A Day of Grace

          Pentecost arrived a little early for me yesterday.  The day started off with my nephew Jack’s First Holy Communion.   I love First Communions.  The kids are always adorable, and they really believe in the mystery of the Eucharist.  Kids have a way of believing even when they don’t understand everything.  Perhaps that’s why Jesus tells us we need to be like little children to enter the Kingdom.  Jack’s pastor, Father Tom, is a great priest (I had the privilege of assisting him last year at my nephew Brian’s FHC), and he has a great rapport with the children.  Father Tom graciously allowed me to administer First Communion to Jack, which is a special blessing for any priest or deacon.     

          By mid-day, I was making my way back to my parish to officiate at Kim and Dave’s wedding.  I met Kim two years ago when she joined the RCIA class that I oversee.  She’s a wonderful young lady with a heart of gold – always concerned about everyone else.  It was a blessing then to journey on the road to Confirmation with her, and an added blessing this past year to meet Dave and prepare them for marriage.  Officiating at their wedding was the icing on the cake – and I love the icing.  Everyone was happy, their families and friends were fun to be with, the bride was beautiful and the groom cleaned up pretty nicely himself.  In a word, it was perfect!

          Since I was already in my Sunday best, I decided to assist at the 5:30 vigil Mass after the wedding.  To my great surprise and delight, Deacon Bill, our retired deacon who recently returned from his annual pilgrimage to Florida, assisted at Mass as well.  I haven’t seen Bill or his wonderful wife Mary for 6 or 7 months, and haven’t assisted at Mass with Bill for longer than that.  It was so nice to see Bill and Mary, to hear Bill proclaim the Gospel and to see him administer communion to the parishioners he served for more than 20 years.  Bill is a great Deacon.  His ministry has touched so many people in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and Haiti.  He was an inspiration for my own vocation (he’s not solely responsible, so don’t blame him), and he introduced me to one of the most rewarding ministries I perform – prison ministry.    

          When Father Tom heard that I was going home to officiate at a wedding, he asked where I got the energy.  Well, the short answer is:  from the Holy Spirit.  Christ sent his Spirit to us on Pentecost so that God’s grace would live and breathe in and around us all the time.  The Sacraments blessed me with a trifecta of grace yesterday on the eve of the Solemnity of the Pentecost.  While I was physically tired at the end of the day, I was spiritually renewed and invigorated.  It was a very special day that I will long remember.  May God bless Jack, Kim and Dave, and Bill and Mary.

Happy Pentecost!

Click here for Pentecost in Two Minutes

United in Prayer: Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Mother's Day, May 12, 2013

God is great;

God is good.

Let us thank him for our food.

Amen

          I can’t tell you how surprised I was several years ago when I heard my wife Jessica teaching that simple meal time prayer to our daughters.  Somewhat piqued by the strange look on my face, Jessica explained that that was the prayer her family prayed every night at dinner time when she was growing up.  The reason I was so surprised was because that’s the same prayer that my family prayed at meal time when I was growing up.  I couldn't believe that two people from different religious backgrounds, living some 2,000 miles apart would have grown up saying the same prayer.  Our families, our faiths and our histories were joined together in that moment by one simple prayer.  Prayer unites us with God and with each other, and that’s what today’s Gospel is talking about.

          I have to admit that I struggled to find a common thread in today’s readings.  But after much fretful consideration, and a few prayers to Saint Jude, I realized that the common thread wasn't so much in the words but in the actions.  All three readings involve prayer.    In our first reading, we find Saint Stephen engaged in an intense, mystical communion with God, praying for Jesus to forgive his murderers.  In our second reading, Saint John hears the voice of the Lord in prayer inviting all who thirst to come and receive the gift of life-giving water.  And in our Gospel reading, Jesus is praying . . . for us.  He’s praying that we may all know that he and God are one, and praying that we may be united in God, or to use his words, that we may be “brought to perfection as one.”

          As Christians we’re called to “pray without ceasing.[1]  Not a day goes by when we’re not asked to pray for someone or something.  But in order to pray, we first have to understand that “the center of our being is a spiritual reality that is related to, yet distinct from the physical, psychological and social dimensions of who we are.”[2]  Humans are both corporeal and spiritual beings, but our spiritual existence sits at our core.  As the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”[3]

          Prayer is going on in our spiritual core and all around us all the time because “God is present in us at all times.  Omniscient, omnipotent, personal – and loving us without conditions.”[4]  And the Spirit of God that dwells within us “is always crying out ‘Abba, Father.’  The Spirit of God is always returning to the Father.”[5]  That cry, that return is prayer, whether we realize it or not.  But just as we take our breathing, our beating hearts, or our own self-awareness for granted, this ceaseless prayer within us is often overlooked, suppressed or even denied.[6]  Prayer is like the electric current that runs through our homes; if we don’t plug into it, we won’t get anything out of it.  But if we take the time, if we make the effort to plug ourselves into that ceaseless prayer within us, we’ll find ourselves connected to a power that’s greater than anything we can imagine because prayer unites us with God.

          Now, if God is present in each one of us at all times, and prayer unites us with God, then prayer unites us with each other.  I’ll give you a moment to catch up with that syllogism.  In prayer, we’re able to “move beyond the physically imposed boundaries of our skin and enter into the spiritual center of another.”[7]  Prayer connects us with each other through our eternal link with God.  So, look around; you’re spiritually connected to the person next to you, to the person in front of you, to the person who’s wearing too much perfume and to the person who’s not wearing enough.  And just like we often overlook God’s presence within us, we sometimes overlook, suppress or even deny the fact that we are all spiritually connected with every single person in this world.  That may feel a little creepy; there are people out there that we don’t like very much, and billions more that we don’t even know.  It’s kind of hard to feel a connection with them.  But Jesus prays that we’ll be perfected as one, united with God and with each other.  Prayer develops and perfects our spiritual connections with God and all of humanity.  We’re united in prayer.

          Today we celebrate one of our greatest spiritual connections – the spiritual connection with our Mothers.  Mothers have a special and unique bond with their children.  In the earliest months of pregnancy, or in the desire and anticipation of a child that will be adopted or cared for, when a mother can’t see or touch her child, she communicates and bonds with her child in the only way and in the most important way she can – spiritually.  That’s prayer.  And the spiritual bond born of prayer unites a mother with her child eternally; it’s the intuition that tells her what her child needs and let’s her know when something’s wrong.  It also gives her the eyes in the back of her head, if you ever wondered where they came from.  It apparently gave my mother eight eyes in the back of her head, and extra-long arms.  The spiritual connection that Jessica and our daughters share is palpable, and I've leaned on my spiritual connection with my mother every day of my life. 

          Whether your mother is living or she’s gone to her heavenly reward, whether you have a great relationship with your mother or a not-so-great relationship, whether your mother lives a thousand miles away or she’s sitting in the fourth pew wondering why your homily’s so long, we can develop and perfect our relationship with our mothers and be united with them eternally through prayer, if we chose to. 

          My mother taught me to pray when I was just a toddler.  If she had known that it would lead to this, she might have taught me something else.  I’m grateful, though, because the gift of prayer sustains me in tough times and helps me appreciate the many blessings I've received in this wonderful life.  Thank you, Mom, for teaching me to pray.  You should be proud to know that I remember my first prayer to this day.  And every time I think of that prayer, I think of you.  We’re united in prayer.  And so for Mother’s Day, I’d like to recite that prayer just like I did with my mother many years ago:

I thank you God for giving me

A home as nice as it can be.

I thank you for my family too,

I love them God, and I love you.

Readings:  Acts 7: 55-60; Revelation 22: 12-14, 16-17,20; John 17: 20-26

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[1] 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

[2] John Shea, The Relentless Widow: The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers, Luke, Year C (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2006) at 151.

[3] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1955).

[4] Eben Alexander, MD, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2012) at 161.

[5] Father Francis Martin.

[6] Harvey D. Egan, S.J., Introduction to Karl Rahner, The Need and the Blessing of Prayer (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 1997) at xi.

[7] Shea at 152.

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

Or so the saying goes.  I kicked off my Spring Cleaning yesterday by tackling my office.  Fortunately for me, I'm not the kind of person who thrives in clutter, so cleaning my office isn't so much about picking up and putting away as it is about actual cleaning - dusting, vacuuming. mopping and the like.  I don't like cleaning my office, which is why it gets so dirty before I'm sufficiently motivated to clean it, but I LOVE having a clean office.  There's just something about a clean work place that makes me feel better about myself.

The notion that cleanliness is next to Godliness has unclear origins.  Some suggest that it dates back to Hebrew writings, though they admit that the phrase does not come from the Hebrew Scriptures.  Others attribute it to Sir Francis Bacon's "Advancement of Learning," where he wrote, "Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a

due reverence to God."   That seems like a stretch to me.  The origin of the phrase in my life was my grandmother, who liberally sprinkled it about whenever we'd complain about having to clean something up.  It always seemed to work.  How can you argue against Godliness?

 

For me, the phrase is aspirational and sometimes even motivational.  It gives me hope in a messy world that things can be straightened up.  It gives me the comfort of knowing that slates can be wiped clean, and fences can be mended.  It inspires me to clean up my life so I can be a better example for my daughters and others.  

God loves us equally in our messiness and our cleanliness.  He never stops drawing us to the purity and perfection of his life, no matter our condition, simply because he wants to share his life with us. That's what Godliness is all about. Cleanliness isn't a condition of God's love; but it sweeps away the clutter so we have the room to receive it.  And when we receive God's love, we always feel better about ourselves.  Happy Spring Cleaning!

Gonna Make this Garden Grow

                       Inch by inch, row by row,

                             Gonna make this garden grow.
                             All it takes is a rake and a hoe

                             And a piece of fertile ground.

                             Inch by inch, row by row someone bless these seeds I sow;
                             Someone warm them from below
                             Til the rain comes tumbling down.

Well, I wish it were that easy.  I spent my afternoon preparing the vegetable garden for planting. In other words, I spent my afternoon weeding.  It seems like spring has finally sprung in western New Jersey, though winter put up a darned good fight.  And with spring came a burst of . . . well . . . weeds.  I can’t get over how many there are, no doubt the result of the fresh soil I added to the beds last year.  I usually don’t mind weeding; I like being outside and gardening has been a hobby for a long time.  But there were A LOT of weeds out there today.  I spent 4 hours weeding, and I’m only half done!  It’s out of control.

                             Pullin’ weeds and pickin’ stones,
                             We are made of dreams and bones.
                             I feel the need to grow my own cause the time is close at hand.
                             Grain for grain, sun and rain I’ll find my way in nature’s chain;
                             I tune my body and my brain to the music of the land.

There’s just something about gardening that brings me back to it every spring, weeds and all.  Perhaps it’s that manly feeling I get when I put vittles on the table grown by my own calloused (read “blistered”) hands.  Maybe it’s the perennial discovery that the asparagus and horseradish keep coming back notwithstanding my poor gardening the year before.  If they can do it, so can I!  But if I had to put a stake in it, it’s just my way of connecting with nature and returning to the simpler things of life.

                             So plant your rows straight and long,
                             And temper them with prayer and song.
                             Mother earth will keep you strong if you give her love and care.
                             Now that crow watching hungrily from his perch in yonder tree;
                             In my garden I’m as free as that feathered thief up there.

I find gardening very liberating:  I can plant what I want to plant and think what I want to think.  In my garden homilies are cultivated among the cabbages, woes are uprooted with the weeds, and prayers are planted alongside the peppers.  The combination of a little physical labor and a lot of fresh air seem to melt the stress away and put life into its proper perspective.  I leave my garden a little tired and much humbled, knowing that I’m not the one who makes the garden grow, and assured that the one who does loves more that I can imagine.  And that’s the most liberating feeling we can have.  But I certainly wouldn't mind if he’d give me a little help with the weeds.

Click HERE for The Garden Song by John Denver (after the Frog)

Love ALWAYS Conquers Evil

          The terrible and senseless attack at the Boston Marathon yesterday reminds us that evil does, in fact, exist in this world, and it returns us to the seemingly unanswerable question: why?  I can't answer that.  But I can say with conviction that love ALWAYS conquers evil.  I say that with conviction not only because I believe that the loving self-sacrifice of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ conquers evil, but because I see love stand tall and strong against evil every time evil rears its ugly head.  I see love conquer evil in the rescue workers and volunteers who put themselves in harm's way to help the injured.  I see love conquer evil in the people who donated blood and in the medical professionals who jumped into action to treat the injured.  And I see love conquer evil in the prayers that are being offered in Churches and around dinner tables, that are rocketing through cyberspace and are storming the heavens.    

          May the light of Christ lead the dead to their heavenly homeland. May the peace of Christ bring healing and strength to the injured and all effected by the attack.  And may the Sacred Heart of Jesus give us the hope and conviction that love ALWAYS conquers evil.

Go Fish! Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, Year C, April 14, 2013

          When I was a kid my Grandma Gallo taught me a card game called “Go Fish.”  You may be familiar with it; it’s a simple game where each player is dealt 5 cards and you take turns asking the other players for a card that matches one in your hand.  The object is to collect the most matches.  If your opponent has the card you ask for, she gives it to you.  If she doesn't have it she says, “Go Fish,” and you have to pick up another card from the deck.  If you’re lucky, you pick up a matching card and get another turn.  “Go Fish” takes on a completely different meaning in today’s Gospel, and luck has nothing to do with it.

          Today’s Gospel presents an unusual scene.  Following the miracle of the empty tomb and after the resurrected Jesus appeared to the Apostles twice out of nowhere, walking through walls and disappearing in an instant, the Apostles decide to go fishing.  Somehow that doesn't seem like an appropriate response to me.  But we have to remember that John’s Gospel is highly symbolic, and “[b]y the time this Gospel was written, the use of the image of fishing for the pastoral ministry of the Church was common.”[1]  So symbolically, we find the Apostles trying to fulfill Jesus’ promise that he would make them fishers of men.  But without Jesus, they didn't catch anything. 

          You see, when Jesus was with them, when they walked with him and talked with him and shared meals with him, “their hearts burned within them.”  But now he was gone, or so they thought, and they “lost that loving feeling,” as the song goes.  They lost their enthusiasm for the mission entrusted to them.  So they weren't very good fishers of men.  But as soon as they hear his voice and listen to him, they’re wildly successful and their Spirit-filled enthusiasm inspired by love returns.  “The enormous catch . . . represents the universal mission of the Church carried out by those who without Jesus can do nothing but who will be fruitful as long as they abide in him and obey him,”[2] as long as they love him.

          Jesus makes it perfectly clear that loving him is the key to the ministry of the Church.  Toward the end of the Gospel, Jesus interrogates Peter three times with the same question, “Do you love me?”  And only after he receives a positive response does Jesus charge Peter with his mission:  “Feed my lambs; tend my sheep; feed my sheep.”  Peter can’t be a successful shepherd, or a fisher of men, for that matter, if he doesn't love Jesus first.

            We’re all called to be fishers of men, just like the Apostles.  Through our common Baptism, fed by Christ in the Eucharist and sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, we become “obliged to spread the faith by word and deed.”[3]  But we’ll be no more successful at it than the Apostles were at the beginning of the Gospel if we’re not in relationship with Christ; if we don’t love him first.   We can study the Bible and the Catechism all year, we can hear his Word and consume his Body and Blood every Sunday, but if we don’t love Jesus, we’re just going through the motions.  And we certainly won’t convince anyone to join us, we won’t catch any fish, by just going through the motions.  “Hey, do you want to just go through the motions with us this Sunday?”  That sounds kind of silly to me.  And, as the great philosopher Steven Wright once said, “There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.” 

          In our context, that fine line is love.  If we love Jesus, if we feed his lambs and tend his sheep, we’ll experience the most gratifying life we can live.  And the joy and enthusiasm that come with being in a loving relationship with Jesus is the best bait out there.  The fish will jump right into our boat.  Just look at Pope Francis.  The Holy Father loves Jesus – no one would doubt how he’d answer Jesus’ three questions.  We all know he loves Jesus because we can see it when he washes the feet of prisoners; when he stops his car to embrace a child crippled by cerebral palsy; when he encourages every member of the Church he leads to bring Jesus to the poorest of the poor.  And guess what, Church attendance around the world has gone up since his election.  People see the joy he gets out of his ministry; they feel Christ’s love flowing right through him and they say, “I gotta get me some of that!”  Pope Francis’ success as a fisher of men doesn't come from luck; it comes from love.

          Of course, fishing can be messy business.  You have to get your hands dirty, and you may even end up smelling like fish.  But as the Spanish proverb says, “You can’t catch a trout with dry breeches.”  And I can tell you from my own experience that it’s well worth it.  When Jesus caught me hook, line and sinker, I was filled with a joy and enthusiasm that I couldn't keep in.  I had to share his love.  I had to go fishing.  Some of you may be wishing that Jesus had thrown me back, but Jesus must have thought I was a keeper.  I love my ministry because I love the one who gave it to me, and I love the people he asked me to serve.  You’re not always pretty . . . I mean ministry’s not always pretty – I've done a lot of things in ministry that I never would have imagined I would do – but the rewards are out of this world. 

          I know that this congregation is filled with people who love Jesus.  I see it all the time.  I see it especially today in the five candidates who will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation this morning.  I've been blessed with the opportunity to watch your love of Jesus grow during this past year.  You took your formation very seriously; it wasn't a game to you.  And if I can give you just two more pieces of advice for a joy-filled life, they would be:  “Love Jesus;” and then “Go Fish!”

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[1] Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (New York, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003) at 226.

[2] Id.

[3] Lumen Gentium, The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Vatican City, Libreria Vaticana, 1964) at 11.

The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary . . .

The Annunciation

by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898