Love Speaks.: Recent Episodes
Love Speaks.
If you ask nicely, I will post pics of my minecraft convent
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From the Letter to St. James this weekend:
Where do the wars
and where do the conflicts among you come from?
Is it not from your passions
that make war within your members?
You covet but do not possess.
You kill and envy but you cannot obtain;
you fight and wage war.
You do not possess because you do not ask.
You ask but do not receive,
because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
The post Claude, the Passionate Dog | 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Why would Jesus warn people not to tell others that he’s the Christ? Isn’t that counter productive?
The post What Ideology Makes us Miss | 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time appeared first on Love Speaks..
Jesus dismantles the Pharisee’s argument in one sentence…a sentence which, as usual, makes no sense in English.
The post Words and What They Mean | 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Farewell Homily to Ss. Peter and Paul, Naperville
10th Sunday in Ordinary Time
9 June 2024
—
What is the greatest tragedy in human history? Besides, of course, for the day that Steve Bartman caught that ball at Wrigley Field in 2003 and the comparably awful moment when the first person decided that coconut should be included in desserts.
Last night, I was in the mood for some hard-hitting research…you know, a real high-octane academic enterprise; so I asked ChatGPT the question: “What is the greatest tragedy in human history?”
Here’s what it said:
Determining the greatest tragedy in human history is inherently subjective and depends on various perspectives, including the scale of human suffering, historical impact, and the legacy left behind. Several events stand out due to their immense human toll and lasting effects:
(Then, it listed things that probably came to your mind)
World War I&II, The Holocaust, The Black Death, The Atlantic Slave Trade (and, really, slavery anywhere at anytime), the Great Chinese Famine, Genocides anywhere, etc.
What is the greatest tragedy in human history? Is there something that each of these have in common – perhaps a thread that runs through each of them?
Genesis describes it this way: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” (Gen 3:6)
Sin. Sin is the greatest tragedy in human history. Not just in Eden, wherever that is, but here in Naperville – here in our hearts and minds, in our everyday living: when we give in to the urge of sin which has us prefer worldly wealth, pleasure, power, and honor over all that we know to be good and beautiful and true, we participate and re-engage the greatest tragedy in the history of the world. These desires for wealth, pleasure, power, and honor represent the core of all interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict; “I want what I want and I want it right now.” Even though everything we could have needed and wanted had already been given to us by the one who knew us better than we know ourselves, because he’d created us.
So that’s the tragedy. What is the greatest shock in the history of the world? Again, the first reading today: “When they heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the garden in the cool of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord then called to the man and asked him: where are you?” (Gen 3:8-9)
Where are you, O man? Adam, my son. My creation. Where are you?
The Lord – the creator, the giver of everything who’d just been betrayed in the most spectacular way – returns first and completely by his own will – and speaks the words that have the ability to pierce any heart that is truly awake: “where are you?”
Adam replies, “I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.”
In the person of his Son, Jesus, who is our model for life precisely because of his obedience to what the Father asked of him – for this reason we call Jesus the “new Adam” – God the Father continues to walk through the sin-soaked landscape of our dark world here below, and with the same composure and love as God in the garden he calls out, “where are you?” Adding encouragement, of course: “Come to me, all you who labor! All you who mourn! All you who are persecuted! All you meek and pure and sad and hungry. I want to give you rest.”
—
I’m not sure whether or not I’m allowed to tell you this, so let’s just keep it between us, okay? Three years ago, when I was still on the Priest Personnel Board, I was given a choice at the very last meeting of the year between two parishes: a parish named after an archangel in a town very close to here that starts with a W and rhymes with “heaton” and Ss. Peter and Paul in Naperville.
Peter and Paul, no question. For me, Peter and Paul has never been a question. It’s has always been a “yes” for me. Two years ago, when I was going to be full time at Chesterton, they wanted me to move. I told them no. When the bishop called me in April to tell me I’d be going to Visitation, I did my Fr. DeSalvo impression and tried to convince him he’d called the wrong number. Alas.
For as long as I can remember, at least in my adult life, Peter and Paul has been a refuge for me. The quiet place to pray after getting obliterated by Finite Math at North Central; the late night adoration chapel visits in 2011 when my roommate in Patterson Hall was blasting his music; altar serving as a college student at the Sunday evening Mass; being invited by Deacon Ron and Brendon Heffron to altar serve at Midnight Mass in 2010 even though this wasn’t technically my parish.
That Midnight Mass changed the course of my life. I was sitting over there where these young men are sitting now. As the Gospel of Christmas was being proclaimed, I was looking toward the back of the Church at the Christ the King window, and I heard someone calling my name. “Ryan! Ryan!” I was the incense guy, so I thought maybe I’d overdone it and was just hearing things. Mass continued, and at the moment of the epiclesis – when Fr. Milota put his hands over the bread and wine and said “Send you Spirit on these to make them Holy.” I heard it again: “Ryan. Ryan!” This time, I knew who it was.
Now, I get to say those words of consecration and look at that Christ the King window every single day
If you listen to or read any versions of my vocation story that I gave while I was still in seminary, you’ll hear me say that it was at that moment that I perceived Jesus was calling me to the priesthood. But I don’t believe that’s true anymore.
Vocations are planted in hearts at the moment of baptism, so the Lord had been calling me to priesthood for my entire life. But that moment on Christmas night was something else, something – believe it or not – much more personal and important.
“Where are you?” He was saying. “Make me King of your heart. Come, follow me.”
That night was like an Automated Internal Defibrillator – a true shock of grace, an invasion of God’s love and life into my heart and mind and it caused me to ask a very important question for the first time in my life: “where am I?”
And I realized that at that moment, I was an English major with an emphasis in writing and Secondary Education, but that I really hated everything I was reading and writing about. I knew I wanted to teach, but I could not see myself teaching high school English as I planned. I was 18, and only just barely beginning to wake up to the idea that the world is insane, and really scary, and will eat me alive if I go through it blind and numb.
The way of the world – the way of sin and death – is painfully boring. It’s so predictable; you all perceive this when you come into the confessional and lament that you are confessing the same things you always confess. There is nothing new or beautiful in a world captivated by sin and death. That is why Pope John Paul II was able to topple Communism by reminding the people of Eastern Europe that it is “Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise. It is He who urges you to shed the masks of of a false life.”
Later on in this Mass, we will hear one of my favorite songs, The Summons. Nick – I really don’t care which verses you sing but you must sing verse 4: “Will you love the ‘you’ you hide if I but call your name? Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same? Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around, through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?”
Because when Jesus calls out to you, “Where are you?” He really wants to know! Where are YOU? Not the version of you that everyone knows, or you wish you were, or you’re trying to be. But you, as you. Where are you? And sometimes life throws these curveballs that are so unpredictable, so disruptive, so dang hard that we really have no choice but to stop everything and dig very deeply to find out precisely where and who we are.
But what comes on the other side of that? The other side of the searching and suffering? The other side of that heart-piercing question?
What Paul told the Corinthians today he speaks also to us: “Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God.”
Everything is for you. The length and width and height and breadth of the human experience are yours when you are hidden in Christ Jesus. “For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
What else does this mean except that in Jesus, because of Jesus, with Jesus…everything is different. That it is possible to live a life without fear, without condemnation, without judgment, without anxiety.
If 25 years from now, you’re out walking the dog or watering the plants or in the delivery room or presenting to the board or changing your oil or walking to Sparrow; or maybe you’re locked up in jail or just leaving divorce court or reeling from the news of the diagnosis; or maybe you just dropped her off at college or starting a new job or learning to paint with watercolors in art therapy or watching an elderly Taylor Swift take the stage…if in the midst of your life, wherever it takes you – up, or down, or in between and all around – if you happen to remember a certain 32 year old priest who reminds you of George Costanza and Woody Allen, I hope you remember his quirks and faults less than you remember what he told you: that with God all things are possible; that in Jesus, all things are bearable; and that in Christ, everything can be different, because everything is new. But you have to let yourself and your worldview be changed, which comes often through suffering.
When we get ordained, we all get very excited about bringing the Love of Christ to the whole world!!! I understand now that isn’t at all what Jesus is asking me to do. He never said anything to me about the whole world. As far as I know, he just asked me bring his love to Naperville as best as I could; and to receive his love from all of you as best as I could. It wasn’t perfect, but I think it turned out pretty good.
On July 1st, 2021 I took refuge once again at Ss. Peter and Paul, and on July 1st, 2024 I will say goodbye. For now, from the bottom of my heart, I just want to say “thank you.”
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St. Thomas Aquinas:
Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us for ever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine.
O precious and wonderful banquet that brings us salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value? Under the old law it was the flesh of calves and goats that was offered, but here Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness of this sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in his passion.
—
O Sacred Banquet!
In which: Christ is received, the memory of his passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us. Alleluia!
The post Corpus Christi and the Cult of Eden | Corpus Christi 2024 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Happy Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity! Today is also my 6th anniversary of priesthood!
CCC #1:
“God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself,
in a plan of sheer goodness
freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.
For this reason, at every time and in every place,
God draws close to man.
He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength.
He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin,
into the unity of his family, the Church.
To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come,
God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour.
In his Son and through him, he invites men to become,
in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children
and thus heirs of his blessed life.”
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A blessed Pentecost!!
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We continue to move through this Easter season, filled with gladness and fully aware of the magnitude of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. For weeks now, we’ve heard of the work and faith of the early Church through these readings from the Acts of the Apostles, and the second readings have filled us with practical wisdom and exhortations from Ss. Peter, Paul, and John the Beloved.
But if you’ve listened closely to the first readings from the Acts of the Apostles, you will notice that those early days of Easter joy were not without conflict. What did it mean to follow Christ? Was it only for Jews or for everyone? Did the Gentiles have to become Jews and then follow this new way within the context of Judaism or was the new covenant with Jesus something definitively new?
Today, we encounter one such difficulty: what do we do with Saul? “When Saul arrived in Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing he was a disciple.” Do you blame them? Not that long ago, he was persecuting Christians – pulling them from their homes in acts of public humiliation, even consenting to their murder – and now he’s here, supposedly as one of us?
Who is “us”, though? Who are we? Christianity goes horribly, horribly wrong, when we forget that we are a community of “Sauls” – all of us having strayed from God and from the message of the Gospel in little and big ways.
So forget about those worried about Saul, and let’s talk about Saul…and, thereby, let’s talk about you, and me.
“You are only as sick as your secrets. Jesus, on the cross, with arms outstretched and offering himself for you in love, says: let your secrets go.”
This is the difficult work of believing in Christ Jesus. So few of us really have access to the deepest places of our humanity, and generally this is because we are the ones who have locked those doors ourselves: out of fear of what might be there, or what we know is there, or, sometimes, out of fear of what we know is not there.
A person’s heart, his interiority, is meant to be his sanctuary and his sure refuge in a world consumed by the madness of war and sin. But so many of us – from the oldest to the youngest, from the holiest monk on the mountain to those just arriving at the age of reason – feel condemned by what we find or don’t find in there.
We find so much familiarity in that marvelous song from the band, The Oh Hellos:
I have made mistakes, and continue to make them
The promises I’ve made, I continue to break them
And all the doubts I’ve faced, I continue to face them.
And oh my heat, how can I face you now?
When we both know how badly I’ve let you down,
And I’m afraid of all that I’ve built
Fading away.
Did you catch the second reading today? “We shall reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” (1 John 3:19-20)
Everyone has hurts in their hearts, and most of the time the secrets that we carry around with us are the source of so much unresolved pain or grief that the very thought of revealing those secrets to our friends or parents, or even to God, is terrifying.
This is the difficult work of believing in Christ Jesus: to sit in silence before our secrets, before the very difficult realities of our human situation, especially before the hurts we have endured and those we have caused. Sitting before these things and believing the lie that because of them we are condemned and without hope is actually very easy.
The truly difficult work of believing in Christ Jesus is the work of looking at everything as it is, all the secrets, all the ways we are tempted to give up God, all the ways our pride or envy or greed or sloth or lust or anger or gluttony has kept us shackled and sad, and to not give in to the voices that say “you are condemned”, “everything is hopeless”, “abandon hope ye who enter here.”
The truly difficult work is to sit before these things and, in utter bewilderment and with seemingly exclusive evidence to the contrary, hear that whisper of Jesus who says: “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” “Let your secrets go.”
Maybe over the course of these 40 days of prayer, penance, and almsgiving you will experience a profound and life-altering encounter with Jesus who loves you, and calls you to himself. But I don’t think this is ultimately the goal of Lent.
Easter is a privileged time, and we have to enter into it with reverence and seriousness. These days are a gift to us because in some sense they requires us to unlock those little doors inside, and take the big step of peering around inside, so that we might finally be able to go into the most secret places, wherein we have locked away the most secret things, and – again in utter bewilderment – look with a non-distracted and purified vision, and instead of seeing those gnarly secrets, we might be shocked to find the gaze of the Father staring back at us as the darkest places become flooded with light, and he says something like, “Now, in the light of the Risen Jesus, who has conquered your heart, let me show you who are, and tell you at what price you have been purchased, and remind whose you are.”
“In every believer flows the spring of the new glory. If we take this word seriously, faith is not easy. Everything in and around us contradicts it, often with arguments difficult to refute…We might be asked the embarrassing question, “whether the redeemed shouldn’t look more redeemed?”…The Christian himself must struggle to sustain the promise against his own not-too-convincing personal experience. This is what John means when he says that our true selves are yet hidden – not only to others, but to ourselves. Nevertheless, the intrinsic splendor is there and grows in spite of all weaknesses.” (Romano Guardini)
The old things you decided to give up during Lent, and the new things you have decided to take up; all your acts of penance and prayer; all your charitable acts and almsgiving; all of your sufferings and difficulties of those 40 days won’t heal you in themselves, and they’re not meant to. What power do getting up on time, eating more broccoli, not drinking pop, giving up Instagram, or only allowing 10 minutes a day on Snapchat have to heal you? None. Zero.
The point of it all is quiet you, to settle you, to redirect you; that all the ways we choose ourselves over God might be called out and abandoned; that all the things we do when we’re hiding from God, from each other, and from ourselves might be obliterated absolutely.
And what purpose does this quieting, redirecting, settling, and obliterating serve?
Simply, to reintroduce you to yourself so that you might (and maybe this time once and for all) believe that you are known and that you are loved, and that you are not your mistakes and regrets, and that because of your baptism there is a river of glory already flowing within you, and that you might believe you do have the courage to be open with yourself, your friends, and God and that you might hear – for the first time, even very faintly – the voice of Jesus who says: “you are only as sick as your secrets; let your secrets go.”
“We have lived in fear, and our fear has betrayed us;
But we are not alone in the dark with our demons.” (The Oh Hellos, “I Have Made Mistakes”)
And all this so we can say in simplicity, again with that incredible band, the Oh Hellos:
Hello, my old heart
How have you been?
Are you still there inside my chest?
I’ve been so worried, you’ve been so still,
barely beating at all.
Hello, my old heart
It’s been so long
Since I’ve given you away
And every day, I add another stone
To the walls I built around you
To keep you safe.
Hello, my old heart
How have you been?
How is it, being locked away?
Don’t worry, in there you’re safe
And it’s true: you’ll never beat,
But you’ll never break.
Nothing lasts forever,
Some things aren’t meant to be
But you’ll never find the answers
Until you set your old heart free
Until you set your old heart free.
So rend those hearts, open them to God! Be true with yourself, be true with others. For freedom! For freedom!!
Here is my honest advice for entering more fully into prayer, and it is what I’m trying harder than ever before to do:
Remember that in this moment you are as old as you’ve ever been, and you’re as young as you’ll ever be. “I want to ask you…as best I can, to have patience about everything that is still unresolved in your heart; try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms. … Don’t look for the answers now: they cannot be given to you yet because you cannot yet live them, and what matters is to live everything.
“[This] is difficult, yes. But difficult things are what we are asked to do. Almost everything that matters is difficult, and everything matters.” (Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 4)
Let us pray.
“O God, what will you do to conquer the fearful hardness of our hearts? Lord, you must give us new hearts, tender hearts, sensitive hearts, to replace hearts that are made of marble and bronze.
You must give us your own heart, Jesus. Come, lovable heart of Jesus. Place your heart deep in the center of our hearts and enkindle in each heart a flame of love.
O Holy Heart of Jesus, dwell hidden in my heart, so that I may live only in you and only for you, so that, in the end, I may live with you forever.
Amen.”
(Prayer of St. Claude la Colombiere)
The post Saul’s Heart (and Ours) | 5th Sunday of Easter 2024 appeared first on Love Speaks..
“It is likely he will lead you by strange and difficult roads.” -who knows
“The final question I will leave with you is this:
Are Christians the masters of Christianity,
deciding what it should be?
Or is Christ who, through his Spirit,
takes hold of you and leads you
where you do not want to go?” (Cardinal Lustiger)
“Here I am Lord,
Here is my body,
Here is my heart,
Here is my soul.
Grant that I may be big enough to reach the world,
Strong enough to carry it.
Pure enough to embrace it without wanting to keep it.
Grant that I may be a meeting-place, but a temporary one,
A road that does not end in itself, because everything to be gathered there,
everything human, must be led to you.” (Michael Quoist, Prayer on a Sunday Night)
The post Strange and Difficult Roads | Good Shepherd Sunday appeared first on Love Speaks..
“Something unexpected is our only hope.” (Eugenio Montale)
The post Something Unexpected | Easter 2024 appeared first on Love Speaks..
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Book of Hours, I 59
The post The Seriousness of Life & Going Forward with Jesus | Palm Sunday 2024 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! He’s my confirmation saint and an amazing saint!
So I’ll never stop giving thanks to my God, who kept me faithful in the time of my temptation. I can today with confidence offer my soul to Christ my Lord as a living victim[Nota]. He is the one who defended me in all my difficulties. I can say: Who am I, Lord, or what is my calling, that you have worked with me with such divine presence[Nota]? This is how I come to praise and magnify your name among the nations all the time, wherever I am, not only in good times but in the difficult times too. Whatever comes about for me, good or bad, I ought to accept them equally and give thanks to God. He has shown me that I can put my faith in him without wavering and without end. However ignorant I am, he has heard me, so that in these late days I can dare to undertake such a holy and wonderful work. In this way I can imitate somewhat those whom the Lord foretold would announce his gospel in witness to all nations before the end of the world. This is what we see has been fulfilled. Look at us: we are witnesses that the gospel has been preached right out to where there is nobody else there! (To the end of the world)
The post St. Patrick: A Saint for Our Times | 3/17/24 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Homily from Ss Peter and Paul in Naperville, Illinois for the 4th Sunday of Lent (Laetare) Year B, 3/12/24.
The post This is the World God So Loves | 4th Sunday of Lent 2024 appeared first on Love Speaks..
John 4: 5-42
Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar,
near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there.
Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.
It was about noon.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
Jesus said to her,
“Give me a drink.”
His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to him,
“How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
—For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.—
Jesus answered and said to her,
“If you knew the gift of God
and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘
you would have asked him
and he would have given you living water.”
The woman said to him,
“Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep;
where then can you get this living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob,
who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself
with his children and his flocks?”
Jesus answered and said to her,
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;
but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;
the water I shall give will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him,
“Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty
or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her,
“Go call your husband and come back.”
The woman answered and said to him,
“I do not have a husband.”
Jesus answered her,
“You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’
For you have had five husbands,
and the one you have now is not your husband.
What you have said is true.”
The woman said to him,
“Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.
Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain;
but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her,
“Believe me, woman, the hour is coming
when you will worship the Father
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You people worship what you do not understand;
we worship what we understand,
because salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour is coming, and is now here,
when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth;
and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.
God is Spirit, and those who worship him
must worship in Spirit and truth.”
The woman said to him,
“I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ;
when he comes, he will tell us everything.”
Jesus said to her,
“I am he, the one speaking with you.”
At that moment his disciples returned,
and were amazed that he was talking with a woman,
but still no one said, “What are you looking for?”
or “Why are you talking with her?”
The woman left her water jar
and went into the town and said to the people,
“Come see a man who told me everything I have done.
Could he possibly be the Christ?”
They went out of the town and came to him.
Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat.”
But he said to them,
“I have food to eat of which you do not know.”
So the disciples said to one another,
“Could someone have brought him something to eat?”
Jesus said to them,
“My food is to do the will of the one who sent me
and to finish his work.
Do you not say, ‘In four months the harvest will be here’?
I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest.
The reaper is already receiving payment
and gathering crops for eternal life,
so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together.
For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’
I sent you to reap what you have not worked for;
others have done the work,
and you are sharing the fruits of their work.”
Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him
because of the word of the woman who testified,
“He told me everything I have done.”
When the Samaritans came to him,
they invited him to stay with them;
and he stayed there two days.
Many more began to believe in him because of his word,
and they said to the woman,
“We no longer believe because of your word;
for we have heard for ourselves,
and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”
The post Hearing the Truth About Ourselves is Step #1 | 3rd Sunday of Lent 2024 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Merry Christmas, everyone! To learn more about the Apollo 8 mission and their famous Christmas message from December 24, 1968...click here.
The post Apollo 8’s Message and the Goodness of the World | Christmas 2023 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Happy Advent!
The post Watch, Especially When It Stinks | 1st Week of Advent 2023 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Happy Solemnity of Christ the King! I was home for thanksgiving, and glad to preach at Ss. Peter and Paul in Naperville.
The vibe of the kingdom is mercy!! And all I have to say to that is, “what a relief.”
The post What is the Vibe of the Kingdom of God? appeared first on Love Speaks..
The Body Keeps the Score: https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748
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Here’s the link to Etymonline, the Etymology dictionary: https://www.etymonline.com/ And also to the readings for the week: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091023.cfm
The post The Most Ignored Teaching Ever | 11 September 2023 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Read the readings!! https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090323.cfm Here’s what I’m looking at while going through the Latin Vulgate text of Jeremiah 20: https://vulgate.org/ot/jeremiah_20.htm Have you fallen in love with www.greekbible.com yet? And just because: St Therese’s poem to
The post Tingly Ears: Jeremiah, Peter, and a Huge Lesson appeared first on Love Speaks..
Click here the link to the autobiography/interview book with Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa I mention in the podcast. And the moving section from Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word (Vol. 2) where Merikakis puts words on
The post “Lord, Help Me”: Jesus and the Canannite Woman | 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 appeared first on Love Speaks..
If you’re not using www.greekbible.com to help you read the Gospels, then what are you doing? Here’s the second part of the excerpt I read in the Podcast from Vol. II of Merikakis’ Fire of
The post What Peter’s Desire Requires | 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 appeared first on Love Speaks..
This week I am pivoting to a bit longer form of the podcast…take a listen and be sure to subscribe for weekly newsletters to your inbox at ryanadorjan.com/subscribe. The quote from Merikakis’ commentary on Matthew, Fire
The post Peter and the Transfiguration | Transfiguration 2023 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Whoever is in Christ is a new creation. What else does this mean except that in Jesus, because of Jesus, with Jesus…everything is different. That it is possible to live a life without fear, without
The post The Jealous Pearl | 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time appeared first on Love Speaks..
Homily for the Baccalaureate Mass
Chesterton Academy of The Holy Family
25 May 2023 – Ss. Peter and Paul, Naperville
—
Dear members of the Board of Directors; dear Mr. Ellison and my esteemed colleagues, the faculty and staff; to you, dear family, friends, and honor guests; and to you, brothers and sisters in Jesus, the honored Chesterton Academy Class of 2023:
Those who went to Rome with us last March might remember the day everyone’s favorite Joe Long had to take a step back from our group and attend to an under-the-weather child. You might remember the sound of shuffling in your Whisper set earpieces as he quickly removed his tour-guide microphone and handed it to me saying, “here give the tour of this church,” and the soft muttering of me saying something back to him I shouldn’t repeat in the context of Holy Mass.
The church in question, you might remember, was the Santuario Madonna del Perpetuo Soccorso, the Church of St. Alphonso’s Ligouri and the home of the original icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. This is a church that – until that moment – I had entered exactly one time and knew less than nothing about.
So we hurried out of there and began what seemed to many of you to be a Green Mile of the brightly colored Roman buildings of the Via Merulana. “How nice this is!” I told you. “Look, we’re in a regular everyday neighborhood! How fun!” Shortly before we reemerged in the Piazza San Giovanni and turned toward the Colosseum, I pointed out to you a Metro Stop about which I was more than a little excited.
It was the stop at the Viale Manzoni, and you might remember why I was so excited.
Alessandro Manzoni, who lived from 1785 to 1873, is one of Italy’s most famous writers. His book, I Promessi Sposi – The Betrothed is credited with doing for the Italian language what only one other work of literature ever did: Dante’s Divine Comedy, written some 500 years before. Manzoni is known as the Father of the Modern Italian language, and The Betrothed is the most hated book by Italian high school students who must study it over and over in a way similar to our own obsession with Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
The Betrothed belongs to a category of 19th century novel which Henry James described as a “loose baggy monster.” The English translation is a whopping 720 pages that comprise (in my opinion) a novel that is at once thrilling and life-changing, painfully boring and really too wordy, and is, at the end of the day, in the top 3 books I have ever read.
It is a truly Catholic story: a young priest who has no time for mercy or the details of his peoples’ lives causes great harm to young Renzo and Lucia, and one small decision of Don Abbondio unleashes a storyline that leads the young couple to depth of hell, to the height of glory, and to the fulness of the human experience.
It’s a book whose details remind us of the timelessness of human folly, and the eternal ramifications of both generosity and selfishness, and gives credence to what we learn from Quoheleth in the Book of Ecclesiastes: there is truly nothing new under the sun.
In The Betrothed we meet busy-body church ladies, and young men who have no vision for the future; set in the 1628 in the midst of Spanish rule of Milan, Italy, the book takes place in a time of great civil strife with great discord in local and national politics, and even includes a highly politicized pandemic – a plague, in fact – the civil discourse around which probably caused far more damage to life in Milan than the disease itself……..
We encounter the saintly Archbishop of Milan who teaches Don Abbondio (and every priest who reads the book) a lesson about the priestly heart, and we see such a heart exemplified in the Capuchin hero, Fr. Cristoforo, who changes the course of so many things simply by his fidelity to his vocation and the witness he gives.
Sent all over the place by his order, Fr. Cristoforo lands eventually at the Lazaretto, the community of exiles suffering from the plague just outside of Milan, where he rises through the ranks and becomes the rector of the place, overseeing every aspect of care. In one of the most moving sections of the novel, right near the end, the jaded and bitter Renzo – having lost all hope of ever being able to marry his beloved Lucia – meets Fr Cristoforo and listens to the speech he gives to those men and women who, by God’s grace, had been healed of the plague and were ready to be sent out into Milan; immune from the plague’s effects, they were called to serve even the poorest and most needy, even if only by the witness of their lives.
Let us give heed to the many thousands who must remain here today, and who do not know by which road they will leave this place when their time comes. Let us take heed for ourselves, so small a band, who leave it in safety. Blessed by the Lord! Blessed in his justice, blessed in his mercy! Blessed in death, and blessed in health! Blessed in the choice that he has made in saving us. And why did he make that choice? … Was it not to make us feel more keenly that this life is a gift of his hands, to be cherished as a thing given by him, to be used in works we can offer up to him? Was it not so that the memory of our own sufferings might make us compassionate and helpful to our neighbors?
Think now of those others, in whose company we have known pain, and hope, and fear; among whom we leave friends and relations, and all of whom are our brothers. (666)
Think now of this place, dear graduates, and all the work you’ve done…of all the people you’ve met. Think now of all the pain, and hope, and fear; and joy, and heartbreak, and betrayal, and reconciliation, and growth, and fruit, and peace.
The Class of 2023 is the largest graduating class in the history of Chesterton Academy of The Holy Family; you are the first class of two sections. You are a class that has called on us as an institution to refine what we are doing; your size but also your intellect and heart is itself a fruit of the mission of this place, a mission that has challenged you as you have challenged it and – by this mutual challenge, this mutual encouragement – I firmly that each has grown. This is the way it is supposed to work.
You are a class that has grown and shrunk. You are a class that received transfer students in sophomore, junior, and senior years. Many of you sitting here before us tonight could never have imagined as you graduated eighth grade that you’d be here with us. But we’re glad you are.
Fr. Cristoforo continues:
Those of them who see us pass through their midst will perhaps be cheered to see someone get out here alive; but let them also be edified by our conduct and bearing. God forbid that they should see in us a noisy gaiety, an earthly rejoicing at having escaped from that death with which they are still wrestling. Let them see us go forth thanking God for our safety, and praying God that they too may be saved. Let them say to themselves: “Even when they are outside, those people will not forget us, and will pray for us.”
While it was the weirdness of our own pandemic that brought many in this class to Chesterton, it is our own confrontation with the weirdness and lopsidedness of the aboriginal pandemic, the one for which everybody forgets there is already an ultimate cure, the plague of sin, that has given us pause and has been the source of our own internal wrestling.
Let no one here think that he or she is, by their own effort, immune from this plague. It is by our own effort that things fall apart, when we lose sight of who we are and where we’ve come from and where we’re called to go. The evil one is nasty, and he’s relentless, and he’s clever. But Jesus who calls you away from the old life obsessed with sin and death, has a yolk that is sweet and light. He is our brother, our companion, our redeemer.
And it is precisely here that we get to the heart of what your time at Chesterton has been about. You are moving from this place. Thank God. No really, thank God. It would be wrong for you stay even one moment longer than the appointed time.
The simple of mission of this place is to give you a time and a place and a community where you can be introduced to the most Sacred Mysteries of all, that you might become acutely more aware that life is worth living, and that there is so much beauty in being human, and that this beauty will help you learn to seek the good; and that, as I have said so many times, you would move from choosing the good because you are afraid of the consequences of being bad to choosing good because you love what is good. “May you love what is good and become what you love.”
Having been formed in this way, having tasted this fruit and having seen a glimpse of this vision, you are called to go where God is calling you: always higher, always deeper; further up, and further in. You are set free from the shackles of this place, as Paul was in the first reading, not to run whimsically and without vision through the passage of time, but to go out and strong and to bear witness to what you have learned, and to the One whom you have come to know.
Fr. Cristoforo again:
Let us begin a new life from the first moments of this journey, from the first steps we take along this road – a new life which shall be all charity. Let those of us who have got back all their strength give a brotherly arm to the weak! Let the young help the old! … And as your charity cancels our your sins, so it will soften your own grief.” (667)
Dear Class of 2023,
I ask you now to pray for us, your teachers and staff and families and friends. I am always moved by the way Fr. Cristoforo finishes his speech to those preparing to leave and live a new life:
I speak both for myself and for all my companions, who without any merit of our own have been chosen for the high honor of serving Christ by serving you, and I beg your forgiveness most humbly if we have failed in so great a mission. If idleness or rebellion of the flesh have made us inattentive to your needs, or slow to come to your call;…if our human frailty has led us into any action that has been of scandal to you – forgive us! And so may God forgive you all your debts, and bless you.”
I know that I speak for each of your teachers when I echo those marvelous words of Jesus in the Gospel tonight: “Father, they are your gift to me.” Being a priest is a gift, being your teacher is a gift, being your brother on this strange and varied pilgrim way is a gift.
Being your mom is a gift. Being your dad is a gift. Being your friend is a gift. Being your sibling is a gift. Being able to know you, and to help you grow is a gift. And I hope that you can look at us and say, somehow and maybe from a very deep place, that because you have been here and because you have known us, you too have been given a great gift.
So go out and bear witness. Be brave in your vocations, be steadfast in your prayer, be truthful in your relationships, and be kind to all (especially to your mom).
And be grateful.
Let me leave you with the words Manzoni uses to end The Betrothed, probably my very favorite ending of any novel I’ve ever read:
After a long debate, and much heart-searching they came to the conclusion that troubles very often come because we have asked for them; but that the most prudent and innocent of conduct is not necessarily enough to keep them away; also that when they come, through our fault or otherwise, trust in God goes far to take away their sting, and makes them useful preparation for a better life.
This conclusion may have been reached by humble folk, but we find it so just, that we have decided to place it here, as the very essence of our story.
If the story has given you any pleasure, think kindly of the man who wrote it….But if on the other hand we have only succeeded in boring you, please believe that we did not do so on purpose.
The post Cristoforo’s Farewell: The Grad Speech Manzoni Wrote appeared first on Love Speaks..
Here’s my homily from the Ascension, at the 7pm Mass on May 21 at Ss. Peter and Paul in Naperville!
Detail, “The Ascension”, Rembrandt, 1636 – oil on canvas.The picture for this post is Rembrandt’s “Ascension”, which you can read more about by clicking here.
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In the midst of many priest moves being announced, we’ll be hearing things like, “It’s about Jesus! Not the priest!” and that’s true enough. Just Google “Ex Opere Operato” and you’ll see why.
But while our life in the parish is not about the priest…it’s also a little bit about the priest. When you feel like you have a connection to the priest, when you feel like he’s a person who understands you and joins you in your human struggles, the spiritual life becomes much more relatable and real.
Take a listen to my homily from this year’s Good Shepherd Sunday, available below.
The post “It isn’t (and also is) about the priest.” | 4th Sunday of Easter 2023 – Good Shepherd Sunday appeared first on Love Speaks..
Happy Easter! He is risen, as he said!!
You can watch my homily from Naperville here, or listen to the audio below. I have no idea why the thumbnail is Jeff Cavins…
The post Totally New | Easter Sunday 2023 appeared first on Love Speaks..
So let us spread before his feet, not garments or soulless olive branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, but ourselves, clothed in his grace, or rather, clothed completely in him. We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that we spread before him. Now that the crimson stains of our sins have been washed away in the saving waters of baptism and we have become white as pure wool, let us present the conqueror of death, not with mere branches of palms but with the real rewards of his victory. Let our souls take the place of the welcoming branches as we join today in the children’s holy song: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel.
Hosanna in the highest!
The post Palm Sunday 2023 appeared first on Love Speaks..
St. Claude la Colombiere: 1641- 1682; feast day is Feb 15.
Connections: Jean-Claude; Feb 15; 1992; Arrival in Paray on December 27
On Becoming Holy
I do not give up hope, however, of arriving at that degree of holiness which my vocation demands. But that is something I foresee will take a long time.
On Honesty With Ourselves
How I fear for my salvation when I see how inconstant I am. I am now happy, now sad: today I am friendly with everyone, tomorrow I am like a hedgehog that no one can touch without being pricked. This is a sign that nature still reigns within us, that our passions are still unmortified and that we have very little virtue. A man who leans on God is immovable and cannot be overthrown. Whatever happens that is annoying, he is pleased because he has no other will than that of God. O happy, peaceful state; but we must fight to attain it.
As perfection exists in trying to please God in everything and to please him only, we must not hesitate when we get an opportunity of pleasing him and of being praised by him, however much we displease men and lose their esteem.
Friendship with Jesus
Jesus, you are my only true friend.
You share in my troubles, you bear them with me, you know the secret of bringing good out of them for me. You listen to me kindly when I tell you of my afflictions and you never fail to soften them.
I can always find you everywhere; you never go away, and if I am obliged to change my dwelling I never fail to find you in the place where I have gone.
You are never tired of hearing my voice; you never weary of doing me good. I am assured of being loved if I love you. You do not need all that I possess and you are not in any way poorer for giving to me what you possess.
However wretched I am, a more noble, finer, or even a holier spirit will never replace me. As for death, which snatches from us all our other friends, it will only reunite me with you.
None of the disgraces of age or the disfavors of fortune can separate me from you; on the contrary, I will never enjoy your presence more fully, you will never be closer than when all is most in my disfavor.
You suffer my shortcomings with admirable patience; even my unfaithfulness, my ungratefulness does not stop you from always coming back to me if I so wish.
Oh Jesus, grant me the grace of desiring this so that I may be all yours for all time and all eternity. Amen.
Prayer for Holiness
“Oh my God, do I still desire something that is not you? What have I come here to seek if it be not you? My soul, are you tired of your God? O loving God, how wondering it would be if someday you should use my weakness to withdraw a soul from sin! If all that is required is my will, I give it to you with all my heart…Make me holy, O my God, and do not spare me in the making, for I want to be yours, whatever the cost.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Other Meditations
On Matthew 5:28
“The Lord makes an extraordinary moral shift, away from a more material morality of external deed to the interior forum of a person’s heart. The psychological insight is simple and keen: that the human glance is not neutral, that our perceptions are full of intentionality, that we do not go from a neutral “awareness” to an external “deed”. As St. Augustine demonstrated so persuasively, the human spirit is such an active and creative agent that it is always seeking some connection, some effect, some relation in which to cast itself and realize its desires and needs. We look and gaze at something, not simply in order to perceive it, but in order to understand it, or judge it, or possess it, or enjoy it, or love it, or exploit it…
“The whole reality of what a person is already exists interiorly in potency before it becomes externalized in concrete deeds. The life that others see, the environment that I create around myself, the effect my life has upon others – all are results of the state of things in the chamber of my heart. It is my heart that is either paradise or hell, torture chamber or bridal chamber for myself and for others…My life and my actions in the world faithfully reproduce and project the microcosm of my heart. The heart always comes first, and it is there – at the core of my being – that conversion, illumination, and self-sacrifice must begin.”
From Romano Guardini (1885-1968)
“In every believer flows the spring of the new glory. If we take this word seriously, faith is not easy. Everything in and around us contradicts it, often with arguments difficult to refute. It can be pointed out that the greatest power and weightiest deeds come from elsewhere. We might be asked the embarrassing question, ‘whether the redeemed shouldn’t look more redeemed?‘ But after all, the stupendous claim is not of our making, nor proved by our existence; we have it from Revelation, from God’s own words. The Christian himself must struggle to sustain the promise against his own not-too-convincing personal experience. This is what John means when he says that our true selves are yet hidden – not only to others, but to ourselves. Nevertheless, the intrinsic splendor is there and grows in spite of all weaknesses.”
The post St. Claude Day Talk appeared first on Love Speaks..
I preached this Sunday at St. Anne’s in Oswego, and it’s always a joy to be back there.
It’s also Word of God Sunday, so I preached on the essential messages of the Scriptures we can see in the readings this week.
- The Light has shone for the people in darkness;
- Repent, turn around, so you can be free to follow Him;
- We are called to be one with God and with each other, and our unity makes a difference in the evangelization and salvation of the world.
Take a listen!
The post The Lego Titanic and Word of God Sunday | 3rd Week in Ordinary Time 2023 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Please enjoy this homily, given this morning at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome by my great friend, Fr. Jim Olofson.
You can find the readings here.
The post Hope, Mary, and Benedict XVI | Mary, Mother of God 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Merry Christmas, everyone! Here’s my homily from the 5pm Christmas Eve Mass at Ss. Peter and Paul in Naperville.
The post Drastic Measures | Christmas 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Brick and River by Brennan Robinson
There was a brick on the bridge’s bottom,
Who had wearied of what elders taught him
In song they’d sing about being a brick,
The joy with brother to bridge bottom stick.
But hardly he heeded lore of the lot
And often in dream to water he plot.
Shouting in wonder at water below.
‘tell of your journeys over reed and stone!’
The whipping water hadn’t time to tell,
But bouncing off rock it bellowed a yell:
“From mountains to marsh, to myriads more;
I’ve seen trees dance and dandelions soar.
Wind is my brother, and stone is my work,
If you’d to see, off the bridge you would jerk.”
The brick shook at the sound, and stirred a hope;
Mortar chipped off, how desperate he groped.
“To mountains and marshes, wild as wind,
Let me loose to the lore of creatures finned.”
He wriggle and fought, begging the weather,
“Send rain, oh sky, to loosen my tether.
Too long my burden buried under brick,
To journey, and change, to nothing ill stick.
I’ll fly in flow with fish and feet kicking,
Oh the freedom to nothing be sticking!”
The sky gave it’s rain and loosened the grime,
He would feel his fall in not long a time:
For subtle a budge he gave the brittle,
And burst from the bridge alone and little.
“Im flying!” he felt, “to marshes and more”
But breaching the water, he quick hit the floor.
He shook and struggled but sand kept him still,
He soon felt the flow, but fleeting his thrill.
Now without warmth from brothers of brick
His only encounters were bumps from sticks.
Down there for days he lie in his lonesome,
Low and longing he recalled his homesong:
“We brothers of brick here buried beneath,
Are bridging two lands of marvelous heath,
A burden we bear but none else we’d be,
For our life as bricks is far beyond we.
To mountains and meadows, by man we’re made
By kings we’re cross’d, so no river they’d wade,
For fellow or queen or army brigade,
For greatest of journeys here we remain.”
His humming soon hollowed as hope seem’d drown,
He dared only dream a brother come down.
Water whipped over and purpose it stole,
From brick to stone he felt corners grow dull.
And up above the brothers so mourned,
Feeling his fall with middle now torn.
They rustled and rubbed and loosened the lime,
Their future demise was matter of time.
Until, splash and sprinkle, brick and glue fell
One a top other, no order to tell.
Bumping and jumping, a total collapse,
They fell to their future, no land to grasp
__
To his surprise, the brick found his brothers,
he shouted with joy over confusion and mutters:
“Bricks of my bridge and bearers of burden,
Lonely I’ve been with future uncertain.
Waiting and wanting the warmth of your weight,
Cold and bitter have been my days of late.
Even as I speak the rush is slowing,
for side by side we’ve ceased waters flowing.”
Indeed he was right for fruit of their jam,
Was watered now bundled up in a dam.
The stream stopped still and the current silenced,
Water then whined with vehement violence.
“Why have we stopped, until sea we must go!”
All seemed to point to a brick down below.
There he recalled elder voices so true,
That “Being a brick is not about you.”
The post Great News: It’s Not About You | Gaudete Sunday 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Here we are at the beginning of the new Church year and……..we’re talking about the end? Again. But we can’t be fooled into thinking that the end, the fulfillment of life in the new kingdom, is supposed to be anything like the intense images left with us by John the Baptist in the Gospel today. How can we imagine that the end which the God of Love has in mind will consist of winnowing fans, violent separation of the wheat and the chaff? Is the incense in heaven around the throne of God no more than the thick, black smoke of burning chaff? I hope not.
The prophet Isaiah tells the rest of the story. Isaiah describes the striking down of the ruthless and justice for the poor; the wicked will be slain merely by the breath from God’s lips; the Lord will come to restore Jerusalem, the mighty city now sitting in ruins. Then, once the Lord comes with his faithfulness and justice, what does Isaiah speak of? Smoke and fire and destruction? Quite the opposite. He speaks of paradise. Enemies – wolves and lambs, calves and lions – are lying down together being led by the meek and humble – the children; those to whom the new kingdom belongs.
The reading from Isaiah is so satisfying to us precisely because it does not end with death and destruction, but with newness and harmony – the desire for which lives within each of us. This desire is stirred up into flame after watching 30 seconds of the evening news. All of this starts when a shoot sprouts up from the stump of Jesse. A stump….how do you make a tree into a stump? By cutting it down. I can think of very few reasons why someone would be compelled to cut down a perfectly healthy tree.
Jesse, as we know, was the father of King David; the Davidic line – the family tree of Jesse – went bad. But as God promised through the prophets and patriarchs, there would be a new “springtime” for Israel and, indeed, a shoot of new life sprouts precisely from the place of destruction. But in order for the shoot to sprout, for spring to come, the tree must be chopped down. As it was for the unfaithful and unrighteous in Israel, so it was for the Pharisees and Sadducees being rebuked by John the Baptist, and so it is for us. “Even now, the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
But is that so bad? Like all things in the Christian life, this is not something we’re called to consider as happening to us as a human collective. Remember, God comes to save all of us, and he comes to save each of us. Therefore, the call to repentance is a call to you and me as much as it is to “that lady” over there, or to “those people.” Advent becomes a time not just for sappy daily reflections in our email inboxes about looking out for the big stars in our lives or becoming Mary to someone at work today, but it becomes an invitation for us to allow Christ to strike at the root of what keeps us from him, in order that new shoots may sprout. Where are the places in this community, this city and parish, where Christ is not welcome? The Israelites wavered because they did not live faithfully to the covenant; we too are in a covenant and we should expect the same disastrous results of disharmony when we stray from it.
The promise of paradise-renewed made to the Israelites is realized in the very person of Jesus Christ who, as a result of his Incarnation, lives among us. God doesn’t want a world full of “generic saints.” God desires a world in which Ryan Adorjan is holy; in which Debbie Johnson and Joe Shmoe and Connie Smith and even Ryan McMillin are holy. Not that they would quit their jobs and move to monasteries to pray for hours each day; remember, holiness is not a matter of virtue but of where we go with our pain. Where do we go when we feel the desire for newness and harmony in the world and in our lives? It is not a matter of “inviting Jesus into this or that place” in our lives; “I’ll just invite Jesus in and it’ll all be fine.” He’s already there – why would he call himself “Emmanuel” if he wasn’t God with us? So it’s not us inviting him, but him inviting us. Where? Into himself.
So ask: What are the parts of my life that I allow to go on living in the present age? What are the parts of my life which have not been surrendered to the power of the Risen Christ? How does sin or mediocrity or puny desire keep me from really living in the new kingdom? Ask these questions – these admittedly very difficult questions – then listen.
We come here today to renew our commitment to the covenant made with us in the blood of Jesus Christ. It is here that God principally reveals himself to us and calls us to himself. The Eucharist we’ll receive today is, really, the living God. May it be the strength we need to produce good fruit, to turn away from what keeps us from him, and begin anew in preparing the way of the Lord.
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There’s a lot of whiplash in the priesthood.
The time surrounding my ordination to the priesthood in May 2018 was so joyful. We were ordained in late May and didn’t start in our parishes until almost July, so we had about a month for trips, and a “victory tour” of the diocese – celebrating Mass at the various parishes where we’d grown up, or served as deacons, or lived during our pastoral internships.
These were days filled with cards and well-wishes, visits from friends, and a sense of optimism about the future.
When we moved in to our parishes, all 7 of us had the same letter waiting for us…
FROM: Diocese of Joliet CHANCELLOR
PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL (in red ink, of course)
“Dear Father, Congratulations on your ordination and welcome to parish ministry. Please find the enclosed funeral planning forms which the Diocese will keep on record for the event of your death. Every effort will be made to honor your wishes.”
It makes sense, of course, and I’m glad they did it sooner rather than later. But the whiplash from life to death was almost laughable. I picked everything including where I want the funeral Mass celebrated, where I want to be buried, what readings and music I’d like, who I want to preach the homily, even who I’d like the pallbearers to be. (We’re allowed to update these whenever we want)
For my pallbearers, I asked them to track down every person I worked on a group project with in high school so those people could let me down, one more time. (That’s a joke)
It got me thinking about my own death, and for some reason I have always had this desire to die in the late autumn. I realize that the whens & wheres of my death are not up to me, but if I had my druthers I think I would like it to be late November, sometime around Christ the King and the 1st Sunday of Advent.
Part of this is logistical – if I die in winter, they’ll stick me in a fridge or something until the ground thaws; if I die in summer, well…I’ve done too many graveside services that are hot and sticky, and everyone who attends those is sad because it’s hot and stick and not because the person is dead.
But the real meaning/reasoning is much deeper, and I have trouble putting it into words. So, this week I just used someone else’s words. One of my favorite authors is Michael D. O’Brien, who wrote Island of the World, Theophilos, Father Elijah, and Sophia House to name only a few. He has a marvelous essay on Christian culture, the dying of the year, and Advent. I used it in my homily this weekend, and I think you’ll find it extremely edifying.
Here’s an excerpt:
“In late autumn, everything is stripped to its essential form…
Within that pungent aroma was the smell of acorns, containing messages about death and rebirth. Along with it came the underlying sense that written into creation are “words” from our Creator, for God has designed all living things, even the simplest, to bear a kind of witness to larger truths. An acorn, a maple key, pips in a pine cone, even the lowly mustard seed—tiny, deceptively simple—contain a vast library of meaning. A seed is so much more than just a code for replicating itself, more than an investment in a distant Spring. More than just a statement of faith on the part of a tree, a biological equivalent to the virtue of hope. A seed is a kingdom, a world really. It has the future wrapped tightly in every cell, waiting to unfold; entire forests lie buried in each small kernel.”
“Advent, placed so strategically at the dying of the year, is good training for this. We must not be like the ancient pagans who watched the coming of winter with a kind of terror-stricken obsession, mesmerized by the specter of death, enslaved to death, sacrificing their children to the insatiable appetite of death. During Advent, we learn to gaze into the growing dark with Spring in our eyes. Impossible? Yes, it is. But Christians must always keep an icon of the impossible in their hearts as a model of the true shape of reality, so much bigger than our terrors.”
You can find the entire essay here.
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Dear friends, A blessed Solemnity of Christ the King!! In the homily I reflect mainly on the second reading, this weekend taken from St. Paul’s awesome letter to the Colossians. You can find all the
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This weeks readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111322.cfm Take a listen to my homily below:
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Listen to my homily below!! (But read the readings first!: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110622.cfm)
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Here are the readings for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, 30 October Year C. You can watch my homily, or find the audio below.
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This week I remembered my friend Rosie Robinson on the first anniversary of her death. Read this week’s reading here and listen to the homily below.
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Reading 2 1 Tm 1:12-17 Beloved: I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer
The post “I Hate It Here” and a Kingdom Not of This World | 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Reading 2 Phmn 9-10, 12-17 I, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus, urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment; I
The post Philemon, Actually Doing This Thing, and the Lady in the Prius | 23rd Sunday in OT 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Reading 2 Heb 12:18-19, 22-24a Brothers and sisters: You have not approached that which could be touched and a blazing fire and gloomy darkness and storm and a trumpet blast and a voice speaking words
The post Shia LaBeouf, St. Augustine, and Choosing the Way | 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Reading 2 Heb 12:5-7, 11-13 Brothers and sisters, You have forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as children: “My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him;
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Reading 1 Jer 38:4-6, 8-10 In those days, the princes said to the king: “Jeremiah ought to be put to death; he is demoralizing the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the
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Gospel Lk 12:32-48 Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags
The post Tenderness and Severity: The Father is Pleased to Give You the Kingdom | 19th Sunday in OT 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Readings here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/073122.cfm Gospel Lk 12:13-21 Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” He replied to him, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and
The post Fools Gold: A Lesson in Sifting | 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Gospel Lk 10:38-42 Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha,
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Gospel Lk 10:25-37 There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the
The post Being Good Noticers as a Key to Discipleship | 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Gospel Lk 10:1-12, 17-20 At that time the Lord appointed seventy-two others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, “The harvest
The post Lessons from the 72 | 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Homily for the Baccalaureate Mass Chesterton Academy of the Holy Family 26 May 2022 – Ss. Peter and Paul, Naperville — Dear Mr. and Mrs. Bowles; Ms. Jurado and Mr. Janeiro; my esteemed colleagues and
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I’m a proud graduate of the University of St. Mary of the Lake – Mundelein Seminary, which is the major seminary sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago in far-north suburban Mundelein, Illinois. Founded by Cardinal
The post Honk, Honk: Baby Geese vs Baby Humans | 6th Week of Easter appeared first on Love Speaks..
Hey everyone, happy Divine Mercy Sunday! My homily from the weekend is below, and the readings are here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042422.cfm
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Happy Easter everyone! Jesus Christ is the faithful witness, having loved his own until the bitter end; he is the firstborn of the dead! Alleluia! The event is one thing; discovering what it could actually
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Here are the readings from this week: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040322-YearC.cfm I also used this passage from JPII’s Redemptoris Missio: The ministry of Jesus is described in the context of his journeys within his homeland. Before Easter, the scope
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Just read 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:20 16 [k]Therefore, we are not discouraged;[l] rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an
The post Those in Christ are a New Creation | 4th Sunday of Lent 2022 appeared first on Love Speaks..
From March 18-26, 2022 I was on pilgrimage with the seniors I teach at Chesterton Academy in Lisle. I preached more than twice, but here are recordings of two of my homilies. Sunday, March 20th
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Ash Wednesday Homily 2 March 2022 Ss. Peter and Paul & Chesterton Academy — “You are only as sick as your secrets. Jesus, on the cross, with arms outstretched and offering himself for you in
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Homily for the 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time 21 February 2022 Ss. Peter and Paul, Naperville — Over the last few Sundays, the Church has been bringing us through Luke’s account of the Sermon on
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(Photo: Taken last week in the cemetery at Mundelein Seminary) Although the grounds at Mundelein Seminary are visited by thousands of people every year, not many people know that there is a cemetery there, tucked
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The readings for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C are some of my favorites of the whole cycle, with the reading from Isaiah 6 being particularly important to me. Despite everything, God has
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Office of Readings, 28 January – Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor From a Conference by St. Thomas Aquinas (Collatio 6 super Credo in Deum) Why did the Son of God have to
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This weekend, the 3rd week in Ordinary Time, is known as “Word of God Sunday” since 2019, and is a day on which the whole Church is encouraged to reflect more specifically on the role of the Sacred Scriptures in the life of the Church. Catholics get a bad rap about not knowing much about the Bible, and I think that’s because there are a lot of Catholics who don’t know much about the Bible!
What is the Bible? What does it mean to say the texts of the Bible are “divinely inspired”? Should scripture scare us and fill us with fear, or bring life and encouragement? Both?
In my homily this weekend, I talk about the concept of Theopneustos, “God-breathed,” and reflect a little on the words of Vatican II in regard to the point of there being scriptural texts at all: “In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4). Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col 1;15, 1 Tim 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself.” (Dei Verbum 2)
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“There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding…Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee, and so revealed his glory, and his disciples came to believe in him.”
Why miracles? Why sacraments? Why did Jesus perform his first miracle in the context of a wedding celebration?
I’m working on a couple of presentations coming up in the next couple of weeks, so you’ll have to listen to my whole homily to get some answers to these questions!
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Yesterday the Church celebrated the liturgical culmination of the Christmas season by marking the occasion of the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. In a sermon on this occasion, St. Gregory of Nanzianzus wrote, “The Baptist protests; Jesus insists. Then John says: I ought to be baptized by you. He is the lamp in the presence of the sun, the voice in the presence of the Word, the friend in the presence of the Bridegroom, the greatest of all born of woman in the presence of the firstborn of all creation…”
At the first moment of creation, Genesis tells us that in the beginning was God, whose spirit hovered over the waters of the formless void and by this action everything was created. The prologue of John’s Gospel tells us that in the beginning the Word of God “was with God and was God” and it was this Word through Whom everything was made.
In the Baptism of Jesus, the Spirit and the Word again go the water, and the moment of has come wherein God begins to fulfill his promise to create a new heaven and a new earth; the redemption of the whole cosmos from the fear and power of sin and death now has its beginning in earnest.
Does the water make Jesus holy? No. Jesus makes the water, a creature, holy and suitable to be the means of sanctification for the rest of creation.
In baptism, we are freed from original sin, become temples of the Holy Spirit, members of the Body of Christ, heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven, and adopted sons and daughters of God.
As his sons and daughters, the Father makes us 4 promises in baptism: he promises to love us always and no matter what; to forgive us, always and no matter what; never to abandon us, never and no matter what; and the whenever, whyever, how ever, wherever the time comes, there will be a place for us in his house.
All this knowledge amounts to a ticket to freedom. How much of the trouble we get into is the result to assuage a fear or lie which stems from the belief that we are unloved, unforgiven, alone, and doomed?
Remember, “When the night was in the midst of its course, all things being at peace, the Word leapt from the royal throne into the doomed land.” (Wisdom 18:14)
Into our gloom and doom, the Lord freely enters, and gives us a new hope, a new way of seeing, a new joy in the midst of his work to bring about a new creation.
You can listen to my whole homily here:
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Homily for Epiphany 2021
Saints Peter and Paul, Naperville
2 January 2022
Scroll down for audio!
—
“This is the glorious day on which Christ himself, the savior of the world, appeared; the prophets foretold him, the angels worshipped him;
— the Magi saw his star and rejoiced to lay their treasures at this feet.
God’s holy day has dawned for us at last; come, all you peoples, adore the Lord.
— the Magi saw his star and rejoiced to lay their treasures at his feet.”
(Responsory to 2nd Reading, Office of Readings, Epiphany)
—
Today we celebrate the great solemnity of the Epiphany, which is day that has had so many meanings over the centuries;
In the first place, we recognize the fulfillment of what the prophet Isaiah foretold (and which we heard in the first reading) about what will happen when the Lord comes to Israel:
“You, Jerusalem, shall be radiant at what you see, your heart shall throb and overflow, for the riches of the sea shall be emptied out before you, the wealth of nations shall be brought to you. Caravans of camels shall fill you, dromedaries from Midian and Ephah; all from Sheba shall come bearing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming the praises of the Lord.” (Is. 60)
In the 2nd century, St. Irenaeus helped us see the meaning of these gifts, which help signify and proclaim the mystery of the Word who has become flesh: gold is a symbol of royalty, representing the kingship of Jesus over all time and history; frankincense, used in worship, representing his divinity, Emmanuel, God is with us; and to the prophecy in Isaiah 60, today is added the gift of Myrrh, a gum-like resin taken from a species of thorny trees and has been used for centuries as a remedy for all kinds of things: indigestion, ulcers, arthritis, and leprosy; it is a truly earthy substance, and represents the humanity of Jesus. Myrrh was also used at the time of Jesus to help prepare bodies for burial, and this gift foretells the passion and death of Christ.
—
In the second place, the Church has long used the feast of the Epiphany, when the three Magi, who were likely Eastern astrologers, followed a star to see where it might lead them. Our calendar and clock are based on the movement of the heavens, and the feast of all of feasts, Easter, is celebrated on the Sunday following the first Full Moon occurring after the Spring Equinox.
So, on this day each year when the stars have led us to Bethlehem, the Church announces with great joy the dates of the moveable feasts of the year, which I will do after the homily.
—
Thirdly, Epiphany announces once and for all that while salvation will come from the Jews, the chosen race, God’s salvation will be for all people, across every time and place. In the psalms, David sang:
“All the nations that you have brought into being will come and fall down in the adoration in your presence, Lord, and glorify your name…the Lord has made known his salvation, in the sign of the nations, he has revealed his justice.”
—
But today I would like to draw out a fourth aspect of this awe-filled celebration. Yes, Jesus has been born; the “Word of the Father now in flesh appearing”, and we have come and continue to come and adore him. We are captivated by the mystery of Christmas, we are filled with a sense of new wonder and awe particularly today at the possibilities latent in this new year, and we are helped in our wonder by the first major snowfall which has made everything bright and new.
I don’t really want to add another voice to the chorus of, “Man, 2021, wow what a year. Lots of struggle and difficulty across the board. Here’s to a better 2022!”
But like…Man, 2021, wow what a year!
But I am struck by the number of times and ways that people in the last couple of days have said things like, “Hoping for a better year! I just know 2022 will be better.”
Hope is a very interesting virtue, and is so essential for life; in people who are facing difficulties, no matter how strong, hope is usually the last light still burning, even if very small and dim, when the other virtues seem to have been extinguished.
By virtue of our baptism into Christ, having experienced in our souls, whether we are consciously calling it to mind always or not, the death and resurrection of Jesus, we Christians are de facto a people of hope. For what do we hope?
We hope for better days, for peace, for health, for joy, for harmony and unity in our families, for at least some semblance of success in our lines of work and hobbies; but how do we still find reasons for hope after so much evidence that the true realization of these desires if actually quite rare?
Christianity gives a lot of things to the daily lives of the people who believe in Jesus; one of the most important daily, practical changes that happens to a Christian over time is that she or he begins to see things differently, and to read what they see through a different lens than the rest of the world.
—
“Epiphany” comes from the Greek word “epiphaneia”, which means “manifestation or striking appearance; a festival held in commemoration of the appearance of a god at some particular place.” That word comes from the word “epiphanes”, which means to “manifest, make conspicuous, to show off, to come suddenly into view.”
These words are a combination of two other Greek words, epi and phainein.
The prefix epi means “on, near, at,” or “against.” I used to think that an EpiPen was called that because you have to slam it against your leg. As many of you know, it’s called an EpiPen because it injects a rapid dose of Epinephrine, also called adrenaline. Did you know that “nephron” is the Greek word for kidney, and that epinephrine and adrenaline have the same name because the adrenal glands are located “on” (epi) the nephrons, the kidneys?
Anyway.
Phainein is the Greek word meaning “to show”, but this word has a much more ancient word at its root, the Proto-Indo-European word “Bha” (where we get pha, as it “photo”, “photon”, “photograph”), and it means “to shine.”
So, an epiphany is “a particular manifestation or striking appearance of something brilliant and related to God, which comes suddenly and conspicuously into our view.” And the effect that such an event can have really is something like an EpiPen injection, but for the soul. Sudden, perhaps life-saving effects, but for an epiphany to have any effect it on the soul, it must be a soul that is awake and watchful, filled with hope for the coming of the divine.
—
And this, I think, is the reason for our Christian hope. We know that God is able to do what he says he will do, and – even if only once, and that a very long time ago – I think each of us have felt or seen or noticed or heard or experienced a moment, a word, a phrase, a song, a sunrise, in which it became clear to us beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is not only able to do what he says he’ll do, but that he’s actually doing it.
What else could sustain us in hope as we move into another year than the belief that God is who he says he is, and is accomplishing for us everything he promised to accomplish? And the fun, the joy, the sadness, the difficulty of it all is that he is giving us exactly what our hearts have always wanted but he’s doing it a way that we, in our littleness, could never have concocted on our own.
In this way, we can see that the personal and particular histories which we each are living, and the difficulties and tragedies of this life are not for nothing and that no matter what you have brought with you into this place today, you do not have to carry it out of here; if you do carry it out of here, you will not be carrying it alone; if you are hearing the lie that what you have done or where you have been disqualifies you from a life of holiness or from the experience of an epiphany, I am speaking directly into your heart when I remind you that is a lie and the whole world lies open before the repentant heart.
Here is the heart of this 4th aspect of the Epiphany: yes, salvation is available in Christ to “all nations”, whoever and wherever they may be. But most crucially for us, today, here, in the particular place, is the truth that salvation has come even to this house, even in this time, even to this people gathered here.
The first reading is from Isaiah 60, right near the very end of his books; the lectionary only gave us 6 verses, even though chapter 60 has 22 verses. So by way of conclusion, let me read to you the words of Isaiah, addressed to a people walking in darkness, recovering from exile and captivity, who have finally seen the promise of the Lord fulfilled for them:
“Once, Jerusalem, you were forsaken, hated and unvisited. Now I will make you the pride of the ages, a joy to generation after generation.
In place of bronze I will bring gold, instead of iron, silver; in place of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron; I will appoint peace your governor, and justice your ruler.
No longer shall violence be heard of in your land, or plunder and ruin within your boundaries. You shall call your walls “salvation” and your gates “praise.”
No longer shall the sun be your light by day, Nor the brightness of the moon shine upon you by night; The Lord shall be your light forever, your God shall be your glory.
No longer shall your sun go down, or your moon withdraw, for the Lord will be your light forever, and the days of your sadness shall be at an end.
The smallest shall become a thousand, the youngest, a mighty nation; I, the Lord, will swiftly accomplish all these things.” Isaiah 60: 1-22
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Homily for the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church – Naperville
21 Naperville 2021
—
(Scroll down for the audio!)
Pondus meum amor meus. How’s your Latin?
On this great solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, I want to throw it back to someone who can be a great friend to us as we stand together today before the mystery of Jesus Christ. And no, I’m not talking about Kanye and his album from 2 years ago, “Jesus is King”. (Closed on Sunday, you’re my Chick-fil-A…Hold the selfies, put the ‘Gram away…Get your family, y’all hold hands and pray” – it’s pretty good advice).
I’m talking about St. Augustine, who was the Bishop of Hippo in modern-day Algeria until his death 1,591 years ago in the year 430. He’s known as one of the most important philosophers of early Christianity, waxing and waning on topics like time, eternity, nature, and the cosmos. But he’s probably most famous for writing a spiritual autobiography called The Confessions, wherein he discusses how was able to go from a pagan young man, born to a Catholic mom and pagan dad, through a life of lust, concubines, a child out of wedlock, to one of the most influential and saintly figures of the very early Church.
In his characteristic way, he states very emphatically: pondus meum amor meus. Meum/meus means “my” or “mine.” “Amor” of course means “love.” And Pondus means “weight.” Think of our English word “pounds.” “Pondus meum amor meus” translates to “my love is my weight” or, better, “what I love gives the inertia to my life.”
“Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.” (Pedro Arrupe, SJ)
Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything. How true this is! Think back to your very first love – how that experience of seeing someone with the eyes of true love for the first time, how this changed everything. Love doesn’t always last, and that’s a sad part of life for sure…but in the moment, it has a power that gives motion and inertia to life.
We “know” on an intellectual level that we ought to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul, strength, etc etc. But more and more it seems difficult to put our finger on quite “who” God is. Early on in The Confessions, Augustine asks a timeless question: “Who is that I love when I love my God? Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these when I love my God.”
Augustine knew that the goodness, truth, and beauty of God could be found in the natural realities of life – even in food, romantic relationships, and music. But even in the most sentimental and fuzziest feelings, those moments which we often call “spiritual”, Augustine recognized that while these might reveal something about God, they aren’t necessarily helpful in moving closer to understanding who it really is we love when we say we love God.
I propose today that our Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe can help us answer this question, or at least approach it in a new way. Recall the second reading from the Book of Revelation, and think about all the ways it describes Jesus:
Jesus, Christ, God, Alpha, Omega, Lord, Almighty.
Yeshua. Christos. Theos. Kyrios. Pantokratore.
What’s in a name! When it comes to these names of Jesus, everything is in these names.
Yeshua – Joshua – means “God saves.” Or “The salvation of God.”
Christ – Christos, in Greek, means the chosen one, the anointed one. In Hebrew, the word is Meshiach, Messiah. (A man who owns a yarmulke shop in Jerusalem found out my name is Ryan, and he asked me what it means, so I told him that in Gaelic it means “little king” and he said, “Aha! You are the little Messiah!”)
So right away, we learn from the name Jesus Christ that the person who bears that name is the one Chosen, anointed, set apart for the specific task of offering, bringing, proposing (whatever you want to say) salvation…and not salvation, redemption, freedom…and not in a worldly way or by worldly means, but through some method, some means that is divine; he is the anointed Savior, who brings God’s salvation.
God – “theos” in Greek. It’s where we get the word “theology.” And in Greek it refers to “the only and true God.”
So Jesus Christ is not only the salvation of God, but Scripture uses language that suggests he is one with God, or might even somehow be God…and not just one God among many Gods, but that this one who is the anointed salvation of God is unique, perhaps we can go as far as saying that he is the one God, the only true God, the only name under heaven by which women and men can be saved. Jesus himself affirms this in John’s Gospel when he writes that he is “the way, and the truth, and the life” and that no one can come to the Father except through him. (John 14:6-7)
Kyrios – you already know this word from the Mass’s use of “Kyrie Eleison”…Lord have mercy. Kyrios means Lord. Paul is the first to use this word in reference to Jesus, and he does so as a making fun of Caesar. In Jesus’ time, the common greeting between citizens of Rome was “Caesar Kyrios” – “Caesar is King”. But Paul, and the other New Testament writers, and now the whole tradition, make a very different claim: If Jesus Christ is the salvation of God, and offers something beyond the worldly government and means of the Roman Empire and its emperors, something more truly and more uniquely divine…then it makes sense to say that maybe Caesar and his successors are not the truest kings after all; Jesus Christ is King.
Jesus Christ is the one chosen by God to bring salvation to the whole…town? Nation? Israelites only? Only those with a certain political/social viewpoint? Orrrrr…..something else?
The Book of Revelation uses one last word to describe Jesus: in addition to being alpha and omega, beginning and end, Lord and God, Revelation tells us that Jesus is “the Almighty.”
Pantokratore. If you’ve ever been in a Byzantine Catholic or Greek Orthodox Church, or if you’ve ever seen the inside of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, you will observe a larger than life depiction of Jesus – a huge painting, showing Jesus as a figure who is ripped out of his mind, holding the world in his hand, seated on the stars and clouds; a majestic, powerful, figure. This image of Jesus is called the Pantocrator.
Pantokratore in Greek means “the ruler of all” and “the one who holds sway over all things.”
So who is it that we love when we love our God? He is the Anointed one, chosen and set apart from all creation to be the bringer, the proposer of the definitive and unique path of salvation for the whole human race, for all of creation, and for the entire cosmos. He is the King, not only of heaven but of earth as well, because he is ruler of all. He is the one who holds sway over all things, who is somehow a part of every person, of every circumstance, of every situation; and not a passive part merely, but one who, in every moment, holds sway if only those he came to save would give him the power and the time to do what he came to do;
If only those he came to save would love him enough to truly be moved by the inertia, the weight, of his presence.
Can I throw one more thing into the mix?
This is the last Sunday of Ordinary Time. In one week, it will be Advent. All the fanfare and triumph and light of this Solemnity will come to an end, and everything will be dark. One week by week, we will walk as if by candlelight toward something, toward someone new: a baby, a child, a boy wrapped in swaddling clothes, too poor for a bed. And yet, a king. A king whose birth and arrival is not announced by royal decree and trumpets, but by angels…to shepherds…out in a field.
We speak today of Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe, and we accept him as Lord and King and Almighty God. But that can feel huge, and impersonal, and out of touch.
So remember in these days that this Jesus really is who we proclaim him to be, and the power he has, the inertia of a new life which is being proposed to you is as real as it gets. But we Napervillians must begin to learn, as if for the very first time, how to recognize the presence, the voice, the call, the correction, the encouragement, the truth which the Shepherd King comes to speak to us.
When I lived in Israel, we went one day to a real pasture and the shepherds there gave us the chance to walk amidst the sheep and shepherd them. They taught us that sheep are some of the dumbest animals on the planet, and that they are tender and vulnerable – so trusting of and completely dependent of the direction of the shepherd. They explained to us sometimes the shepherd stands in front of the flock, leading them and showing them the way; sometimes the shepherd stands behind the flock, and uses his staff to kick the flock into gear and even use a little force to get them moving back toward the path; but most of the time, the shepherd stands in the midst of his flock, and walks among them.
Dear friends, if we are never challenged by Jesus then perhaps our conception of him is not one that adheres to reality. If we approach Jesus in prayer, if we approach the scriptures and the sacraments and the teachings, and we find that everything we already thought, and every way we already behaved was upheld, we probably did not really approach Jesus. Likewise, if we go to him and we feel that everything is challenged, criticized, struck down, and we don’t have a sense that some goodness within us is being affirmed, encouraged, and even appreciated by Jesus, then, again, we probably did not really approach Jesus.
This is the beauty of the example of someone like St. Augustine. He recognized that the inertia of his life, the weighty thing that propelled him and motivate him was as powerful as the mightiest King, and as a gentle as the most competent Shepherd. And in such a person, Augustine found what his heart, restless as it was, had been looking for in all of his wandering and in all of his sin.
This Jesus is yours today if you give yourself to him. This Jesus is yours today if you purify your heart before him. This is Jesus is yours today, and all the wandering and rebelling could be over for you. This Jesus is yours today, and all the lying and pretending and posturing could be over for you…not in one second, of course; but a new path, a new way, a new inertia is being offered.
Who is it that I love when I love my God?
Listen to Augustine’s words when he finally realizes who it is that he loves:
Late have I loved you, o beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you! For you were within me, but I was outside; I looked for you, but in my unloveliness I fell upon the lovely things of your creation. You were with me, but I was not with you…You called to me, and shattered my deafness. You sent forth your beams of light and chased away my blindness. You breathed your fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath, and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and now I burn for your peace.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever!
The post Yeshua, Christos, Kyrios, Pantokratore | Christ the King 2021 appeared first on Love Speaks..
Homily for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ss. Peter and Paul Parish
7 November 2021
—
Hearing about and helping to clarify your spiritual experiences is a joy of priesthood. When you come to the priest, you’re not looking for an expert in economics, accounting, human resources, or education. It’s good to know a little about those things, of course, but for the most part, I think the people of God are looking for something else from their priest. They don’t want him to be the CEO of a small-to-midsize company; they don’t want him to be activist for the sake of the world’s causes alone.
On his visit to Poland in 2006, Pope Benedict said this: “The faithful expect only one thing from priests: that they be specialists in promoting the encounter between man and God. The priest not asked be an expert in economics, construction, or politics. He is expected to be an expert in interiority.” An expert in the spiritual life.
I’m not an expert in the interior life. My own interior life, my own “interior geography” is still being explored, mapped, and catalogued. But I do pray, a lot. And I love Jesus Christ, a lot.
And I am genuinely interested in your spiritual lives and experiences.
Both in real life, and also in my late night YouTube excursions, every now and then I encounter stories of people who have died and gone to heaven. These stories always intrigue me, and while I am inclined to take the late-night YouTube ones with a grain of salt, I have met people in real life who I do think are the real deal in this regard. What’s something the people who have had this experience have in common? They’re different. Most of the stories include a moment where they confess that prior to the experience they were relatively lukewarm in their faith, perhaps just going through the motion, or had made their faith about something else than God…faith becoming an expression of a political view or social worldview, for example, instead of politics and social concerns being born from a true, Christocentric, and Biblical faith.
What do they say about their experience: everything is bright, everything is warm, everything is calm, despite everything being known. There is a new reality to sin, and a new urgency about salvation. There is a new perspective of the beauty, love, and attractiveness of God. One person shared, “If you could see the beauty of God, you would never sin again.”
Do you believe that you, too, die and go to heaven every time you come to Mass?
This intriguing question is at the heart of everything about traditional Catholic architecture and worship.
Why are the windows in old churches so high up? Why is everything in here bright, and filled with color? Why is there a railing and, once upon a time, why was there a gate? Why is the most ornamentation, the most lighting, the most color, focused around a box and a table and this ambo?
When you enter a Catholic Church, you’re not supposed to feel like you’re still on earth, with all of its darkness and dreariness, with all of its preoccupations. When you enter a Catholic Church, you have entered a house of God, and true gate of heaven.
Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands,
a copy of the true one, but heaven itself,
that he might now appear before God on our behalf.
In this place, in this time, during our sojourn in this strange land, we do worship God in what we pray is Spirit and Truth, but we do in a sanctuary crafted by human hands, which is a copy of the true sanctuary: heaven itself. Our faith tells us that when we come in here, we participate in one heavenly reality, the one liturgy that unites heaven with earth.
Not that he might offer himself repeatedly,
as the high priest enters each year into the sanctuary
with blood that is not his own;
if that were so, he would have had to suffer repeatedly
from the foundation of the world.
Here we participate with great eagerness and devotion in the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, an entrance into the one Paschal Mystery by which heaven and earth, if only for a moment, seem to kiss.
This is a sanctuary made by human hands, but it does serve as a copy or a model of the true sanctuary in heaven. Everything is sacramental in here. Everything means something, reveals something. Everything in here, from the windows, to the rail, to the altar, to the tabernacle, to the vestments, to the cups, to the music, and yes: to the priest and the people gathered here in communion.
All of these earthly things parallel heavenly realities: “the book of the law, the people, the tabernacle, and the vessels for worship. All these [are] ‘copies’ in the sense that they [are] figures pointing forward to greater realities: the law written [not on stone tablets, but on fleshy, natural] hearts, the redeemed people of God [who cry out forever, ‘Holy are you! Hosanna to you! Worship and Adoration and Glory to you! DIGNUS EST AGNUS – worthy is the lamb to receive our praise!], the true tent [, the place of worship not made by human hands and the body not marred by divisions and sins], the true tent of Christ’s glorified humanity, which makes us believe that our humanity can be brought to glory with him, and the new covenant liturgy, by which the whole cosmos is sealed in the blood of the new and eternal covenant which God has established once and for all between himself and us.
We don’t need to die suddenly on an operating table or have an out of body experience to die and go to heaven; we can experience a foretaste of heaven every time we come to Mass. There’s a lot of pressure to get our worship right, and there should be! As a priest, I need to make sure that when I come to celebrate Mass I can do so with a pure heart and a clean conscience, and that I am not just going through motions (which admittedly does happen sometimes) but truly leading the people of God in real and faithful worship.
It requires that you, the people, have prepared yourselves well for this also. That you, too, are coming here with a pure heart and a clean conscience; that you have prepared by reading the Readings ahead of time, and not listening by staring off blankly into space and thinking about lunch; that you have done the work of coming in here with an intention for which you plan to offer this Mass; when the gifts are brought forward and the altar is prepared, make some conscious prayer that your intentions and needs would be placed on this altar as well, offered up as spiritual sacrifices acceptable to the Father.
Then, for both priest and people – me and you – we must make the resolution that when we leave this place, we will have a similar reaction to the people who tell stories of having died and gone to heaven: that we really are new, that we really are different.
For some reason, when I woke up this morning, I had American Pie by Don McClean stuck in my head. That’s one of my favorite songs of all time, but I don’t think I’ve listened to it in months.
As I belted it out in the shower, I was stopped by this section near the end:
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poet dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admired most
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.
It’s pretty well known that American Pie begins with death of Buddy Holly in 1959, signaling for McClean the end of the innocence of the 50’s, and tells the story of the turbulence of the 60’s and the disillusionment of the 70’s.
Are we experiencing now another change, another loss of innocence, another time of turbulence, giving way again to disillusionment? I tend to think so.
Did you know there’s a gun range near downtown Naperville now? I have no opinion about it one way or the other, except to tell you this: on Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons sounds of gunfire ring out for hours over this neighborhood. I was made the mistake of reading a comment section on Facebook a couple of weeks ago wherein someone was lamenting the sound of loud gunfire over tranquil downtown Naperville. And someone replied, “I’d rather hear gunfire than the sound of the bells at Ss. Peter and Paul ringing all day and night.”
I tend to think that a lot of people have come to believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost really have taken the last train for the coast. There’s a lot of people – and they’re not far away from here; they’re in our neighborhoods, our schools, our offices, perhaps even our pews – who truly believe that Jesus Christ, the man who pretended to be God, has been dead for 2,000 years and that the Gospel is a means to an ethically fine life but that it lacks any authentic power of its own. No power to heal, no power to transform, no power to make new. And as a result, many of us – myself included – have fallen victim to the belief that I remain dead in my sin and as a result are living lives on unspeakable loneliness.
This is why I drone on and on about coming here and dying and going to heaven and being different. Because Naperville needs this witness! They need the witness that the Church offers life! That the Church offers refuge! That the life which the Church is so insistent that everyone deserves to live with dignity from womb to tomb is a life of abundance and not oppression; They need the witness that the Biblical vision of human sexuality is life-giving and that one’s past or orientation does not automatically exclude them from the Christian community; if it did, no one would be in here.
This city, our city, needs the witness that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have gone nowhere near the coast; but are here, in our midst, as the source of our life, the source of our joy, the source of something new, something different from the divisions and unreasonable assumptions that the world foists upon us.
Brothers and sisters: welcome to the death of you; welcome to the place where everything that is not of God is given up, and shed away, so that room can be made for you to become to woman or the man, the child, the parent, the friend, the sibling, the priest that God so desires to craft you into.
But now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages
to take away sin by his sacrifice.
Just as it is appointed that human beings die once,
and after this the judgment, so also Christ,
offered once to take away the sins of many,
will appear a second time, not to take away sin
but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him.
Is that us?
The post Churches and Heaven and Don McLean | 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021 appeared first on Love Speaks..
It’s with great sadness that I share the passing of my friend Rosie Robinson, with whom I travelled to Lourdes in August 2021. She died peacefully at home in Nashville surrounded by her parents and her 5 brothers and sisters. In my homily this weekend, I took time to reflect on this holy death in the context of the readings the Church provided us with.
You can read the readings for the weekend here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102421.cfm
Here’s my homily from the 7pm Mass at Ss. Peter and Paul:
The post Sowing Tears, Reaping in Joy | 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time appeared first on Love Speaks..
On Saturday, October 16th I spoke to the parents of Chesterton Academy of the Holy Family (where I’m chaplain) about nihilism, individualism, and the digital age…and the role of social media as well as the dangers it poses. The talk was recorded but isn’t finished being edited just yet, so I’m including here PDFs of the talk itself and then the handout I went through with the parents.
Talk: CATHF_Social Media Supper Club talk
Handout: CATHF_Supper Club HANDOUT
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