Tag: #stpatsak

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Ask Fr. Leo – Who Gets a Catholic Funeral?

Dear Fr. Leo

My brother’s wife recently died. She was not Catholic, but she sent the kids to Catholic schools and made sure they had all their sacraments. She would even accompany the family to Mass every Sunday.  I’m not sure why, but she never joined the Church. In many ways, she was more Catholic than a lot of Catholics I know. Will she be able to have a funeral Mass in a Catholic church?  – G

Dear G,

I am so very sorry for your loss.  The question does come up from time to time.  Namely, can someone who is not Catholic have a funeral liturgy in a Catholic church? A lot depends on the situation, but it the answer is usually yes. 

There are many ways of being Catholic. Those in the OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, formerly the RCIA) are usually given a funeral Mass, even though they had not yet been baptized or made an act of full communion.  They are very much a part of the Church, even though they have not yet received full initiation. 

Similar to that, there are those I like to call, “Catholics by association.” Although not formally Catholic, they are very much a part of the life of the parish. By your description, it sounds like your sister-in-law was an active part of the parish community, coming to Mass, instructing the children, coming to parish events.  In such circumstances, it can be possible for her to have a Catholic funeral and be buried in a Catholic cemetery in the family plot. 

If it does not seem prudent or practical to have a full funeral Mass, the Funeral Liturgy Without a Mass is a very good option. I did one of these once for a parishioner of mine who had joined the Church, but whose family were all very devout Lutherans. They were not comfortable with a funeral Mass for a variety of good reasons.  So, the Funeral Liturgy Without a Mass made sense in that situation. These usually happen at the parish church but can also take place at a funeral home.

Sometimes, it does not make sense to have a funeral in the Church. For example, there was a parishioner whose family of origin was Muslim. Not only did they not like the fact he had become a Catholic, but they were very uncomfortable coming into the church building itself.  In that case, simple graveside service made sense.  Later, we had a memorial Mass for him with just his widow, their children, and a few close friends and parishioners.

In sum, there are times when a funeral Mass is allowed for someone who is not Catholic.  There also some circumstances where that does not make sense. In those cases, there are many pastorally sensitive options to bring comfort the grieving family, and to commend our departed brothers or sisters into the arms of their Lord.

Dear Fr. Leo:

What is this “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” that Jesus talks about in Matthew 12:31? – J

Dear J,

Good question. It seems simple enough, but it takes a little bit of thought to get to the heart of the matter. First, we must acknowledge the reality of sin. Next, we must contemplate the even more powerful reality of God’s love. When we understand that the Holy Spirit is this very love of God working powerfully in the world, then we can understand what Jesus means when he says that the only sin that cannot be forgiven is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Sin is an unfortunate, tragic, and a potentially deadly reality of the human condition. Even though the stain of original sin and all particular sins are washed away in baptism, we humans are still have a tendency to sin. We try our best, but sometimes we get selfish and fall into sin. The alternative is moral relativism which is simply hiding one’s head in the sand by denying the reality of the human condition.

The joy of the gospel lies in knowing that “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” (Rm 8:38).  The Catechism of the Catholic Church confirms this when it says: “There are no limits to the mercy of God…” (CCC, 1864.) The good news is that although none of us is without sin, neither are any of us beyond the love of God.

The Church understands that the Holy Spirit is the love shared between the Father and the Son. It is the power of this love that created the world and then redeemed it. There is no sin that is more powerful than this love. 

Nevertheless, we humans have a little thing called free will. If we have even the smallest iota of faith that God can forgive our sins, that can be enough. However, as the Catechism goes on to say, “but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss.” (CCC, 1864). 

Such a deliberate refusal to believe in the power of God’s love to forgive one’s sins constitutes a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. God condemns no one to hell. The sad reality is that everyone in hell has freely chosen to be there.

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Doing the Math

[Do you really have to hate your mother and father to follow Jesus?}

     This week marks something of a milestone in space exploration as NASA is continuing to ramp up for a return to the moon.

     I find this of great interest. One of my earliest childhood memories was crowding around the television in our basement watching the first lunar landing and seeing Neil Armstrong exit the landing craft and become the first human being to walk on the moon.

     Space and things astronomical have always fascinated me. So it was with great anticipation that I awaited the first images from the Hubble space telescope as it was launched into low earth orbit in 1990. With great precision, the engineers pointed this amazing contraption into the heavens. Then they hit the button and awaited the first images to be beamed back to earth…

     …The images were blurry.  The telescope would not focus properly.

     After no small amount of analysis, it was found that the problem was due to a simple error in math.  One engineering team had been designing using the metric system and another had been using the imperial system. Fortunately, the problem was corrected three years later by a crew from the Space Shuttle and now even thirty years later, we can enjoy vivid, high-resolution images of galaxies and nebulae and all kinds of cool things that are out there in the great expanse of space. 

     I think of this embarrassing, and very expensive episode with the Hubble Telescope where the greatest minds of our time got it wrong, and I am reminded of a plaque that hung in the office of the Superintendent at the jobsite on Adak in the Aleutian Islands where I worked construction in the summers during college.  It read:

     “PRIOR PLANNING PREVENTS…uh, PRETTY POOR PERFORMANCE.”

     In short, if you want to do the job right, you better know what you are getting yourself into beforehand.

     That is essentially what Jesus is doing as he speaks with his disciples in this week’s gospel from Luke 14. If you are going be his disciple, you’ve got to know what you are getting yourself into.

     Our Holy Father said this morning that these are very difficult words. Jesus is going up to Jerusalem.  A great crowd is following him, many simply because he is a superstar.  Jesus stops and tells them in no uncertain terms that discipleship is not for the faint of heart.

     First, your relationship with Christ, must come before your family.  This is not to say that you have to disown your family. But it does make sense.  They say that “blood is thicker than water.”  The question here could be WHOSE blood?  When it comes to a case of facts, we have to admit that the blood of our family heritage that brought us to life in this passing world always gives way to the blood of Christ who has given us eternal life. The primary relationship HAS to be Christ for even our relationships with our family to be rightly ordered.

     Second, being a follower of Christ will involves SACRIFICE. For Jesus to say, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” would have made absolutely no sense to his listeners. Crucifixion was a brutal Roman means of execution. In our own day, it is as if he had said, “Whoever does not sit in his own electric chair cannot be my disciple.” Or “whoever does not lie on his own lethal injection table cannot be my disciple.”

     What are we to make of this? If we listen to what he says elsewhere, we cannot escape the conclusion that if Christ is truly the center of our lives; if we try to be his disciples; even if we do this poorly, there are those who will find it very annoying.  And finding it annoying they would like to see us removed from the public square.   

     This can happen on many levels. 

     In its most benign sense, it may mean that we will be snubbed and ignored in matters of public discourse. And this is certainly true. In the wake of the Enlightenment, truth is in the eye of the beholder.

      It was Descartes who famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” In so doing he made himself the center of the universe around which everything else revolved.  

     How small is the intellectual leap from seeing truth as an objective reality to a subjective one. Unthinkable a few generations ago, now the airwaves and screens are full of those who hold sincerely that my truth is as real as your truth.  This bodes ill for those of us Christians for whom the truth is not a something, but a someone – Jesus the Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

     Furthermore, it is a sad testimony that in the secular West, a person is free to embrace just about any religion…except Christianity. Among Christians, we Catholics are the most suspect. 

     In its most extreme sense, this desire to remove us from society takes on the form of brutal, repressive persecution of the Church, even to the point of death. Earlier this month, President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, forcibly closed seven Catholic radio stations and placed the Cardinal Archbishop of Managua under house arrest on charges of sedition and treason.  Cardinal Alvarez’s alleged crime was that he supported student protesters who had demonstrated against the policies and practices of the regime. Namely, that all opposition candidates in the recent election had all been arrested and incarcerated before the last election. 

     We say to ourselves, “Oh that could never happen here!”  Personally, given the momentum of history, I am not so optimistic. But neither am I worried if it does. Persecution is part of discipleship. The seeds of faith have always been watered by the blood of martyrs.  Why should we think it will be any different in our own time?

     In light of this, Jesus’ comment that “Anyone who does not renounce all of his possessions cannot be my disciple” is almost an afterthought. Still it bears reflection. They say that you spend the first third of your life wanting stuff, the second third of your life accumulating stuff and the last third of your life trying to get rid of stuff.  Nevertheless, at some point each one of us must ask the question: “Do I own my possessions?  Or do my possessions own me? The answer to that question will tell us much about ourselves and where we are on the spectrum of discipleship.  In the end we know that we are stewards, not owners.  We leave everything behind in this world. In the meantime, we are each given gifts of time, talent and treasure.  The key is to use these gifts in a way that is pleasing to the Giver, and to return them to the Lord with increase.

     The words of Jesus today are very hard in one sense, but they are very liberating in another. When we stop to think about it, Jesus is not asking us to do anything he has not already done himself.  Furthermore, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the power of God’s love alive in the world; the same Spirit that animated the life of Christ, descended upon Mary and the Apostles at Pentecost; the same Spirit that animates the life of every Christian; through this Holy Spirit, Our Lord has given us the means to live our Catholic faith in the midst of the world courageously and joyfully. 

     We stand in the truth in love in the world and for the world. In so doing, we transform the world and help it to become what God has created it to be.

Is it easy?  No, and it never has been.

Is it worth it?  Absolutely.

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Involved or Committed?

Hey, Church fans! Had a great time last week flying a couple of kids around to see the local glaciers. This week, we hear Jesus say, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” What’s he getting at? Check it out.

Are You Involved or Committed? XIX Sunday in Ordinary Time

      

Yesterday, I had had breakfast with a friend at a local iconic establishment. 

       We both ordered bacon and eggs.

       As our food arrived, he looked at me and said, “You know, that’s the difference between being involved and being committed. 

       “How do you figure?” I asked.

       “Well,” he said, “Look at your breakfast.”

       “Yeah,” I said, “Bacon and eggs.”

       “Yep, bacon and eggs,” he said. “Think about it. The chicken is involved…the pig is committed!” 

       He’s right, you know. 

       It raises a good question for each of us in light of Jesus’ words in the gospel today.

       When it comes to being a disciple of Jesus in St. Patrick’s

       Are you involved

              Or are you committed? 

One thing I like about St. Patrick’s is that we never do anything halfway.

We go all in. We sing every verse and we don’t leave Mass early, even when the donuts are right outside the door! 

       We do this for a reason. First know hat one should never be in a hurry to leave the House of God. 

Second, we remember with sadness that Judas was the first one to leave Mass early…

We are here to praise God, to share our stories, to share communion and fellowship with God and one another, and to be sent back into the world to proclaim the Good News of the Resurrection and the forgiveness of sins.

       But at certain point each one of us has to decided, “I am merely involved, or am I committed?” 

How you answer that question will make all the difference.

This is what Jesus is getting at when he says, “Where your treasure is, there also will be your heart.”

If our “treasure”, i.e., that which is most valuable to us is our relationship with God and others, those relationships will take priority over everything else. That is when we become committed.  That’s when we organize our time and our resources to building up those relationships.

I’ve said it before, “Show me your calendar and your bank statement and I will tell you what your priorities are.”

But such a commitment isn’t easy and it doesn’t come overnight. Such stewardship of our time and resources takes time, practice, vigilance.

There are lots of things that compete for our attention. Very few of these are bad in and of themselves. Indeed, if I was the evil one, I would fill your life with so many good things that you would not have time for the essential relationships that give life joy and meaning.

It we are not careful our lives can become like our garages, filled with so much cool stuff that we can no longer use it for the reason it was built. 

We need to pay attention. We need to be vigilant. We need to be like “servants who await our master’s return.” We need to examine our priorities every day to make sure we are focused on who and what really matters.

       As individuals and as a parish family, we have all been given so much. Thus, much will be demanded of us. At the end of the age, when we stand together as a parish before the Lord, he will ask us what we did to build up the Kingdom here in 99504.

       Now is a good time to examine where our heart is. Now is a good time to look at our calendar and our bank statement. Is our relationship with Christ, with our parish family, with the Church our first priority? If not, where do we need to make adjustments? There is no guarantee of tomorrow. The Master could return at any moment. Now is the time to decide if we are involved or committed.