Go to the readings for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A)

“The LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at night. God said, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.” Solomon answered: “O LORD, my God, you have made me, your servant, king to succeed my father, David; but I am a mere youth, not knowing at all how to act. I serve you in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a people so vast that it cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong.” (1 Kings 3:5-9)

I had a moment like this in my life. A while after I had graduated college, with a degree for a role I found that sadly I didn’t really enjoy, I found myself working for a temp agency. I ended up at a company that was digitizing their file room, and a small army of temps were contracted for this, and they said that they were looking to hire five temps permanently to run the filing system. I was tired of doing job interviews, and tired of the unreliability of temp work, and I made it my goal to be one of those five. Anything they asked me to do was going to be my new favorite thing in the world to do. Remove staples from old forms? That’s my new favorite thing! Run the scanners!? That’s my new favorite thing! And I was one of the first temps to get hired.

I was in my late 20s, but I still kind of felt that I had some growing up to do, to be a “real adult.” But being recruited into the corporate world seemed to me the time to grow up and step up into the call of who I was made to be. I started getting serious about my Catholic faith, was going to Church, and reading Catholic teaching I wanted to understand better; in other words, to mature into an adult Catholic faith.

And this is when God dropped into my lap the book, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Dr. Stephen Covey. It was exactly what I needed at that moment. It gave me the principles for building the kind of life I was looking for. He calls them “first principles,” in Catholic terms we call it “natural law.” When we work with how things work, things work better. And Dr. Covey deeply connected his Christian faith into his writing, which was of great benefit to me. It recently happened, almost by accident, that I came across a video reviewing the seven habits, and it blew my mind how much of my life, and how much of my priestly ministry, is connected to what I had gotten from this book.

When I read that paragraph from Solomon, “O LORD, my God, I am a mere youth, not knowing at all how to act. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to distinguish right from wrong,” I thought, I know that sentiment. And so, looking through today’s readings in preparation for this, I was like, “Oh, yes, I can definitely tie all this into the Seven Habits.

The First Habit: “Be Proactive.” Take responsibility for your particular choices, and your life, and focus your energy on things you can change. There are things we cannot choose, that are given in situations we are in. But we have the capacity to choose how we respond to them. We are not machines running programs, we are God-created people with free-will. We have to look at our habits, our upbringing, our scripts and assumptions, and strengths, and weaknesses, and make good choices, holy choices, about who we are going to become. If we focus on things we can’t change, we waste our energy and opportunity to change the things we can. We can’t change much about the politics and things we see on the news. So don’t focus a lot of energy on that. Focus on what is directly around you. How you respond in your relationships: family, co-workers, and especially with God. How you prioritize your time and energy to what you can make choices about. When you focus on where you can have responsibility – “response ability,” you find that you can change a lot more than you thought you could.

The Second Habit: “Begin with the End in Mind.” What do you want people to remember about you after you’re gone? We’ve talked before about “Memento Mori,” The traditional Latin motto, “Remember you are to die.” Remember that you will have to answer not only for your sins, but who you have made yourself to be, what fruit you have yielded from the seeds of graces you have been given, what effects you have had on those around you. As someone recently pointed out to me, the other side of the coin of “Memento Mori” is “Memento Vivere,” remember to live. Live the life of the gifts and blessings and calling God has given you to have an abundant life of grace, love, joy, and peace.The first habit is that you are the driver of your life. The second habit is, what is your destination?

The Third Habit: “Put first things first.” It’s always bothered me that this wasn’t the first habit. The main theme of this habit is to picture a square with two rows and two columns. The top row is urgent and the bottom row is not urgent. The left column is important and the right column is not important. The first quadrant is both important and urgent. You must do these, and must do them now, things that are on fire. Go to work, pay your bills, especially the late ones, buy groceries. The second quadrant is important but not urgent. This is the key, things that are the most important, your real first things, but since they’re not yelling at you, they get put off too long in order to take care of the urgent things. Quadrant 2 things that are taking care of your spiritual life, your retirement, your health, preventative maintenance tasks, continual learning, long-term goals, etc. The key to this habit is to manage your time proactively around your goals rather than to just living reacting to minor urgent events. We know the phrase, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these other things will be added unto you.” That is Quadrant 2 in biblical terms. In our gospel reading, the kingdom of God is like a buried treasure, and so we sacrifice the non-important stuff (which doesn’t matter as much whether it’s urgent or not if it’s not that important) to acquire what is most important. So a great example of the third habit, of putting first things first.

The Fourth Habit: “Think Win-Win.” Seek solutions that benefit everyone involved so all parties feel heard, feel invested going forward. It’s based on an abundance mentality that someone doesn’t have to lose in order for someone else to win: everyone can win; shifting from a competitive mindset to cooperative one, creatively looking for new options. Also involved in this is our character: integrity (aligning our actions with our core values), maturity (balancing courage with consideration, or what I need with what others need), holiness. We are our brother’s keeper, we can’t step on him or ignore him to get ahead. This is perhaps the habit of holy loving service to others. I can’t consider it a win if it’s unjust to someone else.

In the Fourth Habit (and revisited in the Fifth) Dr. Covey develops the idea of the “Emotional Bank Account.” I didn’t include it in the actual homily as it wasn’t directly connected to explaining the habit, but it’s something that I use and share all the time, and I had forgotten it had come from this book. The idea is that to make a withdrawal in our account with another person–not just a lapse, like breaking a promise or getting into an argument, but even correcting them, giving them tough love–we have to have a positive balance in our account. Deposits are made in the account by acts of loving them, affirming them, spending quality time, sharing positive moments, etc. The higher our balance, the better the relationship will weather a withdrawal without getting into a negative balance, which is a dire threat to the ongoing survival of the relationship. This isn’t just about “buttering someone up” to make a big ask, but that’s a short-term version of this. This is more like having to tell someone they were very wrong in what they did. If there is already a high balance, a high level of trust and affection, then the relationship will still be solid. But if the balance was already low, this might cause the separation of the relationship.

The Fifth Habit: “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood.” This is a line right out of the prayer of Saint Francis. “Make me an instrument of your peace,” which connects to the fourth habit. But the end of that prayer: “O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.” If I love someone, I really want to actively and compassionately listen to their story, their heart, their world, to build a win-win relationship with them, to know what they really value, who they are, and only then can we really have meaningful communication. And that includes God: are you really listening to understand, listening to hear his heart, or is it just trying to get what you want?

The Sixth Habit: “Synergize.” This means 1+1 doesn’t equal 2, but can equal 3, or 10, or more, because combining the complementary strengths of multiple people, filling in the skill gaps in a team, has a multiplier effect of the efforts. York Catholic School Board had to replace an outgoing member, and they didn’t ask, “Who would be a good person to recruit?” They asked, “What skill area are we weak in that we need to strengthen with a new member?” That’s a synergistic approach to the question. It’s progressing from shunning diversity (which is suspicious of differences of background and opinions), to tolerating diversity (coexisting, but not leveraging differences), to celebrating diversity (valuing unique strengths as creative fuel), communicating in a creative and brave exchange of ideas, and choosing the “high road” of a new, mutually beneficial path, so this is tied to the previous habit of win-win. The opposite of this is a negative synergy, based on insecurity, fear of conflict, desire for control, or strict conformity of ideas and perspectives, tearing down others, gossiping with others, silos or camps within an organization that work against each other at the cost of the whole. Heaven is mutual respect, love, and service in humility for the good of others; hell is tearing down others, climbing over others, attacking others. It’s obvious which of these a church, or a family, or any group should work that wants to be successful. Synergy.

The first three habits are “Private Victories,” they have to do with your interior disposition to set right perspectives and goals, and being proactive to pursue them. The second three habits are “Public Victories,” they have to do with interpersonal relations and working together better with others. Of course there’s overlap, because proficiency in each habit help builds proficiency in the other habits.

And the Seventh Habit is called, “Sharpen the Saw,” and it’s in its own category of “Renewal.” Which is to occasionally go back to the basics, revisit the wisdom in the habits, how they’re described, how to build them, what the bad habits are which weaken them. Sometimes you’ll need to re-calibrate your goals, your path, as you grow in wisdom, perspective, and with changes in your life. Every once in a while, take a day and spend it in prayer, reading a holy book about faith, or the scriptures. And once a year or so go away to a Catholic retreat center for a spiritual recharge and renewal.

So these are Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Christians we are called to be highly effective people. We’re also called to be highly holy people, applying natural wisdom to our supernatural calling to be a light for others. And the first step of that is to see how we are not who and what we could be, we are not the saints we could be, and to respond to the call of grace, the call of God’s love for us, to max out our response to that upward call. To quote the Chinese philosopher Lau Tzu: “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” Or to quote Pope Benedict XVI: “The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.”

Bonus: While I was creating this post, I found this little gem, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Catholics” from the great Catholic teacher Dr. John Bergsma. Enjoy!

Go to readings for 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Hopefully everyone here knows where this poem is from. It’s called “The New Colossus,” written in 1883 by the Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus, who was inspired by the suffering of the Jewish immigrants fleeing the antisemitism in Russia, and were flocking to New York for refuge, as well as the newly emancipated the slaves following the American Civil War. Emma Lazarus was commissioned to write a poem to be auctioned off as part of the fundraising to build the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, dedicated in 1886. This poem inspired a dear friend of Emma Lazarus, Rose Hawthorne (daughter of author Nathaniel Hawthorne), to later found the Hawthorne Dominican Sisters to care for the poor and afflicted.

Americans are rightly proud of the many accomplishments, inventions, victories, and successes of the countless great Americans throughout our history. But it is a very Catholic principle, which Pope Leo XIV touched on in his recent Catholic Social Teaching encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas”, that God gives abundant gifts not for the praise of the one receives them, but to be shared for the good of the whole community. And so while we proudly wave Old Glory, it’s not just to celebrate our country’s prosperity, but also what she has always stood for in the minds of the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free in every land. These aren’t necessarily going to be huddled masses of great doctors, great inventors, great businessmen, great statesmen (although these will rise up from among them). It’s going to be mostly good people, the simple, religiously faithful, unsophisticated lower classes, who suffer the most under unjust government and economic systems.

The “American Dream” has its roots in the beginning of the Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It was clearly associated with the abundant advancement of the “blank slate” of the western frontier. Here we encounter that spirit of “Rugged American Individualism,” the conception that we have the right to be left alone, and the opportunity to accomplish what we will, and the obligation to figure it out and “get-r-done” for ourselves. From a Catholic perspective, there are two potential difficulties that may come from this. First, it fathers the “secular religion” of “Moralistic therapeutic deism” whose tenets include that we don’t need to call upon God or have a relationship with him except out of necessity as a last resort. And second, an almost karmic belief that demographic groups that are not successful do not need systemic help (correction of sysemic injustice), but rather just need to learn to be more proactive to “get-r-done” for themselves, as everyone who has worked their way out of difficulty has done before. The Church’s Social Teaching principles of “common good”, “solidarity” offer a tempering effect to be more personally and voluntarily (virtuously) generous to share one’s abundance with those in urgent need. Failing that, the political principle of communism legally forces the redistribution of wealth, and is always a temptation, especially to those who are suffering and frustrated.

There have always been problems with poverty, economic inequality, political corruption, and other hurdles to overcome. Perhaps one of the blessings of the World Cup tourists the last few months has been the revelation that within our own country, we see and experience our problems right in our face. But when visitors come from other places, they’re struck in wonder how blessed, how generous, how kind and welcoming, how patriotic, how “America the Beautiful” is real, which they thought was just in movies.

But as we know, our house does have some big problems to face. And if there were easy answers, we would have solved it by now. So, we continue to pray that God bless America; that he would continue to stand beside her, and guide, her through the night with a light from above.

There’s always been a kind of “promised land” “new world” sort of vibe to America, that sense of hope that we just talked about. And we as Catholics have a special role to play. We know by faith what God our creator has revealed about what is good for both human individuals and human communities, whether that community is a family, a parish, a town, a state, a nation, or the world. We have the light in the darkness of the fallen world, and as Jesus instructs us, we are not to hide light under a bushel basket, but set up on a pedestal for the whole household to see by. Some of them might recoil from the light, if all they have known is darkness, and call their darkness light. But a fire in a cave is not a beautiful sunny Saturday in the park (I think it was the Fourth of July). We have to assure them they were made to dance in the light, liberated and healed of the burdens of sin. Some of them might not only recoil but try to extinguish the light, if they prefer the darkness and its disordered pleasures. But it is God’s eternal light of divine wisdom and love. While they might take out a few candles, we know that the glorious light, God, wins in the end.

Our first reading, from a time of suffering and corruption in Israel, tells the people of God to rejoice, to shout for joy, for the Prince of Peace comes to us. Not an earthly ruler, as Israel was expecting, but God himself, from whom all authority is given.

A king preparing for war processes in on a horse; a king ushering in a time of peace rides a donkey. And it says he shall banish the chariot, a vehicle of war, from the division in our people, and the horse, a spirit of war, from the heart of our people. He shall proclaim peace to the nations, and his dominion is all nations. All world leaders are called to be peaceful, to dialogue, to avoid in every way possible how war ravages nations, lands, and especially the poor. Again, let us ask God to bless our country, our leaders, our people, not only for the suffering, but those who have the power and potential to alleviate suffering.

Saint Paul reminds us in our second reading, from his letter to the Romans, that we are not to look just at what we see with our worldly eyes, to think with our worldly brains, and accept the terms and conditions. We are called to be heavenly while in this world. We are reminded that we are not to live the life of the flesh. On the contrary, we are in the spirit. And so it is from the Spirit, who inspires the teachings of the Sacred Tradition of the Church, that we receive and are formed by what is true and good, not from the world, not from a political party, not from podcasts, not from movies and series and magazines and famous people. We do not judge the Church from what oozes into our brains from society. We judge everything in society by the light that comes to us from the Scriptures, from the Catechism, from the bishops, pastors, and documents of the Church.

And our gospel reading, one of the most inspiring and loved words of Jesus. “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones.” Jesus had just preached throughout Galilee, and instead of a national miracle of renewal, he was, even with his wondrous signs, ignored and rejected. And yet he stays faithful and confident in his mission. He was sent not just to the leaders, full of themselves and comfortable with the status quo. But he was sent also to the people of the land, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. And Jesus rejoices in them, as they rejoice to receive him.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” Humanity was not created to carry the burdens of sin, injustice, hatred, resentment, or even the burdens of wrestling to figure out what is right and what is wrong, good and evil. We were created to receive all that we need from God, to rest in him, to trust in him, to follow him, to love him, and to know in our hearts that we don’t need to avoid or go around God to get what we really need, but to trust ourselves to God, that he knows us better than we know ourselves, and truly wants us to have joy, peace, and happiness, to cooperate with his divine will with a meek and humble heart. The burden we were made for is love, to honor and protect love, and do works of self-giving love.

Jesus showed us humanity perfected from sin, humanity without sin, in perfect relationship with the Father, and invited us (called us) to follow him, to take up our cross of purifying ourselves from the errors and injuries this worldly life inflicts on us, and to embrace his life, his love, his communion with the father, as the new spiritual life within us. The burden is to live in this world by this light of divine life within us. And the yoke is easy. A yoke unites two animals to share the workload, and an easy yoke is one that is custom fit and well made. Our way of being united to Christ is unique to each of us, our own special way of making the work of Christ visible in our lives by the gift of his grace.

And so trusting in our Lord, not only for our own sake, but for our families, our community and especially, this weekend, for our nation, we respond with the call to prayer: to entrust to God the needs of our nation. And what better way to do that than the official prayer of the first bishop of our nation, Archbishop John Carroll, whose cousin, Charles Carroll was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. It is an excellent prayer, especially for the times we live in now, over 200 years later, to remind us of the crucial role faith and prayer has always played in our nation since its beginning.  Also each year on July 4th, Independence Day, we can especially pray for our government as we are commanded to do in Sacred Scripture: “I desire therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men: For kings, and for all that are in high station: that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all piety and chastity. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2 1-4).

And so let us pray:

We pray, O almighty and eternal God, who through Jesus Christ has revealed thy glory to all nations, to preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church, being spread through the whole world, may continue with unchanging faith in the confession of your name.

We pray Thee, who alone are good and holy, to endow with heavenly knowledge, sincere zeal and sanctity of life, our chief bishop, the pope, the vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the government of his Church; our own bishop, all other bishops, prelates and pastors of the Church; and especially those who are appointed to exercise among us the functions of the holy ministry, and conduct your people into the ways of salvation.

We pray O God of might, wisdom and justice, through whom authority is rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgment decreed, assist with your Holy Spirit of counsel and fortitude the president of these United States, that his administration may be conducted in righteousness and be eminently useful to your people over whom he presides; by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion; by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and by restraining vice and immorality.

Let the light of your divine wisdom direct the deliberations of Congress, and shine forth in all the proceedings and laws framed for our rule and government, so that they may tend to the preservation of peace, the promotion of national happiness, the increase of industry, sobriety and useful knowledge; and may perpetuate to us the blessing of equal liberty.

We pray for his excellency, the governor of this state, for the members of the assembly, for all judges, magistrates, and other officers who are appointed to guard our political welfare, that they may be enabled, by your powerful protection, to discharge the duties of their respective stations with honesty and ability.

We recommend likewise, to your unbounded mercy, all our brethren and fellow citizens throughout the United States, that they may be blessed in the knowledge and sanctified in the observance of your most holy law; that they may be preserved in union, and in that peace which the world cannot give; and after enjoying the blessings of this life, be admitted to those which are eternal.

Finally, we pray to you, O Lord of mercy, to remember the souls of your servants departed, who are gone before us with the sign of faith and repose in the sleep of peace; the souls of our parents, relatives and friends; of those who, when living, were members of this congregation, and particularly of such as are lately deceased; of all benefactors who, by their donations or legacies to this Church, witnessed their zeal for the decency of divine worship and proved their claim to our grateful and charitable remembrance. To these, O Lord, and to all that rest in Christ, grant, we beseech you, a place of refreshment, light and everlasting peace, through the same Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior. Amen.

Go to the readings for 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A)
Note: This was written for celebrating the Mass at the Celtic Fling.

Howard Kelly loved nature, hiking great distances, and studying animals in the wild. On a hike through Northern Pennsylvania one spring, young Kelly stopped by a small farmhouse for a drink of cool spring water. A little girl answered the door, and instead of water, she brought him a glass of cold fresh milk. He thanked her profusely and went on his way. Years later, in 1893, Dr. Howard Kelly was one of the four founding doctors of Johns Hopkins, the first medical research university in the U.S. Some years later, that same little girl from Northern Pennsylvania who had given him that glass of milk years ago, was grown up, and was sent to him for a particular operation. When it came time for her to be discharged, her bill was presented to her, and across it was written, “Paid in full, for one glass of milk.”

Our gospel reading follows upon last week’s reading. Jesus is teaching the twelve disciples, his students, before sending them out on a mission. But Jesus is not just sending them out with the nice message that God loves you, and be nice to each other, like a lot of people think should be the limit of what Christianity means.

Jesus said to his apostles: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Now this sounds extreme to us, but it was even more so in the context of Israel’s society. First, there was the ten commandments, including the fourth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother.” Second, Israelite society was family-based. Your identity, your role and respect in society, your financial stability, everything, was based on your family (which is why God repeatedly instructs the Israelites to take special care of widows, orphans, and foreigners, who do not have this support). And so for this rabbi (Jesus) to demand such allegiance to him as to say, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” was preposterous. Why, no one could claim a higher place in someone’s life even above one’s own family, except for…God himself! Ah.

Some anti-Christians like to point out that Jesus never said the words, “I am God.” However, Jesus did claim to be God—revealed himself to be God—clearly, and in many ways. And this is one of those times. Your highest priority is God. The first commandment comes before the fourth commandment, if they come into conflict. Of course, they would only come into conflict because of sin. God’s laws do not contradict each other. But people do. In any other instance, yes, you need to honor your parents, do the dishes, take out the garbage, and stop fighting with your sister. Just like you need to follow the legitimate and just laws of government and society. Until there’s a conflict with a higher authority. Then you need to politely, but firmly, do the right thing anyway, and gracefully accept the consequences (blessed are they who suffer for the sake of righteousness…). People also like to say, “You’re an American first”. No, I’m not. I’m a Catholic first! And… because I’m a Catholic first, I can be an even better American, to paraphrase St. Thomas More, and Justice Antonin Scalia. We are our nation’s good servants because we are God’s first.

But we also know that being right doesn’t mean we don’t suffer. Jesus continues his teaching, “and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” Taking up our cross can mean, first, resisting the internal forces of sinful desires, appetites, habits, attachments, and humbly submitting ourselves to the authority of God, particularly as given to us through the Teaching of the Church. And taking up our cross can mean, second, resisting the external forces of the fallen world which bring on political, legal, financial, and social pressure and coercion to conform us to the values of the fallen world and punish us for not conforming.

The enemy presents himself as a false light, a false imitation of love and goodness, and many are taken in by this false light. Our enemies are demonic spirits who mislead, distort, harm, and destroy; Our enemy is not our brothers and sisters in the human family (even if they think we are their enemy), to whom we are sent out as apostles to proclaim the gospel of faith, hope, love, forgiveness, and new life in Christ.

Jesus says to those he sends out, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” The kindness shown to an ambassador of the king is equivalently shown to the king. C. S. Lewis in his book, “Mere Christianity,” says, “Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.”

The warning Jesus gives in our gospel—that those who are unwilling to claim and worship and serve Christ as their king are unworthy of him—is that they are unworthy to be his ambassadors, unworthy of being sent out, because they are not examples of what a life completely dedicated to Christ looks like: a life of joyful love of (and obedience to) God, which pours out into pure love of others, healed of sin, rejoicing in God, and responding to the Spirit for a life of holiness in the virtuous service of God and each other.

And those who assist us and support us and show us kindness and hospitality because we are ambassadors of Christ will not lose an ambassador’s reward. It’s not just that they showed kindness and hospitality, but that they did so with a heart toward God. This is the connection to the first reading. The prominent woman of Shunem wasn’t just showing kindness to a stranger, but showing gracious generosity to the prophet of God, Elisha, because he was a prophet. And in response, Elisha blessed her with a son. Years later, when the son died in an accident, Elisha resurrected and healed him, because, since the family showed the prophet repeated hospitality, they grew in friendship and holiness, and they knew how to reach out to him in their time of need. We share in the reward of a holy person because our love for them should help us to become holy, too.

Jesus says in the gospel, that “whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because the little one is a disciple—amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.” Cold water doesn’t meaning refrigerated. Of course, they didn’t have refrigerators; they couldn’t make water cold; they could only offer the courtesy of heating it over a fire. So “cold” here means more like “room tempearature.” And not a flagon or a goblet, but just a simple glass of simple water, the most minimum of gestures of kindness, to an apostle because they are an apostle, supporting the mission of the apostle, in genuine love of the apostle as being sent by the Lord, will share in the benefits, the joy, the grace, the reward that the Lord will give his apostles.

I remember the first time I came to the Celtic Fling to celebrate the Mass, and while I was walking around the park, one of the vendors called me over, set out a mug of Guiness, and said, “Father, this is for you, my treat.” I had never met them before, never ministered to them. But because I was a priest, it was their joy to offer kindness and generosity. And of course, it a was free Guiness, so… I was perfectly happy to accept the gift.

And so, let us be ambassadors, apostles, of Christ the King, proclaiming the good news both in word and example, standing firm in faith and virtue against sin and vice both internal and external, while offering support, encouragement, and love to our brothers and sisters, and gracefully receiving kindness when offered, not for our sake but for the sake of him whom we represent and make present, not to judge, but to bring faith, hope, and love, whether that kindness offered is a glass of fresh milk, a cold cup of water, or a mug of refreshing Irish stout. To him be praise and honor and glory and power, forever and ever! Amen!

Go to the readings.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a beautiful explanation of our faith about the Mystery of the Eucharist, starting in paragraph 1324: “The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’ …For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our [Passover]. ‘The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.’ Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.’”

1. The source and summit of the Christian Life
2. The whole spiritual good of the Church: Christ himself
3. The sign of unity by which the Church is kept in being
4. Culmination of God’s sanctifying action and our worship
5. We are united with the heavenly liturgy

1. The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’

In our Gospel reading, Jesus is teaching us repeatedly and clearly that his body and blood are for us to eat and drink. At first, he uses the word, “soma,” for body, and “phagein” the common word for eating, or even to feed our minds by new ideas. And the people murmur amongst themselves about his words. So he changes them, in the direction of being even more clear: he uses the word, “sarx” for flesh, like the skin and meat of a Knights of Columbus chicken barbecue. Then he changes “phagein” to the highly graphic “trogon,” to chew and gnaw like an animal over prey. We are to gnaw the flesh of his body and drink his blood. And by this, he says, we have eternal life, and unless we do this, we do not have life within us. Jesus is not being symbolic or metaphorical; he is leaving no room for that misinterpretation. Now at this point in the gospel, we’re still a long way before the Last Supper. So I imagine, as the apostles were expecting at some point to have to eat the flesh of Jesus, that at the Last Supper when Jesus took bread and said, “This is my body,” and they all breathed a sigh of relief. Now, this IS his body, his flesh, and his blood, under the sacramental mystery of the bread and wine which, though appearing no different to our senses, change invisibly in their essential reality. As Jesus says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.”

This was the first point of the Catechism description of the Eucharist as the “source and summit” of the Christian life. It is the source, because it is by the Eucharist that we are united with Christ not only in what we know and believe, our mind and heart, but in our whole human nature which Christ heals and transfigures, including our body. And it is the summit because union with God is what we are made for, why we were created, as the human race, and as individual persons, to be forever united to God, starting here in this life and world, which we have through the sacrament of the Eucharist, the source and the summit, the beginning and end, of our union with God.

2. ’ …For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our [Passover].

          It is Jesus himself, and not just the Church, who teaches, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Consecrating or consuming the Eucharist is not salvation by our works. Rather, it is the offer of salvation by the work of God himself. It is Jesus present through the ministry of the priest who consecrates the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. And it is Jesus in his body and blood who nourishes us and unites us to himself when we worthily receive the Eucharist. We adore the Eucharist because it is Jesus, the Son of God. It is Jesus who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the New Covenant Passover Lamb. And it was Jesus who in the Last Supper on Holy Thursday instituted the Eucharist, the New Covenant Passover meal, in anticipation of and in connection with the Good Friday New Covenant Passover sacrifice.

3. ‘The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being.

I love this definition of a sacrament: “An efficacious sign instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church to communicate grace (divine life) to those who receive it with the necessary disposition proper to each sacrament.” An efficacious sign makes happen what it signifies. A stop sign is red and says stop, indicating it is important you should stop. But it doesn’t make you stop. You could ignore it. An efficacious sign would be a thick wall that shoots up out of the road to stop you, and on it is written, “I said, STOP.” That is a sign that makes happen what it signifies. The Eucharist, Holy Communion, is an efficacious sign: by all of us sharing in the sublime and divine gift of the one bread that is in mystery the Body of Christ, it is nourishment that unites us as members of the Body of Christ, the Church, as Saint Paul teaches in our second reading. It is this sublime and divine gift of this mystery that unites us, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which the Church is kept in unity in its mission of being the ongoing presence of Christ in the world in every generation.

4. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.’

          In the Israelite sacrifices, a person would present a priest with their flesh offering, an animal without blemish. The priest offered the sacrifice to God, and also returned a portion to the person, who would then return home and consume it in a ritual meal with his family, and it was by this that the family, even others nearby such as the poor, would be participants in the sacrifice. Almost all of the sacrificial liturgies had this two part structure of a ritual sacrifice and ritual meal by which others participated in the benefits of the sacrifice. Of course, the paradigm for this was the first sacrifice in Egypt, the Passover. The self-offering of Jesus the Lamb of God, on the cross for the salvation of the world was established by Jesus as a single event in unity with the Last Supper. With just the Last Supper alone, Jesus says, this is my body given up for you, this is my blood poured out for you, but they were not given up or poured out until the cross. At the same time, with just the cross alone, it was a Roman execution, it wasn’t a sacrificial offering of Jesus giving himself in his body and blood. It’s only when the two parts, the meal and the sacrifice, are united that they each receive their full significance. The cross, the ritual sacrifice, happened once for all, the perfect offering for the salvation of the world. The Last Supper, the ritual meal by which others are participants in the benefits of the sacrifice, is repeated in every Mass, following Christ who established this memorial in saying, “Do this in memory of me.” These words don’t make it symbolic, a pretend re-enactment: this is sacrificial language, echoing the instructions God gave Israel for being a holy people, for their trust and worship and thanksgiving to God. And that is reconfigured in Christ as the New Passover in the Last Supper as the sacrificial memorial repeatedly united to the single offering of Christ on the Cross, not a repeated death, but a repeated sharing for the Church, for all the world for all generations. In our sequence for today, we heard, “What he did at supper seated, Christ ordained to be repeated, His memorial ne’er to cease.” And so through the Holy Spirit by which all the sacraments have their power, the bread and wine, as they did at the Last Supper, are changed in their essential substance,  whereby they still appear to be bread and wine, which we share and consume, but are truly the full and perfect offering of the paschal mystery: the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus for the salvation of the world. And by our offering of this perfect offering that God himself provided, we can make the offering to God in which we are sanctified, and we offer to God our trust, worship, and thanksgiving, in Greek, Eucharistia, our Eucharistic celebration.

5. Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.

          I mentioned that the Ascension is the mystery of Jesus in his resurrected body returning to heaven, to the Father. What is the body of Christ? The Church. And so the Ascension is an ongoing mystery as the members of the Body of Christ ascend to be united to our head in joy and glory. And as we see so many places in Scripture, both Jesus and the Book of Revelation describe the heavenly kingdom as a banquet feast, a wedding banquet feast of the Lamb and the Bride, the Church. It is the feast of Christ’s obedience to his mission in the Father’s will to redeem, rescue, purify, and be united to his bride. Of course, this is a mystery outside of time and is going on now and forever. The Mass is a foretaste, a participation in mystery and faith, in this heavenly banquet. We join the angels in singing the glory of God, and with them praising him forever, Holy! Holy!! Holy!!! And we feast on the Bread of Heaven, the Panis Angelicus, the Bread of Angels, the spiritual food of the heavenly banquet. And we hear the angelic invitation: “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb!” This is why we dress well for the Mass: it’s our wedding day, the Mass is our consummation of our union with our divine bridegroom, whom we receive in his body giving for us, his Bride.

And so to end where we started: “The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’ …For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our [Passover]. ‘The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.’ Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.’”

(Go to readings for Pentecost Sunday)

It is said that humanity is a question. And God is the answer. Throughout Christianity from the first centuries to now, there have always been people who have suggested that we should just jettison the Old Testament, because Jesus is all we need. But the Old Testament is a question. And the New Testament is the answer.

In the opening pages of salvation history, humanity is given all that we need to flourish. But we accepted the lie that we have to distrust and bypass God and his word to get what we really want. And because of that, we found out that God had really provided what we really want, and we lost it by trying to avoid him. Our encounter with him then filled us with shame at our disgrace. As Deacon Michael often says, the effect of the original sin was not so much the addition of sin to our nature, but the subtraction of the original holiness we were given and told to protect.

A few chapters later, humanity conspires to try to seize through violence what we had lost. The Tower of Babel is symbolic and symptomatic of humanity’s willful and prideful desire to reclaim paradise by bypassing the only true way to get it: we have to receive it, as a gift, from God. As a result of attempting to raise our might against the might of God, the result was the chaos (in Hebrew, “bavel”) that divided the nations into groups unintelligible and foreign to each other—not as a punishment from God, but as a natural consequence of the disordered intent of our disordered human nature.

Of course, we can see this as a spiritualized explanation of why the nations of the world speak different languages. And we know from linguistic studies and philology how different languages developed. But the bible is not telling a false story, but rather a true story from the point of view of an ancient religious society, Israel, who saw God as the prime mover of the human story, for the one and the many. And from that perspective, the genesis of the world as we know it, full of sin, division, violence, and suffering, is because humanity, created in and for original goodness, rebelled against the good Creator.

Where does that leave us then? What is the answer to the human question? One Sunday morning, a pastor of a church was invited into the Sunday school class to share a lesson. When all of the children were seated and quiet, for sake of an illustration, the pastor began by saying, “I am going to describe something and I want you to raise your hand when you know what it is.” The children nodded eagerly. The pastor continued, “This thing lives in trees… and it eats nuts… and it has a long bushy tail…” No hands went up. The pastor was shocked. Finally, one little boy tentatively raised his hand. The pastor breathed a sigh of relief and called on him. The boy said, “Well, it sounds an awful lot like a squirrel to me… but I know the answer must be Jesus!”

Correct! Our answer is Jesus. The promised the long-awaited divine messiah, who would be the good creator, God, who would come into our humanity and restore the world from the mess we’ve made of it, including ourselves. Jesus in his Easter (or Paschal) mystery—his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension—accomplishes our rescue, our salvation. And through the gift of the Holy Spirit into the Church, what Jesus accomplished ripples out into all humanity. Father Mike Schmitz, in his “Catechism in a Year,” repeated the phrase, “What Jesus made possible, the Holy Spirit made actual.” And this is how Jesus answers our question.

Just as the Easter (or Paschal) mystery begins the Easter season, Pentecost is the end and fulfillment of the Easter season. Passover was a pilgrim festival, one of the feasts of the Jewish calendar in which God’s people were called to make a pilgrimage to celebrate the feast at the Jerusalem temple. So also, fifty days later was the pilgrim feast of Shavuot, a harvest festival, the Feast of Weeks. Seven weeks of seven days (49), plus one, after Passover, called in Greek, “Pentecost” meaning the “fiftieth” day. As Passover was the ritual memorial of Israel’s rescue from captivity in Egypt, Pentecost was celebrated as the day at Mount Sinai fifty days later when Israel entered into the covenant with God to be his holy people, and received the divine gift of the mosaic law, which, if followed, would allow them to be a uniquely blessed society flourishing with justice and peace.

And so it no coincidence that the descent of the Holy Spirit, the revelation of the third person of the Holy Trinity, presented himself as a rushing wind, the divine breath, and as tongues of fire (reminiscent of the fire that surrounded the top of Mount Sinai as the presence of God) which lighted upon the disciples of Jesus, transforming their hearts, not with the law of Moses written on stone tablets, but writing the law of Christ on the flesh of their hearts. They were now Apostles, those “sent” by Jesus, as Jesus had been sent by the Father, to set the world afire by the divine presence within them. This is the birthday of the Church. Pentecost is the big bang of the new creation.

And so the first thing they did was to go out and preach the good news to all those gathered in Jerusalem from every nation and language, and what they said was miraculously understood by everyone. Why? Because the Church had now received in humility God’s blessing of his holiness in them as a gift. The day of Pentecost is the reversal of the Tower of Babel. Their tongues were united in every language to praise and share the glorious gift of God. It was the Pentecost harvest festival, this time of souls, gathering them into the Church through the inspired preaching of Peter. Note the change in attitude of the crowd; from confused, to astounded, to amazed. And these pilgrims would of course return to their homes around the world and share their experience of what they saw and heard. This is the initiation of the gospel being brought to all the ends of the earth.

Our psalm, our only reading today from the Old Testament, is a prayer asking for this renewal. “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.” That is a prayer for God to renew creation through the gift of his Spirit. If you look at the beginning of creation, God’s Spirit hovers over the waters of primordial chaos. And by his Word, he creates the world.  So this psalm is a prayer for God’s Spirit to renew creation. The Old Testament is a question. The New Testament is the answer.

In our second reading, Saint Paul is teaching the Church about the gifts (and fruits) of the Holy Spirit and how these gifts are to be used to promote the common good. He points out that the human body needs different parts to perform different functions; all of which benefit the body. Since the Church is the Body of Christ, it too is formed of many different members who are to work together for the benefit of the whole.

In the Catechism, in paragraph 768, we read these words in the section on the Holy Spirit, the article of the Creed “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” It says: So that she can fulfill her mission, the Holy Spirit “bestows upon [the Church] varied hierarchic and charismatic gifts, and in this way directs her.” And related to that, the Catechism describes grace: “Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning ‘favor,’ ‘gratuitous gift,’ ‘benefit.’ Whatever their character… charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church” (CCC 2003). Since we just celebrated on Wednesday the Feast of St. Bernardine of Siena, he has a very fitting quote to conclude this section: “When the divine favor chooses someone to receive a special grace, or to accept a lofty vocation, God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts of the Spirit needed to fulfil the task at hand.” So, whether you’re called to be a parent, a pastor, a president, a painter, a paramedic, or a pope, God will give you what you need from him to fulfill, and be fulfilled, in that call.

The Gospel reading of course isn’t about Pentecost, because it doesn’t appear in the gospels; it only appears in our first reading, from the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. Our gospel reading is from John, of an initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit by Jesus on the first evening of the resurrection, giving the apostles the authority to forgive or bind sins in his name. I want to consider not the Gospel of John, but the Gospel of Luke. Because we know that Saint Luke also wrote a second book: the Acts of the Apostles. They have the same introduction, the same vocabulary, and the same structure. And the point Luke is making in the parallelism of these two books is that the Church is the continuation of Christ in the world. The Gospel book ends, and the Book of Acts begins, with the Ascension. And then immediately after that (well, ten days after that), is Pentecost, with the Blessed Mother, as the Church is given birth in its mission to bring the good news and the grace of God won by Christ, and poured out by the Holy Spirit, to all the world. The Holy Spirit is the active principle of the Church, like the soul, uniting the members into the Body of Christ. The Spirit of unity, the spirit of divine love, within and among us.

The Holy Spirit is also what empowers the Sacraments of the Church. Every Sacrament has an epiclesis—a calling down of the Holy Spirit to be the active agent of the celebration of the various seven sacraments: Through Baptism He makes us children of God, temples of the Holy Spirit, and heirs of Heaven. Through Confirmation, He makes us courageous witnesses and defenders of the Faith. Through the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Anointing, He enables us to be reconciled with God by the forgiveness of our sins. Through the Sacrifice and Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, He gives us spiritual nourishment by changing bread and wine into Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. And through the Sacraments of holy orders and matrimony, He makes the community holy with the call to self-giving service in life-giving love to one another. Let us beg God to help us to allow the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit to blossom within us and bear abundant fruit.

All of these things were instituted by Christ, and given to us through the Holy Spirit, guiding us as the Church. “What Jesus makes possible, the Holy Spirit makes actual,” inviting us to participate personally and actively in the new life made available by Christ. Pentecost is our invitation to continue in ourselves the presence, life, and ministry of Jesus. By the Holy Spirit of his love, he gives us the power to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow him. We are a question, and through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is the answer.

Bonus section: someone pointed out that the Church was born of the side of Christ on the cross on Good Friday, which is an excellent point. I know both of these things are true (good ol’ Catholic “both/and”), and had to really struggle to try to reconcile them. So this is what I figured out:

Gen 2:21 – “So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The Lord God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman.”

It’s exactly what Fr. Mike said, “What Jesus makes possible, the Holy Spirit makes actual.” The reason it is said that the Church is born from the side of Christ, the New Adam on the cross, is because of the water and blood from the side of Christ, which are the physical (but in that moment lifeless, flowing from the lifeless body of Christ) matter/materials of the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. But the sacraments don’t actually become operative (full of life, and life-giving) until they receive their particular sacramental graces at Pentecost.

Jesus instituted the sacraments in his ministry, and instituted the Church on the cross with his death and pierced side, making the life (birth) of the Church and her sacraments possible (in what he had accomplished).

Eve, the primordial bride of Adam, was “built” (Hebrew “banah,” as in, built a city, built an ark, built an altar) from the sleeping Adam’s side (in a sense, born of Adam), and then given the breath of life (in another sense, born of the Spirit). The Church, the mystical bride of the “sleeping” New Adam was “built” on Good Friday (“What Jesus makes possible…”), but it was in the infusion of the Holy Spirit (“ruah”, the divine breath, the strong wind in the upper room) as the soul and active principle of the Church and the sacramental grace of Baptism and Eucharist, at Pentecost, that she is given breath and comes to life, and can share with others the life (Spirit) of Christ in her (“…the Holy Spirit makes actual.”). 

God bless, happy birthday to the Church, and happy Pentecost to you!