Bonding With Christ Through Prayer

 

Deacon Dave · Bonding With Christ Through Prayer

Homily for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 25, 2023. Reading: Gospel of St. Matthew 10:26-33. Theme: Bonding With Christ Through Prayer 

In today's Gospel we heard some sayings of Jesus that are pretty easy to understand at face value. Well, maybe the first one about shouting from the housetops needs a little bit of explaining. Back in those days news was spread by literally shouting it from housetop to housetop throughout the village for all to hear. So, Jesus is saying that He has come for everyone and not just an exclusive few. His Message is not to be kept secret because it is good news for everyone. And so He’s telling the disciples to go out and make some noise about the Gospel! 

But it was the last saying, the one about acknowledging Jesus in public, that really got my attention. Because when persecution or opposition or ridicule for being Christian comes our way, not if but when, then only a truly deep personal bond with Jesus will give us what it takes to stand up for Him. So, it seems to me that if we discern that our relationship with Jesus isn't at that level of deep bonding, then we need to get it there. 

And we can do this by looking at how we build any significant relationship in our lives. How do we become friends with anyone? How do we fall in love with someone? How do they become so much a part of us that life without them sounds and seems unbearable? Well, I think the answer is obvious. We get to know them. We intentionally spend quality time with them, opening ourselves up honestly from the heart. We speak and we listen. We share and we ponder what has been learned. When this happens in our human relationships, psychology calls it “bonding”. When it happens in our relationship with God, Christianity calls it “prayer”. 

However, for most of us the word “prayer” doesn’t conjure up images of friends spending time together. Instead it usually makes us think of speaking, talking, telling, and asking. Too often when we pray we engage in what can be called “One-Way Prayer” which means going on and on with God about this or that in my life. It’s me doing all the talking. But the kind of prayer that begins to form a deep bond with Christ can be called “Two-Way Prayer”. This implies that along with speaking we also listen and allow time for God to have His say. In other words, prayer becomes a person-to-person conversation. 

Now, most of us have no problem engaging in a conversation with someone, but I think we tend to flounder a bit when that Someone is Christ. And I think a big part of the reason for this is that He is Someone who, though risen and very much alive, is at the same time invisible. However, faith assures us that He is indeed present to us and desires to speak with us. And so we can approach prayer in the same way that we would arrange a get-together with any friend. First, we need to make the time for it, perhaps even schedule it into our day. We need to arrange a meeting place, which can be anywhere that will allow us to engage in our conversation with God uninterrupted. And finally, we have to do our best to leave distractions behind so as to focus on Who we are with. 

So it’s important that our prayer takes place in an atmosphere of silence because the voice of Christ is most clearly heard in the quiet of our hearts and in the stillness of our minds. We begin our prayer time by relaxing and calming down inside. Silence helps us to do this. We recall that God is present within us because Jesus said, “He who loves me obeys my word and My Father and I will love him and come to dwell within him.” Then we take up the Bible or some other solid spiritual book and choose a passage. We go over it slowly, thoughtfully. The point here is not to study or gather information. Rather, the point is to ponder what the Word of God might mean for me, right here and right now in my life as it is today. We speak to the Lord and share our thoughts about it. And while we are pondering these things in silence we keep the ears of our hearts and minds open so as to receive what God might want to say to us, what direction He might wish to give us. 

And that raises an important question: how does God speak to us? It’s kind of difficult to explain but experience shows that He typically communicates by means of thoughts, words or images that come to mind during prayer and impress themselves upon us. The more a person grows in the experience of prayer the more they will learn to recognize these things. And this discernment is very important because the messages we receive can indeed be from God, but they can also come from ourselves or from an evil spirit, all three are possible sources. But we can learn to tell the difference because a message from God never contradicts His Word revealed to us in Scripture. It brings with it a deep sense of inner peace and spiritual joy, even when the message challenges us to do something demanding or difficult. Also, God’s voice would never lead us to do anything that would get in the way of fulfilling our legitimate obligations in life. 

The saints are unanimous in saying that we need to have a deep spiritual experience of Christ in order to form a tight bond with Him. Without a personal conviction that Jesus is risen and alive and very much interested in my life, religion will be practiced only at the level of rules and rituals. But to those who cultivate the seeds of prayer, these rules and rituals will become encounters with God through HIs Church, through both Word and Sacrament. These experiences will deepen our bond with Jesus and strengthen us to acknowledge Him publicly before others. 

One of the Church’s greatest mystics, St. Teresa of Avila, taught Two-Way prayer to many people as part of her special mission in the Church. She would remind them that it takes time, patience and perseverance but that attaining union with God through prayer is the pearl of great price and the treasure buried in a field that Jesus says is worth finding. She left behind this piece of advice, “Do not stop along the road of learning how to pray. Be strong and fight for it…because you were put here on this earth for no greater reason than to know and love God. And you will do this most effectively by persevering in conversation with Him.”

The Sacred Heart: Symbol of God’s Great Love for Us

 

Deacon Dave · God’s Great Love for Us

Homily for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Reading: Romans 5:6-11. Theme: The Sacred Heart- Symbol of God’s Great Love for Us 

The Sacred Heart of Jesus which we celebrate this Friday, is a symbol of the amazing love of God and the devotion connected with it is ancient in the Church with its roots in the Sacred Scriptures. We see this in our second reading for this Sunday which I just read, wherein we hear that God loved the world so much that He came as one-of-us in order to die for all-of-us. And St. Paul tells us that what is amazing about this loving action of Christ is that He did this for us while we were still caught up in our selfishness and sinfulness. This is so totally opposite of how we act. We demand that people be good to us before we extend goodness back to them. But then, Jesus doesn't have a selfish heart like ours. His Sacred Heart was always focused on God the Father and others. 

Jesus invites us to undergo a spiritual heart transplant. He asks us to consent to this supernatural procedure so that we can become more like Him in loving God the Father and loving others no matter who they are…and even if they do not love us in return. The Holy Spirit is the Divine Physician who carries it out and the surgical instrument He uses to accomplish it is a true and living devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This devotion has taken many different forms in various times and places, but it has come to be described in our times by three words that are each unique expressions of love: consecration, adoration and reparation. 

Consecration means conscious or mindful dedication. In regards to the Sacred Heart, it is a personal response to the awareness of God’s immense love for us individually. Personal consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus usually begins with the recitation of a special prayer, but it’s proved day in and day out by how we act towards others. Anyone can repeat a prayer. It does not demand much from us at all. But the real proof of our consecration to the Heart of Christ is found in the day-in and day-out striving to become more like Jesus and to love as he loves. It proves itself in how much we strive to develop within us the qualities we see in Jesus in the Gospels: purity of motivation in what we do, honesty in our dealings with others, love that shows itself in unselfishness. 

Adoration is honor and homage given to the one we love. Ever since its beginning, devotion to the Sacred Heart has been inseparable from the Eucharist and this makes total sense because they are both expressions of divine love. The Heart of Christ is a symbol of this love and the Blessed Sacrament is the living reality of this love made flesh for us at every Mass. Through frequent and mindful reception of the Eucharist we are filled more and more with the life and love of Christ that can flow out of us to others. By coming into His Real Presence in the tabernacle we spend time in His company and get to know Him better. Adoration added to Consecration gives concrete reality to our Sacred Heart spirituality. 

Lastly, we come to the third word, Reparation. To repair means to patch things up, to make amends. When we offend someone we feel the pain of it within our own hearts and have no peace of mind until we make things right between us again. When it comes to God, we make reparation for our sin by saying we’re sorry or if it's serious stuff, we get ourselves to the Confession. But you know, it’s also possible to offer reparation on behalf of someone else. It’s not the same thing as them doing it of course, but our love cannot wait for them to do it. It moves us to action ourselves. It’s kind of like if someone intentionally offends our spouse or significant other. We feel their pain and we try to console them. We just can’t stand by and do nothing. We say nice things to them to try and lessen the pain. 

And the same can be said about offenses against Christ. Of course, He does not need reparation because He cannot be hurt in that way. But we who love Him have been hurt and it moves us to do what we can to make up for it even if just in some small way. And that is why we are here tonight. Our love for Jesus will not allow us to just sit back and shake our heads in disgust but do nothing. We come to adore Him for those who will not adore Him. We come to love Him on behalf of those who do not love Him. And of course, above all, we come to pray that those who ridicule and blaspheme Him will come to the awareness that God loves each one of them personally and immensely. And we pray that they, in response, will end up giving their hearts to Him in return.

What You See Isn’t Always What You Get!!

 

Deacon Dave · What You See Isn’t Always What You Get!

Homily for Corpus Christi Sunday, June 11, 2023. Gospel of St. John 6: 51-58. Theme: What You See Isn’t Always What You Get! 

Today’s Feast of Corpus Christi marks the beginning of the National Eucharistic Revival on the parish level. It invites us as the Catholic community of St. Sebastian to deepen our faith in one of the most challenging of all the Bible’s teachings: that the bread and wine at Mass are miraculously changed, really and truly, into the Body and Blood of Christ! If this sounds incredible and borderline ridiculous to some of you then you’re not alone. As we heard in today’s Gospel, many of those who heard Jesus teach about it reacted in the same way saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 

It was just too much to accept. And we are told at the end of this story (which for some reason isn’t included in today’s Gospel) that these perplexed disciples walked away from Christ. And He let them walk away instead of saying that He had been misunderstood. Because you see, the problem wasn’t that He had been misunderstood. They clearly and correctly heard what Jesus was saying. The problem was that they did not yet fully understand who He was nor what He was able to do. But Peter and others did not walk away. Not that they totally got it, not that they understood the how or the why of it…but they knew Jesus. They had witnessed His miracles and trusted Him. And here we are 2,000 years later, just like them. We don't understand it either, but we stay with Jesus because we trust Him and we believe. 

However, they are still disciples today like the ones in our Gospel story who find it hard to believe that Jesus gives us His flesh as true food and His blood as true drink. They celebrate the Lord’s Supper in their worship services, some of which even look very much like a Mass, but they believe that the Eucharist is simply specially blessed bread and wine or a reminder of the Lord’s spiritual presence. And you know quite honestly, I’ve never understood why such Christians who have no problem accepting that Christ truly became a man would find it so very difficult to believe that the Eucharist truly becomes Christ. I mean to me these two things are really quite the same. 

In both cases our senses don’t pick up the full story. In both cases it’s a matter of “what you see, isn’t what you get!” What I mean is that when people encountered Jesus of Nazareth, what did they see? What did their senses tell them? What they saw was an ordinary looking man from a rural village. He dressed like them, He spoke like them. He ate like them. He smelled like them. And He worked like them. But they were not able to discern the full truth that was staring them in the face! Because right in front of them, hidden by the appearances of flesh and bone, stood the eternal Son of God. However, they couldn’t identify divinity because it’s a spiritual reality that’s beyond the grasp of our material senses. 

And the same is true for us when we come before Jesus in the Eucharist. The full reality of Who is actually before us is hidden by the outward appearances of bread and wine. And so, we must rely upon faith, which means trusting in Jesus’ word, and look beyond what our senses tell us in order to arrive at the truth. We must look beyond the appearance of the Consecrated Bread held up before our eyes and remember that Jesus said, “This is my Body given for you.” We must look beyond the Consecrated Wine in the chalice and remember the words of Christ at the Last Supper: “This is my Blood, poured out for you.” 

But you know, every so often throughout history God confirms our faith by miraculously changing the appearances of the Consecrated Bread and Wine to reflect what they have really become. There have been over 130 documented miracles affirming that what we worship in the Liturgy, what we receive in Holy Communion and what we adore in the Blessed Sacrament is truly Christ the Lord. But no one needs to take just my word for it. Anyone can go online where you can learn all about these Eucharistic miracles. Today, however, I would like to mention just two of them: the very first documented case and a more recent one. 

The first took place in Lanciano, Italy around the year 750 AD. A priest was having persistent doubts about the Real Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion. During the words of consecration at Mass one day, the host he was holding literally turned into flesh right in his hands and the wine in the chalice was transformed into thick drops of blood. In 1971, Pope St. Paul VI permitted scientific studies to be carried out on them, and it was discovered that the Host was flesh from the heart of a male and the chalice contained human blood type AB. Two years later the W.H.O. carried out 500 tests on these same specimens. Their results confirmed that not only was the Consecrated Host human flesh, but even though 1200 years had passed, it tested as if it had been freshly biopsied from a living human being! The scientists issued a statement that declared, “Our tests have come to a halt because we are face to face with the impossibility of giving an explanation.” 

Jumping ahead to the 20th century, a Consecrated Host also turned into bloody flesh in Buenos Aires in 1996. The archbishop at that time, who is today Pope Francis, sent it under strict guard to a highly respected research center in New York. The lab staff were not told what it was nor where it came from. The man in charge of the study was Dr. Frederic Zugibe, a world-famous cardiologist and forensic pathologist. His findings revealed the specimen to be a slice of male heart tissue with the blood type of AB, just like the flesh and blood of Lanciano. But an even more astounding and inexplicable fact was discovered. When the Host-turned-flesh was put under a microscope, Dr. Zugibe said that the cells were moving, pulsating, and beating like a normal living human heart! He declared it to be utterly impossible and a phenomenon totally beyond the capability of science to explain. 

Imagine that…the Consecrated Host was somehow living flesh! Amazing! For me, this really brings new meaning to the words of Jesus that our cantor just sang at the Alleluia, “I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven!” The Living Bread, not that of a dead and long-gone Savior. I think we can better see now why God chose to have the tangible aspects of the Eucharist – what we see and touch and taste - remain bread and wine even though the reality has changed. For who of us would receive Holy Communion if it looked and tasted for what it actually is? 

But Jesus didn’t give us the Eucharist just so we could adore and worship Him. He never operated out of such self-concern. No, Christ gave Himself to us in this way so that He could change us from the inside out. And if we don’t change over time, it’s not on the Eucharist, but it’s on us. We don't change because we don’t have hearts truly open to being transformed. Maybe we’ve taken the Eucharist for granted and developed a habit of receiving Holy Communion as a matter of routine. Perhaps we each need to ask ourselves: What are my interior motives for going to Communion? What’s happening in my heart? Do I prepare to receive Jesus in the Eucharist? Do I come to him expecting Christ to do great things in my life when I receive him? When was the last time I made a really good confession to clear out the spiritual clutter that may be getting in the way of allowing Jesus to change me? 

Jesus wants to change us. He loves us so much that He comes to live within us in this great Sacrament of Love. He gives himself completely to us. In return, do we give ourselves completely to Him? When we receive Him do we say, “Jesus, thank you for coming to me. Jesus, I need you. Jesus, I love you. Jesus, please change me; change my heart.” On this feast of Corpus Christi, let’s allow Jesus to touch our heart deeply and definitively and say to Him, “Lord, I want for me what you want for me. Increase my love and trust in You!”

Sharing in Divinity

 

Deacon Dave · Sharing in Divinity

HOMILY FOR MOST HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY, June 4, 2023. The Gospel of John 3:16-18. Theme: Sharing in Divinity 

Today’s liturgy focuses our minds and hearts on the great and unique Christian revelation about God that separates us from all other world religions. I am referring of course to the mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity, which means that the One True God is a plurality of persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. How can this be? We’ll never really know, which is why we call it a mystery, but it was revealed to us by God the Son himself, when he came down from Heaven and was made flesh. And so, we accept His Word and we profess this mystery by faith alone, trusting in the fact that Jesus cannot and would not ever deceive us. 

However, we can get an idea of WHY this can be true. You see, once we accept the Word of Scripture which says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8) then it can begin to make a bit of sense to us that there must be more than just one Person who is Divine. Because love is relational, that is, because it is only possible within a communion or fellowship of persons, it can begin to make sense to us that if God is love then there must be more than just one Person in this reality. And so it is that the Scripture teaches us that there are three: the Father Who loves the Son and the Son Who loves the Father. This relationship of theirs is so perfect and so powerful that it brings forth the Holy Spirit, who is said to be the Love of the Father and the Son personified. 

And that’s pretty much all that we can say with some certainty about the Trinity. Anything else would simply be theorizing and speculating. But what we do know is that this awesome mysterious God Who is love reaches out to us, to each one of us individually and personally. Indeed, God has gone to the utmost limits to make known to us His infinite love that touches our hearts and captures our souls. And through the Heart of Jesus which beat for love of us, God makes it possible for us to enter into the Trinitarian relationship by sending us the Holy Spirit who tenderizes our hearts making them sensitive and responsive to this invitation to love. 

Our Gospel today affirms this reaching out to us by God when it says that the Father sent the Son into the world to save or rescue us, not to shame or condemn us. Jesus came to planet Earth to show the depths of God’s love which moved Him to even share in our humanity. In doing so He entered completely into our human experiences and even our deepest miseries, with the exception of sin. But even while remaining holy and innocent Himself, He freely chooses to take on the consequences of our transgressions and in a sense forms a sin-solidarity with us. And as if all this in itself wasn’t enough, Jesus invites us into the relationship of love with the Father and the Spirit by making it possible for us to share his divinity. Yes, God’s love is so mysterious and unselfish that He actually wants us to share in his divinity! 

Now, this doesn’t mean that we Christians can become gods like the Trinity! It means that once the Trinity pulls us into their dynamic love and makes us part of that relationship, it completely changes who we are supernaturally because we begin to share in the life of God by grace. On the outside we look like everyone else, but on the inside we have become a spiritually new creation, a new type of being! This is a reality that is not true for those who are unbaptized. But we who do respond to the love-invitation of God through Baptism enter into the process of spiritual transformation that is called “divinization”. You may be more familiar with this process by its more common names such as “adoption as children of God” or “growing in holiness”. 

Our individual divinization begins at our Baptism, when the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit to live within us. This presence and power of the Spirit is then intensified within us by Confirmation. And throughout our lives this divine life of grace is nourished within us and grows stronger by the Spiritual Food of the Eucharist. As a matter of fact, our sharing in divinity is so intimately connected with the Eucharist that a prayer for our divinization is recited at every Holy Mass by the deacon. He prays it on behalf of the people while he pours water into the wine of the chalice, saying: “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” 

This divinization prayer is intentionally said as we prepare for the Consecration of the Gifts into Christ’s Sacred Body and Precious Blood because it’s through the Eucharist that we most intimately grow in divinity. Through this Sacrament we deepen our identity as children of the Father, and we more speedily progress towards growth in holiness. Through the reception of Holy Communion we become one with God by actually taking Him into us. We mix. We combine. We become what He is.

You can find this teaching on the Eucharist and divinization in the 6th chapter of the Gospel of St. John. In it Jesus himself says that those who eat the Bread of Life will participate in the relationship He has with the Father and will have divine life within them. So you see, we have God’s own Word assuring us that because He sent His Son into the world it's now possible for us humans to participate in the intimate relationship of the Holy Trinity while we are still here on planet Earth, and if we remain faithful then it’s a sharing that will be perfected and last forever in the Kingdom of Heaven.