Seven hundred years prior to the birth of Jesus God revealed through his prophet Isaiah,
“The Lord himself will give you this sign: virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.”
Today we hear Matthew recount how the birth of Jesus came about. Our God comes to us. Unlike every other religion in the world, our God comes to us. Our God reveals himself to us over and over again. And He comes to us.
First celebrated in the 4th century, after centuries of official persecution in the Church. The Church realized that our Church is built upon the blood sweat and tears of a lot of people who loved and loved recklessly with their entire being. These are the ones who have made it to heaven and continue to love us and intercede for us with the Father.
Audio only.
November 1, 2013
One of the important things about prayer is that when you are in prayer you are also open to God. You have initiated a conversation. It is easier to receive what God has to say to us when we have opened the line of communication with God than when we have not opened communication with God. Jesus is teaching us today about staying in prayer.
Let’s continue our discussion of the Seven Deadly Sins. This will help us understand prayer.
Faith changes everything. It doesn’t take much. But it requires action. When I was finishing my MBA at the University of Dallas, I was offered several times to go to work with the pioneer company making birth control pills. I was newly married, and my wife and I had experienced a courtship full of shared faith experiences. Our first child was on the way. I needed a job.
But, I knew I didn’t need this job; I couldn’t sell birth control pills. My faith prevented this.
Further, together we had experienced working in the missions in the mountains of Michoacan, in Southwest Mexico. Our shared mission experiences had stirred into flame our faith. We wanted to work in Latin America.
Last year I preached to you, “Stop Stealing Paperclips”. If you cannot be trusted with small things, you cannot be trusted.
“No servant can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Mammon is an Aramaic word meaning property, money, possessions, or that in which one puts trust.
You know as well as I do that we will spend most of our lives struggling with the master “Mammon”. We will each say to ourselves that we are not mastered by money and possessions. Nevertheless, we will all be jealous of someone else’s money, car, clothes or house. Still we will tell ourselves that we are free from slavery to mammon. However, in our hearts we will know that is simply not true. To be honest, it is a struggle to be free from the master “Mammon”. This struggle cannot be overcome without prayer and God’s grace.
Do you want to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? Jesus comments in today’s Gospel are all about discipleship.
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” And,
“… anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessionscannot be my disciple.”
Family relationships and possessions must be subordinated to the following of Jesus. The idea is that priority in the lives of disciples of Jesus, of Christians, must go to the claims of Christ. All other considerations are secondary, even those of family.
There is a universal call from God to all mankind for their salvation, not just the Jews, as we heard in the first reading from Isaiah.
They shall bring all your brothers and sisters from all the nations as an offering to the LORD, . . . Some of these I will take as priests and Levites, says the LORD.
However, we cannot take our salvation for granted and ignore the call to conversion and repentance. Throughout Sacred Scripture we are warned about being complacent about our salvation. We are all called, but we cannot ignore God’s call to conversion and repentance. The author of Hebrews tell us,
“So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees.
Make straight paths for your feet,
that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed.”
We recently began to consider the Seven Deadly Sins, or the Seven Capital Sins. The Church has been teaching and pondering the Seven Deadly Sins since the time of Jesus and St. Paul. First we began with the sin of Anger. Today we will continue with the Deadly Sin of Greed.
It is important to recall that sin is always a personal choice. Mortal sin is fatal; Mortal sin is like suicide; by your own choice you take your eternal life because mortal sin separates us from God. Eternal life is only possible with God. Only God is eternal. There can be no eternal life separated from God. Mortal sin is fatal because it separates us from our final destiny: Heaven and our Salvation. That is how we lose our Eternal Life. It is always our personal decision.
The Seven Deadly Sins include: Pride, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth or Laziness, Envy and Anger.
From the time I arrived at the parish I have desired to explore with you something you hear very little about these days, “The Seven Deadly Sins”, or the “Seven Capital Sins”. The Church has been contemplating “The Seven Deadly Sins” since the time of Paul. Later, Pope St. Gregory, Dante, and many others have written and taught about them.
Let’s understand a little more about sin. Sin is simply a morally bad act. Sin separates us from God. Mortal sin is deadly sin when it kills our love for God, and separates us from God. Mortal sin is like suicide. God does not kill sinners. Sinners kill themselves through their own decisions. There is no eternal life apart from God. Mortal sin cuts us off from our final destiny: Heaven, our eternal Salvation. The Seven Deadly Sins are mortal sins, because they are a “Source” of sin. If you do these sins, you will be committing not one, but a series of sins that flow from them and cut you off from God. That makes them deadly, when you lose eternal life.
My grandson Gabriel made his First Communion about three years ago, just prior to my ordination. Gabriel was going to his first Confession before his First Communion when he said, “Granddad, just think, if you were already a priest you could hear my Confession.” That caught me off guard, but I told him, “Gabe, I want to be your Granddad. It’s better for you to go to another priest.”
And then something happened that was wonderful, but absolutely normal. Gabe’s father came into the room and said, “Let’s go, Gabe” and took Gabe with him to the Church for Confession. It was such a normal act: Boy followed Dad out the door to go to Confession.
The Mass is ancient. From all the evidence, it probably began in Jerusalem, as the Apostles’ and the first Christian’s primary worship form in the very first week after Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead. The Apostles taught it wherever they went. We heard St. Paul teach about the Mass in the second reading. Sometime in the 50’s, Paul was writing to the Corinthians, a large city in Greece, to warn them against changing the Mass, or mixing the liturgy with other social activities. Previously, Paul had lived among them for about a year and a half. The Church at Corinth subsequently became one of the largest Christian communities in the Roman world. However, in Paul’s absence, they were turning their meetings into common meals and social gatherings, not for the original intent, to worship the Lord in the Eucharist. Writing from the city of Ephesus, Paul told the Corinthian Church,
Pentecost and the Sacred Heart
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
And with that, the Church that Jesus founded was born.
The first Christians were Jews first. Circumcised Jews. They wanted all new Gentile Christians to be circumcised Jews. The Apostles, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, opposed this teaching. It was enough to be Baptized to be Christian. The Gentiles didn’t have to become Jews, but just believe in Jesus Christ.
How do you know you are Christian? How do I know that I am Christian? It is a pretty important question. Today we heard in the Gospel.
I want to engage your imaginations. Let’s go back to the year 33. It is the week after Passover; the week after Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead.
What does the Church do now? There are no Missals or Catechisms. Nobody has ever seen or heard of a priest or a nun or a Pope or a Bishop. Nobody has ever seen a Church.
Easter changes things! Once you have experienced Easter things can never be the same. Those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God cannot die. Yes, our machines wear out; our bodies die. But, people who love and follow Jesus realize they cannot die. They come to believe that human death is like “sleep”, as Jesus often said. Once you come to understand the reality of Easter, human history can never be the same. History itself is not cyclical. Instead, we know there is a “beginning”, a “middle” and an “end”. [Read more…]
God sent Jesus. Jesus chose twelve disciples. He formed them and shaped them into ministers. He ordained them to serve His Church. He appointed Simon as the head of the disciples and named him “Rock”, “Peter”, and told him he would build his Church upon him.
Today Fr. Uche and I concelebrated Mass with our Bishop and the other priests of our Diocese in the Chrism Mass, which is held every year during Holy Week.
The Chrism Mass is the primary celebration for the local Church when the Bishop gathers around the altar with his priests to share our commitment to serving the Lord, Jesus Christ. Fr. Uche and I don’t have our own priesthood, but share in the Bishop’s priesthood of Jesus Christ. Together with our brother priests we renewed the solemn promises we made at our ordinations to spend our lives serving Jesus Christ and you, the People of God.
In Holy Week we celebrate mystery NOT history. These liturgies do not take us back in time but into what is happening now in our lives, today. We are invited to enter into the mystery and anticipate our own Resurrection with the Lord. We are reminded to keep the paschal fast on Good Friday and Holy Saturday until the Easter Vigil. Fast and pray and give alms. In Holy Week we unite ourselves to Jesus, our sufferings to his, so that we might also join with him in the Resurrection.
Cana and Our Lady of Guadalupe
They ran out of wine!
This story is highly symbolic. Our religion is highly symbolic. John recounts the story years after the event to a Christian community that well understood the symbolism of this story of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. The “Wedding at Cana” is Jesus’ first miracle in the Gospel of John, from the beginning of the second chapter. What was John doing, placing this story first?
He was reminding us that the Jewish religion was barren. It didn’t produce feast or wine, but was corrupt and bankrupt. Jesus was the only way out of the malaise in which they found themselves. John’s audience would not have missed the meaning of Mary’s comment to Jesus,
“They have no more wine.”
As Christians, baptized, believing Christians, Jesus Christ has been born into our hearts and has given us life. St. Paul tells us,
“See to it that no one deceives you through any empty, seductive philosophy that follows mere human tradition, a philosophy based upon cosmic powers rather than on Christ.” Col 2:4
“He cancelled that bond that stood against us with all its claims, snatching it up and nailing it to the Cross. Thus did God disarm the principalities and powers.” Col 2:15