Tag: #Fr. Leo

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How’s Your Wedding Garment?

     I’m fascinated by science and space exploration.

   I have taken great interest that in preparation for the colonization of the Moon and the eventual mission to Mars. Did you know that NASA and Space X had recently put several cows into orbit.  It was the herd shot round the world. 

     Don’t laugh, the steaks have never been higher! 

They burned up on reentry.  So it was not well done; it fact it was an udder disaster. 

   I’m going to get some searing comments about that one. 

Anyhoo, I like a good steak. Even more, I enjoy a good meal around a fancy table with friends and everybody having a good time.  I’m very blessed to have a nice set of China donated by a woman named Helen and an equally nice set of silver to go with it.   

   I encourage you to break out the good China and crystal at least once a week, maybe for Sunday dinner and cook up an outrageously elaborate meal and share it with those in your bubble.

   There are lot of reasons for doing this. 

   1.  It’s fun.

   2.  It brings elegance and class into an increasingly drab world.

   3.  It’s a good way to give thanks to God for his generosity.

     This aspect of gratitude is a lot of what Our Lord is getting at in the Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast. Like all parables, this one lends itself to multiple levels of interpretation. For our purposes here, I’m going to concentrate on the image of the wedding garment.

     You can imagine how elaborate a royal wedding feast could be. That is the image that Jesus wants in people’s minds when he is talking about the heavenly banquet. The King sends out the invitation. The call to discipleship is universal. 

It’s not about being worthy, it’s about being called. Remember, the Church is a hospital for sinners, not a rest home for saints.

     The troubling part of the parable is the casting out of the fellow without the wedding garment. It’s very interesting.  Jesus knew the human condition better than just about anybody.  And he knew his disciples were not immune from the same tendency. In a word…don’t get smug!  Don’t get complacent just because you’ve been invited to the feast.

   So, what’s the deal with the wedding garment? Apparently in those days, especially at royal functions, as a courtesy to elevate the dignity of the guests and to make sure the decorum of the gathering was maintained, the host would give each guest a garment to be worn. Kind of like the swag bags you get when you sign up for a golf tournament or other festive event that has all kinds of things like jackets, ball caps and whatnot. The host wanted you to look good for the occasion.

   This would have been the case at the wedding feast. The implication here is that this particular fellow was given the wedding garment when he arrived, but had removed it at some point, thus insulting the king. 

   The implications for us are profound. In a very real sense we have each been given a wedding garment. It is the white garment placed on us at our baptism. Very much like the one the servers and I wear at Mass.  We are wearing them, of course, on your behalf.  But if you wanted to, I suppose you could wear one every time you come church. Wouldn’t that be something to see? 

   But like this fellow who removed his wedding garment, when we sin or when we even fail to identify ourselves as disciples of Jesus by our actions or inactions, in effect we remove the baptismal garment given to us by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords when he invited us to this Eucharistic feast. 

   Think about your baptismal garment. What does it look like now?  Is it worn or stained?  Is it moth-eaten or musty for lack of use?  Does it need a good mending or washing in the sacrament of reconciliation to make it presentable at feast?  The point is that in the abundance of God’s love and mercy, we have each been invited to the feast.

   But we must ask ourselves. Have we been good stewards of this great gift of faith? Have we cherished our baptism and worn our baptismal garment in gratitude and steadfast faith? If so, then as Paul says, we can do all things in him who strengthens us. If not, then maybe it’s time to get into the confessional.

   Let me close by reminding us all of the words that were said to us at our baptism when we were clothed in white garment symbolizing that our sins are always washed clean in the blood of the Lamb.

My dear friends in Christ,

you have become a new creation,

and have clothed yourself in Christ.

See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity.

With your family and friends to help you by word and example,

bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.

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Our Little Part of the Vineyard

Hey, Church Fans! Boy are we having fun in the parish this week. Below is the text for this weekend. As always you can get video of the homily in a day or two at our YouTube channel by clicking here. Just fast forward to the homily.

       Have you ever had this happen to you? I was walking through the break room and stepped on a grape. What happened? It let out a little wine. On a more practical note, I was telling my sister about how you could take left over wine and put it in the ice cube trays to use later to chill your white wine. She looked at me kind of puzzled and said, “What the heck is ‘left over wine?’”

Wine has been around for millennia. Vineyards are special places. They always have been. But it takes a lot of work and a lot of patience to make. Did you know it takes three years for a newly planted vine to produce its first grape? In the meantime, you had to keep the birds and other varmints from eating the fruit. Then there is the harvest, then the crush.  Once you bottle it, it has to ferment for weeks and then age from 6 months to five years depending on what kind of wine you are making.    Vineyards and other types of agricultural images would have been something very familiar to the people of Jesus’ day.

We get two different parables about vineyards this week, one from Isaiah and one from Our Lord. The vineyard is the People of God, the stewards are those who were given care of it. The message is a rather harsh one. Those to whom God entrusted his vineyard were not doing their job.

       It’s a rather sobering lesson and no small challenge for us who have been entrusted with this little part of the vineyard of South Anchorage we call St. Elizabeth Parish, especially when we remember that there will be an accounting of our stewardship at the end of this life.

       It is at once an honor and a challenge.  On the other hand, it’s pretty humbling. In the Catholic understanding of parish life, you and I, the St. Elizabeth Parish Family, are given the care of souls of every man, woman and child who live in South Anchorage, all the way down to Whittier.

       God has given us this part of the vineyard. Our job as a parish is to become so much a part of the scene around here that they cannot imagine life without us. The call from the Lord is challenging. The grace to carry it out is eternal.

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That’s Not Fair! 

Hello, Church fans! Okay, okay, I have been very bad about posting consistently. But hey, the life of a priest is great and rewarding…and sometimes it gets a bit busy around here on Sundays during the time I set aside to do this. If you ever want to see a vid of the homily, simply go to our parish YouTube page by clicking here. The whole Mass is posted almost immediately, the homily vid comes out on Monday when our resident technomancer comes in the office. Anyhoo, thanks for stopping by. Enjoy.

     I’m at that stage in life where my nieces and nephews now have nieces and nephews, as well as their own kids. As you may experience when you visit our amazing school, (and you should, even if you don’t have kids in it!), children go through certain phases of development regarding fairness. By fifteen to nineteen months children will notice unequal sharing.  By age three they understand the rules of fairness and will be very vocal in protesting when such norms are broken…yet they still hoard their toys.  From age four to seven, they will strongly object when they get less than someone else.  This is when you will hear the shouted phrase: “THAT’S NOT FAIR!”  Ironically, at this stage they still delight when they get more than another. However, by eight years old, they understand and concepts of fairness and sharing and put them into practice.  Finally, by age 10, they will begin to practice true altruism and charity.  While this happens incidentally in the rest of the world, such behavior is taught and reinforced daily in our parish school where we “provide an excellent Catholic education in a Christ-like environment.” 

     In thinking of such things, it is important to make an important distinction between ‘justice’ and ‘mercy.’  Justice in the classic sense is to “give to each as he or she deserves.” Justice involves rights and responsibilities. For example, the life and dignity of the human person is something owed to everyone in justice. The founding fathers of our country enshrined such dignity when they states, “We hold such to truths be self evident…that all are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…”  Justice also involves the reparation of and restoration of rights when they have been violated. This is why we have criminal and civil justice systems.

     Mercy is something special. Mercy acknowledges the demands of justice, but goes beyond them to achieve a greater good than justice could accomplish alone. There is no greater example of this than the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. The price for sin is death. This is the demand of justice, and it needed and continues to need to be paid. The mercy of God is shown in that it is not you or I who pay this price, but Christ who pays it for us. As the saying goes, “Jesus paid a debt he didn’t owe because we owe a debt we cannot pay.”

     I don’t know about you, but I know what my sins are.  I know what I deserve in justice. But in his love, God does not inflict that upon me. This is mercy.  I don’t get what I deserve. 

That’s not fair.  Thank God it’s not. 

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When You, I Feel, Because…

[Hello, Church fans! It’s been a busy last part of the summer. but it looks like I am back in the blog saddle again. Here is the text of this week’s missive.]

   It is one of the most uncomfortable situations there is.  Someone, maybe even a spouse, relative or close friend, does something that is very hurtful. The worst part is that they may not even realize it. What do you do? 

   One option is that you can sit there and stew in your resentment. The only problem is that resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Resentment turns into bitterness and bitterness turns into anger. Anger can turn into separation and separation can end relationships. So, option one is not a good one, unless you want to be bitter, angry and lonely for the rest of eternity.

   Another option is to get passive aggressive and get back at them by doing or not doing something to make their life a little more difficult. The problem here is that escalation makes for a conflicted situation which is just miserable. Passive aggression is never a good option…ever.

   A more perfect option is the one that Our Lord proposes in today’s gospel: If your brother sins against you go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother (Mt. 18:15).  This seems simple enough, but there are better ways to do this than others.

   Here is one way that works almost every time. Use the following formula: “When you…I feel…because…”  For example, “Honey, when you leave your dishes in the sink, I feel irritated because I need to use the sink and I can’t until I have I clean all of your mess out of the sink first.”

   The beauty of the “When you…I feel…because…” is that it focuses the attention on the behavior, not the person.  You love the person, it’s the behavior that is driving you nuts. 

   In my own experience, the “When you…I feel…because…” works at least 90% of the time. Most of the time, the other party is completely unaware that they have offended. More often than I care to admit, I have been on the receiving end of a “When you…I feel…because…” But in truth, I appreciate that the other party cares enough about me to let me know my offense. I shows me they value our relationship enough to work to resolve the conflict.

   Conflict is part of life. Whether it leads to deeper communion or greater separation depends entirely on how charitably we decide to deal with it.

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Look Who’s Coming to Dinner

   My parents did a lot of entertaining.  It seemed like at least once a week we would have one of my dad’s business colleagues or a hunting buddy and his wife.  It was fun! Only later in life did I realize that as often as not, Dad would not have informed Mom that he had invited them over until about 2:30 that afternoon. Yet somehow, she always managed to scramble and get everything ready. 

   There’s a bit of that dynamic going on in the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. The disciples are just trying to be practical when they ask him to dismiss the crowds so they can get something to eat. Instead, Jesus invites them all to dinner!

   Two takeaways from the encounter are the cooperation of the disciples to make the miracle happen and the scale of the miracle itself.

   Jesus never passes up an opportunity to reveal the nature of the Kingdom or of his Father. The first takeaway is that God wants us to be part of the miracle.  Jesus could have easily conjured up bread grass and fish from stones. Instead, he says, “You give them something to eat.” It does not matter to him that the disciples only had five loaves and two fish. What does matter is that they trust him enough to give him what they do have.  It’s the same for each of us. Our own resources are never going to be enough. That’s not what matters. Our job is not to work the miracle.  Our job is to bring the fish.

   The second takeaway is that our God is the God of Abundance. This is obvious from the fact that are leftovers.  Lots and lots of leftovers! Some biblical scholars surmise that it was enough to feed everyone again. The lesson here is clear. When it comes to the life of grace, God does not just give us a sufficiency, he gives us an abundance.

   These are couple good lessons for both of us.  Jesus could save the world without, but what fun would that be?  Rather, in his love, he invites us to offer what we have, no matter how little it might seem. Our job is to bring the fish give them to the Lord trusting that he can do far more with our offering than we could ever imagine. 

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The Most Holy Trinity – Problem to Be Solved or Mystery to be Lived.

   There is the story of how St. Augustine, perhaps one of the greatest minds in history and who essentially coined the term “Trinity”, was walking along the beach outside of Hippo one day contemplating this mystery.  Presently, he came across a young boy who, like all boys throughout history, had a little shovel and a pail. The boy had dug a hole in the sand. As St. Augustine watched, the boy would run to the ocean, fill up his bucket and dump it in the hole. After watching it for a bit, he would run back to the ocean and repeat the process. Eventually, Augustine said to him, “Little boy, what are you doing?”

   The boy looked up and replied, “It’s quite simple, I am putting the ocean in this little hole.”

   Shaking his head, the saint replied, “My son, the ocean is vast and wide. No one knows its boundary. You cannot hope to put that vastness into that little hole.”

   “Just so,” the boy replied, “you cannot hope to fit the mystery of the Trinity into your little brain.” And with that, he vanished from Augustine’s sight.

   While we cannot hope to understand the vastness of the mystery of God, in his kindness, God has revealed certain things that we can understand.

   If there is one thing that helps us, it is the understanding that this whole God thing is not primarily about knowing all the right answers but rather entering into the right relationships and appreciating them. Indeed, all our theology and catechesis is descriptive of those relationships. This is the difference between approaching the life of grace as a problem to be solved or a mystery to be lived. 

   Approaching life as a problem involves observation and analysis in the hopes of coming up with an answer to the meaning of life. This approach will always come up short because some things don’t lend themselves to analysis. 

   However, when we approach things as mystery to be lived, everything changes. When we talk about “mystery” in this sense of the word, I am referring to a reality that is larger than you of which you are a part and which is a part of you. Your family, such as it is, is the prime example. You don’t solve a family.  You are part of your family, and genetically, psychologically, spiritually your family is  apart of you.  So too with the Church. In a similar way, you are part of the Church and the Church is a part of you. So too with the mystery of the Trinity. By the graciousness of Almighty God, we are invited to share in the same loving relationship between the Father and the Son, also known as the Holy Spirit. Thus, through the indwelling of the Spirit, we are caught up and united with the very mystery of God, and God is united with each of us at the very level of our being.  This union of heart and soul is what we call “full communion.”  It is a great mystery to be lived, now and into eternity.

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The Lord, the Giver of Life

   Today we celebrate Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. Birthdays are fun. but births themselves are simply miraculous. Anyone who has been there can tell you that perhaps the most profound moment of any birth is when the baby takes its first breath. The experience is indescribable. Perhaps it is because at that moment, we realize that where there is breath, there is life. In the same moment we realize that we are not the source of that life; we are merely its beneficiaries. 

       There is a story making the rounds on the nternet about an elderly Italian gentleman who was hospitalized after he had contracted COVID-19. He recovered but had to spend a day on a ventilator. As he left the hospital, he received a bill for €500. The old man began to cry. The embarrassed attendant assured him that financial assistance was available if he could not pay. The old man said, “Oh, I don’t cry because of the money. I can afford it easily. I cry because I have been breathing God’s air for free for the last 93 years.  I have never thanked him once. It takes €500 to use a ventilator in a hospital for one day. Do you know how much I owe God?”

       There are many different things we could meditate on this Pentecost, but given the times in which we live I would like to spend a little time on the Holy Spirit as the breath that gives life to the Church. 

       It helps to remember how we understand the Holy Spirit as the very love between the Father and the Son; the relationship between the lover and the beloved. It is this relationship of co-eternal, mutual love that is the life breath of the Church by inviting all of us into that relationship. It is the love of God that breathes life into the Church and animates its members. 

       We have two wonderful images of this in today’s Scriptures. In the reading from Acts, we see the first manifestation of the Spirit as “noise, like a strong driving wind.”  I’ve mentioned before that in Hebrew, the word for ‘spirit’ is “ru’ach” (רוח). Literally it means wind, breath, or soul. Thus, at the birth of the Church at Pentecost, the noise like a strong driving wind makes sense. It is God breathing life into the Church.

       In a similar, in the passage from John’s gospel, we see the resurrected Christ breathing on the apostles and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” It is more personal, but the image is the same. It is the breath of Divine Love, the Holy Spirit, that animates or “ensouls” the life of the Church.

       It is through the Holy Spirit that we receive the gifts of Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Courage, Knowledge, Piety, Fear of the Lord.

       It is in our grateful acceptance of these gifts that we become aware of the charisms of the Holy Spirit given to certain individuals within the Church, including prophecy and healing, mercy, teaching, stewardship, perseverance, encouragement, hospitality, leadership, joy.       

Finally, it is in our exercise of these gifts that we each enjoy the fruits of the Holy Spirit: charity, generosity, joy, gentleness, faithfulness, patience, modesty, kindness, self-control, goodness, chastity, peace.

       St. Paul is right. “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” (1Cor 12:4-7)

Perhaps it is a good time to pause, take a deep breath, actually and metaphorically, and thank God for the gifts that we have been given.

       The gift of life,

       The gift of faith

       The gifts, charisms and fruits of the Holy Spirit

              that are given to each of us for the building up of the Church and the world. 

Let us pray.

       Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created; and You shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.   

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Good Shepherd Sunday – Hearing his Voice

Hey, Church Fans! We have the vid, but for some reason, it won’t embed. No worries, just click on the link.

https://www.youtube.com/live/9r-af7Qf5Fg

Hey, happy Good Shepherd Sunday! To get you started here are a few clean sheep jokes: 

Information technology is one of the biggest sheep industries.
There’s always a need for more RAM

What’s a sheep’s favorite car?

A Lamborghini

I had a young sheep jump out from behind tree and head butt me.  It was a lamb bush! 

There was quite the incident on a sheep ranch in the Rockies. All the young sheep were on the side of a steep hill. The one on top slipped and felling into one right below it. This started a chain reaction. Pretty soon all 200 of them came tumbling down the mountain…It was a lamb slide!

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There’s not a whole lot of sheep herding going on up here in Alaska.  So, Good Shepherd Sunday can be a bit perplexing for us.  Not so in first century Nazareth.  Folks around there would have been very familiar with it. It’s no surprise then, that Jesus would use the image of himself as the Good Shepherd.

   One thing that might be lost on us, but would have been obvious to his listeners was the image of the sheepfold and the sheep hearing his voice.  Not so obvious to us, so it bears some explanation. 

   One of the most critical moments for a shepherd is the lambing season. I am told that as soon as a lamb is born, the shepherd will take it into his arms and begin to speak and even sing to it. He does this to take advantage of a biological process called imprinting.  He holds the lamb close to him so that it can smell him. He sings to it so that it can hear his voice.  From that moment on, that sheep will recognize his smell and his voice as the one that will protect it and keep it safe. From then on, whenever he calls that sheep, it will ignore all others and come to him.

   In those days, and in many places even today, shepherds will keep their individual flocks in a common corral known as a sheepfold.  At the beginning of the day, each shepherd will go to the gate and call to his sheep. His own sheep will hear his voice and come right out to him. These he leads to the green pastures. The others, not recognizing him simply ignore him.

   A similar thing happens to us spiritually at our baptism. From the moment of our spiritual birth we are imprinted, if you will, and sealed by the Holy Spirit so that we can recognize him from that moment onward.

Christ, the Good Shepherd is calling each of us to follow him so that we may “have life and have it abundantly.” For some of us, that means a call to the holy ministerial priesthood. But how does one hear that voice? From whence does it come?

The simple answer is that vocations to the holy priesthood do not grow on trees or in foreign countries. They come from right here within our parish family.

What are we looking for in a young man who may be called to the ministerial priesthood. Four things:

  1. He needs to be a healthy, mature, balanced human being. It takes a real man to be a real priest.
  2. He should have a capacity for prayer. He needs to be a man of the spirit.
  3. He needs to be of sufficient intelligence to handle academic requirements.
  4. He needs to have a heart for service.

St. Teresa of Avila said so beautifully, ” Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world…”

By the same token, yours if the voice with which Christ calls a young man to consider a vocation to the holy priesthood.

So if you see a young man in our parish who you think would make a great priest, pray for him, and then at some point take him off to the side and say to him, “You know, I see the qualities in you that would make a good priest. I want you to think about it and I’m going to be praying for you.”

I guarantee you, if you see it in him, he has been thinking about it. Yours could be the voice that helps him save a thousand souls.

   There are a lot of other voices out there vying for our attention, but there is only one that will lead us to salvation.  Pray that we may all hear his voice and follow him into eternity.

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The Secret Code of Emmaus…

Maybe I should get a bit more ‘click bait’ into my titles. For example – “Two Christians invite a stranger to dinner. You won’t believe what happened next! Anyhoo, here is the blog for this weekend. As always, video on Tuesday.

       Sometimes, we don’t pick up on the subtle cues and can miss what is going on right in front of us.  Here’s a good example:

     I did a lot of downhill skiing as a kid.  Every Saturday morning, Dad would load all of us eight kids in the in rig and we would head up to Arctic Valley. Mom would always stand on the porch and wave to us as we drove away for a day of fun on the slopes. I always thought it was sad that she never got to come along with us. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I finally figured out what was really going on. Dad was giving her a break by getting us all out of the house! Who’d have thought?

       I get the impression that a similar thing was going on with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. I’m not saying that they were not bright, just that they were preoccupied. So much so that they didn’t really pick up on what was really going on for some time.

       We can forgive them for this. Their entire world had just been rocked.  All their hopes and dreams had died on the Cross with Jesus. They just wanted to get away. Emmaus was about a two and a half hour walk from Jerusalem.  Can you imagine their conversation along the way?  Then this strange guy shows up and walks with them.  What’s up with that?!

       But as the drama unfolds, we begin to see that the encounter between Jesus and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is actually a thinly veiled description of Holy Mass. 

Think about it. What happens here at Mass?

       We gather.

       We share our stories.

       We break the bread.

       And we are sent.

In liturgy speak, these are called the       Gathering/Introductory Rites.

       The Liturgy of the Word

       The Liturgy of the Eucharist, and

       The Dismissal or Sending Forth.

Let’s take a look at each of these:

Step I:  We gather.  The Introductory Rites

       Those who have been to one of my slow Masses can readily answer the question: When does Mass begin?  The answer is simple: When the second person shows up! Why? Because Jesus said: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst.”

       The Second Vatican Council in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Par. 7) is very clear. “When the people gather” Christ is present. 

       Here, on the Road to Emmaus, the two disciples are gathered. Of course, Jesus would be there with them.

Step II:  We share our stories. The Liturgy of the Word.

       I can’t help but think that the conversation with Jesus on the road had to be one of the most intense Liturgies of the Word in the history of Salvation.

       Here you have the Incarnate Word of God, explaining the word of God in the Sacred Scriptures. 

       Yeah, our hearts would be burning too.

       And I hope yours is today.

Again, the Council is very clear. “In the proclamation of the Word” Jesus is present.

Step III: We break the bread – The Liturgy of the Eucharist

       Luke tells us, “He took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.”

       Does this sound slightly familiar?  It should. It is right out of the Third Eucharistic Prayer. (Actually, it is the source of these words in the Third Eucharistic Prayer.)

       The reference to the Eucharist at the table in Emmaus is unmistakable. This becomes even more evident when one learns that the early Church used the words “fractio panis” or the “breaking of the bread” as a codeword for the Eucharist.

       Again, the Council is unequivocal in their language, “(Christ) is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister… but especially under the Eucharistic species” of bread and wine.”

       As we know, the Eucharist is the source and summit of all what the Church is and does. Everything that we are and do leads to the Eucharist and everything that we are and do flows from the Eucharist.

       No wonder they recognized him “in the breaking of the bread.”

       Which makes me wonder…do we? 

       More importantly, what about others who wander in our church?   What is going on in their hearts and minds?

       Can they recognize him in our midst as we gather? In the way we treat each other?

       In the way we treat them?

       Are they welcomed? Do they feel like they may have a place here?

Are our hearts burning within us as the scriptures are proclaimed and explained?

       If not, then how can we expect their hearts to be burning within them?

       Finally, is he recognizable in the breaking of bread?

       And can they recognize him, the Risen Christ, as we do so? 

       I pray that it is so.

Step IV: We are sent – The Dismissal 

       At one time or another at Mass and in life, I think we can become like those two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Sometimes we can get so wrapped up with our own situation that we miss what’s really going on.

       I pray that we are a parish family whose hearts are so on fire with the love of God that those encounter us

       Whether within these walls

              Or in our schools or in our neighborhoods

              Or in our places work, or in the public square

                     or in our homes…

       I pray that they would recognize him

The two disciples show us that what we experience here cannot, must not be contained within these walls.

       The dismissal is one of the most essential parts of the Mass,

       That’s why it is so short:

       “The Lord be with you.

       And with your spirit.

              May almighty God bless you…NOW GO! 

Grab a donut and go into that part of the world where God needs you most right now!

       Proclaim the Good News of the resurrection of Christ and the forgiveness of sins.

       May your every word and action echo those of those two disciples, saying in ways small or profound,  

       ‘WE HAVE SEEN THE LORD!!!

       And how he was made known to you

              In the breaking of the bread.    

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From “Do Not Be Afraid” to “Peace be with You.”

   Howdy, Church Fans! Here is the text from this weekend. As always, the vid will be up in a couple days.

   Have you noticed how light is getting outside these days?  Just six weeks ago, we were waking up in darkness and coming home in darkness.  It’s quite a contrast. 

   There is a similar contrast in the post-resurrection gospels.  Did you pick up on it?  Before the resurrection, whether it is a huge catch of fish, while he’s walking on the water, or healing a young person, or whenever Jesus is manifesting some aspect of his divinity, the first words out of his mouth were always, “Do not be afraid.” 

   Now, after the resurrection, the first words out of his mouth are invariably:  “Peace be with you.”  What’s the difference?

   I think much of it has to do with how we understand the word “Peace.” It helps to remember that Jesus and the eleven were all good, pious first century Jews. In our own time, we might tend to think of peace as the absence of conflict or a nice feeling of interior contentment, or some such.  Those are nice as far as they go, but it the Hebrew notion of “shalom” is much more expansive. 

   Simply put, the “shalom”, the peace that we are talking about here is a state where everything is as God has intended it to be.  It’s a subtle but important difference.  

   With other notions of peace, the onus is all on us. How do we work for peace? What structures of institutional sin or policies can we put in place to ensure equality? What programs can we develop to raise awareness?  We act as if it all depends on us. How very Pelagian.

   How very different is the notion of shalom as Jesus and the apostles understood it. As we read in the scriptures, God prepared a people. In the fullness of time, the Eternal Word, the Father’s perfect self-expression took flesh of the Virgin Mary and entered fully into the reality of the human condition. By his suffering and death, he redeemed us. By his rising he has shown us that we too are to share in his glory – perfectly human, body and soul. Finally, things are as God has intended them to be. Because of this, fear simply out of context. 

   As people of the resurrection, we have a role in helping those who do not yet know Christ, or do not know him fully to come to a deeper understanding of these sacred mysteries. Our “Peace be with you,” is not some nice little comforting phrase.  It is a declaration that it is God who has acted and now all is as he intended it be.