Homily for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

I’ve just returned to Little Flower from a couple weeks of retreat and vacation with my religious community, the Congregation of Holy Cross, and a good bit of that time was spent at the University of Notre Dame.  So you’ll have to excuse the fact that I was thinking a lot about the history of my religious community and my alma mater when I prayed over the readings for this Sunday’s Liturgy and prepared this homily.

I think I’ve told you before that the Congregation of Holy Cross was founded in France in the years immediately after the French Revolution.  Prior to the Revolution there were some 60,000 priests in France, some 55,000 nuns, and religious communities owned some ten percent of the surface area of France.

But during the Revolution all that land was confiscated, some 20,000 priests abdicated their posts, some 30,000 fled France entirely, and nearly 800 were executed or died in prison.  By the spring of 1794 only 150 parishes in the whole of France had Mass on Sunday!

Suffice it to say that at the beginning of the nineteenth century very few observers would have bet on the survival of the Church in France.  But, in fact, the Church not only survived, it experienced a new flowering.

The first 80 years of the new century saw some 400 new religious orders for women founded and some 200,000 women enter religious life.  Blessed Basil Moreau founded our Congregation at precisely this time, and out of the inauspicious setting of post-Revolutionary France, his order grew and spread all around the globe. Today Holy Cross has over two thousand priests, brothers, and sisters in 16 countries on five continents. 

One of the places Moreau sent his religious was to the American frontier.  In December 1842 Fr. Edward Sorin stood on a snowy hillside overlooking a frozen lake in northern Indiana.  He and seven Holy Cross brothers had only a tiny log cabin in which to huddle against the elements.  Sorin wrote a letter to Father Moreau back in France in which he named the place Notre Dame and pledged to build a school there in Our Lady’s honor.

 Fr. Sorin made this prediction:  “As there is no other school within more than a hundred miles, this college cannot fail to succeed.... Before long, it will develop on a large scale ... It will be one of the most powerful means for good in this country … at least, that is my deep conviction. Time will tell if I am wrong.”

Observers at the time would have thought Sorin insane, but today he’s been proven right a hundred times over.  Notre Dame did indeed grow into a massively successful international research and teaching university, even if at the beginning most sane people would have scoffed at Sorin’s run-down log cabin.

I thought of these historical examples when I read this Sunday’s readings, because the interpretive key to all the other readings is found in today’s second reading from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.  Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

Friends, human sight, reason, logic, economic statistics, and demographic projections would never have come up with the rebuilding of the Church in France after the devastation of the French Revolution.  They would never have foreseen the development of the University of Notre Dame from a single ramshackle log cabin in the desolate Indiana countryside.

And yet with the eyes of faith, the followers of Christ have been “beating the odds” from the very beginning.  After all, human sight, logic, and reason would never have foreseen the Resurrection on Good Friday afternoon, and could never have fathomed twelve Galilean fishermen building an international Church of billions of members that has endured for two thousand years!  And yet, here we are in Bethesda, Maryland in 2012.  “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

That’s the key to understanding the first reading.  The prophet Ezekiel had been a priest in the Jerusalem Temple, but when Israel had abandoned the covenant and God delivered the nation into the hands of the Babylonians, Ezekiel and the rest of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were sent into exile.

And yet, in our first reading, Ezekiel uses the poetic imagery of a large cedar tree to predict that the family tree of King David would indeed survive – and that through David’s family tree, all the nations of the earth would find blessing in the Lord.

To most of Ezekiel’s listeners this must have sounded like a cruel joke. No one would have predicted such a future for Israel while it was in exile and bondage, and yet … “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

That’s the key to understanding today’s Gospel reading as well. First, we have to understand that today’s Gospel is not the passage from Luke, in which the disciples ask for an increase in faith, and Jesus tells them that if they had “faith the size of a mustard seed” they could uproot mountains and drop them in the sea.

No, today’s Gospel is from Mark and it begins with Jesus saying: “this is how it is with the kingdom of God.”  So Jesus’ analogy employs the image of a seed not to describe our faith, but to tell us about God’s kingdom.

First, Jesus says that like the seed buried in the earth, and watched by the farmer – the kingdom grows and spreads, and has its effect, “we know not how.”  In other words, God’s saving activity in the world is a great mystery.  It cannot be fully seen, explained, comprehended, or predicted. 

And therefore it requires a certain kind of patience, both with God who sows the seed and with our own hearts and minds that provide the soil for the seed’s growth.  The kingdom of God is indeed present and growing in our midst, just like a seed.  But just like a seed, it requires time for hidden growth before its fruit becomes obvious to the human eye. 

Second, Jesus says the Kingdom is like the mustard seed which starts small and produces an exponentially larger plant.  So large, in fact, that all the birds of the sky find a home in its branches. 

If you think that sounds a bit like the first reading from Ezekiel you’d be right.  Jesus is the descendant of David through whom all the world finds blessing.  So, like the mustard seed, the kingdom of God starts in the smallest, seemingly insignificant and least obvious ways – in a manger in Bethlehem, and on a cross outside Jerusalem – and yet it grows into an immense reality.

Here we might add something that Jesus doesn’t explicitly point out: namely that the mustard plant is an invasive species! It can easily get out of control and takeover even where it isn’t planted or wanted!

So too, the Kingdom of God is capable of taking control of our lives, even when we would sometimes choose to keep it out, or to give it only a small portion of our attention and commitment.  All the better if we yield to it, and comply with it – that we cultivate and nourish its growth and help it to bear fruit in us and in the world.

Brothers and sisters, throughout our lives there are any number of instances in which human sight, logic, and reason would have us believe that God has abandoned or rejected us, or that there is no future to hope for, or that the Church is dying, or … well, fill in the blank.

But friends, “we walk by faith, not by sight.”  We have faith and trust – like Blessed Basil Moreau, and Fr. Sorin, and St. Francis of Assisi, and Mother Theresa, and all the great saints throughout history – that even when sight, and logic, and reason find it difficult or even impossible to recognize God’s activity in our lives and in the world, He is in fact bringing about a future even better than what we could hope for or imagine.

In this Eucharist we ask for the grace to continue to walk by faith – to patiently trust in God’s grace active within us, to yield evermore fully to His grace, so that God’s grace might produce abundant fruit in us, and His kingdom might be built in our midst.

Homily for the Solemnity of Our Lord's Ascension

Later this week, I’m looking forward to spending a few days’ vacation in Florida with two of my brother Holy Cross priests.  We’ve been invited to visit some friends from our Notre Dame days, a married couple and their three young children, including my goddaughter.

We already have plans for relaxing on the beach, enjoying good food and drink, and most importantly spending lots of time catching up.  But to entertain the kids – and to be honest because we’re like kids ourselves – we’ve also planned a visit to Universal Studios to see their new amusement park: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

I’ve already been checking things out on-line, and I understand that visitors are able to walk the town of Hogsmeade and visit all the shops that Harry and his friends frequent in the famous books and movies.  And then inside the Hogwarts School itself, visitors are able to see replicas of all the magical objects that populate the famous stories.

Included in these magical objects is the Mirror of Erised, which appeared in the very first book and movie of the series.  The Mirror of Erised – which is Desire spelled backwards – doesn’t show a person as they actually are, rather it shows the person as they wish they were – it shows the "deepest and most desperate desire of one's heart."

When Harry’s friend Ron Weasley looked into the Mirror – because he was a middle child and was always being overshadowed by his brothers – he saw himself as Head Boy of the school and as Captain of the Quidditch Team: popular and well liked. 

And when Harry looked into the Mirror – because he had never known his parents who died when he was still an infant – he saw himself in the loving embrace of his parents and relatives.  Harry would sneak out of his room at night to sit in front of the Mirror for hours, just wishing that what he saw was really true.

But when Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School and Harry’s mentor, finds out that he was spending so much time in front of the Mirror of Erised, Dumblemore hid the Mirror and made Harry promise that he would never go looking for it again.

"Men have wasted away before it, not knowing if what they have seen is real, or even possible," Dumbledore told Harry.  "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live,” he said.

I can’t help but think of this fantastical story whenever I think about the feast we celebrate today and hear the readings we just heard about the Ascension of Our Lord.  We’ve just completed forty days since Jesus’ Resurrection at Easter and through the readings of the Easter season we’ve seen the disciples go from being frightened by Jesus’ execution, to confused and amazed by the empty tomb, and then to rejoicing at the reality of Jesus risen from the dead to die no more.

The disciples have benefited from Jesus’ continued teaching, they have begun to preach in Jesus’ name, and they have even been found worthy to suffer persecution, at the hands of the Sanhedrein, for the glory of Jesus’ name.

And now, as Jesus prepares to ascend to heaven, to return to the Father, He promises His Apostles: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  He gives them the great commission: “go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

But despite all that’s happened the Apostles are still stuck in their former way of thinking.  They are still trapped by their old hopes and dreams about how things were supposed to happen. The Apostles ask Jesus: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” 

You see, they were still thinking of the Messiah as an earthly king and as a mighty warrior.  Like Harry Potter, sitting before the Mirror of Erised, they are focused not on how things really are, but on how they wish things were.

And so sure enough, St. Luke records in the Acts of the Apostles, that after Jesus ascended on the clouds, and “while they were looking intently at the sky … suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.  They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?”

Just like Harry Potter needed the wisdom on Albus Dumbledore, the Apostles needed the instruction of the angels to let go of what might have been, to let go of what they wished and wanted to be true, and to instead accept the gift they were, in fact, being given.

And indeed the Apostles were able to let go of their dreams of a warrior Messiah – they were able to let go of having Jesus with them in the flesh, the way they had known Him for so long – and they were able to accept that He was now with them in a different way, in the Spirit, and they did take up the mission they had been given by Jesus.

In the Gospel, St. Mark tells us that, “they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the Word through accompanying signs.” 

The Apostles were able to receive this great gift precisely because they were able to let go of their desire to determine how their lives would unfold – and in the end, what they found was that God’s plan was even greater than what they could have hoped for … the Kingdom was indeed established on the earth, but Jesus did it through them … not through might and force, but through the Apostles, even in their weakness.

Friends, on this Solemnity of the Ascension we are being taught the same lesson that Harry Potter learned staring at the Mirror of Erised, and the Apostles learned staring into the heavens.  We, too, can waste so much of our lives wishing and hoping for things that never were, and imagining how things might have been.  Or we can cling to the past that we have lost and that we long to return to, and never can.

But in the end, all this accomplishes is that it keeps us from living the fullness of life that Christ longs to give us in the here and now.  It keeps us from taking up our part, our role, in Jesus’ mission of proclaiming the Good News to all creatures.

The Paschal Mystery of Jesus, in which we all have a share through Baptism, doesn’t just involve the Cross of Good Friday and the new life of Easter Sunday morning.  It also includes these forty days we have just finished celebrating – a time of adjustment to a new reality – and this day of the Ascension, of letting go and refusing to cling. 

And then ultimately, as we will celebrate next Sunday, the Paschal Mystery includes our reception of the Holy Spirit.  Thus the Paschal Mystery always concludes with our living the fullness of life that Christ came to give us … if only we have the grace to recognize and receive that new life!

Brothers and sisters, we have all experienced loss in our lives and have known broken dreams. But if on this Solemnity of the Ascension we refuse to cling to what might have been – if we let it ascend with Christ to the Father – then we too can be opened so as to receive the fullness of His Spirit. 

And we, too, will find that the new life Christ wants to give us is even greater than anything we once had or once hoped to have. We, too, will live a life “worthy of the call we have received … according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”

CUA Commencement Weekend

This past weekend The Catholic University of America observed its 123rd Commencement Exercises and I was awarded the Master of Arts in History.  Most of the commencement events took place at the beautiful Basilican Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, including the Baccalaureate Mass on Friday evening.

After concelebrating the Mass my parents and I enjoyed dinner at Ray's The Classics with my fellow Holy Cross priest and friend Fr. Terry Ehrman, C.S.C. who was also graduating from CUA with his doctorate in Theology.

Here Fr. Terry and I can be seen in our respective Doctoral and Masters robes and hoods, both of us sporting the distinctive Holy Cross biretta with the academic tassel instead of the more usual pom. It was certainly a great gift to have Fr. Terry with me in D.C. for three of my four semesters, and sharing our commencement made graduation an extra special experience.

Saturday morning's weather for the Commencement could not have been better: bright sun, warm but not hot, and without any humid whatsoever. Against the backdrop of the East Entrance of the Basilica Shrine, University President John Garvey, and University Chancellor Donald Cardinal Wuerl presided at the ceremonies.

This year's commencement speaker was Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and University Alumnus and Trustee.  He was his usual charming and jovial self keeping the crowd laughing with self-depricating humor and a bit of superman frivolity with his ferriola.

Cadinal Dolan gave an excellent address touching on some of the serious issues of the day, including the fight for religious freedom, but highlighting the special calling of Catholic universities.  I was particularly pleased that the Cardinal used a reference to a fellow Staten Islander in a most touching part of his speech.  His full address can be read here.

After the University-wide exercises each College separated for its own diploma distribution ceremony where each graduate's name was read and they got their chance to "walk."

Later that evening, Mom, Dad, and I enjoyed dinner at Virtue Feed and Grain in Old Town Alexandria and then met Bobbie and Jess for deserts at Buzz in Ballston.

Altogether it was a wonderful weekend. My work will continue at CUA through the summer, however. I have planned several research projects for myself and hope to make use of the archives and library on campus until I move to Columbia sometime in August. Ever onward!

Final Vows at Little Flower

This past weekend Little Flower Parish and School had a tremendous cause for celebration.  Sister Rachel Terry, IHM who serves as the music teacher in our school professed her final vows in The Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  It was a very beautiful liturgy and as always it is very powerful to see someone consecrate their lives to Christ and His Church.  May God bless Sister Rachel and the witness she provides!

There was a tremendous turn-out of parishioners, school children, and IHM Sisters for the celebration. Frs. Jeff and Mark who have previously been assigned to Little Flower also made return visits to help us celebrate. Here we pose with Sister and some of her family and friends:

I was also very happy to reconnect with two of the three IHM sisters who served at St. Joseph by the Sea High School when I was a student there. Sisters Mindy and Joan taught religion and music respectively and I remember their humor and kindness very fondly. We had not seen one another since I graduated in 1995!

And I didn't leave the festivities empty handed. The chair I sat in at dinner just happened to have a "winning sticker" on the underside of the seat and so I got to take the table's centerpiece home.  Here Fr. Anthony awards me my prize ... which I promptly passed on to our parish secretary so that it would not be doomed to a rapid and inglorious death by my black thumb!

A Big Post on the Big Easy

A few weeks back, in one of my homilies I referred to a wonderful trip I made in February to New Orleans, Louisiana.  I promised when I posted that homily that once comps were finished I'd get around to writing a full-length post on all the sites, sounds, and tastes that I experienced in the Big Easy. Well, I'm happy to say that I've passed comprehensive exams and now have the time to make good on my promise ... 

I'd been hoping to visit New Orleans for years, going back at least to my senior year at Notre Dame when I wrote my thesis on Archbishop Joseph Rummel who integrated the Catholic schools of the archdiocese in the early 1960s.  But this year I finally had a great excuse to visit because my friend Scott has been living in New Orleans for a work assignment.  

Just blocks from where I was staying, I began my visit to New Orleans with a visit to the National World War II Museum. Founded as the National D-Day Museum, it was located in New Orleans because it was there that Andrew Higgins designed and built the famous landing crafts that were used in Operation Overlord.

Although the Museum now covers the entirety of the Second World War, and is massively expanding, its explication of the conflict is accomplished primarily through the numerous "D-Day" landings that marked both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of operation. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have also produced an excellent movie for the Museum which I though handled the moral issues of the war in particularly subtle and impressive fashion.

While Scott worked during the day, I explored different sections of the city under crystal clear skies.  First up was the heart of the French Quarter and Jackson Square with the iconic Cathedral of St. Louis -where I was also pleased to concelebrate Mass on Sunday morning.

I also spent nearly a whole day riding the St. Charles streetcars and walking the Uptown and Garden District neighborhoods, including the campuses of Tulane and Loyola Universities.

I spent hours just looking at the amazing architecture of the homes and their beautifully maintained lawns and gardens. I also took dozens of photos, but I'll spare you by offering just this example of a Garden District home all decked out for the start of Mardi Gras...:

... and this picture of the boyhood home of Eli Manning (who had just won his second Super Bowl MVP with my beloved New York Football Giants!!!):

The Garden District also offered the perfect opportunity to pop into one of New Orleans' classic above-ground cemeteries.

Throughout my visit I ate amazing food at all sorts of different restaurants.  I worked my way through a checklist that included all the classic New Orleans' dishes: gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish pie, poboys, muffaletta, and the like. 

Jambalaya and Abita Beer 

Soft-shell Crab Poboy at Mother's. I also really enjoyed the traditional roast beef poboy at Mahony's 

but somehow didn't get a picture of all that deliciousness. 

Crawfish Pie at Franky & Johnny's

Raw Oysters at Luke

I'll just highlight a few of the best meals I enjoyed during my stay, starting with a North Portland-esque neighborhood restaurant called Cochon.

The place really did feel like it belonged to the Portland food scene in so many ways - but then there were the creole touches that reminded you where you were. With our delightful cocktails we sampled the house-cured meats, macaroni and cheese, fried alligator, and the grits. I'm fairly certain this was my first experience of alligator, and it really does just taste like chicken!

Another culinary highlight was the James Beard Award-winning Willie Mae's Scotch House in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. The crowds line up long before lunch to sample the house speciality: fried chicken, corn bread, and the ubiquitous red beans and rice.

It was seriously some of the best fried chicken I have ever had in my life. I could have sat there all day gorging myself on that crispy goodness.  But you have to save room for dessert!  Which means you head back to Jackson Square, to the world-famous Cafe Du Monde - if not for coffee with chicory ....

... then for the fabulous beignets with powdered sugar and for the people watching. Throughout the week I found my path inexplicably winding its way just close enough to the Cafe that it seemed a shame not to stop by for just a few more beignets!

One of the real highlights of the trip was the chance to see some of the most important sites in the history of Holy Cross in the United States. We have been in New Orleans since 1849 and outside of the  University of Notre Dame, its hard to conceive of a more iconic apostolate in the U.S. 

Unfortunately, since Hurricane Katrina Holy Cross our priests have withdrawn from the city and closed Sacred Heart parish:

And the hurricane did tremendous damage to the Brothers' Holy Cross School, an all boys academy for grades 5 through 12.  The original campus was right along the levees in the Lower Ninth Ward, and I had the chance to see the now condemned buildings and the FEMA trailers where classes were first held when the school reopened after the storm.

But I was also able to tour the miraculous new campus that the school has built on the site of a former parish church, grade school, and high school.  

The new buildings were designed by a Holy Cross and Notre Dame alumnus and were modeled on the original main building of the school.  

The chapel and dining hall are yet to be built, but the academic and athletic facilities have been completed and they rival anything you'd fine on the nicest college campuses in the country. There are currently no brothers on the faculty, unfortunately, but the headmaster warmly welcomed us and I enjoyed speaking with some of the faculty and students. I very much hope to make return visits to this wonderful apostolate!

I was also lucky enough to be in New Orleans at the very beginning of the Mardi Gras season so I was able to attend three different parades. Happily, one of the parades included the Holy Cross Tiger Band:

I most enjoyed the evening parades we saw, but unfortunately those photos didn't come out quite as well. I also had a hard time juggling my adult beverage, my camera, and all the beads I needed to catch!

Despite their reputation, these Uptown Mardi Gras parades are really very family oriented. There were lots of little ones with their parents along the parade route - sometimes perched atop step ladders so as to better catch more beads! I also made a couple of trips down into the French Quarter's notorious Bourbon Street. 

Although it was undoubtedly a bit cliched, I still very much enjoyed sitting out on the patio behind Pat O'Brien's soaking in the sun and the refreshing Hurricanes they serve!

I should also note that I enjoyed several of the city's official cocktail, the Sazerac, including while sitting on the front porch of the Columns Hotel, while HBO set up for a shoot of Treme inside.

At night, Bourbon Street takes on an entirely different feel - and like Times Square, you really want to experience it at night. Towards the end of my stay, when we made our evening trip to the Quarter, it had gotten quite a bit cooler - which I think helped tame some of the less inspiring traditions of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. So I was able to soak in the atmosphere without encountering too much vice!

Whatever its reputation as a sin-city, I think New Orleans does have one highly civilized civil code that trumps those in so many other American cities: responsibly enjoying a frozen adult beverage while walking the city streets is perfectly legal, and I can attest, quite enjoyable.

My trip also included a tour of the Chalmette Battle site from the War of 1812, and several wonderful visits to live music venues on Frenchman Street. Unfortunately, my pictures in those darkened venues didn't come out so well - and without sound they wouldn't capture the experience anyway. So, you'll just have to make a visit for yourself! 

I'm grateful to Scott for hosting me, and happy to report that I will be making a return visit to New Orleans in January 2013 to present a paper at the annual American Catholic Historical Association meetings. I already can't wait! Laissez les bons temps roullez!!