Imagine I.C.

Seeing the Immaculate Conception through God’s eyes

12/08/2018

Luke 1:26-38 The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you." But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end."

You may have seen that we have created a new slogan for our elementary school. It reads: “Imagine I.C.” and I really like it and think it’s rather catchy. If we asked our students what comes to mind when they hear the words, “Imagine I.C.” their imaginations could conjure up all kinds of things. Some may immediately think of the grand, stately columns that greet and welcome students every morning when they enter the main doors, like the colonnade in front of St. Peter’s Basilica embracing all the world. We have a fabulous façade for an elementary entrance. Some may think of Ms. Anabel who prepares hot and healthy lunches every day and gives a little extra for those students with heartier appetites. Some think of the loads of homework every evening, but then later they breeze through junior high and high school thanks to the strong study skills they mastered here in these halls. They may think of Fr. John or Fr. Stephen. But on second thought, since Fr. Stephen plays the piano and serenades them at lunch, joins them for Gaga ball at recess, and directs traffic on Tuesday morning drop-off, they are probably not thinking about Fr. John.

They may not think about me, but I think about them when I “imagine I.C.” Yesterday, we had our school Advent confessions. I felt so pleased and proud of our students as they made very heart-felt and humble confessions. I am doubly proud because I know that confession is very hard and often embarrassing, which is why so few adults take advantage of the graces of this sacrament. But not I.C. students, and my heart burst with pride. When I see the slogan, “Imagine I.C.” my mind imagines our students growing in grace, like Jesus was described in Luke 2:40: “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” Those splendid students are what I see when I “Imagine I.C.”

Today we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in the womb of her mother, St. Anne. If we were to ask God to glance at our new school slogan and ask him what he thinks of when he tries to “Imagine I.C.”, he would answer, “I think of the woman whom I made, the Immaculate Conception, herself.” In fact, only the imagination of the Immortal God could have conceived how he would fulfill the plan of salvation promised all the way back in Genesis and finally perfected in a poor girl from Nazareth. Only when God imagined the Immaculate Conception did he finally tie together all the several strands of salvation history scattered about in the Old Testament and provide a perfect portal for his Son to enter this world while staying unstained by its sins. So, when the angel says in the gospel, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God,” he is not whistling Dixie; he’s dead serious: she was the fruit of his imagination. In other words, Mary was the bodily fulfillment of what happens when the Divine Mind begins to “Imagine I.C.” When I imagine I.C. I think of students who make a good confession, but when God imagines I.C. he sees a young girl who never even had to go to confession, and she is who we celebrate on December 8th: the first fruit that fell from the tree of the divine imagination.

Let me share with you a rather long quotation from Archbishop Fulton Sheen. I will end with it because he expresses far more eloquently everything I have been stammering and struggling to say. He wrote: “There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between when he wanted her to be and what she is, and that is his own Mother. Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The ideal that God had of her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned and dreamed. The melody of her life is played just as it was written. May was thought, conceived and planned as the equal sign between ideal and history, thought and reality, hope and realization” (Sheen, Mary, the Women the World Loves).

In other words, Mary is what God think when he tries to “Imagine I.C.” because she is the pure product of that immortal imagination. The Blessed Virgin Mary should be what we think of, too, when we “Imagine I.C.” because she should be the inspiration for our merely mortal imaginations. You should think about her even more than you think about Fr. Stephen.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Built to Last

Remembering our citizenship is in the City of God

12/06/2018

Matthew 7:21, 24-27 Jesus said to his disciples: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. "Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house.  And it collapsed and was completely ruined."

Today I would like to talk to you about two cities: one, the city of man, and the other, the city of God. Now, I am not the first to compare and contrast these two cities. St. Augustine already did that much more masterfully in his classic book, The City of God written in 426. Maybe this humble little homily will inspire you to read that blessed book.

The first city, the city of man, is often built along waterways, ocean-fronts or rivers. You may have noticed that Fort Smith lies along the Arkansas River. In fact, two great modern cities were built on swamps: Washington, D.C. and Mexico City. Washington, D.C. has a political reputation for being called “the swamp” because it was built on a tidal basin surrounded by three rivers: the Potomac, the Anacostia, and Tiber Creek. The phrase “to drain the swamp” has the implication of attempting to construct the city on new and different foundations, more solid ones.

Another great modern city that sits on a swamp, actually a lake, is Mexico City. The original settlers, an indigenous people called “the Mexicas” believed in an ancient prophesy telling them where to build their capital city. The sign was an eagle, eating a snake, while perched atop a cactus. They saw that sign in the middle of Lake Texcoco, and they hauled in untold loads of dirt to fill in the lake, and built their capital there. That ancient prophetic image stands in the middle of the modern Mexican flag: an eagle, eating a snake, perched on a cactus. The city of man, therefore, is built along waterways, and sometimes even erected on a swamp.

The second city is the city of God, or the Church, and it is built on rock. When Jesus announced his plans to build his kingdom in Matthew 16, do you remember what he said it would be built on? He turned to St. Peter and declared: “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the nether world will not prevail against it.” That is, Jesus, the divine city planner, would build his city on the person of St. Peter and the rock of his faith. An ancient adage in the Church teaches: “ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia,” which is Latin and means “where there is Peter, there is the Church” because he is the rock on which it is built. In the gospel today, when Jesus speaks of building a house on rock, he is using another image – “house” rather than “kingdom/city” – but in order to convey the same message, namely, the foundation should be the rock of faith, not the waterways and swamps of the city of man. That is the city that will last because of what it is built on, namely, rock.

My friends, we all take pride in our hometowns and our native city, whether it is Fort Smith or Fayetteville, or Faridabad (a city in India where my family lives). But do we take as much pride in the city of God, the Church? Put differently, how much of our time, treasure, and talent do we spend in building one city or the other? It used to be that the tallest structure in a city was the steeples of churches, but now it’s skyscrapers, which says something about which city we take more pride in. I am often in awe of the original Catholics who settled in Fort Smith and built this magnificent church in 1901. I often ask myself: How did they do that, lacking all the modern construction tools, equipment, and know-how? I think the simple answer is: they were far more interested in building the city of God than the city of man. They had an innate sense that modern human cities tend to be built on waterways, while the city of God, the Church, has been set solidly on rock, the person of St. Peter and his profession of faith. And it was pretty clear which one would last and which one would eventually collapse.

A friend of mine who is studying at the University of Notre Dame said that most civilizations have a four-hundred year life cycle, just like human beings have a life cycle (a life expectancy), so do human civilizations, which is four-hundred years. The first two hundred years they grow and expand, conquering other peoples and places, and transplanting their own traditions, like planting their flags on foreign lands. The second two hundred years, however, they experience decline and eventually extinction. That is the fate of the city of man because it is not built on the rock of faith, but on the watery ways of this world.

While we love our human cities, and support them, and enjoy them, let us not forget the city of God, of which we are also citizens. The life cycle of a city has everything to do with its foundations: whether it is built on water or on rock, whether it stands on fate or on faith.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Figuring out Faith

Learning to see faith as a friendship with Jesus

12/03/2018

Matthew 8:5-11 When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying, "Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully." He said to him, "I will come and cure him." The centurion said in reply, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes; and to another, 'Come here,' and he comes; and to my slave, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, "Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven."

One of the most frustrating of all human experiences has to be that of faith. Nevertheless, faith is something we better figure out because we cannot be saved without it. Ephesians 2:8 says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you, it is the gift of God.” So, what is this elusive but essential faith? My personal definition of faith is simply: “friendship with Jesus.” But this is more than like my friendship with 5,000 people on Facebook. Jesus is my best friend, and therefore my mind thinks like him, my behavior imitates him, my joy is found in him, and I like the same stuff he likes because he’s my friend. In other words, faith is a friendship with Jesus which fashions a whole world-view that includes both time and eternity, both earth and heaven, both my individual happiness and the communal happiness of all humanity. All that is wrapped up in my friendship with Jesus. Faith is frustrating but when you start to see it as friendship with Jesus, you start to figure it out.

Now, let me give you three examples of what faith is not. Faith is not found in an ethnic identity. This was the chief failing of the Jews, who believed they were the Chosen People who had the true faith while all other people would not be saved. And yet we know our culture is critical in passing on the faith. So, Fort Smith Catholics congregated in the German church of St. Boniface or at the Irish church of St. Patrick. Ethnicity helps pass on the faith but it is not faith itself. Secondly, a country does not create faith, which is what King Henry VIII attempted to do when he declared himself head of the Church of England. You can legislate many aspects of social life, but not faith. Just because we are Americans does not make us better Christians, even if we are better in basketball than everyone else. And thirdly, faith cannot be shared genetically, like you give your children the color of your eyes or of your skin, or your aptitude for academics. Do you know any parents who feel deeply frustrated that their children do not practice the same faith they did? In other words, faith is not found in a culture, or within the borders of a country, or in the genealogy of a family tree. Faith is a gift, the gift of friendship with Jesus that slowly changes my life and gradually transforms the whole world.

We see these same facets of faith in Jesus’ encounter with the Roman centurion today. The soldier asks Jesus to heal his suffering servant, but insists that Jesus just give the command, like a general, and his soldiers will carry out his orders without fail. To which Jesus is astonished and exclaims: “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven.” Notice how Jesus explains that faith is not tied up with a particular country (Israel), or with a certain culture (faith stretches to east and west), or with a genealogy (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). But rather, faith is a gift of God, given freely to whomever he chooses, and it forges a friendship with Jesus that changes our whole world-view. That Roman centurion had started to think like Jesus, to behave like Jesus, and finally found his joy in Jesus, because he had a friendship with Jesus.

May I share with you my personal frustration with faith? If faith is so crucial to our sanity and our salvation, then why doesn’t God give everyone an equal share of faith? Clearly some Christians receive a greater “dose of the Ghost” as my Charismatic friends love to say. Why doesn’t everyone get an equal “dose of the Ghost”? I certainly don’t know the answer to that question, but maybe it’s a little like how no matter how many children you have each one is different. Even though each child comes from the same set of parents (with the same genetic material), they are decidedly different, each with his or her own strengths and weaknesses. But regardless of a child’s talents, you, as a parent, love each one unconditionally. I believe God loves each of us unconditionally, too, no matter how much faith each person has. Faith is God’s gift to us, just like life is God’s gift to us, and just like love is God’s gift to us, and just like my father’s famous chicken curry is God’s gift to us. No matter what gifts he gives his children, that does not change God’s unconditional love for us. But what we do with those gifts shows God how much we love him in return, especially what we do with the gift of faith.

Have you finished your Christmas wish list yet? If you haven’t done so already, maybe you should add “faith” to the items you would like to receive as a gift this year. The gift of faith is the gift of friendship with Jesus, and it maybe even better than a Red Ryder BB gun.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Shoes of the Fisherman

Celebrating five years as pastor of Immaculate Conception

12/02/2018

Jeremiah 33:14-16 The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah. In those days, in that time, I will raise up for David a just shoot; he shall do what is right and just in the land. In those days Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem shall dwell secure; this is what they shall call her: “The LORD our justice.”

On November 6, 2013, I received a littler from Bishop Taylor that profoundly changed my life for the better. May I read it to you? Don’t worry, it is short. The bishop wrote: “Welcome back! I am glad that your sabbatical with the Carmelite Friars in Texas was spiritually fruitful and doubly glad that the Lord is leading you back to the Diocese of Little Rock. By means of this letter I am happy to appoint you pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Fort Smith effective December 1, 2013.” In other words, today is my five year anniversary as your pastor. I remember feeling overwhelmed at the time, thinking: how will I ever live up to the expectations of pastoring one of the most prominent parishes in the diocese, which is standing at the head of Garrison Avenue as if spiritually watching over the city, and walking in the shoes of legendary pastors? Here are a few of those pastors.

There was Fr. Lawrence Smyth, who was so nervous to meet Pope Pius IX in the 1860’s that he forgot this parish was originally called St. Patrick’s and said he was pastor of Immaculate Conception! And that’s how the church’s name changed: true story. Msgr. Patrick Horan bravely built Immaculate Conception School in 1930, at the outbreak of the Great Depression.  When no one had any money, he was building a Catholic school. He rode his horse on Wildcat Mountain, which his family owned, and you may know the street that’s named for his family. There was Msgr. Tom Walsh, who expanded the rectory by building what was dubiously dubbed “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by later occupants. The pastor’s quarters now has wood-paneled walls and features a fireplace and a commanding view of the church and downtown. You feel more like pastor of a city, not just a church.

 

Of course, who can forget Msgr. William Galvin, who trained an army of associate priests over thirty years? Each one was “Galvinized” under the good monsignor’s gaze and learned the tricks of the trade to be a shepherd of souls and a fisher of men. Then the reverend rockstar arrived, Msgr. John O’Donnell, who packed the church not only on Christmas and Easter, but every Sunday. Listening to Msgr. O’Donnell preaching on Sunday, you felt like you were personally present for our Savior’s Sermon on the Mount. Only fools skipped Sunday Mass in those days. These pastors of I.C. cast their nets wide in the teaming waters of Fort Smith, hauling in a great catch of souls for the kingdom. And so to me, an immigrant from India, my feet felt pretty small as I slid them into those mighty shoes of the fishermen worn by the former pastors of this parish.

I feel very fortunate that I was appointed as pastor on December 1, which usually marks the beginning of Advent, a new liturgical year of the Church. That is, I became a new pastor at the dawn of a new year. Every Advent, therefore, we have a chance to hit the reset button on our spiritual life, our relationship with Jesus, much like we make New Year’s Resolutions on January 1st and make a fresh start each year. Let me offer you the three priorities I would like to work on as a pastor this coming year. Maybe they will give you some ideas on how to improve your own relationship with Jesus and with others. They all begin with the letter “p” so they are easy to remember: prayer, patience and presence.

First of all, prayer. Of course, we priests pray all the time, especially when we celebrate the sacraments, which should feel like peak experiences of prayer for all Christians. But an occupational hazard lurks for priests because prayer can become routine, or worse, it becomes a chore, a burden rather than a blessing. Sometimes I feel like little more than a sacramental machine. I know that when you ask for my prayers you make a serious and solemn request, something you don’t take lightly and neither should I. So, this coming year I will work hard to make my prayer life – both public and private – more heartfelt and intentional. Maybe you could try to make your own prayer life less routine and more real.

Second, patience. Let me apologize to all of you with whom I have lost my patience in the past five years. On several occasions I have been demanding and insisted that people work harder to meet my expectations. And I lost my patience and my cool. A priest in the seminary taught us that our people will forgive many failings of a priest, but they will never forgive a lack of kindness, a lack of patience. I will never forget Fr. Jon McDougal’s sage advice in such circumstances, he said: “Most people are just doing the best they can.” And by the way, Fr. McDougal was also “Galvanized” so you can guess who taught him that lesson first. I will try to be more patient with you, and I beg you to please be more patient with me. Most people, including priests, are just doing the best they can.

And third, presence. I know I am not around and as present as you would like, nor is it as much as I would I like. You may know that besides being pastor of I.C., I am also the administrator of Trinity Junior High, the pastor of our mission church in Winslow, as well as a judge on the marriage tribunal in Little Rock. I once heard it said that when you earn a Ph.D. you know more and more about less and less. Well, I believe that when you go higher in leadership, it feels like you can do less and less about more and more. In other words, the higher up you climb the ladder of leadership, the more distant you feel from others. It’s harder to reach people because there are so many people to reach. Nonetheless, I would like to be more present to the people and groups I have not spent much time with in the past. I hope you won’t tire of my presence, like Benjamin Franklin warned: “Fish and visitors start to smell after three days.”

As we stand on the doorstep of a New Year, maybe we can work on prayer, patience, and presence to make this year better than the last. I hope to serve as pastor of Immaculate Conception as long as Msgr. Galvin did, which means I have another 25 years to go. I hope to leave here “feet first” like he did. When you carry these feet out of this church, I pray they will have been half as worthy as those of previous pastors who wore the shoes of the fisherman. And I hope my feet don’t smell like fish.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Fairy-tale Frogs

Allowing others to love us as we really are 

11/30/2018

Matthew 4:18-22 As Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. He said to them, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men." At once they left their nets and followed him. He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.

It is very normal and natural to want others to think we are better than we really are. All men want to come across like the knight in shining armor or prince charming, while women want to appear as snow white or Cinderella. No one wants to be the fairy-tale frog the princess has to kiss in order to be loved and married. For instance, I tell engaged couples preparing for marriage that the worst thing that can happen to you on your wedding day is you marry a stranger, someone you do not really know. But the best thing that could happen is you look at each other and say, “I know you’re not the knight in shining armor, but I still want to marry you and spend my life with you.” How wonderful for someone to know me as the fairy-tale frog and still want to kiss me?

We have a wonderful parishioner that comes each week to clear the rectory. Do you know what we do the day before she comes? We straighten everything up and clean the rectory as much as possible. Does anyone else do that? We don’t want her to think we are frogs, but rather prince charming. Everyone wants to look better than they are, but deep inside we are all just frogs who need to be kissed and loved in spite of our failings and foolishness.

Today is the feast of St. Andrew, and there is not a lot that the gospels tell us about him. His claim to fame is being the brother of St. Peter. Also, he brings the boy who has the loaves and fishes to Jesus for the miracle of the multiplication. Additionally, Andrew introduces some Greeks who wanted an audience with Jesus. Because of this lacuna or gap in historical data about Andrew – he seems more like a frog than a prince of the church – a hagiography was written about him called Acts of Andrew. A hagiography is a kind of biography that blows a person’s good qualities way out of proportion to make him look better than he is. For example, in the Acts of Andrew, we read that while being crucified on an “x-shaped” cross, he was able to give a sermon for three days. We know that cannot be true because a three-day sermon would crucify the people, not the preacher. In other words, a hagiography tries to clean up a saint’s house before the housekeeper arrives. It tries to make every saint appear perfect, a prince charming. But Jesus came to kiss us and love us while we are still frogs, and the grace that comes from his kiss makes us good.

My friends, it is not at all easy to try to fight the tendency to think we are better than we really are. We all write hagiographies about our lives instead of true autobiographies. When we talk about ourselves we naturally and unthinkingly justify our actions. When there is a conflict we are clearly right and the other person is obviously wrong. It takes a great deal of humility and not hagiography to see we can be ugly frogs, too. In medical school doctors are trained to interpret how patients make themselves look better than they are. To the question how much alcohol do you drink? The doctors should double that answer. To the question, how much sex do you have in a week? The doctor should cut that answer in half. This is one reason it is so hard for people to go to confession. We kneel in humble acknowledgement of our sins and say in so many words, “I have behaved more like a frog than a prince.” Some priests mistakenly believe that putting on the priestly collar hides all their imperfections and we parade around like princes of the church, instead of seeing the silly sinners that we really are. We all hide our dirty laundry before the housekeeper comes.

Maybe today St. Andrew can help us stop worrying about appearing like prince charming or snow white and let other people see us and love us for who we really are. Jesus Christ, the only true Prince Charming, did not come to call the self-righteous but the sinner. Only his kiss will transform us from frogs to someone fabulous. But he cannot do that as long as we think our life is a hagiography.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Funeral Cold Cuts

Seeing the close connection between funerals and weddings

11/29/2018

Revelation 18:1-2, 9A I, John, saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth became illumined by his splendor. After this I heard what sounded like the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying: "Alleluia! Salvation, glory, and might belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments. He has condemned the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her harlotry. He has avenged on her the blood of his servants." Then the angel said to me, "Write this: Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb."

This week I will officiate at two funeral Masses, but also preside at two wedding Masses. As far as earthly experiences go, nothing could be more polar opposite. At a funeral you shudder as you see the depths of human sorrow while at a wedding you soar to the heights of human happiness. A funeral is especially tragic and confounding when it is a young person whose brief life is snuffed out unexpectedly leaving everyone questioning if God is really in charge. For me, weddings are spiritually more special when a couple can share not only their love but also their faith. That is, when both bride and groom are Catholic and can receive Holy Communion. God feels really close in those wedding Masses because absolutely nothing separates the couple: they become “one” in every respect. In other words, what could be more different than a funeral and a wedding? In the first, God seems so absent, and in the second he seems so present.

But I would suggest to you that funerals and weddings are much more closely connected than we might imagine. Indeed, I would go so far as to say weddings and funerals are not only closely connected, they converge, and become one like the two sides of a coin. Think about it this way: what happens at a funeral? The deceased person steps outside of time and into eternity. But what will we experience in eternity? Well, I believe we will attend an eternal wedding banquet. And at that wedding we won’t be an invited guest like the best man or the maid of honor, we will actually be the Bride, that is, the Church, the corporate Bride of Christ. In other words, every funeral we experience merely the earthly side of the coin of Christianity, but the other side of the coin is the eternal wedding banquet of Jesus and his Bride, the Church.

There’s a little line in Shakespeare’s popular play “Hamlet” that has always intrigued me. Hamlet rues the fact that his mother got married so soon after his father died. His father was actually murdered, we discover. And Hamlet says: “The funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” Talk about heaping insult upon injury! To save money, they used some of the cold cuts from the funeral reception for the wedding feast! Quite inadvertently, however, Hamlet stumbled upon that close connection, indeed that convergence, between funerals and weddings. When you use the cold cuts from a funeral reception for a wedding banquet, you can almost catch how funeral and weddings are two sides of the same coin of Christianity. One side is earthly and sad, but the other side is heavenly and joyous.

Today we read something in scripture that should be far more intriguing than Shakespeare. We read in Revelation: “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” Have you heard that line, slightly paraphrased, at some point in the Mass? The priest says those words, almost exactly, right before we receive Holy Communion: “Behold the Lamb of God…blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.” In other words, every Mass is the foretaste of the heavenly wedding of Jesus and the Church. And by the way, Communion means when the Holy Couple of Christ and His Church consummate their marriage. You do know what “consummate” means, right?

But every Mass is also a re-presentation of the Lord’s death on Calvary. Oh, of course, we don’t kill Jesus again, but we do re-enact his passion and death at every Mass. Right in the middle of Mass, we all say, “When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again.” In other words, if you are spiritually awake and aware at the Mass, then you will experience a close connection, indeed a convergence, of a funeral and a wedding. The Mass contains the two sides of the coin of Christianity, both the sorrow of death of Christ and the happiness of a marriage of the Lamb.

And we might even look at the Holy Communion Host like Hamlet ruefully regarded the cold cuts of his father’s funeral and his mother’s wedding. “The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” Holy Communion is the “coin” of Christianity – heck it is even shaped like a little coin – that contains the two great mysteries of human existence namely, death and marriage. At every Mass, therefore, when you come up to receive Holy Communion, your faith should allow you to taste a little of both.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Your Lips Are Movin

Bearing testimony with our actions more than words

11/28/2018

Luke 21:12-19 Jesus said to the crowd: "They will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name. It will lead to your giving testimony. Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute. You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your lives."

An old adage teaches that actions speak louder than words. To change the metaphor, talk is cheap. Let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate this point. Americans rightly cherish our freedom of speech, protected by the first Amendment of the Constitution. But the Constitution itself is about freedom of action. Listen to all the action words in the Preamble to the Constitution: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United State of America.” In the Preamble alone there are eight actions the Founding Fathers were about to undertake. Their words had worth because they were backed up by their actions, namely, the Revolutionary War, their readiness to bleed for what they believed.

Meghan Trainor sings a kind of music called “bubblegum pop” and one of her hits is the song called “Lips are moving.” It’s about a philandering and untruthful man, and the refrain goes: “If your lips are movin’, then you’re lyin’ lyin’ lyin.” The singer has had enough of boyfriends who were not honest, whose actions spoke louder than their words because their words were lies. The same principle, therefore, underlies the song as well as the Constitution, namely, words are worthless unless they are underwritten by your actions.

This principle may shed some light on a sometimes troublesome passage in the gospel of Luke. Jesus says: “It will lead to your giving testimony.” And then he adds: “Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself will give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.” This passage is troublesome, I say, because some priests interpret that to mean they don’t need to prepare their homilies beforehand and can just shoot from the hip. After all, Jesus said he would give us a “wisdom in speaking.” I bet you really enjoy those shoot from the hip homilies, don’t you?

But that is not what Jesus means at all. The English word “testimony” is one translation of the Greek word “marturion,” which is what Luke used, and it is also where we get the word “martyr.” In other words, the “testimony” Jesus means is not one of words but of actions, indeed it is the action of bleeding for what you believe. That is the wisdom that adversaries cannot resist or refute. Why? Because our actions always speak louder than our words, and no one argues with actions.

My friends, we live in times in which talk is terribly cheap. We can’t help but agree with Meghan Trainor when we see certain people talking, that “if your lips are movin’, then you’re lyin’ lyin’ lyin’.” Politicians’ words seem mostly motivated by partisan purposes. Their words are not worried about the truth but about pleasing their base and winning political points and elections. And even more sadly, we the electorate, believe them. Parents can be guilty of relying too much on rhetoric when their child-rearing consists of “do as I say, not as I do.” In other words, coaching from the couch, or armchair parenting. But children know innately that actions speak louder than words, and such parents lose credibility.

We Catholic priests and bishops have been taken to task for failing to give testimony with our actions in light of the clergy sexual abuse scandal and the subsequent cover up. Indeed, we are urged by Jesus to give testimony that is equivalent to martyrdom, that is, we have to be ready to bleed for what we believe, no less than the Founding Fathers of this great nation were. That is why Catholic clergy have lost so much credibility, and our words have lost their worth.

In the movie, “The Princess Bride,” when Wesley meets the six-fingered man, he says serenely: “We are men of action, lies do not become us.” So, too, we Americans, and especially we Christians, should be men and women of action, indeed, we must be ready to bleed for what we believe.

Praised be Jesus Christ!