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!

Palm Sunday: We have entered Jerusalem!

We have finally entered Jerusalem! We have spent this Lent in the desert, the wilderness, thirsting and pining for God. We have spent this Lent alone with our God.

Now we have joyfully entered Jerusalem waving palm branches in praise and happiness at the entrance of our God, Our King!

This week is Hoy Week. The holiest weeks of the year and nothing remotely compares to it's majesty.

This is the week where we enter Jerusalem waving palm branches in praise of Jesus, but it is also the same week where we will hit his body with reeds and whip him, shredding his flesh.

This is the week where we cry "Hosanna to the Son of David" "This is our King!"But, it is also the week where we will sentence our king to death for being our king! We will mockingly nail "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum" Jesus Christ, King of the Jews, to his cross.

This is the week where we lay down our clothes on the donkey and along the path of His entrance into Jerusalem, but also will strip Him naked in humiliation.

This is the week where we acclaim "Glory, Laud and Honor", but also the week where we shout and abuse HIm to the point of shame and leave Him with little dignity.

We have entered Jerusalem. We are holding palm branches in praise of our king, but we will by the end of the week be holding nails to affix Him to a tree.

We are not just remembering and recalling theses events, they are real and timeless. This is the holiest week of the year and a week that knows no boundaries of time or space. We are present with our Lord, our King, through it all. This week we walk with Him triumphantly into Jerusalem, but also walk with Him carrying His cross to the place of death.

May we fully enter into the liturgy, the prayer, the scripture and the intimacy of this week. May we bring our whole selves to this journey with Christ and come to know the events of this week as real and meaningful to our lives.

7th Sunday Ordinary Time: Your sins are forgiven

Humanity, in  the past two decades or so, has acquired an immunity and desensitization to much of the violence, gore, sex, horror and whatnot that gets presented to us in media.

Think about all the music, movies, TV, games and everything else that literally puts us in the midst of so much horrible things and scenes. We have become a people who don’t look away, gasp, get repulsed or sick at seeing these images.

Don’t get me wrong; I am a media junkie. I love so many genres of music, movies and television and many that presents much of this stuff. I love a good movie of war, violence, horror, etc. Who doesn’t?

My point is not to demonize anything media related. I only mean to point out and make us aware of the reality that we have in so many ways become immune and desensitized to nearly everything put forth in our favorite media. It is something interesting to think about and realize. I think that part of taking ownership of ourselves is knowing ourselves and recognizing the blind spots in our lives, and I think this is one blind spot that all of us have.

There is another blind spot we need to acknowledge that predates R rated films by millennia, that is the magnitude of the effects of sin in our lives.

Two episodes of the mercy towards the sinfulness of humanity are shown to us.

Isaiah shows us of God essentially telling the people “I know your sins. I know how weak and vulnerable you are. But you know what, I love you. I love you and I forgive you. Let’s move on”. In the Gospel, Christ is presented with a man lowered through the roof of his house! What is telling about this encounter is that instead of healing his paralysis, Christ forgives him of his sin.

The Gospel gives us no indication of disappointment on the man’s part, but I think many of us feel it inside when we really think about it. If we came to Christ and wanted some physical ailment healed and, instead, He forgave us of our sins, would we be disappointed?

Sin has stripped something out of the core of our souls. It has left an emptiness and yearning inside of us the we have become all too often immune to in it affects. Because there is a hollowness inside of us, we naturally try to fill it up and it often gets filled with sin. Because that hole appears and feels filled, we don’t realize it is even there or the hazards of it. So we go days, weeks, months or years without really thinking about sin. We live in the midst and stench of that sin and we don’t even recognize it. We don’t feel sorrowful , shameful, embarrassed, or guilty. We essentially numb ourselves to sins effects because we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we aren’t hurting ourselves or others and we end up justifying our actions.

We are desensitized to sin!

But God does see this and He desires nothing more than to fill that hole with His love, mercy and the intimacy of a relationship with Him. This healing is essential to our salvation and our coming to know and experience God and the beauty of life.

When Christ says, “Your sins are forgiven”, He is performing a greater miracle than the physical healing of the man’s paralysis by saying “Rise, pick up your mat and walk”.

When a priest utters, “I absolve you of your sins” in the sacrament of Confession, he too is performing that awesome and essential miracle: the forgiveness of sins.

This is our last Sunday of Ordinary Time for a couple months. We enter the season of Lent this Wednesday when we will dive deep into the reality of sin and death before we immerse ourselves in the mystery of life and resurrection at Easter.

We need to not only acknowledge blind spots in our lives like our immunity to violence in film and TV, but also the effects of sin in our lives. We need to start yearning for those words of forgiveness, mercy, intimacy and love.

We need to start recognizing our need for those words of Christ “Child, your sins are forgiven”.