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[Howdy, Church fans! Today, Deacon Mick took us on a very good meditation on some various aspects of discipleship as presented in the Sunday readings. As always, you can see the video of the Mass by clicking here.

Our readings today are about calls to discipleship. 

They focus on the dynamics,

the dignity and the drama

of living and being a follower of Christ.

The first reading

from the Old Testament Book of Samuel

describes God calling young Samuel

in the middle of the night. 

In the Gospel,

Jesus calls Andrew

and it’s Andrew who brings Peter to Jesus

for the first time. 

Here we see something the dynamics of discipleship

that still continues today.

Some people

are called directly by God like Samuel. 

They can say,

“Here I am Lord, I have heard you calling in the night.” 

Most of us, however,

have been brought to the Lord

by people like Andrew in today’s Gospel reading. 

We were baptized as infants

and brought to the church by others. 

We grew up in the Church

and were taught truths of the faith by others. 

We were encouraged

to follow Christ in everything we do by others. 

The Lord called us through others

just as surely as he called Samuel in the middle the night. 

There was an ‘Andrew’ in our life that

the Lord used to reach us, to teach us and to guide us. 

That’s something of the dynamics of discipleship,

how people receive the call. 

Some receive it directly in the middle of the night;

most receive it through others.

Then —— there is the dignity of discipleship.

What prompted Jesus to call Andrew & Peter?

What did Jesus see in Peter and in Andrew? 

Of course, Jesus saw them as they were but

I believe — he also saw what they could become. 

When we look at people,

we often see them only for what they are right now. 

Jesus saw more. 

He saw their potential.

Show a entrepreneur an empty city corner

and he sees a future store. 

Show a sculptor a stone

and he visualizes the image it can be. 

That’s how the Lord looked at people. 

The Lord does the same today. 

He looks at each of us

and through the Church ——

he shows us what we can become. 

That’s the dignity of our discipleship.

Finally there is the drama of discipleship

in how we give witness to the teachings of Christ.

St. Paul is writing about this in today’s second reading. 

Unfortunately, we live, as did the Corinthians,

in a sex-saturated society,

a society that trivializes the sacrament of marriage

a culture —— uncaring for the lives the unborn and the elderly. 

Today, I want join with St. Paul

to focus on the dignity of the body,

of how sexuality gets trivialized.

Now, some say that the Catholic Church is preoccupied with sex. 

In fact, it’s our society that is preoccupied with sex. 

Sex is a subject of humor, discussion, gossip,

entertainment, novels, movies, news,

all the media and advertisements. 

A person can’t watch television

for a brief period of time

without encountering sexual innuendo in some form.

And let’s not even begin the discussion

about the excess of pornography on the internet.

The proliferation of “secular experts”

and books about so-called “sexual liberation”

have all left society in shambles

and families broken apart. 

This liberation has taken down politicians,

religious leaders, and the average man and woman. 

This liberation has made multiple marriages & divorces acceptable

and living together before marriage

the common reality in this sex addicted world.

My brothers and sisters,

St. Paul is teaching us about

sexual responsibility and sexual integrity. 

Sex is not a demon. 

It’s part of human life,

but only a part. 

There are other,

more important dimensions to what a person is

and the most important is our baptism in faith,

our vocation to our life as Christians,

and our call to discipleship. 

Every part of our life

needs to be integrated in our vocation as a Catholic Christians. 

Our commitment has to be complete and total.

Our Catholic faith, belief and teachings

are not a Catholic cafeteria or buffet line

where we can pick and choose what we like

because a secular society says it’s OK!

If Jesus is not Lord of every part of our life,

we can end up as a spiritual Jekyll and Hyde. 

We pray one way and live another.

Our witness to the world today

must be that the seal of love,

the expression of love

belongs to those who have made a public

lifelong commitment to each other

that we call marriage. 

Outside of marriage,

the sexual expression of love is irresponsible and wrong. 

That’s the immorality to which St. Paul refers

and it’s as common today as in Corinth. 

My brothers and sisters,

the key to happiness – to maturity

comes not from sexual experience alone

but from the commitment, the fidelity,

the loyalty, and the family life

it was designed by God to imply. 

Not only has sex without marriage not brought happiness,

it has led to the use, abuse and distortion of people’s lives. 

And history has shown us that

a degeneration of morality

has lead to the downfall of almost every major empire or civilization.

In this kind of world,

we disciples of Christ

must bring a message of hope

and respect for sexuality. 

We must believe and profess that

our bodies are more than biological units. 

They are temples of the HolySpirit.  

Here, at Mass,

the Church calls us to the truth that

we don’t have to settle for the lowest

but can aspire to the highest.

Every Sunday,

the Lord calls us to live in the image of God

we were created to be. 

We can be peacemakers,

we can respect the commitment of marriage

(our own and that of others),

we can honor the sanctity of human life and love,

we can learn to reconcile, to forgive,

to build a civilization based on the Gospel. 

At ever Mass,

the Lord looks at us, as he did Peter and Andrew. 

He sees us as we are

and each Sunday,

he shows us once more what we can become. 

The dignity and drama of our discipleship

is not to settle for what we are

but to aspire

to what each of us can become in Christ.

[Deacon Mick is at it again. This is his homily from the Feast of the Holy Family. As always, you can catch the livestream at www.facebook.com/stpatsak/]

This weekend we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family.

There was a 98 year old Grandfather from Ireland who was dying. The family gathered around his bed trying to make his last journey comfortable. They gave him some warm milk to drink but he refused. Then one of the his sons, remembering a bottle of Irish whiskey received as a gift the previous Christmas, took the glass back to the kitchen, he poured a generous amount of the whiskey into the warm milk. Returning to his Grandfathers’s bed, he held the glass to his grandfathers lips. Grandfather drank a little, then a little more and before they knew it, he had drunk the whole glass down to the last drop. “Grandfather,” the family asked with earnest, “please give us some wisdom before you die.”

Grandfather raised himself up in bed and with a smiling but pious look on his face said, “Whatever you do, don’t sell that cow!

Well as I said, today we celebrate Holy Family Sunday

and it’s an opportunity for us

to reflect on family life, our family’s life. 

On December 8th, the Holy Father declared this year

dedicated to St. Joseph — who is the patron of families,

Fathers, expectant mothers and the Universal Church.

You see, family life

is something we had in common with Jesus,

something Jesus shared with us,

and, like Jesus,

we are all profoundly influenced by our families.

We are most deeply shaped, mentally, emotionally,

and spiritually by the people in our families

and by family events

such as births, deaths, marriages and illness. 

The family is the most important community

to which we will ever belong.

Our readings today

emphasize three points about the family,

first – the family as a bridge,

second – as a factory

and third – as a living cell.

SO!  Let’s explore those points——

The first reading from the Old Testament Book of Sirach

speaks about human life

as connected across generations. 

We have responsibilities and relationships

with the generations before us as well as those after us.

In our modern world,

we hear a great deal about

our responsibility to the future generations

but what about our responsibility to those

who have gone before us:

to respect and care for our parents

as they become older, weaker, more easily distracted. 

Sirach writes,

“My son, take care of your father (and I will add “and mother”)

when he is old; grieve him not as long as he lives. 

Even if his mind fail,

be considerate of him;

revile him not all the days of his life;

kindness to a father will not be forgotten…” 

While we think about our responsibilities to the next generation,

we need to remember the generation that preceded us. 

We are to be instruments

of Christ’s care and love to them as well. 

The family is a community in which

one generation cares for another.

That’s the wisdom of Sirach for us on this Holy Family Sunday —

the family is a bridge that

connects generation to generation to generation.

Second – The family is also a spiritual community,

a community of faith. 

St. Paul writes to the Colossians in today’s second reading

about the virtues that hold a church or family together:

patience, forgiveness, and joint prayer.

It would be nice to say that

with our Baptism,

the whole of Christian life sort of unfolds automatically. 

But it doesn’t happen that way. 

None of us is on a spiritual auto pilot.

We need to learn what it means to be a Christian. 

We need to learn how to pray,

how to be patient,

how to reconcile,

how to be bridge-builders. 

The family is where those lessons about life are started. 

The family is the factory of love.

Now, in my lifetime

I’ve worked in factories

and factories are not neat and clean places. 

and families are a little like that as well.

They are not always neat and clean places because

growing-up and growing in the Lord

are not parts of a neat and tidy process.

The family is where

we start to learn the virtues of patience,

responsibility, cooperation,

self-discipline, self-control

and dealing with authority. 

The family,

that first Christian community to which we belong,

is really the beta test site,

the testing-ground for how deep our discipleship really is.

It’s a real factory of faith where

the rough edges get smoothed,

where shape and structure come into our lives,

where we start to learn what it means to follow Christ

and just how far ———- we may have yet to go. 

The family is a community where

we can learn to grow in Jesus Christ. 

That’s the wisdom of St. Paul on this Holy Family Sunday,

the family as a factory of faith.

Lastly, in the Gospel,

we have Mary and Joseph

bringing Jesus to the Temple for Passover. 

By rituals such as this,

they are joining their family to the their larger family of Judaism.

When people come to Church as a family,

they are joining their family

to the larger family life of the Catholic Church. 

Here, in Church,

we come to see the Church’s mission as our mission,

to see the Church’s concerns as our concerns. 

Each family is a living cell of the huge Body of Christ. 

That’s part of the wisdom of this Gospel scene for us of the

Holy Family coming to the Temple together. 

The family that prays together grows, unites and stays together.

The family is the living cell of the larger Church.

My brothers & sisters — Today, we lift all our families

including our Church family

to the Lord in prayer

to ask for healing, grace, and strength because

family life is not easy today in this world in which we live.

During this year dedicated to St. Joseph – Patron of Families

and especially on this Holy Family Sunday ——

we have a chance not simply to reflect on family life in general,

but to make a decision

on how we can strengthen our own family’s life in the coming year,

on how to make it a stronger bridge that connects generations,

on how to make it a more effective factory of faith,

and on how to make it a vital, living cell of the Body of Christ.

I leave you with one simple suggestion,

in this year dedicated to St. Joseph

there is a powerful opportunity to gain a plenary indulgence.

Take advantage of this great gift    

AND do it —— as a family.

Merry Christmas…Day 3! 

     One of the great things about being Catholic is that for us, Christmas is not just a day, but a whole season. This year Christmas lasts until the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord on January 10th.  That’s actually 17 days of Christmas.  So don’t take that tree down yet!

     This week, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. A central focus of the feast is the family as the first expression of the Church. Indeed, it’s vitally important for us to remember that Church exists first at home. If it does not, then what we do here on the weekends will have limited impact.

So how do you raise a Catholic household?  How can each of us be a “holy family?”  Simple.  In the Church we sanctify (set aside for God) three things: 1) People, 2) Places, and 3) Time.  So start with the basics:

1. Sanctify the members of the family. In the Catholic Book of Household Blessings and Prayers there are lots and lots of blessings that parents can impart at certain times of the year. I particularly like the blessing of children as they leave for school each day.  There are also blessings for birthdays, anniversaries, graduation, and just about anything else you can think of. 

2.  Set aside a special place in the house that is dedicated to family prayer. You have a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place to watch TV.  Where in the house will you make a place to pray? As a child, I remember kneeling around our parents’ bed to pray the Rosary. Make sure there is a crucifix prominently displayed in the main part of the house. Does every bedroom have a crucifix above the bed or the doorway.  Have a depiction of the Last Supper in your dining room.

3. Make sacred family time.  Make the Church calendar, your family’s calendar. The parish calendars that we hand out can help in this regard. Celebrate all the liturgical seasons at home. Decorate with the liturgical colors.  Advent calendars and Advent wreathes are great for preparing for Christmas. Leave the Nativity Scene and other Christmas decorations up until the Baptism of the Lord (some will even do so until Candlemas on February 2nd.) Set aside a certain time each day for simple family prayer. 

4. Learn your faith and have resources on hand for quick reference.  Here are five essential Catholic books in every household: 1) New American Study Bible (Revised Edition), 2) Catechism of the Catholic Church 3) Catholic Book of Household Blessings and Prayers. 4) Flannery’s Documents of Vatican II, Volume I. 4) Butler’s Lives of the Saints (Revised). 5) The Treasury of Catholic Wisdom by John Hardon, S.J.

  Raising a holy Catholic family is not rocket science, but it does take some planning and resolve. The traditions established in the home now will pay dividends for generations.          

          Did you ever play the Game of Why with a three-year-old? It’s a fascinating intellectual endeavor and one which you are not very likely to win. It is also a good reminder to us that we should never stop asking the question, “Why?”, especially then it comes that what really matters. Faith needs to seek understanding. Asking “Why?” helps us get there. 

       Let’s take the Incarnation for example. Last I checked Almighty God could do pretty much anything he wanted.  So why would he become human? That would be like you or me becoming canine to save all of Dogkind. (A totally pointless endeavor, incidentally, since all dogs go to heaven and are not in need of redemption.)

It boils down to the way relationships work and the demands of justice. At the Fall, we humans had seriously injured our relationship with God. So much so, that we were incapable of restoring it on our own. Human nature was marred by sin. Sin is the deliberate separation of oneself from God. God is the source of all life. Thus, separation from God, “sin,” results in death. Not all at once, mind you, but the end result is same. 

Now, since humanity did the sinning, humanity has to pay the price. And this is essentially what went from the Fall right up to the Incarnation. Humanity was subject to sin and death. 

But this was not God’s intention when he created humanity. God had much bigger plans for us. And while sin kept those plans from happening right away, nothing can defeat the will of God in the end. So, if humanity had to pay the price, God who can do anything he wants, would simply become human, pay the price for sin once and for all, and then humanity would be free once again to enter into full communion and eternal beatitude with God. As the saying goes, “Christ paid a debt he did not owe, because we owed a debt we could not pay.”

Of course, the first step in becoming human is to be conceived. In this, Christ is no different from the rest of us. But God never does violence to us; thus, the free cooperation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the special grace she received for her unique vocation as the Mother of God.  After conception, its nine months in the womb, and finally, if we are lucky, birth. 

It’s the birth of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, that we are celebrating today.

Perhaps one of the blessings the pandemic is the absence of much of the noise that comes with “the Holiday Season.” We are less distracted these days and can pay more attention to the true meaning of Christmas.

Come, let us adore him. 

[Deacon Mick hit another one out of the park this weekend. Here’s his homily on the Third Sunday of Advent. Enjoy.]

Welcome to this third Sunday of Advent in the Church’s liturgy

is called “Gaudete Sunday”

or the Sunday to rejoice because

it marks the halfway point of Advent.

The vestments get a little lighter – a little brighter –

and the rose candle on the Advent wreath is lit. 

This Gaudete Sunday celebration goes back to a time when

Advent was a period of deep penance and fasting.

It was a time for spiritual reparation and preparation for Christmas.

So the halfway mark was a relief,

Time to take a break, and a time to rejoice.

So, how do we feel this Sunday? 

Is the nearness of Christmas

a cause for some deep joy in our life or

haven’t we have the time to even think about it? 

Are we anxious about getting everything done in time? 

Getting the Christmas cards out?

Putting up all the decorations? 

Getting everyone just the perfect gift?

Personally, with doing all the Christmas stuff,

I’ve lost sight of what this time of Advent was for.

Today, in our society, in our culture,

Advent is spent sending cards, buying presents,

attending pre-holiday parties even if by Zoom

and then, Christmas Day happens

and suddenly,

the day after Christmas, it’s all over. 

The Christmas carols stop,

the gifts beneath the Christmas tree disappear,

and everything is now geared toward the New Year.

Most probably —— things are already set in motion for this year, but

maybe we should give some thought

to Advent and Christmas of next year,

You know —— to let Advent be Advent

and then let the Christmas season really be a season.

The Christmas season is 12 days in duration

from Christmas Day to the Epiphany

We sing about the 12 days of Christmas 

“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…….”

SO ——— Do all the Christmas cards have to arrive by December 25th? 

Why not throughout the entire Christmas season? 

Do all the gifts have to be given on December 25th? 

Why not throughout the entire Christmas season? 

Do all the Christmas gatherings and celebrations

have to happen by December 25th? 

Why not throughout the entire Christmas season?

So let’s think about it —

Does our personal Advent and Christmas celebration

leave us better off spiritually? 

Is our faith deeper? 

Are the bonds friendship and community with the Church stronger? 

Do we come out of these seasons renewed

or relieved that it’s all over for another year?

The Advent season

doesn’t have to be an exhausting round of frantic activity,

a build up to something that’s gone in one day. 

It can be a glorious time of revival and renewal if

we let Advent be Advent.

On this Gaudete Sunday, or Sunday to rejoice,

there are some deep truths that

might trigger a deep joy in us

despite this frantic Advent season.

The first truth is that

Christmas can be a time when we realize that

the most important things in our life are spiritual ones —

things like

the assurance of God’s love

and his ready forgiveness that

comes to us in Jesus Christ

and the mass is the assurance of that love and forgiveness. 

And that there are friendships, loyal associates,

a faithful spouse, loving children,

caring people we know who are the

real assets, the real joys in a person’s life.

There is a second truth that

should lead to a deep joy at this time of year. 

The power of Christmas centers in the truth that

not only has redemption occurred but that

it has continuing power in our life

as Christ calls us to begin again,

to awaken to his grace,

to open our eyes and ears to his presence.  (pause)

What has been in our life;

does not have to be in our future. 

A new life,

a new way of living is available to us in Jesus Christ.

The power of his cross and Resurrection is never exhausted;

it never runs out of steam.  

And it’s always summoning us to new life. 

As Isaiah says in today’s first reading,

“the Lord comes to set us free,”

to bring liberty and release from everything that

binds us emotionally, spiritually, personally.

A third truth, a third reason to rejoice

is the number of people in RCIA programs

who are preparing to join the Church at Easter. 

It shows us that

we are not part of an historical preservation society

but of a community of faith that

is growing each day, each week, each year.

There are many reasons to rejoice this Sunday

but they can get lost

in the frantic preparations for Christmas. 

John the Baptist say’s in today’s Gospel reading that

the Messiah is one among us

who is not recognized. 

It can be a real tragedy,

with all the colored lights around us,

to miss the true light. 

Advent is the time of year when

we can learn once more to see,

to appreciate, to recognize

the ways the Lord is present among us

even in this time of Covid-19.

If we use the Advent season

to learn once more

to see the things of God among us, then

the Christmas season

will be a time to celebrate Christ’s grand presence

and glorious power at work among us. 

I will be a time to celebrate family:

a time to celebrate friendships;

a time to celebrate the joy of God’s presence in our life.

My brothers and sisters,

take the time to let Advent be Advent

and then Christmas will truly be Christmas ——

not only for a day but for a season of rebirth

and renewal in Christ.