The audio for the Gospel reading is here.  The audio for the homily is here.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of sponsoring two of the five men from our parish who attended Cursillo, a retreat program here in the diocese.  If you don’t know about Cursillo…well, you will.  They are on fire, and unless you are deaf and blind, they will be coming to talk with you!   Cursillo is a great program; I am looking forward to its fruits in these men, and in our parish.

What was most fascinating about all five of them when they returned was how on fire they all were.  They couldn’t stop talking about how much they could now see they had to go out and get done, all for the greater glory of Christ!  They want to evangelize the world, one person at a time!  Like most people who attend a Cursillo, I bet, they had a personal encounter with our Risen Lord, and now they feel like nothing can stop them!

What do they do with that, though?  Where does that lead them?  And where do our encounters with Christ lead us?

Move I

Look at today’s readings.  In both the Old Testament reading and in the gospel, men, encounter God, and something transformational happens to them!  Abram talks with God, and God makes him a promise.  God tells Abram, whose wife had been childless for decades, that his descendents would be as numerous as the stars…and Abram believed God!  And they went on to form a covenant that endures to this day!

In the Gospel, we have the three “favorite” Apostles, Peter, James, and John, heading out on a mini-retreat, to spend a little time alone with Jesus.   And what happens?  Jesus is transfigured right before their eyes, and the Apostles hear a voice from Heaven telling them, “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”  They are on retreat with Jesus, and God speaks to them!  And how did they react?  “They fell silent and did not at that time tell anyone what they had seen.”  They were probably a little frightened by what they saw and heard, and they clammed up! 

In both these instances, the men who encountered God had something huge happen to them.  Abram went from being a simple desert nomad, to become the father of a great nation!  The Apostles continued their transformation from simple fishermen into the foundation of the Church!

Move II

We have opportunities to come face to face with God in our own lives much more often than we might think!  It might be something as simple as a moment of prayer.  It might be a song we hear on the radio, or in Mass.  It might be the moment of the birth of a child; it might be the moment of death of a spouse or a parent.  It might be at a retreat like Cursillo, or SEARCH, or maybe an event like the Bishop’s Men’s Morning, which we’ll be sponsoring in a few weeks. 

It might even be something as simple, and yet as profound, as the Eucharist!  When we approach the priest, in faith, to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of God’s Son in the Eucharist, we have an opportunity to come face-to-face with our Risen Lord, if only we can discern Him there!

And when we meet Him, brothers and sisters, it can have a huge effect on us, too!  We can be energized to go out and share what we have seen and heard!  And when that happens, the world starts to change, one person at a time!

Move III

But…what if that’s just “not us”?  What if we’re not into that “mountaintop” stuff?  What if we’re just too busy, or too stressed, or simply can’t make the time? 

Or, what if the mundane tasks of everyday life just eat up all the available time in our days?  In truth, we do have to spend a lot of time in the “valleys” of life, raising kids, holding down jobs, going to school… maybe it’s a little difficult to see the Glorified Jesus where we are.

But see, brothers and sisters, this is why the Church calls us, during this time of Lent, to be more attentive to where we are with Christ.  That’s why we’re called to slow down…simplify…retreat.  That’s why we are called to “go without”. 

That’s also why the Church calls us to commit to something more during Lent as well.  Attending daily Mass…participating in Stations of the Cross and Eucharistic Adoration…setting aside more time to pray…making a retreat. 

You see, if we can successfully get the world out of our faces, if we can lower the level of background noise, if we can just get to a place where God can reach us, we are more likely to hear God’s voice.  We are more likely to see Jesus in our brothers and sisters, in the beauty of the world around us…in the Eucharist.  And we are more likely to be transformed, just as Abram was transformed, and just as the Apostles were tranformed!

Conclusion

There are people encountering Christ all the time.  Bryan, Jim, Doug and the two Daves all saw Christ last weekend.  So did all the men they were on retreat with.  Just as the apostles who were with Jesus saw a side of Jesus they had never seen before, so did those guys who made Cursillo.

We all have that possibility as well, brothers and sisters.  Jesus is there to be encountered all around us:  in the people we work with and go to school with, in the lady in front of us at the grocery line, and in the people around us here in Mass.  And He is most fully present to us on this altar, every time we celebrate the Eucharist. 

This Lent can be an opportunity to encounter him more closely.  Take time to look for Him in the events of every day.  And take time out:  push back the world, and let Jesus in.

Wanna be transformed?  Let Jesus in!  Wanna set the world on fire?  Let Jesus in.  Let Jesus meet us face to face.

There’s gonna be some heat.

I had the pleasure of preaching at the noon Liturgy of the Word yesterday at our parish in observance of Ash Wednesday; I was again blown away by the number of people who took the time to come out for prayer and worship of our Lord to start their Lenten observance.  Nice crowd!

I chose to talk primarily from the reading from the prophet Joel, coupled with the reading from the 2nd letter of Paul to the Corinthians.  I thought I would share a couple of thoughts from that, because it struck me as important.

WHy were we in church yesterday?  It wasn’t a holy day (at least no holier than the day before).  There were certainly other things we all could have been doing than sitting in a church, watching some big black man wave his hands around.  What in the world brought us to church on such a day? 

What brought us there was a desire, on some level, to make a break with what has gone before.  Every one of us in that room walked in the door with something in our lives that was out of kilter, some place in our daily walk in which we were being unfaithful to he reason for our creation.  We have all been created to know God, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with God forever in the next (Baltimore Catechism, Question 6); to the extent that we have turned away from that reason for our creation, we fall short of God’s call on our lives.

So, Lent gives us a chance to pause, to examine our lives, and to make the changes we need to make in order to be more faithful to the God to whom we owe our very existence.  Paul quoted Isaiah 49:8 in saying, “In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.”  When is that acceptable time for each of us?

One thing that is a guarantee for each of us is that we will NOT live forever, at least, not in these bodies.  How long do we have?  Only God knows for sure.  But what is certain is that we each face a choice, every day: a choice between life and death; a choice between faithfulness and disobedience.  A choice between serving God…or serving ourselves.  Which will we choose?  And when is the time to make that choice?

PAul says, “NOW is the acceptable time.  NOW is the day of salvation.”  I think I agree.  What better time than now, to “Rend our hearts, and not our garments”, to examine our lives and tear out the parts that are not worthy of our call to know, love, and serve God?  What better time?

Howdy, all.

I know, I know.  It’s been all the way since January 19 since I posted anything.  What can I say…it’s been a hard run up to Lent!  Lil’ Nicky has been a busy little bother, and distractions always creep in.  But I am here now, and I will stay caught up from now on, I promise.

OK.  The second class (Jan 24) audio is here.

The third class (Feb 7) audio is here.

The fourth class (Feb 14) audio is here.

If you’d like my notes pages or PowerPoint, please email me.  I will send you the file.  I promise to upload the rest here next Sunday.

LASTLY, here’s a plug for Adoration.  This flyer discusses what we’re doing; if you’d like to volunteer for an hour of Adoration, please email me and let me know which hour.  We are trying to get at least four adorers for every hour through the night, so if you can contribute to that effort, please do!  And remember, if you’re in my Apologetics class, the expectation is that you will spend a total of four hours before the Blessed Sacrament in Adoration during the course of the class.  So…sign on up!

 MAy you all have a most blessed and fruitful Lenten journey, my sisters and brothers.

Folks:  We’re going to get started with the next course, “How To Explain And Defend The Real Presence of Christ In The Eucharist”, on January 17 (I have been called out-of-town this coming weekend, and so will not be able to teach).

If you’d like to register online, use this button:

The registration form is here; if you’d like to pass along a flyer to anyone, the flyer is here. 

I am really looking forward to this course; I think it will make a profound difference for us all as we look at this central tenet of our faith.  Thanks, and God bless everyone!

Audio for the Gospel reading is here.

Audio for this homily is here.

“Watch Out!”

I found a pretty interesting article in Saturday’s paper.  It seems that some folks at Toys R’ Us on Friday morning had a bit of a scuffle: some folks, who had been waiting in line for hours to get Toys R’ Us at midnight were forced to defend their places in line against some late-comers who wanted to bum-rush the doors!  For the most part, the incident ended peaceably, but there were threats of Taser use, and at least one couple got pepper-spray in the face and a sprained ankle out of the whole affair.

The reflexive reaction would be to point and go, “See there? Rampant consumerism sins again!”  But this isn’t the typical “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” message.  I don’t want you to focus on the shame of the over-commercialization of Christmas (though it is sad); I don’t want to criticize the consumerism that drives some to value a few dollars more than the time they could spend with their family (though I think priorities may be out of whack). 

Maybe today’s readings have a meaning that goes beyond those things to something much more basic, but much more important.  And maybe that Toys R’ Us incident serves to remind us about it.

On this first Sunday of Advent, our readings point us in what may seem an odd direction.  The reading from Jeremiah points to a time that is, even today, a long way off:  a time of safety and security for Jerusalem.  In the second reading, Paul urges the Thessalonians to continue to conduct themselves as they’d been instructed, so that they could be “blameless in holiness…at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His holy ones.” Then in the Gospel, Jesus gets all scary!  “…On earth nations will be in dismay…” “People will die of fright…” Jesus describes the end of time in a way that could scare anybody!

But look at what He’s really warning against:  Jesus says, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life”!  Jesus was instructing His disciples to spend less time worrying about today, and more time focused on living a life that would keep them prepared for His return!  And why was he telling them this?  Because He wanted them to be ready:  “But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”  All these warnings were intended as a “heads up” to the disciples,   so that they would not get caught up in the foolishness that the rest of the world could be expected to engage in when He returned! 

We’re a long way from those days of expectant longing for the Lord to return.  The people of Paul’s time were waiting for Jesus to return just any day, in their lifetime.  The people in Jeremiah’s time we recently exiled, and were in a time of repentance and mourning over the loss of Jerusalem; they longed for the time that God would forgive their sins and return them to Jerusalem.  And the people of Jesus’ time had been waiting anxiously for the arrival of the Messiah, who would break the yoke of oppression placed on them by the godless Roman Empire.  We don’t have any of those problems.

No, instead, we have the pressures of a culture that wants us desperately to be a part of it, to accept all the trash that it holds in high regard.  We live the exile of a pilgrim people, wandering what can be a wasteland of wrong ideas about what’s really important.  And most dangerously, I think, we live in a world that wants us to be anxious about the things that it cares about:  money, and status, and appearances, and popularity, and being the first one to have this thing or that outfit, this gaming console or that new car, this big house or that important job.

And Jesus warns us against all of these things, too.  There’s more than one kind of drunkenness, and more than one kind of carousing.  And if some oft the things I mentioned aren’t causes of anxiety, I don’t know what would be!

But brothers and sisters, we do not have to live like that!  We do not have to live anxiously, worried about what’s coming next, or whether we’ll have the next “thing” that we want.  We are called to choose differently, and that is what Advent can help us to do!

Advent is a time to focus on our hope, Jesus Christ!  And as much as it’s a time to look forward to celebrating the birth of our Savior, it is, even more, a time to prepare our heart for His Second Coming!  Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians was for us, too: that the Lord would strengthen our hearts to be “blameless in holiness”.  Jeremiah’s prophecy of safety and security applies to us, the New Jerusalem, as much as it did to the kingdom of Judah. 

And Christ hasn’t returned yet, brothers and sisters, so His warning to “Beware that [our] hearts do not become drowsy” is still in effect.  We can focus on Jesus in His Word, focus on Jesus in His Church, focus on Jesus in The Eucharist we share, and defeat the drowsiness that our culture tries to put into us!

And when the “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars” begin to happen, we will be able to “stand erect and raise [our] heads because [our] redemption is at hand!

I’m glad I wasn’t at Toys R’ Us last Thursday night.  I don’t know that I would have handled myself well.  And I’ve never been a fan of pepper spray.  And while the consumerism that this incident demonstrates, and that has become almost the whole point of Christmas these days is not a good thing, it isn’t the worst thing we can fall into this Advent.

Are we anxious about anything, so anxious that it distracts us from thinking about eternity?  Are we so busy partying, or so drunk on stuff, or power, or money, or anything else that it distracts us from remembering that Christ is coming back?

Advent reminds us to be watchful.  Advent calls us to focus on the eternal more than the “right now”.  Advent asks us to live “in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ”, just as we will pray before Communion in a few minutes.

Jesus is coming.  And He says:  “Be vigilant”.  Watch out!

FIrst, THANK YOU, all of you, for a lively discussion about indulgences and Purgatory!  You stretched me; I was glad for the challenge!

Sorry it’s taken so long to get this posted; it’s been almost ready to post since I left for NCYC; I haven’t stopped running since I left for Kansas City two weeks ago!  But since the next class is coming up, I thought I’d better deal with the LAST class!

Audio from the class is here.  The text of my class notes is here.  And my PowerPoint presentation is not goin gup this week; sorry. 

We will be discussing indulgences in much more detail at the next class; I was left feeling that y’all (or many of y’all) didn’t understand the concept, and were therefore balking at giving the assent of faith to the concept.

It’s important to understand this:  Indulgences are a part of our faith.  They are not some invention of crazy old men in Rome; they flow naturally form the power to bind and loose granted to the Apostles by Jesus.  It is NOT an optional belief, like Marian apparitions and whatnot; indulgences, and the concept of the Church designating the tasks needed to obtain one, is part of the doctrine of the Church.  It is related to what we teach about sin, and about the Church’s assigned role in the forgiveness of sin.  So we really need to deal with this until y’all gain a level of acceptance of the concept.  If you believe that the sacraments do what we say they do, and if you believe that God can remit the punishment due for sin as well as the guilt associated with sin (and remember, it’s the guilt of mortal sin that sends one to hell), then what is so hard about the Church remitting the punishment? 

I will use this example in class Sunday, so if you’re reading this, you will be one up on this part.  As parents, we sometimes have to punish our children severely for some transgression.  It might rise to the level of denying a child the right to participate in some once-in-a-lifetime event, due to the severity of the offense.  Which of us would not allow our child at least the opportunity  to have that punishment reduced, or even eliminated entirely?  And how would we do that?  we would hold the child to certain standards of behavior (equivalent to being free from attachment to sin, in the case of a plenary indulgence), we might require the child to complete certain tasks (clean your sibling’s room for a month; work at a retirement home a certain number of hours, or perform some act or acts of community service, inside or outside the family.  But we would have allowed the child to remit the punishment due for their transgression.