St. Thomas More Catholic Church
215 Thomas More Drive
Elgin, IL 60123
847.888.1682
Fax: 847.888.3198
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St. Thomas More Catholic Church Fax: 847.888.3198
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July 4, 2010 I read recently about a journalist who decided to spend a year doing jobs that most Americans would hesitate doing. He hooked up with a group of Mexican migrant workers and for two months endured the same hardships they did. One of his jobs was to harvest lettuce. We have no idea what a toll that takes on the back an on the hands. He had to learn to become numb to the pains in his back and hands and arms just to make it through each day. He couldn't stop to alleviate his thirst because that would put him behind in his work. What impressed him was how people helped one another in the fields. When someone was sick, or exhausted, the others would automatically take on a little extra to cover for the one who was not able. The other day someone asked me what the difference is between disciples and apostles. We sometimes use those words interchangeable. Apostles refer to the twelve special disciples that Jesus chose to follow him in a unique way. We read about the disciples in today's Gospel. Originally they were seventy-two in number. These were sent out on a missionary journey as we heard in the Gospel. The reason I mentioned that little story about the Mexican migrant workers is because these first disciples were really on a survival course. This was not a straightforward journey, but more about their endurance, how much could they take, a survival exercise. Not only were they not to make motel reservations, but also they were allowed to take little along with them for the journey. Jesus' words to them were that he was sending them like lambs among wolves. Carry no moneybag, no sack, and sandals and greet no one along the way. That's pretty Spartan. It seems that Jesus didn't want them to get sidetracked by anything except the job at hand, which was to proclaim the kingdom of God. As a sign of awakening the world to the message of the kingdom of God, they were to go about setting people free. They healed people using Jesus' name. They were totally dependent upon the generosity and good will of the people they preached to. They stayed in any homes that were provided for them. It seems that Jesus wants to impress upon them that evangelization is hard work. The success of the work that they were being sent to do was trust in God and to give the gift that they were sent to give. Jesus was teaching them a powerful lesson. To live according to the kingdom of God means that there is less dependence upon material things. Jesus didn't want them to lose focus. I sometimes wonder if our obsession with material things lessens our capacity to live out the Gospel call with conviction. As we enter the summer season, thank God for the blessing of our lives and families. Thank the Lord also for the spiritual companions that the Lord has given to us for our journey. When Jesus sent out the seventy-two, he was inviting them to make faith the backbone of their lives. He no doubt knew that there would come a time when their faith would really be put to the test. These trials were but a prelude to what they would be asked to do to witness to that faith. Aren't there times in our own lives when all that we have left is our faith? The Gospel today calls us to prepare the way for Christ. Sometimes material things can get in the way of that pursuit. Eventually, we will all come to the realization is that the most precious gift we have is that of our faith. Faith isn't so much an answer to a question, but a way of perceiving all of life. Those who follow Jesus never go out alone. He sent those disciples out in pairs. I think that it was meant to be a reminder that we too need not go it alone. We are part of a community of believers. Like those migrant farm workers cutting lettuce, they have partners who rally in support of anyone who is flagging or lagging behind. All must work together and share the joy of the harvest.
June 27, 2010 know that the summer is travel time for many of you. The normal flow of life is interrupted somewhat and, by seeing different people and different things, we often come away refreshed. Today we are beginning a journey with Jesus. The journey that Jesus begins will take him to Jerusalem, the place of his suffering and death. This journey will last for nine chapters in the Gospel of Luke and will take all the way into November. There are two themes in this journey narrative, as it is called. The first is the identity of Jesus, who is he? The second is what does it mean to follow him, discipleship. Today's teaching would fall into the latter, the cost that Jesus exacts from us who wish to follow him. It would appear at first glance that Jesus is rather harsh today with his words to his would be disciples. The first response to Jesus' invitation by trying to buy some time. He has to bury his father first. What seems like a reasonable request, upon closer examination is really a stall tactic. I discovered in reading a commentary that the young man's father was not yet dead. What the man is saying then is that he would like to go back and live under the command of his father until some future time when his father would pass on. At that point, at some indefinite future, his calendar will be cleared enough to follow Jesus. For Jesus, this will not work. He has offered a new plan with the words follow me. A whole new life with endless possibilities has offered. This demands immediate and wholehearted response. The second invitation is similar. The man does not simply wish to return to his family for a farewell party and to say good-bye. He is returning to his family for their blessing on what he is about to do. If they do not agree to his traipsing after Jesus, the man will constantly be looking back over his shoulder, thinking about all he left behind. Jesus indicates that this will not work either. To move into kingdom living by following Jesus is something that people must desire more than anything else. Seeking permission avoids the responsibility of personal decision. Jesus is not saying that family is unimportant, but he is holding out the invitation that there is a higher good than even one's family. How does this touch our lives? One of the dangers of the Christian life is that we can be satisfied with buying in at too low a level. We often follow Jesus by using the standard of our own personal comfort or convenience as the ultimate measure. We are happy to follow Christ as long as we are not overly inconvenienced. Yet are you not touched inside by a Jesus who calls us not just to be nice people, but to the best that we can possibly be? When Jesus rebukes, as he does today in the Gospel, that rebuke is coming from an enlightened conscience. His rebuke often targets our ways of thinking or acting, attitudes that we assume are correct. Jesus knows that if we settle for thinking and acting like everybody else does, we may actually subvert real kingdom living. If Jesus is on a journey in the Gospel, you and I are also on a journey back to God. It is not by half-baked efforts, compromise and capitulation that we will make it to the end. The challenges and rebukes that Jesus offers us are grace-filled moments in our lives. How do you receive these? I, for one, find this Jesus even more compelling when he stretches me, when he calls me to give more, to be the best that I can be. I want my prized ways of thinking and acting to be confronted by Jesus. Jesus' words to the people that day did not make them angry. I suspect that he really opened a door of understanding for them, a door which opened into a room of light, a room where Jesus and the disciple are to enter.
June 20, 2010 It has become a tradition in our communities that when we celebrate the baptism of our children, they typically come to the church in a beautiful white garment. Two weeks ago, I baptized a baby and her baptismal garment was made from her mother's wedding dress. A rather beautiful custom that I wish would be passed on. Typically the baptismal garments are so full that they cover the baby's entire body, even concealing their gender. When you and I were baptized, we put on Christ, which means that we were clothed in Christ; as the second reading today reminds us. What they mean is that once we are clothed in Christ, all those things that marked our status in society were done away with. Once baptized, we all have equal status in the family of God. We are all now sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah, children of the promise, and sons and daughters of God. Baptism does not wash away our differences but makes them irrelevant. Just as the white gown masks the baby's gender, so does baptism cover over any status markers in communities of equal disciples. Baptism then becomes a life-long effort to let go of any desire for privilege based on status. When we are baptized, we are freer than at any other moment in our lives. Ask almost anyone -the ancient Hebrew, the wilderness prophet, the pilgrim settler, the Constitution framer, the black American, the poor American, ask any of them what agitates them most, what they most desire, and they will tell you freedom. Everybody wants to be free from something. Here is an interesting point worth reflecting upon. The freest person who ever lived was the one who was most in bondage to God. Jesus was so free that it threatens us. Jesus was free from the weight of other people's expectations. Jesus was free from terrible insecurity that makes us believe that we are unacceptable and so must constantly prove ourselves. Look at Jesus free enough from the expectations of others that he was able to ride into Jerusalem not in a gorgeous chariot, but on the back of a donkey. Jesus was free enough to say no thank you to people who wanted to make him their king. He was the freest person who every lived. Now here's the clincher. The secret of Jesus freedom was in his subservience to God. It may well be that we have all gotten the wrong sense of freedom. We tend to think that it means living without any boundaries. No bondage and no constraints, we have come to believe, will make us truly free. This may actually be our greatest mistake. Take a child for example, (this baby baptized today). Turn a child loose in the world, without any constraints and the child will not survive. Place that child within the confines of a loving family with definite constraints and this kind of freedom will provide the child the opportunity to become a responsible self. Love creates the constraints that make true freedom possible. Ask a person who has lived an entire life with another person. Ask them, does love create bondage? The yes will come through a smile. It is chosen bondage, blessed bondage, bondage that creates communion. Once a person chooses to follow Christ, to put on Christ in baptism, there are boundaries, ramifications in making that choice. Saint Paul says that the love of Christ constrains us. It means that the love of Christ constrains, encircles, and holds us. But it is truly a blessed kind of bondage.
June 13, 2010 With the major festivals of the Easter season and Pentecost behind us, we now embark on the lengthy season in the liturgical year known as Ordinary Time. We will remain in Ordinary time until Advent. Two beautiful stories form the backdrop for this Sunday, which stresses the importance of forgiveness in the life of the believer. In the first reading it is the prophet Nathan who literally confronts King David after David has taken the wife of one of his most faithful and trusted army officials. In addition to his adultery with her, David also has her husband killed by placing him in the front lines of the attack. The sin of adultery is further complicated by the sin of murder. The way in which the prophet gets to the heart of David is that he tells him a story. The story is about a shepherd who had only one, favorite sheep. The sheep lived closely with the shepherd who loved his little sheep and cared for it. The shepherd's master threw a dinner party for his friends and instead of choosing a sheep from his own large flock took the shepherd's only sheep for his dinner guests. David is enraged and says who is that many for he is deserving of death. Nathan then tells David, you are the man! Instead of taking your own wives, you focused on the wife of your loyal servant. The Lord's response to David is akin to saying how could you? It is filled with the frustration and disbelief at a loved one who let you down. It is not anger that God demonstrates but regret. David's response is quick but genuine. I have sinned against the Lord. David then realizes what a terrible thing he has done. He realizes not only that he has done something wrong, but just how wrong. He is saying, I have done a terrible thing. His honest contrition is what set him apart in the Bible from many of the other kings of Israel. As we fast forward to the Gospel, we see another scene of forgiveness. This one involves Jesus himself and the sinful woman. We do not know much of her story, but might only presume that she was a prostitute. Simon the Pharisee, the host of the dinner party, for all his scrupulous adherence to the law, had not been able to achieve, namely forgiveness and the joy of being forgiven. At first glance it would seem that her manifestations of love, the tears and the anointing of the feet of Jesus was what precipitated God's forgiveness. Rather it should be seen that her ability to love and to love greatly was the result of her being forgiven. One translation says: I tell you her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven; where little has been forgiven, little love is shown. I think that it is safe to say that all of us have been forgiven much during our lifetimes. The sins of our youth can be troubling for us. Many of us have a former life. Jesus has forgiven all of it, our sinful past, and those sins, which now make us shudder as we think about them. The lesson of the Gospel is that there is a blessed release in being forgiven. How does this play out in your life? In the Gospel story, the joy of being forgiven expanded the capacity in the heart of this woman for great loving. What would be some of the signs in our lives that we could point to as evidence of the fact that we have been forgiven? Holiness is not so much about never having sinned, but in the ability to recognize our failures and to seek reconciliation. Is your life filled with love now because a loving God has forgiven you?
May 30, 2010 do not consider myself to be an especially analytical person. I didn't do all that well in logic in the seminary. Yet for people who are analytical and logical, today's feast makes no sense. No doctrine of the faith creates more confusion than that of the Holy Trinity. The notion of a God as three in one is completely illogical. Logic knows that one is one and three is three. How can one be three and three be one? How can we make sense out of a phrase like God in Three Persons? Do we have one God or three? In the missionary expansion of Christianity, it was often wondered, mostly in jest, how we could possible compete with the Muslims. The Muslims offer one God and many wives, while Christianity offered one wife and three Gods. I cannot help wondering if we were not meant to be able to figure out the mystery of God. Biblical faith involves both meaning and mystery. When we speak of Christian faith, we are in the realm of mystery. The definition of faith is believing in what is unseen. I would really go a step further and say that it is probably good for us that we cannot figure out the mystery of God in three persons. We live in a world where it seems that most things will eventually be solved. That is surely true in the realm of science. The hidden mysteries of the scientific world have been probed and have revealed to us knowledge that we never had in past ages. The Bible is grounded in the belief that God is one. That is what is called monotheism. Whatever we say about the Trinity can never contradict what is revealed about monotheism in the story of salvation. That was Israel's great contribution to organized religion. They were called from the polytheism of the surrounding cultures to be different, to worship the one, true God. In a world that was fearful and foreboding, the Israelites came to believe in and to trust a God who is righteous and good. They shifted from believing in many self-centered gods, to thinking of the one God who had their welfare at heart. And in this compassionate and caring God, we find the roots of the teaching on the Trinity. Trinity makes sense because of our experience of God in our lives. You and I have known and dwelt with a God who is love, who showers us with every blessing, who walks with us always, who is as close to us as the air that we breathe. In this sense, the doctrines of our faith are attempts to express by and large, the experiences of the faithful. Whatever the doctrine wishes to name itself, we know from our own experience that our God is a God who is close at hand. The experience preceded the doctrine. The first Christians were converts from Judaism. They believed in the one God who was the Creator of all and the Deliverer of Israel. They encountered the presence of God in Christ, and then, they experienced the presence of God during and after Pentecost in the Holy Spirit. There is a story about a missionary to Africa who was home on vacation, and while at home, he ran across a beautiful sundial. He thought that it would be a beautiful gift for his African villagers. I could use it to teach them the time of day. The missionary bought it, crated it up and headed back to Africa. When the village chief saw the gift, he insisted that it be set up in the center of the village. The villagers were thrilled with the sundial and even more so when they learned how it worked. The missionary, however, was totally unprepared for what happened a few days later. The people of the village got together and built a roof over the sundial to shade it from the rain and sun. I wonder if we aren't a bit like those villagers. The doctrine of the Trinity is among the most beautiful teachings of our faith. We have put this teaching at the center of our faith and we stand in awe of it. We kind of build a roof over it instead of living it. The mystery of the Holy Trinity is an invitation to draw closer and to come to know God better. This is our fundamental vocation in life and one that we must take seriously.
May 23, 2010 Today we celebrate the great feast day of Pentecost, a day when the Easter promises of Jesus were fulfilled in the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church. The earth-shattering event is described graphically in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The symbols of the divine presence that we hear reported in the account from Acts are familiar from the Old Testament. A thundering noise, fireworks and flames accompanied the giving of the tablets of the Law, the Ten Commandments, on Mount Sinai. We know from the story in the book of Job that God spoke through a whirlwind. Moses saw flames of fire at Mount Horeb. What is especially important in the Pentecost story is how the presence of God so profoundly transforms those who experience it. Not only does this Paraclete teach the disciples and remind them of all that Jesus taught, but also this consoling one is as near as one's own breath. The description of the Pentecost was a unique event and would never occur again. It was an ecstatic event. The fact of the apostle's speaking in tongues was not gibberish, but it was ecstasy. As the Church grows, there are no more sounds of rushing winds, no tongues of fire (and only in two other times does anyone speak in tongues). The Holy Spirit becomes less an ecstatic experience and more of a problem solver in the life of the Church. And one of the problems that the Church faces then and now, in every age, is that of forgiveness. I don't think that it is simply a chance gift that Jesus gives to the Church in the Gospel account. He breathes upon the Apostles, the ancient sign of the coming of the Holy Spirit, and he gives to them and to the Church the gift of forgiveness of sins. This unique and magnificent manifestation of the Holy Spirit's presence is given to all those who desire it. It comes through the Church through the Church's ordained ministers and it is a gift that adheres to the Church until the end of time. Yet it is a gift that is so often not embraced. Father Ron Rolheiser writes a syndicated column in many of our diocesan newspapers. Recently in the Observer he had a piece dealing with anger. Anger has reached epidemic proportions in our society as you are aware. Just think about road rage for example. There is a book, which some of you may have read, called the Shack. It was the story of a man whose daughter had been kidnapped and brutally murdered. The man is struggling with his anger but receives a mysterious note inviting him to come to the shack where his daughter was murdered. He goes expecting to find the murderer in the shack, but instead he meets God there. What happens there is that he encounters the wonderful warm, all embracing, nurturing, and ever forgiving God. He can go to heaven he is told, but not if he continues to carry his anger. You know, he is dead right. Letting go of anger and bitterness is a non-negotiable condition for going to heaven. Rolheiser writes that there comes a point in our lives when only three words in our spiritual vocabulary really count. Forgive, forgive, forgive. And so on Pentecost day, what gift do you need from the Holy Spirit? The native tongue of the Holy Spirit is love. Where do you need more love in your life? How can a little more love thaw your frozen anger? Don't leave church today without asking the Holy Spirit to give you the gift that you most need for the building up of the community.
April 25, 2010 It may be somewhat surprising to you that Judas is mentioned in the opening sentence of this Easter Gospel. Judas is essential to God's plan for Jesus' glorification. Glorification for Saint John means the approaching death of Jesus. There is no dialogue between Jesus and Judas other than for Jesus to say to him do what you are going to do quickly. Once Judas leaves the supper, Jesus' entire intent is to ready the disciples for the day which is soon approaching when he would not be physically present to them. What Jesus gives them at that moment is a way is which Jesus will be recognized for all ages even though he is not physically present. He tells them that he is giving them a new commandment. It isn't exactly new since it was quoted in the Book of Leviticus. There, mention is made that the first of the commandments is to love the Lord with heart, mind, and soul. The new commandment that Jesus is giving to the disciples is that of the shepherd who lays his life down for the sheep. That love, which Jesus demonstrated by his death, was sacrificial, total, and complete. This is why Jesus says that the greatest of gifts is to lay one's life down for a friend. That is exactly what Jesus did for us. When we love like that totally, completely, giving our lives in humble service of one another, we make Jesus present again in our world. The way we come to know the divine love is through the human. This is the insight that grounds the new commandment of love. How might you lay your life down for another this week? No literally of course, but through self-giving, through sacrifice, through a kind of death to self which Jesus calls us to do?
April 25, 2010 During the season of Easter, unlike any other time of the year, the first reading is taken from the New Testament. Once the Easter season ends, we will revert to the Old Testament once again for the first reading. We are reading from the Acts of the Apostles, a piece of New Testament literature that traces the development and growth of this new church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as it spreads from Jerusalem to Rome and beyond. There are growth pains involved in that movement as we heard today in the preaching of Paul and Barnabas to the Gentiles. You and I have always lived within borders. I recall the adage that good fences make good neighbors. Borders are often a good thing. They provide us with security and protection. Negatively, however, they can make us too insular and actually cut us off from the larger realm of God's creation. Taken too seriously, borders allow us to become too provincial, blindly patriotic, and spiritually circumscribed. Our borders can become the limit of reality for us. One thing is for certain, and that is that spiritually, we cannot be people of borders. Throughout the Bible what we are called is to become a people who are intent on accomplishing God's purposes in the world. The original chosen people loved the idea that they were called and chosen, but they forgot that this imposed certain responsibilities on them. Once chosen, they too were called to bring the light of God to the nations. The Jews characterized the entire rest of the world as simply Gentiles. You were either a Jew or a Gentile. Gentile originally meant the nations, meaning everybody else. By Jesus' time, the word Gentile was a derogatory term. In the Scripture reading from Acts that we heard today, Paul and Barnabas explain to the people that the Lord has commanded them to be a light for the nations, that they might bring salvation to the ends of the earth. This charge from Jesus himself represented a great struggle in the early church to extend the spiritual borders of Christianity. For some inexplicable reason, religion has always tended toward exclusivism, just as love of country tends toward nationalism and isolationism. The movement which Paul and Barnabas began in their preaching did not end with the establishment of Christianity. It continues today. Any form of prejudice that we harbor is really a spiritual malady. It is a form of inner blindness. We tend to put people into boxes and then we identify them solely in terms of that shortcoming that we have identified. In reality, people generally are so much more than our prejudices against them. Who then are our Gentiles? Is there a way that we can translate this ancient lesson into our own language - into our time and place? If we believe that we are the children of the light, can we ignore those who live in darkness? We don't have to give them a name - Gentile, heathen, pagan, unbeliever, sinner. They are our brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. They are also our neighbors, whom Christ commands us to love and serve. Light knows no borders. The Creator's first command was let there be light. Light came before everything else in creation. The world cannot control light or put it out. Our calling is not to generate light or possess the light. Our calling is simply to witness to the light. We do not take light to the world because it is already there. The light of truth knows no borders. The light of love knows no borders. Jesus knew no borders. Why do we?
April 11, 2010 Deeply embedded in the story of Easter is that Easter represents a new creation. You all know the story of the first creation, God's creating Adam and Eve, the peace and security of the Garden of Eden. That plan of God's was thwarted by Adam's sin. Easter is a kind of undoing of that first creation which failed, and God's remaking the world anew, this time with the new Adam, Jesus Christ. The author of the Gospel reading today makes a point that this occurs on the first day of the week, a fitting time for creation to begin anew. In the original story of creation found in Genesis, God breaths on Adam and gives him life. Jesus in the Gospel today also breathes on the Apostles this time giving them new life in the Spirit. What emerges with this Pentecost gift is that of a new courage. Remember that the disciples are locked together in the room because of their fear and gloom. Jesus penetrates that with a new excitement in the gift of the Spirit turning frightened disciples into those who are sent, namely witnesses. Jesus' tone stands in stark contrast with the fear that has bound them both to each other and to that place. Jesus really equips the disciples with everything that they need to go forth and continue Jesus' mission. He not only opens locked doors, but he also opens the locked doors of their hearts. What is especially worthy of note is that Jesus carries with him, as he wills forever, the marks of his wounds. He shows them his hands and his side. It is a reminder that the pain is never totally erased, but that the violence that he suffered can be transformed into joy and peace through the power of the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus did with Adam, here he breathes new life into the disciples making them new creations and empowering them to forgive everything and everyone that they can. A key figure in the account is the one who is not present there initially. It is the person of Thomas the Apostle. We have given Thomas this nickname of doubter, which has stuck with him over the centuries. Nicknames are popular, but mostly when we give them to someone else. In fairness, we must admit to Thomas that we have been a bit too one-sided in our judgment. Thomas was really only asking for the kind of evidence that the other disciples already had. His problem wasn't so much doubt as it was absenteeism. Actually doubt is not all that bad. In fact, we could say that it is a necessary ingredient to mature faith. Gullibility is a greater danger than doubt. When Thomas had the evidence he needed, his confession of faith could not have been more profound: My Lord and my God. When Jesus said to Thomas blessed are they who have not seen and believed, to whom was he referring? A case can surely be made that the writer of the Gospel may well have been referring to you and me and to all those millions of people who have never had the opportunity to place our fingers in the actual wounds of Jesus or our hands into his side, but who believe nonetheless. In the sacraments of the church, we do see and touch the risen presence of Christ. The Eucharist in which we are to share today is the visible proof of Christ's abiding presence in the Church. It is a veiled presence however, a presence that continually hinges upon our own faith. So when we say Christ is risen it is not merely an historical claim. It is a personal testimony of what we have discovered to be true. The Easter message is continually witnessed in our own lives that death is being transformed into life.
April 4, 2010 I always felt that I was fortunate to be living in the northern hemisphere as we celebrate Easter. It is springtime here, easy for us to understand and appreciate that Easter is all about new life. We see it happening everywhere in nature. We associate Easter with lilies and sunlight, spring wardrobes and Easter baskets, exclamations and boundless joy. Easter is our most popular Sunday - our most indomitable celebration. If you have been with us during the season of Lent and especially during this Holy Week, you know that we had to pass through a death in order to reach this day of new life. The first Easter did not happen in a church or a cathedral but in a cemetery. It did not occur on a stage for all to see but in a darkened tomb. The Gospel today tells the story of the first disciples' encounter of a tomb without a body in it. Only gradually, as we heard, were they able to process what had happened and come to the realization that Christ was raised. Resurrection was not the first word about Jesus but the last. The first word was death. You cannot have resurrection unless there is death. Talk of death is always depressing. Even after two thousand years, it is still a grim and painful event to think about. We would all just as soon go from Palm Sunday directly to Easter. It cannot be that way because life is not that way. Resurrection was the Father's response to the very worst that the world could do to his Son. The last word is always God's, and it is a word of hope, of promise and of new life. I think that you and I are here together this morning for more important reasons than commemorating an event that took place two thousand years ago. The question remains - where have you experienced resurrection in your lives? A famous author once wrote that God's other name is Surprise. You and I experience resurrection in unlikely places. Resurrection often occurs in our darkest hours and in the most unlikely places. The places where we experience resurrection are as unlikely as a sealed tomb. Resurrection often occurs when we least expect it; it comes up on our blind side. Mary Magdalene is our leader in this hope. She was overcome by grief and was on her way to the tomb to visit the body of Jesus once more. Like Mary Magdalene, we can suddenly find the tomb of our dead hopes mysteriously empty. Whatever it means for the past and the future, resurrection happens in the midst of life. Can we allow the risen Christ to accompany us through our sufferings to new life? Or will we fail to see his outstretched hand? There is always a choice. Begin today to look for those signs of transformation in your life. You have made a wonderful beginning to this Easter Sunday. Our risen Lord will come to you now once again in these great sacramental signs. Just imagine, you and I, receiving the Body and Blood of our risen Lord. He gives himself to us so that we can be good Samaritans to others. We must emerge from our own moments of crisis and be for others. On behalf of the priests, deacons and lay staff, I would like to wish you and your families our best wishes for a Blessed Easter.
March 28, 2010 Today we enter upon the greatest week in the entire church year. It is the annual celebration of the Passover of the Lord from death to life. I know that the Gospel reading of the Passion of the Lord is lengthy, but it must be told as a single seamless narrative much like a good story is told. In retelling the story of our Lord's suffering and death, the events of that story come to life for us once again. And we always tell the story as Christians from a unique perspective. You cannot tell the story of the tomb without simultaneously hearing the rumbling of the moving stone. In other words, we read the Passion story always in the light of Jesus' Easter victory. Our mood then is not that of sad sentimentality, but of the highest kind of praise. Another thought comes to mind. How could the mood of the people who took off their outer garments and spread them on the ground, the waving of palms, the shouting hosanna, how could that change so quickly to crucify him? The event of Calvary mirrors human life today. The people of Jesus' time were not particularly evil; they were a mixture of good and bad just like we are. The crowd was whipped into such frenzy that they lost their sense of individual responsibility. They were like a crowd anywhere. As a young boy out in the pews like you are, I used to say to myself I would never do that, I would stand up for the truth. Now as an older man, I realize that I just might follow the crowd. This makes me realize how much I need this story, how much I need redemption, how far I have yet to travel. This is a beautiful week. Come to the liturgies, as you are able. Beginning Thursday, we celebrate the Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper and the institution of the Eucharist. Mass is at 7:00 pm. Following Mass, we invite you to stay in the chapel and pray for a while in adoration. Good Friday services are at 3:00 pm. Please join us for this holiest of days. The Easter Vigil with the Liturgy of Baptism begins at 7:30 pm on Saturday night. There is no 5:00 pm Mass on Saturday. Easter Sunday Masses are as any other Sunday. God bless each and every one of you during this week. May you all be drawn closer to our God through our participation in these holy mysteries.
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