Recently in Homilies Category

This is the homily that I preached this evening at First Vespers of Saints Peter and Paul in our Cathedral of the Holy Family in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Spiritually in Rome

This evening, with the Church's evening sacrifice of praise, we enter into the festival of the Apostles Peter and Paul and bring the Pauline Year to a close. The Vespers hymn given us by the Church would have sing: "The beauteous light of God's eternal majesty / Streams down in golden rays to grace this holy day (Aurea luce). We find ourselves on pilgrimage to the Eternal City; spiritually we are in Rome at the tombs of Peter, the Keeper of Heaven's Gate, and of Paul, the Teacher of the Nations. Describing Rome as the eyes of faith see her, the hymn goes on to say:

O happy Rome! who in thy martyr princes' blood,
A twofold stream, art washed and doubly sanctified.
All earthly beauty thou alone outshinest far,
Empurpled by their outpoured life-blood's glorious tide.

Grace Abounds All the More

The mere tourist on a Roman holiday, rushing from one attraction to another, and distracted by a wildly delicious assault of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, misses the city's most precious secrets: the mortal remains of Saints Peter and Paul, and the immortal holiness of streets, and stones, and earth soaked in the blood of a host of other martyrs. "But Father," you may object, "I have been to Rome" -- it is rife with sin and thievery." Saint Paul, addressing the Romans, answers, saying: "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5:20).

A Cascade of Graces

Mystically transported to the tombs of Saints Peter and Saint Paul and enveloped by the liturgy of the feast, we are already standing under a cascade of graces coming down from the Father of lights (Jas 1:17). Every feast in the Church's calendar, indeed every Hour of the Divine Office of every feast, is the vehicle of a particular grace: one coloured by the saint or mystery being celebrated and divinely adapted to whatever our present needs may be.

First Antiphon

The first antiphon, taken from Mathew 16:16-17, is composed of a word pronounced by Peter, and of Jesus' reply. Peter confesses his faith: "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God." Straightaway Our Lord confirms him in his faith: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona." This first antiphon framed Psalm 116 for us: the shortest psalm in the Bible. Psalm 116 has but two verses: a clarion call summoning all the nations to praise the Lord because His mercy over us is confirmed, and because His truth will abide forever.

Blessed Art Thou

If you would enter into the grace of the first antiphon and psalm, make Peter's confession of faith your own, and then listen to Our Lord say to you, "Blessed art thou." If your own faith is beset with doubts, and uncertain in the face of suffering, lean on the faith of Peter and of the Church. Persevere in repeating Peter's prayer -- "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God." Say it even if you feel nothing. Say it even if you think that your prayer is going nowhere. Say it even if you think no one is listening. The mercy of Christ will, at the appointed hour, break through the darkness that surrounds you, and you will hear Him say to you, as He said to Peter, "Blessed art thou."

Second Antiphon

The second antiphon is taken from Matthew 16:18. Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks, saying: "Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church" (Mt 16:18). These words, once addressed to Simon Bar-Jona have been repeated to each of his 265 successors as Bishop of Rome. This is the antiphon sung to greet the Pope every time he solemnly enters Saint Peter's Basilica. And this is the text written in monumental letters around the base of the great dome of Saint Peter's.

Pray for the Pope and for the Church

Today, this antiphon opens and closes Psalm 147, a hymn in praise of the Lord who so loves His Church that He blesses her children, places peace in her borders, and fills her with the wheat of the Most Holy Eucharist, the swift-running efficacy of His Word, and the very Breath of His mouth, the Holy Spirit. Both the antiphon and the psalm invite us to pray fervently and gratefully for Pope Benedict XVI and for the Church. Prayer for the Pope is as old as the Church herself. We read in Acts 12:5: "But prayer was made without ceasing by the Church for him [Peter]" (Ac 12:5).

Third Antiphon

The third antiphon is addressed to Saint Paul. It is an artfully crafted composition, made up of Acts 9:15 and 1 Timothy 2:7. This illustrates, incidentally, that the Church is sovereignly free in her use of Sacred Scripture in the liturgy. Guided by the Holy Ghost, she so grasps the unity of the Bible, that she knows how to lift out first one verse and then another. She then reassembles them in such a way that they become a fitting expression of her prayer for all times.

In Acts 9:15, Our Lord appears to Ananias in a vision. When Ananias protests to Him that he wants nothing to do with this hateful Saul, Our Lord answers, "Go thy way, for this man is to me a vessel of election" (Ac 9:15). That is the first part of the antiphon. In the second part -- 2 Timothy 2:7 -- Paul boasts of his divinely conferred credentials: "I am appointed a preacher and an apostle, (I say the truth, I lie not,) a doctor of the Gentiles in faith and truth."

Grace

This antiphon opens and closes a canticle that Saint Paul either composed or learned from hearing it sung in the assemblies of the Church. It is a song of praise and thanksgiving, glorifying God the Father for having chosen us in Christ, His Beloved Son, for the praise of His glorious grace. In this canticle, grace is the keyword. Grace is the graciousness of God in action, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Grace is what changed Saul into Paul, making him God's vessel of election, and the preacher of the truth in the world. Grace is what will change us from what we are -- frail, broken sinners -- into the saints God wants us to be forever. Hold fast to the Our Lord's own words to Saint Paul: "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my power is made perfect in infirmity" (2 Cor 12:9).

The Reading

It comes as no surprise that the short lesson this evening should be from Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans. It is, in fact, the salutation from the very beginning of his letter: "To all that are at Rome -- and, spiritually, we are there this evening -- the beloved of God called to be saints. Grace to you, and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom 1:7). This is a greeting that delivers what it wishes. It is the word of God uttered in the midst of the Church: no vapid sentimentality here, but rather the efficacious Word of God sent like a flaming arrow into the hearts of those who hear it.

The Responsory

The Reponsory tells us that the Apostles spoke the Word of God with confidence and boldness, bearing witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Latin text has cum fiducia, with assurance, confidence, and trust. Trust in whom? Trust in our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit. "I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever" (Jn 14:16). There is no reason then to be timid and shrinking about our Catholic faith, even in an intimidating culture that mocks it, rejects the hope it offers, and would have us dilute it. Apostolic Catholic Christianity is to be lived cum fiducia, with confidence, and boldly.

Magnificat Antiphon

The Magnificat Antiphon will have us sing: "The glorious Apostles of Christ, just as they loved each other in life, so too, are they not separated in death." Did Peter and Paul love each other? Yes. Did they always agree about everything? No. It is this that makes their fraternal love credible, even more compelling. What was this charity with which they loved each other? It is the charity that Saint Paul describes in First Corinthians: a charity that is patient, is kind, that envieth not, that dealeth not perversely, and that is not puffed up; a charity that is not ambitious, that seeketh not her own, that is not provoked to anger; a charity that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, and endureth all things" (1 Cor 13:4-7).

The Collect

The Collect, in its own way, tells us quite a lot about God and about ourselves. It is proper to this evening and different from the one that we will hear at Mass and at the Hours tomorrow:

Give us, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God,
to be lifted up by the intercession of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul,
so that through them to whom Thou gavest Thy Church
the first proofs of heavenly gifts,
Thou wouldst provide us with helps for everlasting salvation.

We pray to God as a people in need of being lifted up. We are fallen and falling . . . but God is ever ready to lift us up. Today He does so by the intercession of Saints Peter and Paul. Both of them knew what it is to fall. . . and to fall in a spectacular way. Now, in the glory of heaven, they are well placed to help us rise from the sin that, again and again, knocks us down. In the beginning, God gave Saints Peter and Paul signs and demonstrations of His heavenly protection; what He did for them in the first days of the Church, He is ready to do for us in 2009, at this end of the Year of Saint Paul and beginning of the Year of the Priest.

A Lamp to Our Feet

Under Saint Peter's watchful eye, Saint Paul is handing the torch to Saint John Mary Vianney, the Curé d'Ars. Pray that this torch be for all of us, but especially for the priests of our diocese of Tulsa, "a lamp to our feet, and a light to our paths" (Ps 118:105).

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
[Thirteenth Sunday Per Annum B]

Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24
2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15
Mark 5:21-43

A Story of Two Healings

Two miracles. Two women. The first is a twelve year old girl with all the promise of life before her, the other, a woman exhausted by twelve years of chronic suffering. Saint Mark intertwines the stories of the one and of the other. The connection is not merely coincidental, it is complementary. The underlying message is found precisely by taking both stories together.

Faith and the Power of God

Neither Jairus' twelve year old daughter, already at the point of death when he approaches Jesus, nor the woman with the twelve year hemorrhage can be helped by human means. Both are beyond the pale of what medical science can do. Both will be saved by the conjunction of Jesus' divine power with the power of faith. In the case of the sick woman, it is her own faith, a faith at once timid and bold. In the case of the girl, it is her father's faith, the faith of a distraught parent at the bedside of a dying child.

The Number Twelve

You may have remarked that the girl is twelve years old, and that the woman has suffered her affliction for twelve years. Saint Mark did not choose these two numbers at random. As is so often the case in the Bible, these numbers are charged with meaning and with mystery. In Sacred Scripture, the number twelve signifies fulfillment, completion.

In Saint Luke's gospel, Jesus uttered His first prophecy at the age of twelve (Lk 2:42, 49). Jesus calls twelve apostles to signify the arrival of the fullness of time and the coming of the Kingdom of God (Mt 10:1 15). After the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, twelve baskets remain, "full of broken pieces and of the fish" (Mk 6:43).

The glorious completion of all things at the end of time is imaged by the twelve gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, with twelve angels as gatekeepers. The gates are inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and the city has twelve foundations, inscribed with the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb (Ap 21:14). The woman of the book of the Apocalypse (an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the Church), is crowned with twelve stars (Ap 12:1), and the tree of life that flourishes in the heavenly city yields twelve kinds of fruit, one for each of the twelve months of the year (Rev 22:2).

Finally, we know that for Jesus the day is made up of twelve hours; in Saint John's gospel, He says, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" (Jn 11:9). What is Saint Mark trying to say by his symbolic use of the number twelve in today's gospel?

The Fullness of Time

These two miracles are more than the benevolent gestures of a faith-healing rabbi. They are more than the revelation of Jesus' compassion in the face of human suffering. They signify the arrival of the fullness of time, the completion of God's plan of salvation--and salvation means the restoration of health, of wholeness--in Christ. Saint Mark's use of the number twelve is a way of crying out, "At last, at last, God has kept His promises! The Messiah, the Christ of all our desires and longings is here!"

She Suffered Under Many Physicians

The woman exhausted by twelve years of chronic suffering is an image of humankind from the fall of Adam and Eve to the coming of Christ, a history of blood and of tears, a history of oppression, violence, and disease. The woman of the gospel "had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better, but rather grew worse" (Mk 5:26). So too, had humanity suffered much under many physicians. Various philosophies, political systems, and kingdoms had come and gone, leaving, in their wake, a bitter trail of cynicism and disappointment. Societies and individuals spent all that they had, and were no better, but rather grew worse.

Blood is Life

The woman of the gospel comes to Jesus as to her last recourse. Having lost everything, her life was wasting away; that is the significance of her flow of blood. Life was seeping out of her! She was being drained of all vitality! For the people of the Bible blood is life. She felt herself sinking slowly, inexorably, into the pit of despondency.

Touching God

Then, timid and fearful, a veiled, stooped figure in the crowd, she approaches Jesus from behind, not daring to speak, but bold in reaching out to touch the hem of His garment. In faith, she touches, not the hem of a wandering, wonder-working rabbi's garment, but the very mystery of God. Power surges from Jesus, divine energy goes forth. In a single instant, faith cures where human skill had failed through twelve years.

Little Girl, Arise

Jairus' twelve year old daughter is on the threshold of womanhood; she is also on the threshold of death. Could any situation be more tragic? Her father tears himself away from her bedside and goes in search of Jesus. Seeing Our Lord, he falls at His feet, and beseeches Him, saying, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live" (Mk 5:23). Any parent who has watched at the bedside of a dying child knows the anguish that gripped this man's heart, almost suffocating him with grief. When Jesus follows Jairus home, they find that the girl is already dead. The Jewish funeral rites are already underway. The cries and laments of mourners make a ghastly din. Jesus goes in to the girl, takes her by the hand, and says, "Tálitha, cúmi," which means, "Little girl, I say to you, arise" (Mk 5:41). Immediately, she got up and walked, and Jesus ordered that she be given something to eat.

God With Us in the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Saint Mark's message to us today is that Jesus Christ is mankind's one hope, the long-awaited Physician who, in His very person, establishes contact between the power of God and the faith of every human heart. In entering the history of the human race, Jesus Christ descends into the "valley of the shadow of death" (Ps 23:4). The rejected Christ, the condemned Christ, the suffering Christ, carrying His cross, passes through the midst of those who weep, and wail, and mourn: suffering children, the victims of war, of violence, of discrimination, of oppression, those who are afflicted by chronic illness, men and women living with cancer or with any one of a number of life-threatening diseases. To the prayer of faith, to the touch of faith, this Jesus who was crucified brings the power of God, the power that brings light out of darkness, joy out of tears, and life out of death itself, the power by which He, after three days, was raised from the tomb.

His Real Presence

This is the mystery that lies at the heart of every Holy Mass: the real presence of Christ. Like the crowd that thronged about Him in today's Gospel, though many may brush against Him on His passage, not all touch Him, as did the afflicted woman, with faith. It is not enough to be here, not enough to go through the ritual motions, not enough fulfill a duty in compliance with the letter of the law, not enough to say, "I've been to Mass." Jesus waits for us to touch Him with the touch of faith.

We may be like Jairus' daughter, on the verge of something new and wonderful in life, or we may be like the other woman, weary and spent after years of suffering. To each of us the Most Holy Eucharist holds out the power of God, a power unleashed by faith. After raising up the little girl, Jesus said, "Give her something to eat." And that is why we go now to the Holy Table, that all of us who have been raised up by the Word of Christ from the ambo, may be fed with the Body and Blood of Christ from the altar of His Sacrifice. "Approach, then, with the fear of God, and with faith" (Byzantine Liturgy, Invitation to Holy Communion).

Third Sunday of Lent (A)

Exodus 17:3-7
Psalm 94: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9
Romans 5: 1-2, 5-8
John 4:5-42

March 15, 2009
Cathedral of the Holy Family
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Mercies Ever New

Today's Mass offers such a richness of images that a preacher hardly knows where to begin. This is one reason why the Church, in her wisdom, repeats the same texts and exposes our souls to the same images, year after year. The liturgy, even when it repeats the same words and gestures, is always new. The prophet Jeremiah says that, "the mercies of the Lord are new every morning" (Lam 3:23). And where do we receive those mercies ever-new most abundantly, if not from the altar in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?

Casting Blame

In the First Reading we hear of a people grown weary and irritable: delivered out of oppression in Egypt, they found themselves trudging through the wilderness, a desolate place without water. Three things make people irritable: lack of sleep, lack of food, and lack of drink. In this case, their irritation turns to hostility. They murmur against Moses, their hero, their leader, their liberator. His approval ratings plunge. He is blamed for everything that has gone wrong.

Moses, the Friend of God

Moses, for his part, was only doing what God had told him to do. Moses, in spite of a checkered past -- you will recall that, as a young man, he murdered an Egyptian and then hid his body in the sand -- has become God's obedient servant. Even more, he has become God's friend. We read in Exodus 33:11 that "the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man is wont to speak to his friend." And Moses -- in spite of his ongoing struggle with anger management -- has become, according to Numbers 12:3, "exceeding meek above all men that dwelt upon earth."

Moses Cries to God

Moses turns to God in prayer. Note that the passage in question says that he "cried to the Lord" (Ex 17:4). This gives us an idea of the honesty and intensity of his prayer. The Lord answered his cry: He instructed Moses to strike the rock with his rod (the symbol of his authority). Thus were the people give an abundance of living water gushing from the rock.

Contention and Fault-Finding

Moses, nonetheless, wanted to mark the spot as a place of contention and fault-finding. And so he called it Massah and Meribah because there the people put God to the test by saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"

The Passion of Christ and the Priest

There is not a single priest, from the Holy Father himself down to the lowliest pastor of souls in the poorest and most obscure of parishes, who has not, in some way, experienced what Moses did. When one represents Christ, one must expect to be blamed for the things that go wrong. One becomes a scapegoat, the target of bitter criticisms, and the object of all sorts of hostilities. This kind of suffering is intrinsic to the priestly vocation. How can the priest act "in the person of Christ" without sharing in His Passion, without being forced to cry to the Father, saying as did Moses, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me" (Ex 17:4).

The Holy Father's Letter

Last Tuesday, March 10th, Pope Benedict XVI addressed a letter to the Bishops of the world in which he expressed, with profound humility, the suffering caused him by the criticisms, hostility, and murmuring directed at him from all sides in the wake of his decision to reconcile four illicitly consecrated bishops to the Church. I can almost see the Holy Father kneeling in his private chapel, asking the Lord, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me" (Ex 17:4). In our day, of course, stoning assumes a more sophisticated but no less lethal form. The projectiles are launched primarily by the media.

Allow me, for a moment, to quote from the Holy Father's letter: "At times," he says, "one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them - in this case the Pope - he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint."

Unity in Charity

In the prevailing social and political climate, it is more than ever necessary to remain united in charity to the leaders set over us by God: the lay faithful to their deacons and priests; deacons and priests to their bishops; and bishops to the Holy Father. Those who shepherd us in the name of Christ and with His Heart will always experience weariness, rejection, and moral suffering, but these things become easier to bear when the family of the Church is a reconciled family, one in which pardon is readily given and received, one in which unity is the fruit of sacrificial love.
The Weariness of Jesus

Moving now to the Gospel, I should like to call your attention to the weariness of Our Lord. Saint John makes a point of saying that, "Jesus, wearied as He was with His journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour" (Jn 4:6). The image is profoundly moving: the weariness of a wayfaring Jesus. Not for nothing does the liturgy present us with it on the Third Sunday of Lent. We are at the midpoint of our own Lenten journey and susceptible, all of us, to a certain weariness.

This particular Gospel of the weary, wayfaring Christ reminds us that the journey of God towards us precedes even our first step towards Him. God desires us before we begin to desire Him. God looks for us before we begin to look for Him. God thirsts for us before we begin to thirst for Him.

The Sixth Hour

Saint John adds a significant detail to his description of the weary, wayfaring Jesus, seated by the well. He says, "It was about the sixth hour" (Jn 4:6). For us to hear the full resonance of this little phrase, we have to turn the pages of Saint John's Gospel until we come to the crucifixion of Jesus in Chapter 19. There we read, "Now it was the Day of the Passover; it was about the sixth hour." The sixth hour sees Jesus "lifted up from the earth to draw all men to Himself" (Jn 12:32). After a three hour agony, the crucified Jesus reveals the thirst of man for God, and the thirst of God for man. "Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the scripture), 'I thirst'" (Jn 19:28).

Thirst Divine and Human

This mystery too -- God's thirst for man, and man's thirst for God -- is integral to the life of every priest, to the life of our own Bishop, and to the life of the Holy Father. When the priest stands at the altar facing God, he bears within himself the spiritual thirst of every soul entrusted to his care. He presents that thirst to God; he offers his own heart as an empty chalice waiting to be filled by a spring of living water. And when the priest, turns from the altar to face the people, he bears within himself God's thirst for each one of you. So often as the priest turns to face you, he represents the Eternal High Priest who, from the Cross, said, "I thirst." And the thirst of the Crucified is for you: for your faith, for your hope, and above all, for your love.

The Sacrament That Quenches Every Thirst

Every Mass is a singular opportunity for you to quench the thirst of God. And every Mass is the mystery of Moses' striking the rock fulfilled, for in the Sacrifice of the Mass, the side of Jesus is opened by the soldier's lance. A torrent of Blood and of Water gush out to fill the chalice . . . and you, receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion taste of that living stream that alone can quench the heart's most burning thirsts.

Scrutinies

A word to those of you who are here for the Scrutinies, preparing to be received into the Church in the holy and glorious night of Pascha: live well these remaining weeks of Lent. Meditate the thirst of the Crucified. He thirsts for a drink that only you can give him, a drink drawn not out of a well, but out of the depths of your soul. And thirst for God. Feel that thirst; it is a blessing. You will be given to drink in proportion to your thirst. Pray with the psalmist the very words that we will sing at the Easter Vigil: "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. As a deer longs for running streams, so longs my soul for you, O God" (Ps 41:2-3).

God's Desire From the Beginning

And to those here who were baptized and confirmed and received their First Holy Communion ten or twenty or thirty, or fifty, or sixty, or seventy or more years ago, I say, never lose your thirst for God. He has never lost His thirst for you. Approach the Holy Mysteries yearning for the Gift of God, the living water promised by Our Lord to the woman at the well. You will not be disappointed. And God, Who thirsts for you, will find in you the "adorers in spirit and in truth" (Jn 4:24) that He has desired from the beginning.

Quinquagesima, The Seventh Sunday of the Year B

Isaiah 43:18-19, 21-22, 24b-25
Psalm 41:1-2, 3-4, 12-13
2 Corinthians 1:18-22
Mark 2:1-12

Christ, the Father's Yes

"The Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you . . . was not Yes and No; but in Him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in Him" (2 Cor 1:19-20). Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Father's Yes to every yearning inscribed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Christ is the Father's Yes to every prayer of ours for healing, the Father's Yes to every cry of ours in the night, the Father's Yes even to the petitions we dare not formulate "for we do not know how to pray as we ought" (Rom 8:26). When the Holy Spirit himself "intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26), Christ is the Father's Yes to every one of those sighs. Christ is the Father's Yes to the inward groanings of those who hope for what is not yet seen (cf. Rom 8:24-25). Christ is the Father's Yes to all the promises made "by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old" (Lk 1:70).

Through Christ our Lord

The prophet is the mouthpiece of God, the living bearer of His Word, the emissary charged with delivering the promises of God to "those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death" (Lk 1:79). And Christ is the Yes to those promises: their guarantee and their fulfillment. "That is why," says the Apostle, "we utter the Amen through Him to the glory of God" (2 Cor 1:20). This, the Church has done from the beginning and continues to do in every age. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Receive the Promises of God

Those who refuse to let go of the past are not disposed to receive the promises of God. Their heads and their hearts are so full of what is old, that there is no room in them for what is new. What does God say, speaking today through His prophet? "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Is 43:19).

The Mercies of the Lord

Does that mean that we are to practice a kind of self-induced amnesia? Absolutely not. This is not about repression. To forget means to put away. Before something can be put away, it has to be found. The same God who says, "Remember not!" never tires of saying, "Remember!" O glorious paradox! "Remember the wonderful works that He has done, His miracles, and the judgments He uttered" (Ps 104:5). And in another place the psalmist says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits" (Ps 102:2). We are to remember the mercies of the Lord and let go of all the rest. Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo. The mercies of the Lord I will sing forever (Ps 88:1).

Detachment

We are to let go of all those things that impede our going forward to claim the promises of God. We are to let go of all those things that oppose a no to Christ in whom all the promises of God find their Yes (cf. 2 Cor 1:19-20). This letting go allows the fragile green shoot of hope to break through the crusty hardness of a heart whose winter has gone on for too long.

Attachment to Christ Jesus

At the same time, we are to hold fast to the remembrance of God's mercies. Day after day we are sing of the promises of God fulfilled in Christ. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Praise

These are God's promises to us, delivered through the mouth of Isaias His prophet today:

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert . . . for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise (Is 43:20-21).

Every promise of God blossoms into praise. The designs of God have a doxological finality: the vast designs of cosmic proportions, and the little ones hidden in the life stories of the least of Christ's brethren. Faith in the promises of God flowers into an indefectible hope, and the fruit of hope is praise.

And He Rose

The God who promises "a new thing" (Is 43:19) tells us precisely how He will go about it: "I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins" (Is 43:25). "And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, "My son, your sins are forgiven" (Mk 2:5). Fix your gaze on the Face of Christ and read there the Yes to all the promises of God! And lest any lingering doubt remain, "He said to the paralytic, 'I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home.' And he rose. . . ." (Mk 2:10-12). And he rose.

The Promise of Resurrection

Fifty days before Pascha on this Quinquagesima Sunday, Our Lord speaks a word of spiritual resurrection. This is the word of hope that we are to remember and carry in our hearts: the promise of a resurrection from the pallet where we lay immobilized and paralyzed by the burdens and sins of "former things, of the things of old" (Is 43:18). "Behold," says God, "I am doing a new thing . . . a new thing in you, a new thing for you, a new thing among you, a new thing through you. . . now it springs forth, do you not perceive it" (cf. Is 43:19).

Amen

To all of this, Christ, knowing our weakness and our fears, says Yes for us. To His Yes, to the Yes that He is, we have only to say, "Amen." And for this we go to the altar to sing, "our Amen through Him to the glory of God" (2 Cor 1:20). "Through Him, and with Him, and in Him. . . . Amen." And then, "The Body of Christ. Amen." The Most Holy Eucharist is Christ, the Yes of God, on our tongues and in our mouths. The Body of Christ is the Yes of God in our hearts. "The Body of Christ. Amen."

In the traditional liturgy today is Septuagesima Sunday; the Office focuses on the first chapters of Genesis, and Mass on the passing of time from "the morning of the world" to the eleventh hour when the last labourers are hired. The reformed liturgy continues the lectio continua of Saint Mark's Gospel and relates today's passage to the sufferings of the prophet Job.

Even in the reformed liturgy one can and should allude to the traditional observance of Septuagesima. Without this pre-Lenten season, one arrives at Ash Wednesday unprepared; the transition into the Great Fast requires, even from the purely psychological point of view, a time of transition. There is enormous wisdom in the traditional practice of the Church.

Fifth Sunday of the Year B

Job 7:1-4, 6-7
Psalm 146: 12, 3-4, 5-6
1 Corinthians 9: 16-19, 22-23
Mark 1:29-39

The Woes of Job

"I am allotted months of emptiness and nights of misery are apportioned to me" (Jb 7:3), says Job: the utterance of a man for whom life has lost all meaning. Job was a prosperous citizen, a man content with himself: comfortable in his religion, secure in his possessions, happy with his family. In a single day, he lost everything (Jb 1:14-16). A tornado struck the house where all his children were gathered for a dinner party, and all perished (Jb 1:18-19). Later he was stricken with a terrible illness; he was covered with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head" (Jb 2:7). His wife (hardly sympathetic and encouraging) tells him to curse God, and die (Jb 2:9). His friends come for visits, but their conversation brings no comfort and their company no solace.

My eye will never again see good

In only six verses, the First Reading reveals the bleakness and intensity of Job's suffering. His torment is more interior than exterior: restlessness, sleepless nights, and the total eclipse of hope. God is conspicuously absent from the text. God is not even mentioned. Listening to the reading, I was moved by the images of despondency that, one after the other, bare for us the depths of Job's pain. "Months of emptiness and nights of misery" (Jb 7:3). "The night is long, and I am full of tossing till the dawn" (Jb 7:4). Job has the fearful experience of seeing his life rush past him into an impenetrable obscurity. "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and come to their end without hope" (Jb 7:6). The last line of the reading leaves one with the impression of an indefinable and tragic emptiness. "My eye will never again see good" (Jb 7:7) or, in the lectionary translation, "I shall not see happiness again."

Job finds an extraordinarily poignant echo in a poem by W. H. Auden.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Respect for Suffering

"For nothing now can ever come to any good." Auden is quoting Job. How do we leap from this into the Responsorial Psalm, "Praise the Lord, who heals the broken-hearted" (Ps 147:3). I'm not even sure that a leap is appropriate. The reality of human suffering, of the gnawing sense of hopelessness cannot, and should not, be treated dismissively. The pain of the human heart deserves the respect that only a speechless and attentive presence can offer. In any case, the leap into the Responsorial Psalm, however long it is respectfully delayed, cannot be attempted alone. We respond together to the glimmers of light that it holds out. God, conspicuously absent from the text of Job, comes out of hiding in the psalm to "gather the outcasts of Israel, to heal the brokenhearted, and bind up their wounds, to lift up the downtrodden" (Ps 147:2-3, 6).

Weakness

As a rule, the Second Reading is not related to the other texts of the Sunday liturgy. Today, however, Saint Paul says something that brings him close to Job, and to us. "To the weak, I became weak, that I might win the weak" (1 Cor 9:22). Here, the Apostle reflects his Lord and Master, the Suffering Servant. Before Paul, Christ Himself, "despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Is 53:3), became as weak to the weak, that He might win the weak. The weak Christ -- like the weak Job, and the weak Paul -- speaks, I think, to the weakness in all of us, drawing us to Himself humbly and gently. Virtue that causes the righteous to seem distant, and holiness unattainable, is no virtue at all.

Christ Stretches Forth His Hand

Job and Paul, in their weakness, conduct us to the Gospel of the compassionate Christ. In the Gospel, the God of the Responsorial Psalm has a human face, human hands, a human heart, and a healing, human touch. Look at our Divine Lord in the Gospel. What do we see Him doing? He stretches forth His hand (Mk 1:31) to raise up, to set free, to heal. What Our Lord does in the Gospel for the mother-in-law of Peter (Mk 1:30), and for the whole city gathered together about the door (Mk 1:33), He wants to do for us.

Come to Him

Come to Him, present in the adorable Mystery of the Altar. He will take you by the hand and lift you up (Mk 1:31). If, scorched by the heat of the day, you long for the shadow (Jb 7:2), He will "hide you in the shelter of his wings" (Ps 17:8). If months of emptiness have been your lot (Jb 7:3), He comes to "crown the year with bounty" (Ps 65:11). If nights of misery have been your portion (Jb 7:3), He rises before you as the dawn of mercy (cf. Lk 1:78-79).

He Comes

If you say, "When shall I arise" (Jb 7:4), He stretches forth His hand to raise you up (cf. Mk 1:31). If you say, "the night is long" (Jb 7:4), He says, "You will not fear the terror of the night" (Ps 91:5). If the night is "full of tossing till the dawn" (Jb 7:4), He says, "Come to me . . . And you will find rest for your souls" (Mt 11:28 29). If the days of your life are rushing past, "swifter than a weaver's shuttle" (Jb 7:6), leaving things unresolved, questions unanswered, and your heart without hope, He comes to calm and quiet your soul, "like a child quieted at its mother's breast" (Ps 131:2).

My Hope Laid Up in My Heart

If you fear that never again your eye will see good (Jb 7:7), draw near today to the Holy Table saying with Job, "I know that my Redeemer liveth . . . and in my flesh I shall see my God . . . . This, my hope, is laid up in my heart" (Jb 19:25-27, Vulg).

Malachy 3:1-4
Psalm 23: 7, 8, 9, 10
Hebrews 2: 14-18
Luke 2: 22-40

Susception Day

"We receive, O God, Your mercy, in the midst of Your temple" (Ps 47:10). This is the word from Psalm 47 that the liturgy places on our lips and in our hearts today. In the Middle Ages today's feast was sometimes called Susception Day, from "suscepimus," the first word of the entrance antiphon. Often translated as, "we receive," or "we accept," "suscepimus" has yet another meaning. This other meaning, while crucial to understanding the mystery we celebrate today, is often overlooked. "Suscipere" means to take up a new born child to acknowledge it as one's own. In ancient Rome a father acknowledged a child as belonging to him by taking the little one into his arms in the presence of witnesses. Knowing this, the Introit becomes transparent for us, illumined as it is by the word of the Gospel: "Simeon took him into his arms" (Lk 2:28). "We take up into our arms, O God, Your Mercy, in the midst of Your temple."

To Cradle Mercy in Our Arms

The one thing that everyone finds irresistible is to hold a baby, even if only for a few moments. Elders are transformed by it. Boys suddenly become tender and girls motherly. Even little children vie for the privilege of holding the newest arrival. As the little one is passed from one person to the next, faces grow bright with awe and delight. A little child has the power to light up a room. The little child we celebrate today has the power to light up the world: "A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel" (Lk 2:32). The Introit names the Child "Mercy." Today, it is given us to cradle Mercy in our arms.

Guided by the Infant

An antiphon from today's Office sings that, "the ancient carried the Infant, but the Infant guided the steps of the ancient." Simeon, the image of all that in us has grown old with waiting, carries Mercy in his arms, but Mercy, by the light that shines on his face, guides the old man's steps. If we would be guided by Mercy, we must first receive Mercy, the Mercy of God that comes to us in the outstretched arms of a little Child seeking to be held.

In the Middle of the Temple

The Introit says that Mercy is given us in medio templi -- in the middle of the temple. This places the Infant Christ, the human Face of Divine Mercy, at the heart of today's mystery. As in the icon of today's feast, all of the other figures in the Gospel are seen in relation to the Child. All of the other figures are seen, in fact, in the light of his face. "What can bring us happiness?" they ask. "Lift up the light of your face on us, O Lord" (Ps 4:7). "Look towards him," they say one to another, "and be radiant" (Ps 33:6). Christ is placed in our arms today that we might gaze upon the human face of Divine Mercy and, in the light of that face, be transformed.

The painting (1488) is by Bartolomeo di Giovanni and was commissioned for the Hospital of the Innocents in Florence. The six-sided altar at the centre of the composition points to the Sixth Day Sacrifice of the Cross. There is fire burning on the altar, a sign of the Holy Spirit. The Blessed Virgin Mary's gesture indicates that she is offering the Infant Christ and participating in His sacrifice. Simeon's gesture is one of acceptance; he is an image of the Eternal Father. Saint Joseph holds the turtle doves in his cloak; Joseph was chosen by God to veil the mystery. Anna, entering the painting at the extreme left, holds the lighted candle of her faith and hope as she witnesses the arrival in the temple of the long-awaited Priest and Victim, the Consolation of Israel.

The Face of a Little Child

In today's splendid Introit we sing that we have received Mercy "in the midst of the temple" (Ps 47:10). At the heart of today's mystery shines the face of a little Child, the human face of Divine Mercy. The four other figures in today's Gospel -- Mary, Joseph, Simeon and Anna -- are held in His gaze. In his letter for Lent 2006, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the gaze of Jesus. "The gaze of Jesus," he said, "embraces individuals and multitudes, and he brings them all before the Father, offering himself as a sacrifice of expiation."

Today we meet the gaze of the Infant Christ, "made like his brethren in every respect" (Heb 2:17) and, looking into his eyes, we see that he is already our "merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people" (Heb 2:17).

The Presentation of Christ Our Priest

Today in the midst of the temple the Father presents his Christ, our Priest, to us; today the Father presents us to Christ our Priest. Of ourselves we have nothing to present; we can but receive him and allow ourselves to become offering in his hands. "We have received your Mercy, O God, in the midst of your temple" (Ps 47:10). It is the Infant Christ, presented to us as our Priest, who in turn presents us to the Father. It is fitting that the symbol of the Infant Christ should be the living flame that crowns our candles. This Child has a Heart of fire, and so the prophet says, "But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire . . . and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, till they present right offerings to the Lord" (Mal 3:2-3).

The Infant Priest and Victim

Today is the World Day for Consecrated Life. Consider the images that the liturgy sets before us: a flame that burns, consuming the wax that holds it aloft; a Child with the all-embracing gaze of the "Ancient of Days" (Dn 7:13); an Infant who is already priest and victim.

Identification with Christ the Victim

One consecrated is a taper offered to the consuming flame of love. One consecrated has eyes only for the gaze that reveals a Heart that is all fire. One consecrated is presented and handed over to Christ the Priest. One consecrated is inescapably destined for the altar of sacrifice, for identification with Christ the Victim. Consecrated life cannot be anything less than this, nor can it be anything more. This is why the Apostle says, "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Rom 12:1).

The Woman Wrapped in Silence

Each of the four figures surrounding the Infant Christ in the temple is an icon of consecrated life, beginning with his all-holy Virgin Mother. How does today's Gospel present her? She is a woman wrapped in silence. Even when addressed by Simeon, she remains silent. Her silence is an intensity of listening. She is silent so as to take in Simeon's song of praise, silent so as to capture his mysterious prophecy of soul-piercing sorrow and hold it in her Immaculate Heart. She is silent because today her eyes say everything, eyes fixed on the face of the Infant Christ, eyes illumined by the brightness of his gaze.

Wordlessly, Mary offers herself to the living flame of love. She is the bride of the Canticle of whom it is said, "Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold you are beautiful! Your eyes are doves behind your veil" (Ct 4:1). Consecrated life in all its forms, and monastic life in particular, begins in the silence of Mary that, already in the temple, consents to the sacrifice of her Lamb and to the place that will be hers beside the altar of the Cross.

This painting of Jesus preaching in the synagogue at Capernaum is the work of the Polish-Jewish artist Maurycy Gottlieb (1856-1879). Note that he depicts Our Lord with earlocks, and wearing the traditional talith or prayer shawl.

Fourth Sunday of the Year

Mark 1:21-28
1 Corinthians 7:32-35
Psalm 94: 1-2. 6-9
Deuteronomy 18:15-20

Words from God for God

The genius of the sacred liturgy is that it allows us to respond to the Word of God with the Word of God. God speaks to us in the readings; we respond to him in the words of responsories and psalms, words inspired by the Holy Spirit and placed on our lips by the Church. The Word, which descends into our midst in the proclamation of the readings, becomes in the psalm a chariot of fire by which we, like the prophet Elias of old (2 K 2:11), are carried into the presence of the Father, with the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

The Venite

Today's Responsorial Psalm is especially significant. It is the Venite, Psalm 94. This is the psalm that begin the Church's daily round of praise in the Divine Office. Every morning, and in many monasteries before the first glimmers of dawn while the world still sleeps, voices intone Psalm 94. It is more than an invitation to adoration and praise. It pleads with us: "Today if you shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts" (Ps 94:7-8).

Praying Against Oneself

A hardened heart is one that refuses to listen. Encrusted in a shell, it becomes impenetrable even to the piercing grace of God. At times, we have to pray against ourselves. We are obliged to pray against our own hard and stony hearts, if we are to pray at all. The poet knew it well.

"Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow burn, and make me new"
(John Donne, Holy Sonnets V).

The Risk of Listening

To listen is to risk. This is true of every human relationship; it is no less true of the relationship with God. The listening heart is vulnerable, open to being wounded by the two-edged sword of the Word (Heb 4:12) which like the surgeon's scalpel cuts in order to heal. A heart that listens is softened and melted by the Word received. The mystics tell us that the heart may be liquefied by the fire of love that burns in every utterance of the mouth of God. The disciples on the road to Emmaus knew it. "And they said one to the other: Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in this way, and opened to us the Scriptures?" (Lk 24:32).

A Word Unlike Any Other

The assembly in the synagogue at Capernaum risked listening to Jesus of Nazareth. They heard his voice. At least, on this one occasion, they did not harden their hearts. Saint Mark tells us that his teaching made a deep impression on them. What they experienced was different from the dry and lifeless teaching they were accustomed to hearing. This was no routine repetition of stale exhortations. Here was a word whose origin was deeper and more mysterious than anything they had heard before. Unlike the scribes, Jesus taught them with authority. His teaching came not from Himself; it came from the One who sent Him (cf. Jn 7:16).

Taught By God

This episode in the synagogue fulfills God's promises to Moses: "I will raise them up a prophet out of the midst of their brethren like to thee: and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him" (Dt 18:18). The Lord Jesus himself makes it clear in the sixth chapter of Saint John. "It is written in the prophets: And they shall all be taught of God. Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to Me" (Jn 6:45).

In the Synagogue

The worshipers in the village synagogue sensed the unique quality of Jesus' teaching in a confused sort of way. This unique quality was all too clear to the unclean spirit in the man possessed. The unclean spirit clamours, "I know who Thou art, the Holy One of God" (Mk 1:24). Saint Jerome makes an astute observation about this. He says that even if the unclean spirit recognizes Jesus as the Holy One of God, it fails to confess Jesus as he truly is: not simply the Holy One of God, but the Holy God himself.

To Become Wholly Teachable

Jesus speaks. The words of Our Lord are an outpouring, an effusion, an infusion, of the fire and light of his life with the Father in the Holy Spirit. One who really listens, risks being caught up in the life of the Holy Trinity. How I wish that we could all pray as Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity prayed:

O Eternal Word, Word of my God, I want to spend my life in listening to you, to become wholly teachable that I may learn all from you. Then through all nights, all voids, all helplessness, I want to gaze on you always and remain in your great light.

Power to Attend Upon the Lord

We come to Holy Mass to hearken to the words of the Word, to be wounded by them, to be espoused by them in such a way that, as the one Body of Christ, we are drawn upward with our Divine Head to the Father in the Holy Spirit. A listening Church will be one in which Saint Paul's goal for the Corinthians is necessarily fulfilled: "power to attend upon the Lord, without impediment" (1 Cor 7:35).

The Name of the Father

We cannot listen to the words of Jesus without being drawn into his own undivided attention to the Father. This was the desire of His Sacred Heart on the night before he died, "I have given them the words which Thou gavest me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from Thee. . . . I made known to them Thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them" (Jn 17: 7-8;26).

Out of the Midst of the Fire

Today Moses' words to Israel are fulfilled for us. "Out of heaven He made thee to hear His voice, that he might instruct thee: and upon earth He shewed thee his great fire; and thou heardest His words out of the midst of the fire." (Dt 4:36). In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the Father lets us see his great fire.

A Conflagration of Divine Love

What is the Most Holy Eucharist but a conflagration of Divine Love? Like the burning bush, the Church is ablaze and yet not consumed (Ex 3:2). From the heart of the fire -- if we are willing to risk it -- we hear the Word of God, "devouring fire from His mouth" (Ps 17:8). "Today if you shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts" (Ps 94:7-8).

Friday of the First Week of the Year I

Hebrews 4:1-5, 11
Psalm 77: 3 & 4bc, 6c-7, 8
Mark 2:1-12

Toil and Rest

There is a paradox in today's reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. On the one hand, we enter into the Sabbath-rest of God by means of toil, i.e. the active life; and on the other hand, every work of ours is ordered to rest in God, i.e. the contemplative life. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council made this clear in Sacrosanctum Concilium:

It is of the essence of the Church that she be both human and divine, visible and yet invisibly equipped, eager to act and yet intent on contemplation, present in this world and yet not at home in it; and she is all these things in such wise that in her the human is directed and subordinated to the divine, the visible likewise to the invisible, action to contemplation, and this present world to that city yet to come, which we seek " (SC, art. 2).

Six days of work preceded God's holy Sabbath. The world and all it contains was created for man and given to him in view of his participation in the Sabbath-rest of God. "God saw everything that He had made, and found it very good" (Gen 1:31).

The Active life

Saint John Cassian calls the labor by which we enter into God's rest the active life. The active life engages us in the disciplines by which, sustained by a constant flow of actual graces, we dispose ourselves for the Work of God in us by doing whatever we can to uproot our vices and cultivate the virtues.

God works in us while we are at rest: still, quiet, and abandoned to His purifying and healing action. The psalm says, "Is it not in the hours of sleep that the Lord blesses the man He loves?" (Ps 126:2). Sleep is an image of confident repose in God. "Bear me witness that I kept my soul ever quiet, ever at peace. The thoughts of a child on its mother's breast, a child's thoughts were all my soul knew" (Ps 130:2).

The Christian life is not, however, all repose; those who hold that fall into the heresy of quietism. Nor is it all works; those who hold that fall into the heresy of activism, a misguided self-reliance condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical excoriating the errors of Americanism. Our Lord says, "Apart from me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). And in the same Gospel of Saint John he says, "Walk while you have the light of life" (Jn 12:35).

What Must I Do to Be Saved?

The classic question asked of the Desert Fathers was this: "What must I do to be saved?" The sense of the question is this: "What must I do to be saved by God?" and not, "What must I do to save myself?" Abba John answered the question, saying:

I think it best that a man should have a little bit of all the virtues. Therefore, get up early every day and acquire the beginning of every virtue and every commandment of God. Use great patience, with fear and long-suffering, in the love of God, with all the fervour of your soul and body. Exercise great humility, bear with interior distress; be vigilant and pray often with reverence and groaning, with purity of speech and control of your eyes. When you are despised do not get angry; be at peace, and do not render evil for evil. Do not pay attention to the faults of others, and do not try to compare yourself with others, knowing that you are less than every created thing. Renounce everything material and that which is of the flesh. Live by the cross, in warfare, in poverty of spirit, in voluntary spiritual asceticism, in fasting, penitence and tears, in discernment, in purity of soul, taking hold of that which is good. Do your work in peace. Persevere in keeping vigil, in hunger and in thirst, in cold and nakedness, and in sufferings.

Abba John's sagacious reply is very similar to Chapter Four of the Rule of Saint Benedict: The Instruments of Good Works. All of these "instruments" or "practices" are the toil of the active life by which we "strive to enter" into the rest that God has prepared for us, "walking while we have the light of life." And even when we fail miserably in putting the first 72 of Saint Benedict's "instruments" into practice, there remains still one -- the 73rd -- and it is the most important one of all: "And never to despair of God's mercy."

Toward the Most Holy Eucharist

Everything we do by way of toil, mortification, and active virtue is nothing more than a humble preparation for the Work that, in all the sacraments, in the Divine Office, and supremely in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, God does in us and for us. The Church herself suggests this by commanding us to fast before Holy Communion. Every act of self-denial, every refusal to judge another, every effort of ours in the daily spiritual combat, however small, has a Eucharistic finality. The ascetical life is ordered to a transforming and fruitful participation in the sacramental grace of the Holy Sacrifice. There, all that we cannot do of ourselves and by ourselves, is given to us superabundantly. "My grace is enough for thee," says the Lord, "my strength finds its full scope in thy weakness" (2 Cor 12:9). It is in this spirit that I often say the inspired prayer of Mother Yvonne-Aimée of Malestroit:

O mon Jésus,
faites en moi tout ce que vous voulez trouver
afin que vous puissiez tirer de mon néant
tout l'amour et toute la gloire
que vous aviez en vue en me créant.

O my Jesus,
do Thou in me whatsoever Thou desirest to find in me,
so as draw out of my nothingness,
all of the love and all of the glory
that Thou hadst in view in creating me.

"Humble Access"

We come to Holy Mass battle-scarred and weary. And we come to the altar not by great leaps and bounds, but humbly, by bowing low, striking our breast, and taking little steps. In the mysteries of His adorable Body and precious Blood, Our Lord fulfills His promise to us in a way surpassing all our imaginings: "Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest" (Mt 11:28).

First Tuesday of Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 71:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17 (R. 7)
Luke 10:21-24

Bishop Slattery invited me to preach at Holy Mass in Tulsa's Cathedral of the Holy Family on the occasion of the Diocesan Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests, observed annually on the First Tuesday of Advent. It was wonderful to see all the priests of the diocese and a good number of deacons assembled around our Bishop. Here is the homily I gave:

Seek the Lord While He May Be Found

Some of you, brothers, after completing your Morning Prayer today, may have glanced ahead at the Magnificat Antiphon. I, for one, did -- and I found there why we are here this evening: "Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while he is near" (Is 55:6).

Saint Bernard, especially in his darker moments, used to ask himself, Bernarde, ad quid venisti? "Bernard, what are you doing here? Why have you come?" Given that it was Bernard's custom to find answers to his questions in the Scriptures, he may well have replied to himself: "You've come to seek the Lord while He may be found, to call upon Him while He is near" (Is 55:66). This is why we have assembled in our cathedral this evening; to seek the Lord while He may be found and together, with one another and for one another, to call upon Him while He is near.

Times and Places Fragrant With Grace

Our Lord can, without any doubt, be sought anytime and anywhere. One can call upon Him in any place, at any moment, and out of any situation. And yet, there are times and places that are especially fragrant with His grace. There are moments when the veil hiding His Face seems less opaque, when His voice seems to strike the ear of our hearts more clearly

To call upon the Lord is to engage Him in conversation. The Church, instructed by the Holy Spirit, tells us just how we are to go about calling on the Lord. (This is an example of how the liturgy, taken just as it is given, makes all prayer extraordinarily simple. It is the indispensable primary school of prayer.) Look for a moment, if you will, at today's Collect: the prayer that pulls us together, the prayer that, from the very beginning of Mass, imparts the radical God-ward orientation without which there is no prayer.

The Collect

Using a prayer that comes from the 5th century scroll of Ravenna, we say today:

Lord God, be gracious to our supplications
and in tribulation grant us, we pray,
the help of your paternal care;
that being consoled by the presence of your Son who is to come,
we may be untainted, even now,
by the contagion of our former ways.

This prayer, with the realism that characterizes our Roman Rite, just assumes that we are in tribulation. Of course it would. These 5th century Roman prayers emerged out of real life pastoral situations, often marked by crisis, by animosities, persecutions, and weariness.

Pietas Auxilium

And then we ask for the help of God's pietas -- auxilium pietatis. Pietas is a translator's conundrum. It is God's provident, strong, reliable, paternal love. His pietas is the bedrock of what Saint Paul calls the "household of faith" (Gal 6:10). Pietas is what makes a man dutiful and tender in caring for his wife and children, a reflection of how the Father, in Christ, loves the household of the Church.

Consoled Ahead of Time

The prayer goes on to say that because the Son is coming again, we are consoled ahead of time. "That being consoled by the presence of your Son who is to come. . . ." There is consolation, brothers, even in the apparent absence of God, because waiting engenders hope, and hope is, in the uncertainties and losses of this life, the one thing that consoles us.

Old in Sin

Finally we come to point of the whole prayer: the famous ut clause: so that. "So that being consoled by the presence of your Son who is to come, we may be untainted, -- the Latin even more pointedly says unpolluted -- even now, by the contagion of our former ways." The contagious pollution of our former ways! I told you the Roman liturgy is realistic.

Sin is the great unseen pollutant. It ages us prematurely. It robs us of that joy of our youth that we go to the altar in search of, day after day. It is easy, brothers, to be reinfected by ancient patterns of sin, by the contagion of what is old. Such is the plight of the "old man" in me and in you, the decrepit man who, so often as he sins, becomes more decrepit.

The Child

The Son who is to come in the Collect is the Child of the First Reading. . "And a little Child shall lead them" (Is 11:6). We are led by One who has the Face of a little Child, a Face at once open and full of mystery. This is the image of a healthy presbyterate: men of all ages content to be led by a little Child.

The Anointed One

This same Child is the Father's anointed Priest. The Anointing poured over His head runs down even to the hem of His garment (cf. Ps 132), covering each of us, His priestly members, and steeping us in the fragrance of His sacrifice. This too is the image of a healthy presbyterate: one in which the seven gifts of the Divine Anointing are in operation: "the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness. . . and the spirit of the fear of the Lord" (Is 11:2-3).

His Prayer to the Father

The Gospel brings us back to the mystery of the Child-Priest. We surprise Him in the very act of praying to His Father. So intimate is the tone of this prayer that it has been compared to the most sublime pages of the Fourth Gospel.

The Magnificat of Jesus

Saint Luke shows us the Son filled with gladness in the Holy Spirit -- this is the Magnificat of Jesus, an echo of His Mother's exultation in the first chapter of Saint Luke's Gospel. It is, at the same time, Saint Luke's transmission of the uninterrupted priestly prayer of the Heart of Jesus. It is Eucharistic --"Father, I give you thanks"-- corresponding in its own way to Chapter Seventeen of Saint John.

The Great Thanksgiving

This prayer of Jesus is, in essence, the model of the Preface of every Mass. Listen to it in a liturgical key:

It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give you thanks,
O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that you have hidden all this from the wise and the prudent,
and revealed it to little children.
Be it so, Lord, since this finds favour in your sight.
Therefore, with Angels and Archangels, Thrones and Dominations,
and all the warriors of the Heavenly array,
we raise a ceaseless hymn of praise, as we sing . . . .

The Delight of the Child

The Child-Priest praises the Father who has entrusted everything into His hands. None knows who the Child is, except the Father, and none knows who the Father is, except the Child, and those to whom it is the Child's delight to reveal Him. Be certain of one thing, brothers, this Child-Priest is most at ease in conversing with other children because among them He runs the least risk of being misunderstood.

Blessed Are the Eyes That See What You See

And just as in John 17 Jesus addresses His friends, His chosen disciples, so too in today's Gospel, His final words are for us priests. Although Our Lord mentions prophets and kings, He does not mention priests, and this because He is addressing His priests, those of the New Covenant. "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see; I tell you, there have been many prophets and kings who have longed to see what you see, and never saw it, to hear what you hear, and never heard it" (Lk 10:24).

The Joy of Our Youth

This is the affirmation of our priesthood. We need look nowhere else. This is the consolation of our priesthood in the face of our every experience of humiliation and weakness. This is the joy of our priesthood, joy offered by a Child. Welcome it today at the altar, brothers, and there recover, not for ourselves only, but for the sake of the whole Church, the joy of our youth.