Homily for The Immaculate Conception

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with a craving for applesauce? We have tastes that we’ve had all our lives. It turns out that the food our mothers ate while we were in the womb helps determine our preferences. There were some studies where one group of expectant mothers were given a bunch of carrots and asked to eat some every day for nine months. The other group of mothers was asked to avoid carrots. After the babies were born, they were all fed mushed carrots. The children whose mothers ate carrots smiled and happily ate the carrots. The children whose mothers did not eat carrots frowned and pushed away the strange-tasting new food. We learn a lot from our parents.

So it is a little sad to look at the portrait of our first parents, Adam and Eve. There is shame, a feeling that no one wants to feel. They hide from God, the one person no one should ever need to hide from. In their dialogue with God they show their sinful pride, and in their denials of responsibility, they learn how to lie. God carries on the dialogue in a similar tone; there are curses and punishments for their transgression. This is our family inheritance. We inherited original sin from Adam and Eve; we have commited our own personal sins after their example. We find ourselves wrestling with desires we do not want. We doubt the plain truth that should be obvious. And we fall into false habits of thinking wrongly. 

If we were in God’s position, it might be tempting to give up, to start all over again. Maybe God should have destroyed our free will. But instead, God has a better plan to reverse the curse of Adam and Eve. 

We see the portrait of Mary, our new mother, mother of the Church. She has the kind of spiritual wisdom of someone who has suffered the very worst of what humanity has to offer. But Mary is young and innocent, as she is a woman of paradox, virgin and mother, sinless but saved. Mary’s portrait is a mirror image of Adam and Eve. Instead of shame before God, Mary sits innocently at prayer. Not hiding from God, Mary is fully present to her Lord. She is not proud, though she alone has reason to boast; she is humble. She does not deny God’s plan, but she accepts it. And God responds; in place of curses and punishment, Mary receives benediction upon  benediction and blessing.

She is able to be so holy because she was conceived immaculately, protected from the first moment of her existence, surrounded as with a shield, a halo of holiness. No corruption from the world could touch her. She has been preserved from inheriting original sin, and by a singular grace, she never fell into personal sin throughout her life. All this was given her because God knew that she would say Yes, that Christ would be born, and that Christ’s suffering on the Cross would earn for Mary the same merit that brings us salvation.

How beautiful, our mother. She is the ideal disciple, the perfect follower of Christ that we so deeply long to become. She SEES the presence of God in everyone. She does what is right and good, having received the infused virtues that make her capable of living the holiest of human lives. She is at peace, in the Garden with her God.

She was preserved from sin so that her yes would mean yes. So that when the angel announced to her the good news, she could say yes, completely, absolutely, never wavering, never pulling back from the divine embrace. Her Yes enables Christ to join the divine and human nature in his own person.

This is poetry. Eve was born of Adam’s side, and the new Adam is born of the womb of the new Eve. The Church then is born from the wounded side of Christ on the cross, where blood and water flowed out. Mary is mother of God, and Mary is the Church.

What of this Church? This church, the chapel we are in, is cold, and half empty. The beautiful ikon of the Immaculate Conception is no longer here, although her statue remains. The sacristy was emptied of chalices and chasubles. Even the tabernacle was emptied during the summer when no one lived here. They put up extra doors around the first floor of the building, to keep people away. I’ve been through it, and the whole building is a mess; there is debris and junk lying everywhere.

The building is a symbol of the Church in Belgium, the Church in the US, and the Church in the whole western world. We are bruised and shaken. We are reduced in prestige and influence. Due to the sins of our members, especially the clergy and the hierarchy, good people easily doubt the truth of the Church, which they once easily believed. We are threatened with irrelevance, and the truth we teach goes unheeded. So many things have been taken from us. 

There is one thing that was not taken, however. They left behind a blessing that is more original than the Eucharist. This blessing hearkens back to the moments before God created the world. Silence remained here, the sacred silence in which God dwells.

This church is like a wounded soldier taken from the battlefield and allowed to rest in a hospital bed. In rest and silence, she begins to heal. You and I are here again celebrating the Eucharist in this chapel. A group of priests and lay students moved into the fifth floor. Slowly this chapel is coming back to life.

This happens because it doesn’t ultimately depend on us. There is nothing anyone on earth could ever do to destroy the Church. The Church is indefectibly and unfailingly holy. No matter what sins are commited by her members, the Church is holy, because God loves his spouse. God loves his bride, and he has entrusted her with the great treasury of his truth and his sacraments. God’s love and his gifts make us holy.

This is true of the Church, it is true of us. We disagree with Luther and Calvin; we are not totally depraved. There is a part of us that always and forever remains holy, immaculate, that no sin can destroy or corrupt. That is the silence in our souls, the Holy of Holies, where God dwells.

Let us thank God for holiness that does not depend on us.

Solemnity of All Saints

Men and women and children lying in a bed of pain. Widows, widowers and orphans of natural disaster. Peaceful protestors persecuted by police. And millions and millions of modern day martyrs. These are the men and women whom Christ calls blessed. And if we look with the eyes of faith, we may see how they are blessed even now in their suffering. For God has redeemed human suffering through Christ. But Christ promises more than present blessedness. Christ promises future, glorious, eternal blessedness in heaven. Our journey to heaven is long and dangerous. Our road may bend so far off course that we want to give up.

A woman stopped me on the street and asked if it is permissible for catholics to be cremated. I wondered why she was asking. She told me that she has had back pain for years, and that she has become addicted to her pain medication. This addiction put her in years-long depression. She said her body betrayed her. And she wanted it to burn.

I told her this is the only reason that catholics should not be cremated, out of anger and spite for their bodies. We are all eventually broken. And tomorrow we will commemorate those whose bodies lie in the dust of death. But today we celebrate that our bodies are sanctified by Christ who chose to become incarnated in a body like ours. And our bodies are destined for glorious resurrection. The journey is long, but we have help.

We have help in the great company of saints. This is a truly Christian doctrine, for our God is no concept, but a person, a community of persons. And again by the incarnation, we are all of us baptized, and the whole world we hope, knitted together into the Body of Christ. So we become part of the Godhead in the person of Christ! The body of Christ is a many faced and many splendored thing. 

The communion of saints is not only the love and unity that the saints in heaven share with God and each other. It is also communion of the saints with us, the Church on earth. And we are in communion with the suffering souls in purgatory. Grace flows through the Church like blood through the body; grace comes from heaven to revive the members of the body of Christ that have been bruised or broken.

If you have a headache, you can ask St Theresa of Avila for help. For anxiety and mental problems, look to St Dymphna. If you are a student or a teacher, ask St Thomas Aquinas for wisdom. If you are suffering poverty, ask St Macrina. If you are a lost cause, or you know a lost cause, go to the Apostle Jude. And if you are caught in a storm, which is likely tonight, ask St Scholastica for help.

Did you know that the first successful blood transfusion wasn’t between two persons? In 1667 a british doctor took blood from a lamb and gave it to a sick boy, and the boy lived. It is a great coincidence, or no coincidence at all, that he should have been saved by the blood of a lamb. The blood that flows through the Body of Christ is the blood of the lamb. We have the life of the sacraments to help us on our way to heaven. We have help, and so we have hope.

We hope for heaven! There is only one sacrament in heaven. We have no need of reconciliation, for we will all be reconciled to God. Nor are we married, in the earthly sense, because each of us will be wedded to the Lamb of God. And each of us shares in priesthood, either the priesthood of all the baptized, or the ministerial priesthood of the clergy. And everyone is baptized and adopted into Christ. Nor is there need for the anointing of the sick, because there is no more sickness, pain or death. But there is the Eucharist.

When I try to imagine heaven, this banquet of the lamb, I immediately think of Jan van Eyck’s Lammsgot in Ghent. And I wonder, what if this were painted not in a Flemish hillside, but here in the town of Leuven. Leuven is a wonderful setting to imagine the heavenly Jerusalem. We already have the altar in the center of the city, and there the slain but living lamb would preside. But the walls of St Pieter’s would have to be expanded, stretched out beyond the ring road. Because there is no special place set aside for worship, the whole city is the Temple of God. You can see the cooks from Alma dropping their serving spoons and falling on their knees in adoration. You can see the professors opening their mouths in awe before the Lamb, and students, no matter what subject they study, finding the fullness of truth and wisdom in this worship!

There is no disruptive repair work, since everything is already perfect. There is no need for police, because there is no crime. And every room is sound proof, so we can get sleep through the students revelling at night. Saint Lucy is there, with her eyes back in their sockets. And John the Baptist, too, with his head re-attached. And children who suffered polio, they are jumping and running through the streets. The depressed and the anxious join the angels as they sing for joy for all eternity. 

This liturgy is here, it happens here, around this altar, as the heavenly liturgy joins to earth. We adore the Lamb, in communion with all the saints.

The Greatest Commandment

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

The Lord be with you! – And with your spirit!

A reading from the Holy Gospel, according to Matthew – Glory to you, O Lord.

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law tested him by asking,
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

The Gospel of the Lord. – Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Everyone wants to know.  What is the ONE THING that explains everything else?  

In two days the Catholic University of Leuven will host a public lecture by the most renowned physicist of our day.  Stephen Hawking has titled his lecture, the Origin of the Universe.  He is sure to draw a large crowd.  Everyone wants to know.  What is the ONE THING that explains everything else?  

Physics is where many intelligent people look for truth, since indeed physics gets at some of the most fundamental realities of the universe.  But if you follow physics at all, you know that physics faces a crisis, and it's been unsolved for close to a century.  First, you have the world of everyday objects, like apples, billiard balls, and planets.  Sir Isaac Newton applied his fantastic mind to understanding the laws that undergird our everyday world.  Inertia, acceleration, gravity; we know how these things affect the world around us.  We can mathematically determine, to an astonishing degree, exactly what is going on, and what will happen next.  

But then complexity and chaos intervened.  Looking beyond the visible world, entering the atomic, subatomic, and sub-subatomic level, all our classical laws break down.  In the strange world of quantum mechanics things are not what they seem.  One particle may be in two or more locations at once.  Particles communicate with each other faster than the speed of light.  Particles are actually waves; and wave are actually strings.  And everything exists in ten dimensions.  

But which theory is the actually correct one, which theory is true?  Physicists dream of a unified theory of everything.  One law that explains the rest.  And in that way, physicists and Pharisees are twins separated at birth.  The world of the Pharisee is the Bible; the Law of Moses, the books of the prophets, and the wisdom writings.  The Law of God covers everyday contingencies.  Do not oppress foreigners, since you used to be foreigners in a foreign land; do not extort money through super-high interest rates, or you will become poor.  The world of Law is familiar; cause and effect, merit and punishment.  Then you have another world, the world underneath the Law: the world of the prophets where up is down, sinners get off scott-free, and the just man suffers death.  We know these two worlds, too.  The world outside, where time is money, money is power, and power is god.  And there is the world inside, the world inside the Church, where 'sorry' works miracles, bread and wine are flesh and blood, and you and I are precious and holy before God.  But we live in both worlds, each of us, and life is confusing and contradictory.

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus, which verse of Scripture is the most important?  What single lesson do I need in order to understand everything else?  Jesus in his mercy gives his answer.  You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart. 

I have heard too many people warn me that Love is not a feeling; love is a choice, a matter of the will, not of the heart.  But Jesus quotes Moses' command, which came from the LORD:  Love with your whole heart; hole kardia.  In my own life I know that my will is so often not enough; if my heart isn't in it, it's not happening.  It's like getting up in the morning.  What's your reason for getting out of bed?  Is it because your internalized authority figure is yelling at you in your head, or because your heart is in it, and you love your life?  Both motivations will work, but which would you prefer?  

Now, loving God with your whole heart changes you, or so I've glimpsed in the sweetest moments of prayer.  Falling in love with God feels much the same as falling in love with anyone, which makes sense because our God is personal.  What happens when you fall in love?  I think we should ask our newlyweds.  Isn't it like carrying your beloved with you wherever you go, whatever you do?  Even when you are not with the beloved, you think about them all the time.  At first it's all you can think about.  That is loving with your whole mind.  As love matures we don't think any less about the beloved, we simply grow so adept at thinking about them that it happens automatically, like breathing.  The beloved is inside us no matter how far away they may actually be.  The proof comes, sadly, at death.  When a beloved is lost to physical death, the lover undergoes all the throes of falling in love all over again.  The beloved is in your face, and for a long time you can't do anything because this person is all you see, all you feel, all you know.  Widows and widowers never forget the beloved; grief ministry works when the lovely face that has haunted, (or rather 'inspired' is a better word that means the same thing), when the lovely face that has inspired us for so long settles down and moves to our side, then mourners can continue in their lives, with a new sense of their beloved's constant presence.  Love demands our whole heart, whole mind, and whole soul; if it demands less than all of us, it is not love worthy of God.  

But Jesus has more to say.  He answered the biggest question, What is the ONE THING that explains everything else; or rather, What is the ONE THING that makes life worth living?  The answer is love.  But we are a complicated sort of people, and somehow it is possible to be a good person and yet never love.  It is possible to go to mass every day of your life, devote half the day to prayer and meditation, submit to a spiritual father or mother, and yet not know the love of God.  Sad, and true.  But Jesus has more to say.  

Not one law, but two.  Not a simple answer, but a deeply simple answer that cuts through all mendacity and legalism.  It may be possible to fool ourselves that we love God, when truly we've never escaped the confines of our ego.  But, by grace, it is impossible to love your neighbor in the nitty gritty of life, and not to grow step by step into the image of God in which we were created.  No first-time dad has walked away the same old kid after changing his first diaper!  No righteous newly-ordained has maintained his arrogance in the face of his first penitent!  And no pompous little princess has withheld her tears from a friend who was weeping!  

Love subverts legalism.  Love overturns pride.  Love complicates life, but love brings us face to face with the ONE THING, the ONE PERSON who understands, undergirds, supports, inspires, and loves absolutely every person!  

Love is the answer.