The Third Sunday of Advent [A]
Isaiah 35:1-6, 10  +  James 5:7-10  +  Matthew 11:2-11
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
December 14, 2025

In today’s Second Reading, the apostle Saint James encourages us to:  “[t]ake as an example of hardship and patience … the prophets who spoke ….”  Then the Gospel Reading sets before us the greatest of the prophets:  Saint John the Baptist, whose life reveals the wisdom of what St. James encourages us to take up.

“Hardship and patience” don’t come easily to most of us.  Of course, most people can see the value of patience more easily than the value of hardship.  We know from daily experience how much we need patience in order to get along in this world (not to mention in order to have a shot at Heaven!).  As we grow up, we need patience with our brothers, and with our sisters.  Parents need patience with their children, and children with their parents.  Employees need patience with their bosses, and bosses with their employees.

We even need to have patience with God!  Maybe that sounds strange.  Of course, the reason for needing patience with God is very different than why we need patience with our children, parents, boss, and so on.  For the most part, we need patience with our brothers and sisters because of their imperfections, faults, and sins.  But with God we need patience for different reasons.

We need patience with God first of all because His time is not our time.  God looks at us and our lives from the perspective of eternity, while we—like children—look only at a very narrow span of time.  In other words, our field of vision is restricted by blinders that we have placed upon ourselves.

Or we might say that we need patience with God because God is a farmer, while for our part, we—all too often—only want to reap what we have not sown.  So patience is one of the key virtues of Advent, and we beg God for an increase in the virtue of patience, with both God and neighbor.

+     +     +

But on the other hand, do we really need the hardship that St. James speaks about in the Second Reading?  Or is hardship just something that has to be tolerated?  Is hardship actually of value, or should we instead work to cultivate a soft, comfortable, easy, restful life?

We know, of course, that some penance is inevitable in this world where we live.  In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds us that God makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

Saint John the Baptist speaks about the hard fact that hardship is necessary.  In fact, hardship is not just necessary.  Hardship has great value.  Saint James says the same.  Both saints point our attention to Jesus, who shows us repeatedly that hardship is a precious means by which to draw closer to the Father.  Hardship is a means of allowing Him to embrace us as a father embraces his little child.

+     +     +

Of course, another word for “hardship” is “penance”.  But the word “penance” is not always fully appreciated.  For some Catholics, the word “penance” suggests only the Sacrament of Penance, with all of the examination of conscience, confession, and amendment of life that are part and parcel of that sacrament.  For other Catholics, the word “penance” suggests a medieval monastery, where monks use whips and cords, a diet of hard bread and cold soup, and allow themselves three hours of sleep on a hard floor in order to tell God, year after year, how sorry they are for being such miserable wretches.  Unfortunately, false caricatures of “penance” such as that medieval monastery lead some Christians to the opposite extreme, where the grace of Christ, which has already won the victory over human sin, leads them to reject penance as having any place within the spiritual life.

Holy Mother Church, however, not only teaches her children to practice some penance on Fridays in honor of that Good Friday when Jesus carried His Cross and died upon it for us.  The Church not only offers the Sacrament of Penance every week of the year so that sins, both large and small, mortal and venial, can be washed away by the Blood of Christ.  In fact, the Church goes further in sowing the seeds of penance in our spiritual lives.  The Church each year sets aside two seasons of the year as seasons of penance.  Advent and Lent are seasons of preparation:  Lent prepares us for Eastertide, and Advent prepares us for Christmastide.  Penance, then, is one of the tools with which to prepare for the great seasons of Christmas and Easter.

However, although Advent and Lent are similar in many ways, they focus our hearts and minds differently.  Lent will come again in a few months, and during Lent we can reflect on how Lent is unique in calling Christians to penance.  But Advent’s unique “take” on penance has its origin in the experience of new life:  new life, of course, being what lies at the heart of the Christmas mystery.

Those of you who are mothers can recall all the sacrifices involved in bearing new life, and bringing it into the world, not to mention the countless sacrifices involved in shepherding your child through the first decades of his or her life.  New life and sacrifice are part and parcel of each other.  New life and sacrifice go hand in hand.  You can’t have one without the other.

But you will still find some Christians who insist that new life in the spiritual life is different:  they insist that because grace is free, that it demands no sacrifice of the one to whom it’s given.  As Catholics, though, we know better, because the Church leads us in the practices of penance throughout the year, but especially during Advent and Lent.

Along with the practices of poverty and silence, the practice of penance helps us prepare to celebrate Christmas in a deeply spiritual manner.  If you’d like an image to reflect on throughout this third week of Advent, here are three images:  picture our Blessed Mother at the Annunciation, during the journey to Bethlehem, and in the stable after Jesus’ birth.  Reflect on our Blessed Mother practicing poverty, silence, and sacrifice, and give thanks that through the grace of her Son, you and I can draw closer to God the Father.

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Genesis 3:9-15,20  +  Ephesians 1:3-6,11-12  +  Luke 1:26-38
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
December 8, 2025

The Blessed Virgin Mary needed a Savior.  This is important to recall when reflecting upon the Immaculate Conception:  that is, Mary being conceived by her mother, St. Anne, without inheriting Original Sin.  This is important, among other reasons, because some of our separated brethren within the Body of Christ make a false claim about Mary.  They argue that believing in Mary’s being preserved from Original Sin means that the salvation that Jesus won for fallen man on Calvary was not universal:  in other words, that Mary had no need for salvation.  She was sinless, so Jesus did not save her:  that’s the false claim that we have to be able to answer.

In truth, we have Mary’s own testimony in the Bible.  The scene of the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth is recorded in the first chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel account.  In that scene, Mary proclaims the hymn called the Magnificat, which starts with Mary declaring:  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden” [Luke 1:46-48; see Acts 4:12].

Mary speaks of her “Savior”, because Mary was saved by God from sin.  But she was not saved from sin like you and I, through the grace of Baptism and Confession.

Consider an example of what it means to be saved.  Imagine this:  imagine that you’re standing at the edge of a very large lake.  In front of you is a pier that extends a long way into the lake.  At the end of the pier, the water is fifty feet deep.

Now imagine that two friends are with you.  These persons are both blind, and unable to swim.  Now you’re setting up your campsite, when suddenly you hear a splash:  one of your friends walked all the way to the end of the pier and fell into the water.  Naturally, you run to the end of the pier, dive in, and drag the friend to safety.  You have saved your first friend from drowning.

The next day, you’re scavenging near the campsite for firewood.  At one point you pause, and look up.  Your other friend has walked down the pier, and is close to its end.  You make a mad dash for the pier, and you reach its end just as your friend is about to step off and fall into the fifty-foot deep water.  You grab your friend by the back of his shirt and pull him back to safety before he can fall in.  You have saved your second friend from drowning.

That second friend is like the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was saved by preventing her from ever falling into sin.  The rest of the human race is offered salvation in the first way, by being pulled out of sin after having already fallen into it.  Mary was never stained by sin, but she was saved from it.

So that analogy helps us understand how God saved Mary.  However, it’s far more important to understand why God saved Mary in this unique way.

The Blessed Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived, and filled by God with grace, for the moment of the Anunciation.  In fact, Mary was “full of grace” for the sake of her entire vocation, which began at the moment of the Annunciation, and then extended throughout her earthly life, and continued (and continues) after the end of her earthly life and her assumption into Heaven.

However, the rest of her vocation—the Visitation, the Nativity of her Son, the Sorrows of Jesus’ infancy and public ministry, her intercession at the wedding at Cana, her fidelity at Calvary, and her motherly care for the Church starting on the day of Pentecost—was entirely dependent upon this moment of the Annunciation.  This moment was for Mary what the decision in the Garden was for Eve.  But Mary’s choice was the opposite of Eve’s.  Through Eve’s choice, sin entered the world, while through Mary’s choice, the Word of God became Flesh and dwelt among us.

This is why throughout history, the Church has addressed the Blessed Virgin Mary as the New Eve.  Mary is our Mother, and also our model.  She is “full of grace”, and the first of those graces was the grace of her Immaculate Conception.  By means of God’s graces, Mary models for us the way of discipleship, the way to accept Christ into our lives.  The first step upon that way is for us to say at the start of each day:  “Behold, I am the [servant] of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word.”

The Second Sunday of Advent [A]
Isaiah 11:1-10  +  Romans 15:4-9  +  Matthew 3:1-12
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
December 7, 2025

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah, who lived seven centuries before Jesus, prophesied about a day that was to come.  Isaiah preached about that future day on which the Messiah—the Savior of the Jews—would appear and set things right in the world.  But Isaiah’s prophecy is a little strange.

Isaiah begins his prophecy with the words:  “On that day ….”  That day, Isaiah foretells, will be a day of unexpected sights and sounds.  The images that Isaiah describes seem to be contradictions:  the lion eating hay, and the wolf as the guest of the lamb.  But then comes the most disturbing image, especially if we think of the manger in Bethlehem:

“The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.”  We would never expect to see this image in real life.  In fact, if you are a parent, it’s the last image you’d want to see. 

The Lord probably gave Isaiah the image of the baby because of a baby’s innocence and weakness, and how it contrasts with the serpent’s cunning and danger.  But whether Isaiah knew it or not, his image also sums up the meaning of Christmas.  God the Son, who existed from all eternity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, entered this world of ours as a tiny baby.  And what kind of a world is it?

The world we live in—the world God the Son entered as a baby—is a world of sin and sickness.  The Gospel accounts make clear that the world into which Jesus is born is a world where justice is denied to the innocent, and kings are liars.  This world of ours is turned upside-down, and this is the world into which God the Father sent Jesus as an innocent baby.

Why would God the Father do that?  God the Father, who is perfect, and without any needs, chose to send His Son from Heaven to earth:  from Heaven—a place of perfection, the Kingdom where His Will is done—to earth—a place where sin has the upper hand, and a lair of the serpent where everyone gives in to his temptations.

The baby Isaiah prophesies about is the baby Jesus, and the snake is the Devil.  Isaiah’s prophecy echoes what God had warned the serpent in the Garden about after Adam and Eve had committed the Original Sin.  God said to the serpent:  “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers;  He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel” [Genesis 3:15].

No matter how poorly you and I offer our lives to God, day in and day out, He still loves us.  God’s love is mysterious and unexpected, and is the same love that we are preparing to celebrate at Christmas.  This is the love which God the Father incarnates when He sends His only Son into this world of sin, to take that sin upon Himself on the Cross.

These truths can be hard for us to fully accept.  We may say we believe these truths of our Faith, but the Church knows how hard it is for us truly to accept not only how much the Father loves us, but also to accept this truth’s consequences.  That’s why we fallen human beings need an entire season of four weeks to prepare for Christmas.

Last week I mentioned three practices that are a good way to prepare during Advent.  We can remember them with the initials P-S-P.  These three letters—P-S-P—stand for the practices of poverty, silence, and penance.  These three practices can help us to accept more readily the gift God wants to give us, and to accept also the consequences of this gift.  That’s especially true of the practice of silence.

Silence is hard to come by these days.  A lot of people who live in the country appreciate silence.  However, with the nature of mass media today, it doesn’t matter if you live at the top of a mountain:  radio signals, TV signals, wireless Internet and more can be beamed to you, or maybe we should say at you.  To create an atmosphere of silence, you have to go on the offense.  You have to unplug, disconnect and turn off a lot of devices.

Of course, there’s also another difficulty when it comes to silence.  Sometimes we don’t like silence.  Noise has a way of blocking out, or distracting us from, our own thoughts and concerns, which at times we’d rather not face.

But maybe we need to accept silence as a gift.  In fact, in our spiritual life silence is a two-fold gift.  The first aspect of the gift of silence is that it’s a gift we give ourselves, so as to hear one’s own true self, even when that’s uncomfortable.  But the importance of silence also goes beyond our selves.

You remember the Old Testament story about Elijah, to whom the Lord God spoke, not through fire or an earthquake, but through a tiny whisper.  In the Christian spiritual life, silence is not an end in itself.  Silence is a means, or rather, a medium through which to hear the Word of God.  This is takes us to one of the most important truths of our Catholic Faith.  This truth will be proclaimed on Christmas morning in the Gospel Reading from John 1.  You might want to look it up and make it part of your Advent spiritual reading.

The Word of God is not a book.  The Word of God is a Person:  the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity.  In John 1, St. John proclaims that this divine Word, which was in the beginning, became Flesh and dwelt among us.  He became flesh and blood—one of us—in order to offer that Body and Blood, with His soul and divinity, on the Cross at Calvary.  His Sacrifice on the Cross is made present to us sacramentally in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

This is a message we sinners need to hear, and we need silence to be able to hear it, to appreciate it, and to start making changes in our lives in order to accept this gift more fully.

The First Sunday of Advent [A]
Isaiah 2:1-5  +  Romans 13:11-14  +  Matthew 24:37-44
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
November 30, 2025

So much of our preparation for December 25^th is made up of customs.  You have Grandma’s recipe for cookies, the family Christmas stocking to be hung up, and the Christmas tree decorations that have been passed from one generation to the next.  These customs are like well-worn slippers:  comfortable and without surprises.

However, this comfort stands in contrast to the shocks and unexpected surprises that we hear in the Gospel accounts about the nine months leading up to the birth of Jesus.  Unexpected surprises also surround His birth at Bethlehem, and also occur after His birth, as others try to learn more about the new-born king, some for good reasons, and some for ill.

Of course, we might say that that’s all ancient history.  But the mystery at the heart of Christmas—which we are preparing for in these weeks of Advent—is not just about history.  Advent and Christmas are about allowing God to come into your life, as He came into the lives of Mary and Joseph.

God wants to enter into your life throughout your days on this earth.  He wants to enter into your life often, from the day of your baptism to the day of your death.  He wants to enter your lives with specific graces, and for specific reasons.

So for a moment, step back and look at the big picture of your life on earth.  In your life as a Christian, God shapes your life at three different levels. The first is your baptismal vocation, which of course started on the day of your baptism.  This is the most general call that God makes to you:  it’s the call to holiness, or you might say, the call to be a saint.  The second is a more specific vocation that God asks from most Christians:  either the vocation to Holy Matrimony, or the vocation to Holy Orders, or the call to consecrated life.  Those vocations give a more specific shape or form to a person’s call to be holy.

The third is what we’re talking about today.  It’s the most specific call, and occurs often throughout the course of one’s life.  You might say that God calls a specific Christian to carry out a specific mission for God.  These are usually temporary, unlike the first two calls, which last until death.

So regarding these specific calls that God makes to you throughout your life, the challenge is that you do not know the specifics of these calls.  This is what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel Reading:  “… you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”

Nor do you know in what form the Lord’s grace will come into your life.  Nor do you know how, or though whom, the Lord’s grace will come into your life.  God has missions in store for you in the new Church year which starts today.  Some of God’s missions may challenge you, some may console you, some may give you needed support, while some of God’s graces may lead you to make difficult decisions.  But the Season of Advent is about fostering the virtues that help you to be ready for God, no matter where, when, how or through whom He wishes to be present to us, for us, and finally within us.

+     +     +

So there are three very practical ways that you can engage with the Season of Advent, in order to be ready whenever and however the Lord wants to come into your life at specific times, for specific reasons.  These three practices can help you to recognize and accept the Lord when He chooses to come into your life.

These three are poverty, silence, and penance.  Just remember the first letter of each.  Poverty, silence, and penance:  P-S-P.  Not E-S-P:  because if you had ESP than you would know on which day the Lord will come.  The letters P-S-P stand for poverty, silence and penance.  Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition both show us how the three practices of poverty, silence and penance can help you as a Christian prepare for God.  On this First Sunday of Advent, focus upon the practice of poverty.

+     +     +

We don’t usually think of “poverty” as something that’s meant to be practiced.  Usually we just think of poverty as a state of life for some persons.  Likewise, poverty is not usually something that we think of as a means of drawing closer to God.  Usually when we think of “poverty”, we think of what in fact is destitution, where individuals do not have food to eat, or shelter from the elements, or clothing to wear.  When God, in His Sacred Scriptures and Sacred Tradition, commends the practice of poverty to His children, He’s not talking about destitution.  But Jesus does commend poverty to His own disciples, saying to them:  “every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple” [Luke 14:33].

On the one hand, when Jesus ask us to enter into the spirit and practice of poverty, he’s not asking us to become destitute.  But on the other hand, we should never water down Jesus’ commendation of poverty by thinking that it does not connect in any way to our relationship with our material possessions.  That might sound like a strange phrase, to speak of someone’s “relationship with their material possessions”.  Unfortunately, some people not only have a relationship with their material possessions, but in fact have more of a relationship with their material possessions than they do with the other persons in their lives.

Our standard-bearer when it comes to poverty is Jesus Himself.  Jesus never sought material possessions as a way to grow in the sight of Himself, in the sight of others, or in the sight of His Father.  This is one of the first principles of spiritual poverty:  to realize and believe down to the bottom of our hearts how little spiritual value material possessions hold.

The second principle of poverty is trust:  trust in the providential care of God our Father.  Practically speaking, we can ask God to increase our trust not by praying a petition asking for trust, but by making a concrete sacrifice.  When we make such a real sacrifice, we’re implicitly placing our trust in God to provide what we truly need.  So we can grow in the conviction that material possessions hold so little true meaning by making a sacrifice of what we do possess.

Here’s one simple example among many that you might practice this Advent:  tithe your wardrobe.  Maybe some people have never heard of doing such a thing, but it’s a simple practice, and does not need to take a lot of time.  Tithing your wardrobe means giving 10% of your clothes and accessories to the poor.

Although that practical sacrifice is one that the whole family can participate in, I’d like to offer a second challenge just to young people, by which I’m referring to anyone who still lives at home.  This may not make me very popular with our young people, but a priest is not ordained to be popular.  Young people, when you make your Christmas wish list, put down only three gifts that you’d like to receive at Christmas.  And if, for some reason, you receive more than three gifts, resolve now—at the start of Advent—that you will choose only three of the gifts that you receive, and donate the rest to children who are poor, and who might well receive fewer than three Christmas presents if not for you.  Maybe you could donate them to St. Anthony’s Pro-Life ministry, for distribution to families that this Pro-Life ministry serves.

Regardless of how you put it into practice, starting or deepening the practice of poverty has just one aim:  to conform oneself to the person of Jesus.  In other words, poverty is practiced by Christians in order to dispose themselves to the grace by which God wants to make us more like Jesus.

Jesus became one of us when He was conceived at the Annunciation, so that you and I could become like God by opening our hearts and minds to God’s grace.  God works the change by His grace.  But we have to open our lives to God’s grace, as the Blessed Virgin Mary did at the Annunciation.  In our own lives, we accomplish this “opening” through our good works, especially virtuous practices such as poverty.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe [C]
II Samuel 5:1-3 + Colossians 1:12-20 + Luke 23:35-43
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
November 23, 2025

One day an old professor spoke to large corporations about time management.  Standing before a group of CEOs, he pulled out from under the table a large, empty glass vase.

Then he carefully placed a dozen rocks the size of tennis balls inside the vase.  When he could not add any more, he asked the crowd:  “Does the vase look full to you?”, and they all nodded in agreement.

He waited a moment, and then he pulled a box full of pebbles from under the table.  He poured the pebbles into the vase, moving the vase back and forth so that the pebbles shifted downwards.  Then he asked, “Is the vase full?”  In the audience, several shook their heads, “No.”

The professor picked up a bag of sand and poured it into the vase.   The sand filled all the crevices between the rocks and the pebbles.  He asked again: “Is the vase full now?”, and the crowd all answered “No.”  Then the professor took the pitcher of water from the table and poured it into the vase up to the brim.

At this point he looked up at his audience and asked:  “What great truth does this experiment show us?”  The most successful CEO in the audience stood up and declared:  “This shows us that even when our schedule is full, with some effort we can always add another task.”

The professor replied, “You are exactly wrong.  You are looking at what happened from exactly the wrong perspective.  What you’ve just seen in fact demonstrates that, if you don’t put the big rocks in the vase first, then you will never be able to put them in after.”

There was a moment of silence, and the professor continued: “What are the big rocks—the priorities—in your life?  The important thing is to put these big rocks at the top of your agenda.  If you give priority to a thousand other little things—the pebbles, and certainly the sand—your life will be filled with things of small meaning, and you will never fit in what’s most important.”

+     +     +

Not many of us are CEOs, but each of us makes choices each day about our priorities.  On this final Sunday of the Church year, the Church is very sober is speaking about Christ the King.  As a king, Christ judges.  This Sunday focuses our attention on what the Church refers to as “the four Last Things”:  Heaven and hell, death and judgment.   Christ the King judges us in the light of these four Last Things:  Heaven and hell, death and judgment.

+     +     +

When God created the heavens and the earth, including Adam and Eve, God set a plan in motion.  In this plan, Adam and Eve and their descendants could have been perfectly joyful.  However, this plan was derailed by Adam and Eve’s Original Sin.  Adam and Eve chose to divert God’s grace from flowing through this world as God had planned.

So at that point, God had several choices:  He could have said, “These human beings are just not working out:  I’ll think I’ll just destroy the human race and start over.”  In all justice, God had the right to say this.

Or God could have said, what in fact He did say.  God in fact said:  “Unfortunately, Adam and Eve ruined my plan for them.  But I love them.  I will not leave them.  So it’s time to offer them my ‘Plan B’.”

That ‘Plan B’ is what we call “salvation history”.  God’s grace is like a mighty river flowing through the course of human history, which of course includes each human life on this earth.  God was willing to allow His grace to be diverted from His original plan in Eden.  But He also was willing to channel that grace in another direction, so that it could still offer salvation to those whom He loves.

On this feast of Christ the King, we celebrate the victory of God over sin and death, which Christ won on the Cross.  In Christ, who reigns from the Cross, we see the King who wants us to share in His victory by our entering into His life, and through His life, to imitate Him.

However, God only offers you His grace:  He does not force it upon you.  God’s grace will flow around you if you divert it from your life.  Yet God’s grace is always there, ready to flood your life, to destroy sin and the power of death, and to fill you with the graces you need to carry out what He asks of you.  That’s why we have to make God our first priority.  Otherwise, like in the professor’s demonstration to the CEOs, we won’t be able to give God His place into our lives later.  He just won’t fit.

God’s offers His grace to us through the Sacraments and through prayer.  God’s grace conforms your life to the life of Christ.  But you must accept that gift.  That’s where priorities come into play in our lives.

There’s an old saying about life’s priorities.  It’s only six words long:  “Play hard.  Work harder.  Pray hardest.”

These priorities are not about how much time we give to each.  Someone who works to feed the family has to work as much as the job requires, and that’s likely more time than one has for prayer.  Prayer being a higher priority than work doesn’t mean giving more time to prayer.  It means that prayer is a non-negotiable each day.  The priority of prayer also means that while work is done for the family, prayer is done with the family (in addition to being offered at times in solitude).

Work may be, for example, five days a week, but prayer is seven days a week.  Work also lasts, hopefully, only until the age of 65 or 70 or 75.  But prayer only becomes more important each year of one’s life on this earth.  There are two reasons why prayer becomes so important in the later years of life:  first, one’s health becomes a frequent concern, and a subject of prayer; second, the older one is, the more children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren one has, and that means more people to pray for.  Yet if a Christian doesn’t in his 20s and 30s and 40s dedicate time to prayer, the foundation of prayer won’t be there to build upon in the later years of life.

+     +     +

Advent starts a week from today.  The four weeks of Advent are a good time to make some changes based on those six simple words:  “Play hard.  Work harder.  Pray hardest.”

Besides, of course, making an Advent confession, and making sure to plan for the Holy Day of Obligation of the Immaculate Conception on Monday, December 8, one very good goal for each week of Advent is to spend time each week here in church in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  It doesn’t have to be on a Monday or Tuesday morning when Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament takes place.  If Christ is in the tabernacle, and you are praying here in church, then you are praying in His Presence.  It doesn’t have to be an entire hour, either.  If you believe you can only sacrifice thirty minutes each week, then make a “Holy Half-Hour”.  Like in Jesus’ parable, Jesus can take the mustard seed of your time and accomplish great things through your efforts to make Him a stronger priority in your life on this earth.

The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
Ezekiel 47:1-2,8-9,12  +  1 Corinthians 3:9-11,16-17  +  John 2:13-22
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
November 9, 2025

The word “temple” is found in all three of today’s Scripture readings.  In the First Reading, a temple is the heart of Ezekiel’s vision.  In the Gospel Reading, the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem is the focus of Jesus’ cleansing.  In the Second Reading, Saint Paul tells the Corinthians that they themselves are a temple.  Although the image of a “temple” is described differently in these three Scripture passages, taken together they help us see where we can find God in our lives on earth.

But why are those Scripture passages chosen for today’s feast?  What is today’s feast, anyway?

Every year on November 9^th, even if it falls on a Sunday, the Church celebrates the feast of the dedication of St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome.  This church, which was founded in the year 324—just over 1,700 years ago—is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome.  Most people assume that St. Peter’s Basilica is the cathedral of Rome, since the Pope lives next to it.

But St. John Lateran and St. Peter’s are two of the four most important churches in Rome.  Whenever you make your lifetime pilgrimage to Rome—and every Catholic ought to make a pilgrimage to Rome at least once in their life—these four churches need to be at the top of your itinerary.

The most important is St. Peter’s Basilica, built over the tomb of St. Peter, and the largest church in the world, its inside length measuring 300 yards (the length of three football fields).  The second most important is St. John Lateran Basilica, the cathedral of Rome.  The third is St. Mary Major Basilica, the oldest church in the West dedicated to Our Blessed Mother, and containing relics from Bethlehem in the grotto beneath the high altar.  The fourth is St. Paul Basilica, built over the tomb of St. Paul.

As far as what the dedication of a church is in general, you could say that a dedication is to a church what a baptism is to a person.  The ritual of the dedication of a church is a lengthy ceremony performed by a bishop, consecrating a building made by human work so that the building can be used by God for His divine work of making those who dwell there holy.

+     +     +

So why is a church building even important, or needed?  You may be familiar with the old Western song called “Cowboy Church”, the lyrics of which suggest that a church building is not important.  Here are some of the lyrics (sing along if you know the melody):  “My church is the great out of doors / My song is nature’s sound / The sky is my cathedral / My altar is the ground”.  And a little later he sings these words to God:  “Don’t think that I don’t love you / because I’m not herd bound / It’s just that I’m uncomfortable / With other folks around / I know you’re all around me / I see you every day / It’s just that I don’t go to church / Where other people pray”.

Of course, the composer of this song is not the only one who thinks you don’t need a church building to worship God.  Others will tell you that you can worship God in the mountains, on the beach, in your recliner at home, or on the golf course.

However, both Jewish and Christian Scripture and tradition tell us that having sacred spaces in our lives—spaces dedicated by God used only for the purpose of prayer and worship—is important for several reasons.  All of these reasons are summed up in a single word:  “church”.

The word “church” literally means “assembly”, as in God’s people assembling—coming together into one body under one roof—for the purpose of worshipping God.  It’s in this assembly that the two great commands of Jesus come together:  to love our God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength; and to love our neighbor as our self.

Yes, it’s true that you can pray in the mountains, and if you’re ever in the mountains, you certainly ought to pray there.  But the detriment of praying there is that you’re not with others in the way that you are at Sunday Mass.  When we pray with others, we praise God more fittingly.  It’s more fitting to praise God by joining together with other believers, because we show God that we are united with each other, and with Him, in the same act of worship:  the worship He Himself has taught us how to offer.  The Sacraments, after all, are not man-made.  The Sacraments and all the Divine Liturgy were crafted by God and given by Him as a gift to man.

Of course, there’s another argument that gets thrown in the face of church-attending Christians.  It’s illustrated in the story about the Baptist preacher, who one day was walking down the sidewalk in Mayberry when he met Mr. Cratitch.  After exchanging pleasantries, the preacher said, “Why don’t you join us this Sunday for worship?”  Mr. Cratitch replied, “Bah! I wouldn’t be caught dead there!  Your church is full of hypocrites!”  The preacher replied, “Don’t worry:  there’s always room for one more!”

There are certainly times when it would be easier to pray alone, without other hypocrites to “distract” us.  But maybe God wants us to take up this challenge because that’s what He Himself did.  After all, it would have been easier for God’s eternal Son to stay in Heaven, and never come down to earth to take on our human nature, and to take up the Cross that is ours.

But God did not choose Heaven over earth.  He did not choose solitude over the mess of human hypocrites.  He did not choose peace and quiet.  He chose the sword and insults, because His choice to dwell among us was not primarily for His sake, but ours.  Or rather, we could say that it was first for our sake, so that we could be redeemed, and as redeemed sinners, more fittingly give God the worship that we owe Him.

At the same time, if we can enter with humility into communal worship, we see how many blessings there are in communal worship.  We cannot enjoy these blessings in prayer offered in solitude.  The most obvious of these blessings—especially to those of us without such talent—is the spiritual joy of being surrounded by the voices of those who sing beautifully, and who play instruments beautifully.

We certainly don’t want to be like the old gentlemen in Ireland whom Father O’Sullivan chastised after Mass one day for never taking out the hymnal and singing.  Paddy replied, “Well, Father, it’s like this.  With the voice that God did not give me, I consider my not singing to be one of the spiritual works of mercy!”  Most likely, Father Sullivan worked to help Paddy see that we need to bring all our talents to the Lord, no matter how meager.  If you have a meager singing ability, you still need to sing. You might consider your singing to be like the widow who put the penny in the collection, as opposed to the choir members whose talent is like a hundred-dollar bill.  This is important to keep in mind during our parish’s annual renewal of Stewardship.

Our own weaknesses, and the weaknesses of others, are not reasons not to worship the Lord as He commands.  In fact, our weaknesses are opportunities to believe more deeply in the Gospel.  Remember that St. Paul preached to the Corinthians that he three times begged the Lord to take away his weakness from him.  But the Lord replied to St. Paul in the same words that He speaks to you:  “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” [2 Corinthians 12:8-9.]

You can take a virtual tour of the basilica at the parish website, by clicking HERE.

All Souls’ Day
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Andale, KS
November 2, 2025

The “communion of saints” is the Church’s focus this weekend.  The “communion of saints” is a familiar phrase.  We recite it during the Apostles’ Creed.  But some Christians have a narrow view of the Communion of Saints.

Some Christians think that the the “communion of saints” refers only to those who are already in Heaven.  But the “communion of saints” has three parts to it, or three divisions, or three degrees.  The Communion of Saints includes not only those who are in Heaven, but also the members of the Church in Purgatory, and those who are on earth.

Every year on November 1—on the Solemnity of All Saints—we who are on earth honor those who are in Heaven.  We ask their prayers for us and our intentions.  In other words, the prayers of those in Heaven are offered for those of us on earth.

Every year on November 2—on the commemoration of All Souls—we who are on earth remember those who are in Purgatory.  We pray for those souls in Purgatory.  In other words, the prayers of us on earth are offered for those who are in Purgatory.

In other words, those in Heaven, those in Purgatory, and those of us on earth are part of the same Family of God.  Every family member helps those in need to the best of their ability.

+     +     +

The Mass of November 2 for the commemoration of All Souls bears many features of a funeral Mass.  The Scripture readings for today are taken from the options for funeral Masses, and the Gloria is neither recited nor sung.  Today’s Mass commemorates all the souls who have died, and have not yet reached Heaven, and therefore are in need of our prayers.

Here we have to focus on the Church’s teaching about the existence of Purgatory, and God’s reason for creating Purgatory.  The best start is to understand the differences among Heaven, Purgatory, and hell.

All three are on the other side of the “door of death”.  We on earth stand on one side of death’s door.  On the other side of death’s door are Heaven and Purgatory and hell.

When a person dies, that person’s soul goes to one of those three places:  either Heaven, or Purgatory, or Hell.  Which of those places a person’s soul goes to depends upon the state of their soul at the hour of death.  In other words, at the hour or death, to what extent is the person’s soul corrupted by sin?

If a person’s soul at the hour of death is completely free from sin and its effects, then that soul goes straight to Heaven.

If a person’s soul at the hour of death bears even one mortal sin, then that soul goes straight to eternal punishment.

However, if a person’s soul at the hour of their death bears no mortal sins, but is marked by venial sins or the effects of sin called temporal punishment, then that soul—in God’s eyes—deserves neither hell nor Heaven.  That is why God, in His Divine Mercy—created Purgatory:  to be a place of temporary purgation, where venial sins and temporal punishments could be purged from the soul, so that the soul could then fly to Heaven.

It’s St. John the Apostle and Evangelist who teaches us about the difference between mortal and venial sin.  In his first New Testament letter, St. John preaches that “If anyone sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life….  There is sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that.  All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal” [1 John 5:16-17 (NRSV)].

+     +     +

There are two important points that St. John is making in this passage, and which he develops more fully in all of his New Testament writings.  The first is the distinction between mortal and venial sin.  Mortal sin kills the soul, while venial sin wounds the soul.

The second point is that God calls Christians to pray for other Christians, and especially in regard to their venial sins.  Praying for other Christians is the type of prayer called “intercession”.

Even in heaven, saints pray for those Christians who are not yet in Heaven.  Saints do not have their full attention fixed on God in prayers of adoration, without regard for others.  Saints in heaven pray to God for the other members of the “communion of saints” who are in Purgatory and on earth.  St. Therese the Little Flower spoke to this when she promised to “spend her Heaven doing good on earth.”

We on earth are like the saints in Heaven in this regard.  While we might want in our prayer to fix our attention on God alone, God wants us to offer our prayer for others, because this is often where we find God revealed in our lives.  So it is with our prayers of intercession, both for fellow pilgrims on earth, and for those in Purgatory.

Of course, you likely know that some Christians falsely claim that asking others—whether saints in Heaven, or family members on earth—to pray for us is an offense against God.  They will explain to you that Jesus is the sole mediator of God’s graces.  What they will not explain to you is that each Christian is a member of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church.  Therefore, each Christian shares in the work of Christ.

So does one Christian praying for another take something away from God?  No.  God wants us to turn to each other.  Intercessory prayer is one form of Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself” [Matthew 22:39].  If it’s valid in God’s eyes to pray for oneself, why wouldn’t it be to pray for others?  When a family suffers a tragedy, they often draw closer together.  Part of this occurs through prayer, and when they pray for each other, they all are stronger afterwards, and more closely knit.

Our prayer for others draws us closer to those for whom we pray.  Those in Heaven, in Purgatory, and on earth are drawn closer together through intercession.  When we intercede for another—or ask someone’s intercession—we don’t believe that that person is God.  We ask another to take our prayers to God.  When, for example, we call our mother on the phone and ask her to pray for us, we’re doing the same as when we kneel and pray a rosary:  we are asking our mother to pray to God on our behalf.

Through all prayers of intercession, the Body of Christ grows stronger.  In the person of Christ, God and man are united.  Within Christ, we live as members of his Body.  Within Christ, we build others up through our prayers for each other, and find God’s love for us all.

The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C] 
Sirach 35:12-14,16-18  +  2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18  + Luke 18:9-14
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
October 26, 2025

“… the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Look at the Pharisee and the tax collector in today’s parable.  They’re opposites.  Let’s say that the life of prayer is like climbing a mountain.  Then union with God—experienced on earth incompletely in contemplation, and in Heaven forever and fully in Adoration of Him—is the summit of the mountain.

Given that, neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector has reached that summit yet.  Both are still at the base of the mountain.  But they are facing in opposite directions.

+     +     +

Consider an image that clarifies the difference between the Pharisee and the tax collector.  To paint this picture in your imagination, a modern world record holder will help us.  The sprinter who still holds the world record for the 100 meter dash is Usain Bolt.  Although he’s now retired, his 2009 world record for running the 100 meter dash in 9.58 seconds still stands.  At his fastest point during this race, he was running 28 mph.

But imagine if I told you that you could beat Usain Bolt in a 100 meter dash.  You would not have to trip him, or tie his feet together.  I can guarantee that you would win the race against him, fair and square.

Here’s how.  You and Bolt both start at blocks right next to each other.  Both of you run 100 meters as fast as you can.  The only catch is this:  before you begin, Bolt has to turn around 180 degrees and face the other direction.  If he does that, you’ll win every time!

Of course, Bolt would never do that, unless someone convinced him to.  But the Pharisee didn’t have to be convinced.  The Pharisee choose to do just that spiritually, turning his back on the real goal—the real summit—because the vice of pride was the starting block of his prayer.  Remember how St. Luke prefaces the parable.  The evangelist tells us that Jesus spoke this parable “to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.”

In other words, the Pharisee and the tax collector are standing at the same base of the mountain of prayer.  But they’re facing opposite ways.  The Pharisee faces away from the mountain.  Every step he takes leads him farther from authentic prayer, and prayer’s summit of communion with God.

By contrast, the tax collector faces the mountain.  He looks up:  toward the mountain summit which is God, and toward the mountain face that he has to climb to reach the summit.  The tax collector knows the climb will be demanding, but he’s facing the challenge.  The key point of Jesus’ parable is that the first step up the mountain of prayer is the virtue of humility.

+     +     +

To make this even clearer, listen closely to how the Pharisee and the tax collector pray.  This is important to listen in on, because their prayers reveal their hearts, and it’s the heart that determines which direction—and what goal—a person is facing in prayer.

The Pharisee begins with words of thanksgiving:  “O God, I thank you.”  So far, so good. Giving thanks to God is a holy thing.  Thanksgiving is one of the four chief motives for praying to God:  the others being Adoration, Petition, and Contrition.

But then the Pharisee’s prayer goes off course when he explains what he’s thankful for.  “O God, I thank you … that I am not like the rest of humanity.”  In that moment, the Pharisee reveals his hand:  his real goal in praying.  He uses prayer to separate himself from others.  Every word he speaks moves him a little farther down the wrong path, away from the summit of authentic prayer.

In telling this parable, Jesus makes sure we understand what’s happening here.  In narrating this parable, Jesus tells us that the Pharisee “spoke this prayer to himself.”  Honestly, this is not the best translation into English of the original Greek words that St. Luke used to record Jesus’ parable.  In English, when we hear that someone on some occasion was “praying to himself”, we might assume that the person was praying quietly, or “under his breath”.

But that’s not what it means when Jesus tells us that the Pharisee “spoke this prayer to himself”.  The original language means that instead of the Pharisee speaking this prayer to God, he was actually speaking the prayer to himself.[1]  Of course, you might argue that if someone is praying to himself instead of God, he’s not really praying at all.  But that’s Jesus’ point.  The Pharisee is not really praying.  What he’s doing is not giving glory to God.  He’s giving glory to himself.

By contrast, the tax collector does pray authentically.  He stands before God with humility in his heart.  He does not look around.  He does not compare.  He does not justify himself.  He simply lifts his eyes toward Heaven and says, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner”.  Here, the tax collector is starting with a prayer of contrition.   This is the place to start.  Humility fosters a recognition that I am a sinner before God, and that humility motivates our prayers of contrition.  Once we’ve done that, we can advance in prayer:  first, to prayers of thanksgiving and petition, and finally, to prayers of adoration.

+     +     +

So today’s parable is about prayer.  But the lessons that Jesus teaches us through this parable apply not only to prayer.  These lessons apply to every area of our lives in this world.  These lessons apply to everything we do, no matter whether the goal is the summit of prayer, or something much simpler.

Before we take a single step in life, we have to face the right direction.  We have to look up to see God.  We have to be resolved to act and succeed not for our own sake, but for God’s glory.

Humility is the beginning.  Divine charity—the very life of God—is the end.  But without the right beginning, we can never reach the right end:  the end for which God made us.[2]

————————————————–
[1] The original Greek is “πρὸς ἑαυτὸν προσεύχετο”.  The Latin Vulgate renders it “haec apud se orabat”.

[2] See also St. Bernard of Clairvaux, In the Steps of Humility (London: St. Austin Press, 2001), and Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books and Publishers, 1996), especially 777-779.

“Zelo zelatus sum pro Domino, Deo exercituum” (Vulgate, I Kings 19:10)

Summary of Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te

Please note: the numbers in brackets indicate the paragraph(s) of Dilexi Te referred to or quoted. This summary summarizes about nine-tenths of the material in the document. Sociological and economic assertions are largely not covered.

Dilexi Te can be accessed here:
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20251004-dilexi-te.html

The PDF of this summary can be accessed here:
https://reflectionsonthesacredliturgy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/dilexi-te-summary-pdf.pdf

+ + +

Dilexi Te (“I have loved you”) is the title of the first apostolic exhortation promulgated by Pope Leo XIV [October 4, 2025].  The document’s header explains that it’s addressed to all Christians, whereas some papal documents are addressed specifically to bishops, priests, religious, etc.

The total length of the document is 121 paragraphs.  In the introduction, which is three paragraphs long, Pope Leo clarifies that this document is a companion to Pope Francis’ final encyclical, Dilexit Nos [October 24, 2024].  Pope Leo also clarifies that Dilexi Te was drafted by Pope Francis, and that Pope Leo added some reflections to the draft.

Whereas Pope Francis’ encyclical focused upon “the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ” [2], Pope Leo’s apostolic exhortation focuses upon love for the poor.  In other words, Pope Francis’ encyclical focused upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the subject of love (that is, the one who loves), whereas Pope Leo’s apostolic exhortation focuses upon the poor as the object of love (that is, the ones who are loved), albeit from a two-fold perspective:  first, the poor as loved by God; and second, the poor as loved by the members of Christ’s Church.

Chapter One of Dilexi Te is titled “A Few Essential Words”, and consists of twelve paragraphs touching upon diverse points.  Pope Leo in Paragraph 5 ties together three verses from the latter chapters of Matthew.  He introduces his weaving of these verses by asserting:  “Love for the Lord, then, is one with love for the poor.”  Tying these three verses together helps the reader to see the unity forged by Jesus’ two-fold command to love both God and neighbor.  This two-fold command reflects the human and divine natures united in the Person of Christ.  In this chapter, Pope Leo also makes a statement that reveals a motive for writing this apostolic exhortation:  “I am convinced that the preferential choice for the poor is a source of extraordinary renewal both for the Church and for society” [7].  Also of note in this brief chapter is Pope Leo’s explanation that there are many forms of poverty [9], a point which is not in this document fully explored.

Chapter Two is titled “God Chooses the Poor”, and consists of nineteen paragraphs.  It is the most thoroughly Scriptural and theological chapter of the document, and chiefly focuses upon two themes.  The first [16-23] is God’s outreach to the poor being fulfilled in the Messiah who Himself chose to be poor.  The second theme [24-34] is the call of God to His People—both the People of Israel in the Old Testament, and the Church in the New Testament—to imitate His merciful love for the poor.  A briefly mentioned though undeveloped point is that “works of mercy are recommended as a sign of the authenticity of worship” [27].  Hopefully Pope Leo XIV during a lengthy papacy will reflect in his writings about the link between the Church’s heritage of care for the poor and the heritage of the Sacred Liturgy.

Chapter Three is titled “A Church for the Poor”, and consists of 47 paragraphs.  It’s by far the longest chapter of the document:  in fact, it’s more than twice as long as the second-longest chapter.  Nonetheless, Chapter Three is a straightforward survey of saints who with zeal and devotion lived Christ’s call to serve the poor, which call Pope Leo wants Christians today to take up.

The survey starts in the apostolic era with the example of St. Stephen.  Pope Leo suggests that it’s not a coincidence that the first martyr of the Church was a deacon:  one ordained for service of the poorest.  In St. Stephen, “the witness of caring for the poor and of martyrdom are united” [37].  The survey also includes the witness of the Fathers of the Church [39-48], of those in monastic life [53-58], and of religious such as Franciscans and Dominicans who embraced poverty in a radical way as itinerant friars [63-67].  The survey also reflects upon individual saints and religious orders dedicated to particular examples of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy:  to the sick and suffering [49-52], to prisoners [59-62], to the education of the poor [68-72], and to migrants [73-75].  The chapter concludes by considering popular movements “made up of lay people” who dedicate their apostolates to caring for the poor [80-81].

Chapter Four is titled “A History that Continues”.  Over 21 paragraphs, the chapter considers the Church’s “veritable treasury of significant teachings concerning the poor” expounded over the past two centuries [83], beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum [May 15, 1891].  The chapter continues by exploring the teachings of the Second Vatican Council [84-86], and the three popes immediately preceding Pope Leo XIV [87-97].  The chapter concludes with a brief section titled “The poor as subjects” [99-102].  Pope Leo considers the Latin American bishops’ Aparecida Document [June 29, 2007], which “insists on the need to consider marginalized communities as subjects capable of creating their own culture, rather than as objects of charity on the part of others” [100; emphases in the original].  In a similar vein, Pope Leo quotes Pope Francis’ call to “let ourselves be evangelized” by the poor and to recognize “the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them” [102, quoting Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [November 24, 2013], 198].

Chapter Five, titled “A Constant Challenge”, consists of the final nineteen paragraphs of Dilexi Te.  Pope Leo notes that “love for the poor—whatever the form their poverty may take—is the evangelical hallmark of a Church faithful to the heart of God” [103].  That truth is based upon even more fundamental truths of the Christian Faith:  “No Christian can regard the poor simply as a societal problem; they are part of our ‘family.’  They are ‘one of us’” [104].  This solidarity with the poor raises the stakes even beyond those presented in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, to which Pope Leo next turns [105-107].  Jesus taught that parable to a scholar of the law to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus taught the scholar of the law to see the suffering person as his neighbor, but Jesus teaches His disciples to see the suffering person as “one of us”.

Pope Leo concludes Dilexi Te with a section of seven paragraphs about almsgiving [115-121].  This might not seem a grand way to draw the document to a close.  Yet the simplicity, smallness, concreteness, and directness of the venerable Christian practice of almsgiving reinforces the key points of Pope Leo’s first apostolic exhortation.  Each of these four qualities of almsgiving also marks:  the love of God for the poor; the Incarnation of God’s divine Son in poor, mortal flesh; and the earthly mission of Christ’s Church.  The individual Christian is called to serve the poor as Christ Himself did:  seeing in the poor a human person created by God, bearing a heart called to love God and fellow man, and invited to share in the Father’s eternal banquet.