St. Thomas More Catholic Church
215 Thomas More Dr.
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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Father Geoff's Homily One of the more enjoyable experiences of life is eating wouldn't you say? I'm thinking about sharing a meal with someone you care about, not just grazing or raiding the refrigerator during the commercials. When you look at the long tradition of Christian history extending back into the Old Testament, providing food for another person was a sign of generosity and hospitality. All those stories from the Old Testament about sacrifices being offered in the temple were essentially meals with God and God's people. When you and I think about heaven, we think of heaven as seeing God face to face. When the people of the Old Testament thought about the vision of eternal life, they thought of sharing a sumptuous meal with God, a meal in which all of God's people would participate. Is it any wonder then that the greatest sign of God's enduring presence among his people is through food? Jesus was both famous and infamous for his meals. All through the Gospels he is continually portrayed as eating with his disciples, his followers, crowds and even with tax collectors and sinners, which is what got him into trouble. His critics even went so far as to accuse him of being a glutton and a drunkard because of the company he kept. The parable was the customary form for Jesus' teaching. We just completed three weekends of Jesus' teaching through parables. Jesus' banquets were enacted parables. They were symbolic actions, which attempted to make a public statement. In the Gospel today, when Jesus presides at the miraculous feeding of more than five thousand, not counting women and children, he is making an important statement about how we have come to understand God. Through Jesus we all are invited to share in God's abundance. Abundance runs through the entire story. Not only is everyone's hunger satisfied, but also they have leftovers. They all went home with the little styrofoam boxes for tomorrow's lunch or something similar. You and I, however, see this story of the multiplication of the loaves and fish through another lense. From the earliest times in Christianity, this story has been connected to the Jesus' Last Supper and the church's celebration of the Eucharist. To appreciate some of what the Eucharist implies, we have to return to the first reading. There the prophet Isaiah invites God's people to come to the water, to drink freely of God's abundance and mercy. God says all you who are thirsty come tot he water. You who have no money come receive grain and eat. These two brief lines convey so much about our God and the relationship he desires with his people. No one has to pay for God. He is gift for everyone, no matter who we are, no matter our social status or in what age we live. Throughout the course of our lifetime, we must gradually learn to adopt that same attitude that God has in our relationship with one another. We must learn to share; we must be signs of God's love and abundance to one another. What we have been given we must give freely to others. It is not an easy thing to learn. If we can believe Jesus, our response is generally to build more barns to store our pent up wealth. Isn't it interesting that in the Gospel today each person is given a fair share, enough for his or her needs? We do not hear of anyone taking too much and then leaving nothing for the next person. We know that in our world today the problem is not with scarcity of food. Our world is capable of providing sufficient food for the global population. Millions live on the edge of starvation, yet there is enough. Our God gives us, one day at a time, all that we need. Sin causes us to hoard and to fail to share. We all need to learn a more profound generosity with each other. Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed? We cannot do everything, but we can do something. I would like to leave you with this thought on Sunday morning. As the cost of groceries escalates, food panties everywhere are experiencing an unprecedented shortage of food. They need us more than ever. All of us can become more involved with hunger awareness. When we do the next reverse collection this month, don't walk past the baskets to your cars. Take a slip or two, purchase those items. Let's have a room full of signs of our generosity and care for others.
Father Geoff's Homily We all have certain famous titles for Jesus. These may include Lord, Savior, friend, God - to mention only a few. When the people of Jesus' time referred to him, the title they most frequently used was rabbi. It reminds us of the essential Jewishness of Jesus of Nazareth. Rabbi simply meant teacher. The rabbis generally employed a specific method of teaching They would tell a story and then apply it to people's lives. The parable is the classic form of story telling that was used by the teachers in first century Palestine. The finest example of parable teaching is what we have in the Gospel for this weekend. Most of the parables concern the kingdom of God. The major audience for Jesus' parables was Galilean farmers. They would have known all about sowing seed and planting. What is extraordinary in the teaching of Jesus is how incredibly generous the farmer was in sowing the seed. He used lots of seed. The typical method of sowing was to broadcast the seed. He flings it right and left. Not all of it lands where it is supposed to. In fact, we are led to believe that most of it goes to waste because of the poor growing conditions. When Jesus finishes his teaching about the meaning of the parable, he ends with these words: whoever has ears ought to hear. No one practiced selective hearing more diligently than the people of God in the Bible. Occasionally all of us engage in selective hearing. Parents know all about this because children are so adept at it. Parents can say please clean your room a dozen times - each time the volume increasing. Nothing. But whisper, we're going out for a hot fudge Sunday, are you interested? Immediate response. Jesus is thinking back through the long history of his people. When God sent the prophets to thunder the truth, the people closed their ears and their hearts to God's word. Does this continue to be a problem for us today? The main point in the Gospel parable for us is actually not the seed, but the ground. God provides the seed in abundance; think his word or his teaching. We provide the ground for the seed to grow. There are four types of soil mentioned in the Gospel parable. The first three yield little or nothing. The last produces in abundance with great results. Jesus is saying that hearing the Word of God, taking it to heart, does not depend on God but on the hearers. Some are receptive while others are not. In the Bible, the difficulty is seldom that of not knowing the will of God, but of not being willing to do the will of God. When I think of my own life and my receptivity to the Word of God, I know that many truths reach my ears. My problem is that while I have been given so much from a loving God, a lot of it never reaches maturity in me. It is choked off simply by other concerns or preoccupations. I am guilty at times of selective hearing as well. Hearing the Word of God is not a function of the ears. Hearing the Word of God is a function of the heart. Hearing the truth of God is always a choice. It is the difference between hearing with the ear and hearing with the heart. This week you may want to give some thought to what you have heard here today. You heard it with your ears. More important, however, is that you hear it with your heart. What kind of soil are we? How can we enable the message to take root and to grow? What are the things in your life that choke off the Word of God in you that keep you from producing good fruit for the Lord? In terms of the harvest, how can we expect an abundant harvest if we keep the seed to ourselves. That touches on our call to be a good sower of the seed as well. Remember the lesson from the Gospel. A little bit of effort on our part has the power with God to produce great results.
Father Geoff's Homily Who was the best teacher you ever had? There is a good chance that the teacher you might name would be exactly the same as many others in the class would name as well. Good teachers have the ability to reach the slower students and at the same time to stretch the better students to challenge themselves to do more. The best teachers usually worked you hard, but in working you, they made learning seem easy and refreshing. In the Gospel today, Jesus, the greatest teacher in the world, invites us to take his yoke upon our shoulders and to learn from him. Jesus is the greatest of teachers because what he teaches us is not simply human wisdom but the wisdom that he received from God himself. The wisdom of Jesus was divine teaching. Part of what Jesus urges us is to enjoy his rest. This seems like a contradiction in a sense. Rest has been called an un-American activity. Americans are highly motivated doers, eager beavers, can do people. Productivity is the principle virtue of American culture and success is our highest value. There is a price to pay for all this kind of drive of course. The price is that we may not really be living a very whole life or have very many truly fulfilling relationships. The biblical tradition sees a special value in the blessing of rest. What is it that Jesus is offering to us when he says: Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. I cannot help but wonder if perhaps a good deal of our fatigue in life, the stress that we often experience, the rush that characterizes our lives is due to the fact that we have lost the sense of what is called the Sabbath rest. After God creates the world, the Bible is quite explicit in saying the God rested from all his labors. That line was inserted for us. God didn't need to rest since he never grows tired or fatigued in any way. Rather the Bible is telling us something important about ourselves and the rhythm of our lives. I remember a time when Sunday was not only a day of worship but when it also was a day of rest. We rested from all the ordinary pursuits of daily life, and we got a taste of what it would be like to live forever in the sacred rest of God. If we do not slow down and enjoy the rest that God offers to us, we run contrary to the body-soul rhythms of life. It is reflected in all of creation - in the cycle of day and night, with darkness and light, with sleeping and waking in times of action and times of repose. What Jesus is inviting us to in the Gospel is spiritual renewal. Jesus is calling us to rest in him. A lot of our physical weariness has a spiritual source. When the spirit is renewed, the body responds in kind. Jesus' invitation to rest involves a change of yokes. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn form me; for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. What happens when we take on the yoke of Jesus is that our focus changes. The basic change in focus is that we move from ourselves to others. Oddly enough, this is often the key to overcoming weariness and depression. We get our minds off of ourselves by putting our shoulders under the burdens of other people. It is summer - the traditional time for recharging with pursuits that truly recreate us. This is a good time of the year to work on refreshing your souls as well. In Jesus, we have the wisest teacher of all. He is the one who is inviting us to take his yoke upon us. What he asks is that we simply love him and love others. When we do this, we are following him and we are shouldering his yoke. Compared to the kind of demands that our world keeps placing on us, Christ's yoke is very light.
Father Geoff's Homily This weekend, back to basic green, we resume the cycle of Sundays, which is referred to as Ordinary time. Our Gospel companion Matthew returns today with a powerful word addressed to the disciples about the importance of putting Jesus' words, his teachings into practice. For Saint Matthew, he has a special affection for ethical behavior. The sole determinant of people's relationship with God is what they do and not what they say. Where this Gospel text fits into the overall Gospel is that it is the conclusion of Jesus' teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. The beatitudes sketch the values and attitudes that a person needs to enter and enjoy God's kingdom. Mention is made of poverty of spirit, hunger and thirst for justice, compassion, meekness, mercy, integrity, peacemaking and a willingness to suffer persecution if need be for the cause of justice. After teaching these things and the importance in the life of the disciple, he concludes with today's teaching. There is no substitute for personal engagement. Jesus can provide the teaching, but we must provide the action. We will be judged on the action. It is not those who cry out to me Lord, Lord, who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my father. This text is a bit unnerving, because it suggests that some people may actually not enter the kingdom of God. A clear distinction is made between hearing and doing. I believe that we hear many things of great value during the course of our lifetime. How many of them do we actually follow? One of the biggest, all time success stories is the sale of books on dieting. People spend millions of dollars looking for the latest diet fad. They often read the diet books while munching on chips or enjoying that evening bowl of ice cream. Another one, which I am guilty of, is buying more books and actually reading less and less of them. I say to myself, well, I will read them all when I retire some day. We cannot approach the teaching of Jesus with the kind of mind set. With Jesus, the point of hearing is not hearing, but the point of hearing is doing. How do we go about storm proofing you, to move from being just a hearer to a doer? The Letter of Saint James spells it out more in detail. James says that if all you do is hear the word and do not put it into practice, you deceive yourself. He suggests that you see yourself in a mirror and not forget what you see. The mirror is the teaching of Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls us blessed, salt and light. Blessedness, salt and light are the real faces of the followers of Jesus. We are these things because we are connected to God. We cannot forget the mirror and what the view of ourselves is meant to teach us. The second aspect of our life is to remember the law of freedom. We are created by God to live in freedom, which means that we cannot be coerced by circumstances. We can respond out of kind. We can do good when good is not done to us. We can manifest love even when we are hated. We can extend peace even when we are under attack. We are always more than the circumstances that surround us. Back then to the Gospel message. How can we be doers of the word this week? Building a life of faith requires a little work every day. We grow stronger as we practice our faith. Each prayer, each Mass, each act of charity becomes another brick in the house we build for ourselves. If we are wise, we will act on the words that have been given to us.
Father Geoff's Homily
In reflecting on today's feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord, my mind retreats to a time early in my priestly life when I spent a year in the missions in Guatemala. If this is a repeat of a story I previously told you, please forgive me for indulging you again. It was the rainy season and I was assigned to celebrate Mass some five miles from the seminary in which we lived. The terrain was mountainous and the town that I was headed to was several thousand feet above where we were. The four-wheel drive jeep jerked and labored as we drove up into the mountains through knee high mud. The people saw me coming as they gazed down the mountain road. The bells of the church rang out announcing that Mass time was approaching. I was told before Mass that the people were anticipating a procession with the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of the town following Mass. I shall never forget those Indian people, in their festive had-woven finery, literally kneeling down in the mud and slop as I passed by carrying the Blessed Sacrament. I remembered this story when I read something similar about the young Church in Nigeria. Nigeria is one of those places where the Catholic Church is young, vibrant and enthusiastic. The local bishop wrote a letter after returning from his Corpus Christi procession. Yesterday, the Lord sent rain...all along the two-mile route the people danced and sang in the rain...it was the first time that I recall the Blessed Sacrament being carried into the place of benediction to the sound of resounding cheering and clapping. It takes great faith to believe in the real presence of the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist. Many people who have preceded us not only believed in it, but some gave their lives for that belief. Recently someone said to me, Father, if I really believed that this is the true Body and Blood of the Lord, it would change me entire life. This is exactly what we believe about the Eucharist. Perhaps this is why we need to hear experiences like the two I just mentioned. When we hear what the Eucharist means to our brothers and sisters, we are inclined to ask ourselves what the Eucharist means to us. One of the tragedies of life is that we lose our appreciation of precious gifts, like the Eucharist. Psychologists tell us that if we attended to every sound we heard or every color we saw, we would literally go insane. To protect ourselves from insanity, we habituate these sounds and colors. We block them out of our consciousness. We can close our ears to sounds in the next room, or outside when we wish to concentrate. Psychologists call this habituation. There is also a negative side to habituation. We tend to habituate everything after a while - sunsets, flowers, friends, parents, children. We tend to lose our appreciation of them. We tend to lose our excitement for them. We tend to take them for granted. That brings us back to today's feast, the Body and Blood of Christ. It holds out an invitation and a challenge. First it invites us to ask what Holy Communion means to us. Do we appreciate it as much as we once did? If the answer is no, we are faced with a challenge. How can we deepen our appreciation of it again? I have two suggestions. In the week ahead, add a prayer of thanksgiving to your regular daily prayers for Christ's gift of his body to us. Second, as you come down the aisle today for Holy Communion focus your thoughts in a special way on who it is you will receive when you hear the words, the body of Christ. You will receive the living Body of Christ, the same who suffered and died for you, the one who rose from the dead, the one who promises you eternal life in your eating and drinking of him. Only by faith we come to know this is true. Only a loving God could give us such an unimaginable gift.
Father Geoff's Homily Who is God for you? Try it at home or at your next dinner party. It might empty a room or send everyone home early. It is a very personal question and the for you is a very important part because each of us relates to God and experiences God in a unique way. That is something of what we celebrate on this feast of the Holy Trinity. The God whom we believers worship is not an abstract principal who created the world and then let it run on its own. What sets Christianity apart from other religions of the ancient world is the emphasis that is placed on the relationship that we have with God. In the religions of the ancient world, it didn't matter at all if you believed in the god or not. Apollo, it was believed, was the son of Zeus and could cure diseases. Whether you believed that or not, it mattered little. You could still go to the temple of Zeus for worship. For us, belief in this God of Christian faith is essential. In the Gospel of John, the word belief has to do with believing that what Jesus says about himself is true. Chief among the things that Jesus said about himself was that the Father sent him into the world. John asks: do you believe in the one whom he has sent? In our scriptures, we emphasize how we relate to God and how God relates to us. There is always a personal dimension to what the scriptures say about God. In the second reading today from Second Corinthians, the verses that we read are familiar to most of us because often we start Mass with that greeting. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you. From the point of view of theology when grace is mentioned, it always refers to divine favor. In Jesus Christ, God has shown favor to us human beings. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has put us in a right relationship with Jesus Christ. This is a proof of God's care for us. Perhaps nothing captures that love of God better. Just last Sunday, we celebrated the feast of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The expression fellowship of the Holy Spirit seeks to capture the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit with the Church. This is no distant or impersonal God that we celebrate on this feast of the Holy Trinity. God loves us with a mother's love. In fact, when we say that God is merciful, we are saying that God loves us with a mother's love because the root of the word merciful in Hebrew is the same as the word for womb. When God is merciful to us, he manifests the same tender love as a mother would for the child she carries in her womb. The Gospel text, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son must surely send a chill through any parent's heart. We know what the world did to Jesus. Imagine giving a child to someone whose treatment would be anything less than loving. Perhaps the author of the Fourth Gospel wanted to send a chill up our spines to convince us that God's love is above all human imaginings. The question, "Who is God for you?" is a deeply personal one, but one that needs to be answered. Sometimes I am inclined to answer, well it depends on the day. Today, God may be healer, tomorrow teacher, yesterday merciful. Our God is all of those things at any given moment and more.
Father Geoff's Homily When was the last time that you said a prayer to the Holy Spirit? I know that you pray to Jesus, perhaps to the Father as well, but the Holy Spirit? Actually, we just finished praying to the Holy Spirit a few minutes ago. Do you know when that was? It was the Gloria of the Mass also known as the major doxology. Shortly before that, we prayed the minor doxology, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is kind of like that, always with us, but we really aren't that conscious of his presence. The scriptures for the feast of Pentecost may initially be a bit puzzling. The Gospel says that Jesus gives the gift of the Holy Spirit on Easter day. The first reading from Acts says fifty days after Easter. John doesn't worry much about chronology. He puts Easter, the glorification of Jesus, and Pentecost all as one event. Much more important for us is what happens on Pentecost to those who are praying and waiting for the Holy Spirit. Pentecost celebrates the birthday of the Church. What that looks like is power from on high descends upon them all. You have to go back a few pages in your reading of the Gospel story to understand the impact of this event. Throughout the Gospel accounts, the disciples are just kind of there with Jesus. They continue to misunderstand Jesus. They never really get it. They continue to think in terms of earthly power and authority while Jesus is speaking on another plane. With the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, all that changes. They now understand completely. They experience spiritual power. They leave the upper room filled with the power of the Holy Spirit ready for the mission to which the Lord is sending them. And they were quite successful on day one with three thousand new converts baptized. Pentecost marks the beginning of Christian history. As time goes on and you continue reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the miraculous phenomena become less and less and the Holy Spirit becomes more a source of inspiration and guidance for the young Church. When Saint Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit, there is nothing ecstatic or supernatural about them They are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness and self-control. What is it that you and I might pray for on this feast of Pentecost. One of those might be a new dependency on Jesus. We need to cling to Jesus in our trials. This highlights the personal relationship to which we are called to live in Christ. Another gift of the Spirit is to appreciate the fact that we must always be a people of great hope. We live in a hostile world in terms of Christian values, but Jesus reminds us that he has overcome the world. The Lord can turn the hearts of people to him in an instant. We must not live in fear. The darkness of the world cannot overcome those who abide in him. Finally, we all need to realize again on this Pentecost that we are sent. (It is beautiful that we can celebrate a baptism this afternoon.) Baptism is the sacrament, which commissions us for mission. You and I must be the justice, forgiveness, compassion and mercy of Jesus to our world. That is the kind of power that the Holy Spirit brings. On this feast of Pentecost, the climax of the Easter season, realize the gift of God in our midst again. There is no chaining or confining God's Spirit. The Lord is as present to us today as he was on the first Pentecost. All you and I must do is own the gifts again.
Father Geoff's Homily Garrison Keillor is the radio host of A Prairie Home Companion. He has created a little fictitious town in his home state of Minnesota called Lake Woebegone. The town was settled by Germans and Norwegians, and is populated by strait-laced Lutherans, and strait-laced Catholics. Lake Woebegone is the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve. One of his childhood memories is called Storm Homes. On the first day of school, every child was given a slip of paper with the name of a storm home on it, the place where you would go in case of a severe storm, like a huge blizzard. His storm home was the Krueger's, a little green cottage down by the lake. Through the fall he fantasized about his storm home and the little room furnished just for him in his storm home. Just thinking about it helped to calm his fears and make him stronger. Where is your storm home? Where do you go when there is no place else to go? Maybe your storm home is a place? We all need places of privacy, of security or refuge. If possible every teenage should have his or her own room. Young people need their space, their own place. Remember how often Jesus retired to a quiet place alone. He too, needed that in order to be all that he would be for others. It is possible though that your storm place might be another person. Is there some person you can go to when there is no other place to go? Whatever else true friendship means, a true friend is a storm home. Do you have anyone in your life to which you could tell anything? Is there someone in your life with whom there are no secrets between you? Don't worry if you don't have a lot of these, one is really all that is necessary. On the other hand, someone's storm home might be something inadequate, inappropriate and even destructive. Some places of refuge do not provide security at all but only a false sense of security like drugs or alcohol, which make very poor storm homes. The second half of the Easter season, which we are now celebrating, tries to impress upon us the importance of keeping the memory and movement of Jesus alive. I don't know what you all heard in that Gospel reading today, but one of the things that the writer of the Gospel wants us to take away is that whatever other storm homes we have, ultimately our storm home must be God. We are living in rather unprecedented times, times when the whole world could discover, too late, that God is the only ultimate refuge and security. When the Gospel tells us in Jesus' own words that whoever has seen me has seen the Father he is telling us that Jesus will always be our storm home for us. The second part of that is equally important. If we want to know who God is, what God thinks and what God wants of us, we must attend to Jesus, the Word of God. Twenty-one centuries after Jesus walked this earth, we are still drawn to him, realizing that only in him, our storm home, will we ultimately find the deepest answers to the longing of our heart. That is what Jesus tried to tell the apostles that day - that they could trust him; that to see him and to know him was seeing and knowing God himself. This past week Christ's representative on earth, the Holy Father, has been proclaiming the same message. He spoke continuously about hope. His second encyclical was on hope. Christ is our only hope. It seems that this is the message that every believer was seeking and every person as well. Give me a reason to continue to hope and to love. The answer is in Jesus. With Jesus, we need not be afraid to go into our world with all its dangers and uncertainties. Jesus said: be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Garrison Keillor never actually went to the Kruegers. No blizzards came during the day that year. Just knowing where his storm home was made his troubles more bearable. My brothers and sisters, let us live in confident faith that in Jesus we have a storm home that can always be trusted. In our Father's house, there are many rooms - one for you and one for me.
Father Geoff's Homily I discover that generally when people are asked how's Easter, they think about last Sunday. It might interest you to know that we have been celebrating Easter solemnly all week and will continue to do so for some fifty days. Recall how the celebration of the Lord's Passover was a three-day celebration; the same is at work in Easter except that it is spread out even longer. What the Church is actually doing is giving us the opportunity to reflect on the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection in our own lives, on the difference that Easter faith makes for us. I think that this is important because there are going to be many times in our lives when we are going to need that Easter faith. In the Gospel according to Saint John and the passage we read today, we see that this Easter faith brought some problems to the community of the disciples. This is an account of how Easter faith grows among Jesus' closest followers. Recall that from last Sunday, the story began with the discovery of Jesus' empty tomb. Mary Magdalene thought that the body might have been stolen. The risen Lord actually seems to have appeared to the women disciples before the male disciples. Mary Magdalene thought that Jesus was the gardener and only later came to recognize him. In the second appearance on Easter day, the apostles have no trouble recognizing him. He promises them peace and communicates the gift of the Holy Spirit. Easter faith is moving from loss and near despair, to confusion and recognition and eventually to hope and joy with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thomas' profession of faith is the great culmination. My Lord and my God. It is the greatest single profession of faith in the New Testament. We know from the story that it wasn't easily arrived at. What about us? In these weeks of Easter how do we deepen a true Easter faith? One of the points that need to be made is that Jesus Christ offers us a quality of life. Christ did not come to give us endless duration but different quality of life. If we were destined to live forever as simply an extension of the life we now have, lots of people would not be interested in buying in. Easter faith has to do with a quality of life that the boundaries of space and time cannot hold. Mark Twain tells the story about a black man, a slave, who fell asleep on a piece of land in the Mississippi River. Over night, the river broke through a narrow neck of that land, the course of the great river was suddenly changed. The man woke up in the morning only to discover that he was no longer in Missouri, but now in Illinois, and a free man. Over night the entire world had changed for this man, as did his quality of life. The quality of your life and mine has changed forever because of Easter. Easter faith does not mean a trouble free existence or a life without suffering. It does mean that we live in hope. It means that in every human situation there is a saving possibility. No situation is beyond the redemptive power of God's love. No human bondage is without the hope of an Exodus. God is ready to work in the darkness of our tombs, to bring forth new life. Jesus says to every one of us: Lazarus, come forth. I have a suggestion for us this week, a homework assignment. In every one of us there are multiple versions. Some days a good version of ourselves emerges, other days a not so good one. What would have to happen inside of you this week so that the best version of yourself emerges? That is what Easter faith is all about. Easter faith believes in the power of the resurrection. The first place it needs to be seen is in ourselves.
Father Geoff's Homily The scripture readings for the fifth Sunday of Lent are all about resurrection. Resurrection is the greatest and most powerful image of hope in the entire Bible. Yet it was an awareness that only dawned gradually in the history of Salvation. In Jesus' time, the Scribes and Pharisees argued whether or not there was a resurrection and an afterlife. The two readings, the one from Ezekiel and the Gospel, are the ones that speak of resurrection and both contain some powerful imagery. Unfortunately, with the Ezekiel, we do not have the rest of the dry bones prophesy. In the famous vision of the valley of the dry bones, the prophet sees a huge field of dry bones gradually come together, take on flesh again and all come to life. It was a vision, a grand metaphor, of the hope for Israel who was in exile. In the Gospel, it is not just vision or metaphor that is stressed. Jesus raises to life his good friend Lazarus. It is worth noting that in the scheme of the Gospel of John this is the seventh and final sign that Jesus works. The author of the fourth Gospel never uses the word miracles to describe the miraculous activity of Jesus, but the word sign. The raising of Lazarus points to the last and great act of victory in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. When Jesus raises Lazarus, it is not resuscitation since he had already been dead three days. It is less than a resurrection because we assume that Lazarus will one day die again. What Jesus does for Lazarus, his heavenly Father will do for him, and more. In the resurrection of Jesus, death is conquered forever. Jesus will never die again. Lazarus is a preview of Jesus' own resurrection and our own as well. Because of Jesus, we will live forever. Armed with this great proclamation of our faith, how could we become despondent, how could we lose hope? But we do at times don't we? We do have some dead places in us at times. When we are young and healthy, we probably have less of those dead places in us. Someday psychologists tell us, death may even come as a friend. We are used to a certain amount of dead places. You might see some dead places in your lawn. You tend to these lest they threaten the rest of the grass. You may have dead places in your schedule, times between appointments or classes. Dead places can also grow in relationships, in a marriage or a partnership, causing us to question many things in our life. Dead places can also occur spiritually. We are not always going to be on a spiritual high. Emptiness can create a void where faith has always been. A suggestion that I might offer for us today is to try and name for yourself where some of your dead places might be. Where in your life, or in your heart, has life been lost? Maybe the best part of you is buried in some tomb. The great teaching of the fourth Gospel is that faith in Jesus Christ means that we have eternal life now. The great truth of Easter is not that we are to live newly after death - that is not the great thing - but that we are to be new here and now by the power of the resurrection. Resurrection is not so much a quantity of life but a quality of life that begins in the present. Easter is near. Your Easter and mine as well. Let us all live in hope and new life this week.
Father Geoff's Homily The writer of the Fourth Gospel, Saint John, who just addressed us, loves symbolism and metaphor. We have just heard some of his favorites, darkness, light, blindness and sight. Jesus walks along one day and sees a man who is physically blind. In fact, he has been blind from his birth. Jesus does the physical cure rather quickly and from then on the remainder of the story will be to contrast the gift of spiritual sight with the blindness of almost everyone else and especially of the Scribes and Pharisees. The story operates on several different levels. There is the healing of the blind man by Jesus and then there is the deeper theological message, which gives real meaning to the story. What is of importance for the Gospel writer is not the man's physical healing but the fact that he gradually comes to faith in Jesus Christ. When he is asked who cured him, he responds initially, the man called Jesus. When he is questioned later and asked what he has to say about Jesus he says: he is a prophet. When Jesus finally speaks with the man, he acknowledges that Jesus is Lord and responds, I do believe Lord. What is this story about and why is it placed where it is in the Fourth Sunday of Lent. The entire Christian life is a process of gradually coming to spiritual enlightenment. Our lives might be characterized by spiritual blindness, which keeps us from truly following Jesus with our whole hearts. What the healing of the man born blind teaches us is that while the man had no personal connection with Jesus prior to his healing, his life was totally changed by Jesus and he follows him with everything he has. Jesus has the power to open our eyes to the areas of life where our spiritual growth may be stunted. We may be selfish, prejudiced, hypocritical, lacking in compassion toward others, and yet we are not able to see those things in ourselves. Others may be able to see it in us, but we are blinded to our own ability to see. This was exactly the case with the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus saw them as spiritually blind, but they believed they could see. They believed they had 20/20 vision in the things of God because they got it straight from Moses. They were more at fault, because they chose to remain in the blindness and not choose the truth of Jesus. Jesus says to us today do you want to see? We must choose to see. Jesus saw the blindness of the Pharisees not as congenital, but as chosen. They knew better and yet they chose to remain in darkness. During the season of Lent, we want to heighten our capacity to see God in our lives. We beg for the gift of spiritual insight. What you and I strive for is to see the spiritual penetrating the material. How would your week change if you honestly believed that through all your encounters this week, each and every one of them was a means of reaching out to God? In this way, faith becomes an invitation to greater understanding and greater seeing. Heaven and earth are not separate realities, but they interpenetrate with each other. Ask God to give you the gift of spiritual insight this week in any areas of your life in which you might be spiritually blind. Look for the ways that God will visit you through you life and personal encounters.
Father Geoff's Homily There are a number of significant dates in the life of the late Pope John Paul II, but for the pope himself, perhaps none was more important than Wednesday, May 13, 1981. It was the day of the Holy Father's weekly audience. During the nice weather, those audiences were held in the large square of Saint Peters. Late in the afternoon the pope's jeep wound slowly through the crowd allowing the people the chance to speak with the pope, to see him up close, have a picture taken with him. At that moment the pigeons suddenly took to flight as the sound of gunfire echoed around the colonnades. The pope fell back into the arms of his secretary, shot in the stomach. Five nervous hours followed, as the pope was is surgery. When it appeared that he would recover, attention shifted to the would-be assassin, named Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish terrorist. The two met in prison some six months later. The pope forgave Ali Agca. They sat and conversed together as brothers. Agca spoke of the encounter, the pope, he said, knows everything. The Samaritan woman in the Gospel said even more about Jesus. He told me everything I ever did. Isn't that a great line? It almost gives you chills to think about it. What Jesus told her about herself didn't leave her convicted, but profoundly loved. From profound love, more love than any man had ever given her physically; she now receives from Jesus an invitation to experience life from him. If she accepts the life that Jesus is offering her, she will never be thirsty again. How about you? What are you thirsting for? That is a good question for us to ask of ourselves during this time of Lent. Are you evaporating spiritually? Are you slowly dehydrating despite everything you can do? You are not alone. The Samaritan woman is your neighbor, your friend, your kin, your colleague. She lives in some kind of secret shame, hiding from the past that will not go away, and desperately thirsty. It is our common plight. We do not have to remain there. He told me everything I ever did. Christ has engaged you. He has told you everything you ever did and he still loves you. Now that is a sobering thought. Knowing everything about us, he wants to lead us deeper in our thirst for him. He wants to lead us deeper and deeper in our experience of God's love for us. When we speak about the God who knows everything we have ever done and still loves us, then we too have tasted living water.
Father Geoff's Homily Nineteen year old Sean was in prison because his reckless driving took the life of another human being. He was very concerned about what people thought of him. The news reported him as saying, there was no malicious intent in what I did...I just didn't think about what I was doing. The scripture readings for the season of Lent provide a treasure of riches for us. The Old Testament texts provide a history of our salvation. The Gospel focuses on key episodes in the life and ministry of Jesus. The second reading tells us what God has done for us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The readings are also rich in that they seem to really understand our human condition. Like our first parents, we too continue to sin and we all know about temptation. In the case of nineteen year old Sean, that he didn't think about what he was doing reveals a kind of base selfishness, which is all too common. People have a bias toward self-centeredness. Our own survival, our own enjoyment, our own interest is often uppermost in our minds even without our being aware of it. Selfishness isn't always deliberate greed. We just don't think about the consequences of our actions, other people's needs and God's wishes. That is also a good description of sin. Sin is often just thinking blindly about us and no one else. Behind every temptation lies the same appeal, think of yourself. What makes Jesus' triumph over temptation in the Gospel account so powerful is that he was not full of himself. He was totally aware, and because of that he was filled with God. He keeps his focus on serving God alone and because of that he shows us how to resist temptations in our own lives. When we are tempted or tested, it is not always God who is testing us. I believe that life itself puts us to the test. We do not always know whether we are being tested by God or whether it is simply a part of living and growing in the midst of the world. What our faith does, however, is give us a resource for dealing with all of our times of testing. We must remember that we are not being tempted to see if we are worthy or good or acceptable to God. That issue has been settled. That is exactly what Saint Paul is saying to us in the second reading. We have received the abundance of grace and the gift of salvation through the one man Jesus Christ. We are accepted as we are, and this is the meaning of grace. The critical issue is whether or not we can still trust God in the midst of our temptations. This is where self-centeredness comes into play. Can we trust God or do we stubbornly insist on doing it our own way? Our daily tests usually come in the form of money, power, popularity, and sex to cite a few. They are very ordinary, very common, and one might say very boring. At times, we will fail. The letter to the Hebrews reminds us to take heart. It says that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. When it is all said and done, our judgment by God may not hinge on how many of the temptations in life we have actually resisted, but whether we were able in the midst of it all not to lose our focus. Can we still trust God in spite of our human weakness? Come to the table of life and love this morning, sensing in this sacramental sign the wonder and power of God's love for us all. Armed with this gift, may we all keep our focus on Christ during this holy season.
Father Geoff's Homily I remember a time growing up when I used to love the great Saturday treat of going to the show. It was made even more exciting when the famous 3-D glasses came out. Remember those paper glasses you received in the lobby with the colored cellophane lenses that made everything in an action move jump out in your face. The world in which you and I live is a three-dimensional world, thank God. Yet we don't always apply that three-dimensional perspective to our attitudes. Sometimes the way we look at situations, the way we regard people, the judgments we cast upon the Church, can be very flat, or one dimensional. Perhaps an illustration of this might help. In Yorkshire in northern England, there existed almost side by side in two adjoining villages, a couple of struggling churches. Neither was able to support a full-time priest or pay the upkeep on their buildings. A sensible solution would be for them to merge as the bishop suggested. The underlying animosity between those churches was so great that the people would not hear of it. Finally in desperation, the bishop brought both communities together in a neutral place. The people steadfastly refused to give in. The bishop pressed the point hard with them insisting that they reveal to him the source of their animosity. Finally, a grizzly and leathered old man stood up, leaned over the table and with his bony finger pointed to the other group and said: "They didn't warn us that the Danes were coming." The Danes invaded Britain in the eighth century, twelve hundred years before. In the Gospel we just heard, Jesus makes repentance a pre-requisite for hearing and acting upon the message of the kingdom. Sometimes we think that "repent" means be sorry. It means a great deal more than that. It means to do a 180 degree turn. We turn away from old attitudes, past behaviors that are destructive so that we can turn toward something new, a fresh way of doing things. When Jesus called the first apostles, we hear that they left their nets, their fathers, their old way of life in order to turn toward Jesus. The dropping of those nets was a symbolic description of the call to conversion and repentance. The nets are not only indicative of a former way of life, but also can be apt descriptions of the junk we carry in our own nets from the past. The second reading today from 2 Corinthians reminds us that there is a lot of unfinished apostolic business to do. The Corinthians professed one God, one faith, one baptism, but in reality factions were tearing them apart. Factions lead to polarization of communities and to a breakdown of charity and the unity that we must strive to achieve. The Church in our own times has its similarities to Paul's community. When Cardinal Bernardin was alive, he called for Catholics to seek a "common ground" that is to look for opportunities to dialogue with each other on our points of disagreement. There are those who find such talk a threat to our orthodoxy. There are those who like their Gospel served on Eternal Word Television Network and those who do not; those who find the word of God in revelations at Medjugorje and those who are content with the mainstream tradition and magisterium, between those who find a kinship with the "Christian right" and those who find in that alignment a serious neglect of the common good. We all could compose a list with our emotional heat rising at each entry. The church will go on even as it has always carried these creative and painful tensions in its own body. The point is that we must have a three-dimensional view of the Gospel scene which places us within the story, not looking at it from the outside. We are being called by Jesus today to follow him, to leave our nets, our baggage behind. We have to be very serious about undertaking that work. We have found Jesus to be "light in the midst of darkness". We are not only summoned personally to the work of Jesus, but we are called to gather others, to work out our differences in ways that are just, in ways that serve the body of the church and enable that body to serve the world.
Father Geoff's Homily It was an October evening in Rome, 1958, when an elderly cardinal from Venice had just been elected pope, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, soon to be known as John XXIII. History records that he was in shock after realizing he was elected. His first act was to announce that he was going to visit Regina Caeli prison on the outskirts of Rome the following day. It was gently suggested to him that there was one or two things he may have to do first, and as a result, it was not until Christmas that he went. He won the hearts of his prisoner audience. He said I come as Joseph, your brother. He said that a couple of his own relatives had done time in prison and were now living normal lives. He said I want to see the world through your eyes. Those words are now inscribed on a plaque in the prison chapel. Whatever the Baptism of the Lord means, one thing is certain, and that is that the Lord by this action, desired to align himself with us in the most intimate of ways. Jesus wanted to see the world through our eyes. That is why the feast of the Baptism of the Lord is a Christmas feast. This is part of what it means for our God to take on our human flesh. It wasn't what Pope John the XXIII said to the men in prison but the fact that he was there that moved the hearts of all. The same thing was true of Jesus. Jesus could have stood by and watched the baptisms happening, but he chose to get in line like the rest. We know from the Gospel account that it momentarily throws John the Baptist into a tizzy. John exclaims: no, I need to be baptized by you. The sinless one has no need of baptism and yet he plunges into the water like the rest of humanity. John suddenly realizes that his initial reluctance to baptize Jesus was not misplaced. Jesus emerges from the water, the droplets glistening like diamonds off of his beard and his entire body and the heavens are torn open. This is my beloved Son, my favor rests upon him. Jesus' baptism was an act of humility and obedience to God. In Jesus we see that the meaning of humility is obedience to God. Humility is one of those virtues that gets something of a bad wrap in our contemporary society. Somehow it is equated with weakness, or being a milk toast, allowing yourself to be walked over. If you have participated in any of the Twelve step programs, you know this is not true. There is always the talk of turning one's life over to a higher power because it was one's own ego that got them into the mess that they often are in. In the case of Twelve Step Programs, egocentricity has been truly destructive. Humility makes little sense unless we connect it to our relationship with God. In Jesus' baptism he connects his life to a higher power, namely God the Father. He does it in total humility and obedience. Jesus has perfect humility. In all times and places, he finds and then does the will of God. We are not capable of perfect humility, but we can pray daily for God's guidance and for the willingness to follow. Humility is not an attitude we develop, but actually a kind of spiritual condition. The basic ingredient of that condition is to find and to do what God wills of us. In our self-centeredness we do not always see the need to grow spiritually or to develop character. We then get our kicks from material goals and external achievements. Actually, spiritual growth is its own reward just like love is and all other truly good things. Like the action of good Pope John with the prisoners, Jesus' baptism carries a powerful message. When Jesus jumped into the Jordan that day shoulder to shoulder with sinners and then the revelation that followed, we knew from that day on that he was wedded to us forever. This is a great feast at the beginning of the New Year. It stands like a beacon of light, reminding us as the year unfolds that Jesus is our dearest friend, our compassionate Savior and our loving brother.
Father Geoff's Homily Throughout this season of Christmas we have had the opportunity to listen to many of our most treasured stories about the birth of Christ. I think back to Christmas Day and to the Holy Family last weekend, these stories contained many of our most treasured and warm images about the birth of the Lord. We heard about the swaddling clothes, the manager, the shepherds, and the angels singing at the Lord's birth. Those stories all came from Saint Luke. They represented his take on the event of Jesus' birth. Today's reading from the Gospel of Matthew fills in more of those much loved details about the birth of the Savior. Unlike Luke's version, this one is far darker, more sinister, and foreboding. Already in this account of the Magi and the birth we get a sense that there is trouble brewing for this child. The writer Saint Matthew intends this. In the person of Herod the Great, we see the dark side of life. It is Herod's son, another Herod who will appear at the end of the Gospel as Jesus stands before him at his crucifixion. From the very start of his life, there is the present opposition to Jesus. In Saint Matthew's version of the nativity, there is turmoil, danger and suffering. History has given us little information about the Magi. They have been thought to be kings, or astronomers, men of science, seekers, some believe them to be traders in exotic spices. Their symbolic significance in the story is far more important than their actual identity. They are not Jews. As such their presence at the nativity of the Lord is meant to make a statement about the fact that this child named Jesus has significance for the whole world and for all people. When we get to the end of the Gospel, this same theme is reiterated when Jesus tells his disciples to go out with the message to all the nations. What an irony in the story. Herod who is a Jew and who should know the prophecies about the birth of the Messiah has to get the news about the Savior's birth from these foreigners! There is a phrase that is sometimes used and it says that God is ambidextrous. I take it to mean that we cannot limit God. God can use any situation any time to accomplish his work. The left hand of God has been used throughout history to refer to God's secret works or to the unorthodox, surprising even esoteric ways of God. Even the enemies of God can sometimes be used to accomplish his will. It doesn't take a whole lot of deep reflection on our part to realize that throughout our entire lifetime God has continued to surprise us with his love. In all of our lives God has brought good out of bad. God has been full of surprises for us all. We got the job, we passed the exam, the tests came out fine, and there is no cancer. It goes on and on for us all. When there has been true adversity, God has given us the courage and the strength to face it and to grow from it. The Epiphany story reminds us that God will continue to manifest himself to us and to our world in new and surprising ways. We need to manifest him as well. There is no room in your life or in mine for any kind of prejudice. We must not prejudge any person regardless of how different or unusual they seem. Every person is a beloved child of God and may become at any moment God's instrument of truth and love. Typically New Year's is a time for resolutions. May we resolve this year to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. The Bible says a resounding no to all forms of racism and to every human division. This year let us mend fences, heal broken relationships and genuinely come to love and accept others as Jesus did.
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