Across Five Aprils: Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter (Acts 18:9-18; Psalm 47:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; John 16:20-23)

The book Across Five Aprils is about a boy named Jethro who lives on a farm in Jasper County, Illinois during the Civil War. 

Jethro works hard every day. As he works on the farm, he learns to  live a life of virtue. Even when things around him are scary or confusing, he stays calm and keeps going.

It is easy for me to resonate with this story because I also grew up on a farm in Jasper County, Illinois. The story of Jethro brings back vivid images of places I have been and grew up around, as well as strong memories of the farm life—the daily cycle of chores, the seasonal patterns of planting and harvesting, and an appreciation for the joy that can be found in simple things.

My personal connection aside, Jethro’s story is not great just because of the big events happening in the world around him. His story is great because he does ordinary things with compassion, with mercy, and with love.

Today, the Church celebrates another farmer. Today is an optional memorial for Saint Isidore!

Saint Isidore was a farmer who loved God very much. He worked hard in the fields every day, and he talked to God while he worked. Like Jethro, he found meaning in his daily work.

Every morning, Saint Isidore went to Mass before he started working in the field. Some people complained that he came to work late. But Isidore said that God had to come first in his life.

One morning, the owner of the farm went to check on Isidore. Of course, isidore was not there because he was at Mass.  However, what the owner saw astonished him.  The owner of the farm saw angels doing Isidore’s work in the field! 

Another the owner stopped by the field, he saw Isidore hard at work as expected.  But, Isidore was not alone.   The owner saw angels working right next to Isidore.

Saint Isidore was also very kind and generous. He shared the grain he harvested with animals and other people. Even when he gave a lot of the grain he harvested away, he always had enough to give the owner of the farm more than the amount of grain he owed.  In fact, Saint Isidore was always able to give the owner of the farm more grain than the other workers of the field.

Both Jethro and Saint Isidore teach us something important: you do not have to be famous or have a lot of things to be great. You are great by putting God first and by doing small ordinary things with love.

Here are three ways you can be like Saint Isidore:

As I siad, put God first. Pray every day. Before you do any work, particularly if it is work you do not want to do, say a quick prayer and ask God to help you.

Next, always do your best. Even if something feels boring, hard, seems like something beneath you, try your hardest and do it with care.  Do it for God.

Finally, be kind and share. Help be active in the ministries of the parish, prepare a meal for someone in need, or at least simply say something nice to someone.

A big part of Jethro’s story takes place on the “road to Newton”.  Newton is the largest town in Jasper County.

Today, this road is a narrow gravel road that I have been on several times….a narrow gravel road that was bypassed by the highway system and is essentially ignored by the world.  From a certain perspective, we can say Jethro takes the narrow path to Newton.

Saint Isidore also followed a narrow path.  The narrow path of the sacramental life of the Catholic Church.  It is a narrow path that is also ignored by the world, but it is the narrow path that leads us to a life close to God and to our ultimate happiness.  This narrow path includes the Mass and the Sacraments.  This narrow path may not always look exciting, but it is the narrow path that is walked by saints as well as angels.  It is the narrow path that teaches us to live a life where God is King of all the earth.

Thanks be to God!

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Political Pope: Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter (Acts 15:22-31; Psalm 57:8-9, 10 and 12; John 15:12-17)

As I reflected on our Gospel reading today, I could not help but reflect on the current state of our world; and in particular, the state of our country.

Everyday, it seems we are bombarded with noise from polarized sides that contradict love in almost every way.

One side continues to push the extremes of human secularism, sexual and gender liberalism, various forms of fanaticism, and many other “isms” that stand in stark contrast to love of neighbor.

The other side really is not really any better.  Zionism, fundamentalism, dispensationalism, and the like continue to push us into situations that violate the very core of what love is supposed to be.

Both sides allow intrinsic evils to continue to spread practically unchecked.  Calls to let a child live returned with hate and vitriol.  Calls for peace returned with anger and condemnation.  Violence and threats have become the negotiation language of the day for both sides.

Pope Leo recently said “He (God) does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”

Regardless of how our media and our politicians spin this statement out of context, there is a very real truth in our Holy Father’s statement that is worth heeding.

The language of God is love…not anger, not hatred, not threats, not violence, not conflict, not vitriol, not condemnation.

Simply put, God is not going to be found in any of the “isms” that currently define the political landscape of our country.  Ideology and extremism, on both sides, is only going to continue to pull us further away from the Christian core we claim this country was built on.

Often, we hear “The Pope should stay in his own lane”, or “The Church should stay out of politics”, or something else to that effect.  However, statements like these only serve to undermine the true authority of the Catholic Church, which is the Kingdom of God.  These statements only serve undermine the position of the “Al Habayit”, the Roman Pontiff, the prime minister of the Kingdom.  These statements only serve to undermine the role Catholics are to have in the political sphere.

Pope Francis said the following:

• “We, Christians, cannot ‘play Pilate’ and wash our hands…We must participate in politics because politics is one of the highest forms of charity because it seeks the common good. And Christian lay people must work in politics.”
• “However, in these days of hyper-partisanship and ‘cancel culture’ we need to be aware that this “is not easy; politics has become too tainted“.
• “Why has it become tainted? Because Christians have not participated in politics with an (authentic) evangelical spirit”.

The Church, and therefore the Pope, has a responsibility to be the voice of Christ in all aspects of life…including, and perhaps especially, politics.  The Church, and therefore the Pope, has a responsibility to form consciences based on moral principles and guidance.  The Church, and therefore the Pope, has a moral obligation to help society see what is truly just through the lens of faith and natural law.

Catholics must then apply the teachings of the Church to the political sphere.  Lay Catholics must translate Church teaching into concrete legislation and policy.  

As it says in the Catechism:  “Catholics are called to act as ‘salt for the earth’ and ‘light for the nations,’ actively transforming the world by promoting the common good, upholding human dignity (from conception to natural death), and engaging in public life. They are to bring Gospel values into social, economic, and political spheres while living out their faith through love.”

Truly living out our faith through love (especially in politics) is how we will give you thanks among the peoples, O Lord.

Thanks be to God!

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The Way: Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter (Acts 13:26-33; Psalm 2:6-7, 8-9, 10-11ab; John 14:1-6)

Last week, I mentioned we would talk more about Jesus being the way, the truth, and the life today.  I also made a statement that may have come across as rather bold:   The Eucharist is the dividing line of salvation.

We see a sense of this statement reaffirmed in our Gospel reading today:  No one comes to the Father except through Me.

More bold language that comes on the heels of perhaps some of the most shocking statements of all of Salvation History.  I am of course referring to the Bread of Life discourse that you heard throughout last week.

In many ways, it is the Gospel of John (along with the Book of Revelation) that gives us the blueprint for the way Jesus references. The Gospel of John gives us a blueprint for living the Sacramental Life Jesus Christ instituted in the Catholic Church.

As we have said in a recent homily, the Gospel of John is loaded with signs and miracles that are all sacramental in nature.  These are the Sacraments, the Holy Mysteries, as they are referred to in the Eastern Churches, that confer divine grace in our lives.  Ultimately, the Gospel of John reveals the deepest, richest mysteries of our faith!

The Wedding of Cana in Chapter 2 not only foreshadows Holy Matrimony, but strongly eludes to all seven of the Sacraments, particularly through the stone jars used to turn water into wine.

It is in Chapter 3 of the Gospel of John that Jesus stresses the importance of Baptism to Nicodemus.  And, later at Capernaum, as we heard last week in Chapter 6, He stresses the importance of eating the Eucharist, truly the Flesh of the Son of Man.

The promise of the Holy Spirit for the Sacrament of Confirmation is declared by Jesus in Chapter 14, the institution of Holy Orders completed in Chapter 17, and the institution of the Sacrament of Reconciliation in Chapter 20.   Even themes related to Anointing of the Sick can be found throughout the Gospel of John.

What does this mean for us more practically?  The Catechism has this to say:

“Celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify. They are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptizes, he who acts in his sacraments in order to communicate the grace that each sacrament signifies. The Father always hears the prayer of his Son's Church which, in the epiclesis of each sacrament, expresses her faith in the power of the Spirit. As fire transforms into itself everything it touches, so the Holy Spirit transforms into the divine life whatever is subjected to his power.

The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation.  ‘Sacramental grace is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ and proper to each sacrament. The Spirit heals and transforms those who receive him by conforming them to the Son of God. The fruit of the sacramental life is that the Spirit of adoption makes the faithful partakers in the divine nature by uniting them in a living union with the only Son, the Savior.”

All of this to boldly reaffirm that the Sacramental Life of the Catholic Church, particularly the Sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ, is the narrow path of the way.  In every Sacrament, it is ultimately Jesus who acts to sanctify the recipient.

It is through the way, which is the Sacramental Life, that we are made like Him.  The more we are made like Him, the more we participate in His reality…the reality where the Father says, “You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.”

Thanks be to God! 

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Gateway of Salvation: Friday of the Third Week of Easter (Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 117:1bc, 2; John 6:52-59)

To begin to understand the full context of our Gospel reading today, we have to go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve had just eaten of the Tree of Knowledge.  Through their disobedience, our human nature became corrupted.  Our human nature became like a sickness, which symptoms include sin, shame, and death.

As part of His response, God said, “The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil! Now, what if he also reaches out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life, and eats of it and lives forever?”   God then “expelled the man, stationing the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life.”

Now at the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus declares that He will make the Bread of Life, His very Flesh and Blood, available to us as the remedy of, as the medicine for, those symptoms of our fallen humanity.

Let’s look at the correlations a bit more closely.

First the flaming sword, or blade, that blocked the way to the Tree of Life.  It is no accident then that during His sorrowful passion, the heart of Jesus Christ was pierced by a blade or spear…sometimes, by the way, referred to as the Spear of Destiny.

The instrument that blocked the way to eternal life, then used to pierce the heart of Jesus Christ.  In the process, opening up the way.   Making it possible for the Blood of Jesus Christ and the Fire of the Holy Spirit to flow out from the side of Christ into the Sacramental Life of the Catholic Church for our salvation.

Jesus is indeed the way, the truth, and the life.  The Cross is the Tree of Life and He is the fruit of eternal life.  The Sacramental Life of the Catholic Church (particularly the Mass) is our gateway, the gateway once blocked by the Seraphim, but now opened by Jesus Christ for us to feed on Him in order for us to have true life because of Him and live forever in Him.

The heart of Jesus Christ is of course the Flesh of the Son of Man…the same Flesh we consume through the Eucharist.  What God once barred mankind from eating during the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Jesus now commands us to believe and eat.  

Similar to Protestants and other non-Catholics today, the Jews chose not to believe.  “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”

Jesus gave the only response that He could.  He doubled down in a way only Jesus can.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you.”

As Saint Paul will later capture Jesus saying in his first letter to the Corinthians, “This cup (referring to the Eucharist) is the new covenant in my blood”.

The Eucharist is the New Covenant.  The Eucharist is the dividing line of salvation.  

That was a hard teaching for the Jews, almost literally all of His disciples left him.  That was a hard teaching for the Protestant reformers, as they left the Eucharist to follow their own theological musings as we discussed in a recent homily.  That is a hard teaching for many Catholics that do not believe in the real presence.

In our first reading, Jesus said Saint Paul is a “chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before Gentiles”.  The reality is that each of us are chosen instruments to carry not only the name of Jesus Christ out into the world around us, but also to carry the promise of John chapter 6 out into the world around us.

We are chosen instruments to reunite all the children of God into the Sacramental Life of the Catholic Church, which is the world reconciled and restored.

We are chosen instruments to go out to all the world and tell the Good News.

Thanks be to God!

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Bad Interpretations, Good Intentions: Friday of the Second Week of Easter (Acts 5:34-42; Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14; John 6:1-15)

It is not uncommon to encounter an interpretation of today’s Gospel reading to be nothing more than an simple act of sharing.  No miracle.  No sacramental grace.  No act of divinity.

Their position is that the willingness of the boy to share his five barley loaves and two fish moved others in the crowd to come forward to admit they too had food and had became willing to share it with others. From their perspective, the real miracle was not in any sort of multiplication of loaves, but rather in simply caring.

In reality, this relatively recent theological invention serves only to justify their own theology while attempting to discredit the Catholic Church and ultimately undermine the Sacramental Life instituted by Jesus Christ.

I am sure to deep dive some of these concepts in future homilies.  For now, there are three key points to keep in mind when understanding the true context of this reading compared to the popular non-Catholic interpretation that I mentioned.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus makes it very clear the crowd has nothing to eat.  There is no possible way that a few people in the crowd could have been hoarding enough food to feed many thousand people.

Watering down the Gospel to a simple act of caring and sharing simply is not a true interpretation of Scripture and it completely ignores what Jesus said.

Further, whenever we see descriptions of signs and superabundance, particularly in the Gospel of John, we should immediately think of sacramental, supernatural miracles.

Saint John makes it very clear people “saw the sign”.  They saw the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish.  They saw the superabundance that resulted from the miracle.

When we come to Mass, we are privileged to see the sign (albeit, with eyes of faith).  We are privileged to see the Holy Spirit come down upon bread and wine like the dewfall so that simple bread and wine will become the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Contained in that little wafer is the infinity of God.  Contained in that little wafer is the superabundance of grace for our salvation and sanctification.

Finally, Saint John interrupts his story to make it clear that the Feast of the Passover is near.  Therefore, the context of this Multiplication of the Loaves is the Passover.

Non-Catholics often generally this, but the Passover is actually the overriding context of all of Scripture.  This means the Mass and the Eucharist (the fulfillment of the Passover) is the overriding context of all of Scripture.  

When we separate Scripture from the Mass and the Sacramental Life, we are going to get bad interpretations like the one I mentioned at the start of this homily.

When we come to Mass, we come like the crowd in our reading.  We come without the comforts of life.  We come hungry.  We come ready to listen to the Word of God.  We come ready to see and receive the sign of our faith.  We come with the intention of living out the Sacramental Life of His Church.  We come open to receiving superabundant grace through the Eucharist.

We come because of the one thing we seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord.  

Thanks be to God!

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