Dress Blues

29th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B

Is 53:10-11, Psalm 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45

Marines
If you have ever had the opportunity to talk to a recruiter in the Marine Corps, you will notice that they often walk around in their dress blue uniforms, looking very sharp and crisp and handsome. The Marines do this on purpose – it is part of their mystique, it is what draws young men and women into the corps to serve the country. What guy wouldn’t want to have a cool sword, nice threads and a Tank to drive on the weekends? What we don’t see are the endless hours of toil and discipline and hard work that go along with the uniform.

Dress Blues on the Road to Jerusalem
In today’s Gospel, Jesus and his Apostles are going through a similar problem. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem where He is going to suffer and die. He knows the road ahead and his Apostles are caught up in a classic “Dress Blues” moment. I can just see them walking down the road – “Won’t it be cool Lord when you are in your power and we can rule with you – how sweet that will be!” There are at least two ways that we can read the response of the other 10 Apostles, The first is that they are more pious than James and John, and hence their indignation – “How childish of you guys to ask such a lame question – don’t you see?” The other is from the attitude of “Drat! I wanted to be the first to ask that question!” I think that this is truly their source of indignation. The Apostles are indignant with James and John not because they asked to be on Christ’s right and left, but the other 10 didn’t think of that question first!

Be Christian – Be “Like Christ”
Jesus takes this moment to teach his Apostles, and us, what it means to be his followers, to love him. The word Christian means ‘Like Christ’ – and today's Gospel makes it clear that our way to salvation is to love as Christ loved, and to serve as Christ served.

Sacraments of Service
There are two sacraments of service in the Catholic Church – Marriage and Holy Orders. Both have their “shiny, glossy covers” that are similar to the sharp dress blue uniforms of the U.S. Marines, and both have their “reality checks” in which we discover as James and John did that we are called to a ministry of service.

Dress Blues for Marriage
For marriage the “Dress Blues” is a mother snuggling a quiet, peaceful baby just reflecting on the wonder of the love that created this beautiful delicate life that has been entrusted to her. It is a Father coaching his kids in soccer or baseball and seeing them succeed in ways that he couldn’t. It is seeing a married couple deeply in love with one another, caring for each other and walking together.

Baby Blues for Marriage
Marriage also has its “Baby Blues side”. This comes with the first kid when Mom is sitting up late at night with a cranky kid that won’t settle down, or Dad is stuck changing a poopy diaper that somehow has exploded all over the place. We don’t often use these images when we speak of marriage, but they are the heart of the service of love that marriage calls us to.

This is what is happening to James, John and the other Apostles. They have the “rose colored glasses” view of the Kingdom, and Jesus is reminding them of the way of the Cross.

Dress Blues for Holy Orders
For Holy Orders, the best way to speak about the “Dress Blues” moment is to share with you a little bit about my own vocation to be a Deacon. When I first knew that God was calling me to be a Deacon I was very excited, but at the same time I kept it a great secret. The only person that I spoke about my vocation about was my wife. I told her that I thought that Christ was calling me to follow him in His life of service, but that part of following that calling meant to wait on her discernment. To ensure that she had the freedom of discernment, I told no one for over three years.

Talking with the Archdiocese
After years of prayer and quiet discernment Tina and I finally decided to speak to the Deacon in charge of Deacons at the Archdiocese about my vocation. I was expecting a Marine Corps recruiter – “Let me sign you up Son!” This is how I imagined that James and John thought when the approached Jesus. That is not what I encountered – Rather Deacon Al said to me – The life of a Deacon is a life of service – a life of sacrifice, of setting yourself last of all – so that they can come to know Christ. In his own way he was calling my attention to the tough times that lie ahead just as Christ points out the passion to his disciples.

Can you drink the cup? - Why do we do it!
Jesus challenges the Apostles, and he challenges us – “Can you drink the cup that I am to drink? Can you be baptized with the baptism that I will be baptized?” – That is – do you have the courage to walk the whole road to Calvary? Do you have the strength to give yourself fully to your spouse? To the Church? Marriage and Holy Orders are not about being served but about serving. We do this every day when we go to work, or get the kids off to school. When we do these simple things, we are following Christ.

No Pain, No Gain
My drill instructor in the military said a very similar thing to me in boot camp – he said “No Pain, No Gain!” – "No Service, No Reward!"

Quiet Prayer on the way of the Cross
Sometimes it is difficult to see that our day-to-day actions make a difference in the lives of anyone – that is part of the Gospel today. Christ shows us that part of the secret to sanctification is to offer our daily work, our daily sacrifices in prayer. Uniting our sufferings to the sufferings of Christ on the cross.

Being a Mom or Dad is not about having kids to serve you, but rather it is about building a life of service to one another – first as husband and wife, then as Mother and Father in order to allow ourselves to be transformed by the practice of selfless love.

The first Order of Holy Orders is Service - Diakonia
Being a Priest or Deacon is not about leading or being in charge – it is about surrendering your own wants and needs in order to care for the needs of the Body of Christ – the Church. The first step in the ordained life is to be ordained Deacon – the ministry of Diakonia is a ministry of service. Before any priest is ordained a priest he is first ordained Deacon. Before any Bishop is ordained Bishop he is ordained Deacon. The heart of ministry in the Church is the heart of the Gospel.

Can you Drink the Cup?
Christ say’s that “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." In the same way we are not Mothers and Fathers, Deacons and Priests to be served, but to serve, and to give our life so that our children at home and in this flock can have a rich and fruitful spiritual life! Our Savior is challenging us in our lives for the week ahead – Can you drink His cup?

For whom the bell tolls…

4th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B

Dt 18:15-20 Psalm Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 7-9 1 Cor 7:32-35 Mk 1:21-28

Eastern Europe
A Cardinal who grew up in Eastern Europe once shared with a group of young people why church bells were so important to him. “They remind me of my Baptism, of my faith and my mission in life” he said. In his country the Church bells were rung every morning at sunrise to remind the people to begin their day with a prayer of thanksgiving to God. The job of ringing the bells belonged to the altar boys who had to get up before dawn, and walk down to the Church in the dark in order to ring the bells at sunrise.

When the communists took over Eastern Europe they wanted to destroy the Church, so they imposed a curfew until dawn to try to prevent the ringing of the church bells. This cardinal, and his boyhood friend were committed to serving God, and so they would get up early in the morning and sneak over to the Church to ring the bells. One morning when it was his friend’s turn to ring the bells, he was shot for violating the curfew. This tragedy devastated the village, but every day, the bells of the Church still spoke out…

Ringing Bells make a Joyful Noise
At St. Anthony’s we begin every Mass with the ringing of the Church bells. Our bells have always made a joyful noise to the Lord because they call us to open our hearts to God so that we can receive His love. In a certain way our bells are the voice of our Church, because when we hear them, we are reminded of God, our faith and our Baptism.

It takes two to ring the bells
There are two people involved in the ringing of the bells, the one pulling the rope, and the ones listening to the sound. All of us who are baptized have this dual vocation in our lives; we have a responsibility to listen to the sound of the bells (to listen to Christ) and to be a bell for Christ by living our witness to the Gospel before our friends and family.

Listening to Christ
The first reading today contains a stern warning to those of us with this dual responsibility. In it, God warns Moses and all of the prophets (That is us sisters and brothers) that we need to hear the truth – that is the whole truth, and not just the parts of the Truth that we are comfortable with. It is not enough for me to simply hear the Churches teachings on abortion and not hear her teachings on immigration or war, or to hear the Churches teaching on the liturgy and not hear her teachings on the care for the poor or the sick. If we want to be faithful listeners, then we need to hear the whole truth.

How do we listen to Christ?
The response for the responsorial psalm today says, “If today you hear his voice harden not your hearts”. This means that we have an obligation to listen to Christ each day. We listen to Christ through attentive prayer. God has created each one of us with a specific mission in mind, a specific vocation, a calling. If we never listen to Christ, then we can only become aware of our vocation when God sneaks up behind us and whacks us over the head with the spiritual 2x4 (two by four).

Christian Life is Baptism flowing out into the world
The word Vocation means “one who is called”. There are two different connotations of the word vocation that I would like to address today; our baptismal vocation, and the vocations of service that we might be called to in Marriage or Holy orders.

Christian Life is our Baptismal Vocation flowing out into the world.
Fix in your minds the idea that at the moment of your Baptism God placed into your soul a rich spring, welling up with the purest, sweetest, cleanest water. Our Baptismal vocation is not a split instant in our life, but rather the water from this spring welling up within us and flowing out into the world over the course of our entire life. The grace that we received at Baptism remains effective for all eternity – and it desires to permeate into all of our relationships and interactions, washing them clean through the grace of God. Sadly, many Catholics receive this spring at Baptism and then seldom turn again to listen to the voice of God resonating in their souls. Some of us gathered here today may share this experience. For all of us, the readings today call us to listen anew to the bells of the Church!

Have a Conversation with God
I want to encourage all of us gathered here today to make time in our lives to listen to God. Specifically, we can take 10 minutes in the morning as we begin our days to reflect quietly with God about the people that God is calling us to be the bell of the Church for today. This is what God and Moses were doing in the first reading. They were reflecting together over the people that God had entrusted to Moses. Listening to God in prayer this way helps us to become aware of the ways that the grace that God has given us at baptism is flowing through our lives and into the world. It is also a way to become aware of when God is calling us into a more specific vocation – a vocation of service.

All are called to listen and dialog today
In the Church there are two sacramental vocations of service, marriage and holy orders. As a married Deacon, I need to be attentive to both of these calls, but all of us have a need to listen to God about both of the sacraments because all of us experience these sacraments in our lives. Those of us who are single, or young are called to listen and dialog with God about where He is calling us to serve and how he is calling us to serve. If we are ordained, or married, then we too have an obligation to dialog with God about how he is calling us to live out our sacraments today.

This means that like Christ, the prophet that Moses and God spoke about in the first reading, we have an obligation to listen to the whole truth of God in our sacramental life and not to shy away from the teachings of the Church that we find difficult or inconvenient. In this sense all of us need to hear the bells, and all of us need to be bell ringers…

Don’t be anxious about the things of the World.
St. Paul warns us today not to be anxious about the things of the world, but rather to trust in God. The reason why St. Paul warns us about this is because anxiety strangles our ability to listen to God and prevents us from trusting God.

Married People – Trust in the Lord
When it comes to marriage, do we choose to listen to Christ about contraception, or be anxious about the burden of children and so we contracept? Do we place other things above our vocation to serve one another out of love? Where in our marriage do we need to invite in the healing love of God. How can we allow him to enter into the wounds of our love and redeem them, heal them? In what ways are our marriages thirsty for the flowing, cleansing, refreshing, life-giving waters of baptism?

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Bishops, Priests and Deacons – Trust in the Lord
For those of us in Holy Orders, are we faithful to the vows we made at our ordinations? Are we humble to His Will readily following the promptings of the Holy Spirit in our ministry? Does our life of prayer continue to grow and deepen? Are we holding fast to the faith of the Church – the whole faith? Are we obedient to our Bishop, listening to him as good sons ought to? Do we continue to conform our lives to the example of Christ?

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Pray for Vocations – Pray for our married couples
All of us experience the sacrament of marriage – either as husbands and wives or as sons and daughters, and so all of us are affected by the fidelity of those married couples in our community who are called by God to live out this sacrament. Let us pray then sisters and brothers for the married couples of our parish that God may give them the grace to live out their sacrament faithfully, and fruitfully.

Pray for Vocations – pray for our Bishop, Priests and Deacons
Likewise all of us here experience the sacrament of Holy Orders. Without it we could not gather week after week to receive the Eucharist and to celebrate the Mass. Let us take some time this week to pray in a special way for those in Holy Orders and those living the religious life. That they might be faithful to their vows taken at ordination and so reflect the love of God to the World.

Listen and Trust in God and you will discover your vocation
All of us here are called to a vocation in life. The way that we begin to discover this vocation is to listen to God and to trust in God.

To those of us here today that have not yet received either of these two sacraments I want to offer you this reassurance. The decision to enter the seminary to study for the priesthood or diaconate is a serious decision, however, it is not the final decision to be a priest or deacon but rather the next level of listening and trusting in God to see if He is calling you to Holy Orders. In the same way becoming engaged is a serious decision but it does not mean that you are married, but rather that you are going to spend some time considering marriage seriously. Engagement and entering the seminary means that we are willing to listen to God and to trust that He will make his will known to us.

To those of us here today who are living in Holy Orders or Marriage – we too have the same challenge: to listen to God in the context of our vocation and to trust that God will provide for the needs of our ministry. If we do this we will become better wives, better husbands, better priests and better deacons.

Brothers and Sisters when we listen to God we hear the peal of the bells. When we trust in God, we are the ones who are ringing the bells. Go and make joyful noise to the Lord this week!

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?

Dear Holy Mother Church

Tuesday the 2nd Week of Easter

Acts 4:32-37 Psalm 93:1ab, 1cd-2, 5, Jn 3:7b-15

Who is the Church?

The Church is the community founded by Christ with the mission to show humanity how to live reconciled with one another through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.


Let us break that apart a little bit.

The Church is a community founded by Christ
During Easter the Church reflects on her birth from the side of Christ as he hung upon the cross in the sleep of death. Just as Adam was put into a deep sleep so that Eve could be born from him, Christ was put into a deep sleep so that Holy Mother Church could spring from Him when His side was pierced by the soldiers lance – and blood and water flowed forth.

We’re on a Mission from God

The Church has a mission – We don’t meet in order to plan meetings we do not exist so that we can continue to exist. The Church has a mission, a very important purpose in the world - To show humanity how to be reconciled to one another through Christ by the Power of the Holy Spirit.

How can we be reconciled through Christ?

Our community is founded on the Sacrament of Baptism – which we hear a little about in today’s Gospel. We call one another Brother and Sister because we have been born anew in Baptism through Water and the Holy Spirit – We become Brothers and Sisters because we are all united to Christ. The mission of the Church calls us to become reconciled to one another by allowing Christ to be at the center of our relationship. When we do this we invite His presence into our relationships as the source of healing, wholeness and communion.

Two Practical Ways that we can do this

In Marriage

In sacramental marriage Christ expresses His love to me in a unique way through my spouse. Christ also calls me to express His love to my spouse by unconditional love and service to her. In marriage we can strive to begin each day with this thought about what our vocation is, and how we are to love our beloved – As Christ loved the Church, or as the Church loves Christ..

In Baptism

In Baptism we are united to Christ through His Death and Resurrection that destroys sin. Christ conquers Sin and Death so that we can live free of their evil effects. When we are reconciled through Christ we allow our Baptism to take root in our lives; we allow ourselves to be healed of division and that we give thanks to God for His transforming grace in our lives. This means that we recognize that the greatest stumbling block in our relationship to one another is our own sin, and not the sin of our Brothers or Sisters.

The Holy Spirit moves where he wills!

Ask the Holy Spirit – who moves according to the will of the Father to point out to you one relationship of your life that is in need of the light of Christ, so that you can be reconciled by the Holy Spirit.

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Dear Holy Mother Church

You are the community founded by Christ with the mission to show humanity how to live reconciled with one another through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit

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May your Savior guide you in carrying out your mission today!