7/4/2013 – Thursday of the 13th week in Ordinary Time – Fourth of July – Psalm 115:1-6, 8-9

        I enjoy reading the psalms and listening to the poetic language contained in them, but it sometimes takes a while for their meaning to come alive.  Today we hear the psalmist declare – “I will walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living.”  The psalmist wishes to walk as if in the presence of God in the midst of his journey here on earth.  There are many here on earth who only regard man’s presence, who only care about man’s law and man’s rule of conduct and give no thought to God whatsoever.  We see this so often in our secular world today.  We want to show tolerance and to do the right thing, but if we have so baseline or set of values on which we are basing our tolerance, then do we say that just about anything is permissible in our society?

         Today, as we celebrate our nation’s Independence Day, we celebrate the end of our Fortnight for Freedom.  As you recall, the USCCB called the Fortnight for Freedom in order to bring attention to our religious freedom and how it is being threatened both here in our own country and in other places throughout the world.  Last year, our Diocese of Jackson even took the unusual step of filing suit against the federal government along with other dioceses and Catholic organizations throughout the country in response to the HHS mandate that violates our Catholic values.  During this Fortnight for Freedom, our Church has tried to draw attention to the growing intrusions on religious liberty like the HHS mandate. That mandate takes effect this coming August 1st, making this year's Fortnight especially important.  As we celebrate our nation’s independence today, we pray for the protection of religious liberty and an increased respect for the role of faith in public life.  We pray that we recognize that we do walk in the presence of the Lord on our journey here on earth, that there is more to life than having a regard to human judgment and opinion.  May the values and wisdom conveyed by our Bishops during this Fortnight for Freedom continue to lead and guide our prayers and our actions. 

7/17/2012 – Tuesday of 15th week of ordinary time – The Carmelite Nuns of Compiegne, France – Matthew 11:20-24

         We hear Jesus bemoan the cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida in today’s Gospel.  He tells the inhabitants of those cities that they are doomed for their failure to repent and their failure to recognize the miracles that are performed in their midst.  We might want to be judgmental ourselves to those inhabitants who fail to respond to Jesus with faith and trust, yet perhaps this Gospel reading is speaking directly to us today as well.  How often do we ourselves have Jesus present to us in our own lives, yet we are unable to recognize his presence in our midst and do not respond out of our faith.  How often do we put our faith in our secular world instead of putting our faith in God?  How often do the values of our world lure us away from the values of our faith?

         We recognize 16 Carmelite nuns as the saints of the day that most people in our modern world don’t even know about.  The government that took control during the French revolution ordered the Carmelite monastery in the town of Compiegne closed in 1790.  Yet, in 1794, 16 nuns were arrested on charges of living in a religious community, which was against the law in post-revolutionary France.  The nuns were sentenced to death in Paris, and were killed on the guillotine while they sang the Salve Regina.  They refused to bow to a government that condemned their Christian way of life.  Today, we have a media that tells people that they should abandon organized religion.  We have a government that tries to define what religion is and what it isn’t.  We are told by our government that we have to violate the Gospel of Life that we see proclaimed in Christ’s Gospel.  I wonder who Jesus would condemn in our world today.  I also wonder how far all of this will go and who will become the martyrs of modern America.  Our Bishops have been mocked and derided for the Fortnight for Freedom that we just observed several weeks ago.  In hearing the story of the Carmelite nuns who were martyred in France and Jesus condemnation of the cities that refused to repent and to see the signs around them, we should be thanking our bishops for their courage and foresight.  

7/3/2012 – St Thomas the Apostle – Tuesday of 13th week of ordinary time – Ephesians 2:19-22, John 20:24-29

         Paul tells us today that we are no longer strangers or sojourners, but rather citizens, holy ones, and members of God’s family.  When you think about it, we all want a sense of belonging in life.  Hopefully we feel that sense of belonging as followers of Jesus in a very special way, a belonging that fills a lot of the gaps that exist in our lives.  This past weekend, we closed down one of my parishes in Yazoo City, as we had the last mass there with our wonderful Bishop, Joseph Latino.  That parish – St Francis of Assisi -  had been in Yazoo City since 1939.  It severed the African American population of the area, with the school connected to the parish providing a wonderful education to so many children until the day the school closed its doors in 1970.  We celebrated its wonderful heritage and history, and gave thanks to God for all of the blessings we received through this parish throughout the years.  We are grieving now, but we do so with a sense of hope as we move forward as the Catholic Community in Yazoo City at St Mary parish.

         Thomas wanted proof in order to believe.  Yet, sometimes we don’t get the tangible proof we want.  We receive different signs and graces from God all the time.  Sometimes they are not the signs or the proof that we asking for, but that is what God gives us on our journey.   Tradition has it that Thomas, the one who is known as the doubter, went to India to bring the Good News of the Lord to the people there.  We recently received three priests from India as missionaries here in Mississippi, part of the tradition that Thomas brought to that country.  
           We continue to celebrate the Fortnight for Freedom in our country as declared by the Bishops.  This is a challenging time for us as a nation and as a Church.  We see a government and a society that is becoming hostile to the message of Christ and to the way we are called to live out our faith.  We need to witness to the world - that is the mandate we receive from Christ - "Go out to all the world and tell the Good News" as it says in the psalm this morning.  Proclaiming that Good News is not easy, especially in our modern world.  But that is what we are called to do. 
          “Blessed are those who have not seen and who believe.”  May we thank God for the grace to believe, even in the midst of the challenges and struggles that we go through in life.  
    

7/1/2012 – 13th Sunday in Ordinary time – Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24 ; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43

        God fashioned us in his own image so that we might have being.  He fashioned us for life, not for death.  This is the message we hear from the book of Wisdom today.  It is through the life we have from God, from our desire and longing to connect with God and with that divine essence in our lives that propels us in our life of faith, that propels us to desire the new life we receive in our relationship with Jesus. 

         This life of faith that we have encouraged Paul to become the missionary to the Gentiles, to bring Christ’s Good News to all the world.  In his second letter to the Corinthians, we hear about Paul’s passion for the faith and for living out his new life in Christ.  Paul extols the Corinthians for their faith, knowledge, and earnestness, but above all by imitating Jesus in his gracious act of sacrificial love.  I mentioned to you how so many people I met on the pilgrimage trail in Spain were looking for some sort of meaning and direction in their lives, they were looking to bring their lives of faith to fullness and to greater meaning.  So many believers seek to embrace the faith and discipleship in Jesus with a greater embrace, not a more constrained one.  Our faith is for the altar, for the mass, for the sacraments of our Church.  But our faith is also lived out in our homes, in the streets and the highways, in the workplace and the offices and the schools. 

         The Fortnight for Freedom that we are currently celebrating as declared to us by the US Catholic Bishops is to be a “national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty.”  During this 14 day event, we have seen how great models of faith such as John the Baptist, St Thomas More, and St John Fisher stood up to the injustices of the governments and authorities of their day.  Bishops across our country, including our own Bishop Joseph Latino, have filed lawsuits against the government in opposition to the unjust mandate of the US Department of Health and Human Services, requiring Catholic institutions to violate our moral laws by providing contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs at no-cost to members of our health plans.  Our Bishops are also concerned about how the federal government is defining religious institutions through the exemptions that it is willing to grant.  It deems parishes to be religious institutions, but not Catholic universities, hospitals, food pantries, publishing house, or even the Society of St Vincent DePaul and the Knights of Columbus.  We see this in direct violation of the first freedom we have in the Bill of Rights, which is the freedom of religious liberty.  When the government tries to decide what religion is and what the proper work of the Church is, then this freedom of religion is threatened. 

         I had read an article earlier in the week by someone who was very critical of the Bishops’ motives in the Fortnight for Freedom that we are recognizing in our Church, with the prayer, action, and education of this time period to bring about awareness of our religious freedom that is under threat.  The author of this article claimed that we are becoming a Church of the few, and not the Church of the many, that this is not an example of the Christian love that the Church claims it is bringing to the world.  Yet, I beg to differ.  As Paul extolled the virtues which the Christian community in Corinth embodied, he also called that community to makes sacrifices in order to help support the Church in Jerusalem.  Our Church does reach out in love and charity, but we do so in the context of God’s holy teachings and commandments.   We do not abandon the immigrant or the poor, the sick or the prisoner, and we don’t abandon the truth of God. 

         The woman afflicted with hemorrhages for 12 years reached out and touched Jesus' garment out of her faith – and Jesus healed her due to her great faith.  Jairus, the synagogue official, came to Jesus with faith, knowing that Jesus indeed would be able to heal his daughter, and it was out of that faith that Jesus raised her from the dead.  Today, let us come to God in faith, knowing that he will help us stand firm in our desire to continue to practice our faith as disciples of Jesus through the religious freedom we have been accorded since the founding of our nation.  We pray that during this Fortnight for Freedom that we can be true to the Gospel, true to the faith that has brought us this far.