Nativity of Our Lord, Night

Is 9:1-6
Ps 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13
Ti 2:11-14
Lk 2:1-14

Just like children who cannot wait until Christmas day to open presents, we are here in the middle of the night, with a cold front coming in, and a possible chance of snow.  We are here to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  I love being Catholic, I love our faith, I love the very fact that we would be up in the middle of the night to go to Church!  You all are here because you want to be here!

Tonight I have the challenge of retelling the greatest story ever told.  Christmas and Easter stand as the two greatest celebrations in the Church’s year because they convey two sides of the same mystery of the person of Jesus Christ.  The birth of Jesus in this world is a sign for all of us that salvation has literally come into our midst.  All of creation has been waiting for this moment.  At the darkest hour of the darkest day of the darkest month in one of the most remote backwater places in the world, Christ – the light of the world is born to us.  That God would become a man to dwell amongst us is already an incredible act of love, but how He chooses to do it shows us the perfection of that love.  God had planned this from the very beginning of time.  He didn’t just happen to find the perfect gift for us on the shelf as He was passing through.  He had been preparing us to receive Him since the beginning and yet all the while, allowing humanity to make the free choice and decision on whether to follow Him.

Luke begins his account of Jesus’ birth by calling the time and place of the occurrence.  This is for us to understand that this was not a fable, not a made-up morality story or play, but that this really did occur in time and history.  The location? Bethlehem, the City of David – King David’s hometown.  This point of fact recalls Joseph’s lineage back to the house of Jesse and King David and that from this little town of Bethlehem was promised a king like David but even greater than him.  And the Virgin Mary gave birth to this child, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah of a virgin giving birth.  She gave birth to Him in a manger and wrapped Him with swaddling clothes.  The shepherds in the region came to Him and see what had happened.  To the lowliest of people came the greatest news that they would hear: their savior is born tonight!

We have heard this story told many times and each time we hear different variations or different parts highlighted.  What is most fascinating to me is how fitting He has designed everything to be and then how the gospel writers are inspired to write those details for us to uncover.  As we hear in the first reading, the people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.  During the darkest time of the year, it would make sense that Jesus, the light of the World, would come to bring light and life back into our darkness.  He is our hope, He is our light.  God has prepared the cosmos, the seasons to coincide with His coming.

The Mystery of the Incarnation on Christmas cannot be fully realized until we are connected with the Paschal Mystery – that is, Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection.  In other words, without Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we won’t and cannot fully understand Christmas.  As tradition has it, Good Friday and the Feast of the Annunciation were placed on the same day, March 25.  The day when Christ really enters the world is when He is conceived, when the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear a son.  The day that He enters the world is the day that He redeems the world, March 25.  Count nine months ahead and we have December 25 the day of our Lord’s birth.  Here you can see that even calendar and time are ordered to and preparing for Christ.

How is Christ brought into the world?  After He is born, He is wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.  Swaddling is a common way to quiet a child, wrapping them up so they feel secure: like a baby burrito.  I can think of another time of when someone is swaddled and that is after they have died.  Back in the day, they would wrap clothes around a person like a mummy – like you would swaddle a baby.  There is a bit of a symbolic connection of swaddling at the beginning and at the end of your life – in a sense almost one in the same.  As the Lord was laid in the manger, we come to understand this meaning even more fully.  Manger comes from the word “to eat”.  Our Lord was laid in a manger, a feeding trough for beasts and animals.  Christ, just born for us was already being prepared to be sacrificed, to die, and to be offered as food.

Finally, Christ is born in Bethlehem, which many of you know is Hebrew for “House of Bread”.  I could think of no more a fitting place than for Christ to be born in the House of Bread.  Because for us as Catholics, we know that He is the Bread of Life.  The Savior of the world, born for us, swaddled in anticipation of His death and laid in a manger for animals to eat, in the town called “House of Bread”.

For any other person this image would be disturbing, but for us who believe these images are amazing.  That Jesus in a prophetic and symbolic way was already telling us that He has come, not to be heralded as king, but to die for us and give us His life so that we may have relationship and communion with Him.  Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord – Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice! In the celebration of the Holy Eucharist tonight, let us adore and worship in holy reverence to Christ.  God, out of love for us became man – humbling Himself for our sake that we may have communion with Him and be transformed into Him.  Our Lord has come to us, in the humblest form of Bread to sustain us and to bring us life.  All of Creation has waited in anticipation for this day and now that is here, let us enter into the celebration.  Let us truly bring Him into our hearts.  He has been waiting for us and preparing us – come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

IV Sunday of Advent, Cycle C

Mi 5:1-4a
Ps 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19
Heb 10:5-10
Lk 1:39-45

Growing up, one of the most nerve-wracking things I have ever had to do was calling a girl that I liked in junior high.  I finally got her number and I was going to call her to ask her out.  We didn’t have texting or email – I had those old rotary phones that felt like it took a whole minute to dial 7 digits.  Palms sweaty and heart racing – I even had to write out some things to talk about on a piece of paper if and when my mind blanked.  I was really excited, but also scared and nervous too.  What if she said ‘no’ or my plans didn’t work out? There was so much riding on this call.  First call: “Hello?”, Click.  What if her Mom or Dad picks up or her brother? Oh this is not going to end well.  Second call: “Hello?”, Click.  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, I think I’m going to play video games and read books for the rest of my life.  That seems like an acceptable life choice right?  Third call: “Hello?” “Hi… “  I had her on the line and we talked for what seemed like an eternity.  I didn’t even ask her out… too nervous – I had her on the phone, while spoil a good thing right?   It was probably the most awkward conversation ever and we talked about absolutely nothing – I think it was about homework or something. Needless to say, it was not the best first attempt.

Although my first phone conversation with a girl was a rite of passage for all men, I think I remember the feeling afterwards more than the feelings before and during.  I was so excited that I sprinted around the house about ten times, literally jumping for joy, and then messed/tortured my little brother for a victory lap.  I couldn’t sleep the whole night.  It. Was. Awesome.

I am sure you have felt this kind of joy and excitement before.  When you first find out someone likes you, when you decide you want to get married, when you get the job that you really wanted, when you have finally moved into your dream home, or when you hold your child for the first time.  You wake up in the morning and the sun just shines a little brighter, the birds chirp a little happier, and life is just beautiful.

When we hear of Mary setting out in the hill country in haste to find Elizabeth – this is exactly what she is doing: the Good News lifts her up and sends her off.  When Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth cries out in a loud voice of joy.  The infant in her womb also leaps for joy.  The depths of her very being leap for joy.  It is in those moments of intense joy that the Holy Spirit moves within Elizabeth and her unborn child and she proclaims: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  

In this statement we hear the familiar words of the “Hail Mary”, but I would like to reflect on the following passage: And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  Here Elizabeth speaks a profound truth:  “the Mother of my Lord” – is a powerful theological statement.  Announcing that Mary is indeed bearing the Son of God and is indeed the Mother of God – the unborn John the Baptist knows it, Elizabeth knows it, and certainly Mary already knew it.  Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant – the Promise of God fulfilled in her womb, goes to Elizabeth and Elizabeth is humbled before her.  Elizabeth is older, John the Baptist is older, but they recognized that Lord has come into their midst.  And just by God’s very presence, the people around Him are dramatically transformed and filled with joy.  And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  

We are too small, too sinful, and utterly insignificant to be regarded as worthy of receiving Him.  What have we done to deserve God’s favor?  All we have done was to do what we were supposed to do.  The good that we do, seems only to help us “break even” in terms of our sin, but because of Christ we have something a whole lot more.  God has looked down on us and shown us His favor by His love for us in sending down His Son.  He comes to us in His smallness as predicted in the Book of the Prophet Micah: from the little town of Bethlehem comes one who will stand firm, shepherd His flock, showing His greatness to the ends of the earth and bring peace to all – He is peace.

How blessed are we that the Lord should come to us every day in the Holy Eucharist.  As we hear in the letter to the Hebrews, Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delighted in.  Jesus Christ, our sacrifice and our offering – though God desired not, was prepared for us, so that we may do His will.  We would not have the Eucharist without the Passion and Sacrifice.  We would not have the Sacrifice of Christ without the Incarnation of Christ, and without all of that, we would not have salvation.  If He did not come, we would not have a relationship with Him, we would not be able to receive Him, and we would be forever steeped in the darkness of our own sin, suffering and, misery.  And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  

Do we live in that kind of humility?  Do we live in the sense that our heads are bowed down in unworthiness before God for all of His goodness and beatitude?  Or we live in the mindset that God is our ATM, our genie in a bottle that will grant our every wish and completely taking Him for granted?  Are your hearts moved with joy when you are in His presence?  If they aren’t, then maybe that is something that you need to ask for before you ask for anything else.  The lack of joy is not because He is not there, but because we are not fully prepared to receive Him.  In these four weeks, how have you prepared to receive joy?  If you haven’t, this is the time to start.  The joy that you will have with Him is tremendous – this is the Christmas spirit: the anxious anticipation, the preparation, and finally the fulfillment of something that was promised since the beginning of time.  All of Creation has been waiting for the perfect time of Redemption in the Incarnation.  Let us earnestly prepare for his coming.  The time to prepare for His coming is NOW.  Let us be humbled and honored that He would want to come to us – and when He comes may we be filled with humility and joy: And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  

III Sunday of Advent, Cycle C

Zep 3:14-18a
Is 12:2-3, 4, 5-6
Phil 4:4-7
Lk 3:10-18

Rejoice in the Lord always. I say it again: rejoice!

This is the Third Sunday of Advent, Gaudate Sunday – where Gaudate means “rejoice”.  Yet, it seems that we have hardly any cause for rejoicing.   These words from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians can hardly be fitting for our mood today.  Only two days from one of the most tragic shooting sprees our nation has ever faced: 26 dead, twenty children ages 5-10.  Some have been glued to the media trying to find the latest information and others are afraid to turn on the television because they cannot handle this emotional burden.  Sadly this event amongst the unrest in the Middle East, Africa, and other parts of the world, the economic situation in our country, and the curtailing of religious freedom is just one more straw on the camel’s back.  Our nation is suffering and in a state of shock and mourning, how can we rejoice?

Our first reading from the prophet Zephaniah is just as out of touch with our emotional state: Shout for joy, O daughter Zion! Sing joyfully, O Israel! Be glad and exult with all your heart… How can we shout for joy and sing joyfully when we are in the state that we are in.  I cannot tell you how many times people have come up to me to tell me how worried they are with the state of society, our nation, and the world.  They ask me as if I had all the answers – and sometimes I do. =)  As much time for prayer and contemplation as I have had, God has yet to let me see His “playbook” on what He is up to.

As for myself, what am I to do? How am I to answer these tough questions about this particular horrible tragedy of senseless evil?  I ask God where and how am I to tell His beloved children that everything is going to be okay when it is obviously not.  Twelve, almost thirteen years from a century that has seen the most horrible atrocities that one man could commit against another – and now we do not see the evil thousands of miles away but in our places of work, places of entertainment, and places of education.

The Catholic priests of the parish closest to the school in Connecticut were some of the first responders to this tragedy – some of the victims were his parishioners – some were preparing for first communion, some had just performed their Christmas play.  The old monsignor and his associate pastor had to answer the tough questions that none of us would want to answer.  As I sit comfortably in my room, I thought to myself that I would never want to be in that priest’s position ministering and meeting with the victims’ families.  How would I handle it?  What would I even do in that situation?  Senseless violence, incredible loss, and absolutely no means to return to innocence.  It is enough to make a new priest scared run for his life, pack up, and go back home – even if it is only a few miles down Central Expressway.  I didn’t sign up for this!

As we hear the Gospel proclaimed, I hear something quite profound when the crowds asked John the Baptist, “What should we do?” “Teacher, what should we do?”  He gives a very simple answer.  He simply tells them to give to those who have none, to be fair and just, and to do their jobs as their occupation required.  When I ask myself what I should do in that situation, I realized that what those heroic priests did and are doing now is exactly what they were supposed to do.  If your parish priest is truly your shepherd, would your shepherd hide out in his room or would he be right there to tend his flock? If, God forbid, something like that were to happen to Seton’s Ark or the Faith Formation Center or any of the public schools around us – I would not have a second thought to be right there because you are mine and have been entrusted to me.  I would be doing what I am supposed to do and what I want to do, because that is what shepherds do.  And I know that any of you as parents would do the same for your children, your children’s children and your neighbor’s children as well.  Why? Because the love of Christ compels us to fulfill our Christian vocation – our calling to love of neighbor and God.

In the midst of evil and adversity, we have no other recourse than to turn to Jesus Christ.  No words of comfort, no human action can undo the horror that has been done.  Evil in all its forms has been infiltrating creation; from the nations, the society, down to the family and the individual person.  In the very literal dark days ahead – before the winter solstice – and in the very abyss of the darkness of the human condition to the very depths of despair comes the Light of Christ into the world on Christmas Day.  What I have gained from praying for and meditating on this particular tragedy is that in the midst of all this mess that we are in, there is reason to rejoice.  In fact, what St. Paul is saying in the first reading today is not a polite recommendation or a suggestion, but rather an imperative – a command!  REJOICE IN THE LORD ALWAYS. I SAY IT AGAIN: REJOICE!  Gaudate Sunday is not out of place and not inappropriate to our sentiments.  I would be so bold as to say that it is exactly in the right place, the right time – precisely because of these events, we NEED Gaudate Sunday.  These tragic events are precisely the very REASON for Gaudate Sunday.

The command for us to rejoice is not for us to rejoice in the loss, but rather for us to realize that all is not lost.  There is hope to bring us beyond suffering.  Now the people were filled with expectation and all were asking in their hearts… Let us be filled with expectation and desiring in our hearts as the people were with John the Baptist!  That expectation is the coming of Christ into the world to bring salvation to all.  The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. PRAY!!  Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the reality of suffering and tragedy can shake us to our very core – we wrestle with trying to find meaning in the midst of evil.  However, the command to rejoice is not to be taken lightly as some “pious-churchy” excuse to sugarcoat and deny what has happened, but rather to rejoice is our response to what has happened because God is the one who will come to bring us out of these dark times.

Let us remind ourselves that the Eucharist – the Thanksgiving that we celebrate does not stop because there is evil in the world, but rather we continue to celebrate the salvific work of Christ in spite of and in response to those evils.  The Eucharistic Feast that we celebrate here is the sign for us – that God has already won the victory over death and Satan; and we, as the people of God, the people of faith do not live as a people without hope.  We prepare ourselves in anxious anticipation of the hope that is to come on Christmas Day where we will remember and welcome our Lord into this world: Christ our Light is coming, the Lord is near.  Let not anxiety fill your hearts with dread, but let them be filled with joyful expectation for our Lord.  My dear brothers and sisters, let us Rejoice in the Lord always. I say it again: rejoice!

II Sunday of Advent, Cycle C

 Bar 5:1-9
Ps 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6 
Phil 1:4-6, 8-11
Lk 3:1-6


One of my favorite family vacations was when we went to the Grand Canyon.  The four of us, my parents and my brother and I, piled into our Dodge Caravan Mini-van – all the rage in the eighties on our summer trip.  We started our trip to the Grand Canyon by going North. [really?  That made no sense to me – I think I was in the third grade at the time and my geography told me that the Grand Canyon was West, not North.  I offered to drive, but my parents said no.]  We went North up through Oklahoma and Kansas and stopped in Colorado Springs for a quick stay before heading down to the Grand Canyon.  Of course we had to do the family camping thing, the KOA campsites and my brother and I were the best-behaved siblings ever.  [And when I say we were the best-behaved I mean that I would have probably been tried as an adult in some states we drove through.  ]  After almost a week of driving, we eventually did make it to the Grand Canyon and it was certainly one of the most awesome sights I have ever seen in my life: we reached the Promised Land!  But it was short lived; we stayed only two days because we were behind schedule.  My biggest regret was not getting to ride the donkeys.  We finally got back to our home in Dallas in more or less one piece – I think I lost a few of my stuffed animals along the way.

Looking back, I often wondered why we had to go through such a roundabout way to get to our destination.  Wouldn’t it have been better to go straight there and perhaps enjoy it for at least a few more days?  Instead of stopping and going, winding here and there and enjoying myself, I was getting myself into more and more trouble with my brother and my parents.  We hear in today’s Gospel of John the Baptist preaching out in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.  The Lord is coming and we are going to meet Him.  We must prepare the way of the Lord: to take the most direct route possible.  As our family was driving through Colorado down to the Grand Canyon, we had so many mountainous roads to drive through.  It was so stressful for my parents – going up and down, watching out for falling rocks, and trying to keep the two of us boys from tearing each other to pieces.  If the valleys were filled and the mountains leveled, we would have had a much easier time traveling to our destination.  A straight and smooth road – not a winding and rough road – to the Grand Canyon!  

Then again, I think about my life and my walk with God.  And perhaps you too may feel the same way.  Looking back, those roundabouts and rough patches and smooth ways were what made our journey unique and special – something for us to reminisce.  If all the valleys and mountains were made level, there would be no Grand Canyon, no Rocky Mountains.  There would be nothing beautiful to look at or visit.  But you know what?  When we are looking back at our difficult times and struggles, we can see the beauty and we can see the triumph… why? Because we are glad it’s over!  But as we look forward, if there was a shortcut to a desired destination, why would you deliberately try to put yourself into danger or undue stress?  For example, you have procrastinated on homework or a project or a task and waited until the last minute causing you to get angry at people around you for your mistake – why get into that?  After all isn’t the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?  Get it done!  For those who are still young it still sounds like something fun and there is room for that, but you who are older know that some of those side trips in life can have disastrous consequences – spiritually, emotionally, socially, financially, or mortally.  

If we look at the past few Sundays we have had readings about God coming in His glory and that there would be a great fear and trembling when He comes.  Even last Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent’s scripture readings reflected a sense of urgency in preparing for God’s coming.  This Sunday is no different:  A voice of one crying out in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.  I would like to draw your attention to a few parts of this Gospel that make today’s message so strong.  

You’ll notice that at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, we basically have a historical date – a setting in which this narrative will take place, In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar…. This is for the reader to know that this is a historical reality that this was the world at the time of this event.  Rome ruled, Herod was ruling as tetrarch and the high priests were Annas and Caiaphas.  It would be like saying that the Civil War began in the second year of Lincoln’s presidency.  The listing of names and places allows us to piece together that what John the Baptist was doing and when Jesus walked this earth was a real place and actual historical occurrence, not just something that happened “a long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.”  By having story touch historical reality, what follows has greater importance and significance as we hear about this John the Baptist, the son of Zachariah.

The prophet of Isaiah is quoted – the 40th chapter to be exact – and also slightly connected to our first reading: … every lofty mountain be made low, and the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground. This brings for us a fulfillment of one of the many prophecies.  What was prophesied centuries ago is now being fulfilled; a big fat “I told you so!” from God.  There is some guy out in the middle of “nowhere-desert” telling us to repent, be converted, and prepare the way for Christ’s coming. 

What Isaiah, John the Baptist, and all the other prophets of the past are talking about, of course, is preparing the way to God into our hearts, not a highway construction project.  Our Lord who is coming, requires a straight path from us – without the road blocks, without the hurdles that we throw in His way.  When something is obviously good for us and is something that we truly desire with all our heart – we do what we can do to make it happen.  It is remarkable how one can clear their schedule for a football game, time for a movie, or a weekend vacation, but yet cannot even make the time to go to Mass for a Holy Day of Obligation (ahem, yesterday). 

It’s really about priorities in life – if you really wanted to do it, you would make the time to do it or at least give a best effort.  When we prepare the path for the Lord, we are making a straight path – not a winding, rough one – but a highway straight into our hearts.  We prepare for Him – by finding ways to allow God to dwell in our hearts and also making use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, allowing His grace to flow into every part of our lives.  There is a Chinese saying; and because I’m Chinese I can say it without it being cliché: “You cannot write on rotten wood.”  God cannot work in your life nor can He force His will on you if you don’t want it.  He does, however, make an offer that you can’t or shouldn’t refuse: eternal joy and happiness with Him.  In this Advent season, it is the season to prepare for Christ’s coming into the world and we do so first with ourselves.  God desires that our love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness.  When we prepare the way of the Lord, when we make straight the pathway of the Lord to our heart, we are preparing for His coming on Christmas Day and when He comes, we will rejoice and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the BVM

Gn 3:9-15, 20
Ps 98:1,2-3ab, 3cd-4
Eph 1:3-6, 11-12
Lk 1:26-38

In a singular act, God preserved the Blessed Mother at the moment of her conception the stain of Original Sin.  This is, as it were, the second chances of second chances.  We read from the book of Genesis, the penalty and the fall out of our First Parents’ disobedience.  There’s a blame game between Adam and Eve – “It wasn’t my fault, it was the woman that you put here.” “It wasn’t my fault, the serpent tricked me.”  The ugliness of sin is that it continues to perpetuate – we don’t stop the cycle, we continue it and in trying to save ourselves from getting into more trouble, we make it worse.  But God in His divine goodness and love gave us a hint of what He was going to save us – He didn’t leave us in our sin, but in the fullness of time sent His Son to save us.  But even before the Incarnation of Christ, He set His divine plan into motion by preserving our Blessed Mother from Original Sin.  So that she may be a perfect vessel to bear our Lord and Savior.  I can only imagine the honor and beauty of her as a “tabernacle” or “the Ark of the Covenant” bearing our Lord Jesus Christ in her womb.

We hear in the Gospel, the Annunciation.  The angel Gabriel goes to Mary and announces to her that she is full of grace.  He calls her full of grace.  No other time in scripture is someone greeted in that manner and that troubled her. This is of course evidence of God’s favor and her sanctity in this almost cryptic greeting. And in this greeting and announcement that a child will be born from her, she ponders and accepts with the words Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word.

It is a Holy Day of obligation – even if it is a Saturday, with Sunday being right next door – why not combine it with Sunday or abrogate it?  What the Church is saying is that this Solemnity is very important to us.  But why?  Because this Solemnity is not just marking and exalting the Blessed Mother in her special status of being Immaculately Conceived.  This is a feast for us.  How so?  What does the Immaculate Conception have to do with us – that’s Mary’s business not ours.

Everybody here, I would assume – if we had any sense of living life beyond this rat-race of a secular world – in our moments of prayer and solitude we often ask ourselves a very simple question: “Why am I here?  Why me?”  In this question, we are seeking one simple thing: Our Vocation – our calling.  This is not a general call of humanity to holiness, but what is God trying to do in my life?  Why did God put me here on this earth and what is He calling me to do?  Is He calling me to be married?  Is He calling me to a life as a consecrated single?  Is He calling me to be a priest, deacon, or a religious brother or sister?  This vocational call is destined for us – we must seek it.  Why?  Because of Mary’s Immaculate Conception.

God had already in the womb predestined our Blessed Mother to this singular privilege.  And for us too, He has predestined us and planned out our lives for us.  We hear in the second reading to the Ephesians: In him we were also chosen, destined in accord with the purpose of the One who accomplishes all things according to the intention of his will, so that we might exist for the praise of his glory, we who first hoped in Christ.  In God, we have been chosen for a particular, personal vocation just like Mary was in hers.  We are called to seek and discover that.

Going further – even though God set these plans in motion, He still gives us free will.  We can choose to cooperate or refuse.  In Mary’s case, all of creation held their breath as they waited for Mary’s response.  Would she say yes? Or would she say no?  Fortunately for us she replied with the best response.  Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word. -- A complete act of free will surrender to God’s will, an ultimate act of Love.  Surrendering the self for the other is love, is it not?  And our vocation is doing just that.  When God blesses us with a vocation – be it to holy orders, religious life, or marriage – we must answer it.  We are free to answer it.  We must discover it first before we answer it, but we must answer it.  This is a gift – like the Immaculate Conception was the first gift for our Blessed Mother setting things in motion, her answer to her vocation involved a courageous action on her part.  She had to surrender herself to God – to render her complete self to God.  As we too are called to do in whatever our vocation may be – our cooperation with God is needed – on His terms, not ours.

Today, as we celebrate this feast of the Immaculate Conception let us remind ourselves that we must seek that vocation to which God calls us.  We must pray for it in those moments of quiet solitude; asking God imploring God the promise that He had promised us at the moment of our conception.  He does have a plan for us: He predestined us for love and relationship with Him in a special and unique way – a personal way.  And when we receive that answer from God – that vocation – we must respond back to Him.  And we hold Mary – the first to respond as our first parents did not, to start the redemption of all creation – we hold Mary as our most preeminent and shining example and  our model: Behold, I am the servant of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word.

Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe, Cycle B

Dn 7:13-14
Ps 93:1, 1-2, 5
Rev 1:5-8
Jn 18:33b-37

Does the title “Jesus Christ King of the Universe” seem a bit lofty to you?  Couldn’t it just be “Jesus Christ, the King of Christians or King of Catholics”?  Why is He King of everrrrrything?  It’s like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I am Arthur, King of the Britons… I am your king!” “Well, I didn’t vote for you!”  Why celebrate this feast, why do we honor Him as “king”?  Let us look at a bit of the historical development that established this feast.  This is, of course, the last Sunday of the liturgical year – it is the proverbial “New Year’s Eve” Sunday and we celebrate it with a solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ called “Christ the King”.  This feast day was originally instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI to be celebrated on the last Sunday of October to coincide with the Feast of All Saints Day (November 1).  It was later moved in 1969 by Pope Paul VI to the last Sunday in Ordinary Time to reflect the end of the liturgical year.

The original reasoning behind this feast was to honor Our Lord as King because of growing secularism and nationalism in the world; a world where the “here and now” had started to overrun Christ’s sovereignty in people’s lives.  After the First World War, nations began to regroup and start to rely on themselves more and more – there was a rally to a national identity and naturally one started forgetting about their religious identity.  So the Church instituted this feast to remind us that we are not just citizens of the United States, but first and foremost subjects of the Kingdom of God, of Jesus Christ.  When Pope Paul VI moved the feast to the last Sunday of Ordinary Time, the focus was on the emphasis of the end times:  Jesus Christ will reign supreme as King of the Universe – over all His creation at His Second Coming.  And as our Responsorial Psalm says, The Lord is king, in splendor robed in majesty!  Your throne stands firm from of old; from everlasting you are, O Lord.

Our Gospel reading takes us back to the passion of Jesus as He awaits judgment from Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the region.  The Jews have put Jesus to Pilate and accuse Jesus of making Himself king – a direct threat to Roman rule and for which one would be executed by crucifixion if found guilty.  The dialogue is powerful because they are conversing about the claims of Christ’s kingship.  Jesus declares, My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…but as it is, my kingdom is not here.  Jesus does not declare Himself King in the sense that Pilate would see it – a threat to Caesar.  Jesus claims to be of a kingdom that is beyond this world.  And if someone today were to say to you that they belonged to another kingdom not of this world, wouldn’t you dismiss them and write them off as “loony tunes”?  Is it so crazy for us to believe that we have a kingdom that is beyond this world?  Isn’t that why we are believers called Christians, why we are here today – worshipping God at Church?  Who is your King, who is your Lord and Savior?  And are you – as a professed Christian in this world – a passive bystander watching your life go by, or one that is actively trying to engage the world with your Christian faith and values?  When Jesus says, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over… what feelings does that evoke in you?  This has always been an accusation to me:  I have not been fighting to keep Christ from being handed over.  He is talking about us!! There is a quote from St. John Chrysostom (which is referring to worldly kingdoms but appropriate here to talk about His kingdom on earth): “Here Jesus shows the weakness of kingship among us. He demonstrates that its strength lies in servants.  But that which is above is sufficient of itself. It needs nothing….”  We are His weakness.

This dual citizenship that we have as Christians and as citizens of the United States calls us to live these out.  The idea of separation of Church and State does not mean Church and being Christian is only for Sunday and the rest of your world is on Monday through Saturday.  Your dual citizenship calls you to be informed in your faith, believing in the faith, living and practicing your faith, and bringing your faith to others while being out there in the world, seven days a week!  Governments and nations in the world cannot and should not infringe upon the free expression and practice of our Catholic Christian faith.  Since we ultimately belong to the Kingdom of God before we belong to any nation, our laws must reflect our Christian moral and social teachings.

For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.  Truth, my dear brothers and sisters, does not come from ourselves, but is given to us and revealed to us in God.  By flippantly saying “It’s all relative” or “No one’s perfect” is to deny the very fact and reality that there is objective Truth and there is perfection to which one must strive: the Truth of Jesus Christ and His moral example shown through the ages by the lives of the saints.  This is again a call for us to develop a personal relationship with God and have Him permeate every part of our lives.

At the end of the liturgical year, we honor Christ as King of the Universe.  It is fitting because all of the kingdoms and nations of the world will eventually fall and crumble, but Christ’s will reign supreme and eternally.  The First and Second readings speak of the Son of Man coming down from the clouds and that all of creation will be watching and waiting, worshipping the King of the Universe.  At the end of time as we know it, Christ will come again and the world as we know it will end.  Then there will be a new heavens and a new earth, a Resurrection of our bodies – where perfection of the universe and all creation will eternally forever be reigning with Christ in glory.  The end of the world is only scary for those who have no hope in the Resurrection.  We believe that there will be eternity and that there will be a Resurrection.  Therefore it is good that we are prepared for what will happen: for Christ’s Second Coming and we are looking forward to it.  What I find even more fitting is that at the end of the liturgical year, celebrating the end of time, the following Sunday will begin the season of Advent, the start of the new liturgical year.  And what does Advent celebrate?  Advent celebrates the preparation for the coming of Christ on Christmas.  Therefore, if you are worried that you are not ready for the end of the world, you can start next week by preparing yourself and opening yourself up for Christ’s coming on Christmas.  May Jesus Christ the King of the Universe always reign in our lives and most especially in our hearts.

XXXIII Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Dn 12:1-3
Ps 16:5, 8, 9-10, 11
Heb 10:11-14, 18
Mk 13:24-32


I do not know about you, but I have had one of those weeks.  One of those weeks where everything you see is bad news and everything you hear is about the troubles that people are having: some have to do with family, some with work, and some just generally about horrible tragic accidents.  And it’s not just me, others are experiencing it too.  And I find that different people take the bad news differently.  Many fall into an emotional mess, they fall apart and fall into a dark despair.  Others get angry, they start to blame and curse and just throw a complete fit.  But then there’s another group that despite also experiencing the proportionately same amount of bad news react quite differently.  They are not stoic or completely unaffected, they stutter a little bit – they’re shaken – and then move forward.

The skeptic would say – well they haven’t properly grieved and they are inhumane and are not in touch with their emotions.  While that may be true for some, I think for us as Christians, it is the persistent and ever-deepening relationship with our Lord that keeps us anchored and grounded.  When St. Augustine of Hippo writes the ever-popular statement, “Our hearts are restless, until they rest in you.” I ask what are the causes of that restlessness?  They could come from ourselves and our fickle nature.  It could also arise very much from the storms of daily life.  We must first anchor ourselves in the harbor of Jesus Christ – then we will have little difficulty and struggle in the tempests that blow through our lives.
Our readings today give us a pretty gloomy picture: the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky….  Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake… some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace.  And you thought Halloween was over!!!!  As we are rounding off the last few weeks of the liturgical year, the lectionary cycle is signaling the “beginning of the end”.  We are celebrating the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – and next week will be the end of the Liturgical Year with the celebration of the end of the world and Christ the King of the Universe!  Notice it’s a celebration and not a depressing moment, because there will be a new heavens and a new earth, but this world must pass away first.

I think it’s fascinating that our liturgical year is shaped this way.  The leaves are falling, things are dying and the days are darkening sooner.  We simultaneously commemorate the end of the created universe and our world with the seasons of fall and winter: the end of life on earth and the end of time.  [Southern Hemisphere excluded]

But however gloomy it gets, however sad it gets with things going badly, we should not be depressed.  Because we know and we believe that there is something beyond.  We know and believe this because God, our Father has revealed this to us since the beginning of time.  The Responsorial Psalm is just so rich our dependence, our reliance on Him and then His ultimate desire for us: O Lord, you are my allotted portion and my cup, you hold fast my lot…with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed…. You will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption…. Our Lord God is always faithful to us and never forgets us.   There's a story that I think is quite fitting for this occasion:

From A Father Who Keeps His Promises – by Dr. Scott Hahn
Everybody felt it: a moment of eerie silence, a low rumble and then the ground began to shake. Buildings swayed and buckled, then collapsed like houses of cards. Less than four minutes later, over thirty thousand were dead from a magnitude 8.2 earthquake that rocked and nearly flattened Armenia in 1989.  

In the muddled chaos, a distress father bolted through the winding streets leading to the school where his son had gone earlier that morning. The man couldn’t stop thinking about the promise he’d given his son many times: “No matter what happens, Armand, I’ll always be there.”
He reached the site where the school had been, but saw only a pile of rubble. He just stood there at first, fighting back tears, and then took off, stumbling over debris, toward the east corner where he knew his son’s classroom had been.

With nothing but his bare hands, he started to dig. He was desperately pulling up bricks and pieces of wall-plaster, while others stood by watching in forlorn disbelief. He heard someone growl, “Forget it, mister. They’re all dead.”

He looked up, flustered, and replied, “You can grumble, or you can help me lift these bricks.” Only a few pitched in, and most of them gave up once their muscles began to ache. But the man couldn’t stop thinking about his son.

He kept digging and digging – for hours … twelve hours … eighteen hours … twenty-four hours … thirty-six hours … Finally, into the thirty-eight hour, he heard a muffled groan from under a piece of wallboard.

He seized the board, pulled it back, and cried, “ARMAND!” From the darkness came a slight shaking voice, “Papa…!?”

Other weak voices began calling out, as the young survivors stirred beneath the still uncleared rubble. Gasps and shouts of bewildered relief came from the few onlookers and parents who remained. They found fourteen of the thirty-three students still alive.

When Armand finally emerged, he tried to help dig, until all his surviving classmates were out. Everybody standing there heard him as he turned to his friends and said, “See, I told you my father wouldn’t forget us.”

The signs of the times give us a bleak outlook.  It is a sign of our mortality, a sign that we do not live forever.  Even more so as we remember our loved ones in this month of November – designated as a special month to pray for all those that have died.  At the end of the world, there will be a final judgment and there will be heaven and hell – an eternal reward or an eternal punishment.  But we have nothing to fear if we hold fast and keep the faith in God.  But I challenge you not to approach your faith in trying to avoid hell, but to approach your faith in a relationship with Jesus Christ.  Your mind tends towards the things that you focus on.

Parents, your children are depending on you in all these things: to be the perfect parent and to be the perfect example.  I don’t know a single parent who is only trying to be mediocre.  But I do know many parents who struggle with trying to be the perfect parent because they did not have the perfect example of parenting growing up.  In this worry, they compensate for this and that and for everything else and in the end, it seems like they are doing worse than their own parents [in-laws tend to remind them frequently of this matter].  Some say do your best and leave the rest up to God.  I say, start with God in your life first – invite Him into your family -- and then do your best with God.  Your children will learn about their relationship with God from YOUR relationship with God.  If your relationship is strong and true, then your children’s will be too.

We do not know what disaster will happen in our lives, when tragedy will strike, or when the end of the world will come.  However, if we trust in Him and keep the faith strong, we will find a safe place, a safe harbor and we’ll be anchoring ourselves to the One who will never forget us or abandon us.

XXXII Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

1Kgs 17:10-16
Ps 146:7,8-9,9-10
Heb 9:24-28
Mk 12:38-44


When I hear these passages about the destitute widows, I struggle.  I struggle with the idea that it seems like God likes to kick people when they are down.  The first reading speaks of the story of the widow and Elijah.  When this story was told to me in Sunday school, I was found it amazing of that there was this jar of flour that never ran out.  [When I got back home from Sunday school, I was disappointed to find that my jar of cookies does run out.]  What one must understand is that this widow and the widows in that time period were not only without a husband, they were beyond destitute and poverty did not even begin to describe their situation.  Without having any marketable skills, nor able to hold property or any sort of job that could sustain her and her son, she basically had nothing. And here comes the great prophet Elijah, a refugee running from a king that is trying to kill him.  Of all the people he could ask for help, he finds a widow about to have her last meal and demands that she give him some food.  It would seem that if this did not provoke an angry or violent reaction from the widow, nothing would.  This was literally the last straw for her.  But she simply makes him aware of the situation and does not hold back her charity or hospitality.  She is resigned to the idea that she will eventually die, whether there is a final meal or not...that’s that.

The same thing with the widow’s might in Mark’s Gospel: she puts her two small coins, pretty much all that she has in the treasury.  She is probably also resigned to dying soon.  The modern person would try to find some other investment: a lottery ticket or some other way to get rich quick and get out of this abject poverty.  The modern ideology is: if you don’t fight for yourself, no one will.  Practicality and pragmatism is the order of the day.  The widow would have done better to invest in some way – at least there would be a return.  But no, she drops it in the treasury [I always imagine it to be like a votive candle].  And resigns herself to whatever the future had in store for her.  What these two widows are emphasizing in their actions is the radical call to discipleship through acts of love and charity – not from excess and unwanted, but from what is the very heart of their existence and essence.

When we hear the critiques Jesus makes about the corrupt Scribes and other corrupt authorities, I cannot help but drift towards making associations with our hierarchy and clergy.  And no, just to be clear I am not making a reference to our bishop, the Holy Father or any other clergymen.  There’s a clear difference now: that our priests take on vows of obedience, chastity and a life of simplicity or poverty in some cases.  In the Old Testament, the sacrifice of animals on the Day of Atonement or any sacrifice for that matter used the blood of these animals to appease and make reparations to God: …the high priest enters each year into the sanctuary with blood that is not his own. That is to say these authorities of old did not sacrifice themselves per se, but offered the blood of animals not their own.  When one offers themselves, others see the authenticity and the genuineness of their actions.  I take on the office of the priesthood, and I hope you all will keep me accountable, by offering myself for you.  When problems run amok it is because folks are spending and sacrificing things that have no value to them.  A sacrifice that doesn’t hurt isn’t much of a sacrifice.  But after Jesus’ passion and death, He introduced the un-bloody sacrifice through the sacrifice of His body and blood.  Every time a priest after the time of Christ offers sacrifice, the priest is reminded and recalls that he is not entering the sanctuary with some other random animals’ blood, but rather he is entering into the person of Jesus Christ and offering himself with and as Christ on the altar.  Every priest that realizes he is offering our Lord Jesus Christ through Him, with Him, and in Him – makes a profound realization of his own finite mortality and unworthiness before God.  Every priest that realizes what an intimate connection he has to Christ, should feel an obligation to change –to be transformed and repent of their sinful lives and return to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Therefore the role of the priest, like the widows in our story, exemplify the fact of giving not for the sake of giving, but giving in such a way that expresses the personal nature of the sacrifice and offering: a gift that “hurts”, as it were, to show how significant, how important, and how necessary it is to offer it.

What does this all mean for us?  How are we going to be able to match this kind of faith these widows had?  And how are we going to enter into the celebration of the Mass with a priest?  As all of you catechumens will be journeying to Christ with us, I want to invite you to take the widow and the priests for your examples.  The widows are an example of how to offer their complete self in total trust and faith that our Lord will provide for them; that we are to give and to give and to give until it hurts and then give some more.  Until our lives are completely emptied out, we will always be cheating Christ of His desire to dwell in us.  As you look to the high priest in the second reading, recall that a priest’s gift and offering involves a sacrifice of self through his personal vows and promises, witness to the Gospel message, and finally a spiritual offering of self in the liturgy and the other sacraments.

How do we proceed? 1.) You must realize that you will never have that kind of faith without first building up the habit of trusting in God with your complete selves so that when the time comes and you are called to it, you can do it in truth faith and dependence on God.  This begins with a daily practice of denying yourself in the little things and realizing what needs to be removed from your lifestyle.  2.)  One must also know that “the habit of trusting in God” presupposes that you actually have a personal relationship with God – that you come here on Sunday not because it is a precept of the Church and a mortal sin not to, but because your gratitude and love for Him obliges you to do so.  From the outside looking inwards, I don’t see God kicking those who are down. I see two beautiful widows fulfilling their vocation of trust and charity with their very lives, rejecting the cotemporary understanding of success and bringing ones’ complete self in union with Christ on the Cross, united in His suffering which was and is unlike any other.

XXXI Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Dt 6:2-6
Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
Heb 7:23-28
Mk 12:28b-34

If today’s Gospel sounds a little bit repetitive then you are paying attention.  The first reading and the Gospel reading are usually related to some degree and in cases like these, it’s almost an exact quotation of the scriptures in the Old Testament.  This makes my job a little bit easier because there’s less to cover!!

What is so special about this repeated passage of scripture?  Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.  This is known as the “Shemah!!”, which means “ to hear or listen”.  This prayer and proclamation in the Jewish scriptures is perhaps the most important – most central piece of their faith, and likewise for us too.  These two Great Commandments offer a simple distillation of the Faith: it’s bite size!  But note the following verses instructing further:

Keep repeating them to your children. Recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them on your arm as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates. 

Observant Jews will take this to heart and truly follow these instructions, in some cases literally.  They pray this verse in daily morning and evening prayers.  In ancient times they would write the scripture verse on parchment and put it inside little boxes to wear on their foreheads and arms.  In more modern times, one would literally have this verse attached to the doorpost of their houses to remember that the Lord is God, the Lord is one, and that they will love Him with their complete self.

What I find so beautiful about some of these practices is how much the Jewish people tried to live out the faith: to have such a need to live with the Word of God, the Scriptures, and know the importance of God’s sacred word in their lives.  It is not enough with just knowing that God is one and that we should love Him, but rather that knowledge should transform and flow outward into a living faith.  They knew that they were God’s people before they were the people of their conquerors: be it the Babylonians, the Romans, the Greeks, or anyone else.  They were Jewish before anything else.

The beauty of our Catholic faith is no different.  Everybody should know the two great Commandments:  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Great sound bites, especially in our day and age where people are asking for quick answers for everything; but like most sound bites, this is not enough.  These two commandments presuppose that you already know and are already morally living all the other details of the faith.  Do you know all the reasons for our Catholic morals?  Why do we have moral problems with abortion and using artificial birth control?  Why do we believe that there should be preferential option for the poor and immigration reform, why are we against the death penalty?  What does “health care reform“ really entail?  You can give the short answer: because we follow these two commandments.  And that answer would be correct, but I believe also incomplete – almost to some like a “because I said so” kind of answer.  “Because I said so” hardly works on kids, why should it work on you or your peers?

I challenge those who don’t know why abortion or using artificial birth control is wrong or any other controversial moral issues to start reading the Catechism, to read our Church documents and teachings on why we believe such things.  Chances are, your non-Catholic friend, coworker, or family member, do not have the expertise and the thorough research that the Church has gone through to reach a complete answer to a particular moral issue.  They would not be good sources to start with:  would you ask a Muslim to try and understand the Jewish faith?  Of course not!  Ignorance about our Catholic faith abounds, and this includes Catholics too!  If you can sum up the rationality for why something is wrong in the Catholic Church in a single sound bite, an Internet meme, a pithy or snarky little quote, or arguments summed up nicely on a single sheet of paper – you can be certain that the issue has not been well thought through or that the answer is incomplete.  When you do your homework - the answer may surprise you: it’s not a bunch of old fogies in Rome pontificating and trying to demean women or any other demographic!!  What you will find is the fundamentals of those two great commandments elucidated or expressed in its fullest sense.  What you will find is something beautiful and fitting; and will resonate in your soul and help you to live the fullest expression of your humanity.  You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free.  

Election Day is right around the corner, and I know that many of you will be casting your vote.  And if you are like me, I am really tired of the media and the political games; and just want this to be over with.  I know that it has certainly led to some heated discussion among friends and family.  But it is your civic duty to vote, just like it is your civic duty to go on jury duty (no matter how much you dislike it).  As American citizens you can vote and should vote – there is nothing stopping you.  As Americans, when you make your decision to cast your vote, I would like you to consider this:  There is a citizenship that holds greater precedence than your American one or any other nationality for that matter.  That citizenship is, of course, the citizenship in the Kingdom of God.  You are a son or daughter of God before you are a citizen of the United States.

First and most fundamentally, being a citizen in God’s Kingdom means knowing, being well informed, and practicing the Catholic faith before, or as, one engages the world around them.  It means to have that intimate relationship with our Lord.  The Jewish people knew this.  They knew that they had to keep their faith close to their person, living it out daily or else the tides of the pagan world would wash them away.  They knew that the faith and being God’s people was what sustained them as a nation.  We come here today with our different cultures and backgrounds, legal or illegal, white, black, yellow, brown, and everything in between.  What we share first and foremost is our humanity and our common Sonship in God – we are Children of God before all else.  If our nation: our government, our leaders, or the society in general is indeed leading people down a path of destruction and moral relativism, it will be – if not already – a dark time for us as Christians.  As civil and religious liberties, human dignity, and natural law are all on the line this election year, we must vote based upon the issues most dear to us as Catholic Christians before our own personal agendas and biases.  Those issues should be informed and connected to the beliefs of our Catholic Christian Faith and go beyond the boundaries of ideologies of political parties.  And as much as we love our country and fulfill all our civic duties, we will continue to pray for our country and the world no matter the outcome; as that is what our faith calls us to do.  We also take solace and comfort that our ultimate home is with God and that we ultimately belong to His Kingdom.

Today we hear the two great commandments:  Loving the Lord our God and loving our neighbor as ourselves; two bite size commandments with a lot of substance.  These two great commandments are the summation of the 10 Commandments and from these come the particular moral teachings that we practice today and will provide the template for morals in the future as advancements are made in technology.  Moral teachings are related and never formulated in a vacuum; and as citizens, sons and daughters of God, desiring to follow Him, we must seek to discover answers to those questions that the world proposes.  The Scriptures proclaim “Hear O Israel” to us – that we, as Sons and Daughters of God, are the new Israel and we are to hear God’s Word resonate in our hearts – that we are His people, His citizens in living out these two great commandments.  When our faith becomes integrated into our life, when our faith is not something we do on Sunday but something that is lived and breathed, when our faith inspires and guides our actions we will know truly in our hearts what Jesus declared to the scribe: “You are not far from the kingdom of God”.

Solemnity of All Saints

Rev 7:2-4, 9-14
Ps 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6
1 Jn 3:1-3
Mt 5:1-12a

I don’t think I can say this enough: I love our Catholic Faith.  There’s a “full-ness” to our Faith.  We have many feast days for the many saints in our calendar and that’s wonderful.  Everyone has their favorite saint that they like to imitate, read, or ask for intercession.  Smart saints, simple saints, fun saints, humorous saints, martyr saints, and pure saints; there are saints for pretty much every occasion and part of our life.  The famous and popular ones get on the liturgical calendar, but we must never forget the countless multitudes of saints that are not on our calendar: thousands, millions, billions of saints.

This is the fullness of our faith: that when we worship and celebrate Mass, on this day which we commemorate ALL the saints in heaven, we realize that we are worshipping as ONE BODY in Christ.  Every time we celebrate Mass, all the saints and angels have come down from heaven to this sanctuary to worship with us.  This is all the more true as we enter into the final weeks of the liturgical year.  In a few weeks we will celebrate Christ the King, reigning in heaven in glory in the company of all the saints.  And in November we remember especially the faithful departed, souls of our loved ones, and those deserving of the heavenly reward.  The liturgical year then is a microcosm, as it were, of all of time and these are the “end times” of the Second Coming.  What we read in the First Reading is being realized – this is not make believe, but rather actually happening.

I am really excited with this new translation of the Mass that we have because it is just so rich.  Look at the opening prayer, or properly called COLLECT.  It prays this: Almighty and ever-living God, by whose gift we venerate in one celebration the merits of all the Saints.  God gives us the gift of celebrating the merits of all the Saints in ONE celebration so that through their intercession we may be reconciled and earnestly long for God!!  How great is that?  And the prayer over the offerings?  May these offerings we bring …be pleasing to you, O Lord, and grant that, just as we believe the Saints to be already assured of immortality, so we may experience their concern for our salvation.   If you take this in slowly you will just see how rich this is.  Our faith professes that the Saints are assured of immortality.  And we pray that as far as we believe this; that the Saints too are praying for us and our salvation.  Wow…  This tells me two things: 1.) Our faith and dependence on their intercession is proportional to our salvation.  2.) We are not alone in this world by any stretch of the imagination.  Just because the saints are in heaven does not mean they forget us, rather they desire all the more for us to experience the joy they experience too.  This is a family reunion on a scale that is almost in comprehendible.  And finally, the closing prayer after Communion: … we implore your grace, so that, coming to perfect holiness in the fullness of your love, we may pass from this pilgrim table to the banquet of our heavenly homeland.  The altar here is a pilgrim table – as good as it is, we are not meant to be here forever – we should be longing for the banquet in heaven with all the saints.  May all the saints intercede for us without ceasing until we are reunited with Our Lord in glory.

XXX Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Jer 31:7-9
Ps 126:1-2, 2-3,4-5, 6
Heb 5:1-6
Mk 10:46-52

Before we get into the heart of today’s Gospel, let’s take a look at the context and examine this passage closely and see what we can uncover.  This is a euphemistic way of saying “biblical exegesis”, which I know that if I use that term you will be studying the back of your eyelids instead of the scriptures.  Today’s Gospel is powerful and rich in imagery.  I have used this passage many times before to pray because of the rich symbols and images.  On the surface and at first glance, this is a healing of a blind man.  No big deal.  Jesus does healings all time, why is this one any different from any other?

This passage from Mark is a continuation from last week’s Gospel and the week before: Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem.  During this journey, He predicts His death for the third and final time: basically, when Jesus goes to Jerusalem in Mark’s Gospel, he is going there to suffer, die, and be resurrected.  The people around Him usually ignore the statement, get confused, or put their foot in their mouths like James and John last week.  As one approaches Jerusalem, they must go up to it because Jerusalem sits on a hill; one must go up to Jerusalem, the mountain of God, as it were.

Like I just said this healing is different.  In Mark’s gospel, there are two healings of blind men.  This one and one in chapter eight (8:22-26).  Whereas the one before did not have a name, this one has a name – in fact one of only two outside the Passion narrative and the principle players of the Gospel.  Whereas the one before had a gradual healing with physical actions from Christ, this one is instantaneous and emphasizes the faith of the blind beggar.  Whereas the one before was told to go home and told not to enter the village, this one is told to be on his way.  These parallels between the stories set up the differences and emphasize our unique call to discipleship.

After leaving Jericho Jesus and His disciples pass the blind beggar named Bartimaeus, which means “son of Timaeus”.  Timaeus is a Greek name and coincidentally also the name of one of Plato’s works.  I studied a little bit of the Timaeus when I was studying philosophy in seminary and curiously it is a work about the origins of the world - Platonic cosmology - and a study on man’s origins and makeup.  Some scholars suggest that Bartimaeus is a symbol for the Gentile world; that is, everything not Jewish.  I find it interesting that a “son of Timaeus” or one who would believe and ascribe to the current understanding of the cosmos according to Plato, i.e.  the secular world – would be asking Jesus to have pity on him.  For us, this is a symbol of our blindness and our need for Christ in our lives.

When Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus he says, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”  You must understand that at the time, the son of David was literally the son of David: Solomon – and to call on Solomon as a healer and exorcist.   Therefore Bartimaeus, ironically, was calling on the son of David, who actually was the son of David and desiring healing, which Jesus could actually do.  Notice this blind beggar – having the prophetic sight to be able to see Jesus as He is to call on Him like that and to be persistent and persevering in his prayer.  How many times have you prayed without ceasing and prayed even more fervently when things looked bleak?  This is our example and model for us to persevere – not backing down when the going gets tough, but to pray all the more fervently.

Notice also how Bartimaeus responds: He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus. If Jesus called you, would you do the same?  …the only possession as a blind beggar, a cloak, and to have it thrown aside to cling to Jesus?  What are you willing to give up, how eager are you to respond to His call?  And then when Jesus finally asks you “What do you want me to do for you?”  What is your response?  What is Bartimaeus’ response?  “Master, I want to see!”  When we pray, we must not just pray for generic intentions, but be specific in our prayers.  When we pray with intention, with purpose, and with specificity it helps us to focus our prayer and also really discover what we truly need.  It does me no good if I just prayed: “Jesus, make everything better.” Or “Jesus, I need you to make all my problems go away.”  But if I prayed and thought about exactly what are my needs in my life, this allows me to be more aware of my needs and the needs of others.

Finally as we look at what happens after Bartimaeus is healed, we see Jesus inviting him to go about his way.  What does he do?  He follows Him.  Bartimaeus follows Christ along the road, the way to Jerusalem.  For all of us, the Christian calling is to follow Christ on His road to Jerusalem where we unite ourselves with Christ – when He is rejected, when He is suffering, and when is ultimately glorified on the Cross and Resurrected for the salvation of the world.  We join Him in that.  Early Christians, before they even called themselves that, said that they were “on the way”.  When we are “on the way” we unite ourselves, our suffering, our joys and sorrows, with Him and He with us.  Jerusalem is the heavenly city, our happy home where God calls us.

For some of us there’s an even more unique call to follow Christ on His road: the Priesthood.  Today, as you know, is priesthood Sunday.  In the letter to the Hebrews, a high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.  Jesus does this as the perfect example: Christ the great High Priest, the Son with whom the Father is well pleased, a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.  He, the priest, offers the sacrifice, Himself, on behalf of humanity to God the Father.  The priesthood subsequently takes on this role of Christ on behalf of all of you.  The priest, in the person of Christ, offers Christ and himself with the faithful in the celebration of the Mass.  Christ perfected this ritual that in ages past was never successful.  He perfected it so that we may re-present it again, time and time again, on behalf of humanity for the salvation of the world.  Without the priesthood, we would have no Church, no Eucharist.  It is that simple, it is that important.  The priest should be a humble servant of the people, shepherding the people of God, and offering himself daily as Christ did once and for all two thousand years ago.  No man takes this on his own selfish desire, his own whims, but rather he is chosen by God from among men to take this office, this holy duty.

I can say for myself in these 148 days that I have been ordained that my joy comes from offering myself for you all.  It is certainly not in the money, not for the publicity, not in the praises and support – though they are considered a blessing and for the glorification of God.  My joy comes from serving you all and worshipping God. I am also always humbled by what great a gift I have received from God.  Let our prayers today join together in thanksgiving to almighty God for the gift of being able to have relationship with Him in prayer for the gift of the priesthood – the men who were chosen, who helps us and leads us closer to Him.  Let us all draw a deeper insight with the story of Bartimaeus as an example for us in Christian prayer and discipleship.  Be like Bartimaeus, persevering eagerly desiring and praying to God for help and mercy.  Be like Bartimaeus, who cast away all his things to go to God.  Be like Bartimaeus who prays with intention and focus.  Be like Bartimaeus who responded to God’s mercy with discipleship and a desire to follow Christ to Jerusalem.

XXIX Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Is 53:10-11
Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22
Heb 4:14-16
Mk 10:35-45

The passage from which we have just heard from comes from the tenth chapter of Mark.  Preceding this exchange between Jesus and the Sons of Thunder, James and John, Jesus makes his third and final prediction of His death:

Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him, spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death, but after three days he will rise. (Mk 10:33-34)

Imagine your leader, master, and closest friend just nonchalantly saying in your travels for the third time that he was going to die a terrible horrible death.  Forget about the rising from the dead three days after this horrible death ; your best friend just said he was going to suffer and die!  Talk about awkward!!!  Nobody wants to see their friend go through any kind of suffering, let alone a public mockery, torture, and execution.  And then His two disciples, the Sons of Thunder, James and John – trot alongside Him – almost sounding like they have no clue what’s going on in this awkward situation.  “Psst! Psst! Hey Jesus! Ummmm…. when you come into your glory, Can we sit at your right and your left?  Can we ride shotgun?”

This is one of the moments in scripture where, though it was not explicitly recorded, you know there Jesus had a “Face-Palm of Biblical Proportions”.  You don’t know whether to scold them or hug them with a “bless your heart!”  Jesus simply says, You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?  Without skipping a beat they reply, We can. Jesus doesn’t come back agreeing or disagreeing with them on whether they could or not, but speaks in the future tense: The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized. – knowing full well that they, too, would suffer a baptism with their own blood in martyrdom.

The imagery of “drinking a Cup” is a symbol of suffering.   The Old Testament makes references of drinking a cup, and usually it is in reference of suffering the consequences of sin.  Perhaps akin to our idiomatic phrase, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”   So this cup is a bitter cup that is not easy to drink.  It is not a sippy cup with nice handles that never spills.  It is not a travel mug to keep things warm.  Nor is it a beer stein of intoxication to numb sensation.  It is a chalice of bitter suffering – The LORD was pleased to crush him in infirmity. [crushing him with weakness and humiliation] …his life as an offering for sin… the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him… through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear.  The “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah 53 is prophesying of a servant that will eventually redeem God’s people.  Humanity has made their bed, but it is Christ who must now lie in it.  We, as a people have poured this cup, but it is Christ who must now drink it.

In ages before the Incarnation, the priests were charged with offering sacrifice to God, to appease, to ask forgiveness, to strengthen their relationship, and to gain good favor.  Jesus Christ came into this world, the Savior, as the high priest who would offer atonement for the humanity’s transgression and sins.  He was and is the High Priest, who had no sin Himself, and offered Himself as priest and victim to the Father. Into your hands I commend my spirit.  He was the perfect the man, the perfect mediator between God and Mankind, the perfect offering of victimhood.  The perfect priest, the perfect sacrifice; the one and the same Sacrifice that we celebrate everyday at Mass.  As Jesus was experiencing the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, He said, Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done. Christ did not desire to drink this cup, no human person would!  But He did desire to follow His Father’s will.  His agony was so great, scripture writes, that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground.

We come to Church today centuries later, redeemed by Christ’s passion, death and resurrection.  He has drunk the cup, He has been baptized in His blood.  And we sit here comfortably in our homes and pews grumbling about this or that in the world – many of them only first world problems.  The Passion, the Death, and the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior has allowed us to have a seat at His heavenly altar.  Unlike James and John, we didn’t have to call “shotgun!” to get a seat here in His sanctuary.  It has been freely given to us.  Unlike James and John, we did not drink the cup and nor baptized in the blood of martyrdom like they were.  And we sit here comfortably at Mass: perhaps even taking it for granted and demanding that you be entertained or complaining that you didn’t “get something out of it” for the time that you spend – one hour of the 168 hours of the week – as if the Church was making an imposition on your precious time and attention.  You come in grabbing a bulletin and start reading it like you’re sitting at a doctor’s office.  We sit like Masters, Lords and leaders above everyone, like privileged spoiled little kids; and yet Christ was to be servant of all and for all – to give His life as a ransom….

Knowing full well the pain, suffering, and agony that Christ underwent for our sake and for our sins, He offers this same cup that He drank to all of us.  He offers this cup, this chalice of His blood – as an invitation. BY drinking this chalice of salvation that Christ offers, we are to partake in His suffering, to partake in His pain, and most importantly: to partake in His Redemption for us all.  As I celebrate this Mass, my prayer turns towards being “in the person of Christ”.  As I consecrate the bread and the wine to the Body and Blood of Christ, I am completely and utterly humbled by my unworthiness to assume such an office and I approach the altar with holy fear and trembling.  At the same time, I am completely and utterly grateful and filled with thanksgiving that God has chosen me to assume such an office.
 
As we are gathered in His presence, as you literally sit at His left and right at this holy altar, I ask you to search inside yourself and ask yourself – why me? Who am I that the Lord would call me here today?  What have I done to deserve such a place at His table?  Have I come to be served or to serve others? Have I desired to be first without being a slave of all?  And finally, As I sit here am I willing to drink the cup that Our Lord drank for me?

XXVII Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Gn 2:18-24
Ps 128:1-2,3,4-5,6
Heb 2:9-11
Mk 10:2-16


I’m going to talk about marriage.  I was at a post office one day.  It was supposed to be a quick trip, but you know how that goes.  I spent about half an hour there, mostly waiting in line.  [I know some people pray to God for patience, well the best way to practice is at the post office right around lunch hour.]  Anyways, while I was waiting in line, I was thinking about how I could make this situation better.  I thought – it would be really nice to have some gourmet coffee or a nice frozen smoothie while I wait.  They could really make a lot of money here … People always have to wait, they might as well do something.  Yeah, they should sell coffee it would be really great, knock out these windows here and set up the stand right there.  Millionaire over night!! [If you steal my idea, I got 10% of the profits]

Then I thought about how successful it would be and how great the coffee would be.  You know it could happen and pretty soon chairs and little tables could be set up and you could really have a coffee shop and a good one too!  The post office could adopt this idea, stop raising postage rates, and really be in a strong market to sustain not only the mail service but also the coffee business.  AND if it becomes really successful, I bet there would be some people who would go to the post office just to get their coffee.  Going even further if the coffee was so good it may even turn out that this post office coffee business might overtake the business of mailing letters and packages.  There are other competitors that do that, perhaps even better.  Could you imagine a post office that almost exclusively sold coffee? Then I thought to myself… would that post office still be a post office? Or is it now a store that sells coffee?  Philosophical questions in the line at the post office.

Interestingly enough, the situation with the institution of marriage is not dissimilar.  Why do people get married?  Your average Joe and Jane Catholic will probably say something along the lines of “because I love them and I want to spend the rest of my life with them” or “I’ve been with him/her for 3 years, I guess I should make him/her an honest man/woman” or “To start a family and settle down”.  These answers are all correct to some degree, but institution of marriage actually has a fundamental purpose – the essence of marriage.

Institution - a set of behavioral expectations/purpose in society (e.g. bank, schools, hospitals).  As an institution has a set expectations, anything outside of those expectations has the ability to change the institution.  Therefore institutions have a set of expectations and purpose in society and the changing or tampering with the purpose then you don’t have the original institution anymore.  In the past, the institution of marriage had a primary and a secondary purpose.  The primary purpose of marriage was the procreation and education of offspring, the secondary was the mutual help or the good of the spouses.  Up until a little before the last century, there was no question why one got married: to further the future of the family – love didn’t enter the picture as much.  Then there was discussion about the importance of love and the mutual help of spouses and there was talk about re-ordering the primary and secondary ends and eventually they were combined in Vatican II and in the Catechism and in Canon Law.  (cf. ccc1601, ccc1055, GS 48)

This proposes a potential problem.  What has happened with this shift is that when there are “two primary goals or ends” one can win out of the other.  If the post office delivered mail and sold coffee as its primary ends, one could and would win over the other.  When marriage and the pro-creative sexual union are “divorced” as it were, marriage then becomes all about the other primary end: “the good of the spouses”.  When the “good of the spouses” no longer seems good or important this leads to divorce doesn’t it?  Archbishop Fulton Sheen in his book Three to Get Married writes, “The pleasure associated with love [conjugal act], or what is today called ‘sex’, is the frosting on the cake; its purpose is to make us love the cake, not ignore it.”   Love then, “…is directed to someone else for the sake of the other’s perfection; sex is directed to self for the sake of self-satisfaction.”   “If I’m tired of you and you are no longer satisfying me and this relationship is not working out, then I’ll get rid of you.”

Marriage must be connected with the conjugal act.  The conjugal act is the ratification of the vows made before the Church, the people of God, and most importantly God that the spouses desire to give themselves completely to each other fully and for the rest of their lives.  It is so special and so sacred that why the Church seeks to protect this institution.  Why is the Church against same-sex marriage?  Because it cannot be naturally pro-creative.  People with same sex attraction can be friends, they can be “mutually helpful” to each other as one would any other brother or sister in Christ.  But to elevate a relationship to marriage would entail that you can be naturally pro-creative and that is simply not the case.  Why is the Church against contraception?  Because it is not pro-creative it separates the unitive and the pro-creative aspects of marriage.  One puts a barrier and/or purposefully tries to block out the potential for the creative action of God.

Think about it: God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. The two joined together in a love that is so strong, so deep, so intimate that they transcend their beings to an act of the Divine and new life is conceived.  Mankind has been on this earth for thousands of years and science is just now attempting cloning, where a husband and wife can bring about a child in an intimate moment.  Children are a constant sign of the single moment of love that is shared between husband and wife.  Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  

Do I even need to talk about divorce?  Divorce does not – and cannot – even enter into the picture.  If the love between husband and wife imitates the Divine Trinitarian relationship, a husband and wife can no more divorce each other than God can divorce Himself from Himself or divorce Himself from us.  Our God created us in His image and likeness, we are to be imitators of that Divine relationship.  He made us little less than angels and humbled Himself in the person of Jesus Christ for our sake to show us the way to love.  He suffered for us, that we may be called His children.  For all of us that are single we look to you – married couples – as witnesses of God’s love for mankind in the world.  You have such an important role – we see your children, we see your love, we see God.

XXVI Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Nm 11:25-29
Ps 19:8, 10, 12-13, 14
Jas 5:1-6
Mk 9:38-43,45,47-48

So lately, I have been getting lots of questions about heaven.  What’s it going to be like?  What will happen in heaven? …. so on and so forth.  Based on today’s Gospel, you would think that heaven is probably going to be filled with a bunch half blind, handless people hopping around on one foot.  Can you picture that: people hopping around running into each other and missing appendages?  Our second reading has just as much bad news: If you are rich – you must weep and wail over your impending miseries – wealth being rotted away, clothes to be moth-eaten.  Basically, all the material riches that you’ve gotten illicitly and through cheating and dishonesty will cause you great pain and suffering.

This is obviously a lot of bad news today.  Jesus is not going to water down the truth about sin.  Some would say this is hyperbole – a rhetorical device of exaggeration not meant to be taken literally.  The thing about Jesus in the Gospels, it’s hard to tell when He is speaking hyperbolically or literally.  In any case, the radical comparison that He makes here is definitely meant to be taken seriously.  Your eyes: what do you do with them?  Do you keep your eyes and your mind on your business or are you concerned about other people? Do you sin or commit adultery?  Do you look with eyes of envy or jealously?  Do they cause you to lust, look at pornography, or fantasize about sinful things?  Jesus is saying get that out of there!  Cut it out!

Your hands:  do you use them to help or to harm? Do you steal from others or give to charity? Do you use them to fight or use them to hug?  Are they used for self gratification or masturbation or are they used to love and selflessness?  Jesus is saying that if your hands are causing you to sin, get rid of it!

What happens when something gets infected?  Bacteria builds up, corrupts, and lays waste, not only to the part that is infected but also to the rest of the body.  Back when medicine was not as advanced, they would have to amputate.  Amputation was not a punishment or meant to be a form of torture, but a matter of self-preservation.  You had to get rid of it in order to live.  It is the same in this day and age with cancer:  things start growing where they shouldn’t, affecting the whole body and causing incredible harm to the body and so we have the gift of medicine to get rid of those things or at least try to mitigate the damages.  The sin in our life needs to be cut out.  Our hearts may have lots of sin and things that offend God, cut them out so that it does not affect and corrupt the rest of your body.  Why would anyone want to live in their own filth and sin?  Why would anyone want to be held back by things that hurt them?  Root out the sin in your life, take a good look at your life and see what there is in your life that is keeping you from God.  If you are not growing closer to God, you are moving away from Him.  After you take a good look at your life, go to Confession – the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  I promise you, you will feel a lot better and you will have the grace to live a better life.  If you are not growing closer to God, you are moving away from Him.

To all of you youngins’:  If your boyfriend or girlfriend is keeping you from getting closer to God or in fact leading you away from God, get rid of him or her.  He or she is not worth your salvation and the good relationship that you have with God.  Don’t think that you can change them or convert them during your relationship – ya’ll have enough trouble and struggle just trying to learn and know each other let alone trying to carry on a theological discussion about why we should love God.  Just be regular normal friends and learn about God first and then see if He is calling you to be together.  God must be central in your life, the means by which everything happens in your life.

If you will bear with me, talking about sin is depressing and nobody wants to leave here depressed.  Therefore I’m going to change gears and talk about something boring…. The Mass!  Okay, it might seem boring to you, but I promise you that it is not boring.  You know when the celebrant says: “The Lord be with you”?  And everyone responds, “And with your spirit.”   It’s great now – I know who has been to Mass in the last year because they give the wrong response – cheap thrills of a priest.  Actually, I think it’s really just so cool that there is this back and forth response – it’s the inside joke that we Christians really get.  It’s one of the “secret passwords” of our faith.  We are in the know… “haha I know what to say when the priest or deacon says, ‘The Lord be with you’.”

But what exactly are you saying?  Are you really in the know?  Where does this phrase come from?  Our first reading speaks of Moses and the seventy elders.  Moses really had a difficult time managing the people so what happened?  The Lord bestowed the spirit that was on Moses and bestowed it on the seventy elders.  And then it happened that two men who were not present but were part of the group also received the spirit.  Moses and the seventy elders had a very special spirit that was upon them, sent by God; the Spirit that comes from God and rested on them.  The Lord was always present in the camp of the Israelites as they traveled through the desert, but there was an extra spirit that was only present in Moses and then later to the seventy elders.  This Tradition was carried on through the ages, through Jesus’ time with the Apostles to present day.  In the same way for us, I say, “The Lord be with you.”  To tell you that the Lord is present here and your response is to say, “And with your spirit.” The spirit that is with me or any other priest or deacon, by the power of ordination, is to be in the person of Jesus Christ – His Spirit acting and present in the sacraments.  Therefore every time I offer prayers, I say those words: to recognize that Christ is present in and amongst you all, and you recognize and invoke the spirit that is upon the priest to pray for and on behalf of you, the people of God.  It’s like we get in the car, Dad makes sure that we are all buckled up and ready to go – a spiritual checklist before we take off for heaven.

Today we covered two very important things that I hope you can incorporate into your life: the fact that sin can corrupt the rest of the body and must be rooted out and cut off so that you can walk in God’s good graces to heaven.  If it’s been a few months since your last confession come on in and get your soul washed up – don’t let those sins weigh you down anymore.  Today we also learned the meaning of the words “The Lord be with you” and “With your spirit”.  In the Mass take note the times the priest or deacon says those words – they signify that something important is about to happen.  In your prayers, especially as you are praying with me in the Mass, bear in mind the presence of Christ and thereby you can have full active, actual participation in the Mass.  It is not just something I do, but you do too: The Lord is with you.