well as the fact that in August, 2006 I visited the Polish shrine in which this image resides--Jasna Gora or Bright Hill.  There are various stories about the origin of this image.  Some say that it was painted by the gospel-writer St. Luke. It seems to have made its way to Constantinople, the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire.  From there it went to a castle in Belz, now part of Ukraine but in the 1300's part of the Kingdom of Poland. The castle was attacked by Tartars, one of whom shot an arrow through a window and into the room where the image was kept, piercing the throat of the Madonna.

After the attack was repulsed, Duke Wladyslaw of Opole decided to take the image to a safer place--his home in western Poland. The image was carried in solemn procession. Along the way, the group stopped in the town of Czestochowa to spend the night. In the morning the image was placed in a wagon but the horses refused to move. Wladyslaw prayed for guidance and was inspired to have the image remain in a church on a hill in Czestochowa.  This took place on August 26, 1382.

In 1430 a band of Bohemian Hussites, a heretical Christian sect, stormed the monastery in which the image resided and stole various precious items.  But as they fled, horses pulling the wagon which held the image refused to move. One of the robbers threw the image to the ground and in anger slashed it twice.  As he raised his sword a third time, he fell to the ground and died.  The other robbers fled in fear and the image has remained in Czestochowa ever since.

In time artists have tried to "repair" the damage done by the Tartar arrow and Hussite sword, but each time the wounds mysteriously reappeared.  It would seem that our Blessed Mother, wounded by sin, wounded by humanity's rejection of her and her Son, wants the wounds to remain, just as the wounds on her Son's risen body remain--a sign of the terrible effects of sin and a sign of love.

On May 26, 2006 Pope Benedict visited Czestochowa and prayed before the image. He said the following:

"Just as the Apostles together with Mary 'went to the upper room' and there 'with one accord devoted themselves to prayer' (Acts 1:12,14), so we too have come together today at Jasna Góra, which for us at this hour is the 'upper room' where Mary, the Mother of the Lord, is among us.  Today it is she who leads our meditation; she teaches us how to pray.  Mary shows us how to open our minds and our hearts to the power of the Holy Spirit, who comes to us so as to be brought to the whole world. ...

"My dear friends, we need a moment of silence and recollection to place ourselves in her school, so that she may teach us how to live from faith, how to grow in faith, how to remain in contact with the mystery of God in the ordinary, everyday events of our lives.  With feminine tact and with 'the ability to combine penetrating intuition with words of support and encouragement' (John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater 46), Mary sustained the faith of Peter and the Apostles in the Upper Room, and today she sustains my faith and your faith. ...

"When the Apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, went out to the whole world proclaiming the Gospel, one of them, John, the Apostle of love, took Mary into his home (cf. Jn 19:27). It was precisely because of his profound bond with Jesus and with Mary, that he could so effectively insist on the truth that 'God is love' (1 Jn 4:8,16). These were the words that I placed at the beginning of the first Encyclical of my Pontificate: Deus Caritas Est! This is the most important, most central truth about God. To all for whom it is difficult to believe in God, I say again today: 'God is love'. Dear friends, be witnesses to this truth. You will surely be so if you place yourselves in the school of Mary. Beside her you will experience for yourselves that God is love, and you will transmit this message to the world with the richness and the variety that the Holy Spirit will know how to enkindle."

The Special Role of Seniors

One of the talks I usually give on my retreats is about the perspective that death gives to life. Realizing that we are not going to live on this earth forever should make us use the time we have well. I like to quote from Psalm 90: "Seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong." Then I look out at the retreatants and observe that we have some "strong" people in the group. The psalm goes on: "Teach us to count our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart."

A few weeks ago I had two retreats with "strong" people. They were residents of the Little Sisters of the Poor Residences for the Elderly in Scranton, PA and Totowa, NJ.  In fact one of the residents in Totowa is very "strong." He's the retired archbishop of Newark who is 101 years old. 

I enjoy giving retreats to "seniors," as one person told me I should call older people. They are often forgotten and aren't mobile enough to get out to a retreat house.  Society in general treats them as useless and unproductive. Yet they play a very important role in the life of society and the Church.  They are wisdom figures. A comedian once said: "You don't get to be old by being a fool."  I enjoyed telling those older retreatants that their prayers, joined to their sacrifices and sufferings, play an important role.  And so that they would know this wasn't just my opinion, I shared with them a quote from Pope Benedict XVI.  He said the following when he visited a home for the elderly November 12, 2012:

"I come to you as Bishop of Rome, but also as an old man visiting his peers. ... I would like to tell you with deep conviction: it is beautiful to be old! ... We have received the gift of longevity. Living is beautiful even at our age, despite some 'aches and pains' and a few limitations.

"In the Bible longevity is considered a blessing of God; today this blessing is widespread and must be seen as a gift to appreciate and to make the most of. And yet frequently society, dominated by the logic of efficiency and gain, does not accept it as such: on the contrary it frequently rejects it, viewing the elderly as non-productive or useless.

"When life becomes frail, in the years of old age, it never loses its value and its dignity: each one of us, at any stage of life, is wanted and loved by God, each one is important and necessary.

"Dear elderly brothers and sisters, the days sometimes seem long and empty, with difficulties, few engagements and few meetings. Never feel down at heart: you are a wealth for society, even in suffering and sickness. And this phase of life is also a gift for deepening the relationship with God. ... Do not forget that one of the valuable resources you possess is the essential one of prayer: become interceders with God, praying with faith and with constancy. Pray for the Church, and pray for me, for the needs of the world, for the poor, so that there may be no more violence in the world. The prayers of the elderly can protect the world....  The Pope loves you and relies on all of you! May you feel beloved by God and know how to bring a ray of God's love to this society of ours...."

Pope Benedict's New Ministry

I got up early this morning and spent about a half hour on the treadmill getting exercise both physically and spiritually as I prayed the rosary. When I returned to my room to stretch I turned on the television where I heard the "breaking news" and saw photos of Pope Benedict. At first I thought he had died. Then I was shocked to hear that he had resigned.  It is taking some time to digest this news.

In the announcement of his resignation, Pope Benedict told the Cardinals whom he had gathered the following reason for his resignation:

"After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me."

As we talked about the resignation in the office this morning and wondered how we could make a smooth transition as we publicize Pope Benedict's monthly prayer intentions, Michael, one of our part-time employees and the coordinator of our volunteers, reminded us of something very important. He said, "Now he'll be the praying Pope." Not that Pope Benedict has not been a Pope who has prayed intensely as he strove to be faithful to his call and ministry, but now prayer and sacrifice will be his primary mission. 

Today is the 21st World Day of the Sick and the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.  Is it a coincidence that Pope Benedict chose this as the day on which he announced his resignation due to health concerns and his growing weakness? With God there is no coincidence. 

When he resigns Pope Benedict will focus his attention on a different but very important ministry.  Here is what he wrote at the beginning of his Message for this World Day of the Sick:

"This day represents for the sick, for health care workers, for the faithful and for all people of goodwill “a privileged time of prayer, of sharing, of offering one’s sufferings for the good of the Church, and a call for all to recognize in the features of their suffering brothers and sisters the Holy Face of Christ, who, by suffering, dying and rising has brought about the salvation of mankind” (John Paul II, Letter for the Institution of the World Day of the Sick, 13 May 1992, 3). On this occasion I feel especially close to you, dear friends, who in health care centres or at home, are undergoing a time of trial due to illness and suffering. May all of you be sustained by the comforting words of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council: “You are not alone, separated, abandoned or useless. You have been called by Christ and are his living and transparent image” (Message to the Poor, the Sick and the Suffering)."

In his Message for this day, Pope Benedict also mentioned St. Anna Schaffer whom he canonized last October 21, saying that she "was able to unite in an exemplary way her sufferings to those of Christ."

He said the following in his homily at the time of her canonization:

"Anna Schaeffer, from Mindelstetten, as a young woman wished to enter a missionary order. She came from a poor background so, in order to earn the dowry needed for acceptance into the cloister, she worked as a maid. One day she suffered a terrible accident and received incurable burns on her legs which forced her to be bed-ridden for the rest of her life. So her sick-bed became her cloister cell and her suffering a missionary service. She struggled for a time to accept her fate, but then understood her situation as a loving call from the crucified One to follow him. Strengthened by daily communion, she became an untiring intercessor in prayer and a mirror of God’s love for the many who sought her counsel. May her apostolate of prayer and suffering, of sacrifice and expiation, be a shining example for believers...."

The world doesn't understand this. Some commentators said that the Pope is retiring so he can enjoy a well-deserved rest. No. On rare occasions  Popes have resigned but they don't retire. Pope Benedict will be moving to a new and powerful ministry for the Church and the world. In great humility, he will leave the work that he has faithfully offered to God and will now focus on offering up his prayers and sufferings.

You are Necessary

I celebrated Mass at 8 AM today, the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, with the Discalced Carmelite Sisters in Flemington, NJ and the small community that gathers on Sunday to pray with them.  Here is my homily:

I want to begin with a question: when did God think of you?  Was it nine months and a day before you were born?  Or ten months before your birth?  In the first reading (Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19) we hear God say, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you...." So God had us in mind before we were conceived and began to develop in our mothers' wombs.  But when did God first think of you?

In a homily he gave shortly after being elected to lead the Church, Pope Benedict XVI said that "each of us is the result of a thought of God."  The thoughts of God are eternal. God had you in mind from all eternity, not just at some moment in time preceding your conception and birth.  The Holy Father went on to say, "Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary." 

Me?! Necessary?! Yes!

We have a tendency to think along the lines of the people of Nazareth whom we see in today's Gospel (Luke 4:21-30). They had an agenda and expectations about what the Messiah would be like. They thought he would be a great religious leader, a great military leader. Jesus, the hometown boy and son of a carpenter, didn't meet those expectations. They saw Him as insignificant.

We too have expectations. We too judge according to worldly standards of greatness.

Paul confronts that in our second reading (1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13). He writes that what's important is not prophecy or speaking in all sorts of human or heavenly tongues. What's important is not the miraculous moving of a mountain or being able to "comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge."  What's important is not giving up everything and living a life of poverty like that of St. Francis of Assisi.  What's important is not even undergoing great sufferings for the faith or undergoing martyrdom.  All of these can become the source of pride, that which first separated the devil and the first humans from God.  What matters is love.  We and what we do are nothing without love.

Why?  Because God is love and we're made in the image and likeness of love. We are here on earth for one reason--to learn to love. We exist to love God with all our heart, mind, and strength. Loving God totally, we will love what God loves--our neighbor, those others whom God also had in mind from all eternity.

What matters--what makes us necessary to God and for God's plan--is not doing great things, but the love with which we do everything. This is what Blessed Teresa of Calcutta taught when she said: "It is not how much we do, but how much love we put into what we do." This was the "Little Way" of the Doctor of the Church, St. Therese of Lisieux. This was the way of St. Teresa of Avila who, at the end of The Interior Castle, wrote:

"In sum, my Sisters, what I conclude with is that we shouldn't build castles in the air. The Lord doesn't look so much at the greatness of our works as the love with which they are done. And if we do what we can, His Majesty will enable us each day to do more and more, provided that we do not quickly tire. But during the little while this life lasts--and perhaps it will last a shorter time than each one thinks--let us offer the Lord interiorly and exteriorly the sacrifice we can. His Majesty will join it with that which He offered on the cross to the Father for us. Thus even though our works are small they will have the value our love for Him would have merited had they been great."

This is the way of the Apostleship of Prayer. We offer to God every day with its thoughts, words, and deeds, its prayers, works, joys, and sufferings, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In that way, every moment can be an act of love. United to the perfect offering of Jesus on the cross and at Mass, every moment becomes significant, eternally significant. And in that way, a necessary part of God's plan for you and the world. You and every act of love are necessary.

Rejoice! Here is Your Instruction Booklet

I'm preparing to celebrate Mass this evening at the Newman Center for the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.  Here's part of what I'll say:

In the first reading (Nehemiah 8:2-10) the people of Israel weep as they hear the Law of God proclaimed.  Why?  One reason is that they have just returned to the Promised Land from exile. They weep for joy to be back in their homeland where God's Law can be read publicly.  But they also weep with sorrow, realizing that the reason for the disasters that befell them were the result of not following the Law they are hearing proclaimed.  They and their ancestors had forgotten God and His Law.  And God honored their choice to follow a different path which ended in disaster. 

The reality is that God made humanity with a plan.  To follow that plan leads to happiness; to reject that plan leads to unhappiness.  It's as simple as that. 

Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to say that God's commandments were not something that were imposed on us from above, but rather were built right into our nature.  They are the instruction booklet that comes with every human being at birth. 

Thus Ezra, in the first reading, tells the people to rejoice because they have found the instructions that had been lost and they will now know what to do. 

Even then, the temptation to think we know better than God is always there.  We want to change nature and create our own law.  We want to ignore reality, the way God created the world, and be our own gods.  In a recent meeting in the Vatican Pope Benedict called this "technological Prometheanism" and said: "This is a radical denial of the nature of the creature and child in man, which ends in tragic loneliness." 

Jesus came as the obedient Son of the Father who, as Paul wrote, "did not deem equality with God something to be grasped" (Philippians 2:6). This is good news.  Jesus comes as the Living Law of God who not only invites us to follow Him to eternal happiness but also empowers us to follow Him. How?  Through the Eucharist we celebrate. Jesus gives Himself to us.  In union with Him we now have the ability to follow the Law of God, the path that leads to happiness. 

"God Became Poor"

The symbol for the evangelist John is an eagle.  The theology of his gospel is soaringly high.  He begins his gospel writing about the Word or "Logos" which in the Greek world stood for Wisdom.  The early Fathers of the Church said that John found the wisdom about which he wrote at the breast of Jesus during the Last Supper.  When he drew near to the Heart of Jesus he drank from the source of wisdom and was able to soar into the heights that his gospel takes us. 

Every year, during the Mass of Christmas Day, we hear the beginning of John's gospel.  We hear: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word as with God, and the Word was God."  As the Word, Jesus is the perfect communication of God the Father.  According to the beginning of the Letter to the Hebrews, before Jesus came, "God spoke in partial and various ways...."  In Jesus, the Word, God did not speak partially but in the fullest way possible.  Jesus is the complete revelation of who God is. 

As the saying goes, "actions speak louder than words."  So "the Word became flesh."  God took flesh so that humanity would not only hear about or hear from God, but would see and touch and experience God in the flesh. 

St. Ignatius Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, invites people to not only read about Jesus, nor to simply think about the scenes in the gospels, but to use the imagination to experience them.  Jesus is the Living Word whom we encounter in the gospels. 

I don't think St. Ignatius' insight is original.  It was this same motivation--to not only read about the birth of Jesus but to experience it as though one were actually present--that led St. Francis of Assisi in 1223 to create what many have called the first Nativity scene.  In Greccio, Italy he brought together an ox and an ass, a manger and hay, so that people would experience for themselves what it must have been like for Jesus to be born.  He wanted them to not only hear the gospel but to see the baby Jesus with the eyes of their hearts. 

At Midnight Mass in 2011 Pope Benedict said the following about this: 

"Francis discovered Jesus' humanity in an entirely new depth. ... This human existence of God became most visible to him at the moment when God’s Son, born of the Virgin Mary, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. ... For God’s Son to take the form of a child, a truly human child, made a profound impression on the heart of the Saint of Assisi, transforming faith into love. ... In the child born in the stable at Bethlehem, we can as it were touch and caress God.

"This has nothing to do with sentimentality. It is right here, in this new experience of the reality of Jesus’ humanity that the great mystery of faith is revealed. Francis loved the child Jesus, because for him it was in this childish estate that God’s humility shone forth. God became poor. His Son was born in the poverty of the stable. In the child Jesus, God made himself dependent, in need of human love, he put himself in the position of asking for human love – our love."

God came to save the world not with a purifying and destroying flood, not with legions of soldiers nor armies of angels, not with thunderbolts.  God did not come with violence to impose His will on humanity nor to force people to be good.  God came as a poor, weak baby to attract our attention and our love. 

This is completely contrary to human or worldly wisdom.  Yet, whose birthday is remembered annually throughout the world?  Is it Nebuchadnezzar's?  Is it Alexander the Great's?  Is it the birthday of Caesar, Julius or Tiberius or one of the others?  Is it Napolean's?  Or Adolph Hitler's?  Or Stalin, who once asked, "The Pope? How many divisions does he have?" 

It is the birthday of Jesus that the world remembers every year.  It is His example that inspired St. Francis that great lover of the humanity of Jesus, of the Christ Child.  It is their example--Jesus and His close follower Francis--that continues to inspire people today.

Love is the only power capable of changing hearts and changing the world.  In his First Letter, John wrote "God is love."  Jesus is love in word, in action, in the flesh.  Now we, as members of His Body, make Him present today.  Let us draw near with our imaginations to the Baby Jesus and show Him our love by promising to love those for whom He became a baby and suffered and died.  Let us commit ourselves to be peace-makers as we read these words from Pope Benedict's 2011 homily at Midnight Mass:

"God has appeared – as a child. It is in this guise that he pits himself against all violence and

brings a message that is peace. At this hour, when the world is continually threatened by violence in so many places and in so many different ways, when over and over again there are oppressors’ rods and bloodstained cloaks, we cry out to the Lord: O mighty God, you have appeared as a child and you have revealed yourself to us as the One who loves us, the One through whom love will triumph. And you have shown us that we must be peacemakers with you. We love your childish estate, your powerlessness, but we suffer from the continuing presence of violence in the world, and so we also ask you: manifest your power, O God. In this time of ours, in this world of ours, cause the oppressors’ rods, the cloaks rolled in blood and the footgear of battle to be burned, so that your peace may triumph in this world of ours."

Happy Anniversary

Today is the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council.  Pope Benedict XVI chose this anniversary as the day on which the Year of Faith would begin.  In his letter announcing the Year of Faith, the Holy Father spoke of these themes:  "a profound crisis of faith" in the world; the necessity of the "profession of the truth faith and its correct interpretation;" "authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord;" and the need "to rediscover the joy of believing and the enthusiasm for communicating the faith."  It's no accident that Pope Benedict chose this date for the beginning of the Year of Faith because those are themes that appeared in Blessed Pope John XXIII's address at the opening of the Council on October 11, 1962.  Here are some brief excerpts from that address which are as timely today as they were 50 years ago.

Pope John XXIII's reason for calling the Council

"And now the Church must once more reaffirm that teaching authority of hers which never fails, but will endure until the end of time.  For that was Our reason for calling this most authoritative assembly...."

"The major interest of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred heritage of Christian truth be safeguarded and expounded with greater efficacy.  That doctrine embraces the whole man, body and soul. It bids us live as pilgrims here on earth as we journey onwards towards our heavenly homeland. It demonstrates how we must conduct this mortal life of ours.  If we are to achieve God's purpose in our regard we have a twofold obligation: as citizens of earth, and as citizens of heaven.  That is to say, all men without exception, both individually and in society, have a life-long obligation to strive after heavenly values through the right use of things of this earth.  These temporal good must be used in such a way as not to jeopardize eternal happiness." 

"And our duty is not just to guard this treasure [of the truth of the Church's doctrine], as though it were some museum-piece and we the curators, but earnestly and fearlessly to dedicate ourselves to the work that needs to be done in this modern age of ours, pursuing the path which the Church has followed for almost twenty centuries." 

What is needed is to turn to Christ and to share the faith with enthusiasm

"Certain it is that the critical issues, the thorny problems that wait upon men's solution, have remained the same for almost twenty centuries. And why? Because the whole of history and of life hinges on the person of Jesus Christ. Either men anchor themselves on Him and His Church, and thus enjoy the blessings of light and joy, right order and peace; or they live their lives apart from Him; many positively oppose Him, and deliberately exclude themselves from the Church. The result can only be confusion in their lives, bitterness in their relations with one another, and the savage threat of war."

"What is needed at the present time is a new enthusiasm, a new joy and serenity of mind in the unreserved acceptance by all of the entire Christian faith, without forfeiting that accuracy and precision in its presentation which characterized the proceedings of the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. What is needed, and what everyone imbued with a truly Christian, Catholic and apostolic spirit craves today, is that this doctrine shall be more widely known, more deeply understood, and more penetrating in its effects on men's moral lives. What is needed is that this certain and immutable doctrine, to which the faithful owe obedience, be studied afresh and reformulated in contemporary terms. For this deposit of faith, or truths which are contained in our time-honored teaching is one thing; the manner in which these truths are set forth (with their meaning preserved intact) is something else."


In these words of Blessed John XXIII there are clear echoes of what has come to be known as the "New Evangelization."  Christ is not new.  The contents of the faith are not new.  What is new is the enthusiasm with which the faithful ought to believe and to share their faith.  What is new is the method with which the Church communicates its knowledge to a world in desperate need of the faith that leads to love of God and neighbor.  May this anniversary and the Year of Faith inspire us all!