A Passionate Week

Even though it won't look good on a t-shirt... I love my Argentinian Shepherd! :D

What a blessing to be entering my first Holy Week as a priest (and I'm already exhausted)!  I'm looking forward to many blessings this week.  May God bless you with a very "passionate week" as we focus on Christ's Passion and his Passover from death to life!

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Homily: Palm Sunday – Cycle C

It’s been a week and a half now and I have to say that I am totally enamored with Pope Francis.  Don’t get me wrong, I love and miss Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI.  After Benedict’s election, I was one of the first to buy and wear the “I love my German Shepherd” t-shirts.  Pope Francis, however, has this wonderful “Latin affability” about him that, in a positive way, contrasts him with Pope Emeritus Benedict’s deep German sincerity.  I’ve been eating up everything that Pope Francis has been saying and watching as many videos of him as I can find and I can say that I am really enjoying getting to know our new Holy Father.  One of the things that struck me as I was reflecting on the readings for today was just how much some of our new Holy Father’s actions reflect much of what we learn about Christ in these readings.

One of the primary things that we learn about Christ from these readings is that he is our self-emptying savior.  You know, Christ did not come with a great military force to overthrow all of the powers of the world in order to save us from sin and death.  Rather, it was his supreme humility that saved us.  Though he was God, he came to be like us: and not just any one of us, but he came to be the one who would be the most despised among us; so much so that he even got to the point of despair that he had been completely abandoned by everyone, including God the Father.

Pope Francis, from what I’ve read about him so far, never let his “exalted” status as the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires keep him from meeting people wherever they were at.  He eschewed the espiscopal residence in favor of a simple apartment and walked past the car and driver that awaited him to take public transportation.  He remained known as “Fr. Jorge” the whole time, yet he never backed down from speaking frankly to political leaders who proposed laws that were contrary to the teachings of the Church.  For this he was persecuted at times in the Argentinean media and was even accused of complicity in human rights violations during a military dictatorship there.  In other words, though he was the Cardinal Archbishop, a prince of the Church, he nevertheless always chose to serve among his people, not above his people.

Another thing that we learn about Christ from these readings is that he is also our highly exalted savior.  Again, Jesus did not win this great name for himself—the name at which every knee must bend—by putting down all of his enemies (which, by the way, he could have easily done since he was God).  Rather, he allowed himself to be put down.  In doing so, he showed us how we are to live: standing always for truth, in obedience to the Father who alone has the power to exalt us.

When the conclave started, Cardinal Bergoglio (as he was known at the time) wasn’t on anybody’s radar as being a contender for being elected.  Everybody seemed to know that he had garnered the second highest number of votes in the conclave that elected our now retired pope, Benedict XVI, but no one thought that he had much of a chance of getting a large number of votes this time around.  Yet, his brother cardinals recognized him in his “lowliness” and decided to “raise him up” to be exalted among them—that is, to give him a name above all of their names: that of “Bishop of Rome”.  In other words, our new Holy Father didn’t go out and make a name for himself, rather he received it simply by being obedient to the service he had been given.

The final broad theme that we learn about Christ from today’s readings is that Christ is an example for us.  From the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah, to the New Testament testimony of Saint Paul, to our recounting of the Passion narrative from the Gospel of Luke, we see how Christ offered himself for us and for our salvation.  Yet, it is precisely through these same Scriptures that Christ continues to offer himself to us as an example that we are to follow: calling us to empty ourselves for others just as he emptied himself for us.

From the moment that he first stepped out onto the Loggia, Pope Francis has also been offering himself to us as an example to follow.  From eschewing the papal limousine to ride the bus back to the hotel with the other cardinals, to descending from the pope-mobile during the procession after his installation mass to greet (and tenderly kiss) a severely handicapped person, to committing to celebrate Holy Thursday Mass at a juvenal correctional facility, Pope Francis has been showing us that he takes his title as “servant of the servants of God” quite literally.  Like Christ, our Holy Father promotes conversion not by demanding change in forceful speech or by coercion, but rather by providing a “lived example” for others to follow.  I suspect that this “lived example” is going to challenge each and every of us (if it hasn’t done so already).

My brothers and sisters, we recall Christ’s Passion at the head of this the most holy of weeks of the year in order to remind us of his self-emptying and that his self-emptying calls us to our own self-emptying.  Our new Holy Father, following this example, intends to empty himself by spending time with the poor this week so as to enter more intimately into Christ’s Passion.  Each of us ought to meditate on Christ’s Passion this week and thus seek our own way to empty ourselves for others.  Maybe we could be like the women from Galilee who stood by Christ in his suffering and make a visit to a nursing home or the hospital.  Or perhaps we could feel the compunction of the Good Thief and do a little “spring cleaning” in our homes, sharing what we don’t need with those who go without through the Salvation Army, the Saint Vincent de Paul store, or the Emmaus Mission.  Maybe we are like Simon of Cyrene and we see a friend, family member, co-worker, or neighbor who is carrying a heavy cross—perhaps the recent death of a loved one, a broken family, or the loss of a job—and we decide to take it up for them and with them.

Whatever it is, seek to enter into Christ’s Passion this week by opening your heart to be emptied for others, because when we empty ourselves for others like Christ did, we open ourselves to be exalted as he was.  More than that, however, when we empty ourselves like Christ did, we also open ourselves to discover him: Jesus Christ who suffers both in the poor and with the poor.  Thus emptied of ourselves, we become truly ready to experience the joy of the Resurrection: the joy that awaits us on Easter Sunday.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – March 23rd & 24th, 2013

Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord

Jesus turns over the familiar

Greetings friends!  Here is the homily that I preached this past weekend in Jeffersonville.  I am particularly sure that the Holy Spirit was directing this one because even though I had no contact with whoever it was that wrote the Prayers of the Faithful for the parishes at least half of them matched up almost perfectly with different aspects of my homily.  Praise God for that!

As always, if you have any feedback (positive and constructive) I'm happy to hear it!
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Homily: 3^rd Sunday of Lent – Cycle B

          Familiarity breeds contempt… at least that’s what the modern proverb says.  What this saying is, well, saying is that as we come to know someone more deeply, we realize just how much we actually don’t like that person; that is that with familiarity comes knowledge not just of the person’s attractive traits, but also of their more ugly ones (and we all have them, don’t we).  I think, in a certain sense, we can all see some truth in this saying.  But there’s another aspect of this saying that also carries some truth: that is, that familiarity also breeds complacency.

          We can see this in our daily routines.  If you’ve lived in Jeffersonville for some time, the landmarks that you used to notice as you went about your daily tasks—such as taking the kids to school, or making a run to the grocery store, or even just commuting to work—after a while just kind of fade into the landscape.  After years of living in this one place, you might even find that the features of your neighborhood no longer seem to register in your consciousness.

          This can happen with people, too.  Our co-workers, classmates, close friends, brothers and sisters, and even our spouses become so familiar to us and part of our daily routine, that the appreciation of how special they are to our lives is not something that enters our daily consciousnesses.  And so, while this familiarity doesn’t necessarily breed contempt, it does often breed complacency.

          In the first reading today, we heard the recounting of the Ten Commandments.  For many of us, I suspect that listening to these being read is kind of like making our daily commute: we were conscious that we began the trip, but when we got to our destination we weren’t quite sure how we got there.  In other words, the Ten Commandments are perhaps so familiar to us that they’ve become “part of the landscape” and no longer impact our daily consciousness.

          And this is nothing new.  The ancient Jews also fell into this trap.  They had the Law for many years and most people were very familiar with it and its demands.  Thus, following the precepts of the Law had become for them like our daily routine: nothing more than part of the daily landscape through which they had to navigate.  And this to the extent that they turned what is called the “Temple Cult”—that is, the sacrifices offered in the Temple both in homage of God and as an atonement for sins—into a business for profit.

          That’s when Jesus breaks into the scene and disrupts the familiar.  He saw the way that Satan had distorted the truth that the Law represented—that is, that it was a way for God’s chosen people to remain in “right relationship” with Him—and turned it into a Law of cold demands and business transactions.  Jesus saw that this had become so familiar to the people that they simply accepted it as the conditions for living as the People of God. By turning over the tables of the familiar, Jesus was hoping to reawaken in them an awareness of the true relationship that God had called them to.

          The zeal with which Jesus desired that the Temple—his Father’s house—be free from defilement is the same zeal that he has for our hearts.  He wants to turn over the tables of the familiar in our hearts and drive out any distorted images of self, of others, of God, and of what God asks of us so that we can once again see the beauty of the relationship he has called us to: both collectively as the People of God and individually as adopted sons and daughters.  Yet, unlike the Temple, Christ cannot just burst into our hearts and start turning things over.  God created us for freedom and for him to do so would violate that dignity.  And so this Lent—as he does throughout the year, but particularly in this holy season—Jesus calls us once again to open our hearts to him and to give him permission to shed light on anything in them that is unholy, that is untrue, and thus to drive them out, so as to purify his “temples of the Holy Spirit.”

          My brothers and sisters, if all we have done this Lent is take up our old familiar practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, then we have little more to hope for when we arrive at Easter Sunday than a feeling of relief for not having to maintain these disciplines any longer.  The challenge we have before us today is to make this Lent different by “opening wide the doors to Christ,” which was the clarion call of our late Holy Father, Bl. Pope John Paul II.  We do this by turning our gaze away from ourselves and towards others.  In prayer, we ask God to show us ways that we can overcome our sinful habits by turning towards our neighbor and offering a word of encouragement, a gentle correction when they need it, a helping hand in their difficulties, and a humble acknowledgement of how we’ve hurt them in the past that is accompanied by a sincere desire for forgiveness.  Then we return to God, offering him our successes and our (inevitable) failures and asking again for the grace to recognize our weaknesses and to trust in his help to overcome them.

          This work, of course, is uncomfortable.  It is uncomfortable because we have to give up our control to Christ and make ourselves vulnerable to him and to others.  But that’s ok, because, as our current Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has said, “the world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort; rather you were made for greatness.”  My brothers and sisters, this Lent cannot be just about “sticking it out” to the end, but rather it must be about achieving the greatness we were made for.  And so, let Christ—the Christ we encounter here in the sacrifice we offer and in the meal we share—turn over the familiar in your hearts.  If you do so, then you will be truly ready to encounter anew the joy of Easter.

~ Given at Saint Augustine and Sacred Heart Parishes, Jeffersonville, IN - March 10^th-11^th, 2012

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