The Great Paradox of Christianity

 

Deacon Dave · OT6C Beatitudes

Homily for the 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Feb. 16, 2025. The Gospel of St. Luke 6:17-26. Topic: The Great Paradox of Christianity 

 Struggle, sacrifice, self-denial…. These are all a part of our lives and not just when things go wrong or are difficult. Oftentimes, we intentionally embrace a challenge when we want to better ourselves or our situation. For example: If we want to advance at work we put in extra effort and time to prove our dedication. If we want to improve our appearance and health we'll take up a strict diet and commit to a program of physical fitness. In other words, if we want something bad enough, we’ll do whatever it takes to get there, 

 In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents us with the challenge of four Beatitudes, a word that means “Blessings” and four “Woe-itudes” (If I may call them that). These teachings are called “paradoxes of Christianity” because they take experiences or situations which seem either ideal or to be avoided and flip them on their backs. Jesus takes things that we would label as blessings and shows that they can also result in a curse. In a similar manner He speaks of difficult situations and shows how they can be turned around to our ultimate benefit. These teachings of the Lord were consoling and hopeful to the people who heard Him. 

We have to remember that most of those who followed Jesus were not the elite and the nobles. Quite the contrary, they were primarily the ones who had absolutely no voice and no status in the world of the Roman Empire. In that culture, if you were a widow or an orphan or a slave or a disabled person or a beggar you were despised and had no recourse or advocate to plead your cause. So when news spread of a man named Jesus, who had great power from God and who declared that the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven would open wide to people like you…well, these downtrodden people treasured His every word and followed Him wherever he went. This is the backdrop to today’s teachings. 

 Christ was telling those who counted for nothing in the eyes of the rich and powerful that their social condition and struggles are not the sum total of who they are. And furthermore, they are actually blessed because their situation in life puts them in a place where, unlike the well-off, they well know that they depend upon God for their daily needs. His words assure them that the justice of God will make right all that was wrong and reward them for remaining faithful even in the most difficult of times. So, he is not counseling them to just stay put and accept their lot in life as if this is the end of their story. Rather, He is lifting up their hearts and assuring them that better times are to come, perhaps here and now but if not, then for sure in the hereafter. 

 On the other hand, Jesus is reminding those who think they have it made in life to stop and think again. He is warning them that a life of abundance can so easily become a trap that leads to woe in the next life. How so? Because, if in their wealth and plenty they did not provide for the needy and the outcast, then their riches will rise up and condemn them at their judgment. It’s an eternal woe to have been so blessed by God but to have been unmindful of others and to not pass it on and pay it forward. However, it’s never too late for them to hear Jesus speaking to their hearts and to repent of their ways. Then they, too, can begin to walk the pathway to the Kingdom of Heaven. 

 To all of His disciples, be they rich and poor, the Lord closes His discourse in today’s Gospel by saying that they will be blessed if people hate them… and cursed with woe if people speak well of them. Why? Because if “worldly people” hate us it means that we must be doing something right as far as living as a Christian goes. It means that we must be reflecting Jesus and his Gospel because He, too, was maltreated for standing up for justice and truth. On the other hand, if those who hate Christ are speaking well of us it’s a pretty good indicator that we are failing in our mission as Christians. You see, an authentic Christian life should be like a “living examination of conscience” in the world. The good that we do and the love that we bear even for those who oppose us should make people stop and make a moral inventory of their lives. But, if our words and behavior do not upset the status quo they will like us or at least leave us alone. However, "playing it safe" by "going along to get along" is in no way, shape or form a viable option for a faithful follower of Jesus. And it definitely does not lead us to the Kingdom of God. 

 So, for our own sake and for the sake of our neighbor, let’s take to heart the words that Jesus speaks to us in today’s Gospel: Blessed are you who struggle. Blessed are you who sacrifice. Blessed are you who embrace self-denial for love of God and others, for you shall be forever rewarded in the Kingdom of Heaven. But woe to you who have served and pampered yourselves in this life. Woe to you who have lived without thought for your needy brothers and sisters. By choosing to have your consolation and your comforts here and now, you have forfeited enjoying them forever in eternity. This is the great paradox of Christianity.

Turning Our Lives Over to God

 

Deacon Dave · Turning Our Lives Over to God

Homily for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 9, 2025. Readings: Isaiah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11; Gospel of St. Luke 5:1-11. Theme: Turning Our Lives Over to God 

 When we hear the words, “I surrender” or “I give up” we tend to think of the humiliation of defeat, the loss of power and control over our lives. Most of us fight hard against saying these words because we want to avoid being thought of as weak, incompetent or incapable. And yet, one of the many paradoxes in the teachings of Jesus is that we can only become spiritually strong when we admit that we are interiorly weak; we can only be lifted up to greatness after we acknowledge our utter nothingness before God. This is precisely the lesson that all three of the holy men in today's Scriptures teach us. Each one had an up-close-and-personal experience of God which totally transformed their lives. Each one had a life-changing encounter with God that moved them to surrender their own self-image and ideas in order to become what God wanted them to be. 

 In our first reading the prophet Isaiah experienced a profound vision of God in all His glory. Isaiah was hesitant to take up the prophet's mission of calling the people to repentance because he was aware of his own sinfulness. In addition, he knew that saying “yes” to God’s call would bring opposition, rejection and ridicule into his life. And so fear made him hesitant to do what needed to be done. But in beholding the Lord’s glory and being cleansed by the Divine Touch, he surrendered to God saying, “Here I am Lord, send me.” And as a result of his surrender, Isaiah became the greatest prophet of the Messiah in the entire Old Testament. And to this day, almost 3,000 years later we still repeat at every Mass the words that he heard chanted by angels around God’s throne, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of your glory…” 

 Our second reading presents us with the experience of St. Paul. In our reading he doesn’t go into the details of how he was called by the Lord (we learn about that from his other writings) but he makes reference to it. Before the Risen Christ appeared to him he was full of himself, cocky, stubborn and arrogant. He was convinced that he was God’s agent and solution to the problem of an annoying little branch of Judaism called The Way, whose members believed Jesus of Nazareth to be the promised Messiah. Surrendering was the very last thing this self-sure Israelite was likely to ever do, so God had to literally knock him to the ground and temporarily blind him so that he could see clearly and exactly the kind of arrogant man he had become. Long story short, Paul did surrender and was transformed into a tireless missionary for Christ, an inspired author of the New Testament, and the Apostle to Gentile Christians. 

 Lastly, our Gospel tells us about the conversion experience of Simon-Peter, which happened while he was having a real bad fishing day. As we know from so many other stories about him, Simon was headstrong, impetuous, and self-sufficient; a totally “alpha” kind of guy. He knew the fishing business like no one else and wasn’t about to be told how to do it more effectively by a carpenter from the backwoods village of Nazareth. But for some reason, perhaps it was the look in Christ’s eyes or the authority in his voice, or maybe cocky Simon thought he would teach this carpenter a lesson, so he decided to give in, to surrender. And lo and behold! He hit the jackpot and ended up with the biggest catch of fish in his career! Simon then surrendered to Christ with as much passion and gusto as he had at first resisted Him, saying, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” The strong-man facade he has built around himself crumbled as he acknowledged who and what he truly was at heart. His dropping of pretenses and self-sufficiency freed him to become Peter, the first pope, the rock upon which Jesus built His Church. 

 It seems to me that all three of these holy men speak to us about our need to get rid of any false self-images and give up the many self-serving plans that we have in mind. They call us to open our hearts in humility and step forward with trust in what God has in mind for us instead. While it is true that all three of them were already connected with God in some way, it was on their own terms. But their stories show us that letting go of the personas we project and the plans that we have in mind for ourselves are nothing compared to what God has in mind for us. The transformation of ourselves into something beautiful for God is indeed possible and the Lord wants to do this for each one of us. But it requires that we turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God every day in a spirit of surrender, willing to give up our own ideas and plans to embrace those of the Lord as did Isaiah, Paul and Simon-Peter.

Jesus the Light of the World

 

Deacon Dave · Jesus the Light of the World

Homily for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Feb. 2, 2025. Gospel of St. Luke 2:22-40. Theme: Jesus the Light of the World 

 Today we observe the Presentation of the Infant Jesus, a liturgical celebration that dates all the way back to the Third Century. In times past, the Presentation of the Lord marked the end of the then much-longer Christmas Season because it is the last time in the Bible that we are told about Jesus as a baby. Today’s feast was also known by a secondary title, the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, because along with the baby-dedication ceremony there was also a mandatory Jewish ritual of cleansing a woman spiritually after childbirth. 

 On the surface level, the Presentation of the Lord recalls the time when the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph took their 40-day old Child to the Jerusalem Temple to dedicate Him to God. But it was also the fulfilment of God’s Promise to Israel that His Glory (which means His Presence) would one day return to the Temple to purify it and rededicate it to true worship. To understand this, we need to know a little bit about the backstory. You see, at the time of King Solomon, which was about a thousand years before the birth of Christ, God’s Glory first entered the Temple. The people saw this happen when fire descended from the sky and entered into the sanctuary. This manifestation of the Lord's Presence remained there for centuries but left the Temple after the Jews persisted in worshiping idols instead of the One True God. At that time, the prophet Ezekiel saw the Glory depart from the temple. This leaving and returning of the Divine Presence is what the prophet Malachi is referring to in today’s First Reading. S

o that’s the liturgical and historical background of today’s feast in Judaism. But it also has an additional spiritual meaning for us Christians. This can be found in the words which the elderly Simeon proclaimed as he took the Baby Jesus into his arms, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, called Him the light of revelation to the Gentiles. This meant that Jesus the Messiah had come for all people and not just for Israel. To better appreciate what this title of Christ as the “Light” meant to the people of his time, we have to recall that they did not live in an artificially and constantly illuminated world as we do. 

 There were no street lights nor home electrical systems in those days. We take light for granted in our times and only feel the vulnerability of darkness when we have to endure long-term power outages. But they lived much of their time in darkness dependent upon fires, torches and candles. And so they knew from experience that darkness meant the threat of harm because danger loomed potentially around any corner. So to such people light was a very positive symbol! It was a huge blessing and a welcomed advantage! It meant safety because you could see who was around you and where you were going without losing direction. Light meant safety because criminals would not act up when they could be so easily seen. 

 Jesus is the spiritual Light of the world. His words and actions show us the clear way to live and act. His teachings scatter the darkness of error, dispel the clouds of confusion and lift the fog of superstition. The Light of Christ reveals the real inner truth of things that might look good and desirable to us on the outside, such as some lifestyles that are presented as beautiful, affirming and life giving. But in reality they inject spiritual poison into those who embrace them and shroud them in spiritual darkness. If we turn away Christ and extinguish the light of Faith in our lives we are in danger of harming ourselves because we have chosen to stumble through life on our own, trying to find our way through the darkness. 

 Because the Presentation hails Christ as the Light of the world, the use of candles to celebrate it arose in Jerusalem in the Fourth century. We know this from the journal of a Spanish pilgrim named Egeria, who attended a Presentation Procession in Jerusalem in the year 380 AD. Then during the early Middle Ages the custom arose of blessing candles on today’s feast, carrying them in procession at Mass, and then taking them home to use in personal devotion. This gave rise to nicknaming today’s feast Candlemas, which means Mass of theCandles. 

 Candles are a powerful symbol for the Presence of Christ. They spread warm light in a darkened room. They glow with a gentle light that can bring calmness to the soul and when scented they fill the air with a pleasant aroma. In power outages a candle can become the place where we gather with one another in safety. All of these attributes of a candle can also be applied to Jesus. He enables us to focus on what is important and true; His Presence brings calmness to the soul and His goodness is like a fragrant scent that gets our attention and attracts us to follow Him. Even the physical composition of a candle can speak to us about Christ if we look upon the wax as correlating to His body, the wick to His soul, and the flame as a reminder of His divinity. 

 When we were baptized we received a blessed candle to symbolize the spiritual light of Christ. We were invited to keep this spiritual flame burning brightly and to walk by its light. We were told to allow it to guide our choices and steps through life until the day when the Lord would come to bring us home to Heaven. How have we been doing with this? Are our baptismal lights still shining brightly?