May 25, 2008
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Corpus Christi, May 25th, 2008
What do you want in your relationship with God and other people – substance or special effects? Some people, spoiled by technology, say they have a hard time believing in Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist because there are no special effects – you can’t see his Body and Blood hidden under the appearance of bread and wine.
Imagine, young ladies here (or older women, think back to your youth) and you’re going out on a first date. And he takes to the latest action flick – “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, (music) with lots of special effects to dazzle your eyes. But on the ride there and the ride back, he barely speaks, just stares at the road and mumbles a few words in response to your questions. An evening full of popcorn and special effects, but void of substance, leaving your soul feeling empty.
Imagine another first date where he suggests you go for a walk through the Ernest Burton conservation area. What? The Ernest Burton conservation area? You mean near the Castor River (you’re thinking “that’s not very romantic” “if you cared about me you’d entertain me with special effects?”). But you agree. And as you walk and listen to him talk about relationships in general, it occurs to you that this might be someone you can trust, so you take a risk and say, “well, I’ve been hurt in the past . . . and I’m a little bit fearful of rejection.” And he listens respectfully and replies, “As for me, I don’t really share much with my friends; I sort of hide who I am behind a mask.”
So the conversation continues, and two hours go by like that (snap!). He drops you off at home, you close the door behind you and look up with a huge smile on your face, your heart filled with joy! Why? Because you just shared in something that is increasingly rare in our materialistic culture – it’s something called a “relationship” and you shared something of substance with another person.
We human beings are not just consumers craving eye candy and special effects; we are immortal souls that feed on substance. I’m sick of popcorn and cotton candy! Give me something of substance! “At the Last Supper,” we read in “God’s Gift for the Life of the World,” “Jesus gave the gift of his sacramental presence, a ‘real and substantial presence’, even though veiled in the humble signs of bread and wine” (p. 23).
Yes, Lord give me this substantial bread, the bread of life, your Body and Blood, a meaningful relationship with God and other people.
(Music to “Tantum Ergo”). Do you recognize the music? It’s the tune of the Eucharistic hymn, “Tantum Ergo Sacramentum.” Not as thrilling as (theme to Indiana Jones) is it? “Tantum Ergo Sacramentum, veneremur cernui.” Loosely translated, “Down in adoration falling, this great sacrament we hail . . . faith will tell us Christ is present, when our human senses fail.” In this sacrament, our human senses fail, because there are no special effects to entertain them.
Instead of special effects, Jesus gives us substance – the reality of his Body and Blood. Why? Because he loves us. “The institution of the holy Eucharist is the gift of Love in Person” (p. 21). He wants to take you away from the noisy, crowded theater, and other temples of distraction, and go for a walk with you in the ________ conservation area, or sit quietly together in the Church, or in your room at home – just the two of you, you and Jesus, in conversation, in a relationship of substance.
Every relationship of substance requires conversation, communication, openness, sharing. So Jesus speaks first to us. At the moment we receive Holy Communion, he says to each one of us, “this bread that I am giving you is my flesh for the life of the world; the gift of Love in Person.” In love, Jesus speaks to us; what do we reply? Do we stare blankly and mumble like that deadbeat date? Jesus is looking for some friends with whom to share his heart. But is anyone listening?
If we were to sit quietly in prayer, we might hear him say to us, “well, I too have been hurt in the past, and I’m a little bit fearful of rejection, especially by so-called Catholics who exalt themselves and forget me (Deut ), who turn their backs, not their faces to me, whose hearts have grown so cold that . . . I shiver to enter such hearts in Holy Communion . . . if only I had a few friends to keep me company and console me.”
Once we truly meet Jesus Christ and become friends with him, our lives become a quest to come to know him and love him more and more, until that day our mortal flesh is married to his divinity in the glory of the Resurrection. Indiana Jones went on many quests in his career: the “crystal skull” (whatever that is), the ark of the covenant (in the first movie) and the holy grail (in the third movie). (By the way, I liked the first one, but the rest were lame.
Don’t waste your valuable time and money on this latest popcorn fluff; instead, buy a ticket for Pot Pourri after Mass today, and you will get both substance and entertainment).
One of Indiana Jones’ adventures was the quest for the Holy Grail. The story goes back to the late 12th century, when “the poets of France and Germany began to compose haunting legends about a mysterious sacred object – the Holy Grail – that gradually emerged as the chalice of the Last Supper” (In the Presence of Our Lord by Benedict Groeschel and James Monti, p. 209). In a book on the Eucharist by Fr. Benedict Groeschel and James Monti, we read: “The more we seek to penetrate the mystery of the Holy Grail, (we discover) that the quest to see and venerate this vessel of the Last Supper was but a parable of a grand new quest to gaze upon and adore the Priceless Divine Gift of that Supper – a quest to adore the Eucharist” (#210) (that’s the real “holy grail,” the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ)
This year of the International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec is an invitation by the Holy Spirit for all of us to adore the Eucharist. On a recent pastoral day, our Archbishop expressed the hope that one fruit of the Eucharistic Congress in Canada will be more Eucharistic Adoration in the parishes of Ottawa, specifically, adoration for vocations to the priesthood. (By the way, we are having all day adoration on the First Friday of June and there’s a sign up sheet in the foyer) Prayer is desperately needed. I have met many young men who have had thought of the priesthood, but simply cannot make up their minds; they’re distracted by too many special effects and cannot make a commitment. They need the help of your prayers. Eucharistic Adoration is one of the main solutions to the crisis in vocations. A trusted parishioner once told me that there is a lot of “passive” interest in adoration in our parish . . .
The Archbishop also spoke about the feast of Corpus Christi and little things we can do to deepen our faith in the real presence. He cautioned us to avoid the casual language we sometimes find among some eucharistic ministers who say, “you do the bread and I’ll do the wine.” If we really believe in the real presence, our faith should be reflected in our language, so we could say, “you hand out the Body of Christ/ consecrated hosts, and I will minister the Precious Blood/the chalice.”
Little things to deepen our faith in the real presence. To walk through the streets of Russell in a Eucharistic Procession. To genuflect well when entering or leaving the Church. And what about greeting Jesus in the tabernacle when you come to the Church for a meeting? When you come home from school or work, do you ignore your wife or parents and immediately go and sit down in front of the TV or computer? No! You at least say “hi, I’m home!” When we come to the Church for a meeting, should we not first say “hi, I’m here!” to the Master of the house, to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament?
I myself need to be more conscious of this when I come to evening meetings for Temporal Affairs or Parish Council, and I invite members of the CWL or Knights or others to do the same – to briefly greet our Lord truly present here. After all, from the perspective of the angels and the saints, as they look down one earth from heaven, what are the two holiest places in Russell, that shine like lamps in a dark place? (The tabernacle in Church and in the chapel at St. Thomas Aquinas High School).
What do you want in your relationship with God and other people – substance or special effects? Two hours of mindless entertainment may help you forget your pain . . . for two hours. But afterwards, you come back to yourself; nothing has changed; in fact, you may even feel more empty than you did before you spent the $12. If you dedicated that same time once in a while to your relationship with Jesus Christ, you would find instant, amazing and lasting effects in your soul – peace, joy, love, happiness. The quest is before you. Now it’s up to you – to sit in your lazy-boy and watch life pass you by, or begin the adventure.
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May 18, 2008
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Holy Trinity, Year A, May 18th, 2008
“If you see charity, you see the Trinity.” With this quote from St. Augustine, our Holy Father begins the second part of his encyclical, “God is Love.” I re-read the second part of the Pope’s encyclical during my mission trip, in part to seek guidance in my practice of love and charity toward the poor. “If you see love-charity, you see the Trinity.”
In relation to the Trinity, the Pope writes: “The Spirit is . . . the energy which transforms the heart of the (Church), so that it becomes a witness before the world to the love of the Father, who wishes to make humanity a single family in his Son” (#19). “The Church is God’s family in the world” (#25), writes the Pope. In this family, “(in this) community of believers there can never be room for a poverty that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life” (#20)
The word “family” reminds us of one of the most important consequences of our belief in the Trinity: we are created in the image of God not as isolated individuals, but as persons called to love one another as members of a single family, called to discover our selves in the sincere gift of self in love.
This family extends throughout the whole world. As the Holy Father reminds us,“concern for our neighbour transcends the confines of national communities.” He also quotes the Second Vatican Council:
“Through better means of communications, distances between peoples have been almost eliminated, (and) charitable activity can and should embrace all people and all needs” (#30) – from Burma and China to El Salvador and Honduras.
Now to the pictures: the first one is of Jacquelin Carolina Mejia of Barra Santiago in Ahuachapan, El Salvador. She was admitted to the hospital for malnourished children at Agape on April 21st, at the age of 1 year, 10 months and 10 days, with a weight of 15 lbs (and she should weigh about 25 lbs); she was diagnosed with severe malnutrition, psycho-motor delay and intestinal parasites (the nurse told me they pulled out about 40 parasitic worms from her body)
Picture of Fr. Tim feeding Jacquelin (photo #3). I forget what they had for lunch that day, but it may very well have been food donated from Canada through Canadian Food for Children, that’s why I directed some of your donations to this organization. It’s 100% volunteer-run, and they send out s transport truck per day of food and clothing from Canada to missions throughout the world – this is a picture of slit peas in the warehouse in El Salvador (photo #4). The world crisis in food prices has severe and immediate effects in such countries. The price of rice in El Salvador has gone up in three months from 25 cents a pound to 60 cents a pound – more than a 100% increase. The minimum wage in El Salvador is $180/month, but for a family of four, the basic necessities of life cost about $300/month. You wonder how anyone can afford to feed their families.
It is thanks in part to the generosity of Canadians that children who were once starving are now doing much better. This is a picture of Yensi taken 2 weeks ago (photo #5). She is now 7 years old. When I first met her in February, 2003, at the hospital, she was starving, weighing only 18 lbs at the age of two (photo #5.1). Here’s a picture of Yensi and her sister Fatima from 2004 (photo #5.2) and her family in front of their house that same year (photo #5.3). The family is still poor, but the father now has a decent job, and Yensi and her sister received new shoes two weeks ago, along with 38 other children, thanks to your generosity. (photo #6)
Here I am (photo #7) hanging out with some of the children in the hospital. They are holding little prayer cards I gave them of Jesus that says, “Jesus, en ti confio” “Jesus, I trust in you.” As a priest, in addition to giving people money, I also tried to give something of myself, and to share with them the love of Jesus. In his encyclical, “God is love,” the Pope writes that “love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support” (#28).
I spent a lot of time reflecting on these following words of our Holy Father: “My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of humiliation, I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift” (#35). I did not want to go to El Salvador and Honduras and be a bank machine that gives out money. I am a priest, so I want to give people the love of Jesus Christ!
So at the soup kitchen for poor seniors, where they receive 3 meals a day 365 days a year, we decided to first celebrate Mass (photos #8,#9) and give them Jesus, then feed them dinner (photo #9.1), and then I gave to each one of them, 83 people in all, five dollars, saying, “es un regalo de la gente de mi parroquia.” (It’s a gift from the people in my parish). They were very happy indeed; it was like Christmas day! Then after dinner they all went back home. This is the home of one of the regulars from the soup kitchen (photo #10)
After a brief, four-day visit to El Salvador, I was off to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Here’s a picture (photo #11) of more split peas from Canada, with me, a volunteer, and Padre Patricio, the founder of the mission that provides free school and meals for hundreds of poor children. Here he is handing out donations to some needy families in the vicinity of the school (photo #12). Here I am (photo #13)with a single mother and her child after we gave her some food. She was pregnant with her child at age twelve (not of her own free will).
The next part was the saddest portion of my visit to Honduras: the dump (photo #14) beside the polluted river, and the destitute families we visited in this neighborhood. Here are two children from one family: a single mother named Ana — 28 years old with 8 kids (photo #15). Ana was out selling stuff – perhaps found in the dump – to try to raise a few lempiras (the currency in Honduras) to feed her children, leaving four of them at home, one (the girl on the left) in bed with a fever. We visited them around 5 p.m. on Saturday, and none of them had eaten anything all day. But thanks to the money you gave me, we bought them some bread, orange juice and eggs, which you see them eating here (photo #16).
This is a picture of the scenery in the hills around Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras (#17). It is dry and dusty. There’s no running water. For washing, drinking, cooking, all the people have to buy water from a water-tanker truck that rumbles up the hills each day. But in the middle of this wasteland, there are oasis of hope: here’s one of them (#18) a school built by Padre Patricio, where hundreds of children go to school for free and receive free food, thanks in part to the generosity of Canadians.
Here is one the flowers blooming in this wasteland: Veronica (photo #19). Her family is so poor her three-year old sister was malnourished and is now being cared for by the missionaries of charity in the city. Without outside help, Veronica would be barefoot and dirty, sitting in the dust outside her tin house, with nothing to do all day and no hope in the future. But thanks to the generosity of donors from Spain and Canada, she and hundreds like her, are bright-eyed and smiling, dressed in clean uniforms with shoes, and receiving an education which is absolutely essential for any of these children to climb out of poverty.
Here I am (photo #20) with Veronica and some of the children after Sunday Mass at the local parish. Flowers will bloom in this desert with just a little bit of water. With just a little bit of financial aid from the outside, these children bloom into beautiful, healthy, happy and faith-filled teenagers whom I find much more spiritually advanced than Canadian teens, because there are less weeds choking God’s word in their souls – less materialism and distractions, less mindless entertainment and electronic gadgets – all those things that prevent the soul from hearing and seeing God within.
Here’s the Church (photo #21) where I concelebrated Mass 2 Sundays ago. It is probably the smallest and poorest Church I’ve ever entered, but the people sang the hymns with real joy in their hearts.
There is so much suffering in the world, but so much hope. In Burma with the cyclone, in China with the earthquake, hunger in El Salvador and Honduras. There is suffering but there is so much hope. Many, many good people are making a difference in the lives of the poor. Thank you for all your donations that have helped hundreds of people. Thank you for your love for others, our poor brothers and sisters of the “South,” for the love that inspired your financial gifts, so that you were, in the words of the Holy Father, “personally present in your gift.”
Here’s a picture of another Church that you might recognize. Down South, they sometimes say that the people in North America are cold. I try to explain that’s it’s not true: the climate may be cold, but the people are not. There is warmth and love in their hearts – this love kindled in their hearts by the Holy Trinity that wants to make all of humanity a single family; and in their hearts, there is a sincere desire to share with others and help them. Sometimes the people in our culture simply need to be shown how to help, and they will respond, and become personally present in their gifts.
But sometimes, in order to help others and bear witness to our faith, we do have to come out of our “comfort zone” as Deacon Tom mentioned last week. To take risks and make a leap of faith. It was not at all easy for me to go to El Salvador and Honduras; I had to face many fears in undertaking this mission trip. But God rewarded me with many spiritual gifts.
I will leave you with these words from our Holy Father (from a recent meeting with priests in Rome): “I save my soul only be giving it . . . it is only by freeing myself from myself, by coming out of myself, as God did in the Son who came out of God himself to save us . . . it is a great leap that is never made once and for all . . . it (is) necessary to renew this leap out of oneself every day . . . I would say that it is precisely in the celebration of the Eucharist – this great and profound encounter with the Lord in which I let myself fall into his hands – that we ourselves must take this great step” (Meeting with the priests of Rome, February 7th, 2008)
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May 11, 2008
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Pentecost, May 11th, 2008
Come Holy Spirit, fill the Hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Your love. This is exactly what happened to the apostles. They went from being timid and fearful, huddled behind locked doors, to being bold and courageous. Their hearts were filled, and they became on fire for God and His love.
And, the coming of the Holy Spirit is not something that just happened once, to the Apostles, two thousand years ago. In Baptism, and in Confirmation, the Holy Spirit comes upon each of us as well.
Do we really want to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Do we want that fire kindled within us? What happens then? We can see what became of the Apostles when the Holy Spirit filled them. They began to proclaim the Good News, of Jesus and salvation. The verses from the Acts of the Apostles that follow those in today’s first reading tell of Peter’s testimony to this, and the effect it had on the people who heard him – three thousand people were converted. I encourage everyone to open your bible when you get home and read the rest of the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
When we allow the Holy Spirit to work in us to the fullest extent, we too can give powerful testimony to Jesus and help spread the Good News.
Sometimes, this requires stepping out of our comfort zone. This past Thursday, a group of people from our parish, as well as a strong contingent from St. Thomas Aquinas High School, made the trip to the March for Life in Ottawa. It was very heartening to be there with thousands of others, joyfully proclaiming the sanctity of all human life to a culture that is inattentive or even hostile to hearing that abortion is an evil that no society should tolerate, much less one that considers itself civilized.
There was a small group of counter-protesters present; they seemed angry and bitter, and definitely in need of our prayers. And we also need to have compassion for, and pray for, those women who have fallen for the lie that this is an acceptable, or even preferable, option for them when they find themselves in a difficult situation. How did we ever get to the point that there is not just no law against such an atrocity as abortion, but that it is defended to such an extent, that some people consider it so absolutely important?
Regardless, there was still room for more people on our bus, so next year, consider taking the day to come with us, so that we might make an even greater impact.
The Holy Spirit can help us to have the courage to speak out against sin and injustice, to make ourselves understood to a world that often does not speak our language.
The Apostles were able to communicate with people from many different lands who were in Jerusalem at that time. We are sometimes faced with a similar challenge. We will encounter people who, though they may be from the same place, do not share the same worldview that we do, people whose background or experience has left them with as much difficulty understanding our message as we may have of comprehending their lack of understanding. Perhaps, like the Apostles, if we ask the Holy Spirit, he will give us the ability to speak out in a way that others of dissimilar worldviews can understand and accept.
Understand and accept. The Apostles did not force anyone to become believers. They didn’t have to. The Holy Spirit gave them the ability to speak so that others could understand, and their words opened the hearts of those listening to accept their teaching. This is what we should hope for, too. To open hearts to the Lord. To help each individual to realize the plan that God has for him or her, not because of what we think, but according to God’s will. It is the Holy Spirit that can inspire us, enlighten us, to say the words that will help others become closer to God. And, for us to be receptive to His word, His will, in our own lives.
Are we having trouble understanding what the Holy Spirit might be saying to us, regarding some part of our life?
In trying to fight injustice, to save others, we should never lose sight of the importance of our own salvation, and of the role the Holy Spirit plays in helping us stay on the path to eternal life. We open ourselves to the Holy Spirit so that He can give us guidance and strength.
Let us feel the strength, the power, the fire. Come Holy Spirit, fill the Hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Your love.
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