Sunday, June 22, 2014

The Communion... that we share.

So I didn't get last week's homily up because I had to leave for the work camp trip with the youth early Sunday morning.  It's providential, I think, because I see these last two Sundays as being intimately connected.  In celebrating the Most Holy Trinity, we are celebration God, who is a communion of persons in himself.  In celebrating the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we are celebrating that, through our participation in the Eucharist, God has invited us to share the communion that he is.  Thus, the two celebrations go together; and so, my homilies this week come to you... together ;-)

P.S. We had a great experience at Catholic Heart Work Camp in Milwaukee :-D

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Homily: The Most Holy Trinity – Cycle A
          I don’t know if any of you remember having finger painted when you were in kindergarten, but I would guess that most of you at least remember your kids having the opportunity to finger paint when they were there.  Now for kids, finger painting is kind of like a dream come true.  I have a blank slate, I don’t have to use any tools (except for those I’m most adept at using… my fingers) and I’ve been covered in an plastic apron which pretty much gives me license to make as big of a mess as I’d like to during the process.  For the kindergarten teacher, however, I imagine that finger paint day is the day that he or she has to summon up all of his or her courage to go to work.  This is a day in which every child at every moment is teetering on the brink of disaster.  Thus, while the goal of other days is success and accomplishments for the children, the goal of finger paint day (again, I imagine) is survival.
          If I remember my kindergarten art projects correctly (finger painting included), when all was said and done we almost always had something to show for it; and we almost always had a “big-‘ol hot mess” on our hands.  Nonetheless, I don’t remember one time when either my teacher or my parents took a look at what that mess produced and said anything but how beautiful it was.  Now (as you all know, I’m sure) it didn’t matter if the art project had any sort of artistic merit on its own; because it was the effort and the love that went into producing it (and its accompanying mess) that gave the project all of the merit it needed.
          Reflecting on this year’s Easter Vigil, I find myself making a lot of parallels.  It was my first time presiding at the Vigil Mass and if you’ve ever been to one you’ll know that it is a very complex liturgy.  There’s the liturgy of light, when we bring in the newly blessed Easter Candle, an extended liturgy of the Word, baptisms, confirmations, and first Holy Communions, all mashed together in one Mass.  Add on top of all of that the need to celebrate the liturgy in two languages and I shouldn’t have been surprised that the whole thing felt like one “big-‘ol hot mess”.  Nonetheless, after it was finished, almost everyone who spoke to me afterwards expressed just how beautiful they thought it was.  Just like in the finger painting, it wasn’t the product itself (the liturgy) that merited these comments, but rather it was the effort and the love  that went into celebrating it (and, of course, the presence of the Holy Spirit) that gained for it all of its merit.
          You know, for years men and women of faith have tried to figure God out.  All the way back to Abraham, Moses, and the Ancient Israelites and up until today, we have tried to come to grips with this God who, in spite of being all-powerful, nonetheless loves us and desires communion with us.  For the Ancient Israelites it was slightly easier.  God hadn’t yet revealed himself as three persons in one God.  Nonetheless, the mystery of the creating God who had chosen them for his people still kept them intrigued.  In Jesus, and through the Paschal Mystery, God has reveled himself as a Trinity: a mystery of three holy Persons in the one, singular godhead.  If you’ve ever tried to come to grips with this reality—and more so, if you’ve ever tried to explain this reality to someone else—then you’ve probably realized that it is a much more complex mystery even than what it seems; and that any explanation that you come up with probably leaves you (and your hearer) more confused than when you began.  In other words, you usually end up with a “big-‘ol hot mess.”
          Still further, when we try to live out of this reality—that God is three and God is one, and that, though perfect in himself, he nonetheless desires a relationship with us: a relationship that demands certain things of us—we often find that we fall short (way short) of what it is that this demands of us.  Perhaps some of us even despair that we could ever realize what has been promised to us.  Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we find that we’re left with little more than a “big-‘ol hot mess.”
          This is where the grace of this feast that we celebrate today, the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, comes into play.  You know, we don’t celebrate this feast because we already know all that there is to know about the Trinity and thus hold it up like some kind of accomplishment.  We celebrate it, rather, because acknowledging God for who he has revealed himself to be is a way to help us deal with the messes that we make in our lives.
          In our first reading, we heard about Moses going up onto Mount Sinai with the stone tablets in his hand.  What we didn’t hear is that this was the second time that he was going up.  The first time he went up, he received the Ten Commandments from God.  And when he brought them down, he found that the people had gotten anxious while they were waiting for him to return and so decided to make an idol—an image of God—whom they then worshiped.  So angry was Moses to see this that he threw down the stone tablets and shattered them to pieces.
          Thus, Moses went back up the mountain to beg God for another shot, for him and for his people.  The people had gotten themselves in a “big-‘ol hot mess” and Moses went back to ask for mercy (and for another copy of the Ten Commandments).  When God revealed himself to Moses a second time, he did not call himself “the God of wrath and vengeance”, but rather “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.”  At hearing this, Moses, already fearful of God’s response, could only fall down and worship; that this God, powerful beyond comprehension, would spare this people who had made such of mess out of his graciousness was truly a thing of wonder.  At that moment, Moses saw who God really was and he was filled with awe.
          For all of us here today, this feast provides us with an opportunity to experience something of what Moses experienced on the top of Mount Sinai.  We all come here, having been here before and having heard all of God’s admonitions for how to live our lives in constant communion with him, and we realize that, in spite of our best (or, perhaps even, our barely minimal) efforts to fulfill all that God has commanded us, we have fallen short and basically have made a “big-‘ol hot mess” out of it all.  Nonetheless, we come here and God reveals himself to us for who he really is—the Father, whose creative, life-giving love has made us and sustains us, the Son, whose saving love redeemed us from our sin, and the Spirit, whose sanctifying, healing action works among us even now—and our reaction is (or at least it should be) the same as Moses’: to fall down and worship him who so graciously revealed himself to us.
          This loving, merciful God who has revealed himself to us in three persons looks upon all that we have done—good, bad, and everything in-between—and he sees the mess it has produced.  More than anything, however, he sees the effort and the love that we put into striving to fulfill his commandments; and his response is the same response that we give when we receive a kindergartner’s finger painting: “Yeah, it’s a mess, but it’s beautiful.”
          My brothers and sisters, as our Holy Father encouraged the young people at World Youth Day last year, let us not let our fear of stirring things up and making a mess prevent us from trying our hardest to fulfill God’s command to go out into the world and make disciples.  In fact, let’s be intent on making a mess: for from out of that mess God’s Kingdom will come, the beautiful mess that unites us perfectly to the Holy Trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – June 14th, 2014

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Homily: Corpus Christi – Cycle A
          As Americans, we know that we can be pretty pragmatic.  We like things to fit into structures and routines so that we really don’t have to think about them.  As a result, things that we do frequently become common or ordinary to us and we oftentimes forget how important they really are for us.  Consider our morning breakfast: a couple of pieces of toast or perhaps a bowl of cereal, a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee and we’re on our way.  Yet, it throws our whole day off, doesn’t it, if we find we’ve run out of bread or someone finished the last bowl of our favorite cereal.  We just feel better if it remains the same, day in and day out, and we don’t realize how important it is to us until we don’t have it anymore.
          In today’s first reading, we hear Moses reminding the Israelite people, who had been wandering in the desert for forty years after leaving Egypt, about what a miracle it was for them to have the manna as food for their journey.  Way back at the beginning of their journey, the Israelites grumbled against Moses and against God after they were led out into the desert from Egypt because they had no source of food to sustain them during their exodus.  God responded and promised “bread from heaven,” the manna that appeared each morning like dew across the ground.  Each day the Israelites would gather enough to feed their family for the day and on the next day—faithfully, for forty years—more would appear.  If you could imagine what it would be like to eat the same food every day for forty years straight, you might understand that the Israelites began to take this blessing for granted.  The manna, as miraculous as it was, had become common and the Israelites had come to take it for granted.
          I would venture to say that some of us here might experience a similar problem.  Many of us have been parishioners here for a long time: perhaps some of us even for forty-plus years.  We know what mass we attend and where we generally sit (I say “generally” because there are always those “floaters” who sometimes end up in our seats, right?), the music perhaps is somewhat predictable and we generally know what to expect from the experience—I mean, the mass is the mass, right?  And it all becomes very routine for us.  Even though every week we are called here to worship God and to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in the form of bread and wine—the true bread come down from heaven—we nonetheless sometimes find ourselves looking forward more to the opportunity to meet with friends; or on the flipside considering it a chore to be drudged through so that we can get on with the rest of our day.  Because we come here every week and because the mass—by design, by the way—generally looks and feels the same, it has become familiar to us and perhaps we forget what a miracle it is to be called here to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
          As we look back again at the Israelites and Moses’ speech from the first reading today, we recognize one important fact.  In spite of all of their years of taking it for granted, God never once failed to provide it for them.  For forty years the Israelites wandered, grumbled, and wandered some more and in all of that time God never failed to provide them with that miraculous bread from heaven.  The manna, therefore, was their viaticum—which literally translates to “on the way with you”, but less formally means “food for the journey.”  Manna was the miraculous “bread from heaven” that sustained them on their way and was their reminder of God’s providential presence with them throughout it all.
          In giving us this great feast of Corpus Christi, the Church is doing what Moses did for the Israelites a few thousand years ago.  It is reminding us of what a miracle it is that we are called here every week and have the opportunity to receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine.  It is a reminder that, even if we sometimes take it for granted, God will never fail to give us the Eucharist, our viaticum, our “food for the journey.”  And this is so important for us to remember.  Not just because it is food—obviously the little portion that we receive is not much to satisfy us—nor only because it is spiritual food—which of course it is—but primarily because it is our intimate comunion with God.  God gave the Israelites bread for their bodies, but the manna, however, was just that, bread.  The bread that God provides us in the Eucharist is both bread for our bodies and spiritual food to nourish us on our journey, but because it is the Body and Blood of Jesus, our Lord, it is also a participation in the intimate communion that is God: the communion which we celebrated last week in the feast of the Most Holy Trinity.  The Body and Blood of Jesus is the fulfillment of what the manna of the ancient Israelites foreshadowed.  It is the sacrament of God’s presence intended to effect, that is, literally, to make, our communion with God, until that day when we cross over from this life into the land promised to us, not the land of Canaan that God promised to the Israelites, but rather God’s heavenly kingdom.
          My brothers and sisters, the real, sacramental presence of God—the Body Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ—in the form of bread and wine is the most perfect gift that God has given us.  It is the sign of God’s presence with us, even in the midst of our worst afflictions.  Many people today, much like the people of ancient Israel, often want extraordinary signs that God is with them in their affliction.  What I want you all to realize today, however, is that God has given us such a sign.  Yet, in his great condescension to us he has allowed this extraordinary sign to be experienced by us as ordinary.  I realize that sometimes when we are in the midst of our worst afflictions, we want—we feel we need—the clouds to part and a voice to come from the sky saying, “It’s ok, I am with you.”  We want to see Jesus face to face and have him put his arm around us and say, “I know that this is hard, but look I haven’t left you.”  But what I am telling you is that God has done that for us.  Every time that we walk into a church and mass is being celebrated, or even if we only get a glimpse of that red candle flickering in the corner—we can know that God has not abandoned us, but rather that he is with us.  Thus, in the midst of our worst afflictions, God calls us to run to him in the Blessed Sacrament.  He calls us to receive him as often as possible so that his presence may comfort us and strengthen us for the journey.  This is why he sent his Son to us and this is why Jesus instituted this great sacrament.  He did it for us.
          Moses needed to remind the people of Israel that the sign of God’s providential care was something right under their noses: the miraculous bread from heaven that they received every day.  Today, the Church gives us this great feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ to remind us of the same thing and more.  The Blessed Sacrament that we receive ordinarily from this altar is the sign of God’s providential care as we wander as pilgrims on this earth.  It is also the bread that will strengthen us to remain steadfast in faith through all of our trials.  Most importantly, it is our intimate connection to God, who desires communion with us.
          As we continue to plow head-long back into the “routine” of ordinary time, let us strive to remember what an extraordinary gift it is that God has given us, the invitation, as Saint Paul says, “to participate in the body and blood of Christ,” and let us strive to celebrate this gift as extraordinary, even amidst our ordinary participation in it, an opportunity that we enjoy here today.
Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – June 21st & 22nd, 2014
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

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