Fourth of July - Statue of the Virgin Mary in the garden behind the church - St Mary Catholic Church, Yazoo City, Mississippi

7/8/2011 – Friday of the 14th week of ordinary time – Gen 46:1-7, 38-40

In today’s 1^st reading, we hear about Joseph being reunited with his father Israel & with his brothers in Egypt.  Initially, Israel must have feared for his life & the lives of his sons, since he thought his beloved son Joseph had been lost, and he was afraid what would happen to the rest of them. Yet, God reassures Israel that it is ok to travel to Egypt, that this is part of God’s plan, that God will be there with him.  We also might fear some of the places we go in life as well; we also might question God’s plan for us.  Indeed, Jesus even tells his apostles: “I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves.”  Those are not very reassuring words, are they? Yet, we put our trust in the Lord.  We realize that God’s ways are sometimes very different than our own ways.  As the psalmist tells us today: “The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.”  May we indeed put our trust in our salvation that only comes from our heavenly Father through Christ.  

7/1/2011 – Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – Friday – 1 John 4:7-15

Each time that we gather around the Lord’s table for mass as a community of faith, we celebrate the love that God has for us in a special way.  Today’s solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus always falls 19 days after Pentecost, which is always on a Friday. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of the most beloved religious devotions in our Church, as it sees Jesus’ physical heart as a symbol of the love that he has for all of humanity.  Many saints have contributed to our understanding of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, especially St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose visions of Jesus in the 17^th century conveyed this message: “Look at this Heart which has loved men so much, and yet men do not want to love Me in return. Through you My Divine Heart wishes to spread its love everywhere on earth.” 

Our 2nd reading from the 1^st letter of John talks about love, the central message of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  If we just concentrate on rules, commandments, & laws in the practice of our faith, forgetting about love, then we really miss the whole point of Jesus’ teachings & ministry.  We hear the word “love” many, many times in this reading, telling us that love is directly from God, that love connects us to the divine in our live, that love brings us closer not only to God but to our brothers & sisters here on earth, & that love is a sign of God’s relationship to us, of the unfailing commitment He has for his people. 

We will close the homily today with this prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus:

Merciful Jesus,
I consecrate myself today and always, To your Most Sacred Heart. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus I implore that I may ever love You   more and more.  Most Sacred Heart of Jesus I trust in You! Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Have mercy on us! Sacred Heart of Jesus I believe in Your love for me, Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like Your Heart.  Amen

7/7/2011 – Thursday of the 14th week of ordinary time – Matthew 10:7-15

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Then, as a part of their proclamation of God’s kingdom, Jesus tells his apostles to do certain things: cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons. We might be wondering: How are we supposed to do these things as  followers of Christ here in Yazzo City, Mississippi at the beginning of the 21^st century? Well, let’s look at curing the sick.  While most of us listening to God’s word do not have to power to perform miracles of healing and most of us here at mass today are not medical professionals, there are other ways we can cure the sick.  A couple of weeks ago, Mary Rutledge & Margaret Oakes & I went to see some of the sick & shut-ins of our parish community out in the country one Sunday afternoon after all of our masses.  You should have seen the joy in their faces to have us visit.  We did not return until late in the evening, & I will admit I was quite tired at the end of a busy weekend.  But, we did represent Christ & the Church to them in that visit, especially in the way we care for them & in the way we are praying for healing in their lives.  We also brought the Eucharist with us to these sick and shut-ins, which was certainly Christ’s real presence for them in a special way.  But, by those visits, I do believe we brought some healing into their lives & helped them feel the love of Christ.

Then, when we are asked to cure lepers, I think about Father Damien who worked with the lepers in Hawaii; I think of the leper colony in Carville, Louisiana, which on the site of an abandoned sugar plantation was the last place where lepers were treated here in the United States.  There are no lepers for us to visit here in Yazoo City, but there are those who live in the margins of society in our community, those who are often forgotten by many of us.  Do we pray for the prisoners or participate in prison ministry in some way?  Do we reach out to the immigrants, the mentally ill, the homeless?  Indeed, who are marginalized in our society & often treat as outcasts: what can we do to help cleanse them & feel a part of the bigger picture?  How we help them feel accepted and loved?

When we look at God’s Word, in the way it pertains to the people of ancient Israel & to the particulars of their culture, perhaps at times it does not seem like it is speaking directly to us on the surface.  But when we break open his Word & reflect on it in the light of the signs of our own times, God indeed has a message that is very relevant for us today.  

7/5/2011 – Tuesday of the 14th week of ordinary time – Matthew 9:32-38

In today’s Gospel, we hear about Jesus healing a mute demoniac who could finally speak out once the demons where driven out of him.  So often in the Gospels, we see Jesus bringing healing into people’s lives, we see him performing miracles of healing in order to give glory to God & to proclaim God’s kingdom to us here on earth.  These healings usually bring about a great conversion of faith the lives of those healed, & perhaps in the lives of the witnesses to these healings as well.  Perhaps we are in search of a great, dramatic healing in our own lives, but perhaps we don’t see the small miracles that Jesus works in our daily lives of faith.  Jesus tells us, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.”  There is so much we can do in our lives to bring Jesus’ message to others, to help Jesus work miracles in others’ lives.  Perhaps we don’t know where to begin in helping Jesus proclaim his Word in the world today.  However, if we trust the Holy Spirit, I think we’ll know where to start. 

7/3/2011 – 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Zech 9:9-10; Matt 11:25-30

We hear 3 very different readings today, each of them rather short, but each of them telling us a little bit about what Jesus is going to be like as a leader.  To start off with, let’s look at our 1^st reading from the Prophet Zechariah, who lived more than 5 centuries before the birth of Christ.  This prophet lived in a very dark period in Israel’s history: the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed & many Jews were exiled to Babylon.  Zechariah prophesied in a time when the Jews were returning to Jerusalem after their exile when they were freed by King Cyrus of Persia.  He told of the Messiah whom God would send to his people.  Of course, the people wanted a strong, aggressive, powerful leader who’d be able to stand up to foreign powers, a leader who’d lead them back to glory.  Zechariah defies these expectations, telling them about a leader who will be meek, who will enter the land riding on a donkey, who will bring peace & will banish the warrior’s sword.  I bet the people of Israel wondered: How would meekness be a strength for our new leader? By being humble & kind, how would our leader, our king, win wars & bring peace to our kingdom?

Zechariah prophesied the coming of the Messiah to the people of ancient Israel: that prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus.  Our world today is much like the ancient world in Jesus’ day in the way we idolize power & strength. Yet, Jesus contradicts this view of the world, telling us that although certain truths have been withheld from the wise & the learned, they have been revealed to the children & the little ones.  Indeed, we as adults still have a lot to learn about our faith.  Yes, we are encouraged in our Catholic faith to study philosophy and theology.  We can have insights & epiphanies from the prayers we make to the Lord.  We can meditate on God’s Word, breaking open his Word for greater comprehension & understanding.  And all of that is good & important, all of these are ways we can progress along our journey of faith as disciples of Christ. In fact, we always need to be growing in our faith, gaining in our understanding of the Lord.  Yet, that’s not the entire story.  There is another dimension to our lives of faith:  We can look at how our children see God through their joy & enthusiasm, how they see God’s love as the central message of our faith.   If we live out a faith in which we try to follow all of God’s laws & try to do the right things, but if we leave out the love of God & do not have joy in our hearts, then we really don’t understand what Jesus is all about. We do indeed have a lot to teach our children about our faith, to pass down our faith to them, but, as Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel, our children have a lot to teach us about our faith as well.

Opening up ourselves to God with the heart of a child is important. Jesus knows that we all can be burdened down in life by so many different things, & he addresses this in today’s Gospel, too.  If you look at all the people we are praying for in our parish, there are so many who are suffering in their health, who are enduring long-term illnesses, or who are dealing with the aches & pains of old age. We  have members of our parish family who are still recovering from the tornados that happened last year, & those who are still not back in their homes after the recent flooding. Farmers all around us are dealing with the affects of flooding and the lack of rain at the same time. On top of all of these things, all of us are haunted by our own personal demons, by struggles we have in our daily lives – both big & small -  those things that weigh heavily on our hearts. 

Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel: “Take my yoke upon you & learn from me,
for I am meek & humble of heart;
& you will find rest for yourselves.”  Well, the simple, humble people of Jesus’ day knew what a yoke was.  They saw the teams of oxen wearing yokes around their necks with a big crossbar as they pulled a plow in the fields.  And the peasants of Jesus’ day felt the yoke of their backbreaking work imposed on them, as they worked the land & had little time to rest. On top of that, the Pharisees tried to impose the yoke of their interpretation of religion upon the people, a yoke of rigid laws & commandments that often had no sense of God’s love & compassion. 

But Jesus understood the burdens of the poor of his day, just as he understands all that we in the modern world endure. When Jesus made the statements we hear in today’s Gospel, he knew of the rocky road he would have on his way to death on the cross.  The yoke Jesus wants us to assume is not one that will increase our burdens; Jesus’ yoke will not increase what is weighing us down.  Jesus offers us a yoke that will bring peace & rest to our hearts, a yoke that will allow us to find meaning in our sufferings, a yoke that will bring us eternal life & salvation. 

But this is not saying that the yoke Jesus asks us to assume is always the easiest path to follow in life.  His yoke asks us to live a life of discipleship without reservation.  Jesus is not telling us that our Catholic faith is always the politically correct thing to do.  It is important to remember: When we assume Jesus’ yoke in our lives, we must never forget that we are always to practice our faith out of compassion & love.  We are not to harbor bitterness & hatred in our hearts, even for those who lash out against us or who persecute us.  We certainly need to practice in our daily lives what we hear Jesus preach.  Yes, we will still have burdens that we carry with us in life. We will still be confronted with challenges.  We will still have sufferings we will have to endure. But we also have Jesus at our side every step of the way. 

Homilia en Español - 7/3/11 - Décimocuarto domingo del Tiempo Ordinario - Mateo 11, 25 - 30

En nuestro mundo moderno, tenemos muchas oportunidades para ir a la escuela y a la universidad, para estudiar qualquiera cosa. Con nuestra tecnología, con nuestras computadoras y nuestras capacidades, pensamos que nosotros, como seres humanos, nos hemos convertidos en recreadores de lo que Dios ha hecho. A veces, podemos mirar las gradezas que los hombres han hecho en el mundo, y podemos tener un gran orgullo.  Con este orgullo, es casi imposible para tener un sentido de sencillez y humildad que debemos tener en nuestra vida de fe.  En verdad, podemos tener muchas cosas materiales en nuestra vida, pero estas cosas no son una garantía para tener un vida llena de felicidad y alegría. 

Jesús encontraba los doctores de la ley en su predicación de la Palabra de Dios.  Ellos tenían orgullo y arroganía en sus vidas de fe, en su manera de alabar a Dios y practicar su religión.  En el Evangelio de hoy, Jesus esta diciendo que ellos necesitaban recibir Dios con sencillez y gozo y humildad, como los niños.  Con esta sencillez en nuestros corazones, podemos reconocer lo que Dios ha hecho en nostros.  Esta sencillez en el amor y en la misericordia de Dios puede tener una profundidad más fuerte que el orgullo y la sabiduría en nuestro mundo. Mucha gente en nuestra sociedad tiene una falta de evangelización de la palabra de Dios en sus vidas.  Y si no tenemos la paz de Dios en nuestro corazon, estamos afuera del camino de fe.  Todos de nosotros tenemos que saber que solo Dios es el Maestro de nuestra vida, que debemos vivir segun los mandamientos del Señor.  No podemos ser el Maestro proprio de nuestra vida.  No podemos abandonar las leyes de Dios y vivir segun nuestras leyes proprias.  Al inicio del Evangelio de hoy, Jesus dijo: “Te alabo, Padre, Señor del cielo y de la tierra.”  Para tener este sentido en nuestra vida de fe es muy importante.  Necesitamos reconocer el poder de Dios, que El es el Señor del cielo y de la tierra.  En verdad, cada uno de nosotros necesita roconocer el Padre como el Señor de nuestra vida.  Podemos tener muchas cosas como un dios un nuestra vida, como una persona, o una nueva ideología, o las cosas materiales.  Pero, nada puede reemplazar a Dios en nuestra vida y en nuestra fe.  Como en los niños, Dios ha revelado sus misterios a quien es capaz de escucharlo y aceptarlo.  Y los niños pueden hacerlo con el gozo y la sencillez y la inocencia de sus corazones.  El descanso y la paz que el Señor nos promete es un descanso y una paz que necesitamos para seguir en el camino de Dios.  El yugo que el Mesías nos da es un yugo del amor.  Es un yugo que se adapta a las posibilidades reales en nuestra vida, que nos da la posibilidad de ser más plenamente humano, más feliz, más contento.