Family Tree

Feast of the Holy Family – Cycle B

Sir 3:2-6, 12-14 Psalm Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5 Col 3:12-21 or 3:12-17 Lk 2:22-40

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, and I wanted to share with you this idea that the family is a tree that starts out as a seed, and when watered by the love of God grows into the a beautiful and peaceful community of love.

I married my Sister..?
This past summer I went to California and married my Sister

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Ok, that sounds very wrong. Let me be a little more precise. This past summer I had the great joy of officiating the wedding vows when my brother-in-law John married my Sister in California.

Marriage – the Seed of Love
Weddings are a time of incredible joy – because it is the birth of a new family. Part of the reason why we celebrate Marriage with weddings is because married love calls us to commitment, to faithfulness to one another for the rest of our lives. This is the principle difference between marriage and co-habitation, in marriage we go before God, the Church, and the whole world to publicly and freely declare are total commitment to love one another for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. The consequence is that family is born out of that commitment to love. There is intensity in that love, it is like a flare, that burns hot, bright and nothing can quench – not even the sea. Another way of describing this love is that it is like a seed – it is packed with all of the blessings, and struggles that lie ahead for that couple, all that is necessary for a good and holy life. Marriage is a seed that is packed into an intense little bundle, just waiting to get out.

Riding a Bike
Entering into the sacrament of marriage is like learning to ride a bike. We can watch movies about it, we can read books about it, we can watch other people live it out, but until we say I do, we have no clue what marriage is really like. I remember the day when I married my wife Tina, I remember standing at the altar, and watching her come up the aisle towards me. I had no clue what I was getting into, but it did not matter, because I knew that this was a vocation that God had called us to, and that He would be the one to back us up.

Relationship is the focus of the readings
The focus of our readings today is on relationship. The birth of Christ reveals to us that God is all about relationship. It is the relationship of love between the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit that we are invited by Christ to share in. In the first reading from Sirach, we learn of how husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters are to relate to one another. God is helping us to understand a right relationship with our families in order to prepare us to be in relationship with Him for all eternity.

Ribs Sunday
One of my brother Deacons refers to this Sunday as “Ribs Sunday” – because when we get to the part of St. Paul’s letter where he says “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord.” Some husbands will often nudge their wives in the ribs and give a “knowing” look. This is followed a few moments later by a responding dig in when the next verse is read – “Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them.” How do these attitudes towards relationship help us to grow in love for one another?

Wives be subordinate to your husbands
Let’s start with the wives part, When St. Paul says “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord.” He is expressing an idea of mutual love that is more clearly stated in his letter to Ephesians, where he says that “husbands and wives are to submit to one another as unto the Lord”. This is a difficult scripture for us to hear today, so I think that we need to struggle with it in an honest way. All too often this scripture has been used to justify some truly destructive behavior and situations. St. Paul is not trying to relegate women to a second-class status, or to justify remaining in abusive situations, but rather it is an expression of trust in our relationship of love that is backed up by Christ. When we freely submit ourselves to Christ’s love we can be confident that He will care for us because He has our best interests at heart.

Husband’s love your wives…
Now let’s move on to the husband’s role. St. Paul says to us “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ Loved the Church” – How did Christ show his love for the Church?

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He died for her!

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Brothers – let us love our wives!
Brothers – let us remember our commitment to be good husbands to our wives – to give up our lives for our families. This is not an easy challenge because it calls us to conversion, to change our ways. Take a moment to think about the actions or habits that we have that are sucking the love out of our marriages. What habits of sin do we allow to rob our marriages and families of life?

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We have been entrusted with the sacred duty to guarding our families from the evil that kills them. We are called to sacrifice, as Christ sacrificed, to bring about abundant life for our families.


Husband and Wife Homework
I want to invite all of the husbands and wives here today to reflect on these passages from Colossians as an examination of conscience for our marriages. Honestly share with one another where our relationships are filled with “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body.” Let us give thanks to God for the areas where we do these things, and work towards changing those areas of our marriages where we fail.

The Love of Christ is Water and Light…
The Sacrament of Marriage puts into right-relationship the love of husband and wife. When we enter into the Sacrament of Marriage, we root ourselves in the love of Christ, we ask Him to be the guarantor of our vows. In marriage, we invite Christ into our relationship of love, so that we can learn from Him who is the creator of all love. When Christ walks with us He strengthens and purifies our love for one another. The love of Christ is like water and light to the seed, it causes the seed to germinate and grow.

Children are a Blessing from God
Another one of those “riding your bike” moments found in family life is the blessing of children. The Jews always considered children to be a blessing from God. We see this in Sirach when he says “Whoever honors his father is gladdened by children”. Again, in the Gospel a few weeks back we heard of how God blessed St. Elizabeth in her old age when she conceived John the Baptist, and again, God blessed Abraham and Sarah with children when they conceived Isaac. If we go all the way back to Adam and Eve, we see the original intention of marriage, that “the two should become one flesh”, and that God “blessed them and said – be fertile and multiply”.

From Seed to Sapling - Children
Children bless our marriage, because they transform our lives from being this focused seed of intense love into a sapling. Watered and fed by the light of Christ marriage blossoms and grows. In this way married love reflects the creative love of God. Our love overflows and must be shared with children. Children bless us because they call us to a new level of love, to sacrificial love. Think back to those first moments that you shared with your children, as your mind wrestled with the idea that God has entrusted this soul into your care.

Contraception destroys the love of marriage
As a culture, we find it more and more difficult to identify with this idea that children are a blessing from God. One of the reasons why is the prevalence of contraception in our society. Our culture teaches that if we don’t practice contraception then we are irresponsible and foolish. Our Church teaches that when we do practice contraception we are sinning against the 6th commandment because we are rejecting God’s blessing by intentionally destroying His gift of fertility.

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Children become a burden
When we loose sight of the fact that children are a blessing from God they become a burden, an inconvenience, a trophy of accomplishment, or a commodity that we can buy and sell at the fertility clinic when we want.

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From Sapling to Tree to a Forest
As our family tree grows up, it matures from a sapling into a tree. That creative love that began as a little seed of love between husband and wife grows to be open to children and to life. When our children become adults they fall in love and our family grows yet again, as we welcome into our marriage in-laws and then best of all grandchildren. Eventually, if we allow God to work in our lives the tiny seed of love that we began with all those many years ago will grow into an entire forest of trees, each with its own special gifts and hidden treasures. The question is – are we willing to let God order our family relationships so that our families can become Holy Families?

Got Love?

18th Sunday Ordinary Time – Cycle A

Got Love?

Is 55:1-3 Psalm Ps 145:8-9, 15-16, 17-18 Rom 8:35, 37-39 Mt 14:13-21

This past week, my wife went and saw the new X-Files movie, and came back and commented to me that it had a very negative portrayal of the Church.

Hollywood gives the Church a bad rap
This movie (the X-Files) gives a typical Hollywood portrayal of the Catholic Church. Without giving away the plot it features two men, one is a former Catholic priest and convicted pedophile who has super-natural visions, the other is a Catholic Priest who opposes a boy from receiving a non-descript stem-cell treatment that the Church considers abhorrent. The movie embroils these characters into conflict with the Church and concludes that the teachings of the church are wrong, and ought to be ignored.

Does this really reflect our family?
In a certain way, I think that this movie is an attempt by the producers and distributors to portray the Church and her teachings as irrelevant to modern day issues, backwards, messed up and mean. It leads us to ask the question - is this an accurate portrayal of the Catholic Church? Is this how our community, our family really is?

Do we answer by making our own movie?
How are we as Christians to answer these serious accusations in the world today? We could on one hand, collect up all of our monies, and go and hire an great director and pay them to make a movie about the Catholic Church that portrayed her in a positive light – but would that be an effective use of our resources? All in favor of a second collection to raise money to make a movie to counter this accusation please raise your hands.

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If not then how?
Don’t panic! I think that Jesus wouldn’t raise his hand either. Christ doesn’t want us sitting on our backsides in the pews, He calls us to answer these accusations by being witnesses to the Gospel. But where does the rubber meet the road? How do we do this?

The readings today give us some hints on how we as Christians, disciples of Jesus are to respond to this movie, and all other accusations against the Church. Let’s go through them one at a time.

All who are thirsty come to the water
Isaiah the Prophet invites all who are thirsty to come to the water. Are we thirsty? What are we thirsty for? We are thirsty for the same thing that everyone else in the world is thirsty for – we are thirsty for love;

• not the kind of love we might have for ice cream or pizza;
• not the kind of love that we experience from our brothers and sisters;
• not the kind of love that we experience for our parents or our children;
• not the kind of love that we have for our husbands or wives.

We thirst for a love that is greater than all of these loves – we are thirst for the Love of God. We thirst to know how special we are in His eyes.

All who have no money…

Isaiah goes on to invite those “who have no money to come receive grain and eat. Come without paying, and without cost”. If we were to literally engage with this passage of scripture we might dismiss it by saying that we have food in the pantry at home, or some money in the bank. What then is the money that Isaiah is referring to? The money that Isaiah is speaking of is the money of love – our ability to show love. He describes us as having no money, because we learn to love in response to our experience of being loved. Isaiah is describing our ability to love when compared to God’s ability of love. God has an infinite ability to love, we are very limited, and so we are poor in comparison to God. It is God who invites us into a relationship of love, to receive His love – to receive from Him freely.

Love illumines our heart – it reveals in us selfishness
Every encounter with the love of God illuminates our hearts. It is in the brightness of God’s love that we are confronted with the question – “Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what fails to satisfy?” Where is my love directed? Where do I spend my time? My treasures? My talents? How does my expenditure of time relate to the love that I seek?

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Sneaking out of town - imagine Jesus’ day in the Gospel

Have you ever wondered why it took Jesus all day to cure the sick. When I read this Gospel, I imagined that he got up early in the morning, grabbed the disciples and snuck out of town, only to find that when they landed the boat the crowds had followed him. On landing with his disciples, he had pity on the crowds and so he spent his day healing them. This gives us a glimpse of what God’s Love is like. Jesus could have healed them all instantly, but rather he spent the day healing them, by entering into relationship with them, showing them what the Love of God is like – it is relational. God’s love is relational, and when we experience it we are healed!

We are the disciples

Whenever we read scripture about the disciples, we need to pay special attention to them, because we too are disciples of Jesus, and we are called to imitate their actions in our own lives. The disciples come to Jesus and ask him to take care of a problem – feeding the crowd. They even have a suggestion on how God ought to solve this problem that they have (send them away). How many times have we taken our problems to God with a suggested solution?

Christ calls us to action by placing our gifts at His service

Jesus answers them in much the same way that He answers us – He challenges them to action. He says “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.” To which they respond that they don’t have enough – five loaves and two fishes. This is where the Gospel and the reading from Isaiah fit together beautifully. We come to God because we are poor in our ability to Love, but if we allow Him, he will take our meager gifts and multiply them a thousand fold. What would the world be like if we placed all our relationships before Christ like the disciples did in today’s Gospel? How much love would we witness to our wives and husbands, our children and parents, our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and friends and enemies?

Christianity is Fire – Christians are Arsonists
A 19th century philosopher once described Christianity as fire, and true Christians as arsonists.

The Fire of Christianity is Love. Love is the key to being united with God. When we allow the love of Christ to dwell in our hearts then our temptation to sin falls away, we live as St. Paul says – without anything separating us from the Love of Christ.

We are called to be like the disciples in the Gospel and place our meager gifts before God, so that He can take them and magnify their effect.

Love is our capacity to hold heat? How hot or cold are our hearts?
John Chrysostum describes our love as the capacity of our hearts to hold heat. Do we allow the love that we experience here with the Eucharist to remain in our hearts throughout this week? Are we hot or cold? Does our heart retain the heat of Christ’s love in a way that is living and effective, that changes how we live our lives? Are we being arsonists?

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How does our family answer the accusations of Hollywood? - By sharing the fire of Christ’s love!

When we allow this fire of Christ’s love to penetrate our hearts we become a witness of the Gospel to our families, friends, neighbors and coworkers what true Christianity is about. When we do this in simple, practical ways by offering to mow the neighbors lawn, visiting the sick, those who are homebound or in prison, by holding the door for another, by taking care of the poor, the weak and the suffering. When we do one of these actions we spread the fire of God’s love into the world. This arson of Love is the anti-dote to the accusations made in the movie theater about the nature of Christianity and the Church. What fire is Christ calling you to spread this week?

We adore you O Christ...

Good Friday

Is 52:13—53:12 Ps 31:2, 6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25 Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9 Jn 18:1—19:42

How many gathered here today wear a Cross or a Crucifix?

How many of you wear it daily?

Today we commemorate the death of Jesus on the Cross. Part of the reason that we venerate the cross today is that the Cross of Christ reminds us of the story of our salvation.

What is the Story of your Cross?
What is the story of your cross that you wear? Why do you wear it? Is it a nice fashionable piece of jewelry, or is their a deeper reason?

Our lives are shaped by the Cross
Our lives are shaped by the Cross – If we let them be.
Our life in the Church begins with the sign of the Cross. The cross is signed on our foreheads as we are claimed for Christ. Every time we enter into prayer we begin with the sign of the Cross.

The Story of my Tau
I wear a cross every day, and the cross I wear has a long and colorful story. It is, in a way a witness to my ongoing battle with Sin, and a reminder of who I am called to be. Before I was ordained a Deacon I used to work at a retreat center out near Akron, Colorado. And, at the end of a retreat we would give to each of the participants a little wooden cross that the Franciscans wear called a Tau. With the cross came the encouragement to wear their cross each day, as a reminder that Christ calls each of us daily to take up our crosses and to follow him.

Since my days at the retreat center I have worn my Tau Cross every day. When I get out of the shower each day, the first thing that I put on is my Tau, and I say a small prayer that we pray at the stations of the Cross. We adore you O Christ and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

We Adore you O Christ and we praise you…

What does it mean to carry the Cross?
This year, during lent the Church extolled us to carry our crosses each day. During lent she encourages us to battle our love for sin, and replace it with a deeper love, a greater adoration for Christ, so that we can enter with him into paradise – eternal happiness, peace and joy.

How do we show our Adoration for Christ?
There are two ways of showing Christ Adoration that I would like to share with you today – Adoration in sharing our life with Jesus, and expressing our adoration in our willingness to take up our own cross and follow him.

Adoration is sharing our lives with him.
The first way of adoration is prayer where we share the important parts of ourselves with those whom we love. This is why prayer is such an important part of our lives as Christians. Prayer is when we call upon the grace that we have from Baptism, and speak with Jesus. Prayer is time spent before the Blessed Sacrament, and especially in those few precious moments after receiving Holy Communion, when we sit or kneel quietly in our pews and enter into the depths of our heart, and share ourselves with Christ – Who suffered and died on the Cross.

The Second way of adoration is taking up the cross.
Taking up the cross requires courage. It is not an easy thing to do. Sure it is easy to get up in the morning and hang a little cross around your neck and go about your day. The challenge o the cross is to allow that moment of prayer transform your day. Taking your cross into the day means being willing to battle sin at every moment of the day. It means that when I am tempted, I call upon the power of the Cross, sometimes by touching it under my shirt and reminding myself that I am called to hear the word of God and to follow it – trusting that this way will lead to holiness, and to happiness in my life.

We adore you O Christ and we praise you…

How do we give praise to God?
Am I embarrassed to give praise to Christ in my world today? What is effective praise. Are we Christians who stand around and say “Praise you Lord Jesus” with our lips, but only when we are at Church on Sunday, and only for an hour? To give praise to God means to be willing to do the work of the Father. To correct the sinner, to feed the hungry, stand up for the oppressed. As Christians we praise Christ when people see our Good works and give praise to our heavenly Father. It is not enough for us Christians to be involved in good works, but rather we need to let people know the reason for our Good works – that we love as Christ has taught us to love by showing us his great mercy. We come to know this as we come to understand the evil of the sin that we do, and the great mercy that Christ spoke to us as He hung upon the Cross and said to us – “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.

Because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world!

What made the Cross Holy?

The sign of torture and abusive power
Up until the time of Christ the Cross was a sign of torture, humiliation, suffering and of pain. It was a warning to people everywhere not to oppose the power of the Roman Empire, because by the cross they imposed their will on you in terrible ways. It was a sign of power that had no compassion, power that did not care about the cost.

Christ transformed the Cross
Christ transformed the meaning of the Cross once and for all. He transformed the cross through His expression of love. Christ transformed the meaning of the Cross because he willingly, lovingly laid down on the Cross to enter into death – to bear for us the price of our sins so that we might enter into communion with God through his suffering.

Holiness comes through obedience and action
Holiness comes through two things, obedience and action. Christ transformed the Cross into a symbol of God’s love by His obedience to the Father’s desire that we share in communion with Him again – that the sin of Adam be washed away in the blood of His own Son. Christ listened to the will of His heavenly Father and so took action, by dying on the Cross so that we might share in His relationship with God.

Every Cross has a story to tell.
Every Cross has a story to tell – the story is about how the cross leads us to holiness, how the cross reminds us to listen to our Heavenly Father, and how the cross leads us to act on what he has called us to do – To take up our cross and follow him, so that others will see the good works that we do and give praise to our heavenly Father!

Where is the story of your cross going to take you this year?