10th Sun of OT Year C

Next weekend our Holy Father invites us to orient our prayers towards the lives of the aged, the sick, the dying, the unborn, the physically and mentally challenged, and the lives of all those who suffer. He especially invites us in doing so to reflect upon Blessed John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae, the Gospel of Life, which places its concern with the lives of all of these people. In our modern world we can see a loss towards the respect of the value of life which is seen through abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, and all sins which are allowed to take hold within society. In this slow erosion of values we lose respect for children especially the unborn, we begin to see no value to suffering because all is about the present moment, we fail to see the human created in the image and likeness of God, and over time begin to find ourselves acting contrary to the Gospel of Life. In the week ahead Pope Francis challenges us to discover the importance of the Gospel of Life so that we can be concerned for all people.

Our Gospel opens us up to the mystery concerning life. In it we encounter this man who was stricken by death, but through the life giving touch of Christ had his humanity restored. We encounter those who carried his lifeless body and stand with awe with them as they encounter this life giving miracle of Christ. We also join with the woman who felt great pain with the loss of her only son and join with her joy at the reality that his life was restored. The Church Fathers attributed a lot of status to this woman because she was seen as the Church. In her tears are found the concern that the Church must have for all of the life of the faithful. The Church must remain concerned with those who find themselves in the state of sin and bring us to Christ to find mercy. The Church must also remain concerned for the well being of all of humanity, so that life can be protected and defended. We cannot silence the Church's voice from within society because she always walks along with us in our needs known and unknown and looks out for them.

Before his call to conversion Saint Paul was a great persecutor of the Church, but through his encounter with the risen Christ he found true meaning for his life. Despite the sins of his past he was given hope to turn away from his errors and follow constantly after the Gospel. This gospel that came to him was not of human origin, but came as a revelation from Christ. It was through this revelation that he was given his mission to spread the Gospel of Christ throughout the earth. This is the same mission that all of us must constantly be reminded of. This is especially reminded throughout the words of Evangelium Vitae. If we are to proclaim Christ from the midst of the world we will be proclaiming the message of life itself. We will be showing to the world that new life can bestowed upon us and that we all have the ability to leave the oldness of sin that brings death to our souls behind. As Christians we must be willing accept this within our lives and to fear not in our mission to proclaim and defend life always.

Elijah ,as a prophet of God, saw the great need that this woman had for her son to be saved. Elijah did not give up hope, but instead entered into the upper room to enter into a spirit of prayer. For us to discover the Gospel of Life we to must enter into a spirit of prayer allowing ourselves to open wide to a contemplative outlook towards life. In this outlook we can begin to see life as the gift that it truly is because all of creation is a reflection of God. With this understanding we can begin to truly revere and honor every person. God as the creator and bestower of all life constantly calls us to be alive with our joy of celebrating within eternal life. We enter into this great joy each time that we share in the Sacraments of the Church because they bring us into communion with God the giver of all life. Through prayer and the Sacraments we should enter and more each day into this reality and should allow our hearts to enter into this participation to grow in our awe and wonder at the gift of life.

Through our participation in the glory of life that comes from God we are all called to respect human life and dignity. We can answer this call to accept the Gospel of Life by allowing its message to enter into our own families. The family is able to answer this call through prayer and the raising of children within the faith. As a family the concept of the gift of self can be shown and lived out displaying the reality that we do not exist to chase after our own pleasures. Within the family the faith can be fostered and all can begin to see the true meaning of suffering and death. In the family can prayer be fostered where we are thankful for the gift of life, glorify God, and in the midst of pain and suffering be given the strength to endure with hope. The family is the "sanctuary of life" and within this world it must be fostered and protected within our own homes. The woman of our Gospel was concerned for her own family and desired that it would have life bestowed upon it.

This day may each of us desire to join with this woman's hope for life. May we foster the Gospel of life within our own homes and allow the life that is found there to spread out into the world. It is our mission as Christians to always be concerned with the Gospel of Life and we must be willing to share this Gospel with the world. We must be willing to see that all life is sacred no matter how young or old. Let us not become overburdened at those moments when we must face the reality of suffering, but instead orient ourselves with hope towards Christ who is always willing to restore us to life. For us to be pro-life is to contribute to the "renewal of society" because we are concerned with the common good where the dignity of the human person is always respected and defended. In our celebration of life may we always give praise to the Lord who has rescued us from death and brought us to new life.

Corpus Christi Year C Homily

We often allow ourselves to get stuck inside of the present moment without being able to see what may lie beyond. I believe this Gospel sums that fact up well through the feeding of the multitude that was present. We might conclude that Christ saw their physical need to be nourished and therefore put the apostles in motion to take care of their physical needs. This of course is true, but Christ was not only concerned about their physical health through His desire for them to be fed. Christ also had the desire to give their souls the spiritual nourishment necessary to live their life of faith. We on this Solemnity of Corpus Christi are reminded of the importance of the Body and Blood of Christ. The Holy Eucharist should not leave us stuck inside of the present moment, but instead make us realize that we are entering into something very profound within the life of faith. Not only do our bodies receive nourishment through the Eucharist, but our souls also receive the nourishment necessary to live the life of faith.

If we analyze anything that lives we know that it must receive the nourishment that is proper to it. A plant is living and thus must receive water and the sun in order to stay alive. Animals must also eat and drink or in time they will die due to a lack of nourishment. Humans are able to take things farther because we can decide for ourselves what we will eat or what we will not eat. No matter our development of tastes we to must eat and drink or in time we will perish from a lack of nourishment. Christ is taking this further inside of our Gospel because our soul needs to receive nourishment as well. We cannot walk through our life only caring about our physical needs, but also must be concerned with our spiritual well being. We must be concerned with giving nourishment to our souls in order that we may continue to journey along this path of faith. To allow ourselves to truly enter into the life of faith through proper preparation to receiving the Eucharist can assist us in giving life to our souls through spiritual nourishment.

On the Evening of the Last Supper Christ took bread in His sacred hands and looking up to Heaven said the blessing. He then distributed the Eucharist not saying take this bread and wine, but by saying this in my body and blood. This statement of faith sums up the foundation of our faith. Without the Eucharist holding us together here on earth as one body of faith we would be lost inside of the plethora of religious opinions which exist inside of the world. The Eucharist is the reminder that this is the Church that was instituted not by man, but by Christ Himself. Christ understood that His time upon this earth was quickly coming to an end. He knew that He would soon be crucified upon the cross to bring salvation into our lives. With His knowledge that these events were going to unfold He did not want leave us alone, but extended the Eucharist into our lives. Christ through this gesture was able to see not only our physical need for bodily nourishment, but was also able to give us spiritual nourishment.

The Second Vatican Council refers to the Eucharist as the source and summit of our faith. This means that the very life of the Church rotates around Christ's Body and Blood. The Church can never cease to distinguish itself with the Eucharist because to do so would cause ourselves to become disconnected from Christ. All of us here must reflect upon the status of the Holy Eucharist in our lives and within our families. Do we always allow the Eucharist to be the center of our lives or do we come here nonchalant and expecting to receive something because it is what everyone else does? The fact that we are not receiving mere bread and wine, but instead are receiving the very Body and Blood of Christ should call us all to a deeper devotion. This devotion should spread out from the Eucharist that we receive into the very way that we react within the world. To receive the Eucharist always calls us back to Christ in order that we may be continuously nourished spiritually.

We must ask ourselves how we can continue to grow in our devotion to the Eucharist each day. This parish is very blessed with perpetual adoration which is the perfect opportunity to find peace and quiet within this loud world in order to place ourselves in the midst of the quiet of Christ. Christ is truly present inside of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, but through our many excuses to why we have no time to spend here we must question our faith inside of the Eucharist. To just enter the Blessed Sacrament chapel or this Church where Christ is present and to spend a few minutes in prayer is the perfect way to begin to foster this devotion to the Eucharist. To realize that our parish offers Perpetual Adoration and is always in need of more adorers and to answer that call with the sacrifice of our time could begin to unlock our hearts to grow in the splendor of God. Sunday at 3pm we will have the opportunity to partake in a Eucharistic Procession where we will make a public witness of our faith and the importance that the Eucharist plays in our lives. May this time be a time of renewal for all of us that we may continually nourish our souls spiritually.

If we can follow after the words of the Second Vatican Council and allow the Eucharist to become the source and the summit of our lives we will allow the Eucharist to be placed at life's center. We will allow ourselves to rotate around the Eucharist as this planet rotates around the sun. Without the sun this planet was be lost and so is our lives without the Eucharist. With the Eucharist placed at life's center we will find the never ending challenge towards conversion. May we allow ourselves to be spiritually fed this day by the Body and Blood of Christ and may we react to its reception by our devotion and daily conversion. May we no longer allow ourselves to be stuck inside of the present moment, but realize the Eucharist transcends time and place and gives hope to our lives through its worthy reception, 

Holy Trinity Year C Homily

As Catholics we are accustomed to beginning our prayer in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. In this simple invocation to prayer we are opening ourselves up to the great mystery of faith that is found within the Trinity. In the invocation to the Father we touch our foreheads with our hands, to the Son we lower our hands to below our chest, and to the Holy Spirit we touch our shoulders from the left to the right. In this outward sign we are professing the profound reality of salvation that was brought into the world through the cross. This invocation of words that we make was so greatly important in the life of faith that we even hear of Christ instructing the faithful to be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. We notice with these words that we have three persons and yet we say name instead of names. To say in the names of would express that these three person are separate gods, but in our ability to say in the name of we profess that we have one God in three persons.

It can be mind boggling to think of how it is possible for these three persons to exist in one God. After all we cannot take three random people and say that they are separate and yet one. On the other hand we are able to easily accept some things as truth when we acknowledge that something can be one and yet many. As we gear up for the summer many people will head to the roads for travel to their vacation destinations. We can easily accept the fact that some roads despite remaining the same change their names on multiple occasions. These roads despite being one take on many different identities through their different names. The Trinity is more profound then all of this, but through our life of faith and our own worldly experiences this notion of being one and yet three should be acceptable. In our profession of the mystery of the Holy Trinity we express the reality of creation found in God , the importance of thought found in the Son, and the ability to be challenged in love by the Holy Spirit.

We believe that God is the creator of all things. This must be so because we exist and someone had to bring us into existence. This world is so complex that we cannot look upon it and claim that out of some random chance that everything popped into being without first having a principle mover. If a baseball where to fly through this Church and fly past our eyes we would have to believe that someone threw it. With the complexity of creation this must also be so. God is the principle mover who created time and place and therefore is deserving of all of our honor and worship. The first person of the Holy Trinity sheds His love upon us through creation and we therefore should be thankful for all that we have had extended into our lives. Our thankfulness for this reality should not come and go depending upon how we feel this day, but instead we should always remain firm in our thankfulness to God the Father's desire to bring us into creation.

The second person of the Holy Trinity is the Son, Jesus Christ. We hear from John's Gospel that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. All of us here are able to think of many things. We are able to choose between doing what is right and wrong. We are able to argue and debate with other people concerning our thoughts and beliefs. We are able to choose what we will watch on television or what we will eat for supper. Despite the thought that we contain in our minds we know that we must first act upon them if anything will come about because our thoughts are not creative. A mere human thought alone will never be able to generate life. God is also able to think. God's thought is so perfect that only God has one thought. That thought is so perfect that it encompasses everything and extends throughout all generations. This one thought is the word that was brought into being by the Father. Jesus Christ is the Son of God because he was brought into being by the thought of God the Father.

Not only are we able to think, but we are also able to love. We find perfect love inside the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit. In this world where we can find many perverted understandings of love it is important for us to begin to see what love truly is. Inside of the Creed we make this expression of faith by saying: "who proceeds from the Father and the Son." The Holy Spirit proceeds from the love that is extended between the Father and the Son. In order to have love it cannot remain bottled up within ourselves or be contained by another person. Instead love must come forth from ourselves and be the instrument from which we are drawn to one another. Love will always be abusive if it is only about ourselves and our own desire for pleasure. Love will always be lacking in these relationships because they have failed to be formed in a true giving of self. The profound love that exists between the Father and the Son is known as the Holy Spirit.

On this day we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. May we allow the three persons of the Holy Trinity to continue to give strength and wisdom to our lives. May we realize the Trinity is a great mystery from which flows creation, thought, and love. Thorough the wonderful gift of creation may we always give honor to God. May our thoughts become pure and directed always towards the Son. May we also grow to love as the Holy Spirit always proceeds forth from the Father and the Son. The Holy Trinity truly shows us how wonderful the name of our God is throughout all the earth.

Pentecost Homily

We find ourselves here fifty days removed from our celebration of Easter Sunday for this great celebration of Pentecost. With the conclusion of this Mass we will end our season of Easter and begin to orient ourselves back into Ordinary Time. For these fifty days we have become comfortable in seeing the Pascal candle lit here beside the ambo. The Paschal candle is a great symbol of the Easter season because it symbolizes the light of Christ that has entered into the world to dispel the darkness of sin. It is also a reminder of the reality that we entered into the life of faith through the moment of our baptisms. This candle representing the light of Christ was present at our baptism and from it we received the light of Christ into our lives. On Pentecost we join with the apostles when they were left alone following the Ascension of Christ and prepared themselves with prayer for the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them. With this action peace would be brought into their lives through the light of Christ and the reality of the Church.

This peace that the Holy Spirit brings into the darkness of this room is one that gives birth to life of the Church here on earth. Sometimes we might find that we see the Church as something that is stagnate and boring. The Church is far from a lifeless entity because the Holy Spirit has come upon the Church to give it life. We notice in the Book of Acts that the Holy Spirit descended upon them as a strong driving wind, and so it is with the Church. A strong driving wind is far from something that is stagnate and boring. This strong driving wind has blown the Church into the world to make it important to all of its corners. With the blow of breath that Christ bestowed upon the apostles comes the authority of the Church that is driven by the authority of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always driving us forward as a powerful force to overcome sin, death, and darkness in order that the light of Christ may always shine brightly in our midst.

We did not enter into the life giving waters of baptism to remain stagnant and lifeless in our faith, but instead baptism ushered us into the one body of Christ and gave us the mission to become alive and animated through the faith. We do not need to search for other areas that are contrary to the light of Christ to fill our souls because we have all that we will ever need contained in the faith that we share. We should always remain open to the animation of the Holy Spirit within our lives because it will move us away from a stagnate concept of faith. It will move us along like a strong driving wind which will usher us along the way towards Christ. This movement calls us to involvement with the mystical Body of Christ. Involvement that leads to an ever growing knowledge of the faith and a life strengthening living out of the values of the Gospel. To remain unanimated would leave our faith dead because we could care less about knowledge and our living out of the values of the Gospel would become impossible.

The strong driving wind that the apostles encountered on Pentecost informs us that a lack of animation in our faith is impossible. If the apostles did not react to the motion of the Holy Spirit the world would never of been evangelized. People of the four corners of the world would never of been informed about Christ who was God born into the world, who would die upon the cross for our salvation, and who bestows the reality of victory over death through the Resurrection. We some 2,000 years removed from the birth of Christ have the driving wind of the Holy Spirit to thank for our faith that has been passed down to us through the generations. This movement is seen in Catholic schools and hospitals found throughout the world. This movement is found in the care for the poor and those in prison. This movement is found in the Liturgy of the Mass where all of our needs are gathered together and offered to our Lord out of love. This movement removes darkness from our lives and bestows the light of Christ upon us.

As we are dismissed from this Mass on this day and the Pascal candle is buffed out signaling the conclusion of the Easter season may we always allow ourselves to be animated by the will of the Holy Spirit. With the flame extinguished comes smoke that raises to Heaven and hopefully all of our actions can follow along in this orientation to Heaven most high. May we allow the light of Christ to always shine brightly when we are away from this parish community. The Holy Spirit is not animating us only when we are inside of this Church, but instead we are being animated all the days of our life. There is no room in Christianity for a stagnant and lifeless attitude because we are always being challenged to elevate ourselves to the perfection found in God. The Holy Spirit animates us along this path and continues to give life and direction to the Church. The Church will always be relevant to society because the driving wind that is the Holy Spirit continues to move us towards the light of Christ. May we not fear to be moved by the Spirit this day, so that we can find ourselves always surrounded by Christ's light.

Pentecost Vigil Homily

The history of the world has been filled with people who believe that they know everything. I am sure that all of us can think of the many ways where we have believed that we know everything. Even if we don't want to admit these moments or have forced them from the grasp of our minds I am sure that our parents can remember a few of these experiences on our behalf. None of us can take this present moment for granted because none of us knows what our future has in store for us. We may believe that we have it all figured out right now, but before the blink of an eye all of our hopes can begin to change. In this changing of reality we begin to slowly come to understand that we do not know everything. The world is something that is passing, but we can be sure of one thing and that is that God always remains present in our midst without changing. If we can begin to truly allow God into our midst to guide us into the unknown reality of life we will always find comfort and guidance.

In our reading from Genesis we heard about the Tower of Babel where human achievement got ahead of itself. These people were much like we sometimes find ourselves because they thought that they could remove God from their lives. In the time that it took them to build this tower they slowly removed themselves more and more from the comfort and guidance that comes from God. Today as we come to the conclusion of our Easter season we celebrate Pentecost Sunday where the events that took place at the Tower of Babel were overturned. On this day we encounter the apostles as the Holy Spirit descended upon them to give them guidance as they would begin their ministry of the Church. We know from scripture that the apostles had failed at times to place Christ first and thus fooled themselves into thinking that they knew everything. With the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and the Church we are all given the hope that the Church will never be led astray, but instead continue to dwell with the truth of the Gospel.

On this day we also gather with these graduates of 2013 and our prayers are with each of you as you move away from high school and head off to college, the work force, or the military. After all the years that you have worked for this day; you deserve it greatly. May each of you remember the contrast that is shown between the Tower of Babel and Pentecost Sunday. This is especially important with the world that each of you will soon begin to face. No longer will many of you have the comfort of your homes because you will soon begin to find yourselves on your own. As you head away from here I encourage each of you to protect your faith each day. With the many plans that you have for the future we know that none of them are one hundred percent confirmed, but I hope that we know and believe that God is one hundred percent desiring that we will remain with Him for comfort and guidance all the days of your life. At those moments when your plans might go astray place your trust in God and in the Church.

The Tower of Babel leaves us with the understanding that achievement has been great, but our understanding can be misguided. I firmly believe that all of you will achieve great things, but please do not allow yourselves to become misguided. Instead of placing trust in your own merits follow the example that the apostles display on this Pentecost Sunday. Instead of feeling alone following the Ascension they gathered in prayer and were led forth by the Holy Spirit who descended upon them. Continue to trust in the Church and the Sacraments and to trust in prayer and within God. We come to Mass each Sunday to be strengthened in our faith and to grow closer to God. At the Mass we have the opportunity to receive our Lord in the Blessed of the Altar and find guidance to our lives. Do not allow your busy schedules to come before the obligation to attend Mass and the opportunity that you have to receive our Lord's Body and Blood. In any uncertainty we will find comfort with our faith.

My brothers and sisters in Christ let us pray for each of these graduates who join us this day. May they become a beacon of hope to our lives because with them comes the opportunity of a new day. May each of us be inspired with the Pentecost message that the Holy Spirit has come to dwell with us. In this message may we see how empty our actions truly are if we find that they are removed from God. In achievement removed from God we end up as those we encountered at the Tower of Babel, but when we allow our achievement to flow from the Holy Spirit we join with the apostles in their great joy on Pentecost Sunday. May we remain with this joy and allow ourselves to be renewed each day in the Spirit of The Lord.