Are you "tired" of Christmas already?

Hey Folks!  Here's the homily I preached for the second Sunday of Advent at my ministry parishes in Jeffersonville, IN.  I have many, many more things to say about the much maligned season of Advent, but this is all I can bear to write now.  May God bless your Advent season with joy-filled expectation (instead of resentment) of Christmas!
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~ Given at Saint Augustine and Sacred Heart parishes, Jeffersonville, IN – December 3^rd & 4^th, 2011.

          Last Saturday marked the end of the liturgical year.  In the Gospel reading for the Mass of the day on that last day of the Church year, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life….” (Luke 21:34) It’s no accident that that particular reading is read on the last day of the Church liturgical year.  After 34 weeks of Ordinary Time—when we focus on growing spiritually and morally in the context of our daily lives—the Church realizes that most of us probably do have hearts that have “become drowsy”—perhaps from drunkenness and carousing, but most likely from the anxieties of daily life.  And so there is a certain genius on the Church’s part to place that reading right on the cusp of the new liturgical year.  It reminds us that perhaps our hearts have become drowsy and then it ushers us right into Advent, a season designed to help “wake us up.”

          Our first reading today from the prophet Isaiah is a beautiful reading—full of awe and wonder.  While the reader did a great job reading it, I think it would require a method actor to really convey the joy-filled expectation that these words express.  Listen to some of these again:

Comfort, give comfort to my people,

 says your God.

 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her

 that her service is at an end,

her guilt is expiated…

And still further:

…Go up on to a high mountain,

 Zion, herald of glad tidings;

 cry out at the top of your voice,

 Jerusalem, herald of good news!

 Fear not to cry out

 and say to the cities of Judah:

 Here is your God! 

These are words of great joy and expectation and are simply wonderful to ponder.  Perhaps, however, we are unable to see the joy that these words convey, at least not in our current situation.  Perhaps, even after one week of Advent, our hearts are still drowsy—tired, weary, and numb—from the anxieties of our daily lives.  Of course, one need not look farther than the newspaper to understand why: violence and drug use continue to escalate in our cities and neighborhoods, jobs continue to be scarce and an economic recovery continues to be lethargic, national politics remains, it seems, disconnected from the daily struggles of individuals and families, and there are countless other reasons as well.  And so no, it’s not surprising that our hearts may have become drowsy and we are unable to relate to the awe and wonder expressed in today’s first reading.

          Yet, when we listen to the Gospel reading, we see that the Jews living during Jesus’ time also seemed to be struggling with the same problem.  Now, the Gospel of Mark is notoriously slim on narrative details and so we’ll have to read between the lines a little bit to see that their hearts were also drowsy and in need of awakening.  The Gospel begins by quoting our reading from the prophet Isaiah and then essentially equates it with John’s proclamation in the desert, calling for a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  The Gospel states that “people of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him.”  In other words, the whole Jewish nation heard of John’s proclamation and began to come to him to be baptized.  Perhaps many of them were reluctant at first, unable to see the “awe” in the awe-filled proclamation that John was making.  Eventually, perhaps, through the witness of seeing others go out to the Jordan River or of speaking with others who returned from there, these reluctant ones could see that their hearts indeed had become drowsy waiting for the coming of God that Isaiah had promised.  With “hearts awake,” however, they could experience the joy-filled expectation that the coming promised by the prophet was now at hand.

          And so we encounter these readings here today in this season of Advent for the same purpose: to call us to recognize the drowsiness of our own hearts so that we too may awaken to the experience of joy-filled expectation for the second-coming of Jesus.  Just like those ancient Jews, it feels like Christ’s promised return is long-delayed, but when we recognize—as Saint Peter reminds us our second reading today—that “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day,” it makes it easier to see that Jesus’ delay is, ultimately, for our benefit.  Christ wishes that all of us should come to repentance, as Saint Peter reminds us, and so every second that he delays—which is as nothing to him—is a gift of opportunity for us to wake up our drowsy hearts, so as to be ready when he comes.

          My sisters and brothers, Jesus did not tell his disciples to “beware that their hearts not become drowsy” because he is an exacting master, demanding strict discipline so as to never sin.  Rather, he was instructing them—and so us through the preservation of his words in the Gospels—to remain vigilant so that they would not be asleep and miss out on the joy of witnessing his return in glory.  My sisters and brothers, this is what the season of Advent is doing for us.  It’s as if the season itself is saying, “Take comfort, for this time of suffering is at an end and the time for Christ’s return is near!”  If it hasn’t done this for you yet, then I encourage you to spend time praying with these readings in this coming week and to ask God to awaken in your heart a joy-filled expectation for his coming.

          And if it has?  Well, I think the Gospel then shows us what to do.  All of the people from the Judean countryside and the city-dwellers of Jerusalem came out to John to receive the baptism of repentance and to acknowledge their sins—to “make straight a path” in their hearts for the coming of the long-awaited Messiah, the one Isaiah promised.  We too, then, are called to repent and acknowledge our sins.  For the fully-initiated, that means the sacrament of reconciliation—confession—and it is why the Church encourages all Catholics to celebrate this sacrament during the season of Advent.  As we hear the readings reminding us of how the ancient Jews prepared the way of the Lord in their hearts at the sound of John’s proclamation, so we too are called to prepare a pathway for Christ to come into our hearts by reconciling with both God and our neighbor through the sacrament of confession.

          Friends, beware that yours hearts do not become drowsy from the oversaturation of “Christmas Spirit” that the world outside of these walls is drowning you in.  Rather, use this time of Advent to prepare well your heart for Christ’s second coming and the best gift you will receive on Christmas day may very well be the joy of the Lord in your heart.

Race for Vocations!

Ok, I've done it again... I signed up to run the Indianapolis 500 Festival Mini Marathon as part of the 5th annual RACE FOR VOCATIONS.  This year is the 5th running of the race for vocations and they have a goal of getting 500 runners to participate.  This is a big challenge but one we can all get behind!


Check out this YouTube video of last year's race (yours truly is even featured in it ;) )



Last year, I had no idea if I could run a half-marathon.  Committing to racing for vocations, however, I found the inspiration that I needed to train, knowing that every bead of my rosary that passed through my fingers was a grace to help someone open themselves to the vocation that God is calling them to.  Having offered my training as a sacrafice for those discerning their vocations, I found the grace I needed to run my first race and complete it.

If you've never done something like this, now is the perfect time to try.  Even if you are discerning your own vocation, making a committment to train for this race and to pray that God will reveal to you what He has planned for your life will be a blessing and will not be wasted.

If you're feeling a little tug on your heart right now, and you're feeling like this might be something you could do, that's the Holy Spirit telling you to sign up for the 2012 Race for Vocations!  Go right now to sign up for the 500 Festival Mini Marathon (it's still only $55... until 12/1!) and then register with the Race for Vocations.  Here are the links:

Register for the mini or 5k here: http://www.500festival.com/marathon/

Register for the vocations team here: http://www.archindy.org/vocations/race.html

Then send these links to everyone you know and let's do all we can to get 500 (or more) participants this year!  Oh, and let me know you've registered so we can pray for each other as we train by e-mailing me at dominic dot petan at gmail dot com.

Verso l'Alto!

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, pray for us!

The Parable of the worthy wife?

Here's the homily I preached this weekend at Saint Augustine and Sacred Heart parishes in Jeffersonville, IN for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

          Perhaps many of us have read the books (or, more recently, seen the films) of C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.  Many readers have concluded that his stories fall into the category of “Christian allegory.”  Now, an allegory is a literary device—a tool of communication—in which metaphors are used to explain an abstract idea through storytelling.  In the case of Lewis’ books, the fantasy world of Narnia is used to illustrate some of the fundamental truths of the Christian faith: most notably, the battle between good and evil that rages within and around each one of us, and the presence of a powerful king—Aslan—who leads us and inspires in us the faith to persevere in the battle.  Parables are very similar to allegories in that they use metaphorical images in storytelling as a way of imparting certain ideas.  The difference is that parables are usually much shorter, focused, perhaps, on a particular moral lesson that the author is trying to impart.  In a sense, parables are “Allegory Lite.”

          In the Gospel reading today (and, for that matter, the last couple of weeks), Jesus tells his disciples a parable.  Most of us, I would guess, are quite familiar with this parable and so the meaning of the metaphors the parable utilizes probably shine through.  The Master—who is Jesus—is going on a journey to be seated at the Father’s right hand and so needs to entrust his possessions—which is the Gospel—to his servants—otherwise known as his disciples—to care for them until he returns. After a long time—perhaps 2000 years or more—the master will return and call his servants in to see if they’ve been profitable with what they were entrusted with.  Those who return with a profit proportional to what they were given—perhaps a number of converts to the faith or a faithful family or works that have helped the poor—will be blessed for their faithfulness.  Those who failed to be profitable with what they were given—perhaps out of fear, indifference, or even spite—will be punished for their unfaithfulness.  For the disciples to whom this parable was first addressed, I suspect the allegory was obvious and the meaning clear: “We better get out and spread the Gospel so we aren’t caught having done nothing when Jesus returns.”  And I suppose that it’s not much of a stretch for us to interpret the allegory in the same way: “Jesus, it seems, is long delayed, but the fact of the matter is that he could still return at anytime, so we better ‘make hay while the sun shines,’” and that’s easy enough.  Well, perhaps it’s a bit too easy.

          I think, perhaps, that it is too easy to see God as “master” and ourselves as “servants.”  When we look at it this way, it’s kind of easy to fall into a “just do the minimum” mindset exemplified by such “bumper sticker wisdom” as: “Jesus is coming, look busy.”  Such “wisdom” plays on our very natural inclination—which, in fact, is a disordered inclination—to do only what’s minimally necessary so that when our “master” returns we look like we’ve done something when really we’ve done nothing at all.  It’s the mindset that thinks that we can somehow “pull the wool” over the eyes of Jesus to make him believe that we were faithful even when we haven’t been (which, in itself, is a nice piece of irony considering that Jesus is the Lamb of God).  This “just follow the rules” mindset, of course, is not what God has called us to.  Saint Paul is adamant about this, stating repeatedly in his letters that if being a follower of Christ is just about the rules, then forget about it, it’s useless.  Saint Paul knew that when Jesus said, “I no longer call you servants, but friends,” he was inviting us to a relationship beyond that of a master and his servant: a much deeper relationship that brings with it greater responsibilities.

          In our first reading today, we hear a description from the book of Proverbs—an Old Testament “wisdom” book—of a woman described as a “worthy wife.”  I suppose it would be easy to look at this reading and dismiss it as an outdated description of an “ancient middle-eastern housewife” that has no relevance for us today.  Our Catholic faith, however, tells us that Sacred Scripture is God’s living Word—Jesus Christ—speaking to us and revealing himself to us, and so perhaps if we feel inclined to think that a piece of the Scriptures has no relevance for us we need to think again, and maybe become a little curious about why these words were preserved for us to read and ponder here today.  What I would challenge all of us here today to see in this reading is another allegory—one a little less obvious, perhaps, but no less profound.

          The reading tells us that when a man finds a worthy wife, he entrusts his heart to her, and that the worthy wife responds to this trust by working with loving hands to bring him good and not evil.  How often we forget that Jesus is not just our master and we his servants, but that Jesus is also the bridegroom and we—his Church—are his bride.  This is a much more intimate image.  And thus this reading becomes very relevant to our lives today and shows us how we, entrusted with the heart of Jesus, ought to respond so as to be a worthy spouse of so great a husband.  In fact, it shows us the only way, really, that we can respond, given our human limitations: that is, by bringing him good and not evil in our daily actions and by working with loving hands to serve him and each other.

          My brothers and sisters, Jesus has found a worthy spouse—his Church, that is, all of us—and he has entrusted to her his heart—his very Self—here in the Eucharist.  No doubt, it is a fearful thing to be entrusted with so great a gift.  We need not be fearful, however, as if our Master seeks only to catch us off guard in order to punish us.  Rather, we can be hopeful, trusting that the one who has entrusted his heart to us seeks only our own good and to find us faithful.  It is this hopeful trust, then, that leads us to a faithful, fruitful, and joy-filled living of the mystery that God has given to us—a living that can begin here today. May this mysterious love overflow in our hearts and touch the lives of all those around us.

The priest and the cross...

"As priests, we must never forget that the only legitimate ascension towards the ministry of pastor is not that of success but that of the Cross."
~ Pope Benedict XVI, Nov. 5, 2011

More reasons to believe...

I was able to catch these images last Friday as a few of us walked out to the winery (Monkey Hollow Winery) a couple of miles out behind Saint Meinrad.  I'm going to miss this place...

What do you say, Dubya?  Still think B-town's got anything on Saint Meinrad?

Take a look at this...

...and try to tell me that there is no God!

(Taken from the window of my room in the seminary, October 27th, 2011, about 4:20 p.m.)

Can I love you and still be me?

Crazy week this past week! I preached for the first time in our seminary chapel. I was much more intimidated than I expected to be! I think that it went well, though. Please find the homily below.

(By the way: Dr. LaMothe is our professor for Pastoral Care and Counseling.)

~ Given at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology (Saint Thomas Aquinas Chapel), Saint Meinrad, IN – October 23rd, 2011.

I don’t know, perhaps I’m missing something, or perhaps I’ve taken one too many classes with Dr. LaMothe, but it just seems to me like so many of our problems—particularly our relationship problems—boil down to a struggle with differentiation. Differentiation, as many scholars define it, is one’s ability to be his or herself in relation to others. In other words, it is knowing who I am as a distinct person in relation to another person. I like this notion because it touches on something very human: that is, that we come to know ourselves more fully—in a sense, that we become more human—when we recognize our distinctiveness in relation to another person, which gets right to the core of our theological understanding of the human person: that we are all members of one body, distinct but related.

A struggle with differentiation, then, is when our sense of self becomes dependent on others. In other words, when we find that we need others to act in a certain way in order to feel good about ourselves and to function within a group of others then we are probably struggling to be (or, rather, to know) who we are in relation to others. Perhaps an example will help illustrate this. First, for those of you who aren’t from Indiana you should know that in Indiana you are either for Purdue University and against Indiana University or vice versa (unless of course you aren’t from Indiana originally, in which case you don’t care because you realize that it’s just not important). Imagine what it would be like if on any given day a small group of people (let’s say ten or so) decided to walk through the campus of IU completely decked out in black and gold Purdue paraphernalia. For students at IU this demonstration would be tantamount to a hostile invasion. Perhaps, then, you could imagine the tension that would build as this group walked through campus. My guess is that it wouldn’t be but a few minutes before this group began to receive hostile and threatening comments from IU students passing them by. In their anxiety at this apparent threat to their identity as Hoosiers, these students would react by attempting to shame the members of this group for their non-conformity.

We see further examples of this in the readings from the Gospel of Matthew that we’ve heard over the past few weeks. In these passages, we see the Pharisees react to Jesus’ non-conformity in his teaching and his apparent attacks on their authority by sending wave after wave of experts to try and catch Jesus in saying something either heretical that they could use to discredit his teachings or blasphemous that they could use to condemn him. They were anxious about his teaching and reacted in an attempt to shame him for his non-conformity.

Now, in some sense, the Pharisees had good reason to be anxious. As the established protectors of Jewish orthodoxy it was their duty to ensure that all rabbis were espousing right teaching. This was further exacerbated, however, by the Roman occupation, which, while allowing them to continue to practice their religion, was quick to react to anything that smelled of a revolution. Therefore, Jesus’ talk about a “Kingdom at hand” and of the “anointed of God” having arrived would have increased the Pharisees’ anxiety tenfold. Nevertheless, instead of engaging Jesus’ teaching and either embracing it for what it was or ignoring it and thus “teaching around it,” they become reactive, rejecting Jesus’ teaching and seeking to force him to change and to conform to their image. Because they couldn’t be themselves—the established leaders of the Jewish faith—in relation to Jesus, Jesus either had to change or be annihilated.

It’s no stretch to see that this kind of reactive, undifferentiated response is a significant source of conflict in our own lives today. Our culture is given over to polarizations and, thus, in many ways our congregations are divided. How often do we find ourselves launching into criticisms about what others in the church are saying or doing? I suspect that there are few of us in this chapel whose anxiety wouldn’t shoot through the roof when he or she encountered someone who was convinced that women would soon be ordained priests or be able to sit calmly while a fellow Catholic went around teaching that same-sex marriages are valid. Immediately our defenses would shoot up and our responses would move towards an attempt to force them to change and to conform to our image of a “good Catholic.” My brothers and sisters, no matter what the situation is, when our anxiety levels start to rise and we begin to become reactive, it’s a sign that we are struggling with differentiation, that is, we are struggling to be who we are in relation to others.

Even though the Pharisees had confronted Jesus in their struggle with differentiation, we see that Jesus nonetheless puts forth a well-differentiated response. Knowing that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine, we can imagine that he felt some anxiety when the scribe approached him. Nonetheless, he was able to check his anxiety and respond their question instead of reacting to their malicious intentions. He reminded them that an authentic love of God is inextricably intertwined with a genuine love of neighbor. More important, however, is that Jesus models this teaching for them in the very way he responds to them. Although the Pharisees were reacting to their anxiety about Jesus’ teaching, Jesus refuses to react to them. Rather, he responds to them in love, showing his ability to be who he is in relation to them, even when they relate to him in hostility.

For us, the same certainly holds true. When we approach God out of our anxiety—whether it be anger, frustration, fear, or doubt—he is always able to receive us and to respond to us in a way that is in no way reactive to how we approached him. Always capable of being who he is in relation to us, God stands always ready to respond to us in love, a response which then becomes for us like a mirror, showing us who we really are in relation to him—his sons and daughters—and thus enabling us to be who we are in relation to others, which frees us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

My brothers and sisters, Jesus’ ultimate act of differentiation is what we see on that cross and in what we will eat from this altar. In submitting to the indescribable torture and death on the cross and to being made present, body, blood, soul and divinity in the form of bread and wine, Jesus acknowledges who he is in relation both to God and to us: the Son of God and the Son of man, the King of All Ages and the child of a peasant girl, the Beloved of the Father and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world… My brothers and sisters, let us remember today who we are—sons and daughters and brothers and sisters—and let us not forget the commandment Jesus has given us to love God and to love our neighbor, a love that intermingles most perfectly when we approach this altar in unity and peace. My brothers and sisters, let us be.