Fifteenth Sunday of the Year - 2025

The three Evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke include this encounter with Jesus and the Scribe and the Pharisee in their gospels. Mark’s version suggests that the scribe questioning Jesus is impressed with Jesus’ teaching and wants to see if he and Jesus agree on the popular question of which is the most important of the commandments. But in Matthew as well as Luke, our gospel text for today, those questioning Jesus are trying to discredit Jesus’ teaching with trick questions about the commandments. First, they ask a popular question, ‘which is the most important commandment of the law’, and Jesus’ answer seems to agree with theirs. So, they try to entangle Jesus in the highly disputed question of ‘who is my neighbour’. It’s Luke who includes the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Jesus’s answer. There are some important lessons here for us Catholics who may consider ourselves to be truly devout believers because we go to church every Sunday no matter what. The Priest and the Levite in Jesus’ parable are no doubt on their way to fulfill their obligations of service at the temple or returning from doing so. But to do so they must be ritually clean. Coming into contact with blood would make them ritually unclean and unable to perform their religious duties in the temple. So they pass by the bleeding victim laying on the side of the road. Our coming to Mass on Sunday is a most profound religious act of which there is no greater. But we must come with hearts that are worthy. Consider these words of Jesus,  “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” Mtt. 5:23-24 Our religious practice must come from hearts that are humble and true. John, in his first letter asks how you can say you love God whom you have never seen when you fail to love your brother or sister right before your eyes. (1 John. 4:20) Jews at the time of Jesus’s parable hated the Samaritans for not following all the prescripts of the Law. But in Jesus’ parable it was the Samaritan who got it right, who fulfilled the essence of the Law. As you come seeking God’s forgiveness before the altar of God today, ask that your heart be filled with forgiveness and reconciliations for others. Our world is plagued by brokenness and division. It needs healers not haters. The Samaritan got it. Am I getting it?

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Fourteenth Sunday of the Year - 2025

The gospel for this Sunday has Jesus speaking these words; "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." There are two other texts that contain a similar reference: Isaiah 14:12 - "How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! Revelation 12:7 - The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. It may surprise us to realize that the call to Evangelization is a call to warfare, to a spiritual warfare, to be fought here and now in our daily lives. This may be hard to get our heads around given that we are being anesthetized by a growing secularism in our society that has lost all sense of the reality of the spiritual. 'Follow your dream, whatever makes you happy, that's all that matters. Truth is subjective', so it goes. It's like we are sitting in our rec-room sipping a coffee and munching a cookie, watching T.V. while in and out of our house stretcher bearers are bringing in the wounded on stretchers, as a fierce war rages on outside, and we take no notice, oblivious, continuing watching our program. The casualties I refer to are those who are loose their faith, their connection with the spiritual life, their connection with the communion they had with their spiritual home; loosing their union in the Spirit with the Father and Jesus - this especially true of the younger generation. They are being dragged down into a world without God. I recommend you read chapter 12: of the Book of Revelation; its imagery helping us to see what Jesus is seeing.   ... a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. The Church the Body of Christ.   ... She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. The Body of Jesus dying on the cross. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. Originally the seven hills of pagan Rome - now the cities of the world, contaminated by atheism, imposing a secular world view.  The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. Mary the first Church and Jesus her son now born into the world. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days. (the days remaining until the Second coming) The ascension of Jesus and the Church dispersed to all the world; under the protection of divine providence, never to be destroyed. Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus. And so the Church lives on in this ongoing struggle with the Deceiver and his cleaver lies. "Roaming the world, seeking souls to devour." (Prayer to St. Michael)  Are you in? St. Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and the other evil spirits who prowl about the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.

Feast of Saints Peter and Paul - 2025

When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This gospel passage for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, contains two of the most important questions we may ever be ask to answer. We might characterize them in this way;  the first is about religion ( “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” ) the second is about faith (“But who do you say that I am?” ) Few questions receive more attention than questions about religion. What people say about religion can vary greatly:  about God, is there a God or not? if there is a God what is God like? are there many gods? why does God matter to us? which religion has got it right? So many questions like these make up the discussion, or the debate, or the argument about religion. In places like the Middle East, religion and conflict seem to go hand in hand. Here in our country the question seems to have become more muted, deciding instead that it no long matters that much, or just keep it to yourself if you have an opinion about religion. In the gospels, we see Jesus very much engaged in the religion questions of the day, but his purpose is to get to the deeper question, the question of faith, for it is what you believe that shapes the way you conduct your life. It is one thing to form theories and have opinions about religion, it is quite another to embrace with certainty what you are convinced is true. St. Paul made it quite clear when he said, that if it is not a certain fact that Jesus has been raised from the dead, our whole faith structure collapses into nothing. (1Cor. 15:14) It is the official position of our liberal, democratic society not to have a definitive answer to the questions of religion. As long as we do not impose our beliefs on others, or deny them their rights granted them by law, we can practice what ever religious beliefs we have. It is our country's guarantee of religious freedom under the law. So question one asks, "... what are people saying about ...?" After exploring the question of religion, Jesus turns to the question of faith. Jesus has come into the world to bring together and form a communion of people over which he will be the head. ("I will build my church." ) The nature of this communion will be to have a real yet mystical union with Jesus as head and a true and fraternal union with one another. Their instruction will come, by way of revelation and inspiration by the Holy Spirit forming and guiding their minds and hearts. ( “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”) Their purpose is to live holy lives and be a sign and example for all the world to follow. (Be holy as your heavenly Father is holy.) In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit. Moreover, we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world. Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. 1 John 4:8-16 The fact that in this county we have the freedom of religious belief and practice, which we respect, and see as a blessing, does not diminish the importance of the fundamental question: What do you believe - "who do you say I am?". And if your answer concerning Jesus is the same as Peter's, what is the state and condition of your "communion" in the Church that Jesus builds in the world? And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.

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Corpus Christi - 2025

Two months ago, in the liturgy of Holy Thursday we celebrated the institution of the Sacred Eucharist, the Mass. Today’s feast of Corpus Christi, was established to create a feast focused solely on the Holy Eucharist emphasizing the joy of the Eucharist being the body and blood of Jesus Christ through the mystery of Transubstantiation. The origins of this feast began in Liège, a Belgium city, toward the end of the 12thcentury. In the city there were groups of women, known as the Norbertine canonesses, who lived together and devoted their lives to prayer and to charitable works. One of them, Juliana of Liège, had a vision of Christ in which she was instructed to plead for the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi. The vision was repeated for the next 20 years but she kept it a secret. When she eventually relayed it to her confessor, he relayed it to the bishop. So in 1246 the Bishop ordered a celebration of Corpus Christi to be held in the diocese each year thereafter on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Pope Pius V revised the General Roman Calendar and Corpus Christi was one of only two "feasts of devotion" that he kept, the other being Trinity Sunday and it remains to this day. This feast is all about the real and true presences of Jesus, body, soul, and divinity in the elements of the Eucharist. This has been a part of the Church’s belief beginning from the Last Supper but understanding just how this happens has been a developing work over time.  The Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 spoke of the bread and wine as "transubstantiated" into the body and blood of Christ and this was later elaborated on by St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as other medieval theologians. In the end in remains a Divine mystery to our understanding. Martin Luther was not a fan of the Feast of corpus Christi. He wrote: "I am to no festival more hostile ... than this one. Because it is the most shameful festival. At no festival are God and his Christ more blasphemed, than on this day, and particularly by the procession. For then people are treating the Blessed Sacrament with such ignominy that it becomes only play-acting and is just vain idolatry." He also rejected the theology of transubstantiation. So what of this mystery of the real presence today and devotions to the Blessed Sacrament? Many remember the time when Mass could not be said after 12 noon. So during Lent, on Wed. Fri. and Sun. evenings devotions with benediction of the blessed sacrament was norm. Exceptions to this restriction began with Pope Pius XII, and with the new liturgy of the 60’s evening mass was common. So in Lent Mass replaced devotions in most parishes. The Mass and the reception Holy Communion rightfully hold the highest place in our devotion, but other forms of Eucharistic devotion have an important place in deepening our communion with Christ. At the heart of today’s feast of Corpus Christi is the wondrous mystery of Jesus’ real presence, body, soul, and divinity in the elements of the Eucharist. May we never lose sight of this. May our devotion to this mystery grow ever stronger.

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