A Homily for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

It can certainly seem as if we are living in dark days. With the ongoing war in the Ukraine, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and sabre rattling in the South China Sea, the world seems to be in a dark place. Here at home we continue to face various crises: high inflation, the border with Mexico and immigration, drugs and alcohol addiction are at a high, attacks on the family, the approval rating of Congress at an all time low, and let’s be honest, is anyone really excited about either of the likely candidates for president of the two major parties? Dark days.

The Chosen People at the time of Ezekiel, who we heard in our first reading, were also facing dark days. The northern kingdom of Israel had fallen almost 200 years earlier, and now the southern kingdom of Judah had been crushed by the Babylonians. The House of David was fallen; most of the leading citizens were in exiled, the city of Jerusalem, including the Temple were sacked. It was very dark days.

Yet Ezekiel offers a prophecy of hope. God says that He is going to plant a cedar tree on a high mountain, and it is going to flourish. It is an image of the restoration of the House of David. “Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it…” This is an image of how all the nations will be drawn to the “majestic cedar” of the House of God. Hope in the midst of darkness.

Another prophet of hope was the late, and in my opinion great, Pope Benedict XVI. He wrote and spoke a lot about hope.  He recognized hope as the antidote to a world crisis that is deeper and more dangerous than any economic or environmental catastrophe could ever be. Those kinds of material tragedies can cause us some painful suffering, but they cannot take away the meaning of life, which is to live in friendship with Christ by loving God and loving our neighbor. Even in the midst of intense suffering, we can continue doing that. So the most dangerous crisis in our age is not economic, environmental, or even political.

Instead, it is spiritual. It's the tendency of our culture to promise happiness without God.

Because of our technological advances, this promise tells us, it's only a matter of time before we ourselves create heaven on earth - no need for superstitions like religion to help us.

This is a false promise, because we were "made to live in communion with God, in whom [alone] we find happiness" (Catechism, #45). Christian hope is the mighty virtue that gives us the strength and wisdom to resist the seductive voice of this false, evil promise, keeps alive in our hearts the deep conviction that our true home is not here on earth, but in the Father's house in heaven, and sustains our faith in the midst of the darkness and difficulties of our earthly journey.

This is what St Paul is talking about in today's Second Reading. He reminds the Christians of the worldly, wealthy, and pleasure-centered Greek city of Corinth that their true happiness is waiting for them in heaven, when God will reward them for their service to his Kingdom here on earth. He points out that this long-term perspective, revealed by Christ, is the source of courage to resist temptation and despair. Then he writes that amazing line, describing how Christians navigate through this fallen world: "We walk by faith," he writes, "not by sight.”

There is a wrong way to interpret this phrase. For instance, when atheists hear, "We walk by faith, not by sight," they tend to interpret that as meaning, "To believe in God is to shut off your brain."

That, however, is not what St Paul means, nor is it what the Church teaches or what Catholics have done through the centuries. The Church invented the modern university; it built some of the earliest astronomical observatories; it preserved ancient literature and philosophy during the Dark Ages; it brought and continues to bring formal education to the poor and underprivileged on all five continents; it runs some of the world's most respected hospitals, schools, and colleges across the globe… Is this the record of a religion that tells its adherents to "shut off their brains"?

There is no contradiction between the supernatural knowledge of faith and the natural knowledge of sight, or reason, because they both lead us to truth, and all truth comes from God, and God can't contradict himself.

So there is no contradiction between faith and sight, but there is a priority: faith is first. As a result of original sin, human reason is slow and easily makes mistakes, which is partly why history is full of tragedies like war, genocide, famine, and other injustices.

The light of faith helps heal and support our damaged reason. Reason can be blinded by feelings and passions, like anger, lust, and greed. In those moments our faith kicks in and keeps us on the right path: "Forgive and you shall be forgiven," it reminds us, "Thou shalt not commit adultery... Store up your treasure in heaven..."

Walking "by faith and not by sight" doesn't mean shutting off our brains. Rather, it means turning on a flashlight [or: wearing infrared night goggles] to help guide us through the darkness of this fallen world.

Understanding that we "walk by faith, not by sight," is a help to every aspect of our Christian life, but maybe most especially to our life of prayer.

We live busy lives, full of challenges, problems, and difficulties alongside the many joys and satisfactions. As a result, when we come to Mass or prayer, we often find ourselves distracted, tired, or even a bit confused. What's more, in the back of our minds we are usually expecting strong emotional consolation, deep insights, and oceanic interior peace - as spiritual people do in the movies.

However, that is a false expectation, because we don't walk by sight, by what we can feel and touch; we walk by faith. Our faith tells us that prayer isn't about feelings, it's about friendship, and friendship is built on commitment, loyalty, and love.

That's the foundation of Christian prayer. When we pray, when we come to Mass, we don't come in order to stir up feelings - we can do that at the movies or at a concert. Rather, we come to turn the attention of our hearts and minds to God. If good feelings come, great, but if they don't, that's great too! It doesn't change the truth of friendship with God.

When dark clouds block out the sun for a little while, the sun is still there. Just so, when we turn to God in prayer and find it hard to feel his presence, our faith reminds us that he is always with us, listening to us, and guiding us.

As we continue this Mass, let's thank God for the gift of Christian hope and Christian faith, and let's promise to do our best to use these gifts this week, to exercise them, walking by the stable and dependable truth of faith, not the false and collapsible promise of sight.

A Homily for the Vigil of Pentecost (2024)

 (Please note, the Pentecost Vigil, Simple Form, has for readings from the Old Testament to choose from for the first reading. For this homily, I chose the third option, from Ezekiel 37:1-14)

While New Jersey is certainly not a tropical rain forest, we are also not what would be described as an arid environment. We get rain pretty regularly — especially this past week — and we are blessed with many lakes, streams and rivers, not to mention the Atlantic Ocean to our east. 

The same cannot be said about Israel. While modern technology makes getting fresh water in Israel today rather easy, that was not the case at the time of Jesus. Much of the land was arid, large parts of it would be called a desert. People often had to walk a good distance to a well or river to get water. For the ancient Israelites, water was an important factor in life, and not something to be taken for granted. Water was seen as a symbol of life, and dryness was a symbol of death.

This helps us understand the vision the Prophet Ezekiel has in today’s first reading. The Chosen People have been unfaithful to God. They neglected the covenant; at best just going through the motions of worshipping God without their hearts really being in it. They thought that they could handle everything on their own, and failed to rely on God. As a result they have been conquered by the Babylonians and most of their people have been taken into exile. As the Prophet records them saying, “Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off.”

God sent Ezekiel a vision of a plain filled with dried bones. The bones covered as far as his eyes could see. The bones symbolized the Chosen people; dead, lifeless, disconnected. Ezekiel is told to prophesy over the dried bones, and when he does they start to assemble themselves; first becoming human skeletons, then the sinews and flesh came upon them, and finally skin. They looked now like a vast army, but they were still lifeless. Just a collection of bones, organs and skin, can look human but not be alive. It is only when Ezekiel prophesy to the spirit, that God’s Spirit comes into the bodies and gives them life. God promises through Ezekiel to raise the people from their graves, the grave of sin, and He goes further exclaiming, “O my people! I will put my spirit in you that you many live…”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus proclaims that the time for the promise made in Ezekiel is at hand. We are told that it is the last and greatest day of the feast, but what feast is it? It is the Feast of Tabernacles, a harvest festival. Again, recalling that Israel is an arid land, each day of the Feast the priests would fill a basin with water from the Pool of Siloam, and pour it in front of the Altar of Sacrifice as an oblation, a sacrifice asking God to send them abundant rains in the winter to refill their wells and cisterns. The eighth day of the Feast is the greatest and most important day, so the Temple would have been very crowded. It is during this day that Jesus exclaims, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.” He says that everyone who believes in him will have “living water” that will flow in him. “Living water” is the best, because it is fresh and flowing. Jesus is saying that he gives life, and this life is the Holy Spirit.

Like the other two persons in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is mysterious. We will never be able to fully understand the Holy Spirit, but one way to understand the Holy Spirit is in the language of love. St. John tells us that “God is love.” God does not just love, He IS love. God the Father is the Lover, and the Son is the Beloved. The Holy Spirit is the Love that the Father and the Son share. It is a perfect love; perfectly reflecting the Father and the Son; the three are one.

We can also consider the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. As we saw in Ezekiel, after the bones came together with flesh and skin, they still were not alive. They were corpses. They needed a “something” that would give them life. In natural life, we call that the soul. God infuses the soul in human bodies to give them live. He does that at the moment of conception. What was two cells are fused and form a new life with a human soul.

Yet we are made for something so much more than just natural life. We are created for supernatural life; sharing the very life of God. Through the sacrament of baptism, which of course uses water, the Holy Spirit is poured into our souls making us the children of God. And as the soul gives life to the various parts and organs that form the human body, the Holy Spirit gives life to the various members that form the Church. We are the Church, and the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. When the Church acts, it is Christ who is acting. We are the continuation of Jesus’ ministry in the world throughout all of history. But it is only if we stay connected to Christ the Head of the Body. And we can only remain connected to Christ through prayer, especially through the sacraments. In the Eucharist in particular, we eat the Body and Blood of Christ so as to become the Body and Blood of Christ.

This Pentecost we need to ask ourselves, “How dry are my bones?” Have we allowed other things to separate us from Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Like the Israelites in the first reading, are “our bones dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off?” What is drying us out? Conflict in the family, challenges at work, physical illness? Are we putting too much priority on profits, prestige and pleasure, and not placing our priority on God?

Recently Jonathan Roumie gave the commencement address at Catholic University. In case his name is not familiar to you, Jonathan is the actor who plays Jesus in the series “The Chosen.” His father is Egyptian and his mother is Irish. He was baptized in the Orthodox Church, but later converted to Catholicism. He is very active in his parish, both as a catechist and an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion.

A few years ago he was going through a difficult situation. He had no medical insurance. He had only $20 in his wallet and nothing in the bank. He had enough food to last him maybe a day or two. While he had gotten some small guest roles on TV shows, his dream of being an actor did not seem to be paying off. He was desperate. In fear and anguish he fell to his knees, sobbing to God. It was then that he realized that he had given God most of his life, but not all of it. He had never given God his career. He thought he could make it as an actor on his own. He had never turned his career over to God. So that morning he did. He told God that he only wanted to do His will, and if that was to be an actor, great, but if it was doing something else, so be it. About an hour later he received a call asking if he would be interested in playing Jesus, and the rest is history.

We need to give God our dry bones. We must allow Him to be our Lord and Savior in every aspect of our lives, 24/7/365. As we approach Him in the Eucharist, let us give him our dry bones, begging Him to pour out His Holy Spirit into our lives, so that as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we will become the Body and Blood of Christ so to continue to proclaim to the world the Good News of Jesus Christ.

The 4th Sunday of Easter

    This weekend is often called “Good Shepherd Sunday” because of today’s Gospel reading. However, I think we could also call this “Scandal Sunday.” The word scandal comes the Greek word that means “to put a stumbling stone in front of someone.” So it is something offensive and inconvenient.
    Jesus referring to himself as the Good Shepherd would not be scandalous for the Jewish people at that time. Oh, the Scribes and Pharisees might have disagreed with him, but they knew that both in the Psalms and in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel the Messiah was described as the one, true shepherd of Israel. By calling himself the Good Shepherd, Jesus was making the claim to be the long awaited promised Messiah. Again, while some would disagree with his claim, they would not have been scandalized by his making the claim.
    What would have scandalized his listeners — both those who believed in him and those who did not — was this line, “A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus was declaring that he was going to die for the salvation of the people. This would have been shocking to the people because they would never have thought of the Messiah dying. The Messiah was going to rule them forever; he could not die. Of course this is because they had a wrong idea of who the Messiah was going to be, but also because they did not have the correct understanding of what salvation is.
    The salvation that Jesus proclaims, and the Church still holds to, is not an eternity in a garden of sensual delights. Rather the salvation that Jesus Christ offers us is to share in the very life of God. Salvation is to become a child of God, enjoying God forever. The early Church Fathers called this divinization or deification. This does not mean that we will become gods — that was the lie the serpent told our First Parents when he told them that if they ate of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they would “be like gods” (Genesis 3:5). Rather, deification is a participation in the divine nature.
    The founders of the other major world religions do not claim to offer a way to this kind of salvation.

    Buddha said that the problem of human existence was the illusion of our selfhood. He offered a way by which we would lose this illusion and cease to exist as personal beings.

    Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, basically adopted the position of the serpent in the Garden of Eden; that if we lived a good life we would be rewarded by becoming a god over our own planet or solar system.
    Mohammed’s view of salvation was that as a reward for obedience to the mono personal god, “Allah”, we would be given an eternal afterlife of sensual pleasure and comfort.
    None of these are what Jesus taught and what we as Christians believe about salvation. Jesus teaches us that God is our loving Father and that by, through and in him we become a child of God, sharing in the divine life.
    In today’s first reading, St. Peter concludes his message with the line, “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” 

    It is this line that is scandalous to our modern, pluralistic society. Our modern world finds it arrogant for St. Peter to claim that Jesus is the sole way to salvation. The world today says we must all be tolerant of other views. If by that we mean be respectful of others who have different beliefs than we have, then absolutely. As Christians we know that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore have a basic dignity that cannot be taken away. However, if by tolerant the world means that every opinion is just as good as any other, then we must say NO! There is a single TRUTH, and Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the only one to say that salvation is a participation in the very life of God as His child.

    If there are three fruit venders, one only sells oranges, another only sells apples, and one only sells bananas, it is not arrogant to say, “If you want bananas, you must come to me.” It is not arrogant for Jesus to say “If you want salvation, to be a child of the one true God you must come to me.”

    I learned a new word this week, “Christophobia.” This is the fear of Christ, the world’s fear and hatred of the truth that the Church continues to preach — a divisive and intolerant truth — that Jesus Christ alone is God, He alone is the Savior from sin, and that we are all sinners in need of the Salvation Christ offers.

    St. John in his letters speak of the world being the AntiChrist; teaching lies in opposition to the Truth revealed by Jesus Christ. In today’s world, the “sacraments” of the Antichrist, the sacraments of the anti-Christian “sexual revolution” are pornography, fornication, divorce, contraception, abortion, same-sex “marriage” and transgenderism. As followers of Christ we cannot embrace any of these sacraments of the Antichrist. We cannot reconcile light and darkness.

    St. Peter did not expect everyone, especially in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, to smile and love him and agree with him. He expected to be murdered and martyred for what he said. And eventually he was, as were all the other Apostles with the exception of St. John. However, it was that courage, that willingness to be hated by the world that changed the world and saved the world. 

    Today our cowardice to speak the hard truth is losing the world. Every Christian is called by God to become a saint and an apostle. We are all called to be a warrior of love and truth, which are our only two weapons in this great spiritual war of Christ versus the Antichrist. At stake is something much more than the American Dream or Western Civilization. The real stake is the souls of every human being, each of whom have an eternal and immortal and absolute value. St. Thomas Aquinas says that the first thing that love and charity to our neighbor demands of us is to lead them to the truth.

3rd Sunday of Lent (B)

In today’s first reading from the Book of Exodus, we hear God giving Moses the Ten Commandments; the kernel of the Mosaic Law. When you hear “the law” what is your reaction?

Most Americans have a negative attitude towards the idea of law. We tend to view laws as mostly restrictive. A slightly more positive attitude that many of us have is to view law as something that is protective; the law protects the innocent from the guilty. 

Few if any of us would have the attitude that the composer of today’s psalm had for the Law. The Psalmist praises the law as “refreshing the soul” and “rejoicing the heart.” The law is seen as something “more precious than gold” and “sweeter also than syrup or honey.” In another Psalm, King David describes a person as “blessed” if he is able to “meditate on his law day and night” (Ps. 1:2).

Why such a difference of attitudes between us today, and the Jewish people of the Old Testament? Why did they love the law?

For the Jewish people, the Law was so much more than a list of rules and regulations. Oh, they will create quite a list of rules and regulations to further those of the Ten Commandments — all you need to do is read the Book of Deuteronomy, which literally means “Second Law.” For the Jewish people the Mosaic Law was a covenant, which is an extension of kinship by oath. In other words, the Mosaic Law was God’s inviting the Jewish people to become members of His family.

Every family has rules; whether it be about bedtimes, chores, letting people know where you are. And for all the kids in the congregation who have thought “I can’t wait until I’m all grown so that I don’t have all these rules to follow,” let me tell you — I am 59 years-old and I still have rules to follow where I live: I have to let them know if I am going to be “home” for a meal, and I have to mark on a board by the door if I am out or in. Like all “family rules” the Mosaic Law was meant to help the family — God’s family — to live in peace, both with God and with each other.

Now we might better understand why King David described as “blessed” the person who “meditates on his law day and night.” We meditate, or spend time thinking about, that which we love. A person who has just fallen in love with someone might just sit there staring into space; they are thinking about their beloved who is so beautiful that they cannot get their face out of their mind. For today’s Psalmist, the law was loved, dreamed about, more than the face of any human beloved. It is our loss if we do not have that same kind of love for God’s law.

The law — God’s Law — is like an umbilical cord connecting us with God, the God of all meaning and goodness and hope. For pious Jews, reading the Mosaic Law was like reading a love letter from their beloved. Love asks the beloved, “What do you want? What do you desire? What do you love? I want to fulfill your desire because I love you.” Well, God, their beloved, answers those questions with the Law, starting with the Ten Commandments. It is God saying to them, “This is what I love: these values, this kind of person, this kind of life. Being that kind of person and living that kind of life is what would make me proud of you and happy.” [This is largely taken from Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Cycle B) by Peter Kreeft, “Third Sunday of Lent”].

With the coming of Jesus, the Law receives that face of the beloved that we should never be able to get out of our minds. Jesus is the embodiment of the Law. Jesus gives himself to us so that God’s Law may be inside us. We can see this in today’s Gospel reading.

I already noted that the Mosaic Law became more than just the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments could not explicitly cover every possible circumstance, so over time the Jewish people elaborated on the Ten Commandments. We can find many of these “elaborations” in Deuteronomy, but also in Exodus and Leviticus. As we will see in today’s Gospel, the elaborated laws often had “loopholes.”

Why were there merchants and money changers in the Temple area at the time of Jesus? One of the elaborated laws that was intended to make the worship of God easier was to allow the people of Israel to sell their livestock for money, travel to the Temple, and then purchase other livestock for sacrifice. The original law called for people to take the sacrificial offering from their own flocks, however, if you have ever tried to get a flock of sheep or goats from one place to another, you know that it is not easy. So this “second law” made things much easier; you still had to get rid of one animal from your own flock, but then just take the money — which travels much more easily — to Jerusalem, buy another sheep or goat to then offer for the sacrifice. Sadly, this second law, which was intended just to make worship of God more easy, became corrupt as the businesses near the Temple took advantage of the Jewish pilgrims by making a lot of profit. The merchants and money-changers were basically breaking the commandment, “You shall not steal.”

Jesus enters the Temple as the very embodiment of the Law. Written laws can be abused and develop loopholes; persons do not have loopholes. Jesus points out boldly, clearly, and violently the abuse of the second law. The merchants and money-changers could no longer be deceiving themselves; Jesus tells them explicitly that they are thieves.

Lent is a time for us to allow Jesus to do the same thing for us. We should invite him into our souls, which are all “Temples of the Holy Spirit.” If we allow him, if when we receive the sacraments in docility and faith, Jesus will enter and clean up our “Temple.” He will help us see how we are deceiving ourselves, not living God’s Law as a love letter from our beloved, but as merely a set of rules which we look for loopholes to let us off the hook.

As we continue our Lenten journey, especially as we prepare ourselves to receive the Eucharist — the Body and Blood of Jesus who is the embodiment of God’s Law which is God’s Love — let us ask him to continue to “clean our Temple,” as we stay faithful to our practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

First Sunday of Lent

  How many of you are dog lovers? What about cats? Birds? OK, what about snakes or lizards? Me, I am a dog lover. My dog’s name is Dymphna. One of the most difficult thing about having to go on disability and living at the priest retirement home is that I was not allowed to bring her there to live with me. I had gotten her as a puppy, and she will be 12 years-old next month. While I am sad that she cannot live with me, Dymphna has a good home — she is living with my Mom, so I get to see her often.

    This week I came across a story that really moved me, and I think has an important lesson as we start our Lenten journey. 

A little boy went into a pet shop to buy a puppy. He saw five puppies for sale, and asked the shop owner how much they cost. The man replied, "Some are fifty dollars, some are more."

The little boy pulled out his change, counted it, and announced that he had $1.47. The man said, "I'm sorry, but you'll just have to save your money and come back again."

Just then, the man's wife brought out another puppy from the back of the store. It was smaller, had a crippled leg, and limped badly when it tried to walk. They explained that this one had been born without a hip socket and would always be lame.

"I wish I had the money to buy that one!" exclaimed the little boy with excitement. "It's not for sale," said the man, "but I'll gladly give him to you for free.” But the little boy refused, saying: "No, sir. That little dog is worth just as much as the others. I'll give you a dollar and forty-seven cents now, and fifty cents a month until I have paid in full."

Confused, the man asked, "Why do you want a dog that will never run and play like the other puppies?” The boy reached down and rolled up his pant leg to reveal a badly twisted, crippled left leg, supported by a metal brace. He said, "Mister, I don't run and play too well myself. I think this little puppy will need someone like me who understands."

That's the Catholic faith in a nutshell: Jesus became just like us, paid the full price of our sins, and offers us salvation, just because he loves us.

Two images from nature dominate this First Sunday of Lent. In these images we find the key for living the next six weeks deeply and fruitfully, as God is hoping we will live them.

The first image is that of the desert. After Jesus was baptized, but before he began his years of public ministry, St Mark tells us in today's Gospel that the Spirit "drove Jesus out into the desert," where he experienced temptation.

Throughout the Bible, the desert is often referred to a place of testing, where we experience our weakness and dependence on God. Water and food are hard to come by there, and the temperatures and emptiness are oppressive to both the body and the mind. The desert is a place where our illusions of self-sufficiency and comfort fade away.

When we are in the desert, either literally or figuratively, we quickly realize that we need God. In other words, the desert is the opposite of the Garden of Eden. It is the place of suffering and hardship that sin has led us to. Both original sin and also our own personal sins have interfered with God's plan for our lives and for our world; they have put us in need of salvation.

The second image in today's Readings is the flood, the abundance of water that cleansed the world of sin at the time of Noah. That ancient flood of water foreshadowed Christian baptism, the flood of grace that purifies our souls from sin, bringing new spiritual life into the desert of our sin-damaged hearts. 

Sin and salvation: our sins, and Christ's loving sacrifice that leads to salvation. These are the most fundamental aspects of our Catholic faith, and these are the themes that should fill our hearts and minds throughout the season of Lent.

Besides the desert and the flood, there is another, third, image from nature in today's Readings: the rainbow. Noah probably didn't know the scientific explanation behind rainbows, but he did understand their spiritual meaning.

All of creation has a physical nature that science explores and explains. But creation also has a spiritual meaning - it is a gift from our God, a gift full of messages, lessons, and inspiration. Science can explain the prismatic refraction of light in a rainbow, but it cannot explain the thrill of wonder that fills our hearts we behold that same rainbow.

A rainbow appears when sunlight and storm clouds come together. And God chose this as a symbol of his covenant, of his promise that salvation would conquer sin. That covenant and that promise still stand; we have to put our hope in them.

Jesus, as today's Second Reading reminds us so beautifully, has suffered, died, risen from the dead, and ascended into heaven, conquering sin and evil once and for all. The crucifix is our rainbow; the cross of Christ is our Ark. No storm can cancel out Christ's victory over evil; no clouds can reverse it; no flood can extinguish it. And so, while we suffer in the storms of hardship and sin that make our lives and world so painful and difficult, we still continue to follow Christ, because the light of his love shines brightly even in the midst of the storm.

Today we have the privilege to renew our hope once again through this Mass and Holy Communion, to be freshly inspired by a glimpse of our rainbow. When we see a rainbow in the sky, the first thing we do is tell those around us, so they will see it too. This Lent, let's do the same with the rainbow that shines in our Christian hearts.

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

 Do you want to please God? I would say that most of us would like to please God, but the question is what must we do to please God? Luckily for us, God tells us what we should do to please him. 

In today’s first reading from the Prophet Isaiah, God says that if we want to please him we should focus on doing three things, namely guarding against lying and malicious speech; exercising charity, especially towards those who are hungry; and making the Sabbath holy.

 For the Jewish people of Jesus’ time a lot of attention was placed on being careful about what one placed in one’s month. Certain foods were unclean, so it was important to keep Kosher. Yet in Scripture, God expresses more concern about what comes out of our months than what we put in our months. St. Paul writes to “only say the good things that people need to hear.” The gift of speech was given to praise God, and to build up our brothers and sisters, but we are often so careless in what we say. We gossip, we blaspheme, we speak ill of others. To please God we should strive to be the person about whom others say, “I never heard them say a bad word about anyone.” To be a saint we should strive to be like St. Dominic of whom it was said, “He was always speaking to God, or speaking about God to others.”

 We only need to open our eyes — especially the eyes of our hearts — to recognize that there are a lot of people in need, not just in the world in general, but right here in our neighborhood. It is not as easy to provide the necessities of clothing and shelter for others, but all of us can share food for the hungry. Most of us here in America can always go with a little less food for ourselves so to share some with those in need. This morning, members of St. John the Baptist parish Knights of Columbus were over at the soup kitchen at the Cathedral to share a meal of baked ziti with the hungry. Everyone in the parish were all invited to participate, even if it was just preparing a tray of ziti for them to take to the soup kitchen. I wonder how many of parishioners made a tray of food, or make a donation of socks? I am sure each of your parishes offer similar opportunities to help the poor; do you participate?

 Finally keeping the Sabbath holy is important because it consists in “holding back … from following your own pursuits on my holy day” says the Lord. The Sabbath is made holy by doing God’s “thing” rather than our own thing. Even the type of recreation and relaxation that we do on Sundays should not be merely for our pleasure. In someways I regret the decision to let people fulfill their Sabbath obligation by going to the Saturday Vigil Mass; I think it makes it too easy to forget that we are not suppose to give God just an hour, but an entire day.

 If we wish to please God, if we want to become a reconciler in society and bring people closer to one another and to God, we must live by worshipping God on the Sabbath the whole day, curb our tongue so as to only say the good things that people need to hear, and perform the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

Ash Wednesday

Today Jesus is reminding us of a tough lesson. He tells us to stop being hypocrites, to stop looking like Christians on the outside while being self-centered, arrogant, and egotistical on the inside. 

The word "hypocrite" comes from the Greek word for “actor". Actors pretend to be someone they're not. That's OK on stage, but not in real life.

Jesus is encouraging us to take off our masks, to stop pretending, to once again be true to our true selves. That is a hard lesson for us, for two reasons.

First, we don't like to admit that we sometimes act like hypocrites. But the fact is, we do. We try to deceive, to give the right impression, even if it's false. We try to hide our motives. We are all hypocrites in some way.

Second, we are afraid that if we take off our mask, God may reject us. And no one wants to be rejected.

But Jesus gives us a reason to trust him enough to accept this hard lesson. The reason is that he already knows us through and through, and even so, he loves us. He repeats this three times, when he says that the Father sees what we do in secret. That means he has seen all of the most selfish, vitriolic, and morose chapters of our ongoing interior monologues. Everything. He knows it all. And yet, he still loves us with the tender love of the perfect Father, the perfect friend. He still wants us to live close to him - closer and closer, actually.

That's why he keeps telling us to give alms and pray and fast "in secret". He wants us to stay close to him, to live our lives in intimate friendship with him.

The ashes that we use today are meant to remind us of these things.

First, they remind us that we are sinners. Although we are children of God, at the same time we are still children of this fallen world. Ashes are lifeless dust. Insofar as we still give in to our tendencies to selfishness and sin, we too are lifeless dust. Sin separates us from God, who is the source of all life. Without God's redeeming spirit in us, we would have no hope of eternal life.

Second, the ashes remind us that our sins, our acts of selfishness, cause damage. These ashes are made from the palm branches we used on Palm Sunday last year. They symbolized Christ's victory over sin. Our sins forfeit that victory. They destroy the life that God means us to live, just as the palm branches from last year's Palm Sunday were destroyed to make these ashes.

Third, and most importantly, the ashes remind us that in spite of our sins, in spite of our deep-seeded selfishness, God hasn't given up on us. Christ is our Redeemer! He claims us for his own. We still have a mission in his Kingdom; he still wants us to be his ambassadors. Yes, we are marked with ashes, because we are sinners, but the mark is given in the sign of Christ's cross, which won for us the grace of a fresh start and a new life. We are marked on our foreheads, because Christ wants us to go boldly into the world as his representatives. He is not ashamed of us; he wants our friendship. He is our Savior.

Jesus wants the truth and the power of his love to penetrate and transform our lives in a fresh way this Lent. But he needs us to take off our masks in order for that to happen. He needs us to peel them away, like peeling away an old bandage, so that his grace can heal our wounds. He points to three masks in particular. 

First, we have the mask the blocks our relationship with God. This is the one Jesus points to when he tells us to work on our prayer life, to pray from the heart, sincerely, not just to go through the motions.

Second, we have the mask that blocks our relationship with other people. This is the one Jesus points to when he tells us to give alms in secret. He wants us to open our hearts to our neighbors. He wants us to care about them, to be interested in them, to look for ways to serve and encourage them instead of looking for ways to take advantage of them.

Third, we have the mask that blocks our own growth to maturity. This is the one Jesus points to when he tells us to fast in secret. He wants us to learn the art of self-governance and self-discipline, of humility and nobility. He wants to free us from the degrading slavery to our base instincts.

In this Mass, he offers us the grace we need to make a fresh start in our friendship with him. He offers us the strength we need to peel away whichever mask is blocking out his love, a love which never wavers. 

Let's accept this grace and put it to work. Let's not leave this Mass without having committed to peel away one of those masks, to move up a notch either in our relationship with God, or with our neighbor, or with ourselves. If we promise to do our part this Lent, we can be sure he will do his part.