May 29, 2016

 The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Genesis 14: 18-20; 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26; Luke 9: 11-17 I’m thinking back on different celebratory meals that I have shared and been pleased to witness. As a family, the seven of us ate dinner each evening in what we called the breakfast room; dad on one end and mom on the other. We all had jobs before and after associated with the preparation and the clean-up. On Sunday’s we ate in the large dining room. It was special and mom always baked two of her fantastic pies. The largeness of the room and the day added to the specialness. What did I learn…how did I feel? Each meal took a lot of preparation and each person was involved. Being the youngest I got to take out the ‘garbage’ and to do the silverware (the safest for me to clean). I never felt that my role wasn’t important or that I wasn’t important. This time was sacred: we came together as a family. We could never miss a meal, it just wasn’t allowed and we learned not only to be sociable but to be caring and respectful. I was ordained on Saturday, May 20, 1967, and the following day I celebrated my ‘first mass’ at my parish church in Syracuse, Our Lady of Solace. After this mass, we assembled at Drumlins Country Club for a brunch. It was very crowded. I have no idea how many people came, nor could I remember all their names, but it was a celebration of priesthood. Relatives came from near and far and a vast number of neighbors and friends. I was the ‘center of attention’. I had never witnessed this before and it was uncomfortable. They came out of friendship, they came out of respect for not really who I was but for what I was, a priest of Jesus Christ. It was quite a thrill and honor, but most especially it was the feeling of ‘being Christ’ that was totally humbling and at the same time joyous. What did I learn…how did I feel? I felt that I had arrived….All my years of training , learning, and praying had fulfilled a dream that I had from my early years…to be a priest and to celebrate the sacraments, especially the Eucharist that I have always loved. This time the family was extended to people who had touched me, prayed for me and encouraged me. They were honored and proud, I was humbled and not exactly proud, just realizing that this was the beginning of giving and caring. In the Seminary, I read Bishop Sheen’s monumental book,The Priest is Not His Own and I realized that my life would be a continued series of ‘yes’s’. It wasn’t a burden, it was more a ‘finally the time has come’ moment. But again, I knew that it revolved around a meal, THE MEAL, the Eucharist. This sacrament continued to be a very important part of my ministry and my life since the time I tried to attend daily mass during my high school years. I remember numerous school wide celebrations of liturgies at the different High Schools I was assigned. In each school, I was asked to plan the liturgies with the students. It was so rewarding to hear their ideas and to encourage them and to temper some of their wild ideas. The special time I remember that during my time in Rome, NY, the bishop allowed students who had been confirmed to be Eucharistic Ministers. I so enjoyed training them and sharing my love for the Eucharist. They were so excited and felt so close to the Lord. Their faces were the pure love of God. What did I learn…how did I feel? Vatican II repeatedly said that the Church is the People of God. Church is all people from all walks of life. God is reaching out to each one to bring them closer to Himself. I learned that I can be an instrument of this or I could also be an obstacle if I stayed within myself. In 2000, I was invited by Food for the Poor to go to Haiti and to see the work they did. Two incidents I will never forget…they are totally ingrained in my heart. The first was I was invited to celebrate a mass at a complex that had ‘retirement homes’, little two room wood ‘homes’ each with a porch AND also the complex had an orphanage that housed a few hundred boys and girls from 4-14. I had taken two years of French in High School and barely understood their Creole. At Mass, I had a translator, who repeated what I said in to the people in their language. It was just an unbelievable holy sight. The people seemed to hang on to each word I said and we hugged and there were tears. Everyone received the Eucharist and they cried…I found out they only were able to have mass when a visiting priest came and their last mass was three weeks earlier. What did I learn…how did I feel? I felt that I was a part of something so important and special that I was the one God was touching. They were so respectful and appreciative and so kind. How did they show this, they all wanted to kiss my hand, kiss the hands of a priest who brought Jesus to them. It just cemented in my mind that priesthood isn’t about me, it’s about God and His love and His bringing Himself through me to these beautiful people. Later in the week, Food for the Poor asked if I would help distribute food at their center in the City of Sole. This is in a tidal area and is the poorest place I have ever witnessed. Two hundred thousand people are ‘housed’ in cardboard ‘homes’. They come every day to receive food. I was assigned to pass out cooked rice with an enormous ladle that I think must have held 4-5 cups. The people came with ANYTHING that they could put the rice in. It was like there was a garbage dump next door and they took anything they could that would hold the rice. Their faces, their pain, the urgency that they had to get food is indelibly stamped in my heart. What did I learn…how did I feel? People are hungry for God and what God can provide them. They know He cares and whatever He gives and whomever He sends is a Gift directly from God to them. I was that gift. God gifts me and I am called to be gift. Eucharist means thanksgiving. I am thankful for priesthood and God and His love. Alice Camille in Exploring the Sunday Readings comments on todays gospel of the feeding of the five thousand. “Loaves and fishes. Bread and wine. The elements are different, and yet the events are deliberately parallel. In each scene, a little bit of peasant food becomes a never-ending banquet of plenty. No king at his royal table was ever happier to sit down to his supper as that hungry crowd out in a lonely place who expected no supper at all that night. Through the generosity of Jesus and by the will of God, all are provided for. We live in a world where that is less true. All are not provided for. Tens of thousands die of hunger every day, many of them children. Millions more survive in a terrible gnawing need that never goes away. The lives of the majority of people throughout history have been defined by hunger Our meal of plenty demands that we take the hunger of the world seriously.” Sacred Space 2016 says, “This miracle reveals the heart of God, who cares about our every need God also expects us to come to the aid of one another and to share what little we have. Lord, the hunger of the world screams for my attention. But what can I do? Give me a willingness to go beyond myself, to share my little resources toward building a community where people love and care for one another.”

May 22, 2016

The Most Holy Trinity Proverbs 8: 22-31; Romans 5: 1-5; John 16: 12-15 A good question on this feast of the Holy Trinity is: Am I close to God? This really is a personal question because we don’t share how we are with God. There are so many other ways we can look at this, like: what is my relationship with God? This might seem to be just too personal to some people. We could twist this a bit and ask: Where do I find it easy to see God? At the end of the day when I look back and reflect how am I aware of God’s presence? And where does this presence lead me? Today we are celebrating the feast of the Holy Trinity. What does it mean? Very simply put, this is the feast of God. St. Paul described this beautifully in the last words of his second letter to the Corinthians: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” This is the clearest Trinitarian passage in the New Testament. Since this is a mystery, we can never completely comprehend God; this is a mystery hidden in God. How can I see and understand God when I can’t even understand myself? But I can discover so much about God because God has made Himself discoverable. How is this so? Just look around us…what has made us STOP and wonder? What has made me stop what I was doing because of a sudden discovery into creation or life itself? Was it a beauty of nature? Was it the beauty in a person? Was it the amazement of a little child in discovering a new piece of life or God’s creation? What it was is God. God is constantly revealing Himself not only in the wonders of nature and the miracles of science, but in every single experience of love and beauty. Every single STOPPING of our life that makes us aware of people caring for people, people showing compassion, people laughing a good ‘belly laugh’, people experiencing JOY in this moment in living, we are discovering God in His loving. Am I aware of these? I have just finished an amazing book by Fr. Albert Haase, OFM entitled This Sacred Moment… Becoming Holy Right Where You Are. He asks, “What does it really mean to be a holy person?” He continues saying, “…it is a selfless opening and response to God’s call in this sacred moment. And that call of God comes in the need that presently goes unmet or in the duty that is required in the present moment. Holiness, then, is the lifelong journey out of slavery to the ego and it's consuming preoccupation with self-concern, self image, self-gratification and self preservation. Indeed, the present moment as it unfolds before me is an expression of God’s will for me. That’s why this moment—and every moment—is sacred…It demands an awareness of what my five senses are picking up in the present circumstance and requires an active engagement with the world, especially the present moment and the situation in which I find myself.” How do I arrive at this…God is leading me. This is what Jesus’ mission from the Father was: to explain this to us by His life, His teaching, His example, His love, His death, His Rising and His sending of the Holy Spirit to continue this love. It all originates in God’s total, unconditional love for each person every moment. He sent Jesus to show this: we each need concrete examples…you just can’t say something to us without us saying, ‘prove it’ or responding to ‘I don’t understand this’…we need to see love in the concrete. Jesus showed us love in the concrete. John A Devotional Commentary Meditations on the Gospel According to St John explains the Spirit’s role. “The Spirit gives us knowledge that leads us to praise God as the Father and Jesus His Son. He is our Counselor and our teacher (John 14:26). He intercedes for us when we ourselves do not even know how to pray (Romans 8:26). The Spirit leads us to truth in every situation—spiritual and physical—if we but listen to Him. He leads us to recognize that each of us is a participant in the fall of man. None of us is sinless. The Holy Spirit teaches us about the righteousness of Jesus, His sinless nature, and His action in saving us from everlasting separation from God. Thought the Spirit, we come to accept the forgiveness that God has given us through His Son. Lastly, we come to know that Satan and his power have been defeated and that judgment will come for each of us (John 16: 8-11). In all things, the Spirit leads us to a deeper knowledge of Jesus as ‘the way,and the truth, and the life.’” (14:6) The Trinity is God telling us what our life is all about and what God’s love is all about. It can be summed us in the famous phrase John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.” This does not come from a God who is a hard-noised despot, but a God who desperately wants intimacy with each person so that we can see His love and what love is all about. That’s why Jesus came, to put ‘flesh and blood’ into the meaning of love. He came to help us begin to think differently about our lives and the people around us and the world in which we live. He came to show us that life has a purpose and does not end but forever continues with God in love. He came to tell us of heaven. He does this by interrupting our lives through different voices, people and circumstances. Each of these ‘God moments’ help us to keep our focus on the WHY of life: Life With God Forever. The Trinity is the name of God—who God is. Jesus gave us this ‘name’. Does it matter which person of the Trinity I pray to…no. Does it matter what name I refer to God as…no. Traditionally all sorts of names have been used for God: Father, Son and Spirit..or Creator, Savior, Sanctifier, Friend, Provider, Guide, Lover, Holy One, Lord. THIS DOES NOT MATTER what does matter is that each person develops an intimate relationship with the One to whom everyone belongs. Am I doing that? So I reflect on: • Who cared for me when I was young? A teen? How did these caregivers reveal God’s love to me? • Someone once wrote that the ‘Trinity is like a circle of people dancing or a meal everyone is enjoying? Does this change my image of God’s love? • God loves me personally? Do I respond? • A great exercise is a particular examination at the end of the day reflecting on where I saw God… what God showed me about His love…where God was leading me deeper in this ‘love relationship’. Have I ever tried this? Am I reluctant to do this? • What relationships help me to know the God who dwells in me? Sacred Space 2016 says: “Jesus still speaks to us: prayer helps us to grow in love, in friendship, in understanding of the ways of God. The Spirit assists us, mediating God’s message, helping us to recognize how our way of living conforms to what God asks of us and revealing how it does not. Lord, strengthen my ability to receive and listen to Your Spirit, to remember that Your Spirit speaks Your word to me. It is in the nature of God to be giving and generous; Jesus shows us how to relate to His Father with humility, joy, and generosity. Following Jesus calls me to life, to accept my true identity and dignity.” A prayer from John A Devotional Commentary: “Holy Spirit, work in my life in a new way. Teach me about the kingdom of God. Show me my need for Jesus. Reveal to me the love of Christ and lead me according to His will. Give me the desire and the strength to serve the body of Christ and to share this new life with those I meet.”

May 15, 2016

May 15, 2016 Pentecost Acts 2: 1-11; 1 Corinthians 12: 3-7, 12-13 or Romans 8: 8-17; John 20: 19-23 or John 14: 15-16, 23-26 I’ve been reflecting on the workings of the Holy Spirit in my life in the recent past. I hope I’m not rambling but I want to share. • People have asked me what was special about the Holy Land trip this past January/February? I immediately say that there were a number of miracles. • Some ask further, what were the miracles? A number celebrated significant years of marriage…although each year is a celebration because we can see how the Spirit helps each moment of each year. • There were a few miracles of healing; there were returns and deepening of peoples’ faith. • There was God touching so many in a special way especially in thanksgiving and affirming. We don’t realize how many times God wants to thank us. • I’m reflecting on the sudden death of Fr. Eugene Kole, the chaplain at Langley AFB. We were all shocked and numbed. People shared those few days of mourning… how much he did to help and touch them. Everyone had stories and each story showed Fr. Eugene sharing the Spirit of love and care with people. We are grieving but we realize in a deep way that we have been loved and are loved. • I’m thinking of the wonderful Palm Sunday, Holy Week and Easter services. The Spirit was so evident and powerfully present. So many felt this and were aware that there was a power and love that was hovering over the Langley community. We were being touched and loved. • There was the death of my nephew at a young age from cancer. Story upon story was shared of how Kevin touched them with love. That’s the Spirit of love and caring that is always present and cannot be hidden. • I’m thinking of the spiritual counseling that I am honored to be a part of…these holy people come and touch me with the Spirit and their desire to go deeper in realizing the presence of God in every activity of their lives…that’s the Spirit. • I’m looking around at a number of friends who are planning retirement or just retired and how each of them wants to ‘give a return’ for all God’s goodness to them. These people have always impressed me with their helping those with difficulties and the less fortunate…and now their ‘retirement plans are to do more and go deeper into the caring and helping profession. This is all about the Spirit. • I’ve noticed quite a deepening in people’s spiritual lives. They are wanting to be fed and fed deeper and they are looking for help in doing this. • I continue to rejoice at the number of people who are involved in the two year Spiritual Direction Institute that was started by Msgr. Chet Michael so many years ago. These people want a deeper relationship with the Lord and they are reaching out to the Spirit to help them be people who help and share. • I hear so many people so dissatisfied with the condition our country is in and how we have to get back to what we were…a people under God. Is it the Spirit that is making us aware of the inadequacies and the need for reform? I do believe so. • THE SPIRIT IS MOVING ALL OVER THE WORLD AND IN EACH OF US. Fr. Flor McCarthy wrote New Sunday & Holy Day Liturgies. He has a wonderful sermon on Pentecost…I now share a few of his insights: “Before the coming of the Spirit, the apostles were virtually living in hiding in the upper room. A great task had been entrusted to them yet they had neither the strength nor the will to begin it. But after Pentecost they were changed people. What was it that the Holy Spirit did to them and how did the miracle of change come about? Even though we are dealing with mystery that doesn’t mean we can’t understand anything about it. We have to realize that the apostles were wounded people. They were wounded by doubt and grief, by fear and failure, and above all by a sense of inadequacy. Jean Vanier is a man who knows a great deal about what helps wounded people to change. He has set up little communities around the world for (mentally) handicapped people. When the handicapped are locked away in institutions, terrible damage is done to their hearts and spirits. A wounded body will heal naturally, but not a wounded heart. A wounded heart will harden, just to survive, and then fill up with anger and bitterness. But when the handicapped are taken out of institutions where they are made to feel unwanted, and put into communities where they are loved, Vanier has witnessed, over and over again, the miracle of change. This helps us to understand something of what happened to the apostles. In saying that the apostles were wounded, one is not suggesting that they were wounded to the same degree as some handicapped people are. Nevertheless, they are wounded. But after the coming of the Spirit they were changed people. They left their hiding place, and set out courageously to preach the Gospel. We mustn’t think that the change was affected in an instant. It had to be a gradual thing, a growth process. And growth can be slow and painful. We do not easily let go of old habits and attitudes. People change when they are given hope; when someone believes in them, and gives them a task to do. Above all, they change when they are loved They come out of their shells, and hidden energies are released in them. The miracle of human change is the only real miracle. All of us have a capacity for goodness. We have hands that can care, eyes that can see, ears that can hear, tongues that can speak, feet that can walk, and above all hearts that can love. BUT each of us has some HANDICAPS, which keep us from realizing our true and full selves. We need someone to awaken us to what is inside us. Someone who will bid us live, and help us grow. For us followers of Jesus, that someone is the HOLY SPIRIT. The power that changed the apostles is available to us too, the gentle power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit awakens us to the mysterious power within us, bids us live, and helps us grow. The poet Pablo Neruda said: ‘I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.’ That’s what the Spirit does.” NOW AM I LISTENING? The Spirit speaks a language of PEACE, a language of COOPERATION, a language of FORGIVENESS, a language of HOPE, a language of TOLERANCE, a language of FRIENDSHIP, a language of UNITY, a language of LOVE…This is the miracle of Pentecost and it is happening each day all around us and within us…Come Holy Spirit. Sacred Space 2016 shares these words: “Let me take time to be still, to wait on the Lord, to realize that Jesus approaches me as He did the disciples, wishing me peace I hear Him say, ‘Peace be with you.’ I notice my reactions, my protests. I see, too, where I am able to receive His gift of God’s Spirit and pray that I may pass these gifts freely to others. The risen Jesus penetrates the disciples’ defenses, overcomes their fears, and brings them joy. I ask Him to pass through all my security systems and liberate me from whatever prevents me from ‘having life and having it in all its fullness.’”

May 8, 2016

The Ascension of the Lord Acts 1: 1-11; Hebrews 9: 24-28; 10: 19-23; Luke 24: 46-53 We have an amazing fact in todays reading from Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel from Luke. Luke wrote both of these books; it really is a two-volume set. The Gospel was written about 85 AD and the Acts between 95-100 AD. They really are meant to be read together which we probably have never done. If we did we would never lose a beat. Living the Word, Scripture Reflections and Commentaries for Sundays and Holy Days explains this: “The setting for today’s first reading and Gospel reading is Jerusalem In fact, if we were to read chronologically as the author of Luke-Acts had intended, we would start with the Gospel and then turn to Acts. In the Gospel, Jesus has just appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem. After assuring them He is not a ghost (Luke 24:37),He then ‘opened their minds to understand the scriptures’ through the lens of those scriptures. Jesus concludes His teaching by assuring the disciples that He is ‘sending the promise of My Father upon you’ (Luke 24:39)—this promise will be fulfilled in Acts 2 with the coming of the Holy Spirit. After blessing them, Jesus is taken up to heaven. Matthew places the Ascension in Galilee, but for Luke, Jerusalem is the symbolic center of Jewish faith, and the first place in which the gospel is to be preached (Luke 24:47) .” If we do this, read these two together, we will get a richer interpretation of the events. Why? Because Luke is like us: He is not from that part of the world…he never met or saw Jesus…he was a Syrian from Antioch and is mentioned three times by Paul. The opening verses of both books say that Luke is sending them to an unknown person, ‘Theophilus’ a word that means ‘a friend of God or beloved of God,’ that’s each one of us. Why? Jesus at the Last Supper in John’s gospel calls each of us friends: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 16: 12-14) Also Luke was not a first generation Christian. In putting together these books he was dependent upon those who were eyewitnesses. He was very familiar with the Old Testament traditions in the Greek and Hellenistic writings. And he uses Mark’s gospel for reference. He was very sensitive to those who were hurting, tradition says he could have been in medicine. The point is that he is ‘painting’ a picture for each of us about Jesus and the early Church to help us come more in touch with Jesus, His life, His works, His love and His care for each person and for us. Luke paints a portrait unlike any of the other gospel writers. The Acts start with the next development that begins with Pentecost. Acts really isn’t a ‘history’ of the earliest years of the Church. The events do not extend beyond Paul’s imprisonment in Jerusalem and being sent to Rome for trial . The story of Peter and the other apostles stops when Luke shifts to Paul’s journeys. An amazing fact is that we never hear about Paul’s or Peter’s martyrdom. What does all of this mean for us today…perhaps the last words in the Acts today sums this up best, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen Him going into heaven.” Jesus has ascended into heaven. He commissioned each of them to take what He told them and share this with all. They will be part of a kingdom that does not belong to this world. And they have been given gifts and the ability to share and to bring caring, love, compassion, forgiveness and healing to all. So the ‘two men’ say why are they just standing around. They have work to do…they have a mission directly from the Lord. This is a new mission…others have tried it in the past, but have failed. Now we are all a part of God’s plan of salvation for all and each of us have a part in this. This is why we were created…what we have been chosen and commissioned by our baptism to be God’s instruments in His mission of salvation for all. So let’s get working. The apostles had expected an earthly restoration of the glory days of Israel. They certainly were not expecting Jesus’ departure. Now they are in the period of God’s plan…so are each of us. They were thinking…how can ‘little old me, who is a nothing in the world’ bring God’s plan to fruition? How can we when we don’t hear Jesus speaking to us… but He does. This is why Luke wrote his two volume book. When we read just a small passage slowly and reflect on it, we can easily see that Jesus is talking individually to us. We say, He places us in situations that we are not qualified: how do I care for the sick, how do I help when a marriage fails, a job is lost, a dear friend dies unexpectedly or when a tragedy comes? What would Jesus do? He was just present…caring and loving. How important is that? All we have to do is to look at our lives and to see that in our own tragedies we were touched by the presence of a loving person. Sometimes this person we know, sometimes it was from the most unexpected of sources, but in all cases we knew that we were loved. That is what God’s plan is all about. Earlier in Luke Jesus asked, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” It is the Holy Spirit who supplies all, who is with us always. Actually when we think about it, Jesus disappears from view but He is already returning in and through each of us. We still might say, ‘it is too difficult, let…Joe or Sally…do it. But God has given each of us every possible help that we would need in this present situation…event, that we feel is overpowering. If we think it is too difficult, it can be a sure sign that we are not using the gifts God has already gifted us. We have the Eucharist, we have the Scriptures, we have all the sacraments… they are God’s help just waiting for us. Jesus said repeatedly and it is the most used phrase in Scripture…do not be afraid.’ I asked my students years ago if they knew how many times this phrase is used…no one got it. Scholars say that this is used 365 times in Scriptures. One of my students remarked, ‘Hey Father, that’s how many days there are in the year.’ Is this a coincidence? There are no coincidences with God. So I reflect on: • How do I give witness to the Spirit’s power in my life? • Do I rejoice in the Ascension of the Lord? • At times we feel that we are going down a sad or lonely road. Do I realize that Jesus said, You are never alone, I am with you? • What blessings, wealth, and power have I gained through faith in Jesus? Sacred Space 2016 shares: “Jesus connects what has happened to Him to the Old Testament prophecies. Thus, hundreds of years on, God’s promise is fulfilled. God’s time is not always our time. The disciples experienced ‘great joy’ when Jesus blessed them and moved fully into the divine dimension of reality—heaven. Such moments of insight and pure joy are rare but precious for us. While they eventually become dim, their memory can carry us through difficult times. Can I identify one such moment of ‘great joy’? “The night before His death, Jesus prays for all of us who will come to hear and learn His Gospel and the story of God’s love for us through the first disciples and the generations of believers who will follow. Jesus prays that we may know the love of God that He has known, and that same love may unite us as families and friends and communities and churches. That love makes everything done in Christ holy and sacred.” Connections 4/8/16