Superheroes

 

All Saints

Happy All Saints Day! I hope you all had a fun and safe All Hallows Eve last night. Did you have a lot of trick or treaters? Every year there is a theme to the costumes based on the popular movies and shows. There are always a lot of superheroes. All the families with little kids, how many superheroes were there? How many Spider Mans, Ironmans, Batmans, Elsas? How many of your kids dressed up as saints? Not too many, but that’s ok, because just as last night may have been all about superheroes, so is today.

Who are your heroes?

You can tell a lot about a person by who their heroes are, and we all have them. There’s something innate in us to want to emulate and honor people we admire and who have influenced us. Our heroes come from our own interests and how we want to see ourselves. We think of sports heroes, because we want to associate ourselves with and see ourselves as winners, as people who work hard, do their best, and excel in certain endeavors. We may have heroes in business, be they the titans of industry or our mentors or people who have had a positive influence on our lives and careers. We have social heroes or political heroes, those who have stood for values we share.

Most of these people we will never meet nor have any meaningful interaction with, but we still want to identify with them. And if given the chance we would love to meet them and get their advice on how we could be more like them, how we can be better at what we do and who we are by following their example.

When we honor them, we are actually honoring that part of them we want to be. We are in a way honoring ourselves. Their specialness makes us feel special.

We just had the World Series. So many people in the stands were wearing their team jerseys, often with players’ names on them. None of those fans will ever be professional baseball players or play in the championship, but they identify with their team because it’s their team, it’s their city. And even if their team wasn’t in the Series this year, they still rooted for the Brewers, because Americans love the underdog, and we were pulling for them because they had never won before.

We love to see excellence. We love to see people struggle and overcome hardship and overwhelming odds. Everyone loves a winner.

That doesn’t mean we worship them.

One thing I had never experienced before listening to Justin Hibbard’s Why Catholic podcast is the major problem so many protestants have with praying to the saints. They believe that there are saints in heaven, but there is no real connection to them. They’re there, we’re here. They’ve made it, we want to make it. It’s almost like they’re in heaven so we don’t share the same life. We’re alive but they’re … something else.

I’ve never understood that. All throughout scripture we read that God is the God of the living, not the dead. We believe in eternal life, and it’s natural for us to commemorate the dead and honor what they did in this life. The dead live on in our memories and oftentimes feel as close to us now as they did then. We live in our memories and cherish them. We say that the dead still live in our hearts. Isn’t that a great understanding of eternal life, how we can experience heaven here on earth?

But they say they want to pray directly to Jesus, without anyone in between. They see our artwork and our statues and hear our prayers and somehow equate that with praying to them as themselves. And don’t even talk about relics, all those gross old body parts and such. They don’t understand that there’s a difference between honoring and having a devotion to a saint and blurring the line between that and forgetting who we are actually praying to. We do not take part in hero worship nor hold to superstition.

Why wouldn’t we ask them to pray for us? We ask the saints to pray for us, to pray with us, to the same Jesus, to the same Father, in the same Spirit. If we truly believe in eternal life, that there is a heaven, then it makes sense that there is a communion of saints, that there is a connection between those in heaven and those on earth.

The church militant, the church suffering and the church triumphant. These are the stages we all go through on our path to salvation. We’re the ones battling it out here on earth, working out our salvation with fear and trembling and hope. St. Paul actually referred to us as saints. There are those who the Church has officially declared to be in heaven by how they lived their lives. And there are those who we say are in purgatory, who will eventually experience the beatific vision in heaven after a state of purification. Those are the people we remember tomorrow, All Souls Day. All are considered saints and all can be our heroes. I think it’s easier for us to consider those who have died as saints, but we’re saints, too. Do you consider yourself a saint? Is that something you aspire to? Do you see the people around you as saints? A lot of times I think we see that as being presumptuous. Sainthood is a reward or something, not a way of living.

Have you ever asked anyone to pray for you? Have you ever had anyone ask you to pray for them? Of course you have. Your attitude towards the saints is really about your understanding about what it means to be Church and what prayer is. We pray for others out of love for them. We always want the best for those we love, and prayer is the foundation of all we do for the love of others. And we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t think it was effective, if prayer didn’t make a difference. God wants us to pray for one another. We actually have a responsibility to pray for one another, wherever they are.

And do you pray for the dead? It’s a forgotten art. Pray for the repose of their souls. Blessed Fulton Sheen said “As we enter Heaven, we will see them, so many of them, coming towards us and thanking us. We will ask who they are, and they will say ‘a poor soul you prayed for in Purgatory.’ I once asked a priest how long I should pray for the repose of the souls of my parents, because what if they have left purgatory and are in heaven? They wouldn’t need our prayers anymore.  He said to never stop because prayer is outside of time, so when we pray for them in purgatory, we are praying for them while they are still alive, and vice versa.  It was a bit mind blowing.

So, who are your heroes? How do you choose them? It’s important that our heroes are good examples, people who live or have lived lives of virtue and holiness. Rank your heroes by what’s truly important. Baseball players are great, but they won’t necessarily help you get to heaven. It’s interesting that the gospel today is the beatitudes. We read this at weddings and at funerals also. Weddings because they are the foundation for a solid happy marriage and provide the conditions for the couple to get to heaven. At funerals because these are the standards that everyone will be judged by, and we recall how the deceased lived by them. Judge your heroes by the beatitudes and you can’t go wrong. Live by them and you will become a hero to other people. You will be a saint.

What type of hero do you want to be? Are you just trying to “be a good person”, or do you want to be something more? What have you done to be considered heroic? What example have you given that someone would want to emulate? Who do you want to be a hero to? Most of us would want our children and grandchildren to think of us as heroes, but what about everyone else? Do people see the saint in you?

Just as we have been influenced by the examples of those in heaven we have never met, so too you have been a hero to people you have never met or do not remember. So many of the things we do for people that we feel are insignificant or ordinary have such a profound effect that they can help them to heaven. How many saints have you made?

I think we make a lot of saints here at St. Mary’s. I know we make a lot of disciples. You met some of them. Today we welcomed some new folks into the church militant through the beautiful Rite of Entrance. They have become members of the church as catechumens, not yet fully in communion with us but part of the Church, nonetheless. We signed all their senses and claimed them for Christ. They also have their heroes. Some have developed a devotion to a patron saint, and some have come here because they were invited by a hero here on earth, someone like you. Let us pray that these saints continue to grow in faith and love of Christ and his Church.

 

 

Too Good to be True!

 

28^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle A

Isaiah 25:6-10a

Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20

Matthew 22:1-14

 

Many are invited but few are chosen. Actually, all are invited but few choose to attend. Why do people reject God and his gifts? It doesn’t make sense to me.

I think the most common reason why people claim to not believe in God is the existence of evil and suffering in the world. How can the good and loving God that we proclaim allow such pain, suffering and evil in the world? If God is as we say, then wouldn’t we have heaven on earth? Why does he punish us and often so indiscriminately?  It’s easy to understand their point of view, especially if the pain and suffering they have experienced in their lives has eclipsed the good. It is easy to be overwhelmed by that. But I also think it’s often an intellectually lazy argument, an easy way out that absolves them of any responsibility to try to understand or change their lives.

Ironically, for many Christians who do profess a belief in God the question really is, how can I believe in a God that loves me so much? It seems too good to be true. Many of us have been raised with a spirituality of fear versus one of love. We have been taught to focus on our sinfulness and unworthiness and not on the gift of God’s mercy. The Salesian brothers forced me to read that awful sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards, which literally put the fear of God in me.

One of the things Saint Faustina said Jesus revealed to her is what hurts him the most is our lack of trust in his Mercy. We don’t experience that sort of trust and mercy from those around us, and we rarely give it ourselves, so it’s hard to understand and accept it from a God we cannot see and touch and feel.

I don’t deserve that type of God. I am a sinner in the hands of an angry God.

Isaiah says the Lord will supply the banquet for all peoples. It’s not just the atheists and agnostics who have rejected the banquet; it is the good church going folks as well. The banquet being offered can be understood on two levels. The first is the banquet of life itself, all the good gifts everyone has been offered by God, starting with life itself. The second is the Eucharistic banquet, the life that all people are also called to but even fewer accept.

So many of us are so busy with life that we don’t experience life and how wonderful it is. We look so inward that we are blind to the beauty around us. We are so concerned with success and obtaining stuff that we overlook the joy that life can bring, especially life without those things. Or we are so overwhelmed by the hurt in life that it’s hard to see the good. And we so often fail to share the banquet with those we feel are not chosen as we are. If people have never experienced the banquet, it’s up to us to show them our experience of it. When was the last time we went to the highways and byways and invited the marginalized into our lives?

I don’t think many Catholics reject the Eucharistic banquet outright, they just don’t think about it deeply or often. They ignore it or don’t see it as a priority. Other things are more important. Life gets in the way. It’s a powder day, so I won’t go to Mass today. Anyway, isn’t God everywhere? The mountain is my church. Or the kids have practice or a game, and it’s such a hassle to get everyone up and ready on Sunday. Or it doesn’t really matter if I go or not. God understands. I’d rather sleep in. People expect heaven on earth, but they reject the heavenly banquet we can experience each and every day in the Mass. As Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “If you only knew the gift of God and who asks you for a drink, you would ask him and he would give you living water.”

The saddest ones are those who don’t feel worthy to attend either the banquet of life or the banquet of the Eucharist. They think they don’t deserve good things. They have not earned them. Those are the ones who need it the most. Those who are hungry need the banquet. Those who are starving even moreso. Salvation is offered to everyone. The good gifts of the Lord are for all people, not just those who think they deserve it. God is more accepting of sinners and the humble than of the ungrateful, because sinners at least can accept his mercy while the ungrateful do not even acknowledge they need it.

It’s even worse for those who have been told they don’t deserve it. But you do deserve it just because he has given it to you. You are worthy because he has made you worthy. He has made you worthy of all the good things in life so that you can also be purified by the pain and suffering life can bring. He didn’t create pain and suffering, our sinfulness did. He understands our pain. He lived it. His suffering gave meaning to our suffering, and his death destroyed death itself. He wants to heal you.

He wants you to share in his peace and joy. He has prepared the banquet for his son, and he has invited you to it. No, he is desperate for you to come. He has created you to come. His invitation began the moment he first thought of you, and it will continue until you finally accept it.

God has given us himself. What more can he give? He wants us to have eternal life with him in heaven, and he wants us to have heaven on Earth. He has made us little less than gods, higher than the angels. Why would we reject that? Is it that we truly do not understand? If we truly understood, would we still accept it?

In the end I think it all comes down to trust. We treat God like we treat each other. It's so hard for us to accept gifts and trust from others here on Earth, how much more is it difficult to trust the gifts and promises of God?

So many work so hard to create the banquet themselves when the gift is already being offered to them. But we need to prepare ourselves for it. We need to always strive to put our best foot forward. We need to show up with our best selves. That’s what the wedding garment symbolizes. God invites all to the banquet, but we need to be ready to accept it. We need to be sure that our hearts and souls are open to the gift, that we are reconciled to the giver as much as we can be, and that we commit ourselves to constant repentance and improvement with true humility. Most of all, we must trust in the mercy of God.

It is too good to be true. God is too good to be true. But then, so are you.

 

Satan!

 

22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle A

Jeremiah 20:7-9

Romans 12:1-2

Matthew 16:21-27

 

Poor Peter.

At first glance, Jesus hits Peter really hard today. Satan? Really? Jesus had just finished giving Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and now he’s likening him to the devil? But then, Jesus typically was a bit stern in correcting Peter.   

Peter didn’t say anything wrong. Of course he didn’t want the person he loved to suffer. He reacted exactly as anyone would at the time. Peter made the statement that “you are the Christ, the Son of the living God”, but Jesus never asked Peter what that meant to him. What did he expect him to say?

What were Peter’s expectations of the Christ? What did it mean that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God? Why was it necessary that he suffer and die? The disciples always had a hard time understanding and accepting that type of Messiah. That’s not who they were taught to expect. Everyone expected the Messiah to be more a military and political leader, a king that would restore Israel to glory. What was all this talk about suffering and dying?

Still, the Spirit led Peter to be the first to make the declaration, but he was only halfway there. I think we also are only part of the way there. We cannot fully understand this week’s gospel without first understanding last week’s, because it revolves around the same question, “Who do you say that I am?”

We all know the definitions, we just have a hard time figuring out what they mean, especially what they mean for us as children of God. I was at a gathering of parishioners last Sunday night, and the main topic of discussion was the gospel and especially Fr. Dass’ homily that day. Father had made a great connection between Jesus’ identity and our own, that we first have to know God before we can really know ourselves. Who you say God is is linked to whom you say you are.

But when we started talking about who we say Jesus is today, everyone went to the textbook definitions they’d been taught. The Messiah, the savior, the redeemer, the Son of God. Jesus’ titles. Sort of like Peter had done when asked the same question. Yet when asked to go deeper and define what those names and roles actually mean to them personally, few could articulate it. Who do You say that I am and what does that mean for You? Just as we usually tie our identities to what we do, it’s often easier to understand what Jesus does than to understand who He is.

Is Jesus an idea for you or is he a person? You can build on the foundation of an idea, but you cannot have a relationship with one. You cannot have a relationship with an identity, but with a person. You can only love a person. Jesus doesn’t see you as an idea, he sees and loves you as a person.

Have you always wondered why Jesus kept telling his disciples to not tell anyone that he was the Christ. Not only was their own image incomplete, until it was complete if they just declared Jesus to be the Messiah they would be misleading the people. They would be fueling their incorrect and incomplete expectations of who the Messiah would be. They would actually be encouraging the people to try to make Jesus King, the king of Israel, not the Kingdom of God. They were thinking as men think, not as God does, and that could lead to disaster.

Things haven’t changed much. We also have certain expectations of the messiah. The messiah we seek today doesn’t ask much of us, does he, because we really don’t want that kind of messiah. Today, it seems that the messiah we seek is someone who will be there when we need him but doesn’t challenge us very much. We are taught from an early age that Jesus loves us, but we rarely consider what kind of love that is. We pray to him for the things we need when we need them, but the rest of the time he’s just a picture on the wall or a piece of jewelry around our necks. We enjoy hearing stories about how much God loves us no matter what we do. We like to hear stories of Jesus’ miracles and compassion. It really doesn’t matter if we sin, because we’re forgiven.

We like these stories because we’ve reduced the Messiah down to a warm fuzzy friend who’s non-threatening. We fit Jesus into our individualistic lives. It’s all about me, so I like the messiah who’s all about me, but don’t ask me to truly follow him. Jesus wants me to take up my cross daily, but don’t ask me to actually change my life. Don’t challenge me to turn from my sinfulness. Gimme but don’t ask me to give.

Does Jesus meet your expectations? Do you see him as a gentle, soft, cuddly person who just wants everyone to love everyone, or do you see him as a stern savior, stern as death, who actually has set up standards for us to live by and that we will be judged by?

As Fr. Dass said last week, our understanding of ourselves starts first with our understanding of who God is, who the Son of God is. Our image of ourselves comes from our image of God. Are we created in God’s image or do we mold him into our images?

Who do you say you are? Do you see yourself as God sees you? Do you love yourself as God loves you?

What does it mean to you to be a disciple? Do you understand that while his yoke is easy and his burden light, we are still called to take up our cross each and every day and follow him on our road to our own calvary?

We all have our Peter moment. Jesus asks us all the same question.We will have our aha moment when we make our own statement of faith in who we say Jesus is, then like Peter we will spend the rest of our lives developing that, trying to understand what that faith really means.

St. Paul says that now I see indistinctly, as in a mirror. Then I will truly know as I am truly known.

We do tend to see Jesus as if we are looking in a mirror. We see him as an image, how we want to see him. Only when we see him face to face will we be able to see him as he truly is and see ourselves in him.