Passion Sunday

In the more ancient tradition, Lent is progressive. It begins with Septuagesima three weeks before Ash Wednesday, followed by four weeks of Lent proper, then two weeks of Passiontide (beginning today) and finally the Paschal Triduum. Holy Saturday, the last day of our 70-day preparation for Easter, is marked by emptiness and almost total silence: no liturgical prayers, altars and churches stripped, and tabernacle doors gaping ajar, empty. The Crucifix is draped in purple from today until Good Friday, and statues covered until the Easter Vigil. Today is also known as “Judica” Sunday, because the introit or entrance verse comes from Psalm 42, the same verse used for the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar. “Judica me Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta.” Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against a godless people. These words stay on Our Savior’s lips throughout his Sacred Passion. Tu Deus fortitudo mea, “you O God are my strength.” In his masterful Passion of the Christ, Gibson puts these words on Jesus’ agonized lips as he faces his trial and execution.

“I Am”

Our Gospel is taken from St. John Chapter 8, which begins with the woman taken in adultery. Jesus had pardoned the woman in the verses leading up to this Sunday’s reading, but he also commands her to sin no more. This act of forgiving sin, which we Catholics take for granted every time we enter a confessional, drove the Pharisees and legal scholars to fury against Jesus. They accuse him of everything under the sun: You are a Samaritan (an apostate). You are insane. You are possessed. Jesus patiently, but firmly, corrects their absurd charges, but finally speaks the one word that is sure to get him killed, the unspeakable tetragrammaton: I AM. It is this Name that Moses heard on Sinai, the name of Yahweh. “Before Abraham came to be,” Christ says,  “I AM.”  Thus He declares his eternity and his divinity. He leaves no room for equivocation: either he is a madman, claiming to be divine, or he is all that he says he is: the eternal and consubstantial Son of God. The Jews picked up stones to kill him.

God’s Shame

Jesus abscondit se. Consider the indignity of the Christ having to hide himself. The Lord of Lords and King of Kings, having pronounced his divine Name, must dodge his enemies like a common thief and hide down some dark alley. He doesn’t have to hide himself, of course, but in obedience to his Father’s will, he accepts the humiliation of every man who must run and hide from his enemies. Our frailty must often hide or flee certain evils we cannot prevent--misunderstandings, social awkwardness, and the consequences of our own miserable sins. Every morning when we put on clothing, we hide our bodies from shame and sin. When we enter the confessional we hide our sins from others and hide our face from the priest. And  yet, we long to be free of shame, for a day when we will no longer have to run and hide. But that day is not yet. In this life, as we must endure shame, let us endure it with Him. Our Redeemer’s shame, freely chosen, heals our shame.

Keeping the Lights On

​Tourists flock to our city to tour the sex districts and Pride Parades, which pride themselves on their shamelessness. “We have nothing to hide” men say, prancing naked down Castro Street. And yet, the newspapers shame us with pictures of homeless defecating in our streets and camping in front of apartments that rent for $6000 a month. The poverty in our wealthiest cities testifies to original sin, that something is fundamentally wrong with humanity. Many people are desperately trying to fix our problems, but no one has finally succeeded. San Francisco, like any wealthy city, desperately needs Christ, who alone can heal our essential shame. The powers of darkness have convinced most people in our city that we don’t need God: all we need is Google. But technology and the money with which it floods this city is not enough. Every inhabitant of our city needs the Word of God, and the Sacraments of God. And when they come back to God, we are here for them. At least once a month someone comes to Star of the Sea from the wasteland of agnosticism. They come because the doors are open, and the Eucharist blazes from the altar. A Russian orthodox priest last week told me how grateful he is to see our large and prominent church open with the Holy Sacrament shining out across Geary Boulevard. “Christ is blessing the entire city from your altar,” he said. We’ve got to keep the church doors open and the lights on. The human soul needs more than what we can see and taste. We need God. The Church today faces real enemies, men and women who have declared that (as an attorney in Orange County told a prelate) “we will not stop until the Catholic Church is destroyed.” They cannot destroy what God sustains, but they can certainly infiltrate it with poison from within and batter it with lawsuits from without. This Sunday I will ask you to make a gift to the Archdiocese in its Annual Appeal. Our parish goal is $82,000, and many of us are able to make a 1% gift, or $820. Why do we give to the Church beyond our own parish? We give so that the Archbishop can keep the doors open and the lights on in all three counties of Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo. God will not be silenced, if we can help it.

What are you giving up for Lent?

“What are you giving up for Lent, Father?” That’s what a young man asked me at a public lecture last week, since Ash Wednesday is only three days away. So I’ll give you the answer I gave him: I’ll just do what I’ve been doing every Lent for the last 45 years: no sweets, no alcohol, no snacks, some extra charitable giving, stations of the Cross, etc. But on the other hand, life changes. For example, over the last few months I’ve noticed how addicted to my phone I’ve become. How many times at day do you look at your iphone, that little portal into another world? No self-respecting American sits in a waiting room or at a red light without checking his or her phone. And it’s not healthy. So a new fasting is necessary: from screen time. I’ve resolved, for the next 40 days, to use my phone only as a phone (which includes texts). But no emails, no internet, no music, no apps and no media of any kind on my phone. I’ll need a lot of help to pull this off, so I’ll be praying more in Lent too. But I want to practice the presence of God while in line at Safeway or stopped in traffic. I am resolved to see the souls around me, to say hello to people rather than hiding behind screen and earbuds, to pray the rosary or just be quiet if I’m stopped dead on the Bay Bridge. By denying myself those little hits of digital excitement, I hope to see the trees, the sky, the clouds and the sea, to appreciate all the beautiful people in cars, bikes, and sidewalks, and say a prayer for them. I hope to live the precious sacrament of the present moment.
 
As we will hear in Ash Wednesday’s Gospel, we draw closer to God through Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving. The most perfect prayer is time with the Blessed Sacrament, either at daily Mass or in adoration. The most perfect fasting is from food, feeling that lean hunger in your flesh. The most perfect almsgiving is cold hard cash, like a hundred bucks for suffering poor of Venezuela this Sunday, or a significant percentage of your wealth to a favorite charity.

Silence

I know a lady who gives up talking for Lent. Not a bad idea. Mother Teresa taught her sisters: “If we talk always we cannot pray. Jesus is not present within me. We must keep silence. When a person really keeps silence, she is a holy sister…. if we keep silence, silence cannot be corrected; if we speak, if we answer back, we make mistakes.” She was repeating the wisdom of Ben Sirach from our first reading: “one’s faults appear when one speaks.” Of course, sometimes one has to speak, like I’m speaking now. Priests have to preach, and parents have to teach their children, and popes have to speak clearly on heresy and sin. The silence of parents, priests, bishops, and popes over the crimes of the world and the Church is destroying our society. We must speak as the Holy Spirit guides us, but speech born of anger, negativity, or judgmentalism is not from God.

Splinters and Planks

​“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye but not the wooden beam in your own?” Jesus asks today. The answer is obvious. We love to criticize others. Not infrequently a penitent in my confessional cannot think up any sins. A surefire solution is for me to ask if he or she has gossiped. “Oh sure,” is the common reply. “Everybody gossips!” We love picking at each others’ splinters. Now, helping someone get a splinter out of their eye is not a bad thing, but it depends how we get it out.
 
Jesus gives us three rules for removing splinters. First Rule: you have to think of the splinter-bearer as your brother: “Brother, let me remove the splinter from your eye….” We would find life so much easier if we called to mind that all those annoying people are my brothers and sisters, children of the same God. Second Rule: you have to believe you can remove your own splinter, or wooden beam: “Remove the beam from your own eye first.” I’ll never forget a penance I once received for confessing impatient driving: I was to stay in one lane all the way home. I actually drove two hours without changing my lane, and it was the most restful, joyful drive I’ve ever had. Third Rule: you must correct your brother. “Then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.” If you had a splinter in your eye wouldn’t you want someone to help you get it out? We are supposed to correct our brother’s faults. We remove the wooden beam from our own eye so that we can remove the splinter from our brother’s eye.
 
We fast in Lent to see our own sins more clearly, so that we can help build a more “just, verdant, and peaceful world” (words I hear from the McArthur Foundation, proud supporter of NPR). We weaken our stubborn arrogance in order to break down our resistance to change. But not just for ourselves. Once healed, we are healthy enough to help others overcome their ailments. We are one body in Christ, the divine physician. Let us pray for the grace to help each other become stronger in Christ over these next 40 days.

Our Throw Away Culture

Yesterday around 70,000 people, mostly under 30 years of age, testified to the sacred value of every human life by walking down Market Street here in San Francisco. It was an overwhelming witness to the peace and joy of knowing there is a God and He holds each of us in His hands. Pope Francis coined the term “throw away culture.” We throw away perfectly good food, we throw away usable clothing, cars, and electronics. Try to get a pair of shoes or a clock radio fixed these days—they tell you it’s easier and cheaper to just get a new one. And not only material things: we too easily give up on marriages that could be repaired and friendships that just need a little loving care. Our throw away culture began, however, when we began throwing away our children, first through contraception and then through abortion. In pushing life away from us, we have pushed aside the very source of our joy. We have become a sad and fretful people, a homeless people because we have emptied the home of children.

The Joy of the Gospel

In the first reading, Ezra the priest reads from the Books of the Law to the Jewish people who had been deprived of God’s Word for 50 years during their Babylonian Captivity. Proclaiming the Torah from daybreak to midday, Ezra sees the people weep as they hear God’s love for them. “Do not weep,” Ezra says, “and do not be sad, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength!” In the Gospel, the Lord himself reads from Isaiah in the Nazareth synagogue, where he had grown up. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, to bring glad tidings, to proclaim liberty, recovery of sight, to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” God is with us, and we are acceptable to the Him, no matter what we have done or had done to us. If God is a father to us, we are ever-young, children who know a benevolent father will protect and provide for us. He alone can restore the joy of our youth.

Ever Young

Why is the prolife movement so young? It’s not only filled with children and teens, young adults and young families, but the older people who have been praying in front of abortion clinics for 30 years are filled with joy and hope. It is born of a conviction that we are free and can be at peace with nature. The laws of nature do not restrict but free the creatures she governs.
 
One of nature’s laws is that every human being has inalienable rights. In other words, as St. Paul says in today’s epistle, “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you’ nor the head to the feet ‘I do not need you.’” Every human life is needed. If our society is suffering a sense of isolation, of disunity and disembodiment, it is because we have been eliminating an entire part of the human family since 1973. Since Roe v. Wade at least 60 million lives have been thrown away, and if you and I do not say something, their blood is on our hands. The loss of even one human life is my loss, an irreparable loss to humanity. Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist whose story was made famous in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List, saved 1200 Jews from Nazi extermination. In the end, he wept that he had not sold his car or his gold ring to save even one more life. He recalled the Jewish proverb “To save one life is to save the whole world.” If we go to church every Sunday, and practice kindness and honesty, but say nothing about the killing of unborn human beings in America, their blood is on our hands.
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The best of the prolife movement, however, is not motivated by guilt or anger. It is a movement propelled by the joy of youth. Last night I prayed with folks at the only Planned Parenthood still operating in San Francisco, as our parish does every Thursday night. A young adult led the prayers, but I marveled at Dr. Ron Konopaski, a retired dentist who coordinates San Francisco’s 40 Days for Life every year. He spends 12 hours every day for six weeks in front of the abortion facility. He is never sad. He is never frustrated, even though in this city of a million people few join him. I’ve never seen him angry at the sometimes-furious disrespect we endure from passersby. The other morning, on my way to say an early Mass for the Missionaries of Charity, I passed him on the moonlit street, hurrying to the Carmelites. Every morning he walks three miles to and from Cristo Rey for early Mass. What a way to spend your retirement! What a way to keep yourself ever young! You, O Lord, will restore the joy of my youth.

From the top of the year

By ancient tradition, the Church announces the dates for the coming year’s liturgical feast at the Epiphany Mass, which stands at the top, so to speak, of the liturgical year. From our perch at the top of the year we can see the year’s great feasts and mysteries spread out before us. And so, from the Roman Missal:
 
Know, dear brethren, that, as we have rejoiced at the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, so by leave of God's mercy we announce to you also the joy of his Resurrection, who is our Savior. On the sixth day of March will fall Ash Wednesday, and the beginning of the fast of the most sacred Lenten season. On the twenty-first day of April you will celebrate with joy Easter Day, the Paschal feast of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the second day of June will be the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the ninth day of June, the feast of Pentecost. On the twenty-third day of June, the feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. On the first day of December, the First Sunday of the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

He who made the Pleiades and Orion

On Epiphany, a word in Greek that means “the shining forth,” one star rose in the East, pointing to the creator of all the stars. Let’s look into this starry heavens. If you filled a box with sand, each grain representing one star for every observable star in the universe, the box would have to be two miles high, two miles wide, and stretch from Washington to Atlanta. A few years ago astronomers pointed the Hubble telescope at the darkest part of the sky the size of a tennis ball at 100 yards, or about one 32 millionths of the sky. They kept the shutter open for a few weeks. What did they find in that “empty” bit of space? 5,500 galaxies, each containing about 100 billion stars. Go home and Google “Hubble deep field” to see the image—it’s beautiful! Galaxies of all sorts of shapes and colors and configurations, every one of them created by the baby in Bethlehem. And yet, that one baby—and every human life—outweighs all of those 200 billion trillion stars. That’s why the Catholic Church is unshakably prolife.

The Baby

During Christmastide we celebrate the birth of a baby, and with the wise men, we kneel before his sacred face. In three weeks we will celebrate the annual Walk for Life West Coast, vowing never to forget January 22, 1973, the day our government gave us permission to destroy the baby. Babies are a mystery, and mysteries are hard to live with, and mysteries are often frightening. I can remember one summer night in the High Sierras, lying down to sleep under the open sky. It blazed with billions of stars so bright that I felt as if I were falling into them, or they were engulfing me. I could not remain face to face with the abyss and moved under a tree! Looking into creation on a scale that vast leaves no escape for the creature before a power infinitely greater than itself. It’s frightening to admit but it’s inescapably true that “there is a God, and I am not he.” When we deny the Creator or destroy the unborn child or mock the laws of nature it is not nature that is mocked. We do not break the law of God; we break against it. Consider how Herod tried to break the natural law by destroying the children of Bethlehem.

Herod

Herod was a king, and by all historical accounts maniacally fearful of losing the petty power he possessed in his little city. Three magi—scholars of sacred wisdom—arrive at his palace seeking to honor a newborn king. Herod, and we read “all Jerusalem with him,” was greatly troubled at this. He and his city heard of a power greater than themselves, greater even than Rome, a power that moves a star. Herod will try to control the situation by destroying all male children up to two years old, and probably ripped children from pregnant mothers for good measure. But the wise men, overjoyed at seeing the star (a power greater than themselves) prostrate themselves before the child, offering him the gifts of their trustful submission. They kneel before the mystery. “I am the steward of this mystery” St. Paul writes in our second reading. I am not the owner, but the steward, of God’s law.

The Law of God

​The law of God is this: that every creature be saved. We pray in the opening prayer of this Mass “that we, who already know you by faith, may be brought to behold the beauty of your sublime glory.” In other words, that everyone go to heaven. For that to happen, however, we must join all of creation in submitting ourselves to the Creator. Go into the mountains sometime, under the night sky, and fearlessly look up into the stars. Or simply look into the face of a baby, into the infinite mystery of a human life—look deeply, and do not flinch. Ask yourself how you or I could let others, in their confusion or fear, destroy that face. At this moment in history, we are more confused than we were fifty years ago. Our leaders are confused. We regain clarity by looking fearlessly into the face of the child, into the depths of God’s sublime creation. Seek the Child, and follow his Way, and bring as many as you can to this child with the time given you on earth.

Rose Colored Vestments  

“Gaudete Sunday” takes its name from the first word of its opening scripture verse, the introit from Philippians 4, which is also the Epistle for this Mass: Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete. Dominus prope est. “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say it, Rejoice!... the Lord is near.” From the perspective of a sinner facing judgement, the nearness of the Lord is fearful, as in the Dies irae sequence. But from the perspective of the sinner facing final redemption, his imminent arrival is joyful. We want to get on with the necessary judgement so we can get through Purgatory and on to Heaven. We want the Lord to come quickly, because the arrival of the Lord is always our supreme good. Thus the priest and the altar clothe themselves in rose vesture to indicate the joy of the Lord’s imminent arrival.

Joy is More than a Feeling

​St. Paul does not ask but commands us to be joyful, in the imperative. He does not suggest; he requires that we radiate joy. Remember that birthday party when you were pouting and your mother said “You will be happy!” St. Paul can command joy because joy is not just a feeling. As they say in Retrouvaille, a program for troubled marriages, love is not a feeling; it is a decision. I will love you, even when I don’t feel love for you! I will radiate joy, especially when I don’t feel joyful. Sound “inauthentic” or “fake?” It’s not. It’s called fidelity. Contemporary culture, following the dictates of the sexual revolution, commands us to follow our feelings. Jesus commands us to overcome our feelings and to practice goodness even and especially when we don’t feel good. The good news is that we can choose to exercise joy even when things around us make us feel sad.
 
Joy is a virtue: it’s a habit we form by repeatedly choosing a good behavior.
Joy is a duty: God calls his disciples to radiate confident joy in his divine providence, the unshakable conviction that “all things work for the good for those who love God” (Romans 8:28). Joy is a net by which we catch souls, beginning with our own. A sad Christian is a bad Christian. We can lose our own soul by grumbling, by complaining, by falling into a pervasive negativity. When we grumble we throw God’s gifts back in his face. Complaining is a kind of blasphemy. And finally, joy is possible. God does not command the impossible, and we all know people who have suffered terribly but remain serenely joyful.

Prayer Guarantees joy

How can I retain that joyful peace when so much is wrong within and without? St. Paul’s answer is clear: prayer. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” he says. “Have no anxiety at all, but by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” Like everyone else, I struggle with sadness, frustration and discouragement. Being a priest in a culture that marginalizes priests because it ignores God is not easy. Being a priest in a Church whose leaders are confused is confusing. Being a practicing Catholic in a Church whose leaders have been living criminally double lives is discouraging. The betrayal of our leaders drains our courage to be Catholic. We all struggle to put on a joyful face every day with our co-workers, our children, our spouses, and with that most difficult of person, the one we see in the mirror every morning. Personally, what saves me is getting my old carcass out of bed and into the chapel every morning. What can we do when everything else fails but come before God?

The Star of the New Evangelization

​The great image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to my left is still with us from her feast last Wednesday. She brought joy to an entire continent at the lowest point in American history. The most highly developed civilization on the American continent, the Aztec empire, was in its death throes. When she appeared to Juan Diego Cuat-loat-at-zin in 1531, his civilization and the sacred beliefs of his ancestors were being destroyed by the Spaniards. She said to him, “Escucha, ponlo en tu corazón, Hijo mío el menor, que no es nada lo que te espantó, … no se perturbe tu rostro, tu corazón; … ¿No estoy aquí yo, que soy tu Madre?” God gave us His mother, so that we would believe in his tender love for us. By coming to Him through her, we will never flag in Christian joy. Our Lady of Guadalupe, cause of our joy, pray for us!

Mother of the Americas

Yesterday the entire archdiocese came together, it seemed, to honor the Mother of God. 40,000 pilgrims made their way through the city to the cathedral in the 25th annual Guadalupe Procession, walking, singing, and praying for 12 miles into the City of St. Francis. Horsemen in brilliant Guadalupano colors led the way onto the central plaza, pausing at the church door to let in a young woman dressed in the bright mantle Our Lady of Guadalupe, accompanied by a bearded indigenous man dressed as Juan Diego. Thirty Aztec concero dancers in plumage and shells followed them, all keeping their eyes fixed on the 20-foot cathedral mosaic of la Guadalupana. They made their way to her, offering gratitude and prayers to God for sending his holy mother to the Americas in 1531. After the singing, they backed away toward their places for Mass, never turning their faces from hers. And it seemed to me that she was with us yesterday; more than a mere image, the Mother of God who left her image on Juan Diego’s tilma 487 years ago has never left the Americas. God sent his Mother to Mesoamerica during Advent, a Christmas gift, a birth of the Christian faith in the new world. In that year, ten years after Hernan Cortez landed in Veracruz, both Spaniard and Aztec were locked in a war of attrition, grinding toward mutual destruction. Only a mother, and only the Mother of God, could reconcile God’s children. Today they are one race, La Raza, and all of us from Canada to Chile, are Guadalupanos.
 
In my catechism class yesterday, I asked four children to draw a picture of “Christmas” on the board. Each of them drew a Christmas tree. I asked them: What does a fir tree have to do with the birth of the Messiah? And a little girl said it was because Jesus would carry a big piece of wood one day through the streets of Jerusalem. Yes, Christmas is the birth of the Messiah who would save his people by the wood of the cross. Advent is a time of greater prayer and penance to knock down the mountains and fill in the valleys in our lives: to dismantle sinful or simply exaggerated behaviors, and to fill in good habits that may be lacking, especially consistent prayer. Most of us don’t pray enough, and because we don’t give significant time to focused conversation with God, we become easily stressed, irritated, discouraged, depressed, angry, and abusive. The answer to every confusion in our life, the strength for every weakness, is to come before the altar of God, like the Aztec warriors themselves did 500 years ago in Tepeyac, and as they did yesterday in the cathedral. I want to thank all the people from our parish who attended this Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the patronal feast of the United States. Thank you for coming before the altar of God today as well.

Make Straight the Path

Luke begins his Gospel with a list of important historical figures, establishing his credentials as an historian: In the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, in the governorship of Pontius Pilate, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…” But the word of God, and the judgement of God, did not come through these great leaders. It came through John the Baptist, a simple preacher who lived in the desert. He wore animal skins and ate insects. He said very simply: Prepare the way for God to enter your soul. Make a straight path for him into your life. Straighten yourself out. We have work to do in these last three weeks Christmas, and I don’t mean only shopping. We must send out the cards and buy the gifts and stage the parties, which are good things. But please do not neglect the real meaning of this season, which is to prepare our souls to receive Him.

The Immaculate Conception

​On Saturday we celebrated our national patroness, the Immaculate Conception. It was on this day, Dec 9, that Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego, a poor little Indian man who could not even speak Spanish. He was on his way to the Mass of the Immaculate Conception when she drew him in by flor y canto, by roses blooming among cactus and songs of delightful birds. In exquisite sweetness she called out: “Juanito, Juan Diegito, el mas pequeño de mis hijos.” He asked who she was, and she told him: “Know for certain, my son, my littlest one, that I am the perfect and ever virgin holy Mary, mother of the true God, through whom all things live, the creator of mankind, the sovereign of all that is near and far, the maker of heaven and earth.” We are all children of this woman, and children of God. Our lives can be ordered and peaceful, preparing for heaven even while on earth, so that nothing here can disturb us. We only need to pray to the good God through Our Lady, and that prayer is how we make straight the path for God into our hearts this Christmas. We celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe this Wednesday, December 12, at 6 in the morning. Can I count on you to join Juan Diego and me on that day, at that hour, to meet her in our church here on Geary Boulevard?

Let no man separate

Three years ago on the feast of St. Francis, Pope Francis opened the Synod (meeting) of Bishops in Rome on marriage and family. Pundits speculated that the Church would change her teaching on divorce. Providentially, the Mass readings that day delivered Christ’s clearest teaching about marriage and divorce: “What God has joined let no man separate.” Marriage is certainly a human relationship, but the Sacrament of matrimony takes us far beyond our human capacities. Bishop Barron describes the human aspects of marriage as “two people deciding, for mutual benefit, to live together in a form of intense friendship.” Children, physical pleasure, recreation, emotional fulfilment, professional achievement, etc. are all fruits of this relationship. But marriage is not only a human relationship. It is primarily a relationship, through your spouse and children, with God. Marriage, and all forms of love, are God’s, and so Jesus declares that what God has joined no man can separate; therefore whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. The Catholic Church does not recognize divorce, simply because divorce does not exist. A man who separates himself from a woman he has validly and sacramentally married is still married to her. No divorce certificate from city hall can change that. Neither can any priest, bishop, or pope break the bond that God has forged.

Youth, faith, and vocations

It’s been three years since the Synod on marriage, and last Wednesday Pope Francis opened a second Synod, this one on “youth, faith, and vocations.” Again the Synod begins its monthlong deliberations with Christ’s words from Chapter Ten of St. Mark’s Gospel affirming God’s gift of lifelong marriage, and warning against the grave harm impurity does to our relationships. Again, however, the world is wondering if the Church will relax her biblical rules on sexuality. How can the Catholic Church, pundits ask, possibly expect young people to be chaste? But this Synod again opens with Christ’s clearest teaching on God’s plan for human love: “God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” A person’s sex, or what we call today “gender,” is not personal choice. Our sex is a gift from God. We either use our sexual gifts according to God’s laws (and flourish) or we ignore the owner’s manual (and suffer chaos). We do not break the law of God. We break against the law of God. Someone suggested that if you are confused about your sexuality simply go into the bathroom, disrobe, and if you have any questions call him. Biology and the natural law matters. I know that many young people have been thrown into confusion by our confused culture, and many bear wounds from the pervasive social dysfunction of our time. Young people, especially, have had the rug pulled out from under them in the sexual sphere. But the solution is not to pretend that we can create our own reality. The solution is to come back to the natural laws. Our Heavenly Father does not want us to break against these laws, which are beautiful, true, and good. He wants us to flourish by joyfully receiving the beautiful ways of nature.

Love Wins

​I noticed a large sign in the store the other day: Love Wins. That is certainly true. While everyone seems to have their own definition of “love,” there is a God and He is love. One who loves another brings the beloved to God who is love. When it comes to male and female, love by its nature is fruitful, as in all the animal and plant kingdoms. Love blossoms effusively. “Let the children come to me” Jesus says in the Gospel about marriage. Love wins because it transcends its own time and place in begetting new lives who carry that love far beyond the short lives of their mother and father. It is this vocation to which God calls young people— to offer ourselves as He offered himself for another. Let us pray that the Church, in this synod, calls young people to no less than Jesus Christ in this Gospel.
 
God our Father, through Holy Mother church, has opened both these Synods of Bishops with the Scriptures we hear today: “it is not good for man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” God is the author of love and the intensely relational form of love we call sexual. Adam wakes up to find Eve and cries out: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” And that is why a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh.” We are not owners, but stewards, of our bodies and souls. Let us pray to the Blessed Mother in this month of the rosary to show us how to love, and how to live, in the Sacred Heart of Jesus her Son. Let us pray for the leaders of our Church, now gathered in Synod, to proclaim God’s truth about truth and beauty and love, ever ancient, ever new.

A Wedding Feast Gone Sour
“Gospel” in Old English means “good news” (evangelium in Latin, meaning “glad tidings”), but what is the good news from today’s Gospel? A King invites guests to a wedding feast for his Son, but they ignore him. He invites them again, and some ignore him again, while others actually kill his messengers. The king responds in a reciprocally outrageously manner by sending troops to kill the killers and “burn their city.”  Does our Heavenly Father really kill those who oppose him and incinerate entire towns in his rage? On Friday an earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia killed at least 1200 and left 17,000 homeless. Why does God punish even the innocent in this way?
 
I cannot say why God permits losses such as these, or even smaller run-of-the mill adversities. No man can judge or even understand God’s ways; we are the creatures and He the Creator. But some human beings do manage to trust God even in acutely difficult circumstances. They believe that He knows what He is doing. Earthly tragedies at least serve to remind us that here below we have no lasting city. God allows us to suffer not because he feels “hurt” when we ignore Him but in order to correct our disordered intellects. We lapse unconsciously into thinking that we can live just fine without Him. But in reality our only hope is to live eternally with Him, because anything less than the infinite will never satisfy the human heart. Everything in this earthly life must be bent toward finding that Infinite One.
 
God allows natural disasters for this supreme good. He takes things away from us—he lets our property burn, he lets our health decline, he takes way friends and relatives—so that we will focus our hopes on nothing less than His perfect will, which we call heaven. People complain about getting older—losing our eyesight, our sense of taste, our cardio-vascular strength. At 56 I’ve begun to dry up in some places and leak in other places but the weakness of aging helps me to let go of the natural and prepare for the supernatural. The older we get the younger we get, because we are approaching our birth into a perfect life. The weaker we get the stronger we get, because weakness forces us to transfer our hopes from our limited human strength to God’s infinite strength. 
 
The good news of this Gospel parable is that, though we lose everything in this world, we never lose God’s invitation. But we have to respond to the invitation. A Christian responds by attending the Holy Mass, God’s nuptials for His Son. Jesus uses the forceful image of a king burning a city to drive home his point: we will burn if we do not receive the Bread of Life. Without the Eucharist we are defenseless against real evil in the world. But having received the Holy Eucharist, nothing can touch us; we are invincible because God almighty lives within us.
 
The man not properly dressed
So the king fills his banquet hall with guests. But then he comes across a man without proper vesture. The king becomes enraged again (on a purely literal reading we would say this king needs anger management therapy). The king casts the poorly-dressed man out—outside of heaven—where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Lesson: we must be clothed properly for the Mass. I’m wearing my “Sunday Shoes” at Mass right now—I bought them specifically for Sundays and wear them nowhere else. What we wear at Mass matters much. But even more important is to clothe our souls with grace, which we receive in prayer and sacrament. So many are lined up at the confessionals right now for that very purpose.
 
Bring them in!
Finally, notice that the king orders his servants to bring in the people, from the highways and byways. “I want my wedding hall filled with guests” he cries out. Not long ago I mentioned to a nice lady at Mass how much I miss seeing her husband at church. She spoke to him, gently, and he came back to Mass after many years. Sometimes it just takes a simple invitation. In other cases, we simply need to pray and offer sacrifices for those who are trying to live their lives without God. This is what Our Lady of Fatima asked of the three children: make everything you do a sacrifice for those who do not know God. Do not complain that your children, your spouse or siblings, your grandchildren do not go to Mass. Do something about it: make of everything a sacrifice for those entrusted to you, and the good Lord will do the rest. 

The last time I preached in this chapel was April of 1997, and Mother Teresa was sitting in her wheelchair right beside where Sr. Prema is sitting now. The sound system kept cutting out, with the street noise as outrageous as it is today. After Mass I offered Mother a new sound system for the chapel. She replied “but, father, we already have a sound system.” Yes, Mother, I pointed out, but it hardly works. “I think it’s fine for simple sisters like us.” She said, and moved on to another topic. I am happy to see someone eventually installed a functional sound system, but be careful not to overdo your simplicity!
 
72 years ago today Jesus spoke to Mother in what we now call “Inspiration Day.” On a train climbing the grade up to Darjeeling, Jesus’ thirst for love and souls took hold of her heart. From that day, I think, she began to see Jesus more clearly in every person. And what did Mother see in priests, whom she loved so much? She saw in us what we rarely see in ourselves. She saw in the priest “the love of the heart of Jesus,” in the words she loved to quote from the patron saint of parish priests, St. John Vianney. From her childhood at Sacred Heart parish in Albania, Mother had a particularly vivid devotion to the Heart of Jesus, and in every priest, she saw not only Jesus but the Sacred Heart of Jesus. “How pure the priest must be, how holy…” she would tell us.

In the Gospel, Our Lord sees a poor man in the synagogue, one with a withered hand. Like Mother Teresa, he sees what the Pharisees don’t see. Jesus sees the marginalized man because he thirsts for him. That thirst for souls is the heart of the priesthood. Even should a priest have to condemn a man in the flesh, he does so in his burning thirst to save that man from eternal damnation. How courageous a priest must be at times, to speak sternly to the rich and powerful in his own parish who put their souls in jeopardy. It was Cardinal McCarrick that would not refuse Holy Communion to the pro-abortion politicians of his diocese, even after the Pope clearly directed bishops to do this. I think of the famous Catholic Senator Ted Kennedy, who promoted abortion for most of his life. Senator Kennedy died in his sin, and his own bishop, Theodore McCarrick, did little to save him. May now ex-Cardinal McCarrick pray for the soul of this grievously-confused member of his own flock, who has gone to the judgement of God.
 
Today is “Inspiration Day” for the Missionaries of Charity family. It is the day Jesus impressed on a 38-year-old sister in a train to her annual retreat, that he thirsts for every human soul. Please continue to ask Our Lady to awaken that same thirst in the souls of her dear priests.
 
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Dear Sisters,
 
Thank you for inviting us to offer the Holy Mass in your home today. I am from San Francisco, and with me are Fr. Jose Antonio, Fr. Alberto, and Fr. Manuel from Spain. We are in Calcutta for a meeting of the Corpus Christi Movement for Diocesan Priests, which as you know was founded by Mother Teresa in 1979.
 
The Pharisees are annoyed that Our Lord's disciples are not fasting. Jesus replies: "the wedding guests do not fast while the bridegroom is with them. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken from them, and then they will fast."
 
The Bridegroom was with us for 33 years, and then we sent him away. On this day (Friday) we sent him to hell. But just before we crucified him, He left us a memorial of his Passion, the Sacrament of his abiding presence. Every day in every MC house the priest prays these words at Benediction: "O God, who in this Sacrament has left us a memorial of your passion, grant us we pray, so to revere the sacred mysteries of your body and blood that we may always experience the effects of our redemption." That is the collect prayer for the Mass of Corpus Christi, used also for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. 
 
Today is Friday, and we fast, because on this day we killed the Lord. We give up meat, we eat less, we don't eat dessert and we drink only water, or some other form of penance. But even today, Friday, we have Jesus in the Mass. God never, ever deprives his people of the Corpus Christi, the flesh of His Son. 
 
Mother Teresa founded the Corpus Christi Movement for priests so that we would be better custodians of this saving mystery. "Consider us," writes St. Paul in the first reading, "as stewards of the mysteries of God. Now it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy." We priests find it difficult to be trustworthy, I think. From Judas to Peter to ex-Cardinal McCarrick, priests have failed in some pretty serious ways to be trustworthy stewards of the Eucharist. Mother saw this problem in 1948, when she founded her Order on the Holy Eucharist. She saw how priests need help keeping their sacred trust when, in 1979, she founded the Corpus Christi Movement for secular priests. She sees the challenge now, from heaven, and through you, helps us priests to be faithful stewards of the mysteries. 
 
Be holy or go home, she would tell seminarians and priests. One of my seminarian friends was having a sexual relationship with a girl when Mother told him that in 1989. So, he did go home. He left the seminary, did the honorable thing and married the girl, and I hope they have a beautiful family today, with many children. "My dear priests," Mother told us, “be what you are. You are the receivers of an infinite gift. Now give that gift, unstained, back to the Church.” 
 
Please continue to pray for us, that we do penance with you on Fridays, when the bridegroom is taken from us, and every day, offer joyful surrender to God's holy will. We bring you the Holy Presence of Christ in the morning Mass, and you bring the poor the Holy Presence throughout the day. May God be with us all, in the Immaculate Heart of our Mother Mary.