Homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2023

 

Homily for the 21^st Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

“You are Peter, and Upon this Rock I will build my Church”

Fr. Meyer and I were both blessed to witness today the Confirmation of 74 young adults from Dearborn County.  Archbishop Thompson gave a tremendously powerful homily, and one of the things that he said was "when you all come to Mass this weekend, you will hear Jesus telling Peter that I built my Church upon you...we all haver our own theological opinions and ideas about what the Catholic Church ought to teach, and what the Catholic Mass should look like...but it is important that we run our own ideas through what the Church ACTUALLY teaches!" 

There are 4 pillar documents of the 2^nd Vatican Council, and one of them deals exclusively with the Mass.  That pillar document said that while permitting translations of the Mass into the vernacular, “care must be taken to ensure that the faithful may also be able to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them”

Pope Francis said just last week that every Council in the history of the Catholic Church has taken about 100 years to be realized...and we are only 60 years after the 2nd Vatican Council, so we still have 40 years left...

And so it is neither Fr. Meyer nor my desire to do this quickly.  It will take years of teaching…and so we have started with the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei

 

Latin Mass Part (Sanctus and Agnus Dei) are Located

St. Lawrence they are in the BACK of the green Gather book

St. Mary on the hymn board.

St Teresa - in front of Gather book

 

Why chant them?  Because chanting is actually easier than just reciting them, particularly when it comes to the Creed and the Gloria and so forth.

 

If you watch Mass on EWTN at all, that is also what we are trying to build here…the Mass as the 2^nd Vatican Council intended…the Mass on EWTN some days does Latin Mass parts, some days they do the Mass in English…

 

There is also a 2sided handout in this weekend’s bulletins about other questions you might have about the way Mass is celebrated in Dearborn County.  Please grab a bulletin and let myself or Fr. Meyer know if you have any questions. 

There is an old saying that "no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care."  I hope you see that Fr. Meyer and I are both striving to lay down our lives to serve and minister to all of our parishioners and all of those living in our parish boundaries.

We are trying to celebrate the Mass in the way that the 2nd Vatican Council intended it so as to remain close to Peter and his successors.

"A house of prayer for all peoples" - the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023

 

20^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2023

“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”

 

I talked to the youth group when I first arrived and talked about this, and I just wanted to reflect on this topic again.  My talk was on the top 3 sins that I have heard confessed in my 14 years as a priest, and why none of the top 3 “sins” are actually sins.

 

The number 1 most confessed sin is “distraction in prayer.”  The Catechism has a BEAUTIFUL statement about what we do when we are distracted; paragraph 2729 “The habitual difficulty in prayer is distraction. To set about hunting down distractions would be to fall into their trap, when all that is necessary is to turn back to our heart.”

 

The 2^nd most confessed sin is “Lustful thoughts”.  But lustful thoughts are not sins unless we are WILLFULLY, with our mind, ENGAGING those thoughts.  The Devil is allowed to tempt us and suggest things to us…and one of the ways he does that is through showing us lustful things in our mind…but then once he shows us those things he wants us to think that they are coming from US and the Devil ACCUSES us of them…and he will say things to us in our mind “Did you really just look at your sister or that woman or have those thoughts about the Blessed Virgin Mary…you are such a freak show…no one has those thoughts except you!”

 

Saint Padre Pio wrote that he was assaulted with the most perverted lustful thoughts, particularly during Mass and at the words of Consecration…but Saint Padre Pio shrugged them off because he knew those thoughts came from the Devil and not himself.

 

And finally, the third most confessed sin, along the same lines as the other 2, is distraction at Mass.  I get distracted multiple times during every Mass, and if I hadn’t read the Catechism paragraph mentioned above, if I had not read Saint Padre Pio’s writings, I would probably have thought that “I must be the antichrist because I cannot stay focused on the prayers, and I am the one saying most of the prayers out loud!”  But again, when I get distracted at Mass, I simply make a quick prayer “Lord Jesus, I was distracted, I know it is not a sin, help me to refocus on you.

 

In conclusion, there are so many non-Catholics and Catholics who need to hear these teachings.  Every Catholic Church is, in a special way, what we heard in our first reading today from the prophet Isaiah…every Catholic Church is “a house of prayer for all peoples”.  I invite you to think of 5 people in Dearborn County, Catholic or not, who need to hear these teachings, and invite them to the adult education program that starts on Thursday, September 14^th at 6:30 at the St. Martin’s campus hall. 

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 - "But the Lord Was Not in the Wind"

 

19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – “But the Lord Was Not in the Wind”

 

About 20 years ago I was a brand new high school teacher and, although I knew I wanted to be a priest, and had told everyone, I was doubting.  I remember at one point hitting my bed and saying “Jesus I NEED to know that you are REAL!!!”

And immediately I saw a very similar image to last Sunday’s Gospel.  I was standing on the top of a mountain looking at Jesus far off in the distance of that same mountain top talking to two people who I could not see.  Then Jesus came closer to me, and there was a light that came from Jesus and passed right through my heart and I was immediately struck with complete and utter bliss.  After the vision ended, I was walking around my house singing Catholic hymns, and I certainly surprised my family, as that was NOT my normal behavior!

But then that night, as I laid down to sleep, I could feel the super-intense joy start to go.  The effects, though, continued to linger for about a week, and then they were gone.

 

I spent the next couple of years trying to recreate that spiritual experience, I would pound my bed with my fists and say the same words I had said before, but nothing ever happened.

And that caused me to go into a sort of spiritual depression for a couple of years.

So pretty early on at St. Meinrad, I bought a book written by St. John of the Cross, and he definitely helped me understand why trying to recreate a spiritual “high” (or to seek a spiritual “high” in the first place) can actually be damaging to our spiritual growth.

 

He said there are a couple of reasons we should not seek out spiritual highs:

1) St. John of the Cross says one of the reasons we should not ask for spiritual highs is that when they inevitably fade, we will try to recreate them.  Guilty!

2) Another reason he says we should not pray for spiritual mountain experiences is that that the Devil can also lead us astray by appearing to provide us with some of the stuff that we THINK constitutes a “spiritual high”.

3) Also, early on at Meinrad, I was going to Mass every day, and I remember walking into my spiritual director’s office and I started crying and I told him, through the tears, that “I am going to Mass every day, and I just don’t FEEL anything happening!”  But a few months later, when I began reading St. John of the Cross, he hit me right between the eyes with this quote: “In receiving the Eucharist, they spend all their time trying to get some feeling and satisfaction rather than humbling praising and reverencing God dwelling within them.  And they go about this in such a way that, if they do not procure any sensible feeling and satisfaction, they think they have accomplished nothing.”

 

A lot of us, in the Catholic Church and also non-Catholic Christians spend a lot of time and energy trying to make Mass (or their Protestant prayer service) an EMOTIONAL experience, but that is not what the Mass is meant to be.  99.999% of the time I do not FEEL anything at Mass other than just a quiet peace.

This all gets back to our first reading at Mass, one of my favorite in Old Testament.  Elijah is also in desperate straits as I was.  He told God I need to know that you are real, and then there is this litany fire, earthquakes rushing wind, but it says God is not in any of those things, but was in the still small whisper.

 

This Mass, and every Mass, brings a peace that is DEEPER than pyrotechnics and praise music…

At this Mass, and every Mass, as Saint Peter told Jesus on the top of Mount Tabor, it is good for us to be HERE at this Mass to experience the still, quiet presence of Jesus.

The Transfiguration, 2023

 

The Transfiguration 2023

 

About 20 years ago I was a brand new high school teacher and, although I knew I wanted to be a priest, and had told everyone, I was doubting.  I remember at one point hitting my bed and saying “Jesus I NEED to know that you are REAL!!!”

And immediately I saw a very similar image to what is described in our Gospel today.  I was standing on the top of a mountain looking at Jesus far off in the distance of that same mountain top talking to two people who I could not see.  Then Jesus came closer to me, and there was a light that came from Jesus and passed right through my heart and I was immediately struck with complete and utter bliss.  After the vision ended, I was walking around my house singing Catholic hymns, and I certainly surprised my family, as that was NOT my normal behavior!

But then that night, as I laid down to sleep, I could feel the super-intense joy start to go.  The effects, though, continued to linger for about a week, and then they were gone.

 

I spent the next couple of years trying to recreate that spiritual experience, but I encountered St. John of the Cross at St. Meinrad, and he definitely helped me understand why trying to recreate a spiritual “high” (or to seek a spiritual “high” in the first place) can actually be damaging to our spiritual growth.

 

He said there are a couple of reasons we should not seek out spiritual highs:

“They spend all their time trying to get some feeling and satisfaction rather than humbly praising and reverencing God dwelling within them.  And they go about this in such a way that, if they do not procure any sensible feeling and satisfaction, they think they have accomplished nothing.”

He also says that the Devil can also lead us astray by appearing to provide us with some of the stuff that we THINK constitutes a “spiritual high”.

St. John of the Cross also says “The more importance one gives to these spiritual visions the further one strays from faith…these sensory things are an impediment to the spirit because they detain the soul and prevent the spirit from soaring to the invisible.”

 

You can see Saint Peter, stammering out of Joy, asks Jesus if he can build three tents…he doesn’t want the experience to end but it does end

Peter does get one thing right in today’s Gospel when he said that it is good that we are here.

This Mass, and every Mass, brings a peace that is DEEPER than pyrotechnics and praise music…

At this Mass, and every Mass, it is good for us to be HERE