Homily - 2nd Sunday of Easter & Divine Mercy Sunday

Acts 5:12–16
Revelation 1:9–11a, 12–13, 17–19
John 20:19–31

Poor Thomas! He comes in for bad press by most of us. We have labeled him “doubting Thomas”. That, of course, is our interpretation. It is not a general characteristic of him at all. In an earlier chapter, he calls on his fellow disciples to go up to Jerusalem to die with Jesus. In the narrative of the gospel, Thomas is the one who ends up making the clearest affirmation of faith in Jesus: “My Lord and my God.” In this he is not unlike Peter in the other gospels.

I wonder if Thomas is no different than most of us. All he wants to do is see and touch, touch above all. After all, if someone told us, “We have seen the Lord” and left it at that, we might be a bit skeptical too. Thomas wants to touch but what it is it he wants to touch? He wants to touch the wounds of the Lord. He wants to touch the crucified one; he wants to be sure that what his fellow disciples have “seen” is truly the man who suffered, was wounded and was put to death. He does not want and does not need a ghost, a figment of their imagination and hopes and dreams. Thomas’ skepticism and doubt is not bad. It makes all the difference in the world. Is it the same Jesus who was led away with a cross and whose side and hands were pierced in for our sakes that is now glorified? Can a wounded and pierced person be victorious over suffering and death? Can he be wounded and yet free from its pain? How are wounds glorious?

Thomas’ issue is not just about the certainty of the glory of the one who was lifted up on the cross. Perhaps a bigger issue or a concurrent issue is that of the word of his fellow disciples. He is not satisfied with their word about their experience. He wants his own personal experience as well. He wants no intermediary between the risen Lord and himself. The community of the disciples is not sufficient for him. He must know for himself. If there is doubt in Thomas, the doubt is in the word of the community. He is not ready to trust the word of those who had the experience of the Teacher.

Thomas is indicative of the second generation of Christians. They did not have any personal, bodily experience of Jesus. They came to know him solely through the word of those who did experience him in the flesh. They have the word of the first generation: their word, their memories, their stories and the signs that the Teacher left behind. The second generation faith does not come from having been there and seen what happened; they came to believe through the word of the initial disciples. The second generation Christian will not see Jesus. Are we not like the second generation Christian? We have never been there with Jesus, seen him, touched him, heard his wonderful words.

Jesus offers us his final beatitude today: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.” This beatitude is not to the first generation but to those of us who are at the receiving end of the word of other believers. We believe because others believe.

In the initial scene of today’s gospel, it is the first day of the week, the day of resurrection, the day of creation. On that first day, Jesus creates the new community that will now carry him and his word out to the world, physically and in time. I say Jesus creates because it is clear he breathes on them the Holy Spirit. He breathes on them as the spirit first blew over waters of chaos. Here the breath is on a fearful community sealed off in defense from the outside world. Or it is like the breath of the prophet Ezekiel over the dead bones of Israel which gives them new life and makes them stand up again. The disciples are given new life from the Master’s breath of Spirit. The locked doors and walls of the upper room cannot hinder the power of the Spirit.

This spirit-made community is then endowed with two gifts, the first of which is peace. Shalom means a sense of harmony and right order among them, a harmony that comes not from within but from the power of the cross and the gift of the Father. This is a community of shalom living in a world of disharmony and fear. But this community knows its Teacher and knows it is loved by the Father. But now the community must conform itself to the relationship between Jesus and the Father. It must be sent; it is apostolic. It goes not with its own message and power but with that of the Father. The community’s purpose is to reveal to the world that God’s word and Spirit are still creating and calling together. The community Jesus breathes into existence is one that breathes peace into a world of brokenness and fear. Its greeting must always be: “Peace be with you!”

The second gift the Risen Lord gives is empowerment to bring God’s forgiveness into people’s lives. The community lives so that God’s mercy is always offered. When the community is preaching and living forgiveness, then the new world of resurrection can be touched and felt. Forgiveness is about bringing people and broken relationships together. When broken relationships are reconciled and healed, that can be seen and touched. It can be relationships on the big screen as when conflicting parties within a nation come together, speak the truth about their hurts and are reconciled. It can be as close as healing a relationship between a parent and a child after many years of misunderstanding and rejection.

Thomas so much wanted to touch: a love that was willing to become a sacrifice, a love laid down for others. But that is exactly what the risen Lord empowers his fearful disciples to be and do. We want to see and touch. These are so basic to being human. But we can touch the risen Jesus. We can touch and feel peace in our lives and in our community. We can see and touch when forgiveness is at work as a principle for human relationships. Perhaps we need to believe that when we are touched by peace and forgiveness, no matter how fragile its form, we are in reality touching the risen Lord alive and working in the world.

Thomas’ doubt is really a reminder to us to trust in the word of the community that the lord is alive and conquered death. And Thomas is a reminder to us to keep wanting to reach out and touch, touch where love has been poured out; to touch where words have brought about reconciliation, healing and peace. And Thomas is a reminder that in the end our faith is rather simple: My Lord and my God to the one who loved us to the end and by dying made all things one.

Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

Homily - Easter Vigil-2019

Our Prior, Fr. Joel Macul shares his thoughts for the Easter Vigil homily:

Gn 1:1–2:2, Gn 22:1-18
Ex14:15–15:1, Is 54:5–14, Ex 55:1–11
Ez 36:16–17a, 18–28
Rom 6:3–11
Luke 24:1–12

We have just heard the story of the myrrh-bearing women. They come to the tomb as new light is dawning. But their experience, at first, is anything but a new dawn. It is all negative; it is an experience of absence. Where is the body? The body of the Lord is not there. That is what they have come for. They have come to complete the work of burial. Their reaction is one of puzzlement, they don’t  understand. Just as at the birth of the Jesus angels spoke to bewildered shepherds the good news of a birth, so now two angels announce the victory of God over death: “He is not here, he has been raised.” And this proclamation is followed immediately by the angels’ summons to remember. “Remember what he told you…”

In other gospels we hear the angels send the women back to the apostles with the good news of risen life and to tell the apostles to go back to Galilee to see Jesus there. But that is not what Luke would have us do. We don’t go to some familiar place to see Jesus. The angels send us back to memory. There Jesus lives and there we will hear what he has to say, not about the past but about where new life is now.

Our activity these past three days have been about memory or anamnesis. That is the goal and purpose of keeping Passover. On Thursday night we heard the Lord tell Moses that eating the Passover lamb each year was a memorial feast of when the Lord passed over the community, not killing them because the blood marked them as belonging to the Lord. The blood of the lamb became the symbol of life. Eating this meal each year would bring the saving act of that first lamb to bear on the present life of the community. We heard that Jesus took bread and shared it as his body and took a cup and said it was a new covenant in his blood. Each time he gave the command: “Do this in remembrance of me.” And so we take bread and a cup as his body and blood and keep his memory. The power of his body given up for us and his blood poured out as forgiveness is as real for us today as it was the day he gave the command to remember him this way.

The memory we are keeping these days is not just a repeat of some past action, it is a bringing the past forward to touch and change our lives today. We have not been on a walk done on memory lane these days. We are remembering because in these actions and words lie the meaning of our lives as our God has given it to us and worked it for us. At that same supper table of Passover, Jesus washed disciples’ feet. He became their servant. And the command: when you do the same to one another, you are connected to me and you will find your identity. When you lay down lives for one another, then I am not in a tomb waiting for burial rites, but am alive among you and my way is alive among you. I am indeed risen and visible. To remember the words and actions of Jesus is to know him now in the present and to bring him alive into our world and time.

Hopefully, this vigil our memories have awakened in story and in prophetic words and images. The creation story is not heard in nostalgia. Creation is happening now, we are there and creation is here: light is bursting out of darkness and the victory is that darkness cannot overcome it. Tonight, standing around the fire, we have captured, as it were, this primal light of creation and recognized it as the risen Christ. We carried him as the Passover candle and proclaimed victory and gathered around him in this light. We have remembered that he is light now in the midst of many a shadow of death that threatens so much of the human family in form of division, separation, violence, economic unbalance. We are people who are at the first dawn and see the light spreading gently and believe it can transform the world. Remembering that enables us to see and name light where others only name despair, brokenness, paralysis, blindness and death.

The women at the tomb were called to remember. Remember what he told you about himself, about the whole story of being handed over, crucified and then raised. Remember his words and with them remember the whole story. It is easy for us to cut short the words of Jesus, cut short his story. We are remembering tonight so that we will remain in his word and not cut out a word or cut short any of his story and his life. Jesus will be alive for us today and any day when we remember, when his word and life stand in front us as the new life, the new creation, a living hope. The faithful women were treating Jesus as over. Their challenge to us is precisely to see that Jesus is not over, not in the past, but living ahead of us.

Resurrection is the future. Remembrance, what looks at first sight like going into the past, is needed so that the future is grounded and rooted in the risen Lord who once lived among us but now is raised so that what he lived, we might live in our time: loving the stranger, speaking gently, taking a hand to lift up the weary, standing by those who have no voice, not being afraid of those who don’t like to hear about offering the other cheek, and lastly remaining faithful, like father Abraham, to the God of the covenant, in the face of all insecurities all alternatives that pull us away from the source of life.

You see, the transforming moment for the women, was no longer to be anointing the body of the dead. Their moment of transformation came, Luke says, in remembering Jesus’ words. In that moment of transformation brought about by memory/anamnesis, they became messengers of good news, like the two angels in the tomb. In their remembering, they allowed Jesus to be the interpreter of what was at first perplexing and incomprehensible.

What of us? Have our memories been awakened this Passover Triduum so that when we leave here, we will go out into a new way of life beyond imagining because Jesus’ words have transformed our hearts and made them Spirit filled? Will we allow Jesus to interpret our lives in all their moments, but especially those that seem a dead end? Our remembrance of Jesus’ death and resurrection, his Passover, wants to work its way into our very self so that all we see and do are grounded in the power of a love that calls forth life, freedom, forgiveness and peace.

Christ is risen, alleluia!   He is truly risen, alleluia!

Laetare Sunday-4th Sunday of Lent-2019

Joshua 5:9a, 10–12
2 Corinthians 5:17–21
Luke 15:1–3, 11–32

Jesus was a prophet. The reading of Luke’s gospel makes this clear. As a prophet, Jesus was the kind of person who liked to challenge your way of thinking. If you thought reality was to be seen this way, he was almost certain to have another. What made it hard was that Jesus was not talking about opinion. Jesus claimed that his way of looking at things and his actions were none other than God’s way of seeing things and God’s way of acting in the world and with its people. What Jesus was challenging then and today was how God was to be understood and where he was to be experienced.

The action that the prophet Jesus offers us today is that of eating a meal. But the revealing part of this meal is not the kind of food but the kind of people he eats it with. Jesus eats with sinners. Jesus eats with those at the edge, those ‘not worthy.’

When we eat with someone, we do more than share in the food he or she has prepared for us. The food is more than just a bodily necessity that satisfies hunger. This shared food is really a symbol for lives shared. To eat with someone means to make yourself open to the other person. In sharing a meal with someone, you are involving yourself in communion. Not only do you share yourself with other people, but they are sharing themselves with you. Communion is a two way process. There is risk and delight on both sides.

When Jesus eats with sinners, as Luke tells us today, this means he is identifying with them. Not only is he sharing his life of forgiveness with them, but he is involving himself in their life of sin. In sharing a meal with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus makes a statement about who God is and how he wants to be. Jesus is revealing the way in which God loves us. What Jesus is saying in his simple act of eating is that God’s rightful place is at the table of sinful human kind. Our God is a God who invites humanity to a new way of life by sitting down at table with us and sharing in our food. The person we share our food with brings with him or her a new way of seeing ourselves, of accepting ourselves. When Jesus sits with sinners, he brings a new way of life with him. Accepting Jesus at the table means that the sinner leaves himself or herself open to the way of life that Jesus offers. In the act of eating with sinners, Jesus not only shares in the life of the sinner at the table but the sinner shares in the way of life that God is offering in Jesus. Food is shared, yes, but in the food lives are shared, are given over one to another.

Jesus tells a story, a parable, to illustrate his point. We like to see ourselves as the youngest son who comes to his senses when he hits bottom (eating with the pigs is pretty much the bottom).We take our cue of who God is by focusing on the loving father. We make sure that we have this father run down the road to greet us. The welcome of the father captures our emotions. But that is not the clincher of the story. Jesus does more than welcome sinners; he eats with them. The father in the parable does more than embrace and kiss his younger son after he has wasted his inheritance. He wants a meal to celebrate with him and for him.

It is not enough for the younger son to say, “I’m sorry.” The father must have a meal before the reconciliation is complete. All is not healed between father and son until the fattened calf is prepared and the music and dancing begin. For Jesus, the essence of conversion or repentance was accepting a God who would eat with the sinner and in this eating offer and celebrate a new way of life. The father is not satisfied until the younger son accepts from his father a meal and so opens the way to a new life.

You see, the younger son wanted to be treated by his father as a hired worker. He wanted to give up his identity as son and eat with the workers. But the father refuses to allow the younger son to give up his identity. And to make his point, he will have a meal worthy of a son.

These are not actions and stories from the past. This act of God eating with sinners and sinners finding a new identity through this God who shares a meal with them is happening right now. Right now we are hearing the story about a God who risks all to eat with his sinful people. Very soon now the meal will become a reality for us too. The Risen Jesus will offer us food again. He does not offer us a meal because we are worthy or pure or clean or have got our lives straightened out. He offers us food because we have heard of him and come to listen to him; he offers us a simple meal because he knows we are sinners struggling to find our way. Jesus joins our meal and transforms it so that when we are through eating we will be a new people with a new identity in him. Or as Paul says today, we will be a new creation. This very morning God is not only embracing us and holding us as his own, he is offering us a meal that brings him and us together in the intimacy that sharing food holds within it. On the way to death, to walk into the depths of sin, Jesus leaves us a meal with him not because we are his best followers. Better he leaves us this meal so that we will remember that when we are lost, broken, estranged, afraid and without identity, he is there in the sharing of bread and wine to say you are still children of God, human beings in his image.

If we find ourselves among those broken people, those sinners, the dissipated younger son, even perhaps the self-righteous older son, then the Eucharist is for us. Jesus comes to the table. To us Jesus says, “I am not afraid to share and live your brokenness, your death. I will eat your food. And you, take my food, and find in it the way to wholeness, the way of love, the way of healing. When we eat together in this way, then truly God and humanity are made whole. This is why I have come: that we, the Father, the Son and all the Father’s children, may eat together and sing and dance to the original rhythm of love and fidelity.”

Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

Homily - 2nd Sunday of Lent-2019

Inspirational words by our own Fr. Thomas Leitner. His homily for the 2nd Sunday of Lent:

Lk 9:28-36 Gen 15:5-12.17-18
Phil 3:17 – 4:1

Focus: The transfiguration story shows us Jesus’ Divine glory.

Function: It is a consolation for us, as it was for his first disciples, for the times in the valley, the times of pain and of hardship.

My sisters and brothers in Christ,

In movie theaters and on television, we so often see previews of new movies or TV shows. These usually aren’t sufficient for us to understand fully what this movie or show is all about. But they sometimes arouse our interest and stir our desire to see more of the movie or show.

Today’s gospel is a preview of a very special kind. To Peter, John and James, Jesus’ Easter glory is revealed. In Luke’s gospel, it’s only on two occasions that Jesus asks a group of disciples to go with him to a particular place for prayer: here on mountain of transfiguration, which is usually identified as Mt. Tabor, and later in the Garden of Gethsemani.

The Tabor experience happens just at the right time for the disciples. It is a preparation for things to come. Jesus ministry in Galilee is almost over. He has made the first prediction of his passion. In the passage preceding the transfiguration story, Jesus points out to the disciples for the first time that whoever wishes to come after him must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow him. After our passage, Jesus starts his journey to Jerusalem.

The topic of the three persons’ conversation in the vision is Jesus’ exodus, which he is going to accomplish in Jerusalem. The Greek word ‘ex-hodos’ means ‘way out.’ It is the way out of the city and up the hill of Golgotha. But the Exodus is, at the same time, the people of Israel’s way out of Egyptian slavery through the Red Sea’s dangerous waters into freedom. The word ‘exodus’ here points to the whole Paschal mystery: the one once in Egypt and the new one that is going to enfold now: it is a way through death to life.

Moses and Elijah are great O.T. persons who show something about who Jesus was and about what he did. Moses was the lawgiver; Jesus brought a new law of love to God and neighbor. Elijah was the greatest O.T. prophet; Jesus surpassed the prophets’ message by proclaiming God’s special love and care for the poor.

The whole experience is overwhelming. Peter is confused; he wants to build booths like at the festival of Tabernacles; he wants the feast to endure. But the vision ends—still God’s presence, indicated by the cloud, continues. God’s voice from the cloud makes Jesus known as God’s chosen Son and summons the disciples to listen to him.

The season of Lent is an invitation to follow Jesus more closely. It’s a time of repentance and conversion, but also of accepting anew the salvation and redemption that come from God through Jesus Christ. Like Peter, John and James, we, too, need Tabor in order to be able to endure Gethsemani and Golgotha.

Dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, the transfiguration story reveals to us Jesus Divine glory. It’s a consolation for us, as it was for his first disciples, for the times in the valley, for times of pain and of hardship.

This Sunday is a good opportunity to recall the Tabor hours of our life. Most of us can remember moments when we felt God’s closeness in a special way, during a retreat or worship service may be, or when a child was born, or during a mountain hike.

Of course, there were also other times, times when we, in one way or the other, had a share in Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and in his way of the cross.

In order to experience God’s closeness we need, like Peter, John and James, prayer times in the company of Jesus, personal prayer times, but also times of communal worship. The center of the Church’s communal prayer is the celebration of the Eucharist, where Jesus is really present, where we can listen to him, to his word, and where he strengthens us with his body and blood.

Indeed, Tabor hours are necessary in order to stir our interest in heaven and to keep our hope for it alive. “Our citizenship is in heaven.” “The cross and the bearing of the cross we can accept only if we know that they are not the destination and the end, but just the way in order to reach the glory,” one spiritual author writes. The waiting period of this earthly life … can only be endured if we know that Christ—and we with him—have to suffer in order to so enter into his glory.” AMEN.

Fr. Thomas Leitner, OS

Homily - 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time-2019

For the past 4 ½ years I have been living and working in our Abbey in Germany. A large part of what I did there was working with Refugees.

One day one of the refugees asked me, “why do you help us even though we aren’t Christians”? I asked, “why do you think we help”? He was quiet for a long while and then said, “because we are all children of God”? “Yes”, I said, “and because Jesus told us to help those who cannot help us, and do to others as we want done to us. We are to be compassionate and merciful as Allah (God) is merciful and compassionate.”

In the Gospel today Jesus gives us this exact command. He turns everything we think we know upside down and tells us to turn the other cheek, love those who do not love us, not to judge, and to be merciful and forgive.

We like to think we are a Christian country, but all you need to do is turn on the news to see that we are often FAR from being followers of Christ.

If you are shocked or uncomfortable with Jesus words you are not alone. His listeners would have been shocked as well. The Jews at the time were a conquered people. There were foreign soldiers (Romans) all over their country and people were burdened with taxes by a foreign king.

The Greek word used here for love is agape. It does NOT mean a romantic love, or liking someone, or even friendship love.

What Jesus is talking about is a whole-hearted, unreserved, unconditional desire for the well-being of the other person.

We might not like some of their behaviors. We might disagree with what they stand for, but to love those we do not like or disagree with will be to disagree with them in such a way that we still desire their well-being.

Jesus tells us we are to do good! What does that mean? That means to do well by others. It means to be just, to do the right thing, even if we do not like them or think they are bad. It means to be honorable, a trait that seems to have lost its importance.

Jesus tell us to - STOP JUDGING! I took some training over the past few years in Spiritual Direction. If you are going to help people in the spiritual life you have to learn your own weaknesses. I used to think I was a pretty open guy. I found out that I can be quite the judging guy. Not a pretty thing to see when you look in the mirror, but a good start to healing and living the Lord’s command not to judge.

Jesus also tells us to be merciful as God is Merciful. If you have never been shown mercy it might be hard to know what that is.

So what does it mean to be merciful? When I googled it I got this answer: Forgiving, compassionate, gracious, lenient, pitying, humane, mild, softhearted, tenderhearted, kind, kindly, sympathetic, patient, humanitarian, liberal, easygoing, tolerant, generous, benevolent etc.

Being merciful might be what some today would call being a “snowflake”.

Just to bring home the point, the opposite of merciful is merciless or cruel. And boy have we learned how to be merciless and cruel with the poor, with the migrant, and with those who do not think as we think.

Where have we, where has our Church, has our Society forgotten how to be merciful? Something to ponder this week.

We are asked to FORGIVE!

To forgive and pray for someone who has deeply wronged you is tuff! Man is it tuff! It’s one of the hardest things to do. I can’t say that I have totally mastered it yet.

About five years ago I was deeply wronged by someone who I thought was my friend. I must confess I am still working on forgiving him. I shared this one day at coffee break in the abbey with one of the younger monks. He got really upset and asked me “how can you call yourself a Christian if you can’t forgive this man”. I said “because I am working on forgiving and being merciful to him. I want to, but will need time and grace.”

My brothers and sisters, what the Lord is asking of us today isn’t easy, and he never said it would be easy. It certainly cost him everything. But if we are to truly be what our baptism calls us to be, then we have to keep trying. We Benedictines take a vow of conversion of life which is basically this continued trying to make our hearts more like HIS.

We gather here around the altar. We come with our brokenness, with our wounds, our judgieness, our merciful, and mercilessness. We ask that through partaking in this holy sacrifice our hearts might be made more like HIS heart. May HE strengthen us to be more loving, just, and merciful till the day when we finally see him face to face. AMEN

Fr. Adam Patras, OSB

Homily - 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time-2019

Today’s homily by Prior Joel.

Nehemiah 8:2–4a, 5–6, 8–10
1 Corinthians 12:12–30
Luke 1:1–4; 4:14–21

Every image or symbol used to unpack a spiritual reality deserves our careful attention. Within that image there is a truth that cries out for our understanding. We are used to this with the parables of Jesus. Today it is Paul who offers us the clear metaphor of the human body. Our body is not something we can easily escape or set aside. Today Paul puts it forward as an image for our understanding the community. He unpacks for us the meaning of the human body in a way that invites us to move through and beyond our body to a related body, namely the community in Christ. Paul wants to have the Corinthian community understand itself better and so he chooses the physical body that each member of that community is aware of to stretch their understanding of life together in Christ. Paul links the human body to the body of the community to the Christ-Body. It is to the body that is Christ that the human body and its functioning points. We are meant to look beyond the material functioning of our human body to the profound working of the Body that is Christ himself and of which each of us is a member.

Paul draws out three aspects of the body that characterize the Christian community. The first aspect is that of unity. There is only one body not many bodies. The unity in the body of the community is based on baptism. We were all baptized into one body in the Spirit. It is the Spirit and baptism that all share and hence form a single body. This implies that distinctions that seem clearly visible before baptism are transformed into a common life through baptism. Paul chooses ethnic and religious distinctions like Jew and Greek to make his point; he also makes the point that social categories and classes like free and slave cannot be invoked for identity. While these categories may work in the society as a whole, they are not a defining factor in the Body into which members have been baptized. Baptism profoundly alters social categories as forms of distinction. Baptized Christians of all walks of life have a common basis in the one Body into which they have been incorporated. Each of us has something in common with a fellow Christian. Baptism creates a body, a community in Christ himself. Christ and the Spirit are the common denominator. All Christians belong to one another through the common Body of Christ in which all are members. This is the basis for the dialogue called ecumenism. It is not strangers somehow sheepishly talking with one another, rather it is members of one body through baptism seeking ways to acknowledge the gift that each member brings to the one body.

This leads to Paul’s second point. Just as the human body has diverse members which make up the body, so too does the community of the Body of Christ. There is a diversity among the members that is inherent in belonging to the body. No one member of the community can say they are the community to the exclusion of the other members. At the same time, there is no competition among members as though one member of the body is better or more indispensable than another. No one member of the community can say to another “I don’t need you.” In this body there is no inferiority nor is there a superiority. That way of thinking cannot be the mindset that operates this Body of the community, the Body that Paul reminds us is Christ. Pope St. John Paul II was very much aware of the need for all the members of the Body of Christ, the Church, to be recognized as needed for the Body to be whole. He often referred to the Church of the West as really a Church with one lung. We in the West forget that there is a Church in the East and carry on as though the West was the whole Body. He made it clear that we are not the whole Body until East and West are breathing together. When both lungs of the Body are functioning, then the community is manifesting its true fullness. If we were to translate Paul’s point into current events, we would have to say that when the Christians in Iraq, and their communities are among some of the oldest in the Body of Christ, are persecuted and forced into exile, then the whole Body is also suffering because one member is suffering.

The diversity in the Body of Christ that history and culture have given us is precisely the work of the Spirit. To believe in the Spirit is to acknowledge gifts that are given by God to the members of the Body. It is the Spirit that is at work bringing gifts needed for the whole into the one Body. In our small local communities it is good if we recognize the gifts that each one brings into the community. Each member carries a gift that allows the whole to be the Body. Whether it is a gift of visible leadership in the Church or lowly service of collecting clothes and food for those in need, it is all the work of the one Spirit and it is all for building a strong Body in Christ.A third point Paul makes is that of the interdependence of all members in the Body. We are a healthy Body in Christ when there is concern for the other member. The community is not made up of isolated members who happen to come together. We are an organic living whole that is activated when we turn to one another. We are a living Body of Christ when we can suffer with one another and also rejoice with one another. Such living demands humility, setting aside of self-importance, and seeing others as members in the same Body as myself. The interdependence of members in the Christian Body is a challenge in our culture which seems to lean in the opposite pole of individualism and self-reliance. But if we take our baptism into Christ seriously and the life in the Spirit that comes with it, then ours is a life far from walking it alone. The Body’s life does not come from looking away from other members but in interacting with them as a whole.

Paul was not talking idle talk. His Corinthian community was divided into cliques, its wealthier members brought food to the community meals but did not share it with those who had little or could bring nothing. There were members who thought their spiritual gifts were more important than ordinary service. There were those who used their past status to claim honors for themselves. He challenged them to be truly the Body of Christ-recognizing gifts as from the Spirit and being concerned for the weakest among them. …We will shortly be offered the Body of Christ. Let us once again say Amen to who we are and eat the Body that makes us one community in Christ, one Body in the Lord.

Prior Joel Macul, OSB

Homily - Epiphany-2019

Mt 2:1-12 Is 60:1-6
Eph 3:2-3a,5-6

focus: Jesus is the light, the Savior of all humankind.
function: We are invited to receive the light and to manifest it to others.

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ, 0. a. A symphony, according to Wikipedia, is “an extended musical composition in Western classical music most often written by composers for orchestra.” In the orchestra, the many different instruments come together in harmony—and the result can be a magnificent work like Beethoven’s Eroica! The word symphony in its ancient Greek origin combines the prefix syn, which means together, with the word phonein, which means tosound. Sounds in harmony. In a figurative sense, we speak of a symphony of colors among the fall leaves of a park,or the symphony of colors in a magnificent sunrise! Colors in harmony!

A synthesis is, so Merriam Webster, “the composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole.” Out of many perhaps diverse parts a whole is created, which is more than the sum of the parts. Here we have again the Greek the prefix syn: syntithenai--to put or place together.

Finally, we speak of synergy when two or more distinct business participants or elements come together—and the result is beneficial for all! One common energy.

In today’s gospel the magi, in response to their scientific observation and the meditation of their Sacred Scriptures, embark upon a journey. They seek a special newborn king. They spend many days in the desert, in stillness. In stillness we can more easily hear God speaking to us. They do.

First they arrive in Jerusalem, where the king resides, Herod. There, however, they hear God’s revelation to the prophet Micah: “You, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah… from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Thus the seekers reach Bethlehem. Because the eyes of their hearts are open they can recognize the wonder-full work of God in the poor child who hasn’t been born in a royal palace, but in a stable. They use their own knowledge; they are willing to learn from the Scribes in Jerusalem; and they are ready to be surprised by God!

In the stable, the magi kneel down at the manger in adoration and present their gifts to the child. – The experience transforms them. Their ways are different ones now. They return to their country by another way.

In today’s first reading, the prophet Isaiah presents us with a vision of God’s light, God’s glory, which, he says, will be granted to many nations. People from all-over come together. They walk by this shining radiance and joyfully bring their gifts and riches to praise and adore God. In Jesus Christ, we see this prophecy fulfilled: He is the Light of the nations!

Today’s solemnity of Epiphany, the word translated means ‘Manifestation,’ expounds for us in greater fullness the meaning of Christmas: Jesus is the Light for all, for the whole world. He is the Messiah, the shepherd and ruler of his people Israel and of all peoples. And in him, as the preface of the feast proclaims, God has renewed all humanity in God’s own immortal image. We, all of us, all humans, have a share in his divine nature.

In today’s second reading, St. Paul explains further what we celebrate today by witnessing to the Ephesians about the mystery of God’s grace that wasn’t known yet to people of previous generations. Now the Holy Spirit has revealed it to him: namely that the Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body, and co-partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

The Greek original text of the New Testament uses the prefix syn in three words: synkleroma, syssoma and symmetoxa: Jews and Gentiles, all people, are heirs together, one body together, partners together in the promise, meaning they are called to make the promise of unity in Christ a reality ever more fully.

Dear sisters and brothers in the Lord, Jesus is the light, the Savior, of all humankind. We, like the magi, are called upon to receive the light and to manifest it to others.

The magi are models for us. They are seekers. They travel in the quietness of the desert. Prayer and trusting faith in God have made them clear-sighted, as St. Bernard once remarked. They are humble enough to recognize the Son of God as he sucks milk, wrapped in swaddling clothes, in the poverty of the stable. Prayer, stillness, and humility are necessary also for us to see the presence and the work of God, the glory of God, in the people whom we encounter today!

If this is so, then we can also be co-partners in the promise and strengthen the unity that already exists between us and others. We will be able to reach out to, and be surprised by, people whose personality, background, language or nationality are different from ours.

The result will be synergy and synthesis, a symphony of the various gifts that God wants to make manifest in and through us—for His glory. AMEN.

Fr. Thomas Leitner, OSB

Homily - Feast of the Holy Family

Samuel 1:20–22, 24–28
John 3:1–2, 21–24
Luke 2:41–52

This episode in the life of Jesus hits directly on the world of parenting in at least two ways. First and most terrifying is the loss of a child on the part of Mary and Joseph. Suddenly the parents realize that Jesus is not where they thought he was or even where they assumed he was supposed to be—with relatives and acquaintances. They thought he was with members of their extended family or others from their village. This child is now missing, not back home in the familiar territory of the village but on the road and in the throngs of people milling about in Jerusalem at Passover. It does not take much for a parent to identify with the feelings of losing a child, of finding a child gone off somewhere in a shopping mall. Mary says, “Your father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety.” That “anxiety” is a loaded word; it expresses everything about losing someone whom you are responsible for and who cannot fend for themselves. We sometimes label this story the lost child as though it were the child who is lost. But the story is really about about the parents’ experience of losing a child.

This leads to the second theme of parenting found in this Gospel story, namely the emerging adulthood of Jesus. The story does not say that Jesus wandered away from his parents or the pilgrimage group. Jesus chose to stay behind in Jerusalem. Jesus is 12 years old we are told. This is the age in his culture when he begins to assume responsibility for his own life. We can feel the tension that every parent knows when their child starts claiming life for themselves, when they begin the pull away from the parents and make it clear they want their own independence. The parents find themselves in the tension of holding on and yet needing to let go. The child thinks he is ready and the parents are not so sure. Mary seems to scold Jesus for causing them worry but Jesus responds that he has to be about his own life now so stop worrying. A short answer to a parent that perhaps makes us uncomfortable. At least for the moment, Jesus does go back home with them and remains there according to the Gospel. But something has happened. There is a shift in the relationship between Joseph and Mary and their child Jesus. A parent knows it when an adolescent claims adulthood and the separation from the parent begins. The parent feels the self-assurance of their child come forward. Perhaps, like Mary and Joseph, they no longer understand their child. In the end, they will have to find a new way of loving.

This Sunday after Christmas is called Holy Family Sunday. Perhaps the scene from today’s Gospel is meant to enlighten us about today’s family life from the example of the family of Nazareth. It is after all a nuclear family such as we might experience today. But when we look closer at the scene we find that the story is really a story about Jesus. It is clear that Jesus is not lost. In fact, as he says, he is in his father’s house. He is where he is supposed to be and doing what he is supposed to be doing. What we are hearing in the gospel is that Jesus’ life is guided by someone other than his parents of Joseph and Mary. Jesus speaks of his Father’s house. Jesus is at home in the temple among the teacher’s gathered there. The implication he is that he is among equals and yet learning from them and they from him. Jesus is at home in the very house where his story on earth is confirmed and recognized. It is in the temple that we hear about John the Baptist; it is in the temple that the old man Simeon recognizes Jesus as light and glory for the world and his own people and that the old woman Anna sees the redeemer of his people. And his own parents seem dumbfounded. Mary says nothing but keeps it all in mind as though someday she will remember and it will make sense.

Now, at the beginning of his life, Jesus sits with the teachers. And when he returns again for Passover some 30 years later where will he be but in the temple, this time teaching again. And where will his disciples go when Jesus ascends and leaves them; where will they gather but in the temple. There they will teach and there they will be challenged just as their master was challenged. Jesus is in line with a plan of God as well he should as he is God’s Son.

Jesus, says the Gospel, will be obedient to his parents and go back to Nazareth. Here he will grow in age, of course, but also in wisdom. And eventually he will leave Nazareth and we will hear that he will not be accepted there. Should we be surprised? Not really. Today we have heard that “home” and “house” are really not places but relationships. Jesus primary relationship is with God, his Father. And so he is at “home” with his Father. The story of Hannah, Elkanah and Samuel we heard earlier already hints at that. Hannah was desperate for a family, for a home, for a child. But when God gave her a child, she recognized that the child belonged to God. So she gives him to God in God’s house and leaves him there. Hannah contributed to God’s home.

Mary and Joseph have to come to realize the same thing. Jesus belongs to a family in which the primary relationship is with God. Their task is to recognize that and nurture it. Evidently they did that well. Jesus grew in wisdom in their home. And that wisdom led him to call others to form a family but not in Nazareth. He was to form a family around the Father with the Spirit as the binding force and love as the hallmark of the members of that family.

In the face of the fragility and brokenness that we experience in our human families, Jesus comes to call us to a new “home” found in a relationship with him and the Father. As Mary and Joseph discovered that their son was not theirs only but the Son of the Father and that he made home with him, so we too discover that in Jesus we too are children of God. Together we too make a home with God our Father. In that home we are brothers and sisters to one another. Jesus comes to heal and reconcile our broken human families by having us see another “house,” another “home.” In this house we are not lost but found in bonds of love that draw strength from the one who taught us how to be family by loving us to the end. And in this house where we live, the obedience we owe to one another is simply to wash each other’s feet as he once did to us and left as the new commandment.

Being faithful to the will of the Child Jesus will help us to grow in wisdom. That wisdom will guide us in listening to one another, putting the interests of others first, and having God’s mercy as the Spirit that rules our lives. Then we can be called a Holy Family, a home where God dwells.

Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

Homily - Christmas Midnight Mass

Homily by Fr. Joel Macul, Midnight Mass - 2018

Isaiah 9:1–6
Titus 2:11–14
Luke 2:1–14

In 2005 National Geographic launched its genographic project. You participated by submitting a sample of your DNA. When it was analyzed you could see how your ancestry followed the movements of humanity in the world; it traced an ancestral journey as it were, taking for granted that humanity began somewhere in today’s East Africa. I have to say the results can prove quite interesting, even surprising. It is a sort of roots project using your DNA. There is one journey for your mother and another for your father. The goal: to find out your ancestors and what part of humanity is in your DNA make up.

Well, today’s feast is about our human DNA. We could say it is about the completion of a DNA search. It will not be found under a microscope; it will be found through the eyes of faith. But what is found will be no less real. Today we acknowledge and celebrate that part of our human DNA, part of what makes up the essence of our humanity is the stuff of the divine. We acknowledge that our DNA has more than merely a trace of God in it; God has become a substantial and necessary component of the human person, the human story. We call that divine DNA trace the Spirit, the divine breath. It was there from the beginning. Today we acknowledge and marvel that we can see this divine DNA as it were face to face in a human being whom the angel announced to us as Savior, Lord and Christ. The Divine DNA has met the human DNA and been born today as one like us in all things but our sin. No sin, because our original DNA, our ancestry, does not lie in sin but in grace and love.

All of Advent we have been calling out “Come”! What we know about the one who is to come is that he concerns justice. We call out for someone to come who will make the world right again. We have been looking for and waiting for someone who can restore harmony among us human beings; we call out for someone who can remind us that harmony among ourselves means harmony with the earth, with the water, with the clouds, with other living creatures. We have kept before us this Advent the images of those who beat swords into ploughshares and children who can play with snakes and lions who will let a child pet them. The DNA of that picture is not false; it lies deep within us and our imagination because that world is part of who we are and what we want our world to be.

We have given this coming one grand names tonight: Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. It looks like we expect a warrior to come and conquer the enemy and put things in order. But tonight, when God hears our cry for help in our distress, what does he give us: a baby, a new-born, an infant barely big enough to hold. Our pain is great, our wounds are festering, the enemy surrounds us, we feel overwhelmed, helpless even, worn out; we are in the dark, as the prophet says. And what does God send out into the dark cloak of night? A baby—a picture of innocence perhaps; certainly a picture of vulnerability, of total dependence, of weakness. But that is what the prophet calls our attention to: “a son has been born for us.” Or as the gospel describes it, Mary gave birth to her firstborn son. But the angel makes it clear, in the baby lies the Savior, the Lord and the Christ---all that we have been waiting for and calling out to come, come!

God is full of surprises. No one can deny that we are desperate in our broken world and embittered humanity; it looks like we have lost the means to even speak words to one another. We rightfully call out and God hears. But his answer is on his terms not ours. After all, if it were on our terms, we would control it and be no better off than before. But tonight it is all grace, all gift. We think of might or power, of empire like that of Rome into which Jesus is born, or of some great country. That is what we need, so we might think. But what God gives is different. A child is held out to us. Not exactly the image of strength and victory; not a leader. But this is God’s child and God’s child will conquer through weakness; he will touch what is weak and find blessedness in what is lowly. He will bring justice by becoming the victim of injustice on a cross. But that is the surprise hidden in this child. He will conquer human pride, not by arrogance, but by humility and truth.

What is the surprise in this grace that appears to us this night? Is it perhaps that when I look at any human being, I am looking at someone who is made in the image and likeness of God? A light dawns in me and I realize that the other before me shares with me the same human flesh and the same divine Spirit from the creator God. Is that the surprise? Or is it that when I see a picture of a child standing at my country’s border looking frightened and lost, I suddenly become aware that I am looking at God’s own Son found in anyone really who is hungry, thirsty and without an inn in which to rest? ….Perhaps it is easy to believe in a God who creates the world with all its beauty. But maybe it is more difficult to believe that our God has embraced the world by becoming human in it, not in imagination or dream or some virtual reality but in flesh.

The surprise of Christmas, the grace of Christmas, is that the human person and the human family is of unsurpassable worth and value. To make sure that we realize that, God has joined our race and embraced its story as his own. He has become one with us humans to make sure that no one takes our graced dignity away from us. He has come to give us the story of his life so that we can be certain that any other story than the one he will live  is incomplete. He joins us tonight so that we will learn how to be human. He will teach us that the essence of being human is to love, to love others even when their face is marred, scarred by violence and disfigured beyond human. To be human, he will say, is to stop and meet the other where they are on their journey.

Christmas is also about the birth of the first-born. It is clearly said Mary lays her first- born in a manager. Christ is beginning a new humanity; he is first. That is what the angels are singing about. If he is first-born, then where are those who are born after him? Perhaps that is you and I. That old insight is true: Unless Christ is born in you and me, then he is not born in Bethlehem either. Tonight’s birth is not for Christ alone, it is for you and me and all others that share with us a human face.

Tonight God has given us the grace of being able to see his face in that of his Son because it is of our flesh. We say yes to this grace when we turn to another human being and see there also the face of God reflected in that person, the person for whom God’s son identified with and gave his life. When we can see that face in others and approach in humility, then Bethlehem is not yesterday but today.

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