Today, in the first reading, we witness one of the pivotal moments in Salvation History. Here we have Abraham journeying to the top of a mountain the middle of the desert to sacrifice his only son to God. (Click the link to read more)

July 6, 2017

Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 380

GN 22:1B-19

PS 115:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9

MT 9:1-8

Today, in the first reading, we witness one of the pivotal moments in Salvation History.  Here we have Abraham journeying to the top of a mountain the middle of the desert to sacrifice his only son to God.    This was a common thing among the various religions of the time and it was believed that somehow sacrifice, especially human sacrifice, could bridge the rift between God and man and soothe an angry deity.  Abraham trusted in God to provide even from the start of the journey.  Did he believe God would raise Isaac from the dead?  Or that God would provide the ram from the very beginning?  Either way he trusted God enough to follow through with His instructions, to the point of having to be stopped by an Angel.  God showed us in this simple moment that obedience and faith were more powerful than any offering they have to give on their own.

Then fast forward in the Gospel to the time of Jesus.  At this point in time, people have come to believe that the sicker you are, the greater your sins.  The paralytic, the outsider, the leper; all of these would be the darkest of sinners.  Their destination was as far from God as possible and they would be avoided at all cost.  Jesus does something greater than any miracle we have witnessed so far, He heals the man's souls and forgives his sins.  The Jewish teachers gathered around were unable to comprehend what was going on.   So Jesus gave them a sign that would make it completely clear to them.  He healed the physical ailment.  This was proof that the sins were no longer there, as they were no longer manifested in the man as sickness, but rather he was now whole physically and spiritually.

We often forget that miracle occurs every day in the Church.   So many outside the faith and even many of those inside have lost sight of what Confession is really about.   Just look at the response of the people gathered around Jesus as they marvel that “God who had given such authority to men.”  Then we see Jesus send forth His disciples after breathing the Holy Spirit on them and declaring they are to forgive sins.  That’s what our Church is still doing today.  The successors of the Apostles have passed that authority on by laying of hands in direct lines that are traceable back to Jesus Himself.  We are so tied up in finding physical miracles, and yes they are still out there, that we forget the most powerful ones that occur right here every day in the Sacraments.   Jesus forgives the sinner and restores him to the community and then offers himself to them in the form of bread and wine that they might be strengthened for the journey.   

Do we take time each day to realize what a gift we’ve been given?  Are you struck with Awe at the amazing Gift that is the Church?   Do you glorify God for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life?  

His servant and yours,

Brian Mullins

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer. - Psalm 19:14  

When I was a young man I began to look around for a Church that was more vibrant, more active. Though I was very happy with the Christianity I had been shown in the Baptist church, there was something missing. (click the link to read more)

When I was a young man I began to look around for a Church that was more vibrant, more active.  Though I was very happy with the Christianity I had been shown in the Baptist church, there was something missing.  I didn’t understand the Methodist Church and its symbols.  I didn’t even know the Catholic Church in town was an actual ‘church.’   For that matter I didn’t know anything about theology, Christology, or that there had been 2000 years of writings outside of the Sacred Scriptures that I had never been exposed to.   What I did know is that there was a girl that I fancied who went to one of the churches where they shouted Amen and did some strange things.  I ended up settling there in a Holiness/Pentecostal environment for a few years.

My first experience there was one that I will never forget.   As the service began the preacher was loud and animated.   People began to shout Amen often and emphatically.  Hands would have in the air.   Sentences were often punctuated with “That’s right” or “Preach it, brother.”   It was exciting but also confusing at times.   Then something strange happened.   The woman behind me began to scream.  The blood-curdling scream of someone in pain, as if an assault was occurring the pew behind me.    I turned around the first time it happened.   She had a glassy look to her face as if she were in some other place and not even aware that we existed.   I didn’t know what to do.  This was not something I had ever seen or even heard of.

The next time it happened I turned stood up and turned around and asked her if she was O.K.   One of the Church elders put his hand on my shoulder and said “She’s fine boy.  She is just falling out in the spirit.”   It shook me to the core.   It wasn’t something I was comfortable with at all.  I accepted it though.   When I asked about it later someone pointed to Pentecost and speaking tongues.   They explained to me that “in order to be saved” we all had to do it at some point.   I fell in line.  I began to shout Amen.   I watched as others spoke tongues.   I even gave testimony to God in my life and eventually joined that little Church in the mountains and had my name added to their membership roster. For years I stood up in the congregation waving my hands, shouting out praises, and to be honest, enjoyed myself quite a bit.

Then one day I felt a tugging of my heart.   I had begun to study Scripture in earnest.  What I was finding in there didn’t line up with what was going on in the Church.  When I asked questions I was told to avoid those questions and just listen to the Elders.  I had joined a Bible study at the Church and some of the things being taught there not only didn’t jive with what I had been reading on my own, but they were in many ways prejudiced and racist.  A few weeks later I told God when you tell me to raise my hands I will, when you tell me to shout I will, when you tell me to speak tongues I will… but until then I won’t do it.  I realized all along I hadn’t been doing it because God had told me to, I was doing it because someone else had said that’s what I had to do to be “saved.”

In the first reading today we see the primary example of ‘speaking in tongues.”  It’s not something disorganized and disruptive.   It’s not people shouting over each other to see who can pray the longest or the loudest.   It’s also not something every person must do.   Instead, it’s a beautiful display of God’s desire to know each and every one of us, regardless of our ethnic backgrounds.   Every person present there heard in their own native tongue.   God was no longer hidden behind the language of the Hebrews or the learned, but instead was speaking to each person exactly as they best could understand him.   As a man who has been trying for years to become fluent in a second language, I understand not only the practicality of this but the necessity.    I understand many things in Spanish, even some things in Latin.   The truth be told though, when it’s in English it’s much more likely that I will gain a full insight into what I am reading.  I don’t miss the nuances of the language or the ‘slang.’   Rather, I get the entirety of the message.

God loved us so much that He gave a gift to those men and women at Pentecost that they could speak directly to all the cultures present.   Those cultures represented the entire world.  At Vatican II the Church wanted to emphasize this.  For many hundreds of years, the Mass had been in Latin, the language of the Church.   Providently, now it would be in the vernacular, the language of the local culture.  That meant that people would be able to better understand what was going on.   It’s much easier to participate in a Mass when you know what is being said, how it’s being said, and why.  There is still something Holy about a Latin Mass.  It’s somber, beautiful and uplifting.   In English, though I don’t miss the subtleties.  I don’t miss the phrasings or the verbiage.   I know what’s going on.

That’s what all the readings today point to.   The gift of the Holy Spirit.  God loved us so much that He sent His own Spirit to reside in us.  He made us humans into Temples for His Presence.  Do I still believe it’s possible to speak in tongues?  Very much so.   Do I still raise my hands when God tells me to? You better believe it.  Though I do know one Priest who asked me not to because it distracted him and he couldn’t think.  I appreciate that honesty.  Sometimes in Adoration, though I get lost in the moment, swept away in the current of God’s love and mercy, that I can’t help myself and those hands float up into the air to praise God on their own accord.  I am very charismatic and pentecostal in my beliefs to this day.   There is room for that in the Catholic Church, the original Pentecostals.  

What I realize though is that none of our gifts are just for our benefits.  Each of us is given a set of particular skills and specific ways of doing things that only we are capable of doing in our way.  Sure every one of us can take on a role if needed that is outside of our comfort zone… but no two of us will ever think the exact same way, or perform things in a precise manner that another would.   Some of us are good with numbers, others with our hands, some with our brains and still others with our bodies.  There is room for all.  God will speak to each of us in the language we understand best.   By that, I don’t just mean the vernacular, but the language of our hearts.  Love.   He is love itself, and on the very base level of who we are created to be, we respond to Love fully and completely.

One of the most important things about the readings today is found in the Gospel.  For years as a Pentecostal Protestant, I would have told you that my sins were between me and God.  Why would I need to go to a man to forgive them?  Yet, in the reading from John’s gospel, Jesus very words say something different.   He breathes on the disciples long before the moment of Pentecost, the first ordination of men to perform the role of Jesus the Priest in the world.  At this moment Jesus breathed directly on His disciples and said: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven and whose sins you retain are retained.”   That’s what Confession is all about.   It’s going to that same line of Priests thousands of years later and saying, “I trust in Jesus words when He said that you could forgive my sins and I reach out to Him in mercy through His Holy Church and ask for that forgiveness.”   It’s a channel of grace, instituted in a Sacrament that is so much more than a symbol.  It’s an encounter with Christ and the Holy Spirit, and encounter with the infinite that our human minds cannot understand, so God gives it to us in simple terms that we can fathom.   He gives it to us through each other, in the only language, our hearts can understand... Love and mercy itself.

His servant and yours,

Brian Mullins

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer. - Psalm 19:14

A reading for the Feast of Pentecost: June 4th, 2017

What is the least I can do?

A Reflection on the readings for Friday of the thirteenth week of Ordinary Time, July 1, 2016.

Amos 8:4-6, 9-12
Psalm 119:2, 10, 20, 30, 40, 131
The Holy Gospel According to Saint Matthew 9:9-13


I almost did not write a blog today.  You see, my summer assignment was to write three days a week and every Sunday.   Then I read the readings today after reading Stu and Robert's blog and was convicted by them to look inward and ask myself why I am just doing the bare minimum.  Other weeks I have written all five week days.   This week I just felt down, worn... out of energy.   I had just mowed my yard and was laying back in the recliner when my alarm went off to remind me that we had Eucharist Benediction at 7 tonight.   So I went.  I am glad I did...

"If we but paused for a moment to consider attentively what takes place in this Sacrament, I am sure that the thought of Christ's love for us would transform the coldness of our hearts into a fire of love and gratitude."
- St. Angela of Foligno

You see Amos was talking to the people about something that we ourselves are very guilty of thousands of years later.   The people saw God as a burden, the Sabbath as a loss of money.  They were just punching their card and looking good to the people all the while bemoaning the day of rest that God provided them.  Then they left the temple, left the Sabbath and fixed their scales and cheated others to make up for the money they had lost by keeping their oath.  How often we do that today?  "How late can I show up to Mass? Do I have to hear the readings? Or just be their for communion?"   "When can I leave?  Do I have to wait for the song to be over?  The blessing?  Or just for the priest to leave the room?"  "Do I have to go this Thursday?  Is it a holy day of obligation?"  "What can't I do on Sunday?  Should I eat out or stay home?"  Always looking for the least we have to do, instead of realizing the gift we have been given.   Instead of asking "How long can I be there before? What time do the doors open?"  "Can I stay for a few minutes after to spend time with Jesus?"



God warned them that this sort of life of just doing the minimum led to a loss... it would lead to a day when the word of God would be gone from their presence.  A day when creation would realize how horrible a thing had been performed.   That day was on Calvary just around two thousand years ago.  As the Word of God hung on a cross and pronounced it was finished, creation itself groaned and mourned.  The sky darkened as if by night, the ground quaked and shook, the temple veil itself tore from the top to the bottom.  A man standing at the foot of the cross was converted instantly as He saw the Word's demise before his gentile eyes.   "Surely this man was innocent."  What would that be like?  That sense of emptiness?  That sense of longing?   That moment in which we realize that something is wrong, that something is missing from our lives?

"Our hearts are restless, till they rest in thee."  - St. Augustine 

That is exactly what we experience when we sin mortally.   When the Word is no longer visible to us, when the universe itself goes awry and we are unable to find happiness.   The Word comes again to us in the Sacrament of Penance to make us whole, to complete us.  He is resurrected!    He wants you to be resurrected too!   That thing you are missing, that happiness and joy you are seeking.. is found right here, in the Eucharist.. in the Holy Sacraments of the Catholic Church.   Don't just punch your card.. find time for this relationship with the Son.   He wants to be a part of your life and you, you have been seeking Him from the moment of your conception.  It's time to put Him in your schedule first.. then add the rest of the things in your day around Him.   That's when we find joy.. that's when we find love...

So do they know you by that?   The Sacred Scriptures remind us that they will know we are Christians by our love for one another.  A saying attributed to Gandhi goes "I like your Christ.. but I do not like your Christians."   That's because what they see when they look at us alone is creation groaning... our soul darkened and shadow.. our very being quaking and the veil of our soul ripping as it cries out to the world the emptiness it feels when God is taken from it's presence..... Are you ready for Him to come in and fill you so completely that your heart overflows with joy?  It's the year of Mercy.. and Reconciliation is just a moment away.

In the life of the body a man is sometimes sick, and unless he takes medicine, he will die. Even so in the spiritual life a man is sick on account of sin. For that reason he needs medicine so that he may be restored to health; and this grace is bestowed in the Sacrament of Penance. - St. Thomas Aquinas

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease." 

Ever touch an electric fence?

A Reflection on the readings for Daily Mass, June 30, 2016.

Amos 7:10-17
Psalm 19:8-11
The Holy Gospel According to Matthew 9:1-8

When I was younger my grandfather kept telling me not to go down around his garden.   He had this electric fence that he had put in.  He told us not to grab hold of it or it would 'bite' us.   The funny thing was we kind of enjoyed it.  The thrill of doing something dangerous, something we shouldn't be doing... and even better, holding on to someone else who didn't know we were going to touch the fence.  For years I goofed around with that and even found myself as an electrician not being super careful around low voltage.  People warned me that it could be dangerous, the books warned me, my mind warned me, but I didn't care.  I kind of liked it, it made my arthritis pain go away.   Then one day I was wiring a light in a school in Kingsport, Tennessee when my arm brushed the aluminum ceiling grid. It wasn't a hundred and twenty volts, but rather two seventy seven.   I found a new level of pain, one I did not enjoy.. one that left me aching.. one that made me hear clearly in my head the sixty hertz cycle of the transformer.   I thought I was screaming, I was trying to throw it away... but I couldn't move.. I couldn't speak... I was paralyzed.  Eventually it let me go, but I had learned my lesson the hard way.

Amos has been warning Israel of the consequences of their actions.  In the first reading he tells them this is what is going to happen if you keep on the path you are on.  Like me and my little dalliance with electricity eventually it's going to catch you.  As a man whose dad was electrocuted when I was only five years old, you'd think I'd have had more respect for it.   I wanted it though, I enjoyed it.   Just like the society of that time, and even our society today, they are doing things that feel good.   They want them.  They don't realize how dangerous it is.  How much it hurts! Sin and it's glamour tends to draw us in, to paralyze us, to addict us.   We find ourselves falling into the same trap that St. Paul speaks about when he says: "Those things I want to do, I do not.. those things I know not to do, that I do."  It traps us in a cycle where we find ourselves coming back to the Sacrament of Reconciliation time and again for the same sin, the same old temptation.. almost unable to help ourselves.

Just as an animal becomes a stronger beast of burden and more beautiful to behold the more often and better it is fed, so too confession - the more often it is used and the more carefully it is made as to both lesser and greater sins - conveys the soul increasingly forward and is so pleasing to God that it leads the soul to God's very heart.
--Revelations of St. Bridget

That's the key isn't it?  We are unable to help ourselves.  It's only through Christ that we can be cured.  The Gospel reminds us today that when we are paralyzed and unable to move, that's when those around us must pick us up and carry us to Christ.  When we are trapped in sin and unable to get out, that's when we need the Sacraments the most.   We as Catholics have to help those who need God: society, our friends, our neighbors, our kids.    It starts though with a different person: our self.  All of us have some sort of pet sin, something that we haven't let go of.   It's that pesky beam in our own eye that keeps us from being able to see clearly enough to help someone else with a speck or a splinter.  We like touching that electric fence too much to stop.. even though we know it's going to hurt, even though we have tried time and again.  What we've got to do is sit at the feet of Jesus... and let Him say to us, "Your sins are forgiven. Go forth and sin no more."  Then to trust in that... we have to pick up our mat and walk.  

"In failing to confess, Lord, I would only hide You from myself, not myself from You."--Saint Augustine

Are you ready for that?  As a Catholic that's what Reconciliation (Confession/Penance) is all about.  It's about allowing the Church to carry us in on our mats, to place us at the feet of Jesus and when He sees the faith of the body of Christ he says "Go forth, your sins are forgiven."   That's the greatest miracle of all time.  That God has given us a way to not only move away from the electric fence, but to live knowing that any permanent damage isn't done.   If you need someone to carry you on your mat, call me.  I'll drive you.  I'll wait in line with you and hold the door for you when you walk in.  Then I'll get in line too, because I keep falling back on my mat as well.

His servant and yours,
Brian
"He must increase, I must decrease."

Teen Angst and Broken Glass.

A Reflection on the daily readings for Monday, June 20th, 2016.

2 Kings 17:5-8, 13-15a, 18
Psalm 60
The Gospel According to Matthew 7:1-15

My mother and dad were good to me growing up.  Father's day reminded me of that.  To look back and see exactly what it was like growing up.  They were always there for me and gave me gifts other kids did not even have.  Most of my friends didn't have a car.  I had several that I was allowed to choose from to use.  I often took that for granted.  There was this one time that my mother asked me to take the garbage to the dump.   This was before curb side pickup for the whole county.  Back then they used to have a dumpster down by the bridge that crosses the lake.  I was so angry!  I wanted to do something else and she dared to ask me to do something before I went off to do my thing.  I stormed out, threw all the trash into the car they gave me, and sped all the way to the dumpster.   When there I threw the trash as hard as I could reveling in the sound of crunching glass, broken bags, and cracking debris.  Then I went to the hatch of the Bronco and slammed it as hard as I could. I had all the windows up.  I learned a very valuable lesson about air pressure in a closed environment.  The rear window shattered out in an explosion covering me with glass.

How could I explain this to my parents? I had destroyed the gift they had given me all because I was angry at being asked to do a small favor on my way to do something else.  The first reading from the Second Book of Kings reminds me of that.  God has given Israel everything.   He has saved them from slavery, delivered them to the promised land, sent messenger after messenger to tell them of His great love and mercy.  In return they continue to ignore his promise.  The Israelites at the time expressed it as God having "put them out of his sight."  We understand that more today as God was offering them an Amazing Grace and they were too stubborn to accept it.   My parents did not turn their back on me when I slammed the car trunk, they were rather offering me the use of the car and all that came with it, with a small request of just taking out the trash.  God never forgets us, He never stops offering forgiveness... but sometimes in our anger, in our frustration we refuse to take it.   We refuse to be faithful to the relationship and that grace is lost.. just like the glass of a window shattered in the antics of a frustrated teen.

Society reels from the impact of not receiving that grace.  We see it today in the actions of our government, youth, friends and families.  What was once considered taboo and personal is now lauded in the streets.  Religion is mocked and relegated to something you just do behind closed doors.  The things that were once considered perversions are now considered sacred and relegated to untouchable and one is labelled a bigot if they speak out against it.  Just like the Israelites they turn their back on the one true God and serve instead the God's of the enemy, the ones who encourage sexual impurities, incestual worship, and even child sacrifice.  The Psalm for today speaks of that reeling, that sense of lost.  That moment when we realize we are no longer being sheltered by God's grace and not because of His actions.  He is always faithful, but we, we often break the Covenant.

You have rocked the country and split it open;
repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.
You have made your people feel hardships;
you have given us stupefying wine.

Doesn't that say it all? The thing about the Psalms is they often express that deep sense of loss, that deep regret of not having God on our side.. that longing in our hearts for a restoration of that relationship that makes us whole and complete.  Even those Psalms though always end with a declaration of hope, a trust and faith that if we return to the covenants, if we but plead with God with a contrite heart, then He will always be there to return to us.   Hope.

Christ is that fulfillment of hope. Even when all others are turning their back on Him, even when the northern tribes rejected His grace to the point that their enemies over threw them, God was there for Judah.  The remnant need not fear the enemy.   Christ is there for us always, but He requires something from us.  Relationship.  Faithfulness. Covenant fidelity.   He reminds us that first and foremost we are to be looking inward.   To examine our own steps to see if there are any 'specks' or splinters in our own eyes.  That means looking to see if we are right with God.   Are we in a proper relationship?   Or are we pushing God away and rejecting that grace?  Many of us are choosing to ignore the splinters.  Some small vice or some small addiction that we can't control.. and we excuse it.  "I'm not that bad."  "It's only this, at least it's not that."  "I can't help it, but God loves me."   He does indeed, but He challenges you to be better.  To be the person He created you to be.  That means being faithful to His commands, following the rules He established, in the way and through the authority He decreed.

That doesn't mean we never judge.   Too many quote the Gospel without the full message.   It means that we judge as God judges.  God is righteous and we deserve punishment.   He is also merciful and took the punishment Himself.   That's how we judge, with righteousness (truth) and with mercy (love.)   We cannot express a God who is only one or the other.  If God is only the righteous judge, then only the perfect will ever enter Heaven.. and how many of us are that?   If God is only merciful then the Gospel becomes pointless, everyone is going to Heaven so why bother evangelizing at all?  Rather we must judge with both, but only after looking inward and getting rid of even the smallest of splinters.

The thing about a splinter is that it festers.   It irritates and either you remove it?  Or it becomes more serious.  Infection can set in, gangrene, a lost toe or finger, a limb?   Where do we draw the line?  We don't allow it to grow.. we remove it as fast as possible.  That for us spiritually means frequent reception of the Sacraments, even the most under used and often despised Sacrament of Reconciliation.   That Sacrament is a beautiful encounter with Christ Himself in which He offers to restore you to the right relationship with the Father, that we may be one as They are one.   Not only does He remove the splinter of sin by forgiving all sin, but through the penance offered He encourages us to safeguard from getting another in it's place.  We have to grow though!  We have to go forth and try, not just give up and say "That's who I am."  Because it's not.  It's an action you've done, and it's less than you are capable of.

To be saints is not a privilege for the few, but a vocation for everyone. - Pope Francis

Then we are challenged to go into the world and share that mercy with others.  Not to overlook their sins, but to help them find peace, joy, and a Sacramental life of their own.  To help them encounter Christ first through you, then through the Church.  In Cursillo we call that "be a friend, make a friend, and bring that friend to Christ."   Don't try to take the log out of their eye while you're still not letting God's grace flow into your life.  Form a relationship with them, see Christ in them, love them.   Once a relationship is formed and they see you trying, they see you going to Confession and Mass.. then you can invite them to know Christ.  Then, Christ, the man with no splinters or specks in His eye, can help to remove the log that stands between a right relationship with Him.  Are you ready to do that?  Are you making frequent reception of the Sacraments a priority?  Not something to fit into your schedule but something your schedule fits around?  Are you making Christ, the remover of all splinters and logs, the focus of your day?  Are we ready to stop trying to break the glass of the other even further and instead bring them to the One who can restore them to wholeness?

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

Are you stretching?

I've written before about the time I went to the state and international science fair.  That year I put a ton of effort into that project. I practiced what I was going to say.   I memorized sections of code to be able to explain them to the judges without looking at the sheets in front of me.  I learned exactly what images were going to show on the screen and when.  Like the boy scout I hoped to be, I was prepared.  The next year, though, I didn't put so much effort into it.  I made a new board.  I didn't do any new research.  I ran the same old presentation with the same old computer.   It all looked better on this monster of a board my dad helped me make with clean images and lines, but to be honest.. it was the same project.  I still did ok.  I still won the computer science trip to state, but I didn't place there or get any kind of award.   The third year?  I didn't even make a new board.   I didn't do very well.  I simply had not put any effort into it.

In Today's first reading we see Elijah kneeling down and putting his head between his knees in prayer.  He asks his servant to keep an eye out, and he does seven times.  He keeps an eye out until Elijah has prayed 'enough.'  In scripture, seven represents fullness, completion.  Then this tiny cloud rises from the water.  Elijah doesn't question it, he doesn't think "well it's so small, that's not what I asked for."   No, he sends the message to Ahab to get on his chariot and get back to town, the gates of Heaven are about to open and water is going to flood them.  If Ahab isn't ready, this flood is going to overcome him.  It will stop him from getting where he needs to go.  Then Elijah girds himself (again, getting ready!) and he takes off on foot.  He stays in front of Ahab and beats him in a race back to Jezreel, foot vs horse.  That's some super hero action there!

Elijah shows us that preparation is key.  We have to be ready.  Taking off on a race without stretching is going to lead to some disastrous consequences, maybe even injury.    He doesn't take off until God has shown him that it's time, and then he trusts in it.  Prayer.   That's the start.   That doesn't mean we have to spend hours in silence listening to Gregorian Chant (though that's kind of nice too.)   It means that we take whatever moment we are, whatever circumstance we are in, and we pray through it.  We don't live our lives in a vacuum.  So we say our prayer while cleaning.  While changing diapers.  While walking to the car.  While driving.  We make those actions our prayers.   St. Paul talks about running the race, crossing the finish line with our heads held high, it requires diligence, training, preparation, and movement.

When we think of our spiritual lives, the first thing that pops into my mind is the Mass.  Jesus reminds us that before we come to that altar we must examine our conscience.   If there is anything that is between us and our brother, we aren't to come up but to leave our offering there and go to our brother.  Otherwise the opponent is going to take us before the judge.   How often do we ignore that?  How often do we just come on up with some sin in our heart, some injury we have failed to take care of.  We come to the most important prayer on this planet, the moment when Heaven itself touches earth, when we come forth to receive the Body and Blood of Christ into our own frail, mortal bodies.  Do we spend our time in prayer?  Do we read the readings before hand?  Do we prepare by going to our brother (the Priest) in confession and settling any debt we have?

St. Paul also says that if we receive the Body and Blood of our Lord unworthily, then we are responsible for his death.  That's a strong statement.  Too many of us, myself included, run into Mass at the last minute, make a quick genuflection and stumble through the book trying to find the song that has already started.  I think today's readings are a clear calling to make things right.   To reach out to those we have hurt, and to Christ himself in the Sacrament of Confession and say, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner."  In our society where the mantra is "you do you and I'll do me," Reconciliation has become something that many don't make use of.  A channel of grace, an encounter with Christ himself, where the line sometimes is non existent.   I believe if we truly understood what happens in that room, we wouldn't be scared to go, instead we'd be running trying to get in there.  How about it?   Are you ready before going up to receive?  There is no shame in sitting this one out, waiting in the pew with your head bowed while others go up to receive Him, or walking forward with your arms crossed just to be in his presence.

Much better isn't it?  To settle out of court now?  Than to risk being thrown into the prison where you will "not get out until you have paid every penny."

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease." 

Stirring the Flame

Today is the memorial of Saint Justin the Martyr.  A man who lived in the early church, back in the time when the Roman's were having Christians fight to death in the Colosseum.  A time of persecution and hate.  Justin after his conversion began to argue for the Christian faith.  Not argue like we argue today, but to logically and systematically debate with others to show them the truth.  He won over many souls, and failed to do so with others.  Eventually a man, jealous that Justin had beaten him with his logic, reported him to the government and he was martyred for his faith.  We still to this day learn the methods of apologetics, that is not saying we are sorry, but rather giving a defense for our faith.  "Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope." (1 Peter 3:15)

In the first reading for today we have a glimpse into the mindset of Saint Paul.  Paul is being persecuted and in prison, likely to die for his faith.  He reminds Timothy to stir into flame that gift which God has given him, that is the Holy Spirit.  It reminds me of those early movies in which cave men carried their embers with them from site to site.   Someone was in charge of that.  It wasn't a new fire that they were creating, but rather they carried the hot coals wrapped in protective sheets from place to place.  Rebuilding the fire over and over.. slowly coaxing it back to life with the proper fuel.  If they put on the wrong stuff, it would put out the fire.  If however, they used the fuel that it needed.. and slowly breathed into the embers, it would roar to life and produce fire.

I lived in a run down house in Virginia.  In the basement was this old, rusted out wood stove.  When I first moved in there I put in a gas stove, mostly because of all the work it took to keep a wood fire going.  Eventually, due to bad money management and silly circumstances, I couldn't afford the propane anymore to heat the house (not that it ever really heated it well.)  That winter I collected wood and stored it in the shed.  When I would get in from work I'd have to build a new fire.  Every day I'd come in from the cold and the fire would be out.   It took me most of that winter to learn to bank down the fire, to conserve the hot coals during the day.  Then when I got home I'd slowly build it back up.  A little tinder.   Some soft dry wood.  Eventually some heavy, hard woods to burn through the night.  It took time to learn how to stir that flame, to get it going without putting it out.   It took even more time to learn to be able to keep that flame going during the day.   It was so easy to forget to turn down the draft, close the vents and have just enough coal left to keep it going for the many hours I was gone into the world.

Paul reminds us exactly how to do this with that ember burning in our souls.   At Baptism we receive the Holy Spirit.  The Bible reminds us that the Spirit descended in tongues of flames, transformed the burning bush, and left Moses transformed and glowing that he even had to cover his face.   It is through love and self-control that we fan those flames.  When we sin, when we give in to our desires at any cost, that's when we begin to smother that light, to push that flame out of existence.  It is through saying no to those things which are bad for us, even when we want them so badly, that we slowly feed the fire.   A fire that does not harm us, but warms us and glows within us.. eventually glowing so brightly that others see it in us... drawing us to Sainthood.  The power of love and self-control.   How society wants us to go the other way.   To give in to desire, regardless of the consequence.   To simply do what you want, and let others do whatever they want.. but Christianity calls self-control a power!  How much harder is it to say no than to simply give in?  To be in control of yourself?

When we look back to the example left us by Saint Justin we see him reaching out to the world and spreading the Gospel.  We can look back at his description of Christian worship in the first hundred years of Christianity and be astounded that he describes the Catholic Mass.  For two thousand years we have been worshiping God exactly as the Apostles taught us to do so.  The Church has been teaching us that entire time that we must love God and one another, but also that we must have self control.   This has been handed on for generation after generation.  How then are we challenged to be apologists in the world?  How can we exercise that power of love and self-control?

First and foremost by living a Sacramental life.  Making frequent reception of the Sacraments a priority.  Not something we fit into our schedule once it's full of all the other things, but rather something that goes in first and our schedule fits around.  In receiving Christ in the Eucharist, encountering Him in the Confessional and adoring Him in Adoration; we are strengthened by love itself.   We come face to face with our own sinfulness and are challenged to do more, to do better.   Then we must take that Sacramental presence out into the world and become that presence to those in need.  The world is thirsty, it's seeking help.  It needs us.  That doesn't mean you have to go out and preach on the street corner, though there is nothing wrong with that.   What it does mean is that you have to fan those embers, feed them with love and good works, avoiding that which is ungodly and sinful.

This morning I was wondering how I might fan those flames.   How can I help the Holy Spirit grow in me by opening myself more fully to Him?  I stood in the grocery line waiting to pay.  A few people ahead of me stood a woman who was buying some groceries.  As they rang her up she ran her card.  Once, twice... three times.   It was denied.   "I just put money in here, what am I going to do?"  She was on the verge of tears.  I've been there.  I've had to have them hold the groceries till I could go home or to the bank to get cash, or even put back things to afford them.  I've been without food, and more importantly I know that feeling of draining you get when you realize everyone is looking and hearing.   Is it pride?  Sure some.  It's not a feeling though that I envy or want for anyone else.  Out of my mouth I heard the words: "How much is it?"   I didn't even mean to say it, it just came out. She said $19 something.   I said I got it.  I went up and paid for it.  The look on her face was worth more than $20.   She began to cry.  She said you don't know what this means and ran from the building with her two small bags of food.

That's how we fan the flames.  By giving in and letting Him speak through us.   By being a living Sacrament that shows the Living God.   By speaking, acting, loving in the way that Christ would to a world so much in need of that touch.    Are you ready to stir that flame?   To learn how to keep it burning even when we go out into the world?  Do you realize how precious and absolutely necessary it is to protect and guard it to keep it from going out?

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

Are you dancing with joy?

Every evening as part of the Divine Office devout women and men around the world pray for the Church as a whole.   They offer up their time to God for each and every one of us.   Part of that Evening Prayer involves reciting the Prayer that Mary exclaimed, inspired by the Holy Spirit, when John danced before His savior and Lord in the womb.  That Prayer, which is recorded in The Gospel of Luke (Chapter 1:46-55) calls us to remember the beauty of what was occurring at this Visitation between young woman and old.   Here we have the promise of Zephaniah, the one from the first reading from this Feast Day, being fulfilled.   God has himself come to dwell with the Children of Israel.

The LORD, your God, is in your midst,
a mighty savior;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
and renew you in his love,
He will sing joyfully because of you,
as one sings at festivals.

This reminds us of a simple truth.  God's promises are always fulfilled, but it's up to us to keep striving for His will to be done in our lives.   Mary was a very young woman, by today's standards still a child.  Here this tween has found out that she is going to have the baby of God himself.   If that isn't stressful enough, she is an unwed mother who is promised to be married to a man named Joseph.  She could be stoned, shunned, alienated from her entire family and world.   Who knows how the people will react?  Even Joseph himself, who we are told is a good man, decides to discreetly divorce her so that others will not find out about it.  It's enough to send anyone spiraling into depression isn't it?  What happens though?  Mary goes to help Elizabeth.  With everything going on in her own life, she instead goes to help and rejoice over the good news of Elizabeth's pregnancy as well.

To both of their amazement the very moment she arrives John begins to dance in the womb.  Elizabeth declares "How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"  Elizabeth realizes more is going on here than what simply meets the eye.  Like David before him, John the Baptist is dancing before the Ark of the Covenant.  Here in Mary's womb is not just a normal human child.. but the very source of life itself, the Word of God.   The Ark contained the Rod of Aaron, the symbol of the Priesthood.   In the womb of Mary hides the very High Priest himself.   The Ark contained manna from the desert, in Mary resides the living bread from Heaven, of which a man must eat or he has no life in him.  The Ark Contained the tablets of stone on which were written the ten commandments.  Mary's womb reveals the tablets of flesh on which are written the very Law of God, to be lived out in perfection for all of us.

Mary's response to all of this, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was to speak out spontaneously a prayer that will change all nations.  The Magnificat.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.

Another translation says "My soul magnifies the lord."   A magnifying glass.  In computer talk we speak of GIGO.   Garbage in, Garbage out.   Jesus himself said that what comes out of our mouths comes from what resides in our heart.  (Mathew 15:18).  That's a powerful reminder that what we put in, what we listen to, what resides in us... that's what makes us who we are, and that's what comes out of us.   Are we proud of who we are?  Are we proud of our choices?  We can't take back the mistakes of the past, but we can change the future.  It is not written yet, we have not lived it.   We instead live in the now.  Are you becoming who you want to be?   Change it.   Make haste to the country where you can serve God the way he has called you, leave behind your own worries and needs and think of the other.  Mary set the bar high, she set the ultimate example of what it means to be a disciple of the Lord.   Her soul can magnify the Lord because she is filled with Him in a unique way, so fully so that she became pregnant with God himself.  My friend shared this reflection this morning:

"When I reflect upon Mary I think upon her friendship with God like this- she is (that is she exists) and she is beloved and loving through her relationship with the Father, she is fruitful and loving through her relationship with the Holy Spirit, she encounters God and expresses love in this world through the Son. No human is more beloved by the Father than Mary, none are more fruitful by the Holy Spirit than is Mary and none are more intimately involved in the entirety of the human life of the Son than Mary. The Blessed Trinity is the cause, the entire life of our Lady is the effect. She stands before us as an exemplar,the model of perfection. Through her relationship she experienced the greatest of all possible human joys, to be the mother of the Son of God, and the greatest of all possible human sorrows, to be the mother of the crucified Christ, and the greatest of all possible gifts, she received her Son back from the dead. She was at the center of human history, she lived a life of deepest obscurity in a little Galilean town. She was patient, before the Annunciation, she was active, in the Visitation, she was a woman of prayer, she was a mother to the Beloved Disciple" (author: Steven Hepburn)

Too many people think of Mary as just another woman.  As if God would choose just a random female out of all those available to have his own son.  We humans would never even do that!  Why would we think the Holy God, who created the Universe, would simply do that?  He wouldn't, and he did not.  He chose a woman who exemplified what it means to be pure, to be holy, to be obedient to God.  She has shown us the example of what it means to give our full yes, our full assent to God's plan.. and then to make haste to do His will.

Then if we want to be true disciples of Christ, true followers, who always and in every way give ourselves over fully to God's will; then we can start by examining those words today that Mary spoke.  It is up to us to make haste and go out to those in need of our help, regardless of our own worries and sorrows.  To jump for joy before the Lord, and seek understanding of what is going on in our lives.   To lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things.  To magnify the Lord in our lives.. and the only way we can do that is to have Him in them.  Not just at Church, but to take that sacramental presence that we receive at Mass in the Eucharist and take Him with us everywhere and to every person!  God promises joy and mercy.  Are our lives examples of that?   I know mine does not always show it.  I have work to do, a lot of it.. but I know where to begin... by encountering Christ in the Sacraments.   Who is with me?  Are you ready to dance for joy before the presence of Christ?

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

That's Not How I Want It!

In Today's Gospel we see one of the most beautiful phrases in Sacred Scripture, at least in my humble opinion: Jesus, looking at him, loved him.  Oh how that should resound in our hearts and our souls as we think of Jesus doing the same for us.  Here is this young man who has done everything he has been taught but he still feels something more is necessary.   Why do we call him a young man? As Archbishop Barron said, "Because he came running up."  We know little else about him except his desire to get to Heaven and that he knew he must come to Jesus for the answer.  That's really a lesson in and of itself isn't it?  When we have to make a decision, when we have a crisis in life, when we want to know an answer... how often do we go around asking everyone else their opinion before speaking to our friend, our brother, our Savior first?

The young man calls Jesus good.  Jesus responds with that inquiry, "Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone."   So many have interpreted Jesus words here to say that he was just a man, that's part of the problem of interpreting scripture outside of the faith in which it was written.  We can't interpret this verse without looking at not only all the rest of scripture but what the authors believed.   Jesus was not telling the man not to call me good but saying "Do you know who I am?  Do you know why you sought me out?  I am the Son of God.  That is why I am good."   He knowing the young mans heart goes on to say you already know the commandments, follow them.  The man knows that's not enough, how do we know this?  Because he pushes the point.   "I've done all this.  I need more."  That's when He turns and looks on him and loves him.  Oh how wonderful a moment that must have been.  What more can the young man offer? What more can Christ ask of him?

In the book a Rabbi Talks with Jesus, Jacob Nuesner posits that to all of this Christ adds only one thing.  For Neusner it's something unfathomable.  Something that if he had heard himself he would walk away.  For those of us with faith though, those of us who are Christian, it makes perfect sense.   Jesus does not add or take away from the law, but he fulfills it.  To the young mans list he simply adds one thing: Himself.   "Get rid of all the things holding you back, and come and follow me."  The young man was rich and this was his folly.   This was what he was clinging too.  This wealth was exactly what stood in his way of "letting go, and letting God."  It seems like a simple thing doesn't it?   This young man was faithful and he believed.   He knew where to find the answers and now exactly what was left for him to go on to live in Heaven with God the father for eternity.   Yet, he walked away sad.   I imagine when he ran up he thought that maybe Jesus would exhort him, "Well done good and faithful servant!"   Or maybe he thought that it would be something simple like go to this place and do this thing.  

It reminds me of Naaman the Leper who came to Elisha for healing.   He expected some quest, some Holy Grail to have to find, in order to receive this miraculous cure.   When Elisha told him something so simple to do.. he rejected it and stormed off.   How dare this holy man tell him simply to dip in the water?  It wasn't until a servant convinced him to give it a try that he received God's blessings.   If the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather, then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”  So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.  

Like Naaman and the rich young man, sometimes we want our relationship with God to be more complicated than it is.   We go to Confession where Jesus himself meets us Sacramentally and then we wonder afterwards if we did enough, if the priest gave us enough penance, did I remember everything?  Or we come to the Eucharist and we worry whether or not we are doing everything right.. do I need to do this first?  Or this after?  Kneel? In the hand? On the tongue?   We spend so much time worrying about all the extras, trying to make it into our own Holy Quest that we forget the simple nature of what God has offered us.. He has added just one thing: Jesus.   I'm not talking about ignoring reverence.   I am talking about making the moment about Christ and not ourselves.  Both men walked away from an encounter with God because it wasn't what they wanted in that encounter.   It wasn't how they wanted it to be.

How many have done just that today?  "I don't like the priest."  "I don't think I need confession."   "Why should I go to Mass every Sunday?"  Jesus says, "Come and follow me."  He gave us a Church with authority.   That Church has shown us the revealed way to do things.  What is standing in our way?  For some of us it's not wealth, not all of us have the same condition this rich young man had.. nor do we know if this man ever turned and followed Christ... what we do know is that he had an attachment to something other than God.  Where is mine?   That is the question we must ask today.   "If Jesus asked me to give up X and come and follow him, would I go away sad?"  What is your attachment?  Don't miss an encounter with God because it isn't how you thought it should go... rather, let Him lead you to the truth.  Jesus is looking at you and loving you, how will you respond?

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

Slack Jawed Apostles!

Tomorrow we celebrate the Ascension of Our Lord.   Jesus spent 40 days spreading his message to his disciples.  40 days in which he taught them, encouraged them, and prepared them for their mission.  Then after 40 days, he was changed.  He was lifted up before them into heaven and went on to the next leg of his mission.  I imagine from the response of the two men in white garments that the Apostles were standing there with their jaws ajar gazing into sky, unable to believe what they had just witnessed.  "Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?"   Why aren't you out instead doing what he instructed you?   They were still waiting for that push, that courage that comes from receiving the Holy Spirit.

The thing is, God has left us this amazing blueprint here of what to do once we do get that courage, that joy.  He said "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  Such a simple plan, with such strong meaning to me.    Start here, where you are.   Move to where you have been, the places that are familiar to you.   Then, spread out in where you are uncomfortable, where you've never been, where no one has.    To the ends of the earth... everywhere.

Jerusalem.   The city of God.   The place where one would expect the message to take root first and foremost... but so much stands in the way.   It's the root, the center of the Jewish theological mind.  The place where God resides, the home of the temple.  God tells us that the temple, the area around it is where we must evangelize first and foremost.   Paul lets us know that we are the temple of God.   In this great scheme of things, God has charged us with changing our self and our immediate environment first.   Bloom where you are planted.   We must make the Gospel a part of our immediate lives, not just a superficial thing on the surface, but truly permeating our very existence.

Samaria and Judea.  The world in which they have traveled already.   Jesus walked with them through this areas teaching them, preparing not just them but all who would listen.   To me that speaks of the Church itself, our Christian community.   One of our greatest needs is to help evangelize and re-evangelize those who are already a part of the 'flock'.   To claim to be Christian and not be a part of the community is to distance yourself from the truth of the Gospel.   We must allow our joy to overflow to all of those people who we meet in our own church homes.   Our fire will set them on fire.   Let them see the Gospel in your participation.  "You show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works."

To the ends of the earth.  This is the challenge to go out into the world and spread that message to everyone else.  It's not a mandate to beat people over the head, there is such a huge difference in proselytizing (what we are not to do) and evangelizing (what we are to do.)  We are not so much trying to convince people, not so much trying to argue them in, as we are introducing them.   We are inviting them into a relationship with the living God, with the person who has changed our lives.. with the man/God who we have encountered in our own Jerusalem, who we have loved, worshipped, and shared with our faith community, and now who our hearts are so enamoured with that we cannot hide him... love does not hide and bury, it shouts from the rooftops.. to anyone who will listen.

So where are you?  Each of us is at a different stage on the walk, each of us has walked a different length of time, and each of us has a different distance to go... but you gotta start somewhere... It's been 40 days... in 10 more we will celebrate that moment when the Holy Spirit descended on these men who huddled in fear in the upper room, afraid of their own crosses.   At that moment these men will burst forth, and all but 1 will go to their own martyrdom.   You received that same spirit at your Baptism.   Are you ready to rise above all that is holding you back?  The Kingdom of Heaven does not have to wait until the end of time.  We ourselves can be lifted above all those fears that make us think we can't do this.  It's time for us to grasp that sanctifying grace we have received in Baptism and Confirmation.. and which pours out through the Sacraments every time we take advantage of them... to embolden us with joy, determination, and grace of our own to spread the Gospel, even to the ends of the earth.

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

Mission Impossible.

In tomorrow's readings we see Paul trying to follow the will of God.  He has recruited Timothy, a man who is both Jew and Greek to accompany him.  The message of the Gospel would be that much easier to spread to a new culture when you have "one of their own" with you.  Yet, he seems to be confounded at every turn.  They try to go into Asia but are prevented, into Bithynia and it is not God's will.   I imagine that is frustrating.  Here he is doing exactly what he has been called to do, and yet the Holy Spirit prevents them from going into these areas.  Imagine the frustration.   The doubt.  Then that night he has a vision of a Macedonian speaking to him and asking him to come into their country to help.  As soon as the vision was revealed they set out to seek passage into Macedonia to do God's will.

How often do we do the same thing in our lives?   Many of us are 100% sure of our calling, of what God wants us to do.. and that's a noble and good thing.  However, our calling is to do the will of God and that requires discernment.  It requires taking time to ask God exactly what he wants from us.  To follow his lead.  How can we ever know what his lead is if we don't spend time listening?  That's something our culture doesn't like, isn't it?  We have portable phones, music players, streaming devices... ear pieces that allow us to stand in a room with others and listen to some event thousands of miles away.   If we just look around at a restaurant instead of staring down at our cell phones people think we are weird or odd.  We are even encouraged to have music playing in the background of our homes so that when we arrive it isn't silent.. but rather welcoming and warm.

Somehow we got this notion that silence is bad.  That being alone with our own thoughts.. that sitting in meditation waiting for God to speak to us is old fashioned and a waste of time.  Yet, that's when God speaks to us the most.. in the silence.. when we stop using him as some sort of heavenly ATM and instead realize that He is a loving father with whom we have a relationship to maintain.   That means not just talking to Him, but spending time listening.  How then can we prepare for our mission if we never listen for that mission?  The Eucharist is the key.  It is the entire foundation of our Catholic faith.  Receiving Him, adoring Him, spending time with Him, listening to Him... that's what it takes to find out exactly what he wants from us.

The world wants us instead to blare our music, listen to our television shows, and constantly be bombarded with external information.  It's almost as if we are scared to take a moment to find out who we are.. and who He is.   Jesus warned us of this though.  In tomorrow's Gospel he talks about how the world hates him.. and as such, will hate us.   If people watched your day, would they see Him?   Or would they see just another person?  If they looked at your browser list would it look like everyone else's?  If they looked at your Netflix history would they be impressed?  He talks of persecution and he says the reason for it is "because they did not know the one who sent me."

Do you know Him?  Are you listening?   Each day is an opportunity for that, and opportunity to be more like Christ and less like the world.  That's what Church is all about.. it's about unity, growing together in faith, being the Body of Christ... the Sacraments draw us closer, and allow us to receive Him.. to be filled with His grace and His love.   Don't shun them... and take a moment today, and every day, to sit in silence and listen for His voice to find out what His plan is for you.  The fullness of God has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.  He gave us the Holy Spirit, a Church, and the Sacraments to lead us to an informed conscience and a holy formation.... It is time for us to avail ourselves of that tremendous grace and follow where he leads.

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

Look Into the Light

Most people who know me, know that I used to be a commercial electrical foreman.  One of the first things I would do on a construction site would be to get up some sort of lighting.  The first lesson I learned out there in the field was that it's very hard to have quality work if you can't see what you are doing.  It was amazing though how much detail came out when you really lit up the place.  A counter might even look pretty decent with the lights off, then you turn them on and the dirt and grime of the construction process was evident at a glance.  Then I began to see some shady practices that went on out there in the world of commercial sales.  Customers would request certain 'temperature' bulbs for certain applications.  One large food supply store would ask for red tinted bulbs in the meat section to make the food look fresher.  A package of ground beef with a slightly grey tinge would take on a nice, even red hue when placed under these lights.  Another would ask us to lower the wattage in the kitchens so that it wasn't as easy to see the imperfections or lack of cleaning.

That brings me to a spiritual reality that works on those same lines.  The closer you get to light, the easier it is to see imperfections.  The closer you get to the purity of God? The more obvious the filth and dirt in our souls becomes.  That's what sin is really, it's a marr, a missing of the mark.. a dirty spot on our soul.   If you read any of the writings of the Saints you'll see that as they drew closer to God, they felt worse and worse about even the smallest smudge.  After all in a relationship shouldn't we feel bad about the slightest of infidelities?  There are two reactions though that one can have.  One can draw to the light, see the smudges and be convinced they need to clean it up; or one can flee from the light and go for those things which they prefer to the effort it takes to carry their cross.

We humans are fickle things aren't we?  Most of us know exactly what we need to do to be closer to God in our lives.   We like those things though that feel good, that reward us temporally and physically.   We have that pesky concupiscence that makes us want power, pleasure, honor, and wealth.  Christ in the beatitudes challenges us though to put those things in their proper place.  To instead draw closer to the light, to examine any and every log that we might find in our own lives before ever considering to look for even a speck in someone else's.  

Today's Gospel reminds me of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  All too often people run from Confession.  Why?  Jesus says it very plainly: For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed.   We don't want the light to expose what we've done.   In our basements, in our private times, behind closed doors, when not everyone sees.  We fear what the Priest might say or think about us, or even at times we cling to that sin.. the one we don't want to give up.. the one we know we should.  That's pretty much the definition of Hell isn't it?

You see, our faith teaches us that Hell is a choice we make.  It also teaches us that God is an all consuming fire.   Fire burns.  What does God burn?  He burns out the sin.   The Sacred Scriptures tell us that God is a refiner at the furnace, purifying us like gold or silver.  He melts us down and slowly removes the dross.  Someone once told me that the way a refiner knows that the gold or silver is ready is when he can see his own reflection in it.  Think about that for a moment.. when God can see not us in our actions.. but His Son, Jesus Christ.  What happens though when we don't let go of sin? It burns.... I truly believe that for those who have any attachment of sin, that's what happens after this life.  Those who die with no sin attached?  Straight to Heaven.   Those who have an attachment but want to let go of it, and want to cling to God?  Purgatory.  Those who refuse to give up the sin?  Hell.  For eternity God's love washes over them trying to remove this sin from their soul.. this stain... and it burns... but they hold on to it and blame God for the burning.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.   It is God's hope that by sending his Son, the light itself, into the world that it would help every single person to see the areas of sin they needed to work on and remove them from their lives.   That's what the Sacraments are all about.   Confession cleanses us, it allows us to walk into the light and say Lord, give me the grace to remove those things that being in your presence makes me aware of.  Then the Eucharist, oh that marvelous and beautiful Sacrament that is the sign of our faith!   In it Christ himself comes to us and washes over us with his love and embrace.  I am never more aware of my sins than when I come up that aisle to receive Him into my body.  I trust though, that as I draw near to the purest of all lights, and as even the smallest speck of venial sin glares at me, and the demons of this world call out to me and tell me I'm not worthy... I place it all at the foot of the cross and say, "You are right.  I'm not worthy.  I just trust my Savior."  As John said, "Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned."

So ask yourself this morning what is standing in your way?  Like the Apostles in the first reading, each of us has a prison that we've been locked into.   God has been sending his angels to us in the dark night of our oppression to open the doors and to send us on our way to tell others about this life.  What is your prison?  What is holding you back?  What sin has you locked behind it's doors preventing you from living that life of joy, freedom and faith that comes with the grace of God?  Let Him open the doors.  They are locked but God holds the key, and He Himself handed that key to the Church.  Go receive it for yourself in the Sacraments.

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

Hot Sands

Around ten years ago I had an experience that completely changed my life.  It began though around nine months before that.  My wife and I embarked on a journey of learning, though she had quite a bit more knowledge than I at that time.  The three other ladies in the house had to learn how to prepare for this as well.  Things had to be cleaned, locks had to be installed (or reinstalled.)  Various damaging things that could harm the imminent birth of our child had to be moved, secured or disposed of.  Life was changing and we had to work hard and discipline ourselves to prepare for those changes.

My wife had to change her diet, so we changed with her.  Things we normally might have eaten would have to be given up so that the child would be nourished with the proper vitamins and nutrients.  We worked hard on making sure that things didn't happen that would injure her, including avoiding high stress activities and anything that might jossle or jar her stomach in a negative way.  For nine months we prepared for that birth, for nine months we had to think and ponder what it might be like.  I was supposed to be infertile.  The doctors had told me this for years.  My wife and I had resigned ourselves to God's will in this matter.  We had not given up hope, but we didn't have a great deal of confidence that anything would come of it.

Then one day she took a pregnancy test and our world was changed.  It was filled with worry and yet joy.  Would she be healthy?  Would she have special needs?  Would she make it?  Would it be a he or she?  All things we waited till birth to discover.  Then that November I got to experience second hand what childbirth is like.  I've heard it said that a kidney stone is worse than childbirth.  If my wife's ability to give birth to children is the norm?  Then I'd say a kidney stone is a LOT worse than childbirth.  She gives birth like most people walk across hot sand.  If you move your feet fast enough it doesn't hurt too much.  The doctor came in and said "Ok, it's time."  And then? It was over.  There was this child of mine staring at me with my own face in miniature.  I watched as the nurses cleaned her and gave her some shot to boost her immune system and as the drop of blood dripped from her thigh she began to cry in pain.  I wanted to protect her but I knew it was best for her, so I stood and waited for them to hand her to us.  I knew right then I would do anything for this child, anything, even if it meant my own death.

There it is for all of you who wonder why we bother with Lent as Catholics.  Lent is the pregnancy.  It is that time when you prepare, when you discipline yourself, for that life changing event.  You get rid of those things that are harmful in preparation to nourish your new life.  As the reading for this morning says, "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."  In Baptism we die with Christ and rise again a new person, filled with the Holy Spirit and the grace of God to go forth and change our lives.  Easter is a chance to renew that, to rekindle that romance, to draw closer to God and be more like Him.  Lent prepares us for that.  Just like with the new baby coming, anything that can hinder the growth of our new life, anything that might 'kill' or harm that new life, must be removed.

The thing is, it can't end with Lent.  Lent is not about giving up something meaningless in order to go right back to it afterward.  Lent is about preparing for that delivery of New Life that we receive in the Eucharist!  Just like you don't just ignore the baby after it's born, you can't ignore your new self either.  You have to feed it the right things, discipline it so that it can know right from wrong, nourish it, cherish it, and help it to grow into something beautiful.  That's what Easter reminds us to do.  We still have to keep those things out of our lives that we learned to remove during Lent, and continue to do those things that make us grow spiritually.  First and foremost of those is the Sacraments, but second and like to them are the corporeal works of Mercy.   Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, comforting the sick and mourning, visiting those who cannot get out or are imprisoned... yes these things make our new life grow.  They nourish us and enhance us.

It's not something we can forget.   That's why we in the Catholic church consider Sunday a mini-Easter... it's a reminder every week that we have to continue to feed our spirit with the nourishment of Christ in the Eucharist, in Confession, in prayer and in works.  Here you are with this new life cradled in your arms, and for those of you who are parents?  You have other lives to nourish and guide that they too might grow in their faith.  It's our responsibility to guide, nourish and cherish those lives.  When you gaze at them, when you gaze at your own spiritual walk, when you gaze at the Eucharist.... ask yourself, "Would I do anything for them?"  That's what Christ asks of us.  The walk of a Christian is not an easy one, not a thing that we simply do at Church and forget about later.. it's about looking at the people we like the least, the ones we have the most hatred for.. and trying to see Christ in them... because once we do.. the world changes.. our lives change.. and with God's grace and help?  Hatred can become love.  Injury? Pardon.  Doubt? Faith.  Despair? Hope. Anything is possible.

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."