Christmas Homily 2013

As we get older and as people come in and out of our lives, our rhythms and patterns fluctuate, and we’re never really the same person from year to year.

Adults, think back to when you were children and how you celebrated Christmas with innocence and perhaps a sense of naivety, how relatives would fill the house and how smells of food and the cacophony of laughter and ruckus would linger for hours. Now bring yourself back to the present and think about how much life has changed, fluctuated, the people who have left or gone to be with the Lord and those people who are now in your life - spouses and children and grandchildren. You would have never imagined all the details as they have played out.

Children, cherish the joy this Christmas season brings. Truly spend time with your brothers and sisters, give your parents and grandparents a kiss, tell people you love them and laugh with great joy. Really remember and understand the true source of the joy that comes into our world and lives this time of year.

Naturally, this time of year conjures up a longing nostalgia of the past, an anticipation of love in the present and a hope that it will all be sustained into the future.

There’s nothing wrong with that, it is the rituals and traditions of our lives that help give us meaning and purpose to what we do and celebrate.

That brings us to Christmas…

In our lives, these fluxes and changes, the good times and bad are all revolved around unchanging truths, facts and realities: joy, family, hope, friendship, God, salvation…

For so long, people of good will, people who genuinely wanted and desired the fullness of God in their lives longed for this celebration we have every year. For millennia, people who understood this incompletion of ourselves without God, labored through life with little hope of anything more than an eternal darkness. Now, finally, the invincible Lord Jesus has come into the world and darkness will no longer have claim on our souls. The Lord has arrived on the scene and an Epic Tale now commences! We are given, not merely a nice feeling, but the substance of Salvation! From that day onward, humanity would be celebrating the joy, hope and love of that great birth!

What we do tonight, tomorrow and these days ahead is gather in love with family and friends in carrying out this joyous victory of the birth when the King of the Cosmos humbly was born in obscurity, but had a magnificent plan up his sleeve!

The people, environment, and circumstances of our lives change over time. Often we get teary eyed as we get older and as we long for the nostalgia of days and people past. But, we keep returning to this celebration each year in the hope that rests in our hearts. We hope that the promises, realities, and love of Almighty God may be realized again and again in our relationships with each other and with the Lord and in our worship.

The infant is alive and born into the depths of our hearts at Christmas. We celebrate and gather every year in similar yet ever changing ways to recall what never does change, to celebrate what we hope to see and grasp a little better each time. Next year, we will be different. But what will always be the same is the Lord Jesus who is born within the temples of our hearts and souls, begging you to love Him and bring that love into all relationships and all places you go.

Merry Christmas!

A King and Bones

With the Solemnity of Christ the King, the Church marks an end to another Liturgical cycle and we close this Year of Faith, begun last October.

From a pastoral perspective, I would have loved to have done more at the parish, marking this great opportunity to reignite and incite the faith of the good people of my parish whom I lovingly serve. But, as I'm finding out in the infancy of this priesthood, expectations and plans are often not easily put into practice as anticipated or hoped. I pray that whatever we did do at the parish, it was seeds planted in the hearts of the faithful and will one day bud and blossom according to the will of the Father.

From a personal perspective, I was truly excited this year and am conscious of much spiritual growth and a widening of my identity as a priest.

I had the opportunity to go the Rome last December/January. While there, I had the opportunity to say a prayer before the bones of Peter, our first pope and Holy Father, and prayed the liturgy with Benedict, his 265 successor.

Then with the abdication of the Chair of Peter and the election of Francis...what can I add about that!

In the midst of those intense 'Petrine' months of going on pilgrimage to Rome and the events that unfolded in February and March with a new Holy Father, the reality of what it means to have a successor of Peter really struck me in a new way.

I don't know if Benedict planned his resignation in accord with the Year of Faith, but it was certainly a magnificent opportunity to reaffirm ourselves in our Catholic identity and the Faith we wholeheartedly  profess at every Sunday liturgy! This year, we not only had the mandate of the Church to fan the flames of faith, but we were also shown what it means to be a Church rooted in the Vicar of Christ.

This morning in Rome, the Holy Father celebrated a liturgy that closed this Year of Faith and celebrating the Solemnity of Christ the King. For the first time ever, the bones of our first Holy Father, Peter, were exposed and venerated.

I had heard this was going to happen, but didn't really know how they were going to do it or pull it off. I  immediately went to the internet after I celebrated the liturgy this morning and found one of the most profound and beautiful images (aside from the Mass) I think we will ever see as Catholics.





I admit, I started to tear when I saw this. Francis, the 266th successor of Peter, cradles the bones of his ultimate predecessor. We have never seen anything like it nor probably ever will again in our lifetime. This beautiful video of Francis holding Peter during the Credo, the creed, is what the Year of Faith is all about.

As we celebrate our King today, Christ the Logos, we profess our faith in His reality and existence and what He has done for us. Christ showed us that to be a true king, we must wear a crown, not of gold and jewels, but of thorns; to be a king, our throne is the cross, not an ornately upholstered cathedra. This King gave everyone and everything life and is the reason for every beat of every heart. Everything 'is' because this king allows it!

Aside from the fact he created everything and has brought everything to be by His Word, our King also left us shepherds of His earthly Kingdom, the Church. "Whatever you bind on Earth will be bound in Heaven, and whatever you lose of Earth will be loosed in Heaven". "I give you the keys to the Kingdom".

Our King said these things and did these things! These words are what gives the Church authority on Earth, and it is by these words that the Earth - the Church - has been given 266 Popes to guard, govern and lead us into the eternal mysteries of Heaven and to be a father to us who seek eternal life. How glorious and magnificent is this reality and truth!

No other religion, idea, philosophy, person, party, government, organization or creed has this kind of prominence and progeny that we see in the Church - the Kingdom of God!

Our King is real. He is here to stay. Nothing can defeat Him. No one can begin to replace Him. The devil is a speck compared to Him. With Him, we have victory!

As this Year of Faith comes to a close, we realize that we are part of something so fantastic so remarkable so mysterious that no word of mine can ever begin to sum it. We are members of a Kingdom that extends to eternity. We are baptized into this Church as Priest, Prophet, King, to imitate our Lord Jesus in His sacrificial love.

In addition to all that, as if that weren't enough, we were reassured today that we still have Peter! After two millennia of persecution, trials and martyrdom, we have had two millennia of evangelization, discipleship and liturgy that has allowed us to be witness to what we saw today! Nothing else matters! No other trivial criticism of the Church can ever usurp the reality that "We have Peter"!

Credo! Amen! I believe!

27th Sunday "Faith: Don't memorize it, live it!"

What an impressive insight from a largely unknown prophet of Israel. Habakkuk, having come to his wits end in the ensuing tumult of the nation, cries out in anguish to the LORD asking “don’t you see what’s going on? Don’t you care about us? Why are you not doing anything?” The prophet receives an answer that we deep down know to be true, but too often do not want to admit for we it’s losing control of our wills and lives.

The LORD tells the distressed prophet, “I see what’s going on. In fact, I see it and understand it more that you will ever know in this lifetime. I see the pain, the destruction and the sin – and I’m using it for my purpose.”

Today we could add to that, “Didn’t I send my Son to die for you? Didn’t I take your sin and conquer it by death? Didn’t I rise from the underworld for you? Don’t I extend to you my Mercy in every confession? Don’t I offer you my Body and my Blood at every mass? Don’t I sit on your altar so you and I to gaze upon each other in adoration? Don’t I send legions of angels every day and at every time in history to protect you, my beloved creation? Don’t I give you the example of the saints to follow as guides and intercessors? I do all this for you without asking anything out of you, but that you trust me, that you love me, that you seek me.”

This is the reminder Habakkuk received quite poignantly from the LORD – there is no need to wonder what the LORD knows and sees – he’s quite keen and astute to the topics of earthly and temporal affairs.

The key here is that we find within our faith the protection and strength to meet all life’s battles and tumults.

Faith, along with the word Love, is perhaps one of the most watered down  and misrepresented words within our language. Faith cannot be seen as merely having some set of codes and creeds in our back pocket to pull out and offer to the pagan, atheist, protestant, Jew, Muslim who differs from our way of thinking. If you’ve ever tried to convert with a battle over facts and ordinances, you know what a waste of time that really is. You can’t reason someone into a conversion of the heart, if you think you can, then I’d like to witness what other divine acts you can do for us!

No, faith is not a set of codes and ordinances of a Church or religion. Whenever it’s reduced to that, we encounter a dying religion. Not because our laws aren’t interesting, but because it gets off track and ineffective. That is not faith, it’s merely the context and the earthly way of living it out and understanding the theology of God and Church.

Faith is not the theology – theology is theology. Faith is an act of the will – Faith is a verb! Faith is coming before the LORD in the Eucharist and falling to your knees because you realize that on your best day, you can’t even begin to fathom how that bread becomes the body of your GOD. Faith is waking up each morning and realizing that you have been given another day on this earth, not because of your great healthy living tips, but because the LORD has a will for you to live out. Faith is taking the rosary in your hands and gripping them in utter surrender to the beauty of a life lived in the Blessed Mother and realizing that She and all the Saints are gazing upon the face of God and are intimately connected with you and never ceases to pray for you. Faith is looking at your family, your friends, your loved ones and realizing that God has given you a precious gift that nothing can ever replace – and sticking close by them and sacrificing for them so that you go without so they can have. Faith informs us that the posture of a Christian is the cross, and if you aren’t living your life in cruciform obedience, then you aren't tapping into your potential. Faith is everyday recognizing the incalculable beauty that’s penetrating your heart and mind, and it’s beckoning you to bask in the light of that beauty.

When our lives are this, when our lives look like this, then we have found the pearl and the essence of faith. Faith, reduced to some facts and figures is not faith – it’s exactly that: facts and figures. But a life conformed to the Mysteries and abandoned to the arms of our omnipotent God – that is faith. When our lives are built upon the essence and practices of God, and not merely our minds to the theology of it, then we find contentment in the will of the LORD. Then we understand, not Habakkuk’s desolation, but the consolation of the LORD he received.

If everyone lived the cross. If everyone surrendered to the Mysteries that penetrates the cosmos. If we surrender to the magnitude of what has been done for us, then we have begun to understand what faith really is – and it’s joyful! That is how we convert by our faith. In the freedom we have found in the arms of a GOD who loves us, we bring a new tinge and hue to the world. If all of us did that, if all of us were to live cruciform lives, what a different place this would be, what a vibrant Church we would have. The laws, ordinances and codes and creeds of the Faith – those are easy and will naturally follow – don’t obsess about it or make your faith about it. If you aren’t living it first, you’re life will be like a 9^th grade research paper instead of an intoxication of Divine Love!

This is achievable in everybody. Why? Because we are all made and destined for the same God! So believe and abandon yourselves into God. Make your faith first about that, then everything else will fall into place, you have my guarantee.

Only then, and I mean only then, will our lives really ever make sense. Only then will we ever begin to find meaning in our sufferings and death. Only then do we begin to finally live and live life to the fullest! If you do not find yourself coming before the mysteries of God everyday, you have not begun to understand what Faith means. You have perhaps grasped doctrine, but not what it means to have faith. Or you just really haven’t thought about it all together, and thus you really have no idea what you’ve been missing!

So go out today and be like our beloved saint, Saint Francis who, as the prayer attributed to him asks, making us instruments of God’s peace – becoming vessels and agents of the LORD and allowing the Spirit to grip hold and make amazing things happen!

16th Sunday OT - The Power of WYD

This week, Pope Francis makes his way to Rio for his first World Youth Day (WYD) as pontiff.

I had the awesome opportunity to attend the 2002 WYD in Toronto. My parish didn’t have a youth group, but a friend invited me to go along, and I said yes.

Up until that point, my only experience of God or prayer was what I learned in my Catholic school education, through privately praying at night in bed or having intense and moving – yet private – experiences of intimacy with God at Mass. I just was not one to publicly proclaim or pray to God – he was very private and confined to the walls of my school, parish or bedroom.

July 2002, I was changed forever and the effects WYD had on me has never left.

If you have ever been to an event like this, you know that mere words cannot do it justice, the power of the Spirit eludes even the most eloquent of orators. You simply have to journey with a million or more youth and young adults for the sole purpose of giving witness to your shared Catholic faith to understand and feel the power of God there.

It wasn’t just seeing the very soon-to-be St JP2 three times throughout the week, or hearing catechesis, having lunch with strangers – yet brothers and sisters – from opposite ends of the globe; the blessings of the occasion was not just found in the opportunity to solidify your identity as a Catholic and member of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. For me, I think the most profound effect it had was seeing that my faith was not just something I held or did or prayed privately, but was also meant to be given and shared.

The gospel this weekend gives us the famous examples of Martha and Mary. Mary, the model of contemplation and Martha, the model of active and apostolic work. Mary wants to simply sit with Christ and be with Him, listen to him and love Him in the silence. Martha wants to use the relationship she has with Him to do things for Him and to serve Him actively.

Though these two are unique and different expressions of the same love and relationship with the Lord, neither is superior to the other. We don’t shun the apostolic life and give praise to the contemplative life. Often times, the image of John – the Beloved Disciple - and Peter – the first Pope -  is also used in place of Mary and Martha.

What we learn from the Gospel is that we cant treat either as exclusive and in opposition to the other, but as compliments to the same Mission in the One Church. Naturally, we each have our strengths and our preferences for how we live our lives contemplatively or actively. But what is important is that we value each other’s natural abilities and strengths in this and that we use them all for the building of the Kingdom.

At WYD, I was transformed from believing that I could only be a Mary to seeing that I had some of Martha in me as well.

Over the years I have grown in my awareness of this and coming to see how I live out each of them in my life. You can be a strong contemplative at heart, but a passionate defender of the Truth in the world. This is healthy spirituality and a place where we each have to get to. We need to know our natural abilities and strengths when it comes to prayer and living out our faith in the world and then develop them in the Light of the Truth.

WYD is such a gift to the Universal Church. It has been reported time and time again to have opened the doors to religious vocations for 1000s of young men and women (I count myself in those numbers) and has given millions of youth the courage to be a Mary at heart yet a Martha in the world.

Let us pray for the estimated up to 2 million visitors and pilgrims to Rio this week. Let us commend to our prayers Pope Francis that through his ministry as Shepherd will be able to lead innumerable souls to the beauty of the spiritual life and the demands of the active life.

Proof of the Trinity is in the mythology

A proof for God that I have mulled over in my head for a few years now is the reality of ancient mythologies and the polytheism that wedded together the people of primitive times.

Consider this...

From the very beginning of human history, for as far back and as detailed as we can get, people have been sensing 'gods' - that there is something more than what meets the human eye. With no prompting from established religions, from no cultural norms, from no real divine inspiration, people were sensing that that there must be gods at work here, and created their magnificent mythologies that still enthrall us to this day.

Mythology, magic, wizardry, spirits, pantheism, energies...they all point to the most basic human reality that we were made to be attuned to, interact with and connected to things higher and greater than ourselves. The ancients manifested that reality through their myths and practices, we, as Christians, have come to know this as The Trinity.

I believe that we are truly impoverished in our scientific, technological, post-modern industrialized world because there are so much subtle muting and pronounced distractions that hinder us from being as richly insightful as our prehistoric and ancient brothers and sisters.

Whenever we turn to the technology or science or industry or popularized culture to find meaning and answers, then we are truly worse off than the cavemen.

We cant say that what they believed was just as good as the Trinity, but we can say that they, in their limited resources and the void of Sacred Scripture and Divine Revelation, did a pretty good job at probing at the Truth.

I know this isn't one of the great proofs for the existence of God you may find in Anselm or Aquinas, but for a guy who appreciates and loves the beauty of the story and the pursuit for Truth, this is proof enough for me. Everything else is grace!

Let this Trinity Sunday prompt us to consider how we can make God as central and natural in our lives as the early polytheists and pagans wonderfully did. As they found fullness and completion in their mythologies and gods, let us do the same with our God, the Holy Trinity.

Pre March for Life thoughts

            In the recent film Lincoln, a unique perspective is revealed about the overthrowing of slavery and the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation: coercion. In my experience, history has painted a noble image and perhaps idealistic portrayal of how it all went down. What we see in the film (SPOILER) is that Lincoln hires a group of men to, for a lack of better terms, buy votes. There were sharp divisions among the men of congress and a simple vote was just simply not going to secure the emancipation of slaves, even though it was objectively a moral evil. But, with securing…buying and bribing enough votes, he was able to pass the legislation.

            Admittedly, it was a little deflating for I find Lincoln a fascinating character of history and someone to be admired. I understand that congress is the cest pool of politics and politics beats to its own drum and is less concerned with moral objectives and any real eternal ramification as it is with votes and power. Lincoln had to use the game of politics to gain a political achievement.

            The March for Life…

            This will be my eighth or ninth march, and I am honestly blown away by the sheer number of people that come and take over the city. There is an incredible Catholic presence that just overwhelms the crowd. I have no way of knowing, but I would bet that the majority marching are Catholics. Because of that Catholic flavor of the the march, prayer has become ubiquitous alongside the cold and hours of standing and marching.

            Prayer. That is the key to unlocking the mystery and the dilemma we call Abortion. What I have come to see and interiorize is that a conversion of a people and a nation is not the work of a vote in congress or a canned philosophical argument. Prayer is what is going to ‘buy votes’ and going to emancipate millions of children from horrid ends within the womb.

            The march, in and of itself, is a good thing and necessary, for it binds hundreds of thousands of human beings experiencing and living life in the protest of a maltreatment of the most vulnerable of us. It is a powerful sign of affirmation that there are many many people who do oppose abortion and would like it erased from the courts of law as a right and freedom. The march reminds us that we need to be in solidarity with each other, centered on what is true and the best prescription for our society.

            What the march is not, is the solution.

            Abe Lincoln, deciding that enough was enough with the practice of slavery, was simply unable to enact it with just the desire. He had to capture the victory by using another means and by playing the game. Now, I believe how he achieved it was not the most moral of means, but that’s for another discussion. What I point out is that, despite how obvious the evil is, it is not enough to only voice it and reason it. Often times, something higher and more persuasive needs employed.

            President Lincoln used the allurement of high-ranking positions and authority within the government to get his votes. We use prayer!

            I am convinced that the only way to overcome any evil is through prayer. I am not minimizing the power of public demonstrations, philosophical debates or whatever – they all have their use and value. But to have a nation have a total takeover of the heart and to come to the point where we say “No more” because of a genuine love for all life - only God can craft that. The march is then a giant conduit of prayer. It is where we pray for the tens of millions of babies who have perished far too soon and who now rest in the gentle arms of our Blessed Mother. We pray for the conversion of our courts, legislators and laws so that the divine law may be beautifully reflected and upheld within our nation. We pray for all mothers who find themselves pregnant, that they may find the tremendous support they need and the love and strength to bring their child to term. We pray for all fathers of those babies, that they may be true men who support and love their children and the mother of their children. We pray for all hearts and minds hardened or confused with the understanding and acceptance of the sacredness of all life, so that they may have hearts and minds set ablaze with the knowledge and love of God.

            We can’t discredit the power of marching for life and the presence of hundreds of thousands prayerfully making their voice heard and known. But, ultimately, without God, we can never win. Without God, it just becomes a lost pursuit, for power and votes will be the only player on the field. But with prayer and with God, anything is possible.

            In God’s time, if it is His will, we will have this overturned. In God’s time, we will live in a nation where love for life may not be perfectly reflected, but we will all have the opportunity to have a chance to experience the life He has given us.

            Mary, Mother of the unborn, Pray for us!