9 July 2017 - Mass Introductions - 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Introduction to the mass and to the penitential rite: 

As Jesus invites us in today’s Gospel to rest from our labors and our burdens, let us open our hearts to him at mass today as we call to mind our sins: 

Lord Jesus, you are kind and humble of heart: Lord, have mercy.

Christ Jesus, your yoke is easy and your burden is light: Christ, have mercy.

Lord Jesus, you always lead us to a closer relationship with the Father: Lord, have mercy. 

Introduction to the Nicene Creed: 

As disciples of Christ, as members of his community of faith, let us now profess our faith: 

Prayer of the Faithful

God of compassion and mercy, let us join our hearts together today to pray for our needs, the needs of our community, and the needs of the world: 

1. That our Church may more closely follow Jesus each day as we acknowledge and reach out to the meek, the humble and the poor of the world, let us pray to the Lord.

2. That as world leaders meet together in Poland this week, we pray that they may work toward peace and reconciliation, toward harmony amongst the nations of the world, and toward the healing of wounds and hardened hearts, let us pray to the Lord. 

3. For farmers and for all who labor in the field to provide us food, we pray for a bountiful harvest this year, let us pray to the Lord. 

4. For safety for all families traveling throughout the summer months, for the Spirit of the Lord leading them and guiding them through their summer activities let us pray to the Lord.  

5. For the sick and shut-ins of our community.  For those in the hospital, hospice, and nursing home. Let us pray to the Lord. 

6. For the repose of the souls of the faithful departed, especially Father Patrick Noonan who passed away this past week.  Let us pray to the Lord.   

Priest: Compassionate and merciful God, as you reach out to your people, we ask that you hear our prayers  and graciously grant them according to your will, through Jesus Christ, our Lord for ever and ever.  Amen.  

14 July 2017 - Friday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time - Psalm 67

     One of the verses of our psalm stood out to me today - “Trust in the LORD and do good, that you may dwell in the land and be fed in security.  Take delight in the LORD, and he will grant you your heart's requests.”  The saint we celebrate today is a native American woman named Kateria Tekakwitha, known affectionately by the faithful as “the Lily of the Mohawks.”  She was born in present-day up-state New York in the year 1656, more than 100 years before the United States became a country.  When she was only 4 years old, her brother and parents died from smallpox, a disease brought to the Americas by the European explorers and colonists.  Kateri survived this disease, but it left her disfigured and partially blind.  She was assigned to care for one of the Jesuit missionaries who came to her village.  She converted to Catholicism at the age of 20 and was shunned and ridiculed by many in her village for her religious piety and devotedness to her faith.  Due to this harsh reaction, she eventually left her village, fleeing to a Catholic mission in Canada.  When Kateri is depicted in icons and in religious paintings, she is shown with a cross in one hand and an evergreen tree in another.  She has been named as one of the patron saints of ecology and of protecting the environment.  Kateri often carried a hand-made cross with her when she worked so that she would be reminded of Christ’s journey and the need she had to pray in the midst of her day.   The austere way she lived her life contributed to her death at the young age of 24 in 1680 in the middle of Holy Week.  She was buried on Holy Thursday.  It is told that Kateri was too shy and humble to ask the Jesuit priest for religious instruction herself; it was the Jesuit priest who saw a piety and a gentleness in her that offered her religious instruction and started telling her about Jesus.  Often on our own journey of faith, we need to trust the Lord, to delight in his ways, to dwell in his land, as the psalm calls us to do today.  St Kateri Tekakwitha, we ask for your blessings today - for our own journey, for our country, and for the protection of all of God’s creation.  

13 July 2017 - Thursday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time - Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne - Genesis 44:18-21, 23b-29, 45:1-5

    I thought about the psalm response we had yesterday, in its plea: “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.”  Today, as we hear the continuation of the story of Joseph in Egypt from the book of Genesis, we hear not only about mercy, but also about forgiveness, healing, and trust.  We all know the story of Joseph, of his punishment at the hands of his family, of being sold into slavery in Egypt.  But, Joseph moves beyond that, to a position of power and privilege in the Egyptian hierarchy.  He could use his rank to obtain revenge and punishment, but instead he uses his position wisely, even as he recognizes the brothers who sold him into slavery. 

      The story of Joseph has a happy ending; we all like happy endings, don’t we?  But in the reality of our lives, not all endings are happy.  I mentioned yesterday how I had heard about Rose Hawthorne Lathrop’s story of becoming the mother superior and foundress of an order of nuns who ministered to cancer patients.  Today, I want to speak about a group of nuns whose story also came through me through a novel written in 1931 entitled The Last One to the Scaffold written by a German convert to Catholicism, Gertrud von Le Fort.    After the French revolutions, many monasteries and convents were ordered shut, as the new government turned against the Catholic Church.  In 1790, the government ordered the Carmelite monastery in the town of Compiegne, France to close.  Yet, in 1794, 16 nuns who lived in that monastery 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, where they put to death by the guillotine while they sang the Salve Regina.  They refused to bow down to a government that condemned their Christian way of life.  Later, in 1957, French composer Francois Poulenc wrote an opera based on their story entitled Dialogues of the Carmelites.  It is the only major opera that has all female voices.  Poulenc, a lapse Catholic at the time, said that composing the opera, both the music and its lyrics, brought him back to the Catholic faith, as he was so inspired by the story of these Carmelite nuns.  Lord, help us to live out your mercy in our lives.  Help us to be faithful servant to your Word in a world that is often against us.  

12 July 2017 - Wednesday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time - Pslam 33 - Mother Mary Alphonas - Rose Hawthorne Lathrop -

     “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.”  We hear these words from the 33rd psalm, words that ensure to the Lord that we want to place our trust and our faith in him, words that ask for God’s mercy.  Yet, how often do we live out that mercy in our own lives and offer that mercy to others? 

     Back when I was preparing for lay missionary work, I came across a book entitled Sorrow Built a Bridge, about the life of Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, the daughter of the famous American author.  Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Having written the famous American novel The Scarlet Letter, and having been a direct descendant of a judge at the Salem Witch Trials in colonial America, Nathaniel Hawthorne is tied directly to the Puritans and to American Protestantism, so I was surprised to find out that not only was his daughter Rose a convent to Catholicism, but she become the founder of an order of nuns.  Rose had a very unhappy upbringing and unhappy marriage, both of which did not contain a lot of joy or mercy.  Her ministry called her to minister to cancer patients in New York City, which would have been a class of people who were very much outcasts in the the late 19th century.  She especially ministered to the poor in the tenement buildings of New York City who suffered from cancer.  In 1900, with the approval of the Archbishop of New York, Michael Corrigan, she founded a religious order called the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer.  She became this order’s first Mother Superior with the name Mother Mary Alphonsa. She died on July 9, 1926 when she was 75 years old.  Back in 2003, Cardinal Egan of New York opened up her cause for canonization.  Without wallowing in her grief and sorrow, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop built a bridge toward a ministry that reached out to those whose lives desperately needed help.  All of us are called to live out God’s mercy in our lives.  

Quote from Maya Angelo

Maya Angelo taught at Wake Forest, the college where I received my undergraduate education.  One of my fondest memories of being at Wake Forest was attending a small poetry reading given by Maya Angelou and her good friend the poet laureate of the Chicago and the state of Illinois Gwendolyn Brooks.  I had a chance to talk to both of them that evening.  As a young college student, I was in awe of being in the presence of two great literary giants who really made a mark on American literature.  This past week, I have had quoted to me twice these words of Maya Angelou.  Wise words, indeed:  “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  It is a good quote for all of us to remember, especially those of us who work in ministry.  

11 July 2017 - Tuesday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time - St Benedict (489 - 547) - Matthew 9:32-38

      Jesus looks out at the crowds and sees something very curious in our Gospel reading today.  Even though he tries to take of their needs, even though he proclaims God’s kingdom and performs miracles and heals the sick, he realizes that the people are missing something.  They are acting like sheep without a shepherd.  Jesus has compassion for them in the midst of their reality.  

      St Benedict is the saint we celebrate today.  Like Jesus, he looked out at the reality around him and was concerned at what he saw.  Benedict was a young man who came from a wealthy family in Italy; he went to Rome to study and to make his way in life.  Even though Rome was the center of Christianity, beyond the surface Benedict saw the city’s sinful and chaotic nature. The Early Church that was persecuted and struggling had become a Church of the empire.  By the sixth century, many Christians were yearning for the Church’s humble roots, trying to recapture something that was lost from the Early Church. 

     So, Benedict left Rome and became a hermit.  However, his first experiment in attempting to found a monastery was a failure; that first group of monks were upset at Benedict’s high standards.  They even tried to poison him.  He went on to found 12 different monastic communities that not only survived, but flourished, before founding in 529 what would become the famous monastery of Monte Casino, seen as the shining light of the monastic movement in Europe.  The rule of Benedict that he developed became the paradigm for monasticism: living in community, sharing work responsibilities together, studying the faith, and praying together.  Even though Benedict had such high standards, he was always gentle, peaceable, and compassionate.  The monastic movement that Benedict established had a big influence in helping Europe survive through its darkest days in the Middle Ages.  Benedict always encouraged his community to strive toward perfection and the ideals of God’s kingdom, as he once said: “Whatever good work you begin to do, beg of God with most earnest prayer to perfect it.”  On your feast day, St Benedict, we honor the way God called you to lead people to a holy life of prayer, work, and study. May those ideals help us to live a life of holiness, too.    

9 July 2017 - 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Romans 8:9.11-13; Matthew 11:25-30

      Before we Catholic priests can study theology in seminary, we take a ton of classes in philosophy.  In fact, I took more philosophy classes in preparation for my theology studies than a friend of mine took as an undergraduate philosophy major when we were students together at Wake Forest.  My favorite philosophy course was about the philosophers of the Enlightenment movement that included the philosophers Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant.  Another philosophy class I loved was about the Existentialist philosophers and writers, which included Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Martin Heidegger.  Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher and theologian from the first half of 19th century, is considered one of the Fathers of existentialism.  He wrote a beautiful poem about the love of God that one of our speakers quoted at the National Gathering for Christian Initiation that I attended this week in Chicago.  Kierkegaard writes: “You have loved us first, O God, alas! We speak of it in terms of history as if You loved us first but a single time, rather than that without ceasing You have loved us first many times and everyday and our whole life through. When we wake up in the morning and turn our soul toward You – You were there first – You have loved us first; if I rise at dawn and at that same second turn my soul toward You in prayer, You are there ahead of me, You have loved me first. When I withdraw from the distractions of the day and turn my soul toward You, You are there first and thus forever. And we speak ungratefully as if You have loved us first only once.

    No matter what, God is there.  We may not see him.  We may not recognize him.  We may deny him.  We may not understand him.  But he is there.  And he was there first, as Kierkegaard expresses so eloquently in his prayer.  

     So, let’s talk about the Cubs.  Most of you know that I was in Seventh Heaven last year when the Cubs won the World Series.  Since the Cubs were in town when I was there for the conference last week, I just HAD to go to a Cubs game - I could not pass up that opportunity.  A friend of mine last asked when I went to see the Cubs.  It was back in 1996.  And the time before that, I was 11 years old!   I remember growing up, my mom and all my aunts and uncles, and my grandfather - they all thought the Cubs were the greatest thing ever.  And you know, it did not matter whether the Cubs won or lost.  They loved the Cubs.  They loved watching the games on WGN.  They bled Cubby blue!  And as a child, even though I saw the Cubs having one losing season after another, I didn’t dream about rooting for another team.  When I want to the Cubs game on 4th of July, it was the biggest home crowd they had at a regular season game in more than 4 years.  And the Cubs are not having a good year this year.  As I write this homily, the Cubs have won 42 games, but have lost 42 games this year.  Not a great record.  But that crowd at Wrigley field - oh my goodness.  Everyone just so excited about the team they love.  

       I know most of you can relate, because sports are big here in Mississippi, whether we are pulling for Ole Miss or Mississippi State, or the Cowboys or the Braves or the Saints, the love we have for our sports teams, the sense of belonging we feel with the other fans, that is nothing like the love God has for us or for community we have in the in the community of Christ’s disciples.  Nothing.  

     Paul today speaks to us about two yokes - the yoke of the flesh and the yoke of the Spirit.  Before our baptism in the faith, we are of the flesh and we are debtors to the flesh.  With our discipleship in Christ, with the Holy Spirit working in our lives, we are set free from sin, from the yoke of the flesh to be reborn as new creations in the light of Christ.  Yet, we continue to sin, we continue to be lured away from God and his laws.  Yet, we are constantly called back to the love of God, the love of Christ, to the Spirit who will lead us back with God’s grace. 

      The Gospel today is one I have proclaimed as a priest as much or more than any Gospel reading, since it is the Gospel that is usually proclaimed during the anointing of the sick - a sacrament of healing, a sacrament of God’s compassion and love.  Think of the Gospel this week from the 11th Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel to the Gospel last Sunday from the 10th Chapter, of the hard, challenging statement about committing ourselves to Christ without reservation, that “anyone who prefers father or mother… son or daughter to me is not worthy of me.  Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me.”  We cannot say that today’s Gospel does not demand a total giving of ourselves to Christ, but also, in today's Gospel we are reminded of God’s infinite patience, compassion, and love as we strive in our faults and imperfections in an effort to unite ourselves fully to him and the values of his kingdom.  Jesus wants us to lay our burdens and troubles before him, all of us who are labored and heavily burdened.  Through Jesus, we find our comfort and our rest.  The love and compassion of this passage is a comfort to those who are sick and who need healing in their lives, those who hear this Gospel proclaimed in the anointing of the sick. The Gospel message is not to be a burden to us, demanding though it is, but by being faithful disciples, Christ’s yoke is to bring us peace of heart and joy.  It is in that spirit that God’s love calls out to us today.  Not just today, but every day.