Just a few days ago my wife and I were sitting in the garage enjoying the evening air as the sun was beginning to set. We started listening to the Divine Office Evening Prayer on one of the apps on my phone and were reciting the responses along with it. (click the link to read more.)

June 23, 2017
Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Lectionary: 170
DT 7:6-11
PS 103:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 10
1 JN 4:7-16
MT 11:25-30

Just a few days ago my wife and I were sitting in the garage enjoying the evening air as the sun was beginning to set.   We started listening to the Divine Office Evening Prayer on one of the apps on my phone and were reciting the responses along with it.  I believe both of us were reclined in the warm, moist air with our eyes closed just enjoying this moment of prayer together outside the hustle and bustle of life.   The door to the kitchen opened and out walked one of our daughters.   She realized what we were doing and sat down on a skateboard and just listened.  It was at this point that the Magnificat began to be recited.   My wife and I simply began to say it with the group of monks and nuns.    My daughter was impressed I think and mouthed “How do you know the words?”  I scrolled the phone down to where they were and handed it to her.   She finished Evening Prayer with us and we had a very powerful moment.

After our devotions were over I explained to her that we knew the words because we have been praying the Office for the most part since 2010, when we did Awakening Faith at our Parish.   A visiting Deacon was praying it when I arrived one day and I struck up a conversation.  Praying the Scripture?   That makes sense to me.   So I got a little copy of “Shorter Christian Prayer” and began.   I didn’t do it every day.  It did become a part of my life though.  The one thing it taught me about God is that to know Him, to truly know His love, and who He has made us to be requires a relationship.   It requires spending time with Him.   It requires knowing the stories and people of the Old and New Testament.  It’s very powerful to realize that the Evening Prayer recites the words of Mary, her song of thanksgiving when she was visiting Elizabeth.   That’s called the Magnificat.  

The one thing about today’s solemnity is that it focuses on the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  It’s all about God’s love.  His mercy, His plan to redeem us, and His death and resurrection for our sins.  It is a story about how special we are to Him.   I think to understand how special we are we have to stop thinking of ourselves as insignificant worms, made of dust and worth nothing.    Yes compared to divinity itself?   We aren’t much.   Yet, He died for us.   If it were just to save one single soul, He would have done it.   We believe that God made each of us special, unique and with a plan for our lives.  Every time I see someone say that Mary was just a box, a vessel, nothing special, I get a little upset.  If she was nothing?   Then so am I.   So are you.   Yet the Scriptures are clear: “From this day all generations will call me blessed.”   Is “you are just a worthless person” blessing her?   Do you think Jesus did not die on the cross for her as well?  Was she just discarded?  Especially in our age of enlightenment when we try to encourage people to see women as equal to men, why then do we take the mother of God and run her through the mud as just another box?

That’s not love.   My wife was not just a box for my children.   She was someone special that I chose out of all the possibilities and who also had a choice and chose me.   Mary is the flesh that the Sacred Heart of Jesus came from.   We don’t worship her, but we do honor her.   We honor her for the role she played.   The choice she freely made.   The pain and suffering she went through that the Sacred Heart even came into existence.  So no, if Mary had said no it wouldn’t have been the same with just another person… any more than if I went back in time and never met Julie that I’d have the same kid with just another person… No.  That’s not how things work.  God had a plan for her before He made her, just like He had one for us.  Just like with Israel, He chose Her because He loved her.   That’s what the Sacred Heart is about.   It’s about reminding us that God loves each and every one of us completely and fully.   That the heart of Jesus still beats in Heaven and in the Tabernacle for us.  It aches for our completion, for our own hearts and souls to cry out with Mary “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”  Are you ready to give in and realize how much He loves you?  Are you ready to choose love?   To remain in love that Love might remain in you?

It is when we let go of the burdens of this world, close our eyes in the rapture of the moment, and simply rest in the knowledge of this truth that we take on the yoke of Christ.   That does not mean that things have magically gotten better at the moment.  It doesn’t mean that life won’t be hard when we stop resting in His arms and walk back to whatever task that we have at hand.  The relationships that were broken seconds ago are not magically restored.  Our soul though is filled with Him and He remains with us.   That’s what the Sacraments are about.   That’s what prayer is about.  You are special.  God chose you because He loves you and wants to be a part of your life.  He gave you a spiritual family of Saints and Angels to help you get through this world and a Church to open channels of grace into your life that you could better resist those things that harm you and pull you away from Him.  Then He died on the cross because that was the price of our failures.  Let God take up those burdens that are weighing you down, and begin to follow His lead and keep His commandments.  Take it one moment at a time, one step at a time, and realize it’s when you are weakest that He carries you.

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

Every Heart Beat

When I was a young man I attended church at a First Baptist Church in a small town in rural Virginia.  They used to reward us for memorizing scripture.  Free pizza hut pan pizzas, candy, even money.   The very first challenge I received in youth group was to memorize the 23rd Psalm.  "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."  I still remember sitting in my room at night opening my King James bible and closing it, reciting what I could and then repeating, until I could say the entire Psalm without fault.  That week at Wednesday night youth group I received a certificate for a free personal pan pizza.  I didn't even realize the true gift was the Psalm itself, all I wanted was free food.

Years later I find so much comfort in that Psalm.  When we pray it in the Liturgy of the Hours or sing it at the Mass it touches me in ways that I cannot express in words.  The very thought that Ezekiel expresses in the first reading for today when he says that God himself will be the one to enter into the dark, cloudy places where we have been scattered.  That He will be the one to give us rest, the one to pasture and feed us.  How apropos that the Church in her wisdom has chosen these very readings.   To remind us that even in the darkest of times God will set a table for us, and all we have to do is come in and eat.  He himself will robe us and put a ring on our fingers.  Heaven itself will rejoice at this one single sheep coming back as if they were the only one in the universe, ah how grand a party that will be!

478 Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony and his Passion, and gave himself up for each one of us: "The Son of God. . . loved me and gave himself for me." He has loved us all with a human heart. For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation, "is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that. . . love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings" without exception.

Christ died for us while we were still sinners.  That's so powerfully important for us to understand.   It isn't about getting right first, it's about letting Him make you right.  I have heard people say "when I get more time, then I'll pray more."  Or "I'll go to adoration when I retire, I'm too busy now."   God does indeed love you exactly as you are, but too much to leave you there.   He wants the best for you.  He wants you to live that life of fullness that he created you to live.  Not a life of half truths, not one filled with clouds and darkness, but one filled with joy and peace.   That peace comes directly from a relationship with the Shepherd.   It is He who will provide you with food to pasture on, and He is indeed the very rest you seek.

"Our hearts are restless until they rest in you." - St. Augustine

God seeks us out in the darkness where we are, and He sets a feast right there before our enemies.   The thing is, that feast does not leave us unchanged.  He IS our pasture.  The incarnation, the Sacred Heart, became man that man might be transformed into that image that he was created to be.   Every day at Mass he condescends to our level, becoming what we need, sustenance.   Food.   Drink.  Bread and wine.  It is in this way that Christ pastures us.   He gives us himself to eat, the true bread from Heaven, the real Manna, greater than anything our forefather's received in the desert.   It is this very bread which gives us life, which transforms us, if we let it, into the body of Christ itself.   We become 'christ's' in the world.

That means we are challenged by this Eucharistic feast which we partake of.   Challenged to not just be pastured and find our rest, but also to go out into the world as shepherds.   To find the lost sheep and guide them to the table in the midst of their own enemies.   To point them like sign posts to the Eucharist, to the Church, to Christ himself and show them the peace and joy they can only receive in a relationship with Him.  We must feed them.  We must help them find rest.   The darkness is all around us.  Poverty, illness, abortion, moral decay....  These are just a few of the clouds and darkness that gather around our children, families, and friends.   These are the oppressions which push down the widow, the orphan, and the refugee.   Brothers and sisters, The love of God has been poured out into our hearts.  Are you ready to leave your comfort zone, and be the vessel through which God can reach the one who is lost?  Are you ready to be the living heartbeat of Christ's sacred heart, drawing others to Him through the sound of your own life?

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

How About Another Round?

In today's Gospel reading we have a very familiar event, one that every Christian should have heard of at one time or another.   John portrays it as the first event in Jesus public ministry.  The wedding of Cana.  It's interesting that the Bible too starts out with a wedding, then ends with a wedding.   From Adam to the banquet at the end of time, God shows us just how important his relationship is to us.  He shows it as a thing of joy, as a wedding, as an event that blesses the couple and all those around with joy and happiness.  

At this wedding though something sad happens.  The couple runs out of wine.  The party isn't over and they have run out of drink.  Oh how embarrassing!  In this culture it's a loss of face, a loss of honor!  Mary quickly runs to Jesus and informs him of the need.  Then in complete faith of her son she turns to those present and says, "Do whatever he tells you."   That's our first lesson.  The first disciple, the one who said a complete yes to God, always points to her Son.  We should listen to him, do what he tells us!  We too, then, as disciples of Christ should always point to Christ!   How powerful a lesson we receive from some of the few words recorded from our Blessed Mother in Sacred Scripture.

Then another thing happens, Jesus tells them to fill the jars with water. Jesus was more than capable of doing it himself.  He's about to change the very nature of the substance, how much more difficult would it have been to fill up the jars with it?  God can do anything he chooses.  That brings us to a truth about God though, a truth about our relationship to him.  The truth is that God can do everything, but he gives us the honor of being a part of it.  He allows us to be his hands and his feet.  He allows us to fill up our jars with things, with works.  He is going to make the wine, but he expects us to bring him the water.

That's one of the things about us as Catholics.  We know that no matter how much we work, no matter how many times we do prayers, they mean nothing without Christ's help.  We don't believe that we can ever provide the wine... but we work to provide the water.  Not because God hasn't already done the work of the Cross, but because he takes our offering and unites it with the work of His Son, to make an acceptable sacrifice.   He takes our lives... our water... and he transforms it into a beautiful, fragrant, vintage wine.    Oh how wonderful and glorious this truth is.   That no matter how imperfect my work, how imperfect my faith, imperfect my efforts... God will transform them into something worth seeing. 

That's love isn't it?  It's kind of like a child coming to their mother with a gift for their father and saying mom.. I have this little apple and I want to give it to dad.  The mother gets out the best plate, the fine gold china, and she puts the apple on it.   Then she places decorative paper around it and turns it into the gift fit for the King.  The father then sees this gift, perfected in it's beauty, and he is happy.  He would have been happy enough with the gift of the apple, right?  But both the child and the mother feel he deserves better. 

That's what this whole thing is about.   That's what Mass is about.  That's what the vestments, the gold vessels, the incense, the music... all of it is about dressing up our meager offerings.  Not because God doesn't cherish them just the way they are... but because God deserves better.  Then in the Eucharist we offer the one thing, the one gift that is worthy of God... that is the most precious gift he gave to us, the gift of His son.  We offer the Son back to the father, starting with bread and wine... something not worthy.. something plain.. the fruit of the vine and the work of human hands.  Then the Holy Spirit dresses them up, transforms them.. changes them into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Oh happy day!   Oh divine mercy! 

That brings me to one more point.  It doesn't matter how hard you try.. the inside of this vessel of ours is going to be filled with an imperfect person if you only do it on your own.  You can 'fill the jars with water'  but if you don't bring Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, into the picture.. it's just gonna be water.   If your jar is like mine.. that water isn't perfect.  It's not pure.  It's murky and muddy, and filled with the grime of this world.. but praise be to God that through the Sacraments, he can take even the yucky water that I offer and transform it into the finest of wines!  Are you ready?  Is there anything standing in your way?  Get to those Sacraments! Come to Him, the King of Kings, and offer yourself to Him.. and let Him transform you into the person that he created you to be... Free to worship him without fear, Holy and Righteous in His sight, all the days of your life!

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

What crown is this?

This morning I spent an hour in adoration praying for a friend.  During that time I prayed my daily rosary with that intention in my heart while also meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries.  I was struck with a deep sense of love and mercy.  As I began to pray and meditate on the Third Sorrowful Mystery, the crowning of thorns, my heart really went out to my friend.  While it was one of those personal and unspoken prayer requests, the message was clearly for them.  I wanted to share it with all of you as well.

My Lord and Savior, how pitiful a sight it must have been.  Having been scourged and beaten, your body wracked with pain, how did you have the strength to continue on the journey?  As they placed the mocking robe around your shoulders, onto the flayed and fractured skin, oh the pain that must have coursed throughout your existence.  Here the man who is King of all, being made into what to mortal eyes must have seemed a contemptuous parody.  With all the angels at your command your love for us kept you from calling them to your defense.  Ah, how undeserving we are of that love.

As they placed the crown of thorn on your sacred dome, deriding the very nature of your holy and regal being.  The thorns piercing your tender flesh, bleeding profusely across your stately countenance.  You bore this mortification in our place.  Having emptied yourself, you came to this world with this purpose in mind.  You who wore the very fabric of space and time as your robe, took on this tattered and worn garment of purple.   Him who was crowned with so much power and glory that even looking upon his face would bring on the fear of death, was woven a crown of dried, discordant twigs.  From the comfort of your heavenly throne you took on instead the discomfort of the Cross. 

My child, he seemed to say to me, I did this for you.  What you are going through now is a crown of your own thorns.  A crown that seems full of shame and loss.  A decision that makes you tremble on the inside, throwing yourself on the ground in your own garden of Gethsemane and begging God to take this cup from you.  Oh, my child do not let Satan convince you of this.  Satan is your Rome, your opponent.  He wishes to make you seem far away, beaten and destroyed. For you are a child of God, by my work you have become my co-heir and your dignity is that of the royal family.  You have been grafted into the shoot that sprang forth form Jesse's stump.   Your adversary wants you to believe that your shame is your dignity.  That your fear is your robe.  No, embrace this cross no matter how difficult.  Lift up your chin and bear yourself with the regal countenance that comes from being my sibling.   March forth and embrace your cross, and walk towards your Easter.  Do not be resigned but rather like Jesus, rejoice in the Holy Spirit.  Love this burden.  Grasp it in your arms as you would a newborn child.  Carry it as you would your own.   For then your cross will become a cross, without a cross.

His servant and yours,
Brian