That Amazing Mustard-Seed-Sized Faith!

 

Deacon Dave · That Amazing Mustard-Seed-Sized Faith!

Homily for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Oct. 5, 2025. Luke 17:5-10. Theme: That Amazing Mustard-Seed-Sized Faith! 

In today’s gospel, Jesus teaches us about the power of a genuine faith and how it can bring about amazing and unexpected results. He uses the very tiny mustard seed that his listeners were all familiar with to illustrate this truth. Just as that mustard seed contains within it the potential of bringing forth a huge bush, so does an act of confident faith contain within it the power to do the impossible and accomplish much good in the world. But quite often this requires that we be willing to step out of our comfort zones to do something that we did not plan to do or even something that we do not think we can do. But this is where trust in God comes into play and once we take that first step in faith, God’s grace rushes in and enables us to do amazing things. Two inspiring examples of this mustard-seed sized faith at work happened right within the lifetimes of many of us. 

 In 1948, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was just an ordinary nun like so many others who spent their days teaching wealthy girls in India. But every day she had to come face-to-face with the destitute poverty and ravaging hunger of the poor outcasts in the city’s dirty streets. Her mustard-seed sized faith told her that God was asking her to do something about it. It was telling her to move out of her comfortable convent, to exchange her fancy nun clothes for a typical poor Indian woman’s sari, and to go live among the poor as one of them. 

 Mother Teresa trusted and then she began to do what God seemed to be asking of her even though she didn’t fully understand it. She took that first step of faith into the scary unknown and dedicated herself to a life of service among the poorest of the poor. At first she was all by herself but soon other women came to join her. Many of them had once been her wealthy students but now they had become her Sisters in a brand new religious community called the “Missionaries of Charity”, which is just another way of saying, “Ambassadors of God’s Love”. 

 Many years later, after she was world famous as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Mother Teresa was asked how it all started. She replied, “I never thought of doing anything big. I just saw one poor abandoned dying man lying in the street and so I picked him up and brought him home.” Today, there are over 4,000 Missionaries of Charity Sisters and Brothers, as well as lay Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, relieving the suffering of hundreds of thousands across the globe. All of this good happened because of God acting through one person’s mustard-seed-sized faith that was built upon confident trust in him. 

 On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a devout Christian black woman in Montgomery, Alabama, was on a segregated bus-ride home after a long day at work. At one of the stops, 4 black passengers were told to give up their seats for the newly boarding white passengers. Three of them got up. But Rosa stayed put. She was tired from a long day of work and and was even more tired of giving in to injustice and discrimination. Her mustard-seed sized faith inside her told her not to move. It reminded her that she had dignity as a human being, as a child of God, redeemed by Jesus Christ just like anyone else. The police were called and Rosa was arrested on the spot. She then lost her job. 

 Once word of what she did spread, the entire black population of Montgomery boycotted the bus system for 381 days. They brought it to a stop-still, causing it to fall right down on its financial knees. This protest eventually resulted in a Supreme Court decision of opening up the doors to racial equality to all Americans, no matter who or what they are. It jump-started the civil rights movement that became a tidal wave of justice washing across the entire nation. All of this good happened because of God acting through one person’s mustard-seed-sized faith that was built upon confident trust in him. 

 What small act of charity or justice, needing the power of a mustard-seed sized faith to jump-start it, might God be asking each of us? Is there something that we know we could be doing but don’t have the courage to step out of our comfort zones to do? Is there some person or group that needs our help but we are hesitant to get involved or change our schedule to do so? Whatever it might be, don’t fall for the lie that it has to be something great and significant in order to make any real and lasting difference in the world. 

 Mother Teresa never had the slightest clue that picking up one dying man off the streets of Calcutta would result in an international movement of charity on behalf of the poorest of the poor. And Rosa Parks had absolutely no idea that her refusal to give up her seat on that segregated bus in Montgomery would become the catalyst for a worldwide awareness of racial equality and justice. Each one of them was simply activating their mustard-seed sized faith and started off by doing just one seemingly little thing that they thought needed to be done at that time and in that place.. But it just goes to show us that it’s absolutely amazing what God can do through one person’s mustard-seed-sized faith when we have confident trust in him.

Mother Teresa & Rosa Parks, 1981

Poor Lazarus Today

 

Deacon Dave · Poor Lazarus Today

Homily for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, September 28, 2025. Amos 6:1-7; Gospel of St. Luke 16:19-31. Theme: Poor Lazarus Today 

Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Man and Poor Lazarus is more than just a story that was told 2,000 years ago. It’s been playing out in flesh and blood reality throughout history because there have always been and still are the “haves” and the “have-nots”. The moral lesson of this story is that the good we fail to do in this life will have a direct connection as to where we will spend our eternity in the next. The parable informs us that it was precisely because the Rich Man failed to do good to poor Lazarus, his neighbor in need, that he found himself in a terrible and eternal predicament. 

 Jesus began his story by pointing out that the man was dressed in purple and fine linen. Now, why would he have bothered to mention this detail? Well, he wasn’t making a fashion statement! Rather, his listeners knew that the hard-to-get purple cloth and the fine Egyptian linen were among the most expensive fabrics in the entire Roman Empire. For this reason they were worn only by the nobility. So, this told them that the man wasn’t just well-off but was in fact what we might call today, “filthy rich”. In other words, he could have done whatever it took, he could have done whatever was required, to help poor Lazarus. He had all the means at his disposal, but he chose to do nothing. He ignored him as if he was invisible and went about his complacent, self-indulgent life as usual. 

 Poor Lazarus, a broken and suffering human being, was right there at the front gate of the Rich Man’s estate but he simply and frankly didn’t care. He didn’t even do so much as lift a finger to help him. He could have sent a meal out to him. He could have had one of his many servants go and check on the sick man’s condition. Instead, he just left poor Lazarus there to suffer alone. And I’m sure his suffering was increased by the fact that he could smell the food cooking and could hear the festivities happening just a few yards away. The Rich Man was just like the complacent people in our First Reading who were lounging on their couches and stuffing their bellies as they neglected the plight of the poor. God condemned them through his prophet Amos because of their self-focused, self-indulgent lives. 

 Through this parable, Jesus is reaching out to us and asking us to examine ourselves and our own lifestyles. He is calling us to have a compassionate heart for the many poor Lazaruses who sit and beg at the front doors of our stores, on the corners of our streets, and throughout our neighborhoods and towns. He is directing us to see and acknowledge their human dignity, no matter who they are, no matter what they are, and no matter where they come from. He is reminding us that we have a serious moral responsibility to take care of the many poor Lazaruses who are suffering in so many ways today. So, how can we respond to them as individuals, as a church, and as a nation? 

As individuals, one simple but vital thing we can do is to treat the poor in a respectful manner. A priest who has a lot of experience in street ministry once told me a simple way to do this. He said that when seeing a beggar don’t just walk past them looking the other way, but extend a greeting to them. And if we have something to give, don't just hand it off briskly but ask their first name and then address them by it. This kind of response costs us absolutely nothing but is a powerful way to show that we acknowledge them as persons. It tells them that they are not invisible to us. It shows that we recognize their human dignity and are not just putting them in a box labeled: ”Just Another Dirty Beggar on the Street”. 

 And as a Church we are supposed to respond to the poor with the kind of words and actions that Jesus displayed for the sick, the suffering, the outcast and the vulnerable. And so when we as a Church encounter poor Lazarus today we know that we must feed his hunger and tend his wounds. And one doable way any of us can accomplish this as part of the Church is by participating in or supporting the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Our parish Vincentians extend mercy and provide help to so many of our neighbors in need. They bring hope and strength to those who struggle just to survive. Your participation in or financial donation to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is a beautiful way to become part of this response of the Church to poor Lazarus right here in Marin County. Our special collection today on this St. Vincent de Paul weekend is precisely to provide you with the opportunity to do this. 

 Finally, we must respond to the plight of the poor as a united people, as citizens of one of the wealthiest nations on planet Earth. We Americans have long felt a responsibility to look after the vulnerable, to show compassionate concern for the neglected and to care for the weakest among us. But our national heart seems to be hardening. Our attention seems to be turning in on ourselves. And as a result, many of the poor Lazaruses in our world today continue to suffer. But as Christian citizens we are called to be like the prophet Amos and raise a public voice on behalf of the needy. We are supposed to go and announce the Gospel of the Lord that proclaims Jesus’ and the Church’s preferential love for the poor, the vulnerable, the neglected and the weak. We have an obligation in our civic and political activities to help build a nation that is rooted in justice and that shows mercy to all without exception, no matter who they are or where they come from. 

 Our personal, as well as collective national consciences, should be pricked by Jesus’ parable and make us ask: “Why is poor Lazarus still suffering inhumane conditions in our well-supplied nation? What in our political and social systems are perpetuating his destitution? How can we as a united people better tend to his oozing social wounds and heal them? These are hard questions but we have a responsibility before God to ask and to answer them. For if we choose not to, then we run the risk of ending up like that unrepentant Rich Man of the parable. We will find ourselves begging for even just a tiny drop of water to cool the torment that we have brought down upon ourselves by our complacent self-focused lives as individuals, as a Church and as a nation.

Are You Investing in Heavenly Treasure?

 

Deacon Dave · Are You Investing in Heavenly Treasure?

Homily for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sept. 21, 2025. Gospel of Luke 16:1-13. Theme: Are You Investing in Heavenly Treasure? 

 The Parable of the Shrewd Manager in today’s Gospel is not meant to give us a lesson in clever business management. So, no need to get caught up in the details of the steward cutting his employer’s profits nor in wondering why the story seems to approve the end justifying the means. These things are just embellishments that Jesus used to hold his listeners attention so that he could convey his teachings on the proper use of wealth and the importance of having a long-term perspective when it comes to our future security. 

 When Jesus tells us to be wise with our money (which the Bible calls “mammon”) he means that we need to have in mind the bigger picture of our existence. He doesn’t want us to be a short-sighted instant-gratification kind of people who think only about the limited span of life we have on planet Earth. He is directing us to plan ahead and make long-term investments that will yield for us amazing dividends in eternal life. In other words, like the clever steward of the parable, Jesus wants us to be purpose-driven but in the right direction. And that direction is towards Heaven! He is reminding us that the ultimate purpose for which each one of us was created is to know, love and serve God in this world so as to be happy with him forever in the next. 

 By both his words and his example, Jesus taught us the proper place that wealth and material things should occupy in our lives. You see, as God-come-in-the-flesh he could have pre-arranged for himself a life in a luxurious palace with royal parents and a multitude of servants. But instead, he freely chose to be born among animals in a stable. His years as an infant and a toddler, which should be filled with happy times and joyful experiences, were spent as a foreigner and refugee in Egypt, the land in which his human ancestors had been enslaved and mistreated. Returning back to Palestine, he grew up as the son of a poor working class family living in the backwoods village of Nazareth, which made him what some Americans would call “a hick from the sticks”. He then spent most of his life working in construction and the trades as a day laborer from sunrise to sunset. When he was around 30 years old, he became a traveling rabbi or Jewish teacher, who in his poverty had “nowhere to lay his head” as he himself described it. 

 So, you see, Jesus didn’t just talk the talk, but he walked the walk when it came to embracing a simple uncluttered life that puts material possessions in their proper place. He knew that the danger of wealth is not at all in the money itself but that we too easily run the risk of becoming possessed by it. And so because he loves us and wants us to know true happiness both there and hereafter, he warns us that we can too easily become consumed with an unhealthy desire for more and more – what we call greed. Almost without realizing it, we can allow our desires for wealth and possessions to become a driving force, a central motivation in our lives. For many, money can even become an idol, a false god that they worship seven days a week with all of their decisions revolving around it. 

 Jesus is teaching us that greed is such an ugly thing that can deceive even the best of us. It can blur our vision, making us see others as potential profits or debits instead of recognizing their innate dignity as persons. Greed tells us to use our wealth primarily for ourselves and our personal enjoyment. It can tempt us to dismiss the poor and needy as a drain on society or even to write them off completely as just being lazy. It motivates societies to sentence criminals to death rather than having to pay for their lifelong imprisonment. It fractures families of the deceased by leading them into fierce arguments over inheritances, destroying their bonds of relationship. 

 Jesus has taught in so many ways that an excessive preoccupation with money will ultimately ruin us and work against us in the eternal long-run. The only thing it will accumulate for the greedy is an investment with dividends awaiting them in Hell. Ultimately, what Jesus is telling us in today’s gospel is that from God’s point of view the amount of money we have is irrelevant to him. It’s our attitude towards whatever wealth we have and what we do with it that makes all the difference in this life and in the next.

The Healing Remedy of the Eucharist

 

Deacon Dave · The Healing Remedy of the Eucharist

Homily for Exaltation of the Holy Cross Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. Numbers 21:4-9; Gospel of St. John 6:13-17. Theme: The Healing Remedy of the Eucharist 

 Have you ever noticed the emblem on medical alert bracelets? It is a snake wrapped around a pole and it comes directly from the Old Testament story we heard in our First Reading. Jesus also makes reference to it in today’s Gospel. This bronze serpent lifted up on a pole was a foreshadowing or prophecy of Jesus being lifted up, both on the cross and then from the grave, for the spiritual healing of all humanity. 

 As I was pondering today’s Scriptures that speak about healing for those who are dying, I thought of my long career in radiology. I was thinking about the cancer patients who put themselves into the beams of radiation for a chance to receive healing. All they had to do was show up for treatment and stay under the invisible radiating beam. Its power and energy did the rest. But they had to do this faithfully and frequently no matter how they felt. If they wanted the best chances at healing and living a better life, they needed to make this treatment a priority. 

 And you know, it’s very much the same for us who are spiritually dying of what has rightly been called the cancer of sin. First, like oncology patients we have to realize that if left untreated it’s fatal. Second, as it ravages our soul, it plunges us into an unmanageable life here on planet Earth that just spirals into worsening spiritual health. But we have real hope for a complete healing if we put ourselves under the care of Christ the Divine Physician. He who was lifted up on the cross for us is the remedy and the cure. In him and by the power of his cross, we can and will be restored to spiritual strength and wholeness! 

 

How do we do this? Well we can once again look to the cancer patients to show us the way. They consent to the prescribed treatment because they trust their physician. They undergo radiation therapy because they trust the skills of their health care team. And this personal trust enables them to faithfully follow instructions even if they do not fully understand the why or the how. They just keep trusting and hoping all will go well. We need to have this same kind of trusting attitude and the commitment to see our treatment through to the end, convinced that it’s a matter of eternal life or eternal death. 

 And what precisely is our prescribed treatment? It’s being in the Presence of Jesus our Savior who heals us from the inside out through the Holy Eucharist. And so we faithfully attend the Liturgy as vital to our treatment plan, allowing the supernatural rays of grace from Word and Sacrament to penetrate our hearts. As we are about to receive Jesus, we first gaze upon him who is held up before our eyes and then we profess our trust in him by saying, “Amen”. We consume his Sacred Body and Blood allowing his healing Presence to enter into us and radiate spiritual healing within us. 

 We keep showing up for this Eucharistic treatment plan because we realize that healing is a lifelong process. It’s an ongoing encounter with Jesus. and each time we receive Him with faith, we become a little more whole, a little more spiritually healthy. And so, even though it takes time to see the results we never lose hope but we keep trusting because we firmly believe that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

The Hard Sayings of Jesus

 

Deacon Dave · The Hard Sayings of Jesus

Homily for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sept. 7, 20225. Gospel of St. Luke 14:25-43. Philemon 9-10, 12-17. Theme: The Hard Sayings of Jesus 

 I want to focus on our Second Reading, but I can't pass on explaining some potentially confusing words of Jesus that we hear in the Gospel today. So let me touch briefly on that first and then we’ll dive into the unusual and powerful Letter to Philemon. 

 When Christ talks about hating one's family and hating one's life, he is using a common idiom in his culture that means “to love less than”. He does not mean hate as we understand it as “detest” or “despise”. What Jesus is emphasizing is that our love and allegiance must be given to him first and above all of our other relationships. And when he talks of “renouncing” ones’ possessions, it’s another way of saying that we must be detached from the money we have and indifferent to the material goods we have accumulated. In other words, should our wealth and personal goods be taken away, it would not change our attachment to him. So, “hating” and “renouncing” are other ways of saying that we stand in need of conversion of heart, renewal of mind, and reorientation of priorities with Jesus as the Center. 

 We see these “hard sayings of Jesus” (as they have come to be called) lived out in a powerful way in the Letter to Philemon from which our Second Reading is taken. There are three main characters involved in the story: the Apostle Paul (the letter-writer), Philemon (the letter’s primary recipient) and Onesimus (the subject of the letter). Another thing we need to know in order to understand the full impact of our Second Reading is the backstory that leads up to the passage read at Mass. Philemon is such a short letter (it fits on one side of a sheet of paper) that I strongly recommend reading the whole thing so as to put today's passage in its proper perspective. 

 Ok so on to the backstory. Philemon was a well-respected Christian leader. We know he was extremely wealthy and prominent because the Christian community in his city gathered for Mass in his spacious home (there were no churches in early Christianity due to persecution). We also know of his upper class status because he had slaves and one of them, a pagan named Onesimus, seems to have done him some serious wrong and then hightailed it out of town! But the runaway eventually got arrested and was thrown into prison where he met Paul, who converted him to Christianity. The two of them formed a tight bond with one another. 

 It’s at this point that we come into the story in our Second Reading. Paul calls Philemon to have mercy on Onesimus and gives him accountability by making sure the letter is not private. It is also addressed to Apphia (Mrs. Philemon) and Archippus (his pastor) as well as to the entire parish! So everyone knows what is going on and is watching to see if Philemon will rise to the occasion and do the right thing. Paul urges him to reorient his relationship with Onesiumus now that the two of them had been made one in Christ by Baptism. Philemon was to see that they were equals and Onesimus was to be treated as a brother and not a slave. This might all sound pretty neat and clean to us but in 1st century Roman culture it was radical and revolutionary! 

 Paul was calling Philemon to a radical revamping of his attitudes based on Christ’s hard sayings in today’s Gospel. As a disciple of the Lord, Philemon was to love God more than his role as church-leader, more than his reputation, and more than himself. He was being asked to carry the cross of possible social humiliation by being a master who sees himself as equal to his slave. He was being called by Paul to give a real life example to his home-church parish of Jesus’ teaching about detachment and renunciation for the sake of the Kingdom of God! 

 The Letter to Philemon is a summons for all of us to reexamine our lives, our relationships, and our attitudes in the light of the hard sayings of Jesus. This means that we probably will need to reform and revamp our relationships with people and possessions as well as how we see ourselves. But like Philemon, we can find hope and help to do so in our parish community. For it is there that we celebrate and receive the Eucharist that gives us the supernatural strength to actually live these (and other) hard sayings of Jesus. And in our parish community we should be able to meet like-minded Christians whose example and spiritual support help us along this difficult pathway. A parish should be more than just where we show up on the weekend for Mass. 

 Oh! Do you wonder what happened to Philemon and Onesimus? Did they do as Paul said or did they have a bigger falling out? Well, Philemon was so deeply changed by Paul’s words that he sent copies of the letter to all of the Christian churches so that they, too, could learn that all the baptized are equal in God’s eyes and all are to live at-oneness with each other: rich or poor, slave or free, man or woman. As for Onesimus, he became a missionary of the Gospel and later in life was made the Bishop of Ephesus in Turkey, eventually becoming a martyr for Jesus Christ. Isn’t it amazing what God's grace can do to change hearts and transform lives once we choose to lower our pride and humbly set out to put the hard sayings of Jesus into practice?

Grounded in Truth, Living in Reality

 

Deacon Dave · Grounded in Truth, Living in Reality

Homily for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 31, 2025. Gospel of Luke 14:1-14. Theme: Grounded in Truth, Living in Reality 

 Considering Jesus’ typically uneasy relationship with most of the Jewish leaders, it’s a bit surprising to hear in today’s Gospel that He was a guest at a Pharisee Sabbath dinner. However, St. Luke tells us that he was being “observed carefully” by those in attendance, which makes the invite look like it was a possible set-up for potential entrapment. You see, the religious leaders were always on the lookout for ways to discredit Jesus because he was a threat to their power and prestige. The humble honesty of Christ exalted him in the eyes of the people while at the same time the arrogant pride of the Pharisees cast them down into an unfavorable position. And it’s this interplay between pride and humility that is at the heart of the parable in today's Gospel. 

 Pride fools us into having an over-exaggerated opinion of ourselves. It makes us constantly seek recognition. It makes us compare ourselves to others, always wanting the best seat at the table as Jesus put it in today’s parable. What he means by this is that pride is an insatiable hunger for more praise and a greater share of attention. It makes us measure ourselves against others and puts nagging questions into our minds such as: “Am I smarter? More successful? Better liked?” But pride is never satisfied and if left unchecked it can grow into such an immense distortion of our self-importance that we end up dethroning God as Lord of our lives and setting ourselves up in that place of honor. 

 The Scriptures teach us that this is precisely what happened when because of pride the once-glorious angel of light named Lucifer became Satan, the devil and adversary of all that is good. And that it was because of pride that the once-holy and innocent Adam and Eve became the doorways through which sin and death entered into our human experience. In both cases, pride cunningly fooled them - and can still fool us - into thinking that we know better than our Creator. Pride whispers to us the ancient lie that we can find happiness apart from God and this lie plants the seed of distrust towards him in our hearts. 

 But humility, on the other hand, sets us free from pre-occupation with self. It’s the virtue of self-honesty that grounds us in truth and has us living firmly in reality. Humility prevents us from fooling ourselves by giving us a proper persepctive of who God is and who we are. Contrary to what people often think, humility isn’t weakness nor is it a matter of putting oneself down. It doesn’t mean thinking less of ourselves, but rather it means thinking of ourselves less. It means recognizing that everything we are and have is a gift from God and so it moves us to live in gratitude. Being humble doesn’t mean refusing to acknowledge our talents or to deflect praise for a job well done. Rather, it enables us to own our achievements and accomplishments while reminding us that they were made possible in the first place only by the free and gracious gift of God and so we give him the glory! 

 Humble people walk in the light of Jesus’ Great Commandment to love and serve God and neighbor. And in doing so they reorient their outlook from self-centeredness to God-centeredness and other-centeredness. You see, while pride tells us to put ourselves above others, humility moves us to walk beside them. While pride says, “I must be served”, humility says, “I must be of service.” Pride turns our gaze inward, while humility opens our eyes wide open to the needs of our neighbor. And so the humble place their freedom at the service of love, accepting even inconvenience to themselves for the sake of bringing convenience to another. 

 A very beautiful thing about humility is that it brings us benefits on both the natural and supernatural levels. On the natural level it allows us to be known and loved for who we really are, and this is something that every single human being, every one of us, deeply desires with all our hearts. Humility does this for us because the gut-honesty that it requires means that we can take off the masks that we wear. We can drop our defenses, we can stop hiding behind facades, and we can discard all pretenses as we allow others to know and accept and love the real us as God created us to be. 

 And on the supernatural level humility enables us to see and accept our spiritual poverty, a quality that Jesus praises and calls “littleness” or “lowliness”. From beginning to end the Sacred Scriptures tell us that God finds this attitude precious and irresistible. Spiritual poverty opens our hearts to the grace of God and moves us to reach out to him because we know that without God’s help we simply cannot do what is right and good. And so the saints all tell us that humility is the starting point for living a life on planet Earth that is destined to end up in Paradise. This is why the very first beatitude that Jesus spoke at the beginning of his ministry was in praise of humility when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

The Cost of Discipleship

 

Deacon Dave · 250816_001

Homily for the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 17, 2025. The Gospel of St. Luke 2:49-53. Theme: The Cost of Discipleship 

 This Sunday’s Gospel presents us with an unexpected image of Jesus that seems like an “about face” change in personality. Most people tend to think of him as a gentle spiritual preacher of universal love, and of course, there’s some truth to that image. But the Gospels also present us with a Jesus who is bold and demanding, such as when he proclaimed that loving and following him must come first among our many relationships (see Matthew 10:37). This is the fiery-spirited Jesus that St. Luke is showing us in today’s Gospel. Like Jeremiah in our first reading, Christ is speaking the truth to us even if it makes us uncomfortable. 

 I’m sure it sounds quite shocking to hear that our friendship with Christ can alienate us from loved ones and even give rise to the destruction of relationships. And yet that’s exactly what happened to so many converts, especially but not exclusively, in the first few centuries of Christianity. Before the Church became a legal religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, following Jesus was often a heart-wrenching decision that tore families apart. For example, the young brave virgin-martyrs, Saints Barabra and Dymphna, were beheaded by their own fathers because they refused to deny Christ! Professing faith in Christ often meant being cut off from the social safety nets of family, income and protection. 

 And so, the early Church made converts pass through a testing-time that was several years long before being baptized! They had to be convinced of who and what Jesus was and prove that they were not simply giving in to a passing fascination. And because the stakes can still be high when choosing to become a Christian we still require that the unbaptized go through a time of intense focus and personal examination through the OCIA (formerly called RCIA). It’s not as long as it was in ancient times but it still has the exact same purpose: to help them discern if they truly want to follow Christ even at the cost of potentially disrupting some of their relationships. 

 But you know, this upset in relationships wasn’t just confined to the early Christians. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born saint, was related to the Roosevelts and came from among the most upper class families of colonial New York. George Washington and some of the Founding Fathers of our nation were not just names to her but actual social acquaintances. Even though newly widowed and in dire need, she was shunned by family and friends when she became Catholic, leaving her with only a handful of relationships still intact. But this cross of suffering which she embraced for her fidelity to Christ brought about many blessings. Some of her relatives and friends were later drawn to Catholicism and with a couple of them she founded the first religious sisterhood in the brand new USA. They were called the Sisters of Charity and started the Catholic parochial school system which spread throughout the nation. 

 But you know, being harassed or even facing death because of our Faith happens today in many nations and cultures. And it can even happen right here in the USA, in Marin County because people today do not like to hear that they are being wayward in their moral behavior anymore than they did way back in Jeremiah’s or Jesus' times. When the Gospel of Christ conflicts with popular cultural thought there is bound to be friction. And when the teachings of our deeply cherished faith oppose the moral standards of our family, friends, or co-workers the sword of division can become very sharp. Our serious personal fidelity to the Word of God can make others uneasy and cause a torrent of hurtful accusations to rain down upon us. But the witness of our unswerving fidelity to Jesus, even above our most precious relationships, is powerful and can cause others to pause and ponder. Many have been brought to Christ by just such an example. 

 At those times when we find ourselves thinking that it would be so much easier to just go along to get along, we need to take time out and pray from the heart. We need to re-energize our love for Jesus by warming ourselves at the fire of faith that He came to set ablaze on planet Earth, the fire He talks about in today’s Gospel. It’s a spiritual fire, a holy fire, that will invigorate us. It’s the fire of God’s Love that engulfed the heart of Jesus and motivated Him in all that He did. It’s the fire of the Holy Spirit burning within us so that through us the light of truth and goodness can shine upon a very dark and confused world.