Homily for the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God

Today is, of course, January first and as such is the first day of the new civic year, New Year’s Day.  It is also the eighth day since December 25^th and therefore marks the Octave of Christmas.

In the old calendar for the Roman Rite, the Church observed this day as the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord – since, as we hear in today’s Gospel, Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day after His birth according to the ancient Jewish tradition. 

In our current version of the Roman calendar, the Church marks this day as the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God.  St. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, which we heard as our second reading, that “God sent His Son, born of a woman … so that we might receive adoption as sons.”  So, not only is Mary the Mother of God, but she is our mother as well, and we are adopted children of God!

Finally, the Church also marks this first day of the New Year as the World Day of Prayer for Peace. Following the ancient tradition we hear about in today’s first reading, from the Book of Numbers, we invoke God’s name in blessing upon the nations as Aaron did of old.

So, today is New Year’s Day, the Octave of Christmas, the Circumcision of the Lord, the feast of Mary the Mother of God, and World Day of Prayer for Peace.  But I’m not going to talk about any of those things!

I’d like to speak briefly about the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus.  Devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus predates even the writing of the Scriptures. The ancient Christian hymn that ultimately comes to be written as part of the Letter to the Philippians says that, “at the Name of Jesus every knew should bend, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God that Jesus Christ is Lord!”

But the formalized devotion to the Holy Name is the work of St. Bernard of Siena, who reformed the Franciscan Order in the late 1300s and early 1400s.  He preached sermons about the Holy Name and had holy cars printed and distributed with the Latin monogram IHS – which we still see so often in Church art and architecture.

In Spain, the second Sunday after Epiphany was chosen as the date for a feast in honor of the Holy Name –and in 1721 when the feast was extended to the entire Roman Rite, that was the date that was used.  In 1969, Pope Paul VI removed the feast from the calendar, stating that the Holy Name is part of the commemoration of the Octave of Christmas. 

And indeed, many Eastern Churches, the Lutheran Church and the Anglican Communion celebrate today as the Feast of the Holy Name.  Most recently, the 2002 Revised Roman Missal restored the feast of the Holy Name, and assigned January 3^rd, the first free date in the calendar after January 1^st, as the optional memorial of the Holy Name of Jesus.     

I chose to speak about the Holy Name today, because it is certainly a part of the history of the observance of this first day of the year – and we will formally celebrate its feast this week – and because, the Holy Name is so much more than a label – a convenient way to tell one person from another.

We heard in the Gospel today that “after eight days had passed,” not only was it time to have Jesus circumcised, but He was also “named Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.” 

According to St. Luke, this is the name that the angel Gabriel tells Mary to give her son at the Annunciation. And according to St. Matthew, Joseph hears this name from the angel in his dream, telling him to take Mary as his wife. 

So it is not a name chosen by His parents. It is a name that comes from God Himself.  And the word itself adds to this deep significance.  It is essentially the same name as Joshua, the Old Testament hero who led Israel into the Promised Land, and literally the name means: “The Lord is salvation.”  

Thus, the very name of the Savior, the salvation He brings, and He Himself all come to us as a gift from God.  The Holy Name points us to who He is – our Savior – and when spoken with faith and reverence, it is the greatest, if the simplest, of prayers because it puts us into a sacramental contact with the salvation Jesus brings.

Friends, do you want to pray, not only with your lips, but from your heart?  Then use the Holy Name of Jesus.  Say the name of Jesus, with faith and reverence, many times throughout the course of each day.  Let this prayer, His name, rise and fall with the rhythm of your breath – a practice called the Jesus Prayer, which is so revered in the Eastern Churches.

Pray the Rosary, with its decades of Hail Mary’s, the very center of which is the Holy Name of Jesus.  Even while you are doing other things, let saying the name of Jesus become a holy habit, a second nature.  The saints of the Church bear witness to the power of the Holy Name to provide sweetness and consolation, courage and joy, whatever may come our way.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who wrote the great hymn of the Holy Name, has said: “The sweet Name of Jesus produces in us holy thoughts, fills the soul with noble sentiments, strengthens virtue, begets good works, and nourishes pure affections … Jesus is honey in our mouth, light in our eyes, a flame in our heart … This name is the cure for all diseases of the soul. Are you troubled?  Think of Jesus, speak the Name of Jesus, and the clouds disperse, and peace descends anew from heaven. Have you fallen into sin?  Invoke the Name of Jesus, and you will soon feel life returning. Are you surrounded by sorrow and danger? Invoke the Name of Jesus and your fears will vanish … No rigidity of the soul, no weakness, no coldness of heart can resist this Holy Name.”

In other words, friends, we can be changed, and our world can be changed, through an increasing reliance on the Holy Name of Jesus. 

A new year opens before us.  We do not know what it will hold for us.  Some of us will be ill during this year, and some will even die.  We can have the peace of God with the name of Jesus on our lips. Some of us will face other trials and loss.  We can meet them confidently with the name of Jesus on our lips.  Some of us will experience wonderful joys, new opportunities, and unique blessings in this new year.  We can express our gratitude with the name of Jesus on our lips.

Brothers and sisters, may the year ahead be for each of us an opportunity to pray our Savior's Name with faith and fervor – a time for us to discover the power that His Holy Name can have in our lives.

Homily for Christmas Mass at Dawn

Our Gospel this Christmas morning focuses on a frequently forgotten, or easily dismissed, set of actors in the Nativity drama: the shepherds who receive the angels’ message and go in haste to see Jesus in Bethlehem.

Like so many people in the Advent and Christmas readings the shepherds are given an all-important message from God’s holy angels.  You’ll remember that angels announce to Zechariah the coming of his son, John the Baptist; they announce to Mary that she will be the mother of God’s Son; they advise Joseph to take Mary as his wife, and then they warn him to escape Herod’s soldiers by fleeing into Egypt.

But perhaps the angels’ most well known appearance is to this group of lowly shepherds who are keeping watch over their flocks by night: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

What Isaiah prophesied long ago is now proclaimed to the shepherds, and to us, as a present reality: the Lord is here; God is truly Emmanuel, “God with us.” If it is really true, the angels’ message is not only for the shepherds, but for you and for me. Therefore, the angels’ message cannot leave us indifferent. If it is really true, it changes everything for us.

The story of the shepherds is included in Luke’s Gospel for a crucial reason, therefore: the shepherds show us the right way to respond to the message that we too have received. But what precisely is it that these first witnesses of the Incarnation have to tell us?

The first thing the Gospel tells us about the shepherds is that they were awake, keeping the night watch over their flocks.  This is not simply a convenient detail for St. Luke’s story.  Rather, the point is that the shepherds could hear the angels’ message precisely because they were awake!

We, too, must therefore remain awake so that we can hear God’s message.  Indeed, this was the central message of our entire Advent season.  But what does it mean to be awake?  One of the principal differences between someone who is asleep and dreaming, and someone who is awake, is that the dreamer lives in a private and false world of their own, isolated from others. 

To awaken, therefore means to leave that isolated self behind … to open ourselves to others, and especially to develop receptivity for God: to develop eyes and ears capable of perceiving the ways in which God shows us His presence and guides us.

So much of our world today, so much of the way we think and act, tends to deaden our spiritual senses from recognizing God and hearing His message.  We remain asleep in an alternate and false reality.  And yet, the desire and longing for God remains in each of us.  Especially in the Liturgy, where Heaven and earth meet, we should pray for ourselves, and for our loved ones, that the Lord might open our hearts and minds to His nearness.

St. Luke’s Gospel then tells us that after listening to the angels’ message, the shepherds said to one another: “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem … so they went in haste.” 

Undoubtedly, the shepherds were more than just a little bit curious.  But much more than that, they were excited about the wonderful news they had just been given! In fact, what had been said to them had changed the world: the long awaited Savior was born!  Nothing could have been more important!  Indeed, the angels’ message was so important that the shepherds simply had to go immediately: they made haste, and set out at once.

In our daily lives, however, it is often not like that.  We do first what we imagine is urgent: we give our immediate attention to our jobs and our chores, to daily concerns that totally absorb us.  In our list of priorities we place God toward the end.  We can always deal with that later, we tend to think.

But the Gospels, and the story of the shepherds, tell us otherwise.  God is by far the most important thing in our lives; He should always have the highest priority! If anything in our life deserves haste, without delay, then it is our relationship with God.

So, from the shepherds we should learn not to be crushed by all the many pressing matters in our daily lives.  From the shepherds we should learn to put other tasks in second place, however important they may be, so that God can always have the first place in our lives.  And then, in turn, what we will find is that any time given to God and, in His name, given to others in service, is never time lost. It is in that time that we are truly alive; when we live our humanity to the full.

Finally, the shepherds tell one another the reason why they are setting off to Bethlehem in haste: “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

Literally, the Greek text of the Gospel says: “Let us see this Word that has occurred there.”  Truly, the miracle of Christmas, the gift of the Incarnation, is that the Word of God has taken on our human flesh: He can be seen as one like ourselves in all things but sin. 

The angels have told the shepherds: “This will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”  God's sign – the sign given to the shepherds and to us – is not, on the surface, some astonishing occurrence. God's sign is His humility: He makes Himself small; He becomes a dependent little child; He asks for our love.

We would often prefer a different sign – an imposing and irresistible sign of God's immense power and greatness.  But instead His sign calls us to faith and love, and thereby gives us hope. Yes, God has great power; but “power is made perfect in weakness.” And so He invites us to learn to be humble like Him, and thereby to have true greatness like Him as well.     

Brothers and sisters, the angel’s greeting is spoken to us today as surely as it was spoken to those shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem: “Fear not, I bring you tidings of great joy which shall be for all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” 

Like the shepherds, we now come to the crib and find it “just as we have been told” – and together we will “return, glorifying and praising God for all we have seen and heard.”

(Adapted from a homily of the Holy Father, given in Rome, 2008)

Homily for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Gospel today picks up precisely where the Gospel from our other great Advent celebration of Mary left off … Last Wednesday, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception we heard St. Luke’s account of Gabriel’s visit to Mary, announcing that she would be the Mother of God.

Now, in today’s Gospel, St. Luke tells us that Mary “set out in haste traveling to the hill country” to the house of Zechariah, to visit her cousin Elizabeth, whom Gabriel has said is also pregnant, even in her old age.

And when Mary reaches Elizabeth, the infant John the Baptist leaps for joy in her womb, recognizing that the Savior and Messiah, the fulfillment of God’s promise, has been carried to him by His mother, Mary.

Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe: the commemoration of our Blessed Mother’s appearance, in 1531, to St. Juan Diego on the hill at Tepeyac, outside Mexico City. 

In the middle of December, to prove that she was who she said she was, Mary made Castilian roses bloom on that hill.  And when Juan Diego collected those roses in his cloak, and then dropped them at the feet of the bishop, the image of Mary was there, on his cloak, where the roses once had been.

Juan Diego’s tilma, which still hangs in the Basilica of Guadalupe, shows Mary with a mestizo face, mixing both the Spanish and the Mexican in her likeness, and making her, in Blessed John Paul II’s words, Mother of the Americas: these two continents of a mixed cultures.  She also wears a robe covered in stars, the sun shines from behind her, and she stands upon the crescent moon, just as we hear St. John describe his vision in our first reading from the Book of Revelation.

But perhaps most interestingly, Mary’s image on the tilma shows her wearing a black cloth band tied around her waist – the sign in Aztec culture that the young woman is pregnant. 

Our Gospel text is therefore the perfect reading for this feast, because at Guadalupe the pregnant Mary brings the Christ-Child in her womb to Juan Diego, and to the peoples of the New World, just as surely as she brought Jesus to Elizabeth and to John at Her Visitation.

With the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, today’s Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is also, therefore, the perfect Advent celebration.  Mary shows us precisely what it means to wait in faithful expectation for the fulfillment of God’s promise – she assures us of the hope that her Divine Son offers the world – and she encourages us to follow her example in carrying Christ’s life to our brothers and sisters.

More than anything else, these are the central messages of Advent, and the central messages of this Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Christ is the hoped-for Messiah, whose coming answers our every longing and desire, and we too can carry Christ to the world as we await His Second Coming.

Now amidst all of our fretting about getting ready for Christmas – and especially in the midst of all of our anxiety over exams and papers, it’s easy to lose sight of the hope that Advent brings.  We’re so stressed and haggard at this time of year. 

And that’s precisely why we need this season so much, and that’s why we all need this Feast of Our Lady of Gudalupe as well.  Listen to the words that Mary used to comfort Juan Diego that day, speaking in his native tongue: 

“Listen – Put it in your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that frightened you, the thing that afflicted you is nothing.  Do not let it disturb you.  Do not fear … any sharp or hurtful thing.  Am I not here, I who am your mother?  Are you not under the shadow of my protection?  Am I not the source of your joy?  Are you not in the fold of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms?  Do you need something more?  Let nothing else worry you or disturb you.”

Since that day on Tepeyac, Christero rebels defending the rights of the Church in Mexico, migrant farm workers demanding just wages and safe working conditions in California, and volunteers defending the lives of the unborn and serving unwed mothers throughout America, have all marched under the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

That’s because as her words to Juan Diego make clear, and as this Advent season celebrates, there is no struggle, no situation, no sin that we might find ourselves in that is beyond the hope that Mary bears to the world in Her Son. 

So today, in the midst of Advent, in the midst of whatever worry, doubt, or sin we might find ourselves, we commend ourselves once more to the care of our Blessed Mother, the Virgin of Guadalupe.  And we ask her to intercede for us, that we might have an increase in the hope her Son brings – and we ask her to speak once more to our hearts, the way she spoke to Juan Diego: “Listen – Put it in your heart, the thing that afflicted you is nothing … let nothing else worry you or disturb you.”


 (Homily for the Knights of Columbus student Mass at The Catholic University of America, December 12, 2011)

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent (B)

Many of you may remember that when I was first ordained I served for several years as the associate pastor of a parish in Portland, Oregon.  One of my responsibilities there was to work with all of the liturgical ministries of the parish, including the cantors, musicians, and choirs.

Every year as we prepared for Advent, we had the challenge of finding hymns that were one, appropriate for the season; two, were known to the congregation; and three, were not O Come, O Come Emmanuel. 

Now, don’t get me wrong: I really love that great hymn.  But my point is that we sing it so many times each Advent that I worried we might be in danger of overusing it; of becoming numb to the emotion and meaning that its poetic lyrics and mournful tune are meant to convey.

A few years ago my favorite musical group, U2, released a song that sets modern lyrics to the baseline and tune of O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

The song is entitled White As Snow, and Bono the lead singer of U2 has explained that the lyrics are meant to be the reflections of a soldier who lies dying after a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan.  

Listening to this song, and thinking about its lyrics, made me appreciate all the more the hymn it was based on, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and some of the central themes of the Advent season, which we hear about in today’s readings.  First, if you’ll indulge me, the lyrics of the U2 song:

Where I came from there were no hills at all./ The land was flat, the highways straight and wide./ My brother and I would drive for hours/ like years instead of days./ Our faces as pale as the dirty snow.

Once I knew there was a love divine./ Then came a time I thought it knew me not./ Who can forgive, forgiveness where forgiveness is not?/ Only the lamb as white as snow.

And the water, it was icy/ as it washed over me/ and the moon shown above me.

Now this dry ground it bears no fruit at all./ Only poppies laugh under the crescent moon./ The road refuses strangers,/ the land the seeds we sow./ Where might we find the lamb as white as snow?

As boys we would go hunting in the woods/ to sleep the night shooting out the stars./ Now the wolves are every passing stranger/ every face we cannot know./ If only a heart could be as white as snow./ If only a heart could be as white as snow.

Again, as I said, the more I reflected on these lyrics, the more I realized that U2 had captured the essence of the great Advent hymn, and the themes we’re presented in our readings for the Second Sunday of Advent.

The soldier that lies dying, we can presume, is a young American from somewhere in the heartland.  He reminisces:  “Where I came from there were no hills at all.  The land was flat, the highways straight and wide.”  He tells us about how he and his brother would go hunting, and go out driving “for hours, like years instead of days.”

In other words, his home – the place of love and comfort that he recalls and longs to return to – is described in exactly the words that we hear in the prophesy of Isaiah from our first reading.  To prepare for the coming of the Lord, Isaiah instructs: “Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low.” 

And in our second reading, St. Peter tells us that, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.”  So, we can say that the home that the soldier longs for isn’t just his Midwestern place of birth, its the valley of the Lord: Heaven. It’s that place, outside of time, where God dwells and has eliminated all the obstacles that might keep us from reaching Him.

The soldier goes on to tell us something more specific about his journey of faith.  “Once I knew there was a love divine,” he says.  “Then came a time I thought it knew me not.”

Like the exiles from Jerusalem to whom Isaiah prophecies, the soldier can recall a time when everything was going right and God seemed to be very close to him.  But in the face of exile and suffering, both the Israelites in Babylon, and the soldier in our song, have wondered if God has forgotten or abandoned them. 

The soldier is thus speaking not only about the desert of Afghanistan, or the desert of Babylon, but about the desert of our doubting hearts when he says: “Now this dry ground it bears no fruit at all … The road refuses strangers, the land the seeds we sow.”

Now, the Israelite exiles in Babylon knew that their experience of the desert and their suffering were directly connected to their failure in upholding their unique covenant with God.  In our first reading, Isaiah even makes it clear to them that Israel had “received from the hand of the Lord double for her sins.”

And so too, the soldier connects his experience of the desert – connects his feeling the absence of God – to his and the world’s need for reconciliation and forgiveness.  In desperation, the soldier, like the Israelite exiles, asks: “Who can forgive where forgiveness is not?”

But he himself immediately gives us the answer to this all-important question: “only the lamb as white as snow” can “forgive where forgiveness is not,” he assures us.  Only Christ, the spotless Lamb of God can give us the forgiveness and reconciliation for which we so desperately long.

So the soldier asks, plaintively, “where might we find the lamb as white as snow,” so that our hearts, too, might be cleansed of sin and doubt and made as pure and white as snow.

Well, Isaiah’s prophecy in our first reading foretells “a voice of one crying out in the desert” – which is to say, crying out in the midst of that lifeless place where we feel we’ve been abandoned by God.  And our Gospel reading confirms that it is John the Baptist who “appeared in the desert proclaiming”: “Here is your God! Here He comes with power, the Lord God who rules by His strong arm!”

Indeed, later in the Gospels, John the Baptist sees Jesus walking and points Him out to his disciples saying: “Behold the Lamb of God, Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world!”

In our Gospel today, St. Mark also tells us that John came “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” and that “all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.”

And sure enough, in the lyrics of U2’s song, the dying soldier recalls a scene reminiscent of Baptism, saying: “And the water, it was icy as it washed over me, and the moon shown above me.”  His sins have been forgiven, and his heart has been made pure, by Baptism – by his being washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Friends, I said that listening to and reflecting upon the lyrics of this modern rock song gave me a new appreciation for the message of Advent that the ancient hymn, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, is also meant to capture.

Like the Israelites in Babylonian captivity; like the fictional soldier in the lyrics of U2’s song, we can feel abandoned by God and weighed down by our sin.  We too can cry out in desperation wondering where we can find forgiveness and peace; where we can find the lamb as white as snow.

So every Advent, we implore the Lord: Come, O Come Emmanuel, God with us. Come and forgive us our sins.  Come and make our hearts as white as snow.  Come give us “victory o’er the grave;” Come put “death’s dark shadows” to flight; Come “make safe the way that leads on high;” Come “close the path to misery.”

And like the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who went into the desert to be baptized by John; like the soldier who remembers the icy water; we take the opportunity Advent affords us to repent of our sins and to be renewed in our Baptism through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 

Brothers and sisters, next Saturday our parish will once again observe “Come Home for Christmas.”  All day, from 9:00 in the morning, until the 5:00 pm evening Mass, Confessions will be heard here in our church – and we’ll gather at noon for a Penance Service. 

Please take advantage of this opportunity to make the Sacrament of Reconciliation a more regular part of your life.  Our Advent readings, and the season’s great hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel help give voice to our deep longing for God … but in Reconciliation we experience sacramentally Advent’s hopeful promise of healing and fulfillment: the assurance that through the Lamb, we too can once again be as white as snow.

Siegfried Hall on NFL Films

David Ruffer is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.  Like me, he's a Siegfried Rambler. He's also originally from the Washington D.C. area and in high school he attended Gonzaga Prep. which boasts a number of students and alums from Little Flower Parish where I currently reside.

David is finishing up his last season as the place kicker for Notre Dame's football team. But before he walked-on to the varsity squad, he played for Siegfried Hall's inter-hall football team. I knew David's fabulous story from some of the coverage it received when he was first recruited and ultimately given a scholarship.  NBC did a halftime spot on him as I recall.  But I had never seen this fantastic video from NFL Films:



I was thrilled to see the coverage that Siegfried Hall received, including its wonderful rector, my friend and brother, Fr. John Conley, C.S.C., the "Hall of Champions" banner above the front doors, and especially the hall's first ever inter-hall championship trophy. That trophy was won, for bowling, by my section mates way back in 1998!

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent (B)

As is already quite obvious to all of you, in beginning this new Liturgical Year we have also begun using our new translation of the Roman Missal.  While not exactly revolutionary, it can fairly be described as the most significant change in the Liturgy in the past forty years.

The new translation of the Missal has attracted a bit of attention from the media, and we’ve certainly spent a fair amount of time planning and preparing for these changes, and for good reason. While the central realities of the Mystery have not changed, and the meaning hasn’t been altered, the language we use to communicate these realities has changed.  We will have to re-learn the language we use to address Almighty God in the Liturgy.

In a sense, this re-learning we will undertake together reflects the great challenge that is inherent in all prayer: our bumbling human attempt to adequately express the inexpressible; to put into words our deepest gratitude, our worship, and our praise; to put into words our deepest, most personal fears, hopes, and aspirations.

In our Responsorial Psalm today, we hear the Psalmist’s attempt to put these hopes and desires, this longing into his own words of prayer.  With the Psalmist we prayed: “Lord make us turn to you, let us see your face…” 

And similarly, in our first reading the prophet Isaiah gives voice to these longings in a mournful demand that God “rend the heavens and come down.”  In everyday language, Isaiah’s lament is the biblical version of our occasional questions and doubts: “God, where are you?  Why am I going through this? Why have you allowed these terrible things to happen?”

For some, giving voice to this kind of doubt and frustration is scandalous: “Who are we to question God like that?”  But if we do not turn to God when we feel burdened, oppressed, and hopeless, then to whom can we turn?

Only true believers can “lament the apparent absence of God in the workings of this world.”  Only the faithful can truly mourn for those who are afflicted and demand to know how long they will have to endure.

Today’s readings and indeed the entire season of Advent, which we begin today, invite us to acknowledge and lament the sin, the suffering, and the difficulties we often face in the here and now.  That’s why Advent has a somewhat subdued and somber tone… we wear mournful purple, we sing no Gloria, we confess our sins and do penance.  Advent faces the harsh realities of the truth with honesty and doesn’t allow us to ignore them through a blinding naiveté.  Advent puts us in touch with, and gives us a language with which we can express, our deepest longings and desires.

But neither does Advent allow us to become mired in hopelessness or despair.  At the end of his lament in our first reading, Isaiah turns in faithful prayer to God and uses a beautiful metaphor.  He says: “Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay and you are the potter – we are all the work of your hands.”

Brothers and sisters, Advent reminds us that despite the truth of our sinfulness, our suffering, and our deep longing for fulfillment, we are held lovingly in God’s hands.  He is molding us, shaping us, transforming us, and fashioning awesome deeds through us – things so amazing that we could not begin to even hope for them.

Therefore, we can also hear in today’s Gospel a kind of answer to Isaiah’s lament, and to our questions of longing.  In just a very short section of Mark’s Gospel, we heard Jesus say three times, in three different ways: “Be watchful, be alert;” “Watch, therefore;” and finally, just “Watch!”

Our observance of Advent is indeed a kind of watching and waiting, but not merely for the arrival of Christmas Day four weeks from now.  We are watching and waiting for the Day of the Lord, the return of Jesus Christ in glory, which will usher in “a new heaven and a new earth.”

In other words, we are longing for, and watching and waiting for, the Day of the Lord because it is Jesus’ return in glory that will be the answer to all of our longing and all our desires.  It is in Jesus’ coming that the potter will complete the work He has already begun and is currently doing in our lives.

So our Advent longing is rightly shaped by the great virtue of hope.  Not by easy answers, or pious platitudes about how everything will work out in the end, but by the deep and overriding conviction that God is not at all absent from the world.  He has, in fact already “rent the heavens and come down” – He has already shown us His human face in His Son, Jesus Christ.  He holds us in His hands at every moment of our lives and He is constantly molding and forming us.

Finally, that’s why St. Paul says in our second reading: “in Him you were enriched in every way . . . so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

During this Advent season, like children making their wish-lists for Santa, we should become more and more aware of the truest longings of our lives, and we should find in the Liturgy and in the Scriptures the words to express that desire and those longings. 

But Advent should also help us become more and more aware of the spiritual gifts that we have already been given to aid us now in our waiting.

Like the servants in today’s Gospel, we have each been given our own work to accomplish while the Master is away – some task that will help shape and form us, and the world, into the creation God has always intended. 

When He returns, Jesus expects to find us accomplishing this work; using the spiritual gifts we have been given; cooperating with His graces; performing the “righteous deeds” we spoke of in our opening prayer. 

We know that our work will not, by itself, be capable of accomplishing the things we long for most.  But using our spiritual gifts as best we can helps remind us of the potter who is at work in and through us – it helps us to see that, even amidst our waiting and longing, we have been given so many signs which prove that Christ’s coming kingdom is, in fact, already being molded and formed in our midst.

Homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

When I was a seminarian at Notre Dame, we had working on the refectory (or kitchen) staff a middle-aged African American woman who was a devout member of a small Christian church in the area. I’m not precisely sure what denomination, if any, this church was affiliated with, and I can’t claim to have known this woman very well.

But many of the seminarians knew at least the basic details of the staff member’s personal lives, and we all knew that during our years of formation this woman had suffered a series of tragic events in her family life. Some of these tragedies were terrible accidents, or crises of health that befell members of her family, and sadly, others were acts of violence perpetrated against her loved ones.

But no matter what sad events we knew were going on in her life, whenever you greeted her in the refectory and asked her how she was doing, she would always say – sometimes while looking dejected or choking back tears – “Oh, I’m just blessed.”

Now, don’t get me wrong – in one sense, this is an absolutely true and beautiful statement for a person of faith to make. Whatever tragedies or struggles we may face in our lives, our faith assures us of the fact that, there is never a time when we are not being sustained, protected, and blessed by God, no matter how it might feel in any single moment.

But I have to admit that on another level I found this sort of pious language to be unnatural and unhelpful. Even as a seminarian in my early twenties, I knew that suffering finds everyone at some point in their lives – including through losing loved ones to death – and I knew that these moments definitely don’t feel like moments of blessing.

Then as a priest, you learn very quickly if you didn’t know already, that death is indeed all around us, and that a significant number of people are, at any given moment, feeling the weight of grief, even over deaths that occurred years ago. People are constantly asking priests to pray for a dying or deceased loved one, and there are sick calls to hospitals, and wakes to pray at, and funerals and announced Masses to preside at.

Well, our second reading this evening is one of the readings you most often hear at those funeral Masses. And in it, St. Paul gets to the heart of how we Christians should approach suffering and death – and, at least the way I read it, St. Paul is agreeing with me on this score! (Which I say with knowing irony.)

Paul encourages the Thessalonians: do “not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.” In other words, Paul isn’t telling the Thessalonians not to grieve! Christians can and do grieve. Our faith in the Resurrection does not take away our sorrow and grief in the face of tragedy, suffering, and death, just as Jesus’ trust in His Father did not stop Him from weeping at the death of his friend Lazarus.

But unfortunately, some Christians labor mightily under the misconception that their faith should take away all their grief. They figure if they’re grieving, that must mean that their faith isn’t strong enough. They tell themselves, and others, that they should be “happy” at the death of a loved one because they have “gone to a better place.” They try to act as if everything that happens in their lives should always feel like a blessing and a joy.

But St. Paul doesn’t say that we don’t grieve. He says that we grieve differently: we grieve with hope. That is to say, even in moments of grief, we see past the very real pain and sorrow of the moment, to the horizon of hope that awaits all those who live in the Lord: the ultimate horizon of a Love and Life that conquer all suffering and death.

Brothers and sisters, this past week, with the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls, the Church has begun a month that is dedicated to remembering and praying for our deceased loved ones.

In my former parish in Portland, our sizable community of Mexican American Catholics would erect an Altar of the Dead during November with pictures of the deceased loved ones they wished to remember. And here at Little Flower, and at many other parishes across the country, we have the names of the deceased enrolled in Books of Remembrance or on altars where we offer Mass for their eternal rest.

The Church gives us this season of remembrance because it is so important for us to realize that we have permission, we have even the need, to grieve … but also that we grieve differently than those who do not have Christian hope. We grieve with the certain knowledge that our present sorrow, as real and powerful as it is, does not have the final word and that in the end our sadness will be turned into joy. 

We also remember this month that we are obliged not merely to fondly recall our deceased loved ones, but also to pray for them – to remain united with them by offering them the assistance of our prayers, as surely as we prayed for them when they were alive!

In November we make visits to cemeteries, and have Masses said, and offer up other prayers asking God to forgive whatever sins our loved ones may have committed and to welcome them into the joys of Heaven.

Finally, the Church also gives us this Month of the Dead, because even the changes we see all around us in nature, and certainly the themes of all the Gospels we will hear at Mass from now until the end of the Liturgical Year, all remind us that we too will one day die; and that everything we see here in this world, however good they may be, are in fact passing away.

So our first reading, from the Book of Wisdom, and our Gospel from St. Matthew, both give us insight into how we should live in watchfulness and preparation for the Lord’s coming at the moment of our own deaths, and at the end of time.

In the first reading, we are encouraged to “keep vigil” for Wisdom, and we are assured that “whoever watches for Wisdom … shall not be disappointed.” Then in the Gospel we hear the parable of “the ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.” The lesson of this well-known parable is precisely what Jesus says at the end of the reading: we must stay awake, and be watchful and vigilant for we “know neither the day nor the hour” when the Master will return.

So, we might ask: How can the wise virgins be an example for us? What do their lamps, and the oil they have in them signify for us as we attempt to live in expectation of the Bridegroom’s return?

The lamp, like the candle we are given at Baptism, might be said to signify the “flame of faith” that all the children of Light have been given. The oil signifies those things that keep the flame of faith “alive in our hearts:” prayer, the Sacraments, acts of charity, all of the personal virtues that help us develop our life of faith.

And that, in a sense, is why the wise virgins could not give the foolish virgins any of their oil. The life of virtue isn’t something that can simply be given to us by others – we have to obtain the virtues for ourselves. We have to work, day by day, in order to progress in the life of faith and so to be prepared for the moment when we too “go out to meet Him.”

Friends, the month of November and the coming end of the Liturgical Year, give us blessed opportunity to remember our deceased loved ones, to mourn our loss, and to pray for their eternal rest in the “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.” This time also reminds us of our own deaths, and of the end of time, because how we hope for things to be at the end, should effect how we live, here and now. May this Eucharist we celebrate fortify us as we watch and “wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

(I am grateful to Fr. Drew Gawrych, C.S.C. whose reflections on today's readings were most helpful in preparing this homily.)

Homily for the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

This Sunday our first reading comes from the Book of the Prophet Malachi, who preached to the people of Israel between four and five hundred years before Jesus was born, so some twenty-five hundred years ago. But maybe in an even more powerful way than usual, this reading sounds as if it were written for our own time and place, here in the United States in 2011:

“O priests, this commandment is for you: if you do not listen, if you do not lay it to heart, to give glory to my name, says the Lord, I will send a curse upon you.”

It’s hard not to hear these very harsh and demanding words from the Prophet Malachi, addressed to the priests of his day, without thinking of the very dark time that the Church in the United States has been undergoing, in our own day, because of the evil perpetrated by a small number of our priests.

It does indeed feel as if the Lord has “sent a curse” upon the Church, and especially upon priests, who are suspected and maligned by many people in our society today even if they are among the vast majority of good and faithful priests.

But we have to remember that God is not a capricious or vindictive god. The 'curse' He puts upon us is only that, from time to time, He allows us to experience the ill effects of our wandering away from Him, precisely so that we might return to Him, and never stray again.

Though sin is never good, and scandal is never good – and we can certainly never cease to confess that the abuse of children, and the unwillingness to address such crises are both sin and scandal – it is also true that the God who brings life from death can certainly use the hard times we are enduring to teach us lessons we might have forgotten and to bring all His people and His priests into greater fidelity.

So then, what lessons do our readings today offer to us, God’s priests and God’s people? Let’s take a look at Jesus’ criticisms of the Pharisees in today’s Gospel.

The Pharisees, we know, were some of the most important religious leaders of Jesus’ day. They studied and knew the Torah and the Prophets well, and they strove to follow the Law with precision. So Jesus begins by saying: “the scribes and Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.”

There is a very human temptation to view the failings of others – and particularly the failings of people in authority; and perhaps especially the failings of religious authorities – to view these people’s failings as excuses to disregard anything and everything else they say and do:

“If someone in authority doesn’t follow the rules, then why do I have to follow the rules? If a religious leader proves to be a sinner, doesn’t that just prove that everything else they believe and preach is a sham? If some priests and bishops have done the terrible things they’re accused of doing, then why should I accept the authority of any of them, or believe what the Church has to teach about anything?”

But Jesus knows that this is precisely how we think, and so he reminds His followers that the Pharisees have taken “their seat on the chair of Moses,” and He instructs them to “observe all things whatsoever they tell you.” In other words, Jesus says, as long as the Pharisees preach the Law, in as much as they tell you to do as Moses instructed the people to do, then do it – because the weakness and failings of the Pharisees doesn’t negate the power and truth of God’s Law.

And Jesus’ listeners would have known well, that their ancestors, and the kings of Israel, and the priests of the Temple had all sinned and failed throughout the history of Israel – but that none of that ever negated God’s Law or God’s covenant of love with His chosen people.

And so St. Paul also says, in our second reading from his Letter to the Thessalonians, that he gives thanks to God that “in receiving the word of God from” his preaching, they “received it not as a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God which is now at work in you who believe.”

When the Church proclaims the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – when the Church admonishes us to follow the Laws of God, whatever the failings of some of her ministers throughout the past two thousand years, we must strive to “observe all these things” because their truth does not depend on the relative strength or weakness of God’s human instruments - thank God!

Jesus goes on, however, to make clear that His followers are not to “follow the example” of the Pharisees because “they preach but they do not practice.” The teachings they proclaim with their words, are not backed up by the way they live their lives. So the disciples are to do as the Pharisees say, not as they do.

And what precisely is it that the Pharisees do that Jesus wants the disciples to avoid? The Pharisees did, after all, at least claim to follow even the minute details of God’s Law. Well, Jesus names two things in particular. First He says, “they tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.”

The Pharisees abused and misused the Law of God because they used it not as a means of obtaining their own salvation, and less as a means of helping others to achieve their salvation – rather, they used the Law as a means of securing their own power over others. They wielded the Law like a weapon, looking to trap the people in the Law’s minute details.

Second, Jesus says that, all the Pharisee’s “works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, and greetings in marketplaces.” Again, the Pharisees did not see their authority as an opportunity to serve, they saw their authority as a chance to obtain privileges and perks for themselves. They were truly focused, not on God’s Law, but on their own egos – and so they made a show of their religious observance so that other people, not God, would see them and give them earthly praise and esteem.

But Jesus makes clear that for His disciples – for all of us, God’s people and His priests – it is to be different: “The greatest among you must be your servant,” He says. “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Jesus teaches His disciples, and He teaches us, that in and of itself the Law is a good thing – in and of itself, religious observance is a good thing. But they are corrupted when they are turned from being means of encountering and following God, into means for building up our own egos – when they go from being about God, to being about us.

And so, brothers and sisters, we Christian people and priests – any of us who are given authority of any kind – must seek to use that authority as a means to give of ourselves, and serve others. Therefore, in our second reading, St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians about himself and his coworkers, saying: “We were gentle among you, as a nursing mother cares for her children. With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the Gospel of God, but our very selves.”

We have all known good and holy priests and religious who have lived their lives in just that way. And we love them because in giving us the Gospel, and themselves, they were Christ in our midst – Christ, who gave us not only a teaching, but Himself, dying on the Cross out of love for us. May we pray for and encourage such priests and religious, and help call more young men and women to join their ranks, and let us follow the Gospel they preach with their words, but especially through their lives.

All Hallows' Eve

The following article will be published in this weekend's Little Flower Parish bulletin, as part of our weekly "Clergy Corner:"

Sometime this weekend, I will fire-up the old DVD player, pop some popcorn, and sit down to a private showing of “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” – a perpetuation of my family’s annual tradition from when I was a boy.

Like the holiday itself, the show includes lots of kids dressed as ghosts and witches, pumpkins carved into scary Jack-O-Lanterns, Trick-or-Treating, and of course it adds Linus’ anticipation of the mythical Great Pumpkin and his rise from the “most sincere of all pumpkin patches.”

There are many people, especially Evangelical Christians, who are scandalized by such Halloween imagery. These people rightly fear the practice of the occult and they worry that Halloween encourages children to dabble in it. I’m convinced, however, that despite its occasional excesses we can all help redeem the celebration of Halloween.

The holiday’s very name, after all, is a shortened form of “All Hallows’ Eve” – in other words, the day before All Saints’ Day, which leads, the very next day, into All Souls’ Day. These two beautiful feasts celebrate the great witnesses of our faith – among them a great number of martyrs who suffered and died for their love of the Lord – and then move on to commemorate and pray for all the dead, saints and sinners alike.

So when kids dress up as super heroes or saints, let’s take the opportunity to speak about the virtues these role models encourage us to cultivate in our own lives. When we eat cakes decorated with skeletons and tombstones, and Jello-molds shaped like brains, let’s reflect on our own mortality and come to see death as our friend, as St. Francis taught us. When we decorate our homes with witches and devils let’s take the chance to remember that we do indeed believe in the presence and power of evil – but that we also never exaggerate our fear of it. We can even see our Halloween traditions as a way of taunting and mocking these symbols of evil because we recognize that ultimately Christ has power over them!

Even when we carve our Jack-O-Lanterns we can recall the myth that our Irish Catholic forebears brought with them to their colony here in Maryland. The story of Jack and his lantern is a morality tale that teaches us the evil of selfishness and the value of selfless service (see more about this traditional Catholic folk tale at American Catholic).

If we make some of these lessons a part of our Halloween fun, then we will indeed have prepared ourselves well for All Hallows’ Day, and for November, the month of the dead.

Annapolis

A few weeks ago I took a day away from school work and visited my friend Fr. Mark at his new parish assignment. Together we drove to Maryland's state capital in Annapolis and toured the United States Naval Academy, which is appropriately located on the waters of the Chesapeake.

I can recall years ago that Fr. Robert Gannon, my childhood pastor, celebrated a wedding at the Academy Chapel and came back to Staten Island raving about its beauty. This was my first visit to "the yard" and I found that the Chapel is indeed a lovely building.

Along with the Tiffany stained glass windows, I was most impressed by the model ship that hangs above the choir loft as a kind of votive offering on behalf of all those sailors who are currently at sea. In the crypt of the chapel, we paid our respects to John Paul Johns the naval hero of the American Revolution.

Our tour overlapped the lunch hour and so when we made our way to Tecumseh Court, which is directly in front of Bancroft Hall where all of the midshipmen live and eat, we were able to see the daily review formation ...

Inside Bancroft, the Memorial Hall contains some fabulous murals of important naval battles in American history and a replica of the flag flown by Oliver Hazard Perry aboard the USS Niagara during the War of 1812. The phrase "Don't Give Up the Ship" was famously uttered by James Lawrence as he died aboard the USS Chesapeake during the same conflict.

After our tour Fr. Mark and I had a quick bite to eat in one of the campus eateries. We noted that all of the decor centered around the Naval Academy's sports teams, and so I suspected that somewhere I would find a few pictures celebrating the Navy's long-overdue success when playing the Fighting Irish in football. And sure enough ...

Although this trip was several weeks ago, I thought that posting this was an appropriate way of celebrating the 236th birthday of the United States Navy which we commemorate today. Anchors Away, and God bless the men and women of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

A Priest's Chalice

The Catholic New York has a lovely little piece on New York's recent commemoration of the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. The article briefly explains the story behind the chalice that Archbishop Dolan used in the memorial Mass he celebrated at St. Peter's Parish just blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. Go check it out.

Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses the story of two brothers to condemn the chief priests and elders for professing to be children of the covenant, but not proving that they are by their actions.

As Christians, we too are convicted by this Gospel because there can often be a disconnect between the faith and hope we profess in Christ Jesus and the way we live our lives.

Brothers and sisters, too often we confuse ourselves about the meaning of true human freedom and, like the first son in the Gospel, we simply choose to say “No” to the Lord’s invitation. We falsely imagine that what the Lord asks of us is too onerous or too restrictive of our freedom. We falsely imagine that we know better – that what God asks of us is less likely to bring about the happiness we long for in our lives. Like the people that Ezekiel mentions in our first reading, we complain that the Lord’s way is not fair, and so we set off on our own self-determined path to do as we see fit.

At other times, like the second son in today’s Gospel, we can at least bring ourselves to speak a word of “Yes” – with good intentions, we make a choice to do what the Lord has asked of us – but then because of our weakness, we become lukewarm in our commitment. We fail to live out our “Yes” because ego creeps back in, and we never actually do submit ourselves to the demands of the Lord’s work.

Friends, our Gospel story today does not speak of a third son who both says, “Yes, I will go” and then actually “does the work that has been given to him.” But in our second reading, St. Paul describes just such a Son. Jesus is described as the Son who is not afraid to let go of His exalted position, to relinquish His control, His power, His very self in order to do what His Father asks of Him.

St. Paul repeats what is almost certainly an even more ancient Christian text, a crucially important hymn about Jesus, which says: “Though He was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God as something to be grasped at. Rather He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave … He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross.”

And lest we think, as we often do, that so submitting to the will of God will lead only to our suffering and loss, St. Paul makes perfectly clear … “BECAUSE OF THIS God highly exalted Him and gave Him a name above all names, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God the Father that Jesus Christ is Lord!”

It is precisely in emptying Himself that Jesus receives the glory that He is due as Lord of all. So too, it is precisely in emptying ourselves, in answering God’s invitation, and in fulfilling what the Lord asks of our lives that we find the fulfillment and joy we had been seeking all along.

And so, St. Paul pleads with all of us at the beginning of the reading we just heard: if there is to be any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any hope in faith, then be of the same mind, united in heart … “and do nothing out of selfishness or vainglory. Rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves . . .”

Friends, when Jesus offers this parable to the chief priests and the elders, he tells them that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of Heaven before them. It was an intentionally provocative statement. Tax collectors and prostitutes were the most notorious and despised of public sinners – to say that they were entering heaven before the religiously clean leaders of Israel was unthinkable.

But Jesus’ statement was not merely a provocative turn of phrase. It was also an insight into a spiritual truth that we have seen played out in our lives, in the lives of people who know, and even in the lives of the saints. Why were the prostitutes and tax collectors entering heaven before the elders and scribes? Because they had already hit rock bottom! The search for happiness in money and pleasure had already proven itself fruitless for them. They knew, all to well, the emptiness of the illusion that they could achieve any happiness, any salvation by their own merits. Life had already emptied them of any ego that remained – they realized that they were powerless to change their own lives – and so they were finally ready to yield, to give their lives over to God. They accepted the repentance of John’s baptism, and the salvation it foretold.

 The elders and scribes, however, still imagined that they could achieve happiness in this life, and salvation in the next, by their own merit and achievement. Life had not yet emptied them in the same way, and they had refused to empty themselves, and so there was no room, no place left for Christ to enter into their lives. 

Some of us have experienced for ourselves, or through loved ones, the self-emptying that occurs when our lives hit rock bottom. It’s the very premise of the twelve-step program first utilized as part of Alcoholics Anonymous. The first three steps as defined by A.A. are: “We admitted we were powerless; We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us; We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.” This is wisdom rooted squarely in the spiritual lesson of today’s Gospel.

We can see it also in the lives of the saints. Saint Augustine and Saint Ignatius of Loyola famously spent their youths searching for answers to life’s central questions – indeed searching for themselves – in all the wrong places. Only when the faced their darkest hours of doubt and despair were they finally able to give themselves over to God.

But friends, the good news implied in today’s Gospel is that we don’t have to wait for the same to happen to us to give our lives over to God. Jesus says to the elders and the priests: “Even when you saw” tax collectors and prostitutes believing in John the Baptist, “you did not later change your minds and believe in him.”

In other words, we can take as a lesson for our own lives, the hard lessons others have learned. We can recognize, as the priests and elders failed to – but as the conversion of tax collectors and prostitutes was meant to prove – that the search for happiness in money and pleasure, the self-centered pursuit of happiness will be as fruitless for us as it was for them.

Instead, we can – as St. Paul urges us – follow the example of Christ. We can have in us the same mind and heart. We can be emptied of ego, and entirely reliant on God. And if we follow Jesus Christ in His self-emptying, in His fulfillment of the Father’s will, we can be sure too that we will reign with Him as well.

Civil War Tour: First and Second Manassas

Before the summer slipped completely through my fingers, I began working on a project I had first assigned myself when I arrived in Washington a year ago. Knowing that history isn't learned solely in books or in the classroom, I decided when I first moved to the capital that I would make the most of my time here by visiting as many historical sites as possible. Then classes started. 

Obviously the busyness of the school year kept me from living up to my best intentions. But the summer months offered a little bit of a breather and I tried to make the most of the month of August.

When I was doing my planning, a year ago, I was particularly interested in taking advantage of my proximity to so many battle sites from the Civil War. I suppose my delay in beginning my tours was Providential, as this semester I am taking a class on the Civil War, and this year also marks the 150th anniversary of the first year of the war. 

Back in August of 2010, I compiled a list of battle sites that are within driving distance of Bethesda, and organized the list chronologically, hoping to work my way through a personalized Civil War tour.

Already, I've had to make adjustments to the chronological character of the tour - but I have been able to visit a few sites, and I've also been able to 'prepare' for each tour by reading a bit about the battle, and reviewing the applicable section of Ken Burns' remarkable PBS documentary on the war.

My first adventure was undertaken with my friend Fr. Mark, the former associate of Little Flower Parish. We drove across the Potomac to Virginia, and to the little creek known as Bull Run - the site of the first real battle of the war.

The battle is alternately known as Bull Run, in the North, and Manassas, in the South. That's because the Union tended to name the battles after nearby topographical features such as streams, and the Confederacy tended to name the battles after the nearest town or railroad junction.

I don't intend to summarize the details of all the battles in these posts, but rather to point out the most interesting aspects of the places I visit. Seeing the water of Bull Run itself (above), and the bridge that crossed the stream (immediately above), upon which so many of the fleeing Union soldiers and spectators were jammed, was particularly poignant.

Fr. Mark and I began our tour near the Henry House which played an important role in the Battle of First Manassas (1861) as it was the site of the only civilian death of the battle. Judith Carter Henry was mortally wounded by artillery fire in her home (below) which proved to be in the middle of the battlefield.

Throughout our tour I was struck by the iconic fences that are so associated in my mind with the battlefields of the Civil War. Certainly this style of fence was used in other parts of the country, but in my mind's eye it is always associated with the battles of the Civil War.

It was at the Battle of First Manassas that General Thomas J. Jackson received the nickname that remained with him for the duration of the War: "Stonewall" Jackson. During the battle he and his men held the high ground despite strong Union attacks, and other Confederate commanders rallied their wavering men by pointing out the courage of Jackson, who was "standing there like a stone wall." The moniker stuck.

During both battles the Stone House, which had been a saloon and inn, served as a Union field hospital. In the upstairs rooms there are floorboards that still bear the graffiti etchings of soldiers who were treated there during the Second Battle of Manassas in August, 1862.

During that second battle, Union troops attacked the Confederate lines of Stonewall Jackson, whose men were positioned along an unfinished railroad bed called The Deep Cut, seen below. Fr. Mark and I took a brief one mile hike along the entirety of the line and also visited the nearby Brawner Farm from which the Union forces took devastating artillery fire.