Second Sunday of Lent
Fr. Jim Deiters
Every year on the Second Sunday of Lent, Mother Church invites us to reflect on the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus, one of three versions of the event in the Gospels. One year ago when we were listening to this story, it was right before our lives and the world came to a halt at the start of the pandemic. Given what has all happened in the past twelve months, the part of the Transfiguration story that stands out for me this year is the ‘mountain’ and the climb Jesus and his friends took that day. One year ago, most of us were comfortably in our routines in a version of hiking the ‘mountain of life’ with family, work, and other goals. As we approach the anniversary of the ‘Covid earthquake’ that drastically shook us from any secure footing we thought we had in this world, we can be asking ourselves such things as – what ‘mountain’ was I on last year at this time… and was that the hill I needed to be on in the first place? Will the experiences of slowing down in the past year re-train the way I ‘climb’ toward God… and not my own mountain?
In the scriptures, we regularly hear of mountains and hills where important spiritual events took place, including the harrowing experience that Abraham and Isaac had in our first reading today and the high point where Jesus climbed with the three disciples for the Transfiguration. While our personal spiritual journey is often described as a life-long mountain ‘climb’ toward God, we often get side-tracked and find ourselves half-way up various ‘life hills’ that distract us from our true journey to our heavenly homeland.
The climb that Jesus invited his friends to make with him is symbolically an invitation to each of us to also make a journey ‘hike’ with Jesus in order to reach a higher place in our relationship with God. In this sense, we can think of the Transfiguration as a symbol of prayer…where Jesus wants to take us away from our normal routines… to ‘mountain top’ of intimacy with God. But such an excursion takes discipline and training on our part.
Like most of you, I struggle to make sure I set aside enough time for prayer each day. Each of us has to find our own way of making more time for God. Some do this by coming to an extra Mass during the week; some at Eucharistic Adoration on Tuesday nights; and if trying to pray at home has too many distractions, others come by church before work or after dropping the kids at school to be with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel for their own quiet time with God.
To make a ‘spiritual climb’ upward and experience being closer to God requires a sacrifice of giving up 30 or 60 minutes of my day to do what God said to us on that Transfiguration mountain top, “Listen to my Son.” Although we are beginning the second week of Lent, it is never too late to start some new spiritual practice that will make this Lent a lasting meaningful experience…in which we are ‘transfigured’ more and more into Jesus himself.
If we think of Lent and in reality our whole life, as a spiritual climb toward God, we are encouraged by this story to know that Jesus himself is with us on the hike up the hill. Like he did with his disciples, in prayer, Jesus wants to reveal to us very personally who he is as the Son of God…and a friend who walks with us. Another beautiful part of the story is how the disciples who spend this time with Jesus…are eventually drawn into this “cloud” of God’s Presence. This makes me think of that part of Mass where we incense the Altar and sing the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus with all the angels of heaven. Here in the Eucharist, we are privileged to enter into the ‘cloud’ of God’s Real Presence…to be taken up with Jesus… to get a glimpse into our Eternal Life with God.
Even in our personal prayer time, we can enter into the ‘cloud’ of God’s Presence…where we can let fade away the distracting ‘hills of our worries’ and a ‘mountain of false ego’ and simply BE with Jesus…and listen for his voice of love deep within us.
Here at the Altar, we are privileged to actually BE on the mountain top with Jesus …where he draws us into Himself to taste God’s love and forgiveness. May this Eucharistic encounter with Jesus inspire us to make whatever sacrifices it will take to keep climbing closer to God in our daily life.
FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters
It is quite remarkable when something in God’s Amazing Creation becomes a unifying element for our country. Such is the case with the delightful news this week of NASA’s successful accomplishment of getting a new rover to the planet Mars. We humans have been fascinated with the skies since our beginning, including the early Greeks mythological interpretation of the stars and then the great minds of Copernicus and Galileo who laid the foundations for our scientific understanding of the universe today. Perhaps part of our fascination is that the further out we go from our own planet it can feel like we are getting closer to God? Or some interpret our enthusiastic search for life on other planets as a way to console our human loneliness if we are the only species in this vast cosmos.
It is truly extraordinary that our scientists can figure out how to get an SUV-sized computer to another planet 129 million miles away to land in the exact spot they planned! One small part of this accomplishment that made me smile is the name they chose for the rover called “Perseverance,” and the drone called “Ingenuity.” Those same two words can be used to describe how God keeps reaching out to us humans…with perseverance and ingenious ways that we hear about in our scriptures for this First Sunday of Lent.
If you think about it, most of the bible is a story of God’s persevering quest to get us stubborn, selfish humans to follow God’s way of love. And God is incredibly ingenious in the many different ways he tries to intervene and get us back on the path each time we stray and think we can do things on our own. Part of the reason that the story of Noah and the flood is so universally famous is that it reveals how ‘creative’ God is. God’s ‘ingenuity’ gets very detailed at times, including the way he saves the animal along with faithful Noah and his family in a huge boat.
But instead of getting caught up in what I call a “Fisher-Price” children’s version of the story about cute animals, the author is trying to teach us the main point by reminding us FOUR times that this is about a “COVENANT” between God and humanity. It is a story about God’s ‘perseverance’ and not giving up on us humans…even though we break our side of the Covenant time and again. In the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament, we hear many times about this Covenant that God wants with us through such heroes as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David.
We need these Old Testament stories of Noah and Abraham’s conversations with God about ‘covenant’ to make sense of why the word covenant is used so often in the New Testament to describe Jesus as the New Covenant of God’s Love. Especially for us Catholics, in the Mass we hear Jesus telling us that in the Chalice is the “Blood of the new and eternal Covenant which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Everything we do here in Mass is about God renewing His Covenant with us…and our having to make a choice to fulfill our side of the covenant by how we live once we partake in this “Eucharistic pact.”
The way God showed his covenant in the Old Testament was through signs like a rainbow, the blood of animals, and stone tablets of Commandments. But then God decided that he wanted to become the Covenant himself…in the Person of Jesus. This is why St. Peter in our reading today speaks of Jesus as “leading us to God” – a new interpretation of ‘covenant.’ In this sense we can think of ‘covenant’ as an ongoing invitation by God to come to Him, led by Jesus. Our side of the covenant pact is saying “Yes” to God’s calling, like Mary did, and saying “no” to all temptations that hinder me from staying on the path of holiness and the ‘steppingstones’ of Jesus’ Way.
We might think of Lent as a time when God sends his “rover of perseverance” into our heart and soul to lure us back into a covenant of faithfulness and mutual love. The Holy Spirit can be thought of as a “drone of ingenuity” that probes deep into any part of our being that keeps giving into temptations…as the Spirit strengthens us to stay faithful to God and our commitments.
In the sacraments, there is no such thing as ‘cheap’ grace or ‘drive-thru help’ if we thought we could just come here to ‘get’ God’s forgiveness and go back to our old habits. Taking the Eucharist into our bodies is about a covenant-agreement with God, in which the mercy and grace we receive as gift… are to be lived out in our words and actions. If we dare to come forward for the Holy Body and Blood of Jesus, we are essentially saying to God that we want to ‘re-sign’ our part of the covenant-contract of selfless love.
Ash Wednesday
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters
I remember in high school biology having to memorize the bones in the human body and being fascinated that our skull is comprised of 22 different bones. As God is fashioning a baby in the womb, he keeps the skull bones soft for the baby to pass through the birth canal and then during the first year the bones gradually harden and fuse together. When I was ordained a priest, I remember my strange mind started thinking about my skull when in the ritual, the bishop invokes the Holy Spirit and lays his hands on the head of the one being ordained. I was praying hard for the Spirit to take over my whole body through the top of my head.
Interestingly, each of our seven sacraments, in one way or another, use gestures and rituals connected with our head. In baptism, water and Chrism are poured onto our head; in confession and marriage the priest hand is raised over our head when offering forgiveness or the nuptial blessing, and in Confirmation, Anointing, and Ordination, the Holy Spirit is invoked over the top of our head.
For this Ash Wednesday and throughout Lent, I invite us to think about what all is going on this head of ours! Our mind was created as beautiful by God and was meant to think like God thinks. But our mind is often cluttered with anxiety, false ego, greed, lust, and a lot of unimportant data we keep hoarding. Often times an ‘old narrative’ about our self and others that we have created needs to change since it burdens us with negative thinking.
Since this year is different and a small amount of ashes will be ‘sprinkled’ on top of our head, it is a great opportunity to pray for the Holy Spirit to ‘sprinkle’ new grace upon us and enter our mind with a breath of new possibilities.
When receiving the ashes, we can be asking God what needs to be cleaned out and changed in my thinking that will meld my mind more into the mind of Jesus. Briefly, let us apply this to the three goals of Lent from this Gospel today:
As we begin our Lenten journey of conversion, we must be vulnerable enough to let the Holy Spirit come THROUGH the top of our head and possess our whole being. As the ashes are about to be sprinkled upon us, invite the Holy Spirit to come through your sacred skull and fill every crevice of your mind to be shaped into the mind of Jesus.
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters
Some friends of mine have a small collection of artwork from local artists interspersed throughout their home. I’ve always loved the watercolor hanging in one room that he got her for Valentine’s Day years ago. The two persons in the painting are sitting and staring at each other. And the quote next to them says this, “Today, for some reason, I see how short our lives actually are…and how often I forget to look into your eyes and stop time entirely and say, ‘you have made this life for me’.” Too often in our busy-ness, we often miss opportunities to ‘stop time’ and express our love for someone.
When I prayed over this Gospel story of Jesus healing the person with leprosy, I could almost feel the intensity of emotions in their brief conversation. In addition to their few exchanged words, I imagine that their encounter also included a deep stare into each other’s eyes…as Jesus was always prone to look beyond a person’s sin or sickness…into their heart and soul. When you look deep into someone…searching for their inner goodness and beauty, there can be an intense experience of unity. I truly believe that most of our world’s suffering and divisions are based on people not really LOOKING at one another or trying to understand what the other person is going through. Until I see and hear the story of the person… the person in prison, or of the woman who regrets her abortion, or the immigrant whose family was starving before their move, they simply remain a ‘statistic’ we don’t want to deal with.
But Jesus never let such persons go unseen…or their needs not attended to. Jesus’ disciples, including many today, are shocked at how often Jesus did not follow the religious rules once he looked into someone’s suffering. Jesus’ taboo behavior is particularly seen in how he dealt with people with leprosy.
We learn some history in our first reading from the Book of Leviticus of the sad laws that stated anyone with leprosy or other contagious illness had to live on the outskirts of town, which often meant by the garbage dump. Some of this was due to a fear of spreading diseases in a time with little medical knowledge. It is hard for us to imagine living in a time when a person who had a disease not only had to live outside the community but also were mandated to yell out “unclean” whenever someone passed by so others would stay away. But these are the people and place where Jesus would go spend time!
The person with leprosy in the story represents anyone who, through no fault of their own, has been labeled or have a hard time fitting in with the community. Sometimes people feel on the ‘outside’…maybe because of a divorce or a physical limitation. And sometimes we might treat someone like a ‘leper’ because they have hurt us or done something wrong that we judge is unforgiveable. Many times, we are not even aware of excluding people, thinking it ‘normal’ to separate people into categories. For anyone who has ever had a child with a disability or family member with a mental illness or addiction, we know there are still social stigmas that keep some people from feeling welcomed into the community. While the physical disease of leprosy is almost totally eradicated from our world, we know too well that many new variants of exclusion and labels of ‘unclean’ keep sadly increasing.
As we have seen in other healing miracles of Jesus, one of his main efforts was to restore the outcast person back into the community. Notice how Jesus does this by sending the healed person back into his town. Jesus models for us how to see each person as one of God’s daughters or sons…as our own sister or brother. The Gospel writer Mark highlights THREE WORDS to describe why Jesus took the risk of contracting the leprosy by going so far as to touch the man for healing. It says Jesus was “Moved with pity…” for the man. The word ‘pity,’ which literally translated means a ‘stirred gut feeling’ describes Jesus’ incredible gift of compassion that moved him to see beyond the person’s disfigurement… and always look instead for the goodness inside of a person.
Jesus invites us to keep developing and expanding our own sense of compassion…to seek out those who might feel ‘excluded’ or judged ‘unclean’ by societal standards. Having compassion and pity, starting in our own home, means taking time to look into another person’s eyes and learn their story. The Good News is that the more time we spend with Jesus in prayer… and delving into his Gospel examples of healing love for the oppressed, we will actually start to think and act more like him…with true compassion for every single person.
Let pray today and throughout our week for God’s gift of compassion to well up within us…to help us really LOOK into the eyes and heart of each person.
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters
A couple times a year I volunteer at St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana, working with newly ordained priests from throughout the Midwest as they transition to parish life from the seminary. On Wednesday this week, I was with a group of 11 young priests who give me great hope for our Catholic Church. When I asked them their experience of now being a priest in the parish, a couple of them said that they were surprised to discover how much suffering their parishioners were dealing with. We agreed that in addition to people of great faith we priests get to know; we also serve as companions with people in their suffering. This is why it is important to preach on the character of Job when it comes up in the scriptures like we have today since Job demonstrates how to balance suffering with a steady trust in God.
Especially in the section we just heard in the first reading, Job puts words of desperation to what it feels like when one’s world seems to be falling apart. If you remember all the tragedies that happened to Job, it is easy to see why he speaks with such despair. Job represents any of us who have ever felt overwhelmed with life, either from a tragic event, depression, or other form of suffering. Job’s friends tried to convince him that it was God who was punishing him for something he did… and many people ever since then have mistakenly tried to blame God for the sufferings in life.
Pious platitudes like, "God never gives us more than we can bear," do not help at all as such statements wrongly assume that it is God who is the one burdening us with pain, which makes a person wonder what they did wrong to deserve it. The story of Job, who was such a faith-filled person, reminds us that no one is exempt from suffering, not even Jesus himself.
Like Job, we seek answers for why God allows suffering. We have to accept the fact that the bible gives no answer. (For those who want to delve deeper into this, the best book I ever read on an understanding of suffering is by C.S. Lewis called “The Problem of Pain.”) Many people over the centuries have ‘given up’ on God since he did not snap his fingers and fix their problems. Like Job, many of us would like to give God some advice on how to run this world, starting with the removal of all pain. In our minds, it doesn’t make sense how God can be all loving and powerful and yet allows suffering to happen. The question of suffering actually challenges us to address our definition of ‘power’ and what it means when we put on God the title of being ‘all powerful.’ We often wrongly assuming that God’s love and ‘power’ should include stopping all suffering from ever happening. But think of God’s power from the perspective of a loving parent. Like a parent who lets their child get on a bike or in a car, knowing it can lead to an accident, God, as a parent to us, in his gift of our free will, gives us the blessing of each new day, knowing it might include life’s suffering. Do you see the love-predicament God puts himself in by giving us free will and another day of living?
When Job feels ready to give up, later on in the 38th chapter God simply lists the many ways that God’s ‘power’ IS seen in the world, from the creating of the oceans to making each day begin with a sunrise. It helps us think about God’s ‘power’ in a new way: as a creative, life-giving force and not so much as a power that should intervene in our lives, take away our free will, and stop suffering.
This does not ‘explain’ the reason for suffering, but it can help us see that the definition of life itself INCLUDES some suffering…as God asks Job and us… to TRUST that he is at our side and carrying us in our suffering, holding us close when it feels like the world is caving in on us. It is no coincidence that this worship space is surrounded by the Stations of the Cross, a ‘rosary’ of suffering…that wraps us in signs of God sharing in our suffering and NOT as the cause of it.
In Jesus, we see God’s desire for people to be healed and whole, but his healing power was constantly misunderstood, even by his own disciples. Even today, many want Jesus simple to be a miracle worker, someone to take away our problems. While Jesus’ ministry did include some miraculous healings, we learn that he came to earth for something much greater than that. Deep down, we might need to re-define for our self the kind of Messiah we wish Jesus had been. Instead of a miracle worker to ‘fix’ our problems, we have a Messiah who shows us how to embrace suffering as a path to new life! If Jesus only did some miracles and died, he would only be remembered as a healer. BUT if he led people to God, died, and rose from the dead, then he is a Savior who walks us THROUGH suffering and death…to life with God!
THIS is what Jesus in the Eucharist calls us to remember – that suffering and death, as awful as they are in the moment, are NOT the end…but a pathway into a deeper life IN God. The miracle Jesus offers us here in Mass…is that he takes our hand and walk us THROUGH the veil of life’s trials… into God’s embrace of love… and Eternal Life.
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters
There was an interesting article in the newspaper on Friday titled, “God at the Inauguration.” It gave a brief historical overview of which 27 out of 46 Presidents have quoted scripture on the day of their inauguration, including George Washington. The quotes are usually from the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament since those are shared by the three main religions of our country- Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Many people mistakenly forget that a good number of our “Founding Fathers” were Deists, not Christians, and would use a bible quote simply to acknowledge a ‘higher power’ over us. Also interesting is the recent history of using poetry at an inauguration, which for many of us was the bright light of this past week when the beautiful Amanda Gorman proclaimed her passionate poem called “The Hill We Climb.” She called us as a nation to move forward with such powerful poetic lines like, “We lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us; and if we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy.”
Imagine if LOVE would become our legacy! To live in love is a choice that we must make every day…and a call that comes forth from Jesus every time we listen to this Gospel. Which is why it is such a GIFT that Pope Francis has dedicated this Sunday for us to focus on the importance of the Word of God in our life. It is hard to imagine our lives without the guidance of the living Word of God as our compass. Without the Truths that we glean from these sacred pages, we would fall into the mistaken trap that many people do, which is that everything is relative and subjective, and everyone gets to make up their own rules. Instead, as Catholic Christians we must submit our ‘personal opinions’ to the teachings of Jesus that come to us in these Gospels handed on to us from the Apostles themselves.
To make sense of this relatively new feast called “Word of God Sunday,” I think it is important to briefly clarify some terminology about the Scriptures. In general, we claim the whole Bible to be the Word of God. But the bible is like a library, with all kinds of genres - some of it is history, some poetry, some myths and apocalyptic, etc. Another very simple way to think of the bible is by three categories: 1. the Hebrew Scriptures, we call the Old Testament, was written by people BEFORE the time of Jesus, who tried their best to understand who God was. 2. The New Testament starts with four Gospels which are the actual words of Jesus, as God’s Son. We can think of the Gospels are God’s way of ‘clarifying’ for humanity who God is and God’s vision for our world to be a place of justice, non-violence, and love that Jesus modeled. This is why we process with this big Book of Gospels, stand for its proclamation, and sometimes incense it since it preserves the very Words of Jesus himself. 3. The other books of the New Testament are stories of how the Early Christians tried to live out the teachings of Jesus. Again, a little oversimplified but important to clarify so that we do not put a passage from Jonah or Romans on the same level as Jesus’ Words in the Gospels.
What this means is that all of the bible has elements of truth, but we interpret the other parts of the scripture THROUGH THE LENS of what Jesus himself taught and lived as God’s very Self. I say all of this to remind us that every time we stand for this Gospel to be proclaimed, we need to ‘fasten our seatbelt’ for a message from God that will often disturb our comfortable place in society… and rattle my personal way of thinking and living. Which is why it is almost ironic that when, at the end of the Gospel proclamation the priest or deacon says, “The Gospel of the Lord,” our response is “Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.” Do we really want to ‘praise’ him after he just told us things like “give away what you have and care for the poor,” and “love your enemy” and “forgive seven times seventy times?” Yes, we do praise God for this Word…to help us reset our compass in the direction of Jesus…and unscramble any ‘words’ in our heart and mouth that are not in the vocabulary of GOD’S Word of Truth and Love.
This “Word of God Sunday” calls us to pause and re-think about what it means to really FOLLOW Jesus as the Son of God and our Savior…all the way to the Cross. When those first Apostles, wives, and children basically gave up their fishing careers to follow Jesus ‘full-time,’ they challenge us to think about what we are willing to ‘give up’ or ‘take on’ in order to better integrate the teachings of Jesus in our daily life. If we are not able, as we sang in the Opening Hymn, to “leave ALL things behind” to follow Jesus, we can at least make a renewed commitment to pick up the mantle of Ms. Gorman’s challenging poetic line and become an active agent of Jesus’ “legacy of love.” Before we take the host of God’s Love Itself into our bodies…let us make sure that when we say “Amen-Yes,” we are ready to truly follow Jesus’ example of selfless love.
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters
One of the most important professions in our world is that of teachers. In addition to parents being the primary teachers in a person’s life, we can each remember special teachers and professors in our schooling who really stand out for the way they motivated us to want to learn more. I remember a couple great professors in my post-graduate seminary, like Fr. Leo Lefebure, who was so passionate about the theology he was teaching that he contagiously inspired me to keep going deeper in the study of early Christian writings that formed our Catholic thinking. A great teacher goes beyond putting knowledge in a student’s mind, to inspiring them to use their learnings to benefit the lives of others and helping their students form character and virtue in their own life.
In our Gospel today we have two great teachers, John the Baptist and Jesus, who attracted a lot of students with both the ‘way’ they taught AND how their followers noticed that their lives were changed by what they learned. We know that initially Jesus was probably a student of John the Baptist; and John, being a great educator, was humble enough to guide his students to now start following Jesus instead of himself. John announces that Jesus was “the Lamb of God,” who was about to take the “classroom of humanity” to a whole other level of a relationship with God. Two of the disciples quickly learned of Jesus’ power and started calling him “teacher-Rabbi.” At some point in our own spiritual journey, regardless of our age or career, we must recognize that Jesus is the true Teacher I need in my life.
When Jesus asks his students the poignant question, “what are you looking for?” like a great teacher, he wants us to really think about what will be required if we ‘sign up’ for his life-long class. Our “school of Christianity” goes way beyond an 8th-grade Sacrament of Confirmation or fulfilling our Sunday obligation for Mass. Jesus, very different from any other teacher that ever lived, invites his pupils to something deeply personal by saying “come and see” where he “stays.”
The Gospel author John uses a lot of symbolic language in his writing and plays off the disciple’s question “where are you staying?” to mean something much deeper than just the house where Jesus physically lived at the time. We must remember that as the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus’ main abode and dwelling was IN God. Therefore, the very first ‘class’ in Jesus’ curriculum is titled “Come and See” to let us know that he wants to take us INTO GOD, where he always “stays.” While we move from house to house throughout our life, when we become a student-disciple of Jesus, our permanent home is IN GOD! Knowing this, helps us be detached from the place we call our ‘house’ since our real residence is in the Heart of Jesus.
Other very good teachers like Buddha and Mohammad also taught the world about compassion and love, but they never claimed to ‘be’ God’s Son or were never declared by someone to be the “Lamb of God.” What distinguishes our ‘teacher’ Jesus, is that he is God himself; Jesus gives us NOT just ‘ideas’ to help us be good people, but as “God’s Sacrificial Lamb” for the world, Jesus saves all of humanity by forgiving the sins of all people through his life sacrificed on the Cross. His ultimate ‘teaching’ is about laying down one’s life for others. Jesus’ class lessons were taught by how he treated other people with unconditional love. He simply NEVER thought about his own needs, but always about what was good for his student-disciples and all of humanity.
When John the Baptist says to us today, “Behold the Lamb of God,” a prayer we hear at every Mass, he wants to keep pointing us in the direction, to the Person Jesus Christ. The word “behold” means to “look, notice, and study” that which is before you. We need to ‘behold’ Jesus…from being only a name on these Gospel pages and a statue on a cross, and really get to KNOW him…follow his teachings…and eventually “stay” with him in the Heart of God.
Baptism of the Lord
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters
One of the many things I am looking forward to in 2021, is the day we are allowed to fill our baptismal font with water and put our hands into the saving waters once again! Our font and its waters have touched many lives in the 13 years since we moved here. I think it was about 10 years ago when we were preparing the Catechumens for baptism at Easter, we had a young boy in the group who was pretty vocal about his excitement to get baptized. The week before the Vigil, I met with the group to talk about the logistics of getting into the Font and being submerged under water for the baptism. As I was talking, the boy of about 9, looked into the font and then at me and said with alarm, “Wait a minute, I could die in there!” While he was very serious, I couldn’t help but laugh and said, “Yep, that’s what happens!” But I went on to gently explain to him and the group why full submersion was the original way Christians were baptized and how it symbolizes ‘dying’ to our sins and self-centeredness…and coming out of the water as a new person living selflessly for others. So while I assured the boy I would not let him physically die in the font, I did ask him if he had any areas of selfishness that needed to die and he paused and said, “Well, my SISTER thinks I do!”
Getting baptized is a very ‘risky’ thing to do! And since every Mass is a renewal of our baptism we need to understand the risk involved. Without going into a full session on the theology of the sacrament, on this feast of Jesus’ Baptism, I want to look at two aspects of what baptism means for us: INVITATION and RESPONSIBILITY. And I take these from the rich text of our first reading from Isaiah. In the first section of Isaiah 55, the voice of God is this persuading, inviting voice saying things like “Come to me, listen to me, seek me.” Therefore, Baptism is first of all, God’s way of reaching out his saving hand to us and saying, “come to me… once you realize that all your wages and food no longer satisfy all your needs.” This echoes so many other scriptures which remind us that God is the one who is always INITIATING, always seeking us, and inviting us to a deeper life in him. Or as St. Paul says, “God has CHOSEN you and me” for this great GIFT of his life, which is so comforting when we realize that the world around us always leaves us thirsty and hungry for more.
After we “listen” and chose to respond to God’s invitation…at our baptism and every Eucharist…God then speaks through Isaiah about the responsibility that goes with our saying “Amen – yes!” God says, “now, forsake your old ways of living and thinking, because my ways and thoughts are different than yours.” THIS is the dying part of baptism and the turning from selfish ways that are required every time we come forward for the Holy Eucharist. We just heard that by accepting God’s invitation means letting God’s Word come down upon us from heaven, “like water and snow” to make us “fertile and fruitful.” In other words, in Baptism and the Eucharist, our life is no longer our own! We become a part of Christ and must therefore live LIKE Jesus Christ. This is something profound to think about before we might casually walk up and take the Body of Christ into our bodies…as if we won’t have to change our “thoughts and ways” to be more like God’s.
Jesus himself showed us the effect his own baptism had on his life. While he did not need baptism to forgive any sins, what it DID do is act as the catalyst to begin his public ministry of serving others. Once the Spirit of God came upon him in the Jordan, Jesus took on a life of selflessly helping, forgiving, and saving others.
Sometimes we mistakenly think that our baptism is only for my salvation and a ‘private relationship’ with God. Rather, life in Christ pulls us beyond a privileged sense of salvation into a huge responsibility toward the needs of community, the fuller Body of Christ. This is especially challenging for our sometimes-individualistic way of thinking of what’s best for ME, which we saw how that sadly played out in our country recently. The Holy Spirit always pulls us out of what I call our ‘private pool’ of safe water… into the huge ‘sea’ of all God’s children…where a lot of work needs done so others don’t drown in hunger, thirst, or other forms of injustice. In other words, we might go into the waters alone or think our Communion is private…but we come out and the Spirit pushes us into a relationship with the worldwide community where my personal salvation now intimately connects me to a bond of concern for all of God's people. Do you see the big responsibility that flows from receiving the Holy Spirit at our baptism and at every Eucharist?
While our font may remain dry for awhile yet, I invite us to return to the spiritual habit of approaching the font and at least touch its stone or cloth covering…to reconnect to this symbol of our faith. It reminds us to whom we belong…and how my baptism calls me OUT OF myself…and more actively engaged in Jesus’ example of selflessly serving other people’s needs.
Epiphany
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters
One of the main themes of Pope Benedict’s preaching during his 8 years as our leader, was helping people find a connection between the sacred and the secular, between faith and reason. His insights have been very useful for me in the many times I have been in conversations with young adults who are no longer connected to their Catholic faith. Even in my own family, sadly most of my 17 nieces and nephews are completely detached from their Catholic roots. As much as we invest in our children’s Catholic education, we somehow have not done a good job at instilling in them a true faith or understanding of the grace of the sacraments. We have not found a good bridge between their questions and our answers. We can blame our secular world for luring them away, but ultimately we have to find new creative ways to help our young people to see the true value and deeper meaning of what it means to be Catholic. And I think the Gospel for this feast of Epiphany can help us…since it is a story about people who are searching with questions…and the coming together of the sciences and faith.
The Magi were a group of people in a “quest” of something more, beyond their degrees, secure income, and their respectable place in society. They represent all of us who want ‘signs’ that God is there. They symbolize all ‘educated’ people who desire more than just ‘knowledge’ about things. The Magi, as ‘outsiders’ not part of religious groups, speak for all those with questions about whether God exists, and where and how he exists. As a matter of fact the story centers around two questions posed about the “Where” and “when” of this “newborn king?”
The Magis outward pilgrimage to Bethlehem was an expression of their inward journey, the innate searching we humans have in our hearts. Like most people, they began their quest in their head with facts…but without realizing it, were seeking God. Human beings have an intrinsic restlessness for God; but the ‘good news’ is that this restlessness is a participation in God’s own restlessness for us!
In Matthew’s Gospel, the same Jesus, whose light beckoned ‘non-believing’ astrologers to seek him, is also the Good Shepherd who goes searching for lost sheep! This is the Good News of today’s feast: the same Light of Christ that was a magnetic force on the first Epiphany…is STILL drawing all of creation into God. This can fill us with hope, even with statistics about how many are inactive Catholics. Even those who have forgotten that their life belongs to God; even if they don’t realize that their own ‘searching’ for life’s happiness will be met by God’s search for them, God’s Light will never stop drawing them into his plan for ALL to come to the Manger of the Altar…and be saved! I say this especially to parents who worry about their children who don’t go to church. If you noticed, our scriptures today focus on God’s surprising way of gathering ALL into the salvation that Jesus offers. The majority of people on this planet don’t even realize they are persistently being drawn into God’s Light…with his magnetic force of love!
If you think about it, the Epiphany story is like a mathematical ‘formula’ of how reason and faith work together: God gives us amazing minds that investigate and marvel at Creation all around us; God places in our heart a restless ‘seeking’ of something more than what appears; at the same time, God is continually ‘searching’ for US, even as we stray toward all kinds of distracting ‘flashy stars’ that lure us into thinking we can find happiness in them. But God’s Grace and Mercy are never exhausted (!)…as God, like a loving parent, never tires in seeking us from even the furthest places we wonder. We see this in the surprising ending of the story when it says that these non-religious astrologers…decided, after meeting Jesus, to return “by another way.” In other words, their lives were changed!
And this is the key to any and all of our evangelization efforts – with our children, our young adults, and any other person we want to know the depth of joy we find in our faith and the sacraments – it has to start with actually “meeting” Jesus. If and when we can put words and actions to what it MEANS to know Jesus as our Savior and Friend, then we become a ray of Epiphany light extending from the Star over Bethlehem…into lives of people in our own time and place.
Three prayers we can bring to the Altar today and use throughout the week: