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Good Friday 2011   

       On this awful and awe-filled day Christ takes on three foes: Truth is opposed by lies. Suffering is opposed by cowardice. Love is opposed by selfishness.  By his words and actions, Jesus commands us to reflect on real life, and our ability or inability to embrace it. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says if “you will be my disciple, you must deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow me.”

           My first response is: “but Lord, there has to be another way. You way ought to be something easier, something fun, something convenient. I want to follow you, but you are asking me for too much.” Many times we are like the rich young man, we want to follow the Lord, but we are so concerned with hanging on to the things this world says is important, we refuse the gift of hanging on the cross.  

              Which is safer, the world or the cross? What do you think? The world has pleasures, the world has beauty, the world has goodness. The values of the world also teach us that the world is in my control, people can be in my control, I can determine and create my own world according to my whims and desires.  No one is worth my life, I am important above all else. I must serve myself.       

         Jesus saw the world as beautiful and good, but is also saw it as dangerous. We can take ourselves too seriously and forget that it is God who is ultimately in charge, not me. Not my will, but THY WILL be done. This was the battle at Gethsemane. Jesus knows the Truth because as God He is the Truth. Only Jesus can cure the terrible and terminal disease that that the human race has brought upon itself. 

               Truth is sometimes a lonely thing. People are so inmeshed in their own realities and delusions of grandeur that when faced with the choice of the truth or a lie, they will delay or deflect the truth if they have the chance. To choose the Truth is to recognize that some things may be sacrificed- my comfort, my popularity, my wants. I need everything in me to hold onto the Truth, because there is nothing else worth holding. 

          Views in this world change as quickly as the wind, or Ohio weather. Jesus teaches us that we must give up everything else to follow him, to go against the flow, to say that my faith is not just an idea, but a deep commitment to Someone far greater than myself, who guides me and leads me into places I have not planned to go, but where I truly need to be. To live this faith takes great courage, knowing that I might be ridiculed, shunned even isolated because of what is right.         

       Why do we choose to suffer? We seem to gain so very little and at the same time appear to lose so much?  There is only one reason to suffer, and that is love. To love and be loved is the greatest gift one can give and receive, but it is also our heaviest burden. It is what makes us truly human. The bond of love gives us both great joy but also great sorrow.  

              Today Christ gives us back our true humanity by dying out of love for the human race that we might not ever delude ourselves again. The cross is the key that opens the heart of God to the world. From that pierced heart flows the REAL TRUTH. God’s infinite love, his boundless mercy, and consoling peace are opened to us again.

                We see that in this perilous and ever changing world that the cross is surely the safest place to be. It is painful, but pain is a part of real life. It can help us long for the goodness and joy that God has in store for those who bear it lovingly. The cross is heavy, but not as heavy as all the expectations that the world falsely makes on us to become our own gods and goddesses. The cross is humbling, but not humiliating. The world seeks to humiliate us by leaving us in pieces on the street and in broken homes and violent relationships, building us up only to later strike us down.  

             Jesus teaches us that the only safe place to be in this world is on the cross. God is there with us to show us the Truth of his sacrifice, to suffer bravely with us when everyone else would abandon us, and love us when everyone else is too self absorbed to care.  

              As we venerate this instrument of death which today becomes the truest sign of love and our means of salvation, let us hold tight to it, because we too are in a battle for truth, for courage and for love. Everything is riding on it. He tells us: don’t give up, don’t give in. Take up that cross and take up real life.

Holy Thursday 2011     

     It seems that the one constant in the world is change. We know that all things in this world pass, and that this world is not our final destination, but a stop along the way. We are always looking for ways to improve things and make things better, faster and easier. We even have a word for that today- “Upgrade.”       

          Every couple of years we may get a new phone because it is faster and has better gadgets. We may try to get an upgrade when we travel from coach to first class, or even a better hotel room. Unfortunately, some people think that they can upgrade relationships. Some may try to upgrade to “better” friends or better spouses. Many are always in search of something better, smarter, prettier, but they are never satisfied. They are simply waiting for a new model.    

               If anyone ought to have seriously been considering an upgrade, it should have been God. This human model 1.0 is far from perfect. Human beings can be selfish, greedy, needy, ungrateful and even evil. But in the midst of this, John tells us that Jesus loves them to the end as they are. He loves Judas who betrayed him. He loves Peter who is constantly second-guessing him. He loves those apostles who fled when he was arrested. He loves those who nailed him to the cross.  

              This night which begins the Sacred Triduum is all about the love of God for his people. He does not just speak about love though. John puts the love of God into action in the action of Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet. God’s love not only desires our happiness, but God also wishes to give us all that he can so that we can receive that love in true freedom of heart. Loving is the most exalted and humbling thing we can do. We can choose another and allow ourselves to be chosen. We can give to another and at the same time be vulnerable enough to receive what another person has to give us.    

            God shows the greatness and power of his love through the lowliness and humility of his action. God has created us in love and through the action of his Son chosen us to become his children. He has done this by humbling himself to take on our humanity and emptying himself, stripping himself of all pretense to cover himself with our sins.  

                 In the presence of his disciples, Jesus Christ takes humble gifts of bread and wine and exalts them through his Words and the Holy Spirit to become his Body and Blood. That action that we recall is what we truly celebrate every time we gather for this Holy Sacrifice.                It is not the desire of God to upgrade the human race, but rather sanctify it. He teaches us tonight how to be human beings and he gives us the grace now to carry it out. He teaches us tonight the true meaning of love. To love, one must strip themselves of all ego and pretense and present themselves as they are, sinners in need of the mercy of God, a lost race in the need of direction, people who feel unloved, yet seek the fullness of love. We do not need to upgrade to something new. In fact, we need to return to something very ancient- God so loved the world and he has given us his only Son, that we might be saved from death and experience life. 

              In this gift of the Holy Eucharist, Jesus gives us his Body broken on the cross, yet glorified in the resurrection to put us back together when life pulls us apart. He pours out his blood to make us clean and fill us with gifts of healing, peace, courage, and the ability to let his love become our love. 

            In a world that speaks of love as taking and possessing, Jesus teaches us in this Sacred  action of the Eucharist  that the core of being who we are created to be consists of giving and receiving, of loving and sacrificing, of thanking and serving God and one another. Let us thank the Lord for this gift of the Holy Eucharist and the priesthood. Let us allow the Lord to wash us so that we can be made holy. Let us spend some time with him tonight and know that he is not going to upgrade this gift, but rather fulfill it by doing he has promised to do for us, give us real life.     

      As I wrote yesterday. When the Artist creates, there are rules that have developed over time by Masters to help the students achieve their goal- whihc is to transmit truth and beauty. For the Christian believer, the first rule in our method of living is faith. We recognize that our work is going to be fundamentally fllawed and incomplete if it is not done with the aid of faith.

     Faith by definition is the awareness, recognition and acceptance of the reality of God as a positive and sure guide throughout life. The brush strokes, the words and the musical notes of our faith must flow out from the artist if the he/she really wants to express himself/herself as a trustworthy guide to the truth of reality which is the activity and dynamic presence and love of God. Reality is what God places before the artist and he/she must make the choice to live in it if show reality as truth, as well as the emptiness of untruth in which some desire to  dwell. This faith has developed through history as God working with, in and through the world in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, as it has been interpreted by the Church. As one’s core relationship in the world, faith serves to connect the artist to the beauty of God as well the absence of beauty in a world slowly consumed by sin. Faith also connects the artist to others by attempting to express the mystery of life in a language that at its core is both immament and transcendent. The artist attempts to incarnate his/her faith by images, words or melodies that flow from the depths of his/her heart, inspired by God himself.

     As the artist grows in faith, he/she grows in the understanding of reality and then is better able to express that reality, although it may be difficult for the viewer or listener to grasp it immediately. Sometimes it is enough for invite the viewer or listener into the artist’s struggle with Mystery rather than provide clear answers.  Rule number two on Saturday.

    Tomorrow we talk about the greatest work of art ever undertaken between God and man, the Incarnation.

      Life is discovering and and practicing the truth. Truth is something that has to be practiced becuase it is something that we cannot grasp in its fullness right away, but over time as we grow, love and discover. Life for God is the fullness of Being. There is no change in God. Because we are finite beings, and we come into a fuller awareness of who we are and who God is and who others are over time, we change. Our life is not complete in itself in this world until death. Life for us is practice and a constant formation by ourselves and being formed by God and others.

    As Catholics, the form for our life and the model which we strive to attain is Jesus Christ. As true God and true man, Jesus used his Body as well as divine personhood to show us the beauty of the Son who is eternally begotten by the Father, yet born in time of the Virgin Mary. His Body and his human nature is the canvas on which we see who he is, not just in his birth and in his death, but ultimately in his glorified and resurrected Body. He is the Poetic Word which contains all other words. He is the melody which resonates in the deepest part of who we are as beings capable of receiving and giving to God.

     As God, Jesus Christ is the truth and he mediates that truth through his human consciousness. He does it through parables, images, and his encounters with his disciples and others. We are not God, but becuase the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, we can also mediate Truth to the extent that we are united with God in the Holy Spirit. In that sense we are the brushes or pencils or notes that God uses. At the same time, because of our free will we can use our own creativity to express this Truth who is Jesus Christ, if we work within certain parameters. Every artist, though free to create, has rules that guide his work, and as Christians, we have rules as well to keep us true to the reality we wish to respect. I will try to describe some of these rules tomorrow.

     What is it that defines a life that is lived in the most fully human way? It seems to me that a life that is most fully human is one that manifests the truth in the core of its being. One is not deluded by fantasies or clouded by false hopes. It is a life which appears in itself to be limited until the person turns outside of himself to the other, first to the God who created him/her and then to others to whom he/she depends and to those who depend upon him/her. This truth is not something created by the person, but rather something that the person discovers which in fact is responsible for helping to create the person.  In the natural sense, that truth would be mediated to us by our parents, family members and friends. They help to aid us in the realization of the fact that the truth lies outside of ourselves and it  is something that measures us rather than something that we measure.  In the supernatural life, God is truth and while this truth has been indirectly manifested in the Old Testament, the fullest meaning of life has come through the Incarnation.  This fact of the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ makes it possible for human beings to manfest the fullness of truth through our bodies and souls. It is the Incarnation that makes the fullest expression of ourselves as the living artwork and artisans of God possible.

     I was making some olive wood rosaries for a Christ renews his parish this weekend and for some reason I began to reflect on the Catholic life as an artistic process. There are many ways that art is expressed. The three I can see most immediately are word (Poetry), Image (Paint and sculpture) and Sound (music). While many of us do not have great abilities in these areas, we still are tasked with the mission of expressing ourselves in word, thought and deed in the fullest possible way. I believe that all true art seeks to express itself the truth and not just my personal truth. We have this capacity because we are created in the image and likeness of God, who is the fullness of unity, goodness, truth and beauty.

     This self-expression is not however, a solitary task. We are not only the art but the artist, really co-artists with the Holy Spirit and those whom the Holy Spirit sends us to make their impression upon us. We are at our essence relational beings. This relationality is I believe the starting point of our Christian artistic process. The primary relationship of life is to the God who made us, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He knows the masterpiece we are capable of becoming. At the same time, he gives us room to grow and come to grips as best as we can with who we are. Maybe this relfection will need no where, but over the next few days I will ask the lord for some further enlightement, of he wishes to do so. Otherwise, I will stmble around and try not to bump into anything.

     As we are know in the second week of Lent, some of our acts of self-denial and penance may have become a little more difficult. We long for the “fleshpots of Egypt,” where our little indulgences seemed to do little harm, and we wonder whether the act of self-denial is worth it. We live in a world where self-indulgence is the norm and self-discipline is necesary once in a while, but only for usually for self-serving purposes.

      This second Sunday of Lent tells us why are disciplines and spiritual acts of self-denial are important. The simple reason is that it is the only we way are going to receive the glory God once us to have. Life is not, as some think, is not about self-indulgence, but self-giving. Jesus climbs the Mount of Transfiguration today to remind us that glory will ultimately come through the cross. He wants to share with us a glimpse of that glory on this side of heaven, so that we have can strong enough to deal with life.

     WE probably do not even realize that the reception of the Holy Eucharist every Sunday and every day if possible is a sharing of the glory of God that is to come. The Eucharistic Jesus is the first fruits of the coming of Christ at the end of the world. That is why the glorious mysteries of the rosary are not simply something only about the future, we share in that glory every time we each His Body and drink His Blood. We share in that glory every time we seek forgiveness for our sins in the Sacrament of Penance. We taste its passing sweetness now to prepare us and help us long for the fullness of what is to come.

     Jesus shows us that fidelity to his teaching and his cross and his Church is worth everything, becuase he has put everything on the line to make it a true reality for us. It is understandable to ask ourselves if living our Catholic faith is worth it. Next time we do, look to the saints and look to the Holy Eucharist, and you will know with all your heart that Jesus truly is WORTH IT.  Our bodies, our souls, our hopes, our loves, and our crosses.

     We always look to the Mother of God as the exemplar of all virtues- purity, humility, faith, hope, obedience and love. St. Joseph is model that has been coming more into his own over the last few decades. At the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, the first invention made by a Bishop concerned the lack of devotion and attention given to the Spouse of Mary and the Guardian of the Redeeemer. Pope John XXIII had just previously in 1959 added the name of St. Joseph to the Canon of the Mass.

     If men are looking for a good exemplar of Catholic manhood, they need look no further than St. Joseph. He is known as the “Most chaste Spouse,” and the “Guardian/ Foster Father of Jesus Christ.” We also celebrate him as the model of workers on May 1 as a response to the Communist perversion of the nature of work and the human person.

     Joseph I believe embodies four things that men need to address today. The first is that he is a man who listens to the voice of God and then acts. That means that he is a man of prayer which attunes him to the will of God. REAL MEN PRAY. Then he is able to act on what God asked him to do with confidence and courage.

    The second attribute of Joseph that men can adopt is a chaste and pure heart. Men in this culture are viewed and coarse and lustful beings. As a just man, Joseph sought to live a life of balance and have an undivided heart for God and those who are entrusted to his care. One of the most serious obstacles to true human growth for men is pornography and it is seen by some as normal. It is an insidious evil that slowly degrades the person as well as the persons with whom the man will come into contact. If we put garbage into ourselves, don’t expect a rose garden to come out.

     Joseph is also a humble man. He is one who serves with a sense of honor in his word and his deeds. He is a man of integrity who seeks to live with justice and mercy in regard to others, becuase all he has is a gift from God.

    Lastly, tonight, I believe that Joseph is vigilant. He pays attention to what is going on around him, so that he can see the dangers coming toward him and those whom he loves long before they arrive, so that he can prevent them from bringing harm to his family. By his availability to God, he is also available to others. May all men find in St. Joseph a strong example of how to be a real man and an advocate who intercedes for us to Jesus to help us in this world.

     Few things make people’s blood run cold as the prospect of facing the crosses they have in life. We live for little distractions and diversions with the hope that our cross will go and find someone else to pester. But when we have had enough of our apps or naps the cross is still standing there, waiting for us to face it.  We cannot avoid it forever. We cannot go to heaven without carrying our cross with us. I wonder if carrying our cross to the gates of heaven is the key to passing through the gates. There is not a secret handshake or password, just our cross, worn down with splinters with little gashes missing. Maybe at death we exchange the cross for the crown.

     We spend so much energy trying to avoid obstacles to our growth in holiness and refuse to acknowledge our weaknesses. Imagine if we just spent our energy carrying our burdens and helping others to carry theirs with love. I think this will be much easier, because the Lord has promised us that we will not carry our crosses alone.  Maybe this weekend we can look at how much time and energy we have spent avoiding difficulties in oursevles and others, and how much we could have saved if we just humbly carried them.

     On this feast of St. Patrick, we remember a person who as a young man was taken into slavery in Ireland and who later escaped, only to return to preach the Gospel to them. Faith in Jesus Christ means freedom. Freedom from sin and death and freedom for grace and life.

     The life of Patrick also expresses at a deeper level our own life. When we look at ourselves in the world, we find that we have given up up freedom for lesser things, only to regret it and have no way of regaining it. To hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the love of God and his desire to restore us to freedom, the Saints offer an opportunity that no one else can. The reason for this is not only are they teaching it, they are truly living it. Pope John Paul II said it best when we stated the the Church does not need more theologians to explain the faith, it needs more saints to live it.

      In the eyes of the Gaels, Patrick sacrificed all to preach to them the Gospel at the risk of his own life. However, it is possible to say that for Patrick, returning to Ireland was not a risk, but an opportunity that God offered him to show his former captors a better way.

    None of us should desire that others remain in slavery.  While we can provide freedom in a material sense, only Jesus Christ can provide truly freedom in the spiritual sense. In this sense of Freedom, the love and grace of God alone is enough, everything else is simply blessings of the generosity of God.

    In this season of Lent, it is time to search out what is enslaving us, so that we can beg the Lord for the grace to cooperate in his love in being freed from our pettiness and stubborness. Jesus has freed us from sin by his death and resurrection. Like St. Patrick may we return to those who are enslaved by the same things that bound us, so that we may be instruments to offer the freedom bestowed by Jesus Christ.