On the Sunday after Christmas Holy Mother Church points to the Holy Family, because with Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph became a family. “How vast and rich,” writes St. John Paul, “is the treasure of Christian truth about the family!”

Noble Poverty

Joseph and Mary bring the baby Jesus to the Temple in obedience to the Law of Moses. They can’t afford a calf or a goat to redeem their Son, so they offer what they can afford—two little pigeons. The Lord enters his own temple, he who made and sustains the entire universe, and all his parents have to offer are two scrawny birds. Joseph and Mary show us what noble poverty looks like. When God assumed the indignity of a human body, He ennobled the honest poverty of being human. No longer is poverty of intellect, or poverty of physical beauty, or poverty of money, or poverty of health or friends or social standing shameful. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords entered his Temple clothed in no more than His radiant simplicity.

A family that imitates Christ’s poverty is never poor. Love, and children who are the fruit of love—a sense of home—are the true wealth only a family can provide. We live in one of the richest per-capita cities in America (the median household income in San Francisco is $75,000, compared with New York at $50,000), but we have the lowest number of children. In this city, money is more important than children. But wealth is measured in love, not in dollars. Without children we become inexpressibly poor. Pity people who can afford only chic restaurants and million dollar condos, but can’t afford children.

Attacks  on the Family

I was talking to a woman in a plane recently. Everyone in her family—herself, her second husband, her children, and even one of her grandchildren, have been divorced. She has recovered somewhat, but only after 20 years of therapy. We can scarcely imagine the scope of devastation resulting from the collapse of family life in America. “The family,” wrote St. John Paul, “is a necessary good for peoples, an indispensable foundation for society… it is a unique good for children… a school which enables men and women to grow to the full measure of their humanity.” If the family fails, our children will be stunted and dysfunctional, only a fraction of their potential. We’ve seen a lot of anger over black men attacking police officers, and police officers shooting black men. But is anyone asking why America’s jails contain a disproportionate number of black males? Could it be because 75% of black boys grow up without a father, deprived of the irreplaceable benefit of a home and a family?

We must awaken to the fact that the family has been under societal attack since contraception and then divorce began to be promoted in the 1930s. Today the attack takes the form of equating same-sex relationships with marriages and families, and tomorrow it will be polygamy or even incestuous relationships. Many of these attacks begin right here in our own city in the name of free choice, but what choice do the poor African American kids have who grow up without a family to call their own?

Witnessing to the family

How can we defend and build up the family, we who live at ground zero? We can begin by coming to church. This church is mostly empty, and empty churches in America’s cities mean empty families. Where is America going to hear the truth about family life and its irreplaceable role in society? From the government? At school? In a movie theatre? The Church has been in the marriage business for 3500 years. She knows a thing or two about marriage and culture.

And where are families going find the grace to withstand these attacks? From the Eucharist, from the sacraments, from their prayer lives. Thank you for coming to Mass—of course, I’m preaching to the choir. I need to preach to the fence-sitters. Only you can bring them in.  We must also witness to family life by riding out the difficulties of our own marriages. A boy asked his grandma if she ever thought of divorcing grandpa. “Oh no, child,” she replied. “I never thought of divorcing him. I wanted to kill him a few times, but never divorce him.”

Finally we must pray for the family. Every time you pray the rosary, pray for your family, and all families. I can’t think of a better prayer to strengthen and save the family than the rosary. If you don’t pray the family rosary, you are not doing all you can to save the family, and save America. May Jesus, Mary, and Joseph protect my own family, and all families in this great land.

The Angelus Prayer

Does anyone recognize the Collect for today’s Mass? “Pour forth, we beseech you O Lord, your grace into our hearts that we to whom the incarnation of Christ, your Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by his passion and cross, be brought the glory of his resurrection?” It is the “Angelus Prayer,” which Catholics for centuries have prayed three times a day. In Europe all the church bells ring at noon, as do our own bells here at Star of the Sea, calling us to this prayer. We would do well to regain this tradition.

The Angelus prayer reflects today’s Gospel, which is the Annunciation, the precise moment in which the eternal Word became incarnate. The mystery of the Incarnation stands at the head of all the Christian mysteries. This first mystery of the rosary contains all the other mysteries within it. God became man, so that man might become God. We ‘become God’ not because we are capable of anything great, but because God shares his divine life with us. It is by his own gracious will that He brings us into himself. “God does not choose the qualified; he qualifies those whom he chooses.” It is only for us to surrender to that perfect will.

Total Surrender

No human being had ever, or has ever, or will ever perfectly surrender to God except the Blessed Virgin Mary. Only she who was conceived without original sin could do this, and she did do it. The rest of humanity is trapped in the fears, addictions, and dysfunctions of Original Sin. But the wonder of Christmas is that one person did completely surrender to God’s perfect will in loving trust.

God has always loved us, but we have not always loved God. It was at the precise moment when the young maiden of Nazareth chose to trust him completely that the world changed. The human and divine wills, for the first time in the history of our race, perfectly aligned, and she became the mother of all the living, humanity’s solitary boast, our one great merit to become children of God. That’s why Christmas is not just about Jesus, and the US Post Office doesn’t just have a Christmas stamp with Jesus, but a picture of Jesus and Mary, Mary holding Jesus.

Gaudete: joy

Today, the Third Sunday of Advent, is “Gaudete Sunday,” so named from the first word of the entrance verse for the Mass: Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say it, Rejoice!... the Lord is near” (Phil 4:4). The priest and the altar clad themselves in rose colored vestments to express the Church’s joyful expectation of the Lord’s imminent arrival. We anticipate the Lord not with fear and trembling but with steadfast joy. The Prophet Isaiah’s joy flows from his heart and soul: “I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul.” His joy is that of one sent to bear glad tidings to a people in darkness; an exultant energy, as Our Lady went in haste to bring Jesus to her cousin Elizabeth.

This Present Darkness

Next Sunday will be the darkest day of the year, the day before the Winter Solstice. There is no longer and colder night than December 21st. Christmas brightens the long winter of our earthly exile. In this month of December the Church celebrates feasts of light. On Monday we celebrated the Immaculate Conception, the “white dawn announcing the Son’s rising.” Yesterday it was St. Lucy, a child martyr of the 3rd century whose names means light (Lucy from “lux”), and whose radiant joy overcame the hatred of her executioners. In ten days we celebrate the greatest of all Festivals of Light, the star of Bethlehem, the radiance of angels over nighttime flocks, the Solemnity of Christmas. “O that birth forever blessed,” writes Aurelius Prudentius in his 4th century hymn. “When the Virgin, full of grace, Overshadowed by the Spirit, Bore the Savior of our Race.” It is by virtue of His birth that St. Paul can command us in the Epistle to “rejoice always.”

Anyone can rejoice in every circumstance if he knows that God is with him, because joy is a virtue, not merely a feeling. Joy is an act of the will, sometimes difficult, but always possible to men of faith. We do not have to be sad, we do not have to be negative; we can choose to smile into the darkness, to sing while we work at even disagreeable tasks. “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.” ‘Always’ because God is with us in every circumstance. Joy is a virtue that becomes less difficult and more perfect with practice.

“Make Straight the Path”

In the Gospel, John is baptizing at the River Jordan, and some priests ask him: who are you? He tells them that he is not the Messiah, but a voice in the desert crying out “make straight the way of the Lord.” The sad and lonely desert, the dangerous and frightening wilderness, is spreading. Senselessness, perhaps guided by calculated demonic fury, is undermining the once solid foundations of an earlier Christian era. Two years ago today a young man drove up to Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot 20 children. Two days ago a 22-year-old man opened fire at Rosemary Anderson School in Oregon. School shootings are relatively common now, but unknown just a generation ago. What has changed? Well, we can hardly expect people not to kill children when our government subsidizes child murder under another name. Not 20 children but 20,000 children die every day in this world through government-subsidized abortion.

It is always darkest before dawn. We cannot lift the darkness—only God can save our world—but we can make straight the path. It is the joyful penances of Advent, our spiritual preparation, that make Christmas the most joyful season of the year. Take those spiritual practices away, and Christmas loses its joy. It becomes just another commercial event, driven by blind market forces.

“Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you catch souls,” wrote Mother Teresa. If you pray, you will be joyful, because you will see light in even the deepest darkness. Go to Mass every week, every day if possible, and bring your friends. Make a good confession, schedule in a weekly holy hour, pray the rosary, and you will radiate the light of a joyful Christian. “Pow’rs, dominions bow before him, the babe, the world’s redeemer,” wrote Aurelius Prudentius 1600 years ago. “Now he shines, the long expected. Let creation praise its Lord.”

The Immaculate Conception

I made up a nice little Advent quiz for all of you today—just three questions.

Question One: Tomorrow is a “holy day of _________.”

Question Two: Tomorrow, December 8, is the Feast of the ____________.

Question Three: The Immaculate Conception refers to whom?

The White Dawn

Why does the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception occur in the middle of Advent? Because Mary’s Immaculate Conception was the prelude to the Incarnation, the necessary preparation for the baby Jesus. It was fitting that God first prepare an immaculate mother for His Son by preserving her body and soul from the decay of original sin. Mary is the “white dawn” that announces the rising of God’s Son. Have you ever passed a very bad night, longing for that first bit of light in the eastern sky? The dawn assures us that the night will not last forever. So in Isaiah Chapter 40, the “Book of Consolation” is written for a people in their 40th year of exile, two generations in Babylonian slavery for their infidelities. “Comfort, give comfort to my people,” says Yahweh. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem—her service (slavery) is at an end, her guilt expiated.” Indeed, she has paid double for her sins. It had seemed an endless exile, but Isaiah announces that God and man are now reconciled. “Cry out at the top of your voice these glad tidings: like a shepherd our God feeds and carries his people.”

Glad Tidings

The first words of Mark’s Gospel brings us these glad tidings: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” In this first Gospel to be written, St. Mark is announcing something absolutely new. As Fr. Barron points out in his homily this week, the word “gospel” (in Greek “eu-angelion”) was the “good message” that the emperor would send ahead of him announcing a great military victory. Days before the people would see the emperor marching into Rome at the head of his victory parade, they would hear the heralds or “evangelists” galloping into the city, flags flying: “the emperor has won the victory! We are saved from the enemy!” In fact, one of the emperor’s titles was son of God, but Mark names Jesus Christ the “Son of God.” He is saying that no imperial victory, no good news, can compare with this good news, because Jesus is one and only Son of God and lover of men. These glad tidings are of a whole different order; they address the fundamental problem with our humanity. They grant true freedom.

Prepare

Advent is our annual retreat, our preparation for this king. He has won the victory, and He is on his way to enter San Francisco in triumph (He does that, actually, at every Mass in every Catholic church in this city). His heralds arrive ahead of him, and in today’s gospel it is not only St. Mark, but St. John the Baptist as well. “One mightier than I is coming…he will baptize you with fire,” So make straight his paths—fill up what is lacking in your hearts, and excavate what is burdensome in your bodies.

How to prepare? If all we do before Christmas this year is shop and eat, we will not be ready for such a King. Advent is a time of greater prayer and some measure of fasting, so let’s get at it. Here are three suggestions:

1. Pray the rosary once a week, with a view to praying it every day, as Our Lady at Fatima requested. Most Catholics use rosaries as rear view mirror ornaments, but let every Mass-going Catholic in this parish pray the rosary at least once a week. Advent 2014 is a good time to start.
2. Go to confession once a month. The people came to John “acknowledging their sins.” Let us do the same to prepare a heart fit for God’s Advent.
3. Make a significant gift to someone poorer than you. Christmas is meaningless unless we give sacrificially from our hearts. We need to feel the gift. Money is always nice, and we all know people who have less than we do. Time is good too—a listening ear, a heartfelt letter. 

Christmas—that is, Christ’s Mass—is near. I’m sure you all go to Mass on December 25. Please don’t go unprepared: Christmas comes only once a year.

You might notice that the church is a bit brighter today. We’ve changed out our old 500-watt light bulbs for newer technology 100-watt bulbs. 20% more light for 500% less electricity. Many thanks to Thomas Edison, and to Professor Nick Holonyak for inventing the LED light bulb.

 Gives all his possessions, then leaves

Have you ever lent your car to someone? You know that apprehensive feeling when he or she drives off into city traffic with your baby? In the Gospel parable today, a “man going on a journey” gives all his possessions to three of his servants. Who is that man going on a journey, and was gone a Long Time? It is Jesus Christ, who left us in charge of his Church—the salvation of the human race—and went back to heaven, promising to return someday. It sure seems like he has been gone a long time. God trusts us with all his possessions, and in particular his most precious possession: love.

Talents

He gives the first servant five “talents:” a talent was not a unit of money but a weight, around 100lbs. A talent of gold today is worth $1.9 million. But as much money as that is, the money is worthless if you don’t spend it. The first two servants spend it, and spend it wisely—they invest it, and I’ll bet they had a really good time doing so. Let’s say the owner was gone thirty years. In 30 years $10 million can become $30 million, and done lots of good along the way. Jesus has been gone 2000 years….that’s about $300 trillion worth of grace and salvation we should have been able to build up for him. But Jesus didn’t just leave us cash. He left us grace and mercy, the capacity to love one another. That’s worth a lot more than money—money can’t buy love. But note that this kind of “talent” increases only to the extent that we give it away. Let’s say God gives me a talent for building people up, for loving the loveless. If I keep it to myself, the talent dies. If I spend it on others, it grows. $10 million, with a little patience and application, becomes $30 million.

The Law of the Gift

We call this the law of the gift: “We grow in wealth to the extent that we give it away.” You can only “have” the greatest gifts—like love, beauty, gracefulness, and friendship--by giving them away. The moment we try to keep these things to ourselves rather than freely sharing them, they melt through our fingers. Christmas is only a few weeks away, and have you ever wondered why a post-Christian world still finds the Birth of Christ the happiest time of the year? I think it’s because Christmas is all about giving gifts. Christmas is the one great hope left to us lonely people that we can still give something to someone that they will treasure. God made us to love and be loved, but we seem to receive so little love. And that, I think, is because we don’t take the time and trouble to give love. Everybody seems to be either working or surfing the net or texting or busy with something else. We don’t take the time to listen to each other, to smile at each other.

Life is not about getting; it’s about giving. If I feel like no one is giving me love, like no one understands me, I can fix the problem immediately by giving love to another, by seeking to understand someone else. In the Gospel, the master gives the first servant five talents ($10 million), the second two talents, and the third one talent. The first two give it away. In business terms, they invest it, and get a return on their investment. But in spiritual terms, they give it away. And because they give it away, they get it back. They get back more than they gave away. And this is what “sharing your master’s joy” means: recognizing the law of the gift. It is the joy of knowing that our Father will always provide for us, and we need not fear to exercise the joy of giving.

Give and it will be given to you

Do you want to receive love? Then give love. In giving love, you will be filled with love. You will undoubtedly receive more than you give. Do you want to be beautiful? Then see the beauty in another person. You will radiate beauty in yourself. Do you want to be joyful? Then seek to bring joy to another person. Then you will be filled with an imperishable joy.

As in all virtues, Our Lady leads the way. She said “yes” to God’s will once, and she never stopped saying yes, no matter how much he seemed to take from her. “Give what he takes, and take what he gives, with a big smile,” said Mother Teresa. Our Lady trusted God enough to give without limits, and so with all the saints. “Give, and it will be given to you, packed down, flowing over….” May we prepare for the beautiful feast of Christmas in this way, by giving without caring if we receive a return.

All Souls Day

Halloween has become almost as big a holiday in America as Christmas, with “Halloween Superstores” and a lineup of movies and TV specials on zombies, death, and the paranormal. I think secularism’s fascination with death manifests a deep fear, and a need to trivialize the object of that fear. Certainly this time of year speaks death to us: dying leaves fall to earth, daylight fades earlier, and weather turns colder. In November, the Church helps her children make sense of the inevitable and confusing fact of death as we commemorate All Souls Day. The fact is, each of us will grow older, grow feebler, and die. The Book of Ecclesiastes describes “hateful old age” and “miserable death” (Homer’s description) in these words: “the silver cord is snapped, the golden bowl is broken, the pitcher is shattered at the spring, the pulley is broken at the well, the dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath returns to God who gave it.” That last line points to a truth deeper than death, which gives All Souls Day (and All Hallows Eve) its proper balance: the life breath will return to God, who gave it. Those who willingly return to God do not die, but become part of His deathless life.

Those of us who still live on this side of the grave must look around us at the great multitude filling the air, invisible to us, but more real than anything on earth. The saints in heaven (the Church Triumphant), and the holy souls in purgatory (the Church Suffering), have entered into real life, and we are shadows compared to them. We are the ghosts; they are the living--substantially alive in Christ Jesus. Today Holy Mother Church directs our attention to the souls in purgatory, where most of us will spend some time before entering heaven. These souls have died, and although they are holy, they are not saints in heaven. They need our prayers, and we need their prayers. They testify that death is not easy, but it makes perfect sense if we know where we have come from and know where we are going.

Destined for Life
Where did we come from? We came from God. No one creates himself.  All that we have and all that we are is a gift from a beneficent Father. Where are we going? We are going back to God, if we hold steadily onto our faith. One of the most consoling verses in Scripture is found in our first reading: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.” We priests read this at almost every funeral, and hearing it often has freed us from the fear of death. The souls of the just…we are “just” if we believe, if we surrender, if we trust in a Higher Power. We can only fall out of God’s hands, that is, end up in hell, if we stop believing in God. “Grace and mercy are with his holy ones, and his care is with his elect.” God has elected us for eternal happiness, and the Holy One makes holy those who believe in him.

Most of us do believe in God, but our faith is weak, and our Christian living poor. So we need Purgatory, a second chance after death to take care of the issues we couldn’t quite get a handle on here below. Pope Benedict writes: “if there were no purgatory, we would have to invent it, for who would dare say of himself that he was able to stand directly before God? And yet we don’t want to be ‘a pot that turned out wrong,’ that has to be thrown away; we want to be able to put right. Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each a pure heart is revealed.”

More real than death

Death is real, but God is more real. Let’s pray that we trust God more than we fear death. Secular culture, increasingly fascinated by zombies, vampires, ghosts and the paranormal, both fears death and pretends that it is only a laughing matter. We Christians neither fear death nor make light of it, because we have a Father in heaven whom we trust. We have betrayed Him and death is sin’s penalty, but He will forgive us if we let him. We also have a Mother in heaven, both Holy Mother Church and Our Mother Mary. As we think on the fact that we all must undergo our own death alone, and the hope that God will sweep us up into the glorious multitude of saints, we put ourselves into our Holy Mother’s arms. She will lead us over the waters of our earthly death and bring us at last to her Son and His kingdom, where we will live with the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, and all of those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, forever and ever. Amen.

I am pleased to see two seminarians at Mass this morning—Cameron Polette entered the archdiocesan seminary from our parish in August and is home for the long weekend, and Ivan Ruiz, our new Oratorian seminarian, is serving the Mass. I also see a U.S. Naval lieutenant in uniform, presumably here for Fleet Week. Thank you for your service to our Country. We are all looking forward to the air show this afternoon with the Navy’s Blue Angels.

 A Paralytic

In today’s Gospel, just as Jesus is getting out of a boat on the Sea of Galilee, some men lay down their paralyzed friend on the dock, right in front of Jesus. And Our Lord goes to the root of the problem: he cures the man’s sins. Only after healing his sins does he heal his paralysis. We take two lessons from today’s Gospel.

Paralyzed by sin

Our First Lesson: the paralyzed man’s friends make a bold move by plopping him down right in front of Our Lord. They don’t give Jesus any choice but to face their friend, and they don’t give their friend any choice but to face Jesus. St. Thomas Aquinas writes: “the paralytic symbolizes the sinner lying in his sin; just as the paralytic can’t move, so the sinner cannot help himself.” Many of our friends trapped in sin—addictions, anger, compulsions—simply cannot get beyond their demons. We’ve all had periods ourselves when we need someone to help us out of a situation—a divorce, a depression, an addiction. But the first thing we must do for a sick friend is to pray for him, because all sickness comes ultimately from sin. Sometimes more direct action is necessary, such as taking a buddy to an AA meeting, or insisting that he got to confession, or talking to him quietly about how he is treating his wife and children. I mentioned to a nice lady yesterday how much I miss seeing her husband at Mass. “It makes me so sad that his business keeps him so busy on Sunday’s, but I don’t want to pressure him,” she said sadly. “Well,” I suggested, “after 30 years maybe it’s time for a bit of well-placed pressure.” I don’t know what she said to him last night, but this morning he was at Mass. It made my heart leap with joy, and I’m sure she was all smiles too. We must never give up on helping others regain holiness.

All Healing goes through the Soul

And this brings us to our Second Lesson: the Sacrament of Penance. This sacrament heals paralyzed limbs and hearts. Imagine paralysis in the ancient world, before motorized wheelchairs, handicapped ramps, and automatic doors. A paralyzed man had to lie on his back for the rest of his life, staring helplessly up at the sky. Does Jesus cure this helpless man’s paralysis? Yes, but only after he forgives his sins. He points out that mortal sin is worse than paralysis. Indeed, it is sin that paralyzes. The first thing in any distress—physical, emotional, or spiritual—is to go to confession, and to pray before the tabernacle. Jesus heals the man’s paralysis with a word, not only indicating his divinity, but showing how external paralysis only manifests the root problem: the internal paralysis of mortal sin. The first thing in any sickness is to get to confession, because the soul is infinitely more important than anything else. If our souls are all right, the rest of us will be perfectly all right.

Kolbe: A Pure Heart, a strong body and spirit

St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish priest who died in Auschwitz in 1941, got tuberculosis at age 17, and lived with only 25% lung capacity for the rest of his life.  But this infirm man founded and oversaw the largest friary in the world (Neopokolanow, near Warsaw, with 700 men). At the time of his arrest in 1941, he was managing the largest printing concern in Poland. He survived three months in Auschwitz at hard labor and almost no food, and in the end saved the life of another man by taking his place in the starvation bunker. Where did he get his extraordinary strength? Not from his weak body, but from a pure soul, a heart cleansed of sin.

The way to all health is through our souls. Before we go to a physician or psychologist, we must go first to God. If our country is sick, and she is, let her look above all to her soul. Yesterday 3000 people followed the Archbishop in a Eucharistic procession to United Nations Plaza, where we prayed the rosary. President Obama had left the City just hours before along that same route. I was hoping he could’ve joined us for the rosary. Imagine President Obama praying the rosary with Archbishop Cordileone. Imagine what that would mean to the health of this country. Our Lord wishes to cleanse, heal, and strengthen us, but we must first confess our personal sins, and repent of our national sins.

Let us pray to the Blessed Mother, that she bring our sick and suffering souls to her Divine Son. Let her lead us to share her purity, and the glory God has bestowed upon her, and all the saints, among whom are we, in the making.

From Whom every family is named

St. Paul kneels before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. God defines the family because he created us. We did not create ourselves. The secularism in which the United States is awash rejects this fundamental truth; namely, that I am not God. It is by His authority that I even exist, and by His authority that the human family exists. Paul “kneels before the Father,” he bows to that authority, so that he might know the breadth and length, the height and depth, of the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge. Catholic schools and universities, in a better time, valued love more than knowledge; in a better time Catholic priests taught their parishioners and Catholic parents taught their children, that God created us for one purpose: to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, so as be eternally happy with him in the next.

But our faith has diminished as we have become wealthier and more educated. Oh that we could be wealthy, educated, and faithful to God! Why is it that economic prosperity almost always leads to loss of faith? As western culture loses its faith in God, the family, in particular, becomes incomprehensible. If we do not “kneel before the Father” with St. Paul, we will not be capable of “comprehending” the breadth and length of Christ’s love. We will become progressively stupid and loveless, that is, less civilized. For all the rhetoric about going green and being natural, our relations with each other have become unnatural, because we have rejected the laws of nature and nature’s God (as the Declaration of Independence states in the first paragraph).

Charity

San Francisco was once a city of strong Christian families. Its hundreds of churches bear witness to a more faithful era. How can we speak truth to a culture gone secular? I tell you, we can only do so with heartfelt charity. No one will listen to a Christian who does not speak with charity. In his letter to Nancy Pelosi and others who attacked him for defending marriage, Archbiship Cordileone wrote these words last June: “Please do not make judgments based on stereotypes, media images and comments taken out of context. Rather, get to know us first as fellow human beings. I myself am willing to meet personally with any of you not only to dialogue, but simply so that we can get to know each other. It is the personal encounter that … softens the heart.  In the end, love is the answer, and this can happen even between people with such deep disagreements. That may sound fanciful and far-fetched, but it … is possible. … I know this from personal experience.”

Legalism v. Charity

In the Gospel Jesus is attacked, like our good Archbishop, for an act of charity. At a Sabbath dinner party he sits opposite a man suffering from dropsy. “May I heal this man, even though it is the Sabbath?” he asks the Pharisees. They remain obtusely silent because they are legalists: they love the law more than the man. Jesus heals the man and then asks the sullen Pharisees if any one of them would rescue his own son or even his work animal ox on a Sabbath. They cannot answer him without surrendering their proud self-sufficiency. They would have to say, with St. Paul, that the law cannot save us. Only God can save us, and it is He who makes the laws. His supreme law of charity trumps all other laws, and this is something all of us find hard to live with.

Those of us who love the Latin Mass are particularly prone to legalism. The many rubrical laws of the Mass, however, are at the service of charity. If we follow every liturgical law of the Mass but are not moved to greater charity, meaning patience, heartfelt affection, and thoughtfulness to our brothers, the law is pointless. It becomes an obstacle to God, as it did in today’s Gospel.

The good news is that we can keep the disciplinary laws of the Church and the supreme law of charity. God does not command mutually exclusive laws. We can be faithful to the high standards of Christian morality without violating the highest law of charity. It’s all about how we say things: either with the loving heart of a mother or father, or the harsh demands of a Pharisee. We must turn, above all, to Our Lady for inspiration and intercession in achieving this delicate balance. She was supremely delicate among all women. She knew the right words, and will teach us how to speak, even to our enemies.

Everyone that hears this parable thinks how unfair life is. Jesus defends himself for giving equal pay for unequal work, and we listen with quiet resignation. Yes, God has been unfair to me many times in my life. I’ve been misunderstood by my best friends; I’ve been punished for doing good things; I’ve been cheated out of what should have been mine. I should be happier, I should be living a better life, I should be more respected in my community, I deserve a higher standing of living. Life just isn’t fair, and God’s responsible for life’s injustice.

Jesus does not disagree. In fact, he seems to bait us in this parable: “You think I’ve been unfair with you?” I won’t deny it, He says, and I’ll even chastise you for pointing it out. “Friend, take what is yours and go,” the Landowner says to the complaining worker. “What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?” Go, and do not question me.

God doesn't owe us anything, but He gives us everything anyway

I’d like to point out two things about this Scripture.

The first point is that God is God, and really, we have no right to question him. Does a gnat question the man who brushes him off? We are really nothing before God, and can stand on no authority of our own to challenge his judgments. We delude ourselves if we think we can demand anything of God. God is God, and we are not God.

There is a second point, however, and it is even more important than the first. God loves us. He loves us poor, trembling, insecure, complaining and whining gnats. I might think he is unfair with me, and that he loves that guy more than me, and that he has forgotten me. But this parable actually says quite the opposite. Everyone gets equal pay. Jesus is telling us that he gives each of us the same amount of his providence. He goes out five times during the day—at daybreak, at nine, at noon, at three, and at five o’clock—looking for unemployed people. He wanted to give honest work, and honest pay, to men that were without work or pay. Is it the fault of those hired at 5 o’clock that they did not get hired sooner? “No one has hired us,” they say. No one valued their work enough to hire them until the Landowner finds them. The worst experience is to be unwanted, and not valued, by others. Personally, I would much rather be the man hired at daybreak, working for someone who appreciates me, than that lonely guy kicking stones all day, hoping someone would hire him.

In the end, all get the same daily age. And in Scripture, that wage is eternal life. All the workers make it to heaven, because all responded to the Landowner. All came to the land of everlasting rest, owned by God, which we call heaven.

Getting to Heaven

The next time you feel that life is unfair, remind yourself that God gives each of us all that we need to be eternally happy. The next time your stomach gets sour over the fact that you’ve tried to honor God all your life but don’t feel the rewards—the next time you feel cheated—ask yourself: would I want anyone to be shut out of heaven forever? I think all of us would say that what we really want is bad men to become good men, and for everyone to go to heaven. This life is so brief, nothing really compares to the life of the world to come. So what if I have a little more grief than the next guy? The main thing is for us all to get safely to heaven.

Let us count on the prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary to keep us steady in our resolve to work in just the way God wants us to, and to work for the salvation of all souls, that we may all be in heaven one day with her, and the Blessed Trinity, and all the angels and saints forever.

On this day, September 14, in the year 335, the Emperor Constantine dedicated a basilica over the site on which was discovered a Cross. Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helena, had made a pilgrimage to Rome nine years earlier. With imperial resources, she was able to locate the long-lost hill of Calvary, upon which a second-century temple to Aphrodite had been built. Deep below its foundations she found three crosses, one of which was discovered to have healing powers.

St. Helena got back to Constantinople and convinced her son to erect a basilica over the spot on which Christ died and was buried. In 335 the basilica was finally ready, and the priests lifted high the Cross of Christ with this chant: “Ave Crux, spes unica!” Hail O Cross, our only hope! Behold this cross, an instrument of the vilest pagan torture, now become the jeweled sign of our salvation. No tragedy, no suffering, no evil can overcome redeeming health this Cross affords to those who believe. In the presence of this Cross, hope shines into the darkest despair.

Once I came upon a terrible accident on I-580. A woman had lost control and rolled her little Mazda into the median. Both her girls were dead, and the paramedics brought me to her just after they had told her this. I held out a 3-inch wooden cross from my emergency kit. She wordlessly pressed that cross to her lips as EMTs lifted her into the mediflight.

In September 2001, a fireman found steel beams twisted into a perfect cross in the wreckage of World Trade Tower #2. It became an icon of hope in the midst of the most senseless tragedy of our time.

Today your priests, and your Archbishop, will clothe themselves in red vestments. It is on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross that Archbishop Cordileone has chosen to visit our parish, and to offer the sacrifice of the Mass here in our sanctuary. We welcome him, and we adore the Holy Cross with him. May we cling to the Cross of Christ, like that unfortunate mother on the freeway. May we Hail the Cross of Christ, our only hope!z