Choice

Moses set the Law before the people and let them know that were choosing Life or death in whether they followed it or not. Jesus too invites us to wisdom of seeking his teaching. My homily for this weekend is posted here.

Unclear on the Concept

Today is the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the titular feast of the parish where I work. I wasn't able to plan anything big because we have the graduation exercises of our parish high school today. That's good enough for the Sacred Heart; he'll be happy.

I don't know if this is a true story or not, but it sure is funny. When I was a student in Ireland there was this pub that displayed a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Someone told me that people liked to toast the Sacred Heart saying, "Here's to the Sacred Heart, may God bless him!"

Ransomed from Futility

I've always loved the part of the first letter of Peter that comes around in the lectionary today:

Realize that you were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious Blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished Lamb.

We all suffer with "futile conduct," whether we call it sin, maladaptive behavior, addiction, or what have you. It's all the misguided stuff we keep doing (insanely) because we believe (wrongly--and against repeated evidence!) that it will bring us happiness or peace.

Our spiritual task is to realize, to make real in our own daily lives, our deliverance from such things through the power of Christ's Passion and Resurrection.

Interpretation

A lot depends on what we say to ourselves about what we see.

I've been in a bit of a spiritual funk lately: praying distractedly, wasting time, not paying attention to grace, etc. Anyone who knows the cycles of the spiritual life knows what I'm talking about. In light of that you can imagine how I was taken aback when this happened at Mass this morning:

After the consecration my chalice caught my eye. I noticed that the inside was very dirty, as if the Sunday sacristan had neither purified nor washed it after Mass (I didn't use it yesterday). Of course I felt bad for using a dirty chalice for Mass. I was also also annoyed at the sacristan, of course.

Then a little later, when I went to communicate the server with the Precious Blood, my chalice looked clean. Examining it myself after Holy Communion but before I purified it, I saw nothing of the dirtiness that I had noticed during the post-consecratory epiclesis.

So what's up? How do I interpret my experience? Do I confess to having a vision by which I am warned that it is the sin of sacrilege to offer Mass when my life of prayer and devotion is otherwise neglected? Or do I just say, "Maybe it was the lighting." I don't know.

It's the sort of thing that makes me realize once again that how we interpret our experience makes all the difference for the life of spiritual discernment and thoughtful discretion.

Corpus Christi

To my mind, Corpus Christi should have been this past Thursday. Nevertheless, it is a joy to celebrate the tremendous gift of the Lord's Body and Blood. My homily for this weekend is posted here.

Relieved or Disappointed?

Our fifth graders invited me to visit and teach them about the sacrament of Order. So today I went over and led them through a little reflection on oversight, teaching, and the ordered assembly in which we Catholics pray. Kids understand the need for these ministries right away when you have them imagine a school without teachers or a principal.

They had endless questions about things like liturgical prostration, laicization, and (in their own words) the distinction between the religious and clerical states. But to my great surprise, none of them asked me about clerical celibacy or the reservation of ordination to men. I couldn't decide whether to be relieved or disappointed!

The Most Holy Trinity

The God who is an eternal self-expression invites us into the loving mystery of God's own divine self. My homily for this weekend is posted here.