Homily for the Third Sunday in Advent

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Today’s readings include two of the most important prophets in the history of salvation. The first reading comes from the prophet Isaiah, who is considered to be the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. The Gospel includes John the Baptist, the last of the prophets before the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Both of these figures provide examples of the role of prophecy in the story of salvation. The reading from Isaiah is a proclamation of hope towards the Kingdom of Heaven. John the Baptist’s purpose was to call the Jewish people back to God and point them to Christ. Between the two, we get a clear picture of what it means to be a prophet of God.

John the Baptist is said to be the last prophet, because the role of prophet passed to Our Lord when He became incarnate. The prophets in the Old Testament were part of the Old Covenant between God and the people of Israel. Our Lord, however, was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King for the New Covenant which He established through His Blood.

As members of the Body of Christ, visible in the world through the Church, we share in these roles of priest, prophet and king. Notice that we share in Christ’s role as prophet. As Christians, followers of Christ, we are called to proclaim the Good News of salvation to the whole world. This Good News, the Gospel of Christ, is the message of hope that we have for the Kingdom of Heaven, and echos the message proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah: “Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense, he comes to save you.” (Is 35:4)

Yes, our role as Christians is to proclaim the Good News that our God has come to save us, and that salvation is open to all who accept and follow Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a message we should be proclaiming with our lips, but it is also a message that we should be proclaiming throughout our whole lives. Everything we do and say should proclaim our faith and love for Our Lord and our hope for his salvation.

An example of this is Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her life on Earth was spent humbly pointing others to Her son. From the Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel, to the wedding at Cana, and even at the foot of the Cross, her posture was always one of humble submission which leads people to Christ. Through her apparitions, which have occurred throughout the history of the Church, Our Lady fulfills the role of prophet for Her Son by announcing the message of hope promised in the Kingdom of Heaven and by pointing all humanity to Christ.

This Sunday is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, celebrating the apparition of Our Lady in 1531 at Tepyac Hill in what is now Mexico City. This appearance of Our Lady and the message of hope embodied in it – hope literally embodied, as she appears pregnant with Our Lord in the image which remains to this day – led to the miraculous conversion of the Aztec people to the Catholic faith.

Just as Our Lady proclaims the message of hope to the whole world, we too are called to proclaim that same message. As individuals, each and every one of us should seek the conversion of all to Our Lord, both inside and outside the Church, as well as ourselves. Even those of us who have been baptized Catholics need to hear this call to conversion, to turn again (as the word ‘conversion’ means) to Our Lord.

If we take seriously our faith in Christ and our desire to enter into His salvation, may we boldly and patiently proclaim the Gospel to the whole world for the conversion of ourselves and for all humanity.

Morning Reflection for December 10, 2010

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I was out of town this morning, so I couldn’t give this reflection live at the radio station. Instead, I recorded it on my computer and burned the recording to a CD. Since I already had the recording, thought I’d share it on the blog:

Morning Reflection for December 9, 2010

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Yesterday, Catholics had a Holy Day of Obligation, which is a special day in which Catholics are to attend Mass as part of the celebration of this feast. This is something that is unique to Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Churches, as most other Christian denominations do not expect worship attendance Monday through Saturday. Often, when discussing Mass attendance, the question arises, “Why is it important to attend weekly worship in a church? After all, I can pray to God anywhere.”

That is a legitimate question. After all, Jesus Himself tells us, “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Mt. 6:6) Since Jesus tells us to pray in secret, we shouldn’t go to communal worship, right?

Not exactly. First of all, Jesus Himself regularly went to Jewish communal worship by attending synagogues and temple services. He obviously had no problem with joining others in prayer to God the Father. In fact, His next words make the meaning of this command clear: “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” Our Lord is telling us that our prayer needs to be sincere, spoken from the depths of our souls. A long, drawn out prayer with many words is useless if there is no sincerity, but a short, silent prayer is the most effective if the sincerity of heart is there.

Secondly, the Scriptures encourage us to gather as a community in worship. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us to “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Heb 10:25) The Apostles regularly went to synagogue and temple on Saturday, as observant Jews, then gathered again on Sunday for worship of Our Lord. The Apostles thought it was important, so why shouldn’t we?

Obviously, it is. Human beings are not isolated, strictly individualistic, creatures. We all desire some level of social involvement, some more and some less, but all have a need for contact with other humans. When we gather on Sunday for communal worship, we make visible our unity with one another as Christians. We join together to worship God with one voice, and allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through us who have gathered to strengthen each other. The Body of Christ, sadly divided into denominations by human disagreements, is shown in some sense through our unity at Christian worship.

This Sunday, instead of staying home or sleeping in, if that’s your regular practice, join your brothers and sisters at Sunday worship. Jesus tells us, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Mt 18:20) Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

Homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

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This evening, we are celebrating Mary’s “yes” to the Archangel Gabriel. We are celebrating that Our Lady was open to doing God’s will, and was thus able to become the mother of His Son. In short, we are celebrating Mary’s openness to her role within God’s plan of salvation.

To help us understand how Mary fits in to the history of salvation, we go all the way back to the beginning of the Scriptures. Our first reading shows us the result of the Original Sin – the embarrassment at being naked by Adam and Eve – and the blame being passed for that sin. There is also a message of hope in this passage, as it makes the promise that one would come to save us from the effects of sin in our lives.

Of course we know as Christians who that savior is: Our Lord Jesus Christ. There is often a contrast made between Adam and Jesus. Adam sought to become like God, as the serpent temped him to do, but Jesus lowered himself from His equality with God when He chose to become human. Adam died because of sin, but Jesus died to conquer sin.

In addition, a contrast is made between Eve and Mary. Eve said “yes” to the temptation of the Devil, and became sinful. Our Lady said “yes” to God, and was made sinless from her very first moment of existence. Eve lost the perfection of paradise by her pride, but Mary gained sinless perfection by her humility.

Because of these comparisons, Jesus and Mary are often referred to as the New Adam and Eve. The first Adam and Eve cooperated in allowing sin’s entrance into the world, but Jesus and Mary, the New Adam and Eve, cooperated in conquering sin in the world. Through Mary’s “yes”, we can now share in the adoption that St. Paul tells us God destined for us; an adoption as sons and daughters of God.

As adopted sons and daughters of God our Heavenly Father, we are challenged to follow the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary in saying “yes” to God’s will for our lives, as we are all called to participate in God’s plan of salvation. This morning, following my reflection on the radio, I played a song called “Look Like a Fool” by the Catholic artist Matt Maher. The first line goes, “All God’s creatures got a place in the choir”. We all have a place in God’s plan of salvation. The challenge for us as Christians is to open ourselves to finding that place, and to respond with the same “yes” that Mary did: “May it be done to me according to your word.”

This evening, as we celebrate this Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, may we echo Mary’s “yes” with our own, and take our places in God’s loving plan of salvation.

Morning Reflection for December 8, 2010

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We don’t like looking foolish. We get mad when someone makes a fool of us, and become upset with ourselves when we say or do something that makes us look like a fool. In general, we avoid doing anything that might be considered foolish by those around us because we want to avoid looking foolish.

This tendency is not a bad thing, as many foolish acts can lead to serious harm to ourselves and those around us. Unfortunately, there is a negative side this as well, as it can lead us to be more reserved about our faith in Jesus Christ. After all, we don’t want to look like one of those foolish, overzealous Christians. It should be enough to believe in Jesus, right?

Well, not exactly. To be a Christian is foolish in the eyes of the world, because we believe in a Savior who is God Himself, yet humbled Himself to become one of us lowly humans and was killed by being hung on a cross. Not only that, but we also believe that He rose from the dead and now lives bodily in Heaven. As St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians tells us, “we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.” (1 Cor 1:23) In our physical, material world, this is beyond foolishness, it’s insanity.

Even so, that is what we believe, and that foolish faith calls us to do more things that could be seen as foolish in the eyes of the world. In the Catholic Church, we have a list called the Corporal Works of Mercy which are actions commanded by Jesus Himself to His followers. Most of the Corporal Works come right from Jesus’ mouth in the Gospel of Matthew: “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, and I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. […] As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” (Mt 25:34-36, 40)

Clearly, just having a belief in Jesus isn’t enough, there are also demands by Our Lord for physical action. Of course, the physical actions are where we can look foolish, as someone could misinterpret our intentions. We might have to stand out in the crowd when we would much rather just blend in. We might even fail in our work, and fall flat on our face. Regardless, we are still called to be, in the words of St. Paul, “fools for Christ’s sake.” (1 Cor 4:10)

Of course, there’s one good reason why we would want to be fools for Christ: those who are foolish in the eyes of the world are open to the great joy, peace, and love from God our Heavenly Father. St. Paul reminds us that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men,” (1 Cor 1:25) and as the song I picked for this morning says, “That’s why I don’t care if I look like a fool.”

This morning’s song: Look Like a Fool, by Matt Maher

Morning Reflection for December 7, 2010

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I’m sure you all have noticed how much earlier the Christmas shopping season seems to start. It used to be that the weekend after Thanksgiving was spent by store employees setting up Christmas decorations and putting out the latest products to be purchased as gifts. Now, that weekend is considered the busiest shopping weekend of the Christmas season (it really isn’t, according to some reports I’ve recently heard), and Christmas sales begin almost right after Halloween. It’s almost as if the major retailers haven’t figured out how to make lots of money on Thanksgiving, so they skip it all together.

The problem is that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is not the Christmas season. “Sure it is,” you might think. “Look at all the decorations and Christmas sales and Christmas music on the radio. It has to be the Christmas season.” Unfortunately, that’s because it’s become culturally popular to celebrate Christmas earlier and earlier. Until relatively recently, Christians have always celebrated the Christmas season starting on Christmas Day. We all know the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. Those twelve days began on Christmas Day and ended on January 5th, the day before the Feast of the Epiphany, which commemorates the arrival of the Magi from the East. Christmas Day is the beginning of the celebration, not the end.

Because we celebrate the Christmas season so early, we’ve lost Advent. During the Advent season, which lasts for four weeks before Christmas, we prepare ourselves for the celebration of Jesus’ birth, but we also look forward with joyful anticipation to the return of Our Lord at the end of the world. This is the season we should be in right now, not the early Christmas shopping season.

Since we don’t recognize Advent as a culture, we end our Christmas celebrations when we should be just getting started. On December 26th, the Christmas music and decorations go back into storage, and the trees get thrown to the curb. We’ve lost any real extended celebration of Our Lord’s birth.

How should we recognize the Advent season? By preparing ourselves for the celebration instead of prematurely jumping into it as we do now. If you were to visit St. Mary’s Church right now, you’d see that there aren’t any Christmas decorations or trees up at this time, just an Advent wreath and some violet, a traditional color of royalty, to prepare for the coming of Our King and Lord. Visit on Christmas Day and the decorations will be up, the trees will be lit, and we’ll be in the full swing of celebrating Our Lord’s birth. Our celebration will continue until the Feast of the Epiphany, marking the Twelve Days.

For now, we need to ready ourselves for Christ’s coming, and not worry about celebrating His birth too early. For our prayer, may we use this popular Advent hymn: O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

This morning’s song: O Come, O Come Emmanuel, performed by Sugarland

Morning Reflection for December 6, 2010

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Every weekday morning, a member of the Malta Ministerial Association gives a short reflection on the local radio station at about 6:45 AM. We also pick a Christian hymn or contemporary Christian song to play following our reflection. Each minister takes a week, and it’s my turn again this week.When I was a kid, my family had an annual tradition around this time of year. We would load up in the car and spend an hour or so one evening slowly driving around town looking at how people decorated their houses with Christmas lights. We were always amazed at the level of care and detail people would put into lighting up their houses, and we enjoyed the time immensely.

If you’ve driven around Malta after dark during the last week or so, it’s obvious that the annual ritual of putting up Christmas lights and decorating the lawns has begun in earnest. Lights are already starting to show up around town, and I’m sure preparations are well underway, if not complete, for the Parade of Lights this evening. To quote the classic song, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”

Although many people might view Christmas lights only as festive decorations to brighten up a dark time of the year, there is a far deeper significance to these beautiful light displays. Of course, the purpose of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. One of the titles that we find in the Bible for Our Lord is Light of the World, meaning that Jesus leads us through the darkness of sin and death into the light of eternal life with Our Heavenly Father.

During this time of year, when there are so few hours of daylight and the winter darkness seems to be unending, it’s easy to see the symbolism behind the lights that we put up. Despite the darkness of night surrounding our houses, the Christmas lights shine brightly as beacons of joy. There is a sense of welcome in the beauty of the lights, just as Our Lord welcomes all of us with open arms to come to Him and follow Him.

This year, as we decorate our homes with radiant light and gather downtown this evening for the Parade of Lights, may the Christmas lights we display be more than decorations, but proclaim to the world the birth of Christ, the Light of the World.

This morning’s song (recommended by Pennyante on Plurk): Walk in the Light, performed by Aretha Franklin

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent

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Throughout the Advent season, our Old Testament readings at Mass focus on the prophet Isaiah, and with good reason. Much of Isaiah’s prophecy foretells the coming of the Messiah, Our Lord Jesus Christ, so we look at what Isaiah said about Our Lord as we prepare for His coming. Likewise, we also focus on John the Baptist and his proclamation of the immediate coming of the Messiah to the people of Israel.

It might be easy to read these texts as historical preludes to the story of Christmas. Just as a novel may have a prelude chapter to set the scene for the story, we can easy look at the prophesy of Isaiah and the proclamation of John the Baptist as setting the scene for Our Lord’s birth. That is true if we look at the story of Christmas as just that: an interesting, feel-good story with no effect on our lives today.

As Christians, however, we don’t believe that the Scriptures are a history book or a historical novel. Instead, we know they are living words with a message that is as needed today as it was 2000 years ago when John the Baptist first spoke them. We hear this message spoken concisely by John the Baptist in the Gospel today: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

Problem is, we don’t want to hear about repentance. There’s a popular view of repentance that is negative, with God seen as a stern judge who writes down every little thing we do wrong, and is ready to condemn us if we don’t repent. When we do repent of our sins, we receive harsh punishments enacted by God as a consequence of our sins, and terrible, difficult penances issued by priests within the Sacrament of Confession.

Of course, none of this is true. OK, maybe the last part about the priests giving difficult penances might be true, but the rest is not true. Repentance is not merely God deigning to forgive us of our sins, but a reconciliation with God. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it many times in the future: sin is our turning away from God, choosing our own right and wrong over what He has revealed as right or wrong, and is not God turning away from us. God truly is our Heavenly Father, and like many earthly Fathers, He wants to flood us with the best of gifts. When we repent from our sins, we become open to receiving His graces of healing and peace in our lives. Sin restricts us from His graces, but repentance opens us up to them.

To be clear, this repentance is not a one-time deal. Each of us, every single one of us, commit sins every day that we need to repent from. Also, we can’t just think, “I repent from my sins” and then go on with nothing changed in our lives. As John the Baptist told the Pharisees and Sadducees, “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.” True repentance, which must include reception of the Sacrament of Confession, will lead to changes in our lives. They might be small, barely noticeable to all but those closest to you, but those changes still occur.

This true repentance should not be seen as something painful, although some measure of pain may come when we have to confront our pride. We should approach repentance as something joyful, something we desire above all things on Earth, because it truly is a joyful preparation in our lives for the coming of Our Lord and for our joining with Him. As St. Paul puts it, we should “think in harmony with one another, in keeping with Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We should seek union with Christ so that we may one day join Him and our brothers and sisters in the glories of Heaven.

John the Baptist tells us that those who repent and whose lives show the fruit of that repentance will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Isaiah promises us that in this Kingdom, “There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain […] for His dwelling shall be glorious.” This message of John the Baptist and the prophet Isaiah truly should be a message of joy and hope in our lives. If we are willing to let go of our pride and repent of our sins, we too will look forward with joy to the return of Our Lord.

Freedom of Speech and Erroneous Opinion

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It never fails. Whenever freedom of speech is brought up in a blog post about some position contrary to the Catholic Faith, someone writes a response to the extent of, “Error has no rights whatsoever, be it in the spoken word, written statement or otherwise.” Their point, as near as I can tell, is that we should not have the wide-ranging freedom of speech we enjoy here in the United States, but should only be free to express that which is compatible with the Truth revealed by Christ.

As Christians, we must always speak and act according to the Truth. Because we follow Christ, we do not have the freedom to behave contrary to his will, and fall into sin when we do. If we are serious about our belief in Christ, we must use our free will to do what we ought, as Pope John Paul II put so eloquently.

On a civil level, there is a problem. We need to be very careful when desiring the abolition of government protected free speech. We do not live in a country governed by Catholic values. Some would argue the United States is barely holding on to any Christian virtue at all. It is not Christian Truth that governs this nation’s practices, but rather post-modern philosophies that reject the Christian Faith.

If government protected free speech were withdrawn, it would not be error that would be repressed, but the Truth of Christ. The revealed Truth of Christ would be seen, as it already is in some places, to be “hate speech” and would be repressed severely. The same freedom of speech which allows error to be expressed also allows us to proclaim the Truth of Christ. Of course, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Those who would remove freedom of speech from error require that same freedom of speech to call for its abolition.

There is a solution to the problem, but it’s far more difficult then merely calling for repression of error. Instead of removing the freedom of speech from those who disagree with the Truth revealed by Christ, we should use the same freedom of speech to spread the Gospel. One of the Spiritual Works of Mercy is to instruct the ignorant. We can fight error with Truth, not merely seek to repress it. Truth will overcome error, but we need to courageous in proclaiming that Truth.