January 28, 2007

Prophets in Our Midst

Posted in Homilies at 9:00 am

Homily for the Fourth Sunday In Ordinary Time

January 28, 2007

Do we have any prophets here today? At Baptism, we are reminded that Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, and that by virtue of our baptismal anointing we too share in those aspects of Christ’s life. We are all called to be prophets. Now, there are different understandings of the term prophet. Often, a prophet is viewed as someone who predicts the future. Old Testament prophets were messengers of God, who received His word through revelation and communicated it to the people. Divine Revelation ended with the coming of Christ, so why would we still need prophets? Well, prophets can also be those who read the signs of what is going on in our world, and see what is not consistent with living as God wishes. In a recent column, David Warren wrote: “Prophecy consists in seeing and saying what is really going on; it has little to do with predicting the future, for the future is always unfolding now”. It has been said the Pope Paul VI was prophetic in writing Humanae Vitae. That is true, but not because he predicted the future by some supernatural means or through Divine Revelation. However, he was able to see the natural – or we could even say unnatural – progression of events that would result from a culture that rejected children as the primary blessing of the marital union. Since that encyclical was issued almost 40 years ago, experience has shown that he was quite accurate in his assessment.

To get back to ourselves – do we really want to be prophets? Do we have what it takes? Jeremiah is warned that he must gird up his loins, that Judah’s kings and princes would fight against him – but also that they would not prevail. Jesus reminds us that no prophet is accepted in his own native place, and by the end of this Gospel passage, the people want to throw Him off a cliff. As we know, Christians and Catholics can face a rough time trying to be prophets. It is difficult even to quietly live our faith, and it can be quite challenging to witness to it. And in order to effectively live out our faith, we need to understand it. We need to be prepared. Verses 6 to 16 of Jeremiah are omitted from today’s reading, but in them Jeremiah protests that he cannot be a prophet because he is too young, he is not ready, not prepared. But God reassures him, and demonstrates the abilities He has given him. God has given us the support and the tools we need as well; it is up to us to take advantage of them.

Today’s second reading is most noted for it’s words about love. But today, let’s just consider verse 11: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways”. Many of us here went to Catholic schools as children. We learned about our faith as children. Theological concepts were taught to us on a level that would reach the understanding of a child. We memorized answers to simple questions. As we grew older, the questions and answers grew a little more involved, but were still geared to the limited scope of our intellect. Perhaps in High School we learned a bit more, but for many, at that time our interest was on things other than deepening our knowledge of the faith. So we find ourselves as adults, in our thirties, forties, fifties, and more – and with an understanding of the faith that is pretty much at the same level as when we were 14. It doesn’t have to remain there! One thing that we hear from our catechumens and candidates in RCIA is how privileged they are to be learning about the faith as adults. We all can be just as privileged, if we just take some time to investigate the great truths of our faith.

Being here every Sunday is important, especially if we listen attentively to the Readings, the Psalm, and the Homily. But just as we need to carry the practise of our faith outside the doors of the church, we also need to carry a desire for learning more about the faith into our lives. There are so many resources available to us – good Catholic literature, including classic works from the early church, through the middle ages and the renaissance, right up to some very excellent and faithful modern authors. We have seminars and programs like our Introduction to Catholicism course, or Theology on Tap. And we are blessed to have two Catholic television broadcasters available in Canada, EWTN from the states, and Salt + Light Television that originates in Toronto. Whatever we do, whatever method we use, isn’t it important that we try to improve our adult knowledge of the Faith? It is difficult for us to explain what we believe – and why – to others, or even to ourselves, if our knowledge is limited to what we learned by the eighth grade.

There will always be more to understand of our faith as long as we walk this earth. As I have told the RCIA candidates, exploring the wonders of our faith is a limitless endeavour. We can find a certain aspect that interests us, and research it in depth. Or pick a variety of things to learn just enough about to satisfy our curiosity. Our parish library has good books and videotapes on many different topics. And there are a lot of things that are not specifically religious that can contribute to our recognition of God working in our lives. We are also, unfortunately, exposed constantly to influences which serve to lead us away from God. So we should spend some time working to counteract those influences not just in our own lives, but also in the lives of our children and grandchildren, our friends, and our community. Just think, we could have a great number of modern prophets, demonstrating the hope and power of Christ’s love in a world that has such great need of it. So yes, we certainly do still need prophets. Let us all learn the truths of our Catholic faith, and prepare ourselves to be those prophets.

January 21, 2007

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and the Word of God

Posted in Homilies at 9:00 am

Third Sunday, Year C, Jan. 21st, 2007

How many people here have friends who attend the United, Anglican or Reformed Presbyterian Churches of Russell? . . . (How many have friends who never darken the door of any Church?). Today is the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, so we are thinking and praying for unity with our friends, with our separated brothers and sisters in all Christian Churches. And in light of today’s readings on the Word of God, I will comment on what unites and divides Catholics and Protestants in our approach to the Bible.

The unity of all Christians is the will of God and the prayer of Christ (Jn 17:21), the unity alluded to in the Second Reading: “in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13), by baptism there is a real but imperfect unity among all Christians. For this reason, Protestants who become Catholics, such as myself, are not re-baptized. But today there are so many divisions among Christians. How can full unity possibly be achieved?

Do you think we should try to convert each other? Do your friends in the Protestant Churches of Russell ever try to tempt you away from the Catholic Church? Some of them might say, “The Catholic Church is so rigid and conservative, and judges and condemns so many people.” (I don’t think that’s true at all, but many outsiders might think that). “Why don’t you come to our church? We welcome everyone! Don’t worry about all those Catholic ‘rules’ – Jesus didn’t follow the ‘rules’!” Would any of those arguments tempt you away?

Or what about this argument: “You Catholics don’t know or follow the Bible, the Word of God! You follow human tradition instead! The Bible says, ‘worship God alone,’ but you worship Mary and the saints and the Pope and a piece of bread! We worship like the early Christians, and we’re faithful to the Bible.” Is that true? What do you say to that? Do we even know our own tradition well enough to respond, to duke it out in charity with our Protestant brothers and sisters, with a Bible in one hand and a Catechism in the other?

Do you ever invite your Protestant friends to come to this Church? Do you try to convert them to the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church? Are we supposed to try to convert them? Is that how unity will be achieved?

Well, I’m not going to answer those questions today. It would take too long and I don’t think I have the answers. But it is something to ponder and pray about during this week of prayer for Christian. But I will say this: let’s continue to love each other (“They’ll know we are Christians by our love”) and to dialogue and to PRAY for unity. I’m happy to say that there is a wonderful ecumenical spirit in Russell: we have the men’s and women’s ecumenical breakfasts, the Good Friday walk, Vacation Bible School, and the ministers gather about once a month for lunch.

I wholeheartedly support ecumenical efforts, but my vision of unity is biased because I am a Protestant convert to Catholicism; so for me, it is only natural that Protestants return to the mother who gave us birth . . . the Church founded by Christ in the 1st century – the Catholic Church.

The readings today specifically focus on the Word of God: in the first reading, Ezra the scribe is reading from the book of the law of Moses, and in the Gospel, Jesus is in the synagogue reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
Catholics and Protestants can learn from each other about how best to interpret the Word of God, while keeping in mind what unites us in this respect.

Did you notice, in the first reading, that Ezra read from the Scriptures “from early morning until midday” and “the ears of all the people were attentive” (Nehemiah 8:3) to the Word of God for four or five hours! No jokes, no props, no stunts, no song and dance – just the Bible. The people (like good Protestants!) were so hungry for the Word of God that they listened attentively for four or five hours! I sometimes daydream . . . about what it would be like for people to be so hungry for the Word of God, to have a famine for the Word of God (Amos 8:11), so that they would listen so attentively as to gather up every crumb that would fall from the table of God’s Word . . . Yes, I daydream . . . I’m sorry, where am I? Oh, yeah . . . I’m a Catholic priest in a Catholic Church . . . back to reality. Seriously, I think that Catholics can learn from devout Protestants how to listen attentively to the Word of God through which God speaks personally to us.

And I submit that Protestants could learn from Catholics how to interpret Scripture within the living tradition of the Church, as St. Luke wrote in today’s Gospel, the tradition “handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Lk 1:2). I have time for only one brief example – the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, “This is my Body, give up for you.” According to the Church’s living tradition from the very beginning and for 1500 years, the Church interpreted these words literally.

But along came the Reformation, and today there are some fundamentalist Protestants who seem to interpret the whole Bible literally except the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, claiming He was speaking symbolically or metaphorically. They are wrong, because they are interpreting the Word of God according to their extremely limited, personal, subjective opinion, cut off from the now 2000 year-old living tradition of the Holy Catholic Church. They contradict the understanding of St. Mark, St. Matthew, St. Luke, St. Paul, and the Apostolic Fathers like St. Ignatius of Antioch, and the early Church Fathers like St. Augustine, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose and St. Jerome. So Protestants can also learn something from Catholics – how to read the Bible according to the living tradition of the Church.

Since this is the beginning of the week of prayer for Christian UNITY, I will focus on what UNITES us in our approach to the Bible. In the first place, for all Christians, “all Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Tim 3:16); God is the principal author of Scripture and He speaks to us personally through His Word. Furthermore, the model for all Christians on how to properly interpret Scripture is none other than Jesus Christ. How does He interpret Scripture in today’s Gospel?

Jesus stood up to read in the synagogue from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah from the 7th century B.C.: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 14:18-21, quoting Isaiah 61:1)

The literal, historic meaning of this passage, and the intent of the original author are very important, but Jesus interprets it spiritually, with the depth of insight He has as the Son of God, saying “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” – as if to say, “This scripture, written about 700 years ago, refers to me.” And if that isn’t explicit enough, Jesus clearly states on other occasions that the prophets and psalms and all the Scriptures speak of Him (Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:39)

If you care about the Bible at all, then please keep in mind this very important point forgotten by many modern Christians, of which I had to be reminded, which I’m not sure we clearly taught in the Seminary: the whole Bible, including the Old Testament, speaks to us of Christ. We can personally meet Jesus in any of the pages of the Bible. If the Bible is ever going to touch us, inspire us, guide us, console us, convert us, then we must not read it as mere history, poetry, or even deep thoughts. While always keeping in mind the literal meaning of a given book or passage, we must look deeper into its spiritual meaning: the whole Bible is the mystery of Christ, and it is God’s Word spoken personally to you and me.

The people from RCIA told me I had to read this during my homily, as I shared it with them on Wednesday night. It is an example of the power of God’s word to change our lives, from a book called The Mystery of God’s Word by the preacher to the Papal household, Raniero Cantalamessa.

“I once heard a man give this testimony in public: He had reached the last stage of alcoholism; he couldn’t hold out for more than an hour or two without a drink; wherever he happened to be, traveling, in the train, or at work, his first thought was where he could get some wine. His wife, who was there too, said she had reached the brink of despair and could see no way out for herself and her three children, except death.

Someone invited them to some Bible readings. There was one word in particular which, heard by chance, made a deep impression on him and which for many years served as a rope to draw him up from the abyss. Each time he read it over, it was like a fresh flood of heat and strength, until he was completely cured. When he tried to tell us what that word was, his voice broke and he was so overcome with emotion that he could not manage to complete the sentence. It was the verse in the Song of Songs (1:2) which says, ‘More delightful is your love than wine.’ It would have been easy for any ‘expert’ on the Song to show him that the verse had no bearing on his situation and that he was deluding himself, but the man went on repeating, ‘I was dead and now I am alive. That word gave me back my life!’” (81).

So let us listen attentively to God’s word, (which all Christians venerate, both Protestant or Catholic), whether proclaimed in the Church or pondered in private, and we will be deeply moved and converted, like the man in this story and the people in the time of Ezra who were never bored with the Word of God, but who wept over their sins at the words of the law, and then they were consoled by the words, “do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10)

January 14, 2007

Jesus at Cana: The Source of Joy in Marriage

Posted in Homilies at 9:00 am

Second Sunday, Year C, January 14th, 2007

Jesus went to a wedding! That’s Good News for marriage and all married couples (See Catechism #1613), especially for us who live in a time of the breakdown of marriage, an era of divorce, same-sex “marriage” and now, thanks to the unelected officials of the Ontario Court of Appeal, we also have three parent families. So it is very Good News that the Son of God attended a marriage celebration! It is a reminder that God richly blesses each sacramental marriage between one man and one woman, and that Jesus wants to be personally present in each one of your marriages as a source of grace, love and joy, a joy that is stronger than any temptation to lukewarmness or indifference, a joy that can thrive in the midst of crosses, a joy that no one can take from you (Jn 16:22)

You wonder whose wedding was it that Jesus and his disciples attended? Family or friends of Jesus? I like to imagine the conversation between the husband, let’s call him Joachim, and his wife, let’s call her Hannah, as they were preparing the guest list. Since I cannot do a first century Palestinian Jewish accent, this is might be a sort of Russian-Jewish accent, (but in order to be politically correct, I formally declare that this is a no-name accent).

“Joakim, we must invite Jesus and his mother to our wedding, because he is like your second cousin, no?”

“I know! But now he thinks he is great prophet, and he is going around Galilee preaching ‘repent, for kingdom of God is near!’ Do you want him to preach like that at our wedding? He will be . . . how you say . . . pooper of the party!

“–You mean party-pooper – “

“Yes, party pooper! We want to rejoice at our wedding, not be depressed! And if he bring his unemployed disciples and they drink all our wine and we run out of wine at our wedding – is that what you want?!”

“Joachim, Joachim . . . we must have faith that if we invite holy man to our wedding, it will be a blessing.”

So what did happen at the wedding feast at Cana? Were Jesus and his disciples the “party-poopers”? Did Jesus come and spoil the fun and kill the joy by his preaching and teaching? No way! He saved the day and He was the life of the party by instantly ordering from heaven – what did the Gospel say – there were 6 stone jars containing about 100 litres each? Jesus ordered 600 bottles of the finest wine for the wedding feast!

People have the same fear today, thinking that if they invite Jesus to their wedding and into their marriage, along with his disciples (meaning the teaching of the Church on sex and marriage) that Jesus and the Church are going to be the “party-poopers” and spoil all the fun, turn on all the lights in the bedroom and kill all the joy. (See Benedict’s discussion in Deus Caritas Est #3)

But if you stop and consider . . . do you really think that Jesus came down from heaven, suffered and died on a Cross, rose from the dead, established the Catholic Church to be on earth the sign of his infinite holiness and the living Gospel for all people to hear – would He do all this just so that He could be a “party-pooper”?

Actually, Jesus established His Church with the Sacraments and teaching authority to be a source of infinite grace and love and joy for married couples, families, and all people. But what can I say about marriage? I’m not married, and people in our culture don’t want to listen to an old, repressed, celibate man telling them how to live their lives! SO I AM DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE that married couples from our parish are helping to organize an evening, the day after Valentine’s Day, the week after World Marriage Sunday, on Natural Family Planning. So this is not the Church represented by the Pope, bishops and priests, all those old . . . repressed . . celibate men imposing their authority over the people. No. Remember – ALL of us are the Church. This is a case of married couples ministering to other married couples. It’s beautiful and inspiring!

There are actually many parallels between the relationship of the soul and Christ and the relationship between husband and wife. We heard this comparison in the First Reading from Isaiah, in which God loves His people as a bridegroom loves his bride. So by analogy of the soul’s “marital” relationship with God, (about which I might know something), I will comment on the importance of joy in marriage in the face of one of the deadliest spiritual diseases of our times – indifference.

Jesus Himself prophesied about this deadly disease when he warned that iniquity would increase, and the love of many would grow cold (Mt 13:15) and the hearts of the people would become coarse, callous, dull, unfeeling (the Greek “pachuno” Mt 24:12)

Jesus wants to be the source of joy in married love. That’s why He changed water into wine at a wedding feast – wine is a symbol of joy (Sirach 31:27). The love and joy of the sacrament of marriage must be stronger than any temptation to lukewarmness or indifference. Sometimes the strong wine of joy that Christ gave you on your wedding day in the sacrament of marriage can be diluted by the colourless, tasteless, and stagnant water of indifference. (And this can also happen with the soul’s relationship with God, a priest’s relationship with Christ).

Imagine this glass of wine represents the grace, love, and joy that Christ gave you on your wedding day. A marriage is meant to be like a 1961 Chateau la Tour Bordeaux (my brother the wine connoisseur told me this) – it gets better with age, and is worth a lot more after 25 or 50 years. And this cup is meant to be filled to overflowing, until that day we drink the new wine in the kingdom of our Father (Mt 26:29), celebrating the wedding feast of the Lamb, when each human soul will be “married” to God.

So how does this strong wine become diluted by indifference? Well, because life is busy and we get tired, and sometimes it’s just easier to turn off your brain and turn on the T.V. rather than talk to your spouse (or for a priest to pray to God, because this disease of indifference affects us too). Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with drinking beer and watching the game, because we need time to relax.

1) But if God is calling us to pray or talk to our spouse and we don’t because we feel it takes too much effort to reach out and to listen attentively, then very subtly and slowly the strong wine becomes diluted with the colourless, tasteless, and stagnant water of indifference (pour water into glass). (Please note that this water represents indifference, but the water mixed with wine at Mass symbolizes our humanity being mingled with Christ’s divinity)

2) Or if couples say, “We’re just too busy with work and the kids and we have no time to go on a date EVER.” But doesn’t lack of time together dilute a marriage? (Pour more water)

3) Many people are not to blame for this next dilution, because they have never been taught the truth. So no one is being judged – I want that to be very clear. No one is being judged. And in the name of the Catholic Church, I ask your forgiveness for the failure of the Church to teach the truth about this dilution of the marriage bond. We all have to be very gentle and patient with one another as we try to re-build marriage after 40 years of misinformation. But when people (perhaps through no fault of their own) use contraception instead of natural family planning, even without knowing it, there is a subtle but real dilution of the strong wine of the sacrament of marriage. (Pour more water into glass)

But here is the Good News: no matter how diluted a marriage becomes, the wine of grace and love and joy is always present, and can be increased, because the same guy who ordered 600 bottles of the finest wine from heaven for a marriage feast, this same guy who is God the Son, is present here today for each one of us in the bread and wine that becomes His Body and Blood, and He wants to fill our cups to overflowing (pour more wine). (And by the way, I’m pouring more wine that usual into the chalices at Mass today, as a sign of the super-abundant love, grace and joy that Christ offers us. And if the Eucharistic ministers get drunk consuming the extra wine, they’ll just have to be sure not to drive home immediately after Mass)

I’ll end with this: it breaks my heart to see bored faces at Mass. If you want to sleep during the homily, I don’t take it personally. But to be bored when the Son of God comes down from heaven, to be indifferent when the Bridegroom of the Church and the Spouse of our souls proves His love for us by laying down His life for us and giving us His Body and Blood to be received into our own bodies, to have a heart so coarse, callous, dull and unfeeling to be indifferent to such love, is very sad. I believe that those who find joy in Jesus in the Eucharist will more likely find joy in their marriage, and I wonder if those who are indifferent at Mass may also be tempted to indifference in their marriage. But what do I know? I’m just an old, repressed, celibate man, so I’m going to stop talking now.

January 6, 2007

Epiphany

Posted in Homilies at 9:00 am

Epiphany, Year C, January 6th, 2007

The 17th century philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal once wrote: “(there are) only two classes of persons who can be called reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him and those who seek (italics mine) him with all their heart because they do not know him” (Pensees, Penguin Books, 1987, 160). We live in an unreasonable time of so many indifferent people who neither know God nor seek Him. Many things could be said about

The wise men whom we commemorate on Epiphany. Certainly, those who “searched diligently for the child,” the new-born King of the Jews, are an example to us of those who seek God with all their heart. In my homily today, I want to address in particular teenagers or young people who are skeptical about God and may be searching for a deeper truth. God wants all people to find him, so He tells us in Scripture, “seek, and ye shall find” (Mt 7:7, 1 Tim 2:4). He gives us gifts, clues, pieces of a puzzle, and signs of His Presence to lead us to Him.

Let’s imagine the three wise men (traditionally known as Caspar, Balthazar, and Melchior) were three different personalities and that God lead them to Him in three different ways, but these three different gifts, clues, pieces of a puzzle, or signs led them all to the same manger, to believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the King of Kings. Of course all of them were probably amateur astronomers, but let us conjecture that it was Caspar who was the most relentlessly scientific, and it was 1) truth above all that would lead him to God. Perhaps Balthazar was the artist of the group, drawn to God more by 2) beauty. And finally let us imagine that Melchior had a broken heart, and it was 3) loneliness and pain that led him to God.

1) Can science lead someone to God? It has been said that “the scientific revolution (has) disenchanted nature by draining if of any divine presence, rendering it as mere stuff, dead matter” (Robert Sibley quoting Paul Brockelman, Ottawa Citizen, December 24th, 2006). So the stars no longer lead us to wonder and contemplate the infinite majesty of God; they’ve lost their romance, because we now know, from science, that are just burning hydrogen gases and so on. And doesn’t science also prove that religion is just a silly superstition of primitive cultures? . . .

I would like to turn for a moment from the science of astronomy to the science of biology and to the example of a scientist named Francis Collins. Has anyone ever heard of him? . . . He was the leader of the Human Genome Project, that mapped the genetic code of human beings, one of the greatest discoveries of modern science.

He recently wrote a book. What do you think it’s about? Is it like that book by the 20th century atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian? Or Why Christians are so Stupid: A Scientific Perspective? The book is called The Language of God. As a reviewer put it, the book is not about “the discovery of new truths, but of old truths – how and why he came to . . . believe in God” (First Things December 2006, p. 39-43). Yes, a scientist who believes in God! It was not a star of wonder that led him to God, but another wonder – the marvel of the genetic code of the human person. Francis Collins’ faith in God is proof that scientific truths are neutral, and whether or not they lead a person to faith or atheism depends on the heart of the person interpreting those facts. Francis Collins may be compared to our image of Caspar – the gift, clue, piece of the puzzle or sign that lead him to God was scientific truth (First puzzle piece).

2) We imagined that Balthazar was the type to be drawn to God by beauty. Of course there are many kinds of beauty, above all the beauty of the human person created in the image of God. But let us take two examples from music and art. Has anyone here ever heard Handel’s Messiah, whether performed or recorded? I remember when I was a 20-something skeptic, I came across a second-hand copy of the highlights of the Messiah, and bought it out of curiosity because I knew my Mother liked it . . . one day I’m listening to it, and it comes to the Hallelujah Chorus, in which a choir of voices, men and women, children, bass, baritone, tenor, soprano, accompanied by trumpets and drums, together triumphantly proclaim that Jesus Christ is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and that He shall reign forever and ever. The first time I heard it I was deeply moved and an inner voice whispered to me, “something this beautiful must be true. Only the truth could inspire such beauty.”

Has anyone here had the privilege of visiting St. Peter’s in Rome? A friend of mine from university, when she first stepped into that immense plaza where thousands of people gather for Papal audiences, when she first gazed upon the majestic dome and Church designed by Michelangelo, and she looked up at the statues of all the saints on the colonnade surrounding the plaza, a feeling of wonder and awe came upon her, and she says at that moment she knew that the Catholic Church . . . was the truth, because only the truth could produce such beauty. She and Balthazar were drawn to God by the gift, clue, piece of the puzzle and sign of beauty. (Second puzzle piece)

3) Remember our imagined Melchior had a broken heart, and it was pain and loneliness that lead him to God. As I mentioned, before the scientific revolution, the beauty and order of the stars led people to wonder and think of God. But not so with us. Bishop Fulton Sheen puts it very nicely when he writes that the modern soul might not come to God anymore through “the loveliness of a star” but the “loneliness of a heart” (Peace of Soul, p.13).

The “loneliness of a heart” can inspire us to search for God, like the wise men searching diligently for the child, the new-born King. If anyone here has ever had a broken heart, or feels lonely, even within a relationship, do not be discouraged for “the Lord is close to the broken-hearted” as Scripture says, (Psalm 34:19) and all loneliness is ultimately an invitation from God to seek Him, to seek intimacy with Him. (Third Puzzle Piece).

All these pieces of the puzzle together form an icon of the birth of Christ in the manger, the goal of all the seeking of the three wise men (although it is small and hard to see from the back, you get the idea). For all those who seek Him, God gives to each person different gifts, clues, pieces of a puzzle, or signs to lead them to Him – it could be a love of truth, beauty or a lonely heart or anything else under the sun. God wants to be found by us, and to enter into a personal relationship with us.

“(There are) only two classes of persons who can be called reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him and those who seek (italics mine) him with all their heart because they do not know him.” In one sense, we practicing Catholics do know God and try to serve Him with all our hearts; yet, in so far as we are not yet saints, let us continue to “search diligently for the child,” for a deeper knowledge and love of Him who is the only Son of God, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

That’s the end of my homily. Just a reminder that on this feast of the Epiphany, we are giving out little gifts just like last year. After you receive Communion, you may reach into one of the baskets and take out a personal spiritual gift from God for 2007. As I mentioned last year, there is nothing outside God’s providence; He knows where our hand is going to reach into the basket and what gift He wants to give us. There are of course countless gifts that God wants to give us, but this tradition helps us to focus on one particular gift. There are about 40-50 different ones. They are ALL gifts; it’s not like some get chocolate in their stocking and some get coal. Last year, one person received “repentance” for a gift and wondered whether or not that’s really a gift. Yes. They are all gifts. Last year, I received happiness, and even though God allowed my heart to pass through a certain agony for about 8 months, I was still very happy. Enjoy your gift, and may it bring you closer to God in 2007.