Joyful Mystery - Hear O Israel!

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God - the Lord alone!

The Annunciation - Having a life of prayer and a heart that is open to the presence of the Holy Spirit

That means that I do not live a life that is offensive or rejecting God.

Therefore you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart

The Visitation - That means that I have in my heart the love that God has for me and that I begin to find ways to allow that love to transform the relationships of my life so that they too encounter the power of God’s love.

with all your soul

The Incarnation - Mary had a radical openness to the presence of the Holy Spirit in her life.  Because of her ability to say YES to God, he took on flesh in her womb.  

The soul is the essence of who we are, it is not who we imagine or think we are but who we are in the eyes of God - who he created us to be.  A Life of Conversion, a life of Loving God with all our Soul means that we strive to be transformed into the one God created us to be - unmarred by sin and death.

When we love God with all our soul, we are radically open to His presence in our life - He becomes the focus of our existence.  

with all your strength

The Presentation and Finding of the Child Jesus in the temple.  Being a Christian is not easy - it is hard.  At the presentation Mary hears from Simeon that “a sword of sorrow will pierce her heart” - and yet she does not flinch or turn away.  Then in the finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple after three days - took much strength and worry.  To Love God with all your strength takes courage when the chips are down, when you face persecution or it becomes difficult to give the Christian Witness.  This is where having a life-line to the Lord is essential.

Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.

After the shepherds visited the Holy Family St. Luke tells us that Mary kept all these things in her heart reflecting on them.  She took to hear the Word made flesh, and throughout the rest of her life reflected that word to those who knew her.

We too have the opportunity to take these words into our hearts today - when we receive the Eucharist we take these words into our heart.  We open ourselves up to a time of transformation in which Christ can be placed first in all that we do this week.

Forgive us our trespasses...

24th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle A

A Boat ride on the Sea of Galiliee
We don’t know from scripture what led to the incident in the Gospel reading today.  St. Matthew does not say.  Following St. Ignatius I want us to use our active imagination and put ourselves into the situation with Peter and Jesus.  Imagine that Peter has offered to take Jesus out on his fishing boat in the late afternoon / early evening to escape the heat of the day and enjoy a cool breeze on the Sea of Galilee.  So, they go down to the boat to depart, and instead of finding everything in order, it is a total mess.  Peter knows instantly that it was his brother who left this mess. – Andrew!  He is steamed by his brother’s messiness and really annoyed.  After all Andrew has been a slob and his messiness has ruined what would have been a wonderful evening.

Yet at the same time Peter knows that Jesus is calling him to conversion, to forgiveness, even of his own annoying brother.  So with that in mind he turns to Jesus and asks him.  "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him?  Seven Times?”  Perhaps forgiving Andrew seven seems to be a lot.

Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. 

Oops, thinks Peter, I guess I need to work on my ability to forgive my brother…

But why Lord?  I don’t understand.  Look at this mess, Look at the impact it has on me as I need to take away from our time together to clean it up.  Look at how it ruined our evening!

Where is your heart looking - to yourself or to God?
The book of Sirach gives us some clues about why imitating the love of God is ultimately good for us.  It starts us where Peter is at – Look at how I suffer from Andrew’s sin!  It starts us at where our heart is at, and then leads us to where God’s heart is at.

Wrath and anger are hateful things,
yet the sinner hugs them tight.
The vengeful will suffer the LORD's vengeance,
for he remembers their sins in detail.

Injustice to the self?
When we are busy caught up in injustice it is often not a holy justice, but a selfish sense of justice.  And for the reason of the logic of the injustice, we can’t get beyond ourselves and the wrong to understand the injury from God’s perspective.  For this reason, we hug tightly to our sinfulness.

The backpack of Gruges?
Think of that image for a second.  It is like we wear a backpack of grudges, and every time we experience an injustice, instead of forgiving, and loving, we stuff the injustice into our grudge pack and keep on going.  And then the day comes when the grudge pack is full, and someone gives us another grudge, and gets a whole lot back in return!

Christ calls us to conversion
Yet Christ calls us to conversion.  To forgiveness.  Instead of holding onto those grudges, slights, injustices ourselves, he calls us to give them to God.  We surrender judgment to God who can judge justly, who judges with mercy.  Whose justice is his mercy and whose mercy is his justice because God’s justice is aimed at bringing about an authentic communion of love and relationship with himself and with one another.

God invites us into this relationship, but gives us the freedom to choose or reject it.

Forgive your neighbor's injustice;
then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.
Could anyone nourish anger against another
and expect healing from the LORD?
Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself,
can he seek pardon for his own sins?
If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath,
who will forgive his sins?

Forgive us…
This challenge is codified in the Our Father – Forgive us our Trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

IDEA:  Pray an Our Father each day for each person that you feel that you are angry / vengeful towards.  Do this on your way to work with them or when you recognize that you are avoiding them.  It is a way of keeping this idea from Sirach foremost in our hearts.

How to respond to Injustice
When we face those who treat us unjustly, who sin against us, or persecute us, then how do we respond?  With Mercy and forgiveness, with prayer and thanksgiving.  Jesus shows this in the parable he explains to Peter

That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.' Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. 

God is the King, we are the Servants
The King is God, and we are the servants.  We are in debt to God on account that he created us and invites us into a relationship of co-creation with himself, and we are called to witness the love of God to one another, and yet in our sin we destroy God’s gift.  This is the debt that we cannot repay.

How does the king respond to this debtor.
1. He listens!
2. He speaks the truth with love – he points out the reality of the debt.
3. He has a greater mercy than the debtor can even imagine.  The debtor pleads for time to repay and the King forgives.  This is extra-ordinary love!
4. The King’s response leads the servant to Freedom so he can choose to love God more fully – rather than imprisoning him.

This is important because the King teaches us how to be like Christ.

How do we respond to this gift of Mercy?
When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, 'Pay back what you owe.'

Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,
'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' But he refused.  Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt. 

Does the Servant Imitate the King?
When we are angry with others, when we are hurt by others do we choose to imitate the love of Christ?  Do we imitate the love and generosity and forgiveness of God?  This servant does not, and when the King hears how his forgiven servant responds, he has the servant suffer for failing to learn the lesson.

• The servant does not listen – he says Give me my Money!
• The servant does not forgive – he impressions
• The servant does not lead his brother to freedom, he insists on getting “His right”.

The servant does not imitate the generosity and mercy of God.  He is owed much less, and yet his response is less generous.  His heart is hard, his goal is the self and not God’s Plan

Baptism - we are called to imitate the mercy of the King as a sacrifice.
This is why we have the second reading – to help us to understand our mission as Christians in the world.

Brothers and sisters:
None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself.  

What is our orientation in life – for myself and the little debts that I am owed – debts of justice, debts of uncharity, debts of cruelty?  Or is my orientation to imitate Christ and his love?

For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord;

Baptism is a commission to be a source of forgiveness
To die is to suffer the injustice of another and then to offer it in prayer for the salvation of the other.  Remember that it is by our Baptism that we enter into the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.  In our Baptism we are called to share in the priestly ministry of offering sacrifice for those who cause us to suffer.  Jesus took our debts with him into the grave when he died on the Cross, and then he left them there and rose to eternal life with God the Father.

so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.
For this is why Christ died and came to life,
that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

Are we watering the seed of eternal life we were given at Baptism with these opportunities for prayer, forgiveness and grace, or are we ignoring the invitations of the King?

Mirror, Mirror

Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord!
Thanks be to God!

The readings today give us some clues on how we can go and live out this command that we hear at the end of Mass.  It is our mission, as the faithful of Christ to live our lives reflecting the love of God that we receive in our souls into the world.

Mirror, Mirror On the Wall
In Snow White and the Seven Dwarves the evil witch has a magical mirror – and she is so vain that each day she begins her day with the chant – Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, who’s the fairest of them all?

Everything is good while her outer beauty lasts, but as her beauty fades, she discovers that her step-daughter – Snow White is the fairest, and so she plots to destroy her beauty.

I think that it would be kind of cool to have a magically mirror in my life – that way I could get up in the morning and ask the question –

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, let us reflect Christ to them all!

Then we could begin to live an examined life, a life that is measured by an ability to understand how well we reflect the love of Christ each day.  Then we could begin to truly strive after holiness and transform the world!

Transformation = Prepare, Rest, Intercede
The readings today give us some hints on how to find this magical mirror and place it in our lives so that we can reflect the love of Christ into our families, to our friends and to the world.  There are three clues offered to us in the readings – Prepare our Souls, Rest in our Souls, Imitate Christ’s love through our sufferings.

First – How are we hospitable to God?  In the first reading we see an extension of the actions of the Good Samaritan from last Sunday’s readings.  Abraham is waiting on a hot day in his tent, and when he sees the Holy Trinity walking by in the form of three angels, he welcomes them into his tent.  He prepares for them the finest bread, meat and drink to cool and nourish them.  God rewards Abraham’s hospitality with the gift of new life – his son Isaac.

Prepare our Souls for Christ – Do we watch and welcome?
We can also look at this reading as an analogy for our soul – do we welcome God into our hearts, have we prepared a place for him within us.  We can do this each time we celebrate the Mass when we say

“Lord, I am not worthy that you enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed”.

Are we living our lives in such a way that God will find a welcome for himself within our souls?  Do we sit at the entrance to our tent (soul) and wait for the Lord’s visit? – Or are we too busy / too afraid with work to welcome Christ into our presence.

Rest in Stillness – Be imprinted by Christ!
This takes us to the Gospel.  In the Gospel today, Jesus comes to visit the house of Mary and Martha.  Martha is anxious and worried about many things.  She is distracted from listening to Christ – She is unable to be still in the presence of God.

We live in a busy world – we are always going all over the place – and the world changes rapidly.  How many of us are able to practice a little bit of stillness in our lives?  To prepare for this homily I tried to set aside a little bit of time each day to listen to the readings, to sit and let them soak in.  That is a hard task to do – what with the busyness of work, kids, bills etc.  Every time I tried to quiet myself my mind erupted with 15 different things that “had” to be done.  These are distractions that prevent me from soaking in the presence of God as Mary did in the first reading.  In order to be an effective mirror of Christ’s love to the world we need to set aside busy-ness and entertainment and be content to listen to the Word in our hearts – let it challenge us and transform us.  This is what Mary is doing in the Gospel.

Then, after this flood of distraction entered my mind, my heart remembered the words of Christ – Martha, Martha, you are worried and anxious about many things… - It was a duh! moment – If God loves me greatly, surely he will allow me the freedom of spending a few moments resting and reflecting at the feet of Jesus.

Learning to reflect God’s Love
What Mary is doing by sitting still and quiet at the feed of Our Lord is that she is learning to reflect Christ.  She has focused her entire being on learning to love as Christ is loving her in that moment.  We are all called to that intensity of life, that encounter with God that transforms our souls.

St Paul – Suffering as intercession
St. Paul speaks of his encounter with Christ in his suffering – and this is perhaps the most difficult way that we are called to imitate the love of Christ – but at the same time it is the most profound way to learn to love as Christ loved in his sufferings.

St. Paul knew that Jesus expressed the fullness of his love, the deepest part of his love when he suffered on the Cross.  That was Christ’s action of profound love.  St. Paul tried to reflect Christ’s love in his sufferings by praying for others while he suffered.

We did not comprehend the strength of God’s love until he showed it too us on the Cross.  This is at the heart of the revelation of Christ.  When he suffered the most, he loved the Most.

Transform Suffering to Intercession as an act of Love
This is why St. Paul was able to rejoice in his sufferings.  He saw them as an opportunity to reflect the love of God in the deepest way.  This is what St. Paul says when he says that he is filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ – what is lacking is his choice to share in the sufferings of Christ by taking his sufferings and then praying for the needs of the Church!

Do we Welcome, Reflect and follow Christ closely enough, to allow him to share in our sufferings.  This is a hard and difficult mass.  St. Paul teaches that the way that we allow Christ to share in our sufferings is to pray for the needs of the Church when we are experiencing the pain, loss, and abandonment.

The offertory is a particularly powerful time to offer these prayers, as we pour into the chalice our sufferings, our pain, and our love.  We ask to receive from God in this Mass the grace of his Son, that our pain can be transformed into the forgiveness of our sins.

Conclusion
If we can do these three things – prepare a tent acceptable to the Lord, to wait at the feet of Christ and allow his presence to imprint itself on our hearts and to invite Christ into our sufferings, so we can learn to love as he does, and pray for others to lead them to eternal life then we will be better prepared to “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord!”.

Spiritual Slingshot

From a fuzzy dot to an incredible scene
In 2006 NASA launched the New Horizons Spacecraft with the mission to visit Pluto.  Last year that mission succeeded and we saw the very first pictures of that far-away planet. Before New Horizons, all we new of Pluto was that it was a fuzzy dot of light on the edge of the solar system.  After New Horizons flew past we had amazing pictures of the mountains and ice-fields of this far away place.

Gravity Slingshot
In order to get to Pluto in time New Horizons needed to perform a gravity slingshot around the planet Jupiter.  In doing this the spacecraft sped up by 9000 miles an hour and was able to make it to Pluto on time.

Spiritual Slingshots
In the Church year we have the opportunity to perform a Spiritual Slingshot around the two great feasts of the year where we have the chance for an intense spiritual encounter with God - Easter and Christmas.

• At Easter time we encounter the DEPTHS OF GOD'S LOVE in that He is willing to endure suffering and death in order to open up the way for us to have a relationship with God.  
• At Christmas we encounter the HUMILITY OF CHRIST - That he would give us himself in the gift of the flesh so that we could encounter him as a person and so be drawn into His love.  

These two encounters act like a gravity slingshot for our faith - and have the ability to send us with renewed energy on our way.  As a result of these encounters we understand God and ourselves in a much clearer way!

Baptism of the Lord
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, it is the end of our spiritual encounter with the Humility of Christ and it sends us on our way back out into ordinary time.  The challenge for us as Christians is "Are we going to allow this spiritual encounter with Christ to propel us into the New Year?"

Christ is Last
In the Gospel today Christ receives his Baptism from St. John the Baptist.  How he receives His Baptism is an important lesson for us.  If you notice - Christ is Baptized LAST - after everyone else.

Imagine being there...
Think about it this way - All the people are being baptized in the Jordan - and as each person enters into the river their sins are being washed away by the waters of the river - the waters become filled more and more with the sin of the repentant - while they walk away clean. Can you imagine being a sinner compelled by the preaching of John the Baptist and getting in line behind Christ waiting to be baptized - only to have Christ move you forward in the line?

In order to take our sin to Calvary 
Then after all of us have been cleansed by Baptism, Christ steps into the water and is Baptized.  It is as if He is entering into ALL of our sins and so accepting them into his humanity - to carry ALL of these sins with him until he reaches the completion of His mission and dies on the cross.  That is the profound encounter of today's feast.

[[PAUSE]]

What are the effects of the Sacrament Baptism?
For those of us who are Baptized, we benefit from Baptism in three ways:

• ·Baptism washes away our sins - Baptism has a tremendous power over Sin.  It does this because it is preparing us to receive the presence of the Holy Trinity.  This is why the practice of invoking the grace of our Baptism is particularly effective when combating the temptation to sin.
• Through Baptism the Holy Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit come and dwell in our souls.  This is another profound thought.  Just as the Trinity is revealed for the first time today in Scripture, when we are Baptized God unites Himself to our soul, and so is present with us throughout the rest of our life.  This is another profound thought to consider the next time that we are tempted with sin - we bear within our soul the gift of divine life.
• By the presence of the Holy Trinity we experience spiritual adoption by God - we become His sons and daughters.  We become those who manifest God's love to the world.

We respond by becoming students of Christ
The first response is that if I am a son or daughter of God then I am called to imitate in my life the life of the Son of God - Jesus.  The first step to imitating another is to learn about them.  This is what St. Paul says to Timothy in the second reading.  "Beloved:
The grace of God has appeared, (JESUS) saving all (BY DYING ON THE CROSS) and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly" in this age,

New Years Resolution
In our culture, the New Year is a time for resolutions, for making changes in our lives.  The first suggestion of the readings today is that we make a resolution to take advantage of this great and rare encounter with the Humility of Christ - so that we can spend this year becoming better students of Christ.

3 Ways to live our lives - Serious, Just and Devout
In his public ministry Christ taught three ways that we can live our lives

• ·Christ taught us to take life seriously - to understand that our life and our faith is serious - and not something to be passed over lightly
• Christ taught us to live justly - which means according to God's plan.  Where in our lives today are we living injustice - are we living in sin - these are areas we are called to change!
• Christ teaches us to live our lives devoutly - with a love that imitates the love of Christ.  This year is the year of Mercy, and we care called to witness that mercy to the world

Christ's Students become aware of their mission
As we become more and more like Christ this year, we become aware that like Christ - God is calling us to life with a mission - life with a purpose.  The first reading from the prophet Isaiah shows us the goal of our mission.

Isaiah - Those who are Baptized are God's servants
The opening lines of the first reading make it clear that God is addressing this first reading to those of us who have been Baptized.  He says "Thus says the LORD: Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased, upon whom I have put my spirit;"  Those who are Baptized are called to be the servants of God - we are the ones who have received God's spirit!

We must be gentle and humble because the world is broken
Those who have received God's spirit have a mission, a purpose which Isaiah shows to us when he says "he shall bring forth justice to the nations, not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street.  a bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,"

We are called to carry out our mission by being men and women of Mercy, Gentleness and Humility!

Missionaries of Mercy
As Baptized Christians we are the people who have been given the purpose of showing God's justice to the world.  We do this by living lives that imitate Christ.  In Christ we learn that God's justice is founded on His Mercy, and so we are called to be men and women of mercy in the world.

We live in the Coast lands - Pagan Territory
God has sent us into the coast lands to bear this witness.  For the Jews at the time of Isaiah, the coast lands are the areas of Israel where the people do not know who God is, and so they need a witness to God's ways.

In our world today the coast land would be the places of this country where there is a need for people to witness to God's love.  Colorado is one of those places.  According to a 2010 Pew Research survey 1 in 4 Coloradoan's is a person without faith - without and experience of the love of God.  It may come as a surprise to use that we live in a place that is so in need of this message - God teaches us that our mission is to be "a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness."

Mission of the New Evangelization is a mission of action
In 1993 St. Pope John Paul II came to Colorado and gave the Church of Denver the mission of being the heart of the New Evangelization - to bring the message of Christ's love and humility to the world.  We are called to live out this mission here in our state - not by words but by actions that show how we choose to live out our lives.

Baptism compels us to be witnesses to Love
This is the gift of Baptism - this is the gift to which we are invited to participate in.  The feast of the Baptism of the Lord is the feast in which we celebrate the gift of Baptism in our life.  Let us take advantage of this Spiritual encounter and allow it to propel us into this year with a deeper desire to share the message of Love with the world in darkness around us.