Mercy received and mercy given in the life of Mother Teresa

Last Sunday Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa. He spoke of how God loved her, and how she in turn gave His tender loving kindness to others. We see saints from the outside (the love they give to others), but we don’t usually see their interior lives (the love they have first received from God). Mother Teresa gave extraordinary love because she perceived to an extraordinary degree God’s thirsting love for her. Saints are those astonishing people who see what we don’t see. God’s infinite thirst, his tender care at every moment, became visible to her over time, and so she became capable of total surrender to Him in loving trust. “There is a sort of miracle every day, some sign of God’s love and care.” Mother Teresa wrote. “Once we ran out of food because of the rains and the flood. Just that time the schools closed in Calcutta and all the bread was given to us… for two days, our poor had bread and bread, until they could eat no more. The greatest miracle is that God can work through nothings, small things like us.” Mother Teresa accomplished remarkable works for the poor in her 87 years on earth, but all of it was only the exterior fruit of her interior love for God. “It is God’s work, not ours,” she insisted. “I am only a pencil in His hand. Pray that we do not spoil God’s work.”
 
Three parables of mercy

Our readings today speak of God’s mercy, what Mother called “God’s tender love for me.” First, Moses appeals to Yahweh’s mercy. Although justice demands that he wipe out the faithless Israelites, God’s heart relents. “I will not destroy them, for I am God, not man.” St. Paul writes in the second reading : “I have been mercifully treated … I have found mercy.” And today’s Gospel gives us three parables: a woman who loses a coin, a shepherd who loses a sheep, a father who loses a son. In each of these parables, God searches for us as a person driven crazy by desirous love. The shepherd puts 99 good sheep at risk to chase after one who was dumb enough to wander off. The woman tears her house apart to find one small coin, and then spends ten times its worth to celebrate.
 
Forgiving your son

And the “Prodigal Father” spends his days scanning the horizon for the return of his “prodigal son.” This boy was no good; he had demanded his father’s money because he couldn’t wait for him to die. He wastes the family resources and wastes himself. Most of us would write a loser like that out of our lives.  But the father spends his days scanning the horizon, hoping for his return. When he sees him, “a long way off,” the Father runs out to him, clasps him to his heart, and restores his humanity, no questions asked.
 
A few years ago a young man I knew returned from Los Angeles. He had enjoyed a happy childhood and been a beloved part of our parish growing up. But at around 16 he began to resent his parents, and pierce himself, and practice senseless violence. After high school he went to LA to live the party scene for a few years. Recently he came back home. And what did he find waiting for him? Did his father run out to meet him and wrap him around with affectionate forgiveness? I won’t tell you what happened, but you can only imagine how hard—impossible, even—it would be for his father to completely forgive his son. I’m sure I could not forgive him completely, because I don’t know God’s infinite love for me yet. But I’m working on it.
 
Do you know Jesus?
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In her famous last letter to her sisters, Mother Teresa wrote these words: "My dearest Children, Jesus wants me to tell you again, how much is the love He has for each one of you—beyond all that you can imagine. I worry some of you still have not really met Jesus—one to one—you and Jesus alone. We may spend time in chapel—but have you seen with the eyes of your soul how He looks at you with love? Do you really know the living Jesus—not from books, but from being with Him in your heart? Have you heard the loving words He speaks to you? Ask for this grace, He is longing to give it. Never give up this daily intimate contact with Jesus as a real living Person—not just an idea.”
 
I and the rest of our parish are largely unconverted. You and I, we do not know Jesus very personally. We do not trust Him very much because we scarcely know Him. That is why we have so much trouble loving others. We do not know the love God has for us. So we must take the trouble to pray. We must set aside time every day for silence, especially before the Blessed Sacrament. The church is open to us; Jesus is thirsting for us. Our Lady will help us, and so will St. Teresa of Calcutta. It is up to us to make that time for Jesus in prayer, so we may begin to know him face to face, and so become capable of giving that love.

Fire and division

Jesus declares “I have come not to establish peace but division.” How could the Prince of Peace say that? Didn’t he also tell his disciples “Peace is my gift to you”? Didn’t he pray that his disciples “all be one”? Does Christ purposefully sow controversy and division? Certainly traumatic division wracked Star of the Sea parish and school last year, precisely over what Jesus’ Church teaches on abortion, marriage, and gender identity.
 
It all depends on what you mean by “peace.” Jesus gives us his peace; “not as the world gives peace do I give peace.” His peace is based on truth, and sometimes (oftentimes in our society) truth exposes unseen but toxic divisions. The truth is that an unborn child is human, but many Catholics don’t want to talk about the fact that killing these children is legal in our country. The truth is that one’s sex is a fact of nature not a human choice, but we pretend otherwise. The truth is that there is a God, and I am not he. These eternal truths often split families right down the middle. The Gospel today challenges us to engage these issues rather than ignore them, even at the cost of division.  Facing first principles and final ends about human nature is not easy in a society that has lost much of both its faith and reason, but it’s the only path to real peace. A disciple is prepared to forgo superficial peace in order to reach the deeper peace of eternal truths.
 
When your husband belittles religion, or your nephew choses to call himself a woman, or your children support a “woman’s right to choose” [the death of her child], how can one work toward peace with them without denying essential truths?
 
Healing Division through Love

I think some members of our community have found a way. They’ve been going out to the streets every other Sunday to engage folks at the Clement Street Farmer’s Market with a joyful Christian witness. The initiative is called St. Paul Street Evangelization, a movement started in 2007 by a man in Portland and now in over 200 cities worldwide. Listen to their report from last Sunday’s witness on Clement Street after the 9:30 Mass:
 
“Mariella spoke with a food vendor who was raised Catholic but no longer practices because he said he finds Mass boring. Mariella gave him a rosary and told him she would be back to speak with him further on our next outing. He was open to that and was going to give us free food when the market closed. Lorna spoke to a mother with her baby, Annalise, who said her husband got mad at the Church and now refuses to allow Annalise to be baptized. She asked for prayers since her heart is broken that her child is not baptized.
 
“Our own children were excellent, so persistent and positive. Almost everyone who rejected medals from the adults took them from the children. They could not resist. One man, a non-believer, asked, "Did Jesus tell you to hand these out today?" And the children said, "YES!" emphatically and positively. Another man rejected a medal from Summer only to come back 20 minutes later to say, "I changed my mind. May I have one please?" Joseph handed out stickers with stuff like "I love Jesus" on them to anyone who would take them. Because he is so little and so adorable, almost everyone took a sticker. At one point all of the children came up to a little boy sitting in a little wagon and asked if he wanted a rosary and a sticker. Of course, the little boy was delighted to have so many friends around him, and his mother (a fallen away Catholic) was so touched that she happily obliged. Little Joseph asked a male couple if they wanted a sticker. He showed them his selection, and they eventually choose a cartoon of a frog and the words Fully Reliant On God. He also offered them the cookies, which they politely declined, but were very nice about it. Then Summer said, "Have a sweet day!" It was all very touching.”
 
Divisions overcome by childlike simplicity

We first approach those who do not believe fully in the Gospel with a simple, childlike acceptance. That is why little children are so helpful to St. Paul Street Evangelization. Only after a certain trust is achieved will we talk about deeper, divisive questions. We approach all with the childlike love of Our Lady, who helps us as we hand out silver miraculous medals and pretty rosaries. Hearts melt when Our Lady and her little children speak to them; they open a little to receiving the truths that are more difficult to accept. I can hardly believe this marvelously simple and effective witness to Jesus is happening right in our neighborhood! It gives me hope that indeed, we can overcome the divisions the Gospel brings about, so that we can attain at last the deeper unity only Christ can bestow on our human community. 

Greed is Death

All three readings today warn against greed, one of the seven capital sins. In fact, Jesus replies to a greedy man with what seems to be snarky remark: “Friend, who appointed me your lawyer?” St. Paul is even more direct: put greed to death. Jacopone da Todi, in 1265, described it in even more acerbically: “obsessive avarice, a worm that knows no rest, erodes the mind with endless preoccupations.” It breeds discontent and dissatisfaction; it poisons our inner thoughts with envy and resentment; greed is a cancer that spreads its fibrous tentacles into every dimension of our lives. But the Bible gives a cure, which I will show you at the end of this homily.
 
Vanities

The first reading from the book of Qoheleth declares rather drearily “Vanity of Vanities.” Nothingness eventually claims everything on earth. Bishop Baron points out the Hebrew word which we translate “vanity” is actually “bubbles.” All the prettiest things in life are no more than shiny bubbles that disappear within a few seconds. So don’t form an idolatrous greed, because your bubble will burst. As a kid I was greedy for matchbox cars. I had collected about a hundred shiny, fast, and fascinating little idols. They probably still lie in a box somewhere in my parents’ home. At a certain point they ceased to fascinate me, and I wondered why I had spent so much time and money on them.
A few years ago a woman and her husband came for marriage counseling. “He works three jobs!” she complained. “The children and I never see him!” Her husband replied that he was working so hard precisely to provide good things for them—a large house, a boat, vacations, etc. A few years later he came home from work to that large and beautiful house—and it was empty. His wife and children had left. Greed had killed his marriage; and all that he had worked for—to whom would it go?

God calls in the debt
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In Jesus’ parable, a man has worked very hard to amass so many things that he has to build bigger barns to store them. Putting things in storage pretty much describes our American society of endless acquisition. Even though I have fourteen pairs of shoes, I must satisfy my greed for even more footgear idols. Does anyone in this church not have stuff in storage somewhere? I had planned on a gentle reprimand, but then remembered that I myself have a few dozen boxes of stuff in a friend’s garage. So in Jesus’ parable, God “demands” the life of that man, just as he was moving his stuff into bigger barns. The literal Hebrew words are that God “calls in the debt.” Our possessions, and our very life, are on loan from God, and he can call in the debt at any time. It will go badly for us if we are not ready to give it back.
So how do I free myself of greed? “Put to death, then, …. the greed that is idolatry,” St. Paul writes. We kill greed by giving a portion of what we have been given away. When I tithe (give a tenth of my goods to another), I declare my freedom from those things. They no longer use me, but I use them to glorify God and help His children.

It really works!

But does almsgiving work? Some years ago I had managed to save up $17,000 over three years to buy a new car. The vehicle ended up costing $27,000, so I had to borrow $10,000 from a friend. Just at that time another priest-friend invited me to a talk on tithing at his parish. The married couples were so joyful in their dedication to sacrificial giving that I decided to begin right away, heedless of my $10,000 debt. And then something strange happened. Even though I was giving significant weekly tithes to the parish, I was able to repay that $10,000 in three months. Money came from everywhere: an unusually large tax refund; a personal debt repaid; an unexpected reimbursement. A family told me after the first Mass yesterday that they had exactly the same experience: they began tithing—they broke the stranglehold—and money came at them. I must say that “free money” dropped on me only once, (probably as an assurance that He was really there), but I’ve never had personal money worries since. The same goes for time: if you give God an hour a week in the adoration chapel, or with the family rosary, or daily Mass, He will give you many more hours in return. I don’t know how it works, but I know it works. “Don’t worry about money,” Mother Teresa said. “God has lots of it.”

This homily was given at St. Joseph’s Parish, Modesto

The Drama: God fishes for men

There is great drama in today’s Gospel. It’s not the kind of drama played out at high school proms, where creatures seek each other out; it is the deeper drama of the Creator seeking his creature. In our race’s first drama, God sought Adam and Eve “in the cool time of day.” This traumatic drama was made whole when God proposed to the maiden Mary in Nazareth. In today’s Gospel, God fishes for men. Once inside his net of divine love, the men themselves become fishers of men.
 
The drama opens with great excitement at the lakeshore: “Great crowds were pressing in on Jesus to hear the Word”—how great a thirst people have, even in our day, for the Word of God. Peter and his fishing partners, however, were paying no attention. They were too busy with their business. The City of San Francisco, where I live, is exploding with big business. Great crowds pour in from all over the world to get coveted tech sector jobs. Our streets, office buildings, and restaurants surge with talented young adults. One columnist quipped that the city has become one big singles bar. Almost none of them go to Mass. It is not that they don’t like Jesus—they are simply too busy to think about him. There is so much to do in San Francisco right now.
 
The Barque of Peter

Back to the Lakeshore: Jesus asks Simon if he can get into his boat, and from that moment, his simple fishing boat becomes the “Barque of Peter,” now known as the Catholic Church. Jesus is still teaching from this simple boat, and the Church should never doubt who speaks, or who should be speaking, from her pulpits. It is Jesus through Peter who speaks, and we priests had better make sure we are not adulterating the Word with our own shoddy opinions. Jesus commands Simon: “put out into deep water and lower your nets….” Our Divine Lord commands this boat; Christ is the master of His Church. The Pope himself takes direction from Christ, and if not, his nets will remain empty. “Master,” Simon contends, “we have worked hard all night but have caught nothing…but at your command, I will lower the nets.” Peter is not the perfect Pope, but he gives Jesus something to work in his simple obedience.
 
But Jesus steps into Peter’s boat not principally to preach to the crowds or even to teach him how to fish. He steps into the boat to fish for Peter. First he has to win Peter’s soul, and only then will Peter learn how to fish himself. The men haul in such a great catch that both boats are in danger of sinking. Peter realizes that it is not his work, but God’s. He falls on his knees in the boat: “leave me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” The one thing necessary for a priest to catch souls is to know that he is a sinner, unworthy, incapable, and so begin the process of surrender to God’s will. Jesus reassures the fishermen: “don’t worry. From now on, you will be fishers of men.”
 
Leaving it behind to follow the Master

The four men leave everything to follow Jesus. Leaving the business and their families seemed like a lot, but it was their part to play in saving their own souls and the souls of the world. Four men are currently in the seminary from this parish (St. Joseph’s, Modesto). I can think of at least four other men who have been ordained from this parish in recent years. And why this parish? Because for twenty years St. Joseph’s parish has had a Eucharistic adoration chapel, and for twenty years she has promoted devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary (as should any parish named for her spouse). Jesus and Mary: these two names draw a man or woman from the busyness of life to follow God.
 
Never lose these two guiding principles: Jesus and Mary. In my San Francisco parish, named for the Mother of God, we are developing perpetual prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Already we have 36 hours of continuous adoration from Friday mornings to Saturday nights, and already we have a man in the seminary. We know more will follow, more will enter consecrated life, and more will enter faithful loving marriages, as long as we focus on Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and his Holy Mother in the rosary. 

Mother’s Day
A blessed and Happy Mother’s Day to all of our beloved mothers and grandmothers, both those living in this world and those living with God in the next. I was touched to receive a Mother’s Day letter from one of our parishioners, even though I’m a father. I had received her elderly mother into the Church a few months ago, and then gave her a robust Catholic funeral a few days after her baptism. “This will be the first year without our beloved mamma and grandma,” her daughter wrote. “We miss her dearly. There is not a day that goes by that we do not think of her.” There should never be a day when we do not think about and pray for our mothers, beginning with our mother in heaven. We celebrate Mother’s Day in Our Lady’s Month of May because no man who daily remembers Our Lady can ever forget the woman who gave him birth. And that goes double for the ladies, true daughters of Mary!
 
He takes his seat
Today the liturgical feast is the Solemnity of the Ascension, the second glorious mystery of the rosary. Many dioceses have moved his feast from Ascension Thursday proper to the following Sunday, in the hope that more Catholics would attend Ascension Mass. Whether this was a good idea or not is debatable, but certainly all Catholics should deepen their understanding of this fundamental mystery. In fact, the Paschal Mystery itself would be incomplete without Christ’s Ascension. Not only the Passion, Death, and Resurrection, but also the Ascension completes the central mystery of our faith. Without Christ seated in heaven, we could not be saved—he directs the delivery systems of the faith from his place at the right hand of the Father. He settles into the captain’s chair, so to speak, for the long journey He must accomplish with His Holy Church. He has not left earth to abandon us, but to assume command of human history. Even in the present cultural decline, even in our current political chaos, even in the most severe breakdown periods in our lives, we must not disbelieve that Someone is in control. Let the storms beat against us, let the winds and the seas rock our little boats and even the mighty ship of the Church herself: Someone is yet at the captain’s helm, steering us through history to our safe haven.

Yet we are anxious
Certainly the waves and darkness frighten us. So the Apostles ask if Jesus will restore the Kingdom “at this time,” that is, before He leaves them. After all, establishing the Kingdom was the whole reason He came from heaven, and they began to panic as he prepared to leave them to do the job themselves. Jesus tells them, “It is not for you to know when and how.” It is enough for you to know only that you will receive power from on high to be my witnesses on earth, The restoration of the kingdom will be accomplished by fits and starts, through our manifestly imperfect witness—a long hard row through the night, against relentless winds. We might think Christ is asleep on some cushions in the back of our boat as we pull on the oars, taking on water. But He is not asleep. He is our mighty captain, guiding as he alone knows how.

Stella Maris
We are in the season of the Church’s first novena, that nine day time of prayer between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday: “Stay in Jerusalem,” Jesus told the Apostles, “until you are clothed with power from on high.” As He sends the Holy Spirit to strengthen us for this ocean crossing, and so He also sends his own mother, the Star of the Sea and spouse of the same Holy Spirit. In this month of May, on this Mother’s Day, we turn to our heavenly mother, the star who guides our little boats, giving joy even to those manning the mighty ship of the Church herself. Every Pope has turned to her: John Paul chose Totus Tuus (“all yours”) as his motto, Benedict turned to Our Lady the day after his election, saying “I invoke the maternal intercession of Most Holy Mary, in whose hands I place the present and the future of my person and the Church." Pope Francis, for his part, hurried over the St. Mary Major the day after his election to beg her help and encouragement. Guiding our little boats through the storms, we look to her when we pray the rosary, when we spend time in her own church here on Geary Boulevard. Honoring her, we honor our earthly mothers—my mother put a miraculous medal on me when I was 7 years old and told me never to take it off—and I’ve got it on right now (not the original medal, for little boys can’t seem to keep any one thing on them for long). Let’s keep her medal on us, and let her guide us through the squalls that come between us and our safe haven.

​Love and Desire
We have a powerful collect for today’s Mass that I cannot pass over without explaining:

 

We want to love his commands, simply because they are from Him. The harder his commands seem, the more we love them, because also we want to desire what he promises, namely, heaven. Christianity is not a religion of compulsion but of desire. What does the human heart really desire—a thing or a Person? Distractions or reality? The Latin word used in the prayer for “distractions” is varietates—as in that silly and superficial American TV program called the “variety show” that unloads one dumb joke after another, along with gossip and crude hype. The trinket shops in Mexico are called variedades—“Variedades Y Fantasías Carol ” is one I saw recently—selling cheap bracelets, fake pearls, tawdry romance novels. I’m quite sure that what the human heart desires at the end of the day is to fix our hearts where true joys are found. We came from God, and we desire to cut through the artifices of this world to regain our place with God. “How do I get to heaven?” a lady asked St. John Vianney. “As straight as a canon ball” he shot back.
 
All from God, all returns to Him
Let’s look at the Epistle. “All good giving,” writes St. James, “and every perfect gift, comes from above.” Every thing, as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, is good—evil is not a “thing” or any positive essence, but the absence of being, the absence of God. “Every good thing” writes St. James, comes from the padre luminum, the father of lights, with whom there is no alteration or shadow of change.
 
Thus we recognize the goodness in all things, and are grateful for every thing. As St. Paul says, give thanks in all circumstances. We know where it came from and where it is going. All is from God, and everything is returning to God. Our blessed Lord speaks to this in the Gospel: “I am going to the one who sent me….” Jesus knows whence he comes and wither he goes. He who is God from God and Light from the Father of Lights, knows that He has come from God the Father and is returning to God the Father. We become like him when we realize, and live according to that conviction, that we have come from God and are returning to him. If not to him, to hell. We have no lasting home in this world; we are pilgrims, on a journey, in status viatoris. We are free to the extent that we have no illusions or attachments to what is temporary. We are enslaved to the extent that we absolutize that which is not absolute.
 
Stewardship

The practice of conviction is what we call Christian stewardship. To recognize, to be continually grateful, for everything that is—our families, our homes, our jobs, our bodies, our minds, our past, present, and future—as a gift of God. And then to give it back to him: he who “keeps” his life—possesses it—will lose it, but he who loses it will preserve it unto life eternal. “Corpus Domini nostril Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam eternam.” "May the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ guard your soul unto eternal life. Amen." Please pray for the parish leadership, who will be going on a stewardship retreat this Friday and Saturday, to study what it must mean for us to be Christian stewards, to fix our hearts on the life of the world to come, to be detached from this world’s goods by giving a portion away of our time, our talents, and our treasure. Our Lady, of course, was the first Christian and first Christian steward: let it be done to me as you have said, because none of my life is mine. It is all yours, and I use it for your good pleasure!

Receiving Mercy 

Today’s Gospel is very difficult to hear, if we listen carefully, because some men of God try to kill a woman. Some Pharisees, who would have been respected as we respect pastors and theologians, drag a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. Apparently they had followed a woman—probably a poor prostitute—and watched her hooking up with a customer. Not accusing the man, they jumped out to force this woman before Jesus; they used her to trap Jesus. They were using the law as a sledgehammer to bash this unfortunate sinful woman, and to bash sinless Lord Jesus. These two are thrown together, and unbelievably, they understand each other. Jesus wants to give the mercy she needs, and she gratefully receives the mercy he thirsts to give. The accusers, however, do not ask and so do not receive mercy. The woman, abased, humbly awaits Jesus’ decision, whereas the Pharisees grudgingly drop their stones, but keep their hatred, only now transferring it to Jesus. They have come for blood, and they will get it. Jesus will die in that woman’s place. In absolving her, Jesus makes her capable of receiving the real love she had never known from a man.
 
Sacramental Confession 

This drama plays out several times a day in our parish. Every time someone goes to confession, he or she kneels before the Lord humbling awaiting Christ’s sentence. And Our Lord does indeed judge the sinner, but only as worthy of mercy. He has come for our sins, and weeps that we will not give them to him (“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you knew…”). The one thing Christ needs, however, is our presence in that confessional. God does uphold the law, for without right order we sink into demonic chaos. He does not condemn her, but he does tell her to sin no more. He doesn’t abrogate the law but makes us capable of keeping the law.
 
Go with Our Lady

So go to confession at least once before Easter. The woman in today’s gospel, after all, made her confession, albeit not under optimal circumstances. But the effect was the same—she received pardon and the grace to “avoid this sin.” Let’s not wait until someone accuses us, drags us under the public eye, before confessing our sins. The Church gives us the confessional to make it relatively painless. Ask Our Lady to go with you into the confessional, as crying children sometimes ask their mothers to go with them. You will not be condemned by Jesus, and you will escape the condemnation of men.

A Face like the Sun
​Our Lord climbs Mount Tabor to pray with Peter, James, and John, and while he is praying, is transfigured: the fourth Luminous Mystery of the Rosary. Two weeks ago I too climbed Mt. Tabor, with 45 others from our parish,  during our Holy Land pilgrimage. How wonderful to have been where Our Lord stood. We could see the fertile Valley of Jezreel, the limestone cliffs of Nazareth to the northwest, the Golan Heights to the east. What a grace to make that pilgrimage—you see the Scriptures as you hear them! So on Mount Tabor, Christ reveals his glory to Peter, James and John to strengthen their faith for the trauma of his Crucifixion. “This is my beloved Son,” a voice thunders from within the cloud. This is my Son, blazing with the radiance of the sun, with the glory of a billion stars. He will be humiliated on Good Friday, but he will be raised up, for the Creator of the Stars of Night cannot be conquered by darkness.
 
A Boy’s Telescope
When I was a kid I bought a telescope. With that treasure, I explored the heavens, gazing at galaxies and moons and planets, the rings of Saturn, the polar caps of Mars, the dusty lanes of stellar nebulae. As the apostles beheld Christ’s heavenly glory, let us also turn our telescopes to the heavens for a moment. On a clear night from a high mountain—Mt. Tam for instance—you can see hundreds of stars, a few planets, and the smoky edges of our own galaxy. That dull smudge is the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light years distant (that’s 10,000 million trillion miles—the Lord owns a lot of real estate), which contains over a trillion stars. Both galaxies belong to the Local Group of about 50 galaxies, which belongs to a cluster, which clusters make up filament patterns of superclusters. My new favorite telescope, the Hubble, took a picture of the night sky the size of your thumb held at arm’s length and found 10,000 galaxies in that small dark spot. If every star (with its dozens of planets) were a grain of sand, the box to contain all the observable stars in the universe would have to be two miles high and two miles wide and stretch from New York to Atlanta. The universe is vast beyond our imagining, but God made man as the central jewel of creation: a creature to be loved for his own sake, and made capable of loving his Creator. But we are only capable of that love if we keep ourselves pure.
 
Your Sanctification
In the Epistle, St. Paul pleads with his beloved Christians at Thessalonica to imitate this immaculate whiteness of Christ.  He earnestly urges them, in the Lord Jesus, “to refrain from immorality and lust…. God has not called us to impurity but to holiness.” As a mother would speak with her daughter, or a father his son, he addresses the delicate and burning issue of purity. “Conduct yourselves in a way pleasing to God… this is the will of God—your sanctification.” Paul defines “sanctification,” in this passage, as sexual purity. Holiness is more than chastity, of course, but bodily impurity severely limits our capacity to love God. “Every other sin,” St. Paul will say, “is outside the body,” but the impure man compromises the very temple of the Holy Spirit, which is his own body.
 
While He was at Prayer…
The world in which we live smears its filth on us at every turn, from television, movies and social media. You can hardly do a simple google search without getting contaminated by someone’s impurity. How can we maintain the purity in which God created us? How can we keep our place among the radiance of his sun and stars? We all know that only God can keep us pure, that we are powerless in the grip of our own lusts to either sexual impurity or base uncharity. It is for us to pray, from the heart, every day, to dispose ourselves. Notice that the glory of Our Lord’s immaculate purity was revealed while he was in prayer. That’s why, at Star of the Sea, we are putting all our time, money, and energy into Perpetual Adoration of the Eucharist. We must make our parish another Mount Tabor, a hilltop from which the radiance of Christ’s light beams over the City. Every parish must be so, and I believe the surest way is to develop a culture of Eucharistic prayer in every parish. May Our Lady, the Immaculata, Star of the Sea, shine her brilliant purity upon us, leading us to the glory of Christ himself.

Desert Warfare
We entered into the great and holy season of Lent with Ash Wednesday last week. The fact that just about everyone loves Ash Wednesday confirms what Cardinal Sarah says in his book God or Nothing: to be atheist is quite impossible. Everyone confesses at some point the futility of these few years on earth and senses that only God can save us from returning to mere dust.
 
The collect for Ash Wednesday expresses the season with particular precision: “Grant, O Lord, that we may begin with holy fasting this campaign of Christian service, so that, as we take up battle against spiritual evils, we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint.” Lent is armed conflict. We enter into a campaign of military service; we prepare for battle armed with weapons of self-restraint. It is just this kind of desert warfare that Christ enters into on the First Sunday of Lent. The Spirit drives him into the desert to meet the enemy at close quarters. He takes with him only the weapons of self-restraint; He talks to no one, he sleeps on the ground, and most importantly, he refuses food and drink. On the fortieth day the Bible tells us, with typical Semitic understatement, Jesus was “hungry.” At his weakest, Jesus confronts Satan.
 
The Mount of Temptation
I want to share with you an extraordinary experience I had on Ash Wednesday. 45 of us were making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and our last day happened to be Ash Wednesday. We were scheduled to visit Jericho, where Jesus had been baptized and then driven by the Holy Spirit into the desert. Notice that Our Lord begins his public ministry by retreating into the desert, and then confronting Satan: first things first, right? We had come to the same place on the first day of Lent, and I convinced the tour director to let us make a side trip past Jericho to the “Mount of Temptation.” It is a desert cliff above Jericho, a few miles from the Jordan River, the site of Christ’s temptation after his 40-day fast. Built into those cliffs halfway up is a Greek Orthodox monastery, the extreme south end of which is found a chapel with a rock in the far wall. This is the rock on which Lucifer placed our Lord to show him all the kingdoms of the world, which he would give him, if only Jesus would submit himself to Satan.
 
Members of His Body
We spent some time in that little chapel, overlooking the vast fertile plain of Jericho, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea. I’ve asked many of our pilgrims which place of our pilgrimage struck them the most—Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem? They all, to my surprise, said it was the Mount of Temptation. Christ was tempted in every way that we are, writes St. Paul. We found Christ’s testing cathartic for our own temptations.  “If in Christ we have been tempted,” writes St. Augustine, “in him we overcome the devil…. He could have kept the devil from himself; but if he were not tempted he could not teach you how to triumph over temptation.” I know that when I am tired, hungry, abandoned, or at the end of my rope, Satan will appear with “solutions.” Just get something to eat if you are depressed, he will say, or level some power over someone, or jump off a cliff and see what happens. The world, the flesh, and the devil offer us all sorts of solutions to our problems, but Jesus did not swerve one inch from God’s will.  Perched on the Mount of Temptation, we sensed that we too could keep faithful to God’s will by clinging to Christ. If He could do it, I can do it, because I am after all a member of his own body.
 
Lent is a time for war, desert warfare, not only with the devil but with our own flesh and the world. War requires discipline and self-denial to reach our objective. Let us ask our Holy Mother, who trained her will from the moment she made her Fiat to the angel Gabriel, to enter this campaign of Christian service joyfully, armed with the weapons of self-restraint.

Love is patient….
Our second reading today should sound familiar, if you’ve ever been to a wedding: “Love is patient, Love is Kind....Love never fails.” I’ll return to St. Paul’s description of Christian love in a minute, but first a glance at the Old Testament and Gospel readings.
 
I will not leave you crushed
The Prophet Jeremiah is discouraged. His fellow Jews oppose or, worse, ignore, his preaching. I can relate to that, because I often feel like I’m preaching to an empty (or mostly-empty) church on Sundays. Do you ever get that feeling when you speak to your children or employees, that they just couldn’t care less? So Yahweh speaks encouragement to his prophet: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Last Saturday 50,000 of us marched down Market Street in solidarity with people still in their mothers’ wombs, but actually God knows each of us even before we are conceived. Before we even make it to the womb, God knows us and loves us. “Be not crushed,” he tells Jeremiah, “as though I would leave you crushed!” Every prophet will be rejected by the people he loves because the word of God will always be a sign of contradiction. If we are not at some point “crushed” by the words we bear we are not speaking God’s word. Yes, the prophet will be crushed, but God will not leave him crumpled in the dirt. He will raise him up, stronger, better, invincible. “They will fight against you but not prevail over you, because I am with you,” says the Lord.
 
The Cliffs
Jesus too speaks the word of God in his hometown, and his neighbors are driven to fury. They drag him to the edge of the cliffs on which Nazareth is built to hurl him down headlong, but he passes through their midst. Just a digression here, if you don’t mind. In a few days forty of us from this parish will look up at those jagged 70 foot limestone cliffs. On Wednesday we leave on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to walk where the Son of God walked, to pray at the places he prayed, to see, smell, and taste the life he lived. And we will offer Mass where he died and rose. Nothing like a week in the Holy Land confirms a man’s faith in Christianity, because our faith is real, it is historical. We can spend a week in the place where eternity stepped into time. The first time I saw those horrible cliffs near Nazareth, I shuddered to think how the people Jesus grew up with would want to cast him from their pinnacles. I encourage you to make that trip before you die. So they try to kill Jesus, and they do kill Jesus eventually, in the most horrible manner possible. But He will say from the cross, “Father, forgive them. I still love them….”
 
Love never fails
In our second reading, St. Paul defines the love Christ pours into us from Calvary. I don’t have time to unpack even half of the riches of this passage—I leave it to your prayerful reading of this Scripture (for example, during your weekly holy hour). But this I will say about Paul’s description of Christian Love: it never fails. If you make a speech at the Rotary Club, and you don’t get all the words right, or didn’t prepare well, or are just not a good speaker—your words will not fail if you speak with love. If you are not that smart, and you don’t know how to run your business or your family or your friendships well, if you only use love, you will not fail. If you submit to God’s love in the way you speak, in the patience and kindness with which you speak and act, he will not fail you. Love will not fail you, because God does not fail.
 
Mother of Mercy
Pope Francis has declared a year of mercy for this reason, that it is love, not knowledge, it is fidelity, not success, it is mercy, not sacrifice, that God desires. We turn to Mary, the Mother of Mercy Incarnate, Jesus Christ. She will teach us how to speak and act with love, even in very difficult circumstances. My first pastorate was a large parish; 30 staff. I didn’t know quite how to lead such a large number—you know that if you get more than two people in a room you’ve got a fight. I tried all sorts of prayer techniques and best management practices, but eventually I just got them together every Wednesday to pray the rosary (and of course after the rosary, lunch). But it was the presence of Our Lady, and her Son, that made our parish, and parish staff, a place of love. The love of God, through her, will not fail us.