The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Isaiah 50:5-9  +  James 2:14-18  +  Mark 8:27-35

There are two types of death.  One is much worse than the other.  Lots of folks work hard to avoid the one type of death, but not the other, which is strange.  It’s strange because the death they work to avoid is actually unavoidable.  Yet the death they don’t worry about is completely avoidable.

The first death is the death of our body.  This is the death that God Himself suffered in the person of Jesus Christ on Good Friday.  This death is unavoidable.  You cannot run from it.  Inevitably, your body will die.  Just look at a crucifix:  there is your proof.  Even God died in the flesh.

This is the death of which Isaiah prophesies in today’s First Reading.  It’s not a coincidence that today’s First Reading is also proclaimed at Mass on Palm Sunday, in connection with the Passion narrative.  Isaiah’s prophecy in the First Reading clearly foreshadows the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ.

To reflect more deeply upon this, we ought to remember that Jesus had a faithful Jewish upbringing.  It’s likely that as the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph brought Jesus up, the child Jesus memorized large parts of the Scriptures.  Many years later, during the years of His public ministry, it’s likely that Jesus, while walking the dusty roads of Judea, Samaria and Galilee, meditated on the words of Isaiah that we heard a few minutes ago.  Jesus could see that these words referred to His own experiences of rejection:  for example, when He was expelled from the synagogue in His hometown, and when He was rebuked by the Scribes and the Pharisees.

Finally, as Jesus spent those three hours on the Cross at the top of Calvary, the words of Isaiah undoubtedly ran through His mind:  “The Lord God opens my ear that I may hear;  /  and I have not rebelled,  /  have not turned back.”  Jesus on Good Friday is completely faithful to the will of God the Father.

By contrast, Peter in today’s Gospel Reading is clearly not faithful to the will of God.  Peter’s lack of fidelity stems from his confusion about the two different types of death.

In turn, you need to ask if you will be faithful to the will of God.  In today’s Gospel Reading Jesus makes a demand of you:  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  Do you, who call yourself a Christian, hear what Christ is saying to you?  Or are you like Peter?  Are you tempted to turn your back on the words spoken by Jesus?

Along the way to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks those following Him exactly who it is that they think they’re following.  Peter responds, “You are the Christ.”  Here’s where Peter’s trouble begins.

Peter has spoken the right words, but for the wrong reason.  It’s true that this Christ—this Anointed One—has come down from Heaven to save God’s People from certain death.  But Peter does not understand which death Christ has come to save us from.

Jesus begins teaching His disciples that the Son of Man must suffer greatly, be rejected, be killed, and rise after three days.  “He spoke this openly.”  But the ears of Peter are not open.  Peter turns his back on these words of Christ, and actually begins to rebuke the Son of God.  Peter cannot believe that the Christ must suffer greatly and die.  Peter cannot believe that any good can come out of human death.  Peter cannot believe that out of human death can come a share in the life of God.

Are you like Peter?  What do you make of death?  Do you believe that Christ suffered for us, but not with us?  If you’re older, you might remember the commercial for a product called Dow Scrubbing Bubbles.  The tag line was, “We work hard so you don’t have to.”  Is this how we think the Christian Faith works?  If Jesus came to earth today and made a commercial to advertise His Gospel, would he say, “I suffered greatly and died so you don’t have to”?

On the Cross, Christ destroyed the power of death by dying Himself.  When He died, death split in two.  Christ separated the death of the body from the death of the soul, so that the soul’s death would not inevitably follow the body’s death.  Christ didn’t die so that you wouldn’t have to.  Christ died so that the death that you will inevitably face—the death of the body—would not be the last word.

When you were baptized, and God the Father adopted you as His own child, you took on Christ’s life as your own, which also means taking on His death.  This is true because the meaning of Christ’s life—the mission of Christ’s life on this earth—was to destroy death.  So if you wish to share in Christ’s life, you must accept His mission—His death—as your own.  In other words, you must not rebel against the words that Christ speaks today:  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”

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There are two types of death:  the death of the body, and the death of the soul.  The death of the body is unavoidable, while the death of the soul is completely avoidable.  The death of the body, which many people try so hard to avoid, is in fact the door that Christ has opened to eternal life.  Yet the death that people don’t worry much about is a death that lasts forever.

There is an old saying:  “If you are not struggling in your spiritual life, then one of two things is true:  either you are dead, or your soul is.”  We need to make sure that we’re working to avoid the death that is eternal, and to follow the Person whose death is the path to eternal life.

The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Proverbs 9:1-6  +  Ephesians 5:15-20  +  John 6:51-58

Praying each set of mysteries of the Rosary is like climbing a mountain.

The five mysteries of each set—whether you’re talking about the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, or Glorious Mysteries—are not five random, unconnected mysteries.  The five mysteries of each set tell a single story, and they climb to a peak, which is reached in the fifth mystery.  In each set, the fifth mystery is set on a mountaintop.

For example, the fifth Sorrowful Mystery is literally and geographically set on a mountaintop.  The Fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Crucifixion is set upon Mount Calvary.  Of course, it’s true that this mount is not on the scale of the Rockies or the Alps, but only 2,500 feet above sea level, less than half the altitude of Denver.

However, it wasn’t the physical climb of Mount Calvary, but the spiritual climb that was so steep for Jesus.  That ascent was not only the act of walking up the mount, but was also in the raising of His life to God the Father during the three hours that He was nailed to the Cross.  The ascent of Mount Calvary is steep because Jesus was steeped in the sins of every human person throughout history—past, present, and future—from Adam and Eve in the beginning to the last sinner to trespass against God before the Second Coming at the end of human history.  Atop Mount Calvary on Good Friday, the God-man Jesus Christ reconciled God and man by offering up His life in sacrifice, to God the Father, for the sake of fallen man.

In a similar way, the Fifth Joyful Mystery is also set on a mountain.  The fifth Joyful Mystery is the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple.  The Temple Mount, built upon what in the Book of Genesis is called Mount Moriah, was and is the holiest site in Judaism, because the Jewish Temple was built upon this mount.  It was within the Jewish Temple—more specifically, within the Temple’s Holy of Holies—that God descended to earth and manifested His divine Presence.  It was there that the Word made made Flesh—a mere boy of twelve—said to Mary and Joseph, “Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s House?”

In a similar way, the Fifth Luminous Mystery is set on a mountain:  not geographically, but spiritually.  The Fifth Luminous Mystery is Jesus instituting the Eucharist at His Last Supper.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting one of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, declares that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life” [CCC 1324, quoting Lumen Gentium 11].  This summit—this mountaintop—is the peak of the Christian life here on earth.  Nowhere on earth is Christ more powerfully present than in Jesus’ complete gift of Self, which He gave us as a sacrament on the night before He offered Himself on the Cross.  At the Last Supper, Jesus instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

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This is the gift of Self that Jesus preaches about in today’s Gospel passage.  Jesus, in this sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, has been speaking about bread for some time.  But His intentions are constantly misunderstood.

The first confusion that Jesus has to clear up is the belief that Jesus is present in the crowd’s midst in order to fill their stomachs.  Of course, it’s true that Jesus did perform a miracle of feeding five thousand men with just five loaves.  But that miracle was a sign, pointing to something even greater.

The first words that He speaks in today’s Gospel passage are:  “I am the living bread”.  Now if Jesus had just stopped there, John 6 would have ended just fine (spoiler alert:  the end of John 6, as we’ll hear next Sunday, does not end just fine).  In any case, these first words that Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel passage are innocent enough:  “I am the living bread”.  That could mean just about anything you might want it to mean.  Many Christians can accept those words as referring to Jesus’ teaching, or more generally, to the Word of God.  But is that what Jesus is chiefly directing our attention towards in His Sermon on the Bread of Life?  Jesus’ declaration that He is “the living bread” are a sign, pointing to something even greater.

Jesus declares to the crowd:  “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”  This astounds the crowd.  But it hardly astounds Christians in our day and age, because to us it’s a clear foreshadowing of Good Friday.  It seems obvious that Jesus is foretelling His sacrificial death on the Cross when He declares, “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”  All Christians can accept these words in that way.  But Jesus does not stop there.  These words point us further, into an even deeper belief in Christ Jesus.  The chief meaning of His Sermon on the Bread of Life is still to come.  He has something more to give us.  Jesus through His preaching of this sermon is ascending a mountain, and He has to continue climbing, and continue to invite us to follow Him to the sermon’s peak.

When Jesus declares, “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world”, His words are a sign that point to a sacrament:  the Sacrament of the Eucharist; the Sacrament of the Real Presence of Christ Jesus, which comes into our midst through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Jesus speaks of this Most Blessed Sacrament when He preaches these words to you:

“unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”

Here at the mountaintop of His Sermon on the Bread of Life, Jesus is not speaking about bread that fills the stomach.  He’s not speaking about the bread that’s preached through the Word of God.  He’s not even speaking chiefly about the historical event of His impending Crucifixion, because the Crucifixion in an historical event, far back in the historical past.  He’s speaking about the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which makes His believers present at His Crucifixion, even if they live 2,000 years after the historical event that took place on Good Friday. This Sacrament makes us not just witnesses to the event of His Crucifixion, but invites us to partake of the Crucifixion by worthily eating the Flesh and drinking the Blood of the Word made Flesh.

The mountaintop of the Sermon on the Bread of Life is in invitation from Jesus to His disciples to believe in His Real Presence in the Eucharist, and to worthily partake in this Sacrifice.  Next Sunday we will hear about the disappointing fallout that occurred 2,000 years ago when Jesus first preached this sermon.  Today, you and I have to decide whether to accept Jesus at His Word, and accept the Gift of His very Self in the Eucharist as His means of our abiding in Him, and living our lives with His very strength inside us.

The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Exodus 16:2-4,12-15  +  Ephesians 4:17,20-24  +  John 6:24-35

“I am the Bread of Life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Today is the second of five Sundays when we hear from the sixth chapter of Saint John’s account of the Gospel.  In this chapter, St. John the Evangelist records both the miracles and the teaching of Jesus that point towards the Eucharist.  Last Sunday we heard Jesus miraculously multiple five loaves of bread, and as a consequence of this sign, the crowd wanted to carry Jesus off to make Him their King.  In spite of their desire, last week’s Gospel passage ended when Jesus, surely frustrated by the crowd misunderstanding His miracle, fled to a mountain alone.

Before we reflect on this Sunday’s passage, stop and consider Jesus’ flight to the mountain.  Please consider that Jesus might at times act towards you as He acted towards that crowd.  Consider that Jesus might flee from you for the same reason that He fled that crowd.  If we don’t take this personally, we won’t appreciate fully the rest of John 6.

First of all, we ought to recognize that everything that Jesus did and does is loving.  Even when Jesus spoke strictly to others, it was with love in His heart for the one to whom He spoke, and with a desire for that person to turn over his or her life fully to God.  Likewise, when Jesus at the end of last Sunday’s passage fled the crowd for the mountain, it was a loving action.  But, we might wonder, how could leaving someone be a loving act?  Consider just two reasons from the spiritual and moral life.

In the spiritual life, one of the causes of what sometimes is called “spiritual dryness” or “spiritual desolation” is that God wants your desire for Him to grow.  The old saying “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” applies to the spiritual life.  At times, God will absent Himself from the Christian’s soul to make her longing for Him grow stronger.  This type of God leaving us in no way implies that there’s anything wrong with the state of our soul.

However, the other type of God leaving us does implies that we’ve done something wrong.  I’m not talking here about someone committing mortal sin, in which case all grace in the soul is gone.  Instead, I’m talking about God choosing to leave the Christian’s soul because of what that Christian wants from God:  that is, because of the Christian’s desires.

This is why Jesus fled for the mountain alone at the end of last Sunday’s passage.  In this Sunday’s passage, Jesus speaks to this point also.  God wants us to want Him for the best possible reason, not just to fill our stomachs, or heal our illnesses.  As each of us grows in the Christian life, we have to allow God to purify our motives and desires.  We have to ask God to help us to love Him only for His sake, and not for our own sake.  Only the disciple with a pure heart shall see God, and only the disciple with a more pure heart shall have God abide within his soul.

So with that as a backdrop, consider what we heard today from John 6.

When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor His disciples were at the place where Jesus had eaten the bread, they went looking for Him.  We see this crowd hungering for something.  In last Sunday’s Gospel passage, the crowd hungered for bread.  This Sunday, we see the crowd hungering for Jesus.  They want to learn from Jesus how never to hunger again.

In this passage, we hear the crowd speak to Jesus four times.  The first three times they ask questions; the fourth time they make a request.  The first question they ask is, Rabbi (meaning, “Teacher”), when did you come here?  The crowd is confused about the origin of Jesus, but Jesus confronts them with the fact that they are only concerning themselves about their physical hunger.  He tells them, as He tells each of us, You should not be working for perishable food, but for food that remains unto life eternal, food which the Son of Man will give you.  Jesus shifts attention from the physical hunger He satisfied through the miracle He offered to them shortly before, to the spiritual hunger He will meet through the Sacrifice of His Body and Blood which He will offer to them some time later.

Well, this seems all right to the crowd.  They want in on the deal, so they ask Jesus their second question:  What must we do to perform the works of God?  Jesus’ response is brief and to the point.  This is the work of God:  have faith in the One He sent.  In other words, they do not themselves have the means to satisfy this spiritual hunger:  there is no spiritual refrigerator, supermarket, or field for them to go to.  Their spiritual hunger is not only for something to fill the emptiness inside their souls, but also for something to fill the emptiness around them.  For there is nothing around them capable of sustaining them eternally.

But the response of the crowd at this point is to demand a sign from Jesus, so that they’ll know He is worthy of their faith.  They’re looking for a sign like the one their ancestors received in the desert during the Exodus, when bread rained down from Heaven.  Jesus explains, however, that while this sort of physical bread can sustain one during one’s days in this world, it only has meaning in this world.  The daily bread Jesus offers from God the Father, a spiritual bread, is the food that is capable of making the Exodus from earth to Heaven.

In any case, we have during these five weeks the words and deeds of Jesus recorded in the sixth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel account, and I encourage you to spend time in meditation on what Jesus wants us to want most during our earthly days.  The Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist fulfills the deepest need we have.  If, like the crowd in the Gospel, we continue to have a hard time believing that truth, Jesus will nonetheless continue to invite us here.  He will continue to teach us throughout our earthly days that our lives find real meaning only through His life.  He’s continue to teach us that all the earthly things that we think are important, and for which we hunger, are important only inasmuch as they lead us to love God and others more deeply.

The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
II Kings 4:42-44  +  Ephesians 4:1-6  +  John 6:1-15

Some years back, three brother priests and I set out east along the highways and interstates of America to attend a conference in Louisville, Kentucky.  The round trip was more than 1500 miles, so the four of us prayed the Rosary often during the trip, and for several different reasons.

One reason for praying the Rosary was disagreements about directions.  I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke:  “Why did it take Moses and Joshua forty years to lead the Israelites through the desert?  Because men hate to ask for directions.”  That was true on our trip to Louisville.  Each of us read the signs of the road differently.

However, there was an additional problem.  Each of the other three priests had an electronic device which could look up directions.  Now, you would think that this abundance of technology would mean fewer disagreements about reading the signs of the road.  You would be wrong.

With each brand of technology—three different high-tech devices, and one Rand McNally Road Atlas—came a slightly different set of directions.  Each piece of technology read the signs of the road in its own way.  We had one driver and four navigators, which was three navigators too many.  When all these directions became too much for the driver, he would usually suggest that we pray the Rosary… again.

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Signs are important in today’s Gospel passage.  Signs appear at the beginning and at the end of this Gospel passage.  But before looking closely at today’s Gospel passage, consider signs in general.

Of course, there are many different types of signs.  There are television ads, traffic signs, interstate markers along the side of the road, and billboards farther back from the road; there are signs of weather in the sky, and written signs on a page.

However, regardless of what type of sign you’re talking about, if a sign is going to be effective, it has to accomplish two goals.  A sign has to first catch your attention by diverting it away from whatever currently holds your attention.  The advertising industry spends billions of dollars each year in order to succeed at this.  Advertisements use color, bright light, cute children and animals, and also appeal to man’s baser instincts:  all in order to turn your attention away from what you’re focusing on.  A sign needs to captivate you.

For example, a stop sign uses the bold color of red in order to catch your attention, in order to focus your attention on your legal requirement to stop.  This requirement is very serious—it can easily be a matter of life or death—so the stop sign is as bold as a road sign can be.  Other road signs—for example, along the side of a highway that have less important messages—might be green, blue, or brown.  The signs are not as bright as a stop sign, because if you miss the green, blue or brown sign, you may be inconvenienced—you may, for example, have to take a 45-minute detour—but it’s not likely to be a life or death matter (unless someone strangles you in frustration) .

The second goal of a sign is to fix your attention on the object of the sign:  the goal.  The sign is not a sign for its own sake.  A sign points your attention beyond itself to something more important.  That’s where today’s Gospel passage poses a challenge.

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Consider the signs of Jesus mentioned in the Gospel passage.  Signs are mentioned twice:  once at the beginning of this passage, and the second time at the end.  At the beginning of the passage, Saint John the Evangelist explains to us that “a large crowd followed [Jesus] because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick.”  Then at the end of the passage, St. John explains how after “the people saw the sign He had done” just then—that is, multiplying the loaves and fish—“Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, [and so] he withdrew again to the mountain alone.”

That’s a very sad statement:  Jesus “withdrew again to the mountain alone.”  Again.  Apparently this had happened before, and likely would also happen again later.  The problem, of course, was not Jesus, the one performing the signs.  The problem was in the crowds who saw His signs, but mistook their message.  Yet it’s not the crowds, but Jesus who chooses to withdraw, again and again, to the mountains alone.

Now, your average person, if he knew that a crowd were wanting to make him a king, would definitely not retreat into solitude.  We see this in the culture of the Internet, where on blogs or YouTube an individual can very quickly become a celebrity with thousands, or even millions, of followers, regardless of whether what he does is very noble or praiseworthy.  Sometimes, the baser the content, the more followers a content provider gains.

For His part, Jesus did not want to be a celebrity.  Jesus wanted crowds to follow Him, but only for the right reason.  At the end of today’s Gospel passage, after the Multiplication of the Loaves, the people proclaim Jesus to be “‘the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.’”  “They were going to… carry Him off to make Him king.”  In these two sentences, we can see the problem with the way the people were looking at Jesus.  They were looking at Jesus for the sake of His signs, instead of looking at His signs for the sake of seeing Jesus.  Or in other words, Jesus to them is significant because of the way that He changes this world.  That’s why they call Him “the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.”  That’s why they were going to carry Him off to make Him king:  because of the way that they thought that Jesus would change their world for the better.

They think Jesus is in this world to rid it of hunger by His miracles.  They don’t understand what the miracle of feeding 5000 is pointing to.  Like the sign of Jesus’ healing the sick, the miracle of feeding 5000 is meant to be a road sign, not the end of the road.  All of Jesus’ signs beg an important question.  What was the object of Jesus’ life on earth?  What were all of Jesus’ miracles advertising?

Every one of Jesus’ signs points to Jesus Himself.  Maybe that sounds too simple to be true, but it is.  Each of Jesus’ signs points to Himself.  He does this in order to reveal to others who He is, not simply so that people might be healed or miraculously fed, but instead so that they might follow Jesus, and abide with Jesus, and that Jesus might abide with them, and within them.

This is significant because this Sunday is the first of five Sundays during which most of the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel will be proclaimed.  This chapter of John 6, as you know, is where Jesus proclaims His teaching about the Most Blessed of the seven Sacraments:  that is, the Eucharist, where the Real Presence of Jesus Christ comes into our midst through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  The Eucharist is not a mere sign, but a sacrament, which makes the end of the road present in our midst during our travels down the road of life. 

Practically speaking, I encourage you over the next several weeks to take your bible and read John 6.  Read the whole chapter at one sitting, so that you see what the Sunday Gospel passages are presenting to us in five separate passages.  See the signs that Jesus presents, and see what the signs are pointing to.  If you’re especially ambitious, also read John 13-17, because these chapters are set at the Last Supper.  In these chapters, Jesus speaks to the Apostles, to whom He is giving at the Last Supper the power to celebrate this Sacrament, and to ordain other men that they might do the same, so that Jesus Christ—really, truly, and sacramentally—will abide within the members of His Mystical Body, the Church.

The Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Jeremiah 23:1-6  +  Ephesians 2:13-18  +  Mark 6:30-34

A few weeks ago, on June 25, I drove from my former parish to Eureka in order to drop off boxes of my belongings.  At the Copper Kettle in Eureka, three of us had lunch together:  the then-current, the newly appointed, and a previous pastor of Greenwood County:  namely, Father Nic, myself, and Father Mike Klag.  Some of the folks in the Copper Kettle might have called us the Three Amigos.  Some might have called us the Three Stooges.  But in fact, we were and are three brothers, like the brothers in today’s Gospel passage.

If you open your Bible to Mark Chapter 6, you’ll find this Sunday’s Gospel passage right after last Sunday’s.  They’re two parts of the same narrative.  They describe the Twelve Apostles:  first, being sent by Jesus to do His work; and later, returning to the Lord Jesus after completing their work, in order to rest.  However, Chapter 6 is fairly early on in St. Mark’s account of the Gospel, long before the events of Holy Week.  Jesus here is not sending the apostles out to preach the Good News of His Death and Resurrection, because His Death and Resurrection have not yet happened.  So for what purpose is Jesus sending the apostles out in today’s Gospel passage?

In any given part of the world, the Church is led there by the local bishop.  Each bishop is a successor of the Apostles.  Each bishop is sent to a given part of the world by the Pope, who is the successor of St. Peter.  Just as Jesus appointed Peter to act in His Name after Jesus ascended to Heaven, so also the Pope at any given time acts of behalf of Jesus.  One job of the Pope, then, is to send out bishops, just as Jesus sent the Twelve Apostles.

However, the world is a large place.  So the Sacrament of Holy Orders, which Jesus instituted at the Last Supper, includes not just the role of bishop, but also the role of priest.  Priests, as the Catechism describes them, are the bishop’s “co-workers” [CCC 1595].

When a young man enters the seminary in order to find out if God is calling him to be a priest, that young man has to be sponsored by a bishop, and the bishop sends him to a seminary of the bishop’s choosing.  If the young man perseveres in the seminary, he’s ordained by that bishop for that bishop’s diocese, and can be assigned by that bishop to serve anywhere in his diocese.

Yet as important as a priest’s relationship with his bishop is, his relationships with his brother priests is just as important.  In seminary they had a saying:  “The priest who rides like the Lone Ranger doesn’t make it far down the trail.”  In other words, a priest needs the support of his brothers.

Religious order priests, such as Benedictines and Franciscans, have built-in fraternity since they usually reside in community, pray together several times a day, take their meals together in the refectory, and carry out their labor alongside each other.  By contrast, secular priests—sometimes called diocesan priests—have to work harder at fostering priestly fraternity, and often have to travel long distances to do so.

That’s part of what Father Nic, Father Mike Klag, and I were up to on June 25.  I got to know Father Klag when he followed me as the pastor of St. Martin of Tours Parish in Caldwell.  After he moved there, he would call me at least once a month to visit about his new parish, and if he made a trip to Wichita we would have lunch, and visit not only about his new parish, but also about his carpentry and his gardening.  When he learned that I’d been appointed pastor in Greenwood County, he generously offered the use of his trailer to move my belongings, and said that he’d like to see the renovated rectory.

On June 25, during the lunch that the three of us had at the Copper Kettle, Father Klag did most of the talking, the majority of our conversation being about the parishes and parishioners of Greenwood County.  Father Nic would often chime in to confirm an observation that Father Mike made.  For my part, I mostly kept quiet, listening to my brothers and learning from them.

So why did Jesus send out the Twelve Apostles as we heard in last Sunday’s and today’s Gospel Readings?  The most obvious answer is to preach repentance, drive out demons, and anoint and cure the sick.  However, at the same time, we can see another purpose.

At the start of last Sunday’s Gospel Reading from Mark 6, the evangelist noted that Jesus sent them out two by two.  Jesus sent the Apostles two by two to learn to rely not only on God’s grace, but also on a brother’s shoulder.

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Practically speaking, where does this connect to your life?  It might be interesting to hear about the life of a priest, or for that matter, about the Twelve Apostles.  But does any of that relate practically to the daily life of a lay person?

It does, because no Christian—whether layperson, consecrated religious, or priest—is meant to be a Lone Ranger.  Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto to help him out of a jam.  By God’s express design, the Christian disciple is meant to depend on his or her fellow Christians. This is part of what in the Apostles’ Creed we call the “Communion of Saints”.

The Romans, when they crucified Jesus, could not have known that the instrument of torture and death that they utilized to shame and eliminate their enemies would become the Sign by which God would offer salvation to man.  The Sign of the Cross is part and parcel of our Catholic Faith for many reasons.

One reason is that the two arms of the Cross—the vertical arm and the horizontal arm—symbolize what Jesus taught us about God’s commands to His disciples.  All the commands of God’s Law are summed up in two commands:  love your God, and love your neighbor.  Loving our God is symbolized by the vertical arm of the Cross, which is grounded in the earth, but rises up to Heaven.  Loving our neighbor is symbolized by the horizontal arm of the Cross, which stretches from left to right, bad to good, unlovable to lovable, reminding us to love our neighbor not because they are or are not like us, but because they were created in God’s Image and likeness.

Today’s Gospel passage, though, reminds us about another point that’s symbolized by the Sign of the Cross.  That’s the point that Jesus wanted His Twelve Apostles to learn when He sent them out two-by-two in order to carry out God’s work.  The vertical arm of the Cross reminds us that it’s by God’s grace that we—like the Apostles—accomplish any good works that we carry out for the sake of our families, our parish, or our community.

The horizontal arm of the Cross reminds us that, by God’s design and desire, each of us carries out his or her work alongside, and relying upon, our neighbors.  To give a specific example:  in marriage, husband and wife have to work together, and to teach their children how to be part of the team that is the family, also called the domestic church.  Likewise, God designs a parish family, and a local community, with different individuals with individual gifts who learn to work together for the good of others and the glory of God.

Having said that about our needs to rely on others, a heads-up about our Gospel passages for the next five Sundays.  This Sunday Jesus wants us to understand our need to depend on those around us.  Over the next five Sundays, the Gospel passage at Sunday Mass will come from John 6, helping us to appreciate better the gift of the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.  The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ—who is true God and true man, who is the God and the neighbor whom we are to love—gives us His very self to depend upon:  Jesus, our Good Shepherd, who makes us to rest in green pasture, and to be nourished at His sacred banquet.

The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Amos 7:12-15  +  Ephesians 1:3-14  +  Mark 6:7-13

“So they went off and preached repentance.”

Sometimes it’s better to step back and consider Scripture in general, and sometimes it’s better to focus on one of the day’s Scripture passages.  Sometimes, it’s best to do both.  One of the saints of our Church can help us do so.

Saint Thomas More, who lived in England in the 1500s, was a husband and father, lawyer and statesman.  St. Thomas was also devoted to learning more about his Catholic Faith.  He was chosen by the King of England for the position of Lord Chancellor, the second-most powerful position in the kingdom, second only to the king.

However, St. Thomas, unlike many who wield worldly power, was clear-sighted.  One day he said to his son-in-law, “If my head could win the king a castle in France, it would not fail to go.”  Those were prophetic words.  St. Thomas More was martyred by the King of England because St. Thomas refused to call the king the head of the Church within England.  The feast day of St. Thomas More is June 22^nd.

St. Thomas emphasized the need to read Sacred Scripture in the light of faith, with the early Fathers of the Church as guides.  About Sacred Scripture, St. Thomas wrote:  “Holy Scripture is the highest and best learning that any man can have, if one takes the right way in the learning.  It is [like a river] so marvellously well tempered that a mouse can wade therein and an elephant be drowned therein.”

This point about the elephant and the mouse is important to stop and consider.  Sometimes Christians think that they have to be an elephant when it comes to approaching Scripture.  That is to say, they think that if they’re going to approach Sacred Scripture, they have to tackle the entire Bible, and become a master of every book, chapter, and verse.  Frankly, that makes about as much sense as wanting to begin a walking regimen, and starting by walking to the top of Mount Everest.  Instead, it’s better to be a mouse.

When someone asks for counsel about reading, or studying, or reflecting upon Scripture more deeply, there are two points I make in reply.  The first is to start with one of the four Gospel accounts:  not “in the beginning” with the Book of Genesis, and not with the letters of St. Paul, as rich as they are, but instead with one of the four Gospel accounts.

The second point leads into today’s Scripture passages.  The second point to keep in mind when starting to read, study, or reflect upon Scripture more deeply is to be that mouse that St. Thomas More wrote about.  Specifically, when you turn to any chapter or paragraph of the Bible, ask the Holy Spirit to direct your mind and heart to one particular verse, or sentence, or even just a phrase.  That’s all you need.  That small creek of Scripture is enough to immerse yourself in the Word of God.  You don’t need to swim in the Mississippi.  You only need one verse, sentence, or phrase.

But then, once the Holy Spirit has helped you to select a specific verse, sentence, or phrase, ask Jesus, who is the Word of God made Flesh, to give you insight into the meaning of that verse, sentence, or phrase.

This past week, in preparing for this Sunday’s homily, the sentence that came to the forefront is the next-to-last sentence of today’s Gospel Reading.  “So they went off and preached repentance.”  What does Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, wants us to understand through these words?  We cannot exhaust their meaning, but we can ask the Lord Jesus to apply these words to our lives in the here and now.

Each one of us, by virtue of his or her baptism, is called by God to holiness.  There is no holiness for the sinner except by means of repentance.  Repentance, accepted through the virtue of humility, is the first step.

In turn, those who are called to shepherd others, have the responsibility to preach repentance to those entrusted to their care.  They may not do so from a pulpit, but they do so in the ordinary course of life.  Parents, for example, have to preach the need for repentance when their teenager, who has a curfew of midnight, comes home at 2:00 am.  In our civil society, citizens have to preach the need for repentance when laws fail to protect the lives of unborn children.

However, no Christian can preach to others unless he first examines his own conscience and seeks out what forgiveness he needs to accept from God or others.  Every night, during his prayers before falling asleep, the Christian disciple needs to make an examination of conscience, and pray the Confiteor or Act of Contrition.  Every month, the Christian disciple who wants to grow in holiness will accept Jesus’ gift of Divine Mercy through the Sacrament of Confession.

Growth in the Christian life begins with the virtue of humility, and repentance for one’s sins.  In other words, Christian growth is founded upon two basic truths of our Catholic Faith:  (1) that there is sin, and (2) that I am a sinner.

By contrast, we live in a world that professes two claims that contradict our Faith:  (1) that there is no objective truth, and therefore no such thing as sin, and (2) that instead, those who believe contrary to each other can only at best tolerate each other, or perhaps simply ignore each other, or at worst fight against each other.  However, if there is truth – and Jesus proclaims “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” – then we are able to reason with others, even when we disagree with them, and even when there’s a need for repentance, whether on our part or on theirs.

Nonetheless, repentance is only the first step.  Because where there is human sin, there also is Christ willing to carry that sin on His shoulders to Calvary.  And where there is sin, there is Christ Jesus offering His grace.

The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Wisdom 1:13-15;2:23-24  +  2 Corinthians 8:7,9,13-15  +  Mark 5:21-43 [or Mark 5:21-24, 35-43]

There are certain seasons of the Church Year, and certain times of that year, when we expect that certain beliefs of our Faith will come to the forefront.  For example, during Lent, and even more so the closer we draw to Good Friday, we expect to hear about—and to be challenged to reflect upon—the sacred Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  Likewise, in the last Sundays of the Church Year, during the month of November, the Scriptures at Mass draw our attention to what Holy Mother Church calls the “Four Last Things”.  One of those four Last Things is death, and of course November—as nature all around us becomes colder and more barren, with fields and lawns turning yellow—is a fitting time to reflect upon death.

But this Sunday?  We’re in the heart of summer.  The days are filled with light and heat.  Fields and lawns are lush and green.  Why do our Scriptures today focus upon the harsh reality of human death?

Maybe it’s to remind us that death is often not predictable.  Reflecting upon death during Lent and November is fitting and timely.  But death often strikes unexpectedly, at a time that seems altogether unfitting.  Maybe that’s why on this Summer morning Holy Mother Church wants us to reflect upon death through the light of the Gospel.

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In today’s First Reading, from the Old Testament Book of Wisdom, the author states:  “God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living.”

But if God did not make death, then who did?  The answer is:  man made death; or at least, man made death into what we know it as.

“In the beginning”, when God created man—male and female He created them—He did not design man to experience death as we know it.  Certainly, God never intended man to live forever upon the earth.  But God did not design man to end his earthly days by means of what we know as death.

“In the beginning”, God created man so that an individual human person, upon reaching his or her final day on earth, would rise to Heaven both in body and soul, as the Blessed Virgin Mary did at the end of her days on earth.  As God originally designed man, the end of earthly life would not have resulted in the division of a man’s body from his soul.  The human body and soul were meant always to be united to each other:  both on earth and in Heaven.

But when Adam and Eve brought sin into human life, death as we know it resulted.  Human sin is the reason that the body and soul are separated from each other at the moment of death.  They remain separated, of course, until the end of time.  St. Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, writes that at the end of time “the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible” [1 Corinthians 15:52].  Those in Heaven will finally have their bodies joined again to their souls.

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Death divides.  Life unites.

There are many ways in which death divides.  One way is that death divides the soul from the body.  But an even deeper division is the death caused by sin during life on earth.  Everyone experiences division within oneself, and on many different levels, some more important than others.  To give a less important, though difficult, example:  regarding something as simple as a diet, human persons are torn in two.  We “know” that we need to eat a more healthful diet, but we “want” to eat what’s satisfying.  That’s why the diet industry earns billions of dollars every year:  because human beings are divided inside, and their diets don’t address that fault line within the human person.

The same is true when we face decisions about spending time:  for example, whether to sleep in on a Saturday morning, or to tackle a needed chore.  Inside us, a tug-of-war goes on, and more often then not, the lower side—the baser side—wins.

St. Paul in his New Testament letters often writes about division within his own life.  But he doesn’t write about diets or chores.  He speaks about division in the very heart of man’s soul, and about sin as the cause of this division.  In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul tackles this conflict head on.  He writes:

“I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  ….  So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.  …. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.  ….   Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  [Romans 7:15,17, 18-19, 24-25].

There is only one way strong enough to overcome division.  That way is Jesus Christ.  This truth was proclaimed in the Alleluia Verse before today’s Gospel Reading:  “Our Savior Jesus Christ destroyed death / and brought life to light through the Gospel” [see 2 Timothy 1:10].

Jesus has brought “life to light”.  What is this life?  This is the life of grace.

The life of grace—which is life in Christ—strengthens us not to give in to division in any form.  Finally, the life of grace strengthens us against the deepest temptation to division:  that is, the temptation to divide death from life.

This is really two opposite temptations.  You can divide death from life in two different ways.  Both ways lead away from Christ, or rather, away from the Way of Christ.

First, you can focus on death to the exclusion of life.  When you do this, you become not just weak and pessimistic, but self-centered, because your self-pity prevents you from seeing outside your misery.  You will neither allow others to give you a hand, or God to give you His grace.

Second, you can focus on life to the exclusion of death.  When you do this, you become what’s called a “Pollyanna”, believing in a false form of life, a phony optimism.  This false hope ignores the power and presence of sin and death, and so eventually has no need for either repentance or grace.

In Rome I wrote my thesis on the greatest work of the convert and apologist G. K. Chesterton, titled The Everlasting Man.  In the last chapter of that work, Chesterton wrote:  “Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”  What Chesterton states about Christianity is true of each authentic disciple of Jesus Christ.  Each Christian falls because of his own sins and because of the sins of those around him.  But each Christian can rise through the grace offered by Christ’s sacraments.  The Christian life takes seriously both sin and grace, death and life, yet never doubts that in that stupendous battle between death and life, life in Christ will always be victorious.

references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this Sunday by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 548-549, 646, 994: Jesus raises the dead
CCC 1009-1014: death transformed by Christ
CCC 1042-1050: hope for a new heaven and a new earth

Christ Raising Jairus’s Daughter by William Blake (1757–1827)

The Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Job 38:1,8-11   +   2 Corinthians 5:14-17   +   Mark 4:35-41

The Book of Job is 42 chapters long, and today’s First Reading is from Chapter 38, so it’s clearly part of the end of the story of Job.  Nonetheless, to reflect meaningfully upon the First Reading, and to contrast it with today’s Gospel Reading, you have to know the entire story of Job.

 In Western culture, you’ll hear the phrase “the patience of Job”.  Some might think the chief point of the Book of Job to be his example of patience.

Certainly Job had many reasons not to be patient.  At the start of the Book of Job, the devil strikes Job by having his livestock raided and killed, and all of his children killed.  The devil is trying to get Job to curse God because of his suffering, but Job refuses to do so.  Then the devil strikes Job with boils from his feet to his head.  Job still will not curse God, though he does question why he was ever born.

Job has three friends who try to console him by trying to convince him that his suffering is a punishment for Job’s wrongdoing.  But Job rejects his friends’ claims.  Instead, he challenges God to explain the reason for his suffering.

That’s where today’s First Reading is set.  The passage only offers four verses of God speaking to Job “out of the storm”.  Did you notice that phrase in today’s First Reading, and how it connects to today’s Gospel Reading, where Jesus sleeps in the boat in the middle of a storm?

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Before reflecting specifically on the First Reading and Gospel passage, stop to consider two different ways to reflect upon Scripture in general.

The first way to reflect upon Scripture is to apply the scriptures to your own life.  Maybe that’s easy where today’s scriptures are concerned, because maybe your life—right now—resembles a storm or even a whirlwind.

But what if your life right now is very peaceful?  What if this current year of your life on earth is one of the best years you’ve ever had:  no illness, no money problems, and no problems with work?  In that case, how do you listen to today’s scriptures?  Or do you just ignore them?

If a given day’s Scriptures don’t seem to “apply” to your life today, they might describe your life at sometime in the past, or in the future.  If they describe your life in the past, then reflecting on the day’s Scriptures might help you deal with past difficulties that are still unresolved or unaccepted.  After all, your past can bear a great weight upon your present self.

On the other hand, since you don’t know today whether in your future you will face what’s described in the day’s Scriptures, it’s good to reflect upon them to prepare yourself for something that might well be coming down the pike.

The second way to reflect upon Scripture is for the sake of another person:  someone around you.  While you might well be having one of the best years of your life, someone around you might be having the worst.  Maybe you have a clearer frame of mind, and can help that someone see things more clearly.  We can do this in part by taking the scriptures, reflecting upon them, and relating them to what that someone is dealing with.

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So given all that, consider today’s First Reading and Gospel Reading.

Out of the whirlwind, God responds to Job’s question about suffering.  God responds, but He does not answer Job’s question in the way that Job was hoping.  God does not explain where suffering comes from, or even if there’s a deeper meaning to it.

God’s response to Job is much like Jesus’ response to the disciples in the boat.  The disciples’ cry is perfectly understandable.  Their cry is like the prayers that you and I might offer when we’re in distress.  “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  The disciples’ cry is perfectly natural.  Yet how does Jesus respond?  His response is not perfectly natural.  It’s perfectly supernatural.  Jesus calls us to be more like Him, and less like our own fearful selves.

Jesus calls us to rest in Him, even in the midst of suffering and distress.  That’s the first point, but not the key point.  The key point is that Jesus is with us—present—in the midst of our suffering and distress.

Two of the four evangelists stress this point when they start their Gospel accounts.  St. Matthew, in the first chapter of his Gospel account, speaks about the birth of Jesus by quoting the prophet Isaiah:  “‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us’” [Mt 1:23].  St. John, in the first chapter of his Gospel account, speaks about God the Son becoming man in this way:  “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth”; “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” [Jn 1:14,12].

God is with us.  He’s in the boat beaten by the waves.  First, He’s with us to help us make the changes needed amidst the suffering that we’ve inflicted upon ourselves.  Second, He’s also with us to help bear the suffering imposed upon us by others, and to pursue justice when that’s needed.  Third, He’s with us against the suffering that arises from natural causes in this world that’s full of sickness and storms.  He’s with us in all things, and wants to strengthen us in the midst of our suffering.

We are the children of God.  Yet that truth does not exempt us from suffering.  After all, how did the life of Jesus, the Father’s only-begotten Son, end if not in the suffering of His Passion and Crucifixion?  God’s love does not exempt us from suffering, but it does assure us of His Presence in its midst.

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references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this Sunday by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 423, 464-469: Jesus, true God and true Man
CCC 1814-1816: faith as gift of God, and human response
CCC 671-672: maintaining faith in adversity

The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Ezekiel 17:22-24  +  2 Corinthians 5:6-10  +  Mark 4:26-34

Most Christians would say that Christians are supposed to carry out the will of God. Whatever God wants in any given situation is what the Christian disciple ought to do, and when the Christian does carry out the will of God, that disciple grows to be more like God by virtue of carrying out that action.

However, here’s an important question. To what extent does God take an interest in what we do? Is God just interested in the general outline of our lives, or is He a micro-manager? Does God only care about each of us finding our vocation in life, and then leave the rest to us, or does He have a check-list for us each morning, which we need to complete by nightfall? How a Christian answers that question has a lot to do with his or her potential for spiritual growth.

Regarding God’s will, and how the Christian is meant to carry it out, one of the monkey wrenches that often gets thrown into Christians’ minds is the idea that if we simply lead a basically decent life, we will—in any given situation—understand what is good and what is bad when choices are set before us.

Unfortunately, this is false. The world, and the moral choices that we have to make in this world, are not that simple. From the beginning, from the example of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis, we see that the Devil is more devious than we give him credit for.

The fact is that the willpower of fallen man is weak. The willpower of fallen man is “damaged goods”, so to speak. The human will of each of us was deformed by Original Sin. Even though Baptism restores grace to our souls, Baptism does not make the human soul as strong as it was “in the beginning”, before sin entered our world.

Given all this, the Christian has at least three different ways to think about Christian morality. These are three different ways of considering what a Christian is and is not to do in this world.

The first way of thinking about Christian morality is to think that the goal of Christian morality is to avoid sin, especially mortal sin. This is based on the distinction between good and evil, which is the foundation of Christian morality. However, while this first way of thinking about Christian morality is the foundation, we have to build upon the foundation. That’s where the second way comes in.

The second way of thinking about Christian morality is to think that the goal of Christian morality is to do as much good as possible. While the first way of thinking focuses on avoiding sin, the second focuses on doing good. Yet by itself, this second way is incomplete. If our lives as Christians were only about doing good, then it would be enough to choose simply what is “more or less” good, as long as it’s not evil. But that’s not the final goal of the Christian moral life.

In other words, God intends that you yourself, in any given situation, would choose the most loving choice: not just avoiding evil choices, and not just choosing any of several good choices, but instead, choosing the best choice—the most loving choice—among many possible good choices. This distinction—this third way of thinking about Christian morality—is what makes the difference between a lukewarm Catholic and a living saint.

God intends something particular for each of us in every action of every day of our lives, and if we are not sacrificing what is necessary to make those choices, we are not living up to our baptismal promises.

Now we have to be honest: some Christians might find this truth overwhelming. They might ask: “How can a Christian constantly be focused upon figuring out what God’s will is, much less calling upon the inner strength to carry it out?”

The simple answer is that the further away you are from God, the harder it is. Yet the closer you draw to God, the easier it becomes. Not only does it become easier: it becomes “second nature”. Consider a simple analogy from ordinary life.

Maybe when you were a teenager, you learned to drive in a vehicle with an automatic transmission. My parents wanted my sisters and brother and me to first learn how to drive a vehicle by driving a stick-shift. Of course, this made the learning process much more challenging. During my first efforts on the dirt roads west of town, as much as I wanted to be able to drive, more than once I wanted to give up because of the difficulty in coordinating everything, especially the clutch, the gear shift, and the foot feed. Of course, after a person spends many years driving, coordinating all the tasks involved becomes second-nature. You don’t even have to coordinate them consciously, so easily can you do them at the same time.

Something similar is true of the Catholic moral life. The more often we make good and strong moral and spiritual choices, the easier it becomes.

Of course, we cannot act in a Christ-like manner through human will power alone. We have to allow God to strengthen our will by means of His grace. We do this by leading a sacramental life. Most blessed among the seven sacraments, of course, is the Eucharist, and the way in which we prepare ourselves to devoutly receive this sacrament says a lot about our dedication to the Christian moral life and sacramental life.

Another part of the moral life to consider is how much of a role penance plays in our life. Now when I say the word “penance”, the first thing that comes to your mind might be the Sacrament of Penance: that is, Confession. For others, the first thing they think of when they hear the word “penance” is those actions that they carry out (or give up) during the season of Lent: that is, acts of self-denial.

Both the Sacrament of Penance and our own personal acts of penance are ways to strengthen our weak human wills: to restore those damaged goods to their proper shape. God’s grace in Confession, of course, is far more powerful than our personal acts of self-sacrifice. But God never treats us like a puppet. He always wills that each of us should share with Him in the work of our spiritual growth, even if we are only spiritual infants, and He is our divine Father.

We could spend all our days in prayer discerning God’s will for our lives, but once we found out God’s Will, what good would that knowledge do if we weren’t strong enough to carry it out? By ourselves, we are like the tiny mustard seed. But by means of our simple acts of self-sacrifice, and the powerful grace of God’s sacraments, God can providentially—in His own good time, we know not how—bear an abundant spiritual harvest within our souls.

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references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this Sunday by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 543-546: announcing the Kingdom of God
CCC 2653-2654, 2660, 2716: the Kingdom grows by hearing the Word